Boomerang Method False Start

Light poured in through the narrow windows, sending thin fingers of the sun's reach across the back of the sofa.  My own thin fingers draped over the sofa's arm, interrupting the light, the polish on my nails glistening an iridescent blue.  It would be tea-time soon.

I twisted around, itching to move, but not yet ready to stand up.  My bottom half lounged demurely, sliding gently to the side to accommodate my stomach pressing into the sofa cushions.  This way, I could prop my chin on the armrest and see out one of the littlest windows, to stare down the one patch of shade left to the late afternoon.

There was nothing in it to look at.

As I aligned both halves of myself, my clothes rumpled and rustled.  The stretchy fabric of my skirt caught around my knees like Saran wrap pulled tight over a pair of teacups.  Soon, Mister Baludmesh would arrive with his tray, clicking and whirring as usual.

I shut my eyes and breathed in the stale air.  The tiny cones of incense on the coffee table had given my atmosphere a smoky scent.  I stuck my tongue out to taste it, but the only result was dry taste buds.

My body rolled easily off of the sofa and onto the plush rug, barely making a sound in the transference.  Absolute freedom was absolutely dull.  I sat up and stared across the table, letting my gaze skim over the spent husks of the incense cones so that they became brown pointed blurs below my vision.

There was a click several yards in front of me.  The door.  I lifted myself to stand on my feet, as taut as a silk cord stretched across a room.

Mister Baludmesh, gears whirring smartly, clunked into the room.  A satin top hat adorned his small, round head, clamped in place to prevent obscuring the ocular receptors.  Two long white ears erupted timidly from either side of the hat, swishing as the clockwork butler walked into the room.

As usual, the door shut behind him, a firm reminder of freedom's conditions.  I watched it out of the corner of my eye as I seated myself at the table.  I could never break the habit of looking.

The tray, set with a teacup and other dainties, sat well in Mister Baludmesh's clumsy hands.  He could speak, but I never incited him to say very much.  There was a number etched on his otherwise smooth cheek that identified him as a very old model, and I couldn't bring myself to learn just how incapable of conversing he was.  Little jets of steam burst from his joints as he moved.  Protocol, the only care such a contraption was allowed, moved him to keep those boiling hot bursts away from my tender skin, but I almost wished he would not be so cautious.

Even a burn would be something different.

Fine china had its own musical voice, one that was as comforting as the warm amber liquid in my cup.  I took a saucer from the tray and set a sugar cube in the shallow well at its centre.  Sparkling white on cream, ringed by a thin line of gold.  The tea set was an antique, the miraculous survivor of the times.  Like me.

I scooped up a spoonful of tea and then let a few drops fall onto the sugar cube.  It was the best I could do to bring the world beyond to my little castle.

That morning, I had read a series of books in the study, about a detective who solved grisly murders by paying attention to fine details.  He regularly visited an 'uptown' bar with a lady, who always convinced him to try cocktails with exciting names.  Names like Black Velvet, Anaconda, Sazerac.  I picked up the sugar cube and examined it.  Tea was nothing like absinthe.

"Is everything suitable, miss?"

I set the sugar cube back on the saucer.  "Of course, Mister Baludmesh."

"You must drink your tea, miss."

A sigh passed through my lips like a zephyr through a mountain pass.  Must.  Yes, I must drink it, it was part of the terms.  I nodded, for no particular reason, then picked up the teacup, my finger crooked through its delicate handle.

The tea slid easily down my throat, warm and soothing as a hot bath, despite its meaning.  There were scones as well, but they were never very interesting.  Not after I had swallowed the tea.  I picked one up anyway, pinching it between my thumb and index finger while Mister Baludmesh watched me, his ocular receptors whirring occasionally as they refreshed the image intake.  It was rather like blinking, I supposed.  His eyeshields opened and shut just like eyelids.

I ripped the scone in half-and it was accompanied by an explosion.

A section of the wall the size of my head slammed through Mister Baludmesh's midsection, tearing him in two as easily as I had divided the scone.  The force of the blast rippled through my little world like a wave, knocking over several of the tea things and the chair I had been sitting in.

Even with my senses dulled by the tea, I could feel a sharp sensation of pain in my shoulder and head.  The wall had been replaced by thick white dust and a gaping hole leading into the guards' room.  Three people stood in the hole, bearing weapons.  I had only seen the guards' pistols before, but I had plenty of books.  I knew words like semi-automatic assault rifle.

