Love Lost, Chapter 19b: Cleavages, concluded.
#38 of Love Lost
Love Lost, Chapter 19b: Cleavages, concluded.
"Hey!" Grace gave up on looking and tapped the ceiling with a broomstick's blunt end.
Marianne's hat and eyes fell through. "Exactly how bored are you?"
"Do you know where they went?"
"They?"
Scowling, Grace clarified, "The boys."
"Oh. Somewhere else."
Grace played trump. "Well, since I'm the only living thing in the house, I guess I can put the stereo on a station I like and turn it up really loud." She drifted across the living room and began fiddling with a receiver.
"You play with fire, young lady. I'm not in a mood for music that sucks."
"Are you in a mood to answer my question?"
Marianne fell through completely and flipped right-side-up. "You're not gonna like it."
Grace placed her hand on the volume knob. "Last chance."
"O--kay. After the first night he was distraught and worried, and spent all that afternoon looking for you. He tried the centers and asked the neighbors and all that. When he ran out of ideas, the squatter suggested that you'd be fine and he should just have faith in you and wait. By day four--"
"What do you mean, day four?"
"What else could I mean?" Marianne began raising tendrils and pointing them at Grace as she counted, "One potato, two potato, three potato," she paused, "whore."
Grace snatched up the fourth and jolted Marianne with a thunder-wave. "I'm sick of you calling me that!"
Marianne darted through Grace's head and as she passed through, let her own Electric-type power arc across the tips of Grace's gills, simultaneously chilling and stunning her. "And I'm sick of you getting all touchy-feely with that poor, innocent lad when you want to get off and then ditching him for exposing a little backbone and putting you in place for once. Fortunately for him, Scarlet likes backbone and slipped right in to fill the void you left behind. Joe didn't seem to mind, and right now, they're off with the Mister, shopping for some stuff they're going to throw into the pool when it gets too cold for them to swim it." Pondering, she soon added, "Perhaps we should celebrate our evolutions' anniversary with a re-match."
Grace sat on the love-seat. "How many days have I been gone?"
Marianne perched upon her head. "Too many to be good for your future plans, considering what a sensitive time it is in your"--Marianne added great emphasis on the next word--"trainer's life."
"I thought I was only gone for a night."
"I thought you only hit your head on that truss hard enough to raise a welt. I guess neither of us wins a prize today."
Marianne left Grace's head and Grace rubbed its point of collision. It was not hurting anymore. "I guess there's nothing much to do but to wait for him, them, to come home."
"I can think of a few things you could do."
"Like what?"
Marianne floated around Grace in a tight, swift orbit. "Snoop through James' things; clean house; do laundry as an excuse to imbalance the machine, sit on it, and masturbate." The ghost entangled the Psychic's shoulders and shook her forcefully, "The world is your oyster, Girlfriend!"
Grace's flesh turned rosy and she whispered, "Does it feel better that way?"
Marianne accumulated herself against the side of Grace's body and whispered in reply, "Actually, I saw it in a film. I don't know for sure because," she stopped whispering, "I AM MADE OF MIST!"
Grace recoiled.
"Vibration doesn't really do much for me unless applied directly to my crystals. I did try it once, but they rattled over the edge before I did." Marianne flicked one scornfully with a tendril.
Grace turned in the seat and laid herself down, adjusting cushions to taste.
Marianne scoffed. "Or you can be lazy. Better on James' sofa than mine, I guess." She exited upward.
James pulled over, Joe shifted over, and Scarlet slid her seat forward as far as it could go. She was dismayed when she tried sliding it back to recover her leg-room and discovered that she could not. The taller hitch-hiker filled the entire space. Indeed, the roof forced him to sit hunched forward. She could feel his warm breath. It made her break a nervous sweat.
"What's in the box?" Joe asked of Alice while she buckled herself in the center bench seat.
"I bought myself some house-warming presents, and a replacement for the door that Ivana ruined."
"There's a door in that box?"
"A replacement. It's the best I can do; we can't go to my house and switch doors, anymore." Her ears lowered somewhat, and Burner reached across her shoulders to comfort her.
The recirculated air conditioning broke Scarlet's patience and her tact. "Sixty seconds cooped up in here with it and the car already smells like we're in a coop."
