InsaneJournal

RafeDraft - Chapter Two

To his vague surprise, upon stepping outside for yard duty at the end of the day, Rafe discovered it was quite nice out. He'd half-expected gloom, or oppressive heat, but the usual noon glare seemed to have already dissipated into a pleasant warmth, and the sun was shining as merrily as ever. It appeared that at least the weather was not at the whim of his conflicting moods.

He was spotted nearly instantly; a collection of unoccupied children ran over to him excitedly.

"Mr Rafe!"

"Hi, Mr Rafe!"

"Hello, kids," he said dutifully, embarrassed as always by their enthusiasm. It wasn't even as if he was on yard duty that often. "Oh, I see your scrape is much better now, Casey... and how's your sister doing, Jamie?"

It was like this every time he went out. The kids would come and cheerfully mob him, tell him completely unsolicited things about their lives and the other students, beg him to come play their games with them. And certainly he was flattered by their trust, and enjoyed the chance to interact with them, but he'd never quite understood why it happened. For the life of him he couldn't think of anything he'd done that would merit the attention.

"Mr Rafe."

Someone was tugging on his sleeve. Rafe turned and found himself on the receiving end of the Phelps twins' inquisitive stares.

"Yes?" he said.

They blinked at him solemnly. "Miss Flockhart keeps saying we come from a different planet," said one.

"We were wondering if you could confirm," said the other.

"What, that it happened?"

"Yes."

"We find it unlikely."

"Well, there's..." Rafe thought. "They have cryo boxes and bits of the ships on display in Rain. It was a while ago, but it happened."

The twins looked disappointed. "But it doesn't make sense," said the first. "Any society that has reached the level of space travel would first of all have a much more efficient electrical system than we do."

"And second of all would have at least one space station," the second added. "And our houses would be made of metal, not clay and brick."

"And we would have robots."

"Well, I-I think there was only so much we could bring along at the time." Rafe paused. "Didn't you ask Marissa this--I mean, Miss Flockhart?"

The twins exchanged a look. "Well, yes," they said. "But we didn't believe her."

Rafe sighed. "You two have really got to stop second-guessing your teachers like this. Ma--Miss Flockhart knows a lot more about this stuff than I do."

"But she's silly," said a twin. "We like you better."

"In any case," said the other, who looked rather distraught by all this, "we can't have come from another planet, because then we'd be aliens."

"Um," said Rafe.

"And everyone knows that aliens have all kinds of advanced powers."

"Like telepathy."

"And mind control."

"And moving things with their brains."

"And we don't have any of that stuff, do we?"

Rafe thought briefly of his dreams, and the voice in his head, and the floating pencil.

"No," he said firmly. "None of that's real."

But by then some of the other children had picked up on the conversation. "No way!" said one. "We're aliens?"

"Awesome!" said another.

They ran off again, shouting gleefully and making laser gun noises at each other. The twins wandered away in the opposite direction, shaking their heads and looking dissatisfied.

Rafe sighed, and set off towards the swingset.

It seemed to him that the playground emptied out far more quickly than usual. He pushed some kindergarteners on the swings, broke up one or two minor scuffles, and then all of a sudden the last few kids were being picked up by their parents or making their own ways home in twos and threes, and the wind was beginning to pick up and he suddenly remembered how tired he really was.

He sat down on the step before the front door of the school and stared out at the deserted play equipment, which looked much more worn-down and dusty without all the children scrambling over it. Well, that's it, he thought, one more year done with, and no really major incidents. But he couldn't quite bring himself to feel pleased about that.

There was a small sound from the door, and he looked around to see Leslie settling herself down beside him. "So," she said. "What is it?"

"Hmm?" said Rafe.

"What's bothering you?"

Rafe looked away. Not now, he wasn't in the mood for this. "Nothing's bothering me."

"Oh?" Leslie raised an eyebrow and began counting off on her fingers. "One, you looked even more dead than usual when I came in. Two, you're usually so die-hard about getting everything done right, but you've been off your game all week. Three, you've been doing that little 'look functional around the boss' routine of yours since lunch. I know something's up, I was just wondering what it was."

Rafe sighed. "I'm just... not having a good week."

