Husk

Chapter 4 - Drift

Chapter 4

Three weeks pass.

"Do you believe in God" Azra looked me directly in the eyes and asked.

I stumbled. I don't think I had ever been put on the spot like that before.

I took a moment to think. I thought about the universe. Our tiny planet. The millions of lives out there. Science and all it's breakthroughs. The beauty of the world, nature. I thought about a dog I had as a child. Rex. How Rex would come to my side whenever I heard my mother and father fighting. How he would lick my face and nudge me to get out of bed. Then I thought about how Rex died. I couldn't remember it exactly but I remembered looking up at my father, I remember feeling pain and my vision being blurred. I remember he said we had a choice to make. We could bring Rex back or we could let him die and go to heaven. I told my father I wanted him to go to heaven.

"Yes," I answered.

We were sitting on a blanket in the park. We were having a picnic. A nice break from dancing, bars, clubs, theaters, and fancy restaurants. Maybe I was thinking about Rex because of where we were. In the park. We could see people playing with their dogs, throwing Frisbees, balls. They were saying how good they were. I wondered how many of these people had husks lined up. How many were already dead like me. How many would clone their dog if it died. I wondered what I would do with Rex after what I have been through now. If I had Rex now he would be just like me. We'd be best friends 2.0.

"That's good" She said.

"What about fate?"

I knew the answer to that one. The face of that elderly woman from my nightmares starring into my eyes came to mind. Her life coming to an end. No husks to come back to. The taxi driver who escaped his country because it was such an awful place only to die in another.

"No," I said.

"So you don't believe fate could have brought us together?" She smirked. I felt stupid. Hear I was over analyzing. Thinking about religion, Rex, the taxi driver, the old woman and she was wondering if I thought fate had brought us together. "Sorry guess I'm just thinking too hard about it... yeah I do think something brought us together." I paused. "Maybe it was God," I said to her. She smiled and kissed me.

"Maybe we should go see a movie?" I said.

"Nothing good is out," she said.

"There is a horror movie about husks coming to life," I didn't really think about how disturbing the idea of that was to me. Suddenly I felt uncomfortable.

"Nah, I'm not into those movies," she answered. I felt relief come over me as I realized a movie or anything relating to husks was the last thing I wanted to see.

"I'm having a good time here." She said. I couldn't remember the last time I had so much fun in a park. "I am too."

We ate some food we brought. There was a black bag full of PB & J sandwiches, fruit, and some flavored water to wash it all down with. There was a spider crawling near Azra's feet. I grabbed my water bottle and was about to smash it but then she stopped me. "It doesn't know any better. It's just searching for food." She took a napkin and shoved it to the side. It ran away. Alive. After that we wrapped up our blanket and put it back into the bag. We continued to talk about books, movies, music, everything. I had never met someone I felt so much in common with.

We got back to our cars. I was driving a new electric silver hatchback. She had an older black two door coupe. It was still electric like most cars on the streets these days but hers was in need of some serious upgrades. She didn't care. She said her father had given her that car when she was seventeen. She said driving it made her feel close to him. It made my heart ache. Her mother had died, really died, when she was five years old. Her father was a pilot for hire so he wasn't able to afford for someone to watch her full time so he took her with him two weeks every month. She would play with dolls behind him in his cockpit. He flew private so none of his clients really cared so long as they made it wherever they were going alive. Eventually he taught her how the controls worked. She dreamed of being a pilot just like him. He even let her steer on his lap a couple times. She said it was the best childhood ever. When she was eighteen he got into an accident. He was flying over a desert and crashed. No one knows anymore detail then that. They were never able to recover his body and they weren't able to afford to pay for husks anyway. She gave up her dream of becoming a pilot that day. She spent the next few years writing stories, she wanted to do something to inspire others the way her father had inspired her.