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Hello! This popped out during a botched attempt at writing a Psych essay. Ha, so behold my non-intellectualness.
Read on and enjoy. :)
The Good-Man
A great shape suddenly eclipsed the popsicle sun. She blinked, gaped. The thing moved closer and became a man. His green eyes were narrow triangles, dark like old evergreens. His fingers gripped her skull, hugged her.
"Jesus, kid. Someone hurt you?" He smelled nice. Cologne and fresh newspapers. He kept saying that, over and over again. "Jesus, kid." "Jesus Christ, kid."
She could speak English. She opened her mouth, but only a little noise came out. Small and dry. Her tongue felt too big, glued to the roof of her mouth. Everything was heavy. Everything had dried up.
"Jesus, kid." He said again. He looked frightened. His hand suddenly took hers and squeezed it. She could feel the bones under his skin wrap around her own. It was comforting.
Everything was dark. Only the streetlight buzzing over her head brought any light. Somehow that was important. She gazed at the empty street. There were houses and cars and a park. Everything was black and quiet.
"Hey." The green-eyed man gently turned her shoulders towards him. "My name is Seth O'Malley. I'm a police officer." He dug into his back pocket and withdrew a golden badge. It was so clean. She reached out to feel the designs engraved on it. He pulled away, perturbed. "Can you tell me who did this to you?"
She blinked slowly. She was cold. When Seth moved his clothes creaked like new leather. It was a uniform, there was RCMP in huge black script across his back. She knew because he shrugged it off and wrapped it around her. She was naked.
"There," he murmured gently. His radio crackled loudly in her ears. She covered them when he pressed a button and asked for an ambulance. Ambulance…. It conjured a jumble of images and sensations, exciting and terrifying. A smell, too. The smell was the most vivid.
There was a bench beside the streetlamp. Seth hesitantly reached for her hand. "Would you like to sit down? Is that alright?"
His fingers felt dry and intricately carved. She held his palm towards the buzzing orange light. Human skin was a canvas, carved with rivers of whorls and lines and creases flowing over his muscles. A warm, pink armour pulsing against her own.
He led her to the bench and sat down, his thick boots shining black against the sidewalk. She sat beside him, legs dangling, jacket unzipped. Seth flushed and closed it with an embarrassed "hurmph." He removed a notepad and pen from his back pocket.
"What's your name?" He asked gently. His green eyes were dyed brown under the lamp.
Seth O'Malley. She liked his name. It was a nice, normal, good-man name. She didn't know how or why, but she instinctively trusted the soft rolling sound of it, the commonplace taste of it in the air. She smiled and put her head on his shoulder. It was a nice thing. She remembered there was something nice about heads on shoulders.
"Hey," he murmured nervously and pushed her upright. "Everything's gonna be okay, but I need you to tell me what happened. Is there someone I can contact? Your parents?"
She studied the lines on his face, the grooves thousands of smiles had etched into his living, beating, crackling skin. She heard billions of individual cells born and dying as part of the precious chain-mail veiling his bones. Skin. So smooth, unique, and human. She found it fascinating.
"Kid?" He muttered, frowning. "Hey kid, don't zone out on me. We need to catch the bad guys, right?"
Yes. Exactly! An urge bubbled from the shrouded void in her memory. Something vague but irresistible: bad guys. There were bad guys and she had to…to…. Catch them? No, something inside her said that wasn't a good idea. But she had to do something, and Seth had to help her do it. Seth O'Malley. The good-man.
An unnatural whine pierced the night's quiet. Flashing lights and revving engines scraped against her mind. She pressed her face against her knees and vomited between her calves. The noise. The smell. The death.
And in that dark place between her knees, she remembered something real. Plunging into something wet and dark—the ocean—her eyes burning, her fingers tickled by silver jellyfish—bubbles—and above her people watching, the moon dancing, a pale dawn-blue sky….
Her belly was emptied. She threw her head back and screamed. Her name was in that sound, that feeling, that raw human aaaaaauuuhh.
Auh.
Her name was Auh. Human. Explosive. Triumphant and despairing.
"Jesus Christ, kid! Calm down! Nobody's gonna hurt you." Seth O'Malley was on his feet, frantic. He raked his hand through his curly black hair. The ambulance roared down the street and pulled against the curb nearby. She felt nauseous again and fled to Seth for respite. His pulse throbbed at the junction between his neck and shoulder. She listened to his murmuring heart, thrusting blood around his body. Its meaty brogue was calming. Seth pushed her away, gently but with finality.
A man and a woman burst out of the ambulance. Paramedics. She felt frightened and embarrassed when they darted towards her, their serious faces ready to save her life. Something else rose from the bottomless black beneath her thoughts. Run. Not from them, but from what they were.
Run. Run! Runrunrunrun.
Her legs carried her over the bench, across the park, under the moonlight, past the wind. The grass was wet underneath her feet. It felt false, tamed. She charged the pretty white fence, jumped, and flew. Stones bit into the sensitive arches of her feet. Auh cried out, her namesake ringing against the singed neon sky as she spiralled onto the ground. It was cool and wet beneath her shoulders, rough and dusty against her calves. Noises approached—Seth and paramedics.
