[challengefic] Sunday's Shoebox
Title: Sunday's Shoebox
Characters: Duo
Rating: K+
Wordcount: 2021
Notes: After revising it, I really doubt if I should try posting it. I don't think it fits with any of this month's challenge because apparently I messed up Duo's time-travelling that I erased the idea and decide to rewrite the whole fic. Gaah! Er, at least I pathetically mentioned 'tentacle' in it, though it doesn't play anything important in the fic. *sigh*
That spherical chunk of gravestone they called the moon was in favor of the authority as it provided too much light than necessary, but he didn’t see it as a problem. He did a good job on blending in with the shadows of the stinking alleyways.
Duo hasn’t seen Horris since the instant he bolted from their ‘home’, but he knew the old man has his own style of playing chameleon. Sunday, always the actress, has been leading the cops in a seemingly endless wild-goose chase. Duo wondered why the oafs never surmised that the woman was one of them. Or at least suspect her of being a floozy, donned in that fabric-deprived garment and all.
Before they’d started the nightly hide-and-seek, Sunday had asked him to keep something until they meet each other again, presumably a couple of hours after the game.
“Take this,” she flatly managed, a very short black cigar wagging between her dark lips. Duo took the little shoebox from her and eyed her levelly.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a sin.” Sunday chucked the chocolate-flavored filter away and puffed out sweet smoke into his face. She smiled evilly when he winced.
“A what?”
“You can open that, but I’m discouraging you. You wouldn’t like to know what that sin is.” He caught a predatory glimmer in her eyes. “I just have to keep it away from the house. I can’t have it pulverized.”
She wasn’t going to tell him anything, and she knew he’d open it anyway. He rolled his eyes. “Whatever you say, milady.”
Sunday cackled. She gave him a light tap on the shoulder to signal that she’d be on her way. “I think Horris needs help. You know the problem of getting old…See yah.”
He gave her a salute in mock farewell. Smirking, he sandwiched himself between two moss-covered walls, protecting the shoebox, hoping that the path he’d chosen wasn’t a cul-de -sac.
He was certain they wouldn’t be caught. Not tonight. Not ever.
It was no dead-end street. He squeezed out of the alley and emerged into a dimly-lit lot, where in the middle stood a chapel. He snorted at it. Religion. He didn’t-and probably never would-believe in religion. He wasn’t an atheist, though; he believes that there is a god.
And that god was himself.
“The God of Death,” he mumbled with a grin, the words coming out clearly despite the already tasteless gum he trapped between his teeth. He spit the thing out and instinctively paced towards the entrance. From where he stopped he could see the stained-glass image of a wounded lamb, its bright scarlet blood flowing into the tabernacle. He couldn’t tell where the light from the lamb came from, but he wasn’t interested with it at all. The sitting figure at the first pew arrested his full attention.
His first footfalls howled at him as if to scare him away, but he didn’t even flinch. He walked quietly towards the silhouette. She looked up as he approached and he wasn’t surprised at all when he recognized her face. They traded smiles.
“You haven’t changed,” her bell-like voice rang out across the empty chapel.
“Yeah,” he tersely responded. He thought about it, then spoke up again after a short pause. “But not really. Still the boy that a normal mother wouldn’t want to be her son, but not that ragamuffin who thought he’s still alive because of fluke.”
At first, he thought that there was enough truth in it for her not to say anything else. She broke the hush with a laugh and gave a sideways wobble of her head. “Yes. You’re still here because you have a purpose. God has plans for you.”
He snorted. “Your God’s got no plans for a God of Death.”
“You still talk like that?”
He darted a lopsided toothy grin at her in exchange for the nagging glare she threw at him. He slumped down to the pew next to her and thoughtlessly slid down, fractionally closing his eyes, pillowing his head on her lap. She looked down at him and fingered a few strands of his bangs out of his eyes. Her fingers felt unnaturally warm on his brow.
“What seems to be the problem?” she asked. She’d read him again. He hates it when he seemed so transparent to her.
“Nothing to be worried about, really,” he said, hiding a yawn behind his fist, “we’re just…being forced away from our home.”
“Home?”
He cocked a nod. “Yeah. I don’t know what their problem is-we’re already on the outskirts of the colony! Uh, well, yeah we’re still squatters but they don’t have to hunt us even after they blow our brittle houses to smithereens. They say we’re marring the colony’s image and the population had ballooned, so they’re going to ship us to Earth and have us work there as some sort of domestic helpers. I’m not really against whatever they’re planning, but you know I’m at home at this kind of places. Cozy for me is not cozy for any earthling, I’m sure of that.”
She gave little nods at his ramblings. He sighed when he felt her fingers squeezing in between the knots of his braid. The cord at the end snapped, and his hair tumbled out slowly, untamed, above him.
“I thought you have friends?”
“I thought you know me well?” He got the implication easily. “I don’t need alms. Not that they want to give me the impression that they were acting like a charity group, but I don’t like it when they offered me a lot of things when they thought my life needs defragmentation. They have their own lives to busy themselves with. I just have to stay alive and that’s my business.” He heaved a deep breath at the truth of his words he didn’t try to speak out before.
