Hanna managed to grab Sparrow’s right hand and hold on. “Sparrow!” she yelled. She got Sparrow’s attention. “You have to calm down, girl. Concentrate on breathing. Just breathe.” Looking into her eyes, Sparrow calmed down almost immediately. Hanna smiled. “It’s going to be fine,” she said.
She let go of Sparrow’s hand. Sparrow kept breathing. Hanna grabbed Sparrow’s right leg at the ankle, Tom grabbed her left leg, and they held them open.
“Push, Sparrow!” Hanna urged.
Sparrow strained against whatever was inside her. “Oh, God!” she screamed.
“Push, Sparrow!”
Sparrow reached back and grabbed the headboard of her bed, her fingers digging into the wood, as she strained again. Sweat slid down her face in thick rivulets. Nothing came, and she collapsed into the bed.
“One more time,” Hanna said. “Come on, Sparrow, you can do it.”
“I can’t,” Sparrow whined. “I can’t…”
“Just one more time,” Hanna said. “And we’ll get it out.”
Sparrow took a deep breath, and Tom felt the muscles of her leg tense up. She grabbed the headboard again and strained with everything she had, trying to push out whatever was inside her. The wood of the headboard cracked and broke off in her hands.
“Something’s happening!” Tom said. Sparrow’s stomach had expanded suddenly. Sparrow groaned, a fundamental noise from the core of her being.
Suddenly, Sparrow’s groan turned into a full-fledged scream that pierced Tom’s eardrums like a shard of glass. He let go of her leg and slammed his hands over his ears, falling to his knees on the floor. He saw Hanna doing the same. And then a greenish-grey ooze exploded from inside Sparrow, jetting out like water from a firehose, splattering the far wall, while Sparrow screamed. Sparrow’s scream died down, but the jet of ooze continued to spray out from inside her. An undefinable smell immediately permeated the room, overpowering Tom with conflicting signals… it was sweet yet acrid, reminiscent of the smell of sex but also of death… it made him want to puke and at the same time aroused him… it reminded him of every form of animal secretion… blood, bile, urine, semen, puke…
“Tom, get out of here!” Hanna yelled. There was panic in her voice. “Don’t let it touch you!” She motioned for him to come over the bed to her side of the room, where the door was. He vaulted over the bed and Sparrow, who had passed out, and crashed into Hanna. She pushed him toward the door.
“Upstairs!” she yelled. “Hurry!”
“What the hell is that stuff?” he asked as he made his way down the hall, toward the stairs. He opened the door and they hurried up the wooden stairs
“I’m not sure,” Hanna said, “but I have a feeling that if you let it touch you, you’re gone.”
“Gone?”
“Gone.” On the second floor, they listened as the entire Blue House creaked and groaned while it filled up with the goo that was still coming from Sparrow. They heard the sound of glass shattering, and Tom looked outside to see the goo pouring out through all the windows on the first floor, and disappearing into the Grey Nothing. At first he felt relief. At least the stuff wouldn’t get to the second floor. Then he wondered what was happening to Sparrow.
“I think Sparrow will be all right,” Hanna said, as if reading his mind. “It’s from her. I don’t think it’ll do anything to her.”
“You said you weren’t sure what that stuff is,” Tom said. “You have an idea, though, don’t you?”
Hanna nodded. “I think it’s the stuff that creates life.”
“How much of it do you think is in her?”
“As much as it takes, I guess.”
“As much as it takes for what?” Tom asked.
Hanna shrugged. They looked outside, all around the house. Every downstairs window had been shattered and the ectoplasmic goo poured out of the Blue House on all sides, as well as down the front stairs, and it disappeared into the Grey Nothing. The house continued to creak and groan under the strain, and Tom feared its collapse, but what could he do? He resigned himself to accepting whatever fate befell them, and just stared out the window, watching the goo plummet from the Blue House into infinity.
“Something’s happening,” Hanna said after a while. Tom didn’t know how long he’d been staring out the window.
“What?” he asked.
