Melanie Walker is a Writer

Preacher has reached the bottom, the deepest place anyone can go before its to late. Last chance and all that. He has let his intrest in Tavern Madly drive him insane. And that has lead him down a soooooo not Preacher path.
NOTE~ Preacher started drinking, sleeping around and alienating everyone.
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“Look here you Irish fuck!” Cash snarled, his stare a glaring ball of pure rage as he stared me down. “I won’t stand here you wax poetic on how dark the world is when you do nothing to stop it from darkening.” Cash cupped his face in his palms and growled in frustration. I could only muster a mild smirk at his frustration.
“Tell me Cash, what the bloody hell have I ever done that has made a damn bit of impact? I have about as much faith left inside of me old friend as you do.” I stood toe to toe with, not an ounce of fear in my soul of the misfit before me. “What the bleedin fuck do you think I have been tellin you? I have no faith in this shell. My mask, my face my heart is gone …long gone.”
Cash shook his head annoyed as if I were petulant child that refused to listen. In turn he was to afraid to see. See what I knew all along. “Sober up you stupid fucking bastard. Sober the fuck up, buy an ounce and get your fucking head straight before you disappear entirely.” He didn’t wait for more of my argument. He didn’t care what I had to say. He stormed off, indignant pride cutting the crowed as he stormed off.
I took a seat back at the table as the cute little waitress, I had spaced her name, came back with my brandy. I stared at the liquid as if it had the answers but had yet to divulge me them. I was beginning to think there were no right answers.
“Tell me Preach, are you trying your damndest for him to kill you?” Leushus asked from behind me. How the fuck was it that he always knew when I had fucked up, how he knew when I was wrong.
“Ah the mind of a serial killer is less frightening Preacher. I promise you that. I’m here because I need to warn you.” I tried to roll my eyes. Tried. Leushus was having none of it. My body still as stone he spoke into my ear forcing me to take in every word as if it were my last breath.
“The Cado are looking for a soul Preacher. They believe yours is up for auction. I have just spent the better part of a fucking week making sure they kept their distance. Know why I spent that time Preach?” He wasn’t asking me. He was absolutely going to tell me though. The anger in his voice spoke volumes to the frightening shit he knew.
“You have no idea how dark I can be Preacher. Just push me and I will show you exactly what the Fallen are made of. There are no puffy white clouds and golden harps where I come from Preacher. Do. Not. Push. Me.”
I wasn’t about to. Wasn’t in the mood tonight to fuck with Leushus too.
“Your not as far gone as you think Preacher.” Leushus said off handedly as if he hadn’t just threatened to show me what hell looked like.
“I have no desire for you to ever see hell Preacher. On that note it’s why I stopped by.” Leushus took a seat that the table. He also took my brandy and tossed it back like it was a tumbler of milk and not the best 80 proof the dive he sat in had to offer. “Where was I?” he asked looking over his shoulder to his guard Bastian. The one and Only Werewolf known through all ages. Myth had nothing on Bastian.
“The Cado.” I said trying to figure why the fuck they were watching me.
“They are following you, watching you. Hell Preacher they are circleing you daily like crows and a corpse. Waiting for you my dead friend to finally throw in the towel.” He chewed the end of a tooth pick, his fangs on display like he had just told me that I was under a puppy dogs surveillance.
“Funny jokes for a man in jeopardy of losing his soul.”
That got my attention. There are moments of absolute clarity in life that can take you to a place where everything stops moving and you can take it all in. I tend to focus on what I know as certain. Pain. Pain has been my one constant companion over the last decades. I hadn’t known till that instant that my pain had fully been extinguished by absolute, complete rage.
“Preacher. The Cado feed on that anger, that constant release of absolute fury you have around you lately. Buddy they are looking for souls and they are salivating over yours. They believe I owe them a soul for London. Don’t make this an easy fight.”
“I cant stop.” He knew what I meant. There was no need for my elaboration.
‘Find a way Preacher. I’ll h ave your back the whole way. But find it and now. “ He stood to leave. Leushus was like that. He made his point, damn clear and would not sit around waiting for actions. “Preacher, give in to her. It’ll be ok.” Was all he said over his shoulder as he faded from sight.

Go into Taverns mind. She is at said bar. Think Through the glass by ?

The pounding on the door got louder and based on the rhythm I knew it was Cookie.
“Ga’ ‘way.” I mumbled and tried to shut out the noise. But this was Cookie and no amount of begging would get her moving.
“Preacher O’Connor” She spat through the door jam. Calling me by my last name was never good. It was something she started doing to all of us if we didn’t listen. “So help me God Preacher if you don’t open this door I am going to start talking designers… and you know how I get. I will be here for hours.”

