Page 7 of Lust
Certainly not Mercy, who was fast asleep in her bed.
A piece of Acedia’s essence broke from her form. Falling toward the earth was a red, formless lump that gradually transformed into a woman most becoming to Mercy’s eyes. Acedia certainly hoped so, anyway. Her research indicated that she should send an avatar that only mildly reminded Mercy of her ex-girlfriend, who was dark of hair and fair of skin. The entity now crashing toward the earth twisted until she was nothing more than a speck in Acedia’s eye. She grabbed hold of the deep red folds of fabric manifesting from the air. Her hair, dark and cumbersome at first, soon bloomed into a mystic hue that was neither blond nor brunette. She was a visual enigma, for she represented what any given woman found the most desirable the night they met.
Good luck.Acedia retreated back into her space between reality and nothingness. The place she slept and nourished her own soul until it was prepared to face the world once more.
She only had to close her eyes to see through her avatar’s, anyway.
Delicate feet touched the ground, not that the first of seven avatars had to worry about literallycrashingto Earth. When her eyes opened, she realized that she had been awakened for the first time in over a hundred years. The grass was soft beneath her hands. The air? Far from fresh. What had happened to it, anyway? It used to be so pure. Not is was putrid.
Ugh.
She was behind Mercy’s house. More specifically, outside a darkened window that invited her to climb inside and allow the healing to begin.
4
The loneliness of her house was what she required most. Usually, Mercy considered the silence deafening, as every sign of her ex-girlfriend had long departed with her clothes, CDs, and the flat screen TV in the living room. Yet that night, as Mercy shrugged out of her jacket and collapsed into bed, she was grateful to pretend the past two days had never happened.
In truth, shedidregret what happened on the bridge the night before. She often regretted those stupid moves, like the time she joined a group of streakers during university finals. Or the time she streaked down Main Street and was subsequently arrested for indecent exposure. At least Mercy didn’t try to jump off the bridge naked. She would never live that down in the afterlife.
Thinking of the possibility of an afterlife reminded her of Acedia. Groaning, Mercy rolled into her pillow and fell asleep.
She didn’t dream, thank God. At this point, if Mercy were doomed to dream, she might imagine a life when Marissa was back. When she dared to hope her job would be more rewarding, or at least notsosoul-crushing. Back when she fantasized about this comfortable house being filled with the sing-song voice of a domestic artist and the children they would adopt. Puppies. Kittens. Maybe a lizard and a bird, because Mercywouldhave a son or daughter who demanded the unconventional type of pet. Well, she had the house. The house came before Marissa, who had never been added to the deed, thank God. But Mercy had been too ambitious. Maybe she had too much hope.
Damn. She was having a nightmare anyway. One where she dueled with her subconscious, the toxic bitch.
Why couldn’t she dream about something else? It had been a long while since she had a good “peeing in public” nightmare. The one where she spent the better part of a night hunting down a toilet before her bladder gave out on her. Only, when she finally found the sweet porcelain throne she had been searching for, the curtain was pulled back and she was suddenly in the middle of a busy shopping mall. Yeah. Why couldn't she have one ofthosedreams? Anything was better than thinking about how her life had completely collapsed in the matter of three short years.
She couldn’t simply accept that Marissa had left her. To think! A narcissist had lefther!Now, Mercy was far from a know-it-all about the big N, but she was under the mistaken impression that once a narcissist sank their claws into somebody, they were almost impossible to shake off without wart remover. It was the main reason she put up with the verbal and occasional physical flare-ups that had become nastier as the months wore on in their relationship. At least, Mercy had rationalized, she wasn’t alone. She might die with an abusive piece of shit in her bed, but her broken brain told her it was better than beingalone.Anything was better than that.
Yet, she was alone. Go figure.
Mercy wasn’t roused from her stupor until the moonlight shined on her window and the wind picked up outside. The change in atmosphere brought with it the unheralded arrival of the very entity that had promised to visit Mercy that night.
Only it wasn’t the Acedia she knew. No, the visitor crashing into her guest room down the hallway looked and sounded nothing like the moonlit deity absconding her from bridges and possessing the body of front-desk secretaries.
“What the hell is it now?” Mercy sat up on her bed, groggy, wiping her face with the back of her hand and willing herself awake.
Another crash.
Mercy was up, brain on full-throttle as she searched for the handgun Marissa had once owned. Right! Marissa had taken that with her! Like she had taken the cat, Dinkles, who was Mercy’s second guess in all mattersintruder!
She hustled to the closet, where she unearthed her old softball bat from the corner. Mercy may have had a death wish, but her fight or flight response dictated that she not go down to a burglar.Wish I could say it’s because I actually want to live…More like she didn’t want the epic embarrassment of dying in a home invasion. If she was going down, it was from her own volition. Or, at least, she would go down fighting for her grandmother’s quilt in the guest room.
Mercy creeped down the hallway, bat raised above her shoulder as she proceeded toward the guest room.Show this asshole what it’s like to break into my house…Light streamed from beneath the closed door.It’s the only thing I’ve got left.Marissa may have taken everything else - including the fucking TV - but not the house. Mercy would be damned if she let some robber in and take the last bit of security she had!
Of course, having no regard for her own life also helped. If she had, she may have called the police instead of swinging open the guest room door and screaming like a banshee as she swung the bat. “Get out of my house!” She almost knocked the bat into the antique dresser she picked up from a shop in New Orleans. Original French import. Reduced to scrap. Would be her fate.
A bright, blinding red light made her scream for a different reason, though. Mercy dropped the bat and fell to her knees, covering her eyes.
“Was that really necessary?” came a voice as sweet as syrup.
Mercy’s eyes fluttered open, but all she could see was the beige carpet beneath her nose. A few feet away, awash in a crimson light, stood another ethereal figure in a stunning gown. Or an expensive prom dress. It was getting harder to tell the more Mercy was subjected to some old deity’s whim.
The red light subsided as the guest eased into her more corporeal form. Nevertheless, the crimson hue left behind was the definition oflove.The kind that embodied the ruby necklace Marissa had given Mercy for their first anniversary, back before the reds of a slap to the cheek. No,thiswas the red of insatiable desire and the red of soft lights that set a certain mood. Wearing this red gown was a woman with effervescent skin and a face with high - incredibly high - cheekbones that brought her red lips apart into a kind smile. Hair as fine as silk and eyes as incomprehensible as a dream welcomed the encroaching walls as the light fully subsided and Mercy was brought back to her strange reality.
“Oh, God,” she muttered. “It’s another one.”
The red woman stood back, smile fading as she furrowed her seductive brows. “I beg your pardon?”