Joe leaned over and sniffed Burner's extended arm. "I don't notice anything. I mean, that's just what a blaziken smells like, right?"
"Actually," Burner admitted in a weakened voice, "the doctor brought it up when I got my clearance. I'm slightly more--uh, 'acrid'--than normal, but he said that it's common for blaziken sharing my biological profile."
Scarlet melodramatically covered her nose with a napkin fished from the center console. "Ain't that a relief? Bad genes means he just smells like filth but isn't transmitting it."
Joe leaned toward the middle. "It's not my fault. Every new store I've been in I've checked for shampoo for bird pokemon. Everything they have says it's not for use on pokemon with feathers."
Another bel quieter, Burner continued, "I rinse myself often. I like water."
A bel louder, Scarlet continued, "I don't know which disappoints me more, Joe. That you gave up on him instead of getting the job done, or that he didn't realize it and found the right stuff for himself."
James activated a turn signal and pulled over. He turned off his car's ignition. "If you were a man, I would literally throw you out of this car and leave you to walk home. Do you understand me?"
Scarlet nodded.
"I don't have a problem with my son making new friends at school. I want to see that. But I am not going to tolerate this shit you are pulling, pretending to want to be Joe's pseudo-girlfriend whenever it's just you two together having fun, but turning into a snot when Grace or Burner or Alice are around. I'm not going to tolerate you disrespecting my family. Do you understand me?"
She spoke low, near a whisper but somewhat broken. "Yeah, I understand. But, I don't agree."
"You don't have to agree. You have to apologize."
Her eyes widened. "Apologize? To a... fine. Burner, I'm sorry I admitted that your bird stench makes me want to vomit. I'm sorry th--"
The door locks' solenoids beat strongly as James pressed a button. "Get out. You can walk home from here."
"My bike and stuff is at your house."
"Then you can walk to my house and get it before you go home, or you can go home and have your parents give you a ride to pick it up."
"You can't throw a kid out on the street like this!"
James lit up a cigarette and blew its first drag in Scarlet's direction. She coughed. "Burner, lean forward between us."
Alice shifted to her left to accommodate, pressing Joe near the door and cramping them both against her box. Burner was not sure what he was actually being asked to do.
James took another deep pull. "I won't literally throw you out, but I'm not going to be driving anywhere as long as you are in my car, and between Burner's bird stench and a new pack of menthols, if you really are distressed by the air in here, I think you'll let yourself out."
Scarlet clicked the window controls but found them to be subject to a driver's override. Next, she clicked her seat-belt release. "I'm telling my father about this! Then you'll be sorry. He's a very powerful man, you know."
"I'm getting used dealing with the very powerful kind of man. Send him over to get your stuff. I'll be happy to meet him and tell him what a brat he brought up. Enjoy the fresh air."
Burner reached around the passenger seat to pull shut the door that Scarlet left open as she stomped down the sidewalk.
After James' sedan pulled back into the roadway, Alice reversed the angle of her lean. "Burner, I like how you smell. It makes me remember good moments."
Burner replied in their natural tongue.
Joe adjusted Alice's box to ride more comfortably. "Dad... uh, thanks. I wanted to get onto her about how she was acting to them, but I didn't want to screw up my grade and--"
"To hell with your grade. Family comes first. I know you haven't had much of one to worry about but you added to it and that's your responsibility. She was right about one thing, though: you did give up on finding that shampoo or whatever it is. We're dealing with that, now." James changed lanes and turned at the next intersection.
Burner mumbled something too low to be heard.
A knock at the door startled Grace, who was struggling to nap but completely unable to find peace. She teleported near the door and opened it, revealing a familiar flygon.
"Deliveries for Mr. James Rainier and Miss Gr--ah!"
Marianne appeared out of nothing, wrenched two packages from the flygon's grip, while quickly spouting, "I'll be taking that, thank you; sign for it, Grace, no questions."
"Do you do exotic pets here?"
A groomer with a colorful mohawk glanced away from a poodle he was shaving. "You could say that."
"Good," James continued, "wash this. Straight water showers aren't cutting it." He snaked an arm behind Burner's waist and pressed him forward.
Lamont continued styling the pooch. "We don't usually do birds except for shows, and Ocimene pokemon are pretty good at washing themselves. What's wrong? Can't bust a lice outbreak or something?"
