Second That Emotion
by
Latikia
Copyright © 2006
Chapter 34
Yeah, yeah…I knew it was only a dream. I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a white suit, unless I was going to a costume party as Edgar Winter. Of course, knowing it was just a dream didn’t do a thing to reduce the hammering of my heart.
What actually hit me in the chest was about one hundred and five pounds of squirmy little woman. I threw my arms around her and squeezed until she squeaked. I opened my eyes, looked into Peggy’s smiling face and grinned back at her with love and affection.
“Hey there squirt. How’re you doin’?”
“Terrific, now that I know you’re okay. You rampaging polar bear, you scared the hell out of me, you know that?”
“Sorry. I’ll try to be kinder and gentler next time.”
She pressed her lips against mine and gave me a kiss that I’ll remember till my dying day. I quickly forgot the pain in my chest, aggravated by her three point landing on top of me, and the dull ache in my belly and got instantly as horny as a three peckered weasel. Reaching down I cupped her tiny ass with one hand and goosed her. Peggy squealed into my mouth and wiggled hard against me. I heard someone clearing their throat off to the side.
I disengaged our mouths and stage whispered to her, “I think we have an audience.”
Peggy giggled and turned to look over her shoulder.
Mr. Jones stood next to the door, leaning against the frame. He was watching us with a small smile on his usually stony face.
“You might want to go easy there for a couple more days. The holes in your chest and belly haven’t had all that much time to heal. I know you’re tough but there is such a thing as pushing your luck.”
“Spoilsport.” Peggy groused as she slithered down off me and sat primly on the edge of the bed.
I got a good look at the cast that covered her right arm from knuckles to elbow.
“How’s your arm, sweetie?”
“It itches sometimes, but other than that it’s okay.” She held it out for me to see. It was an interesting shade of green and looked more like fiberglass than any cast I’d ever seen before. There were names scrawled across it in magic marker. I could make out Lilly’s and Izzy’s, Dr. Wills had added his name, along with Joshua and Grant and someone named ‘Davey Jones’.
“Davey Jones?” I muttered. Then it dawned on me. I looked up and Mr. Jones actually blushed.
“You have no idea how much shit I’ve taken over the years with a name like Davey Jones.” he said.
“I can pretty well imagine. You have my deepest sympathies.” I smirked.
“Fuck you too, sir.” He tossed me a brown paper bag, which I caught like a football.
“Get dressed and come on downstairs. We’re moving again.” He walked out and headed back towards the room Anya was in.
Peggy leaned towards me. “I think Davey has a crush on Anya.” she whispered, and giggled.
I raised an eyebrow and chuckled with her. “Now wouldn’t that be something?”
I got out of bed and stripped off the hospital top and pants and pulled on the brown slacks and military style pullover knit sweater, taking care not to catch the plugs in my arm. At the bottom of the bag was a worn pair of tennis shoes that looked remarkably like my own. I slipped them on and laced them up. Perfect. I rolled up the hospital garb and shoved it all into the bag, glad to be done with the stuff.
Peggy and I went downstairs where Dr. Wills, Izzy and Lilly were waiting for us. I opened my arms and got mobbed. It was wonderful. The image of the three of them acting as my personal firing squad faded away and became nothing more than an unpleasant memory in the face of this much happier reality.
Once the girls were done saying hello we all took a seat on the couch.
“We’re going to relocate you all to another location. The plan is to keep moving for the next two days.” the Doctor informed me.
“Why two days?” I asked.
“Three days from now we meet with the congressional sub-committees.”
“You talked them into a joint session?”
“It wasn’t easy, but yes, both committees at the same time.”
“Excellent. Now we just have to figure out how to get me inside without being arrested or killed.”
“At our next stop we’ll meet someone who should be able to solve that little problem.” he said cryptically.
Mr. Jones came down the stairs with one arm around Anya’s waist, holding her steady and upright. They walked slowly into the living room and he helped her into a chair.
