Chapter 9
My back. My legs. My arms. Even my head. They were all sore. Sore and wonderfully debilitating.
A thunderhead had materialized early in the morning like some foul demon of cloud, soot, and rage that saw the nice summer day and thought, “No, this wouldn’t do. Lyle Ivano cannot have a pleasant day.” It shredded apart the hot sky and started pulverizing the city with torrential fury.
Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Rain stomped on the roof louder than a bungalow of fucking kindergarteners on punch. It clacked and clacked and clacked and clacked my eardrums, masked only when thunder shattered through, but then they’d continue their incessant dancing again. Fuck me for getting a top-floor room because I want to have a good view of the trash and bums. I took solace in the understanding that the racket, however insufferable, was at least sane.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Sane compared to that motherfucking drip.
Drip. Drip.
Six hours. Six goddamn hours those drips have been assaulting me. Curse them all, each stray drop of water that wormed its way through the roof and collected in a pool in the ceiling. Each and every one that snuck through a stress fracture in the bloated stucco. Each single one that kamazied straight onto my floor and crashed with auditory madness.
Drip.
Blasted weather. Blasted, wretched weather. I couldn’t stand it. The stupid rain beat me down with exhaustion and pain and locked me into this damned hole. Here I was, a full-grown and otherwise healthy adult, five seconds away from tearing my hair off from the god-awful rain.
Curse the idiot who invented it. He must have been an engineer.
I strung up an arm to the nightstand and pulled out the bottle of sleeping pills I kept in the drawer. It felt too light and kept mute like a bratty kid no matter how hard I shook it. I threw the goddamn thing across the room and out the hallway.
I had chucked in some antivirals to combat the cold, but it didn’t help much. Like an unwelcomed houseguest, the nasty fiend was here to stay. I considered calling up Aimee to tell her I’d be out sick, but decided against it. I was eating a sick day either way, and telling them why will just give them a good reason to raise my health insurance premiums.
Noon maybe, or some time close enough, and I threw middle finger at the bed and the ceiling and willed out of bed to gargle some mouthwash, and I then went to the living room. I was pretty sure that green mouthwash wasn’t supposed to turn red after you gargled it. Whatever. I was too light-headed to care. I collapsed into the couch and didn’t bother untangling my limbs.
I turned on the computer to distract myself from the storm and sickness. I believe I ended up watching a Sunday evangelism program. Probably the usual fire and brimstone and sin and Satan and stuff. It was all the same. Just so long it kept me occupied, I could stand patronization from a humble octogenarian who made more in three words than I made in three years.
Come to think of it, I was in entirely the wrong profession.
It was late in the evening when I came-to. The rain had since tempered, but clung on like a vicious little dog. My delirium had queued up some sort of teeny-bopper melodrama that was now parading itself on the screen. I turned it off and staggered into the kitchen for something to eat. Maybe some chicken soup, I could have really gone for some chicken soup. That is, had there been any. The closest I stocked was a canister of irregularity supplements. Well it’ll have to do, I thought. Mix it up with boiling water and some sugar, and it’ll be reasonably tasty. I spooned the ingredients into the oven and set it away. In a few minutes, I would have the full, delicious flavor of a full-day’s worth of fiber…
Crack. Everything went dark. The lights, the oven, my sense of direction. Son-of-a-…
Stupid, goddamn rain. Not content with repossessing physical well-being, my mental acuity, and my money, it now wanted to take away my delicious, gelatinous fiber soup, too! Son of a bitch!
Fumbling like a helpless idiot in the dark, I managed to find the intercom (which was attached to a backup circuit) and called up the manager to ask what was wrong.
“The power ain’t coming on tonight, buddy. Fuggedaboutit and go to sleep.”
“But…”
Click.
Sigh. It’s the story of my life. Sitting on the floor, miserable, coughing, and in pain while a vat of fibrous soup remained half-boiled and unloved.
I hated the rain.
