by Denny Taylor
“Are we playing psychiatrists now?” Cat asked. “Shall I become Hack Cat?”
“Perhaps you’ll remember if you tell us what happened to Max,” the Old Crone said, frowning at Cat. “How did you lose him?”
“The thunder frightened him,” X-it said.
The Old Crone could see the pain in his eyes. She waited.
X-it was quiet.
Cat jumped off the Old Crone’s lap and jumped back up on X-it’s lap and he started stroking her. It was becoming part of their routine.
“My dad used to say you can’t do anything during a hurricane except wait for it to be gone,” X-it said, looking into the Fire. “But Mr. Zuki came and said a tree had fallen on his house and Mrs. Zuki was hurt. My dad went to help and Max ran out. My dad came back with Mr. and Mrs. Zuki but Max was gone. Dad wouldn’t let me go after him.” X-it paused.
The Old Crone listened, knowing that it was a much younger boy who was telling the tale.
X-it stroked Cat, who was sharing thoughts with the Old Crone. “How old were you?” Cat asked.
“Maybe seven or eight?” X-it said.
“Young,” the Old Crone said. “Life was different then.”
“We knew the hurricane was coming and we’d got everything ready,” X-it said, as he glanced up at the Old Crone, “but we didn’t think it was going to be so bad – it was – it stretched from Texas City to Mobile.”
He continued in no more than a whisper. “Mrs. Zuki was crying, and Mr. Zuki and my mom were trying to take care of her. She had a cut on her head. A scratch. Nothing at all really. Then trees started falling down around our house.”
The Fire crackled frightening Cat who hissed and the Old Crone tutted at the Fire and Cat.
“One tree smashed the glass in the patio door and the water was flowing in.” X-it said, taking no notice of the interruption.
“You could hear the wind gust and then a sound almost like a locomotive coming and we’d know it was a tornado,” X-it said, his voice changing, and a young boy speaking. “We’d get down in a safe part of the house and everybody would huddle together.”
The Four Corners inched in.
“In a couple of minutes it would pass,” X-it said, once again eight. “You’d notice the rain was sideways and then it would fall straight. Then you’d hear it again, and other trees would come down and you’d hear them crashing all around the house.”
“My dad and mom had prepared for the storm,” X-it said, once again grown. He looked intently at the Old Crone as if it was important to him that she knew his dad and mom were good people. “We thought we’d be okay but there’d never been a storm like this one.”
“I’m sure they did everything they could,” the Old Crone said, fascinated by the way he’d switched back and forth, younger, then older. She wanted to ask what happened to his mom and dad, but decided to wait.
The room had grown so small as the Four Corners had drawn closer to listen to X-it that it was no larger than a closet. The Old Crone raised her arms and spread her fingers as if pushing outward with her hands and the Four Corners moved out, making adjustments to their angles.
“It was quiet for a while,” X-it said, in a moment of peacefulness, which was quickly replaced by a wild look in his eyes. “Then we heard the wind again, like a locomotive. We got down on the floor and held on to each other, but the noise got louder and louder and we knew that the tornado was very close. The noise was so loud it hurt my ears. It was hard to breathe.”
“You must have been very frightened,” the Old Crone said when X-it looked at her as if for reassurance, “but very brave.”
“Trees were falling so fast the noise was deafening and bits of the roof of our house were flying about,” X-it said, his arms around Cat who was trembling at his near death experience.
“Then like a freight train leaving the station the tornado was gone and everything went quiet, except for Mrs. Zuki who was still crying. Most of the roof was gone and the rain was pouring in. My dad said we had to leave and get to a safe place. Then Mrs. Zuki started screaming that we were going to die, and my mother told her everything would be okay, and we left the house to go to my Aunt Cecilia’s.
“When we got outside I heard Max barking and my dad told me that I had to stay with him, but Max sounded as if he had been hurt so I ran off to look for him.” He wanted the Old Crone to understand. “I could hear my father shouting my name but Max was hurt and I had to find him.”
