Seven o'clock, that was when the alarm clock began ringing, sounding with a mindnumbing melody that instantly suffused the room. The blinds were opening automatically, showing Manhattan's blue sky which was in fact unusually clear today, only a few perfectly white clouds were traversing through it. The sun had already climbed over the horizon, its beams desperately trying to find a path through the variety of skycrapers and other tall buildings blocking the way. In spite of the still early hours, streetlife was already showing itself in all its aspects, with the lanes being filled with passer-byes, may it be businessmen, tourists or simple inhabitants, who had crawled out of their apartments and were now hectically aiming either for their workplaces or for the gigantic spaceport in the middle of the capital city, every now and then taking a quick look at their watches from the corners of their eyes. People were honking their horn, frustrated about the traffic jam, an inevitability when crowds of people were colliding, or snapping at each other for unintentional jostling and thus the spilling of the holy coffee in the pedestrians' hands. When you were living a life on Manhattan, you would have to get used to this constantly noisy backdrop, for better or worse, no matter if it was seven o'clock in the morning, midday, afternoon or midnight. After all, there was always a deal to strike, always a bud to meet or a date or party to have.
From Elena's perspective, an ordinary day - which surely wouldn't stay that way - dawned on her as she awoke from her quiet slumber and naturally found herself where she had fallen asleep several hours before - at her boyfriend's place. Situated on the highest floor of one of the skyscrapers, the view through the large, panoramic windows happened to be a very fascinating one, the main nature parks being only a few further blocks away. A large couch complex dominated the middle of the room, before it a flatscreen was situated, while in another corner the obligatory kitchen could be found. Her first reaction, rolling to the other side and checking whether he was lying beside her on the bed, got followed by a second reaction, a deep sigh, one that had almost got traditional by now, as she realized he didn't. It wouldn't exactly surprise her; never had it been uncommon that she had to hit the sack without him, but apparently the prior night had been one of the ones when he actually didn't show up at all. May it be because his work as a Navy officer had again struck him down at his desk or whatever else it had been, it was certainly nothing new to Elena. Thus, a shrug; it was all she felt was needed to comment on this situation that usually didn't gladden her, and neither did it this time. An annoyed expression slowly crawled on her face, and buggedly would she turn off the alarm bell, cursing herself for adjusting it for such an early time of the day. Taking a look at the room however, she realized she prefered her boyfriend's over her own. It had a lot more space, was far tidier, was better furnished - even though she missed her Wraith model on the shelves. Who she however didn't miss was her roommate back in her own apartment. She favoured every day that could pass without her having to witness this poor, misprogrammed KSR hitting the walls or telling the worst jokes mankind ever thought of.
For another two hours would she just lie in bed, mostly procrastinating - an ability she thought to have perfected by now -, attempting to fall asleep again as she didn't exactly feel like getting out of bed just yet. It was one of these days again, bad hair day you would call it: she felt worse for wear, as if somebody had stolen her incentive while she had been asleep. Motivation to get up and wash herself was closing up to non-existant. Her belly felt weirdly heavy, heavier than usually even though she had gained quite some weight with her little offspring residing and growing up inside her. Thinking of it, it would capture her attention for several minutes which she just spent staring at her belly, lost in thoughts and dreams as she pictured certain scenarios to herself which would ultimately be painting a smile on her face that had shown concern before. She couldn't deny pregnancy had turned out to be not the easiest of all undertakings, especially in her line of business and with the obligations she felt she had, yet was it certainly a unique experience, one she was all in all glad she was allowed to make. Despite the numerous troubles it had by now caused and would probably keep on causing.
Finally she would bring herself to cast off the blanket and head for the bathroom to wind up her daily morning routine - consisting of toothbrushing, washing, blow-drying her hair, skin care and putting on some in no way flamboyant make-up. Followed by a quick, rudimentary yet nutritious breakfast and she would be ready to get started with working. Different to many people and much to her delight however, she had quite flexible working hours, meaning that she could show up at Glendalough Orbital, the Headquarter of the Forlorn Hope, the organization she was working for, whenever she felt like it. The only thing she was obliged to do was getting done with the stuff she had been assigned to until certain deadlines - how she managed to get to that point was of her concern only. But duteous as she of course was without any doubt, she always did her daily stint, no matter how she felt about it. With a few exceptions of course, exceptions that were slowly clustering, but everybody knows exceptions prove the rule after all.
And today, she would have been thrilled to make such an exception. But there was work needed to be finished, thus she exited the apartment after she had grabbed her leather jacket from the hallstand and yomped down to the spaceport. Still in a drowsy state of mind, walking proved to be a bit of a difficulty as she found herself stumbling more often than not. Nonetheless, she used the opportunity to soak in the fresh air while she was ambling through the busy streets. Even though many of the other passer-byes were far too focused on their PDAs, Elena would naturally draw some attention from other people due to her unusual hair colour. Not that she minded attracting notice from others, she actually enjoyed it, knowing that people were actively looking at her, was it because of the hair, the baby belly or whyever else, she didn't care at all. Allowing herself plenty of time - after all nobody expected her to be anywhere soon - she decided else and paid a visit at her favourite nature park which she had just come across. Sighing in relief as she found a free bench where she could sit down and relax instead of walk around further, she leaned back, closing her eyes and letting the scenery unfold its effect on her. The birds' twittering, frogs' croaking, ducks' quacking, the rustling of leaves in a cool breeze. She lost herself in her surroundings, almost forgetting there was work needed to be done - but for once, she didn't care. This day had by now already stressed her out enough. It kind of seemed to be off a bad start already, so she treated herself to a few minutes of chilling.
What a gorgeous construct nature was, she kept thinking, over and over again.
"You got an appointment", a deep, male voice suddenly said in a neutral tone, taking Elena by surprise and making her cringe. Taking gulps of air, wide-eyedly would she hectically look about herself. Whom did she just hear? Had it just been a delusion, possibly? Caused by her thoughts drifting further and further away from reality? And if so, why the heck did she just hear these four words, these exact four words?
"Who ... what ... what kind of appointment?", she asked puzzledly. In the meantime, she came to the conclusion someone was actually standing behind her, a man, dressed in a coat, looking down to her. He had the same confused facial play as Elena, though.
"Uhm, that was a question, Miss", the man replied, clearing his throat and adjusting his tie. Yet one of his eyes narrowed, wondering what had caused her reacting so scared. "You got an appointment? I mean, you ... seem like you're just idling right now. Maybe you, uh, would wanna fetch a drink or something? With, uh, me?"
Slowly Elena would realize what all of this was about, and couldn't contain herself from sighing loudly in relief. It was just a man asking her out for something, apparently. No subconsciousness playing foul games with her. It did however remind her that she was, as he just said, idling around, and thus she stood up, smoothing down her clothes and giving the man a friendly smirk, though at the same time opening the view upon her belly to demonstrate he could ask all he wants. "Oh well, I just got carried away by nature", said she, tilting her head a little and eyeing the man further. "Happens a lot to me. You know, sometimes nature just makes you forget about the rest of the world, right? Eh ... a-anyways, I'm sorry, but I must be on my way. When there's a job, it needs to be done, right?" She wouldn't give him time to ask her for her name or her number, but went straight out of the park, not looking back. In the background she heard him bidding goodbye, however Elena decided not to react on that further. She didn't feel too garrulous right now.
There was some bad taste on her tongue when she left the park, feeling rather uneasy about what just happened. Even though it had turned out to just be a man ready to mate, something had anchored in the back of her mind and wouldn't let go of it easily. Elena didn't know what it was. But would it turn out that she had all and every reason to feel uneasy.
Ten o'clock. The short flight to Glendalough Orbital had been a rather uneventful one, something Elena happened to be overly thankful for. She still had this weird feeling in her guts from the encounter with the man in the park, and she wouldn't have liked to talk with people right now either. In fact, she got a little surprised by how extraordinarily grumpy she was feeling, but she ascribed it to the pending pile of paperwork that already awaited her at her workplace. Sometimes she believed the bureaucracy had really taken hold of her, sometimes she wished the old times back when she had just been a simple freelancer, living from hand to mouth, and sometimes did she wonder whether the path she had followed would prove to be the right one in the end. But every time those thoughts would anchor themselves in her mind, she was resourceful enough to know how to distract herself. In this specific case, she switched on the radio during the flight, letting others take care of the talking process. In the past, she would have chosen the loudest music she could find, but as of late, she caught herself listening to the news more and more often. Clearly could she remember that she had once hated newscasts absolute guts, and when she was honest to herself that was still the case, yet everytime she switched them on some hope of a possibly interesting coverage would resonate. Not exactly to her surprise, the newscaster didn't have much to say, one assault here, a nature disaster there, the usual daily fusses that would be mentioned, and soon the radio switched over to broadcasting music again. Following the premise "old, but gold", an almost eerily accurate tune would start playing and accompany her during the rest of her flight. It wouldn't exactly help to raise her mood, either, though.
Finally reaching Glendalough, Elena would maneuver her craft onto one of the free landing pads, just as she used to it on an everyday basis. The hangar was already full of other ships, some of which she recognized whom they belonged to, and mechanics and Service Droids were bustling about all over the place, in some ways similar to an ant colony, lugging spare parts round. As every day, Elena hopped out of the cockpit, climbed down the ladder and instructed the next available mechanic to leave her Sabre alone. Even though she had been rendered unable to work on it on her own lately due to her health state, what she would have wanted the least was others to meddle with her ship, no matter how adept they might were. The local mechanics already knew about her special wishes, but didn't say much to it. When their boss told them something, they would have to follow it. Nay-sayers would get disliked very fast in this branche, everybody knew that.
Heading straight to her office, she met a few acquaintances on her way through the hallways, exchanged a few pleasantries and Good Mornings, mainly formalities, nothing actually serious. On other days would she might have gotten into longer conversations with a few of the others, but today she felt like getting to work rather sooner than later. Besides the fact that standing felt exhausting to her currently, she felt weak in some weird way. The possibility that she might was becoming ill seemed more and more realistic, a possibility that already now began annoying her. Nobody liked being ill, and especially not she, feeling bereft of her get-up-and-go. And that's exactly how she felt today, her incentive was still lost in some random cloaca and she couldn't find it. Entering her office, sighing at the papers already lying all across her desk, she would jam herself behind the latter, boot up the PC and get to it. Ever since the inter-structural changes for the Forlorn Hope had been decided upon, Elena was kept being busy with organizing duties. Leading an own division was a hard job, she had been wary of that, but how could she have imagined it would be that hard to change a pre-established system? Databases would have to be updated, others to be created first, listing everything she had to do would result in a sheer monologue.
The sound of a keyboard being typed with would suffuse her room for a few hours up until midday, that's when she decided to take a break and visit the local cantina for a rudimentary lunch. It wasn't exactly because of her having a ravenous appetite, quite the opposite, she weirdly had none at all, yet she felt how her body could use some nutrients after several hours of brain working. After having knocked together a meal, she would sit down at a table where a few other people were already residing, joining into the conversation with ease. If one thing was her strength, it was certainly talking. However today, she wasn't working towards being the center of attention at the table as she was usually keen on. Her body kept her busy as she more and more felt slight stomach aches, responsible for her lack of appetite. Some gastro-intestinal disease was her first thought, and it didn't amuse her. She still had stuff to deal with, which made her rather unwilling to allow herself getting ill right now.
