June 1964
2:15am
Underground parking lot
“What. The fuck. Is going. On.”
Charles pointed at the pile of bodies sprawling on the ground. Trembling, he yelled at the woman noisily drinking a strawberry milkshake in front of him.
“Who the hell are they? No wait! Don’t tell me. I don’t wanna know. The less I know, the less I’ll say when the police come to get me.”
“You’re overreacting. They’re not dead.”
“Yet! They’re not dead YET!” He was freaking out.
“Nah, they aren’t going to die. Bad children ought to be punished, not killed.” The black woman burped.
“What should I do? Oh my god! Am I going to jail?” Charles paced around in a frenzy.
“Nah. They’re mafia, the police won’t say a thing. Relax.”
“They are what? There are mafias in town? Wait, no, don’t tell me!” The baby-faced teen plugged his ears. He wanted to cry. He shouldn’t have listened to his father and followed this psycho.
“As a matter of fact, I can’t see you. I can’t hear you either. I’m not even here, how could I have seen anything? None of my business. Nothing to do with me. I’m going back home. Bye! I’ll steal a couple of beers from Pops and pass out so I won’t wake up when someone breaks into my house to slaughter me into pieces tonight.”
“What a drama queen! Next time, I won’t call you.”
“Yeah. Brilliant idea! Next time, don’t call me, call– What next time!? There shouldn’t be a next time!” He howled.
“Alright, alright,” she waved her hand, “can you drop me by Eric’s?” She threw her empty cup on someone’s head, sending them back to nothingness.
“Why do you need the Doc at 2am?” He glared at her.
“I got shot. My fingers can’t reach the bullets,” She pouted pitifully. “It’s itchy.”
“Bullets?! How many? Freaking hell! I’m gonna die, ain’t I? I’m gonna die! I’m too young for that and now people will come and kill me for sure! Aaagh, why me? I just had my first date tonight! We watched the moon landing and it was so nice. Now, I don’t even know if I’ll be alive long enough to have a second date! Hell, I don’t even know if I can make it past summer!” Charles wailed.
“You’re overreacting! Come on, I’m bleeding rivers over here. Oh, can you stop to get me burgers on the way? I’m starving.”
“Fucking hell, I don’t even have my driver’s license yet!”
***
May 1996
4pm
Apartment Downtown, East River
“Ah! Did you trash your place again?”
A scream shook the apartment filled with trash, shattered glass, broken walls and people.
“Get out!” A voice emerged through a pile of blankets on the sofa.
“What’s that smell? Did you die in there?”
Charles trod with difficulties through the chaos, waving here and there and putting things aside. He opened the windows and let fresh air and sunlight into the dark place.
“Fuck off!”
Trash bags were filled, and a vacuum purred in the background.
“When was the last time you ate?” Charles tried to take away the covers the woman was hiding under.
“Stop it! Do you wanna die?” She resisted.
“When did you last shower? You stink!”
“Go away! It’s none of your business!”
“As a matter of facts, it is. Why are you throwing a tantrum!” The middle-aged man complained, giving up the prospect of washing the sheets and their owner for now.
“You haven’t stepped outside for months. It’s almost summer and you’re still hibernating. By the way, do you know that the cable company sent someone over for a welfare check? He asked me if everything was alright. Apparently, someone had spent fourteen hours a day watching documentaries on penguins on repeat for five days in a row. Even my toddler can’t stay interested that long about PENGUINS!” Charles grumbled.
“I don’t care!”
“I care! I saw the bill. A grand total of one hundred and fifty-seven hours on prairie dogs. One hundred and forty-eight hours on tropical fish. Three hundred fifty-two on arctic animals. Two hundred sixty-seven on ducks and three hundred twenty-two on cactuses! Fucking cactuses! Who the fuck has this much time to make documentaries on the life of cactuses?”
The more he said, the angrier he got. “And don’t get me started on all those VHSs you rented!”
“It’s cacti. The plural of cactus is cacti.”
“I don’t care! Stop watching TV! Go outside. Breathe some air. Destroy some ferns. Sleep around. I don’t care as long as you get the hell out of this room. My god, you’re worse than a teenager.”
