Restevac
Chapter Two
M.C. Laphar
Chapter Two
M.C. Laphar
The driver watched from his rearview mirror as the three visitors returned to the car, this time with a fourth person. He could tell by her skin and by her hair and by the way her clothes were ragged that she was a restevac. One of the poor, uneducated people of the serving class in Haiti. Upon seeing this, the man realized why the three men had come to Hinche. The only time that a restevac was ever brought out of this place was for work in another part of Haiti, or Santo Domingo, or Sex Trafficking. The man's heart sank as the smiling woman made her way, flanked by thethree men, across the street and to the car.
Nadya took her seat in the front by the driver, while the three men sat in the back. The silence was deafening and the look Nadya saw in the driver's eyes was disturbing, like a hawk that lost its prey, and was still hungry.
“Can you drive us to Santo Domingo?” Donovan asked.
“I can only go so far as the border, Monsieur.” the driver replied.
“That will be fine,” Donovan said. “there is another driver waiting for us at the border.”
“Why are we going to Sante Dominique?” Nadya said with a turn of her head. “I can't go there!”
“Says who?”
“Says the people in Sante Dominique!”
“The Government of Sante Dominique is not God.” The car started up, and made its way down the road. Nadya had a sinking feeling in her heart as the car came closer and closer to their destination.
The auditorium was filled with over a thousand people, they all watched the graduates seated in two massive phalanxes of educated soldiery. Cana sat in the middle of the group, listening to the president of the university as he gave his farewells to the new graduates of Georgetown. The president was old, his hair curling at the sides of his head and his eyes wrinkled with age. He stood with a cane and hunched over the podium like a large crow defending a single piece of meat.
“You all are the best that the university can produce, the best that any school canproduce, and for that you are to be commended,” said the President. “I bid you farewell, and I wish you all the best that life can offer you.” He was done, and all the graduates cheered and tossed their hats into the air. They went for drinks at the reception area, and had a very merry time. The last time some of them would ever see each other in fact. Cana shied away from the others and drank some punch while her former schoolmates downed Heineken and Miller Pilsner Beer.
After the reception, she went to her dorm, where she looked around. A week ago, it was cluttered up with junk. Now, there was only a large suitcase and a manilla folder. The week had been filled with days of hauling papers and books down the hall to the trashcan, and throwing out old clothes. She had no need for music cd's as she had money to buy musicians now. The entire fortune of the Fadruthiya family had been left to Charities, but Cana hired a Lawyer who helped to change all of that.
She pulled off her gown and put on her foot length blue jeans. They were ragged at the ankles, a style she had recently found quite attractive. She pulled on her day old socks and her white sneakers. She loosely tied them and pulledo n a gray tee shirt. She turned to the bed and sighed.
The Suitcase held a new doorway to be entered. A boundless future filled with beauty and despair, life and death, tranquility. The envelope held a doorway locked, but to be opened before anything else was done. A path of darkness and determination lay on this road, and possibly, terror beyond the scope of her most terrible fantasies. She picked up the Suitcase and then the Envelope.
“I would like to see the room of Bethany Fadruthiya please.” Cana said as she stopped at the front desk of Saint Elizabeth's Mental Hospital. It was a beautiful place, it was like a wonderland on the outide, a nobleman's house. Buto n the inside the truth was plain to be seen. It was miserable.
“Right this way,” the orderly replied as she turned on her heel and led her to an elevator. They rode to the second floor where Bethany was kept, along with numerous other patients of varying traumatic degree. Cana watched the orderly, the woman was tall, with a haunting grace. Her skin was a milky complexion which blended well with her long golden locks restrained by a white clasp. She walked with a confident, sensual stride that Cana picked up on immediately. It was almost as if the woman meant for her to notice it. If that was the case, then it was done.
“This is the room,” she said as she turned to face Cana. “She's probably hiding somewhere.”
