Chapter 100. Holy crud.

I love you so.

ssg.x.

-

Bloodless
And brainless
Sleeping
I’m dreamless
The planet spins on a dime
Spits on mine

-

Apparently he was known as Riddler. And he would have killed Faye if it wasn’t for Spike.

-

Ezekiel had to watch the entire thing from across the street, doubled over between a newsstand and his guitar case, crippled by chest pains. Distorted sound and vision set his stomach turning and the burning heart behind his ribs threatened to swallow him up in its flames. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes to stop the spinning.

“Fuck, no...Please not now,” he groaned. Shots rang out and he sank to his knees, defeated.

When he was a child he wanted to be a superhero. His parents constantly discouraged his daydreaming and imaginative play by telling him it was blasphemous. “Only God can have superpowers, Ezekiel.”

When he was eight his mother reacted to finding his Green Lantern comics the same way another mother might react to finding a stack of Hustlers in his closet.

She grabbed him by his shoulder, shaking one of the books in his face. “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth!”

She knelt on the floor, peering under the bed and collecting the rest of the books there. “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God...”

Ezekiel watched silently, expressionless. He’d learned at an even earlier age that when either one of his parents was on auto-bible there was really no reasoning with them. His best plan of action was to remain calm for the time being then attempt to track down the comics after his parents have gone to bed. And anyways, his mother could strip his room bare but she could never get into his head. His dreams remained his own.

A simple, sharp intake of breath would be all it took to strike down his enemies with lightening. He’d throw his arms back to bring about the fiercest winds and control the undercurrents of the ocean. His fists striking the ground would break apart the earth and his cries would shatter the sky.

But that was so long ago now, back to a time when he still had dreams. And now he found himself the one broken apart and shattered.

“Hey, Spiegel. You must need a fix bad.”

The guy manning the newsstand peered over the counter he’d ducked behind at the sound of the gunfire, looking down at Ezekiel and cocking his head to one side.

“Oh hey, buddy. I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else. You alright?”

Ezekiel shook his head.

“You been shot?”

“No,” he grunted, “there’s a girl... across the street.”

“Across the street? Yeah, I see her. She’s on the ground.”

She’s on the ground.

Ezekiel closed his eyes, swallowing hard. He tried to put together a coherent thought but his chest seized again, wiping his mind clean of a single word or picture. He could make out the shape of a man hiding behind a parked car, his daughter held tightly against him. His hands shielded her ears from the sounds of the gun going off again and again.

I couldn’t protect her.

“Goddamn bounty hunters. Greedy bastards don’t give a shit what innocent bystander gets caught in the crossfire so long as they get their money. Fucking cops just look the other way. Lazy, that’s what they are, letting those sociopaths do all the work for them.” Probably finally noticing Ezekiel’s severe disinterest in the newsman’s editorial rant he said, “It looks like the girl’s okay, buddy. She’s getting up.”

“Thank you,” Ezekiel wheezed. He clutched his left arm, pushing his right against the storefront to get back on his feet. Eventually the four Fayes he saw blended into one and he was instantly able to recognize the pretty, green dress she wore the night of the cast party.

“Yeah, no problem. You don’t look good.”

Perceptive, idiot.

Beatrice...

“I can’t do it anymore,” he whispered.

“What was that?” the newsman asked. “I didn’t hear you. You sick? You want me to call you an ambulance?”

“No,” he whispered.

“Your girl’s up and gone, buddy. That guy I mistook you for – Spiegel – he’s running the show now.”

Spike.

“Another one of those bounty hunters. A good guy. He gets his cigarettes from me. I give him a bit of a tax break, if you know what I mean. He can’t be making much of a living at this bounty business, seeing as how he’s always wearing that same suit. And he always asks how my wife is doing. Now that other guy, he’s a nasty piece of work.”

“Other guy?” Ezekiel tentatively unfolded himself. The newsman offered him his hand, reaching over the counter and rustling the piles of newspaper beneath his arm. Ezekiel accepted his offer, grabbing his wrist and using it to pull himself back into a standing position.

“The Riddler,” the newsman replied, happy to have finally piqued Ezekiel’s interest. “Another bounty hunter. Always leaves a mess behind. That girl of yours is lucky she didn’t get her head blown off, lemme tell you.”

Another wave of nausea hit. He blinked hard, trying to get his eye’s focus back.

What the hell kind of name is 'The Riddler'?

