13 Pinky Swear and Promises
Serita held her hand tightly as she ran across the sky. Ophelia flowed behind her like silk scarf in an imperceptible wind. Around them, oceans of colors flexed and rolled and far below, an infinite black plane played like the ground but nothing else made sense. Wire frame versions of reality winked in and out around them as they traveled but as much as her mind wanted to make sense of the chaos, nothing gelled into any kind of normalcy. Even if she closed her eyes, the colors, the lines of power glowed against the inside of her lids.
Memories overtook her. Falling and falling through the endless light, entangled with the beast, a dragon-like creature, scrawny and skeletal with slick black skin, a horse shaped head and an unruly nest of fangs for a mouth. It screeched six sounds at once as they fell, its useless, tattered wings flapping against the lights. They smacked into the black plane which should have killed them but gravity wasn’t working as expected and mass appeared meaningless.
After a moment, the beast rolled to all fours and shook itself like a wet dog. Then it turned to her and pounced. Not aggressively but out of obvious concern. It sniffed her hair and the tears that streamed down her face. It checked her body for injuries with long, black, tapered talons. It rose on its hind legs and slowly scanned their surroundings, almost as if it was looking for help or a way out.
“Just leave me,” Ophelia croaked. Everything in her was dead and she couldn’t even remember why.
The beast shook its head violently. It loped a little ways to her left, sniffed the air and then returned to her side. It gripped her wrist and pulled her across the black granite.
“What are you doing?” she asked and the beast answered in its multi-tonal screech. It would pull her several meters, then pause and push against the ground with its free hand, pull more and then press and probe. Her arm ached at the shoulder socket and she wanted to die so desperately that her body seized up in a painful, wrenching, endless sob. The beast stopped and threw away her hand. It screeched at her in frustration as it stepped back. Then, suddenly it began to sink, the black surface becoming liquid like oil. The beast looked at its sinking self and then lunged for Ophelia, claws outstretched.
“No!,” she screamed. “Don’t leave me!” She rolled to her hands and knees and crawled. The beast clambered for her as it sank. Ophelia pushed herself up and stumbled forward on numb legs and, as the beast fell back into the liquid ground, she fell into its arms. The beast held her and wrapped them in a cocoon of shredded wings. The ground swallowed them, slowly as the colors of the universe raged about them.
“Is this the end?” she whispered and the beast chortled the most alien sound that was somehow comforting.
Blackness, so pure it broke what was left of her mind. Until the gray of the bunker materialized around them.
Serita pulled her toward a wire frame representation of the garage at the Asylum. The building grew in substance as they approached until Serita stepped onto the oil stained concrete and suddenly they were real again.
Ophelia couldn’t catch her breath. She was sure she would pass out.
“Here,” Serita ordered. “Sit.” A chair appeared behind her knees and Ophelia collapsed into it.
“Breath,” Serita said.
“I’m,” Ophelia wheezed, “trying.” The air wouldn’t come into lungs. She felt gut punched and panicked in the worst way.
“Here.” Serita stepped forward and put her thumb to Ophelia’s forehead, between her brows. A subtle energy filled the space behind her eyes. Breathing became easier. She focused on the contact of Serita’s thumb on her forehead and took slow, deep breaths. Breathing slowly became easier.
“I think in many ways you are the strongest of us,” Serita said dryly. ”but you can be so pathetic,”
“Thanks, asshole,” Ophelia snapped as she slapped Serita’s hand away. Serita laughed as she spun away and settled against the fender of the big truck, the toe of one foot tucked into the wheel well..
“Wait,” Ophelia said. “Are you taller?” The last time she saw Serita, she appeared to be tenish, maybe twelve. Now she appeared to have grown several inches and her face had thinned out although she was not as skinny overall. “What are you doing?”
Serita shrugged. “If I have to stay on this side of the dream then I’ll let the energy do what it will.”
Ophelia blinked. “What does that even mean?”
Serita rolled her eyes. “It means that I’ve decided to play along with this end of things until they resolve.”
“This end of what thing?”
Serita frowned. “You really don’t know?”
Ophelia held up her hands, helplessly. “I have ideas. Sort of.” She had more than ideas though. She had chunks of revelations that appeared to have little connection to the whole and sounded ridiculous if she said it out loud.
“Interesting,” Serita said, pushing off the truck. “I could try to explain it but I can’t avoid details that this language lacks the vocabulary for. I would need the old language.”
Another memory screamed to the front of her mind. Ophelia closed her eyes against the voices that demanded everything and offered nothing.
“What is going on in there,” Serita said, head cocked to the side, as she slowly approached.
“Nothing, I’m fine.”
Serita paused and put her hands on her knees like she was looking at a strange bug. “You should let me in. I bet I can fix it.”
Opheilia launched to her feet, knocking the chair away. “You stay the fuck out of my head, Serita.”
“Why?” She seemed honestly confused. “What are you afraid of that’s in your own head?”
“None of your business,” Ophelia snapped.
“You don’t trust me?”
