"Putting on the foil coach!" ~ Hanson Brothers

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Monday - October 1st 

So what has happened to us since we last left off on that fateful day in the rain?

Three weeks have flashed by like lightning, since that long kiss in the rain. May is as well as she can be, putting up with me and my myriad of eccentricities. Things between us have reached a strange place of truth and trust. That we both accept as positively interesting, with the emphasis on interestingly positive. That time when you are falling in so hard that you can hardly notice anything else save that other person. Almost as if everyone else in the world is in black and white and only your other half is living in color.

Some aspects of our relationship things are set in stone now, while some still remain unspoken secrets. One of the things that is never spoken of out loud, is that we never have to make plans with each other for lunch. It's just an understood thing now that we will meet at our spot on Devil May Care Island. So nothing more needs to be said other than "meet you alter". 

The only reason to talk about what we are doing after school anymore is if May can't meet up. Mostly because she has the odd conflict with Somone's Sister super sinister spirit schedule. Otherwise, it's a given that I will swoop into her theater class at the end and we will fly. If the weather is decent to the park for some wraith walking. If not, then to study buddies to collect on my gigolo gig.

Along with all the other undesirables, Hillside park has become our new refuge. Kids with teams and clubs and after-school activities stay on campus to "activate" and participate. But for everyone else, the place to be is in the park until dark. The blazers and hazers play Frisbee golf down the long central green. The forest bang bunnies scamper about the woods with their playmates looking for a little solitude. So May and I routinely head to the park, to join the ranks of the unwanted to wraith walk with the wind.  

I've learned that May loves the wind, especially the high in the sky wild wind, which she calls windsongs. Those currents you can hear howling high above the trees, but barely feel the rush on your skin. So we walk the trails hand in hand all the way up to our new spot under the shelter of the old oak trees.

And yeah, we hold hands now after school in the park, and sometimes under the table at study buddies. However, we never ever show any intimate affection at school ...it's another unspoken thing.   

I am also starting to understand that May might have actually been right about something else. That whole "small town/big hate" thing she preached at me? Yeah, there might actually be something to that after all? So we have come to an informal accord of sorts, she calls "after dark in the park". In the park, we can be ourselves alone. But everywhere else, we are everyone else's friendly idea of what we should be.

I have never tried to touch her at school, and she has never tried to kiss me. It's an unspoken rule for us, that we wait until we are alone to meld and melt into each other. As it turns out we are both extremely protective people, but for wildly different reasons. For May, she is afraid of what people will say about me kissing a "special girl" like her?

So what am I afraid of? I am afraid, that May will get blood splatter on her outfit. When I kick the brains out of the first person that says something stupid to her about us. You know, because bad blood is so hard to get out.  

Every Friday afternoon during the pep rally we hit the park to talk about the state of us ...weather permitting. As Fridays in San Fall are traditionally for the Big Game under the Friday Night Lights. Cheering on our local gridiron godlings on the way to yet another championship in something sport. Because without the entertainment for the flocks there is nothing for the Raisins of Wrath to do in Valley of Death but breathe and die.

For the rest of the filthy few who don't give a crap about any of this holy hoopla? Friday night is an excellent opportunity to do things without being seen or fighting the flocks. For May and me, that's The Maltese for a classic movie and Leo's Pizza for a slice. For what May keeps insisting on referring to as "Blind Date Night".

Since the wanton kissing carnality of us has begun, we haven't watched a movie in the front row since "that day in the rain".  We've now become those strange kissing kids in the dark corner, eternally attached to one another.

One of the other things that seems to have changed since we began to be more than just a kiss, is that Someone's Sinister Sister somehow seems to loathe me even more on sight than before ...as if that was supposably possible. 

So with all that said and done, so begins the next stage in the saga of the story of us.

I am running a little late to lunch, so I miss May's early arrival at our spot. Thanks again, to yet another day of manly running around in circles for Chad's psychotic amusements. So I do not know is that May has barked her shin fiercely just before she got to our spot in the shade of the battle banner.

I do not see her slightly limp in for a landing. I do not witness her wincing hiss to sit. I do not see her sigh deeply, trying not to concentrate on the pain. Or that she is bruising and burning blood on the inside of her darkest black stretchy pants, that barely poke out of the vastly oversize hoody sweater.

