Because You Love to Hate Me(74)

You finally collect your bag of money, which is unquestionably heavy, but it’s nothing you can’t handle considering you’ve thrown around heavier things—and people. You make your way to Karl, looking around to be certain you’re not being followed, and you stop in your tracks when you see a familiar face—your old assistant. His shoes are untied, and he smells of piss and other nastiness.

“Slate is not to be betrayed, Slate is not to be betrayed,” he chants, walking past you with dead eyes.

A dose of Retrieve could save him, could give him his life back.

But you don’t carry that vaccine around, and you’ve already shown mercy once tonight.

You rush to Karl, putting the chants behind you as you cross empty streets, and tap on the passenger’s window of the Ford truck he’s in.

Karl unlocks the door, and you jump in, throwing the money in the backseat.

“I heard gunshots,” Karl says, scanning your body up and down.

“I didn’t shoot anyone,” you say. You’re not lying. “Or get shot.”

“I’m happy you’re okay.” Karl smiles at you, and although your client’s smile a few minutes ago was pathetic, that one felt more real. You know Karl doesn’t approve of your business, but he continues to love you anyway. He’s a treasure.

You lean in and kiss him. “The client called me an angel,” you tell him.

Even though you rescued Karl, you know in his nods he’s struggling to find a greater truth in this.

You’ll prove him wrong.

You’ll prove everyone wrong.

You grab the black handkerchief from the glove compartment and blindfold yourself, as is procedure. In the event someone ever captures you, the first thing they’ll want to do is drug you with Trance so you’ll reveal where you live. They’ll get your supply and then kill you. Now that you have Karl, you’ve erased your address from your own memory and can relax knowing that someone can kill you, but they’ll never find everything you’ve worked so hard to create.

Your home has to remain a secret. Even from yourself.





You remove your blindfold after stepping through your front door. You let Karl deal with his bastard cat while you bullet straight to your Memory Bank. As you spin the dial of your vault—2-4-8, because you tortured your father for two hours and forty-eight minutes before killing him—you wish you could just throw that cat out the window and make Karl forget it ever existed. But there are only a few things that make Karl happy, so you let the cat live, even though it hates you.

See? You’re good. You put others before you.

You open your vault and put away the extra Dazes and Tokens you had on you in case that kid wanted more than just Trance. You don’t close it immediately. You nod in approval at all you’ve done. The client was right. You are an angel. You’ve come to the rescue for many who’ve gone through traumas. It’s not as if painful memories shrink away as quickly as all your old childhood belongings melted the night you set your house on fire. Your services are needed.

You’ve come a long way.

The seeds here, particularly the grey Dazes and green Tokens, do good. The Tokens will grow in someone’s mind like a garden, where someone can grab a memory off a tree as if it were an apple. The Dazes will blossom, too, except they’ll hide whatever memory needs to be hidden in its trails of thorny vines.

You’ve come a long way, Slate, but there’s still work to be done, and you know it. No matter how you or the others spin it, you know that what comes from the violet Trance seeds is less of a garden and more of an abyss. But you’re not the one creating the abyss or pushing others into it; you just hand others the shovel to dig that hole themselves.

Except once.

You were called an angel today. Prove it to yourself.

In the colorful garden of green, grey, and violet seeds, there are a few pink ones. You pull out one pink seed and a pocketknife and close the vault.

You play some classical music and meet Karl in the living room, joining him on the floor while the cat scratches the couch’s armrest. Your flute of chardonnay already awaits you on the diamond-shaped coffee table, as is routine in your household. You sit on the outrageously overpriced Oriental rug you bought simply because you could, kicking one boot off your foot on the spot where you tracked in mud last week and the other where you spat out Karl’s favorite red wine. You’re positive the seller would die of a heart attack if they saw the carpet today.

You fall flat on your back, staring at yourself in the ceiling mirror, and let the music calm your pounding heart.

Karl inches toward you with your chardonnay. “You okay? You seem a little on edge.”

“Do you think I’m an angel?”

The mirror doesn’t show you as an angel, but what the hell does a mirror know? Mirrors only know what you show them, not the other way around.

Karl hovers over you, blocking your reflection, and smiles down at you. “I would have to be a clown’s ass to think the girl who saved me from a burning bridge is anything less than angelic.”

“Would you love me if I didn’t save you?” You’re not sure you want the answer, but the question is out there.

But Karl’s smile doesn’t break. “No shit, Slate. I was just too busy thanking you after you saved me to fall in love with you.”