Meriscorde: A Love Story part the first of Mr. Wrong ain't hard to find by EZ SCrittore

[Étienne Zaynein Scrittoré]

Aleyinder Rosemonde was fresh from resigning from college and he was free. Aley was free and was overcome by a queer youthful fancy a rosiness in his peripheral vision that possessed him with a sudden whimsy to run in wide big-hipped dancing steps -- like they used to do when they were kids of ten or eleven at play in the tall sweet grasses and wild poppies and the dilapidated remains of the Johnson Farm the Mayfair Barn where they made love for the first time him and angelic Charlie St. Elliot the Bell Mill where he'd found his mangled body-- instead of walking to toss a bright colored ball a sharp stick anything at all up up up into the air and to catch it in wide opened clumsy hands. He wanted most of all to laugh wide-mouthedly as a Cheshire cat at fat white clouds a warm rocking breeze at nothing nothing at all.

 

He was free and he knew that come the next morning he would awake promptly at half passed six and fix a pot of triple brewed coffee that would be gone before eight. He'd do this out of sheer force of habit. He was free of fetters free to dance gaily in the streets at five o'clock to dance in the rain to dance where he damn well pleased. He was free to party like the twenty-something that he was was free to believe in something not of his own fashioning should he wish it. He was free.

 

The sky was cow heavy and pewter grey cumulonimbus clouds hung low over the barren not-quite-out-of-winter earth like a fastened lid. The mistral wind slapped against the tar and steel rooftops of the university campus like a leadened fist. Stepping out of the building for the last time Aley fought the wind. Like a defective Moses failing to part the red sea he was slammed against the doors of the building. He was free to leave but it was as though the very forces of nature were conspiring to keep him confined to this version of academic purgatory. Reaching for his bag, Aley snaked the length of the wall and upon reaching the end used his bag to split the wind and made his way to his car.

 

~~~

 

A lawn mover buzzed like a hive of honey bees aways off in the distance and the computer screen was blank. The screen was blank in spite of the fact that Aley had sat before it hour after hour day out and day in for four whole days. The screen stared back at him blankly and as white as the wall that lay before him. No words came to him from those shifting dark realms of his mind like fireflies on a summer's night waiting to be caught in a jar, in fact, nothing came to him at all except the humming of that damned lawn mower.

 

As he stepped out the door the wind greeted him with a cold slap to the face and the sky was a boiling pot of heavy clouds that spoke of snow. He looked across the street and saw, as he knew it would be, the junior Munro, Ren, operating the device.

 

Aley was almost content just to sit back and watch the boy work. Ren was beautiful in Aley's eyes. He worked with his shirt off, tied around his dainty waist. His porcelain skin dripped with sweat and and hard-as-stone muscles rippled and glistened like a gilded idol of the god of love, whom Aley thought the 17 year-old boy to be. His kiss-me soft cherry red lips were parted slightly, as was his praxis when deep in thought. Aley had little doubt that were he to saunter over, Ren would have a far off and lost look in his pewter eyes. He would be, no doubt, thinking about later that night. "Tonight," Aley thought wistfully and expectantly as he rose and went into the house, "Our real lives will begin."

 

~~~

 

At 11:30 Aley finally rose from the bed on and went downstairs to wait on his Ren. At forty-five after he went to check the jeep for the umpteenth time that hour and found everything at the ready.

 

He checked his phone and saw that it was now ten after. Ren was late. As Aley made his way back to the living room he thought about what his life would have been like were it not for the boy, his boy. Ren had been the one bright spot in Aley's life. At twenty after, he thought about leaving Ren, but, he pushed the thought away like it were rotten meat. If he couldn't take Ren with him ... he wasn't going to leave his boy with that ... he had to get Ren away from Fenlay and his roaming hands. ... He would or he'd die trying. He shook off the thoughts like the remnants of a bad dream.

