Chapter Thirty-Eight
Gates Opening
The Edge of The Bliss
None of this is real. The layers of The Bliss have all peeled back, and I see it so clearly now.
There can be no pleasure without pain. Contentment is not happiness.
That’s stasis. I do not seek pure joy either.
That’s merely enjoyment without fulfillment.
I want the hard-earned feeling of pleasure despite the pain, of the happiness felt after the hurt.
“Where are you?” I call out to the dark sky, my voice cracking as water streams down my face. Where did the woman who threw me in—who made me remember what I begged to forget—where did she go?
“Coward!” I scream louder as I fall to my knees. The weight of the memories is too much to shoulder.
He cried. My sweet boy. New and innocent in the cruel world, crying for me and I couldn’t …
“I’m so sorry.” I sob weakly as my right hand covers my mouth while my left cradles my stomach. My stomach, which now feels as though it held him only moments before.
How long has it been? Where is he? Who is he?
Anger surges through me as I look around the emptiness while getting back to my feet. I need to get out of here. I need to find him. I need to find her. What monster would flood a mother with such memories only to abandon her in her moment of need?
My wandering thoughts mirror my feet as I navigate through parts of The Bliss I’ve never thought to explore before. Through an unpaved path surrounded by dense foliage, I come out in a clearing. In the distance, I see an end.
A high brick wall stretches off into the horizon in both directions.
Between the endless stretch of grey stone sits a thick wrought iron gate.
As I walk across the low grass field to reach it, I notice something on the other side.
A person stands by the bars, and though it’s faint, I think I hear them yelling.
My steps quicken as I race to get to the source of the sound.
As the gate and the figure beyond come into clearer focus, I see now that I am running straight toward the person whose memory has inked itself into my soul.
“Tommy,” I whisper in disbelief as I force my legs to move faster. I feel my hair falling from its pin, but I don’t slow down. “Tommy!” I cry out in disbelief as I approach the gate.
“Maddy.” He breathes my name on a ragged sob as he stares at me like I hung the moon.
No, more than that. He looks at me like I am the moon.
His gaze alone fills me with a power I’ve never known at any other time.
“My sweet dove. I’ve found you. I-I can’t believe it.
It’s true. It’s you! You’re really here! ”
I close the final few feet to the gate and shoot my arms through the bars.
My hands run over the top of his outstretched arms. We embrace tightly, the cold iron rigid in places that keep us from fully connecting with the other.
I cannot get close enough to this man. I want to keep closing the distance between us until we are fused, two souls made one.
I scratch and claw at his back, my face and chest hitting resistance where all I want is connection.
He pulls back and breaks the awkward contact, but does not take his eyes off me. “I’m here now, my dove,” he says, his voice raw and certain as he tucks a lock of hair behind my ear.
“You found me,” I whisper in disbelief. “You actually found me.”
“I did.” His voice breaks. “It may have taken me a lifetime or more, but I promised you I would.”
“You remembered.”
“I could never forget you, Maddy. I could never forget us. I faced every dark thing inside me to get to you. And I’d do it again if it meant reliving this moment. I found you.”
“Oh, Tommy. I never want you to leave again.”
“Never. Not ever. You and me, Maddy. The pleasure and the pain. That’s the only thing I know for certain anymore. It’s all that matters. I’m staying with you. Always.”
He brings his hands through two of the bars on either side of my face and then guides me to the space between. His lips meet mine, and the final fog of life in The Bliss lifts.
A lifetime of love and loss pour through our lips and ignite into a passion I’ve only ever known from this man.
His hands cradle my face from behind. He possesses and claims me with each pass of his tongue against mine, with the pressure of his hands twining in my hair, with the growl that rumbles from his chest. Our mouths dance as our bodies desperately seek closeness.
There are no words for a yearning that’s stretched over lifetimes.
No phrases that speak as loud as our lips can.
And we continue to share all those unspoken thoughts, feelings, and longings in this hungry tangle of tongues and flesh.
But then our reunion is interrupted by a voice that I recognize immediately. Chance. The strange man I met by the river appears near us, wearing a translucent green visor, holding a small, round cage full of tiny, round objects.
“Just my luck, running into you two lovebirds here!” Chance states, opening the cage and plunging his hand into a sea of small white balls. “What are the odds?”
Thomas returns to his side of the bars, and I, to my side. We both turn our attention to the entity that must somehow be integral to this story, to our story.
“What are you doing here?” Thomas asks intently.
Chance pulls his hand out of the cage and looks at the writing on the single white ball he pulled out. “B-4 I answer that, how’s about a quick game?”
“Enough games. This isn’t a fucking game!” Thomas booms.
“Isn’t it though? Are we not all inside an arena, operating by a set of rules, with a goal in mind?
There are winners and losers, and the outcome for each of us is unknown until we get there.
” Chance tosses the first ball over his shoulder and reaches into the cage again to pull another ball.
He looks at it before speaking again. “I”—he emphasizes the letter as though reading from the ball before tossing it over his shoulder as well—“think that sounds an awful lot like a game.”
“Open this gate,” Thomas demands, his anger rising. “Now. You cannot keep us apart. Not after all we’ve been through in this life and the last. We deserve to be together.”
“While I must say I agree, it’s not up to me. We very rarely get what we deserve in life. In any of our lives. Fate could be kind, but rarely chooses to be. Dishing out harm coldly behind her metallic silver eyes with those writhing gold threads.”
“I know those eyes.” I say quietly, remembering the creature that assaulted my memories before I escaped The Bliss.