“I don’t wanna see people.” She grumbled.
“And people don’t want to see you, either. That’s life! We’re always doing things we don’t want all the time. We hate others for it, and we hate ourselves even more. But that’s the way the world works. Get over it and get out!”
Charles kicked a fuss. “If you can’t enjoy life, fake it, like the rest of us. Buy some friends, travel the cosmos, be a vigilante again, I don’t know! Do something. OUTSIDE!”
***
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September 2016
10:45 PM
In front of a Police Station
“How are you doing, Charles?”
A forty-something man in full police regalia exited the doors of the precinct and saluted the old man.
“Sam.”
Charles shook his hand with a good grip. “Still alive. You’re finally chief of police. Damn, time flies by so fast. I still remember your first day in town. The look on your face when you realized how weird this town was... I still laugh when I think about it.”
“Tell me about it. Nothing could have prepared me for that Master of yours. Look at us now. You’re an old man, I’m the chief, and we’re still babysitting a grown adult who can’t stay away from trouble...” Sam chuckled. “The patrol team found her taking a drunken nap inside the fountain again. They put her in her usual room with some food. She’s still treating the station like a daycare. ”
“It’s fall, after all. She’s restless.” Charles said. “Still too heavy on the bottle, you know how she is.”
“How come you’re still picking her up? Where’s your daughter? Didn’t Alice pick up your job as a caretaker? You know, there’s something called retirement,” The chief raised an eyebrow.
“Alice got locked in the basement again. She’s too naive.” Charles shook his head.
“Tell me about it,” Sam snorted. “I always forget how fast time passes every time the master drops by. She doesn’t seem to realize how the world has changed.”
He handed Charles a folded piece of paper. “It’s getting harder and harder to cover up her antics. The higher-ups have changed, and nosy people are snooping around. She’s been too flashy these past forty years. Even if we can hide her as a community, with the internet, secrets will sooner or later become facts.”
“Thanks,” Charles sighed.
He raised his head and watched as this forever-young woman exited the precinct with a shoe in her hand. A messy afro and smeared makeup, she stumbled and almost fell down the stairs as she giggled.
“Bye bye, Sammy. Say hi to Sarah for me!”
She kissed the chief on the cheek, staggered and struggled to get in the car.
“Charlie, I’m hungry. I wanna eat pancakes.” She complained, “I don’t remember where my other shoe is.”
The two men smiled wryly. The chief patted his old friend on the shoulder before turning around with a word. The journey home was silent.
Charles glanced at her. “Listen… I’m worried about you. The world is moving on, and you refuse to change. Whatever happened, wherever it was,” he paused, “Whenever it was, it’s so far behind now. You can’t keep going like that.”
“I’m doing alright, thanks.” She yawned.
“You’re not. Everyone knows it. You’re the only one stubbornly refusing to acknowledge it.”
“Enough.” The tipsy gleam in her eyes was replaced by apathy. She laid her head on her arm hanging over the window.
“Decades after decades, our family has taken care of you, you–” Charles sighed as he saw her unmoved. “This endless journey–”
“I’m okay,” she declared firmly as she closed her eyes.
“I’m dying,” Charles simply stated.
“Lucky you,” she giggled as she played with a loose lock of hair.
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you,” he sneered.
Charles drove through the night with mixed feelings. It had been a while since he last picked her up. He observed the woman from the corner of his eyes; so many decades had passed, and nary a change in her. He thought she had become more subdued these past few years, had tried to pry and asked her to open up, but she stubbornly remained closed off. Yet, there were some words he couldn’t keep in anymore.
“When I was young, I thought I was so lucky. Only after I took over did I realize that not only were you insane, you were also heartless. A selfish piece of rock.” He scowled. “After a while, I started to hate you for choosing our family. If you weren’t there, many bad things wouldn’t have happened to us, to me. I hated Dad even more. I thought–”
He paused, glancing at the woman by his side. “I even tried to fight him. I confronted him one day. You know, he didn’t say a word, he just quietly looked at me. After my rant, he stayed silent for a while and asked me, “Who are we doing this for?” I was pissed. Our family takes care of your life and comfort in exchange for treasure and power, who else are we doing this for? At that time, he just shook his head and sneered. You know what he did after that?”
