Chapter 2: Awake

It was around nine, verging on ten, when I awoke. The hiss of the radiator had pulled me from one of the only soothing dreams I had in a while, so in retaliation to the hell spawn, I chucked a pillow at it. It wobbled back and only hissed louder. Work started about an hour ago, and, as I sat up and put my feet to the cold floor, I remembered I was supposed to open the doors today. I glared at the radiator: a fat lot of good it did to keep the floor from being frozen.

With holey socks put haphazardly over my feet, I shuffled into the section of the tiny apartment the landlord called a kitchen and began to make coffee. On one of the plastic chairs I used as barstools, there sat a small stack of white envelopes. Bills.

I sighed. She had set me off my schedule for the week. Dina had obviously put the bills in the first place I would look this morning, strategically trying to get me to pay them, instead of my usual shoving them into the incinerator in the basement. On every Friday of every two months, I would take up the stack of bills, some loose change I would find underneath the lint in the couch, and go down to the basement of the apartment. I'd chuck the paper into a roaring flame and go get a beer out at Rubens.

Last night pulsed in my memory as pain lanced my head. Okay, scratch that visit to Rubens, bill-burning or no. Either way, I should keep a low profile for a while. Maybe I beat that guy so bad he'd have memory loss and couldn't pick me out of a line up. I swallowed a mouthful of sickly black coffee: here's to the guy's concussion.

The blatant appearance of the bills means Dina was worried. Damn it, I thought, for an intervention was certainly around the corner. She would only start sending subtle hints after the anger had passed and the worrying for my future began. Some day soon, she'd appear on my doorstep a calculator in hand and two number two pencils ready to go, saying we could sort this out. I would fall asleep around one o'clock and she would finish up what she started. At least I'd get a night of drinking out of it, even though she wouldn't let me smoke.

For now, I chucked the bills into the trash then poured milk and bits of soggy cereal on top once I had finished breakfast.

As I went back to shower, a thin voice echoed around my apartment.

"Hello, this is Eric Smith from Capital One. This is your last chance to call us and get your debt under control before I send someone—"

I unplugged the phone, smirking heavily into the blank white speakers.

I took a bus to work and before then, I had taken about five Advil to relief the almost intolerable beating inside my skull. I had to scrub for about ten minutes to remove the thick layer of mascara still left behind on my face. Dina had left me some money for the bus, wanting me to save the few dollars I had for a bank account to build a college fund. That was a lofty dream (more verging on the impossible, never-going-to-happen-in-a-million-years sort of dream) but she was determined to get me to college, or some form of academia. And its not like I couldn't, go to college and all. I just didn't want to. Simple as that. Nothing else. End of story.

I paid $4.00 for the bus ride, another $5.50 for Starbucks and $2.25 for a bagel. I even flipped the man on the street corner $5. Here Dina, this is what I think of college education.

Burger Bonanza was once a family owned restaurant, known only by the Southern Mannys. But as most honest things go, the government eventually took over, offering 1.5 million dollars to Mr. and Mrs. TJ Hodgins for their restaurant, all recipes known to their restaurant and complete and utter rendering of all Burger Bonanza merchandise. Now, as I am told, Bonanza has 4,300 restaurants nation wide and is on the brink of moving a store to China. The manager of our lowly stand is Freddie Roberts, a young man who was born to be a secretary at Vogue, but until then, he has to work like the rest of us. Tom, a kid in the dead center of high school, worked at B. Bonanza only for a reason to escape home. I wasn't entirely sure of Tom's situation. If forced to guess, he was some sort of adopted kid with bad background (say hellion father) because whenever Freddie asked him about it, he would completely avoid the subject. But other than that, he was the most normal sixteen-year-old I had met out here in the backwaters. Stew, a man in his late forties with a hairy potbelly and arms and a face like a gorilla, worked in the back with the food. He had something to do with unpacking it, or repackaging it, I never really took the time to ask him about it. I work in the front and absolutely refuse to eat the food. Stew is a big man, with lots of hair that cannot be contained no matter how many hairnets he wears.

And then there are about two or three people that none of us can name. We don't really know what they look like, can call them male or female or describe their job. I'd see them working the grill or cleaning the bathrooms but never talk to them or, shortly afterwards, ever see them again. They're extra. They are drifters. Unknowns. They come in, they come out. One minute they're here, the next they're not.

