The prison bars wouldn’t relent. Flint’s jaw was simply not sharp enough. He wished he had a
whetstone, but there was no whetstone in sight. The only furnishings in his six
by six prison cell were a bucket, a steel bed with paper-thin mattress, and a
wooden plate bearing a wedge of moon cheese. Flint grimaced at the moon cheese.
He was hungry, but he wasn’t that hungry.
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, his pangs of hunger were soon
quashed by those of the pains in his neck and forehead, those of his misery,
and those of his confusion as a direct result of his misery.
His head pains had been brought on during his escape attempt, which had
mostly involved moving his head back and forth like a hacksaw – only this
hacksaw had brains and muscles in place of solid steel. The resulting aches
were unwanted, but not unexpected. However,
Flint's misery was something he'd never planned to persist even after killing
the president. Strange, he’d
thought. I’d always imagined
that killing a president would solve all of life’s problems.
It hadn’t. And therein lay his confusion.
Sitting on the concrete floor of his cell, Flint might have berated
Ashleigh for her poor weapon choice (a blow dart) if only he could contact her,
but communication between earth and the moon was impossible due to the
immensity of waste disposal pods bordering earth’s atmosphere. These pods ate
up communication signals like miniature hackers. Were it not for them, Flint
would have arranged to be in constant contact with his sharp-nosed ginger wife.
The notion of seeing her again blanketed him in an overpowering
sensation of weakness. Fond and intimate memories of her loosed his eyelids,
ushered his mind elsewhere, and brought a smile to his lonely lips. The image
was warm and nostalgic, almost real; and her voice, while nasally, was a balm
to his lonely soul.
When he reopened his eyes, he saw a concrete wall in place of his
spouse. It bore no resemblance to her whatever, save for that one incident when
she came home after a week of non-stop dancing and proceeded to remove her
make-up. Flint couldn’t help but shudder at the thought.
The hard floor beneath him felt colder now, and the light permitted
through the small barred window appeared dimmer than before. Alone in the dark,
Flint’s tender smile faded like a rose kissed by blight.
The darkness did more than just surround him. He could taste it, feel it
like it he’d felt Nicky’s presence moments before. The shadows deepened until,
seconds later, he was struck with an unshakeable fear. He could have sworn that
the walls echoed the pounding of his chest. Out from the deepest recesses of
his heart in which hides irrefutable facts came the stark realisation that
someone – someone he knew – was going to die.
*
It was a fine thing that the Ozricks spacecraft landed when it did, for
no sooner had Nicky walked off the gangway than the entire ship suddenly
collapsed. With her back to the craft, Nicky could only hear the moans and
groans of twisting, melting metal, followed by crashing, more moaning, and the
faint cry of a single parrot. Nicky cringed in time with the sounds; there was
only one explanation for the sudden disintegration of her carrier…
Cheese vomit.
Never would Nicky eat moon cheese again.
With the ship in pieces, Nicky would need to find another means of
escape. Once I find Flint,
everything will be all right, she thought, reassuring herself.
Unfortunately, most of her hope scurried away the moment she beheld the immense
building in which her husband was supposedly being held.
The exterior of the Ozricks Maximum Security Prison, or OMSP, was a
brooding mass of stone and steel. Sparse of window and void of colour, it
lacked any semblance to an ordinary building. Had it not been for the
underground parking access, the smoke rising from chimneys, and the duos of
sentries who manned every entrance, Nicky might have mistaken it for the ruins
of a massive ancient alien vessel. The shadow of the building, which seemed to
darken as she drew nearer the entrance, revived the itch at her neck and made
goose prickles sprout on her arms. As she eyed the vicinity, tall barbed fences
surrounding the area only made her shudder. Those thorn-like curls preventing
her escape looked as coarse as Nicky’s head on a bad ginger hair day.
Fortunately, during the final seconds of her journey, Nicky had procured
her original set of clothes – fake eyelashes included – and placed them in an
eco-friendly canvas bag, which now hung from the handles on her right arm.
