{"id":848,"date":"2014-01-11T02:02:21","date_gmt":"2014-01-11T10:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/?p=848"},"modified":"2014-01-11T02:02:21","modified_gmt":"2014-01-11T10:02:21","slug":"mercy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/?p=848","title":{"rendered":"Mercy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It was her lips that brought Mercy\u2019s attention to focus: how red more than red, plump and liquid in the light of the kitchen\u2019s fluorescent, a swath of scarlet across her pale, pale skin. Julia was everything that Mercy was not: smooth where she was rough, light where Mercy was dark.<\/p>\n

\u201cRead my tea leaves,\u201d Julia asked, and of course Mercy did. She did everything Julia asked of her. Mercy peered into the swirl at the bottom of the cup, and nearly dropped it, so startled was she by what she saw inside.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is it?\u201d Julia asked. \u201cWhat do you see?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYour dreams coming true,\u201d Mercy lied. \u201cAnd a light brighter than the sun surrounding you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The leaves spun into a dark circle, pulling inward on themselves, the gravity of their evil dragging in the light around them.<\/p>\n

It was Joshua, Mercy knew. With his blond hair, framing his face like a windowpane, and his devil\u2019s eyes that Julia couldn\u2019t resist. She\u2019d seen how Julia\u2019s blush raised when she was thinking of Joshua, how she leaned out the open window to watch him while he worked under the hood of the car he never finished tinkering with in his driveway.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going out tonight,\u201d Julia said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you wearing?\u201d Mercy asked.<\/p>\n

Julia put out her cigarette. \u201cI don\u2019t know. My yellow dress, maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mercy poured more tea in Julia\u2019s cup, not caring if she drank it or not, but wanting to stir the leaves up again, to break the bond of their dark portent. \u201cAre you sure? It\u2019s going to be cold tonight, and that dress is awfully thin.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt won\u2019t be that cold. I\u2019ll be alright.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just don\u2019t want you to get sick, that\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Julia turned on the radio, which was on the cabinet by the table. \u201cYou worry too much.\u201d She spun the dial until she found some soft rock music, something Mercy didn\u2019t recognize.<\/p>\n

Mercy had once brought Joshua a piece of mail that had been delivered by accident to their house instead of his. She\u2019d brushed her fingers against his hand as he took the letter from her, and Mercy had known the mail was from a woman in Minnesota, a woman named Maude, with hair like a pre-Raphaelite Ophelia, moving like a cinematic dream in Mercy\u2019s mind, and she\u2019d seen how Joshua had kissed her, felt it on her own lips, and tasted the pillow against her mouth while he held Maude down against the bed, felt the headboard under her hands as Maude gripped it, knew the way Joshua\u2019s muscles felt tensing and releasing against and inside of her.<\/p>\n

Mercy had excused herself as quickly as she could and hurried back inside her own house, trying not to run, not until she was out of Joshua\u2019s sight and could dash upstairs and to her own bed, where she collapsed in a flushed heap. She could taste Joshua on her lips, salt and rust, and she could taste Maude as well, baby\u2019s breath, and Mercy knew there was nothing to do when she got like this other than to hide away, stay in bed with the blankets pulled up high against her chin, and not to come out again until the shivering had subsided, until the flush was gone from her skin, until the heat that radiated out from her head and her heart and from between her legs dissipated. She couldn\u2019t leave until she was one person again, and not three.<\/p>\n

Julia wanted Joshua so badly that Mercy could feel her desire slipping like smoke between the plaster wall separating their bedrooms, while Mercy\u2019s own want was trapped in a windowless place inside her, locks on the door, keys thrown away. It was safer that way, not just for Mercy, but safer for Julia as well.<\/p>\n

Things happened when Mercy let her heart out of its box.<\/p>\n

Things happened, and people were changed, and then the weight of sin grew a little heavier around Mercy\u2019s shoulders, and the dirt floor of the house\u2019s basement would have another secret to help cover over.<\/p>\n

Things were safer with Mercy\u2019s heart kept in its box.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was her lips that brought Mercy\u2019s attention to focus: how red more than red, plump and liquid in the light of the kitchen\u2019s fluorescent, a swath of scarlet across her pale, pale skin. Julia was everything that Mercy was not: smooth where she was rough, light where Mercy was dark. \u201cRead my tea leaves,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[232],"class_list":["post-848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-2","tag-mercy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=848"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":849,"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848\/revisions\/849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kamekomurakami.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}