Growing Hope - Installment 7

“Carol, did you smoke all our shit?” Shelly asked from the doorway. Carol just giggled. I looked up from my typing.

I liked Shelly most of all because she seemed the most normal in the enclave. No tattoos, no piercings other than her ears, no scars. Just perfect. The way her DNA meant her to be. She didn't smoke, she rarely took drugs, and she thought I was killing my brain and liver. I liked her. She looked to be entirely more... whole. Of course, the most normal out of the enclave didn't really mean shit. And looks didn't mean anything either.

Short and petite with long black hair and a little bit of Native American flowing through her veins. Lovely in that, I'm super-fucked-up-in-the-head-because-I-watched-my-parents-executed-with-a-bullet-to-the-back-of-the-head kind of way. But you build up a sort of resistance to that kind of thing around here. Most of these people were our allies, after all. A little crazy, but sometimes those are the best compadres to have. Besides, when you got nothing...

“Hey Dorse,” Shelly greeted me, came over and gave me a peck on the lips. “How you been?”

“Can't complain, Shelly. How was shopping?”

Shelly looked down at my hands resting on the laptop keyboard, caught a glance at some schematics of the farm that I'd pulled up. She walked around behind me to give the screen a closer inspection. “Is that you and Telson's setup?” She asked, eyes wide.

“They're leaving tomorrow, Shell,” Carol called from her bed.

“Shut the fuck up, Carol!” I yelled reflexively, then more quietly, “Shelly close the door, would you?” Shelly went around and did as I asked, eyes still wide. She looked back at me after the bolt clicked satisfactorily, eyebrows raised.

“You two are leaving? Why? And don't yell at me.”

“Well...” Telson said sluggishly, trailing off. Still fucked.

“I apologize. And we want to go to the Freelands.” I answered.

“You know,” Shelly started quietly as she sat down on the end of the bed, “they're not as great as you think. There's still problems there.”

“How would you know?” Telson asked.

“Not everything everybody says is true, Telson. I mean, Kenchi's just propaganda-”

“But better than the propaganda everybody else daily feeds us,” I interjected.

“Yeah,” Shelly said, frowning, “but it's still propaganda, guys. Maybe you should stay here in the camp. I mean, we can still move all the stuff in-”

“Ohhh hell no!” I snapped, “I'm not moving in here. I'd end up breaking Hillfen into a million pieces, scattering his fucking nanobots all over the fucking camp grounds, getting kicked out, living on the street. Fuck no. Fuck. No. Then I'd be out of a place to live and have no farm.”

“But-” she started again.

“Fuck no! We're having a party, we're getting completely, utterly incapacitated, then we're leaving in the morning. End of fucking story.”

Telson sat up, looked at us both, “Right.”

“Right. Shit. And I apologize for yelling again.”

Shelly didn't even look at me, just got up and left. All Carol could muster was a sigh. I got up to follow Shelly. Telson laid back down.

“Don't even bother, Dorse. She's pissed. Give her a minute for her to get back to her studio, work a little bit of it out of her system. She might knife you if you don't,” Carol said quietly.

“She might knife me if I do,” I walked over and put my cigarette out in the ashtray on the bed, “but you're probably right. I'll finish the notes then go down there.”

Cross-posted at Frequency23 months ago, back when the world was younger, and you were less boring.