Ch.2) Touching Feeling /k/ edition part 2: Healing Boogaloo

Walking to the fat guy’s house was a bit unnerving when all I had was a long stick in my hand while traversing these woods. It’s downright spooky going through them at dusk with the figure behind me shadowing my steps. The wind picks up, the shadows of the trees and the glare of the sun in front of me slowly dying is playing hell on my vision right now. I stumble on some unseen rubble and barely catch my balance. Stealing a look behind me I see her limping along, her right leg more burden than use right now. Judging by her lack of expression, though, it seems to be a depressingly familiar pain to her.

I stop in my tracks and estimate how much daylight I have left. I didn’t plan on staying over so long at his place, but the sun doesn’t care. If I rush, I can probably barely make it before dark and I’d much rather be home than in the woods with a malfunctioning, empty gun and spirit. I hear her stop, waiting for me in that grim silence that seemed natural to her. With her limping, I doubt she could keep up with me. So that leaves…

“Hey, do you mind if I just carry you home? Sun’s about to set.”

I turn to her and look her in the eyes. Eye. I still can’t bear to look in her pale, damaged one. Confusion graced her pocked face. It figures; apparently most people can’t see these weapon spirits anyway. She probably never spoke to a human in her life.

Pity I don’t have time for her to answer me properly though. I walk up to her, still standing in apparent uncertainty, and lift her up in a bridal carry. I don’t know if touching her scars hurt her, but judging by that odd squeak I heard, it apparently doesn’t. She’s a fairly light girl, soft in the right places. I would be having a hard time, to use a euphuism, if it wasn’t for the scars caused by the rust.

Off I walk with my seemingly in-shock companion. A few minutes pass by and I contemplate my decision. It’s definitely a bit faster going, but tiring. It’s also hard to see exactly where the road is leading but judging by that familiar looking fallen over tree, my house should be just under a mile away. My arms are getting tired, so I bounce her up and readjust my arm’s positioning on her back. The jolt of that seems to have woken her up though.

“W-w-what are you doing! Let me go!” She squirms in my grasp, but I keep a firm hold on her.

“What I’m doing is taking you home. Gently.” Judging by her bewildered, open mouth she is still not fully aware of the situation. “Look, I want to get back before dark, and you’re injured. This is the fastest way to…”

“You can see me?” Ah, she’s still working on that concept. “Oh god, no!” She breaks out of my hands and falls hard onto the dirt. Luckily for her, that section of the path didn’t have any rocks. Covering her face with her hands, she begins to hyperventilate. I shake the cramp out of my arms and pat my right pocket where the revolver, her real body I guess, is. Her back arches, goes stiff and she peeks out at me, as if to wonder if I was real. Odd, in most cases shouldn’t I be wondering if this gun ghost was either reality or fantasy? Daylight is dying, so I snap back to the current state of affairs.

“Look, can we have our heartfelt introduction when we get home? I promise we can talk things out later.”

“You can see me” she says with bewilderment. She drops her hands from her face and crawls over to me. Grabbing my shirt with both hands, kneeling with tears streaming down her good eye, she pushes her face to me and sobs. Awkwardly, I try to comfort her only to have her break out in long, heart-wrenching wails. A more logical part of me wants to hurry her along, but her words kill that part. “Oh god, please don’t leave me. I’ll do anything, but don’t throw me away. I swear, you can use me however you want but don’t abandon me. I don’t want to be left alone in a box again.”

“I won’t.” Those words are pulled out of my soul, a solemn oath to whatever god or gods there could be that govern promises. I stoop down to her and take her face in my hands. “Look at me.” Her eyes are fixed downward and she tries to cover my eyes with her hands. Gently, but firmly I push them down. “Look at me, Ruger Vaquero.” She jerks at hearing me call her and obeys. I push any thoughts about her disfigurement out of my mind. “From now on, you’ll be at my side. I’ll fix you, restore you, and have you back in a holster. I won’t let you go, okay?” I do my best to remain calm; I don’t really have a speech prepared and I have no idea how to start the restoration process. Hell, I’ve only just started my part-time work, so I don’t know if I can even afford to restore her. “Look, it will take some time, but I’ll do it. I promise”.

She wraps her arms around me and nuzzled my chest with her face. I’m not much of a wordsmith, so I can only promise her a place with me. “You mean it? You’ll keep me by your side?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll take care of my rust and refinishing?”

“It’ll take a while to figure it out, but yes.”

“You’ll carry me and use me?”

“Not everywhere, but you’ll either be in my car or on my hip.”

