Mountain Qualia

NaNoWriMo Day 22b

Tipi let out a scream. He heard someone bang on a door at the other end of the hallway. Shivers rippled across his body from bottom to top. He gasped one last time for air, still clenching his hands around a rope that is not there. Vasco en Körbl were lying motionless next to their chairs. "At the center of the universe, he said," Tipi mumbled to himself. Why are people so desperate to find centers everywhere? And when they can't find one, they assume they must be it."

Tipi got up and walked through the door into the hallway, dragging a desk chair behind him. He then tried to unknot the rope around his arm, but his free hand shook too much to make any progress. "Julian?" he called out.

"Help!" Julian screamed from behind a door. Tipi unlocked it with the key that is still in the lock. Julian pulled the door open and runs straight into Tipi's chest.

"Tipi?" he said and hugged Tipi tight. "I don't want to go on anymore, why is everyone so mean."

"Hush, hush," Tipi said. "You're right, you're right, but that does not mean we can just give up. It's only an assumption that everything will be better when we die."

"Where are those men?"

"Asleep, in the next room. They're in a dream prison, but I don't know for how long, so we have to get moving." They tumbled down the stairs, with Tipi basing the chair behind him against walls, vases and stair railing. Julian ran ahead and found his way out the front door. A bright sunlight welcomed them.

"Do you know where we are?" Julian said.

"No, you?"

"No."

They walked up the road and looked left and right. Water. Water on both sides as far as the eye can see. A small strip of land cut throuh two large bodies of water. Houses lined on one side of the road and a bike path on the other side.

"Let's just walk," he said to Julian who was still sobbing. This was too much for a little guy like him, but there was not much else to do than try to tag him along. He would not leave them with those sick bastards, that was certain. A few cars passed them by. Tipi had waved at them to stop but other than looking at Tipi and his chair they did not slow down at all.

Then he saw a regular bus approaching, at the same time as he saw the bus stop post. "Run!" he called out to Julian. "Try to stop that bus." Tipi tried to run as well with a dangling chair chafing his calfs. Out of breath, Tipi carried himself and the chair into the bus and paid for himself at the driver who pretended not to see the chair.

"Where are we going?" Julian asked when they had sat down at the spacious disabled seat.

Julian pointed to the schedule on the wall of the bus. "Utrecht, they did not take me that far."

"Are you getting rid of me again?"

"No!"

Julian looked out the window in clear disbelief. It must have been tough all those years with his parents to make him run away. Tipi saw flashes of the suicide dive Julian had attempted to make on that utterly strange evening. What was several months seemed like an eternity ago.

"It is different now," he said to Julian. "I have found my passport, and my smartphone and laptop. I have a lot of money from selling my house. Living as a smooching and possessed enlightened vagabond apparently did not cost much. I am no longer that aimless and helpless. I'm getting my regular life back on the rails."

"Good for you," Julian said closing his eyes and either trying or pretending to sleep against the window of the shaking bus.

"I'm just saying I can actually do things now, not just for me, but also for you." Although Tipi had no idea what he could do. His parents would look for him with good or bad intentions, and that means it would also involve the authorities, and that meant that currently Tipi was not in a very good position to take good care of the boy.