I cough, sitting on the stiff bed here in the observation room, taking another drag from my cigarette. God, I don’t know why I missed these things so much. They’re awful. I greedily draw in another mouthful of minty death, and stare up at the large window over the room.

Apparently while I was sitting off in the waiting room, everyone that mattered had a little pow wow and decided it would be best if I stayed here. That they wouldn’t keep me locked up, but it would probably be for the best so they could ‘monitor and study’ how I’m doing. Of course ‘hide you from the world so you could die quietly where it wouldn’t be inconvenient for anyone’ got left unsaid (aside from the other me).

Doc and Bianca spent the afternoon converting this room yet again into something like a half decent sterile little sleeping quarters. Doctor’s seat to a bed, a little desk.  Brian got for me a handful of clothes in a trunk and a weak apology overnight. ‘Cameras off for my privacy’ the professor had said, he won’t watch me and I probably won’t ever see him. But that giant window basically puts me into a zoo enclosure anyways. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and ghouls, come see the incredible melting man! One time only, you don’t want to miss this chance of a lifetime, folks!

It’s not like I did much sleeping anyways. I mostly stared up at the ceiling. Threw up once or twice. Couldn’t help but just think over and over about what else I have left to do in my life. It’s not like I’m set up to be able to do much anyways. Hard not to feel like you’re wasting my time when you know exactly how little you have left to waste. 

A soft knocking at the glass inner door. Bianca waves her arms through it, lifting up a bag of tacos. “Yeah, come on in.” I wave her in with the two back fingers my cig is in, scooching over to put it out. In she comes with Sabrina hot on her heels. She really was a tiny thing, easily a head shorter than that android of hers. Granted it’s also bigger than I am, but only by a hair. I think they make them about six foot or something ridiculous like that?

She sits down and tosses one of the bags at me. “Hey there. Me and Sabrina got us some lunch. Figured you’d be pretty hungry since you basically didn’t eat yesterday.” Well, it wasn’t for a lack of them trying. Frank stayed basically until he couldn’t any longer since he had work today, Bianca and Sabrina I’m pretty sure slept in the control room up there. All three of them offered to go get me something roughly every fifteen minutes, but I kept turning them down. Eventually gave in and ate a granola bar from the break room to keep them from pulling out the force feed tube or something.

“Ugh, yeah. Sorry. I never had much of an appetite anyways, and last night wasn’t the way to get me to have one, ya’know?” I pick up one of the greasy little hard shells and bite into it, getting crumbs all over the floor. I’d prefer a soft shell, but whatever. Beggars and choosers.

Sabrina sat there, softly tapping her fingers against her thighs, watching the two of us eat. “According to your friend Mortimer, the other Brian did much of the same last night. He messaged in earlier. Said he was worried about his actions last night. Other Brian’s behavior seems to have gone back to normal now, although apparently he is now trying to ignore that this happened at all.”

“God. Yeah, that sounds like me.” I shove the rest of the taco down my gullet at once so that I can be over with eating it. “Honestly, having got an hour or two around the guy. How could any of you all stand being around me so long? I could barely handle that.”

“You know,” Bianca glanced over at me softly, “you really should be kinder to each other. I’m sure he didn’t mean most of those things. He’s kinda going through a lot of shit right now, you know?”

“What, and I’m not?”  I see Bianca wince at that, bouncing her leg up and down pretty heavily. I realize I had already started to hunch into myself, standing off the couch, squaring up. I crack the tension in my fingers, and then slump back down into my seat on the bed, breath in a few times. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. It’s just, I know what he’s like, I’m like. The kinds of shit that I’m capable of. Maybe it’s justice that I’m getting a taste of my own medicine. If you knew the kinds of things I did you wouldn’t want to sit here with me.” 

Sabrina nudges against my shoulder softly. “You told Franklin and Mortimer. They seem to stick by you even so.” 

“Yeah!” Bianca yells, getting up from her seat to sit next to me on the other side of the bed. “If my little bro likes you then you have to be a good person, that’s the rules.” 

I fidget, clicking my lighter’s hinge over and over again. “I didn’t tell him everything. Not the things I did, the people I ran with, the people I left behind. Just enough to explain why I didn’t like…”

Bianca grins at me. “You can say it, I won’t get offended.”

“Uh, yeah. Sorcerers, or whatever. Lives get ruined,” I throw my arms up to gesture around me, “even when magic is in good hands. Imagine how much better things could be if we could get it out of the bad ones.” 