Thus, after bidding goodbye to the others, she quickly made her way back to the office, going on with the business that she had to do willy-nilly. But these aches kept being there. In an act of immersing herself into the various matters she had to deal with, she tried to pretermit the aches that were slowly crawling through her stomach. The ignoring method of hers only worked well up to a certain degree, up until the ache transformed into a twinge of pain which made her completely unable to concentrate. With a deep, annoyed sigh she striked on the keyboard disgruntedly. It was at this point when she decided it wouldn't make any sense continuing with her work. Even though she hated leaving without having finished her daily set task, the problems with her stomach didn't seem to go away easily. Thus, believing a longer session of lie-down would help, she left her office aiming for the hangars again to fly back to her boyfriends' apartment, looking forward to the cozy couch and a hot cup of tea that would hopefully be able to settle her stomach.
Sixteen o'clock, the sun on Manhattan had already been a the zenith a few hours ago and would now slowly climb down the heaven's tent, ready to inevitably succumb to the horizon. Had the streets already been busy in the morning, now would they be absolutely full of crowds, people only could proceed through scraping by anymore. It wouldn't happen to be the optimal place for a woman with a considerate baby belly to traverse, but Elena didn't possess a hover-car, and in the literal heat of the moment, she didn't think of just quickly calling a taxi which would have been the easiest solution. As it currently was midsummer on Manhattan, the side experiencing day light had been gradually heating up more and more over the course of the day, and only the fact that the sun wasn't at its peak anymore made it anything near tolerable outside of a climated room. Beads of perspiration were dropping off her forehead and she would feel her clothes becoming more and more sweat-logged. Hot-flashes kept pestering her all the way to her boyfriend's apartment, sometimes followed by sudden shivers. The aches were creeping through her stomach, every now and then accompanied by a stab of pain due to which Elena even had to hunch slightly. However with the prospect of the couch in the apartment, she would clench her teeth and move on. If she had had a gun right now, she would have probably shot every single person who jostled against her, and there were many.
It wasn't much of a surprise to her that John wasn't residing in it yet when she unlocked the door to the apartment, obviously he was still at work just as always. With an annoyed grunt would she walk over to the kitchen, throwing a cherry stone pouch in the microwave, waiting for it to be heated up. Tapping against the kitchen table exasperatedly as she felt like she could die a wretched death any second. A nerving headache had joined in by now, rendering her quite unable to concentrate sanely. As soon as the microwave spouted an almost obnoxious beep, Elena took the pouch out of it, walked over to the couch and let herself fall down onto it, letting loose of a deep sigh as she leaned back and rested her palpitating head on one of the soft, white pillows. All while laying the pouch onto her belly, letting its radiated warmth sink in her belly.
That was imaginably bad timing to be struck with flu, she thought, even though she began pondering whether this might was a psychosomatic reaction to the stress of the last days, even the last weeks. Besides the quite obvious drowning in organizing work, tailing her friend, being pestered with the possibility of lacking trust might had been a bit too much for her. And thus, inevitably, stress would entail a weak immune system, that's what she had learned in school after all, so it would only be a logical consequence that she felt like absolute garbage now. She was just hoping that it would be over fast so she could get back to finishing what she had begun. But that was the problem with flu, it might take a while.
A nice lie she had been cooking up there in the course for herself of the last minutes. Judging from her body language however, nervously playing around with her fingers, staring at the ceiling waiting for the pain to slack off, deep down she knew something was not right. Even though she now had the opportunity to relax, her heartbeat hadn't calmed down either, she was still in a somewhat strained physical state. Ironically, it was as if her human instincts wanted to tell her something. Go to the goddamn hospital already, something is wrong, they wanted to tell her. And it was as if her subconsciousness was responsible for her headaches, pounding against her head, trying to get through. Don't forget the appointment!, it would have loved to tell her. But Elena didn't listen, not because she wasn't willing to, but because she didn't hear it in the first place. Instead, she gladly felt how the pain slowly succumbed to the warmth from the pouch and made a retreat. It would paint a small smile on her face, a reliefed one, maybe this would indicate that it really had just been a psychosomatic way of telling her to stop overworking herself.
But the aches wouldn't stay away that easily she soon realized, and sooner than she had thought they came back, sharper than before and fare more sudden when she had just decided to stand up from the couch again. Convulsing in pain, she muttered some incoherent stuff while holding her stomach. For several seconds, she stood there, praying it would become better again, except that it wasn't - in fact, it was quite the opposite, it would get worse and worse. Clenching her teeth, she made a few steps forwards, merely in an attempt to get forward as she didn't actually know what to do. That was when a sickly queasy feeling came over her like a flood, and from one moment to the other, before she could realize what was going on, there was barf all over the place, flooding the floor.
A few hours later, when Elena finally had the chance of reverberating on what happened after she had delicately poured out on the wooden parquet of the apartment, she realized she actually couldn't clearly remember. It were tags of memories she could still find in her mind, yet they were disjointed up to a point that she couldn't reconstruct the actual happenings anymore. Other memories were just ambiguos portrayals of the incident that had grown on her, and it wasn't safe to say what her mind had just made up on its own and what had in fact happened. As though she could only view the past hours through the wall of a waterfall. And if she was honest to herself, she preferred not remembering every single detail. It almost seemed to be a brain's mechanism to safeguard its own sanity, which was slowly drifting towards a yawning abyss of despair anyways.
What she however could remember was that, after her stomach contents had been delicately spread on the floor and the aches had been fulminating again, she, although panicking still sensible enough to realize something was wrong, called the emergency doctor forthwith. Just in time did she end the call to be struck by another wave of piercing pain in her stomach, making her sink to the floor, curled up. The next thing she still could reconstruct was that she, after been examined by a man clothed in white, was gathered up from the floor and stretchered out of the apartment. People were gathering around her, carrying her off, talking to each other in quite a hurried tone, while sporadically looking at her with a concerned mien. To Elena, it was just obvious something with her body was absolutely not in order, to the others and especially the doctor it would become more than apparent this was a case of emergency. And the fact she was carrying a young human inside her at the same time was surely not boding well, either.
Followed by a more or less juddery flight, Elena's next memories would contain a lot more of the color white, a frightening lot more, as she entered the nearest hospital, a large skyscraper stretching in the inner city circle. Being in an overly confused state of mind, she didn't really twig anything what was going on. However, people hectically running around besides her would draw an unpleasant impression, making her blabber some words that wouldn't make any sense as she wasn't able to clearly think with the headache striking her mind down. After a short while of having assistants drive her through a maze of corridores on an hellishly uncomfortable couch, meanwhile still having that peskily nauseous feeling in her gastric that wouldn't want to go away, she would be delivered into another room where she would have to have a body scan, being put into a tube like she was used to due to regular surveys of the maternal body. In other circumstances she would have flailed around like a maniac, if she had already had the realization of that scan would indicate, but at that point in time, she didn't even try to resist. Her body felt heavy and weak, her head hurt like crazy, and if she was honest to herself - she just wanted to fall asleep, wake up and find out this was all merely a bad dream. No consequences, nothing whatsoever. But even though she pinchered in the arm during the scan, it just didn't happen to be a nightmare she was living through. It was something far worse than this. It was reality.
Followed by yet another chain of memory lapses, the doctors were apparently discussing something, then talked to her, however most of it she didn't get completely. Their voices sounded weirdly dull, as though a metal wall stood between their mouths and her ears. All she knew was that she got driven out of the scanning room again, and that she felt extremely tired. In fact, she wasn't exactly sure when she was still awake, because at some point her body would decide it was time to rest, and thus she drifted into a more or less sweet slumber. Whether it was because her body needed sleep, because the doctors had injected her tranquilizers, because she got narcotized or because she was hellishly close to biting the dust would however remain unknown to her.
When Elena awoke from her slumber again, she found herself lying on a decently comfortable bed, her head resting on a wonderfully soft pillow while the rest of her body was covered by a thin blanket. The first thing she would recognize was that weirdly, all pain was gone as if there had never been any hint of a problem, and she felt as light as a feater. The headaches were gone as well, yet she quickly realized her mind was still befogged and reporting the desire to sleep again, repercussions of the anaesthesia she had had to endure. Breathing felt somewhat heavy for her, and inhaling deeply was still a physical impossibility. The air she was breathing in though was rather cool, a result of the strikingly obvious air conditioner in one of the upper corners. However, there was an overall stench of cleaning and disinfection solutions filling up her room, which didn't prove to be of much space. Its walls had been painted in the omnipresent white that seemed to lurk everywhere inside this skyscraper that was the hospital. The most of part of them were completely blank, one side had a metallic door, another a pair of windows through which she could glance at the outside. The curtains were blocking most of the view, however through the slits that were still there sunlight was falling into the room, indicating Elena some time must had passed since she had fallen asleep. Because it was bright as day on the outside, different to the dusk in which she got brought away from her apartment. One of the windows was slightly opened, allowing her to perceive the usual traffic jam of Manhattan again in all its beautiful aspects.
After having looked at the window for a moment, Elena's gaze wandered across the rest of the room, and with a shock did she have to notice a holder right beside her, carrying an intravenous bottle with an IV line attached to it that in turn was attached to her right arm. A nauseated mien flashed over her face before she decided it was better for her own sake to not have a closer look at the bottle's actual content, being able to already guess it. A jerk ran through her body however as she noticed that all the time, while she had been checking her surroundings, she had had company with her in the room. He had however not uttered one single peep and instead sat on a chair near one of the blank walls. Having his legs that were covered by black trousers crossed, bobbing up and down with his foot that didn't touch the ground, he had been staring at a PDA resting on his thighs. Studiously taking notes with a pencil, apparently with the utmost care. As soon as her patient looked at him though, he would raise his eyes and stare into hers for a few seconds with the typically neutral facial play of a doctor before hints of a smile would become recognizable.
He would clearly perceive her confused expressions on this matter, thus clearing his throat and then piping up. He, who seemed to have gotten long in the tooth already, had a deep, almost calming voice. "Miss Voigt, good to see that you have awoken...", he said, resting his hands on his lap. Though Elena wouldn't waste one second to already interrupt him. "Who the fu.ck are you, first, and second: why the hell am I even here?", she retorted with a bolshy tone, crossing her arms in front of her.
It would take a few seconds for the man to reply, but the sigh he uttered clearly showed that he had already come to the realization Elena wouldn't be his incarnation of the perfect patient. "My name is Doctor Erick Hardwood, Miss, but first things first. Just for the record, would you please cough once for me?" Defiantly, so she did, once again feeling how hard it was to breath actually, and the man would start making notes again, mumbling: "Perfect. Lung capacities at a normal level, it seems."
After having finished writing down his notes, he would raise from his chair, putting pencil and PDA back onto it and fixing his white coat. Another cleared throat later, he would resume again while walking up to her bed. However, before he could say anything Elena would already pipe up once more, narrowing her eyes and keeping to stare at the doctor. "What the hell have you guys done to me. I feel ... extraordinarily", she said, seemingly staggered at that point.
With a raised eyebrow, he would instead answer to her question first. "Tranquilizers, a ton of analgesics..." A short pause. "... pain killers, basically. And the repercussions of the anaesthesia. So to say, what you feel is a legalized drug trip, sort of." With a neutral expression, since he had worn a small smile before, he went on. "You should thank us for the pain killing medication, otherwise you would feel pretty damn horrible, I can tell you. Besides, to answer your other question, this is why I am here. To inform you." While he had attempted to keep his countenance the whole time successfully, showing his typically neutral expression during ward rounds, his words would now come to a standstill all of a sudden. Some incoherent stuttering followed. An uneasy feeling anchored in Elena's mind, and instintively she immediately moved one hand up to her belly, palpating it. Thank God, she thought since it seemed to be just as normal. Yet the discomfort wouldn't go away.
