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let-it-raines · 5 years ago

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Catch Me If You Can (33/40)

298 days. That’s how long Killian Jones was away from a baseball field. It’s less than a year, only part of a season for him, but it might as well have lasted a decade as he alternated between physical therapy and spending an excessive amount of time sitting on his couch.

But then he came back and won the World Series.

It’s something no one saw coming, and it’s certainly not something anyone who knows about his arm would predict. Now it’s a new season with new possibilities, and anything could happen. On-field reporter Emma Swan will be there to cover it all even if she is not his biggest fan right now.

Asking her out live on-air will do that.

Rating: Mature

a/n: This is one of my favorite chapters, but then again, like, 25/40 of these chapter are my favorite. Haha. Thanks to @resident-of-storybrooke for reading all of these words what feels like a million years ago!

I apologize for the erratic posting schedule, but it will probably be like that for awhile. I have all of these chapters ready to be posted. I just have to, you know, post them! 🙈

Found on AO3: Beginning | Current

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-/-

“Woah, what are you doing here?”

Emma turns to look back at Ruby standing in the doorway to the living room. She’s already dressed for work, much like Emma is, but she has no idea why Ruby is asking her what she’s doing there.

“Making myself a bowl of cereal?” Emma answers as she pours the Cheerios into her bowl. “Why wouldn’t I be here?”

Ruby’s heels click against the tile floor, and suddenly she’s standing in front of Emma with her perfectly manicured brow raised. “I sleep here. Like, every night. You, however, do not. Is Killian here?”

“No, he’s at his apartment.” Emma walks around Ruby to open the fridge and grab a gallon of milk, twisting the top open and pouring it in her bowl. “I’m here nearly every day, Rubes. I don’t know why you’re so shocked.” She scoops up a spoonful and takes a bite only for Ruby to still be staring at her. “What?”

“You,” she starts, picking up the milk and putting it back in the fridge, “are here most days, but you don’t sleep here. And if you do, there’s usually a scruffy baseball player drinking coffee and making eyes at you in the mornings. This is a rare sight. The guys made the playoffs last night? You two didn’t go out celebrating?”

“We do not make eyes, and nope, we didn’t,” Emma answers quickly before shoveling more cereal in her mouth. “What time do you want to leave to go into the office today? And do you want to go to the Stadium directly after? Or should we come back here first?”

Ruby’s eyes squint, suspicion obvious in them, and Emma is sure that she’s not going to make it to work this morning without an even more thorough interrogation. That’s exactly why she came here last night after the game instead of going to Liam and Elsa’s. She didn’t want to have everyone asking how her day went or how she’s still dealing with things. There was always a chance that Ruby and Graham would be in the living room awake when she got home, but since Ruby was able to leave the stadium far before Emma was last night, she figured that she had a chance of sneaking in unnoticed.

She did.

This is her first time actually seeing Ruby since Thursday night of last week, and she just knows that Ruby is chomping at the bit to talk more about everything that’s happened.

After all of the stares and cat calls that Emma got yesterday, she doesn’t have the energy to talk about it. Not to David or Elsa or Ruby.

Not to Killian.

She’d texted him and feigned not feeling well, telling him not to worry about her and that she’d spend the night at home.

There’s less than a one percent chance that he didn’t realize that it was lie.

And now she’s kind of freaking out at the implication that she’s basically living with Killian. Emma knows that it’s true, that she’s almost always staying in his apartment to the point that she shopped for groceries for his apartment the other day without even thinking about it, but hearing it in such concrete words freaks her out the slightest bit.

There’s a difference between regularly sleeping over and officially moving in.

It’s been six months. She loves him and wants to live with him at some point, but she’d rather like to keep the option of having her own place.

Possibly. She doesn’t know. It’s…she doesn’t know what she wants right now.

Her mind doesn’t need any extra thoughts running around in there when it’s still running rampant with worry for Killian over how he’s doing and fear of her life getting even more hectic than it was eleven months ago.

It’s already more hectic. She had someone follow her home last night bombarding her with questions about her relationship with Killian. She’s surprised he doesn’t know about it yet and hasn’t called her insisting that he do something to help it stop. What he would do, she doesn’t know, but she knows he would try to do something.

“No, no, no,” Ruby protests, “you’re not getting out of this conversation that easily. I haven’t seen you in days, not even at work, and our texts this weekend are not cutting it for me knowing what’s going on. Are you and Killian okay? Why aren’t you together?”

“Because I’m allowed to spend time on my own,” she bites out, putting her bowl on the counter before crossing her arms over her chest. “Believe it or not, I don’t need a man to survive.”

Ruby practically recoils, hurt quickly crossing her face, and Emma immediately knows that she’s fucked up.

“Hey, hey, Rubes,” she starts, an apology on her lips. “I’m sorry. I didn’t – I didn’t mean to snap at you like that. My mind is all over the place right now. I’ve had a shitty few days, and I didn’t mean to take it out on you. That’s not an excuse, but it’s mine.”

Suddenly, Ruby is reaching forward and pulling Emma into a rough hug, practically smothering her, and all Emma can do is hold on while Ruby rubs circles up and down Emma’s back. Emotion lodges itself in Emma’s throat, and she chokes it back down while holding onto Ruby a little bit tighter.

“I’m so tired,” Emma murmurs into Ruby’s neck. “I couldn’t…everyone just looked at me yesterday like I had a giant tattoo on my forehead telling everyone that I don’t deserve anything I have. And if they weren’t looking at me for that, they were looking at me thinking they knew everything about my life because Killian’s entire past has been splashed out on front pages.”

“How do you know they were looking at you like that?”

“You can just tell. I felt eyes on me all damn day, and now I have to do it again today and tomorrow and pretty much every day for the next month.”

Ruby hums as she keeps rubbing Emma’s back, and Emma doesn’t know what the hell she would ever do without Ruby Lucas. “Remember that time last year when this really hot asshole baseball player asked you out on live television? And remember how stressed you were every time we went out and someone brought it up or every time your name was mentioned online?”

“Yeah,” Emma laughs, pulling back from Ruby a bit so she’s not quite as smothered. “What about it?”

“You made it through that, sweetie. You did. And obviously this is a little different, even if the hot asshole baseball player is still involved, but you’re going to make it through this too. Walsh Osborne doesn’t even deserve to be the trash on the cement. He is lower than that, and he is not going to bring you or Killian down with him, okay?”

“Yeah,” Emma sighs, “okay.”

“Woah,” Graham murmurs as he walks into the kitchen adjusting his shoulder strap over his uniform, “what are you doing here? Is Killian here too? I wanted to talk to him.”

All Emma can do is laugh.

She finishes her cereal, and then she and Ruby leave for the offices, walking the few blocks to their subway station before taking the ten minutes ride to midtown. There’s one camera on her when she leaves her apartment, but Emma ignores it as best she can, making sure not to speak or flash any angry faces. It’s ridiculous, actually, what people will do for the smallest of stories. She’s obviously a journalist, but she would never.

Invasions of privacy like that are a huge deal, and what is anyone really going to learn from how someone looks coming out of their apartment?

Ruby leaves her to go to the fourth floor for some kind of production meeting while Emma rides the elevator up to the seventh so that she can go to her office for a little bit before she has to go to a meeting to talk about the post-season.

Killian: Are you feeling better today?

Emma both smiles and cringes at the text. She didn’t feel well last night, but it wasn’t because she was sick. She shouldn’t have lied to him like that, especially with their history, but she did. She’ll have to fix it tonight.

Emma: Yeah, I am. Can I come over after the game?

Killian: Always.

Emma grins down at her phone before putting it back in her purse and stepping off the elevator. It’s pretty empty, most people not in quite yet, and she takes that as a good sign as she walks the long way around the cubicles back to her closet of an office only to find the last person that she wanted to see standing there waiting for her.

Walsh.

She knew he would be in the office today. David told her that he was under investigation but not fired quite yet. It would take a few days. But still. No amount of mental preparation could have prepared her for the fact that he would be standing outside of her office very obviously waiting for her to show up.

Asshole.

What did she ever see in him?

“What could you possibly want?”

The smile that curves across his lips is downright disgusting, and a shiver runs down her spine because of it. “I wanted to talk about the fact that you’re a bitch, and I’m getting fired because of you.”

Emma scoffs and pulls out her key to open her office door, brushing past him. “Well, I heard that you were simply under investigation, but you’re definitely getting fired after calling me a bitch. That’s against HR policy.”

“Really? HR policy? That’s what you’re going with?”

Could he be any more of a dick?

Emma puts her purse down on her desk and turns to look at him with her arms crossed over her chest, defenses up. This is a man who once made her laugh and who she once thought that she loved. She can’t even see the remnants of that man anymore. She hasn’t been able to in the past three years.

“You fucked up, Walsh,” she states as plainly as possible while trying to keep her voice calm and her anger under wraps when all she really wants to do is slap him. “You thought you got some great exclusive when all you did was write a cheap article spread with half lies you dug into the back alleys of gossip magazines to find and snippets of truth. You can get sued for libel, you know? And since I know you don’t have any particular skills outside of journalism and being an asshole, I’m not really sure what you’ll do when your career goes down the drain. Then again, if you were that good of a journalist, you wouldn’t have slapped your name on the article.”

There was so much shitty stuff in that article, and Emma doesn’t even know how he found out about Milah or the legal dealings of Killian’s accident, but Walsh making unfounded accusations may have been the worst part. He obviously couldn’t help himself.

“You’re so smug. You know that? You’ve always been so damn smug. I always hated that about you, but you were hot enough that I let it slide. Apparently, you’re also hot enough to fuck Jones in an attempt to boost your career. It’s a pity that probably won’t work out. Think about all of the other women who fucked him. What are they doing now?”

Emma flinches and bites the inside of her cheek so hard that she can taste blood. He’s trying to hurt her. He’s already lost. His career is already ruined. The best he can hope for is to work at some cheap gossip mag. The high of knowing he was going to hurt her and hurt Killian obviously pushed him into writing this article, and he figured he could ride on the wave of it.

False articles don’t bring him enough money to ride out the rest of his life.

It’s nothing but momentary fame for him, and honestly, who even cares about the name at the top when all of the information everyone wants is below that?

It’s really damn hard not to slap him right now.

She can barely breathe.

“If you honestly think I started fucking Killian so that I could commentate on a singular game this season, you’re delusional. In fact, I know that you’re delusional. You have always been bitter and petty over every little thing I have done that you didn’t get to do.”

“That didn’t seem to bother you when we were dating. I think you forget that we dated.”

“Oh no, I remember. I remember exactly how demeaning and misogynistic that you were then too. You never congratulated me for any of my achievements. All you did was talk down to me, as if you were somehow better and knew more when we had the same damn job for three years. I have no idea what your vendetta with me is, Walsh. You cheated on me. You betrayed every bit of trust that I had in you. I didn’t do that to you, so I can’t understand what you could possibly still be mad about.”

“You’re so damn harsh, Emma.” She scoffs at that and rolls her eyes while anger practically radiates off of her body. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you to lighten up a little bit? To smile?”

She’s going to get arrested for assault. It’s going to happen. Because there is no way she’s not knocking the teeth out of this bastard.

