by DC Alexander
We still had an appointment to go out to the house with the graveyard, but the day was shot. I guess it took longer than I had thought to get the disc from the ditch, or maybe the tattoo actually took time. Carl was pissed, “You know, we agreed to get up and go out to that house and check it out this morning. I got some lights and cleared out my schedule so we could do that, and then you was fooling with that woman in the back yard when I got there, then you left and I aint seen you all day. I trusted you, and I feel like you let me down.”
Jesus Christ. “Carl, I aint got no idea how most of the stuff I do works. When it works I am surprised every time. It’s on sometimes and off sometimes and I aint got no magic phone that somebody calls me and tells when it’s gonna work and when something gonna eat my ass up. I asked for help and teachin, and that woman in the back yard showed up right then, just flashed into the damn yard. She aint your average woman for the neighborhood, either; she come shootin smoke out her ass and glimmerin an shit like that, and I think she was tryin to decide if she wanted to smash me like a bug or hug me. I told her I wanted teaching and poof! She sent my ass to a cave where some motha fucka sat on me and wrote all this shit on me by sticking me with a fuckin thorn as long as my hand and that shit hurt. When she got through she said I complained too much about the pain and the mothafucka set my damn hand on fire, burnt that mothafucka to a cinder I mean, looked like I was a pig at a barbecue where nobody was watching it and it burned up, and the worse thing was it smelled like some good ham and damn near made me hungry but I get sick when I smell ham cookin now that I skinny as a fuckin rail and can’t eat no meat, and” I inhaled and noticed tears dripping off my chin, damn it anyway “and! As I was sayin, you give me all that shit about that thing in the fuckin ditch I seen the other day and wanted to find out about but I can’t drive a fuckin car so I had to get you to drive me” I noticed in a detached way I was up in the seat on my knees and leaning over him, the hand on the back of the seat slipped off and tore the headrest off, “So now we on the way back to the house and I gone take a short pause in this fuckin drama that happened to my nice, fat, quiet life and try to figure out what sort of vicious blood suckin rotted stinkin nasty night walkin ass chewing downright ugly motha fucka” I tossed the headrest in the back seat, sorry piece of shit “you want to go out there and poke with a fuckin stick so it try to eat our faces off so I got a chance to kill whatever shithead sailor suckin son of a bitch gang of bastards is out there, ok honey? Is that all right wid you?” My lips pulled back from my teeth in a snarl, nose full of snot from tears, I wanted to bite and claw and growl and tear shit up.
Carl had scooted over against the door and somewhere in there he had pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. He didn’t know whether to shit or go blind, if he had asked me for advice I would have told him to run. He had a look between horror and amusement, his lips were pursed up and his eyes squinched down, I reached over and grabbed him by the ear, pulled his face to mine, and kissed that bastard on the lips, hard.
“Now, you got somethin you want to say, sugar? You had plenty before, what up, homie?” Shit. I recognized this. I was kinda standing back and watchin, this was one of those alter egos done slipped out, or maybe I’d just had enough. Whichever, I didn’t really care.
Carl’s mouth fell open. I mean his jaw actually went down so I could see his tongue in his mouth. He was so surprised, his eyes were open as wide as they would go, I couldn’t help but get tickled. I tried not to show it, the more I tried the funnier it got. I noticed a blue flashing light behind us, the damn law had pulled up and I hadn’t noticed, for some reason that made it twice as funny. I give it up and sat back in my seat, clenching everything I could clench not to laugh.
Carl looked surprised and said “Hey, Rosalee. Ah. Hey. Where’d you go?”
That puzzled me, but I thought he was getting even with me for jumping on him or something, I said “I’m hiding from the law, don’t look at me and give me away.”
The cop was coming up to the window, Carl put his hands on the steering wheel so he wouldn’t get shot and waited. The officer leaned over from behind like they do, and said “Mr. Roberts, are yall havin problems again? You broke down?” It was Henry. I was choking and it was getting funnier, I started to say hi, then thought about it and kept my mouth shut and my face straight.