Peering into the bag lent her some small solace. Nicky loved her clothes; she
loved them so much that she’d more than once considered changing out of her
disguise. Except, Nicky never compromised the things that mattered most in life,
such as her husband’s welfare. If saving him meant having to wear an
unfashionable, uncomfortable set of uniform, then that was exactly what she was
going to do, no questions asked.
Nicky entered through the prison’s main entrance without so much as a
second look from the guards. Notwithstanding, she had poised her hair in prime
twirling position on the off-chance that they questioned her. A simple flick of
her ginger locks would ward off an assailant as quickly as pepper spray – only
with her hair the damage was permanent. She had learned this technique years ago
in her co-ed ballroom class. Her only co-ed ballroom class.
Inside, Nicky identified an unmanned terminal that was sure to contain a
directory of every inmate and his whereabouts. A quick search revealed that
Flint was in ward C4, which, after counting with her fingers, she confirmed was
somewhere between wards C3 and C5.
The grey corridors went on and on. They might have been as long as
Rowan’s beard, if he had trimmed it. As Nicky remembered it, his beard was such
that, if she were to snip it right off and entwine the strands into rope, it
would still be long enough for her to uncoil it in her footsteps as a means to
trace her way back to the exit. Of course, the lord of beards didn’t much want
to shave, nor was he in snipping range. Indeed, had he not been so busy getting
captured, Rowan might have been able to update Nicky on Flint’s status. She
didn’t even know if Flint was even alive in that cell; and worse, assuming
she succeeded in rescuing him, she would then have to rescue Rowan as well. She
sighed. Two rescues in one
day. What am I, Wonder Woman? She
pondered the thought – Oh
wait, I am! – and failed to
contain her giggle.
She entered ward C2 to find that it was much the same as C1 – that was,
boring and stuffy. Her hair, growing frizzier by the minute, didn’t like this
place one bit.
Metal doors with tiny windows lined the walls. Flint would be behind a
door such as these, but Nicky knew that the exact cell in which he would be
kept was still two wards hence.
The corridor seemed endless at first, but eventually she made out where
it met another corridor at a junction. Occupying this crossroad was a janitor
mopping the floor, though Nicky wasn’t sure why; the floor seemed perfectly
clean.
It was difficult to tell from the overalls and hat, but when the janitor
turned side-on, Nicky deduced by way of bosom that this cleaner was female. And
what followed snuffed out any further doubt.
As the janitor lifted her mop and dipped it in the bucket beside her,
she moved with the suppleness and grace of a cat – or, Nicky thought, a dancer.
The manoeuvre was so precise that, as this janitor wrung the mop, nary a drop
splashed out of turn. She pivoted on the ball of her foot back to her mopping
space with a finesse Nicky hadn’t seen since before the end of her dancing
career. The ginger spy slowed her pace; it wasn’t her dancing career that had
taught her to question everything she saw.
For instance, at the point when she was about to pass this janitor, she
noticed the woman reverse her grip on the mop and swivel her right foot in
Nicky’s direction. Just so, Nicky was prepared for the swing of stick from
floor to face, which she caught halfway with well-timed hands. Ginger and
janitor were locked in a test of strength, which lasted two seconds before the
mop split in two. Nicky had the bigger half, but she was never a fan of sticks.
Instead, she kicked the bucket, sending it spinning into the air past the head
of her assailant. On the way, the metal handle brushed the janitor’s hat,
knocking it off and freeing a mid-length heap of layered brown hair from its
containment – a heap that could have belonged to only one woman. Nicky cursed
her ginger eyes.
“Ashleigh? My old dancing rival?”
In return, the girl threw her a dark look that signified sheer hatred.
“The bucket,” she said, “you missed.”
Nicky smiled back. “I never miss.” During their momentary reunion, the
pail had continued its trajectory to bounce off the rear wall, now finishing its course with a satisfying thunk on the back of Ashleigh’s head. The
pseudo-janitor stumbled and nearly fell, but lunged a leg forward to maintain
balance. Crouched, she used her thigh to snap her half-mop into quarters. Nicky,
realising that two was better than one, did likewise – after tossing her
eco-friendly canvas bag to a safe distance, of course. Sticks in hand, the two
women circled each other like gladiators, or perhaps dancers on ice. “Before we
kill each other for no reason,” Nicky said, “tell me, why are you here?”
