Angelic Resolutions

A Story With No Stories

It was midnight. It was raining. The hospital was quiet. Joe laid perfectly still as tubes ran from his nose and arms to beeping machines that gave off a dull green glow in the dark room.

Casey watched his chest slowly move up and down. She wondered how it was possible to lose her baby and Joe all in one day. At least there's no life-threatening injuries, she tried reassuring herself. It didn't work very well.

"There's too much going on here, Joe. Parker and Mali disappeared, Gordon is off doing God-knows-what to God-knows-who and here I am, waiting for you to wake up. Are we going to continue telling stories? Are you going to hate me forever for losing our child? Do I want to even continue this bitch of a trip? How am I even going to pay for this little trip to the hospital? I hate not knowing things. That's the worst part."

A nurse walked in to check on Joe's vitals, but Casey didn't notice her.

"Sounds like an awful lot of unanswered questions," the nurse replied, drawing a syringe full of some clear liquid to inject into Joe's ivy.

Casey noticed she was there. "Please do your job and don't worry about me."

The nurse winced at Casey's statement, but continued to do her work. "You should get some sleep. You must have had a hard day."

"I can't sleep."

"You should try. I'll be back in an hour to check on him."

"Miss?" Casey asked as the nurse was exiting the room.

"Yes?"

"Can you give me some advice?"

"Advice? What kind of advice?"

"Any at all."

"Well, I would have to say after fourteen years in the ICU, you would be surprised how many angels there are out there."

"Angels?"

"Yes, people who help for no apparent reason at all. The things I've seen....it's almost too much to understand. God has a plan for us all, and sometimes He helps move that plan along through others."

"Now you sound like Parker," Casey muttered as the nurse left her alone with Joe. "Thanks for nothing."

"Oh, one more thing, honey," the nurse said, popping her head back in.

"Don't call me honey," Casey told her.

"Right. Well, I just wanted to let you know that this young man's medical expenses have been taken care of. Don't worry about how you're going to pay for this."

The nurse continued into the hall, leaving Casey with a severely confused look on her face.
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Speaking of Parker....

He was running, crying, splashing through puddles, cursing the rain, and wondering where God was. Mali did not have the reaction he wanted her to have, and he decided to run home to his bastard in hopes of redemption. It was all confusing and hashed together on hunger and sleeplessness. Mali didn't want him, and that's where every decision had stemmed from.

It was when he finally stopped in front of a church to catch his breath that he realized how futile it was to return home now. But he couldn't return to the others...

A graveyard laid next to the church. It was as big as a baseball diamond, but none of the gravestones were much bigger than two or three feet. The names on the graves were strange, almost like someone made them up as the buried the corpses. In the middle of the resting area was a six foot tall cross. Parker stared at it, and, almost jokingly, whispered, "Why have Thou forsaken me?"

"Oh, poor you," said a voice behind him. Parker turned, saw nothing, and then looked down. There was short little Mali, using her coat to cover her head from the downpour.

"Please, leave me. I don't want to talk to anyone right now."

"So you're going to rip your heart out to show me, then leave? Typical male. Get over me, get over yourself, and come back."

"It's not that easy," Parker told her, turning and making his way toward the cross. He read a few gravestones on his way there. The names were incomprehensible. He heard the sloshing of footsteps behind him, and he knew Mali was following. "What is this place?" he finally asked aloud.

"I think it's a Russian graveyard. These names aren't English, that's for sure."

Parker kneelt before the cross. "I just wanted to make You happy," he said, his head hanging low.

Mali went around Parker and stood behind the cross. "What if I told you I am God? And that you made me very happy?"

"You are not God. It is a blasphemy to say such things. We are only humans. Weak, flawed, and desperate humans." He was quiet for a moment. "You don't want to be with me, do you?"

"No, I don't," she answered honestly. Parker's head hung loose on his neck once again, and Mali took a breath. "But that doesn't mean I want you to leave."

"I have no place here," he said.

"Can I tell you a secret?" Mali asked, draping her arms over the cross. She let her coat fall to her shoulders, and the rain ran down her hair and face. "I like your stories the best."

Parker said nothing and continued to stare at the sacred ground. "You're lying to make me stay."

Mali had had enough. "Fine!" she declared with her firecracker anger. "Go back to your daughter! Abandon us when we've already come so far! That's what Jesus would have done, right? I believe before he was crucified, he abandoned all of his followers in order to clear his head. Am I right?"

