Well, the fan service chapter didn't get much of a response. Perhaps you didn't like it. That's OK. I did get a bunch of great suggestions of NIFTY stories to read, so thanks for that! Buckle up for this chapter, it's going to be a wild ride. I hope you enjoy it.
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Crown Vic to a Parallel World: Stolen Love The third and final installment of the ongoing adventures of Church Philips
19
An Unexpected Visitor & A Trip to the Past
"Big Guy?" Bem said.
I snapped out of my memory into the present. I looked into Bem's face and remembered where I was and what I was doing. I remembered everything. I was ashamed of myself for daydreaming of sex with Bem, of sex without Shawn while Shawn was missing. I felt so guilty I could have cried.
Bem seemed to sense that I'd been somewhere else for a while. "Are you...?" He asked and trailed off. I guessed he was going to ask if I was OK, and stopped himself when he realized how stupid a question that was, and that he'd already asked it.
Bem was quiet for a few seconds. I assumed he was trying to figure out what to say next. Before I'd gotten lost in the sexy daydream, I'd admitted to Bem that I missed him, and that touching him made that more difficult. I'd admitted that it was selfish of me, but that I didn't know how to feel any different. There wasn't anything that he could say. There was no answer required. He couldn't change it or make it better. The situation was what it was.
"Big Guy...Church..." Bem said to get my attention. His use of my first name sharpened my focus on what he was about to say. Since we'd first met and he commented lustily on my size, I'd been `Big Guy' more often than not. It's not that Bem never used my first name, but he typically used it to refer to me when he was talking to someone else. The fact that he used it to me, meant what was coming next was important.
"Is there something else going on?" Bem asked, his voice pensive, like he wasn't certain if he should be bringing up the question at all. "Is there something between you and Shawn? I'm flattered you miss me, but...is there a reason that you do? Something you haven't said?"
`I must really wear my heart on my sleeve.' I thought as Bem put his finger right on the sore point in my life. "I'm afraid." I whispered to him, like it was a deep secret that couldn't be spoken aloud.
"Afraid?" He asked.
I cleared my throat and used my normal voice, softened only slightly because of how close we were and the natural quiet of nighttime. "I'm afraid...I'm afraid I'm losing him." I admitted.
"Shawn?"
I'd already told Bem about my worries over losing my husband, but I'd had that talk with Bem the professional. The talk that I was about to have, I was having with my friend Bem. The topic was the same, but the level of detail was different. When I'd told Bem the professional my fears, I'd told him like I was reporting the news and he'd listened in the same manner. For this talk, the talk with my dear and affectionate friend, I told the story like we were friends.
I kept my eyes on the stars and poured out my fears to Bem. I told my friend about the long, lonely days I spent killing time, waiting for Shawn to get home. I told him about how distant Shawn seemed when he was with me, and how he reacted to my advances the day before. I even told Bem about Shawn's vague promise that `it won't always be this way.' I took my heart from my chest and squeezed it out for Bem. I exposed all my doubt and fear and dread over the relationship that I had with my husband. Bem listened, wordlessly but actively.
I finished my monologue and lowered my eyes from the sky. I had the urge to cradle my head in my hands, but my reclined posture would have made it more awkward than usual. I stared out along the runway lights and tried to decide if I should cry, or scream, or sulk quietly.
I sighted along the lights that stretched out in a long row to my left and they seemed to crawl in front of my eyes. I blinked hard to clear what I assumed was some lingering film from being asleep. I opened my eyes again and sighted along the lights again and saw something in the distance. Something, a light of some kind, way out in front of me, beyond the two-mile airfield, was moving. I tracked it with my eyes and hoped against hope that what I saw was really there and not a figment of my desperate imagination.
Bem started talking. He tried to continue the conversation we'd been having before. "You know, Big Guy, I think you should trust him more. I mean, I get why you're worried, but this is Shawn we're talking about. He loves you more than anything and..."
"Shut up." I hissed at Bem. "Look." I sat up and pointed into the distance.
Bem sat up with me and sighted along my arm to see where I pointed. "There's something out there." He observed.
