“I hear ya.”
The two men bumped fists, and the driver returned to Iris, this time poking his head through the windowless door.
“Yo, lady. Stop walkin’.”
To his surprise, Iris stopped dead in her tracks and obliged the gentleman.
It forced him to apply the brakes completely at the side of the road.
The passenger giggled in disbelief. “Shit, man. Nigga’s lost her goddamn mind. Check out those eyes, man.”
The driver did just that. He squinted at the strange woman’s face as she stared back at him.
“Damn.”
His buddy was correct. Her eyes were strange all right. Bizarre gray coating around a pyramid-shaped pupil. Two of them. At least, that’s what they appeared to be. The longer the driver stared, the more disturbed he became. His initial smile turned to one of confusion, and then to reverence.
Something was “up”, but he couldn’t figure out what.
“Yo, lady. Where you goin’?”
Iris stood perfectly still and kept her eyes on the driver, refusing to respond.
“It ain’t safe out here for you,” the driver added, hoping it might force the stranger to speak. “You better get up outta here real soon before somethin’ bad happens.”
But it didn’t.
“Tch,” he sucked in his teeth and broke the eye contact. Not because he felt the advice he’d given was useless, but because he couldn’t bear to look at her any longer without the need for soiling his pants. “Crazy-ass bitch.”
The driver slammed on the gas and drove off, leaving a thoroughly disaffected Iris staring at the car-shaped plume of smog he’d left behind.
Nothing seemed to matter tonight.
Iris didn’t care.
Three seconds later, she turned to face her destination - wherever that was - and continued to walk.
And walk… and walk…
***
Chrome Valley was well and truly alive this evening.
The central district separated the Valley into two distinct sections - the affluent east side where Iris resided, and the “unfortunate” west side. The central area she was about to cross had a reputation at night, underscored by its perfect imbalance of rich and poor.
The Kaleidoscope shopping mall loomed ahead on the cobbled path Iris walked across. The stores on each side of the road had closed for the night. Some of them had shutters and bars over their windows; a sign that a lack of trust in the Valley’s citizens was ever-present.
Iris kept her composure as she absentmindedly stepped forwards, making her way to wherever she was going.
Strangers of all shapes and sizes, colors and creeds, whizzed past her until the scene turned into a bright, multicolored blur in her eyes.
Streaks of white, red, blue, and green lights from neon signs, car headlights, and street lamps whizzed past her head forming what looked like transparent lines of nocturnal toothpaste.
No one dared bump into the strange woman as they made their way past her, although they did shoot her a look of consternation more often than not.
“Weird woman,” was one such offering from an overweight bearded man carrying a sweaty, overstuffed gyro in his hands.
Iris turned to him for the briefest of moments as the guy chomped into the pita bread. The red chili sauce splashed around his mouth as his incisors bit into the flesh contained within. It looked like blood. The lamb meat could have been human flesh for all she knew. The fact that the man’s incisors were sharp made him look more like a vampire.
When he passed her by, he vanished into thin air.
The youngsters hit the town for a drunken night out.
She knew the type - boys in their late teens and early twenties, all dressed up to the nines in rich cotton and polyester from The Brand; the clothing store that Iris used to visit in her formative years. A place she eventually grew too old for, now that she was in her forties.
A youth never to be recaptured, unlike the heathens moving past her at full volume.
One of the young lads caught sight of Iris and nudged his friends, “Hey, guys. Look at this one.”
The incessant cat calls that followed didn’t perturb Iris in the slightest. If anything, she subconsciously played up to their chants of “Get ‘em off, Get ‘em off!”
They were, of course, referring to her nightgown which did a terrific job of revealing what may lay underneath.
The soft breeze in the air created by the narrow street didn’t allay the salacious looks from many of the others in her immediate vicinity.
“How much, love?” another young man blurted with through inebriation to the amusement of his friends.
Iris ignored them.
It wasn’t much of an ignorance, though. A smile formed across her face, as if she’d heard the approval, sealed by the fact that she knew something they didn’t.
Her lack of response didn’t go down well with the boys. What initially began as a semi-friendly call of approval quickly turned sour as she walked past them.
“Hey, why aren’t you wearing any shoes?”
“Yo. Why you dressed like a hooker?”
The random call-outs seemed to blend together to form one, incoherent sentence. So, Iris ignored them and let them stew in their own post-adolescent juices.
“Stupid whore,” a blond-haired boy in glasses said.
His friends burst out laughing as they watched this exquisite vision of beauty travel down her vanishing point towards the end of the high street.
“Does your daddy know you’re out this late?” came a final remark.
A gaggle of scantily-dressed girls hovered around the closed Bean Flicker cafe in an attempt to catch drivers passing by.
Some had success.
Others didn’t, and so fumed with rage.
One such woman with purple lipstick and tight denim shorts - which more resembled a belt over her fishnet stockings - managed to lure a red Range Rover to the side of the road.
“Hey, baby,” she smiled. “Will you be my Prince Charming?”
The driver didn’t react right away. He stared at her, sizing up her lips and mouth.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Crystal,” she said. “But you can call me Cinderella, if you like.”
