Chapter #56Iris Out by: Seuzz   You can't believe the nerve on Eric. In fact, you have to laugh. "If you think I'm going with you, you're fucking crazy."
Eric smiles wanly. "And I don't blame you, Will. I wish you trusted me. But when you're in a shithole this deep, I don't blame you if you can't tell right-side-up from upside-down. But come on." He gestures. "I'll drop you guys off."
"My car's out front," Patterson says. He looks around nervously, then gets up when no one interferes.
"Gimme a ride?" you start to ask.
"Fuck you! Walk! And keep walking. When I see you at school--"
"If you see him at school," Eric interrupts, "count yourself a very lucky man. Personally, I wouldn't bet on your seeing two more sunrises."
Patterson flinches, then strides off with a snarl. Straussler ignores you when you look at him. Only Eric is going to save you from a very, very, very long walk home in the dark. You follow him out, but at a distance.
* * * * *
"You know," Eric says in a mildly reproachful tone as you're driving away from the Strausslers'. "I wouldn't have hurt you too bad. That's my training. Oh, I can make you hurt, but it doesn't do any damage."
"Gee, thanks."
"Done you a lot less damage than your friend did to me. Wow. I'd love to shake his hand. I respect the hell out of work like he did."
"I'm sure he'd be happy to hear that."
He sighs deeply, unhappily. "I'm not a bad dude, Will," he says. "It's just that in my line of work--"
"What is your line of work? I thought you just owned a crappy comic book shop, hung out with losers--"
"Dude! Will! That's harsh!" He sounds genuinely hurt. "I put a lot of work into my shop. Well, into the selection. You won't get things like I carry anyplace else in town. And Christian and them? They're really good guys, I love hanging out, chewing the fat. Reminds me of when I was--" He stops abruptly. "Well, but that's what everyone thinks I am. Because I am. Just it's not my main work."
"So what is your main work?"
"Sure you won't come with me?"
"Yeah, I'm sure."
"Then I'm not gonna tell you."
"Are you a spy?"
He laughs, and then abruptly turns serious. "Sort of, but not the way you're thinking. I'm an American, dude, second generation, so don't go thinking I'm-- You know, there's such a thing as industrial espionage. I'm not gonna confirm or deny that I might or might not be interested in certain kinds of trade secrets, but I'm not a fucking spy like what you're thinking."
"But you know about magic."
"Yeah, I know about magic." He lowers his head, and his voice sinks. "Dude, I've seen some hard-core stuff, and I know not to tangle with guys like you tangled with. Fuck me, how you managed to stay alive with them around--" He puts out a hand. "Do me a fucking honor, little bro, lemme tell people I shook hands with someone who went mano a mano, and won, against the guy who put this dent in my skull."
He seems transparently sincere, so you take it. His hand is greasy and sweaty, but it encloses no trick, and he only pumps your arm firmly. "I was just lucky," you say. "Got so close they couldn't see me."
"Fuck. Luck? No such thing, unless it's luck when you're born with the stuff that let's you-- Come on, Will, go back with me!"
"I just wanna go home."
"They'll come after you. You know that."
"Let them. Maybe I deserve it. Or maybe my luck will continue."
He says nothing more, and you just direct him to your house. But a few blocks from it, he pulls over. "Will, lemme do one thing for you. Something that could save your life."
"What?" You brace for a trick as he reaches into his back seat.
"It's called a flensing. You seen Men in Black?" He fumbles inside a bag.
"Sure. Will Smith and that grumpy old dude."
He gives you a reproachful look. "That grumpy old dude is-- Oh, never mind. Well, I got a thing like they got. Very crude, might do you some damage, but it'll give you a better chance with those two guys."
"Eric. I don't want--" You fumble at the car door.
"They might leave you alone if they think you don't know anything, and if you come down with amnesia, then you won't know anything."
"Amnesia? Wait, you're not--"
He's wearing sunglasses when he turns back to you, and he raises a thing like a flashlight. "Say 'Cheese'."
* * * * *
You are, of course, unconscious when the paramedics find you and hustle you to the hospital, and since you've no ID it is actually a full day before your parents are alerted. You wake to find your sniffling mother by your side. After a confused reunion, and some blessed sleep to relieve you from the terrible ache in the back of your head, some cops come in to give you some quiet questioning. You're only able to tell them that you were standing by the side of a road when you heard tires, saw headlights, and felt something clip your legs. You've no idea what you were doing out at that time of night.
In fact, you've no idea where you've been for the last month or so. A battery of tests are administered, and it is determined that the head injury has knocked at least a few weeks of memories out. The last thing you remember clearly was Mr. Walberg giving your class an assignment: Get something for a time capsule.
After a few days you are sent home to convalesce; the doctors are sure you'll make a full recovery, even to the point of getting back those memories. But your parents keep you home for the rest of the semester, and you do all your schoolwork there. You find yourself wishing you'd been hit by a car at the end of August, because you get all the learning, plus the socializing with Caleb and Keith after school, and none of the bullying. Girls even stop by to wish you well; and after a fun series of visits, you and Cassie Harper decide that you're dating.
But your memories never come back.
There are only a few peculiar things that make you wonder if you're missing something important. Caleb and Keith will sometimes say cryptic things about "that weird shit back in October." They'll roll their eyes and tell you you're lucky you don't remember. And one time, Caleb grabs your face, yells some weird string of words, and pulls at your forehead.
Weirder still, a few days after your accident you get a visit from Steve Patterson, of all people. He is very cold, as he always is, but he's reasonably polite as he inquires after your health while staring intently at you the whole time. The weirdest sequel to his visit doesn't come until after the spring semester starts. You're very depressed about returning to the bully-haunted halls of Westside, but to your surprise find that everyone from Chen to Kirkham to Douglas to even the Molester himself gives you a wide berth. Rumors reach you that it's because Patterson and Black have put you on some kind of "do not molest" list. Your gratitude is only slightly lessened by the further rumors that they are being so kind because think you're a "retarded, schizo basket case" who deserves pity (and maybe a little wariness in case you snap) instead of hassling.
Certainly you don't think you're brain damaged. As far as you can tell, except for that persistent foggy patch, the only change in your head is that you've picked up a peculiar phobia of scarecrows.
While cleaning your room in February, you find a strange object, a bluish oval shaped like a tragedian's mask. You ask your parents and brother about it. They say that you brought it home in the fall semester as an "art project." Whatever it is, the fact that you didn't finish it didn't hurt your grades, so you just throw it away.
Two years after you graduate, you receive a wedding invitation from a cousin you've never heard of: Rosalie Martin. It's being held in Italy, and you'd have tossed it in the garbage, but the card said that "fare and lodgings" would be paid for by the groom's family. So though you're blue from a breakup with your latest girlfriend, you like the idea of a getaway, and accept. Rosalie greets you warmly at the rustic villa where it's being held, and it turns out that, when you were thirteen, you must have briefly met her on a trip to Cuthbert, where she was living at the time. But you don't remember each other. Her fiancée, a blonde guy whose thick Italian accent fractures English into hilarious but oddly apt malapropisms, bubbles over when he meets you, but he bubbles over with everybody. His brother--taller, very dark, and very saturnine--cops the opposite attitude, though, and seems to glower at you from every direction you turn. But it's a lovely time all around, though this one English bloke will insist on buttonholing you to inveigh against the evils of a multinational conglomerate called "Fane," until Rosalie orders him to desist. |
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