“Outside. Look down. You see the bottom.” Tom looked, and sure enough the Grey Nothing had a bottom. The goo from Sparrow had apparently filled it up, and the bottom was now steadily rising toward them.
“Is that supposed to be happening?” he asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but I think so.”
They continued to watch what was happening outside. The ooze rapidly reached what would have been ground level outside the house, and then it began moving, molding itself into shapes on the surface, vague shapes at first that became more well-defined as time went on… tree-shapes, house-shapes, car-shapes… No color, though; everything was the color of the goo.
“Suddenly I’m exhausted,” Tom said. “I feel like I’ve been awake for days, or weeks, or forever.” His eyelids drooped. It felt as if all his energy had suddenly been sucked from his body.
“You should try and sleep,” Hanna told him.
“Yeah…” He swayed on his feet, then leaned against the wall and slowly slid down to the floor. “Maybe just a little bit.” He closed his eyes, and within moments he was out.
Sparrow’s door was open. The first floor of the Blue House looked like it had been scrubbed clean and then sanded smooth. Hanna went into Sparrow’s room hesitantly, not sure what she’d find there, a little bit afraid, but curious… and hopeful. She loved Sparrow, a remnant of Jovah’s passion for her, which Hanna felt, but was not as overpowering as it had been for him.
She found Sparrow sleeping peacefully in bed. The debris of the dresser had been swept out of the room along with the tattered remnants of the sheets. Hanna opened the closet and found, high up on a shelf, extra sheets. She spread them out over Sparrow’s naked body.
Hanna felt tired, too. She had not closed her eyes since absorbing the General. She feared discovering that the war was still there, in her dreams. Seeing Sparrow so peaceful, though, gave her strength. She left Sparrow’s room, went back upstairs where Tom had curled up on the floor. The hardwood floor never looked so inviting. Hanna stretched out, put her hands behind her head, and closed her eyes.
Darkness. No war dream. Hanna smiled. To sleep… perchance to dream?
Chapter Sixteen
Tom awoke to the sounds of birds singing outside the window. He sat up quickly, remembering everything that had happened. Beside him, asleep on the floor, was Hanna. His stomach growled and he realized he couldn’t even recall the last time he’d eaten anything. Outside, the birds still sang.
Outside. He was almost afraid to look, but he had to. He went to the window… the sun shown down brightly on a tree in the yard, a squirrel bounded through the grass pursued by a cat, a car drove by on Second Avenue… Everything looked normal. His heart pounded inside him. Was it all real?
He felt an overpowering urge to go outside and experience it all firsthand. He didn’t bother to awaken Hanna, just hurried down the stairs to the first floor, then to the front door which was standing wide open, and outside. He breathed deep the cool morning air, smelling the aroma of the grass and trees. Sunlight tickled his face. It was all real.
What did that mean about last night? Had it all been a bad trip? Had to have been. No way that stuff could have really happened.
So, then, who was Hanna?
And, had he and Sparrow really… ? Sparrow.
He went back inside, back to her room. He found her asleep in her bed, covered by a sheet, appearing untroubled. Tom wanted to wake her, but couldn’t bring himself to do it, not yet.
“Good morning.” Hanna’s voice behind him. He turned to face her. She stretched, smiling and yawning. “It is a good morning, isn’t it?”
“It’s amazing,” Tom replied.
“Yes, it really happened, Tom,” Hanna said. “All of it.”
“Jesus.”
“But now it’s over. I’m almost positive.”
“Almost?”
She shrugged. “Well, I don’t know everything, you know.” Hanna came to the doorway to Sparrow’s room and peeked inside. “How’s she doing?”
“See for yourself. Sleeping like a baby. Let’s go in the other room. I don’t want to disturb her.”
Sparrow stirred. “Too late,” she said, and sat up in bed. She brought her knees back to her chin, putting her arms around her legs. “Why are you guys standing in my room talking?”
“You weren’t doing too well last night,” Tom told her.
“I wasn’t?”
“You don’t remember?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I remember going to bed after drinking some beer. Did I get sick last night?”
“Sort of.”
