James Hackett

“Doc are you busy?”
“Layla?”

“Yeah it’s me are you busy? Actually even if you are I need your help…uhmmm now, right now.”
“We spoke about boundaries and how our relationship..”

“Doc. I am actually asking for help. Do I usually ask for help?
“No. You don’t. What is going on?”

“Lots, but right now I need you to come to 83 Brooke Road in Maraval. It is on the left hand side after you pass the KFC that is near…”
“Vie De France?”

“Yeah. I will open the gate drive in and come through the front door.”
“What? Why are you there? What is going on?”
“I will explain it when you come but please. Come.”
“I am already leaving.”

“I just kissed him and I felt it, his life actually slipping away and it being done. All those times I tried to kill myself and it never felt like this. This was so endless and powerful…and I caused it. I mean I went through all the stuff and I saw the differences in my body and my gifts or whatever but none of it clued me into this”
“So he is just dead, gone?”

“Yeah he is gone his body just shriveled up and just disintegrated, nothing left.”
“With a kiss?”

“Yeah, weird huh? All this time I been playing with my own end and now I can cause it in others.”
“You still want to die don’t you?”

“Must you always be a head doctor?”
”Isn’t that what you need right now? You called me here to this house, more like a mausoleum or an odd shrine to all things old and classical and very uncomfortable” Andrew shifted on the chaise looking at Layla and knowing everything was changed and he suspected they would stay that way and just get worse.

But, she called him, she needed help and reached for him. Now was the time to see what could or would come of it.

“Then I get here and you tell me that something happened, some mystical hereditary DNA thing and you have powers now including super strength, which you demonstrate by finger walking yourself across a room. You also seem to think that you just killed a guy who was, you claim, planning to kill you.”

“Didn’t you go downstairs and see the room? How could I know about the room if I wasn’t there? You found me up here not down there. How did I get to this house? Look at this house, does it look like somewhere I would be? Where is my wheelchair?”

She had a good point. Quite a few rational sensible points, along with a very fantastical tale explaining it all. He tried to read her face and her eyes, he could usually see what she was actually feeling in her eyes. They were filled with sincerity. Dammit. What was he supposed to do with that?

“Ok, I think we should leave now…this place is beginning to un-nerve me… it’s all too perfect.”

“No real colour either just politically correct versions of white and expensive furniture, to buy class I suppose.”

Andrew shook his head and looked at her; the absolute ridiculousness of the situation was slowly dawning on him.

“You couldn’t fit in any less could you?” He half chuckled the sentence out and looking at his face she knew he wanted to laugh, it was ludicrous really, she the queen of comfort and colour in the midst of bland pretentious class. Laughing with him, “So says the country boy from the land of potato farmers.” The shared joke eased tensions.

An instant later her face grew serious again, locking eyes with him she confided a scary truth.

“I should feel bad but I don’t. He killed Maman. It was him. His life wasn’t worth anything after that to me and I know that is wrong…”
“Layla…”
In another instant her feelings masked once more.
“You’re right we should go, let’s go.”
“Are you “
“I’m sure, let’s just go.”

Andrew bent over and lifted Layla up into his arms. “You know I don’t really believe all this and I am waiting for you to tell me the truth right?”
“You don’t? Kiss me then.”

Shaking his head he walked them both out of the too perfect house. Questions circling both minds, he wondering what was really happening and she wondering if this was a life she could actually live. Now she understood why her parents stood against it and tried to prevent it.

Calling them had not been an option. They did not want her to become La Femme. In fact lying about her birthday was part of their brilliant strategy to keep her from this. You see many things have to align for a woman to become the carrier of Baiser de Mort. For the last 100 years in her family history only two women have been carriers of the gene who were also blessed or cursed, depending on your pov, with all the giftings needed to truly be La Femme.
Maman was one and then came Layla.

“Layla? You still with me?”

The drive away from the house was quiet, they both thinking over what had been said and revealed in the past hour. She swung her head to contemplate his profile as they traveled east.

“I am not going back to my parents. I have my own place now, head to St. Joseph.”
“Your parents are ok with that?”

A half smile crossed her face as she turned to look out at the traffic lights.

“It doesn’t matter if they do anymore, I no longer belong to them or that life. I am La Femme and I see so much more now. More than I could imagine existed, Abrinet Adanech taught me to do that.”
“Who?”
“She who emanates light and who rescued them.”
“Them? Which them?”
Sighing whimsically she mused.

“You know I would think an Irishman such as yourself could tell when a story was about to be told and would shut up so it could be told.”

Her witty comeback settled him a bit.

“Good to see some things haven’t changed. But forgive me, go ahead.”

“Hmm… anyway, after Enos named me I blacked out again and woke up back in my hospital room. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye or even thanks. He probably would have been annoyed if I did, I guess. So it was probably better that way.”

“He gave you the power of the Titans right? And Abrinet Ada-nech…she was the one with the eyes?”

With pursed lips and an impatient glare she glanced in his direction.
“Sorry. Please, go on.”

White padded walls, disinfectant over urine smell and a nasty head ache. No need to guess where I was.

Sigh. What now? What was I supposed to do now?

Instinctively I knew without testing myself I still had titan strength, but why?

Did it really change anything, had any of that changed me?
Short answer no, long answer no.

Lying on her back Layla turned unto her stomach and stared listlessly at the wall ahead of her, uncaring of her chin resting on the floor. The emptiness that was always there didn’t leave. The one unceasing thought that had pervaded her mind and followed her throughout her life still rattled around her brain.

Death, would be such a relief, such blessed relief.

Now not only won’t they let me die; now they are adding complications, complications that I couldn’t simply ignore.

I am not happy and I don’t remember when I ever was and I don’t know how to get there I only know how to run away from the pain.

She wiggled over to a corner and sat up leaning against the wall obliquely opposite to the solitary door in the room. She knew what came next and waited dejectedly for it.

It took them five minutes before the door swung open. The orderly gave her that sadistically sweet smile that was supposed to make her feel secure.
Ha!

She looked dangerous, angry and dangerous. Andrew looked on behind the door as the orderly moved towards her to check her vitals. Her eyes were void of feeling or emotion, she just seemed empty. Angry empty silence filled the room, and watching her made his body tense.
THUD!

He had only turned towards the corridor for a second, before he heard the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the floor. Eyes wide and wild he spun his body back towards the door pushing past it only to stop abruptly as he crossed the opening.

The orderly lay unconscious on the floor with a cracked forehead, while Layla stared holes through his now prone body.

“Let me die Doc. Let me die before I really start hurting people.”

Her body slumped further down and her chest curled towards her legs, her broken body trying its best to mimic a long forgotten fetal position. Probably the only time in her life she felt safe, happy and was blissfully unaware of what life had in store for her.

She knew better but didn’t care. Enos showed her how to crush anything using her head, literally, without hurting herself. The problem was she wanted to hurt herself. Unlike before though she also wanted to hurt that sadistic orderly. So she had changed, hmmm. The pain was no longer just self inflicted some of it had started to be reflected outwardly.

Along that thin line of reasoning she slipped away again.

Perfumes this time.
Sensuous.

A sliver of scent with a pound of impact.
Here we go again.