“You,” Emma spits, straightening her back to make herself eye level with him with the help of her heels, “are nothing to me. You think that you’ve somehow pulled the rug out from under me and that you’re going to take me down while also hurting someone I love, but you’re not. You have accomplished nothing but getting yourself fired. You were waiting outside my office door this morning because you wanted to see the hurt on my face as some kind of sadistic payoff. You’re not going to. I hope you get everything that you deserve in life. Now get the fuck out of my office.”

She expects more of a fight with him with more empty words. He’s never known when to shut up or when the fight is done. But surprisingly, he walks out with a word with his tail between his legs, slamming the door shut behind him so that it shakes in the frame.

As soon as it settles, though, Emma falls down in her chair and hides her face in her hands as she tries to catch her breath and stop the silent sobs from coming. That was too much. This is all too much, and she can’t breathe.

She simply can’t.

Never again does she want to see his face or hear his name.

Never again does she want to allow him to occupy so much space in her mind that it blocks out everything else. He is an asshole who is trying to hurt her, and she has let him.

But he can’t know that. She won’t give him the satisfaction.

Clutching the ring against her chest, Emma sucks in a big gulp of air and turns to her desk as she tries to compartmentalize what she has to do today. She needs to sign this paperwork for her time off requests, go to her meeting, and then get the hell out of this office and go to the Stadium where she can hide away in the seas of people who are going to be there.

One by one. She can do one by one.

(She has to.)

-/-

The Yankees win the game in a shut-out in a little over three hours, probably still riding off of the high of making it to the playoffs. Emma likely is too, even if all she wanted was to be able to go home the entire time and change out of these jeans and heels and into pajama pants.

And she really wants to take off her bra.

Instead, she’s wandering back down the hallways of the stadium to the clubhouse getting ready to do post-game interviews with everyone since she didn’t get any while out on the field. The clubhouse is as crazy as ever after a game, everyone yelling as they talk with music blaring while also being in various states of undress. It used to not bother her to see all of these guys changing clothes or walking around nearly nude (sometimes completely nude if she’s honest), but now that she knows several of them personally, she has to look away and turn her attention to something else.

Will Scarlet is a perfectly attractive man, but she does not need to see him naked. There’s no t a lot of coming back from that.

Quickly, she makes her way around the room to those who are dressed with Jeff following her with the camera and runs through her usual questions about the game, trying to get a little insight. It’s always funny to her which guys give insane insight and treat the game like they’re playing a game of chess and which ones give her little grunts and monosyllabic answers, probably not caring to have to answer her questions along with every other reporter in the room.

Emma gets it. They can be annoying.

Eventually things calm down, the music volume lowering and the yelling stopping as managers and trainers walk to their different offices and some of the players move onto their showers or post-game treatments. Jeff left with the camera ten minutes ago, but she’s still having an in-depth conversation with Booth about their prospects for the Series as well as everyone else in both leagues. He’s always the most insightful after possibly Killian (she’s not biased or anything), and he’s a joy to talk to since he actually doesn’t seem bothered having to be talked to by her.

He’s telling her that he thinks the Dodgers will probably be the last men standing in the National League when someone walks past her and hits her shoulder with force. She turns to see Arthur still walking past as he moves to his locker in nothing but a towel. It’s a huge clubhouse. He had room to walk around, and she knows that he did it on purpose.

Asshole.

Why are men such assholes?

Emma goes back to looking at August only for Arthur to speak up. “So, turns out I was right when I said Jones was fucking you, huh?”

He’s got to be kidding.

There is no way she can interact with this many assholes in a row. There’s got to be some kind of limit.

“So, you think it’ll be a repeat of last year’s Championship?” Emma asks August, ignoring Arthur.

August leans back into his locker and stretches his arms forward to crack his knuckles. “I mean, yeah. Hopefully with the same result too.”

“Hopefully,” Emma laughs. “You guys are undoubtedly the best team, but you never know what can happen over seven games, especially when you may be out of a starting pitcher.”

“I’m hoping he can come back in time and isn’t rusty, you know? Obviously, we have a good line up, but Jones has always been our glue. No one gives a better pre-game speech or rallies us even when he’s done for the night. I mean, damn he’s moody sometimes, but that usually works out in our favor.”

Emma grins as a chuckle passes through her lips at Booth’s spot-on description of Killian.

“You don’t have to talk Jones up to her, you know?” Arthur starts, and Emma’s fists immediately clench at her sides. “She may have slept her way into this room, but I don’t think she’s going to move around to each of us. SoSo, there’s really no need to butter her up.”

“Shut the fuck up, King,” August seethes, getting up from his locker’s seat and walking over to Arthur all the while Emma’s heart starts pounding and the air around her gets a little thicker so that her lungs stop working once again. “Everyone in here knows you’re an asshole who can’t keep his mouth shut, and you should have learned your lesson the last time you decided to talk shit about Emma.”

“What? You’re not interested in the fact she she’s sleeping with Jones? How does everyone still think he’s a hero when he jeopardized our season by lying to us about his injury? And why does absolutely no one find it fascinating that he’s sleeping with the reporter who covers all of our games and no one knew about that too? Because I certainly find it all intriguing.”

Emma can’t hear any more of this. She can’t. she knows that she needs to defend herself, to fight back and not let anyone tell her who she is when they’re all wrong. She knows exactly who she is. She doesn’t need to punch back and yell and scream and cause anything else to happen.

So she runs.

She grabs her things and runs out the door of the clubhouse leaving Arthur and August and anyone else who was in that room behind. Maybe she’d react differently if today had started in some other way. Maybe she would be the one to yell back at Arthur and tell him to stop talking shit about her and too her and to get over his weird feelings over her too.

But it’s been a very long four days, and Emma is tired of screaming words that disappear into the void.

Rounding the corner of the hallway, not entirely sure where she’s going to go, Emma finds a little cut out in the wall next to a set of vending machines and sinks down against the wall until she’s on the cold cement ground with her knees pulled up to her chest and her head resting against her forearms while her fingers clutch at the chain around her neck.

This is not like her to fall apart. Not at all. And yet here she is breaking down next to a machine full of chips and crackers and a melted chocolate bar or two.

Footsteps echo down the hallway, and Emma tries to hide a little further into the wall, hoping that whoever it is won’t see her. But they keep on getting closer and closer until a body is sinking down next to her in Yankee-mandated warm-up pants and a pair of worn-down sneakers that she recognizes.

Will Scarlet.

The realization that it’s him has her leaning into his side as he wraps his arm around her shoulder and his hand rubs up and down her bicep in one of the most comforting touches she’s felt all day.

Emma has got to stop falling apart today.

She’s sure she probably will again when she sees Killian and finally tells him how she’s been coping in the past two days. They can have some kind of pity party together.

“When I got called up from the minor leagues,” Will starts, his voice calmer and quieter than she’s ever heard it, “I didn’t know a soul in New York. Seriously, no one. And I walk into the clubhouse for the first time, nerves consuming me, and the first thing that I see is your boyfriend’s bare ass as he was getting it massaged.”

Emma chuckles, her chest moving, and Will keeps moving his hand against her arm. “I was just thinking a few minutes ago about how you guys don’t know how to stay dressed.”

“No, we don’t,” Will continues. “Anyways, so the first sight that I see is his ass. Congratulations on it, by the way. He’s got a good one.”

“Oh my gosh.”

“It’s true. He does. Anyways,” he starts again, and Emma is reminded of how thankful she is for him. Everyone needs a Will Scarlet in their life. “He is the first soul that I met, and I stuck to him because I didn’t know what else to do. I haven’t always been this outgoing, you know? It’s been a journey. And, I mean, I don’t regret any of it. I don’t regret how I made friends with a guy whose ass I saw before his face and who happened to be going through some really though times off the field. He’s one of the best damn friends I’ve ever had, and he’s part of the reason I’m with Belle. He talked me down from my freak-out when we were getting serious, and I didn’t know what to do. I can never give him enough thanks for that and telling me that being in love didn’t have to burn up in flames.”

Emma leans up back against the wall and Will’s arm then, thankful that she can breathe again as she stares out at the cinderblock wall in front of her. “Why are you telling me all of this?”

“Because you ran out of that locker room faster than I’ve ever seen anyone run while wearing heels, and I know that you’re going through a tough time. I also know that you’re probably freaking out a little bit over your relationship. How could you not? So, I thought it’d be nice to hear a little something nice about your boyfriend.”

“So, you’re being his hype man?”

“Only a little,” Will laughs, and Emma’s stomach settles a little bit more. “I also couldn’t think of anything else to say to cheer you up since I’m sure you’re tired of hearing the same thing from everyone who talks to you. People are assholes, Emma. There’s no denying that, but you can’t let people like King and that ex of yours beat you down. You are damn good at your job, and you’ve earned it. And I can guarantee that if anyone ever talks shit about you and Killian again, I’ve got twenty professional athletes who are willing to back you up.”

“Thank you,” she whispers as she leans her head onto his shoulder. “You’re my favorite catcher.”

“Aww, I bet you say that to all of your catchers.”

“Nope, just you.”

“Good. I get a little bit jealous,” he teases, and Emma’s grin stretches across her lips. It’s a genuine smile, the first one she has felt in hours. “Do you want a ride back home? I can take you so you don’t have to take the train.”

“No, no,” she protests as her legs fall to the ground in front of them, “you don’t have to do that. You should go and get dinner with Belle or something, drag her away from all of those books she is proofreading.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Thank you, Will.”

“No problem at all, sweetheart.”

-/-

When Emma gets to Killian’s apartment a little over thirty minutes later, she uses her key to go into the back entrance and avoid most of the people out front. She’s tired, even with Will’s pep talk, and all she wants is to be inside the safety and comfort of that apartment and not have to think about doing anything else for the rest of the day.

Killian is sitting on the couch when she walks in, and after slipping out of her heels and reaching up under her shirt to take off her bra, Emma immediately walks over to him and crawls onto his lap, curling around him while his arm comes to support her back and the other hooks under her bent knees.

He’s so warm and smells like the spice of his body wash, and she sighs into it, breathing it all in and reveling in having another set of arms to catch her when she’s falling and feels like everything is slipping away.

Killian’s thumb moves against her bicep, running back and forth in little circles, and she feels him shift her entire body on his lap before the bristle of his whiskesrwhiskers brushes over her forehead.

“Long day?”

“You have no idea.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Five words: Walsh and Arthur are misogynistic assholes.”

“That’s six words.”

“I added the misogynistic part after I’d already counted the words.”

Killian softly chuckles, and Emma nuzzles a little further into him, her grip on his stomach tightening. “Will and August told me about Arthur. I’m sorry, darling. They won’t do anything about him now because our managers won’t want to lose him before the Series, but hopefully there will be some kind of action taken soon. He doesn’t get to have repeated incidents like that without any consequences.”

“To be fair, you punched him the first time.”

“That I did.” Killian’s hand starts moving up and down the outside of her thigh, and it feels so damn good that her entire body shivers. It’s also what has her leaning back so that she can look in his eyes and see the blue that is written across so many major parts of her life now. “Did something happen with Walsh today too? And don’t think you’re off the hook for last night. I believed you when you said you didn’t feel good, but I know you weren’t sick.”

Of course he knows. Always reading her like a book.

