CDI: Can you know tell me if the cuts back then were intentional or accidental?
TF: Uh… Accidental. Yeah. I think so.
CDI: So you think she hadn’t began to injure herself at that point?
TF: No. I think I know when she did. It was after I threw away her favourite skirt. She’d ruined it one day, and I yelled at her. I told her that she was careless and threw it away. She was really upset about that but I had to make her see that she should take care of her things.
CDI: Could you say that it was an emotional trigger then?
TF: What do you mean?
CDI: Do you believe that because Emma was upset, that she started cutting herself?
TF: Yes, that’s why we took her to the doctor.
CDI: I see. Please go on.
TF: She was filling those slides with drops of her blood. She scratched her old cuts to bleed them and they got, what do you call it, reddish…
CDI: Infected.
TF: Yes, infected. So we scolded her and didn’t let her take the band-aids off. Then she cut her arms. It was one or two at first but then I knew, she was doing it on purpose.
CDI: That is when you took her to get examined?
TF: Yes. She came to me one day and asked about getting her period! I mean, a kid asking about sex? It was in those books of hers… - PAUSE - I sent her to the doctor with her dad and took the microscope away while she was gone.
CDI: How did Emma react to that?
TF: What?
CDI: How did Emma react to you taking her microscope away?
TF: She freaked out. Like kiddie freak-out, only worse. She screamed and we locked her in her room. She said - PAUSE - She said she hated me.
CDI: Did that go on?
TF: We kept her home the next day, and then we took her to the doctor again. The doctor asked that we stay outside. I can’t understand why he wouldn’t let me be in there, I mean it’s not like I won’t let my daughter say… - PAUSE
CDI: Would you say now that at that point, her cutting herself was severe?
TF: Yes, it was severe. Very severe. She didn’t drink water. Or anything at all. Her lips were dry, with sores.
CDI: Was she letting you bathe her?
TF: No. Now that you say it, no.
CDI: Do you know what she actually did? Did she tell you?
TF: She said she was doing “experiments.” That’s all. She was babbling about some chemicals or something. I dunno.
CDI: When you took the microscope away, did she stop her experiments?
TF: No, she did them again. With her phone. Taking pictures and pictures, of her blood. Hundreds.
CDI: Did you take her phone as well?
TF: [YELLING] Of course I did!
SESSION END
Chapter 26
I entered the girl’s room. It was nice and colourful. Posters of boy bands on the wall, dolls neatly groomed all over the place.
I noticed that anything sharp, anything that could pierce skin, was missing. No scissors, no mechanical pencils. The edges of the desk and chair were trimmed round. The parents must have gone through everything in all the time Emma was bleeding herself.
I noted where she would place her hands. Everything was clean, but you can never really get blood off anything. A discolouration here, a stain there. Dried in the chair’s cloth seat.
I opened the books. They were from the school’s library, months delayed but I had a feeling no-one was trying to return them anyway. She had little sticky bookmarks with poppies on them, for easy reference on the blood pages.
To be honest, for a nine-year-old, this was meticulous work. I’ve seen graduate papers less organised than this.
In colourful plastic cases were the blood slides. Placed in rows after rows. The blood was in dark spread out drops, in all its deep colours. Some were months old, some were newer. There didn’t seem to be a system in place for cataloguing the slides.
Emma couldn’t have bought these from anywhere in town. There were rows and rows of blood slides, in various boxes. Some boxes had stickers on them, others were plain cardboard ones. The slides were probably ordered, which meant that her parents would have to place it. That meant they had no idea at first, they enabled Emma’s “research” acceptingly.
I took clear photographs. I was thorough, taking my time, straitening the pages digitally with an app, evenly lit. I then asked the mother if we could take them.
She said no. She wanted to burn it all.
Chapter 27
At dusk, I went back to the police station. I filed the forms needed and went to the holding cell with one of the police officers. It was the one with the blue overall and the rifle. He looked bored.
Zoe was lying down. Cigarette smell was coming out of the place. The officer unlocked the cell-door and she stood up.
“You are starting to resemble my little brother.”
“What, is he the one paying bail for you instead of the other way around?”
Zoe grabbed her coat and snorted loudly. “Of course. Do I look like a geek?”
The middle aged police officer was waiting for me at the exit.
“Let’s not see you around.”
“I hope the best for your nephew,” I told him, and I meant it.
“You are too damn polite,” Zoe said as soon as we left some distance.
“I find it best not to antagonise people of authority.” I went to the driver’s side. She grunted. I went to the passenger’s seat.
She turned on the ignition and stayed in place, looking around.
“How do we get to that hotel?”
Chapter 28
Zoe showered and spread on the bed as if was made of feathers. I let her have it all to herself, after that uncomfortable holding cell, so I sat on the chair.
She was looking at my notes, and I was filling in. I felt kinda anxious, to be honest. I was in training after all, and I barely had any.
