"Well that didn’t work." Butterfly guy tugged me to my feet, slammed a duffle bag into my arms, and shoved me towards the door. He was spotless -- the grime and soot he’d worn over that deranged grin was gone.

He kept his hand on my back all the way out the door, down the stairs, out onto the street. The vapor wafted out of the bathroom window, which had presumably shattered. As we watched from the street, the house took a deep breath, tendrils of smoke sucked back in before erupting out again -- out the front window and sides, spewing glass and bits of our curtains out into the street, alleyway, and onto the other three deckers nearby.

I was having trouble figuring out why I was looking down at a small, sad puddle of vomit, which leaked down the sidewalk. The blacksmith’s hand still on my back. He was talking to me.

"We’ve got to get to the train station." He gave me a gentle little shove down the street.

I stumbled a few steps down the hill, my momentum building on the steep incline of Hillside Street, the duffle tugging me downwards. My tongue felt slightly too large to fit in my mouth. "But." I felt a small chunk of vomit sneak out with the word. "I need. Laura and Sadie, were they--" 

"They’re gone, man. Way gone. You can’t help them right now. I can fix it, though, it’s cool."

We grabbed the first train out of Union Station: the 8:32 to Boston. We’d run all the way down the hill, across Kelly Square and down Green Street, and I kept thinking, attempting to say that I didn’t think I should be running as my brain rattled around inside the very raw insides of my skull. The blacksmith was sweating profusely as we got on the train, but he didn’t stop pacing. I was dimly aware of him passing by me with a slight tap on my shoulder, as if he were ensuring himself of my presence, and then he would be gone. I could hear him huffing and puffing, as well, getting louder then softer. "Oh. Shit. Platform. Few. Blacksmiths. Hammers."

I couldn’t tell if we were moving or not from my seat, I just kept my head down, hand on that duffle bag in the seat beside me. My nostrils flared and burned from the acrid taste of vomit, dark anti-matter-like stars bobbed in front of my eyes, blocking out my view of the floor.

#

We were moving, because the kid sat opposite me and the scenery outside gave our car a green glow, less stark and gray than the way it was in the station. I was suffering, but he wasn’t having a picnic of it, either, as he sucked in, taking in great gulps of air, wheezing with the force of it.

Under normal circumstances I’d go, or be taken, to a quiet room, nice and dark, and allowed to sit it out. I would be winded from the run down the hill, but nothing like this -- a cold sweat broke out across my forehead, lights popped at the edges of my vision, breath came in shallow bursts. My heart pounded like I’d been stabbed.

But the kid across from me, he was just unfit. His skin was so pasty white it was nearly translucent. His hair was thin and scraggly, pasted all over his forehead in great sweaty streaks, and his cheeks, in between breaths, were great sunken pits like sinkholes in his face. If I were to put money on it, I wouldn’t bet that he could stand up again against the weight of his blacksmith’s apron.

"Jimmy," he said.

I nodded, which was a painful and stupid thing to do, since I could feel the vomit rise as if it were checking out what it was I was nodding at.

I heard him say it again, "Jimmy."

"Fu--. Oh. OK." I said, just to get him to stop talking.

#

I woke up with my face rocking against the ratty seat cushion. Jimmy had stripped off his heavy leather apron at some point, as it lay on the seat next to him. He looked even more thin and frail without it. He stared out the window, looking back at a platform from which we were just pulling away.

I closed my eyes again and thought about the... explosion, I guess, when the bubble burst in our bathroom. I could picture Sadie’s little body tipping and breaking the skin of the bubble, tugging her mom in with her. I could see Laura curling up around her daughter, our daughter, instinctively, whatever instinct there is when you find yourself falling into a magical, humming, exploding soap bubble. Must have been an instinct from an odd corner of the evolutionary tree. I could see Eli disappear in a brief flash of light.

"It’ll all be okay, you know. In the end."

I didn’t realize he was talking to me until I heard my name. "’Will Murphy,’ that’s you, right? I mean, you’re a legend." Jimmy fidgeted in his seat. Even his eyes were restless; he’d look down at me, or out the window, or down the aisles, but his eyes wouldn’t sit for long, on to the next thing. I figured he was still looking out for the blacksmiths who were chasing us. Or my poor addled brain was just having trouble staying focused, itself. "I play Pro Hockey Three as the Ice Cats just so I can wreak havoc on the opposing teams. With you. I could beat anybody with the Ice Cats. Even the NHL clubs. I’d take out their best players in a fight with you. Or Germaine Bousquet, oh man. The two of you! Then I’d just pick them apart from there." He mimed a few punches, quick little jabs.

A small part of me cringed, and another small part wanted to start punching.

At the Wellesley Farms station a man with a pitchfork got on our car, sat down three seats behind me in a puff of hay dust. The besuited people in the proximity began coughing, politely, and then not so politely holding their noses, as the smell of sheep manure wafted down the car. With great care, Jimmy sidled out of his seat. He scrabbled beneath my armpits with his scraggly little fingers that were stronger than they looked. I shuffled, if only to avoid the rake-like fingers. With each wiggle to get free of the seat I felt as if someone were dredging the inside of my skull with barbed wire. Jimmy scooped the duffle bag off the seat to clear my way. He hooked an arm across my back and led me forward.

We found a car near the front of the train, in which the conductor sat, slumped in a seat, sobbing to himself. Well, obviously not all the way to himself, since we heard it. And he kept looking over at us. I would have moved seats, if I had felt up to it, but the trip down the length of the train had left me winded and he wasn’t chasing us or anything, so we stayed where we were.

I kept my head down and breathed as evenly as I could. Jimmy started up a conversation with the conductor, so far as I could tell, and the miles went by outside, presumably.

We pulled into South Station with a soft rocking motion that brought a spike of pain up through somewhere in the center of my brain and with it more vomit.

Next Chapter: Chapter Four