Shaking, I covered my head with my hands and took in my severely altered surroundings.  I could see the guards, all lying on the ground.  In different positions, but each one held an overtone of death.  One of the intruders clipped a bulky remote to his chest pocket, and then clomped over to me.  His heavy combat boots thudded ominously.

I couldn't help screaming when he grabbed my arm.

"For cripes sake, boss, the poor girl is gonna have a freakin' heart attack."

The surprise at hearing one of them speak cut me off as effectively as the slap I would have expected from such a violent group.  The middle-sized one, vaguely woman-shaped, lowered her weapon and took an authoritative step forward.

"Let her go already.  We have time."

The pressure on my hand released just as I realised that it had not been very firm.  "Sorry, little girl."  I watched in awe as the man raised the visor on his helmet, just enough so that I could see the colour of his eyes.  A strange muddy blue.  And then he shut the visor again.

A pathetic half-hearted whir sounded near my foot.  I looked down and saw a clump of what had once been Mister Baludmesh.  It was his poor head.  I picked it up and cradled it like a doll.

"See?  She's in shock."  The woman walked up to me and patted my shoulder, very gently.  As though she understood what was going on in my head.  For a second, I wondered if she might be--but then my better sense gave me a soft tap on the forehead.  She was wearing a helmet, after all.

Beside her, the middle-sized one with the biggest gun leaned forward, as though he were squinting with his entire body.  "What's wrong with her hair?  It's two colours."

She stood perfectly still, but her tone of voice made it easy to guess at her expression behind the visor.  "She dyed her bangs, you moron.  Poor kid probably hasn't got a thing to do in this opulent prison other than her hair.  I doubt she's even a real blonde."

I held a hand over my chest, clasping my fingers in a tight fist.  It took so much effort not to twitch when people were talking about them.  And then I stopped bothering.  If they had gone to this sort of trouble already, they probably already knew exactly what I was, if not the finer details.  "Actually, it isn't hair at all.  Not these." I lifted them up, letting them taste the air as they were meant to, rather than hanging at my side like useless pink locks of hair.  "They're feelers."

The tall man seemed to be chuckling, but the shorter man…  Now that I could move my feelers properly, I could taste his shock.  It would have been funny if my senses didn't have to deal with the hole in the wall and its debris.  The dullness of the tea helped, but not quite enough.

Thankfully, the woman seemed to understand.  She approached me at a respectable speed, and then threw an insult over her shoulder at the short man.  "Idiot."

He made a noise like water squirting from a cracked pipe.  "Back off, B."

"No names!  This place probably has head to toe surveillance!"

"I wasn't using your name.  I was referring to a five-letter word that you remind me of."

"Oh, go have a mardy in the corner."

"Oy!"  I jumped a bit as the tall man spun on his companions.  "We are now officially running out of time.  Now that you two have wasted any chance we had to explain to our little charge here, it's Plan B."  A swift slicing motion of his hand cut off any snickering from the short man.

The woman placed a tender hand on my arm.  "You heard the boss, princess."  She tossed her gun to the tall man, then removed the clamps keeping Mister Baludmesh's hat on his broken head.  There were a few tears in the satin, and it was covered in dust, but it was otherwise intact.

My feelers pulled back, away from these strange people.  I wanted my freedom back.  I didn't want change anymore.  "Please leave," I whispered, flinching away.

The tall man stepped forward, carrying the woman's gun as though it were merely a thought.  He balanced it easily, finding a free hand to gesture in a way that I had not seen since I had been taken to this place.  "Jahvay afta'ein, mos kobalít."

His accent was perfect.  I promise safe passage, my child.  It had been so long since I had heard someone truly speak, in the language of my mother.  I smiled, even laughed a little.  He even spoke like a mother.  "You mean, 'Johvay avte'ein', habi."  Someone with an accent like that would surely know 'habi', a polite word equitable to uncle or lingzun.

He nodded, chuckling softly.  "Right.  But you understand.  Come with us."

I glanced back over my shoulder at the shattered tea things.  One cup had survived the blast, a spare that Mister Baludmesh had always brought in case I destroyed the first.  "Must I?"

"Yes."  The urgency in his voice was palpable.  It made me feel powerful somehow.

I grinned, but the unfamiliar expression made my face feel swollen and stretched.  "Why?"

"It doesn't matter.  You're coming with us whether you like it or not."  The woman discarded Mister Baludmesh's head and held up the top hat.  Its long, white ears flapped forlornly.  "First, you need a little camouflage."

Camouflage…  I stared at her, then at the hat, then blanched.  "You can't mean--I can't do that."

