Friday Fiction: The Day Delphine Disappeared

THE DAY DELPHINE DISAPPEARED

 

          The tall, slender girl sat slightly askew in the oversized wheelchair and looked out from the hospital lobby, waiting for her mother to arrive. Outside the May day was already in the hundred plus range, and it was only a little after eleven o'clock. She took a sip from the bottle of water they had given her as a parting gift and contemplated her options.

          The laptop at her side seemed heavy with all the schoolwork that was piling up inside. The first week she was in she hadn't been allowed to have it; after that it didn't seem important to keep up with the cascading assignments. To be fair, she hadn't been keeping up with her usual entertainments and diversions, either. Blogs, websites, and movies were queuing up unviewed. A weekend could clear the homework, a week the froth of amusements. She wasn't sure she had time for either.

          "Delphine Waters?"

          She looked around. A young man wearing a scrubs jacket and carrying a clipboard had walked up to her side. He seemed about thirty; his haircut was almost ten years out of date, his clothes under the scrubs anonymously professional. He clicked a pen and looked at her with the practiced sympathy of a bureaucrat.

          She lifted her wrist where the papery plastic ID bracelet flapped around in annoying circles. "Yeah, I'm Delphine. Is there a problem?" she said, voice weary.

          "I wonder if we could do a few last things before you leave? Just some questions, mostly."

          "Shoot," she said, looking away through the glass at the parking lot. "It's not like I'm doing a whole lot else."

          "Great," he said, making a mark on the papers that rattled messily on the clipboard. His manner switched automatically from breezy to serious and solicitous. "First of all, Delphine, do you mind if I take your pulse?"

          "Knock yourself out." She held up her non-tagged left hand. When he took it his broad hand she felt an odd thrill, a sensation she hadn't experienced with any other hospital personnel this whole time. She lifted her head and straightened up, at last looking at him closely.

          He held her wrist lightly in his fist. The controlled strength of his hand was surprising. She felt that he could easily snap her arm like a twig between his fingers. His bright blue eyes were hooded as he consulted the silver pocket watch cupped in his other hand. She looked at it in surprise.

          "You some kind of steampunk?" she asked.

          "Hm? Oh, no." He put the watch away. He still held her arm, though, looking from the lacerations criss-crossing the flesh all the way up to her elbow to the matching set on her right arm. His face was neutral. "You do this?"

          She tore the arm out of his hand and huddled it to her side.

          "I thought you guys weren't supposed to ask questions like that," she said angrily. After a bit she added, "Not that it's any of your business, but no, I didn't."

          "I didn't think so," he said, making another note on the clipboard. "Thought I'd ask, though, because you seemed sort of, well, depressed, and I just need to cover all possibilities." He gazed at the rumpled papers. "Are you, Delphine, bullied at school?"

          "Yes," she said, then added hastily, "Well, not by other students. My friends are. My bullies are mostly the teachers." She looked at her arms. "This has nothing to do with that."

          "I didn't think so," he said again, making another note. "Want to tell me about your ring? A little unusual for a girl like you, isn't it?"

          Her left hand reflexively flew to her right to cover it, then she took it away defiantly and grasped the wheelchair arms. The ring was made of bright steel in the shape of a gaping death's-head, her finger thrust through the band made by the jaw. Its crown was the knobby skull, gazing out on the world with empty eyes.

          "That's kind of a sexist remark," she said evasively.

          "Oh, I didn't mean it like that," he said. "I just meant that you don't seem particularly Goth or metal to me. Though I suppose that might sound a little judgmental as well." He grinned.

          She rapped the metal ring hard on the wheelchair. It echoed like a gunshot in the quiet lobby. At the check-in desk, an elderly nurse lifted a bespectacled, startled face like a grazing deer.

          "It gets the job done," Delphine said, with what she hoped was quiet menace.

          "And not as obvious as brass knuckles," he said matter-of-factly. "My great-grandmother used a hat-pin." He flipped the stapled page on top, folding it over. Through it she could see his black pen marks furrowing the paper, and the bold letters across the top, seen backwards, that read DEA.

          "Drug Enforcement Administration?" she frowned. "I ain't no druggie."

          He looked at her, surprised, then looked down at his forms. "Oh," he said, catching on. "No, not that DEA. People have muddled us up before. It can be confusing, and to be fair, they've had much more publicity. But we're actually older."

