Ava Wahl
“I have to find him.”
She spoke as if waking from a dream. Oftentimes it was like this: a gasp, the lighting of a match. The faintest fraying in a life’s thread was all it took. Love knew her enemy’s tactics well.
She’d studied them day and night as instructed by her mother, tracing their stitches in the quilt of times past. She’d read books about the bloodshed, the name calling, the ignorance. In every crevice she found a trace of him, hidden in the bruised knuckles of tired fists, the sound a door makes when it slams shut, the striking of a whip against a bare back.
Love, and all the Loves that came before her, preferred to fight this war from afar, protected from evils in a beachside cabin, drenched with the rays of a sun that never faded. Out here, light always had the strength to hold on.
But today, the dark called. In this game of hiding, Love had come to seek.
She knew her mother would not have approved. She’d have been worried. Of course, no Love can ever be killed. But wounded, yes, wounded was a different story.
Regardless, she’d made up her mind. How long had this war gone on? Since the beginning of time, according to the books. Perhaps even before time, it was suspected (there was research done by Curiosity). Well, infinity was too long for a war, even for one so important as this.
Love stepped outside into the halflight of morning, and traced her thin fingers against the porch fence, brushing off a fine layer of sand. The wood beneath sparkled.
“I’ll be back,” she said, to no one in particular.
Beyond the shore sprawled her ocean, the one she crossed everyday. Each step sent a tremor through the translucent cool below, forming waves that would tumble and glide for miles. She knew that on distant shores, they’d come crashing down and tickle the feet of young children. On those shores, her agents worked in tandem as they spread trickles of joy and understanding among humankind.
Oftentimes she’d send her disciples to a specific domain: Kindness to Beijing, Mercy to London, Empathy to Washington, D.C. This morning, Beauty had checked in from the Netherlands. Tulips were now in full bloom.
Alas, she was distracting herself from the task at hand. There was a discovery to be made—but where to find someone that was practically everywhere nowadays? How to find one atom, one speck of dust, in this vast expanse? She could not do it alone.
Love reached into her pocket and pulled out her map. The world tossed and turned, a thousand inversions bleeding into a finger painting that changed each moment. Sparks of green in newborn meadows planted by women who were still on her side. Light pinks on balconies where lovers exchanged a passionate kiss. Yellow for the happiness of a shared experience.
And red. So much red. Red and black, bruising the earth’s gentle skins. Leaning in to inspect, Love searched for the latest wound, the freshest nightshade. Tucked between a pawn shop and a tattoo parlor, she saw it. The indigo poison grazed her lips and she shivered at the taste of it. Oh, to be an unlucky mortal and fall prey to nature’s wish.
Anyhow, she’d found who she was looking for.
…
The alley was dusty and ruled by shadows, and it smelled like excrement. Leaning against the graffiti-stained wall was the limp shape of a man, syringe in hand, who had just finished his last breath. Love crouched down, caressed the rough, prickly cheeks and closed her eyes. Two kids. A boy and a girl. A cat.
Yes. Love had done her job for this man. But it had not been enough.
“You’re looking for him.” The voice came from behind.
So, she was here. Just like Love thought. Death loved visiting these cases in person.
Love nodded. “It’s about time I did. I’m sorry to bother you. I know you can’t help what you do, but you and him, you’re intertwined.”
Death gently touched Love’s shoulder and turned her around. “You don’t need to remind me.”
Love felt the inevitable cold breeze surrounding her companion’s presence. Her black strands of hair lifted upon the wind’s arrival, and between them echoed screams and tears, the striking bittersweetness of blood, giving life, showing its true face, taking life away. Death’s story was endless and non-linear, a catastrophic tangle of knots. Some were bigger than the rest: Battles from the world wars, colonization of the Americas. The Holocaust.
“Time”, Love said. “It has not been kind to you.”
“No. My hair just keeps on growing.”
“As it always will, while this world still turns. Now, where is he?” She pulled out the map.
“You really don’t know? You cannot trace him?”
“I have not learned yet. I am too young, I suppose, and he is too different, too…other. Besides, he could be everywhere. He is everywhere.”
Death looked down. “Why meet him? You know what your mother would think.”
Useless. Impossible. He will never listen, no matter young or old, strong or weak. He is not made to listen. His entire purpose is to turn ears away from truth.
“I do not care what my mother would think.”
Death felt the urgency laced between Love’s words. The young one was reckless, impatient. It seemed as if she was not willing to wait for victory.
Perhaps she had a point.
