Edge of End (35 page)

The boy didn’t let a cry, he was
surprisingly silence, his furious eyes staring at the
man.

“
You do this to your
mother every time,
” the man smirked and
lifted the woman’s dress baring her buttocks.

“
No, Tom,
please,
” the woman moaned.
“
Let the boy go. He doesn’t need to see
this. I’ll do everything you say. Just let him
loose.
”

“
Shut up,
bitch,
” he slapped her butt in full
measure causing her to cry in pain. With another quick move he
slipped her pink panties over her legs and started unzipping his
pants. “
You watch this, bastard. Man
shouldn’t lie, ever. Especially to his parents. You’ll learn the
lesson, and you’ll be thankful to me one day.
”

“
Tom, don’t make him watch
this,
” the woman proceeded pleading with
whispering voice, but she was too scared to do anything. She wept
soundlessly, covering her eyes with her hand.

The man ignored her like she was a
doll and he was explaining the boy how to play with it. He freed
his dick and placed it between her legs followed by painful and
miserable voice.

“
Close your eyes,
baby,
” she steadied her voice and looked
at her child through tearful eyes. “
Close
them. Close your ears. It’s gonna be okay. It’s okay,
baby.
”

But the boy kept unblinkingly staring
at his father banging his mother on the kitchen table. Just looking
in them I knew his insides were welling, anger squeezing every
ounce of his body. The next moment he shot to his feet, and before
the man could react, he winded out the kitchen and ran toward the
front door. I watched him open it and get out without another
glance back.

The next hour the boy ran never
intending to stop. He didn’t look back, he veered to the left or to
the right randomly, just to be away from his home, from his father,
from the nightmare he had lived all his life regardless of his
mother’s love. He ran determined to never come back again. And he
hadn’t.

I woke up covered in
sweat, gasping for air. Memories. The boy craving to kill his
sadist father had been me once. Oh, how much I longed to meet him
in the
town
and
beat the shit out of him for what he’d done to my life. He was
responsible I had chosen this way to live my life. I was angry, my
blood welling in my veins, I hadn’t had much choice just from the
beginning. The woman who gave a birth to me had loved me too much,
she’d probably commit suicide like Elizabeth but she had faced
every difficult, every beating and my father who had come home
drunken, drugged, with bloodshot eyes.

The rest of night was sleepless and
restless. My childhood poured in my head, the boy who had fled from
his home and found himself alone in the streets, starving and cold.
And there was when I met Jack. I lived in his back yard, in a dog
house in a daytime. When the night fell I sneaked into his house
while his mother went to work at a strip club downtown.

I had to do something not to die. I
stole, at first food, then money and afterwards I’d become my
father. I hadn’t realized that until I was sent to Morsfinis–the
town for sin souls while their bodies weren’t fully dead back on
Earth.

When Melissa was born I thought
everything was going to change. But the path I walked was like a
tube that vacuumed me into emptiness. Sometime, rarely, there was
someone who broke loose, and after Morsfinis I could be added to
that list.

I hated these memories, I wished them
never come back. After I had gone after Elizabeth and had run risk
to save her, from that point onward I was no longer that
boy.

Two days rolled by. No
news about Elizabeth’s whereabouts. I started doubting in her
existence at all. Maybe she’d been my inside voice taking a human
look and coming to rescue my ripped soul. Sometimes, when I was
lying alone in my ward, between the break of my visitors–my
friends, the guys working for me, Benedict, even two blond women
working in a brothel I had used to go every weekend before I was
shot–I sank deep in thoughts and ponder. Was the
town
real? I still could
sense its nasty smelling air, could clearly see those hideous faces
of the residents in my mind’s eyes, but the
town
could be the imagination of my
stressed brain. Everything that had happened there could be a kid’s
imagination who once had wished to be a superhero that saved his
and his beloved’s lives. A kid who lived amidst the debris of my
memories.

I wasn’t expecting anyone, and a knock
on the door brought me back to reality. I lifted my head in
interest.

“
Come in,” I said
loudly.

Jack’s face appeared from behind in
the doorway. With a thin smile on his face he slid in and moved to
the foot of my bed.

“
I’ve found her,” he said
solemnly. “That Elizabeth.”

Air refused to leave my
lungs. The
town
was real, and Elizabeth’s soul was there.

“
Are you sure that’s her?”
I asked.

“
Red-haired woman, the
name is Elizabeth. I found her in a hospital.”

“
Where is she?” I asked at
once bolting into an upright sitting position. Again a sharp pain
jolted through my chest, I gasped.

Jack was beside me in a second and
held me carefully, “You’re weak John, and you should stay in bed.
I’ll call for the nurse.”

“
Where is she?” I grabbed
his arm as strong as I could.

“
Los-Angeles. Our friends
from there just called me. That’s her.”

Too long way to cross from New Jersey
to California. But I had to see her, look into her eyes.

“
Take me to her Jack.
Now!” My hands began trembling.

Jack hesitated, gazing down at me
blankly.

“
I can’t John. For your
sake,” he added quickly as he met my stern look. “You have to stay
here at least two more days.”

“
Fuck, Jack,” I bowled.
“Are you a doctor? I didn’t know that. Just give me your hand and
help me to stand up. We’re leaving. Now!”

He propped his arm behind me and
helped me drag my legs to the edge of the bed. My body wasn’t as
strong as it had been in ‘Morsfinis’. It was tired, weak, and my
bones cracked as I stood.

“
Easy, John, easy,” Jack
kept saying as he walked me slowly towards the door.

