Part 6
LOSING MY RELIGION
Dorothy was boldly parked in the ambulance unloading area, arm slung out the window of her car. So far no one had noticed, all too busy with the morning feeding and cleaning of the patients and their rooms. The morning air was clean and surprisingly clean for the particular colony. Walking out while still fitting on his jacket, the smell of pine invaded him and a green wave of trees was out front of the hospital. Duo walked up and opened the door.
"Where are we going?"
"Get in Duo. I've got orders from Dr. G to get you home. He said, and I quote, "There's too many Jit's brown-nosing around." The drama had drained from her expressions, partly because she had sunglasses on.
As he sat down and slammed the door, he asked, "How'd he find you?"
"You know that bastard better than I do, take a guess. He just showed up," she said icily.
As the purring engine revved and pulled them out of the unloading area and up the hill to the highway, a smile worked its way through Duo's bitter expression from the argument. He knew she'd been hiding something. Folding his arms, he didn't quit staring at her until she caught on and stared back.
"What?"
"He caught working, didn't he?" His smile was ready to pop his eyeballs. "Damn… poor you. Lemme guess… no tip?"
"Shut up."
"Not a good show?"
"Do the words 'mutilation by lover' scare you?" she snapped, jarring her foot down on the pedal. "No? Well, I'll make you scared of it, you son of a bitch, you."
"Ha. Incorrect. I don't have a mom," he said, kicking back and putting his hands behind his head. "Orphaned, remember?"
Dorothy chewed her gum and didn't answer. Her long, painted-black fingernails drummed on the steering wheel, then turned it as she diverged from the steadily thickening Japanese morning commute. Her lips puckered in the side view mirror briefly as she pulled out a violet shade of lipstick and routinely applied it. She pulled herself back into the car, Duo watching her silently and with the disinterest of the usual teenager on a road trip, and looked over at him. It was a warning to keep shutted up. And he was happy to oblige. "It's part of the deal," she said to explain the lipstick. Duo couldn't help but smile his impish smile.
A few meters down the road they were slowed by the presence of not-so-confident L-1 drivers and Dorothy's face soured. Leaning out the window, she gunned the engine threateningly, loud enough for it to be heard by the man driving the first slow car. He turned, visibly, and looked at Dorothy with critical, beady brown eyes. Smiling dangerously in reply, she fearlessly sped the car out onto shallow shoulder. Gravel spun out from the wheels with the speed of explosion shrapnel and dust choked the car. Passing him quickly, she yanked it back into the lane and let her foot find the gas pedal and her middle finger the air.
"Showoff," Duo muttered, leaning back.
Dorothy waited patiently, acting as well as she could to be unconcerned with him, until the American was asleep and opened the glove compartment and pulled out the syringe.
* * * * *
A few hours later, she was at the airport. Dorothy sat watching the ironic fork in the road just challenge her morals. Money? Or escape to a romantic getaway with the boy she didn't romantically love. It was equal sinful, and she frowned. The car when into park as she stared at the signs. One sign said, "L-2 Colony" somewhere in the jumbling collection of the same message in six or seven different languages. The other was "Earth."
Soulless blue eyes turned to Duo's drugged sleeping form. She didn't know what to do.
* * * * *
He woke up from a jolted nap to the smell of manic humidity making his skin perspire endlessly. It was like some smoky demon raping him from the inside out. Making a few moans of discomfort, he sleepily shifted against the doorframe and awkwardly slipped out of his jacket. It was like an oven. In some dazed sleep fervor, he could almost imagine his coat cooking him raw. He tossed it onto the floor by his feet. With half open eyes, he rolled down the window further and let his face hang out into the cool night air. He sighed with relief and even let his braid hang out in the wind. When he did, he had this odd fear of it detaching from his head and flying away, never to be seen. Shake it off, he told himself. You're insane.
