Lyle

July 4th, 2013

She’s broken.

I walk up to her and kneel down. She doesn’t respond so I pick up one of her rusted chains and examine them. They’re too old and fragile, but they do their job. The girl doesn’t look at me, it’s like she’s completely catatonic. Good. I let go of the chains and grab her chin to make her look at me.

“Look at you, a survivor. Strong. A few weeks ago you were weak, unwilling to live. When I found you out in the streets you were nothing more than dirt, but now,” I pause. “Beautiful,” I whisper.

The girl looks away, looks at her chains. I let go of her chin and wait for a response. It always takes a while. The girl weakly tugs on her chains around her legs. “You did this,” she says softly.

“I did this? No. I didn’t do anything. I’m not the one who gave up on life.”

“You…”

The girl refuses to look at me. She stares at the cracked and broken wall. I look around. Living here for weeks would break anyone down. It would make me hate my captor. She doesn’t know how powerful she has yet to become.

The room echoes with the roar of a passing motorcycle from outside. There’s not a lot of light shining through but enough where we can see each other. The room with no windows, the room with only one door, it creaks with a hollow whisper. The girl refuses to see me, to look at me. Once she does, only then will she understand.

“You did this,” The girl winces. “You did this to me,” he voice shakes, shaking her chains.

“I did this for you!”

The girl finally darts her eyes to me. “No, no!”

I stand up, making sure our eye contact doesn’t break. “From the moment I saw you I knew what you could become. You were nothing but a shell of a person, empty and meaningless. I took you here so I can show you what complete emptiness is,” I pause. “But now that you know what complete emptiness is, you can use it.”

“This is bullshit!” The girl yells, shaking her chains and getting on her knees.

I get to see her face for the first time. It’s covered in dirt and her brown hair covers her eyes. Her malnourished cheeks bleed from her old reopened scabs. What a weak girl. A weak girl that now has the desire to take the world.

“You’ve been running away from your own life!” I put emotions into my words. I have to make her believe and the only way I can do that is to make myself believe. “This world, it took everything from you! It beat your down into submission, it made you believe that you are worthless. This world made you want to leave it entirely.”

“I hate you.”

“Nah, girl, you got it all wrong. You don’t hate me. You hate yourself.”

My words are getting to her. She whimpers and whines as she slouches down. Her voice is too weak to properly cry but she cries nonetheless. “What do I do?” her voice shakes even worse now.

I kneel to move her hair out of her eyes. They’re milky brown, just like my sister’s. “You use that emptiness. I know because I’ve done it.” The girl looks at me again. “I felt like I didn’t matter. I felt like the world hates me. My mother, she would beat me until my tears would turn into blood. I hated her, she made me feel like I wasn’t a person. She took a lot from me, kind of how the world took a lot from you. See, this shit you went through, this shit I put you through? A stronger girl wouldn’t survive it, not the way you have.”

The girl looks away again, then looks back at me with stronger eyes. She straightens out her back and her head starts to rise.

“Most people, they won’t ever know the kind of pain you have been through. It would kill them, but here you are, you survived the hurricane. And those who survive, those who weather the storm, those are the ones who become the storm. You become the hurricane. You hear me?”

The girl’s eyes shine through, they widen.

“You become the hurricane and it’s your turn to become stronger and destroy anything that will get in your way,” I stand back up and extend my hand out. “And if you believe that the world is now yours, stand up. Stand up and join me and together we will strike back at the world that has wrong us one too many times.

The girl looks up to me with glowing eyes and gulps down the little saliva she has left. She takes my hand and stands.

I smile and remove her shackles. I take her hand and take her outside the dark-lit room.

-

One of the girls once asked me why I go to the jobs myself. She was my first little foot soldier. She soon became my second in command, the one who runs the show when I’m not around. She stopped seeing the sun and dyed her hair snow-white just as I once did. She became what I once was; Sessions. Marina became the only one I respect out of all of them.

I told her, “Hiding behind your workers just makes you a coward. How can one lead when he doesn’t stand beside everyone? I’m not above anyone, they just trust me to know what to do.” It’s all sign language. I have never heard her speak in all the years that I’ve known her.

“Aren’t you afraid your face will be known?”

“Aren’t you?”

“If you go down, all of this was for nothing.”

“Isn’t that why you’re here? The mythical person who runs the whole thing? A ghost, a quick and fleeting session.”

Sessions smiled and moved her bangs. She looked at me with her bugged eyes. They always freak me out. Sessions always freak me out but there isn’t anyone else I trust more. She was far more broken than anyone I have ever met and I made her who she is. Sessions has everything she ever wanted and she owes her life to me.

