One tear escaped and trickled down Kris’ cheek. Lauralei wiped it away, “It’s ok. Really, it is.”
Kris noticed a nickel-sized circle of blood on the
cloud-white wool of Mary’s jacket lining and it looked exactly like a sheep to
him, maybe one of the sheep from his dreams.
He felt sure that his feet were not, in fact, touching the ground. And he thought that surely he should feel
guilty as the red splotch spread as gracefully as music across her breast, and
began to saturate the fleece. But he did
not. His arm was extended straight out,
the pistol aimed directly into Mary’s chest, where he had just deposited every
last bullet in Lauralei’s clip. Lauralei
comforted Kris, stroking his face, “Don’t look over there, Kris, look at me. Everything is ok.” She eased Kris’ arm down
gently and took the gun back from his cool hand. The white-as-snow fleece became a scarlet
horror as it saturated.
As Mary’s lifeblood quickly drained out of the many holes
perforating her body, she called Lauralei to her. She took Lauralei’s hand in her own, kissed
it, caressed it as a mother would. She pressed
Lauralei’s hand to her cheek, looked up at her with those happy, hippy eyes,
and whispered her rites to the Girl, “It’s ok, baby. It’s ok.
There’s still poetry in you yet.
I believe it. Still poetry . . .
” And then, of course, she died.
Lauralei would not believe what Kris had done. “Why?!” she asked, “Why did you do that? You’re the innocent one, Cookie? Why?”
“We are all angels here,” he explained, “just . . . angels with dirty wings.”
Lauralei’s horror and guilt very slowly gave way to
something else: wonder. And then the
wonder melted into the shape of a key. And
then the key then unlocked something precious . . . and then the Girl kissed Kris. Lauralei kissed Kris as hard and deeply as
she could, with a passion beyond eroticism, beyond animal attraction. She kissed Kris from the very core of herself, she kissed him from
that secret place, kissed him from that place locked away for half a
lifetime. It was a place that Lauralei
had been afraid to look in to for such a very, very long time. And now that the
seal had been compromised, a deluge burst forth, a monumental rush of rage and of
terror, of trust and first-loves lost. The
very foundations of her every defense liquefacted, and all of her bulwarks slid
to the depths in a terrible, ecstatic, catastrophic landslide of
liberation. And in the torrent was
Lauralei’s Hello Kitty comforter, and backwards skates, and her first driver’s
license, and all of the other
trappings of girlhood that had been stolen from her! And all of this – all of it – she poured into
the empty heart of her virgin killer soul-mate.
She took Kris’ face in her hands, “Protection,” she said,
“protection.” Lauralei nuzzled her face
into his chest like some naked, translucent pup burrowing into her mother’s
pelt for security.
“Protection,” was her whispered mantra.
“Protection,” a song in no need of a tune.
“Protection,”
repeated like a heartbeat.
“Protection,” a
one-word haiku. . .
-
- - - - -
A sweet pop ballad, crooned softly from the small, blue radio in the kitchen.
The Girl feels warm,
secure; her veins run slow as if with chamomile and a familiar song plays to
her from somewhere far away.
Sanctuary.
The end
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