“He confronted me in my office this morning.” Killian’s jaw ticks, and she reaches up her hand to run it across his scruff. She’s too tired for any more anger today. She doesn’t want him to be angry too. “I don’t…he didn’t even make any sense, you know? There’s no reason for him to have done what he did except to hurt me and hurt you since there’s no way he thought he was going to make a lot of money off of this. I think – when he was waiting for me outside of my office, it made me realize that all he really wanted was to finally push me into the ground so hard that there was no way that I’d ever be able to get back up.”

The sigh Killian releases is so loud that she feels it run its course throughout her own body, and his palm stops moving against her thigh before it starts again and moves over all of the curves of her body before Killian is holding her cheek and looking at her like she was the one to hang the stars in the sky and keep them glowing each night.

Being looked at like that will never not cause her breath to still.

“Have I ever told you how incredible you are? Because I…I don’t know how I got to be so lucky to have someone like you in my life. You are walking through fire both for me and because of me, and I don’t deserve that from you.”

“You do,” she promises as her heart does that thing again where it beats a little too fast while her stomach swoops. Emma leans forward and kisses Killian, something slow and lazy and just what they both need. She could spend all day right here in his arms kissing him while everything else fades into the background. “You do, and you’re walking through fire because of me too. We’re in this together, twenty-nine.”

“I think we make a pretty good team.”

“Obviously the best team. We’d win all of the trophies.”

“So many that we wouldn’t even have a place to store them.”

“Oh, well, we can keep them in my apartment because Ruby called me out and said I never stay there anymore.”

Killian raises a brow, a Cheshire Cat grin spreading across his lips. “Well…”

“What?” she laughs, slapping him.

“You really don’t, love,” Killian explains. She can tell he’s holding back laughter. “You’re maybe sleeping over there once a week when you’re not traveling. You’ve kind of taken over my apartment.”

“I have not.”

“I found at least fifteen bobby pins when I was vacuuming today. How do you lose so many of those damn things?”

“It just kind of happens.”

“I found some in the gym. You don’t even go in the gym when you’re here.”

Emma shrugs her shoulders. “Magic, maybe?”

“Yeah,” he laughs as he stands from the couch and brings her up with her while she squeals at the sudden movement, “sure. Something like that. C’mon, Swan. I have missed you terribly these past two days, and I think it’s time you become reacquainted with my bed. It has missed you for at least five days now.”

“For sleeping purposes, right?”

Killian winks at the same time that his tongue runs across her teeth. “Sure. We’ll go with that.”

#catch me if you can #cs fic #cs ff #captain swan fic #captain swan ff #captain swan

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radasadam · 5 years ago

Text

A long story about some people I used to know

We were young. It was a few days before my seventeenth birthday and I was living away from home with a mate from high school, D, working a job I thought was my passion. I had an old friend over one night, M, and she asked if it would be cool if a couple of her friends stopped by. “Sure! Why not?!” I said with glee, being able to make these decisions myself now.

An hour rolls by and all of a sudden there’s someone attempting to reverse park into my carport. Perplexed, we go outside, look over the small balcony and around the corner are two people, whom I could only describe as “young punks” are getting out a black ford escape with bright pink license plates.

“This is B and H!” M said with a demeanor as if she introducing two minor celebrities.

“Did you see that sick park job I did, first go!” B said with excitement. It wasn’t the first go, we saw her reverse in and out a few times, but M had told me she only had her license for two weeks, so we weren’t about to dim that shine. “What up, dude” says H, as if we’d met before.

M introduces D and I, we all exchange casual pleasantries and B, H, M and I spark a cigarette. D doesn’t smoke but he enjoys the banter of the smoke circle. One after another we awkwardly look for an ashtray, I grab the butt bucket and we all take a last drag, put out our smoke and head inside.

“We got you a birthday present!” yells B, having just remembered. She goes back out to the car and comes back in with a half melted soft serve cone from McDonald’s. “Happy birthday!” B and H say in unison.

I look at it for a second, look up at M, she’s holding back laughter. “I’m lactose intolerant” I say with a chuckle. B and H look at each other and we all burst out in hysterics. D, a bigger lad, swoops in and chomps it out of my hand in one bite, relieving me of dripping awkward mess that was an impromptu birthday gift. I thank them profusely as to not insult their gift, though they aren’t fazed either way.

We talk for a while, M spends an hour talking about all the cool things that B and H do and have done. Trying to cement the fact that these are two cool cats. I wasn’t sure why she did this, they were making the case all on their own. That’s just kind of what she did though, as if surrounding herself with the ‘cool’ people would make her seem more interesting. M was lovely, a bit misguided but great nonetheless.

D has been playing xbox for most of this, so the rest of us moved to the balcony so we could smoke, because there’s nothing cooler in the eyes of teenagers trying to rebel than chain smoking, even if it hurt. M is asthmatic, but battles her labored breath to keep looking 'cool’ with us. H is smoking perfectly hand rolled cigarettes, something I admired as I couldn’t roll a cigarette to save my life. B smokes hybrid cigarettes, I hadn’t seen these before but my interest drops when I realize they’re menthol.

H brings up pot, because he’s heading to his brothers to smoke with him after this. B asks why he doesn’t just stay at her house, she has bud at home. H lists a few reasons I can’t remember and makes it clear he’s going to his brothers. B seems a little disappointed and shifts focus to me. “Have you smoked before?” I had only smoked pot once, a few months back but wanting to fit in, I say “Yeah! Heaps of times!” obviously lying, but no one calls me on it. “We should smoke some time” B and H reply, both with a look that says they’ll show me the ropes.

It hits 9pm and provisional driving curfews, that mean no passengers in your car, start at 10pm. B, not wanting to lose her recently obtained license, says to H that they had better go. M says she should head off too. Her grandmother, who she lives with, will kill her if she’s out past 10 again. We all spark one last smoke and say our goodbyes. “We should hang out soon” says B as they roll out of the carport “Later dude” adds H. M asks what I thought of them as I walk her to her car. “They’re rad, we should chill again” I say in a tone I thought I conveyed as relaxed but came off desperate. M picks up on this and with a smile says she’ll organise something, gets in her car and drives off. I head back to the house and D has already gone to bed, so I head off to my room and do the same. My head hits the pillow and I think to myself “These are people I want, no, need in my sheltered life”.

It’s been about a week, I’ve turned seventeen and I’m walking aimlessly through the shopping centre, looking for something to do on Tuesday. As a chef, my weekend was Tuesday-Wednesday and I was trying to make the most of it. I head upstairs to go see what movies are on and as I’m passing the boost juice counter I hear a “Hey dude!” I look around, wondering if that was directed at me. Then I see them, B and H, they’re waiting in line for their drink at boost, H knows the girl behind the counter and is talking to her. B, looking annoyed, had grabbed my attention and starts a conversation with me. After chatting with B for a minute, H walks over with their drinks. “What up, dude” H mutters through his straw. I have a generic reply because for some reason I’m now nervous. We go out to the stairs next to the cinema and have a cigarette. B asks what I’m doing at the plaza and I explain my search for a fulfilling ‘weekend’. B gets it because she works as a hairdresser and understands odd days off. She invites me to come back to her place with H and we can all “smoke up” When I say I wouldn’t be able to get home she even invites me to stay the night. I agree with excitement, in part because I’ll have something to do this weekend, because I’m making new friends and holy cow, I’m going to smoke pot for the second time. My now seventeen year old mind is going wild with expectations. I mention if M will come over too and they both snicker a little bit. “Nah” B replies while looking at H. I didn’t read into it and followed them to B’s car and off we went. B and H have been friends for years, grew up together I felt nervous as an almost third wheel, their chemistry was strong and something I strived to have with someone.

We get to B’s house and start heading down a long drive way. I let out an awe as we pass through the second set of gates and I see a massive house on acres of land with horses in a paddock with a huge body of water. I complement B’s home and she replies ever so casually “Oh that’s the main house, mines out back” as we drive around it. In shock, I ask if she rents or something and B explains that the main house is where her mum, J, lives and she has her own flat out the back then points out yet another dwelling in the distance where a man privately rented from her mum, but doesn’t elaborate.

We park in the carport adjacent to her flat, hop out of the car and walk into the courtyard. “B! H!” J yells out in a loving tone from the window clad walkway that connected the houses. “Hey mum! This is A” B says as we enter. J welcomes us all with a hug, H gives her a kiss on the cheek as if he is her son. Warm, I felt warm and welcome. We all take a seat in the cosy walkway, I complement J and B on their home and they give me a verbal tour. J leave us and heads into the main house, B, H and I make our way into B’s flat.

There are band posters and childhood artworks on the walls, instruments and amplifiers scattered and a snow board leaning up against the far wall. The room couldn’t have looked cooler in my teenage eyes. It’s getting dark and after a few cigarettes and shared anecdotes, H gestures to B and she gets up, walks through a curtain dividing the lounge room from the rest of the flat and comes back with what looked to be a water bottle and a Tupperware container. Now seeing the small length of garden hose popping out of the water bottle, it clicks and anxiety kicks in. I had only smoked a joint before and had no idea how to smoke a bong. I played it cool and just watched what they did and tried to guess the rest. It was my turn now and without asking, B had packed a cone for me, relieving me of the stress of how much to pack. At this point B and H must know that I had over played my experience because I just tried to pull a cone as one would draw on a cigarette. Pulling into my mouth, then inhaling, only being able to do it bit by bit. The jig was up as H starts laughing, B following suit. They don’t call me out though, H just starts slowly doing the motions as he smokes his next cone, I get it now, I think. It’s my turn again and I successfully pull and inhale simultaneously, finishing the cone in one go, then promptly coughing my lungs up, we all laugh.

We have another one a few minutes pass and it starts to kick in. I, nervous in my inexperience, try not to freak out as a full body high slowly moves up me. I’ve never felt this before, a wondrous euphoria crashing over my body again and again. B and H show me affection over the next few hours, affection I hadn’t truly felt before, with or without drugs. Here are two people that don’t care what I am, but rather who I am. Sharing this experience, making sure that I’m comfortable, hydrated and laughing. I won’t forget this, I couldn’t forget this. I realise that B and H, only having known them for a week, are the friends I had always longed for in my dark and confusing teen years, relative to me only being seventeen. I feel content for the first time, knowing that my life has just changed.

What followed was two years of pure friendship. High highs and low lows, no pun intended. Road trips and nights in, new additions and sour farewells. We would bicker like children and plan our lives as adults. Share all of our vulnerabilities and revel in each other’s success. Creating memories that will never fade and forgiving each other’s transgressions. I now live as a new person, feeling reborn as I experienced why, as humans, we are social. I soon come out of the closet to B, then H and am offered nothing but support, normalcy and unchanged friendship. Memories to last a life time. Bliss.

It’s now my third year with these wonderful people and only a few months later, what I felt was going to last forever, is now starting to slide from my grip. I lose the passion for my work and am let go, recoiled back into my childhood home. H has met new friends and is farther away now, we see him less and less. B is searching for a path, her mother’s health starts to deteriorate and needs B more now. B is conflicted, she now has to consider J in her life choices. J becomes less warm, she changes ever so slightly, day by day. B’s light is dim. M has taken time away from us, and us away from her. She lives a different life now, but we will see her again in the future.

We go through months of unknowing and uncertainty, desperately clasping at anything that will give us the feelings we just recently lost. Not sharing that we felt differently, but rather tried to masquerade our sadness of the situation with smiling faces. Were we just growing up?