So when I do finally arrive for the feast, I only see her smiling brightly. As she sits contritely at our spot, awaiting our lunch date on Devil May Care Island.

Something else that has subtly changed in the days following the "first worst" kissing incident, is that we no longer sit at oblique angles from each other respecting space. We sit right across from each other now, with our ankles hooked together like two kids facing on swings. As we share lunch and play academic fencing forays to sharpen our witty riposte fortes. There are times she has rubbed her calf along mine by"accident" when she shifts. And there are more times when I wish more "accidents" would happen more often.  

But today as we sit across from each other, her legs are stretched out straight crossed underneath mine. So I have yet to notice the sanguine saturation spreading out on her lower shinbone and soaking thru her black leggings. May merely suffers in smiling silence, munching on the other half of my submarine sandwich. Just playing through the pain as the blood price of doing business with the Devil.

But a funny thing happens when I adjust my sit stance. I graze her shin almost "accidentally" and...

"Yeep!" May makes a noise, not unlike the feral cry of a chipmunk, as she winces and shifts her leg safely away from the contact.

"What was that for? Did I do something wrong, again?"  I am instantly apologetic.

"No, it's nothing you did. I just banged up my shin on Mrs. Chin's new low bookcase ...again." May shakes me off. "You know that old joke about Helen Keller's parents moving the furniture around to punish her? Yeah well, in the real-life version, not so funny for the furniture."

"No, not funny at all." I wholeheartedly agree.  

Glancing down at her leg, her black leggings tucked into her clunky black and white Oxford saddle shoes. Her dark leggings look suddenly shiny to me, and I know only too well that copper smell that accompanies the rust patina of oxidizing blood. But it's my jean leg that tells the true tale of horrible old jokes. The crimson-colored swath brushed across the inside of the pant leg from the contact can only be one thing ...bad blood.  

"May you're bleeding." I intone intensely. "Not like 'bleeding out' bleeding? But definitely bleeding bad enough that we need to get you to the nurse now."

"Oh." She heaves the sacred sigh, then straightens up abruptly. "No, I'm okay for now. Honestly, it's really not that bad. Trust me, I've had way worse shin splints that this little thing."

"May you're bleeding and I really want to insist that I piggyback you to the Nurse's Office...now please?" I try to use my new highly dicey "authority over any aspect of her life" voice. Like I somehow have earned even half the right to tell her anything at all?

"Darren. Do. Not. Go. There." The flat tone of very unhappy is back with a vengeance, and I can already see her growing cross with my daring impertinence.

"I'll go to the Nurse's after lunch is over, and no arguments. Okay?" She acquiescing slightly, sensing my growing anxiety. "And yes, if you're good, I might even let you give me a piggyback ride there. But only after everyone else is long gone."

I know from my past life experience post-Frost, an angry god is to be feared and avoided at all cost. So duly chastised by my dark goddess, I fall back on the only thing I have left to offer her ...my triage skill set. I know now what I can do to make amends for my transgression, but only if she will allow me.

"Okay May, have it your way." I sigh in acceptance.  

But the sight of her blood seeping into her white sock is making my skin crawl in a new imperative."I have to do something to fix her, and make everything good again!" The voice from the abyss in my mind keeps screaming and keening at me.  

"Okay, but can you just hear me out on one thing then?" I push my luck with her. "I have an idea of a quick fix for this now, that should hold until after lunch. But I do not want to cross crass, if you take it wrong? Cause it's a triage thing I was taught ...but not nice?"    

"Okay, try me." She sighs resigned that I will not be able to just forget about it.

That at a minimum I will have to try to help her. Because May knows me enough by now, to know that my compulsion to be her Mr. Helper is slightly overwhelming at times. That denied my addiction, I will soon be boarding the terminal for the "Fly Off The Handle Express" to Panic'stan in all its vainglory.

"Do you happen to carry a 'back up plan' in your bowling bag by any chance? For that time of the blood moon? Maybe?" I inhale a deep breath and hold it, waiting to see how she is going to take this clear violation of the normal societal privacy mores, and a possible broken taboo or two?

"Time of the blood moon?" She tilts her crown down, and her bad frown is back with a vengeance. "Are you asking me if I have a spare feminine hygiene product handy in case of an emergency?" 

