Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 48018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
“How are you?”
“Stale cereal.”
It works. It keeps people at bay.
More time…
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to retire you, Agent Cooper.”
More time…
I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to move out. You haven’t paid rent in three months.”
Who cares…
I’m sitting under a bridge. It’s a nice bridge, but someone has decided to decorate it with discarded needles. I have to wonder why. There’s no real accounting for taste and aesthetics, I suppose.
My shoes are plastic bags.
Later still…
I’m cold. Winter is making the ground frosty and my fingers just a little blue. I try to get warm by getting closer to lights, but the people with the lights don’t like me. They walk away from me and make me follow them.
“Riley?”
A man with very dark eyes and an even darker soul appears in my vision. He has a nice warm coat and a scarf. He was wearing a hat, but he takes that off and snugs it over my hair. I feel instantly better.
“Are you hungry, Riley?”
I nod.
He gives me a sandwich, one of the big ones with all the filling, the meats and the vegetables, including the big green one with all the surface area and water and no taste.
I eat and the food tastes like it comes directly from heaven. It is rich and delicious and it fills my belly and makes me warm.
“Would you like to come with me, Riley?”
I think I would.
10
“So she went mental?” Dark, curious eyes set in a pale, brutal face inspect me. I feel a shudder of something like fear as this other man looks at me.
“Hardly, Bobby.”
“Look at her. She doesn’t know who she is.”
“Of course she does. She’s not broken, she’s merely unwell. She will recover.”
The very nice man with the very nice accent is speaking to a less nice man who nonetheless seems to be very interested in me. We are in a very nice, warm room, and I am eating from a tray of food, picking through crackers and cheeses and little fruits and pieces of meat sliced up in rounds. I am very happy, and very warm.
“She stinks.”
“I will bathe her soon. Let her eat first, Bobby.”
Bobby continues to stare at me.
“What happened to her? Did we do this? Is she on drugs?”
He issues a series of rapid fire questions at the very nice man, expecting him to have all the answers.
“I suppose we had some influence on this outcome, but no, Bobby. We didn’t do this. They did this. This is what they do, the government. They use people, and when those people are no longer useful, they are discarded. And when they are discarded, they fall from grace and leave society and are found grotesque by others.”
He speaks very prettily, and with intellect. I like smart people. I used to be smart, before thinking got too painful and my ears got loud.
“Come with me, Riley. I will give you a bath.”
He will give me a bath. But I don’t have anywhere to put a bath. I suppose if I turn it upside down it might provide some kind of shelter.
It turns out he does not mean he intends to give me a physical bath. He has filled a bath with water, and he gently helps me disrobe, peeling off layers of clothing until he reaches the parts that have begun to stick to me from being on me too long.
He shows no outward sign of disgust. I think this man is dangerous and probably cruel. I can see it in the lines of his face and in the depths of his eyes. But those qualities also seem to mean he is not sensitive to disgusting and depraved things.
He offers a hand, helping me to step into the warm water which immediately turns a yellowish brown as I sink down into it. He picks up the shower head from above the bath, pulls the plug, and lets the water drain away, rinsing me down while I sit curled up in the ceramic tub.
The water is warm and the steam rises around me, and I feel comforted even though I am naked and broken. He drizzles a sweet and floral wash over me and massages it into my hair and my shoulders and down my back.
“Open your legs,” he orders, his tone firm but gentle. I do as I am told, and his hand runs down the sunken plane of my body, taking a washcloth covered in a thick lather of soft soap down between my legs.
He washes every part of me with a tender care that I can feel even through the numbness that has wrapped me up in its arms for the past few months.
When the water runs clear, he returns the plug to its place and refills the tub around me, leaving me to soak, clean for the first time in weeks.