Mackey (short story)

Mackey

"My sister is in San Antonio," I echoed to Nadean who collected aluminum scraps on the beach. "I've never been to Texas, but from what I've heard her say, it's a scary place," I remember my sister going on about cults on one occasion. A family gathering or something like that where the sister you haven't seen in five years shows up out of social prerogatives.

Nadean didn't respond and I continued drifting in and out of the water.

My foot edged along the broken window of a sunken car. I was glad I came with my shoes this time. The sewer was filled with dangerous things but I often forgot that those things existed. My mind so preoccupied with the wonder that only a dark sewer could bestow upon you. What would I find this time? As I scuttled through the floating glass and rusted metal in the water I remembered to speak.

"She tells me all about her time in the midnight trauma center. All the crazy people she's seen coming in and out of those hospital doors. You know, one time, she told me about this wacko named Isis. Can you believe that name? Isis came in and complained she was hearing screams from her pee. Big sis thought she just had a bladder problem. Later my sister found out Isis was just schizophrenic."

Nadean didn't intervene. Instead, returning with a sack full and wasted soda cans, lifting it up to the light so she could show me it was time to leave.

I ignored her.

"Anyway, most people didn't like her there in the ER. Being a foreigner and all. But she didn't let it get in the way of paving her new life in the states." I jumped from the roof of the submerged car onto another one. Something more rounded and older. The places Nadean and I were from didn't usually come with the gleaming nature new opportunities. However, it still seeded that same hatred for the outside world. Just look at me and Nadean. She was a Muslim. If her burka didn't give her away it was surely her speech that did it for you. She only spoke in Arabic. I didn't understand her but that did not mean I still could talk to her. Mostly one-sided but still talk.

Nadean shook her bag so I could hear her want the ratting of aluminum. I raised my hands and shrugged.

"Since no one liked her she had to go home alone too. Not like how we do, Nadean. She had to do it in the wee hours of the morning. Witching hours. Dark. She'd tell me how dark sometimes. The sky was so black my sister couldn't see the parking lot. Had to use her phone to light up her car." Wading through the murky water, I left a wake as I went deeper into the mouth of the sewer. Nadean reluctantly behind me.

I had a feeling Nadean didn't really like our little 'excursions'. Though, it was almost her job to go. Nadean would turn in the scraps she found to a local smelter who would pay her 50 cents forever three cans she had. I told her I thought it was cheap change but like all things I said to her, it went unnoticed. Me and Nadean we're going on three years having known each other now and the only aspects about her that she has related to me is that she speaks different and that Nadean is a thoroughbred push over. Even without language for her to tell me that it was apparent in how she coat-tailed me down the flooded sewer hall.

"But yeah. Not really funky stuff. But then that all changed." I removed my jacket and throw it to a concrete slab close to Nadean. It landed with a wet thud and got her attention. " One day her car broke down and she was forced to walk home. Sis told me she didn't want to pay for a bus ticket but I think that's BS. Don't see any harm in taking the bus."

My unmoved friend narrowed her dark eyes at me and shifted towards a pile of trash. Continuing without her I spoke up louder, "We take the bus everywhere. I don't see how being in Texas would change that. Maybe there's some dumb law about people on the bus. I don't know, she never told me." Nadean returned to the bank of the chamber with more cans. Shaking them up some more didn't deter me from my story.