-

I can ride my bike with no handlebars
I can keep rhythm with no metronome
And I can hit a target through a telescope

-

It didn’t take long to find Riddler, aka Mickey Dufrane. The newsman was right – he always left a mess behind. And tracking through his own mess, Riddler had left a clear track for Ezekiel to follow. Bartenders and “business associates”. A young hooker he’d left his mark on in the form of two missing front teeth and a chipped canine.

Beatrice was dead and all he could think was that he could just kill somebody.

The Riddler had him convinced that he would never be able to protect Faye the way Spike could. Ezekiel was dead weight. He couldn’t risk that Faye might walk headfirst into a bullet looking back over her shoulder to make sure he was alright. He couldn’t watch her die again. She’d already died a hundred times over in his nightmares.

If it wasn’t for the Riddler incident he never would have broken his promise to Beatrice. He never would have pushed Faye away the way he had. And Bea would have at least left this world with some ounce of respect for him. His stomach churned when he thought back to the vehement look in her eyes before disappearing into the back in search of the bathroom, the vicious cut of her last words to him against his throat.

High on a heavy dose of twisted logic,Ezekiel had tracked him down within mere hours. He waited for him across the street from The Snake and The Mongoose Pub in the pouring rain and mercifully it turned out he didn’t have to wait long. Riddler was thrown out after disagreeing rather violently with the bartender’s decision to cut him off.

“Don’t do it.”

“That’s not really up to you.”

Ezekiel’s gun swayed heavily from his right hand. He had to retrain himself after his left arm had decided to crap out on him one too many times. He was pleased he’d been able to make the transition from left to right so smoothly.

“Listen, it was a joke! I wasn’t really going to kill her! I was just having a little fun with her!”

Riddler reached up carefully to wipe his mouth. His hand was shaking. The blood wouldn’t stop. He’d lost his two front teeth when Ezekiel cornered him, quickly busting his mouth open with the end of his guitar case. That was for the hooker.

“How ‘bout we have some fun together.”

“I already told Spiegel I wouldn’t touch her! I promised I wouldn’t go near her again!” The man began to back away along the ground, slowly as though Ezekiel were an animal he didn’t want to spook.

Ezekiel wrapped the long fingers of one hand around the pump, pulling back and bracing himself for the staggering recoil as he aimed and pulled the trigger with his other hand. It sent shockwaves through his entire body and fire through his veins. A trash can by Riddler’s head was sent from the ground in a spectacular explosion of garbage and old newspaper. Ezekiel thought that putting the fear in Riddler would satiate at least a sliver of his appetite for destruction in the wake of Bea’s death. But firing the gun had just the opposite effect. He wanted more.

He turned his attention back to Riddler.

Panicked, Riddler began reaching for anything he thought might soothe the demon rising in Ezekiel. “I could have killed Valentine anytime I wanted! I could have killed her but I didn’t!”

You’re a selfish bastard.

Don’t, Bea...

Don’t what? Don’t say what you’re thinking out loud?

Ezekiel squeezed his eyes shut and gave his head a good, sobering shake. Hot tears ran down his cheeks. He dipped to one side dizzily, the gun suddenly feeling like more weight than he could carry.

If you let her die I’ll never forgive you for it. I’ll make sure your heart stops beating before it finally decides to on its own.

“I said I’d stay away from her! What the hell else do you want me to do?” Riddler shouted.

Ezekiel’s eyes snapped open.

“Can you bring back the dead?”

He pulled the trigger, clenching his teeth and willing his arm to steady his weapon of choice. Riddler was thrown back into the garbage cans. Unanchored, they smashed the silence as they bounced against the brick walls of the alley.

It was raining hard. Ezekiel stared at the ground, watching the water puddle around his boots before streaming out into the street, taking Riddler’s lifeblood with it. He returned his gun and its shell casings to the guitar case then flipped the clasps back into place.

The rain had long permeated the layers of clothing he wore. He was tired, spent. He felt like he could put his head down and sleep for days. He wanted to get into something dry and just close his eyes for a little while. He thought about his blanket and his couch back at Bea’s place and unconsciously began to head in that direction, leaving the Riddler behind with a hole the size of a fist where his heart would have been if he’d ever had one.

