This post is part of the online serial novel “Future Crash” if you are looking for other chapters click here.
For other projects on this website such as metal working click here.
Feedback is greatly appreciated. Future Crash the novel updates Mon/Wed/Fri.

My face was pressed up against the glass, trying in some way to be closer to Rain, to push her out of danger by sheer force of will. That car was going to run her over; there was no way it could miss! Rain had started to slow for some reason. What was she doing?

“Faster Rain! Faster!” Talking to myself again, I didn’t care.

Rain was riding a fixed gear. She didn’t have a freewheel on her bike, if she pedaled forward she went forward, pedal backwards she would go backwards. That meant that for instance, if she were to hop slightly to lift the back wheel off the ground she could lock her legs. When the back wheel came back down she would be skidding. With a slight shifting of body weight she could turn her skidding bike to the side. A power slide on bicycle.

Rain was now moving to the right, the straps from her aviatrix helmet flailing like angry snakes behind her. She had slowed down just enough to keep her from flying over the handlebars as she performed her bicycle ballet. She shot up over the curb and down an alley pushing more speed into the cranks as she made her getaway.

The huge car behind her had no such turning radius; it continued going forward, dutifully following all the relevant laws of physics. Newton would have pointed out that it’s forward motion was transmitted into heat and noise as it smashed into the large truck that had just pulled out of a driveway.

Minutes later I heard the muted ‘ding’ of the elevator and turned to find a panting, sweaty, Rain holding her bicycle in one hand and a full bag in the other. She sat her bike against the wall as I ran forward to wrap her in a hug. She held on to me tightly.

It was a couple of seconds before we realized the awkward nature of our embrace. Pulling away we both looked down unsure of what had just happened. I was the first to break the silence.

“That was fucking amazing!” I was picking up bad linguistic habits from her.

I showed her the accident below, people were approaching the car, both passengers had not had seat belts on, it didn’t look good.

“Fuck, I didn’t want to kill them, stupid fuckers.”

“We better get going” She said as she grabbed my arm. “We still need to get you a ride.”

We snuck out the back of the office building, taking a route through a maze of dumpsters and loading docks. Rain walked next to her bike so that I could keep up.

“How did you learn to ride like that?” I was still in awe of her performance.

“You want to drop your package on time you got to ride hard.” Simple enough I guess.

We didn’t talk much, she was out of breath, and my jaw still hurt from where she had decked me. We stuck to the back alleys as much as we could, slowly working our way uptown, finally arriving at a small wooden door with a large chain ring from a bicycle nailed to it.

“This guy owes me a favor, but he is kind of a cranky bitch, so just don’t say nothing, and please Quentin, don’t have any freak outs in there, ok.”

She was trying to make it sound nice, but it sort of hurt my feelings anyway. I guess it showed.

“No don’t get me wrong man, I think you’re a pretty interesting guy, but well Jake is kind of a douche, but he has rides, and we need one, just let me do the talking k?”

I nodded.

Rain knocked on the door a couple of times, and a Jake opened it.

“Rain, what’s going on, didn’t see you round today? You got the day off?”

Jake was wearing a pair of cut off jeans that did little to hide his massive legs. The man was built like a T-Rex with calves that looked like they could crush a walnut. His brown hair hung down past his ears, and was tucked under a bicycle cap.

“Yea, well I’m taking some time off. Look Jake can we come in, we need to talk”

We went inside and I could see that besides riding them, Jake also like to fix bicycles. The shop was full of bikes in various stages of repair. I would later learn that Jake ran an unlicensed business building and fixing bikes for messengers. He would let them buy parts on credit and have them pay him back after they got paid. He seemed like a nice enough guy, it wasn’t until much later that I learned why Rain didn’t like him.

Rain and Jake went in the back room, leaving me alone to admire the bicycles. The different kinds of frames reminded me of some sort of metal geometry lesson. Triangles, circles, lines, combine them in just the right way and you got a bicycle. I had never really ridden much, but these machines looked so clean, appealing even. I had read on the internet that bicycling was the most efficient mode of human travel. Was I really going to ride one of these things all the way to Ohio?

Jake made fixed gears, he took normal bikes, removed all the extra gears, all the cables, and created bikes with just one gear in the front, one in the back. The handle bars all looked unique. Some like bull horns, some like strange insect arms curled under, some flipped over and cut off in the middle. I was absentmindedly looking at them when Rain and Jake came back in.

“So he needs a set of wheels, huh? Let’s see what we can do.” Jake was looking at me, sizing me up.

