Cosmic Confluence

Chapter 12: bad rush

As each hour went by I felt sicker and sicker. Today wasn't going too good at all, and it started with me listening to that podcast. I've already implied this, but I'd like to make my point clearer--I already knew about that incident of the exploding person in the woods of Pennrith.

Not from the news, not from a friend.

But because I was there for it.

One could even say it was my fault.

And one has said it was my fault.

I kept on feeling sicker.

To make matters worse I hadn't even seen Kenzie at school today, which was over by now, and I was headed for work. I would've been freaking the fuck out if she hadn't posted that video of herself at home on Snapchat a little while ago. I felt even sicker knowing that I was almost definitely the reason she stayed from school today.

I really just felt like screaming "fuck" at the top of my lungs right now. But I just walked into the coin laundry and that bell at the top of the door jingled. Suddenly I was back on the plain of normalcy. I'm not sure why it worked that way but I wasn't complaining. Things felt better somehow.

 "There you are!" 

Oh, I thought from hearing the voice. It came from my co-worker, Jasper. He hadn't been here for awhile. Every year he and his family took a trip to The States to stock way the hell up on cheap food and supplies from Costco. It was kind of weird, and well, so was he. 

"You're back?" I asked, pinning on my name-tag. 

"Just got back yesterday. What's more important is that apparently you forgot to lock down the store on Sunday night. Nothing was stolen and nobody came in though. You're soo lucky we live in such a safe city. I overheard our manager saying he's considering firing you. You fucked up dude."

I barely cared actually. Who the fuck wanted to work at a job that paid minimum wage while death was days away. I didn't, that's for sure. 

"Yeah, well, that's fine."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." There wasn't much to do there at the laundromat and even if there was something to do, it wasn't worth doing. I figured that during this time I should call Kenzie. That was something worth doing. Right before I could find her name in my contacts, Jasper interrupted me asking:

"How come you forgot to lock the place up anyways?"

"I had to run from the devil." I don't really know why I decided to say that actually, but it was fine because Jasper didn't seem phased by it. I called Kenzie. I won't write out our conversation word for word because the call was quite short, and she was fine. She was just stressed out and barely got any sleep, which made sense. Kenzie also added that she had been working on a painting for art class all day, which by her luck, only stressed her out more. I told her that failure and error in art is good because she was learning. She replied saying that "she was learning she didn't like it". Our call ended shortly after that.

I listened to the clanging of a metal button in the dryer, I watched a ball of lint flutter by, and I smelled the scent of despair--which happened to be lavender detergent. I took off my name tag and told Jasper that I was going to quit whether our manager wanted me gone or not. He looked at me like he was about to say something but stopped himself. The abrupt sound of a skid gang entering the store got in the way of that, with their reek of skunk weed and loud voices. Before the door closed behind them I slipped out of the building. 

Walking outside, the world instantly felt more open. I didn't mean that in a good way though. I felt like a deer in an open field. Agoraphobic. 

However, turning to my left, the world instantly felt more closed. Once again, not in a good way either. I felt like a rat in a labyrinth built with no escape from anything. Claustrophobic. 

What I saw to my left was Elijah Johansen.