“Hey, were you with that guy in the back stall, the one with the sunglasses on, looking all pissed off?” Bill had taken to following Samantha down Belmont, when what he really needed to do was to go off towards Clark and his job.
Well, thought Clyde, lust does some stupid things, like making you late for work.
“Who, him? Yea, but he’s my brother. Bit of a creep if you ask me, but he’s family. He likes to be alone a lot.”
“Creepy, yea, I got that vibe from him.”
What the hell was she talking about? And where is she leading him?
With his Ray bans still whirring away, Clyde focused what was going on around the two lovebirds. It was sunny, bright; the buildings were throwing their worst reflections down on the mob of walkers. Sweat dribbled down everybody’s forehead, which did not stop people form running across busy intersections when the light flashed the no walking sign. Taxis on-the-hand, routinely tried to mow down pedestrians. He was half block behind them (he had decided that the conversation had gotten much too sickening to listen to, so he would just watch them thank you very much, sister), but well placed so as to notice that she was steering them to the CTA train station. Trains screamed overhead, coming to stops, dropping and picking up passengers, and gearing up to scream away.
What Samantha did not notice, since she had not replaced her Ray bans were the high fluxions of luck, and all of it was bad. Quickly, he prodded another bottom on his sunglasses, only to remember that she was not wearing hers.
C’mon Samantha!
He started to pick up the pace and make his way towards them, when she stopped and hailed a cab. She looked back at Clyde and he saw that she was worried.
She mouthed, Call
Call who, thought Clyde, he was just happy that she had reacted to the levels of bad luck. Some one woke up on the wrong side of the bed today and decided they really needed to fuck with Billy. And of course, here we are in the middle of it, split up.
Then, her head was in the cab and she was headed back the other way.
He switched on a button in the Ray bans and a colored screen popped up. Sitting in the picture was a girl of what looked like sixteen. She had blonde hair dyed pink, and had big hoop earrings. She wore very loose fitting clothes.
“Oh, good Annie, you’re in. We need some help.”
Samantha was in the cab with Billy, or Bill, as he liked to call himself. Half of the conversation was of him telling her who he was. She had to stop herself from finishing his thoughts for him; she knew all this. She had watched him grow up since he was a baby. Really, he was coming on a bit strong, and she had an old mother interest in him. And, she was really beginning to worry. The cats had been one thing, but she had felt the train station, she had felt the negativity. And Clyde had looked very worried.
Her plan had been to steer Billy to the station and hope he would decide he needed to go out to the burbs, and the station was a step in the right direction. Somebody knew what was going on with Billy today. How, was the question, but a more important how was: How were they going to keep Billy safe when they knew everything they did and, apparently, everything they didn’t. Hopefully, Clyde was getting some answers, since her glasses were sitting back at the diner.
“So, are you seeing anyone right now?”
8/8/8 12:35am – 1:07am
“What? No, not at the moment,” she said, then turning to the cabbie, “take us to Union Station.”
The driver threw the car into drive and peeled out into traffic.
“Union station, but that’s back in the direction we came from. I have to get to work.”
Samantha turned to him and looked deep into his sea green eyes. She saw something there, a shimmer she had never seen before. Of course, she had never been this close to him and in direct contact before. She added a little tweek of influence.
“I have a feeling there’s something more important in store for you today. Why don’t you call work and tell them you’re suddenly not feeling too good.”
Bill looked back at her with a stupid grin on his face. “But I’ve got to be there today. I have an appointment, an important appointment.”
“Just call in, tell them something you ate at the diner isn’t sitting well. I promise everything will work out,” she said tweeking the influence a little higher. This time, even though she thought she was in control, she was having a hard time pulling her own eyes away.
“Oh…ok, I guess I can call in.”
He flipped open his phone to make the call. With a flick of her wrist, Samantha nudged a line of influence around Billy to make sure she didn’t make him lose his job.
“Ok Annie, what’s the deal? Four black cats came at Billy in the diner. There are traces of bad luck everywhere.” Clyde said.
