Across Acheron

Session 20

I didn’t like Rosebay that much.

It was the typical downtown scenery you would see in those high class movies; the only difference was the fact that 90% of the population lived rich. Fancy apartments, buildings, houses and cars littered the prospect from where I stood at the hotel window, offering me a bird’s eye view into everyone’s lives.

I saw people of different kinds dragging themselves through the streets, their faces contorted as if angry when they really weren’t, breathing in the sickly scent of car fuel which they probably called fresh air. I saw children by mothers who dressed pretty; cased with estrangement due to the poison they entitled their city.

Everyone seemed fake, pretending to have something to do when they did nothing at all. They all bustled about, pushing their way through the throng of bodies as if wherever they had to be was more important than a polite gesture. I saw men and women with their eyes trapped on their phones or their feet, cars that honked, drivers with one finger out the window, children with eyes that seemed to plead, save me.

You may think I’m being hellishly melodramatic, but I swear, that is what I saw.

My vision changed when I heard the door open, looking behind me to see Keenan with a bag in his hand. He threw it on the bed before lying down next to it, watching me as I hurried to see what books he had gotten.

Keenan had said that since we were probably going to be at the home for a while, he didn’t want me to get bored. So he went downstairs to the bookstore and managed to snag some for me to read.

“Lorna still isn’t here, so you can crack one open if you want,” he said to me. “She still needs to get your stuff in order.”

I somewhat felt bad for making her do extra work, but I never admitted it. She only had one suitcase waiting for Keenan in the hotel room, and I was far too skinny to fit in his jeans. It was kind of embarrassing, so we didn’t talk about it much.

He had a good taste in books at least. Keenan went for the old stuff—the kind that seemed to go against all the rules and tried to take the world by storm. You know, the stuff by Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and C.S Lewis. I didn’t have much interest in the new stuff that was coming out. Things by the dead seemed more...genuine.

One thing you should know about me is that I despise change. For example, if you left and I had to get another shrink, I’d probably pull my hair out. This is why I liked the books Keenan bought me, especially the ones that didn’t have sequels. With sequels you risked things changing. But with a single, published book, everything stayed the same. No matter how many times you read it, the dead stayed dead and the living stayed living. The only thing that changed would be you.

“I knew some of those guys back when they were first starting out,” said Keenan, smiling solemnly at the book I held. “Nothing on a personal level, though. They wouldn’t let me in.”

“You’re bluffing,” I said, though I knew he wasn’t. He couldn’t lie. “How old are you, anyway?”

Keenan frowned at me. “Don’t you know that it’s rude to ask? We age differently than you humans, so you wouldn’t understand it even if I told you. Which I never will.”

“So I could be old with my teeth falling out and you’d still stay the same?”

He shrugged. “Probably. Let’s quit talking about it now. Lorna’s sensitive about age.”

The door opened a second later, earning a surprised look from me. Lorna rolled a suitcase in, a deep scowl resting on her face. She dropped the suitcase on the floor and put her hands on her hips. “You’re going to pay me every single dime I spent on you,” she said to Keenan. “I wouldn’t have been dragged into this if it wasn’t for Niamh.”