Alright.
________
“Oh, nothing. Just--just food,” I said pathetically, feeling the idiocy seep out of my skin.
“You eat weapons?” asked the man, his appearance reminding me vaguely of person who wants everyone to think they’re homeless when they’re really the King of England.
“Not yet. But I might if I get hungry.”
His eyes were blue as the paint under my fingernails, and his face was creased with the rats he had been sleeping on. When I looked at him closer, however distasteful that was, I found that he was probably only a few years older than I.
“You going to get us out with your edible weapon?” He looked hungry, and I supposed he would eat me if he felt in the mood.
“Definitely, definitely. I just haven’t decided--”
“Give it to me and I’ll break the--who’s the girl?” he asked abruptly.
“She tried to save me.”
“Can she wake up?” he asked.
It seemed an incredibly odd question, so I hesitated. Could she wake up? Suddenly I was unsure. “Probably, I guess,” I said lamely, sure that my answer would have repercussion of a negative sort.
When he danced over to her and kicked her in the ribs, I witnessed the negative repercussions I had predicted. At first I imagined that there was some kind of spell on the jail that forced one person at a time into a catatonic sleep, but then I remembered that Danler was asleep, so I assumed I had been mistaken. I was also reassured that my conclusion was correct when the girl groaned in pain and rolled over, getting slowly to her feet.
“What--where--who the hell kicked me?” she said groggily, her lady-like respectability having got lost in her dreams.
“That was me. I thought you wouldn’t wake,” said the rat-man quickly, backing against the wall like he thought she would attack him.
“Could you have chosen a less violent manner of waking me first?” she asked, a little more alert and slowly realizing where she was. “I’m in a jail cell with a boy that I tried to save, right?”
“I thought I was a man,” I said hurriedly, unsure as to why I was hurried.
“Did I say that?”
The rat-man was watching us both avidly, his mouth twitching in a hungry way. Without speaking, he reached over and tapped me on the shoulder. I looked at him, taking a step further away.
“Are we going to leave? The gun’ll get us out, you know.”
“Gun? What gun?” The girl looked frightened, and I raised the gun above my head, trying to look courageous.
“This one.” Before I could remember that I didn’t want the rat-man to get the gun, he snatched it from my hand and raced to the other side of the cell.
“Now, listen to me, both of you,” he said slowly. His demeanor had changed, and he no longer looked like a crazy hobo. “I’m going to shoot the lock, and if it doesn’t break, like I hope it will, I’ll have to shoot Danler and whoever else comes running. If you don’t want to see someone’s head explode, kindly close your eyes and wait it out. Now, move away while I shoot the lock. I don’t exactly want the bullet to bounce off and catch one of you in the head.” He laughed a little uncertainly, and then stepped forward, making for the door.
I didn’t really like the idea of being the cause of multiple people’s death, but I didn’t really have a choice, so I followed the girl to the back of the cell and waited.
“What’s your name?” she suddenly asked.
“Why?” I was confused.
“So that if you die I’ll be able to write something--”
“Shut up. I’m Frankie.”
“I’m--” But the gun went off and her name vanished in the noise.
My ears rang for a moment, and when I opened my eyes the rat-man was standing outside of the cell with the gun at Danler’s heard.
“I’m going to shoot him. Run away, kids. I might follow, so careful.” We ran, covering our ears as they gun went off again, a bullet landing firmly in the half-awake drippy man and spilling his brains all over the crazy rat-man.
Outside it was raining, and I wondered how the little blue vandal had managed that; the clouds had looked so white and sweet. Perhaps he wasn’t as little as I.
“Frankie! Slow down!”
I glanced over my shoulder to find the girl lagging. I didn’t want to slow down, but I did, turning quickly into an alley way and racing to its end where I found a gate that told people not to go to a place they couldn’t possibly ever want to go.
The other side of the gate was what looked like an endless field of spiky, yellow grass, as tall as myself in some places. But in other places it was short and littered with rubber and metal experiments. Black dirt mixed with melted black rubber, and I thought of black blood. I wondered what color blood blue people have. And I also wondered where I was going. What would happen if I ran forever? I suppose I would eventually end up right back where I started. And that’s exactly where I wanted to go; back to my stupid room with my blue paint and my doubtlessly superficial big brother.
“We should go over there,” said the girl, taking my hand in hers.
“Why?”
“Well, because the police won’t want to follow us, of course.”
“Of course,” I echoed, not feeling particularly sure.
