Committed Chapter 24

The Mercedes pulled into the parking lot of the Menelaus Mansion and Ariadne gazed out the window at it.  It rose up almost like a medieval castle, a full four stories high.  The gates swung open before them on electrical hinges and the Mercedes cruised down the cobblestone driveway as if entering into another world.

            The driveway was flanked by green hedges, narrowing Ariadne’s view to that of the incoming house.  The incoming prison.

            The Mercedes rolled up so that it was directly in front of the entrance and Achilles climbed out.  Ariadne waited for him to come around, her heart beating faster.

            He opened the door and gently pulled her out by her arm.  He held her just above her elbow as he walked her up to the front entrance.  He didn’t pull her along though.  They walked together.

            Once through the doors Ariadne barely took in the lavish entrance hall.  It was like her brain was incapable of registering what she was seeing.  The neurons wouldn’t fire, the impressions wouldn’t take hold.  Instead, she stood there, trying not to shake, waiting to hear his voice.

            Finally, he appeared at the top of the right stairwell that rolled down to the floor like the tongue from some mythological beast.

            “You’ve given me quite a scare, my love.”

            Janus Menelaus strode down the stairs with the speed of someone who has all the time in the universe.  He did not rush to her.  He did not need to.  She was in his domain and she had lost all avenues of escape.

            Achilles released her arm and took a step to the side.

            Ariadne met Janus’ gaze and held it as she approached him.  She felt revulsion roll over her body.  He stepped right up to her and caressed the side of her face, cupping it in his dry hands.  She hated him.

            “Why have you been so difficult about this?” Janus whispered to her.  “Your father must have explained it all to you, must have made you see.  But you took so long to come to me.  Even before, how did you not feel it?  How did the love you hold for me not swarm over you and draw you too me?  Like a moth to flame.”

            “You really need to work on your analogies,” Ariadne wanted to say.  But she didn’t.  Instead, she remained silent.  There was nothing more that needed to be said.

            “Of course, soon you’ll remember everything.  Soon you’ll remember all our lives together.  The countless love stories we’ve told.  Soon you’ll remember them and we’ll write a new one together.”

            Janus moved his hand so that it was behind her head now, just below her pony-tail.  She wanted to strike him.  She wanted to pull back.  She wanted to scream and kick and roar with rage at the countless past lives that this monster had robbed from her in his deluded belief that he loved her and she loved him.

            Instead, she summoned all the self-control she could, and let Janus pull her to him.  He kissed her with a passion that sent waves of nausea up and down Ariadne’s spine.  She hated it, because Janus would probably see those as the tingles of ecstacy running through her.  In fact, he pulled her closer, kissing her deeper and only increasing the disgust that Ariadne felt.

            “Oh God,” Janus breathed, finally breaking away but holding his forehead against hers.  “My love, I have missed you so much.  It has torn my heart apart knowing that you were being kept from me by that monster Paris Montague.  I thought I’d gotten rid of him but…he has proved a resilient cockroach.”

            Ariadne found her silence almost broken by her fierce need to defend Paris.  The nobility of Paris sacrifices for her filled her with a righteous anger at this man who had destroyed his life in his quest to possess her.

            Paris, who truly loved her.  Janus could never hope to understand love the way that Paris understood it, the way Paris expressed it in his every word, gesture, and touch towards her.

            Just thinking about him, and that moment beneath the city that was hunting them relentlessly, made Ariadne almost begin to cry.

            “Shhhh,” Janus hushed her, placing a finger against her lips.  “It’s all going to be okay.  I promise.”

            Suddenly, the ring was in his hand.

            Ariadne felt a cold fear run through her body.  Her heart seemed to shrivel in her chest and press back against her spine.  She felt as if every organ in her body was fighting to get as far away from that ring as was possible.  But that’s exactly what she couldn’t do.

            Janus lifted her hand.  Ariadne refused to tremble.  She held her muscles stiff, demanded a control over them that years of athleticism had given her.  She watched as Janus knelt before her, as though he were performing some sick, demented proposal, and lifted the wedding band like ring to her finger.