“You know how to ride? You look a little skinny man?”

“Just get him some wheels Jake.”

Jake picked out a bike from the corner; it was an old steel frame with Italian words on the side and no wheels. Jake selected some tubes and tires and I watched as he threaded the circles of rubber onto the metal rims. He then made me stand over the bike; sit on the seat, and a couple of other things. This resulted in various adjustments to the seat stem and the handlebars.

Before we left Jake gave me an old messenger bag and filled it with a set of Allen wrenches, patch kits, a bunch of tubes and tools to change a flat tire. Then he and Rain went back in the back room and I could hear them fighting. She came back out and she had tears in her eyes.

“Let’s go Q.” She was walking towards the door. When she got there she turned.

“Please think about it Jake, just for once use your fuckin brain and listen to me.”

Jake threw up his hands and swatted the air in frustration. Rain held the door for me and then closed it quietly. Outside it had become overcast and the wind had picked up. A storm was approaching.

Offshore, a giant cyclonic eye surrounded by miles of swirling winds was starting to push toward shore.

This post is part of the online serial novel “Future Crash” if you are looking for other chapters click here.
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“Are you out of your fuckin mind Rain? You can’t really be thinking about listening to this freak!” Marla’s forked tongue was visible when she screamed.

Rain was already on her way to the door. “Marla, listen I know he sounds like a freak, and I know he is strange but he saved my… he has been right before and well I need to get out of town anyway.” Rain had made up her mind.

“You should leave too.” I gestured towards Marla. It was hard to speak; my jaw had seized up like a rusty gear.

“Quentin, knows things.” Rain was making an awkward attempt to defend me. It made me feel strange.

“Oh really, like how to freak out and start screaming on my couch? Things like that?” Marla was dubious, dubious at best.

“Marla, you know I love you, we have a great time together,” a knowing smile appeared on Marla’s face, “but I am going to do this, and I think you should seriously consider taking a trip west, if only for a couple of days, what could it hurt?” She shrugged and continued to smile at Marla.

Marla smiled back, “Well listen, just take care of yourself, ok.” The look in her eye spoke of lust and love.

Rain already had her bag on her back, pausing briefly to make sure the small package was inside. Thinking of Rain and Marla tangled in a heap of naked tattooed limbs made me blush, I quickly thought of something else.

“You coming?” Rain was at the door.

I stood up and started to walk. I was almost to the door when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“If you hurt her, I will find you and I will cut off your balls and shove them up your ass.” The calm way Marla described the violence left no doubt that she was serious. Marla was the kind of girl that didn’t lie about this sort of thing.

We were several blocks away before I realized that we were walking back towards the T station. I paused momentarily.

Rain seemed to notice my apprehension, “We have to go back to my place, we have to get my bike, and then we have to get you one too.”

“Are you sure? I mean can’t we like steal a bike or something?”

“You don’t steal bikes, it is Karmically impure to even speak of such things.” Rain took bicycle ownership seriously.

“Listen Quentin, you said we need to walk or ride, we sure as shit ain’t walking to Ohio, so we get my wheels.” She looked at me, waiting for an answer.

Did I have a better plan? Not really.

“OK.”

Once again to the T, once again through the sweaty hot underground, more horrible noise, this time up an endless flight of stairs. I surprised myself by making it the whole way back without having to stop. Was I getting stronger, or was it the adrenaline. Were we really going to go back to the place that just this morning had been ransacked by a bunch of angry mobsters?

When we got a couple of blocks away from Rains place she stopped walking.

“Ok listen, not to be mean Quentin, but you’re not exactly in top physical shape right now.” She wasn’t being cruel, zombies had better constitution.

“So here is what we are going to do, you are going to go over to that office building and go up to the top floor.” She pointed several blocks down the road towards a tall glass building.

“I am going to go back to my place, get my bike and some stuff.”

A simple enough plan

“You wait for me on the very top floor. Trust me.”

The strange thing is I did trust her. I don’t know when it had happened but I was starting to think of Rain as my friend.

Rain walked with me towards the tall glass building, going so far as to lead me inside to a bank of elevators. The brass plate that held the floor numbers above the doors had tiny scroll work leaves and vines. The air was cool inside. The carpet felt strange under my feet, like it was made of tiny bits of moss stacked up just right, like you might sink in at any moment.

“Be right back.” She grinned and pressed the button for the top floor in the elevator. The doors shut with a silent motion.