"Yes, one of those." And The Maybe effect strikes me again, and the machine begins running my mouth a mile a minute. "Because I learned this Plan B trick in Junior Lifeguards. That those commonly used feminine items, also make the perfect triage compress bandage in a pinch. They are sterile, self-adhesive, ichor absorbent, and most importantly ...immediate."

"Also, they are perfect for glass shard cuts, cause they don't have to be press compacted down driving the shards deeper in..." Yeah, even I heard that faux pas. "...the optimum battle dressing."

"Which is not as totally insane as it sounds, once you learn that those time of the moon things, actually were developed by Benjamin Franklin. Who originally invented the idea to save soldiers with gunshot wounds, and not the other way around." I impart the irrelevant historical background. "Even Navy Seals carry them all the time for just such moments. But they call them Slap-stick'n'slay Bandaids? Probably because they're Navy Seals, so saying anything else might seem not uber-macho? So they moto'd Plan B into to something warlike, ergo Slapsticks?"

"And honestly, once you can get past the 'are you blazing insane?' factor of my suggestion. And think it through for a second, using Occam's Razor? Being the simplest solution for an immediate problem is usually the best solution? The immediate need always outweighs too many afterthoughts, regardless of the impulse towards taboo." 

"So yeah, do you happen to have one of those handy?" I wince hard and wait for the onslaught of: "Are you out of your ever-loving flocking mind, you psycho!"

"So let me see if I understand this Slapstick solution of yours clearly?" May rocks her crown to the side with a frown. "You want me to just roll up my leggings, and slap a period pad on my leg? Then just what? Just sit here and chill, while all these jackals judging my new fall look? Like 'Oh that's such a cool Band-Aide Batgirl. Why didn't we think of that?' Because once upon a time, Benjamin Franklin told Navy Seals it was cool?"

Trust May to be the only one who sees the obvious flaw in my quick fix Plan B. Now I might be dumb, but even I'm not stupid enough to rely on the charitable understanding and empathy of the jackal packs.  

"Not even." I snort. "No, you give Plan B to me. The dashing young lifeguard guy and highly trained triage dude. Who also happens to be sitting right in front of you, blocking the flocks out."

"Then I razzle-dazzle this plan into the spot it needs to be, under your leggings where no one can see." I wince again because I am not getting any better at explaining this obvious off-kilter plan of action. "All of which will happen under my rather tattered poncho on top. So as to make it look like you have cold feet, instead of minor surgery? So if we do it all casually like, with lots of super smiles? Hopefully, no one will be the wiser."

"But in order to pull this off, all I'll need from you is just a little faith in me and one slapstick band-aide. Please?" I ask hopefully looking down at the blood that is oozing into her sock. "And FYI, you're bleeding blood is now turned your sock red on one side, and is leaking into your snappy saddle shoes."

May frowns and reaches down, tentatively touching her damp legging. She comes away with a sanguine smear on her fingertips to smell and is now apparently satisfied I am telling the truth.

"Okay yeah, that's not good." She sighs, steeling herself for the onset of stupidity. "Okay, Dare, tell me what you need me to do. And I hope to hell, you do not make me regret this have 'faith' thing you are preaching? Cause seriously Mr. Devil I have my doubts about all this awesome..."

"Nuff said." I cut her off clean before she can change her mind.

"First thing I need you to do is gently slip out of those shoes, while I pull off my poncho. Then casually let me put your feet up on my lap, under the aforementioned poncho. After that, I can take care of everything from there." I instruct, stripping off my poncho, then carefully lifting her feet up onto my lap. "So you want me to dumpster dive in your bowling ball bag or respect what little privacy the bag has left?"

"Oh, what the hell, just go for it." Placing the bowling ball bag on her lap, side down facing me. "FYI, the item in question you're looking for is in the zipper pouch, inside my wallet where money normally goes."

"You know that way if I ever lose my wallet?" May snorts. "That's all the blood money anyone will get from me."

"Good one." I dive for the dump with a fake smile, and I am in and out of the bag with her wallet in a blink of an eye. "Oh cool, and you have sterile handy wipes too."

"Yeah, cool." May drones dryly.

"Okay, we are all set to roll. Now start telling me tales about everything I never wanted to know about this bad bookcase." I instruct her happily. "And don't stop talking until I fake cough, to let you know when it's safe to stop."

