Subtropolis: Shadow Theatre - 3/13 (Original; ~30k words; 15+)
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Everything was disconnected. Life in art-house. A small man with the head of an elephant swayed in the breeze. There were lights, sometimes. Boston closed his eyes and opened them and it was seconds or centuries later. His back and arm were on fire, but even that was disconnected, like watching the world through glass. His fingers touched a window, cool and slick. Something pressed him down and he panicked, thrashing, trying to escape, until someone snapped something at him in an annoyed tone. It was oddly comforting. Normal. He sank back down into the vibrating seat and through it back into the darkness.
The next time he opened his eyes, he could smell incense, he was pretty sure, unless he'd had some kind of brain thing, and there was a woman sitting next to him. She was about his age, maybe a little younger, twenty-two, twenty-three. Puerto-Rican, he thought, or Dominican. Maybe Afro-Cuban. Hispanic. Something.
"My mother was from Barbados," she said, looking amused. "I was born right here."
"Was that out loud?" he asked, and she laughed. "You have a pretty laugh."
"I have a pretty everything." She grinned at him. "You staying with us?"
Boston couldn't make sense of the question. He didn't know where he was. He rolled over automatically, and remembered only after her warning noise, only as his back came down on the bed, why this was such a bad idea. The black reclaimed him.
He drifted in and out. At one point there was a needle in his arm, and something was dripping. He woke again to find himself scratching hard enough at his bandaged arm that he was drawing blood; someone yanked his hand away, but he was gone again before he could see who. He thought he heard prayers -- no, a rosary, beads clinking under the slow, endless murmur of half-remembered words, washing over him like water. He let himself go. The itching woke him again. He curled his hands so he wouldn't scratch, set his teeth as it went from pins-and-needles to biting insects to red hot nails.
"Itching is good," someone said. An older woman. "It's the poison working its way out. You'll be better soon. Trust me."
He tried to ask if she was a doctor, only it was later, and the first woman was back, headphones around her neck, playing something lively. She smiled quizzically at him. Boston tried to ask her again, couldn't remember the question, asked, instead, "What's your name?"
"Katrina," she said. "Should I be insulted that you never seem to remember?"
"Yes," he said, and, "Sorry," but not for the name, for that he was leaving again.
"Sleep well," she said from far, far above him. "I'll be waiting."
The darkness swirled around him. He remembered cleaning paint brushes, but he couldn't remember when or where. He could smell ammonia. Clean smells. Hospital smells. Blood smells, too, like a handful of hot pennies, struck smooth where the trains hit them. He forced his eyes open. He'd scratched his arm again. The older woman was there but for all his blinking she wouldn't come into focus. Something brushed against his skin, wet, rough as a cat's tongue. Fresh bandages wound around his arm. He thought he saw her raise the old, stained ones to her mouth, press them to her lips, but he couldn't see.
Fingers brushed his forehead. Someone said, "Soon."
*
Boston was in a long, narrow room, maybe triple the width of the cot he was lying on, and four, if not five times its length. The walls were metal, and the ceiling curved down at the edges to meet them. The floor looked plastic, almost laminated. There were a number of dividing curtains between him and the small door in the far wall, all open, and numerous windows down both sides of the room, though they were all opaque. He could see light through one side, darkness on the other, but little more.
The sheets below him were scratchy, the thick grey blanket too, the pillow solid. He was lying on his front. When he tried to turn onto his side, his back protested, sudden sharp pains that faded to a dull ache when he froze. Edging sideways, he carefully slid himself out of the bed, testing his legs would hold his weight before he slowly straightened up. The room swam from a moment and then settled down.
"Not so bad," he muttered, voice dry and rough.
His clothes were waiting on the bedside chair, and he dressed with slow care. To his surprise and relief, his gun was with it, though someone had thoughtfully taken the clip out and put the safety on. He checked it was empty before reloading it. The hoodie was a write-off, the T-Shirt much of one, both clawed open, stained with his own blood. He pulled them on anyway, wincing as they dragged against the bandages wrapped around his chest and arm.