Before he could fall asleep, lights on the side of the road woke him up. He struggled to bring his eyes back into focus. Duo sat up and propped his elbow on the window and saw a friendless gas station and church ahead in the dark artificial night. Rubbing the sleep from his eye, he groaned and turned to look at Dorothy. "Where are we?" he asked.
Still drumming her fingers to the music he hadn't noticed before, she didn't bother to turn her eyes or her head. "L-2," she stated flatly, "Why? Miss your stop somewhere?"
"Yeah, I was supposed to get off before we got to Hell," he snorted sarcastically. "Where are we? I don't remember any long stretches of country in L-2."
"New Wisconsin."
Duo shrugged. "That would explain. But where are the cows? I've always wanted to see a cow. Think we could do a little quick cow tipping on the way there?"
Dorothy rolled her soulless blue eyes and huffed a breath out into the air. It clouded in front of her, on the windshield. She wiped it off and said, angrily, "Don't push your luck. I'm pissed off already."
"Hn. Couldn't tell." He patted his pocket and found he hadn't brought his wallet. "Do you have any money?"
"Yes, but it's for me only. That's why it's mine," she commented with a cold air. "Besides, we're not stopping. I do have orders and if I don't follow those orders, no deal, no money, okay? Once I drop you off, you can visit all the fucking gas stations you want. That is, if Dr. G's in a good mood and doesn't kill you."
"Please Dorothy?" He stared at her, letting no anger sift through. "Like you said, I might not have the chance."
"Fine. We're low on gas anyway. You going to shut up, then?"
"Promise on my life."
"Yeah, that's the most stable thing to promise on."
They pulled in at the gas station; the woman behind the counter was still enveloped in her magazine and barely acknowledged the show of life. Squinting under the bright, industrial lights, he stepped out and slammed the door. Dorothy got out as well and went to filling the gas tank. Duo pushed open the door to the convenience store and listened to the ringing of the bell echo through the empty, fully stocked place. The lady curled a lock of her fuzzy brown hair, puckering her lips every so often to the beauty tips she read in her Cosmo magazine. Duo adjusted his black cap, suddenly feeling alienated in this quiet and socially deprived place. The lady was looking at him now.
"You okay kid?"
"Yeah, I'm fine." Duo looked around, then at Dorothy's money in his hand. He bit his lip, looked out the glass door behind him, and then shook the change in his hand. "You know what, I'm not hungry. See ya."
The lady followed him out with a strange look.
"Whatever," she said, flipping the page.
Dorothy, ghostly white looking from the industrial lights, looked up from leaning against the side of the car. Her blue eyes followed him, her long blonde hair pulled into a ponytail to keep the heat off. He walked up to the trunk of the car and hit his fist against the top of it. "Yo. Here's your money," he said unenthusiastically, tossing it to her. She caught it and cocked one eyebrow up.
"Duo: Suddenly mister generosity. What brings on the Gandhi ways, eh?" Dorothy folded her arms haughtily, smirking her purple lips.
He snorted. "Is it a problem I'm nice? You know as well as I do that I wouldn't have paid you back. Don't you want it back, Dorothy?"
She didn't say anything. She stood there smiling until Duo shook his head, stuffed his hands causally into his pockets and walked out across the street. Once he was gone, she hooked the gas nozzle and shut the cap on the gas tank. He looked up, expecting a full sky of stars, found only black blanketing him. Apparently, L-2 had shut off the artificial lights tonight. Violet eyes darkened with disappointment, he shook his head and continued across the street.
It wasn't the most active church, that was clear from just looking at it, with its lack of lights inside. More so than the gas station across the street. Its stainless steel and brightly lit neighbor dwarfed the wooden beams and rich brown paint. But it still held its own sense of homey pride and Duo knew if it had a head, it would keep it held high, so high that its little church neck would hurt. Catholicism always stunned him with its blind faith in the impossible. Revering a silent god, one that he'd shunned long ago for the fact it never did anything for him. He'd lost faith in God… when God had lost faith in him. Didn't he think that he was able to have friends? Is that why all his friends died?
