I should feel a lot worse than I do. The thought that something is wrong with me hasn't left my head for a while. And I don't mean inside me. I mean with my head. I should be gone. My mind lost, freaking out. But I'm not.
----
After we bury the body, KJ takes me to a french fry stand on the side of the road and orders me a medium fries. The fact that this is a sentence I just thought, and it made sense in context, slowly starts to dawn on me. He gets himself a large, and we sit on a picnic bench. It's far too cold for this place to even be open, I can't imagine they get much business in the winter. I watch him happily chewing on his fries, trying to figure out what is going on in that brain of his, but I've got nothing. He notices me looking and points at the tray in front of me.
"You gonna eat those?" He asks.
I cross my arms. "You told me you would give me answers."
"Oh yeah, I did. Haha." He scratches the back of his neck. "Well, what do you wanna know? Choose your question carefully."
"Do I only get one?" I ask.
"No. But I can't answer every single one, I doubt, so start with what's important to you." He says.
I think hard about this one. What do I need to know? I have so many questions, so many thoughts and theories, and nothing adds up, I don't know where to start. I remember the look on Carson's face as he pushed me into the pool, still there on his body later, I remember Dr. Wainstyle telling me the X-Ray machine was perfectly safe, I remember how I couldn't turn back when I heard the screams behind the farmer's market door. I remember the feeling that overcame me in all of those situations, something I couldn't control. And I have my first question.
"What's happening to me?" I ask.
KJ drops his french fry, and stares at me long and hard. The dark thing behind his eyes is back, trying to get a read on me again. His expression is a lot more serious than it was a second ago. Like he'd gone from a man without a care in the world to a man who had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
"The angel inside you is ripening." He says.
I try to mirror his intense expression, staring back at him, matching his tone of voice even, as I ask my next question.
"What, in the name of all that is fuck, does that mean?"
The tension in the air breaks as he leans back and laughs a little, tossing another fry in his mouth.
"Oh yeah, I remember it." He says. "The early days, all the questions. It's not an easy time. And I had to go through it on my own, without a helpful guide."
"Huh?" The tension may have broken, but my cluelessness as to what the hell he's talking about remains as intact as ever.
"Oh, the helpful guide is me. I'm your helpful guide." He gestures at himself vaguely. "Listen. I get it, trust me, I do. You've seen some horrible things recently. And I gotta apologize, but it's not about to get any better. But what you will get is an understanding, alright?"
"Will I?" I ask. "Because I'm not getting any understanding yet. What do you mean about ripening angels? What does that even mean? That's barely even a string of words that works together."
He laughs again, a good natured laugh. I laugh that I should absolutely despise, but for some reason I don't. "Listen, you're like me. Well, not quite. You're getting there. You will be like me. But I'm really struggling with the words to tell you what I'm like, so I'm just gonna show you."
"Show me?" I ask.
"Yeah, get back in the car." He says. "And bring those fries. If you're not gonna eat them I will."
YOU ARE READING
Town Like Still Water (Nanowrimo 2021)
HorrorThis is the first draft of a book I wrote, in FIVE DAYS. I missed the first three weeks of nanowrimo, and in the last few days, decided to really challenge myself. it was awful. the book however, i think turned out pretty good all things considered.
