“That’s the stupid tax, I’ll see you two boys back at the bus.”
Athena walked out the door, the doorway bell chiming as she exited. Marshall looked down at the bran distastefully, his top lip curling up on the right side of his face.
“That looks like crap-,” Marshall started, but Alan cut him off mid-sentence.
“Are we going to talk about your little reveal earlier? Or are you just going to leave it at, ‘I chose to be here’?”
Marshall cleared his throat. It was a slip up, plain and simple. He’d gotten too comfortable with Alan. Alan had this way of smiling, listening, that made a person want to tell things - secrets - that weren’t meant to be shared.
“Listen, kid, don’t take my words and make them more than what they were,” Marshall said plainly, “I spoke out of turn, and I don’t want you to take what I said as some deep, dark secret to fill up the hours of your mundane workday. Let’s just leave it at that. It’s nothing. It’s not important to you.”
“Fine,” Alan replied, stone-faced but annoyed. “I’ll pretend I never heard it. Let’s get out of here.”
Marshall didn’t believe Alan was going to give up that easily, but he did know that the bus was about to leave without them, so it didn’t bother him much to leave it where it was for the time being. The two checked out, when the store manager and their supervisor, Mr. Finch walked up with Athena. They motioned for Alan to follow. Alan grabbed the backpack out of his basket and they were led outside.
Around the corner, the store’s white brick had been defaced. Alan pulled up on the shoulder strap of his backpack. The paint was still dripping, trails of red spray paint rolling down the wall’s brick facade. It was in big, messy capital letters: FREAKS.
Alan sighed; his eyes transfixed on the graffiti. Finch, Athena, and the manager were all looking at him. The manager pulled a bucket up and pulled the mop that was leaning up against the wall to his chest. He handed Alan the mop and slid the bucket across the sidewalk to him, a splash of water sloshing out onto the asphalt. Athena picked up a paint brush, white paint already slathered across its bristled tips.
“So…?” Alan’s voice trailed off, a confused look on his face.
“Clean this up. Can’t have our store so messy,” Finch grunted, a wisp of his hair getting loose. He tightly packed it back into his limited hair.
“I didn’t…,” Alan grumbled.
The manager cleared his throat. “We don’t care, kid. Just clean this crap up. Unless, of course, you’d like another strike.”
Alan’s upper lip flinched, his eyebrows slanting at the callous way the manager threw strikes around. Those weren’t tokens for some prize. They were tickets to hell. The manager squinted back at Alan, fished in his pocket for his keys, and strolled back over to the entrance.
“Let’s just get to it,” Athena sighed, and she picked up a bristled brush that was sitting next to the bucket.
Finch followed the manager, their talk of some recent sporting event echoing down the street, filled with boisterous trash talk and laughter. Alan slid the backpack down his arm and onto the sidewalk, then pushed the mop into the bucket of cold water, hearing the gulp and splurt as the mop soaked in the moisture. He pulled the mop out and slapped it against the wall, sending water into the air. Athena jumped back from the spray.
“Jeez, Alan. Watch what you’re doing,” Athena complained, and she rubbed the water off her arms.
“I’m well aware of what I’m doing,” Alan groaned. “Cleaning up after people who hate us.”
“Hate is a strong word,” Athena remarked, and she wiped off the excess water and started painting the wall where Alan had mopped.
“Yes,” Alan replied, “It is.”
✽✽✽
After scrubbing the wall, Alan and Athena got back on the bus that would take them back to their dorms. The bus was full, and people were chatting as the sun sat leisurely right above its final rest for the night. The orange light cast a line across the horizon as the bus made its way back to the 308’s compound.
Athena was telling Alan about her old cat. If the stories were true, her cat was the smelliest cat in all the world. In fact, at one point, Athena mistook him for garbage in the middle of the night. She tried to put him in the can, but as soon as she had grabbed the tail, all hell broke loose. Alan laughed all the way through the riotous tale of the smelliest cat, and so did Athena.
“Do you have stories from back home, Alan?” Athena asked. Alan smiled.
“Yeah, I have stories. I mean, I had a childhood, Athena,” Alan said jokingly.
“Sometimes we forget,” Athena replied, her eyes looking out at the sun setting. “It can be easier that way… But who would want to forget about your garbage cat?”
Athena smiled brightly, a smile Alan didn’t recognize. Maybe it was the smile Athena wanted to share, or the one she never would. When she realized Alan was looking at her, she stopped immediately.
“Your turn. Tell me a story,” Athena said. Alan turned his body toward her and looked in her green eyes. He remembered this one time…
“Who’s Molly?” Athena asked quizzically.
Alan wasn’t sure what happened first: the swerve or the collision. Either way the bus that was carrying them swiped a car and slid against a railing on the road back to the compound. Sparks flew through the air, and people screamed. But not Alan. He’d witnessed this before.
