The GOD Box (19 page)

As he walked,
Gabe heard footsteps behind him. Trying to ignore it, he tried to remember their whole conversation up, to finish gleaning important information.
This doctor, that doctor, May and Dane and their rules.
He passed that woman’s house whose name eluded him at the moment.

Unable to control the frequency with which he looked behind him, he sped up.
So did his pursuer. His legs were tired and unstable, he didn’t trust himself to be able to outrun anyone or anything. Gabe could be killed on this stretch of land, then hidden in the jungle, and no one would ever know.
Is that Miek? Would he kill him now? Is that the conspiracy? The shadow is not thin enough to be Miek, is it?

Visions of a thin,
bright-eyed murder flooded his brain as he tripped his way home, breathing heavily. When he reached the house, he was grateful for a small candle that was lit so he could see the door. He opened the door, stumbling inside to look back and see the skinny boy on the ground laughing.

“I’m sorry” he said. “Couldn’t help it.” He laughed and rolled around. Furious, now, Gabe stood up,
jumped inside and nearly slammed the door before locking it.

May cocked her head, “Everything okay?”

Gabe jumped a foot in the air, growled, then whimpered, and set himself down in the most distant open chair as he hyperventilated. The door was tried and Gabe shot a scathing look at it. From behind the door Miek whispered light-heartedly, “May… May… please come unlock the door.” It sounded like he was right up against it; cheek to wood.

It took n
o time at all for May to prescribe what had happened. She smiled and Gabe spat that it wasn’t funny. May stood up from the table where she sat next to the sleeping Dane who was drooling unattractively all over the wood. She made her way to the door, opened it just a hair and spoke to Miek through it, getting the full story, and laughing, sometimes peeking around the corner at Gabe’s sullen face.

He felt like he almost
died
and there they were; laughing about it. Really, though, if anyone wanted to catch up with him, they could have.

Miek stuck his face in the opening of the door, which squished his lips and distorted his voice. “Can I come in now?”

May opened the door all the way. Miek entered, giving a big superficial smile and click of his tongue to Gabe, then noted the puddle of drool on the table where Dane was fast asleep, and looking to May said with a wink, “that’s hot”.

Miek was irritating. And Gabe, he almost
just had a heart-attack. Too bad he didn’t. Jonathan thought that maybe Gabe would die and they’d let him out of these damn chains. There had to be a better way for this to work. There had to be a formula.

“I know you feel responsible.” Dane said to May in the morning. Clearly they’d been up talking for much longer than Gabe was awake. “We both are, and I’m okay with shouldering that for now. It might not even be a week.”

“I’m so tired.” She said, giving into her exhaustion finally, weighing down toward the table. Gabe believed that, he never saw her sleep, but once. She was hardly able to process what Dane was saying. She added, “Lying only makes things worse.”

“I know.” Dane agreed sympathetically. “
It’s the only thing I can think to do right now to give us time. Can I do anything to help you ease your mind?” His face was gentle and his deep eyes poised on her hers.

“I
’ll be fine. I’ll figure it out. I’m… just tired.”

He tapped the table with his knuckle and said, looking at her, “Okay. I’
ve got to go.”

“Kay.”
Her alertness withered out with her breath and her head drooped ungracefully into her arms on the table.

Dane
then exited the house, closing the door carefully behind him.

To rid of suspicion from the burning, Dane was going back up to the city they just came from
to play innocent. The plan made sense. He would go in and act like he was just coming to see it for the first time because Darian made him curious. He wouldn’t even mention anything about the burning, assuming that that was the way it was when they found it. But that wouldn’t last for long because they’d be so stressed about it, he was sure they would bring it up. Then he would say he was going to go look through one of the houses to see if there were any books. And then he’d keep playing the part until it was safe to leave.

Gabe wondered the last time they were really apart… must not have been recent. He wondered how much it hurt May to say goodbye to him, if at all.

“When was the last time you were apart?”

May barely looked up, and did so very drearily, “Um… like two and… a half months ago.”

“Before that?”

“I dunno…” she sighed heavily, looking like someone was pulling her eye balls backward in order to force the lids
to close. Her lashes fluttered. “We have seen each other every day for two years… give or take a couple weeks.”

“Does it bother you to watch him go?”

May moved in what seemed to be a shrug.

“The tears are tiredness, not sadness.” She finished.

Trusting so thoroughly in their relationship made her stable enough that she would likely be okay, Gabe determined. By herself, she stayed at the table, with a solitary tear running sideways over her nose, until utter exhaustion disabled her from rendering any vital signs and she fell asleep.

Gabe felt sleep coming on, but as if in some form of self-punishment, he refused to let it take him.
While May was asleep, Miek and Samson left, too, heading to the cave to see if they could destroy it. Apparently they’d given up on cooperative tactics. As further proof of that: Jonathan was on a chair in the opposite corner of the room, drooping forward in the chains that he was bound with at elbows and wrists, which strung from hooks they had put in the walls and in the ceilings especially for him after their little bout three days ago. Now that it was dark, Gabe couldn’t see all the bruises that Jonathan had on him, and the black eye, but they were there.

Once upon a time, they were invincible. Now, in almost every way, they were invisible
, except for the pain and anger they felt inside, which seemed to be the only reason they could still exist. He spent his day bitterly looking around this hell-hole, thinking of all their doctors and diagnosis. This was really no different than any other time. Everyone still had problems. They were labeling and rule making, but with a different focus. The focus was not on society, but on themselves.