“Uh huh. Nai. Not bad for a noob,” she said in the end.
“I figured I could handle the interviews. Getting people informed should be done by you.”
“Mmm, I’m not feeling it right now. I’m hungry. Let’s go somewhere.” She perched up her head and stood still. “You didn’t spend all our money on booze and hookers, did you?”
“No!” I laughed out.
“Gawd, I’m so disappointed in you.”
We drove around town until we found fast food. Thankfully there was a Goody’s place, the Greek hamburger store chain. We ordered a couple of big meals and indulged like there was no tomorrow.
Zoe stole 10 packs of ketchup and lathered it all on the fries. Then she ate them by hand, moaning with delight each time.
“Here, have mine as well,” I said and passed them on.
“You’re such a gentleman,” she said and added them to the pile.
“So, what do we do next?”
“Well,” she said between bites, “we have only a day, so let’s prioritise. The most important thing is to talk to the medical professionals. Get them aware, tell them what to expect, things like that. You’ve done the interviews, more than I would have done, you freak, so we just need to copy some medical reports and put them in our case file. Then we are done.” She leaned back and stared at her swollen belly.
“OK. I guess we leave it to the locals then.”
“Duh, yeah. It’s not like we can monitor things across the country for months. The symptoms in humans and animals take months to show, you know. We could show up in 3 months if there really was a case, but the locals need to handle it personally.”
I took a bite of my burger and pushed the rest of it away from me.
“You’re not gonna eat that?”
“Ohi.”
Zoe took my meal and gave it a coup de grace.
She looked at my face, trying to chew down in one gulp.
“What’s bothering you?”
“See, there’s something weird about this case. Not that I have any experience in these sort o
f things, but the symptoms are unusual. Emma had a maniacal obsession with examining her blood. Tens of times per day.”
“Hey, I read the mom’s interview. They had a few issues, they didn’t know how to handle her.”
I bit my lips and thought about it out loud. “Look, the way I saw it, is that Emma cutting herself wasn’t the issue. I think that the mania was researching, no matter how silly that sounds for a nine-year-old girl, her blood in regular intervals. She was cutting herself to gain access to her blood.”
Zoe stared at me for a while. “It’s still freaky.”
“It’s freaky because it was a little girl. Try to think of her for a sec as a woman. Then it simply becomes methodical.”
“Methodical until it turned her into a rabid, literally, animal that attacked a cop in the night and got her shot.”
“Yeah, you’re right, that doesn’t add up.”
She watched her hands for a while. They looked like she had just killed a man.
“What did they tell you about the cop?”
“Well, the poor man is a mess. He blames himself, he’s gone crazy over the shooting. He is under investigation of course, which does not concern us. But it’s why the police was so against us,” I said, and gestured at her with my hand.
Zoe acted like something bitter was in her mouth. “I noticed.”
“I explained to them that the positive rabies test on the poor girl helps the officer’s case, so they eased up a little. But if you saw him, you’d know that legal troubles are the least of his worries.”
“If we get called to testify in court, you are the one coming all the way back here. Not me.”
I raised my hands. “Fine.”
The manager started sweeping the floor next to us, politely urging us to leave. I picked up my stuff.
“What?” Zoe said. “It’s not even 11 o’clock!”
I shrugged and picked up her coat.
“I hate this town,” she said and went to wash her sticky hands.
Chapter 29
Science Teacher’s Report
T. Athanasiou
Emma was bright. She kept asking questions. Good ones too, because all they do is ask questions anyway but they are usually irrelevant.
I was teaching them one day about blood, how it carries oxygen from our lungs, travels through our body to every cell. I didn’t notice it then, but she was fascinated by it. At class break, she caught up to me and bombarded me with questions. I answered as many as I could.
The logical part of me says that it would have happened anyway. The emotional part says that it’s my fault.
I’m too enthusiastic. I show the kids experiments, I bring props, try to get them to be hands-on. Some like it, others don’t bother looking up from their phones.
So yes, it makes me happy to see that my enthusiasm is getting through to a student. I know that not all of them can become scientists, but even the greatest minds of all time were slobbering children at some point. Somebody got them excited with science.
I didn’t see her condition, I admit. I’m usually blind to ordinary things. My girlfriend would have to dye her hair purple for me to take notice. I only heard it in the teacher’s office. We discussed it all together, decided we should see if there was a case of bullying, or talk to the parents to see if it was something domestic. We agreed and moved on. I didn’t put much thought into it.
A few weeks later, Emma was missing from class. I assumed she was sick, or just staying home. They had made a big deal out of it. Next morning, Lefteris’ uncle called me. Said he needed a friend.
I went to the police station, everybody knows me there cause we hang out sometimes. I just barged in and found my best friend in an office. Everybody had a worried look. A grim, worried look.