She laughs no longer with dried out self-deprecation, but one giddy and full of delight. By now, the sun had set and darkness was falling at a quick rate. I tried to stand up, but she pulled me down with more strength than I thought she had. Her laughter had stopped and she looked up at me with her left eye. Reflected in her eye I can see the moon starting to rise, intoxicating me. The rest of her face concealed, she looked strangely nervous and almost, what’s the word?

Abashed?

“Will you polish me?”

I have no idea what she means by this, what words of comfort she’s looking for. Maybe it’s the light of the moon casting some spell on me, but I decide on to hell with trying to preserve some manly dignity and myself as a poet, I’ll just say it straight.

“Girl, you’re going to be so polished, you’ll start to think you were silver!”

She stops laughing and the moon’s spell wears off. I can feel myself turning red; the heat from my cheeks could boil water. Why did I let myself get drunk off the moon and atmosphere? That didn’t even make sense. Why silver? Berating myself, I hear a few chuckles and a long sigh, as if the weight of the world had been lifted off her slender frame.

“Okay, so maybe silver isn’t the right kind of metal, but…”

“No, it’s not like that. I want nothing more than that, but silver is too nice for rusted trash like me.” More and more, I’m hearing her accent coming out, a southern drawl like from some antebellum belle. Of course, the way the conversation is going, I can hear her spirit withering. I try desperately to change the subject.

“Did your old owner give you a name?” She gives me a sad glance and turns her head down. That was a stupid question on my part, one that probably brings up too much of the past. Way to blow it, me.

“Well, that just means I’ll have to make good on my promise. I’ll have you polished like silver, silver. Huh.” I petered out, but if she wants a name how about…

“Sylvia?”

I feel her tighten her arms around me in response, a visceral reaction.

“Sylvia.”

She starts to nuzzle harder, the increasing dampness on my shirt evidence of fresh tears.

“Slyvie.”

Her arms droops off me to her sides and she looks up at me with one puppy-dog eye. And, without warning, she wails again with long, sustained moans as she pours out years of pent-up fears and despair to the moon and trees holding fast as witnesses. Each and every breath she takes only fuels that evacuation of the past that had held her for so long. The wind picks up as if in response to her call, taking her pains far away to sights unseen. And all I can do is watch.

It was only for a few minutes, but by the end of it she starts to calm down. Wiping the fresh tears from her eye, she gasps for breath hiccupping weakly. But before I can do anything, she gets up albeit unsteadily and takes my hands in hers. Without warning, she kisses the back of my fingers and puts my right hand to the left side of her face.

“Master, I swear I’ll do anything you ask of me. I’ll bear every desire you have. Just keep me by your side.”

A long since dead ember inside her has been relit it seems. My mouth goes dry and my mind numb. Who could deny how attractive such a zealous woman, gun, spirit, whatever she is? I struggle to think of something, anything as she resumes kissing my hand.

“Anon. My name’s Anon. We can worry about everything else once we get back.” I take a look at my watch and retake custody of my hand. It’s too late to go to town and pick up the basics that my neighbor recommended for rust removal. “Let’s first fix you up, and then we can talk.”

“The master is kind.” She speaks demurely; her voice would be seductive and husky if it didn’t crack from her recent crying. “Master…”

“Anon.”

“Master Anon.”

“I said…”

“Master…” She’s not giving it up, huh? “Can I make one last, selfish request?” I cock my head just a tad. She takes that as an affirmative and holds out her hands to embrace me.

“Carry me home gently?”


Oh god my arms are tired. Who was the idiot who thought bridal carrying a full grown woman through a mile of forest was a good idea? Right. Me.

We made it safe back home, the automated porch light a blessed beacon illuminating my path during that last stretch. Surprising willful, that gun is. For such a submissive little thing, Sylvie close to demanded I carry her across the threshold. I’m not dense enough to not realize the symbolism behind her request, but I am soft-hearted enough to acquiesce. Part of me thought about dropping her as soon as we passed it and entered the house proper, but that’s not really a part of me I’m proud of. Once we got to the living room, which was bare except for a moldy matching pair of recliner and couch, I eased her down onto the couch and immediately collapsed onto the recliner.

I had spent the last few minutes just trying to catch my breath and stir up the little motivation I had to start cooking. It would be a while before I bought myself a microwave considering that I’m going to prioritize Sylvie; oddly enough, my family members all had old ones lying around but forgot to bring them during the remodel. Which brings me to the present; what the hell am I going to cook?

Wait, does she need to eat too? Do these weapon spirits eat people food or ammo? Speaking of which, do they sleep? Poop? I now realize how precious little I know of these women.

I hear a plopping sound, but pay it no real mind. I could make a few PB&Js, but would a gun girl be offended if I offered her anything that is technically “jammed”? Does this mean I have to start stocking some special type of preservatives instead? I press my hand to my eyes and try to focus on the here and now. Here and now, like that shuffling sound moving towards me.

