Amanita: Poison Shot

Chapter 2: A Grim Verdict

"I still got a motorbike to mend! Mr Fabio's gonna kill me," Daniel whispered to me while those two clone cops came back from the pacifying room as if nothing had happened.

"Relax, Daniel," I replied also whispering. "Mr Fabio's bike won't run away on its own. He's gonna understand why you haven't got it repaired today."

I was still shaken by what had happened to those two brothers, but with an impending check-up on all three of us, I couldn't afford to worry about anybody else.

"Waiting is a total bummer," he whispered after an impatient sigh. I smiled at him.

Daniel had my father and me busy with his unstoppable obsession to become a mechanic, like me. Neither of us could talk about anything else.

We shared a dream: running our own garage, where we would mend cars, motorbikes, tractors, or any machine that would require our magic fingers to make it come back to life.

I had been saving money ever since I had started working in Replica Ltd., and he also had some savings of his own even though he was only fifteen years old. On top of that, we were devoted students of the same manuals, Daniel and I. We usually studied at night, on weekends, or during any spare hours. We were deadly serious about our dream.

"One day we will open our own garage, Daphne. I can't let this give us a bad image." He sounded appalled and proud. "Being late is inadmissible!"

"Wow, you sound so mature when you say it like this, Daniel," I replied mocking him, but I was smirking at him. "Impatient as usual, I see."

Opening the garage would be possible thanks to him, actually: for as long as a man signed the papers and made himself responsible for me, a woman, everything would be fine.

"Tonight," Daniel whispered close to my ear with eagerness, "we're going to Old Sue's Clearing to party, aren't we?"

"I don't know. We'll see."

"What the fuck 'we'll see', Daphne!" he almost lost control of the volume of his voice. "Fuck, Daphne. I'm dying to go! Especially tonight, after we've undergone this torture. You're too nervous. I can tell. What happened here a few minutes ago... I..." he hesitated and sighed. "You need to unwind, too."

"We're getting too wild in Old Sue's Clearing lately," I said mocking a concerned mother's tone of voice to try to get that nasty scene out of my mind. "Old witches don't like parties, you know. Eventually, she's gonna come down and kick us out with her broomstick or something."

We usually went to Old Sue's Clearing to party on Friday and Saturday evenings and nights. I was eager to go too. That was why I was already smiling at the mere thought of it.

"Yeah, good Old Sue, the white-haired, wrinkled witch," Daniel whispered with naughtiness and sighed.

Old Sue, the woman my brother was talking about, 'lived' –so to speak– right outside the city limits, on the mountainside down south. Since the clearing was close to her home, we had named it after her. The clearing was a car graveyard in disuse. Old Sue's home was a decadent, large mansion about to collapse, standing high above the clearing.

Then, I noticed that the two police officers in uniform were staring at us with a deep frown. I could tell they wanted Daniel and me to shut up by the deadly look in their eyes and the stern aura around them.

"Listen, we should remain silent," I whispered in a hurry. "Those guards look ready for action. Dad's gonna be mad at us. Anyway, how come you are so talkative right now?"

"I'm antsy. You know. The check-up."

"Bollocks. You've got ants in your pants because tonight you're seeing your girlfriend, Chloé."