Ashleigh darkened
her dark look. “You were always a better dancer than me. I hated that about
you.” Her voice was as cold as the figurative ice upon which they were
figuratively figure skating. As she spoke, she flipped her sticks in hand in
what seemed like an effort to appear intimidating. “When I heard you’d quit
dancing for spying, I knew that that was my chance. See, I’m a far better spy
than you are.”
“I don’t know,” Nicky said. “I think I’m better at that, too.”
Ashleigh glared at her with a gaze sharp enough to rival Flint’s jaw.
Nicky went on. “What I don’t understand is why you’re here, opposing me. I
thought that we were on the same side.”
“We were, but my hatred for you exceeds my loyalty to your husband. So I
snuck a ride on the ship he took to get here.”
Nicky debated Ashleigh’s words. “Honey, that doesn’t make sense. Why did
you help Flint kill the president if you wanted to betray him?”
In saying those last two words, Nicky was reminded that her rival lacked
a certain something called ‘common sense’. No surprise, then, that Ashleigh
replied with sticks instead of words. The two engaged in a dance so fierce that
their respective weapons were soon ground down to splinters the size of
toothpicks. And on they fought, performing a cat rendition with fingers, nails
and teeth, even as flurries of mop-stick sawdust showered them like confetti.
Next, they were at each other’s throats, throttling, choking, nails
sinking – followed by another round of cat fighting.
They fought for several minutes, but for Nicky it felt like seconds,
before exhaustion, pain, and oxygen-deprived lungs got the better of them.
Leaning on her knees, Nicky looked over at Ashleigh and saw the results of her
nails in the mangled and torn remains of what must have been her face.
Ashleigh’s cheeks looked as if they’d been mauled by a bear; her nose was
visually broken; and her bottom lip dangled by only a few strands of skin
tissue. One of her eyelids was sealed shut, and the other, vaguely open,
revealed an empty socket where an eye used to sit. She’s blind, Nicky thought.
Ashleigh flailed aimlessly, her arms lurching for something solid. “Get
ack here!” she screeched (the ‘b’ was missing due to insufficient lip). Nicky
determined to seize the opportunity, but doing so was almost impossible; the
excruciating pain she felt all over her face bespoke a fate not unlike Ashleigh’s.
As if her now nail-less fingers weren’t agony enough. Both her face and hands
were on fire…
…but a ginger like Nicky eats fire for breakfast.
She swallowed her pain like a hot orange-zested chai with no milk, and
channelled it into strength. At the same time, something stood out from the
corner of her eye: a whole fingernail on the ground that must have been ripped
off in one fell scratch. I
knew my lengthy nails would come in handy someday. This rogue nail, while
short for Nicky standards, was still half the length of a dagger’s blade, and
twice as sharp. Yet her opponent was likely too wary for a direct approach to
work. This ginger would need to improvise.
Noting the position of the mopping bucket between her and Ashleigh, she
propped the fingernail up on a standing position, stepped back and ushered her
rival closer with a contemptuous “Over here!” The girl fell for the bait,
scrambling in Nicky’s direction. On her second step she tripped on the bucket
and fell forward to hit the ground face down. It wasn’t the resultant thud of impact so much as the shlick of nail through stomach that Nicky
took to confirm Ashleigh’s death and, thus, a hard-fought victory. This caused
her to don a wide grin, which in turn released a number of teeth to clatter out
of her mouth, followed by a decent-sized morsel of recently-bitten off flesh,
Ashleigh’s flesh, no doubt. Nicky hadn’t realised how many teeth she’d lost,
but it was the morsel of flesh that captured the better of her attention.
“Hmm,” she said, “I suppose I won by the skin in my teeth.”
Battered and bruised, but giggling at her awesome pun, she retrieved her
bag and limped onwards in search of her husband.
