Again

Lieutenant Frank strolled up to the Duty Officer standing outside the interview room.  The man smiled as he came up which Frank thought was rude and he was half-forming a rebuke when the officer gestured through the window.  

“One for you,” he said quietly.  The lieutenant glanced in.  There was a girl of about nineteen sitting down inside with an untouched glass of water in front of her.  Her body was slumped forward onto the table, skinny arms wrapped in the thick red and grey stripes of her sweatshirt cradled her head as she idly played with strands of her hair.

Frank jerked his eyes back at the officer.

“Again?” he croaked, instantly upset that it made him seem weaker than he was. Damn, number eighty-three oh one.

“Yep,” replied the officer, reaching for the door handle to let him in.  “Same story.  She just happened to be there.”

Frank went into the room and heard the door clang shut behind him.  It took a few seconds before the girl’s pupils casually swung up towards him, held for a moment, then swung away again.  Except for the fiddling tips of her fingers the rest of her didn’t move.  

This girl was from his hometown and that made it tough.  Another country girl losing her way in the big city.  

Frank slunk over and dumped down into the chair opposite, thoughts of number eighty-three oh one swirling round his head.  He should have brought his own glass of water for his throat.

“So,” he rumbled.  “What happened?”

A few seconds later, the pupils swung up to his face…then swung away again.

Over in Rockaway Park, in a bar representing the leftovers of a 1920’s brownstone hemmed in by new builds on both sides and facing the drive down to Breezy Point, things were getting animated.  Animated enough to stir some worry into bartender Joe’s sluggish sense of calm.

The old guy didn’t cause any trouble, never had.  He just liked to talk   This was fine.  He’d direct it to you if he thought you were following but he never demanded an audience.  Today was different though; volume-wise certainly.  And he seemed to have started into the crazy-talk a lot earlier.  Joe leaned back against the fridges, heavily-muscled arms crossed and equidistant between the old guy and the only two other occupants.  He was wondering whether, in a neighbourly sort of way, he’d have to start diluting the old guy’s drinks.   

“Everything seems dull after that,” continued the ramble.  “Just dull.  There’s no sheen, no colour to anything.  You come back, and straight away you wonder why you wanted to come back.  What possessed you ta wish for such a thing?  When you had it all?”

Somebody, certainly, didn’t have it all, thought Joe; at least not upstairs.  It amazed him how he could tune out the rants on baseball and discrimination and all society’s other ills yet when the talk came back round to the ridiculous, the unimaginable, he drew your ear and you started following, trying to build pictures in your mind of what he was saying.

“And what a time they had!?” laughed the old man, beaming at the now golden cubes in his glass.  “Mystery!  Suspense! Intrigue!” he quaked.  “High Adventure!  And with the whackiest of companions.  Who would’ve thought such a group would do such things?  That they were even capable?”

All right, thought Joe, uncrossing his arms and bending down behind the bar to find the empty labelled bottles that were kept for times like this.  As he reached in for the Jack Daniels one, he cocked his head again for a moment, then nodded to himself.  Sparkling rivers, glittering roads and lush forests were one thing, but giants pretending to be pussycats was quite another.

He grabbed a small plastic funnel and the bottle of genuine whiskey and set them aside.  The old guy was getting low so he’d have to work quickly.  He stood quickly to get some water out of the mixer hose and found his ear pulled again.  The question was out before he knew what he was doing.

“You mean a robot?” he asked.  

They both stared at each other in surprise, the old guy damn shocked to find someone else in his head.  

“Yeah,” he answered slowly.  “Yes, I suppose that’s what you would call a heartless machine.  If you were being kind.”

The girl hadn’t answered yet.  Just kept playing on with a few strands of her hair.

As far as he knew this was par for the course these days; talking hadn’t been her thing for a while.

Frank looked down at the files in his lap; almost a dozen cases, including last night’s escapade, of vandalism, arson, property destruction, graffiti and general delinquency and she was tied to all of them.  She’d been present at all of them.

But she hadn’t done anything.

Hadn’t taken part, hadn’t incited, hadn’t offered a damn opinion.  Had just been a reclusive part of the group that had gone on to commit the felonies.  Most importantly, hadn’t tried to run away, why would she?  Also hadn’t given up anyone either; she didn’t know them.  And that was true; those that had squealed and those that had been sentenced both agreed on her non-involvement.  They’d only even met her that same night.  Sometimes, barely twenty minutes before going on a rampage.  She was innocent.  She was just present.

Frank knew though that after a while guilt by association became a more than tangible thing.  He scratched a leg, an image flashing in his mind of number eighty-three oh one.

It was a shame, he thought.  The Wrath of the Big City, he called it.  

He’d actually known this girl back then.  Known of her at least.  

Without the benefit of chemical solutions, the hair had been more frizzled and rusty-coloured, not the brown horsetail that yielded strands of gold under the interrogation room light.  