The elevator shot swiftly upwards, producing an uncomfortable feeling in my spine. The increased gravity too much for my fragile bones. The doors opened with a gentle ding and I walked out into a large empty space. The top floor of this building was still under construction. Several saw horses and sheets of drywall sat near one corner, white dust clung to the floor where a recent sheet had been sawed in half. The air smelled like saw dust, and the pungent smell of industrial cleaners.

I walked to the windowed wall and realized that I could see straight down towards Rains apartment. Far below a miniature Rain was walking cautiously towards the back of her place. I could just make out her black skirt pushing out around her body. From this height she looked like a moving doll.

I watched her until she turned the corner and was gone from my view. The time dragged on for what seemed like forever. My arm pits started to get moist with nervous sweat, what was taking her so long?

I was just about to turn and head back for the elevator when I saw a miniature Rain this time on bicycle shoot out from the parking lot behind her building. She went right over the curb like it wasn’t their. She was followed closely by two men in dark clothing. She was already standing up on her bike, pumping her legs, swinging the bike out sideways, sacrificing stability for speed.

The men seemed to realize in unison the futility of chasing her on foot and ran back the way they had came, moments later a large dark car, came rocketing out of the parking lot. It was the kind of car you saw in old movies, wide enough to take up most of the lane, and with little fins on the back. That kind of car that had recently become very expensive to fuel.

They quickly made up the distance Rain had put between them. Her legs pumped like pistons, pushing her tiny bike forward keeping a short distance on the whale of a car coming up behind her. Ahead was a group of cars waiting at a red light.

She didn’t even slow down. She melted through the intersection like water through a sieve. It was dark messenger voodoo, the cars didn’t exist to her she was pure movement. The giant caddie behind her swerved to one side and put two wheels up on the curb, firing both hub caps off like cannons.

The mobsters made it through the intersection into the empty lane ahead. With nothing in their way they would soon overtake their prey. Rain looked behind her and I imagined she smiled when she saw the large car so close behind her. I imagine she smiled because of what she did next.

This post is part of the online serial novel “Future Crash” if you are looking for other chapters click here.
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“That’s strange?” Oh no I was talking to myself again.

I was floating, my vision blurry, like swimming in cotton candy. I had felt this way once when I was a child. As a boy I had been prone to chronic ear infections. My ears had gotten so bad that the doctors had to put tubes into my ears. The tubes would drain my ears, in theory preventing buildup of bacteria, or whatever.

The doctors had explained that they would put me to sleep and that I wouldn’t feel a thing. The black mask was placed over my face and I was told to count backwards from 10, I never made past 8.

When I woke up the world spun like a top every time I opened my eyes. There are tiny hairs inside your ear. These hairs live inside a bath of fluid and keep you balanced. Disrupting the hairs sends incorrect signals to the brain, and your brain tells the rest of you that the world is spinning in a rapid clockwise motion. Human signal processing is a lot like a computer, garbage in garbage out.

I was enjoying this floating, hazy existence when I achieved a sudden clarity. This clarity was accompanied by a sudden and sharp sensation localized in the region of my face.

“Hey, what is that?” Talking to yourself can be a very unrewarding exercise.

Oh, I know what that is…

“Ahhh!” My face was on fire, all my attention focuses intently on the fist that had just slammed into it. My hands came up to ward off future blows, Rain stood above me in a fighter’s stance. Her right hand clenched into a fist. She looked ready to hit me again.

“What did you do that for?” The pain had begun spreading down my neck.

“Sorry, you were screaming your lungs out, and wouldn’t stop, Marla suggested I hit you.” Rain unclenched her hand but stood ready just in case.

“I didn’t tell you to deck him!”

“I only know one way to hit someone. Sorry.” Rain lowered her arms to her sides.

The realization of what had been going on right before my “episode” flooded back to me.

“Rain, we have to get out of this city, and we have to do it right now.” The words flew out of me. I stood and started to move towards the door.

“Hold on there scream boy, what the fuck are you talking about?” Marla stood in front of me blocking my way, she was shorter than me, but in my current state she could have knocked me over with a finger.

My brain was on fire, too many thoughts were firing at once, my words flowed out in a torrent of babble and mumbling. I stopped talking and put my hand to my face in order to rub my jaw. The maneuver reignited a small explosion of pain. Oddly enough the pain seemed to focus my thoughts into crystal clear objectiveness.