The morning shift had started by the time I got in, but no one noticed as I slipped on a cap, and went to stand behind the register. I don't know why Bonanza opens this early. We don't even serve breakfast. And frankly, the hanging posters of personified red and blue cows and chickens holding 30% off signs are nauseating, especially this early in the morning.

"Look who decided to come to work today," said a brisk voice that grated on the inner workings of my migraine.

"Yeah, Freddie. I'm here. What of it?"

"Your paycheck. As much as you'd like it, I can't pay you for sleeping."

"Why not? You've been doing it for two years."

This type of banter was our way of a 'good morning'. He was an arrogant, narcissistic rat-racer, and I was the lowly employee that never let him forget exactly what I thought of him. I would probably have his job, had it not been for my constant tardys, or occasional, never-showing-ups.

Freddie walked across the brilliantly white tile floor, his saddle shoes shinned and his square glasses calculative and judging. His brown hair was combed to the side and his clipboard had five pens hooked on the top. His usual scowl was replaced by a smirk of superiority and then I felt my stomach drop out to the floor. Freddie was a disgusting kiss-ass to the highest degree, but there was only one reason for this level of cleanliness: they were coming.

"That may be, but run a lawnmower through that fuzz you call hair and wipe the running drool off your chin. Mr. Jennings is coming today," Freddie said, confirming my worst fears.

Freddie straightened his clip-on tie and wedged his classes further up his pointed nose but even as he tried to keep up his forever façade of well-dressed business man, I heard a rise in the pitch of his voice as he said the name of his boss's boss's boss (and probably a hundred more 'boss's boss' up). Mr. Kenner Jennings himself wasn't a terrifying man; his surfer blonde hair and tanned skin was evidence of a hundred spoiled summers, but it was simply what he represented that made everyone at Burger Bonanza put on their fancy shoes and sing the song and dance of 'happy underpaid workers'. His father, Edward Jennings, was the fat cat that bought out the Bonanza from the Hodgins a millennia and a half ago. So as heir to the Bonanza industry, CEO Jennings gave his son the largest branch of Bonanza stores. Determined and backstabbing as his father, Jennings was going to smooze his way to the leather CEO seat of his own, by impressing his superiors with weekly visits to his restaurants across the NY district. Truly, the family business was less than interesting to Kennings Jr., but the money load wasn't something anyone could ignore.

Freddie had moved to the back, trying to arouse those asleep next to the grill and I found myself glancing in the circular, silver-rimmed mirror up in the corner of the ceiling. A nonchalant hand reached up and tugged a stray hair around my ear. He was the man that could decide whether or not I slept on the curb outside 7/11 or got to eat at Fuddruckers. Maybe I could—

There was a girlish squeal from the grill area and before I turned to see what made Freddie scream, he burst back around the corner, a paper towel furiously scrubbing at his shirt.

"What did Stew do now?" I asked, a chuckle following the end of the question. But I immediately knew it was a mistake.

Freddie jerked his head up, his glasses fogged and glinting with anger.

"That pig of a man just slapped me with a soggy slab of hamburger because I woke him up prematurely," he scowled and continued to incessantly erase away part of his shirt. For the fraction of a second his hand moved away, I saw that there was no spot at all.

"Damn that oaf! I have to change shirts!" Freddie threw the rag into a trash bin and looked at me as though I was meant to be horribly exasperated as well. "He is coming in ten minutes, and this will simply not do!"

I watched him storm away with an eyebrow raised. My eyes caught the mirror as I saw him go. Again, my reflection was staring at me. Our pinched fingers ran down matching collars. Two creases ran down the left sides of our uniforms and pale hands smoothed them out. There were matching smudges on the side of our cheeks and we wiped them away. Now I was close to the mirror, fixing up every little thing I could. I wanted to wash my hands, drench them soap and scrub until they were numb. Grease from the grill, the heat lamps, even the bathrooms, covered me. I realized that now. Showering was the only option to get it all of off me. But even then, all the water in the world couldn't get the grease off of me. I thumbed away a dark line under my eye, and then something blue returned my attention to the mirror. The reflection-me jerked her head back, just as I did. We stared at each other for a long time. Both had angular chins, almond eyes, wavy and shockingly red hair that covered pale cheeks in a Medusa snake-like tendril way. But, when I came to stare across the small space into of my reflection and to look at those almond eyes again, the sight startled me. The blue, electric eyes were needle-sharp, glaring, fearsome; they burned a hole through my chest, causing me to loose my breath momentarily as though I had been sucker-punched in the stomach. They hated what they saw, even though it was the face of their owner, and that hatred was magnified as they glanced around the room.

