Chain Reaction

When I was seventeen I fell in love with a girl named Amber. She was in two of my classes, English and French and she was at the top of the class in both languages and could flawlessly move between each language while I had issues with everything except sarcasm and dry humor. My French was limited to curse words and a few idioms.

Amber was a part of the popular crowd which did not include me, but it did include my quasi-friend, Scott Morris. We had been kind of good friends for two years and bona-fide enemies a year before that. Let’s just say that he usually left me hung out to dry or left holding the check if we went out. There was one time that he left me in downtown Spokane after a group of us went to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. It was two in the morning when the movie ended, and I went to the restroom only to see everyone I knew, our group of four, gone. Amber was a part fo the group, I invited her to come with us, not entirely sure if she would come but she did, much to mine-and Scott’s surprise. We picked her and a friend, Heather, up from their apartment on the South Hill and went to the movie.

So, I waited in the theatre for a few minutes until the staff told me I had to leave. I stepped out onto the street at two-fifteen in the morning. It was quiet, a very eerie silence.
“Well, this sucks,” Skully said as he took a cigarette out.
Aylese stood next to me with her head down for a moment.
“I mean the movie was terrible. Good music, I liked the actors but it just plain sucked!”
Aylese clenched her fists and took a step away from us.
“However, Susan Sarandon’s boobs; just, wow.”
“Shut up!”
“Oh, don’t tell me you actually liked the movie?”
“I said, shut up!”
“Let’s calm down.” I whispered.
“I. Am. Calm!” Aylese yelled as she tuned back to me. “Okay. Let’s take this for what it is.”
“Scott’s abandoned us.”
“No, I refuse to believe that he would do that,” Aylese said as she motioned for us to follow her. “However, we can’t stand here on the corner.”
“True, we’re not dressed to take a client,” Skully replied.
“Shut. Up!”

We walked down the street and through the tunnel, heading south up to Third Avenue where there were a few restaurants that stayed open all night. The entire walk up the street was done in silence as the two of them had their weapons out. Skully brandished a long scythe and Aylese held her daggers out as they flanked me. We passed by a few shadowy people who may have been armed or in the need to rob some kid, but they kept their distance, and each had a strange expression on their face.

We arrived at Frankie Doodle’s at three-thirty in the morning and I made a phone call to my sister, asking her to come and pick me up in an hour without telling mom and dad anything. She wasn’t happy with the wake-up call, but she did want to know what I thought about the movie.

We sat at a booth in the corner of the restaurant and I ordered a coffee for myself and stared out the window.
“So, are we going to talk about the elephant in room?" Skully asked.
“It’s okay.”
“It’s okay? Stephen, we were left downtown to fend for ourselves by someone who we should slam in the balls and then slice his head off."
“We can’t do that.”
“Then I’ll do it,” Aylese said.
Skully’s eyes glowed some strange purple color in reaction.
“Seriously, I think I will. He needs a bit of clan work done on him.”
“Wait. What about elfin honor and all that?"
“Wait. What about elfin honor and all that?”
I lifted the coffee cup off the table.
“Honor must be earned,” Aylese stated as she stood up and slammed her fists on the table.
“I am so with you, sister,” Skully said. “I finally really like you.”
“Same here,” Aylese replied as she sat back down next to me.
“So, how will we do it?”
“I’m thinking, slashing his brake line.”
“I was thinking more for going for the jugular.”
I sat the cup down.
“No, we’re just going to find out what really happened. There may be a great reason, like Amber got sick or they were carjacked.” I said.
“Maybe,” Aylese said as she nodded.
“No. No, we’re supposed to think carnage. Vlad the Impaler inspired carnage.”
“That will be plan B," I replied. “Oh, and Skully, Columbia’s were better.”
We all nodded in agreement as we saw my sister walk in.