Algernon - Part Eight

Only in dreams/You'll see what it means/Reach out our hands/Hold onto hers/But when we wake/It's all been erased/And so it seems/Only in dreams.

Only In Dreams

3008

May managed to get away from the church before the camp security officers got there, and made her way towards the far end of the camp towards the coliseum. She entered through the spectator’s entrance near the top and made her way down slowly towards the fighting ring. Upon stepping into the ring, the stadium lights came on, giving her the impression that it was day and not the middle of the night. She looked around carefully and made note of all of the various pillars and walls behind which she could hide if she got in a tight spot. Finishing her visual circle around the ring, she spotted Mirielle in the center of the ring. She was wearing the traditional black leather officer’s tunic, her blond hair tied back in a neat bun that rested on the nape of her neck. May ejected her empty clip, put in a fresh one, aimed her gun, and walked purposefully towards the center of the ring. 

“I see you avoided the welcoming committee,” Mirielle smiled, bemused. 

May said nothing and continued to stare her down. 

“I find it interesting that you think that even if you are the best, you can stop death.”

“I said nothing of stopping death, merely skillfully avoiding it,” May remarked wryly.

“You cannot avoid it forever. We are born, thus we are destined to die.”

“In this day and age, there are few who are born, yet many are created. Regardless, yes, we are all destined to die, whether we be born or created.”

“Are you ready to die?”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

Mirielle’s eyes narrowed as she drew her gun. She fired at a point just past May’s head, the bullet taking some of May’s blond hair as it flew past her.

“Another one bites the dust.”

“Not if the dust bites first,” May smiled. 

Both women fired simultaneously, Mirielle’s bullet grazing May’s shoulder and May’s grazing the other woman’s leg. 

May ran to the right and took shelter behind a large wall. Shots rang behind her as she ran and chipped the cement. She pulled the hammer and moving out briefly from her hiding place, made a pass at Mirielle, who returned fire. 

May dodged bullets as she ran towards her, firing one bullet for every third Mirielle fired. When May got close enough to fire a killing shot, Mirielle swung her gun and connected with May’s, throwing her sideways on top of her bad shoulder. 

Mirielle got up quickly and ran towards her, delivering a swift kick into May’s gut, which sent her rolling further away. She stopped on her back, her gun up, Mirielle standing over her with the gun pointed down at her. 

Mirielle smiled, ignoring the blood dribbling steadily down her leg. 

“Hail May, Full of Grace, The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among gunners, and blessed are the bullets of your gun, stolen. Holy May, Mother of Justice,” she began.

“Pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of death.” May finished.

Click, Mirielle cocked the hammer.

Click, May cocked her hammer.

Boom.

The gun flew out of Mirielle’s hand and landed somewhere behind her. Both women looked up to find a man standing at the top of the stadium holding a smoking gun.

3014

Ryan opened one eye carefully and surveyed the room over the crook of his arm. He could hear singing, but couldn’t distinguish where it was coming from. Sitting up, he noticed Valerie on the couch playing solitaire and singing quietly to herself.

“Bang, bang. He shot me down. Bang, bang. I hit the ground. Bang, bang. That awful sound. Bang, bang. My baby shot me down.”

Ryan scooted his chair back making a creaking noise on the floor and Valerie looked up.

“You’re tone deaf,” Ryan said sleepily, getting up from the chair.

“You snore. What’s your point?” Valerie returned to her game.

Ryan didn’t answer and went to raid the fridge. Upon opening the door, he found a bowl of eggs that Moose had hard boiled the night before. Sighing, he took the bowl out of the fridge, shut the door, set the bowl down on the counter, and proceeded to eat the eggs. Moose came into the living room, carting bags with him. Valerie stopped playing and Ryan looked up when he entered. Moose set the bags down with a loud thud next to the door.

“Where you going?” Ryan asked.

“Out. I have to get this one looked at cause I think the wounds from the mirror shards are getting infected.” Moose said gesturing towards Valerie.

Ryan shrugged and went back to the eggs.

“Then we’re leaving.”

Ryan finished chewing and swallowed before he answered. “You wanna run that by me again?”

