Marvin's daughter had a cat

TW: suicide, violence

There wasn't much to do. It was going to be hard no matter what, but she put herself into it as she always did. Someday, maybe, she would have someone to help her and stay with her - and leave with her. But she now knew it wouldn't be this town, this time. She had a few boxes left in the living room, books on bookshelves, several dishes and pans that she had left in the kitchen. And the litter box. The bed was stripped. The bathroom bleached. Everything she had touched for personal use had been donated or thrown away at the transfer station, not counting big items like furniture and electronics. She did her best to sanitize them.

The litter box was a painful reminder of her situation. Normally she didn't do this to herself - make sentimental connections. If she had retained any say in the matter the cat would have gone with her. As it was, she had gotten the cat into the shelter about 15 minutes before closing time. She had pretty much thrown the paperwork at the lady at the front counter, ignored her commentary on waiting and space, and had run out the door, leaving the cat behind. The cat that had no name. She had at least done that much right.

Having a cat at all had been idiotic. What were you going to do with it exactly? She never stayed in one place long enough to really get to know anybody, and mainly tried not to. Somehow this time it had seemed like having a cat would be a nice substitute for human companionship. Now she allowed herself to acknowledge what she had known all along, that she had just made things worse. Having and losing was worse than not having at all.

This was her mantra. Normally she held to it.

She took one last glance around the small apartment. “Not worth it,” she said aloud. She meant, not worth any regret. She went out the door and closed it with a tiny soft click. She carried no bags. She had only her clothes and herself.

She had left behind nothing for them to trace her by. Everything left in that apartment was specifically designed to fit the esthetics of an elderly gentleman fond of canasta and chess. In its own way it was generic. She had encyclopedias from the 1960s and pans from the 1970s. Nothing tied directly to her because her was a construct. There was no her. There was only the running, the running.

----

The running starts with a phone call. The man on the other side says red light, green light. She responds with go and hangs up the phone. She then has 24 hours to sanitize the apartment, redistribute her belongings and be ready to leave. Sometime in the 24 hours after the call a car will appear outside her residence. She has never once caught the person leaving it. The keys will be in the glove box and a phone will be under the driver's seat with a single note in the notepad app with an address. She has been warned that any delay beyond the 24 hours may result in possible capture so she is always punctual.

----

It was an older grey Prius. It smelled of dog. The phone was older too but nicer than the one she had scrapped earlier that day. The address was in Florida. The account linked on her phone showed $12,000 available. The tap pay was only available at certain gas stations and restaurants. She would have to take out some cash. She fed the address in and noted the time to get there: 13 hrs and 27 minutes. She could do it in one day, if she tried. But she wouldn’t. She was too tired.

She began to drive.

----

In 1980, Beverly and Marvin lived in a tall brick apartment building in the downtown of a city in California. The city is unimportant. It could have been anywhere. They paid their taxes, they worked their jobs, they held hands when they crossed the street, they loved each other. Beverly and Marvin had a daughter who was a year old and precocious. She was already speaking words by the age of 6 months and speaking in full sentences by the age of one. She could walk and run and kick a ball. Beverly believed she was lucky to have such a smart and lovely child. The daughter had blond hair that hung in ringlets down her back. Her eyes were a light blue and her legs were strong and steady.

The day her mother died, the daughter had found one of her dolls stuck in a sewage drain. It was a small Barbie knock off and somehow it had been dropped out of a vehicle and stuck under a grate. Perhaps a child had stuck it there. Perhaps not. The daughter wanted it and wanted it badly.

“Get my doll mommy!” she shouted.

Beverly was running late for a doctor appointment. It was her daughter’s one year check up and given the amazing growth in the past few months, Beverly was eager to talk to the doctor about all she had observed.

“Not now honey,” she said. “Ill try when we get back, ok?”

“I want my doll!” shrieked the daughter, pulling away and trying to see down the grate again.

“Not now,” said the mother.

Two things occurred simultaneously: The doll appeared in the girl’s hand, the hand that had a second before been held by her mother, and her mother appeared in the middle of the street. The driver of the bus that hit her didn’t even know he had hit something until a block later. He never saw the daughter.

Marvin saw everything.