          Delphine straightened up, wedging herself as far as she could away from the man.

          "Who are you?" she demanded. "You're not hospital staff. I think you'd better show me some ID."

          "Glad to, miss, if you'll answer just one more question." She glared at him defensively, her mouth a grim line of denial and fists balled ready in her lap. He looked at her straight in the eyes, unblinking. "Have you, Delphine, had a recent encounter with a strange, inexplicable, or paranormal phenomenon in any way beyond the boundaries of normal explanation, possibly of a life-threatening nature?" He paused. "Because if you have, I'm here to help."

          She looked at him, face suddenly open with ambushed acknowledgement.

          "I think you'd better show me some ID," she repeated hollowly.

          "Absolutely," he said. He pulled out his wallet and opened it to show a laminated photo on a card, crawling with information and codes, stamped with gold leaf. On the other side of the billfold was a shiny black metallic badge with blue hi-lights. He held it out long enough for her to get a good look, then drew out a slip of cardboard and tucked the wallet away. "Here," he said, handing the card over. "You can keep that."

          She looked at it and read:

                                                BLAKE MARTIN

                                         Paraskills Agent

                             Department of Extranatural Affairs

                                                (www.bmar@bos.gov)

She shot her eyes up at the man. "Extranatural?" she asked.

          "Yep," he said. His eyes darted around. "Look, we probably don't have much time before your mom picks you up. Hospitals are neutral ground, along with schools and churches, but if they don't get what they want, well... and once you leave here, I couldn't vouch for your safety. "

          "Wish I'd known that before," Delphine said bitterly, tossing her hair. "It would have saved me some bad nights, worrying ..."

          "No time for that," Blake said hurriedly. "Look, I'll give you the quick version now, and you can contact me later," he gestured at the card, then scanned the blistering drive-through outside. He frowned. "If you can."

          He bent down, one hand on the wheelchair arm, and talked to her low and earnestly for ten minutes, every now and then looking up to scan the area. At the end he handed her a folded paper.

          "Keep it," he said. "It should confuse them a while, at least on one level. I'm going out the back way, and that should grab their attention for a bit, too. Good luck, Delphine. Think about what I said."

          Delphine watched him leave. When she turned back, Mom was there, pulling up under the car port in the family clunker. She waved absent-mindedly to her mother then looked over to signal the nurse, who had already picked up on her body language and was summoning an orderly to wheel her out, ready to be rid of her. The hospital doors opened like a furnace blast.

          "Hi, sweetie," her mom sang through her rolled down window. "How you feeling, hon?" She clicked open the passenger side of the front seat.

          "Okay," Delphine said. "I'd rather sit in the back, though."

          "Whatever you want, Delphie," her mom said. Mrs. Waters was in her mid-forties, a large good-looking woman who, in her daughter's opinion, had long ago settled on the ploy of rolling over and showing the world her belly in hopes that it would spare her. It was plain she wasn't going to look at this thing head-on.

          Delphine scrabbled into the back seat and hunkered down.

          "You want to get some lunch? You want some McDonald's or something? A change from that awful hospital food, huh?" Her mother laughed.

          "It was okay," Delphine said. She opened the folded paper Blake had given her. Drawn on it was a compass rose, with circles where north, south, east, and west should be. In the circles were rusty red blotches. A dozen arrows pointed away from the heart of the diagram.

          "Delphie," her mother said. There was something wary in her tone, as if she were about to touch an electrical wire. "Delphie, do you want to talk about it?"

          The girl put away the paper and opened her laptop.

          "Not right now," she said. "I want to go ahead and get a start on this homework."

          Mrs. Waters backed off in relief.

          "That's good. You get all caught up and work it out and then when school's out of the way we can buckle down and work on it. You know we want to do whatever's best for you, sweetie."

          "I know, Mom," she said. She tapped a few keys, and instead of opening her homework files, got on her messaging network. She wrote a short text:

          To the ABC Society: Out of hospital. Call meeting at Mr. Chezzi's immediately after school. IMPERATIVE. (signed) Your Glorious Leader.

          She contemplated it for a moment, then sent it off. She looked out the window. Somewhere to the north she could feel something searching, brooding and baffled. She was glad that the car was slanting away west from it, heading obliviously along the annihilating sun's blazing path.

