Chapter-1
Author: The Narrator
Category: Adventure, Film Noire
Rated: R, just to be safe.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the JQ characters, HB does, they are being used without permission. I am deeply appologetic.
Archivers: The ones that still exist- do what ye will.
Chapter 1- A Muddled Perception
I slip another yellow pill in my mouth. This is a mess of 200mg of caffeine and artificial food coloring that has been compressed to a ball of puss that we have conditioned ourselves to find edible.
The days stretch on, the hours hurling themselves in dizzying circles around in my head, crashing into one another and confusing their order in my memory. I can't remember the last time that I slept. I might have drifted off in the cab a couple minutes ago, or last week before Jessie went missing. The caffeine keeps my eyes open, at any rate.
Jade popped up out of nowhere, suddenly hightailing it out of Vegas, dropping fake passports along the way and she probably needed money. I guess that's why she thought of me- some daft rich kid who received one whopper of an undeserved inheritance when he turned 18 and had too many emotional attachments for the good of someone with that kind of money.
Besides, what would ickle Jonny care if she transferred a couple thousand dollars from one bank account to another anyways? And I might actually not have. If that was all that she had done. But Jade was never simple. Theft was child's play to her- boring and as dangerous as spray painting your own wall.
We pass acres of corn fields, flashes of green and brown and yellow whipping by so fast that I might be hallucinating it. I am again reminded of the time- the minutes tangling together until they become a useless mass of undefined sub-meanings and blurred, repetitive images.
I think of Jessie. She could be out here, anywhere. I imagine her huddled behind the enormous stalks of corn, hiding from the traffic, Jade's crooked blade at her throat and her voice ringing sharply in her ear, "stay down and keep your mouth shut." And my stomach convulses thinking of the pieces I've already received of her.
Jade always had a way of explaining things in such an unquestionable way that cut clear through your soul and carried your intestines right out with it on the other side without ever saying a word. I met her one night while she was smacking on my bodyguard. I have basically two or three full memories of her altogether, but they are impressionable ones. I was particularly amazed by how well it seemed she was able to make out and yank twenty dollar bills from closed wallets at the same time. I was nearly mesmerized by it until the poor man went temporarily broke.
Another thing about her was how she loved to pick out all the short ends of every stick and make damn sure that his daughter got every one of them. That about her managed to piss me off pretty bad because the daughter and I had something of a relationship even then. Five years later, we're live-in boyfriend and girlfriend and this little problem with Jade has inspired me to pick up gun collecting.
I lean forward, toward the driver, close enough for my breath to violate the back of his neck. "How much farther?" I barely recognize my own voice- a jumble of lost vowels and consonants, hopping around and redefining, themselves, where they really belong.
"Close enough for you to get out and walk if you don't shut up."
Apparently, I have not allowed enough time since I last asked this. I sit back in my seat. I am the fat kid with ice cream smeared on his chin and shirt, crying, "are we there, yet? Are we there, yet?"
I can't remember five words that I ever said to Jade in all the times I had ever seen her, but she knew enough about me to track me down to the very bed I slept in. About the clear cut messages- she managed to deliver the first one to me without a hitch. Three fingernails and a lock of red hair tied uneasily neat with a pretty little green ribbon.