Chapter 7: Fox

EMETT

After college, things just settled into a rut for awhile. I worked as a janitor, I worked in the back room at a thrift store, I worked for an older lady to help her sort her things out before she moved, and I worked a lot for small homeowners who needed weeding or landscaping work. But for the most part, these were temporary jobs, and not at all full-time, typically only one or two hours of work and then I headed back home. I was depressed and hated myself for not being able to be who and what I wanted. In my heart, I wanted to be a girl, and I wanted to date a girl. I guess that made me a lesbian transgender person. Or a straight male with a clothing fetish, depending on how someone decided to define me. And usually depending on political leanings nowadays.

Of course, at the time, I could barely articulate that I was unhappy, aside from periodic bad moods where I would argue with my parents or try to stay in my room all day. These were usually after several years without legitimate jobs, though typically I would do volunteer work at the library or at the theater. I would also freeze up when asked about my future plans. In the future, I was sure that I would live alone and then eventually, I would die. This was all that I could think about. In fact, whenever they asked, I envisioned a Cold House, cold both with loneliness and isolation and because I lacked the resources to heat everything. With the pictographic language I invented, I suppose I would have written it as...

All of this changed when I met Fox. Kat Fox Hillard, though she went by her middle name. I feel okay giving Fox's full name because in retrospect, it is very obviously a pseudonym. Katherine Hillard is a character from Power Rangers, Fox is probably short for Fox Mulder from X-Files series. So honestly, I have no idea what her name actually was, and thus probably anything that I call her is probably fine. I definitely was sure later that she maybe was a spy. Or not, I'll let readers decide.

In any case, I met her in an extremely odd way. Her mother had employed me for a good six or so hours for a couple times to work on her landscaping. This was pretty decent money, but she was planning to head out for a month or so, and wanted me to watch her orange tree in addition to using a riding mower to mow her lawn during this time. A little background information about this place. I had to go to a few towns over, turn right at a street near a Mexican restaurant, turn again, cross a narrow bridge, and go between a mountain and a coastline until I got to their house. Their house was literally along a hill leading to the coast, and had a fairly steep hill, and it was kind of steep. Before this job, I had also never used a riding mower, and she wanted me to go faster than I was comfortable with. I didn't do anything like ram the riding mower into anything, but I was nervous enough that she had her doubts with me. On like the third time I came to the house, something different happened. First, I was also supposed to use a weed whacker against the house to give it a clean area. While I was helping her mother, she told me about her daughter Fox who was working as a nurse, and I seemed kinda interested. She apparently would have her birthday around the time they were gone so I would get to meet her. Also while I was helping her mother, her dad was revving up the weed-whacker for use. And revving it. And revving it. To be honest, I think he flooded the engine, but when he gave it to me, I used it for a few minutes and it started smoking. I was paid, but they seemed to blame me for it breaking, and they told me that they weren't that confident that I wouldn't drive the riding mower into the river while they were gone.

So Mom had me write an apology note to her (seriously, I didn't do anything), and so something inspired me to as if I could at least be invited to her birthday. I fully expected her to tell me no, but to my surprise, this was not objected to. Her mom only said that if you call her, and she said yes, then it was fine. That was apparently a big if,as I quickly found that her number was blocked to all calls. I tried texting her with that number, and she called me back on a different number to tell me yes, this was okay and that I should be there at around nine or so. Or maybe six, it was awhile back. I got there, and had some cheese platters while she and two guy friends discussed various topics, and watched some show called Drunk Histories, and another called Too Cute about kittens. On the way out, I asked her about the phone. Apparently the first phone number was the right one, but you couldn't call it because reasons that I didn't understand. Okay...

Anyway, I stayed in touch like once or twice a week, until one week when my parents were out of town and they had asked me to move a hammock. The chain kinda came undone while I was moving it, and the crossbeam hit me pretty hard in the forehead, and I was bleeding pretty heavily. I tried calling or texting my parents but they weren't picking up, so I tried to text Fox (since I couldn't call her, and since she worked in nursing). She walked me through how to be certain it wasn't a concussion or brain damage, and got me to wrap it properly with something cooling and take some rest for awhile. After this good advice (as you've seen from previous chapters, I don't have the best common sense), I was in touch with her more often. Once a week became twice a week. Then three times. Then nearly every day. I asked her all sorts of questions about what was going on with her lately, about her family, or other such things. Then we went on a vacation for awhile (the same cottage that I visited when I was 18, as it was a yearly vacation almost, though we went in September instead of July after college or so because Mom had retired from teaching), and while I was talking to her one day (after my parents had noticed I basically "blew up the phone" from texting, and later switched me to unlimited texts), I noticed things didn't add up.

She was supposedly a nurse for older people, yet she didn't seem to have normal hours. When I was calling her all the time, she even picked up at 4am a few times. It was a though she was available at any time I needed help. She lived near the Washington DC outskirts. And she had a phone that needed to be called indirectly, and two different numbers. Uhhhh, was she really a nurse?

So I texted her point blank, «Uhhhh Fox, are you a spy?» Suddenly, someone who was available at any hour, even those that didn't make sense, was unavailable for nearly half the day. I eventually apologized, after which told me by text, «I am not a spy. But you can believe whatever you want.» The boldface text is what I decided to read. She later said something cryptic about, «Perhaps you will see things differently when you get back.» This could definitely be read as that perhaps I'd see good sense when I got back, and stop accusing her of being a spy. But the really didn't seem to be what she meant.

