Asleep In Eden, Part Four

     It's been... what, three weeks? I got lazy. I'm sorry. Please accept this offering of prose as my apology. (Word count warning: 1969 words or 6 pages). Have a great night, kids!

     After they left, I could hear more of Cadence’s soul-goons clambering through Marco’s apartment. I swallowed and shrunk further back into the closet, staring at dust bunnies and praying that the souls would not find me. I wanted to leave the place altogether, but I needed information, and if I stayed here and eavesdropped I might get it.

     I could hear them asking each other quiet questions, and sometimes see their shadow cast across the strip of light underneath the closet door. I held my breath and waited, but after an hour or two it became clear that they were not leaving anytime soon. Cadence knew I had to be somewhere in the vicinity. Maybe her underlings had seen me leaving the movie theater. Whatever had happened, I knew that these souls were here looking for me, and if I wanted to get out, I would have to be real, real subtle.

     I slipped through the wall behind me— slowly, carefully. Cadence’s goons might notice sudden movements, even sudden movements from inside the closet. But I had to get out, which meant I just had to hope that his neighbors weren’t home.

      I did not have time to finish praying they were not at home before I noticed the large, balding man in the recliner. He had trouble focusing on me, and it looked like the culprit was lack of rest.

      “Get some sleep,” I told him. “You’re hallucinating.”

      With that, I hurried through the far wall into his neighbor’s apartments. They were not home, so I stopped to catch my breath for a bit.

      I knew I couldn’t stay here long. Cadence’s minions would only stay in Marco’s apartment for so long, and then they’d start looking elsewhere. I needed to get out of the building— and the sooner, the better.

      But I couldn’t just take the stairs or the fire escape down to the first floor. Undoubtedly, Cadence would have goons surrounding the building on the sidewalk. I walked to the window to check, and sure enough, there were plenty of her soul-slaves standing outside the building. I sighed. It was not the first time I wished Cadence was a little bit more careless.

      So I needed a way to get down that did not involve fire escapes or stairs, because otherwise at least one of the souls would see me. I wasn’t sure if I could sink through upstairs floors into lower apartments, but if I could, I had no guarantees that everyone in the apartments would be as dazed as Marco’s next door neighbor. Any screams would definitely bring Cadence’s underlings running.

      I sighed, forcing myself to think. I needed to get out, and I needed to get out now. But what other way was there? There was an elevator at the end of the hall, but it had a very old, yellow “Out of Order” sign posted on the front and I kind of suspected that it had been out of order since the complex opened. The elevator cab was probably stuck at the bottom of the shaft, and would probably never take passengers again.

      But I didn’t need the elevator cab. I was out-of-body. I was just a soul, and the only things that could hurt me were other souls. So the fall down the shaft would be nothing but scary.

      Really scary, now that I thought of it. Willingly stepping into a thirty-foot empty elevator shaft would probably be the scariest thing I had ever done. But I had to do it. How else was I going to get down to the first floor?

      I walked over to the walls and peeked out into the hallway to see if any of Cadence’s goons had been smart enough to check the hallway. Of course, Cadence is more thorough than I could ever imagine, so naturally she had one standing outside of Marco’s door, fortunately turned the other way.

      I slipped back inside of the apartment to give myself time to breathe and think. If I was fast, the soul might not see me. I knew he wouldn’t hear me— disembodied souls don’t make noise.

      That was enough planning for me. I slipped out and dashed towards the elevator. I didn’t give myself time to think. I ran straight through the “Out of Order” sign and the elevator doors, falling straight down to the bottom of the shaft and straight into the elevator cab.

      It didn’t even hurt, but I didn’t give myself time to think about that. I had to get out of here. I checked all of the nearby walls until I found one that led into the parking lot. I was thoroughly disappointed to see it crawling with them.

      I slid into a dumpster and sat down against the floor to hide and wait until Cadence decided that I was not in the building and called her goons off. I really hated how much I had to hide and avoid her, but it was not as if I could do much against a flesh-and-blood fairy. Whenever I peeked through the dumpster to check, her goons were always standing there, watching. It was ten o’clock at night before I realized that Cadence was not going to call them off. If I wanted to get out of this apartment complex, I would have to call off her souls myself.

