Pulse, Part Six

by Tangerine

Betsy shot up in bed, clutching her stomach immediately as pain coursed through her womb like a sharp knife fresh out of the fire. Her breathing was laboured, her body sweaty, and she feared she might have screamed in her sleep.

And to her horror, she didn't recognise where she was, she never did, not once had she in the week since Bobby had first offered his room. She never remembered; something always stopped her, always, always.

"That never happened like that! It hadn't been him!" Betsy cried out in agony like a beast caught in a hunter's trap, squeezing her hands to her face until it hurt. "Oh God! I never did that to him; I wouldn't have done that. He was too young. I didn't know him then. It isn't me. It wasn't him!"

Betsy stopped suddenly, biting her fist, and looked down at the growing pool of blood. She retched violently, vomiting onto the crimson bed sheets, and sent one, primal thought to Bobby. It violently woke him from his fitful sleep and nearly destroyed his mind, but there was no other way to do it. At this moment, she simply had no control, and she was beginning to think maybe she never had.

Laying back, she stared at the ceiling, waiting, waiting for Bobby to come, but he wasn't coming. Where was he? Oh God, had she... had she killed him? She had! She knew it; she could feel it. She had ruined his mind like she had ruined her own.

Now she waited to die. She had nothing left, nothing in her. The baby she would have birthed lay outside her womb, hot and searing against her flesh, and it was dead, like everything else in her life, in her.

"Giving up?"

Betsy closed her eyes, pretending those words had not been uttered by him.

"Like you always do?"

No, she wasn't hearing this.

"Haven't you any strength?"

She was dreaming, though she remembered awakening.

"You let that baby die."

It was a nightmare.

"Like you let me die."

Wake up!

And she awoke into the darkness of the early morning, before the sun awoke, before the world came alive. She blinked rapidly, unable to believe she was awake, but the world was as she had left it. Placing her hand on her abdomen, as it rose and fell with every laboured breath. Her baby, it was still alive, and so was she. Alive, they were alive!

But was she really awake? Or was this another dream within a dream with a dream and on and on until she forgot what was real and what was a lie.

"Betsy?" Bobby asked sleepily, opening the door to his own room and looking in at her, a small ray of light hitting her left eye. She raised her hand to block it out, and Bobby walked in slowly, sitting down in the edge of the bed. "Are you okay?"

Calm yourself. "Of course. Why would I not be?"

"Call it a feeling, an intuition," Bobby responded seriously, crossing one lean leg over the other, bringing his shoulders forward to hide his undeveloped form from her unending stare, though he had the feeling she wasn't looking at him. "Your dreams have given you away, Betsy."

Control yourself. "I do not dream."

"Liar." There was an undertone to the way he said it that shocked her, and she stared at him with that look that was uniquely hers until he turned away, and she knew he regretted that particular utterance. "Sorry."

Reveal yourself. "I am sorry. I do not usually project when I sleep. I have not harmed you, have I?"

Bobby shook his head, shifting uncomfortably on the bed then crossing his free leg under the other bent one, and he sat still as if meditating. How young he looked, so much like a boy still despite his years. His soul had never grown up, and Betsy was envious because hers was too old. Why could she not be pure and young?

"Stop it."

Betsy looked at him, confused. "Pardon?"

"Stop it." Bobby held up his hand, moving it slowly with his fingers apart and his palms flat, moving it to emphasise his words, moving it to keep her away. "Just stop it."

"What am I doing?"

"What aren't you doing?"

"Oh." The word was pronounced dryly with a faint hint of anger. "It is not your place to comment on that."

Bobby inhaled sharply.

"Fine."

He stood up and walked to the door then turned sharply, on the ball of his heel, and in flash, in a brief flick of her eye, he was there, inches from her face, breathing deeply.

And suddenly, he wasn't Bobby anymore.

"You let me die!"