"Uh-huh. And the desert's a little bit dry. Come on, Rafe, I may just be your boss, but you can tell me these things."

"I..." Rafe dug his fingers into his hair and stared out at the vacant playground. He might as well, he thought, she was just going to keep bothering him until he said something. "Have you ever had a dream where you're--trapped somewhere, and you can't get out?"

Leslie nodded.

"That's--that's all that's been bothering me, really. I keep having the same dream. It feels... like I'm dying, and I can't move or..."

He trailed off, biting his lip. Leslie regarded him thoughtfully for a moment.

"Recurring nightmares are generally a sign of some kind of stress in your life," she said. "Seems pretty straightforward to me--you're feeling trapped by something, so that shows up literally in your dreams."

"Hn," said Rafe, noncommittally.

Leslie gave him a sidelong glance. "Speaking of which, I wonder if you've given any more thought to my earlier proposal..."

Oh god. Not again.

"I'm not going to."

Leslie sighed. "Come on, Rafe, you're the best damn secretary I've ever had, but we're wasting you on paperwork. The kids love you, you love the kids, you've got the right temperament for it, why shouldn't you tea--"

"No!" God damn it, he'd worked for her all these years, he'd done his very best, he'd kept the--the stranger parts of his life in check, and now in return all she wanted was to ruin the only thing he had going for him. "I can't teach. I'm not going to. I'm not--I'm not qualified."

"How qualified do you need to be? You'd be good at it, that's all the qualification I need."

"I--never went to college."

Leslie stared at him with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. "College? You think I went to college? Rafe, if you had to be rich enough to go to college in order to be a teacher, we wouldn't have enough teachers to get you there."

"I don't know how to teach."

"That's what the summer's for, isn't it?" Her expression softened a little. "Rafe, this isn't Earth. We're all just trying to get along as best we can. There's no time to bother with formal degrees and whether you can use a semicolon properly. And right now, everyone wants to be architects, they want to be scientists, they want to rebuild and design and bring back the good old days, but no one can do any of that without teachers. We need you, Rafe. And, frankly, we've been going around in circles about this for weeks now and you still haven't given me one good reason why I shouldn't promote you."

Rafe stared at the ground. He wanted to say: I'm pale. I'm gaunt. I never finished high school. I'm only barely literate, things float when I'm around, and there's a voice in my head that won't go away. What the hell kind of influence do you think I'd be?

Instead he said, "I don't want to."

Leslie threw up her hands in disgust. "All right, all right! Jesus. I'm sorry I brought it up."

They sat in silence for a moment.

Finally, Leslie shifted slightly. "Listen, Rafe?" she said, quietly.

"Yeah?"

"I know I've been a bit of a selfish pig, lately, but I want you to know that if you have any kind of problem, any kind at all, you can always come to us. We care about you, Rafe. We really do."

She reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. Rafe stood before she could touch him, shouldering his bag.

"Gotta go," he said. "Got things to do."

It was an obvious lie, but Leslie was decent enough not to comment. When he was halfway across the field, she called after him, "Have a good summer!"

Wouldn't that be nice, Rafe thought wistfully.

#

The house was just as he presumed he must have left it that morning: small, poorly ventilated, scrupulously neat in that depressing sort of way that indicated not any real effort on the owner's part but a simple lack of possessions to leave lying around. In particular it still retained its miraculous ability to be hotter inside than it was outside. Rafe dropped his bag onto the armchair and wandered into the kitchen. At least the cold cellar was properly ventilated.

His own cold cellar was merely a trapdoor in the kitchen floor, with a ladder leading down into a plain, dirt-walled room. He'd heard there were things they could do now with metal plating of some kind, to more efficiently trap in the cool of the earth, but of course that was only available to people with actual disposable incomes. Besides, his was plenty cold enough, which he felt mostly made up for the fact that it wasn't anywhere near full enough.

He paced across the room, taking a cursory stock of the shelves. It was the same things he always seemed to have: a hunk of cheese, a spare bit of butter, one or two slightly bruised apples, a jumble of canned things that didn't really need to be down there but that he'd added the last time Alex invited himself over to cook for him, in the hopes of making the place look slightly less hopelessly empty.

