Pizza Time

This was turning out to be a great day.

A great day!

Indeed.

Chapter Five

- Ripples -

It was a dark and stormy night.

Well, that's not entirely accurate. While it was dark, there wasn't a storm to be seen for miles. The temperature was freezing, and the weather report did say something about snow flurries tomorrow, but that was tomorrow. Right now, my sister was bleeding from gashes in her back, wrapped in a slivery foil space blanket, and moaning weakly as the drugs my parents gave her slowly coursed through her system. I cradled her tightly; trying to share some of the meager heat that the car's heater stingily gave out of the narrow vents set into the dash. The engine roared happily along, as cars zipped by, honking furiously as we passed. For once, I had absolutely no problem with Ekataren's driving, but my universe had curiously contracted to a space no larger than my sister's small, pathetically mewling body huddled in my arms.

"Sean, do you suppose she will be quite alright?" Ekataren said softly, trying not to disturb Liz even more than she had to.

"I don't know. I could only guess what they did to her. She might be catatonic when she cleans up."

"Do you think they... raped her?"

"I think that for someone to engrave her back like she was a clay tablet might just think that rapine is just a small social aberration."

"Egh." She grunted, her face scrunching up as if she bit into something rotten.

"My parents," I said delicately, "were not the models for sanity and stability before I left. I think they only became more unhinged with age. As vile as that sounds to me."

"Well, how co--shite, cop!" She barked, just as the flashing lights and the screeching wail of the siren announced its presence.

"How long until the hospital?"

"Three minutes."

"Can they overtake?" I asked suddenly. I knew how the police ended chases like this; they came close and fired an EMP burst into the car. The car shuts down, and the chase is over, but the range was small. The police car was a few hundred yards behind us, and accelerating had, but if it were the larger interceptor, instead of a cruiser, then that meager gap would close very quickly indeed.

Ekataren glanced back as she swerved around a big flatbed truck. "I think it is a cruiser, which means that this heap is only just barely faster than it is." She said with a professional air just as the deep roar of the engine suddenly acquired a more astringent tone as we shot past the left side a big SUV tooling along in the right lane.

"What do we tell the hospital people when we get there?"

"I think the truth is our best alternative." Ekataren said tightly as we zipped around cars much larger than the roadster. "We tell them that the dame was abused by her parents, and she has lost an unfortunate amount of blood. Do you know what her allergies are?"

"Allergies? Why would I know her allergies?"
"They are going to ask that question, and more."

"Shit."

"Bloody hell." Ekataren corrected me.

Three minutes later, on the dot, the nimble roadster came to a screeching, skidding stop in front of the glass paneled automated doors to the emergency room.

Awkwardly, I tugged feebly on the lever to open the car door as Liz shifted in my arms restlessly. Ekataren, as quick as a mongoose, slid across the hood and yanked my door open with a half-smile and a pigeon bow.

"What's going on here?" A nurse asked, already running out to see what was the commotion.

"Sean is carrying a woman with deep gashes on her back. The dame has been bleeding since we found her, thirty minutes ago." Ekataren said quickly, holding the door open for me.

"We don't know what to do, so we came here." I said, unable to get out of the car with Liz's moaning, slowly squirming body cradled fanatically close to my chest.

The nurse unwrapped the partial covering around Liz's head and professionally felt around with her gloved fingers.

"She's been drugged." I said holding back unexpected tears as the tension I didn't know I'd been holding suddenly released as the nurse's professional hands touched, and prodded Liz's squirming, incoherently moaning body.

As Liz was taken from my arms, and the nurses and a doctor started to babble in their profession's peculiar sub-dialect of English, I started to relax as my thoughts spun in a tight circle;she's going to be okay, she's going to be alright, everything is going to be fine--half hoping, half praying. The professional eyes of the doctor took in the wounds on her back as a nurse washed the area carefully. While her face was a mask of professionalism, I thought I could see a slight glimmer of humanity in the corner of her eyes. She had never seen anything like this before, I could tell. I had never seen this before, except in awful B-grade horror movies with expansive budgets that ranged into the low thousands. I sat by Liz as the doctor went to work, studiously looking at Liz's face and trying desperately to ignore the thick, redolent smell of blood that hang heavily on the air, that almost, but not entirely blotted out the sharp, persuasive odor of disinfectant. The acrid smell of ozone rose in clouds from the shiny medical instruments huddled in groups near the bed, and all within arm-reach of the medical personnel.