“Were you planning on staying here permanently?”

“No, but…” Ryan started.

“Good,” Moose interrupted. “I got a ship that can get us off this rock.”

“Where are you planning on going?”

“Anywhere but here. Just gonna take us somewhere where we can live our lives like we want to and not like anyone else says we have to. The Japanese just recently established some colonies on Mars…”

Ryan thought about it for a moment, but said nothing.

***

When Moose and Valerie returned a few hours later, Ryan was sitting at the table poring over the note that had been taped to the door. Moose set Valerie down on the couch and looked over Ryan’s shoulder.

“It’s from her, isn’t it?”

“That woman is the bane of my existence,” Ryan said, not looking up.

“Glad to know I’m not the only one,” Valerie said from the couch.

“No, you’re just the invisible thorn in my side.” Ryan sat hunched over the note. Moose rolled his eyes but said nothing and walked into the kitchen. “Plans have changed. I’m going in by myself.”

“You’re what?” Valerie asked as she tried turning over to face him, but only succeeded in wrenching her back.

“I thought about what you said and you’re right. It’s my problem; I need to take care of it. So, I’m doing it by myself.”

“So all that crap about needing me was bullshit?” she asked, propping herself up into a sitting position.

Ryan paused and traced the edges of the paper with his finger.

Moose stopped what he was doing and rested his hands on the counter, listening intently.

“I can’t say I don’t need you or I didn’t need you because I would be lying. As much of a thorn as you are, I can’t deny that there have been some times when I have been glad that you were around, most of which involve you getting my a*s out of s**t,” Ryan said. “When I first met you, I made a lot of assumptions, most of which turned out not to be true. The only thing about you that was real to me was that you were living with a purpose. It was like, looking in a mirror and seeing myself as I could have been. I’ve been living in a dream.”

“Makes sense. All you seem to be doing is living in the past.”

Ryan said nothing as he slowly got up from the table, picked up the note, went into the bedroom and shut the door.

Valerie looked over at Moose, who had gone back to cooking, and then at the door.

“He has no right to tell me…” she started.

“Let me say something. It may help explain a few things,” Moose said, not looking up from his work. “Men hold on to their pasts to the point of death, and then wonder where they were going to begin with. Ryan has finally realized that he needs to turn back, to leave it behind for good, to wake up from this dream that he’s in.”

Valerie said nothing.

***

A few hours later, Moose knocked cautiously on the bedroom door. After hearing a faint affirmation that he could come in did he open the door and enter the room. Ryan looked up from his note and sat up on the bed.

“Food. Good, I’m starving.” He smiled weakly and took the plate of steak and pepper kabobs from Moose, who leaned against the dresser and watched him eat in silence.

“This food is horrible,” Ryan said between bites. “As usual.”

“You’re not eating it like it is,” Moose snorted.

Ryan grunted and continued eating. After he finished, he set his fork on the plate and looked up at Moose.

“It’s funny,” Ryan said after a moment, “I’ve been trying to skip to the last page to see how this will end. But now, I’m waking up before I get there.”

Moose bent and picked Ryan’s plate up off the bed, smiling. “To tell you the truth cowboy, I think you knew how it was going to end all along. The moment you told Dante you weren’t going with her, you knew. You’ve just been too afraid to realize it.”

“Death is always beside us, Moose. Fear is what allows Death to take us quickly. Lack of fear allows Death to pass over you. I’ve never been afraid of Death because I’ve already died.” Ryan got up off the bed and gathered his shoes and his coat. Moose watched silently as Ryan put on his shoes and his jacket, and equipped himself with his gun and extra cartridges. When he was finished, Moose followed him out of the room where they found Valerie standing nonchalantly in the doorway to the hall.

“Come to say good bye?” he asked.

“I figure it’s the last time I’ll be seeing you.” Valerie stared at the floor.

“You mean you’re leaving too?”

“No, I just figure you’re not going to come back.”

Ryan said nothing and continued to walk toward the door.

“Where are you going?” she asked looking up at him.

“I thought I was watching a dream that I would never awaken from. Before I knew it, the dream was all gone.”

