subrosa: the adventures of bill chase chapter_17

Chapter 17


"It’s good to see you," Suzanne said. "Come in. I can’t believe it’s you.
You look the same except that you look more like a stranger than I remember."

"Hi," I said.

I kissed her and hugged her. I remembered that she was the first woman to ever kiss me. I often confused how I thought of Suzanne. Sometimes I thought of her as an older sister because she had taught me many things but when we were not talking I wanted to kiss her.

"Want have you been doing?"

"You are so beautiful."

"So are you, especially when you aren’t depressed."

"I am just tired."

"Come and sit then. This is Joan, one of my roommates."

"Want a beer?" she asked getting up.

"Thank you."

She went to the kitchen for beer. It looked like she was a seasoned drinker. When she came back, she handed Suzanne and me each a can of beer before she sat back in front of the television. The chair was well worn in like what I might imagine when I thought of someone sitting and watching football or baseball. It was a pale green. Somehow uglier than necessary. The rest of the furniture was uglier than necessary. Nothing fit together. The dirty off coloured white-yellow walls were not complimented by the dark brown rug. Why I noticed it at all, I was not sure. Usually I would not care. But somehow, this was so wrong that it bothered me.

Paranoia told me that I was not a necessary addition to the house. My suspicion was that male visitors that were not fellow students did not exist other than in two dimensions. The odd two dimensional, nearly naked hero had been crucified on a few of the walls. Lip stick marks were to be detected on the posters.

"Does the fire place work?" I asked.

"We have no wood. It’s a big city we live in. We can’t go out back and cut up a dead tree."

"I suppose you are right. Are these boy friends?" I pointed toward the flat heroes.

"Just sex partners."

"Oh."

"Where have you been staying the last month or how long have you been here?"

"Not far from here."

"How’d you find a place?"

"Someone actually took me home the first night I was here."

"And you are still there."

"Um."

"That’s pretty lucky."

"I am a lucky person."

"My guess is that someone is a young woman."

"One is."

"Have you heard about Kathy?"

"I got a letter."

"The little girl has her troubles. You must know then about her dad and what happened."

"Yes, she told me about it."

"My mom was going to take her in after she found out that Grace wanted her out. But she was already gone. No one knows where. Grace doesn’t want to know. She thinks she’s possessed. It’s a real soap opera."

"I can imagine your mom taking her in. She was the type to take a vagabond in off the street and let him play with her children."

"Mom is a good judge of people."

"I do not know. She is just so sweet and kind that even an ass like me would find it hard to break her trust."

I could not tell if Joan was listening to us or the television. She seemed a little concerned about something.

"Would you like to see my school?"

"Okay, is it far?"

"No, but I didn’t mean we had to right now."

"When?"

"Sometime."

"Sometime may never come. Who can be sure were I will be. We can walk through the campus then go to see a movie. Maybe get something to eat. Go to a bar and sit in a corner and talk till late in the night. I could stare at you for the evening with no trouble. What do you think?"

"I think you make me horny," she whispered in my ear.

I was a little surprised to hear that. I do not think she would have said that back under the mountains at her farm.

"I’ll just go put some jeans on," she said.

"Or just go in some lingerie."

She thought about it for a moment and seemed to like the idea but then she shook her head and disappeared up the stairs. While she put on her jeans and a bit of make-up, Joan and I fell into the television. She was watching a news report.

The authorities had uncovered a secular monastery in the British Colombia mountains. It was thought to be a scientific experiment rather than a religious hideaway. Although well concealed in the mountains, it had been accidentally discovered by heat sensors. They had been looking for a runaway bank robber.

Terror awoke in me. My heart doubled its beating. I resisted believing it but when I heard them talking about the boys, I started remembering. They showed the face of one of the leaders. It was like seeing a father that had abandoned me.

He was explaining how an international group of scientists, philosophers and technician had joined together in a quest to improve man’s possibility of survival into the future. He talked about how lizards had grown feathers or hair when the climate changed. Only they survived. We were one of the mutations but we have not developed fast enough for the future we are making for ourselves. It was necessary to work on the blue print. He explained about DNA spirals, proteins, chorine, pyrimidines ribofavin, mitochondrial structures, nucleic acids and many other thing I could not follow.

The interviewer asked about playing God.

The leader of this test tub cave, explained that there was no god to help us and if we did not help ourselves we would die waiting. He went back into the history or evolution and the necessity of mutation at times of change.

