Dents

[+] Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head

2D drove us home. He insisted on carrying me inside, upstairs, and to my bed. Delicately, he set me down.

The paper cranes hanging from my ceiling fluttered imperceptibly, disturbed only by the slight movements of the two of us beneath them. The sheets on my bed had been replaced. The new ones were silky, unlike the previous set that had become uncomfortably scratchy and abrasive. I imagined that Noodle must have tended to them, as she often did. It was something that she'd taken upon herself when 2D and I were first abducted. She simply never stopped doing it after that. I'd asked her not to worry about it, assuring her that I could do it myself. She always changed the subject.

It was obvious to her that I deeply appreciated it. I didn't truly want for her to stop doing it. Coming home to a bed with clean sheets already on it reminded me of a distant home, before 2D and Gorillaz, before Essex, and before my life changed forever.

My memories of the past were little more than a faded series of snapshots. Even those had worn away with time. Sometimes I wondered whether I ever had a mother or father at all.

I remembered the earthy scent of soil and fields of grain. There was a cottage on a hill and the faint echo of children playing nearby.

Everything else had disappeared.

"Yew gonna be alrigh'?"

"Yeah. I'll be okay. It doesn't hurt as much anymore."

2D stood up and dusted off his jeans.

"Yew sure yew're alrigh', Saoirse? Yew look a little spacey."

"I'm sure. I think I'm just a little tired, is all."

2D eyed me skeptically. I knew that he wasn't buying the excuse, but he also wasn't the sort to push me to talk about something I would rather not rehash. He sighed.

"Alrigh', luv. I've gotta drop the car back off at the rental place. If yew need me, call 'n I'll hurry back as quick as I can," he said.

He straightened out my dress so that it better covered my legs.

"I'll take anotha look at yewr knee when I get home. Lata we can watch some movies or somefink."

"Sounds good to me. Drive safe, 'D."

I resisted the urge to ask him when he'd be back. I knew that if I so much as implied I wanted him to stay, he'd do it and end up breaking his bank renting that car all night long. He was already pretty strapped thanks to his ongoing arrangement with Ace, whose talent with a bass and confidentiality surrounding the album came at a hefty cost.

He kissed me softly, once on the lips and again on the forehead, and left my room.

I laid there for a long while, gazing at the paper cranes as they swayed with the draft sweeping beneath the gap in the door frame. I momentarily considered turning on the television but I was too achy to get out of bed and retrieve the remote. It wasn't like it had a lot of channels, anyway.

I laid there watching the cranes fly over me. I imagined what it'd be like to be a crane, myself. I pictured soaring through the sky, ten thousand feet in the air, seeing the townhouse become the city, and the city become the country, and the country become the world.

A heavy knock rattled my door.

After that, there was a brief pause and a much lighter knock better suited for not scaring the ever-loving piss out of anyone in the room. I knew who stood outside without seeing who it was. He was the only person who would accidentally knock hard enough to bring the door down, and then make a conscious effort to knock as politely as the weight of his hands would allow to correct it.