Chapter Twenty-Five
Something was stinging my arm. It squeezed my most recent self-inflicted wounds tightly and felt like my arm was going to burst from the pressure, or like it had a glob of lit Napalm on it. I tried opening my eyes and sitting up but I only achieved the former; my aching body felt like it had just hauled a truckload of soil bags three miles without a wheelbarrow before stretching out on the pavement in anticipation of a landing jumbo jet.
It took a few seconds for my eyes to focus. When they did, the image remained fuzzy but further scrutiny of my situation revealed the blurriness was caused by missing glasses. Though it was a struggle, I could sit up enough to make out a stained white bandage smothering my cut arm; when I looked at it, another wave of searing pain splashed across my senses. Upon trying and failing to move my other arm, I discovered an IV pumping a clear liquid into my wrist. Also perceptible with my foggy eyes, I saw a hospital gown covering me.
Just next to me, a head of shimmering blue hair sat on shoulders whose elbows leaned on the edge of the stiff mat I was on. Hurting my mind in the effort, I thought about who I knew with blue hair. To the best of my knowledge, no one I knew had such hair, until that was, Jade got ready for Sir Harold’s gala.
My voice was croaky and difficult to use yet it didn’t stop me from speaking. Unfortunately, all that came out was a guttoral squawk. Jade snapped around; her eyes were distant, as if her soul had gone fishing. I tried speaking again but only convinced Jade to offer me a glass of water with a yellow-striped bendy-straw. Grateful, I took a swig but regretted it afterwards; the water, though deliciously cold, burned all the way down, leaving a sickening mucus film in its wake.
“You’re awake,” Jade smiled weakly. “I didn’t want to, you know, lose you too.”
Jade’s concern was sweet but not enough to erase my scowl. A response would’ve come but I felt so nauseated, I didn’t believe I could talk without vomiting.
Without knowing how sick I was, Jade interpreted my silence as more anger; she’d live.
Shrugging it off, Jade took my hand in hers. “McLeod Manor went under siege.” She didn’t seem to care whether or not I was listening, which I was surprisingly.
“Sir Harold’s Ninjas were all that kept anything worse from happening.” She gulped. “At least a dozen people lost their lives in the attack.”
I stared at her, waiting for her to go on; I hoped she didn’t think I was blaming her for my frustrating misery.
“You should’ve seen what happened when the announcement came on. That girl who you’re friends with, Valerie I think her name is, well her boyfriend—that Lenny dude—he pulled a massive antique pistol from his coat and barely escaped being closed in the ballroom with the rest of us. Seconds later, we heard a ton of gunfire, both from him and a few other people scattered around the castle, namely Sir Harold’s Ninjas though.”
Her face still showed signs of shock, presumably from the terror of it all.
“When Sir Harold finally got the door open, there were hundreds of shell casings littering the ground, not to mention the vast lakes of bubble-gum-pink oozer. That boy was leaning against the wall when we got to him. Next to him was his empty automatic pistol and a partially assembled Russian assault rifle, you know, the old terrorist guns.” Jade shook her head. “He had a nasty burn on his right bicep and he had a torn-off sleeve of his suit tuxedo jacket over his nose and mouth—he was practically an action-movie hero!”
I nodded once; if Jade hadn’t been watching me closely, she wouldn’t have seen the movement. Though I kind of wanted to say something, I was afraid the nausea growing in my gut would burst forth if I opened my mouth to speak. Working up the courage to risk it, I gulped down the cold ball of saliva I prayed would stop the stomach acid from coming up.
“C-can I have my glasses?”
Oh, right/” Jade stood up and took my glasses from her back pocket; I grimaced upon seeing where they’d been. If my glasses were to mangle or break, I didn’t know how long it would be until I could replace them. Thankfully, Jade had miraculously found a brown plastic case to protect them in.
With my glasses on, my world wasn’t nearly as fuzzy though I still didn’t have perfect clarity.
I was on a train car, that much was certain. The lights were dim but bright enough to obscure the makeshift hospital surrounding me. About ten feet away, Leon Gonzago slept on three seats with his hand clutching an object in his pocket. Four or five of Sir Harold’s mercenaries stood galliantly around the train car, their weapons were holstered and slung but not cloaked; many of them had anxiety scrawled across their faces. It seemed the reality of what they were up against was starting to sink in.
“Where’re we going? We’re obviously moving, but where to?” I asked, shaking the feeling this place too wasn’t immune to the growing threat. Honestly, I was tired of the Catrions following me. True, I could watch the news and see they were a global nuisance, but I felt they were haunting me specifically.
Sir Harold says his mansion isn’t safe for us to stay in anymore so he found us a place to stay until McLeod Manor is safe again.”
Afraid to ask the next question, I gulped down my nausea again. Fortunately for me Jade had anticipated what I wanted to ask.
“He told me we’re going to stay with an old mmorpg friend of his, username LoneRider_’43.” Jade shrugged. “He didn’t say what computer game they met on.”
“He’s probably some geezer, who owes alimony to his first wife, outlived his second, and spends his retirement peeping at the neighbor’s forteen-year-old carrot-top as she gets dressed.” I theorized.