H talks to us less and less until one day he stops, stops replying, stops answering, until he stops being in our everyday thoughts. I still don’t know what happened. Did we do something wrong or did he outgrow us? Did we not share the same interests anymore? Confusion. I say goodbye to him in my head and just remember the good times, just remember the good times A.

I have an opportunity, after months of unemployment. My sister in law offers me a new start with her company. It requires me to move to another state. I, thinking all I need is a sea change, accept without hesitation, without consulting B. When did I start doing that? I wouldn’t change cigarette brands without consulting them in the past. It hits me, we’ve grown out of the day dream that was our life for two years. Does this mean growing apart?

I leave. Days after making the announcement. Thinking that this may close that chapter and I will have to find this kind of love all over again. B and I don’t grow apart though. We call each other every day and if we miss a day, our conversation is just longer the next. We live in each other’s lives like we did before, not making the smallest of decision without talking to eachother first. This is working, were still friends and we’re still growing. I fly down to see her and she flies up to see me, we’re making it work. These feelings are still available, still obtainable, and did we ever lose them? Or did we just need to change how we sought them out. We’ve evolved in a way. B and I are in new careers, we’ve got passion and drive behind us that we haven’t felt before. We’re getting promotions, making new friends, and having different experiences but we’re telling each other every detail along the way, our bond is only growing stronger.

It’s been two years now, two years away from where I grew up and I’m coming home. I call B with the news and she’s ecstatic! I say goodbye to my new friends, knowing I may never see them again. I pack my car, D, who has remained only a message or call away through my time away, flies up to me and we share the drive down. We enjoy catching up after not seeing each other for two years and I realise that our friendship hasn’t changed, we slot straight back in. Experiencing that rekindling only makes me more impatient to get to B.

We arrive at D’s house after driving for 18 hours on day two. I thank him and hug him tightly, knowing our friendship is unique, swearing to myself that he’ll be a part of my life forever. I drive a few streets away to my childhood home, I greet my parents with affection and caffeinate my tired mind. I get back in the car, only a 40 minute drive now. It’s almost 10pm and I have a job interview the next day, but I’m on my way. I had organised with B to move into her flat when I came back, knowing that we needed to be together 24/7 for a while to make up for the two years apart.

I’m driving slowly down the long drive way and at the end, through the second set of gates, illuminated by the moon and some solar lights dangling on the wall behind her is B. She is practically bouncing with her hands over her mouth. A look I knew was excitement and anticipation. I leap out of the car, straight over to her and we give each other a hug that tells one another ‘We’re home now’.

B introduces me to HG, her new boyfriend. He seems great! The perfect mix of punk and hipster. I couldn’t be happier, because from our brief interaction I could tell he would fit in. I have a moment of reflection. Is this how M felt when she introduced me to B and H? Not that I had introduced them, but rather the feeling that someone fits. M is back on the scene, and she’s had a baby! She’s moved into the cottage in the distance with her partner.

I slot into a part time job and bide my time before moving into yet another new career, expanding on my experience up north. I feel good and have the same drive, B, HG and I are even working in the same shopping centre now. Meeting for a cigarette in between our stores almost every day.

HG and I bond in a weird but wholesome way. We share interests and hobbies that he doesn’t with B. Balance. I felt I helped him fall in love with B by sharing all of the ways I love her and how she’s changed my life. I share with B how HG and I have bonded, and the ways he loves her without her realising. B, HG and I share new experiences together. This feels familiar, this feels like years ago, this feels dangerous. Am I reliving those old days? Am I trying to hard? Will I ruin this if I try to repeat old behaviours? Anxiety. M moves out, she crossed J in a way I’m still not fully aware of, I don’t understand, but I don’t ask too many questions. I regretfully get on board the hate train. I justified it somehow, I didn’t feel bad about it in the moment. I do now.

B is striving, she’s stressed but somehow uses it to her advantage, and I admire this. HG just lost his job. He doesn’t work in the centre anymore and suddenly B and I aren’t meeting for cigarettes as frequently. Was she only making the time for him? I stop thinking this way when it becomes clear her job just doesn’t allow it anymore. I feel concerned. B is working herself too hard. The things she used to do to advance in her role aren’t being recognized anymore, she’s deflating. Losing the passion. No. Not again. Is this all breaking apart? This is where it started to fall last time, is the role just reversed?

I was wrong. We’d been through something in the past, sure, but this wasn’t a repeat. She’s stronger now than I was back then, wiser. She makes a move onto a different path, starting at the bottom again. She has the drive, the passion, it never left her. What was I worried about?

B has a long commute now, almost 2 hours. It’s her dream job though and she doesn’t let it sway her. I realise she’s powerful in her will, a lot stronger than I could ever or will ever be. I start to feel resentment for the first time. I hate it. I don’t resent her, but myself. Because I now know that it was my lack of will that derailed us all those years ago. I start to spiral.

HG is in and out of work, he just can’t land something he can be passionate about and I feel his pain. He feels inadequate compared to B, we share that feeling but we don’t know how to tell each other let alone B, who just transferred to a store close by. Her hard work paid off, quickly. HG and I start to bond in a new and unhealthy way, smoking weed. I find myself buying and smoking more, HG buys when he can but is always asking for some. I worry when stuff around the house goes missing, just before he buys. It’s just a coincidence, he wouldn’t, I tell myself.

It’s late in the year now, close to my 21st birthday. HG has been living in B’s room for a while, we didn’t really notice when he moved in though, it just kind of happened over a few weeks of him staying every night, to him bringing his stuff over, to HG being home when B or I weren’t. It feels right though, so I don’t read into it, they must have talked about it without me, no stress.

I’m moving along in life the same as I have since getting back. I’m good but I’m dealing with new feelings and new guilt about past choices, and how I can’t change, giving into my own apathy. Depression. D peeks his head in, asks if I want to move out again with him. Yes! That sound great, but we can’t really afford a place in our area, so we ask J if we can rent the cottage in the distance. She loves the idea as she needs the extra cash. Done! D and I move into the cottage. This feels good, B and HG have their space to grow as a couple, we all live together on this almost commune and it’s great. I even get a dog!

The dog brings a new meaning into my life, suddenly I’m working harder. I’m concerned for him while I’m gone though, so I set up a camera or two to watch him while I’m at work. It records everything while I’m gone and I can watch him on a live feed. Tops!

J isn’t doing great, or so it seemed health wise. But it’s odd this time. I start contemplating J’s relationship with B. I’d always stayed out of arguments between them, been a shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen, but now some things aren’t adding up. We all knew of J’s injury years ago, but never questioned the symptoms that would sporadically arise.

A few months pass, B is still striving, she even got a promotion, HG is out of work again, D is happy with his new privacy away from his parents and little sister, J has some extra income now and I’m well too. J is showing concern about HG all of a sudden when I mention misplacing some things, J talks to me about things that she feels she can’t say to B about HG. J has always confined in me in the past. Usually about random things she doesn’t want to bother B about, but this was different. I kept it between us all the same and just kept my eyes a bit wider.

J would need help sometimes and we were all too happy to help, her being like a second mother to me and always referring to her as such. This changes though. During my time living with J and B, then later HG and D, her requests were getting more and more, for a lack of better words, mundane. Suddenly I realise J has been playing up her disability, in order for us to do things she just didn’t feel like doing. I realised B had made decisions in life based on J’s disability when she hadn’t need to. B was blind to J’s manipulation. The straw that broke the camel’s back in my mind was when B spent days waiting on J in her bed, because she was apparently bed ridden, we all took pity and did whatever she would ask, from simple things like getting her a cup of tea, to helping her go to the bathroom. In the morning before work, in the middle of a bed rest period, I head up to J’s room, to see if she needs anything because everyone had left already. J is crying in ‘pain’ and asks if I have any weed. I say I don’t, because I don’t. I get her some tea, some Panadol, wish her a better day and leave for work, as I was already running late. Now, a week after talking with J that morning, I started noticing odd things again. Things are going missing, but this time out of the cottage. It was a game controller here, a game there, some pot if I left it out, all signs pointed to HG, Because J had pointed it out to me. I let it slide for a few more days. Then money went missing. The rent that D and I pay to J, we put into a specific spot in the kitchen, because sometimes we would get in late and J would be asleep. With us gone the next day, J would just go to the spot and collect the rent instead of waiting until the next afternoon.

One day, J asked if we were struggling or something. I was confused and asked why she thought that. J mentioned that the rent was $100 short. Thinking I had just miss counted, I gave her another $100 out of pocket. So the next week, I counted with D, then counted again at the spot to confirm. All there, all good. J messages me at work the next day “$150 short this time, sure you guys are okay?” I lose it, but say it must be a miscount and give her the difference when I get home. I’ll confront HG afterwards. HG isn’t home though, but B and I have a talk when she gets home, not about the situation, but that HG had been accused of selling games and odd electronics at his old job, that his friends had left in his car. HG denied it and B believed him, I think.

I have an idea. I can’t prove if HG had stolen money from the spot or if J was scamming me and I don’t want to confront anyone without evidence, but I’ve had cameras in the cottage watching the dog for weeks. All backing up to my laptop. I start going through the footage after work one day, looking at days I’ve noticed things missing and see what I’m after. HG coming into the cottage while D and I are at work and going through our rooms, taking odd things, eating our food and sitting down in my room, smoking my weed. Here’s where it gets worse. I see J come into frame after scrubbing to a new day’s footage. The morning J claimed she was in too much pain to get out of bed, let alone get herself a cup of tea. I could see her going through my belonging, snooping, I thought to myself, how could someone act that way to my face, then enter my flat at a panthers pace the moment I left. J starts running around my bedroom, putting her fingers through empty weed baggies. Now I know why she was in there. I’m livid, I couldn’t believe that J had done this, I was ready to oust HG but I wasn’t prepared for what J had done. Had she only been saying we were short and pocketing the extra cash?

D said he wasn’t missing anything, but we decide to move out nonetheless. He is going back to his parents, but I didn’t know what I was going to do.

I arm myself with all of the footage, ready to confront HG and J. However I’m conflicted. B has been telling me of the trouble her and HG were going through. J was up for an operation, and things were seemed to be falling apart around B. What do I do? Wait to see if B breaks up with HG, so that he’ll be gone and I won’t have to add salt to the injury? Or Give this as a reason to break up with him? I didn’t know what to expect once B had this information. What do I do about J? B couldn’t lose HG, J and have me move at the same time, would B even want me to confront J about it? I decide to wait but made sure J was aware I was taking down my cameras and mentioned the fun ill have looking through the weird times I had in the cottage. Her eyes widen but I don’t give any more details. D and I tell everyone we are moving out, I find a room with some old friends from high school and we make plans.

Dylan has been gone for a few days now and things are deteriorating. I leave, thinking that I can just keep this information to myself, and after a few weeks, I can reassess. A week after moving into the new house, in the city now. I woke up to a house of 3 old mates and the feeling of a fresh new start in a different area. I can bring B into this life soon enough, away from these people that were tearing her in different directions. J, making B feel guilty about things out of B’s control, manipulating B into making decisions that only benefited J. Away from HG, who had reverted into a bong rat with no aspirations.

