The Slide

Chapter 17 | Paris — A Confluence of Memories, the past — (continued)

Part 2, A Science Fiction Story

Caution: Contains upsetting scenes of violence which may be triggering

They giggled as they climbed into the bed with the double-ended dildo.

“Will you be my yang?” Farha said as her lips parted into a sensual pout.

“Yes, my love,” Sophie breathed huskily as she hooked the dildo into her strap-on harness and reached to unhook Farha’s hold on it.

“I’m so wet,” Farha whispered, her breath matching a building arousal. After Sophie’s relentless pounding and their simultaneous multiple orgasms, they collapsed into each other and slept. It was late afternoon. Sophie had pulled back the curtains of all the windows facing west, a stone’s throw or two from the river Seine.

The sun shone through a small stain glassed window on the bed and lit Farha’s face with diffuse indirect light. Her eyes were glazed over and she was mumbling under her breath.

“I’m fixing some salad,” Sofie said loudly from the kitchen.

Farha shook off her trance. She rose from the bed and stared at the small stain glassed window of starlight in the center of a domed cathedral.

“Alexis,” she said aloud.

“What hun?” Sofie shouted and moved to the doorway to hear.

“Alexis,” Farha repeated in a dreamy, unhinged voice.

“Say again,” Sophie entered the bedroom — parlor area and stood in front of the windows to the tiny terrace where they had flung their purses and clothing after shopping.

“Alexis…”

“Who the hell is Alexis?” Sophie’s ire rose.

“Alexis, my beloved,” Farha continued in her dreamy voice, as if in a swoon.

“Alexis be damned.”

Farha paid no attention to Sophie and continued mumbling. She saw him in place of Sophie on the other side of the room, fading in and out of visibility.

“Who is this damned Alexis?” Sophie screeched.

“Alexis is my soulmate,” Farha said, as if trying to break free of the spell, but in vain.

“Betrayer!” Sophie screamed. She pulled the trigger of the revolver in her palm and missed with the first shot. The second shot hit the tarnished copper breast plate. Faltering, she stumbled and fell backwards onto the floor.

Sophie stared at Farha lifeless on the floor, the breast plate bent and damaged. Stunned, she dropped the revolver onto the floor and wandered out into the hallway, sobbing and yelling.

“My fault, my fault, my fault.”

Police sirens support teams approached. As the police cars pulled up to the apartment building, they found Sophie on the ground floor foyer with severe injuries from an apparent jump or fall from the sixth-floor landing. She was taken by paramedics, unconscious and barely alive.

The police taped off the staircase on all six floors of the building.

A block away, black vans stopped the ambulance at gunpoint and took Sophie’s body in one of the three unmarked vans. Inside, they determined she had expired. Three armed guards prevented the paramedics from any actions to cover the escape of the vans before they escaped on motorcycles. Two of the three paramedics were killed by a snapped neck and a knife blade at the jugular. One was left wounded but alive.

One Month Later

Farha awoke in a hospital bed sweating and screaming. She was restrained in the bed for her own protection. The building that had housed the Memory Unit was gone and was replaced by a fully equipped convalescent hospital for one. She dreamt repeatedly of the man with the sun for his head and that’s what she called him.

“Where’s Sophie?” she screamed.

Commandant Bisset monitored her progress from the nurse’s station. A male and a female nurse were sent along with her attending physician and psychotherapist, Thomasina Legrand.

“Tommy, can you tell me where Sophie has gone?” Farha pleaded. Even though her body had not been recovered, she was reported by the one paramedic that had survived the assault to have passed.

“Sophie has passed,” Legrand said softly.

“Where is her body, then? Where?”

“I killed ‘em,” Farha continued. “I pulled the trigger and shot ’em in the head, in the temple.”

“Remember your breath,” Tommy reminded her. Both nurses put their palms on the tops of her hands. She calmed and fell into a deep sleep almost instantaneously. In her dream she went to The Man-With-The-Sun-for-his-Head and asked a question.

“You’re asking the wrong questions,” The Man-With-The-Sun-for-his-Head answered.

The nurses remained in room while Legrand returned to the nurses’ station. As Tommy opened the door, Bisset hung-up the phone.

“That was one of my people in the Inspector General’s Office. It’s official. Bayard had been suspended from duty. My source says that he may be court marshaled. They found three of the black-ops team that took Sophie L’Mallard’s body and the site where the autopsy was performed,” Commandant Bisset said.

“I’ll be glad when we can put this fiasco to rest. I hope that some healing comes out of it for Farha,” Bisset added. She looked down into her lap at her handwritten note, wondering whether to share it, and decided against it. The note read:

Captain Anton and three members of the Memory Team, including Oman, had been detained by the Inquiry Counsel for interrogation by the Inspector General’s team. Anton had been charged with administering banned memory drugs without official authorization.

Five months later

“I don’t know what to live for anymore,” Farha whispered in Uncle Tem’s ear, “except to find out the truth of The Slide.”

Tem paused in thought.

“Well… Any response, Uncle Tem?” she said aloud.

“Always the scientist to the ends of the earth,” Tem commented with a wry smile. “Have I told you about the meeting with the Magistrate? He and the team want both of us back when the Satellite returns in about six months.”

“I’ll be ready,” Farha said out of hope. She was still mourning the loss of Sophie. She continued to not remember Alexis’s existence. The Man-With-The-Sun-for-his-Head continued to appear in her dreams. The only glimmer of purpose within her was her focus on the Slide.

What is the Slide? What is it’s purpose? Where did it come from? What energy sustains it? the thoughts consumed her.

At the end of Chapter 14 Secrets and Love, the past (continued) there is an index of all chapters of part 1 and 2.

Thanks for reading, for your comments and support.

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