Second Thoughts and Last Chances
By
Latikia
Edited by
The Old Fart
Copyright © 2007,
2008
Chapter 21
Los Angeles. There’s no way I can adequately describe my first impression of that monstrosity of a city. I’d never been there, but I’d seen fragments on the news, scraps of it in movies and on TV. In some ways LA is no different from any other large American city; beautiful in spots, appealingly sit-com-ish around the edges, and just plain nauseating at the core.
In other ways it’s completely different; the filthy rich
traipsing the streets alongside the pathetically poor, diamond wearing trophy
wives pointedly ignoring strung out crack whores, tanned and trim Ivy League
lawyers in three thousand dollar Italian suits tossing the keys to their BMWs,
Mercedes and Porches to red vested illegal immigrants who, if they were lucky,
were making minimum wage.
I’ve been to
I work in
But LA was an entirely new experience. For the both of us.
Lilly, I realized from our conversations on the drive up,
had the standard starry-eyed Midwestern expectations most people have of the
place. There was probably a time when I
did as well. But those days, for me
anyway, were long gone. Lilly saw the
glamour, the bright colors, the fascinating façade, and was as thrilled as any
young wannabe starlet fresh off the bus from
I saw the rust hiding behind the chrome. I felt the horrendous anxiety, the immense insecurity, the barely muted anger and dissatisfaction that bubbled beneath the smiling faces we saw wherever we went. The relentless ambition, ruthless greed, remorseless lust…they were everywhere. They almost completely blotted out the thin layer of more positive emotions I could sense lying beneath like a thick ugly cloud of smog squatting over a field of daisies.
LA is huge, sprawling and ominous. There were times when it seemed to go on forever, hungrily expanding like a cancer, always looking for more. More. LA felt, to me, like a living, breathing, desperately insatiable need for more.
It made me uncomfortable as we hit the southern city
limits. By the time we were arrived at
our Hotel in
LA – Day 1
I barely slept that night. More like dozing off for a few minutes every couple of hours. I was in a lousy mood from the start. It was all I could do to put on a pleasant face for Lilly. I didn’t want to be the one to trash her fantasy.
We had breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant then left and drove up to UCLA.
I got my first taste of outright hostility when I met the Chancellor. She could have been Senator Gottschalk’s sister. Her general appearance and sense of style were noticeably better; her manners and political leaning however left a lot to be desired. I overcame her objections by the simple expedient of suggesting the school’s federal funding might be endangered by her lack of cooperation.
The dean of the Science and Technology school was made of sterner stuff. He refused to allow me access to any of the professors, stridently proclaiming that my presence was an abuse of government authority. The man had tenure and was relying on that to protect him. Foolish, foolish fellow. He’d been in academia far too long.
I had him sobbing on the floor of his office within seconds, and a printout of the school’s professors, associates and grad students in my hand a few minutes later, along with a tear stained, hand-written note suggesting in no uncertain terms that anyone I wanted to talk with provide their fullest cooperation.
My skin was crawling by the time we located the first name on the list. I felt grimy, filthy, itchy, irritable and out of place.
The first interview went well enough. He was a fairly young guy, a full professor at the ripe old age of thirty-three, who’d been, by his own admission, a bit of a black-hat in his younger days. Yes, he’d heard of Lucifer, but had no idea who the guy might be. In fact, he’d heard of most of the hackers on my researched list. He spoke admiringly of a few and sneered at the rest. Most, he said, were posers. Their time would have been better spent playing video games.
I actually found myself liking the guy, until I realized that he was spending as much time staring at Lilly as he was talking to me. Charming, soft spoken, knowledgeable, good looking…
And Lilly was pleasantly flattered by the attention.
Well of course she
is. Why shouldn’t she be?
A low rumbling started in my chest and gradually made its way up to my throat, emerging as a snarling growl.
The professor shifted uneasily in his chair. Lilly, sitting next to me, reached out and slipped her arm possessively around mine, clutching fingers tightened around my bicep.
“Professor, in your opinion, what is the best computer security company in the state?” she asked him, tightening her hold on my arm, adding her body weight to mine in an effort to keep me seated.
“Uhm…what, the
best?” He looked at me as though
I’d just sprouted fangs and was going to tear his throat out with them. “Computek is the
oldest and most well known. They’ve been
into computer security since the seventies.
They handle most of the established companies and corporations on the
west coast. But there is one…White
Dragon Security; they’re a lot smaller, very new in the business. They started up about five years ago. Privately owned. I hear they’ve built up quite a reputation
with the
“Where?” I choked out. The professor flinched back in his seat.
“
Lilly stood up abruptly, pulling insistently on my arms with both of hers. “Thank you for your time, Professor. We’ll show ourselves out.”