“Let’s hope that’s all LoneRider_’43 is.” Jade scratched the back of her neck, looking at me out of the corners of her eyes.
Instead of just crossing the Atlantic again, the train travelled farther. One of the mercenaries explained that the ride was taking longer than it should’ve because we weren’t stoppingat the station in the southeastern Virginia city, Sevencities, like Jade and I had done frequently in the past few weeks. He explained that Sir Harold had paid the train company a hefty sum to take us straight to a rural town in middle-of-nowhere Kansas.
The plan was for Jade, Leon, and I to get off at the closest train station we could, and then take a bus deep into the country. Sir Harold’s Ninjas would cloak themselves before our train stopped, and follow us to our destination. They refused to say if they wre going to continue stalking Jade and I after we arrived where we were going. I suspected the answer was yes, but when questioned, the Ninjas neither agreed nor disagreed.
During the trip, I played a few travel games with Jade to keep her amused. There were a few times where jade’s short attention span drew her away from me. When that happened, Jade and leon would examine the other’s pupils like the people on the cover of a harlequin romance. Every time, I’d look away and struggle to suppress my fury at my own former beau. The rage came as regularly as a pot-bellied binge-drinker to Joe’s Tavern.
Eventually, our train slowed to a crawl, and shuddered to a stop. As planned, the Ninjas faded into shadows, and Jade, Leon, and I got off the train. Jade and Leon seemed to gaze in wonder at the backwoods Mag-Lev station but I remained transfixed on the meaningless blobs in front of my eyes.
A rank panhandler in flashy black high-tops crawled over to me and moaned for assistance. The signs he had erected told lies of his poverty, disability, and woe-begone family, yet the petty words formed by his brown lips demanded cash in exchange for a lesser sentence on judgement day. “Please miss, would you offer a token?”
I shunned away from the wretched filth magnet. “Why? You’re too high on crack to see how petty your lies are.”
I continued walking, despite his flabbergasted expression.
“I only wanted a penny or nickel,” He pouted.
I turned around, glaring, and reached in my pocket for a sliver of metal he wasn’t going to get. “Your signs there, they try to reach out and touch people, don’t they?” I flicked the coin in the air and caught it.
He nodded, and followed the movement of the coin.
“They’re banal manipulations of humanity’s emphatic weakness.” I cocked my head to the side. “Perhaps if the signs said you had to pay for your funeral, I’d give you this coin, but I don’t see a point.”
“I’m going to be cremated,” He mumbled.
“Itr’s fitting,” I commented. “The black soil on your unbathed corpse will blend flawlessly with your charred ashes.”
The grizzly begger had no response but someone else did; before I’d turned away, I saw coins and small bills drop into the man’s tin bucket before the generous donaters scurried off, wary of what I might say.
On the bus, I took the window seat but because the bus company had tried to maximize profit by minimizing customer comfort, Jade and Leon did also—in the same row as me. Our three butts wound up on a seat designed for two. Had I known beforehand how cramped I’d be, I would’ve convinced Jade to stare into the drizzle from the closest seat to the window.
Unlike on the train ride, Jade snoozed on Leon’s shoulder; by the end of the trip, a dark circle of drool was visible beneath where her mouth had been.
Of the many bodies crammed onto the bus, only three descended the sharp steel steps. Needless to say, when Leon, Jade, and I moved int othe narrow walkway, our seats were immedeatly confiscated.
Jade slipped on the way down the steps but Leon caught her arm before her fragile skin tasted icy metal. It sickened me, not because I wanted Jade to get hurt, but because Jade had a chromosome I didn’t through having Leon. It didn’t take much thought to come to the conclusion they were boung to have sucked faces at least once. The fact Jade had someone there to grab her, and that in him doing so, it was sappily romantic, it reminded me I had no one.
What was worse, I’d had one, yet my knight in shining armor apparently entertained himself by groping other women.
Outside, apart from the countless acres of nothinf, was a three-sided glass shelter above an aluminum bench. Behind it was a field of corn and in front of it was a tangled patch of the kind of weeds young boys whipped eachother with.
Even as the bus splattered cold mud on my ankles, I stood there next to the weeds. Meanwhile Jade and Leon scurried under the miniscule roof of the small glass structure.
When, seconds later, the chilly spray morphed into a numbing downpour whose talons reached into my very bones, I stood atop the crushed weeds with my clenched hands in my trenchcoat’s deep pockets.
“Are you mad?” Leon squeeked. “It’s pouring down rain, at least step under the roof!”
“Every drop of rain eliminates a proportional amount of carbon-dioxide from the air. Did it ever occur to you I might actually like the invigorating effects of fresh oxygen?” I answered without tutning my head.
The truth was, the rain didn’t revive me any more than it dried me off.
“Did it ever occur to you you’re soaking wet?” He retorted, thinking himself a smart aleck.
I sstill didn’t look at him. “Gee, you’re a bright one.”
