Mercy

The longer I stay sprawled in Adrienne lap, the more paranoid I become. Every noise causes me to flinch in alarm, and the unexpected creaking of the swings as the wind picks up just about makes me scream. At one point, I think I hear a twig snap directly behind us. I’m instantly wide-eyed and peering over Adrienne’s shoulder like a child nearly wetting itself in fright, but there’s no one there. I grow more terrified still when a disembodied whisper resonates in my ears and swirls about in the suddenly frigid wind. The swings are groaning again. The disembodied whisper moans right along with them.

“Adie…there’s s-s-someone here,” I stutter, burying my face in her blouse. The perfume she’s wearing might have been strong, though the smell of it is suddenly difficult to decipher through the stronger fragrance of cigarette smoke. I’ve been chain smoking in an attempt to calm my nerves, but the cancer sticks did little to stop my racing heart. They’re equally useless in quieting the fucking whispers that surround me.

“Is this someone dead or alive?” she asks with mounting curiosity.

“Dead,” I murmur with absolute certainty. The dead never fail in reducing me to a pathetic, quivering coward whenever I feel their presence closing in on me. It’s a feeling I imagine I’ll never get used to. I would rather be stalked by a gun-slinging bigot from the bar than by any of the countless spirits that insisted upon haunting me. With a stolen gun of my own, I can maim and scare the drunk into leaving me alone. You can’t scare or maim the dead. They have nothing left to lose.

“Has the spirit shown itself to you, or is it being coy?” Adrienne presses, eyes lighting up at the prospect of being near a ghost. She wishes she has my gift. Her jealousy ripples through me like an electric current and smarts as if the voltage emanating from her expectant stare is real. For a moment, I fear it’s burning me alive.

“It’s hidin’ from me, the fuckin’ coward…” I growl, trying to convince Adrienne through a veil of masculinity that I have the balls, the cojones, to call the spirit out. She doesn’t buy it. She’s fully aware of how my body is still trembling in her arms.

“Maybe you should try to talk to it,” she persists, pulling my body up to a sitting position. I slump right back down into her lap.

“No,” I tell her firmly, but her fascination with the supernatural keeps her from backing down. She pulls me right back up again and scowls at me, but I do nothing but flick ash from the glowing end of my cancer stick at her. If she’s so goddamn enthralled by speaking with the dead, why wasn’t she born a psychic?

“What if it’s Jason?” she snaps, swiftly shaking her head to rid the ash from her hair.

In shock, the cigarette falls from my fingertips, and I immediately curse myself. It was my last. I scramble to retrieve the still-burning cigarette from the grass. Adrienne nicks it first and presses it into the ground until my precious vice is nothing but a smoldering white speck in the dirt. I begin to cry.

“That ain’t fair, Adie,” I whimper.

“Oh, I’m sorry, you were so busy playing with that stupid thing that I thought you were finished with it,” she hisses. I regret flicking that ash in her face.

“I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout the fuckin’ cig, Adrienne! I’m talkin’ ‘bout…Jay. He wouldn’t do this to me, ‘n’ you shouldn’t neither,” I holler, dropping the masculine act completely and conceding defeat to my fears.

Adrienne smiles sweetly at me before asking, “But if he really did love you as much as you say, why wouldn’t he try to contact you somehow? He knew about your gift too, honey. He’s going to find you.”

“No!” I shout, horrified. “He ain’t gonna torture me like that! He’s dead, ‘n’ contactin’ me from the beyond ain’t gonna change nothin’!”

Adrienne is well equipped with a spiteful remark about having sex with a ghost. Her mouth is already opening to allow the words to uncontrollably spew from her jealous lips, but a blinding pair of headlights tearing down the road in front of the park causes her jaw to clamp tight in alarm and her head to snap in the direction of the vehicle. She can’t make it out from where we’re sitting. I know without looking that it’s a rusted out black pickup truck careening towards the park.

I breathe a sigh of relief. Adrienne panics.

