Previously on Wings of Light:
--- *** ---
"Don't worry about me, dear! I'm right there. You can see me in a whole view. In a whole view of tower. In a whole view of a landscape. In a whole view of paradise. You are going to be an uncle of my little precious right there. It will be due in November. You have still time to reflect on the overwhelming process how your sister becomes a mother for initial time. Somebody has to be also either the godmother or godfather of this little precious angel."
"I'm still wondering how did you persevere and you are still standing from the ground even after the severe affliction you've stepped its sticky surface and clamming your palms from the ounce of the tribulations, burdening your hands. I remember how when we're so young just two weeks before Christmas at least, you couldn't stop begging even clashing with me to get back your favourite stuffed animal. That was nothing compared to the hardships you're being through at the moment, Martha! That was just an infantile action to question your stubbornness to put it mildly. It's extremely apparent how persistent you're and you're about to fight for whatever you believe it's right for you and banish everything that weakens you and doesn't actually impacting its greatly fantastic influence to improve your character and your very own being."
--- *** ---
"You have to be Madeleine! It's good to see you at this moment of the day."
"Good evening, Father! It's also amazing to see you."
--- *** ---
"It won't be easy to make the journalists' cats to get their tongues at all. Trust me, they're ferocious wild animals that seek an ordinary person as a prey to fabricate anything about their families or nicknames about their notorious accident they have had a long time ago."
"But Mary Eunice passed away a long time ago and I don't even have any idea how they will assimilate with their teeny-weeny brains whatever you try to explain to them."
--- *** ---
Once the former sleazy jazz nightclub singer's series of monotonously unavoidable whispers of her vermilion sneakers ghosted creamily, relentlessly the concetre empty asphalt, subsequently mild heat pebbled ruthlessly her delicate, alabaster epidermis zapped due to the stark moderation of her uneven pace ghostwriting her jogging. The heart pulsations perkily hysterical battered the frequency of the sluggish pounds thudding her brittle rubcage, guarding with its constructed walls of the megawattly potent heart pulses almost levelling out the sheer adrenaline to spring out of its grate. Fashioning into balled fists her white-knuckled, petite hands on reflex, the frequency of the dully breathless inward inhales and snorts through her tiny, vulnerable nostrils to swig the fresh, nocturnal air during her jogging expedition, the middle-aged lady's naturally roseate, lusciously plumpish lips pursed thoughtfully, warily.
The functioning pulses and muscles melded to pressure restlessly and the genuine epitome of the freedom infectiously sweet laced the middle-aged lady's fat of her berry-coloured tongue, squinting up her fixated cinnamon brown optics forward. The crickets' silver-tonguedly elating, serene songs composed its own nocturnal ballad to play on loop repetitively.
Hypodermic heat of the generous layer of pinkness tinged mischievously tickled the Bostonian's well-carved, chubby cheeks.
What Judy enamored with the leisure jog to ghostwrite a handful of kilometers on her own was the utter relaxation from her daily problems and tremendous responsibilities, encumbering her chaotic daily schedule. It felt like a leisure walk in the park or anywhere where the limited quantity of general population blocked her path to scorch the futile calories and motioning the choir of tandeming muscles to rotate and grind altogether.
"Do ya know what the best about the jogging is?" An inwardly narrative voice echoed through her skull whilst knitting together her thin, elegantly dark eyebrows when the light spring zephyr gently fanned her neatly, casually modest coiffed with its tied in a low bun long wavy aureate hair unlike the fistful of unruly, cheerfully glossy gilded tresses bouncing up along with her soft fat of her bosom, escorting docilely the rhythm. "It asphyxiating the stress and those growling hormones of the incessant reminder of yar daily problems you encounter relentlessly. It's like a teeny-weeny sport to keep yourself in shape." The impending destination of the former licentious jazz nightclub singer was getting back inside the godforsaken hotel as her petite-frame glided smoothly through the lobby after setting foot inside the interior and decelerating her pace deftly when a handful of strangers along with the hotel owner shooting fleet glances at the blonde, who strolled up towards the elevator to ascend to the last floor which was namely the fourth.
In a long minute of awaiting patiently the elevator after manifesting to press the button with a few fingers and darting a fleetly nimble glimpse at the front door and the lobby shortly before the elevator's current progress of descent from the third to the first floor unnervingly ticked, thus ominously ordinary snort coursed through the middle-aged lady's tiny, flexible nostrils and utterly relaxing her arms.
Once the elevator's unceasing descent floor by floor and peaking to the first, the lavishly silver doors swung broadly opened at the illustration of a handful of clients stepping out of their eased entity at last and the former pious sister of the church hopping up inside the site and adjusting for the final floor to get back inside her reserved room emphatically after her evening jogging.
For a moment of pure patience and murderous versatility, Jude peaked to the final floor of the façade and strolled up leisurely, squarely towards her reserved room numbered 406. A couple of fabulously acrylic and watercolor paintings exquisitely hovered on the wine red floral royal wallpapers along with a grandiose French window in the end of the hallway that was categorically shut, in order to prevent any unintentional accidents of any of the hotel customers between suicide and homicide. The first four doors of the abysmally dim lit corridor hardly possessed any inkling of decrepitude unlike the fifth door's discrete details illustrating the actual furniture leading to its linked site apt to variant between series of dim leery scrapes and a few dried dark blood blotches embroidering the wooden material, arousing its candid, gruesomely tangy pinch of salt of every owner's gape darted to the sinisterly imprinted like tattoo traces.