The Old Crone nodded.
“Then the wind changed again and the rain lashed my face as another tornado touched down,” X-it looked terrified, as if he was reliving what had happened to him. “The noise was deafening. I threw myself on the ground by the old stone wall and the trees, more and more trees, started to fall. They were all falling in the same direction and one landed on the stone wall above me and I thought it was going to crush me.” His words bumped into each other as he spoke. “I couldn’t hear anything except the sound of the locomotive. It was difficult to breathe. I lay on the ground with my face in my baseball cap and covered my head with my hands.”
X-it began to cry.
“When it finally passed I was gasping for breath, the trunk of the tree was almost touching my back. I’m not sure how the old stone wall had stayed put but I’m thankful that it did. I crawled out and I tried to shout for my dad, but got no answer. Then I shouted for Max but he didn’t bark. I heard nothing, not even a whimper.”
“This is quite a story,” the Old Crone said. “I think we should stop for a while and you can tell us what happened next after you rest?”
“Sure,” X-it said, suddenly very sleepy. He looked down at Cat. “Did you hack?”
“Got caught up in the story,” Cat said. “Forgot!”
“Good,” X-it said laughing, “because I didn’t feel a thing!”
“I’m going to go and spend a little time with your friend,” the Old Crone said, trying not to be exasperated with Cat.
“Can I come?” X-it asked.
“After you sleep,” the Old Crone said, “and you tell us what happened when you got on the bus.”
“That’s where I met her,” X-it said, looking troubled.
“Time to hack,” Cat said. “Hopefully no intruders, otherwise it might come to combat!”
Ten
X-it woke, wondering again why none of his bodily functions worked.
“You’ll figure it out,” Death said, this time looking more like Lady Gaga than Kiss. “Your kidneys are working fine, just not at the moment, and you don’t have erectile dysfunction, you’ll have many boners, biggies, and hard-ons in your life time – that’s if you live.”
“You were in my head!” X-it protested.
“A quick mooch,” the voluptuous psychedelic apparition said in a low seductive voice.
“Not without asking!” X-it complained, thinking he would rather discuss his dysfunctional body parts with Cat.
“We discussed before you went to sleep!” Cat said, her feline form replacing the psychedelic apparition. “How will you ever detect an intruder if I don’t intrude?” She gave X-it a knowing wink.
“Why were you dressed up like that?” X-it asked, annoyed with her.
“Would you be more comfortable if I appeared like most humans imagine me?” Cat asked, momentarily the voluptuous lady again before an evil looking skull replaced her beautiful face. Her low cut extravagant dress becoming a ragged black cloak stained with blood that reached from shoulder to floor of the huge wraith-like manifestation of death that took her place. The bones of the wraith’s fingers were wrapped around a gigantic scythe with a blade blackened from millennia of use.
“Death will punish the wicked even if everyone in creation dies!” the apparition shouted raising his blade in a battle cry before disappearing.
“Is that the way you think of me?” the psychedelic apparition said, returning, her voluptuous voice as smooth as milk chocolate. “It’s a sick male image,” she said, the chocolat
e in her voice turning bitter. “I prefer to imagine myself female.”
“Not that I am either,” Death said, discarding her voluptuous femininity and becoming Cat. “I have no form except the one I give myself or you give to me.” Cat gave a lamenting yowl, “Sadly, I am nothing. Nothing at all.”
“But you exist?” X-it asked. “You must otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“That’s the spirit,” Cat said, cheering up.
“I like it when you’re Cat,” X-it said.
“Me too,” said Death, enjoying her feline form, and with her tongue she began to groom the fur on her stretched out left front paw.
“Tell us what happened when you got on the bus,” the Old Crone said, reappearing with her hands in her lap sitting on her chair.
