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[26 Nov 2005|12:30am] |
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Iron Maiden - Can I Play With Madness? |
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Hehe, I have teh mad 1337 paint skillz. And Macromedia Fireworks.
Also, I went from 500 behind to 1000 ahead today. got about 41k now,
I'll update once I've got everything together again. It's always spread
over my two computers.
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[18 Nov 2005|10:33pm] |
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“Hey, I told you, enough with the smartass veteran cop remarks.” Paul got his packet of smokes out of his pocket as well. The lid flicked open and a light shortly brightened his face as he lit the cig. “Alright, let’s just hang around here and wait for the ambulance. Shall we move her to the sidewalk?”
“What for? It’s not like anyone will drive past here at this hour. Let’s just leave here there and go sit on that staircase.” Hank waved vaguely to a few stairs that led up to someone’s front door. Paul nodded, took one more look at the dead woman and strolled to the stairs to wait for the ambulance to come. Looks like it’d be a quiet evening, aside from that dead politician.
It only seemed so, for when the ambulance arrived a whole three hours later, they could pick up not only a dead political engaged woman, but also two cops, an old veteran and a young rookie. The veteran was dead. The rookie had gone mad. Neither could tell what happened.
“What’s for breakfast, sweetheart?” Rheirin asked with a hint of sarcasm in her voice, but with a smile on her face as Tyrian entered the room, newspaper in his hands and bathrobe around his shoulders. He looked up, looked at the paper again, and said: “Bad news.” He threw the paper on the table. Rheirin leaned over it and read the headline on the front page. She stood up as she read it, and looked at Tyrian. He just looked back, not a word, not an expression on his face. She stretched out her arms and he held her, letting his eyes flash over the paper once more.
HUNDREDS OF SIGHTINGS OF MYSTERIOUS ENTITIES
“The dead are up and walking”
PART 3: Destruction
I
“Silence! Silence please! Council is now in session,” the old man with the handlebar-moustache said. “As always, we shall open with the newspaper discussions.”
“Please, tell me it is not this spirit madness that we are starting about,” a voice came from the room. “This hysteria started as a verbal disease of frightening and awakened paranoia, and now the papers are only spreading it further. If you ask me, we should discuss whether we shouldn’t keep more tabs on the press, rather than how much of this is true.”
“But hundreds of people have seen it at the same time at many different locations,” a younger female voiced through the hall. “There’s hardly a denying to it anymore.”
“Prank calls, bored youth and lack of discipline,” the first voice replied, and the sound of a fist on wood echoed through the room. “They have nothing to do, so they try to spread hysteria. Just us discussing this here gives them their fun. Now let’s focus on silencing the press about this plague of panic.”
A lot of shouting burst out in the room, and terms like freedom of press and protection of civilians flew left to right through the room. The old council president called for silence and kept beating with his hammer on the wooden plaque in front of him. Finally the room went silent again and the first to speak yelled: “There’s still such a thing as freedom of press, you know. We can’t ignore the amendments and shove them aside. If the newspapers think it’s important, it’s going to be in it, whether we like it or not. There’s no legal way we can forbid it.”
“And if we accuse the papers of spreading hysteria, fright and terror for a massive prank?”
“We don’t even know whether it’s a prank? Some newspapers even included photographs.” An older woman than the first waved with a newspaper, but the man who constantly objected waved her accusations away. “Those pictures are all the same. A blurry, blue figure, in a blurry photo, and even videos are blurry. They said that there was an evidential video available, but it was at least as fuzzy and confusing as the pictures.”
“Yet there has been an inexplicable increase in the mysterious death rate yesterday. There have been about two and a half thousand more inexplicable deaths yesterday.” The council president flipped through his laptop annotations. “One of which being miss Mezaphique, who was under way to replace the least competent of all of you here, if I understood correctly. Names shall not be mentioned.” Many angry glares were exchanged throughout the room. “Also, 100 % more people want abruptly mad yesterday. There does seem to be something more happening than just a mere uproar of rebellious youngsters, mister Johsken.”
“Oh, sod it,” the man cursed, and there were some angry mumbles from around him. “If you can’t understand that’s just heart attacks and paranoia, you have to be blind.” The angry mumbles got a little louder, and the president looked over the edge of his glasses. “It seems that the rest of the council has decided who should’ve been replaced by miss Mezaphique, mister Johsken. You better be careful what you say from now on.”
Johsken looked at the angry faces around him, muttered something and leaned on the table. He seemed out of words for the moment, and just listened to how the discussion would develop.
“Miss Warren, you said the newspapers had photographical evidence. Could you please insert the image to be shown on the centre screen?”
“Certainly,” the woman said. The placed a scanner on the photo, adjusted the size accordingly and pressed a button on the side. The image appeared on the large screen behind the council president. It was indeed blurry, and it appeared to be a blue cloud in a dark alley. Johsken let out a lazy chuckle and gestured with his hand to the picture with a face that said: “See? Told you so.” The council president eyed over the picture and leaned back lazily. “Mister Johsken’s commentary on the quality of the pictures appears not to be unfounded, miss Warren. What exactly are we supposed to make of this?”
“Well… It fits the description of the reports on the spirits,” she said, but she didn’t sound quite as confident anymore. “They told the papers it was a humanoid figure, glowing blue, often with wounds or fractures, and…”
“Miss Warren, I don’t see a humanoid figure in this photograph. I can not make out any wounds or fractures. The only comparison this photo has with the descriptions seems to be that it is in fact, glowing blue.” He scraped his throat, took a sip from the glass of water on his desk and continued: “As you might like to know, I have a light in the kitchen that glows a similar shade of blue. I am not convinced by this picture, miss Warren. We will need better evidence of the existence of these spirits. We should not add to the hysteria, as mister Johsken so much likes to describe it, by telling the people something might exist that might be dangerous. However,” he added, silencing Johsken before he could start to utter his triumph, “we will by no means silence the press, nor insinuate that we know just WHAT it is. The PR will take care of this, and the message to be carried out is as following: until we have definite proof of the existence of these phantoms, spirits or apparitions, no one will give comment. We’re working on the case but there’s not enough information. Be elusive, evasive and give them no reason to assume we do too much or too little about it. In short: the big mindfuck of vague.”
From the back, someone joked: "So we can't say what no one knows? That ought to be one heavy article in the newspapers." Some mutters and a few chuckles could be heard.
The president added to the jokemaker's comment: "But do keep in mind that this must be announced as a main issue in the council. What's big in the press is supposed to be big here. Don't forget that the people out there watch out every move, and the media are ready to pin down and plunge upon any mistakes we might make. We're not supposed to be human, we have to be gods, whose decisions are always correct. If someone in here makes a mistake, they're obviously unworthy of a spot in the council. So watch every move you make, everything you say, everything you do, dammit, watch what you're having for breakfast every morning! The only thing that's worse than the press knowing more than us on any issue is when we give them the chance to flame someone out of the council, and that's happened more than I'd want it to be already. The press, ladies and gentlemen, is more often than not our enemy, and we will need caution when addressing someone of the press. All agreed?"
There was a grumbling sound of approval and the council president was satisfied. Only Johsken seemed to be dissatisfied as of now, but the president had been planning to talk to him sooner already, and it was only the more urgent now. The man had been disagreeing too much, too often and on too many issues lately. To keep a steady and secure council, the president could do without members like that.
II
"Mister General, sir?" The private held up a phone to the general from his seat. The screen in front of him was glowing blue, and there was a globe drawn out upon it. Tiny dots moved along the surface of the globe, in several different colors. The general turned around. His face was that of a weary and old man, but he was in fact only weary. He asked: "Who is it?"
"It's mister Everand, sir. He wants to speak to you personally."
"Alright." The general took the phone. The screen showed the face of the president. He seemed tired, but a friendly smile cracked on his face when the general replied.
"Hello, Jord," the general said. "Something the matter?"
"Evening, Richard," the president said on the other end of the line. "I need you to take care of someone for me. He has been a nuisance in the council, and he can be a good talker if he gets fired up. I need to prevent him from getting more followers."
"Have you tried verbal persuasion?"
"Of course." The president looked a little angry at the comment. "I wouldn't have someone killed unless there was no other option. I would rather not have to do this, but if he breaks apart the council we'll be in bigger trouble than we could imagine ourselves to possibly wind up in. If those spirits are for real, and I frankly hardly doubt that they are, we need a pinnacle of leadership to guide everything to a good ending. If the council falls apart, there's nothing left for the people to look up to for leadership."
"But wouldn't it be easy for you to take full power over the city, Jord?" The general frowned. "If you would keep steadfast then, it would give people an unlimited trust in you."
"Richard, if I take full command and become a dictator, I will have as much power as I do now, only with a bigger risk of being overthrown," the president said with a faint smile. "Numbers do count, especially in politics. I have everyone in the council eating from the palm of my hand. When I state something, no one objects, and if they do it can be solved pretty easily. Contacts in the army always pay off."
"Don't say that, Jord, please. I will do this, but not because of your dictatorial little scheme, but rather because you are right that the people need a steady government they can trust. And on the spirits issue..." He bit his lower lip. "I know for myself that they are real. I saw one."
"Really?" The image on the video cell phone shook a little as the president sat up. "What happened?"
"I drove home, got out of the car and saw one further down the street," the general said short. He didn't feel like talking about it. " I didn't take a good look at it but went straight inside and reported it. I don't want to have this become a case of mass hysteria, but the people might need to be warned. We don't know what these spirits can do."
"Well, first things first," the president said, "and now that the spirits are apparently real, the sooner the better as well. Can you take him out?"
"Of course. I can have him down for the count in two minutes. Who do you need to be cleared?"
"Johsken."
"Oh, him." The general grimaced. "Yes, we have been watching him for a while now. I was hoping it wouldn't be Michelsson, he's a good friend of mine. Then again, he eats out of your hand like most."
"When will the job be done?" The president seemed relieved. He should be, the general thought. He might just as well have refused the job.
"I'm putting someone on it now. Don't expect to see the guy around tomorrow."
"Thanks. I owe you one."
"You owe me two and a half million."
"Cheap as always."
"Rheirin?"
She looked up at him. Tyrian let go of her and sat down, grabbing the news paper again. His eyes flashed over the lines, now and then looking up for a moment to Rheirin. "Could this have something to do with Will?"
Rheirin got startled by the question. " Will? No.... No, I don;t think so. I don't want to think that it does anyway, It's incomprehensible enough as it is, why those things suddenly pop out of the ground. One depressed suicide can't trigger that, could it?"
Tyrian shook his head. "I don't assume so. But it did seem to start around that time. Maybe something happened that triggered both Will to end it all and those spirits to appear."
"Well, that's another possibility..." Rheirin frowned. "I can't stop thinking of the comparison to the spirit we saw and Will. It probably has something to do with being unhappy."
"Possible, but we haven't even figured out whether there even IS a connection." Tyrian sighed and rested his head on the table. "This is depressing and tiring." He looked up and stared at the clock. "If we don't get breakfast, we're going to be late anyway.
“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s try to put this off of us until tonight,” Rheirin said. She walked up to him and put her arms around him. She breathed in the smell from his hair, a smell of cheap shampoo and steam, and she felt his heart beating under his bathrobe. Then he suddenly stood up. “Come on,” he said, “we gotta hurry or we’ll both be late.”
As they walked out the door, Rheirin put an arm around his waist. She just felt like she should stay close to him, she felt safe near him. He made a sound that sounded like a short, soft chuckle and put an arm around her shoulders. They walked to the station, where Tyrian would have to get on. They hugged tightly and kissed, before Tyrian stepped into the elevator. Their goodbye wasn’t without a sense of pain: it was the first time they had to depart since they had turned lovers. Rheirin watched the buzzing trolley depart from the platform, and she reluctantly strolled down the road towards the construction site.
“RHEIRIN!” She didn’t need to look up to know that her boss had his purple face, was probably stock-filled with ildium, and looked somewhat like a very angry blueberry.
“Oh, hey chef,” she said as casually as possible while turning around. “Sorry I had to skip work yesterday, I was nauseous as hell and kept puking. It was a total mess, I was a total mess myself, and-“
“No excuses, you should’ve called! Next time you skip work like that again and your pretty little ass will be flat out on the street! Got that?”
Rheirin simply ignored the sexist comment, turned around and wanted to talk on.
“One more thing,” her boss said. “My consolations on the death of your friend,” he said in a surprisingly soft voice. “I’ve felt pretty guilty for being so harsh to him, that last time before he died, but I don’t think that was the reason he jumped under that wall. I had seen you two talking shortly before that. It wasn’t my fault, was it?”
Rheirin was surprised by her boss showing so much emotion and compassion. She almost forgot that he was human sometimes, he would appear just a shoutbox, something you’d have to endure for being late. She smiled faintly, a mere shadow of a smile, and said: “No, it wasn’t you, Dave. He was carrying the world on his shoulders, and that’s just not something for someone to take on alone.”
“Alright.” He gestured for her to get moving. “Thank you, Rin. Now get your ass moving.”
“Hey Rheirin,” Mike said as he saw her walk onto the site. “Have you seen Butch? He’s been missing…”
“No haven’t seen him.” She looked around. “Rourke doesn’t know either?”
“No, he’s asking around a bit, but work needs to get done anyway.”
Rheirin shrugged. “I’m sure he’ll turn up later on. Butch isn’t stupid, he won’t get himself in more trouble than he can handle.” She realized something and frowned. “you don’t think it’s another spirit, do you?”
“Can’t tell, Rin. I don’t know. I just hope it ain’t.”
Butch didn’t show up for the rest of the day.
IV
“Is he in sight?” The general spoke into the mic with a tense whisper. As casual as he had acted to the president about putting down Johsken, as intense he was now viewing the images on the screens. One screen showed how Johsken sat in his private trolley. Apparently, the council member enjoyed to take forbidden tranquillizers for his relaxation, but this didn’t surprise the general. He couldn’t think of anyone who wasn’t likely to use any, and even the general himself had a histoy in the chemicals. Because he preferred to be focused, he had gotten rid of it, but his experience made sure he was not surprise to see Johsken insert a small needle in his neck, thin enough not to be seen by anyone who suspected drug usage. As the council member leaned backwards, the general waited for the sniper on the opposing roof to answer.
“I can see him, general, but I won’t take the shot until he’s out of the trolley. Concentrated plasma will surely pierce the shield, but it won’t seem like another mystery death if there’s a smoking hole in the window.”
“Good. Keep an eye on him, and fire at will when you think the shot is clear.” The general looked at an other screen. The tiny camera mounted at the bottom of the barrel of the gun the sniper carried not only projected the visual to a small screen on the gun, the general could see the same image as well. Green glowing lines appeared on the screen as the sniper tapped on the screen, indicating what head to lock onto. There was a short scan to lock the rifle to the target, and the device the rifle was clicked into automatically changed the rifle’s direction to aim exactly at Johsken’s head. The target stood up inside the trolley, and grabbed his suitcase, ready to step out of the trolley into the apartment. The short landing platform that was an exclusive exit for his home, that stood on the seventeenth floor, was long enough for one shot.
