by Gann, Myles
“I’ve smelled that before. Love spell?”
She stopped momentarily and stared him in the eye again. “Respond, don’t stare,” he heard in a breathed statement. “Yeah, you knew someone that wore it?”
“A few girls, yeah. They read too much into the title.” She smiled shortly before returning to her study. “You went from shy to crazy in no time flat.”
She laughed softly near his ear. “Hey that was one of your options the other day.”
“Thanks for the big clue, then.”
She let a half-smile show brilliantly as she leaned back in her chair again. “I’m not crazy…I just like faces. And yours is—”
“Alice, stop that.” A man walked from the swinging back door and gently placed hands on Alice’s shoulders. “I’m so sorry she’s got a rare complication.”
“I know, we’ve met before and exchanged that information.” His blood felt a bit hotter abruptly. The man kept his arms wrapped around her pouting silhouette as his narrow shoulders nearly matched hers. “I’m Caleb, and you are?”
“He be David, my boyfriend.” Her hand affectionately ran across his bleached wrist. His other hand pushed his glasses closer to his face with an extended pinkie. “He just doesn’t get my quirky ways.”
‘Your jealousy is clouding my domain. Why are you jealous? She just tried to dissect your face.’
‘I’m looking for a friend, not a jealous boyfriend.’
‘Ah. I see us both hating him before long.’
The hand that was nearly groping her suddenly shot up in a friendly manner. ‘He’s the captain of the team.’
‘I noticed that too.’
He reached out and gently shook the man’s hand. “Charmed,” the smiling man said. David’s voice was soft in tone, but every word seemed sharp from his mouth. ‘A velvet assassin, Caleb.’ “I didn’t think you talked to anyone outside the circle, Alice.”
“I didn’t until now. We met last week.”
David’s dull, opal eyes and puppy-esque head cock didn’t inspire much positive reinforcement. “Really?”
“I did, and he saved me.”
“I’m sure you could’ve handled it on your own.” His eyes seemed focused on some feature on Caleb’s face, but not his eyes.
‘Cocky little twig isn’t he?’
‘He’s cocky for her. It’s him folding into her humility. They seem good together. Stop trying to make me hate him.’ “She handled it pretty well after the knife was out of play.”
Alice smiled a bit and kept her eyes fixed on Caleb’s while David’s moved towards the front of the door. “Well, we should be getting back to the group….”
She leaned out of David’s embrace. “You really have Asperger’s?”
Caleb smiled despite the air still ill at ease. “What makes you so skeptical of me?”
“I can see your face now.”
“My face makes you trust me less?”
“Half of it. Your left eye is emoting with every word you say, and you look sincere, but your right has been looking heavily at me and him like a security camera.”
‘Which eye are you looking through?’
Caleb’s power completely retracted. ‘The right….’
“Now they’re both emoting the same. That’s so cool you can do that!”
‘That is amazing.’ “Yes, I have Asperger’s.”
David seemed interested again. “Is he telling the truth, Alice?”
“Yep, from both sides now. You should stop by our own little gym a few blocks away for a meeting of all kinds of people like us. David helps us cope with the outside world and we just kinda sit around, share, and have fun.”
‘Marion paraphrased the same thing, remember.’
‘So what?’ “Give me a time and I might swing by.”
“Six or so. See you there.”
Her enthusiasm clashed with David’s animosity, and her haunting eyes seemed stuck in Caleb’s even as they finally broke contact. His lined lips curled upwards. ‘We’re going to spite him, aren’t we? I’m on board.’
‘Couldn’t be happier to have your agreement.’
Caleb nodded at her the few times she looked back to him before she was dragged behind the swinging door. The ruckus revived as Caleb picked up his luke-warm chocolate and took a much larger drink than before. May walked up slowly as the last of the mixture dripped down his throat. “Now, Caleb, are you going to be around them much?”
“It looks like I’ll at least see them tonight. Why is it you’re curious?”
