Cliff

Eugenie decided to take the week off work. She thought that perhaps she would actually quit her job. Her heart was aching. For the first time in a year, she thought that what lied ahead was truly insurmountable. She slid under the covers of her bed with her cat on the side, stroking him with eyes looking into the void. She opened her bottle of water with her other hand and forgot to drink from it. The clock went from nine o’clock to eleven and Terence changed position five times. Five times she interrupted her stroking and resumed it without thinking, without blinking.

She thought about her caravan, the only inheritance that was left to her by her parents. Why wouldn’t she just live in it and travel around, find substitute teaching vacancies where she went? Why would she continue this life that didn’t make any sense? Her index finger was itchy on the right hand, which was an indication of a lot of unshed tears, but she didn’t feel able to cry. She was frozen, her face was imprisoned in a block of ice, and the air inside her throat was cold, raspy, quivering.

She visioned the events of the afternoon on her mind’s screen. She and Barry jogging in the park, and suddenly, the sky turning black. All the phones in everyone’s pockets had started to ring with the usual alert for lockdown. Her heart had skipped a beat when she had looked at the details from the emergency message and discovered that there was an added image, “BARRY” she raised the phone in front of him, “Your team!”

He couldn’t believe it, and his eyes had kept going from the cell phone to the flying saucer above them as it passed and released the Autumn sun, back to the screen and then to Eugenie’s face. Something heavy had swollen inside Eugenie’s rib cage. She had always been preparing for the moment where his mutant entourage would make a return into the world but, at the same time, she had seen that all the preparation in the universe would not be sufficient. A hundred or zero percent, it was the same.

“They’ve been called to intervene!” Barry had shouted, then lowered his voice, “it looks like—” He glanced at the phone again.

“They seem to be on the spaceship thing” she had forced a cheerful tone. She had thought: how weird is time. How weird is a year’s difference. An earthly rotation around the sun earlier, she’d had given anything for those superheroes to be around and take the Barry burden off her hands and, presently, she meant to jealously hide him from those people. Those people who had let him get hurt by a bunch of crazy extraterrestrial robots and abandoned him to his fate.

Barry had kept shaking his head, perplexed, “I have… I have—”

“You have to go!”

“There is an attack” he sounded like he was justifying, asking permission. There might have been something he sensed about the brutality of this new episode, “I should, I should—” as a reflex, his hand had brushed against his abdomen, scratched it through his jumper anxiously, “I’m rusty, I don’t know if—”

Prolonged proximity had rendered all the subtle twitches of his face so familiar to Eugenie, she could tell he was giving her a way to protest his plan, “noo, nonsense” she had said, rubbing the sides of his arms encouragingly, “go home and get your suit!”

“My suit” he hesitated, took a deep breath, “you’re right, my suit…” He had read the emergency message a tenth time, frowning, munching something invisible inside his mouth.

“Barry, you have to GO!”

“I have to go” he had repeated pensively, giving her back the little phone. The same one that he had confiscated a year before, when she had wished to call for help to aid his situation. Time. Dimensions. Hearts. Two hearts in one home. Standing in front of him with her hands on his shoulders, she had swallowed hard, smiled bright, so she could fight the emotion. It was Barry’s job, there was nothing she could do about it, it was what he loved to do, what he meant to do and he would have done uninterrupted if he had not been gunned down and forced into hiding. She was very impressed by him. “What the fuck are you crying?”

“Shut up Barry, I’m proud of you, that’s all” she had shaken her head to decrease the drama, “I’m humbled by you, shut he fuck up” she had shoved her hands inside her large pockets, “go on and” she wasn’t sure what to recommend, “be safe and uh, all those things like, be super safe Barry, I will not be a nurse again, you hear me?”

He had smiled back at her like a puppy, squinting under the sun, “I…” he had looked up at the sky, unhurried. She remembered that he had all the time in the world since he could bolt through it. “I…” he had looked down at the ground, “I will go and uh… I will be back later, to tell you all the gossip, okay?”

Eugenie’s throat was so tight that the air was barely going through it, “you know where to find me”

“I will come through the door”

“That’s good”

Barry had exhaled sharply and turned around, taken two steps, his hands making fists and releasing their fingers in turn, then he had stopped for a nanosecond and spun back to face her, an expression of fright and resolution on his traits. He had lifted her chin softly and landed his lips on hers. He had kissed her like in the movies for a good five seconds and she had felt his legs start trembling, become aware that her own hands had dissolved inside her pockets. She had closed her eyes and let her heart explode inside her chest.