Peggy got up and walked to where Anya was seated. Anya blinked slowly.
“I’m really sorry you got hurt because of me.” Peggy said and gave the blond girl a brief hug.
Tears formed in Anya’s eyes and she hugged Peggy in return.
“I…” she broke down and sobbed.
I stood up, walked over and knelt in front of the two girls. Linking with Anya I could feel her despair and her feelings of failure and incompetence. I drained them away, replacing them with understanding, appreciation and respect.
“Anya, you didn’t fail. You did what you could in a bad situatition. You were outnumbered and ambushed. No one expects you to do the impossible. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
She calmed down and wiped her face.
“How’s your head?” I asked.
“A little fuzzy, like it was stuffed with cotton balls. It hurts a lot too.”
That, at least, I could do something about. I hunted down the pain she was feeling and surrounded it with more pleasant feelings. Anya sighed with relief and then blushed bright red.
Well, the feelings I used to dull her pain were the ones I’d gotten from Peggy. I suppose a bit of blushing was inevitable, under the circumstances.
Mr. Jones rounded everyone up and we straggle marched outside and into the big SUV parked on the driveway.
While we sat there I leaned over to Izzy and whispered in her ear, “How many days have I missed?”
She put her lips to my ear, nibbled on my lobe for a moment and then whispered back, “Four.”
Four days? I’d lost four days. It didn’t seem like four days, but without a calendar how could I tell?
“Really? Four days?” I was stunned.
“Ike, you were hurt bad. You shouldn’t even be up and moving around yet.”
Four days. Lost and never to be had back. Those governmental morons were just racking up the brownie points.
Peggy crawled up into my lap and leaned back against my chest. I pulled Izzy and Lilly beneath my arms and linked with the three of them. Three sparks, three tiny little embers that represented the very best part of me, I gave to each of them. All three shuddered and pushed harder against me. I felt stronger and more alive than I had in ages.
“One down, three to go.” I murmured happily.
I have no idea where we went, not exactly. To be honest, I wasn’t paying all that much attention. Between cuddling with the girls and thinking about how I might be able to repair the damage I’d done to Anya I was pretty well preoccupied.
Wherever it was we were going, we got there and Mr. Jones and Dr. Wills ushered all of us inside a rather grungy looking warehouse in a seedy looking part of some place. I took a deep breath. Dank, salty, grimy, sooty, rank, rotten, dirty and decaying.
“Shit…is this
“Yup…I take it you were doing something other than watching the road signs?”
“Yeah, actually I was trying to work out a way to give Anya her free will back.”
He stared at me for five very slow heart beats and then blinked. “I’d appreciate that.”
“No promises. I don’t know if I can. But if I can figure out a way that won’t endanger her, I’ll do it.”
He nodded. “Come on, we have to get off the street.”
The inside of the building was much nicer than the outside would lead anyone to believe. Once we were in, Mr. Jones threw a switch that activated an automatic door opener so he could drive the SUV into the building. There was more than enough room in there for a fleet of SUVs.
Off to the left of the vast garage was a kind of pre-fabricated building with a set of large windows that faced us. Dr. Wills was standing inside and waved for us to join him. I herded my girls and Mr. Jones helped Anya.
Peggy was right…he had a serious case of the ‘likes’.
Inside the dry-wall enclosure we found a very homey little setup, including a small kitchen area.
There was also a wide collapsible table with a three-part folding mirror set up on it along with the largest assortment of make-up I’d ever seen. The girls rushed over and began pointing and picking up bottles and containers. Dr. Wills turned to them and cleared his throat.
“Ladies, please! Allow me to introduce Janice McNeal. Ms. McNeal is one of the premier theatrical makeup artists on the east coast and she has agreed to see what can be done to alter Ike’s appearance.”
The woman sitting next to Dr. Wills stood up and approached me, examining me from all sides and as many angles as she could as if I were some kind of museum exhibit.
