As her memories returned to her, so did her precious youth. With every bite her skin became smoother, until all the wrinkles had left her body. Her flesh that had once draped all around her in a vest of redundancy regained its supple strength. The sagging breasts that had dragged her down returned to their firm shapes, her nipples staring proudly into the distance rather than at the ground.
Her mind cleared up a little too. Though much of her recent past still remained hidden to her, she once more felt the deep connection to her roots. Only now did she realize how much she had missed them. How lost she had been without them.
Her sisters, her mother. Red, Black, Margaret. And the man that had killed them all.
Her father. He had spared her once and she never understood why. Now, it seemed, he was here to collect. To ask things of her that he knew she could never deny him. After all this time, after all these years, she still only wanted to be one thing and one thing only.
Gold wanted to be perfect for him.
Arthur sat in his office, slowly chipping away at the seemingly endless piles of paper that inevitably invaded his desk.
Even though he had Mary, who handled most of the day-to-day of the Southeast Reintegration Project, there were some things only he could do. Decisions only he could make and signatures only his hand could put down.
The most promising, he felt, was that there were several factories in Alabama that had responded very favorably to his offer. He would finance them and, in return, they would take in a few people that the project was seeking employment for.
Arthur knew that, eventually, the Southeastern Reintegration Project couldn’t sustain itself. It wasn’t viable, economically speaking, and he was hemorrhaging money left and right.
What would happen to the people he wanted to help after his funds eventually ran out? Arthur couldn’t be sure. He knew, however, that when it happened, those young men and women had at least developed marketable skills and could put something on their resumes. If they became good at their jobs, he believed most employers would keep them on.
That was always the point of the project. Arthur knew that he was aging, perhaps rapidly, and that his life wouldn’t last forever. He would see this place better off the only way that made sense to him. He invested in people, not businesses.
One of the people he had invested in was Ethan Walker. The young man who had shown up at his door, haunted by a terror nobody else could see.
Ethan Walker, who was now a vegetable lying strapped down in a hospital bed. Such a cruel fate for a young man that deserved better.
Ethan had been a burglar before he enrolled with the project and came fresh out of prison. If you turned to a life of crime, no doubt about it, you made bad choices. Arthur knew, however, that bad choices were sometimes forced through the complicated dynamics of our pasts and environments. Who really chose to become a burglar if other avenues were open to them?
Arthur’s friend Dr. Stewart had briefed him on all that had happened at the hospital. Including the awkward meeting in his office between the special agent and the strange researcher with her bodyguard.
Special Agent Bradford had decided Ethan would stay, even though the researcher they supposedly trusted recommended differently. Thus was the folly of bureaucracy, Arthur thought.
Between the arrogant demeanor of the special agent and the uncommon appearance of Jane Elring, Arthur wasn’t sure who to put his stock in. They both seemed to exist in worlds that he, even though he was well connected, had no real access to. As if the shadows that lingered beneath the worlds of common men had decided to visit him. Only he had invited them himself, of course.
Yet it was the young investigator that had offered him a strange kind of solace when she confirmed his own worst fear about Ellie. “You squeeze a runaway too tight, she’ll just run again.” That’s what she had told him.
If nothing else, Jane Elring had showed that she cared about what was happening in this town. Whether she was right or not, her concern for the safety of Ethan Walker seemed to rival Arthur’s.
Arthur couldn’t shake his fears for the young man. If only they could find out what ailed him. No expense would be too large for Arthur if a solution could be brought forth. Second chances, third chances, fourth chances. Arthur was willing to hand them all out, no questions asked.
The only person he was ever really hard on was himself. There was so much to do and there was so little time. If he could just be faster, a little smarter, or a lot younger. If he had only known earlier in life what he wanted to do with the enormous wealth left to him.
Blood money could never truly be cleaned. Arthur knew that. You couldn’t wash off the dark and horrible red taint. The metallic scent would stick forever.
He would never be enough. What he did would never be enough. But he did it anyway because it was the only thing he knew to do.
Arthur was happy that the hatred ended with him. There was no offspring to be seduced by the darkness that roamed in his family’s past. The blood they had shed, the suffering they had caused. Power was a tricky concept, Arthur knew, and its seduction came upon you slowly and often from behind. Once you realized how horribly you had abused the power given to you, it was very often already far too late.
The closest he had to an heir now was Ellie.
A smile drew itself on his face as the young girl entered his mind’s eye. Energetic Ellie with her blue eyes and dark skin. She could sometimes see straight through him and ask questions no ordinary teenager would dare ask. He wasn’t sure if Ellie was brave or simply unaware of the rules of etiquette she broke. Perhaps both, he thought.
It pained him to know that she had seen him at his worst. Crippled by the horrible terrors that attacked him during his sleep. How frightened she must have been. Although she wore a brave face for him the morning after, Arthur could see the anxiety hiding behind her bright blue eyes and the worry she felt for him. It was the same worry Mary had, though the woman was far more vocal about it.
Ellie. What was he going to do about Ellie? At least she was going to school. Thank God for small blessings.
Ellie didn’t like math. She had never liked it, had never been good at it either. She wasn’t afraid to admit that the questions in her textbook didn’t make any sense to her. Nor did Mr. Boothby’s explanations that he expounded, without much regard for his students, in front of the classroom.
Mr. Boothby was a typical mathematician, Ellie thought. One of those people that understood everything, except for the fact that others didn’t understand them. So they explained things in ways that were so vague and abstract that nobody could really relate to what they were saying.
Ellie couldn’t relate to the older man in front of the class. His thin, round glasses and balding head. What little black hair he had danced wildly, as if his brain exploded regularly to jolt his hair upward. He wasn’t unfriendly or anything, Ellie thought, just a little weird.
Mister Boothby took time out of his busy schedule of writing equations on the chalkboard to check on the few students that hadn’t lost focus.
“Do you all understand now?” he asked.
The few awkward nods that followed wouldn’t have inspired an attentive teacher, but Mr. Boothby was satisfied with them. He had always been good at explaining difficult concepts to the casual listener, he thought. So much so that he cited the quality in all of his job interviews when asked why he should be hired as a teacher.
Astutely self-aware, Ellie raised her hand. This was the very first time that she had ever asked something in class. The first time that she had been motivated enough to do so. Ellie wanted to be better, to do better. If she did better, Arthur would worry less and maybe his night terrors wouldn’t be so bad.