This chapter and the next one are going to be shorter than the first two, in case you're interested.
Day Three
(or)
Me and the Moon
Buzz Cut is driving. He says we can stay in a hotel tonight, since everybody's gone two nights without showers or beds. Nobody believes him until we hit a town and Raven suggests we pull into that hotel, right there. Give it a try. What she says goes, and everybody wants to sleep on a mattress finally, so Buzz Cut swerves us into the parking lot. It's almost eleven at night.
We all wait in the van, not talking, while Buzz Cut goes into the front office. He returns a few minutes later with some keys, drives us around the building.
"I got us three rooms, all with two beds in them. John and I will take one room, and the rest of you get to fight for the other two. One room will have to have three people in it. And whoever gets Jinx: keep an eye on her. Please. For all of our sakes." Buzz Cut says before promptly abandoning the rest of us along with Mullet, or John, I guess. They shamble into the dully lit hotel, Buzz Cut swinging the keys around on his finger. He left two other keys on the dashboard.
"Uh, I guess the guys and I will take one room, to give you girls some privacy." Rib says. Even he is nervous under Raven's accusing stare. I can feel how unhappy she is about this arrangement. But she lets the three remaining guards slink out of the van, one key in the tattooed one's palm, all of them scrambling to see the room number printed on it. They are eager to get away from us.
"Privacy, my ass." I grumble around my dry tongue as Raven nudges me none-to-gently out of the van, the remaining key in her hand. She doesn't talk, just leaves a trail behind her that states boldly that I had damn better follow her, or else I can stay out here in the parking lot and freeze my tail off. I guess she really doesn't care one way or the other about me. The only reason she's here is to keep me from running off again. She only cares enough to keep me out of trouble.
And, this is another sad thing, that's a lot more than most people offer.
The hotel walls are plaster, the floor that very bland, generic color that I can never really figure out what color it is. I mean, it could be brown, or teal, or dark red, or green. Nobody knows. The place smells like laundry detergent and sick animals.
We pass a lady with an eye patch leaning against the wall. She keeps saying "Fuck pants, man, fuck pants. Don't need them sons of bitches. Fuck pants." Over and over. She's like the people I find in the psychiatric wards. Catatonic. She's here to hurt herself, I'm guessing. We don't give her a second glance as we walk on by her, on the way to our room. Her chant echoes down the hall after us. We turn a corner, both of us holding our breath, because we both know what's going to happen, and then it does happen, and we can breathe. Just a gunshot. That's all it takes. Just a gunshot.
Raven unlocks the room, gets me inside, closes it behind us. It's dark in there and getting colder. Two starched, stiff beds tossed parallel to each other, a television that at first glance looks decent but I know should we turn it on—which we won't—it'll be absolute crap. The lamps are dim and wavering, the curtains are gold-and-olive paisley, you know the type I'm talking about. We have a tiny little bathroom and a big window for a nice view of our parking lot, swarmed by dusty cars and drunks and the homeless. I can hear the highway off in the distance and the faded cries of whoever just found the lady in the hallway. I grit my teeth just thinking about that fool.
Thoughtlessly, Raven bends down and unlocks the cuffs on my ankles, works her way up to my hands and then my neck. She doesn't give me a verbal warning about her actions, but it's still clear: even without these cuffs, I'd be a moron to try to escape. She'd find me effortlessly, and all I would have accomplished from that hypothetical venture would be submerging myself into an even deeper level of Hell.
Raven turns away from me, not acknowledging me, and waltzes into the bathroom, the door shutting behind her. A second later, the shower turns on. I flop onto the bed, wishing I could just bust out of this dump. I mean, if I was with anybody else, I would be out of here the moment they turned their back. With Raven…I'm sorry, but as I've stated before, you just don't mess with somebody who can do anything. I could easily open the window and slip out, and Raven probably wouldn't know until she got out of the shower, and by that time I could be on the highway in a stolen car. I really could, you know. She'd be on me like a hungry dog on a bone, though, and I don't want to think of the things she could do to me when she caught me. She wouldn't really do much, though, but just the prospect of those horrors amongst horrors she's capable of is enough to keep me in this stinking hotel room, police swarming down the hall over the body of some crazy woman, miles and miles from home and from my brothers. Oh God, my brothers. Where are they?
"Hey…uh, Raven?" I knock on the door. I can feel her scowling.
"What?" She demands. I can barely hear her voice over the water and through the door, but I can still hear her answer, and that's plenty enough for me.
