Tevun-Krus #20 - WattPunk

Dub-Dub - A Short Story by @sdfrost61

Dub-Dub

By Stephen Frost (@sdfrost61)

I

Pinky, fifteen-years-old going on twenty-five, wakes up to the pulse of an alarm clock. It's three thirty a.m.

She lays in the darkness with her eyes shut for a moment, listening to the sounds of solitude. When she's ready, she reaches out, grabbing at the linen on the edge of the mattress with her left hand. With a secure grip, she tugs hard, throwing her right arm towards the edge of the bed, propelling herself upright. She picks up and shunts her legs across the bed. First the left leg, humping the ankle a few centimeters to the left, then the right, clasping the knee and shifting it until her legs are together. Then she repeats it. And again. When her legs are finally positioned by the edge of the bed, she pushes her fists into the mattress, lifting her body off so she can transfer her weight across the sheets to be nearer her wheelchair.

She pulls the chair close. Checking the brakes are locked, she grips the armrest pad and, leveraging herself off the mattress, finesses herself into the seat. Comfort is important, so she doesn't drag her legs off the scrunched bedding until everything feels right. When it is, she drops her feet onto the footplate, knowing the metal should be cool to her touch. But Pinky feels nothing.

"Hey, you need help in there?" her father says.

"No, I'm fine," she says, raising the armrest. "I'm just going to the toilet. Go back to sleep."

"Okay," he says. "Call if you need me, all right."

"I will," she says.

She listens to him coughing and rolling over, his bedhead knocking against the partition between them. She sits motionless until he's breathing heavily again, then wheels herself out the door.

* * *

Pinky and her father live in the Thirteen Streets, which consists of eleven short parallel streets bordered by two four-stack freeways choked with traffic. But she's not going down to street level to suck up dust into her lungs. She's going up, to the rooftop.

The ceiling fluorescents in the corridor don't work, but she can see a halo of light around the elevator button. She rolls toward it, the chair's rubber wheels silent on the cracked and chipped tiles. The tower has been designated for demolition longer than she's been alive, but at least the elevators are still functional. And just as important, it's still free to ride them. That's rare these days. Most of them are controlled by gangsters. That means it's free to descend, but if you want to come up, then it's cash only thank you or start climbing.

Pinky presses the button and waits. Her subdivided flat is on the 36th floor, and if she needs to go down to the street during the day it can take ten minutes or more for a car to arrive. At the dead hour, though, there's no one around, and the elevator arrives in less than a minute. There's no ding to signal it's turned up. The bell burnt out years ago.

When the doors open, the corridor is lit by a flickering bulb inside the car. It pulsates off and on as she wheels in. She pushes the button for the 75th floor, turning her chair around so she's facing forward as the doors close and the elevator starts to ascend. At this time of the morning, she usually has the car to herself. And it's the same today, although there's a strong odor of soapy noodles and urine that makes her think she's sharing it with something, if not someone.

The elevator groans upward, knocking against the sides of the shaft, a rocking motion that scares some but comforts Pinky. The screen above the buttons isn't working again, a blur of white specks filling its frame instead. At least the sound is down to barely audible static, which is unusual but welcome. The ascent slows as she reaches the transfer floor, where the car clunks to a stop. Pinky guides her chair out, trundling down the corridor to another elevator that will take her to the top. It slows as it passes the hundredth floor, but picks up speed again as its homes in on the roof. Then it stops with a judder, pings, and the doors slide open.