"Is she going to be okay?"

The doctor's hands kept moving as she kept a running litany of words that were all but noise to my ears, her tone calm and professional as her double gloved hands flashed machine like over Liz's back, moving with almost inhuman precision. "She's going to be fine. Who did this to her?"

"Our mother." I said simply. "Our crazy, deranged mother armed with a sharp knife, and a threadbare grip on sanity."

Bless the woman, her professionalism never wavered once, but my courage did. After Liz was admitted for observation, her float bed trundled up to the three hundredth floor and into a small room colored in neutral pastels and discreetly wallpapered with muted flowery designs, I sat in the barely comfortable chair looking out the window at the horizon stained faintly with the coming of dawn. I sighed sharply, trying to ignore the sharp tang of hospital-grade disinfectant that floated in the room like an invisible, sterile fog.

With the day over and just begun, I felt my brash courage slip away from my tenuous grasp and flee into the shadows slowly driven off by the coming sunrise. Left behind in and forgotten in its sudden flight was me. As my body sank deeper into the cushions, as my eyes grew heavy, as a thin sliver of the sun slid out from behind the city edge, driving the shadows deep into their dens, waiting to appear again, I saw, in an almost indescribable moment of clarity, myself, naked, surrounded by a black fog of my own cackling doubt in my own personal wasteland spotted with bitter, glassy pools of fear, and fiery gouts of adrenaline.

With a soft, honeyed voice, the fog lightly pointed out everything that could have gone wrong with what I had done, and everything that probably could go wrong in the future, because of what I have done. I argued, of course. Heatedly, I replied there was always going to be a way to screw up, it was impossible for there not to be any one thing one person could do that didn't have any chance of failure, no matter how impossible or remote the possibility is. It chuckled, and then neatly, with a deftness I envied deeply, sundered my argument, and swept the jagged pieces away with a verbal flourish that made me green with jealousy. There was an astringent sweetness in the voice as it smoothly examined my arguments and found them universally wanting, and its urbane chuckle made me shiver. I wished I could talk with such urbane silkiness and verbal adroitness, and most of all, accomplish it with an elegant effortlessness that impressed the hell out of me.

"Sir? Sir??" A voice said, as a hand gently shook me awake.

I came awake instantly as I inhaled harshly trying to clear the fog from my mind as my eyes checked the window. The sun was midway through the sky, and the sky still looked morning-clean despite the automatic polarization of the armored, triple paned smart glass.

"What time is it?" I asked as I rubbed my eyes fuzzily as my body stridently begged for more sleep.

"The time is--nine-oh-five a.m., sir."

I stopped rubbing my eyes; it only seemed to lull me back to sleep. I blinked fuzzily at the police droid, a dinged floating blue and white ball, roughly a meter wide, with three decals on it. The first was 'police' in large block letters on the front and back, then a decal of the golden shield of the local police department just below that, and, mysteriously, a black and yellow happy face between the wide-set forward facing cameras, "I'm to assume you're here to ask a few questions?" I said my voice gravelly from fatigue.

I blinked and tried to focus my eyes on the police droid. "That is correct, sir," it said as the hand retracted back into its spheroid body.

I shook my head, and yawned, "Do you need to read me my rights, or something?"

"No, sir. You may ask for a lawyer at any time, but this is just an initial interview to gather information on the sequence of events that led to your sister's arrival at this facility."

"May I get some caffeine before that?"

"Yes, sir. Be aware, sir, that protocol requires me to come with you."

"Okay." I grunted as I levered myself out of the chair. Liz slept peacefully in the bed, for once, as tubes and slender bundles of hair-thin wires ran from quietly whirring, indecipherable equipment, to attach somewhere on her pale, thin body gently tucked under the snowy white sheet. Nothing seemed amiss, and the whirring was the same pitch as it was when it was brought in, so I assumed everything was okay.

