Another Bubble Four

A thought,

Individual but inspired,

Transforming…

Five inches of the wrench.

It wasn’t scary anymore. It should have been, but to the runaway boy, why, it was partly his. His, even though he didn’t know what could be done with it, other than shaking the world. He was beginning to think that was enough.

It was partly his, because it wanted what he wanted. No matter what that guy with the crazy haircut who flew off in that big metal ball said…no, he did say. He said not to mess with it. Someone intentionally put it there. For what reason, though? A wrench that shook the entire world? Not just this town. If they could do something that powerful then why leave it?

That powerful. That thought imbued his mind with pleasant things. Something to shake the floor of the house out from under his parents? To bring the roof down around them? To knock the stupid trophies off the shelves? To tear down every wall in that house so they couldn’t help but see him? Yeah. That sounded so freaking sweet.

How did he know that those things hadn’t happened already because of his meddling? And if it hadn’t, then it wouldn’t take much to send some waves back the way he came and wake his parents up. Yeah, that’s what it was. No one was freaking out because they were all still asleep. He hadn’t shaken things up enough. Those tremors that numbed him and shook this little stretch only reached so far.

He’d have to try it again. Only this time, he’d have to put some effort into it, right? He could, right? He could operate it, right? It was the perfect tool for this particular occasion. Hidden away here where hardly anyone traveled. How long had it been here? A long time? Had it been used before? Someone else who had similar problems? Shaking worlds. That’s all they wanted to do. It wasn’t the whole world. That guy with the weird haircut, he couldn’t have been talking about the whole world, right?

No way. There was no way a kid like him could affect the whole world. Especially with one little wrench. Though, making quakes wasn’t exactly a job given to just anyone. Making quakes, well, that was a sensitive business. Wasn’t it, though? Sensitive business. Just like his business. He couldn’t talk to just anyone about it. No way he could approach his parents about it. It was his parents who he had issues with.

No, this…this was where he belonged right now. He was meant to be here. Fairy tales or no, when someone had a problem, sometimes a solution found them. That sounded good. And as fantastic as this wrench was, it was such a solution. This spot probably wasn’t even its true location. It probably didn’t have a true location. It hopped from spot to spot, near the person with the problems but at a distance to hide. Yeah, so the wrench and the person could hide from the source of the problem and just send waves of revenge to do the job.

The guy with the weird haircut said no, but…but…a connection was made just as connections were made with anything in life based upon how much they could relate, and since the boy had hoped to shake things up at home by leaving, well, he felt comfortable enough around his new friend to drop down to his knees, sit back on his feet, hunch there and just stare at the wrench.

He was leaning over it so far that he might as well have been breathing it in. He didn’t care what it looked like. Didn’t care if it was metal, if it was stuck. All he cared about was that it made the earthquakes come.

It was a trigger.

He was smiling at it.

The world. Something wrong with the world. And this was it. Right here. Not the whole world. His world. That’s what the guy with the haircut meant, right?

He reached out to grab it.

The guy said it wasn’t a toy.

He hesitated.

He wasn’t looking at it as a toy. He inched closer.

The guy told him to go back home where it was safe. He paused again.

He tried to tell the guy he couldn’t go back home, but the guy didn’t hear him. The guy said that to protect him, certainly, but the guy didn’t understand his situation. Who was that guy, anyway? The guy told him to wait until it starts raining or the sun comes out? That’ll let him know everything was safe?

The boy knew that if he himself didn’t do anything, there would be no rain. No sunshine. Just the same gray over his head, and he couldn’t live like that. He came out here to provoke some type of change. Well, this was the trigger he really needed. A literal trigger.

He closed his fingers around the wrench.

The Bubble Two

Sidetracked,

Thoughts,

Nervousness…

Twenty-eight miles south of the wrench.

A major road split off from the highway to dig into the small town in the east, but Nathan kept heading north. The town lay hidden behind the trees that cluttered either side of the highway, but they were forced apart where signs of civilization dotted the edge of the road. It was more than Nathan wanted to see at this point. He’d hoped to start seeing these things later when they reached his home town.

He didn’t take note of these things on the way to the coast. Now he wished he had, but what difference would it make? This highway was the quickest route both ways. So they would happen along some gas stations without any customers. No big deal. So far they’d driven past several, all empty, but none of his passengers said anything about it.

Cocoa was too busy leaning between the two front seats talking to Tanner, her overly-cheerful tone almost blasting the windows out of the car. Nathan didn’t dare roll down the windows to relieve the pressure. Being the only car on the road was enough of a mark on his head.