The next day he felt even more path
etic, as if his body actually understood what was happening in his brain. Depression finally caught up with him. He didn’t want to try to move. When asked if he wanted to try the soup Janine made, he gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. A few hours later his stomach audibly growled, thus Janine coaxed him the more. Refusing was no good and he hoped that just maybe she would pity him and come take care of him. As she was about to do just that, May warned her,

“Ma, he’
s depressed, and wanting pity. He’s vying for your attention. Let him make his own choice. If he wants food, he can ask for it.”

She was at the table with her back facing him, working in a small notebook, wit
h a few books stacked or open. May gave no look behind her to see what his reaction was to her comment. Janine looked reproving but kind,

“May, I know that he probably needs to learn to overcome this resentment on his own. I just don’t know that he knows
how
. There’s an empty look in his eye that tells me he hasn’t had someone take care of him for a long time. It’s okay with me to show a little mercy.”

“
Okay, it was just a thought,” May responded, “I just see it as his opportunity to grow. I’m not intending to be unkind, just hopeful for him to accept change.”

Gabe didn’t know what to think about that last comment and was irritated that May could read him so well, and see into these most embarrassing of desperate hopes.
The one woman was mercy and the other justice… weren’t they that pair? Janine sat next to him, and, like he was a child, straightened his hair so that it was smooth behind his ear and flat on top. She had a bowl of warm soup in her hand.

“Will you please eat it?” She asked.

With a furrowed brow, he moved himself to a proper sitting position. Taking the bowl from her and scowling, this was his fate. The gentle touch of that woman’s hand was worth it. As he spooned the soup sloppily and painfully into his mouth, over his lips and down his chin, he watched Janine sit at the table and ask May what she was working on. He hoped they wouldn’t look back and see what a mess he was making. But, they did, May first, then her Mom. Then they looked back, May’s face was unchanged. Janine looked more sympathetic and pitiful than ever.

May was curious.
She was maybe a little high-strong at the moment, and perhaps somewhat unhappy with her decision to strap herself at home. With all respect, though, he had never found her to be brash or even unmerciful.

They had a fairly reasonable mother-daughter relationship.
May often asked her mother if a sentence made sense. Come to think of it, Gabe didn’t know what kind of education May had. True, she read a lot which makes writing a lot easier, but he knew as well as anyone that proofing was important. Usually, the pattern for organization as a new community had been houses, government (however unplanned or prepared), and then education.

He w
ondered, now, if it came as a shock to the first parents that
they
had to teach their own children.
Go figure.

Gabe felt like the
y were leaving a world in May’s and Dane’s hands.
Could they handle it? Probably not.
Their perspective was too narrow. Miek called them ‘higher rules’. Gabe didn’t like that at all. As a matter of fact it went against everything he stood for. Something about that was wrong.

He was curious, and needed to ask the question, but felt so unlike himself when the words came out, “May…” he started. “Are you happy?”

At the picnic-like dining table, May sat with her mother. She was busy listing sources for her relationship theory; gathering quotes to support it and then taking down a few of her own ideas. With the question, she paused and considered. Sighing as if resigned to the fact she said,

“I don’t know. I suppose I don’t have anything to compare it to.”

“You’ve never felt happier at one moment than the next? It’s a pretty clear difference. Think about it. When have you been really happy?” He coaxed.

“I’ve noticed the difference, of course, but I thought you were asking a different question. Happy in one moment
wasn’t really what you were asking, I thought?”

“What about having that momentary happiness all the time?”

May was taken aback, “It’s not possible.” She put her hand to her face and reconsidered the answer. “No, I’m sticking with that. It’s not possible.”

Gabe didn’t want to argue, and wasn’t sure how to argue it.
So bizarre.
Ignoring that, he asked another question;

“Are you free?”

“I’d give the same answer. Only to add this; I have the desire. I just don’t have the capacity.”

Gabe settle
d again, shimmying down in his chair until it was completely uncomfortable.
What did that even mean? Lacks the capacity?
May seemed to consider it herself for a while, silently, before turning back to the books and to her mother who was helping her organize her thoughts.

Based off of the few ideas
May was sharing aloud, Gabe became very wary and made a personal note to destroy that small green book that was sitting haphazardly with his belongings. She would probably enjoy it far more than she ought. Problem was, the bag was never out of their sight. But now, they sometimes let
him
out of their sight at least. Maybe there was a way he could do it…

May spoke more junk about ‘supposing to’ and Gabe had had enough, so he said, “Right and wrong is a figment of imagination
.”

Her response reflected offense,
but also a startling amount of confidence,

“No, the problem is that it’s a figment of
imagination that
you think
it’s a figment of imagination. Worse yet, people thinking that supposed right and wrong will never have an influence, are the truly delusional ones.”

Gabe was really grumpy about that
. His thoughts became obsessive…
This is wrong, this is wrong, it won’t work now.

…

The next day he ate normally, crying off and on, thinking of things that would never exist again, pitying his loneliness and his failure, feeling heart-broken and inconsolable. Around the early evening, probably five o’clock, everything would change.

Immediately his mind registered a few things. There was a pain in his left
arm. May heard his discomfort from across the room, where she was talking almost literally face to face with Jonathan. The rest of the house was empty except for a child in the back room. Gabe’s whole body seized. And then, he knew nothing; he
was
nothing, but a corpse.