The Night of Shadows: Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO - Isidora

I tried to open my eyes, but my lids felt too heavy. I couldn’t remember why I felt like I was drugged. I couldn’t remember where I was. When I finally got my eyes to open and focus, I realized I was in a hospital bed with machines and an IV hooked up to me. I tried to reach up to my face to pull the plastic tube wrapped around my ears and over my face, but someone else’s hand stopped me from removing it.

“Don’t remove that, please. It’s a nasal cannula, it’s giving you oxygen,” a voice to my left stated. I tried to look in that direction, to see where the voice was coming from, but as soon as I moved my head, my vision became blurry.

“Where am I?” I choked out of a throat that felt like it was full of sand.

“You’re in hospital, Signora. You and your husband were in a car crash a number of weeks ago.” The face the voice was coming from finally came into view. The person looked like a doctor of some kind? He was in a white lab coat and scrubs, just like they make them look in the TV shows. He had a vaguely familiar look about him that I couldn’t place.

“A car crash?” I asked, a feeling of anxiety starting to build in my chest. “Where’s Ivar? Where’s my husband?” I was trying to sit up now, pulling again at the cords and tubes coming out of me.

The doctor put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me back down on to the bed as two nurses came in to assist him. “Oh, Signora. I’m sorry to tell you, but your husband died at the scene.”

“He’s dead?” My voice became shrill as the anxiety turned to panic, and I started fighting off the hands holding me down but it felt like there were too many hands and I couldn’t swat them away. They just kept coming back.

“Sì, Signora,” the doctor continued. Finally, the nurses had strapped me down to the bed with some kind of velcro straps and the doctor had moved to the foot of the bed. “He was, ah, decapitatio …. uh, decapitated!” The doctor clapped his hands together and his face lit up like he just solved a puzzle. “His head was not found at the scene.”

“WHAT?” The scream that came out of me sounded inhuman. It felt like the walls vibrated from it. The force I used to try to lift myself off the bed with strained the straps holding me down.

“Well, I took his head, Isidora,” the doctor’s voice changed, suddenly, as his lips were at my ear. They barely grazed the skin of my earlobe and made my stomach turn. He ran his hand up my throat. He didn’t need to do anything other than that; the panic tightened my throat for him. My ability to breath was very slowly leaving me, as any strength I may have had in my arms quickly disappeared and they dropped to my sides in their restraints.

“I’ll have it mounted in my study. The first of the many Alphas, Lords, Kings, all of them, that I’ll use you to bag.” The fake doctor roughly seized my chin with his hand, running his thumb over my lower lip. Dread had landed in the pit of my stomach, hard, as I stared into his piercing blue eyes. I felt like a butterfly pinned to a board under those eyes.

“But don’t worry - that beast you played family with didn’t die alone. We made sure that mongrel he put in you died with him.”

I gasped as my eyes widened. The tears overwhelmed my eyes before I consciously realized what his words meant.

“Oh. You didn’t know you were pregnant, did you?” He was so amused with himself. He moved his free hand down over my abdomen and pressed down slowly. The pain blossomed through my body like a rose in slow motion and it pushed a wave a nausea up to the back of my throat. I closed my eyes as tight as I could and bared my teeth to keep from screaming.

It didn’t take long for me to feel like I was drowning in the emotional and physical pain of this entire situation. Why hadn’t I died in that car wreck with Ivar? What was the point of surviving it for this?

“Don’t worry! When I find you again,” he moved in closer so our lips were almost touching as he rubbed his nose against mine, “and I will find you again, you’ll serve a much greater purpose than overpopulating this world with litters of more filthy abominations.”

My body jolted upright in bed, tangled in the sheets and covered in sweat. I was breathing like I had just sprinted a 100m in less than nine seconds.

I glanced at the end table and saw the dim blue glow of the clock displaying that it was 3:30am. The shiba inu of the pack, Wartooth, was lying next to me and staring directly at me. He made a small sound and moved to nudge something on the bed toward me. It was the plaid jacket that Ivar used to wear.