Serita’s expressions had matured along with her body. She appeared to be hurt although her eyes held an ominous glint.
“Of course, I trust you,” Ophelia said. “I trust you more than most.”
Serita’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, an expression she had seen in a mirror more than once. If they had appeared to be at least related before her growth spurt, now there was no denying it.
“I accept the fact that we are sisters but I can not go further right now. I can’t go back before the bunker,” Ophelia said.
Serita stiffened. “I understand,” she said. “It was hard on all of us but I think you took the brunt.” She folded her arms across her chest. “My offer stands. Let me in and I can help. But I will not do anything until you ask.”
“I still don’t understand how you can help but thank you.” Ophelia took a deep breath and released it slowly. She wasn’t entirely sure she could stop little miss spooky if she insisted on “helping”. Her sense of relief came from hearing that she would at least wait until she was ready.
“Speaking of helping,” Serita said. “You will honor our agreement?”
Ophelia closed her eyes for a moment and then shot her a look. “You really had me over a barrel, you know.”
“Irrelevant.”
“Maybe a little bit relevant.” She pinched the air with her fingers. “Just a bit.”
“So you won’t honor the agreement?”
Ophelia rolled her eyes. “Of course, I’ll honor the agreement. I’m just giving you a hard time. Wait, what is it?”
Serita smiled. “I found Tony.”
“Shit.”
“He returned to the Menagerie.”
“What? On his own?”
“And I need you to go with me to get him.”
“Oh, fuck no.”
Serita glared, hands balling into fists. “You promised.”
“Yeah, I did. But that is ridiculous.” Ophelia turned away, pulling out her ponytail that was suddenly too tight. “Besides, if he went back on his own, why should you stop him?”
“Because it’s suicide,” Serita said evenly. “He escaped once. They won’t let it happen again. They will kill him.”
“Still his choice.”
“That’s not right,” Serita said, her voice suddenly a little smaller. “You have no right to say that.”
Ophelia spun to face her. “I seem to remember you trying the same thing recently.”
“And someone who cared about me, stopped me.”
Ophelia took an actual step back. The little shit had her there. Ophelia crossed her arms across her chest.
“You know he killed my friends.”
“By accident!”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Their eyes locked. Ophelia’s chest boiled with a remembered rage and regret that settled only slightly when tears rimmed Serita’s eyes.
“Shit,” Ophelia breathed.
“He was the only one that helped me,” she whispered. “He promised me that no one would hurt me ever again. Even you didn’t care what happened to me. But Tony did.”
“To be fair, I didn’t know who you were,” Ophelia said with a half shrug.
“That shouldn’t have mattered.”
Ouch. Serita was landing all the emotional blows.
“And now he’s going to die.” Serita sniffed.
Ophelia put her hands on her hips and walked a slow circle, looking up at the ceiling of the garage. “He’s not going to die.” Her mind spun into the logistics of the situation. They would have to take the Beast. She wanted her pump 12 gauge. And spray paint. She would mark their trail on the way in.
“Wait,” she said. “Where is he going if we do get him?”
Serita had moved to one of the stools at the parts bench. She looked at the floor, wiping her nose with her sleeve.
“Um, gross?” Ophelia said and pointed at a stack of clean shop towels.
“Maggie said she’ll take him back.”
“Really?”
“She said I can live there too.”
A sense of poignant relief ate the last of her conflicting emotions. Serita would be off the streets. But then a strange cloud of jealousy loomed.
“So you would live with Tony and Maggie at the book shop?”
Serita nodded.
Was this really jealousy? She had tried for some time to convince Serita to move into the Asylum. Just minutes ago, she had admitted to herself and to Serita that they were sisters and now she would just move in with a happy little, pre-made family? A strange little family it would be but still a family in a cute little book store in a sort-of nice part of town. What the hell? What was wrong with the Asylum? Other than Mr. Leeds? And maybe Mahin? Or the proximity to the bunker.
Well, shit.
It still wasn’t fair though.
“No,” Ophelia said and Serita’s face darkened even as she blew her nose. Ophelia held up her hands defensively. “I’m okay with you staying there,” she said quickly. “But I get every weekend-” She dropped her hands to her hips. “I get, at least, every other weekend.”
Serita frowned. “Why?”
“If you are my sister,” Ophelia said, stabbing her finger at the ground. “Then I get time.” She nodded, nervously, even as the tightness in her chest dissolved. “No more disappearing for weeks. No more showing up when you want to. Norman is going to get you a phone and it’s going to have one of those nanny apps on it. You can stay with Maggie and Tony. But I’m your sister and I get time.” She paused, trying to register a new feeling that supplanted all the others. “I get time with my sister.”
The expected resistance did not materialize. Instead, Serita’s lower lip quivered and the tears started again as she launched herself from the stool and into Ophelia’s arms, hugging her painfully tight. Ophelia wasn’t used to hugging. Honi would hug her but it was usually an attack from behind or the side. She was eternally the hugged. .
“Not really a hugger,” she muttered.
“Don’t really care,” Serita said into her chest.
Ophelia sighed.