“Get ready,” the general said. The rifle zoomed in upon the head, and as soon as it exited the trolley there was a bright flash. The plasma burst shot straight through, and there was shortly a shadow behind it as it passed through the head.
“Shit, hologram! Hologram!” The general was now shouting orders to the other members of a capture and destroy-team that were practically ambushing the apartment. The hologram had flickered and disappeared, and the general frantically searched the screens. Every single soldier had a camera on his helmet, and every move they made was monitored and corrected. The steady cams were placed inside small bullets that would stick to the wall. The sniper had fired several into the apartment shortly before the arrival of the trolley.
The general watched the screens carefully. He saw the roof of the trolley draw closer fast on one, then he saw the shoes of the soldier for a moment as he landed on the red cabin. The screen made a sickening swirl as the soldier looked over the edge inside the cabin. There was no one in there. "Shit!" The general cursed. He had underestimated the office jock. He grabbed the mic and ordered: "All units go undercover and sweep the building and nearby streets in search of the target. No one is to stand out as the search commences: this operation must remain top-secret. Isolate the target from any possible witnesses and execute him. Report every suspicious development to me immediately. Move out!"
"What is it, Richard?" The president folded his hands and looked to the face of the general on the screen. "No bad news, I hope?"
"Unfortunately, it is," Richard said. "When we tried to eliminate Johsken, he had turned out to have programmed his trolley to arrive at his regular time and sent a hologram with it. We underestimated him. I'm commencing a sweep-and-clean now, but I'll need your help on this. We have a few locations where he might be, but you have more information on him than we do. What places do you know of?"
"You lost him?!" Jord smacked his hand on the table. "I thought I could count on you!"
"Calm down, Jord. Until this is in the newspapers in fat headlines, there's nothing lost yet. Now will you help me find him?"
"Okay, okay. I'm just stressed out, that's all." The council president flicked through a drawer full of maps. Each one contained a highly detailed file on every member in the council, some with enough shady business to fill a rather big prison with. "Here's Johsken's file. I'll put it through the fast-scanner, you'll have it in a minute."
Soon the pages appeared one by one on the computer screen at the general's headquarters. "Print that out for me," he said to the technician controlling the computer. A rattling keyboard and a short beep indicated the start of the printing, and in a minute the file was on the general's table. "Thank you, Jord," he said.
"No thanks. There's a list of places he tends to visit in there. Make good use of it."
"I will. Keep your foreign bank accounts ready, we'll haul him in."
"That sounds too much like what you said last time, Richard." Jord sighed. "Get him this time and you'll get your money. Otherwise there's no deal. Understood?"
"Completely."
"Alright team, listen up. This is going to be a big catch, so don't break the net and we'll get it in our mazes." The general knew that a little bit of metaphorical language was usually a good thing to get the team going. A joke here, some emotion there, it was almost like cooking. Just let the sense of duty stir for a few minutes, then add some spicy sauce and it's all done. He smiled at the thought. "Council member Johsken is in danger of destabilizing the council and has gone underground to escape his execution. However, we will not let this help him. We have a list of his frequently visited locations, and this is where our search begins. Everyone has gone undercover by now, and you all know the drill. Get the target out of sight, then execute him and dispose of the body in a clean matter that will leave no traces. With the recent uplift of inexplicable deceases, it won't be hard to get him identified as another victim of whatever it is these people are dying from, and that will be how we will keep ourselves unknown and unspotted.
The locations are as follows: Mixy's Bar, a smutty cafe at Dridgy Lane in the eastern district. I want two man there, and there needs to be one of the cams for me to have visual of the scene. That camera objective goes for every team, so pay attention that the lense is free! Other locations are the pond in Fortry Park, the Nixon Palace Hotel, Red Blossom, which is apparently where he gets his female fun, a brothel near the Nixon hotel, and the following addresses: 12 Fedrenty Lane, 14..." There was a long list of addresses, and after each address he saw one of the camera's going on the move. Good, he thought, that's good. He noticed they were lower now. Most cameras would be placed in buttons or chest pocket pencils, although some had them in glasses or parts of the pants. Finally the list was complete, and the whole team had moved out in search of the target. It wasn't the only thing they would find.
"So, what's the big deal with this guy?" The one assassin was a broad, muscled guy. His sunglasses weren't out of place in the heat, and he worse a heavy leather biker's jacket. He looked like a regular thug fresh off the street, and no one noticed how he watched everything from the glasses. Those glasses also contained a small bit of poison, that now rested behind his ears. The camera was attached to a button on the jacket, nearly invisible and not noticed by anyone.
"Well, apparently he has a big mouth, one too big for his own good." The other team member had an old coat and smoked a thin cigarette. His cowboy hat had another one of those invisible cameras. The general hadn't really needed to remark about the cameras: every member of the team knew they should always keep the general in direct visual touch.
As they walked into the bar, no one looked up. The crowded hole had the smell of smoke and sweat running though. The whole place looked like neon had been cheaper than repairs. Plaster had been knocked off the wall in a recent bar fight. The hole had been covered up with neon props, and the edge of the bar was lined with neon as well. Upon closer inspection it would turn out to be full of scratches. Even parts of chairs and a whole window had been replaced with neon. The whole was pretty nauseating.
“alright, let’s find the target and make sure he gets what we’re supposed to give him,” the tall man said. The other nodded, looked around the bar and casually strolled in between the tables. He appeared to have a spot to sit in sight, but his eyes flashed left to right across the bar. His companion walked to the bar, ordered a drink and leaned with his back to the bar, seemingly uninterested.
The general watched both screens intensely focused. They were the first that had reached their location, and until the other team members had arrived he could only aid the agents in their search. The one screen slowly moved forward, shook a little with every step, and turned left to right. The other had the edge of glasses in sight, and it slowly moved around like a security camera. It eyed over the whole café, and the general saw the man in the fancy suit before either of them did. “Target spotted,” he said calmly into the microphone. Only the two agents it was meant for received the message.
“Where?” It was the tall agent at the bar, whose screen had now stopped moving.
“In the far left corner of the right cubicle. Fancy suit, balding.” The camera turned back and was now centred on Johsken. “Target acquired.”
“Isolate him and get it done.” The general leaned over to the screen, almost as if he wanted to keep Johsken in his seat by looking at him. The tension could be cut with a knife.
“Johsken, pal, how’s life?” The tall man with the leather jacket and sunglasses sat down, patting Johsken on the back. The council member almost jumped up, but with a firm hand on his lower leg the muscly man kept him down. The other agent sat on the other side of the scared victim and before he noticed what was happening, a needle had pierced his side. Johsken’s limbs went floppy, his face fell forward on the table. The slimmer man planted a small, flat device under the table and turned it on. There appeared several empty glasses of beer. Holograms, of course, but they worked well nonetheless. It was already a remarkable achievement that it could be projected through the wood: a regular hologram wouldn’t be able to project through solid objects. The little device was set to shatter in five minutes.
The assassins heaved the council member on their shoulders. “Come on, man, you shouldn’t be drinking that much this early on the evening,” they said to him, looking at the empty glasses on the table. “We’ll make sure you can get a long rest to sleep it off.”
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| Upload November 11 |
[12 Nov 2005|11:00pm] |
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Edge of Sanity - Crimson 2 |
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She blushed and all three laughed. Tyrian told him what he had said to Gordat and they all laughed again. Yet, Rheirin still felt like Mike wasn’t fully comfortable. Sometimes his eyes shot to the door for a moment, as if he feared something there.
“Well, good luck to both of you,” he said. “If you hadn’t heard, Rin, I told the chief you were sick. Better tell him the same tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Mike. I will.” She sat up a bit, took a sip from her drink and looked to the door for a moment. “Mikey,” she said, turning back to him. “There’s only one more part to the story we need to hear. What was in that street that you were so scared of? What were you running from that you are still nervous about?” When he wanted to protest, she silenced him with a gesture of the hand and continued: “You’re constantly looking at the door and even before you welcomed us you looked whether there was nothing down the road. And I know you never lock your door, yet you had now.” She leaned over. “What’s going on?”
“Well,” he started, “Tyrian told me about that spirit you saw, and… I saw an other one just then.
“Another spirit?” Tyrian sat up and leaned forward. “So are there more now?”
“Yeah, apparently,” Mike said. “It was glowing blue and spooky, like you said, but this was no young boy with a sliced neck. It was some old geezer, seemed to be a beggar, who broke his neck. His head was dangling to the side, and he drooled all over himself.” He kept silent for a moment and continued: “But this guy wasn’t silent like you said. It seems that you can’t speak very comprehensive with a broken neck, but he was uttering things that sounded like he may have been begging, not even realizing he was dead.”
“He talked?” Tyrian looked confused. “Well… Either the boy we saw didn’t want to speak, then, or he couldn’t… But what did you do when you saw him?”
“I felt like frozen at first and didn’t think of anything I could do. But then I thought of what you said, that their touch was deadly or would at least knock you unconscious, and I didn’t want to wait to find out how much of that part was true. So I ran as fast as I could. I had already passed the park when I realized I should go visit you, but for that I’d have to go back towards that spirit, and even though I couldn’t see him anywhere anymore I didn’t really want to test my luck.” Mike took a long drink from his glass and shivered. “That thing scared the hell out of me.”
“Well, if we’ve seen two of them in two days, it might mean there’s more appearing,” Tyrian pondered. “I don’t think it can be this much of a coincidence that something as rare as this suddenly happens twice.”
“But what can we do about it?” Rheirin said. “We have no idea what they really are. Maybe they’re not even real but some kind of advanced hologram, or maybe a machine like thing or something.”
“That’s what I said too,” Mike said, “to Tyrian yesterday. But every theory can be easily punted through. There’s no denying that these things are real. Now we have to find out how to deal with them.”
“But do we need to?” Rheirin pursued. “Can’t we just forget about it until it turns out to be a real problem? I don’t see the harm right now, except that maybe some people might die or something. We shouldn’t jump onto this without thinking.”
“Rin, I agree with you partially, and I disagree partially,” Tyrian spoke. “We shouldn’t do anything now, we shouldn’t go seeking them out, but we have to be prepared for it if there’s going to be more of these phantoms. We should at least try to do a little, and leave them alone if they turn out to be hardly any harm.”
“Hey, maybe we can deliver the story to the press,” Mike said. “They might turn it down altogether, but if they put it in at least some people can prepare themselves.”
“Good idea. Will you write it?” Tyrian said. “Your experience wasn’t all that different from ours, and you can quote our story along with it. If you want I’ll write a bit about what we had seen ourselves.”
“Yeah, you do that, and I’ll write the rest,” Mike said. “It’s not like I can put my mind off it easily anyway. Specters… “ His face distorted a little. “This better be placed.”
“So what are you thinking now?” Tyrian said as he and Rheirin walked home. The sunshine was dazzling in their eyes and it seemed hard to believe that the spirits were real.
“Well, probably about the same as you,” Rheirin said with a short sigh. She felt uncomfortable walking there right now. She felt like something might be watching, even though it was likely just her imagination. “There’s now a bunch of spirits on the loose and there’s likely more. Yet we’re the only ones who have seen them.”
“Only as far as we know, Rin,” Tyrian corrected her. “There might be a million more people in the city who all think they’re the only ones who are seeing things. The problem is for those spirits to be acknowledged by the other fifteen and a half million people. When people don’t want to believe something they can be pretty persistent in refusing the testimony of many, and they’ll probably say it’s something in the air that makes people hallucinate. People need to die in large numbers before others believe the spirits are for real.”
“That’s awful,” Rheirin called out in disgust.
Tyrian shrugged. “It sure is, but hey, I can’t help it. I’d probably do the same, because how much would you like to believe the spirits of the dead are up and walking?”
Rheirin bit her lower lip. She knew Tyrian was right. People didn’t want to believe that anything was threatening the world as they knew it. She didn’t know what she’d do when she heard news like that, laugh or get scared.
“Don’t worry about it,” Tyrian said and pulled her close. “I can see by your face that you’re worrying again, so don’t. Tell you what, tonight I’m going to rent a movie, we’ll order in and just make it cozy and comfortable for ourselves.”
“Sounds good,” she said, and leaned her head on his shoulder. “We’ll figure out what to do tomorrow, after I get back from work and you get back from college. Because we really need to pick up normal life again by now.”
“Yep, so it’s early in bed tonight,” Tyrian said. “Your bed or mine?”
And the intense sun seemed to shine an even brighter light as Rheirin laughed with a mixture of happiness and love.
“Hey Paul,” the oldest of the two cops said as they strolled down the street, “you ain’t still thinkin’ ‘bout that old beggar in the alley, are you?”
“Yeah, I am,” Paul admitted. "And is that so weird? How many times has someone jumped from a roof heads down into an alley when you were smoking a cig in there?"
"Not often," the older man replied, "but I ain't seen the prettiest things either, yet I don't keep on ponderin' about it for a week. It's been long enough, Paul, you gotta let that stuff go. Worse things'll happen if you keep on bein' a cop like me. Christ, you didn't even know the guy and he didn't even look too awful dying. I mean, sure, his head was on backwards, but everything was still inside his body 'n all. I've seen a guy who had been wanting to kill himself an' got hit by a trolley on his way down." He grimaced. "Now there's something I've had nightmares 'bout for days."
"Knock it off, will you?" Paul said angrily. "Come on, Buck, I don't wanna hear your stories of what you've been through. The more you talk about it the less sure I am about being a cop, so let's just stick to what we have to do instead of your banter that makes it only the worse for me.”
“Suit yourself, sonny,” his partner said, earning him another angry glance. “but you better look in front of you instead. I think someone lying in the middle of the street at half past three in the night would make bigger headlines than some damned drunken beggar throwing himself off a building.”
The body was only meters away, and Paul cursed himself for not seeing it sooner. He ran to the figure that lay silent on the empty and dark street. It was a woman, around her late forties. Her nose had bled, but the blood had dried, and her glasses were cracked. She appeared to have fallen on her face without an attempt to catch herself. She was cold and stiff and quite obviously dead. Coincidentally, she was also an upcoming politician who was creating her own career by making her way up to the City’s Council, a goal she had nearly reached until she had been on the wrong place and the wrong time.
“Shit!” Paul said when he recognized the face. “Come take a look, Hank. This is that woman from the CRSP, miss Mozambique or something.”
“Mezaphique, the French politician,” Hank said, “and no longer in need of reanimation, it seems. Let’s call an ambulance to pick her up so the doctors can officially declare her dead.”
“How can you stay so cool under this?” Paul asked him frustrated.
Hank laughed. “My dear, dear boy,” he said, “you have not even begun to see the worst yet. I don’t think I have myself, although I might have made a start by now. The cops who go corrupt and or jump off the roofs, those are the ones who have seen the worst.”
