No glib comments tonight, just right into the chapter.
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Chapter 8:
Miranda laced up her skates preparing for the roller derby, careful of her left foot. She had to make sure the laces on that one were tight enough since she couldn't feel that one, but it wasn't too difficult. She hummed a little tune, "My Sharona" out of tune and bounced as she chewed her bubblegum and blew a bubble, her pink pigtails bobbing and swinging wildly.
She stood up and stretched, enjoying the attention she got from the guys who worked at the roller rink. But they were too easy. All she had to do was bat her eyes and jiggle her boobs, and smile, and they fell all over themselves. But they also expected her to just fall into bed with them too, they didn't ever want to WORK for it. What she wouldn't give for a challenge.
Oh well, that just meant spending more time alone at home with BOB, her Battery Operated Boyfriend.
She got out onto the rink floor and started in on some laps while pulling her special helmet on over her head. It had special holes for her pigtails to come out, or so everyone thought. She had pulled her pigtails through there at one time it was true, but now she tucked them up under the helmet and pulled through the decoys.
Once, and only once, someone tried to pull her down by the pigtails, but from that point forward if anyone did grab at them all they would get was a handful of fake hair, which usually caused them to lose balance and fall, and cause a pile up.
That thought made her smile, and she rolled past the speaker just as the song ended and the radio came on.
"That was My Sharona, by the Knack. WNCX time is 9:22 am, and we have a breaking news story. A few hours ago a bomb blast woke the residents of Terre Haute, Indiana. Nobody's really sure what happened, Terrorist attack, accident, or car bomb, the cops aren't talking, and even the feds won't say what they think just yet. The only info we have so far is that the blast happened in Storage Park, which was owned by a guy named Raul Moo-ee-res... Muyres."
Miranda's face froze, and spun around and she stared at the speaker.
"But they're not saying if he's the cause, or just a victim, because I guess he was caught in the blast, and doesn't appear to have made it."
She gasped dropped down, sitting on her heels, her hands covering her mouth and nose in a state of shock, and the tears coming unbidden. Her feet slipped out from under her and she landed on her butt, and rolled onto her back, crying silently now, mascara smearing down her cheeks.
It was about a minute before she could gather herself up. She pulled off her skates, and headed to the locker room in her stocking feet. She knew that the boys there were watching her, but she couldn't bring herself to care about that right now. It was time to hat-up and put on her ass-stomping boots.
She pulled them on, the ones she had worn through two tours... before...
She ran her hand over the soft silicon gel, which felt smooth to the touch, like silk. The straps went around the upper part of her knee. They had chaffed at first, now she barely felt them. She noticed more when they weren't there than when they were. The silicon folded up over the knee such that you could barely even tell anything was there. It was even colored the same as her skin. The only thing missing was the tattoos.
The knee hinges, the ankle hinges, even the toes. They all moved with perfect grace and precision, so smoothly, and it was like they seemed to know when they needed to flex. The exact mechanism was a mystery to her, but it seemed to just have an equal an opposite reaction to whatever she did. It gave back whatever she gave to it.
The prosthetic was a part of her, it almost felt more natural than... clothes. Or her boots. Or her pink hair. She finished dressing and looked at her self in the locker room mirror, which was broken. It still gave her a pretty good view though. She cleaned off the mascara, and she had her pink and white camo pants on, which were baggy, and full of pockets, all of which had a little somethin' something' for a rainy day. Her tattoos covered both arms, neck, shoulders and across her back, but there were bruises marring all those areas too, from throwing them into other skaters in the rink.
She checked her account balance on her phone, which showed the deposit from her last job in Mexico, helping the Policía push back the gangs and drug runners, to keep the cities safe, and take them back one at a time.
She sent a text to the team captain, explained this was an emergency, a death in the family (which was true in her own mind,) got directions to Terre Haute, jumped into her cargo van, painted with Hello Kitty and skulls, and took off.
The GPS said she should make it in about 6 1/2 hours, but she made it in 5 1/2. But during the ride her mind raced... what would she do when got there?
She thought back to all the conversations they had while she was in the Hospital after losing her leg, when he was measuring, and testing flex and force, and having her push against the pressure sensors, and pull on weights and rubber bands, testing her. She had thought it was some goofy form of therapy, and went along with it.
But he's talked about so many things, but mostly about art. About DiVinci and Michaelangelo... about hidden meanings, and about how Mona Lisa was actually a self portrait, and how DiVinci had actually designed prosthetics for various limbs, but had never been able to have them made, and that this design, her design, had been based on some of the sketches, but with ergonomics in mind, and with a few secret magical touches....