“All the houses in my neighborhood were destroyed,” X-it said, staring into space. “No buildings were left standing in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, and even Illinois was devastated by the storm. All along the Gulf Coast towns, entire cities were gone. So many kids lost their parents.” He looked at the Old Crone with an intense look on his face.
“What we know now that we didn’t know then is that it was more than a Category 5 hurricane with winds of more than 185 miles per hour that devastated the region,” X-it said. “Violent storms were increasing because of the extreme weather changes taking place but this was also a man-made event.”
“Mooch time,” said Cat. “Watch my tail. One swish for ‘you’re being hacked,’ twice for ‘severe risk of termination,’ and three times for ‘you’re about to be terminated.’”
“What do I do then?” X-it asked, his voice climbing an octave.
“Nothing,” Cat said. “If that happens you’ll be like me, nothing at all.”
“Stop-it!” the Old Crone said staring at Cat in exasperation. “You play with X-it as if he was a ball of yarn for your Cat persona to unravel. Let’s get on with the story.” She looked across at X-it. “You are not going to be terminated. I won’t let them.”
X-it didn’t find that very reassuring.
“The hurricane was used as a cover-up for targeted attacks,” he said. “Most people still don’t know what happened and most of those who did have been killed.”
He paused, glancing down at Cat’s tail that was uncharacteristically still and when he started speaking again his voice had changed. He’d become the young boy again searching for his mom and dad and for Max.
“I kept shouting ‘Mom! Dad! Max! I’m over here!’” he said. “I even called for Mr. Zuki and Mrs. Zuki but I never found any of them and they didn’t find me.”
Cat drew in her claw and stroked X-it’s leg and he responded by stroking her back while keeping his eyes on her tail.
“I searched for them for three days. I managed to get through the narrow spaces between huge piles of debris, watched people digging in the rubble of buildings trying to find members of their families. The Mississippi River flooded the land for hundreds of miles, and the waters of the Gulf invaded the wetlands at such a fast pace people were taken by surprise and few survived.”
X-it had become the boy he was and he was reliving moment by moment what had happened to him.
“Swollen bodies were floating in the water in the steamy heat,” he said. “I waded through water that was filled with shit and other foul smelling stuff trying to get to some place where people were gathering in the hope of being rescued,” he said. “A body in the water had got caught in an eddy and was turning in circles and then it broke free and bumped into me.”
X-it stopped stroking Cat and gasped for air. He started crying. “I pushed it away but it came back rolling over.” He tried to catch his breath. “I can see the man’s face, the look of terror, his eyes were wide open, his stomach swollen –”
“Then what happened?” the Old Crone asked, moving X-it along.
“When I finally got to a place on high ground where people were gathering there were lots of soldiers waiting in full battle gear with submachine guns,” X-it said, his voice no longer that of the young boy he once was. “I thought they were there to help us. They were assisting people, giving them water and packs of food, but they were also searching for someone.
“I thought at first they were looking for someone important who had been lost, but they were asking for identification and treating the people they questioned as if they were looking for someone who had escaped from prison –
“– that’s what I thought at the time,” X-it said, his eyes dark and wary. “And that’s what they were doing, only not quite –”
“Go on,” the Old Crone said.
“I knew my dad was an astrophysicist working on gravitational waves – Einstein’s ripples in spacetime – but he had never talked about his work and I used to tell people he was a school teacher.” X-it smiled, “And so when they asked me my name and what my parents did I said my parents were both school teachers – which was a half-truth because my mom actually was a teacher. I named her school and my dad did some work there too.
“Another soldier checked a data base and as my dad sometimes taught a class at the school both their names were on the list and they let me get in line for the next bus,” X-it’s eyes softened. He looked at Cat’s tail that had not moved since he had begun his story.
“All clear,” Cat said. “I think we’re being overly cautious, but better safe than sorry.”
“Don’t say any names,” the Old Crone reminded him.
