Sunset on the river was beautiful, as always. The spectrum of colors reflecting on the water brought a desperately needed sense of peace, though never quite enough. The tranquility and the song of nature as it could only be experienced here was exactly what the sole man aboard was after. It was why he'd purchased the boat four years ago. Initially it had been to do something new and exciting, but lately Archie had found it akin to an escape. A way to forget his old life and find a place that didn't remind him of anything anymore. It was like his retirement. Early—but unavoidable, and entirely necessary these days.
The deck chair held him up, and the cooler at his elbow held everything he needed: cold beer inside and something to nibble on, on top. He had enough for another week away from port stowed in the cabin if he really wanted— longer if he rationed. There was nothing to do but enjoy the sunset. As the sun dipped below the horizon and became a sliver, the color he loved and loathed painted the sky. The rich purple bloomed, contrasting ever so beautifully with the candy blue aftertones of the day, and the ache in his chest mirrored it. He missed them. Still. He would for the rest of his life.
"You still want to know why sunset is important to me?"
She had nodded, her hands fidgeting away- so used to the constant busying caused by one baby girl.
Archie took a long sip before he answered. "Just after the sun vanishes under the horizon the sky turns the same color as your eyes. For a moment it takes me back to that first night at that dirty little dive when I fell in love with the girl at the bar. Or when my little girl held my fingers for the first time in the hospital."
She was grinning now, and despite the fact that she was no longer the twenty-something stranger drinking alone but rather the mother of his child, she reminded him of something free and wild and completely untamable. She'd go where the wind blew her, flowing with the tides, but she'd always come back to what she loved. She was beautiful and funny and smart and dazzling and everything. She had given him everything.
"What?"
He gave her a grin. "Nothing."This was the time of day he lived for. Masochistic, yes, but he had nothing else. His life was wandering the river's byways, ferrying tourists and fishermen around for a little extra cash when he wasn't working in the shop. A far cry from his evenings, where every moment was adrenaline-filled mania. When he made port, Archie did his banking, resupplied, and took on a few holiday-makers before setting out to sea again. He'd dump them at whatever port they wanted and be gone as soon as he got his pay. Then it was him, the water, and the sunset until he ran out of provisions if so desired. It was a simple life.
Well, him and
it. The other reason he had spent so much time on the boat. Away from everything and everyone else.
It came in waves, like a sickness that just wouldn't fade. He felt it pulling at the edges of his vision sometimes, an inky blackness that tunneled his vision and darkened the world. Those cotton candy blues and grand reds and purples faded into nothing and he was temporarily robbed of the one thing he lived for. Instead he saw hazy outlines and sparks and signatures of the physical world around him. Pinpoint flashes that were terribly raw in his dark world. He always hated when it happened, but he
was able to resist. Sometimes.
A hand raised up to his chest instinctively, and the war drum that was his heart calmed some. Even if it screamed, it wouldn't come out.
Not now.But it didn't listen, not fully at least. A wave of nausea washed over him and in the fleeting moment he had before his vision darkened once more- he could see that the purple was no longer of the sky, but instead a flash. He felt his ears pop, and Archie felt this odd sensation of having dropped about ten feet, like a plane depressurizing. There was some sort of crashing sound, and his preternaturally powerful ears heard what was possibly the loudest sound he had ever heard- it was like a freight train was passing directly by him, but it was coming from every direction at once, including above and below. Archie screamed, but he couldn't even hear himself over this deafening roar. His blind eyes dashed around in his head in an attempt to see something, the source of the sound, but couldn't. He felt tendrils extend from his body- feeble as they might have been at this stage in a change, they still tried to do what they could- constricting around handrails and whatever they could ensnare themselves on. But whatever was pulling him away wasn't physical. He felt gravity throw him in different directions.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped, like someone threw a switch and cut it off. He couldn't see again yet, but he felt the cold grit of what had to have been concrete against his skin. He laid there for a second, perfectly still, and slowly the normal sounds of the world came back. As his vision returned, his suspicion was confirmed, but he did not move until that inky black pollutant drained away from his blackened veins and returned them to their normal color. Archie could feel others in the room, and even if they had seen some of his body's unnatural behavior, he didn't want them to see any more than he could help.