Burner looked down more because of a sense of shame than because of his height. "I don't have lice, but I do smell."
Lamont beckoned Burner with a finger to approach. The poodle became nervous and barked a few times. Lamont brought up some of the feathers from Burner's mane. "Smells like blaziken. A little strong but that's normal for males when they want to find a hen to screw."
Alice jumped and dropped a business card she had lifted from the front counter.
Leaning over for a better view and noticing her ribbons, "Or when he's found one and she's been holding out on him." Lamont emitted a sarcastically wide-mouthed coughing laugh. "You can't wash that out until you take care of the root problem. Then you wash his root."
James interjected. "Look, I don't know anything about this except that there's supposed to be a special powder soap for feathered pokemon and my son can't find it so we're asking you to wash him up. If you won't, we'll take our business elsewhere."
"If you want me to fix a big tub and shampoo him, I can do it and make him glossy like he's set for a show, but if you just want to cover his scent and get at anything water's missing without trashing his feathers you can do it yourself for one-third the price if you buy and apply some Eight-P yourself."
"Eight-P?" James asked.
"Yeah. You know." Blank stares abounded. "Pretty Pidgey's Perfectly Perfumed Pest-Proofing Plumage Powder. Hardware stores carry it, usually in between the rat poison and the bug bombs."
The Rainiers and Alice turned to leave. Lamont added before they were gone, "Get some rubber gloves, safety glasses, and a mask while you're there."
Grace, supine upon the couch, continued shouting at the ceiling above her. "What are those things, Marianne?"
The ceiling again refused to answer the question coming from the love-seat below. "No questions!"
Grace raised her arm, drew near again the broom, and finding it not long enough to tap the ceiling from where she lay, forced it upward telekinetically.
Knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock--
"Cut it out!"
"What are those things, Marianne?"
A tendril swept through the ceiling, knocking the broom away. Next, a book emerged and fell upon Grace. She flinched but caught it with her mind before it struck her. Opening the book, she found it to contain explanations for slang, phrases, and idioms. It also contained a small piece of paper tucked in a pocket glued to the last page, reading: "I'm sorry about your mother. -- C.V."
Knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock--
"Cut it out!" whined the ceiling.
"That's not me," Grace informed Marianne as she rose from the love-seat, striking her head. When Grace recovered her senses, she realized that she was in a very warm environment. It was not completely dark, but there was no artificial illumination. She reached around herself, found the beam, and tried to get up carefully. The ceiling was far too low to stand beneath.
Marianne flipped a page in a white photograph binder with a soft, padded cover. Aside from daylight trickling through vent grilles, her jewels contributed additional light of a crimson cast. "Good choice head-banging the collar tie. If you'd missed and kept going, one of those protruding shingle nails would've put an extra hole in your head."
"Wuh... where am I?" Grace looked about, finding insulation, trusses, dust, a bundle of silver wire, boxes, a ghost, and an empty bottle of glue.
Marianne flipped another page. "You're in my bedroom. Uninvited, I might add, and interrupting my 'Me' time. Were you hoping I might not notice and you would get a chance to dream-eat me?"
Grace crawled across a platform of plywood. "You didn't bring me here?"
Marianne cast the photo album aside. "What reason in any of the nine Hells would I have to bring you up here? Let's try the opposite. GET OUT OF MY ROOM!" Marianne rushed Grace, ensnared her, and flung her through the plywood and drywall beneath her, into the living room. Grace broke her own fall with levitation and shook her head to clear it, casting calm-mind on herself.
Knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock--
"--AND ANSWER THAT DOOR!" Marianne added.
Grace opened it, sensing Scarlet on the other side.
Scarlet seemed distracted by something, as her tone was neither evasive nor antagonistic. "Oh. You came back already. Look, my bag is in Joe's room. Let me have it and I won't be bothering you guys again."
Grace drifted aside. "Why don't you come in?"
"I don't think I should."
"Please?"
Scarlet entered slowly.
Grace shut the door behind her and checked Joe's room. Their project was almost complete, but Scarlet apparently decided that the labels on the board needed to be upgraded. Otherwise, all that remained was writing a script for their presentation. That could be done over the network. When Grace returned with Scarlet's backpack, she refrained from surrendering it. "Miss Foley, I want to know what's wrong."
