It's Always Time Act 03 Ch. 02

"Yes!" the scarlet girl burbled. "Kill me, master! Hate me enough to kill me!"

Dee fixed her with an empty stare, and in that terrible, lifeless monotone, he said, "That's how she killed Galatea."

The scarlet girl's slow dissolve froze. "That sentimental green simpleton?" she said, her features hardening along with her voice. "If my master doesn't choose me over her, I may kill her after all."

Dee blanched. "Galatea's alive?"

"Fear," the scarlet girl gulped. "I can smell it from here."

Dee advanced, face bleached and eyes blank. Yves blundered about but managed to sag against the apartment's front door. The scarlet girl bolted upright, fists squeezed against her checks. "Oh, Master," she began, "your fear. It's more incredible than I ever imagined—" but her babbling squeal ascended into a piercing scream as Dee reached out and tore off both her wings at the shoulder.

Her wings liquefied, thundering to the floor in a crimson downpour. Dee stepped close to the scarlet girl shrieking in the middle of the red tide. "Tell me where she is," he said.

"You're so scared!" rejoiced the scarlet girl.

Dee ripped the little wings out of her head. "Tell me where she is."

The scarlet girl's trembling limbs locked rigid. "You'll never push me away again!"

Dee cradled her face in his hands. "Tell me where she is or die."

The scarlet girl twittered and drooped in a post-coital haze. "No," she said, abyssal eyes glowing.

Dee's arms twitched, and in that split second of indecision the scarlet girl slipped from his grip and laid Dee out flat with a lightning-quick uppercut. The red fluid on the floor roiled around and rushed up her back. New pairs of wings unfurled. "No," she yawned, "I don't think so. I was ready to die for you, Master, but now I think I've found a better way to ensure you'll never push me away again."

She swayed over him. "You pushed her away, remember? And she let you go. That's why she gave up and let me take her so easily. She knew you pushed her away to make room for me. I'll be better than she ever was, Master, because I never give up. And I never let go. And you're crying, Master."

"I'm sorry, Galatea," Dee whispered.

The scarlet girl shook her head. "You still don't understand. But you will." She sauntered over to the living room window and broke the pane with an effortless flip of a wing. "I've got to go now, Master."

"No, tell me—"

"See? You've accepted it a little already." The scarlet girl leaped onto the windowsill. "You can't push me away. But there's so much work to be done, now that I know what you need me to do. I'm going to make everything perfect for us, Master."

"No."

Red wings extended into the pre-dawn damp. "I live to serve and please my master," the scarlet girl said, "whether my master likes it or not."

"No!"

The scarlet girl's wing claws bit into the wall high above her and she clambered out of sight.

"Dee," said Yves, testing his balance, "get up."

Dee sprawled on the floor, head in his hands. "Galatea, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Snap out of it and get up," Yves insisted, taking a few uncertain steps forward.

"But she's right: it's all my fault—"

"No, she's not." Yves leaned against the archway to the kitchenette. "You're coming down off a serious adrenaline rush and she took advantage of it to fuck with your head and escape. It's a dirty trick that I've used myself a few times."

"That explains the headache," Dee groaned.

"No, that's probably the bourbon. If I can stand, so can you. Now get your ass up!"

Dee stood, flinching at the pain pounding in his temples.

"Jesus, Dee," Yves said. "Have you been working out or something?"

"'Four day fuck-a-thon,' remember?" Dee shrugged in an outspread gesture that took in the entire room. "What the fuck do I do now, Yves?"

"We find some clothes—Oh, grow up," Yves sighed as Dee cupped his hands over his crotch and blushed. "Anyway, we find some clothes and some coffee, and then we find Galatea and burn that devil cookie freak."

"'We?'"

Yves hobbled into the kitchenette. "If you don't want to help me, I guess I'll understand."

Dee's smile was grim. "Of course I'll help, Y-Sensei." He listened to Yves fumble with the electric coffee maker but knew better than to interfere. "Coffee's in the cabinet above the microwave."

"Thanks," Yves said, his movements growing confident. "Have you really gone five days without sleep?"

"Only if being comatose doesn't count."

Steam percolated in the coffee maker. "I doubt it does," said Yves, rinsing out a couple of corporate-logo coffee mugs. "But I haven't pulled a real all-nighter since college, so these are both for me. In about ten hours I'm going to be hit with a massive migraine and become utterly useless, so after we get our shit together we're going to have to move fast."

Coffee started sizzling into the pot. "Move where?" Dee asked. "Miss Devil Cookie could be anywhere. Where do we start?"

