The Brand

Calculated Brutality

3

Melody, mired in darkness, saw the light at the end of the tunnel. She reached, fingers probing, her eyes squinting from the brilliance, and found the jagged stone edges of the opening. A few more steps and the brick and mortar wall was behind her. The brilliance was the sun, ever fixed in its imperial, supreme, neutrality. From the sun came the wind, patting her face with welcome kisses. The sun, the wind, together they gave of the grass beneath her feet. Melody peered down at her ten bare toes, and watched them squeeze the grass.

Relieved, she listened to the call of the breeze and the squeak of the grass blades resisting the clutching pull of her toes. Presently, faintly at first, came another sound. Melody looked up. She saw the playground, its amusements gone, its children gone, its barricade of chain link fencing flattened to the ground, as if each length had been disconnected from the next and knocked down from the inside. The new sound was the unfurling of a blanket. She turned and saw a red and white checkered picnic blanket rippling and settling before her.

Slowly, she walked toward Samedi, the great baron in his formal black suit and his tall stove pipe hat. Melody watched as the black man with the night face spread the blanket flat. Then, with a snap of his fingers, he conjured a picnic basket and set it on the far corner of the blanket. With another snap of his fingers, he conjured a lawn chair, positioned it so that it held down the opposite corner of the blanket, and then sat himself upon it. With a third snap, Samedi conjured his glass of rum steeped in chili peppers and gave Melody his beaming bright white toothed smile.

"Welcome back my dear." He laughed, shaking the ground beneath Melody's feet.

"Where, where did I go?" she asked, meeting his unfathomably twinkling star eyes.

"Don't you remember?"

Melody quickly wagged her head. Samedi shrugged, gestured a few circles with his snapping fingers, and then pointed behind her. Melody turned to face the direction from which she'd come, and then uttered a small gasp of surprise. The hole from which she'd emerged took up the center of a great square pedestal. Upon the pedestal stood a twenty-five or so foot tall statue of polished grey marble. It was Victria, smooth skin shining, her body symmetrical, like a cross, her arms extended, and her face staring boldly up at the sky. In her left hand, a pyre of flame rose from her open palm. In her right hand, she held a vessel that overflowed with water. Over her left breast was a black hole in which was nestled a solitary, sleeping, white turtle dove.

For a fourth time, Melody heard Samedi snap his fingers. She turned, and there stood little Leanne, beside the picnic basket. Melody's eyes went wide and she covered her mouth. Cautiously, she stepped forward. Leanne did not smile exactly. She never had really smiled for anyone, Luella, her special education teacher, Melody or even her parents. But, her day to day expression during the time that Melody had known her was that of one that appeared as if a smile was to be the very next thing to happen in one's face, as if conveying a perpetual threat of a smile.

"Leanne?" she whispered, glancing at Samedi.

Leanne waved, and then sat down on the blanket. Opening the picnic basket, she withdrew its contents and arranged them before her. Melody slowly stepped around to the other side of the blanket and sat herself down, demurely brushing her skirt over her knees. Fascinated, Melody's gaze jumped and flitted over the entire scene, Samedi, Leanne, the items of food she was laying out, the grass, the fallen fences, the vast brick wall and the monument to Victria that stood before it. Finally, Melody settled her gaze on the implausible patch of universe wrapped up in a slick black suit and, as she gestured her head in the direction of Victria's statue, asked:

"Can you bring her here too?"

Again the ground began to rumble and quake. Baron Samedi laughed deep in his throat. After a time, his laughter bubbled up to his lips and out it came, sending the lengths of fence into clanging, rattling fits, setting the picnic basket and its contents to bounce and fly about and Melody into a fitful jarring jounce upon the blanket. Leanne, just as Samedi himself, sat undisturbed.

Presently, the spirit's laughter diminished, Melody's body became still, her legs akimbo. Leanne went about gathering and rearranging packages of sandwiches and bags of chips. Melody assessed their surroundings. The ground was literally rippled, split in some places, the fencing was scattered or oddly stacked and the great brick wall behind her had become a mountain of rubble, clouds, the color of oxidized blood, rising from its heaps. Victria's statue remained intact, the dove, nuzzled in its stone nest, was still asleep. Or, was it dead, Melody wondered. She turned to gaze back at Samedi. After taking a deep draft of his pepper spiced rum, he said with sardonic emphasis:

"Yes, because all you could possibly hold dear to your heart should live with you here, forever, in this place. No child, I cannot bring her here."