So someone tells me why she isn’t here with all of us like she’s supposed to.

Today was supposed to be the revival of my destiny, my inherited birthright. It’s taken years to get the attention of the last surviving OG of Golden Hearts, but he finally agreed to it. Chopin and I are supposed to bring this country to its knees. Sessions was supposed to be the key to all of this. She was supposed to show him we have the power of God on our side.

But she isn’t here.

Acid says she betrayed us but that’s absurd. It doesn’t matter, she isn’t here so all of this will fall apart.

The skies are turning dark gray. No one said anything about raining today. I look at the warehouse and something doesn’t feel right. My crew is starting to show up and hang around the parking lot. Chopin’s crew hasn’t bothered to show. It’s odd, it’s minutes away from the meeting time we set. No, this is too odd to ignore. Sessions isn’t here and Chopin’s crew hasn’t bothered to show. It’s odd, it’s odd, it’s odd.

Did they get to her before this? No, they don’t know who she is.

I look at Acid. One of the girls is talking to him and he’s ignoring her as usual. Everyone is relaxed and isn’t worried about a thing. Andrew isn’t here either. Why isn’t he here? He knows what would happen if he doesn’t show, so why isn’t he here?

It’s time and everyone except Acid and I head inside. “Have you reached Sessions?” I ask him.

“No, it goes straight to voicemail.”

“Her phone, is it on? Have you checked it on iCloud? Where was she last?”

“Don’t panic.”

“I never panic, well?”

“No, her phones off. Last time it was on it was at the apartment last night.”

Last night? “Why are you telling me this now?”

Acid shrugs and starts to walk inside, “She did her job and went home, it’s not a big deal. Come inside man so we can finally get this Winter.”

My phone starts to ring. I let Acid open the doors and disappear. Once he does, I answer but I don’t say anything.

“Mendelssohn, you should learn to answer your phone faster,” the blocked phone number says. His voice is effeminate. It’s his voice, Chopin’s. This is the first time I have heard him speak. I have seen him once back in Denver, almost seven years ago. Chopin was an old man, probably in his forties back then. He had long hair though and looked almost like the man he is named after, Frederic Chopin.

“I didn’t have my phone on me. Why is nobody here?”

He chuckles. “How stupid do you think I would be to get busted by the DEA?”

“What do you mean? There’s no DEA here.”

“You had a mole. They have the place surrounded waiting for us to show up to entrap us all. I suggest you leave while you can,” Chopin hangs us.

A mole? I knew there was something odd about all of this. Sessions, she did betray us. No. No that’s impossible, she would still be here if that was the case. Andrew? No, that kid owes me after giving him back his sister. Even if he found out the truth he knows I wouldn’t hesitate to kill him.

No. There’s only one oddity out of the crew. You just don’t decide to leave the state to visit your dying mother for two months and then come back as nothing happened. Jesus has only been with us for a couple of years but he’s always been the odd one. He’s here today just to watch me fall. He’s the mole, I should have killed him when I first started to suspect him.

But where is Sessions?

I leave.

Sessions was supposed to take Chris to Kennewick to kill him for failing me. I gave him so many resources and time to make this meeting unnecessary but he failed me. He had to go. Chris is the last person to see her and I’m betting he’s still alive.

I take a deep breath and take back control. I should away be in control, it’s the only way I can take charge. It doesn’t matter if the DEA is here. That’s why I have Acid, he can take the fall. All that matters is Sessions, today wouldn’t have worked without her anyways. I still have half my crew around and they haven’t gotten to me or Sessions. I just have to find her and I’ll have everything again. I knew this day would happen, it’ll be fine, it has happened before. My breathing under control now, there isn’t anything to worry about now.

I just have to find Marina Lightyear. Her condition, her one of a kind uniqueness is my ticket to achieving my destiny.

-

Six years ago, I found her half-dead in the streets of Denver. She was alone, starving and scared out of her mind. She didn’t speak and I didn’t know sign language yet. I was always told that there was going to be a person that would change my life, someone who will give me everything I ever wanted. Somehow, I knew at that moment that It was her, Marina.

Marina was an orphan. She’s a monster that made her undesirable. See when people are at their lowest, I can build them back up on my image. That’s exactly what I did, it’s what I do. It’s people like me who are destined to change the world. It’s only those who take charge and control people’s lives that can have greatness.

Some call it evil. It’s not right, it’s not humane and compassionate. It eats people up, makes them unable to sleep. It haunts their dreams and drives them mad. But then they go home, have dinner. They take a bath and sleep well for the very first time in weeks. They wake up.

Everything in this world can be forgotten through time.