If someone else got there first…if it breaks through now on the street, although these are desolate hours…there’d be no happy ending for me tonight, that’s for sure. I don’t even want to consider…Fuck—a scratch stars at the top corner of the box near my right hand and it snakes down the side near me. It knows I’m the one pushing it. My heart threatens to sprout newborn teeth and gnaw through my ribcage, splinters of bone to shred my lungs. I grip the handle of the cart always expecting it to come loose without warning and pop up and out, break off, disappear. My wet and pale knuckles plead to become a part of the cart so as to confirm control over the movement and jerky steering capability, ambiguous landings and rolls over uneven cracks in the sidewalk, but my entire body is fighting with the instinct to retract from the noxious threat that I’m handling altogether.
I wanted to bolt. Right here and now; drop the hand cart, let the box topple into the street, and run the other way. Disappear. I didn’t have too many strings keeping me attached, did I?
This was bigger than me, though. I wasn’t the only one in danger if this got loose.
This is a Bad Seed, the Boss reminding me in my head, forcing me to push my body and the damn package further, faster. …needs to be destroyed immediately before Control is compromised. It already has been compromised, I snap back to myself. There must have been a problem internally. My thoughts start running hurdles with my heart beat, ahead of myself. This is a set up. They didn’t think I could handle what they needed me for, and they need to delete and refresh. That’s been the pattern of their system for as long as I’ve been around. Where did the visions of this thing come from anyway? What if a part of her soul still existed inside it?
I’m running in slow motion, my legs are putty grinding and flopping, muscle memory confused and rethinking gravity. The skyscraper at the end of the block boasts its obsidian girth, penetrating the icy atmosphere that whispers failure into my burning ears. All I have to do is get cleared by the doorman, move past the lobby towards the elevator, and I’ll be in the Basement. Less than a minute. My senses are contorting, and I’m beginning to realize that it’s not just the temperature. There seems to be a twisting of energy. My mind starts to grasp at the mystery of a spiral when the box screams in splintered fragments.
There’s a bloody fist protruding from the wooden crate, and my panic is cursing the choice not to transport Seeds in metallic containers, something more reliable than fucking wood. The wood cracks like lightning again and the Seed contorts itself to crawl out from the hole it made. Oh fuck, I think, its out of the box now, she’s in the street.
Should I:
Try to knock out the Seed
Let it go
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