Last in Line

         She stood but twenty feet from him. Twenty feet was all she had to traverse to touch him, to feel the moon’s silver glow on his olive skin. Twenty feet was all it would take to change her life forever.

         It was hard enough to stare at him without drawing his attention, or the attention of his friends. More difficult, still, was it to meet his gaze head-on, and gather the courage to walk the path that would lead her to him.

         To her, to make that journey would be to cross an ocean.

         Shamed by her own inadequacy (imaginary and otherwise), she bowed her head low and buried herself and the furious, desperate beating of her lonely heart in the noise and confusion of the evening’s festivities.


*******


         The wind carried the music, jubilant and merry, from the mouths of the carolers and the minstrels’ instruments to the winding streets and alleyways of town. To her ears, it was no more than an indistinct buzz, with neither form nor resonance. The lights from the lanterns, colorful and radiant, danced from the eaves of the shops and taverns, but to her eyes they seemed only distant and forlorn, like vapid stars on a cloudy night. The streets were thick with people carousing, jesting, dancing, loving life.

         Samantha Sallee Gin stood at the other side of the street, sheltered in the shadow of a large oak, sheltered from the lights and hubbub of town. Her gaze remained oblivious to the crowd, and focused on him.

         It was not a particularly cold night. Yet her hand reached up, as if possessed by a mind of its own, and began to lightly finger the thick scarf that was wrapped ever so securely around her neck.

         “He likes you, you know,” said a soft, female voice behind her. “I can tell.” Its arrival heralded by the unexpected appearance of two, sapphire blue eyes burning coldly in the brush, a dark figure materialized from the shadows. Black stuff coalesced to form a head, limbs, and body.

         Samantha did not turn to meet the speaker. She already knew who it was.

         Whole once more, Liligan was a teenage girl with curls like spun golden silk that cascaded gloriously past her shoulders. Her haughty expression spoke of a noble birth, and a regal upbringing. The sharpness of her eyes spoke of a keen, dangerous intelligence.

         Liligan faced the crowd, imitating the taller girl next to her. In her blue eyes were reflected the colorful play of fireworks and wizardry in the great distance.

         “You cannot will him to come to you, I am afraid,” said Liligan, in a voice without humor. “If that is what you are trying to do. You are no Sorceress.”

         Samantha heard the words, but chose not to give any indication of it.

         “I can understand why you are so taken with him,” Liligan said. “He is quite a handsome… specimen.”

         Liligan leaned forward, her lips so close to the other’s cheek as to touch it, and offered a brief, but tantalizing whisper in Samantha’s ear: “Why don’t you approach him?”

         There was a momentary flicker in Samantha’s pale gray eyes. A weak, sputtering flame, there one second and then gone, consumed by blackness, the next; hope burning and burning out too soon. “He and I… we’re different,” she said, lowering her gaze.

         “And you were expecting a clone of yourself?”

         Samantha shook her head. “No. That’s not what I meant. He and I don’t belong… can’t be together.” She searched the other’s eyes knowingly. “We’re different in a way your mind’s eye has already seen.”

         “Still, he likes you,” the other insisted.

         “He likes me because he doesn’t know.” Her hand returned to the scarf around her neck.

         Liligan gazed back at her. She studied her, as if by peering into the limitless depths of her ghostly eyes, she could fathom the nature of Samantha’s soul... and of her loss. “You are not as ugly as you believe, Samantha.”

         Samantha said nothing in reply.

         “Look. He comes this way.”

         Startled by this sudden revelation, Samantha looked up to see him waving at his friends fare well, and walking in her direction. He was smiling. Ocean eyes sparkled as they sought hers, and for a brief, tender moment, they were locked together in the warm, gentle embrace of that very first look, of that very first, true meeting of their souls.

         A warmth that she had not felt for so long, a warmth she had thought she would never feel again, filled her entire being. From her toes all the way to the tips of every strand of hair on her head, she felt warm and… alive.

         And then, as quickly as the joy had taken her, did the knowledge and realization of what she was rush back.

         It was too much for her. She could not take it. His smile, his eyes. This promise of false hope.

         She looked away, and broke contact.

         “What are you doing?” Liligan asked, the alarm in her voice.

         “I… I can’t be here,” Samantha said, backing away from Liligan, from the figure of him approaching in the distance. “I can’t!” She balked, running as fast as she could, away from the crowds, from the lights and the sounds, from the festivities.

         Away from him.


*******


         Into the darkness of the forest her legs took her, a flurry of motion, of bitterness, of rage. As if in response to her anger, leaves like razors ripped at her, tearing at the fabric of her clothes, exposing cold flesh.



         She could remember a time, in the not too distant past, when human hands had done the same. Filled with anger, with rage, and with something more primal, more dangerously cruel.

         Lust.



         She ran, her feet numb to the sharp cracking of rocks and the crunching of brambles beneath her. Her skin dared the boughs as they whipped and lashed at her body.



         The hands were everywhere. She struggled and screamed and kicked. But they were too strong, too many. She was an athlete, and tall for her age. But she was only one girl, after all.



