Window

Fear of heights 

Fear of falling

Fear of joining

The world below

Lonely nights

Voices calling

Injured evening

Fades to snow

XXX

Amethyst felt his hands around her neck the moment she heard the sirens. They were high and squealing, far away like the waves of a distant beach. But they were coming. Hope wrestled fear in her heart, grappling for the reigns of her body.

But the hands, they were so strong. She couldn't even dream of breaking free. "You little bitches," said Leafy's voice, low and dangerous. "You idiots! Look what you've done."

The world looked spotty, sparse, things missing all around. Amethyst tried to breathe, but the air caught in her throat. "Sophie," she choked. Where was her friend now? Where was she while Leafy squeezed the life out of her, made her weep with the solid, burning pain of suffocation.

"Don't call for your little friend now," he growled. "She's gone. Left you. Now, hold still. They'll be here soon." Then pain.

XXX

By the time the car pulled up to the curb, Davey's heart had betrayed him again. He felt, brewing above his stomach, dangerous streams of hope. He tried to close them out, shut them down, but they kept reappearing.

He tried to emulate his dog's example. Clark sat stoically beside him, eyes falling shut on the stretches of smooth road and jerking open with every pothole. His flab jiggled at the turns like a dead object, uncaring and unaffected by the world. Clark, Davey knew, would not be disappointed if they did not find Amethyst here because he was simply not expecting to.

But there were words coming through on the radio, words that filled him up with that hope, drowned him in it. The static muffled the messages, but he heard things: "He's gone, no trace", "Small incision on the palm, cut on the head", "Not speaking".

Something had happened. Someone had been found, no denying it anymore. Davey looked at his fat, lazy dog, wanting to shake him and yell, "Don't you understand? This is it!" His heart beat wildly in his chest, clicking away like a timebomb ready to explode. His stomach roiled with anxiety.

The car rocked back and to a complete stop. The officers in front already had their doors open. "You stay here, Mr. Springs. Gotta make sure it's not dangerous before you get out."

"Hey, I'm as much a part of this police force as you are!"

"You armed?"

". . . No?"

"Then stay here."

Davey slumped back in his seat. The excitement of the last few minutes leaked out of him like helium from a balloon. Dusk had fallen; out the window the world looked shadowy and tired, drained of color except for the angry reds and blues of the police lights. Right in front of him was a house -- no, the house. The place where she was. The place where they would find her. It looked right, just the kind of place he figured a kidnapper would be. The shutters were falling from the windows, glass covered with thick wooden boards. Ivy scaled the walls, tangling with the ugly vegetation of the overgrown yard. The lights were all off, the place throwing out a feeling of utter and complete isolation. And yet, here she was.

But why had he been so excited to begin with? Sure, they would find her, but he would never see her again anyway. He had no claim to her. She was not his child, was not the child of a friend, was not a distant relation. She was nothing but a case he had failed for so long to solve. Who was going to let him see her? Touch her? Comfort her? Who was going to let his wife hold her and read to her and braid her hair and take her home?

No one. No matter what they found in this sad little run-down house, Davey's family would never be complete again.

He watched the ambulance back into the house's gravel driveway, lights reaching out their frantic arms. He saw the door open, not the front door but the heavy metal one that guarded the basement. Two men, a stretcher between them, emerged. Davey's breath caught as the little body on the stretcher moved, hand reaching up to the sky in a dark silhouette, small and tragic as a baby bird fallen from the nest. Davey put his head down on Clark's back and let himself cry.

XXX

She didn't say anything.

Richard didn't know what he had been expecting, but it certainly wasn't this. The silence. The calm. The little blue eyes, devoid of tears, devoid of a smile, just pale and sad and so tired. How could someone so young look so exhausted?

He closed the door behind him, desperate to sit down. She rocked before him, splitting into two images and then merging into one again. His hands shook. He needed a drink.

She watched him closely as he staggered to the chair beside her bed. Richard sank into it, closing his eyes. Every muscle in his body ached with that awful soberness. With every beat of the pulse in his temple, the world flashed in and out of sight. His heart beat too fast.

"Amethyst," he muttered. How could this be her? This cold, angry presence didn't match the sweet disposition with which he associated his daughter. The girl he knew, his Aimee, would have flown out of the hospital bed the moment she saw him. She would have thrown her thin arms around him and squeezed until he embraced her in return. "Amethyst, Amethyst, Amethyst."

"What?"

Her voice cut through Richard's heart like a blade. What anger! What coldness! "Sweetie," he heard himself saying. His voice sounded oafish, too loud. He heard himself, resented himself, the way she did for a moment. Why couldn't he be better? Why did a sober day pain him so, make him so dysfunctional. "Come give Daddy a hug, sweetie."

