Listen To The Silence by Sheryl

Chapter 10

...Why can't you see me?

Metallic spit, electric... taste of fear. Does fear have a taste? He suspects so, swallowing, wincing, praying... the edge of life, one step in the wrong direction and everything ends. Eyes shut in despair, he leans, helpless against cold tile, breathing fresh urine and old beer, grit and wetness under filthy hands, cool, crumbling wall soothing on his hot cheek.
"Where am I?"
The questions moans out of him into the empty room, bouncing off rust crusted sink spouts, sharp reeking urinals, broken stalls, echoing back up out of dirty water and unspeakable emptiness. White noise hums above his head, ancient convectors, exchanging fetid air for exhaust fumes.
"God where am I?!"
"Don't you know?"
The voice rises from nothing, stopping his breath as a cold terror slices through him. For just a moment his heart misses its beat, and he braces, waiting.
"Don't just sit there and cry about it, do you want to live or do you want to die? Look at me, I don't have all night."
He recognizes the voice, somehow, from somewhere, and squeezes his hands to his temples, pulling hair in his confusion. Who is it? How could he know it?
"Maybe if you looked up you'd see..."
Teeth sink into lip, salt blood adding to the taste in his mouth, eyes tracing over and again the pattern of grout beneath his leg. Narrowing, he can feel it, his whole life narrowing now to one miserable point, forced through the eye of a needle.
"Jesse. If you don't listen to me you'll die... and we don't want you to die. Now will you get a grip?" Faint exasperation in the voice, followed by the clear, mundane, normal sound of a zipper being undone.
Confused, his eyes turn upward, falling on battered running shoes, faded jeans.
Splashing above his head, his eyes furrow, and he moves out, slipping from his hiding place beneath the sinks, crawling to lean against the wall.
"You can't even stand up, can you?"
Faint headshake as he watches the boy shake off, zip up, idly reach for the soap button, watching it run in shimmering pink streams down the wall.
"How are you here?"
The words, blurted in shocked surprise, echo in the empty room, startling him. The boy's voice doesn't echo...
"I'm not here, Jesse."
Blue eyes drill into him, penetrating, affixing him to the spot, the reality of him unquestionable.
"I see you..."
"Yeah I know. Jesse..."
He drops down, cross legged on the floor in front of him, blue eyes never breaking contact, and Jesse finds his hand out, fingers touching denim clad knee, fabric rough and warm. The boy's scent rises from him, heat and soap and something sweet.
"I can feel you, you're real"
"I am real, but I'm not here. Listen to me. LISTEN to me..."
Hands, solid and warm, grasp him roughly, shaking off the distance of shock falling over him again.
"You're dying, Jesse, do you understand that? You're body can't take much more of what you're putting it through. Do you even know why?"
Headshake, frantically frustrated, and the smell of piss drowns out the fragrance of the boy in front of him again.
"What do you know then?"
The hands let him go, and he feels his eyes tear as his heart breaks, longing for touch, wanting nothing more than to lean into those arms and stay... some unreal feeling of safety from this hallucination in front of him.
"I love you, how can I love you?"
"You don't, you're just scared. Jess, do you know what's going on?"
Headshake, teeth gritting together.
"Tell me what you do know..." Golden hair glitters on the back of the boy's sunbrowned hand as it reaches for Jesse's, holding firmly. "I'm right here... just tell me."
"I can only go east."
"You can only go east... why?"
"If I turn away from it I get sick... I throw up... I get dizzy and pass out... I have to keep going east..." He pauses then, knowledge dark in him. "Not east... to them. I have to go to them... but I can't get there, don't you understand? I'm doing everything I can but there are people trying to kill me and I have to stay alive and I don't have any money..."
Words cut off as the boy's hand drifts to his chest, then down... his own moving to stop them, gripping hard, animal groan from his throat.
"What... why stop me when you sell it to everyone in the city?"
Scorn in those words, in those eyes, and his soul shatters, head falling into his hands.
"Do what you want to me, I don't care..."
"Jesse..." The voice is warm, gentle, and the hands now touch his face, soft. "I don't want to do anything to you. But don't you see? You hate it... you hate it! You want to stop it, you have to stop now, you have to hurry! You're sick because you're fighting us, why are you doing that?"
"I'm not..."
"You are! Or you'd be here!"
"I am here!"
Fury rises up, sinks back. No energy for it, and his eyes fall back to the crumbs of gray grout. What does any of it matter?
His scalp itches maddeningly, skin crawling, and he sighs, feeling the growl in his chest. Sick, sure... for a while now. Why bother?
The boy lets him go, stands up, blond hair shining, radiating health, cleanliness, calling images of soft beds, toothbrushes and pajamas, snacks in front of the television...
"It's not fair... don't you understand?"
The boy nods, slipping on the jacket he holds over his arm, cloth rustling on cloth.
"I understand. But I understand you have to hurry, or you won't make it to us. Stop stalling Jesse, and stop trying to kill yourself."
"I'm n..."
"No, you don't have the courage to do it yourself. You're trying to get someone else to do it for you. Don't deny it, look at you!"
Zipper sound again, this time the coat, and the boy leans back on one foot.
"Go out into the waiting room... you do realize you're at the airport right? Go past the baggage checkins, and follow the little utility hall. There's an electrical panel on the wall down there. Open it, and you'll find something in there you need. Don't think... just do it. And when you find what we left you, use it. Don't hesitate... if you do... you lose and so do we."
"But..."
The boy's hand comes up now, warding off, pushing away. "Just do what I tell you. You're too sick to make any kind of decision on your own... and this is costing me, and costing me a lot. I won't even be able to move now, because of all this energy I'm putting out for you. Don't make me waste myself. Go get what we left you, and use it right away. Never mind how you look, never mind that you need a shower, just never mind any of it. Just go. Someone will be there to meet you when you get where you're going."
"Wait... please."
"I can't... and neither can you."
His motion is almost too fast to detect and his presence is gone, leaving only the empty aching stench of an airline bathroom, sanitary cakes sending their false chemical freshness into the stale air.
"Crazy... I'm crazy..."
Still, he stands, hauling himself up on the edge of the sink, eyes gazing into the polished steel mirror. No glass here, wouldn't want murders and suicides messing up the bathrooms.
The sour cynicism of the thought makes him laugh, as his eyes roam his face.
He is dying, that kid was right, that kid that wasn't here... hotel boy, gleaming golden and scrubbed, alien to this squalor.
Dying... face waxy white and covered with some rash... what he doesn't know, fever blisters clustered all around the mouth, eyes sunken, dull, black shadowed, throat bitten and bruised by the unloving hands and kisses of strangers... body aching dully, scratched, bitten, intruded upon, penetrated too many ways, too many times, marks of needle tracks marching up one scrawny arm. Plaything of many, loved by none, and God knew what was living in his hair...
"Man..."
He thought about it, absently running water, washing some of the grime from his face, the dreamy shock that had brought him here now almost completely gone.
How many weeks? How many weeks on the streets, selling himself for enough money to prevent starvation, sleeping under benches and in lousy public bathrooms in airports and train stations? How many weeks of every kind of sexual perversion known to man, to ward off abuse, buy a bed out of the rain... How many beatings, endured for the sheer joy his hell gave to them.
"Too many weeks, man, too many..." His fingers ride over the ridges and bands of callused flesh on his wrists... marks of chains, ropes, toys... almost scarred...
Loneliness driving him to the brink of insanity, the weird insane compulsion to go east... to go to them... violent sickness with every step further away, fear halting his steps, shutting down his mind.
Could he do this? Follow the directions of a walking hallucination?
His eyes roam again, ravaged visage convincing him. He had, after all, nothing to lose.