Amazing how things disappeared so fast. He'd only just gone to the store last week... or maybe it was the week before. In any case, he'd have to be going again soon. It was not a cheering thought.

He never did seem to have many of those, nowadays.

He selected the freshest-looking of the apples and settled himself into one corner, gnawing on it idly. The trouble with food, he thought, was that food cost money, and money was something he rarely seemed to have that much of. He had always hated going grocery shopping, simply because it seemed like such a waste to spend money on something that was going to be gone in a few weeks anyway.

And now it was summer, which was never much of a good time for him, no matter how much Alex liked to insist that no vacation was a bad vacation. There was the fact that he didn't get paid for two whole months--usually he managed to save a big enough chunk to tide him over, but it still made him antsy. And then there was the fact that he had absolutely nothing to do for two whole months. In theory that would be a good thing, two solid, unbroken months of no obligations, no outside stresses, nothing except whatever he himself chose to do. But in practice, what he usually chose to do was nothing. He would sit in his tiny house, dozing and staring at the walls, until the hours and days and weeks all started to blur together. He could still remember what had happened last Christmas vacation--it had been a week into the school year before he even thought to remember when it was going to start up again.

He'd managed to keep himself occupied the past few summers with paying off as much of his debt to Alex as the man would allow, and fixing up the house as well as he could, but now the house was in the best shape he had the funds for, and if he hadn't completely erased his debt then it was only because Alex staunchly refused to take any more of his money. There was nothing left he could think of to do that was even close to taking up two months. And so it looked like he was doomed to that slow downward slide again, unless something completely extraordinary happened.

At least he had the voice in his head to keep him company. Although even that seemed to be petering off now, the static quieting down into a dull hum. He couldn't quite decide if that was a good sign or a bad one.

There was, of course, the concept of a summer job, which had been Alex's suggestion when he'd been careless enough to mention that winter vacation. He'd done it before, spent a few weeks here and there shelving books or washing dishes to fund his main summer activity. It would certainly take care of the inactivity, and lessen some of the nervousness about his income. But the idea of ten weeks of mindless drudgery was not one that appealed to him. He could put up with paperwork at the school because that was only one of several duties, and it was in support of something he truly cared about--a rarer and rarer find these days. He didn't think he could survive a whole summer of nothing but menial chores.

In any case, inactivity was starting to look like an attractive option. He'd been so tired lately. Maybe that was just what he needed, a whole summer just to rest...

The next thing he knew there was a loud creak from above him, and he was jerking awake, and he looked up just in time to see Alex's face appear in the gap beneath the opened trapdoor.

"You left your door unlocked," said Alex, by way of explanation. "What are you doing down there, anyway?"

Rafe glanced at the half-eaten apple in his hand. The inside had long gone brown. He sighed, and dropped it to the ground as he straightened up.

"Just... resting," he said.

"Well, come on up! End of the school year, after all, dinner at my place to celebrate!"

Alex's face disappeared. Rafe hesitated a moment, then headed for the ladder.

He'd have preferred to just stay down there. But, he reflected, as he climbed back into the kitchen, he probably didn't have a choice in the matter.

#

Alex didn't have a cold cellar, of course--he had a proper refrigerator, one of the few in a poorer city like Tessa. That was, after all, how his family got their money: since the earliest days of colonization, they had worked to find ways of replicating basic Earth technology using whatever materials were available. Alex was constantly trying to foist off old factory extras onto Rafe, but Rafe always adamantly refused. He had a gas oven, a toaster, and a nice kettle, and that was all he really needed. Besides, it felt almost like cheating to accept them.

He had to admit, though, that dinners at Alex's were always much more enjoyable than those he had at home. Appetite he might be lacking, but his taste buds still worked fine, and Alex always seemed to make a point of cooking up something extra-delicious when they had dinner together. Undoubtedly it was all just another poorly-disguised attempt to fatten him up, but it worked out for the best. Alex's cooking was good enough that Rafe could bear to eat an almost normal-sized portion of it, which meant that Alex was not driven to bother him about his eating habits, which meant there would be little to detract from the pleasure of Alex's company.

