"The Journey"

She stuffs necessary and unnecessary things into a brown leather backpack in the dark, while her father lies unconscious in the basement with his mistress, a woman he smoked at the strip-joint downtown and crushed out later in his bedsheets. Issa cries to herself as quietly as possible, grabbing another pair of panties, a book, and the chef's knife from the kitchen. This last memento she holds in her hand a moment, looking at the faint moonglow reflection, before replacing the plastic blade-guard and hiding the implement in her pack. As a final insult Issa stands on a kitchen chair to reach the old cigar box her father stows atop the cupboards, above the fridge. His primary stash of weed; she carefully empties the contents into the toilet tank; quietly puts the porcelain cover back on; places her acerbic note into the cigar box; returns the box to its hiding place. Issa never cracks a smile, but the tears have stopped. The decrepit porch creaks treacherously as she sneaks out the front door, but it's too late now. Here comes auburn Angela around the corner, her familiar green Passat purring, and she slows down while Issa jumps in, and then—they are away.


* * *
"I told my mother we're going to a midnight showing of Pulp Fiction," Angela explains, replying to an unasked question. "Where am I really taking you?"

"You know that you are the best friend I have ever had, right?" Issa says as she swipes at her reddened eyes. "You know that, right?"

"Aw, you know I love you, baby," the red-haired girl answers, giving her passenger a playful, mock-groping squeeze on the knee. "I've loved you since we were six. I would drive you to Arizona tonight if you asked me. Seriously, Issa. Anywhere. Now where are we going, should I turn left or—?"

"Right," Issa directs, a brief sound of laughter clearing out the remainder of her sadness. "Get on the bypass, head toward Waverton."

"Waver—oh my God, Issa, you're eloping with Jack, aren't you?"

Issa sinks down lower into the passenger seat, pulling her denim coat tightly closed. The spring night air is still chilly with the ghost of winter. She lowers her chin, and a mass of dark brown ringlets hides most of her pale face. She nods, then: "Yes," she says.

"I am completely jealous. Do you guys know where you're going yet?" Angela asks, reaching a hand out to turn up the thermostat. "You'd have to leave town pretty much forever—your dad will murder you if he sees you."

"I know," Issa replies flatly, nudging the overstuffed backpack at her feet with one sneaker-clad foot. "Especially when he goes to check his stash."

"Issa, you didn't..."

"Totally. He's lucky I didn't neuter him before I left."

They both laugh, but for Issa the mirth ends with her eyes.


* * *
Half-an-hour later Angela runs red fingernails through her short mop of auburn and checks the rearview mirror. Issa sits looking out the side window, her mood oddly grave for someone who has just tossed off the shackles of an abusive father, a mother who emotionally blackmails her in weekly telephone calls, and a duplicitous, conspiratorial social scene which rates her well below the acceptable limits of promiscuity (a reputation which, to be honest, she had resolutely begun to shed from the moment she met Jack). Angela herself is a casualty of that scene, and often fantasizes about burning their high school to the foundations, the way one might wish to plant a firecracker in a hornet's nest. But Angela is afraid of getting stung, whereas Issa seems to possess some secret leaden aegis. Which is, of course, why Angela has loved her since childhood, when the neighborhood bullies learned to cower before Issa's devil-may-care claws.

They have been off the highway for half an hour and now, as the Passat slinks through a lifeless district of abandoned houses and motionless industrial parks, Issa guides them to a sleeping rail yard where retired boxcars molder, dinosaur carcasses in the primeval dark.

"Here? Really?" Angela says, doubtful.

But Issa is already gathering up her backpack and looking anxiously out the windows. "He said he'd be here; go toward that big building ahead, there should be a little road that goes around back."

"You've been here before?" The string of Angela's incredulousness is unbroken.

"Once we—" Issa begins to answer, then stops short and changes directions. "Yes, I've been here before... Anyway. Wait—I think I see his car."

The tail of a cherry red Mustang is clearly visible where the driver has pulled into the black, dusty mouth of a disused service garage. As the Passat's headlights splash across it the brake lights flare and it backs out slowly, pulling up alongside them. With the motor idling, its driver climbs out and walks around to Issa's door.