“Boston… Boston is not safe, I can’t tell you why, but I know that we have to leave, and we have to go to Ohio, we have to get to my moms house, and then… I don’t know what happens then but I know that much.” I had to squeeze my jaw to keep my mind clear; it brought tears to my eyes.

“Are you talking about, the hurricane. It’s only going to be a category 2, Boston is going to be fine.” Rain put both hands on my shoulders and forcibly sat me down.

“No, it is not going to be a cat 2, it’s going to be something else, and that’s not the only thing, so many people, oh my god…” I was loosing it again. I could feel the screaming welling up inside, I had to fight to keep myself under control. I looked up at Rain, doe eyed.

“I need you to do something for me.” God this was stupid. “I need you to hit me again.” I pleaded with my eyes.

“What the fuck, hit you?”

“Hit me!” I screamed, surprising even myself.

The girl could swing, the hit was fast and hard, knocking my head sideways, my brain immediately became clear as my jaw erupted in a blossom of pain.

“Thanks.” It was hard to talk, my jaw was starting to swell. “Rain, I know you hardly know me, and I know I have been acting like the biggest freak in the world, but you have to trust me. Boston, New York City, Washington DC, all of them are going to get slammed by these storms, but besides that something else is going to happen, something I can’t, ‘see’.” I emphasized the last word. Using the same tone I had used to explain to her why I knew she wanted to jump off the bridge.

“You saw this, like last time.” She looked concerned, and confused.

I nodded, and started to talk again when I was interrupted.

“You two are into some kinky ass shit!” Marla threw her head back and laughed. “I once had a boyfriend who wanted me to spank him, but I ain’t never seen nobody getting their kicks from getting jacked in the face.” Her expression was a mix of ammusment, and arousal, Marla was the kind of girl who was into this sort of thing.

Rain and I looked at her in unison, “We aren’t together, and this isn’t a sex thing Marla!” Rain spat out.

“Quentin has, well let’s just say he was right before.” She paused, thinking. “If we were going to get out of the city how would we do it?” She looked to me.

“We can’t drive, and we can’t take a bus or train or plane.” The pain and clarity was fading, but I didn’t think I could take another hit. “We should walk, or I guess ride bikes.” I felt stupid saying it, who rides their bike to Ohio, but it was what I had seen.

Rain looked down; the straps of her aviatrix helmet fell across both cheeks. She shuffled her feet, causing her black skirt to swish gently back and forth. A small lock of her hair escaped her helmet, she reached up and tucked it behind her ear.

She had her own reasons for getting the hell out of dodge. Did it really matter what kind of crazy I was blurting?

She looked to Marla, and back at me, her eyes reflecting the worry and emotion she felt inside.

“Fuck it. We are going to need some wheels.”

This post is part of the online serial novel “Future Crash” if you are looking for other chapters click here.
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Feedback is greatly appreciated. Future Crash the novel updates Mon/Wed/Fri.

I turned to look at Rain blushing; the door opened a crack stopped by a thick security chain.

“Yea what is it?” Said a pair of dark eyes.

“Marla open this fuckin door, I really need to come in!” Rain screamed, pounding on the door. Had they followed us?

“Shit. Hi Rain. Wait a second; I need to put on some cloths.”

The sound of someone walking around was followed shortly by the soft metal slide of the chain being removed.

Marla opened the door and let us into her small apartment. It was cave like inside, the walls covered with dark tapestries interspersed with Type O Negative, Tool, and VNV Nation posters. The windows had been covered with foil.

Marla stood before us, one hip cocked out, hands on her midsection. She was dressed in an extra large white zombie t-shirt and little else. A cartoon zombie with a large X burned into its head stared back at us. Her bare legs where covered to mid thigh by the long black t-shirt. Her coal black hair, a series of thin dread locks, was pulled back into a single large tendril. Both arms were as covered with tattoos like Rain’s, I noticed several pieces that could have been by the same artist. Marla was the kind of girl that shaved off her eyebrows and drew them back on.

I stood awkwardly to one side as Rain explained why we were there.

“Fuck girl, you in some serious shit. Them Irish guys don’t fuck around when it comes to lending out money, especially now-n-days.” When she talked I could see that she had split her tongue. I had seen that on a website once. The tongue is split down the middle so that the end looks like a snake tongue.

“What the fuck is he staring at?” I looked down quickly, blushing even harder than I had before.

“Marla, Quentin, Quentin this is Marla.” Rain introduced us. “It’s a long story; can we stay at your place for a couple hours till things blow over?”

“Sure honey, you know you’re always welcome here.” She smiled.

