The Power-lock (UNDER CONSTRUCTION)

CHAPTER 20 : MELISSA

I concentrate on the cool, slow breeze - carrying away the hotness brewing within me - instead of the migrainous ticking of the long, thin minute-hand at the first quarter of the circular face of my wristwatch - its constant vibrations urge the thicker, short hour-arm to resonate about the number 2. I bite my inner cheek in annoyance.

I was never good with showing patience as a child, and now that I am an adult, I haven't gotten any better at it.

What's taking them? They should've been here by now. I look round at the misery-stricken newspapers strewn on the cold, hard concrete floor - vaingloriously usurping the entire filthy area. A sudden rush of wind disarrays the perfectly neat, freshly-trimmed strands of my straight, brown hair.

The same gush also carries one of the lying rotogravures - letting it crash into a dirty wall of brick and mortar. The sharp, saw-toothed upper horizontal edge of the paper cuts through the fine spider-line - taking the artistic arachnid by surprise and letting it fall midair for just about one-sixtieth of a millisecond - until the seemingly feeble creature sprouts a new filament to sway safely to life.

With the trail of silk following its sericterium, it struts along an area where obnoxiously bright flyers are stuck onto the red-bricked rampart - overlapping each other as if determining a victory. Signs in capital, bold fonts catch my eye. My gaze lingers on a peculiarly dark one, camphor-black, advertising a discount on some sort of near-to-expiration food product.

I stand up, dusting the area of my dress near the hemline, and start walking towards the wall to get a better look at the fine-print at the bottom of the flyer.

I am interrupted by a constantly increasing frequency of a sussurusque bicker. Judging by the combined pitches, not only are they familiar but they are also very late.

Their voices are increasingly dissolving in the atmosphere surrounding me. A man, walking along the sidewalk, stops in his tracks to peep in the alley where I currently stand. I pull out my phone, noiselessly, so that it doesn't look too obvious, and hold it infront of me, acting as if the juvenile altercation is being produced by the speakers of the cellular-phone.

The man, obviously gulled by the false scenario, resumes his original route of travel, leaving me alone in the comfort of a rusty dumpster and the button-orbs of a scaly reptilian, peeping through the slit, left open by a tall heap of debris.

However, the bickering has now intensified so much that I have to plug my ears with my hands - one of them still clutching the phone. The hackles on the back of my neck stand up. The breeze starts concentring at a common point, glowing argon-blue.

Every blink of my eye marks an increase in its circumference until it reaches about a 6-ft level - enough height for an average mammalian life-form to walk through.

Continuous squabble, asynchronous treads and methane-blue luminescence occupy my senses for a brief four-second lap until I push all the unnecessary stimuli aside and walk closer towards the portal.

I unplug an ear and use the idle hand to feel the glowing edge, running my forefinger slowly against it. I always imagined why its rims never felt hot : where there's light, there has to be heat. I shun the thought and peep inside, the darkness veils all the mysteries that lie in it.

The bickering is starting to die down - the reverberations have dimmed a bit - but the footfalls have grown louder. I jerk back slightly, reflexively, to avoid the untamed noise, my eyes pinched all the while.

I destress my eyes and look at the two petite figures standing before me. Every sign of the existence of a bust-up is gone as they look at me with smiling hearts. They jump off the edge of the portal, a foot over the hard ground, one after the other.

Andrea raises her arms in the air and exclaims with mock innocence, "Yay, we made it right on time!" I scowl at her juvenile idiocy while Janice just smiles a classic Janice-smile but I bite my tongue to keep the acidic comeback from dripping.

I take a huge gulp of air and exhale. Life with Andrea would've been a lot easier if somehow she were subtracted.