The doors were open. The air swirling around him was cool and ghostly, refrigerated by the beams of cherry wood. Dust curled up at his feet, like snakes being disturbed from their winter sleep. He passed it from his face, waving a hand, and peered in. Blackness greeted him with open arms, silent and human free. Good. Dealing with some supportive man preaching the word of the god he didn't believe wasn't going to make him very happy. He sat down in the far end of the last pew on the right, finding shelter in the dark of the corner. It didn't make him feel better though, to know in a way he was breaking and entering. In all the times Roman Catholism had been forced upon him in his days of training, he'd been told it was acceptable to visit a church at any hour. That you were a loved child, and God could never punish you for coming for guidance, anytime.
Duo never considered himself loved, by this god or the next man on the street. If this God loved him so much, and so equally, then why did he look away from the hell he'd put them in? Why did God not step in? A bit a hope, salvation, a smack of sense to stop the greed of the mob leaders; why didn't he give any of this? Did he think Duo was just too much of a bastard to deserve it, for something he'd been bred for? For something that was his only purpose for coming into existence? God must have some sick humor, putting Duo there and leaving him there to rot slowly in the stresses of the mob life.
Pain. Self-inflicted. Duo looked down from his swirling, bitter wonderings to see he'd dug his fingernails into the palm of his hand. It wasn't bleeding just yet, but he knew it would be if he kept drifting off into angry thoughts like this.
As much as he hated to admit, he felt that everything that went wrong was God's fault. He'd recognized his own mistakes time after time, but refused to accept it in some insecure part of himself. Pinching the red marks a few times to make sure he didn't bleed, he put his hands into his pocket. Did he really deserve it; was that what he was trying to tell himself, or was he just fucked up so much he couldn't take the blame? Duo breathed a sigh into the blackness, sightless purple eyes lost in the black.
He hated this. He'd get God for personally fucking up his life.
Dorothy screamed from the car, honking it as well so he could hear it. Duo stood up and left, closing the doors behind him with hostile finality.
LOSING MY RELIGION
Dorothy was boldly parked in the ambulance unloading area, arm slung out the window of her car. So far no one had noticed, all too busy with the morning feeding and cleaning of the patients and their rooms. The morning air was clean and surprisingly clean for the particular colony. Walking out while still fitting on his jacket, the smell of pine invaded him and a green wave of trees was out front of the hospital. Duo walked up and opened the door.
"Where are we going?"
"Get in Duo. I've got orders from Dr. G to get you home. He said, and I quote, "There's too many Jit's brown-nosing around." The drama had drained from her expressions, partly because she had sunglasses on.
As he sat down and slammed the door, he asked, "How'd he find you?"
"You know that bastard better than I do, take a guess. He just showed up," she said icily.
As the purring engine revved and pulled them out of the unloading area and up the hill to the highway, a smile worked its way through Duo's bitter expression from the argument. He knew she'd been hiding something. Folding his arms, he didn't quit staring at her until she caught on and stared back.
"What?"
"He caught working, didn't he?" His smile was ready to pop his eyeballs. "Damn… poor you. Lemme guess… no tip?"
"Shut up."
"Not a good show?"
"Do the words 'mutilation by lover' scare you?" she snapped, jarring her foot down on the pedal. "No? Well, I'll make you scared of it, you son of a bitch, you."
"Ha. Incorrect. I don't have a mom," he said, kicking back and putting his hands behind his head. "Orphaned, remember?"
Dorothy chewed her gum and didn't answer. Her long, painted-black fingernails drummed on the steering wheel, then turned it as she diverged from the steadily thickening Japanese morning commute. Her lips puckered in the side view mirror briefly as she pulled out a violet shade of lipstick and routinely applied it. She pulled herself back into the car, Duo watching her silently and with the disinterest of the usual teenager on a road trip, and looked over at him. It was a warning to keep shutted up. And he was happy to oblige. "It's part of the deal," she said to explain the lipstick. Duo couldn't help but smile his impish smile.