Then my phone rings. It’s B, I answer “Hey Bitch!” thinking it’s going to be a fun recap of the day before and the night I had had. “A” B barley manages to speak in a small voice “HG just broke up with me” B crackles through tears. B walks me through what happened while bawling her eyes out. I could hear the pain and confusion in her voice. “I don’t know what to do” B belts out a as she loses what little composure she has left. I couldn’t blame her, although they had problems she wanted to fight, she had a type of burning love for him that would start a fire under water. I guess I never stopped to see if HG’s love for B was the same.

It hit me. I was going to keep quiet for now. I don’t want to unload this information on B now because it would just make her pain worse, and if he came back into her life, maybe I would re-consider. As for J, I knew it could wait. I had made commitments I couldn’t get out of that night, but told B I would be there the very next morning. We stayed on the phone for about an hour while I listened to her proverbially bleed out. She wasn’t going to work, her friends there understood the severity and insisted she stay home for a few days.

Its night now when my phone rings again, an unknown number, I chose to ignore it. However it kept ringing. After the 3rd ring, on the 4th I decide to answer and to my surprise, it was J. I let my guard down thinking it was concern for B and ask “What’s up?” in an upbeat tone. But my tone isn’t matched. She starts digging into me.

“I hope you’re happy!” “This is all your fault!” “Who do you think you are?!” “You caused this!” “How can you live with yourself after this?” “What are you going to do about it?!” J belts out, practically in one breath. I pause and think “Does she think she’ talking to HG?” I interrupt to say “J, it’s A, are you okay, what’s going on?”

“I know it’s you, A! I’m not stupid! What the fuck have you done?” J screams, takes a breath and continues “You think you can just leave and nothing will change? B is a wreck and it’s all your fault!” I’m confused at this point and ask “What does me moving out have anything to do with B and HG breaking up? I talked to her just a few hours ago and I’m coming over in the morning” “Don’t you dare! You’ve done enough! Don’t dare come back to this house, you’re as bad as M! Just come and go as you please, walking all over us!” J replies, then hangs up. This just confuses me even more. What has any of this got to do with M?! And why is J calling me, blaming me for B and HG breaking up? At this point, I had excused myself from the dinner I was attending. I have a quick cigarette, contemplate calling B but decide to just head back inside the restaurant. I’ll call her on the way home.

Its 10 pm, two hours after J’s call. I’m racking my brain for reasons why I could be to blame for all of this. But in the end, I reluctantly give B a stupid excuse I regret, to reschedule our day tomorrow. The nest day I wake up to message after message of abuse from J, mixed in were messages from B. I reply to B but decide I can’t go back to that house, and make more bad excuses.

Days had passed now and I felt that B knew I wasn’t coming. I felt terrible, absolutely terrible, but how in the world could I tell B that J was the reason I wasn’t coming? I invite her to my new house, but she declines. She wants to stay in bed, and after all I should be making the effort here, not her. What am I supposed to do? J is in the back ground of B and I’s phone calls, asking for me and how I am, when am I coming to do this and that but I was still getting text messages saying “You left me high and dry! Without your rent I’m going to starve! You didn’t give me enough notice and now you owe me X amount of money!” “Come get the shit you left behind!” followed by “Don’t think you can ever step foot around my house or B ever again!” “Fuck off you c**t!”

I screen shot all of this and was ready to end J’s way of life and get B out of there when I realised. B wouldn’t do that. She would defend her mother until her last breath. No matter what I said, or showed, it could somehow be turned back on me. I talk myself out of doing this on multiple occasions.

In the end I decide I can’t do anything. Now I see myself turning into H. Not replying, not answering and eventually, sure enough, I’ll be out of their everyday thoughts. It’s now when I start contemplating the friends B and I lost. Was it some variation of this situation that caused them to exit our lives? Maybe.

Time kept passing and days kept going by, months now. I missed talking to B every day, I felt something missing from my life. Until other things took over. I was packing up the room I was living in, we were moving to a new house. When I saw a Polaroid of B sitting on her bed, with the purple wall behind her with her hand on her face like she’d always do when I tried to take a photo of her with no makeup on. I cried. It was too late now. I couldn’t call her, I couldn’t message her. The person I shared my life with for the past 7 years.

Its 2018 now. My depression has worsened over the last two years. I have dark thoughts every morning when I wake up and every night when I go to bed. I’m drowning myself in drugs and alcohol and putting on a brave face for the people around me. I make plans for a final day but never go through with them. Then I get a phone call on the fourth day of October. I’ve been made redundant from my job along with 7 others, in a corporate takeover and I’m lost. Three weeks pass and my plans keep becoming more enticing. I go to interview after interview and get nothing but rejection. A friend I’ve been living with ,L, has been treating me and our other house mate, DB, like trash, smoking our weed and eating our food. We send him the rent, and he is supposed to pay it. We find out he hasn’t paid rent in a month and instead pocketed it for his own. We are facing eviction. I call it.

On the fifth day of November I set everything in motion. I pack up everything I own into boxes, and give away any clothes that would fit DB under the impression I’m cleaning stuff out. I throw out a lot of junk, say goodbye to my dog and cats and say to DB, “I’ll be back in the morning” I grabbed anything that my family may want or that I’ve borrowed and put it into a box and headed out. I stop by my dealer, pick up a Q of hydro and 4 tabs of LSD and make a b-line for my parents’ house. I return borrowed items and leave the box in the shed for them to find after. Dad starts an argument with me about finishing an odd job for him. “I’ll do it next time” I yell back in anger, knowing I’ll probably never going to see him again for some reason wanting that to be the last thing I said to him. I come into the kitchen of the house I grew up and look around. I’ve had so many good memories here, but all I can think of are the bad ones. I give mum a kiss on the cheek and say “Love you, see you next weekend” with a whimper. She asks if something’s the matter but I don’t let it out. I shake my head with a half-hearted smile, walk out and get in my car.

I drive to the bottle shop and pick up a few long necks, thinking the more inebriated I am, the easier it would be. I’m crying but the shop clerk doesn’t point it out. I don’t blame them, he was an older gentleman who just looked confused and confronted. I leave and drive down the hill to an old camp ground, Norton’s basin.

I park my car, set up my tent, crack a beer and start rolling a joint. I go through the night drinking and smoking writing letters and recording messages for loved ones. I start writing one for B, wondering if she would even read it after how I left her. I go to write it anyway. I write out a few lines and scrap the page, start again, scrap again. There’s nothing I can write to her. So I start recording a message and just let it all pour out. No corrections, no restarting, just raw words. I spoke for an hour before realising how long it had been. I close the message with the send-off “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me, because now you can’t be here for me when I need you” and cry myself into a drunken slumber.

Its morning now. I’m hung over but don’t care. I have a plan for today and I’m going through with it. I crack another beer from the poorly made esky bag and light a joint. I drop all 4 tabs of LSD and start working. I finish off some letters, get changed into my navy suit, with a floral bow-tie and clean accessories. I’m going out in style. I’ve become a skeleton of my previous self in the last year, now only 60 odd kilos, my suit is ill fitting and draping but I don’t care. It’s been 3 hours and the LSD has well and truly kicked in. My trip isn’t bad but I’m crying uncontrollably.

Some passers-by see me and my odd scenario and start questioning me, I let out a bad lie about a failed proposal, thus the suit and the tears. They buy it and move on with my saying I’m packing up now. I pack the tent into my car and move the car down the track for more privacy. Now it begins.

I pull the hose and duct tape out of a bag and start taping shut my air vents. I seal four of the five doors, attach the hose to the exhaust, feed it through a window and tape it off. I put the back seats down, get in and seal off the remaining door. I start the car and settle in. I put some music on and stare at the roof of the interior, still tripping on LSD, more so now, I have a beer and I spark a joint. I start to visualise what’s going to happen to me and am met with a wave of euphoria. What is this feeling? I remember this. This feeling that I’ve been chasing all these years. That first euphoric moment in B’s lounge room, with her and H laughing with me. I cry uncontrollably, this is fitting. The feeling I had in the moment I felt reborn was going to be the same feeling I have as I exit. I black out.

I don’t know who found me, I don’t know what saved me. I just remember waking up in a hospital with my mother crying at my bedside. It was the year anniversary of that day a last month and I can thankfully say I’m doing better now.

The only reason I wrote this was because I found out recently that B is living in Canada now, she’s living a better life, away from HG, J and I. I can’t help but wonder what our life together would be like if I had of just gone to her fucking house. Fuck you HG and a special fuck you to J. B, I hope you see this and understand why I didn't come.

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moorezako · 7 years ago

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Purple Sky Part 2

Eventually the lizards draw to a halt, stopping at the edge of what looked like a thickly polluted river. The current looked strong, and there was no clear bridge or pathway across.

“God I hate these things.” Rowina groaned, “but this means we’re close to the start point, I heard there’s a marked tree just on the other side of this river, and that we can climb to the first point from there. You listening Brailin?”

Brailin hadn’t grown up around many rivers or things of that nature, in his village they mostly collected water from the rain and only when desperate would venture to one of the streams nearby. But regardless of his shaky knowledge of water, Brailin was certain that rivers should never be quite that muddy. The river in front of him was not only so thick he could not see an inch below the surface, but it was also such a rich brown. And that smell, he could swear it reminded him of…

“Chocolate. You really never been out of Rockdale? I crossed one not two days out from your village.”

The memory hit him immediately. A wealthy moustache twirling man venturing from an Eastern city, Brailin remembered how he had saved the man from a carnivorous plant and in return the man had given him a bar of what he called ‘chocolate’. He had made it last almost a whole week, sneaking bites every now and then. It was a taste unlike anything he’d experienced in Rockdale. In front of him was a near infinite supply of the thing he’d dreamt of since he was a boy.

Brailin made a mad dash for the river bed, emptying his flask as he ran, preparing to gorge himself on fine liquid. The rock connected with his head and he tripped, going down hard. Rubbing the back of his head Brailin whipped around to face his aggressor. Rowina stood there with a look of mild indignation, a slight smirk creeping onto her face.

“What are you doing?” She spoke as if addressing a small child, “you can’t drink from the river it’s poisonous. Get up, we need to keep moving, there are all manner of things in there just waiting for some poor sap like yourself.”

Somewhat dazed and disgruntled, Brailin side-eyed the river.

“Right, so how exactly are we planning on getting over here again?”

“See those mounds protruding from the current there? Where the rivers flow shifts slightly and you can see a spotted greeny yellowy pattern?”

Brailin peered over the river, it was almost impossible to spot from this angle but he thought he could make out what she was talking about.

“Well those are a special type of toadstool that grow beneath the surface of the river. They can generally support a pretty substantial weight and these lizards are pretty good at jumping between them. All we’ve got to do is point them in the right direction and pray to whatever god you believe in we don’t fall off. Sound good?”

Good was not a word Brailin would use to describe, strapping himself to volatile lizard and being hurled from toadstool to toadstool across a monster infested death river, but as he tilted his head skyward, and saw the collection of dazzling purple mountain ranges above, he felt a new sense of determination sweep over him. Brailin nodded.

“Good because that’s the only way we’ve got.”

The two prepared themselves for the crossing, harnessing each other together with several metres rope incase one of them fell in.

“Ok Brailin, because I’ve done this a few times already, I’m going to go first and you’re going to follow my lead, staying one platform behind at all times, got it?”

