Author Games Compilation [Cycle 2]

Task 3 - The Witness [LIM]

AUTHOR GAMES: EMPTY NIGHT - TASK THREE: THE WITNESS - LIMERICK

It's early in the morning and yet it's still night but through the bus window I can feel the steady rays of morning coming up and shooting just inches above the streets of Chicago, firing through alleys and between the underbellies of cars parked on the side of the road. I haven't slept in a full twenty-four hours and my temple rests against the large window beside me. It's cold. I'm at the front of the bus so the engine roars loudest here, and as we speed through the downtown area, every roll of tire over asphalt makes the window vibrate, and so my entire skull vibrates, my entire being, but I don't care because I'm just so goddamn tired and my eyes are drifting to a close and I'm so glad that I'm sitting by myself and that nobody can appreciate someone as tall, someone as glowing, as sinful, as me.

There comes a time where I don't even realize my eyes have closed, and it feels like bliss, it truly does, relief deep in my brain and behind my eyes where the pressure is most throbbing. For the first time in twenty-four hours, my body relaxes. Heaven, if I've ever known it.

Then the bus stops.

The entire vessel lurches forward and my forehead smacks directly into the back of the seat in front of me. Nose, smushed; cheek, slapped. I bounce back instantaneously and against my own wishes. "Fuck," I say quietly, but my voice is always so deep that it can't help but be louder than I mean. My long fingers rub carefully at the place of impact. Feeling for a knot that I know won't exist. Fuck indeed. "Fuck indeed."

A light tinkle of a laugh sounds to my left, and my eyes dart to the corners, looking bitterly through the peripheral. There's that girl again, that dainty one with the pink hair all propped up in her seat, knees folded under her like they tell children not to do when en route to elementary. My gaze softens; my face flushes. "What?" I whisper. I shouldn't have.

"I didn't know you spoke," the girl says.

I'm still staring at her when Nickel, the officer in blue I've knocked over on multiple occasions, hops to attention and stands at the front of the bus, clapping his hands together once, firmly, for all faces to gather 'round. I'm still staring at her when she turns away to listen intently to what he has to say, and I think it wise to follow her example, so I do the same.

"Alright, okay, just another briefing of what we're doing here, everybody, nothing too hard to grasp. We're looking for a demon named Imariel, who runs the nightclub just outside right there, see, I'm pointing to it, there, yes. We want any information he can offer about Dorian's circumstances, about his murderer. We may need to split up to accomplish this in an efficient manner, but before we do, I want you all to know the stakes heading in. It may be dangerous. You may be hassled or offered something. If offered anything, anything at all, say no. Unless it's Imariel's direct location, deny, but gently, so as to not anger the clients. I don't care if a sexy beast is offering to buy you a drink - it cannot be trusted here. You will die. Understood?" Nickel the Officer pauses, lets his smoldering gaze linger just a moment longer, and then he claps his hands together in peppy fashion and smiles brightly, bouncing on the balls of his heels like an elf. "Alrighty, now let's get moving, kiddos! It's not every day we go on a field trip!"

In that moment I decide that I like Nickel and his dramatic personas, and that if he touches me again, I'll at least try to refrain from throwing him into the gutter. Because I'm in the second seat from the front, I'm behind him in an instant, following closely like a stray puppy begging one kind stranger who fed them so graciously to take them home, feed them more, stay near.

Feed me more. Feed me more. Feed me more. A few short seconds of vertigo. Fuck indeed, I think, because despite having eaten just that night, it's never enough. You're always hungry when cast down to Earth. That's the worst part about all this.