Every night, it was the same thing. The dreams might be different, but they were always horrible. Sometimes, they were soul crushing, like this one, reminding me of what I had and lost. I preferred the ones where I was just ripped to shreds by large shadow monsters with thousands of eyes.

I slowly pulled it up, buried my face in it, and inhaled deeply. Sea salt. Cedar. Summer storms. I closed my eyes and could almost feel his fingers combing through my hair. I rolled over on to my side, still holding the jacket up to my face as my tears leaked out. I felt Wartooth curl up behind my knees as tight as he could and I fell back into a dreamless sleep.

About three hours later, my alarm went off. My body jerked awake like I had just dozed off in a high school trig class and heard the teacher call my name. In between the time I fell back asleep and now, all eight dogs decided to sleep on the bed with me. Today was going to be rough, I thought to myself as I tried to extricate my body from the game of Sleep Tetris I found myself in.

Wartooth was still behind my knees. Ralphie was being the little spoon to my big spoon. Nymeria, the northern Inuit dog, was curled up by Wartooth and had her head on my feet. Dillion and Dutch, the cane corsos, had both managed to position themselves behind me in a way that they could alternate kicking me in the kidneys. Barda, the bear coat shar-pei, was on her back at the foot of the bed with her legs straight up. Machete, the xoloityzcuintli, was on the pillow next to my head with Little Bit, the scottie/yorkie mix, curled up on him.

I honestly considered just staying there until I couldn’t feel my legs anymore, but soon changed my mind when the most rancid smell hit me like a brick in the face.

“Alright,” I gagged. “Y’all suck. C’mon, get up before I die from what has to be a Geneva Convention violation.” The dogs each woke up and moved at their own pace. Ralphie, Barda, and Nymeria were the morning people of the group and were immediately at the sliding glass door that led to the fenced in yard. I slowly got to my feet, every joint in my body aching already, and hobbled over to open the door for them. I left it open so all the dogs could come in and out as they pleased and continued my way to the bathroom.

When I got in there, I pulled my med organizer out of the top drawer. I did the same thing I did every morning and every night: I took that day’s container out (today was Wednesday); shook it to make sure I hadn’t taken my meds already and had forgotten; popped open the side of the container that coincided with the time of day it was (morning or night); emptied the pills into my mouth (three in the morning, five at night); and followed it down with a glass of water.

That was just the daily pill routine. That didn’t account for the weekly injections.

The car wreck might have been four years ago, but I would carry the physical disabilities from it until I died. Shit, some of them might even kill me, eventually. If I’m lucky, it’ll happen sooner rather than later, I thought. The invisible trauma of what happened apparently wasn’t enough, I also needed it reflected on the outside for everyone to see.

While I waited for the shower to warm up, I stared down at the scar on my sternum. It cut a path almost directly down the center of the sacred heart chest tattoo that I had there. It ripped into the flames at the hollow of my throat and tore a jagged line almost to the bottom of the heart design, stopping just short of it. I lightly traced my fingertips over the discoloured skin. It had that smooth, silky feel that scarred flesh gets after a few years.

I gave a deflated sigh and got in the shower where I would have to go over all the other scars, big and small, that the car wreck and surgeries left me with.

I stepped out after scrubbing and rinsing everything in the auto mode that I did most tasks these days. While working the extra water out of my hair with a towel, I looked up and caught my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t recognize myself.

There had been some face blindness that came with the brain injury, where I could walk right by someone I had known all my life and not recognize them at all. This was different.

The me I remembered was a 34 year old artist that was covered in tattoos, had long ocean blue-green hair that match her eyes, and an athletic build that her husband regularly treated as something to be worshipped (even if she thought he was absolutely out of her league and could do so much better). She was sharp, loved to travel and write and make art and laugh with people she just met.

The person I saw in the mirror looked hollow. Pale skin, washed out blue eyes with dark circles under them, shoulder length hair that was mostly a brownish red outgrowth with areas of silver white starting to show up. The ends were faded blue dye (except for the shaved undercut), and the scars. Always the scars. And they were everywhere.

