Installment four of Audrey’s new tale. She’s been asked by Katerine Taapetl to discover the whereabouts of Eberhaëzer Jacmel, a yound PhD student and boxer. She’s had a scuffle in an alley with an unknown man with white hair. A boy intervened. Enjoy and fait dex beaux reves.
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Audrey stands bathed in the glare of a sun that feels distant, casting a jagged shadow. She presses the cloth to her cheek, feeling its cold seep into her skin, but the pain doesn't dull.
Her voice comes a low murmur behind the lens she holds, her eyes never stray from the field before her. "When people see some things as beautiful other things become ugly." The silence presses in. "When people see some things as good, other things become bad." The boy moves beside her, his white garb a stark contrast to the filth smeared on the memory of the alley.
"Miss, you alright?" the boy’s voice had been calm when he found her crumpled among the refuse, his laughter like the shriek of birds. He offered the cloth as if it were all too common to stumble across the bleeding. She hadn’t answered then and doesn’t now. The horizon yawns before them, the question hanging heavier. Her fingers close around the hilt of the athame buried in her bag, her muscles tense with the memory of its use.
The grip tightens on the camera. She adjusts the angle, her voice thick with the fresh memory of the fight. "Who was he?", she asks. As if on cue, brittle stalk of dead grass shudder in the wind. "The man in the suit. You know him?"
The boy’s steps hesitate on the warm sidewalk, his voice trying for casual but failing. “I’ve seen him around, maybe once or twice. On campus. He doesn’t belong.” his gaze falling as though ashamed. Audrey understands. Neither do I, she thinks But Audrey doesn’t say that. She lowers the camera, letting it drift toward the ground. She exhales slow, steady, focusing on the path ahead. "I need to go to the boxing club."
The boy flinches, as though the words stung him. "The boxing club?" He forces a smile that does not touch his eyes, the effort of it strained. "Strange place for a woman like you."
Audrey doesn’t want to explain. Something unfathomable looms over her mind, the pieces of her world rearranging themselves in a shape she can not yet comprehend. "I seek someone there," she says, her voice a whisper against the wind.
The boy nods, slow, uncertain, but there’s something behind his wide eyes—fear, maybe, or curiosity. His hand lingers awkwardly at his side before extending it toward her. “Thomas Pietty” he says, his boyish face too soft for the hard truths that wait ahead. There’s a “You can be my mama and I'll be your boy” energy about him.
Audrey shifts the camera again, catching her own face in a flash of reflection. "Audrey Brooks," she says “Audrey Brooks” she says again, as if to reassure herself of her own reality by reverbing her name across the field. She takes his hand, feeling the warmth of life within it. Together, they walk across campus the field now empty, save for the dark, squat building on the horizon.
The boxing club looks out of place, like it’s been dropped there. The sound of fists striking bags thud through the air. The silence swells again, creeping into the spaces between the punches.
"You’re sure about this?" Thomas’s voice wavered as his hand found the door. She steps into the gloom, the scent of sweat and leather filling her lungs. "I must be."