 

Not a second later Ren strolled in the door and all was forgiven. "Sorry, I'm late. I had to wait for the Trilam I mixed with the old man's whiskey to kick-in," Ren muttered as he sank heavily into the plush over-stuffed couch next to Aley with a long heavy sigh.

 

"It's okay. You're here now, and that's all that matters," Aley cooed as he reached out his hand to stroke Ren's cheek. He pulled away from him.

 

"No, don't touch me. I stink of him."

 

"It's ok. He won't hurt you ever again. Not after tonight," Aley billed sweetly and quietly as though he was talking to a wounded animal. He opened his arms and waited. Ren all but threw himself into the welcomed embrace and Aley was content to just hold his boy. He wished that he could just take all of Ren's hurt into himself and spare the boy any ill.

 

Ren pulled back and pressed his soft lips to Aley's like he was drowing and they were his life preserver. After it was over, Aley wrapped his arms around the bare flesh of his boy and they drifted off into the realms sleep wrapped in the safety of each others embrace.

 

When he awoke Aley was in a daze and the car was quickly being swollowed by the rapidly growing snow back. He knew that the jeep was too far burried to be pulled out into the snow let up and that looked like it would be a long time comming.

 

~~~

 

Aley woke some twenty minutes later, the dried fruit of their union still clinging to his thigh, streached, and thought about not waking his boy. He didn't have the think too long. Ren moaned lightly as he stirred from the world of his slumber and streached the aches from his bones. "We best be on our way. We should have been gone already," Aley muttered softly as they rose and went about getting ready for their departure. Not ten minutes later they had stolen away from town. A train of heavy black clouds trailed behind them as they sped down the highway twards their new life together.

 

"Where are we headed exactly," Ren finally asked after the long silence, in which they sat -- he watching the landscape of his former home dart by and Aley watching the road intently -- had gotten to him and curiosuty had dug her long teneacious tendrills into his soul.

 

"You remember I told you that my pearents lived in Ashville, right?"

 

"Of course, I remember."

 

"Well, when they passed a few years back they left me a house."

 

"And that's where we're going, is it?"

 

"More or less."

 

"What's that supposed to mean?"

 

"Right now, mon cœur, the less you know the better."

 

"Fine then," Ren muttered under his breath in his best little boy voice, "Don't tell me. Can you tell me a story, instead? Did you hear about that guy?"

 

"What guy," Aley muttered as he took his eyes off the road for a second as he turned to look as Ren.

 

"That guy, The Outcast, that killed all those men. Men like us."

 

"Yeah. What about him?"

 

"They haven't found him yet."

 

"And... That all happened in Mississippi, not here in Georgia."

 

"If you say so. Can I have that story now?" Ren didn't mention that they'd caught the man in Mississippi and had expadited him back here to Georgia for his trail where he'd managed to excape upon arriving in Atlanta.

 

"Ok. That I can do," Aley muttered with a sigh before he began. "Imagin this: there was a boy and there was a girl. She was sopping wet in diamonds and gold and he barely had £1.50 to his name. They meet in a secluded corner of some dull-as-ditchwater fête in which a so-called hyper riche bâtard elitist/ a grande-chate chienne dame thought it would be a hoot and a half to invite him and see how well the lower class could mingle with the upper crust. Yeah, it’s that story.

 

"Once upon a time, as these kind of stories usually begin, the boy is the rich ne'er-do-well and the girls the social climbing charvette. In those tales there's an aged Strega there to turn rags of cotton into gowns of silk and orange Calabasas into coaches of white gold and mother-of-pearl. You know the stories I'm talking about.

 

"Once it was a duo of doves that fetched her the sable gowns and mole skin slippers and dropped them off in an old fig tree her mother had planted before she kicked the bucket. In those stories you can't find a stich of magic anywhere. There is just a girl and her good old fashioned common sense.

 

"There didn't have to be a ball. In truth, there was little need for one. All that was required for what followed was the empty space of seclusion and the somber shadows of moonlight. He languorously ambled away. A fat cat with its maw full of fish. He didn't leave her with that luxury.

 

