x o -- eureka

[Mika (DELETED 6423)]

Alcohol and sex left her breathless, her head spinning too fast for her to ever come down. At twenty years old, she had plenty of years left on her pretty little legs, but the morning after left her empty. She lived only to sate her thirst. Nothing made her feel more alive than when fingertips danced across her pale thighs and slid down the length of her spine.

When Mika opened her eyes, she squinted at the sunlight drifting through partially drawn blinds. If it weren’t for the birds chirping just outside of the bedroom windows, she might have slept into the evening. Sliding her left hand beneath her pillow, she flipped it over and buried her face into the cotton and polyester. She stopped her breathing just to enjoy the silence, but her moment vanished when she felt an arm curl around her waist. Mika lost her hold on her pillow as she slid across the middle of the bed, but she managed to keep the sheet over her bare legs.

“Good morning,” he whispered, his voice much lower from its lack of use. He smelled like stale cologne and sweat, but it wasn’t his scent that bothered her. He was still in her bed. He was still in her apartment. “Mmm, you’re so ******* sexy.” He growled playfully as he poked and prodded at her sides, eliciting a screech and a giggle she didn’t know she could emit.

She pressed a palm flat against his scruffy cheek and drummed her fingers along his jawline. He looked so smitten, but she couldn’t say the same about herself, not unless she lied. Despite being so charming and thoughtful, he meant absolutely nothing to her. She didn’t know whether she looked away first or not, but the moment was broken all the same.

“You stink,” she laughed. She turned her head to the side and buried her face in part of his pillow, claiming that small portion as her own. After all, she owned everything in the apartment, everything except for him. She only borrowed him.

He poked and prodded at her again, but she swatted at his hands. They both dissolved into quiet laughter that grew and grew until they were cackling. The early morning obviously had a strange hold on the both of them, or so she reasoned. For a moment, she entertained the thought that she could eventually grow to care about him. The thought left as soon as it came and the two of them finally forced themselves from the satin sheets. He gathered his clothes from the bedroom floor and she did the same. Unlike him, she had a hamper where she discarded the dirty clothes.

“Come shower with me,” he spoke, closing the distance between them. He curled his arms around her waist and pressed himself flesh against her bare back. When he leaned down to press a few kisses to her blonde hair, he brushed his fingers along her hips. “Mika.” Her name was a purr on his lips and she had to close her eyes and ground herself. How many times had another man done the exact same thing?

“Fine,” she relented, as she usually did, “I’ll take a shower with you. But there’s no funny business!” She turned around in his arms and poked her index finger at his chest. It was a little show for him, since she had every intention of instigating such funny business.

He picked her up bridal style and carried her over the threshold to the bathroom, announcing that he would make sure she scrubbed behind her ears. He was a sweet man. Without a doubt, he’d treated her with so much respect and so much concern. She broke one of her own rules when she let him back to her apartment for a second time. He meant nothing to her, but yet she enjoyed some companionship. She longed for someone. She needed more than her thoughts and the echoes of her upstairs and downstairs neighbors.

The shower ended too soon and Mika wrapped herself in a soft bath towel. He was talking to her again, but she didn’t pay attention to the words. She leaned against the doorframe and watched him as he dressed. Mika admired the way his muscles moved beneath his tanned skin. She admired the way his back looked, the smooth curvature of his spine, as he leaned down to tie the laces of his shoes. When he looked up at her, she forced a smile.

“You didn’t hear a ******* word, did you?” He cursed, but yet he laughed. He found amusement where others had found insult. Mika looked down at her feet, hiding her flushed cheeks behind her long blonde hair. “I asked if you wanted to take a ride with me. We could get ice cream,” he grinned, a single dimple appearing on his right cheek.

Mika continued looking down at her feet. She focused on the polish on her toenails and the contrast between the ruby-red color and her ghostly pale toes. The polish had begun to chip away, just like the polish on her fingernails. The longer she stared at the red, the more she noticed the uncomfortable silence between them. She let out a quiet sigh and finally lifted her eyes to meet his.

“All right. This isn’t a date though,” she frowned, watching as he raised his hands in a mock surrender. She’d never had anyone ask her on a proper date, a truly thoughtful date, and she didn’t want her first official date to be with a messy one-night stand. Well, he had been a one-night stand, but grew into a dangerously messy two-night stand. “You know I don’t do dates.”

Mika unknotted her towel and moved back into the bathroom to hang it on the appropriate fixture. As she walked back into the bedroom, she caught him in the center of her bed. He had his arms folded behind his head, his fingers intertwined, and his legs crossed at the ankles. In an overdramatic fashion, he watched her as she moved around the bed to her closet. She rolled her eyes at his attempts at humor, but she still had a small smile on her face.

