Abigail

by Gloria Kitchens

  On more than one occasion, Charlie had told her not to go snooping into Deely’s things. As if her snooping amounted to that of a reckless child. She was merely getting a feel for the new company she’d been forced into. Letting the TV play in the background, she wandered over to the table sitting in the middle of the cramped room. Not like any table that she’d ever seen before. It was shaped like an oval with a shiny metallic silver lining going around the top of it. Then she noticed that the entire top of the table was black. Black like some sort of screen.

  “Ooo!” She’d seen something like this in a magazine once. Maybe the one she’d seen had been a shittier model because it had looked so clunky and box-like she couldn’t have imagined anyone wanting it. But Deely’s table was sleek, so new in a way that made her much more excited to try it. “Hmm...how do I turn this thing on?”

  Suddenly the table flashed, lighting up to a bright blue before adjusting to the darkness of Deely’s study. Unlike the messy files that laid around on his desk and under it, the folders on his desk display were organized neatly. At a glance, they even looked alphabetized. What kind of man can take the time to alphabetize his desktop but not even stack his files neatly?

  Abigail began skimming the file names until one caught her eye. “Dating Service Wor—.” She clicked on the folder causing a window to pop up, the full name of the folder now visible at the top of it. “Dating Service Workers.” And to Abby’s dismay, right below it, the box was asking her for a fingerprint in order to open it. Most likely Deely’s own fingerprint but she thought it couldn’t hurt to try. She pressed her finger against the table and the window flashed red. “Fuck.”

  She exited out of the window and decided to try more folders, any folder and each one gave her the same fingerprint prompt until she got to the folder labeled “Pictures.” It opened right up to hundreds of pictures; most seemingly irrelevant without any sort of context and then a few that looked like family photos. Abby stopped on one immediately recognizing the piercing blue eyes that stared back at her. His young prepubescent face holding none of the characteristics with which she’d grown familiar. But those eyes unmistakably belonged to Deely. His hair was cut short and a faint splash of blonde tipped the ends of his hair that fell right above his eyebrows. He looked so happy.

  She kept scrolling through the pictures looking for the brother he’d previously mentioned. But she didn’t see any other boy in the pictures besides Deely with spotty appearances of a woman with brunette hair she assumed to be his mom and then the sudden appearance of a toddler, which she was able to correctly distinguish as Meri. Then the pictures just stopped there with Deely still not looking quite like himself yet, and Meri still young as could be.

  Then she heard the bell at the entrance of the restaurant, knowing already that it was Deely coming in, making his way to the bar before ending up in his study for the rest of the night. She quickly exited out of the folder and wiped her sleeve over the tabletop, wishing to erase any evidence of her being there. As she turned to leave mere steps from the door, she realized that the table was off when she found it. Rushing back over to the table, she hoped that the same simple command could be used to shut down the table. Leaning in closely she whispered, “Umm...off?” And the table switched to black again finally granting her enough relief to leave.

  “What do you think you’re doin’?” Deely met her at the door, leaving her completely surprised at how much she underestimated the time it would take him to get to his study.

  “Oh… just watching TV.” She brushed past him thinking that’d stop him from questioning her anymore.

  “You normally just leave the TV on?”

  Shit! She’d forgotten about that entirely.

  “I must’ve not been paying attention.”

  “It’s fine. I’ll take care of it.”

  She turned to leave for a second time making it just a few steps away from Meri’s bedroom.

  “Hey, Abby,” she looked toward him again certain that she was caught. “Could you meet me in my study when I get back tomorrow night?”

  “Sure.” And they both went their separate ways leaving Abigail with more questions than she could put into words. The most burning of them being, Why would Deely lie about having a brother?

  Chapter 5

  The day couldn’t go by fast enough for Abby. She craved more information. Deely still hadn’t told her how she was meant to help him. She also wanted to find out more about his brother, if he even existed.

  A thought crossed her mind to ask Meri about it, but Meri would always lock herself up in the room right across from the bedroom. So, it was quite a surprise when Abby found her that evening sitting in front of the mirror in the bedroom, sipping what looked like chocolate milk out of a kiddie cup while she fiddled with her hair. Abby watched the girl sit at the mirror waiting to see what she’d do to her hair, even though she couldn’t see her own reflection.

  Abby thought that the girl just needed to feel like she was looking at herself to style her hair as precisely as she could. And sometimes it worked, but other times, Abby would notice a part that would curve a little too far to the left or a braid that looked markedly different from the one next to it. It was much more than what Abby knew how to do to her own hair and after seeing Meri do this several times, she finally got curious enough to ask for help.

  They sat in front of the mirror. Abby sat in front and Meri sat to the right of her, feeling around Abby’s hair. Though Abby had been able to keep her hair untangled for the most part, it was a bit dry and dull.