She’d been studious, dutiful and so pleasant and friendly you’d never believe she was an orphan.  Her aunt and Uncle had done a wonderful job.  Then when she was thirteen, she’d fallen into a coma for three days.  Living out on a farm and with a storm on, the doctor hadn’t been able to get out to her in that time.  By the time he did, she was up and about like nothing’d happened.  They’d kept a close eye on her at school for a while but she was fine after that.  Fit as a fiddle. 

He cleared his throat.  It went rougher than he imagined and he wanted to spit but was forced to swallow instead.

Were he of a methodical and habitual nature, a man could actually count the number of cigarettes he’d smoked in his life.  Give or take.

Lieutenant Frank had smoked twenty a day, no more and no less, every day, for eleven years.  Pencil and paper told him that was eighty thousand, three hundred cigarettes.  A number that tolled a bell through his heart.  Then he’d had one more…and quit.

Six years ‘clean’ as an addict would call it, and he was still haunted by that last one.  Number Eighty, Three, Oh, One.

He was a smoker.  He knew this in his bones.  It shouldn’t hurt this much by now.  It should be easy, natural even, something he could take for granted.  Not a daily grind akin to Sisyphus and his boulder.  It was love for Martha that kept him in the fight.  That and the vastness of that number; adding more to it seemed completely obscene.

“I met a wizard.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Frank started in his seat.  The girl was sitting upright, looking straight at him.  One of her eyes smiled.

“Not a real wizard,” she continued.  “More of a…mayor.  With an emerald chain of office.”

Diluting his drinks hadn’t really made any difference.  The old guy prattled on with just as much fervour and elation it seemed.  The topic rarely strayed to individuals when he was like this but when it did it always involved the same three or four.  

Queens, they were, ethereal creatures with hypnotic smiles and musical voices, but this time, oddly enough, he seemed to be talking about a little girl.  Joe was sure of it. 

“She changed us all,” continued the ramble.  “Each and every one of us.  Irreversibly.  That warmth and kindness; impossible for it not ta affect you.  The power of a good and innocent heart was more than any magic they could bare.

“And when she came back, she was fine.  Knew enough, level-headed enough to accept it for what it was and not talk about it too much.  She just got on with her life.  Perfect.”

The pause caused Joe to look up.  The ever-present brown mackintosh, dirty grey hair and moustache and seemingly singed eyebrows were immobile, staring into the remnants of his glass.

“Until her dog died,” muttered the old man, and swigged.

Joe was already moving towards him with the bottle.  The question of a refill was rhetorical on days like this.  Besides, with the strong warm winds blowing dark clouds furiously past outside, the heralded storm would keep most of the late afternoon and evening regulars away.  Might as well keep the folks who are here happy.

“That changed everything for her, you see,” said the old man placing his glass down in front of him and looking straight at Joe.  “He was the last link to the place and once he was gone, she felt sort of adrift, you know.”  

Joe stared back blankly, filling up the glass in silence before moving away again.  The old man looked down silently at his refilled glass.

“Then the nightmares began,” he said.

“I saw them, you know,” snapped the girl.  She was quivering now, face pale and pupils flickering with the recollection.  “My companions,” she continued.  She finally reached for the glass of water.  Holding it seemed to steady her hand and her voice.  Her eyes smiled again.  “Well, not them, but versions of them.”

Lt. Frank was still amazed she was being so suddenly verbose.  He was gauging for a point, an opening, from which to gently start steering her diatribe onto solid ground and then onto the facts of the latest misdeed; arson this time, more serious than all before.  He knew what her ‘accomplices’ would say – that she hadn’t been involved beside being an onlooker, but he was keen to see if there was some reason, some link as to why she was so often present and how she joined up with so many disparate groups.

At the moment though, it still wasn’t a conversation.  He had her usual role in this talk; just a bystander.

“Tin Man was like a suit of armour, but with pipe-thin limbs ending in these fearful huge gloves and boots.  He didn’t have a head but a helm now with a tiny chimney coming out the top with smoke billowing out.  He was powered; a heart-shaped space where his heart should be.  And he used an obese axe to chop the wood that kept him fed.”

She twirled the glass in place, somehow barely agitating the water within. “Lion stood upright, his golden fur only grew at his oversized feet and tail and his mane.  He didn’t have a face.  Just a porcelain white weeping mask. And a huge odd-shaped hole in the centre of his body.”   Her pupils found him for a moment.  “No guts, you see.”

The twinkle in her eye was gone in a flash and she seemed genuinely sad.

“And Scare…Scare was actually scary now.  Terrifying.  With a scarf over most of his face and just these cruel eyes sticking out from under that hat; her hat.  Why would he wear her hat!?”

Frank made a tiny gesture to indicate the glass.  The girl took his meaning, brought it up to her lips and drank.  She saved some for her lips and moistened them both before she started speaking again.

“And it happens so often, so now I think…is it just a dream?  Is it really?  Or is that how they are now?  Now that I’ve left, is that what they’ve become?  Did they not get what they wanted after all because I took all the magic with me?”