“I should have said, we were actually lined-up alongside the bus and there were soldiers monitoring the line,” X-it said. “But there was a lot going on and once I was in the line no one took any notice of me. I stood looking down making myself as insignificant I could, and a small hand came out from under the bus and untied the shoelace of my right sneaker. Then the hand disappeared.”
“Go on!” Cat said, fur standing on end but tail still.
“I bent down to tie my shoelace and saw a very small girl under the bus,” X-it looked worried. “I’ve never told anyone this story. Are you sure it is safe?”
He looked around and saw that the Four Corners had drawn close and the embers of the Fire were glowing in strange hues that he found strangely comforting.
“When you arrived the A-I was already in your head,” the Old Crone said. “You brought the hackers with you. It’s unlikely they would have been able to find you here on their own. Imagine this place as a ripple in the spacetime continuum. Imagine it as a bubble floating close to Earth. It’s highly unlikely your location is still showing up in their database or that they could monitor the conversation even if it did. But there’s no telling how far technology has taken them so we are super vigilant and quite capable of responding – even if the signal for trouble is transmitted via Cat’s tail!”
X-it smiled. It all made sense to him. Actually nothing made sense, but he had put his trust in the Old Crone and he was simpatico with Cat – in a nonsensical world it was as straightforward as that.
“I looked back at my shoe and pretended I was having trouble tying the lace,” X-it said. “The girl pushed her back-pack towards me. ‘Take it!’ she whispered looking fierce. I hesitated. ‘Please!’ she whispered, this time the desperation in her voice matched by the terror in her eyes.
“I finished tying the one lace and as I switched legs to retie the other lace I pulled the backpack out from under the bus hoping no one was looking,” X-it said, with more than a little pride in his voice at the action he had taken. “I couldn’t take the bag and leave the girl and so I grabbed her hand and pulled her out from under the bus. She didn’t try to stop me because that would have brought the soldiers.
“‘Is she the girl they’re looking for?’ the woman behind me asked in a low voice.
“‘No,’ I said, not looking back. ‘She’s my sister,’ I said, making it up. ‘We got separated and if I get out of the line and tell them she’s here we’ll lose our place in the line to get on the bus.’
“‘Stick to your story,’ the woman said. ‘If they find out and she’s the girl they’re looking for they’ll kill her and you too most likely. Don’t worry, I saw nothing and I’ll say nothing.’
“‘Here,’ the woman said. ‘I have some pralines,’ and she gave me two. ‘One each,’ she said. ‘You both look as if you need feeding.’”
“What was in the backpack?” Cat asked.
“I think,” X-it hesitated. “My friend should tell you.”
“I agree,” said the Old Crone, lifting herself carefully off her chair and walking slowly into the North Corner of the room. “I think it’s time.”
Eleven
X-it looked at Death who was now Bat wearing her red glittery strappy shoes. “Very exciting!” she said, spreading her huge black bat wings.
“Better get back to being Cat,” X-it said, without elaborating.
“You think so?” Bat asked. “I’m more majestic as a bat.”
“You’re much more empathetic when you’re Cat,” X-it said.
“I can’t believe you’re having this conversation,” the girl said smiling at X-it as she walked out of one of the Four Corners with the Old Crone.
X-it was on his feet, arms out almost falling over as he rushed towards her.
The girl put her hand up and smiling at him she shook her head, and instead of embracing her he took her hand and kissed it.
“Forgive me,” she said to X-it. “I’m so overwhelmed right now if you put your arms around me I would drown in my own tears.” She was almost as tall as him and she reached up and kissed him on the forehead. Then as their eyes met she said, “And as I’ve just been rescued from drowning I don’t intend to need rescuing again.” Word smiled at X-it. “Besides I want to know what’s been going on while I was in a comatose state.”
Cat walked over to greet the girl with her tail up and curled. She rubbed against her legs and said with a polite mew, “I am so relieved that you are able to join us.”
