The Meridians(43)

"So," she said, as she always did. "Is today the day?"

And Scott, as he always did, responded, "What day, Cheryl?"

"The day you ask me out, we fall in love, and you take me away from all this," she responded brightly.

Scott usually tried to remain smiling, to remain polite throughout this exchange, usually ending the conversation with an awkward excuse why he could not ask her out. He had friends in town. He was busy doing grades this weekend. He had other plans. He had to wash his hair. He had a headache.

But today was different. He didn't have it in him to continue the pleasant lies that were a staple of human existence. He just wanted to be alone, to steep in the false memories of his past life, and Cheryl was standing between him and that goal.

"Cheryl," he said, "I don't mean to be a jerk, but I'm never going to ask you out."

Cheryl's face changed subtly, as though she were the lead actress in a play and her counterpart had just delivered a line that was not in the script. She recovered quickly, though, beaming her smile once again and saying, "Aw, honey, you don't mean that. After all, where else you gonna find someone like me?"

"I'm sure I don't know," he said. And, truthfully, he had to admit that most men would find Cheryl a catch. She was attractive, charming, vivacious, full of life.

But it was that last that made her ineligible for Scott's affections. He could not love someone who was full of life; his attentions were reserved for those who lived in the realm of the dead.

"But it's just not going to work out, Cheryl," he continued. "You should spend some time on someone else."

Again, Cheryl's face changed. But this time she was not able to recover nearly as well as she had the first time. Her lip quivered slightly, as though she had never been turned down before. And perhaps she hadn't - most people didn't tend to turn down the attentions of women like her, Scott knew.

But then, most people didn't have families that had been stolen from them, either. Most people could afford to live in the present, because they had something worth living for there. But Scott was not most people. He could not afford to live in the present, because to do so would be to lose the most important and defining parts of his life. He was already starting to lose the memories of his wife and son; he could not bear to complete the process by crowding out what little remained with new experiences with other people.

Cheryl looked like she was going to cry, but Scott didn't know what to do about that. Should he comfort her? Hardly. That would be inviting her to knock on the doors of his heart even harder than she had been doing before. But he didn't feel right just leaving, either. He wasn't a monster. Or at least, he had never thought of himself as a monster. But perhaps he was wrong about that. Maybe he was nothing but a monster, nothing but a Dr. Jekyll inhabiting the destroyed world of a once-happy Mr. Hyde. Maybe the darkness that lived in his heart had finally escaped into the rest of his life, and would now be an ever-present companion, a new source of misery in Scott's already miserable world.

And now Cheryl was crying, though Scott had not intended for that to happen. He stood in front of her for a long moment, wondering what to do, then finally put out a hand to touch her shoulder.

She slapped it away.

"Don't you dare," she said. "All I've ever been is nice to you, so why can't you be nice back?"

Scott had no answer for her. At least, he had no answer that he could give her there, in the public space of the office. So he simply turned and walked away, hoping that tomorrow, or the next day or the next month or the next year he would find in himself the strength to talk to her, to explain to her why he could never be happy, and so he could never allow himself to get close to her. Because she might actually try to make him happy, and that would bring her nothing but misery and pain. The universe did not intend Scott to be happy - it had made that dreadfully clear to him eight years ago - and anyone who tried to change the universe's plan would find themselves in mortal danger. He couldn't do that to anyone, so he had to keep everyone away; had to keep everyone at arm's distance.

Scott left. He walked with his head down to his own office, unlocking it and walking in without looking up, moving around the balls and equipment that cluttered the room without having to pay attention, because after eight years he knew this room better than he knew his own house.

Which was why it was doubly unexpected when a voice said, "A little hard on her, weren't you?"

Scott looked up, and as he did the papers he had been carrying dropped from his nerveless fingers and fluttered to the floor like pigeons gathering on the ground to feed.

He reached instinctively under his armpit. But there was nothing there. No gun. Not anymore. He wasn't a cop anymore, he was just a middle aged PhysEd teacher without many friends or much of anything to live for.

But that didn't mean he had to leave mortality quietly. And it sure didn't mean that he had to go out without a fight. Especially not when confronted by the monster in front of him.

"Hello," he said, and rushed at the old man in his office, fingers outstretched and looking for a chance to kill.





***





20.

***

Never before had Scott wanted so badly to kill something. The only thoughts in his mind were thoughts of destruction, of maiming, of killing Mr. Gray; of killing the thing that had destroyed his family and so had destroyed him as well.