Dreamwalker (poem)

You can visit my dreams,

accelerated stories of madness.

I won't linger for too long

prophesies hold no weight to me.

I've chased down illusions before,

down into the snake's den,

there so long, I became the snake

consuming myself to dig a little deeper.

All I wanted was guidance,

some way to calm the whispers,

but interpretation only emboldened them,

screaming prophesies that would never be.

So you're welcome to visit,

sit, have a cup of tea with me.

When I stir from this world,

I'll forget you along with it.

-Zero

The Fire - "Kindred Spirits" Part 7

 New? Here's Part 1!

Part 6: A Sequence of Unfortunate Attacks

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“What do we do?” Audrey questioned, still clinging onto her cactus. 

“Maybe the balcony door would be better?” I suggested, running back into the apartment to find that the fire had made its way inside. It was still moving in, but it was coming from Holly’s room. I peeked my head into the living room and saw that the balcony door was likewise engulfed in flames. 

“No good,” I reported back to the girls, who were by the doors talking with a number of other residents. 

“The fire department are on their way,” Holly informed them before her eyes drifted over to me. “If you’ll excuse me.” She pushed past them and met me in the hallway outside of her apartment. “We have to get them out of here. The fire is going to spread,” she told me in a distressed tone. 

“Your apartment’s mostly on fire now,” I informed her with a sigh. I shook my head. “Other than dropping down from the second story, I don’t have many ideas.”

“That’s it,” she exclaimed quietly as she looked up at me with bright determined eyes. “Come on, if we can drop down, we might be able to break the doors down from outside. It’ll depressurize the room without someone being in it.” 

“That’s risky,” I said in mild protest. 

“What other option do we have? Sit and wait for someone to save us? Come on, we have to move.” 

We ran up the stairs to a still-open door in the apartment that would be across from Holly’s. We entered. It was a family’s home. Kids toys littered the ground, and the two of us tripped over them a couple times. We headed to the balcony. 

“Thank god these balconies are mostly cement,” Holly said as we made our way outside. We could see the light of the fire flashing below us, and onlookers in the parking lot behind the building watching in curious horror. We peered over. It wasn’t a short drop, but it seemed manageable. 

A Sequence of Unfortunate Attacks - "Kindred Spirits" Part 6

 New? Here's Part 1!

Part 5: Coffee with the Ex

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We set a date and two days later, the four of us met up at the diner down the street. It had a retro style going on, just like every diner seemed to need to. It was a popular place, but we were going a little later in the night so  we missed most of the crowd. Mahli was the first one to get there, even though we both agreed to show up together, he didn’t want to have even me waiting. 

“Hey, I figured you’d be here,” I commented with a chuckle before looking at him more closely. “You’re all dressed up. I’d recognize your nice shoes anywhere, and is that a blazer you’re wearing?” I took a closer look. “And a little bit of eyeliner. Man, you must really want to make a good impression on her.” 

He immediately blushed and turned away from me. “I just… I just thought that it was appropriate to make myself as presentable as possible. I don’t want to make them feel like they’re not worth the effort,” he said in an attempt to defend himself from someone who wasn’t attacking him.

“Looks like you’re not the only one…” I muttered as I looked past him and saw the two girls walking towards us.
 
Both Holly and Evette were more properly dressed up. They had their makeup done just the way they like it, and coordinated their outfits. Evette was wearing a simple red dress with a black leather jacket, and Holly was wearing ripped black jeans with a slightly oversized grey sweater on top. I was the only one who came as if it was no more than a usual trip to the coffee shop.
 
“Wow,” I said as they drew near, approaching them with a smile on my face. “The two of you look nice!”
 
“We know,” Evette replied with a grin.
 
“Well you’re not the only ones,” I told her. “Not me, of course, but Mahli thought the same as you. Look at him.”
 
“No, it’s really nothing, I just-” he muttered as I stepped back and pushed him in front of me. He looked up at Evette shyly and smiled. “Hi.”
 
“You weren’t kidding,” Holly said as she examined Mahli. “You really are the only slob here, Arthur.” This seemed to take some of the pressure of off Mahli, who laughed along with the other two at my expense.
 
We went in and had a pretty wonderful time at dinner. Mahli and Evette were hitting it off decent enough. It seemed like she adjusted the way she acted to accommodate the way he is more. I thought that was sweet. He was right about her though. Exuberant was definitely an accurate description. Sometimes I was worried I should feel embarrassed because she was so unabashedly herself. But it was refreshing.
 
