Quotes from the Shelf

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." - Ernest Hemingway

Wednesday, 9 May 2012

Committed Chapter 8



Paris’ house was in the exact opposite direction of Ariadne’s, but it was a few minutes closer.  One look at it was enough to tell Ariadne that the architect had been on a mission to create a home with the exact minimum required space for a family of three to live in without being driven to strangle each other.
            The front of the house had enough space on the first floor for a door and a thin window.  The second floor had one circular window below the inverted-V of the roof.
            Ariadne pulled the SUV into the driveway and clicked off the lights.  She leaned back against her seat and let out a slow breath.  The adrenaline was finally starting to seep out of her system.  She ran her hands through her hair quickly.  What the hell was happening?  How had her evening gotten so completely out of control?
            “Uh, Ariadne?” Paris asked from the passenger’s seat.  “Do you think we could get inside?”
            “Yeah, right, sorry,” Ariadne said, pulling the key from the ignition and climbing out of the car.
            Paris held his left arm close to her chest as they approached his front door and fished in his pocket for the keys.  He finally got them out and dropped them on the ground, cursing under his breath as he did.
            “I got them,” Ariadne said, putting a hand on his uninjured arm as she leaned down to pick up the keys.  “I’m sorry I got you shot.”
            “It wasn’t your fault,” Paris assured her.
            “Still, I owe you.  You got dragged into all of this.”
            “Don’t apologize.  Can you imagine a series of events where I didn’t rush to help you?  The bastard was hitting you.”
            Ariadne nodded silently.  She hadn’t dared to look at her face in the mirror, to see the red welt on her face from Janus’ slaps.  She could only hope that she’d bruised his handsome face when she’d punched him.
            “What can we do to stop the bleeding?” Ariadne asked as they stepped inside.
            A quick scan of the first floor of Paris’ house showed that it was only two rooms.  The living room and kitchen were not separated by a wall and there appeared to be no dining room.  Instead, a small counter-island sat in the middle of the kitchen, which was distinguished by the white tiles, with a fridge and stove while the living room, distinguished by a maroon coloured carpet, had only a couch and TV.  The TV was barely a meter away from the couch and, Ariadne noticed, unplugged at the moment.  There were various other odds and ends scattered around the room, including a clock on the wall, but overall the rooms were sparse.  The only other room was a bathroom to the right of the kitchen, the door slightly ajar.  Ariadne assumed the two doors to her right were closets.  There was also a spiral staircase that went up to the second to the left of the kitchen.
            “We need to keep pressure on it with something.  A sweater like this won’t do forever,” Paris explained.  “There should be something you could use in there, some rags or something.  There should be some cleaning solution in there too.  If you could wash them first, we can use them.”
            “What are you going to do?” Ariadne asked as Paris walked over to the couch.
            “I’m going to sew myself up,” Paris explained, pulling a sewing kit from around the corner of the couch.  “I don’t think my mom will mind me borrowing her supplies in this case.”
            Ariadne nodded and walked towards the bathroom.  There was a smell in the air as she walked.  It smelled of sawdust but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.  Instead, it felt comforting.
            When she stepped into the bathroom she turned on the light and made the mistake of looking into the mirror.
            Her cheek was scarlet from where Janus had slapped her.  That was the first thing she noticed.  By comparison, her messed up hair, which had chunks of leaves torn from the cornstalks in it, and sweaty face and neck were barely noticeable.
            She sank against the sink just below the mirror and lowered her face.  She took in a few slow breaths and tried not to think about it too hard.  If she thought about it the emotions would come and Paris was bleeding.
            She opened the cupboard beneath the sink.  Sure enough, there was a bucket full of used rags and face towels with a bottle of cleaner next to it.
            She pulled out the bucket and grabbed a hand full of rags.  She’d already put the stopper into the sink and it was starting to fill up with water.  She tossed the rags into the sink and dumped some cleaning solution in.
            As she was scrubbing them she felt her pocket vibrate.  She realized it was her phone and quickly dried her hands with a towel off the rack by the sink.
            The screen of her phone told her she’d received a text from her mother.  She opened it and read:

Where are you?