Carl said “No sir, We are just fine, we was arguing and I pulled over so as to be safe.” He glanced over at me to confirm that and looked surprised all over again and wandered his eyes around on the area I sat in.
Henry said “Mr. Roberts, who was you arguing with?” You were texting again?”
“No Sir, You know I don’t text when I drive, I was arguing with Rosalee, I mean, I was havin a conversation about Rosalee with myself, kinda, what I ought to say to her and all, and I heard a noise in the engine and I pulled over to see what it was.”
Henry got real confidential and leaned his arm on the window; “Mr. Roberts – can I call you Carl?” Carl said “Yes sir, sure.” Henry continued “If you’re that tied up over the girl, you better go tell her about it. If you screw around and don’t tell her how you feel, first thing you know, somebody else gonna be hangin out over there and you gone be old news. Then you look bad if you try to get a word in, and it’ll all go to shit. Quit this ridin round screamin at yourself and go talk with that girl, you hear? Life is too short to waste it.”
Carl said “Yes, sir, thank you. I will do that thing as soon as I get the nerve up, I been wantin to tell her for a long time, but she like dealin with a damn cobra sometimes. “He acted like he was just turning his head to release tension, he looked over where I was, and then turned back to Henry “I try to catch her in a good mood where she might listen, every time, somethin comes up, then she pissed off, and anything I do make it worse. I get mad because I’m a damn coward and scared to talk with her, I might scare her off, and I run off at the mouth like an idiot when she need someone to stand up with her. That makes her mad and she get the maddest mad of anybody I ever seen, and that woman is bad news when she get mad. But I fix this as soon as I get the chance; I get on my knees and tell her before she can hit me.”
Henry was laughing hard, he said “Carl, you aint all bad but you got it bad. You go on and talk with her like you said and see how that turns out. If it don’t work out for you, they is other fish in the sea that don’t bite quite so hard maybe. You go try to have a nice day, you hear?” He walked off still laughing.
Carl put the car in gear and drove off right in front of the cop, he didn’t even slow down about it. We went a block in silence, I didn’t have anything to say, and finally he gave up “Rosalee, you over there?”
“You can’t see me? “
“No. That’s pretty weird, but I meant what I said back there. I got feelins for you, I need to tell you about them. It’s been eating me up.” Oh shit, I couldn’t deal with this. I just wasn’t ready for it, no way, no how.
“Carl, there is way too much shit goin on to think about such as that. I like you; and maybe it could be stronger, if I was lookin for a man I would look at you first, I swear, but right now I aint lookin for nobody. I am just barely hangin on to me, I can’t handle any more. That’s as straight and level as I can be with you. Can we leave it at that?”
“Yeah. I can wait. I will wait. You tell me when we can move on, or if you lookin elsewhere, can you do that for me?”
“I promise, I will. Now, I’m kinda invisible, and I’m doin somethin to cause it, but I don’t know what it is. I feel somethin, I am payin a little attention to somethin here that I think is keepin it goin, but I don’t know what it is exactly. Let me look at this a minute and see if I can figure it out.”
We pulled up in front of the house and I got out and went into the back yard and sat down to talk with Dirt about this. I heard Carl talking, I didn’t see anybody when I got out, must be somebody on the street. Whatever, I asked Dirt “I am invisible, can you see me?”and Dirt came right back “You a
re not invisible, I can see you. You are projecting your surroundings; you look like whatever you are close to.”
“How am I doin this? I didn’t do much of anything, all of a sudden Carl noticed he couldn’t see me, and I feel somethin but I don’t know what it is.”
You have the ability to affect your surroundings and yourself, you can project impressions that people see as what you intend. Examine yourself and find exactly how you do it, I do not have that information. “
I tried to sink into myself, it was hard, I heard Carl calling out to me. He wouldn’t call me if it wasn’t important, so I shouted “Hey, what is it?” He came on around the house, “You back here? Rosalee?” looking hard at the steps and the ground, it was comical.
