SSCS 03: Installment 18 of 35
Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About
This is Installment 18 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…
While I was lost in those (not) thoughts, the bus stopped, and someone else got on. Someone tall and thin, carrying some sort of stick or cane. They had a thick mane of hair, the color indistinct in the darkness. It spilled out around their head and trailed down past their shoulders.
…Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About
Installment 18: 21.0114
“Jhaani.”
My name wasn’t actually spoken, but I heard it anyway, in the shushing sound of the bus-door closing, in the sound of nearby traffic and the brakes releasing. The new passenger hadn’t found a seat yet, was mostly a silhouette standing in the middle of the aisle, maybe facing me, maybe saying my name inside a susurrus so low only I could hear it. No one else on the bus appeared to be watching the new stranger, though there were few of us and all looking like little more than lumpy shadows in the dimness.
I made myself look out the window, lean against it and make tired shapes out of the dots of the city lights sparking on outside, counting the stops until home.
When I forgot myself and looked back, the tall stranger was right beside me, standing in the aisle next to my seat.
“Jhaani.” My name like a rushing in my ears, but louder this time, with a low grumble underneath.
“Go away.” My lips shaped the words, while my fingers clutched tight around the dandelion texture plate in my lap, the edges cold and sharp. It couldn’t protect me, but neither could I make myself let it go. I shook my head, tried to make myself look away out the window again. But then, for a flashing moment of time, the sound of rain thundered loud all around, filled the view out the window with bright pounding, and a pain speared through my arm. Then it was gone, and the stranger was leaning over me, holding my arm in a tight, cold grip.
Looking up, I could barely tell what I saw. The long mane of hair falling forward, almost brushing my face. No features visible except the glint of huge, sharp teeth. Still gripping my arm, the stranger lifted the cane in their other hand, and brought it down on the floor of the aisle with a loud, sharp crack.
And I slipped, falling from my place slumped at the kitchen table with a terrifying crash caused by the texture plate falling to the floor with me.
And the door to the flat opened in a jangle of keys and quiet curses, Nina struggling inside with a stack of rice boxes tottering in her arms. When she saw me on the floor, my flat-mate gave a double-take and almost dropped them again, but recovered, got the door shoved shut and latched, and made it to the table with her boxes before it was too late.
“Jhaani? What are you doing? Why aren’t you in bed?” Nina worked the nightshift at a factory across town in the other direction. Most days we weren’t even positive the other one still lived here.
“I don’t…” I leveraged myself halfway up, wincing to feel a deep ache that warned of some real hurt in my arm this time. But Nina wasn’t watching.
“That’s pretty.” She bent and plucked the dandelion texture plate up from the floor at my knees. “I didn’t know you guys made anything like this.” She studied it, looking with her long, narrow eyes, while her long, pale fingers gently probed the raised design.
“No, ah…” I got creakily to my feet, which felt like they’d fallen asleep. “They moved me to a different factory a few days ago.” I gestured to my (very wrinkled) indigo tunic, which got Nina to cock her head, but make no other response. “That was in with some of the new tools they gave me to use.”
At this, Nina smiled. “It’s a good one. Don’t lose it.” And she handed it back to me. “I got three-days-worth of lunch boxes for both of us,” she said, turning back to the rice boxes she’d piled on the table and moving to shove them into our squat, old fridge. “I meant to do it yesterday, but then I saw there were a couple still left. Did you forget to take yours?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
Nina just shook her head and flashed me a puzzled smile.
Back in my room, I tucked the dandelion plate back into the big front pocket of my tunic, before pulling it off carefully over my head. Nina back meant I only had an hour or two before I had to get up to catch the bus back to the factory. Or maybe I’d have another black-out and just wake up back in front of the bell Template. I wanted the chance to change first.
My arm was stiff, though, aching and burning somewhere deep. Now that it was bare, I turned it over, and found, hooking around the back of the elbow, an angry red scar that hadn’t been there before. It traced a long line down toward the outside of my wrist, the edges looking like they’d started healing days ago, but with a faint mottling, a foreign texture I couldn’t place.