SHELLEY THOUGHT she had caught a glimpse of George before the security associates dragged her to the mouth of the adjacent tunnel. She had called to her father, waving her arms, but he must not have heard her.
"That was my dad!" she cried to one of the police associates. "You have to get him back!"
"I'll see what I can do," one of the associates said, then hurried off.
Shelley waited for the man to return, frozen in her grief, her mind locked on that one terrible thought: Had she refused to go with Charlotte to the beach, had she continued to search through the night instead of waiting until morning, he might have survived. Something had told her he was there.
Why hadn't she listened to her gut?
Medical-Corp took Kurt's body away, leaving her a crumpled, crying mass staring across the garage floor. The shuttle disappeared down the south exit hall, sparks of electricity dragging behind it, and Shelley stared as if it might come back again, just long enough for her to say one more final "goodbye." No one returned, however, and so she sat, alone in the crowded garage, trying to decide whether to bother going back home.
Her father had invested everything he had left in Kurt. How was he going to react when he found out that his only son, his legacy, the Irwin name, had frozen to death while in her care? Granted, he had abandoned them for the weekend, but Shelley knew that wouldn't make a difference. He might even accuse her of killing him on purpose in some crazed, jealous rage over of the boy's education.
"I shouldn't have gone home without you!" she cried aloud. "I should have kept looking!
"Then you both would have died in the cold," said a woman who sounded eerily like Virginia. Shelly looked around. The garage had once again been opened to weekend foot traffic, but no one seemed to be addressing her. Had her mother's ghost come to console her?
"Where are you?" Shelley cried out, desperate to find the face to her phantom speaker. "Show yourself!"
A few people turned to her, looking surprised and alarmed by her outburst. She listened silently for the woman to say something more, but nothing came. Shelley hurried through the thin crowd as the shuttle to Housing inched its way in. She found a seat, then waited for the shuttle to gain momentum. It moved slowly through the heavy snowfall, and the lack of adequate interior heating left even complete strangers huddling together as they awaited their stops. Shelley stared out the frost-clouded windows, watching what she could of the storm. She happened by chance to spot a giant snowflake as it smacked against the window closest to her, holding its shape for a moment before it melded into the growing sheet of frost, and she couldn't help but wonder how something so beautiful could also be so terribly destructive.
Her cheeks grew raw with tears, her nose red and sore. She couldn't shake the image of Kurt's frostbitten face from her mind. His eyes had been frozen closed. She wasn't sure how she would have reacted if he had stared back at her through that frozen face. Still, what was left of him seemed more like a wax doll than her brother . . . completely inanimate, as if it had never been alive at all. It left Shelley with an emptiness that she couldn't define. It felt almost as if a small piece of death had forced its way onto her soul, threatening to turn all that was left of her foul and grey.
She fought to keep from hyperventilating as her mind's eye brought Kurt's face back to the forefront, only this time he stared right at her, his brown eyes glassy and still. She cried out, and then shuddered at the realization that every person in the shuttle was staring at her. She took slow, deliberate breaths, turning to her window and ignoring the whispers.
The shuttle strained to continue despite the storm. The power threatened to go out a few times, the lights failing through the last several miles of Shelley's ride. By the time the shuttle got to her exit at Housing, she felt ready to collapse. She cried off and on, her eyes so puffy from tears and injury she could barely see. She made her way home, planning to stay just long enough to calm down, warm up by the heater, pack some extra clothes, and gather a few provisions. She tried to call Charlotte, hoping her parents might let her stay with them for a while, but no one answered. After much deliberation, knowing that she absolutely could not face her father's response to Kurt's death, she decided to go to the church for the night, meet up with Charlotte in the morning at Sunday class, and then figure out the rest of her plans from there. She hurried back to the shuttle garage, only to find all of the shuttle associates leaving their posts.
She hurried up to a nearby security associate. "What's going on?" she asked.
"Corporate's given the order for everyone to stay indoors until the storm lets up," the associate said, overseeing the small crowd of people as they hurried toward Housing. "You should go home, miss. Most of the shuttles are powering-down because of the blizzard."
Shelley looked around, hoping to find just one shuttle that was still manned.
"You look like you've been crying. Are you okay?" the security associate asked, glaring at her black eye.
She nodded.
"Then you should return home," he said. "You're liable to freeze to death out here."
Shelley frowned, although she knew the associate was right. She readjusted her bag over her shoulder and began the short walk back home. Frustrated, she started crying again. She rushed back to her apartment, afraid that someone else might see her in such a panicked state, and she hurried through the door and locked herself in once she reached it.