The clear door opened, spilling in a brilliant light, and two black silhouettes stepped on the immaculate tile. As the room adjusted to the sudden glow of white, the first figure formed to be a young man in a pinstriped business suit, black loafers and a smooth silver cell phone resting on his ear as one of the arms flipped up its wrists to check the time on a gold Rolex.

"Keep your pants on, Jim. This'll take twenty minutes max then we can get your damn Toilet Pro 2000 off to Asia in an hour." The man rattled off into his phone. He strode into the restaurant, his blonde hair dyed darker than the last time I saw him. Lines ran down the sides of his cheeks as though he had fake-smiled one too many times. His brown eyes stared acutely into a plastic chair, obviously seeing through what was in front of him as he focused on something millions of miles away. His foot tapped as he nodded, and he sighed a couple of times before finally glaring at his watch again as he twirled into a booth to yell at the man on the other line.

The other shadow slowly materialized and the moment I had been dreading as soon as Freddie mentioned their arrival became a reality.

She walked as though on air and the world glided behind her. She wore white summer shorts and a tank top that looked like it had been taken from a romantic beach movie. Her sandals reached up around her tan legs, tying off up at the mid-calf. Golden hair came down in elegant swirls, bobbing along as she walked, caressing her shoulders and chest. From such a person of high class and an endless supply of money, her eyes would naturally assume the glare of superficially superb but for the fiancé of Kenner Jennings, the two auburn suns sparkled with the most genuine happiness I have ever seen on a human face. In one word, Ani Clark was perfect.

"Hi, Reid. How are you?" Ani smiled and I was struck silent for a moment by how honestly curious she was.

"Fine. I'm great. Good." I managed to spit out before realized I never had time wash my hands before she came.

"Sorry about him," she laughed and pointed to her fiancé still jabbering away into his cell phone. "He's about to sign this deal with Japan. I mean that's what I think. He's been on chattering away for at least two days so I haven't been able to get the full story."

I looked her up and down one more time before coming up with a reply. The whole outfit must have cost at least $2000, money I'll never own or even see. And probably when they left, a private jet was awaiting on a private run way to carry them to Fiji or somewhere else exotic so then, after the deal was signed, they'd have beach sex for hours and hours and hours...

"Reid, hello. Can you hear me?" A perfectly manicured hand was waving in front of my face.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. Just a little bit— nothing."

"Could you point me towards the bathroom? The flight over here was more or less hell in the sky." She laughed again, the sound like a wind running over smoothed stones and water.

I pointed towards around the corner towards the back of the restaurant and she nodded, brilliantly smiling again, before gliding away. I watched her go and began to think.

A lifetime and a half ago, we used to be even. Money, status, looks; she was just where I was. In high school we were both beautiful, popular and even had a little bit of extra cash in our pockets, giving us the power to do whatever we wanted. We were also the best of friends. Then high school ended. My mother had apparently left me with nothing (as in no inheritance) and I had never had a day of honest work in my life. I lost every cent I had, moved in with an out of date P.E coach and became dead last in society. The world around me changed so sharply and so fast, from time to time I couldn't breathe. Friends became enemies, and Ani Clark became engaged to the heir of Kenner Enterprises.

Something occurred to me so suddenly, I swore I heard the whoosh of realization fly by me. I wasn't in awe of Ani. Her beauty didn't blow me away. I hated her, how she left me to fend for myself in the underworld, how she forgot those days of summer secrets and late night passwords. I hated her. She meant nothing to me.

Ani hummed as she rounded the corner again. My eyes darted back from the reflection in the mirror so I could see the girl who ruined my life flaunt everything she had like she didn't care. She hopped up onto the counter and kicked the $500 dollar sandals up and down.

"I really wish he would hurry up," she muttered nodding towards Jennings. "The house is getting really lonely."

Yeah, all five stories of it, you bitch.