"Alright then. So the first day of Chin's class, I get the seat in the front next to the door as usual. Which is when I first bumped into this low table bookcase thing?" She starts to rattle off her tattle-tales on Chin's Celestial coffee table.

I close my eyes and nod along playing my part, while doing my slight of hands first aide best under the ratty tatty poncho. I gently pull off her bloody sock and stretch roll the leotard leg up and over the damage. While the sock is only slightly moist to the touch, the entire bottom of the legging is damp, with an all too familiar oozy ichor stickiness. Feeling around the dent on her shinbone with tender caresses, my fingers are already sticky slick. I blindly wipe an old ichor away with a sterile wipe.

May involuntarily "meeps"  aloud again when the alcohol from the sterile wipe comes in contact with the open wound. Then she slowly hisses out the sting of the burning blood. If it were me, I would have at least said "Blazing something!" at this point. But then again May has proved more than once that she is a lot tougher than I am. So she merely takes a deep breath and continues to chitter-chatter away, albeit with her incensed nostrils slightly flared out. 

The first handy wipe comes out crimson, telling the bloody tale of her encounter with Chin's new coffee table bookcase. I use another sterile wipe to blot the few new swelling drops being born under my menstruations. To her intake of pained breaths, as she keeps trying to spin the tale.

Under the poncho, I work as quickly as I can to put the final touches on my trick. Peeling off the adhesive strip, I wrap and roll the slapstick around her slender leg. Then fold the fly ends together, sealing the bandage. With deft care, I carefully roll down the black leotard legging over the bandage, all the while making certain the battle bandage stays in place.

My final gift to her are my own socks. Which I slide onto her warm toes, making them curl and her squirm slightly. I take this toe curl as a good sign and finish socking her foot. Carefully folding the sock top down twice, so as to make the oversized white socks appear somewhat presentable.

My larger athletic socks look bulkier on her petite feet, but not enough to draw any unwanted attention. My final act is to wad up all the leftover fixings and scraps, including her bloody sock into my lunch bag. Which I immediately stuff back in my poncho pocket for later disposal. 

I quick shake of my head in faux mirth, and casually eye roll to quick check the flocks flying around our island. While I cannot be a hundred percent certain, it looks like none the wiser that a magic triage trick has just been performed in their heathen midst. In fact, I may have just pulled off the greatest illusion of my triage career. The old Devil's trick ...convincing people you don't exist is always the best defense to unwanted scrutiny. 

"Done da-ta." I cough out the signal and we are back in real time.

"So yeah, that just happened." May intones slowly, reaching out under the poncho to check out my work and seems somewhat pleased with my deft skills. "I have to admit, aside from the slight stinging sensation, my leg does feel slightly better than it did before?"

Her frown slowly evolves into a beautiful brilliantly smile, blinding me in its bedazzling scintillating steel splendor. So I release the breath I've been holding and relax a little, immersed in May's good graces. Which is all the thanks a monster like me will ever need.

"I hope that will do the trick until lunch is over. But no moving about, please? I want the bandage to set, until I can piggyback you to the nurse's office?" I grudgingly add. "After lunch when the crowds clear out, of course."

"One of these days soon, I think that you and I are gonna need to have a long talk about this piggyback fetish of yours?" She quirks a small smirk, "But I think that in light of your little tricks of the trade, today is not that day." 

"So on that note, what should we name this story? The Slapstick Solution? The Plan B Band-Aid trick? Ooo I know, how about Reverse the Curse? That's pretty oblique if you don't know all the gory details." May suddenly slows her roll and scowls across at me.  "Darren, why are you shaking so hard? Cause it's not that cold, is it?"

So without reservation, I offer up to my dark goddess a piece of my truth.  

"Oh, those are just some pesky little post-battle rattles. Nothing to worry about, they'll pass soon enough. Trust, I've had much worse than this." I use her own line against her, as I laugh thru the initial onset of the shakes and try to play the malady of as a nothing.

"Oh, you poor devil." The sad sigh of sympathy, as she realizes the price of my blood sacrifice for her continued well-being. 

Yet another reminder that her new toy is a very broken boy. But instead of kicking me to the curb, like any right-minded person should. She reaches out for me and clasps her warm embrace around my shaking clenched fists of prayer. Her pale visage is suddenly a study in concern.