She thought about that for a moment. She'd thought he'd meant "magical" in the common sense that they had been amazing, or clever. But it occurred to her now that he might have meant that he had used actual magic in their construction. Of course most fabrication techniques involved some kind of metaphysical manipulations, but maybe he'd meant that he'd put a little something extra in... Magic... Art.
Magic AS Art? She'd seen displays and things that used Magic to pull off some spectacular looking effects...
She Googled "Art, Magic, Terre Haute" and the first thing that came up was Halcyon Art Gallery, which was having a show called MetaPhysical, the Art of using Magic to create Art. All kinds of different artistic representations of Magic, people's perceptions of Magic, and Magic used to create art would be on display.
This sounded promising to her. She set her GPS, and arrived there shortly thereafter.
Halcyon was practically just a little shop set into the surrounding buildings, similar to any Midwest shops except for the large round sculpture set into concrete out in front. She parked the van in the blacktop parking lot across the street, and jogged across the street.
The interior of the building was all one singular room, pure white, except where the displays were being shown along the walls and in an aisle down the middle. But Miranda didn't have a lot of time for any of that. She found an official looking lady, and walked up to her pulling out her phone.
"Hi," she said.
The lady was dressed in a dark jacket and dark skirt, with her hair pulled tightly up into a bun, and severe looking glasses, which were on a chain around her neck. Her brows furrowed as she looked over Miranda's pink ensemble, pink hair, and combat boots, and she said, as if it were against her better judgement, "Mm... Yes?"
Miranda glanced up at her from her phone, and let a little of the pain she'd been shielding away come back for just a moment to show on her face. "Yeah, hi. So uuummm..." she started, letting her voice shake, and her chin tremble just a bit. She glanced up at the ceiling then back at the lady as if trying to hold it together as she said, "I was wondering if you could help me?" She gave a little smile, and sniffled a bit.
The lady began to lose her severe disapproving attitude for just a moment, recognizing a fellow girl in need of emotional support. "Of course sweetie," she said touching Miranda's arm, and putting a hand on her shoulder. "What's going on," she asked sympathetically.
"Well, an old friend of mine was here in town, but I heard something on the news, and... Well... do you know this guy?" She showed him the picture of Raul, the low-res one she had used as his contact picture.
The lady gasped. "Oh my goodness of course, yes!" Miranda's heart jumped. "Mister Muyres was well known to me, we have spoken many times on the phone. Oh," she said gushing a little, "He was your friend? He is a little older, but were you two... you know... "
Miranda took a second to catch on, then said, "What? No! Oh no, GOD no. I'm pretty sure he was gay. But he did make this for me." And she reached down and pulled up her pant-leg, showing this lady her prosthetic leg."
"Ooooooh!" said the lady drawing out the word to show how sweet she thought this was.
"Yeah, and then I heard he'd been killed in..." Miranda's voice had gone higher and higher as she went through that sentence, till finally her voice was just a series of incoherent squeeks, which the lady apparently understood. She led Miranda to a row of benches between the exhibits and sat her down.
"Oh dearie, I'm so sorry. The Poli- OH! By the way, I'm Celia Fry."
"Miranda Herrera," she said in a still high pitched voice.
"Hi Miranda. Well anyway, the Police, the FBI, and for some reason even the CIA have all been here with questions, and I told them that without a warrant I cannot violate the privacy of our clients." Celia looked around conspiritorialy. "But I can say that he was supposed to be meeting one of my other clients at a place called Club Koyote, over in West T.H."
Miranda gasped. "Do you know who? Or why?"
Celia shook her head. "I can't really tell you anything about the other client unfortunately..." she sighed and looked a little sad herself, and started crying a bit herself. "I'm not even supposed to give you any information on Mr Muyres either, but seeing..*sob* as he's not *sob*here to object..."
They sat and cried together for a few moments, and compared notes about how they'd met Raul and , and little entertaining tidbits, and Miranda showed Celia her prosthetic leg, which Celia dutifully Ooo'ed and Aahhh'd over.
************************** Chapter 8 part 2
Okay have to stop there for now, running out of time tonight, so I'll have to finish the rest tomorrow, and hopefully get a start on Chapter 9. Just when you think you're getting ahead!
Anyway, comments and suggestions, welcome, welcome, welcome.
Thanks for Reading!
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