Paul looked up worried. “How long had you said you had been a cop?”
“I’ve done work behind the desk for most of my life,” he replied, “but I eventually decided to make it more exciting for myself and get field assignments.”
“And when was that?”
A short silence.
“Two years ago.”
“Two years? Only two years and you can’t even care about someone dying anymore?” Paul bit his lower lip. “Is it really that bad?”
“This is your third patrol, right?”
“My third nightshift patrol. I did five more by daylight.”
“That’s what I meant. Well, lemme tell you this: you’ll understand what I think like in six months. You will stop caring about the living in a year. You will stop caring about the dead half a year after that.”
Paul shook his head in disbelief. “Even if that is true, I don’t want to think about it now or I’ll go crazy already. I’ll call the ambulance.” He twisted a ring on his watch and said to it: “Send an ambulance to 32 West near the library, please. Dead body, high priority.”
The watch sent out a crackling sound and a voice replied: “Sorry sir, all ambulances are on their way to other scenes. Hang tight, we’re sending the next one that comes back.”
“All ambulances gone?” Paul said. Hank shrugged, but Paul looked around. “That’s not normal. You ever had all ambulances gone?”
“Only once, and a whole building had burned to the ground then,” Hank replied. “Might be the same here.”
“The operator said other scenes, so there’s more than one at least,” Paul said, “and I have a feeling that it’s not just two or three either.”
“That’s just newbie paranoia,” Hank said. “Don’t let it get to you. Everyone has that on their first few weeks.”
“Then why doesn’t it seem like anything happened to this woman before she died?” Paul said. “She only has some wounds in her face from the fall.”
Hank waved away the arguments. “Most causes of death aren’t visible. There’s nothing spooky or mysterious going on, Paul. Don’t let those rumors of ghosts and spirits get to you. There’s just a bunch of people making other people hysterical.” He lit a cigarette and inhaled a lungful of smoke. “Take it from me, Paul. In this business, fifty percent of the people will turn out to be lying to you. The other fifty percent can’t lie well enough for you to believe them from the start.”
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[12 Nov 2005|10:59pm] |
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X
Mike walked onto the construction site with his worries drawn out on his face. He did not see Rheirin anywhere, and feared something might have happened. Rourke nor Butch had heard anything about her disappearance and Mike decided to just assume she was ill. Yet, there was a splinter in his heart when he stepped into the toolsuit. He noticed Rourke’s uneasy movements as he buckled up and powered up the machinery, and asked: “Hey Rourke, everything okay?”
Rourke answered by a loud spin of his drill, and Mike was satisfied. He decided to give Rheirin a call in the afternoon break and see what was going on. When he did, the answering machine picked up right away, confirming Mike’s suspicions that she was ill. She never turned off the phone if she merely wasn’t at home, so Mike held the camera in front of his face and spoke into the receiver: “Hey Rin, it’s me, Mike. I was wondering how you were, so give me a buzz when you turn this thing back on, ok? See ya!”
“Recorder?” Rourke asked when Mike put away the videocell.
“Yeah,” he replied, “she hadn’t turned on the phone. Guess she is ill or something. I’ll report that to the chef.”
Later that day, Mike finally heard the loud signal that indicated the end of their shift across the site. He got out of his toolsuit and went home quickly. As he turned on his videocell again, he had one new message. The message had just been sent a minute ago. Mike softly cursed to himself that he hadn’t tuned on his cell earlier, but watched the message anyway.
It was Rheirin. She looked tired but happy, but all he could see was her face. Apparently she had been lying on the bed and had her face right in font of the camera.
“Hey Mike, I’m sorry to have worried you so much, but I’m fine now. I’ll be back at work tomorrow, okay?” Mike cheered up instantly. His worries of the last few days had mainly concerned Rheirin. She was a very special someone, he knew, like everyone. She had the ability to cheer everyone up, but if she was unhappy, everyone seemed to be. Only rarely people had such a widespread effect on everyone around them. He watched the rest of the message.
“I’ve been thinking a lot recently, and perhaps a bit too much, but I’ve got everything straightened up. And congratulations, you’re gonna be the first to hear this: I’ve got a boyfriend now.” She had winked into the camera, and Mike knew who it was without her even telling it. He felt happy for Tyrian and Rheirin, and laughed as he saw Tyrian kissing her on the cheek quite hard, so he pressed her head away from the camera. He heard laughter and some shouts as she chased Tyrian away. He hadn’t seen more than faces, yet because of that he was quite sure neither of them had clothes on.
“I take it you had guessed that part by now,” she said smiling, and then after a short wave and goodbye she had ended the message. Mike sent a short spoken message back, that he had reported her sick at the chef and that she should confirm that the next day, and wishing them both luck and was looking forward to seeing her again.
He was walking home, because the construction site wasn’t far from his home. Last time the site had been on top of a roof downtown, where they had used loose arms of the toolsuits because the suits would have been too heavy. His arms had hurt for days, and the travel had been over half an hour with the trolleys. Luckily this was just building new prefab apartments, his favourite kind of job, and the toolsuits were of excellent use as usual. The walk home was only ten minutes, so he didn’t feel like taking the trolley. He whistled as he was nearing home, when he saw another blue flash in the corner of his eye.
He quickly looked, and this time he saw him. The street was rather empty: this was no broad street, and most people had gone to the park that was only two blocks further. It was a spirit, just as Tyrian had described it: a glowing blue figure, beaming with an inner light, but this was no boy. It was an old beggar, and by the looks of it Mike could safely assume his neck had been broken. His head swayed from left to right as he stifled towards Mike, his mouth open and drool dripping out of the corner, his teeth rotten. He had a short beard, and his hat was on backwards, hiding what hair he had left. The thin, long face did not move, but he uttered sounds that sounded asking, begging, and Mike started to run. He ran past the beggar, and sped straight home. When he had passed the park, he looked over his shoulder, but the spirit had disappeared. Mike would’ve gone straight to Rheirin’s house, but that would be back in the direction of the spirit. He would do anything to avoid having to see that old beggar again.
XI
“Now why did you have to do that?” Rheirin said laughing as she turned off the video phone. She had only turned it on for a moment to see what messages she had gotten. She was surprised not to hear the angry shouts of her boss into the phone, as she could watch his face turn from red to purple. He was often called “the Blueberry” because he was short and plump and would tend to turn violet when bursting out in anger, which he did at least twice on a daily basis.
Mike's mail gave her a strange mix of happy and sad feelings. She felt sorry that she had worried him, but on the other hand, she thought, it showed how much of a friend he was. If he hadn't cared, he wouldn't have called, and she knew he'd cheer up once he saw the message. She turned around just in time to see the pillow coming for her head. She raised an arm just in time to block the fluffy white mass blowing down on her face, and she rolled away laughing as Tyrian tried to hit her again. We're still such kids, she thought. But that doesn't matter, really. It's never a problem to be a kid, not even if you're old and wrinkled. If enjoying life means acting like a kid, then what's wrong with it?
She grabbed a pillow herself and threw it to Tyrian's head. He ducked laughing, and the pillow flew into the curtains... and straight out the window. They looked at each other in a completely, dead silent moment, before bursting out in an uncontrollable fit of laughter. They lay on the bed bursting of laughter, almost choking, and only when she concentrated Rheirin managed to control her laughter into a continuing sound of giggles and hiccups. Tyrian was still rolling on the bed, holding his arms around his belly, as she stood up, put on a shirt and panties in a hurry and leaned out the window. The pillow had landed right beneath the window, the speed slowed down by the heavy curtains. She looked up, and a motion caught her eye. It was Mike, running down the street past the park. He looked frightened, seemed to flee from something.
"Something's wrong," Rheirin said, and she grabbed her pants. Tyrian looked up and asked: "Why? Someone got hit by that pillow?"
"Not the pillow, nutty, I saw Mike running down the street. He seemed scared. I'm going to check it out."
"I'm coming with you." She just nodded silently and stepped into her pants. He grabbed his own, and soon they were on their way down and into the street. Tyrian just threw the pillow inside underneath the stairs. If it was stolen, though luck.
"I sure hope this has nothing to do with me," Rheirin said. "I've had enough bad news this week." Tyrian grabbed her hand and squeezed it softly. She walked a little closer to him and lay her arm around his waist, and thus they walked to Mike's home, a few blocks further down the street. Rheirin looked around once, but there was nothing to be seen, and certainly not the ghost of an old beggar with a broken neck, uttering phrases that sounded like begging but could not be understood.
Rheirin rang at the front door, and it didn't take long before she heard a muttering voice coming down the hall. "Coming, coming," she heard, and the electronic lock slid open with a click right before the door swung open and Mike stood in the opening. He looked nervous, and Rheirin nor Tyrian missed that his eyes shot down the street for a moment before welcoming them both jovially. "Rin, Tyrian!" He took a step backwards and to the side in a gesture for them to enter his home. "We've got a lot to talk about, me and the two of you. Especially you, Rin, as I know you'd guessed."
"Mike, is there anything wrong?" Rheirin asked.
"Wrong? What do you mean wrong? Things were wrong, but it seems you've got things back on track, so nothing's wrong!"
Rheirin shook her head and said: "We saw that you were running down the street just moments ago, Mike. What was the matter?"
"You saw that, huh?" He sighed. "Come on in. We'll get to that."
"As you probably know, Tyrian invited me in yesterday after he had practically carried you to bed," Mike started. There was a bowl and three glasses of iced tea in front of them, and they had settled down in the comfy chairs of Mike's interior, for it was probably going to be a long talk.
"Yes, he told me," Rheirin said. It had been one of the things they had discussed that day, and Tyrian had told her all the details.
"Then you also know that he told me what had been happening to you since Will died, and what happened with the spirit you had seen," he continued. "But that was only what he told me. Now I wanna know what you have been thinking this last week. You should start with the death of Will, and then end with your last thoughts before you lost in that trolley." He looked at Rheirin, then to Tyrian and back to Rheirin. "And then you can both tell me what happened after I was gone."
Rheirin had told the story before, just that day, as she had been lying on her bed with Tyrian. Telling it a second time went more easily, and she was soon finished with their rendezvous with the apparition. "I don't even know why I dropped right back into my depression," she said. "Everything about the spirit was just... sad. He reminded me of Will, I think, and it felt like it was happening again. I think that's the reason."
"Maybe so," Mike replied, "but we don't really have a way of finding out now. So, I know the rest of the story, but I don't know what happened afterwards. Rin, you were asleep when I left, so I think Tyrian should start with the rest of the story."
And so the story continued, and Tyrian would often give Rheirin the word, and she would let him speak after her part was done, as they both unraveled how they had found the way to one another's heart. Mike's smile widened during the story, and even though they let out the physical parts of their newborn love Mike asked Rheirin: "I thought you only liked muscly men, Rin?"
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“But since neither of us ever saw one, and there was never any report on the TV about one, don’t you think this might be so rare we shouldn’t have to worry about it?” Tyrian rubbed his hands. “In that case, our only problem now is Rheirin.”
“I don’t know her for very long, at least, not as long as you have,” Mike said, “but she has never seemed to be the type to be gripped by anything this heavily and this easily. Am I wrong here or…?”
Tyrian shook his head. “Rheirin has always been a cheerful girl, and never really had much trouble getting over the humps in life’s road, if you know what I mean. I don’t know why she doesn’t get over this one, and can’t just move on and get back to her own life.” He bit his lower lip. “It’s almost as if there’s something deeper than just the grief about William, and I’m scared it will turn out something as bad as whatever Will had in his mind.” He felt a tear run past his cheek and didn’t bother wiping it off.
“Let’s get back to that spirit for a moment,” Mike said, diverting the subject away from Rheirin’s depression. “What if there is more than one, or just a few?”
“What are you getting at?”
“I think I saw one today, or at least caught a glimpse of it.” Mike said it very calmly.
“You did?” Tyrian sat up. “Where? When?”
“Just this afternoon,” Mike told. “I was walking to the market and when I passed a jewellery I thought I saw a shining blue figure somewhere behind me. It was gone when I turned around.”
“It could have been anything,” Tyrian said pondering, “but that includes another spirit. We have to keep our eyes open the next few days. If there’s going to be more, more people might get killed. So many people get killed these days, one more or less won’t matter much, but one spirit could kill hundreds just by walking through the market.”
Mike shivered. “Jeez, man, don’t even make me think about it. I don’t even want to know what such a thing feels like.”
“Hey, Mike, shouldn’t you be off home?” Tyrian looked at the clock. “Isn’t there anyone waiting for you at home?”
“Yeah, I should get going,” he replied. “Thanks for the drink.”
“No thanks. I could use one myself.”
VII
Rheirin sat up, awoken in an instant. She let out a shivering sigh. Another nightmare. Her throat was still throbbing and she coughed. The dark room never seemed to be as depressing as it seemed now. She thought about what happened before she got here, but she couldn’t remember anything since they got in the trolley home. Her head and stomach were splitting sources of pain, and he rested her head in her palms. She decided not to get out: she didn’t want to wake Tyrian in the next room. She yawned and turned on the light.
“Was it another nightmare?”
She almost jumped up. Tyrian was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. He looked a little pale and seemed worried. She tried to utter an accusation, but couldn’t think of any. She looked at the clock, and saw it was only 22:00. Yet she didn’t think it could’ve been much later than 15:00 when she had been put to bed. “How long have you been sitting there?” she finally asked. Her throat hurt when she spoke.
“About three hours now. Was it another nightmare?”
“Three hours?” She sat up and shoved a pillow behind her back. “Why?”
“To watch over you,” he said with a small, involuntary smile. “You were murmuring in your sleep just before you awoke. That was the first sign of life you had given during that time.”
“But why were you watching me? Were you worried I’d do something to myself?”
He shook his head. “No. While you have been worrying me these last few days, I don’t think you’ll go down the same road Will did.”
“How can you be so sure?” she asked. “The more I think about it, the more I hate everything around me, the world, and how everything is going wrong. I can’t see how I was happy anymore, somehow. God, I sound just like William,” she said. She pulled up her knees and hid her face in her pillow. Tyrian sat next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. He brought his lips to her ear and whispered: “But still I know you won’t feel as bad as William did.”
“But why? How do you know I won’t follow him?”
“Because you have me,” Tyrian said, “and I love you.”
They sat in silence, the two of them, together on the same bed. The words had thrown a tense silence in the room, as they both realized the depth of it. Tyrian felt the tension tensing his nerves like wires, yet in his heart he felt calm as he had finally said what he had felt for weeks, months, even years. Always had he feared that saying it would mean the end of their friendship, and that it would create a barrier between them, something they could not live around. Yet now, at this moment, when he had finally spoken his feelings after pretending not to feel anything so deep for her, pretending to be just a friend for years on end, now he felt calm and knew this was the right thing to do at the right time. He felt his love for her open up as a flower in his heart, a ray of light in the darkness that was cast by her misery, and perhaps it was the only thing needed to light that darkness.