"Is there anything I can do for you at all?" May inquires concerned.

Her concern only serves to shames me more to the core. That even in the throws of her own agonies, she still thinks of my small inconveniences.  

"You could show me your eyes again?" I hiss through the icy grip of the shivers. "They are a far more powerful totem than any little shiver shake."

So she smiles sadly and drops the veils, embracing me into her abyssal zooming occulus. And once again down I go into her realm of Nix, to lose myself in the depths of her darkness. My goddess, it's amazing... O' Nix, how do I love your darkness, my dark goddess.

It is a long time lost as I free-fall into the painless abyss. But sadly not as long as we would have liked.

"May'may, I need to talk to you now!" The screechy harpy shrieking interrupts my adoration.

I am suddenly snapped back into the current against my will. My Goddess's smile saddens slightly at this incursion on our island fortress, and my moment in the eye of the abyss as been lost to me. All thanks to Someone's Sinister Sister, and my least favorite fearleader of them all.  

"April, what's wrong?" May queries, pulling her leg out from under the poncho. As she so deftly slides her socked feet back onto her shoes.

"Watch." April takes Mays pocketwatch out of her bag, closes the silver cover with a sharp snick snap, then presses it into May's open palm. "It's time to go...now."

"Ah, actually May needs to go to the..." I start to speak my protest.

"Don't even start stupid." April snaps back super cross. "I need to talk to my sister about some sister shit, that's got nothing to do with you. So invite only asshole, and you are so not invited. It's time to go ...now, May."

"It's okay Dare, I'll go with April." May is stoic replaces the watch inside her coat pocket. "There's something I need to ask her about anyways? And now is as good as time as any, I suppose? Then I promise to go to see the nurse for an aspirin, so don't worry about me. Okay?"

"Okay May, I'll see ya later for study buddies then?" I proffer weakly, still slightly reeling from my time in the dark.   

"Study buddies it is." She nods nonce. By agreement I know she means to pick her up at the theater and take her to the park.

"Or not." April smiles savagely, and I sense something dark like a shadow pass behind her eyes.

Which is seriously strange, because April never smiles at me. Especially since it's never a real "I am so pleased to see you" smile like the one she is now wearing. 

A seething smile, sometimes? Even a semi-tolerant smirk from time to time. But never ever an actual smile. I am starting to realize that something seriously sinister has grown inside her since I stopped paying any attention to her. And that the"shadowy sinister something"  that lives inside her is maybe more than just a little malevolently very pleased with itself? 

I watch intently how April wrathy wraith walks, trying to learn her tricks as she has been doing this far longer than I have. As I watch on April leads May slightly limping away. April's guide is firm but she's is pushing May slightly faster than I do. The impatient walk she uses when trying to force May along faster than she wants.

My immediate impulse is to run after them and swoop May up straight to the Nurse's Office. But I have a pretty good idea that my intrusion into her independence would not be welcomed at this point. As she has made it crystal clear to me ...to worry not. But if anything, I am faithful in my heresy to the will of my dark goddess.

In the wake of the Grimm sister's sudden departure, I gather up our lunch scraps and walk towards the trash. After I dump the surgery leftovers in with the regular trash, then just keep walking. Weaving through the flocks randomly standing around. Following the sisters in the distance as they wend past the coven cliques towards the side gate lorded over by Mrs. St. Claire.

I watch them as they navigate through the late gate. I can clearly tell that May's shin splint is clearly firing up again. She is not limping too badly. But there is a certain off-kilter canter to her gait, that says she is in more pain with every step. Oh, and she wonders why I have a piggyback fetish? 

In light of the sudden departure, an oddity occurs to me about this back and forth with May's antique braille pocket watch. The times that I do see the sisters together are rare. But almost every time April takes May's pocket watch, checks the time to her own watch, then hands it back without closing it. A "sister thing" that they always do the same way every time ...except for this time?   

I know this seems like such a small silly thing for me to obsess over, in light of the injury to her leg. But something I have learned in my time in May's dark world, she likes her personal habits to remain constant. The familiarity of sameness gives her the ability to anticipate and helps her stay grounded, so as to not have to continually readjust herself to her surroundings. So a disruption in the pattern is a portent of potential problems. Not unlike Mrs. Chin's new bookcase table stand? Something that I will definitely be doing something about in the very near future.