********************  

"Did he listen?" Dark hair falls softly on the boy's flushed face, as his friend leans over him, cool cloth in hand. "Do you think he'll come?"
"I don't know..." The voice is raspy, faint, spent. There's little left to go with now, he needs to sleep.
"Jordan?"
"Hmm?" Absent murmur as he folds the cloth gently over burning hands.
"If he doesn't come, what then?"
The cloth drops, and the boy watches his friend's head fall into shaking hands.
"Oh... I don't know. If he doesn't come I think we lose."
Defeat fills dark eyes for a moment, driven back suddenly by a forced smile.
"Cut it out, you just about killed yourself convincing him... he'll come."
"Why me?"
"Huh?!"
The exclamation makes up in incredulity what it lacks in finesse, and the boy laughs.
"How come you couldn't do it yourself? Can I have that?"
Jordan hands him the water glass, thinking. Why did he have the boy do it? Why couldn't he reach Jesse himself? His compulsion certainly could.
"I think... because he loves you. And he'd want to go where you are."
"So I'm just a tool?"
"In a sense. Can you live with that?"
"I don't know. Can you?"
Jordan's brows meet in a V and he scowls, yanking the bowl of water away impatiently.
"Just shut up and go to sleep." He's gone almost before the boy can blink, and his ill-natured exit brings a fresh burst of laughter. "You're always so guilty, Jordan... always so guilty"
He laughs again, a certainty growing in him that he's done it right. Jesse will be here, and soon... and they'll be alright finally.
He begins to drift, thoughts of airports and lonely, sick, dirty young men fall away from his mind, carrying with them the knowledge of Jordan, Kellan, the psychics and guardians that form his immediate circle now. Gone... down that long spiral of dreams, replaced with the purely prosaic knowledge that he needs to call his mother, when he wakes up.

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