Rheirin sat in complete motionless, thoughtlessness, silence. She felt the words Tyrian had just spoken were not just words of friendship, they were words of love, of that deeper feeling she had felt awakening just days ago, and had only grown stronger with the days. She realized how it had been the only thing that had prevented her from hurting herself, the only thing that stopped her from following William sooner or later.
Those days after Will’s death had not only been awful with her mourning. She had searched for countless amounts of data on crime, murder, rape, hunger, poverty, homeless and starving people, and she had not been able to let their indications slip by without interpreting their meaning to her. She now saw a crime at every corner of the street, saw a victim in every man or woman, she wanted to stop it but she found out that she couldn’t. The fate of the world was impossible for one person to bear, and that harsh truth was what knocked her off her naïve happiness and threw her down to rock bottom. She not only knew what had driven Will to his suicide, she understood him completely, and felt what he had felt.
But now, she finally found what comfort she had needed, not just the comfort of a friend, but the comfort only a lover could give, and he had been next to her for all these years. She knew that there was nothing more to say any longer.
She leaned over to him, lay her hands in his neck. Her fingers intertwined as she drew him closer to her, and when his soft lips touched her she felt how every fear and every regret let loose, and an ecstasy of love was all that remained. Their lips connected, she sucked in his breath, held it in her lungs as if it was the only air she could live upon, felt his tongue searching for hers and she answered, she answered passionate and hungry, the only salvation she could find from her misery was here with her now and the world was outside, somewhere else, nothing of meaning. They kissed, and in her excitement she felt every movement he made, every breath and even every thought reached her. She felt his hand under her shirt, and before she knew it she had taken it off herself. As he cupped her breast in his hand, she lay her over his, and she felt her nipple harden in her excitement. She moaned softly as his fingers searched for her panties, slowly slid down into them. She arched against him, and he lay beside her, still kissing her.
And as the darkness of the room hid their deed from the world, a friendship died, only for a love to arise from the ashes.
VIII
Tyrian found himself in the embrace he had slept in upon waking, his body naked, his arms folded around the body of his soulmate, once his friend, now his lover, their legs intertwined, her sweaty hands on his back. He slowly moved along as her body moved with her breath, and he felt the warm air past his cheek as she breathed out. Her breasts pressed against his chest, and as he lay there, a thin ray of sunlight reached into the room. He watched and waited, and finally she slowly opened her eyes… and smiled.
“Hey,” she said, in a soft whisper. Tyrian would have melted if he could have. He kissed her, softly, and said: “Hey, sweetheart. How are you feeling?”
“Like I got the only thing I needed,” she said.
They stayed in bed all day, talking, making love. They talked about the past, what they had been through together, what hardships overcome and people they had met. They talked about the future, farfetched ideas of marriage and children. Rheirin said they would have a lot of people looking odd once news would be that they were a couple, and Tyrian just laughed, thinking about his rather visual explanation (and lie) to Gordat how much he would like to have sex with Rheirin. He told her, and she laughed as well, and joked about how he had just committed incest. The ray of light in the curtains slowly crept through the room as the day passed. After several rings, the phone was turned off, and they did not mind the messages that Rheirin's boss, Gordat and Madam Schnortzzweiter left.
Shortly after they had made love again, Rheirin asked Tyrian how long he had been in love with her.
"I think for about two or three years now," he said. " I had always been worried to tell you. I thought it might get in the way with our friendship. But... Somehow, I just wasn't afraid to tell you anymore tonight. I hadn't really sat there, in the corner, to protect you or to watch over you, I had been there to watch you. Just to watch you sleep, so peaceful and beautiful, despite your sadness. Maybe even because of your sadness," he wanted to continue, but her lips broke off his sentence.
"Shh," she said, "don't walk about that now. I don't want to think about that now."
"Only this then," Tyrian pursued. "What happened to you in the trolley yesterday? That wasn't just a depression."
She pondered about it. "I honestly can't say," she replied, "because I don't know. I don't remember, I mean. The only thing I remember from then is that everything was dark and the whole world felt like it was collapsing around me. You should see what I have found out, Tyrian. It's horrid, everything. The whole world is slowly crumbling. I belong to the rare 2% of the girls who were never sexually assaulted. Two percent!" She shook her head. "I didn't feel like there was any love left in this world, just like Will had said. No one seems to care about one another anymore. We don’t even experience that much of it here, but there’s no escaping from it further downtown, and this city is calm compared to most others. The cities just have grown too much, and now there’s too many people, so it’s each to his own. Save yourself and others don’t care.”
“But here I am, with you,” she smiled, and kissed him again, “and together we can make it through anything. I feel that.”
They made love again, their sweating bodies gleaming in the sunlight that had now reached the bed. It ricocheted off the golden rings in Tyrian’s hair as they moved with their rhythm, the rhythm of their bodies, and the rhythm of the pulsating delight that they both felt. When that feeling reached its peak, Rheirin opened her mouth in a silent scream that died in a moaning gasp, and she pulled Tyrian closer and told him not to stop, to keep going, for the feeling had not gone and she felt like they could go on forever…
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She thought of how it was possible the ghost they had seen had seemed to be as sad and lonely as William. Was it possible that he would become a spirit as well? She shivered at the thought. The ghost of the boy had seemed horribly maimed. The wound in his neck was obviously why he died. She didn’t doubt that it was the soul of someone who had passed away: it could be nothing else. It hadn’t made a sound, not once while he walked towards the poor man who only sought to protect his property.
“Tyrian?” she asked, and got startled by the sound of her own voice. It was the sound of a witch, hoarse and raw, distorted by the tears in her throat and the tears she had already shed. He sat back a little, stopped his efforts to ease her pain, and grabbed her hand as an answer. “Do you think this is because of my dream?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I think things like this could happen regardless of whether you dream about it or not. But it is strange. It’s almost as if you can feel this coming, as if you can almost foresee it…” He sighed and put his hand over his eyes. He rubbed the corners of his eyes with his index finger and thumb and shook his head again. “I don’t know, Rin. This is all too confusing right now.”
She sighed and leaned to his shoulder. “Thanks for being here,” she said, a tear running down the corner of her eye.
V
Mike smiled as he saw Rheirin and Tyrian on the other side of the street. He waved, and they waved back, but Rheirin didn’t seem to be too fond of talking. He shrugged by himself. The poor girl was devastated when William had ended it all. He hadn’t seen her smiling like she had just now in days, but he didn’t think the scars would heal for quite some time. They had been as close as father and daughter, it had seemed, and Mike knew what it was to lose a father like that. He had experienced it himself.
The walk to the market was a long way from his house, but Mike wasn’t the type to complain. In contrary, he enjoyed being outside for a while again, and he quickened his pace just because, and looked to the left into the park. Some children were playing, and some of them were still trying to make it to the ice cream car before it would leave. One wanted to run past in front of him and tripped, but Mike caught him just in time. “Wow there, little fella, those bumps in the road can be pretty mean,” he laughed.
“Ouch! Tank yoo, siwr!” The boy was only five or six years old and still had a bit of baby-talk in his voice. “I awmost twipped and fell, din’t I?”
“Yep, so be careful, kiddo,” Mike said jovial. The boy ran off laughing, and quickly got in line for an ice cream. Mike smiled. When he had been as old as that kid, the trolley system was not used a lot in the outer rings of the city, though it was expanding very fast by that time. The roads were still full of cars, motorcycles and buses, most of them hydrogen-powered of course. No one was able to cross the street the way that little kid just had. Nowadays the streets were mostly for walks as Mike made, and for children to play on. There had been propositions in the city council whether or not they should remove the roads and plant more plants and trees there, but it had been turned down on account that there was still some traffic that needed the roads. The ice cream cars, ambulances, fire trucks for fire on lower levels, and multiple other examples were still in need of more than just the trolley system. It was now being discussed that they would keep the main roads open for traffic and only plant greenery on the smaller streets.
Mike couldn’t care less himself. The park he now walked past was his favourite spot in the city, and there was more green than any man would need. It was only a ten-minute walk from his home, so he could come here every day if he wanted to. The long part of the walk he was now taking was all beyond the park. He looked up as a trolley whirred past, and could see the back of Rheirin’s coat in a flash through the window. He smiled, for he had not missed that Tyrian had his arm around here and they were leaning to each other. Hmph, just good friends, he thought. I think they are the only ones that don’t know how much they love each other yet.
He crossed the street and walked further away from the park. As he passed a small jewellery shop, he heard bells behind him. The ice cream truck had left his spot and now driving towards the next park. On a day like this, ice cream paid off well, and Mike smiled when he realized he wouldn’t turn down one himself. The windows of the shop mirrored him and the street behind him as he looked at the displays of necklaces and wristwatches. Some had some amazing technology, could tell you anything about your body, had 3D projected videogames implanted in them, and others just indicated the time. Those last watches, as expensive as they looked, were never much more than twenty dollars nowadays. People paid for technology, not for looks, and even Rolexes had dropped their prices dramatically.
As he looked in the mirroring window, he thought he saw a blue light behind him. He quickly turned around, but there was nothing there. Mike wasn't the person to let such things bother him, so he shrugged it off and walked along.
He soon got to the market, a large square built into small alleys that were separated by crampy stands. He walked among the fruit, wristwatches, vegetables, candy, fish, waffles, clothes, belts, CD's, electronics, books, drinks and ice cream, sniffing up a thousand scents, seeing a billion colors, and walked among people of all ethnicities, Thai, American, Chinese, French, German, African, Mexican and Turkish. He enjoyed the heat, the messy market, the busy chatter all around him as he admired the various merchandise as the merchants yelled for the loudest to sell whatever they offered.
"Bananas! The best bananas in town! Bananas here!"
"Silk from Asia! Smooth as a baby's skin, madam, feel that! Silk!"
"Come here for your wristwatches! Low Prices!"
It went on constantly. Mike got a new pair of headphones at an electronics stand ("Wireless ear plugs, 3D TV's, wrist camera's, get your electronics here!") and walked on to get some fruit for on his way home. The man who had screamed for everyone to get their bananas at his stand now got rewarded, and Mike walked off with a bag of bananas in his one hand and his new headphones in the other. The sun reflected in between the buildings when he walked back. The park was still full, and the laughter of the children made it a peaceful and joyful area, so Mike sat down on the nearest bench to enjoy the weather.
"Hey Mike!" It was Rourke. He walked towards the bench and sat down next to Mike.
"Oh, hey Rourke. Everything alright?"
Rourke hung his head backwards and sighed deeply. He reached in his pocket, took out a pre-rolled cigarette. He lit it, inhaled deeply and calmly breathed out the smoke. "A little better," he said finally. "I was afraid to go to work for a while. I was one of the first to see Will after he, you know, did it. I had stayed for a moment, talking to a know of the other team that I know, and I hear Rin scream her lungs out. When I ran out, she sat there crying her eyeballs out, and that's when I saw what was left of William." He swallowed hard, and took another draw from his cigarette. "I was afraid that it'd happen to me when I was working, you know. The guy who was working the wall that Will put himself under hasn't been punished, but the fact itself was punishment enough. He's a mess, devastated. Keeps saying it's his fault, and sometimes I hate Will a bit for that." He ran a hand across his face and said: "I know the guy's family. Lovely wife, cute kids. They're all saddled with a traumatized father now."
"So, when are you getting back to work?" Mike asked, changing the painful subject a little. "I haven't seen you around yet."
"I've been working a bit, but only late hours," Rourke said. "I wanted to grow back into it a little before picking it up for longer hours. I was just going to..."
"Wait up," Mike interrupted him. "Aren't that Rheirin and Tyrian?" They both saw them getting out of the station. As soon as Mike saw Rheirin's face, he stood up. "Something's wrong. I'll be right back."
VI
Tyrian was as startled as Rheirin had been, but in contrary to her he had not made the comparison to the ghost and William. He was worried about her, even more than he had been the last few days. She had had a rough time, but today she had seemed to have crawled out of that pit and gotten back on top. He had had rough times before, of course, but never before had she dropped back like this. He held her in his arms, kissed her on the cheek, wiped away her tears, but she was locked inside her own world and he couldn't reach her. He rocked softly back and forth with her, tried to console her as much as he could. She didn't react to him, but he knew that if he stopped, it would only get worse. He was now the only one that was here for her.
As the trolley came to a silent halt at the station, Tyrian helped Rheirin stand. She didn't seem to be bale to stand herself. Tyrian hardly recognized the shadow of the happy girl that he now carried to the elevator. She was worn out, merely from crying, and couldn't speak a word. He had never seen her like this, and it was maddening. It felt like her whole mind was occupied by mere misery, and he couldn't explain why.
"Rheirin?" Tyrian turned around as he heard the voice. It was a colleague from Rin's work. He searched his mind for a name, and remembered. "Mike?"
"Yeah, hey Tyrian." Mike walked up to them, and laid a hand on Rheirin's back. She looked up, still crying, and quickly looked away, as if she didn't want him to see her crying. Tyrian wiped her tears off again and said to Mike: "There's been some horrible things happening, but if you want to hear it, you'll have to come in. I don't want to dicuss this here, and Rin needs to rest."
"Is she better now?"
"I think so. I just put her into bed, put some water beside her, and tucked her in. She's drained." Tyrian walked from Rheirin's bedroom door to the couch. Mike sat there, on the edge of the seat, looking worried. Tyrian walked towards the cupboards in the kitchen and took out a two glasses. He reached in the fridge and pulled out a bottle of liquor. He raised it: "You want any?" Mike turned around, nodded. The sound of streaming liquid filled the small room. Tyrian walked back to the couch, put one of the glasses in front of Mike on the low table. He sank down in the chair himself. Mike leaned forward, took a sip of his glass and said: "Now please, tell me exactly what happened."
Tyrian told the whole story. About Rheirin’s depression after Will had died, her speech at his funeral (Mike had seen it: he had been in the back of the church, and found it an excellent speech, if that was an appropriate word for such an occasion), then how they had went home and slept on the couch. He told how she had woken up with a nightmare and had woken him up by her scream for William, and their talk afterwards. He told how she had cried for him and for Will, and how she finally seemed to have gotten rid of her depressed feelings the next morning. Their walk to the station was of course something Mike had seen, and how they had sat in the trolley waiting for it to arrive at its final stop. Mike wisely decided to keep it shut about what he had thought when he saw their trolley whirring past.
The story was now still growing, and Tyrian kept talking. Their arrival at the station, the old man, the long road towards the forest, and then finally their bumping into the scene with the spirit and its victim. “Wait… how did you say he looked?” Mike suddenly interrupted Tyrian.
“The spirit? He looked like a boy, around my or Rin’s age. Baseba-“
Mike raised his hand to make him stop. “No, what made him look special. Blue, glowing? You mean he seemed to glow because he was bright blue, or was he actually glowing, beaming light?”