The bus was careening toward a large tree at over sixty miles per hour. Alan stood up in the aisle and held his hand out, causing the air brakes to screech from the overload. Alan felt the front of the truck: the metal fender, the wheels, the frame. He felt its pulse, the magnetic field. He pressed his mind as far as it could go. The bus groaned to a halt, not three inches from the massive old tree.
The bus passengers all seemed to exhale at the same time. Alan didn’t look at his friends, but at the other vehicle smoking down the road. Alan ran out of the bus wreck and across the street to the small sedan bent up against the railing.
DMP buses were programmed to avoid human vehicles at all costs, even at the expense of the bus and its occupants. But another car could strike a DMP bus if it lost control or if someone really wanted to hit it.
Alan looked down at the woman slumped over in the sedan, a bloody airbag ballooned up against her face. Her long brown hair was scattered in strands around the bag, mixed with blood and fragments of the steering wheel. The blood in Alan’s veins ran cold, and he could perceive some of it ran out as well. His arm throbbed, bathed in dark blood in the early moonlight.
Molly.
Alan tried to forget. He thought serving his time would dull the memories. But even now she was on the surface, easy enough for Athena to pluck the name out of the air.
“Alan,” it was Athena, standing a few feet away, between Alan and the bus. Alan felt a shiver down his spine, his hairs on his arms standing up. His arm hurt like hell, now that the shock was wearing off.
“Is everybody okay?” Alan asked.
“More or less.”
Alan didn’t look back, his eyes still set on the woman in the car. She didn’t look much older than twenty, a bottle of alcohol propped up in her dashboard, broken in half.
“Why would she-?” Alan managed to grumble out of his mouth, his throat hoarse and tight. Inside the compound, outside the compound, nothing felt real anymore. Everything was some grand illusion of reality. Everything until this.
“- drink?” Athena finished the sentence.
Alan clenched his teeth. Senseless was what it was. Free, not free. Everybody was somehow in prisons of their own. Alan mused that whether he had gone to the 308 or not, he’d still be locked away in some respect. Like the woman who drank until she couldn’t have the sense to keep on the road, Alan would’ve dulled his memories some other way.
Sirens faintly skipped across the hills in the distance, the red and blue lights of the police heading their way. They would soon be back in the compound, left wonderin
g what had really transpired out on the road that evening. The only person who knew the truth would never speak again.
“Alan,” Athena spoke up, her voice shaky. Alan looked back at Athena. Her eyes wouldn’t even blink, their attention intently focused on Alan’s face. Something in them seemed to know the answer to what she was about to ask, but she’d ask it again anyway.
“Alan,” Athena asked, wringing cold sweat in her hands, “Who’s Molly?”
seven
Finch had everyone in the lobby with the Healer EMT division in attendance to treat the wounded from the bus crash. Alan watched as the break in his arm snapped back into place and the cuts in his arms sewed shut as if by some invisible magic. The person who was helping him, a dispassionate blonde-haired man in his late thirties, ran his hands across Alan’s arm then held up one to Alan’s face. The cut in Alan’s eyebrow sealed.
“Thanks, Linus,” Alan said, peering down at the man’s nametag briefly. The man - with no emotion whatsoever - nodded and motioned for Alan to step out of line.
Finch continued to yell out in the lobby, “When you are finished, head straight to your room! Do not stop to talk! It is lights out! We’re not on vacation! We have work tomorrow! If you lost your groceries, you will have to file the proper paperwork! Go to bed!”
“Alan,” Athena called out to Alan, as he tried to get through the crowd and into the courtyard.
Alan swallowed the lump in his throat and pressed his way through the sea of bodies, glancing back quickly at Athena who also struggling to make her way to the courtyard. He pushed harder, finding people were beginning to yield to his impatience and frantic pace.
The crowd seemed to reform as a barrier between Athena and Alan. Athena looked over at Marshall who was handling the flow of people back to the courtyard. She gave him an annoyed look, and he stepped over to her.
“Pardon me. Okay. Ahem, sorry about that. Pardon me. And Pardon my reach,” Marshall wiggled between people, then grabbed a few coworkers blocking Athena and lifted them out of the way. “There we go.”
“Thanks, Marshall,” Athena said as she ran past him.
✽✽✽
“Alan!” Athena’s voice was muffled from inside Alan’s room. “Alan, open the door.”
Alan didn’t answer. He just sat in stunned silence.
“Alan, please, I’m sorry,” Athena pleaded, her forehead pressed against the door. It wasn’t locked, but she didn’t want to push any further than she already had. “Come on, just open the door.”
No answer.
Marshall walked up behind Athena and motioned for her to go. He knocked on the door, then opened it without waiting for a response.
It was dark in Alan’s room. The only visibility was from the fluorescent lighting outside in the hall, peeking in through the window. Alan sat with his back up against the dresser in his room. His right hand was holding the broken watch, gliding his thumb back and forth across the cracked glass.
Alan barely acknowledged Marshall’s existence. He was elsewhere. Marshall paused for a moment, looking at the young man against the dresser. He pressed fingers against his strained eyes, and then inhaled a deep breath.