“Here,” Death gently took hold of Love’s hand, guiding it towards her map. Her mind outstretched, a silent probe sifting through pages of tragedy, attrition and fury. Behind closed lids, an abundance of sorrows rose in a flurry, a murder of crows taking flight. Between each sliver of warbled birdsong she searched for the fire that turned men into monsters. Much like Love, this was a flame that would never be extinguished.
Death winced. Her fingers smoked, slightly singed with the mark of a beast. She pulled her fingertips away and pointed. “There.”
“Thank you,” Love shook Death’s hand as she bid farewell. “You’ve been most helpful.”
“Love?” Death called as Love turned to go.
“Yes?”
“Don’t…be careful. I remember what your ancestors always said about your duty, how to stay safe, what to do. I think they were wrong. About him, I mean. I hope they are.”
Love only nodded. What else was there to say? Besides, she could never be sure about Death’s true intentions. Putting faith in a being such as her was often risky—this time, though, Love believed her risk would pay off.
…
The first thing she noticed was the litter. Trash, everywhere. Scattered remains of past lives, surrounding the crime scene. Yellow tape—a temptation, a beckoning to which her kind would always answer, in search of a way to make amends.
Flashing lights flickered in a hypnotic dance, harrowed messages in each siren’s blare, reaching out and striking fear in the hearts of anyone who could hear. It would be in the news the next day. Violence was a pathogen that traveled through words, those slippery things that deserved to be treated with more care. Words, Love had known for a while, could sharpen a butter knife into a bloody dagger.
Love shivered as she caught sight of the slur, scrawled across the sidewalk in black spray paint. The writing was jagged and smeared, a rushed blunder brought into the world by a fleeting swath of brutality, as unnerving and pinpointed as the act itself. The word was… slovenly, desperate, unrelinquishing in its brokenness, like a person who’d lost hope long ago.
Police officers gathered around the body, crouching down, inspecting the clothing, the torn hair, the glazed eyes. Love couldn’t look away. She could not remove the dagger from her own chest.
This, she supposed, was his intended purpose.
Now, to find him. Where would he be? He would stand out, one Other among a sea of sameness. Her gaze traveled past policemen leaning against cars, pedestrians peeping over tape lines and fences, peering outside windows down the road.
There he was—right there, how could she have missed it? Only a car’s length away, in an open space, one of the only patches of road that had not been overtaken by chaos.
He stood with his back to her. He was smaller than she thought he’d be. Much smaller.
Love took one step closer, reaching out. She felt his body tense at the moment their minds connected. He bristled. Slowly, he turned.
She was greeted with a young, freckled face—much like hers, she supposed. A short mop of hair. Wide eyes. He was holding a gun. Did he carry one everywhere, she wondered.
Surreal, to finally confront his immortal being face-to-face. He could not look away—in his eyes was a strange look, something indescribable yet almost tangible. He squinted, as if her brilliance was too much to bear for someone so defined by darkness.
“So, you’re Violence,” she said. “It’s nice to…meet you. I mean, really, really, meet you.”
“What are you doing here?” In his voice she searched for any sign of proof that he was the empty, cavernous hole her family had been fighting for eternity.
She found not emptiness, but a vibrant force, the unbridled passion of one who is steadfast in his destiny, who will stop at nothing to mark the world. Love watched as Violence surveyed his work, taking in the wretched scene around them.
“You, you shouldn’t be here.” His shadow was a mirror to her light in that moment, a warbled reflection of psyche lit aflame. “This isn’t…your domain.”
“It’s my domain, just as much as yours. This—this needs to stop. The war, our silence, everything. This feud, it’s useless.”
Love felt mother shaking her head in the back of her mind. How could you say that? How could you say this about something so important, so essential? You know what we do. We fight Violence. We chase them, we strike them down, we make them smaller.
“You and I,” Slowly, he raised his gun, shaking. “We are not friends. Our fight is not useless. Our fight is…everything. I know I am meant to tear you apart, and I know you think the same about me. That is the nature of this game. Restless, unending.”
For a moment, he seemed completely serious, as if he was ready to pull the trigger just for the fun of it. But no, that wasn’t it. Was he…scared? Sad, somehow?
It was then that she realized the true nature of his tortured gaze: Violence was not a boy who had never known Love. He was a boy who had once felt Love’s touch, lived it, breathed it, and watched it be wrung from his grasp. Violence was not a hole, but he had once been whole, two-sided, complex. Now, he was filled not with warmth, but with a passion just as potent and unassailable.
Love felt a tsunami of shame crash upon her borders, soaking the sand miles away, giving way to a crumbling, quaking beneath. Trembling, she forced herself to consider a new possibility: Could it be that her family’s judgment of him as a foreigner, alien and unfamiliar, had been a mistake?