 

 

          After MacDonald's, her mom let her off at the Walnut Springs Library. She passed almost immediately out the back, first taking the elevator to the second floor, then down the outside stairs. She caught the city bus and rode it for two circuits around town before getting down at the strip mall on the outskirts by the highway, almost abandoned in the afternoon heat. She made a stop at the ATM under the baking walkway. Then she slipped inside Mr. Chezzi's, bought a buffet plate but only got a glass of tea, and went to sit in the kids’ room in the back.

          She sat in the very farthest booth in the corner. At this time of day, the place was completely deserted. A continuous reel of cartoons played on the big screen, throwing flickering colored shadows over the fairy tale murals on the wall and mingling with the neon light from the game room. She sipped her tea and waited for school to let out.

          A couple of families had already drifted in when the first of her crew arrived. It was Byron, as she knew it would be. A pale, handsome boy, muscled, with dark eyes and red lips, everyone in school called him Mr. What-a-Waste. Not only was he homosexual and never denied it, he also declared that homosexuality was an aberration, like diabetes, and not something he was going to indulge. He got grief coming and going, from homophobes and the Queer Mafia alike. He came, tea in hand and a plate piled high with salad and made a beeline for their booth.

          He skootched in right beside her, hugged her warmly, and kissed her cheek.

          "Hi, Dee," he said, holding her at arm’s length and searching her face. "It's good to see you out and about again. How you feeling? What's up?"

          "Hi, Bee," she said. "I'm okay." She stirred the ice in her glass and sipped the dregs. "Big doings," she said. "We should wait until the others get here, though. I only want to have to say this once."

          He looked at her, concern in his eyes, then nodded. "Let me get you a refill," he said, taking her tea. "And fix you a plate. If I know you, you'll just twiddle your hair and suck down caffeine. You look thin."

          "But fabulous, I hope," she said with a grim chuckle. He smiled back at her, relieved to see some sign of humor, and left with her plate and glass. He returned with Cal by his side.

          Cal was a plain, practical girl with a lantern jaw and frizzy hair. She came over and put her plate down, sitting catty-corner to Delphine and reaching out to take the thin girl's hands into her own cool, dry, red fingers, pressing them firmly.

          "You're right, Byron," she said. "Way too pale." She looked over her steel wire-frame glasses into Delphine's eyes, never letting go of her hands. "You need to come out to the farm for the weekend, get some sun. Nothing like being around pigs and sheep to give you some perspective on life."

          "Hi, Cee," Delphine said. She drew her hands back, took her glass from Byron and started to add some Sweet'N'Low. "If I want to see pigs and sheep, I'll go back to school. At least they know how to use the restroom -- almost."

          Cal examined her dubiously, as if trying to see past her flippant words. "Seriously," she said. "Are things all right with you?"

          "Whether things are all right is a moot point at the moment," Delphine said. She looked down at Cal's plate rather than at her face. It was a mix of spaghetti and sauce covered with tomatoes, mushrooms, and onions from the salad bar. "That's kind of the reason I called the meeting. But to put your mind at ease," Delphine raised her forearms to show the red, healing scars, "Contrary to what some people may assume, these were not self-inflicted. I was attacked."

          "Who dares?" a voice boomed out over the cartoon room. The enormous figure of Albert stood suddenly looming next to their table. He had approached on the cat-like tread that constantly surprised people who judged him by his size. "Who dares harm our Glorious Leader? Tell me, that I may take up my great sword and slay him!" He set his plate down hard. Several pieces of pizza slipped off the precarious mound of slices he had built.

          "Slow down, Alpha," Delphine said as the big teen wedged himself in next to Cal. "And keep it low, okay? There're people trying to eat in peace."

          "People cry, Peace, peace! But there is no peace," he declaimed in mock anger. "But for the great, the beautiful Rikki-tikki's sake I will stop. Now, what happened? What's up? Who do I have to kill?" he said eagerly.

          "C'mon, Al," Byron said. "You're scaring the kids."

          The big teen looked around incredulously.

          "Nonsense, Bee. Gamera is the friend of all children everywhere."

          "Somehow, that's even more frightening than your violent rants," said Cal, looking disapprovingly at his meal. "Don't you eat any vegetables at all?"

          "Aren't mushrooms a vegetable?" he asked innocently.