She was not a young woman, but she wasn’t all that old either, probably in her late thirties or early forties. She had dark black hair in tight cornrows and probably weighed twenty pounds more than was ideal for her five foot seven inch frame. The twenty extra pounds all looked to be located on her chest.
“Amazing skin. May I?” she asked me and then reached out and placed her palm against the skin of my neck before I could reply. “Just amazing.” Her face lit up and she actually rubbed her hands together in excitement. “You are, without a doubt, the whitest white-boy I have ever seen.”
I called my sister over and put my arm around her shoulders.
“If you want something to work towards, try and make me look like Izzy here.”
“Hmmm…sure, I can do that, no problem. The real trick will be getting it to hold up for any length of time and fixing it so that no one suspects it’s cosmetic.”
For the next two hours Janice worked on dyeing the hair on my head, trimming my beard down to a goatee and dyeing it, and then darkening my skin from scalp to shoulders and my hands from fingers up to mid forearm.
I sat in a chair in front of the make up table and while she worked on me, I worked on trying to unravel what I’d done to Anya. I could see enough of her out of the corner of my eye to link, so I examined the tightly forged ring of emotions I’d planted and tried to find some way of breaking it.
I couldn’t force it open. I tried to insert additional softer emotions and use them to crack it, but it was solid and refused to hold anything else for more than a few seconds. I tried to burn it, which only made Anya irritable and angry so I gave up on that quickly. Eventually I resorted to trying to rip it out, but it wouldn’t move. The damn thing was permanent and there was nothing I could do to get rid of it.
Lilly came up to my side and was watching as Janice worked on my hands.
“I can’t undo what I did to Anya. It’s just too strong.” I said softly.
“What exactly did you do?” she asked, just as softly.
“I made her emotionally reliant on me. Every emotion she has, or will ever have, is forced to go thru a filter, and the filter requires that she serve, obey and defend me, no matter what she might want.”
“Damn, that’s harsh.”
“I was in a harsh frame of mind. There’s no way to take it back, no way to break it, no way to take it out. I’ve doomed the girl to follow me for the rest of her life.” My voice sounded hollow and empty, even to me.
Lilly was quiet for a while then she brightened up.
“Could you add something to it? A different set of instructions, maybe?”
“No…it won’t hold any other feelings for more than a few seconds.”
“Is it anything like the rings you gave us?” she asked.
“Similar, but not really the same. I intended for your rings to be added to, so in that respect it’s different. I do seem to have a tendency for using rings though. I wonder why that is?”
“Well, if you can’t add to her ring, could you loop another ring to the one she already has? Maybe the emotions in the second could influence the first…like the way electronic inductance works.”
Light bulbs went off in my brain and my imagination went in several directions at the same time.
“Lilly, my sweet, that is one hell of an idea. That might work, if we can figure out what to add. I’d kiss you, if Janice wasn’t busy painting my arms.” I enthused.
Lilly smiled and rubbed one hand across my back. She peered at my image in the mirrors.
“You know, with dark hair and dark skin, I can finally see the resemblance between you and Izzy. You really do look alike.”
Izzy walked up next to Lilly and looked into the mirrors. “Actually, he looks like pictures of our grandfather when he was young.”
Janice finished up with my arms and stepped back, admiring her work. “You’d make a good looking black man…for a white boy.” she grinned.
“But do I look different enough that no one will recognize me as me?”
Peggy had been talking with Anya, but seeing the crowd she bounced up and came over to see what the fuss was. She examined the new me from different angles, looking between Izzy and me a few times then stood back.
“I like you better with white skin and hair. But you’re kinda sexy this way too.”
“Young man, you most definitely look different. Anyone who doesn’t know you personally would never recognize you. But in my professional opinion, the one thing that always gives someone away is the way they move; change the way you stand and how you walk and that will do more to disguise you than all the makeup in the world. In your case though, gotta cover up that skin. It’s a dead giveaway.”