“Are you going to throw your life away…to die…for a woman? For a dream?”

“I’m not going to die,” Ryan said stopping next to her. “I’m going to see if I’m really alive. I can’t do anything for a dead woman.”

Ryan turned the knob, stepped across the threshold, and disappeared down the hall.

Valerie clenched her fists and bit her lip, tears streaming down her face. Moose knew she had never been angrier at Ryan than she was now.

3008

Mirielle smirked, wiped some of the dust from her black leather tunic and turned to face the man who had just entered the coliseum. “Well, well, well. I didn’t expect to see you here, of all people.”

The man slowly descended down the stairs, gun still aimed squarely at Mirielle, who began walking towards him. The two stopped ten paces from each other and regarded each other momentarily.

“Are you not going to tell me what you’re doing here? Perhaps it’s to save your precious May, is that it?”

“Do you expect me to talk?” the man asked, the gun still aimed at her.

“No, Mr. Stone,” Mirielle said, reaching behind her. “I expect you to die.”

From out of nowhere, she pulled a gun and began firing on Ryan. Ryan ducked behind a wall, surprised to find May also hiding behind the wall, gun ready.

“Why did you come?” May asked. Her red and black work tunic was stained with a mixture of blood and dirt.

“I had to protect you. I didn’t want you to go and do something stupid like die,” Ryan said taking another clip from his trench coat pocket and reloading his gun, not looking at her.

May smiled. “Let’s get out of here.”

More gunfire rang out as bullets hit the wall behind them. The arid scent of the dirt mixed with the metallic gunpowder from the bullets and the tang of nicotine. Out of nowhere, a knife whizzed towards them. It landed in a crack in the wall between May and Ryan. He dodged the knife and moved out from behind the wall. The two ran in opposite directions around the ring alternatively returning fire and taking shelter behind pillars.

May got about halfway around the ring when she realized that the pillar behind which she was hiding was already occupied.

A thin woman with burgundy hair short in front and tied in the back wearing a toga and golden sandals held a long, thin knife to May’s throat and smiled menacingly.

“I should have known.” May held her hands up, the gun hanging off her finger.

The woman smiled and took the gun. She held her knife at May’s throat. “There’s a good girl. Now, just come quietly and no one will get hurt.”

“The only people that won’t get hurt in all of this are you and Dante, Chloe.”

Chloe smiled, pressing the knife closer to May’s throat. “That’s not true. If you just come with me and tell us what you know…”

“Never.” May spat, grabbing Chloe’s wrist and twisting it back. Chloe screamed; May heard a sickening crack as Chloe’s wrist broke. Chloe stumbled backward into the wall and slumped down against the pillar, holding her wrist. Blood leaked out from between her fingers and down her arm.

May turned, pulled another gun from behind her and shot Chloe dangerously close to her head. Blood splattered against the wall and Chloe slumped over, her eyes still open in shock.

“Sweet dreams,” May sighed, satisfied that the damage she had done would keep Chloe asleep for a long time.

Bullets whizzed past her, hitting the edge of the wall. She turned out from behind the wall and kept running.

3014

Ryan approached the building and looked up. He had always wondered why they felt the need to make government buildings so tall. Maybe it was to tell all the other buildings that it was the building in charge and they were merely there to serve. He laughed to himself. People had such warped priorities.

He entered the building through two pairs of sliding doors and stood in the foyer. To his right, there was a reception desk and to his left, escalators. Milling around in the lobby were several men in suits, who all stopped what they were doing when he came in. Ryan very casually walked to the reception desk, smiling at the attendant.

“Do you have an appointment?” he stammered. Clearly something about Ryan was making him nervous.

“Yes, I’m here to see Miss Dante. Can you tell me where she is?”

The attendant looked at Ryan blankly for a moment before he spoke again. “I can’t do that,” he swallowed. “That’s restricted information.”

Ryan fished the note out of his back pocket and slid it toward the attendant with a long finger.

“Tell me,” he said slowly, “where Miss Dante is. I would like to see her.”