"But, in any case, how have you been?" Ani swung around and smiled her award-winning smile.

"Busy. Working. Tired." I replied shortly. I was waiting for the confused look to appear across her face but it never came. She managed to hide the fact that she had no idea what the feeling of being exhausted was like. Conning people was what she did best; I shouldn't have been so surprised. My latest epiphany now invoked a particular surge of rage towards the girl who had it all. "Not all of us can live the penthouse life. We don't all have servants that wipe our asses for us."

That just caused her to laugh, unable to grasp the fact that the girl who stood next to her loathed everything she was and is and will become. Ani still lived in the world where no one can hate as deeply as I could.

"God, Reid, you always had such a great sense of humor," Ani giggled again and put a slender hand on my shoulder. Almost immediately, I snatched her around the wrist and shoved it away, glaring as fiercely as I could.

There was a momentarily crease in her marble face before Kennings stood up and snap his phone shut.

"Come on, babe. This is a hook line and sinker. Want to go to Rome?"

Ani's golden eyes glittered in happiness and she leapt off the counter to give her boyfriend a deep hug, followed by a slobbery kiss.

"Bye, Reid," she finally said and Jennings put his hand into one of the back pockets of her summer shorts, steering her out of the restaurant. "It was good to see you. Au revoir!"

The clear door swung shut behind them and the shadows disappeared into the bright sun.

"Au revoir!" I furiously kicked the counter, then swung my hips to the side and flicked my wrist over my shoulder, mocking the stupid bitch. "Au revoir!"

"This is perfect. Mr. Jennings will be so impressed." Freddie appeared from the backroom, a Kleenex stuffed into a frightfully white shirt as elegant plumage. He stared around the room and his face fell. Something crumbled inside me and hate bit my skin as it rushed in my veins.

"Yeah, your lover came and went without so as much as a hello to you," Words up heaved from the back of my throat, clearing away the burning sensation growing there. "If you can get your head out from his ass then you'll see he doesn't give a damn about anything but the amount of zeros in his bank account. Stop trying to make yourself something you're not, come out of the less-than-obvious closet and get the hell on with life."

The thing about blunt honesty, it's the most liberating experience you can have. Freddie watched me leave the restaurant with his mouth slightly agape and I felt wave of excellent peace burrow into my chest, leaving me completely indifferent to what I had just said to my boss and the memories Ani had brought back.

It was the time of year in which the Northern Hemisphere is finally caught in its own tracks and forced to stop and look at what was happening around it. Leaves were changing. There was the occasional burst of cold and dry wind, shaded with the prospect of freezing rain and snow. Skies were darker than normal and sometimes the world was engulfed in thick clouds that threatened to bring a never-ending frost upon the earth below. Then the next day, the signs of winter would be gone and summer would try to establish its hold on the world again. Yet, with each passing of day and of night, summer was loosing its grip and the icy winds from winter were blowing away the last remaining fingers of warmth and bright sunlight.

I strode forcefully through the busy streets of Manhattan, desperately trying to lose myself in the massive stream of human population. I wanted to become nothing in the sea of people, just one more water drop with a face, a number, a statistic. The other waves crashed against me. They pushed and sidled me to and fro, almost falling as I stumbled along. Drowning and barely moving forward in the mass of human beings, I finally felt content.

One particularly large man was in a hurry and it only took a forceful shove from one of his broad shoulders to send me tripping into a convenience store window. I had been here many times before and had even shoplifted from it more than a decent amount, due to the terrible lax in security. Memories and feelings were swooping up to my throat from my stomach, and I was just about to dive back into the crowd when something in the store window caught my eye. It was a poster boasting about the new technical advances the store had taken to prevent thieves from taking whatever they liked. Most people saw comfort and reassurance. I saw a challenge.

Pushing back the clear door and hearing a familiar tingle of the bell, I smirked and walked over to the poster to get a better look. The Asian clerk at the desk looked up as I came in, which only encouraged me further: he had never met me or seen me before, so of course he wouldn't call the cops the moment I cause the doorbell to ring. Immediately he glanced back down at the crossword lying on the desk and tapped the bouncy eraser on his pencil several times to the counter, not giving me another moment's glance. This caused a fierce jolt of pleasure to erupt in my veins. The cosmos was edging me on.