I walked down to the cantina a few floors down, followed by the droid at a precise, polite distance which would be slightly unnerving to me if I wasn't focusing so much on putting one foot in front of the other. Plugging my 'card into the drink machine, I scrolled though the surprisingly long list of caffeinated beverages for a few hazy minutes before selecting a ordinary, no frills cola, slightly higher ratio of syrup to water, extra caffeine, cold, extra large portion. A few seconds later a cheap plastic cup appeared filled with a viperously hissing, evilly bubbling black-as-midnight-on-a-cloudy-and-moonless-night- in-the-middle-of-nowhere liquid. Turning, I sipped the concoction, not really tasting it while absently noting the sugary aftertaste after each swallow.

"Is it okay to question here? I don't want to disturb my sister."

"Yes, sir. It is acceptable to conduct the interview here." It said, and I took a seat.

I took another sip, and said, "Well, we can start any time you want to."

"Very good, sir. Protocol requires me to inform you that I am recording this interview in the visual, infrared, ultraviolet of the visible spectrum, as well as the sonic, sub sonic, and ultrasonic of the audible spectrum. Do you still wish to proceed? Protocol requires a verbal statement of intentions before continuing."

"Yes, I do."

"Please state your full name, social security number, and birth date for the record." I did, then, "Please state, in your own words, your actions since December 25 of this year." I did, sipping the drink occasionally.

The drink kept me on the edge of collapse, the questions kept me on my toes. While the droid was programmed with a fairly advanced AI, its grasp of innuendo and slang was almost non-existent, forcing me to explain even further some things. While the droid was exactingly polite, and I was too tired to have any emotions, and I started to flag through the last quarter of the interview as my body traitorously tried to force me asleep. After the last question had been asked, the droid bobbed in a robotic bow, asked me to stay in the building until contacted by a police officer, and then thanked me politely before it departed, floating serenely towards the elevators. I watched it go, took another sip and relaxed.

"Sean! Sean!!" Ekataren called from far away.

"Huh?" I blurted, snapping my head up and looking around wildly as my eyes fought to clear themselves, and my brain struggled to process what I did see into something understandable. Ekataren was there, dressed in better fitting jeans and a sweater, as well as a uniformed police officer. The officer looked like she was in shape, displaying a muscle tone that I usually saw on professional athletes.

"Sean, the officer wants to talk to you."

"Why?" I asked guzzling the last of the flat soda, and running a hand through my short, oily hair, struggling to get my mind moving.

"I have a few follow up questions to ask you, sir."

"Ah, of course. May Miss Vorreminov stay?" I said as the combination of caffeine and a sudden shot of adrenaline woke me up quickly.

"That's fine." The officer said, and took the seat opposite to me as she pulled out a small PDA and glanced at the screen, presumably bringing up something before the first question rolled off her lips.

Underneath the table, Ekataren hand found mine, and our fingers intertwined. My hand felt like it was on fire as I reflexively tried to jerk away, but she held my hand firmly and smiled at me. Perfect teeth glinted from under perfect lips as her perfect hand held mine, I felt so... rough, unpolished next to her. My hand felt like unfired clay next to her almost angelic perfection. For a brief second, a moment in time that stretched to the edge of forever, I wondered that, perhaps... maybe... she liked me. It was a feeling I denied to myself for a long time.

Ekataren smiled at me like an angel, and I tried to smile back as the heat in my hand flowed towards my heart like a storm of smoke-wrought lightning. Experimentally, I tried to smile back, but it felt unfit, it wasn't a smile, it was an expression I used when I wanted to look as if I was smiling. She tilted her head as I stopped, and frowned, my eyes dropping to the table, and the hands underneath.

I had lived, if you can call it that, inwardly sneering at the mortals around me would found love, while I outwardly cheered them on. All the while, deep inside, in a place that I rarely see, in a pool so dark, so deep, as to render the color black into a pale shadow of this shade, I bitterly hoped that I would be as lucky as they were. Occasionally, in the deepest of darkest of nights, I would feel that pool pulse in time with my heart, reminding me, driving me mad like a grain of sand was lodged firmly in my mind's eye. Love was a delusion, I had told myself. I laughed at my co-workers as they fell into and out of relationships. I watched the aftermath with a smug arrogance, as I knew, deep in the blackest pools of my soul, that that would never happen to me.

But it was happening to me now, here, with her. My heart was on the cusp of being consumed by the onrushing storm, I stopped trying to smile, and just smiled. It was a small one, lopsided and rusty from disuse, but was full of a shy kind of promise.