I rolled from the bed and felt the world tilt and sway.
Still drunk?
Yep.
Opening the door I didn’t meet her eye, just turned and climbed back in bed. “Bloody hell Cookie its one in the afternoon. That’s two am to humans. What is it?” I may be annoyed but I would always open the door for my Cookie.
“I cannot take this anymore Preacher. You and Cash never fight and for the last few months you are at one another’s throats. I don’t like it Preacher.” The events from that morning before sunrise replayed in hi def. Cash had wanted to leave the bar to get home to Cookie and I wasn’t ready to go. I had been talking up a waitress, her short blonde hair wasn’t the cure and neither were the green eyes I wished were violet. But as mirages went she looked just like the one in my dreams each time I closed my eyes.
“Just a lil’ tiff Cookie, nothing to be alarmed by.” Truth was, I had never been violent to those I cared for, but Cash had the happy ending and he reminded me all too often. There is only so much happiness I can muster for the two of them until I get a little sick.
She gave an effortless hmf before rolling her eyes. “Well these little tiffs are more and more common as the months go by.” Her finger pointing at my chest, her voice rose. “It seems to me that before you succeed in alienating everyone you are close with, that you should find her and give it a shot.”
She was right. She didn’t know I would agree but she was right. I was angry as hell but only at myself. I hated that I missed Tavern, I hated that she replaced the thoughts of Emme and that I wanted her here. “That’s easier said than done Cookie.” I all but whispered, and like each time before when I allowed myself to think of Tavern; that guilt rolled in like a hurricane hell bent on ruining everything. How could I even think of replacing Emme?
“Preacher…” Cookie sighed, not an easy thing for Cookie to be gentle and comforting but she trusted Cash and I to see this side of her. Knowing we would love her no matter what. “I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to remember the things you see at night. I can’t imagine how it feels to be torn between the living and the truly dead, but she is Preacher.”
She didn’t need to say who, I knew. Emigen was dead and had been for almost a century. That is where faith gets tricky, see, I knew for certain in my heart, my un-beating heart that Mary and Peter were with the Great Father. Emmi… most likely but I didn’t know if she was happy. I knew Mary and Peter were. Taking a chance and hoping for a small reaction I spoke. “And do what? I can’t seek a girl out that I have no promises to ever offer, to give freely. I have taken many oaths in my years Cookie and I have nothin’ left inside to offer.”
“Preacher!” She wined and stomped her foot. As if it had helped her in the past? “If you could say goodbye to your Emme, and feel a true peace with it would you?”
The question stumped me more than why ever on earth she would ask me such a thing. “What’ya mean Cookie?”
“If I could find a way…” She stopped and dropped her voice, stepping tentatively into my room. Something she never cared to do before. Cookie was more of a barge in and demand type a gal. “A way to help you say goodbye…for good?” She looked away as if ashamed of her words. It was a first. “Would you?”
“Cookie, spit it out.” My words were clipped and though I adored her, she was very close to a very, very deep line nobody dared cross.
She fell to her knees at the end of my bed, a pleading look staining her tear ridden eyes. “Please Preacher. Please let me show you my way?”
“Cookie, I helped kill the only family you had. What would make you assume you could possibly know how to make it all go away?”
“You told me once that it wasn’t hate my father felt for me, but that he simply felt nothing for me in general. Well to answer you rude assed question Preacher, I didn’t feel that way about him.” The pitch of anger in her voice smoothed when she brushed a tear from her cheeks. “I loved Walter, twisted I know, but I did. I don’t feel anything but relief knowing he is gone but I feel that because I made peace with the demons he left me with.”
The silence that followed was not uncomfortable, it was thoughtful. As if this tiny fire cracker who was as loved by me as my daughter was, knew how deep my darkness went. “How?”
A simple question that held the weight of damn near a hundred years worth of sorrow.
“Come with us.” Cash said from the doorway. In the light behind him I could make out the two other figures as Bastian and Leushus.
I said nothing but nodded. I had tried many things, a desperate man knows not to tempt himself with hope. But I stood slowly and went without hesitation. Perhaps it really was time.

It had been decades since I last stepped foot in the crypt behind my New Mexico home. I purchased the land just after I was reborn, when a need for the sun left me longing for heat. I couldn’t leave New York without them. I made the arrangements through a friend of a friend and arranged for them to be with me always, though I rarely accept with more than my own knowledge that they were there the whole time. The ground had been kept up, Cash’s influence I was certain, but the three small plaques that lined the single stone building inside were dust ridden and covered in cob webs. No they were not forgotten by any means, but I had never been strong enough to face the reality of the place where they now rest, together.
They stood with me now as I faced that musty doorway to where everything I loved lay sleeping for all time. It was silent, and the peace I should have been feeling was nowhere in sight. Cookie’s hand on my shoulder startled me. “It’s okay to be frightened Preacher.”
Her words were meant to soothe I was sure but they left me feeling helpless instead.

