My heart pounded like a column of bricks falling heavily one atop the other. My hand was still on the lever. I unglued it finger by finger.
The woman lay on the ground behind me. Patches of my grandmother’s rug were seen between the threads of her long, stringy, dark hair. She wore a thin dress with flowers embroidered around her stomach, as was fashionable within the lower neighborhoods at the time.
“Huh, huh, muh…” she muttered. “Mother, I’ll.. I’ll come back…”
“Hey,” I went over and touched her shoulder. She snapped upright and sat facing towards me, she had a gun in her hand and pointed it at me.
I froze.
Her eyes were wild, unflinching, unblinking, perfectly round, and perfectly… green… just like…
“Stay put!” She spat and my heart stopped. She seemed delusional. “Don’t move!”
“You can trust me,” I said, surprised at my courage despite my raging heartbeats. “He…” I stammered, “He’s dead… See? The window… His head… See?” Her stillness sliced right through me. She was a statue. Did she apprehend what I was saying?
“I did that,” I said. The head in the pressure window looked like a gruesome display in a serial killer or criminal scientist’s cabinet.
She was still as ice.
“What happened out there?” I asked after a few moments of silence.
Without a preemptive admonition, the strange woman with green eyes exploded into an explanation about herself and her life. My initial interpretation was that she meant to repudiate her part in the guard’s death, but I soon understood that she was seized by a terrible state of delusion.
With the gun still pointed at me, I listened to her complete life story in a gibberish-riddled frenzy. “I am from the West Cove,” she started, “The Upper West. A noble family had me. I was theirs in blood and soul. It was all planned out for me, as it is for nobles, you probably wouldn’t know, our ways of life are a fantasy this far below the Mark.
“I knew what was coming from the minute I could consciously think,” she snorted with one side of her nose. “I did not like it, not one bit. To make things worse they turned to the Rabbinate when I was a teen. My father, Lord Klaus, the known liberal, the military commander, turned to the Temple one clear blue morning. To this day I can’t believe it. Sure, they gained power from that, I know, he and my mother, I think it came from my mother ultimately, but I don’t want to discuss that.
“The Rabbinate gained a lot of power under Ursula, this history is known. My father hated them from the second they became powerful. ‘They want our money,’ he would say, ‘We have these luxuries because we toiled for years. You think I don’t have problems? I’ve sat my hundred years on the computer. My back is a stiffened brick.’ He always complained about his health, my father, the military commander. I never understood that.
But we had it good, and for a while I did not care for his remonstrations. I was young. Still, they slowly seethed their way into my young memory only to lay dormant and fuse with my thoughts years later. So you can imagine why I could do nothing to hold back my revulsion towards him when he joined the Temple in order to alleviate his reputation and get closer to power.” She twisted her head sideways towards the ceiling. “Do you think everything we ultimately do is for power?” She put her thumb and forefinger to her chin.
This madness of a rant was blurted at top speed. She barely stopped to breathe. It was remarkable that I understood as much as I did. She slurred complete sentences and abruptly blurted to her mother as she did when I first approached her - seemingly in a strange other language. I was baffled and attributed the outbursts to the poisoned acid she likely swallowed from the ocean.
“So how could he have endorsed them?” She continued, “If I am uninteresting please let me know.” I chuckled - she still had her gun firmly pointed at me. “Well,” she continued without waiting for my reply. “Over the years they gradually seduced my parents, yes, seduced, and my parents let themselves be seduced by the money, greed, and power, persuaded into the lunacy of the Temple! Can you believe it? My father, Lord Klaus! I, of course, would have none of it.
“I started my High Studies at the Royal Academia fully complacent with the intent of abandoning both it and my life as a noble with ties to the Temple. My father, as explicit as he had been in my education and bias against the Temple, suddenly had nothing bad to say about them, as we’ve established. It was as if he woke up one morning with frenetic determination to adore the mud on their heels! I took my education seriously, and my analytical inclinations towards the natural order of the world, including the fluctuations of a certain man’s whims, even a mad man, convinced me that my father had indeed become deranged. Well, I think that’s a fine enough place to stop. What’s happened since then? I have run away and for a long time have not been particularly from anywhere-“
“Look,” I stopped her at the first chance I got. “You just crashed into my room from the outer ‘Cano. I opened the pressure window hoping you would squeeze through it, and by chance, you did and are now alive. Such a scene has never happened here and I wish it to never happen again. The authorities will know that the pressure window has opened, and they will certainly ask about the missing guard - and if they find his body,” I raised my voice higher than I intended, but something devilish gripped me, “Which is deep in the ocean by now, they will certainly inquire about his missing head!” I pointed to it, still stuck in between the window screens. The pressure now caused the veins inside it to explode one after the other and turn his skin to a disgusting purple color. I made a mental note to myself to tint the window, though the awful sight was well enough a reminder.
“Ohh!” the woman suddenly wailed. “My head is a train wreck.” She rubbed her wrinkled forehead with the hand that still held the gun.
I took a few seconds to catch my breath. She certainly was a wreck. “You probably swallowed acid from the wave.” I sighed.
I went over and put my hand on her shoulder and instantly jerked it back. Her skin was covered with a buttery and electrifying substance. I held my hand in stinging pain. Could it be from the acid? I thought. I had only been in contact with it once as a small girl. My mother took me out to be baptized in the ocean, I remember a tingling buzz, a sharp feeling, maybe the memory was too far away. “You should dry and lay down,” I told her. “But take a shower first. You can shower here, and you held a gun to my face a minute ago, that’s unnecessary, ok? I am a friend.” I kneeled and saw her face up close for the first time. The smile I forced as I approached her quickly erased. There was a color of frozen despair on her strikingly pallid face. Her eyes were open and unblinking. She looked like a woman taken out of a painting, like a thing that had been real a long time ago and has since been a relic. Her eyes were large and green - a dark green that lured you in hypnotically and pushed you away with a powerful and sudden force. I wanted to touch her face. She was as beautiful as anything I had seen before. “Let me help you up.”
The woman showered for a long time with long pauses. I tried to think why. My heart still pounded heavily against my chest. But it started to ease. Little by little. “What is taking her so long?” I wondered but quickly dismissed the thought. I felt ashamed. She barely escaped death! I would shower for a full day had that been me! I blushed at the realization of my thinking of her in the shower. My guest should have her privacy, without creeps sitting outside, intruding on their thoughts.
Guest? My head started hurting with anxiety. This was my house! She crashed into my house! Pointed a gun at me after I saved her life and now she was using my shower! Probably splashing acid all over the curtains. I can think what I like!
My fear and pounding heart turned slowly into shame and confusion. But ultimately to a terrible headache. A shameful and confusing headache.
I myself have had many thoughts in the shower. It is a holy time. A thing of perfect privacy. When someone else goes to shower my mind turns a blind eye and a deaf ear. I have no idea what goes on in there and I never wish to think about it. But for some reason, with her, I was thinking about it.
“Hey,” she got out, my towel covering her naked body. “What is your name?”
My heart stopped.
“I’m Lehrraine - and you?” I said in one breath.
“Shai”, she smiled thinly and tilted her head, barely moving the other features of her face. “Thanks for letting me stay here.”
“Call me Leh.” I said.
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