The Day of Sagittarius

[Gundham]

Crap crap crapcrap crapcrapcrap crap crap CRAP! CRAP CRAP CRAAAP!

Her heart was pounding in her ears, her lungs practically bursting. She was a good runner in short spurts, when she had the ability to dodge and weave and snake around obstacles. But she couldn't maintain it for long, not when she was tired and hungry and had a heavy pack thumping and banging the whole way along.

It was the damn snow. The snow remembered, memorializing her every movement. There hadn't been time to stop and wipe away the footprints; she'd been moving at top speed ever since the camp, ever since she heard the first sounds of someone jogging after her. The branches raked at her and the snow sucked at her boots, trying to trap her feet, but she kept blundering blundering forwards, playing for time and distance.

She hit the treeline and burst into the daylight. Kept running, out of the forest, onto the rugged, overgrown path. The snow was thinner here, it was all gravel and rocks and underbrush. She'd hoped that the sparse terrain would hide her steps, make it harder to follow her, but a quick glance over her shoulder told her it didn't matter, that she'd already been spotted.

CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAPCRAP

Loose rocks shifted under her feet, threatened to send her tumbling back down the slope. It was hard to get purchase, hard to run. Hard to stay upright. But she had no choice but to keep running. Not if she wanted to stay alive.

[Ruggahissy]

((Josh James continued from One Who Seeks))

He gave chase, moving through the trees and snow. Josh was used to running for extended periods from his training and playing lacrosse. His feet pounded into the snow and his arms pumped, but it was more exhilarating than taxing. At first he jogged more slowly to make less noise. It was easy to follow her footprints in the snow.

"Run" his mind said, and his legs followed.

Some ancient directive in his brain told him that this was sport. There was simplicity in the action.

"Run," his mind urged to Karin silently. "Run, run."

The trees suddenly stopped and as Karin went through the tree line and out on to the path, so did he burst past the trees and skid to a sharp stop on the path. Karin looked back at him and tried to scramble away. There were no sounds in on the pass besides the stomping of feet and panting.

Josh sprinted forward. When he had to take sharp turns or weave around obstacles he felt at ease swerving and maneuvering. He got closer, closer still, until he reached out and grabbed her arm.

You're mine.

"Hi," he said playfully. He tried to give a small wave but was still holding the assault rifle, so he just shook that a little.

[Gundham]

Why?

Why do aliens probe people?

It was something that nobody seemed to ask, outside of amateur stand-up comedians. But it was actually a pretty profound question, when you thought about it. Aliens had the technology to travel faster than light, but they'd never stumbled upon X-rays? They had transporter beams that could abduct cows and humans, but they didn't have MRI? Probing was a caveman-level medical procedure; probing couldn't possibly tell the aliens anything about human biology that they couldn't learn from scans or dissections or a hundred other things. So what was the probe supposed to accomplish? What was the point of it?

Karin couldn't remember a lot about the abduction, or about the alien who'd taken her. But she did know one thing. There was one little sliver of certainty that lingered on, unchanging, even as time and trauma withered and distorted the memories around it. She didn't know why she knew it, or how she could have come to know it. But she knew it.

The alien had been enjoying itself.

And so, when Josh seized her arm like an iron vise and her boots crunched to an abrupt stop, when she stood there defeated and gasping with exhaustion, when despair hit her in the chest like a battleaxe, she didn't ask why. She didn't ask why he'd followed her. She didn't ask why he'd chased her down instead of shooting. She didn't ask why he was speaking in such a cheerful tone of voice. Because she already knew the beats of this script. She was meant to be playing The Victim in this scene, and the demands of the role were the same whether the actor opposite her came from Salem or Saturn.

The Victim's role is to writhe helplessly, to bemoan her fate and be overpowered. All of her stage directions are fearful reactions. All of her dialogue is screams. Zoom in on the terror, cut to black and play one last bloodcurdling shriek, let the audience's imagination fill in the rest. That's what's in the script.

