Ruby Red Marionette

seventeen | interjection

At some point, in the midst of the tornado I was creating around myself with each swift, robust step, my right foot stumbled over something. I stopped - if I kept going, I met fall flat on my face - and turned around to see a small action figure on the ground, probably left behind by a child. It was about two or three o’clock in the morning, and no child would expect to find their lost toy here tomorrow, anyway. So I picked it up, holding it up to the headlights of a car that drove by to see what it was (I still couldn’t identify it) and then kept walking.

Slowing my pace was always the hardest part. It was easy to just keep going, to push one foot in front of the other even when it felt like I’d collapse at any moment, because it felt like I had no choice. The smouldering in my chest and the speed at which everything around me disappeared with a gust of wind added to the urgency that made my heart pound and my eyes water. If I ran, the clown was behind me. When he was behind me, he was my reason to run. He was death, and I ran for my life.

But to walk was to pretend to be calm when there was an explosion inside me. It was to blend in with the other people around me, to look like I hadn’t just learned that a girl blew her face up on purpose and that the detective who found out was dead (or not). In reality, trying to blend in with the people around me wasn’t normal, because there was no valid reason why someone should be roaming the streets at this hour in the morning. Just because I looked like everyone else didn’t mean that we weren’t all crazy. I was only displaying my insanity in a different way from them.

I did it, nonetheless. I stepped along the sidewalk like it was three in the afternoon, keeping my fingers interlocked behind me. I followed the lead of the sprinkles of people I saw every few blocks.

I took the action figure out of my pocket and held it in my hand. I needed something else with me, some kind of company. The toy wasn’t alive but the child who dropped it was, and every time its little arms poked me I could remember that.

My rush out of Charlie’s house took me through his empty, taunting neighborhood in no time. The studio was only a few blocks away now, and walking seemed to be getting me closer too quickly. I slowed to a crawl. The adrenaline numbed the pain for a while, but the effect of all the running I’d been doing was coming back to my legs now. I staggered every few steps, trying not to think about how much my feet hurt or about the circumstances I was under the last time I found myself running to my mother’s studio at this time of night. If someone was awake every night in one of these houses, watching everything that transpired when the sun went down, they would pity me. Either that, or they would be utterly confused of what demons forced me to have to escape almost every situation I entered.

Their names were Charlie, Carlos, Ashley, and Simon.

And, if the grisly churning in my stomach was right: Devin.

Two of them were dead, and one could possibly be. The other two would be back soon; at some point, maybe even before the sun came back up, I’d run into them like I always did. With Simon, our encounters were never accidental. I could always lead myself to believe so, but my intoxicated, rock-bottom nights didn’t have to lead me there. If I wanted, somehow, I could will myself to turn around, to rent a hotel room or sleep in a homeless shelter. Something about the ritual we went through every time had me hooked.

With Devin, on the other hand, I wasn’t sure. The first and second times I met him were both questionable. He could have simply been in the neighborhood that day I was being bum-rushed in Alton Park, or he could have been following me. If our meeting was a coincidence, that still didn’t explain why he acted so strangely or how he knew to give me directions to my neighborhood. The second time had to have been an accident; he couldn’t have planted himself on that bus on purpose. He was already there when I came on. But that didn’t rule out all evidence of him being someone to be wary of.