At the end of diner, Mahli and I offered to walk them back to their car, just for the sake of conversation. Mahli walked up in front with Evette, and I watched from behind with Holly. All we could hear of their conversation was mumbles and the occasional outburst of laughter or otherwise.
 
“So this went well,” Holly said with a grin on her face.
 
“I think so too,” I responded, smiling and looking up at the clouded night sky above us. I let out a deep sigh and looked over at her. “Look, I’m sorry about the other day. I know that I was being a little unreasonable. This matters even if I’m with someone.”
 
“Thank you,” she said with a knowing tone, “but it’s okay. I think we have about as many answers as we’ll be able to get. And that’s something we can’t control.”
 
“So have we landed on the census that we’re siblings?” I questioned.
 
She took a moment and then shrugged. “I guess so. Not like it’d hurt to assume that much. From what we know, it’s the most likely scenario.” She gently punches me in the arm. “Besides, I think I’d like having a brother. If you behave yourself, at least.”
 
“I’ll try not to be too much trouble,” I told her before looking ahead of us and seeing that the pair had disappeared. “Um, where did they go?”
 
Holly looked around. “Maybe they ran ahead to get some more alone time?” she suggested. 

I searched the area for any sign of them but the city streets weren’t even crowded enough to conceal them. I looked behind us, just in case. A man was sprinting towards us, his face concealed by darkness and a hood. Instinctively, I grabbed Holly by the arm and pulled her out of the way.
 
“What?” she yelped as she spun towards me. The man lunged at the spot where she had been and fell to the ground, his knife falling out of his hands and sliding into the street.
 
We stood there and stared at him for a moment before he scrambled to his feet. We didn’t say anything, but our eyes met with his before he ran off, leaving his knife behind on the city street. It was an older man, of at least fifty, with a crazed look in his eyes. I couldn’t help but feel like none of this was an accident.
 
“Are you okay?” I asked Holly after he was fully out of sight.
 
“What just happened? Who was that man?” she asked in response, clearly shaking from the event.
 
“I don’t know…” I muttered, staring down the street where he had disappeared to. “But I think he was waiting for us.”
 
“What?” she exclaimed. “What makes you think that?”
 
“The look in his eyes. There was something in them that made me uneasy…” I explained as I headed towards the knife that he had dropped. “Besides, the chances of randomly being attacked on the side of the road by a stranger like that are ridiculously low…”
 
“We should call the police,” she reminded me.
 
“Good idea,” I said as I stared at the knife. It was a surprisingly long knife. It wasn’t from a kitchen and wasn’t a pocket knife. It wasn’t something just anyone would carry on them for no reason.
 
“What’s keeping you guys?” Evette asked as she crossed the street from the parking lot with Mahli trailing behind her.
 
“We were attacked,” I answered. “Holly’s calling the police right now.”
 
“Oh my god, are you okay?” Mahli questioned with a louder tone than I’ve ever heard from him.
 
“We’re fine. I happened to notice him at the last moment. He tripped and dropped his knife before running off.” I took a deep breath. “At the very most, we’re a little shaken up. Where did you two get to? All of a sudden you weren’t in front of us anymore.”
 
“Sorry…” Mahli muttered. “Evette challenged me to a race back to the car.”
 
“He couldn’t resist the challenge,” Evette said with a proud and somewhat silly voice. “Even though he didn’t know what the car looked like.”
 
“Wishing I didn’t agree to it now…” he muttered under his breath.
 
“It’s okay,” I assured him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “If you were here, it wouldn’t have gone much differently. No one got hurt and he ran off. It’s okay.”
 
The four of us hung out until the police came by. It was only a couple of minutes even though it wasn’t an emergency. Downtown always had at least one patrol unit around just in case. They collected all of our statements. I pointed them towards the knife, told them my suspicions about it not being a random attack, and they took it in as evidence, but were very clear in saying, “these sorts of things happen from time to time. He was likely having an episode and lashing out at the first person around.” Then they added. “We’ll do our due diligence and check what little prints we can pull from the knife against our records.”
 
Because of what happened, Holly insisted that she drive the two of us home. We were mostly silent the whole time, with Holly and I sitting up front and Evette and Mahli sitting in the back together. Mahli was the first to get out, followed by Evette. Once we had driven a bit from Evette’s apartment building, Holly pulled over.
 
