InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 10: Anomaly ❯ Misguided ( Chapter 22 )

“She buried Jeff, you see?  She’d buried Jeff, not Jazz, and . . . And there wasn’t a goddamn thing we could do about it.”

Wandering along the darkened street, Madison paid no attention to where she was, where she’d been, where she was going.

“The girls want to have her exhumed, want to change her into what she would have wanted . . . I told them that it wasn’t possible.  We’d have no right to do that, and there isn’t a court anywhere that would allow it, anyway.  I mean, I get it.  I understand, and I agree . . . But . . .”

It didn’t make sense.  Just how one woman could be that loathsome, that vile . . . that hateful . . .

And how many times had Jazz told her that everything was all right; that if her parents couldn’t accept her as she wanted to be, then it was their loss—and just how many times had Madison seen the truth behind the bravado—the pain that she tried to hide, and Madison . . . She flinched, but kept walking.  Madison had let her have it, hadn’t she?  She’d allowed Jazz to believe that she hid it all so well . . .

She should have called her out on it, should have wheedled the truth from her, but Madison?  She hadn’t, telling herself that it was natural and normal, that of course, Jazz would feel bad about the whole thing, losing her parents who were too closed-minded to even try to accept her the way she was, but Madison had to wonder . . .

She had a feeling that her willingness to allow Jazz her white lies weren’t that noble, that altruistic.  No, it was just simpler, wasn’t it?  Easier to let it ride than it was to help her face it.  After all, it’d all be right in the end, wouldn’t it?  It had allowed Madison a sense of peace about the entire situation, and hadn’t she been able to sleep well at night, and all the while, Jazz . . .

She wasn’t her best friend, no, but after the things they’d talked about, Madison knew deep down that the things Jazz had told her were things that she likely never told anyone else.  It used to be that they’d call each other, hang out weekly, sometimes bi-weekly, goofing off and just chattering away about everything, anything, but lately, she realized, they’d lost touch, and Madison had been too busy to see why or to even really notice—too wrapped up in her own life, in the things that she wanted—the person she allowed to push aside everything else in her mind . . .

‘Don’t do it, Madison,’ her youkai-voice warned gently.  ‘Don’t own what happened to Jazzy . . . Whether you knew or not, does it matter?  In the end, she didn’t want to be stopped.  In the end, she didn’t reach out to you to try to catch her.  She knew . . . She knew you would.  She knew you’d have dropped everything if she’d asked you for help.  She knew it, and she didn’t . . . and that’s not on you.’

They were nice words, weren’t they?  Wrapping her arms around herself in a wholly protective kind of way, the chill that seeped into Madison’s body had nothing at all to do with the early October night.  It was a bone-deep cold that seeped into her very soul . . .

Nice words, yes . . . And, in a way, she could understand what her youkai-voice was telling her.  But wasn’t that just another way of setting it all aside, of allowing her to walk away, to shake her head and say that she wished . . . Ah, but that’s too bad, isn’t it?  If she had been just a little stronger, if she had reached out for someone—anyone—to help her . . .

“She buried Jeff, you see?  She’d buried Jeff, not Jazz, and . . . And there wasn’t a goddamn thing we could do about it.”

Every time those hateful words echoed through her head, she gritted her teeth, had to fight down the consuming sense of outrage that they inspired.  There weren’t adequate words to articulate, just how foul, how deplorable, that really was, and that sense of desperate rage only grew worse when Madison realized that, in her mind, Jazz’s mother likely believed—truly believed—that she had the right to do what she had done—that somehow, she was saving her child, even in death.

And just how desperately did Madison want to hunt the woman down, to make her understand, just what she’d done to her child—a child she should have loved, regardless, unconditionally . . .?

‘And you think that anything you’d say to her would make a difference?  It wouldn’t, you know.  She’s still going to believe that she was right, that you’re wrong, that she somehow managed to save Jazz’s immortal soul, and maybe that’ll help her stand up on Sunday mornings, to raise her hand and praise her God, safe in the sanctimonious lies that she’s wrapped around herself.’