No man had seen the inside of her closet, but she couldn’t ask him to leave the room when she showed more than enough confidence to parade around naked. Slowly, she opened her closet doors and positioned herself in front of the entrance to shield as much of the sacred space as possible.

“Jesus,” she heard him exclaim as he jumped off the bed. She heard the floorboards beneath the carpet creak, almost as if he were moving in slow motion, and then she felt him standing directly behind her. “You color code your closet and your shoes.”

She color-coded her clothing and her shoes. She also had them organized according to seasons and occasions, but she kept her mouth closed. Mika snagged a sleeveless orange dress from within the colorful collection and then closed her closet doors. He didn’t say anything else, so she finished getting ready. When they met at the door to her apartment, he kissed her head again, just like he had before their shower, and they walked down the hall of her apartment building to the underground garage.

“I think it’s great that you’re organized. I’m a slob,” he joked, finally broaching the subject that lingered on her mind. “I could use some of your skills.” He saw her as she rolled her eyes, but she didn’t try to justify her reaction. He didn’t care that she sometimes came off as a *****. She made him laugh, oddly enough. “This is me.”

Mika had considered many types of vehicles for someone like him, but never a motorcycle, and never a motorcycle in such good shape. He looked after what was important to him. Mika crossed her arms over her chest and then quickly uncrossed them. She looked at the bike as if it would come alive and transform into some type of robot serial killer. He put his arm around her shoulder and she inched away.

“I thought you had a car or a truck. I’ve never been on a motorcycle. I’m wearing a dress,” she rambled. She rolled her eyes, looking up toward the ceiling as she tried her best to hide her obvious insecurities. He didn’t listen to her mumbled ramblings though. She let him take her hand and guide her closer to the bike, then he put a helmet over her head and fastened it beneath her chin. He didn’t put a helmet on himself, which she pointed out with a vague motion toward his head.

“I don’t like wearing helmets. I brought it for you.” He winked at her and then swung one leg over the side of the bike. He didn’t seem to care that he’d admitted to planning the day out in advance and she didn’t feel like having that conversation with the purring of the bike in the background. She knew she had the choice to stay or go. As she looked between his face and the motorcycle, she made the decision to go.

Mika hiked up her dress and mimicked his movement from before. She swung a leg over the bike and moved up closer toward his back. He reached back and took her arms, moving them so that they wrapped firmly around his waist. When the bike lurched forward, she let out a squeal, an embarrassing sound that she condemned to the fiery pits of hell.

“It’s okay. Just hang on. It’s a short ride.” He had to speak louder for her to hear, but she gave him a quick thumbs-up. As they left the underground parking lot, she focused on keeping her arms around him and keeping her heart from bursting out of her chest.

The first turn that he made had Mika hyperventilating, but she recovered. He didn’t take the direct route to the ice-cream parlor, not that she actually expected him to; he bypassed the roads that lead to the marketplace and took her toward River Rock. When they hit a clear patch of road, he sped up a little bit, just enough to have her swearing at him in Dutch. He kept irritating her, but she also enjoyed his playfulness. He was an exception to many of her rules.

When he made it past the infamous quarantine zone, he kept going. For once, Mika gave him the freedom to make the decision and she went along with the change in direction. He went far beyond where she thought they were stopping and followed the road toward the limits of Harper Rock. If he actually went beyond the limits, Mika had it in mind that she would go back, whether on foot or with his assistance.

He picked up speed again and she instinctively tightened her hold on his waist. He was going too fast for her liking. She hated the feeling in the pit of her stomach, the fear. He let go of one of the handles to point toward the fairground in the distance and Mika felt another kind of emotion wash over her. She wished she hadn’t had that second night with him. While she had her eyes on the fairground, she felt the bike jerk. She looked back to the front just in time to see a blue, four-door sedan going through the intersection.

Her natural instinct was to close her eyes and bury her head into his back, but the sudden jerk of the motorcycle had her sliding to the left. She couldn’t hold onto him. Her fingers were grasping at the loose fabric of his t-shirt. Her legs were moving further up on the seat. She watched the entire scene in slow motion, as if she were watching the crash from afar. One minute, they were perfectly fine. The next minute, they were sliding across asphalt.

“---!” She screamed his name as the two went in separate directions. He went into the side of the sedan and his upper body went through the front windshield. She stayed with the doomed bike and crashed into a guardrail. Her entire left side scraped against the pavement before the bike slammed into the metal barrier. One leg remained pinned under the bike while the rest of her body went into awkward and painful angles. Without moving, she knew the whole scene was a mess. The air heavy with the stench of oil, gasoline, and blood, the ground covered in parts and glass--other than the crash, the roads in that eastern edge of the city were deserted.

