Gang: Book 3

Murderer

He was talking about all of this as though it had already passed, as though we were all already dead.

"Gene—"

He had taken up my hand again, but it felt clammy against my fingers.

"Naru's gone," he said. "He's gone. I told you, we're identical twins, this is my body too. Please..."

I tugged my hand from his grasp. "If that's true, why are you so desperate for me to accept you? How would that change anything?"

"Because I love you—"

"How could you?" I couldn't help how the words snapped out like wire. "You're dead. Do you even know how long you've been dead? You said in that plain that time was irrelevant, so do you even know how old I am?"

He scoffed. "Of course I do. You're fifteen."

"Look closer, Gene. I'm eighteen."

That cold stillness came over him. The gunshots on the screen abruptly died, leaving the crouched protagonist crouched behind his new shelter, gun in hand. Cautiously, he peered around the corner. His pursuers had vanished. It was like they'd been spirited away.

"I don't see how that matters," he whispered.

"Then how about this," I said, my words spilling out of my mouth quicker than I could consider them. "You say I don't know death, but do you know life? What makes you alive? If you can't feel time, if you can't breathe and smell and contemplate the things that pass without your thoughts blurring into one another—affected by every other that passes through you---how could you possibly love me?"

"Because I've watched you, I know you—"

"How? Have you ever seen me eat? Ever seen me watch Sherlock? Ever seen me live? That plain of foxfires isn't like a movie theater, despite how many times you've lead me into it like it was one."

He ducked his chin and scowled in a way more violent than Naru could have ever managed. "This isn't philosophy, Mai. Naru's gone, and my life will mean nothing if none of you will even accept me for who I am."

"I thought we were talking about me?"

With a grunt of frustration he pushed himself out of the folding seat, his half-lit face sharp, angry, un-Naru.

"Go away, Mai. Just go away."

But I stood as well. We had yet to touch upon the most important thing, and he couldn't go until I said it.

"Why didn't you pass on?" I asked.

"I already told you, Naru held me back—"

"You know just as well as I that he had no power to do that. He isn't even a spiritualist."

"He didn't want to hold me back, it's just his very existence."

"Gene," I grabbed his wrist as he moved to leave. "You've forgotten, haven't you?"

"Let go."

"You stayed behind for Naru, why? I know you love him, I can see it in the way you talk about him—"

"Mai, I warn you—"

"—if what you say is true and he really is gone, you've murdered him, Gene. You got that? You're a murderer!"

So quick I hardly saw it, his wrist ripped from my grasp and he lashed out, slapping me, twisting up his other fist in my shirt, pushing me over the next row of seats. Even as he did it, I kept my eyes open, watching the terror that wracked him, twisted him, and the contrast of his black hair against his white skin made all the worse by the bleached lighting of the movie screen.

"...tell a man the truth, and he shoots at you. How's that for poetry?" said the protagonist on the screen. I heard a click of a gun and, for a brief, horrifying moment, with my back cringing from the cold floor, leg smarting from where it had caught between two seats, skirt nearly flipped up to my chest, and cheek throbbing in time with my spinning head, I thought Gene had gun.

But his hands were empty and open over the back of the seats.

His tortured expression would haunt my nightmares and quiet moments forever. He lifted his arms out, as though to fly, or though he was suddenly horrified that they were attached to him.

"Mai..." It came out a strangled choke."What in the...I..."

"In the name of Jesus Christ our God and Lord---"

Gene jumped wildly. John's voice broke through the rumbling ambiance of the movie like a bell on a winter morning.

"—strengthened by the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of god—"

Gene was crashing into movie seats, stumbling out into the aisle.

"—of the Blessed Michael the Archangel—"

But the theater door had already slammed against the wall. Gene was gone.

And John was rushing to my side as I unstuck my legs from between the seats.

"Mai! Are you alright?"

"Forget me, get Gene!"

"He's got longer legs than me, Mai, he's probably out of the building by now. He's gone."