Ariadne quickly explained to her mother that she’d gone back to Paris’ house after the event at school and would be home later.  She didn’t think that a text would be the best way to tell her mother that she’d been shot at by Janus and that he’d hit her.  She’d certainly see the mark on her face when she got home.
            As an afterthought, Ariadne told her mother not to worry, that she was fine.  As she pocketed her phone she thought back to their conversation at the dinner table earlier.  Would her mother believe her when she explained what Janus had said and done?  Or would she think that Ariadne was just trying to cause trouble?
            Deciding that this wasn’t the time to be thinking about that, Ariadne continued to clean off the rags.
            “You almost done in there?” Paris called from the living room a moment later.
            “Almost,” Ariadne called back.  She unceremoniously dumped the bucket of rags she hadn’t used onto the floor and rung out the ones she had cleaned one by one.  She then tossed them into the bucket and carried the lot of them out into the living room.
            Ariadne hadn’t expected Paris to be shirtless.
            He was sitting on the couch, his shirt off, exposing his broad shoulders coiled with muscle.  She hesitated for a moment approaching him, her eyes moving to his left arm, which was held tightly to his side as he worked.  He was holding a line of thread between his teeth and cutting the thread with scissors at that moment.
            “How are you going to get the back part?” Ariadne asked, eyeing the small but bloody entry wound on the back of Paris’ arm.  His arm down to his elbow was coated with drying rivers of blood, some of it matted by the sweater he’d tied around it, but it was still bleeding slightly.
            “You’ll have to do it,” Paris said, turning to her.
            “What?”
            “I can’t reach it Ariadne.  I trust you.”
            Ariadne set the bucket of rags down on the floor and sat beside Paris as he turned so his back was towards her.
            “Okay,” she said, taking the needle and thread from Paris other hand when he offered it.  “It might not be a very good job.”
            “It’ll be better than nothing,” Paris replied.
            Ariadne nodded and got to work.  She’d used a needle and thread before to hem her own jeans and clothes, since her mother refused to do it, but she discovered that doing it to a person was very different.  She ended up drawing more blood in the process of sewing up Paris wound and found herself grimacing as she made the final suture.
            She took the scissors when he offered them, having been silent the whole time she was working, and she cut the thread.
            “We should clean up your arm before we make our makeshift bandages,” Ariadne said.
            “I’ll sew some of them together,” Paris said as Ariadne stood and returned to the bathroom.  She ran another cloth underneath the tap quickly and returned to Paris.
            While he worked, she scrubbed down his arm, wiping away the red marks on his arms.
            “I can’t believe he shot at us,” Ariadne finally said.
            “Janus is clearly used to getting what he wants,” Paris said.
            “Where were you earlier?” Ariadne asked.
            Paris turned to her, having just finished his make-shift bandage, and Ariadne saw the hurt on his face.
            “No!  Oh God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…I just meant why weren’t you there earlier?  I was expecting you at the maze before Janus ever showed up.”
            “My parents had something they wanted to give me.   For my birthday,” Paris explained, reaching across his chest with his right hand to take one of Ariadne’s in it.  “I am so sorry I wasn’t there earlier.”
            “It’s not your fault,” Ariadne said, not pulling her hand away.  “I was trying to be nice to him.  I won’t make that mistake again.”
            “We have to be very careful now, Ariadne,” Paris said, holding her gaze intently.  “We have no idea what he’ll do next.  You should stay here for the night.”
            “I should go home.”
            “He knows where you live Ariadne, I’m sure of it,” Paris said.  “Your home is the first place he’s going to go looking for you.”
            “Then I need to get home now, he might hurt my mother!” Ariadne realized, springing to her feet.
            “He doesn’t want to kill you, Ariadne, he just wants to find you,” Paris said, getting up as well and placing his hands on her shoulders.  “He doesn’t know where I live and you’re safe here for tonight.  He won’t do anything to your mother.  He might have shot at us but he was aiming for me.”
            “How do you know he won’t hurt my mother?” Ariadne asked.  “He might have been aiming for you but he could have hit me.”
            Paris nodded.  “You’re right.  He’s reckless.  The fact that he brought a gun with a suppressor shows that he didn’t expect you to be very compliant with what he wanted.”
            “He just wanted me to put on a ring,” Ariadne explained.  “What the hell was that about?”
            “I have no idea,” Paris said, turning towards the closets by the door as he spoke.  “But I don’t think we need to figure it out right now.  You can stay the night here and tomorrow morning we can figure out what we’re going to do next.  I’ll go grab a sleeping bag, you can sleep in my room upstairs.”
            “Paris, I’m not going to steal your room from you.”
            “You are, and you’re going to like it while you do,” Paris said, glancing over his shoulder and grinning as he approached the closet.  “I am, after all, a gentleman.”
            “Gentleman my ass,” Ariadne replied.  But, because Paris always had that effect, she found herself smiling back at him as she said it.

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