My Julian.
The fury lights into rage and erupts out of me. I scream and Liz falls silent. She’s scared.
“Get out!”
I don’t recognize my voice. It sounds like someone else. Discordant. Dark. I’m not the only one that feels it. Liz stumbles back as I advance. Wind rises around me as my rage rises to the surface. Papers scatter and fly wildly around the room in a tornado of wind.
“Leave. Now.”
Liz screams and stumbles. She falls onto her back by the door and when she tries to get up, her legs give out and she falls again. She’s crawling towards the door, sobbing, when I’ve had enough and go right for her.
“Help! Someone save me!”
I kick her in the ass and send her sprawling onto her face in the hallway. Liz lifts herself up onto her hands and looks back at me. She looks like a worm forced up out of the grain from the rain. When I was a kid the sidewalks used to be littered with the worms trying to find a new home. I used to walk carefully to school, hopping and walking on my tiptoes to make sure not to step on them. I felt sorry for them. The odds were already stacked against them with the gulls and other birds swooping down for an easy meal.
Liz is an easy meal right now. Weak and prone on the ground. I don’t feel sorry for her. The rage dies as quickly as it came and I lean against the doorframe with Liz at my feet. Exactly where this bitch should be.
“What did you do to me?” she sobs at the same time Julian appears in the hallway.
I don’t answer her. I watch Julian look between Liz and me. He barely spares her a glance before he walks past her and comes to me.
“We’re going home,” he tells me and swings me up into his arms.
“Julian, you can’t,” Liz begs. “She’s not normal. She’s going to kill you.”
Julain doesn’t look at her. He looks at me and kisses my forehead before he answers her. “Then I die.”
Liz’s sobs echo down the hallway after us when Julian carries me away.
Forty-One
JULIAN
Idon’t know what happened between Liz and Maris. I took longer than I should have getting back to her because believe it or not, having a job in a hospital means I have to fucking work. Liz didn’t get that memo it seems.
“What happened?” I ask. We’re in my car and I’m driving back to town. The storm is raging again. Water from the waves crashing against the cliff side shoots up in the air and splashes onto the passenger side window. Maris jumps every single time.
Did what happened with Liz upset her that much?
“Maris?” I reach out and touch her hand when she doesn’t answer me. “Maris, what’s wrong?”
She jumps at my hand on her leg. “Th-this road is where they d-died,” she stammers. “It was just like this when they died. There was a storm. It washed out the road, swept their car right off and into the sea.”
“Fate took my parents from me. It killed them on an empty road and dragged them out to sea.”
This is the road. I look at the curving stretch of pavement with new eyes. This is where her parents died.
“We didn’t find them for a week. I couldn’t-I wasn’t allowed to see their faces at their funeral. I didn’t understand why, butnow I do.” I hear the pain in Maris’ voice. A week at sea would cause severe decomposition. Not only would the salt water break the body down but the bodies would be a food source for any passing animal.
Whatever was left of Maris’ parents wasn’t fit for a child’s eyes.
“What do you need from me?” I squeeze her hand and then press both of our hands to her thigh to ground her. I don’t know if it works but Maris stops looking at the water spraying up from the sea and looks at me. At our hands. She puts her other hand on top of mine. It’s shaking.
“J-just keep driving, Julian. Don’t let the sea take me too. Please, don’t let it.”
Maris is pleading. She isn’t just scared of this road. She’s scared of the ocean, the water. She thinks it’s going to drag her down like it did her parents. She starts to tremble so I start talking.
“You aren’t going anywhere, wife. You’re mine,” I remind her as I take a turn and the lights of town come into view, “and I’m not good at sharing. The sea will never have you.”