The doctor, upon seeing Elena's confused glance at him, would sigh and move on again. "Okay, so here are the bloody facts, Miss, and please believe me, I do hate myself for telling them. However, I was the one responsible for your emergency operation, so it's my obligation. What I want you to know beforehand, however, and I say that in all seriousness: If we hadn't acted fast yesterday, you would certainly be six feet under by now. There are variables, sure, but playing with variables and betting is not our business." Seeing as his patient's mien derailed rapidly, he decided to quickly move on, not allowing her to butt in and cause a discussion he really wouldn't be fond of having. "To start simple, a seat of infection had apparently established itself inside your stomach, hosting a large number of bacteria that became dangerous for you. As all bacteria, they have been procreating with an exponential growth, which explains the rather ... sudden outbreak of symptoms. A lot of accumulated pus had to be discharged as well as it posed a serious threat to your other organs. The seat of infection has been removed." The doctor's heavy gulp would be audible in the room as he stated the last of the number of facts. Breaking off the eye contact with his patient, an almost unprofessional behaviour, he stared at the window for a moment, moving his lips though words would remain unspoken. Elena felt her heartbeat rise again, and with what the doctor had said, she couldn't unthink the possibility of what might have happened. Just a usual infection wouldn't have burdened this man so much, after all. She would inhale sharply, starting to breath faster what would soon develop into hyperventilation. From one moment to the other, her mind was blank, except this one question pounding again and again and again. Could it be true? Would the gruesome apprehension that had overcome her prove to be correct?
She as well gulped when she asked the question, not knowing that what she actually questioned there she couldn't even realize to full degree. "The seat of infection...", she said with a fragile voice. "Where was it? What was it?"
That's exactly what the man had wanted to avoid, the patient suddenly asking questions they wouldn't want to ask and make his life a harder one. Another deep exhale however and he felt himself ready to give the appropriate answer. "Inside the maternal body", he replied reluctantly. "In the end, your child itself has been the seat of infection. Perceving her disbelieving stare at him, he hastily added before she could say anything to it: "I'm sorry to say it, but it was already dead before the infection started. At least one, if not two or even three weeks. We will have to take another closer look to determine the cause of the death, but from what I've been able to find out so far, it ... must be a wide range of causes." He gulped again. "Radiation, injuries, uhm ... alcohol."
It wouldn't take very long until his patient's silence would transform into a loud scream that filled up the room.
Sitting on the chair infront of his desk within the working room, John would check the network through, via an all-in-one screen computer. Rubbing his left hand along his chin, he read new messages regarding his fleet. While staring at the computer, he recognized a message suddenly blopping up at the right hand corner of the screen, indicating it's from his girlfriend. Clicking on the message, he'd read it, while his eyes widened in a less pleasant surprise. Quickly he shut down the device, standing up, making his way through his apartment, grabbing stuff like his wallet and his PDA, before he left through the entrance door of his apartment.
On his way to the elevator, he called a shuttle via the PDA, while waiting for the elevator. Once it arrived, he'd put the PDA back in a pocket, turning around towards the large mirrored walls, looking at himself, at his clearly stressed reflection, while taking sharp breathes. As the elevator stopped and the doors opened, he charged through the whole building, out of the building, right into the shuttle that was already waiting for him. Directing the driver, the shuttle made its way to the Brooklyn Hospital Center, taking only ten minutes. Paying the driver, he'd rush out of the shuttle, into the hospital, asking for his girlfriend's location, where he'd be directed to her room. With quick steps, he made his way towards it, opening the door, entering it.
As he entered, what he was seeing was a sterotypical hospital room, white blank walls with two opened windows at one side through which the sunlight is shining. At another side of the wall, a bed was standing on which Elena was lying, covered up to her throat with a white blanket. For a moment, he might thought she was asleep as she had her eyes closed currently, as if she was having a sweet slumber, but as soon as he shut the door behind him, she suddenly piped up, indicating she had been awake the whole time. Her hearably trembling voice sounded somewhat fragile and scared. "John", she just said, not opening her eyes yet.
His eyes widened in shock at the scene infront him, he was speechless for a longer moment, slowly stepping closer. Kneeling down next to her, at the side of the bed, his hands reached for her left arm covered by the blanket, carefully and softly. "I'm here, Elena." He almost whispered, in the lower tone his words are spoken.
His eyes became a little wet in sadness, compassion and pain, seeing Elena lying there, covered up to ther throat, worries filling his mind, made his body tremble slightly with fear, so did his lips, as his gaze wandered over his girlfriend, keeping a low breath, as he kneeled down next to her.
From her low, yet clearly audible and over-the-top regular breathing it quickly would become apparent to him that she was obviously trying to regulate herself, to keep her countenance so to say. What was going on inside her he could only guess at this point, but from how she was lying on that bed, it actually looked pretty calm and peaceful as if nothing had ever happened. More and more however, Elena pressed her eyelids and her mouth together before a sniff beca,e audible. As he was holding her hand, he would feel how she was tensing her muscles. "How does this look like to you?", she asked, still trembling, having difficulties to stay cool. In fact, she didn't even dare to look into his eyes right now, not wanting to see his expressions.
His eyes blinked briefly as he noticed her reactions, feeling her muscles tensing, a frown of deep worrying formed slight wrinkles on his forehead, he exhaled slowly and slightly, as she asks him this question. "Terrifying ... worrying, Elena. That is ... how it looks like to me ..." He'd take another sharp breath, turning his gaze aside for a moment, before it would return back to her, his with moistness gleaming eyes examine her facial expression. "What ... why?" He would only ask.
While still having her muscles strained, she clenched her teeth, her face looking pretty tensed, but also stressed at that moment. Knowing that at the very moment she opened her eyes she wouldn't be able to suppress a wailing attack, she still kept her eyes closed, though one tiny teardrop was already streaming from behind her eyelids. Her breathing audibly accelerated a little, however she soon managed to control her in- and exhaling again. Not knowing how to express the following words best, she instinctively decided to go with the bluntest approach imaginable. She had always been a diplomat, more or less knowing which words to choose for any given moment, but for this, no matter how long she searched, she really couldn't find anything suitable. "It's..." She halted again, gulping deeply as if she has a lump in her throat. Multiple seconds passed until she would manage to complete the sentence. "It's dead. Gone."
Just as he didn't think his shock couldn't grow any bigger, his expression would speak otherwisely. His eyes widened even more, still wet with sadness, though now adding a cold sheen of denial. He'd clench his teeth, only top open his mouth in a gap, unable to speak, soon returning into clenching his teeth once again. Shaking his head slightly, he'd take several sharp breathes, as he now was trying to hold back the same wailing attack alike hers. His left hand leaves her arm, brushing over his face, further to his forehead and through his face, before gasping between the words he finally manages to speak. "No ... no ... nonono ..." The cold denial would yet soon break, changing in realization, which finally broke the last bit of composure. With small globets of tears forming at the corner of his eyes, rolling down slowly his cheeks, his left hand would grab her arm once again, now firmly. "No ...", he said in an unsteady voice, mixed with slowly increasing sobbing, as he leaned his forhead against her arm.
For this young man, who was taken by surprise, worries and shock, the first time she announced her pregnancy, the world would slowly begin to shatter, as he seemingly had, even if he couldn't always show it due to his absence for duty, getting used to the idea of becoming a father, building a connection to the little thing that was growing within Elena's belly, that was his, that was hers, that was theirs.
Listening to his words, it wouldn't make it easier for her to look into his eyes, God alone knew at that point how they might look like at this stage, and to openly admit to him that what had bonded them the whole time was now gone. She simply didn't have the courage to do so, as she felt ashamed of herself, and above all was actually fearing his reaction. Yet she felt like she had to bring herself to finally do it, thus she opened her eyes slowly, and to nobody's surprise tears would immediately start running down from them. The lump in her throat became even bigger as she tilted her head to look at John as he huddled right beside her. Realizing what she had just done by this blunt statement. She had already opened her mouth to say something, however the words wouldn't want to come out, and all she felt able to do was shaking her head. She would have loved to just curl up and die right now, the uncomfort was clearly visible on her face. And the worst of all, she didn't know what there was to say. She couldn't tell John anything what she herself hadn't yet fully understood, after all.
Under shallow breathing, gasping between the sobbing, trying to slowly regain some composure to atleast be able to speak, he would as well, open his mouth, without any words able to be spoken. Taking another couple of minutes, he would finally find enough strength to speak. "How ... why ...?" It wouldn't last long, as he soon lost his composure again, falling back into another longer sequence of sobbing. Lifting his head slowly, he'd look into her eyes, with an expession of a broken man, redned eyes glisten with tears, the expression shifted from melancholy to simple heartaching agony. John would know the answer already, the answer of why their child would not be able to see the light of the world, not be able to enjoy a long life, not be able to grow into the symbol of proudness and care of two loving parents... and yet, he wasn't able to say it on his own. His lips would tremble, with the upcoming anger within his heart and mind, of his loss, unjust and icecold taken from him.
Elena really didn't want to give an answer to that, given that she knew far too well what the circumstances had been and what exactly had led to the baby's death. The question would make her feel ashamed even more, her face would start glowing in a discrete red as she turned her head around, not having to face John anymore. It was a relief, almost, not having to look at his reaction anymore. She had expected this to be painful, but not that painful. Using her hands to wash away some of the tears that had been running along her cheeks, she gave herself some time to think about an answer. And immediately realized that she just couldn't think about it right now. As she turned her head towards him again, her face had some almost begging features. "Please don't ask me that, John. Please."
He'd sigh deeply, nodding slighty, before he'd let his head hang, averting his eyes from her slowly, with a shallow breathing, he'd then remain silent, not asking further. In an inner fight of wanting to blame her, and knowing exactly that this wouldn't help, nor bring back the baby either, his eyes would restlessly wander from left to right, his lips still trembling, as his face would also gain a red hue, but with surpressed anger, as he clenched his teeth. His eyes would focus her again, staring at her with an expression that has now changed in disappointment, and anger as well. Rising slowly, as he released his hands from her he'd stand and turn around, grabbing one of these metal tablets on a small side table, throwing it, and the content on it, aside in anger, shouting his pain out, before he the hit the wall with all the pain in his heart channeling, powering his hit. Not even aware that he might just harmed his hand by that, he'd brush his hands through his hair, before he turned in her direction again, looking at her with his body trembling with pent up stacked anger and emotional pain. His hands clenching to fists.
Still in an attempt, though completely in vain, to hold back the tears, she stared at John with an aghast facial play flashing over her face, with an open mouth and widened eyes, blinking every now and then. She had never seen him that angry before, it caught her off-guard so to say, so there really was not much she could reply to this sudden eruption of agressions from him. It scared her a little though, as she was almost a hundred percent sure he was blaming her for all this, rightfully. But it all pulled her into a more and more helpless mood, taken by surprise. "I... I...", she just stuttered before lowering her head again to not fall into tears right in front of him.
