J. Redmerski - Behind The Hands That Kill

“And Osiris?” Apollo asks.

“I never heard from him again,” I answer, still somewhat lost in my thoughts. “It is not customary to keep contact with a client after a job has been fulfilled.”

Apollo is standing by my cell now; I am sitting on the floor.

“That’s not what I meant,” he says.

I erase the images completely from my mind, and I look up at him through the bars.

“How did you feel about Osiris,” he clarifies, “after he made you kill the woman you loved?”

“He did not make me do anything,” I answer without flinching.

“So then you wanted to kill my sister?” He cocks his head to one side. “Is that what you’re saying, Victor? Because if that’s true”—he shakes his head, clenches his fists—“if that’s true then we have a very different problem, you and I.” His solid gaze seethes with anger.

“There is nothing more to tell,” I say, and look down at the stones around my bare feet.

An eerie silence chokes the room all around us.

Then Apollo says, “Oh, but there is, Faust,” and a proud grin deepens in his face. “There is so much more to tell. Only…”—he glances behind him toward the exit, then looks back at me—“…you won’t be the one telling it.”

I hear voices funneling down the hallway just beyond the door; shadows move against the floor beneath it. I am afraid; absolute fear grips my chest. What has become of Izabel? All that I can think of is Hestia’s threat years ago, and I try to mentally prepare myself to see Izabel, wheeled into the room because she can no longer walk; bloodied by the blade of Hestia’s knife; skinned alive and put on display. For me. For long-overdue revenge.

Dull light from the hallway spills in as the door opens. I cannot breathe; my heart is beating so fast I feel it in my head, hear it pounding against my eardrums. Slowly I rise into a stand, and I do not tear my eyes away from the figures moving through the darkest shadows; my hands are on the bars of my cage again, gripping, squeezing, pulling; all of the moisture has evaporated from my mouth.

And then I see her, Izabel, alive and seemingly unharmed, and I let my breath out in one deep sigh of relief; my legs feel weak beneath me, and for a moment I feel that hope is not lost, after all.

But then I see another face—Artemis Stone.

And what strength I had left in my legs, betrays me.

I’ve never seen a look like that on Victor’s face before. He appears… traumatized ; that calm, impassive disposition he always carries, replaced by something more…fragile.

And he’s not even looking at me.

“ Artemis …” Victor says in a sort of gasp.

I gasp too, stunned, and I turn my head to see the woman behind me, the same woman who dressed me and fixed my hair and did my makeup. The same woman who told me that she was someone else. And then, as if a dam has been opened, the answers to everything rushes into my head like a raging river. Ah, so that’s what that traumatized look is on Victor’s face. Now I know exactly how I must appear to him.

I feel a hand on the center of my back, and my body is pushed forward. With my wrists tied behind me, I fall, skinning my knees on the floor; my shoulder hits next, and then my face. Oomph! A sharp stab darts through my head and spreads throughout my jaw, neck, and back, and my only consolation is knowing it was from the fall, and not the cattle prod this time. I don’t know how much more of the electric shock my heart can take.

Artemis walks past me as if I’m not even here, and steps closer to Victor and the cage.

I’m lifted from the floor by unseen hands, and am shoved onto the chair I sat on before I was whisked away to this crazy bitch’s beauty salon. “Don’t move,” I hear Apollo say behind me.

Suddenly I feel the pull of Victor’s gaze; he isn’t looking at me, but I feel like he wants to—or that he’s trying not to.

“Victor?” I say, but he doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t look my way; I’m not sure what I would say if I did happen to get his attention.

But why won’t he look at me? Why is Artemis the only person in the room he acknowledges? I mean sure, he thought she was dead, he thought he killed her himself, but the look-like-he’s-seen-a-ghost syndrome should be wearing off by now.

How is she alive?

And why, Victor, won’t you look at me?

It takes every ounce of strength I have to keep from looking at Izabel right now. The second my eyes stray from Artemis, the very moment in which Artemis sees me look at anyone other than her, and Izabel will be punished for it.

I focus only on her. It is what Artemis wants: my devoted, undivided attention. She has waited so long for this day, this moment; she has trained for it no doubt—I would not be in this cage if she had not, if Apollo had not worked with her. And as I look at her, secretly studying her movements, the expression in her eyes, the confidence in her walk, I know that the woman before me is a far cry from the woman she used to be. Artemis Stone, my first love, my first real mistake, she is so very different from the woman I once knew. And I know that whatever happens here tonight, whatever kind of beast that unleashes from within her, that it was created by me fifteen years ago. And I know that I deserve the havoc it will wreak.

“The police,” I begin with the first of many things swirling around in my mind—I indicate Apollo with the tilt of my head, but never take my eyes from Artemis. “He knew he could not get to you before Osiris, so he called the police. That’s how they got there so quickly that night.”

Artemis steps up to the bars, curls her long, delicate fingers around them with both hands. For seconds that feel like minutes, she just looks at me, unblinking, unflinching, and I feel slightly destabilized by it.

More than a minute goes by, and still she says nothing. She just stares at me, injecting discomfort into every one of my limbs, weakening my confidence. Why will she not speak?

“Artemis—”

She raises her right hand to stop me, and I do. Then the same hand moves slowly toward her throat, and carefully she takes the zipper tab of her bodysuit between her thumb and index finger, and slides it down. Slowly, very slowly. Her penetrating gaze never wavers, and still, her eyes never seem to blink. Only when the zipper has stopped, just above her cleavage, and her hand moves to her side, do I look away from her eyes and behold the thing she wants me to see.

A long scar, smooth-looking and raised above the skin, discolored against her natural brown flesh, looks back at me. Ashamed and consumed by guilt and regret, my gaze finally falls from hers and I can look at no one, nor anything, except the palms of my hands. I hold them out in front of me, remembering the blood, Artemis’s blood, seeping through my fingers the night that I killed her. Because I did kill her—I killed the person she was.

“Look at me, Victor,” Artemis says, calmly, yet with command. “Look at what you’ve done.”

What I’ve created…

I raise my head. And I swallow.

“ Now do you know why you’re here?” she asks.

I nod, unable to offer a verbal response. I want to look at Izabel behind Artemis, but I cannot do that, either.

Apollo stands quietly off to the side.

“Tell me why you’re here, Victor,” Artemis insists.

I do not. I cannot say it aloud, not when Izabel is in earshot. I see the dress that Izabel wears; I see the makeup and the curled hair; I see the black high-heel shoes—I see Izabel as a copy of Artemis fifteen years ago when she and I spent our one-year anniversary in that restaurant, the night I killed her. Yes, I know why we are here. I know why…