While I was wallowing in self-pity, a sound tapped through the storm. Something sharper and more deliberate than raindrops. I closed over one of my ears to make sense of it.
Thud!
What the hell?
The door banged. Someone… something was pounding it, and it didn’t sound like it was trying to say “hello.” The door shook and buckled as the pounding intensified. I scrambled over to the entry panel and jammed on it until I remembered that the power had died and taken out the visitation camera. I tapped the door two times. The thumping stopped.
“Hello?” I called out. “Anyone there?” No answer.
Cautiously, I unbolted the door and manually slid it open a crack, just space enough for me to peek out an eyeball. The hallway ate the light and vision and offered no answers. I slid the door open and stuck my head out.
Before I could scan around once, the door was ripped open and my back found itself kissing the floor. The pain took a second to surge through my spine, but I was barely conscious of it because I was too busy panicking. I could hear my assailant enter the room.
God, I was going to die. Some hoodlum, taking advantage of the power outage, was going to rob me blind and kill me.
My breath was too fearful to exit the safety of my lungs. My diaphragm locked up. And more than that, someone paralyzed my chest by pressing on it.
He was kneeing me in the chest and holding me down. This was it. My throat was going to be slashed open. I’ll die gurgling and choking on my own blood. I felt a warm breath against my face. He was going to do it. I’m dead. Gone. My head lost control and I screamed.
Suddenly, I was drowned with the wetness on my face. My blood. I was feeling my own blood. Lord help me, he did it. I’m dead!
And then the lights turned on.
“Ly-lee!”
My back. My legs. My arms. My head. Even my empty lungs. They were all sore. Sore and wonderfully debilitating.
The adrenaline that coursed through my veins tapered off and left me to withdraw into a spastic, anxious mess, far worse than I had been this morning. The throbbing tug-of-war between my tired muscles and my hyper-stimulated nerves wrecked havoc on my body
And now I had a pair of bright blue eyes staring down at me.
I came to my senses and squirmed back to my and to what was left of my dignity. My eyes adjusted to the room in a blurred mess. I swore I saw an Isian. But it couldn’t be. I clamped down my eyelids to blot out the backed-up fluids and blinked numerous times. A pair of white and blue lizards, dripping water on my floor, sat on their haunches and looked at me with wide smiles.
“Wha… what?” I garbled. “Basil? Tia?”
“Hey Ly-lee!” they greeted together. They got up and shook themselves dry, spraying everything with cold rainwater.
Yep, it was them.
I shook off the last vestiges of incredulity. The Isians where here. In my apartment. In my home! In the middle of the night! Wet!
“What… what the heck are you guys doing here?” I said.
The twins clicked to each other and laughed.
“Oh silly!” Basil said.
“We’re here to live with you!” said Tia.
“Come again?” I said. I just noticed they had knapsacks slung on their backs. They dropped their bags on the floor and wandered into the living room. Basil began nosing into a cabinet.
“We came to live with you, Ly-lee,” Basil said. “Just like you said we could.”
“What? Since when?”
“Remember?” Tia said. “In drafting day. You told me we could stay here a in your house.”
Basil chirped. “Yes, yes you did, Sis told me!”
Drafting day? What the hell did I say two days ago? I grounded the bones of my wrist into my temples to keep distracting stimuli away. Think! Tia took me out of the line and started crying. She said Tetra was moving them out of Summit. I told her it was going to be all right. She hesitated to believe me. I tried to convince her that it’ll be better, that’ll be even better than my place. She refused to believe that. Then I maintained it was true and that she could see for herself by staying…
God-dammit!
“Hey guys?” I said. “I’m sorry, but there’s been a misunderstanding. I didn’t really mean that you could actually stay with me.”
“Oh, Ly-lee has such a nice place,” Tia said. “Doesn’t he, little brother?” Her brother whistled and started using the sofa’s cushions as a trampoline.
“Hey, hey!” I shouted. I went after them before they could possibly break anything.