The interviewer used words like megalomaniacs tread on a thin wire that stretches over frothing uncertainties. God was not to be so easily dismissed and had they really thought their mad plan would help anything.

"I’m ready! Let’s blow this pop stand."

I followed after staring at the television for a few more seconds. They were talking with another leader about genetic manipulation. He explained that if one was careful and understood all the perimeter, there was no danger and that the only difference in the boys was their improved DNA. Only a guided rate of evolution. He was cut short; the bias of the interviewer suggested that the boys were dangerous mutants.

The authorities would take care of things. Already they were on the hunt for the mutant boys. What had been done was unnatural and they could not take any chances. The boys may have a dangerous virus or have criminal tendencies. For the safety of all, it would be necessary....

"They talk as if they have discovered mutants that threaten national security."

Joan looked at me and said nothing. She did not agree with me. I hurried out the door.

"Kiss me," Suzanne demanded when I got out of the house.

"Gladly."

"I missed you."

We walked holding each other. I thought about what I had seen on television. I knew it was me. Lee had suspected it. I was a mutant from another world. I was uncertain what it meant, how it would affect me, what I might have to do, it they know what I looked like. How would they track down a freak?

They were the freaks, not me.

I did not want to believe it but I remembered the face on the screen like it was my own.

"That’s the library", Suzanne pointed to an interesting structure. "That part there is for rare books only."

"Like books on genetic engineering?"

"No, that’s not rare; they’ve been working on that for years. They have a strawberry with fish genes and they are working on rice that kills the bug that destroys half the crop. Some scientists believe it will be an important part of our future survival, if you can believe that."

"People will not accept it."

"Too late, it’s already with us. Just like when they were thinking computers were a sign of the devil’s take over."

"Is that right?"

"Everything that’s new is question. Sometimes the wrong way and not enough. Gene manipulation can be dangerous. When it comes to money, scientists look for fast improvements without thinking of consequences. When did you start getting interested in biology?"

"I never gave it much thought until recently."

I thought to tell her but decided to let her figure it out on her own. It was not the time to be a mutant. She would figure it out when she heard the news. I was not convinced it should be a problem. Bill was not a mutant enemy.

We walked through the campus until we ended up on Bloor Street. We walked to Yonge Street. As we walked down Yonge Street we looked in the windows of the stores, what a variety of things people could have.

When we eventually got to a big shopping mall on Dundas Street, the place where the street preacher had been, we went into the cinema to watch a meaningless but funny movie. I was too involved with my own predicament to follow the story.

After the movie was over, we went across the street to eat. We ate listening to terrible music on an unbalanced sound system. The restaurant appeared out dated or too contrived. The food did not appear real either but it did not taste offensive.

I had the delusion of being secure while I was with Suzanne.

Instead of going to a bar, we went for a walk. We wandered around the new city hall. It was a pair of curved buildings that appeared to be an attempt at architectural elegance but they were handicapped by a dreary dated modern look.

There was no one around. I had not realised where she had been leading me. On the walkway above the ground level was a children’s play area. We climbed a fence to get in to it. Finding a shadow to sit in, we kissed and touched each other. I wanted her breast in my mouth she wanted her hand in my pants. She was not at all hesitant. She was hungry. In a few minutes we were half-naked and she was lowering herself on me. We kissed and I licked her breast and held her as we ground together.

I enjoyed our communion so much that I forgot I was trapped in a smelly city. The quiet roar of engines and machines might have even seemed like the wind blowing through the trees on a star lit night.

We held each other for what seemed hours before we finally spoke.
Neither one of us wanted to find out what happened next. We talked about the old hometown, something that seemed like someone else’s past that had been misplaced and fell into my head. I did not want to get up but it was decided that I should walk her home so that she could get some sleep before going to school.

It was a long quiet walk. I had my arm around her but I felt I was getting farther and farther from her. She was becoming a stranger. Or I was. At her door step I promised I would try to see her soon but I could not picture it. I wondered why she did not invite me in to sleep with her but I knew it was better that she did not.

I felt lonely.

I was not sure if I should fad away into oblivion. Drunken nihilism would be a warm place to hide. Although mentally suited for such a state, I was determined to fight for hope. I was not ready to surrender. Even if my efforts meant nothing, I had to go on. I would never quit.

I sat down against a wall for some time trying to convince myself to go on. Finally I forced myself to move. Whatever life was, it was a force that could not surrender to death. Nothing, oblivion, was no way to be.