She wrung her hands against her apron before sitting down across from him. “Mine and Abe’s daughter is in that group, and she’s terrified of new people. I’m not telling you not to go, well, I suppose I’m just making sure she’s not in any danger around you. You don’t seem like a dangerous fella, but I guess a mother will be a mother.”
Caleb leaned forward. “Well, ma’am, I can promise you your daughter is in no more danger with me around than she is without me around. So this is an actual group?”
“Oh yes they’re all good friends. The two that were out here have known each other for…oh, going on their whole lives I think. Everyone else came in as they did. David’s some type of doctor, I forget of what. He doesn’t have the sickness but he’s so helpful for her—for all of them. For you too, I imagine.”
“Heh, well if I do end up going, it won’t be for help.”
“Aw, you’re not looking for help?”
“Nothing they can help with.”
“That’s a shame.”
“I’ll see you around, May.” He stood and smiled before turning and striding out the front door. The late afternoon streets were a little busier than the last hour, sparsely littered with retreating business woman from a nearby firm specializing in sexual harassment suits. ‘And I’m sure they enjoy the cat-calling tumescence of the construction workers across the street. I wonder how many paid and purchased mansions have come from that construction sight of idiocy since it started two years ago. Aren’t you glad I had this area scouted?’
‘Yes, your paranoia in a pursuit to gather useless knowledge.’ Caleb took some spare change out for a soda machine. ‘What else did you find out when I was asleep, or did you go straight to rape and murder?’
‘Oh no, that didn’t happen until much later. Most of the night was scouting. The response time of a massive police force to our apartment from the closest station would be about eighteen minutes. The canyon in front of our complex is geometrically perfect for a total kill zone if the situation should arise.’
He reached down and picked up his purchased water. ‘It won’t, ever.’
Both personas became silent in their impasse. Caleb walked towards a slowly igniting group of lights near the river with the disappearing shine on his left. He let his hands fall into his pockets as he felt the blocks flowing by. He soon came to a busy pavilion and weaved through the crowd, not touching a single person while his body contorted and twisted to not interrupt their respective paths. He made it through the crowd and noticed the groups dim and dim until he reached the famous and mighty purple bridge. His bottle found its way to a close receptacle, and his feet flurried up the girder with nobody taking notice. Balancing wasn’t a problem for him for the first half of the climb, but his power automatically activated to maintain it for the latter half. The crest of the wave approached, and he stopped to look out unto an encroaching riverboat. A rushing wind tried to topple him but he simply plunked his bottom down and let one leg dangle carelessly from the edge, not allowing the wind to threaten even slightly. The sun scorned and scowled as the western compass tilted, taking the ball down the drain no matter how it clawed and longed to be as free as Caleb’s swinging leg. ‘Can’t help yourself can you?’
He didn’t answer the ghost of his sub-conscious. His legs stood straight again while his wrist watch gently clicked onto and through six-o-clock. A crowd gathering near the bottom of the bridge dissuaded a return route. ‘Let’s get creati
ve.’ Caleb let his body soak in power for a few seconds before leaping to the large entertainment center close to the shoreline. Nobody seemed to notice the hundred-yard leap, but the crowded streets below were swelling in activity. The power kept coursing as his gentle leaps took him from rooftop to rooftop, closer to his neighborhood with record speed. His overhead view revealed his proximity to the goal, so his left foot pressed a little harder into the roof than his right, skewing his jump towards a very skinny alley, each arm catching a rung on either fire escape. A group of teenagers were walking by the opening, causing Caleb to simply hang as they passed. They strode by before he snapped the safety bars with his power, fitting one foot into each falling ladder until he could gently step to the ground.
His hands felt the bottom of his pockets as he walked into the street and let his power dip into the background again. The paranoia of Power scouted the street ahead of Caleb’s feet. The subdued girl from earlier emerged from a doorway with the same outfit glowing in the light. ‘Alice.’
Caleb raised an eyebrow at his internal demon. ‘You cared to remember her name?’
