Without the buzz of life, it seemed a much more depressing place than Xander remembered. When he, Mike and Cathy would stay up until 3am playing video games and talk about what they’d done all day. Now they only served to remind him of what he was and what he had done to them and everyone else around him.
“Lord, you’re depressing,” Sara said, walking over to him with an orange tray loaded down with a large plate of fries. To some, fries were just a snack food, but to her they were a full-course meal. They were loaded down with cheese, bacon bits, green onion, onion and sour cream. The sight of it made Xander urge every time she took a bite, washing it down with a large slurp of watered-down cola. “What the hell do I have to do to get you out of this funk?”
Xander smiled at the memory just as he had at the time, a sly grin twitching at the left side of his face. “I can think of a few things,” he whispered aloud, leering playfully at the vacant seat across from him.
She tossed a cheese-spattered fry at him and he moved quickly to dodge the gooey projectile, letting it sail into someone else’s table. “Jerk,” she said simply as she continued her meal, a spiteful look on her face.
His grin widened.
“Seriously though, whatever’s wrong, do you really think that sitting here with me moping about it is going to fix anything?” she asked, staring at him knowingly from beneath her blonde bangs.
“Might,” he said aloud again, keeping his voice low. He could almost see her in his minds eye now. Could smell the rotten mess that she called food. “I’m scared. Scared to move, scared to think... feel like no matter what I do’ll be the wrong answer.”
“Probably true,” she nodded, frowning at him.
He shot her a quizzical look, but did not respond.
“But that’s a good thing. I mean, if every answer is going to end up bad anyway, it takes the pressure off. You can just do what you feel. Sure you’ll get beat down, but no more than you would if you didn’t do what you feel... gotta take your satisfactions somewhere, y’know.”
He nodded, stroking his chin with his thumb and index finger as he did. No matter how he thought about it, Genblade was just as much a link to his sanity as Mike and Cathy were. He had made the choice not to kill him, despite what he had done to Sara. I chose to let him live. That’s not something I can back away from now. He thought, the memory of Sara still playing out before him as she lifted her head up to get all of the cheese literally melting off the fry she was holding. “Thanks,” he said finally, his smile more genuine now.
“No problem. If I can patch up Grendel and Peterson, I can- -”
“Hey, Drew,” came a voice from behind Xander, just as a heavy hand fell onto his shoulder.
He jumped in his chair, almost falling off it as he lost the memory and snapped back to reality, his mind momentarily fizzed by the jolt in perception. All at once the sounds of The Factory that he’d been sifting out into white noise came crashing back, like an avalanche of commotion. He turned around bitterly, his face drawled up in a scowl. “What?” he snapped at the person behind him, standing up as he did so.
Derek raised his hands in the air and backed up a pace, his thin eyebrows shooting upwards and his mouth curling into a letter O. “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to interrupt your teatime there.”
Xander stopped, closed his eyes, then sighed. Slowly, he let a smile perk back onto his lips. “Sorry. M’in a mood, it’s a thing. Not your fault.”
Derek grinned, his shocked expression mellowing down to his usual stoic eyes and comedic grin. “What’s got your panties in a bunch? I thought I heard Mike and Cat were gonna be okay?”
He nodded slowly, the smell of the poutine that hadn’t even really existed still fresh in his nostrils. “Yeah,” he said finally, forcing a smile. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Probably nothing.”
Derek’s grin grew so wide that it didn’t seem natural, as though someone had sliced it onto his face. “Good,” he said, slapping his hand down onto the man’s shoulder again and giving it a friendly squeeze. “Saw you comin’ in here from across the street,” he said, jutting his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of his house. “Couldn’t figure why you were comin’ over all by your lonesome. Thought you might wanna get some food or something?”
His smile was contagious, and after a moment Xander didn’t have to fake his own anymore. “Sure,” he said, chuckling as he motioned to Roxanne that he wanted to place an order. “Let’s get a couple of fries with everything. On me.”
“Thought you hated those,” Derek shrugged as the two of them walked towards the counter.
“They grow on you.”
Two-hundred and forty-eight dollars.
That was the take-home amount that Clarence Fisher drew every week for thirty-eight hours work as a security guard at Coral Beach Penitentiary. Thirty-eight hours, not forty. If he worked just two hours more a week, he would be eligible for medical benefits, insurance and be guaranteed a raise once every six months. Even though two hours didn’t sound like much to him, it apparently made all the difference to the people that signed his paychecks because he’d never managed to get any more than an extra hour out of them. If he complained too much, he often found his hours slightly reduced for the next week and had learned to
