Chapter Thirty-One
Adelaide paused as the past claimed her heart and squeezed. “But when I put the gun in my mouth, I couldn’t pull the trigger. I kept thinking of the mess my own little brothers and sister would find. I kept thinking of how they would have to live with that sight the rest of their lives. All the blood and the mess.”
She turned her wrists inward and her gaze refocused on the long, thin scars that traveled down the center of either arm. “I put the gun away, closed the closet, and went upstairs to my room. I opened a bottle of allergy medicine and poured half of it into my mouth. All I could hold.”
Pain went through her chest, a spike of agonizing, sharp fear at the memory. She touched her neck and lowered her head, breathing deeply. When she could talk again, she said, “Once I got the pills down, I realized they might not work. I got so scared they wouldn’t. No one can understand that kind of fear, that fear that exists between barely living and death. Even if I made it and wasn’t permanently disabled, I would wake up to the same religious family that would tell me I was going to hell and that I’d done the worst thing a person could do, a cowardly thing and a selfish thing, and I would never be forgiven. That was what my mom told me once when I ran away, after all. ‘You’ve embarrassed me and I will never forgive you.’ I couldn’t stop thinking of the scowl on her face, the cold shoulder, the silent treatment she’d give me as she stuck her nose back into a Stephen King novel and pretended I didn’t exist.”
She shook her head, placing her hand to her forehead. “I was already in so much pain – so much – I knew I couldn’t handle this on top of it all. I would rather not exist for real. So in a blind panic, I ran to the bathroom, pulled a shaving razor from one of the drawers, and smashed it under my boot. All thoughts of family finding a bloody mess flew from my mind. I took the razor out of the broken plastic, and….” She hiccupped, realizing suddenly that her cheeks were wet. Her chest was so tight, she couldn’t fully breathe.
Suddenly, she was enveloped in warmth. Strong arms were around her, steely but gentle, secure and tight, but absolutely welcome. She sobbed, no longer in control of the pain coming out of her. The memory was too much, and she had never told another living soul her story. “I was dead in that emergency room for seven minutes and thirteen seconds,” she said between sobs that racked her memory-torn body. She was drenching his shirt, she was sure, and for once in her life, she didn’t care. She just didn’t care that her pain was showing, that it was coming out, and that it was fucking messy. That was life.
“They thought I would come back with permanent brain damage, maybe unable to function. But when I woke up,” she said as she pulled slightly back and rubbed the tears from her face, “I was just… different.” She shook her head. “I… I could see things. The future. Sometimes, anyway.” She turned away, and he let her. But she was seriously wishing she had a tissue.
Around her right arm, his hand appeared. Between his fingers was a tissue.
She almost laughed. But she wasn’t quite to that point yet. Instead, she noisily blew her nose and took a shaky, but deep breath. “My mom never told me that I was selfish. Instead, she took me to her Bingo get-togethers. She took me into gas stations when she bought lottery tickets. She started to want to be around me as much as she’d always wanted to be around my much more witty, much more out-going sister. I began to think… Maybe this isn’t so bad. Maybe it was meant to be. My father even sued the school and had the kids who’d bullied me expelled.” She shrugged and turned back to face Nicholas.
“I wore long-sleeved shirts to hide the scars, and they had an air conditioner installed in the house so I wouldn’t be too hot. It was southern New Mexico,” she shook her head. “It was always hot. But I was finally starting to feel comfortable in my skin….” A darkness passed over her, and once more her chest was too tight. “And then my father was in a car accident. He was T-boned at an intersection by a teen in a pickup who was texting on his phone.”
She lowered her head again and closed her eyes. “He didn’t survive. The teen who’d been texting survived. He was paralyzed, but alive. But my father was taken from me that day.”
She turned away from Nicholas and leaned against the massive crystal monster, lowering her forehead to its cool surface. It felt good. “I never had a vision about it. There was no warning. And my mother has never forgiven me for that. She never will.”
Addie lifted her head and stared at nothing. “I was right back where I started, in my own little hell.” She ran her hand over the crystal absent-mindedly, then picked up her jacket and put it back on. Wherever the Carousel was flying, the air was growing cooler. “So I got my GED and I left. I bunked with three roommates in Lubbock, TX and decided I would get a job and save to go to school. But then I had a vision that changed the course of my life for the better.”
