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Part 3-11: Flower
I hurried through the details of the first few Eden-inspired events. Jimena pierced us with her gaze the whole time, barely speaking. Her attentiveness and lack of pointing and laughing encouraged me to keep talking. I’d not explained the situation to anyone before; everyone involved pretty much knew the story by their own account.
When we got to the part about the floors inside of the John B. Zachary Centre switching on us, floor five appearing everywhere, her eyes flickered and her lip twitched. She looked at Dack then, who simply said, “I was there. It’s all true.”
Jimena rolled her finger at me, and I went on.
She leaned back, arms folded, head down and listening as I got into the weirder aspects of the tale.
“Okay,” she said, as I came up to the part where Eden killed the pigeons. “Okay, this is…”
“Completely and utterly unbelievable?” said Dack.
I swallowed back a minor anxiety attack. I’d barreled on with the story, energized by the therapeutic release afforded by saying it all aloud. Now the cop was going to phone in some backup and ship us both off to the hospital.
“I appreciate that you prefaced this little catch up with the notion of a wild tale,” said Jimena, “but Dios mío Dack, what am I to do with it, yeah? Say it is true and there are ghosts roaming parks and buildings. Just say.”
“It is true,” I said, leapfrogging off the anxiety and channeling it into anger.
“Yes, they all say so, your conviction is clear, miss,” she said, which pissed me off even more.
Dack put a hand on my shoulder, a good thing, because I was about to stand up and maybe shout. I stewed as the cop eyed me, and then I remembered she was armed. I closed my eyes and fidgeted with my ring. Wait!
I put my hand on the table and pointed at it. “Try and take it off. Try.”
“Try to take off your ring,” said Jimena.
“Look, hold on,” said Dack. “We’ll get to the ring, first let me say that I don’t need you to believe it all right now, Jimena. I think we can probably prove it if you’ll let us. I don’t expect you to be able to do anything—”
“We’ll prove it now,” I said. I looked around.
“What? Now? How, Alena, wait a sec,” Dack said.
There was a littering of flower buds on one edge of the picnic table. Maybe I could figure out how to melt one or explode it or something? Eden had done to a rock, a pop can, meant to do it to the grandstands. I plucked a big one up and held it out to her.
“Hold this,” I said.
She did not budge, and simply frowned at me.
“Dack, here,” I gave it to him.
He pinched it between his thumb and forefinger and said, “Alena, please. Chill for a minute. We have to ease into it, this doesn’t, uh, look super good given how nutty—”
I shooed my hand in his face, and stood up. He didn’t understand. He wasn’t reading Jimena’s face properly. She was a hair away from sending us away and then probably making sure we were kept on a close watch. The whole plan tonight was compromised thanks to this stupid meeting, and unless she believed us it was going to be harder, if not impossible to do what we had to do. She’d seen us in the stairwell. The stairwell was the only path back to Fort Ticktock.
I suppressed a mad giggle at the idea of trying to explain ‘Fort Ticktock’ to this woman, and instead felt for my tingles. We’d not gone too far from Bannerman Drive, and the sensation was agreeable. I closed my eyes and pulled it up my arm.
“Are you… oh jeez,” said Dack.
I heard Jimena let out a jagged breath, then a heatwave flared up the right side of my body.
I opened my eyes. The garden was awash in shimmering light. The patio doors on the back of the little house were two painful white squares. Dack and Jimena were somewhat visible—human outlines tinged with blue.
“Dack, wifi,” I said, trying to anchor on the smell of all the greenery.
“Um, shit. Uh, is there any way you can shut off your wifi?” Dack said.
“Excuse me?” said Jimena.
“I…” Dack looked at me, helpless.
There wouldn’t be time for that. From Jimena’s perspective, all I was doing was standing there like an idiot. I pulled my ghost-self forward and stood inside the picnic table, trying to find the flower at the end of Dack’s arm.
“Never mind. Hold still,” I said, hoping it came through my physical lips.
I squinted and bobbed my head around, glimpsing for a petal shape in the soupy, fuzzy mess. I ended up finding Dack’s arm, and slowly moved my face along it until… a pinch of blue, a soft curve. I cupped it with my right hand. Tried to find any kind of feeling within it, a thread of meaning, something that could connect me.
“Dack, dearest, look. I have given you more time than asked,” said Jimena.
“I know. Just give her another minute, one more?”
“This is getting foolish, and I am due on shift shortly. I think I might be able to arrange a watch on your… haunted building for odd activity, if that will help set your minds at ease.”
Exactly what I was afraid of. I steeled against sweat and shakes, as the wifi burned and my nerves started to buckle under all the stress. No wonder Eden hated wifi so much.
I floated the Queen’s Band into the flower’s blue twinkle. Nothing. The heat from the house was everything, everywhere. I needed a bigger, better idea—and fast. There were only two to choose from.
“Miss Alena, please understand,” said Jimena.
I moved over to the policewoman, and sat myself inside of her.
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