It was the revenants, of course. I think maybe Doc had been trying to warn me, had been going to warn me. I’m not sure if he rose up and blinked or beeped or wailed or something but why wouldn’t he warn me about them? I just didn’t know then if he was or wasn’t warning me because one second I was only this far from Brigitte’s lips and the next there was this cold hand clawing into my shoulder and dragging me back and I smashed into the window headfirst. The hand had only broken a small piece into it. My head didn’t break it at all but I was knocked silly for a second and as the hand got its grip better I slumped onto the table.
Brigitte, I saw, had stood up and had her hands up to her face, stunned and Doc, I saw, too, had risen up and had his tentacles out. One was pointing straight at me and Doc was drifting, jetting, almost, to his left. An Octopus doesn’t move all that fast but he didn’t have to go very far. Only before he could do anything the revenant grabbed me again and began to pull, and then Brigitte grabbed my ankles…
… and even in the midst of all that I noticed how warm her hands were and how nice it felt to have her touch me…
And the revenants hands were digging into my armpit and pulling more, its gross fingernails clawing at me and maybe drawing blood, I thought, as Brigitte pulled back. She was stronger and she pulled and the glass broke more and half the revenant came into the restaurant, its side landing on the sharp glass and cutting into it. There wasn’t any blood but the injury, if it was injured, if dead things can be injured like that, caused it to let go and when it did Doc did that zap thing, shooting electricity at it as I scrambled away. The little lightning-bolt thing shot out and hit the revenant, who spasmed and then slumped and I stood up and Brigitte grabbed me and hugged me… and again she was warm and I was grateful for it. Especially grateful when she said “Let’s get out of here” and without taking her arms off of me she went up to the front door.
Peering out through the tinted glass she said “There’s two more of them out there.”
I didn’t look. I was watching Brigitte’s face watching them and I was rubbing my shoulder and armpit where the revenant had grabbed me.
“This way,” Brigitte said, and went back behind the counter. She walked me through the swinging door into the kitchen and back area. Off to the right were stoves and things, and off to the left, a supply room. There was also a back door and as I looked at it I saw in the little window a leering face with the raggedy, previously-sewn eyelids that I’d come to recognize. I drew in my breath but I didn’t scream. I pointed. Brigitte looked and her lips got real tight and she bit her lower lip. “Okay,” she said, finally, as we stood there. The revenant was now pushing at the door and clawing at it. He’d seen us.
“Where can we go?” I asked. Brigitte still had her hand around my waist and she pushed me off to the side into the storage area. She backed me up against a bunch of bags of flower and a canister of syrup and as she pressed against me she began reaching past me. She was leaning against me with her full body, legs lined up against mine and chest lined up against mine so our breasts mashed together and pressed each other and rubbed, and she was leaning her head past mine (Brigitte’s a little taller than me) so that I could see her neck as she reached in to the shelf behind me. “What…” I began but that was all I could really say. It was all a bit much for me at that moment.
“There,” she said, and pulled something and behind her a door fell away. She pulled back from me – I hated that—and said “Follow me.” She backed up and began climbing down into the trapdoor. She was about three steps down into the dark and I was wondering where that went, as I was also looking at the white-pale skin of her breasts and the little tiny part of the front of her bra that I could see. She looked up and said “Well, come on,” and I felt myself get a little hot from blushing.
“What’s this?” I said, as I turned around and started climbing down.
“Daddy’s prepared for this for a while. I think it’s because he hangs around Reverend Tommy so much,” Brigitte said.
“Prepared for…” I stopped talking because Brigitte had reached up to steady me and had a hand on either side of my butt at my hips and I couldn’t concentrate.
“Revenants,” Brigitte said as I got down and turned around. We were in the dark, only some light from above drifting in. She was face to face with me, again, only a few inches apart. Her hands had dropped off as I had rotated to face her. “Daddy said they’re becoming more common and he was worried that they were going to attack us so he began this project to allow me to get around without worrying about them. Speaking of which,” she said and reached off to her right in the dark. The trapdoor above snapped shut and bolts clicked and we were in the dark. I stood there wondering what was supposed to happen, and for just a second it was perfectly black. In that second, I swear that I felt her lips brush against mine, just really quick-like, almost not a kiss at all, but I know what I felt and I couldn’t have imagined that. I know I couldn’t have, didn’t, imagine it because every time after that when I kissed Brigitte she did that same thing, where she’d first brush her lips against mine featherlight and soft and barely touching so that I’d think, again, each time, that she maybe hadn’t kissed me, that I hadn’t touched her at all. Also, I know I didn’t imagine it because at that point, in this life, at least, I’d never kissed anyone and didn’t know what it really felt like.
