by DC Alexander
If we were going to get along, I would bend over backwards for what she could teach me. Maybe she could show me how to use the sword too. “Yes, you want some coffee? I got some greens too, and I can cook some bread, if you hungry. Come on in the house and let’s see how it’s coming along.
I introduced her to Carl inside, he was smitten. Her leather skirt just barely covered the cheeks of her ass and he wasn’t going to miss the view if he could help it, but politely and real nice. We didn’t get a lot of blondes with miniskirts in the hood. The coffee was ready, he was coming out when we went in, and I made some cornbread and broke out the cheese.
She finished the greens and ate most of the cornbread, and that girl knew she loved cheese and cornbread and bacon. I broke out the ranch dressing and she had a fit over it on the cornbread when I showed her how to use it. We were getting along really well; there was an odd moment or two when she’d reach for something and somebody else wanted it too, she naturally assumed she owned it, and being a guest, we let her carry on that way. It was a little pushy but some people are like that.
“Let us get to the contract first. The contract is between your kind and the earth, that you will support Gaia.” She kept on that with terms and conditions and I made sure I understood it. That was the gist of the contract. I was ready to sign and I told her so. I sat my coffee cup down.
She grabbed my arm and dragged me through a colander, I couldn’t see anything. It felt like I was pressed through a window screen that had no give to it. It didn’t hurt exactly, but it didn’t feel good. It lasted longer than a second, less than a thousand years, and that was as close as I could come. At some point I was in a cave, lying naked on a table on my back staring up at a rough stone ceiling. Someone sat on my chest ripping my left arm to shreds with a bunch of fish hooks.
I couldn’t breathe with her sitting on my chest. I couldn’t see but it felt like her bare ass was on me. There were a lot of things wrong. I swung with my right arm and hit her as hard as I could in the back. I came all around breaking my hand. If I had used a fist it would have broken fingers for sure. It felt like I slapped the side of a building. There was no give at all.
She turned her head so she could see my face “Isn’t that lovely!” She pressed hard and it hurt like hell, I couldn’t see what she was doing to my arm but it had to involve something that would require a lot of healing and stitches.
“This is going to turn out well. I am out of practice, but the memory remains. ”
“What the fuck are you doin to my arm! Quit that and let me up, what the hell, Ow! Fuck that hurts oh DAMN!” I was grabbing at her with my right arm; my left might be encased in concrete for all I could move it. My legs were stuck too; I screamed “Let me the fuck up from here right now!”
She said “Very well” and stepped down off the table. As soon as she moved I could too. I sat up and looked at my arm. It was covered in blue swirls like vines and odd cursive writing. She was tattooing my wrist, my arm and the back of my hand.
She pointed to a stone chair “Sit there.” She moved to another chair at right angles to the first and sat down. “I’m almost finished.”
I sat in the chair. I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t get to think about it much. When she told me, I just wanted to sit there. I put my arm on the table and looked at the designs. She pulled it to her and poked her thorn into my wrist.
A freaking thorn? She pulled it out and rubbed it on a piece of black leather, then poked it in me again and wiggled it. It left a little blue dot and blood welled up, she picked up a scrap of leather and rubbed briskly to get the blood off, and went back to stabbing with the thorn. It hurt like a bitch, I was stunned. I sat there watching the steady stabbing and rubbing, it got distant but I didn’t pass out; I was observing. It was a trance state more or less. Even though I felt it, it was like watching it happen to someone else and that made it bearable.
“Do you have your other form yet? No? That’s too bad. I could do that while you’re here and save a return trip.” She was dressed in leather, it was rough, and yeah, she probably didn’t have underwear on. I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Oh, you are new to this. They didn’t teach you anything , did they? You can shift your shape into different forms, one is primary, that one should be represented here. There are dangers in changing your shape. You will almost certainly die or get lost without guidance.”
She gave a really vicious gouge with that damn thorn at the point where my wrist bends to become hand, I said “Son of a BITCH that hurt, if you got to do this, you ever heard of Novocain? What are you doin, I aint asked for a damn tattoo, hey! Ouch!” I snatched my arm back but it didn’t move. I don’t think she noticed my trying to move it.
