The Four Monkeys

July 26, 07

In the end, Techno was the only one who was ever there for me.

It was something inherent, something I didn’t have to ask for; that’s not to say I didn’t-- ask that is. I never could assimilate to his type of thinking, but I understood it enough. No words but my own were ever heard in our little, heavily cluttered, world. If he ever uttered any, I certainly wasn’t privy to hear them. I listened to the city instead and every car whizzing over our bridge was his sigh, every bark his grunt, and every conversation passerby’s had was his response to mine.

When I asked his name, he danced an unabashed spasm, took me to a club, put a hand to my chest and made me wait as my pulse and heartbeat changed. When I asked him to let me follow him, he walked away; a week later, he went to his other home and didn’t lock the door. When I asked him if he’d ever miss it, he nodded, but when I suggested we go back, go take it back, he…it was the only time he denied me, the only time he said “No.” I barely heard it, so wrapped up in the importance of what he wasn’t saying: even if he denied it, there was something worth fighting for after all, and with some more nudging, I could make him a champion. But everything else, every miniscule grievance—the lock that kept the goods from me, the boy that thought he was a thug, the kid I couldn’t help, the city I thought needed to be destroyed—everything, he did, whether I got around to asking or not.

When I asked him to shoot me, he did that too.

He didn’t ask why it had to be done—why him—or what would happen—what had happened—and he didn’t ask where—whether it had to be fatal or just close enough to a muscle I shouldn’t be able to control afterwards. He complied, a grimace of things he never could articulate around me. He never said any of the things I’d expect out of other, much more normal, people, but, then again, I’d never ask them.

--

Grace talked too much. She told me too many things that could have been said with her body. Typical. Her voice was so telling in ways I felt I should stop. It'd be hell trying to survive here if she kept that up. She never listened.

She didn’t have to ask me anything but there was always…always that hesitance when she did: she confessed once that it seemed I was confident in all I did, had been down this road before, because I would have my answer right afterwards. But really, Grace was the one with that. I had the answers because she wanted to put voice to the questions I’d already seen in her stiff shoulders, bright eyes, or bit upper lip. And really, I’d never been in this situation before.

She called it her Heaven, and thanked me for being her Virgil. Whatever that meant.

Her body was cold the first time I touched her, cooling down so fast I almost smiled. She’d finally gotten it.

--

So I watched them, waiting for it to fall apart. When it did, I couldn’t exactly confess, even to myself, that I was relieved.

When the girl left I knew he would too. He’d never told her his real name. I figured that was because he never had one. I liked to think of him as a Sandy, if only because it fits. Or something like that. But I never interfered, never announced myself.

I was always near so I always heard things: her dialect fit with a city not too far from here; her name was not common and could be traced or narrowed down. I asked questions and thanked my stars I’d gotten in good with the People In Power because soon I’d found out Grace’s secrets. Nothing about her was entirely original, or as entertaining as I thought it’d be. I felt I should memorize her history so that one day I could tell him, that Techno Sandman, who he’d been harboring, because it seemed the type of thing he’d like to know, even if he’d never say it. Instead, I spent weeks muttering her small, erratic facts so it seemed I was the one with or without so many siblings, with a blood type of this or that, with code of so many random numbers.

It never occurred to me that he’d never asked for this, would never accept it, until I realized I had done nothing, nothing for her case or his sanity. I was gifting him with another ghost, another story to ignore, because I could not bear knowing. I could not bear actually acting on it, or did not know how, and it scared me that I was helping a murderer.

And when I followed him passed the city gates, I felt that I had slipped into a shadow I could do nothing to escape.

--

That fellow, the one that Gracie hung with, he never looked like the kind of guy I’d let my daughter look at. Even look at.

There was nothing endearing about him, save the natural allure of any casual vagabond. I’d have fallen for it too if I was still innocent enough to want to be tainted. I tried to find ways to convince myself their relationship was rationally wrought but I always failed. There was a time when a fight broke out in the streets and the girl was on the outskirts of the fray; I don’t know how but sooner than later she was in the middle—I like to imagine he nudged her—and he just watched with the rest of us, watched as the girl – who I liked to imagine as his ward—got a busted lip and then stabbed a man. When it was broken up, the both came straight to me.

Something silent happened. She asked for salt. He took it.

That was my chance. I could get her to see my reasoning if only I got her alone, away from his aggressively passive aloofness, but trying only meant vague questions and even vaguer attempts at stalling my search. She smiled when he took the salt, sprinkled a pinch on her new cut. The rest, she informed me, was for the steak and fish they had at home.

Worry. I couldn’t hide it. I wanted him to know I was a threat, so I let him see I was doubtful. He shrugged his thanks or his rebuff, and left without her. I turned just in time to not see her limp away, and my mind struggled to clear away things I would swear from then on not to have seen.

--

AN: See no evil, do no evil, hear no evil, say no evil, only not in that order. He’d never told her his real name. I figured that was because he never had one. A runaway’s story seen in three other point of views besides her own.