Apparently, there was a security camera now installed, along with special bar codes that would call the cops the moment anyone tried to pass through the front door without paying. My favorite installation came next. Actually getting out of the door was probably the most magnificent feat due to the fact that sensors placed five feet from the doors would detect any unpaid products and immediately shut down the store, steel-locking the gates as to prevent anyone from leaving until the cops arrived. This was my calling and I already had a plan. I had to be fast, and quick and strong to pull this off.

I selected a bottle of Jack Daniel's as my prize. If I was caught, why not be caught with something classy? And if I wasn't, I should have the best as my reward. Thankful for once in my life that I wore gloves, I opened one of the many freezer doors that held racks and racks of soft drinks, beers, energy drinks and of course my beloved Jack Daniels. I reached for a diet Dr. Pepper up at the top shelf, while with the other hand I pulled the bottle of alcohol and dropped it in my coat pocket. I mimed the impression of looking at the drink with interest, as though wondering to buy it or not before shrugging and returning the Dr. Pepper to the hole on the shelf.

I ran a careless hand against the candy, again acting out the façade that I was still here to purchase something. Bags of chips crunched under my hands and I shifted them back and forth. Finally I turned to the cashier and held up a dollar bill.

"Anything for this?"

The moment was coming. The adrenaline was sitting in the dead center of my heart, waiting to be pumped out through the rush of blood that would course around my body as I ran from the police. My hand was shaking I was so excited, but to not tip the man off just yet, I put away my hand and the dollar.

The man shook his head, without even glancing up.

"Get more money then come back. They don't pay me enough to take crap money like that."

"Then I'll have to just drink this here."

It was time. I pulled the bottle of Jack Daniels out of my coat and unscrewed the lid. I heard a gasp. There was a rush of pure excitement, and then I heard the sirens.

"Thank you so much." I grinned, which now only frightened the man more as he stood, back against the wall and trying as fast as he could to get into hiding. I laughed loudly and bolted out the door as the metal bars closed down.

The wind was fierce as it bit into my face and whistled harshly into my ears. I hadn't seen the cop cars but I knew they were close, fruitlessly trying to find the thief. Maybe I should double back, run through an alleyway so they could see me. As I dashed around a corner, the violent screeching became louder and a cop car pulled out from five streets behind me. An arrogant and giddy laugh belted out from my chest, forcing me to breath in the prickly air and setting my senses on fire. The cop had seen me and I started to run like hell. Down a thin street I went, and the playing field was evened.

As I ran, the faceless cop was ordering backup because this girl was disturbingly fast, probably high on something. She was running like a mad man up the street, occasionally zigzagging through the street and up onto the sidewalk. The cop had no idea how much fun the deranged girl was having.

But, as only human, I could only out run cop cars in a narrow road for so long. This path dumped us out at the underbelly of the Manhattan Bridge, near the water. Now the cops had to go on foot to follow me. Five or so men dressed in dark blue were running, desperately trying to keep up but all I had to do was flit a few feet and they were momentarily gone from my sight.

I weaved around the right foot of the bridge and just as the men reached the top of a hill, I shoved over some loosening metal where the screws had broken down and I dove inside.

There was a minute of silence before the five passed by me, completely unaware that their culprit stood less than a foot from them.

I waited for the silence to return before howling with laughter and slumping to the floor. The Jack Daniels inside of my coat bumped me to remind me of my prize and with an increasingly light head, I opened the tab again and drank until tears ran out of my eyes and my cheeks. I sat, red-faced and smiling before getting up to make it back into the center of town. The metal columns that supported the Manhattan Bridge were open the underground, which led to the sewers and hence back up in downtown. I drank heartily again before starting my walk.

Jack Daniels had never tasted so good, but perhaps that was because the taste of pure victory didn't linger on the rim of regular bottles as it did with my prize. I peeled back a grimy metal gate and whistling a tune with no words, I slipped down into the black sewers. The Jack Daniels made me sing and dance while surrounded by smells that would make even the most iron of stomachs heave. I continued along, the sewers made into the shape of stone cylinders, the floor cut with dirty water down the middle.

And then, without a single doubt in my mind, I realized I wasn't alone.

