Keo let out a long freeing breath and ran after the girl—fairy—who could one day be his future.
Dearest Clementine,
It’s been a few days since I last wrote to you in my journal, and I think I may have a lead. I found your bracelet—the one I made for you—on the porch steps of our cabin in the woods. I’m wearing the one you made for me too, with blue sapphires and golden beads. You always believed because we were fiends, that we weren’t good beings, but my dearest, your heart is one of the purest I know. We are demons of a different sort, not like him. Bogdi is the one who is destructive, and if he thinks he can drag you away to the Underworld, then he has another thing coming. This one time, I ask that you darken your heart a bit so you can protect yourself. Until then, my love, I’ve attached another story. Perhaps you won’t be able to hear it now, but one day you will read it.
Always Yours,
Dorin
A Piece for Him
1982
“You can’t die!” Talia shouted, shaking the arm of the body in front of her. “You can’t!” Releasing Shea’s bicep, she slammed her hands against her legs, but he was gone. Gone. Something had killed Shea in his sleep. Old age? A heart attack? Talia didn’t know, but she had known that one day it would come. Her entire heart felt as if it was broken into two.
She swiped her long black hair from her face and picked up the phone receiver from the cradle to dial an ambulance. With a choked sob, she hung up the phone after calling and clenched Shea’s hand once more, holding on tight until the sirens wailed.
Hesitantly letting go of Shea’s hand, Talia hurried and flung open the door to let the paramedics inside.
She led them to her and Shea’s room. “I-I’m not sure what happened. I went to make him breakfast, and when I came to check on him he was already gone.” Despite the need to curl into a ball on the floor and weep, she held her grief in as much as she could.
“Is this your grandpa, Miss?” one of the EMTs asked as he pulled out an object from his bag.
Her spine straightened, and her despair only consumed her further. “No, I’m only his maid.” It was a lie. Everything that spilled from her mouth to them was a lie.
Shea had been her lover for years, until he was unable to do much of anything. But she stayed because she loved him, because he was the light she longed to hold onto, and because he was her soulmate if they truly existed.
After all this time, she had found the one.
For the lovers of her past, she had loved them all in her own way. As with Shea, they’d grown wrinkled with graying hair, while she hadn’t aged a day. The names repeated over and over in her head. Jasmine, Johnny, William, Laurel, Elizabeth, and on and on and on. Shea…
After the paramedics took Shea’s body away, Talia rushed to the only friend she had left. Ednah. Hardly able to see the road through her tears, she sped past a row of old houses and parked in the cracked driveway. Talia scrambled out of the car and jogged to Edna’s porch, banging on the door until her friend opened it. Ednah was still in her striped pajamas, and her short gray hair was perfectly set by mounds of hairspray to keep her curls in check.
“What’s wrong?” Ednah asked, a wrinkled hand gripping the shirt at her stomach.
“Shea’s—” Talia took a deep breath to control herself. “Shea’s dead.”
Ednah let out a heavy sigh and nodded, because they had both seen it coming. Talia had wanted to believe it would never happen, that it couldn’t happen, but Ednah always knew it would.
Talia had met Ednah through Shea who had always been like a sister to him. When Talia told Ednah what she was, she didn’t believe it at first, but as the years went by, the old woman had finally accepted it.
The hot tears came again and wouldn’t stop. Shea had been everything to her, and the thought of moving on again as she had with the others hurt her more than anything.
She curled up on Ednah’s couch, and her friend placed a crocheted blanket over her. The memories of Shea came back to her one after another.
Talia sat on the rocks that formed a straight line from the sand to the ocean, going out about thirty feet before it was only water.
She’d been living in solitude for some time, and she was tired, tired of thinking about where she’d be in a thousand more years. Somehow, she’d been born immortal, whereas her parents had withered and died so incredibly long ago. All of this was beginning to drive her mad. Sucking in a deep breath, she stood from the hard rock and shifted to the very last one. She released her tightened fists at her sides and flexed her hands with her palms outward and stared up at the sky.
“Miss!” a voice yelled. “Miss! Stop!”
Startled, Talia whirled around to see a man running at her wearing trousers and suspenders, with a hat blocking the view of his face.
She cocked her head, but still couldn’t see the man clearly. “Yes?”
The man stepped toward her. “If you’re looking to drown yourself, that’s not the way I would recommend doing it.”
Talia let out high-pitched laughter. “Oh, dear sir, are you trying to tell me I can’t choose to drown myself if I want to?”
“I wasn’t saying that, but I’d have to go in after you, wouldn’t I?” He moved to the side, and the sun’s rays revealed his face. The man was possibly a little older than her—at least her current appearance—with wide-set brown eyes, tan skin, chiseled cheeks, and a too-long nose.
“Sorry, sir, but today is not my day to die. But thank you for your concern.” She brushed past him and when she was only a few feet away, he called after her.
“What’s your name?”
She spun around and something in his face made her want to possibly see him again. Perhaps it was the crooked smile that made him seem a bit eager. “Save me from the train at the tracks tomorrow, and I might give you a name.” Talia smiled in return and walked away.
More memories came to Talia: Shea sweeping her off her feet at the train tracks, him spinning her in circle after circle as they danced to records, her feeding him chocolates, their first kiss at the train station, making love for the first time in the front seat of his car. Then came the bad times: the arguments of why she wouldn’t marry him, when she never got pregnant, her confessing to why she could never have his baby because she was immortal, him constantly depressed and afraid she would move on because he was aging.
But the good always overpowered the bad. If only they had both been human, then things would have been perfect.
The day forged into night and Talia fell asleep on the couch. When she opened her eyes, Ednah must have already gone to bed because she was no longer sitting in the worn recliner. Talia stood and turned on the TV, putting it on a channel that was playing Frankenstein. It must have been a Frankenstein marathon because a different one played next. After watching the first two, an idea formulated in her head. Something she should have thought about before because Shea loved the films and book so much.
She ran to the bedroom and flicked on the light, finding Ednah on her back with her mouth fully open, lightly snoring.
“Ednah!”
Jerking forward with wide eyes, Ednah’s hand flew to her chest. “You can’t do that to an old woman,” she groaned. “Do you want another person lifeless by the evening?”