And Rafe did enjoy Alex's company, despite his excitability and his tendency to nag. It was comforting, knowing that there was someone there to watch out for him, someone whose friendship he wouldn't have to fight to keep.

Dinner went smoothly enough; as always, Alex carried most of the conversation on his own, telling his wildly involved stories of work and the latest family drama as Rafe ate and nodded and provided relevant comments where necessary. He even ended up having seconds, to Alex's inexpertly disguised glee.

When they were finished he made his usual attempt to clean up the dishes, which was, as always, firmly rebuffed by Alex. "Strange as it may seem," Alex said, as he took Rafe's plate from him and headed into the kitchen, "you aren't actually required to do anything in exchange for dinner."

And so Rafe sat, and listened to water run in the kitchen, and when Alex was finished with the dishes he went downstairs and returned with a bottle and two wine glasses.

Rafe considered the situation. He didn't normally drink--he didn't like the thought of intoxication, of what might happen if he forgot himself--but Alex waggled the bottle enticingly, and he thought back on his day and that voice and decided that a little couldn't possibly hurt. Alex understood, after all. Alex would make sure not to give him too much.

"Here's to summertime!" Alex said cheerfully, raising his glass. He glanced out at the early fall sunset and added, "Figuratively speaking, of course."

"Cheers," Rafe murmured, and sipped cautiously at the wine. To his slight annoyance, he felt the staticky feeling return, although the voice itself seemed to be keeping quiet.

Alex swung his feet up onto the arm of Rafe's chair, grinning at him over his glass. "So, any plans? Keep in mind that 'moping around in my tiny house all day' does not count as a plan."

"I don't mope," Rafe protested. "I just--don't go outside much."

"Well, it's a good thing you have me, then."

Rafe eyed him warily. "You're not going to dump me with your cousins again, are you? Remember the last time."

Alex had the dignity to look affronted. "That wasn't my fault! I had no way of knowing her nieces would be over that day. Besides, you love kids."

"I do. I just don't love it when they lock me in a room and try to restyle my hair."

"I liked what they did with your hair."

"It was pink."

"But, you have to admit, very stylish."

Rafe made a face and took another sip of wine. This did not seem to have any further effect on his head, so he decided it was probably safe to continue.

"No cousins," he said.

Alex sniffed. "I assure you, I was not thinking of anything that even remotely included cousins or the hellish nieces thereof."

"Good."

"What I was thinking of was more along the lines of a trip. I've got some vacation time coming up, how does a week or two in Rain sound to you?"

Rafe experienced a sudden, fleeting, but intense feeling of panic. He gasped, and his wine glass shook in his hand, spilling a few drops onto his shirt.

Alex started. "What? What's wrong?"

"I--" But the feeling was gone, leaving behind only a vague unease. What had that been all about? "Nothing. Sorry."

Alex gave him a sympathetic look. "Headache again?"

In fact, Rafe's head had been surprisingly pain-free all evening, but he didn't want to have to explain the stranger parts of his day to Alex. "Yeah," he said.

"You really ought to get those looked at. It can't be healthy, you having so many."

"It's--it's not so bad." Rafe dabbed ineffectually at the drops on his shirt, avoiding Alex's gaze. "I've got medicine. I can deal with them."

"If you say so," said Alex. He didn't seem convinced, but thankfully did not press the subject. "So, what do you think? Road trip? It'll be just like old times."

Rafe raised his eyebrows.

"I mean," Alex amended, "minus the bullies and fascist high school teachers and other assorted childhood trauma. Come on, I'll take you to see that big data computer they have up there. Dad's got special access for company research. Oh, and the botanical gardens, I don't think you've ever seen those." He paused. "Come to think of it, I don't think you've seen that much of Rain. You had that really boring foster family, they never took you anywhere."

"They took me to the museums," said Rafe.

Alex waved a hand at him. "Kid's stuff. Man, Rafe, you've never really experienced the capital! That cinches it, we have to get you out there this summer."

Rafe stared down at his glass. It sounded like a good idea. A change of scenery might help to relieve the ennui, and of course he'd never bother to do anything like that on his own. But... he had another sharp spike of anxiety, although it was less intense than before, and he managed to stop himself from visibly reacting.

