Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

Even Chandra, so full of sting and swagger, couldn’t muster a glare, and just shoved her hands into the pockets of her fatigues, shaking her head as she exited the room. Hunter followed without a word or backward glance, which left me alone in the spacious dojo, staring at my foreign and baffled reflection in the mirror, the emblem on my chest still pulsing gently.

So that went well.

I thought about finding Warren and asking him when he’d planned to tell me about this democratic little voting process, but he was probably still in his so-called session with Greta. Besides, while we were seated in Greta’s office, pretending to be civilized as we glared at one another across our teacups, I’d decided there was something Warren wasn’t sharing. Either that or something in his recent past that he didn’t want to face. Something, I thought, remembering the guilt sitting like a cold stone in my belly, that had to do with Tekla. So what was it he was unwilling to face, or know? More, what didn’t he want the rest of us to know?

These questions consumed me as I wove alone through the hallways, halting every so often to scratch the heads and cheeks of escaped cats. Wardens, I thought, correcting myself. None of them hissed or growled or swiped at my hand as I’d seen Luna do with Butch, so that was a small comfort. They just looked at me with unblinking eyes, pushing against my fingers with their lithe little bodies, and moved on when they were finished, tails raised in a parting salute.

Finally, I returned to my mother’s windowless, concrete room to regroup, thankful there was at least one place in this underground labyrinth where I could be alone and feel safe. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I’d tucked myself into bed, drawing my knees high to my chest, that I realized trust couldn’t even be extended to my own mind.

The dream was like wind gradually picking up in slack sails, so I knew it was coming. If I’d acted early enough, I might even have been able to stop it. Still, I wasn’t braced for the feeling of invasion; like someone was picking through the folds of my mind, searching and excavating the forbidden parts. And what they found was bedrock; granite, and caliche, and a petrified memory I’d never dared touch before. But it chipped free now, sharp-edged, banging around inside of me. Slicing at my sanity. A nightmare come back to life.

The biggest nightmare of my life.

I was a teen again; fifteen, to be exact. Sneaky and smart, and needing to escape a world that neither knew nor understood me…as all teens feel the need to do, I suppose. But there was one person who did understand me, and he knew and loved me better than anyone else.

Ben Traina lived across a narrow but elongated patch of desert, long since converted into another thoroughfare for impatient motorists, but marked at the time by a sole footpath which bisected the desert floor. Ben and I probably wore that one away in this summer alone.

Though relatively close in proximity, our homes were worlds apart. The Archer mansion fanned coldly across an entire city block, a massive complex with so much faux work and gaudy detailing it looked like a Victorian ball-gown. In contrast, Ben’s house was like an old tattered sweatshirt. Low ceilings, small windows, a fireplace made out of rock they’d, thankfully, stopped making in the seventies, and the original green shag carpeting blanketing the concrete floor.

For all these differences, though, our families were remarkably similar. There was the overbearing patriarch—gaming mogul versus military man; the mousy wife—society maven and the housefrau; and the two point five kids, two girls on my side of the tracks, three boys on his.

His parents were out of town for the weekend—one brother was already out of the house, and the second was in basic training—so, unsurprisingly, their vacation had become ours. We were in love, a first for us both, and we experienced all the firsts that go along with that. We hid from the world that entire weekend; talking, laughing, eating. Watching movies. Kissing. Stroking. Making love for days.

Sunday morning marked the end of our lovers’ tryst. His parents would be home by noon, but it was my sister who arrived first, breathless and fresh from a predawn flight across the desert. We were forced to leave our cocoon of sheets and limbs and flesh just to silence her insistent pounding at the door.

“Mom’s looking for you,” Olivia announced, without preamble. “She’s so freaked she wants to call the police. And Dad says this time you’re going to juvenile hall.”

Regretfully, I turned to Ben. “I have to go.”

He sighed sleepily, smelling like me. “Will you get in trouble?”

I smiled. “It was worth it.”

“Come on! I am not going to juvi with you,” Olivia said, then shuddered delicately. “They make you wear paper shoes.”

We fled as fast as our limbs would carry us, into the abyss of darkness, across the swath of hard desert earth I knew as intimately as the vein at my wrist…or Ben’s. Olivia was younger than me, and at the time quicker too. I can still see her flying through the night, golden hair lit by the moon’s eye, streaming behind her like ribbons cutting wind. Even at thirteen she’d been beautiful, the woman inside her already outgrowing the child. I, though older, still looked like a girl.

The man came from nowhere, hurtling from the darkness like a dust devil, catching Olivia from the side. She didn’t even have time to scream before she struck the boulders and tumbleweeds of the desert floor, pinned helplessly beneath the weight of her stronger adversary. Then there were only sounds of struggle. Clothing torn. Flesh beaten. Anguished cries for mercy.

A voice, twisted and irrational, snaked up from my subconscious. You deserved what happened that night .

Even as I groaned in my sleep, shaking my head, I knew I did. Olivia was only there because of me. Those meaty fists rained down on her body and face, knuckles reporting like shots as they made contact with her soft flesh, pummeling fragile bone. And because it was my fault, I reacted the same way again.

“Run!” I screamed, latching onto the man from behind. I didn’t have the skills then that I did now. I didn’t have the strength to overpower a man of any size, and nothing to enable me to stand up to a human predator. Olivia ran, and even after I’d lost sight of her I could still hear her feet crunching over gravel and rock, her sobs streaming, like her hair, behind her. Then I heard nothing at all.

But that was then.

“I should’ve killed you the first time,” said the man I now knew as Joaquin. I felt my eyes open—eyes like Rena’s, there but not—and I stared into a face as cruel as I remembered. Thin lips wrapped around a full set of evenly spaced teeth; a smile for me, I realized, as the smell of rancid honey spilled out of his mouth. A five o’clock shadow, too perfect and precise to have been by accident, studded his cheeks and chin, and despite his position, looming over me, not a hair on his head was out of place. It was slicked back, tight and sleek, the individual lines from the teeth of his comb clear in the meager moonlight.

“No,” I managed, before his fingertips dug into my windpipe, strangling me again. His other hand ricocheted across my face, whipping it to the right. On the returning backhand, I felt my nose collapse. How had I ever forgotten that sound?

“Oh, yes,” he replied, arching into me, mimicking orgasm, writhing above me like a rattler. “Yes, yes, yes.”

I head-butted him, causing him to jerk back, his face registering surprise as blood began to seep from his nose. I hadn’t done that the first time. He slapped me again, but it was too late. A new thought had already burrowed into my mind.