It's not that the Bostonian paid utterly attention to anything encircling her, despite her sharp slyness and razor-sharp intelligence, unconditional instincts and intuition, the gruesomely unspeakable landscape of the scrapes and dry dark blood blotches caught her peripheral eye nonetheless. The haphazardness of halting her unavoidably mere pace gliding through the corridor, her lower deliciously plump lip twitched abruptly and manipulated the twist of a straight line, gauging her sheer nonplus and uncertainness behind the gloomy back story of the leery traces embroidering the room 405's door. The truth eventually was hidden in scarcely glimpsing or at least recalling bright, explicitly scintillating memories of those scrapes and blood blotches adorning the wooden material's furniture shortly before leaving the monumental building for a brief jog. Little did she know if either one of the clients of the hotel refilling the patchy hollow of the despondent, fiendish emptiness possessed any unimaginable personality traits leaning to psychotic or socipathic's wing.
Without a second thought, the blonde retired back to her booked room and stepping inside when the prospect of the younger gentleman absent-mindedly, vastly affectionate stroke their ray of sunshine's short mop of crispy brown strands capping his scalp. Pristinely secure, slim fingers gingerly, solemnly cradled and grazed idly, tenderly the stray chestnut strands whilst flicking up his cinnamon brown jewels to bore into his wife's blushed complexion. A benevolently beatific, vague smile majestically lingered at the corners of his angelically pale-pinkish, cherub lips.
"You're back from the jogging." The ordinary reminder of Timothy's mirth hardly rotating or motioning to fall from his handsome facial attributes as soon as his wife's very presence acknowledgment fueled the patchy loneliness in the site, whereas the middle-aged woman elaborated a healthily guttural, husky chuckle whilst dashing leisurely, plainly to participate in her small family's company by sharing a seat with her husband. "I'm guessing it's been a long time when you did it later than sooner."
"I have to second it," Dropping her head to perch on her husband's broadly muscular, comfy shoulder on reflex, consequently the former sleazy jazz nightclub singer's honey brown big, roundish embers landed on their kipping son. The space she genuinely open-minded traded with the British compatriot and her son and refilling the inescapably patchy, invincible gaps of her temporal absence. No matter if they were in their own very home or anywhere else, as much as they're bonded together, the family is all and everywhere. The poetically majestic, heartwarming space which wore smugly its own title of very sanctum bestowed with myriad of unconditional love, unquestioning warmness and cozy comfort the trio even though Edward Ralph was far cry to be young enough to fathom the logical complexity of its exemplar's notion. It was a sentiment like the others that were worth more than a thousand words essay to be expressed poetically rational and dip inside its mistily abysmal, endless sea of plexuses. Furthermore, his flimsy heart melted every time whenever his parents united and he delightfully was part of their company and fathoming due to his childishly sharp intuition and impulsive instincts the genuine notion of the family sanctum when the elements weren't missing to formulate its puzzle. "I really missed the times when the jogging was part of my anatomy's daily second nature. I could do it like twice daily without even getting tired of," Darting the fat of her strawberry-coloured tongue to lick gamely, idly her upper and bottom cherub lips as the British aristocrat ushered to puff its inward, serene inhale of Jude's neatly messy bun aroma of delicious honey. "Like eating, napping or whatever comes to yar mind unlike the cleaning or cooking."
"Well, you're getting back to your free life even when you're having responsibilities as a parent and a wife!" Pressing a featherly-soft, welcomingly promising peck on top of the former nun's head and then nuzzling delicately his nose against the softly crispy gilded scalp, he admired her ethereal beauty and her hair's crispiness yet. "There's nothing bad to fuel with your creativity your every day episode. It's like watching the movie's franchise but noticing the differences in each new individual segment, regardless how dumb and illogical they could be." The resiliently quiet inhales of the delightfully luxurious fragrance of the former holy woman's hair amplified her heinously hysterical heart pulses throbbing into her ribcage. Profuse, perfectly natural perspiration clumsily, lazily coated her temple and her delicate epidermis underneath her garments. "Your hair's aroma is still scrumptiously majestic as much as your unmatchable uniqueness. It's as crispy as young autumn leaf."
"Yar mouth is always capable of crafting such endless cataracts of compliments on my looks even when I look like a tree."
"You deserve only the best and nothing to discourage you to believe the truth I and Maddie would always stick to."
"Did ya both talk while I was gone?" Pursuing for her husband's lusciously baby-pinkish, plump lips and sealing one another's lips into a brief, sultrily inviting kiss shortly before the dose of vowels and syllables limping backward and forward in the beginning of her tongue blasted one another for domination until the imminent utterance's forge at last, the initial thought of their daughter figure who got utter control over the flower store along with Andrea and Cassandra during the couple's diabolically indisputably absence.
