JMJ

Chapter Eight

Unfinished Equations

"What's not to get? We're leaving, Snake!" said Ace. "Like you said, we can't stay here with creeps on our tail. We're on the run."

"From what?" I begged.

But Ace didn't answer. He was frantic even though he was pretending not to be. He opened the fridge. He shut it again. Reaching down he pulled open the cupboards and found some extra plastic bags. I just watched him as he stuffed a bag of banana chips, some pudding, some bread, and the rest of the goat cheese into it, and all the candy bars and then went for the door.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Outa town for a while," Ace said with a careless shrug that was a little too careless to be authentic; it made me wonder really if his carelessness was ever really that authentic.

I shuddered that I even questioned it. It shouldn't matter. Should it? We were all of us falsies, and we all knew that. I got a bag of my own and put some food into it and a flashlight and a lighter. I was not exactly sure if we were leaving yet, but I followed the leader.

"I gotta lie low," said Ace grinning to see my compliance. "Maybe the woods. Maybe the next town over. Whatever seems best when we get to it."

"Are we gunna find the othersss, though?"

For some reason I didn't like the idea of the others getting involved even though I hated being alone in this unknown situation, but as I was continuing on in a mental smog more than a fog, Ace had the door opened to the drab world beyond. The traffic, the yelling kids somewhere, and some dog somewhere else barking was all pretty far off. The courtyard was as dead as a graveyard, but I didn't quite have the word "grave" in mind until… a strange moan erupted from Ace like the sound of a zombie breaking through the crust of the earth.

I nearly yelped clean out of my skin like a real scared snake, but all that came out was a gag as I stumbled to try to catch him, or something to that affect, in an underling's reflex. Even here, I stopped as Ace's skin began to crawl. For real. It was bristling like fur on a cat or more like bacon frying up in a pan.

He leaned against the doorframe, shivering with pain or embarrassment or both, and then he collapsed on the floor dropping the bag in his hands.

It was another kind of reflex that had me snatch up the food from falling down the steps out the door. But as soon as the contents were round the corner, I was helping Ace again. His tongue was hanging out panting. He was sweating buckets, but he seemed back to normal. Well, I mean like he was human except for being yellow, but he was in no condition to go hiking or even hitch hiking.

I dragged him back into the house, and he did not resist. He was stiff like he'd been frozen, but he was panting more. At last he snatched me. I gasped in fright from his sudden hot painful grip on my arms.

"Snake!" he hissed.

"Uh…!" I said swallowing hard. "Y…yeah, Ace?"

"I… I… I gotta lie down," he sighed and went limp on his knees into the floor as he released me.

"Right, right!" I said trying to help him up again. "You want I should get an ambulance or something?"

"No," breathed Ace shaking his head. "No good. It's no good. They won't help. 'sides… no, they… they just can't help. I'll get kidnapped from there in the night I'm sure by Dr. Happy-pills."

"Whossssse Dr. Ha—"

Weakly but stubbornly Ace waved his hand aside and grunted. So I helped him up again and we went for the couch. I was relieved to back away from his heaving body soaked by now. I think he was relieved too. He slammed his head onto the couch arm. He was basically back where he started at the base. Writhing and moaning, angry, scared, and humiliated all at once, but on overload now.

I went to get him a glass of water more as an excuse to get away from him, but he was happy to have it when I returned. He may have taken it with shaky hands, but he practically inhaled it once it was to his lips. Then at last he looked calmer.

"You don't know what kind of crap I went through, Snake," he choked sitting back more like a normal person— a really exhausted one.

"No, I don't," I agreed wringing my hands without the cup in between them to clasp.

"I lost my innocence these past few months," he said looking wistfully now.

"Monthsss?" I asked cocking my head in alarm. "But it's only been a couple weeks?"

Ace stiffened a little, but then shook his head. "Then I really did lose my innocence anyway."

"I thought we already did that," I commented despite myself.

This time he glared, and I gulped under that golden owl-stare behind his shades. I shuffled back a space sluggishly and slumped.

"I lost innocence that I didn't know I had," Ace said sternly.

