Chapter 90: [7] Close Encounters of the Bus Kind 7 [From Beyond Arc]

Close Encounters of the Bus Kind

[7]

There was no way that Erin was just going to leave this fresh mystery alone. She swiftly slipped on her usual, nighttime clothes (so quickly that Paul didn’t even bother to look away) and sat next to Paul with her legs crossed.

“Can you try speaking like that again?” Erin encouraged, leaning forward. Paul poked her head out of the blankets and repeated from earlier, “… Erin and her mom put me up at their place.”

To this, Erin shook her head. “You’re just speaking English now. Is that what you said before?” Paul paraphrased and summarized what she discussed with the woman on the phone who claimed to be her mother. Same stuff as what Sharon brought up regarding a plane crash, which both of them surmised was some sort of government cover-up for whatever they experienced. Erin grimaced sympathetically when Paul mentioned piano lessons and asked if she had any experience with them.

“No more than just messing around on Casio keyboards in stores by playing Chopsticks.” Shrugging with her hands, Erin proposed that perhaps, with everything that’s happened, maybe she’s turned into an unconscious virtuoso same as she was able to speak whatever language that was. They didn’t make much headway with pinning down the language until Erin proposed searching for social media on Paul’s phone.

Nadia Miray Baris. That was her. Or rather, it was who the Internet said she was. Fourteen years old going on fifteen on November 29th. Turkish and Greek ethnicity. Grew up in Bristol before moving to the United States for junior high and high school. Father owns a local restaurant chain and mother is an accomplished writer. She had seven siblings, two brothers, and five sisters. Paul had to close the app and take a breath. It was too much to process, too much of a life to absorb.

“That’s wild”, Erin responded. She also had two brothers, but they were never a part of her life. Paul set her phone back down where it had been and stretched around to make sure the charger was inserted. While she went to go get a drink of water before bed, Erin snuck around the apartment to hunt any mysterious odors. It would’ve been ideal to possess some sort of natural gas detector with a myriad of sensors, but she never even considered that possibility. There was a carbon monoxide detector in one of the drawers, which she used to have on the wall, but the batteries eventually ran out and she never had the 9V it required.

Sharon became mildly curious about what her daughter was doing rummaging around the drawers. Preparing her words, Erin set her hands on her hips and casually explained that she caught a weird smell before taking her shower. Only when she admitted that it smelled like rotten eggs did Sharon launch off the couch and out of the blankets. Fortunately, she actually had exactly the variety of gas detector Erin was thinking about in the car. A gift from the mysterious man she usually lived with. It vaguely resembled a colorful, bloated straw with a screen on the side.

Reading through the directions, Sharon walked around the apartment and paused at various points to let it beep. She gave special attention to the bathroom while transferring several larger towels over from the main linen closet. The lines on the screen wiggled a few times but every measurement concluded that the air around was safe. Checking again, Sharon could only conclude, with some assistance from Google, that it was some sort of hydrogen sulfide buildup in the pipes or the water heater. She again invoked the mystery man she lived with as being able to help drain the water heater and possibly sanitize the pipes to see if that solved it. For now, she squeezed her daughter in a calm hug and brushed her hair back.

Erin sincerely appreciated the gesture far more than the perfunctory, needy poses that her original mother drew her into. Those hugs felt more like a leech peeling off the love that bled out of her than providing an infusion of affection. It was nice and a relief that at least one of her worries could be set aside. The problem was the flood of other things which allowed no easy explanation or remedy. How could she tell her mom that she saw a pack of ravenous things with hungry red eyes, along with a creepy black dog, felt thumps to put Cthulhu to shame with forms to dwarf and blot out the evening light, heard sounds of twisting anxiety, and absorbed so many other things she didn’t understand? She just presented a look of calm and reassurance as she receded back to the bathroom.

Paul echoed her relief when she explained the puzzling smell. They each let the weight of all this chaos fall away as they pulled back the covers. Erin flicked off the light, leaving a moonlight-like spill from the hallway under the door. It was enough to see their way to the restroom. Erin bundled up and looked towards Paul, who was soon also as cozy. This was nice.

They each apologized in advance for snoring, with Erin pressing that hers was absolutely the worst. Propping her head up with her hand, she looked at Paul’s slight form with the abundant crests of her chest impossible to hide beneath the layers. Sleepiness dangled on their lives and spirits, but they still found the energy to talk for a bit.

Erin questioned Paul about whether she should start referring to her as Nadia. Paul raised her slim eyebrows and tilted her head a few ways, as if she was searching for some hidden text that would provide her with the right thing to say.