An ugly, paranoid ogre-ish part of me bellowed in warning, flayed by sorrowful memories, argued with me. Not as eloquently as other parts would, perhaps, but what it lacked in locution, it more than made up with as it spoke with a kind of fanatical zealous fervor I remember only hearing once before, from a small, scared, angry, lonely, sad little child who walked out on his parents before he killed them both.She is lying. She only wants to hurt you. Like all the others. Do not feel for this... human. She will surely sunder you at the weakest point in your armor. Do not be weak; be strong. Be as strong as stone, able to wear, but still remain. Soon other voices joined in, giving me pause as I stumbled, slowly being consumed in dainty bite-sized pieces by my own self-doubt.

My smile slipped slightly, as I fought ferally against the voices, throwing old arguments, and old feelings back at my teeth. How stupid was I to think this? And how much stupider was I to believe it?! After enough sorrow to drown a world, I turned a corner, and kept walking. Ekataren's smile brightened to an almost brilliant radiance, and I felt my face heat as I blushed in response. Indeed, my eyes wanted to turn away, and gaze at something less painfully beautiful, but I felt the inner voices cower in terror from her perfect smile. Instead I steeled myself, and kept looking at her, gazing deep into her eyes--and for a moment, I almost felt myself pouring into her everything that I was, and everything that I would become in a watery headlong rush into a large--the officer tapped the table politely, jerking my attention back to the interview to come.

As I refocused on the police officer, Ekataren squeezed my hand warmly, confidently, sending an electric spark shooting down my veins, and straight into my heart, to explode there into the most indescribable, unbridled, almost inhuman joy. I thought I would surely float free of the cheap memory-plastic chair, and hang gracelessly in the air, like a balloon tethered to the ground my Ekataren and her wonderful, warm, perfect hand, all the while cheerfully sneering at the pathetic attempts of Newton to bring me back down to Earth. Is this love? I thought to myself, I hope it is, 'cause I don't think I could stand much more joy. I felt so... good that I almost expected to see my skin to fluoresce, or see errant tendrils of energy arc from my arms and hands and scorch the plastic of the table. It was new, and exciting, and oh so wonderful

The interview lasted for another couple of hours, probing deeply into the events of the past few days, with a few questions that obliquely asked about my past. Taking a deep breath and a sip from a new cola, I launched into an abbreviated history of myself. After finishing with, "... and then the car skidded to a stop in front of the emergency ward, and here I am." The police officer thanked me, and I casually asked if I could go home and get a bath, at least. The officer handed me her card, and told me to call her once I was home, in case they needed to contact me again.

In a dim, professionally paranoid part of my brain, I wondered if I was considered a suspect. Or, perhaps there was a question if I should be charged with something. Either way, I didn't actually care. Maybe I was too tired. Perhaps it was inexperience and naïveté talking, but I think it was a crusty old man within, who was tired of fearing whatmight happen, and was standing his ground, no matter what came. Bravery came in many forms, I knew, but stopping because you were getting tired of running seemed like the oddest sort of bravery to me.

As I drained the last of the soda, I contemplated the physics of standing up as well as the logistics of getting home without a ride. With a smile, Ekataren tugged me to my feet and graciously offered to drive me to her place, which was far closer to the hospital than my apartment. I thanked her absently and allowed myself to be led to her freshly cleaned car. Slumping in the seat as she drove, I seemed helpless to stop the slow settling of an oppressive silence. I knew that I should say something, but everything I thought to say seemed hollow, and insultingly fatuous, or so blithely foolish and wholly half-hearted as to surely raise her ire. Not a mean trick when half-asleep, and so far past emotionally drained I think, emotionally speaking, I was making that empty-cup slurping noise you make with a straw.

After we pulled up to a modest suburban townhouse in a picturesque suburban neighborhood, my memory of what happened became amazingly blurred. I remember grabbing a quick shower, dressing in somewhat ill fitting clothing, and falling on something soft, and then nothing at all as I eagerly sank deep into a vast, inky black quagmire of sleep, only to emerge face first into something soft and sweet smelling. Which surprised me,nothing I own smells sweet. Clean, yes, sweet, no.