She found Flint in Ward C4 as expected. He was inside a more traditional
cell unlike those Nicky had seen in the wards heretofore. This one had bars
instead of a door.
“Nicky?” he said. “Nicky, is that really you?”
His words were hard to comprehend over the ringing that had taken
residence in her ears some time after the cat fight. Still, the sound of his
voice seemed to numb every aching nerve in her body. “Flint! Oh, sweet Flint,”
she said, limping towards him. “How many months has it been?”
“Too many,” he replied. “Now, get me out of here.”
She had trouble moving her eyes off of his face, perfect razor jaw and
all. His complexion was to her eyes as an orange-flavoured cake would have been
to her stomach. She would have devoured the cake whole had there been no bars
in the way. “Hurry up!” he yelled.
“Oh, right.” She pulled at the bars with her burning hands, but they
refused to yield. “Um,” she said, “it’s not working.”
“It’s locked. You’ll need a key.”
“A key?”
“You know, to unlock the door.”
Nicky looked away, troubled. “Rowan normally handles those kinds of
things.”
Flint grimaced. “Well, where’s Rowan?”
“He got captured.”
“Why would he do that?”
“You’re telling me!”
“THERE YOU ARE!”
These last words hadn’t come from either of them. Indeed, they belonged
to a third voice, a voice that had emerged from the far end of the corridor.
While distant, it carried a carefully-balanced weight of authority.
Nicky turned in its direction, and gasped. “Old Captain Tatai?! I… I
thought-”
“What?” Tatai broke in, “That I had died with the ship?
Nicky shrugged. “Something like that.”
“Perhaps I would have, had my trusty parrot not come to my aid.” Nicky
had been wondering why there was a bird circling the air above Tatai. Now it
perched on his shoulder. “Mr Fringe and I make a great team. But I digress.
You’re probably wondering why I’m here.”
“Yes,” Nicky said. She wanted to stroke Mr Fringe’s fringe -- perhaps
when her fingernails had regrown.
“Well, you see, I lost a hand in the upheaval of the ship.” He raised a
handless sleeve to add emphasis. “And even though I gained this-” he drew his
sleeve up to reveal a shiny metal hook in place of a hand- “I still want my
vengeance.”
Captain Tatai’s do-up of trench coat, eye patch, parrot and hook-hand
reminded Nicky of something from earth – something she couldn’t quite put her
finger on. All she knew was that it had something to do with water. The word
‘ocean’ came to mind, but she’d forgotten what an ocean even was.
Tatai broke her reverie with the words, “Okay, I’m going to kill you
now.” Immediately, he burst into a run, his lengthy strides eating up the
distance between them. Nicky gasped. Not only was she too weak to fight again,
but Flint would be unable to help her so long as he was in his cell.
“Nicky, you have to flee!” Flint said. “He’s too strong. You’ll die if
you stay here.”
“I’m not leaving you,” she asserted, quoting every film she’d ever seen.
“There has to be another way.”
Flint took her hands into his own. “I love you, Nicky.”
Admittedly, touching his hands was not making it easy for her to leave. Not
that she would have. “What about our secret weapon?” she asked.
“Secret weapon?” He raised his eyebrows in realisation. “Oh! That! Are…
are you sure? We’ll, um… we’ll die.”
“No time.” Nicky couldn’t save him, but she could kiss him. Cheeks
against the bars, her lips met his. Flint reciprocated in a most love-endowed
fashion. With the right head angle, they were able to touch lips while avoiding
the hazards of nose and jaw.
Somewhere at the back of her mind it occurred to her that her lips were
still fully intact. But none of that concerned her anymore. If she died here,
it wouldn’t matter.
