The Brand Ch. 15

"Yes it is. I know you want help."

"Shut up. No I don't."

"Yes you do. And I tried to help you through the spiritual path."

"Oh Christ, please."

"But, since that didn't work-"

"I wouldn't say it didn't work."

"Since that didn't work, I've decided to take a different tact."

"And stalking me was part of this, tact."

"Yep. And getting you to submit to me, to break you down, that will turn you into the human being you ought to be. You will be humbled. I will teach you to be a good slave."

Victria's eyes went wide.

"Glory, you are doing this against my will."

"Am I? Think about how you feel tomorrow morning, then bring that up again. Are you ready for another beer?"

Victria sighed, then winced because the air she breathed in made the wound in her lower lip sting.

"Yes please." She answered.

As the night wore on, Victria guzzled eight beers and two shots, and urinated four times in her jeans, before deciding she wanted to sober up with some food. Too drunk and tried to resist or fight about it, Victria accepted chip after chip from Glory's gentle fingers. The candy bars, Victria's captor had cut, with her pocket knife, into chunks, taking half the morsels for herself. Eventually, Glory moved her by the bed, so that Victria could suffer through a Full House marathon while Glory secured all the weapons and ammunition and got dressed into her sleeping clothes.

"Look She-Hulk," Victria said groggily in the brutal blue light of the room's TV, "I have to shit. Do you seriously want me to do it right here?"

Glory paused in the midst of turning down the bed. Victria observed the tall woman thinking it over.

"I mean really sister," she continued, "It'll be like we never left Greely.

"Hmm," said Glory, "Greely was pretty awful. You're right. Just let me get a collar and a longer chain."

"Collar?"

It was mortifying enough, to have to shit in front of Glory, to have her see the scars, fissures and ugly patches of red of her lower legs. Though, being drunk and dejected certainly made such feelings somewhat less impacting. But to be collared, to have an inch wide, quarter inch thick, ring of steel around her neck, and having had it fit on her by another domme, made it all the worse. It was the principle of it, the symbolic obdurateness of her enslavement that agonized Victria far more than being seen conducting herself with private matters. Where did this amazon bitch come from, she wondered. It was the strangest feeling she'd ever known. But, the role was reversed. All of it was strange. All of it was bad. Consent to this bull shit, she thought. Of course I won't consent to this. When morning comes, we will part company and that's all there will be to it.

Still held at the end of Glory's chain, Victria was forced to shower herself off, and then instructed to dress for bed. She did. Glory then brought her back to the bathroom so that she could pee one last time that night, and then brush her teeth. Victria did as she was bid. The collar, however, was not removed from Victria's neck. And, as if that wasn't enough, Glory hand cuffed both of her wrists to one of her own. Bound, they got into bed. With her free hand, Glory turned out the light. They were back to back, Victria's wrists linked to Glory's right arm, a short length of chain draped between them. Glory tried to sleep, but it wouldn't come. Victria had not moved. Then, an hour or so later, Victria whispered:

"What did you do with my dolls?"

"I locked them away in your gun safe." Glory whispered back, "The pins that were in your legs, I threw into the trash."

Again, silence reigned between them. Outside, traffic sped and slowed, lives were lived lustfully or lingered on, day to day to day. Somewhere in the world, a child was turning eight or an eighty year old woman was dreaming of her children, the pain of her oncoming death made mute with morphine. Glory had begun to drift. But, there was a new sound, a soft keening, so like a child and so close. Glory turned herself around. A moment more and she heard Victria's sniffling. Glory reached around and touched Victria's hot, wet face. She whiled away the next moment, wiping the tears from her captive's eyes.

Sobbing, Victria turned to huddle against Glory's chest. There, she drove her face deep and screamed her pain and wept her tears. Over and over Victria screamed, screamed for Melody. But, Melody she couldn't have. Love, for the moment, she wouldn't have. Glory embraced her despairing captive, held her close and gently stroked her hair. Victria's sobbing wore on, broken up only by intermittent mutterings, growls, mumblings and helpless screams until she, finally, was spent. In the darkness, the two women remained chained to each other. Presently, the whole world was silent and, breaking it, but only with the barest, sweetest of whispers, Glory said:

"Anything we do is to distract us from loss, from death, anything and everything."

