The Bodies We Wear (4 page)

The rest of the day goes by quickly. I always eat alone at lunch but it doesn’t take long before I notice Paige sitting a few tables down. She’s with a group of her friends and they’re all looking at me intently. Especially her boyfriend, Jesse, the one who apparently owes the greasy Trevor money. Of course she told them. Suddenly I feel like there’s a great big red flag flying over my head.

But the teachers don’t notice. No one pulls me into the office to ream me out.

Jesse goes out of his way to walk past me at the table. I look down at my book, making it obvious I have no intentions of talking with him. He slows down, even pauses for a second to take a better look. I continue to ignore him. Finally, he walks off, but not before caressing his hand gently across my shoulder. A quick move, probably missed by everyone except me.

What does he want from me?

After class I head home. If I’m quick enough, I can put in a few hours of training before homework and dinner.

I need to stick to what I’m good at. Focus. Everything else is just another distraction.

The silver liquid touches my tongue and I’m happy that it tastes like strawberry candy. Such a perfect flavor, I wish there were more of it. Like a glass of soda. I’m very thirsty from all that crying.

The men around me are laughing. One of them bends down until he’s inches away from my face. His eyes are beady and dark. I don’t like them. When he smiles, I see his teeth, white, behind his stubble. But there’s nothing happy about him; his eyes don’t sparkle, and they remain dead and cold. It makes me nervous and I begin to sniffle again.

“Your daddy was a bad boy,” he says to me. “And since he doesn’t have any money, we take our cut out of blood instead.”

“Hey, leave her alone,” someone else says. I think it’s Christian but I’m not fully sure about anything anymore.

The man grins again. His teeth are very white. I can’t stop looking at them. They grow in size. If he opens his mouth, he might swallow me.

But things are changing. I can hear my heart beating in my chest, pounding against my temple, with each beat; I’m worried that it might explode. At eleven years old, I’m not entirely convinced this can’t happen.

Pound. Pound. Pound.

I look over and I see that they’ve got Christian down on the ground. He’s struggling with them but he’s too weak and they’ve got his arms pinned behind his back. Another man, the one with a long scar along his forehead, has Christian and he’s pried open his mouth with his fingers. Someone else pours some of the strawberry candy onto his tongue and it splashes against his teeth. He’s no longer pleading. He’s staring straight ahead, and our eyes meet. I can’t look away. I want to but I can’t. His green eyes are full of hatred. Sorrow. Confusion. Too many emotions. It hurts my head.

The strawberry taste is now rancid on my tongue. I swallow, trying to get it out, but it’s like syrup coating my throat, and it won’t go away. And everything is growing hazy. My eyelids have grown heavy, weighted down by the buckets of tears I’ve cried. Suddenly my legs are no longer supporting my weight, I tilt to the side, and in slow motion I see the ground reach up to meet me.

And I’m lying on the concrete, staring up at the stars.

Pound. Pound. Pound.

The man with the scary smile leans over me. “Have a nice trip,” he says.

A billion colors light up the sky, like fireworks Mom once took me to. I watch them, trying to decipher the colors I don’t recognize but there are simply too many. I think I’ve stopped breathing; my chest is no longer rising and I’m slightly aware of the burning sensation inside my lungs. But I see blue and pink and red and silver. Lots of silver.

Pound. Pound. Pound.

I want to reach up and touch the colors as they float down toward me, taunting me to pick them up and put them in my pocket. But I can’t move my arms; they’re no longer under my control. It’s okay. I don’t need them anyway. The sky is dipping down to meet me.

Everything is beautiful.

Pound.

And suddenly it stops.

No more heartbeat. No more sky. Nothing but blackness.

And then … fire.

A pounding at my door.

“Faye?”

Another knock.

I sit up, the dream falling away, tangling myself in my bedsheets. I look at the clock. Almost seven. It’s dark outside.

Shit.

Gazer is at my door, knocking again.

“I’m fine,” I say. “Just fell asleep.”

A soft silence.

“Dinner is on the table. Come down when you’re ready.”

“Okay,” I say.

I wait till I hear his feet recede back down the stairs. Climbing out of bed, I head straight for the bathroom, cursing myself in the mirror. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. That was stupid. Now I’ve gone and missed practice and I’ve still got a ton of homework to do before I can go out tonight.

These late-night hours are starting to wear me down. I’m a teenager; I’m supposed to be in my prime. So why are there heavy circles under my eyes? I splash water on my face and wet down my hair.

I head downstairs to try to eat something. I’ll need my strength for what I have planned tonight.

“You’re not ready.”

I’m sick of those words. I hear them constantly.

And I totally disagree.

But Gazer always says it. No matter how much I train, no matter how many times I manage to land a killing blow, he ends each session with those three words.

You’re. Not. Ready.

“Why not?” My current standard reply.

“Because you’re not ready.”

