Read Ask for Free Online

liked the
feeling of metal under his fingers.
    Oh,
Evade .
    When he said her name to himself, he
pretended it was her real one. It wasn't, of course, but he did
like to pretend. It was a fitting one, after all.
    Evade...
    He looked up and realized it was dark – or
at least, the sky was. Some time on the walk home from work, the
sun had gone down.
    He didn't care.
    Not about the dark.
    But the emptiness of the streets was
unpleasant now. Where a second before it had been a comfort, a
safety blanket he wrapped around himself, a quiet companion that
didn't look over his shoulder and that he didn't have to look over
his shoulder for, now it was a lonely gaping thing. Night.
    Paranoid
fuck , he berated himself.
    Still, shivers wiggled through his gut at
the night's emptiness, more frightening than its dark sky. The
streetlights lit up the night, and he walked under the black dome
of a city-sized light bubble with the dark sky pressing in from the
outside. The white pools of light from the lampposts overlapped so
that there was barely a spot of dark anywhere on the sidewalk, and
blue light rape-phones dotted each corner. Like those were still
necessary. At least the blue cubes added some color to the grey
night.
    He was safe and he knew it.
    At least, he was safe from the people that
the blue light phones had been set up to protect him from.
    The emptiness still bothered him,
though.
    It was impossible to blend
into emptiness. No matter how much he tried, he'd always be just
so... extant. Couldn't really do anything about that. Couldn't just
disappear into emptiness. Couldn't quit. Couldn't swipe out of
sight in the blink of an eye. Couldn't delete himself. No, he had
to settle for being... there . Nothing to be done about
that.
    Well, at least not anything he wanted to
do.
    But it didn't matter anyway. It was Friday
and he wouldn't have to be... there – not fully present, anyway –
outside his own front door for a full two days. And his own front
door was close. His conversation with Evade had taken him almost
all the way home.
    A minutes later, he was there.
    He emptied his pockets. Wallet, keys, ID
plopped onto the bed. The phone clinked onto the metal desk beside
it. The clink of the gun beside the phone was louder.
    The .22 gleamed silver in the pool of light
under the desk lamp. The weapon sat on the night stand staring up
at him, mostly useless. Hadn't even been to the firing range in
over a year. He plugged in his phone, then opened a drawer in the
desk and put the gun away inside it, closed the drawer, concealed
the weapon.
    Then, without taking off his shoes, he
flopped down on the bed.
    The gun wasn't his most valuable possession.
And it was far from his most illegal.
    They still had the Second Amendment, after
all.

 
     
    TWO
     
    The blood red suede shoes thunked on to the
closet floor.
    They skittered in different directions. One
bounced off the back wall and lay on its side next to a brown
knee-high boot. The other landed next to a pair of fluffy pink
slippers in the shape of bunnies - the type of slippers saved for
emergencies like breakups or PMS or douchy guys on the internet who
were friendly and warm one minute and then–
    Fucking pull yourself together!
    She stood a moment staring at the shoes, not
wanting – or maybe not able – to gather up the energy to set them
right. She sighed, a frustrated sigh that hissed out through her
teeth.
    Still a lady. Still a lady.
    She bent down, righted the blood red suede
shoes and set them neatly in between the brown boots and a pair of
sneakers. She resisted the urge to pick up the fluffy slippers.
    She turned away from the closet and sat down
at the desk again. The chat window had disappeared from her screen
since she quit the conversation – there hadn't been anyone else to
talk to. And other things had taken her attention.
    Now, the screen showed a dark site with
white letters and plastic-faced avatars in boxes.
    No. Stop. Still a lady...
    She closed her laptop