“I’m right here in front of you, don’t step on me.”
“I didn’t know where you went, I worried you might have went somewhere again. Go ahead, I’ll stand here and make sure nobody bothers you.” He folded his arms and went on guard. As god is my witness, some day I might just hit him in the head and knock him out.
I set back down, looking for whatever I was doing that caused changes around me. It wasn’t obvious. I didn’t see anything or feel anything out of the ordinary. That wasn’t quite right, I had a feeling of slight strain, I was doing something at a level of effort about the same as holding a salt shaker in my hand. I looked for the source of the strain; it was connected to the disc. I Looked at the disc and it radiated a clear, soft white light that went right through me and everything else. I imagined it getting stronger and it flared brighter; I desired it to be weaker and it went down to a dim glow. I kept holding those thoughts and opened my eyes. Carl was looking right at me. “Can you see me now?”
He said “Yes. There for a second you turned into a big rock, a stone as big as a car, then the stone dissolved and your shape showed up, then I could see you like this. You look normal now.”
“It was the disc I found in that ditch. It lets me look like everything around me so you can’t see me.”
He wasn’t thrilled, but he tried to be a good sport, “It’s a good thing you got that then, it must be valuable. Do you have any idea where it came from?”
“No. It’s probably been there a long time, I don’t think anybody can see what it is. They see a lump of mud unless they have the sight. Just lucky I stumbled across it.” I was wore out, and suspicious that Carl wasn’t going to let the attachment stuff lie. “Carl, let’s call it a day. I been through the mill, I am slap wore out, I want to wind down a little. If it’s good with you, let’s go out to that house tomorrow and check it out, I will try my best to not get caught up in no strange shit between now and then.”
He laughed but his heart wasn’t in it “Yeah, that’s fine. I aint got anything planned tomorrow anyway, I’ll come over in the mornin and we can get to it. If you want to drive, let’s get you a permit and we can start you learnin, that might make you feel better.”
“Thanks, Carl, you’re absolutely right, that is what we ought to do. Night then, and I’ll see you in the mornin.” I got up and walked around the house, Carl walked with me. It was surprisingly comfortable; maybe we would be ok with all this personal stuff if we could just leave it alone.
Chapter Fifteen
B right and early, I don’t know who came up with that. It aint bright, early, it’s kind of dim and a lot of times it’s foggy. Like this morning, the fog was slow to burn off and turn into humidity, maybe the air was already as full of water as it could get. I loved it down here, but it did stay wet and hot most of the time.
I woke up springy these days. I went to the kitchen and put on the coffee, put some cereal in a bowl for breakfast, and slipped on some clothes while the coffee was making. I put some shoes on, the flip flops just didn’t handle running well and we had that graveyard to look at today. I found a leather shoestring and threaded it through the disc to so I could hang it around my neck, I thought about the rock; it would be good to hang it on the necklace if I could figure out how to get a hole in it. I took my coffee outside and sat on the ground, it was damp but it didn’t bother me, I sat there idly feeling the rock and thinking about how to make a hole. I had a drill, but no drill bit. I could get a drill bit next time I went to the store.
I looked to see where a hole should go, one edge was thinner and almost came to a point, it was a little like a rough teardrop. I thought about how the hole should look, and watched as an indentation formed, then became the hole I wanted, with a smooth, raised ridge around it as though something had melted its way through the rock. I wasn’t even surprised, I thought “thanks” and got an answering echo kinda like “Think nothing of it.” A mosquito took the opportunity to land on my neck, I moved my head to run it off but it bit anyway. Damn things are a plague, the hot, wet weather and water collecting everywhere let them breed, and breed they did. I reached up and spatted it. One down, millions of the damn things were still out there waiting to get a bite. The only good thing about them is they aren’t biting flies or yellow flies; either of those has a much worse bite.