Violence continued to stare as she wrestled with these questions, submerged in his own impenetrable stupor of disbelief. Here he was, in his truest form. Just a young, scared boy, holding a gun. And nothing more.
“You think we can never see eye to eye,” Love said tentatively, “You think we can never grasp what it means to be standing on a shore different than our own.”
“Just leave me be.” He gripped his gun tight. “I’ll shoot.”
“But you forget that all sand seeps into the ocean, that our blood comes from the same vein. We both have an extraordinary power, Violence, and we can’t let ourselves get lost.”
“Lost?” Violence sputtered, waving his weapon. “I’m not lost. It’s you that’s lost.”
“Don’t you understand?” Love let the words fall from her lips in a soft whisper. She took another step. “We…we could’ve been friends, you and I. Maybe we were.”
“No,” He shook his head. But there was a sliver of hesitation in his voice. “You’re nothing like me…no one is like me.”
Love took another step, and another. She crossed the divide, the boundary built through eons of misguided time. Slowly, Love stretched out her arms, palms open.
“You don’t have to be alone,” she sang, and felt the chorus of past Loves, all the sisters and mothers and daughters and aunts of before, spirits woken from their rest and called to her side. She could make them see. She could make them learn. “You don’t have to be alone!”
The pop sound hit her before the pain, a searing strangeness in her stomach and chest. Blood spilled in the wake of the bullet’s path, trickling down her leg, breaking free as if from a burst dam. Love felt all other sense wane, every aspect of her being confined to this one moment, this sensation of tearing from within. Stumbling, her skin tasted the harshness of pavement as she scrambled for purchase on the rough ground. Shaky breaths forced up from her throat.
Violence leaned down, digging his fingers into her arm and forcing her down as she struggled. As her back slammed into the concrete beneath, Love felt herself overtaken by something unknown. Love screamed, reached forward and caught hold of his gun, wrenching it from his grasp in a vibrant surge of adrenaline. Staring up at her attacker, she felt the urge to end him. She fumbled with the gun, doing her best to ignore the pain of the bullet lodged in her waist. Slowly, her hands tightened their grip and raised the barrel towards Violence’s eyes.
Her breath intermingled with his, caught in an intricate dance. Violence began to shake, softened by the faint caress of the air shared between them.
Amid the agony Love imagined the billions that had come before her, fellow victims of his pervasive crime. She saw their tears, screams, and last fleeting breaths, their loved ones faced with a sudden rending, an upending. She saw every memory shared, every shoulder pillowed to another, every prayer, every wound softened through the passage of time. She let the sirens echo in her ears, gazed at the figure sprawled across the sidewalk. This would be a message, she knew. Some would see it as an invitation for more harm. But some would heal themselves, make it their promise and purpose to search caverns for light. She knew that in a moment’s time, her own blessing would grace those scarred. She imagined a hand outstretched towards another, the strength it takes to cross such a divide, and in that moment, Love knew Violence. Understood his nature, his curse, and the flora that grew from the rubble left in his wake.
Love’s strange craving passed as soon as it had come. Lowering her arms, she tossed the gun across the street, wincing as it skidded across the pavement. Slowly, Love began to rise against the pain.
Violence scowled, turning to retrieve his weapon.
Love reached out and winced once more. “Wait,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”
He whirled around to face her and yelled, confusion and exasperation laced into his stark features. “For what? You and I both know we have a part to play. Roles we cannot stray from.”
“I know,” she said, stepping forward. “I know I can’t change you, can’t warm you completely. I thought I could, but I can’t. Yet you’re not beyond reach. Violence, I realized…I need you.”
“Need me?” Violence said with disdain and bewilderment. But he didn’t back away.
“We shape each other, tempt the world with our ways. Tempt each other. You’ve spilled a part of yourself into me,” One more step and they were nearly touching, two bodies occupying the same space, two halves making one whole. “Now, it’s my turn.”
“Please.” Love let the tears trace her cheeks as she held out her hand, opening her palm like an unfurling bloom in need of sunlight and sustenance. “That's all you have to do. Just this once.”
With Love so close, Violence felt the pull of her, a gentle tugging. Love watched him glance at his weapon, lying merely feet away, a child yearning for his toy. As he turned back to face her, his silent fear cut into her like shards from a broken mirror, an unanswered question caught in between.
There he stood, at a crossroads between a gun and a handshake, reckoning with all that he was, all that he’d been, and all he could be. This was a choice, Love knew, that haunted every human, every being who had ever known Life. A choice that could not be delayed, that she herself had just made.
Still, she was surprised when he made it, too.