Alice opened and rooted around in all of their cupboard, in the fridge, and even in the plastic box that contained the dry food items that didn’t fit anywhere else. Eventually, she came back to the table with several metal tins in her arms.
“Okay,” she said, “so we’re out of coffee, milk, juice and alcohol. We really need to go shopping. I mean, what are we even doing with our lives?”
She paused, maybe intending for Oasis to interject something. When they didn’t answer, she continued, mumbling to herself.
“You know what? I would kill for some soju right now, and I don’t even like it. Anyway, we do have Gatorade powder. So, which of these do you think will be the most mind-numbing?”
She opened her arms and let the tins tumble to the table. There were seven or eight of them, and they only had them because the Canadian Superheroes League had a sponsorship and received the stuff by the crate. Every time that SwordBright went up to Ottawa for their yearly review, their caseworker practically begged them to take some tins home.
Oasis blinked and sifted through them with interest. They hadn’t had Gatorade for ages and ages. While they knew Alice was probably bemoaning their lack of groceries at that moment, the shiny paper labels and colourful plastic lids felt like luxuries for them.
“Oooh, green,” they said, handing the tin to Alice. She rolled her eyes but obligingly went to get an empty plastic juice jug to prepare the drink for them.
“Great, green, the most radioactive colour,” she said sarcastically. Then she froze, and looked back at them, wide-eyed. “Please tell me it wasn’t a nuclear thing.”
They shrugged and slumped in their seat. “It wasn’t.”
They weren’t particularly eager to share the story of the end of the world, but they knew that Alice would probably prefer to know. She was the sort of person to rip off band-aids and open college admission letters the moment they arrived in the mail.
“It was magic, some sort of spell. There was a tyrant, who decided to try and rule the world. First Canada, then the United States, which by the way was a weird order to do this in. Very unexpected. Anyway, then people rebelled, as they do, and I’m not quite sure what happened next. I guess he snapped. Figured if he couldn’t have the world, no one could, or something like that. A bunch of superheroes went to confront him and like twenty minutes later, everyone in North America was dead.”
Alice stared at him through her long fringe of hair. She looked dismayed, but also a little suspicious of their easy answer. “I’m quite sure that’s not the whole story, but okay.”
Oasis knew that she was only letting them off the hook for now and would surely ask more questions later, but they were still relieved as she busied herself with the Gatorade preparation, putting the cap back on the jug and shaking it vigorously.
She managed to mostly shake the jug, and Oasis envied her sharp, precise movements a little. When they did that they mostly managed to shake their hips and not the jug, which was just embarrassing for someone who was moonlighting as a superhero. When their had their sword in hand, they seemed to pull coordination and grace out of thin air, but that obviously did not follow them back to their civilian life. Not even after thirty years of rigorous sword training filling up every minute of their free time.
“I understand if you don’t want to talk about it in much detail,” she added, pouring the bright green drink into their mug, “but you can at least tell me this. What’s the plan? You do have one, right?”
Oasis felt a pique of insult at the insinuation that they would have come so far without a plan, but then their remembered that she was talking to them at the age of twenty, and their anger evaporated. They had been remarkably stupid and careless at twenty, and they readily admitted it.
“I do have a plan. I’ve already been at Karry’s earlier to ask her for her help.”
“Who?”
“Oh, you know. Katarina. The Vampire Queen.”
The jug slammed to the table so hard that green liquid shot out of the top of it and splashed all over their kitchen table.
“WHAT?” bellowed Alice, and Oasis straightened in their seat as if it were their mother yelling at them. “What do you MEAN you asked the Vampire Queen?! She tried to kill you!”
“Yes, that’s a thing she does,” edged Oasis, heart beating double time in their chest. They hands had shot out to grip the edge of the table, Alice’s sudden transformation into their mother for a hot minute making them feel ill and panicky. “What time are we talking about, here?”
“What time? WHAT TIME?” kept yelling Alice, showing no sign of calming down.
Oasis eyed the mess of Gatorade and pushed their chair backward, trying to avoid the spill that was spreading toward their side of the table. Thrown back in time to their childhood, and not in a good way, by Alice’s uncharacteristic temper, the last thing that they wanted was to get their clothes dirty if they could avoid it. Not getting dirty or messy seemed vitally important if they wanted to avoid more yelling. It was the only thing that they could concentrate on, aside from the rushing in their ear and the loud pounding of their heart.
The stain kept creeping closer, and they felt rooted to the spot, incapable of leaving the room. So Oasis squeezed their eyes shut and resorted to begging.
“Alice… Please. Don’t be mad, please.”
A sudden, deafening silence fell over their small kitchen. There seemed to be too much of it, that silence, and it filled every nook and cranny of the room with guilt and fear and resentment.
“… I’m sorry,” she finally whispered, appalled. She fell into a chair and did nothing about the spilt Gatorade, although now that nobody was yelling anymore, it didn’t feel as urgent a problem as it had before to Oasis.
“I’m just,” she continued. “She tried to drown you. She did drown you, Oasis. You weren’t breathing. For a while there you were… and I had to… If I hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t know CPR, do you know what would have happened to you?”
“Oh,” they said, quietly. “Yeah, that. That was a long time ago, though.”
Her fingers clenched into fists, and from the glance that they stole at her face, they could tell that she was trying really hard to reign in her anger. “That was two weeks ago,” she finally managed, voice flat and only slightly strangled. “You were dead, two weeks ago. I thought I lost you.”
There was a beat, and then Oasis was on their feet, sidestepping the table and the mess on it. It was their turn to tug their cousin to their feet, and then they were hugging her fiercely, as if the space between them was a personal insult and it was their job to reduce it to nothing. Alice clung back just as tightly.
“It’s alright. It’s okay now. We’re both here, and we’re both alive. We’re okay. I’m gonna find us a therapist and we’ll talk about it and we’ll all be okay.”
“…Okay,” she repeated, her voice muffled in their shirt. He hands clung to their back, squeezing tight. “I want to help you. Please tell me how to help you. I don’t want you to be alone in this.”
They rubbed her back comfortingly, setting their cheek on their soft hair. “I could use your help,” they admitted. “Karry and I are gonna rob a museum.”
“What.” came the flat voice from where she’d smushed her cheek on their chest. Oasis chuckled, and patted her hair the way they knew annoyed her the most.
“Also, I’m gonna need my sword. Have any idea where I keep it in 2016?”
“2017.”
“That’s what I said.”
Comments (0)
See all