Breathing and gasping heavily, the muscles of his arms would slowly relax, and so would his fists. Noticing her reaction, John realized he wouldn't care right at the moment, not if he scared her, or was the cause for tears.... his expression would cool down, from anger to a blank face. He then speaked with a depressed tone, that still had the hint of anger and suffering at the same time. "There are so many... ugh!" He shook his head slightly. "I need distance now... time to think, time to calm down - time to... cope with that. Get well soon, Elena." He then made his way towards the door, reaching for the knob, he looked over his shoulder at Elena again, for a brief moment.
He would leave a completely broken Elena behind him in the room, sitting in her bed and recapitatulating what had just happened. It all seemed to surreal to her, but if she thought about that, everything seemed surreal to her. There was still a tiny bit of hope left though, hope that all this was just a bad dream and that she would once wake up, find herself next to her boyfriend and could fall asleep again with a smile on her face. But more and more did she realize this would never happen. This was reality, reality had made its move, now it was her time to cope with it and make her own one. However, that was still just wishful thinking, and a thing of the future. For now, she would have to live through the despair that had come over her. She felt like a void, something was missing, something she realized she might not be able to live without with anymore. And the worst thing: She hadn't even been able to say goodbye, truly. It had been taken from her without a warning. She had taken it from herself.
Several days had past since the events that had made Elena lose what she held dearest in her life - her future offspring. The sudden shock of the moment had by now slowly subsided, yet of an improvement of her mental state could in no way be spoken. What she instead was left with was the worst feeling one could imagine - nothing. What she felt inside her was a gaping void, knowing that she had ultimately failed, the burden of having to protect a little human had proven to be far too much for her. The problem was: being left with nothing, she neither had anything to stuff this void with. It kept being there. The only thing left for her to do right now was gathering up the shards of her shattered dreams, she felt, however she badly tried to postpone doing so further and further. Having to endure this state of desperation all on her own - the only comrades she'd find were the little demons on her shoulders that were appearing again one by one, and Elena proved to be good fodder to sate their appetite for crumbling sanities and their thrist for shedded tears -, days felt like weeks, and the week she would have to stay in hospital quickly became eternity. While at the beginning she had periodically cried her heart out, kicking and punching against the wall as if it was her personal punching bag, feeling the need to express her emotions, the day would come when she felt outpowered and resignated enough to mostly just stay silent, withdrawn into herself and fighting her own turbulent nature instead. Most of the time did she lie on her bed with her eyes closed; from the outside it seemed as if she was sleeping or dozing in sleep, but only she herself knew that there were a pile of thoughts she would have to grapple with.
However, completely and utterly at this void's mercy she had first attempted to cope with, after a short while Elena was on the desperate search for something to distract her with, as she soon realized busying herself with the thoughts in her mind would only be futile self-torture leading to nothing but suicidal tendencies. She wouldn't like to acknowledge to herself that every now and then had she already played with the idea of strangulating herself with the bedspread, putting an end to the misery that had come over her life all of a sudden. Imagining how it would be like when the demons on her shoulder finally silenced forever, when her brain would finally stop messing with her, when she would finally stop living her life that was deemed to fail. Or, to word it differently: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, as it was told in the Old Testament. Having her own family's blood on her hands, she kept pondering if it might was a just act to kill off herself. What she had brought upon her own child she would have to bring upon her as well, she thought. However, deep inside her she knew it would be an act of cowardice and recreancy, together with the ultimate proof of her own weak will. Choosing death was merely an exit, and anything but a real punishment. What she lived through right now already was her punishment, and ironically she tried to to escape it by distracting herself. Going into rapture and ending her life was not her particular plan. Frankly though, there was no plan at all. Somehow she tried to bridge the time until she could leave hospital, but not even aware of what to do next then. Probably binge-drinking, that's how she had dealt with situations like these in the past. Comparing this to anything she had experienced in her past years could be well described as hypocritical though.
The hospital room which she resided in equaled a prison cell for her, though theoretically she could have gone outside by now and take a walk through the gardens and enjoy the fresh air while being distracted by nature. However, she didn't exactly feel like it, as a result of her depressed her incentive seemed to have died together with her child. She herself kept her as a prisoner rather than the hospital did, so to say. Instead of going out, meeting other people who had suffered various other fates and possibly making new contacts she for once prefered to stay in her room the whole day, lying in her bed and staring dead ahead. The old Elena, cheerful and motivated to meet new people like nobody else, seemed to be completely gone, or buried alive by a brutal avalanche of baleful circumstances. She didn't talk much either to the ones she saw, mainly the nurses. Every now and then one would knock on the door, either with the intend of taking a blood sample from her or bringing her her everyday meal. She would refuse to eat it everyday, as though she was on a hunger strike. The cause however was merely the lack of apettite, not an actual hunger strike - there was nothing left for her to strike against in the first place. It was a weird state of mind she was in, one that made her seem torpid, apathetic and disinterested. Grief, desperation, forlornness, wrath and last but not least an abundance of nothingness were all represented there and made for a unique, emotional cup of hemlock for her to deal with. Drinking or trying to disregard it, that was the question she pondered. However she leaned towards option number two, because dealing with the hard facts seemed too hurtful to bear. Trying to block off the obligatory realisation that nothing could be done about it, because this realisation would happen to involve dealing with the fact she alone was responsible for the death, she remained in a state of self-pity.
It was one of those usual evenings again, which Elena was recently using to spend time in her own apartment on Glendalough. A pretty large one in fact, with one commodious living room together with a kitchen, a bedroom and the obligatory bathroom. The lights she had already been switch off – the clock at the wall indicated it was already one in the morning. The only source of light was the TV which flaringly illuminated the couch in front of it and Elena who was sitting on it. Ever since the beef between her and her boyfriend had happened approximately one week ago, in which he had clearly stated seeing each other was of no relief for him at all, she had preferred to not peeve him any more by her presence and instead reside in her own apartment. There was not much to do for her there either though, which made her lounging about most of the time, being bored beyond belief. He was right to a certain degree though, she kept thinking to herself, as it indeed hadn’t helped much to look into his angered eyes and instantly get reminded of what she had been responsible for. Elena had arranged that meeting in hopes that they would sort the problems out that way; except that it hadn’t worked out. Both had seemed to be too hardheaded and impaired to deal with it in an objective manner. Which none of them could be blamed for, still it had opened just another can of worms. Back then, as though in a burst of anger and lust for confrontation, she had asked him to throw everything in her face he could think of, any kind of insult or whatever else crossed his mind, wishing to listen to his thoughts about her. She had known what would be in store for her there and still believed she could abide it. Truth be told, she couldn’t.
His words were still frequently weaving through her mind – irresponsibility, egoism, recklessness, bitch -, and there was nothing she could do about it. As much as she would have loved to lock them away, like highwaymen did they stray through her cogitations. They were hitting her hard, as they came from the most positively biased person she could have thought of, the one who probably knew her the best and loved her the most, she thought. That could only mean his words were closest to the actual truth, she thought. The consequence: The bitter self-hatred she was nourishing grew only further day by day. It was almost a miracle she had not yet attempted suicide over it; however she could exert enough willpower to not fall prey to the suggestions the demons on her shoulder gave her. While she had spoken about them in a plainly jocular way a few months ago, more as a metaphor than anything else to make fun of herself, most recently she couldn’t gainsay their existence anymore. Or she was just exaggerating in that matter.
There she perched, hanging around on the couch, her chin sunk on her chest, staring at the flatscreen – expensive model - with vacant expressions. No matter how costly the TV had been however, it wouldn’t help with the programme, utter crap as usual, and it visibly bored her to death. Yet, for lack of anything better to do, she kept zapping through the channels, grunting disgustedly every now and then when she had found something particularly whack. The sitcoms couldn’t hold her attention for long, and she strayed from the TV over and over. As she looked over at the KSR in the corner, for once resting instead of making obnoxious noises or jokes. There were bullet holes right next to it at the wall for a reason. Inspecting her fingernails, she briefly pondered painting them again as it had been some time, but scrapped the idea shortly after. She would have to search for the paint first anyways, and she felt too indolent for that right now. Placing her hands foldedly on her stomach, she began to fiddle about with her thumbs, whistling a melody piano that was faintly reminiscent of a lullaby. It were mostly crooked tones though, and so she ended the melody with a ho-hum sigh. Weighing her head to the right, she would eyeball her best friend that had pompously taken their seat on the couch right next to her – a bottle of the finest Whiskey she could lay her hands on. To be honest with herself, she had imagined her reunification with alcohol to be more glorious and less excessive, but it had turned out to be less glorious and more excessive instead.
At first, the local barkeeper on Glendalough had looked fairly surprised when Elena had moseyed in the bar, ordering good old booze. With days passing by however, he was questioning her alcohol consumption less and less, and instead was giving her more and more of the booze. Since the accident, she had become a regular, almost daily acquaintance of his again. Though she couldn’t even tell for sure whether he knew about her reasoning, he was definitely nobody’s fool, and he could have guessed it with ease, she believed. Else he would have probably intervened in her boozing in no time anyways. booze had become her regular form of liquid again, after multiple months of abstinating could she finally savor alcohol again. While she had always viewed it as some sort of ‘friend’, so to say, lately it had actually become one. No questions asked, and it just simply helped her. Neither did it have a mouth to blame anyone, which was convenient to her as well. Evasion was the name of Elena’s game. However soon the realization followed that her whole drinking could drift in an alcohol problem again. The fly in the ointment: In the beginning, the booze had helped her quite dramatically to suppress the bad thoughts, but the more she drank, the less the alcohol affected her mind. By now, unimpressed by the alcohol, the thoughts had been loitering around again.
Making some not further classifiable sounds with her mouth, she turned her attention to the left of her, where another acquaintance of her had taken its seat, dovishly resting on the couch – her gun. It was of rather fair quality, but couldn’t boast with innovation since it was a rather old model, relying on the kinetic energy of a bullet. Elena had never been forced to use it in real combat, which she was grateful for. Sheer brutality and savagery had always grossed her out a great deal, neither had she ever been fond of imagining how a possible foe of hers would collapse in his death throes after being shot. To her, it appeared to be such an almighty weapon. However, keeping it next to her while being in such homely surroundings was far from usual for her, and for an outsider it would have likely seemed irrational. And that is exactly what it was. However, the gun was lying there in her reach for a reason. Only recently, coincidentally soon after her hospital stay, had she begun realizing how dangerous she was living, as the head of a band of mercenaries earning a living through pissing off a bunch of people. Not to mention that the world itself housed so many dangers, she fancied, that it was only logic to have a gun next to her in case things went from worst to god-awful. Which, in her opinion, could happen any second, and she shall be damned if she couldn’t shoot whatever down with a precision shot this time.
Every now and then she had lost herself in umpteen of freaky delusions, in what-if questions. For instance, what if a guy managed to burgle her, creep up on her from behind and try to strangulate her? Or what if a snub suddenly showed up before her panorama window, blowing a gaping hole into it with a precisely aimed Sidewinder shot?