Marla was apparently into the color black. Most things in her apartment were black, or a deep blood red. I sat on a black couch trying to stay awake. The stress of our flight from the Irish mob had worn me out.

Marla got us some water; mine came in a tiny mug with Jack from The Nightmare Before Christmas on it. His skeletal arm made up the handle. She turned on the Television and handed me the remote. I turned to the local news channel. The main story was the fact that 4 hurricanes were currently in the Atlantic at the same time. They were all expected to hit the east coast in the next couple of days. There was no news about a couple of people forcefully kicking there way into any local apartments.

Rain and Marla talked about Rain’s problems. Marla didn’t seem to notice or care that when she sat down her black lace underwear showed. Her legs had long stitched tattooed along the outside, like she was a giant doll held together with string. I made sure to keep my attention on the news.

“I can’t go back to work. If they could find me at my place they will know where I work.”

“Maybe you can get out of town, your cousin in Cali?”

“Have you seen the price of a bus ticket? Now that gas is so expensive, I can’t afford that shit.”

“You have your bike”

CNN had stories about the likelihood that hurricane Martha, Ned, Ophelia, and Peter would slam into the entire east coast from Florida, to Maine all at once. They had graphics that looked like a bar graph, with the paths of each storm lined up in nice lines set to run into land in an orderly pattern. I flipped through the channels, Fox news was running a special on the “Terrorists in Our Midst” they were currently highlighting a couple of ELF members that had set a bunch of Hummers on fire in Oregon.

“I left it at the apartment, and besides what am I going to do ride to fuckin California?”

“Shit, girl I seen how you ride, you could do it.”

“Thanks, but there has got to be a way to reason with these people, maybe I could get them some of the money and then they would let me pay the rest back slowly…”

“How long are you overdue?” Marla placed a hand on Rain’s leg.

The home shopping network was selling air filter masks with hello kitty patterns on them. Seems yet another mega-fire was ravaging the west. No reason to look unfashionable when dealing with elevated air particulates.

“They said I had till the end of the month to pay them back, I guess they wanted it early.” Rain said putting her head into her hands.

Discovery was running shark week again. Great whites leaping out of the air with seals in their mouths, the announcer explained that the shark attacked from below and the leaping broke the seals back so that the shark could swallow it easier.

“Well girl you have to do something, don’t worry we will figure it out.” Marla used her other hand to gently rub Rains back.

Click. Soap opera, yes he really was the twin. Click. Commercial for the new 5 dollar menu at Burger King. Only five dollars! What a deal. Click. Trade in your car for a scooter, at Bobs scooter world “stop paying high gas prices, scoot in style at Bob’s.” Click. The Russian rocket powered train was capable of speeds of over 100 miles per hour. Click. Another shooting in Dorchester. Flip. 200 killed in suicide bombing in Iraq. Click. The house debating the water distribution act of 2007 on CSPAN. Click. Click. Click. I couldn’t stop, Marla had over 50 channels and I had to watch them all, preferably at the same time. My thumb had ceased taking order from my brain. All systems were on full autopilot. The familiar itch started in my frontal lobes.

“What’s wrong with him? ADHD?” Marla said looking up.

“I am not sure.” Rain stood and they both looked at me.

Rain placed her hand carefully but firmly onto the remote and pulled it from my hands. My eyes had gone blank and my mouth hung open, my thumb continued to press buttons that were no longer there.

“We have to get out of Boston.” Each word took my entire strength to get out.

That’s when I began to scream.

This post is part of the online serial novel “Future Crash” if you are looking for other chapters click here.
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I had never actually heard a flashbang before, but I had seen enough TV to know what was going on next door. Someone had just unleashed hell on the poor bastards that inhabited the apartment next to Rains, and even through the walls we could tell it was no party.

“Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, FUCK!”

She was a whirlwind, grabbing her bag, and then reaching under the couch to grab a small package wrapped in brown paper. It came away with the sound of tearing masking tape.  It was addressed to her, and the from address was a hospital room, it went into her pack which she slung over her shoulder with a practiced flick. She took only a second to secure her aviatrix helmet and goggles and then she looked at me.

She didn’t need for me to speak; the look of terror on my face spoke volumes.

“Back window, run, NOW!” She ordered.

She pried open the one and only window in her apartment and quickly jumped out. The apartment was on the first floor and it was only a couple feet to the ground. The air outside was muggy and warm.