I walk over to the wooden mannequin and remove the knives sticking out of its chest. One blade in particular is embedded so deeply I have to use my foot as leverage to try to pull it out. Now, that is what I’d call a decent death blow.

“I can throw a knife better than you,” I say. “You even admitted it yourself. And my hand-to-hand combat is off the wall. I can fight. You’ve trained me well and you know it.”

“You’re decent enough,” Gazer says. “But it takes a lot more than fighting to succeed.”

I grab the soft cloth kept specifically for wiping down the blades. I start polishing the knife, admiring the way the silver shines, the way it reflects my eyes. There’s something very beautiful about a sharp weapon, especially one as deadly as this one. This tiny thing in my hand is powerful. With the right guide, it can take life. And some lives are worth taking.

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, and I wink at my reflection in the knife. “It takes heart and brains and all sorts of other things. I’m ready physically but I suck in the mental department.”

It’s a well-known argument. We have it weekly.

“Yes,” Gazer says. “The fact that you’re so nonchalant about it contributes even more to my argument. You have a lot more to learn, Faye. You’re still too much of a child.”

Ouch.

“I lost my childhood six years ago,” I snap.

“No, you lost your innocence. Your childish ways are still up for debate.”

I stamp my foot, which I know really does reinforce his views, but at this point I don’t care. “You know what they did to me. You understand why I have to do this. How can you sit there and say I’m not ready?” I wave my knife around but Gazer isn’t threatened. He knows I’d never hurt him. Of course, he also knows that even though I’m one tough cookie, he could still probably take me out in a heartbeat. He did teach me everything he knows.

The people I want to kill aren’t as well rounded as Gazer.

But my mentor isn’t going to go down without a fight tonight. “Faye, no one knows your desires as well as me. I’m not your enemy here. I want to protect you. When I took you in, I agreed to help. You were so small, and there was so much hate in your heart. So much fire. I thought if I could help you learn to protect yourself, I might be able to save you. I might be able to make you understand you’re better off forgiving and moving on. That life has more meaning than the scars on your chest. But sometimes I think all I’ve done is add kerosene to that fire.”

“You’ve helped me become a warrior,” I snap.

“I’ve made you more hateful,” he argues back. “All I wanted to do was give you confidence. Help you grow stronger so you’d be prepared if you were attacked again. Until you can learn to let go of that hate, only then will you be ready.”

“I’m not going to forgive them for what they did to me.”

Gazer shakes his head slowly. “Then I can’t do anything more for you right now.” Turning, he gathers his books and heads back upstairs.

I’m left fuming by myself, which is usually the way these conversations end.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why Gazer seems to believe I need to forgive these people. How on earth is it supposed to be revenge if I don’t have the satisfaction of watching them bleed? Turning, I push the wooden mannequin back into its resting place in the corner and stare at it. It’s a poor excuse for a human: wood, with carpet wrapped around its shoulders to mimic flesh and blood. In my mind, I envision the dead man at the bar, his crooked smile and short hair. I remember him standing over me, and for a second, I’m eleven again, full of fear and helplessness. Pulling my arm back, I punch the dummy as hard as I can, feeling the pain in my knuckles where flesh meets wood.

If it were really his face, I would have broken his nose. I would have felt the cartilage snap beneath my knuckles and seen the surprised look on his face. Only then would I pull the knife from behind my back and finish the task.

“Remember me?” I whisper to the empty room. “You took my soul. Now I’m returning the favor.”

But the wooden dummy doesn’t respond and suddenly I’m feeling foolish. Gathering up the rest of the weapons, I put them back in their proper spots and head upstairs.

I’ve got better places to be.

Gazer ignores me when I tell him I’m heading out. He’s curled up by the fireplace again, his nose in a book. How can he sit there night after night and read his life away? All he does is live inside those books. He hardly ever goes outside. He has no friends. There must be fire in his heart too. I know his past. I know what they did to his wife.

How tiring it must be to be him.

If I were him, I’d hunt down each and every one of them and take their lives slowly and methodically.

I wouldn’t waste my time reading, that’s for sure.

It’s raining as usual as I slip out the door and into the night. Drizzle hits my face and I tilt my head up appreciatively. My training session was particularly rough tonight and the rain is refreshing. It cools my burning muscles and actually wakes me up a bit. I first started training with Gazer when I was eleven. I used to get so exhausted I’d sit down and cry. Then I learned about the healing property of rain. When I went outside and stood in the middle of the dilapidated-church parking lot, the coolness of the rainwater would wash away some of that pain. I’d stand in the parking spot marked
reserved for minister
and feel the exhaustion and soreness drip off my body and into the ground beneath my feet.

Heam was invented when I was five years old. It was created by two chemistry students in a university in Switzerland who were looking for something that resembled crystal meth, LSD, and Ecstasy. They wanted a new drug that would be easy, trendy, exciting—something that anyone with a little background in mixing chemicals could create cheaply and effectively. What they got was Heaven’s Dream, or Heam for short.