Janice showed the girls how to apply the different types of makeup to color my skin, how to do touch ups, and made up a list of what to use and in what sequence.
We all thanked her for her assistance and she grinned at me. “Not all that often I get such a nice canvas to work on.” She patted the bandage on my chest. “Try and take better care of it, yeah?”
Dr. Wills led her out of the pre-fab room, into a waiting car and out of our lives.
We packed the makeup into a carry-all, gathered our few
belongings and loaded into Mr. Jones’ SUV and left the
An hour and a half later we pulled up to a house outside of
the town of
That night, while the girls were getting ready for bed, I sat down with Mr. Jones and explained the problem, what Lilly had proposed and my ideas about what that proposition might mean.
“You want to link the two of us? Tie our emotions together, for good?”
I shrugged. “I think by tying the two of you together I can transfer her loyalty from me to you. Anya is never going to have true free will ever again. I pretty much destroyed that. She’s not a mindless zombie, but she needs someone to give her direction and purpose. At the moment that someone is me. What we have to find out is whether she’s willing to let that someone be you. I won’t force her if she doesn’t want to, but I won’t stop her if it would make her happy. Something you have to keep in mind; if I link her to you, it’s going to work both ways. Each of you will be able to feel some of what the other is feeling. On the down side…”
“Down side? You don’t think that each of us knowing what the other one feels is a down side?”
“David, there are benefits to being able to feel what she feels. Believe me. Now, as I was saying, on the down side, I have no idea what the long term effects of this kind of link might be. It might mean that if one of you dies the other would follow right after. It would definitely mean that if she were to get pregnant you would suffer the slings and arrows of her outrageous fortune from first morning sickness to final delivery. Not to mention PMS even if she never gets pregnant. You should talk to her and the two of you decide what you want and what you’re willing to endure.”
Mr. Jones got up and went to Anya’s room and knocked on the door, looking very much like a teenage boy on the way to his first date.
I waited until Anya let him in and shut the door behind them then got up and went into the bedroom the girls had chosen and shut the door behind me.
It’s a good thing I’d been drugged in the hospital; otherwise I’d have never been able to get to sleep. I’d gotten so that I needed the three of them pressed against me to fall asleep. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Early the next morning we all piled into the SUV and
relocated yet again to a town called
We left
“I got her an AK-47 pistol and one of the new Ruger P89 pistols. They’ll be fine until we can get back.”
I hoped he was right about that.
From
In his office, Dr. Wills walked around me, checking for any imperfections or uncovered areas in my makeup. Satisfied with my appearance he brought in a man I thought was a photographer, who took my picture and created, on the spot, a set of Federal Marshall’s ID, including a heavy gold plated badge, and Congressional access cards. Mr. Jones came back in as the forger was leaving and handed me the double shoulder rig and the two 10mm Glock’s from the ranch’s gun locker.
Supplied with ID and weapons, I followed Dr. Wills and Mr. Jones out to the front parking lot. We all got into the SUV and drove off to our date with Senator Mortenson and Congressman Bustamante.
We parked in the underground garage and took an elevator up
to the first floor where we filed thru the metal detectors, fluoroscope
machines and armed guards waving hand held wands that looked like the bastard
child of a Geiger counter and a rooftop TV antenna. I flashed my brand new
Dr. Wills was met on the other side of the detectors by a very pretty young woman, who introduced herself as an aide to the Senate sub-committee’s chairman, and she led us to the chamber where the combined meeting was to be held.
I walked carefully, the pebbles taped to the balls of my feet forcing me to keep most of my weight on my heels. I made much more noise with each step than I would have liked and drew more attention as we moved along the corridor that I was comfortable with. I glowered back at all the curious stares I received.
The young aide opened a set of doors with a sign hanging from them that read, Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and we all followed her in.