Annie turned to him, her enthusiastic smile sliding away. Her pink hair shimmered and shifted to a more serious brown.
“Clyde, look, it’s news to me too. I see the lines around Billy are still solid now. I’m contacting some other agents to do a sweep of the diner and the surrounding blocks.”
“You better get me the answers quick.”
“I’m doing all I can,” she said. Annie was becoming frustrated, and her hair was shifting back to pink in patches. “I will let you know as soon as I find anything. What about Samantha?”
“We had to split up. I went after the cats. She stayed with Billy.”
“Oh no, I’m showing her levels at sixteen percent, and yours is only fifteen. That’s hardly enough for you two to be alone, let alone together. I’m going to have to send backup.”
“No, there’s no one I’ll trust as much as Samantha, and we don’t need it right now. As soon as I get back in touch with Samantha I’ll have her recharge.”
8/16/04 7:26pm-7:57pm
The taxi dumped both Samantha and Bill at the doorstep of Union station, and as soon as the taxi peeled away she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck prick. Ignoring the warning sign she grabbed Bill by the arm and pushed him through the doors and out into the great hall. Looking at the time arrival boards that guarded either side of the sliding glass doors, she decided to take to track 15 and grab the one just about to head out.
The levels of influence around Bill were beginning to waver as he put his foot to the floor and grabbed the side of table holding all the train schedules.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Bill snapped his arm back and brought it up to his head, rubbing his eyes like he was in a fog. “I can’t do this. This is… lunacy. I can’t just take off with someone I do not even know. I have responsibilities; I have people who depend on me.”
“If you only knew how much we do.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Billy, come with me, hon,” Samantha tried to turn the charm on. She glanced down at her levels; they were in the single digits: 7. Shit that’s not really enough to take a train ride anywhere. “What I need you to do is trust me. C’mon we don’t have far to go. It is an adventure.”
“Trust you? Trust you! Lady, I am not sure I even know you.”
That is when everything began to shimmer to Samantha. Lines of influence sprang from several directions at once. She grasped her sphere around Bill tightly, but with withering power it was broken like a china hitting concrete. She felt the bad luck emanating from all around. How did they know? How could they know? Only Annie…Unless they found someone like her…but where…how, her thoughts turned from black to worse as she crumpled on the floor. “Billy… Billy…run…”
“What’s going on?”
She could see shadows coming, lengthening as her vision snowballed.
* * *
Clyde throttled the engine of his Honda civic as he careened through the streets of taxis and pedestrians. A hubcap flew off around Jackson and Michigan as he narrowly missed a Good Boy Baking truck. “Hey Annie, are you sure they went back to the train station?”
“Of course I’m sure. Roger reported in not five minutes ago. Oh...” Annie’s hair went from brown to stark white, her eyes yellowed.
“What?”
“You remember the lines I told you that were still strong around Billy.”
“Yes.”
“Well...”
“Just spit it out!” He yelled this as he spun out unto Clinton. Two blocks ahead he saw Billy, running like his life depended on it. And behind him…
“They’re broken; Samantha’s in trouble Clyde.”
He wanted to scream: NO SHIT! But he didn’t it. Is this morning ever going to end?
“Do I follow Billy or go after Samantha?” He had not realized he had said that out loud until Annie piped in: “Billy is important, if anything should happen to him things would be a whole lot worse. He is one of the last gates, though he doesn’t know it. He must be protected at all costs.”
Clyde gassed the car down Clinton after Billy.
8/21/04 – 1:00pm – 1:31pm
Billy looked frantic. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he ran down the street. Other pedestrians looked up at him, but most just went back to what they were doing. Billy had a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He was running short of breath. His lungs were on fire. Billy stopped next to a homeless man, panting and hands on his knees.
“Boy, you best keep a’ movin. There’s a cloud over you like I aint never seen before.” The homeless man said. “My luck’s bad enough, I don’t need no more.”