Gun in a ready position at his side, he moved slowly down the room. Up closer, he could see that some of what he'd thought were windows were actually pairs of sliding doors, four of them, two in each wall, equally spaced. He tried the nearest. They wouldn't slide open even when he pulled the green release handle. It was familiar. The whole place was familiar, but not, all at once.
Seats, he thought. There should be seats. It's an old subway car. What the hell?
He moved further down it. There were cabinets here, cheap, mass-produced stuff with oddly heavy-duty locks on them. He could make out boxes inside, vials, pills, medicines. There was medical equipment further down too, and a safe-box for medical waste. It was upscale for a clinic in a train.
The next set of side-doors wouldn't open either. He tried the opposite pair, the ones facing onto darkness, but they wouldn't budge.
"Door number five," he muttered. There was a window in it, too, but it was opaque, like the others. Nothing to see.
Boston took a few long deep breaths, and then jerked the door open, gun ready, only to find a small sort of umbilical section, leading to an exact matching door. He couldn't hear anything through it. He tried the handle cautiously and it gave. Not locked. Okay, then. Three. Two. One.
Shoving it open, he took three quick steps into the room, looking quickly around.
There were seats this time, but what caught the eye were the plants. There was green everywhere. Few flowers that he could see, but lots of foliage, all shades of green. Faint scents in the air he couldn't place.
"Feeling better?" It was the older of the two women, brunette, heavy-set, her gaze steady despite his weapon. She nodded off to the side. "The door's right there if you want to leave. You're not a prisoner." Her voice was calm, soothing. "I have some antibiotics I'd like you to keep taking, but you're free to go with, or without them."
Boston lowered his weapon a little and edged past the plants and around her so he could glance outside. He caught a glimpse of a platform, empty brackets on the wall where the name-plate should have been, and then everything went swimming again and he had to grab the door frame for balance.
"Are you going to throw up again?" It was the younger woman, Katrina.
The older woman's clothes had been plain, greys and creams, nothing you'd look at twice or even really remember. Katrina was wearing a bright green jacket over black and pink tops. Her blue stonewashed jeans had red and white stripes painted down the outside of the legs. Her flats were the same open-toed sandal style, but one was purple, the other so dark blue it was almost black. She had chain after chain around her neck, pendants and lockets, dog-tags, a St Christopher medal.
"That's pretty gross," she said, pulling an expressive face, and it took him a moment to connect it to her previous statement.
"You rescued me?" He hadn't meant it come out as a question.
She nodded. "Did a number on my cab."
Boston decided to come back to that. "And you brought me here?"
"To Maria," she agreed, nodding past him.
He turned, slower this time, to look at the older woman. "You're a doctor."
"Something like that," Maria agreed calmly. She took a seat opposite the door, straightening her skirt a little when she sat.
"You couldn't take me to a hospital?" Boston asked, turning back to Katrina.
"This is a hospital," she said, waving a hand at it, and then at him. "You got all bandaged up and not dead of poison, didn't you?"
"Poison," he repeated.
"Hell, yeah!" Katrina bounced a little on the spot, chains jangling, grinning. "Man, you were all out of it, like you'd licked the toad or something. It was actually kind of cool. You told me I was pretty about a hundred times."
"I, uh." Boston didn't know what to say to that. He could feel his cheeks flush. He realised he still had his gun out, though neither of them seemed concerned by that, and put it away. "The, uh. The guy. Who attacked me?"
"The guy?" Katrina scoffed.
"The guy," Boston repeated.
Katrina leaned sideways to address Maria around him. "We're calling it 'the guy' now."
Maria held up her hands placatingly.
"It?" Boston repeated.
"Man, it was totally an it! Come on! Do you live in this city or not? Hey!" She bounded towards him, reaching out to grab his good arm. "I'll show you what it did to my cab. That's cool right?"
"Sure?" Boston said, bemused.
"Yeah, I was talking to the doc, dude," Katrina said. "He's not going to puke on me, right? Cleaning up body fluids, so not my bag."
"Your bag?"