Yves watched the level of coffee in the pot rise. "If you told me everything before, then we've only got two places to go."

Dee thought about it for a moment. "You're right. Let's start close to home. Listen," Dee added. "I think I've run out of clothes."

"Clean clothes?"

"Yeah." Dee shifted uncomfortably. "But I think I'm completely out of pants."

* * * *

"Ten years," grumbled Yves, pounding down the cement stairs.

"What?" Dee asked from a few steps in front of him.

"Ninety minute workouts, at least once a day, for ten years," Yves said, glaring at Dee's chiseled shoulders. "That's how long it took me to look good in these clothes."

"Really?" said Dee as he reached the door to the first floor. "I thought you were born bishi."

"And you fill out a muscle shirt in four damned days."

"Feeling petty, Yves?" Dee turned the door handle. "Is that why you gave me these stupid M.C. Hammer pants?" He pulled at the elastic of a pair of sweats resembling gun-metal gray pantaloons with his free hand.

"No, I'm feeling practical. You've been ruining an average of 2.5 articles of clothing an hour in the past few days, and I need to cleanse the Nineties from my wardrobe. Besides, you need a lot of room for Goojitsu."

Dee held the door ajar. "What?"

Yves shrugged, then winced and rubbed his shoulders. "Would you prefer 'goo fu?'"

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Your martial art," Yves said.

The door fell closed. "I repeat: what the fuck?"

"Come off it, Dee. When I said I'd never seen anyone move like you did, I meant it. And what you did to that cherry cupcake psycho…" Yves shuddered. "She may have felt like Jell-O to you, but to this mere mortal she was about three hundred pounds of wet cement."

"Yves, honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing or what's happening to me. You've always been good at this sort of thing; I've seen you guess the endings of movies like The Sixth Sense, Momento, and Seven from just watching the opening credits. Do you know what's going on?"

"Not yet," Yves said, joining Dee in the entryway to the first floor and pulling open the door. "But I'm working on it."

Dee peered down the empty hallway. "What can you tell me, then?"

"Well," Yves sighed, closing the door. "You've invented the world's first martial art designed not just for unarmed combat, but also for fighting when totally nude, with an entire school devoted to defense against hydrodynamic attacks. The cherry cupcake girl is insane, but she has standards and lines she is unwilling to cross. She makes contingency plans, however, and is prepared to compromise when desperate. And Bee's really dead."

Dee goggled. "How do you know all that?"

"His testicles are in a jar outside his apartment's front door."

Dee cracked the door open. "Good eye," he said, squinting. "I thought those were marbles."

"Have some respect for the dead, Dee. That's the part of himself Bee probably wanted to put in her mouth more than any other and it wound up being the only part of him that didn't end up in there. I guess nanomek really is programmed for irony."

"What are Bee's balls doing in the hallway?" Dee said.

"It's a message from that cherry devil cookie bitch—look, we need to come up with a good nickname for her," Yves said. "I don't like saying 'bitch' all the time, no matter how appropriate."

"Cherry Cupcake?" Dee suggested.

"Only if I get to call you 'Ellie Dee.'"

Dee blinked. "I don't even get that reference. But, whatever. Um, Betty Crocker?"

"Lawsuit waiting to happen," Yves said.

"Darth Cherry?"

"Please."

"Well," Dee said, "Devil Cookie has a familiar ring…Wait a minute. You're trying to distract me from something."

"It's working."

"Just tell me what message Bee's balls in a glass jar could possibly convey."

"I have no idea," Yves said. "Cherry Cupcake's crazy."

"'Crazy for me,'" Dee muttered in reverie.

"What? No, she's indiscriminately crazy. But the message, whatever it was, was meant for you."

"So?" Dee said, ire rising.

"So I don’t think Cherry Cupcake's there, but I also don't think you're going to like what's waiting for us in there, either,"

Dee startled and threw open the door. "You think Galatea's—"

"I don't know, Dee." Yves blocked the doorway. "But I need you to not think about Galatea for the moment. I don't want to belittle your feelings and I appreciate the gravity of your situation—"

"I know," Dee said.

"—but we need to think big-picture right now, and that means the most important question is—"

"I know."

"—where the Hell is the rest of the nanomek?" Yves finished, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"I don't know," Dee said. "But I can guess."

* * * *

The tin of SRU Thickener bounced around the metal mesh child seat of the shopping cart gamboling down the Baking Needs aisle. The burning red sunrise threw crazy shadows ahead of it. "Where's all the cherry Jell-O?" the pusher of the cart called out.

A sleepy reply came from a few aisles away. "Ma'am? We don't open until six o'clock, ma'am. The front door should have been locked."

