***
I slept until Jo knocked on the door to his guest room. I sat up, feeling immeasurably tired still.
My phone was ringing as well. I grabbed it and saw that it was Mom and Dad. They left about ten messages. I turned the phone off.
"You can come in..." I said to Jo.
He did so. He opened the door and leaned against the doorframe. He was dressed for work by the looks of things. He was dressed pretty formal for school in a suit and tie. Maybe he wanted to be a good influence on the young adults. He cleaned up well--at least in my eyes--most women would probably consider him pretty nerdy.
"I have to get going... Do you want me to drive you home?" Jo asked.
My shoulders tensed and my head felt hot at the suggestion. "Can I just stay here?"
He was silent, looking at the ceiling; wondering what was going on with me. "Are you sure you're okay? I don't mean to sound rude, but most women don't just ask to come home with some guy they just met and stay in his house."
I forced a smile. "I'm okay. I gotta get ready for work, myself..."
He raised an eyebrow. "You didn't even bring any clothes for work. Are you sure you don't want me to drop you off at your parent's place?"
I stood up, still wearing the same clothes from yesterday and I shook my head. "No one cares if you wear the same clothes as you did before. Least of all your clients." I didn't know how long I could keep lying to him, but anything was better than facing rejection and being shamed by him when he found out what kind of woman I really was.
"Let me at least call you a cab to take you to work, then," he pulled out his phone from his pocket but I held up a hand.
"I'll call one," I lied easily. It was pretty easy to continue lying once you started.
He stared at me confusedly. I stared right back. He cleared his throat. "Okay. I'll let you get ready. I suppose if you want to you can stay here."
I smiled at him. "Thank you..."
***
Day 11
I told him I would leave for work after he did, but I never even left the house.
Many of my emotions were numbed since I had taken the serum, and I was glad of it. That might be why I made such a reckless decision of staying in the house of a man I didn't know and proceeding to lie to him.
I was still too sick to work, but I thought if I injected the rest of the serum, I could manage it. But I thought about having children, and I simply couldn't do it. I didn't know what it was, but not having that option was unthinkable to me.
I found my way to his room and padded around on the blue-carpeted floor curiously. There were framed pictures of people who I assumed to be family members at his bedside table. There was a young lady, maybe in her twenties who I assumed was his sister, and an older man and woman who I assumed to be his parents. There was a framed picture facing down. I tilted it up. It was another woman who was not his sister.
I tilted the picture back down.
I shuffled to the corner of his room which had one of his dressers. I looked through all his drawers for fun--having no concept of decency, respect, or privacy at the moment--and found that his drawers were a mess.
He didn't bother to fold clothes and instead tossed them into his top drawer. His second drawer had various cords and keyboards; things relating to technology. I grinned. I had one of those, too.
His third drawer was filled with miscellaneous papers. It seemed a relative who was a child liked to draw him lots of pictures and Jo kept them all.
I dug through with a little smile, finding the drawings charming and comforting. I came upon a note, however, addressed to Jo from a girl named Marie. She essentially wrote to him that she didn't want to live anymore and she would rather be a robot. I looked at the paper, intrigued. There were some dried wet spots on it. I assumed he must have cried when he read it. He shouldn't have. She was probably better off not being human.
I shrugged and tossed the note back in the drawer and closed it up.
I stalked into the kitchen and looked around. I checked in his refrigerator. He had nothing but condiments. I shut it with a laugh. Next, I checked his pantry. He had cereal and chips, and appeared not to be a healthy eater. I wondered how he kept his toothpick physique.
I shut the panty and finally arrived at the last unexplored room: His living room. There was a tan couch there and one salmon arm chair next to it with a TV in front of them. I sat in his arm chair, cross-legged. He had a book next to his chair.
I picked it up. I giggled. Some high fantasy novel. I started reading it, and I didn't stop.
***
I must have fallen asleep. Jo shook me awake. "Wake up, Shawna..."
My head snapped out of sleep and I looked around frantically. I was still holding his book, which now had drool on it.
"You got home before me, huh?" Jo stated plainly.
I nearly forgot about the lie I told him. "I suppose so..." I stood up and looked at the clock hanging above his TV. It was seven PM.