I slid off the hood to put my feet on the ground and backed toward the driver's door without taking my eyes from the moving light in the distance. "Get in the car." I said.
Bem slid off the hood but went no farther. He warned me against rash action. "Don't go out there. It could be a trap."
"I'm going."
"DON'T!" Bem insisted.
I opened the driver's door and peered over the roof at my friend. "I'm going. Are you coming or not?"
"NOT!" Bem insisted even more vehemently, his arms rigid at his sides and his hands half-closed into loose fists.
I slid into the driver's seat and started the car. I pulled the gear shift into `drive' and let the car roll forward. The passenger door jerked open, and Bem jumped in beside me. He was mad. "YOU'RE IMPOSSIBLE!" He scolded. "If something happened to you out there and I didn't go, I'd never forgive myself, but if something happens to me, I'll never forgive you and neither will Mary. I can't be doing this stuff anymore. I'VE GOT A KID!"
I ignored Bem's objections and throttled the Vic. I pulled the lights on and switched on the high beams. I crossed the line of landing lights to the smoother surface of the airfield and accelerated along it. `Please be Shawn, please be Shawn, please be Shawn, please be Shawn...' my mind chanted as my right foot urged the old sedan forward faster and faster.
Bem shifted in his seat next to me. He slid forward and reached into his pocket to draw out a pistol-shaped, hand-held energy weapon. He fiddled with it, powered it up, and held it ready to use. `Where'd he get that?' I wondered.
We shot passed the end of the landing field like a bullet from a gun and launched into the vast darkness of the plains. Once beyond the glowing landing lights, the light coming from the thing I'd been watching stood out bold against the black. It was still some way off. I aimed for it and maintained speed despite the rougher surface of the unimproved plains.
The suspension of the old sedan was working hard, but well within itself. We got closer and closer to the light in the distance. The closer we got, the more nervous Bem seemed to get. He was on his phone, shouting over the wind noise for someone to `arm themselves and convene on our location.'
Bem argued into the phone. "No, I can't stop him. I'm not willing to shoot him and we're going too fast. Incapacitating him would kill us both."
`Just fucking try it.' I thought with unnecessary menace.
Soon, we got close enough to the thing for me to see what it was. It was a standard issue, plastic egg car that was picking its way gingerly across the low scrub of the plains. It was moving vaguely toward the estate and not getting anywhere fast.
I flashed my high beams at it and left them on. The egg car seemed to take the brights as a threat. It made a hard U-turn and accelerated in the opposite direction. I gritted my teeth and stomped down harder on the gas pedal. "Not a fucking chance pal." I growled as I drove.
The fact that the other car was running away told me the occupant wasn't Shawn. That was a heavy blow. Anger and disappointment bloomed inside me like an oil-well fire ignited by an explosion. I gripped the wheel like I was trying to tear it from the column and bore down on the strange vehicle.
When we got close enough, I wrapped my magic around the fleeing egg car and lifted it off the ground. I shook it to disorient the driver and disable the vehicle. I'd learned, at some point that I didn't remember, one of the vehicle's basic safety features would shut the drive train down when the vehicle's wheels lost traction. I felt the wheels of the egg stop turning and tried to reassure Bem. "They're inside my power. They can't hurt us."
"I'm not worried about them." He complained at my side while he scanned the darkness around us, his eyes everywhere but on the egg car. "I'm worried about who else might be out there."
I brought the Vic to a halt and lowered the egg car to the ground next to it. In deference to Bem's worries, I built a box around both vehicles and sealed us in. I told Bem we were protected and shouted my way out of the Vic.
Bem scrambled out after me, calling protestations at my heels. He shouted that he wanted me to let him get out first. His back-and-forth objections didn't make sense to me. First, he gave me shit for going after the thing because it put him at risk, then he wanted to stand between me and whatever the potential threat might be.
I ignored him again and marched to the egg car. "GET OUTTA THAT FUCKING CAR!" I bellowed to the occupant who was barely visible in the wan light of the dashboard gauges.