She tsked at me and thrust the hat out.  "It'll only be for a minute.  That philozophedrin they dose your tea with doesn't dull you sufficient to get us past scans."

I turned to the man who spoke Feilova, but he shook his head.  "Gin tyevo."  It is necessary.

My hands trembled.  During all my years of imprisonment, I had at least been in possession of all my faculties.  It was true, I was chained by the philozophedrin, but my feelers were always loose.  I didn't know if I could function with them trapped in a hat.

An alarm blared, three alternating pitches in three alternating speeds.  I accepted the hat and tucked my feelers into it as well as I could.  I felt like I had been put into a paper sack.

"Good girl," the woman said, and I hoped that she meant it.

"Can we cut the diplomacy and book it?"

None of that question made any sense to me, but based on the actions that the woman and the tall man took, it must have been another statement about leaving in a hurry.

We exited through the hole, my kidnappers stomping professionally while I picked my way in a compromise of care and speed.  The short man kept pace with me as we raced through the corridors.  Out of the corner of my eye, I could take in everything.  Handicapped as I was, there was no way to experience anything in its full glory, but it was impossible to miss the stained glass windows and antique furniture.  Everything was as old and perfectly beautiful as the tea set.

It was stupefying to pass through these rooms at all, to see the spread of luxury throughout the building.  If I had ever felt guilty about needing guards, I would have to take it back.  Even if they had been taken from their families for a thankless task, they certainly lived in splendour.  Or perhaps they didn't, really.  I had no way of really knowing.  I could have been looking into my own mind.

Beside me, the short man carried his weapon as easily as though it weren't there.  When we reached the anteroom, he and the woman discarded their weapons and their fatigues, stuffing it all into a couple of duffel bags.  While the short man stepped into a pair of denim trousers, he glanced up at me for a split second.

"You look like you're going to fall over," he said.  He might have been worried, but it was impossible to do anything but guess.  I decided that he wasn't.

"My fingers feel like feet."  I held them up so that he could see, only half aware that I was slurring.

He gave me a crooked smile and lowered my hands for me, then turned to glare at the woman.  "Chief, I don't think she's gonna last long on foot."

"Then carry her, sprog."

Some part of that order tweaked a switch in my brain that triggered annoyance.  Although it was very likely a misfire striking the wrong synapse, I directed a scowl... in the wrong direction.  The man who had been given the order looked taken aback, but he scooped me up, like soup into a spoon.

Even with my senses in a knot, I was not well-pleased.  I ought to have stayed behind, really.  My first lapse in judgement in... ever.  Perhaps I shouldn't have put off lapsing for so long.  If I'd done it sooner, it might have been more fun my first time.  Or not.

He ran in a strange, unhurried and rather bumpy fashion that forced me to hold tightly to the rim of the silk top hat.  The pinch on my feelers made me whimper and remember what my surroundings would have been had I stayed behind.