Tyrian thought about this for a moment. “I’m pretty sure he was glowing. There was some blue light on the nearby trees, I recall. Why? Is something the matter?”
Mike shook his head. He remembered the glowing blue reflection he had thought he had seen earlier… But he dismissed the thought. It could have been anything: even anything regular blue just passing by would have seemed to glow with such bright sunlight. And besides, he wasn’t even sure he had seen it.
Tyrian continued his story, which was almost finished now. He continued how he lost her further and further on the way home, and carried her out of the station. “And that’s where you came in. You know the rest,” he finished.
For a long time, Mike didn’t speak. He let his thoughts run over what Tyrian had just told him. A ghost? A real spirit, an actual apparition? Could such a thing exist, and even kill someone? Or maybe… “You sure it wasn’t just some practical joke? Some rich guy and his son looking for some fun, and with some nifty equipment to their disposal?”
“No, I know it wasn’t that.” Tyrian shook his head. “First of all, tranquillizer darts are rather big, because they need to contain enough of the tranquillizing liquid. I could see the dart flying through the boy, not past him, through him.”
“Hologram?”
“Impossible. The image would’ve been distorted by the object flying through. The principle of holograms make sure that nothing can go through it without the image being distorted. We would have seen a gap on the opposite side than where the hologram would be projected on the entire line past the dart.”
Mike gave him a wry smile. “Can tell you’re a student, Tyrian. Can’t pass anything on you.”
Tyrian waved the compliment away. “Doesn’t matter for the moment. What does matter is that the spirit was real. We can’t deny that.”
“A real spirit… I never even thought they existed,” Mike said.
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[08 Nov 2005|07:33am] |
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The trolley arrived soon, and as the doors slid quietly open it turned out to be rather empty. Of course, the trolleys to the outer limits of the city were hardly ever full: Rheirin and Tyrian already lived in what was often reckoned as the outer limits, and the true outer limits were the area of the incredibly rich people who occupied the villas at the edge of the country. Those villas, some of them as big and impressive as a palace, usually had what seemed like endless acres of garden and hunting ground. Some of the owners were very much on their own and made sure they would not get visitors, other made their entire home public, let dozens of people stay after their parties and only had a few rooms as their actual home. The latter category often had millions of dollars for their movables insured for theft.
However, these were the people that owned their own trolleys and never used the public transport, and thus the only time the public trolleys to the outer edges were crowded would be whenever another of those big parties was thrown. Rheirin and Tyrian were now some of the very few who went there for the forests, that were even beyond the outer limits, and no longer part of the official property of any of the villas.
When Rheirin looked out the window, she quickly saw the buildings flash past. She didn’t pay attention to it: the sight grew onto you, and after a while it was as simple and normal as the sight when walking out your own door, or waking up and looking around in your room. She shuffled over to Tyrian and leaned her head on his shoulder. Tyrian was two years younger than her, but he looked and acted more mature, although on occasion he could be a real child as well. Especially around Rheirin.
For anyone entering the trolley after that, it was an adoring sight. They’d see a boy, a young man rather, whose face had a scar that told of a painful accident, but that seemed to suit him rather than it being ugly. His hair, as dark as ink, was tied in four separate tails with golden rings, shining brightly in the sunlight. His grey eyes were closed, and his thin figure was only a little taller than the girl next to him. His white blouse had black edges around the collar and over the sleeves, and on the right was the black silhouette of an attacking eagle. He wore a thick, heavy belt over his black jeans, that were ragged and torn at the ends of the pipes. His head rested upon the head of the girl next to him, his left arm around her shoulders, his right hand entangled with her left. He only seemed asleep.
The girl’s long, brown leather jacket was the thing that stood out most about her, while her slim athletic figure and long brown hair were nothing to be missed either. The jacket was patched, stitched and repaired countless of times, yet it seemed like it’d survive another century or two. She didn’t react to any sound, yet she as well only seemed to be sleeping. Her dust goggles, seemingly old, had slid from her head to her neck, where it now hung as an odd and out of place necklace. Her breasts showed their contours in her white shirt, and her thin belt was quite the contrast to the thick, almost armour-alike belt of what most would assume to be her boyfriend. Her jeans seemed to have had a competition with his in getting torn and ragged, and there was a long stitch down the one pipe. The hand that wasn’t entangled with his was slid around his waist, holding him close to her as they enjoyed the flashes of sun that shone through the buildings as they passed by, seeking comfort in their friendship, and finding happiness on the way.
III
“Hey, lovebirds,” a voice said. Rheirin opened her eyes, and she saw an old man standing in the doorway, apparently about to step out. “This is the last stop, I assume this is where you had planned on going?”
“Oh, yes, thank you, sir,” she said and bumped Tyrian with her elbow. “Come on, lovebird, let’s get a move on,” she said sarcastically.
“Already here?” He opened his eyes, and they were sparkling. “Well then, let’s see how many squirrels we can scare, shall we?”
“You going to the forests?” the man said. They nodded, and the man smiled. “Good luck then, youngsters. It’s at least an hour to walk there, as I assume you know.”
“That’s not too much,” Rheirin said. “We don’t mind.”
“Ah, youth, to be able to walk such a distance,” the man said with a smile of nostalgia. “But I’m glad to see that not all youngsters think of the park when they hear about forests anymore these days. Keep aware of what treasures of nature we still have in our world, youngsters. They’re getting rare, so visit them while they haven’t been built upon.”
Rheirin smiled and nodded. “Thank you, sir. We will keep that in mind.”
When the old man had left, Tyrian asked Rheirin: “Why didn’t you tell him we weren’t lovers?”
“Would it hurt if he thought that? He seemed happy enough about it,” Rheirin said. She was a little surprised at Tyrian’s reaction. He smiled, but shook his head.
“It’s always better to tell people the truth before they find out themselves, or they will say you have lied,” he adviced her.
"Like in the case of our apartment?"
He laughed. "Well, yes, but emergency breaks laws, wouldn't you say?"
"And I say a little lie for good will won't hurt anyone," Rheirin said as they walked into the elevator.
It was a quiet station, only three stores high and with an equal number of lines running to it. They walked past the road, and past the large villas that lined it, one every fifty yards or so. The sun was at its peak now, shining through the leaves of the trees that lined the road, casting flickering spots of light on the road. The winding road went on for miles, and the silence was only broken by the whispering of the wind in the trees and the excited chatter of birds. She felt at peace in her head and in her heart, yet something spread turmoil in her heart, although it wasn't a sad feeling. She had gotten that feeling more often recently, and she only felt it when she was happy, or that's what she thought.
Having fun with Tyrian usually had this effect on her, and so she took a skip and a jump and started running down the road, a laughing yell and quick footsteps following her soon. She grabbed a handful of leaves from the ground (it was nearing fall and the trees had begun releasing their leaves) and threw it up, so Tyrian ran right into it. He grabbed her round the waist and lift her up, but quickly put her down again. "Heheh... Heh... Holy damn, Rin, you've gained weight," he said with a snicker. She pushed him, and he fell to the side of the road into the grass. On the other side was a small field, and it didn't take long before they both lay panting on the ground. Their romping was tiring as hell, and neither of them could do much more than panting and laughing for the longest of time.
"Look," he said, pointing at a small cloud. "That's you."
"Am I white and fluffy?" Rheirin chuckled. Tyrian laughed.
"Hehehe, clever, Rin," he said sarcastically, and looked to the side. The edge of the forest was only a few dozen yards away by now. A pale blue light shined at the edge, and it seemed to move. He sat up. "Hey Rin... see that?"
She looked. Yes, she saw it too. It seemed like someone waving a large blue lantern or something. "Wanna have a look?" she asked. Tyrian nodded.
By the time they got there, they weren't the only ones. A man with a rather expensive-looking suit was holding a tranquillizer, and obviously felt inclined to use it. But Tyrian and Rheirin hardly noticed. They only saw the other man.
The blue light hadn't been a lantern, torch or any of the sorts. It was a man, glowing with the pale blue light himself, an intense light that came from within him. He seemed to be about Rheirin's age, and wore a baseball cap, jeans and a loose shirt that said "To me go the spoils." It could hardly be read, for his neck was gaping wound and blood had been spilled over the letters.
The rich man was shaking, and with him shook the tranquillizer gun in his hand. "S-stop! This is private p-property!" His eyes were tearing with fear as he raised the gun to fire. The apparition in front of him looked up, and Rheirin almost let out a scream.
The desperate, miserable look on his face was almost exactly like Will, right before he died.
"T... Tyrian?"
"Rin?"
"What is going on?"
The spirit looked at the rich man sadly, and continued to walk towards him without a word. "Stop!" The gun made a whirring sound as a dart shot from the short barrel. It flew right through the boy, and made the noise of a nail into wood as it landed into a tree, still shaking.
"Tyrian... Let's get out of here!"
The spirit had now reached the man. He did a step backwards, clenched a fist and tried to hit the glowing figure. As his hand reached its cheek, his body went lump and he fell down onto the carpet of leaves and grass.
"Come on!" Rheirin now pulled his arm, and Tyrian came to his senses. They ran away from the two figures, ran across the fields and back to the road, and until they had made it around a corner and the forest was no longer in sight they did not stop. Only then they slowed down to take a breather, and when they reached a wall they sat with their backs to it and sank to the ground.
"What the hell was that?" Rheirin finally asked. "Was that... a ghost?"
"It seemed to be," Tyrian said. He was still panting from the run, and only kept looking straight ahead. "And I don't want to know what happened to that other guy. I don't think it's wise to touch a ghost."
"After seeing that, I think we can presume that safely."
"Yeah... Do you think he's come after us?"
"If he did, we'll see him coming around the corner. But I don't think that he will. That land owner guy only seemed to be in the way or something. The ghost didn't seem out to harm him, only to keep walking. At least, that's what I think." Tyrian wiped his face with his sleeve. "Rheirin? Are you okay?"
"Tyrian..." She seemed near crying. "That ghost... he looked as lonely and helpless as Will. It was the same expression. I was so scared, I felt so scared, I..."
Tyrian finished her sentence for her. "You thought that it was Will, and that you would have to watch him die again?"
"Yes... God, yes, that's just what I thought it was." She hid her head in her hands and cried.
IV
They saw no more ghosts on the way back to the station. Rheirin felt scared and depressed, and in her paranoia she thought to be seeing Will's face everywhere. When the doors of the trolley slid open silently, she was startled by a man with a constructor's helmet, but it was no one she knew. In the trolley, Tyrian laid his arms around her waist, kissed her on the cheek and whispered words that were meant to comfort her, but she didn't hear them, not really. She knew he meant it well, and that alone was what made her feel a little better, but she could not listen to what he was saying. Everything she thought she had cried out the night before was coming back again.
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[08 Nov 2005|07:32am] |
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Tyrian had been the biggest support for her in the days after the accident. Whenever she felt a breakdown coming, Tyrian was ready to catch her, to give her a shoulder to cry on. And despite how bad she felt about Will, she never felt more love, more thankful for having Tyrian with her. She found herself thinking about what she’d do if it had been Tyrian instead of Will, and pushed out the thought in horror. She didn’t want to think about it, not now.
When the priest was finished, Rheirin sat up. She had prepared a speech, and now stood up to walk to the font. As she walked over the carpet, she couldn’t feel anything. Her legs were moving on their own: she couldn’t feel the movement, and everything around her seemed to blur. She felt how all eyes were watching her, but she couldn’t turn her head to look around. She hardly knew what she was doing until she was standing behind the microphone.
“I met William at my work at the construction site,” she started. She knew it was a weak way to start a speech, but she hadn’t been able to find anything else. “I learned to know Will as a thoughtful person, one who cared about those who loved him and regretted the absence of love wherever he saw it. He was a person of the heart, and lived by the heart. I like to assume I was one of his closest friends, and perhaps there was no one he was more open to. What we discussed came straight from his heart, and from mine. And so was our last conversation his last in life, and he told about how he felt. You may not like to hear how he felt,” she swallowed hard, “but I believe it is necessary for all those who cared for him to know why Will did not want to endure life any longer.”
And she told it. From the talk from the window the night before to his arrival at the construction site, and from the construction site to his death, she told everyone in the church what they had spoken about. As she told about their final talk, his last confessions, she saw everything around her clearer than ever, every detail seemed to be the centre of her attention. She saw Will’s old mother, sitting on her own in the back of the church, crying silently. A woman and a man Rheirin did not know leaned against each other, their arms over each other’s shoulders. They were dismissing their grief by comforting in each other’s company, as Rheirin had with Tyrian.
She suddenly felt her vision was splintered in a prism of tears that once again started to flow as she drew closer to ending her story. When she told about the last moment she saw him, diving under the wall as it was smashed into the ground, she was crying openly, but she didn’t care. She saw a man in front, his hands in his face, and recognized him as the construction worker who had put down the wall. She felt bad for him all of a sudden, because she knew that it wasn’t his fault.
After the speech, she felt a little better. It felt like she had purged something from her heart, but she saw that feeling didn’t transfer over to the people in the church. Many were crying, or on the verge of tears. She stepped down and walked back her seat, but when she sat next to Tyrian again she felt bad about what she had told, that she had explained why William had ended his life. She said this to Tyrian, and he answered: “Don’t. You did the right thing, and I know most people here would thank you for it if it were the appropriate time.”
“Thanks,” she whispered after a short silence, and settled with an arm around his waist again, seeking his comfort. He laid an arm around her shoulders and drew her close, trying to give her whatever consolation she might need. They listened together to the other speeches. Someone from the Guilt talked about they fun they had had together, and Will’s mother told what he had meant for her. She couldn’t finish her speech, and someone helped her down the stairs as her words were lost in tears.
Rheirin and Tyrian didn’t stay for the reception after the mass. “I hardly know anyone there,” Rheirin had said, “and it’s only make me more depressed. Let’s just go home, watch some movies and fall asleep on the couch.” Tyrian had agreed; he was glad Rheirin still had a little sense of humour, despite these sad few days. But in the end, it was no joke. They lay cuddled up against each other on the couch, watching movie after movie, until they finally both fell asleep, in a symbol of friendship that William had failed to see.
II
The sky was black as ink. Rheirin was running again. She knew it was a dream this time, and she knew what to do. She ran past the lake, to the buildings, and felt how they were crumbling behind her. She kept running, turned a corner, ran further, kept running as the city around her crumbled. No one was there, all seemed the same. She turned another corner, ran further away from the lake behind the blue wall, and found herself to be leaving the city and running onto an endless plain. There were forests, far away, and from there she saw the dead, glowing blue, rotting and decaying, walking aimlessly to the city, to the forest, to the plain. She couldn’t avoid them, and when she turned around she saw them wandering the city, swarming it. She screamed, but there was no sound. She wanted to ran further, and tried to make her way past the bodies that were now growing in number, swarming around her. She tripped, fell on her face, and she cried out with no sound. She stood up… and looked in the face of William, his face desperately twisted, his mouth open in a silent scream for help.