"Of course not. Jesus never..." Parker began. And then he began to sob.

Mali dismounted from the cross and crouched next to him. "Please come back," she whispered in his ear. Then, as if some great amount of emotion had passed from Parker to Mali, she began to weep as well.

It was about ten minutes later that Mali suddenly realized she had lost her phone-o-wonders.
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Gordon knew he was fucked. He sat in a holding cell of the Utah Immigration Service. "I swear to God that I renewed my Visa!" he had tried telling them. They said he would depart for merry-old England in the morning. It had been a couple hours of silence, so Gordon hummed Bruce Springsteen songs to keep himself amused. When the door opened as he was in the middle of "Born In The USA" he was quite surprised.

"It seems your visa have been renewed," the immigration officer who had caught him said.

"......what?" was Gordon's best response.

"Yeah, just yesterday. It must have cost you a lot of money in fines. You wealthy?"

Gordon pondered the question for a moment. "Yes," he lied.

"Well, you can go. And I would love it if you returned to UCLA. I don't want to see your face running around back alleys anymore."

"Sir, yes sir!" Gordon beamed as he jumped up and exited the cell. "Oh, and sir?"

"Yes?"

"Could you give me some advice?"

"Advice on what?"

"Advice on anything?"

"Yeah. Make sure you always have toilet paper. You're miserable without it."

"Jolly good!" Gordon exclaimed, practically skipping out of the building.
*****************************************************************************
"It must be back in that alley, where you gave me the mini-Burning Man. I guess it slipped out of my pocket..." Mali was almost inconsolable.

"We'll find it," Parker told her, his face still as grave as the Russian headstones.

They wondered the streets, checking every nook and cranny, but no PDA was found. "My whole life is in that thing," Mali muttered acerbically.

They entered the alley where the confession of Parker's love had taken place. There, in a plastic bag to protect it from the rain, was Mali's phone and a white envelope.

"What the...?" Mali began as she opened the bag. Something was written on the notepad contained in the phone's database of random-shit-a-phone-shouldn't-have.

She read it aloud to Parker.

My life has always been strange. I've never really accepted the day-to-day activities of others. I find it hard to assimilate into any culture. I've tried being white, black, Hispanic, and Asian. I've been straight, gay, and everything in between. I've even tried Catholicism, Buddhism, Muslim, and even Satanism. I even wondered if I was the wrong gender, but I just don't fit in anywhere, anytime, in any way.

I followed you, Mali, to the original meeting at UCLA. I had noticed the flyer, and I was interested. But after seeing the five of you go off on your adventure, I thought it best not to ruin everything but trying to fit in. So I started following you all.

I was at the poetry competition. I was at Burning Man. I was at the youth center the night your number wasn't called. I have been following your troop across state lines, listening to every story I could overhear. It keeps me going. Even though I am not one of you, I feel as if I finally belong. I think I was meant to follow you all, listen to your stories, and appreciate your gifts and flaws. At the risk of sounding even more obsessive than you must already think I am, I have fallen in love with all of you. Joe, with his everyman point of view. Casey, with her tough and rigid exterior and her soft, comforting interior. Parker, with his self-righteous quests and sinful pasts. And you, Mali, with your soft-spoken volcano of emotions. You're all very special. And your stories are beautiful.

I have tried so hard to not involve myself with your exploits, but the past few days have been an exception. I am wealthy, and I have helped where financial helped was needed. I also alerted the proper authorities to Kat's whereabouts. Aiding a runaway will only bring you more trouble. And tell Gordon to make sure his Visa is renewed next time.

If my involvement has disturbed you, don't let it. I only wish for the five of you to continue on your path of creative exploration. I want to hear your stories. I want you to enjoy the time that was given to us all, but only with each other. Apart, you will only become more lost. Together, you can all go somewhere, anywhere. I also never want any of you to see my face. I prefer to listen from afar.

Please don't stop telling stories.

-The Follower-

Mali and Parker were stunned into silence. After letting the note left in Mali's PDA really sink in, Parker grabbed the envelope from the plastic bag in the alleyway. On the front, a hastily scribbled message:

You will find Gordon around the Utah Immigration Office.

You will find Casey and Joe in the Utah Memorial Hospital, Room 28C.

"What's in it?" Mali asked Parker as he opened the envelope.

Parker's face went white. He pulled out $5,000 and a small piece of paper.