"She crawled away; dragging body, hand over hand. Once lily-white flesh, now, bruised aubergine purple-black and scrapping the firm indifferent ground.

 

"She held no delusions of a future where she was his mistress and the child cooking in her oven was his heir apparent. She knew that that would never become a reality. She was by no means daft.

 

"What was she to do? She could not go home. Her father would never accept her as she now was, she knew that. As she sat, mulling over her options, she heard the chiming of the abby bells. And she knew then what she would do.

 

"The child came, as the new mother knew it would. The child, she had her mother's fair-as-cream complection, her rivers of raven hair, and the father cole-black eyes. The young mother couldn't stand the sight of the child. She was a constant remimder of that night and how her life had changed. No more was she the daughter of a lowly yet successful merchant having to choose between the butcher, the baker, the carpenter, the candlestick maker. No more could she play the role of the care free child. She was now a mother. She was now a schoolmarm nun.

 

"For six long years the mother fussed over what to do before she decided the fate of that innocent misbegotten child. Gathering the child she took her to the father's home.

 

"What passed over the child's mind, like water cought in opened hands, as she walked in the gate, shy and slow as a pair of revolving snails, I cannot say. Weither her heart was taken over by the cold indifferent hand of fear or if her breath froze in her throat as she held back a sob and tears, that later would flow like a monsoon, it's hard to say.

 

"I wasn't there and I'm not that child, but, I can say that the child pushed back her grief, locking it behind a door in her heart and all but lost the key, shoved down her shoulders, held her head high, and proceeded to persuse her now new fate.

 

"By this time the father was married to some friend of a friend of his family whom he could not nor would not ever love and she had produced for him a child. A boy. It was this melocolic little boy whom found the girl wandering through one of the gardens balling her eyes out of her head. She'd decided to give herself, however momentarily, over to her grief. The two-years-her-jounior boy took one look at the girl, smiled, and decided there and then to take her in.

 

"His mother looked at the girl without really seeing her. She did see her son smiling, which was a rare event. Upon the spot she made the girl his personal servant.

 

"As time passed, they grew to love each other. She was his friend, his confidant, the only one that could get him to do what he knew he must. He was her ally, her protector, the one whom assumed the blaim for her rare mistakes. He truely did love her, but, he knew that while his mother still drew breath she'd never allow such a scandel in her household.

 

"The girl was the happiest one at the boy's wedding to a girl his mother had picked out for him when she'd got it in her head that the boy should marry and the sooner the better. His was a happy union that produced two merry children, twins.

 

"The girl doted on the children as though they were her own and she was content to live in that frail bubble of happiness for the time being."

 

"How sad," Ren muttered a few moments after Aley's voice ceised to fill the listless silence that inhabited to car. At some point durring the course of Aley's story the snow began to fall. At first it was a light flurry that melted soon as it found a foothold of a surface, be it the hot hard ground or the cool surface of the car. Now, it had evolved; had taken on a life of its own. It had become a true storm reflecting and mutipling Ren's inner torment ten-fold.

 

The driving storm had all but obscured Aley's view of the road. He slowed to a slow methoical crawl, but, it was really no good. The only thing the kept him driving forward into the white out of the storm was the fact the he had to, needed to even, to get Ren away from his father. after a long spell of silence, broken only by the struggling swiching of the windshield wippers, it happened. First, came the blast of the horn from the semi. Next, Aley was swerving to avoid a head on collision. Then, was the deadening swolling of darkness and the forrest around them opened to allow them enterance.

 

~~~

 

As soon as Aley realized that he could in fact move his limbs -- testing first his right arm, then left followed closely by his legs -- he turned his attention to Ren. "Ren, my love, wake up. We've had an accident," he cooed softly as he resisted the urge to reach over and shake his boy.

