Short Piece Inspired By CleaningThe Kitchen

[wulfboy.livejournal.com]

Getting Home

Robert hadn’t seen any of the others face-to-face since Eric and Albert’s wedding. Truth be told, he wouldn’t have made the wedding at all had Eric not sent him the cash to pay for the trip to Ontario. He’d felt out-of-place, and hadn’t known anyone else there. He’d half-hoped his sister might have come, but realistically he knew it was not going to happen. At the reception he’d stood in a hired suit against one of the walls nervously holding a bottle of beer wondering what language everyone else was speaking.

Eric had dragged him aside a little later on in the evening and they’d stood on the balcony watching it rain. The day had been very much about Albert, and as far as Robert could tell Eric felt nearly as out-of-place as he did. They’d chatted for a while about mundane things, about moving to Canada, about Eric’s family (who had not been at the wedding). Then Robert asked about his sister. Eric toyed with the neck of his bottle for a few moments before replying.

“I invited her.” He admitted awkwardly. He’d used his contacts in the States to track her down in ’94. She’d made it clear then that she wanted nothing to do with him, and for the most part he’d respected that. He still kept tabs on her, as much as he was able, and kept Robert up to date. He hadn’t heard from her himself since 1992, nobody in his family had. She’d never forgiven them.
Neither of them said anything for a few minutes, just watched the rain. Then, haltingly at first, Eric started to talk about their time Away. He always said it like that. “Away.” So you could hear the capital letter. They talked for about an hour, until Albert came out and Eric immediately changed the subject. Albert was drunk, but in a very good mood, and insisted on dragging the pair of them back into the reception. Robert didn’t really remember much of the rest of that night, and had a terrible hangover when Eric dove him to the airport. Eric did most of the talking.

Albert didn’t talk about their time Away. He hadn’t suppressed it the way Robert’s sister had, he just didn’t mention it, and if Eric tried to speak to him about it, he became upset, and hurting him hurt Eric so he’d stopped even trying. There was an unspoken implication that the decision to move to Canada had been less about the marriage, and more about getting out of America to somewhere that people didn’t know or care who they were or had been. The decision had come after a tabloid had run a story about what had happened in the ‘80s, putting an immediate end to Eric’s political career and prompting a suicide attempt from Albert. Robert didn’t blame them.
“Albert can treat people anywhere,” Eric had said jovially on the phone on the night he’d rung to tell Robert about their decision. “And even the Canadians must need lawyers, surely.” They’d laughed about it. Eric had been a little drunk. Robert had gone out and picked a fight and spent the next few days in hospital.

*

The worst part about it all ... there were several worst parts. But usually Eric and Robert both agreed that the worst part was that nobody had missed them. For all the subjective time they’d been away, they’d been gone about ten minutes when they got back. Nobody missed them – not those who’d come back at any rate. By that evening the parents of the other two were involved, then by morning the police. Then, after Robert’s sister had spoken up, so were the papers. In the end, they called his sister a liar and Hank and Diana runaways. The carnival was closed down, and one of the roustabouts arrested for some sort of child-sex offence.

It would have been easier if Shelia had kept quiet, but Robert couldn’t blame her. They’d learnt – they’d been taught – to stand up for what was right, and to believe that even if the authorities wouldn’t believe them, their families would recognise that they were being truthful. It hadn’t turned out like that, of course. Shelia spoke up first, and then Robert had had to back her up. Eric and Albert might have tried to stick to the “runaways” story, but what could they do? They’d all been through too much to turn on Shelia.

They’d been a nine-days wonder. Drugs and “devil games” were to blame. The local schools banned Dungeons and Dragons. Some woman wrote a book on them, about their psychotic break and the delusions it had inspired. Their parents moved half-way across the country to get away from it. Robert got into a lot of fights. Shelia got a lot of prescription drugs and therapy. Neither of them had done well at school.

Shelia left home for good the day after her twentieth birthday (twenty-first really. They were all a year older than the dates on their driving licenses might suggest). She packed up her things and just left. She left a note on the table saying she couldn’t be around people who thought she was a liar. She’d left a second note for Robert on his bedside table saying she didn’t blame him for what happened, but he knew that wasn’t true. She blamed him, blamed him for her decision to come back, even though he knew she’d have chosen to come back anyway. He’d never asked her to look after him, and he certainly never blamed her for persuading him to come back. At the time it had been the right thing to do.

*

He dreamt about that last night sometimes. Standing beneath the Forever Gate, watching the constellations realigning themselves as the Pandemonicon broke into shards of ice and fire and collapsed around them. They’d won, they’d earned the chance to go home for real. They just had to choose to do so.