"Why not?" Melody asked.

Samedi paused, took another drink of his rum and answered:

"Because she is vastly different than you."

"Yes, but-"

Melody stopped to rethink her words. Samedi sighed.

"She doesn't feel sorry for herself." He answered, his demeanor as one put off, waving his free hand as if to dismiss Melody for asking such a question, "She is not blind to her own sickness. She has the sense to seek healing."

Melody glowered.

"He's right you know Ms. M. You're being a big stupid head."

Melody looked down at Leanne. Leanne looked back, her hand rummaging through a bag of chips, her big brown eyes daring Melody to disagree. She watched as the young girl reached for a sandwich wrapped in plastic and tossed it onto Melody's lap. Suddenly, she became aware of flies buzzing. Flies would ruin the picnic, wouldn't they? They always did. Melody followed their flight. There was a mass of them swarming behind Leanne's back, though the little girl didn't seem to notice. Then there came another rumble of laughter and there, from the corner of her eye, Melody saw him.

"Dude, this tuna salad is bangin'! What's in it?" the young man said between bites.

Melody unwrapped her sandwich in spite of herself as she stared in renewed, yet muted, astonishment. The flies had multiplied, becoming so numerous that they began to look like smoke, drifting from Leanne's back to the gaping wound in the left side of Randy's head.

"Relish, the sweet kind." Answered Leanne.

"No shit!" sang Randy.

Transfixed, Melody continued to take him in, the deep cuts of starvation in his cheeks, his lost child's eyes, the round black mole on his cheek and the vacuous crater in the side of his head: jaggedly round and festooned with remnant clumps of brain, shattered bits of skull and flapping skin. She saw too that he was chained, about his neck. Melody followed the chain into the distance. Its opposite end was held by a figure that stood some sixty or so yards away, in the birth of one of the cracks made in the ground by Samedi's laughter. The figure regarded her from beneath the darkness inside its black hood. She thought it best to look away. Her eyes met Randy's. Suddenly, there was a warmth in his gaze.

"So like," Melody ventured, gestureing her sandwich over his shoulder, "Who's that Randy?"

Randy turned his head, allowing Melody a look at his entry wound, a smaller hold by far, but it seemed to stare back at her, seeing through her, as if it was the eye of the cloaked figure that held Randy's chain.

"Oh that's just what the other voice inside my head looks like." He answered, turning back to face her, "Only, he doesn't tell me things anymore."

"Why not?" Melody asked, talking to him in the voice she'd used that time in the library in Bear Lake high, what she realized was her adult support want to be a teacher's voice.

"Because I gave him what he wanted and now he has nothing to say."

"What did he used to say?"

"He used to say that everyone was shit, that I was shit, but at least I had the power to harvest some souls for him."

"You can stop using that swear word stupid head." Said Leanne.

"No prob." Randy replied, "Can I have another sandwich please?

"Yes you may. Here."

Melody watched his boyish face, his bouncing shoulders as he excitedly unwrapped his second sandwich.

"Primitive psychotic defense mechanisms," announced Randy after swallowing his first bite of his second sandwich.

"Excuse me?" said Melody after taking another bite of her own turkey and cheese.

"Primitive psychotic defense mechanisms," Randy repeated, Splitting dude, you know, when your ego detaches from reality."

"No." Melody replied, "I'm sure I don't know."

"Aw come on," Randy continued, "Sure you do Leanne's para. You forget certain things, like when I killed Mrs. Peterson, that little guy in the closet and Leanne right here. Believe me, if I was still alive, I'd forget that too."

"But I didn't forget it Randy." Said Melody, "Thanks to you, I can't forget it, ever."

"Oh right, right, right, right." Answered Randy, shaking his damaged head, "That's why then you spent the last year of your reality working your way back here. So here you are, alive among the dead."

Melody looked away.

"So you used her." Randy said.

"What?" Melody turned back to face him.

"I said you used her. You let her project her pain on you. You took her shit, sorry Leanne, and you kept taking it until the giving of you hit the unforgiving of her."

Confused, Melody glanced quickly back at Victria's monument, and then stared at Randy. She watched him take another mouthful of sandwich and ponder her eyes. Seconds later, his thoughts collected, Randy raised a finger and shook his head.

"The water of you is rising," he said, pointing his finger at her, "Is rising ever higher, so high that Victria, her power, her strength, her heat won't be hot enough to keep you from snuffing her out."