         As if in challenge to her own threshold of pain, she tore off what remained of her clothes, until only the scarf around her neck remained. Her skin was revealed under the naked moon, red with scratches and lacerations. Everything became a blur of hurt and confusion around her as she rushed, headlong, into the thick of the forest.



         They took her then. One by one, they consumed her. It lasted only a while, and yet it lasted forever. When it was over, she found herself more alone than she had ever been. For in doing what they had done, they had reduced her, stripped her of something more precious than her pride, than her honor.

         And as the blood, scalding hot and as thick as a serpent’s spine, ran down her inner thighs, she realized there was nothing more left for her in the world, but to run.



         And so she ran and ran and ran, until the trees gave way and the forest receded around her. The leafy canopy overhead and the foliage underfoot thinned out, opening up a path illuminated in swathes of silver moonlight.

         Moisture in the wind. The sky and a dark, broken horizon in the distance. Her pace slowed. She stopped.

         She was standing by the edge of a cliff. A great gulf stood before her. It must have been more than fifty feet wide, this chasm. Beyond it was another rise, and another cliff, emerging from the horizon like an impenetrable wall of total blackness.

         Below her, water jetted out of a large cavern and propelled downwards, tumbling over rocks and into a tumultuous river. She listened to the noise.

         She could remember standing by the edge of a very similar cliff.



         She had run through the forest. She had bled, and the weariness had latched on to her body like a leech. And though her muscles ached from strain, and her wounded, tattered flesh stung with the salt of her sweat, there were no pangs of pain in her heart. There was only a hole, and a vacuum where once she had felt emotions such as joy, sadness, and even fear.

         The great gap in the earth that divided the land was like a maw of some giant, ravenous monster. The sheer drop was lined with sharp rocks that jutted out like teeth. As frightening as the sight would have been to others, Samantha found herself strangely drawn to it. Drawn to the fall, and to the prospect of complete erasure.

         Drawn to obliteration.



         Samantha peered down at the raging river at the bottom of the cliff. A cold shiver invaded her body, extending from the tip of her spine to the base of her neck.

         She closed her eyes as the memories revisited her.



         The ravine sucked her in.

         It was as if the maw was closing to grind her in its stone teeth. The crunch of her bones as her body slammed against the sheer wall was an explosion in her ears. Lone branches reached out to ensnare her, while the rocks cut her open, spilling more than just blood.

         The pain seared into her flesh, driving her temporarily insane. White hot flashes scattered themselves in her mind like a series of fireworks being set off in her brain. She opened her eyes and saw the ground accelerating upwards, impossibly quick.

         She met the ground, head first. The last thing she could remember was a reverberating, soundless crunch. And then all was black.


*******


         A gust of wind blew around her, and then she was touching herself, her fingers grazing over scars, indelible marks burned into her flesh that would forever remind her of her long, arduous descent into the abyss.

         Samantha closed her eyes at the memory. Slowly, her fingers moved upwards to touch the scarf at her neck, gently probing for the seams that would unwind it.

         They found them. The scarf came undone.

         Exposed to the lonely chill of the night was the enormous scar around her neck, where skin, muscle, bone and spinal chord had ruptured on impact with the cold, hard earth.

         It should have ended there, she knew, with the crimson splatter of her brains and innards all over the ravine floor. But it was not in her destiny to cease and become nothing. It was in her destiny to continue.

         To exist without living.

         Borne by the wind was a lonely keen, a low plaintive howl in the night. She looked to the distance and there she saw, on the other side of the ravine, the lone form of a wolf atop a bluff. Its frail body taut, its head pointed upwards at the moon, it cried out in anguish and sorrow; the cry of the omega wolf.

         Samantha was startled to find tears on her cheeks. It had been long… too long, since she had last wept.

         Like the omega wolf, she too, would be forever last in line, for what she was, for what she had become. The victim. The tainted. The walking dead among the living.

         And so she lifted her head to the heavens, and, throwing her arms out wide, she screamed, all the sadness and pain and loneliness coming out in one, anguished breath. She screamed until her throat was sore and her lungs were raw.

         If this was to be her fate, then so be it. Let them judge her. Let them pity her. Let them condemn her. She would become the outcast they meant her to be. She would welcome the sticks and the stones, the blame and the ridicule. She would become the object of their fear and suspicion, the subject of their prejudice and intolerance. For by becoming thus, she realized one, important thing.

         She had been broken, demeaned, and exploited. She had suffered beyond the human capacity for suffering. And she had died.

         But she had also risen. And far from being destroyed, she had persisted. Whether it was from the grace of a God unknown to her, or through the power of her own invisible will that she had yet to get acquainted with, she had survived her twilight existence. She was already dead. But she was far, quite far, from being destroyed.

         Could any of those who would look down on her go through the same hell that had been so unfairly thrust upon her, and say the same about themselves?

         The wind wailed in anger, in torment. The soot-black clouds moved like a great tidal wave, snuffing out all light from the moon and the stars. Behind her, the forest was a wall of impregnable darkness.

         Samantha felt cold arms embracing her. She closed her eyes and allowed the shadows to envelop her completely.