"We did," Gulping sluggishly the thickness contracting his Adam's apple, Judy managed to seize her lips in a pensive, attentive purse while being all ears and honing her petite, vulnerable ears to Timothy's honey-mouthed, boyishly timid mumble whilst fixating his chocolate brown depths to peruse deeply into his wife's hazelish-brown. They spoke emotions. They vibrantly glimmered out the powerful glossiness and the luminous starless nocturnal landscape of Timothy's acknowledgment about his old friend and the young woman's interaction a couple of hours ago and the fame-hungry, bloodthirstily inquisitive journalists labeling the Howards with unthinkable names that imperiled their image and reputation into the general population's eyes every time whenever a newspaper article mentioned either of their names out loud. "She mentioned about our old friend Kellan. There were rumors about us inside the chapel he fought to protect our names from the notoriety and the last newspaper article about Cayden's arrest and how they labeled me as a rape victim."
"My goodness!" At the moment, the older woman manifested to hunker down to untie her sneakers' shoelaces and kicking them off as her obsidian black socks-clad feet creamily glided to ghostwrite the carpeted floor, apocalyptic incredulity at the initial illumination of the revelations sharpened her gorgeous, graciously symmetric facial features while the younger gentleman manifested to dangle his silken, muscular arms to brace her middle to grant her emboldening consolation even when the panic didn't fall from his face. "Did Maddie meet eventually yar old pal in the chapel?"
"They did and discussed so many things, despite his attempts to have a fresh start in Vermont like us." Sharp exhale straightforwardly bubbled up from the British compatriot's brittle lungs when the impotence to halt the cliffhanger of the questions whose answers weren't evidently emphasized to equate to the patchily vapid fragrance that emulated fully to its futility. "Most of the priests that were with him in Boston's St. Andrew church sussurated sweet exaggerations that weren't part of their business at all. The reality we're living in and we're keeping ourselves quiet to mute those gossipers is as fugly as withered flower." All of a sudden, the former devotional man of the cloth followed in the corner of his eye Jude's dexterous, bony fingers working on pulling her maroon sporty, casual sweater up to her shoulders and discarding it on the conveniently royal-like wine red armchair's polished arm pad, shooting a fleetly deft glance at the former aspiring Monsignor. The tension fiercely blazed its own potently megawatt intensity, building the fiery sanctuary of the great deal of drama, cusp of realism and pessimism rationally hungering for solution. It wasn't a good sign of the harmony emulation. It was rather leaning to its celestially low-spirited fierceness of the stubborn journalists' hunger for fame to climb in the hierarchy's hill for more recognition, money while crucially jeopardizing even innocents' reputations and images to scintillate the audience's realistic rationality and being brainwashed by the sugarcoated exaggerations of the publicists. It was a matter of question. "We have something particularly urgent to do."
"If they are aiming to ruin us and our peaceful life we're having in a privately owned property in the countryside, I don't want them then to pretend as if nothing happened after they pissed on our leg and told us it's raining."
"No shit! The journalists are benefiting from the doubts of everything that has happened or said by their protagonists in their own pathetic newspaper story." The suddenness of the former promiscuous nightclub singer stripping off her pair of sporty trousers and dumping them along with the sweater as nothing else than her comfy pair of obsidian black panties paired with her plain lily-white tank top securing her torso and exposing her bare, leanly long arms. "No wonder why Dmitri Shostakovich's life was ruined thanks to the media and his opera Lady Macbeth in the District of Mtsensk was criticized, besides most of his relatives and friends faced much worse consequences than him!" Quirking hair-risingly bittersweet, unspeakably aghast her dark, elegantly thin eyebrows to knit towards the bridge of her nose whilst maneuvering her fingers to knead gently her forehead and fingertips ghostwriting the thick mantle of translucent sweat sponging clumsily her flesh's perpetrator, bedaubing softly the profuse layer of perspiration to peel off her profile at last.
"At least we're not having death camps like the Soviet Union does with the rivals of the country, itself! But I've to admit it's unbearable the others that don't even having any idea what are ya being through every single fucking day," Trying to regulate the decibels of her reprimand after boiling and cooking its cauldron of opulent of stark frustration and daredevil resentment and pessimism ironically smoothed during their incessant drip from the former pious woman of the cloth's mouth. "And yar like whether the superhero or the anti-hero in the newspaper article and those nobodies are gawking at you as if ya have murdered somebody or at least having any involvement in the crime dilemma, ya know," Puffing a sharp, brief snort through her button nose while her rear carelessly perched on the armchair's arm pad and daubing smoothly, unknowledgeable the duo of discarded attires, faintly ducking her head though she didn't avert her gaze from the British compatriot's inviting coffee brown optics. "Their care about your back story and so forth to satiate the journalists' growling stomachs of their fierce vain is under no circumstances. They will eat your hat if they weren't that superficial and impulsive. That keeps the journalists' bellies full and their success prospering rapidly along with earning their miserable salaries of fabricating a tissue of lies that are worth even a couple of cents."