The driver's side sliding door opened and a youngish man climbed out. He was portly and short, maybe five feet even. He had a mop of limp brown hair on his head and was wearing two shades of green in a sort-of suit. He raised his hands in surrender and cowered in front of me. "P-p-pp-please, please...are, are you Ch-Ch-Church?" He stammered with his eyes on the ground.
"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?" I demanded. I had my hands behind my back with my right hand wrapped around my left wrist because it was taking everything I had not to wrap my hands around his neck.
"P-P-PP-Primis." He stammered some more.
I wrapped the cowering man in my magic and lifted him, so his face was even with mine and barely an inch away. "Stop stuttering and talk." I growled in his face.
He screamed like a siren and got hysterical. Words tumbled out of him, but they made no sense. "AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH...DON'T HURT ME! DON'T HURT ME! HERE TO HELP! KNOW...KNOW WHO...I KNOW CHORDUS!"
The mention of Shawn's original first name reminded me of the wording in the ransom demand and I lost it. "WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? WHERE'S SHAWN?" I screamed at the hysterical man. I raised my hands to him and slapped his face, once, twice, three times.
Bem grabbed my hand when I was winding up to hit the hysterical man again. "DON'T!" Bem pleaded.
I shoved my friend away from me with magic and slapped the hysterical man again and again, alternating forehand and backhand as I hit him. Blood started to run from his mouth and his nose, but I didn't stop. I struck him over and over as he screamed and pleaded with me.
"WHERE IS MY HUSBAND?" I demanded at the top of my voice. I balled my fist to hit the man for real, but my swing never connected. My whole body went rigid, like every one of my muscles contracted at the same time, and my legs gave out. I crumpled to the ground and felt weird little ripples of electricity course through my body. My magic control ceased at the same time my muscle control failed and the hysterical man dropped in front of me to lay in a bloody, sniveling heap.
Bem's face appeared in front of mine. He crouched down, held his phone up with the flashlight on, and shined the beam in my eyes one at a time. Apparently satisfied by what he saw, he put the phone away and spoke to me. "Blink if you can hear me."
I blinked. My eyelids seemed to be the only muscles in my body that would still respond to my brain's commands. "I shot you." Bem said with no emotion in his flat voice. "I had to. You didn't give me a choice. It's just a stun. You'll recover in about an hour." With his explanation given, he got up to check on the hysterical man.
I watched as Bem soothed the hysterical man, got him to his feet, and walked him out of sight. The sounds I heard told me Bem had put the man in the passenger side of the Vic. Bem came back to me, lifted me with his telekinesis, and put me in the back seat of my own car.
The reason he could do that on his own, was the time he'd spent with me and his expanded magic capacity. When we first met, he could only lift about ten pounds. Having spent more than a decade around me increased his magic to the point where his telekinesis was more powerful than all but the most naturally gifted individual.
Bem got in the driver's side, started the car, and drove us back toward the house. He talked on the phone as he drove. "No...no I don't need you to come to me. I'm coming in. I have someone with me. Have Met and Lenis come to the dining room. I have one in need of medical attention. No, it's not Church. Get Paul, have him come to the family room downstairs. I'll be there soon. Tell Mary everything is fine and see if she'll check on my dad. I don't want either of them to worry."
Bem drove us to the estate and pulled the car into the garage instead of backing it in. He escorted the hysterical man, who was no longer hysterical, into the house before he came back for me. He lifted me with his telekinesis again and floated me into the rumpus room, where he put me on the couch I'd slept on before. The couch I'd slept on before Cellarius woke me up into the nightmare that I was living. Bem looked down on my face after he released his magic.
"You need to get it together." He scolded me like he was dressing-down a green soldier. "If you're going to act like that...you just can't act like that. That person you were beating on...that's Shawn's brother. He came here to tell us what he knows about the kidnapping. He could be the key to this and if I didn't go with you, you might have killed him."
Bem crouched down to put his hand on my shoulder, or at least I think he did; I couldn't feel much. "Big Guy, I know how hard it must be. If someone took Mary from me..." Bem dropped his eyes and his face contorted in anguish as he imagined the horror of someone taking his love away from him, "I get it, and that's why you get a pass on this one, but you won't get another."
