I'm helpedâalong with my grandmother and Moritzâby the soldiers that soldier for the lady with my name. And over us, the crying-alarm continues.
It's like a rainbow colored-vehicle that matches the uniforms of the rainbow-themed and reminding soldiersâI say rainbow in parallel with how I think of them because their presence gives me the feelings the weather would if suns and rainbows were outside; or should I say "sun" because there is only one sun.
"Get in," says the lady with my name, telling my grandmother as well as myself.
In front of the vehicle I'm seeking safety in, Moritz is already being driven away, speedily, to what I hope is somewhere where they can save him. Even if it is the University of East Wall Medical Center, where I think they might go and try and find us since some of the luchadores and men back there worked there because I don't care about dying now. I just don't want people dying for me.
If this lady with my name is who I think she is, then I guess I found what I thought would make me happy in this lifetime: a true being that isâor wasâwhat Earth and my grandmother have been to me.
"To the University center," says the lady with my name to a driver already in place.
That's all that is of this assembled-death-hole-playground: sets of sets of already-set sets; everything is already in place for your play to not play.
It is not random that the hospital is so far, for it is a force to direct you to where they want you to go.
****************************
When we arrive, because it is that close that we arrive that fast, Moritz has already been taken into a roomâan ICU room.
"He's in 507," one of the younger soldiers tells me, encoding the worried message on my pretending-to-be-illegible eyes.
Another planned plan: young soldiers dying for causes they most-definitely can't believe in.
"Mom, do you want to stay here? Get some water," the lady with my name says towards my grandmother.
My grandmother!
This lady must be who I think she is and now she might watch me see someone I love die. Is this also planned?
We get into the room and my grandmother goes off to get some liquid in her. But by the time she returns back into the room, not much has happened. Moritz has stayed unconscious. They've only plugged him into tubes and they're prepping for the big "dig".
"We need to do this fast," says a womanâa tall womanâwith thick, blonde hair topped right over her shouldersâshe says this as she's dragging surgery glovers over her handsâif they're called "surgery gloves" or whatever they're called.
Two nurses follow the woman.
One of the nurses goes to the right, and the other to the left.
"Hold him down in case he wakes up," the doctor lady says to the nurses.
"Got him," says one of them.
"Got him as well,' says another, flexing his muscles on the rail of the bed as he gripped onto Moritz, probably harder than he should or needed to.
The doctor inserts six shots into Moritz, quickly. And she does it like a pro too. But I don't know why I' surprised...
*******************
"You all might want to step out," the doctor then says, beginning to prep her weapons for surgery. "It's going to get messy," she says, disinfecting the scissors.
"What have we gotten him into?" my grandmother asks the lady with my name.
Inside, behind us, behind the thick white walls cut with squaresâuneven at thatâthe drops and hits of the strings and tubes going into Moritz were heard as they picked up and dropped when the surgeon got in the way or picked them up by accident as his sharp instruments dug at them as they dug into Moritz. I believe it's that that my grandmother talks aboutâthat in which we got Moritz in, which in turn is now getting into him, in the form of pain and death.
"Get your fucking hands off of me!" then came over the roping and dinging of the tubes inter-tubed into Moritz, and Luviel inter-tubed into our conversation, whatever close-moment we were having at the momentâmy grandmother, myself and the lady with my name.
Youth, younglingsâas alwaysâbrought Luviel in. She is covered in blood, but like me, and like my grandmother, and almost-like Moritz, it is not her own blood.
"We need a room," the lady with my name tells one of the soldiers.
The Youth went then, after being told, and walked, leaving Luviel behind with other three-piece sets of youths, and checked a few rooms close to us until finally finding one.
"In here," he said, bobbing his head toward the room, directing us at the available one he had found for us.
"Take her in," the lady with my name said, looking at the youths holding Luviel.
"Fuck you!" Luviel screamed and then spit at the lady with my name.
"Jesusâyou two haven't changed..." my grandmother raised. "And that's why I took you," she then said to me.
When the youth throws Luviel into the room the other youth soldier directed us into, we followâmy grandmother, the lady with my name, and myself.
Once we're inside, the lady with my name waves the soldiersâonly a fewâto enter the room and stay to take watch, while others watched outside, and near Moritz' room. One of the youths was also told to sit Luviel down.
Luviel is forced on a grey, hard chair. And with barely any light in the room, besides a dingy lightbulb hanging in the middle, my grandmother and I took other chairs apart from Luviel but that we then had to pull closer to her in order to not be in the darkness we were already forced to living in.
"Why don't you tell her?" said Luviel to the lady with my name. "Go aheadâtell her how you agreed to meet with usâonly and only ifâwhen we sent you a picture of her confirming her kidnapping from her uncle's place."
A chair slid back:
"Was this all part of your plan?" my grandmother gasped back.
Another chair slid back, slower than the one before though:
"She's supposed to take her throne," laughed Luviel. "Any of you have a fag on you?" he then asked.
One of the youths gave her a fag, and she lit it up for her too. Luviel took a drag and leaned back. She inhaled fully, as if to fully enjoy every bit of carbon monoxide she was in-haling, and then, she said my plan:
*****************
"Your mum, my sister here, has planned to get you kidnapped only to have you take her place in a place your grandmother took you away from, whom is also my mother and a bitch; but what your mum, my sister, didn't know, was that the plan would go against her, fucking bitch she is, I don't know how the fuck I'm in here...but hey, at least we killed your boyfriend."
"Shut up!" I said.
"That's it, get mad, divine," Luviel taunted.
"Shut up!" then followed my grandmother, slapping Luviel across the face, doing what I wanted to do.
"Yeah, you still hit like you did before we ran away, you dirty whore," said Luviel, to my grandmother, taking another hit of her monoxide; perhaps she was trying to end herself before the lady with my name and her youths threatened to do so.
