Moonbeam

Damien

Climbing up through constellations, he let his head explode. Where he stood was before the Heavens, below the waterfall, beneath the blow threatening to strike him down. “Let me in!” he cried, finally past all celestial beings and barriers that had blocked his path. The clouds kissed his feet, danced on his shins, sliding past the mortal hair growing there. Small, black butterflies littered the air around him, tugging on strands of his hair as they teased him with landings.

Great eyes turned to him, moving the sky and the stars to look. “Boy,” the sunset sighed. “You cannot come in.” The poor thing; peeling layers of travel, sweating liquid drops of determination. It was a shame his heart had to be crushed.

“But!” he whimpered, twining his fingers in the thread of the gates. He could feel the other side; it was warm, sunny, he knew it. “Please. I’ve come so far.”

The sky turned its back on him. “Not today.”

The clouds withdrew their curious fingers, sensing the boy’s rejection, and let him fall. Space swallowed him, pushed him and pulled until his lungs could breathe again. Then he was plummeting. The air was cold, sharp, and it severed the baby tears from his eyelashes before they had time to develop. He saw the ground coming, did not shy from it, in fact, began to open his arms to it.

“Welcome,” he whispered. His body slammed straight through the roof of a house, penetrating the ceiling and then tumbling, harmless, back into his sleeping body, tangled in bed sheets. He felt his fingers holding, his legs twisting, his lungs panting, and realized he was awake.

“Shit,” he hissed. His black eyes stared upward, wide and blind. He could still taste rejection.

“Damien,” a woman’s voice called to him. It was slightly blocked by the door to his bedroom. “Are you awake yet?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t care if she heard him. Eyes half closed in disappointment, he turned out of bed and shuffled downstairs, uncaring toward the texture of the carpet on his bare feet, the smell of bacon and the sound of birds chirping outside. The rain had long gone; he watched the shadows of each small cloud as they played hide ‘n’ seek with the sun. His frown only deepened.

“What’s up with you?” Dee asked over her shoulder. She was preparing breakfast – by the looks of it, with the intention of feeding an army.

His expression soured. “Where did you get the money for all these groceries?” he wondered at her. He took the back of his chair and sat in front of an empty bowl. He stared into it as Dee talked.

“You’re not the only one with a job. I’ve got a big family to support,” yeah, an apartment complex full of them, “and I don’t chicken out on responsibility.”

Here she goes, he thought in annoyance and grabbed the box of frosted cereal at his elbow. He tried to imagine he was somewhere else. maybe in the clouds as they drifted by the sky’s golden eyeball. Maybe before golden gates made of string. So easy to penetrate, it would seem.

“Hey. Where’d you go?” She had stopped cooking, and was staring at him. When she saw that she held his attention, she turned back to the stove, her shoulders hunched forward in a graceful arch.

He was mesmerized. There was something about the way her body moved – how all of the people here moved – that hypnotized him. It was so beautiful, fluid and perfect as every part of them worked so flawlessly to get them from one place to another. They shifted and walked with an un-earthly grace, and he loved it.

“Damien? Did I lose you again?”

He blinked and dropped his attention to his cereal. He liked it dry. “No,” he muttered as he ate a crunchy spoonful. It drowned out Dee’s next question, but he watched her lips move to form the sounds anyway. She always smiled when she spoke. It gave him the impression that she was always happy when giving her input. He took special care to pay attention to her when she was serious. “I’m sorry, what did you say? I was chewing.”

Her smile faltered, but immediately it appeared again. Did she have the power to turn on the sparkles in her eyes? “I said, you should get it together soon. You’re going to talk to that Ann girl again, and it probably wouldn’t be wise to show weakness to her.” She caught sight of his narrowed eyes while she poured a finished pan-full of hash browns onto a plate. “Not saying that you’re… weak, per say, just… be careful, OK?” She turned to him, taking precious moments away from cooking to give to him. He had to know it was important. “Clark has told me a few things about her, what she did… I just want you to be safe.”

He frowned as he took up chewing again. “Hm…” He took a moment to look through his memories of her. “She doesn’t seem very dangerous,” he said through his cereal. “She just looks… scared.” She looked more than scared. When he sat near to her, he felt the waves of fear and hurt rolling off of her. It was carved into her face, and it chewed on the ends of her nails. She probably didn’t even notice the blood that had covered her fingertips.

“Oh, she just doesn’t remember,” Dee explained cheerily.

Damien ate the rest of his breakfast in silence.