I blinked a few times to indicate that I understood. Bem seemed somewhat satisfied. He straightened up. "Paul will be in soon to keep you company. Do NOT come into the dining room unless I come and get you. When there's something that you should be told, I will tell it to you." He turned on his heels with a neat action like a military man squaring a corner and left me alone.
I laid still, because I didn't have any other choice, and waited to get enough feeling back in my body so I could move it around. It came slowly. First, I could wiggle my fingers, then my toes, then my arms and legs. My core came last. By the time Paul arrived, I was sitting up. I had my right hand clasped to my bracelet and was looking at the night through one of the clear walls. I'd been thinking about Shawn and my own stupidity and my impotence in helping him. I felt quite miserable when Paul entered the room.
"Young man?" Paul said as he came into view.
He had a million questions on his expressive face, but I wasn't in the mood to answer any of them. I opened my mouth and said exactly what was in my mind so Paul would keep his questions to himself. "I was thinking about Shawn's legs."
"His legs?" Paul asked and sat down on the far end of the couch from me.
I rubbed the fingertips of both my hands together and imagined I could feel Shawn's smooth skin, and the firm flesh underneath. "The pillars of marble set in sockets of fine gold, as you said. Shawn has amazing legs. They're beautiful, smooth and muscled, dancer's legs. I love his legs. They're my favorite part of his body."
I glanced at Paul to make certain he followed my words. I wanted him to understand what I was saying. I needed someone to understand the love I had for Shawn; for him as a whole and for every individual part of him. "Do you know, he can hold himself on me with just his legs? He does this thing where he climbs my body and wraps those legs around my waist. He can hold himself there with just his legs. It's so fucking erotic. He can stay there all day."
I shut my eyes and imagined Shawn was there with me, with his powerful legs wrapped around my waist, and the weight of his body supported from mine. "The funny thing is, as hot as it makes me when he does that, is as hot as it makes him. He likes that I'm big enough, strong enough to support us both. He says that he'd love me no matter what my body looked like, and I know he would, but I also know the animal side of him loves this big body I built for him. He loves not having to be careful when we...you know...make love."
A soft, sad voice that sounded like it came from very far away said something that opened my eyes and focused my attention. "My wife could do that...what Shawn can do...she could hold herself to me with just her legs."
I sat up and stared at the man who was keeping me company. I stared like I needed to verify the man was who I thought he was. I needed to make sure it really was Father Paul Miller seated at the far end of the couch. "Your...uh...what?" I asked the man that looked like Paul.
The man next to me examined the back of his hands for a moment. He seemed dissatisfied with what he saw. "So much time," he muttered, "my hands have gotten so old." The man who looked like Paul folded his hands in his lap. He drew in a heavy breath and sighed it back out.
"I never told you about her. I haven't told anyone about her. Not ever. Not even Father Davis, the man who introduced me to God's love...not even he knew about her. She was beautiful and I loved her. Bernita, my wife, her name was Bernita. She was dark, as dark as strong coffee.
"She was a dark-skinned Latin woman with a thick, black braid of hair that fell all the way down her back. It was as strong and as thick as the mooring rope on a ship. Her face, the high cheekbones of her face showed the Indian blood that flowed in her veins. She was short-tempered and fiery, far from the stereotype of a peasant farmer.
"She...she had these legs, my Bernita, my beautiful one. Her legs were from working the fields. They were terraced, you see, the fields were terraced, on the side of the mountain. She climbed the terraces, tending the crops. The work that she did gave her amazing legs."
Paul trailed off and stilled to the point that I didn't know if he planned to say anything more. I wanted to beg him to keep talking, but I held my tongue to keep from breaking the spell of his memory.
He got a second wind and his story resumed. "I was a young man then, a strapping man. She would wrap those legs around me and...that was my favorite place; standing tall and strong with the woman I loved clinging to my strapping young body. My GOD how I loved her. My God how I miss her."
The old man sniffed and wiped his eyes with the sleeves of his shirt. He blinked and the tears he'd fought against streamed down his craggy face. "She was pregnant with my child when they killed her...killed her and the village in the night."
