“What! You’ve got to be—How the hell—”
“Wait—Cos, I can’t hear jack!”
Sinjin jabbed at the volume button at the side of his phone, gripping the phone near his earlobe to understand the incoherent rush of questions from the other side.
Commotion at a mad rush hour. Yet another headache to burden his already splitting head. The cars cried, clustered in a tight line, waiting for a miraculous leeway to manifest. People crowded around the blockage, capturing the chaos on their devices or screaming bitter nothings into deaf ears.
“Get out of the way—”
“I have an appointment—”
“This cow needs to be absorbed—”
“When are the cops locking her—”
“The SDD should be here soon—”
“I have somewhere to be—”
“Move—”
“Nuisances!”
“Useless!”
“A-holes!”
“Nuisances!”
All the ruckus was to no avail; it made his teeth grate. Everything at the moment was a losing game, the most frustrating being that he couldn’t reach Cosima. The uproar around him drowned her voice out, their connection faltering, with neither getting anything across. It was always like an unrelenting tempest nowadays—a rabid tangle between him and whatever problem the world would blindside him with.
He knew a greater storm would await him soon—on the other side of this human barricade. The other side would wear the image of a clean road if no vehicles could get through. However, believing the grass was greener on a different side always rubbed him the wrong way. After all, it was this same road he would have to drive across to reach a destination that pained the bumps on his back the more he carried the thought. Eventually, minutes would pass where he and Cosima would have to attend whatever harmonization training they had in store at the Eta household. They’d have to learn how to break their bodies and transform themselves into something capable of…
What?
He still had his doubts about the logistics of it; that itself wouldn’t change. However, attempting to comprehend his girlfriend on the other end, he realized he was thinking too far ahead again.
He snapped back to reality with flickering eyes, having lost himself in his thoughts for what he hoped was the last time that day. Much to his dismay, dismal disappointment dawned on him the more he had to witness the present situation.
It was a tempest in a teacup, a disgrace to the beauty of tea.
Vexing.
He cringed at the futile attempts to sidestep the protesters on the road. Peeved drivers lugged some of the activists—heavy and strong in their beliefs. However, they’d retaliate and scramble back into their wall, shoving their ‘Stop Harmonization’ signs into many headlights and eyes that only saw red. The growing mob would rise and revolt, running the pulling attempts to the ground. Yet the wall stayed, with the bricks always cementing back together. The activists would revolt, chanting their signs to people willing to sign their death warrants.
It was just a back-and-forth between people who wouldn’t listen to one another—the tried-and-true finishing nail to the coffin that was Sinjin’s sanity.
Vexing.
All this failure was vexing.
This is useless. Shouting at protesters is stupid. Wait for the bloody cops, blockheads.
Then he felt stupid, shifting his eyes past the crowd of heads to face his blatant error. Out of all the blockheads loitering around and running their mouths, the biggest blockhead was the head of the protesting wall, sitting smack dab in the middle with a stony expression: Tawny Tonner.
The woman in question wore similar clothes as her other protestors—the same grey shirts and scratchy jeans that made them all look like robots. However, unlike her allies, who parroted their message, she stayed silent. She simply sat on the rough asphalt with one leg—which had the appearance of a cat’s—propped up, her wrinkled face as motionless as their message’s potency.
However, the reason why no one ever attempted to pull her away was because she held potency. Sinjin knew very well that those familiar with the protesting woman’s repetitive class act learned to avoid confronting her if they happened to run into her and her extremist antics. He supposed he was deemed lucky.
It wasn’t even a class act; there was nothing “class” about it if people didn’t absorb anything.
In its purest form, this was a circus act for all to record and roll their eyes at. And at the centre of it all was the class clown of a ringleader to this mayhem—the sitting headache department walled off by her gang.
She’s one-dimensional—no space or depth in that head.
He wouldn’t say that to her face. Heck, he didn’t know why some wanted to complain directly to the human wall because not only was it a waste of energy, but that bricks were opaque; their brains were smooth and impenetrable.
But few looked Tawny in her one human and one feline eye, as she didn’t need many words if her physical image did the talking. Behind her, eight mackerel tabby tails stretched from her behind in serpentine movement, stiff but vicious in intent. One of her tails was longer than the rest, arching over the woman’s head like a scorpion’s stinger. She took up the most space in the wall, so the heavy and lethal job of dragging her wasn’t an option a rational person would take.
There was no rational person there—just people being people.
She got added to the chat’s Gallon list thingie. What kind of stupid game is that? Why even care?
His phone buzzed. It went unnoticed.