"You repeat things a lot, have you noticed that?" Katrina asked, tugging at him. "Are we cool?"
"Don't leave without the medication," Maria said. "I think I'll water my plants."
"Sweet!"
This time, when Katrina tugged, Boston went with her. They took the steps up, Katrina two at a time and then pausing briefly and impatiently when he followed slower.
"I got cut up," he reminded her.
"You got a little scratched. Walk it off, Red!"
"It's Boston," he said, as they came off the stairs into an abandoned station. Someone had smashed the automatic ticket machines open, and the little teller office was thick with graffiti. "Boston Craig. Where is this place?"
"Lower East. River's a three blocks that way." She nodded to one side. "Main street starts four hundred and twelve yards around that corner," she pointed, "and this baby right here is my cab."
Black and yellow, it squatted at the curb, its front grille buckled, a hefty dent in its bonnet.
"That's-- You would have had to drive right past Mercy General to get me here," Boston complained.
"What good would that have done you? You think Mercy would have got you back on your feet in three days? Hell no." She laughed scornfully. "You'd've been dead and gone, Red--"
"Boston."
"--dead and gone. Maria Grace is the miracle worker. Keeps the life in your blood."
Boston opened his mouth to ask what the hell that meant, when the previous bit finally registered and he spluttered out, "Three days?!"
*
Bric-a-brac packed the front of the cab. Bobble-headed characters nodded along to the drive from the dash and the back window. There were more chains hanging from the rear-view mirror. Katrina had had to dump toys and books and scraps of paper, receipts and notes, onto the back seat to let him into the passenger seat; then she'd run back down to grab his meds and back up again, chucking them at him as she jumped into the driver's seat. He'd barely gotten buckled in before she'd pulled away, driving with a reckless abandon that didn't abate, even when they started crossing main streets with their accompanying traffic. Something loud was on the radio, fast, lots of percussion and heavy guitar, and Katrina drummed on the wheel and hummed along as she drove.
"You know where you're going?" he asked.
"I always know where I'm going," she said. "This is the quickest way back to your apartment, believe me."
Boston digested that. "You know where I live?"
"You're kind of whiny, you know that?" She glared at the road. "Wah, wah, you saved my life, wah, wah, three days, wah wah."
"Look, I'm a cop, okay?" Boston rubbed at his face. "I go missing for three days, people are going to come looking for me, lots of people. Lots of cop type people. You want to tell them a squat in a train is a hospital?"
"It's not a squat," Katrina snapped, "and it is a hospital, and if you can't be nice, you should shut your damn mouth, okay?"
She turned the radio up, fuming. Boston turned away, looking out through the grimy window, trying to make sense of the blurs, but it just made his head hurt. He looked back. Katrina was still trying to kill the road with her eyes. He looked away again. There was a small statue hanging amid the chains dangling from the rear-view mirror, a four-armed elephant-headed man sat on what might have been a giant rat. It swayed too-and-fro, in pendulum patterns that seemed to have little to do with the motion of the car.
"I'm sorry," Boston said. "I shouldn't have said that."
"Damn right you shouldn't have," Katrina agreed, but she seemed to relax a little.
The cab pulled in in front of his apartment building; the speed of arrival was impressive, but much more so was the way Katrina managed to find a space on a road that was usually solid one end to the other.
"Last stop, all out," she said. "Seriously, put some new clothes on; you look like a serial killer."
"Thanks," he said dryly, though he didn't really disagree. He got out, closing the door behind him.
She leaned across to wind it down, hand cranked, not electric. "You need me to walk you up?"
"I'm good," Boston said. "Thank you for saving my life. Did I say that before?"
"You could say it more often," Katrina said, grinning. "And, hey, don't worry about it, okay? Everything's been taken care of. Your neighbour said he'd look after your big dog."
"Griff's not--" Boston started, but she'd already straightened up, back into her seat,
With a cheery, "See you around, Red!" the cab burst away, whipping around the corner in a blink and gone.
"Boston," he said to the empty air, sighed, and went up to the door where he found that, somewhere along the way, he'd managed to lose his keys.