“Thank you.” Cana opened the door and closed it quickly. She made sure the orderly was gone before she turned to find Bethany, Cana wiggled her fingers in dark anticipation. She stood in the middle of the room and listened. The hiss of slow, measured breath was faint, but evident. She sat on the bed and looked around for a moment, then bent over until her head reached under the bed. She smiled at the red eyed blonde woman under the bed.
“Hello, Bethany.”
“This is your sister,” Donovan said as he sat down. Nadya was outside of the room while her two sisters, tall, dark haired, slim figured women, sat on a couch before the man.
One wore a pair of jeans that reached the floor, black sandals and a long sleved, light fabric shirt with a deep v-cut. This was Favie, rumored to be the more sinister of the two. She had sharp features on her yellow face, and her slender arms connected to slender, manicured hands with glossy black nail polish. Her lips were curled in a despicable sneer which disgusted the visitor.
“Your arrogance is evident madamoiselle.” He glanced at her sister, who wore a black dress and black stockings. Her heels were in her bag beside her. This woman was Lucielle, who was far more arrogant and persuasive than her despicable sister. Lucielle was rumored to have seduced a man into killing himself, saying that she'd marry him in the afterlife, if he waited for her.
Favie spoke quickly, “Master Donovan, that girl is not our sister.”
“Really,” he replied unconvinced.
“Yes. Our sister died a month before we left for Santo Domingo.”
“Of,”
“Typhoid.” Favie began dangling the sandal of her right foot. “That creature is ofno relation to my self or my sister.”
“Somehow, I think you're telling the truth.” Donovan said.
“I'm glad you think so.”
“Yes, I think that you two have made yourselves believe that Nadya died before you left for this nation. But I can certainly tell you that she is alive and recovering from your actions.” He looked at Favie. She had begun wiggling her toes in her sandals. An uncomfortable expression glazed upon her face. And Lucielle had taken to rubbing her feet together furiously, her stockings making a constant, 'scritch scritch,' in the room. “Is something wrong ladies?”
“No,” Favie said as she shifted positions on the couch and crossed her legs. She scratched her knee for a moment.
“Is that all that brought you here?” Lucielle said as she began scratching her soles furiously.
“Well, no. In fact, I wouldn' even be here were it not for a previous engagement I had the pleasure of having with your cousins in America.” Favie's eyes were shocked for a moment, then she embarrassedly scratched her underarm.
“Gosh, I'm so sorry sir, I don't know what is going on.”
“That is fine my dear, as I was saying, I met your cousins in America. The Fadruthiyas.”
“We haven;t,” Lucielle scratched her back, “heard from them in two years. How are they?”
“Dead.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, very dead. Except for their only daughter, Cana.”
“That bitch, she's not even their, agh,”
“Itching?”
“Yes,” Lucielle said. “So sorry,”
“No need to apologize. Anyway, I just wanted to say that, I was told that in addition to knowing about your sister, which I kno to be the one out there in the hallway right now, you also know of someone else I am looking for. Now, will you tell me or not?”
“id you come here to interrogate us?”
“No, I came here to ask nicely, but I can if you want. My methods are quite precise on young women such as yourselves.”
“Get out.” they said together.
“No,” Donovan said as he rose to his feet and removed his panama hat. His hair fell to his shoulders. He removed his glasses, revealing red eyes. At seeing the man's face, the two women shrieked.
“Dante,” Lucielle whispered. “No...you're dead....”
“Dead? Well, if you count when I was I fought and was shot in the Napoleonic Wars, yes. I am dead. If oyu count the burning of Claude, Mehra and Maloj Fadruthiya, then no. I never died.” He grinned and stepped forward, throwing his cape to the floor and removing his gloves neatly. His knees cracked as he knelt to face them. The women forgot their itchign for the moment and looked into his eyes. Terror filling their blood.
“Don't tickle us again....” Lucielle begged.
“God in Heaven..” Favie gasped.