7

Melody, against her mother's behest, took a walk into town and sat at a bus stop across the street from where Bear Lake Elementary once stood. The structure, built in 2005, had been leveled to the ground. What remained was nine thousand square feet of budding lawn.

She'd stepped out of the house after three days of hiding in her room, the room she shared with her mother. They'd spoken frankly to each other, shared, confessed and cried. Dean had walked in that first early evening of Melody's return, stunned speechless. He'd come upon the two, still seated together in the kitchen, speaking in hushed voices, the broken plate, chops, peas and potatoes still all over the floor. The three then regarded one another, the weight of the silence getting heavier by the second, until Dean lifted his daughter's chin and asked:

"How you in that head a yours Mel?"

Meeting his eyes, she answered:

"I'm here, Daddy, I'm here."

With that, Dean let his daughter's chin go. Then, both she and Martha studied the man as he went to the corner where his wife kept the broom and proceeded to sweep up the scattered mess on the floor. Martha started to protest, started to get on her feet, but Melody put a hand on her mother's arm, glanced at her father, and then told her mother to sit back down.

As slow traffic passed in and out across her field of vision, Melody watched as her memory put Bear Lake Elementary back together. Somehow, however it happened, where ever she'd been, Melody was now able to piece memory together without getting stuck on seeing Leanne running to her, Leanne running and grabbing hold of her leg, running down the hall and Leanne falling down, staring at her, never to run or play or anything ever again.

She remembered that it was Dean that had told her to just get up and walk out of there. It was Martha that had met her outside, crying, taking a cold wet wash cloth and wiping someone else's blood from her face. She remembered that an EMT had run up to her, sliced her jeans, just above where she was bleeding, looked at the wound, taped gauze to it, and then ran back into the school. Dean and Martha still took her to the hospital. She remembered being on a table, not hearing anything, staring at people in scrubs around her, coming in and going out of the room.

Someone dressed well, like a lawyer, came into the room and tried to talk to her, but she couldn't hear him. Melody just wanted it quiet for a while, quiet outside of her head at least, so that maybe screams and the crying and the gun going off over and over would quiet down too. Still, days later, she still wanted it quiet, but it wouldn't come.

At the end of those three days, school staff and parents got together to talk to the psychologist from the district and the Methodist minister from the church on Dalton and 1st Street. It was there, in the church's community hall, that Melody took the first steps away from the useless talk of small people about the big, beneficent, far away God and all of his big preordained plans for us all and how things would hurt less and less if we talked it out and if we believed. So she walked back home, packed some of the few things she did believe in, threw it all on her back, rode her bike to the bank, took out all of her money, left her bike behind the bank and walked away from Bear Lake.

"You know there's gotta be at least twenty houses in this town with little kids bedrooms, untouched, while their families just get along the best they can."

Melody turned to see a lanky, dark haired woman her own age, standing just beyond the far end of the bus stop bench. She was a familiar stranger, dressed in a neat blouse, pressed slacks and a dark rimmed pair of glasses obscuring her face. As she stared, Melody had a memory she hadn't recalled in nearly three years. She was walking past The Second Cup on her way out of town. She saw Dory seeing her through the shop's window. But Melody hadn't seen Dory pause that day, start crying and then run to the Second Cup's door. Melody had heard it's bell jangle, but didn't turn around. She'd known Dory was behind her, standing outside the shop, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to do while someone that had loved her briefly was hurting so bad that she just started walking away from all she'd known.

"Welcome home." Said Dory, "Is it good to be back?"

Melody shifted her gaze and let it fall to the passing traffic.

"Or are you waiting on a bus to get right back out of here?"

"Fuck the bus." Answered Melody, "I'd likely just start walking away all over again."

"Oh would you now?"

"Hell no. How are you?"

Dory sat down at the opposite end of the bench and settled her gaze on the flat expanse across the street.

"I'm alright. I'm still at the Second Cup, only now I manage people slinging coffee. I quit weed, fixed my car, bought a nicer car, met a nice Mexican girl out Loveland way and I got this apartment up on Red Stream."

Melody smiled slightly, felt it fade, and then fixed her own gaze across the street.

"I can't imagine how any of those families can still be here." Continued Dory, "The rest just up and left. I would have done the same, if it were my kids I lost anyway."