Talking about this aspect of her past eased the tightness of the band around her chest. It helped. So she kept going. “They were the winning numbers in a massive jackpot lottery that covered several states. I figured, ‘what the hell?’ and I bought a ticket with those numbers. I honestly didn’t think I would win. I mean, I couldn’t save my father... why would fate decide this was more important?”
Suddenly, the band around her chest was back.
“But it did. And I won.” She smiled tightly as she looked up at the handsome king before her. “It was a two-hundred and eighty-six million dollar jackpot. There was one other winner. After taxes, we each walked away with ninety million. And I started doing what I do now.”
Nicholas looked down at her for a long, long time. His eyes were doorways to another world, one filled with all the attention she had ever needed, and twice the approval. It was a wondrous thing to see. There was no judgment in his features, no shock, no pity. Instead, he smiled a slow and beautiful smile and gently, so gently, cupped her still-damp cheek.
“Saving the world,” he said softly.
She sniffed a little, and shrugged deprecatingly. “Yeah… I guess.”
“I know,” he said. “Adelaide… I already knew all of this. I know you, more than you think.”
Addie felt confused. “You do? I mean… you did?” He knew about her wrists? Her past? Her… dying?
He nodded. “And I also know it tears you up that you can’t save the whole world,” he told her, his thumb brushing gently across her cheekbone, wiping away the last of her tears. “Despite what it has done to you, you still want to save it. But it’s too damn big, Addie. No one can save it all. You’re an angel for even trying.”
An angel? she thought, “Not likely.”
“Okay, then,” he compromised, smiling. “Maybe a bodhisattva.”
“A what?”
“Buddhists believe that bodhisattvas are souls who have found Nirvana, but who care so much about others, they come back to the world of the living. They leave Nirvana behind to help others reach it.”
Bodhisattva… she thought slowly, sounding it out in her head. She was convinced she was no great soul, and she was pretty sure she wasn’t a Buddhist. But when she’d died, she’d seen nothing except – well, nothing. It wasn’t light, and it wasn’t black. There’d been no tunnel, no spiritual guide, no meeting people from her past. Instead, it was a rainbow kind of nothing she’d floated in. It was this thing that literally could not be described, and it was beyond peaceful.
In the moments it took her pulse and blood pressure to bottom out, she went from overwhelmingly nauseated and terrified to feeling nothing whatsoever. It was the most welcome release, and the purest relief. She’d gone from abjectly horrified of her present situation to distant, drifting, and unaware. She’d entered a state where thought didn’t really happen.
And then she’d been pulled back. She’d opened her eyes to find people all around her hospital bed, machines beeping, doctors shouting orders, someone saying her name over and over again. She’d realized it wasn’t over, there was no release yet. She’d returned.
She laughed, shaking her head. “Well, it’s certainly a nice thought.”
“You’re a nice thought, Addie,” he told her, dropping his hand and smiling like he meant it. “Now I want to show you something else. Come with me.”
Addie watched him turn and move to the edge of the Carousel, once more making her pulse speed up by getting too close to a ledge. But this time, she had some control over it, knowing what she now knew about him and the Carnival.
“Come here,” he repeated, gesturing her over.
She moved around the glass monsters to where he was standing. Slowly, she inched forward until she could look over the edge. The wind played with her hair, knotting it terribly. But she ignored it. The view below was too good, too perfect for her to screw it up by caring about anything else.
“It’s breathtaking,” she said.
“It’s the Nightmare Realm,” he told her. “The first time I flew over it all those years ago, I fell in love. And I knew I was meant to be king.” He turned to her. “You’ve been to hell and back. Those scars on your arms are the marks that appear when you suffer so much pain, it literally kills you. Yet you returned. And now your soul has the depth that can only come with dying. You paid the ultimate sacrifice for someone else’s cruelty. Yet you remain here in the world that harmed you so that you can do for others what no one would do for you.” He took her hands in his and gently lifted one to his lips, where he placed upon it a tender kiss.
“You are the most beautiful soul I have ever known, Adelaide.” Still holding her hands, he turned back to the glittering world below them where the Nightmare Realm stretched to an unknown and dark horizon an eternity away. “This is my kingdom.” He was silent a moment. And then he said, “And now it’s yours.”