He had finally broken the embrace, took a step back, “oh shit” he had said, smiling sheepishly, “oh shit” he had chuckled, tripped on his feet and landed on his butt on the grass, quickly bouncing back up and, this time, after one last glance, he had taken off at supersonic speed.

“Madame, you have to LOCKDOWN”! a police officer had shouted at her as she was strolling back to her building, and she had noticed only then the crowd of uniforms swarming through the streets and waving at everyone to close shops and confine to safety. The boulevard was flashing with red and blue in the descending evening, and the air was pure, fresh, smelling of leaves. She had wondered why the bottom half of her face was hurting so much and she had brought her fingers to her mouth, realized she was smiling. She had forced a serious expression that she sent back in a nod to the policeman and picked up speed. She couldn’t remember anything of the trip back home.

The news on her laptop had informed her that the hostilities had brought the invaders back to the threshold of their artificial lake breech, and that the team of vigilantes of the city was progressing towards shoving them back into the hole in the crust. There was a picture of Hobbes grumpily making a V with his fingers for a photographer, but no images of the other members of his group. She felt no sincere curiosity about the state of the world’s well-being under the menace of the droids. According to Barry, they had always come and gone, attempted to claim territories and been chased away by the Team.

She had started to wonder about Barry. She had wondered about a lot of things, mostly, if he was content. If he was happy. She had closed the little laptop on her dining table and at that moment, the silence and the emptiness of her flat had startled her. More like, punched her in the face. She had confirmed the absence of Barry within her walls, attested that he wasn’t hiding in any corners of it. Lightheaded, she sat down and stared blankly at the walls where the little nails that had held her pictures frames were still planted. He had ejected them from their spots back when he had bolted inside the flat.

Until she realized that she was wearing her pajamas and she had slid under her thick bed comforter with her opened bottle of water and her sleepy cat. She couldn’t tell if she had brushed her hair or her teeth, she guessed she must have, since she could taste some mint in her mouth, but she couldn’t remember exactly and she couldn’t say what the color of her walls was. She could only remember the nails and the lighter squares and rectangles where the pictures had hung before.

“Oh shit” she whispered back to Barry in the darkness. He wasn’t here anymore. Now was the moment where she needed to be scolding herself, to shake herself out of that sad bullshit and that feeling of devastation, to start asking things such as what did you think would happen you crazy Venus flytrap bitch but the thought was exhausting enough. She thought it possible that she had entered a new state of sideration, triggered by another violent event in her days. No matter how much she had prepared herself for that day, it felt like Barry had crashed into her life and then been ripped from it, that everything was as rushed and against nature as the very bolt that inhabited him. Eugenie thought about crying, like she had felt earlier, when the tears had bubbled and boiled at her lower lash line, and her ears had grown hot, but she couldn’t find the muscle memory for it. She was petrified.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Therefore, she spent all those hours in the black of her bedroom until the day almost became tomorrow, and she reorganized her life. It was too unrealistic to try to process what she felt about the abruptness of change at the moment, it was impossible, so she set out to embrace the change, to surf on its wave like it was a roll of water, a push of freedom. One moment she was seeing the light, before the darkness took her again, but she saw that, somewhere, that was probably what the universe was telling her to do, what Barry had been sent to her for. She had submitted her week absence email to her school without even mentioning a backup plan for her cover. Deep inside she knew she could never go back there. She scanned and scanned her gut for fright, but didn’t find a trace of it.

Two hours after midnight, some quick footsteps in the building’s staircase extracted her from her stupor; such a sound was quite unusual for a Sunday. She lent a distracted ear to it until the footsteps stopped at her door and then, the shuffle of some keys made her jump on her butt. Eugenie pounced out of bed and felt the cold floor under her bare feet. She had left her own keys inside the lock, as she did every day as an extra safety measure, so the person on the other side was unable to disengage the latch. Barry? She almost asked, thinking that he was the only other owner of keys to her home. Don’t think about Barry, it’s not Barry, it cannot be Barry.

Oh great, then it’s a serial killer, she sneered inside. “Who’s there?” she demanded with authority in her voice.