Cars. Passed. Pedestrians strolled. Birds sang and flit from branch to branch.

"So where'd you end up running away to?" asked Dory.

Melody turned to face her, let her gaze linger for a few seconds, and then looked back across the street. Then, laughing ironically, she answered:

"It wouldn't be fair to you, to even start. I wouldn't know where to start. I, I-"

Melody swung her hand before her, gesturing to have an explanation just drop right into her hand. She paused, settling her hands back onto her lap and said:

"I hid. I interrupted my life to, to live for someone else, and now-"

Again, she paused. Dory waited, watching the side of Melody's face until the pause had lasted so long that she looked to her left, up the west bound side of Main Street. .

"Now, I'm free." Melody finally said, "I'm free. And I'm, trapped here, being free."

Dory regarded her, took off her glasses, and then tucked them into her shirt pocket.

"You're not trapped." She said, "You just don't know what to do with being free."

Melody studied Dory's face for a moment, and then turned once more to face the school that was no longer there. Presently, a jogger, a man in his late thirties Melody thought she recognized, was running along the sidewalk that ran across the front of the place where Bear Lake Elementary once stood.

Now you see there," said Dory as they watched the man increase his speed, "That's Ron Jacobs, little Danny's dad. He and his wife Irene, they're two of those people that never left town and keep their boy's room exactly the way it was before he died."

"He was a first grader." Melody said distantly.

"Yeah, that's right. Anyway, his room, it must be like a shrine. I mean, why else do it. I don't know. I can't know and frankly, I never want to know. Now that guy, he runs each and every day. I guess he and Irene started this foundation to promote stricter adherence to Child Find, I don't know, some way to find bad kids before they get worse. So they get people all over to donate and run in these marathons. Sometimes, I see him through the coffee shop's window and he's crying when he runs by."

Melody watched him pass in front of the empty grounds across the way, and then watched him disappear into the distance.

"But that's the thing." Dory continued, "It doesn't matter how far you run or where you run to or whether you stay right by your ground zero. He, his wife, everyone that was there-"

Dory paused, became teary eyed and turned to meet Melody's gaze.

"You," She said, "will always be haunted. So what do you do? You keep the ghosts. You do what you're supposed to do, what you want to do in the world, and you, keep the ghosts."

Melody considered Dory for a time, turned to look back across the street and considered the future memorial park or new school, and then got to her feet. Dory rose too. The women embraced, exchanged polite wishes and intentions to visit more in the future, and then parted company.

Melody made her way back home, stopping at the Pigly to buy some sweet, terribly unhealthy confection. Having noticed in the mirror in her old room, and as her mother had pointed out, she'd become thin as a rail. An appetite, she decided, was in order. An appetite was good. Absently, she walked the half mile along the cracked sidewalk of Juniper Road. She delighted in the sweet flavor and soft textures of her snack as she admired the tall Ponderosa and Lodge pole pines, the Balsam Poplars and Peach leaf Willows that stood guard along the street.

How had I lost so much weight, she wondered. What in the world had she done to me? What was the last thing I remember? Melody cringed. Her stomach soured as she remembered the men with their masked faces and their big guns bursting through the front door, the door she'd opened for them. Victria, she must have punished me for that. Melody wanted to remember, wanted to understand, to be sure of one thing or another concerning where she'd been between the end of December and those three days ago, three and a half months later, in the cemetery on Gamble Oak Hill. I was bound to her, she thought. She was my, my queen. I loved her. She told me to leave the world.

A heat suddenly came into Melody's eyes. She shook her head and neatly folded the packaging around her remaining cupcake. She willed herself away from any further thought for the moment, admiring the trees, listening to the breeze playing with the leaves overhead, the birds singing and she glanced in the windows of the houses along the street, wondering which ones held shrines to lost children.

And then she was there. It had never been an incongruous home. It looked like all the others, painted wood siding, two stories, screens in the windows, a wide front door, with columns on either side holding up a small peaked roof. But, now, the Allwine house was boarded up, its door, its windows, even those of the second floor. Someone had gone to the trouble.