“Please,” Mika croaked, her jaw aching, “help me. Someone!” She couldn’t move. When she tried to move any part of her body, she felt more stabbing pains. Every part of her body hurt. The helmet that protected her head was lost somewhere in the accident, so her bloodied head was flesh against the pavement. Her beautiful orange dress became a tattered mess in under a few minutes. “Please.” Mika repeated the word in a whisper.

[Eureka]

Exploration was the aim of the game. There was still so much that Eureka didn’t know, regardless of what she’d learned in that first week with Chad. But there were some things one could learn from other people. Things that one had to learn for oneself. Company was scarce, conversations with other people few and far between.

There were looks, of course. At the Casino. She had to go through the public area to get in and out of her dungeon. The staff tried to keep her disturbances to a minimum. Like when she’d come in off the street dragging an old but still serviceable lounge chair. Just the armchair part. The three seater was too bulky and unmanageable, even though she still thought about going back for it. One of the security guards had taken a shine on her, though. Either that, or he had the public perception in mind; he always helped her when she was dragging random objects. Cooper, his name was. Though Eureka rarely remembered that. Like an animal, she learned by habit, and now she looked for Cooper whenever she got home. Like a cat who knew who provided the food.

See, Eureka wasn’t completely wild. She was domesticated, to a certain extent. Domesticated like a stray who drifted between different homes and different masters, all thinking they belonged to her but really, she belonged to no one. She was in this for herself. Her own pleasures and her own gains. Not that she knew this. It was just instinct.

The dungeon had become her nest, as if she were preparing it for something. For what? She didn’t know. It was just a new home. Somewhere that was hers, and hers alone. She wandered the streets to find things to fill her home with, like a Crow looking for shiny pretty objects.

Which is exactly what the crash looked like, from afar. The blinking, flashing creation of a shiny, pretty thing. Eureka had no idea how she’d got to this part of the city or why. Probably following some trail that she completely forgot about as soon as the crash caught her attention; the screech of tires and the crumpling of metal, peppered by the sound of pleading.

Eureka wasn’t a cruel person, not really. She took no pleasure in hearing someone plead for help, but nor did it twist her heart. It piqued her curiosity enough to wander closer, to get a better look at what was going on. Freckled nostrils flared as soon as she caught the hint of blood beneath the burnt tyres and the oil. The car had stalled and the bike was mangled; it wasn’t silent, by any means. There was that tick tick of a hot car that’s suddenly cooling down. There was the drip of oil on asphalt. There was the sound of a heart, beating rapidly. No, two hearts, one slower than the other one, struggling. But there were three bodies.

One completely dead.

One not quite dead.

One trapped beneath the bike. Pleading.

Glass shards sliced through the rough soles of Eureka’s feet; she did her best, thenceforth, to step around the sharps—and to ignore the sting. She wore no pants, this time, though the new hoodie she had stolen from her most recent meal was large enough to be considered a dress on her petite form. Red hair was tangled atop her head in a messy bun; hair that was nearly starting to dreadlock, it hadn’t been brushed in so long. At least it had rained recently, and she didn’t smell so bad. Though there was still a smear of crimson across her lower jaw, a large patch of it staining the neck of the hoodie. Green eyes gleamed in the semi-darkness as she came to stand nearby the pleading woman; only after two minutes of staring did she figure out what the woman wanted. She stepped forward and took hold of the bike, wrenching it up enough to allow the human to scramble out from underneath.

Eureka didn’t know what she would do next. She never really thought ahead. But she was curious. What would the human do next?

[Mika (DELETED 6423)]

I’m fine.

He’s fine.

She repeated those words over and over again in her head, but she couldn’t force herself to believe them. She saw a whole family in the car. She saw a mother, a father, and their two little girls. Her eyes saw whatever her heart didn’t want to see. In reality, the accident involved three people, including herself.

The fumes burned her nostrils and set her lungs aflame, but she couldn’t escape the scene. She watched as her--she didn’t know what to think of him as, so she simply referred to him as Todd. (Todd seemed like such a plain name then, something unbefitting.) As she watched his legs twitch, Mika began to cry. Her tears weren’t pretty, not by any means, but she didn’t think anyone would ever see her face again, not while she still had a heartbeat or fresh air in her lungs. She thought the three of them, the two drivers and she, the lone passenger, were doomed to die a slow and painful death.

She picked up her pleading once more, but she lost the hope and enthusiasm in her tone. With every passing second, she felt weaker. She felt colder. The pain of her injuries began to fade, which made her panic even more. She began to wonder if she were the only one that survived the initial impact. The twitching she saw in his limbs could have been mere muscle spasms.