The main one, the one that was out there on main street and I couldn’t hide it, ran from underneath my chin and up to my left ear, contouring the edge of my cheekbone. The other started above my left eye, went through my eyebrow, and cut into my hairline. The end of the scar stopped at one of the points of the  tattoo of antlers I had on my scalp where my undercut was.

The person looking back at me just looked tired and like she didn’t want to be here anymore. She didn’t want to be alive anymore and I was trapped in her body. I wasn’t sure how to deal with that.

After I got myself dressed in simple jeans and a T-shirt with one of my favourite bands on it, I put on a random pair of Doc Martens without lacing them up and grabbed a comic book themed hoodie before rounding up the dogs and closing the sliding door.

We all headed down the hall towards the kitchen, I limped slowly as the cane only relieved so much pain, and the dogs kept pace with me. On passing by Kiernan and Bran’s door, I could hear the steady rhythm of their bodies in motion together. The void in my center felt like it grew bigger as a gasp and a groan stopped the previous sounds for a moment. I hobbled faster to get out of the house and to the barn.

The weather was still cold in the mornings at this time of the year. Cold in the mornings, warm during the days, cold at night. Repeat off and on until Autumn rolled back around again. Even though Colorado weather was usually fickle, you could always bet on that pattern for spring. It made the animals congested and snotty until the summer months kept the nights from dipping into the forties. As it was right now, you could still see your breath in the mornings.

The first place the dogs and I stopped was the bird pens. It was already full of clucking and squawking as the chickens, ducks, peafowl, and emu waited for someone to open the gates and let them have access to the pasture.

The emus, Cookie and Mumbles, were first out, racing each other across the pasture they had fenced off for them like it was the first time they were using their legs. Their silent modern interpretive dance through the wild grasses and weeds sent a signal to the horses (who were further back in the pasture) that breakfast was happening.

As I opened the chicken and duck gate, I could hear the whinnies and neighs, along with the thundering hooves, getting closer to the barn. The chickens crowed and clucked as they got to work foraging for the day. I heard the ducks splashing around in their pond, soft squacks in between sharp quacks. The peafowl came next. They filed out leisurely, as they always did. Never in a rush, always on their time, like models on a catwalk.

Some of the dogs were following close behind me, some were off investigating smells in the corners of the barn. They all knew the routine we were on. It was the same thing every morning and every night. My TBI kept me from deviating from it if I wanted to be sure the animals were taken care of.

We moved on to the stalls.

Statler and Waldorf, the two Swiss Valais Blackneck billies, were waiting patiently with Bill and Ted, the mini horses, their heads hanging over the lower stall door. I propped my cane against the wall, so I could use both hands, and grabbed up some alfalfa and grain, and put it in their feeder.

“How’re you doin’ fellas?” I asked them as I opened the bigger stall door to the pastures. “Could be worse? Could be better?” I gave each a pat on the rump. They ignored me and continued eating.

I next filled up my little heavy-duty wagon with more alfalfa and grain for the big horses, grabbed my cane, and hobbled out to the coral where they were waiting.

The sun had started to show above the horizon more, causing the clouds to turn a golden orange. I started to spread out the alfalfa and grain amongst the feeding stations, and was getting nudged by velvet noses to hurry up as I did it.

“Okay, okay,” I laughed as I almost got knocked over by Hades, one of the American Quarter Horses. “Im goin’ as fast as I can! Have some pity on me!”

He put his nose to mine before disappearing in the feed with the rest of the herd. I went to go back into the barn, stopping to take Little Bit off of Ted’s back. Bill and Ted were the miniature horses Ivar got me after I found out that I had PMOS and it was making getting pregnant difficult. For some reason, they liked to give Little Bit rides. It wasn’t something either of us trained them to do. They also let the chickens ride around on them, sometimes.

I figured maybe they were just bored or feeling left out when the other horses were being ridden. I did that a lot, made up entire inner lives and dialogues for all the animals. I had been like that since I was a kid. I even had full conversations with them as if they were talking back.