He was dressed casually now, and he said cheerily, "come on, let's go out. I know this great pizza place. It'll be great after a hard day's work..."
I looked away--my hair covering the human side of my face. "I'll order us a pizza."
"I don't want you to pay. Besides, it'll be fun to get out--"
I couldn't help a worried, uncomfortable look on my face. He sighed and scratched his head again. "Shawna, are you going to tell me the truth? What's going on with you?"
I hugged my knees, biting back tears in my human eye. "Will you let me stay here if I tell you?"
I was putting him in a bizarre situation; I could tell he didn't know quite how to respond to a stranger he just met crying on his arm chair and asking if she could live with him. "Shawna, I like you but I barely know you... Don't you want to go home?"
I was desperate. I knew he was attracted to me and I used that against him. I upped my crying in my human eye and I stood up from the chair and threw my arms around him; appealing to his male need to protect me. I told him a partial truth. "I lost my job and my parents are threatening to kick me out..."
For a moment he was quiet. He didn't know what to make of any of this. But I could tell he liked being hugged. I could tell it had been a long time since he had any company. He held me at arm's length and smiled at me. He smoothed my hair out of the human side of my face, and would have let it fall lank at his side if I hadn't leaned my cheek into it and put my hand on top of his.
He looked at me longingly. "Sure. Of course you can stay."
"I'll order us that pizza!" I wiped my eyes and sniffled for good measure.
***
I felt obligated to watch a movie with him on his couch. He was going to pick out a drama, but I said to him playfully, "sure you don't want to pick a fantasy?"
He turned to me, a little embarrassed. "I can't believe you read that book..."
My smile melted into a frown, and I looked at him intently and seriously. "Truth be told, I love fantasies..."
There was silence between us, and he let those words sink in. He turned to his movie rack (he had a lot more than I ever did) and picked out a fantasy instead. I grinned.
He popped it in the DVD player and sat next to me on the couch I scooted away from him. He was a little bit too close for comfort. I watched with rapt attention. It was pretty good.
Jo knew everything about the movie and paused it at times to tell me tidbits. I thought it was cute, and actually pretty interesting. I had never been much of a movie watcher. I preferred to go out at night. It was fun, staying in and watching a movie at night.
The main character died at the end, and I couldn't stop crying. "Why would you make me watch that? Why couldn't they end up together?"
He laughed a little. "Come on, it's just a movie..."
I wiped my human eye. "It's good to have a cry, though..."
After a moment he asked with a smile, "are you going to bed, or should we watch one more?"
I thought about it. I almost said yes; I was having fun. But I looked down at my feet and said, "I'm gonna go to bed. Goodnight." I stood up and headed toward the guest room.
"Don't forget to let your parents know you're staying with me." He called after me as I shut the guest room door behind myself.
I sat on top of the blue covers of the guest bed, cross-legged. I looked at my phone on the desk beside the bed. My hand wavered over the phone; trembling. I sighed and screwed my eyes shut. I switched the light off and crawled under the covers.
***
Day 18
I lived with him for a week now, and I thought he must have the patience of a saint. He didn't care that I (supposedly) couldn't get a job, and he didn't even ask about it. I thought he might have just liked the company.
For some nights, I didn't want to spend any time with him. Others, I stayed up with him and watched movies with him.
It was raining outside one day and I asked him something I was surprised I felt well enough to ask him about. I paused the movie we were watching and asked, "do you want to take a walk with me?"
He was surprised. "It's raining out!"
"I know, I used to--I mean, I love walking in the rain." Back before the trauma I endured, there was nothing I loved more than walking through a rainstorm with an umbrella over head. Something about it made the world right with me.
Jo thought about it, and then smiled with a nod. "You know, it sounds fun! I'll get the umbrella!"
He ran to his closet and I heard him rummaging through it. Jo had been letting me borrow some of his clothes, and I put on one of his coats. It was way too big for me.
Jo met up with me at his front door. He grinned at the oversized coat, but said nothing.
He had a tan coat of his own on. He opened a black umbrella before I got the door for him. We were greeted by sweet-smelling rain and a rush of breeze and loud, pitter-pattering. Raindrops were dotting the sidewalk. I was excited.
