A Fine Line

A Fine Line:

Alice couldn’t quite remember when James first appeared. Perhaps it was after the trip to the movies, as she lay trembling under her scanty comforter, pillow pulled firmly around her ears to drown out the tumult of bellowing, and crashing glass. Each pounding of fist on flesh--although her father was not above utilizing any implement on hand--beckoned another tear onto her already soaked covers. From the cracks of her eyelids she’d looked up to see the most peculiar figure beaming genially down at her from the foot of her bed.

“Are you the bogeyman?”

            He perched himself at the edge of her mattress and braced an arm around her, her wide eyes soaking in his silhouette. He looked too kind to be a monster, she decided. 

“No, Little Swan.”

“Are you an angel?”

The man’s smile broadened.

“Perhaps, Little Swan. You can call me James.”

At first she’d pestered him with questions: “Why are you so blonde?” “Why don’t you eat?” “Why can’t Mummy and Daddy see you?” And every time James replied with the same slow shake of his head and shark-like smile. With time she came to accept his omnipresent grin, her only comfort through the thunderstorm that ravaged her world. When the rows escalated, she sought refuge in the vintage armoire that her mother had salvaged from a haphazard yard sale, its hand-painted lions standing guard. James crouched awkwardly beside her, rocking her until the waves of turmoil died down.

            He was her faithful watchdog, never leaving her side. He lifted her to the kitchen counter to sneak an extra cookie when her father had finally passed out in front of the muted television and her mother drank herself to sleep. He waltzed with her across the carpet of her bedroom floor, dusted with rays of midnight, to the tinkling of her music box. He sat cross-legged in the teak rocking chair while she held lonely tea parties with her one-eyed teddy. James even defended her when her father exploded—calloused hands crushing her, ready to snap her like a chinadoll—and smashed him into the wall, while she scampered to the crook of her cherry tree, frills billowing in the evening breeze, tuning out the cacophony erupting from the yellow-stained walls.  And every night she curled up beside him, breathing in the warm cinnamon scent of his suit, while he weaved stories about Anastasia, and the Troubadours, and the ragings of the Blitzkrieg.

Even beyond her cage, James accompanied her. He liked to smell the city. But he never came to school with her, except for that time when Timmy McAloon yanked her pigtails and pushed her off the swings, and James made the chains coil around his neck while she took in the spectacle, head tilted curiously. An accident, the teachers called it. No one ever pulled her hair again after that.

Her mother probably would have sent her to therapy, if she wasn’t in a perpetual stupor of inebriation. It was no concern of hers that her daughter consorted with an imaginary friend who wasn’t quite imaginary.

The only person who might have noticed Alice’s madness was Uncle Ted, but he was too busy smacking his chops, saggy jowls quivering with excitement at each passing schoolgirl. At nine and a half, Alice was a little too old to sate his depravity, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t tried to sneak a clammy hand up Alice’s frock. One Thanksgiving, he flopped on top of her, red-faced and stinking of booze, clamping a stubby hand over her mouth as he loosened his belt. James descended upon him at once, lifting him into the air with impossible-strength and hurling him into the wilted flowerbed outside. She bolted.

Panting past familiar mailboxes and flickering streetlamps, she steeled herself. She let the icy calm envelop her, but yet she could not mask the silver streaks trickling against her will. “Stupid humans,” she said, kicking the gravel with her bare feet. It was something James always said. Not far behind her, her friend laughed.

“There’s a way out you know.”

She turned. The near winter moonlight revealed a dangerous glint in his eyes that she had never seen before. He extended his hand. “You know what to do, Little Swan.”

 In his palm she saw the blaze of reassurance that had warmed her through the endless assaults, the anchor that shielded her from the storm’s fury. There was no hesitation, no question of unwavering trust as her dainty fingers clasped his.

It was easier than Alice had thought. No different from when her mother had sliced up the turkey through half-choked sobs earlier. Of course, her family hadn’t been expecting it.  The blade glided in and out, waltzing around rubied ribbons, and her face lit up at the innards strewn across her stage like roses at a curtain call. Her father was the hardest; the whiskey fires fueling him into action, but James took care of him. Alice’s delicate pout twisted as she watched him spluttering, as helpless as she’d always felt.

She giggled as the streams of blood bubbled gently around her. James circled the massacre, vulturine and triumphant.

“Beautiful,” he crooned.

Alice giggled again. Even after the wails of sirens invaded, her childish glee trilled through the thawing morning.