The driver peered into his rearview mirror to ensure he wasn’t being followed, nor seen by anyone he knew - a common occurrence around these parts, given that the valley wasn’t densely populated.
“How much?” he asked.
Iris carefully angled her head and soaked up the transaction as she walked past the car.
“Uh-huh,” the man said as he checked out the woman’s wares. “Nice ass. Very nice. How much you want?”
To aid the man’s dilemma, Crystal ran the tip of her tongue along her bottom lip and offered him a sneak preview into her mouth.
“Depends what you want, sweetheart.”
Iris tried to ignore the exchange but, despite the couple’s best efforts to keep their forthcoming business under wraps, they had no choice but to yell over the thumping music coming from the night club further up.
The driver went to touch Crystal’s face, but she grabbed his wrist and flung it back to his lap.
“Nu-huh, not till you show me cash-money.”
“Cash?”
Crystal whistled at her colleagues milling around behind her. “Duh, what an asshole. Hey, girls. We got a toucher, here.”
“Man, ignore the dude,” one of her friends suggested. “He wanna touch? He gotta pay.”
Crystal returned to the man and sniffed hard, causing the back of her throat to constrict.
“Yeah, my friend says you gotta pay. Half now, half after you’ve unloaded.”
The man produced a tiny, bullet-shaped nugget of plastic. “Can we party, too?”
“Sure we can party, baby. Gimme that Prizm.”
She pinched the plastic and slid the sharp end into her wrist. A quick squeeze from the fat end was all it took.
The solution inside ran into her veins and reduced her knees to mayonnaise. She buckled under her own weight and kept herself propped up by gripping the driver’s window.
“Ooooohhh, yeah,” she moaned. “Feels good. Where you wanna unload, baby?”
The driver gulped and cleared his throat.
“In your mouth.”
That’s all Crystal needed to hear. She squeezed the rim of the driver side window and nodded at the passenger side.
“Fifty for oral.”
Nervous, he unlocked the passenger door. “Okay. Get in.”
Just as the group of girls noticed Iris, she felt something grab at her ankle.
It stopped her from walking.
Her instinct was to kick whatever has touched her away, but as she turned her attention to the ground, she saw a withered, vein-riddled hand released its grip.
Next to the outstretched arm was a flurry of green hair in a Mohawk, accompanied by an extremely gaunt face.
The man’s attempt to grab her from the ground stifled any response she could have given.
“H-Help m-me,” the man croaked and slumped onto his back. His denim jacket opened out to reveal a stained, white t-shirt with “Charlie Says” written on the front in bright pink.
The arm had track marks all over it.
The ugly punk rocker-looking man had spent much of the day in the doorway to The Brand. The same bullets the hooker had used were scattered around his beaten sneakers, both of which had busted open at the front and showed his yellow socks.
Iris’s jaw opened.
“I’m d-dying,” the punk said. “My head’s all messed up, and I n-need more. More.”
“Charlie” opened his eyes and tried to fight off the harsh neon light coming from the adjacent storefront.
“Ughh.”
Thoroughly bloodshot, his eyes had evidently seen better days. This was a man perilously close to death’s door.
Charlie’s eyes rolled to the side of their sockets and made contact with Iris’s. She soaked up his visage with a stunned silence.
A lifetime of regret and bad decisions. Surely that’s what lead this poor man to where he was, now.
His reaction was markedly different. He didn’t much like what he was seeing as he burrowed through Iris’s eyes and tried to see into her soul.
“Gah,” he spluttered with venom. “Get away. Get away. Y-You’re not right.”
He swiped at her feet once again. She noticed his sharp fingernails might cause some hideous infection if he managed to lay a scratch on her.
She took one step back and allowed “Charlie” to die in the doorway, if that’s what was about to happen.
She inhaled to the pit of her lungs and, in a flash, decided she didn’t care anymore.
“Where are you g-going?” he called after her as she walked away and out of his life. “C-Come b-back.”
With a renewed determination, Iris approached the group of hookers and kept her confidence up.
She had no idea what was going on, moving forwards like a battery bunny with one goal - to get to her destination, everything and everyone else be damned.
One of the girls puckered her lips and blew Iris a sarcastic kiss steeped in anger, “Looks like we got ourselves sum bad bitch right here.”
Iris showed little in the way of emotion to that comment. She just kept on walking and brushed right past the woman who’d spoken and elected to stand in her path.
Both their shoulders rubbed together, forcing the strange woman off her path for half a second.
“Hey,” the hooker said. “What you doin’ touchin’ me?”
“Angel, man. Leave it,” her friend said. “We don’t want no trouble tonight.”
Angel rolled her shoulders, thumbed her bra strap, and goaded Iris from behind. “This nigga pushed me, yo. Hey! I’m talking to you, you stank-ass piece of shit.”
Iris continued on her path, away from the group - a move that would prove to be a bad idea if she continued.
“Yo, bitch, I said I’m talking to you.”
Angel marched behind Iris and taunted her with clenched fists.
“Angel, man. Leave her.”
“I ain’t lettin’ no asshole touch me without payin’, yeah?” Angel yelled over her shoulder as she prepared to strike Iris in the back of the head. “Yo, my nigger. What’s good?”