We stepped out together, and I clung to his arm. I was cold. I pressed my cheek into his arm happily. He said nothing. He was just smiling and having a good time.
"I can't thank you enough for letting me stay..." I said to him genuinely.
He looked away awkwardly as we walked down the sidewalk and past many other houses lined up next to one another. He replied, "truth be told, I don't want you to go. It's been a lot of fun having you around. You're the only person who likes my nerdy movie commentary. And you don't seem to mind fantasies, either..."
"Don't have any friends who do?" I asked curiously.
He shook his head. "I don't have any friends, period."
I thought about the woman's note I had found in his drawer. She seemed to have been a friend.
"Company's not hard to find, though. I'm sure there's better company out there than me..." We had to nearly yell to each other over the loud rain. But it was so pleasing to be out here with him alone. I felt warm, despite it being so cold.
"Company's not hard to find," he agreed. "But good company is. So many people just come and go. It gets hard to say goodbye after awhile."
"You've said goodbye to many people?" I asked vaguely.
He blinked sadly. "My little sister injected the serum into her wrist. She was... Not the same afterwards. She moved far away, and now... She works as at a fast food place somewhere."
"You don't even know where she went to?" I asked.
He shook his head. "I never want to see her again. That's not my sister."
We came to the end of the neighborhood and arrived at a street corner by a surface street. A car zoomed past and splashed through a puddle of rain pooling in the gutter as Jo pushed the button on the cross-walk.
While we waited for the walk sign to light up, I asked him, "why did she...?"
"She was never very happy. She got picked on a lot throughout school and had a hard time getting on with others. She couldn't work in the condition she was in and she just felt worthless... After our parents died she had to come live with me. I liked taking care of her, but she didn't believe it. She went to go visit the Goddess, and came back a cold machine. You're a therapist. Can you tell me why she would choose death over me?" He had a blank, thoughtful face on.
I bit back tears. I knew what it was like to feel worthless. I knew from personal experience and from my patients. I had treated people who were rich and poor, who had large and small social networks. For many people deep in the whirlwind of unhappiness, myself included; it didn't matter how many people loved you, how many accomplishments you had, how much money you had, or how many people you loved in return. The feeling of worthlessness was deep in your veins. The feeling of apathy was embedded deep in your skull. Your friends and family felt like they were far away, above ground--where happy people belong--and you felt like you were being buried and kept away from them. The worst part was, you felt like that was what you deserved.
The only way to get rid of the worthlessness in your veins was to turn them into metal.
"She isn't dead... She just doesn't feel anything. Sometimes--some people... They just can't be saved. Feeling nothing is still better than being dead." I said to him, still choking back tears.
He didn't noticed how choked I was. He answered, "no it isn't. She's like a walking corpse now."
There was intense silence between the two of us again. I knew what he was thinking.
I looked down. "Do you find my metal half repulsive?"
Jo looked straight ahead and nowhere near me. "I'm sorry; I can't help it."
I was fully crying now.
Jo felt bad for me. He gave me a comforting hug. It was completely understandable that he would find it gross; but it still hurt me.
The walk sign lit up and we crossed the street together. Once across the street, we walked past a church in silence and came upon the school next to it. The air tasted like metal. I couldn't tell if it was because half my tongue was metal or because there was metal in the air, but it was a nasty taste.
"Are you going to take the rest of that serum?" Joahnnes asked.
I was going to answer when a man pressed a gun to the base of Jo's skull and cocked it. I shuddered with fear; my eyes wide.
Jo stayed calm and put his hands up. I did too.
"Wallet." The man demanded.
Jo reached slowly into his pocket with his free hand and let his hand fall lank at his side. The man took the wallet and told us to stand there silently and count to sixty.
We did so. I was trembling and screwing my eyes shut in fear. I couldn't get flash backs out of my head. My wrists ached with an imagined, past pain; my head was on fire with trauma and fear. The scars under my clothes hurt. I was crying with fear.
After a minute, Jo said, "are you okay?"
I shook my head and sobbed with fear. He hugged me once again. "I'll take you home; I'm sorry about this..."
"It was my fault; I never should have suggested we go out."
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