That’s when Mika heard the light crunch of glass against the concrete. The sound cut through the lingering noise of the crash and matched perfectly with the beat of her heart. Hope. She felt it course through her veins, comforting her in ways that words wouldn’t or couldn’t. The blonde lifted her head to try and see the one approaching the site, but she couldn’t.

“Please help,” she whispered, her throat suddenly so dry that she could hardly form the words.

Beg. Beg for your life.

She thought that those two words, that one last plea, would get her the attention she sought, but she waited. She had to wait. Mika waited for the person to stand over her and lift the heavy bike from the ground. Instinct told the blonde to hurry, but her body wouldn’t oblige. She had to crawl. She had to dig her fingers into the cracks of the pavement and push and pull herself away from the bike.

The lower half of her body was more of a mess than she could have ever imagined. She couldn’t see the full extent of the damage, but she saw the bone protruding from the upper portion of her left leg and it made her sick to her stomach. Once she was clear of the bike, Mika collapsed back onto the ground, turned her head to the side, and threw up. Some of the chunks of food landed in her hair. The liquid, a mixture of brown, yellow, and blood red, clung to the corner of her mouth and dribbled down along her cheek. When she felt like she could grasp the situation, she began crying all over again.

“I’m going to die,” she cried. She couldn’t understand why she wasn’t screaming in pain, but she knew that it was a bad sign. The bone sticking out of her thigh. The road rash all along her left side. The burns along the inner part of her right leg. Blood coated her skin as if someone had simply spread a layer across her flesh. “Please help them!”

Mika quickly turned her head to the side, jarring her left leg and sending more of the bone through her flesh. She seemed hysterical then, ready to force her battered body if it meant getting back to the ruined sedan. She didn’t even get a good look at the one that rescued her from beneath the bike. She thought she might have seen bare legs, but it was an appropriate time for shorts or skirts or dresses, just like her beautiful orange dress. She wanted help for herself and for everyone else. Why wasn’t she moving faster? That’s right. Her femur was broken.

Mika’s motions slowed until she finally collapsed, returning to her place on the ground. Flat on her back, staring up at the sky, she tried to think about breathing. She just needed to rest for a few minutes. She just needed to get her thoughts in order.

“They’re already dead, aren’t they?” Mika didn’t turn her head to look at her savior. She spoke in a calm and even tone. Every part of her became numb then. She felt no pain.

[Eureka]

The expression on Eureka’s face was impassive. Kind of. No, that was a lie. She looked curious; as if the woman’s pleading wasn’t even heard. As if Eureka were an invisible, omniscient observer who had absolutely no interest in the scene except just to watch. But, she was listening. And, somewhere in that instinct-driven heart of hers, something clicked. A cog shifted slightly in a different direction than usual, and she found herself stepping over wreckage to get closer to the human. Or was it just the smell of blood that lured her close?

There was a lot of blood. There was a lot of gore, too, but that didn’t bother Eureka. Reka had a habit of creating a bit of gore every now and again. No, that was a lie too. It wasn’t every now and again. It was every time she fed, because she couldn’t help herself. The blood tasted so good, and what she assumed the majority of her kin did not know was that it tasted better when sucked from the tender flesh, after it had been torn and ripped and wrecked. It was like adding salt. Eureka liked salt.

She paused as the question was asked of her. She approached the other two bodies. Yes, one was definitely dead. The other… mostly there. Not saveable, probably. Eureka didn’t know. She wasn’t a doctor.

The glass crinkled and crunched, shifting infinitesimally beneath her bare feet as she sauntered back over toward the living human. She was shaking her head.

”Yes,” she lied. The guy in the car was dead. The guy that came off the bike was not. But what was the point in lying? No help was coming. Not yet. Eureka didn’t have a phone that she could use to call anyone, and she herself had limited capabilities. The woman, though messed up, would have a greater chance of survival, right? Eureka’s nostrils flared and she crouched down nearby the woman. Her head canted to the side.

”I can save you though. I think,” Eureka said. She’d done it before, hadn’t she? Goggle. She still thought it was a stupid name. But the manthing had disappeared. She hadn’t seen him in a while. Her cub had either flown the nest or… either way, he’d flown the nest. Whether he’d died or survived, Eureka didn’t really know. Maybe she could do better with the next cub. Maybe the next cub would be stronger. Maybe… maybe…

”Do you want to live?” Eureka asked. She didn’t even know whether the human was dying. She was the one who had said she was going to die. Who was Eureka to disbelieve her?

The scent of blood was now mixed with chunder. It wasn’t exactly appealing. But it didn’t dissuade Eureka much, either. Just one look at her, and one would know she wasn’t exactly a stickler for cleanliness.