Time Spent (17 page)

______________________

Heather couldn't move anymore. She was the
rooftop. She was the wind. She was the sparks in the air. She was
wasting away, vanishing.

"Simon," she called through a throat that
wasn't there anymore, "It's happening again. It's happening
againnnn!"

At the center of the aperture in the sky, a
light formed, this one blood red.

A figure stepped forth.

The strange figure stepped down as if
walking down a flight of stairs, only there were no stairs. Its
legs moved gracefully downward until it stood on the roof.

______________________

Heather was checking her hair when she
realized the tickets were no longer tucked into the corner of the
mirror.

"Where are the tickets?" she asked her
reflection. Her eyes scanned the dresser. She opened the vanity
drawers. She looked over the bed. She checked the night stand. They
were nowhere to be found.

"Mom!" she called. "Have you seen my concert
tickets?"

She began to be a bit frantic. She looked
under the bed, in the night stand drawer, in her dresser, in her
closet.

"They're gone," her mother said from the
doorway.

"What?" Heather said, facing her.
"WHAT?"

"I tore them up," her mother said. "You're
not going."

"What? WHY? Why would you DO that?"

"I know it doesn't seem like it now, but I
think it's for the best. You're always losing yourself, escaping.
It's not good for you."

"I'M always escaping?" Heather couldn't
believe her ears. "Oh my god, are you serious? I'm always escaping?
You're the one who can't stop drinking! You're the one who's
falling down drunk all the time!"

Her mother clasped her hands together. "I
know, baby. I know."

"All those nights you came home drunk...with
those men...those
horrible men
..."

Her mother closed her eyes, tears spilling
down her cheeks. She tried to collect herself. "I have to go to a
meeting, baby. We'll talk about it when I get back."

"I don't WANT to talk to you about it! I
hate you! I HATE YOU! I'm GLAD they hit you! I wish they would have
hit you HARDER! I wish you were DEAD!"

Sarah shook her head. "This isn't you. This
is Katie. Can't you see it, baby? It's like you're not even
there...you just...latch onto whoever is around you..."

Heather slammed the door and leaped on to
her bed, burying her head in her pillow.

______________________

They reached the building and ran up the
stairs to the rooftop. The sky had darkened, and wind was screaming
around the rooftop. Others had gathered there. Most Heather
recognized immediately: Mia, Becca, Tyler, and Zachary were there.
Some she didn't know.

A hand came up over the side of the roof:
black, matted with fur.

"SIMON!" Heather screamed.

Simon clambered up to the roof. His gorilla
form had grown much larger, more wild-looking. He leapt across the
roof to land next to her.

Heather wrapped her arms around him. Her
body shifted to be like his. "I was so worried."

"I'm okay," he said. "I'm okay."

A spark leapt between Mia and the pale white
girl standing with her. The spark leapt outward, and soon sparks
were jumping between all the people standing on the rooftop.

"What's happening?" Heather asked.

"I don't know," Simon said. "But at least
we're together."

She nodded, embracing him with her gorilla
arms.

Without warning, images flashed in her mind:
A hole in the sky. Simon passing through it. Her own body made of
stone, still as a statue. A strange, patchwork world. Finally, a
woman with flowing red hair and red eyes.
The red lady,
Heather realized. The woman was in the middle of them all, and they
were fighting her, or trying to fight her.

"She's killing us," Heather whispered.

"What?" Simon asked. "Who's killing us?
Who's she?"

Kevin appeared on the rooftop with a crack,
and the sparks began to grow in intensity.

"What's going on?" shrieked Heather. A spark
leapt from Simon's shoulder to hers, knocking them apart.

______________________

Heather's pillow was soaked from her sobs,
and her face was a sticky mess, when she heard the front door. Her
mother had returned.

She turned her sullen gaze to the door to
her room. Her mother had vowed to return to talk, and Heather
figured the closed door would not stop her.

Footsteps approached, followed by a thump
against the wall. Something slid down her wall to land on the
floor.