Poor Mister Baludmesh.  There wouldn't be his like, wherever the shorter man was jogging to.
~~~

Chapter 2:

Outside, the world began.  Or rather, it had begun long ago, but I had not seen it.  Perhaps it was I who had just begun, though what I had begun I could hardly articulate.

Of course, at that moment in time, I could not articulate very much at all.  My head jostled between a freestyling bounce and an uncomfortable game of paddle ball with the shorter man's shoulder.

"You could just pretend to be asleep," he grumbled, as he travelled at the rear, navigating narrow, unpopulated byways.

Pretending was for children.  I wrinkled my nose in distaste.  Had I ever been a child?  I couldn't have been, I was of ancient distinction, far older than any of these creatures attempting a march of mediocrity.  Yet even that was beyond their reach.

However, such a high-minded speech would have been little better than absurd musings in my current state.  Poor Mister Baludmesh's hat crushed down on me, as though I had escaped nothing.

"Am I escaping?"  A few moments passed before I realised I had said it aloud.  It was a ridiculous notion in the first place, although there was no telling where I was now.  The woman and the taller man had stopped running.

My question went unanswered.  They had all stopped, skirting the edge of a crowd  My centre of gravity shifted, and I felt a solid line beneath my feet.

"We ought to have given her a change of clothes."

"No need," the taller man said, before lowering his height to reach me.  "Can you disguise yourself?"

I nearly snorted at him, never mind how rude the action.  Disguising oneself from humans was simple business.  ...when I was not so impaired.  I bit my lower lip and drew it into my mouth.  This man knew my language and nature, he ought to have known that so many handicaps made such a request unreasonable.

Then he lifted the hat.  I nearly gasped at the mixture of pain and relief.  But I could smell and taste his fear, his apprehension.  They were bitter, nasty sensations.  He had taken the hat in order to remove its effects on me.  I projected an image over myself that was closely related to the human idea of mundane, and smiled up at him.

Again, I asked myself why I had come along with them.  This raised another question, which more or less challenged me to leave.  I was free of that place, and I could be free of them.  They no longer wore helmets, and I was hindered only by the philozophedrin.  Out in the open, all I needed was a suggested face.

He smiled back at me and then looped his arm in mine.  The shock of being touched in so familiar a fashion jarred me.  Tumbling headlong into the human crowd added the susurring jostle of busy creatures, so that it was all I could do to maintain the illusion.  Perhaps it would serve my interests to stay with this lot a while longer.

The other two kept close to us, like bodyguards.  We continued in this way for some time, though I noticed a patternless thickening and thinning of humans.  None of my kidnappers said anything.  In fact, they never seemed to look at me unless it was necessary to avoid a collision.  Although I did catch the shorter man eyeing me cautiously, from time to time.

By the time we stopped again, I had gotten used to their buzzing minds.  If I had been a nayroo'an, I would have been able to read each thought, but as I was, it was all so much insectoid noise.  Emotions were easier to suss out, with colours and tastes to categorise each into a neat little box.

My arm was hooked in once more, and then the tall man stepped through a door that I had not seen, taking me with him.

For the second--or perhaps third--time that day, I entered another world.  Granted, this was a dark, featureless world of unexciting drabness, but it was still new, and it was nice to have a sensory break.

Daylight did its best to enter the building, but it was held back quite efficiently by thick curtains.  Mundane thinking, desperate for a turn in my brain, sent me towards the first light-switch I could see.  But before I could reach it, the woman kidnapper stood in front of me and wagged her finger.

"Try not to touch anything," she said, in a voice that did little to restrain the contemptuous anxiety that I could sense in any case.

Although her face was easily 12 centimetres above mine, she angled her head down so that I could get the maximum effect of her twitchy smile.  I decided to like her, simply because I had the strong feeling that it would make her angry.

Now that my mind had finally snapped free of the hat madness, I could get a good look at things and not doubt the reality around me.  It was a disappointment.  The woman was browned all over, like a loaf of bread, with short curly hair and broad shoulders.  Ordinary.

After a moment, she ushered me away from the light switch and into a corner of the room, where a few duffel bags had been stuffed behind a chair.  The two men had already congregated there, switching the duffel bags they'd been carrying with those behind the chair.

It seemed that kidnapping was rather like camping in fast motion.  Rather than be left out of the fun, I changed my illusion to something homey, to match this new costume change.

The woman seemed to have stepped out of a magazine, but she'd got it slightly wrong.  Armed with a straight skirt and cream-coloured blouse, she evoked the image of a human home-maker.  Until one looked at her feet and wondered why there were combat boots there.

Her partners did a slightly more seamless job; the shorter man clashed his own darker complexion with a bright red jumper while the other man seemed to be torn between dressing for church or a casual party.  They looked very different in this dim, twilight-esque lighting.  Mostly they ended up looking like an exercise in opposites.

"May I have your names?" I asked, breaking through the din of rustling cloth as they all patted themselves down.

I was not surprised to see the woman tense her shoulders, but the motherly tall man gave her a look I supposed to be meaningful and then turned a smile on me.  "I'm John," he said.

Just John.  "And the others?"

"This is Bijou," he said, indicating the woman, who flared her nostrils, "and Mao."  The shorter man held up a hand, and then dropped it to his side.

I was shorter than all of them, even Mao, but I was still the superior being.  Logic suggested that they may be lying, and I had a small trick of finding them out.  Not that it would do me any good, but I always felt like showing off to myself whenever  I could move my feelers freely.  Besides, it was a trick that would work even with that awful drug still weighing me down.

Focusing on John's face, I pictured his name as solid element in the air, blocking him in.  He just smiled gormlessly at me, immobile as a blinking stone.  If it had been a lie, then he would have been able to move about as though I was doing nothing at all.

A stabbing pain speared through the front of my head.  If anyone ever came near me with a hat again, I would bite them.  But at least I knew their names.  It made for clearer thinking.  Even with diminutive agony lancing through my brain.

I forced a smile and pointed at myself.  "Cadence."  And then I brushed past him to sit in the chair.  It was nice and soft.