As the thuds of Tatai’s footsteps grew louder and closer, Nicky thought
she heard a second set of steps approaching from the other direction. Her eyes
were closed, but she peeped one open and saw what looked like a giant hedge
made entirely out of facial hair bounding towards her. “Stop!” came a voice
from inside it. But Nicky had no reason to listen to an oversized clump of
black hair. Even if she wasn’t on the brink of death and was instead lying in
bed or watching television – even then she wouldn’t have listened to an
oversized clump of black hair. No, she and Flint smooched unabated, and at some
point his rock-like jaw on her fiery skin seemed to create a spark. It was a
small spark, inconsequential in all other kissing affairs, yet Nicky’s dry hair
was so hay-like that, as a single ginger lock brushed between them, it turned
the spark into a powerful firework, powerful enough, perhaps, to demolish the
entirety of an ancient alien vessel. Tatai’s grasp must have been two paces
hence when he was blown apart by fire – and not just the 'love' type of fire,
either.
Nicky embraced death like she might a potent hair conditioner. Yet she
felt no pain, and the explosion that was sure to deafen her ears sounded
muffled and distant. When she realised that Flint’s lips were still on hers,
she wondered if she was immortal. In a few moments, when she’d decided that
they’d kissed for long enough, she opened her eyes.
Everything, everywhere, was dark. The air was thin, and she could have
sworn that she smelled smoke.
“Nicky, are you all right?” It was Flint’s voice.
“Fine, I think.”
“Why is it so dark?”
“I don’t know.”
Seconds passed before a white dot appeared like a speck on the
blackness. The dot grew, letting in light. Soon there were multiple dots, each
one spreading and growing, merging with the others. They looked to be within an
arm’s reach. Burning away the blackness, they grew to be several inches in
size. She realised then that they weren’t dots, but holes. Wider still they
became, until she breathed in a foul stench, vile as if hair was being
scorched. She touched the rim of one of the holes. It was hot and coarse.
“Facial hair!” she exclaimed.
The light was bright enough now to define the blackness as a tapestry of
dark hair sheltering them like a tent. But soon the holes burned so large that
the whole thing collapsed to their feet, revealing before them an entirely
different scene. They found themselves dead centre in a ruin of smoke, rubble
and ash. “We did all this?” Flint asked. Nicky was too slack of jaw to reply.
Also, her scalp felt cold.
Through pillars of smoke and motes of ash, she saw that her and Flint’s
kiss had levelled the compound so fast that it seemed as if the prison had all
but up and left. The ground beneath their feet was all acrumble, and the barbed
fences previously surrounding the perimeter appeared to have toppled as one.
Watchtowers sturdy as brick had been turned to hollow shells a fraction of
their former height. Small fires burned amidst mounds of brick and stone; their
smoke rose thick and black as poison. Orange light from the setting fiery-red-thing-in-the-sky
tinted the ruin a dull tone. By contrast, Flint’s steely jaw sparkled like
diamonds in the twilight.
“Flint, why aren’t we dead?” Nicky asked.
Flint reached down and retrieved a tuft of black hair from the rubble.
“I think that wall of hair sheltered us from the explosion.”
Nicky was dubious. “Even the impact?”
“It seems so. This hair was very strong. Whomever it belonged to must
have groomed it well, unlike your-” he pointed at something just above her
head- “never mind.”
Nicky scanned the rubble around them. “Where did this hair come from?”
“It’s hard to say.”
“Well, where is this man?”
“Buried and burnt, most likely.”
She sighed, and then hugged her husband in a firm embrace. “At least we
have each other.” They held one another for what must have been minutes. And
then, her head still on his shoulder, she saw a set of eyes staring back at her
from amongst the debris. “Is that…?” She let go of him and rushed towards it to
obtain a closer look.
Even in the dim hue of twilight, Rowan’s beardless complexion was
unmistakable, yet when she crouched beside him, she noticed that the eyes were
unmoving, and no breath entered or escaped the mouth. Half of the body was
covered in rocks. The face was unblemished, but Rowan was gone.
“We killed him,” Flint said.
Nicky picked up a disposable razor lying in the rubble beside him. “Why
was he here?”
Flint seemed to dwell on that question for a moment. “Do you remember
the huge mass of facial hair that had been running towards us just seconds
before the explosion?”
“Yeah.”
“That was Rowan’s beard.”
Nicky didn’t like what she was hearing. “But he'd been captured. How did
he escape?”
