Acid-Washed Reflections
by TryMyHand
Chapter 3: Albedo Transience
I woke laughing. Somewhere Sammy licked the salty remnants of sex from a dangling finger. I shook myself. “Be smart. Be careful. Stay free until tomorrow,” I repeated, focusing my attention.
I drifted out to the living room in a robe, my hair spiky. Adorable Cameron had left only a memory. Elise sat on the sofa, tying another ponytail, staring at the overcast morning.
I ambled behind her and massaged her shoulders. “I had the greatest dream last night about these two horny sluts,” I said.
“Me too,” she laughed, but it was laughter over emptiness.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, suspecting she missed Cameron.
“Do you know that you talk in your sleep?” she said.
“Oh? What do I say?” I asked.
“... Be smart ... Be careful ... Stay free until tomorrow,” she said. I froze. The weight with which she echoed my words was chilling. Sammy dropped his tennis ball on my foot. Absently, I bent down and retrieved it.
I paused, then stood up anxiously as some vague danger-sign fought for my attention. Behind me, three loud bangs both derailed and fulfilled that train of thought. A gaze in the peephole revealed the Grips from the library last week, crowned in those frightening felt homburgs. Shit, there would be no escape from here. How had they found her? My life suddenly depended on whether gentle Elise could handle these two monsters.
Elise got up from the sofa and approached the door. I frantically waved her away and scanned the apartment for a hiding-place.
Elise tugged on my robe and led me to the bedroom closet, but that seemed too obvious. On the wall opposite the door, she had a wardrobe filled with dresses. I pushed my way in. She closed the doors behind me, as three more urgent knocks sounded from the entryway.
The smell of camphor-soaked mothballs flooded my nostrils, at once nauseating my stomach and calming my lungs. With the wardrobe door open a crack, I could see the entry. Elise calmly unlocked and unlatched the door. As soon as it clicked, the two Grips shoved through, knocking her to the floor. We were in trouble.
“What’s with the lock?” asked one.
“Where is he, Lisa?” demanded the other.
“Oh God,” I thought, slumping in horror as the maw of that lost thought resurfaced to consume me. A dozen tiny clues snapped into place. Why had Elise been in the library that night? Why was she alone? Why had she had no books? Why had she been so hard to read now-and-then? What did her gray felt hair-ties remind me of? The answer to each of these was “Grips.”
I thought I had escaped four of them that night, but instead I had been caught by another. How had she kept such a web of secrets from me? From ME? We weren’t in trouble; I was utterly fucked.
Below me, Sammy yelped and jumped against the wardrobe. The two Grips glanced toward the darkened bedroom. My mind and heart raced in desperation. Stupid dog! Must every atom conspire against me at once? What could he want? Then I remembered I was still clenching his tennis ball in my trembling fist.
Elise got up from the floor and spoke calmly, “He’s here. And trapped. I’ll bring him. But first I want to show you guys something, offline.” She tapped the side of her head.
I passed the tennis ball to Sammy. He trotted away, happy, oblivious to the mortal peril on his doorstep. He knew these two.
Then the Grips did something I had never seen before. They removed their hats. Elise untied her ponytail. “Over here,” she said. They disappeared from my narrow view, my neck straining to follow.
I waited for several tense eternities in that wardrobe, hearing nothing, expecting ambush, and turning her words over in mind. Finally, I resigned myself to the long tumble into the abyss that awaited me. I comforted in the knowledge that they might still make mistakes that would permit suicide. I tucked a silk scarf under my clothes and tiptoed out.
The scene in the living room washed away my delusions like an acid bath. My feelings toward Elise plowed through three new stages: shock, envy, and relief. The Grips lay unconscious on the sofa, tumblers spilled across their crisp suits.
She was one of us. And she was strong to have handled them both, stronger maybe than me. Her irresistibility, her voice, my strange honesty with her: why hadn’t I noticed these things? Why hadn’t they? Another layer of the onion peeled away before my blind and burning eyes. But none of it mattered if we were free.
“Elise? Lisa? Who are you?” I confronted her.
“Shh!” she hissed, then turned to face me, tears welling in her eyes. “I... What can I...” she couldn’t finish.
“Forget it. Come with me. Let’s run away,” I said. I was naked: too stunned to try Influence and unsure if it had ever worked in the first place.
“I can’t. I can’t ever get away,” she broke into tears.
“Why? Come on. Let’s hurry!” I pleaded.
“Oh Tom, don’t ever let them catch you. They do things to you—put things in you, so that you can’t ever get away, not even for a second,” she sobbed, some long-repressed horror waking in her words. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Her conviction crushed me like a millstone. It broke me. Death would have been preferable to assimilation, but assimilation now seemed preferable to losing her, to leaving her.
She turned away. I don’t think she could bear to feel what I felt, what she was doing to me. I knew I couldn’t. From behind, I could hear her steeling herself through her sobs, deep programming kicking in. But I still wasn’t prepared.
She spun back and her voice rolled out, stronger than when I had been in the wardrobe, surpassingly strong, “Listen to me, Tom. All is well. You’re going to be OK. You’re going to get away from here. You can trust me.”
Abruptly, I felt sickeningly soothed. Inside, I fought desperately to hang on to my anguish instead. I beat the sides of my head with clenched fists. A strangled cry erupted from the pit of my stomach.
“Tom, stop, please,” she implored. Continuing, she said, “Listen again. The door is open. Look at it. Outside is freedom. Go. Go out that door and don’t ever come back. I want you to do something for me, Tom. Will you do this one thing for me? I want you to be smart. I want you to be careful. I want you to stay free until tomorrow. Now run!”
She knew my secret phrase, my code, my mantra. The depth of those words overwhelmed any defense. I turned now, slowly as I might. But gradually she slipped beyond the horizon of vision. Once she was gone, I couldn’t help myself.
Methodically, I began to walk out the door, then jog to the elevator, then run from that building, that town, that moment, that memory, that love, that pain.
I ran then. And I’m still running. Running forever, but never escaping.