He hated it when they were coming up on a hill, unsure if he would have to press the gas that much further, hoping he’d just be able to coast right on over it and catch his speed on the way down the other side, hating how his leg would tense up from both wanting to press just a little bit and holding his foot back from doing just that.

He told himself the gentle glide of his car was nothing more than the sound of the tires along the asphalt, drowning out the hum of the engine. That was the extent of what he wanted to hear. Pressing the gas at all would excite the engine more than he wanted to. He wanted nothing to give them away. He figured Cocoa’s voice was reaching beyond the windows but as nothing more than the muffled version of what they were getting inside. If he was to unleash that upon the empty world outside, he wouldn’t be able to keep the sweat off his face.

That wouldn’t be the last of his symptoms.

After the sweat would come the shaking. With the shaking would come the attention from his friends. That would pump up the pressure that much more, but that wouldn’t be what would pull the blackness over his eyes, although that didn’t sound like a bad idea. Blacking out from the world to forget and at least exist in a void where consequences didn’t exist. Of course, as soon as his life ended, that blackness would switch to something else. He wondered if he would feel the fatal blow, however it would come at him. He hoped it would be quick.

But he wasn’t on the verge of blacking out. There wasn’t enough pressure. In a way, Cocoa’s cheerfulness distracted him. It made him assume that they had yet to figure out what happened to the world…what he had done to it.

But seeing any type of evidence before he was ready for them to know brought the heat to his head. How long would it be before the sweat crept onto his skin? An overcooked brain was bound to give its owner all types of funny ideas, not that he needed anymore. He had done enough for one person to do in a single lifetime.

Although, he had heard about that guy Joshua who had stopped the sun. He never learned why, though. Yet, Nathan figured his own reason didn’t much correspond with that guy’s. Of course, a lot of people supposedly knew about what that guy did, too. Nathan didn’t want any witnesses here.

Instead, he wanted to tell those he wanted to know in his own time. However, he was afraid vacant buildings might tell them for him.

The first one came easy. It was another gas station. But it only occupied the little corner of a much larger opening. Nathan was relieved the gas station was quick to fall out of view.

The towns along the southern stretch of this highway were nothing more than thoughts hidden behind the blink of an eye. They didn’t try to advertise themselves much, either. However, this one particular town had a little bit of a growth spurt over the past several years, and so a department store of this size seemed both out of place and welcomed. It was a popular chain, too, never having an empty parking lot, even in the late hours of the day, because it was open twenty-four/seven.

Cocoa’s loud one-way conversation came to a close when she looked out over that parking lot. Tanner was caught off guard by the sudden silence. He glanced at her, saw that she was looking past him, and gazed out the window.

Pudding, who was reading one of the random pages of the magazine she had dismembered, looked up to the sudden silence and then stared out at the parking lot.

Nathan didn’t need to look. He knew what it would look like. He just kept staring ahead, feeling the sweat trickling underneath his bangs.

Now that he had silence, he wanted noise more than anything else in the world. The three others in the car with him had known him for over ten years now, had grown up with him, joked and drank with him, told stories. He’d even made love to Cocoa one of those drunken nights, a moment neither one of them held against the other, and might have even remembered it from time to time to change the mood of their conversations when it suited them.

He knew them like he knew himself, but in those seconds of silence that continued to tick onward, nothing came to mind to spark up a random conversation, and he never had a problem doing that. No, these people weren’t the same ones he spent the night with and drove to his home town not long after waking. Instead, they might have been people he picked up along the side of the road, a pack of three, friends for years, their own histories, and he the nice soul who gave them a ride, since he was heading their way. And because there were three, he was forced to drive in silence while they conversed about lives he knew nothing about, occasionally throwing him a question or two, but he wasn’t comfortable enough to drop the barrier every stranger had up.

And now they were just judges and he the judged. A heinous deed was stretched out before them. A crook stumbling back to a crime scene while the cops were there waiting. What could he do but sit there and let them look? He couldn’t hide it.

There was a service road running parallel with the highway. It intersected with a road that laced across the highway as part of a red light intersection. Nathan noticed it only just then. It was an excuse to keep staring forward, especially since the light was green.

Strange, he thought, that there would be any electricity at all. Or was this something else? A sign? Someone had fixed it somehow? Someone else was awake? He glanced to the left side of the highway, opposite the empty department store parking lot. The road that intersected the highway continued on to the west, going up a hill and disappearing between the thickening trees.

Nathan didn’t let up on the gas. Neither did he press it any further. He just let the car approach the red light intersection and watched either side for a car to appear. The green had yet to give over to yellow. He wondered if seeing a car would make him feel better or not.