"Despite my apprehension and prejudices, I'll take the utter responsibility to face the apocalyptic tribulations of the publicists to defend our family and our image instead of chasing the rainbow of picturing a peaceful life even when the journalists' quietness is a cold day in July." Meantime, the Bostonian registered to retrieve her clean baby blue bathrobe sprawled recklessly on her shoulder blade shortly before retiring to the en-suite bathroom to take a quick refreshing, lukewarm shower, opting to assimilate the whole dilemma of the phone conversation Timothy and Madeleine swapped with each other just a few minutes ago. "And I almost forgot to mention I saw the fifth door on this floor,"
"There's something fishy behind it!" Jude ushered her nimble tongue to cut off politely whilst approaching her husband once again to toss her leanly marbled, floppy arms to seal them in a tight, warm embrace for a minute. "As soon as I got back in the hotel from the jogging, because I didn't see that on my way outside just a half an hour ago or so."
"The only thing I heard was the desperate bewails of its recent victim of being stabbed with a knife several times. Presumably the hotel owner's assistant smells fishy!"
"Oh! I didn't know psychopaths would be the actual owners of such a place."
"I'm still questioning why Mister Gallagher didn't stop right there in the past few nights when we were still there."
"I would rather not have any interactions with that fishy joe! I would never allow him to shed some light about room 405."
--- *** ---
"No, no, Ewan! There's nothing wrong lurking around the church shortly before shutting it down up to the next morning!" Once the local Hartford's chapel emptied rabidly rapid through the nocturnal daily episode, consequently Kellan Teagan's pristinely meaty, masculinely strong fingers danced around the earpiece that clung to his ear-shell, whilst seating in the cryptic room and the artificial divinely gilt light filtered bountifully the sufficiently expansive space and reclining leisurely on his cherry wood chair.
The truth eventually was that Ewan Fergus and Kellan Teagan traded mutually a sufficiently scandalous age gap that was approximately a decade at least. Further, the both religious men of the cloth's initial encounter was a handful of years ago when the older gentleman had to pay a visit to Adams, Tennessee and once the destiny bonded magnificently unexplainable him with the New Jerseyan, whenever they had sparse time to meet one another after swapping with one another their phone numbers and addresses for their residences' location. Through the advancing time and their stealthy dinner nights either in a luxurious restaurant or on the contrary using their creativity to save their own money for facilities like restaurants, clubs and bars.
In spite of the long time friendship Timothy and the slightly older holy man exchanged together for more than a half a decade, what it was candidly, bloodily oblivious for the former devotional members of the church is one of their old friend's ambiguous lifestyle. If either of them have acknowledged their old friend's ambiguous lifestyle and the double standards impacting generally even if they're emulating to the subtle exposure, thus it would be truly questioned how the New Jerseyan hasn't left the church for better life due to his sexual orientation that was rather deemed as out of the norms according to the contemporary society and the solemnly austere, unwelcoming morals of the recent decade. It would be a betrayal if the religious clergyman shed the light about his sexual orientation in front of his old friends. Galore of controversially explicit scenarios flashed in his blizzard of thoughts and the bitter flavor of the betrayal about unexposed intimate questions that have to do with his personal life.
Even the most intimate, discreetly subtle secrets cannot be scintillatingly bright illuminated and leak in front of the others' eyes unless its owner wisely decides who must be his buddies that are presumed to not spread the word about their discrete secrets.
The both clergymen Ewan and Kellan usually exchanged with one another phone conversations to keep themselves updated about their daily lives like once daily at least. The last time the duo have beheld each other was a handful of weeks ago.
"Is it eerily empty as it's supposed to be?" The New Jerseyan's pleasant lilt emphasized prominently his posed question while his other mammoth, veiny hand's long fingers handily braced his wine glass of mouth-watering red liquor, lacing remarkably his oral caverns and berry-coloured tongue.
"Yes and it's just like that for a half an hour already except for some late visitors that are back from work and just arrived there to pray their hearts out."
"Aw, I see, sweet pie! Because my chapel is empty as ghost town during the evening hours." The haphazardness of nefariously unpreventable creak of the monumentally lacquered double door of the chapel wailed and tingling its own amusing ode into the older man's flexible ears, keeping his wits about the recent hallowed building's visitor.
An arcanely mystic embarrassing silence arched between the pairing through their earpieces enduring almost a straight minute without conjugating any single blatantly stark vowel except their breathing fueled meagerly the frigid hollow.
Even when the recent hallowed building's visitor equated to unknown yet for the older gentleman, whereas his persistent attempts to sort his mind neatly, smartly, his sapphire blue minerals landed subconsciously on one of the grandiose acrylic painting, manipulating to dart his wet, strawberry-coloured tongue to moisten with its indisputably healthy hydration his upper cherub lip. Little did he know what kind of intentions the unknown visitant and flabbergastingly scorching the frigid emptiness and abysmal barrens. Anyway the majority of the church visitants didn't have any vicious intentions in the form of harming the other strangers, nuns and holy men or infectiously contaminating with its sinisterly rowdy turmoil of heated debates and wee hints of harassment.