‘If that’s her God, then it’s a God I don’t know,’ Madison thought.  No, she hadn’t been to church in years, but even as a child, the God she’d learned about in Sunday school and Vacation Bible School . . . He was good, and He was kind, and He was loving . . . Jazz had said before that his parents were Christian fundamentalists, had described revivals and prayer vigils, sermons of hellfire and brimstone that Madison couldn’t really understand, but Jazz did . . . But Jazz did . . .

Jazz’s mother . . . She was going to present herself as a martyr, wasn’t she?  The poor woman who tried her best, who raised her son to be a good, upstanding young man, yet that same young man was lured away by the bright lights of the big city, led into a godless life of unspeakable debauchery and shame . . .

Madison grimaced, unconsciously increasing her gait as she strode down the boulevard.  It was sickening; the whole thing—sickening and so outlandishly infuriating . . .

Stopping abruptly, Madison blinked, her gaze slowly lifting upward, staring at the building that she hadn’t realized she’d approached.  In the distance, she could hear a dog, barking out a low and somber song—the abrasive sound of too-loud engines, the rise of a siren, the screech of tires . . . The steady hum of the city itself that lie beneath the other nonsense, and Madison ignored it all as she frowned up at the towering building.

She’d only been here once before—one night so long ago when she’d walked a very drunk Jazz home.  She’d taken her up to her apartment, had carefully removed her shoes, her stockings, and had put her to bed while Jazz giggled and laughed and told her how much she loved her . . .

Even from the sidewalk where she stood, she could see the black windows of Jazz’s apartment—empty, soulless—and infinitely sad.

Without stopping to think about it, as though she were compelled to step forward, Madison climbed the concrete steps, tried the door, only to blink in surprise when it gave under her grip.  It wasn’t worth questioning, though, and she pushed inside, her nose instantly full of those dry and dusty kinds of scents.  It wasn’t a terrible building, no, but it was old, and despite the relative cleanliness of the foyer, there were lingering smells that just never quite went away.

Madison paid it no mind as she climbed the stairs to the seventh floor—the green door at the end of the long hallway—and her footsteps were dulled by the old but clean carpet.  Ugly yellow police tape hung, suspended by one side or the other, on both sides of the frame like the remnants of a garish reminder—an ugliness that couldn’t be washed clean.

The door was locked.  Madison shoved it hard enough that it popped open, only to spring back, accompanied by the splintering sound of wood, giving way.  It slapped closed, only to release with a wizened creak since the jamb that once held it had been destroyed.

Madison stepped inside, ignoring the light switch beside the door.  Somehow, the barely-there moonlight that pushed through the darkness near the windows seemed so much more appropriate, and even in the darkness, Madison could see well enough.

Boxes were stacked near the door.  She had no idea what was in those boxes—the last remains of a life that ended way too soon—and she had no idea who had packed them, but the other scent she discerned was too similar to Jazz’s not to belong to her mother, and at that realization, the anger that rose in her once more was so vile, so toxic, that it felt like it might well choke her . . .

Stepping away from those boxes, Madison frowned at the large trash can, situated in the center of the small living room.  As she drew nearer, she could smell the unmistakable odor of cosmetics, of hair products and other female things.  Her mother had thrown away all of the things that made Jazz who she was, hadn’t she?  Tossed it all away without so much as a second thought . . .

She reached out, snagged the corner of a gauzy pink scarf from the garbage—one that Madison knew since it was one of Jazz’s favorite accessories.  She slipped it around her neck, closing her eyes as Jazz’s scent inundated her.

“One day, I’m going to walk down the street as a complete woman, and I’m going to smile at everyone and really mean it for the first time in my life.”

“I don’t know, Jazz . . . Sometimes, people don’t deserve your smiles,” Madison replied, swirling the ridiculously fruity drink that Jazz had ordered for her, half as a joke, half as a gesture of appreciation.

“Maybe,” Jazz replied with a careless littles shrug, toying with the corner of the gauzy pink scarf, idly whipping it around in a tight circle.  “Then again, I think people appreciate them, even if they don’t say so out loud . . .”

