Low Sided A.J. Downey (ebook reader macos TXT) 📖

For reasons I don’t want to get into, I left a lot of my things back at the house I used to live in. I don’t know what my old roommates did with it. If they got rid of it or kept it.

One of my favorite things in the world was gathering at Gas Works with my fellow fire performers on summer nights, all of us taking turns, getting live practice in. It’s been a while.

What about you? What are some of your favorite things? You talked a lot about the things you did to pass the time in prison, and about what put you in prison, but you never really said much about the good things. How long has it been since you indulged in anything good?

You have me here, hot shower, favorite comfy clothes, drinking my favorite tea out of my beautiful new tea set – what do you do to relax?

What’s your passion? What sparks your curiosity?

What makes you happy?

I love the elements, myself. Walking in the woods, touching the trees. Spinning fire, and walking along the beach, my feet in the water. I feel the most grounded when I’m connected to the four basic elements. I always have, I guess.

I don’t know that I’m necessarily religious at all, but I’m certainly spiritual. I guess Pagan would be the closest fit, but I wouldn’t call myself a Wiccan or a witch.

I just am. I love existing in nature and revel in just being… or I used to.

I guess I know something of existing in both the light and dark the world has to offer. Don’t we all in our own ways?

I sighed and closed my eyes, the deep wellspring of emotion opening up beneath me and swallowing me whole, the hopelessness, the helplessness of my situation closing over my head.

I wondered to myself, and not for the first time, how one person could do this to another and not only get away with it, but were aided by the very people sworn to protect. It was sick, and it hurt. Also, and not for the first time, I wondered… what did I do to deserve this?

I closed the notebook. Maybe I would finish writing Mace later… maybe I should stop. After all, he was sweet, and it’d already been proven he was far from invulnerable.

I hugged my knees and finished my tea, drowning in the depths of my sorrow and memories that just would not be put to bed.

11

Mace…

It’d been something like three weeks since I’d left Raven’s and I was almost back to one hundred percent. I was definitely back enough that I could start to manage some things. The letters went back and forth two or three a week. Some of the other guys started getting invested in what was up, and when Sauley couldn’t go, occasionally one of the other guys would.

I appreciated it. Appreciated even more when they came around the farm for whatever reason, they asked questions.

Things were pretty much handled around here, so I went over to the main house and let myself in to the kitchen to see if Vyking would let me borrow his truck.

“Hey, whoa, how’s it going?” he asked when we nearly crashed into each other.

“Good, good, man.”

“You need something?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah. I was gonna ask to borrow your truck,” I said, blowing into my chilled hands.

“Aw, yeah? What for?”

“Was gonna run up into the Phinney Ridge and Fremont areas. That girl I’m trying to see had to clear out of her place in a hurry and she left some stuff. Was going to see if her old roomies had any of it and if so, reclaim it.”

“Ah-huh.” He looked at me over his glasses and asked, “She know about this master plan of yours?”

I chewed my bottom lip and shook my head, sniffed and said, “No, man, there are some serious complications surrounding everything. I don’t think she left her roomies on bad terms but she did leave suddenly and with only what she could carry.”

He scowled. “What’s she into?”

“Nothing that can get your truck fucked up,” I said. “Scout’s honor.”

He grunted and nodded, fishing the keys out of his hip pocket.

“Good luck, son.”

“Thanks, man.”

I caught the keys he tossed at me out of midair and ducked back out into the damp winter cold.

The drive to Raven’s old neighborhood was sort of stressful through the tunnel. Fuckin’ yuppie tech sector scum around here didn’t know how to fuckin’ drive! Made me glad I was in Vyking’s truck and that I wasn’t on my bike. I would have ended up back in fuckin’ prison for the same damn thing I’d gone up for in the first place.

The streets in this part of the outer edge of the city were tight, and parking was a fucking joke, but I found something a few doors down that would be serviceable if I hurried my ass the fuck up.

I got out the truck, shrugged into my cut and went down the cracked sidewalk and stopped in front of the place. It was a two story and clean on the outside, the small yard more of a vegetable garden than anything else. Boy was I out of place in this type of hood. I let myself in the low front gate of the white picket fence and went up onto the big wrap-around porch. The front door opened before I got halfway up the steps painted a brick red.

“Can I help you?” The man was skinny, probably vegan, and the woman that peered around him was tiny and just as granola.

“I’m a friend of Raven’s,” I said. “I was hoping to talk to you.”

“Oh, my God! Is she okay?” The woman darted around the man in front who tried to keep her back.

“She’s okay,” I said, nodding.

“Where is she?” the little girl demanded.

I shook my head. “I’m not about all that,” I said. The man frowned.

“She doesn’t know you’re here.”

I shook my head. “No. She