Absolute Dark - Four (UPDATE#1)

Chapter Four — I Can Fix This…

I'm in a jet-black void.

Floating in nothing.

There is a current, pulling me nowhere.

And then I'm awake, drenched in sweat, gasping in the early morning light. I sit up, spying that Jane's door is a jar.

I stand up & peel off my over-sized hoodie & sweatpants; the hoodie makes a wet clap on the floor that sends a chill up my spine.

After a quick shower, a lot of water and a few protein bars, I realized something.

This would not end soon.

I feel drawn to Coraline more than I should be right now. I've been able to find her when others could not.

We were kids, but the prospect of doing nothing killed me where I sat at my desk, researching the quickest drive to Brightmane.

It wasn't too far from our hometown, and yet, I don't remember ever hearing of it.

Moving on to Wikipedia doesn't put me at ease. A lot of rural areas don't have impressive records in Canada to begin with.

I've been through this a thousand times while researching through the years. Whether in a library or deep in some oft-forgotten website, I almost always find decent information about rural communities when I hunt for it, but it's never easy.

Scrolling through search engines provides conflicting, nonsensical responses.

Then I remember the old codes Coraline used to send secret messages to each other.

She hasn't set up a new email since she was pretty young, and to my knowledge she doesn't use the only one she had much, if at all.

PrettyPinkPrincessFlabbergast@hotmail.com doesn't hold up well, so my hope was not high when I tried her old passwords.

It only took four or five tries before I got in. My jaw drops as I stare at the only unsent draft in her account, dated the same day we last spoke.

Checking my phone logs, I see she left this here two hours after we talked on the phone.

I click, my heartbeat and the mouse are the only things I can hear. The email opens.

Inside, I find a solid square made of number and letters. I smoke a cigarette while trying to remember our keywords.

We always used a simple digraph substitution cipher, with the same keywords.

A burning hot cherry falls from my smoke to my thigh and I yelp. This convinces me to toss the towel I've been wearing & put on some clothes, all I have clean are cargo pants and a few tops I pull over my head.

As soon as I'm dressed the keywords come to me, 'arrogant' & 'nightgown', both originating from out foster mother.

I run to my computer and using the keywords, skipping every third letter then fourth letter, I grabbed a pen & paper to check my work.

I wish I hadn't.

Once I'd decrypted it…"Don't come here" sat etched in blue ink on my notepad.

In what feels like an instant, I've shut down my PC, tossed my notepad entirely into the bin & started cooking eggs.

It kind of felt like waking up in the kitchen, like sleepwalking but I remember it.

I feel no peace, but I'm no longer tortured by uncertainty. I know what I'm doing next.

****

I'm shoving all my audio and surveillance tech into several bags, mixed in with my clothes for their protection as much as my convenience.

Jane strolls into my room, appearing without a sound in my peripheral, stabbing me with a look of longing.

"I'm gonna go to Brightmane, see what I can see."

Jane nods her head in my direction, then offers a half-hearted smile while she walks down the hall.

I set up my bags, boots, retractable baton, taser & fixed blade knife by my door.

If I'm going to keep any chance with Jane when I get back, I've got to make an effort before I leave, that I know.

Everything is ready to leave, except maybe me. I pull off my clothes and replace them with a simple black dress that I've never actually worn, I pull the tags off.

I apply my noir lipstick and ultra black eyeliner, a bit of foundation, not half bad.

Walking down the hallway I can hear Jane is listening to one of her Golfrapp albums, she's cleaned the kitchen, a tinge of guilt crawls up my spine when I remember the eggs I didn't clean up after making.

Upon entering the living room I watch her applying lotion to her legs on the couch, I wait to see it takes for her to notice me.

After about 15 seconds, her head snaps my way and she yelps at my presence, which makes me chuckle like a fool. I crouch at her feet and take over lotion duties, she lays back closing her eyes and smiling.

She's more beautiful at times like these than when she's dolled up, dressed down and relaxed. I had a crappy joke about her nightie locked and loaded, but the prospect of missing her wearing them just about every night leads me to tear up.

Cora has done this exact same thing before... a few hours home with Jane won't hurt, I'll always bring Coraline home, but I can't let this die. 

"I'm not leaving until tomorrow morning", her eyes shoot open.

"I was hoping we could spend the day together being lazy and cuddling until then." I tell her as I rub the last of her lotion into her right foot.

She turns her smiling face my way and uses her left foot to lift my chin up so she can look into my eyes. "Ya don't say?"

I swallow my apprehension towards responsibility and say, "Yeah, I've led you around like an ass without really even understanding what I was doing…" She crawls toward me, then she holds my face in her hands, an inch or so from hers.

I finally tell her, "I want to be with you, I want you to be my girl and I wanna spend every day with you when I get back."

Thankfully, she smiles, "Well, you're gonna have to be all in with me, right?"

I knew this was coming, and it was very fair of her, "Absolutely."

With tears quickly drying in our eyes, we kiss.

****

She was so amazing with me on my birthday that I spent the rest of the day trying to make her happy, which in her mind meant a lot of sex, cuddles and even more Buffy.

I've created a monster, an amazing monster.

Jane made us stir-fry & egg rolls which I devoured like a dog. We smoked and cuddled the few precious hours we had away, it was almost perfect.

As the minutes ticked on I felt worse, and worse for not leaving faster. She could tell, we got my things ready.

I've got everything loaded into my black sedan around 4am the next morning. I'm back in my cargo pants, strapped tightly into my boots & draped in two layers of thin sweaters.

Jane sees me off with a kiss and a pat on the ass.

I pop in one of the Goldfrapp albums Jane lent me for the trip and that's it, I'm on the road to B.C.