Melanie’s Choice (a novel)

MELANIE’S CHOICE

Melanie twisted and turned, flailed her arms, heard laughter, and felt more unbearable pain; willed herself to go back into the dream, into any dream.  But reality was drawing closer.

First there were flashing bright lights, followed by a clanging sound like enormous cathedral bells.  Bells like Christmas, and they were all together in the gospel barn. Christmas bells filled the air.  Intermission. Just after the combined choirs from Patton Presbyterian and Methodist Church had finished singing “Lo How A Rose Ere Blooming,” and the people were still standing silently, caught in the beauty.

Before the spell was broken, Cliff ran for the stage, took the microphone and announced to the whole wide world “This time next year, Claire and I won’t be here by ourselves, we’ll be bringing our baby.”  Applause and laughter filled the gospel barn. 

Then spring, long awaited spring, a time of rejoicing and lilacs and rain. The rain.  The nightmare began with the flood, and seemed to never end. Claire was dead, the baby with her mother before she lived a full day.  Cliff dying. All dead. The hopes and dreams of Claire and Cliff were gone into the darkness.

The nightmare never ending though the graves were fresh green mounds and the blooming flowers of summer made a lie of suffering.

Roughness was pulling her out of the dream. She fought, kicking, scratching, and screaming.

This time, they didn’t bother with the rag.  Fists worked.  She was beaten into unconsciousness and found it easy to welcome the darkness.

But not the nightmare; she would never welcome the nightmare.

KIDS IN A CARDBOARD BOX

Plane crashes? Big one over at City Airport.  Little ones in fields. Train wrecks, bodies mangled in highway crashes, children murdered by parents, mauled by dogs, devoured by fires, bodies bloated by drowning.  Been there, seen that and walked away.  The list was endless.

Sergeant Moro looked at the rookies, shook his head, secured his bill cap on his closely cropped gray brown hair, and remembered his own baptism under fire, all those years ago.  Unbidden pictures forever imprinted in his brain of the burning car and the screaming children replayed in his mind.

He knew these rookies would never forget.  He knew they might call police work quits after this day.  It happened.

He entered the trailer.

“Jesus! God!”

He exited.  His face pale, his chiseled jaw line frozen, his eyes wide in shock.  He tried to speak.  Opened his mouth several times and decided it was wiser all around to keep it closed.

He staggered to the blue and white patrol car and hit the mike “Unit 49 to base.”

“Come in 49.”

“Forty nine, do you read me?”

“Come in Bill.”  There was panic in the dispatchers’ voice.  All she could think was “officer down.”   She had heard that tone before.

Blinking lights on other consoles in dispatch became surreal.  Voices silenced.  Chilled.  The air had chilled.  These guys were family, more than family.  What they shared was a bond deeper than genetics.

“Forty nine do you read me?  Do you need assistance?  Can you give your location?”

In a voice he did not recognize as his own, the sergeant responded.

While they waited for the coroner and ambulance, four officers entered the trailer and stood in horror filled silence over the entwined children in one corner of the cardboard box.

To a man, they knew they were dead. How could they be anything but dead? They were wrapped around each other like they were victims of the holocaust. Skin over protruding bone.  Arms, legs entwined, their heads bent down, one resting on another, like they’d just fallen asleep.