          Delphine watched quietly at the friendly squabble that ensued, Big Sister versus Big Bruiser. Albert was not really fat, but he was tall and built like a badger, with a vast moon of a baby-face that a sparse mustache did nothing to modify. But there was also a vast brain in all that bulk, and it suffered. He was the only one who hadn't touched her in greeting, who hadn't even come to visit her in the hospital, and she knew why. He liked her in that way, as her mother would say, and he wasn't about to impose himself on her.

          She looked at her friends. Albert, who had quit the football team to concentrate on editing the school newspaper and had never recovered the loss of status; Byron, who had committed himself to an identity belonging to neither extreme of the gender agenda; and Cal, who seemed to be made out of cast-iron and calico rather than sugar and spice and was already fifty years old inside. The ABC Society. Her crew.

          "Listen, guys," she said, breaking into the amiable teasing, which immediately evaporated into attention. "Why don't we eat first, and then I can tell you everything that's going down. It's time for some big decisions, and I don't want it to ruin your dinner."

          "Oh, like that announcement will settle us down," said Byron, taking up his fork with a grin and plunging it into his salad.

          "Fine," said Cal, bowing her head and closing her eyes. The others paused, freezing awkwardly and lowering their heads, eyes darting at each other as she prayed. "Father, we thank you for this food and these friends, and that we could be gathered here today. Please make this meal health to our bodies, and that our actions be pleasing and of service to Your plan. In Your dear Son's name, amen."

          They unfroze and started eating. Cal was the only one of them that was really religious, but they would no more have thought of not joining her than of slapping her in the face. Delphine toyed around with the food Byron had got for her, a little salad, a little pasta, a little pizza, and kept her eye on whoever was leaving or entering the cartoon room.

          For all his food, it was Al who finished first, pushing away his plate with a grim grin, the light of battle gleaming in his eye.

          "Really, Dee," he said quietly. "Who did it?"

          "Can it wait 'til I'm done eating?"

          "You've been pushing that last tomato around for five minutes; I think it's nearly dead by now. Either put it out of its misery or go ahead and talk to us about it. What happened?"

          Delphine dropped her fork and pushed the plate away.

          "It's not so much what happened, but what's going to happen, I think," she said. She sighed. "It's hard to say, and I don't want to say it, almost as much as I don't want it to happen." If I only had a little more time, she thought. Al, why are you making me say this so soon? Couldn't I have five minutes, ten minutes more? "But I'm going to have to go away. Leave. Disappear. This is our last meal together. Maybe forever."

          She winced at their stunned faces and could feel their shock blazing through their bodies and spiking through the roof towards the sky. And in immediate response, from the east this time, she could feel the dark thing roll like a wave overhead in the ether and pass like silent thunder questing to the west.

          Not much time now.

          "Here it is in a nutshell," she said, bending her head in low. "I was passing by the culvert on James and Still Street when I felt something down there --"

          "Another of your famous feelings?" Byron said wryly.

          "Shut up. You know they're always right, don't you? Hm? How often do they pan out? Always! And let me tell you something I didn't before: they'd been getting stronger and stronger all spring, like they were blooming with the milkweed. There was something down there, something I couldn't make out, something strong I had to see. Well, it turns out it was a trap.

          "No sooner'd I got down there I was snatched by the wrists and dragged into the dark. Couldn't see what it was, but it was bony and sharp and leathery, and every time I twisted away its claws grabbed me again. Finally, I was able to get one hand free and give it a punch with the ring, and I swear to you -- and this had never happened before -- I felt something go out of my body through the steel and punch that thing right in the head. It gave a squawk and fell away, scuttling off away in the dark, and then I just sat there catching my breath."

          "Good," said Al, glowing with pride. It was he who had given her the ring last Halloween, half as a joke, half in earnest, as a way to protect herself. "That'll larn him."

          "But that's not all. I was just about ready to drag myself out into the sunlight again when suddenly there were two voices. 'She's strong. That's good,' said one, 'Shall we take her now?' 'No,' said the other, 'Let her think about things a bit.' And then something rushed past me and, boom! I went down to the pavement and blacked out. Next thing I know I wake up in the hospital with everybody tiptoeing around me and acting like I'm made of glass or something. It seems they'd come to the brilliant conclusion that I was suicidal."

          "Well, of course, we didn't think so," snorted Cal. "We know you too well. But you were so cagey when I visited, I couldn't figure out what heck was going on."

