18.06.202X - Hangout - Part 1

 Hangout - Part 1

“Mishka...” Sayori said, shutting the door behind her. “Hey, Mish...”

She was dressed quite atypically for the situation – a simple and summery white knee-length dress, paired with her old, faded red Converse and dark socks covering her shins. The look, if you could call it that, was largely ruined by the patchwork of scar tissue spread across her body, occasionally covered by a fresh – albeit rain-soaked – bandage. The dress itself was sodden, as was the girl wearing it – the ongoing thunderstorm and constant rain had done her little favor, and even the creamy white of the dress was more of a dull gray tone.

Quite exposed, one might think, and Sayori thought so too, but... this was supposed to be a “hang out”. 

With Mishka. 

Not a night spent reloading magazines for tomorrow's use, not a night spent cooking and pickling and weeding and welding, a proper hangout.

She'd still elected to keep her little black thigh bag – the one containing her medications, her drugs, some odds and ends – but had it hanging far more loosely off of a red canvas belt that had seen better days, the bag swinging to and fro with every measured, robotic step she took towards the comatose girl.

She'd even done her make-up, although that was sparse at best, the brushes and pens feeling unfamiliar in her hands, alien and slightly too delicate after months of slapping magazines and extracting smoking brass from jammed ejection ports and climbing chain-link fences and chopping off heads and...

She stopped in front of the bed – the blood-stained mattress now covered with towels – and try as she might, she couldn't help staring at Mishka – covered in bandages, bandaids on her face, an IV drip with saline running to the cannula in her right arm, the valve on her right arm closed but still there just in case.

Sayori had initially clipped Mishka's fingernails short – after cleaning the shredded tissue out from the nail bed and putting bandaids on the still-raw fingertips – but had later decided to put a thick pair of wool mittens on her hands, again, just in case.

Her eyes were as empty as when she'd almost killed h found her in the storage lot, staring off into space, completely unresponsive. The red “CREI” t-shirt laid discarded on the end of the bed, flecked with dried blood – after the surgery a couple days prior, after the IV drips ran out, she'd done her best to change Mishka's clothes into something cleaner, and had been taken aback by the dearth of clothing in her cabinets and drawers – FAL mags, books, water bottles, various bits of kit, yes, but clothing? No.

Eventually enough she'd found a t-shirt and a pair of yellow sport shorts. That was it. She almost felt a bit bad – she had cabinets and cupboards stacked full of shirts, hoodies, dresses, jeans, and perfumes, but the poor girl living underneath barely had anything apart from her fatigues.

“Hey Mish.” She repeated, trying her best to sound cheerful and upbeat, like nothing was wrong with the world, like her best friend hadn't been lying comatose in her bed for almost two full days now... “I brought... I brought you some snacks. There's... beef jerky, and peanuts, and... ch-chocolate wafer sticks...”

She swallowed, her mouth dry, and carefully sat down on the bed next to her friend.

Dead silence.

“I was wondering... maybe you'd like t-to... to play some cards?” There was that hopeful tone again, but this time it was more genuine – Mishka had mentioned gambling with her old squad, playing poker and blackjack off-duty. “I brought a card deck, I found one earlier... maybe we could play some hold-'em?”

The emergency water ration Sayori had opened for her still laid untouched on her nightstand – the one she'd had her TV on, long ago – as did the MRE, the small plastic food bags inside undisturbed.

“I don't... don't remember the rules that well, s-so you'll have to correct me if I do something wrong...” She said, knowing full well that Mishka wouldn't, that she most likely wouldn't even as much as move a single muscle during their entire parody of a hangout.

Sayori started drawing cards.

“Don't worry, I'll d-draw for you as well!” She said, in that false-chipper tone she was now beginning to hate. “Let's see... q-queen of hearts... t-ten of hearts... t-three of spades...”

She scrunched up her nose, counting the mess of cards in her lap quietly for a moment.

Two pairs, ace high, Mishka was the definite winner.

 

“You win, Mishka, look! You win...” Sayori said, her words falling on deaf ears.

Mishka still hadn't so much as moved a muscle, her friend staring off into space with empty eyes.