“I had a bad dream,” she said. “It was… disgusting. All this stuff was coming out of me.” She saw the look on Tom’s face. “It wasn’t a dream?”
“No,” he said.
Sparrow paled. “Oh, God.” She looked at Tom. “What about the rest of it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I remember that you and I… you know, in the sky…”
She nodded, smiling slightly. “Yes, I remember that. So it wasn’t all bad.”
He nodded.
“Where’s Lena?” Sparrow asked.
Now Tom grew pale. “She… umm… she’s not…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“She’s dead,” Hanna said.
Sparrow closed her eyes. “Somehow I knew that,” she said. “But… somehow I don’t feel that she’s actually gone. I can’t explain it.”
Tom didn’t want to say anything. He didn’t want to tell Sparrow that yes, Lena was actually gone and he’d seen it with his own eyes. He’d caused it.
Sparrow narrowed her eyes at Tom. “You look worried. I don’t know why, Tom, but I know everything’s going to be all right. I know it.”
“I guess.”
“It will. You’ll see.”
Hanna nodded. “I feel the same way,” she said.
“Must be female intuition,” Sparrow offered.
Sunlight angled off a window across the yard from Sparrow’s room, casting a yellowish glow inside. A blue jay flew up to the windowsill and landed, looking at them sideways first with one eye and then with the other. Then it flew away. Perfectly normal.
“Let’s go,” Sparrow said.
“Go where?” Tom asked.
“I’m starving. How about Bagel Place?”
“Okay.”
“I need clothes.” Tom went into the closet and found clothes that had been hanging up high enough to avoid being swept away overnight. A floral patterned dress and pair of sandals that were up on a shelf. Sparrow got dressed under the sheet, then got out of bed. Their bikes were gone, like everything else that had been in the Blue House and on the front porch below the level of the windows. They walked down the steps to the sidewalk, through the neighborhood. Everything looked right, everything looked familiar and in place, the way it had been before.
“Maybe none of it really happened,” Tom ventured. “Maybe we really were tripping after all.”
“Maybe.”
Approaching University Avenue they saw Dev from the Chix, bicycling along as if everything was perfectly normal. Dev, who had been killed by the heli-dragon…
“Dev!” Sparrow shouted excitedly. Dev looked over, but there was no smile of recognition, no wave hello. She saw them, that was obvious, but the look on her face did not indicate anything more. “Is she mad at me or something?” Sparrow asked. She looked at Tom. “Did something happen last night? Between me and Dev, I mean?”
Tom shook his head. They kept walking, cutting through the Student Ghetto and passing behind a convenience store, the back wall of which had long been a favorite place for bands to spray paint their names. Sparrow had tagged the building with Chix name not long ago. Nowhere did it say Chix, but there seemed to be a band called Mutt done in a similar style as the Chix logo. Also, Tom’s magazine name, Random Times, had been spray painted on that wall. It was gone, but there was apparently something called Random Comix with a similar-looking logo.
“That’s weird,” Tom commented.
“We’ll worry about it later,” Sparrow said. “Let’s go, I’m starving.”
They passed by the Post Office, and Tom decided to check the Random Times box for mail. While Hanna and Sparrow stood in the parking lot, Tom got the mail. He came back with a stack of letters and sorted through them as they continued toward Bagel Place.
“Hey, this isn’t mine,” Tom said, stopping. He showed the mail to Sparrow. Each letter was addressed to Chuck Speedy, Random Comix. “I should put these back in the box.” He went back, put the letters back in, and caught up with Hanna and Sparrow.
“We’ll figure out what’s going on after we eat,” Sparrow said. They proceeded to Bagel Place. When they got there, Tom and Sparrow looked at each other and grinned. All their friends were there: Chuck Speedy, Pinhead, Nicola… all alive and well. And behind the counter, Lena. Tom, Sparrow and Hanna rushed up to the counter. Lena gave them her best customer service smile.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“The usual,” Tom said.
“And what’s the usual?” Lena asked.
“You know… the usual.”
Lena’s smile faltered. “A bagel?”