          "Sorry 'bout that, Cal," she said. "I was still trying to figure out what the hell happened myself, how much to tell, and so on. It sounded so crazy and random, then."

          "It still does," said Byron. He gently took her hand. "What makes you so sure you didn't just hit your head and have some sort of seizure where you hurt your arms and imagined all of it?"

          "Because of this." Delphine reached behind her smart-phone case and pulled out Blake's card. She gave it to Byron who read it, who wrinkled his nose, and passed it to Al. "This guy turns up while I'm waiting for Mom to pick me up, and he KNOWS. He gives me the lowdown and then he runs off. You know what? I think he was scared, too."

          "Scared of what?" said Cal, giving her back the card after scarcely a glance. "Trolls under the bridge?"

          "No. Scared of people like me," she said quietly, putting the card away.

          "And just what did he mean by that?" said Al, bristling.

          "Wild Talents, he called them, people with extranatural powers ... telekinesis, pyrokinesis, apportation ... he said they've always been around, but now with more communication and less social taboos, they're banding together. The biggest group he just called the Block, and he says it's them who are after me, to recruit me, or if they can't, well ... get me out of the way, with extreme prejudice."

          "And what does this DEA have to do with it?"

          Delphine gave a twisted smile.

          "Well, they want to recruit me, too. But failing that, this Martin guy said they could protect me. He said he couldn't on his own, but he'd try to give me a chance to escape. And that's why I'm headed for Washington." She looked around at her friends. "So I called you. To say goodbye. Today's the day that Delphine has to disappear."

          "And what do your parents say?" asked Cal. "Are they actually good with you doing this?"

          "They don't know anything about it," said Delphine. "I can't even talk to them about ... about my talent." She spat the word out bitterly. "Can you imagine me trying to tell them about this? It would take days, and I don't have time." She stood up. "In fact, I should be gone, right now. But you ... I know you guys understand me, and I had to say goodbye."

          "If it means your life, of course you have to do what you have to do," Al said. He had leapt to his feet, mirroring her movement. "Do you need money?" He reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. "I just got paid. Here's three hundred. If you think we have time, I have more in the bank."

          "Thanks, Al," she said, taking his arm. "But I cleaned out my account. I'm good."

          "Take it anyway," he said. He had gone still at her touch but came alive again frantically an instant later. He pressed the bills into her hands. "Nobody ever said they had too much money. And you don't know when you might need it."

          She smiled. "Thanks, Al," she said again, stuffing the money into her pocket. She turned. "Move it, Bee," she said. "I've got to hit the road."

          Byron got reluctantly to his feet, his handsome face troubled. "How," he started. "How are you going to get to Washington? You don't have a car. Do you intend to take a bus?"

          "I'm going to hitch," she said. She lifted her hand to stop his protest. "I know it's dangerous. But not as dangerous as staying here, and I've got to assume they know all my family's vehicles."

          "Then take mine."

          "I said, all of my family's vehicles. That includes you. But I could use a ride to the truck stop at Four Corners. I think we could risk that."

          "You got it. I'm parked in the back."

          They all rose and started moving down and out of the cartoon room. Instinctively the three surrounded Delphine, Al in front like a gigantic icebreaker, and Cal and Byron flanking the rear. She moved unobtrusively in their midst. They came out of the cool dimness of the restaurant into the bloody disastrous light of afternoon sun struggling against dark, coppery clouds gathering in the west.

          It felt horribly exposed. They scuttled, rather furtively, round the back. Delphine thought that anyone who saw them would have thought they were up to no good. As scantily populated as the front of the mall was, the back was a wasteland. Two or three employees' cars, industrial garbage bins, and then an empty lot of weeds stretching out to a distant apartment complex. They had reached Byron's little Sentra and he had the key in the lock when a voice stopped them in their tracks.

          "Well, Delphine, you've led us a nice little chase."

          A moment before they had not been there, and now they were. Three people dressed in black, two men and one woman, their hands clasped at their waists and legs spread. The man in front, the one who had spoken, was smiling through -- oh, crap, Delphine thought, he must think he's a bad dude -- an extended goatee.

          "Sorry, folks," Byron said, opening the door and punching open the locks. "We don't have any time to hear the Good News. We got a study group for final exams and we're late. 'Bye, now."