"Nothing. Everything is fine. Gimme that."
Grace drifted from Scarlet's reach. "No. Not until you tell me why you hate us."
"Then I'll leave without it." She tried, but could not, unable to open the door more than a few inches before Grace forced it shut again with a telekinetic pulse.
The gardevoir drifted near to her. "You can show me, if you don't want to say."
Scarlet turned, saw Grace's rising hand, and fell against the door. "No, no please, don't. Stay away from me. Don't, I don't want to, not again," Scarlet burst into tears and slumped into the corner by the front door's hinges. She covered her temples with her hands.
Grace knelt before her. "I won't hurt you. I don't want to do this, but I have to know. I can't keep doing nothing." Leaning forward, the girl screamed as Grace's palms touched her. A chill passed through both of them, and froze their motion.
"Scarlet," a purple haze voiced as it faded into visibility, "let her see what you let me see in your nightmare. She does need to understand." Marianne faded away.
Reluctantly, Scarlet lowered her guard.
"Eliminates outstanding infestations of all lice, mites, and other nuisance parasites that may affect feathered, plated, and scaled pokemon. Leaves your pokemon's feathers smelling fresh and looking shiny for up to ten days. Read all instructions before use. Do not re-use container. Do not rinse out container. Do not pour into drains. Do not use more than the indicated amount at a time. Instruct your pokemon to keep its eyes shut throughout entire treatment. Do not inhale powder. Do not mix with any other chemicals. If used inside a bathroom, rinse all surfaces thoroughly after use. Do not store near shampoos or other cleaning agents. In case of accidental ingestion, induce vomiting immediately and contact poison emergency services. This packaging is biodegradable and environmentally-safe." Joe turned the canister around and continued reading.
"Her bike is still here," Alice noticed as they pulled into the driveway.
Shambling out of James' sedan, the Rainiers and Alice carried their purchases up the walkway and opened the door. The first thing they saw inside was Marianne hovering, holding a tendril before her mouth, and hissing a faint, "Shhhh."
Burner and Alice went directly to their room, glancing at Grace and Scarlet sitting together in a synchronizing position on the love-seat. Joe carried the pool supplies through to the backyard. James shook his head and went to his room to change into more comfortable attire.
Soon, the doorbell's chime broke their concentration. Grace attended to the door, but Marianne already made off with the delivery, leaving Grace little to do but to sign for the package, much to the flygon's relief.
Scarlet went to the pokemon room. "Uh, Burner?" She captured both Burner's and Alice's attentions. "I'm sorry. Really. I was--it wasn't personal, I mean."
Alice abandoned her box and approached Scarlet hastily. "It was personal, very personal. You weren't just rude today; you hurt him. You don't like his scent, you said your peace, fair enough. But you didn't have to pile it on like that."
"I know."
"Also know this: our sense of smell is stronger than yours. In that car, we were trapped with three of you. In fact--"
Burner placed his claws on Alice's shoulders. "You don't have to pile it on like that," he said to them, before adding a comment understood by Alice alone and then another addressed to Scarlet, "I will make efforts to be less objectionable, and I accept your apology, Ma'am."
Alice's ears had shifted from aggressively back to ashamedly lowered and she muttered something in reply to Burner's reminder.
Scarlet turned to leave, but stopped in the doorway. "You aren't the objectionable one." Seen out by Grace, Scarlet slung her bag over her back and got onto her bicycle. Taking a detour she went not straight home but to Rennin's pokemart and purchased a re-chip, just in case, when her mind settled after her experience with Grace, she found it to have changed.
Confronting Joe in his bedroom, Grace asked, "I don't know how this goes. Should I be the one to talk first?"
Joe was trying to find a way to carry the science project display without risking dropping and damaging anything. Especially the atom that wanted so badly to ionize. "I'm sorry I bossed you around, Grace, but I didn't want to see you fighting with Scarlet, even if she started it, and... and you scared me. I've never seen you like that. Even when you do that when you fight, you never look so... so mean."