Later that morning, Marvin sat in a police station with his one-year old daughter. She was still clutching her doll. Marvin was confused. Marvin told the police a story that made no sense, was fantastical. Marvin was traumatized, beyond what any person could hope to be and remain in command of their faculties. Marvin repeated his story over and over again. No one had seen anything but Marvin, and by all accounts, the police told each other, it was likely that he had not really seen anything either.

One year later, when the daughter was two, Marvin attempted to leave this life. His daughter was in a special school for gifted children in the downtown area, during lunch hour, when the school got the call. Marvin went to a hospital and then Marvin was sent to another hospital, and he stayed there.

The daughter was quickly shuffled into social services, and then placed with a foster family. She continued to go to the school for gifted children. At the age of 5 she was sent to a school in Virginia for savants. It was a boarding school. Her first memories were of that school, and the tests that she was given. The practicing she did. The fun she had.

By the age of 7 she recalled having a name for her specific set of abilities: teleportation by telekinesis. Her studies included the full mastery of normal subjects through a 12th grade level, and the ability to master the mental state that allowed for the disappearance of objects from one location and appearance in another.

Until she was 12 she remembered doing “tests” of these abilities for various instructors and doctors. Also for various guests. Some “tests” were completed on site at the school in Virginia. Some were in the field in other locations.

She had no memory of her abilities giving her any deep satisfaction. And like others that she had heard of in the school who were capable of similar tricks, her ability to control her “trick” began to deteriorate right around the age of 11. Age 10 had seen her peak and then it had gone downhill after that. Right before her 11th birthday she recalled a number of incidents involving unexpected transportation of persons who were testing her. She was never told the outcomes of those incidents, but she never saw the individuals again. And then she was only able to make it work on smaller and smaller objects. And then only very randomly.

No one ever explained to her why her training stopped. She assumed she just wasn’t very useful anymore. After all, she had been a bit of a disappointment recently. And she didn’t ask. As intelligent as she was, her raising had left in her a unique flaw, not unlike that of a battered child or a beaten dog. She would not be able to say when or how, and she had no memory of any specific punishments or trauma in her training, but she had learned very early on a very important fact – people who are older than you in positions of power do not like being questioned. If information is relevant to you, you will be told. End of story. So she did not ask questions. Asking questions caused problems.

When she was 13 she was transferred to a small compound in the woods in Colorado. There were only a few other kids there, also teens.

Then the compound had been emancipated.

It had happened on a warm summer night when she was 16. She recalled fireflies playing in the lawn outside of her bedroom window. At this school they didn’t do any training. She assumed that she and the others had grown out of her abilities. She didn’t miss them. All they did there were backwoods survivalist work, gardening, math, and science. She learned some carpentry. She learned how to drive a car.

The emancipation was explained to her as freeing her from government control. There had been guns, and blood. One of the other teens had bled out like a rabbit on the lawn with the fireflies. It seemed she had not wanted to be emancipated. None of this mattered to Marvin’s daughter. One set of teachers were much like another. She had recently been experiencing a boredom in this “school” and so any change was a welcome change.

The leader of the emancipators was named Cal. He told her and the other 4 teens that came with her that they had been used by the government all their lives. She was told that the government (she was unclear on exactly WHO in the government) had used kids like them to kill political rivals, to move around power, to change wartime fortunes. Not ever having politics and international news be a core part of her focus, and having a very low level of curiosity about things not directly related to her, Marvin’s daughter let the information wash over her like the last remnants of a cold shower.

She was told that she was in danger and that Cal and the others would take care of her and the other teens. She was told that there were factions in the government looking to wipe out all remnants of the program that had raised her. She was told that she would hide in plain sight in rural America and that they would teach her how.

She had lived in 7 towns since she was 18. She was now leaving the 7th. And during the sequence of moving, and red light green light, despite her hardwired lack of general curiosity, she had developed a calm set of questions for the universe. Once she started to allow them to huddle at the back of her mind, they soon became a solid, unmovable, growing mass: Did I every have an ability? If so, what was it really? Are people really still after me? I’ve never seen anyone. Could I maybe stop running? Could I maybe have an ability again?