“I’m Alice, by the way,” she responded.
I wasn’t paying her the attention that I probably should have. The rain was making the blue paint drip from under my fingernails, and its cold tears were making the rubber metal even less welcoming.
“Hello, Alice,” I said, not looking at her.
“Will you boost me over?” she asked, looking at me inquisitively.
“You should probably go home.”
“Please,” she said.
“Fine.” I knelt down, letting her step on my shoulder, and she threw herself over, falling with a thump on the other side.
“Ouch,” she said, standing up and trying to brush the mud from her damp overalls. Right as I was pulling myself over the slippery gate, I caught sight of a “No trespassing” sign and I slipped, falling back onto the other side. “Frankie, look behind you,” said Alice slowly. I got painfully to my feet and glanced over.
“Where are we going?” shouted the rat-man, waving his smoking gun through the damp air. I started to climb with more resolve, and managed to fall on top of Alice right as he reached us.
“Are the police chasing you?” I asked, helping Alice up.
“No, no, I killed them all.”
“You couldn’t have killed all of them,” said Alice.
“I could.” And he shoved the gun into the back of his pants and climbed easily over the gate. “Where are we going?” he repeated. I felt extra small when he stood close to me, so I backed up.
I didn’t answer, somehow sure that I shouldn’t. Before he could shoot me for being rude, I heard sirens and saw a blue uniform that might have spotted us. I glanced over at Alice, and then we both threw ourselves into the tall, spiky grass, beginning to crawl towards the end that would eventually become the beginning again.
The fact that the rat-man was either crawling somewhere nearby, or ready to meet us wherever we ended up, didn’t make the sharp grass any less irritating when it poked me in the eye. The rain dripped obsessively down every part of me that it could, and I hoped I didn’t look as drippy as the drippy man who rat-man had killed. I also hoped that we wouldn’t accidentally run into the person who had put up the “No trespassing” sign, or the person with the blow torch that liked melting things into weird shapes. I tried not to wonder what I would look like if someone melted me into a weird shape.
My jacket was soaked through--I could feel it dragging me down--and I dearly wanted to sleep. I began to slip, and then the world got fuzzy and disappeared.
I felt the grass poking me, but I only saw little blue faeries racing around in my head, pulling on different parts of my brain to make me feel and see things that weren’t there. I suddenly thought I felt someone shoot me in the leg, and I began to cry desperately into my arms; then I felt my eyeballs being torn out of my head and the pain in my leg vanished to make room for new pain.
But then the nightmare slipped shakily away and the faeries were suddenly kind creatures, mending my dreams and making new, beautiful ones to replace the rusting, rotten ones. I could see a great expanse of blue, and another sensation spread through my body. I didn’t know what it was so I decided it was sugar and licked my fingers as they tasted so good.
I thought I heard my brothers voice and I glanced back into my head and found him grinning lazily from the ceiling. His mouth wasn’t moving, but I heard him ask me where I was or why I had left. I tried to tell him that I was coming back, but I felt a hand over my mouth and I could smell dead rats and smoke. When I struggled my brother vanished and I thought I had died.
“Frankie?” said a voice. “Frankie!”
I took a deep breath, preparing a string of curses for my eulogy.
But things made sense. “Whoops. Did I fall asleep?” Alice was sitting cross-legged next to me, and I had my face in my arms, my whole body damp and shivery.
“Oh yes, you fell asleep. In the middle of crawling you mumbled something about getting melted and then collapsed. I’ve been watching you for a while, and I thought you were dead, so I--”
“Have you seen the rat-man?” I asked, not really caring what she thought of my present mental state.
“No, but I think he’s nearby. We’ve been crawling for long enough. We must have gotten somewhere.”
“Stand up and tell me where we are.”
“That’s not polite at all,” she said, staring at the sky. “It stopped raining. I wonder if this grass will ever--Ouch!” she cried, as I grabbed the back of her overalls and pulled her to her feet. “That was rude,” she said. And of course it was also pointless because I had to stand up to make her stand up, and since the whole point had been to stay on the ground--it was stupid, in other words.
I ignored her, glancing around. I couldn’t see anything except the grass poking me in the eye. “Let’s run,” I said. Not waiting for her response, I sprinted into the grass. After a minute or so, the grass got short enough that we could see in front of us, so we stopped.
