Noticed I write a lot better in the morning! At night there's too much stuff on my mind. A whole day of negativity has kicked my ass by then. I'm trying though, guys!
Ok, it turned out a lot better than it started. Nothing funny to relate today, just another day at the office, sirs.
Ok, it turned out a lot better than it started. Nothing funny to relate today, just another day at the office, sirs.
“Your brain is programmed to have dejavus to keep you on the right track. When you have these ephemeral flashbacks, its like a clue, consider it breadcrumbs.” Jim spattered off details on their trek up to the car. Roger walked ahead, speeding up his pace each time Jim would catch up beside him. He looked back at him as he yammered on, Jim debating with himself as much as he was talking to Roger anyway.
The robot followed slowly on the trail, in full on strut mode. It had battle scars, and didn’t bother removing the glass lodged in between its joints.
“Don’t worry that’s as fast as he’s programmed to walk. Running isn’t cool, and he’s programmed to be cool. Completely unlike me.”
It ran into two trees that were standing close together and ripped one of them down and in half with a loud tear.
“How did you plan on standing up to that thing, anyway?” Roger asked as they reached his Subaru. He got into the drivers side and opened up the passenger side for Jim. He had urgency in his eyes, but still moved smoothly and slyly.
“Well, I was going to punch it in the nose, if you hit it hard enough in the nose it’ll back off.” It kept coming toward them, making up a dangerous amount of space. With a quick lunge, Roger was positive they’d be goners.
“…But, metal is pretty hard, and it doesn’t want you to hit it in the nose. Therein lies the problem.” The robot was distracted with pretending to be too cool to approach more quickly.
“Seems like there’s been a few mutations, it might be just a little more unpredictable than planned.”
Roger stared in the rearview mirror, it was coming up the walkway. He took the car key out and twisted it, revving the engine in reverse.
“You could just hit it with the car, theoretically that should put it out of work.” Jim said, fiddling with something in his pocket. He put on a pair of sunglasses, and reconfigured the passenger side chair, rolling it back to the seat behind him. Roger pulled the car up the path with Emerson Lake and Palmer still blasting from the deck. He reached and turned it down.
“First thing we need to do is figure out where we’re going,” Roger said. “Where am I going?”
“We might want to go visit Otto first.”
“Otto? I don’t like the sounds of that”
“He’s an old pal. He didn’t quite get out as cleanly as I did, though. He had to listen to that wailing going on all night, every night. It makes me shiver to think about.”
The robot disappeared completely from view in the rearview mirror until it was a tiny grey speck behind them. It was an unapologetically handsome day outside, allergy causing green shrouding everything. The windshield wipers were covered in leaves, and Roger flicked them on to get rid of them. A lot stuck, intertwined around the swishing blades like tendrils on a hungry tree holding down a crocodile.
They stopped to get gas, Jim insisting on paying with cash, removing a sweaty smelly bundle of bills from the inside of his dirt black socks. He bought a Red Bull on the inside, and joked around by calling it “motor oil.” Jim insisted he could drive if Roger got tired of it, but Roger didn’t respond, merely looking over with a furrowed brow and a grave look on his face. They drove two hours back to the city, not saying a word to eachother.
The shrubbery and foliage outside lessened progressively as they departed the woods, past the old water tower and city graveyard full of homemade wooden graves.
“I want to be buried there.” Jim said, unaware of the crypticness of this comment. “I just think the stones are cool, looks like people really cared about their loved ones.”
“You know, you don’t sound like much of a scientist,” Roger said. “If your science hadn’t got us here, I’d think you were more of the antisocial hermit type.”
“I’m an intellectual, I keep on going because I have to.” Jim assured him. He had little sense of humor when it came to things that dealt with his personal nature, even though the world was one big joke.
Roger switched off from checking the clock on the dashboard, the mirror, and the road. His eyes glazed over from time to time, and to a bystandard it appeared he might fall to sleep at any second.
A tiny black shadow ran in front of the car, and Roger unwillingly crunched over it. It made a loud popping noise, like a balloon right in someones ear, and Roger pumped the brakes as the tires left a long black smear on the road behind them. The car finally righted itself as they came to almost a complete stop. A mouth wateringly bad smell took over the car, and Roger knew he had hit a skunk.
Everything started to get uncomfortable in the car after that smell. Roger cracked the windows and turned the air up, but this seemed to amplify the smell. Jim complained about the tightness of his seatbelt and removed it as he continued emptying his pockets and reorganizing them. He found a little red rectangle that looked like a block of wrapped cheese, which he sounded particularly excited about.
“Roger, this is exactly what we needed,” He said, pressing the button in the center of it and releasing a gas into the car. “Omega oils in gas form. Smells like fish sticks.”
Roger hated this smell more than the skunk one, and they melded together to become almost intolerable. He saw a sign for a diner flashing, a plate with a fork and a knife on each side in bright neon, and pulled in.
“You’re right, Roger, we had better eat and think this thing over.” Jim said, putting his useless inventions in the door pocket. He checked his hair in the mirror, assessing for damages, and they stepped out together.
“I should try calling the police again.” Roger said. “They should know what happened to their policeman.”
“Well I wouldn’t dream of having you do that on an empty stomach.” Jim said, an air of nonchalance in his voice.
They sat down and Jim ordered Salisbury Steak. Roger got the Family Chicken Combo. The young blonde waitress looked like she had no business working at a Denny’s-lite type of place. When she left to get their coffee, Jim had a few comments to make.
“I need to know why she’s here. Why would someone like that be here? She looks like a real woman.”
“What do you know about real women, Jim? And while we’re at it, what do you know that I don’t know?” He leaned across the table, and the waitress placed their lunches in front of them.
“Roger, I know you’re upset because your girls are gone, but yelling at me won’t help you about it.”
They ate in silence, the TV showing a turtle escaping from activity. A table next to theirs consisted of three older man concerning themselves with lifes bigger probems, mainly lottery tickets. The car in the parking lot practically had stink lines coming from it.
“I do know one thing you don’t know.” Jim said. “They aren’t going to hurt your girls.”
Roger sighed audibly. “How do you know this?”
“He kept a stable of younger girls, he treated them all like princesses. He pampers them, gives them a taste of the good life. It’s going to be like those girls were at the spa.”
“But they need to be raised by their parents!” Roger slammed a fist down near his mashed potatos. Some of his water splashed on the table. The old men facing away rearranged themselves, the svelt leather booths crinkling underneath them.
Jim leaned in so their heads were almost touching eachother and said. “This is the first and only time I’m telling you this. I don’t want to be traveling with you any more than you want to be traveling with me. You seem like an alright guy, you have it together, you’re serious, you are a creature of habit. They want me to come back, they don’t want you. They think it’s my daughters, he doesn’t even know who you are.”
“You’re the creep living in a shack. What happened anyway, where’d all of your money go? Why did you have to insist on staying near the house, if you knew you were endangering my family?”
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