Chapter 1 - Changes

Turn and face the strange.

The upset and discomfort had been visible all afternoon. Tristan couldn’t put his finger on it but he thought it had settled over her while they were at the cafe. Not that Lilith wasn’t prone to moods or bad humor anyway, this just seemed to be deeper and longer than usual. He knew the life she came from and tried the best he could to accept her for who she was, regardless of everything that came with it. Maybe someday it will all turn around. The good in their lives pointed him in that direction the days the bad showed up.

”WHAT. THE. FUCK. DOES THAT MEAN?” he heard Lilith angrily bellow from the other room.

She’d been on the phone with her sister since walked in the door. They often got into yelling fights. They had a weird dynamic that was more strained than your typical sibling rivalry. He’d never met her whole family but apparently it was quite large to hear her tell it. He’d only really met her sister once and that was only in passing on the street. He felt like it was slightly odd he had never met them, especially considering they all lived in the same city. But it was a large city and they’d only been going out for a little short of a year. Families can be different and odd and have their own eccentricities. His father had died when he was young and he had a … strained relationship with his mother so he could understand.

Tristan yawned loudly and got up from the sofa. He always felt tired when she was in one of these moods. Her anger and frustration felt very draining to him. He walked over to the window and pulled back the sheers. The rain was dancing on the road outside from a passing Summer shower. He looked across the street and noticed a solitary figure standing in the bus stop enclosure. A tall lady with long, shockingly red hair; natural, not dyed. Her trenchcoat was soaked from walking in the rain, her black leather linesmen boots slick from the downpour.

Their eyes locked for an impossible eternity. There was no way she could see him standing in this third floor window but yet it felt like she was looking into him somehow; reading his soul. He smirked at the thought. She actually reminded him of a woman he’d known as a child. She’d been the outcast that lived on the edge of town, the one whispered about with sneering words like whore and witch. Looking back from the perspective of his age, really just someone who had been liberated and ahead of her time by 50 years give or take. The resemblance was uncanny but this woman would have been her daughter although judging by her apparent age, more like that woman’s granddaughter.

The sound of the Butler door swinging open and crashing against the wall broke the spell. He turned from the window and let the sheer swish back into place. There was a visible dent in the drywall from that happening repeatedly. He meant to fix that someday but why bother? Maybe wait for the day it stops happening? That’s what he hoped her weekly therapy was helping her through.

”Is everything okay dear,” he pleaded as he walked back over to the couch and sat down.

There was always a subtle, liminal moment in all of her moods. A momentary eternity where the wind could shift either way. She’d either sit down, smile, and snuggle up against him or continue the tirade directed at her sister against him. It felt like that other metaphorical shoe always took achingly slow to drop.

She hovered there, like she couldn’t decide which way the shoe would go. In that moment Tristan felt an incredible wave of exhaustion wash over him. It was as if all the rest and peace and caffeine he’d consumed that day were sucked out of him through the middle of his chest.

Didn’t he sleep well last night?

She smiled and sat down, relief washing over Tristan’s soul like a cold splash of water.

She pulled down the hem of her Valentino dress as she curled up against him. Tristan smiled and felt her warmth against him. Their relationship was unsettling sometimes but he knew the good times outweighed the bad and that’s what counts.

Right?

”My sister is an impossible fool,” Lilith smirked in her hard to place but vaguely Eastern European accent. Like Mila Kunis. Just that tinge of something Slavic back there at the end of an R.

Well at least that was something he could agree with as he slowly felt his anxiety subside. Her sister was insufferable. Always calling with emergencies and anxieties at all hours of the night and getting Lilith all riled up. Tristan had often asked why she put up with her nonsense and all she’d do is shrug and say, “Eve is family. What can I do?”

Tristan understood difficult family. His parents had been married for 40 years but probably hadn’t spoken 6 words to each other in the last 10. Outwardly they were the cream of the social crop in their community but inwardly it was all harsh coldness and calculation; the Kardashians pretending to be the Kennedys. His father was more concerned with money, womanizing, and his poker buddies at the Country Club than his wife and children. His mother was more concerned with how quickly she could get to the bottom of a bottle of Vodka than whether Tristan had lunch. Just wealthy enough to have all the bad habits but never enough to have a staff that could take care of the kids. His older sister had run as soon as she could find someone to take her away from the chaos. His older brother had followed in his father’s footsteps and could do no wrong. He’d just walked out the front door one day and no one noticed he was gone.

He’d run as far as the money he had and his father’s social connections could carry him. Halfway across the country he’d run into Lilith at an art exhibition and they just kind of collapsed into each other like a neutron star . . . or a black hole. He still hadn’t decided which astronomical metaphor was more appropriate. It depended on the day really.

I will not be equal to the fool who cherishes her own misdeed.

Tristan whipped out of his reverie and looked down at Lilith curled up against him, coiled like a cat.

“What did you say!?!”, the look of confusion clearly splattered across his face.

Lillith looked up for her repose, equally confused, “I’ve said nothing dear. You are hearing the voices again.”

But it had been there in that moment, clear as if someone had whispered it in his ear. Now that he thought about it though, it was not her voice. It had a brogue to it, clearly Celtic; Scottish or Irish. Liltingly feminine yet . . . husky.

Suddenly, Tristan jumped from the couch and ran to the window and pulled back the sheer violently. But she was gone, the bus shelter was empty. Why was he so convinced it had been her? Whoever she was?

Lilith was right, it wasn’t the first time he’d heard that same voice in his head. It had started about two months ago on a foggy April morning. He’d been laying in bed, dreading the day like he did a lot of the time. The days had increasingly become someone else’s; work, life, Lilith. A percussive, repetitive rhythm that seemed to have no room for him anymore. He was not the musician it seemed, he was more the drumhead.

It was in that moment that the voice seemed to push its way into his mind. That same voice as now; feminine, husky, Celtic. An ancient sounding voice from myth and legend.

You are watched. You are protected. But you must break free yourself.

It wasn’t imagined or an artifice of a waking mind. It was real. As real as someone kneeling beside him and whispering softly in his ear. It had come to him three other times before today; all with a similar message. You must break free. Break free from what?

Tristan returned to the present and walked back to the couch; slumping down beside Lilith. It felt different though, laying here against her. Something had changed; had been changing since the first day hearing the voice. Distrust? Anger? Frustration? It was hard to place a finger on it.

Lilith reached out to take his hand and he felt a tiredness overtake him. He hadn’t been sleeping well. Maybe it was time for a nap. As he curled up against her and let the tiredness overtake him, he saw the woman at the bus stop in his mind one more time. Why did she seem so familiar to him?