Everyone Dies in the End #41

Cindy

They rode in silence now and her butt still hurt, but the pain didn’t register. Hope springs eternal, yet hope sucks. Hope is a nagging boyfriend that’s never satisfied. Screw him all night and he wants a lip job the next morning. Nothing is good enough. That was Jeff on his bad days, but on his good ones?

Oh, Jeff was good, real good, and Jeff was in Philly. At least he had been when the missiles came. And she was headed to Philly, so what was the problem? Hope. Hope was the problem. And maybe a flash-blinded guard, and then there was that explosive anklet. That could be a real problem. Life without her right foot would suck. But then again, she was already finding out that life, even with both feet, sucked. But to visit that then yet again, if what she had in mind worked, there wouldn’t be an anklet to worry about.

The real problem was the hope, and the doubt (opposite sides of the same coin), which the flash-blinded guard had shed on her sucky life. “You got the idea,” he said. And she did, and the idea was simple. She could teleport. Nothing new there. As far as she knew, if she could visualize a location, she could teleport to it. It didn’t matter if that location was across the street to a library with a lead-spitting machinegun, where she murdered two Soviet boys, or back to the cellar of a small, South Carolina farm. Before the guard asked her if she received the thought, it had never occurred to her that she might, just might, be able to not only teleport across distance, but time as well.

An incredible, hopeful, but scary, thought. She knew where she wanted to go, knew the when she wanted to go to. It was a risk. In fact it was so many risks she found it difficult to ascertain which frightened her more. For sure having a foot explosively removed was at the top of the list. Or was it? The thought of losing herself for eternity in some weird, B-grade science fiction movie depiction of the time space continuum didn’t sound like much of a life. Could she pull it off? She didn’t know the answer to that question. Would she try? She knew that answer, had known that answer the second the thought popped into her brain.

The answer raised her eyes to the dim truck interior. Raised them as if the guards could read her thoughts and jump to retain her. But no, the blind guard sat impassively across from her. She couldn’t tell if he was asleep or awake, and it really didn’t matter. The Gunslinger aficionado was awake, once again struggling to read the book in the dim light, holding the paperback in one hand while shining a red-lensed, hook-necked flashlight on it with the other. Each time a page needed turning he would set down the flashlight, turn the page, resettle the book, pick up the flashlight, and begin reading. Looked like a lot of work to her. In fact, reading looked like a lot of work, why bother when there was always TV? Of course it didn’t matter; none of it mattered. He couldn’t stop her if he wanted. No one could stop her from trying. And she wanted to try, right?

Right?

Jeff or Zak, foot or shorn ankle, Philly or… in her mind’s eye she could see the white flash she had escaped, imagine the men, women, mothers, and children…babies. She thought the tears were gone, but they weren’t. They were on her cheeks, running to her chin, dripping on the floor. She sobbed.

“Hey, you okay?” It was The Gunslinger dude, the book now in his lap. He sounded concerned, which was a point in his favor. Tears blurred his image as she answered.

            “I’ll be okay in a second,” and then Cindy blinked.