Six
Marla van Kirk stood in darkness, surrounded by
jungle. Overhead, stars dusted the night sky. With a groan of pure
pleasure, she opened her arms to embrace the warmth. She closed her eyes,
threw her head back, and drank in the peace and quiet.
This place was wild and free. For the first time in
her life, she was alone. Her parents had told her it would happen some
day. They would die and she would be free at last. This wasn't the way
they thought it would happen, but it must have happened. How otherwise
could she have gotten away from them?
A cat growled nearby.
Marla paused and watched for movement in the
underbrush. She had never been taught to fear. The world existed to
sustain her. People and animals alike existed to serve and obey the whims
of her parents.
"Kitty-kitty! Here kitty!"
The white Siamese bounced to her from the
underbrush. Marla cried with joy. She had always wanted one. Her
parents had always denied her. Almost desperately, she reached for the
soft, warm fur, and pressed it to her body.
The cat purred for a time.
But the purring grew fainter, and then stopped
altogether.
The cat began to change form.
"No! Please!"
The animal's warmth and softness turned hard and
cold. Instead of a living creature, she cradled instead a foot-tall
statue of porcelain, the present that had been given to her by her parents
on her fifth birthday. The summer previous to that birthday, she had
visited neighbors with a litter of newborn kittens. She had been
forbidden to touch. Her parents had promised her a kitten of her own, and
this was how they had responded to her wishes.
Marla set the statue on the ground. She did not
break it in her anger. She had been taught the value of things. She had
been taught to behave like a young lady. Her defense against the hurt was
to emulate her ever-so-caring parents and not feel anything at all.
It was the way of the world, the only way she knew.
Bright light appeared off to her right. Brilliant,
cold, winter light, her parent's world. Marla turned away from the
glare. The jungle darkness was warm, soft and filled with living things.
Her very life depended upon exploring the unknown and learning a new way
of life.
Something furry passed near her feet. It mattered
little what kind of animal it was. She dropped to her hands and knees and
reached for it eagerly.
"Please, let me pet you!"
A mouse hopped onto the back of her hand. Marla
paused so as not to frighten it away. The lowly creature perched on two
legs and quivered with nervous tension. The heat of its tiny body warmed
her skin. In the next moment, it became a thing of stone.
A voice murmuring close by cut short her
disappointment. At first, the intruders frightened her. It was one fear
she had picked up from her parents, the fear of hooligans and the
poverty-stricken world in which they lived. "But you must know your
enemy," her father had told her last year. It had been the reason he had
sent her to a public high school for her senior year, to live among her
enemies and implement the defenses her parents had instilled in her.
She reached out and parted a bush with one hand to
see who they were. They sat on a park bench, a boy trying to kiss a
girl. The girl sat without moving, without responding to the boy in any
way at all.
Her behavior alarmed Marla. She had to respond. She
had to embrace the boy and kiss back, or he would leave her, and she would
be alone. But the girl was ignorant. And frightened. Marla understood
all too well. Neither did she know how to respond to Rick Kaiser's gentle
displays of affection. Rick was the first boy in her life. The very
first.
Marla gasped in surprise. The intruder was Rick
Kaiser! And the girl? Who was the girl?
Trees rustled overhead in a spring breeze. Patches
of moonlight fell to the ground. Sooner or later, the face of the girl
would be bathed in pale illumination.
It happened, and Marla reeled back in shock. She
brought her arms across her face, as if to ward off an attack.
The girl at Rick's side was a manikin. It wasn't
even a living girl.
And it had her face!
Marla closed her eyes in pain, remembering the times
Rick had tried to kiss her. She had not known how to kiss back. She had
frozen up. She turned into a lifeless manikin each and every time, cold
inside, and hard.
The warmth and the darkness of the jungle shunned
her. The winter glare flared brighter and engulfed the jungle and its
precious secrets. Along with the warmth went her feelings. Drained of
emotion, at least she did not hurt.
The winter light surrounded her with a world more
suited to her station in life. Despite the chill in the air, green hills
rolled beneath a blue sky like an unending golf course, her father's golf
course, no less. She stood upon a cobblestone path that wound through the
hills as far as the eye could see. The cobblestone path led to the gates
of a distant castle.
The castle towered into the blue sky, an edifice of
silver and gold flashing and sparkling in the sun. From such a distance,
it looked like a tiny knick-knack. Marla had seen it before somewhere.
On the living room mantel at home, maybe. A priceless treasure, it meant
nothing to her. Money was a thing her parents cared about. Money bought
things, but things she took for granted.
Still, it was important. She belonged to that
world. It was her responsibility to care for it. In turn, it would care
for her. Her parents had promised that someday all of this would be hers,
a bright and cold world free of risk and danger.
Perhaps this was that day.