When I got back, I worked for my boss, Jim, a reverend who had me gardening for him for a better part of two years. Only something seemed strange now. It was kinda like Manchurian Candidate with the Red Queen and the cards. When he said, "Hello, how are you doing?" which he always said when I got there, and always said about the same tone, it sounded more like a trigger phrase or something. It was an innocuous phrase, so I dunno how I came to that conclusion, but I was paranoid as hell right then, so that's what I heard. Then he told me, "Stay away from the Poison Ivy," and I heard this as a name of a person (like the 1959 song), rather than a plant name. Poison Ivy in this case was "That Person that I don't want you to see." And so on. After collecting the money, he asked me if I was okay, and I'm like "Yes, of course I'm okay." But I wasn't. I packed a few supplies, and headed for the car. My mom Bianca tried to stop me, but I decided she was with Them, whoever They were. So I yelled that I hated her, and nudged her out of the way, driving the car off. I got a phone call or ten trying to talk some sense into me, but I decided They would try to talk me out of things. I didn't know what these people that claimed to be my parents wanted of me, but I wasn't going to be a part of their evil conspiracy. I think I stopped by Fox's place to leave some clothing, but my memory is fuzzy here. I was under a lot of stress.

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Fox

I am not at liberty to disclose whether or not I work as a spy or a nurse. But in any case, I continued my work while Emett did his thing. Except one day, he panicked and wandered off. His parents called me, as he had apparently chucked his cellphone out the window. This would make it somewhat more difficult to track him. Emett visited me, leaving some clothing there, then headed at west as best as I am supposed to know. After all, why would I know anything more?

What's that? You think that maybe I do know where he went to? Absurd! And there were absolutely no reason why roads that week were unreasonably blocked to slow his escape toward a destination that might result in his death. It was all the government shutdown and had nothing to do with me at all.

His parents apparently filed a missing persons report and he was pulled over near Kansas and Missouri. Unfortunately, on his way back from Wyoming, he was almost arrested near Sterling. Don't ask me how I know this. I'm just a nurse!

EMETT

As I suspected that whatever these people were targeting me for was nothing good (a communist cell? Some sort of terrorist regime? Dude, I'm a red-blooded American, even if I am femme as hell), I decided it was better to die than be used. So I drove west, intending to head to the Grand Canyon and drive or jump off. I was, needless to say, not in a good place.

I had gone through a police checkpoint and was pulled over (I wasn't speeding or anything), because I was in fact the person they were looking for. I was a missing person, and now they found me. Yay! But unfortunately, later on, when they found me again, the cops decided that I had stolen the car. In a last ditch effort, I asked the police to call my parents to confirm that the car had not been stolen. My mom, whose number I remembered, wasn't at the phone. I think I needed to ask them for help with my dad's number (they of course could pull up records). So they later wrote his name and number on the registration, along with my mom's. Yeah, I was hopeless, not even properly remembering my parent's contacts. And the worst part about it was some teasing about how when you get locked up... followed by an indirect reference to dropping the soap.

Uhhh let's back up a bit from dropping the soap. I appear to have skipped ahead again. Let's talk about how I got from a Kansas checkpoint all the way to a Sterling intersection where my car almost slammed into a telephone pole. I had gone to Wyoming, after my brother by email convinced me that even if I was off on a suicide mission, there was no way that I'd be able to do what I wanted. Obama had after all refused to put any kind of cap in spending so the government had shut down this week. And so I was decided to move north, toward the unforgiving colds of someplace like North Dakota or Minnesota. Though where I was considering was West Michigan. I got as far as a rest stop in Wyoming before I had to pull in for the night. At around 4am, I awoke shivering. All around me was snow and ice, but thankfully I hadn't been snowed in place.

And then I noticed something. You know that game you sometimes do as a kid where the windows are foggy, and you doodle something with your fingers? Well, on the outside of the car, between the snow and the windshield were the words written, « (@//M3h ». Having read the webcomic Megatokyo, I knew what l33t was, and how you could substitute out letters and numbers to make words. It said, Call Me as clear as day to me. I thought through the logistics of how that got here. Either my mom wrote it, Fox's friends wrote it while I was distracted with her, or it was some kind of message that miraculously appeared. Giving my mental state, this was what I decided was most likely. Especially since in order for either of the other two to be a thing, someone either was trying to subliminally get me to call them (Fox), or or knew that I would be heading to some place very very cold (Mom or God). I thought about the odds of someone knowing that in advance, and it basically ruled out all but the last. In any case, I felt deeply loved. Suddenly, like the guy in It's a Wonderful Life, I said to myself, "I want to live!" I drove away from Wyoming, trying to get out of a blizzard, stopped at a gas station that was open at a crazy hour (it turned out my car really needed gas). I headed east, but when it became clear that I was skidding all about the road, I started to go south. Unfortunately, my choice of roads led to a tattered and bumpy drive that had no salt or anything. I couldn't stop, yet no life flashed before my eyes. Instead, as I veered toward a telephone pole, I instead quickly reacted, veering right to get off the road and avoid hitting any cars, then to the left as I slid off into a ditch. I was totally unhurt, and thought about all the people at home probably praying for my safety. Well, their prayers worked. Despite skidding all around in a blizzard, I never hit one car, nor that big phone pole. But now I was answering cops and about to be arrested. But that didn't happen either. But I was hit by a big fine for failure to stop, and I think I got a towing fine too, even though they didn't tow my car more than about ten feet. Stupid town. Who puts a telephone pole right past an intersection?

After that, I made my way to a truck stop, and settled in for the night. Unfortunately, when I got in my car the next day, I found out that the battery was dead. After wanting to give up once again, I found a guy named Noah who was willing to restart my car using a cord.

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