Ruby Red Marionette

twentyeight | sonnet

I wanted to throw away my phone.

After I saw the message, the fifteen words that solidified everything I always thought about my life made me want to believe that I was wrong. I was always looking for evidence to support the fact that I was always being followed—not by the clown (I didn't need evidence to know he was there), but by someone I couldn't see, someone I'd never met—and the text message just supported it all.

There was someone who knew what I was thinking, knew my number, and wanted to control what information I was aware of and when I received this information.

Yet I didn't want it to be true.

The only thing stopping me from taking the phone and flinging it as far away from me as my weak, tired arms could throw was Isaiah. After I read the message, I ran away from the headquarters. I ran and ran, a keen pain shooting straight to my chest every time I stepped down on my right leg. Just knowing it was there made me want to saw it off. I ran and closed my eyes as I went, hoping that I'd bump into something, a ladder maybe, and bricks would fall and crush me to my death.

I ran, and I couldn't get a block away from the building without crying.

Isaiah called me. He called, and he called, and he called, to the point that I felt guilty for even leaving in the first place.

But then I remembered that there was a fucking tracking device in my leg and I went back to running.

"Geneva, I'm here," A breathless, tired, and desperate voice called from behind me. It was him. I could hear his heavy, dragging footsteps on the sidewalk. He jogged lazily, probably tired from catching up with me. I didn't have to turn around to know what he looked like; there was probably sweat around his hairline. His head hung a little backward and his mouth was open, still panting. Every now and then, he'd wipe his face with his shirt, and maybe stop to cough and catch his breath.

When I reached a good ways from Red Liquor Services' headquarters, far enough that I couldn't even see it, I turned around. I was right.

"Look, I'm here." He said to me. He pushed himself to run over to me, closing the space between us. "Batul told me everything. She overheard what the guard told you."

I didn't look into Isaiah's eyes. I couldn't, not anymore. He was staring at me pleadingly, almost begging me to comply, to just listen to him and stop running and see him. I did see him, and that didn't change anything.

"What did you do up there on the third floor?" I asked him the question not just to change the subject, but because it just occurred to me that my interaction with the security guard wasn't the reason we went there.

"I asked to speak to the person in charge of mailing. The manager of that department told me that if I was receiving strange things in my mailbox, it was either an error, or someone who worked for them was doing it on purpose. He said he'd investigate. I asked if I could be removed from the mailing list, and he said only if I cancelled my affiliation with Red Liquor altogether. I asked if I could do that, and he told me that the only person who could help me do that is the person who got me affiliated in the first place," he explained. Of course, this was Carlos. Carlos couldn't explain anything to anyone from the dead.

"There has to be another way," I told him. "They're lying to you. They don't want you to leave because they have a message to send to you. We have to keep reading those papers. Something they're trying to tell you is—

"Geneva, would you stop?" Isaiah almost yelled this at me. He wasn't angry. He was frustrated. "I don't care about them or those papers or what they have to tell me. I care about you, and right now you're stressed, confused, and upset. But you're concealing it, covering it by piling my own problems on top of it. Stop that. I want to help you. Let's just talk about this, please."