Shades of Gray

“I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job,” Temperance Larkin chanted loudly as she pounded maniacally along the graveled path, huffing and puffing and building up a sweat. Exercise sucked but it was a means to an end. By exercising Temperance could burn off all the delicious empty calories she had consumed at lunch, therefore allowing more to take their place at dinnertime. There was also the fact that a brisk walk helped to ease the tension that tightened her body and mind. Of course Temperance knew she would probably have to walk to China and back to relax properly but a couple of erratic, fast-paced circuits around the local cemetery talking to herself were the next best thing.
A lot of people thought power walking around the cemetery at twilight was a weird thing to do. However, Temperance was not someone who worried about other what people thought of her or what was or was not considered weird. She did things because she could and “weird” was just a name tag for anyone considered different. Temperance Larkin enjoyed being different. Why be one of the crowd?
“So color me weird,” she muttered through clenched teeth as she tramped. She had frustrations to burn off and the cemetery was the best place to do it as it was quiet and uncrowded. Temperance did not have to be polite to fellow exercisers as she worked off the tensions of the day. The dead never asked questions. The dead did not care if she sweated, or swore, or talked to herself. The dead were really quite the most perfect people to be around.
“Go the dead,” murmured Temperance in quiet appreciation. She smiled suddenly. “It is true. I am weird—and my care factor would be?” she asked no one in particular as she tramped along. “Why I believe, Temperance, it would be a negative twelve on the Larkin couldn’t-give-a-rat’s-ass scale of caring.” The sound of her own words made her laugh. It was bloody good to laugh after a day of dealing with crap, cranky customers at work who felt the need to take out their frustrations with the company she worked for, on the call center staff. Those customers had yet to work out that the staff did not really care and that they were basically only there to get paid and go home.
“I have to get out of that job.” Temperance’s pace picked up just thinking about her job. Crap, crap and more crap. And yes, in a perfect world she should just shut up and accept her lot in life. However, along with being weird she wasn’t good at shutting up either. This caused tension and that tension needed to be relieved or she would explode. So the minute she got home every day after work Temperance dragged her hair up into a messy ponytail, pulled on her sweats and slid on her battered gym shoes and hit the pathways of the inner northern Brisbane cemetery to burn off the raging emotions left over from the day. Generally it worked. While she did not return to her home in Zen-ike calm, she did, however, not feel the need to kick her front door open in search of wine.
Temperance came to an abrupt stop at the large granite tomb that had drawn her since the moment she had first started coming to the cemetery. Its simple boxlike shape held the remains of a long-deceased family. In the twilight Temperance could still see the weathered stone angel with broken fingers that kept watch over the gravesite. The old, faded inscription had caught her heart and imagination the first time she had read it. The heartache of one family from 1826 was inscribed so neatly in the granite. Over a period of nine years, six family members had died. The mother, the baby Eliza, then in one hit after that the brother Joseph, the twins John and David and the eldest daughter Mary had all been removed from the Earth in 1835. Had it been a plague or a ghastly accident to have taken so many lives in one go? The blows that family had endured had astonished and saddened Temperance. What they had to bear would have been awful. And a family member, maybe the patriarch as he was not listed, would have been left to have buried the family members. How would that person have coped in the 1800s after such terrible losses? Life would have been so different then. There wouldn’t have been any cure-all counseling or miraculous medicine to save their loved ones. Temperance always felt her own problems seemed nothing in comparison to what this family would have suffered.
“What the hell is a crap job in the scheme of things?” she muttered to herself as she ran her hand over the old, weathered stone and said a silent prayer for the family. She was not the slightest bit religious. It was more a wish that these people had found some sort of peace. Reading the inscriptions on headstones was like reading a book. People’s lives, dreams and sorrows were etched in stone. It was the history of people who had lived through deep, enduring love and intense heartbreak. It made her feel and think and realize what life was all about.
“And life sucks badly sometimes,” Temperance muttered as she turned from the stone monument and ran straight into a wall of warm male flesh. Temperance screamed and flung herself backward.
“Good evening,” a deep male voice greeted her.
“Holy frigging hell.” Oh, this was not good. Four men all dressed in black stood before her like a solid barrier of unyielding flesh. “What the fuck do you want?” Temperance was a greater believer in attack being the best form of defense in these situations—sound tough and act tough and bluff your way out of whatever the hell you may have stumbled into, was her motto. Temperance looked at the men coolly. Four of them against one cranky, tired woman. It seemed almost an even match. She raised herself to her full scary height of five foot two inches of pure chunky womanhood and stared defiantly at four of the sexiest-looking guys she had ever seen. She licked her lips with interest. Were thugs supposed to look this good? They never looked like this on the wanted posters. Temperance felt a rush of heat shoot through her body. She pulled her tongue back inside her mouth and hoped none of these godlike creatures had oticed her licking her lips. It did not inspire people to think she was scary—just horny—which she was but it was not the look she was going for.
“Well, what do you want?” And how fast can I run from these buff guys while screaming my lungs out for help? Not real fast was the answer.
“We want you.”