“I am Paul. Barring the possibility that aliens or whatever just made two random teenage girls think they’re actually Paul Moore and Coach Erin Reeves.” This deservedly earned a playful but firm poke from Erin for even introducing the possibility. Waving her hands, Erin qualified that, assuming everything was taken at face value, did she want to be Nadia?

Paul wiggled her hands beneath the covers and inquired about how it made Erin feel. That earned another poke as she demanded Paul tell her her own feelings and “Stop being such a shy little girl”. It wasn’t an easy proposition. So many years of her life were devoted to just patiently waiting things out or acquiescing to others. The parents she grew up with were survived in their fury and their apathy because he became like an invisible presence. Not noticed as a deflection for bitterness. Not punished pointlessly. Just a ghost inhabiting the confines, just a dutiful butler who completed his tasks of ferrying the needy from one place to another before being transferred to his grandparents.

What did he want? He wanted more time with Erin. He wanted to make her smile. He wanted her to feel comforted and safe. He wanted so many things for her and to share in them. But all that was presumptuous. His family crushed his ego for calm obedience. He had needs and wants, but they had to be excavated. What did he… She feel then?

Nadia. It was a pretty name that vaguely reminded her of Russian girls and gymnasts. She could be Nadia. But did she want to be Nadia? Before she receded into the nagging precipice of simply accepting that the world decided this was who she was and she couldn’t disappoint her parents and others in her life, Paul took a deep breath and resolved, “Alright.”

It wasn’t a conclusion she was going to set in stone as her new reality or genuine self. But she was willing to give it a try. Be Nadia for a bit, try it out, and see if it fit along with everything else. Nadia Miray Baris. Someone else but also her.

The notion still felt like tossing herself off a cliff but also felt like flying. In turn, now as Nadia, she had her own questions for Erin.

“What are we to one another? Like, I was kind of sort of thinking about whether we’re a couple and we’re dating or if we’re together or something?” Despite the fledgling effort at some level of confidence, she could feel herself shrinking from the potency of her thoughts.

Erin considered the easy response of just lobbing the question back at Nadia. How do you see us? What are your feelings? What do you want us to be? But she had asked first. It only seemed fair to tackle it appropriately.

She had so many words and notions rifling around in her head, but it was like they all scurried away into the shadows as soon as she put forth the reality of this question. What was Nadia to her? Paul was a cute, protective, artistic, inscrutable guy she knew in high school who became a driver deeply devoted to making sure everyone was safe. Like this, together, either under the warm covers or reaching out for warm, sensitive places, she didn’t know yet. She wasn’t even prepared for if she wanted to say she was a lesbian.

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The word was so loaded, especially with all the crap that her parents piled on top of her head, never mind the garbage she accumulated from being an active sports enthusiast and educator.

The teachers in the lounge never really said anything that she could directly point to but the looks and implications were a fouler stench than the one she found in the bathroom. That wasn’t to say there weren’t some teachers who proved the clichés, jokes, and worse accurate, like Coach Janice Nesbitt.

During the first week before classes, Erin endeavored to befriend, associate with, and at least learn the quirks of everyone in her particular orbit of campus. Some of them were amazingly helpful and others provided interesting stories. But Nesbitt, oh Nesbitt. She really tried with her.

The problem was Nesbitt was exactly like a callous, lecherous old man. If you said the slightest thing that she didn’t like, then you never heard the end of it. Even worse, there were stories about the way she handled female students. Nothing ever wound up on the record and she always managed to find the careful line between suggestive and abuse, but everyone knew.

She was just the most recent in a long line of negative examples that Erin ran into at the worst points in her life. The first lesbian she met in high school was utterly vitriolic, menacing, and obsessed with making reality what she wanted in a way that eclipsed mere gaslighting. And just when she managed to recover from each encounter, a new instance would crop up and smack down her optimism. After a certain point, it felt like the universe was trying to tell her something.

She did her best to overcome that impression, especially as the area infested with notorious crackheads on the streets who just happened to be trans and gay. They provided the galvanizing negative example to the community to torpedo whatever progress, especially for that one former student who she desperately wished she could’ve helped find a place where she was welcome.

What did Erin think of herself? Despite the lack of any helpful role models, and so much noise and confusion, she felt content and at peace right here next to… Nadia. She fully appreciated Paul in the school and all the quietly kind things he did. And she especially felt nervous delight every Friday when she could look forward to him in the driver’s seat. Did that make her bisexual? Did it matter?

She got lost in all that. What was the question again? What were they to each other? What particular label did it deserve? Girlfriends? Friends? Flirtatious crush? Something serious? Something undefined? Erin really did want to clear it up, as much for herself as for Nadia to understand.

