Page 25 of Ruined

More time…

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to retire you, Agent Cooper.”

* * *

More time…

I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to move out. You haven’t paid rent in three months.”

* * *

Who cares…

I’m sitting under a bridge. It’s a nice bridge, but someone has decided to decorate it with discarded needles. I have to wonder why. There’s no real accounting for taste and aesthetics, I suppose.

My shoes are plastic bags.

* * *

Later still…

I’m cold. Winter is making the ground frosty and my fingers just a little blue. I try to get warm by getting closer to lights, but the people with the lights don’t like me. They walk away from me and make me follow them.

“Riley?”

A man with very dark eyes and an even darker soul appears in my vision. He has a nice warm coat and a scarf. He was wearing a hat, but he takes that off and snugs it over my hair. I feel instantly better.

“Are you hungry, Riley?”

I nod.

He gives me a sandwich, one of the big ones with all the filling, the meats and the vegetables, including the big green one with all the surface area and water and no taste.

I eat and the food tastes like it comes directly from heaven. It is rich and delicious and it fills my belly and makes me warm.

“Would you like to come with me, Riley?”

I think I would.

10

“So she went mental?” Dark, curious eyes set in a pale, brutal face inspect me. I feel a shudder of something like fear as this other man looks at me.

“Hardly, Bobby.”

“Look at her. She doesn’t know who she is.”

“Of course she does. She’s not broken, she’s merely unwell. She will recover.”

The very nice man with the very nice accent is speaking to a less nice man who nonetheless seems to be very interested in me. We are in a very nice, warm room, and I am eating from a tray of food, picking through crackers and cheeses and little fruits and pieces of meat sliced up in rounds. I am very happy, and very warm.

“She stinks.”

“I will bathe her soon. Let her eat first, Bobby.”

Bobby continues to stare at me.

“What happened to her? Did we do this? Is she on drugs?”

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