[ Full Headers | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | E | Read on DW ]
Everything was disconnected. Life in art-house. A small man with the head of an elephant swayed in the breeze. There were lights, sometimes. Boston closed his eyes and opened them and it was seconds or centuries later. His back and arm were on fire, but even that was disconnected, like watching the world through glass. His fingers touched a window, cool and slick. Something pressed him down and he panicked, thrashing, trying to escape, until someone snapped something at him in an annoyed tone. It was oddly comforting. Normal. He sank back down into the vibrating seat and through it back into the darkness.
The next time he opened his eyes, he could smell incense, he was pretty sure, unless he'd had some kind of brain thing, and there was a woman sitting next to him. She was about his age, maybe a little younger, twenty-two, twenty-three. Puerto-Rican, he thought, or Dominican. Maybe Afro-Cuban. Hispanic. Something.
"My mother was from Barbados," she said, looking amused. "I was born right here."
"Was that out loud?" he asked, and she laughed. "You have a pretty laugh."
"I have a pretty everything." She grinned at him. "You staying with us?"
Boston couldn't make sense of the question. He didn't know where he was. He rolled over automatically, and remembered only after her warning noise, only as his back came down on the bed, why this was such a bad idea. The black reclaimed him.
He drifted in and out. At one point there was a needle in his arm, and something was dripping. He woke again to find himself scratching hard enough at his bandaged arm that he was drawing blood; someone yanked his hand away, but he was gone again before he could see who. He thought he heard prayers -- no, a rosary, beads clinking under the slow, endless murmur of half-remembered words, washing over him like water. He let himself go. The itching woke him again. He curled his hands so he wouldn't scratch, set his teeth as it went from pins-and-needles to biting insects to red hot nails.
"Itching is good," someone said. An older woman. "It's the poison working its way out. You'll be better soon. Trust me."
He tried to ask if she was a doctor, only it was later, and the first woman was back, headphones around her neck, playing something lively. She smiled quizzically at him. Boston tried to ask her again, couldn't remember the question, asked, instead, "What's your name?"
"Katrina," she said. "Should I be insulted that you never seem to remember?"
"Yes," he said, and, "Sorry," but not for the name, for that he was leaving again.
"Sleep well," she said from far, far above him. "I'll be waiting."
The darkness swirled around him. He remembered cleaning paint brushes, but he couldn't remember when or where. He could smell ammonia. Clean smells. Hospital smells. Blood smells, too, like a handful of hot pennies, struck smooth where the trains hit them. He forced his eyes open. He'd scratched his arm again. The older woman was there but for all his blinking she wouldn't come into focus. Something brushed against his skin, wet, rough as a cat's tongue. Fresh bandages wound around his arm. He thought he saw her raise the old, stained ones to her mouth, press them to her lips, but he couldn't see.
Fingers brushed his forehead. Someone said, "Soon."
*
Boston was in a long, narrow room, maybe triple the width of the cot he was lying on, and four, if not five times its length. The walls were metal, and the ceiling curved down at the edges to meet them. The floor looked plastic, almost laminated. There were a number of dividing curtains between him and the small door in the far wall, all open, and numerous windows down both sides of the room, though they were all opaque. He could see light through one side, darkness on the other, but little more.
The sheets below him were scratchy, the thick grey blanket too, the pillow solid. He was lying on his front. When he tried to turn onto his side, his back protested, sudden sharp pains that faded to a dull ache when he froze. Edging sideways, he carefully slid himself out of the bed, testing his legs would hold his weight before he slowly straightened up. The room swam from a moment and then settled down.
"Not so bad," he muttered, voice dry and rough.
His clothes were waiting on the bedside chair, and he dressed with slow care. To his surprise and relief, his gun was with it, though someone had thoughtfully taken the clip out and put the safety on. He checked it was empty before reloading it. The hoodie was a write-off, the T-Shirt much of one, both clawed open, stained with his own blood. He pulled them on anyway, wincing as they dragged against the bandages wrapped around his chest and arm.
