Frankentown (14 page)

On his lower hip he found a strange bloody symbol, as though he was tagged, or even branded. He felt, but couldn’t see the strange tattoo-like burn-marks on his back.
His entire body hurt, equally all over.
The water wasn’t even hot, but it burned his body anyway in hypothermic hot flashes.

Going grocery shopping has been few and far in between, so there was no soap or shower gel, or shampoo, only an old sponge and toothpaste which was of no use either. Either way, there was too much pain from the bruising and the cuts for him to even want to attempt lathering.

Round and round the red drain went.

Slowly getting out of the shower, his bathrobe provided him with some comfort of familiarity in such a strange time. There was no way he’d be able to towel off if he couldn’t even lather, so he’d have to dry, the slow way.

 
After the shower, his reflection was not only bruised but now also burned and colored bright pink. The bruises on his body seemed to be in a pattern, perhaps even intentionally placed.
The bathrobe he soon bloodied up didn’t hurt as much, so he could venture down to the kitchen and brew himself a real mug of coffee and think about where to go from here.
When he got to the kitchen he picked up the phone to dial Allen, but his wife picked it up. When Frank asked where Allen is, she just said
“He just left the house for the campus.”

Frank said nothing. And soon he knew why.
“Are you okay Frank?”
“Yeah
…
yeah I’m okay
…
what do you mean?”
“Allen said he hasn’t seen you in over a month. Said you won’t return his phone calls, or show up to your own classes and lectures
…
”
Frank dropped the handset with a cling of a sudden realization.
He’d lost time.
What date is it?
He knew he’s been away but it didn’t feel any longer than maybe a few days.

Suddenly it occurred to him that it wasn’t the best idea to phone Allen. Not even home. If it was a month since he’d gone missing, and if he was indeed abducted by the army, the phones would surely be tapped.
It was commonly known that the largest phone operator, the PB&J phone company was in fact government owned.

So after calling Allen, or anyone, they’ll know he’s home. And it’s not at all unlikely they’ll come looking for him.
He quickly put on his glasses and the heaviest coat he could find on the coatrack, followed by a couple of painkillers.
It was time to get out of there.

Euclid avenue was interconnected with a series of small sub streets.
He was burned and hurting but he didn’t want to raise suspicion more than he wanted to conserve his pain threshold.
And not raising suspicion would have him reserved to the trailing of the backstreets; taking the long way around.

At the edge of the UC campus, he raised his awareness out of the most primal of fears:
to look out for potential danger.
When he didn’t see any on the way presenting itself, he sneaked past the campus line.

The campus police were aware of him by the time he got to the end of the second block. It was on this second block that Frank took a sharp turn inside.
 

Allen taught a botany class here, in 31D.

Heading down the long hall from the elevator, he could see the familiar door
 
where he’d usually pick up Allen for lunch. The bell rang and the students emerged out of the doors in a storm.

When Allen saw Frank in the door of his classroom his face went pale. He quickly went to the door with his index across his lips.
“What are you doing here?” Allen ‘whispered’ to a cowering Frank in the corner. Allen’s ‘whispering’ was equal to that of a typhoon.
But it was about 20
%
quieter than his normal voice.
“You know they’re looking for you?”

“Who? What? Why?”
Allen’s face showed cold and complete disbelief.

“Where have you been past month?

 
Where did you go?

 
I thought you were dead!”

“That makes sense” Frank said when he finally brought himself to speak.

“No wait, it doesn’t
…
”
 
Both of them then attempted to communicate only with their faces, which to others were mere weird looks, exchanged.
“I don’t think you have time to tell me
…
”
Allen gestured over to the blasted-glass window of the classroom door.
A uniformed silhouette was approaching.

“The door!” Allen yelled.
 

“Duck behind the desk.” Allen commanded. Frank dropped to the floor like a bag of potatoes, scurried under and pulled the chair closer.
The campus police man walked in, followed by another.