Grace drifted inside and perched on the foot of his bed. "I never felt so mean. I was ashamed, and angry at you. I know, you have to do your school project because you're a human and you do these things because they can't T.M. everything you need to know into your head. I accept that there are a lot of things about you that I have to accept to be with you the way I want to be with you, someday, because you are worth it; but the things she was saying to me and doing to me, and you just let her do it. Remember when we were in the gym, the day Burner evolved, I told you that I wanted to evolve so I could protect you when you needed me? I need you to evolve so you can protect me when I need you. I wasn't in danger, but I was being hurt. I know, I've been training you to stop worrying about me getting hurt physically, but when I get hurt emotionally, it gets me right here," she watched herself as she placed a hand on her front horn, "and I can't protect this. I have to rely on you. We put our faith in you." She looked up to Joe, "Please, don't betray us."
Joe let his props fall aside and stepped up to Grace. He wrapped his left arm around her and placed his right hand atop her hand and horn. "I didn't do it right, and I'm not sure how to, but I'll try to do better next time."
A tear emerged from Grace's right eye, and she spoke faintly. "That's all I ask, Master, and that's all I need, Joe."
After a moment they loosened their grip on each other. Joe began, "So, where did you go when you left?"
"A very strange place. Here, let me show you." They settled upon his bed. She reached for his temples and recalled a select series of sights. As she released him, she admitted, "There were some other things that I did, but now that I think about it, I might be embarrassed to admit them to you; at least, right now. I--I am embarrassed. I can't believe it; I want to keep a secret from you." Her gills glowed with a powerful blush and she twisted away both to evade his glance and align her antennae to minimize their reception, as futile as that action was at a range of one meter.
"Grace, you didn't show me anything."
"What?" She twisted back in a flash. "There was the beach, the jungle road, that lugia in the market--"
"I didn't see anything, Grace. Try again."
Action repeated, result same.
"What? Okay, what about this?"
Grace attempted to share her banging on the ceiling to pester Marianne.
Joe tilted his head slightly. "Do you need to go to the pokecenter? If we hurry we can get there and back before it gets dark."
"Wait, one more." She projected herself leaving the kitchen with drinks. A ball flew out of Joe's room, bounced, and scanned her. She stood bemused for a moment, placed the drink tray on the bar, and levitated the ball to her hand. It was Burner's. Slowly she became suffused with a boiling fury. With deliberate steps she approached Joe's room. Second guessing herself, she stopped and sensed the minds within. Instinct won out. She began levitating and pitched the ball into the room. When it bounced off of Scarlet's head, she spat, "Gifref flus cakgyy ello hurs, neki!" After that, the scene faded into darkness. Joe remembered his side of the rest of it, at least.
"Well, I saw part of that, but it got weird after you threw the ball at Scarlet."
Grace let her arms drop to her sides and laid back, not much caring about her dorsal horn. The bed gave a little, at least. "Okay, whatever. Maybe it's best if we just forget about the whole thing. Just tell me: you did miss having me around these last few days, right?"
"Days? That was yesterday."
Grace sprang up partially, ensured there was no wooden beam before her, and then completed her rise, her hair somewhat disrupted. "Then... but Marianne said... Ghost!" She left Joe's room and got the broom. Joe followed behind her as she found the right spot of the ceiling.
Knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock--
Marianne sank through the ceiling face-first and bit the end off of the broomstick. She chewed it, somehow, very loudly. Swallowed into her bulge, Marianne licked her lips. "You're going to mess up the plaster if you do that with a splintered stick, you know."
"You said I was gone for at least half of a week, but I wasn't. What were you doing?"
Marianne lowered. Her jewels sparkled brightly. "I don't know what you mean by that, but surely I've been doing the usual ghost stuff. Haunting, absorbing life forces, saying 'wooo-ooo-ooo,' hiding socks so one comes up without a match--"
Gesturing with the splintered broom, Grace warned, "Ghost, I don't want to but I will fight you if I have to."
Marianne slapped the broom away, lowered herself, and turned to face Joe specifically. "I think you need to take her into your room, shut the door, strip that rag off of her waist, and--"
James emerged from the hallway's corner.
Marianne looked at him with a smirk. "--and molest her until she screams for mercy! Then, redouble your efforts." She soaked in Grace and Joe's reactions.
Placing his hand on her hat, James forced Marianne downward a few inches and turned her to face him. "Do you really need to be advising my teenage son to commit indiscretions with his pokemon?"