But, you know, fuck it.

She looked back at him. Looked down at her trembling arm. Back at him. Then knotted her free hand into a fist and took a swing.

"Leave me ALONE!"

[Ruggahissy]

Karin’s fist made contact with just below Josh’s jaw. It rattled his teeth and it left him a bit dazed for a moment, but the blow wasn’t enough to shake his grip or his stance.

"Ow."

Josh tossed his gun behind him and let his bags drop. With his free hand, he rubbed the point of impact gently.

"Karin, that hurt," he said, despondent, as if she had hit him in the hallway at school. He sounded and looked a bit like someone who had brought a dish to a potluck that no one had eaten.

"Leave you alone?" he asked back.

For a moment they stood, still panting from exertion, him still holding her arm.

"No," he declined plainly, without malice. "Now I don’t want to."

Suddenly he pulled her to him, holding her one arm to the side. He wrapped his other arm around her back and pressed tightly against her. If the circumstances had been different, it might have looked like they were about to start dancing.

"My, what big eyes you have," a smile audible in his growl. She already knew about him, so there was no need to hold back. He nuzzled her head with his.

"They aren’t here to help now."

He lowered his head. His eyelashes fluttered against her cheek and jaw. Both of their chests rose and fell and pushed against each other. Their lungs were still working from the chase.

She’d dismissed him as easily handled like so many others had, after thinking maybe she could take advantage of him for her own needs. Then, she realized she was in over her head. He was sympathetic to a degree, but he also felt the rush of power. Josh pulled back to look her in the eye.

"But… they never really were, were they? Even I’m surprised. After I came on to you and I grabbed you, and you pulled away shaking like a leaf, shaking like you are now –"

He squeezed and shifted against her.

"— and I chased you. Nothing. You’re not surprised though. It’s just like always.”

His voice dropped to a harsh whisper.

"Just like Victor."

[Gundham]

He was very close now. She could have bitten his ear off, spat into the cut on his cheek, headbutted him until they both saw stars.

She fought back the impulse, trying to think. It was hard. He was right there, in her space, pressed up against her, like his body was trying to engulf hers and swallow it up via osmosis.

What did she know about Josh? What was happening here?

She already had the rough gist. He wanted this. He wanted her panic and her fear. He wanted to have her here, trapped like this, just because he could. He saw her the way a child sees the ice atop a mud puddle - the brittle kind of ice that formed on frosty mornings, just begging to have a boot stomped through it. Ice like that only had value when it was being destroyed, it only brought joy in the sound of its shattering and the sight of its glistening shards.

But he wasn't rushing. He was savoring this, drawing out her suffering as long as he could. He could have stomped his boot down at any point, but he was taking his time, pressing his toes down and listening to the ice squeal beneath him. And she was squealing, oh yes. Every nerve in her body was betraying her, shaking her inside and out. Every alarm bell in her head was going off, all at once, telling her that this was bad, this was BAD and she needed to fight and scream and RUN and do all the useless, pointless things that he wanted her to do. But she wasn't cracking. Not yet.

So, right. Yeah. Wolf. Victim. Thrill of the chase, yadda yadda yadda. She knew all this. She knew why, but she didn't know why, why. She knew why he was doing what he was doing, but she didn't know why she, personally, was about to die. He hadn't wanted her when they first met. The wolf hadn't been hungry, in his words. But now he was ravenous, and she couldn't figure out what had flipped the switch. Why did he want her now, badly enough to chase her down and torment her like this? What had he seen in her? What changed? Or rather... what was it about her that enticed him? What was it about her that brought aliens across galaxies and wolves across forests just to prey on her? She wasn't pretty and she wasn't sweet, and she sure as shit wasn't innocent. She wasn't anything like the distressed Disney damsels. So, what the hell was it? If she was going to die here, she at least deserved to know that much. Didn't she?

