Anyone could turn spider for the right price. First in line to get smacked, Kuroneko chanced it dangling her body over the street as the train passed. Demonically possessed she prepared herself to drop in Lucifer’s palm. The sight of her exposed caused the nauseating heights to grab hold of me.
Smell the sparks, the conductor hit the brakes. Somehow Hawaii was now in front of me, scrunched up, holding her hand outstretched as if trying to block a bright light from her eyes. She pivoted back at me with a look of regret, panting, frozen with fear.
“It was me.” Mangled, Hawaii’s face lost its form as the squealing steel burst in with remorseless momentum. Splashed by an exploding balloon of blood. The train came to a halt. Inches. Milliseconds. I could stick my tongue out and lick it.
“It’s alright Farrow. Whenever I lose something, it’s impossible for me to believe I’d truly get it back. I’m cool with it. Once something’s gone. It’s gone.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way. Missy…Missy…”
Close enough to see over the border to the afterlife, Kuroneko methodically pulled her body back on the tracks. Unscathed, she didn’t have time to think about what just happened, hustling off to the next station. Awe struck as I watched her pull herself up onto the platform at 39th Avenue. The reckless cat calmly adjusted the bag of cash on her shoulder, walking off down the street as if she just picked up a bag of Sunday bagels.
{XLII}
“DON’T LET HER GET AWAY.” My words were muffled. Detective Anderson was wiping Hawaii’s blood off my face with my own shirt. The heavy summer air stuck to my bare chest. I felt covered in omnipotent honey. Stuck in a beehive with the bees stinging everyone, but me. They knew I was watching. They liked it that way.
“You live in a fucking dream world Farrow. I’m going get your head checked out. Cunt dropped like a penny from the Empire State Building.” Sgt. Bethany Powers flew up in my face.
“More like a silver dollar. Monsters always leave a big mess.” Detective Anderson kicked back filling out the tag team.
“I’m sorry about Hawaii. Had nothing against her, but maybe you did?”
“I thought you guys know everything.”
“We know Missy’s in mainland China and she didn’t leave with a baby. Crossed the border on her lonesome, under the name Eun Young.”
“Wait what... no baby?” Detective Anderson’s words hit me as a decaying hum.
Smoke through her nose. Cigarette dangling from her mouth. Missy was always destroying pages. I shouldn’t have left them around to curl up and turn to ash.
“You don’t want me to finish.”
“You can’t finish. Everything you start blossoms into life, then slowly gets sick.” It was a few straight weeks of insults. It wasn’t like this in the beginning. My girlfriend was fucking another man to help get my book published and she was the one that was insecure. There was nothing to do, but ignore her and that of course was why the snakes rolled around in their pit biting at the air.
“Seoul. Farrow, don’t tell me you never thought about it.”
“Missy overstayed her visa by six years. What did you expect to run into her sunning in Sheep’s Meadow?”
Another woman’s arms were around me. Sgt. Bethany Powers’ eyes blasted lasers. Adelora’s opals deflected them into the crooked cop’s screw face.
“Officers please give me a moment with my client, Mr. Faro.” Adelora wrapped me up in her serenity, leading me away.
“Watch out Chica. Guy’s born under a bad sign.” Sgt. Bethany Powers unsnapped the cover on her holster and anxiously resnapped it several times.
“We’re bored of him already.” Detective Anderson touched his tongue to his upper lip, eyeing Adelora.
Adelora shook the envelope in her hands. She was having a conversation with herself inside her own head. Both Anderson’s and Powers’ eyes weighed down on us as we walked away. Soon enough their feet would most likely follow their eyes. The tracks overhead started shaking again. The first trains since the accident approached the plaza. Adelora glanced back to see if they were still behind us. I could tell by her face that they were. She seemed to go over it a little longer.
“You know I was sitting at home with this envelope in my hands and all I could think of was my father. What it would be like if we didn’t meet for the first time at his gravestone.” Adelora nonchalantly slid through an opening in the fence and hopped down onto an embankment dropping steeply into the Sunnyside Yards. I followed in the same fashion beachkids jump from the boardwalk, hit the sand, and race to the sea.
“I always dreamed that my dad would bring me to the circus. I dreamed he would walk across the tightrope with me.” Rocks and overgrown weeds, we walked down a lonely abandoned rail line caught in the tangle of dozens others that were ready for action. We didn’t have to look back to remember our abandoned overgrown shadows.
{XLIII}
THE ENVELOPE WAS THIN AND could only hold paper. It had an address on it...
Missy Featherton
219 Madison Street Apt 5E
NY, NY 10002
I didn’t think Adelora knew how hard she was chewing on the bottom of her lip as I carefully peeled the envelope open. The sight inside gave me chills. I looked back at Sgt. Bethany Powers. She was moving in on me with the baton.
“Get on the ground Farrow. Let us take a look at that.” Detective Anderson pulled his gun on me for the first time. I dropped to the ground staring up at a spiderweb of high voltage cables and the first royalty check I’d ever seen or held. It was made out to Missy Featherton for A Greater Truth.
“These cops have something against you?” Adelora lay next to me, anxious and twitching. Ignoring her, I chewed the envelope to pieces careful to keep the address engrained in my head. I started next on the paystub, but Sgt. Bethany Powers jammed the thick baton between my teeth before I got half of it down. Detective Anderson shoved his fingers in my mouth to pull out what was left.
“Got anything Anderson?”
“Only scraps. Fucking animal devoured it.” Detective Anderson nonchalantly palmed the address. Arms twisted behind me, cuffs clicked on my wrists.
“We’re bringing you in. Destruction of evidence.”
“Where is she Farrow? Spit it out and we’ll let you go.”
“Tell us and we’ll race you there.”
“We know you know. Don’t waste our time.”
The sun stayed in our faces. The air just kind of hung there. Adelora was breathing heavily. I could tell she was trying to calm herself down, but it backfired. I tried to grab her hand, but she pushed it away. This wasn’t a courtroom. Nobody even pretended there were rules out here. Then there was a long silence. The kind that could only be followed by brutal violence. Gun butts, boots, batons, and fists. The two detectives did what they had to do to get the truth. Years of practice and training. Sgt. Bethany Powers kicked Adelora so hard, her boot shot out into the open air. The black thigh high soared towards me. Maybe I could’ve ducked in time. Maybe I just had to know how the black leather felt against my skin.
{XLIV}
MISSY POPPED OUT FROM BEHIND the door startling me. She had sliced cucumbers stuck to her face. Uninhibited, she was laughing the way most people can only laugh in the company of family. People you’ve known your whole life. People that will put up with you and even more stand behind you, blindly.