Cora Carmack: Seeking Her

I thought about her lips, red and full and taunting. I dreamed about the taste of her and the warmth of her skin. Remembering the way everyone flocked to her in that bar, the way she seemed to light a fire under the world, just the thought of having her all to myself—­all this was enough to make my breath come in pants.

I didn’t even have to invent anything more to get off. The memories alone did the trick, and my release was powerful enough to make my legs go weak and black spots merge in my vision. I didn’t realize until afterward that the water sliding down my back had turned cold. Almost as if the universe were trying to keep me from crossing that line.

Too late.

MY EYES FOUND Kelsey, her hips once again swinging to the music. Bodies swarmed around her in the club and lights flashed overhead. There was a crash like thunder, and the club floor shook. Kelsey kept on dancing, oblivious, but I looked down to the rifle in my hands.

The rest of the world came into focus—­the helmet strapped tight beneath my chin, the vest heavy against my chest, and the smoke singeing my nostrils.

Sand began to roll across my boots, riding on the wind and stinging the few places where my bare skin showed. In seconds, the club became a desert and the colored lights morphed into the flare of explosions. I was knocked off my feet, my ears ringing, but my eyes went to Kelsey once more, still standing. I heard the tap-­tap-­tap of gunfire, almost benign in it’s simplicity. If we were somewhere else, it could have blended in with the sound of street traffic or construction. But in the desert, the sand seemed to suck away all the other sounds.

Tap-­tap-­tap.

I stood, whirling, trying to find the source, and I wasn’t alone. Rodriguez was there at my heels. Ingram, Johnny One, and Teague, too.

“Come on!” Ingram roared, gesturing for us to retreat back behind a barricade. He slid over the top, knocking down glasses and beer bottles perched along the bar.

I looked back to Kelsey. She was alone on the dance floor now, the others running for cover, but still she danced. A blast struck off to my left, closer this time, and the ground rumbled so long it could have been an earthquake. I glanced back again, and everyone was behind the barricade, except for Rodriguez. I couldn’t hear him over the near constant tap-­tap-­tap filling up the desert, but he was waving wildly.

I had to get Kelsey first. She was my responsibility.

I sprinted toward her, my boots sinking into the sand. A cloud of the stuff swirled up around us when I slid to a stop in front of her. My hands scrabbled at her hips, trying to take hold. Her long eyelashes rested against her cheeks, and it took a few seconds before her lids lifted. Her green eyes glowed, magnified by her spreading smile. I was stunned into stillness for a moment.

Tap-­tap-­tap-­tap.

I heard the whine of a bullet ripping past on the wind, and I pulled Kelsey under my arm, ready to drag her with me.

I turned to see Rodriguez halfway toward me, his rifle hanging at his side.

Tap-­tap.

The bullets reached him before we heard the sound, so that his body seemed to jerk in anticipation. I didn’t see where the first bullet hit, but the second struck in the neck. Blood painted the sand, and Rodriguez reached one hand out to me and the other toward his neck. The strap of his gun fell down to his elbow, and the weight must have been too much for him to reach his neck. He plunged toward me, his mouth hanging open as he tried and failed to draw in a breath. He sputtered around drifts of blood, and his eyes screamed at me in a way he couldn’t.

I too felt like I was choking on the blood as his knees hit the earth, sand clumping into dark red clots beneath him. Kelsey’s jaw dropped beside me in a scream, but I couldn’t hear her. Silence rang in my ears like the first few seconds after a blast, but it stretched on. And despite being unable to hear, I knew the gasping, gurgling sound that Rodriguez’s trembling mouth made like it was a physical thing I could see and touch.

It was Kelsey that began dragging me away, past the lifeless body of my friend. When I ripped my eyes off of him, I saw everything clearer. Including my friends behind the barricade, behind the bar.

My mind tripped for a moment, trying to reconcile the past and the present. The film of the dream weakened and I thought—­I’m about to wake up. Relief pumped through my veins seconds before the mortar shell dropped and the bar exploded, flames propelled upward into the sky.

The blast blew me backward, and I was skidding through the sand. The last thing I saw before blacking out was Rodriguez’s empty eyes and blood-­stained lips.

I woke, covered in sweat as if I’d just spent the night in the desert heat. My ears rang as I stumbled out of bed and pushed open the window. Head swimming, I thought I might be sick. I concentrated on the purple pre-­dawn sky.

The window shutters banged against the building in an eerily familiar tap-­tap-­tap, and I slid down to my knees. Turning, I sat with my back below the windowsill and tried to catch my breath.

I couldn’t decide what was worse. Dreams like the one I’d just had, amalgamations of truth and fiction, or the ones that were actual memories. Rodriguez’s death in my dream wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. It bore a resemblance to the death of a soldier from the first week of my deployment. I couldn’t remember that soldier’s name now. —­There had been too many others that I’d met and lost since then—­but the look on his face . . . . that was still burned into my memory.

I reached for my backpack, fumbling with the zipper. Cursing my shaky fingers, I practically ripped the thing open. Just touching my sketchbook calmed me. I skimmed my finger up the metal spiral on the side and took a deep breath.

I flipped it open and came face-­to-­face with a blank page, a fresh start.

I closed my eyes, searching for something that could distract me. I decided on the ultimate distraction.

Kelsey.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about her. My thoughts were a mess of frustration and want and annoyance. If I wasn’t following her into bars, I wouldn’t be so wound up. The dreams only happened when I was stressed. But I couldn’t seem to pluck up much anger at her, not after last night when I’d allowed myself to think of her in an entirely different manner.

She was spoiled and reckless and shallow, and yet . . . there was something else to her. Something that I saw but couldn’t put a name to. I thought back to the moments that I’d watched her that had felt the most honest. I thought of her dancing on that bar, carefree and unaware of her surroundings. She’d been almost childlike. Then there was that day in the park, her solitary hour in that tree, thinking about God knows what. I wanted to know where she went during those moments, because she wasn’t in the present. She was like an old movie, where the film would catch or skip, ruining the illusion. I wanted to grab hold of that inconsistency, unravel it, and see the real story underneath.

More than that, I wanted to capture it. My fingers were itching to draw her.

So, I did.

I started with her neck, the way it had been tilted backward when she sat on the bar. I did a rough outline of her body—­the bend of her knees, the point of her toes, the flare of her hips. I scratched out the swoop of her shirt as it hung off her shoulder.

It was a fairly accurate depiction, I thought, considering I was drawing from memory. But an hour in, I’d worn out my eraser trying to get her face right.

I knew what it looked like. Full lips, oval face, thin nose, expressive eyes. I had the pieces right. I was sure of it. But somehow they never quite added up to the right whole.