For her, those were all valid considerations. It however didn’t exactly encourage relaxation, since she was on her guard the whole time as a result. From time to time, when she lowered her breathing on purpose, she could listen to her steadily hammer-pounding heartbeat, which happened to be the most obvious evidence of her stress level that for the life of hers wouldn’t alleviate. Falling asleep had become a difficult thing to do, no matter how much she tossed about in bed. Elena was already used to sleep deprivation to some extent though, and thus she didn’t ascribe too much importance to it. Where she was left was an incessant state of deeply rooted discomfort and unease, one which was, from a psychological point of view, verging on morbid paranoia at times. Too great was her fear that something could throw her off course again. Wherever she went would she not feel safe as long as her gun was not with her, and even then, the uncertainty she felt in almost every day-to-day setting wouldn’t ever leave her side. Whoever or whatever wished to fuck with her again shall be riddled with bullets this time, she encouraged herself. What she however didn’t come to realize was that most of her fears, or at least her true ones and not the ones with which she deceived herself, were not to be solved with a gun. Her instincts played her for a fool with a simple fight-or-flight dilemma. She couldn’t fight them with a gun, and neither could she escape them for a long time, just as a pendulum that would always come back after you pushed it away.
What goes around, comes around; yet another proverb that characterized the circumstances laconicly.
Her mind was too full with ballast for her to conceit this was not healthy at all, though. And so, the zest for life was slowly, but surely melting away. Bye-bye.
And then, not forgetting there was also the matter with Kiara that had consorted with the other cogitations in her mind, and if anything, it just had hardished Elena even more to try and drink all her sorrows away. As though it hadn’t been already enough that she was assigning guilt to herself for the death of her child – which was actually entitled in every single way -, fortune had apparently had yet another card up its sleeve to knock her flat out entirely. From her perspective, the odds were long that they could find Kiara, whom she had considered one of, if not the closest friends of hers, ever again. Either had she been killed by a bunch of criminals, or she had been taken hostage. Neither possibility gladdened Elena all too much, and the reflection that it could be very well her fault again that had made Kiara end up in such a hazardous situation had a suffocating effect on her.
Any mere thought about the subject rattled her a great deal and encouraged her to reach for the Vodka bottle again, and so she did. Boot-facedly, she raised the bottle, clutching it on the neck and having a look at it. It was empty, unfortunately. Again, she thought, as this particular bottle hadn’t lasted very long. Only a few drops of booze were still coming out of it, but otherwise all of its contents were already rushing through her veins. She couldn’t yet feel the effect very well, though that would surely be to change as soon as she stood up. Right now, it just made her feel heavy, accompanied by a pinch of dizzy, but nothing more. It wasn’t brightening her night up whatsoever, for booze had quasi already forfeited this effect for her. It didn’t make her feel better, but at least it broke the wheel of constant, self-hating bethinking.
For now, she knew that she needed more, and the only place where she would get more of what she needed was the bar. Glendalough, as it was a former civilian facility, had quite a variety of bars, though all except one were absolutely good for nothing, at least in her own humble opinion. Rising up from her couch, although it was an ordeal in itself as she had laid on the couch for hours already without moving a single inch, she nutated slightly. The alcohol hadn’t hit her as hard as that her head would immediately start spinning like crazy, but the dizziness was enough to force her to concentrate on the next few steps she made. Holding her forehead with her right hand, she groaned, looking around her room, searching for the door to the hallway. Gross-motorly, she clutched at the gun that was still resting on the couch, and quickly stuck it into one of her backside trouser pockets. Still being in her right mind to not forget enough about her deep-rooted paranoia to leave without her safety’s guarantor.
Closing the door behind her, she would start tramping through the corridors, hands stuck in her trouser pockets while her glimpse rested on the floor before her as she watched every of her steps. Deep in the night as it was, she wouldn’t expect any other people coming her way, and if she was lucky, she would have the bar all for herself as well. Elena had always been a people’s person, but recently, and especially during her inglorious hours of getting royally drunk, she didn’t wish many people around. Or rather, people’s careworn or even pejorative looks. It was some kind of U-turn when she thought about it, since she remembered the times when she could enjoy clubbing around like a madwoman. But for now, she was enough of an enemy to nobody but herself to not really want any kind of person acting as judge around her. Just as imagined, nobody on her way to the bar crossed her path, only occasionally a security droid passed her, uttering an electronically distorted “Greetings” which partook of something pesky. She downright ignored them, except that at one point she almost crashed into one accidentally. With some bad luck she might had triggered the self-defense mechanism that way, but the robot didn’t seem bothered about it one bit, and just resumed with his patrol. With a now hurting shoulder she palpated carefully, she turn right and walked the last few meters to the bar.
Alec MarMurdoch copped a brief look at the clock that hang on the wall, right above a big sign of metal letters saying “Welcome to 96 Slide”. Half past one in the morning already. A sigh slipped out of his mouth, then his gaze wandered down at what lot he still had to do this night. A set of glasses still had to be washed and dried by hand. Granted, he could have left them to the dishwasher to take care of, but as vintage as he, the old geezer he simply was, preferred to keep the bar, he favored to wash them one after another on his own. It was what he wanted 96 Slide to work like, carrying off its visitors into another, maybe easier world. For him, it definitely was an easier world. Here, he was just the barkeeper, serving his guests, having some smalltalk, but nothing serious. The serious part of his life was kept behind the entrance to the bar, and it was good this way. Grasping at the next glass in wait for some groping, he looked up at the metal letters once again, which triggered his melancholia each and every time he did so.
He had seen many people come and go over the years, decades. Many different adminstrators under whose thumb he was. To word it nicely, he had never been the kind of guy caring for his bosses. Being one’s own boss on the other hand was more repugnant to him just as much. As long as he had a boss, one that would make sure his business would run smoothly, the old man was satisfied. What he couldn’t stand however were others who poached on his territory day in day out as if they knew everything better. He had had such kind of bosses already too, but his reaction to such smartypants always had to be a sycophantic “Yes, Sir, you are so absolutely right. I’ll do my best”. He couldn’t be arsed to do his best, if ‘best’ meant to rejig his whole pub to the wishes of a random somebody.
At first, when he was seeing those mercenaries calling themselves Forlorn Hope take over Glendalough all of the sudden, he wasn’t all too pleasantly anticipated. His usual cookie-cutter approach when faced with a new boss, following the tenet of “If you don’t expect much, you can’t be disappointed”. The people he would encounter weren’t all that bad, in his opinion. Even when this opinion only derived from the fact that those mercenaries let him do his work without any interferences at all. Maybe they were savvy enough to understand MacMurdoch knew his stuff better than they. So far, it had bidden fair.
Absorbed by giving this well-curved glass a pleasant treating with his caring hands, there was no mistaking of footsteps out on the hallway, at so late an hour. Raising his head again, he double-checked the clock. Still half past one. Those mercenaries weren’t very nocturnal, which he was gladdened about, as he preferred silence during the night over deafening boozy sessions until late in the night. That being said, he usually had the nights to call solely his own. The footsteps were definitely the ones of a human, as the stamping of the security droids was usually far more louder. Only one option was left in the basket then, he deduced. Elementary, my dear Watson, he knew who or what was heading his way. A boozehound.
He straightened himself after stooping over the washbasin, quickly brushing away gutter from his apron. High-ranking clientele was about to enter the bar.
It turned out just as he had expected from days and weeks of the same old story as the bluehead entered the bar, looking as miserable as sin with her zombie-like pale skin and sleep-deprived eyes – or, looking as miserable as always. It was a well-trodden face to MacMurdoch by now, though he could not be called ecstatic to see her again. She paid OK, no doubt, but the less cadavers he had to see, the better. And if anything, this girl in front of him looked exactly that way. Like a cadaver.
He sighed. Greeting her with a nod, while still treating the glass in his hands, he wouldn’t show any smile. “Caipt’n”, he mumbled his words. He didn’t know all their names, and even though he knew this one’s well enough by now, he preferred keeping the relationship to his bosses a more or less distant one. Not to mention, they were virtually all one to him. Captains, Knights, whatsoever, he knew the titles, but the persons behind the titles he wasn’t too interested in. What however had caught his eye for the whole time was her slim figure. Not only that he was just a man and couldn’t do much about it, but also that he knew there was more about it. The gossip factory is always working overtime in his line of work, and thus he was informed about one thing or another. The whole station was aware of the pregnancy on board. How could one not know, with the visual signs so obvious? Except that they weren’t anymore. Combined with her nasty habit of drinking herself under the table recently, it only supported one conclusion. And only when he thought about it, he could only too well understand her reasoning.
She looked at him for a very brief moment, stoop-shouldered. Her eyes however glazed over soon. “Alec”, she gave back, striding over to the bar, and plunked down on one of the stools, laying her hands on the counter. “The usual, as always. Vodka, in case you got some. I need something that burns”, she mussitated and looked down at the table and her fingers on it, which she soon ran over her face, obscuring it and her mien.
“Who would I be to not have one”, Alec countered, bending down behind the counter to reach for a bottle of the desired alcohol. While cracking it open, he would start conversing a little, just as he had learnt to do over the past couple of decades. Making guests feel like they had a bud behind the bar always helped with perquisities, not to mention that one chinwag or another usually never hurt. “You see, by now I actually proceeded to keep one bottle of it ready all the time, under my counter. Just in case you show up”, he wittered on while pouring some of the Vodka in a small glass. A lopsided smile appeared on his face. It all too much reminded him of Groundhog Day, except that it wasn’t the groundhog that was greeting him day in, day out, but a drunkard instead. As though he was trapped in a time loop like Phil Connors. And if so, how would he get out again? On the other hand, the woman was a good source of income, examined from a business point of view. So why would he want to end this loop in the first place?
His guest was watching his hand as he put the shot down on the table with dash. “You’re my resort, Alec”, she told him, focusing her gaze on the small glass of Vodka as it stood lonely on the counter. One second after and she poured it into her throat in one whack. She let out a groan shortly after and began coughing.
“If I didn’t know better, Captain”, Alec chimed in, holding the bottle in his right hand as he was certain he would be ordered to refill the glass soon enough. Besides his business considerations, it was a sorry sight every time. “I’d say I bring about your ruin, but who am I to judge anyways.”
“Next one.”
He sighed. Just as he had expected. And so he poured more Vodka into the glass again, until it was almost full to the brim. While she was busy downing it, Alec decided to spend a few seconds to have a closer look at his guest’s facial play. It was a convulsed face, but he ascribed that to the burning Vodka in her throat. God thanks he was over this already. According to his own believes, only a former alcoholic would make a good barkeeper in the end, and he could proudly count himself among this number of souls. It had been in his early thirties when he had lost himself to the alcohol like so many had done before. Back then, the divorce from the love of his life had been his cause to chum up with the rum bottles.
It was almost a ritual they were holding here, and it was already definite what his next words would be, because they would always be the same. With a headshake, he looked at her, then looked behind himself at the shelves with other bottles standing there. “Captain, I could try and tell you once again that alcohol won’t be your savior, but I doubt I’m telling you anything new. Since I say that every single time.” A frown appeared on his face as he said that. He knew well enough that it was easy to say that as a non-alcoholic. He had been told the same back in the days again and again, and he could still remember what kind of dismissal he had returned every time.
When she was done with coughing and forcing the Vodka down her throat, she would gasp a little, then look up at Alec. No expressions. It was as though he looked into the eyes of a dead corpse, he thought. A vacant stare. It was dead silent for a few moments as she fiddled around with the glass, not letting her stare wander away from his eyes though. “Do we really have to make conversation about this every time, even though you know the outcome isn’t gonna change?”, she returned, watching the Vodka resting in her hands. “Next.” And with that, she put the glass down on the table, shoving it towards Alec for him to refill it again. A provocative look whooshed over her visage as she looked up, jutting her chin forward.