Smiling suddenly, Randy looked toward Samedi. Melody followed his gaze. The Baron slowly nodded and took another draft of his rum.

"Huh, huh, huh!" shouted Randy, "That's it, right, huh, right?"

Melody regarded the tall, broken, lost, hated boy, and then set her sandwich down on her lap. She gazed for a time at the half eaten thing. Eventually, she watched flies begin to congregate on the discarded sandwich. A moment more and Melody realized that something had changed. Her dress had changed or at least she'd become aware of being dressed. Then, looking at her feet, Melody thought back on having emerged from the hole in the now ruined wall. Her feet had been bare. She was sure of it. But now she saw that they were covered in her ruby slippers.

There was a sudden flash of a shadow to her right. Melody looked. It was Leanne, getting to her feet, and then brushing dry bits of grass and crumbs from her pants. Finished, she met Melody's eyes and stepped forward. She threw her arms around Melody's neck, gave her a soft kiss on the cheek, and then sped away. Melody watched the little girl, the wide wound in her back diminishing with the distance. She then realized that the landscape had changed. The fencing was gone. The grass remained, but she, upon the picnic blanket, sat upon the summit of a hill. Melody studied the changing scene, the long rolling meadow, the bright blue sky and the inconceivable multitude of children to whom Leanne was running.

"Are you going to eat that?"

She turned to regard Randy. He was staring at her, waiting. But, there was another difference, a new shadow. He didn't seem as hungry. In fact, it seemed as if he wanted her to finish the fly ridden sandwich. Melody glanced at the shadow, and then followed up to its source. It was the cloaked figure, his pallid, pustule, fingers clutching Randy's chain tightly in his fists. Still, she could not see his, its, face nor would she venture. Melody swung her head to see if Samedi was still there. He was, but his drink was empty.

"Go ahead Leanne's para," Randy urged, "Eat."

Melody looked down at the massing flies and the patches of still visible bread. But, they weren't flies and it wasn't bread. It was a gun.

4

"You won Mel." Came a voice from behind her, "You've beat me with passive resistance."

Melody stared at the gun for a very long time. She squinted. The sun, it was real, glinting on the thing's trigger and along its barrel. The wind, it too was real, frisking her loose hair askew. She pulled her gaze away to look at her sequin twinkling arms. She touched the long skirt of her dress and rubbed its gold organza between her fingers. Again, she regarded the gun. It wasn't a big gun, not like the one Randy had used. It was a small thing, yet no less a means to an end. Melody raised her gaze to scan her new horizon. She was still seated on the summit of a hill, only the hill was covered with rows and rows of head stones. She looked to her left, suspecting that she wouldn't see Samedi. She didn't. Instead, she was staring at a small headstone, made more diminutive by the dozens of flowers that flanked it on either side. Carved into the stone was the inscription: Leanne Roslyn Childress, August 19, 2006 to April 16, 2012, blessed is she whose name is on the wind.

"Why didn't we die?"

Melody turned her head slowly around to see Victria, the living Victria, standing in the very spot where her monument had been.

"Because we weren't supposed to." She said, leaning against the side of a vehicle Melody didn't recognize, her arms folded, her hair much, much longer than she'd remembered.

No, thought Melody, they killed you. I was sure of it. That didn't hap- It was you. You, killed them? She stared at Victria, her long hair, her bright face, her hard grey eyes, her lean, black clad body, tight black jeans, tall black boots and leather jacket. Victria studied Melody's awakening, her eyes fixed on her, alert, tired, sad, sadder, mournful and confused. Where are you Mel, she wondered. Are you here yet?

None of what Melody sensed was as real as she thought it should be. There was the firmness of the ground beneath her, the dry smell on the wind, the high breadth of the sky and the lovely rage in that black clad creature's eyes that made the world seem just as ethereal as the place she'd been for the last- How long had it been? Melody tried to stand. She wanted to get away from the gun, but her legs wouldn't cooperate. She swung her gaze to look upon the grave stone before her. Leanne? There, laying still, gone, the smell of dry grass and mountain air filling her lungs. I'm here. I'm back.

"This is what it is Cowboy," Victria proclaimed, "fucking aversion therapy, just the kind of showdown the abyss wants to see. Guns, shooting, wounds, death, all up in your face! So, what are you gonna do about it Slave?" Hmm?"

Slave, Melody thought. She turned away. She looked from one grave to the next, across acres and acres.

