Black Sheep

Isit on my meditation mat, facing the pool and the atrium beyond, the water trickling down the infinity edge. My eyes drift closed and I focus on the sound, clearing my mind of all my thoughts and concerns. I take a deep breath in, and then out. In and out. Again and again, until the road to my memory palace is clear in my mind.

But instead of going toward it, I turn and face the other direction, and I walk into the desert.

The path leads to a white shipping container that’s been converted into an office. Three metal stairs lead to the door that’s been cut into the steel wall. I open it and enter, closing it behind me. There’s an old office chair, covered in desert dust, sitting in the middle of the room. I walk over to it and take a deep breath before I lower myself onto it and close my eyes.

When I open them, I’m fourteen again.

I’m bound to the chair. My eyes are sticky, my throat raw with thirst. My muscles ache with bruises and dehydration. A headache fills my skull with knives.

A plastic straw enters my murky field of vision and I blink up at the man holding it. He’s older, maybe in his sixties. He must be my height or perhaps a little shorter. He’s sinewy but strong. Despite the dusty office we’re in, he looks well-dressed, his white hair combed with precision. His skin is marked by the sun but not heavily lined, as though he rarely frowns or smiles. His expression is unreadable. He pushes the straw into my mouth and I drink. I want the whole glass of water but he only gives me enough to speak.Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“Ava,” I reply, my voice tight and grating.

“How old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

“How did you arrive at my dumping ground?”

“I was dumped there. I guess it’s everyone’s dump,” I say, and the man appears neither amused nor enraged, though I get the sense that his anger could be easily stoked. I know it already, without needing to ask. This man is a predator. It lingers in the air between us like the scent of musk on his skin. He waits for me to elaborate. “My…community. They abandoned me there.”

“Why?”

I say nothing at first. I look around the room. There’s a desk with papers in neat, ordered stacks. A low lamp sheds light across the surface where there are drawings on blue paper. On the opposite wall are topographic maps. When I look at the man once more, his eyes have darkened. I don’t know what this dumping ground is to him, but it’s obviously something he feels compelled to protect. I work out every option for how to proceed, and I’m left with only one. The truth.

“I killed someone.”

This seems to surprise the man, but not nearly as much as it should. His head tilts a degree on its axis and his eyes narrow. “Why?”

“I was meant to be paired to him. He was our leader’s son. I didn’t want to. I felt…compelled.”

The man regards me in silence. He seems intrigued by me, like I should be acting some other way. That’s something I’m used to. What I’m not used to is the way he’s acting in return. Like me. He’s not afraid or repulsed. He’s just observant, like my reflection in a mirror.

“You’ve killed before,” I say.

“Why do you think that?”

“Your reaction when I told you. You weren’t disturbed by me.”

The man seems to consider my observation before he presses the straw to my lips and permits me another small sip of water. It feels as though he’s rewarding me, though I think the true reward is that I’m still alive. “How did you kill him?” he asks. “Did you plan it?”

“Yes. As much as I could in three days.”

“Tell me what happened.”

I keep my eyes on the man even though the recent past overlays the present like a film over this stranger. “I had gone to steal a book from our leader Xantheus’s collection. He never let us read from his private library. He had secrets hidden among his books. I liked to sneak in and take them. Not just the books, but the secrets. Like his real name. Donald Soversky.”

The man’s eyes narrow just a fraction. I worry for a moment that maybe he knows Xantheus and will deliver me back there, even though they cast me out. But before I can ask, he offers the straw and I take another drink. “Continue,” he says.

“When I arrived, Xantheus was already at his home. He was having an argument with his son, Xanus, so I listened beneath his window. Xanus said he wanted me. He’d always hated me when we were younger. He was four years older than me and there were other girls closer in age that he got along with, so I didn’t know why the sudden interest. Xantheus was arguing that it wasn’t a good idea, but what Xanus wanted, he usually got, so eventually his father agreed, promising to make arrangements for the marriage ritual to occur in three days’ time. So I went straight away to the storage barn for rope and an ax. I hid them in the temple room where I would have to bed Xanus after the ceremony. That night, after everyone was asleep, I siphoned diesel from the tractor and took candles from the pantry. I hid those in the loft of the storage barn. The next night, I timed how long it took to burn a candle down to its base. Before the ceremony, I set up three candles to burn down to rags soaked in diesel. When the ceremony was over and I was led to the bed chamber with Xanus. We were alone for only a few moments before the fire took off in the barn. Everyone rushed out of the temple to put it out. He was going to go too, but I hit him with the blunt edge of the ax and knocked him out. I tied him to a chair with the rope I hid. Then I waited.”