On the paper, another message:

As Casey stressed before, don't let money overtake your creativity.

Parker looked into Mali's wide eyes and said, "Holy shit."

The sirens could be heard warbling in the distance in protest to everything in the world around it. Joe felt cold in his stomach and extremities, his fingers, two of which ran thick ribbons of blood from to-the-bone gashes, were tingly and chilled. He shook, sometimes from the shoulders in heavy jerks, sometimes simply at the knees where street burned skin beneath his pants ached as they rubbed the fabric.

Through the haze of thoughts that came to his head, he tried to think of what it was. Symptoms, what were they? Why do I shake? Too warm to be cold, I thought. Does anyone have a blanket? Am I getting a cold? Wouldn't that just be the best right now, a cold when I'm sitting here in shock. 

The world moved slowly for him, his eyes working to be sure, but turning this way and that on worn hinges in much need of oil. His eyelids drooped and his mouth sagged open and it seemed to him that time would come to an end before he was able to force them shut again. 

"Wh-who would d-do this?" he said to his lap, is neck craned in the exhaustion of spilled blood and adrenaline. 

The sirens were closer, Casey could here them only a few blocks away. She held Joe tightly, trying her best to warm him with her own heat, fighting as the shakes he was jostled by threatened to take them both off the bench. She knew she wasn't supposed to have moved him. Everyone knows that moving someone recently involved in such a serious trauma has the chance to paralyze the injured person, but she couldn't stand to leave him in the street. She loved him, child or not. 

"Quiet now, the ambulance is close,"

"I'm just tired," Joe said, closing his eyes. 

"Stay awake for me, Joe. You can't sleep right now."

One of the police officers came over with his clipboard and pen in one hand, the other pressed to the radio on his shoulder.

"Are you tired?" he said, his voice piercing the haze of Joe's desire just to sleep.

Joe nodded.

"You've gotta stay awake for me bud, ok? The paramedics are on their way to take care of you," He looked sternly at Casey who clutched Joe like a stuffed animal, "You need to try and keep him awake, miss. Keep him talking or he could slip into a coma, ok?" 

Casey nodded, the word 'coma' sending little shudders through her chest as she thought of him sleeping and never waking up. She ran a warm hand through his hair and kissed his cheek.

"Can you tell me a story?" she asked him.

Joe's mind was sluggish and crowded like too many people trying to get through a small door. He licked his lips, still staring down into his lap and shook his head.

"I just want to sleep, just let me do this,"

Hospital beds. Innumerable nurses wearing innumerable gowns. Doctors with clipboards and spectacles and concerned faces who poked and prodded with blood and test tubes and strange syringes. Casey saw them all as his eyes closed again, ghosts that walked through the front of her mind with haunting precision. 

"If you won't tell it on your own," she stammered, "then you at least have to help me tell it,"

His eyes came open in slits as she began.

There was a woman once named Jane, and she loved a man named James with all of her heart. Jane woke up before James every day in order to watch him wake, and only pretended to sleep at night until James was sleeping. 

Jane, however, was married to a man from across the city, 

"Stay awake, sweetheart,"

She was married, I said, to a rich and powerful nobleman in the northern part of the city. What do you think his name was?

Joe's eyes stayed in slits but he spoke as clearly as he could. Casey let go a breath she'd been holding.

His name was Marcus. He said slowly. Marcus Wellbridge.

"A perfect name," 

Marcus slept in a different chamber than Jane did, only bringing her into his room for sex or to complain about her absences in the afternoons. He would become angry, yelling about how she hardly cooks for him anymore and that there is no passion in her eyes when they make love. Jane refutes these truthful accusations as best she can, but in her eyes the nobleman always sees the truth. 

"Where does she go in the afternoons?" Casey asked and Joe's eyes came open slowly.

"To him,"

"Very well,"

The sirens stopped warbling and the EMT came to a fast stop in the street, two men poured from the back carrying an orange and white stretcher and a third and fourth man exited from the cab. They huddled around Joe, helping him off of the bench as best they could and sitting him on the now chair shaped stretcher.

"You moved him to the bench, miss?" One of the EMT's said to Casey and she nodded, "Ok well let me tell you, if he's got any spinal issues you'll probably end up liable, ok? You never move a victim of trauma like this and--"

"I know I'm sorry," She said and stood up to be next to Joe, "I just didn't want to leave him in the street, I didn't want to see that."