But no arms came around his neck. He pressed his eyes shut, wishing to hear her inch forward in bed, approach him after all these months of separation. It pained him that she had no interest in him. He was, he supposed, part of her life before. This was life after, this was the gaping hole after the bloody landscape of the past.

Richard took a deep breath, trying to make the pains stabbing through his temples. If they were ever going to get through this, he saw, he would have to make the first move. But he couldn't make himself move. And so they sat for hours more until at last he drifted off to sleep.

XXX

Window like a TV screen, tiny people like tired actors, cars like props and streets like sets. Amethyst pressed her face against the glass, wondering if she could fall through reality and into the carefully orchestrated world below.

The view, splendid with lights, captivated her. She had never seen buildings this tall. It occurred to her that she was in one of them. Could she, could she really be a part of one of these cement dragons? Could she be in the intestines of a steel beast, being digested so slowly she couldn't feel it, the way the earth was spinning but she couldn't tell?

Maybe, she thought, that's what happened to Scrubbles and Molly. They were so small, couldn't they be digested already?

The sounds arrested her as well -- car horns blaring, the sparse trees rustling their leaves in the wind, tires against pavement, human laughs and cries and calls. Wait for me! she wanted to call to them. They all seemed so alive and free down there.

Hospital noises reached her, too. Nurses' flats on the linoleum floor, stifled weeping, doors wheezing shut. Her father, snoring gently in the chair beside her bed. When she kissed him goodnight after he dozed off, he murmured in his sleep but did not wake.

Everything passed by so quickly; Amethyst wasn't sure what had happened and what she had dreamed. Leafy, Sophie -- where were they? No one would tell her. Davey, Annie, Minka, Rubin. Why was her father the only one here?

She felt almost as hopeless now as she had down there in the basement. At least then, she had had a friend beside her to share the pain. Now, she was alone with the noises and the lights and the stone giants.

Amethyst stretched her legs out toward the window, pulling her hospital gown up. There was one thing the nurses didn't know about; they hadn't found it. Part of her knew that she should tell someone, but the bigger part of her wanted to keep it safe within herself, the last secret she had left.

It was a small incision, about the length of a paper clip, still red and irritated on the inside of her thigh. It was the last thing Leafy did before the sirens overtook their words and flashing lights illuminated the basement. She didn't know what the cut meant, but it had to serve a purpose, she figured. He had done it with such intent, blotting away the blood with the sleeve of his jacket. He only left once the bleeding had stopped. Either, Amethyst thought, he cares about me, or this is important.

She touched it, flinching at the sensitivity of her skin. Her thigh twitched steadily as she traced the line up and down. It was beginning to scab over, would soon be banished from her body and promptly forgotten.

Amethyst pulled her gown back down and turned her back on the window. In here, there were only familiar dark shapes. Maybe it would be safer to just stop thinking.

XXX

"Davey?"

Annelise peeked past the doorframe, feeling pink rise to her cheeks. What's wrong with you? she demanded. This was her husband. Why did she feel so shy?

But, it had been almost a week since he had touched her, held her, even spoken to her. They had been living on silent terms, weaving in and out of each other's space like cars on the highway.

Annie can barely remember what they were fighting about. All she recalls is the feeling of hot, burning anger smoldering in her stomach like coals in a fireplace.

The anger had faded, though. In its place came a cold, murmuring sadness that she couldn't seem to shake.

"Annie?"

She remembered, now. What she said. I fucking loved you, she heard her voice shout. Cruel, cruel words.

Today, Davey's face was pale from lack of sleep, but there was something there that wasn't there this morning. Maybe it was relief, maybe it was some kind of choked, stifled happiness that he wouldn't express to her just yet. Whatever it was, Annie was glad not to have a grunting, angry Davey home tonight. Tonight, she was in the mood to make up.

"Hey," she said and stepped into the kitchen. It was dark, only the fluorescent lights of the microwave illuminating the room. She used to tease Davey for being so vampire-like, sitting in his room alone in pitch blackness, doing absolutely nothing. He liked the dark, she supposed, the quiet, the way everything seemed to disappear when the lights came off.

She could see a puppy-doggish longing in his dimly lit eyes, in the brackets around his mouth. Hesitantly, he reached for her. Annie let him pull her closer, his hand on the small of her back. He leaned down and spoke close to her ear, lips warm and soft against her skin. "We found her."

"You did?"

"We did."

"Thank the lord."

"Mhm."

"Come to bed with me?"

"Okay."

XXX

Karma police
I've given all I can
It's not enough
I've given all I can
But we're still on the payroll

-Karma Police by Radiohead