There was a dense, slightly melancholy-looking forest with dark, crisscrossing bars of metal tied tightly to the trunks of the first trees. I couldn’t tell if it was a joke or if someone was threatening someone else. It reminded me starkly of my own philosophical jokes, so I ignored it. When I glanced to the right I jumped, spotting the rat-man on his back next a huge pile of the rubber-metal things, talking to someone. I was immediately frightened, and definitely wanted to escape into the forest before he saw me.
“Alice, run,” I said, right as the man talking to the rat-man glanced over. Alice hesitated, and then shook her head, irritating me with her foolish bravery.
“Hey! You two! This is private property!”
The rat-man glanced up, and then jumped to his feet, running towards us. I backed up, shoving Alice behind me. “There you are!” he yelled. “I knew you would turn up again--just a matter of patience, that’s all.”
“What? What’s--” I really had no idea what question would be appropriate at the moment, but the rat-man interrupted, saving me the humiliation of asking something entirely preposterous.
“This is his property. He was just telling me all about it,” he said excitedly, waving to the man with his gun to come over. “Apparently he put up the ‘No trespassing’ sign up because no one ever bothered visiting. Luckily he learned that telling someone not to do something is the best way to ensure that they will.”
As the man got closer I realized he didn’t look much like a man at all. He looked more like an animal who had been shaved and taught to speak. His eyes were not wild like a man’s, they were entirely predictable and tame like even the most dangerous beast. He was wearing a great purple coat that had very little purple left, and a black beanie pulled over his forehead.
“These are my friends, Hess, they helped me escape prison.” He pointed at me with the gun and I flinched. “This one got the gun from the stupid guard, who I shot, and this one--” he pointed at Alice “--didn’t really do anything at all.” He laughed and Hess stared at his little more than blankly.
“You kids running, too? Kids are always running and they’re the only one’s who…” But he trailed off, licking his lips.
At first I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t a kid, and then I thought better of it. Perhaps being a kid would help my case. Or perhaps I was a kid.
“You guys going into the forest?” asked the rat-man.
“Should we?” I asked. “I mean, yeah. We are.” I stared for a moment, trying to find something helpful to say, but nothing came.
“You probably shouldn’t take the girl in there. You should leave her here with me. I’ll take care of her.” He sighed and gestured with the gun at Alice. Hess was already wandering off, and I had a feeling he had already forgotten we were here at all.
“What’s dangerous about the forest?” I asked, ignoring whatever he might have been implying about Alice.
“Oh, a few things. People like me, for instance. No policeman, though. They stay in the city.” He stared at me for a moment, and then his gaze shifted to Alice.
“What’s on the other side?”
“The other side of the forest? Oh, I don’t know if it has sides. I haven’t checked. But it might take you somewhere, depending on where you’re trying to get. But you two aren’t really trying to get anywhere, are you? You’re just trying to get away from something.”
Well, he was right that we were running away from something, but we were also very decidedly trying to get somewhere. Perhaps the problem was that the forest wouldn’t really know where we were going because were really trying to go backwards while going forwards at the same time. How do you go in one direction to get somewhere that’s behind you? If we keep running will we somehow end up going in a different circle that takes us around where we’re trying to get rather than back to where we were?
Huh. Perhaps I wasn’t really capable of doing anything about that strangeness that I couldn’t understand. Perhaps I should just wait until we’re free of the scary rat-man to decide what to do next.
“Thanks for your help, rat-man. I really, really appreciate it. But we have to go and we wish you the--”
“I think I’ll come, actually.”
“No thanks,” said Alice into my ear.
The rat-man made a superior face, pointing his gun at Alice. “Either I come or I shoot you in the face,” he said mildly, cocking the gun.
“Then you come!” I said brightly, waving the gun away. “Let’s get on with it, shall we!”
The rat-man looked perfectly satisfied, but didn’t put his gun away as he followed Alice and I towards the forest. The bars that were stretched back and forth across the trees had dripped rusty blood into the grass and killed the flowers. I ducked under the first one. quickly glancing over my shoulder to find that the rat-man was prodding Alice in the back, and that she was telling him to stop; so I remedied the situation by grabbing the strap of her overalls, and pulling her under. The rat-man quickly followed and we found ourselves in delightfully cramped wood.
“Do we go straight?” I asked, peering ahead as best as I could.
“I’m hungry,” said Alice.
“I’ll eat you,” said the rat-man, poking her again.
“That won’t help at all,” she answered, looking frustrated and not terrified like she should have.
“I guess that means we’ll go straight.” And we did.