The decision had been easy for Hank and Diana, and Robert wondered about that. For all that Hank had spent so much time focused on getting them all home, there’d always been that suggestion that he wasn’t going to come with them. As he and Diana had become closer, they’d seemed to move away from the other four a little.

On the occasions Eric drunkenly telephoned Robert (bi-annually, usually on the anniversary of their disappearance and return, and on a random birthday), it was Hank and Diana he most often talked about. Why did Robert think they did what they did? Were the happy? Did they make the right decision? Robert was never clear by this point who Eric was talking about – Hank and Diana, or the four of them that returned to the “Real World.”

There’d been hints. He remembered vividly Diana taking Shelia’s arm and trying to talk to her as the light from the Forever Gate became brighter. Shelia pulled away – she didn’t want to hear. Eric and Hank facing off, Hank trying to get Eric to understand why he wasn’t coming back with them. Nobody really tried to talk to Robert, who was too busy saying goodbye to his best friend. He would have stayed for her, but it would have meant abandoning his sister and his family.
He’d stepped through the Forever Gate full of doubt about whether he was doing the right thing, but he’d been nine years old and couldn’t put his worries into words. The last thing he remembered was Uni standing between Hank and Diana, and the Guide off to one side, watching. Everyone had been in tears, even the Keeper. His hand resting on the head of his defeated son, he’d held Robert’s gaze for a moment and there had been so much compassion and regret there that he’d nearly turned back.

*

He hated dreaming about that time.

Robert lived alone in a two-room apartment. He didn’t hold down a regular job, barely paid his bills, or his medical costs. He’d joined the army as soon as he was able, served a tour oversees, been discharged on medical grounds. He sometimes wondered if his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was due to his time in the desert, or his time Away, or whether it was just a response to a world that made absolutely no sense to him any more.

He got beaten up a lot. He couldn’t stand by. He’d tried to track down others like himself and found Alien Abduction groups with whom he could make no connection. He’d been married twice, and twice it’d ended badly. He lost days at a time, just gone, with no idea what he’d done during them but he’d wake up in a strange place with a crippling hangover, usually surrounded by strangers with cracked ribs and bruised knuckles.

The Keeper had said there were other doors between worlds, and he’d spent most ofhis mid-twenties searching for them without success. He’d received a letter from Terri – a girl who’d spent a little time with them while they were Away – and he’d trashed his car driving non-stop cross-country to see her, only to discover she’d disappeared by the time he got there. She’d found a way back, and she’d taken it, and he’d not been able to get there in time to go with her. He didn’t blame her – not when he was sober.
He stopped looking when he turned thirty.

*

The evening of his thirty-second birthday, he ended up in the hospital again. Some thugs were beating up a kid in the alley on his way home and he ran straight in to help the kid. He drove off the two thugs and then when he leant over to see if the kid was alright, was stabbed in the gut. The kid stole his wallet and his phone, and left him bleeding to death. He dragged himself to a payphone, called for an ambulance, and collapsed.

When he woke up, he was back there. In the Unicorn fields, and he had his club again. Eric was teasing him about young kids needing their sleep. Hank chastised Eric. Albert - wearing his glasses again - tried to get a bicycle out of his hat and succeeded in producing a winged horse that promptly knocked him down and flew off. Diana and Shelia laughed so hard the tears came.

When he woke up again, he was in hospital. They told him he'd nearly died and there was much discussion about medical insurance.

When he got home, he took a handful of painkillers and rang Eric. Albert answered the phone and they spend a minute or two saying “hi” to each other, like old school-friends who still kept in touch. He chatted for a while, reminiscing about old times. They were looking into adopting, apparently, and it was going well. Robert made positive noises.
Eric took the phone into the den so they could talk properly; about facing down the Enemy in the graveyard of the dragons, about the time Eric was given the powers of a Keeper, about the child of the stargazer and the ridiculous escapade involving the cloudbears. He didn’t mention the attack.
When he got off the telephone it was nearly midnight. He tidied his apartment, took out the trash, washed his plate, knife and fork, wrote a note, stuck the barrel of a pistol in his mouth and blew the back of his head off.


Hmmm.
Now I've written it I'm not sure it works. Maybe it's a bit too defeatist. Rereading it I think it's probably too clinical or detached (which is maybe not a good style for me), and I'm almost certainly rusty at writing in the third rather than the first or second person. It is slightly influenced by "The Trouble With Susan" but as anyone who has played Changeling with me knows it's a theme I've been poking about since long before readingthat particular story.

Given this is part of Project - Learn By Doing I'd really appreciate constructive feedback, especially in terms of what works, what doesn't, and why you think that is.