“Eugenie, Ms White!” she heard muffled through the thickness of the wood, “it’s me!”

Eugenie, she thought. She opened the door and Barry was there. Entirely suited as the Bolt including the head part, which was covering the top of his face. She wondered now how she never matched pictures of the Bolt from the news before with Barry’s traits. Because you didn’t give a shit. The voice was definitely back. Good? Bad?

“Barry!” she exclaimed, astonished, “you are using your key!”

He was hunched timidly and struggling to fish out the key from the lock, slumped forward on top of it and an embarrassed smile on his face, “yes I am trying!” finally, he pulled the little stick of metal out with ampleness.

“Shhh” Eugenie placed her finger on her mouth, gestured to him to enter quickly, “it’s super late Barry” But she felt her jaw sore again, knew that she was smiling too. Stop smiling. Stop smiling and acting like a teenager.

Shut the fuck up, she closed the door behind him, held herself against it as he walked inside the corridor, let me live my life. And who the fuck are you? Who the fuck are YOU? “Are you sleeping?” Barry asked, switching the light on.

She granted herself half a second to have a look at him. She remembered very well shredding his original suit into some little pieces with her scissors and offering it to the trash when he had arrived at her apartment. Now, he had reconstructed it from scratch over the period of the passed year, patiently, needle after needle, thread after thread, welding the heat plates to the limbs. He had added the gliding underarm parts. It looked even better than the first one, gifted by Hobbes. Eugenie deplored that the crude light of the hallway was on, as she felt her cheeks redden. She was indeed fan-girling a little bit once more. “Yes Barry” she mocked him, “I’m sleeping, this is all a dream”

He rubbed his nose and chuckled, “I’m sorry I… I meant to ask you if you were sleeping”

“Yeah. No, I mean I was not sleeping”

“But it’s Sunday”

“I took the day off tomorrow”

“Why” he asked. The temperature control pads of his suit shone orangey under the light following the subtle rolls of his shoulders. His shoulders were really beautiful, graceful, and he had beautiful elbows, a poised back, he asked you a question, the patterns of the bolt conducing energy wires around him showed off his height, the strength of his arms and legs, answer the question, “you’re okay Ms White?”

“Yes!” she blurted out, snapped out of it, “I just thought I needed a bit of cocooning. Oh my god Barry your suit looks great!”

He looked down at himself with fake modesty, as he probably agreed, “you like it?”

“Iiyeah” she absent-mindedly dusted off his chest, “a bit dirty now, but—”

“’Cause of action”

“It’s truly awesome”

“You know I glided from the top of the IndyStar building, it was bananas. Hobbes couldn’t believe his eyes”

“I’m sure. You did so well”

“Arachnovitch looked so jealous, oh, I forgot” he giggled, took off his mask, under which his hair was a mess, “now do you recognize me?” Eugenie scoffed and nodded at him. “You did well” he said. She produced another nod, a thank you version of the previous one. They stood for some seconds locking eyes in the entrance corridor without speaking, taking the time to appreciate the victories that they had crafted as an improbable team. She had saved his life, a year before, and he had rebuilt himself. “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

She smiled brighter, “I’m thinking we both did well”

“Yeah” he looked down at his feet trying to break their eyelock, “plus, I like to enter through the door. It’s more fun than I thought”

“Did you come here to tell me how it went with your team?” she retrieved her bubbly disengaged self, rubbing her hands avidly such as a teacher would do before a student’s presentation.

“Ah yes, well, I was a little stiff, you know, and my stomach still hurts when I brake hard but other than that, it was pretty much like riding a fucking bike”

“But… your team? What did they say?”

“Ah yes, well, a lot. Hobbes, Marlene, Robortor, they were losing their shit. Maybe I’ll tell you all the details tomorrow. I’m so tired right now, but tomorrow—”

She cocked her head, “tomorrow?”

“I mean today, we are already Monday I guess. But I need some sleep first I think” Without further fuss, he started walking backwards into the corridor, into the apartment, “man, today was too much! I didn’t expect that to g—”

“Some sleep?”

He stopped and faced her again, danced clumsily on the thick soles of his boots, “hm? Sleep like, you know, what people do when they close their eyes, at night”

“You came here to sleep?”

