Friday, January 18, 2008

Girl Like That


Ferris picks me up standing alone by the Enlightenment Headquarters and we’re cruising down the main street of the city. She wasn’t interested in coffee. “I’m impressed you didn’t come out with more bruises,” she says. I give her a toothy grin and roll down the window. The sun has been up for a while now and I find myself enjoying it. “I’m a lot more likable when I haven’t had the shit beaten out of me,” I reply. I barely have to repeat the directions and destination before Ferris says she recognizes the street and we’re off. I could learn to like a girl like that. Knows her way around, can handle pressure, and maybe work in a good kiss or two while she’s at it. I catch myself again admiring her looks. She sees me out of the corner of her eye, but this time pretends not to notice. I could learn to like a girl like that. We pull up to the place Dingo has been hiding out. It’s a rundown apartment building with two stories and one story not worth visiting. Chairs and garbage fill the halls as we both plod inside. Up the stairs and over to room 203, I’m spared the trouble of knocking because the door is still slightly ajar. Inside the apartment, the place is a mess. There is a big pile of dirt on the floor and some rope twisted around it. The dressers and drawers have all been ripped to shreds. Papers lie everywhere. “Well, help me look around, but it looks like someone got here before us,” I say. Ferris raises an eyebrow and starts poking around the scattered items in the abandoned apartment. There isn’t much there. Some clothes, shredded newspapers, and old photographs. I pause when I recognize one of them from back at our old hideout when we had all, Dingo, Sunshine, and Me, first left the Enlightenment. Christ, Dingo still had blood on his mouth in the photo. I remember thinking it had been hilarious back when we took it. Now it just makes me uncomfortable. The three of us had lived in a shithole a lot like this one when we’d first struck out on our own. I pocket the photo and try to forget about the sad feeling the memories give me. I don’t think I wanted to admit that I missed it a little bit, that blood. The three of us on our own. The sun light is coming into the apartment through a lone window and slowly filling the room. That sad feeling in me is flushed and replaced with a cold chill. As the light slowly creeps inside, it covers the pile of dirt and knotted rope in the middle of the room. The kind of dirt that a vampire exposed to sunlight creates when he combusts.

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