“What are you pulling over for?” I questioned in a concerned tone. “Are you feeling alright?”
 
“I just realized where I saw that man’s face before…” she muttered before pulling out her phone. She was on it for a moment or two before holding up a picture of a man in his 30’s. “Do you recognize him?”
 
“That’s… my biological father…” I answered in surprise, realizing that I had barely even looked at his picture this whole time. “Those eyes…”
 
The eyes weren’t as unique as my mother’s, as ours, but they were unique enough to be identified. If not for the eyes, everything else looked like him. If not more worn and crazed.
 
“So let’s say that was him,” I posited with some doubt in my tone. I didn’t want to fall into the trap of attributing everything to our personal story, “what does that mean for us?”
 
“It means he’s still alive…” Holly muttered. “And that he does not want us alive.”
 
“Maybe it’s because we’ve been looking into him?” I suggested.
 
She shook her head. “I don’t think he would care if someone was investigating him if he had successfully fallen off the face of the earth…”
 
I knew what she was about to suggest, what she was afraid to think. That he resurfaced because he found out she was still alive and intended on finishing the job. But I wanted to believe that there was something better to it, something not as sad, though I had no other options.
 
“I guess that could be true.”

“Only one way to find out…” she muttered before looking over at me with a determined look in her eyes. “We’re going to draw him out again. If it was just a random attack, then it won’t be an issue. But if we’re ready for him, we can catch him and find the answers that we were trying to get this whole time.”
 
I was not in the mood to go chasing after a guy who may or may not exist anymore. I just wanted to go home and try to forget that it had ever happened. But as I looked into Holly’s eyes - my eyes - I saw something that I hadn’t seen in my own in so long. It was what had always separated her from me, the thing that made her gaze seem so uncanny and uncomfortable. My eyes were broken and defeated, trying desperately to cling to something to avoid falling apart entirely. She wasn’t a fragmented mess. She was put together. A force to be reckoned with.
 
“This is a crazy idea,” I reminded her before letting out a defeated sigh. I knew that there was only one good answer here, one answer that could help me grow as a person. “But I guess we have to do it.”
 
“That’s the spirit!” she exclaimed with an odd amount of excitement. “I’ll bring you home and then we can plan another time to meet to talk.”
 
“Why not do it over the phone?” I questioned. “Or messenger pigeon?”
 
“How would he have known that we were downtown tonight? How would he have known where we were?” she reminded me. “I think he might have found a way to listen in on our conversations and read our text messages.”
 
“That, or it was a coincidence,” I suggested, but immediately felt foolish.
 
“I don’t think he was just wandering the streets with a knife like that hoping that he’d bump into us,” she told me as she ignited the engine.
 
“Yeah, you’re probably right about that.” I admitted defeat, but I couldn’t help but to wonder how he would have been able to do that. It wasn’t like he was a member of a spy agency or anything, or even someone who studied computer engineering. He was a physicist, not a hacker.
 
I waved goodbye to Holly as I watched her drive away from my apartment building. Once she was gone, I ran up to the front door, slipped in, and headed to my apartment. Despite the time, there was a surprising amount of noise in the hall, probably because it was the weekend and people liked to socialize. Holly and I planned our next meeting to be at her apartment, a place I had yet to see that was a bit further out than my own from downtown. Explained why she drove everywhere.


I was hanging at Solenne’s before our planned meeting. Things were still kind of weird between us, but they were getting better. “Do you want another drink?” she offered me as she got up and headed for the kitchen.
 
“No, I think I’m good, thanks,” I responded. “Besides, I gotta head out soon to meet with Holly.”
 
“Oh yeah, that’s a thing now, isn’t it?” she replied in a deadpan tone as she disappeared behind the kitchen doorway. “Why are you two meeting anyways?”
 
I didn’t want to tell her the truth. It felt too unbelievable that she would assume I was lying and that was the last thing I wanted. “We’re going to try to figure out a way to find our father,” I explained.
 
“Why can’t you do that over text or something?” she questioned. She didn’t want me to leave.
 
“Holly said she found something that I should see instead of her just telling me about it,” I lied. “Besides, it’s probably a good idea for the two of us to get to know each other in person, since we are siblings and all.”
 
“I better not find out she’s not actually your sister and you’ve been lying to me this whole time,” she grumbled as she sat back down in her seat with a gin and lemonade in hand. 
“Though that would explain why you haven’t introduced me to her yet.”
 
