Sympathy for Clones

(Part 5 of six day series)

“What they hell do you mean Golem?” I ask Slick, pinned to the wall. I feel so angry I might cry. Then, I do. I cry as Slick loses air between my fingers.

M pulls me off of him.

“It’s okay,” he says.

I try to respond but all I feel is a great wall of poison in my chest that needs to be released. I sit down in the corner and compose myself. The tears find their bottom and I stop shaking. I feel hungry.

“What do you guys have to eat?” I ask Slick. Slick adjusts himself, rubbing his neck.

I can tell he is fighting back anger. I don’t care.

“What would you like?” he growls.

I think for a moment. “Pancakes?”

Slick nods. I hold my hand out to N. “Help me up.”

He frowns at me, grabbing my hand, he pulls me up.

“You hate pancakes,” he says. Thinking about it, he’s right, but, I want them none the less.

“So?”

He shrugs. Slick leads us to a dingy kitchen.

“Have a seat in there,” he says, motioning through a door.

Through the door is a cafeteria. It looks post-apocalyptic. I instinctively look into the corners for zombies or some other incarnation of the devil. I only find dirt.

We sit at a table. N leans forward, and whispers, “golems?”

M lights a cigarette, “we need to get out of here,” he says, simply.

N nods.

“I just want some damn pancakes. Oh, and by the way,” I point at my stomach. “I don’t suppose either of you know how to deliver a baby through, you know, a penis?”

They don’t respond.

“That’s what I thought. So—“

There is a crash from the floor above. Then, gunshots. Slick pops his head out of the kitchen.

“Don’t move,” he says, then, awkwardly, gives us a thumbs up. He disappears out the door.

N puts his face in his hands.

“I’m going to die here,” he moans, then, starts talking to himself in Russian. Gunshots continue above us. Someone screams; the sound of death knocking. Then, nothing, silence.

There are footsteps. The kitchen door bangs open. Slick stands there. Blood is spattered over his apron. He gives us another thumbs up.

“Pancakes almost ready,” he says. He turns back into the kitchen.

Later, laying on a rickety old cot, I think. It hurts. I roll over. M sleeps peacefully in the cot across. N snores above. The door opens. I squint through the dull light.

“Larry?”

Larry comes closer. I sit up. Then, he knocks me over the head for the second time in a day.

TO BE CONTINUED…