I open my tired eyes a crack and see Sylvie prostrating in front of me. I can’t suppress a sigh, which, judging by how she’s slightly shaking, means I probably scared her. So what is she afraid of, Anon? Probably of displeasing me in some weird way and me revoking my promises to her if I have two cents worth of brain. Of course, being held in such light esteem by someone who apparently thinks of me as a master figure is oddly irking.

“Sylvie, I’m kind of tired so can we just pretend we’re not master and slave until tomorrow?”

Ah, she’s shaking more.

“I’m sorry, master, I mean Anon. I just want to...”

She trails off, still prostrating. While I have to admit, it would feel good in a primal way to play the part of master; but right now I want to eat and go to sleep. Still, I’m the one who changed her life so drastically, right? I’m the knight in shining denim who promised her the world. So I have to take responsibility and ease her out of her abandonment complex. Which means what? Do I play along as her owner and… wait, I technically do own her. So am I the weird one in this relationship or…

Fuck it.

“Hey, Sylvie?” She looks up from her genuflection, a position which must be painful considering the limp in her leg. “What would you like to eat? Scratch that, first sit down on the couch and then tell me what you’d like to have.”

She obeys with startling speed, all things considered. Not physically, but before the words are out of my mouth she is moving. She gets up off the floor and makes her way back onto the couch, dragging her unresponsive leg with her. She forces herself back down, sitting facing me. I feel a tightness in my chest, looking at her. Fixing all this definitely won’t be easy, especially if I have to worry about her mental state too. One step at a time though, right?

“So, Sylvie. What do you normally eat?” Food is on my mind. Hell, the easiest way to get involved in other cultures is through cuisine in my opinion.

“I… I’m chambered in .357 magnum, but I until I’m fixed…” She rubs her arm, probably feeling the raised portions of diseased flesh on her spirit body. Well, that doesn’t really  answer anything.

“Does this mean I’m chambered for chicken nuggets or something?” She looks inquisitively at me, giving me a mental reminder for next time to hold off on the snark. At least until everything is more established. “What I mean is, do you eat human food or just ammo?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.” She fixes her gaze towards the floor and leaves me to my thoughts. If we don’t know until we try, then I better try. I pick myself off the recliner, with great effort and much reluctance. She flinches. Why I can guess, but all I planned on doing was making some eggs. I start walking towards the kitchen, but I have to stop myself. She’s shivering now. My feet move me unconsciously towards Sylvie; close enough to hear her as she struggles to catch her breath. Our heart to heart in the woods doesn’t seem to have been a panacea for her complexes; only an idiot would think that helping her on an emotional level would be a one-and-done deal. From the little I’ve spoken to her, kind words do help but so far I’ve been jamming, okay bad word for now, sticking my foot in my mouth. If I can’t trust my words, then…

I pat her head.

I can feel her jolt at the touch, scaring me just enough to retract my hand an inch away from her. I gulp and gather my courage. If I can just believe in myself enough…

I pat her head again.

She stiffens, but remains obediently under my hand and drops her hands that had risen up as if to protect herself. I force myself to look at her, all of her. Her scars, her glazed, dead eye, the sores and the marks and the sickness that penetrates into her. I gorge myself on it, ramming the sight of her down my throat until my body and mind weakens it’s rejection of her. I gorge and stare and feel with my hands as it runs down to her cheek the affliction with which destiny wrought against her until the only horror and revulsion I feel is towards my own weakness as a man. With my clumsy ministrations, she relaxes herself only a tad. She’s knotted all up inside but if I can just ease the tension in her hopefully she won’t snap.

I keep patting her head. I run my hands through her dirty blonde hair, gently trying to undo the tangles that had come up from the long neglect she underwent. Ignoring the pangs in my stomach, I try to ease the pangs in my heart. She really is to be pitied. Admired even for holding out this long. I can see her well-proportioned breasts heaving slowly against the filthy rags that once would have been the cowgirl costume that all red-blooded men fancy. Those lips, cracked and pocked with sores, moisten and with that I stop.

She keeps breathing deeply, her hands holding mine in place. When they got there, I don’t recall. I almost wish I hadn’t tried to get over my feelings of disgust for her rusted side; my pants were getting tight and there isn’t enough baseball in the world that would settle me down. Finally, during a brief prayer that the Cubs will never win the World Series in my lifetime, I feel her hands relinquish mine. She looks up to me with those puppy-dog eyes of hers, tears more than threatening to fall.

“Why did you…” As the tears start to stream down her good eye, I put a forefinger to her lips and with my other hand wipe the tears away.

“Shhh… there’s no crying in baseball.”