“WILL!” Rheirin sat up with a shock. She looked around, but it wasn’t her room. When she felt a movement beside her and heard a tired moan, she realized where she was. The TV had turned to static screen after the movie had ended. The room wasn’t particularly warm, but Tyrian had warmed her. “Rin?” He sat up slowly, and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “What’s the matter? A nightmare again?”
“Yeah.” She hid her head in her hands. “Just like the night before Will died.”
“Was he in it?”
“Yeah. You just go back to sleep, Tyr, I’m gonna get some water.” She stood up and walked to the bathroom. The cold water gave her goose bumps and sent chills down her spine, but she didn’t mind. She took a deep breath and let her hair drip out over the sink, before drying it off with a towel and returning to the room.
“I couldn’t get tot sleep just yet,” Tyrian said when she came in. He had turned on a small lamp that stood on a cupboard right next to the couch, and turned off the TV. He patted on the couch, right next to him, as a gesture for her to sit down. She laid herself down on the spot with her legs over the edge and her head in his lap. She felt a warm hand running through her hair, and silently she thanked the world for Tyrian, for letting him be with her.
“Rin…” She looked up to him. His face was hanging right above hers, and he seemed worried. “It scares me sometimes how your nightmares seem to predict bad things happening. It’s happened before, and now again. I’m scared whether something will happen now.”
Rheirin was puzzled. “But… I have nightmares a lot. There not always equally bad, but it happens more often.” She smiled. “Sweet little Tyr, you’re not getting superstitious, are you?”
“I’m not,” he replied, “but I only notice your nightmares when you need to go out, drink some water and wash your face. Last time that happened was before I had that accident.”
She shoved a hand under his shirt and felt the scar on his back. It was a thick scar, but the wound he had had after the accident had been much worse. She shivered because of the memory. She had never felt as awful as she had the moment she feared that Tyrian was dead, when she had seen him being carried into an ambulance, his back twisted and a gaping wound where a metal plate had struck him. The collision between his cable trolley and another on the same track had been due to a fault in the programming of the trolley’s schedules. He had been rushed to the hospital, and barely survived the first few days. He had a small scar near his eye, and where his back had been torn open the nerves were damaged and his legs were paralyzed. Luckily, his nerve tissue had been repaired by a specialized team of doctors, operating with robots the size of a splinter to put his spine back in order. Rheirin had nearly lived in the hospital the week he recovered in there, and in the months he revalidated in their house afterwards she had helped him in any way she could. She knew how would’ve done the same for her.
She felt him shivering under her touch, so she pulled back her hand. She suddenly had an awful feeling that this new misfortune might be directed to Tyrian. She shuddered and grabbed him around his waist, sat up and hugged him tightly. Tyrian was surprised at first, but then answered the hug by wrapping his arms around her waist and leaving her be as she softly sobbed in his ear. “I don’t want anything happening to you,” she whispered. “I care too much about you to have that happen. Don’t go away from me.”
He kept silent as she sought comfort in his arms, sometimes whispered some soothing words. She softly kissed his cheek, kept asking him not to leave. For no good reason she felt desperate that she might lose him as well. Life suddenly seemed as thin as a sheet, something that could be crushed any minute, as valuable and fragile as a crystal glass. She cried, kept crying, for now she finally cried for everything she had kept to herself these last few days. The death of Will, his bleak vision on the world, her nightmares, her loneliness, the fear of losing Tyrian, everything came out as she held her best friend in her arms, while he caressed her back, held on to her and whispered consoling words in her ear. She couldn’t stop the tears, didn’t want to stop them. She didn’t care whether she’d be crying for an hour, a day or a week. Her tears wouldn’t stop in this abyss of sadness she felt, until suddenly she felt a kiss on her cheek. She felt a happiness return inside of her, at the realization Tyrian wouldn’t leave her, he would stick with her until the end, whatever fate life had in preparation for them, and she would never have to feel lonely.
She stopped crying, slowly, her stomach aching with the constant sobbing. And as she let go of Tyrian and wiped her tears, she surprised him and herself by producing a smile on her face. It wasn’t the broad smile he used to call her “Hello World” smile she often had on her face, but by the look of Tyrian’s face, it was more than she had thought. He kissed her forehead softly, pushed her down on the couch and laid down beside her, folding his arms around her waist, and it was in this position that they once again fell asleep, but no more disturbed by nightmares.
III
Rheirin was the first to wake up when the sun peered through a crack in the curtains. She kept silent, kept her eyes closed, and listened to Tyrians's breath. He was still fast asleep and did not notice that cars, trolleys and other vehicles were long up and running in the streets, the clock indicated a quarter to noon and the sun was high above the streets. She lay with his back to his belly, and he had one arm around her waist. She thought about last night, and instead of sadness, she felt a warm melancholy for their friendship. She felt happy again, for the first time in days, after she had finally gotten rid of everything she had been worrying about with that one long stream of tears. She suddenly felt like hugging, so she turned around and hugged Tyrian tightly, waking him up instantly.
"Hey, hey, wait up? What's the big idea?" he said laughing. He returned the hug, and then looked at the clock. "Jeez, that time already? Lucky it's Sunday, or we'd both be in trouble."
"Hey, what'd you say we make some good time of our day off?" She traced circles on his chest and looked over her shoulder to the window. " It's such nice weather outside. What do you say we go to the nearest forest and walk around in there and tow with the trees and the leaves?" She looked at him with big puppy eyes, a little trick that convinced anyone with a heart big enough. "Let's just pretend we're ten years younger and not afraid to be childish."
"Alright," Tyrian said. "Let's get the next trolley out the city." He smiled. "I'm glad to see you're finally getting over it, Rin. It's good to have my sun shining again."
When he said that, Rheirin felt such an overwhelming warmth that she couldn't help but to hug him so tightly that they both fell back onto the couch.
The sky really was as clear as crystal when they walked out the front door to get to the nearest cable trolly. The sun shone brightly in their faces, and Rheirin looked up, pinching her eyes to small cracks. She enjoyed the light on her face, the soft breeze that was cooling the air enough without getting chilly, the laughter of children playing in the park across the street. She didn't see a figure that glowed with soft blue light in the alley they passed by, because on the other side of the street walked Mike. She waved, but then looked in front of her again, in a dismissive way that would make sure he wouldn't cross the street for a chat. She didn't feel like talking: the subject would inevitably be William again and she didn't want her good mood to drop again. Today was going to be a happy day for her and Tyrian.
"Mister, mister!" A young boy, about 6 or 7, walked up to them. "Mister, can you spare me a dollar for an ice cream, mister?"
Rheirin laughed. It was such innocence that could brighten up any day, even one as bright as this one. Tyrian reached deep in his pockets, and managed to dig up a dollar coin, that he flipped to the kid. He caught it clumsily, let it fall on the ground and picked it up again. "Thank you, mister!" He ran off towards the ice cream car.
Most vehicles in 2137 had been replaced by a system of trolleys that ran on multiple layers throughout the city. Some people owned their own trolleys, but the trolleybus system was so smooth and fast most people didn't bother buying one. On nearly every block was a trolley station, most varying in height from three up to fifteen floors, each with another bus every ten minutes. Trolley buses could carry up to a dozen people, but they were rarely full. Tight programming of the speeds and heights of trolleys prevented nearly all accidents: Tyrian's crash had been an unfortunate exception, and they had received a large sum of money to make sure that the accident would not be published in every major newspaper. The government wanted the people to think the trolley system was a hundred percent infallible: trolleys were cheap to build, maintenance was even cheaper and they used only electricity, no fuel or anything of the sorts. The trolley system even had his own nuclear fusion reactor, a gigantic 50 meter high structure that was in the center of the city.
There had been one major power outage in the trolley system, when the injection of deuterium had been a major screwup and the reactor stopped working. The trolleys were temporarily put on their emergency batteries and all managed to reach a station to ensure the people's safety. The emergency system worked perfectly and only strengthened the people's belief that the trolleys were simply a perfect method of transportation.
The ice cream car was a natural exception, although the hydrogen engine was a 100% clean. Rheirin and Tyrian watched the line of children getting their ice cream, and they smiled at the sound of their laughter and busy chattering with their high-pitched voices and animated movements. The trolley station was right nearby. They walked past William's house (Rheirin didn't look at it, and thus did not see the sign "Apartment for Rent") and stepped into the elevator. The buttons did not indicate a floor, but a direction the appropriate trolley was taking. Rheirin pressed "City limits" and they stood at the platform for the right trolley in mere seconds.
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I
The words of the priests hardly reached her, let alone them giving comfort to her loss. She couldn't get the images off her, she couldn't stop thinking of what William had said before he killed himself. He couldn't stand the world going to hell... She thought about it. Of course, she knew how bad it was in St. Paul, and global problems around the world were common knowledge. Yet, there seemed to be deeper sadness in Will, something she couldn't quite catch. She remembered his words: "I try to see it, but I can't." He couldn't even see how he could escape from his nightmares or how the world could turn better again. Even the beautiful things in life, like friendship or love, had gone out of his sight.
Rheirin tried to imagine what it had to feel like, such despair and desolation, and found that she couldn't. It just wasn't in her nature to see the bad sides of things: She usually just looked past the bad sides, and enjoyed the good sides. Even now, though she felt so miserable about losing her friend like this, she felt like he at least had his peace now: she didn't believe in heaven nor hell, and merely believed in an absence of all consciousness, a black hole of thoughtlessness: absolute peace.
She thought about how she remembered Will. Though he had often been silent, when he saw she felt down he had always cheered her up with a joke and a smile. After a few talks she soon found out that he drank a lot, and had even formed some sort of beer-drinking club with his friends. The Guilt of the Drunk, they had called themselves, and Rheirin had laughed at the name but felt bad about his drinking habit. He wasn't an alcoholic, though: he got drunk out of habit, but left the bottle alone when he didn't feel like it.
She remembered they had had a conversation while he was drunk once, a little similar to the one they had had the night before what she now preferred to think of as 'the accident', but it had been way longer and so funny it had made Rheirin's sides bust and her cheeks hurt. But funny as he might be when drunk, he turned out to be grumpy and sore in the morning, and often late for work.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a warm arm around her shoulder. She leaned her head on Tyrian's shoulder and let her tears flow freely. Of course Tyrian had joined her to the funeral mass: even though he hadn't known William well, he had insisted that he'd accompany her. He had said that she'd need someone to lean on, and she knew it was true, so she let him come along, and here she was, leaning to his shoulder and crying out in silence. He softly caressed her arm and shoulder and let her be with her emotions, silently listening to the words of the priest that drifted meaningless through the church. It wasn't full: about half the places were taken, most of them apparently family. Rheirin remembered Will had felt lonely, and she could see why. He had counted her as his only friend besides the Guilt of the Drunk.
She felt Tyrian search in his pocket, and when he had found it, she noticed it was a handkerchief. He wiped away her tears, and now she noticed that he was also crying: not for Will, but for her. He never could stand it when she was feeling down, she knew, and now that she was crying, he cried as well. She smiled, fighting against the tears, and they stopped for the moment. She shoved a little bit away from him and lay down, her head in his lap, hiding her grief in the comfort of their friendship.
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| Tremendously behind: trying to catch up today. Upload 4 November |
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“Dear, dear sweet Rheirin…” He seemed desperate, beyond desperate even. “I wish I could see it, honestly I wish so. But I can’t. When I think I see something beautiful, it’s but superficial. I don’t even trust friendships anymore, honest to God, even you seem but distant to me now. The whole world is driving me crazy, it constantly does and I sometimes just want to sink to my knees and wait with my face in my hands to die.”
“Don’t talk like that! Just don’t do that!” Rheirin was yelling now, nearing tears. She couldn’t stand to see Will like this. With each word he tore her heart further open. “You’re wrong, Will, and you know it, so stop talking like that and get out of your own nightmares! You know there’s still love, peace and friendship in the world, but you just won’t realize it, you just won’t see it! Just open up your eyes and look around!”
“I know, Rheirin, I know. I know that I’m wrong, and I know there’s still love, peace, friendship. But the more people I met, the lonelier I get, and I can’t help but to despair.” He kicked some rubble away. “I just wish I could see things brightly again. Now I only feel happiness when I lock myself in with liquor.”
“Then… get help, or something. There’s people who can help you with this better than I can,” Rheirin pushed. “I can’t tell your consciousness to be happy again, because it won’t listen to me, but there’s others who feel depressed like you, and lots of people can be cured by psychiatrists or something.”
“Cured? So now realization is a disease?”
“The way you behave now, yes, it is a disease! You just said it yourself, you know you’re only seeing the bad things. So what else would it be than a disease if it makes you see everything so dark?”
“Rin…” He looked at her, and to her shock not only with sadness, but also with pity, genuine pity, as if he felt miserable for her. “You’re such a sweet girl, so I will only ask you this once. Don’t try to help me, don’t even talk to me about anything more than superficial stuff. I don’t want to contaminate you with my despair.”
“Will, I will not do that, not after what you have just said to me. We’re both going to the hospital right now and ask how they can help you.” She grabbed his arm and looked around where the hospital was. To her astonishment, she noticed they were still on the construction site. An other team had taken over the build and were now working their way through the next block of apartments. During their conversation, she hadn’t noticed they had walked around a block and went back to the site. But despite that she had taken his arm and tried to stop him, William kept walking towards the machines. “Will… What are we doing here?”
“As I told you, I just want to curl up in a ball and die,” he said with a melancholic smile. “Sinatra couldn’t have said it better.”
“Will, NO!” She hung from his arm, tried to drag him away. “Come one, we’re getting to the hospital, but you’re not doing this!”
“Too late, Rin. I’m sorry.” He grabbed her wrist and tore himself loose from her grasp. He started running to one of the machines. It was near a half-build apartment, but the operator couldn’t see Will coming: he was with his back turned, and over the machines he couldn’t hear Rheirin’s shouts to stop construction, to shut down the machines.
There was no longer a way of stopping William. As the huge wall was about to be smashed into place, he jumped right underneath. Only now the construction worker in the robotic suit saw him, but it was too late.
Only Rheirin’s desperate scream overpowered the sickening sound as the wall pulverised William’s body.
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[04 Nov 2005|07:35am] |
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“Well, if you don’t think you’re going to make it, you should get back in that book, because you’ve got two more hours to get it all lined up.”
“Tyr, I am already lined up, like a prisoner for the fire squad. You can shoot me right here,” Gordat said with a bitter smile. “Seriously, man, I don’t know what to do here. If I can’t make it through this, how am I supposed to graduate altogether?”
“Hey, if you can’t handle it you should try a lower level of education,” Tyrian said. “It’s not the end of the world you know.”
“I know, I know.” He sighed. “Well, I’ll just see what I can make of this. But a short break first.” He closed his notebook and stuffed it back in his pocket. “So, how’s Rin doing?”