She literally dragged me out of his office, hustled me out of the building, onto the sidewalk and shoved me down onto the first bench we came to.
“What the hell was that all about?” she demanded.
My hands were clenching and unclenching like clockwork. I stared down at them, watching the veins and tendons swell and flex.
“Well?”
I looked up into her face, my eyes felt gritty and sore. The emotional mirror I’d been holding up cracked.
“Oh…” she said sadly. Lilly sat down on the bench and leaned against me.
“Ike…” she started.
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” I said finally. I took a deep breath. The morning air was cool, clean and smelled faintly of roses, but I felt as though I were suffocating.
“Do you feel alright? You’re not sick, are you?” She put the back of her hand across my forehead.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but something’s wrong. I just don’t know what. I didn’t sleep very well last night.” I admitted. “But that doesn’t matter. We need to finish up here.”
“Okay. But after that we’re going right back to the hotel and you are going to rest.” She stood up, stepped between my legs, pulled my face against her breasts and stroked the back of my head. “Just remember something, will you?”
“Remember what?” I asked, nuzzling a hardening nipple thru her blouse.
“Remember that you’re the only man I want.”
The other four interviews were strained, but I got thru them
without making a scene. Unfortunately
they were less revealing than the first had been, Lucifer-wise anyway. Two of the four were elderly men with a lot
of scientific knowledge but little interest in the activities of hackers. The other two were women, which I gathered
from the emotional chips on their shoulders was unusual. One, in her early forties, was obviously a
lesbian, and she aggressively flirted with Lilly, while at the same time doing
her dead level best to ignore my presence altogether. My little flower was neither flattered nor
amused. The other woman, a big breasted
I couldn’t have cared less at that point. My head hurt, my chest felt like iron bands had been welded in place around it, every muscle and joint ached and the walk back to the car left me sweating like a pig and gasping for air. Lilly rushed us back to the hotel, driving like one of the maniacal natives.
Lying in bed that night, spooned up behind Lilly, I tried to sleep and couldn’t. The afternoon and early evening rest period hadn’t done me a lick of good. I was more fatigued than I’d ever been in my life, brushes with death included, as eager and desirous of the temporary oblivion unconsciousness offered as any man could be. It just wasn’t happening. Sleep was nowhere to be found.
Their feelings wouldn’t leave me alone. An entire city’s worth of emotional sludge was seeping in and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Once Lilly was asleep I got up, went into the living room portion of our suite and slumped onto the loveseat. I was restless, miserable, strung out and growing more and more depressed by the minute. Slitting my own throat started to seem like a viable option. I went to the mini-bar and gulped down the contents of half the tiny liquor bottles. That helped dull things a little, but not nearly enough to let me sleep.
It was like that day at the mall when I was thirteen and I linked with thirty odd people all at the same time…magnified a million times.
At this rate I’ll be
insane by morning.
I walked across the room, just missed slamming my shins into the glass and metal coffee table, swung open the sliding glass door that led out onto the narrow balcony and stepped out into the tepid early morning. I stood still, allowing the vapidly listless breeze to flip my hair off my shoulders and into my face.
“Daddy?”
I put both hands on the wrought iron railing, hunched my shoulders and lowered my head between my arms.
“Daddy?” her bell-like voice persisted.
I turned my head and peered disinterestedly thru the hair that half covered my eyes.
Tink sat in the corner, looking as dejected as only a little girl could, one of Peggy’s shiny pink vibrators in her hand.
“It stopped.” she
said, pouting. She held it out to
me. “Can
you fix it? Please?”
I stood up, took my hands off the rail, stepped over and crouched down next to her. Tink pushed the pink piston at me. I held out one hand, palm up, and she laid it across my fingers.
After a few seconds of examination, twisting this and flipping that, I looked up.
“I think the battery’s dead.”
She smiled, the tip of her tiny pink tongue poked out between the gap created by her missing baby teeth.
“It’s not dead…but it
is dying. All it needs is to be filled
up.”
I bobbed my head curtly. “And how do you propose I do that?”
“You know how. You’re just afraid to try.”
“Batteries have limits. Fill them up too much and they explode. Very messy.”
She grinned very wide.
“Everything has limits, but
they’re almost always beyond what we thought they were.”
I cracked a smile. “You’re a clever little girl, you know that?”
Her grin vanished. “There’s no need to be such a patronizing
shit-head.”
Tink’s body began to bubble, billow, and swell. Then her physical outline dissolved, erupting into nodes of expanding ebon plasma edged with flame.
I slowly stood up, following the rising pillar of darkness.
“There was no need for you to do that either.”
‘Au contraire. There was a very good reason.’
“Such as?”
‘Such as you don’t trust me, but you do her. Hell, you’ll trust damn near anyone…but not
me.’
“I’ve taken your advice, when I thought it was good. But you’re right, I don’t trust you.”
