Blacker Against the Deep Dark by Alexander Zelenyj

Author:Alexander Zelenyj
Format: epub

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He’d been waiting in the alley since dusk. He was soaked through to the skin, having left his B-U suit at home—he no longer needed its protection from the chemical rain. He shook violently from the cold. He would have waited another hundred nights to atone for what he’d almost done. He huddled closer to the wall among his nest of sodden cardboard boxes and rusty garbage cans, watching the street at the opposite end of the alley.

The pill was small but its weight in his palm had startled him. He could barely hold it, and was forced to clamp his other hand beneath it in order to hold it, and even then he struggled with it. Sweat broke out on his brow when he’d handled it, grimacing with the effort. He’d felt his muscles straining, and a kink awaken and stab in his abdomen. He felt its weight now as a comfort nestled inside the pocket of his coat. He checked the alley but it was empty. He wrapped his arms around himself to help stave off the chill, but it was hopeless. He would wait for her.

“Philip.”

He looked up and she was there. Donna, the teen urchin, haunting the alley as if she’d materialized there from another place. She hovered anxiously in place, moth-like and fragile between the immense dark brick faces of the walls towering above them. Her rain-hood was thrown back. By the streetlight’s glow he made out the circle of blue and purple and black bruises around her throat. It hurt him to see.

Her voice came again, small and uncertain. “I found the note you left for me, on the corkboard at the diner. Telling me to come here tonight. Is it true? Did you find what you were looking for? Did you find . . . Vern?”

Philip smiled at her. “An . . . An angel helped me. She gave me the money for it.”

Donna remembered the kind woman’s husky but soothing voice, the motherly comfort of her arms around her in the cold rain. She thought about how she’d shared her story with this woman, feeling able to divulge everything about the dark story of her life to her like she’d never felt able to share it with anyone before. Maybe it had been the fact that she was a police officer—a real-life detective, who’d seen who knew how many dark and sad things—that had convinced Donna. Or maybe it had been the understanding in her eyes.

She said, “I know.”

Philip retrieved the pills from his pocket. “I have one for you too,” he called to her. “I didn’t know where to find you, so I left the note at the diner. I knew you’d go there sooner or later because you told me you always went there, asking for food. I asked the Saint for two pills. I told him about you and that you were also running away, from the same things I’m running away from. And the Saint . . . he really is a saint.

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