FIFTY-NINE: Mori

Drip. Tap, tap, drip. Drip. Drip. Tap, tap, drip. Drip. Drip. Tap, tap . . .

James had taken Arous up a greasy, stairway. Various sized crawling things muttered about ceiling cobwebs, in corners and along the floor. Arous didn’t look; she didn’t want empirical evidence of monsters.

James stopped in front of a door.  He stood looking at it a minute.  He walked up to it and put both hands flat on it and his ear to it. He stood there for a minute listening. Above them, Arous could hear the flapping of the door to the roof and the drip, drip, dripping of water somewhere.  Behind this door, lurked a hushed, breezy silence.

“I think it’s okay,” he said.

“We’re going to wait for the welcoming committee?”

James pushed open the door letting it slam against the wall and walked in.   To her immediate right there was a tattered, dirty kitchen and water tap, tap, tapping dishes in the sink. To her left a cracked door to another room.  Columns lined the right of the hall. Beyond the hall and to the right blankets and pillows and a few odd pieces of clothing and paper rustled across a large open space. She walked in: to her left was a nook with a bench.  The bench recessed into the wall a few feet.  A boy reclined on the bench as if in the process of raising himself; a statue, he had been at that stage for quite some time. He stared at Arous with an empty expression.

“Hurry,” James said. He stood twenty feet from her.

 “What is this place?” she asked.

“This is where I live.”  He smiled up at her.

James turned the corner and Arous wasted no time following him. She rounded the corner. In front of her was a long corridor. At the end of it was a window with an intact glass pane. The glass was tinted pink from the residual light from LywhoLood sign on top of the building that she’d seen crack to life while standing outside.  A dozen doors lined both sides of the hall.

There was no James. Arous’ eyes widened and she stood frozen.

“Arous, come in here,” he said.

James had ducked into the first door on the right.  Arous could see him through the crack he’d left.

The room was small, like a child’s bedroom, with a closet.  The walls were red, a bit lighter and cleaner than outside. In the far corner a curled figure lay on a mattress. James whispered for her to close the door.  James motioned and Arous sat on a small wire chair on the wall. Along the opposite wall was a Bunsen burner and hotplate.  Out of the closet James took a jug of water, he mouthed at her, “We have plenty of this.”  The girl on the mattress lifted her head.

“James,” said his sister.

“Hey, I brought a visitor.  She bought us groceries.”

“James,” she said.

“I didn’t ask. She offered. It’s the same girl that bought me the jaw breakers, the same one with the hybrid cat she shouldn’t have that I saw at the temple, the one that looks like the woman you have the pictures of,” James took a breath. “Arous this is my sister Moristia. Mori, this is Arous.”

She looked up at Arous and tried to smile.

One wall was pinned with pictures of beautiful people.  Mori and James both looked to a picture pinned to the wall that looked like Arous. It was her mother.

Arous reached for it and pulled her hand back.

“That’s my mother,” said Arous.

“She’s gone now,” said Mori.

“I think she’s still alive. I think she’s at the HaleSpa that’s near the Park,” said Arous.

“That’s HaleSpa North. All the rich go there,” he said.

 “There’s no way to know,” said James.  “Without going there.”

“I did, the day after I saw you at the temple.  I went there.”

“And they didn’t kick you out?”

“No, I Skin-danced,” said Arous. She explained what that meant by grabbing Mori’s hand and skin-dancing into Mori and back into herself.

“Except that I danced as an Amalgamese.  There’s lots of Amalgamese in Alippiana.”

James boiled tea using a crude stove made of Bunsen burners and tiles.  

James told their story while he made tea. His sister was about Arous’ age when they had come to the City.  On the walls of their living room, Mori had watched all the beautiful Idelles from the City playing out their lives out on the walls of DE-rooms across the nation.  Mori came to LywhoLood, just like they did, to pledge a house to sponsor them as an Idelle or Idon. 