"Do you…uh, you know where my br—uh, where Mammoth and Gizmo are?"
"Yes." She says it like she thinks that ends it. And if I was a sane person, I would take that as The End of this conversation. Finished. Done. Let sleeping dogs lie and all that jazz. Since when do I do smart people things like that?
"Where are they?" I press.
She doesn't say anything for a very long time. I lean my head against the door, eyes closed. When the water shuts off, I slump back onto the bed. She comes out a time later, fully dressed, the only sign that she was ever in the shower being that her hair is tousled and damp. Calmly, she walks over to her bed and lays down on it. "I can't tell you exact locations, obviously,"
I sigh deeply, and she rolls over to face me. She looks hesitant and not that happy about what she's about to say. "But…well, Mammoth's a far ways off, and Gizmo isn't even in theAmericas."
That right there stops me cold. If I knew that my brothers were both in the states, or evenCanadaorMexico, I could breath easy. Mammoth's a mere 'far ways off'. That's okay. I can deal with a 'far ways off'. But Gizmo…not only are we not on the same continent, but a whole different land mass? An ocean away? An ocean, a land mass, a continent, languages and cultures and currencies and miles and miles away is too much for me, alright? Alright? I take too much as it is, and I deal with all these bad things, and then to learn that my brothers are gone, that if I have any hope of winning them back, it'll be an inconceivably hard fight to even learn their exact locations, now that is too far. That's my breaking point.
"Oh," I exhale in a very small manner. Raven keeps looking sad, like she is genuinely sorry for me. "Oh." I stumble up and stumble into the still steamy bathroom and stumble out of my clothes, into the shower, stumble my slightly atrophied hands over the knobs for hot, hot water. I stand in that hot water for a moment, before peeking out and hoping I remembered to close and lock the door. I did.
Then, I start crying. Not that timid sort of crying either, when you hunch your shoulders and put a hand over your mouth. Nope. Not me. When I cry, I just have at it. I sound like a goddamn banshee, and don't particularly care who hears, be it Raven or the guards or the police in the halls, or even what's left of that crazy woman.
I don't really figure how long I cry, but eventually there's a knock on the door. Not the bathroom door, but the room door. I immediately shut myself up, because I can just feel that it's the guards and they don't get to know that I cry. Maybe I really do care who can hear me. Maybe only Raven gets to hear me break.
She opens the room door and talks to whoever is there. It sounds like Buzz Cut, but I can't be sure. I can't be sure what exactly they talk about, but they talk about it a while. Or more of, Buzz Cut awkwardly stilts through conversation while Raven undoubtedly looks at him in that way of hers that isn't technically a glare, but Jesus, not just a look should make your spine freeze solid! Finally Buzz Cut leaves, and the door closes.
This whole time, I've been curled up on the bottom of the shower, hot water plunking on my matted hair. I shiver, even if it's tropical in here, and I twist my toes and fingers like a maniac. I bite my lip to stave off the crying, and I lean back with a ragged moan when the door shuts and Buzz Cut leaves and only Raven and I are left.
There's another knock on the door. Not the room door, but my door, my bathroom door. It's her. I can hear her reluctance, then she ever-so-softly says my name. Just once, just loud enough to be heard through a door and through the water. "Jinx."
That is the first time she's ever said my name. And it sets me off again, slow and quiet at first, a loping string of jerky sobs, then raises an ugly head into such a God-awful cacophony that she leaves the door, knowing I won't be able to talk for a long while.
I cry until I get too tired to carry on. It's horribly to cry until the only thing stopping you from continuing is that fact that your stomach and ribs ache and your chest feels deep as space. I struggle out of the shower, slamming the water off, throw on my plain white prison clothes without drying off. I leave the bathroom with red eyes and my clothes already partially soaked from my dripping mop of hair.
Raven's lying on top of the blankets of her bed, immaculately untouched. Her back is to me, straight as a board, but somehow asleep. The only sound left are the drunks and drifters in the parking lot and, much louder, Raven's breathing. I flop onto the empty bed, my face in the pillow, and I can't stop from the soft little tremors from returning. Of course, the little tremors lead to little whimpers, then to twisting my hands up in the sheets and mashing my face into the pillow.
And I swear I don't mean to and I swear I can't stop it, but eventually the little sobs creep back up on me and they just won't leave. This time around, though, I don't even want Raven to hear.