"What? No! No!" Betsy screamed, scrambling away from him on useless legs, falling from the bed onto the floor and crying out in pain when she hit. Her baby, her baby had hit the floor first instead of her. "Go away! Leave me alone! Stop haunting me!"

"You want to forget me?" He asked, coming over her, his body on hers, forcing her down, hurting her, and she screamed again. The stink of rotten flesh was suffocating her and the fear was worse than that, far worse. "You want to pretend I never existed?"

"No, I don't," Betsy sobbed, "but I want to let you go. I want to move on, and I can't, I can't let you leave me." Betsy face distorted in sorrow, and she put her hand where his heart should have been and was not, pushing him away. "But you have to go. Now."

"Betsy?"

She opened her eyes slowly at the question, sitting up in bed slowly, slightly surprised at the huge bulge of her stomach as it pushed out at her movements. The child within was stirring restlessly because it had not slept.

"Betts, are you okay? I heard you cry out."

"I am fine." The sentence seemed to lack the assurance she had hoped for, but Bobby nodded, entering the dark room, and Betsy, though she knew this time she was truly awake, was still afraid because she could not know for sure. "Really, Bobby, I am all right."

"You sure?" He asked, absently brushing a strand of sweat-soaked hair from her eyes with the back of his fingers, gently touching her skin, and it comforted her with its sweetness. She was not afraid.

"I'm sure." Betsy smiled sadly, catching his hand with hers, pulling it from her face and holding it tightly in her cold hands. An icy tear trickled down her pale cheeks, landing on his hand, and it burned, ever so slightly. It worried him because he recognised the feeling. It was the feeling of the shadows that time when she touched him and cauterised his skin.

"It was a bad dream, a nightmare, and nothing more. I am awake."

"But that doesn't mean they still can't haunt you," Bobby whispered gently, pulling her into a hug, and against his abdomen he felt a movement like butterflies dancing on his flesh as gentle as snow on a winter's eve. It was life.

"They can't if I do not let them, and I will not, not anymore. They have plagued me enough, and I will not give them anymore time. Warren is dead, and he is not coming back, ever, forever. I must learn to live with that because I am going to be a mother and a good one. I have to be strong for my baby."

Bobby laughed a joyous laugh. "And thank the Lord for that, Betsy. I never doubted you'd do anything less. Hey, I know, we're both not going to be getting anymore sleep, right? How about we get dressed and go see a movie? There's a theatre in town that plays the good stuff through the night, and I think 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is on for tonight. What say, you up for it?"

"It seems a fitting choice." Betsy smiled, gesturing to him with a hand. "But I suspect I'll need your help getting up. I fear I cannot make it on my own."

"Nobody ever said you had to, Betsy."

"I know that now. It took me awhile, but my eyes have been opened. I am no longer blind."

Bobby placed his arms around her, pulling her out of the car seat, and Betsy laughed, apologising profusely every time he swore. "I am sorry. I was not aware I weighed so much, but then, Doctor Woodrow did warn me I had gained weight."

"I'm just attributing it to weakness, and I think you should do the same," Bobby wheezed when she was standing, haloed by the streetlight above, and she was illuminated with beauty. The curves of her mature body were accentuated by the light, purple fabric that hung around her like a veil. "You look beautiful, Betsy."

Betsy cast a painful look upon her reflection in a nearby store window. "I'm fat."

"Fat? Pfft! You look like a pregnant woman, Betsy, fat and pregnant cannot exist together. You're either one or the other, not both, and even then, who's not to say the rest of us aren't emaciated?" Betsy smiled ruefully, and Bobby grinned, taking her arm in his. "Come on, I'd hate to have to sit in the front."

"So would I," Betsy muttered with a soft, charming laugh. "It's too far from the loo for my tastes." She placed her hands on her back, stretching her constantly sore muscles. "I am beginning to wonder if I will ever deflate."

"Only one ... er ... technically two more months, Betsy, keep the faith, you can do it. Hell," Bobby's eyes opened wide as he inwardly cursed at himself, "heck, it's been hardly a week since Mr. S brought you to the mansion, and you're already walking, despite my adamant pleas."