Heather slipped out of bed and cracked her
door.

Sarah was there, sitting on the floor
outside her room, eyes closed, slumped against the wall.

Heather's shoulders fell. "Mom...."

"Whuh?" Sarah slurred, her eyes fluttering
open. "What's wrong?"

"Come on," Heather said, reaching down to
lift her. Her mother's breath was thick with the overpowering smell
of scotch whisky.

Her mother tried to put her legs under her
to stand, but she was useless. Heather had to pull her up the wall
then put her mothers arm around her and hoist her to her feet.

"I'm sorry baby," Sarah said. "Sorry..."

"I know, mom."

She half-carried her mother to her bedroom,
and lowered her to the bed, unceremoniously dumping her when she
could no longer hold her up.

"Look at you," Sarah said.

Heather slipped her mother's shoes off and
rolled her onto her side.

"Nothing," Sarah said.

Heather stopped. "What?"

"Nothing. Just a little nothing." Sarah
began to snore.

Heather felt her face flush. She left her
mother's room, shutting the door behind her, and went back to her
own, where she continued to weep into her pillow until she
slept.

______________________

The figure seemed to be veiled by some kind
of visual fog. Sometimes it looked like a woman, and sometimes only
a shape in the fog. It was slim and strange looking, with large
blood red eyes. Heather thought she saw flowing red hair down its
back, but sometimes it only appeared to be a red glow.

The figure approached her. It looked at her
for a moment, as if considering what to do about her. Then it
reached out a hand for her forehead.

An inch from her forehead, the figure
paused.

"NO," it said in an echoing voice. It pulled
its finger back. "THERE IS POWER IN YOU. POWER TO TAKE THE MIGHT OF
THE LOST."

It tilted its head and appeared to ponder
her.

"YET YOU WILL NOT DO SO. IN THE END, YOUR
POWER WILL AMOUNT TO NOTHING."

Heather blew away into the wind, off the
rooftop and into the void and was gone.

Some time later, when there was time again,
and when there was a 'her' again, she opened new eyes.

______________________

Some time after the rooftop, she found
herself wandering down an unknown street. Her feet moved slowly,
stiffly, on the concrete, taking her down the street in lurching
steps. When she came to the payphone, her hand lifted sluggishly,
as though it belonged to someone else. She didn't lift the phone
handset from its cradle, just held it, and something inside her
head shifted.

"Hello?"
Her mother's voice came from
somewhere, echoing inside her right ear canal.
"Hello?"

At first, she said nothing.

"Heather? Oh God...Heather is that you?
Where are you, baby? Please tell me where you are."

"I'm not here," said Heather. "I'm not here
at all."

"Oh God, baby where are you? Is it that boy?
Are you with Simon? They say he doesn't live there anymore."

"You were right, mom. I am nothing. You were
right."

"Oh no, baby. No, no, no..."

Heather released the phone and the sound
stopped. She took a few more shambling steps, as the concrete
spread up her legs and through her body. Finally, she sank to her
knees, hands on her upper thighs, eyes downcast as the concrete
washed through her head and over her face. Her eyes were the last
to go, hardening in place as she stared at her reflection in a pool
on the sidewalk.

Heather saw nothing.

______________________

"This is all your fault!" Simon growled.

"Wha- ME?" Brandon raised his hands. "What
did I do?"

"She was in that store you were running! You
were keeping her, like some kind of pet! What did you do to
her?"

"I didn't-" Brandon let out an exasperated
breath. "I didn't know what else to do with her! She was all...like
a statue or something. I couldn't just leave her there in the
street."

Simon looked down, uncertain.

"And where were you, huh?" Brandon asked.
"Oh yeah, right. You were gone."

Simon released him and turned his back.

"You were just gone."

CHAPTER SEVEN

Again and again, Simon swung the baseball
bat. Up, and down. Up, and down.

Pieces shattered and flew away. The
satisfying sounds of destruction filled his ears. Up, and down. Up,
and down. He smashed and smashed, and howled his rage.

He was free.

