Filaria - Brent Hayward [3]
“McCreedy, I was just asking. I was thinking.”
“Well don’t.” McCreedy shifted gear and the motor hummed. “They tell me you’re the lookout, the eyeballs. So look out. Eyeball. That’s why you’re here. I do the thinking.”
Young Phister leaned back. He closed his eagle eyes. He felt sick. Sicker than usual. More than just hunger and general malaise — those he was accustomed to. This amplified degree of unpleasant sensations had begun with the onset of the present predicament, three nights prior, a lifetime ago:
Milling around the entrance to the moss room, dazed people stood listless in the dark there, while inside the room itself, Young Phister — among others — got quietly wasted.
A night like any other.
But at some point in the hazy chronology — the point when the night became unlike other nights — Crystal Max and her boyfriend, Simpson Lang, started to fight. Reclining together on a dark green hillock near the corner of the room, the couple had been chatting, chewing — like everyone else — when their voices suddenly rose. Simpson had said something that caused Crystal to scream: I’m so tired of your suspicion!
And Simpson: You don’t understand anything I say!
Stoned, huddled by himself on his own mound, Phister heard the tirade of venomous spite that quickly followed, each lash of words cutting deeper than the previous. He listened, his back to the pair before turning openly, to stare, as the argument escalated, becoming louder, more animated, until it flayed every personal aspect from Crystal and Simpson, everything that made them human, until there was nothing left of either to tear down, only an ugly, empty beast that coiled the two spent bodies and rose up, twining, to the ceiling. The nasty tones and tense postures had fractured the night, sliding it into an unwelcome place, aggressive and tumultuous.
Phister’s buzz was totally wrecked.
Holding onto Simpson’s sleeve, Crystal shrieked hysterically, tearing at him, and Simpson tried to pull away from her, one hand held up —
In his petrified state, Phister was unsure if he should interfere. Perhaps go fetch someone more decisive than he? He told himself he would wait to see if Crystal started in with her fingernails: she’d been known to. Then he would go for help. Or hold her back himself.
All around, paired or in small clusters, the others in the moss room chewed, dozed, talked. Somebody sang. No one else seemed to notice the fight. Phister could not understand this. For him, time was charged, poised.
Just as he assured himself that he was finally about to try getting to his feet, to do something — anything — Simpson Lang broke free, stumbling backwards, his shirt torn. There was blood on his face. He stood livid for a second.
Then time resumed with a crash, and Crystal’s shouting; Simpson turned and stomped away, across the crests of moss as a wave of relief broke over Phister. No action had been required of him. He could tell himself he would have acted, if the fight had continued.
Crystal stood very still. Quiet now, watching Simpson recede. Only when the gloom had swallowed him altogether did she sit down, hard, crumpling to the green hump and holding her face between cupped fingers. She shook.
Recalling Crystal’s misery, Young Phister wished, for an instant, that he could be someone else, or that someone else might move into his skin and take control of him. Get things done for once.
He caught his breath. And let it out again.
The car rumbled on.
Phister harboured sentiments for the girl. Undisputable. These lurched up in him from time to time, veering perilously close to what he suspected might actually be love. Yes, to see her cry was painful, rending his insides, but to watch her laugh, Simpson Lang at her side? Tenfold worse.
When Phister was even younger, fourteen or so — before he had been called Young Phister — he and Crystal had nurtured a relationship. Of sorts. Seeds of one, anyhow. He was sure of it, with the hindsight that