The grass whispered against her palms. She ignored the scrap of her knees against manicured gravel and propelled herself across the open park. Seth's body heaved over the fence with more difficulty. He barked something professional at the paramedics before launching himself after her.
Auh willed herself to move. She could run much faster, but something held her back. The grass was slick and unpredictable under her wounded feet. She gasped in frustration when Seth's arms clamped about her middle and neatly scooped her off the ground.
"Kid, kid calm down. Nobody's going to hurt you. Okay? You're safe now." He spoke loudly in her left ear, his voice forced and tickling. She giggled, relaxed, and leaned on his arm when he put her down. The paramedics were nowhere to be seen. Auh looked at the fence but things were dark and quiet. "I told them to wait," Seth muttered. He gave her a weary glance, like he had seen it all before. "If you go with them, they can help…."
She shook her head and Seth sighed.
"Well, kid. Do you want to go home?"
Home? The word echoed blankly inside her mind. She glanced at the grass shining under her feet. There were so many meanings, none which tugged the edges of her thoughts. She gazed at him blankly, eyes full of puzzlement. Her throat bobbed in the supreme effort to swallow and her lips parted in mute entreaty for water. She was so thirsty.
A sudden panic ran up her spine. The distant buzz of electric suns lined the streets, banishing any semblance of night and erasing stars from the sky. Everything was burning the sky's blackness into a charred orange haze. It was all suddenly and overwhelmingly unfamiliar. Auh felt small and she had never felt that way in her entire life. Home. This was not Home. This was not near to Home. She was lost. She was alone.
She pressed into the pulsing, cologne-soaked solidness of Seth's chest. The edges of his jacket chafed her thighs, but it was a small pain. Her memory bubbled with murky certainty that she had endured much worse. Auh sighed and listened to muscles gliding under her fingertips. She could track them through his shirt. Thousands of fleshy cords pulled in tandem, gliding strong and liquidly beneath his skin to her push her away. His green eyes were bright away from the streetlights. His expression betrayed anxiety and worry.
Rules. The good-man followed rules. It was strange, but she accepted his limitation.
Auh had enough of pain. She sank into the grass and rubbed her feet. Her fingers came away wet and vaguely sticky. The microcosm of her body had been rent open. She moaned and fell on her back, luxuriating in the cool slickness of grass beneath her naked legs. Everything felt cold and good. She lost the feeling of blood through her hair. Her fingers sank into it and for a long time she felt only the tingling of her scalp.
Seth watched her, flummoxed and reluctantly fascinated. Nakedness was a thing to be feared. She could see it in his eyes. Men and women feared nudity, but women most of all.
"What are you doing?" He demanded. He was lost without rules to show him how to act and speak. Rules were important to him.
She sucked in a deep breath, air scraped down her throat in a painful gurgle. Seth kneeled down beside her, evergreen eyes glinting. "Kid," he whispered, "why don't you come back? We can go to the hospital, find your parents. You'll be safe." He offered his right hand. She took it, the strength in his palm spiralling down her arm and lifting her off the grass.
He saw the blood smeared on her feet. His face became an agonized scowl and Law squabbled with Right. She could see the spasm tear across his lower lip.
"Come here," Seth whispered quietly. He bent down on his haunches and offered his back. "I'll carry you."
It was a novel idea. Auh clasped his shoulders. The thrill of floating on another's shoulders dissipated her unease. She wrapped her ankles around his hips and enjoyed the gentle sway of his back. His hands were warm but modest under her knees. He circumvented the fence and took her to the paramedics waiting impatiently by their ambulance. Its lights were still flashing. She groaned into his neck. A cold tremble rattled her bones together like hollow pieces of wood.
When they re-entered the bright orange-lit street, Auh felt a black unease slither around her stomach. The paramedics regarded them with thinly veiled appraisal, their viciously sterile gloves poised upon their instruments. Her grip on Seth tightened. She opened her mouth, but her tongue was too dry and clumsy to shape the air between her lips. The only sound that escaped was a deep-seated cough. Seth walked to the back of the ambulance and lowered her to its floor. She wished to leave, but the black slither in her belly and its sharply-edged cousin in her lungs leeched too much strength.
All three professionals loomed over her, speaking and gesturing. Seth was the most commanding, his sharply angled features starkly dissected by light and shadow.
"….Just after she ran," he was saying. "She didn't show any symptoms before."
The woman leaned close to Auh. Her face was pudgy and splotchy, but her expression was genuinely concerned.
"Are you alright?" She asked.
Auh scowled at her, the smell, gloves, and tools she carried were repulsive. It was vaguely familiar, and it fed the blackness swirling in her belly. She tired to move away, but gravity suddenly yanked her hair, pulled her onto the floor with a harsh thud. The chattering immediately stopped and hands thrust her arms aside. It was familiar. So familiar. The darkness grew bolder.
She threw up on someone's hand. Then she dreamt of the dancing moon.