He is pulling my sleeve, I yell at him because he is going to ruin my dress. He leaves me alone and goes back to the balcony to look for his bicycle.
I wear my shoes. They fit the dress well. They make me a lady. I look at them in the mirror and I love them.
George is not yelling now. I hear the door closing, it is big and heavy and makes a snap when it shuts.
I get to the balcony, George is not there. I get out of the house and walk down the marble stairs. I hear the condo’s main door close and I run downstairs.
Water has come inside the lobby. Some parts are muddy. I stand at the last step and look at the water. I don’t want to get muddy water on my shoes. I love my shoes. I take them off and leave them on the last step. I walk in the water and open the main door.
George is outside on the pavement. The water is lower now but it was very high before. I can see that from the brown mark on the walls. The rain took a lot of the dirt away. I yell at George to come back and pull my dress up. I step into the water and walk outside.
George tells me he saw his bicycle across the street, around the corner. He saw the water push it there. I walk down on the pavement, the street still has a lot of water, it looks like a river. A dark green garbage can is flowing down like a boat. George crosses the road after it and goes to the corner. He is all wet now, and dirty from the mud. He doesn’t care.
I walk to the corner, still on my pavement. I yell at George to come back. I tell him mommy will be very angry and that she is coming in five seconds. George says that his bike is just over there and that it will only take a second.
The street around the corner is lower, so the water is deeper. More water is coming from other places and ends up there, so it makes swirly shapes. A branch from a pine tree is coming towards George fast and I yell at him to stay away. He looks around and holds on to a car. The branch hits the car and it makes a bang, but it floats away.
George yells that he sees the bicycle and runs to it. I can’t see where he is going and I can’t see the bicycle. I wait at the corner and I am holding my dress up so it doesn’t get dirty.
I call out to George but he doesn’t say anything. I yell louder but he still doesn’t hear me. I wait there because I don’t want to get my dress dirty. It’s new and I love it.
I yell again and I step into the muddy water. My dress gets ruined. I am angry and am going to tell everything to mommy so she takes care of George when she comes.
I hold on to a car and go where George saw his bicycle. It is a place from a condo that has cars below. There is a hole and the water is going inside very fast. George is at the hole and is pulling the green bicycle. The water is fast and he can’t pull the bicycle. He tells me to help him. I tell him no, he made me walk into the water and now my new dress is ruined. It is wet and muddy and I’ll never forgive him and I’ll tell mommy and he will never play videogames again.
George is all wet and dirty, and his face is red. He is pulling on the bicycle. It gets unsnagged and George falls under it in the water. I yell at him from far away.
He gets up from the water and carries the bicycle against the fast water. He puts his arm in the triangle under the seat and puts it on his back. He tells me that it’s OK and he can get it home.
He slips and falls and the water pulls the bicycle into the hole. The bicycle gets stuck in the hole and his arm is pinned under the water. His face is red and brown and under the water. I scream and run to George and pull him up but he is stuck and the water is coming fast.
A man hears me and comes towards me and tells me to get back but I pull George up but he is stuck.
I pull and pull and I slip and I stand up over the water and I breathe.
The man comes next to me and pulls George over the water.
George turns blue.
I love him but he is now blue.
Chapter 14
I was in no mood to go home. I left Deppy’s after cleaning up of course and went to a cafe on my own.
I walked inside and the barman lit up as soon as he saw me. His name was Adras and he was as manly as it gets. He had a thing for me, commenting on all my pictures. I could get a free coffee anytime where he worked.
He tried to hide that he rushed to my side of the bar and casually rubbed something that needed cleaning. “Yasou Mahi! It’s not your usual time.”
“I should leave then,” I said and theatrically turned towards the exit.
“No, no,” he said and he was practically leaning over the counter.
So adorable.
“I’ll stay then,” I said and smiled at him.
He looked like he had won a prize. “What shall I make you? Frappe as usual?”
I held my hand topside touching my forehead, and said, “I really need something stronger today.”
Adras gritted his teeth and inhaled. “I can’t do that Mahi, you aren’t 18 yet. And the fact is, I know you are not 18, and can’t even claim ignorance. You come here with half your classmates for god’s sake.”
“Come on…” I said and leaned on the counter to give him a good view, the very same I knew for a fact he was looking at for hours surfing my pictures. I took a real bimbo tone of voice and said, “I read on a article the other day that a woman should have a Cosmo when she is troubled. Can you make me a woman?”
He gulped. “Yes.”
“I’m sure you make it great.” I made sure to keep the pose he liked and took out my wallet. “I dunno how much a cocktail costs, never had one before…”
“It’s OK, on me,” he said and started making me one.
“You are the best,” I told him and smiled.
I sat at a table alone.