Basil picked up the lamp on the side table. “Oh look at this, Tia, isn’t this the neatest thing ever?”
I ran over and snatched the lamp away from him.
“Ooo, ooo! Look, little brother! A UH8 wall-mount!” Tia squealed at my computer. She turned it on and began pounding random keys on the console.
“Wait, that’s not yours!” I called out with the lamp under my left arm. I shooed her away and turned off the machine. I heard Basil call out from behind.
“Tia! Tia! Look! It’s an intercom!” Before I could stop him, he was plugging away at the controls.
“No, no! Don’t touch that!”
“Hello? Hello? Earth to Orion’s Belt, come in Delta Station.”
Tia chattered and pointed to a basket of fruit on the kitchen table. “Oh, Basil, little brother! There’s some food!” She hopped over the coffee table and knocked over an empty glass flower vase with her tail. I ran like a madman to catch it before it could roll off to certain oblivion. With the vase in my right hand and the lamp in my left arm, I chased after them into the kitchen.
“Who the hell is this?” I heard a static-coated voice call from the intercom. Frantically, I ran to the com while the twins started rummaging through the fruit basket.
“Hello, this has been another episode of Giant Lizard Theater 4000. Tune in at the same time in never for another great installment. Goodbye!” I paged out and shut down the intercom.
Back at the kitchen, I was too late. The basket was upturned with a large hole on its bottom, and the fruits were gone. The twins were in the corner somewhere and left behind the sound of munching. Exasperated, I dropped the vase and lamp on the kitchen table and slumped back into the living room sofa. This is going to be a long night, I thought. Just then, I heard a shriek followed by the crescendo of dishes clashing on kitchen tiles.
A long night.
I left the twins to their havoc in the kitchen. It was late, I was tired, and it would’ve been pointless. They’ll come out when they became bored with the backdrop. They can have their fun, but as soon as I found the energy to remove myself from this chair, there will be order. Oh yes, regulation and power. A man’s house is his castle, and I am King Lyle. I shall demand—nay, command!—respect. Woe to those unfortunate souls that dare rebel against my supreme will!
I was quite delusional when I was sick.
Sure enough, the twins wandered back into the living room after having their fill of my pantry, their hyperactivity bogged down by round bellies. Basil sagged down randomly on floor, not bothering to find a comfortable spot, and his sister crawled over to me. This was it. It was time to show them who was the man of the house.
I stood up, pumped my arms and pushed out my chest, and immediately coughed out phlegm because of my lung’s allergic reaction to machismo. Regaining myself, I steeled my legs in a kingly stance stood like an iron column of authority. I crossed my arms. Crossed arms are authoritative.
“Tiamat!” I called out in an earth-shattering voice. God, I was good. “Young lady! I’ll have a w—”
“Ly-lee, do you have any hot chocolate or something? My throat is kinda dry.”
“Ah… chocolate? I think I do—” I started in reflex before I caught myself. “Wait! No! Tia, listen!”
“Can you bring me some? I’m awfully thirsty.” She propped down onto the couch and turned the computer on.
“Tia, I—”
“Thanks Ly-lee.”
I went to the kitchen to find my can of chocolate mix.
At least, I swore I had a can. I nearly ripped apart the kitchen trying to find that damned thing. It just wasn’t there. I had cans of damn near everything else but chocolate. Well, I thought, I’m an engineer, so I can engineer together a suitable alternative. I rummaged through the pantry. Black tea, prune juice, ginger extract, orange tea, cinnamon. You know, if you mixed them you could probably come up with something similar. Add it a small pack of gelatin and you could…
Wait a minute! What the hell was I doing? I was supposed to kick out unwanted guests, not pamper them! I dropped the canisters and stormed out of the kitchen.