“Fine, I think,” was the reply. “She did have some sort of nightmare last night though. Didn’t even tell me what it was.”
“Probably of you in your shorts,” Gordat said with a chuckle.
“You know, you’re closer than you think,” Tyrian said, and told him how he had stood in his shorts in front of her when she got out of the bathroom.
Gordat laughed. “Wow, what a miracle. A woman sees you in your shorts and doesn’t come humping you right away. ‘t Is an outrage!” He pretended to be fainting, in that very overacting way you only see in the movies or the theatre.
“Jesus, Gord, you ever think of anything else than sex?” Tyrian laughed, but felt a little annoyed as well. “If you want to have sex with Rheirin, you’re welcome to try. I wouldn’t want sex with her, honestly, and if I did I wouldn’t get past her knees for sure. That girl has a mean habit of going for the family jewels as soon as someone does something she wouldn’t like.”
“What do you mean, no sex with her? She’s a frickin’ goddess man! Who wouldn’t want sex with her?” Gordat looked genuinely surprised. “As close as the two of you are, you’d say no one could have sex with her before you.”
“It’s because we’re so close that I wouldn’t want sex,” Tyrian said. “It’s almost as if I’d be fucking my sister. That’s the best comparison I could make. You understand?”
“Ewwww, hold it with the incest comparisons, buddy, I hate it when you do that,” Gordat said.
“Well, I hate it when you turn every woman into a sex object, right-o?” Tyrian gave him a friendly stump to the shoulder.
“Alright, alright, got the hint, alright?” Gordat said laughing. “Ugh, I’ll just get that book to imprint itself in my head again. Why isn’t there anything invented to do that for you yet?”
“You mean an auto-learner?” Tyrian shook his head. “Every time they solve something about the brain, they get five more riddles and problems. We haven’t even figured out whether there’s a soul or not.”
“Sounds like I’ll have some studying to do then,” Gordat said. “Wanna help me out?”
“Sure thing.”
IX
“Okay people, get your asses moving, we’ve got to put twenty apartments out of the ground today and we’ve got to get this rolling! Rheirin, Mike, Rourke, Butch, you get that block of six over there. Paul, Simon, Moriak, Flinch, you get the opposing block done. Gradier, Suze, Biyon, Jack, you’re up for the six on the edge. There’s gonna be two more in the center: Phil, Ruby and William are up for that. Everybody get up, get your tools and GET MOVING!”
“Oh shit,” Rheirin said. “Hey Rourke, you seen Will yet?”
“William? No, I haven’t, actually.” Rourke, a gigantic muscular hulk of a man, scratched his head and looked around. “You think he went out again last night?”
“Thinking? I know he did. I was sitting in the window when he came back, drunk as a monkey’s ass.” Rheirin sighed. “He’ll probably turn up about 3 in the afternoon with a splitting headache. Damned guy can’t keep his fingers off the Jack Daniels.”
“Poor bastard,” Mike added, who had overheard the conversation. “He’s in his forty’s and still alone, and when he’s not drunk he worries about what the world is coming to.”
“Straight to hell, probably,” Rourke grumbled. “They did some research, some magazine, I think, and turns out about 98% of all crimes in this town go unpunished, including murder and rape. It’s a bloody mess, the police is corrupt because they know they can’t do shit and think they might as well earn something out of it. Sometimes it feels like you can’t trust anybody. Remember Gerald?”
“Yeah, they said he was transferred to another site… Why?” Rheirin asked.
“Transferred my ass, the cops silenced it when he was goddamned murdered, that’s what.”
“Killed?” Rheirin asked startled. “But… What happened?”
“He had twenty dollars in his pocket and a maniac with a knife didn’t,” Rourke shrugged. “The more you hear about this shit, the less you can actually care about it. Some of my family have been murdered, my sister was raped even. The asshole who did that is now six feet under with his head turned on backwards, I can tell you that much.” He cracked his knuckles. “Don’t let anybody fool you, Rin: you ain’t safe anywhere. No more. You doin’ a good job in keeping that knife with you.”
“It’s hard to avoid what’s happening to Saint Paul, yeah,” Mike agreed. “And it wouldn’t even matter if it only were Paul, but it’s everywhere. The only country where it ain’t happenin’ must be Tanzania-south because no one lives there.”
“I just thought the police was powerless, rather than corrupt,” Rheirin said.
Mike lay an arm around her shoulders. “Point is, my dear Rin, because they’re powerless they turn corrupt. Each man to his own these days.”
Rheirin thought about this. Of course she knew of the high crime rate in St. Paul: that was the reason to keep her knife with her all the time in the first place. She knew that Tyrian had gone further and got a nice pair of guns, in case he needed to get to some of the less pleasant neighbourhoods.
Madam’s Schnortzzweiter’s rental apartment was in a rather quiet part of town, near the outer edge of town, and there even was a park nearby. In the city the oxygen wasn’t even supplied by green anymore: on every roof big reactors worked around the clock to produce the oxygen necessary for the city to survive. The further in town, the worse the crime rate was: Rheirin always watched for plants and trees, and as long as she could see any, she knew it wasn’t too dangerous. If she or Tyrian had to go further, they’d get their guns before going downtown. The Green Border is what most people called it, and the resolutions Tyrian and she had made were pretty common.
“Hey Rin, get out of the zone girl, work to do!” She was startled out of her stream of thoughts by Butch yelling for her to get to work. She went to the construction site and got in the Toolsuit, that was ready and powered up near where the materials were stacked up.
The Toolsuit was worth some extra explanations. Standing about 8 foot high, the design had sprung from the Matrix and Alien movies. They looked like colossal humanoid robots, where the operator sat in and used the arms and feet as an extension of their own limbs. The arms were full of tools one needed to use when building the apartments: welding torches, drills, heavy impact hammers and numerous other machinery. The prefab walls that were nowadays used to put apartments together were too heavy for normal people, whereas cranes were not efficient enough. The Toolsuit combined the powers of both without the weaknesses, making it the sole thing most construction workers needed.
Both the arms and the legs were powered with Chemothrusters, the more powerful equivalent of hydraulic and pneumatic systems that were in the early 21st century the most important systems in heavy machinery.
XI
Rheirin stepped in her Toolsuit, shoved her arms into either mechanical limb and grabbed the triggers. "Alright baby, let's get rockin' and rolling!" she yelled enthusiastically. He grabbed a piece of rubble and swung it high up into the air, and enjoyed the dust and rubble as she let it explode on her drill. Rourke, Mike and Butch looked at each other, shrugged and went to get the first prefab wall. The walls were made of various materials, with electricity wires, points, and various other necessities installed already. All the constructors needed to do was to put them straight up and make them fit together into a house. The thus made apartments were pretty small and all very much alike, but they were cheap to build and to buy. They were especially popular among students.
"Rourke, come help me with this wall. Rheirin, Mike, put up that one, then we'll connect them and get to the rest of the room." Butch was taking the lead in construction, and none of them minded. As they picked up the wall, Rheirin heard an angry voice:
"Goddammit, Will, where were you! We're way behind on schedule thanks to you! Get your ass moving over there and GET TO WORK!"
"Dammit," Rheirin said, and bit her lower lip. "Will's got into big trouble this time. Guess I should go ask the boss not to be too hard on him, or something."
"RIN!" Mike yelled. "Keep your head at the goddamned work! The boss will deal with William as he sees fit, and you nor I can change that. He won't be the first to be fired, nor will he be the last, as much as I'd hate to see him go, but keep your mind off of it and don't forget what's above your head right now!"
She didn't have to look up to know there was about 3100 pounds of rock, steel and synthetics right above her. In a suit, those things didn't seem like they weighed a thing, despite that the machines could sometimes make a few cracking sounds when picking them up, especially when they were carrying a wall alone. They slowly walked it to the fundament of the first apartment and put the wall right side up, corners next to each other with the other wall Butch and Rourke were taking care of. Mike went to get another wall while Butch connected the corners.
William seemed sore and worn out. He didn't speak to anyone during the lunch break and kept silent throughout the day. Rheirin asked Mike: "You don't think he's fired, do you?"
"No," Mike said resolute. "The chief wouldn't let him stay one more day if he were fired."
"True," Rheirin replied, but she didn't feel more comfortable. She picked up a wall (the suit let out a scary series of cracks, but Rheirin knew there needed to be a whole lot of more cracking before it would break down) and walked towards the site where the third apartment was now nearly finished.
When work was done, Rheirin quickly walked over to William. He still didn’t seem in the mood for talking. His shoulders were bent, his face in an angry frown, and most people who tried to address him got a grumpy “Hmph,” as if they were to blame for his misery. And maybe he felt like they were.
“Will?” Rheirin walked up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t reply, and shook his shoulder to get rid of her hand, but he kept hold of him. “I understand if you’re not in the mood for talking, but maybe you’ll feel better if you do. I heard from Mike and Rourke you’ve been worrying about the future, so I was thinking…”
“Worry about the future?” William laughed, a bitter laugh with no joy. “I worry about what we’ve done in the past, what we are doing now AND what lies ahead of us. Look around you, Rin. Look at the billboards, the machines we control, what houses we build. It’s all cold, empty. By prospering in science, we’ve been slowly killing what love and peace there still was.” He threw a handful of nothing at the world. “No one cares about one another anymore, it’s all about making money, avoiding misery and staying alive.”
“Will, I know things aren’t going well around the world, but…” she bit her lip. “Why do you think love doesn’t exist anymore? People still love each other! It’s foolish to just look away from that and only see what’s going wrong!”
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| Upload November 2 |
[03 Nov 2005|08:14am] |
Tyrian gave her an angry-amused glance, but the old lady voiced one of her strange cackles again, and replied: “Yes, yes, very well. I can get you both rooms on that floor, if you like. The bathroom is free, you can reach it through the hall, and…”
V
Rheirin shook off the memory. She stood in the bathroom door, listening to the silence. Somewhere a car drove by, she could hear it through the opened window. As she listened, she suddenly heard a low, repeating rumble of sorts. She had heard it often enough to bring a smile back to her face. It sounded like Tyrian had no problem getting back to sleep.
She walked to the window and leaned out. The cold air gave her goose bumps, but she liked it. The street was empty. She was reminded of something she heard in a show… “Nothing human up at this hour.” “No sir, just us civil servants.” She couldn’t remember what it was from, but didn’t think it was any recent show. Maybe even still from the 2D television. She would have chuckled, but the atmosphere didn’t have anything humorous. It was so quiet… The sky was open, and most lights were out, so the stars seemed to shine unnaturally bright. Of course, born and raised in the city, she hardly ever got to see any stars. She suddenly felt tiny, a little uncomfortable feeling, yet a feeling that it was true and she should not worry about it. She leaned to the side of the window, pulled up a leg and sat on the windowsill. She saw a man walking past the street, in the direction of their home. She recognized him, and when he passed by underneath, she hissed in a friendly matter: “Hey, William, been out late again?”
“Huh? Who dat?” He looked around, then looked up. “Oh, heysa, Rin. Yah, been out with the mates, haddin’ a good’un ‘n all dat. Much o’funs, y’know what I mean.”
Rheirin, who did not have a clue what he was talking about, other than that he was tipsy, nodded smiling. She asked: “You shouldn’t stay up so late when you’ve got work at the site tomorrow, Will. You know how the chef thinks of your drinking parties.”
William made a sputtering sound and waved the accusations away. “Chef can think ‘bout me all he wanna think. Don’ give a damm, me, no sirree, no give a damm.”
“But don’t you care when he will fire you?”
He thought about that. “Y’know, Rin, y’righ. So mine solution be: you don’ tell ‘im, I don’ tell ‘im, what he dunnot find out ‘bout, he couln’t fire me for. Y’ain’t tellin’ me on ‘im, are ye Rin?” he said, almost like a naughty child.
She laughed, and shook her head. “No, Will, I won’t tell him. You just make sure that YOU won’t tell him.”
“Yes, mizzes!” He made a clumsy salute, and Rheirin laughed again. William, despite being twice her age, always knew to cheer her up, even when the conversation was as awkward as this, from a window and hours past midnight. “Y’know, Rin, you’re a good kidder. Wud’ye doin’ over there at this time anyway?”
“Oh, you know, couldn’t sleep. Bad dreams and all that. Nothing you need to worry about, Will, with what it is you got behind your teeth by now.”
“Oh, I ain’t got nothin’ behind my teeth but my tongue, mizzes,” he said, and winked. “Them Jack Daniels ‘ave long gone down the throat, that true or not?”
“I know, Will, matter of speech. Will you go home now and sleep it off? I know you don’t live much further down the street, so walk on and get in bed.”
“Sure thing, Rin. See ye tomorrow?”
“Yup, I’ll be there. See you tomorrow, Will.”
When Will had walked down the road, Rheirin felt relieved. While he had been drinking again, and probably would get in trouble, their conversation had cheered her up and the night didn’t seem quite as dark anymore. She didn’t return to bed right away, but enjoyed the night sky some more. The stars twinkled and in the park across the street she could hear crickets chirping and something that sounded like a squirrel or a bird was stirring in the branches of the tree opposing the house. Listening to these sounds, the dark started to daze her, and slowly everything sunk away…
"Rheirin? Oh crap." Tyrian walked over to the sill. Rheirin sat in the open window, fast asleep. He felt her forehead and her lips. They were ice cold, and he could guess she had been sitting here all night. "Rheirin? Come on, answer me, girl, wake up."
"Tyrian? Did you open up a window in my room tonight, because it's freezing as hell an I dn wnn..." Whatever she said, it went lost in sleepy murmering as she got caught by the sleep again. Tyrian laughed out loud. It was exactly the kind of odd situation you might expect Rheirin to be in after a restless night. "Come on, Rheirin, open those little goggles of yours and look where you are."
"What? What in the world..." She sounded tired and angry, like anyone whose sleep is disturbed, but when she finally opened her eyes, she looked a little startled around. When she realized what had happened, she looked at Tyrian and saw his twinkling eyes. They both burst out in laughter simultaneously, in that way only best friends ever would.
"Ooooh, my back, I can hardly stand up," Rheirin said, still having hiccups of laughter. "Come on, Tyr, gimme a hand." He reached out and helped her stand. They both heard the painful series of cracks as her spine regained its natural shape. "Thanks," she said. "Jesus, stupid old me... What time is it anyway?"
"Uhm..." Tyrian looked at his watch. "It's almost 7 in the morning. You should just go and get breakfast, if you go back to bed for those fifteen minutes you might not wake up, despite of the Pierce the Bloodshed album you programmed for your alarm."
"Yeah, I know. I wasn't planning to get back in anyway," she replied with a yawn. "You going back to college?"
"Yeah, in a bit." He sighed. "I rather stand up an hour early than ride one of those new blitz-streetcars... I don't wanna puke on any fancyman's shirt, and neither do they want my puke on them, so I just take it slow and steady. It's just 45 miles anyway, the cable trolley does it in 30 minutes. And it gives me some more time to study too."