I couldn’t bring myself to go any
slower. My heart was hammering, and I was eager to get out of the
hospital.

Jack led me out where a car was
waiting us to arrive. Clad in my expensive black clothes, my chest
bandaged, I got into the car and ordered the driver to take us to
the airport at once. Jack never left me.

The flight was long,
mostly Jack asleep and me thinking, remembering Elizabeth as if I
was repeatedly reminding my mind about her beautiful face just in
case if it was going to forget her. I needed to see her and realize
that the
town
had
been real, whatever I had done there was real and I could change, I
could give up the present me and start the new me, the guy who’d
been determined to sacrifice his soul and save Elizabeth. This man
would have a future.

“
You never told me about
her,” Jack asked. “You’ve found one of your relatives?”

“
No, she’s not that,” I
replied.

“
Who is she? Why is this
rush?”

“
Please, Jack. You
wouldn’t understand anyway.”

“
You met her secretly? Why
didn’t you tell me?”

“
Jack, I’ll tell you
everything when I meet her, okay?”

The agonizing hours were left behind.
We were at her ward. The pain in my chest I stared at the door
separating me from her. She was behind it. She was probably
sleeping, dreaming…, but what about?

I stopped dead in my
tracks at the door; my hand froze on the knob;
would she even remember me? Would she still have the same
memories of me? Would she see the man who she had given hope and
the desire to return to life as a better person?

Still I didn’t hesitate for too long.
I yanked the door open and there she was. Her red tangled hair fell
across her chest in a mess. Her eyes closed, she was probably
asleep. She was breathing lightly, not troubled by
anything.

I entered slowly, it felt almost
unreal.

Jack stayed at the door and closed it
behind me. There was a strong magnetism that was pulling me closer
towards Elizabeth with no effort on my part.

Elizabeth
, I kept calling her name
in my mind, but my lips didn’t move and were dry. I stood at her
bedside, watching her breathing calmly.

I noted the bandages wrapped around
both her arms. My guess had been right; she had tried to take her
life by slicing her wrists. She had wanted to extinguish her own
life after the deaths of her husband and daughter.

I wondered if she remembered them, if
she had recalled her memories.

I didn’t know how long I had been
standing there staring at her, but she somehow felt my presence and
opened her eyes. She blinked her eyes repeatedly and looked at me,
embarrassed.

“
Jonathan, is that really
you?” A breath escaped her lungs in a hissing rush. I recalled her
house in Morsfinis; she had asked the same question when I had gone
back for her.

“
Yes, it’s me,” my face
lit up with smile. I knelt down next to her and screwed up my eyes
in pain taking her hand in mine and just held it. “It’s me. I’ve
found you again.”

Her big brown eyes welled up, and she
burst into tears. She wept in silence and looked at me through
confused eyes trying to figure out whether it was real, or just
another dream.

“
Jonathan, she’s dead. My
little girl is dead,” she said closing her eyes in pain. “I
remembered. I wished I didn’t, but I am.”

A year ago a car accident had taken
away her husband and her daughter. She had struggled to live on,
alone, accompanied with memories until she had ended up in
Morsfinis.

“
I know,” I
muttered.

“
How long?”

“
I saw your girl in the
bathroom in the town when I came to rescue you for the second time.
You should’ve known that too. The town gave you signs, the
visions.”

“
I didn’t want to
believe,” she said.

“
So don’t believe now,” I
put my hand on her cheek. “Elizabeth, we’ve made it, we’ve come
from the town. Now you have to live and you have to change your
destination to heaven. Your girl is there.” I gushed happily. My
voice was trembling as I spoke. I wanted to cry out loud and shout
about our great victory against hell, but the only thing I could
manage was to lean in towards her forehead and breathe in her sweet
scent. How sweet she was, how fetching, how beautiful!

We both laughed through our tears and
through the pain that we were both feeling. She traced her finger
over my check and then her hand slid down to mine.

“
It’s kind of weird
without my supernatural powers,” I said half-jokingly. I was as
weak as any other human and I didn’t feel any strangeness rushing
through my veins.

“
Your power is here,” she
put her hand on my heart. “It was always here, you just didn’t
realize it.”

She was right. I cupped her face,
looked into her eyes and kissed her tenderly on the lips–a kiss
between two bodies, not souls. Her delicious moist lips were sweet
and inviting.

“
Unfortunately, I’m not a
guy, and you can’t beat the shit out of me,” she remembered
giggling.

“
Yeah,” I murmured. “And
I’m not a gay. You can never get rid of me. I’ll keep you
imprisoned in my arms until–” I hesitated.

“
Until Malcolm comes and
says,” she changed her voice trying to pretend the old man. “Hey,
lovebirds. Get over this. The life is over.”

The room filled with our
laughs.

This is my story.

It might seem unbelievable to you and
completely unreal, but it happened to me. I reached the flickering
light of my soul, and I found love in the most extraordinary and
peculiar place ever. I found Elizabeth.

In all my time back in the real world,
I only ever sinned once, but only because I felt compelled to keep
my word to Malcolm. I had sworn to him that I would do this, so I
had no choice and he had done so much for me.

Jack found him in a hospital somewhere
in Colorado. The day before Elizabeth and I left the country, I
paid Malcolm a visit. I saw his full face resting on a pillow
seemingly unconscious, his eyes closed. The machines were working
at monitoring him and stabilizing his breathing and heart rate. I
had secretly slipped into his ward managing to avoid all doctors,
nurses and security. I found myself standing bedside the man who
had given me another chance at living; he had given me a second
chance.