Post by CoolTubeSource on Mar 12, 2020 11:44:08 GMT -5
~~Sunday, March 12th, 2017:~~
Jean-Paul Lacklan could feel each and every one of his years as he sat on a bench in his weight room. Wearing nothing but a white muscle shirt and tight black pants, his half-mask covering the lower half of his face, he could feel his body being eaten away. The cancer had started in his skin all those years ago, but its relentless assault on his body, from organs to entire respiratory system, had been ruthless, without mercy.
How long since he had been able to breath fully, to take open his mouth wide and fill his lungs? Months. The hunk of metal and wires surgically placed in his throat, the only thing that allowed him to talk, had severely limited his ability to breathe. It had turned his deep baritone into a mockery of its former gravity, leaving something less human and more robotic. His head, the flesh of his hairless scalp naught but a mass of red and purple burns, the flesh mottled, felt as it was freshly on fire, as if that day long ago was revisiting him so close to the end. His entire body was a mess. He needed a cane to walk anywhere, and even getting out of bed was a struggle most days.
Oh, to be taken away to His side, to rejoin his Beloved Selena after all these years. To be free of the pain. He had no strength left. No strength.
Except for the pillar of strength pressed against his back.
His daughter, his lovely, loving daughter. Sarah. She sat opposite, their backs pressed against each other, the scratching of her quill on a pad of paper the only sound in the room. How many times had they sat in this very position, their backs pressed against the other, lending the other strength in silence? Countless. Even as a little girl, she found herself leaning against him as he worked. Writing letters or sermons, perhaps just speaking to God, and a little child, her albino condition making her seem a red-eyed ghost, lending him her strength.
The day she realized for the first time, at the tender age of five, that the mother she never knew, the mother taken away just moments after her own birth, was never going to walk through that door, no matter how hard she prayed.
The day she left school, having completed all of her credits two years early, and needed support in her decision on what to do with her life.
The day he finally decided to let her train to become a wrestler, both under his instruction and under his friend Nikita Dolore.
The day he learned of the cancer...and then of the terminal reality of it.
And now today. The day he was to let her go. Forever.
Her life had been tumultuous, this he knew. A lifetime of people, his people, the people who had flocked to him and his message of salvation, looking to her not as a person but as an idea. A lifetime of being treated differently because of what she looked like. A lifetime of living in the shadow of the Voice of God. He did not envy her task of spreading her own wings.
But spread she did! He was infinitely proud of her, as proud as any father could be. As much as he may have argued initially, she was succeeding as a professional wrestler, even starting in the tag team division, just like he did. And she was making friends outside of the compound, just as he had charged her to. He knew she ran into initial difficulty, even a few crushing defeats, particularly with girls her age, but she was succeeding now. She beamed when speaking of her tag partner, Melissa, and the circle of friends involved with her. But a whole different look entered her eye when she spoke of Mackenzie, the girl who visited to so much fanfare two weeks before. They even got arrested together! He had begun to worry that Sarah was being too reserved; after all, her mother had been arrested for the first time at 16.
And now...now...she was leaving him. She was moving out to Hollywood, all the way on the other side of the country in California. The why of it made sense, of course: She would be near her partner, allowing them to train together, and she would be but a few hours from Las Vegas, the home location for one of her companies, and Los Angeles boasted one of the largest airports in the world. It all made practical sense. But he needed her to truly be on her own, to truly separate herself from the strings of Lacklanland. She was to live on a stipend, and not be able to call upon the coffers for any reason, and even learn to drive a car. She visibly pouted at that demand!
She was leaving. Tomorrow. And here she was, her back pressed against his as she had always done, drawing on her pad. She needed something. And he would provide what little strength he had left.
“Father?”
Lacklan’s lips, dried and cracked though they were, smiled from underneath his mask. While his daughter had never known her mother, she was still somehow her carbon copy. Her voice carried Selena’s Londoner tongue, his Beloved’s clear and perfect diction. The soft “ahs” in Father always made his heart melt.
“Daughter?” Even that one word pained him, his throat straining.
“Is love important?”
Odd question. Matters of the heart never seemed to matter much to her.
“Of course, Daughter. It is one of the few pure things in this world. It is worth fighting for.”
The scratch of her quill on the pad of paper.
“Is it worth sacrifice? Even when it hurts?”
“Especially when it hurts. But remember what I told you before: It must be easy. If it is not? Then it is not real.”
The scratch of her quill on the pad of paper.
“I have met someone, Father.”
Ah. There it is. What this is all about. Is that why she was so happy this weekend? Her entire trip home to visit him had been a whirlwind of his petulant princess, but everything had suddenly changed yesterday morning. The servants said that she had been seen making a dash, a true sprint, to her bedchamber, her phone in her hand. And then it was nothing but sunshine and rainbows from her. Well, relatively, anyway.
“Oh?”
The scratch of her quill on the pad of paper.
“What if I told you this person was...different...from us. Very different.”
Interesting.
“I would commend you, then. You need more culture than what Lacklanland has to offer.”
The scratch of her quill on the pad of paper.
“What if I told you this person was black?”
Odd question. There must be something else here, something deep.
“What does race or ethnicity have to matter? God sees us all the same.”
The scratch of her quill on the pad of paper.
“What if I told you this person was a girl?”
That came out as a whisper. He could feel her body shift against him, her posture and countenance changing. This...this was important.
“What are you saying, Daughter?”
Silence. No scratching of the quill.
“Father...Daddy…”
She had not called him “Daddy” since she was seven. There was a quiver in her voice.
“I think I’m gay.”
She sounds almost broken. Why?
The large man turns slowly, his body groaning in protest, his left knee needing his hands to assist in its operation. But he does turn to face his daughter. But he sees her back, she has not turned.
“You have had male suitors before.”
“Yes,” she says, her shoulders slumping. “Recently, in fact. But...there is always something...wrong. Like...it’s just...hard, you know? And you say that love is supposed to be easy, that the love you and Mother shared was effortless. And it doesn’t feel that way.”
She pauses, her shoulders still slumped, such a foreign picture from her usual prideful bearing.
“But with her...it just feels RIGHT. Like...we were meant to be together. And I...I just...I am so afraid that you...that you will be ashamed of me...”
Those last few words come out as a sob. She was crying. He had not seen her cry in many years.
Lacklan takes her by the shoulders and gently turns her, his grip as if he is holding a small bird: Too gentle and she will fly away, too strong and he will crush her. As she turns, he sees her sketchpad, sees what she has been drawing as they held each other up with their shared strength. A girl. A woman. Dark skinned. Freckled nose. Braids.
Ah. Now he understands. Her fierce and excitable friend.
He takes her chin in his hand, lifting it up. She was so beautiful, as if God had taken his Beloved’s face and frosted it, made it moonlight, and placed rubies in her eyes.
“Nothing you could ever say, or ever do, would make me be ashamed of you. You are my daughter, my Blood Princess. And I hope that what you and Mackenzie have, and what you find, equals what I and your mother had.”
Tears stream down her face openly now. One final piece of advice. One final moment to be his little girl’s hero.
“If you love her, do not let her go, no matter what. Do you understand?”
She burst into tears, unabashedly weeping, and leaps into his arms. Lacklan holds his daughter, feeling her hot tears soaking his shirt, feeling them slick his chest. He held her, proud of her, ready to let her go, to let her be her own woman. Deep inside him, he feared that it would be the last time he ever saw her.
He was right.
End.