Brailin nodded, but he was barely listening, something had caught his eye. In the distance, back the way they’d come, was a pair of lizards not unlike their own. This was not uncommon to find other travelers on the yellow path, however something was off. These two were different, he knew it. One of them was a hulking man, easily a couple foot taller than himself. His face represented that of a humanoid bull, a brutish nose, beaded eyes and fearsome horns. He was unmistakably a minotaur. The other figure was miniscule in comparison, a slender frame and cloaked in a black garb similar to Rowina however not an inch of skin was visible on this shrouded individual. They were approaching at a remarkably fast pace.

“Brailin are you listening to me?”

Brailin’s attention snapped back to Rowina.

“Look.”

Rowina turned her gaze over to the pair just in time to see the Minotaur draw an axe from behind his back large enough to pass for a giants letter opener.

“Follow me and whatever happens don’t stop for a goddamn second.”

Leaving her steed behind, Rowina took a sprinting leap towards a spot on the river and skidded to a stop, grabbing the side of the floating schroom. Brailin didn’t need to be told twice, past fears dwarfed by the size of that axe, he took a running jump and landed heavily behind Rowina. Again she jumped and once more he followed suit. Jump, land, repeat. They were about 10 meters from the shore line when their pursuers closed in on the riverbed. We had enough of a head start at this point, we just need to get to the other side and then maybe we can disappear and lose them in the jungle, he thought.

The next jump was a lot larger than the previous ones, and the target was much less forgiving. He steeled himself, and jumped. He could tell he was off from the moment his feet left the ground, he felt his torso and lower body splash into the thick brown liquid as his arms scrambled to grab onto the platform. Rowina was already landing on the next platform, however his short jump jerked her backwards. As she fell Rowina managed to flick out one of her many knives and by stabbing into the toadstools surface she was able cement a hold on her platform.

Brailin’s imagination went into overdrive, picturing that giant axe splitting his head or some unimaginable horror from the depths chomping down on his legs and dragging him under. Spurred on by the taste of sweat, chocolate and fear, Brailin dug his fingers into the squishy surface and hauled himself to safety. His momentary triumph was quickly drowned out by the low growl of his gargantuan follower,

“That was a close one little man. You never know what could be lurking down there.” The minotaur had just landed with a splash on the toadstool one behind Brailin’s.

“Your chief was quite insistent we return you alive if possible, he was worried for your safety wasn’t he Lucas.” Now closer, the one called ‘Lucas’ was more visible. Beneath his hood was a deathly pale face, etched with visceral runes and a cruel smile.

“You know he’s lucky we showed up when we did because I don’t think ol Brailin here was going to be returning with his precious artifact anytime soon, do you?”

Lucas shook his head, eye’s drilling into Brailin’s. Brailin turned his gaze behind him, the jump to the next platform was even further than the one he just made.

“You know I hate to disappoint an old chief but I think we’re going to have to take that artifact of his for ourself to sell to someone a little more lucrative-”

Before he can finish the sentence, an arrow darts past Brailin and strikes into the minotaur shoulder, forcing him to grunt in pain through gritted teeth.

Rowina stands several meters back, bow raised, “the next one is going to be further north unless you back away now.” She spoke calmly but with a snarl to her voice. Brailin, seeing his opportunity, prepared to make a jump for it. Unfortunately as he did so a green mist coiled around him and he felt every muscle in his body seize up. He was helpless as the minotaur launched from his pad and landed with a smack behind Brailin. He was wrenched into the air and held in front of the minotaur with one hand, pointed at Rowina. He could see the fear and agitation starting to encroach on Rowina’s demeanor.

“Now drop the bow, and bring over the artifact, or else poor elfy boy hear meets an unfortunately grisly end.”

As he spoke, the current sped along, beneath Brailin’s still paralysed frame.

“What’s it going to be girl? Lover boy, or your precious trinket. Bounty hunter to bounty hunter.”

The sound of the current, while moments ago had been calm, was now deafening. The heat of the sun was like a hot knife against her back and her skin itched with an ugly nervous sweat. Brailin’s eye’s flicked to her left, and she let the arrow fly.

The green mist evaporated as quickly as it had come as Lucas felt an arrow rip through his kneecap. Brailin felt every nerve in his body switch back online and a red hot fire coursed through his veins as his eyes glowed a bright orange. Flipping himself around, Brailin lept into the air, slamming both his feet into the wall of muscle that had held him in its grasp. As his feet made contact, Brailin let loose a devastating torrent of flames that engulfed the minotaur and sent him reeling backwards, slipping into the sticky depths. At the same time, Brailin was hurled through the air like a missile,slamming hard into the next platform and skidding to a halt at Rowina’s side. The minotaur scrambled for a hold on the slippery surface, managing to dig his fingers in at the last second. But his relief was short lived as from the murky depths something of a child's nightmares rose. The large minotaur was almost completely engulfed by a set of colossal jaws sporting teeth the size of scimitars. An orange orb of an eye blinked vertically as a startling array of tentacles wrapped itself around its prey and dragged the beast into the awaiting maw. A moment passed, the current settled, and Rowena and Brailin each let out a sigh of relief. The pair had made it, and high above them, a utopia awaited.

*****

The trek upwards was an arduous one to say the least. They climbed from floating rock to floating rock, following the ropes laid out by those who had journeyed before them and been lucky enough to make it. Eventually they too had made it, and the end of their journey was within their grasp. They could soon see buildings that could only belong to the people who lived here. But something was off. For one there was not nearly as many buildings as they had expected and the ground they climbed across was not a magnificent purple as it looked from the ground, but a cold stone grey. Despite this however, there was no mistaking that the view was in fact, utterly remarkable. They could see kilometers in every direction. Sparkling blue lakes, the brilliant greens of the jungle. They could even see the colossal Greatschroom they had passed under on their way there.

“Good thing neither of us is afraid of heights.” Brailin said as they walked across their fourth rickety rope bridge, a startling void beneath them. Rowina was quiet

Finally they arrived at the main area of the ‘city’. Their arrival was met with cautionary stares from the people living there. Frail children darted from building to building, dressed in tattered clothing. The buildings, they could now see, were mostly in ruins, left dilapidated by Time’s cruel hand. They walked silently as they took things in, the misty air, the frightened children, the colourless uncared for landscape.

“Rowina, what’s going on, what has happened here?”

Rowina didn’t say anything, she kept her head down and continued to walk towards the centre of the town, Brailin in tow.

“Rowina.” His tone was stern and he was no longer walking in her stead. “I’m serious. This isn’t a Utopia,” he let out a humourless laugh, “it’s not even a city. So why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on.” Years of disillusioned promises filled his voice.

Rowina sighed, “follow me, and I will show you.”

Tired, frustrated and angry, Brailin reluctantly followed. She lead him to a stone door carved into the mountain in the centre of town. She took a key from a necklace she’d been wearing and placed it into the door. With a mechanical click, the door opened and Brailin was beckoned inside. Rowina had lit a lantern and together they ventured deep into the floating mountain. As they walked Brailin could make out ancient symbols carved into the walls, to archaic to read. Eventually, he could make out a faint glow coming from the distance. Until that glow was just as bright as Rowina’s torch, and the two emerged into a large circular room, at the centre of which protruded a large purple crystal, glowing with a supernatural energy.

“Enough Rowina, you need to tell me exactly what is going on or I walk back the way I came right now.”

“You don’t need to yell, I’m going to tell you everything.” She took a deep breath.

“First off, Purple Sky isn’t real. At least the idea of Purple Sky that hopeful idiots such yourself dream about, isn’t real. Purple Sky was the forgotten dream of a brilliant madman. A man with so much power, that he was able to warp entire landscapes to his own twisted idea of what made fantastical. But you’re right, this isn’t a Utopia, for the people who live here it’s nothing but a nightmare. I’m sure in the beginning it was fine, when they had people to venture to the surface and hunt for them, but as their population dwindles… They have no food, barely any water. For god’ sake they’re living off of what birds they can trap up here. And all so that people on the ground can have something pretty to look at and dream of a more exciting life outside their dreary, boring village. Meanwhile I dreamed of getting the hell off this floating rock.”

Brailin was silent, staring at her as she unraveled everything that had been swamping her mind since she began her journey.

“Right now, we are sitting at the heart of Purple Sky. That ‘trinket’ I stole from your village is part two of a two part off switch.” She removed two shards of differently coloured crystals, one red and the other blue. Her hand outstretched, offering the red shard to Brailin.

“I need two people to stop this thing.”

For a moment there was nothing but an eery silence so thick you could cut it with a knife. Then Brailin spoke.

“This Is... Insane. You ask me to help you turn off a floating city, endangering who knows how many lives up here and on the surface, without even knowing what’ll happen and this was what you wanted me here for this entire time.”

“Yes.”

Brailin narrowed his eyes.

“How can I trust you.”

“You can’t.”

*****

In the town of Rockdale, a child wakes up, crying for his mother. The rainbow trees tremor and shake and the mother holds the child in her arms, lying as she tells him there’s nothing to worry about when of course she has no idea.

In the city of Yellowseed an elderly shop keep curses as a tremor causes a beloved earn to crash to the floor, ashes spilling across his leather shoes.

In Cherryton a young girl prays as she feels the vibrations beneath her feet. Her prayer quickly changes to one of concern for her father, whom she knows to be out hunting boar in the wilderness.

And deep in the jungle, a grown man cries as he sees the heavens themselves crash to earth. He falls to his knees and sobs into the ground. His tears splash softly to earth, and as they do, they fall upon toadstools not of yellow or gold, but a soft stone grey.

So that’s it, my first foray into the world of Daymare, hope you guys liked it. I know a lot was left unexplained but I’ll be sure to develop things further in the future.

#fantasy #dungeons and dragons #minotaur #magic #chocolate #river #jungle

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ktkski2017-blog · 8 years ago

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Mount Kenya

February 21, 2017

On Saturday, after rounding in the morning on male medical ward with Janet while Clark battled the credit card/debit card/cash/bank/chip-card debacle, Luke and I prepared to leave Chogoria to hike Mount Kenya. If you read our safari adventure you might have heard of our hired guide, Dunsten. So long story short, we had already given him a downpayment to take us up Mount Kenya prior to going on safari – and this guy had been recommended by Sergei from a hike he went on the previous month – so we went with it. His company was called something like mountain trekkers so we figured it had to be better than the safari. And it was – I can glowingly recommend Dunsten and his crew for mountain trekking as we had a great weekend.