‘And therein lays the crux of our problem.’
“Keep going. I’m listening.”
‘Have I ever lied to you?’
The question made me shudder. My head felt as if it were three times its normal size.
“You said I couldn’t save them.”
‘I said you couldn’t save them from me. Did I lie?’
I had to admit he’d been right about that. I’d tried to distance myself from them and failed. Failed them, failed myself, just plain failed.
‘I showed you how to save your sister’s life; how to rebuild your
own. Did I lie?’
“You said I was a god.”
‘Semantics. You are what you
are, no matter how you chose to describe it.
Did I lie? Have I ever lied to
you?’
I shut my eyes and exhaled loudly.
“How do I stop this…whatever it is?” I asked.
‘It stops when you die. And
right now you’re very close to getting your wish.’
“I’m dying?”
‘We’re dying.’ he replied softly. ‘This place is sapping you, draining your
power…and you’re letting it happen.
You’re wasting energy and effort trying to keep something you need away,
and that effort is going to kill you. It
doesn’t have to happen; we don’t have to let it. But if you don’t do something soon, we will
die. Is that really what you want?’
Long…long…long pause.
“No.”
‘Then stop fighting me. I’m not
the monster you seem to think I am.’
Even longer pause.
‘Let me help you. We can beat
this. Trust me. Trust yourself.’
“I trust you Ike.” Lilly’s voice called to me.
I opened my eyes as my head snapped around. She stood in the doorway, naked and covered with goosebumps.
She stepped out onto the balcony, pressed herself against me and wrapped her arms tightly around my waist. I put both arms around her back and pulled her closer.
“I’m dying Lilly.” I said. “I don’t even know why.”
“Don’t.” she replied. “Please don’t.”
I swallowed hard. The echo of that one word reverberated thru my bones…Don’t. I swallowed my fear, my doubt, my lack of faith. The lump in my throat went down hard, scratching and clawing all the way, not unlike swallowing a handful of un-chewed corn chips. Tears welled up in my eyes and turned to steam.
Lilly gave a little yelp of pain. I opened my arms and she quickly backed away.
Emotions that had been slowly seeping in all day long suddenly came at me in a rush.
I wasn’t a receiver any more, I’d become some sort of vacuum cleaner, an emotional suction pump.
‘More! Take it all! We want it all!’ he bellowed from within.
“I can’t hold it all!” I snarled thru gritted teeth.
‘Yes you can. It’s only pain.’
More. The city wanted more, we wanted more, everybody wanted more. But there are limits.
How do you know?
I feel it. It hurts, goddamn it!
So what? Life is pain.
I’m afraid.
Of what? Not the pain, I know
better than that.
Of losing myself.
What is it you’re always telling Izzy?
You can’t lose yourself, sunshine.
Throw or push away, maybe. But
never lose.
I screamed at the top of my lungs; my body shuddered from the throbbing agony, quivered, shook and shivered with rage, hatred, envy, fury, disgust, distrust, avarice, jealousy, lust, anger, sadness, misery…there were so many of them, and so much. It was endless and never-ending. On and on and on…
The end. There had to be an end. There had to be.
There is only one end.
I can’t see it.
I hope we never do. Now swallow!
I’m trying to…it’s not
working!
Then…
I couldn’t get them in. Not all of them.
…try…
There was just no way I could keep it up. There was no place to put them all.
…harder!
The piercing shrieks coming from my throat started getting on what was left of my nerves.
Don’t you fuckin’ quit on me!
Why is this happening
to me?
You know why.
I don’t.
My body started swaying as the muscles grew more and more fatigued. I locked my knees in a vain effort to remain standing.
That day in ’95, you felt emotions without linking. That’s when it started.
What is it?
Where’s your analytical acumen?
Where’s all that psychological know-how you’re so proud of?
Just answer the fuckin’ question!
Puberty.
Pain. My very existence was one of pain. Physical, emotional, intellectual pain. My mind was screaming, my body was on the edge of collapse and the only personal emotion I could recognize was fear.
I started laughing. A weak, pitiful, pain wracked sound, only vaguely human sounding, but it was laughter.
Puberty? Fuck!
Remember what it was like when you were a kid? Body changing, growing, aching all the time,
constantly tired, emotions all mixed up and out of control. Sound familiar?
Strangely enough, it did.
It took four years for
this to happen?
Puberty doesn’t start and end on the same day, does it? It’s a process, not an event.
Thirty years old and
I’m going thru puberty.
Only in a manner of speaking.
This is different, very different.
Your body isn’t changing. You
won’t get any taller, your dick won’t get any hairier, which I’m sure will come
as a great relief to your girls, and your voice won’t change.
My ability, right?