“Waited for what?”

“Anyone. Everyone.” I shrug. The motion pulls at the weeping scabs and sunburn that streak my skin.

“Why?”

I smile, remembering the hours I spent alone with Xanus as the others tried and failed to keep the storage barn from turning to cinders and ash. He spent an hour unconscious, and then two hours more vacillating between pleas and curses. When the others finally realized that we hadn’t come and something was wrong, they burst into the room as though an unstoppable prophecy was coming true. The sense of triumph I felt was all-consuming, like being struck with lightning and trapping the power of the storm. “I didn’t just want to kill Xantheus’s son. I wanted to mark their souls with something that would scar them forever. Just like they’ve scarred me.” I roll my shoulders. This man must have seen the blood and slashes across my shirt, possibly even the old scars through the holes in the dirty cotton.

“How did you kill him?”

“When I heard footsteps and muffled voices, I cut off his hand. His father burst into the room, and I threw the hand at him. He always called Xanus his right hand, so it seemed fitting to give him his son’s as a token. Then I hacked at his neck before they tackled me.”

My faint smile fades as I slip away from the memory, avoiding everything that came after that glorious moment. The merciless beating. Falling unconscious. The unforgiving sun as they dumped my broken body hours from the compound and left me to rot. I blink those thoughts away as I take in the man’s unperturbed expression.

“Why did they not kill you for taking the son’s life?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they thought a long death in the desert would be more fitting. Or maybe because they were afraid they’d enjoy it just like I did, and their house of straw would tumble away.”

“Would you do it again?”

“Yes,” I say without hesitation. I look past him to the door, unsure I’ll ever walk through it. “I would kill them all, if I could.”

“Why didn’t you just try to escape?”

“I did try. It nearly worked once.” I close my eyes, remembering that beautiful night when a rare storm blanketed the commune when I was twelve. I snuck out and bolted into the rain. Lightning streaked across the sky and thunder boomed around me like drums. Freedom poured into me with every drop of water that pelted my skin. I’d hoped I could get far in the cool, wet weather, but I hadn’t counted on the flash flood through the creek bed. I couldn’t swim.

I open my eyes to the memory of hands around my arms, pulling me from the fast-moving water. “They put me in the Sinner’s Box for punishment,” I say, trying to repress a shudder at the thought of being encased in the narrow iron coffin. “But it was worth it.”

I meet the man’s eyes and he watches me for a long moment before he steps away and turns around, setting the water glass on the desk to his left. He then walks to the opposite wall and studies one of the topographic maps.

“Do you know what I meant when I said you were in my dumping ground?” he asks. He doesn’t look at me. His gaze seems trapped within the swirling lines of topography on the thin paper. I wonder if that’s where his dumping ground is, somewhere among those hills and valleys.

I think for a moment before I answer. My head is still buzzing and my muscles tighten with cramps. Working out a problem feels like trying to lift my feet free of deep mud. “It was your third question, but the most important to you. The only one that sounded like an accusation. Is it a hiding place?”

“Of sorts,” he says. He turns to face me. A knife glints in the dim light, clutched in his hand.

The man steps toward me. These might be my last breaths. I’m still and quiet, watching as he draws closer in the small, narrow space.

The man steps around me and cuts the zip ties that bind my wrists.

“Come with me,” he says as he takes my arm in a firm grip.

The man neither rushes nor coddles me as we leave the office. The cool night air is a relief on my sunburnt skin. We’re in some kind of industrial building site where the land has been leveled by the dozers parked on the perimeter and temporary structures dot one edge of the space. We head toward a canvas dome building and enter through the scuffed white door.

The man turns on a single row of overhead fluorescents and the unintelligible sound of a muffled, desperate voice fill the wide space.