"You got a good grip on my head, J.R., push me a little further down and I'll show you a zipper trick that only a ghost can do." Marianne spun with a flourish as he shoved her away. "Okay; saving that for later."
James glanced at Grace and Joe and the broom as he passed by. "Whatever is going on in here, please, calm yourselves."
Marianne drifted along behind James and followed him into the kitchen. "Don't be a hypocrite. He's almost as old as you were when you and his future mother were releasing each other's stress..."
Grace let her shoulders droop. "I don't know what to think anymore. I don't know where I am, I don't know when I am, I'm not sure who I am sometimes. I don't know what's real." She turned toward Joe. "I want to sleep. No dreams, no being weird places, no waking up in the attic. I just want to, to let go of all this stuff I'm carrying."
Alice, having emerged from the pokemon room, took Grace's left hand. "You need two things. First, a massage; and second, you need to sleep in your ball."
Grace began voicing a protest.
"No, really. I know you don't like being in there, but you said it yourself. You need to let go. You can pick up what you still need to carry once you feel better."
With a grunt of assent, Grace drifted into the pokemon room. Burner handed her Alice's ring cushion to accommodate her ventral horn while she laid herself flat, before returning to re-arranging things in the room to better accommodate Alice's new presence.
Joe asked Alice, "Is that going to work? Sleeping in her ball?"
Marianne's voice, cast in an affected accent, blared from the kitchen, " 'Oh, Jimbo, oh, that finger is magical!' That you-and-her-at-the-public-pool-when-you-thought-it-was-empty memory dream. Do you want his development to become stunted?" Her voice attenuated to normal levels as she continued until it no longer distracted people in the living room.
"I think so. There was a time when I had really bad dreams and Daddy holding me wasn't enough and I had to sleep in my ball for a while. The first time it was because we almost got caught and thrown out of a motel because he sneaked me into a human-only room. I grew out of it eventually and then there was a thing about bad ball chips so he started avoiding putting me in, but I'll always remember how feeling numb seemed better than feeling bad; how it got me through the roughest spots."
"Seemed?"
Alice's ears drooped. "Once you're not feeling so bad that feeling numb feels better, you'll regret choosing the numbness. But you get over that pretty quickly because then things get better." She grinned and left him to tend to Grace's needs.
Burner emerged as Alice entered. "Joe, can we try that powder now?"
"I guess. I wonder which is worse, that stuff or the pool chemicals."
Burner slid open the patio door. "I don't have to close my eyes when I'm in the pool."
James halted them with his cough. "Burner, go on out, get the hose or whatever you need for that."
He nodded.
"Joe. After discussing it with your spectre, I just want to make it clear that, ugh, God." James' face slipped into his elbow-propped palms for a moment. "You're a young man now. During this summer, your voice changed, you outgrew half of your clothes, you began your journey by calling out one of the most powerful men in the region, and you've learned the light and dark sides of pokemon ownership, especially particular kinds of them. That means you are going to be responsible as a man for your decisions from now on. I'm going to respect them, and I'm going to hold you accountable for them. Now, if you and Grace are going to... okay. What you two decide to do together, that is your choice, but your choices determine what is and isn't going to be part of your future, and everything in your future is going to become your past, and there's no changing that. If you aren't absolutely sure yet, don't do anything with her that will make her think that you are. If you two can handle being together, in--that sort of way--you have each other's lifetimes to figure it out. You can afford to wait until you have the life experience you need to choose right. That's why society puts age restrictions on driving, drugs, and dirty films. Got it?"
"I think so, but more than that: 'Until each of us is wholly doubtless.' " Joe departed, leaving James wondering where that phrasing came from.
Marianne became visible again. "See, that wasn't so hard; although you forgot the part about him being able to ask you anything, man-to-man."
"I'll try to get that across next time. God, I just implied to a teenager that he is capable of knowing for certain a decision about his entire life. They never are."
"They think they are, though." Marianne giggled in a girly fashion.
James re-palmed his face. "What's worse is they still aren't when they're old enough to realize they weren't but not old enough to know that they haven't changed yet."
Marianne drifted alongside James and rested part of herself on his shoulder. "I remember when Harvey had that phase. I can't say I noticed when it ended, though."
"I think it ends roughly one second after you pass the point of no return."