“That’s pretty,” Madison remarked, sticking out her index finger to indicate what she was talking about—the scarf.

Jazz giggled, and, just for a second, her gaze took on a rather faraway light.  “It used to be my mom’s,” she said.  “I stole it out of her drawer when I was . . . fourteen?  Fifteen?”  She sighed.  “Playing dress-up when no one else was home . . .”

Wincing as the memory faded, Madison slowly wound the scarf around her throat once.

She . . . She should have known.  Just how selfish was she, anyway?  Because Mikio had showed up, she’d forgotten everyone that meant anything to her without a second thought.  If she had known . . . If she had known . . .

‘If you had known, what?  You think that Jazz would still be alive, that you could have saved her, but you know, that’s really not true.  Jazz did what she did, and the fact is, she didn’t reach out to anyone, and you have to understand that when someone does that?  There is no stopping them—there really wasn’t a thing you could have done to stop it.’

A part of her knew and understood all of that: the logical part of her, naturally.  It was the part of her that was ruled by her heart that argued and railed against it—and a desolate sense of hopelessness as vast, as deep, as the sea . . .

She wandered from room to room in the dark, touching surfaces, feeling the presence that was slowly fading away.  In a few weeks, maybe a month, the last, lingering traces of Jazz would be gone, and then, that really would be the last.

The very last room she entered was the bedroom, and she stopped just inside the doorway.  The stench of death was thick in here, maybe not strong enough for a human to detect it, but for Madison . . . Stomach turning, rolling over upon itself, she forced herself to step closer to the bed, knowing instinctively that that’s where Jazz had died.  The darkened and quiet room was peaceful and somehow entirely ghastly at the same time.  The bed had been stripped down to the mattress, the closets hung open, the doors, barely containing the gaping void beyond.

Without much thought, she stumbled forward, sank down on the barren bed, closing her eyes against the torrent of sentiment that lingered in the air around her: the appalling sense of loneliness.  If they were Jazz’s final emotions, she didn’t know, and yet, she thought that maybe they were.  Eyes filling with tears that felt so helpless, so hopeless . . .

Yet under those feelings, something else loomed: something dark and ugly and frightening.

It was more of a reaction than a conscious decision as Madison stood, as she hurried back through the apartment.  As though she were trying to get away from some unknown, unseen force, she broke into a light run in the hallway, not bothering to try to close the door, fleeing as she realized just one thing: she needed to get out of there, goaded by a frothing rage, the likes of which she’d never felt before.  As if every single moment, spent in that apartment had silently, stealthily, fed the ire that spiraled through her, sneaking up on her, twisting deep into every fiber of her being . . .

Down the stairs, straight out the doors, back onto the street, she didn’t stop until she stepped back onto the sidewalk once more, her gaze lifting back up to the empty windows once more, and the sight of them seemed to break something inside her wide open: a heated surge of the ugliest fury . . .

And before she could stop and think about it, she veered into a pitch-black alley beside the apartment building, giving a dumpster a hard shove that send it flying back into the even darker black, even as she turned, as she unleashed her claws against the roughened brick wall.  The baked clay cracked and crumbled, rent the delicate flesh under her claws, and yet, she couldn’t stop, could she?  Striking time and again, wishing that the anger, the bitterness, the sadness that combined into the ugliest pall that somehow grew darker, more foreboding, no matter how many times she tried to physically beat it away until her hands were bloody, bruised, and torn, her claws worn away to stumps as the nerve endings that lived deep inside those claws screamed and cried with the flow of her own blood.  Cradling her hands against her chest, she flinched, gritting her teeth against the coppery scent that she couldn’t escape, even as she collapsed against the brick wall, closing her eyes, just for a moment, against the ache that hadn’t waned.

Funny, wasn’t it?  How many times over the years had seen Evan lose his temper, seen him unleash his rage on whatever just happened to be close at hand?  And she’d never understood that, had she?  Never understood, just how he could possibly reach the point where the only thing that he could do to release that pain was to lash out?