The apartment was just as dark and lonely as it had been before. She stomped over to the wall heater in the kitchen and turned it back on before it had a chance to cool. In a fit of rage, she punched the wall beside the heater, and then pulled back her hand with a defeated cry. She massaged her scuffed and swelling knuckles, suddenly feeling positive that she hated just about everyone and everything. There was nothing left for her here, nothing at all.
Shelley could remember a time when life offered such mystery, such excitement. The world was filled with all different kinds of vibrant colors and fantastic smells, childhood wonders to explore, marvels to discover. As the years went by, however, the colors seemed to fade slowly into shades of grey. Her parents progressively taught her that dreams were the musings of fools, that hope could only take a person so far. No one was above the system. They provided well enough for Shelley and Kurt, but the best they really could offer either of them, when it all came down to it, was a life of mediocrity. Was she willing to spend the rest of her existence as a manager at the Food-Mart or an assembly line or some other menial crap job somewhere in one of the Mart districts? No . . . whatever did remain of her spirit would certainly wither away if that was all she had to live for.
Maybe death was the only viable option she had left.
Sobbing, she started a hot shower. She forced herself to face the mirror, staring, looking for something—a glimmer of hope, the will to rise above this pain, a desire to continue on. Nothing came, however, and so she gave herself a spiteful sneer. The bruise around her eye now featured giant splashes of yellow and green, making her face all the more unsightly. As she stared herself down, the eyes in the mirror seemed to take on a life of their own. They stared back at her with disgust and hate, egging her on. Crying aloud, Shelley picked up a shaver from the sink. She carefully removed the razor and set it in the shower soap dish.
Removing only the first couple layers of clothes, Shelley hurried into the shower and allowed the hot water to douse her hair and body. A shiver went through her as she sat down and allowed the water to beat down on her. Her thoughts went to Virginia and Kurt, to her broken education, and to all of the new responsibilities that had been dropped down upon her. Kurt's face returned once more, and she screamed and cursed until the image retreated again to the back of her mind. She breathed in the calming steam, telling herself nothing mattered anymore. Her hands shaking, she held the razor up against her wrist.
She closed her eyes, afraid that she might go hysterical at the sight of so much of her own blood. She took a deep breath, trying her best to steady her hands. She pressed the razor hard against her skin, swallowing what she told herself would be the last of her tears, but she could not bring herself to finish the deed. She thought to give herself a moment, and then try again.
She took another mental inventory of all that had gone wrong in her life, knowing that her resolve to end it would return as soon as she thought enough about all of her grievances. Instead, thoughts of a new purpose in life flashed through her mind, and she set the razor blade in the soap dish as she considered her vindictive idea: If she was going to die, she might as well take out as many deviants as she could first. Someone had to suffer for all that she had lost. Someone had to be held accountable. Perhaps she wouldn't get the deviant directly responsible for her mother's infection, but one way or another, she would find a way to even the score.
She got out of the shower, stripping off the wet layers, quickly drying off, and putting on multiple layers of clean, dry clothes. She wrapped a towel on her head, and then went back to the kitchen to prepare something to eat. Saturday was usually chicken pot pie night, but Shelley decided that tonight, for a change, she would have spaghetti. Filling a pot of water to boil, she dug out the spaghetti and canned sauce from the cupboard.
She sat by the wall heater while she waited for her dinner to heat, shaking her hair out of the towel and letting it air dry close to the glowing coils. She glanced over at a small window, seeing nothing through the glass but snow and darkness. The desire to write hit her, and she scrambled for a pen and paper. The release came quickly, the cold, dark words falling from her fingers to the page in thick, hateful waves. She wrote too quickly to keep her penmanship completely legible, scribbling line after line of cryptic, syncopated promise. She stopped for a moment to review her new masterpiece, carefully reading each line. Fully satisfied with the draft, she decided to self-publish. She turned around, took a deep breath, and then wrote her entire poem across the wall in large block letters:
The dim light flickers overhead
and she contemplates the night
with vengeance on her mind
and a specter's cold hands
tight around her throat.
The cold consumes her
in more ways than one;
thorns and heavy bags of ice
only feed the fire within her
and draw the demons ever nearer.
The white snow washes out the dark sky
only to be trampled and defecated on,
reduced to black mud on the ground;
what was once white and pure
is bound to corruption.
The light flickers out
and she prepares herself,
knowing what must be done;
the specter slowly loosens its grip
and she takes a deep, hateful breath.
She finished it with the most professional-looking signature she could manage, and stood back to admire her work.
"Genius," she whispered aloud, tears streaming down her face. "Pure genius."