Rain gripped my arm painfully and led me towards a large dumpster behind the apartment complex, a quick glance behind me showed grey smoke pouring out of the window next door.

“I lied on all my paperwork, I just hope they don’t hurt the neighbors” Rain explained quickly as we snuck towards a small alley that led out to the main road.

“Fuck, I didn’t think they would be this interested, or come this soon, fuck!” She hissed under her breath.

We had only gone about a block when walking started to feel like drowning, I was not ready for anything more than sitting, eating and sleeping.

“Rain, not to be a downer, but I am not going to be able to go much further.” I managed to wheeze.

Looking left and right she once again grabbed my arm and started leading me down the street. We entered a small building that had a large T painted on it. The sickly warm air of the Boston T hit my face and nose causing me to cough. A stream of people pushed up and out of the subway, happy to be entering the relative cool of the air above.

Rain reached into her bag and handed me a small white card that had a small cartoon man on it. She then found one for herself, we pressed the tiny RFID tag in the card up against a reader and with a “boop” the doors slid open.

We were adrift in a sea of people, Rain held my hand, some of her tattoos spilled out onto the back of her hands. She herded me into a train with a red stripe down the side, the outbound to Braintree.

“I know a person we can stay with till this blows over.” We sat down in the blessedly air conditioned train, a strange smirk on her face.

“What exactly is ‘this’?” I asked trying not to sound too ungrateful towards the woman who had recently saved my life.

She looked at me, her face changing abruptly to a mask of confusion and fear. “I uhh, borrowed some money from these guys. Only a couple thousand, you know, with all the economic bullshit going on I needed it to help someone out of a jam.”

My brain suddenly felt, itchy, like a small rodent was crawling around inside my head. “That’s why you were going to jump off the bridge, because she died, and you couldn’t help her.” The words ran out of me.

“How the fuck do you know that!” She spat, tears welling up in her eyes, “Are you some kind of fuckin weirdo stalker?” She pulled away from me, I could see it in her eyes, she wanted to hurt me, she could have too, years of carrying heavy bags, and riding hard through Boston traffic had made her strong. She was getting ready to fight or flee.

“Wait! I am not a weirdo I promise.” People were starting to look at us. It is not every day a skinny corpse and a punk rock prep schooler get in a fight on the T. I leaned in closer and spoke quietly. “I promise, it’s just something I can do, if you give me enough data points, I can calculate a prime projection based on optimal probability.”

“What the fuck does that mean in English.” Unaware and uncaring about the stares of the other passengers.

“I am not sure how it works, but if I get enough information about something, I can ‘know’ stuff about it. Like you, I didn’t know enough about you to know all the pieces, but when you said that it gave me enough information, and well, it just shoots out of me, I can’t always control it.” I was trying to whisper. It wasn’t working.

I placed my hand on hers; she jerked a little but didn’t make me move it. “I am glad you didn’t jump, I would be dead right now if you hadn’t”

The trains started to slow, which was accompanied by a horrific squealing noise as the brakes hungrily gummed the wheels. A sound like steal fingernail running along the worlds largest chalk board, god I hated the T.

“This is our stop.” She stood up, letting my hand go. I couldn’t tell if she was pissed off or just mulling over what I had told her. We quickly exited the train into the sweltering North Quincy T Stop. People moved swiftly towards the exits to escape the oppressive dead air underground.

The escalator was broken and so we had to climb several flights of stairs. It was slow and grueling. When we reached the top I had to take a break. We sat in silence.

How had I known her mother had died in the hospital, unable to get the medicine she needed to fight her cancer? My thoughts wandered, I started to wonder about what had happened at her apartment. What kind of people go through all the trouble of doing a full on ninja assault on an apartment just to get money back from a bike messenger? How much money was ‘a couple thousand’?

After I had rested, we walked north slowly. We crossed over a bridge and I could see the train bridge we had just rode over to my right, some daring kid had crawled out and scrawled his tag 7 feet high with shiny silver paint. That ledge had to be just a couple feet wide, and the water was a long way down. That’s some commitment to your art.

We rested again at a small gas station at the base of the bridge, Rain bought me a Gatorade and I drank it slowly. We had walked about a mile, and I was absolutely exhausted. I sat sweating in the warm winter sun. Dead weeds grew up between my feet, seems I wasn’t the only one hating this heat.

We walked behind the gas station to a small apartment; Rain stopped and looked at me.

“I am sorry I called you are weirdo stalker on the T. I was just a little freaked out that you, could like read my mind and shit.” She paused, looked down at her feet then back at me. I could tell this was not the end of this conversation.