"Why, Josh?" she asked. A tear leaked out of her eye, and ran down the seam where their faces joined together. "Why do you want me?"

[Ruggahissy]

The high of the pursuit was starting to ease down. The frantic violins faded. Josh felt her tear against his face, and it stopped him. He remembered crying and Shu cruelly licking the tear off his cheek just before throwing him down. It made him uneasy to recall.

He moved a fraction, then stopped. Licking her tear in the same way was not something he felt like he could do.

She asked, why her?

"I didn’t at first," he said almost to himself. "I just wanted you to fix me."

Josh wasn’t used to people asking him anything. Cassie had asked him what he wanted, but that was more of a question about what he wanted with her. That was a “what” and this was a “why.” But remembering her also made him uneasy.

Why her?

"Then you -- You kind of assumed things and annoyed me even after I tried to warn you, so I… grabbed you. And I said something I know is gross, to scare you."

His eyes were half-lidded as he pulled away. He gave her a little more space than before. They were no longer pushed right against each other. The hold on her arm relaxed. Now only their coats were brushing against each other.

"But then you tried very hard to not show you were afraid, even though you totally were. And you turned to Wendy, and you told the truth. I could tell it was the truth that time. You peeled off a layer and became someone else. That was so interesting. I wanted to follow you and see what would happen if I played with you some more, I think. It’s a little hard to put into words because it’s just the feelings I had, and I followed them."

Explaining all this plainly had the effect of tempering his emotions momentarily.

"I’m not used to paying that close of attention to people, because they didn’t pay attention back. But now, I am. And… I don’t know. They’re interesting. Interesting to see how they react. I don’t know," he mumbled, looking bashful.

It's fun.

[Gundham]

"I see."

Karin noted the shift in his posture, the way he started to mumble. He was losing confidence as he explained himself, getting less aggressive. All right. That was probably a good thing. But he'd said that he'd been reacting to her, right? That he'd wanted to scare her for annoying him. So pressing on the lack of confidence wasn't gonna be the right play; if anything, it could set him off worse.

He didn't want her as an ally. Didn't even really want her as a victim. He just wanted her to be interesting. Well, she could do interesting.

"Josh... I lied before, about Victor. I didn't... really see him do anything. But I know Victor, and I know what kind of guy he is. I know what guys like that do when they think they can get away with it. When he got mad, he didn't hesitate to attack me and beat me up. And I knew... I knew that the girls wouldn't listen to me if I tried to warn them. Because people don't really ever listen to me, even when I'm telling the truth. So I thought that if I said something more extreme, more personal, that they'd listen. But they didn't. They just stood there, and watched him hit me, and take all my stuff... I saw all of that coming, miles away, and I tried to get out ahead of it. And it just... didn't matter. It didn't matter what I said or what I did. Because of who I am."

She looked up at him, swallowing hard. The words were bitter in her mouth, the decayed remnants of things that had been rotting inside of her for longer than she could remember. But she needed to say them. If not now, when?

"But you... you could tell that I was telling the truth, right? You saw that I wasn't lying. So... So, how about this? You said you wanted to play with me, so what if I... peel off another layer for you? What if I tell you something, and... you can tell me whether it's true or not. And you can decide how you feel about me then."

[Ruggahissy]

Josh's hand dropped even more, so that it was now only gently holding Karin by the wrist. He looked away from her, darkness crossing his face. He chewed on his lower lip. His fingers fiddled with the fabric of her sleeve. His breath caught.

What guys like that do when they think they can get away with it.

His brothers.

Cassie.


Push it away.


Other people wouldn't listen to her.


It was just him and Karin.

"Show me," he said faintly.

[Gundham]

Something had changed in his demeanor, and she wasn't entirely sure what or why. But she was committed to entertaining him now, giving him enough emotional vulnerability to satisfy whatever twisted desires were driving this messed up interaction.