      I peeked at the souls who were guarding the place. I hated it, but in the ten years I had been running away from Cadence I had gotten to know her minions pretty well— and not in an entirely good way. She has had some of these goons for years, and since I have practically had to beat them off of me the entire time, I know exactly where their weak spots are. So when I saw Keith standing outside one of the back entrances, I almost sighed in relief.

      I will never be sure why she pulled that poor kid out-of-body. Maybe she had thought he had a loud voice, and could warn the other souls when he saw me. Whatever her reasoning was, it was a mistake, and I was glad of it. Keith was a whole lot easier to take out than her other souls.

      I waited until the punk kid who had been standing with him walked around the corner to abate his boredom, and then I slid out of the trash can where I had been hiding and wrapped a hand around Keith’s mouth. He squirmed, but it did not matter. The only way a disembodied soul can make noise is vocally, and I did not need to worry about that.

      After ten years, I had learned exactly how to do a soul in— not that I liked it. A hit or two in the right places, on the exposed nerves, and that would give them enough pain to keep them quiet while I dragged them off somewhere they would not be heard. Not that I enjoy it— I hate dealing a beating like this to another human being, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I have to give them motivation to leave me alone. So those exposed nerves were exactly where I had to hit this poor little boy. I hate these beatings, but they have gotten easier to stomach. That scares me sometimes.

      I dealt him a final punch and released the poor kid. He fell to the ground, and I knelt beside him the way I always did.

      “I’m sorry, Keith,” I promised him. “I really am. I hate this. I’ll do my best to make it better once this is all over.”

      I stood up and tried to forget the sight of his poor bruised face as I walked away. I squared my shoulders and headed downtown, reminding myself that this was for Marco.

      The walk into the downtown historic district was relatively easy. Once I got there, deciding what to do was not. Now, along with my body and Cadence, Marco was here too, and if I knew Cadence he would be guarded by at least four-soul goons. And it was my fault. I tried not to think about that as I slipped between shops, warehouses, and alleys, trying to find Cadence or Marco or someone who might lead me to them.

      I spent the rest of the night searching and the rest of the night avoiding my old house. After yesterday, I did not want to spend any more time looking at the commercial mess this city had made out of my life and my memories. But after another two hours of searching, I could not deny it any more. If I were Cadence, I would definitely make the museum my headquarters. The only way I was going to find Marco was by looking there.

      On the way over to my old house all I could think of was Marco, and the way he had tried to help me even at the cost of getting captured himself. I blinked. I could picture his face, probably horrified, as the soul dragged him away to Cadence. He had risked all of that for me. He had lost all of that for me.

      And Marco was not the only one who had lost himself to me. I hated thinking about it, but Cadence had a way of dragging other people out of their bodies and into our dispute. And I could not pretend that I had not hurt them too. There was the obvious pain— the kind I inflicted to get them to leave me alone or make an escape. But the fact that they had to do this at all... that was my fault, too. If Cadence and I never had this fight, she would have left them to their own lives and I had no doubt they preferred those. I heard them talking about it, sometimes, while they kept an eye out for me outside a building or while I hid from them inside a filing cabinet. And every time I though the pain Cadence and I had caused them, it hurt me too.

      The sooner I ended this, the sooner Cadence’s captive souls, and Marco— and Cadence too, I guess— could go back to our normal lives. That was what had been telling myself for ten years, and now, in less than a week, it would finally be over.

      And I finally knew what I wanted.

       I wanted Marco to be able to go back to Galaxy Comics and his apartment. I wanted Cadence to send her captives back into their bodies and go back to the humanitarian work she had told me she loved to do when she was not busy exacting revenge.

      And me? What did I have to go back to? A house-turned-museum to produce income for the city of Eden? My parents’ silent headstones in the local cemetery? I blinked back tears and kept walking. They all had something to go back to: Marco, Cadence, her captives. But I did not. And I knew what it felt like: losing parents, the only home I had ever known, ninety years of my life. I had nothing to go back to, but I kept running anyway, hoping that I could get away from Cadence alive.

      Meanwhile I had caused them all of this pain. I had never realized how selfish that was. If I succeeded, and Cadence failed, I doubted she would be good enough to waste time and magic sending them back to their bodies. The lives, the homes, the families... they would never see them again.

      I could not do that to them. I stopped in front of my old house determined. I could not help myself. I knew that now. But maybe I could help them.