All four members of James’ and Moristia’s family had their own DE-room. Each member of their family could put their headphones on and watch a different wall in their DE-room and never know or care or experience the other. They could watch, touch, be in their own story and never turn and invite another. They spent nights and weekends like that.

FIFTY-EIGHT: Little starving boy

The first time she saw James was outside her window. She followed him urged by me via Octavius to follow him. She paid for his Amazingly Large Jawbreakers.  The second time she saw him was at the Temple.  She saw him again at the corner store and she went home to meet his sister, Mori who was dying of the wasting disease.

            But the important thing is that, because of them she met Mijin.  Mijin was destined, along with Edlawit and Arous, to be one of the three.

She was in Burton’s Corner store staring at the shelves.  She didn’t pick out anything and decided to leave. Before she could turn around, she almost fell over backwards.  The boy was staring up at her with his big, gray eyes standing so close she could feel his breath warm her thigh. He looked at her and said nothing.  She didn’t recognize him at first.

“How long were you standing behind me?”

“Not very long, Arous.”

Then in hit her.

“You’re the boy with the amazingly strong jaws. And from the -.”

“Yes.” He said. “That and a little more. Why don’t you ever recognize me.”

He was thin, much thinner than Arous remembered him being when he escorted her from the Temple.  His eyes looked bigger, maybe even sunken. He was dirty and looked like he wore the same clothes that he wore the 1^st time she saw him. He tried to smile at her but all he could manage was a grimace.  His thin, little boy lips quivered.  His stomach growled.

“You hungry?”

“That’s not what I followed you about.”

“You followed me?”

“Yes. Can you reach in there and get that jar of milk off the top up there?  I can’t quite reach it.”

“It’s almost bigger than you.”

“I’m stronger than I look.”

“And, you talk like an adult,” she said.

“You’ve said that before.”

“I remember,” but she didn’t. “You have a good memory.”

Arous reached into the cooler and grabbed a gallon jug off the top shelf.

“Here you go,” said Arous.

She handed the heavy glass jug to the boy and almost immediately heard it clink to the floor.

“You want me to carry it for you?”

“It’s just that I’m hungry, is all.”

“Let’s get some bread and a few things to take home with you.”

“Thank you. My sister’s not well -,” said James.

“So, your mom sent you to the store to get a jug of milk.”

“No.  Nobody sent me.  I came on my own,” said James.

“Oh. Why don‘t you just go wait outside and I‘ll get these things for you, okay?”

“Thank you,” he said; his face a little brighter.

Arous wasn’t quite following the conversation.  She picked a couple of food essentials for the boy and his sister and took them to the counter. The boy waited outside. Arous could see him through the glass window looking in at her as if he didn’t quite trust her.  He did everything but press his button nose and little hands to the window.

The bell clanged and the boy jumped.

“How far do you live from here?” Arous asked.

“Several blocks. Close to the wall.”

“Walking distance?”

“I walked,” he said.

“Well, you lead the way I guess.”

They walked for some time.

 “Where are all the hoveh-hyocs?” she asked.

James laughed but didn’t answer. Arous began to wonder if the boy had forgotten her question.  Then he exhaled long, like an old man.

“After a certain time, the hoveh-hyocs and horse carts won’t run down here.  After quitting time, about an hour after, they won’t bring people in anymore. And the hoveh-hyocs, once they do their last corner pick-up, they’re not coming back in to get you. They’re big but not dumb. If you’re late, you have to walk.”

It had gotten darker while they walked; the sun had just dipped below the City wall and the long shadows had begun to merge with one another to form their dark blanket.  Arous stopped and the boy ran up the steps into a rundown old building.  To Arous it looked vacant but she could see a soft glow of light coming through the widows.  The street smelled strange: musty, wet, oily. Papers passed her as the wind picked up a bit.

“Hurry.  It’s about to be dark.  We shouldn’t stand out here,” said James who stood at the top of the steps.

As he pushed open the old creaking doors two boys dressed in dark clothing pushed passed him.  The flickering light of a gas lamp spilled on the landing.