“Right. With…”
“Cream cheese?”
“Right!” Tom clapped his hands together once. “Plain bagel. And a cup of coffee.”
“For here or to go?” Lena asked.
“Here, of course.”
She proceeded to fill Tom’s order. “So how are you feeling?”
“Fine,” Lena said as she poured the coffee.
“Hell of a night, huh?”
Lena stopped, looked at him for a second. “You mean the party last night?” He nodded. “You were there?” she asked.
He nodded, laughing, then stopped and frowned. “Do you remember what happened last night?”
“I should,” she told him. “We played last night.”
“Who’s we?”
She turned around, reaching her arm behind her back and pointed to the logo on the back of her t-shirt. Mutt. She turned back around and retrieved Tom’s bagel from the toaster. “That’s my band. We played last night.”
“With the Psychotics?”
Lena nodded.
“Who else is in your band?” Sparrow asked, stepping forward.
“I sing, Dev plays guitar, Nicola plays drums, and Sin is on bass. You guys want coffee, too?” Sparrow and Hanna nodded.
“Do you recognize me?” Tom asked suddenly. Lena paused to look at him intently for a few seconds, then shook her head. “Are you sure?” Tom pressed.
“Why, did we have sex last night or something?” Lena asked. She poured Hanna’s and Sparrow’s coffee.
“No, but…”
“I was kidding,” Lena said. “Believe me, you’re not my type.” With that, she cast a meaningful glance at Hanna. “Did you want something to eat?” she asked her and Sparrow.
“Same,” Sparrow said. Hanna nodded.
“You guys can sit down, I’ll bring it out to you,” Lena told them.
They went to a vacant table by the window, near where Chuck Speedy, Pinhead, and Nicola were seated. They weren’t acknowledged by anyone.
“Hi guys,” Tom greeted the other table. Speedy and Pinhead looked back with blank expressions. Nicola responded with a rhetorical, “How are you?” before going right back into her conversation with them.
“They don’t know us,” Sparrow said.
“Maybe it’s a joke,” Tom said. “They knew we were tripping. Maybe they’re playing a joke on us, to make us think we’re still tripping.”
<
br /> Lena brought them the food. She didn’t even look at Sparrow or Tom, but smiled brightly at Hanna.
“Or everything really is different,” Sparrow said.
“Or we’re crazy,” Tom added.
“You’re not crazy,” Hanna told him.
“So, what, none of our friends remember us? Like we never existed?”
“This is a new reality,” Hanna said. “You’re not of this reality, remember? You preceded it. You created it.”
“Well, that’s just great.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” Sparrow asked.
At that moment Dave-O walked in. He immediately took notice of both Hanna and Sparrow, totally ignoring Tom. “Hey, hot mama,” he said as his gaze met Sparrow’s. She smiled.
“He doesn’t know you,” Tom told her. “He’s just hitting on you.” Tom watched Lena come around the counter and give Dave-O a big hug. It almost made him want to cry.
“I know.” She looked at Tom, her eyes practically sparkling. “I liked it. It made me realize… nobody here knows us anymore. We can start completely over. We can decide who we want to be.”
“Or we could just go someplace else, together” Tom said. “You’ve been wanting to leave Gainesville for a while.”
“That was then. But this is like being in a totally new place. Besides, I know now the problem wasn’t this place, the problem was me. I didn’t need a break from Gainesville, I needed a break from myself.”
“I don’t know,” Tom said. “If we stay, won’t we just wind up the way we were?”
“Only if you want that. You have to know what you want, Tom. What do you want out of life?”
He didn’t know how to answer that. All he could do was look at her. It took her a few seconds to get it, but she got it.
“Oh.” She looked away, out through the window. The leaves rustled in the wind outside. Then she looked back at him. “Okay,” she said. “Maybe this is what it was all for. But you have to want to do things differently than before, Tom. This is our chance to start fresh, without any ties to…” She stopped talking suddenly.
“Okay.” He tried not to let his excitement show. All he wanted was her, and now she was agreeing to be with him.
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