Apparently she was in the “I’m not here to talk” mood today, Alec imagined. He shrugged. He would force the conversation down her throat together with the Vodka if he had to, no matter if she liked it or not. He wasn’t there to be liked. But seeing that wreckage of a person before him, and knowing alcohol was full of hidden pitfalls, he was feeling the obligation to step in and remind her where this could lead her. Not that she would listen, he knew. But it was worth the try. While filling the glass up with Vodka yet once again, he would smirk upon her words, reluctant to deviate from his light-hearted appearance. People don’t listen to you when you start griping.
“I believe at least somebody should remind you of what you’re getting into though”, he said, offering the glass to her which she eagerly accepted and emptied in one shot.
After she was done coughing, she would look at him, with an obstinate play on her face. “My friends are telling me often enough, don’t worry.”
“What are they saying?”
“That I should stop drinking.”
His grin grew a bit wider as she said that. “Why don’t you listen to your friends? They seem to be quite savvy.”
“Because I shouldn’t” was her surly answer.
“Why not?”
A sigh. “They can’t put themselves in my shoes. Not really. It’s sickening hypocrisy.”
It was a perfect screenplay the two of them were rat-tatting at this moment, as each and every line was sticking perfectly by now. This conversation they had conducted so often by now, both of them knew perfectly what they were retort to each other. It almost was a ritual. Both knew nothing would come out of it, but they just got over it because they had been getting used to saying those words far too much. However at this point, the conversation would take a different turn than usually, only if it was because Alec was sick from the self-pity this woman was wallowing in.
“Would you rather want them to suffer the same, just so they can understand what you feel?”, he asked in a provocative tone of voice before reaching for the empty glass. “I guess you want another one.”
Raking her fingers through her messy, uncombed hair, she would vent a profound sigh, shifting around on her stool. Leaning onto the counter with her elbows, she would break off the eye contact, while instead staring at the wooden bar. “No, of course I wouldn’t want that…”, she purled.
“I dunno what you’ve gone through, Captain”, he replied while filling up the glass to the brim once more. It was a lie, but he affected pretending to know less. Would be better if she didn’t know what kind of rumors were doing the rounds recently. “But it seems like life’s played a bad joke on you. Friends might ain’t in your skin, but they just wanna help you. Listen to them.” His words were almost akin to coaxing.
“Pfft”, came the immediate rebuff. “Don’t act as if you had a heiligenschein.”
He shoved the filled glass over the counter back into her direction, as some of the Vodka slopped over. “Last one for today”, he said with resolute, hard vox. Leaning over the counter a little, steadying himself with his arms, he would add while she was instantly leaping at the shot, slugging it down as though it was a matter of life and death: “I’m no saint, but I’m still in my right senses to see where this is gonna lead to. I know that you think your life’s been smashed to smithers. But that’s no reason to throw it all away now.”
She had already guided the glass to her lips when she halted and meanmugged him for a second. He could notice her strained muscles at this moment. He smirked. Bravo, you hit something there, old geezer, he thought to himself as a smile flickered across his face. Angry reactions ever so often were a sign of repugnance, but also of slow realization.
“Just shut the hell up, old fart”, she groused back and quaffed off the Vodka. After she was done with the obligatory gulping and choking and coughing, an excruciated expression flashed over her face as she gritted her teeth; apparently she was trying to keep the whole Vodka she had just drunk in one go in her stomach. It only made Alec shake his head at her, while he was crossing his arms before his chest and breathed out wearily.
“Well, from what I see, this amount of Vodka will surely be enough to make you busy for a while. Happy puking your lungs out, Captain”, he commented on her unsavory behavior while reaching for a wiping cloth to wipe the counter clean from the drops of Vodka on it. To some degree, it actually disgusted him. Maybe it was the reason why he didn’t drink much alcohol anymore, beside one pitcher Scotch every now and then with his widely scattered buds. It was almost ironical that he, as a barkeeper, didn’t insist on regular guzzling himself, but he thought it a very advantageous circumstance. No guest could use a drunken barkeeper behind the counter. And instead, he used his time to natter with the people he entertained, and could easily make them stop whenever he saw fit to do so.
Since she was already holding her stomach frantically as she rose from the barstool, Alec guessed it was really time for her to stop. Now it was just important to get her out of his bar before she would start heaving the gorge on his property. He had no cleaner, so every piss or barf that would end up on the floor he had to clean up himself willy-nilly. For now though, he just wanted to finish the glasses that still needed a washing and go to bed afterwards, cleaning up a pool of sick was not scheduled in his timetable.
Mopping her brow after a slight attack of sweating, the only thing she seemed capable of doing was groaning, and stumbling as she stepped on the ground. Apparently she had once again overestimated herself to a fatal degree, Alec figured. For a brief moment he considered whether he should usher her back to her room, but then opted against it. She would surely find her way back without his help. Not to mention that his own slothfulness would have gotten in the way anyways.
Weaving to the exit as though she was slipping on black ice, she made a brief sweeping gesture to wave goodbye to Alec, accompanied by groan after groan. “Fine, alright. I got enough for today. I know”, she mumbled her words, not looking back at him. “Got my share for today. Good … good night.” The last words were only stuttered as she leaned against the wall of the bar for a second, mopping her brow again before she walked through the door with dash, veering to the right and thus out of Alec’s sight. He put the wiping cloth back neatly on the bracket. With a shake of the head, he would reach for the bottle of Vodka and stow it back under the counter; tomorrow, or overmorrow it would surely find use again. The idea of giving in to a shot himself flashed through his mind, but that would get him into hot water, so he casted the idea away and instead devoted himself to the next glass in line. His hopes were high those few shots would make her busy for a while, at least for this night. There had already been times when she had come around multiple times during one night, though. Yet she seemed disheveled enough for now to be self-absorbed until the other day.
Humming a deep tone, not altering it over the course of minutes, he would quickly sink in his task. Him and the glasses.
Elena felt dizzy. The world around her was wobbling in a way which made it difficult for her to focus on her steps, and thus she proceeded with one hand propped against the wall palpatingly. It was by no means an ecstatic vertigo she was suffering from, but rather a sickening one. She had to fight back the Vodka in her stomach that was pushing for being released again. To be frank, alcohol didn’t do her good in any way, no matter how much she claimed it to. In the end, drinking was always tantamount to feeling like a miserable insect dying a wretched death. The entire boozing never pumped her up as much as she would have liked it to, but at least it forced the gnawing demons out of her head for a while, and replaced it with a whole lot of brackishness. Elena knew that was drifting into alcoholism at its best, but she was at her wits’ end how to deal with herself. She just made do and mend.
With a spinning head and a churning stomach, she made one step after another. For an occasional passer byer, she would have allegedly made a paramount bog mummy, the way she mugged. In a sudden spell of panic, she opened her eyes wide and pawed at her chest frantically. Blessedly, the gun was still where it was supposed to be. For a brief second had she thought she had lost it somewhere on the way, or in the bar. That would have been close to a veritable disaster to her. Something racketed about in the distance, or at least she believed to perceive clamor from somewhere on the base. As she tried to focus on the hallway before her, it began spinning like a maelstrom in her head. Alcohol was in play, surely. Oh jeesh Elena, she thought, you’re in the grog again. At that particular moment she could have denigrated herself for the binge, but those thoughts would be forgotten till the other day, when she would repeat the cycle anew.
For a few seconds, there was a nigh eerie silence flooding the floor and thus her head, she could only perceive her heart that was booming against her chest. Her head ailed as though some churl had smashed her brains in with a pickaxe. Thinking straight proved to be a physical impossibility. Exactly that was the good reason behind drowning her problems with alcohol, because she couldn’t concentrate on anything anymore; which was celestial blessing and hellish bane at the same time.
She paused with her steps when she suddenly perceived a noise from directly behind her, akin to a crack as though somebody was walking on parquet. Except that the floor was metal. Then another crack, as though this certain somebody was coming closer. Holding her breath, Elena felt her heart thumping like mad all of a sudden, and beads of sweat already began running down her front. With her trembling lip bitten, she closed her eyes for a moment to work up the nerve to look behind her. Slowly, she turned her head around with a raised eyebrow, eyeballing who was behind her. With one hand on her heart, or rather on her gun this time.
Not a soul to be seen on the hallway. The cracking sound was gone.
Her eyes narrowed to small slits. Was that some kind of delusion? A moment later she could perceive a voice, seemingly coming from the opposite direction, the one she had been walking to the whole time. It was a silver, clear voice Elena heard, one that resonated with the slightest hint of trembling anxiety, though one she had never heard before.
“Mommy.”
Inhaling sharply, Elena shot her head around with widened eyes, producing her gun out of the jacket in a rustle, leveling it at the corridor ahead of her in the teeth of dithering hands. With a face like thunder, she gazed at the figure that unfolded before her eyes. A deinty little girl it was, clothed in an atrociously pink dress, holding a stuffed animal jammed beneath her shoulder. Upon facing up to the gun only a few meters away, pointing at her, a terribly frightened expression showed on the girl’s face, and she clang to her teddy bear even more, all while her eyes turned bleary and her lips began jittering. “Mommy..?”, the little girl spoke with a stammer, for once avoiding eye contact with Elena.
Somebody or something was playing Elena for a fool, she knew that. But above all, she was equally frightened by the sight that presented itself to her. “Oh … oh God … oh God no”, she quethed, taking a step back, but keeping the gun pointed at what was in front of her. Her heart was ferally thumping away by now. The tremble in her hand became heavier as she examined the features of the figure. Her head, addled and free of any thoughts at this moment besides one: guilt. “Not you…”
“What are you doing?”, the girl asked full of fear, hugging and squeezing the teddy bear in her arms, as though to shield her from the gun with. She tucked in her chin.
While palpating her throbbing head carefully, Elena’s jaw dropped more and more, and she turned ashen-pale with horror. Was she going insane already? Was it the alcohol? Or her remorse? Whatever it was, she would have had to spend a great amount of willpower to keep face, willpower she didn’t have at the moment. Despite a vain attempt to do so, she was all of a dither, and well on the way to losing her poise. Flourishing her gun-holding hand, her face adopted a bewildered expression. This could under no circumstances be real. “Go away, you bloody abomination!”, she shouted gapingly, however her words sounded weirdly lulled and shaky, as the alcohol still had a massive bearing on her. “Whatever the fuck you are, you’re not real!” In an act of wimping out, she retrogressed with another step, almost stumbling over her own feet. She broke out in a cold, freezing sweat. Another sudden dizzy spell got the better of her again, forbidding her to zero in on aiming the gun right, and instead her arm began swaying all over the place.
The little girl recoiled almost immediately, and burying her face in the plush toy, lachrymose sobbing was audible. In between the sniveling, she managed to blubber out a few words, though with her mouth pressed against the teddy, her voice sounded quite muffle, making it actually hard to understand her. “Please … please don’t kill me, Mommy”, she begged for.
“I said go away!”, Elena screamed before her voice cracked. Her heart went head over heels, she felt the rapid, pumping pulse in her carotids. In the next second, a shot was audible, together with the sound of a recoiling bullet. It went right through the bear into the girl’s tummy. An actual wonder that she had managed to aim that precisely. To be fair though, it was a lucky shot. With widened eyes that slowly turned bleary, she stared at the sight before her. While Elena’s mind had been empty until now, dozens of emotions were now breezing in like a volatile storm approaching. Gasping for breath, she took another careful step back, and although the vertigo made the world spinning around her once more, she kept her balance notwithstanding. A malodorous smell stung her nose all of a sudden, a putrescent one.
