SSCS 03: Installment 13 of 35
Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About
This is Installment 13 of this year’s SSCS. If you want to start at the beginning of ‘Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About’, go here! If you want to know what the heck an SSCS is, go here!
Previously…
Once I’d got my footing steadier, I finally looked up, to find we’d reached the end of the Factory wall and that the cross-avenue here was broad and straight, maybe straight enough to see all the way to the River. I couldn’t see quite that far, though, because the clouds had lowered and there was a thin curtain of rain marching up the street toward us.
…Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About
Installment 13: 20.0502
“Oh, no,” Jack laughed, and grabbed my hand. “Quick. It’s not too far.” And he pulled me into a run.
I stumbled three steps in, pulling him off-balance, but he didn’t let me go, his hand hard and warm around mine, his white teeth flashing back at me. We ran, but not fast enough, the rain sweeping toward us just as fast. After we hit the curtain of it, we had to dodge across a street and halfway down the last block with the water falling cold and bright down on us. It shimmered in the air, a break in the clouds letting the sunlight fall through. Jack pulled on the red-painted handle of the shop just as the rain splotches on the sidewalk were joining together into the solid color of wet.
A bell overhead jangled as the door came shut behind us, and then a sweeter, little bell jingled back a ‘welcome’ from the smiling woman behind the counter. She had a bright pattern stitched along the hem-edges of her tunic that reminded me of stars, despite the rich-brown shop-keeper tunic background. I blinked and made myself see plum blossoms instead. Stars would be too strange a choice for a cozy noodle shop like this.
There were several customers ahead of us, so we waited – silently, because my brain still hadn’t figured out how to talk to Jack properly, and he seemed perfectly at ease without words. The sound of the rain grew louder, and only one more group of three came in behind us. By the time we were taking our bowls to the counter along the wall to eat and I had finally mustered up the nerve to speak, I had to say my question twice, my voice too soft beneath the steady drumming. “How long have you been at the factory?” I wasn’t yelling it, but my voice felt tight and awkward enough that it felt like I was.
Jack flashed me another white smile, smaller this time, his long lashes making him look almost shy. “Just over a month. I was working at a factory in the south city when one day they told me I had to transfer up here. This is a lot more interesting, though. Back there I was mostly painting shop signs, and we usually didn’t even get to do much embellishment work. Where were you?” He twirled up a big mouthful of noodles, but kept his eyes up on me.
“Um. I was out in the east block,” I answered, forcing my voice to be loud enough over the rain. I wasn’t sure what I should say about my last factory, about not even being artisan class until a couple days ago. I still had no idea what I was really doing here, or why I’d been sent away.
Before I could think of a better answer, though, Jack frowned, looking past me toward the window. “What’s wrong?” I half turned in my seat. All I could see out the window now was rain, coming down a lot thicker than when we’d got here. A cold, little shudder walked its way up my back and I glanced back at Jack.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I thought there was something.” His eyes flicked to me, nervous now. I just looked back at him, neither of us saying the fear that was rising up between us. And no one else in the shop was talking now either. Except for the hard pounding of the rain, it would have been silent, all of us watching out the windows. The rain was hitting the sidewalk hard enough to come bouncing up again, filling the view with a hard, white rain mist.
And then something dark went by fast, almost too fast to properly see, so that what I thought I’d seen was a lion, running, with its mane plastered down around its neck making it look strangely skinny. It had been mostly a shadow against the rain.
And then another went by, just as quick. By now, the dread was such a hard knot in my belly, that I didn’t even realize I was squeezing Jack’s hand tight in my own until he spoke again. “Aren’t they bigger than that?” His voice was pitched so that it should have been too quiet for me to hear. “Aren’t they –” We squeezed each other’s hands tighter. Great Fish – terrible and monstrous – were supposedly much bigger than that, but if this rain had made the river flood… My voice was choked inside me. I could only shake my head, denying.