Her blond locks tickled him when she bent down to plant a kiss on his forehead. “Everything will feel the same if you don’t try to view it from a different angle. Duo, you’ve been peeking at the wrong end of the telescope all your life.”
“Guess I’m at an impasse then,” he snorted. “Bits of my yesterday sometimes mess my today and I’m used to it now. I look at my life with a basis from the past, but I don’t cling to it.”
“You cannot move on that way.”
“There’s no reason to move on anyway.”
She smiled a mirthless smile. “God has plans for you.”
“I don’t believe in your God.” He propped himself up with his elbows and sat upright, his back to her. “I can start my future without having to believe he exists. I’ve survived that way, and I always will.”
He felt her slide nearer. “Your future hasn’t been born yet. Nurture your present first and try to cut your strings from the past.”
He chuckled and looked back to her. “That’s a pretty thought. A boy without a future. Makes sense…”
She shook her head. “Duo, I didn’t say you don’t have a future.”
“It’s more believable when I say it that way. I’ll kill it before it’ll be born. But I’ll stay alive.”
Snatching the shoebox from his side, he peeled away from the pew and whirled to face her. He couldn’t read the emotion she was wearing.
“I have to go now,” he said abruptly.
She nodded. “God bless you.”
“I’ll see you soon,” he said. He realized what it meant and took it back readily. “I mean, I’ll see you much, much later. Good bye, Sister Helen.”
He turned on his heel and never looked back, his hair swishing behind him like a cape. His eyes felt heavy. Maybe the game’s ended by now…
The shoebox felt warm. He ached to open it right then and there, but when Sunday’s voice rang in his ears, he chose to open it when he gets back to their home-if ever they’d still have the home they re-built just yesterday after it’s been smashed to dust. He doubted it.
He found Sunday sprawled over a bench next to a broken vendo machine, her eyes closed. A plump man-a Santa terribly gone wrong with those frizzy gray and white facial hair and safety pins dangling from his ears-was slumped next to her, snoring, beer belly jutting out.
“I saw you in the chantry,” she said as he approached, eyes still closed. “You’re alone. Who’re you talking to?”
He simpered. “An old friend. Haven’t seen her since the day she died.”
She flipped a lid up. “About time we scale back your morphine, eh?”
Chuckling, he pushed Horris with his hip and tried to compress himself to the meager space that his effort produced. The shoebox felt warmer.
“What’s inside?”
“You didn’t open it?” Sunday questioned incredulously. She needed to lean forward so that Duo would see her beyond the mountain of the old man’s tummy. “I thought you’re better than that.”
“I think I’m afraid to see what’s inside,” he listlessly responded. “You made it sound like it’s going to explode anytime.”
“It’s not going to kill you,” she snorted disdainfully. “Hey, I love your hair when you let it hang loose like that.”
“Thanks.” He lifted the lid.
Sunday stared at him, obviously waiting for a reaction. But he was stock-still, as if he was carved out of stone.
“I killed it before it was even born. I stayed alive.”
He grinned at her choice of words. He didn’t really want to smile; nausea was tangling all his intestines in a tight bundle. He was suddenly glad he didn’t eat anything for dinner.
“We have the same future,” he muttered.
“Excuse me?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
For a moment, he just fixed his eyes on the pathetic form inside the box-her cheap coffin. It looked twisted, and at first, you wouldn’t distinguish the thing from the chops of bad meat you’d find in the trash bin of wet market stalls. It’s still a lump of blood. But if you’d look closely, you’d recognize the half-formed fingerless hands, the slightly amorphous feet, and its balled stance that confirmed what it really was. He didn’t believe in God, but he believed that killing a little angel before it even gets the chance to breathe is one sin you’d have to pay forever in hell. He wondered if all prostitutes wouldn’t hesitate to undergo induced abortion.
“Are you planning to bury it?” he said at the same time Sunday waved a DVD case in front of his nose while saying, “What do you think? I filched this from a sidewalk store while I look for Horris. It’s pirated, but I’ve heard that it’s a good snuff movie. It’s Japanese.”
Horris stirred. “You better stop watching such things, kid,” he said with a grunt. His eyes were still closed. “Japanese minds are demented. I’ll never consider tentacles porn an art.”
Sunday raised a brow. “I’m not asking your opinion, pig. You don’t have an open mind like Duo’s.” She playfully punched his belly before she turned to Duo again. “What do you think?”
“How about some booze first?” He heartily offered, closing the shoebox and placing it under the bench. “We have to make it a Dutch treat, though.” His eyes were teary.
Horris cracked his laugh, Duo’s favorite, because it sounded like a motorcycle starting. “Yeah. Nice way to celebrate another homeless night.”
Sunday giggled. “Three cheers for a bright future!”
Duo felt one tear slide down. He was glad that it was his left cheek that was turned to the others so they didn’t see the tear. If he was weeping for the fetus or for his own future, he didn’t know.
********
fin