“I haven’t even brought her to my adoptive parents yet,” I said in my defense. “We’re going to try to sort out this biological family stuff out first before branching out.”
 
“That’s weird,” she said in a disapproving tone.
 
“Right, well…” I slapped my knees and got to my feet. “I should probably get going. The bus ride is decently long from here and all.”
 
“Have fun with your sister,” she muttered with a fake smile on her face.
 
“I will, thanks,” I said as sincerely as I could muster in the situation.
 
Once out of the apartment, I picked up my pace and hurried out of the building. I could feel my face turning red, my heart-rate increasing. Who was she to question my every move? I would never cheat on her, and she should have known that by then. I was willing to give her everything. Why couldn’t she see that?
 
Holly’s apartment was in a poorer part of town, similar to my own neighbourbood. It was filled with old brick four-story apartment complexes surrounded by either street or parking lot. I could count the amount of trees on one hand, and they were all on a steep hill where no cars could park. Around her own building, there were a number of stumps, which made me wonder if something had happened to get them all cut down.
 
I could hear some children playing soccer in one of the parking lots. Down the road was another few kids on little bikes with brightly colored helmets on their heads. The fresh spring air was welcoming everyone out into the world again after the long winter we had. We got a night of snow a few nights prior, but it was warm enough during the day to melt it all away and pretend that summer was closer than it really was.
 
I slid into the door of Holly’s apartment building, only to find the second door left ajar with a sign on it reading, “do not close”. Unsure about entering without permission, I tried to buzz her apartment, but it seemed like the buzzer was broken. My first apartment was like this, a little worn but good enough I guessed. I slipped in and headed down the stairs to apartment 2.
 
I knocked and waited. The door opened, and I was expecting to find myself looking into my own eyes but instead some other young woman was in her place.
 
“Oh, sorry,” I said instinctively. “I must have gotten the address wrong.”
 
“You didn’t!” Holly called out from deep inside the apartment. She ran around the corner of the hallway. “That’s my roommate, Audrey!”
 
Audrey was a bit taller than Holly and had auburn hair in a pixie cut. Her eyes were a mix of brown and blue, like the horizon split by a coast on one side and ocean on the other.
 
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said with a polite smile, extending out a hand.
 
“You too,” she replied in a deadpan tone before turning around and walking back into her apartment. Holly slipped by her and ushered me in.
 
“Sorry if she was a bit cold,” she apologized quietly as I took off my shoes. “She is not a fan of strangers. Especially not strange men.”
 
“That’s fair, I think,” I answered with a relaxed grin. “It’s really no problem. Just a little confusing.”
 
“So welcome to Casa a Holly and Audrey,” she said to me as she motioned to the nearby living room like a real-estate agent.
 
“The name could use some work,” I joked, chuckling.
 
Unlike Solenne’s apartment, Holly and Audrey’s was filled with things. A good portion of space by the balcony door, which was dug into the ground since their apartment was somewhat underground, was filled with various plants of all sorts, many of them tropical.
 
It was clear by the living room alone that they decorated with what they could find and made the best with what they had. Their living room lamp looked like an antique. A lot of their furniture had at least some worn wood on it, making the whole room feel kind of warm and cozy. It was a little messy, but clean enough.
 
“I thought about cleaning up before you got here,” she explained to me. “But then I figured I could spend that time relaxing instead.”
 
“Living a stressful life?” I joked.
 
She shrugged her shoulders. “I mean, we were attacked on the street the other day. That was stressful.”
 
“You make a good point there. So did you want to plan here?” I asked.
 
She shook her head. “I have stuff set up in my bedroom, but first you have to promise not to judge.”
 
“Judge what?”
 
“How messy it is. The planning got a little out of hand,” she answered.
 
I laughed. “You have no idea how much of a mess my room is. I won’t judge you.”
 
She led me to her room, and surely enough it was a mess greater than I had expected. 
Crumpled and flattened papers lay all over the floor, and her blankets were laying all around the base of the bed, which had been overtaken by a number of papers and pictures. I immediately recognized the two pictures. One of them was of my mother, and the other of my father, well, my biological parents.
 
“Oh wow, you weren’t kidding,” I muttered as I tried to enter the room without stepping on too many papers, worried I might ruin something carefully placed. “I didn’t expect the planning to look so intense or chaotic.”
 
