Read White Demon and Black Demon first if you haven't already!!
Blue Demon Love Song
by Jill C.
"Here," James says, shoving the greasy paper bag at me. "Mason, here."
I look up from the chafed ring around my wrist. "What?" I ask.
"Mason, take the bag." I take it, feeling the greasy steam of the fast food flowing through the pores of the bag.
"Your car's gonna smell like fries," I say.
"Uh, yeah," James replies distractedly. He hasn't shaved for days and his short black hair is standing on end. He doesn't usually look this messy. Maybe he doesn't want me?
Where are we going? We should have stopped and eaten at the restaurant rather than taking it to go. But then I remember that I didn't want to. I remember that I don't really want the hamburger and fries in the paper bag in my lap. I remember that I don't really want to go home. But I really don't want to go back.
James turns the battered honda onto a gravel road. I hate that road. It makes me sick. It has since we drove it with the grandfather in the old truck. But it means that we are going there.
James pulls up into the improvised parking on the shoulder of the road. "Ready to walk?" he asks. I nod and get out of the car. "Bring the food, damn it!" James says.
"But I don't want it."
"Mason, you've lost ten pounds in a week. You have to eat."
Anger surges a little. I expect him to tell me to hit, to hurt. But he is gone. I have no feeling. I don't know what to do. My actions have never been my own.
I turn from James and dash down the hill toward the lighthouse. Its whiteness makes it look like an extension of the clouds against the massive blue sea and sky.
"Mason! Hey!" I hear James yelling after me. He is swishing down the reedy hill behind me. I am ahead, though. Racing through the air, through life, through time.
Two little copper skinned boys running into the ocean, the grandmother setting up a picnic blanket on the shore behind them. They splash into the frothy waves. I splash. I fall on my face. The grandmother's voice sounds.
"Careful!" she calls with a laugh. The boys push eachother and splash. A wave crashes down on their heads, and they come up spluttering and laughing. My head surfaces, my too-long hair dripping.
I reach down and come up with a handful of sand. I rub it over the welt on my wrist. Dry skin flakes away. The salt and sand sting, but it is the sting of healing. The hospital bracelet is gone. Now all of its traces will leave too.
"God, Mason," James gasps, coming up beside me, "One day you're going to end up dead doing that." He wrenches my sand filled hand off of my wrist and begins to pull me back up the shore.
I sit wrapped in blanket in the passenger seat of James's car, eating the now tempid fries from the greasy bag. James stops the car in the driveway of the tiny house that the grandmother left behind. He turns to me and sighs.
"You're home," he says.
"I didn't mean to," I reply.
"You didn't mean to what?"
"Get...all wet."
I didn't know how to say it. But I needed James to know that he was gone. I needed James to know that I wanted to do what I wanted. But that I didn't know how. So the past burst out of me. In the early, disconected memories of when I did act for myself. I needed James to know that I was ready to return to that.
"I want it to be like that," I say, "I'm ready."
"You know, Mason," James replies, "You might be starting to make sense again. But get out of my car before it starts to smell like seawater."
****************************************************************