-

Maybe we don’t know
Maybe we don’t show
But I don’t think you understand
And I can be the better man
Still I don’t see the summer gone
And I don’t feel your heart has sung
But I won’t be the one you love
Because your whole world has got to start

-

Ezekiel lay on the living room floor of Bea’s apartment.

He wasn’t hungry but he had eaten a few forkfuls of Bea’s leftover casserole anyways. She’d made it especially for him two days ago. She had wanted him to eat something to keep his strength up. He hadn’t touched it. Not until now. He thought maybe it would please her to see that he was finally appreciating it.

He’d gone into the bathroom, found the first aid kit she kept for him beneath the sink. He poured the half empty bottle of alcohol over his injured hand and wrapped it up tightly with gauze. He fumbled to tie the ends into a knot, something Bea usually did for him, but his hands were shaking. He ground his teeth together, focusing on the task at hand, and still ended up doing a shoddy job of it.

You can barely take care of yourself. How can you expect to take care of me too?

Jesus Christ, she was right.

He lay down flat on the plush carpet, arms out at his sides. He stared up at the track lighting on the ceiling. It started to spin like the blades of a propeller but he didn’t look away. The eyes of the dearly departed watched him from every wall. He could still taste his own blood in his mouth. He wanted to throw up. His wet shirt and jacket clung to him like a stocking. The entire walk over his boots weighed him down like blocks of cement and he was happy to have them out from under him.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know would happen to her things now that she was gone, but he wondered about it nonetheless. Would it all be divvied up and shipped out to her family? Would it be donated to charity? The apartment was packed wall to ceiling with picture frames, knick knacks, and books. There was an entire room devoted solely to what was formerly Faye’s ceramic doll collection. The closet within was filled with boxes of baby clothes, hand-made birthday cards from her children and grandchildren, and some of Faye’s old dresses.

His eyes closed and his breathing deepened. Before heading out to find Riddler, Ezekiel contacted Dr. Pheng Tzu, the man who had overseen Ezekiel’s “thawing”. He had been a good friend and former intern of Bea’s husband and was the one who would be making the arrangements for Bea’s body to be returned to her children in accordance to her wishes. His daughter would be taking care of everything else. He was informed that he would have access to the apartment for two more months although he was almost a hundred percent sure he wouldn’t be hanging around much longer.

There was nothing left for Ezekiel to do. He had successfully managed to delegate all responsibilities and now he felt empty and aimless.

It felt good for about three minutes.

-

This scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin
Tried to reach deep but you couldn't get in
Now you're outside me
You see all the beauty
Repent all your sin

-

Breathe.

Breathe.

Please breathe.

“Please breathe.”

Ezekiel opens his eyes a measure, coming face-to-face with just that -- his face. He jumps.

“Christ,” he gasps. Faye was crouched down beside him holding a compact mirror under his nose.

“I wasn’t sure if you were breathing,” she offers by way of explanation, seeming only mildly concerned. But he could swear he heard her voice break trying to wake him just seconds before he opened his eyes.

Ezekiel brings himself up on one elbow. He rubs his eyes, “What are you doing here?”

“What happened to your hand?”

“You first.”

Faye snaps the compact closed, returning it to the pocket of her bomber jacket. She looks away, “The box of stuff Bea put together for me. I came back for it.”

“It’s by the door where you left it,” he says, grimacing as he inadvertantly puts pressure on his bandaged hand to crawl out from under her. He stands and tugs at his wet clothes. The fabric is in the later stages of fusing to him like a second skin. He looks down at the carpet and sees the damp, snow angel-like imprint his body has left behind.

He wonders if he actually managed to fall asleep and for how long. If he had actually fallen asleep it was a waste of time. He doesn’t feel at all rested. He scrambles desperately for other inane thoughts. Anything that has a chance of distracting him from looking at Faye. Cold, wet Faye.

“Is it still raining?”

“Ezekiel, your hand. What happened to your hand?”

He doesn’t know how to answer her question.

“You did that to yourself, didn’t you?” Faye doesn’t hesitate to reach across the gap between them to grab the hand. He tries to pull back but she’s quick. Her whole body seems to soften as she cradles his hand gently, uncomfortably close to her breast.

Catching him off guard, she presses her thumb into the palm of his hand, directly into the heart of the injury. He cries out.

“And I’m the monster! What the hell is the matter with you?” She pushes deeper into the wound. “How could you do something like this to yourself?”

“Because there was no one close enough to kill,” he hisses. He pulls himself free, hiding his hand behind his back, away from her. He glares at her, his eyes ablaze.