“Did you happen to see Professor Cabella?”
Allen made a thinking expression on his face that he himself never thought could possibly be convincing, but worked every time.
“No..” he said mulling his beard “..I haven’t seen Frank in about a month.
Have you seen him? Do you know where he is?”
The guard stared Allen in the eyes for several seconds and then left. Once the door closed, they waited several seconds to sigh.
“You’ve gotta get out of town, Frank. Tonight. This is the twelveth cop that’s asked me about you in the past two weeks."

There’s only one question left to answer
∴

Only one that matters
∴
"Are they pissed?"

Chapter Sixteen

Holiday

Frank stayed in his home a mere few hours, packing and catching up before leaving for the train. He packed two duffel bags; enough to carry and at the same time big enough to contain all of his necessities.
He wasn’t particularly interested in returning to Area 51.
Perhaps more importantly, he recalled the contract that prohibits disclosure under the pain of death.
Then he started feeling kind of faint, so he made himself a sandwich. If he’s been gone for a month and it only felt like a couple of days, how long could it have been since he’s eaten?

His stomach made a piteous gurgle, signaling time to eat and stock up on nutrition.

There was no staying here anymore,
he thought as he chewed on a bacon sandwich; the only thing he could construct from the contents of his fridge.

It's time to go somewhere
and he figured the best way to do it would be to try to blend in, so before leaving he rummaged through his house to find the best disguise the house could afford him. One that wouldn't draw too much attention. He decided to disguise himself as an old man. All he needed was some acrylics, a brush and time and his hair was gray. Dark circles from watered down acrylics around his eyes accentuated his skull, making him look particularly old. In high-school he did makeup for the theater crew, just for the sake of impressing girls. Now he didn’t have to impress anyone, just pass for an older guy so he could escape. It worked.

To complete the look, he found the pair of glasses he inherited from his grandfather. They were big and clear, but the prescription rendered everything into a blur. Being the perfectionist he was, Frank went into the trouble of lighting a candle, heating up the frame a little to pop out the lenses so he could see.

Though he knew it very well, this is where the Achilles' heel of his disguise was, though he did compensate for this by wearing his grandfather's old fedora as well, to make it less noticable. Under the shade of the brim, nobody would hopefully notice the cosmetic status of his glasses, though his own glasses were in one of his duffel bags.
His leather shoes fit snug but he always enjoyed how they hugged his feet. These were the most efficient pair of shoes to wear, knowing there was no knowing when he’d return back home if ever.
Now that he had outcast status, he had to pack only what was absolutely necessary to survive, all of which fit into only two bags.
They had his whole life in them.* Even though the house he lived in was full of things, there were only a few that he considered truly his.

Autumn turned to s cold, pinching Fall.
He checked all his coat pockets and grabbed all the money he could find hidden around the house.

Credit cards make one trackable.

And on an army base, there wasn’t much to spend on. Their vending machines dispensed everything for free. What sweet times.
I might’ve even gained a little weight, being there
, he joked with himself.
He put on his leather jacket and long coat over to combat the harsh winds outside, but outside warm winds foretold of a coming thunderstorm.

He opened the backdoor and took out the two duffel bags before setting the alarm. When he came back out of the door, Katherine walked up the driveway.
 

Katherine turned into his lot from the sidewalk and made for the backdoor.

“There you are!” she said flirtatiously.
She wore bunny slippers, a fluffy bright red robe and nothing underneath it.

Her soft curves made Frank temporarily drunk. But he remembered that he better get going. And it’s probably better she doesn’t get involved.
“Kathy,” he grinned nervously as she reached out to hug him, but was lost for further words, for the soft lines of her decadent body.
Kathy smiled a beautiful smile. She was a stupendous tigress and a caring woman. He could stay with her forever.
We should tell her husband we’re
…

RUN
∴
Before Frank could get completely seduced by this sexual sorceress, he pelted for the front gate of his lot, leaving poor Kathy to feel rejected and retract back to her home.
As he ran down the street, he passed a green car parked a block and half down. Its engine was off but someone lied inside, on a lowered front seat.