            “Ariadne…” he breathed her name like he was whispering the sacred name of a goddess.  Ariadne refused to close her eyes.  Instead, she looked at the mark on the wedding band, the same mark that was on Janus’.  The mark that looked like the shattered glass on a windshield where a baseball had struck it.

            The Mark of Cain.

            Then, with no more delays, with no more stalling, with no more grand escape attempts, Ariadne watched as Janus slipped the ring onto her finger.

            And Ariadne felt herself die.

 The rush was unlike anything she’d experienced before.  Names flew past her like chariots in a Coliseum race.  Psyche, Daphne, Ariadne, Dido, Helen, Juliet, countless names that Ariadne knew from history and countless more that had not been recorded in the annals.  Thousands of lives all rushed at her.  Too much to process all at once.  Only one thing came through loud and clear, as definitively true as anything she had ever thought or known or believed.

            She opened her eyes and looked into the face of Janus Menelaus.  More names raced by, names from history.  Apollo, Cain, Aeneas, Dionysus.

            She felt her heart fill up as though it were preparing to burst out of her chest.  She gazed into Janus eyes and she felt tears flow freely down her face.  She reached out trembling hands and cupped his face in both of them, slowly pulling him upwards until he was standing, looking at her expectantly.

            “Janus…”

            “Yes?” he said.  Ariadne couldn’t believe she had ever once thought that his voice could be anything but magnificent and wonderful and a blessing upon her ears.

            “I love you.”

            Janus began to weep, taking her hands off of his face and holding them tightly in his.  She felt the words she had said with every fibre of her being.  It was so wonderful.  The lights in the entrance hall of the Menelaus Mansion seemed to be surrounded by a fuzzy haze, as though she was intoxicated, but she knew herself to be thinking more clearly than she had ever thought in this life.

            She hated the transition period.  Always the first thing that she felt, after her immense love for Janus resurfaced, was the guilt.  It poured on her like molten lava.  It hit her now with the same force it always did.  Thousands of repetitions of the experience could never quite prepare her for it.

            “Oh, Janus, my love.  Oh I am so sorry.  Will you ever forgive me?  Will you forgive me, I wasn’t me.  I wasn’t in my right mind.”

            Janus hushed her, cradling her face in his hands.  “All is forgiven my love.  You came back to me, of your own free will.  What greater sign can there be that, even in the confused state you always find yourself in at the beginning of each new life, you love me truly deep down?  You came to me yourself.”

            Ariadne nodded.  Janus pulled her in and they kissed passionately.  She felt her whole body succumbing to the taste of his lips.  She poured herself into him.  She was his.  She would give everything that she was to him in every moment of the rest of this life to appease him for the terrible things she had said, done, and thought up until now.

            “Oh, but you don’t understand,” Ariadne wept.  “You don’t understand the plan.  Oh, it was horrid.  I cannot forgive myself for ever having even thought of it.”

            “What was the plan, my dear?” Janus asked.  “It’s all right, my love.  There’s nothing you can tell me that I cannot forgive, in time.”

            Ariadne felt her lower lip trembling.  She was scared.  Not of Janus, he loved her too much.  Not matter what he did she never had to fear him.  He had ensured that they would be together, in love, for ever and throughout eternity.  He had shown her countless ages of man that she would never have seen without him.  He was her soul, her life blood, the reason for her being.  Nothing he did to her matter because in the end he was always there, and he always loved her.

            “I made a plan…I was going to come here and…I was going to get the rings and smash them!  I thought that was the way to end the Curse!  Oh God, I was going to try and break us apart forever!  I was going to make it so that we could never remember and find each other in the next life!  I was going to make it so I could never remember who I truly am!”

            Ariadne felt o her knees, still clutching Janus’ hands, and wept.  He said nothing.  Finally, after a time, he pulled her back up and looked into her eyes.

            “What about Paris?”

            His grip was so tight on her wrists that it stung.  But it was okay.  His voice was harsh.  But it was okay.  His eye bore into her, flames of anger licking out from his pupils.  But it was okay.

            Because he loved her.  And she loved him.