I surfed the web a while, ignoring my messages. Adras brought me the Cosmo and after some chit chat, he went back to the bar. I took a big sip and found it nice. I think he made it light on alcohol somehow, even though I’ve never had one before to compare. It was surely on purpose because he really knew how to make those things. Adras was a mixologist, a title that brings out snorts in Greece everytime it is uttered out loud because it means something silly. It sounds as if you call yourself “snot specialist.” Seriously. But no one seemed to complain after he’d tasted his lattes and cocktails. Adras had gone to a mixologist school in the Netherlands, and he was really proud of it. He was older of course, way over thirty but he was always sweet.
Plus he had grrreat arms.
Muscled and with hands that were rough from manual labour.
I stared at him work through a reflection.
My phone buzzed. It was a message. I was about to ignore it but I noticed the greek pi on a white background. It was Prodromos.
“Come with me if you want to live.”
What?
I wrote back, “What?”
No reply.
I waited and waited, refreshed and turned my Wi-Fi on and off again. Nothing. I drank my whole drink but decided against asking for another. Maybe I could push my luck with Adras for a second one, but to be honest, I was starting to get tipsy.
I called Billy.
“Hey.”
“Hey. Did you see what happened?”
“No, what?”
“You really need to get a smartphone one of these days. You are literally the only person I know who didn’t see the videos yet.”
“Please tell me you aren’t talking about a sex tape.”
“No, it’s worse!”
And I told him what happened.
“… And now nothing.”
“It’s Terminator.”
“The killer robot is after me?”
“No, I mean could be, but no. The line is from Terminator. Come with me if you want to live. It’s right after he saves Sar-”
“So? What does it mean?”
“Lemme think. It must be a place, he must be telling you to come somewhere.”
“We aren’t in Hollywood.”
“No, wait. There is something similar nearby.”
“What, a killer
robot?”
I instinctively looked around. Couldn’t help it.
“Ohi, no. There’s a sculpture at Omonoia, a metal man. It looks a lot like Terminator. The artist was on the local news a few weeks ago, didn’t you see it?”
“Why would I see sculptures,” I said as if the word was something lame. Which it was.
“Because that knowledge might come in handy when receiving cryptic messages from anonymous people. Which it just did.”
I let the smug bastard have his moment.
“I’ll text you the address.”
“Whoa, wait! You aren’t leaving me to go there alone, are you?”
“Why not? I could be wrong.”
“And you could be right! And frankly, when have you ever been wrong you tall brainiac?”
“I’ve been wrong many times.”
“You’re coming with me. I’m not meeting this creepy guy on my own. My mom would kill you if something happened to me and you weren’t there.”
Chapter 15
I poked Billy.
Not on Facebook of course, in real life. We have already established that the freak doesn’t actually use social media.
How does he even breathe?
Anyway, we were on the metro heading to Athens Centre. The historic centre of Athens you might say, yes, the one with the Acropolis on it. I could tell we were heading close by the ever increasing amount of people squeezing in and by the body odours.
Or muck. Call it what you want.
Billy was a gentleman as always and was standing close to me, towering over and cornering me so that people wouldn’t bump into me. Other girls might think that was a bit flirty, I knew that he was actually following his own personal Savoir Vivre.
I kinda liked that.
He was looking out the window, zoned out and probably thinking of chess moves or something esoteric as always.
I poked him again.
“Yeah?”
“Deppy told you didn’t she?” I asked, not quite asking.
He hesitated. “She might have mentioned an episode.”
“An episode? Like an epileptic one?” I angry-whispered.
“That’s my term, don’t get mad at her. She’s just worried about you.” We were so close he was literally looking down at me.
I kinda hated that.
A sudden rush hit me. Cold sweat. My heart pumped and gravity tilted.
I looked around at all the people, locked in like sardines in a can.
Where would I go if she came at me again?
Where would I run?
Is there a button you can press in an emergency? Yes, there is one over there. Only three meters away yet so far it might as well be a hundred. A “break in case of emergency” button, with a warning below it for facing charges if used inappropriately.
How would I convince people it was an emergency if I was the only one who could see her? The Erinyes, with her angry face and her purple glowing hair that flowed towards me like it wanted to choke me?
I think I fainted.
Yeah.
It must have been mere seconds but I have no memory of it.
Duh, that’s what fainting is!
I was held in the corner by Billy, he had pushed my head closer to the window so I could get some more air.
I looked around, people were whispering. A woman gave me her water bottle, I splashed it on my face.
“Take your girl off the heat and the people,” she said to Billy.
“Excellent advice madam, we are getting off now anyway,” he replied while propping me up.
I pushed him away and walked to the door, people were making room for me despite the crowded space.
The doors opened and we walked onto the platform.
I stood firm as people rushed out of the metro and went on to their lives. I opened my legs wider than normal to stabilise myself.
People stopped paying attention to me. I wonder what they would do if they could see what I saw in my mind’s eye?
“Are you OK Mahi?”
“Fine now.”