"Not... right away," he said, and to his relief the feeling ebbed a bit. "I think I need a week or two just to--to relax."

"Well, yeah. I wasn't suggesting we leave tonight or anything. I've got to give notice, after all." Alex sniffed. "You'd think they'd give me more leeway with this stuff, what with being the son of the company president and everything. Maybe sometime in July, then?"

"Y-yeah." Rafe paused, but his agreement seemed to cause no ill effect, so he continued, "I mean, I can't promise anything, but... if I'm feeling up to it... sure."

Alex grinned. "All right! Oh, there's this great ice cream shop in one of the neighborhoods, mum used to take me there all the time when I was, I don't know, five. We definitely have to find that. And the art center, I think they've only just finished building it..."

The rest of the evening managed to pass without major incident. Rafe felt comfortable enough in his lack of hallucinations to allow Alex to pour him another glass, and by the time the conversation began to peter out he had reached that level of inebriation where motor functions are as yet unaffected but the senses are lightly suffused with a cheerful pink haze, a state which he rarely had the chance to appreciate. Alex walked him home around midnight, yammering on about landmarks and bars, and Rafe discovered that he was content simply to listen, without worrying about finances and what might happen to his house if he left it for that long.

The house had finally cooled down when they reached it--not that Rafe was in much state to notice if it hadn't. Whether because of the alcohol or just the general stress of the day, he found himself suddenly exhausted. He bid Alex good night and wandered off to his room, where he just managed to change out of his day clothes before collapsing onto the bed.

#

Despite the relatively small amount of alcohol he'd had, Rafe had hoped it would be enough to grant him, for once, a peaceful sleep. And for a little while, it seemed like it might; he did begin to dream, but it was a pleasantly insipid sort of dream, just a collection of colors and images thrown together in a vaguely coherent pattern. But to his dismay, it soon coalesced into Alex and Aria, playing cards on a rickety old table.

Aria, at least, seemed in better shape than she usually was in his dreams, which was to say that she only looked about three weeks decayed and still had all her limbs. It was not much of an improvement.

Alex raised an eyebrow at Rafe, cigarette dangling from his lips. "What are you doing here?"

"What?" said Rafe.

"Shouldn't you be looking after him?" Alex jerked a thumb over his shoulder at a patch of empty air. Rafe stared, but whatever might have been there, it stayed resolutely invisible.

"I don't... see it," he said.

Aria scoffed. "What, you blind as well as deaf?" She jerked her head in the same direction, to the same lack of effect. Rafe looked at her blankly, and she rolled her glassy eyes. "Geez, Rafe, why do we even bother with you?"

"I-I'm sorry," said Rafe, helplessly. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Alex slammed his cards down onto the table, scattering chips everywhere. "Dammit, Rafe, if you can't even--"

Aria held out a pacifying, skeletal hand. "Hey, no, leave him alone. It's probably better this way. You remember what happened last time."

There was a splintering noise, and her hand fell off completely, landing on the deck with a thump.

"Dammit, Aria!" Alex yelled, rising angrily to his feet. "You said this wasn't going to happen anymore! You promised me!"

"But he's gone!" Aria was standing now too, clutching her stump of a wrist and glaring furiously. "He's gone, and it's their fault, it's all their fault, what was I supposed to--"

A knife flashed in Alex's hand, and he lunged; Rafe wanted to run forward, to intervene, but Alex's voice had changed again, gone soft and silky with that strange accent Rafe couldn't quite place and he found himself transfixed, a pair of eyes just floating and watching as the two of them lunged and dived and fought. Aria screamed rage and insults, and Alex said that he understood the pain, he truly did, but people had died and there was no turning back now, and all the while the knife flashed and spun and slashed across Aria's chest, sending fountains of stale blood into the air--

Rafe was halfway expecting the darkness when it came, but nothing could shield him from the pure, elemental terror that came with it, ravaging his senses until all he wanted to do was scream. Numbness suffused his entire body, and he could feel himself shutting down, his insides freezing, his brain inexorably slowing, and he knew that this was it, this was dying, this was death, and it was only that faint, feeble hope that someone would finally come for him that kept him from giving into it entirely...

#

Rafe woke up knowing where he needed to go.