Innocence

by Samael Wolf

  That was easier said than done when my legs didn’t want to cooperate. They didn’t hurt, but they didn’t seem to be moving as much as I expected unless I paid attention to how exactly they were placed. I must have apologized a dozen times before Sae got me over to the couch Cassie’s parents had gifted the apartment. I collapsed onto it gratefully. An incoherent thought flitted through my head: So this is what it’s like to have vertigo. I don’t think I like it. Neither did my stomach. I decided to just lie still until it passed…

  I think I must have passed out, because when I started ‘seeing’ things again, I was on my side and my head was on Sae’s lap. I sat up with a start and was surprised when the sudden motion didn’t set off my head or stomach again. In fact, as I opened my mouth to apologize and yawned instead, I realized I definitely felt better, if rather embarrassed for all the inconvenience I was giving Sae.

  But if she was bothered, she didn’t show it. “Oh good, you’re awake!” she whispered. “It’s nearly ten. At night,” she added hastily, and I was glad she did — at this point, it wouldn’t have surprised me to have woken up at 10:00 the next morning. “Your roommates came home hours ago.”

  I groaned, imagining what they must have seen and thought. “You should have woken me up.”

  She shrugged easily. “You seemed like you needed it. How are you feeling now? Are you up to eating something?”

  I used a moment to take stock. My head had cleared and my stomach just felt empty. Most of the fatigue seemed to have lifted. I felt like I should have felt if I’d just woken up from a long sleep, and how I’d felt instead this afternoon was now a memory. “I guess it must have been what I needed, because I don’t feel too bad at all now,” I admitted, feeling oddly guilty. “Just hungry. If I order out, can I persuade you to let me get you something? It’s the least I can do for everything today.”

  Sae made a rude noise and waved her hands dismissively. “Too late! I was going to make you the same offer, but you slept through when I ordered. I hope you like poke. I put yours in the fridge.”

  The guilt redoubled. “You shouldn’t have done that,” I protested, barely remembering in time to keep my voice low. I didn’t know who had class or work tomorrow, but it was usually a safe bet that someone would be asleep early. “I’m—“

  I stopped because Sae had just planted two fingers on my lips. She gave a very feline smile as she leaned forward and I had the absurd notion she was about to kiss me, but she stopped a few inches from my face. “What you are is worrying too much, but if you prefer, I suppose I could chastity you.”

  “I think you mean ‘chastise,’ ” I said automatically, heat flooding into my cheeks. I leaned away before she could get any ideas, then realized I had a perfect excuse to get up as my stomach let out a bubbling complaint.

  “Do I?”

  Her laughter followed me to the kitchen as I scurried away, eager to duck my head into the coolness of the refrigerator. I found a covered plastic bowl and quickly identified it as poke, a Hawaiian fish salad which had been gaining popularity in the University District, claiming a niche alongside sushi and teriyaki restaurants in the area. This one consisted of sushi rice, vegetables, and chunks of fish I couldn’t recognize by scent alone. I was surprised to find the bowl still warm as I lifted it up. That was just as well; I’d have hated to do it the injustice of putting it in the microwave.

  That left me wondering when she’d ordered the delivery, and why it hadn’t awakened me sooner. True, something was seriously amiss with my sleeping habits, or else I wouldn’t have slept nearly 19 hours straight, but I found it a little daunting to think that Sae had gone to the door, received and eaten a meal, placed the leftovers in the refrigerator, and then put my head in her lap, all without me having roused during that time.

  “I think you have mono,” Sae announced from directly behind me as I was fishing a fork out of the dish drying rack. The only thing that kept me from letting out a shriek was clapping my hands over my mouth, dropping the plastic bowl to the floor in the process. I spun around and fixed her synesthesia image in my mind, so badly startled that I was shaking. The little minx didn’t even seem to notice, chattering just as if she hadn’t done something nearly impossible by sneaking up on me so easily. “That would explain why you slept so much, wouldn’t it? Have you ever had it before? Do you have a sore throat too?”