The small man gulped and took the note with shaking hands. Ryan watched his eyes scan the note briefly before putting it back down on the counter. “Top floor at the end of the hall.”

“That’s better. Thank you.” Ryan continued to smile icily as he made his way up through the foyer to the escalator. He could feel the eyes of the other men in the lobby watching him, as if they were waiting for him to do something.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small black switch explosive box and planted it halfway up the escalator wall. He heard the click of footsteps behind him and turned to see two of the suits following him up the escalator. Getting off the escalator, he pressed the button that triggered the explosive. The moving stairway exploded and Ryan booked it toward the elevator as gunfire erupted in the foyer.

When he reached the elevator, he pressed the button to open it and ducked behind a pillar to wait. As soon as the door opened, Ryan got inside and quickly shut the doors. He calmly pressed the number ‘12’ and after a moment, felt a familiar lurch in his stomach as the elevator started upward. Once he was done, he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, pulled out his gun, and waited for the door to open on the 12th floor.

When the doors opened he was greeted with gunfire, meaning that they knew he was there. He waited inside the elevator for a moment before the gunfire stopped and stepped out firing. A figure ran toward him. He almost fired before he figured out who it was.

“Ayn?!”

“Good to see you too!” she said, picking off the last of the visible gunmen. Her straight brown hair was tangled, and there was a rapidly growing bloody stain on her left shoulder

“She’s on the top floor.”

“I know, I know. This way.” Ayn gestured down the hall to her right and the two took off down the hall. Halfway down the hall, they were met by two more gunmen. Ayn and Ryan both fired, but not before Ryan was shot multiple times in the left arm. Ayn got a chest full of bullets. She fell back and was soon surrounded by a pool of blood.

“AYN!” Ryan yelled as he knelt next to her. “Snap out of it!” The air was now thick with the stench of iron, gunpowder, and carpet cleaner. The haze of discharged firearms hung like thin wisps of clouds in the darken hallway.

She rolled her head over and smiled at Ryan. Her lips were cracked and the color was starting to drain from her face as she spoke. “Take her out,” she cringed. “And don’t die.”

Ryan furrowed his brow, confused. “You know, the paperwork….” She trailed off.

Ryan got up, leaving her body in the hall, holding his injured arm as close to his body as possible, leaving bloody footprints on the carpet behind him.

To his surprise, the rest of the way up to the thirteenth floor was cleared. He ran toward the door as if possessed by a demon, wanting nothing more than to get to her, to kill her. As he reached the doors and entered the room, an explosion rocked the building.

3008

May met Ryan near where he had entered the stadium. They stood back to back behind a pillar while they waited for the gun fire to die down.

“We need to make a break for it.” Ryan said, reloading his gun.

“That much is obvious,” May said ejecting her clip.

“There’s an exit outside the coliseum just past the second barrack.”

“Is that how you got here so fast?”

“No, actually, I wandered in the front gate.” May gave him a wary look. “Yes, that’s how I got here, sweetheart.” He couldn’t see her, but he knew she was smiling.

“Let’s go for it.”

They moved out from behind the pillar and ran up the stairs, Ryan in the lead, out of the coliseum. The two managed to get out of the stadium before they heard gunfire again.

“Get down!” Ryan yelled, turning around and firing at the officer behind them. He went down after two shots. Ryan turned and started running again as May got up and collected herself.

Mirielle appeared at the top of the stadium stairs and started slowly making her way down. She paused in the middle of the stairway, carefully aimed, and fired, directly into May’s back.

As the bullet hit her back, May yelled and Ryan turned around.

Everything happened in slow motion: Ryan stood rooted to the spot as May fell forward, surprised.

The light over the pool table in the bar cast a dark shadow over her face, the beams highlighting her slim body encased within its pleather jumpsuit. He stood holding the cue stick, not quite sure if she was real.

More gunfire ensued around Ryan, but he appeared not to notice.

She wrapped her naked arms around him from behind and kissed the nape of his neck. He reached up and gently rested a hand on her wrist, the other planted softly on her cheek. She was smiling.

His eyes were aimed at Mirielle, whose smoking gun just barely concealed her satisfaction.