“So dirty.” Cocoa scoffed.

The words were a hammer blow to Nathan. He jerked, and when that ran its course, he stopped to consider her comment, playing it back over in his mind.

Dirty.

Not what he expected.

The word made him consider, made him feel like he was given an excuse. An excuse, out of guilt, to assume she was talking about what she was looking at. As though there was hope, that she was talking about something else. Something more preferable….like…like….that one night she and he….but, wait, that was dumb. The timing of her silence, added with the direction she was facing…he was just trying to play it off, an attempt, a grasp at anything like a guilty man would do, and just like any guilty man, he must have looked like a fool. Well, if he had been open with his thoughts…but yes, he saw his thoughts and felt like a fool, because it was true: she had to be talking about what he had done. The evidence was already mounted against him way before he reached his hometown. He didn’t need this.

“Lazy.” Pudding muttered.

Tanner glanced at her through the mirror on his overhead visor, “Tell me who isn’t.”

The page in Pudding’s hand was torn in half.

“Nathan isn’t.” Cocoa said.

Nathan’s heart thumped against his rib cage. Any doubt he appeased himself with before was crushed, and he wanted to hit the gas, but still, his leg tensed up in the midst of that two-way battle. Instinct wanted to pull his head toward her, to voice some obscure defense to deny everything, but he forced himself to look ahead, to watch the green light, hoping it wouldn’t turn yellow.

“Am I right, Nate?” Cocoa added.

Nathan swallowed. “Uh…w-what?”

“Heeee.” Cocoa cooed, “Nate’s a busy body.”

“A busy body?” Tanner asked, snickering.

“A go getter.” Pudding muttered.

“Getting what he wants all the time?” Tanner asked her without looking in the mirror on his visor.

The half of the magazine page in Pudding’s left hand was crumpled.

“It’s true.” Cocoa said.

Nathan wasn’t looking, but he could tell that they were still staring out the windows. If he looked he’d see the backs of their heads, a strange wall suddenly excluding him from their apparent circle.

Exiled.

But it would be more than that. They would continue to say things about him, but they wouldn’t move at all. They wouldn’t turn their heads. They’d speak to the windows, making him guess what their faces looked like, as though he’d never met them. But in his mind their faces wouldn’t look human. They’d be smiling, but their mouths would be stretched up into their cheekbones, making the flesh of their cheeks fold and bend, having nowhere else to go but up into their eyes, giving them that narrowed-eyed look, the look of devilish glee as they took in everything outside. But their eyes wouldn’t be the same, either. They’d be smaller, tiny irises and pinprick pupils. The disturbing part would be how much of the white of their eyes would be exposed, and it would be that part that would tell everything about what was going on behind their expressions.

It would tell him how much they weren’t who he thought they were…and what they could do to him.

“That’s Nathan for ya.” Cocoa said, and he imaged her tone of admiration was one of mockery, her voice more snake-like than that of a cute girl.

“Know what I see?” Tanner asked, a smile in his tone.

“Fantasy.” Pudding muttered.

“Just like you?” Tanner snickered, still gazing out the window.

The half of the magazine page in Pudding’s right hand was crumpled.

“I see it, too.” Cocoa said.

Nathan held his breath.

“It’s like a chill.” Tanner said.

“Ice.” Pudding muttered.

“Solid ice.” Cocoa said.

“Running the entire stretch.” Tanner said.

Nathan was feeling anything but a chill. The inside of his car was too hot. He restrained himself from rolling down the windows.

“It would cover the dirty.” Cocoa agreed.

“How big do you think it is?” Tanner asked.

“Football field.” Pudding muttered.

“That enough room for a fantasy?” Tanner snickered.

Pudding smashed the two crumpled halves of the magazine page together.

The sound made Nathan jump.

“Imagine a solid sheet of ice,” Cocoa said, “five inches thick, covering the whole thing.”

“It could happen.” Tanner said.

“Skating rink.” Pudding muttered.

“In the nude.” Tanner snickered.

Pudding’s hands snatched at the two piles of dismembered magazine pages on either side of her. Again, the sound made Nathan jump. He was panting to himself, wondering if they heard him. He kept staring forward, watching the green light approach, wondering why it was taking so long to reach it. He didn’t dare look down at the speedometer. He couldn’t feel his right leg, couldn’t tell if he was pressing the gas or letting off it.

“How many?” Tanner asked.

“Bodies.” Pudding muttered.

Nathan felt his skin go white.

“Skating all at once.” Cocoa said, her voice a daze.

“But not now.” Tanner said.