I shivered. It wasn't just Ace I was creeped out about. It was the unknown, which is a lot more disturbing of a thing to be disturbed about. I glanced behind at a window as though someone was peeking in. There was nothing. Silence. Innocent silence came from without. All adulteration of life was inside with me already.

My eyes shifted back to Ace. I couldn't tell if it was the yellow or not, but he had seemed to age since the last time I saw him. But was it a loss of innocence so much, or just how unwell he was?

"You went sssssomeplace…" I didn't know where I was going with that exactly, but I was only staring at him in a glaze trying to picture this Unknown that he kept me in suspense about.

Thankfully, no more!

"This guy came," said Ace; he paused. "Okay! So I had everything under control, but he outnumbered me with a whole parade of scientists. It was like mad-science apocalypse! Nobody could fight that. They had me on their table, and I won't tell you what they did for your sake, Snake. It was like living a B-movie horror, except it was real. They had me wired. They had to, or I would've had them. You know me."

I nodded hastily, though almost unaware I was doing it.

"They were slicing and dicing me up like coleslaw on the Fourth of July. Fried me up like a turkey disaster on Thanksgiving and then were about to carve me up like an Easter ham."

"I don't underssssss…"

"I escaped! What else? And it was a great escape. The kind you could make a movie about. Except now that scientist guy, Dr. Form or whatever his name is, if he even is a guy and not some alien dissecting humanity, he and his buddies are after me. They sure were dissecting me like they never seen a human before. Making me eat to watch me digest, covering my body with little scanner things, injecting me over and over… and you don't even wanna know about the pain. You wouldn't've been able to handle it. Searing, gut pulling, heart-stopping agony like they were trying to crochet my insides into a ganny's doily."

I closed my eyes, trying to block out the images that were toying with my brain. Of course, that only made the images clearer, but staring at Ace's steady stare was worse. I could tell he was seeing it— feeling it— even as he spoke. Just the thought of being in that situation for real was so unreal I felt like I was fizzing out into another dimension. If even half the things Ace said were true he was lucky to be alive at all. It almost made me wonder if he was exaggerating, but someone was after him and I was convinced it wasn't the police. Besides, what had just happened at the door and even his previous violent shivering… it was not normal.

"You mean…" I quivered, "you mean, whe-wh-whe—when you was shivering just now were y-y—you—"

"So now, they want to finish what they started! They were trying to make the great leader of the Gangreen Gang their beast to command," sniffed Ace arrogantly, "but they don't know that there ain't nothing nor nobody what can keep me down or any of us from the Gangreen Gang, right, Snake?"

"Er…rrrrright. That'sssss right, Ace. But… are we the Gangreen Gang still? We sssplit up?"

Ace threw his hand aside and leaned against a pillow he slid down towards his head. "We'll get 'em all back. Don't be such a wet blanket."

I almost wanted to say that the only one wet enough to be a wet blanket was Ace, dripping smelly medical sweat all over my mom's couch, his hair platted to his skull.

"When's your mom get back?"

My eyes leapt. "Four thirty."

"Wake me up at four, 'kay?" said Ace with a heavy yawn.

"Sure thing," I muttered and paused again sulkily, queasily… then I jolted back to reality, as I suddenly thought to ask more, "But Ace, what about—?"

It was too late. Ace was out. He shivered a little, but was not waking anytime soon, drooling already and everything. His drool looked more like snot than saliva. I stared helplessly, and just stood there for a minute. Well, more like fifteen minutes, maybe more. I was numb, unsure what to think or what to do.

I sighed heavily. Then I blinked some dust in my eye away. Having already broken away from my statue-mold, anyway, I decided to go put the food back in the fridge so my mom wouldn't have to ask about it. I paused and looked at Ace once more still exactly how I left him, but he was squirming a little. Whether from pain or nightmares, I couldn't tell. His shirt was shoved up from squirming around, and I have to admit that I couldn't resist leaning down to see if there were any scars or even something unnatural poking through his skin. It was that gross yellowish color like the rest of him, and even kind of mottled-colored, but there was nothing that indicated anything… well, more than that.