I strung the disc and the rock together on the shoelace. I wish I could read the disc, the writing was clear and sharp, there was a picture of a blindfolded woman holding a set of balancing scales on one side, like the motto ‘Justice is blind.’ That couldn’t have a lot to do with something that allowed a disguise – then again, maybe the blind part was the important thing, not the justice, which would make more sense.
It hung easily around my neck. I got a steady impression of something like background noise from the disc, it felt alive. When I thought at it the impression got stronger but I couldn’t make out the words.
I sought out information about the disc by sending images and a questioning feel, carefully using an alter ego to filter the results. The disc lay in the ditch for a long time. The person who possessed it before it went into the ditch had lived in this area. His end was violent and there was much blood. He was missed. He had served but was overwhelmed, there was a lot he couldn’t do, and his ability to communicate was very small and meager. He’d never used an alter ego as a buffer and wasn’t able to handle much information flow. In spite of his limitations he had persevered and done a lot of good. I had an image of him, more of a feel, if I met him I’d know him but that was unlikely in the extreme.
I wondered what was up with the shape shifting. I believed way more of anything than I used to, my skepticism was about dead. If I could change shape, what happened to my brain? Would I still be able to think? If I changed to something small, would I lose capacity to think and reason? That would account for the warnings about the dangers of doing it alone. I didn’t have much of a choice. Nobody had stepped up to teach me about it. Maybe Artemis could show me. If she ever came back, that is. I had no idea how to go about getting in touch with her. Dirt seemed to be tuned in so maybe I could get in touch that way.
Shape shifting had to involve my ability to see within myself. I sank down and examined me, I could get to the level where I could sense individual cells and if I focused, I could tell what they were intended for, what they did, more or less. It was horribly complex. Any cell anywhere had the ability to recreate itself, it was a confident feeling. Each cell also contained a library of functions like blueprints that detailed every other cell. It had history, a primary function and the other functions it had moved away from, and it remembered.
I concentrated on a spot on my right arm, reached into the cells, and looked at the memories. I encouraged skin cells to become hair follicles, I had examples right there, it came pretty easy, I encouraged growth and it sprouted right on up. I spread my perception over a larger area and the skin thinned and hair sprouted. I looked and it wasn’t gorilla hair, but I had a noticeable area on my arm hairier than the rest of the arm.
I put it back by reversing the process, all it took was concentration and energy, and the tattoos on my other arm seemed to be able to suck energy effortlessly from the earth. When I pressed the tattoos to the ground it made a
better connection, the energy flow was there with no thought. When I lifted the arm away from the earth the air seemed to slow the energy flow down. Dirt put information into my view; there were elementals who worked with/were/controlled air, I had no relationship with them, so air was neutral and provided no help. Huh. Something else to look into, I wouldn’t get bored anytime soon.
Changing shape would involve every cell. There was no way I could consciously control the mutation on a per cell basis, so my unconscious would have to do it. If my subconscious or alter ego or whatever it was faltered or lost concentration, the results could be pretty sucky. Ok, I needed more information.
The damn mosquito and some of his buddies buzzed past my ear with that really annoying whine they do so well. It landed on my arm where the hair had just reabsorbed, I watched it from within as it landed on me, saw the little hooks on the ends of its legs snag, and it stuck its feeding tube out against my skin and pressed. It tapped around a little as I watched, it was fascinating. Finally it pressed the tube against my arm, the outer part bowed and exposed two flat chisels it dug into my skin; then it popped out another pair of sticks and a half pipe, it gouged and worked the parts against each other till it got in past the skin. I allowed it to make entry, it tore cells and pressed them aside, ripping into and through tiny capillaries viciously. When it got deep enough, the little bastard spat juice down a tube formed out of the parts it had used to dig the hole, the juice stopped the blood from clotting and caused a kind of sickness in the surrounding skin.
It had shed cells as it ripped through. Just for the hell of it, I examined one of the shed cells. It was extremely close to a match with my cells, the differences were negligible. I encouraged a group of cells to morph to match the mosquito cells and they complied, there was nothing to it. My arm felt odd on that spot, I opened my eyes and looked at my arm.