A few meters down the road they were slowed by the presence of not-so-confident L-1 drivers and Dorothy's face soured. Leaning out the window, she gunned the engine threateningly, loud enough for it to be heard by the man driving the first slow car. He turned, visibly, and looked at Dorothy with critical, beady brown eyes. Smiling dangerously in reply, she fearlessly sped the car out onto shallow shoulder. Gravel spun out from the wheels with the speed of explosion shrapnel and dust choked the car. Passing him quickly, she yanked it back into the lane and let her foot find the gas pedal and her middle finger the air.
"Showoff," Duo muttered, leaning back.
Dorothy waited patiently, acting as well as she could to be unconcerned with him, until the American was asleep and opened the glove compartment and pulled out the syringe.
* * * * *
A few hours later, she was at the airport. Dorothy sat watching the ironic fork in the road just challenge her morals. Money? Or escape to a romantic getaway with the boy she didn't romantically love. It was equal sinful, and she frowned. The car when into park as she stared at the signs. One sign said, "L-2 Colony" somewhere in the jumbling collection of the same message in six or seven different languages. The other was "Earth."
Soulless blue eyes turned to Duo's drugged sleeping form. She didn't know what to do.
* * * * *
He woke up from a jolted nap to the smell of manic humidity making his skin perspire endlessly. It was like some smoky demon raping him from the inside out. Making a few moans of discomfort, he sleepily shifted against the doorframe and awkwardly slipped out of his jacket. It was like an oven. In some dazed sleep fervor, he could almost imagine his coat cooking him raw. He tossed it onto the floor by his feet. With half open eyes, he rolled down the window further and let his face hang out into the cool night air. He sighed with relief and even let his braid hang out in the wind. When he did, he had this odd fear of it detaching from his head and flying away, never to be seen. Shake it off, he told himself. You're insane.
Before he could fall asleep, lights on the side of the road woke him up. He struggled to bring his eyes back into focus. Duo sat up and propped his elbow on the window and saw a friendless gas station and church ahead in the dark artificial night. Rubbing the sleep from his eye, he groaned and turned to look at Dorothy. "Where are we?" he asked.
Still drumming her fingers to the music he hadn't noticed before, she didn't bother to turn her eyes or her head. "L-2," she stated flatly, "Why? Miss your stop somewhere?"
"Yeah, I was supposed to get off before we got to Hell," he snorted sarcastically. "Where are we? I don't remember any long stretches of country in L-2."
"New Wisconsin."
Duo shrugged. "That would explain. But where are the cows? I've always wanted to see a cow. Think we could do a little quick cow tipping on the way there?"
Dorothy rolled her soulless blue eyes and huffed a breath out into the air. It clouded in front of her, on the windshield. She wiped it off and said, angrily, "Don't push your luck. I'm pissed off already."
"Hn. Couldn't tell." He patted his pocket and found he hadn't brought his wallet. "Do you have any money?"
"Yes, but it's for me only. That's why it's mine," she commented with a cold air. "Besides, we're not stopping. I do have orders and if I don't follow those orders, no deal, no money, okay? Once I drop you off, you can visit all the fucking gas stations you want. That is, if Dr. G's in a good mood and doesn't kill you."
"Please Dorothy?" He stared at her, letting no anger sift through. "Like you said, I might not have the chance."
"Fine. We're low on gas anyway. You going to shut up, then?"
"Promise on my life."
"Yeah, that's the most stable thing to promise on."
They pulled in at the gas station; the woman behind the counter was still enveloped in her magazine and barely acknowledged the show of life. Squinting under the bright, industrial lights, he stepped out and slammed the door. Dorothy got out as well and went to filling the gas tank. Duo pushed open the door to the convenience store and listened to the ringing of the bell echo through the empty, fully stocked place. The lady curled a lock of her fuzzy brown hair, puckering her lips every so often to the beauty tips she read in her Cosmo magazine. Duo adjusted his black cap, suddenly feeling alienated in this quiet and socially deprived place. The lady was looking at him now.