"I feel wonderful, Bobby, there is no reason to worry. My head is clear, and with it, my body. It feels good to walk, and it's good for me." Betsy held her arms out from her body, twirling around slowly and raising her face to the cold, artificial light, but it was like the sun to her at the moment because she didn't care. There was weight gone from her soul, and the world no longer seemed as bad as it had. "It is so fabulous for me to be free!"

Bobby couldn't help but marvel at the dramatic change. In a span of a night, she had gone from being depressed and lifeless to joyful and free. He was glad for her. He smiled because she did and his heart rejoiced for her because hers was light, yet still, in the pit of his being, a little voice nagged at him. Something was more wrong here than ever before.

"Can you excuse me for a moment?" Betsy muttered suddenly, staring intently at a person standing across the road under an identical light, yet this person seemed to be more in the shadows than in the light. Bobby nodded, watching as she moved slowly across the abandoned street, watching, watching like he always did.

Betsy stopped a metre from the body, waiting for him to make the first move, but he didn't, so Betsy cleared her throat, running her fingernails softly across the swell of her belly, back and forth, waiting.

And finally she could wait no longer. "You said you would leave me alone!"

"Keep your voice down, or it will attract attention to yourself, and I know that is not what you want," he replied, his voice monotonous and emotionless, so cold, so dead. "And for the record, I said I would not tend to you anymore, but I did mention, in passing if nothing else, that I intended to keep a close eye on you, Elisabeth."

"I vaguely recall such a threat," Elisabeth conceded airily as if she was too highly ranked to be forced to be accepting to his presence. Whether or not that was true, she could not deny it was a cruel joke that she was forced into this role of submissiveness. "Then be on with it, Sinister. What do you want from me now?"

"Simply to assure myself there is nothing amiss with you."

"Then I hope you are assured. I have never been better."

Sinister eyed her, a faint hint of what might be called a smile on his metallic lips. She noticed that his costume had changed dramatically. No longer did he don the red and blue but instead wore a simple black suit, with one red diamond over his right pectoral muscle and a second one on his left thigh, both the size of a clenched fist. The texture of the suit was metallic, like his flesh, as if it were merely an extension of his flesh.

The thin strips of material, it too made of a metal-like substance, formed the recognisable cape as it flowed behind him, moving as if in tune with him. He was somewhat overbearing, but she was not frightened of him. She had been but not anymore. She wouldn't allow herself fear.

"As I see." Sinister's cape suddenly merged with his body, and the costume and outer facade faded away to reveal a rather young, rather human young man. "I hope you did like my gift, Elisabeth."

"Gift?" Betsy repeated, looking at him with sense of bemusement. "If you mean my life and that of this baby, yes, I am very grateful to you for it, though it does mean I hate you any less that I have in the past."

"That is a part of it, but moreover I was speaking of this." He drew back the sleeve of his tailored shirt, revealing a piece of very raw, very silver skin on the inside of his wrist. "Like my flesh, your uterine walls are now lined with it, with a thicker lining near your cervix. When the time comes, and provided you do not tear this sheath before then, you will be okay. Any trauma will be absorbed by it, and any damage done other than a large tear, will heal itself."

Betsy felt sick by the knowledge as if his presence in her body made her unclean, and tears, though she fought them vehemently, formed in her eyes then flowed down her flawless cheeks. Sinister, satisfied by her reaction, nodded and stepped back.

"Enjoy your film."

And he walked off, briskly and light-footed, vanishing into the slight crowd. Bobby jogged up beside Betsy, holding her to him with one arm around her shoulders and stroked her hair like a father would a child.

And slowly, they moved to the movies, ready to lose themselves in a world of madness and fantasy, but Betsy knew it would never be enough. She could not escape herself that easily, no matter how hard she tried. It would never, ever happen, and she was numbed by the knowledge.

She had been condemned and could not find retribution for her sins.

[next part]

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