This woman hasn’t been caught for months. The world’s a freaking superhero society now—
His phone buzzed repeatedly, ripping him away from his inward rants. He glanced at the default cover screen and noticed Cosima spamming him on WhatsApp, with many ‘SIN’ messages flooding his feed. For a millisecond, he noted the pool of missed calls before they were drowned out by the texts.
He wished to drown everything out. The argumentative noises of a crowd and the reasonably hounding notifications of his phone—all of these forces drummed his skull. If only he were like the cars on the other side of the freeway—lucky and mobile—he’d be running away from the annoyances that so happened to be installed in his way.
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Vexing.
It was vexing.
But if there was one thing he couldn’t turn away from, it was Cosima. It always was, even when stuck in this mental disarray. He could never leave her.
Heaving a sigh of anything but relief, he unlocked his phone with an 8-digit pin to confront the palpable distress of his girlfriend. She was still in full throttle with the hurried messages, urging him to pump out a quick text that said: Cosimama, I’m fine. I’m sorry for leaving. I’ll be back in a bit just had to see what was up.
She had stopped in her virtual tantrum; the woman had been typing for a while longer. He watched a more thought-out text from her get sent that read: OK good, come back it’s dangerous to be near that.
It was rare for Cosima to take care of him. However, when she did, in contradiction to him being her crutch, he never took it for granted. He never would because he always knew her sternness came from a place of love and the heart.
Despite having no exit from this road madness, Sinjin had to remove himself from the crowd, or his brain would rot further if he didn’t return to that place of love he had left in the car.
Before he even considered escaping, he’d soon be immersed back into the chaos with little to no resistance. The deafening squall of a man trembled the air, extinguishing the rumble of sounds down to hushed whispers and gossip. Sinjin shifted through a few people, attempting to peer through the rising tower of arms and horizontal phones, soon having enough space to watch a man in dishevelled work attire seethe above Tawny’s rough glare.
“When are you people—you especially—going to learn that this is useless?” the man roared. His loud voice must have been the result of some mutation. “All of us got better things to be doing than protesting some worthless effin’ cause!”
The woman kept silent. Her stare remained hard, angering her opponent more.
“What kind of hypocrisy are you even trying to promote?” The man thrust his hands—full of fleshy holes—towards the many signs bobbing up and down by the activists. “Where do you think you got your cat tails from? Oh yeah—goddamn Harmonization!”
The woman kept silent. More fuel to the fire, worsened by the heartening responses of the crowd in agreement with the man.
“We have somewhere to be—”
“He’s right—”
“It’s useless—”
“Kick her—”
“Arson attempts have been a problem thanks to her—”
“Why should she be listened to—”
“Tell her!”
The man had a further incentive to increase his fire.
“Do you really think that waving a piece of cardboard is going to change over 6 billion or something worldwide… on some random street in freakin’ LA?” The man scoffed, clear spit flying in Tawny’s direction. He fiddled with his damp collar, looking down at the woman’s rigid face as if she were inferior. “Face the facts: you can do nothing. Simple as.”
More phones rose. More cars honked. More onlookers cheered in harmony. More fuel flew into the man’s fire.
Sinjin knew exactly how the man felt; he frowned at the knowledge.
The man’s fists had made their way to his hips. His shoulders straightened. His tie fastened. His sneer tightened. His determination boomed.
The man had set in train a surge of rebellion against the rebels, assuming the conductor role in the presence of another conductor. In Sinjin’s inflamed eyes, it was pointless. The whistle never pulled the train, added by the fact that no track was in sight. The scene would be a train wreck if no one could drive basic communication in the right direction.
Vexing.
All of it was vexing for him.
However, surprisingly, Tawny still looked unperturbed.
“The SDD will just keep shoving you away—you do realize you’re a criminal, right?” The man forced more of his pride onto the unmoving woman. “And, once again, people that do harmonization won’t suddenly change because some hypocritical nutcase told them to on a piece of paper—”
Encouraging cheers stopped him pleasantly in his tracks, once again giving him more fire to thrust his point forward at a breakneck pace.
Sinjin wouldn’t cheer. All these sounds were white noise to him—plain discordance that never rectified itself. Letting himself utter that same white noise was never his motto; he knew he was above that as an adult.
He hated train wrecks. Especially in this stir, they were always the obvious conclusion when a train met a brick wall head-on, as evident when Tawny finally opened her mouth.