“They found us!” she whispers, scrambling to her feet. For a moment, she forgets all about my twisted ankle and waits for me to stand beside her. When I don’t, she gasps and yanks me up. I have to hop around on my uninjured leg to keep from falling right back to the ground before she regains sense enough to pull me close to her body. I lean against her, still a bit wobbly, and feel overwhelmingly at peace. The black pickup truck had driven all the dead from the area.

“Adie, take a good look at that truck there, ‘n’ tell me what you see,” I command her, pointing at the pickup that was now parked on the side of the road with its headlights shining directly upon us. She focuses hard on the vehicle and gasps. Finally, she recognizes a reason why I can’t wipe this stupid grin off of my face.

“Rich!” she cries, watching eagerly as my oldest brother jumps out of his truck and begins to run towards us. “Rich, he’s hurt!”

“Gimme that gun, B-Joe. I’ma hunt those assholes down ‘n’ kill ‘em one by one ‘til they can’t bother you no more,” Rich pants out, grappling at my pockets to take the weapon from me. I’m reminded of the way the old men had been groping at me, and I let out a violated sob. Rich recoils immediately.

“I ain’t worth it goin’ to jail for, Richie. I ain’t even your brother, ‘member?” I sniffle out, referencing the conversation I’d overheard while making my escape from the bar.

Rich scoops me up into his arms and starts to carry me out to his truck, motioning for Adrienne to follow him. He shakes his head, disgusted with himself, as he explains, “Danny’s a self-righteous prick. He might’ve disowned you, but you’re still my fav’rite little brother. You’re better’n the lot of ‘em, even if you are a faggot.”

I cringe at his use of the word. It makes me feel disgusting. Subhuman.

“Sorry I’m such a disappointment,” I mumble, keeping my eyes focused on the ground and nothing else.

“Hey, I di’n’t say that! You ain’t a disappointment. In fact, I’m proud of you,” he assures me, giving my body a comforting squeeze. I shake my head in disbelief.

“Why? I ain’t done nothin’ to be proud of.”

“Yes, you have. You were so brave tonight, standin’ up to all those sick bastards by yourself after they…they…” Rich’s breath hitches in his chest, and not until I tear my eyes from the ground to peek up into his eyes that I realize he’s trying not to cry. I know why.

“They di’n’t rape me, Rich, ‘n’ it ain’t your fault that they tried. It was outta your control,” I make clear, wrapping my arm around my brother’s neck in an awkward hug to further illustrate that I don’t blame him for what happened. Adrienne disappears to the bed of Rich’s truck to place my guitar case gingerly inside, giving us a much needed moment of silent apologies.

“It was outta your control too, kid, but you still stopped ‘em. I coulda protected you, but I di’n’t. Now I gotta make it right,” he says, setting me down in the passenger seat of his truck. My twisted ankle gets caught in the doorway, and I let out a pained shriek. Rich apologizes profusely.

“I ain’t givin’ you the gun, if that’s how you think you’re gonna make it right,” I grunt through gritted teeth, waiting for the aching in my ankle to dull enough for me to scoot over. Adrienne needs to squeeze into the passenger seat as well, and that isn’t going to happen with half of my body still hanging outside of the truck. With a deep breath, I pull myself closer to the driver’s seat to give Adrienne room to sit comfortably beside me. My mangled foot drags along the floor of the truck. There’s no chance in that pain ever going away.

“No, B-Joe. I don’t want the gun. I’m gonna get you outta this place. That’s how I’ma make it right,” Rich clarifies. He steps into his beat-up truck and makes sure I’m ok before he starts to drive away from the park. “I’ma make it right,” he repeats, removing his right hand from the wheel long enough to rustle my unruly black curls.

My eyes wander to something that looks promising on the floor of Rich’s beat-up truck. There, concealed underneath Adrienne’s feet, is the best possible gift my brother could have brought for me after everything I’ve been through. I’ll be able to silence all the other disembodied voices that happen to bother me tonight, and Adrienne sure as hell won’t be finding out if I can have sex with ghosts.

Beaming ear to ear despite the discomfort in my twisted ankle, I squeal, “Rich, did you buy me booze?!”