She pushed herself away from the wall, shot it an angry glance, her wrath, misplaced—utter rage that the building still stood, but even in the stingy light, she could discern the deep gouges that traversed the surface.

But it wasn’t enough.

Miki o sat up, blinking into the darkness, frowning as he shook his head, as he struggled with his sleep-addled brain to figure out, just what had disturbed his fitful sleep.  It could have been anything or nothing, the unsettling feeling that something was just left of center . . .

Heaving a sigh, he dropped his face into his hands.  It wasn’t a dream, no, but he wasn’t sure what it actually was.  The disorienting, almost surreal, sense that everything was off-kilter . . . A sense of something fell?

And he still didn’t know what it was when he tossed back the coverlet and stumbled out of bed, reaching for the slacks he’d dropped over the nearby chair, just before he’d laid down for the night.

By the time he had gotten dressed again, he was a little more awake.  The thing was, he still didn’t know why he felt such a strange sense of urgency, but even now, the sense that something was very, very wrong was growing steadily stronger.

But what?

Even as he asked himself that, as he strode out of the room and down the hallway, taking the stairs, two at a time—something Mikio never did—one name flashed into his head, and his eyes flared wide, his pace quickening even more.

“Madison,” he murmured, striding through the living room and into the foyer, and as soon as her name came to mind, he knew, didn’t he?  The how of it or why didn’t matter; not really.  Madison . . . “She’s . . . She’s in trouble . . .”

Uttering a terse growl as he jammed his feet into his shoes, he slammed out of the penthouse, grinding his teeth together, smashing his palm against the elevator call button over and over again.  It finally, mercifully, slipped open, and he swore that the ride down to the base level took much, much longer than it ever should have.

The doorman on duty greeted him in passing.  He didn’t know if he returned the nicety or not.  Stepping up to the curb, he tried to hail a passing cab, but the driver didn’t stop.  With every moment that passed, the image of Madison’s face grew stronger as the sense that something was very, very wrong loomed larger and darker, and, with a frustrated growl, he stepped back, casting a quick glance, up and down the street, before launching himself up onto the roof of the building beside the hotel.

His first thought had been to go to her apartment, but he had a feeling that she wasn’t there.  He had no way of knowing, whether or not his feeling was right.  Even so, he forced himself to stop, to calm himself enough to keep him from heading out blindly.  In a city so vast, searching for Madison would be akin to looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.

He hadn’t bothered to grab his phone, and for a moment, he considered going back for it.  He started to brace himself to jump back down, but stopped suddenly, his chin snapping up, his eyes, scanning the horizon, as though he were looking for her, which would be entirely stupid, wouldn’t it?  Before he could question it further, however, another very clear jolt shot through him, and he broke into a flat-out sprint over the tops of buildings, leaping easily from one to the next.

As he ran, he forgot his clumsiness, forgot that he could very easily trip, fall, as he had so many times before.  The only thing that he could think of was Madison’s face and that ugly sense that something was just not right.  Traversing the skyline of the night, Mikio’s lungs burned with the exertion, but he didn’t stop, didn’t falter, even as the new and well-kempt buildings gave way to slightly older, more tired ones.  So focused on her, he was that the sense of her proximity didn’t occur to him until he skidded to a halt, as his eyes flared wider, dropping to the darkness that seemed to gather below him, and he knew.

Somewhere down there was Madison—he could feel her—and . . .

With a harsh growl borne more of a sense of desperation than anything else, brought on by the unmistakable scent of Madison’s blood, of her tears, Mikio dropped off the side of the old apartment building, onto the sidewalk below.  He didn’t know what he was about to find, nor did he really care.  The only thing that mattered was that he needed to find her—needed to get to her and needed to take her home.  “M-Maddy,” he said, his voice not much louder than a whisper.

The sound of a broken sort of sob rattled through him, and he turned, blinking fast as the woman stepped out of the shadows of the alley.

And then, with a ragged and horrifyingly elegant, ghastly sob, she threw herself into his arms.