"I'm genuinely sorry, sweet pie, but I really have to go, because there's a particular visitor whose face I haven't even imbibed with my own eyes." Dramatically cold-blooded, doubtlessly icy exhale unloaded the Bostonian's toned torso, lingering the broadly vibrant, beamingly cheesy smile spreading across his naturally baby-pinkish, scrumptiously plump lips while curling them in the low-spirited caution. "We'll see each other very soon and I strongly promise you to return the call by tomorrow the morning. Good night and I love you, Ewan!"
"It's okay, baby!" The meek sensuality creamily spotlighted his straightforwardly open-minded instant response to his boyfriend's excuse, although the inevitable a handful of cracks tattooing blood-curdlingly on his frail heart and equating to the heartache due to the fact the duo will miss one another even if it was until the next morning to hearken each other's adorable, silver-tongued voices tingling angelic hymns. "You better check who that is and I love you too way more than you can imagine, Kellan! Good night!" Once the New Jerseyan ushered his mumble to ghostwrite the earpiece huskily, seconds before peeling off his gracious sweet nothings, humble pip echoed through his eardrum.
When the Bostonian lifted up his rear and readjusted the earwig back to the handset and retreating from the site and his fingers switched off the lights, subsequently a familiar face at first sight caught his eye, although the maintenance of their approximately unnatural huge distance. The familiar character that appeared to be the recent chapel's visitor did seem far from unfamiliar according to his perceptions even if it's been months since his final stay in the small city of Massachusetts.
The more the middle-aged gentleman managed to approach the brunette, more of her physique loomed to cloud his lapis lazuli gemstones. Wasn't that woman Lana Winters? How ironic she pays a visit to one of the local Hartford's churches in the wee hours of the night! Her appearance and character didn't parallel to the religiousness of the majority of the general population nowadays. Even though Father Kellan Teagan had a doubtless interaction with the brunette back in Boston, he wasn't very fond of her imprisonment in one of the most ill-famed mental institutions of the small city of Massachusetts. He didn't think it was fair to imprison somebody just because of their sexual orientation that was far cry from the most of the general population's. A big dose of questions encumbered his train of thoughts and the inability yet to discover their leaked brilliantly crystal answers he seeks about Lana Winters's escape from Briarcliff and establishing nowhere else than in Hartford, Vermont.
"It's Lana Winters, right?" The pleasantly northern lilt of the priest punctured his gracious politeness, enveloped in sacred benevolence whilst maintaining an appropriate, graceful eye contact with the journalist, softening his handsome facial attributes whilst a sympathetically vague smile bloomed upon his mouth.
"Yes, Father! I'm there for a pretty serious conversation to hold there." In the interim, the middle-aged man's bottom brim lip curled at her undeniable honesty, in spite of the tartly salty flavor of the cryptical mystery behind her ultimate freedom to join the general population and resume strong-willedly her career in journalism.
"Just of curiosity how did you know about my current establishment in Vermont?"
"A child's play!" Meanwhile, Kellan Teagan manifested to bob docilely modest his head whilst being all ears to acknowledge the real motives how the brunette has tracked down not only him, but also the Howards that were currently on a honeymoon in Adams, Tennessee. Wryly hoarse, half-hearted chuckle roared through the middle-aged lady's mouth when the subconsciously woeful prejudices behind the brunette's identity and arcanely peculiar demeanor during their second interaction aroused his ruefully somber doubts the bright contrast between the hopelessly despondent, helpless patient committed against her will in the most nefarious mental institution of Boston and the beatifically cocksure, acute woman whose petite, delicately marbled hands' fingers daubed series of times the typewriter's buttons to formulate the sheets of papers' fabrication to rise in the higher tiers of her prosperous career and the recognition of her famous protagonist to leak even the most discrete secrets and unthinkably untouchable circumstances about notorious personas and sites. Even a single encounter that's situated a year at least after the horrifically horripilative events compensate the hopelessness of the prisoner of the destiny and flapping its celestially aureate wings of the haughtiness and childlike carelessness as soon as their gruesomely rusty, ominously lifeless cages were unlocked and they participated in the huge mass of the nobodies, gliding smoothly through the aisle of the divinely unique liberty. "I asked a few priests to give me more information about your current location along with Sister Jude," Clearing gruffily his throat with a muffled cough after politely swatting his colossal, creamy hand to diminish the blatantly stronger decibels, whereas stifling every variant of cryptically spine-chilling, peculiar noises and devilish slurs, fortunately, dying on his tongue. "And the Monsignor as I know you're best of the friends during your priesthood, if I'm not mistaking."
"Correct, Miss Winters!" The futility of questioning her escape from the mental hospital urged him to not find any tangible inkling of altering the topic sooner than later that could bring him nothing else than misunderstanding and antagonistic troubles with the brunette. "I and Timothy are still friends even with Jude!"
"He isn't a priest anymore?" What it peculiarly aroused the middle-aged woman's authentically outstanding inquisitiveness to discover more about the Howards' contemporary life and their associations with the Bostonian. Furthermore, what Lana could barely envision the explicitly vivid scenarios of the British compatriot was no longer serving the ecclesiastical duties by choosing the family and re-building his value system all over again over rising in the highest tiers of the church and becoming Cardinal and afterwards the Pope at last.