"All right," she said quietly, her voice slipping into the soft cadence she always used for narrating. "I'll tell you two versions of this story. One is going to be true, and the other is going to be made up. I want you to tell me which one is the truth."

"I already told you that nobody believes me when I say things, but I haven't told you why. So, this is the story. This is why I lie." She locked eyes with him, kept her face serious. She hadn't rehearsed this, the way she'd rehearsed so many of her interactions. Because this story wasn't one that she had to think about. She just had to remember. Ten years ago, she'd told versions of this story to anyone who'd listen. She'd told it a hundred times, and then she'd realized that nobody was listening, and then she stopped. Only her therapists and Soo-Bin had heard it since then, and they were all a world away and a murder ago, no longer a part of her reality.

"When I was seven years old, I had trouble sleeping," she said. The words were crisp, clearly enunciated. Flawless narration. "I used to stay up all night, watching the ceiling. But one night, I got bored of the ceiling. So I got out of bed, and I walked around the room. The next night, I got bored of my room, so I pried open the window, and I crawled outside. I liked it outside. Everything looked different in the dark. I was only out there for a little bit, and then I was afraid I would get caught, so I climbed back inside. But the next night, I went out again. I walked down the block, and came back. The night after that, I went for two blocks. That became my little ritual. I would just go out and walk, always in a different direction, exploring the neighborhood. My parents never found out. And nobody else ever saw me."

She raised an eyebrow. "Until someone did."

"I was abducted by aliens that night. A UFO flew over me, and shone a paralyzer ray into my eyes. I couldn't see or move. A tractor beam picked me up and lifted me off the ground. I was terrified. No matter how hard I kicked and squirmed and screamed, I couldn't stop myself being pulled up into the air. I was taken into the ship, into a cold, scary place full of metal pipes and wires. The tractor beam dumped me on the floor. An alien poked me with a probe, jabbering at me in a language I didn't understand. It seemed to be enjoying itself. I heard it start to talk to another alien. I saw my opportunity, and I ran. I burst out of a hatch in the spaceship, and fell out. We weren't hovering too far above the ground, but I fell hard and landed on my arm. I could hear the crunch of the bone as it shattered into a bunch of little pieces. It hurt so bad. But I got up and ran away, as far and as fast as I could. I found a playground, and hid in one of the little plastic tunnels they have, holding my arm and crying. I was there all night, until morning, when I was found by a policeman. He just happened to be patrolling in the area and heard me sobbing. He took me to the hospital, and called my parents. My parents were mad at me for sneaking out of the house and getting lost, and for getting hurt. I told them what happened, that I had been taken by space aliens. They didn't believe me. They sent me to therapy. But no matter how many times the therapist asked me about it, no matter how many times my parents asked me to fess up and just tell the truth, I always said the same thing: I was abducted by aliens. Everybody at school said I was lying. They made fun of me. They stuffed my locker full of pictures of UFOs, and nicknamed me Crazy Karin. Nobody believes me. So I don't tell the story anymore. And now I lie all the time. Because nobody believes me when I tell the truth, and if I'm going to get called a liar anyway, I might as well actually be one."

Karin held up a finger. "That's the first version of the story. But here's version two."

"Version two starts off exactly the same. Bored little me, walking around the room, then around the neighborhood. Liked to be in the dark. Exploring the neighborhood, nobody ever saw me. Until someone did. But here's what's different."