“God is absent today...” He grinned as he dug his long fingers into the women's bellies. They both urched forward in unison and screamed with laughter. They banged the couch and the floor, tried to get their hands around Dante's arms and failing miserably as their loose skin jiggled madly under their clothes. After five minutes, the women were sweating, grinning messes on the couch, their laughter filling the room.
“Please Dante,” Lucielle begged, “Stop tickling us!”
“No,” he said with focus in his voice.
“Damn you european!” Favie said as she tried to block his hand with her leg. In response, he slid his hand under her buttocks and wiggled his fingertips along the seat of her pants. “Augh damn it!!!”
“Now, you two listen to me.” Dante said. “I wish to know everything about your father and mother. You will tell me everything you know about them, and everything you claim not to know. If you lie to me, I have demons who do much worst than this to succulent wenches such as yourself. Their tortures are right out of a painting by Heironymous Bosch.”
“Fine, FINE!!!” Favie screamed between breaks of laughter. “I'll tell you anything, just stop it!”
“You will not tell me anything, you will tell me what I want to know.” He put his hands under Favie's sirt, and stuck his other hand up Lucille's dress, he dug into their fleshy bellies and watched them squeal and contort. “I am not in the mood for games.”
Two hours later Donovan left the room, Favie and Lucielle followed him quietly. Their faces were straining with residual laughter, and they were still itching like mad. They twitched and moved their shoulders.
Nadya stood as the three people came down the stairway. She looked at her sisters who looked just as they did six years before. And her sisters looked at her. They couldn't believe how pitiful she looked. Knotty hair, rotting teeth, a horrible odor that seemed all pervasive, and ragged clothing. They looked upon her with arrogant contempt.Sensing this, Donovan turned to face the two women above him.
“Do not worry,” he said pointing a gloved hand at them. “Before long she will look far more lovely than you two.” He turned on his heel, and gently held Nadya's wrist. The two of them then walked out of the foyer and into the pickup truck outside. As the vehicle drove off, Lucielle and Favie felt the itching disippate.
“Bethany, do you know who I am?” Cana asked as she looked at her adopted sister's eyes. It was distant, her blue eyes looked dazed eternally. Cana had been working with her sister for months on trying to get her to speak, with no response whatsoever. She had taken her out, bought her clothes, dressed her like her a double. But she did not respond vocally. She merely looked at her, there was no smile, no slack of the jaw, no involuntary twitch. But where she lacked speech, her odd actions were quite extravagant.
Today Cana found her under the bed, hiding from someone, perhaps the orderly. Cana pulled her out and handed her the clothes she'd wear that day. A sweat shirt and sweat pants, and sandals. She tied Bethany's hair back and led her out the door. They walked around Saint Elizabeth's and then walked back to Bethany's room. Cana helped Bethany undo her hair and gave her a piece of lemon pie.
“Bye Bethany,” Cana said after she put the food away. She picked up her bags and opened the door.
“Bye, Cana...” Cana stopped and turned around quickly. Bethany was looking at Cana and smiling.
Cana's eyes welled with tears of joy and she dropped her bags and went to hug her. She wrapped her arms around the woman and Bethany wrapped her arms around her sister's waist. Cana nestled her head between the crook in the shoulder and the neck. Her body language changed drastically as she felt Bethany's fingers skittering along her ribs.
“DAMN IT BETHANEEEHEHEHE!!!” She roared as she kicked a shoe off inadvertently. She rolled on the floor as Bethany lay on her and kept digging her fingers under her shirt. “HAAAhahahaa!!” Cana was not about to be beaten by her sister. She dug her fingers into her armpits, Bethany's teeth clenched and tears welled in her eyes, she snorted and sniggered for a moment.
The orderly heard laughter in the hallway, and went down to see what was going on. She looked in the room and saw Bethany and Cana rolling on the floor, laughing like maniacs and tickling the hell out of each other. She smiled and notified the doctor, her recommendation, Bethany was Cured.
