MICHAEL LOOKED DECIMATED as he lay on the bed in Melissa’s motel room. He was a full-grown man, but Melissa had been able to drag him into her car and into the room without too much effort. He was a stick. Though taller than her, his body felt like a child’s. The smell emanating from him was almost unbearable. She didn’t know if it was his usual lot in life to be so disgusting, or if it was the days of hiding out in the woods, the added stench of the house fire. Soon the room was thick with the repugnant odor.
He lay on the bed like a corpse in the county morgue. He was hot to the touch, a fever keeping its hold on him. A few times on the drive over from his burned-down house Michael had mumbled incoherently, but he never gained consciousness. This was for the best, according to Melissa. She didn’t know what would happen if he woke up and started fighting her.
His leg was bloodied. When she examined it closer, she saw what appeared to be a puncture wound above his knee. Though his pants were covered with blood, it appeared that the wound was healing itself. She could feel heat rising from the scar, as if it was being cauterized by an unseen force. She was not a doctor, but what she saw didn’t seem natural.
She kept him tied up. Despite having years to contemplate the idea of exacting revenge on her brother, she soon found herself woefully underprepared. Now, after all these years, here he was. The boogeyman who had killed Marcus.
Her resolve had strengthened again on the drive back.
She walked over and pulled the drapes shut again, not sure if the small crack in between them left an outsider with a full view inside. She walked over to the box, pulled out the gun, and held it in her hand. From across the room she pointed it at Michael.
Melissa’s hands had a slight shake to them. She tried and tried, but she couldn’t seem to hold the weapon steady. She lowered it, walked up to the bed, and placed the barrel against his forehead. He didn’t move, just the slow rise and fall of his rib cage gave proof that he hadn’t already expired. She held the gun, her eyes starting to water, and her anger started to rise. She was angry at this stranger in the bed. She was angry at herself. Coming to the brink a second time and finding herself unable to kill him. Her heart raced and her head pounded with trepidation.
From the bed she grabbed a pillow, placed it over his head, and drove the gun into it. She didn’t want to look at him when she pulled the trigger. She didn’t know if she could live with the image of the violence to be unleashed on his skull. She held the gun in trembling hands.
Her anger quickly turned to shame, shame at herself. Her weakness in not being able to follow through with what she had mentally rehearsed for many years.
She lowered the weapon, dropped it to the floor, and felt the emotional turmoil of all the years flow up inside her and come crashing through. She raised her hands and all the anguish of a lost childhood, a broken family, came pouring out of her and she wept. Her body shook, and as she cried, a feeling in the pit of her stomach began to form. It started as a faint groan and then stirred to a deep nauseous void, threatening to send her heaving to the bathroom.
Melissa reached out her hand and removed the pillow from Michael’s face, and flinched when she saw him.
One eye was partially opened and it looked as if he was staring at her. Sizing her up.
She stared back, shell shocked to finally make connection with her brother.
His face was a tapestry of deep colors. Bruising, both old and more recent, covered his face. Healed scars and fresh cuts. As he lay there, his face looked both villainous and peaceful. Melissa stood, frozen, examining every beaten-down pore of his skin. To her utmost surprise, she felt a feeling creep up inside her that she had never before thought to contemplate.
Here was her brother. Her kin. Her childhood companion. A person who had done things and suffered things that she could not possibly fathom. Her anger, her animosity, slowly seeped out of her veins, and what she felt shocked her. She felt sympathy.
She gazed on her brother, actually looked at him in his most vulnerable state, and saw him as he was before he had murdered Marcus. She had not seen him since he was taken out of the courtroom and sent to prison.
She did not know him anymore. The kid she raged against was no longer there. She had no idea who this man was. Was he the same person? Was he different?
“I know you,” Michael whispered with the labored pains of a broken man, his voice as one from the grave.
She clasped the pillow to her chest as a shield, and simply nodded.
“I . . . I’m . . .” Michael was moving back to the brink of unconsciousness.
“What?” Melissa asked. The pit in her stomach began to fade.
“I’m . . . sorry.” And with that, he was gone again.
Melissa stared at him. She felt empty, hollowed out, as if the burden that had weighed on her heart for as long as she could remember had been lifted off her. Two words breathed into existence a simple thread, a lifeline to guide her back from deep water. To raise her from the pit of sorrow that she had sunk into deeper and deeper since she was a little girl.
She slowly reached down and grabbed the pistol from the floor. The tool suddenly felt foreign to her. Her resolve was shaken. Her determination wiped out. She had lost, and in losing, had freed herself from the bonds of revenge.
Confusion came pouring over her, clouding her mind, and she looked around the room, disoriented, not knowing what to think. This plan had been the guiding star on which she had plotted her course. What now? What was life without this?
Melissa slowly walked across the room and placed the gun back into the box. As she did so, she heard a knock. She turned quickly, expecting to see Michael up and poised to attack her, but he still lay unconscious.
Another knock. It came from the door.
Melissa walked over, composed herself, and with one hand holding the doorknob, she spoke.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me, Lila. Can I come in?”
Melissa unfastened the chain lock and cracked the door to shoo Lila away. What she saw wasn’t the chain-smoking waitress standing outside but a large, hulking figure filling her line of sight. She stood, frozen, as her mind tried to make sense of what she saw. The door came smashing against her face as the shadow kicked it in. Melissa went crashing to the floor in a daze. She had never been hit before and her body was slow to process the sensation.
“Sorry about that,” Haywood said as he stomped into the room.
He grabbed Michael from the bed and dragged him out through the door. Lila came rushing in, yelling at Haywood in some trailer-park dialect of words and phrases that weren’t part of Melissa’s vocabulary. Lila knelt down beside her.
“Are you okay? I had no idea he was going to do that. No idea. He asked me to come with him to talk to you, that’s it. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s alright,” Melissa said as she tried to get to her feet.
“No idea. He’s gone crazy. I’m sorry . . .”
“Lila, it’s okay.”
“Who was that? Who did he drag out of here?”
“Michael.”
“Michael? That was Michael?”
“Yes.”
The sounds of squealing tires were heard as Haywood’s truck pulled out of the parking lot and headed off into the night, with another vehicle close behind.
“I need to know where he is going!” Melissa screamed.
Lila stepped back and held her tongue, an act that seemed both foreign and awkward on her.
“Lila, if you know, tell me. Where are they taking him?”
“Same place. Springer’s Grove. I heard Haywood say it again. They’re taking him back up to Springer’s Grove.”