Read The Lazarus Heart for Free Online

stop and listen to it, Jared."
    But something inside him has burst, something ripe and festering, and the dark, acidic fury is out before he knows it's found a way. It pours from him in a wild and mindless flood and he tears a picture from the wall, only dimly aware of what he's holding, and hurls it at the black bird. The frame crashes against the footboard and explodes in a shower of glass and splinters.
    Now he is staring into Benny's eyes, at the face in the ruined black-and-white photograph staring back at him. The shot that was printed in the Voice, Benny with his hands bound behind his back, out of sight, and the softest hint of a snarl on his lips. The figure against a shadowy backdrop, blazing wings stretched wide behind him, stark projected wings that seem to grow from Benny's bare shoulders. Jared named the photograph The Raven, and Benny complained how obvious that was, and that it was a very dumb joke.
    "Oh." His voice is just another bit of flotsam thrown out in the scalding cascade. "Oh, fuck you."
    "Please," Lucrece says, begging now. Begging him to please stop as he seizes the Tiffany torchere by the door and throws it like a spear made of bronze and
    stained glass, driving it through the center of the photograph. And he smiles for the
    crow now, a vicious razor smile so wide he thinks it might split his head in half, will surely slice open the corners of his mouth. The bird squawks and retreats to the safety of the headboard.
    "You think that's fanny? Huh, you think that's fucking funny?"
    Then Lucrece is standing in front of him, putting herself between him and the crow, and his anger switches focus in the space between heartbeats.
    "Get out of my way, bitch."
    "No," she says, her voice low and firm and sounding male now, the way it sounded when Jared first met her and Benny at a gallery opening uptown. "No, I won't.
    Whatever's happening here is happening for a reason, Jared."
    "No, Lucas" he says, all the emphasis he can find loaded on top of that discarded name, such a simple, easy weapon lying there conveniently. Lucrece flinches but doesn't move. "It's just a fucking joke. Just a goddamned sick joke on all of us, by a sick-ass, twisted universe. Don't you get it, Lucas?"
    "You know it's not," she says, glaring, and the heat gathering behind her eyes is almost a match for his anger.
    "Jesus, you never did have a sense of humor." Jared turns away from her and rips another of his photographs from the wall, smashes it against the floor. The glass and steel cut his hands and they heal immediately, like flesh in a time-lapse film. He turns around again slowly, raising his palms so that she can see the gashes sealing themselves closed. So that he can see the look on her face.
    "Then please, darling, by all means let me refresh your memory." Jared moves so fast he knows Lucrece doesn't see it coming, shoves her stumbling back into the bed. He drives words at her like nails, each one sharper and harder than the last, as if his voice alone could crucify.

    "'But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only... that one word, as if his soul in that one word did outpour. Nothing further then he uttered; not a feather then he fluttered-'"
    Lucrece slaps him, the sound of her palm loud against his cheek, and Jared pauses in his recitation long enough to laugh at her, long enough to savor the stinging sensation her hand has left behind.
    "Leave me alone," she growls. Jared slaps her back, hits her hard and she trips over the lamp and falls onto the bed. And he remembers now how good the violence can feel, the cleaning release, and he leans low over her like a movie vampire.
    "Till I scarcely more than muttered: Other friends have flown before-'"
    Lucrece drives her knee into his crotch and uses her other foot to push him off of
    her.

    "I said to leave me alone, you son of a bitch!"
    Jared releases her, falls in a heap at the foot of the bed, crumples next to what's
    left of the lamp and The Raven. Lucrece