History is not so easy to kill. Books may burn but forgetfulness cannot be enforced. Regimes storm onto the stage, gutting as they go. Pillars of the past fall into pieces and flowers spring up where important feet once trod. The evidence of history is delicate. Zealous guards stand over it with cotton gloves and climate-controlled boxes. A taint of oils from the skin, a seep of humidity, and all is lost”or so the secret police would have you believe. Preaching voices, rhythms swaying into the crowd, compensating for the fact that paper is fragile and monuments are subject to the destructive vagaries of nature. Memories linger. They grow long in the mind, changing with time, and travel the bridges of words between mouths. Kill who you were, burn the bones and scatter the ashes, but the reflections will live on.
Emily stretches out on the couch. The laptop balances on her hipbones, its heat seeping into the deepest layers of her flesh. The silence of the house is stippled by rain, smeared by traffic and smoothed into place by the whir of the laptop’s little fan.
She breaks the bubble and steps in, lets the darkness pour out of hidden places. She sees herself at sixteen, herself at seventeen, shipwrecked years strewn across the basement floor of her mind. Like a scarlet H tattooed into her bleeding breast, like something left out in the elements to disintegrate, at the end of each day she scraped herself back together and bound the pieces up with silky black ribbons. Shoved it into steel-toed boots. In those days there was chaos and it was sweet. It felt like life in the face of her stultifying home, the parties, the nannies, everything arranged just so.
After the abortion she would only fuck girls. Lots and lots of girls, most of them dark-haired and round-bodied. Digging for the spark. A few of them offered to get in the bathtub for her, hold ice in their cunts, this after late nights inhaling incense and pot. Goth girls. Ladies in love with the idea of blood drops meaning more than soft open-mouthed kisses exchanged in the backseats of cars, surrounded by headstones, cold rain steaming up the rearview mirror. Suicide girls. Scratch on the wrist, stroke of a tongue. Shivering up close to the edge and holding there, hot iron burning in the nostrils, clenching tight, holding it all in until deft fingers unlocked the reservoir. Fingers on her face, stroking: let me be your living dead girl. I’ll make myself cold for you. We’ll fuck until it hurts and then we’ll fuck until it’s numb. Yeah?
The waking thoughts pull apart and the sleeping ones creep in. They move over and under each other, knotting into baroque monstrosities. Emotions gain texture and scent as they cross into the real world. A silky pile of fear sits in her mouth and the lust inside is scratchy, tender on the insides of her cheeks, sour. Her hands are on her thighs, skin to skin, rubbing as if the friction is enough to keep her feet on the ground. She smells roses.
She pulls open the trapdoor and climbs down into the cellar.
Emily is caught in the blue. All around her thick and deep, star-speckled, sanded down by the sounds of waves, are drifts of darkness. Houses like shells perch in scrub pines and cranky wild rose bushes, whistling empty in the constant wind.
The beach is broad and lonesome, flat, gleaming in the wet places. Dune grass lies like hair on flanks of sand. Stones embed in the wet, drawing loose arrows in the rushing water. White foam spreads like moldy lace. Down the sweep of beach lanterns of colored glass flicker, adrift in the night. She walks toward firmer ground. Ocean-cold burrows between the bones of her feet, filled with the scent of salt. Her forehead itches. She reaches up, fingertips brushing silken petals and rough-edged leaves and thorny fur. Her hands come away smeared with rose-scented blood.
In the center is Foyet, in his loose white shirt and faded jeans, one of the floppy bright pink beach roses shoved into a buttonhole. He watches her with an expression made indistinct by fire-written shadow. His hands are ghostly, too big, laddered with rawlooking scratches. His fingernails are torn. The wind smells like his skin, salty and bruised with soap. She enters his place. With a smile carved out of bone and curved lines gathering in his cheeks, he comes close and takes up her hands. His eyes, the wet line of his closed lips holding the moonlight, making tarnished glints of it. His head bows. He kisses the blood drying on her fingers.
She pulls white petals out of her crown. She wipes her red fingerprints off his chin. His mouth opens. She puts the petals on his tongue and makes the sign of the cross.
He draws her into a tango. He uses the beat of her blood as a rhythm and her body unties its knots, falling into forgotten steps. Her bones lock into place. She turns into his scent, the sand slithering up to kiss the soles of her feet. Languid gooseflesh runs down her back and murmurs sweet nothings to the tips of her toes. The sound of the waves flows through the places where they touch, eroding the precision of their steps. His hands move down her flanks and her breath rises, comes apart. Mouths overlap, loose and hot. She cinches his shirt into a noose, using it to pull him down. His tongue tastes like it’s been buried in her cunt. She tries to catch it with her teeth, to bite down, but it’s soft against hers and she can’t tell where hers ends and his begins.
He holds her still. A sweet sullen ache rises into her groin. He licks her tongue and the fluttering tightens into a fist, squeezing a sound from her throat. She melts into long deep spasms as he breaks the seal, taking her down onto the sand. It shifts beneath her, falling away in places, cool and smelling of summer sun. Her body opens with each ripple, unwinding until her cunt lolls in soft hunger. She peers into the sky, black and full of galaxies, rippling near the water with strange boreal lights.
He cuts her jean shorts off her legs. It is precise surgery, lines carved up the centers of her thighs until the denim falls away. Noise echoes over the calm sea. Is it thunder?
He cuts the crown of roses from her hair.
George, she murmurs, unable to get a deep breath. What’s that sound?
Her tank top, sliced up the middle like a ribbon-cutting ceremony: it’s time to break ground.