“Hey, kid,” Marshall exhaled in a groaning bellow as he sat down next to Alan against the dresser. He wrapped his arms around his knees and waited in the silence. Several moments passed. “Your arm looks better.”
Alan stared ahead at his twin bed. He had been perfectly fine doing his time, going through the motions, clocking in and out. Maybe it would’ve helped him forget her.
Molly.
“Kid, you seem out of sorts,” Marshall sighed. “And that has Athena worried, and she’s useless when she’s worried.”
No answer.
Marshall groaned and got up off of the floor, his shoes leaving a mud stain in the grotesque carpet. Everything felt tight. Arms. Legs. Lungs. Marshall cracked his fingers together and ran a finger across an itch on his eyebrow. He looked at the exit.
“Try to get some sleep, kid. We’ve got work tomorrow.”
Marshall stepped toward the doorway.
“Have you ever seen someone die, Marshall? I mean, really see them. Not like at funeral… but right then… when it happened. Did you see the woman on the road?”
Marshall shook his head, leaning into the doorway.
“I didn’t. I was…,” Marshall’s voice trailed off as he noticed Alan still wasn’t making eye contact. Alan looked down at the watch.
“I don’t understand it,” Alan murmured.
“What’s there to understand? Drank too much and did something stupid,” Marshall shrugged, then he pushed his hands into his jeans’ pockets.
“I can relate,” Alan said under his breath. “Not the drinking, per se, but I know stupid.”
“I think we all can relate,” Marshall replied.
Finch’s voice echoed in the hallway for lights out. Marshall stood tall in the doorway.
“This isn’t about that girl on the road tonight,” Marshall said with a grim expression on his face. “What’s with the watch, Alan?”
Alan blinked slowly, and looked down at his broken watch, thumb still sliding across the imperfect, cracked surface.
“It’s lights out,” Alan replied gravely.
Marshall walked over and sat down on the bed opposite Alan, folding his arms and awaiting Alan’s response.
“You think I’m scared of them?”
“You’re scared of something,” Alan replied, his voice filled with bitterness, and he finally looked up at Marshall.
“That’s fair,” Marshall cleared his throat. “I can’t make you tell me if you don’t want to, but eventually you’re going to realize we’re the only friends you have, kid. That life you had before - the people you knew - they’re gone, and they aren’t coming back.”
Alan clenched his jaw. “I know.”
“I used to think I’d get out one of these days. I’d do my time, and they’d just let me go when they lost use for me. But that’s not how this works. I made a choice to be here, and that is irreversible. There’s no going back to the way things were for me. Same as you.”
Marshall’s honesty was sobering; sobering in a mood that was already hurtling toward depression. Alan looked back at his broken watch, the last vestige of his time in the real world.
“I remember the day Molly gave me this watch. She had this way of joking about you and you didn’t even care. She said to me, ‘I got you this watch so you’ll stop being late to pick me up.’,” Alan laughed. “I’ve never been the punctual type. Anyway, I was 17, and she was trying to whip me into shape. I took the hint. Hardly ever forgot that watch, and maybe I showed up on time more often. I don’t remember. I don’t think she really cared all that much about that.”
Marshall sat down next to Alan.
“Athena was asking me about a funny story early tonight, and it just reminded me of this one time… Molly’s dog - the little guy was a handful - and he liked to jump at the door in her parent’s old shed. She kept him in there on cold nights. Well he would just scratch up the door when I came over… all the time. So, one night when I pulled up to her house, I heard Ralph - the dog’s name was Ralph if you could believe it - and he was running toward the shed door. So, I just reached out,” Alan held his hand out to pantomime his story, “and the door flies open just in time for Ralph to come rolling out into the yard. Dog rolled for probably a good few seconds - felt like minutes - and then Ralph hopped back up and gave me the most confused look. One ear bent down, the other standing straight up like an antenna. He sneezed and dirt came out of his nose. It was hilarious.”
Marshall and Alan laughed at the story. Alan laughed so hard there were genuine tears in his eyes. He cleared his throat and continued.
“Course, Ralph was fine. He was a resilient booger, tongue wagging and jumping at my car after that. Molly rolled her eyes at me, and put Ralph back up and we went out for the night. I guess Athena reminded me that little memories coul
d still be happy memories if you let them.”
Marshall nodded.
“How’d your watch break?” Marshall asked, his head tipping in its direction. Alan looked at his broken watch face, his smile evaporating.
“Some memories will never be happy memories,” Alan murmured and wiped the tears of joy from his eyes.
“How’d the watch break, Alan?”
“Why’d you volunteer for this job?” Alan sneered back at Marshall.
“Touché,” Marshall sighed. Alan could see Marshall was struggling with his thoughts. “I’ll tell you one thing - one thing - if you tell me about the watch.”
The Department for Mutated Persons (Book 1): The Department for Mutated Persons Page 5