  “Your hair isn’t too bad. I can still feel your scalp at least,” Meri laughed. “So, the first thing I do is get my hair wet and then go on from there.” Meri handed Abigail a spray bottle and she sprayed until her hair started to curl up a bit. She could see the coils becoming more and more apparent and getting more weighed down by the water. Meri dipped her hand in a tub of white cream, coming up with nearly half of her hand covered in it.

  “This is just some braiding cream.” Meri rubbed part of it through one side of Abby’s hair and then through the other side, letting it sit for a second, parting her hair down the middle with her small, stubby fingers. Meri braided Abby’s hair down into two fat braids that sat cleanly on top of her head, giving Abigail a sleeker look than she was used to.

  Abby sort of marveled at herself in the mirror. Surprised by how well the braids accentuated her angular face in a pretty way. She just couldn’t imagine ever being able to do it on her own. Well, not as neatly at least.

  “Do you think you could teach me how to do this?”

  “Of course. But I do believe you have some business to attend to.”

  Before Abigail could even ask what “business” the girl was talking about, the usual sound of a bell came from the front of the restaurant, sounding that Deely was already back. She didn’t wait for him to enter his study. She met him right at the bar. He was sitting in the same seat he’d sat in when he brought Abby there for the first time. Abby sat in the seat right next to him, the same one that she’d sat in right before her inevitable fainting spell that same day. And like Deely, it was hard to break the habit of falling into the same seat.

  “Where’ve you been?” She’d never really thought to ask him where he went off to every day.

  “Places.”

  “Places? Care to be any more specific than that?”

  “Not really.” And he laughed under his breath.

  This only made her more frustrated. She’d been waiting for answers all day, only to be hit with more generalities than specifics. And with that, Deely moved the conversation on to something about the restaurant and at that point Abby stopped listening. She’d finally grown tired of wasting her air on this trivial conversation.

  “Why am I here?” she interrupted looking straight at Deely forcing him to pay full attention to her. He looked at her for the first time since s
itting down.

  “Because I need your help.”

  “With what? You have to give me something. You haven’t told me what we’re doing, how I’m supposed to help. Am I just supposed to sit on my ass all goddamn day?”

  Deely got up from his seat and let out an exaggerated sigh and taking one last, long swig of his beer, he ushered Abigail toward his study.

  “I like your hair.” Deely looked at her over the files that towered on top of his desk.

  Abby blushed a little, completely forgetting how different it looked under someone else’s caring hands.

  “Thanks… but you still never answered my questions. What am I doing here? What do you expect me to do for you?”

  “Well, I’m glad you asked.” A smirk crossed his face as he began sifting through the highest pile on his desk. Abby thought that it was strange why anyone would tolerate having this much clutter around when you could just digitize them in mere seconds. Maybe he preferred the way the paper felt under his fingers. He must’ve gotten so used to the grain that it was too much of a hassle to change his preference.

  He pulled out a light greenish folder, fourth from the top. It looked a bit thinner than all the other ones. Granted the other folders only amounted to the size of a clothing catalog. “I want you to scope out this house tomorrow. And then I’ll be able to send you somewhere safe. To live a normal life. Or at least as normal as possible.”

  “Send me where?”

  “I haven’t exactly figured that out yet. But can you do this for me?” He passed her the folder to look in. It only contained a few dating service advertisements of a youngish looking girl. Only a bit younger than Abigail. And there was an address handwritten at the bottom of it. “I already took the liberty of getting the address of the place, but I haven’t gotten around to seeing the place for myself. Tomorrow, I’d like you to just go there and discreetly take some pictures. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to drive you. I have other things to tend to. But you can call if you need anything.” He slid a folded, flat device in her direction.

  “I think that sounds easy enough. Is that really all you want me to do?”

  “Uh-huh. Wait, actually I might’ve just told a lie.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me,” she said offhandedly, which Deely seemed to ignore as he continued his own thoughts.

  “I wanted to document what your living situation was like.”

  “So you can throw me into that Dating Service Workers folder; why should I do that? I don’t even know what you do.”

  “I do what the police can’t or more like won’t do. I get Meri to scour the web for different postings of illegal prostitution services that pose as dating services. The line between them gets a bit too tricky for the police to make any kind of difference. I find that line to be pretty clear. I go to these places and get the victims out and then move them on to a secure location to live the rest of their lives. Before that, I usually like to have a record of what went on to prevent the same people from starting up again after I’ve done my job. Unfortunately, many of them never get arrested, but they do get watched for a time which helps.”

  Abigail thought for a moment. She thought about everything she’d experienced in her mother’s house. Everything she had to do to survive. And she immediately started feeling sick. Her thoughts centering around the small girl that haunted her dreams every night. Deely must have noticed her quickly starting to fade because he got up and walked around the table, gently resting his hand on her shoulder to steady her.

  “Are you okay?”

  It took so much of her not to fall over.

  “Yeah...,” she began focusing on the touch of Deely’s hand to keep her from falling on her face again. “Do you really have to know everything?”