She glanced up at me “Hm. So feisty. I admire that sometimes. Other times it upsets me. I never know which it will be till it’s too late. For them.” She cackled, which was strange, she looked to be about maybe twenty five, definitely less than thirty. She didn’t have any fat on her, and her muscles were well defined and hard looking. Her hair hung down her back as far as I could see, so black it sucked the light into it. She wore a leather vest that gaped open and exposed most of one firm breast. With those clothes and the cave she should show a lot of dirt, but she was almost shiny clean, dirt wouldn’t stick to her.
She laughed, “You are a few millennia off. I’m older than that. Pain is good for you, it keeps you alive. It tells you when something is happening so you will pay attention.” The thorn she used was long and narrow with a small base and a long shaft, tapering to a point so sharp I couldn’t see it, just a blur where the thorn ended; It was as long as my hand and big around as my pinkie finger at the base. While I was looking at it she held it up so I could see it. When I realized she was holding it up for me, she rubbed it on the leather, turned my wrist, and gouged it in slowly. She started twisting it after the point popped through the skin, and then she moved the base of the thorn around in large circles. It hurt a lot.
“Why are you putting a tattoo on me? Where in the hell is this place, if you a tattoo artist, why don’t you have a tattoo gun? Is that thing sterile? It can’t be sterile, it a damn thorn off a bush, oh shit that hurt!” She had run the thorn under the skin sideways.
“This is the contract. Why are you suffering from all the pain you complain so much about?”
I couldn’t think of anything smartass to say, so I said “Because it hurts when you stick a damn thorn in me and wiggle it around.”
“Yes, of course it does. Why do you suffer from it?” She was truly curious, peering at me intently. Maybe she was a little challenged…I thought about it, she seemed to be reading my mind. I’d better watch what I thought.
“When it hurts it hurts.”
“Yes, good, you are almost there. Go on.”
“They aint no ‘on’ to go with, that it, that shit hurts. I can take some aspirin or something when I get home and fix it a little but damn that hurts! It’s hurtin right now. If you got something that would fix it up, I surely would appreciate it ever so much.”
“Why certainly, follow me in this closely now.” she grabbed me inside my head and took me with her on a tour of my brain, I recognized some of it from working with Dirt. It didn’t make any sense to me either.
“You can only sense certain kinds of sensations. The signal increases as more area is involved or more of the sensation is applied, heat for instance. My hand caught fire and burned with a smoky yellow flame, it hurt pretty bad, and crackled, the worse thing was it smelled like frying ham. I couldn’t move it. I couldn’t move anything. My mouth was not working at all.
“The signals are sorted here, and this little area decides where it goes. Past a certain point the nerves are ruined” My hand felt cold, then lost all sensation even though I could see it burning and some bones were showing up now “And you get a lack of sensation. At any time you can route the incoming signals to this area” what she was showing me made perfect sense “and they basicall
y dead end there. That prevents you from feeling sensation. With practice you can block what you want, but be careful about the amount of damage you take while doing it.”
She reached over and caught me by the wrist of the hand that was on fire, pursed her lips, and blew the fire out, ‘poof’ like blowing out a candle. Melted flesh burned my wrist, I damped the pain and it worked. I couldn’t feel the hand at all. It was my right hand, the one without the tattoos, I guess she didn’t want to ruin her work.
“Exactly! You are so clever. Now, run along, I have things to do.”
“Oh my god, can you fix my hand? Holy shit, it cauterized the arteries or I’d bleed to death. You did that? What, oh shit.” I was speechless.
She said “How sweet, but I am not your god, not as you intend it. I will not heal it, you need the practice. Now go.” She waved her hand toward me and I went back through the screen and landed on my ass in my hedge bushes in the back yard with a crispy burned hand. I was sick at the stomach with the damage, on the verge of passing out. Black spots swam in my vision and I was sick at the stomach and damn near hysterical. I needed to get an ambulance, no, Carl could take me to the hospital. They could save part of it maybe. I pushed myself up, except I realized as I pushed me up I was using both hands and the burned one shouldn’t touch the ground but it was too late.
