The Sweetest Thing – Part 6
Kickstarter Update: Technically speaking, the project has 24 more days to go to reach the goal.
Realistically, those days are simply marking time. I just got the final rejection for all the blogs / websites that I reached out to for promotion.
So that’s over. It was a long shot, and I had some small amount of hopes since the total was so small. Them’s the breaks though, and I’m left with the same choice as always: quit or keep getting back up.
Getting back up wins another round. Time to step back in and keep swinging.
I’ve had a chance to get my head around what happened at the gym earlier this week. I’ve managed to go back, walk over the conspicuous lack of stain that was once a human being. I’ll probably always be slightly afraid of that place, but I won’t let it keep me from being the best version of myself that I can possibly muster.
As far as Sweetest Thing is concerned, as I mentioned on Friday, what I really want is for that story to match the lovely thing I’ve crafted in my mind. I have such a great vision for what this story could be that I don’t want it to get lost in some half-cocked scheme that I cook up out of some desperate need to supply a post.
Onward with the story!
The Sweetest Thing – Part 6
I walked towards the waiting drop-runner, swearing as profusely as I knew how under my breath, willing it to strike Sargent McDowell down where he stood. Much to my frustration and building anger, he seemed immune to my desire that he drop dead.
As I walked up the tiny incline of packed dirt which served as my pitiable landing pad, I had a chance to squeeze Agnes’ hand for a few moments. Her return grip was intense, bordering on painful, and I focused every single fiber of my being on the contact, willing time to stretch as each neuron fired in pain or pleasure or anything. To live as much in those few desperate seconds as I possibly could, holding on to Agnes for all I was worth.
As always, such moments were not designed to last. Agnes quickly, and gently though I don’t know how she managed that one, shooed my hand away with a batting motion that made it seem like she had been dismissing my affection. She turned her head in disgust, a look of loathing playing across her features for everyone else to see. We’d kept this fiction up as often as possible, whenever we weren’t sweating and aching in the grips of The Hunger on the practice ground under McDowell’s baleful gaze.
I climbed into the small cockpit, straddling the seat which tilted me into the controls like I was riding an airborne motorcycle. It suited the small ship, which cut through the air with an abundance of speed and a complete lack of grace. I slipped the helmet and goggles over my face, willing my sense to focus on the controls as I went through the familiar motions of revving up the small ship. Agnes and I had done this far too often for it to be anything but routine. Even now, I could see on the tiny external camera feed that Agnes had secured herself in the central pod already, the pod sucking up into the meager protection of the rear of the runner.
We were all set to go, and the hateful Sargent below signaled for us to be off with a casual wave of complete disregard.
I debated doing a flyby low enough to wipe the smug look off his face, but decided against it. We already had enough to worry about without the disciplinary actions that would cause should we survive the day.
I circled us low along the cliff face, the sea below heedless of our passage as it smashed against the rocks in steady rhythm. The light of full morning was upon us as we sped out over the waves, churning along at a speed which still startled me. We would cross the distance from Greenland to England within an hour.
We would even have a chance to see the wreckage we had made of Iceland, a thought which still churned my stomach with grief and guilt. I opened up the comm channel to Agnes, willing away thoughts of my own concerns as I began caring for Agnes.
Agnes was a kinesiopath, which meant her body was itself one enormous weapon. I’d seen her tear the top off a tank with her bare hands. She’d slammed through a twelve inch thick barrier door by herself and shrugged off high-velocity anti-tank rounds without breaking a sweat. But an hour in the absolute blackness of the pod, immobile and deprived of any sound but her own beating heart made her almost delirious with fright. I’d heard her in her sleep when we managed to share a bunk, and I knew that when her Hunger claimed her, she always went back into the dark of the pods. For the next hour, my job was to distract her as best I knew how.
“Hey Agnes, what do you do if you have to go poop while you’re fighting?”
Agnes spluttered, fighting a combination of outrage, disgust, and over it all barely restrained laughter.
“What do you think I do Riley? I shit my pants.”
“Wait” I intoned slowly, dawning horror in my tone even as a smile stole over my face “you mean that all those times I’ve hugged you after… you were carrying a bomb in your trousers? Gross!”
Agnes did laugh then, rich and full and not at all the small and frightened voice I had encountered on too many occasions to count.
I laughed too, and took the small runner through a series of loops and swoops which would slow down my arrival, but not by enough to care. I was awash in the sensations of the runner, the feel of the controls which were at my fingertips and also contained inside my motorcycle seat. The runner responded to each change in pressure that I applied to either set of controls, and my mind rode wave after wave of sensation and input from my sight and my sense of touch. I wasn’t piloting the small ship, I was the ship. I swooped and looped and whooped, laughing uproariously as Agnes voiced curses and protests at my behavior, but I didn’t care. I was made for this, as hopelessly addicted to the joys of piloting such a capable vessel as I was to the hatefully small doses of power that I received only as a prelude to possible annihilation.
In that moment, it was enough. Agnes swore, I soared, and together we forgot the chains of our captivity as we raced towards the coast of England and our target on the northern Scottish shore.