Billy looked at him, and the feeling in his stomach became worse. Who ever this guy was, he was giving him a worse feeling then the guy in the diner. From behind him, Billy heard a lot of honking, and a motor roaring closer. He looked over shoulder and saw a forest green Honda Civic wizzing through traffic.
He took off again, running as fast as he could down the sidewalk.
“Bad luck don’ jus rub off boy!” The homeless man shouted after. “It stick to you like tar!”
Clyde saw Billy take off, from where he stopped. With his glasses still on he could see the streams around Billy. Up ahead was nothing but black. He couldn’t see Billy’s main line through the other side. He zoomed up, cutting off a bus, and pulling into the right lane. With an effort, he pushed some luck around. Billy swerved left to avoid a couple. He was running almost on the curb.
Clyde was matching Billy’s pace. He reached over and opened the passenger’s side door. As he did that Billy tripped on an uneven section of sidewalk and fell into the open door of Clyde’s car. Billy screamed, legs kicking still outside the door. Clyde grabbed his colar and yanked him up.
As Clyde drove past the blackness, a chunck of masonry fell from the fourth story and crashed on the sidewalk.
* * *
Samantha awoke feeling cold, a cold that seeped into her bones. She felt very unlike herself, like a copy. It was a feeling she’d had a few times before. Her luck had run out.She opened her eyes to look around. She was no longer in Union Station, as least not in the Great Hall. She was in an extravagant office. The desk in front of her was a deep cherry wood, polished to an incredible gloss. The chair she was in was a soft, plush leather.
Her mind was fuzzy, but she could remember shielding Billy and then telling him to run. She checked for her watch. It was gone, just like her glasses. She was trapped and alone.
8/22/04 8:38pm-9:08pm
She attempted to find her lines of luck, her temporal self. She was blind; it was as if she did not exist. Casting about she found nothing, she panicked. Attempting to rise, she found like before that she was stuck. Try as she might she was just a fish caught in an entangling net.
She opened her mouth to scream but Silence filled it up that’s when she noticed to the shadow behind the desk, just to the left of the windows. He tossed something across the room towards her. It hit the top the desk, slid off, and landed in front of Samantha. She heard none of it; she was in a Void of Silence. She had been in one near the end of the fourteenth century, in the city of Florence. But, that one had been her design, this one was not, it was foreign and it reeked. The problem with this void is that the sense of smell increased tenfold. Anything could be detected by the nose, it was ultra sensitive. The rug had had a cinnamon shampoo wash recently, the table had been scrubbed down with some lemon polish, and Samantha could tell what body odor was most displeasing, the kind that meant her body had not waited for to wake up and just decided to go to the john without the presence of a john around. But what the Void of Silence had been made out of was the strongest most pervading smell, and it nearly made her retch.
She glanced down and found a pair of glasses: ray bans to be exact.
“Belong to anyone you know?”
Samantha stared pikes into the shadows. Partly because yes she had recognized them, they were Clyde’s, and also she was trying to figure out how the shadow had cut his voice through the Void of Silence. It was still up because she screamed at the top of her lungs and not a door mouse under her chair would have realized she had said a damn thing. And that door mouse, who actually was there, would continue eating the cheese that dotted the floor.
“If I could repeat those words my boss would hang me in eternal fire. But then again, he does that just to amuse himself.” The shadow pulled the blinds closed and so the city skyscap disappeared. She was blind. “What I need from you is information. If you cooperate, then this will all be much easier in the long run. Okay?”
She wanted to say, ‘Eat shit and Die,’ but she couldn’t, she only mouthed them while she thought, If they need information, then Billy and Clyde HAVE to be all right. What else is there?
“You were a pretty little thing, weren’t you? Foul mouth on you, I must say. I give you time to think about my offer. If I were you I would accept it, you cannot imagine the fun my minions would have with you undying soul. A rare treasure to say the least, your essence would be gone forever but the memory of your pain will stay just as long.”