“Come with me?” I asked my words meant only for her, though I knew all the ears surrounding us heard me loud and clear. Those men acted as if my voice was nothing more than the breeze and stayed behind as Cookie took my hand.
The creek of the door was as loud as a battlefield in the dry desert night. Her hand in mine we stood there, I was terrified to speak. Cookie once again had my back. “I’ll be here if you need me Preacher, but you need this time for yourself.”
Her hand slipped from mine and I gasped as if in pain, I was in pain. “I’m not leaving, I’m only stepping back by the door.” Her voice was soft, a tone I never knew she was capable of. She was loud and proud and demanded the attention of any room she saw fit to be a part of. But tonight she was soft and gentle and kind.
She was my dearest friend, and in her strength I found my own.
I cleared my voice. Once. And then again, before I could feel the words rush out. “My loves…”
I felt like a fool talking to a wall but I closed my eyes and shucked my Mariners cap and stuffed it in my back pocket. My hair was longer than Emme would have liked, so I told her why I grew it out. It was there that everything inside of me rushed to be released.
“I grew my hair out because I couldn’t stand the sight of myself the instant you left… I guess you didn’t leave now did’ya love? You were taken from me… all of you. Mary and Peter I miss you, your smiles and laughter, even your fits Mary. Some days I can’t get from my own bed for the depth of loss I feel at not hearing a tantrum from you. Never thought I would long to hear you scream for a cone of cream or a doll in the store front window. God knows I’d give it all to hear just that again.
Peter I still carry your pocket watch, the one your grandfather gave me when I married your mom. I in turn gave it to you at your first Alter Service. I look at it daily. I’d like to have seen you get beyond that awkward stage that left you shy and temperamental. I wish a lot of things, but mostly that I had been there that night. Perhaps it would have changed nothing other than my true death as well. Our religion begs us not to believe I exist but as I stand here tonight so many decades later and I know not if you can hear me. If I am what, as a father and a dad taught me to not believe. I am that thing, that same species that took you from me. I can only vow to continue to fight, to change it if I can.”
I don’t know how long I stood in the silence, trying to broach an overdue goodbye to my beloved wife, not sure if I was capable of such a task. The only sound in the crypt was that of my shoes as I shifted from one foot to the other, my feet scraping along the stone floor. And silent sniffling sobs from Cookie still standing at the door.
“I miss you.” I finally whispered into the vacant night. I didn’t address Emme as I did my children. My love for her was every breadth, depth and all of my soul to offer. “Had I known that I would never touch you again I would have held you tighter and not left. If I knew that your lips would be cold when I kissed them again, I’d have kissed you forever.” I felt to my knees as a sob broke free of my chest. “I’d have died that night beside you, defending you to my very best ability, died trying at least. I’d have not been at the church begging for forgiveness that never came. I only beg now for redemption Emme. It’s all that drives me. I have lost that faith, that belief that there is good in this world. Any belief I had died that night when the light in your eyes was snuffed because of me. I am so sorry I couldn’t have been more, been better for you, for what you deserved. I’m sorry I never made it right, never made them pay. But I have made others pay.” My voice had dropped lethal and I felt the anger roll in like an old friend I had been missing, for say, oh… about an hour give or take a tear.
I stayed there on my knees as if in prayer, but just as desperate. I wasn’t here to mourn any longer, to beg of forgiveness that would never come. I was here to leave her, them, in peace. “I’ll be sealing this door tonight my loves…” I squeezed tear soaked eyes and tried to focus on what I had to do, needed to do. I felt the old hat in my back pocket and reached for it. I wasn’t Father O’Connor, I wasn’t Mac. I was simply Preacher. A Vampire, who on occasion still gave a little mercy when the merciless side of me was sleeping. A Vampire who believed once that God was just and right and would bring to peace to those in need if they would seek his help. I had sought and I had been forsaken. I had no choice but to say goodbye and be the only thing I could and would ever be. An avenging Preacher, in the name of God I was just and good.
Forsaken and forgotten didn’t matter when my cross was bared. I wasn’t evil by the good Lords standards. I was evil by blood and bone and the things I had done. There was no going back to change the many mistakes I had made.
“I’ll be sealing this door for your peace. So you may rest for eternity and know I have protected what I have left of you to the very end. I have no choice but to never forget, but to forever remember the light blue of Mary’s eyes.”Choking on my own sob, I could hear Cookie doing the same, but I forged on. “I will never forget the blue in you my little Mary Lass. I can never forget the laughter of a young man on the brink of something exciting like a girl or a new trinket to be greedy over. No Peter that laugh will drive me on my son, I promise.
“And to my Emme girl, my life, my bride I will forever be reminded of your gentle touch, your warm kiss and the gold of your hair as you stood by the window of our home, naked on Saturday mornings. I will never see a sunrise again Em, but the image of you there before me, bare breasted and round with my children will forever be my light, my love my own sunrise. Now and forever.” I kissed my palm and placed it slowly sliding through years of dust and dirt across the names of my most cherished. My thumb rubbed gently at the carvings of Emme’s name. “Emigen Grace O’Connor, forever mine, thine and ours.” And with that I stepped from the crypt not looking back.
Not at Cookie crumpled and crying silently on the floor, and not at the three grown men, all creatures of the night and scary as hell, with tears in their eyes as I passed. Wordless and empty I didn’t turn back.

Melanie Walker is a Writer

Sunday, February 17, 2013

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