Gun in a ready position at his side, he moved slowly down the room. Up closer, he could see that some of what he'd thought were windows were actually pairs of sliding doors, four of them, two in each wall, equally spaced. He tried the nearest. They wouldn't slide open even when he pulled the green release handle. It was familiar. The whole place was familiar, but not, all at once.
Seats, he thought. There should be seats. It's an old subway car. What the hell?
He moved further down it. There were cabinets here, cheap, mass-produced stuff with oddly heavy-duty locks on them. He could make out boxes inside, vials, pills, medicines. There was medical equipment further down too, and a safe-box for medical waste. It was upscale for a clinic in a train.
The next set of side-doors wouldn't open either. He tried the opposite pair, the ones facing onto darkness, but they wouldn't budge.
"Door number five," he muttered. There was a window in it, too, but it was opaque, like the others. Nothing to see.
Boston took a few long deep breaths, and then jerked the door open, gun ready, only to find a small sort of umbilical section, leading to an exact matching door. He couldn't hear anything through it. He tried the handle cautiously and it gave. Not locked. Okay, then. Three. Two. One.
Shoving it open, he took three quick steps into the room, looking quickly around.
There were seats this time, but what caught the eye were the plants. There was green everywhere. Few flowers that he could see, but lots of foliage, all shades of green. Faint scents in the air he couldn't place.
"Feeling better?" It was the older of the two women, brunette, heavy-set, her gaze steady despite his weapon. She nodded off to the side. "The door's right there if you want to leave. You're not a prisoner." Her voice was calm, soothing. "I have some antibiotics I'd like you to keep taking, but you're free to go with, or without them."
Boston lowered his weapon a little and edged past the plants and around her so he could glance outside. He caught a glimpse of a platform, empty brackets on the wall where the name-plate should have been, and then everything went swimming again and he had to grab the door frame for balance.
"Are you going to throw up again?" It was the younger woman, Katrina.
The older woman's clothes had been plain, greys and creams, nothing you'd look at twice or even really remember. Katrina was wearing a bright green jacket over black and pink tops. Her blue stonewashed jeans had red and white stripes painted down the outside of the legs. Her flats were the same open-toed sandal style, but one was purple, the other so dark blue it was almost black. She had chain after chain around her neck, pendants and lockets, dog-tags, a St Christopher medal.
"That's pretty gross," she said, pulling an expressive face, and it took him a moment to connect it to her previous statement.
"You rescued me?" He hadn't meant it come out as a question.
She nodded. "Did a number on my cab."
Boston decided to come back to that. "And you brought me here?"
"To Maria," she agreed, nodding past him.
He turned, slower this time, to look at the older woman. "You're a doctor."
"Something like that," Maria agreed calmly. She took a seat opposite the door, straightening her skirt a little when she sat.
"You couldn't take me to a hospital?" Boston asked, turning back to Katrina.
"This is a hospital," she said, waving a hand at it, and then at him. "You got all bandaged up and not dead of poison, didn't you?"
"Poison," he repeated.
"Hell, yeah!" Katrina bounced a little on the spot, chains jangling, grinning. "Man, you were all out of it, like you'd licked the toad or something. It was actually kind of cool. You told me I was pretty about a hundred times."
"I, uh." Boston didn't know what to say to that. He could feel his cheeks flush. He realised he still had his gun out, though neither of them seemed concerned by that, and put it away. "The, uh. The guy. Who attacked me?"
"The guy?" Katrina scoffed.
"The guy," Boston repeated.
Katrina leaned sideways to address Maria around him. "We're calling it 'the guy' now."
Maria held up her hands placatingly.
"It?" Boston repeated.
"Man, it was totally an it! Come on! Do you live in this city or not? Hey!" She bounded towards him, reaching out to grab his good arm. "I'll show you what it did to my cab. That's cool right?"
"Sure?" Boston said, bemused.
"Yeah, I was talking to the doc, dude," Katrina said. "He's not going to puke on me, right? Cleaning up body fluids, so not my bag."
"Your bag?"
"You repeat things a lot, have you noticed that?" Katrina asked, tugging at him. "Are we cool?"