With that Samantha fell away and the shadows launched into fire. She thought she saw the face of the shadow, but then hundreds of cackling faces emerged and the torture started.
* * *
Bill Bragg had never had such a day. He was used to all the so-called luck that had haunted his life for good or ill, mostly good if he reflected back enough. Today he had actually witnessed cats go psycho, met a woman, a beautiful one at that, who talked to him, and then ran from chimerical creatures that nobody else had seen. That sent him running out of the station and into the car of the brother of the beautiful woman. He had seen the creatures as well, but was able to elude them. He zigzagged around poles falling haphazardly, chunks of masonry clubbing the ground, and odd lightening strikes that sparked from snapped electric cables. Jumping the curb and barreling down a side alley, a large two-headed dog pounced upon their car. One claw smashed the driver’s window and sent shards everywhere. Before he could shake the creature, his glasses had flown back out the window with the retreating claw.
Now, they were idling down Eisenhower looking for the right exit or so Clyde kept saying. His name was Clyde, right, thought Bill? Clyde was looking a bit weary and tired. And old. Was he that old when he had fallen into the car?
Bill sat back and still could not piece together his day into any reasonably sane explanation that he could give anybody. Least of all his boss, who could quite possibly be trying to call Bill to fire him. But, since his phone had bit the dust so long ago, there would be no answer. Fucking cats! Swearing shocked Bill that he just closed his eyes for a bit.
He began to think if he had ever had such a day. Was it even possible to imagine? Maybe…
Once when he was nine, his uncle Benny had flown in to see big little league baseball game. It was the championship game. Uncle Benny had been old, white hair short to the scalp, but clean-shaven. He always wore sunglasses, big ones. Light sensitive he had told Bill. He would say:
“Billy, the damn sunlight will cause my eyes irreparable damage if they should ever meet.”
In the game, his teem, the Vortexes, were up large. It was an easy game. Bill though, was not a very good player. Playing right field afforded him little chance to be in very many aspects of the game. But, being the shortest player in the league, by three and half inches, translated into him being the most walked player. The pitchers could not squeeze the ball into the tiny strike zone three times out of seven. So, he played every game.
In the top of the fourth, Bill remembered an instance that everybody else had seemed to have forgotten. Bill was out in right field, the clouds had drawn dark, and birds, dark and loud, gathered on the top of the fences. The ball struck by the batter, flew out to right field. The birds took flight and circled, then plummeted downward. The ball flew right by Bill. The birds did not. They had bloody beaks and human looking teeth and they squeaked like hissing vipers. But, before anything had occurred that could have been messy, Bill was running into the dugout with the ball in his glove. The third out made the slaughter rule was in effect and the game was over. Bill, though, felt like he was in the middle of a hazy dream. A dream where a shadowy man, with animals, chased him down dark streets, and he was left sweaty and short of breath upon waking. His fear pounded in his chest as glimpses of warmth had cradled him away. There was always a watcher, or so he thought.
His Uncle Benny congratulated him on the fine catch.
“Hey, Uncle Benny here comes my Mom. C’mon we should go.” He waved enthusiastically with his glove hand at his Mom. Even though, he was unsure of what had occurred he was basking in the glory his teammates had greeted him with. ‘What a catch!” they shouted at him.
“Hey Mom, Uncle Benny’s here. He watched the game from the bleachers! Did you see my catch?”
“It was amazing, hon. You don’t have an Uncle Benny?”
“Sure I do…” Turning around, nobody stood there. Bill had blocked that from his memory, he only remembered the catch.
Now, looking at the man driving the car, he saw a man who had been very young this morning. But, since then he had aged. His hair had turned white and it had stayed close to his scalp, and those glasses.
“Who are you?”
Benny…Clyde looked over with a pained expression on his face. “Told you the sun and my eyes don’t like each other. Now, be quite we are almost to our destination. Everything is going to be o…okay.”
8/27/04 11:48am- 12:31pm
No comments:
Post a Comment