“that... t-that means y-you get to eat this wafer... look, I'll even put it in your hand for you...”

The wafer fell on the floor with barely a noise. It would have felt better if it would have been a loud crack, or a gunshot, or anything else that would break the silence, because Sayori found it harder and harder to hold back her tears.

“Y-you ready... f-for round two?” Sayori sniffled, shuffling the cards back into the deck with shaky hands.

Round two – three kings for Sayori, pair of tens for Mishka, the wafer tasted like cardboard but masked the taste of Valium quite well. She didn't want to eat, not like this.

“S-so, I was up north, a-at the rest stop... A helo came by and d-dropped something when it saw me... c-can you guess what it was?” Of course she couldn't guess. “Food! ...a-and water, and b-batteries and meds a-and...”

There was another sniffle, then another quick glance since she just couldn't stand looking into those eyes for longer than five seconds and then Sayori let her gaze return to the dusty linoleum floor.

Hands clasped, picking at the burns on her fingers.

“S-so I guess they care a-after all. T-that's official US Government water y-you're drinking!” She pointed to the – completely untouched – emergency water ration, the liquid inside visibly collecting dust.

A few moments passed, and she opened her mouth, as if to speak again, but couldn't really manage anything.

They sat in silence, Mishka's shallow breathing barely audible.

“They, uh... they dropped new flyers, as w-well...” Sayori gulped, a digging out the pair of moist, folded flyers from her thigh bag as quietly as she could. “Let's see... one's fr-from the CDC, a-and the other o-one is from f-FEMA...”

She briefly let her eyes wander over the texts, “temporary suspension of civil liberties”, “wear a face covering at all times”, “requisition of private property”...

Not very cheerful reading, and the tears in her eyes made the texts even harder to make out, and...

“A-actually, those... those f-fliers aren't v-very cheerful... n-not really g-good bedtime stories...”

Another sniffle, three more Valium into her palm, a sudden urge to hang herself from the ceiling fan.

“I'm g-going outside to top up the g-generators.”

A lie. She'd refilled them yesterday.

Sayori nearly sprinted up the rusted metal staircase, angry and sad and helpless, the taste of copper in her mouth. It was still pouring rain outside. She downed a couple Prozac, the dosage didn't feel like it mattered that much anymore. Her fingers grasped the all-too-familiar handle of her M&P9 and she briefly contemplated turning the gun on herself before shaking her head.

Mishka needed her. Her Mishka. Her friend.

She'd mentioned something about her grandpa driving an Oshkosh for a living – a long haul trucker. Sayori rummaged through her closet, discarding jeans and crop-tops before finally finding her prize: a faded gray hoodie with the Oshkosh logo emblazoned across the chest in a cheerful yellow-and-red, probably a vintage item that would be worth hundreds to the right kind of weirdo.

T-shirt, Oshkosh hoodie, jeans. The dress was getting cold. Perfume on, something nice and understated, cotton and fresh linens and baby powder to counteract the smell of disinfectant and sweat and old blood in the room.

Something comforting.

And just like that she was out again, this time sprinting down the stairs and towards the old busted ambulance they'd long ago scrapped for parts and just left there, next to the outhouse.

She took one of the flyers – the CDC one, maybe – and affixed it to the cracked windshield with the one wiper that hadn't been broken off yet. Then she took ten paces, pistol in hand.

Turn.

Squeeze.

What was supposed to be one confident shot became two, then three, then five, then fifteen, until she was huffing with anger, mechanically pulling the trigger, the hammer clicking softly in protest at every empty squeeze.

Suddenly, she screamed with anger and threw the pistol towards the bullet hole-riddled windshield, the already-damaged glass finally shattering completely as the piece crashed through it.

She took a few running steps and then drove her fist into the hood of the ambulance again and again and again and again, leaving dents with every blow, bloodied smears from her protesting knuckles adorning the dirtied medical white of the ambulance, a short grunt leaving her throat with every punch.

Then, she fell onto her knees, breathing heavily, cursing under her breath, her jeans wet and covered in sand.

The pistol could rot for all she cared.

 

 

 “You win, Mishka, look! You win...”