"Yes!" A heavy sigh flushed the middle-aged gentleman's tiny, flexible nostrils whilst Lana tried to assimilate iron-willedly the recent information leaking through the holy man she saw once back during her imprisonment in the facility. Moreover, she wasn't very fond of the Bostonian's old friend who resigned from the church to pursue his altruistic motives of being a family man instead of choosing slyly the power and divine recognition. "He has his own family and he preferred Jude and their son over the clerical duties, you know! The times are changing, the priorities also do. Don't they?"
"Interesting!" Cunning sarcasm punctured the brunette's prim, childish excitement to detect more about the wed couple's contemporary life, whilst maneuvering to lick greedily, gamely her lips and smoothly ghosting the fat of her tongue to smear its fresh dew, subsequently luminously glimmering past the clergyman's ocean blue gemstones, igniting its fiercely scorching curiosity to uncover more of Lana's debatable intentions, donning her up in the mystically dark invisible attires of her journalistic imagination and exuberant curiosity. "I'm actually an old friend of Sister Jude."
"It's not just a sister of the church anymore, Miss Winters! Don't try harder to call them with their clerical titles that they wore just months ago! It's like eating the food that was thrown in the garbage bin and recycled with other remnants of the garbage!"
"I'm essentially there in Hartford because they are about to have an upcoming interview due in June!"
"I know that my old friends will be interviewed to break the ice about the labels they are being portrayed in that newspaper article about Cayden Gray, the infamous serial killer of Vermont."
"Do you have any information where I can find right now Mr. Howard along with Jude?"
"They aren't there in Hartford. They're gone to Tennessee for their honeymoon and they will back soon."
Notwithstanding the circumstances, Father Kellan Teagan has never been a keen fan of the journalists and their starkly razor-sharp intuition and celestially unholy intelligence melding with their childlike, superfluous nosiness that's the crucially realistic, apocalyptic symptom of thousand of ruined lives because of the media and turning their lives onward instantaneously afflictive.
Further, the fame-hungry reporter arrived a couple of hours ago in Vermont, in order to accomplish her quest of having an initial interaction with the Howards months after their encounter back in their past lives paging up a few pages ago in their books of their own lives. Plenty of embarrassing uncertainness to embrace with open arms the fact that her former captor and her husband were gone in the other part of the enormous country burdened the journalist's vortex of thoughts which hysterically heinous whirled and twirled their disastrous process of overthinking.
In the corner of her smoky quartz cabochon she followed the criminally brisk phenomenon of the petered out smile and replaced with a straight line due to the sheerly vexing prying nature of the chapel visitant. She knew so far that the former ambitious Monsignor's old friend commenced to develop his dislike for Lana and her cryptically unexplainable, ominously vicious intentions, wisdom swathing thickly the core of his gearing thoughts.
"Your prying starts to bother me, Miss Winters! If you are about to label them with unspeakably gross nicknames in whatever your tissue of lies like the other journalists, just forget about stepping there and using me as a source for drawing a long bow!"
"I'm not prying or intruding, Father!" Ushering a pout to curve her naturally rosy-coloured, cherub lips in a grimacing fussy frown decorating her face when the Bostonian's mouth struggled to elaborate a huskily wry, dry snigger whilst crossing his muscly, toned arms across his chest.
"Oh really? If Jude is your friend, then you would use her for your own story that you're currently writing and thinking that is okay to mention names without the consent of their owners." Inclining ruefully mischievous, smart-aleckily an eyebrow at the visitant's suspicious demeanor and her self-absorbed thought of gaining fame after collecting myriad of evidence about the Howards' contemporary life. "That's your purpose. When it rains, it pours, Miss Winters! I just told you enough about them and I cannot get enough of your ego and infantile curiosity yearning to learn more about them even when I mustn't be the person that I am giving you this information. It's like betrayal to them."
--- *** ---
--- The Next Morning ---
--- 8th of April, 1966 ---
Once the nocturnal daily episode bled into the daylight with the phenomenally breathtaking evolution of the sunrise and the spring divinely big, aureate sun climbing smoothly the horizon, subsequently Madeleine and Cassandra got back at work unlike their eldest co-worker, Andrea who was sharing an encounter with the security guard Frank in one of the nigh cafeterias.
During their shift, the both young women managed to discuss a couple of topics that aroused their interest while music was playing on the radio and humming in the background.
"Honey you do me wrong but still i'm crazy about you! Stay away too long and i can't do without you! Every chance you get you seem to hurt me more and more! But each hurt makes my love stronger than before! I know flowers go through rain! But how can love go through pain!" The recent song that was playing on the radio was Ain't That Peculiar by Marvin Gaye as his honey-mouthed mellifluous voice chanted the lyrics with galore of emotions and feelings raining in the instrumental apt to tandem and matching ideally with the song's ambience and vibes.
"A few clients have passed through this door and I can't go to the nearby chain store to buy some fruit for here!" In the interval, the both young women seated alongside one another whilst Madeleine was having her morning coffee in a plain floral mug, whereas her pristinely dainty, long fingers braced the mug handle and lugging the marbled entity, in order to hydrate herself with modicum of caffeine lacing her tongue and oral caverns eventually. A flat line adorned the Michiganian's roseate lips. It was neither an angelically vibrant smile, nor a fiendishly despondent frown.