"I was abducted by a strange man that night. Not an alien. Just... some guy. He was holding a flashlight, and he shone it in my eyes. I was blinded, too scared to move. He picked me up and started to carry me away. I was terrified. No matter how hard I squirmed and shrieked and cried, he wouldn't let me go. He took me up a flight of stairs, into a shabby old apartment with metal pipes and heating ducts in the ceiling. He dropped me on the floor, and poked me, smiling at me to try and calm me down, asking me questions in a foreign language I didn't understand. Then he turned away and started to talk to someone else in the apartment. As soon as he turned his head, I ran. I burst out of the door, and fell through the stair rail to the asphalt and landed on my arm. I could hear the snap of the bone as it broke. It hurt like crazy, the worst pain I've ever felt. But I got up and ran away, as far and as fast as I could. I found a playground, and hid in one of the tube slides, crying and holding my arm. I was there until morning, when a cop found me. My sister had woken up early and found out that I wasn't in bed, and when my parents couldn't find me, they called the police. The policeman took me to the hospital, and my parents came. The police told them that I had been found in a neighborhood that had a lot of immigrants; they didn't speak English or Korean, and some of them were illegal aliens. The person had probably taken me because they knew a little girl shouldn't be out on the street in the middle of the night, but they were probably afraid to call the police and didn't know what to do. I was so afraid that my parents would be mad at me for sneaking out of the house, so I told them a lie. I told them I had been taken by space aliens, not illegal aliens. They didn't believe me. But I knew that if I changed my story, they would catch on, and I'd be in even more trouble for lying. So I kept telling the lie. And once I started, I just... couldn't stop. I kept telling it, for years. I told it to my classmates, and to my friends. Even when everybody said I was lying, or made fun of me. Even when they stuffed my locker full of pictures of UFOs, and nicknamed me Crazy Karin. I kept telling the story anyway, because I was too afraid to admit it, even years later. I've never admitted it to anybody until now. And because of that lie, now nobody believes me. So I lie all the time, because everybody already knows that I can't be trusted, so I might as well just make it up as I go."

She took a breath. "And that's the story," she said, her eyes softening as her voice returned to its normal cadence. "Well, one of them, anyway. So... what do you think, Josh? Which one of those stories is the truth?"

[Ruggahissy]

She opened her heart like a flower in the snow.

Josh put a hand up his mouth thoughtfully and looked down at their shoes.

He knew the truth of the matter, and knew that there were many truths of a situation. Both could be true. He bit the tip of his index finger and continued looking down for a long time.

Josh had seen her secrets. He knew how painful it was to say the truth of what you feel; it hurt even to think it. It hurt like torture to remember the things you regret and, at times, the strict paths that you were set on in life as a result.

What am I doing?

Well, I am doing what it is I want to do.

And in this moment, hearing her trust and her pain and how they reminded him of his own --

He let go of her wrist and took a step back so that she would have her space again. She could go.

"H- How --" he started. Josh swallowed loudly. "How did th-the aliens look?" he said finally looking at her.

[Gundham]

She didn't say anything at first.

His body language made it clear. She had stripped herself right down to the core, let him see the absolute truth of her, and he approved of what he had seen. She had won the right to stay alive.

Karin looked up at the road ahead. The trail was pitted and lined with ruts, but still passable. It'd take her out of here and towards whatever came next.

But she wasn't ready to go, not yet.

Her eyes swiveled back to Josh. He looked the way she felt.

She didn't know what Josh wanted, what he was looking for out here. Maybe Josh himself didn't know. He'd said that he'd been overlooked, taken for granted all his life. He'd hated it when she made assumptions about him, hated it enough to want to hurt her over it. Lashing out, the way she'd lashed out when Shannon Choi grabbed her around the throat and put her right back there in second grade, lying shivering on the examination table.

Josh was scary. He was violent, and he had hurt her and threatened her and made her cry. But he believed her. He heard her story, and even with a perfectly credible, perfectly realistic alternate explanation, he had chosen to hear her truth. And he had asked her for more. Nobody, not her parents, or her sister, not Soo-Bin or the clown parade of therapists, had ever done that. She wanted, needed to thank him for that.

She wanted him to feel something. To feel what his question made her feel. So she stepped forward, and she wrapped her arms around him, burying her face in his shoulder. Clung to him for dear life.

"They looked like nightmares," she whispered into him.

"I couldn't look at them properly, because the lights were so bright. But I could see them in the way the way they moved, the way they looked at me, and touched me. They looked like what an ant would see, looking up at a little kid as he pulls their legs and antennae off one by one. That's what they looked like."