‘I remembered the arrogant boyfriend. Her face and name just came with it.’
Her bright colors continued to sing in the waning light as he lightly jogged across the street. The twilit vanilla that bounced from her skin seemed an unworthy attempt to cover her natural aura, which still shined emerald green even against the mango sky. She turned away from the light, separating the sun’s attempt to glow from her source; her eyes luminescent still within the shadow of the mountain of her impassable ruddiness. She smiled quickly as he tripped up the curb, nearly blinding him with an innocent essence too young to know its own carelessness. “You made it! C’mon in.”
‘What exactly did we make it to, I wonder?’ “Where am I going?”
She stood to the side and raised her arm to the door. “Staircase, four stairs up, three down, twelve up, twenty steps across the walkway, ten steps down to the gym floor, grab a seat. I’ll be right behind you.” Caleb looked back to her from the doorway, quickly realizing she’d moved much closer to him. ‘She never took her eyes off you. You’re being studied.’
Her eyes and smile never wavered from his face as he walked by her, braving a sideways smile that seemed to make her even happier. He counted the steps in his head, soon finding himself at the walkway with every number square. Tiny voices echoed from across the open gymnasium as he walked through the doorway; the rickety path hung over a very old wooden floor with some planks removed and more rotting from water. His presence was immediately noticed by every member of a circle on the far end by a large, semi-circular window. One—‘David the Great,’—walked towards him as he slowly descended the stairs, noticing the remnants of championship past hung in tattered-banner form atop folded bleachers. ‘The dust from the rafters could choke a whale.’ Orange light splashed across the downed heads and folding chairs; the still-shined floor shown several blackened circles atop entwining boards—‘Barrel bottoms. This is a hobo squatting ground.’
‘Was. I don’t smell any self-made bathrooms…just a splash of Windex and Pine-sol. It doesn’t look like they’re here legally, but neither are we.’
He was finally met by David a few steps into the forest of creaking wood. “Welcome,” David said while extending his hand again.
“Thanks.”
They shook and David escorted Caleb across the floor, drawing two or three stares and a great deal of anxiety. ‘Pick the chair against the window. View the room, easy escape if needed.’
‘Do you really think these people are dangerous?’
‘David’s competent enough to be. He seems the type.’
Caleb didn’t bother looking around the circle, and suddenly heard a door slam on ground level. His power flinched while Caleb’s eyes calmly turned towards the open double-doors. A worn, abstractly patterned recliner was carried through the doors by Alice, whistling some jaunty tune as she hefted the chair across the floor by her lonesome. David pushed one of the folding chairs out of the way and a few others scooted apart to create a space for the approaching recliner before it gently fell to the ground with a final peppy whistle from her mouth. Caleb could just smile and shake his head.
David’s meek figure stood in the center. “The news of the day is still our victory earlier, and the second order is that Alice has taken it upon herself to invite someone else to our circle.”
‘Pecker head.’
Alice curled her entire body into the large chair and spoke. “His name is Caleb, and he needs our help like everyone else here does. He’s got blue eyes, and an amazing face, as you can see.” She waved her hand towards him. ‘She’s adorably innocent.’
“I’m Caleb—”
“This is going to screw with the story I had ready for today.”
The speaking man had a filing folder at the side of his chair and fidgety hands that now scooped it into his lap. His short, blonde hairs didn’t move as he did, his button up shirt dark and loose against his slightly tanned skin. He quickly flipped open the purple folder and the dividers sprang from one finger to the other. “It’s okay, Benny, maybe you could just read a poem for us tonight until you work out the story.” He flipped faster and nodded. “Let’s all introduce ourselves to our new mate.”
“I’m Benny: the guy whose story you just ruined.”
“Angela.” ‘Caramel, shoulder-blade-length hair with chubby cheeks and small hands.”
‘And she’s connected by the hand too…,’ “Christopher.”
“Lacey.” ‘Such a tiny voice.’