There. It’s out.

He likes the kill. He didn’t at first but now he wonders if it was just because he hadn’t been doing it right those first few times. God had been doing such a shitty job for so long that Ezekiel decided to run for office. And now he found it was like a drug.

He’s the monster. He’s the one who lost his soul along the way.

He can’t describe Faye’s expression. There’s disgust – that seems to be the majority of it -- but there’s sadness too. She continues to mourn the death of a boy long dead.

“Where’s the guitar case?” she asks quietly. She’s starting to shake.

He looks at her suspiciously. “Why are you asking?”

“Spike told me you left the pawn shop with your guitar case. It’s the same one I found the gun in, isn’t it,” she says quietly. “Ezekiel,” -- with the beginnings of tears in her eyes – “What did you do?”

Ezekiel shakes his head, “You should go.”

“Where’s the guitar case?” she asks more firmly this time. Her voice is stretched tight like a wire. Her head is cocked ever-so-slightly to one side. Her body is a mere breath before movement.

He’s too slow to catch her.

She breaks into a run, heading straight for Bea’s bedroom. Ezekiel kicks an ottoman out of his way chasing her. She swings open the door to the closet. By the time he gets to the doorway she already has the guitar case in her hands. She hauls it up against her chest, promptly striking it hard enough against the floor to pop it open causing everything within to tumble out noisily in a pile between them.

He raises his eyes to meet hers.

“Don’t touch it,” he says.

Faye’s eyes narrow, “Or you’ll hurt me?”

Ezekiel winces, stricken. “You know I’d never –“

“I don’t know anything about you,” she spits. She feigns a grab for the gun and he involuntarily jumps towards her. He stops in his tracks when he realizes her trick. She laughs bitterly and the sound hurts his head.

“I was afraid the gun would go off by accident. I wouldn’t have touched you if I didn’t have to,” he says. Visibly stricken, her eyes widen and her jaw drops just the tiniest bit. He silently berates himself for his inability to keep his thoughts from constantly derailing on their way to his tongue. Everything he’s ever said to her comes out wrong.

“Is this what I’ve turned you into? It’s like I’ve poisoned you,” she says, more to herself than to him. “Is there any of the Ezekiel I used to know in there?”

Used to love.

He bites into his bottom lip, really thinking about it.

“I don’t know,” he answers hoarsely.

She steps carefully over the gun to where the guitar case lies open on the floor. “Bea seemed to think so,” she says softly. She lifts the guitar case from the floor, gently placing it on the bed. Ezekiel watches her silently as she feels around the faux-velvet lining of the case. When she seems satisfied that she’s found the x that marks the spot, she tugs fiercely at the fabric, ripping it away from the duct tape that was holding it in place. She doesn’t look surprised with her findings.

-

It's nothing but time and a face that you lose
I chose to feel it and you couldn't choose
I'll write you a postcard
I'll send you the news
From a house down the road from real love

-

“Bea told me about it,” Faye explains, untangling the old biology notebook carefully from the plastic wrap that had been protecting it. Ezekiel isn’t surprised. He knew Bea would try to trip him up somehow. Faye looks up at him occasionally, probably trying to gauge his reaction as she gets closer and closer to the secret, closer to his heart.

She opens the book and carefully turns the pages. On the inside cover, scrawled over and over again in her most perfect handwriting, is what was once her imagined married name.

Faye Ezekiel Chadwick
Faye Ezekiel Chadwick
Faye Ezekiel Chadwick
Faye Ezekiel Chadwick

A tear rolls down her cheek and she brushes it away quickly. Ezekiel, God help him, can’t help but blush, just as he had the first time he’d noticed the writing one afternoon they’d spent studying together by the baseball diamond behind their school. As it turned out, even with all her help he still managed to fail that test. But how was he expected to concentrate on studying after something like that?

She traces the writing delicately with the tip of her finger. Ezekiel finally has to look away. He rakes his fingers through his tangled hair and leans his weight on one leg, then the other.

The letter is folded in half and tucked between the pages of her notebook. It’s hard to place its date and almost harder to read the writing if you’re attempting it for the very first time. But Faye is an old hand at translating his “hieroglyphics” as she used to call them.

Dear Faye,

You’d hate the person I am now. Maybe it’s better that you won’t remember who I was because you could never love the person I’ve become.