“How do you like me now, cowboy?” she asked breathlessly, her hands gripping his short hair as she pressed him closer to her heaving bosom.

He inhaled, the sweet scent of rotting fruit mixed with the sweat from their glistening bodies, and sighed heavily. He was too exhausted to speak.

Moments later when May hit the ground, Ryan ran back towards her, knelt down, and rolled her over.

“Do you really believe Mirielle when she says she can fix everything? Whatever happened to thinking for yourself? There is still hope for a better life, but that’s for us to decide. The government can’t decide anything for us. We can make our own happiness, Ryan. I know we can…”

She blinked slowly as Ryan moved his face closer to hers. “May….”

She looked up at him one last time and tried to talk, but Ryan could only see her lips moving, forming words from a language he had finally come to understand.

“I love you, Ryan. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Seconds later, she was gone.

Ryan felt May go limp in his arms as he looked up into the sky. Rain had begun to fall silently around him and he didn’t know if he was blinking back rain or tears.

3014

Ryan carefully pulled himself up out of the pile of ceiling tiles that had fallen on him and opened his eyes. His right eye was fine, but there was blood dribbling over the left and he was forced to squint. He looked up and around him. There was no longer a top floor, the roof had been blown off and chunks of cement and wood lay scattered over the floor. From one end of the room, he heard a soft singing. Glancing over he saw that there was a blond haired figure clad in a trench coat sitting at the far end who looked to be unharmed, fingering what looked to be a sword at its side. As he approached the figure, the singing grew louder.

“Now he’s gone, I don’t know why. And to this day, sometimes I cry. He didn’t even say good bye. He didn’t take the time to lie.

“Bang, bang. He shot me down. Bang, bang. I hit the ground. Bang, bang. That awful sound. Bang, bang. My baby shot me down.”

The figure turned as Ryan approached and he found himself face to face with Mirielle Dante. Her small eyes and her smile reminded Ryan of a jungle cat just before it pounced on its meal.

“I always knew you would come back,” Mirielle breathed matter-of-factly. “You never could stay away.”

“The only reason I stayed away is because you drove me away.”

“I wouldn’t say that. You were fine with me until she came along.”

“Leave her out of it.” He could feel his face getting hot, his palms sweating in anticipation of the kill.

“No, because, my dear rhinestone cowboy, she’s the whole reason we’re in this mess, is she not?” Mirielle smiled, lips pursed.

Ryan opened his mouth to retort, but Mirielle continued. “Tell me the truth: you left because she wanted you to, didn’t you?”

“I left because I didn’t want to be a part of something I didn’t believe in.”

“You don’t believe in doing all that you can do for your country?”

“I don’t believe in manipulating people to get what I want,” Ryan croaked, his mouth suddenly dry. “That’s what you did to that poor empath.”

“I wouldn’t feel too sorry for her. Chloe needed me to help her see where to go. She was lost without me. That’s why I made her my bodyguard.”

“You made her your bodyguard because she was an empath and she could tell you when people didn’t like you. She probably had direction; she didn’t need you to brainwash her into helping you.”

“Then why did you kill her if she didn’t do anything?”

“When it comes to you, it’s better to be dead than alive.”

“I’ve died too, you know, and I have to tell you, I much prefer living.” Mirielle sighed.

Ryan said nothing, but readied his gun at his side.

“Have you never thought about it? All you are is a pawn in the grand scheme of things. By the end of the age, I should be able to get my hands on enough power to do whatever I want. And the beauty of it is, nobody will be smart enough to figure out what I’m doing. I have the technology to make people as idiotic or as smart as I wish. It’s brilliant.”

“You b***h. You’re willing monopolize millions of people just so you can continue to wreak havoc? You disgust me.”

He aimed and shot at her, but she dodged and drew her sword. Ryan came at her, but she caught his gun and he shot up.

The shot was enough to knock the sword out of Mirielle’s hand and the gun out of Ryan’s hand.