The answer seemed to be to provide some vague affirmation while letting Nadia define and delineate… oh, screw that. She had been hesitant and waited for Paul all through her last opportunity. He shared his beautiful flower and precious art and she demurely expected that he would take the next step or that romance would happen if it happened. Well, she wanted this!

“Nadia… I want to go out with you. Let’s be a couple. Whatever that means. A cute couple. Just enjoying each other. Do you want to be my girlfriend and I’ll be yours? You get to be the adorable, busty, shy, squishy one.” For emphasis, she ensnared Nadia under the covers and pulled her close. She didn’t know if those were the right words, but she did her best not to doubt them.

For Nadia, it was like being wrapped up in a warm confident tidal wave. She wasn’t sure about her question and felt afraid pressing the point might make Erin turn away and leave the bed emotionally cold. The animating heat of her embrace made Nadia feel like she might pass out. Beside one another, Nadia‘s trembles seemed like a chill she couldn’t shake until Erin made her toasty.

The words spilled out, “Yes! Please. I don’t know how to be a girl really, let alone a girlfriend, but I promise to do my best for you. And myself. Whatever it is I’m supposed to do.” Calmly, they kissed. The fervent emotion stilled with the lateness of the evening, but they calmly cuddled against one another with the pillows stacked up for maximum softness. Erin quipped that Nadia was the best pillow as they took turns spooning. Eventually, she curled up against Erin‘s back and shut her eyes. The snores that followed were so preciously dainty and demure that she went to the effort of sneaking away so she could use her phone to record the best bits.

Sleep was easy for Erin but felt like a trick. As though some shade of the horrors she glimpsed were just waiting for her to relax the last protection. She just went through the motions of this notion until the enveloping warmth lulled her to sleep.

A span of nothingness filled her existence, the same way she could only remember the alien light burning away the night and her thoughts. Did the bus crash? Are the kids okay? Where is Paul? It was all just an echo, but it still felt the same as that moment.

Then, a weird sensation invaded that space, like something sharp probing the edges of her skin, worse than the strange itches earlier. Erin opened her eyes without feeling her lids lifting. She looked without seeing and resolved in horror a dark mass, like slowly undulating oil, saturating the ceiling above them. A sickly feeler, like an insect leg mixed with a slimy elephant trunk, rubbed against her head. A second one probed about where she knew Nadia was resting beside her.

That crystallized all her thoughts into a single point of anger. She didn’t have control of her body, but she still squeezed her hand into a fist. The wretched, inverted pool shifted. Opening her hand, she felt strange but amazing. Electrified currents flowed through her as she rose from the bed. Screaming without opening her mouth, she released her fist and focused waves of what churned plasma over the horrific mass. Immediately, it gave an inhuman shriek of terror as it writhed and roiled, as though suddenly placed in a bubbling, burning pot. The mass stretched to escape, but she tightly ensnared it until the nightmare probes slipped away from them. Only when it seemed like a frail puddle on the cusp of death did she finally release her hold on it. What remained shot out so fast that it rattled the window.

Erin felt herself jostle against the bed as though from a jerk of sudden awakening. The mattress wiggled more than she expected, but it didn’t rouse Nadia. Blinking her eyes, Erin softly groaned and scrutinized the ceiling above her. Nothing there, of course. Also, no sign of the gravity-defying dark sludge she had seen in the most empowering sleep paralysis encounter of her life. Plenty of them popped up when she was under stress, but she never managed to assault the monsters like that.

Untangling herself from her new girlfriend, Erin stumbled with curiosity over to the window. She overlooked the fact that every time she checked outside, it seemed like something worse was around. Pulling back the drape just a little bit, so that the room wasn’t flooded with the streetlight, she noticed the hint of a black mass crossing from the roof of one apartment building to another but easily resolved that it had to be some sort of raven or blackbird. The fog still lingered and obscured most of her view. Nothing else.

Before she shut the drape and returned to bed, she scrunched her brow and noticed a faint darkening in the otherwise clear glass. It appeared similar to a scorch mark. No amount of rubbing helped, and she could find no other marks. Covering her eyes, she scolded herself about no more weirdness. She needed to sleep and finally let this crazy day go. 

[I have a question at the end of the chapter again to help with suggestions for where the story should go. I'm actually not that far ahead this time and I am wide open for possibilities for this particular story. Feel free to add an idea which doesn't show up in the options. Also, if you see any random typos or uncapitalized starts of sentences, please pass them along. I have to cut down on my editing due to release speed and my programs don't seem to be catching lowercase sentences. Thank you for reading!]

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