Sometimes, it felt like they understood me. I knew it was just the wish of a deeply lonely person who didn’t really like other people that much. Especially since their one person was dead and not coming back.

I called out a “Hey!” once I was back in the barn to get the attention of the dogs and then pointed at the door. Everyone started to make their way out and back to the main house. I stopped at each bird pen to make sure they had enough feed in their buckets. Good for another day or so, I thought, and continued out of the barn.

We all headed back into the kitchen, making idle chatter as we went (myself doing all the chatting). It was still empty. I stood near the center island counter for a moment, feeling smothered by the silence.

I never liked mornings. That was more of an Ivar thing. For as long as we were together, without fail, he would wake up at 5am every morning, do his workout routine, and be back in the kitchen making impossibly huge breakfasts before any reasonable hour for me to wake up (as far as I was concerned). I don’t think we ever ate breakfast once in this kitchen.

I had always been a night person. It was quieter. Things seemed less clusterfucked in my head at 3:30am. For me, that’s when the magic happened. Don’t ask me to explain what “the magic” is, I couldn’t do it, but that’s definitely when it happened. At night, I got all my best work done. All my brilliant work done. Because of the magic that only happened between dusk and dawn.

It wasn’t until after his funeral that I started waking up early.

Barda stuck her giant house hippo head against my hand and pulled me out of my space out. We just looked at each other for a few seconds. I gave her some good scratches on the top of her head, between her ears.

Life did what it has always done. It went on.

Before I headed back out to the studio, I made sure all the dogs had food in their bowls for breakfast and that their water dispenser had enough in it for the day. Hopefully, Dillion and Dutch wouldn’t eat the food out of all the bowls before anyone else had any.

Bran would probably refill them anyway when he got in there to make breakfast for everyone, but those two still didn't need to eat everyone's breakfast.

The first thing I did in the studio was make sure the kilns had gone through the firing from the previous night completely and without any issues. Once that was checked, I opened them up and took a quick look over the bowls toward the front of the shelves to see if any issues had come up inside the kiln (cracking, pieces tipping over onto each other and fusing together while the glaze was molten, etc.).

So far, so good, I thought. But they were still a little too warm to take out of the kilns. I let them stay in there and kept the doors propped open a little.

We didn’t have any projects lined up after this one and I debated looking through the mail that Nox brought in yesterday to see if there was anything interesting in it or starting up something for purely personal purposes. I shuffled through the envelopes quickly, scanning the return addresses on them to determine the level of importance they had to me.

I came to the conclusion that I just didn’t care what any of them had to say right then at that moment. I did catch the faint smell of something warm and comforting off the mail that caught my curiosity for the briefest of moments before I stopped short of going through the entire stack of envelopes and tossed them back on the table.

I turned on the wi-fi speakers and hit shuffle on my “Fav Songs” playlist on my phone, and then gathered up the materials I needed to put together an armature. Something for myself, it was going to be.

Usually, I would start with a sketch before I started making anything concrete like an armature. These materials were more expensive than drawing, so it was just better, for me, to work out ideas that way before starting. Even after all these years of not having to scrape by, eating Ramen Noodle as my one meal a day, it was still difficult to get out of the mindset of needing to conserve art supplies because I wouldn’t know when I could afford new ones.

The odd thing was that, this little spur of the moment project felt like I already knew what I was doing without thinking about it. I started with the aluminum wires, using them to make almost a skeleton of what I wanted to sculpt. After that, I attached the armature to a stand so I could work in the round without ruining any of the work already done. From there, I started to fill the armature out with tinfoil, like I was adding a basic layer of muscle to the skeleton of the wires.

The purpose of the armature was to use less clay. I wasn’t planning to fire the finished sculpture in the kiln, so I wasn’t worried about the clay needing to thin the clay out after removing the armature to keep it from exploding in the kiln. I planned to use oil based clay that wouldn’t dry out while I was using it. That way, if we did get a commission offer that was interesting enough to take, I could stop in the middle of working on this, and wouldn’t have to worry about the clay drying up and becoming workable.

