The half-forgotten
Other half of my short life
In short story form

 
One Last Time
9-24-2004

I'm driving my Dodge Dart through my childhood neighborhood at night. I'm standing up to turn the wheel and use the brakes at each stop sign. I notice the car is making a whistling sound and figure I should take it in soon. I head over to Wayne's parents' house, a dead-end street, but it's changed to a condo complex so I turn around.

I make it back to a brightly-lit, white little building that serves as a laundromat, video arcade, coffee shop, and copy center all rolled into one. Everything inside is white. It makes the rest of the surrounding territory look utterly dark. A guy and a girl stand outside, dressed in black, playing imaginary instruments as part of an arcade game I can't see. It's some guitar-jamming game that makes you feel like you really know how to play, even though you don't. Sounds good though. I watch the chick slap her imaginary strings in beat with some orchestra hits.

I hawk over a printer, awaiting a printout that I don't want anyone else to see. I didn't think I was long in the queue, but my printout doesn't turn up. I flip one of the others over and see it's a little comic written by an Asian girl sitting at a table nearby, sipping a cup of coffee. It's amusing in a way I hadn't expected, and includes the comment, "I am NOT going to pay for a single copy." Printing and copying are paid for here on the honor system, as is the coffee. I don't see her here often; she drives in from somewhere else, then leaves. Doesn't stay like the rest of us.

I go outside, around the back of the building, and she's there looking out into the dark forest. It's cold outside, and a barbed fence surrounds the yard, tilted away from us. A ditch lies beyond. It's all there to keep us in, for whose safety I'm not sure. I test it with my foot, confirming it wouldn't be possible to jump over it and the ditch to leave this place. The girl turns to me and says, "I want to go. Out of here." I explain that she comes and goes in her car all the time. She says, "I can't take the car. I need to leave it here." She faces me and puts her arms around my waist, yet keeping her distance as she talks to me. "I want to go with you," she says, and kisses me. I slip to the ground as I kiss her back, and she urges me to stand up, because the ground is cold and wet. I take her to a pond and we wade into it, leaning against a rock and staring over the water. The water is freezing, too, but we don't care anymore. She comments that running into me has changed everything for her.

We're out on a public street, under a gothic-style bridge. Still nighttime, but there's an old streetlamp here. Keefer Sutherland probes the wall under the bridge and disconnects the brige, moving it aside with superhuman ease to reveal a tunnel. "This is the only way out," he says, "this tunnel. It's dangerous." I thought we could come back and take it later if we wanted, but an old roadster pulls up and some men in burlap suits get out. A little girl with curly hair stands up from the car, points at us, and says, "There they are, get them." I urge everyone to take the tunnel right away.

Keefer goes first, then the girl, then me. Noone follows us. The tunnel is long, narrow, and full of water. I can't really feel anything with my feet, just amorphous goo and weeds and God knows what, so I have to pull myself along with my hands along the walls, which are made of white brick and thankfully aren't slippery. We come to a corner, passing a decayed, brown skeleton that none of us comment on. The water is dark, but the tunnel is well-lit. Keefer stops in front of a large room, wading in the muck. It's darker in there. Looking up, I see tons of spider webs, and I warn Keefer to watch out for the big purple spider over his head. He wacks it, sending it screaming. We swim into the big room. Bats attack us from above, but they leave as alone after we pass under.

We make it out of the muck and into some old service passageways. I take hold of the girl's hand in case the floor gives, and help her climb down some walls. There are no stairs anywhere. Everything is lit again, a sort of turquoise color, like a room lit by a pool's underwater lights. Turning a corner, I see a gleaming corridor that looks promising. I also notice a hole in the wall in front of me, leading into a darker passage. Upon reflection, the gleaming corridor looks too promising, like a trap, so I lead everyone into the dusty black passage.

We come out into more hallways. I see metal doors all over in the white concrete, locked shut, boarded and chained up. One I take to be the entrance to a movie theatre, and I wondered what it must've been like to come here for movies, or when it even used to be open.

We pass it and see a set of metal doors with reinforced windows. Lots of light coming from the outside, and not boarded up either. This is it, I think, but then two black men with hatchets enter from outside. They don't say anything, but they walk toward us. We duck into the movie theatre lobby, and they follow. "They're holding hands. It looks like they were about to do something," one of them comments. We walk out, past them, toward the doors. A thin black girl, holding a hatchet, opens one and comes in, walking towards us as she says, "Come on out." Just a blur in the windows, but I can see tons of people outside, all with hatchets. "Everyone's out there. Even the rescue person!"

I get the feeling I won't like their idea of rescue, so we turn around. As we do so, some chubby white kid swings his hatchet at the girl and gets her in the side of the neck. She screams. I pull it out of her, trying to ignore the blood, and stick it into his face. Two big white brutes run at me, but I chop into their heads quickly, then throw my hatchet into an older woman's head as she comes near the girl. The only thing going through my mind is that I have to kill these people quickly so that I can be with the girl in her final moments.

I lift gently off the ground a little to hold her in my arms. I try to keep the wound closed to prevent bleeding. We were so close, too. Almost out. Must've been the wrong exit. "Don't tell me," she says, "I don't want to know." Referring to her wound.

I run some analysis software, but it turns up red instead of green, indicating death will happen. Suddenly, though, I'm the one who's wounded, and I'm in her arms. "It's red," I say. "I'm going to die." Sad, beautiful piano music starts to play from somewhere. She starts to cry and says, "I told you not to tell me," and kisses me one last time.

posted by Phlegm at 9/30/2004