Bulletproof Heart

“Get over it.” Party Poison stifled into my ear at my still and nearly paralyzed reaction to his actions. I hadn’t been this close to someone in a while. I had never been this close to what might as well be a complete stranger. Despite this, arms around me was something I hadn’t experienced in quite a while, and the freezing of my toes was quite incentive enough, I thought. I curled my toes inside of my shoes, which felt as stiff as wood, I had stepped in a puddle and it pretty much freeze dried them.

Actually, they were really cold. A moment ago they had only been cold, now they were mind-numbingly unbearable, and just as my thought train headed into central station they became legitimately numb. Careful not to disturb my warm sleeping partner, I reached down to my feet, loosening the straps. I tried not to hit his legs as I kicked them off, freeing my toes to wiggle and regain feeling. I returned to my previous position, gently resting my hands on his own, which, by happenstance, were connected to his arms, which also clenched around my waist quite snugly.

As much as I would never admit it to him… or anyone, for that matter, human contact did feel nice once in a while. He was sound asleep by now, and I found his head struggling to the position of resting in the crook of my neck, and his warm breath rested quietly on my collar bone, heating up the cold shoulder, so to speak. His nose touched my neck; it was cold and made me shudder violently. He held me tighter at this, eyes still closed peacefully.

I began to drift off into strange dreams, but then awoke, realizing just how close, close was.

It was irrational for me to feel this way at the sensuality of skin contact. It didn’t mean anything; it wasn’t going to get me laid, just warmer. All he was used for was as a very attractive heater. And not even that attractive, why should looks matter anyway? Only physicality, that’s all it was; useless in the grand scheme of things unless someone needed a distraction. Anyways, Killjoys didn’t fall in love, or much like anyone.

We weren’t one big spawning family; no one brought children into the fray unless they were rescues. There certainly wasn’t a maternity section of the tiny shack of a hospital. Most people who received major wounds died on the field, or later, from sepsis.

I seemed to stray from the topic my right and left brain were discussing avidly… ah, yes, Mr. Killjoy-extraordinaire. Why did I care? I needed sleep, not fantasy. I shut off the lights in my brain and the blinds of my eyelids on my window-pane eyes shut as well, engulfing me in uninterrupted sleep.

That whole uninterrupted thing, it lasted until I heard someone…

“How adorable! You think we should wake them? Yeah, we should, you’re right Mr. Twinkles.” I awoke, eyes blurred beyond compare. I tried to move, but to no avail.

“Mr. Twinkles?” My eyes finally focused in a surge of blinding white head-ache and I could see quite clearly a man sat in front of me, stroking a teddy bear, no a koala bear. He disguised his facial features within a mask of… smoke? No, he was just smoking something; it didn’t look like a cigarette, though. He removed the pipe, and all I could see of his face was dramatically painted with black make-up. Now the smoke cleared and the final reveal was shocking. The man, if you could call him that, had no facial features to speak of. It was like he hid for a long time in the dark and eventually didn’t need eyes to see or mouth to eat or nose to breathe. His top hat sat on his bald head like it was a permanent fixture, perfectly perched atop. His matching white suit was the same; spotless, as if he never even moved an inch.

I now realized that the white was the walls around me. Poison and I were in exactly the same position we had lay in in the depths of our little tree cave, but we were on laminate white flooring. I tried to move my lower extremities, to avoid the horrible embarrassment of being found asleep in Party Poison’s venomous arms, but I still could not move anything but my neck upwards. I turned, now only realizing how integral shoulders were to turning any amount of degrees. I now saw that my bedfellow was stumbling into reality, just as I had previously.

“Yes, short for Reginald Bippity Twinkle Toes. See his gorgeous toes?” He pointed at the toes the factory had neglected to sew for the false creature, “He’s a dancer. His wife, Rad Bobbity Twinkle Toes-Banana Pie is hiding though; I think she might be on a brownie binge again.” If he had a face, I would have sworn that he pouted; a blinding frown it must have been.

“How do you talk?” Poison asked from beside me, also struggling with the new paralyzed state that seemed to overtake our bodies. I had to admit, he was still pretty warm, though that was the only thing we probably had going for us at the moment.

“It’s not me. It’s Mr. Twinkles. I think Alice wants to talk now, though.” The man pulled out a nude baby doll. I hadn’t seen one of those since I decided I was too old for them at age five. Alice was clearly a boy, from what I could see, but hey, all the boys in grade school thought I was one, “I’m the Sad Man,” He forced the baby’s arm to point at him, “And I’ve got something of a pickle to pick with you.”

He, or Alice, laughed at his own joke. It came out in a high pitch staccato whine, as if someone had an asthma attack while watching the Three Stooges. It was akin to listening to a broken record of a Gilbert and Sullivan song. I hadn’t ever heard of the Sad Man, maybe my memory was just fuzzy.