She brings her hand to her mouth, sobbing into it. “She told me you carry this around with you, and that there are others. Are there others?”

Ezekiel’s shoulders drop. “Yeah, there are others,” he mutters.

“Ezekiel --”

He stares up at the ceiling, “Why did you really come? I mean besides to humiliate me.”

“I don’t know. And I’m not trying to humiliate you.”

“Does Spike know you’re here?”

“No, I don’t suppose he does. He was sleeping when I left him.”

Ezekiel tries to shake the immediate image that comes to mind of Spike lying beside her, his arms wrapped tightly around her naked body. Their skin slick with sweat, their bed sheets in knots around their tired limbs. Thinking about it is painful. Having seen it for himself is agony in its purest form.

He hadn’t told Bea that he’d watched the whole disc, from the moment they’d entered the bedroom to the moment her eyes fell closed, exhausted after the act itself. He watched her sleeping in real time and it didn’t matter which way Ezekiel twisted his head or how much he screwed up his eyes – it still didn’t look like he was sleeping beside her in Spike’s place.

“You need to stop this. You’re killing yourself,” Faye says.

“Are you kidding me?” he glares at her. “It hasn’t even been a day since I tried to stop this. I know you have trouble remembering things but --”

“Don’t be mean,” she warns, pointing a finger at him. “You’re acting like this isn’t having any affect on me at all. I woke up alone and for three years I tried to find out where I came from, because for all I knew I was hatched from a fucking egg! My whole world had been destroyed and now you tell me that you expected I’d spend my remaining years standing in the ruins choking on the dust left behind? Don’t you dare try to make me feel guilty for trying to make a life for myself after that accident! You went on with yours!”

“My life was over the second yours ended!” he shouts. “You were at least granted the luxury of never knowing I existed!”

Faye’s hand tightens into a fist around the letter, crushing it. She throws it to her side. Her eyes are shiny and hard like quartz, dribbling angry tears. “I’d remember everything too if I had kept every little stupid piece of paper --”

Ezekiel stares at the crumpled letter as though it’s his living, breathing heart lying there by her feet. He comes out of the shock just in time to see her about to start tearing the pages out of her notebook. His notebook. In an instant all he can see is red.

“Don’t!” he shouts, making a grab for the book. She manages to dodge him, holding it away from him. The room seems to start spinning. Faye holds the book in midair. He’ll never be sure whether or not she would actually have gone through with destroying it had he not managed to stop her.

Willing his strength to return to him he rises to his full height absolutely livid. His dark eyes are scintillating. “I’ll be damned before I let you kill her,” he rasps.

Flushed with rage he darts at her. The ferocity with which the action is executed catches her off guard and she spins, stumbling over the gun still lying on the carpet. His hand closes around her wrist and as she falls she pulls him along with her.

-

In his dreams she’s rising from her seat like a spirit from her tomb every night in his head. Her hands, fingers are outstretched, reaching desperately for the fasteners but it’s too late. She’s already floating too far above and her hands search for the ceiling of the ship instead. She just wants to stop moving.

A bubble of blood escapes her nostril. And then another. They begin to slip from her throat when she tries to scream. There’s never any sound in these dreams.

Faye’s fingers clutch at her chest moments before it breaks open like a dollhouse. Inside he sees a girl swinging to and fro on a swing. There’s a sun glowing fiercely where Faye’s heart was only a moment before.

The dream ends the same way, too. Every night he tries to reach out for the girl on the swing and every night Faye slams the door to her heart closed, almost catching his finger in it. Ezekiel is sorry it doesn’t.

But tonight is not like the others.

Tonight he catches her.

-

Seconds before Faye's skull is about to collide with the solid wood of Bea’s old vanity, Ezekiel’s arm captures her about her waist. He pulls her against him and the momentary shifting of their collective weight allows her enough time to break their fall by putting one arm out in front of her and against the counter top. His body slams against the back of hers as they come in for a crash landing. She cups her hand over his injured one, protecting it from the impact.

After catching their breath, they both look up almost simultaneously.

And right there in the mirror, in the very last place either of them would have thought to look, was the dark-haired girl before the broken home, and the brown-eyed boy before the broken heart.

-

Lyrics quoted from The Flobots’ Handlebars, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s Pretend, Stars’ Your Ex-Lover Is Dead, and Nadsat’s Stupor. Don’t sue, please.