She laughs and shakes her head, smiling up at me. “There’s plenty of bad people who have never touched magic, you know. Can’t solve the world by shutting it down. If we follow that thought process to its logical end we may as well go join the anprims in throwing ourselves to the big cats.” 

I think back to all the people in the town, the abject hatred they had for anything or anyone that wouldn’t fall in line with their beliefs, about what they were turning into when we fled. “Yeah. Plenty of bad people of any stripe.” 

Sabrina tilts her head to the side with a little bit of machine noise, little pistons exposed on her neck extending and contracting. “Excuse me, what does F.M.A. mean? The initials of a relative?” I freeze, blanching a little. Quickly throw my lighter back into my pocket. “Oh, no! I’m sorry!” She throws her hands up in a defensive wave. Wow, she even blushes a little? It’s blue, freaky. “I didn’t mean to pry, if it’s personal you don’t need to share! It’s fine!”

I move to get up and leave the room, but… I don’t know. I freeze. Lick my lips. Who am I keeping this secret for anymore. What’s it going to hurt if they know? Not going to be my problem soon enough. I sit back down, scratch the back of my head.

“It means Find Me Again.” I pause to pull out another cigarette. Light it, take a long drag. “His name was Raimi. Only god damned person in that entire place that actually cared about me. He could see right through all the bullshit, all the walls and fake personas I built up. He got certain leeways, since his dad was one of the town elders. Everyone knew what he was, but they were also too afraid to do anything to his face. He knew, though, it wasn’t smart to be friends in the open. For me, I mean. I’m just a shitty little nobody who’s on a short leash already, there’s no way I’d survive his orbit. So we never once made plans. We would just run into each other, out on the street, in the dead of night, or off in secluded sections of the woods. And we would end every meeting with the same promise, that we would just so happen to find each other once more.”

Bianca bites her lip, looking over at me softly, twiddling with her hair. “‘Friends’, huh?” She makes the gentlest hook with two of her fingers with her free hand a few times to emphasize the word. 

 “Yeah, ‘friends’,” I grunt, blowing up a cloud of smoke toward the roof. “Of course, things went from bad to worse in the town. His family started being a little too foreign for the way the wind was blowing, and his dad lost the influence around town. Dad stayed loyal to the cause though, and people like that love having their little human shields if they know their place. He was still stuck, but had no protections that he thought he’d always have. Long and short, it became open season on Raimi. The kids were extra cruel after all the years of denial against attacking him. Physical beatings, constant verbal torment. I had to do it sometimes. He begged me to, in order to keep me from getting an even worse treatment. That it would be ok if I found him later and made it better. I should have told him no.”

Sabrina ticks her fingers against her legs. “That must have been awful to go through, for the both of you.” 

I sigh, nodding. “It ended, of course. I could leave, he couldn’t. When he heard I was finally getting out, he was overjoyed. Not sad that he was stuck, not sad about the distance, that we might never see each other again. He was just happy one of us made it out. All he wanted was one more chance to meet, and a gift to hand over.” I shake the lighter out between my fingers. “‘Something to remember me by’, he said. I knew it was a promise, but one that neither of us were likely to keep.  So I took it, and I left, and I tried my best to forget everything that happened. Another thing I’m not very good at.” 

I let my story sit in silence, taking another minty drag. “You know, first thing I did when I got to this city was switch from cloves to menthol. I wanted to taste him again.”

Bianca nods at me, smiling softly. I feel Sabrina’s hand on my shoulder too. She scootches to sit on her side, so she could be facing me. “Thank you for telling us. That seemed like it took a lot.”

“Well, you two’re the first. I never told anyone that. Not Frank, not Morty, not even Ma. I just keep saying vaguely that it’s important, you know? Let them fill in the blanks.”

Bianca gets up, pacing over to behind Sabrina, putting her arms around her neck. “Well, for what it’s worth. You picked pretty good for your first time. Trust me, I have ‘friends’ I can’t tell people about either.” Again, the finger quotes for emphasis. 

I scratch my head softly behind my ear. “Huh? Really, you too? But I thought this city was supposed to be really liberal?”

She just laughs, leans over, and kisses the top of the Android’s head. “B… Bianca!” Her faceplate goes nearly entirely blue, she’s flushed so bad. She does nestle into her some though, clearly comfortable.

“Oh.” I give out a little chuckle and smile at the two of them. 

CassieSandwich

Take my hands off my neck and hold onto the ghost of your body. I know that good lives make bad stories.

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