“She said you were the Devil,” the man whispers to me as we stop at the edges of the light. A woman is bound to a chair that lies on sheets of clear plastic. Her mouth is covered by duct tape. I recognize her wild eyes. She’s from the community that just abandoned me to the merciless desert sun.

“Zara,” I breathe. My heart riots, blood humming through my ears. Zara squints into the shadows, struggling against her bonds. A channel of blood paints a crimson stain across her face.

The man leans close, his voice low in my ear. “She said she was sent to make sure you were dead, and to kill you if you weren’t. When I found you, she was trying to convince herself to crush your skull with a rock. She begged me to help her cleanse your corrupted soul from the world.”

They must have wanted to test her loyalty. Zara’s not the type to level accusations, though she never would have stood up for me either. She’s not the first one to volunteer to lead prayers. She doesn’t sing hymns with the most feeling or speak in tongues. She’s not the first on her knees to praise Xantheus.

But she does still drop. She does still sing and lead prayers and sway with her hands reaching for the heavens in worship.

When they’re not reaching for a rock, it seems.

I step forward into the light.

Zara’s eyes widen. I see every thought in them. Every emotion. Recognition. Relief. The spiral into realization. Fear and hopelessness. Desperation and terror.

I’m motionless as I consume them all.

“This is a test,” I say to the man as he stops by my side.

“Yes.”

“And if I fail, I die.”

The man nods in my periphery.

I will not fail.

“May I please have the knife?” I ask, holding out my hand. The man presses the warm wooden handle into my palm.

Zara struggles in the chair. She tries to scream and thrash as I approach the edge of the drop cloth with the blade in my hand. But I don’t go to her. Instead, I bend down and cut a large square from the edge of the thick, clear plastic.

I stand, the sound of Zara’s distressed cries following me as I stop in front of the man, handing him the knife by the handle. “The tape, please,” I say as a brightness infuses his eyes. He nods toward a table to my right.

I pick the tape up from the table and walk over to Zara, the plastic fluttering in my hand. She shakes her head, pleading sounds and cries trapped by the adhesive stuck across her lips, tears sliding across its silver surface.

I lay the plastic over Zara’s head like a shroud. “I should thank you,” I say as I hold it in place on her crown. My teeth grip onto the frayed edge of the tape and I pull a few inches free, sticking it to the bottom of the polyethylene veil. “I’ve had an epiphany out there in the desert. Isn’t that what you were chasing all these years? Lightning strikes from God? Though how Xantheus would be able to interpret them, I have no idea. Did you know that’s not even his real name? His real name is Donald Soversky.”

Sweat and tears streak the dust on Zara’s neck. I can almost hear her pulse flooding her body with adrenaline.

I hold the taped end of the plastic to the back of Zara’s neck, lifting the front over both our faces as though we’re two best friends sharing secrets beneath the sheets. “I’ve discovered what I want to do with my life. I want justice for the scars you’ve given me. I want to kill everyone I can find like you, until I find the biggest. The worst. But I have to start somewhere. For today, the bottom will do.” The scent of fear drifts from Zara’s skin, caught between us. I lean a little closer until there’s nothing for her to see but me. “Tell Donald Soversky Jr. that Ava sent you, when you get to hell.”

Zara tries to scream as I press the plastic to her face and wind the tape around her neck again and again, staring into her eyes as her desperate last breaths mist the surface with condensation. I leave the roll of tape dangling from her throat like a necklace as I press the plastic against her skin, looking into her eyes as she struggles and slowly dies between my hands.

When Zara’s muscles slacken and her heart stills, I climb off her body, the pain of my injuries dulled by the release of a need that’s been sated. After one long, last look at the success of my efforts, I turn toward the man.

His eyes are vibrant. A smile ghosts across his lips.

“Did I pass?” I ask as I stop before him.

“My name is Samuel,” he says. “I will teach. You will learn. How to camouflage. How to hunt and never be caught. And from this day onward, you are not Ava. You are Sombria. My shadow. My legacy.”

Euphoria fills my veins. God might be blind to me, but the Devil isn’t, and now that I’ve embraced my demon, he’s given me a gift. A chance to be who I was always meant to be. “I will not fail.”

I open my eyes to the present, holding onto that moment of a new life beginning. And then I go to my room, burrow under the covers, and fall into a deep and dreamless sleep.