Page 38 of Unnatural
A tiny prick in his arm, small and painless. He calmed, the silkiness of her voice wrapping him like a cocoon.Safety.Beauty. So many times, he’d recited her words in his mind, but he’d never been able to conjure the sound of her voice. Maybe he’d finally lost his mind. It was a relief. How often he’d prayed to find relief in the void of insanity, but his prayers had never been answered. Now they finally had been. God did see him. He’d gifted Sam madness, and even sweeter,shestill remained. He hadn’t been asked to leave her behind.Mercy.He finally knew what it felt like.
He heard a man’s voice briefly, and he didn’t like it, but then he was gone, and it was only her.
“What can I do?” she asked.
“Whisper in my ear,” he begged. He wanted her to touch him, but he couldn’t bear the feel of human hands, so he asked for her voice, the touch of her breath.
“What would you have me whisper?”
“Tell me that I’m human.”Tell me that I haven’t been drained of the last bit of it.He wanted to hear it from her, even if it wasn’t true.
A pause. Had she left him already as he plunged lower into the depths of insanity? “You’re very human,” she said. “Do you know how I know?”
No, he didn’t know, and he suddenly couldn’t remember how to speak. He felt a very light weight on his chest, the warmth of flesh. She’d placed her hand on his heart. He felt a gust of breath at his ear.
“Iknow,” she whispered, “because your heart is beating beneath my palm. And I know because you cared enough to save me once. And now I’m going to save you.”
If saving me means I have to leave this place—leaveyou—then I don’t want to be saved.
He drifted, and when he came to, there was a slight weight on his shoulder, and he felt the tickle of hair. A faint snore, breath on his skin. She’d fallen asleep on his shoulder. His heart sang. He inhaled her hair. Not strawberry Jell-O. It made him want to laugh that he had once thought that. She smelled nothing like a strawberry. And definitely not the gelatin variety. “Madagascar,” he murmured.
He felt her stir. “What?”
“In Madagascar,” he slurred. “There was a boy in the street…selling…vanilla beans from a basket.” He saw it, pictured it as if he’d floated there and was again standing in that street. “There was a flower box filled with…whiteflowers in a window.” He swallowed. His throat burned. “I could smell their scent mixed with the…vanilla.” He inhaled again.Heaven.“That’s what you smell like.”A peaceful street in Madagascar, under an orange sky.
“Why were you in Madagascar?”
To kill a man. Someone’s enemy.But he kept that to himself. He didn’t want her to know. He didn’t want to say that he had no ideawhoseenemy and that it hadn’t mattered anyway. But it did, didn’t it? In his sane life, it wasallthat mattered. The mission—whatever mission that might be—and his role in carrying it out. He’d spent his life being taught that the mission mattered: the individual missions and the overall mission. His purpose. His only purpose. No wonder they’d cast him aside. He was worthless and weak. So why didn’t he care? Why didn’t he want to try to be better at the missions? Why would he rather die than be brought back again?
What happened in Macau, Sam?
He moaned. He felt pain, but not the physical kind. He didn’t want to think about missions or Macau. He only wanted to think about baskets of vanilla beans cast in a citrus glow. And her. Always her. He didn’t like the way his thoughts were clearing, taking shape. He wanted to drop back into the abyss of insanity where only good memories lived.
Her sweet-smelling hair tickled his shoulder again.
He drifted once more, further this time, that cocoon drawing tighter, the silkiness cradling him. He felt warm. Happy maybe, though he couldn’t well remember the feeling or if this was it. He liked it though, whatever it was. Here he could let go of missions and enemies and Macau.Yes,he thought.I enjoy madness very much.
***
The pain was back. He bellowed again, swatting at the fiery brand running across his skin.
“Stop it now,” she said. “Lie still, and you’ll be fine.”
Her voice. He stilled as she told him to, the pain lessening. Not unbearable, just…uncomfortable. And itchy. And hot. Strange. But not painful.
“Shh.” Her breath against his ear. He sighed. “Trust me.”
Something tugged at his lips, and if he could have lifted his arms, he’d have batted it away.
“Well, look at that,” she said. “Asmile.Goal attained. I wasn’t sure you were capable.”
Whatever hot thing was on his skin was uncomfortable and…wet. He started to raise his hand to bat it away, but she caught it, pressed it down.
“You need a bath. A proper one,” she mumbled, and he heard the sound of water hitting water. “But this will have to do for now.”
The warmth again. Her voice as she hummed. He liked being crazy. He liked it very much.Thank you, God.He felt that tug once more. He believed in God now? He even talked to him? Yes, being crazy was very nice. He would definitely stay here.
***