 

Ren sat up slowly, as he got his bearings and assised his damage. He winced in pain as he moved his right shoulder. Expiernice told him that it was not broken but it was dislocated. He had a cut running down his face but it wasn't bleeding anymore so he was too worried. "We've had an accident, haven't we? Well, as least no one got killed. That's a plus," Ren muttered in a voice that trimbled with the shock of it all.

 

"We should get out of the car before we get too burried," Aley muttered in relief that Ren was still with him.

 

"That's not going to be too much of a problem. Looks like this freak storm is letting up."

 

"We should get back up to the main road. Maybe a car will come along," Aley mutterd hoarsely as he reached in the back to search out their coats. Once he'd found what he was looking for he turned around and handed Ren his coat. Once they were suitable dressed, he used the last of the battery power to roll down his window and got out turning to help Ren out as well.

 

The road was some ten or so feet above them and all they could see were the frozen river of snow capped trees and as they made it to the presipace of the road the river changed to a more dense ocean.

 

They stood their a few moments to gather their thoughts and bearrings. A few minutes longer they saw the tell-tale signs of a car approaching aways off in the gathering darkness. The car came slowly as death from it mount on top of the hill, moving not as someone driving in a storm but more as if the occupants were watching and taking note of their every move.

 

Ren, whom was drawn to action, rose his good arm and waved dramatically to attract the driver's or drivers attention. The car continued in its slow crowl forward, disappearing altogether around a dip in to road before emeraging once more at an snails-slow pace as it approached the still waving figure of the boy.

 

The car was a big battered monster of an automobile; the kind of sturdy thing that they don't make anymore and was in bad need of a new paint job, in Aley's openion -- then again, Aley wasn't known for his knowledge of cars. It came to a dead stop just a few yards away from them and for a spell of some minutes, the driver peered back at them with a even and expressionless gaze and didn't bother to speak.

 

He then turned his head slightly and muttered something in the direction of the other two whom were with him. After a spell a of a few seconds the two men he was talking to got out the cab of the car. The first of them was a short and squat toad of a man in pewter-grey dress pants and a lighter grey sweat shirt, both of which looked to Aley to be in need of a good washing. He moved around the left side of the hearse-like car with an air of exaggerated diffculty, as though his movements were calculated to make him seam more harmless. The other man, whom approached Aley and Ren from the right, was broom handle thin was dressed in navy pants, that had at one time been starch-ironed to an unifrom crease, and a navy and sky blue striped button down shirt -- the stripes streached across his chest giving one the impression that the man was bigger in the chest than he actually was. The man had an old camel kangol hat pulled low over his face which hid his eyes from plane view. Nither of the men spoke waiting instead for either Aley or Ren to do so first.

 

"We've had a touch of an accident," Aley finally muttered after the streaching scilence between the pair of men grew to be too much for him to bare. At some point in this scilent exchange the driver got out of the car. Ren noticed that this man was dressed in a set of ill fitting blue sweat pants and shirt and a pair of black shoes with no socks. Ren couldn't shake the impression that he knew this man from somewhere. His face was just too fimiliar to place at the moment.

 

"Evening," he said to Ren and Aley in a labored voice, as thought the very act of speaking was a chore form him, "See ya'll've had a spill."

 

"Should I try the car," The toad man said to the driver.

 

"No use," Aley muttered, "The battery died as we were getting out."

 

"You two sit down over there," The driver said to Ren and Aley as he gestured to an overturned log just behind where they were standing. "Your standing's making me nervious."

 

Ren was about to mutter "Why you telling us that," but he saw that the three men all had revolvers sticking out of their pockets.

 

"Now, you look," Aley began to said suddenly in a voice that was far stornger than he felt, "We're in a bad way. We --"

 

Ren let out a high pitched shriek as it dawned on him how he knew the man. He backed away slowly as he shouted "I know you! You're The Outcast!"

 

"Yes, I am," He said in a clear voice that filled the thirsty silence that had grown around them. "Been better if you'd not said that."

 

The Outcast smiled slightly in the incrouching darkness and it seamed to Aley that the forrest arround them opened her mouth to accept their sacrifice.