Ruby Red Marionette

twentyone | flesh

//: Devin in the MM. 

The rain began to fall. The onset of heavy droplets from the sky came all at once; I’d expected a forewarning in the form of a light drizzle, but when it didn’t come, I assumed the thick, smoky clouds were a false alarm . If I knew that everything around me would be completely soaked in a matter of seconds, I would have stayed in the CARTA building.

But I left, and now I was running to Eastdale with water in my underwear.

I questioned the decision the entire time. This was no different from other times when I made choices that I knew I may regret later on; I would convince myself to do something, and weigh my other options in the process of doing it. But there was so much more to this - I wasn’t just questioning my visit to Devin. I thought about whether the man gave me the correct information, if I could get there on time, if the tenuous vibrations in the pit of my stomach were a plea from my conscience to turn around and go home.

I kept going.

The rain didn’t let up. The puddles I stomped into every few wobbly steps, when the adrenaline stopped for a moment and my legs felt the strain of trying to run at the pace of a bus, grew steeper each time. Once in a while, when the rain would crash into my eyes or I’d bump shoulders with someone on the sidewalk who I didn’t even see coming, I could feel it. I could feel the life inside of me, the future I was about to destroy. I imagined the thing inside of me going through the motions of life, experiencing a raindrop to the eye or bumping into a stranger. I imagined what it would feel for this thing to be just like me, to sleep with anyone for what it wanted and sleep in any available space, to treat me like I didn’t give birth to it. And, for a moment, I understood my mother’s pain. I decided I would never risk even the possibility of experiencing it firsthand, and that’s why I had to do this.

But, just as quickly as it came, my justification for this murder disintegrated and was replaced with an even more dauntingly cumbersome fact: right now, if I felt like curling up to die as I often did, this baby was the only thing stopping me.

I now had a reason to live.

I hadn’t noticed that I stopped running. When I remembered my purpose for even being outside at such a dreadful time, I looked up and saw it right in front of me: a sign that read Greenwood Road, a street in Eastdale. And, a long block ahead, the bus pulling up to the bus stop.

I’d been running for so long that I almost didn’t think I could make it. I didn’t pick up the pace immediately; I watched the bus come to a complete stop before I began to speed-walk, and when the doors opened and the first passenger got off, I started to run. More and more of the dark silhouettes left the bus, and the length of the block between them and me settled in. I ran and waved at the people who got off, hoping they’d assume that I was running to catch the bus and would hold it there for me. I needed to speak to the driver in case I didn’t see Devin.

No matter how hard I pushed myself, I still seemed to be moving in slow motion. I reached the end of the block, but I couldn’t cross over to the next one. A red stoplight and an incoming flow of traffic were the obstacles that caused the bus to drive off. It was completely gone by the time I reached the bus stop, and so was everyone else.

I failed.

I stood in the rain, which seemed to have softened by now. Either that or I just started to notice it less in the midst of the whirlwind that was my thoughts. I failed. But it was so much more than that. It was a foreshadow to what life would be like if I never ran into Devin again and never got the money; every failure I made - and I made them quite often - would not be my own failure, but I would be failing my child. Everything I did, every move I made without thinking first, would affect this child.