2019-10-15 - Egress

Despite the oft-loud redhead sitting across from Jaime in the booth near the window looking out over the all-but-empty gas station and parking lot, it's pleasantly quiet. A coffee machine brewing up a fresh pot provides a sort of whitenoise backdrop interrupted occasionally by the soft hush of a paperback page turning. Sparrow slouches in her seat across from Jaime, dressed tonight in a black tee shirt which reads 'blah' across the front in faded grey letters, half-obscured by her hands as she holds up her phone, fussing with something on the screen. Saying nothing, she frowns at the device, faintly frustrated.

Another truck stop, another meal along the way from here to there and back again. There's a cup of coffee in front of him, but he's staring out the window instead. There's the pool of a street lamp's light, but nothing illuminated beneath it but the corner of a dumpster, and no headlights coming or going on the road outside. Still, he just sort of looks that way for a while in silence. Eventually, he glances back over at Sparrow, not even questioning why she'd be there in the middle of one of his routes. "What's up?"

Sparrow only looks up after she's already shrugged, and even that is a brief glance, a flicker of fondness breaking past the frustration before her focus falls phone-ward again. "How long do grasshoppers live, you think?" seems out of nowhere, not really an answer to the question asked.

Outside, the street lamp flickers in time with the noise coming from the coffee maker. The hair on the back of Jaime's neck stands on end. Like he's being watched. Both the waitress and the girl across from him have their attention elsewhere. Neither seems to have noticed the brief shift in lighting.

"Depends on if they get eaten or not. Maybe until winter?" Jaime says, having no idea how long grasshoppers live. But he's willing to guess, and too lazy to get out his phone and Google it. He watches the flickering of the light, listening to how the coffee maker sounds seem to line up with it. It's an idle sort of observation, but not particularly alarming. Though, when he feels like someone is watching him, he turns, glancing back over his shoulder, toward the door. Then toward the little hall where the restrooms are, and finally back over toward the waitress before his attention shifts outside the window again.

"Yeah," Sparrow sighs, not precisely happy with that answer, but accepting it all the same. "That's how the story goes." She says something more, but maybe she's muttering. It all kinda blurs together incoherently. Maybe Jaime's too distracted looking for the source of that prickling to pay much mind to what she's rambling on about. The first pass around the empty truck stop turns up nothing. No one at the door or down the hall, though there seems no light in that corridor leading toward the bathrooms, the path back oddly gloomy. Outside, a shadowy shape seems to move through the unsteady illumination, the silhouette of a child holding a familiar toy glimpsed just before the streetlight goes dim, just as the coffee maker stops making noise, the pot fully brewed.

The light being out doesn't seem to register with him, not fully, or at least not as a point of interest. Not even the fact that Sparrow's voice has faded into the background seems to strike him as odd. But the shadowy shape, that catches his attention and he watches it for a moment. There's a slight furrow of his brow. But then the streetlight goes dim, and the shadow isn't there anymore. He stares at the spot where it was for several long moments, asking Sparrow "Did you see that?" even though he knows she was looking at her phone and probably didn't. "Looked like a kid."

"We're taught to be ants as kids," Sparrow answers without really answering. But she does look up, casting her curiosity about the dining room then outside at the dark parking lot. The vinyl seat creaks beneath her as she sits up a little straighter, no longer distracted by her phone. No longer holding her phone. Maybe she set it down beside her? "I don't see anything," she tells Jaime, but he does. Maybe because he's been staring out there longer, eyes adjusted to the gloom. Maybe because he knows where to look. It's difficult to make out any details, but there's definitely a short silhouette near the dumpster. Maybe it's an animal. But the movements seem awfully human. And confused. Like a child looking around worriedly for a familiar face. "I'm sure it's nothing," sounds like maybe Sparrow's not so sure. "You should stay here."

"Yeah, pretty sure there's a kid out there," Jaime says, entirely ignoring the comment about the ants. "I'll be right back," he says to her and then gets up from the table and heads toward the door, aiming to head out into the parking lot and out toward the dumpster. As far as he's concerned, there's some little kid lost out there wandering around near the dumpster, and he's going to go see what's going on. No thought is given to whether it might not be a kid. That doesn't even enter his mind.

Sparrow gets up to follow, but she bangs her leg against the table of the corner on her way to her feet, a half-squeaked, "Damnit," marking her delay. A plaintive, "Jaime!" follows as he opens the door, as a bell jangles overhead, as hurried footsteps follow after him. But she never makes it out the door.

