Catherine’s Bio:

Catherine Jones is absolutely thrilled to have placed in the WOW quarterly flash contest! She has been creating stories ever since the first time she put pen to paper, and in 2005 made the cover of “Downstate Stories’ with her short story ‘Witches Wand.’ She lives in a small house made colorful and noisy by three awesome children and the love of her life. She makes her living as a firefighter/EMT and feels truly blessed not only to be employed in her chosen field, but to have enough time left over to pursue her writing career. Currently she is polishing her first novel and harboring high hopes!

Peace Still and Blue

By Catherine E. Jones

“The lights.” Whoville voice, a fervent plea; the baby was evidently incognizant of the mother’s condition. “Need the lights on now.”

There was an ethereal quality to Tilly Donovan’s stillness. She lay on a rancid mattress with her ratted hair fanned out beneath her and her blue-tinged skin seemed thin and delicate. Agent John Santiago thought that the heroin was going to win this one; he turned away from the bed, and pointed to the bare light bulb screwed into the wall socket. “Light’s are on, kiddo.”

“No.” The toddler-girl was distressed, twisting her hands in the hem of the large and dirty tee shirt that she wore and sidling a little closer to him on scuffed animal slippers. “Lights.”

She was, he saw at last, pointing to a string of blue Christmas lights that were tacked around the bedroom window, reminding him—with all the force of a violent slap—that the holiest of holidays was fast approaching. Would catch him, as always, unprepared.

He was trolling for the end of the extension cord when the medics arrived. “In here,” he called from his crouch on the floor. “She’s on the bed.”

The outlet threw a spark that startled him into a standing position, and he abandoned his task, backing away a little and wiping his hands reflexively on the seat of his jeans. “Broke,” he told the child.

The medics were casting sidelong glances, and he thought that he knew what they saw—scary street Latino, hair pulled back in a bandana, tattoo on his forearm and a vulgar diamond earring; he flashed his badge, earning, at least, a modicum of respect.

And he remembered them, had taught a Meth awareness class at their station the summer before, when he had still been a clean-cut uniform.  Burton was the assistant chief and Nic Bennett the only girl on the department, devastating little blonde with curls and curves and a tomboy grin. Who could forget that face?

He winked once, solemnly, when he caught her looking, and had the satisfaction of seeing her cheeks color.

The little skel on the bed was barely working her chest at all—tiny, tiny inspirations—and John Santiago surprised himself with an unbidden memory of Catholic school. A perpetuus lux lucis. A perpetual light upon her, wouldn’t that be good?

He couldn’t remember the last time he had been in church. And he hated the way that Tilly Donovan had made that a pop-up rebuke in his tired mind.

“Can you bring her to the hospital?” Nic Bennett’s voice penetrated the exhaustion that had wound around him like a damp gray ground fog, and he realized that he was holding the baby. Could honestly not remember picking her up. “Social services can meet us there.”

The car seat that he found in Tilly’s van was crusted over with a substance that he didn’t want to think about. He plugged the baby into it anyway, and sang to her all the way across town, trying not to notice the smell.

“I don’t know her name,” he explained to the emergency room nurse who procured an instant claim on the child. “Mom came in on 10-39. Tilly Donovan. I don’t know if she made it.”

Outside, he leaned against the cold brick and blew cigarette smoke in an acrid plume through his nostrils, closing his eyes. He thought that he could feel Tilly’s stained and battered soul hurrying past him, disappearing into the shrouded winter sky.

Nic Bennett joined him, palming her Marlboros out of her cargoes and sighing Irish; he raised his brows but did not otherwise greet her.

Across the street, in the square, the evergreens were lit with a thousand blue bulbs. Light, bright, the color of peace. He watched them from beneath his lashes until they became an inconsequential blur, and he didn’t come back to himself until he realized that Nic was looking at him with something very like speculation on her features.

He kissed her on the nose, and the gesture was so perfect that it felt as though he had done it a hundred times before.

“We lost her,” she wanted him to know.

“Maybe I’ll go get the baby,” he said. “The lights are all on now.”

***