Chapter 1-3
667 Words
“Stop it, you’re misting up the windows.” Edie was creeping down the street, the car hardly moving, the windshield wipers swishing back and forth fast enough to make Archie dizzy.
“What?”
“You’re hyperventilating. Stop. I can’t see when you’re fogging everything up.”
“I’m not the one doing it.” Archie held his breath, the ringing in his ears excruciating as an invisible hand forced its way down his throat to tug at his stomach. “Stop the car.” The words could hardly count as a whisper. “Stop the car!”
Edie slammed the breaks, making the car behind them honk. Archie threw open the door, stumbled out on the sidewalk, and across a mud puddle that once had been a flowerbed.
September shouldn’t be this cold.
He put his back against the wall of the house, his fingers tracing the mortar between the bricks.
The rain attacked him, and the wind laughed in his head.
“What the hell, Archie!” Edie trotted toward him, the driver behind them still laying on the horn. “Did you see the dog?”
He shook his head and reached down to lift an old flowerpot, gesturing at the key the invisible hand had wanted him to find.
Edie rolled her eyes but gentled her voice. “I’m sure someone would be delighted you found their lost key. Now, get back into the car.”
Archie did, some of the nausea gone now that he’d found the key. Edie gave the driver behind them the finger and climbed inside, her wet chocolate-brown hair glued to her skull. She made a disgusted sound and shook it free of droplets. “I swear to God, once we get a big fat paycheck, I’m taking a month off to go to Thailand or something.”
“It’s raining there too.” The world wasn’t what it once had been. It rained everywhere. Not a little rain, no, it poured down every day, all day as if Mother Earth tried to wash off the stain they’d created.
“You don’t hear me crushing your dreams, do you?” Edie sent that creepy forked tongue out the corner of her mouth.
“What dreams?”
“Right, I forgot. You’re one of those who m*********s to get a dopamine high and not because you’re horny. Tell me again, what day of the week do you practice self-abuse?”
Archie ignored her. It had been years since he’d made one fatal comment about orgasms and dopamine and he’d had to suffer for it ever since.
“Okay, keep your eyes open.” Edie took a right turn, and the Greenwood Park came into view. It wasn’t a big park, and people seldom visited it since it always rained. All Archie could see was dying plants. Nothing survived the downpour, no matter what season. He remembered a time when this park had been filled with tulips in the spring. The bulbs had rotted by now.
No matter in what direction Archie looked, he couldn’t see a dog. “Perhaps we need to go outside.” He glared at his belly, wondering where the invisible hand was now.
Edie sighed. “The mutt better be there, I’m in no mood to get wet unless I get paid for it.”
“It’s good for your dopamine levels.”
She snorted, then she laughed in a way he hadn’t heard her do in a long time. “Oh Archie, a joke? You shock me.” The laugh died down to a giggle and Edie removed the key from the ignition, but neither of them moved.
“Okay, let’s go, but if you dig up any old broken bracelets that have been buried for decades I’m going back into the car, understood?”
Archie nodded and reached for the handle. He didn’t want to go outside, he hated being outdoors, but the faster he could get Edie to give up on finding the dog, the sooner they could go home, and he wouldn’t have to venture outside for six more days.
“Our luck is changing, Archibald.” Edie dug her fingers into his thigh. “Lookie there.” She pointed at a once-white dog sniffing around a bench, lifting its hind leg to pee.
“Charming.”
“I know, now go get him.”
Archie stared at her. “Me? Why me?”
She flashed fangs and a forked tongue. “You think he’d run to me or away from me? I need groceries. Go.” She shooed at him as if he was a cat and Archie slipped out into the rain.
No sane animal would willingly go near Edie. He wished he’d done that.
- Writer
