Chapter 32: 32. Through the Fog

Elia's eyes tumble around behind her eyelids, searching for a last bit of solace from the rays of sun piercing through her studio's windows. The light floods her bed in hues of brilliant white-yellows and unbearable warmth. Clothes cling to her skin with an uncomfortable, wet tightness and her thoughts race through her mind like many unformed clay blobs refusing to take shape on a pottery wheel. She cracks her eyes open. What were vague patterns of light on the other side of her eyelids resolve into the blurry shapes of her furniture. The next moment, a wave of dry pain flushes tears into her eyes and distorts her vision through a bubbly kaleidoscope.

She squints through the itchiness and pain. "Ugh, what time is it?" The display of the clock next to her bed sits blank, battery completely empty. For around a month now if she remembers right. She swings her legs over the side of the bed and twists her palms into her eyes. "Bamboo?"

No meow. No teleport-induced crack. Only the sound of angle grinders drifting up from the shop and through her open window. Elia casts her squinting gaze about the studio, but no cat. Odd. She calls toward the kitchen. "Bamboo?"

Nothing.

Her heart creeps into her ears, carrying through a crescendo until its thumps drown out the screeching of the angle grinder. Bamboo always wakes her up. She bolts to her feet and freezes in place. The beating grows, pounding and hammering in her chest; forcing each breath out of her lungs the moment she takes it. She needs her mirror.

Clouds outside interrupt the sun's glow, but only briefly and a new glint catches the corner of Elia's vision. Her mirror on the nightstand; she swipes it up and pops it open, then her emotions drift away into those comfortable voids at the center of her eyes.

Inside the shop, everything melts away in front of Elia besides the silver Camry with a failed oxygen sensor in its exhaust manifold. She engages her workstation lift's hydraulic mechanism. Underneath the car, pipes and axles and coils crisscross in a maze of metal that hint at more complexity through shadowy gaps. Onto work, she supposes.

Otto flails his arms about on the other side of Elia's desk. "What do you mean, no? You were harsh on them!"

He's upset, Elia supposes. But why would Duffie deserve an apology when she just told them how she felt at the time? She plucks a can of soda out of her fridge.

It's lunch. Carrying a bottle of milk and a pitcher of water, Mitchel winds around the serving counter of Sickbay. Food soon then: Elia counts each stool Mitchel passes. Just to occupy her mind.

Lowering both glasses onto the table, Mitchel slips into the booth — opposite of Elia. "Hey Elia, getting the usual— wait. Where's Bamboo?"

Something in her mind cries out; a tingling pinprick traveling through her network of nerves, setting out on its journey from somewhere on her calf. An itch from the coverall's material, she supposes. She should scratch it. "Yes, and I have no idea."

He cocks his head and squints his eyebrows together: disappointment probably. "No idea? Really, that's it?"

"Yes. She didn't visit this morning."

Mitchel stares at her. No blinking, no shifting hands: just staring like a statue. "You've got to lay off the power, Elia." He shuffles out of his seat and heads back to the counter, but places a hand on Elia's shoulder before he leaves. "I know you should be worried out of your mind about this. Come back when you're sober and I'll help you look for her."

"Okay, can I get the food still? And can I get a glass for the milk?"

That Camry has more wrong with it than Elia thought. Not just the exhaust-side oxygen sensor, but worn out rear brake pads too. Over the next hour she wrenches, she yanks, and she talks in a polite tone at the underside of the car to get at the brake pads then put everything together again.

Inside the Camry, the RPM meter peeks just over the steering wheel. Elia turns the key in the ignition. The tiny red pointer jumps with each sputter of the car's engine until it settles near the white tick indicating four hundred. Still low. Maybe the intake oxygen sensor needs replaced too?

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In the silence of her pondering, everything disappears into a swirling whirlpool. Her entire consciousness falls through the world and plunges deep into ice cold, lifeless water that sweeps her about in circles of despair, guilt, and disgust. She can't move, she can't breathe, she can only drown. Except for the one disc of metal in her palm. One flick of her finger and a glance of her eyes and she'll be fine, it'll be just like none of this is even happening. She shifts her finger over to the mirror's latch.

Mitchel's words echo out from somewhere deep in the ocean, as if he was whispering to her from a universe away. "I know you should be worried out of your mind about this. Come back when you're sober and I'll help you look for her."

Each moment of resistance burns her alive; blistering cold turns to blazing heat instant after instant; every bottled up emotion pours into the water and the pressure grows, squeezing at her from all sides. Even so, she tugs back on her finger. With all her strength she tugs back on the irresistible urge to stare into her own eyes and to make the pain a memory.

Past Mitchel now yells into her ear, morphing with a hint of her own angry inflection. "I know you should be worried out of your mind about this."

Somewhere under the pressure and cold and heat, her heart drums out alongside his words. She is. She is worried about that damn cat.

She breaks through the surface and the world snaps back into place. Right. She's in the Camry, staring at the RPM meter. The sensation of touch jumps to the front of her mind: sweat drenching her body; warmth spreading from her armpits; her unceasing, hammering heart. She has to go look, now.

Elia hops out of the car, whips her tool belt at the wall — where it probably clatters down onto the tool table — and she takes off out the open, overhead door. Otto's head peaks out from over a car's body with uneven streaks of wax and he yells after her. "W-What's wrong?"

She doesn't turn around. She doesn't yell back. She just keeps running.

Red and orange leaves lay wet and decaying over top of the cobblestone path; water drips in a steady rhythm from skeletal branches. Elia near-sprints past the plodding couples and jogging exercisers, calling out to tree and trashcan alike. "Come here, Bamboo!"

Bodegas advertise groceries, lottery tickets, and cigarettes at every street corner. Elia swings her body through the door of another one and she yells to the twenty-something behind the register in the back. "Have you seen a brownish-greyish cat?"

Steel dumpsters overflow with garbage of all sorts inside yet another alley between commercial buildings. Pain blooms in a fissure-like pattern in Elia's throat. She stands at the edge of the sidewalk, leaning down to catch a glimpse underneath the dumpsters. Her voice cracks. "Are you here, Bamboo?"

No noise. Her heart falls down into her stomach and she starts off to check the next empty alley.

Then a simple, wonderful noise: out from under the nearest dumpster, a meow carries along the brick walls of the alley like a whisper. Elia's heart swells at the familiar sound and she rushes toward it. Light from the afternoon sun disappears from her shoulders in the space of a step; wind channels through the small gap in buildings and blasts her loose hair back in a violent torrent of grey-streaked, tawny-brown. Gasping as the wind steals her breath, she kneels down amid the street grime and searches under the dumpster. A vertical slit pupil amid a sea of speckled emerald glares back.

Only one. Bamboo whispers another meow.

Elia nudges the dumpster along on its wheels, careful to keep them far from Bamboo's body and she lurches it to a halt with a grunt. "There."

Bamboo sits, mostly frozen. Her head doesn't move, her tail doesn't twitch, but her stomach rises and falls. Clumps of fur are missing from her back and cat-like scratches score bloody lines on her exposed skin. Warmth wells up in the corners of Elia's eyes. She scoops up Bamboo's tense, scratch covered form and cradles the cat close to her chest. "It's okay... it's okay." A tear sneaks through her fit of swallowing and voice cracking. "I'm sorry. I've got you, we'll get you help."

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