The girl instantaneously began weeping, first only to herself, though the piano quickly crescendoed into a full-blown fortissimo. And before Elena knew what was happening, the weeping took another turn, fluidly transforming into snicker, then a twitting laughter. With her mouth wide opened, Elena kept staring at the little girl, gasping rapidly, yet she took a quick peek at the gun in her tremulous hand, then looked back at what was unfolding in front of her. The picture of the hallway in front of her slowly turned fuzzy, making her blink.
“Why did you kill me?”, the girl asked, throwing the teddy bear aside on the floor in a dash, flinging it on the ground, unveiling her face riven by blazing hatred. Wrathfully she looked straight into Elena’s eyes. It was only at that point that she realized this little girl had just the same heterochrome eyes as she did. Feeling unable to breath or to say anything, a reaction came in form of another few bullets riddling through the girl. To no avail. There was no blood streaming down her chest as it was supposed to after multiple projectiles had gone through her body, and her face was anything but contorted with pain. What kind of abominable creature was that, Elena pondered hectically. Feeling unable to move her eyes away from this little monster, she couldn’t help but stare at it as it made a step forward towards her with an almost threatening hand gesture. “You tried to kill me!”, the girl shouted at her in a nigh denouncing tone of voice.
The dizziness confused Elena a great deal, and as she was about to make another step back, a sudden feeling of faintness joint the vertigo that was sucking her in further and further. Miscalculating the step, her foot would touch the ground in an exceedingly bad angle. It tripped her up, and she let go of the gun in her hand which dropped on the floor with a clank, and already before she would even hit the ground would she begin suffering from tunnel vision. Hitting the ground, while her temple ungently hammered against the floor, was only a mere formality to knock her out completely. Black environed her from all sides, before she would be roughly forced into a state of unconsciousness. A last anguished groan slipped her mouth upon the sore blow against her head.
It was a weird dream she had, in no way like a usual dream during sleep or narcosis. What she was imagining to live through was far more torn to shreds, making the attempt to remember anything of it besides smithereens of abstruse, obscene scenes a well-nigh impossibility. She only could remember the little girl had played a major role in it, and that one or two grotesques, completely disconnected from reality, had happened.
Her wakey wakey was almost as rude as the way she had fallen asleep unintentionally. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but what she did know was that both her cheeks were hurting as though a whip had done its smarting work on them. The sound of a smack had woken her up, and as her squinting eyes, which had to adjust to the bright white light of the hallway, slowly opened she could see the figure of her barkeeper standing right beside her, bent over to slap her in the face. No smile whatsoever was painted on his face when Elena came around again, still having the dizziness filling up her mind, barring her from any kind of realization what had just happened. The last events only felt like a weird dream to her, which had nothing to do with reality. Her vicious headache however was nothing but cruel reality.
“God dammit, Captain”, Alec snarled, slapping her face yet again. It was just making the smart worse. Then however, he would reach one arm out for her, offering to pull her up. A gesture that suited her. “I’m telling you, you’re by God the most foolish eejit I’ve seen so far in my life.”
Dim light from the ceiling illuminated the room Elena resided in, her apartment on Glendalough. Since she had spent so much time in there recently, it had almost become something akin to a prison cell to her. She had grown weary of each and every aspect of the room; the furniture, the parquet, the light glaring her into the eyes, virtually everything. Only the large panorama window at one of the room’s four walls was still able to enthrall her, like the light enthralling a moth. Sometimes – no, almost always when she had nothing better to do than doing nothing -, she walked up to the window, hands folded behind her back, and just stared. Stared endlessly, into the endless space that spread out before her eyes. The only thing reminding her that she still wasn’t floating in space was the gravity on the station, and the reflection of light on the glass surface. She used to spend countless above countless of hours, just staring out of the window.
To many it would have seemed boring, or unspectacular even. After all, it was always the same plain sight, if one had gotten familiar with the astonishing vastness of space. Planet Sarina, resting in space pristinely, always filled up most of the view, but behind it stars and the remnants of the Barrier Gate nebula were just as much visible. Surely, there were far more beautiful sights to look at in Sirius, but this somehow was different, Elena thought. Maybe it was because only now she realized the beauty she had to look at right next door. Maybe because she had seen the planet and the overall scenery so many times, but had never truly seen how beautiful the planet was, with its surface clouds meandering perpetually. But maybe, that was just a false sense of romanticizing. To some extent, the sight managed to cast a spell on her every time she looked at it. It wasn’t the fascination of the beauty that kept her locked. It was that spell that had perhaps become the last true safehold of hers, from herself.
The rest of her room was oppressively drab and grey, especially when the light was dimmed. Or it just felt that way to her. There had been times she could well remember when she had enjoyed her apartment, as spacious and plenty of everything as it was. These days however, only the panorama window presented something that didn’t make her puke inwardly at an instant (which was the reason for the amount of small holes on one of the walls – caused by bullets). That circumstance held a mirror up to how it was going for her, in some way. The sight made her forget about what had happened, and instead filled her with a void that only did her good. Just looking out of the window, and being calmed by the effects of the scenery. No nagging. No self-hate. No perpetual glooming about the events that had led her to become what she was, a picture of misery. Her dark under-eye circles had become her everyday make-up, and neither did she hide them. Why should she in the first place? To appear like something? Appear like she was alright?
She had tried that so many endless times already, and it had only made her feel even shi.ttier than before. Hell, should people see what was going on, she was sick of hiding it, sick of acting as if everything was alright. Nothing was, and she did have neither the ability nor the means to do something about it. She had abandoned fighting against the bad feelings with alcohol, as there was no use in doing so. And so she abandoned herself to the despair, self-loathing, feelings of guilt, and let herself get torn apart by them. And if she really felt like she had to take a break from the torment, she went to the window.
So she did today, stonily-looking, glancing out of the window, standing so near at its surface that her nose touched it slightly and that she could see her shallow breath condensing on it. The usual lump was in her throat; it felt as though an assassin tried to strangulate her from behind, suffocating her, taking her breath away and rendering her unable to speak up. A slight tremble rushed through her body, and she had her arms crossed before her chest. Her face didn’t show any emotions, as expressionless as a mummy. Her lips she compressed, breathing only through her nose. Deeply inhaling the temperature-controlled air of the room, she devoted herself to the sight once again, in hopes to be distracted by just staring space to death.
Only that it didn’t work, this time. It only got worse.
Her thoughts began to trail away from the planet its beauty again, slowly, but surely. Back toward what had made her walk up to the window in the first place. It was a picture that was etched in her mind, bloodcurdling. Elena didn’t resist, knowing that it was futile to try and ignore it. That as well she had tried out multiple times, only to fail every time. So she let the picture slip into her mind. She couldn’t bear to look, but it forced itself upon her. Weeks ago, she would have started to whine right away, but her response had leveled off by now. Towards mute acceptance in agony. A blonde woman, sitting enchained on a chair, unconscious. An empty syringe lied on the floor. Cuts all along her skin, some clotted, some still open and bleeding. The woman wouldn’t utter a sound, sunk in the chair. Bereft of any strength. Thinking of it, Elena lowered her head, eyes shut. She didn’t want to think of her anymore, it was so enough by now. Two weeks really felt like enough to ponder about it. That was the past, nothing more. An unfortunate past, yes, but it had been done, and she could not do anything about it anymore.
Yet, the mere thought of what had happened to her, Kiara, was enough to psyche her out. Tortured, brainwashed, all because of her. Because she didn’t manage to control herself back then. All because of a small, minor mistake from her side. She had made her run away, right into the clutches of this bastard. She had gone to all imaginable lengths – visited the Lion’s Den -, to safe her, but it hadn’t made a difference in the end. The damage had already been done to her friend, and there had been nothing for her to do about it, besides accepting it. Giving up on her had been Elena’s last resort, but she had to if she didn’t want to spread herself too thin even more.
Gulping, she looked up again, eyes opened to a slit. That she hadn’t been able to do anything was the worst. She couldn’t hold back a small tear that began to make its way down, rolling over her right cheek, followed by a weary sigh and another gulp. It didn’t take long until the tear reached her jawbone, and rolled further towards the tip of her chin, where it eventually dropped to the floor. She blinked with her eyes a few times, in order to keep the rest of the water from running down too. Otherwise, she stared into the window, making out the outlines of her own silhouette on it. But she didn’t see space anymore out there. She couldn’t say what it was, but it was more a gaze of distraction, distracted and lost in thoughts.
She remembered the TV binge-watch session on the Apahanta, or more importantly, remembered how she had felt on board the ship. Surprisingly good. In fact, it had been fun, real fun. And she had been happy. Not overjoyed, but it had turned out to be a long-yearned-for relief from usual monotony. She had had her doubts about this Captain, doubts that had given her more of a share amount of fear the last weeks. What she had first expected to be a trap, had quickly turned into something that came close to paradise for her, though. A word she had last used an eternity ago, she believed. Perhaps that evening wasn’t even all that great in fact. But compared to what she had been gone through otherwise, day by day again and again, it looked like gold. The hangover after wards had definitely not been great, and there had been moments when she had felt just as shi.tty as usually, but she succeeded in forgetting about those aspects of her stay. For her pessimistic stance, that was so much the more remarkable.
It had been a blessing, in the truest sense of the word. And, at the point when she would have believed in it the least, it had actually rekindled some of her long forgotten spirits that still seemed to be inherent in her. Every time she thought back to it, she could not hide a smile on her face. And so she couldn’t this time. It was a rueful smile she showed the mirror, added with another tear dripping down, but mind you. At least it was one, and for once it wasn’t a fake one. A hopeful one, perhaps.
She was not trapped in something, apparently. There were ways out, somehow, somewhere. Perhaps, she wouldn’t rot here until the end of days, rapt in the repercussions of what she had experienced. Maybe one day she could forget about it, or at least put it behind herself, and look forward into the future. One day.
A prisoner of herself, or of something inside her that kept her restrained in the tightest of manacles imaginable. If she truly was a prisoner, then there had to be a way to flee. But had she not spent so much time already – multiple months in fact -, only to realize there was no escape for her this time? It was at those points during her thought patterns that usually one or multiple images flickered across her inner screen, as a friendly reminder of why exactly she wanted to give up. All this, her fault. Did she really want to break free, or did she want to succumb to this at heart? Yes, she wanted to get all of her problems behind her, as she sometimes dreamt about waving goodbye to them as she would wave goodbye to an old, hated acquaintance of hers when she left them. But then, there was the question of how. And she didn’t know an answer to that question, driving her even more into the despair she was in. How was she supposed to have a big say in what would happen to her in her lifetime if she knew it wouldn’t make a difference anyways?
She lied her head against the window with a bang, making her head hurt instantly. This was all too much to bear for her, she lamented to herself. She found herself trembling ever so slightly again. Only a single thought of either what had happened or what would happen in the future made her react that way. Sometimes she tried to stifle it, mostly when people were around. Not when she was alone though. Then she just let her body do what it wanted.
The view of Salina held no meaning to her anymore, now that she had gone before the window and had once again turned into the deeply-troubled mess she was at the moment. Something was different this time, or the last way to cool herself down somewhat had finally forfeited its use as well. Her bleary eyes had decided to finally stop with shoving water out onto her face, and she was glad that they had. She hated crying. Probably the thing she hated the absolute most. Even more than herself, when she thought about it. At least one thing that had not changed with recent events. It was a questionable thing to hew to with her current situation, though.