[Ruggahissy]

Instead of running off down the road, a soft sound of impact followed.

Karin landed against his chest and wrapped her arms around him and cried into his chest.

Karin, don’t –

Josh bit his lip hard and felt her arms squeeze him. She was so much smaller than him, but she held on tightly.

It was more familiar to take slights, snide remarks, and violence. Those were things he was prepared for. Even rejection, which led to anger, was more familiar. They were familiar faces, so while he may not have liked all of those forces, he was at least used to them. They were the devils he knew.

Josh had no idea what to do with this.

"Oh…"

Shu hadn’t hugged him. Dani hugged him reluctantly, with a layer of fear and mistrust. And fear and mistrust had been amusing in their own ways. His mom used to hug him, but not in years. It wasn’t right to get hugs from mommy after 12. His brothers didn’t hug him. That was OK. He was used to it now.

But Karin hugged him; she did it like she loved him. And he couldn’t process that, even though it was what he’d wanted, but not from her.

"Don’t – Don’t think about it anymore. Try not to.”

His arms finally moved and held her in return.There was no voice telling him that he was greedy, to take more, to devour, because it was being given as a gift.

Maybe he could give her something in return.

"Karin," he said quietly. "Victor took your stuff, right?"

Josh let go and cleared his throat.

"Go get your things back. If I hear that you killed him, come to the research station. I’ll give you whatever you need, as a prize. Your own best kill award. Kill him, and don’t be burdened thinking about it. It’s what’s fair. Right?"

[Gundham]

Her stuff.

More importantly, her sunglasses. She'd first noticed their absence last night. Normally she kept them in her pocket, but she'd wound up stuffing them into her day pack while they were leaving the bar, which meant... that they were with Victor.

As bad as it was when she was held or restrained, those reactions were nothing compared to what her body did when she was confronted by bright piercing lights. Nothing. And on an island full of people with flashlights, all of whom knew she was a murderer and weren't likely to hesitate if they caught her in a weak moment... well, that was a very, very bad situation. She needed those glasses.

Killing Victor, having it in the announcements that she'd felled one of the strongest jocks in the school in a classic David-slaying-Goliath moment? Well, that'd be a bonus.

It wasn't lost on her that Josh had phrased the proposal in a way that made it clear that she'd be doing the slaying by herself. They were parting ways here. Patting her on the back, telling her to go square up with the Vicredible Hulk, that he'd be happy to reward her for succeeding... it could have been a dismissal or an encouragement, depending on whether he actually believed she was capable or not. Maybe he just didn't give a damn, and figured that pitting Karen and Victor against each other would remove an obstacle from the board either way. It was impossible to tell which, and she wasn't about to probe any deeper into Josh than she had to. Either way, she'd treat it as a good thing. The guy was a lunatic, and there was no telling when his mood would shift again. All things considered, she'd come out ahead.

"All right," she said, as confidently as she could. "I'll do it. Just you wait and see."

Readjusting her bag, she headed up the path.

((Karin Han continued elsewhere.))

[Ruggahissy]

Josh’s head lolled to the side and he gazed at her with his head leaning to the right. She had been interesting, at least. Josh also thought about how he’d lost his grasp of the situation back there. He picked up the gun and his bags again. As she walked down the path, he raised the gun and braced it against his shoulder.

Sometimes when he was petting a cat, the cat fell asleep. As he pet the cat, he would rest his hand on its neck. He could lightly encircle his hand around its neck and it would just keep sleeping peacefully. Of course, he had never done anything to a cat, or any animal for that matter.

He shut one eye and pointed.

He would just rest his hand on the cat and think, wow, this creature really does trust me, don’t they? Then he would keep petting them.

"I’m sure you will," he said to himself.


After another moment, he decided to lower the gun.

"So long, Karin!" he called after her.

((Josh James continued in Denudate ))