Don’t get me wrong, I liked the Isians and enjoyed their company. But this was too much even for me. I couldn’t have them barging in unexpectedly—in the middle of the night no less!—and happily accept them as my new roommates. No, this place was barely enough for a full-grown adult me, let alone a me plus two high-maintenance reptilian creatures. I’m sorry, but they had to go. It was nothing personal, just life.
With a newfound confidence, I took in a deep breath and stepped into the living room to do the deed. The lights were off as well as the computer. I could barely make out a snoring Basil curled up in sleep on the carpet in the middle of the room. A tap on my shoulder startled me.
“Ly-lee, do you have any blankets?”
Tia was standing on two legs and looking up at me.
“No, I don’t have any extra,” I said. “Sorry.”
She shrugged and turned her head to the side. “Oh well. That’s okay.”
“Listen, Tia, I have to say something.”
“Oh, me too. Can I go first?”
I agreed, and she opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She closed it, rubbed her hands together in a nervous tic, and paced about the room. Finally, with her eyes averted away, she said, “Ly-lee, I don’t know how to say this really well, but I want to… I want to thank you. Thank you for everything.”
“Thank me? For what?”
“You’ve been so nice to me and my little brother. You shared your food with us, and your playtime, and lots of things. Now you’re sharing your home too.” She looked up to me with her round eyes and smiled. “That’s the best thing anyone had done for us, ever.”
I didn’t say anything.
She leaned over her brother and cooed. “Poor thing, he must be so cold and tired from the rain. That was a long walk.”
“Where did you guys come form?”
“Summit.”
Summit was over 45 kilometers from here. Surely they didn’t slog through that entire distance in this godforsaken thunderstorm, did they?
“You walked all the way from Summit? Really?”
“Um-hmm. You live awfully far away, Ly-lee. I wanted to use the train, but we didn’t know how to use it, so we walked instead. We left in the morning so that we can get here early, but then the rain came. It made it very hard. And very, very cold.” She lovingly stroked Basil’s cheek. “We’re so tired.”
I said nothing.
“But now that we made it here,” Tia continued, scampering to me, “everything’s better!” She pressed her hands against my chest and cocked her head the side. “Because we have Ly-lee!”
She rose and touched my cheek with the end of her muzzle like she wanted to lick me, but instead, she pursed her lips and placed a little kiss. I never felt this before, not from an Isian, and I forgot to breathe when she pulled her lips away and until she spoke again.
“Thank you, Ly-lee. You’re the best friend”—she emphasized with a lick—“I know.” She tucked her arms shyly to her sides and smiled at me. She bobbed her head and crept back to her sleeping brother.
I stood there like a flabbergasted idiot.
She squeaked and turned around. “Oh! You wanted to say something.”
“Oh. Yeah. I did.”
She nodded for me to continue.
“Yeah…” An annoying itch tingled at the back of my neck. I tried to slap it away. “I don’t have any chocolate. I have some tea though, if you’d like.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I’m tired anyway. I think I’ll sleep now.” She gaped her mouth open in a toothy yawn, crawled to Basil, and wrapped herself over his curled form. “’Night, Ly-lee.”
“Good-night.”
I stayed there and watched them sleep for the longest while before I went back to bed.
I didn’t get much sleep. I had too much in my head. I still couldn’t comprehend what had just happened in the past hour of that rainy, gloomy night. Something barbed itself into my mind and refused to let go. No, not because I had new, unexpected roommates. Or that these roommates were wild and unpredictable animals. Or even the fact I didn’t know the first goddamn thing on how to care for them. No, none of those.
I was kept up all night because she called me a friend.
“Best friend.” It was something that no one has called me in years. At least, called me and actually meant it.
Maybe they can stay for a little bit, just a few days until they got their bearings. Maybe a few weeks. A month, at the very most.
I picked up the empty bottle from the hallway and shook it into my mouth, hoping to shake out some of the magic pharmaceutical dust. I sat on the edge of my bed, the beat of the rain soothing my nerves, and contemplated my new bedmates, these feral colleagues of mine.
My life just got a whole lot more interesting.