Archie propped himself up on his elbow, and groggily looked around- identifying no one but the Jaden person that he had read about- a survivor of the horde, and his friend David who seemed no worse for wear and was already getting up and dusting himself off. Despite the man being many years his senior, he was more spry than Archie was. But, credit where it was due- if he heard the noise that Archie had, it probably didn't sound like the end of the fucking world. When he spoke, he confirmed Archie's guess that he too had heard the noise. But what kept his attention was the comment.
It felt familiar. Like Araminta, but not. Archie scanned the room in an attempt to find some sort of tell, but couldn't quite place what made it feel more like home than Araminta itself had in a long time.
You tell me.
Growing up alone had been, for lack of better wording, rough.
Granted, she hadn't been
alone alone, if you're buying what I'm selling, but Kayla had spent most of her life in quiet solitude. She came in contact with a lot of bodies, and handshakes, and smiles, and laughter, and friendly moments. But a friend was something different. Outside of her dog, she wasn't sure if she would define herself as someone who had any. Sure, she was popular, and everyone knew her. She never didn't have notifications on Snapchat or Instagram and she
certainly hadn't ever had to face an issue like unrequited love- but that was a problem in and of itself. She hadn't really felt that level of attraction to
anyone yet.
Her uncle had been mostly absent throughout her life. He was always around often enough to have seen her slink into the house so late at night that it was probably best defined as early morning with barely or not at all concealed hickeys. He had certainly been around long enough to pull her out of bad situations with authorities using the silver tongue that she
must have gotten from her moms side of the family if he had it. He had
been around, but he wasn't involved. Closer to a room mate than a family member. Maybe that's why he didn't have a family of his own. Maybe he didn't want one. Maybe his casual avoidance was simply his best way of dealing with the unfortunate situation that they had found themselves in. Her with dead parents, and him with their kid.
Kayla kicks a rock in front of her a few times and marvels at the ark and bounce that it follows along the street. Fending for herself so much throughout her life had been pretty lonely, and with no family and most people being uninteresting she had always wanted a pet for the company. She came home from the hospital after a pipe bomb gone wrong and asked her uncle for at least a fish for what had to have been the six thousandth time in her life, except that that time he'd said yes.
In the rare moments of familial camaraderie, Uncle Milo usually insists that she'd been using the hospitalization as a woe-is-me move to manipulate him into buying her a pet, but that's not true at all. She'd just wanted some company. If he had felt so guilty and worried over her despondency that they'd been practically obligated to cave in and get her a dog, well, that's purely coincidental. Assuming that was even the case. Kayla would put just as much money on the idea that he was sick of her bothering him.
In any case, they'd driven to the pet store that evening and she was promised they wouldn't leave until she'd found something fluffy to call her own. Milo had immediately started trying to sell her on the giant Labradors in the corner, until he'd overheard her trying to get a parakeet to say 'Milo is a dumb ass'. Things went downhill from there.
With her uncle successfully distracted by the clerk, who was now chewing him out over a bird being taught to curse (she hadn't even had to employ her knock-over-shelves-like-dominoes strategy, which was lucky because she did that in Walmart once and it didn't go well), Kayla had slipped away to the back of the shop. That was where they kept the outcast animals who would probably get put down because they were vicious or ugly or old, so of course they were the ones who Kayla felt like she would relate to the most.
Apart from some serious sympathy and this horrible tugging on her heartstrings that made Kayla want to take every single one home with her, she hadn't felt anything special for any of them until she'd reached the end of the room. There'd been this tiny grey and white ball of fur in a cage that started snarling at her the second she'd gotten close, and she'd been about to move on when it had very suddenly taken interest. Despite herself, Kayla just
knew then, because she
knew that look of hesitant curiosity and unbridled rage at the world for the situation they had ended up in. The puppy had fought the attendant every step of the way, and she had nearly lost a finger to the spitfire's tiny puppy teeth when she had unsuccessfully tried to pet the dog. "Kayla," her uncle had started, "are you sure that you…?" he'd trailed off at the way Kayla was looking at her new friend, and didn't make a move to restart objections after that. He had glanced longingly at the panting golden retrievers in the corner but otherwise didn't complain.