That sound. She rustles on the sand. There’s no rain.
He cuts off her nipple and it comes away like old leather. There is no blood. Her raw flesh prickles at the air and hot pins fall inside her groin. She feels herself swell. Her hips begin their restless churn.
Do the other one.
He leans on one arm and grins into her with his heat, bringing the blade close to skin that draws up into tight wrinkles. She labors with her breath. He carves it off her body and her toes curl. Her fingers walk up the back of his hair. He moves over her and he licks the fresh holes in her body, making her moan and pant. She’s going to come again, this time with a clanging like”
The doorbell rings again and it startles her. She opens her eyes. The afternoon light has faded into dusk, the rain stopped. Cold air, raw with moisture, moves across her feet. She closes the laptop and pushes it off her belly. She takes her cell phone off the coffee table, squinting at the display. As if activated by her touch it starts to vibrate.
“Hotch?”
“I’m at the door. Will you let me in?”
“Yeah.” She glances at the readout on the stereo. “What are you doing here so late?”
“It’s not that late.”
Emily gets up and walks toward the front door. “It’s late for you.”
“I have some paperwork to catch up on. I’ll probably be going back. Are you hungry?”
Her stomach growled. “Yeah. Convenient.”
She opens the door, smelling hot paper and red curry. He hangs up the cell and holds up a bag. “I hope Thai is okay?”
“It’s perfect.” Emily grins. “Come on in. Don’t mind my…uh, grungies. If I’d known you were coming over I would’ve changed.”
He steps inside. She closes the door.
“What should I do with the food?”
“Kitchen. Do you want anything to drink?”
“What do you have?”
“Water, juice, beer, soda. What is this about, anyway? It’s been awhile since you’ve showed up at my house.”
He walks into the kitchen and sets the bag down on the center island. He’s still wearing his work clothes, suit jacket and tie in the car, shirt cuffs rolled up toward his elbows. He goes for the cabinets, hands opening doors and drawers on instinct. He takes down two plates. “I’ll have a beer.”
“Is Dos Equis all right?”
“Yeah.” A smile moves through his face. “More than all right.” He pulls open the staples, lifting styrofoam cartons out of the bag. “I haven’t had Dos Equis in years.”
“Do you want it in the bottle or do you want it in a glass?”
“Glass.” He looks around and looks at her. “Where do we eat?”
Emily closes the refrigerator door, holding a pair of bottles dangling by their necks. “Usually I just eat on the couch, but I’m a slob.” She twists off a cap. “There’s a dining room if you want to use it.”
“The couch is fine by me.”
Emily pours his beer into a tall glass. Hotch carries the food and the plates out to the coffee table. Emily brings him his beer, sitting down at the end of the couch. She twists the cap off her bottle, takes a sip, and pulls a plate into her lap. She picks up a box and unfolds the top. “So what have we got here?”
“A little bit of everything.”
Emily helps herself.
“I know I can’t fool you and I hope you know that you can’t fool me.” He digs in with his fork. “We’re worried.”
“We?”
“Let’s just say that I was unanimously elected to this position.”
Emily folds her arms and smiles. “A rescue mission.”
“Your words, not mine.”
She sighs and looks into her plate. “I’m okay.”
“Morgan says you’ve been spending a lot of time at the shooting range.” Hotch balances his plate on his knee. “Something tells me you aren’t overly concerned about passing your qualification.”
“No. I just like to shoot. It helps my stress.”
“Fair enough.”
Emily holds up her bottle. She tilts her head and smirks. “So…do you want to tell me all about your youthful adventures with Dos Equis?”
He grins and shakes his head. “Not much to tell. I drank a lot of it in college.”
“Oh, I see.” She takes a drink. “Now, you drank a lot of it…or you drank a lot of it?”
He laughs. “I plead the fifth.”
“You can take the boy out of the prosecutor’s office…”
He stops her with his eyes. “We really are worried about you.”
“There’s.” She shakes her head. “Well, there’s nothing you need to worry about, let me put it that way.”
He put his plate aside. “Do you want to talk?”
“I want to eat.”
“By all means.”
Look at the lady in the glittery skirt. Watch her pretty smile. Oooh and ahh at the billows of smoke. There’s an explosion of whirring doves.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about my teen years. I haven’t thought about them in a long time. It’s just…old stuff. You know.”
Between that and the sequined cleavage, no one ever notices the switch.
He looks at her. “Matthew?”
“Yeah. Other stuff too.”
His eyebrows go up. “Care to share?”
“I don’t know if I told you this or not, but when I was a kid in Italy I found a body in a stream.” She pauses, takes another bite. “It was a rage murder. She had a boyfriend and this other guy didn’t like the idea. You know how it goes.”
“Yes.”
“I was a rebellious child, to put it lightly. My mother thought there was something wrong with me for wanting to dress up like a vampire and spend all my time with girls, so she made me go to this therapist.” She rolls her eyes. “Anyway we talked a lot about Francesca, the therapist and I. That was her name.” Emily picks up her beer. “For a long time I wrote all these awful emo journal entries about it. Bad poetry, little weird stories, the whole works. It helped with the dreams. I had nightmares about it for years.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know if you should be.” She pulls her legs up onto the cushions. “It’s probably how I ended up working for the BAU.”
“Are they back? The dreams?”
She looks for a moment like she’s going to shake her head. “Yeah,” she sighs. “Yeah.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“I don’t know. The past, you know. It never stays there.”
Drawn In Slow Strokes by Pink Siamese