The Meridians(3)

His family disappeared around a corner, and he followed the laughter, bright as sunlight in this moonless, starless city of the Angels where the city lights had long ago chased away the sky. Scott turned the corner as well, moving quickly onto an adjoining street, laughing like the worst kind of madman: the kind of man who has somehow managed to find a way to be truly happy.

Then the laughter died in his throat. Like most cops, Scott had a kind of sixth sense that often activated before his other five senses picked up on anything; a subconscious feeling that something was amiss.

He cast his gaze about, looking for his family. Visible only a second before, they were now nowhere to be seen.

Then he heard a short yelp. A child's cry.

He looked to the sound and saw...his wife's feet, kicking, flailing as she was dragged into a dark alleyway.

Chad was nowhere to be seen.

"Amy!" shouted Scott, and drew his gun at the same instant. He flicked the safety off, which was technically a violation of LAPD rules, but dammit this was his family and he was not going to wait until the last second to be ready to kill or be killed. The handsome prince didn't wait until the dragon shot its flame before drawing his sword. No, he went into the castle armed and ready to destroy anything that stood between him and happily ever after.

Scott ran to the alley.

All sound faded. All Scott could hear was his own tortured, panicked breathing; his own arrhythmic heartbeat.

Complete silence, save only the sound of blood pumping in his ears.

Amy's feet disappeared into the darkness of the alley.

Silence.

Then, at last, a pair of hard, fast sounds pierced the night: two gunshots.

Scott ran the rest of the way into the alley, but he knew what he would find there. That sixth sense was active as it had never been before, telling his cop self what he was going to find before he even got there.

Two bodies, intermingled and holding hands in death as they always had in life.

One hand holding a phone. One hand holding a plastic badge. Two bodies floating in pools of blood like once-bright boats in colorfully morbid seas dotting the countryside of the alleyway.

Once upon a time, Scott screamed. And riding the crest of that wave of sound, he felt sound return to the universe. He held the two bodies to his chest and cried. Because once upon a time, he had been happy. But now the fairy tale was over, and it would never end happily ever after. It would end, night after night in his dreams for the rest of his life, in bodies and blood and death. It would end in a lonely city where over four million people lived as strangers for the brief period of weeks or months or years or a lifetime.

It would end here, with the blood of his child and wife on his hands, and in the knowledge that not only would he never live happily ever after, but he would likely never be truly happy for another moment as long as he lived.

Once upon a time, the fairy tale ended, and Scott hated God for making him believe that it would go on forever.





***





3.

***

Lynette Randall's day started with her death, and ended with birth.

She awoke as she had every single night of her pregnancy, which was now in its thirtieth week: needing to pee and wanting to eat. Peeing came first, of course, if for no other reason than eating from an opened tub of ice cream while pee-bloated was a singularly unpleasant feeling.

So she flipped the covers off herself, careful to keep them on her side of the bed. Contrary to popular belief, the only guarantee in life was neither death nor taxes: it was that if she allowed any portion of her covers to stray over onto Robbie's side of the bed, he would instantly wrap them around himself like some kind of burlesque dancer's boa, making it impossible to remove from him without either waking him up and having him physically unwind himself, or simply yanking any available end of the blankets hard enough to spin him like a yo-yo, catapulting him out of bed and at the same time returning her portion of the blankets to her.

She had never, as yet, tried the yo-yo version of the solution, but there were nights when she was tempted to try.

Not tonight, though. Tonight she was extra-careful to get out of bed as slowly and quietly as possible. Robbie was a light sleeper at the best of times, and she often woke him as she went on her nightly pee-and-eat quest. Sometimes Robbie stayed awake far after she did, occasionally even going the rest of the night without a wink of sleep. But Lynette knew that he had a long day scheduled at work, and the last thing she wanted to do was send him off to his job cranky and operating at only partial capacity.

So, moving with the stealth and care of a ninja, she slipped out of the covers (careful to keep them on her side as much as possible), and then went to the bathroom. After finishing there, she crept through her and Robbie's room into the hall. She stopped there to glance into the baby's partially finished room. They had another two-plus months, so there was no crib, no mobile, no baby monitor. Just an empty room that Robbie had painted so recently that the smell of the paint still hung in the air and nauseated her if she subjected her sensitive pregnant nose to it for more than a few minutes.

Still, even though the bedroom was empty in reality, Lynette never saw it that way in her mind. She saw it as full. Not full of furniture or toys or even full of the presence of her coming child, but rather full of promise and hope. She saw the room as a sort of shrine to faith, to the knowledge-without-knowledge that a baby was coming, that it would be fine, that it would be happy and whole. Inside its walls she could imagine playing with her baby, holding its perfect fingers, tickling its perfect toes.