"You okay kid?"
"Yeah, I'm fine." Duo looked around, then at Dorothy's money in his hand. He bit his lip, looked out the glass door behind him, and then shook the change in his hand. "You know what, I'm not hungry. See ya."
The lady followed him out with a strange look.
"Whatever," she said, flipping the page.
Dorothy, ghostly white looking from the industrial lights, looked up from leaning against the side of the car. Her blue eyes followed him, her long blonde hair pulled into a ponytail to keep the heat off. He walked up to the trunk of the car and hit his fist against the top of it. "Yo. Here's your money," he said unenthusiastically, tossing it to her. She caught it and cocked one eyebrow up.
"Duo: Suddenly mister generosity. What brings on the Gandhi ways, eh?" Dorothy folded her arms haughtily, smirking her purple lips.
He snorted. "Is it a problem I'm nice? You know as well as I do that I wouldn't have paid you back. Don't you want it back, Dorothy?"
She didn't say anything. She stood there smiling until Duo shook his head, stuffed his hands causally into his pockets and walked out across the street. Once he was gone, she hooked the gas nozzle and shut the cap on the gas tank. He looked up, expecting a full sky of stars, found only black blanketing him. Apparently, L-2 had shut off the artificial lights tonight. Violet eyes darkened with disappointment, he shook his head and continued across the street.
It wasn't the most active church, that was clear from just looking at it, with its lack of lights inside. More so than the gas station across the street. Its stainless steel and brightly lit neighbor dwarfed the wooden beams and rich brown paint. But it still held its own sense of homey pride and Duo knew if it had a head, it would keep it held high, so high that its little church neck would hurt. Catholicism always stunned him with its blind faith in the impossible. Revering a silent god, one that he'd shunned long ago for the fact it never did anything for him. He'd lost faith in God… when God had lost faith in him. Didn't he think that he was able to have friends? Is that why all his friends died?
The doors were open. The air swirling around him was cool and ghostly, refrigerated by the beams of cherry wood. Dust curled up at his feet, like snakes being disturbed from their winter sleep. He passed it from his face, waving a hand, and peered in. Blackness greeted him with open arms, silent and human free. Good. Dealing with some supportive man preaching the word of the god he didn't believe wasn't going to make him very happy. He sat down in the far end of the last pew on the right, finding shelter in the dark of the corner. It didn't make him feel better though, to know in a way he was breaking and entering. In all the times Roman Catholism had been forced upon him in his days of training, he'd been told it was acceptable to visit a church at any hour. That you were a loved child, and God could never punish you for coming for guidance, anytime.
Duo never considered himself loved, by this god or the next man on the street. If this God loved him so much, and so equally, then why did he look away from the hell he'd put them in? Why did God not step in? A bit a hope, salvation, a smack of sense to stop the greed of the mob leaders; why didn't he give any of this? Did he think Duo was just too much of a bastard to deserve it, for something he'd been bred for? For something that was his only purpose for coming into existence? God must have some sick humor, putting Duo there and leaving him there to rot slowly in the stresses of the mob life.
Pain. Self-inflicted. Duo looked down from his swirling, bitter wonderings to see he'd dug his fingernails into the palm of his hand. It wasn't bleeding just yet, but he knew it would be if he kept drifting off into angry thoughts like this.
As much as he hated to admit, he felt that everything that went wrong was God's fault. He'd recognized his own mistakes time after time, but refused to accept it in some insecure part of himself. Pinching the red marks a few times to make sure he didn't bleed, he put his hands into his pocket. Did he really deserve it; was that what he was trying to tell himself, or was he just fucked up so much he couldn't take the blame? Duo breathed a sigh into the blackness, sightless purple eyes lost in the black.
He hated this. He'd get God for personally fucking up his life.
Dorothy screamed from the car, honking it as well so he could hear it. Duo stood up and left, closing the doors behind him with hostile finality.