Using the armature was mostly just to make the final sculpture weight less, and make it easier for me to move. If I liked what I ended up with, being able to move the finished piece would come in handy if I wanted to make molds out of it for casting later.

By the time I got the armature done, and the first round of clay in the microwave to heat it up (to make it more malleable), the dogs had finished eating and had made their way into the studio. The music was shuffling through metal to Baroque classical to 80s New Wave, and was currently playing one of my favourite songs from my favourite band.

I started putting on layers of clay over the armature in a robotic fashion. My body was there, doing the work, but the actions were all muscle memory. I didn't feel like I was in control. My mind was in a completely different place and time when the second round of clay went into the microwave.

The rest of the world slowly faded away like background noise, and I pushed and scrapped and added and smoothed clay to the mass I had in front of me. I would work on one side, spin the lazy Suzanne underneath the stand, work on another side, spin, repeat.

As you grow up, you learn to focus on whatever it is that you need to focus on and block everything else out. Your brain learns to filter out what’s not important so that is doesn’t overstimulate itself. It’s a skill neurotypical brains usually develop as they age. Since the car wreck and the TBI, my ability to filter out the noise and focus was gone. It was why I couldn’t be in crowds anymore, couldn’t go out to eat, see concerts, be around people. Even just being with myself was too loud, sometimes.

But when I did this? When I got into the flow state of creating something? That’s all I could hear. That’s all that mattered and I almost felt like myself again. Almost. Because it didn’t last. It wouldn’t take long from hitting that flow, that high of everything working the way it should, the way it always had, that it would be over.

Sometimes it felt like I would blackout after getting there because I couldn’t remember doing any of the work that was in front of me. Which was a ridiculous thought. If I had blacked out, how would the artwork get worked on? How was anything getting finished?

+++ 13 YEARS AGO +++

He thought he was being stealthy. I mean, he was stealthy. He had stalked into the studio and directly behind me without making any sound to give himself away, but I still knew he was there. It was the way he smelled. Sea salt and cedar. That electricity before a summer storm. I picked up on it before he entered the studio. I don’t know how. It wasn’t like I was wolverine’ing scents or anything like that - this was a smell that was specifically a Him thing. It wasn’t even the cologne he wore.

It was just him.

“What are you doing out here in the middle of the night, min käraste?” The low rumble of his voice chased the electric sensation the backside of his knuckles sent down my spine as he ran them down my neck. I closed my eyes and let out a moan.

“I was getting work done,” I mumbled, rolling my head to the side as he nuzzled into my neck, “until someone rudely distracted me.” His chuckle reverberated through the connection of his chest against my back. He spun me around on the stool I was sitting on so that I was looking at him, and held my face up in his hands.

“Oh,” he started, running a thumb along my lower lip, “that sounds incredibly rude of that person.” He leaned down into me and kissed me, his lips pressing into mine. I reached my arms up around his neck and kissed him back. Our tongues found each others’, sliding along in a languid dance. I sucked on his bottom lip as he pulled away just enough to lift me off the stool and up on to the table.

I leaned back and lifted my hips up to make it easier for him to pull my sweatpants and underwear off in one swift motion. He then dragged his hands up from my ankles to the backs of my knees torturously slow until he had himself positioned between my legs and my knees were bent up bracketing his chest.

“We’re going straight to business, huh?” I asked with a smirk. My legs wrapped around his waist and I pulled his hips in toward mine. His hands pushed their way up my hoodie and found my breasts, my nipples already pebbled as his fingers ran over them. I sucked my lower lip in and bit it as he trailed opened mouth kisses up my stomach to my chest.

“Well,” he groaned while tugging my body closer to the edge of the table, “you weren’t working on the wheel. We can’t do the Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore pottery thing.” He had moved one of my legs up over his shoulder, using the other hand to slide his fingers between my slick folds. I moved my hips to place myself more firmly into his hand as I sucked in a breath. My head fell back on to my bunched up top.

“Oh my god, Ivar,” I started laughing, “you are such a - OH FUCK!”