My hands both sank into the ground with no resistance at all. It felt like I reached into a bathtub full of cool water. I felt Dirt’s presence, I called “Help, my hand, oh god my hand is all burned up! ”
Dirt replied that it was there, kind of like “Present.” No big deal.
“MY DAMN HAND IS A CRISPY CRITTER. I GOT CRACKLINS FOR FINGERS.” I struggled to get up, get out of the hedge, get help.
“Repair it”
“Ok, I’ll fix it, how do I fix it?” I was still panicked, but there was something, I just couldn’t focus.
I Looked into my arm and followed it down to the hand. I could see the damage, it was sickening. I pushed it back toward the way it should be. It took energy, Dirt was a huge reservoir of energy, I drew from Dirt and pushed it to my hand. Everything there knew what it should be and it wanted to be right, all it took was energy and direction. I worried about germs, my hand was raw and bloody in the dirt. I could see/sense/feel the cells in my hand returning back to health, I could surely see any bacteria intruding.
I reformed the hand, and then looked at the tattoo on the other hand. I could see what had changed, but it was natural and the way it should be. I couldn’t remove the tattoo unless I took the skin and a lot of muscle off that arm. I could stop the outraged reactions in that arm to the pigment and the raw holes poked in it, so I did; but the tattoo was permanent.
I pulled my hands out of the dirt and looked them both over. The burned hand was good as new, actually better, I didn’t have any scars and the wrinkles and lines were smaller. The tattoo looked like it had been there for years, it wasn’t faded but it looked natural and comfortable. I wouldn’t have paid to get something that looked like that, but it was cool looking, lots of swirls and interlocking lines, a lot of cursive looking writing in some unknown alphabet.
I went inside, and Carl was still sitting at the table. Artemis was gone. Carl was looking at the chair across the table where I had been setting. I sat down and picked up my coffee.
Carl said “Jesus Christ, how’d you do that?”
I said “I have no idea what happened. I been off getting a tattoo with a thorn and my hand burned up and throwed in a hedge bush. I’m gone drink this coffee before it cools off.” I took a sip and set the cup back down. “I recommend you be careful what you wish for. Things are strange and getting stranger every time I turn around.”
I had a lot of new information I needed to sink in, I’d just sit and drink and think and see what happened next.
Chapter Fourteen
I woke up thinking about the ditch. The shiny, glittering hot thing. I had ignored it at the time, but it had pulled on me. It had slipped my mind, but I really wanted to find out what it was. I wonder if it was gold. I could use some gold or silver. I wondered if Dirt would help me find treasure, it hadn’t occurred to me before, but it might not mind at all. I could sense gold and dig it up, or old buried money, coins, I was exciting myself at all the ideas.
First thing though, I wanted to go find what that was in the ditch if it was still there. I rushed through coffee and waited for Carl to show up. I needed to get my driver’s license so I wouldn’t have to wait on anybody to run me around. It gave me time for a second cup, then a third, and some cereal. I’d discovered that I hated the overwhelming taste of white sugar. It was too strong and was missing something. Carl got me some raw sugar when I mentioned it, and it was still too strong but it was better than the processed sugar so I used that when I wanted sugar. Mostly I did without it.
Carl finally showed up and I got him to run me over to the ditch. He was puzzled but he didn’t ask a thing when I told him where I wanted to go. I appreciate that in a man, or a woman or anybody. It’s a rare thing to find.
We got to the ditch and he wanted to do this and that and its awfully nasty and all that sort of shit, I ignored it and slid down in the ditch and kicked off my flip flops. He had a fit when I throwed them up on the bank, I’d me my feet cut up and get tetanus and syphilis and “You might get pregnant down there in that shit, that some nasty shit and they aint no tellin who been doin nasty shit in there!”