"Moritz is going to be okay," I say, in denial.
"Maybe. But are you?" laughed Luviel, looking right at me as she inhaled and exhaled again.
"Where is Zero?" interjected the lady with my name.
So he didn't die! He did make it out, as we suspected?
Being that our surroundings are like a vast delta, I am surprised that drones from the other side of the Wall couldn't just come and find us.
"You know she had them shoot down them drones they send from the other side just to get you," Luviel then answered me (mentally and literally).
"Where the fuck is Zero?" asked, again, the lady with my nameâshe asked so fast in deed that it made it seem as if she simply didn't want to talk about whatever Luviel was saying.
"I don't know," devilishly, deceitfully, angrily, bitterly, trembling said Luviel, knowing so much under her tongue, holding back for Zero instead of her own blood.
"If the Catz wanted to take this one and the holding, where would Zero go?"
"You know what's funny about you?"
"Just answer her question," my grandmother said thinking her authority from the other side, along with her blood, followed her here.
"That's what's funny--that you remind me of mom. Stubborn and ignorant."
"You have five seconds," snapped the lady with my name, getting upâno, jumping upâand snatching the gun from the youth behind her and pointing it straighter at who I think is her sister, her born-female-twin-to-hold-on-to-per-earth.
"Yeahâthat's it. That's mom right there. What do you think, mom?"
"Five..."
"Why don't you tell her where you think Zero is, mom?" Luviel says.
"Four...."
And just as three is coming, it stops.
"What? Mom?"
"Zero is your goddamn brother, okay!"
****************
What? Where is the popcorn?
"I had to give him away at birth because we owed too much money! Your father owed too much money!" my grandmother lets out, a riverâone that once flowed over my face in my uncle's storeânow flowing over my grandmother's cheeks and onto and over her lips.
The lady with my name turns to my grandmother.
"So it is family that will always betray you, then?" she asks.
In the room, it seems that it is not the shade and shadows that are the only thing creating darknessâthe darkness that we are hiding within; it seems there are more skeletons in this family's closet than Iâor anyoneâcould have imagined or expected.
To think my life is simply a game; and a point in their game too:
"We can sit here and spill our family secrets, or you can tell me where our newly-pronounced brother is?" shouts the lady with my name...
Maybe it's time to call her for what she is...I think.
-- sorry, I better get used to saying it:
...or as I should say, my mother.
"He's going to make it all worse," she then says.
"You know what's funny, sis?" Luviel says. "That you still have that fucking scar I left you in mom's belly. Look at her ear," she tells me. "It's funny I could even fuck you up before we were even born, before we made it to this Earth.
And I did look at my mother's ear. Her left ear was flat at the top, it pointed up instead of curling down like everybody else's.
"Funny too that mom would always tape it up as if to fix it. She'd leave it on for hours, then when she'd take the tape off, the ear would curl back up, pointing to the sky, only within seconds. Isn't that right, ma?" Luviel asked, insulting.
"We can talk about that later," says my grandmother. "Please help us Luviel."
"Don't let her fool you," Luviel told me. "They've always been fucked up."
She took another hit before asking:
"What would you do with your fuck-up?"
The answer came to me quick...
*****************
...as clicks of youth boots came pacing, racing in.
"Mamâyou might want to come into the room," one of the youth says, rushing into the room full of sweat from the rush that had waved over him because of the situation happening outside, hopefully not where Moritz is.
"It's the boy who is hurt," he then says, confirming my worst fears.
Please, not Moritz. Don't take him now
"Let him die and stop acting like you care," Luviel says.
My hand, at this moment, moves without me. It lifts, quickly, and it rushes over to Luviel as soon as the words leave her mouth.
CLAP!
Then came a gust of inhales, from my grandmother, the lady with my name, a few youthsâthose that were in the room to see. Then came Luviel's response:
"Now you're starting to show the family genes," she says. "How does it feel? You did have to kill to get here after all. So how does it feel to be a murderer?"
My hand moved without my brain saying anything again:
CLAP!
'Ludy! Please!" my grandmother said, reaching for me. But the lady with my name had already taken ahold of my armâthe arm doing the "clapping".
"Come on," my mother said, dragging my arm and then body off of the chair.
****************************************
We left Luviel behind, locked to the chair with another plastic band.
"I hope he dies!" is what we all last heard from her as we ran out of the room. Three youths stayed behind with her.
While running past the rooms to get to Moritz, a part of me felt ashamed that I had given into Luviel's remarks and baited into the anger she was hoping I'd bait into.
Now that I look at it, my mother's ear takes the shape of that I once saw in Christmas books, on elves, Santa's helpers, or on cereal boxesâon the mascot of the marshmallow cereal.
Through the windows of the hospital, the delta showed plain as day in the day. No dirt paths could be seen, so my worry did not go up. But even if they did, Moritz is in a room fighting for his life. Therefore, there are more important things, for I am already dead.
At the door, the doctor was waiting.
"He only has a few minutes, maybe an hour," she said, her head down, avoiding eye contact.
"Fuck," my mother said.
"Excuse me?"
I didn't hear that right.
Please tell me I didn't hear that right.
"What do you mean he has a few minutes? A few minutes until we get him somewhere else" I ask, truly, truly avoiding faith and life's plan for Moritz.
Or was it?
This was not part of his faith. It was not his faith at all. In fact, it wouldn't have been if I wouldn't have gone and shot that patron in my uncle's store.
"Honey," my mother began, before I interrupt-
"What the fuck do you mean, honey? I don't know you!" I first said, then I directed myself at the "doctor":
"You need to help him. We can get him somewhere else. We can cross him back to the other side with your help."