Once he steps out into the lot, smelling of gasoline and tar and garbage, there isn't even a door behind him anymore. The neon glow from the open sign is gone. The muted illumination from the other side of the windows is gone. The whole building is gone along with the gas station itself despite the lingering scents. The only point of focus in the darkness is the dumpster and the indistinct figure beside it, now still and... seemingly staring at Jaime. There's that prickling at the neck again, more unsettling than it should be if that is just a kid.

The trouble with Kellys is their impressive lack of sense of self-preservation or fear when faced with the strange and unusual, as well sa their complete ability to write even the strangest things off. What that means in this moment, is that Jaime's whole focus seems to be on the idea that some little kid is lost and needs help. Because the one thing that does get to him, is seeing a little kid, like Jess, in trouble. So it's without hesitation, despite all the warning signs, that Jaime approaches that shadowy figure by the dumpster and says, "Hey.. my name's Jaime, and I noticed you were out here looking confused. Are you looking for someone? Do you need some help getting home?" He crouches down a few feet away, one knee bent to the pavement and his elbow resting on the other, trying to get down at kid level rather than looming.

The closer Jaime gets, the more focused he is on the kid, the less detail the rest of the world possesses, a blanket of flat blackness spread out around him. Even that dumpster disappears though the odor persists, growing more pungent the closer he gets. It's almost overwhelming, the sickening scent of gasoline and old food, of burnt coffee and rot. It's enough to make his stomach churn.

The kid grows a little more distinct as he draws closer, if only in shape, shadow given depth without color. She's covered in slick black as if just emerging from an oil spill, as if made of tar. Even with her eyes opened, there are no whites, no sclera to help define irises, just gleaming black staring out at Jaime. She clutches a stufed animal, just as sticky pitch as she is, holding it tight to her chest with both arms. Though she doesn't step forward toward that offered hand, she speaks. Sort of. Her mouth opens, and blackness oozes out along with an inhuman sound, soft and scared and bubbling. A question shaped in shadow, indistinct and pleading.

The smell is pretty overpowering, but somehow Jaime manages to hold onto whatever he'd eaten in the diner, if he'd eaten anything at all. Probably not. He couldn't even remember having drunk the coffee. His focus is on the kid. As she gains definition and he can see that she is completely covered like a duck that swam through the Exxon Valdez spill, he frowns deeply as his brain tries to process it. The blackness of her eyes is unsettling, and somewhere in his lizard-brain he knows how wrong that is, which pricks at his senses. But still, he crouches there watching her. The scared and bubbling noise has him saying, "Hey.. can you tell me what happened to you? Want to come with me? We can get you cleaned up.. see if we can find.. uh.. someone, who can help?" It's about then that he notices that the parking lot and diner are gone, and that distracts him momentarily, before he looks back to the girl. "When we figure out where somewhere went.."

The ground oozes and bubbles as the little girl steps forward, tendrils of tar stretching from sticky ground to tiny foot. She doesn't get very far before she stops, even that much effort seeming to take a lot out of her. How can such black eyes portray such sorrow, such helplessness? Poor thing seems so confused, all the more so when her next attempt to speak is the same as the first, wet and shapeless babbling inappropriate for a child her size, her age. Reaching out a sticky hand toward Jaime, acceptance of his offer, she tries again, tries to say something, but she has no better luck, the plea ending in a frustrated whimper. Closer now, the smell is almost crippling.

It's pretty heartbreaking to see that little figure, all sticky and covered in tar and needing help. It pulls at something in Jaime that he just can't deny. He gets up then and moves over toward her when he sees she can't go any further on her own, and despite the horrifying smell, he manages to hold it together to lean down and attempt to pick her up. "Okay," he says, "I've got you. We're going to get you cleaned up. Hang in there." His voice is quiet, reassuring in his attempt to keep her calm.

The blackness which clings to the little girl isn't the least bit pleasant, grittier than it looks as fingers run through it, like oil filled with coffee grinds. It's not difficult, though, to get hold of her, to lift her up and draw her close, her icky arms wrapping around Jaime's neck as she issues a mournful sound, half relief and half grief. As she sinks into the comfort of his embrace, melting into that reassurance, she dissolves, dissipates, filthy, nauseating pitch oozing out over his clothes until there is nothing but malodorous muck left.

Without that purpose to push him through it, without any escape from the stench, his stomach lurches again, an unsettling sensation rising up from his gut and pitching itself forward, outward, until he's stumbling and stuttering awake out by the trashcans outside his house, set out on the curb for early morning pick up. It all seems so much more real, the concrete beneath his feet, the moon overhead, the cool night air, the far less pungent smell of actual trash. Yet there's still some strange, sticky black clinging to his chest. It'll probably wash off. Right?