"It was," said the customer, bobbing her head to peek into various rows of instant desserts and pie fillings. "I just slipped in." She adopted a breathy, pouting tone. "I hope you don't mind. It's only a few minutes before six. Could you help me with the cherry Jell-O? Please?"

"I'm sorry," said the sleepy voice, the squeak of sneakered feet approaching the Baking Needs aisle. "Some sicko came in last night and bought it all for who-knows-what."

"Oh, really?" the early customer drawled owlishly.

"Yah, really," the husky stock boy insisted, round the bend of the aisle. "We're all sold ow—wow-huh-how." He skidded to a halt, gawking.

Black Cherry's batwings stretched high and triangular like lateen sails, crimson blazing and black veins glistening as they drank in the dawn. Her fingers riffled through the uneven rows of gelatin boxes. "'Peach,'" she read, picking up one box. "Maybe. If I had some schnapps." She put the box back on the shelf. "Hm. 'Grape?' Probably a boozehound. 'Mixed Fruit?' What the heck is that? Oh, who am I kidding?" A wing flicked down and scooped every last box into the shopping basket.

"I'll make as many as it takes for Master," she said, plucking out the boxes of lime Jell-O from the pile in her basket and pitching them into the next row, "give him more, and more, and more until he finally realizes I'm the only one perfect for him. Or they drain him dry, I suppose, and then I'll just claim what's mine. After all," she told the stock boy, "a girl needs her minions."

"Uh. Huh?"

"Ah," Black Cherry said, ignoring him, and pulled a handful of devil's food instant pudding boxes from the shopping cart. "Not cherry, but these will do for a start. Too unoriginal, though. She'll need something more. Time to think outside the box." She watched inky black swirls spiral across her wings. "Of course," she murmured. "She'll be perfect. Well, almost perfect."

Black Cherry fixed the stock boy with her bottomless stare. "Do you sell paint?"

"Aisle three," the stock boy said, unblinking.

She took a step closer. "Do you sell black paint?"

"Aisle three, freezer-side left," the stock boy gulped, gooseflesh prickling his arms and neck.

She stepped closer still, her wings buffeting his hair. "Do you sell black latex paint?"

"Aisle three," the stock boy croaked, "freezer-side left, center shelf. Just a pint or two, though."

"More than I need, thank you. Say…" Black Cherry gave the stock boy's cheek a friendly tweak, raising a bruise. "Has anyone ever told you that you look good enough to eat?"

* * * *

"Do you really think meliae can make more meliae?" Yves wondered. "We're dealing with magic and dream-logic, here. There could be a rule against it."

"There's also a rule that nanomek never does what you expect," Dee said. "It's the most important rule, apparently, so maybe it applies to meliae too."

"I don't know what's worse," Yves said, scrutinizing the hallway again, "Cherry Cupcake planning to make more meliae or Cherry Cupcake making more meliae that don't turn out as planned."

"Jesus, I hadn't thought of that."

"I've run out of ideas, myself," Yves said. "We have to check out Bee's place eventually, anyway." He stepped through the doorway. "Let's get it over with."

They sidled down the hallway. "Who else lives down here?" Yves asked.

"Esteban. You know," Dee said into Yves blank stare, "good looking guy, always acts like he just broke up with his girlfriend, goes home with a new girl every other night? Not your scene, I guess. I doubt he's home."

"Is he Bee's next door neighbor?"

"No," Dee said. "That's Kay."

"Kay's back from Iraq?"

"Don't know, but don't worry," Dee whispered, "Kay sleeps like the dead, no amount of noise can wake him up—unless you're trying to be quiet or sneaking around, that is."

"Like we are now?"

"Shit," Dee said a normal volume. "Good point. Sorry."

Yves marched to the door with the jar sitting in front of it like something left out for the milkman. He nudged the jar aside with his foot, his eyes focused on the glass peephole directly in front of him. He rattled the knob. "Locked. Do your thing, Dee," he said, moving back, "and don't be sneaky."

Dee kicked out. The metal door refused to bend and Dee's right foot punched through it like an awl through leather until his leg pushed knee-deep. "Cheap door," Dee said, hopping on his left leg to keep his balance.

"That's what it's supposed to do, I think," Yves said, backing even further away.

"Okay, then," Dee grumbled. He reared up, shifting his full weight onto his trapped leg and butting the door with his head. The hinges groaned, the door caved in, and Dee toppled into the apartment.

"That would have woken the dead," Yves said after a long pause. "I don't think Kay's home."

"There're Styrofoam peanuts all over the place in here," Dee remarked.