It was as though someone had dosed me in ice-cold water then blown an Alaskan wind my way. Every hair was standing on end and my mind was perfectly clear, focused and alert. The rats that scuttled several walls away, I could hear them as they scrambled in the search of food, pillaging through the dirt. A smell like a thousand dead bodies mixed with all the dirty water of the world left out in the sun to bake for years suddenly clamped down on my nostrils. I snarled in disgust and suddenly the smell was lessened. A roach had fallen into the water and I knew it was there. My hands felt as though tiny waves were pressing themselves into my palms, like I could feel the roach's futile efforts to keep itself from drowning. The water that dripped so far away now was a leak in my ear, pounding with sound and a reverberating plop. Then there was something else.

Before, with the rats and the roach, they were there. Present. Alive. Having that undeniable sense of simply being, no matter how small the life may be; each one of those sewer animals had it. Yet now, the thing that was close, getting closer, had none of it. It was not an animal and it was certainly not human. In a flash of horror, it's not alive, crossed my mind. Like instinct, the acute attentiveness that had suddenly bloomed inside of me reached out into the dark blue sewer and it retreated immediately because when I touched it, there was no heartbeat. I could hear no breathing, no rustle of hair or clothing, but I knew something was there. It was a shadow without a body to give it form.

It was cold and frightening—

Frightening, that's not the right word. No, not at all. Standing frozen in a dirty sewer and awake for the first time in my life, I was petrified. The thing was black. Not the color but the description of the Endless Abyss, the sort of thing that sucks you in, crushing you from the inside out, ripping you to pieces and slowly, painfully, soaking up the being that you are; that was at the very core of what was following me. It was nothing but black.

For once in my life something was so abundantly clear, I could not refuse my instinct. I had to run until the wind carried me because it did not want a human to be faster than it. But even then, part of my head was telling me running wouldn't do a thing. Giving up was not an option either; the alertness told me that.

Finally, I moved. I moved into a crouch, one foot steadily in front of the other and going faster, a large spacing mounting between us but it followed me. I went faster and faster, the thing moving just enough to open a flood of fear inside of me. Through a maze of wet walkways and empty tunnels I went, momentarily considering punching my way through stone to the surface, if I could. Fear was eating my stomach and if I was in there for much longer, the scream I was holding in would shatter my lungs.

The wet metal ladder in sight was a miracle. My hand slipped slightly as I grasped onto the sides and shimmed up. Bursting through the manhole like the flames of hell were on my heels, I flung myself out of the sewers and slammed the metal cover back into its place.

I was somewhere around the southern part of downtown, near the area by the Bronx. It was late, with very little people around. A car occasionally passed by but for the most part, I was alone.

The clarity was gone. I couldn't hear sounds fifty feet away. I couldn't feel the taps of millions of feet walking on the cement. My vision was even a little blurry. Suddenly my breath caught up and my lungs contracted. I gasped, tears pouring down from my eyes. My arms couldn't hold me and I scuttled back to a brick wall to try and breathe. I was shaking so fiercely I thought I would throw up. My body felt like jelly and I folded to the ground, the cold cement weirdly feeling warm to my cheek.

He was going to kill me. He was going to murder me in the sewers and no one would find my body for weeks. The jaws of Death had their teeth pricking me and by luck I had escaped them.

I think at that point, I fell asleep for several hours. For what seemed to be a blink of an eye, the black sky had melted into a purple, then a lighter purple then an angelic pink. It was then I hoped to any god that the danger was gone. By this, the very early morning light, I made my way home.

Taking a taxi never occurred to me for as I walked, practically in a stupor, the memories I viciously tried to escape the previous day were filling my mind like a toxic gas. My head was beginning to hurt and my stomach felt sick. A light was trying very hard to turn on in my head but I refused to let it. The night that my mother was killed and tonight felt so similar it made my skin itch. If allowed to speak my thoughts aloud without being considered completely crazy, I would say without hesitation, that the man who murdered my mother was the same man who followed me last night. The feeling of being cynically dead is not the aura most people carry around. And that night was the most terrified I've ever been in my life, tonight being the only exception. In a normal world, I would go to the police and report my case. But after running from the cops after robbing a store, I doubt they would do anything but handcuff me and keep me in jail as long as they can. I was going to have to protect myself, alone as always.

I unlocked my apartment door, kicked off my shoes and fell into bed, sleep coming so fast it knocked me out.