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Part 6-24: Hijacked
Deluxe sees it too, and floats her own hand up to her mouth.
“You feel all this?” I say. The walls waver.
“My memory feels hijacked, as if, as if…”
“Are we poisoned?” I know it’s not true. I don’t know how I know, but I’m certain it’s to do with the man in the bathroom and the ring on my finger.
“No,” says Deluxe. “They don’t hurt us, but they scare us into leaving.”
She is predicting the future. Or reciting the past? I can remember it all, impossibly. This conversation, sitting in the shop, being terrified. We start the day and she calls the police, low key. They come by and look at the vandalism, take notes, promise to drive by a bunch.
We feel a little better, but then a sharp suited guy comes in, near closing time, and flashes the tattoo on the inside of his thumb. It’s the same symbol. He smiles, and acts charming. He apologizes for what happened with the attempted robbery and compliments my bravery. But unfortunately, he tells us, through damn bad luck, I happened to have disfigured and seriously inconvenienced the son-in-law of a high ranking boss of some sort. The boss is in a tough place—his daughter wants blood, but we’ve not technically crossed any line by defending ourselves. The slick man says the daughter is unhinged but inefficient (Deluxe and I laugh about this later), and if we leave now, the boss will look the other way. If we linger, the family feud will likely boil over and there really may be a dagger or a cyanide pill or hell, if angry mob wife really gets her way, a hail of mercenary bullets.
“We leave, we actually pack up and leave the next day,” I breathe. The sun is gone, and it is pitch black outside.
“I run the risk profile,” says Deluxe. “Even if there is only a 1% chance of truth in the man’s words, it is better to not roll the dice.”
“You have enough cash, you say we can find a quieter place to try this whole restaurant thing in a better locale, find a niche.”
All the colour seems to drain away.
Eden is not in the washroom. Eden is lurking inside of a clock, far away, maybe learning how to infect a man named William Tulun. I will meet them in about two years. First, Deluxe and I skip out of the city, me taking nothing but a suitcase, her commissioning a small, strange fleet of specialty vehicles to move her pets and electronics. I will make up a vague excuse to friends and email my family to let them know I’m trying something new. We stay in hotels for a few weeks until we find temporary housing many, many miles from the city. That temporary spot becomes home for a year and a half, as we wait for her to arrange the sale of her former place and the purchase of a new one.
No one hunts us down. The trauma of it all fades. We are ready to start again, as soon as the brand new small-town condo she’s purchased is finished. We’ve come up with our restaurant idea and everything. We move again, best pals now, a real pair of spunky vegetarian zookeepers, soon to be unwitting modern day ghost hunters.
Fast forward, and…
“The feds, they took us,” says Deluxe. There is no shop anymore, though I can still smell it. It is only she and I, standing before one another.
“Fergus…” I say the name and everything else clicks back into place. “Fergus and I got to the book. Eden and The Minder, they gave me a new skill. I think, well, I know—I’m in you right now.”
“I feel it, across these memories,” she says. “That was more than just reliving.”
“You were truly scared, when we sat down and realized what that gang sign meant.”
“I was.”
“But we made it,” I say.
“Then. Then we made it. What about right now?”
“Be scared with me again. But let me drive.”
Deluxe inhales through her nose, and nods. She steps toward me, like she’s moving in for a kiss. I brace, not sure what new craziness might arise now. The sensation of the shop has regressed into memory from a dream; the pressing matter of the federal imprisonment loomed supreme once again.
“Wait,” said Deluxe.
“Hm?”
“I never did give you the rest of the muffin formula, did I?”
“I’d forgotten all about that, to be honest,” I said.
“Being able to measure the impact of your own design is a powerful thing, even when limited to baked goods,” she said. “It is liberating and wonderful. But behind it all there must be a purpose, and it must be at least some part personal. That’s the main thrust of the formula. The rest is simply patience.”
“I don’t know how much time we have right now for patience, but these fuckers sure have invaded my personal space. Both the earthly and supernatural ones.”
“Then have all of mine,” she said, and walked headlong into me.
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