  “H-how did you get behind me? You were just sitting on the couch, weren’t you?” I hadn’t meant to ask the question out loud, but it just slipped out of me as I regarded her in disbelief.

  Sae inclined her head questioningly. “Well, obviously I didn’t teleport, on account of that being patently impossible, right?” She grinned, my discomfiture apparently not even registering on her horizon. “You must still be a little sleepy. You dropped this, by the way. Good thing I have quick reflexes, huh?”

  She held up the bowl I knew—I knew for a fact—had just hit the floor. I was speechless.

  My synesthesia is strange, sometimes inexplicable in its capacity to provide detailed imagery of things I shouldn’t possibly be able to sense, much less identify so precisely, but it had never lied to me like this. I had seen her on the couch, and then she had simply been behind me with nothing in the intervening space. I had seen the plastic container drop to the floor, far too late to be caught, and somehow she had plucked it from the air while hardly seeming to move. It was impossible. I refused to believe whatever trick of my senses had guided me so long had suddenly expired. Obviously she wasn’t breaking the laws of physics, so it had to be me, and that meant either I was taking leave of my senses, or else something much simpler was at play.

  “I’m still asleep, aren’t I?” I asked, edging away from her. It had to be. I wouldn’t accept any other explanation. I was already struggling to keep my fear in check. “I’m asleep and this is a dream. Otherwise, none of this makes sense. Why would you be here? Why do these things keep happening?”

  Sae blinked once and then smiled. Feline ears sprouted from her head as she reached forward and grasped me by the arm.

  “Glad to see you’ve caught on. Now wake up.”

  The world whirled and went utterly dark.

  I jerked upright in bed, gasping for breath. The room was dark and I was blessedly alone, with no bizarre, cat-eared Sae to taunt me. Everything seemed normal, and I felt, aside from my pounding heart, relatively refreshed and much improved from earlier. Assuming any part of ‘earlier’ had been real. Unreality slid over me, making the fine hair on my arms prickle uncomfortably. I had no idea where reality had ended and fantasy had begun. Had Sae even been here at all, or had I dreamed the entire encounter? It had seemed so real, but…

  I quickly checked. I was dressed as I had remembered dressing that morning, so that much was real. I didn’t feel like checking to see if I’d really sent that e-mail out to my professors, although I’d have to do it if I couldn’t make it into class… today? Tomorrow? I sighed and located my watch right where I’d left it and triggered its time readout.

  “Friday, 1:29 A.M.,” a female voice pleasantly announced from the watch’s speaker. I winced. I had slept through the entire day and now here I was awake in the early hours of the night with an exam later today. I was definitely going to make an appointment with my doctor as soon as I could. The good news was that unless I started feeling ill again, I could probably get to Microbiology and take my exam, although if I couldn’t convince my body to sleep a little longer, it was going to feel like late afternoon by the time it happened.

  My stomach let out a rumble. Oh yes, I was still hungry, and no wonder if I hadn’t had anything to eat in over 24 hours. I pulled the covers off and stood up, spotting Esti’s note on my table, unchanged from when I’d read it earlier. So far, it seemed like Sae’s inexplicable visit was the only thing I couldn’t account for, and now, perversely, I had an urge to check the refrigerator for leftover poke. I crept down the short hall past Esti’s room, entered the kitchen, and hesitantly cracked open
the refrigerator door.

  No poke, not that I had really expected there to be any. I breathed a sigh, feeling strangely relieved. My suspicion was that Sae really had dropped by to check up on me that afternoon, but I’d been so tired that I didn’t remember going back to bed. I hoped I hadn’t been behaving strange or rudely while I was all but sleepwalking. Hadn’t she said she’d tried to call me? I had a few trails of breadcrumbs to follow as soon as I got something in my stomach and something to drink. I filled a glass of water and pondered what I could quietly make to eat as I took it back to my room, pausing as I passed in front of Esti’s door. It was closed, but that didn’t stop me from peeking inside, and I could tell that her bed was empty. That was mildly concerning, if not that unusual for Esti — which was none of my business, but I did hope she wasn’t somewhere suffering the same ailment I was.

