Thread: To the Last Syllable (Mr. M & Bathos)

He had been monitoring her awakening silently, reading as he listened and scented her reactions. He had to reread a few pages, having reached the end with no memory of what he had just read, but that was never a hardship with Raymond Chandler. He was sitting cross-legged, leaning forward a bit to angle the book toward the lantern, which was just as well, because he was backed up against the free-standing wall of books, and they wouldn't support his weight if he leaned against them. She exploded into motion well, exploded in a relative sense, and came around one end of the makeshift barrier. She could have stepped over it with only a little effort, but given her recent condition, he didn't blame her for not risking it. Point me to a facility? she asked, coming directly in between him and his light. He casually straightened his back and looked up at her. He pointed to the doorway in the corner of the room away from the windows. Through there, far side of the kitchenette. Light's on. As she moved away, he called after her. Toilet takes about half an hour to refill, and takes all the water flow wash your hands before you flush. As she left, he made a mental note of his page number and closed the book. Then he sprang up and began to prepare, gently lifting the arm off the record player, switching on the hotplate he'd brought over, and opening up the margarine. The bread, cheesefood, and thin-sliced vat-grown turkeyflesh were already handy, and everything would be nice and grilled by the time she got back. The kitchenette certainly used to be a kitchenette when the apartment had been occupied, but every useful bit of equipment, from refrigerator to stove to the very pipes of the sink, had been ripped out long ago. Even the cabinet doors had been broken or had rotted off. Instead, the whole chamber was a storage place for old mechanical and electronic junk, devices a hundred, two hundred years or more out of date. Most were just shells, maybe with a few wires still attached, while others seemed nearly pristine. In any case, it was clearly the kitchenette he was talking about. It was illuminated with light cast from the only other open door of the several leading off the room the bathroom. Technically, it was a half-bath, as the ancient tub was filled with growing greenery, a type unfamiliar to her and not currently bearing any recognizable fruit of any sort. The fluorescent gro-lights, the same kind used in the upper levels above but far, far out of date, illuminated the whole room brightly. They were powered by a multiply-taped cable that led from a hole in the wall that looked sledgehammered in, a hole that also admitted a single copper pipe that angled along the wall and diverted a smaller pipe to the old-fashioned tank toilet before going to the sink. There was only one tap on the sink faucet, since there was only one water feed, but the sink basin was large and deep. The whole bathroom seemed a little decrepit, but clean the surfaces were scrubbed, and the toilet seat was a reasonably new antibacterial model. It smelled of soap, earth, and growing things, a scent Lyla hadn't smelled all that often but which chimed deep within the human psyche, anyway. Sitting on the edge of the sink were a toothbrush still in its blister pack, an unopened tube of toothpaste, a clean-looking washcloth, some hand soap in a pump bottle, and a fresh roll of toilet paper.