“What pickle, Peter?” Now it was a pirate action figure talking, the irony was not lost on me, he even rolled his ‘r’ like a dirty sailor, “Well, I can’t just have you near that generator. That generator is very important to Peter, though I won’t say why.” The Sad Man, I revolved the name along the length of my tongue, trying to remember if I had ever heard of him. I felt Poison struggle next to me, it seemed his immobility was more short-lived, while I was still stuck attached to his side like a puppy dog.

“Will Mr. Twinkles say why?” I regretted saying it as soon as it tumbled off my tongue, collecting dirt and moss like a rolling stone. The minute I started playing his game, I let him into my head. Gerard sighed, clearly thinking the same dull thought as I was.

If he is really insane, we’re done for.

“Mr. Twinkles certainly will not!” The stuffed marsupial said, in heady disgust, “His dirty mistress won’t let him!” That was Alice. Instead of staring at the dolls, I stared at him. The symmetrical rounding of his face was perfect; as if he were made of clay and someone just smoothed it over. It was the face paint I didn’t understand, though, unless he had a skin condition.

“Why do you have to talk through them?” Poison asked, his hands twitching, as he was trying to remove the weakness of rigidity from the neck down, from the equation.

“I don’t have to. I can talk through any medium I want.” A rocket ship capsized in my mind, sending painful sparks behind my eyes, as my features were briefly taken over by the Sad Man. I spoke for him this time.

What was left of my body that could move was shaking with fear. I was kidnapped, along with someone who would probably sell me out for a veggie burger. Alright, my opinion of him was biased at the moment, but I was kidnapped! Thinking rationally was sadly not on the menu.

“And now, I’m gone.” All objects in the room vanished as if they had never been there, as if they had not collected an ounce of dust and not left behind trails. A disconcerting nausea overtook my organs and my lower extremities seemed to be removed from the numb tightness they had been encapsulated in previously. I shook out my legs, trying to get up, but finding my arms weak in that department, along with my legs. A friendly hand proffered itself and I took it, feeling quite like my bones had liquidized. A door, which appeared out of absolutely nowhere, was opened, and men in grey suits, with faces swathed in black, as if to emulate the Sad Man, walked in. They began to assault us, grasping at the hems of our clothing and very efficiently removing it. My tongue squirmed around my mouth, trying to find something to say, and as soon as I found something to say, my tongue was bound, and I couldn’t resist.

They took our clothing, placing it in pure white garbage bags and sent one of the men out of the room with the bags of possibly our only worldly possessions. I gritted my teeth, still unable to say anything. The men pushed us frightfully near each other, at which we averted our eyes. After they left, something small, like pebbles, dropped from the ceiling. We were going to be gassed, I knew it. He toyed with us and then went all Hitler on us. At least Hitler had a face to despise.

Wait… I wasn’t suffocating. Neither was Party Poison, we were absolutely fine. Next water fell from the ceiling, engulfing us in an avalanche that I could only remember as being… a shower. I hadn’t been clean in centuries, this was almost heavenly. My hair felt rough, like all of the sand grains were being removed from it. Suds developed around my feet, the pebbles had in fact been soap, not chemicals with intent to kill.

Well, wasn’t that a relief?

The water also became soapy, akin to the water collecting around our feet. Now my hair was not only cleared of dirt, but felt wonderfully soft. I could see why people stuck around Battery City; showers were hard to go without once you received a taste. This was when I realized how much Party Poison had given up resisting Better Living. He probably had a life and he took it from himself, giving it up for a piteous and danger-filled existence, and barely that. I was given a choice to go back to Battery when I turned sixteen. There were some who could scratch the surface of the system and hack away identities, and I didn’t take it. I wanted to be just like everyone I had grown up with.

Suddenly it was dry as a desert and the experience was over. The men came back in, soullessness invading their eyes as they placed us in white jumpsuits. We might be prisoners; that was definitely a possibility. Okay, it was a definite. They wouldn’t have bathed us if they didn’t intend on having us stick around. It was either that or they had sensitive noses, but no scruples about playing with their food.

My tongue seemed to be freed as the men exited, “Is that how a shower feels?” I asked, humorlessly, despite how drastically comedic the situation wasn’t.

“Yeah, I have to admit, I miss them. Well. We’ve been kidnapped, haven’t we?” He and I started laughing our guts out. It was an awkwardly long lasting cackle, and it filled the air with a bitter taste. We weren’t getting out of here, and we knew it, so to avoid our fate for as long as possible, we laughed like maniacs. Only when we heard a chuckle come from the wall, did we cease. That was clearly the Sad Man.

I almost felt like crying out at the very oxymoron the name was, until I realized that it wasn’t he who was supposedly sad, it was that he made others sad. I was sad, laughing to pretend that I didn’t want to cry.