Day 1

We met Dunsten and his six porters/cooks/drivers/what have you in the grass in front of Clark’s house. They had a safari vehicle (go figure) that was a bit worse for wear, but ran. The whole group of them watched as Luke and I walked up (joined by Clark who came to see us off) and then I proceeded to talk business with Dunsten and debate costs (details not important). We eventually agreed (in front of everyone) and jumped in the vehicle, fitting all eight people and our gear inside - two in the boot with all of the backpacks. We picked up someone in town who wanted a ride to the National Park, so now there were nine of us. The road up the mountain was similar to the one we had taken with Leonard to find the waterfall a few days ago – at times narrow with potholes and obstacles. At another time, the road was newly made and completely smooth with water pipes running alongside it in the dirt as if the road was not yet finished. The car did not have power steering so the driver wrangled the steering wheel back and forth. The door that I was sitting against did not seem stable so I spent the ride gripping the seat in front of me as we also didn’t have seatbelts. All of the “the guys” debated loudly about various topics in Swahili so Luke and I just watched the sights go by. Once we reached the Mount Kenya National Forest (the electric fence wire strewn to the side allowing open driving to and from the forest), the road was graded and relatively well maintained but pretty steep. At one point Dunsten got out and did something with the engine before we went up a large slope. The forest on either side of the road had a lot of bamboo and we saw several small animals scamper to the sides, including monkeys. Dunsten said that the forest had water buffalo, hyena, some predators (but few and far between), birds, elephants, etc. At one incline the car stopped and Dunsten said that Luke and I were to get out to hike the last few kilometers for acclimation to the altitude. We hopped out and met Elijah – one of the crew that had been riding with us (turns out he is Dunsten’s brother-in-law) – and we hiked up the remainder of the distance to the cabin we were scheduled to stay at overnight at “the Bandas.” Luke and I had started taking dexamethasone the previous day – this is a generic steroid that people with lung diseases or inflammatory conditions take when they need a boost to their systems and can be used to combat altitude sickness. We did okay with the altitude – we were certainly huffing and puffing but as soon as the ground levelled out our breathing and heart rates slowed to normal (without the acclimation we would likely have higher resting heart and breathing rates to compensate for the decreased oxygen available at higher altitudes – this makes your body work harder just to maintain status-quo).

The cabin was simple wood with concrete footers and a concrete fireplace – we were given a bedroom with twin beds and a bathroom that was no frills. The shower leaked all day (which perhaps kept it from freezing in the cold temperatures on the mountain) and the toilet didn’t have a seat – which is common in public bathrooms in Kenya. The temperature was cool - maybe in the 60’s –but I was comfortable in a t-shirt with a thin long-sleeve over shirt and running pants. Luke was in shorts. The porters/cooks set up in the next room to cook dinner and brought us out some tea. Elijah gathered us to go for a walk around the Bandas to see some of the animals. He walked us up to a fish hatchery, however there was no one around to show us the place – so we wandered a bit around the large cement drums that supposedly held 1,000 fish each and I snapped some shots of a large grey heron that must find some way to get past the hodge-podge wire coverings. We went to a few overlooks and saw waterbuck. At another overlook we heard loud noises in the woods so we sat down to see if any large animals would emerge. Several water buffalo descended out of the forest but the noises continued and we highly suspected an elephant (known for chomping down trees for a snack). While sitting on tufts of dried grasses, the weather changed and a rain cloud appeared overhead. I remember saying “looks like a rain cloud” but we continued to wait for the suspected elephant. We felt a couple of drops and decided to start walking back. Shortly thereafter, the sky opened up and it began to downpour so we ran for cover under one of the other cabin porches. Eventually we figured we needed to run the rest of the way in the rain as it did not look like it was going to stop anytime soon. Soaked, we returned to the cabin to be chuckled at by the other porters. We changed our clothes and sat around in the small sitting room next to the kitchen as people came and went all speaking Swahili. The temperatures dropped with the sun and Elijah lit a fire in the fireplace. Dinner was soup for appetizer with mashed potatoes, a vegetable stew, and fresh fruit for dessert. Initially, we didn’t know that the soup was only an appetizer – so we were stuffed by the end of dinner as we had eaten dinner portions of soup. The evening was spent sitting around the fire – Elijah joined us for some of the time and Dunsten for another portion. They were taking turns between their own meals. In the kitchen next to us was a constant discussion and people kept coming and going – it was like a clown car once we realized how small the room actually (there was only 1 chair we realized the next day). Eventually the party left the kitchen and the cabin was left to Luke and I. We hung up our wet clothes to dry by the fire and eventually went to sleep as we hadn’t thought to bring any entertainment with us (to lighten the load of hiking). The night was cold and the rain kept coming and going – so loud on the tin roofed buildings.

Day 2

Morning came early and the cook came at 6am to start boiling water and making food. We got up, packed our hiking bags (to be carried by the porters) and sat down for breakfast, which included fried eggs, toast, and a kind of pancake vs thick crepe. And tea, of course. Once we were all packed and ready, Dunsten led Luke and I toward the next destination. The day was cloudy with patchy sun. I kept switching from being too hot to too cold depending on whether the sun was out or we were going uphill. We walked through some pretty varied landscape – from dried grasses to green forest with huge trees dangling what looked like Spanish moss. There were fragrant bushes lining many of the roads that smelled kind of like rosemary and spearmint. I tried to figure out what many of the plants were but they were all strange and Dunsten only knew the names of a few, which he would share when he knew them. The large trees were “argoria”? And looked like huge Cyprus trees with thick wide spanning branches. At one point we made a turn off to go view a scenic lake and headed uphill. The climb was steep and slow – at one particularly steep area we realized a SUV with a small fishing boat on top of it was coming up behind us. Several guys got out of the vehicle and walked up the hill as the driver of the vehicle somehow drove that SUV up some of the most rugged and steep road that I have ever seen. He even waved at us out the window as he passed and then quickly put two hands back on the wheel. We met the guys as they walked past us – some ex-pats from Scotland/New Zealand/Canada was the vague explanation that I got. They were adventuring this weekend. Sounded like they had previously summited the mountain and were here for what I would assume is ‘bro’ time. We continued the slow climb after they had re-entered the car once it had passed the worst of the bad road. The lake was very picturesque in the dried grassy fields. Luke and I ate a snack and tried to enjoy the nature (minus the car load of guys across the way setting up for fishing camp). Dunsten the led us onward instead of back towards the way we came, saying we were going to take “the scenic route” to the camp. We walked farther along the lake, past some designated camping sites, and up around the hill next to the lake. The path was at times easy to find and other times was non-existent and so we bushwhacked through some of the foliage. The dried grass tufts were tricky to walk through as the ground was obscured by the grass – you never knew what lay beneath. A hole? A rock? Sometimes you would trip yourself with the grass if you stood on the end of it and tried to pass your other foot, hooking your toe. If you stepped on the dried grass tuft your foot would fall off the edge of the very sturdy tuft. I got far behind Luke and Dunsten several times trying to maneuver my path. We bushwhacked down a slope and I almost fell several times, grabbing on to various bushes to stabilize myself. We walked along a river for a while and my arms got sore from brushing against the bushes that stood on either side of the animal trail path – I felt like I was training to be a linebacker by the end of the trip from the number of times I had to push past the branches. As my hangry level rose we continued to bushwhack toward lunch. At one point Dunsten had us jump across a river at a arbitrarily chosen point after winding along the edge of the river, stepping in mushy spots and falling over tufts of dried grasses/avoiding thistles. Luckily we reached the camp shortly thereafter and they had lunch ready for us (or at least tea). They had set up a tent for us as well as a picnic table-ish area covered in a masai cloth. After lunch we set up our sleeping bags and mats (borrowed from Cyrus and Christina- thank you!) and set things up assuming it would rain during the night.

After a short break, Elijah took us on a walk to visit the nearby sites. First we visited a waterfall. We stood at the top of the waterfall – mere feet away from our shoes – and watched the water gush over the top. The path to the bottom of the waterfall was immediately next to the waterfall – meaning if you veered off the path a few inches to the left and stepped on the soft grass that “edged” the path – you would find yourself immediately at the base of the waterfall. At one point a cedar tree that had its roots at the base of the fall was a left sided hand-hold toward the top third of the tree. We clambored down roots, back and forth along the edge, and made it to the bottom in one piece. The waterfall was so lovely with the spray moistening the surrounding foliage and making it lush. The sun was out for the time being and lighting up the greenery. Once we had taken some photos and enjoyed the scene, we scrambled back up the slope and headed to “the caves.” The pathway to the caves was also exciting but less vertical. I will mention here that Mount Kenya was originally a volcano – not currently active – so the rock is all post-lavaflow. The caves consisted of crumbling lower lava flows that were pulled out of the cliffs by water flow. One cave had a small waterfall at the back of it with a large vertical crack through the roof – we did not explore this cave for fear of falling rock. The larger cave was dry but had a huge chunk of the roof that had fallen down that now created an island in the floor of the cave. People camp in the cave as evidenced by their trash left behind as well as old burned coals. Luke and I wandered up through a crevasse in the mountain cut by a small river/waterfall and enjoyed its wind tunnel effect on our hair. We slowly made our way back to camp, enjoying the temporary sunshine warming us up.

At camp, and at various points on our trip, we met several other travelers like ourselves. There was one group of French-speaking ladies who were taking breaks from their families for a ladies weekend on Mount Kenya. They are ex-pats living in Johannesburg, South Africa that met each other through their children, who all attend a French-speaking school while their husbands work/are stationed there. They were very friendly and surprisingly loud by French-people standards, and would often provide most of my entertainment during the trip. Another couple included a pair of friends – one had a South African accent (white) but was living in a nearby town here in Kenya and her companion was a Jordanian man that was visiting her for the time being. The French ladies had a group of porters, cooks, and a guide similar to us, whereas the friend couple had just hired a guide and a porter – and were otherwise doing their own cooking etc.

After dinner but before bed, Luke and I joined our porters/cooks next to a small fire that they made to keep warm. The temperatures were likely in the 50’s. We didn’t speak Swahili so the two of us sat there for about an hour listening to the group chat without us – but everyone can appreciate a warm fire silently and we had been welcomed over by Elijah, no one seemed concerned that we were there and not participating in the conversation. The stars were out and beautiful before we went to bed.

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waldos-writing · 8 years ago

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The Dig Initiative: Chapter 24

Mustard Alice

Alice sat up in the bed, holding her head as the room slowly turned around her. It was not the first night she woke up in the small cell, but the metallic taste and visual distortion were new. She scraped her dry tongue across her teeth, smacking her lips with an ugly sticky sound.

Everything was heavy. Heavy head, heavy eyes, heavy arms, heavy air. It took every ounce of energy just to raise her hand and scratch at the little blue Band-Aid on her arm. Blue was good. Blue was less than red. Green would be a nightmare. Nothing would be best of all, which inspired her to peel the adhesive strip off her skin. She folded up into a wad and tossed it away from the bed. It didn’t get far. Just as long as she didn’t forget and step on it. It might stick to the bottom of her foot and continue with its low dose sedative.

Wasn’t too bad of an idea to get up anyways. Alice scooted her butt to the edge of the rigid cot and placed her naked toes on the floor. It was cool against her bare feet. She imagined laying down, pressing as much of her body against it until she fell through the soft white and disappeared into a mixture of cement and static noise. The room itself was comfortably warm. There were four clean white walls spaced with four clean white light strips just about at the height of her navel. A door across the room opened into the facility and a locked window next to it was wide enough to pass food or talk to a doctor, a guard, an orderly, whatever. There was a toilet. A sink. The bed. Nothing in the way of entertainment, which was a drag. Was really starting to eat away at her, now that she wasn’t on the red sedative, but a clear head was exactly what she needed.

That, and water.

Alice stood up, her arms wobbling by her sides as she steadied her balance. The room still twirled a little around the edges and if she followed it with her eyes, she’d be back on the bed ready to throw up. Nobody was there to judge. Nobody had been by to take her down to the patient room where they reapplied the sedatives, checked her vitals and bloodwork, and injected her with whatever the hell it was. Nothing good, obviously. But that, too, made her stomach hurt when she thought about it. The best thing she could do was forget it and just take her time, slow and steady as she shuffled away from the bed towards the corner with the clean white toilet and the porcelain sink.