"You will be fine, Maddie!" The suddenness of Cassandra's nimbleness ghostwriting her elvish, delicate hand clawing amicably, lightly her friend's shoulder blade didn't ignite the very flames of horripilative startlingness spiking her milky epidermis. Gentle squeeze followed by a wryly light-hearted, angelical snicker bubbled up from the older woman's feminine Adam's apple whilst boring her chocolate brown embers into the hazelish-brown. Twains of chocolate and hazel potently magnifying the great deal of magnetism, subsequently tinging the Michiganian's well-sculptured, chubby cheeks with healthily vermillion hue, hypodermically crawling underneath her facial skin. "I can go to the nearby chain store to purchase abundance of fruit for us to keep our stomachs filled with healthy, biological entities instead chemistry." A benevolently megawatt huge grin curved Cassandra's nude pink mouth to twitch its own lips rapidly rabid, whilst lingering her fingers on the cotton bubblegum sweater's attire and manipulating her fingertips and digits to circle the frequently soothing motions.
"You don't have to do it for me, Cass! I'll be fine to do it on my own." Dawdling the brace of her delicate fingers to tandem the grapple of her porcelain mug, consequently the Michiganian channelized her physical strength to lift up repetitively the entity, in order to swig cordially a handful of tiny sips as the rim of the mug gingerly grazed beneath the raw spot of her bottom lip.
"Since you're the younger one, you better stay here and take care of the things until I get back," Managing to discard her hand from Madeleine's shoulder blade, throughout the dexterous motion of the older woman to cup in the palms of her delicate hands her friend's profile, whilst her grin was replaced with a benevolently sympathetic smile beaming vibrantly sunny at her, in order to soften her youthfully fresh facial attributes. "It won't take more than a few minutes for my return, Maddie!" Then the younger lady dumped her cup of caffeine beverage on top of the hardwood bureau whilst channeling her arms to brace Cassandra's upper back at last being all ears. "Okay?"
"Okay!" Managing a nod in strong agreement even when the Michiganian wasn't very fond of the others to pamper her and bloodthirstily villainous to satiate her needs, then the older woman lifted up her rear from the chair and retrieved her personal purse from the second drawer of the bureau as the juvenile blonde reclined leisurely, fussily against her seat, flickering up her hazelish-brown optics to scan her friend's petite frame fully. "Take care!" Shortly before dashing out of the site, the older blonde pressed a platonically affectionate, creamy peck on top of the Michiganian's head and stroking featherly-soft the recently kissed spot with her orthodoxy smooth fingertips.
"Of course, Cass! Always anything for you!"
"Good girl!" A couple of moments before retiring to outdoors, the Vermontian ushered her forefinger teasingly amiable to point at the younger blonde and swapping with one another healthily guttural, blatantly beatific giggles droning the flower store interior's background, participating boldly to choir with the playing music.
"Ain't that peculiar? A peculiar-arity! Ain't that peculiar, baby? Peculiar as can be! Oh, you tell me lies that should be obvious to me! But I'm so much in love with you, baby, 'till I don't want to see!"
"Ain't that peculiar?" As soon as the flower store's interior emptied with a person less, meantime, the blonde's coffee-stained, glossy lips curled in chanting diligently mellifluous the lyrics, in spite of her lacking talent in singing, but she really enjoyed to annoy her older brother and the others that could scarcely bear her artificial singing voice to accent the chansons' lyrics, clapping her hands and escorting boldly the rhythm as her legs folded. "A peculiar arity!" Suddenly the door whined infamously and catching off guard the blonde when the journalist stepped inside the flower store as her persona was unfamiliar to the young woman except what she has harked about her so far. "Good day, ma'am!"
"Good day, miss!" A primly beaming, villainous smile tugged at the corner of Lana's bloody red painted lip, darting her coffee brown optics to prong the unfamiliar blonde.
In a long minute of uncomfortably sinister, bone-chilling hush strangling headstrongly the female pairing while the Bostonian managed to survey in a scrutiny the wooden-framed Polaroid photograph of the flower store owner with the former pious woman of the cloth, oblivious to the Michiganian's leery stare scanning her facial attributes to acknowledge her additional intentions that were far cry from detectable and tangible at first sight.
"M-My Goodness! Sister Jude!" Solely distinctive the lowered decibels transmuted into a muffled girlishly sheepish whisper curling Lana's lower cherub lip, whilst manifesting to paw gingerly, mousy her delicate jaw as her coffee brown jewels kindling with luminously fierce inquisitiveness and slyness, yet oblivious to Madeleine's incredulous scintillating glare draining off each vibrantly aglitter colour of her milky face. Furthermore, something incredulous skeptical donned up in its thin veil the enigmatically bewildering attitude of the recent visitor in the flower store's interior that evolved the juvenile blonde's very hurricane of thoughts to masterize her own speculative theories behind the thin veil of enigmatically skepticism shimmering its somberly hazy nuances past her vision.