"How does it smell?" asked Yves.

"The peanuts?" said Dee, lying atop the punctured metal door crammed into the apartment's tiny foyer. Paint scraped off the walls whenever he tried to move. "Yves, I need a little help here. I think I'm stuck."

Out in the hallway, Yves fell into a ready stance. "Try thinking for a second, Dee, and tell me if you smell anything."

"It is a little ripe in here, now that you mention it. Sickly sweet, like—Oh, shit." Dee bucked, bending the door at a ninety-degree angle, only trapping his right leg tighter. "You don't think Bee made two of them, do you?"

"Sickly sweet like what?"

Dee shuffled, making no progress. "Not like cookies, thank God. Garbage and air freshener. No, not air freshener…Galatea."

The door shred like tissue paper under his hands and Dee stumbled into the apartment's living room. A moment later Yves followed, picking his way through the sharp strips of shorn sheet metal. "This place is directly below yours, Dee," he said, "so that makes sense. Check out the ceiling. It's tie-dyed mint green."

Dee relaxed enough to take in his surroundings. "The fridge's wide open but the light's out and I don't hear the compressor running. I guess that's where the smell's coming from. No sewage-meliae to worry about, thank God."

"I was thinking more along the lines of other bits and pieces of Bee," Yves said, rummaging through the clutter of old mail on Bee's coffee table.

"Ew. Thanks, I'll keep that in mind." Dee rifled through the cushions of Bee's black leather couch. "We're looking for the nanomek, I take it?"

"Yeah, on the odd chance we've lucked out and Cherry Cupcake doesn't have it, we've got to find it and put it somewhere safe. Man, look at all these mail-order catalogues. Did Bee collect anime action figures or something?"

"Trust me; you don't want to know," Dee said, "I'll check out the kitchen."

Yves contemplated the ceiling. "It's not seeping down," he pondered aloud. "It's spreading across."

"What?" Dee said from the kitchenette.

"I'll be in the bedroom," said Yves.

The refrigerator door was propped open by a massive, metal mixing bowl. Dee rolled it aside and shut the door, ignoring wilting vegetables spotted with mold and a burst, soupy package of blackening ground beef. He hefted the bowl off the floor, testing its weight. Dee sniffed a hint of chocolate cherry cordial candy. "Speaking of magic and dream-logic," Dee called out, "you should see the bowl Bee made Cherry Cupcake in. It's a god-damned cauldron."

Dee caught a glimpse of the kitchen table and whistled. "Holy crap." The mixing bowl thudded on the stove. "That's a lot of Jell-O. Yves! There must be two dozen empty boxes of cherry Jell-O in here. All that collagen; no wonder she was so strong…Wait a minute."

Dee bent down and picked a lone, empty box of Devil's Food instant pudding from the floor. Its cardboard was crusted with a dull russet stain. Dee wished it were ketchup, beet juice, or even Cherry Cupcake cum, but he knew better. "Devil's food." He turned to the mixing bowl. "Witch's cauldron." There was more russet on its rim. "I bet he bled a little into the mix, too." He glanced out the bay window into the golden dawn. "All on a night of the New Moon. Bee, you idiot."

"Dee," came Yves' shaky voice from the bedroom. "You'd better get in here."

Dee crossed the living room and trod down the little hallway to the bedroom. Galatea's scent mixed with the earthy must of mildewed plaster. Yves stood in the bedroom doorway. "Don't freak out," he said, moving back. "Just look and tell me if you think there's anything we can do."

The bedroom ceiling was pitted with lime-stained fissures and craters. Strips of greenish drywall formed stalactites around a broken plywood support beam breaching the spongy stucco and blemished the walls. The catastrophic water damage barely registered. Dee's attention was transfixed by dozens of containers. Salad and soup bowls, aluminum pots and steel pans, glass beer mugs and plastic cups littered every flat surface in the room. "He was collecting her," Dee whispered. The Devil's Food box tumbled to the floor. "Her, uh, runoff."

"I know." Yves picked up a nearby Pyrex measuring cup and handed it over. A rind of pale green powder coated the mouth and walls of the glass and a thick, florescent green sludge glazed the bottom. "They're all pretty much like this, mostly evaporated. Do you think there's anything we can do? If Cherry Cupcake knew about this, she wouldn't have left anything here if she thought we could—"

"Maybe she didn't know everything," Dee said. He pressed a finger into the measuring cup. The sludge felt cold and lifeless, the fingerprint he left in it as unchanging as an astronaut's footprint on the Moon. "Maybe she didn't know what she never experienced."

"What are you thinking, Dee?" Yves asked.