Shay Savage - Otherwise Unharmed

“Evan!  What’s happening?”

I moved back around the couch where I had better cover as well as a better view of the balcony.  It was also a little farther from Lia, and I would be able to draw fire away from her.  I came around the far side and raised my gun again.  From there, I could see the figure on the other side of the glass—a small, thin person with white, sand-covered clothes.

It was the kid.

He just stood there—tears coming out of his eyes—and looked at me.

My hands started shaking.  I couldn’t hold the gun straight any longer, but I also wasn’t so sure I was actually pointing it at anyone who was there.

“Not fucking real,” I whispered.

“Evan?”

“Look out at the balcony,” I told her.

Her head turned briefly toward the glass before looking back to me.  There was no shock or fear in her eyes, which there certainly would have been if she had seen what I had.

“There’s no one there, is there?”

“No.”  Lia looked again, this time tilting her head to the side for a better angle, but her answer was the same.  “There’s no one there.”

I squeezed my eyes shut before I looked again.

There was nothing there.

“Fuck.”  I dropped down on my ass and leaned against the side of the couch with my elbows up on my knees and the Beretta dangling there with no purpose.

Lia was beside me a moment later.

“Are you all right?”  She reached to touch my arm, but I shoved her hand away.

“I’m fine,” I snapped.

“Who was out there?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“No one.”  I rubbed my forehead with the back of my hand and laughed at myself.  “We live on the fifteenth floor, for Christ’s sake—how would anyone get there?”

“I understand that,” Lia replied quietly.  “Who did you think you saw?”

I looked over to her, crouched on the floor a couple feet away from me like she was trying to coax some wild, wounded animal out of a cave.  To top it off, she was as naked as I was.  I shook my head at the ridiculousness of it all and pushed against the carpet to stand myself up.

“Come on,” I said as I reached my hand out for Lia’s, “let’s go back to bed.”

She took my hand and followed me back into the bedroom and under the sheets.  She was tentative to touch me at first, given how I had reacted in the other room, but I wrapped my arms around her waist and she wrapped hers around my head.

We both relaxed with a long sigh.

“Are you going to tell me what you saw?” she asked.

“Just a kid,” I replied with a shrug.

“You were going to shoot a kid?”

“I shot him before.”  I tilted my head up to see her better.  “He was wrapped in explosives and headed for our base.  I took him out from two kilometers away six years ago, and he shows up on my fucking balcony now.  What’s up with that shit?”

“I don’t know,” Lia replied.  “Have you ever talked to your psychologist about him?”

“No.  Didn’t see any point.”

“Maybe he can help you figure out what the point is,” she suggested.

I looked at her for a long moment as I tried to come up with a way I could even begin to convey everything that had happened over there.  I couldn’t possibly talk to Mark about every little detail, and I didn’t know how to put it into words that would make any sense.  Besides, I knew exactly what Mark Duncan would say—seeing this kid was somehow important.

The problem was that there were probably a thousand other important bits I wasn’t seeing.

“No,” I finally said.  I felt Lia tense at my words.

“You can’t just ignore it,” she said.  “Evan—you were about to shoot up the balcony door.”

“I didn’t.”

“But you would have!”

“Maybe not,” I said with a shrug.  I tucked my head against her body, hoping she was going to get the hint and drop it all.  I wasn’t used to having someone else around me so much, let alone have to justify myself and my actions.  It was uncomfortable at the very least.

“You can’t keep going like this,” Lia said.  Her hand ran over the back of my head slowly, and I relaxed a little.  “It’s scaring me.”

I opened my eyes and looked back up at her.  All the stress and worry were plain on her face, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to do to change that.  I wasn’t sure that I could.

“I scare me sometimes,” I admitted.  I cracked a bit of a smile, but it wasn’t returned.  My tongue darted out over my lips.  “I don’t know how to make it stop.  I don’t even know when it’s going to happen.  It didn’t happen for years, and it just started again.”

“When did it start up again?”  Her fingers moved to my shoulder and over to my chest.   With the palm of her hand, she stroked down to my abs and back up again.

The feel of her touch was distracting, calming, and disarming.