“All unfortunate souls meet those eyes at one time or another. Spooky stuff.” Chance shudders before continuing.
“And I offer nothing more than opportunity. A couple of lucky breaks got you part of the way, but it’s the two of you that made it together in the end.
Rather poetic to have made it this far and still be separated by bars that pulled you apart in your mortal days as well.
Poetic or cruel. I suppose it depends on your perspective. ”
Thomas pulls and yanks at the bars, his iron will doing nothing to manipulate the iron bars between us. The hinges rattle, and the lock shakes, but the gate does not budge. My fingers, which gripped the bars again as Thomas worked, slowly loosen their grip as defeat and desperation take hold.
Tears well in my eyes. I bang futilely against the bars on my end as energy leaves me and hopelessness grows.
Tommy’s hand is now furiously pushing at the handle attached to the lock in the center of the door.
The handle turns, but the lock does not disengage.
“It’s locked, my love. There’s nothing to be done. ”
“No. It’s not possible,” I cry. “There must be a way in. There must be. I’ll climb over. I’ll dig under. I will claw at these bars until my hands are bloody and scarred. We cannot have made it this far for it all to end now.”
“Fate is a cruel mistress, indeed, my love.”
“Fuck fate, Tommy. We are destiny. And if death cannot keep us apart, then I refuse to let some bars get in the way now.”
“They’ll be coming for me, Maddy. I don’t know how much time we have.”
“Forever, Thomas Asher. We have forever.” I insist as I claw my arms at the bars, willing them to be as fake as the flowers I left behind in The Bliss.
“We have stories to tell and memories yet to make. I will not lose you again before I’ve even had you.
I will not.” I slow my efforts, as Thomas lets his hand fall from the unmoving handle.
Chance chimes in again, his hand having found another ball. “N case of emergency, make sure you’ve exhausted all options first.”
“Stop with your stupid riddles.”
“These aren’t riddles, Asher. It’s bingo. Have you never played?”
“Why are you doing this?” Thomas seethes at Chance.
“I’m not doing this. It just is.”
“Why?” Thomas pleads, the scratch in his throat voicing his desperation.
“Why, why, why, why, why.” Chance rattles off in a mocking, frustrated tone.
“Why does everything need a reason? Why can’t it just BE?
Hmm? Bad things happen to good people. Why?
Just. Because. Good things happen to bad people.
Why? Why not? Some things don’t make any sense.
Why? Because I felt like it. Because they have to.
Because something has to, and why not that?
There’s no reason. It just is. Life doesn’t care.
It’s not awarding points for good behavior.
It’s just out here, rolling the dice and doing the math.
But why? There must be a reason. There simply must. No. There. Does. Not.”
Thomas balls his fists at his sides and looks like he’s moments away from rushing at Chance.
Without thinking, I bring my hand to the handle on my side of the gate and give it a gentle tug.
With no extra effort, not superhuman force, I push the handle down, and to my complete and total surprise, the lock disengages, and the door creaks slightly at the hinge.
“It’s open,” I whisper in complete shock. “The gate is just open.”
“Well, would you look at that?” Chance hums with a smile on his face. “It’s been open this whole time.”
“Why wouldn’t the gate be locked from the inside?”
“Gates are used for two purposes—to keep some people out and other people in. No one’s ever tried to leave The Bliss before, so there’s been no reason to lock the gate.
First time for everything, I suppose. I imagine management will have something to say about this.
Not your problem though.” Chance reaches his hand back into the cage of balls and pulls two out. “G-O.”
“Go,” Thomas says, and a smile crosses Chance’s face.
“Bingo.” He smirks, and just as suddenly as he arrived, he disappears.
I pull the door open wider and take an excited step across the threshold toward Tommy.
The second my body passes beyond the boundary of The Bliss, a flood of memories drowns me.
Hurts and trauma I long since buried and not felt in ages pour through me and rack my body with unimaginable pain.
My body feels like it’s being physically torn in two as wave after wave of joy and sadness overwhelm me.
It’s as though my entire life has been distilled into a single moment that is hitting me all at once—every high and every low concentrated into a microsecond.
During my time in The Bliss, I felt so little about so many things, but I now feel every little thing acutely and completely. The sensation is enough to render me immobile, for my body to seize up in agony.
Then a physical sensation helps my mind focus on the present. Thomas’s firm, rough hand grasps my shoulder. His other hand comes to my other shoulder, and he squeezes me reassuringly, locking eyes with me and forcing my attention through the chaos and into him.
“It’s okay, my dove. You’re safe now. You’re mine. Nothing can hurt you anymore.”
“But it does. So much from the past. It hurts so much, and I feel it now. Everywhere.”
“And I’m here with you. You don’t have to face it alone. You don’t have to feel anything alone again. We can navigate the pain together.”
“Until we find our way back to the pleasure,” I whisper hopefully.
Strength returning to my body from the points of contact shared with Thomas. I let his confidence shelter me from the storm raging within.
He takes hold of me fully, and my entire body presses into his eager embrace.
The distance between us, which was a chasm for ages and was moments ago still separated by iron, has finally been reduced to nothing.
I could stay in this space for another eight lifetimes, but Thomas squeezes me even tighter and then pulls back slightly.
“We need to go. There will be people looking for us,” he insists.
“Where?” I ask, knowing nothing of the world I’ve just entered into outside of The Bliss.
A fire lights behind Tommy’s eyes. “I have an idea. Follow me.”
“Anywhere you lead,” I tell him, trailing my hand down his arm and locking our fingers together.
And then we’re off.