Had he been making stuff up?

After all, he had been sick before all this. Maybe he was just worse. Could he have been hallucinating? Sleepwalking? Could he be becoming schizophrenic? Was the idea of someone after him a delusion?

It almost made it easier thinking these were possibilities, but I couldn't believe it. That goop had belonged to scientists. Maybe they had come to take it back. They could have tried to siphon it out of him, but it had been more difficult than they had thought. I couldn't help remembering a weird truck passing by right before Ace barged into my window.

Had it been a weird truck, though?

I scratched my head.

It had not been ordinary.

But that meant that those crazy alien scientists could come into the house.

I had to get my mind off it. I was feeling like I was catching whatever Ace had just staring at him like that. He looked so unhealthy he was reminding me of Frankenstein's monster. I slunk away. I went up the stairs. Then I paused with a choke that almost made me unable to breathe.

A sound almost made my brain flip upside down.

It was not the unknown.

I knew what I heard.

Whether in sleep or not, I don't think I'd ever heard it before— at least not like that.

Ace was…crying. Whimpering! He sounded like a little boy trapped in an older person's body, a lost little kid in despair worse than any sobbing kid we ever picked on.

My nose was almost pressed against the steps, when I discovered myself— like a snake, I suppose. I felt awkward being unable to slither up and silent out of sight. I ran pounding loudly up the rest of the steps like an elephant just like parents say. I jumped the last three steps with a boom like a giant Asian gong. I don't know who I was afraid of overhearing, but it felt like the whole world had ears against me waiting for the right moment to leap out with masked faces and piercing lights like miner's lamps across their forehead and blinding me. Then they'd wrench out their needles, wires, and alien medical dissection knives, tweezers and gloved alien hands all around me to handle all my living guts throbbing in my wide-open body before my waking eyes.

The mind-numbing, emotionless, consistent world of numbers sounded much more appealing right now than anything in real life and especially anything more than my morbid imagination was stealing from graphic and stupid horror movies. I think I understood math that afternoon better than I had my whole life. I almost forgot about Ace down there in the living room.

True mental blocking at its finest there, Sanford Ingleberry!

I was the master at that. Ace could have been dead down there after a last death agonizing scream and I wouldn't've known it. Of course I had heavy metal ranked up to hurting my eardrums. But suddenly I noticed it was 4:13.

I jumped.

Racing down the steps and leaping a few more at the bottom, I found Ace still sleeping, though much more soundly. I hated waking him up. I hated to think of his reaction more than because I didn't want to disturb him for his sake.

Holding my breath, I dove in as though to scrape something at the bottom of a sewer stream. I reached out my hands and shook him hard. An arm swiped at me and missed, but the other wrenched my collar.

"Nghx!" I cried.

A drooling, glaring, clenching, half-conscious face growled like a rabid dog into mine. I half expected him to bite my whole face off. His eyes had downright black rings around them thicker than mascara on a cute little Goth girl I once liked from a distance going to that high school that I never attended.

Why was it that for a second I was wishing I had just asked her out without the gang knowing where I'd gone? I'd imagined then, watching like a sad dog through the chain link fence, some Chinese and a table between us till I'd remembered I had no money and that most girls weren't impressed with guys who stole their dinners for them so that half way through police sirens would interrupt the romantic ambiance. It would kind of ruin the mood when they cuffed the both of you. Or, you know, it would ruin it more if you and she were both punched in the face by some Powerpuff Girl or other and your whole table bowled in.

A second foaming growl threw me back from that strange sort of life-flashing-before-my-eyes moment to the dog more like a wolf now from a nightmare through his grinding teeth. I almost wished for Buttercup to punch me in the face than to see this.

"Acccccccce…!" I hissed.

He pushed me back, and even though I fell on my butt on the floor, I was so thankful to be released that I felt tears in my eyes. Ace was quickly recovering himself. He straightened his clothes, looked at the clock, and picked up his fallen shades.

"A little late," he muttered like nothing had happened.