          "We're not talking to your pets, Delphine," the woman said. "If you really like them, I suggest you send them on their way. The real people have to talk."

          "There's nothing I want to say to you," Delphine said.

          "But there are things you might want to hear. Things that will impact your entire life, and your future," said the goateed man.

          "And don't think Mr. Martin will help you this time," the other man said. His brush-cut hair was bristling; he sounded like he could barely contain his anger. "He's pretty busy with our friends right now. I don't think he'll be much use when they're finished with him."

          "A smart, talented girl like you doesn't really want to be hanging around a hick place like this anyway, do you, Delphine?" the lead man said smoothly, reasonably. "School, crappy jobs, stupid ideals ... it's all just a bunch of cardboard blocks, isn't it, waiting for a wind to blow them down. You've got power, it's real, and you'll have even more power if you join with us. And make no mistake, if you don't join us, we can't have you flapping around at loose ends. If you don't deal with us, you'll have to be dealt with."

          "Now, that's just the sort of talk that makes the lady uncomfortable with you people," said Al, stepping forward, fists in his pockets. Although it was three to one, he looked like a bowling ball advancing confidently toward three skinny pins. "I don't particularly like having my friends threatened." He pulled his hands out, and there were brass knuckles curled on both hands. "I suggest you leave."

          What happened next happened very quickly, then very slowly in Delphine's head. The woman raised a hand in a fast, casual gesture and Al went flying back as if hit by a tidal wave, head bouncing on the asphalt and big body scraping backwards on the loose gravel. Cal and Byron went leaping to his side, and Delphine

          was suddenly in front of the woman's smug face as if she had not passed through any space to reach her

          was smashing her ringed fist right into that evil smile

          was knocking the woman backward into the astonished men behind her

          was feeling the bolt that seemed to come from the pit of her stomach pass through her arm clean and strong and calm

          was for a split-second looking at her three accosters, now positively amazed

          was watching an atomized red cloud moving softly and silently backward from the force of her blow.

          Time caught up with Delphine with a bump, and she stood, shocked, looking at the cloud, its heavier parts drizzling to the pavement like rain, the rest carried away like a mist on the wind that was gathering. Far off, there was the low brool of summer thunder.

          Oh shit, I killed them, was her first thought; it was quickly followed by, They're really going to be angry now. She turned to her friends.

          Byron had Al's head in his lap, while Cal held his hand, examining him. He was twitching, his eyes rolled white in his head. Delphine approached, and for just a second, they looked at her like she was no longer human, a strange thing in their friend's skin. Then she knelt down and took his other hand, and in that action, they knew her again.

          Her mind was awake, as if her brain was a machine that had been set ticking again by the jolt of power. She felt him, the life stuttering but strong. She reached inside and calmed his heart, probed the swelling on his head, knew with relief that his thick skull was unfractured. She looked up.

          "He'll be okay," she said. "But you've got to get him out of here and to the hospital. There'll be others here soon, I'll bet. Go on. After we ate, you never saw me, you don't know anything, understand?"

          "What about you?" said Cal.

          "Do you still doubt I can handle it?" she said grimly. "Cal, I just killed three people! If I can keep myself out of the Block's hands, I don't think there's much I need to worry about."

          "But --"

          "We have to think about Al and you," she said. Cal looked gloomy but shook her head in agreement, and the three of them wrangled him into the passenger seat. She looked at his face. There was a trickle of blood where he'd bit his lip. She leaned in and softly, tenderly, kissed his cheek. "When he wakes up, tell him about that, will you?" she said, head bowed. She didn't look up. "Now move out. If and when I can call you, I will. But not if it will endanger you."

          "Tally ho, the ABC Society," said Byron quietly, hands gripping the wheel. "Good luck, Dee."

          "God bless you, Dee," said Cal, as the engine revved into life.

          "Thanks, guys. Now get out of here."

          She sprinted out of the parking lot and jumped the drainage ditch, crossed one highway, and hit the northbound road. The Sentra headed the other way, towards the hospital and emergency room, its three occupants pale in the car lights that flipped on automatically in the dark of the gathering rain. Then it finally fell, hard torrents that washed away the red film on the pavement behind the Mr. Chezzi's sign, that blinked on and off like a fiery eye watching over the edge of town.

-         2/7/2020

[Notes to follow later today]