“One more thing, this girl we are about to meet, she is umm a little strange.”

“Strange?”

She knocked on the door, then turned back to me.

“Well let’s just say she marches to her own drummer. Oh, and we have sex once in a while.”

This post is part of the online serial novel “Future Crash” if you are looking for other chapters click here.
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“Jesus Christ man you need to stop fuckin passing out.”

Memories washed over my brain like someone was basting it like a turkey. My head felt like someone had been playing soccer with it, and for some reason my mouth tasted like pennies. A quick internal diagnostic revealed that I had foolishly bit the inside of my mouth on the way down.

I opened my eyes to see Rain sitting next to me as I lay on the couch.

“Hi, yea sorry, you must think I am a real weakling.” I sat up slowly. She took that moment to stand and look at me sternly.

“Ok listen, your not going to fuckin die on the couch, for some stupid ass reason I dragged your ass home, and now well, you owe me. You know like in those Chinese movies, I saved your life so now you owe me a favor.” She looked serious.

“Umm” I sputtered, talking made my head feel like my brain was vibrating painfully inside my skull.

“You need to eat and then sleep.”

Rain made me some pasta and some steamed carrots. After she made sure I was full enough I was made to drink a Nalgene of water, then she forced me to lie down. It didn’t take long before I passed out.

It wasn’t like falling asleep it was like falling off a cliff. I slept like an inanimate object. My body was in maintenance mode. Repairing, and recharging. I don’t know how long I slept but it felt like a long time. I awoke to find the one room apartment empty, Rain was gone and so was her bike. A note was attached to the apple crate in front of me.

“I left some more ramen noodles on the stove, had to go to work, be back at 4pm” It was signed “R.” Why was she being so nice to me? It seemed like part of my brain new the reason, but refused to spit it out. Something to do with her flying, no not flying falling. I was very frustrated with my brains inability to function.

I took a chance and stood up. Standing with out passing out, check. I looked at the clock and saw that it was almost 4pm. Nothing like a 20 hour nap to revive you. I made myself a bowl of ramen noodles and ate them quickly, enjoying the salty goodness. A man could get used to this eating and sleeping thing. I hadn’t felt this good in months. As I finished slurping up the last bit of broth, I heard a rustling of keys at the door.

“Hey you woke up, good” She said as she placed her bike against one wall, and dropped a messenger bag off her shoulder. She was sweaty and dirty, dressed in a pair of Capri black jeans, and wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a guitar on it, her hair was still tucked up under that aviatrix cap. Her colorful tattoos, a myriad of flowers, demon women, and a million other things covered both arms like sleeves.

“Hi, thanks for letting me crash here last night.”

That strange glassy look returned to her eyes briefly, and she said “You need to stop fuckin thanking me for doing what anyone would do, now hold on a second I have to get out of my riding gear” This apparently meant that she was going to take a shower, I sat on the couch and listened to the shower run.

Her apartment was small, the walls covered with posters for bands I had never heard of. A couch, a couple shelves and a small crate were all the furniture. A couple bike frames, wheels, and other random bike parts leaned up against one wall. Some tools, and a couple bike parts catalogs sat on the apple crate.

When she returned to the main room she was once again dressed like some catholic school girl/punk rocker hybrid. She still had that funny hat on, the goggles on the top of her head. Her blond/brown hair fell out of the helmet on the sides and the back. The army boots were back, this time the fishnets were red instead of black.

She sat on the couch. We talked about her job. She worked as a messenger in downtown Boston. She was one those crazy people you see hauling packages all over town on bicycle. I always thought it must take some sort of brain defect to ride your bike around in city traffic. It seemed her currier company was one of the few places doing alright in this economic shit storm. Bicycles don’t need gas.

I let her talk, choosing not to say much about myself. Mentioning only my mother in Ohio, and how I had only been living in Boston for a while. She told me she was from the city and had grown up here. She didn’t mention her family.

She made us some vegetable dish comprised of sweet potatoes and some sort of squash. It was hearty and filled me up. After the initial small talk was over, we sat awkwardly on her couch. The conversation had come to one of those pauses. She fidgeted with the couch. I looked down and I saw a small airplane tattoo on her arm.

Seeing that small plane seemed to knock something loose in my head. A feeling I had been having, like I had to sneeze but not being able too, vanished. The memory of Rain falling, her hair and the straps of her helmet flying behind her as she soared through the air, exploded into my head.

