Altitude

Numeral

100

 

90

 

80

 

70

 

60

 

50

 

40

 

30

 

20

 

10

 

00

I mentioned that unknown individuals had ransacked my apartment when I'd been out of town and he didn't even react.



"Someone knows that I'm looking for her," I said. "And I don't think that they want me to be able to find her."



"Someone wants you to find her, it seems, otherwise you wouldn't be here in this bar, and I wouldn't have been... coerced into showing up." Partain clenched his jaw and balled his hands into fists, but then he relaxed again, as if something upsetting had crossed his mind but he'd been able to block it out. He took a long pull off of his pint.



"Coerced you? What happened?" I asked.



"It's none of your concern, stranger," he said, turning to look at me again. He stood up and stepped away from the bar. "This is ridiculous. Good luck finding your friend."



I wasn't sure how to respond to that. He hadn't given me ANY answers!



"Partain, wait!" I said, standing up.



He didn't answer as he walked out of the front doors of the bar and into the blurry world outside.



I turned and looked at Janine and her boyfriend, shrugging. They both came over to meet me at the bar.



"What did you find out?" Janine asked, her face a mixture of concern and anticipation.



"Nothing," I said. "Nothing useful at all."

 

 

How many dreams do we surpass when we fly?

 

 

He sighed; It was a heavy sigh that seemed to say that he had told this story before to other people and they hadn't believed him, or perhaps he had scared them off with it, causing them to worry that he could accidentally cause them to come into harm as well. Maybe I should have been a little more concerned that he might get angry with us and kill us, though all of my intuition towards him pointed to trusting that he was one of the quote good guys unquote.  I don't know, really.  Maybe he was one of those serial killers that just needed the right thing to set him off.  He seemed all right, though, and his story was definitely no stranger than my own.

 
"I’ll need one of those cigarettes, probably," he said to me, taking some dice out of his pocket. "And no interruptions once I start," he added, casting a heavy look over to Janine.