  Deely looked a bit puzzled by the question probably wondering why someone wouldn’t want to tell him everything. It’d only work in their favor. “I guess no. You don’t necessarily have to tell me everything. You actually don’t have to tell me anything. The information does help other people though. But you don’t have to do this right now. You don’t look so well.”

  “No. I’m fine,” she said brushing his hand off her shoulder. She didn’t deserve to be helped. “I’ll tell you everything. I just wanna know one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why’d you lie about having a brother?”

  Deely’s face suddenly darkened as if he were remembering something that he hadn’t wanted to remember again in his lifetime.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then why don’t you have any pictures of him. I only saw you and Meri.”

  “I deleted them.”

  Abigail was surprised by how curt Deely was with his answers. A sharp difference from how he was just a few minutes ago.

  “Why?”

  “He’s dead to me.” Deely returned to his seat wanting to distance himself from the conversation. “I think we’re done for tonight. I’ll set you up to head out in the morning and then later you can tell me what you went through.”

  “Ok,” Abby got up to leave feeling like she had overstayed her welcome.

  “And Abby, please don’t go prying in my business again. Some things are none of your concern.”

  “Of course,” she agreed and closed the door on her way out.

  Chapter 6

  The next day, Deely wrote instructions for Abigail to get to the house she was meant to scope out. It surprised her that he would trust an outsider not to get lost in the huge expanse of city that rested under the dome. The best way to get there, he’d said, was through the transport tubes which seemed to be a straight shot from Ol’ Mike’s to Section One. And then he saw her off leaving her with a few verbal warnings.

  “Be discreet. Do not go inside. And do not make contact.”

  His directions seemed easy enough to follow. Abby surely wasn’t dying to meet the people who thought that it was alright to sell people off to complete strangers for a few hours. She’d already gotten her fill of that over the last four years.

  Following Deely’s map, Abigail started walking toward New Centennial Park, which she’d been meaning to ask Deely about going back. She hadn’t really been in a state to explore it then. But now, she felt just enough restlessness to climb the trees there and examine every creature that she could, taking in animals she couldn’t see anywhere else. However, for now, she had to keep walking past it, heading toward the only transit station within Downtown.

  A building that looked more like a ball of bunched up organized tubes, sat there, looking less significant against the heights of the surrounding skyscrapers. It was the only way in or out of each section, if one wasn’t lucky enough to own a glider. It happened to be much easier commute-wise to go through the transport tubes and it was free of charge to travel. The place looked nearly abandoned, save for the line of people waiting for their turn at Section One’s “GOING” tube.

  Everyone was dressed in clothes that rightly fit their occupations. A few sporting dull blue jumpsuit janitor attire some even carrying their cleaning supplies on their backs and then there was one that wore a police uniform. He carried his hat in his hand as if he’d been waiting all day to take it off. Abby made herself a place in line behind a short plump old lady in a nursing uniform, looking just as tired as everyone else was after what looked like a long hard day at work. Abby couldn’t help but wonder why everyone was headed to Section One right now.

  “Excuse me. Why’s everyone headed to Section One?” she asked the lady in standing in front of her.

  “Hmm?” the lady turned around and looked Abigail up and down, looking to find her occupation in her clothing and quickly drawing a conclusion about her after not finding it. “You must not be from around here, huh?”

  “Oh, no I’m not.” Abigail laughed nervously not knowing exactly how much to reveal about herself.


  “We’re all heading home. It’s the end of the workday,” she looked down at the small slip of paper in Abigail’s hands, “I could help you get to wherever you’re going when we get there if you’d like.”

  Abby thought the lady could be helpful but figured that Deely wouldn’t like her bringing another person along with her. The lady would just start asking more questions.

  “No, I’ll be fine. I have a pretty good sense of direction.” The lady smiled and entered the tube, instantly removing any proof of her being there. The tube sucked her away until she looked like another unrecognizable blob in the distance.

  The line hadn’t stopped growing since Abby got there. She hadn’t thought about how this part would go. She was too used to having at least a little control over her body when going from place to place. The man in the dark brown suit behind her sighed and moaned, annoyed at how long it was taking Abigail to just go in. After about the fifth huff of annoyance, she went headfirst into the big blue opening, getting into a crawling position and before she knew it, she was sucked in flying through the tubes. It felt so unnatural. Was it normal for humans to be carried through the air like this? Flying over buildings through the sky in a place meant to be ruled by winged creatures rather than creatures whose biology had meant to limit them to the ground.

  The path felt completely disorienting. Abby felt herself about to release the lunch she had earlier. She imagined that the man behind her would be much more upset with her than before. Then suddenly, the buildings started to lower as the tube went away from downtown. The buildings were then replaced by trees that were quite dull in appearance, probably needing more than just the rays of the sun through inches of laminated glass. Houses rested below the trees, all of varying shapes and heights but all appearing to have the same “good enough” quality in mind.