But just as I thought maybe she had kissed me, it stopped and lights came on and she was turning away. The lights in the tunnel glowed only dimly, a little blue-ish, but showed the way down further. Above, I heard more glass breaking, very dimly, far away. “Daddy’s going to be really mad,” Brigitte said, but she didn’t seem too concerned about it. She took my hand and led me down the hallway. We walked through the tunnel, past a couple of things that might have been doors and past a couple of intersections. She paused at one and looked around, touching her finger to her lips and thinking, squinting her eyes a little to make her forehead wrinkle up with little vertical knots. She then held her hand up and made little motions with it. I realized, after a moment, that she was trying to picture the streets above, moving her hand the way she would have walked. “This way,” she decided and turned left. “I don’t use these a lot,” she said over her shoulder, and kept walking along. Another block or so and she stopped. There was a ladder in the wall and she looked down the tunnel and then at the ladder. “Here,” she said, seeming for the first time a bit uncertain. Then she seemed more definite. “Come on up,” she said and climbed up the ladder first.
I couldn’t help it. She was wearing a skirt, so I looked, but I told myself that she must have wanted me to look because why else would she climb the ladder first? Later that night, while I was laying there trying not to fall asleep, in her bed, I would think she had to climb the ladder first because I didn’t know where to go or how to open the door, but I knew all along it was an excuse, knew it even as I did it, looked up and saw her legs rise up to a pair of skimpy underwear that was made of mostly lace but the lace was made of mostly the spaces between the lace, so it was like they were not there at all, just little wisps of white tracing around her beautiful butt. I almost reached up to touch it. But she looked down and smiled as I blushed again and said “It’s clear.” It was only then that I realized she’d opened the trap door a little and looked out.
She opened it more and pushed it aside and then waited while I climbed up. We were in a stairwell. There was a solid wood front door and a hallway that led back behind us, and a short stairwell that led up. “It’s a rooming house,” Brigitte whispered, holding her finger up as she did so, making a shushing sound. She took my hand again. I looked around but all I could picture was her underwear. “My room’s upstairs,” she said and led me up the stairs into the room I’d live in for the next few days.
We walked into the room and she quickly went over to the window. Doc drifted over by the dresser and in the glow he gave off I could see things like hair brushes and lipstick and clips and a little Read-Or unit, which I knew about because I’d seen people sitting on a bench waiting for the dirigibus and using them while I hid in the park across the street and I’d asked Doc what the people were holding and looking at, little things they kept peering into and pressing or tapping occasionally. He’d said they were mostly reading the news and I’d wondered why anyone would want to do that when they could have their Octopus play the news for them but Doc had said that not everyone could afford an Octopus, that they were really expensive and were considered luxury items for the rich.
Then, I’d had too much else on my mind to wonder why I had one.
I looked around as Brigitte looked out the window from the gauzy curtains that were closed in front of it. There was the dresser-and-mirror, a little chair, a bigger stuffed chair, and Brigitte’s bed, a lumpy, overstuffed, puffy looking thing that was covered in blankets (rumpled and barely made) and a few stuffed toys and pillows.
Only one bed!
I watched her and tried to concentrate. I knew I should be thinking about the revenants but I didn’t, really, think about them at all. I’d been in Hell and dealt with other revenants and demons and had been chased around by Ivanka on one night that had been more forced than anything else -- even though it had felt pretty good, I hadn’t really wanted to do anything with her because I was scared of her, a little, and also because of all the damned souls screaming not far away – and I’d seen enough that a couple of revenants wasn’t that scary to me, or not scary enough to overcome my thrill at there being only one bed and the fact that Brigitte had maybe kissed me.
Plus, I couldn’t stop thinking about her underwear. So I didn’t notice what she was doing at the window that night. Didn’t think about it at all until I was pulled into Hell with Naked Girl clinging to me, when I realized that the tunnel that I was being pulled out of was almost exactly the same as the tunnel I had walked through with Brigitte that night, and also realized that Brigitte had been standing at her window and making some sort of hand gesture.
But you know what? Even then, getting pulled into Hell and remembering the tunnel sameness and the little hand gesture she was sending out the window, I mostly thought about her underwear. It was really sexy.
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