My mind was at the vortex of a void that would surely negate my remaining connection. I tried to grope for something solid to hold onto. I shook my head and tried to make it believe something.

I could see myself in a cold cell. No senses, no reason, no out.

"I hope Lee is still awake," I said to the elevator.

Having used the key to get in the front door gave me a little reason. I could visualise connections. I thought about a hot shower. I thought about touching. I thought about being.

When I finally got to the apartment, I felt strong enough to envelop consciousness. When I put the key in the door I knew that it would feel right to walk into a space I would recognise. I would have some degree of security.

In the dream I had as a child, I fell into a whole in a chessboard or some similar game. I was caught in a whorl pool that was sure to suck me into oblivion. I jumped out of the dream long enough to construct a ledge to land on inside the whole. When I went back into my dream, I was safely hidden under the surface and still not sucked into the depths of the hole.

I never moved from that spot.

Before I turned the key, Danny screamed, "Run like fuck, Bill!"

It did not take long for my wandering mind to focus on the present. I knew Danny was not joking. The authorities must have found out where I was staying. They had come to greet me. I heard someone call Danny an idiot as I bolted from the door. I ran like fuck. However fuck ran. Probably I ran more like an endangered species pursued by mad killers on a hostile planet.

Just as I got to the elevator, an old lady was getting off. I pulled her out of the way as I pushed past her. I pushed the button marked number one. Ten times, I pushed it. I pushed the close button fifty times. Did they not understand that I was in a hurry?

"Close, for fuck sakes!"

"Hold it, Buddy!" a police screamed just a bit too late.

The door was closing, he was too far away to stop it. I was not going to go back to see if he was actually my buddy or just a pseudo buddy.

"Move, Mister Elevator."

It took too long. I knew the police were running down the stairs. They were close.

The elevator stopped at the second floor.

"Get the fuck in, Bitch, if you are getting in."

I pulled her in to speed up the process.

"Are you too fucking lazy to walk down one flight of stairs?"

"Piss off, Asshole."

"Sorry, I am having a rough day. Normally I am much more relaxed and friendly. You are very pretty."

"Piss off, Creep."

"Good idea."

The cops just missed catching me at the front door.

"Stop!" they shouted.

"No. You did not say please, in the name of the law, Simon says or in the name of Jesus," I said blowing through the front doors.

I broke the front door when I pushed too hard to open it. Glass sang as it hit the ground. They should make a movie of this, I thought. One of the police got in his car to try to catch me while the other police ran after me. He was a good runner, but he did not have fear on his side. I lost the police in the car when I ran through an alley. I used the old ‘throw garbage cans behind you as you run through a dark alley’ trick like they did in the movies. It slowed down the pursuer some but I still had not lost him.

"You’re not getting away, Freak," shouted the law. "There’s nowhere to run to that I won’t catch you. You’re just pissing me off. Give it up!"

He must have been getting tired. I felt too strong to slow down. I was running as if I was built to run. I jumped obstacles and dodged cars in the streets until I finally lost the sound of the policeman’s feet. A dead end alley was the next place I ran down.

"No."

It could not end this way.

I kept running toward the wall. An old fire escape awaited me. I scurried up the iron ladder to it. The ladder was just hooked onto the first landing of the stairs. I pulled it up out of reach of the ground creatures.

From the roof, I stood and watched the policeman run up to the end of the alley and look around. He had his gun out. I was going to laugh at him but thought I would sacrifice the pleasure to keep my whereabouts a mystery. I lay down on the roof and listened to him talking on his walkie-talkie about how the goddam mutant freak just ran through a brick wall.

I had stupidity on my side.

I lay perfectly still, hardly breathing. He and his reinforcements searched the rubble in the alley. They looked at the fire escape and debated whether of not I could jump that high.

"Unless he pulled the ladder up," one of them suggested.

"Well, if he did, he’s long gone now."

"I’m ready for a coffee anyway. Let someone else worry about the poor bugger," one of the police said.

I rolled over and crept away. It was hard to see in the shadows. I was too tired to move but I kept going. My muscles were tightening. I kept falling over things and banging my head. My mind was becoming a blur.

I wanted to be back on the ground, or in a warm bed. The police might have been right. I did not know where to go. Eventually, I found my way to the ground. Just a few scrapes. I was too tired to be careful.

I started running again. I ran through alleys until I finally fell for the last time. My head smashed into a garbage bin. A loud bong filled both the air and my head. I managed to crawl behind the bin before I passed out.



by Joanne B. Washington

read on. chapter_18



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