I lifted my head back up and locked eyes with him as he dragged his tongue up my seam to circle it around my clit. As his mouth sealed over me and his tongue began to lap over the now sensitive bundle of nerves, my hips bucked against his mouth. Obscene moans tumbled out of me with increasing volume as he alternated between massaging and sucking harder on my clit. He glided the two fingers he had been stroking me with into my cunt, slow and steady at first. His other hand palmed my breast firmly, holding me down to the table as my back arched with the building pressure in my core.

Ivar added a third finger and increased the speed that he pumped them at, still alternating between licking and sucking at my clit, while I desperately tried to keep from breaking so quickly. My hips jerked erratically as that electric feeling was building in my stomach. We had been together barely a year, and this man could already make me cum in less than five minutes. I felt like such a lightweight.

Like he could read my mind, he curled his fingers inside me and pulled, setting off chain lightning through my body. I cried out as my body arched up onto my shoulders, one hand fisting his hair, the other he had entwined with his. My eyes couldn’t focus, so I closed them as tight as I could as I tried to I ride out the aftershocks.

I was startled out of the comedown when I felt the cold air against my heat. My eyes flew open just in time to see that Ivar had pulled himself out of his pajama bottoms and was rubbing the slick on his fingers onto his cock. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and his bare chest was heaving from his labored breathing. Shit, I was surprised he had any clothes on at all since he usually slept nude.

Actually, he was nude a lot of the time he was at home. I didn’t know if it was a European thing or a Swedish thing? I didn’t care. I ran my fingers down the muscles of his stomach to his Adonis belt. I’d be naked all the damn time, too, if I looked that good.

I hooked my ankles around his waist, letting my knees fall open. I absently started chewing on my lower lip as a subtle feeling of dread started to creep into my stomach.

“What’s that look for, älskade?” his voice was rough and low, his eyes almost looked black. He had his length in one hand and was running the tip along my pulsing entrance, lubricating it in my juices. “Why are you working on that lip so hard?”

He used his thumb to pull my lip out from between my teeth, and leaned down to kiss me. It was slow and sensual, his tongue gently exploring mine like he was still asking questions. I kissed him back, not sure why I suddenly felt this way, desperately only wanting to feel him again. I lifted my hips slightly toward him, trying to redirect his attention back to the topic in his hand. It worked, as he pushed into me, torturously slow. He moved his mouth to cover my nipple, swirling his tongue around it. Once he had filled me to his hilt, he grabbed me by my wrists, pinned them down at my hips, and straightened up so he was looking down at me.

The strokes started out long, slow, and steady, like he could drag the release of pleasure out for as long as he wanted. I felt like I couldn’t wait that long, like we didn’t have that kind of time.

“I need you to be faster, harder,” I whimpered slightly as I squirmed against him. He raised an eyebrow and tightened his grip on my wrists. He pulled out almost completely and stopped.

“Do you?” Ivar asked before he immediately snapped his hips back into mine. It made me cry out in surprise, the pain and pleasure hitting simultaneously. I clenched around him.

He slowly pulled back out again. “Was that a yes? I need you to use your words, älskade,” he tipped his head to the left as he waited for my verbal consent.

I barely gasped out a yes before Ivar started to drill his cock deeper, harder, and faster inside me. The pleasure was so overwhelming it bordered on painful. As the heat between our bodies built, and the sweat started to drip down the contours of every muscle that was being used to work that perfect body of his, he let go of my wrists and grabbed my hips to pull them up toward him.

I cried out as pleasure ripped through my body in waves. My hands frantically tried to grab ahold of Ivar’s forearms as my back arched further and my hips jerked against his hands. Every snap of his hips set off an explosion of stars in my vision. Ivar used one of his hands to grab me by the back of my neck and pull my face up to his. His mouth crushed mine with a guttural sound that was almost a deep growl, as he bucked against me erratically, his release throbbing out deep inside me.

We stayed like that, both of us panting hard, for several moments. When he set me back down on the table, he whispered in a strained voice, “Om jag vet vad kärlek är, då är det tack vare dig,” and then kissed me again.