He cleared his throat and wiped his face again and repeated himself. "She was pregnant with my child, and they killed her. The gunfire...gunfire in the night, the noise woke us, and we ran...holding hands we ran away. She was running with me, her strong legs running to get away, to save herself and my child."
Paul sucked a gasping breath and blew it out. His exhale sounded like a desperate sob. "She was running...and then she wasn't. She wasn't running anymore, and I knew she was dead. I...I had to leave her...that dark night. I left her and I ran...to save myself."
Paul paused again. When he resumed, his voice was hollow, a hollow lonely voice. "The next day, I came back to find her. I found her, but I wasn't the same man anymore. I wasn't the man she loved. I was the man who abandoned her, and I was ashamed. I wished I'd stayed and let them kill me. I wished I'd begged them for death. Sometimes I still wish it."
Paul took another deep breath. It caught in his throat and rattled its way into and out of his deep chest. "I buried her, in the terraced field she tended. I buried her and her strong legs and my unborn child. With her I buried my pride and my youth and my innocence."
Paul shrugged a deep expressive shrug with his broad shoulders, and he let them hang. "I suppose she's still there. Though I don't even know where that is anymore. Sometimes I think I dreamed the whole thing. Sometimes I think, maybe that village never existed, but it had too."
Paul slid himself forward to the edge of his cushion, and he leaned toward me as far as he could. "I have my cup, you see, so it had to exist." Paul explained with the conviction of a zealot proselytizing his faith to a non-believer.
"The cup from the hotel." Paul said with emphasis. "She was such a simple woman, my Bernita...in many respects a sheltered child. She loved to drink from that cup. She said it made her feel like a queen, drinking from something so delicate and fancy. That cup made her happy and I loved to see her happy." A faraway look and a small nostalgic smile creased the old man's expressive face, but it didn't last. His face fell into a deep, sad frown as reality crashed into his fantasy. "But she's dead," he said bitterly, "and there's nothing I can do about that."
Paul leaned back into the couch and crossed his arms over his chest. I waited for him to go on, but the story seemed finished. It was finished, except there was something I didn't understand. I didn't know why he brought it up at all. It seemed so painful and private, that I was surprised he'd related it to me. I asked him about it. "Why did you tell me that?"
The sad man dragged himself forward again. He uncrossed his arms and rested his big hands on his knees as he leaned into his words. "Because I lost my love. The cartels killed her, and I couldn't stop them. Even if I had killed the men that killed her, it would not have brought her back or given her spirit any peace.
"Your love is alive. If what you told me is true, about that band on your wrist, you know he is alive. You can do something to save him, and you WILL do it if it costs you everything you have. All this," he lifted his left hand and waved it at the room, "ALL OF IT IS MEANINGLESS! If you have your love, none of it matters."
Paul's story, and its lesson, made me want to weep. I told him as much. "I'm sorry, Paul, truly."
The old man flared at me. "NO PITY, YOUNG MAN!" He roared and rose to his full height to glare down at me. "LIFE AND LOVE IS ALL THERE IS! THERE IS NOTHING ELSE! YOU," he pointed in my face, "YOU SWALLOW YOUR GRIEF AND YOU SAVE HIM! BECAUSE," he shouted, his anger reached a crescendo and then crashed down as the man seemed to sag, his energy abandoned him as his grief took control, "because if you don't, all you'll have left is a goddamned empty cup."
The sad, bitter words of the priest struck me as hard as if he'd hit me with his fists...harder maybe. The things he said echoed in my head like earthquakes and thunder. Life and love is all there is.' I thought. He's right. I've been wallowing in self-pity but I'm not even the one that's kidnapped. I am an asshole.'
I got up and thanked Paul. I had a small idea of what it cost him to share his grief with me and I appreciated it more than I could ever tell him. "You're right. I'm going to...I'm going to go and...uh...do what I should have been doing. Thank you, Paul. I won't let you down."
"I'm not the one you have to worry about letting down." Paul corrected me.
I nodded to him and left the room.