“Andrew is I.” ‘Satirically, lovely. Aesthetically, way too young to be a long time member of this group.’
“Stewart.” ‘Has never stood out of a crowd in his life.’
The next tilted her head out of the shadow of the window molding. “Joy.”
“David,” he said quickly. “All right then, Alice will start us off while Caleb and I have a chat.” His fake smile flashed to comfort the faces, ‘Obviously not concerned about his actions….’ Caleb stood and walked after David. “Sorry for ruining your story, Benny,” he said as they walked by. Benny took a sharp breath as Caleb passed, afraid that he would violate his space somehow. ‘The artistic worm could be crushed easily.’ Caleb made sure he had a wide berth, walking closer to Alice as he passed between.
‘He’s holding that clipboard like a gun.’ They wandered halfway to the other end of the gym. ‘He just looks congested. Something isn’t tickling his pickle.’ The man turned on a dime and closed his eyes. ‘I guess it’s biting his pickle like a piranha. Why is he so annoyed at us? This goes beyond you contaminating his precious lab rats.’ “We need to communicate on a more personal level if you’re going to be helped by this kind of gathering. Do you have any medical records confirming your diagnosis? I have clearance, if you allow me, to have them sent from any medical center.”
His head cocked and eyes rose until a single gemstone was peering over the black rim of his glasses. ‘That was a shot. Look at his eyes: he’s got some power over you. The government may have—’
‘My picture.’
‘He saw it, which means your little ballerina knows about you too. Kill him, turn, push everyone against the walls—’
‘How are you showing me this?’ His waking eyes suddenly saw the events as if they happened.
‘Power of the mind. Hold them there while another part starts a fire. Barricade the door on the way out, the barred windows will hold, building burns down. A pile of derelict ashes with supposedly homeless bones powdering the ground would be the remains. We go on with your experiment.’
‘No, no involvement by you that was the deal. Let the military come first. She wouldn’t greet me like that and David wouldn’t wait two seconds to turn me in.’ Power backed down under his command. “I have my medical files at home, but you don’t need to see them. They’re full of sensitive information that is quite personal, hence them being my medical files, and hen
ce, you don’t need to see them.”
“Not technically, no, but I’d like to get to know you a little, and this is usually a good place to start.”
“You’re trying to get to know me?”
“Well, connect with you is more appropriate. I’ve known a great deal of this group for over a decade, and Alice our whole lives. That boy for two years and Joy was referred to me by a colleague not a year ago, which makes you the stranger, which isn’t a problem as long as they can find some common ground with you. The best way to connect with them is to connect with me, then Alice, then the rest. We’re like the tether poles of the group, the best place to start getting rooted.”
Caleb snickered. “David, you’re not going to connect with me. You have nothing in common with me. You don’t have any of the diseases I have or the one they have. The simple truth is you can only take an educated leap at what they’re going through, and can’t even fathom what I’m going through. I know you’re trying to wipe the grime from the window between you and me, but wipe forever, it’s still a barrier that keeps you from ever truly connecting with me. I’ve got a laundry list of experiences you could never imagine. So, don’t even try to connect with me, because it’s simply not possible.”
David pushed his glasses against his face and crossed his arms. “How will this work then?”
“Hey, I can help.”
---
“You can connect to me, I bet.”
Alice felt her smile burst a little further from her head. Both men looked at her now; at her youthful skin and wind-damaged hair as they went against her looming, deeply effervescent eyes. She knew very little about the world; very little about the splintered paths she never took and where they led. They were nothing more than an idol curiosity as she strolled by; the trees along the dense forest path too thick for her to brave a gander. Even if their branches were thin and weak, she would never summon desire for another direction. She loved the path she tread unequivocally, and was incredibly gifted at her estranged skip along it. Everything on the path was easily seen by her, but the dirty clouds ahead swirled into a dust that blinded her feet from the straight and narrow. “I’m the perfect bridge. I know his mumbo-jumbo and I know what you’re going through. Perfect!”