I asked him what happened. He was delirious and crying. His uncle told me he’d shot a kid by accident.
I stayed with him all day. I took a day’s leave but the rest of the time I had to work. I went to him straight from work, every waking hour. The drugs are helping. I don’t think he’ll ever get over it.
Chapter 30
The neighbour next door was rolling around on her tricycle. Her parents didn’t want to talk to us, but they gave us permission to talk to her.
The little girl was still at preschool. Her mother propped herself up on the fence but didn’t intervene at all.
Zoe got down on her knees and waited for the girl to complete a circle and come closer. She was simply doing figure eights on the lawn, pulling a dog’s collar on a leash behind her.
“Hello,” Zoe said with the standard tone all adults take when addressing children.
The girl looked at her toes and then at her mom. She was brought up properly. “Hello miss.”
“I’m Zoe and this is Poly,” she said while presenting us with flourishes. “We just want to talk to you about Emma.”
The girl chugged some air and let loose a screeching whine. “Alitis didn’t do it!” she screamed. “The man said Alitis bit Emma but he didn’t do it. He was a nice doggy!”
Her mother rushed to her side and simply hugged her.
I turned over to Zoe and mouthed, “What the hell?”
Zoe slouched her shoulders in a resigned attitude. “They had to check the dog for rabies.”
“So?” I asked.
Zoe covered the side of her mouth and whispered the words at me. “The only way to check is to cut it’s head open and look inside.”
I brought my hand up to my mouth. I looked at the crying girl, embraced by her mother, leash still in her little hand.
Zoe made a walking back gesture with her fingers and we left in silence.
Back in the car, Zoe threw around the back seat a bunch of papers from the case file. That was her filing system. She found one in particular, and wrote something down while saying in monotone, “Neighbour’s dog tested negative for rabies.”
“Hey!”
“Whath?” she asked, with a pen in her mouth.
“Why the hell would they euthanize the girl’s poodle?”
She took the pen out of her mouth as if I had interrupted the donning of the royal crown. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah…” I said, with a waning attitude.
“Dogs are the perfect lyssa carriers for some reason. They are like honeypots to the virus. Their close proximity to people makes them very dangerous. Not to mention they drool everywhere. In a confirmed infection, we can’t mess around. The most probable pets needed to be tested.”
“They didn’t have to kill it? Did they?”
“Nai. The had to. If it was just a rabies scare, the dog would be monitored for three months and kept isolated. This time someone died. In this case, they chop off it’s head and look inside,” she said, and accommodated the explanation with hand gestures.
“Ugh. That’s horrible.”
She pointed the pen at me. “Hey! It’s better than having the whole family choke convulsively at the mere mention of water and die foaming!”
I just stared at her gaping for a while. “I guess it is…”
We were both silent on the drive to the hospital.
Chapter 31
The hospital was old and rustic. A few attempts to modernise it have been made, but the town’s character had swallowed it back.
There wasn’t much staff, so we had to wait for a while. Zoe kept going outside for a smoke, I stayed at the waiting area.
There weren’t many sick or injured people, certainly nothing too gory or disgusting. But sitting there, waiting and wallowing, made me think a lot.
Was I right for this kind of work? It was starting to get to me, the interviews and the tears. No matter how much I tried to distance myself from these strangers, they were ordinary people and I felt sorry for them. The job wouldn’t get any better. Its subject was disease. It would always entail doctors, hospitals, sick people, and unfortunately dead people. It’s not like we had to watch autopsies or anything, but it was all diseased.
; I was beginning to understand why Zoe was eager to slip away from an investigation. The bonus cash didn’t hurt, but it’s not that she was a bad person. The cases got to you. No sane person would want to live through more of them, especially here, where there was nothing we could do really. It felt like we were too late to the party. Zoe’s thinking of not coming at all was not too irrational (other than scamming the government).
I looked at a man who had a poorly bandaged hand. The bleeding had stopped but it was serious. I had no choice but to listen to how he injured himself on some farming equipment. He was telling the story to other people, loudly.
I was completely absorbed and didn’t notice Zoe coming back.
“Come on, the doc’s waiting,” she said. “Those Apollon guys don’t like rescheduling their appointments.”
His assistant was eyeing us as if we had peed in her favourite pot.
The doctor indeed looked pissed. He was probably overwhelmed by patients, being one of the few medical practitioners in a small town.
I sat down quietly and let Zoe handle it.
He was in his forties, and used to getting his way. “Everything I have to say is in the report. I have patients outside waiting. Why did you need to see me in person?”
Something was off in his attitude. I can somehow understand the hostility of the police, and the naivety of the teachers, but this man had expert knowledge of the situation. He was the only one truly capable of grasping the danger people were in.
Myth Gods Tech - Omnibus Edition: Science Fiction Meets Greek Mythology In The God Complex Universe Page 27