“Yeah, well, we have to be ready for someone to come and try to murder us, so I wanted to try to make sure we were prepared for everything.” 

“I’m pretty sure this is a fire hazard,” I commented as I made my way over to the bed and looked at her oddly formed plan scattered all over it. “Okay, so you’re going to have to explain this to me.”
 
“I got really into the details here, but basically what we’re going to do is try to recreate the other day. Obviously not exactly, but we’ll go out later at night to a place downtown with Mahli and Evette. But we’ll be the ones in front, and they’ll hang back and look out for him. We’ll walk as normal, and when he shows up, they’ll let us know, and we’ll try to catch him.”
 
“What if this time he brings something more than a knife?” I questioned.
 
She let out a sigh. “I couldn’t figure out a single scenario where he has a gun and a clear shot that doesn’t end with the shot going off.”
 
“It’s like Chekhov's gun,” I joked, only to get a sharp glance from her. “Maybe we should pretend like he has a gun and try not to get him to attack us again. It’s starting to sound like an awful plan.”
 
She let out a sigh. “I know… I just want to know the truth, why he wants me dead. Why he left me there…”
 
I put a hand on her shoulder. Any deviation from the plan could mean utter disaster, but I couldn’t think of another plan. I couldn’t think of a way to make her feel better any short of confronting him and finding the truth.
 
“How about we pick up all these extra papers and then talk to the others about the plan?” I suggested, motioning a the floor that was making me uncomfortable.
 
“No, it’s okay,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll take care of it later. Do you want a cup of tea?”
I nodded. “I could go for one, yeah.”
 
We left the room and headed into the kitchen, where we found her roommate picking at a sad looking cactus on the windowsill.
 
“Why don’t you just accept that he’s never going to recover?” Holly asked her as she brushed by her to get a couple of mugs from the cupboards.
 
“He’s not dead yet,” Audrey replied. “There’s always hope. No point in just letting him go without a fight. Now if only I knew what was wrong…” She looked up and saw me standing there. “You a plant guy by any chance?”
 
“I know a couple things,” I answered with a shrug. “But it looks like you’d know more than I would.”
 
“Well, it’s worth a shot,” she admitted with a grim tone. “What do you think is wrong with it?”
 
The cactus was yellow and almost swollen. It was withering, that was for sure, but it was a cactus. What could kill it besides a lack of sunlight and water? So I said that.
 
“That’s just it,” she said with a sigh, leaning back onto the counter, dangerously close to the kettle’s spout. “I water this guy every week, and he doesn’t leave the windowsill. We’ve only had him a month or so. I don’t get how he’s already dying.”
 
“Aren’t cacti supposed to get watered only once every few weeks?” I questioned, prompting a wide-eyed expression to cross her face.
 
“I can’t believe I forgot that. Jesus Christ, how dumb am I?” she said in a grumpy mood 
before placing the cactus back on the windowsill. “Hey, there’s some dude out there.”
 
“So? People are allowed in the yard,” Holly questioned in response, not even bothering to look.
 
“I think he’s holding a gas can though… Look. He’s walking around all weird.”
 
Holly leaned towards the window. “It looks like he’s pouring something out of it…”
 
I’d like to say that our minds clicked and we realized what was going on before anything happened, but we didn’t. We were just confused until a fire appeared all along the walls of the apartment. 

“Oh shit!” Audrey exclaimed. She grabbed the cactus and ran for the fire alarm. She hopped up and pressed the button on it, initiating the test. The apartment was filled with a beeping noise as the three of us ran to get out before the fire could find a way in.
 
Just as we got to the front door, the sound of breaking windows echoed through the apartment. We didn’t have time to investigate. We ran out into the shared hallway and up the stairs, only to find that both of the entrances were covered in flames. The glass doors that used to show the outside world were just blue, orange, and red hot. The flames hadn’t made their way in yet, but it was only a matter of time before they did. 

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Part 7: The Fire

April may be over, but this story is really only just getting started. Well, not really, but there's still a bit to go until we finish it up. Hopefully this story provides you with some good, even if it's hilarious cringe at awful writing. 

Until next time,

-Zero

The Topic of Conversation (poem)

Everything cycles back -

no escape,

the thoughts always follow.

We run

but there's only one hallway:

back and forth

with nowhere to hide.

Prisoners

not of a corrupt government, but

our bodies

but our fragile mortality.

-Zero