We stepped outside into the street and breathed in the smell of piss.
Chapter 16
No seriously, piss.
Everywhere, like stepping into the world’s largest urinal. Depending on the wind and the building you were near, the odour varied. Sometimes it was just a hint, something you pick up and need to take another sniff to pin-point. Other times it was wet and think, like the piss from 46 people taking on an averaged urinal scent.
I’m not sure why, but Omonoia, the big plaza smack-dab in the middle of Athens smells like piss. Take it from me.
I pinched my nostrils but then decided it was a bad idea to deny oxygen to my brain so soon after an actual fainting, so I mouthbreathed instead.
Besides, what kind of lady would walk around pinching her nose?
I let Billy lead, due to the fact that I had no frickin idea where we were going.
“It’s not far, two streets west.”
“Uh huh.” I decided not to interrupt my mouth-breathing and for the first time in my life, I had no reply.
“It’s funny, so this artist made the Terminator statue out of spite. He works with metal, right? And he makes sculptures in abstract shapes. So he made four sculptures out of scrap metal, and found a way to pull them out on the sidewalk. It was a big sidewalk, if you see the pictures you’ll understand. Anyway, he manages to get those half-a-ton sculptures into the street so that people could see them for free. That was his thing, he wanted that collection to be free and amongst the people, not out in some gallery for intellectual assholes. So he places them there, people like them, dogs pee on them, cyclists lock their bikes on them etc. And then the garbage collector comes, sees the piles of scrap metal and calls his partners and they haul them into the landfill. He thought they were rubbish! Not aesthetically, he literally thought they were trash and he had to get them sorted! That’s exactly what he said on his interview. Then the artist reads it, gets mad of course, months of his work wasted and called rubbish, so he makes a metal man and plops it in the same place. And then he says, ‘Terminators don’t feel pain’!”
I just stared at him.
“Get it? Cause he was hurt? No?”
“Don’t make me regret picking you as my knight,” I said and moved along.
“Hah! A chess counter-joke! Nice. Yeah you are feeling better. It’s the other way.”
I turned like a princess and moved along, the right way this time.
Chapter 17
We walked along a street where two young Nigerian girls were showing off their wares. I’m more discreet usually, but couldn’t help but watch as they called out to men driving by and squeezing their breasts to present them. Not that they were in any way hidden, of course. The girls, not the breasts. It was broad daylight.
I thought these things happen only at night?
Talk about a distorted worldview from TV.
Loud chewing of gum, perky lips, fishnets. Some animal prints of course. It was like an unofficial uniform, as if there were general guidelines posted up somewhere with what a prostitute should wear to be considered one. You could mix and match, but the general view should work like a neon sign.
Billy took one peek and then proceeded along as if nothing happened.
The poor boy was embarrassed, that big cushy wushy!
We got to the sculpture, at last. Yup, it was big and tall and metal and rusty. Piece of garbage in a man form.
“There it is,” Billy said as if the female partner, moi, was blind or something and couldn’t notice a huge metal man by herself.
I told him exactly that.
“Just sayin’, here we are. What now?”
“No idea,” I said, and had no idea. At all. I checked my phone, no new messages. Not from this Prodromos, that is. I always had new messages, from stalkers and gawkers and droolers. Those were my own categories, I’ll explain them another time.
But from the man in question, noth
ing.
Chapter 18
“So…”
“So what?”
“What now?”
“Beats me!”
The metal man was taunting us. Taunting me. Terminator my 700 like-ass, this guy was useless.
Billy was discreet, searching around for clues or any hidden messages in the sculpture, but after an hour or so he was just shoving his arm in its gaps risking tetanus and sudden finger-loss.
I’d located the cleanest spot I could find and was lying in the sun.
At that point I unconsciously checked my phone for like the fortieth time and remembered about that thingy Deppy was excited about. The veil? Something like that.
I opened the app and scanned around for stuff. A vendor across the street branched out with information. OMG, what a furry fetish. Keep it to yourself man!
I pointed it towards the metal statue.
Billy was there, with minimal information of course. The profile picture was from the mandatory registration at school, the public data as little as possible.
Then the Terminator lit up.
Not literally, the veil version of him. The artist’s name popped up, links to the articles relevant to the story. And a pi.
A greek π.
I tapped the link and got a loading screen.
“Hey Billy, come here! I got something,” I told him and showed him the phone.
The app reloaded and showed a big arrow over the live video, pointing the way.
“It seems so,” Billy said and we hesitated.
Chapter 19
We walked down the alleys, guided by the phone prompts. It was really hot and I wanted to go home, but my curiosity was getting the better of me.
Billy was following me closely, towering over my shoulder to glance at the little screen himself, craning his head back, never relaxing.
The arrow was taking us towards a multi-story parking space, one of those whole buildings where you can park by the hour, because finding a spot in the middle of Athens is pretty much impossible.
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