Melody had clipped the article and pasted it into her diary, how they found Randy's first victims: his father, Randolph Senior, dead, face down at the dining room table, a nine millimeter hollow point slug fired into the back of his head; Virginia Allwine, found on the short set of stairs that led out to the garage, shopping bags and their spilled contents cluttered around her body, a total of six shots fired from the same gun. Randy had fired the first from behind, hit her on the side of the neck. Maybe he was shaking. It was his mother after all. Then she likely turned to face him. Later, a psychologist would write of their fights, Virginia's denial, Randy's refusal to take his Prozac and Virginia's entreaties: "Just kill me then Randy, just kill me then."

They, maybe kids in their twenties, drunk, faking up a witch hunt, had set the place inside on fire. Or, maybe it were the heads of the families of the children Randy killed, maybe some of the teachers that survived, that lived in town, that burned the guts of the house, after the police took the bodies, took all the knives, ninja stars, ammunition and guns Randolph Senior his son begged for. Sure Randy. Just be a good boy for me and Mom, okay? Yes Dad, I promise. I promise.

"Mom?" called Melody, having dried her eyes just before she walked into the house.

She found them in the kitchen, sharing that day's paper, talking, close, their intimacy strange to her, unfamiliar yet provoking a feeling that wasn't all together unpleasant.

"Hi baby." Smiled Martha, "How did it go?"

"It, was okay." Melody said, "What do they plan on building where the school was?"

"A library, I think." Dean uttered softly, his elbows on the table, his eyes cast down at the local news page.

"A man stopped by for you." Indicated Martha.

""A man." Said Melody, confused, "What man?"

"Well, I don't know." Said Martha, glancing away, "But he seemed kind enough, said he had a delivery for you."

"Did he leave it?"

"No. He said he'd be back with it."

It was then that the knock came on the old dry wood of the screen door. Melody stood still. Martha got up, meaning to answer it. Melody followed. Together, they went to the door. Melody found herself looking at a man she didn't know.

"Ms. Melody May?" he asked with a smile as he looked at her through the screen.

Melody paused, considering the man's soft southern drawl.

"Yes," she answered.

Then she heard a dog yipping and barking excitedly from inside a car that was parked on the street.

"I've got your dog in the car." Said the man as he walked a few steps backward before turning around.

"Dog? I don't have, a dog." Said Melody as she stepped onto the front porch.

The man went to the rear passenger door, opened it and out sprinted a little black tornado with leopard spots on his back. His mouth in a wide smile, he cried with longing as he jumped against Melody's knees, taking her off guard and knocking her to the porch floor.

"Mel honey," laughed Martha, "how can that not be your dog?"

Melody, perplexed, laughed delightedly as the dog licked her face and nuzzled his nose under her chin, filling his nose with her scent. Finally, he calmed down and settled on her lap. Melody studied him, bemused, concerned, and positively certain she had never before known such a dog.

"Sir," she said, "I don't know this dog."

"But the lady that left him at my kennel back in Georgia said he was your dog."

"I," Melody stuttered, "What's, what's his name?"

"Spanky, Ma'am." The man answered, "And the lady, her name was, uh, Victoria, something."

"Victria." Melody corrected, "Victria."

8

Another hard winter had rolled around for the North Country. In fact, it was a hard winter for all of the country, and if two or more feet of snow hadn't fallen, then it was record inches of rain that had overwhelmed folks, rushing floods, drowning houses and cars, mud sliding, burying the living alive. The land, a handsome hundred acre lot, was Victria's. Like her first home, she'd paid up outright, in cash. The owner had each bill checked for counterfeits. You never knew people, especially these artsy whack jobs. Sixty thousand in cash, really? The land was pristine, a small valley nestled in the foothills of the Green Mountains, a bend of river elbowing into its North West corner.

Victria had built a cabin on the property, learning how to execute such an undertaking with Glory as her guide. The beautiful giant of a woman, had become many things for Victria, her teacher, spiritual advisor, gun range partner, her protector and friend. Their love had become that of two sisters, open, vital and dependable. Victria could do nothing but admire the woman's persistent devotion and focused attention. Together, over the summer months, they labored effortlessly, usually in contented silence. After Victria had a contractor pour its foundation, dig out the septic leech fields, drop the tank and install the ground water pump, the two women framed the cabin out, framed out its four rooms and erected its walls.