---

She had been driving for 4 and a half hours. The Prius had an amazing gas to miles capacity and she was only down a quarter of a tank. She pulled over at a small stop just before heading into a city area to get food.

She parked in the back lot of a Denny’s and stretched her neck. As she walked through the lot she noticed a man walking from an older black sedan parked in the front lot. She noticed him because he was walking stiffly, like someone who had to pee who was holding it in, or someone who had an injury who was trying to baby it. And he was staring at her. As she watched he sat down at a park bench close to the walkway leading to the main entrance of the restaurant. He sat down into a mannikin pose, easing himself down, his back straight, his arms at his sides. He continued to look at her. She purposefully chose not to see him and walked into the diner.

When she came out the bench was empty. Something about the man

caused her to have a sense of warning in her chest. Her training taught her to

be cautious of anyone showing too much interest in her. But it was likely just a nobody, as most people were.

She stopped that night at a small bed and breakfast. She put down an alias, collected her keys, and went to her room. It was a small studio, with a queen bed, bathroom, and kitchenette. She had stopped at a Target on the way through the last town and purchased clothing and toiletries, along with a small duffle bag. She had also taken out cash. She placed her few items on the bed and locked the door behind her.

The place was on a busy road, set back only slightly from the noise. She took her time crossing the street, waiting for the right gap between the cars, ending up at a small diner that looked quaint and well frequented by the locals. She told the hostess “For one please” and was seated by the window near the front door. She scanned the diner’s guests. There were only 5 that she could see. A sixth was looking at their menu. Marvin’s daughter kept looking up, waiting for the person to lower their menu so she could see their face. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but something tickled at the back of her brain.

She looked up from her menu as the waitress came over. “Know what you want yet hon?” the waitress asked. Marvin’s daughter looked up. The menu was down. The man from the bench sat starting at her from the booth at the opposite side of the restaurant. She stared back. He slowly stretched his face into a smile that did not reach his eyes.

“Hon?” the waitress asked again.

“I’m sorry,” she replied. “Something came up and I have to leave. I’m sorry.” She slid out of her seat and was out the front door in the space of a few breaths. She turned to make sure she wasn’t being followed.

She was being followed.

The man stood only a few feet from her, just to the side of the diner’s entrance. She could feel the rush of the air of the traffic going past on the road to her right. The cars driving past were perhaps 15 feet away, although somehow the breeze their passage created was more noticeable to her in that moment than their sound. But the sound was there. It would take raising her voice to be heard clearly over it.

Thus her voice was loud when she spoke:

“Who are you? What do you want?” she asked.

The man just stared at her. The smile was gone. He wasn’t old, but he looked worn. His hair was grey. His eyes looked filmy.

He moved toward her.

The tickle in the back of her mind turned into a roar.

“What do you want?” she repeated. She had been told what to do.

She could run. She could fight. She could pretend the person wasn’t there. It was too late for that one.

The man stopped mid stride.

He said something too softly. She couldn’t make out the words.

“What?” she asked.

He spoke again right as a semi went past. She couldn’t make anything out.

He stepped toward her again. Maybe six feet away now.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a picture, an actual printed picture on photography paper. It was of a small girl, a toddler, sitting on the lap of a dark haired woman and a light haired man. He held it out to her to see.

There was a lull in the traffic.

“I’m Marvin,” he said. “This,” he pointed to the man in the photo, “is me. Who are you?”

She heard the roar in her head again, or maybe it was the traffic.

She reached for the photo. It was in her hands. She looked down at it.

A few seconds later she heard the squeal of brakes as a semi on the road next to her came to a careening, sudden, stop.

At the sound, she broke her gaze from the picture and looked up.

The man was gone.

“Marvin?” she asked. There was no answer.

----

The police spoke to the waitress at the roadside diner. She described a quiet young woman with short blond hair. She described the man who had followed her, how he had sat at the diner for an hour before she arrived. How he had ordered nothing but black coffee. How he had obviously been waiting for someone.

The investigation turned up nothing. No surveillance footage. No evidence of an occupant in the girl’s room at the B & B. The girl was just- gone.

The one thing the girl had left behind was a grey Prius. It was empty save a single item: a cat collar with a small blue fish on it - and no name.