When his shift ended Lt. Frank had every intention of going straight home.  But number eighty, three oh one weighed heavily on him.  He could almost taste it.  Forget the almost, he could taste it.  The scent filled every airway in his skull and he thought he felt the head-rush sensation that he hadn’t felt since he’d tried his first cigarette as a teen back in Kansas.

Martha was waiting for him.  He should go home, but when the struggle was this hard, when the boulder was this heavy, he needed another vice to lighten the load.

When he slept, number eighty-three oh one had many new brothers.  Nothing like the girl’s dreams but at least in his he could smoke, and did.  In the middle of conversations, car-chases, picnics and shoot-outs; the dream-Frank puffed away without conscience.  It was wonderful and terrifying at the same time somehow.

He pulled up outside the bar just as it was starting to rain.  It came on strong so by the time he was inside, he had to shake off his coat a bit and sweep a hand through the brown mop on his head and fling the water aside.

He perched at the bar and held up a finger.

“Whiskey.  Neat,” he said.  The bartender nodded silently and got him a glass.  Frank watched him pour in anticipation, figuring on drowning number eighty three oh one.  Then felt himself an object of scrutiny.

He jerked his head to the right.  There, an old guy in a dirty brown mac was staring at him.

“Well?” asked the old guy.  Frank flicked a frown at the bartender, who remained a blank wall of indifference.  He was about to ignore the old man when he continued:

“Did you let her go?”

“Excuse me?”  said Frank.

“The girl!  Did you let her go!?” he repeated, hugely animated.  Frank slung another glance at the bartender, who for his part, now looked genuinely puzzled.

“Sorry, but I don’t know what y-”

“You did, didn’t ya?” interrupted the old man.  “And after all that she told you!  How could you!?  You could’ve sectioned her on that stuff alone.  Or tried to!  Something!”

Lt. Frank felt as though the ground wasn’t quite solid any longer.  He whipped a gaze around and found everything as he’d left it except he was now the centre of attention.  Two guys at the end of the bar now looking at him, the muscular bartender also staring at him in confusion.  He felt hot.  The old man’s words were making sense but they shouldn’t be.  It suddenly seemed like a really good time for number eighty three oh two.  He found himself answering with his thoughts still in a maelstrom.

“She hadn’t done anything.,” he croaked.

“Yet!” whined the old man.  “But she’s still got them!  And they still work!  You had to tell her she’s crazy.  She’s been waiting, for somebody, anybody, to tell her she’s crazy.  Then she can move on, forget about it.  Stop believing.  But now she still does!  And she’s crazy enough to try them again!”

Even with the dust rubbed off, they still didn’t sparkle like they used to.  Grey, definitely not silver.  And had her feet really not grown since she was thirteen?

She stood up in them and considered. How did it go again?  Heels three times.  So she did that.  Now what?

Now you wish, idiot, she told herself. 

But for what?

That was when she caught sight of herself in the mirror.  The bathroom door was open, and the light was still on in there.  The face in the mirror still had freckles though they’d been bleached into submission; the hair was still strawberry blond and the lips still full and red as her cheeks.  But it was a woman’s face, not a girl’s.  An adult.  And here she was believing in fairy tales.  Oh God!!

She kicked off the slippers in a flurry of pity and stormed into the bathroom proper and stared at herself.  What was she doing?  Not just now but with her life?  

The dreams terrified her from sleep.  So instead, she spent the nights traipsing around with drunks, delinquents and petty criminals; watching them commit mayhem and then standing by as the police arrived and inevitably arrested her.  They kept letting her go though.  Why wasn’t anyone doing anything  about her?  Why wasn’t anyone listening?

As she stared, a lone tear rolled down from the corner of an eye. 

Seeing it lit a fire of disgust and slung her head down and glared at the sink.  She felt like punching something, anything.  She considered the sink but she’d probably just injure her hand.  And she couldn’t afford to replace anything she actually damaged.

The fire sunk under blankets of depression and pity.  Dammit.

“I wish I was with Toto,” she whispered.

The house sprang apart from the force of the twister that tore through it an instant later.  It barrelled up high into the sky with thunderous force, all but drowning out the distant shrieking.

It carried her through the clouds and beyond them into still fading sunshine above.  

Tumbled her relentlessly over and over across a horizon of strata and then down.  Down through mist, and glimmer, and sparkle.

Through a glass ceiling and down onto a green floor with bits of green glass falling all around her.

When she came to terms with the fact that she was still alive, she saw a cloaked figure coming towards her.  It wore a tall black hat, like a witch’s hat.

She shrank back.  But when it came into view it was a man.  He was thin, tall and clad entirely in black.  With golden hair like tufts of straw sticking out from under his hat, at his collar and cuffs.  He bent down to her, onyx-black eyes fixing her with an amused stare. 

He stretched out a hand to help her up.  She looked at it.  It was a real hand.  No hay-fashioned claws like in her dreams.

“Scare..?” she whispered.  Now the man smiled.

“Goodness, Dor,” he said.  “Even the dog used the gates.”