“Boy, get out of the way,” one of them said.

“You don’t even belong here,” said the other.

“He won’t last long.”

“Not as somebody’s supper.”

They tripped down the steps and into the dark street without noticing Arous.  The stopped at a hole in the street and jumped down, laughing.

“Underlings,” said James.

“What?” asked Arous.

“Underlings,” he said. “Most of their existence is under the City.  The only time that Underlings come topside is here.  They don’t care too much for City Citizens.”

“Aren’t they Citiizens?”

James guffawed, “No. The MOTAS consider them vermin, here anyway.  In other Pantaganents Underlings are contributing members of society at large but not here.  Ricci would just a soon they were exterminated.”

“Exterminated?”

“He takes it upon himself to gas the UnderCity every so often.”

“You’re so matter-of-fact,” said Arous. It made her uneasy.

“It’s so the-way-it-is,” said James almost mocking her.

A neon sign on top of the building bloomed into neon-pink life.

FIFTY-SEVEN: Special Attention

“Special attention! Special attraction! Special days. Two-days-in-a-row-for-two special girly-girls!” We’d hear Chara singing that as his ferry crossed the river carrying special birthday presents for Arous one day and Edlawit the next.

Arous’ whole life, VIH-dots have come from her mother. Arous has a box that she keeps all the dots in: red, blue, purple, green, with different designs, patterns, and engravings for special occasions.  She would run all the way from Chara’s Crossing rubbing the dot in her hand with Edlawit burning up the path behind her.  Before she was even close enough to the house, I’d hear her screaming “Miguel, Priscilla, come see!”

Arous would bound up the steps to the house and fling the dot on the porch. An image of her mother would pop up: a happy birthday song and dance; how are you; you looked beautiful in the last dot you sent; my, you are getting big; I wish I could see you but I’m stuck here for now. And when the dot went out, she would pick-up the dot, rub it between her palms and slam it down, sitting to watch it a second time. And again. And again. She, Edlawit and Priscilla would spend hours watching them. I got tired after the first couple of times and went about other business.

 When Arous was almost thirteen she received a VIH-dot from her mother and a present: a new dress sent by special messenger who sang to Arous an early birthday song. In this last dot, her mother hinted at leaving The City; she would travel to soon Alippiana to visit Aunt Bertha. Arous beamed but, over time, deflated as day after day no mother and no other dot arrived. Arous was hopeful for months but that hope began to simmer into restlessness, longing, and bitterness.

She even avoided Priscilla.

Then the dot finally came and by special messenger that may have had another agenda. Edlawit was the only one to see him and in him she saw nothing but conflict, ambition and worst of all, fear.

Edlawit is like me.  She can see things. The Diofe is Omnipotent and can see past, future, present, possibility and into the soul of man. There are boundaries keeping us out of what we shouldn’t see; we have to be invited to see. It’s like looking through a window. The invitation is one boundary; when we are invited in the shutter opens. The other boundary is set by our subconscious soul.  If my soul senses something that would not be good for me, it will draw a dark curtain over the window.  It slams tight the shutter over anything that either would be too tempting, hurtful or too distressing. It’s a self-protection mechanism.  Otherwise, I can see all that I am invited to see: good and bad.  Sometimes the invitation is simply a dot to me inviting me to know what is going on. Sometimes it is the bond of friendship that serves as an invitation to see into someone’s life.  But sometimes the friend slams door of blindness in your face.  Because Edlawit was still learning to use her gift, she couldn’t always tell the difference between a good mind-sight and her own feelings or thoughts.

Then when the dot from Arous’ mom arrived by a messenger on a black horse, it hinted a dark truth: Arous’ mom was in trouble.

Arous had to run away.

As the Diofe would have it, she didn’t just run away but she ran into.

Into what?

Into trouble. Into herself.  Into an replaced Momo, into two enslaved Nephilim. Into her mother. Her father, Ricci. Love. Treachery. Death. Murder. Miasmen. Quetzalcoatyl.

Into James.

Into number Three.