Simon opened his eyes. The pain was less
now, had subsided sometime in the night, and he was able to handle
the light more easily. He still was unable to speak, and he still
cringed at times from the pain in his skull, but he'd been free of
the bandage for a while now and there seemed to be no bleeding or
seeping from the place on the back of his head where it had once
been.

He sat up and looked about the enclosure for
his fellow prisoners. At last he found them, sitting across on one
of the platforms they were provided to sit and play during the day.
At night, of course, they were herded into cages. Simon preferred
the cages, in a way, where he was secure from being pursued and
beaten by the big male, who seemed to have a perpetual need to
establish dominance.

The big male, called "Azizi" by their
handlers, was sunning himself on the platform, being tended to by
the two females, whose names Simon did not know or care to know.
The one part of Azizi's dominance that he appreciated was the fact
that the two females seemed to enjoy fawning over him too much to
turn their unwanted attentions in Simon's direction.

The beatings, however, those had to
stop.

Above the rocky enclosure wall, and the
smooth metal wall beyond that, families stood at the rail and
looked down on them, smiling, eating their popcorn and pointing at
the prisoners as if their imprisonment was the greatest thing
they'd ever seen.

Simon had had just about enough of that, as
well.

He stood at the mouth of the little "cave"
in the Gorilla Enclosure wall, which had been his home during the
daytime. He rarely emerged; to do so was surely to risk arousing
Azizi's wrath, but he did so now, drawing himself up to his full
height.

That he was bigger now was beyond question.
His gorilla form had been growing taller and more muscular, to the
point where it was getting difficult to cram himself into his cage
at night.

Simon chuffed a bit of air out of the hole
where his nose had once been. He did not plan on returning to that
cage much longer.

He stepped up to the platform, and bellowed
his challenge.

Azizi bolted upright, his head tilted to the
left. He looked baffled, Simon thought with a near chuckle. The two
females recognized that a fight was about to occur and backed away
to the rear corners of the platform, screeching.

When Azizi leapt from the platform to the
floor of the enclosure, Simon turned and bolted for his little
cave. Azizi was hot on his heels, bellowing his rage. Simon ran to
the back of the cave, where just out of sight he had hidden
something. It had taken him days to pry away some of the plastic
from the back of the cave, twisting it this way and that, wrapping
scraps of duct tape he had found here and there in the enclosure as
well as the cages they were kept in at night. It had been easy
enough to stick the scraps to his fur and then peel them
(painfully) away and add them to his little weapon. Finally though,
he had it, an instrument he might use to bring down his enemy.

Azizi followed him in without hesitation.
Simon leapt over him, bringing the plastic loop around his head and
squeezing it tight from behind. He dragged the big gorilla to the
ground, wrapping his legs around his waist and holding the plastic
loop he had made tight around his neck. Azizi struggled, scrabbling
at Simon and the plastic with his great paws, but unable to find
purchase. Simon squeezed and waited for him to pass out from lack
of oxygen.

"Simon?"

Simon started at the sound of his name,
floating down to him from somewhere above. There were several
patrons there, looking down at him: the same families he had seen
before. Who among these people could recognize him like this?

"It's me, Simon. It's me." The voice might
have come from a child, holding a bag of popcorn. "I saw you at the
military base. Those doctors, they hurt you, didn't they?"

With a rip, some of the duct tape came free
and Azizi wrenched away the plastic loop. Simon turned back to him,
but it was too late. The big ape brought down both massive hands on
his chest, knocking the wind out of him.

Simon hit the ground hard, and the big
gorilla was on him before he could get his breath back. Blow after
blow landed on his head.

Two handlers entered the enclosure, holding
tranquilizer guns. One of them aimed his rifle at Azizi, the other
at Simon. Simon felt the prick of the dart before he realized he
had been fired upon. Azizi fell flat on top of him, his head
lolling beside Simon's left ear.

As the world dissolved into a gray fog, he
could swear he heard Azizi whisper to him in a gravelly voice.
"Simon. It's me."