No Matter How Far You Get, You're Just a Memory Away From Where You've Been
13 Jun 2016Terra Sheer
I weigh my options. It doesn't take long; I don't have many. I regard the end of my shock stick with a quiet wistfulness, struck by an odd sense of deja vu. There's something familiar about the way the light hits the silver nubs of its probes ... the heft of it in my hands. Something that trickles out from some hazy fissure in one of the darker recesses of my mind, as if out of somebody else's life."We need to get out of here," I say.
"Great." Tiny grunts. "So that's your cunning plan?"
"I don't really have a plan," I admit. "I was sorta hoping Scar would have wandered in by now ... that this would go down easy. But he hasn't, so it's probably a safe bet he won't. And I don't like the odds I see in us storming the cockpit."
He scowls, his big face scrunching up like an over-dried raisin, color flushing. That same rage he took out on the cage door working its way through his empty hands, curling them into fists.
"I thought you said--" he starts.
I cut him off. Better to not go down that road. Better, at least, for me. "Look. At least you're not in that cage anymore. You're out here, you're breathing, you're in control. That's always better than the alternative."
"He's going to call it in. They're going to hurt her ... on account of me...."
"Then, god dammit, Tiny! Be a fucking man and stop them!"
The words hit him like a slap. He visibly recoils, eyes wide. I grip the clammy surface of the shock stick, thinking too hard about what the hell I might do with it to think about the words coming out of my mouth. And like it does in every other unguarded moment, it goes rattling on, spitting out the venom in my poisoned soul.
"You tucked tail the first time, and look where it got you. Look where it got her. You failed her then. You think she's proud of you now, knowing they're keeping you in a cage like an animal? You think she wants to live like that, knowing that her life is the only wage that brand brings you? What kind of screwed up thing is that to do to somebody who loves you? She knows as well as I do how many of them you could take with you. And at least if you died trying to be a free man, she'd have something to take some pride in--"
He hits the wall next to my head, so hard it makes a dent. But it's the sound he makes that strikes me silent. It hurts to hear -- the agony it draws up behind it. He blinks, surprised at his own outburst. He looks surprised at it. Ashamed.
I blink, too, fluttering my eyes out of a protracted flinch. "I'm sorry," I tell him, aware of just how lame it sounds after all that.
"No." He takes his fist out of the wall. Red wells on his knuckles. "I shouldn't have done that," he says.
"You should have hit me."
He shakes his head. "Never hit a lady," he says.
"There are no ladies here." I swallow a knot in my throat, set the shock stick aside and take his bleeding hand. "I didn't mean any of that. I just ... I need your help. There's no way I can get out of this on my own."
"You meant it," he says. "And you were right."
"I'm still a bitch for saying it." I look around for something to wrap his hand with.
"You are." He pulls his hand away. "But I need your help, too. There's no way I'm getting out of this on my own, either."
I eye him, trying to weigh the change that's suddenly come over him. I hit something raw, for sure. It never ceases to amaze me how frequently blind stabbing manages to turn up a nerve ... but it occurs to me that, as a long term survival strategy, this one is bound to be a loser. I've been fortunate that all the assholes in my life have been so extraordinarily coddled by their histories, and how the ones with the real shit to turn up have all been more or less good people. Maybe there's something to that. Maybe I'm the exception that proves the rule.
"I am sorry," I whisper, and this time I think I actually mean it.
"Forget it. Let's worry about how to get out of here."
"But ... I really am--"
He puts a finger to my lips -- as big as my whole mouth, almost. I flinch again, the same as if he were winding up to hit me.
"What's your name?" he asks.
I wince up at him. "Terra. Why?"
"Terra." He nods. "Because, Terra ... I like to know the names of the people I'm willing to die for."
Another damn knot. I wink away a sting in my left eye. "I'm not worth it," I tell him.
"You're the best I've got. So ... the cockpit. I go in first, try to get his weapons. You come in behind and zap him?"
"Forget it. He'll gun you down before you even get close."
"What else is there?"
I hesitate. "Well ... I've got a ship. They've got it in tow."
He side-eyes me. Gradually, a grin cracks over the looming crag of his face. "Why didn't you say that in the first place?" he asks, and it almost kills me to see the brightness that creeps into his eyes.
"Well. I do have a ship. But there's one little problem...."
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