Angela has seen Jack only three times since he began dating Issa three months ago. He is handsome, owner of a five o’clock shadow, and possesses the rumpled yet profoundly capable appearance of one who works on machines, has mastered their metal savagery; a sort of urban Greystoke just a month shy of his diploma. Issa had seemed to be madly taken with him immediately. It had been a foregone conclusion, in Angela's mind, that they would attend the senior prom together in a few weeks, despite Jack going to school in another county. Now it would be a different story: Issa and Jack will disappear, small waves will roll and die quickly on the tongues of the community, and then the whole thing will be forgotten by the end of the summer. The romance of what is about to occur suddenly starts to falter in Angela’s eyes.

"Issa," Angela begins, and feels her heart slam hard as it realizes the question on her lips can only have a painful answer. "Am I ever going to see you again? I mean… ever?"

And Issa freezes with her hand on the door handle, the backpack slung over one shoulder. Jack is leaning against his car, arms crossed, patiently looking into the distance. She turns back to Angela, her expression giving everything away. Then, in one swift movement, Issa leans and kisses her. The shock is immediate, and weepingly desperate. Angela's mind races to make sense of this, and at the same time her lips are responding; her tongue is responding. This is crazy. Why now, why this? If she feels...? But Jack...? Confusion and exultation twist Angela into a dizzying paralysis. Love (but what sort? All so fast!) raises Angela's hands and pulls Issa into an embrace, and they simply hold onto each other for a few moments, breathing hard, Issa's face buried in her neck, and Angela looking out the passenger window and seeing—but not registering—Jack's continued, ever-patient presence. This is too much understanding to be given at the end of things, Angela thinks, and astounding herself she speaks it aloud.

"This is too much understanding to be given at the end of things," Angela whispers; only needs to whisper, because Issa's ear is there, waiting.

And Issa pulls back, wiping fresh tears, smiling in such a tortured way that it causes Angela to grimace in sympathy.

"That's the thing," Issa whispers in reply. "You don't understand any of it. But you don't have to. It's not your journey."

For months, years after Issa is gone, Angela will replay those parting words in her sleep, in her daydreams, in moments at work as she stares off into space, suddenly returned to that kiss and the strange night which framed it. At first she will think of the words as cold, hurtful, insulting. She will hate Issa for a very long time, and then one day she will play it all over again and there, in Issa's tone, in the expression on her face, a hint of something else surfaces. Five years later, Angela will believe she knows this much: That Issa saved her from something that night, though she cannot explain how. And then, a few months after this epiphany, as Angela dwells alone in her New York City apartment, there arrives an October evening with an unexpected knock at the door.


* * *
“Hold on, I’m coming,” Angela calls, and opens the door with the expectation of finding a neighbor, or a friend. The moment she breaks the seal an odor sweeps in, foul like rotting meat. But the inertia of habit is too swift, and the aperture widens in greeting before she can change her mind.

Her first fleeting impression is that a homeless man has somehow gotten past the doorman and wandered onto her floor. In the instant before he attacks, other details assail her: the yellow tinge of his flesh, the viperous jaw, the small knots of horn or bone jutting from his temples, linking the thickened ridge of his brow like glass shards set into concrete; and behind that, a wild, oily chaos of black hair. Now the thing’s eyes flare, bright red (like the tail lights of a Mustang) as the fanged mouth unhinges and comes for her. Angela’s arms rise instinctively, presenting her wrists. She has not had time to cry out yet; the impossible details of the thing standing before her only barely registered on the subconscious level. What appeared to be threadbare, ragged clothes are some kind of patchwork armor, beaten and scarred by the trials of a horrible existence, and the wickedly familiar blade in his hand comes whistling forth, burying itself to the hilt in Angela’s side, robbing her of the breath to scream.

There is no time for a mind so shocked to register things like doubt or disbelief, yet there is no reference in Angela’s mind for this plateau of pain, or for the body of the thing now looming over her, slowing drawing its knife out of her flesh as it salivates and prepares to deal the next, fatal cut. She tries to scream. Only life comes burbling out.

