halfway!

2011 NANO Part 10

    And then it happens.  Quickly Jared puts up his hand and the others stop, “Wait.  Now it is gone.  I can’t feel it anywhere”.  Without further explanation Jared takes off at a dead run twords his car.  It he doesn’t realize that it is two miles away until about 1.5 miles in when his full on sprint slows down to a very quick jog.  While a good part of his mind and soul are elsewhere and benefit from vastly broadened abilities the flesh still has needs.  Throwing open the trunk he starts to mutter under his breath, “Why did we walk so far from the car.  This doesn’t make sense, as soon as I feel something it vanishes and I know we didn’t wander two miles something must have happened there is some trace of the thing”.  The others saunter up at their own pace.  One quick look shows that the other two are unperturbed by the events.  They started all of this directly next to the car, he thinks.  Maybe they walked a bit he isn’t sure.  Time is of the essence.  Realizing that he is quickly loosing his grip on what has just happened he thanks god for his laptop, his custom os, and his near instant boot up time.
    The next step involves a power drill.  Which he also has in his trunk.  Most square johns, when confronted with a trunk containing a battery operated power drill would wonder why its there.  Well it is amazing the uses one can find for a power drill when one always has one on hand.  For example, right now Jared needs a hole in his head.  Again normal friends would at the very least try to stop their other friend from drilling a hole in their head but Alexander and Stephen look non plused as the drill penetrates flesh, then bone.  Grabbing a bunch of small wires that are attached to the laptop Jared shoves them into his new airhole and begins downloading the contence of his brain.  He wipes some of the blood from his face serving only to smear it everywhere rather than to actually clean himself. 
    He doesn’t hear the child ask, “What are you doing?”
    Alexander turns to the boy.  He’s little, sandy haired with scabbed knees and freckles.  He looks like his mother dresses him.  The boy smiles uncertainly when met with Alexander’s stare, “Didn’t your mother tell you not to talk to strangers?   Now we are going to have to drill a hole in your head too”  The boy’s eyes grow wide, “Yeah next time you’ll listen to your mother, Stephen get him”.  With that the boy runs off doing an irritating combination of screaming and crying, “That kid’s balls seriously need to drop.  Good god what a voice he’s like a harpy”
    Stephen’s shocked look fails to ellicit any real reasonce from Alexander until he demands, “Don’t you think there was a better way to chase the boy off other than terrorizing him?”
    “Yes but I hate freckles and this suburban clean living place is getting under my skin.  Can I help you?”  Alexander snaps at an elderly couple walking a dog.  They look at Jared, then nervously at Alexander, back to Jared, then Alexander starts to growl and they scamper off as quickly as their frail elderly bodies will take them, “Look at them desperately clinging to life.  I bet walking that heap of rags they jokingly reffer to as a dog is the absolute highlight of their day.  I bet it is marked down on the calander months in advance.  Look at this place!  They say cities bring out the worse in humanity but at least the worse involves something, even if it is violence.  This place is just sadness.  We rescued that virgin if you ask me!”
    Laughing Stephen shakes his head, “We blew her eyes out of her head.  I don’t think boring houses and zoning restrictions is the same as that.  Besides I grew up in a neighborhood like this it isn’t that bad”
    Alexander raising a pair of bushy eyebrows returns the laughter, “Really now?  This coming from someone who got into contract with creatures that even I am afraid of and tried to end the world?  I just wanted to use it, you were trying to kill the universe.  Sounds like this was a perfectly healthy environment for you”
    Stephen has to admit, Alexander got him there.  Admitting it to yourself and admitting it to the person who just defeated you are two different things.  Changing the subject is now the only acceptable course of action, “So how long do you thing Jared is going to take because we are eventually going to attract some unwanted aten- will you stop harassing everyone who walks by?”
    Alexander turns from the poor guy who picked the absolute wrong time to get the mail and looks at Jared’s vacant eyes, blank expression, the drool, the blood, the computer flashing away with intense patterns on the screen, and realizes he has no idea what is going on, “Perhaps we should of stopped him when he put the drill to his head”
    “Yes I can see how that would have been an approprate couse of action  now”
    Alexander throws up his hands, “Well don’t look at me I don’t know what it is you kids do.  Maybe you all go around drilling holes in your heads.  He seemed like he knew what he was doing”
    “So do people who are possessed by spritis”
    “Yeah that doesn’t work on Jared” He realizes the mistake right as he said it.  All these years and he still hasn’t gotten used to being around people who are quick enough to keep up with him.
    Stephen narrows his eyes, “You tried to posses Jared?”
    “Well yes, I was curious you see.  Since he claims that part of his soul is elsewhere or whatever, I wanted to know if he was particularly vulnerable to spirit or demonic possesion I mean if he is then he really shouldn’t be around either me or Deven.  Luckily for him it has the opposite effect.  Weird eh?  So what do you think he is doing?”
    Stephen shrugs, “Once again we need to ask questions, aww fuck”.  Stephen doesn’t swear often.  When he does it is ordinarily for a pretty good reason, like the cops showing up which is what is happening now.      The flashers cut through the night with migraine causing blueness.   Stephen leans over to Alexander, “What should we do”
    “Well I mean they are just cops.  It isn’t like we can’t handle cops if you know what I mean”
    “Yes but we are not suppose to be just handling people like that because they are making our lives incontinent”
    Alexander smiles, “True but we aren’t supposed to be drilling holes in peoples heads, you aren’t supposed to be within 50 feet of a school, and I say that I am not spending any amount of time in jail I have books I want to read”
    Stephen looks helpless for a moment, “Yes but how are we going to convince the cops to leave us alone when we are all so very painfully guilty of something here at the moment”
    “Now see here I don’t see what I could possibly look guilty of.  I look older, I am fairly respectably dressed, if I do say so myself.  Hawiian shirts are definitely a benefit of this modern age, I mean I could just as easily of happened on this situation.  Why I bet I could convince these two idiots that I am just a brave passerby and I saw you put the drill to that poor poor young boy’s head”
    Stephen holds up his hands, “Oh yeah look no blood, besides Jared is still holding the drill!”