"No need to go on a rant, big boy, or you'll be late for your beloved cable trolley," Rheirin said. "Come on, soldier, get that ass moving and make your country proud!"
"Gotcha Rin, if you don't want me around you could just have said so," he said, but with a smile. "Then, I shall be off, my fair lady, with a wave of the hand and a sigh for thine beauty, so divine and inspiring, as swans on a rippling lake, the stars glimmering in..." He ducked laughing as a towel flew past his head and quickly shuffled out the door. Rheirin stood laughing in the hallway, before shaking her head with a grin and heading to the kitchen for breakfast.
VII
"Checking in early today, Rin?"
Rheirin looked over her shoulder. "Oh, hey Mike. Yeah, got up early this morning, figured I might as well get over here while I was at it. And you? Anything up?"
"Yeah, actually, there is," he said, and his shoulders went bent. "My dog found something under the table this morning. I think it was a piece of a cup I broke yesterday, I cleaned up hastily and might have missed a piece. He probably swallowed it when licking off the coffee or anything, and I found him dead this morning."
"Oh, Mike..." Rheirin gave him a short and friendly hug. "I know what it's like to lose a pet. Try not to let it get to you, it'll not make it any easier if you keep worrying about it. Try to get some distraction, go to the movies or something. If you want a day off, I could talk into the chef. I can handle His Highness the best, it seems." Upon saying that, she looked down and lay an arm under her breasts meaningfully. When she looked back at Mike with a wry smile and a raised eyebrow, a smile broke on his face a little and he seemed to cheer up a little bit.
"Thanks Rin, but I'm okay. Just keeping up the hard work is a better way to forget about it than to sit at home or watching a boring movie."
"Alrighty, your choice." She ran her ID through the card reader at the entrance tot he construction site and went through the gate. After Mike had followed, they went to the canteen together.
"You still living with Tyrian?" Mike asked when they were sitting inside with a cup of hot coffee. "For what I understood from last time you explained the story to me, you're not dating but still live together or something, right?"
"Mikey, I'm surprised you remember that much," Rheirin said. "When I tried to explain it to you, you had had four triple tighn-whiskeys and could stand only by holding on to either me or anyone standing near me. Not that I was all that sober," she continued with a chuckle, "but you were the attraction of the evening that party. But anyhow, you got the basics right. Tyrian and I have known each other for God knows how long: neither of us can even remember how we wound up together. We've always stuck together, and even pretended to be dating to get our apartments."
"And you never... uhm..." Mike looked a little uneasy, so it was about as obvious as a ten foot banner what he meant.
"Sex? With him?" Rheirin burst out in laughter. "No, no, no, God help me, the insinuation is bad enough!" She wiped away the tears and smiled: "I'm a cliche girl, you know. I like muscular men, ' the strong and silent type'. Tyrian won't stop yapping and is shorter than me, and half my weight." She sighed. "And I guess that why he's such a great friend. He's everything I wouldn't want to fuck or date: so for everything that drops out of those categories, there's Tyrian."
"I guess that should put me in my place," Mike said. "Sorry 'bout asking."
"No big deal," she said. "I like to talk about him. If you can't even gossip about your best friend, then who would be left?"
VIII
"Hey Gordat my man, how's life?" Tyrian patted him on the shoulder rather hard." What's up? You ready for the big test for Advanced Nuclii Geometry?"
"Oh please, Tyrian, don't get me started." Gordat sounded like someone stole his joix de vie and replaced it with a heavy bag of bricks. "If I don't get at least a B for this one, I can't even begin to think of what the teach will sodomize me with."
"Well, maybe he'll let you pick something," Tyrian said grinning. "What would you rather be sodomized with, Gord? A pencil or a test-tube?"
"Oh, shut up," Gordat said laughing as he smacked the side of his book to Tyrian's forehead.
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| Upload November 1 |
[01 Nov 2005|08:47pm] |
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Edge of Sanity - Crimson |
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I
She was running past a lake. The water was glowing red, and she saw bubbles coming up from the deep. She kept running, into a wall of blue. Behind it, there were building, but they were collapsing. She knew that something was wrong here, wherever it was that she was running in. She went back to see at the lake, but now there dead people climbing out of it. Their flesh was decaying, and some had no eyes. She had nowhere to go now, not anymore. She stood in the wall between the crumbling buildings and the dead people, a blue wall, reaching up into the sky, but the sky was black she now saw, black as the eyes of the people in front of her. She turned around, ran in between the collapsing buildings. She was laughing, but she didn’t know why. She felt like crying. Behind her, around her, the dust and rocks of the houses and towers came crashing down, and when she looked up, so did the sky. It fell on top of her, crushing her, smothering her…
Rheirin woke up coughing and sweating like mad. The dark room was no comfort, so she turned on the light. The room was as cluttered as always. Shirts and pants were thrown across the room, hanging from the chair or one of the open closet doors, and her one shoe was somewhere under the bed while the other had somehow winded up on top of the desk (she suddenly remembered how she had kicked it out without looking where it wound up: apparently, that was one mystery solved) and she saw that somehow, the doors to the little cupboard beneath her desk had failed to hold the pile of books, papers, magazines and other junk, and everything was now spread in a two foot wide fan on the ground. About a dozen pens and twice as many paperclips lay scattered around the floor, as well as pieces of eraser and a few tampons. The two cupboards next to her bed housed a few packs of cigarettes, some comics, an old gaming console (Playstation 5, an old-fashioned console you still had to play with a controller you held in your hands), more pens and pencils, and a long, sharp kitchen knife.
While Rheirin had never had to use that knife for other than cooking (and not even for that: she actually never cooked: she just ordered down a 2-minute meal, like most people), and hoped she never would, she always brought it with her wherever she went. St. Paul had grown violent, and sooner or later she would likely thank Tyrian for his advice to arm herself.
She stood up. She only had a bra and panties on, but she grabbed a shirt that was two sizes too big for her and put it on. She walked out the door, and through the hall to the sink. The sound of splashing water and a shivering sigh from the bathroom. She let her now wet hair drip out over the sink, and looked at her reflection in the mirror. The same small nose and big hazel eyes, although the eyes now were red at the edges. Her teeth were all still a little yellow from smoking, as were her fingernails. She shook her head in distress and rubbed her eyelids with her index finger and thumb. “Come on, Rin, it was just a dream. Just some stupid nightmare.” Even though she couldn’t deny from herself she had almost smothered herself in her pillow, she calmed down a little. Yes, it had been just a stupid dream. No, nothing was collapsing, and the dead were not up and walking. She managed to force a smile on her face, and at the sight of that wrought and distorted smile in the mirror, she almost laughed and it turned into a real smile. She thought about dragging her videogames out of the dust: she hadn’t played Final Fantasy XIX in months, and felt quite like it. But when she saw it was only 2 in the night, she changed her mind. She just wanted to turn around, when she heard a soft voice through the hall: “Rheirin? You up?”
II
He walked down a long hall. He knew the hall, he lived in this house, yet it was not the same hall. It was longer, and there were paintings on the wall he didn’t know but he felt like he was supposed to know. “I don’t know you,” he said to the pictures.
“Yes you do,” an old man on one of the pictures said, “you just forgot.”
“No,” he answered, “I’ve stopped knowing you. I hid my memories of you, and burned them in my head. I don’t know you.”
“Then you shouldn’t be here,” the man said, “but you are. Because you are here, you are proving that you still know us. If you say my name, you will be reminded of everything, and you will no longer have to hide your memories, and you won’t have to run from your dreams. You know you will run again, and forget about it. You know, but you won’t stop. You never stopped, not even back then. And when everything will start to happen, you still won’t stop. You’ll always keep running, just keep running, without looking where you’re going, running running running runningggggggggggg…”
And he did. He ran, ran, ran like mad, and didn’t look back. He jumped through the wall at the end of the wall, because he knew that it all wasn’t real, he was just dreaming, and soon he’d wake up. He saw the ocean felling towards him, and watched himself falling to the ocean, into the water.
Splash!
Tyrian sat up. He was sure that splashing sound hadn’t been a dream. He looked around his room. It was still dark, but he saw a bit of light coming from the room. He knew his home well enough to know someone was in the bathroom. He turned on the light, and looked around once more. The room was as tidy as another in the house was messy. His clothes were neatly folded behind the closed doors of his closet, a wardrobe that mainly consisted of loose jeans, t-shirts and blouses. His computer, a 24,8 GHz Pentium 8, stood neatly aligned with the edge of the desk, and on the other side of the desk was a row of books, sorted on title. Underneath the desk were several drawers, each with several books, sorted on subject. The cupboard next to his bed harboured a few magazines, one of them not suitable for children, the others science related.
He sat up and got out of bed. He looked at the clock. 2 in the night? What was up? He walked to the door, glancing at the TV across the room as he did so. “Rheirin?” he said. “you up?”
III
“Tyrian? Yeah, it’s me.” He saw her peeping through the crack in the door of the bathroom. Her hair was wet and she looked tired.
“What’s the matter? Couldn’t sleep?”
“Nightmares,” she said. “And you? Or did I wake you up?”
“I think I had a nightmare just before you did… But I can’t quite remember,” he replied. Stretching his arms, he let out a yawn, before realizing he was just in his shorts. He looked around bewildered, but Rheirin smiled. “Don’t worry, Tyrian, I’m sure there’s nothing under there I never saw on a man. You should go back to bed anyway, don’t you need to go to school tomorrow?”
“True. You sure you’re okay?” Tyrian gave Rheirin a good look. She looked like she had slept in a storm. Her hair was still wet (though it had stopped dripping) and her eyes were bordered red. Her oversized shirt was a little wet when she had splashed water in her face, and in the faint light he could see her bra through it. She smiled though, and whatever the nightmare was, she seemed to have recovered quite well.
“Yes, you dope, I’m fine,” she said. “Now go to bed. I’m going myself soon as well.”
“Alright then. Sleep well,” he said. He didn’t felt like sleeping anymore, but he’d try. A bad feeling crept up on him. Whenever Rheirin had nightmares, something bad was bound to happen. It always was.
Rheirin watched as Tyrian went back to his room. She sighed. That Tyrian… They had been close friends ever since high school, and even though they were on completely different levels of education, they had stuck together even after Rheirin had finished her education for construction worker. Even when she had gotten a job, they stuck together, sharing a floor in a student’s home. She remembered well when they tried to get the rooms…
IV
“Okay, Rheirin, now please try not to laugh, okay?” Tyrian said as they stood arms linked in front of the student house. He himself was obviously trying not to laugh as well, but they both managed to straighten their faces before the door was opened. It was a lady in her late 50’s, a woman they would later get to know as Ma’am Schnortzzweiter, a German woman with a thing for cats, but with a good heart. She was little over 5 foot tall, and seemed even smaller because she walked bent. Her white hair was usually tied in a knot, with a long blue ribbon, and her thin cane was never far away, a mix of several alloys with the sculpture of a dragon on top. She had a round face, too many wrinkles for anyone to count, and a small round pair of glasses. She looked at the two youngsters in front of her. “Yes, children, what do you want?” she asked.
Rheirin, who hated to be called a child (at the time, she was 21 years old and near graduation) almost spoke up, but Tyrian kicked her with gentle force in the shins and said: “We’re here for the room, ma’am. We had heard you had two rooms for students?”
“Yes, that’s true. Can I see your ID’s, children? Sorry, but, rules, you know…” She chuckled, or cackled, rather. It was a laugh that could’ve been disturbing.
They both gave their cards. She put them in an ID reader that seemed ancient (it was pretty old: the production date was 2124, and there had been many improvements since) and checked their student occupations. “But… my dear girl, you’re nearly graduated! That wouldn’t be much good, moving in and moving out three months later, would it? Why don’t you have a home already?”
“Well,” Rheirin started out, “You see, Tyrian is my boyfriend, and I was living with him at the time, but now he’s going to the IU of Bloomington. He needed a home in St. Paul, so we went to search in time for his new study to start, so…” She clenched tighter to his arm and produced a big smile. Tyrian wanted to hiss to her not to overdo the act, but the old lady was delighted.
“Oh, you’re a couple! Yes, of course, I should’ve noticed that right away, you seem to fit so well together.” Both Tyrian and Rheirin started blushing like mad. “Well, I couldn’t do with just, tearing such a lovely young couple apart, now could I?” She smiled at both of them, and they smiled back rather uneasy. “Yes, well now, come in, I’ll show you where you can stay. I take it you’ll want a single bedroom for the two of you, hm?”
“Uhm, no, actually…” Tyrian looked even more uneasy now. Luckily, Rheirin had got a solution. “No, ma’am, we’d rather have two bedrooms, because Tyrian often has to get out a lot earlier than me, and that would be a pain if we were both on the same room. Besides,” she added with a chuckle, “I like somewhere to escape to when Tyrian is snoring too loud.”
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| Rough plot outline and some chars |
[30 Oct 2005|07:34pm] |
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mood |
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[Seraphique - Promise] |
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Rough plot outline:
It's 2137. Where once was wasteland now stand houses: where once were houses are now villages: where once were villages are now cities: where once were cities, noware metropoles, housing millions upon millions of people. But then, word goes that ghosts, spirits, have been seen in the city. Soon the first ones start to appear in the open, and it doesn't take long before the first people die and buildings collapse under the power of these spirits, of which the mere presence is utterly destructive. Whereas they don't seem to know where they're going or what's happening, they slowly gather in a march, an exodus of spirits, a destructive march that is a threat to every city on their course. As the military and the government try to come up with a solution, two young adults are drawn into the stream of events.
One of the MC's:
Name: Rheirin
Sex: Female
Age: 23
Physical description: Dark brown hair, with a length to shortly past her shoulders. She uses goggles as a hairband. Big hazel eyes, and a small nose. she never uses make up and can usually be seen with a cigarette between her lips. Her clothing usually consists of an old, worn and tattered brown jacket that reaches to her knees, with many stitches and patches from repairs. Under that a simple white tanktop, a large belt that has two long bands that cross between her breasts and reach over her shoulders. She has baggy jeans and heavy leather boots. In the inside pocket of her coat or tucked under her belt, she usually keeps a large kitchen knife.
Personality: Rheirin is a cheerful person, in a calm sort of way. She's very social and often comes over for a little chitchat with friends, and likes to hang out on the street or at the cafe. When someone's in need of help, she won't hesitate to. She is, however, not very good with words, and doesn't know how to say things subtly. She tends to hurt people with that, and while she has learned to cope with her own big mouth, the things she says sometimes hurt herself more than the other. She is not eager to show it when she feels bad.
Background: Rheirin lives in one of the poorer parts of Bloomington, which became part of St. Paul in Minnesota in 2103. She has a job as construction worker.
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| New journal |
[29 Oct 2005|02:01am] |
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 creatired |
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A whole new journal, just for my NaNo! And no one even knows it's here yet at the moment! Yay!
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