"Let's hope he suffered no serious injuries then," he said coldly.

They loaded Joe into the ambulance, a low drip of morphine running through his veins. Casey tried climbing in but they stopped her at the back.

"Bus is full ma'am, we need this space. The officer here will take you to the hospital where you can wait for him."

Casey started to protest but the ambulance doors were pushed shut by the two men who sat in the cab and the officer who'd scolded her earlier had taken her by the arm. 

"We'll be there when they are, miss," he said and fresh tears ran from her eyes. The story would have to wait, she though. 

 

All's End

Casey hoisted Joe to his feet, his trembling limbs fighting to gain footing or balance against the constant pull of car-struck vertigo. She pressed a hand against the small of his back and led him off the road in short, whimpering limps. Twenty yards away, a bench - its green paint cracked and peeled from the rigors of the desert winds - loomed against the backdrop of sand and horizon.

"Where's... Where's Kat?" Joe whimpered, favoring his left leg and holding his stomach. It felt like he'd consumed a carpenter's entire inventory of nails, each piercing his organs with inanimate indifference for his plight.

"Gone, I guess." Casey shook her head. "When I looked up, she was gone."

"And... Mali?"

"She and Parker were a'ways behind us," Casey said, glancing over her shoulder. No one was following them. "They must have gone for help."

They reached the bench and Casey lowered him to a sitting position, Joe involuntarily gasping as pins and needles stabbed him from within. She sat next to him, cradling his head with her hands, nestling as much of him as she could fit into the comfortable nook between her shoulder and chest. 

"Casey?"

"Yeah." Not a question; a monosyllabic acknowledgement that he had spoken, a simple utterance to just keep him talking - even though she wished he'd just be quiet, for she knew what was to come.

"It's gone, isn't it?"

"Yeah." Same inflection, same tone. "Yeah, Joe, it's gone. It's gone, Joe."

She held him as he began to weep, tears and snot and a shiny streak of blood collecting on his upper lip. She stroked his hair and held his hand, her eyes fixed on the winding road that stretched into the desert beyond.

"Can we," Joe began. "Can we just wait here a while? For the others?"

"Sure," Casey nodded. "We can wait here a while. The road won't get any longer."

And then there were none

As the hunt for Gordon continued, Joe was unaware of the fact that two more members departed, albeit temporarily. His focus was entirely on Casey, who had yet to emit words directly towards him, a fact he took issue with but had no knowledge of how to address directly, that is without sounding like an asshole. He pondered how to broach the subject when a shout occurred from Kat, who forged ahead rather than flounder in the inadequacy that pervaded her thoughts. Her cry snapped Joe back to attention in time to see a vehicle that was making a line toward himself and Casey.

Rather than grab Casey and evade the vehicle, Joe embraced the change that was about to occur. The vehicle struck him, and as his body rolled across the hood, Joe realized that this was just another escape; another attempt by him to evade the issue, to evade life rather than face it and progress. The pain he had always pined for, the misery he wanted in order to spawn creativity was nothing more than an outlet, a focal point for the frustrations of his stagnation. He needed to move on, to grow up and seek new heights through new avenues. Dying wouldn't accomplish that.

The driver halted, a reaction that firmly placed Joe's body on the asphalt, a sound Kat would later make analogous to unloading meat. Casey returned to his side, held him up in an unintentionally dramatic pose and spoke, though the words were not what Joe expected:

"What the fuck is wrong with you? Stop being a damn fool."

"It's cool, if I die, I have an heir apparent right?"

"...........no Joe, you don't."

Neither were aware that the driver fled the scene or had taken notice to the vehicles that followed, vehicles that carried authority and most certainly, sirens.

Kat attempted to warn the officers who had taken to foot as well, that is until she recognized one.

"Young lady, your mother has been worried sick about you."

"Yes Dale, I'm well aware, phones have silence for a reason."

"I'm tired of your disrespect, now get in the car so I can bring you back home, you're not an adult yet."

"I'm well aware of that fact, but adulthood isn't far away. Then I can embrace the change I've pined for."

"Sure, sure, you turn 18 and I guess we have no choice but to allow you to go all over hell's half acre, but that day isn't today, now get in the car while my boys take a statement and get that thievin' sonofabitch."

Kat complied, and stepped into the passenger seat despondently, hoping her departure would go unnoticed. She didn't want to inconvenience them anymore.