“Closed.” Pudding muttered.

“Like your heart?” Tanner snickered.

Pudding crumpled several of the magazine pages in her grasp.

“The doors would stay closed.” Cocoa said. “No one would be able to go inside. Not with ice covering the parking lot. A solid sheet. There would be too much fun to go inside.”

“Not even if they bang on those sliding doors?” Tanner asked.

“Trapped.” Pudding muttered.

“In my grasp?” Tanner snickered.

More pages crumpled in Pudding’s grasp.

“They’d be able to look inside,” Cocoa said, “because the doors are big windows. Stores like that like people to be able to see inside.”

“But it’d be all dark inside because no one would be inside.” Tanner said.

“Desire.” Pudding muttered.

“In your fingertips.” Tanner said.

Pudding’s right hand slapped against the window. Nathan jumped again. Pudding didn’t take her hand away.

“While behind them,” Cocoa said, “everyone would be skating. Skating and skating. Skating on the ice. Skating with smiles. Smiling the whole time.”

Nathan’s vision blurred and he blinked, feeling a splatter of sweat against his nose. He couldn’t take his hands from the steering wheel to wipe his eyes, so he just blinked until his vision righted itself. But in that blur he glimpsed the green light. He didn’t know if it was because of the way water could play on one’s vision, but the intersection looked further away now. Of course it would. This was his mind screwing with him. Guilt had a way of torturing one slowly.

“And while they skated,” Tanner said, “their skates would be cutting the ice.”

“Slicing.” Pudding muttered.

“Is that what you’re into?” Tanner snickered.

Pudding’s fingers curled, her fingernails coming in contact with the window, carving out five different squealing notes.

“Cutting deep.” Cocoa said. “Because they would skate over and over….”

“Over and over.” Tanner said.

“Repeating.” Pudding muttered.

Nathan blinked and shook his head. The blur changed shapes every time he blinked, but not once did the green light come any closer. It remained aloof, not wanting to be reached, something in the distance, the details still fuzzy.

“The sound would be like…” Cocoa paused for a second to think about it.

“A slushy.” Tanner snickered.

“Cherry flavored.” Pudding muttered.

“Dribbled all over you.” Tanner said.

Pudding’s fingers dropped an inch down the window, clawing five more high pitched notes from the glass.

Nathan didn’t hear glass though. He heard cries, saw five grooves breaking through something that looked spongy and rubbery at the same time. Only after the red swelled up out of those grooves and spilled over that pale surface did he know what that something was. The sound was like tearing paper, only wetter and quieter. But the pain was loud.

“Does ice bleed?” Cocoa asked.

“No,” Tanner said, “but as soon as they cut so deep that their skates hit the concrete parking lot below, they’d fall forward and bust their nose on the ice.”

“Smear.” Pudding muttered.

“And others would skate right through it.” Cocoa added.

“Blind.” Pudding muttered.

“Asleep.” Tanner said.

Nathan jolted, and the water in his eyes splattered his nose and cheeks. He could see. The green light was only a few seconds away.

“Sleep skating?” Cocoa snickered.

“Sleep crashing.” Tanner snickered.

“Bodies upon bodies.” Pudding muttered.

“That would melt some ice, wouldn’t it?” Tanner snickered.

Pudding’s hand dropped another inch, carving screeches from the glass.

“What would happen if all the ice was melted?” Cocoa asked.

“A flood.” Tanner said.

“And all the bodies?” Cocoa asked.

“Washed away.” Pudding muttered.

“But what about the skates?” Cocoa asked.

“Lonely.” Pudding muttered.

“But you’re not, right?” Tanner snickered.

Five more screeches were carved from the glass.

“But,” Cocoa said, “Nathan doesn’t want to be lonely.”

Nathan started to gasp, but his tongue hit the roof of his mouth, making him gulp. When he had air again, he said, “Huh?” He didn’t look at them. The green light was two seconds away. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that their heads were still turned away from him.

“Is that why he brought us along?” Tanner asked.

“For one…” Cocoa said.

“…last…” Pudding said.

“…ride…” Tanner finished.

The car plunged into the intersection, and Nathan held his breath, staring up at the green light as it swept over, never once changing to yellow. When it disappeared over the roof of his car, he waited, staring forward, seeing the rest of the highway stretching out ahead of him, miles upon miles until they reached his home town. Motion drew his eyes to his rearview mirror. He watched as the green light shrank in his rear windshield. Over on the southbound side, the light wasn’t showing any color. It was dead and gray. Silent.

It was silent inside his car.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the tree line sewing itself back along the edge of the road. He turned his head to look, and his friends were looking at him. He glanced at them.