Heam works in ways that no drug has ever worked before. It targets both the brain and the spinal cord, attacking the central nervous system, and breaking apart everything that allows us to live. Within five minutes after someone takes the drug, the body begins to shut down. Breathing grows shallow, the heart beats slower, body temperature drops, and the body enters a catatonic state. Shortly after, all communication between brain and body ceases and the person ingesting the drug … dies. The victim will be dead anywhere from two to ten minutes before the brain and body kick back into action. If you look at it in computer terms, it’s as if the body goes through a reboot. Everything shuts down and then starts up again. Although it’s been tested repeatedly on lab rats and chimpanzees around the world, scientists still don’t quite understand how this drug does this. There are plenty of theories but no real answers.

The dangerous thing about Heam is that not all users become addicted. There have been cases of people dropping once or twice and then never trying it again. For many users, there are no side effects. No withdrawals. No consequences.

But there is always the risk. The next level.

For people who do get addicted, it is a never-ending world of pain. They completely cease to function in the normal world. They will do anything to get Heam: steal, sell their bodies, even kill. They are unable to keep jobs. Family means nothing to them. Babies have died, forgotten in their cribs. Spouses tear each other apart for one more hit.

Addicts live in a semi-delirious state between the real world and the heaven their mind shows them. They can live this way for years. But their bodies grow weaker. Their hair starts to fall out. Nothing else matters, except scoring their next hit. There is no solid data on long-term Heam abusers. The drug is still only twelve years old.

Scientists do know a few things. Statistics suggest that one out of a hundred users overdoses. Their body never reboots and they remain dead. With proper medical attention, the occasional overdose victim can be brought back, but with grave consequences. Like myself, they end up with battle scars in the form of red spiderweb veins across the chest and shoulders and an addiction to end all addictions. This is why so few Heam overdosers can kick the drug. It’s worse than cigarettes. It makes heroin look like a baby’s bottle. There is nothing in the world that can come close to the cravings a Heam addict suffers. These cravings never subside. You can’t ignore them and no amount of time will make them fade.

Sounds crazy, right? Who on earth would willingly take something that technically has to kill them in order to work? Especially with such crappy odds of overdosing. One out of a hundred isn’t very good.

The risk was apparently nothing compared to the results.

When early Heam users came back to life, they brought stories with them. They’d seen an amazing place while they were dead—a world of peace and beauty that had no ugliness or suffering. They often reported feeling completely happy and relaxed. Many of them saw relatives who had died. They saw angels and their bodies floated on the air. It was the out-of-body experience to end all experiences.

They saw the white light.

They reached out and touched it. They felt its absolute warmth.

Heaven.

Euphoria.

And they were fine. No problems.

Overnight it became the world’s biggest threat and salvation at the same time.

Suddenly people who had never thought of taking drugs were lining up in the streets for the drug that would let them glimpse the afterlife. Little blue-haired grandmothers were overdosing on Heam and children were being rushed to the hospital in shocking numbers. People stopped going to work and children started dying because mothers were neglecting to feed them.

Religious groups were torn. Here was the proof of heaven’s existence that the devout had been asserting for thousands of years. The afterlife existed and you could see it for a cheap price. But others began preaching that Heam was not the path to salvation, that just because you saw heaven didn’t mean your soul would go there when you died. God had made heaven elusive for a reason and humans were not meant to test God’s plan. Taking the drug quickly went from being an answer to being a sin but even that didn’t stop people from using.

In fact, it made things worse.

Debates raged around the world. Atheists and scientists alike argued that Heam was not a pathway to heaven but a chemical reaction in the body. It was the mind’s way of coping with the body’s shutdown. The images people saw were only brain waves and neurons misfiring in the seconds before death occurred. It was nothing but a nice dream to have while you were dying.

No one listened.

The Church of Heam sprang up. It was a place where one could worship and get high at the same time. Governments tried to shut it down but new congregations kept growing. It’s now considered a cult by most countries so the church has gone underground, its followers dropping Heam in secret. But it still exists.

And people continued to die.

But no one seemed to care.

Then a select few began to report seeing another place. One of evil and sadness. Of fire and brimstone. Pain. It only confirmed people’s beliefs that there really was a heaven. If heaven was God’s great world, then it was only natural that its opposite existed too.

And did society really fall into chaos and anarchy? No, of course not. People still work jobs and the government still functions. But the world is different. Heam changed everything.

Heam is illegal and the punishment for creating and distributing it can mean a life sentence. In some countries, it can result in the death penalty. After so many years, it is now considered a taboo, and there is no easy way out. Heam addicts are not forgiven. They don’t get the breaks that other drug abusers get.

No second chances.

A drug that the world hates and loves at the same time.

I always wondered: if those two university students could have seen the future, would they have gone ahead with the drug? It’s hard to say. They’re both dead now, victims of their own invention. They never lived long enough to see the horror they unleashed.