“Sounds like you suddenly went from a full-time sleep lover to a hardcore sleep-hater, wait—” Barry opened his mouth, hesitated “well… did you can cancel my Existing-Person-of-the-House membership?” He squinted at her “wait! You thought I had moved out, didn’t you!” He stared at her, incredulous “Jesus Christ, I’ve been gone like five hours, and you’ve already crossed me out of here!”

“No no!” she lied and showed him her hands in appeasement, “I don’t know what I thought i—” There were some days I thought you would stay here forever, with me, she heard herself inside her skull, there were some other seconds when I prayed that you would never leave, “we never talked about it” she closed her eyes and reopened them, “I don’t know where my manners are Barry”

“Can I sleep here tonight?” he moved nearer to her and planted his eyes into hers, this time with reserve. So it was clear now. Barry had resumed his former vigilante life and, after that, he had just come home. She recognized him very well indeed.

“Yes of course! Do you want a little snack, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?” All of a sudden, the memory of that kissing episode from the park popped inside her brain and the air became scarce in her lungs. Oh no, she thought helplessly, oh shit, her limbs turned to stone, and her head was spinning, she grabbed the door handle to keep herself still. Why hadn’t she pushed him back or made a sound to discourage him to indicate disagreement? Because she didn’t disagree, that was plain to observe, but why hadn’t she at least pretended to oppose this course of action? She had just stood there, not even slipping her hands out of her pockets, and she had closed her eyes. Total consent. She couldn’t breathe and her vision became blurry.

After blinking several times to recover her sight, her eyes landed on Barry, observing at her strangely. “You’re sure you’re alright?” he asked again. He was also strangely close, like, close enough for her to be able to count the three buttons of his collar.

Say YES! At least save yourself now! Say yes! Get your shit together! Damage control! “No” she inhaled deeply, “I never stay up that late, I’m thinking I’m not entirely awake”

“So you are sleeping” he said, “and this is all a dream” This was what she had said to him on the day of his arrival when he was sitting in the middle of the rubble that had been her former bookshelves, it is a dream, it is not real, it is a nightmare. Was it? Was it a dream?

She could see clearly now, the color of her walls, and they were beige mixed with salmon stripes, and they were dancing, swaying. Some heat clashing with the colder season outside was bursting bubbles through the wallpaper.

She was recalling everything; she had indeed brushed her teeth, combed her hair, she had absurdly checked her Facebook before closing her laptop and, before before that, she had walked back from the park to her building, her fingers lingering on her lips, a smile there, mixed with some thin tears, the sob lodged inside her throat and trying to claw its way out with fingers made of fire, the feeling that the world was being erased under her feet and she was losing touch with reality. And before that, she had remained standing in the park between the trees and admired their brown hue, dark brown, light brown, regular brown, and she had watched all the people rush out of the premises, wondered how cool it was that none of them had been aware that the Bolt had been hanging out among them a few minutes earlier. Hanging out and kissing her.

And even before that, all the many times she had thought about grabbing his face and eating his mouth, or softly brushing it with hers, a mouth caress, the lightest touch. When he irrupted behind her while she was doing the dishes, when he changed a light bulb, when he fixed her chair, when he assembled her new table, when he took out the trash, when they were ordering some takeout online and browsing some Chinese food on the tablet above the iridescent light of the screen.

When they were sitting next to each other on the sofa, when they talked with their faces very close to each other, when he said goodnight to her before bed with a little crooked smile, when he said good morning to her, when he was getting out of the bathroom half naked asking her to locate his socks, when she was silently watching him patch together his Bolt suit from the chair opposite him, faking being absorbed by some newspaper.

When they had had their fight, when they were arguing. Those were really tantalizing moments especially. Barry was very attractive when he was angry. “A dream” she repeated feebly, “like before, in the park, it was a dream too?”

Barry smiled but this time, it was his cowboy smile. He had upgraded again. He was so close that she could smell the city on his suit and in his hair, the fumes from the smog, the damp night, the chemicals, some faint scent of grass, “if you want it to be a dream, it can be a dream” he leaned forward, his eyes buried deep under his eyebrows, darkness stirred into light, “if you want”

Get him a glass of water, give him some Oreos, trip and fall, cough, DO something! She felt the back of her head knock against the door frame, “yes” she said, don’t close your eyes, RUN and not only did she close her eyes, but she advanced her feet to their pointe and lifted herself up to kiss him. It was all a dream.