"Ssssorry, Ace," I breathed through my teeth. "I wasn't sure if—well… well, I mean you're so sick and—well—well…"

"Well, well, and welly, well!" scoffed Ace haughtily. "It doesn't matter anyways. You're mom's not home."

He stood up with force and staggered like he had forgotten how much he weighed. He almost fell back into the couch again, but he quickly steadied himself. I didn't have to be asked to help him up to my room. Then he sat down on my bed, and kind of took it over.

It was the first time I'd cared about my bedding being dirtied since I found I'd slept on Grubber's indefinable slimy-things collection, but I didn't argue. I dared not argue. Besides I could hear the door open downstairs.

I winced.

"Tha'd be your mom, huh?" muttered Ace without looking up.

Swiveling to him made my jaw drop.

"Well?" asked Ace unperturbed as he continued presumably staring at the cracks in ceiling. "Aren't you gunna to go to her? I'm sure she sure missed her widdo baby sooooo much!" He puckered his lips mockingly.

"She's gunna come check on my schoolwork, you know," I warned.

Ace sighed heavily and threw his arms behind his head. "Fine. I'll go in the closet."

I grimaced sourly. "Thanks, Ace."

"It's not a thanking matter," Ace said as he carelessly climbed out of bed and slipped into the closet.

I heard him slump bodily into the floor after he shut the closet door behind him, and just in time. My mom was coming up the steps. I hurried to my door and opened it right before she could from the other side.

"Hi, Mom!" I said brazenly cheerfully.

She paused in surprise, and studied me a moment blinking widely. I probably was using a similar tone to the one I'd used when I'd first come home with the same phrase. I kept my eyes steady. I could not risk losing the sight of her face for fear of my eyes darting to the closet, but with that concentration my smile fell, and an overwhelming sorrow overtook my face, apparently, and a few other stressful things, I suppose.

"Is… everything okay?" she asked.

"I…" I looked up at the ceiling, left, right, and down again, "…was distracted a lot today," I said, finally allowing my face to drop to the sight of my shoes.

Mom sighed. "Well, I'm sure it's hard to get back into the swing of school, but—"

"No, no, it's okay, I'm sorry. I'll try harder tomorrow."

"It must be lonely here all by yourself. I'm sorry about that. Would you like to go to school and see if that—"

"Ngh, not really. It's no big deal being solitary. I mean, I think I like being alone for now, if that's not weird."

"No, that's not weird," said Mom.

She smiled and gave me a hug.

I burned through to the marrow at the thought of Ace just behind that thin wall of my closet against the entryway to the door. It was not like he could see me, but I felt like it. That poor suffering woman didn't need that kind of aggravation like being spied upon while loving her son. Actually. I didn't feel like I needed that kind of aggravation after the day I'd had, but I didn't hug her back all the way. I just sort of made it easier for her to hug me after a moment, but it was too late.

She already sensed I didn't want the physical contact, so she backed up, though I could tell she felt bad.

I looked up at her guiltily, and all she did was brush a strand of hair out of my face.

"You look hot and stressed out," she said. "Come on down stairs. I'm making beetroot soup with yogurt and cold chicken. That should cool you down, hmm?"

"Yeah."

"Would you like to help me?" she asked this almost shyly.

I felt sick again.

Ace was listening. My imagination didn't need to go into detail about the meaning of that.

I bit my lip. Then I smiled again in spite of it being sickly. Maybe she took it as me still feeling awkward about being reacquainted with a person I had been willingly away from for three years.

"Sure, Mom!" I said and patted her shoulder like I felt a good and honest son would, and I felt more sweltering guilt than before.

Was I more the sick puppy or was Ace?

She smiled awkwardly too from the unexpected touch. Was I really just as sensitive as she was? Whatever. She allowed me to take her back down the steps, and that was all that mattered to me at the moment. Anything to get away from the skeleton in the closet even if that skeleton still sort of had flesh even if only debatably normal organs.

I even closed the door behind us for extra measure.

I could feel she was suspicious of that even as I did, but she let the suspicion pass.

"I did a lot of math today, though, at least," I admitted.