I thought I saw him start to open his mouth again, but Jade elbowed him to stop. I felt like she was trying to force him to respect me as a person, which aditated me. I certainly could fend for myself, especially in a contest of wit with a babbling disillusioned gorilla.
For the next hour, only the pitter-patter of water bouncing off the bus stop’s window to the sky resonated in our eardrums. Near the end of the hour, at 4:53 AM by my watch, the first car I’d seen all night approached. If it’s headlamps hadn’t been on, the black sedan would’ve been just another corner of the darkness. The car’s approach was the first distraction to draw my pupils to it; all night, I’d been in a trance.
My saturated hair clung to my face, and when the car stopped ten or fifteen feet back from the bus stop with its headlights illuminating me, I brushed my hair off my face with a numb pinky; a rigid scowl had curled beneath my hair.
The person holding the umbrella which had just opened through the sliver of space between the car and the roof would have to make do with my down-side-up smile.
“Are you Sruun Borealis or Jade Cataye?” Asked a quaky voice from the woman’s general direction.
I nodded but then realized the distance between she and I, so I croaked out a yes.
“Heavens, let’s get you out of this rain!” She cried. “You could catch your death out here!”
I thanked the lady for her concern, kicked Leon in the shins to wake him, and jogged to the car. In the light provided by her car’s interior light, I could see the woman picking us up was elderly; her wrinkles had wrinkles. She had a kind face though, and her saffinf smile told yarns about her wonderful cooking and gentle nurturing.
Sliding into the front passenger seat, I noticed how clean the car’s inside was; I felt a pang of guilt at my stubbornness since getting off the bus. Because of me, one of her car seats would be wet and her car’s nice carpet would be caked with mud.
Leon and Jade piled into the back, buckled up, and fell back to sleep.
As I was the only other concious human, the lady began telling me about herself. Apparently her name was Agatha Zmarliowski, and her intimidating surname was Polish for ‘one who lives near death.’ She was sixty-two and back in her fashion model days, she was five feet, seven inches tall, but since then, the government had made inches longer than they used to be, so she was shorter now. She claimed however that she never listened to what the doctors told her, that she’d gotten shorter, and as such, she continued to be sixty-seven inches tall. More importantly however, was what she and her sister did for a living; they were the caretakers of the bed and breakfast Sir Harold had arranged for Jade and I to stay at.
Around dawn, we arrived at a grand yet cozy three-story home. There wasn’t much as far as neighbors went; the nearest neighbors lived in a swallow’s nest.
Inside the house, an old-world charm and the fragrant musk of potpourri greeted visitors. Since Jade and Leon both appeared drowsier than I, Mrs. Zmarliowski gave them each a room first. While she did, she invited me to look around.
First I found the kitchen, but what I found there was somewhat more fascinating. There was a screened in porch outside the kitchen’s back door. Peeping through the window, I spotted a wooden rocking chair containing another female senior citizen, this one snoring. She looked a little younger than Mrs. Zmarliowski and her head was thrown back in such a way her neck would hurt come morning. What I found the most shocking was the object she held in her lap.
Cradled in her arms was an antique military projectile weapon. It was a shotgun built like an assault rifle, therefore, it was an assault shotgun; clipped into the gun was an enormous drum magazine. I was pretty sure such weapons weren’t legal by any stretch of the imagination, and I doubted such flagrant displays of firepower hadn’t even been legal for civilians to own way back when people actually did own such guns!
Afraid to wake the sleeping woman and the wrath of her savage pet, I held my breath; noise was the last thing I wanted. Mrs. Zmarliowski almost caused me to scream however when her fingers touched my shoulder.
“Sruun, dearie, I can show you to your room now, if you like.”
“I-I’d like that, thank you.” I stammered.
“Right this way,” She walked back to the main entrance, up to the third floor and at the end of the hall was a humble door. She slid a key into the brass dead bolt, jiggled it, and swung the door open for me. “Here you go, this will be yuour bedroom, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask.”
She started to back out, but reconsidered. “I almost forgot to give you a key!” She fished around in her apron’s one pocket and produced an extra key for my room. “There’s a night gown in the wardrobe if you need one.”
She left.
Instinctively, I locked the door, shut the blinds, and pulled the curtains together. I didn’t want to be disturbed until I was ready, and that included the coming of dawn.
The mentioned nightgown was made of an expensive pink fabric and was quite soft. Upon ridding myself of my sopping clothes in exchange for the nightgown, I felt bare and exposed; wearing the nightgown did nothing to appease the prickly goosebumps leftover from growing accustomed to the cold stickiness I’d gotten used to.
It was a combination of many things that put me to sleep as soon as I fell onto the cozy mattress. Grief, rafe, and manic depression were only the psychological reasons. There were also physical causes behind my collapse, including the trauma I’d been through earlier that night. Another factor might’ve been I’d lost more than two pints of blood. Plus, I had travelled backwards across seven timezones.
Whatever the cause, I stretched out on top of the comforters, and disappeared into the back of my eyelids. All that hindered me was the stinging itchiness of the bandages on my arm, though even they could do little to stop the sandman from doing his job.