Rubbing her cheeks dry with the right sleeve of her jacket, she averted her eyes from the window and looked back into her room. Everything was quiet. She could only feel her own heartbeat, accelerated, but not stressed out like she had to run for her life. A chilly cold suddenly enwrapped her as she stared dead ahead. The room was still as much illuminated as before, but it appeared darker to her, as if somebody had dimmed the lights a bit more. Weird. The silence didn’t make it better. She could hear herself think better then, and that was never, never a good sign. For a brief moment, it seemed as if time stood still. Nothing urged.
The silence before the storm, as hell broke loose the next moment.
She felt an intense knock against her head, like somebody whacking her over the head with a sledgehammer or an equally unsubtle weapon. A haze of dizziness swirled around her all of a sudden. In the distance, she could hear a voice, or rather a silent sobbing, and it approached her, came closer with every second that past. Elena felt unable to do anything than to keep standing where she was, and wait for what was to happen, petrified of her own suspicion. She knew what was to come. It was the first time since approximately a week that it happened, but it still did, and it shocked her more than ever before. Gasping like somebody had decompressed her apartment, she shook her head frantically, vainly trying to get her head straight again. Whatever it was however, it easily broke her resistance.
“Tell me that you missed me,” she heard her say. A young girl’s voice, just as thin and feeble as expected. It hit Elena marrow-deep. She didn’t know where the voice was coming from, or if it even was coming from anywhere in the first place. Her senses told her that person was in the room, but she was not as idiotic to believe that to be true. That she was fighting her head again didn’t make the deal any easier however, in fact it made it worse. “Please just hug me,” the voice sounded pipily into her ear once more, echoing in her head.
Rendered speechless, Elena felt her pulse go way up. Feelings crashed into her mind. Panic-stricken, she began to hold her hurting head with one of her hands, while trying to stumble forward on her shaky legs, almost falling down onto the floor. She couldn’t control her own body anymore, as she was shaking all over the place by now. Wheezingly she tried to shut down the thoughts, banish them to a remote place far off where she was, but it didn’t work.
“Mommy, do you, do you remember what the Doctor said?”
Elena shook her head in despair. Memories forced themselves upon her. Destructive memories. While the child’s voice still echoed inside her mind, another voice suddenly chimed in, resting above the other one. Her head felt as if it would bust any second. Holding it frantically, somehow trying to make the voices and memories stop, she stumbled and fell over onto the floor, and landed on her knees. It however seemed as though any attempts of hers to block the memories away just motivated them even more to come and come in flocks. “The seat of infection has been removed,” said the male voice residing her head dryly as dust. No matter how dry it sounded though, it was enough for Elena to freeze at an instant as she sat on the floor. Her huffing and puffing she could barely even hear, so loud seemed the on-goings in her head. “Radiation, injuries, alcohol.” Another tag of memory clashing into her mind, echoing just as much. Then another, creating a bizarre, lurid tapestry of sound that could only be described as total chaos. “It was already dead before the infection started.” The way the voice sounded changed, from dryly to almost pejoratively, with a great amount of arrogance.
“Leave me alone! Please!” Elena cried out beseechingly, bowing down and holding her head. She had been through this many times already, but the torture would not become less. As she curled up into a ball on the floor, she tried to lock everything away.
“I want to be with you, Mommy!” the little girl’s voice cried equally in despair, cutting through the rest of the background noises like a sharp knife. Distracted as she was, she had not felt the tears welling up in her eyes again. As she blinked hectically to get a clearer picture of her surroundings, still fuzzy and disconnected from reality, they made way down her cheeks. She wished everything to silence at once, but wishes didn’t easily come true. The racket she heard with her inner ear was deafening and intimidating, like the raging madness of a mob seeking out to lynch her. The girl’s pleading inside her head had dealt her a major blow. No, she wouldn’t ever do what the girl seemed to suggest.
“I said, go the fu.ck away!” Elena shouted in the room, still fighting back the memories. As if there was somebody she had to shout it at, as if there was somebody in the room with her. As she looked round however, she realized the room would not answer. Gaspingly, she stared into the black screen of the TV, and for a second it seemed as though it stared back at her. It sent even more chills down her spine, and made her break out in sweat once and for all. The silence she had begged for had returned, the chaos of different voices slowly was pushed into the back of her mind again, albeit not for long. It was enough for her to grasp a sense of reality again, though. The room seemed even more so empty than before, lifeless.
It had left her stupefied with horror, and moreover, it left her with seemingly nothing. Now there was silence again, in contrast to the horrible hubbub before that could have made her scream her lungs out. It felt as if something had suddenly been taken from her again. She couldn’t say for how long that had gone on, but it had appeared like a dozen of minutes. Whereas in reality, it had only been one mere minute of flashback.
Trembling, she tried to stay up, but her knees still were weak and she was quite wobbly on her legs. She quickly brushed the tears away with her ashen-pale hands that felt incredibly cold. The lump in her throat seemed to obstruct the way through her throat, making her breaths heavy and fitful in comparison to how calmly she had breathed against the window a few minutes ago.
She just realized she felt like throwing up when her head became heavy again and her knees turned to jelly. Her heartbeat, just as it had had time to calm down, accelerated once again, so frenziedly as though it wanted to beat right out of her chest. The tremble in her hands promptly turned beyond her control. Back in her mind, a picture began to unroll, filling up the whole screen of her inner cinema of thoughts. It was film festival time.
In vain hopes of being able to shy away from looking at it, she pressed her eyes shut and held her hands before her face as she lied on the floor.
It was not the most violent scene she saw. No bloodbath, no hacking and slashing, not even the cry of people was audible. It was just her and a man in front of her, looking her deep into the eyes, piercing through them with his cold as his face turned red in anger.
Before he could say anything, she opened her eyes wide open again, but the voice would speak up nonetheless in her head as she stared at her apartment in horror. “Irresponsible, reckless, egoistic, egocentric bit.ch,” the male voice sounded heavy against her head, and it was enough to make her fall on the floor completely, pressing the air out of her lungs and leaving her breathless. She knew that voice, she knew it all too well; it was a voice she had adored and learned to love. And so it just hurt even more to hear it again. “God,” she murmured into her hands in a constrained tone of voice. She refused to believe those voices and memories to be really happening to her.
As the voice went on, it took a sharp turn. It had been resentful before already, filled with suppressed anger, but now it sounded as though the man whom it belonged to could explode any second. There was a sense of sternness clinging by thought that was akin to the judge’s grave voice of verdict. “Lacking ability to take serious things for real, act with responsibility and caution,” it told her. A brief pause for breath for Elena as the memory silenced in her head. On her inner eyelids, she suddenly believed to see another image. Her lying on a bed with white sheets, stock-still and scared to death. Before her, a man expressing his mounting anger, adjacent to almost feral rage as he threw a metal tablet and its content against the next wall. She could feel the dread of this situation long gone as though it was happening right here, right now, shattering her nerves. Feeling like she was enchained to the bed she imagined to lie on, she flashbacked right into the total loss of control she had been experiencing.
The male voice returned, but this time sounded only like a small, guileless reminder with no ulterior motives woven into. What it said though wasn’t as much that than speaking out the hard truth and rubbing her nose in it as if the matter was so easily to grasp and understand. “That’s what has killed our child.”
Elena gave a shriek as she heard it, pressing her hands against her ears now to block the way of sound. An action of no greater benefit, for she knew it wouldn’t make the memories cease. In her ordeal, she found herself suddenly pawing at her chest. Something was hidden inside her leather jacket there. Before she really knew what she was doing – she didn’t know what she was doing at all in fact -, she already held it in her jittery, pallid hand. Its fingers clasped the grip of the pistol, first only lightly, then ever more tightly. Breaking out in tears by the mere sight of it, she peered at the thing in her head for a few seconds. Dismay writ large in her face, puffy eyes and distorted mouth.
“That’s.” She gulped deeply, closing her eyes momentarily and taking a deep breath in between the crying. Her fingertips begun to tingle as her hands turned whiter in color. “What.” Opening her eyes again, she put one quick, scrutinizing look at the pistol, then started to slowly move her hand. Shut the hell up, she pleadingly screamed inwardly, but her prayers wouldn’t be answered. “Has.” She glanced into the gun barrel that appeared in front of her face. It filled her with terror. She was unsure. “Killed.” Blazingly fast, as if she had made a final decision, she moved the gun at her head and pressed it against her brow furrowed with wrinkles. “Our.” A short moment of reluctance as she closed her eyes. There was no other way out. “Child.” With a final tear dripping down her cheek, she pulled the trigger. Click.
It took a few seconds until she collapsed on the ground, lifeless. The black TV kept staring at her, like a crow carefully ogling its feast. The gun had dropped to her side onto the floor like a thunderbolt. The bounce opened the pistol, opening the view upon the magazine. It was empty. It had always been.
There was no pool of blood on the floor. Only susurrant sobbing filled the otherwise silent room.
When Elena finally awoke from her slumber again, she felt like having a hangover. She had an aching back, since she had rested the whole night on the hard floor. The memories that had rocked her to sleep at some point during the night had lapsed into silence. As she looked about herself and the room, there was no sign visible anymore of the horror that had stricken her hours ago. Although it still looked as lifeless to her as before, at least it shed some peacefulness to her for now. She couldn’t clearly remember what had happened yesterday night, nor did she want, but she knew it had been dire.
She still remembered what she had tried to do, and reflecting, she instantly denigrated it. She hadn’t tried to stick through it against all odds to only give up now. She would see herself through, come what may come. That’s what she had vowed to herself to do. And yesterday, she would have almost broken her vow.
Standing up with a groan, she walked over to the kitchen to take a cup out of the shelf and fill it to the brim with black coffee. It tasted boring and scalded her tongue, but at least it washed away the bad taste in her mouth. The night had been restless, for the dreams she had were still haunting her, but she swallowed down together with the coffee that burned down her throat. She felt squashy, and anything she wanted to do was to return to her cozy bed and lay down again.
What had happened yesterday told her a few home truths, though, and she couldn’t for the sake of it unthink them. In the meantime, she flopped herself onto the bed, accidentally slopping some coffee onto her jeans. As she lied there and stared the opposite wall to death and beyond, her thoughts always trailed back to something she thought she had realized by now. Objectively speaking, it dawned on her that she had reached a condition that would make her kill herself sooner or later. Right now she was sure she wouldn’t ever do it, but the next time she had a flashback, things would be different again, she knew. And before she would know what was happening, she would lie dead on the floor, for real this time. Despite her current lifestyle and the worth she saw in her life, imagining it scared her off to no end.
When she had gulped the last sip from the coffee down, the rest of its peculiar flavor still resting on her tongue, she reached out to grasp at her PDA that lied on the small table next to her bed. As she switched it on and browsed through various sites and documents on the Neural Net absent-mindedly, she thought of it again, and she began to stare at the screen with nigh fierce countenance. She stifled a sigh, for she could have uttered countless. She still wrestled with the matter stubbornly, almost vehemently opposing the piece of advice she and others had given herself.
For some minutes she peered at the PDA. Then looked down onto herself. Then up at the ceiling, mumbling a curse. She needed help. From a professionalist. No matter if she liked it or not. She would have to bestir herself if she wanted to get through this unharmed, both mentally and physically. Over the last months, she had grasped one name or another.
It was time to do something. Time to meet it head on.
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