Iris walked away from the woman as if she wasn’t there, which angered her all the more.
“Asshole, I said man up. Turn around.”
Iris stopped still, quite out of the blue.
A dozen pedestrians stopped with her and turned their heads to the forthcoming explosion. Something was definitely wrong, and they wanted to see the blood.
“I said turn around,” Angel ordered.
Suddenly, Iris obliged her oppressor, carrying out the action as slowly as possible. It wasn’t to better the situation, nor was it to exacerbate it.
She just wanted Angel to know she wasn’t phased in the least. Once her head turned, her eyes followed.
Gray, distant, and absent.
“What’s good, bitch?” Angel said, offering Iris the fight of her life.
She squinted and sized Iris up with her chocolate-brown eyes. Both her pupils dilated subtly, before she arrived at her final assessment.
“Nigga, you ain’t right in the head.”
Iris simply remained standing, perfectly statuesque, in front of Angel.
Not a move.
Not a sound.
Confused, she saw Iris’s eyes giving the answer away.
Angel raised her hand and waved it left and right in front of the strange woman’s face.
Once again, no response. Iris didn’t even flinch.
Angel had no idea what to do next. She unclenched her fist, wondering if punching this pretty forty-something-year-old in the face might be the best course of action.
But a crowd had gathered, and Angel’s reputation and good standing within the street walking community was at stake.
Angel scanned her friends’ pent-up anxiety. They all waited for her response, before she turned back to Iris.
“You ain’t wearnin’ no shoes,” she said.
Iris didn’t answer.
“What y’all doin’ out at this time of night around here, anyway?”
Again, Iris didn’t respond, and it started to frighten Angel into action.
“Nigga, stop starin’ at me.”
She obliged her, and stopped staring. She turned around and just walked away. Technically, Angel had gotten what she asked for - but this wasn’t what she had planned.
The dozen strangers chuckled quietly to themselves, half disappointed that a scrap between two svelte women hadn’t taken place.
There’d be nothing to report at the bar later tonight to their friends. Another dull and uneventful episode in the history of Chrome Valley, for sure.
Apart from all the other ones, of course.
“Yeah, that’s right. Walk away. Take that pussy someplace else. Y’all don’t operate on my patch or you get murdered, ya hear?”
The threat washed over Iris with all the relevance of a condom machine in a primary school. Instead, she focused her attention on the fountain at the front of the Kaleidoscope Shopping Mall.
Two teenage boys tried to climb the stone structure and reach the summit some twenty foot above.
“Sam, man,” one of the boys called up to his friend. “If the water comes back on, you’re gonna slip and fall.”
“Shut up, Jonny. I can do it,” Sam called down from above his friend’s head. “I’ll get to the top easy.”
Jonny, the blond haired boy, no older than the age of twelve, noticed Iris glide past. He found himself magnetized to the vision of the black, barefooted woman in her green nightgown.
“What the—?”
Sam called down as he clung to the stone protrusion, “Hey, Jonny. What you looking at?”
Jonny lifted his arm and pointed at the woman walking past, “Loo
k at her man. Look at her.”
Sam struggled to keep his balance, “Why?”
“She’s weird. It’s like she’s asleep or something.”
Iris stopped in her tracks the instant the sentence left his lips. Her arms hung by her sides.
She twisted her body around forty-five degrees and immediately snapped her eyes in Jonny’s direction.
The young boy felt a jolt of instant fear hug his entire body.
“Wow.”
“What is it?” Sam hollered down from above.
Iris took one step toward Jonny in what felt like a deliberate attempt to intimidate the poor boy.
In retaliation, the confused Jonny took one step back, retaining the safe proximity between them. He felt more comfortable that way.
“Jonny, leave her alone,” Sam said. “She’s not right in the head. Look at her.”
Angered by the response, not that her face registered as such, she turned up to look at Sam. Her eyes widened, offering the boy more of a glimpse into her vacuous and infinite gray eye palette.
Sam released his grip and almost fell from the structure. “Whoa. She’s insane.”
“I know,” Jonny said.
The sound of a door closing and hurried footsteps erupted at the front of the store. A withered, old black man dressed in overalls and carrying a mop, came running over.
“Hey, get off the fountain, you little shit,” he yelled at Sam.
“What?”
“I said get off the fountain. Now.”
A shaft of light from the street lamp bounced off the man’s name badge and pierced across Iris’s eyes, forcing her to shriek and stumble backwards.
“Whoa!” Jonny exclaimed.
The man took a swing at Sam’s feet with his broom and attempted to bat him down.
“Get off me,” Sam wailed as he kicked back. “I’m doing it, I’m doing it—”
Iris let out an ear-piercing screech with her head in her hands. “Aggghhhhh!”
Jonny, Sam, and the bathroom attendant turned to watch her prolonged exclamation. It wouldn’t let up. Her chest expanded as she continued to scream. They wondered if she’d explode like a burst watermelon.
She shoved her arms to the side and screamed into the night sky, and then—
SPRISSSSHHH.
Somnambulist Page 5