The two weapons skidded to a stop behind the opponent and Ryan and Mirielle regarded each other. Both were breathing heavily, and blood started to flow more freely over his left eye. He wanted more than anything for her to suffer, he wanted her to be just as dead as he felt.

“Why did you kill her?”

“Simply put, you broke my heart, so I broke yours.”

Ryan paused before he spoke again.

“Shall we finish what we started?”

“Yes, and you can start by dying!” Mirielle yelled.

The two slid their respective weapons back toward each other and got up. Ryan fired into Mirielle’s chest as she plunged her sword through his gut. Ryan staggered backward, dropping the gun. Mirielle fell forward and lay on the ground, motionless. After years of chasing her, she was finally dead.

***

Valerie tried not to cringe as Moose attempted to carry her and the entirety of their luggage to the ship he had recently acquired. It looked to her remarkably like an aircraft carrier had been cut in half, capped off with a rounded end, and been adorned with wings on the sides. It was just as roomy as she remembered the Algernon, and looked remarkably the same, minus the smell of sea salt and barnacles.

Moose walked slowly up the gangplank, through a rotating chamber into a room that resembled a lounge area with a couch on one side near where they were coming down the stairs, a chair on the opposite end of the room, and a rickety looking table in the middle. Moose carefully placed her on the couch before setting the luggage down.

She looked up at the ceiling and studied the studs, painted a fresh grey black. Closing her eyes, she remembered the ceiling of the Algernon: it was painted almost the same grey, except for the noticeable rust spots that made rings around the studs in the plating. She could hear the cry of gulls outside, and the gentle lapping of the waves against the side of the ship, the salty smell of the sea mixing with lingering smoke from an abandoned cigarette. It was a feeling of being at home. Opening her eyes, the vision faded.

Moose was about to leave for the cockpit, but Valerie called him back. “Moose!”

“What?”

“Are we going to go after him?”

Moose paused for a moment and looked at her. Her face was set, lips pursed. “No.”

“NO?! What do you mean ‘no’?”

“Both of you have given me trouble, but he, by far, has given me the most trouble since I met him. I never have any money and my home is gone. Because of him, I’m a nomad with no place to go.”

“I don’t have a home either, Moose.”

“And yet, for all the running off you do, you still come back.”

“So do you. Why do you think that is?”

“How the hell should I know?” Moose said, turning to go.

“Because we found somewhere we belong – we belong with each other!”

Moose turned and looked at her incredulously, hands on his hips.

“Don’t you see? We may have nowhere to go and no home to go back to, but we always went back because somehow we all knew that with each other was the one place we could go back to no matter what!” Tears started to stream down her face, and she tried to swallow the knot in her throat. She had been lying to herself all along – she really did care about them, she didn’t want them to leave, she didn’t want things to change.

But that was life, and things were changing around her; events had been set in motion long before she had met either of them that could not be stopped.

Moose said nothing and turned to leave when Valerie called again.

“What now?”

“Did you name the ship?”

Moose turned and looked at her, surprised. “Name the ship?”

“Haven’t you heard that it’s bad luck to have a ship without a name?” she asked quietly.

Moose thought for a moment, bit his lip, and ran a hand over his head. “How about ‘Bebop’?” he said finally.

Valerie smiled. “I like it.”

“Is there anything else?”

“Yeah…can you get me some flowers?”

“Flowers?” Moose cocked an eyebrow at her. “For what?”

“Before we go, I want to say good bye to Algernon.”

***

Ryan’s vision grew foggier and foggier as he made his way down the stairs to the lower level of the building. From above, a clear white light bathed the remains of the building. Ryan clutched at his wound, blood seeping out from between his fingers as he walked, taking the stairs one at a time as he made his way into the lobby. He could vaguely make out a group of men with guns below him, standing in awe as they watched him descend the staircase.

In the middle of the stairs, Ryan paused and shook for a moment while he tried to regain his balance. Getting his balance, he looked up at the men, squinting into the bright light. He removed his arm from the wound and held up his hand pointer finger extended and thumb up in the shape of a gun.

“Bang….” he whispered as he cocked his hand back like he was shooting. Closing his eyes, his vision became dark and he fell forward, face down the stairs.