  It turned out Sae had left me two voicemail messages, first inquiring if I was in and able to make it to work, the second expressing concern that I hadn’t called back and warning me that she was going to visit to check in on me. She also mentioned in the latter that she had gotten her sister to fill in for me, which confirmed that at least part of her visit had been real. I had to assume my guess had been correct, and I had gone back to bed at some point after she visited and dreamed waking up on the couch with her. It had been so lifelike, and I had been asleep so long, that it had taken awhile for me to piece together what had happened and what hasn’t. I had to laugh at myself in retrospect. I never realized what a creature of habit I am. Oversleep a little while and I start questioning reality…

  Well, to make a long story short, I had a post-midnight meal and miserably failed at getting back to sleep, but I did succeed in getting to class and taking my exam, which I did well on. Esti came home that afternoon while I napped, but since it was now a weekend night and everyone was up late, I saw her and the others when I woke up a little later and we hung out a bit while they watched a movie. I tried to keep up with it, but since I can’t turn off synesthesia to just enjoy the dialogue, what I heard and what I could ‘see’ often didn’t match up. I often visualized actors in front of empty sets and landscapes that were incomplete and fuzzy at the edges. I didn’t complain, though, since I was happy enough to vicariously enjoy my friends’ reactions to the film. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to speak to Esti alone before I had to go back to bed, but she seemed in high spirits, not sick at all, which had been my chief concern.

  Over the next few days, I labored to get my sleeping schedule back on track, thanking God I didn’t have much to worry about on weekends other than any assignments I had to do, and this had been a week of exams, so I didn’t have much more than a bit of studying to take care of and a doctor’s appointment that thankfully turned up nothing of consequence. I missed the best parts of the day, but somehow I managed to make myself sleep at 4:00 AM early Saturday morning, and then at 1:00 AM the following night. I didn’t have much of a social life that weekend, and Esti in particular was nowhere to be found when I wanted to talk to her—which left me feeling more than a little stung—but at least I was able to be up at a reasonable hour on Monday and endure an entire day of classes without falling asleep in the middle of them.

  It was Monday evening while I was sitting alone in our diminutive living room with my netbook, trying to retrieve my grades as a means of passing the time until I could drop into my bed and hopefully have everything back to rights when I woke up the next morning, that I caught something on the news that made me jump. Jesse had left the television on when she went to bed and I hadn’t been paying much attention to the window into a studio of people talking mainly about unpleasant things, this being how I ‘saw’ it, when their topic jumping finally referenced something particularly relevant to me.

  “… his family, but the King County Medical Examiner has officially ruled Officer Orkin’s death one of natural causes. Although it was at first thought that the woman heard on audio retrieved from his dashboard camera may have played a role in his death, presiding coroner Doctor Miguel Martín now says his death was due to a heart attack suffered during the attempted arrest.

  “The woman has still not been identified. Anyone who may have information relating to the events that took place this past Saturday evening is urged to contact the Seattle Police Department.”

  I rocked back, struggling to make sense of what I’d just heard. Could it really have been the same man as Wednesday? I wish I’d paid more attention to the opening of the segment! Then I realized I was holding an object in my lap that could possibly give me the information I desired, if I was willing to put in the time to find it. I was conscious of the time, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I didn’t try. Sighing, I fumbled around until I managed to open a new window and keyed in a search.

  It didn’t take long to get results, even if they were a bit scanty on details. His full name had been Zackary Orkin and his wife’s name was Sophia, and the articles mentioned they had a child together, although none of them gave the child’s name — for privacy reasons, I guessed. Still, I had enough that I was certain it was the same person. I could see about getting Esti to print a picture from the articles so that I could ‘see’ it, but I had a feeling there was no need.