“So—”
“Harmonization puts animals in danger, as wildlife has been declining as a result of it,” Tawny interrupted, her voice gravelly yet direct and hard, like the crashing wreck that was the man’s upcoming sentence and the crowd’s confidence. There were bursts of disagreement, but the protester kept her voice audible. “So, harmonization should be stopped—”
“Don’t ignore what I said!” The man couldn’t comprehend how impregnable the wall ahead of him was. He forgot that walls were solid; his mind was not grounded in any reality, as Sinjin deduced.
Tawny just kept silent. It added more fuel to the already derailing train.
“Isn’t the point of protesting to be flexible?” another person shouted from within the crowd. “She isn’t realizing that her message doesn’t consider both sides—”
“Exactly!” the man exclaimed, inching closer to Tawny in an attempt to grab at an unsuspecting activist’s sign. “Just leave! I have work, for effin’ sake!”
One of Tawny’s tails swiftly slapped the man’s hand away, forcing him into a submissive state of angry grunts.
“We won’t stop protesting until the government—”
“The government?”
“—takes some drastic measures in preventing harmonization—”
“Woman, the government won’t do jack-sh—”
“—especially in public areas—”
“They won’t do jack—”
“Harmonization also makes people—”
“You’re not listening!”
“—more dangerous and leads to more crime—”
“Listen!”
“—as seen in the big case in Skid Row to name—”
“What would happen if the animal was dead?”
“—a few, which had led to many casualties—”
“What. Would. Happen. If. The. Animal—”
“Why would you support something so cruel?”
Vexing.
Vexing.
Vexing.
Nothing was going on. It was just a man bashing his head into a brick wall, hoping his bloody forehead would break through it. Sinjin didn’t understand the appeal. Encouragement from a sea of people encouraged fruitless attempts at getting a message across, and there was no indication that an end was to come. However, until the authorities arrive, the circus is bound to continue, and Sinjin is bound to lose his mind.
But what confused his lost mind most was one question from a chink in his brain.
Why was he still there?
“Fusing with something dead doesn’t change the fact that you gain the abilities that it may possess,” Tawny explained, her challenger becoming red in the face. The protester fiddled with the bushy, moustache-like fur that branched from her nostrils. “You forget—”
“So, were the cats you fused with alive or dead?”
“That is not important—”
“Why isn’t it?” The man revelled in a weak spot, masking his annoyance with a smirk as he studied Tawny’s scrunched-up expression. “Because we all know from your previous protesting attempts that you’ve been using abilities to disrupt people’s lives… like you’re doing now—”
“I am protesting for a good—”
“No! Because what you’re telling me is that—”
“—cause, I am—”
“Listen—you’re no better than the supposed criminals you’re trying to fight against—”
It all felt like a ticking time bomb. The man shouted. The growing crowd shouted. The traffic shouted. The activists shouted. Tawny contemplated in silence—this behavior caused all other things to snowball.
I need out of here—crap.
Sinjin found himself swamped by people, attempting to move himself through the wavering crevices that presented themselves. The scene behind him would explode; he was attentive enough to acknowledge it. But when he began barging through the crowd, it was then that he remembered that his attention was feeble.
He didn’t need a masterful eye to know how the radiation made everyone come in different shapes and sizes. However, as the crowd increased and the ruckus rose in tempo, he noticed that everyone present contributed to the ever-growing fire. Everyone was wasting time. Everyone was wasting energy. Everyone was wasting breath.
Blockheads. They were all blockheads—from the protesters to the protesting opposition.
All of them were blockheads, including him.
It was at that realization that the time bomb blew, with screams and wails shaking the air, drawing Sinjin back into reality. He turned around in a stumble to catch the explosion, seeing people scrambling in the opposite direction, away from the central point of all the conflict.
A mass of bubbling beige skin had taken to the sky behind the activist wall, sweeping downward towards Tawny’s head. The activists floundering with their signs from the threat behind them alerted the woman, causing her five cat ears to twitch as she faced the oncoming bundle of flesh at impressive speeds.
The flesh crashed into her face, sending her hurtling to the ground. It enveloped half of her head as she shrieked and struggled in the attacker’s grip.
More people dispersed. More people got out of their cars. More screams. More cries for help.
Pure mayhem.
And yet, all Sinjin did was stand there and watch it unfold. His phone rang like a bell, chiming in with the discordant tune of the scene.
Cosima!
The mental block in his mind wanted to act and check on her, but his body was slow in registering it. All he could do was slowly turn on his heel and pray for his aloft brain to turn on, too.
He felt like the man who tried to confront Tawny, going along with something that bore no reward. To put it bluntly, the man failed.
And that meant Sinjin was failing as well.
Vexing.
It was vexing.