Smiles. Big smiles. So big they cut up into their cheeks, folding the skin, narrowing their eyes, those tiny pinprick eyes and all that white. Frozen. Icy smiles. Cherry slush dribbling from their bottom lips, staining their upper lips.

Nathan screamed and crashed against the driver’s side door. The car swerved to the right. The tires barked along the asphalt. The tug pressed Nathan against the door. He grabbed at the wheel, his arms buzzing with thoughts of chunks of ice running through his veins, cutting him inside, cherry flavored, spewing, lips tasting, smacking, ice skates cutting the ice, the ice packed into his arms from the grooves Pudding cut and watched the cherry flavor gush out and spill over the sides.

He jerked the wheel back to the left, and Cocoa screamed. They were all tugged to the side of the car. Nathan fought to keep himself from crossing over the compartment separating his seat from Tanner’s. He had to stay in control to save the car.

“Calm!” Pudding called, her voice not much more than a mutter, but she could be heard over Cocoa’s screaming.

Out of the corner of Nathan’s eyes, he saw that Tanner had pressed one hand against the dashboard to brace himself. “Geez, Nate! What the hell?”

The car squealed over in the left lane. Nathan pivoted the wheel to the right. The car jolted that way and straddled the segmented stripes that designated the boundary between the lanes.

“Calm!” Pudding called again.

Cocoa squealed.

“Nathan, what’s wrong with you?” Tanner exclaimed.

Nathan shifted the wheel a little to the left. The car edged that way, bringing them back into the left lane.

“Calm.” Pudding said, her voice soothing.

The car centered itself in the left lane. Nathan kept the steering wheel steady. His arms felt numb, packed with all that ice. So full it wasn’t able to circulate. A hand laid down on his right forearm. He jerked his head that way to see Cocoa looking at him, her face pulled down into a recognizable concern.

“Nate, are you alright?” she asked.

He stared at her, breathing, and then remembered he was driving and looked ahead. There was no one else on the road. He could make all the mistakes he wanted and no one would know.

Cocoa started rubbing his arm up and down, and he felt the ice inside melting. The resulting water passed through his veins like it was supposed to. There was no cutting. No bleeding. No pain. Just comfort. Normalcy.

“Calm now.” Pudding muttered.

Tanner leaned forward to see Nathan past Cocoa’s head. “Geez, Nate. What just happened?”

He was shaking his head, breathing as Cocoa rubbed his arm. He glanced at Cocoa and Tanner. He knew them. They had their right faces. Nothing about their expressions was strained. Just regular ole concern.

“You doing alright over there, buddy?” Tanner asked.

“Scared.” Pudding muttered.

“You did give us a fright.” Cocoa said. “What was that about?”

Nathan started to chuckle. He was right about guilt. It was a slow torture, but when it prodded you, those moments flared up a bright red, and there was no telling how that pain would feel…or look in this case.

“You were…you were talking about ice skating.” he chuckled.

“Dream.” Pudding muttered.

Tanner looked at her through the mirror on his visor, “Just like you?”

The magazines at Pudding’s sides were crumpled in her grasp.

“Ice skating?” Cocoa asked.

“That’s a little out of season, buddy.” Tanner chuckled.

“We’re going swimming.” Cocoa said and inched closer to him, laying her other hand on his shoulder, “You’re gonna find us a hotel pool, right?”

“Uh…right.” Nathan said, smirking, forcing himself to smirk, “Right.”

He glanced in his rearview mirror again to see the red light intersection fading away. The trees along the side of the road were curtaining off that opened space with the department store and its empty dirty parking lot. He and his friends were yet again leaving behind emptiness. The idea of that kind of emptiness brought on that chill in his arms again. He tried to suppress the idea, but then his mind started to wander through those partitioning trees, deeper down that road they passed that dug into the town they never saw. He could see it now in his mind, and knew exactly how it would look.

Gray. Barren. Open to the world. Buildings shaking because it just wasn’t right. There were supposed to be people moving. There was supposed to be movement, but there wasn’t, so they shook in fear of standing naked out in all that emptiness. Their unnoticed walls now all that there was. The paper settled on the streets, not fluttering, not picking up with a wind, just lying there when they were supposed to be picked up. A community of standstills, wondering who would make things right. Waiting for someone to put it right. Windows dark but looking out along with all the objects within. Searching. Asking without a voice. Being the life that was missing. A life that wasn’t supposed to be but was forced to compensate for stillness.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right at all. But it was. That’s all. It just was.

�

Next Chapter: House Bubble