“I don't know, but I think it's safe to say that he wanted to save us,
and, well… it worked.” He gestured to the razor in her hand. “He must
have been using that razor. I'm guessing that, as he ran, he trimmed his
beard into a veil of facial hair, and then draped the veil over us in order to
shield us from the blast… all at the cost of his own life.”
A tear trickled down Nicky's cheek and onto her lips. It tasted like
liquid ginger. “He really... he really took the ‘h’ out of ‘shave’.”
Despite the awesomeness of her pun, this time, she didn’t laugh.
Flint crouched down beside her. “Back in the prison, I knew someone
would die, but even I didn’t foresee this kind of an ending.”
Beside Rowan’s corpse, Nicky saw what looked to be a plastic card half
buried in stones. A row of digits indented into its surface reflected the last
of the fiery-red-thing’s light. She pulled it out to discover that it was
Rowan’s credit card.
“He’d fashioned himself a wallet made from the hairs of his own beard,”
she said, flipping the card in hand, “which is why this is still intact.” A useful thought
crossed her mind. “We can buy our beach house.”
To that, Flint made a wry face. “Are you sure that’s wise?”
Nicky regarded the card again. Its golden finish was the only thing that
glowed in the dying light; well, besides Flint’s do-not-touch jaw. “Yes,” she
asserted.
He shrugged. “You knew him better than me.”
“That I did.” She stood, pocketed the card and brushed the dust off her
clothes. “Let’s go.”
They walked for no more than ten seconds when Flint, in a foreboding
tone, declared, “There’s something you should know.”
“What is it?”
“Your hair-” foreboding and timid- “it’s… it’s all gone.”
Nicky pretended to ignore him. She gawked at him, waiting for him to
tell her that it was all a joke – a bad joke that she would subsequently warn
him never to make again. Only, he wasn’t laughing. Uneasy now, she halted and
threw her hands to the top of her head, still expecting Flint to say something
along the lines of, “Fooled you!” Yet he spoke no such words; and as Nicky felt
her scalp, she realised that she was touching something other than hair – more
specifically, a stark lack thereof. Her resultant scream was enough to upset
the ringing in her ears again, and to rekindle every fire in a two hundred yard
radius.
“I… I’m sorry, babe,” he said.
But apologies did little to bring her hair back. She was as bald as
Tatai, as hairless as the face of Rowan’s corpse. Her head was as void of hair
as this compound was of an ancient alien vessel. She wanted a mirror even
though she dreaded the thought of seeing herself. The pain in her face and
hands returned, more intense than ever before. She withdrew Rowan’s credit card
from her pocket.
“What happened to my face?”
she asked.
“Your face?” A pause. “Your
face is fine. In fact, your nose is a normal length now. It's never looked
better! Why do you ask?”
Moving her hands from her
head down to her face, she realised that the pain there was as a wounded nose,
resulting from her fight with Ashleigh. While her rival’s face was torn to
pieces, hers simply had a nose job. “It’s nothing,” she said, somewhat relieved.
“What are you going to do?” Flint asked.
“The only thing I can.” Her tone was a mix of despair and resolve.
He blinked in quick succession, evidently confused. “A beach house can’t
bring your hair back.”
“We aren’t buying a beach house.”
“Well, then, what are we buying?”
The bald ginger clutched the card tight in her fist. “Time.”
Flint’s mouth went crooked. “Time? You aren’t thinking of…”
“Yes.”
“But that’s… that’s dangerous, and hardly legal.”
She gave him a sarcastic look that said, “And you’re one to talk,” but
knew that such an expression would have been far more effective with hair on
her head.
Flint dropped his shoulders, conceding. “Okay, fine, so I killed the
president. But this is different; you could die!”
She ignored him and turned to face the night sky. The fiery-red-thing
had been replaced by a full moon, and stars had emerged from out of the
darkness. The air was less stuffy and more crisp, especially so on Nicky’s
scalp. But the ginger-lacking ginger was unfazed. “I’ll get my hair back,” she
said. “I’ll get it back even if it means taking a trip back in time to find it.”
THE END