After she put her mouth under the stream and drank big gulps of water, too many and too fast to the point where she almost made herself sick, she splashed her face and sighed. It was becoming clearer then, sharper. She stood tall, imagining a mirror to check her reflection. If only.

“Feeding.” Someone banged on the little hinged window next to her door and undid the bolt. She raced over to it, waddling a little from the sedatives. “Come and get it.”

“I am,” Alice answered and snatched at the Styrofoam plate. “Hey, you know what time it is?”

“Nope,” the guard answered.

His gloved hand started to disappear from the window. Alice bent so that her face was level with it, craning up at the black uniform, trying to see if it was the one with the beard or the one with the neck tattoo or the one with the glasses.

“Hey,” she said. The guard paused, noticed her chin in the window and crouched down a little. Beard. He was a little nicer than glasses, less nice than neck tattoo. “Any word on if I’m getting out of here?”

“Nope,” he answered again, a big round “o” with a pop on the “p.”

“Because, I don’t know if it matters, but I haven’t had any exams in three days. Are they….” Alice wiped her mouth, trying to bat her eyes and pout her lips a little. “Are they going to have any need of me soon?”

“Need,” the guard said with a scoff and rolled his eyes. “Nobody needs shit from you. But, hey.” The guard got down closer to her so that the hair of his chin tickled the window. Alice drew back before he reached in and grabbed her. “Maybe I can get some use out of you later. How about that?”

“Oh…I don’t—”

“Who’s asking,” he said and ran a short pale tongue over his bottom lip. He chomped his teeth twice with a little bark and slammed the window shut, laughing as he wandered down to the next cell.

“Fucking creeps,” Alice muttered to her meal.

Alice went back to her bed, sitting cross-legged with her back to the wall and the tray spread out on her thighs. There was some meat patty with gravy and potatoes and canned vegetables. Not the worst thing she’d seen. She didn’t have utensils, so she picked at it with her fingers, ignoring the sour tang of the gravy and the gristle-riddled meat. There were three pills on the tray, two orange, one white. She asked the nurse what they were when she was in the examination room a week ago.

“Vitamins,” he answered.

“For what?”

“Health,” he said and pushed them back into her hand gently before saying, “It’s better if you do. I promise.”

Nothing good was coming her way, that’s for damn sure, but this one person was kind to her when he didn’t even need to be and she decided she didn’t trust him, but she would comply. She desperately missed that gentle touch when she was alone in her room. She would rub her nauseated stomach, thinking of the little graze on her arm, and then of Devon, wondering where he was and if he had the same number of vitamins as her or if he was taking something else. Could he be in a cell nearby? Or across the entire complex? Or a state away? That was the only thing that still ate away at her and kept her praying. Be okay. Please, you giant prick, be okay.

The day ticked away spent on that bed. She poked at the Styrofoam until she scratched a relief image into the back. It was supposed to be a face, but the eyes were hanging wrong, the lips crooked, the nose a wobbly line. Alice wasn’t much of an artist in the way of pen and paper, brush and canvas, or fingernail and Styrofoam. She picked at it the sloppy Picasso mess. When it was done, she ran her thumb over the uneven edges and dreamed of Devon under the sheets next to her.

She wasn’t sure how many hours had passed. It stretched on. Alice got up a few times, paced the room. She tried to do a push up just because it seemed something to do while in solitary confinement. Her arms were wobbly and her stomach still hurt. The food was awful.

When Alice was afraid the walls were starting to come in on her, she sang. Nothing good, Jay was always the vocals. But she sang little things to herself, broken notes and humming she often heard Devon do when he was trying to fall asleep. She popped her tongue and clapped her hands and circled the room a dozen times. The more she did it, the more restless she became and it made her throat so tight that it squawked her notes like a rusty trombone.

“It’s okay,” she sang in a shaky falsetto. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Locked up Alice. But that’s ooooooookaaaaaaaay.”

Alice started to laugh just because, and she shook her hands by her sides, clenching them and unclenching them. She thought about some of the old shows her band had performed, trilling through the lyrics to make sure she knew them. What was the name of the club they did in Philadelphia? That place had been a gas. Really packed in, no good lighting and bad whiskey. She shook her hands again and toured the room. There was that one bar, Burroughs or something, where Ritchie the Bitch was arrested after knifing a guy in the fucking head. What an idiot. He survived, but, man, Ritchie the Bitch was such an asshole. Or maybe he didn’t knife the guy then, because wasn’t that when they were up in New Jersey on her birthday? Hard to keep it all straight. She didn’t know if it mattered if she did or if it was okay to let it slip away. No, remember harder. She couldn’t forget. Not Jay, not Declan, not Ritchie the Bitch. Not Devon. Alice laughed. It wasn’t a good laugh. It was too close to mania.

The meal had really upset her stomach and she rubbed down the burning line of indigestion that was carving up her esophagus. Alice didn’t get heartburn, not ever, but it was surely there now. Whatever they were doing to her was making her weak. Heartburn? The worst. Alice winced as it kept coming up. She couldn’t even lie down and try to sleep it off, because it just made it worse. She couldn’t laugh anymore.

There was a knock, sudden but gentle. Alice stepped away with her hand glued to her chest as the locks scraped away and someone opened the door. A woman in a white coat waited in the doorway while a guard stood behind her. Bearded guy. Fuck that guy. Fuck that guy in the worst way ever.

“So you’re Alice,” the woman said.

“So you’re demented,” Alice answered in the same tone.

“Yes,” the woman answered and shrugged. She looked back at the guard and said, “Thank you. I’ll be fine.”

“I’m supposed to be here just in case.”

“Fine. But she’s hardly a threat. Just close the door, if you may.”

“I don’t think I’m supposed to.”

“If you may,” the woman said firmly. The guard nodded and did as he was told.

Even after it was shut and they were sealed off, she didn’t break her impressive posture or warm her passively blank face. She didn’t look up. Alice didn’t have any way to read her.

“Alice,” she said.

“Yeah,” Alice answered. She didn’t get up, didn’t break eye contact. It was a different power play when she was in a position with zero power to speak of. “You’re a doctor?”

“I am,” the woman answered, like she was taking roll count. “They took you out of the first trial.”

“I guess. I haven’t been in the chair for a week, if that’s what you mean.”

“Do you know why?”

“Cause you guys decided you didn’t wanna torture me anymore and were gonna give me a pat on the head and a lollipop for good behavior before you send me on my way.”

“Sarcasm is a good sign.”

“I’ll show you a sign,” Alice muttered darkly, sweeping her fingers under her chin towards the doctor.

“I’m going to need a blood sample. One of the techs will get that for me later today. Have you been taking your vitamins?”

“Come on,” said Alice and slumped back against the wall. “They’re not really vitamins. Be straight with me. Or….”

Alice sat forward, her elbows sinking into the soft sides of her thighs. She didn’t mind if she was getting a little fat, a little softer. It felt safer to have the extra weight than not. She watched the doctor, who stared at her clip board, reading charts, flipping to previous pages and nodding or furrowing her brow. She had very thin eyebrows, pale as the blonde on her head, which she kept in a neat bun.

“Or?” the doctor prompted.

“No, I was just thinking, maybe I can’t play it straight with you, y’know. You seem like, with the tight hair and glasses and stuff, you seem like you’d be a real low key dyke on the outside.”

“It’s important that you take your vitamins, Alice,” the doctor continued, refusing to address what Alice said, which was just as much an answer if she had said anything for or against.

“What’s next on my chart? I only saw one other patient in here when they took me out, and she had all these tags up her arms and this really thin night gown. Looked like a twig. Was I looking at my future, doctor?”

“I would advise any attending they put on your case be warned that any additional weight loss would be harmful to the fetus.”

A sharp black wave ringed the periphery of her vision. There was a tingling in her fingertips as they went numb and a creeping heat tickled up her spine.

What?

How did this woman….?

What?

Alice was sick, okay, so was everyone else. The flu was still going around. Stress of fighting, stress of surviving, they were doing everything they could with the towers and she just didn’t pay attention. Alice touched her neck and felt her heartbeat go hard against the thin skin there. She had trouble finding her voice, crumbled deep in her chest, before she could spit out, “….fetus?”

Dr. Whoever finally looked up from the charts. She had soft eyes, kind and round and light. They were the only bit of her that betrayed any feeling and it was obvious now why she didn’t try to make eye contact.

“They didn’t tell you. Of course they didn’t.” The doctor set her mouth in a grim line. “Not to be presumptuous, but is this your first? It’s not uncommon to start showing anywhere from twelve to sixteen weeks. I’ve put in a request to get an OBGYN here on the team. We’ll see. As for you…because we do not have data on infection in an unborn fetus, we’ve pulled you out. I want to do some blood tests to test infection rates, your overall health, the health of the child, etcetera. That is the least of your concerns, I’m sure. Continue taking the vitamins and—”

“How long?”

“Excuse me?”

“How far long am I?” Alice started to cry and wiped away the tears as soon as they started to fall. Then, quietly to herself, she said a breathy “God damnit.”

“I’d say….eleven weeks, maybe twelve.”

“Twelve, sonovabitch.” Alice wiped her eyes. “Sonovabitch.”

“I’d hazard there are no congratulations?” The doctor placed the clipboard under her arm. She took a breath and said, “I’m sorry. That was rude.”

“Listen, um. I think. I think someone should have been brought in. Brought in, sonovabitch, sonovabitch—brought in with me. Uh, back when…. Did they bring in a guy? Tall, dark hair. His name’s….”

Alice couldn’t decide if these people knew that Father Barkley was Devon Rorshire. Devon had pulled a stupid stunt on his radio show and told Alice how there had been a ton of agents looking for him when he left, which was why he changed his identity. She didn’t know if it was safe to even ask about him. Maybe he had escaped before they came to Altamira? She could only hope.

“I was told you were brought in alone,” the doctor answered, squaring her shoulders. “I can look with the registration team, but I doubt they’d give me an answer.”

“Okay.” Alice bit her lip.

“Okay,” the doctor answered, nodding once, before she took out the clipboard again and scribbled a few notes. “Okay, well, tech will be by within the hour. Rest. Take the vitamins. We will do what we can for you and the child.”

Alice wanted to just die. She couldn’t stop crying, so she covered her eyes. The doctor walked over to the bed, her sensible shoes barely making a sound on the cement floor. Alice assumed the doctor would try to remove her hand from her eyes or inject her or put on a new sedative adhesive, but she didn’t do anything. She walked away and told the guard she was ready to leave. Bearded-guy unlocked the cell door with a strain of metal hinges followed by the firm, deep clanking of the bolts settling back into place. Alice didn’t care anymore that the door was locked. She tipped over onto her side and wept hard.

There was something on the pillow, crinkling against Alice’s forearm as she grabbed it and brought it down over her face. She wiped her nose, trying to steady her breathing as she peeled open her gummy eyelids. It was a little slip of paper torn off from the corner of a sheet. Alice fumbled to get it open and turned around so she could read the tiny print. It read:

I will help you escape.

The words were tightly packed, hard to read, harder to read through her tears. She coughed against the big wet wad in her throat, something like a laugh and something like surprise and something like fear. She kept reading it to make sure that the words were real. Escape. God, it was a fantasy, a trick. Or it was real. Alice balled the little piece of paper into her fist and curled up around herself.

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#The Dig Initiative #Writing #prose #novel #sci-fi #rape mention

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