“Rain, I know why you were on that bridge.” It flowed out of my mouth before I could think.

She looked at me, her face suddenly grim. “What do you mean?”

“You were going to jump off that bridge; you were going to kill yourself.”

She looked like she was going to cry. I wanted to reassure her, tell her that I was going to do the same thing. I wanted to help her in the way she had helped me.

Before anyone could say anything the sound of wood breaking filled the air followed instantly by a monstrous ear popping crash from the apartment next door. Men could be heard screaming, bits of plaster fell off the wall. The apartment started to fill with the rotten egg small of sulfur. Something had exploded next door.

She shot up, grabbing her messenger bag and started running towards the back window.

“Shit! They found me! We have to get the fuck out of here now!”

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I suddenly felt very weak. Throwing up was fighting with passing out to see what I would do next. I can’t save the world, I can’t even feed myself. What was this inked up, punker with an Amelia Earhart complex talking about?

“Save the world? You have to be kidding”

Of all the reactions to my incredulity I wasn’t expecting the one I got. A look of disheartened sadness flashed briefly through her eyes and was gone.

“Well whatever, do you still want those ramen noodles?”

Do drowning people want air? The simple stupid needs of the flesh suddenly came pouring into me. Where had I been? What had I been doing? It didn’t matter at that point. I was so hungry it felt like my stomach was trying to eat my lungs.

“Yes, please.”

She started boiling some water, and ripping open the familiar packets of dry noodles. It was less than 10 minutes before a steaming pile of oriental flavor Top Ramen was plunked down in front of me.

“You have to get the Top Ramen brand, not the Maruchan brand. The Maruchan has beef powder in it.” Rain announced at she sat a fork down next to me.

“Fuck that shit.” She added, as an afterthought.

“You’re a vegetarian I take it?”

She responded with a sort of shrug that said “isn’t it obvious?” I couldn’t really be bothered to notice at that point. I almost burned my lips off in an effort to get at the noodles. Never before in my life had food looked so good.

Rain sat down across from me on a stool made from an old apple crate. Slats of old wood painted with the smiling face of some blond boy grinning from ear to ear holding a giant green apple. Now I understood how someone could be that happy about apples.

What I had been doing on that bridge suddenly started to wash over me. Was I really going to kill myself? I raised my head in mid swallow.

“About the bridge, umm… thanks. I am not really sure what I was thinking, but I am glad you saved my life.”

It came out awkwardly through a mouthful of noodles. She looked at me tilting her head to one side as if she was pondering a response and said simply.

“No problem, eat your soup and then we have to do something about that stink coming off you. My old dog got sprayed by a fuckin skunk once, maybe we could cover you with tomato juice?”

It wasn’t a smile, but a slight uplifting of her eyes that said she was trying to lighten the mood a bit.

“How about a shower?” I asked tilting the bowl to slurp the last of the salty broth.

The bathroom was just big enough for a single person, a stand up shower, a small sink and a toilet. I stood for a long time under the warm water, letting it fall over me. Something had changed. I felt…different, like some part of me had been turned down, or turned off. Flashes of memory would strike out at me, making me shiver.

Like a TV left on for too long, the memory of my past life had formed a ghost image in my brain. The data, the streams of words, images, and video echoed in my head. Is this what drug users feel like when they are coming down? I finished washing myself and stepped out of the shower.

Wiping my hand across the mirror I looked at myself for the first time in weeks. Who was this zombie standing in front of me? I looked like shit. Were those my eyes staring back from sunken pits? They had shown us pictures of people like this in history class. People who had survived concentration camps.

I looked down and saw that Rain had left me a clean pair of jeans and my army jacket. The pants were small, but they still hung off of me. I walked into the other room to find her working on a bicycle.

“Feel better?”

“Yea, thanks for the pants. Rain can I ask you something?”

She stood up, wiping grease on a bandana stuffed in her pocket.

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

For a brief moment her eyes got glassy and I thought she might cry, then in a calm voice she said.

“What, a person can’t be decent anymore? You obviously needed fuckin help, and well… I was there and well…here we are.”

She said it with a finality that made me reluctant to push the matter further. I was thinking about asking her for some more noodles when my head started to feel kind of strange.

The vertigo came fast and hard upending the world and making me feel like someone had violently kicked my legs out from under me. Just before the ground came rushing up to meet my head I had a very clear vision of Rain falling, her skirt flapping in the wind, the goggles from her aviatrix helmet pulled down over her eyes.