Rosalee

 1. Rosalee

The man used his hands to push himself backward and away from Rosalee as she walked toward him; the rasp of his rugged jeans and boots dragging against the splintered, wooden floor pulled her along. She gravitated toward the sound as if she were blind and being guided by a trusted voice, the only other noises being her own footsteps and the man's gasping cries. The man moved quicker, but Rosalee continued a calmly paced walk. He finally came up against the wall behind him and Rosalee watched through blurred vision as the man struggled to get to his feet. He panted and cried, his hands scraped the wall as he fell back down, and the wood beneath him creaked as he tried to get up again. And again, he fell. Rosalee's eyes burned and she forced herself to blink several times. Fresh tears fell, cooling her face, and with each blink, her eyes stayed closed a little longer. Once she saw that the man wasn't going to get anywhere, Rosalee stopped and let her head hang; the stretch was a game of tug-of-war, the head and tail each straining to secure his victory by wrenching the spine out of his opposer's grasp. The tension wrung her abdomen, catapulting upward wet bitterness that Rosalee forced back down. Her eyes were unfocused as she faced the ground, but tiny, gray dots swam around the outskirts of her vision. They moved about like fish, swimming, dancing, living, multiplying, until they split into two groups, both being swallowed by her hands. She raised them to her midsection and studied them; they were covered in blood, some dried, some fresh, some of her own, some of others'; they were bruised, scarred, and her left ring and middle finger were bent in unnatural ways; she had a long, diagonal cut on her right palm, deep and still pulsing blood; but most importantly, and strangely as Rosalee noted, her hands had stopped trembling.

The man's voice interrupted her halfhearted examination, “Please,” he spoke between gasping coughs, “don't do this. Please, just stop... just... ”. He trailed off into a heavy sigh, leaving the room in silence. “And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice,” Rosalee thought, “He gave up His spirit.”

Rosalee kept her head down as she closed her eyes and listened over the throbbing in her ears. Crickets, frogs, and cicadas whispered sweet nothings to one another. Water was dripping, somewhere to the right of where she stood, from an unknown source into an unseen puddle. The wind crooned Rosalee through the cracked walls and broken windows that surrounded her, and instructed the hay, rolled and stacked up and lining one wall behind Rosalee, to shift and to flutter. She let her hands fall to her sides and saw a bloody mattock on the floor. She blinked, lifted her head, and woke herself up to the world around her – to the world as it now was, to what it had to be, to what it was always going to be.

I was always gonna to end up here, she thought, as she deeply inhaled, I was always gonna end up alone.

She exhaled as she told the man, who now sat silently with his hands in his lap, “I'm not doin' anything.”

The man looked up suddenly, and met her eyes. “What?”

“I didn't do this,” she said. She took a step forward and the man shifted, she bent down and picked up the mattock before continuing her sentence, “you did this to yourself.” The man began sobbing again, far more intensely than he had previously, and Rosalee pinched the bridge of her nose. She allowed the throbbing to drown out the cries as she breathed in and out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Her exhale slipped into the wind's song. She felt the gentle touch caressing her neck and softly ruffling her short, curly hair, and thought that the breeze could carry her away. Maybe they could even sing together, one day.

She moved her index finger and thumb from her nose to her eyes and pressed in on them. Breathe in. Breathe out.

“Shut up,” she told the man at a volume only slightly above a whisper.

“You,” the man started, “ you... you followed us the whole way here just to … slaughter us like dogs?”

Rosalee huffed a bitter laugh, “I would never kill a dog.” She paused. “Did you expect something else?” She waited. Did he expect something else? “You thought, genuinely, with the world that you and I live in as it is, that I would watch what happened, and just... walk away, feeling sadder but wiser. Is that what you thought was gonna happen?”

“You shouldn't have been there,” the man said slowly.

“Oh, I agree, but ya see, you didn't care too much about us being there, matter a fact – you seemed thrilled about it – until it brought me here. Why is that?”

“I... I'm sorry,” the man stammered.

“No, you're not. You just don't wanna die. Well, guess what?” She walked to the man until she was standing at his feet, “Neither did he.”

2.

When she had finished, Rosalee left the barn and walked the two miles back to her Pontiac. She got into the driver's seat, and sat with her keys in her hand, motionless for a time. She looked over to the passenger and said, “rough night, huh, Ruby?” The dog acknowledged her with a lift of the eyes and perk of the ears, and, then, rose to lick Rosalee's face. Rosalee smiled and scratched Ruby's head, “alright,” she said as she put the key in the ignition, “sit down, now, we ain't quite done.”

She drove back to the barn, constantly checking her mirrors, and, after arriving, parked a good distance from the building, got out, and listened.

No traffic, no people, nice spot.

The wind continued humming and held Rosalee's hand as she went to the trunk of the car. Upon opening it, fireflies swarmed her, the whispers of the other creatures became distinct gibberish, and the song grew familiar. Rosalee paused, the lilting whistles and swaying murmurs lulling her soul into a rest that her body could not allow. She sighed as she looked upward, but the sky had nothing to offer her – no moon, no stars, no light. She grabbed the gas can and utility lighter before slamming the trunk shut.