Chapter Seven
Man, this hallucination I was having was really fucked-right-the-fuck up.
"Your people?" I repeated.
CowBelle ignored me. She was busy hitting the Mac's screen. "How long has your ship been out of order?" she demanded. She turned and fiddled with the soundboard again. The hum of the speakers and squeal of microphone feedback went in and out as she moved the buttons. She was starting to get frustrated, her face was turning red.
"It's a soundboard," I said, "And it worked just fine before you started messing with it."
She turned around in the swivel seat, a look of disapproval on her face. "You could be a little nicer to me, considering I'm saving your life and all," she said hotly.
I blinked at her. I literally didn't know what else to do.
Finally she turned back around, "You're an ass."
"And you're not real," I snapped back.
I wondered if I was actually seeing things, or if this was some vivid dream and I was gonna wake up on the couch downstairs in a couple minutes completely discombobulated. I wondered how to wake myself up. I tried pinching myself. It hurt. I looked at her as she bobbled back and forth from one panel to the next, her hair swishing, her legs bent back under the seat like she always sat in swivel chairs.
Hallucination.
I was going crazy. I was seeing things. I had finally, finally lost my marbles, just like the guys had sworn up and down that I was doing every time they spent more than an hour or two with me. Nick, they'd say, You're insane, man. Well guess what guys? Now I really am.
Well, if I was crazy, I might as well go out with a bang, right?
I walked closer to CowBelle, my heart racing. It was my opportunity, my chance to smell her, to feel her again. I could touch her hair, hold her close, taste her kiss. I held out a shaking hand, laid it on the chair behind her, pulled her toward me, pressed my face into her hair and breathed in.
She leaped up, her head smashing my nose pretty solidly, and I jumped back, clutching my face as she struck an almost kung-fu-like pose about five feet away from me. She glared at me. "What are you doing?" she snapped.
"Sorry, I just --"
"Were you smelling me?"
"I'm sorry," I said, "I just -- God damn it, Belle, I miss you." My voice came out strangled. I stared at her, lowered my hands. My nose was bleeding. I had blood on my palms. It dripped onto my shirt. I stared at her.
My CowBelle - the CowBelle I remembered and loved and adored - she would've dropped the stance, would rushed over, would've tended my wound. She would've held me until it was better. But this phantom CowBelle... she just stared at me, her eyes focused on the drips of red dropping onto my shirt, a fascination in her eyes. "Your face... is leaking." She looked into my eyes. "Why?"
"Because you all but broke my damn nose?" I asked hotly.
It struck me how odd it was that after almost a year of desiring nothing but to see her again, it'd taken this phantom less than an hour to rile me up. Typical CowBelle, actually. I remember spending long tours laying in hotel rooms dreaming of being back in LA or Nashville, wherever she was, and then I'd finally get there after months of waiting and hoping and day dreaming of the moment and we'd be riled up and yapping at each other within a day or two. That's just how we communicated, I guess. We argued a lot, but it was never mean arguing. Half the time we were playing around - arguing passionately about like who would win Spiderman or Batman or something like that.
She tilted her head. "How does it stop?" she asked.
"I need tissues," I answered. I pushed through the doorway of the studio into the hall. I didn't care if she followed as she was a hallucination anyways, and I made my way to the bathroom where I unraveled a couple sheets of the toilet paper and shoved it into my nostril, tilting my head up. She was hovering in the door way.
"How do you --" she paused, furrowed her brow, "miss me?" she asked.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. I felt tears come into my eyes. "I've missed you every single day," I whispered. I sounde like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
"But I just got here."
"You've been gone since December, though, haven't you?"
She thought for a long moment. "This... December? Was it long ago?" she asked.
I stared at her out of the corner of my eyes as I pinched my nose. "Ten months," I finally said.
"Approximately 305 rotations around the sun," she murmured.
"Excuse me?"
"A month is approximately 30 rotations of the Earth on it's axis, a day, as it rotates in a much larger circle around the star that you call the sun," she replied, "You call that a year. Correct?"
I nodded.
"So ten months would be approximately 305 rotations on your axis before the sun. 305 days. Almost one full rotation around the sun"
"Okay."
"This is not relevant," she said. "Is it?"
"Not really."
We were silent for some time, and I lowered my face, released the pinch, checked the tissues. I seemed to have stopped bleeding. I threw the toilet paper away and washed my hands. She watched everything I did closely, her eyes wide with interest. "Such...strange...customs," she muttered.
I looked at her. "Why are you here?" I asked. "Am I really losing my mind?"
She looked annoyed. "I told you; I came to warn you - and to stop the whitenoise."
I sighed.
"Do you not believe me?" she asked.
I shrugged, "I don't know. I don't know what to think. You died, you were all but dead the last time I saw you. You were in that hospital bed and --" I shook my head, conjuring images was not a good idea. I could feel the wind being sucked out of my chest even as I spoke the words I'd already said. I looked at her, "It doesn't make sense that you're here at all. Much less what you're saying or whether I believe what you're saying."
"I left many, many rotations ago from my home to come here to warn Earth and to stop the whitenoise," she repeated.
"You are home, right now, right here."
"You are mistaking me for my human form."
I didn't even know what to say. I couldn't think of a single thing. I wasn't sure I understood what she was saying. I just stared at her.
"In my natural form, a human would not know how to comprehend me, so when I am in the presence of humans I take a human form. I took the form of the human that sent the whitenoise. Bellatrix Watson."
I still didn't know how to respond.
"You are Nick Carter. Your voice is in the whitenoise. I recognize it." She paused. "But I am not Bellatrix Watson. She is merely the form which I took so that I could communicate effectively with humans. Do you understand?"
I didn't. This hallucination was incredible. You'd think since it came out of my head that the things I was hallucinating about would at least be -- you know, understandable to me.
I said the only thing I could think of to say.
"So who the hell are you then?"
She chewed her lip. "I'm not sure how you would say my name as a human."
"As a human?" I laughed, "Okay. So my next question is what the hell are you?"
"I'm a Kepler," she replied in a matter-of-a-fact voice.
"Oh. A Kepler." I said. I nodded. "Of course."
"You've heard of us?"
"Uh... no."
"Well... now you have."
Whitenoise by Pengi