But now, as sounds grow distant and vision blurs, another form shimmers into life before her, swims into reality behind the yellow-skinned horror and its claw full of hate. The thing spins on its heel suddenly, cloven toes splayed, screaming in a language that sounds absurdly like a garbage disposal. Then the newcomer utters one ringing note, sings it high and sweet as the apartment is engulfed by light. Angela sees her attacker in cameo, coming apart at the seams, fingers and forearms trailing like windblown sand. As the blinding glow fades, so does Angela, and from miles above, out of a dark internal sky, the echo of a familiar voice murmurs down to her.

“I was wrong… you were part of the journey…”

One final, thudding beat of sound registers in Angela’s brain, and the world recedes altogether.


* * *
It’s the sound nobody wants to hear upon waking. Machines. The steady, low rhythm of beeps that signal one is attached to a monitor, meaning one was recently pressing the bounds of mortality. “…treated for a stab wound,” someone says. “I think she’s waking up. Angela? Can you hear me?”

Mmm… hmm…

“Angela, I am Dr. Patel. You’re in the ER at St. Bethany’s Hospital. Do you remember what happened to you?”

No. Yes. Maybe.

“You were stabbed in the abdomen by an 8-inch chef’s knife. Your friends called the paramedics. They saved your life tonight. Corporal Eddings here is hoping you can tell him what the person who did this looked like.”

My... friends?

“Hey, baby,” says Issa quietly, as if words spoken too loudly could further the injuries.

Power words. Kill words. Blinding light.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” says another male voice, and Angela opens her eyes. Issa and Jack huddle together by her right shoulder, gravest concern marking their faces. An older police officer, uniformed, gun-belted, stands off to the left. His eyes look on kindly from above a thick mustache. At the foot of the bed a young Indian man in a white coat holds a clipboard beneath his arm; his other hand rests in his pocket. It was Jack who spoke.

Nothing. I don’t remember… what it looked like. He. It. Listen… can I go back to sleep?

Angela does not bother to wait for their reply.


* * *
Sunlight on a hospital bed; a tray of uneaten food in neat little compartments; a muted television showing “The Price Is Right” with Bob Barker. It’s only Issa this morning, and a private room. The medication is dampening the pain to a low banshee’s wail. Angela’s fingers twine with Issa’s. She is wearing several new rings, Angela notices. Some of them have gems. Her dark ringlets have been chopped back into short curlicues. Otherwise, it’s the same Issa who still haunts Angela’s lips whenever she kisses anybody else.

“It wasn’t human,” Angela is telling her, “but I can’t say that to them. But I saw it die, so it’s alright. It can’t get me now.”

Then she looks into Issa’s eyes.

“It’s not dead, is it?” she infers. “Issa, how do you know what it is? Where did you and Jack go when you left me?”

Beside the sunlit hospital bed, a young woman with curly brown hair and vibrant green eyes sits stroking the hand of the love of her life. There are volumes to explain, and no time, but she takes her time anyway. It’s a journey, she explains. Not everyone matters, as difficult as that is to hear. The few who do, the players, the dramatis personae… they can live forever. Jack has been on the journey for over a hundred years, and the moment he met Issa there was no doubt that she was written into its fateful weave. There is magic in the weave, Issa tells her love, and there are devils attempting to rip it apart, stealing pieces of the tale and twisting it upon itself; thus, the long knife. What neither Jack nor Issa understood until too late was that Angela truly belongs to the story. She is no shadow scenery, no vague pawn, but a wryghder like they are. A wryghder—a being who is like the thread of a seam, holding the worlds together. A traveler of stories. The burden of proof is voided, now that Angela has seen the face of an Adversary. Now that she has heard the word of banishment in her true love’s mouth. Now that she has seen the light.

“I left with Jack because he knew, because he could teach me,” Issa explains with tears in her eyes. “And I could never bear to tell you that you were merely a dream. But as the story unfolded we learned differently, I was wrong, Jack was wrong… sweet Goddess of the earth, we were both so blessedly wrong. And I will never leave your side again, Angela.”

The silence that follows carries the scent of tenuous realities; it verges on breaking, dallies with the precarious chance of failure. Belief crosses and meanders upon Angela’s face, and in the end it’s the gentle fingers woven into her own that heal the wounded faith.

“You’ll protect me?” Angela asks.

“I’ll protect you,” Issa whispers.

“You’ll stay with me?” Angela asks.

Issa leans over, and this time the soft kiss imparts no uncertainties.

“Until the end.”