Right. It’s growing up. During physical puberty the body feeds on
itself to facilitate the change. You eat
more often to fuel the body so it can complete the process. Basic biology 101. But in your case, let’s just say you haven’t
been eating enough of the right stuff.
Your body was barely able to keep the process going, and now you’re
paying the price.
It hurts so much.
Yeah, I know. he agreed sympathetically. Change is hard on everyone. But it happens, whether you want it to or
not.
I have to eat.
Yes. You’ve been putting it off
for a long time, so it won’t be pleasant, but it has to be done. Forget what you think you can do and just do what you need to.
What I needed to do. Izzy, once upon a time, had begged me not to die. Lilly had just done the same.
I don’t want to die.
Then don’t a cold, clipped, dispassionate voice whispered. It was the voice that wasn’t a voice from my dream.
This time I heard it. Distinctly heard it. Similar to the voice of the darkness, similar to my own, but not the same.
It was cold. Very cold. Distant, unemotional, direct and inflexible.
Fear, my fear, was quickly surrounded and encompassed by a shrinking ball of burning ice. Replaced by cold. Irresistible, inexorable and infinitely faster than the ice age it felt like.
Now swallow the voice commanded.
My thoughts were ice. My pain frozen in place along with my body. Cold pain versus burning pain. What a peculiar contrast.
Pain is what it is. So are
we. Now swallow.
What am I then?
SWALLOW.
I swallowed. Three and a half million multiplied by I don’t know how many emotions and feelings.
And then there was a blinding flash of agonizing light.
I’d heard explosions before. Mortars, bombs, grenades, claymore mines…trees. I knew the differing sounds of each type. This was worse.
My chest exploded and sub-zero darkness followed the light.
Soft skin against my cheek…
…firm muscle beneath the skin…
Warm…soothing…healing…
…fresh cut grass…
Gentle fingers stroked my brow…
…wake up…
No.
It’s time.
No!
You’ve won.
How?
Does it matter?
Won how?
By not dying.
That’s it?
Should there be more?
No. I guess not.
“…I’m telling you, it looked just like a bolt of lightning…out of his chest and into the sky…blue…no, pale blue…like you said he got in the snow that time…I don’t know what else to do…barely breathing…scared the living daylights out of me…no, doesn’t hurt much now…kinda like a sunburn…but what if he doesn’t…”
“Lilly?” I whispered. I tried to whisper, but it came out sounding like a toad with a sore throat.
Something bounced off my aching chest and hit the carpet with a muted thud. Soft arms wrapped around my head and neck, sweet smelling hair tickled my nose and eyelids, and wet lips pressed against the side of my face.
“Thirsty.” I croaked.
“Oh baby…I thought I’d lost you.”
“Never.” I rasped thru a throat that felt like it was made of raw and bloody meat. I tried to put my arms around her. They wouldn’t move. I felt as weak as a kitten.
“Be right back.” Lilly promised as she slid out from under me, easing my head down before rushing off.
I managed to get my eyes open as she returned, one of the short bar glasses half filled with clear liquid in hand. She knelt down beside me, slipped one hand under my neck, lifting and tilting my head. She held the glass to my lips, allowing a slow trickle of water to pass my lips and worm its way down my throat.
It took a while, but I managed to get it all down…and kept it there. Lilly set the glass on top of the coffee table, which I noticed was higher than I was, and crawled on top of me.
She was so warm. Filled with warmth, filled with fire that sparked and flared; it reached out to me, beckoning, enticing.
“I love you so much.” I told her, feeling better, more aware.
Lilly went from warm to blazing in a heartbeat. The beckoning fire became a cleansing furnace; the forge fire swept thru me, washing away my weakness, re-investing my muscles with strength and my mind with clarity.
I could feel the carpet giving way beneath my back, hear the blood in my veins as it surged the length and breadth of my body, taste the shampoo Lilly used to wash her hair.
I smiled. Watermelon and cut grass. I love that smell. Always have.
I lifted my arms and put them around her, rubbing her back and shoulders.
“Hey,” I said to the top of her head, “wanna fool around?”
Lilly snorted, called me a very nasty name, punched me in the ribs and then proceeded to grind her belly against mine. My cock got hard, popped up between her deliciously soft thighs and came to an abrupt stop against her simmering sex. She groaned softly and hit me in the side again.
I smacked her bottom.
“Feeling better?” she asked.
“Much, thanks to you.”
“You sound better. A lot better than you did just a few second ago. What’s going on Ike?”
“I’m changing Lilly.”
“Changing how? I don’t know what that means.”
“Me either. All I know for sure is that I am.”
She wiggled like a snake, dragging her nipples across my chest and twisting her thighs and pussy around my cock.
“Could you try to do it a little less dramatically from now on?”
“No promises, but I’ll see what I can do.”
We both eventually fell asleep, laying there on the floor, too comfortable and content to get up.