Eh, just someone dozing in their car
∴
Frank could relate to the desire for solidarity of the man sleeping alone in a closed and probably warm automobile. He had the Euclid house all to himself now, affording him all the solidarity one could ever want, and has since gotten used to it.

He intended to make for the train station on foot, but the winds were too strong and the heavy leather duffel bags kept falling off his shoulders. Remembering his grandfather’s old motorbike that his dad fixed up with Lyle, he realized there was a way of escaping attention that was both more and less conspicuous at the same time. But it was not deemed road-safe anymore.
After Frank lost his entire family, he had zero interest in riding it, though he’d wished for it for such a long time before.

He sneaked back carefully, hiding and looking over corners to make sure Kathy doesn’t see him. It would be far too much to explain and she would seduce him again. When coast appeared to be clear, he sneaked back in through the kitchen entrance to switch the long coat for his fur coat, put both duffel bags in an old leather suitcase and set out with it secured to the back. He rolled the motorcycle a little down the hill before he kickstarted the engine. It started right up without an issue.

The downtown was lit with golden lamps and full of busy people. With the helmet on, nobody could recognize him by his face or certainly his clothes.

He would hide in plain sight.
Though he’s never had much of an understanding as to why, he’s always felt short of breath after a while in large crowds for as long as he could remember.
 

Before leaving the Bay Area, he took a short trip west toward the water. He had a plan. To ensure that he doesn’t lose his keys on the way, he would hide them in a hard-to-reach place somewhere.
The drainpipe was too obvious now. He had a plan.

He would hide them inside a rock among thousands of rocks in one of the pier parks, and he had just the rock for the part.

Once on a dive at a rock formation off the coast of Yonaguni island of Japan he found a strange underwater area of enormous flat rocks, he also found a peculiar round stone, which though large, was not too big to be picked up and taken to shore. On shore he tried to split it open, and a perfect pearl shell of an ammonite came loose like a cereal toy. The fossil was permanently kept in the campus museum. Frank at least kept the two halves as bookends, but now he repurposed them to hide his house key.

When he got to Berkeley marina, he drove off to the side, far away from the hot dog stand where nobody ever went. Without turning off the engine, he jumped off the bike, quickly hid the rock among the thousands of others that lined the marina, and drove off with a purple sunset at his back.

By the time he headed back, it had already gotten dark.

It was an electrical night. Almost every corner Frank turned, someone was looking over their shoulder.
A few times, he was even convinced he heard buzzes of a police walkie talkie.

He was having one of his paranoid fits.
 
And He knew it.

The station parking lot was full, so he left the motorcycle on his allocated campus parking spot and walked the rest of the way.
The getup still hadn’t harbored any suspicion.

It was really cold outside and it wasn’t a lot warmer at the station, which was only part closed. Lights of the night guided his way to the over-designed train station. It was architecturally structured from great sandstone pillars in the early 30’s, with an egyptian twist to it.
 

The architect must have had a lot of fun.

As he passed by the campus box-newsstands, he noticed his picture on the front of the local newspaper. It was a good one.
Fortunately he didn’t look much like himself.

FIRST E.T. MURDERED

PEACE TREATY THREATENED

The photo on the cover was the one Frank had to take for his campus ID card. It was shot by a crappy webcam and wasn’t very flattering, but it’s been in the system since they took his picture on his first day of the freshman year.

He had much longer hair then, and a weird, cheap looking haircut.
I was defending myself. But I did kill the alien.

The second skin burst at the back
∴

Then, of course, the alien disappeared.

He skipped over the part of the papers that mentioned how dangerous he is and all about his family’s mysterious disappearance;

The ETR is said to have recovered the body but declined to comment on the possible consequences this may have.
 
The public is asked to be patient and remain in their homes as much as possible until the suspect has been tracked down.