    Alexander nods taking this bit of forensic information in, “You know this is why you are with us in the hunt for the not a virgin.  You are quick on your feet.  As for the topic at hand, I dunno you were threatening him with a dog and if he didn’t do it, the dog would attack him”
    “A dog”
    “A big dog-ALRIGHT we heard you the first time.  We are pretty clearly just ignoring you.  Get back in the car, drive away and go fight crime in some other neighborhood.”
    The cop looks nervous.  Being a cop is hard.  It is a lot harder than most people think it is.  Sure lots of time you spend sitting around speed traps, or chasing kids off skateboards, or if you are lucky catching people having sex.  That was his favorite.  He loved breaking up sex, the way the guy would shrivle up and they would both run for cover.  Sometimes he would wait until he knew they were getting close before he taps the nightstick on the window.  He is the ultimate buzz kill.  The defeater of underaged drinking, the bane of pot smokers everywhere.  He is the law.  He isn’t used to be ignored.  He understands that the job comes with risks and that any situation can potentially turn explosive.  An old man and a teenager standing next to another young man with an electric drill in his head is a pretty good indication that this is a situation that is quickly going to loose control.  He’s given them warning, then multiple warnings.  Since there are two of them and even though they don’t seem dangerous there is a kid bleeding from what appears to be a self inflicted wound in his head.  Nothing good can come of this.  Why couldn’t they just be kids with skateboards?  One more time he tries in his most demanding voice, “I want both of you to spread your legs and put your hands on the car” he prays they don’t hear the tremble.
    His prayers go unanswered as they both hear the tremble.  Alexander smiling asks, “Do you want me to put headcase’s hands on the car too?  I mean I’ll do it but I am pretty sure that if we move him he will just fall over or something.  I’ve never been in this sort of situation before officer.  I mean I don’t even know who these kids are.  How about…”
    “What are you doing, of course you know who we are.  And he isn’t falling for that he’s been standing in front of us while you were talking about the lies you were going to tell to get out of it”
    “Oh Stephen my wit is a dry wit.  You just messed up that joke now didn’t you?”
    “It wasn’t funny”
    “Oh whatever, look what is with the technical people and their bodies.  I mean first we have Jerimia with his leg and now this.  I mean it seems like every other week they are breaking something fixing something changing something I mean, oh for the love of-”
    They’d continue to ignore the cop who is growing increasingly more and more disressed by the minute.  He can’t let himself get faced down by an old man and a kid and he knows there is something very wrong here.  People don’t react to cops like this, no one does.  There they go though they just keep talking like he doesn’t have a gun pointed at them, like there isn’t someone bleeding profusely due to a hole in his head.  That kid needs an ambulance at the very least, the cop tries to remember if he’s called for one or not but it is hard to remember when he can’t even get a basic control of the situation in front of him.  Enouigh is enough it is time to do something,.  To step up, to save the kid with the hole in his head, to become the authority.  There would be a metal involved for getting this situation straight there is no way there couldn’t be.  He could call his parents and make them proud.  First.  First he had to get their atension and that would require a warning shot, he raises the gun in the air and winces slightly as he thinks about the reams of paperwork he is going to have to fill out for doing this but it has to be done.  Then there is the thought of paperwork again.  Taking out his tazer he aims it at the younger one without the hole in his head.  The older one is doing more of the mouthing off true but he is not allowed to taser the eldery.  There the old guy goes ranting about technical types when he takes a deep breath, squares his body and pulls the trigger.
    Stephen hit’s the ground the audible buzzing caused by a whole pile of volts running through his body simultaneously, gets him very mad at Alexander, even madder at the cop, and to loose control of his body and fall to the ground.  That last part is Stephen’s least favorite.  The cop is in the middle of smugly claiming that they will listen to him now that he has used some force when Stephen stands up tearing the tazer connecters from his body, “You know just a second ago I was defending you.  Did you have to do that?  I mean really?”
    Alexander nods, “Oh good now that you’ve pissed off your only friend here let me tell you something.  I live in this places called the ghetto and I got to say it is just as every bit as bad as rap music makes it out to be.  Cops don’t come around there because they will get shot.  If there is an area where cops keep getting shot shouldn’t that mean they need to send more cops to that area instead of ignoring it”
    Stephen looks confused, “You live in the ghetto?”
    “I think reconstructing one of my towers would be a little bit to much of a temptation, besides I like it.  Sometimes I would spend half a century at a time slumming it.  Good source of raw materials and you get to operate outside of the law.  Unlike here.  I mean look at this you just got tazered because of me.  Isn’t that funny?”
    “Your dry wit again I assume?”   
    “Indubitably.  Now then my fine somewhat portly protector of the law why don’t you just turn around and shove off the way you came.  There isn’t any piece of us you want a part of, believe me when I say this the shit this young one can do will turn your hair white and cause your balls to receed back into your body.  You’ll need surgery to get them back out I’m telling you”
    Before Stephen could make Alexander’s prophesy come true the cops radio squaks inaudibly but urgently.  In a slight daze the cop answers, and then the radio squacks again this time both louder and longer.  Eyes widening the cop gives them all a baleful glare before running back to the car.  He speeds off lights flashing into the night.  They turn back to Jared pulling cables out of his head smiling.