I paid him no mind, feeling along with my mind for that shiny thing. There were interesting things in there but I passed them by. They were common things; a big silver fork like I cut up to make the shell for Earl, two delicate china cups, hardly anything wrong with them, a little automatic pistol somebody probably ditched when they shot somebody but it was rusted. Then I saw the shiny and went right to it.
It was down in the muck a couple feet, I was down on my knees before I thought about it and asked Dirt “Can you raise that thing up here for me?” nicely.
A little fountain of dirt like a volcano came rising up out of the ditch with the coin on the top of it. Posed like somebody had taken a lot of trouble to clean it off so I could see it good, it was the size of a silver dollar. I thought for a second that’s what it was, but the writing on it was wrong and it had a hole near one edge. I reached out and picked it up, and it almost spoke to me, there was a strong feeling of connection and I could sense some sort of intelligence.
I came trudging out of the ditch and walked up to where Carl was standing there fretting, and holding my flip flops. My feet were as clean as they could be. I had nothing on my pants legs – I quit wearing the mu mus when I lost the weight, they just didn’t feel right any more. I held out the disc so he could see, but I wasn’t about to let him take it. I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone even touching it. He looked at it and said “Hey, that’s as nice a wad a mud as I ever seen, good job. That was sure worth coming out here risking certain death in that damn ditch for. You need yo head examined girl.”
I looked at what I had in my hand, and saw the disc. At the same time I could see the covering of dirt. It wasn’t dirty at all, I could feel it in my hand and it was warm and smooth; but when I looked at it without really Looking, all I could see was the disguise. If I could disguise myself, that would be pretty damn nice. I could go to the bank and steal money and they’d never know who did it. I wouldn’t do that but it was something to think about. If something was after me and I could look like something else, a fence maybe, then it would go on by me and I could get away. Well, I didn’t get away much, but again, it was something to think about.
I said “Carl, this is a nice thing made to look like it all dirty and shit. It called to me the other day when I was lookin for Eddy, I come back cause I finally got the time to do it and here it is.
Carl said “Oh, hey, I didn’t realize it was that nice thing, I thought it was just a lump of mud and shit, I couldn’t see through the disguise. Jesus. We through here, or is they some other t
reasures, maybe we could go to the damn sewer and see if we can get something there.”
Wow, he was on a roll. “No, this will do it, I’m ready when you’re ready, let’s load up and go.”
He handed me a white napkin from the burger joint, “Here, why don’t you wrap that treasure up so we don’t lose no goodies on the upholstery.”
I said “Sure, let me show you somethin. Hand me that.” I wrapped up the disc. “This napkin’s gone be pretty muddy aint it, after I did this, huh?” I rubbed the napkin vigorously on the disc, crushing it down on it.
“Don’t get your drawers in a wad, Rosalee. I didn’t mean to make you mad. You diggin in the ditch for nasty stuff and it just don’t seem right.”
“Don’t you worry about my drawers, you tell me about this napkin. Is what I said right or wrong?”
“Yeah, the napkin’s gonna be muddy.” Bet he wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
I handed him the clean, wrinkled, pristine napkin. The only dirt on it came off my hands, and that wasn’t enough to see. “What you think now Mr. Smart Ass. How dirty is this lump of mud in my hands, it aint leakin nothin. It’s as dry as it could be? What you think about that?”
He looked at the napkin and said “You’re right, Rosalee, and I’m wrong, all it take is money, and I put it on the list.” I don’t remember what that came from, but it’s a saying about how to end an argument with a woman that takes a poke at women in general.
I come just as close to busting him upside the head, he just didn’t know how close it was. It teetered in the balance, then I busted out laughing, “You a smart ass, you know that? The only thing that saved yo ass is you a funny smart ass. If I didn’t get tickled at you I’d kill you dead.”
He laughed with me. I don’t think he knew I was kinda serious. I worry me sometimes. He almost put me in a bad mood, and that aint a good thing. I think I headed it off and stopped it. That’s a good thing.