“Not too long after I met you,” I replied.  “Well, some of it, anyway—the dreams, not being able to sleep—that started then.  Seeing shit that isn’t there is more recent.”

In the low light coming from the window, I could see the glistening in Lia’s eyes, and I hated it.  I hated that I was the one making her feel that way and that there was nothing I could do to change it.  I hated being this way and couldn’t even begin to understand how it happened.

“I…I wasn’t always like this,” I said, my voice hushed.  “I just don’t know…I don’t know what’s me inside and what isn’t.”

“But that’s who I met in Arizona,” Lia said.  “That’s the person who let a stranger stay with him, even though it was probably dangerous.  That’s who cooked for me and…and…”

“Fucked you?” I smiled slightly, and this time the gesture was returned.

“That’s the man who understood what I needed more than anything else and exactly how to give it to me.”

“It’s not like I didn’t want to do it,” I said.

“I realize that.”  Lia’s smile widened, and she blushed.  “The point is, that was all you.  So you are in there, Evan—I know you are.”

I reached up and pushed her hair away from her forehead and stroked my fingertips down the side of her face as I talked.

“There’s so much shit in my head—shit I can’t unsee or undo.  Sometimes it feels like there’s something inside of me just…tearing me up inside and waiting to bust its way out.  I think maybe…maybe if I could get that out, then maybe the person I was is still underneath.”

I tightened my fingers slightly on her shoulder.  I wanted to grip her as tightly as I could.

“Someday—when we’re away from here, and it’s just us—will you help me?  Will you help me get it out so I can be what you need?”

Her hands cradled my face, and she brought her lips to brush quickly against my mouth.

“Of course I will, Evan.  Don’t you see?  That’s why I’m staying.”

Nothing was going to stop me from making sure she had the chance.

“I keep seeing this kid I shot in when I was over there.”

Mark Duncan was noticeably pissed off at me, not that I blamed him.  As far as he had known, I dropped off the face of the planet once I left incarceration.  Once I came out and told him I was hallucinating, he dropped the anger and looked me over carefully.

“Is there someone you are seeing who looks like this kid and you think it’s him, or is there no one there at all?”

“No one there, not when I try to get closer to him.  He just vanishes.”

“Are you hearing things, too?”

“No.”

“You did before though, didn’t you?  When you were locked up?”

“Yeah,” I acknowledged.  “A few times.”

“Did you see him then?” Mark asked.

“No, not until a couple of weeks ago.”

“Always the same person?”

“Yeah.”  I reached up and scratched at the back of my head.

“How many times have you seen him?”

“Three or four now, I guess.”  I leaned back and took a calming breath.  “I don’t understand why I see him.  I killed plenty of people when I was there.”

Mark sat back as well and chewed on the end of his pen.

“Tell me about killing him.”

I went over it all—how I had been on scout duty and had seen him approaching our base.  I told him about the bombs strapped to him and how young he was.  I even told him about my captain telling me I had done well.

“So?” I asked.  “What does it mean?”

“It could mean a lot of things,” Mark said in typical, vague psychologist fashion.  “Like you said—you’ve taken other lives.”

His eyes narrowed slightly as he said it, and his posture changed minutely.

He knows.

I wasn’t sure what digging he had done over the past few weeks, but I had no doubt that he had found out what I did for a living, and it wasn’t paid-under-the-table roofing.

“What made this life different from the others?” he asked.

I could have called him out on it and maybe even threatened him into silence, but I didn’t see the point.  If he was going to turn me in, it wasn’t like he had anything more on me than the feds already did.  His knowledge was interesting and changed our dynamic but ultimately didn’t matter to me.

“He was a kid, I guess,” I said but didn’t really buy it.  I’d taken the lives of gang members not much older than the insurgent teenager.  I shrugged.  “Maybe he was a virgin.”

“Does that matter to you?”

“Dying a virgin seems kind of shitty.”

“You’re too flippant about it for that to be the reason,” Mark countered.  He was pissed again.

“So, what is it, then?” I snapped back.

“He’s a symbol, Evan,” Mark informed me.  “A symbol about what is something you’re going to have to figure out.  If you don’t, you’re going to keep seeing him.”