"Come on Mel!" Victria prodded, "What are you gonna do? Just sit there and keep moping about how you survived and the abyss, the blackness of that all seeing eye, took that little girl? It never should have happened, true enough, never. However, Melody Eunice May, it did. It did and you can't change a thing, not one single fucking thing, except your life. You wanted a new life. Anyone with any sense at all would have wanted a new life after being put through that. So you got lost. I found you and I gave you a life, and what did you do?"

Melody turned and watched Victria's feet take a few steps away from the SUV. She couldn't look her in the face. She ruminated over the word "slave" and became very conscious of the fact that she wasn't kneeling. Slowly, Melody moved her legs, watching her ruby slippers and the gun nestled in the ripples and folds of gold organza.

"You gave it up Melody!" Victria shouted, "So I busted my ass and I said fine, I brought you back here. Why? Because you never fucking left. You never left Melody! You've been here all along, right by Leanne's grave! Should it have been you? Should it have been you that died that day? No, it shouldn't have been! Why? Because you were meant to find me. But you know what Cowboy. Today's your lucky day. I'm giving you the opportunity to die today. See? I'm generous! I can be a giving person. So, go ahead. Take all that useless guilt and put it to good use. Take that gun. Pull that trigger and see if you can find Leanne when you get to the other side!"

It was then that Melody, wide eyed and insolent, met Victria's hard narrow stare.

"Either forgive yourself Melody, for surviving, say good bye to the Leanne you loved or join her forever. You choose."

Victria took another step forward. From her position, four or so yards from Melody, she watched her, whatever she was, slave or victim, still caught between total awareness and dream. Presently, she saw her body shiver slightly. Then Melody whirled her head to look again at Leanne's grave, at the revolver within her reach, and then back at Victria. The domme looked on as her slave, her lover or the tragic soul lost between, as her expression transformed her into someone ugly, someone she no longer recognized.

Melody's face contorted with loathing and disgust, and looked upon Victria as if she was perfectly insane. Abruptly, Melody picked up the gun and flung it at Victria. Victria shifted her body slightly, her eyes following the gun's spinning path of flight, reached her right hand up and quickly caught the .357, the grip fitting perfectly into her palm. Seething, furious, Victria's knuckles turned white around the grip. Then, wide eyed with fury, she threw it back at Melody's feet. Screaming, Melody crawled back, struggling, squirming, her legs caught up in the skirt.

"Take it." Victria hissed.

"No!" Melody screamed.

Victria stepped to the revolver and picked it up. Melody franticly struggled, kicking in her voluminous skirts, rolling down the hill and scuttling between gravestones. Victria advanced, her face without expression, the revolver gripped tightly in her right hand. Melody continued to increase her distance, crawling backward, keeping her eyes on her pursuer and pulling her skirting up and away from her feet. She watched Victria quickly zigzag between headstones. Presently, Melody felt that she'd freed her legs entirely. Turning, she sprang ahead, but only to stop in her tracks.

It was a larger stone that blocked her way, polished, gleaming, black marble, a cross chiseled into its face, above an inscription that read: Randolph Sebastian Allwine, December 4, 2001 to April 16, 2012. There were no flowers and there was a considerable distance of empty lawn on either side of the stone. Melody suspected the area would remain that way, until the cemetery became so crowded that good families would no longer have the option to avoid burying their loved ones near such a grave. Who he was really, she asked herself. Who cared for him? How long ago had they given up? Melody looked away, and then swung her body around.

"You found him, I see." Said Victria, jutting her chin at Randy's stone and flipping the revolver around her trigger finger.

"That's your boy, your shooter, the pussy that just couldn't keep his anger and frustration for himself, he had to bring other people with him. How about him? Is he your master? Huh Melody? Who's brand do you wear Melody; Leanne's or his? Either way, you're stuck here. Your past is this cemetery. End that day now, with this gun."

In the moment of silence, Victria extended the revolver to Melody in her open palm.

"Or come and be mine."

Victria stepped closer. Melody's gaze flit back and forth between Victria's eyes and the gun in her open hand. Victria watched her redden, watched her chest begin to quickly rise and fall, and then she watched her slap the revolver out of her hand. Melody rushed forward, her left arm in a wide arc until the flat of her hand collided into Victria's mouth. Melody stood back and watched the blood start its way down Victria's split lower lip. Neither woman moved. Again, Melody slapped her. Victria's head went back. Melody saw the red imprint of her hand on the other's cheek.