"Are you actually there for flowers or plants to purchase, ma'am?" During her iron-willed attempt to detect the brunette's crucial motive to populate fleetly the site, ironically melodious low hum escaped her pursed lips.
"Not at all! I was looking for some people that can give me more information about Miss Judy Martin and her boyfriend even if they are currently on honeymoon in Tennessee."
"How could you," A few self-consciously woeful stammers slipped sloppily from the blonde's tongue tip, shaking frequently her head due to the reporter's outspoken confession and opting to prevent a migraine or other kind of a headache with rubbing on circles her flimsy forehead and manipulating her fingertips to motion gently. "Testing the waters by drawing a long bow about the Howards just to put it in your pathetic upcoming story and mentioning their notorious side what they did to you back a few years ago!"
"I'm not here for," The strong-willed attempts of the reporter to elaborate a retaliation while dozens of vowels and syllables awkwardly sluggish limped backward and forward in the beginning of her dry, strawberry-coloured tongue, softening her young-looking, delicate facial features due to the authoritatively bellicose flower store's saleswoman.
"For what?" Raising an arch of her thin, elegantly dark eyebrow whilst folding her arms across her ribcage to demonstrate her authoritatively nonchalant, bellicose nature that brightly contrasted with the unbelievably diligent, painstaking other protagonist fragmenting her general character. The sardonically outstanding interruption of the journalist's stutter articulating her retaliation against the Michiganian's ironical reprimands registered the restless fidgety motion of the older woman's fingers."I can smell your sweet lies and your journalistic shallow mind just to owe you anything I am not under an obligation to you actually, Miss Winters! You are on fire on about the water under the bridge just to be blind leading the blinds that is called your circle of fans to believe any quantity of your fabrications in your forthcoming book like for example about Jude and Timothy as great examples."
"I'm not lying. I want to find out about their nowadays lives. It doesn't hurt the knowledge."
"That things you do and say are designed to make me blue! It's a doggone shame my love for you makes all your lies seem true! But if the truth makes love last longer! Why do lies make my love stronger? (stronger, stronger, stronger)! Ain't that peculiar? Peculiar as can be!"
"Oh hi there, Cass and Lydia!" When the door swung widely opened at the prospect of the homosexual police officer accompanied by the young mother of two children grasping a handful of plastic bags with variety of fruit such as green and red apples, bananas, oranges and fern green pears while they overlooked the prying journalist.
The truth eventually was that, in spite of Lydia's lewd demeanor back on Valentine's Day towards Jude, she often paid a visit to the flower store to fulfill her sacred atonement with frequent colloquy with the flower store saleswomen. Moreover, Lydia Jane cordially relished each second she spent in Cassandra, Andrea, Madeleine and Judy's company as well.
"Lydia, sweetie!"
"Yes, Maddie?"
"Could you get that prying journalist out of my flower store for asking a bit too much about Jude and Timothy's nowadays life without their consent?"
"Of course, anything for you, Maddie!" At the moment, the police officer registered to non-verbally drag out the reporter from the flower store's interior, whereas the young mother of two retreated back to her seat and settled the plastic bags with fruit on top of the desk.
--- *** ---
--- The Next Morning ---
--- 9th of April, 1966 ---
When the beginning of the weekend became a victim of the wee hours of the morning's lull, consequently the pale gilt sunny light streamed through the hospital's window.
It was high time for Sebastian and Martha to flee the medical façade after severely persistently recovering from their unthinkably afflictive injuries and wounds of the accident situated a couple of days ago.
As soon as the young medical student came to her senses and fashioning into balled fists her elvish, creamily milky hands to rub her groggy minerals and afterwards muffling a blatantly impulsive yawn until her cinnamon brown minerals landed on the other hospital bed and noting the significantly very essential details such as the messily crinkled bed sheets and the unwrapped oyster-white blanket. Presumably her uncle was gone either to the bathroom or on the contrary fled their patient room. Strangely doctors' very presences didn't populate the site.
All of a sudden, the nefariously bone-chilling subtle sound of swaying immobile body until the juvenile brunette's gaze didn't land on her uncle's corpse and her classy, elegantly exquisite emerald green scarf tightly emphatic, invincibly bided his throat on the window's handle as her heart sunk in the mistily abysmal, blood-curdlingly timeless ocean of heartbreak, in fact, her uncle committed suicide without her knowledge until the demise's scenario vividly leaked in front of her after waking up.
"Oh God!" Refraining to craft series of emotionally miserable, heinously hysterical bewails at the top of her lungs whilst twin fat crystalline tears trickled down her frail chubby, ghostly pale cheeks, clawing docilely her chapped mouth and scarcely averting her gawk in mortified awe. "Oh no!" Rowdy, desperate bewail dripped sloppily uncontrollable from her mouth.
Author's Note: Another cliffhanger that emerges per a few chapters at least.
What are your thoughts on Lana's reborn? Do you think Jude and Timothy made the best decision about the interview? What do you think about Sebastian's final scene or rather the real motive of the cliffhanger?
Don't be shy and share with me your real thoughts! I would love to hear them! I hope you liked and enjoyed the new chapter! :))