And so they'd become friends. It'd taken maybe two weeks for Oleander to go from being the fierce, unholy offspring of rage and muscle to a husky that was so harmless and playful. Seriously, this one time he killed a lizard accidentally and wouldn't get out of bed for days. It had been three years since then.
But make no mistake, Oleander was a horrible creature. He's got this ever-present look of absolute smugness on his stupid ugly face and he takes up well over half the bed even though he's like sixty pounds. He refuses to dance with Kayla whenever she's in music mode, he throws a hissy fit every time Kayla's too busy to pet him, he knocks everything over if he so much as hears the word 'walk', he practically flops if you scratch him under the chin, he's terrified of snakes, and he won't even look at any type of dog food that isn't beef flavored. Kayla's pretty sure that having a diet lacking chicken and turkey and, you know, variety is probably bad for the dog but he's got big blue eyes and a great begging face and Kayla is weak.
As much as Kayla hates Oleander and every day regrets choosing him over a talking bird that could insult her uncle or other anyone she might one day consider a friend, she's serenaded the dog with Queen's
You're My Best Friend more than a couple of times and she's pretty sure that makes them bonded for life. Besides, Oleander may be a terrible living being but he's a great cuddler and Kayla can no longer fall asleep without him.
That doesn't redeem the fact that Oleander is the worst listener in the world, though. To her venting, I mean. The dog was scary intelligent, and half of their days were spent training together. She'd have to consider a dog competition one day, but until then the town would just have to settle for her not leaving a path of chaos wherever she went in the meantime.
If Oleander had been around, maybe that great flash of purple light and otherworldly bang wouldn't have caught her by surprise- because in one moment she had gone from spray painting a mural and kicking a rock around to face first into the concrete of a strange warehouse in god knows where. She had eaten shit before, mostly while skating. She had a nice scar on the bridge of her nose and what had once been cut from a split chin to prove it. But she hadn't eaten shit like this before. It wasn't so much as the fall, rather it felt like her shit had been
rocked.
She sat up, a bit woozy but experienced enough in getting hurt to know that she was unharmed. She looked around and saw that there were several people like her around, all of various ages and in various states of stunned. There was one man just to her right who she recognized as the repairman from Araminta. She had visited more than a few times to get something fixed or to have her truck repaired. He looked a bit worse for wear compared to the rest of the people in the room- and his veins were a spiderweb of black that rapidly retreated underneath his clothes.
Kayla furled her brow. Was he high? Or tweaking or something? She had never seen any drugs do that, and she had tried quite a few. She was on her feet quickly, and thankfully whatever the man had been suffering from seemed to have lost its affect because Mr. Anderson had gone from prone to sitting- albeit slowly. She extended her hand to the larger man.
"You okay, Mister Anderson?" she questioned. Archie took her hand in a somewhat jerky fashion, as if his muscles were stiff and twitchy still. Cocaine, maybe meth? She could see him having a meth lab, maybe. She pulled him up.
"Yeah." Archie said, shaking his hand out. "I think whatever took me here had a weird affect on me." he explained. Kayla shifted her weight uneasily, but didn't press. She shrugged. "You looked rough."
"I feel rough."
She grinned at that, and Archie offered her a small smile for her benefit. But just like Oleander she saw the look in his eyes and knew it well, deep within herself. She watched Archie as he stepped away from her and placed a hand on another man's shoulder. What was his name? David something? Had a camera when she saw him around town. Probably took pictures of kids at schools or something.
Kayla looked around. She recognized this warehouse, she had defamed and damaged it many times with rocks and spray paint and drug deals and impromptu fires with people who were looking for a good time in high school.
"This isn't right." She said casually, tuning into Jaden, Kaitie, and Terry's conversation. "If this is the warehouse I think it is, there should be a massive red white and blue dick drawn with spraypaint on that wall." she said, throwing a thumb being her to one of her many independence day excursions. That one had taken a few people in her age group to pull off, and while the beer had made it more fun, she couldnt remember the people she had done it with. "And there would be tire marks all over the floors from people doing burnouts."
This place was right, but wrong. Like a memory of a place rather than what it actually was. "Where the fuck are we."