  One of the articles had an excerpt from an interview with the coroner, Doctor Martín, going into more detail than the news report had and clarifying a detail they had gotten wrong. He had performed several blood tests for toxins and had found nothing to suggest that the cause was anything but natural. However, he had actually ruled Orkin’s death as caused by heart failure, not a heart attack. This was unusual because Orkin had no prior history of heart disease, but it was possible he had suffered from some form of arrhythmia that had gone unreported and thus undiagnosed.

  Several of the articles also referenced the mysterious dash camera video which had initially made police suspect that foul play had been involved. Orkin’s car had been on the side of the road with his body lying on the sidewalk on the passenger side by officers responding to a request for assistance. When they pulled the video, it had turned out Orkin had been in the process of performing an arrest when he collapsed, but the woman he was arresting never appeared on camera due to the way the car was parked, and Seattle officers weren’t yet using body cameras. The video had been put online and there was a lot of speculation about the mystery woman, who was thought to be a prostitute.

  Out of a sense of morbid curiosity, I found myself trying to find the video, thinking at least that the sound of his voice would confirm once and for all that it was the same man from Wednesday. I eventually found it just as I was starting to seriously run low on pep, yawning so hard my eyes watered as I tried to coax my netbook into playing the file. It took a lot of fumbling because the player wasn’t configured for ease of access, but after a few false starts, I found the play button and got it started.

  The video opened with indistinct radio chatter, which I tried hard not to hear too clearly, not wanting to have to visualize more than one layer to this window. Orkin’s own incidental sounds were too soft to get much of a picture of him at first, but the video was only of the pertinent part of the incident, so I didn’t have long to wait.

  “Hey, I’ve got a suspicious person here at the corner of Northgate and Meridian, possibly a code 125. Gonna check it out.”

  The hair on my arms lifted. If I’d had any remaining doubt that this wasn’t the same guy, it had just been shattered. I easily recognized the contemptuous disgust as an echo of the same tone he’d used on his wife, and the image of him in my mind crystallized as he spoke. I shivered reflexively, although I knew I had nothing to fear from him now. Unable to pause the video, I jumped up and switched off the television set so I could better hear my netbook audio, sitting down in time to hear a car pulling over. Most of the details weren’t coming through clearly since the audio by itself, especially with such low quality, didn’t provide me with enough sensory information to form a complete picture. Still, I
could follow along well enough, and did so with a rising sense of unease.

  “Evening, ma’am,” Orkin called, apparently speaking to the mystery woman, his tone now superficially respectful. “Everything all right? Are you headed home?”

  “Everything’s fine,” the woman’s voice came, painting a vaguely humanoid silhouette in my mind. I leaned in closer, surprised. I don’t know what I had expected, but it wasn’t this dulcet voice that seemed to curl around my ears. When she spoke again, it seemed like she had gotten closer to the camera. “Oh, mister Orkin. Yes, everything is just fine.” Then she laughed.

  I don’t know how to describe what went through my mind at that sound. If I said that it was a beautiful, sexy laugh, I don’t think I’d be communicating the idea I wanted. Her laugh sent a shiver down my spine and left me squirming, wanting more. If I didn’t embarrass so easily, I’d even admit just the sound of her laughing made me wet. I’d never heard a voice like that before. It seemed to echo, or maybe just resonate somehow, like the way the right pitch can make a crystal glass vibrate.

  But at the same time, there was something else to that laugh, something I’d never encountered before either. I hesitate to describe it as evil, but it certainly wasn’t joyful laughter. It was the sound of someone intending to do something very unpleasant, and looking forward to doing it. At the same time that I found myself strangely aroused by her voice, I wanted to cringe and cover my ears, too. It was suddenly very, very clear why people had thought this woman had something to do with Orkin’s death.

  In horrified fascination, I continued listening. Orkin recoiled to his side of the car as the woman laughed, his expression clouding in a mixture of emotions I couldn’t even begin to decipher. “Ma’am, step away from the car,” he warned, a catch in his voice betraying that he was just as affected by her presence as I was by proximity. “What are you doing?”