He had only visited Ann once so far, and already he was caught. She seemed so innocent. There was no lie in her eyes; she was just a scared little girl locked in their basement. She didn’t have to remember whatever it was she had done. She was separated from that life by her amnesia, so it was a completely different person that Clark was pissed at. Why didn’t he realize that? The girl he was torturing was, in her mind, innocent.

“I’m going to talk to her after I take a shower.”



She didn’t look very pleased to see him, but at least she didn’t scream. He had a gift to give her, straight from Clark. It was wrapped in a little velvet bag, the put into a box. He wasn’t supposed to touch it, it seemed.

Ann lay on her back. Her knees were bent, her toes touching the wall. Her hands were folded over the flat of her stomach. She looked like she was thinking.

“Hi,” he offered, sitting beside her shoulder. Honestly, he wanted to lie in the same position by her side, but he didn’t want to look like a shrink who was trying too hard to relate to their patient.

“Hi.” Well, her voice wasn’t angry. She sounded tired.

Silence laid with them, prodding in his ears and itching on his skin. It was his turn to speak. What would he say? Would he start barraging her with questions from Clark? He only had one or two, but he couldn’t ask them until he had given her the gift. The schedule was very well planned. It made Damien a little sick, but… hey, he owed Dee favor or two. He would follow the rules he thought made at least a little sense. The others, he replaced with his own.

“Did you have any dreams last night?” he thought out loud.

Her silence told him it was an uncomfortable question to answer. “I had a nightmare.” Before he could ask what happened, she continued. “I was on the back of a bird flying so high I wasn’t sure there was a ground below us. Then the sun flew at us and killed the bird and I fell into the darkness because the sun had died, too.” She turned her head away from him. “What about you?”

Images came to mind, yes. “Well… I dreamed I made it all the way to Heaven. It was really hard, but I thought it was worth it. But when I got there, the sky told me I couldn’t go in. And… it called me a boy. Then I fell.” He didn’t look at her when he felt her eyes on his face.

“Did you just make that up?” she asked incredulously.

He frowned at her. “No. I didn’t.” He wanted, for a split second, to barrage her with questions that hurt, like the one she had just asked him, but he bit them back. He wasn’t really angry at her.

“Why are you here?” This time he did look at her. “Why are you talking to me?” She sat up and moved away from him. That made his eyes grow darker.

“I owe Dee a favor,” he muttered to the floor.

“This is a favor to someone?” Her disbelief was like a slap in the face. “No, you’re twisted. A favor is loaning a cup of sugar to someone. A favor is when you hold a door open, or when you give someone your coat when it’s cold out. Coming here, asking me questions I don’t understand and then leaving me in this fucking basement is not a favor. You’re a fucking psycho, and so is Clark. Leave me alone.”

He could only watch as she grabbed the single chair. She dragged it noisily to the opposite corner of the room, where he noticed she had revealed a window. In the silence, he heard birds singing. He sat in the quiet, watching her sometimes, at others staring at the ground. He was supposed to find out what was happening with her. Was she afraid? Did she envy Clark? Mostly, Clark had wanted to know if she was lonely. “Oh yes,” Damien had said after his first talk with her. “She’s… very alone.” He had been troubled by it, and the feeling of wrongness only grew when Clark had smiled.

“Good.”

“You’re not alone,” he said to her across the room. Her head turned to him, her eyes wider than an owl’s. Her skin was pale, her dark hair limp and dirty. She looked like a wraith. “Right now. You’re not alone, because I’m here with you.”

Her eyes narrowed and a crinkle appeared on the bridge of her nose. “And who are you, exactly?”

He stood and brushed the dirt off the seat of his jeans. His eyes stayed glued to the ground until he was less than five feet away from her. When he stopped, he leaned his shoulder on the wall and tucked a hand into his pocket. “I’m Damien. I’m mortal, I know how to hang upside down from my feet and I’ve never eaten ice cream.” He smiled a little at her. “Who are you?”

Her expression changed from happy intrigue to sadness. “I don’t know,” she whispered, then dropped her head forward to hide the tears he had already seen collecting in her eyes. “I just don’t anymore.”

“Hm…” He bit down lightly on his bottom lip, then pulled the box out of his pocket. “Maybe this will help.” He tugged off the tiny lid and turned the bag into his left hand. Two of his fingers worked it open, and he saw that it was a necklace inside. He pinched its chain and drew it out, looking at the silver face of the crescent-moon pendant. Without care, he dropped both bag and box and moved the open chain in front of her neck. He saw her tense and lift a hand. Her fingers brushed against the moon at the same moment he was clasping it at her nape. An electrical shock ran through the both of them, drawing gasps and trembles as they were catapulted into some place neither of them recognized.