Impish

CHAPTER 14: POPSPINDLE

I take my ten dollars to the refreshment stand by the Bible Experience. I stand there and look over my options without taking stock of the person running the stand. I don't care enough to look at him, his bland face, and his crisp white apron.

I could get a popsicle. It's certainly hot enough to warrant that. I don't want people to look at me oddly, though. The park may be nearly abandoned, and I may be the most strawberry lemonade-colored thing in it, but I still don't want to draw more unnecessary attention to myself than I already am.

Everything else is hot food, though, and the sun is shining on me. It beats down on my shoulders like an unending waterfall, so that isn't the best idea. I don't want people to look at me oddly, especially men. I know how much some of them like to perv on young women eating popsicles. It's enough to make me self-conscious.

This is a stupid line of thinking. I shouldn't care what other people think. Nobody's looking, anyway.

After a panicked second, I decide to let them stare. It's hot out and I'm buying a goddamn popsicle. It's such a steep price for such a cheap treat, but I hand over three dollars. In return, I receive a coconut-flavored bar of frozen white something. I take it with me to sit on the sidewalk outside Jeb's office, where I stretch out my legs and turn my feet from side to side while I eat.

I'm not sure what's happening here. I think something may be wrong with Doug, or maybe with Jeb. There's something going on there, at the very least. There's some animosity, some unnamed tension between the two of them. My heart pangs a little when I think about it, mostly out of fear for my father.

Roux was right when they said that I don't really know Doug. He may be my father, but he has never been a prominent figure in my life. He never had the chance. I don't need a father (I've made it eighteen years without one), but it's nice to have him. It's nice to learn things about his world, about the world I am also a part of. I've learned that even demons have wants and fears and dreams. I have learned that even demons can despise the feeling of dehydrated onions on a fast food burger. (Doug told me that it was an invention of some angel-inspired man hand-chosen by God, and most demons don't like onions anyway.) Yes, they're horrible people most of the time. Some of them are good-ish, though. Doug is proof of that.

I don't know everything about him, but I have learned enough to know that something is up. Something is wrong. I'm not sure if it has to do with his terror at being ordered around by Jeb, but it might be related.

I'm not sure, though. Maybe nothing is going on. I'm tired of being kept out of the loop. If I didn't have to be here in order to get something so I can live a normal life again, I would probably just go join Roux in the car, leave Doug behind, and just drive. That wouldn't work, though. I need to be here. If Jeb needs to do some weird tests on me in order to get me to the point that I can operate in a normal society, then so be it. I'm willing to wait. I'm willing to work for it.

I'm not sure where this line of thinking is going. I just know the carnage these people are capable of. I know what they are, what they do. Every sentence is an invitation for slaughter and sin. But that's generalizing, and that's wrong, and maybe I'm just prejudiced. Maybe I'm in the wrong here.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't terrified. I try not to show it. I want to disguise every shiver that runs through me as a side effect of the frosty treat on a wooden stick in my hands. I want to excuse every errant beat of my heart as the result of the melted popsicle on my fingers and every darting glance as having a cause in my self consciousness rather than my worry about the people and things I have chosen and been forced to associate with. I am spiraling and I have no idea how to stop it. I hate being alone with my thoughts. Is it any wonder that Roux didn't want to be here? I think I'm starting to see it now. This place is dangerous. I'm not sure that I'm dangerous enough for it not to chew me up and spit me out like a mouthful of chicken tendons and gristle.