"Don't leave without the medication," Maria said. "I think I'll water my plants."
"Sweet!"
This time, when Katrina tugged, Boston went with her. They took the steps up, Katrina two at a time and then pausing briefly and impatiently when he followed slower.
"I got cut up," he reminded her.
"You got a little scratched. Walk it off, Red!"
"It's Boston," he said, as they came off the stairs into an abandoned station. Someone had smashed the automatic ticket machines open, and the little teller office was thick with graffiti. "Boston Craig. Where is this place?"
"Lower East. River's a three blocks that way." She nodded to one side. "Main street starts four hundred and twelve yards around that corner," she pointed, "and this baby right here is my cab."
Black and yellow, it squatted at the curb, its front grille buckled, a hefty dent in its bonnet.
"That's-- You would have had to drive right past Mercy General to get me here," Boston complained.
"What good would that have done you? You think Mercy would have got you back on your feet in three days? Hell no." She laughed scornfully. "You'd've been dead and gone, Red--"
"Boston."
"--dead and gone. Maria Grace is the miracle worker. Keeps the life in your blood."
Boston opened his mouth to ask what the hell that meant, when the previous bit finally registered and he spluttered out, "Three days?!"
*
Bric-a-brac packed the front of the cab. Bobble-headed characters nodded along to the drive from the dash and the back window. There were more chains hanging from the rear-view mirror. Katrina had had to dump toys and books and scraps of paper, receipts and notes, onto the back seat to let him into the passenger seat; then she'd run back down to grab his meds and back up again, chucking them at him as she jumped into the driver's seat. He'd barely gotten buckled in before she'd pulled away, driving with a reckless abandon that didn't abate, even when they started crossing main streets with their accompanying traffic. Something loud was on the radio, fast, lots of percussion and heavy guitar, and Katrina drummed on the wheel and hummed along as she drove.
"You know where you're going?" he asked.
"I always know where I'm going," she said. "This is the quickest way back to your apartment, believe me."
Boston digested that. "You know where I live?"
"You're kind of whiny, you know that?" She glared at the road. "Wah, wah, you saved my life, wah, wah, three days, wah wah."
"Look, I'm a cop, okay?" Boston rubbed at his face. "I go missing for three days, people are going to come looking for me, lots of people. Lots of cop type people. You want to tell them a squat in a train is a hospital?"
"It's not a squat," Katrina snapped, "and it is a hospital, and if you can't be nice, you should shut your damn mouth, okay?"
She turned the radio up, fuming. Boston turned away, looking out through the grimy window, trying to make sense of the blurs, but it just made his head hurt. He looked back. Katrina was still trying to kill the road with her eyes. He looked away again. There was a small statue hanging amid the chains dangling from the rear-view mirror, a four-armed elephant-headed man sat on what might have been a giant rat. It swayed too-and-fro, in pendulum patterns that seemed to have little to do with the motion of the car.
"I'm sorry," Boston said. "I shouldn't have said that."
"Damn right you shouldn't have," Katrina agreed, but she seemed to relax a little.
The cab pulled in in front of his apartment building; the speed of arrival was impressive, but much more so was the way Katrina managed to find a space on a road that was usually solid one end to the other.
"Last stop, all out," she said. "Seriously, put some new clothes on; you look like a serial killer."
"Thanks," he said dryly, though he didn't really disagree. He got out, closing the door behind him.
She leaned across to wind it down, hand cranked, not electric. "You need me to walk you up?"
"I'm good," Boston said. "Thank you for saving my life. Did I say that before?"
"You could say it more often," Katrina said, grinning. "And, hey, don't worry about it, okay? Everything's been taken care of. Your neighbour said he'd look after your big dog."
"Griff's not--" Boston started, but she'd already straightened up, back into her seat,
With a cheery, "See you around, Red!" the cab burst away, whipping around the corner in a blink and gone.
"Boston," he said to the empty air, sighed, and went up to the door where he found that, somewhere along the way, he'd managed to lose his keys.
[ Full Headers | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | E | Read on DW ]