The woman didn’t respond. Her long and delicate ebony fingers were dancing through the wind. She didn’t seem to have listened, nor did she seem to care about anything he said. Charles went on nonetheless.
“He showed me your files and told me about how he met you. I was naive back then, twenty-two years old, barely more than a kid. Thought I was a babysitter for an extremely immature woman, and that you just liked to fight people left and right. I never truly understood the stakes. Pages after pages, I couldn’t help but shiver. What kind of evil were you? How could my dad ever make a deal with you?”
He recalled that day, his fingers gripping the steering wheel.
“How could he watch me follow you around when he knew how fucked up you were? I was terrified. I couldn’t believe it, so I questioned him. Berated him and cussed him for dooming us with you. He just stood there, silent. My mind was a mess. My dad wasn’t that kind of man. He used to be a soldier, he would never tolerate someone like you around his kids. And my mom… she must have known. How could she let him do this to us? I didn’t know how to feel about this whole situation. In the morning, he took me to your room. We sat there, waiting in the shadows. He held my hand and told me to wait for you to wake up. I scoffed at him. Since when can you wake up on your own? Someone had to scream and shake you alive for you to wake up. We waited there in silence for hours. And then, I saw you. For the first time in my life, I saw you wake up on your own. That day–”
He didn't know how to express himself. Back then, he had experienced so many emotions, been so young… And the truth was too heavy.
“I was shaken to the core. That day, I witnessed true heartache. I don’t know what, I don’t know how, but something in me broke that day. Something I never knew existed shuttered and could never be retrieved. And in a blink, I discovered true terror. True fear. Dread that takes you by the throat and crushes your heart and soul. I saw your eyes and I knew what kind–”
His voice faltered. He gulped down the following words, and it took him a moment to get himself back together.
“Then, I saw dad open and slam the door as loud as he could. He started his usual morning scolding. And like a switch, I saw you turned back into your usual self.”
Charles’s frown loosened and his wrinkled eyes softened. That day was bitter-sweet. He remembered how he grew up in the span of a day.
“I spent the day in a daze. I doubted my eyes, myself, you, the whole universe, and just sat on that porch until dusk. Dad sat next to me and we watched the sun set. He asked me again, “Who do we do this for?” Then, it stuck with me. Mom used to say that taking care of you was taking care of the world. Serving you was protecting the world. Only then, did I realize the weight of her words and the burden on our family.”
Charles parked the car in the driveway and cut the engine. He gazed at her with complexity. Observed the face that never changed in over sixty years, her nonchalance, her disinterest in the world.
“Master,” he turned her head to face him. The glint of drunkenness had disappeared. “My affairs are in order. Alice, that daughter of mine, always gets fooled by you, but she’s ready to take on my task. My life is about to end–”
There were so many words left to say. So many complaints and joyful memories, so many laughs and tears. So many things he wanted her to think about. But they both knew that it was in vain.
“I’ve learned many things with you. Lived so many twists and turns. Witnessed things that ordinary people would never be able to imagine. But in the midst of all that, there is one truth that I realized following you. This familiar hell, unless you truly wished to leave it–” He rested his forehead against hers. “Don’t you think you deserve a chance as well?”
“I’m not a good person,” she declared.
“You’re not as bad as you think.” Charles paused, “You may be worse than I can ever fathom, but you’re not as bad as you think you are.”
“I agree to disagree.” She muttered, “What you think, it’s just like a red veil of illusions and falsehood. The sage says it right, ‘Red dust converging from all directions, merging with smoke and clouds over the entire city’. An endless nightmare.”
“Nightmares or mere dreams, everyone has to wake up at some point. There is no endless night. Everything has an end.” Charles stared into her hazel eyes, “Even you. Your ending is just different from ours. You alone can define it. You alone can own it.”