[ He could've told her the post was unnecessary. The mattress is soaked through. No amount of ammonia solution, hydrogen peroxide, or corn starch can salvage this mess. In the end, Hei's resolved to simply discard the mattress. Pricier to replace than sheets, true, but in the end, it's all blood-stained semantics. ]
[ Blotting out a better part of the seepage, ignoring the copper tang hanging heavily in the air, he props the mattress up to dry in the balcony -- tilted sideways, so no-one on the floors above can see the blood. Once that's done, he makes his way to Pai. It's like a tailormade crime scene in there, red smeared over the tile floor and Pai sitting in the bathtub. The memories gathering quietly under the surface of his mind are inevitable. South America. Even as he marches through the wooden maze of the house, South America is expanding and unfolding in his mind, stretched open and as searingly green as Amber's hair, with its straight-lined barracks and cracked-open gray mornings too sharp to breathe in and all of it scorched and clawed over, split open, by the black and red gashes of warfare. ]
[ Yet somehow it's freeing to have South America in front of him for a change, as opposed to lingering behind him, breathing down his neck. ]
[ Arms folded, he leans against the bathroom doorjamb, regarding Pai quietly, ]
Should I take you to the Beach? The Drowning Pool?
[ Some place that'll wash the blood away. (Literally, not figuratively.) ]
action;
[ Blotting out a better part of the seepage, ignoring the copper tang hanging heavily in the air, he props the mattress up to dry in the balcony -- tilted sideways, so no-one on the floors above can see the blood. Once that's done, he makes his way to Pai. It's like a tailormade crime scene in there, red smeared over the tile floor and Pai sitting in the bathtub. The memories gathering quietly under the surface of his mind are inevitable. South America. Even as he marches through the wooden maze of the house, South America is expanding and unfolding in his mind, stretched open and as searingly green as Amber's hair, with its straight-lined barracks and cracked-open gray mornings too sharp to breathe in and all of it scorched and clawed over, split open, by the black and red gashes of warfare. ]
[ Yet somehow it's freeing to have South America in front of him for a change, as opposed to lingering behind him, breathing down his neck. ]
[ Arms folded, he leans against the bathroom doorjamb, regarding Pai quietly, ]
Should I take you to the Beach? The Drowning Pool?
[ Some place that'll wash the blood away. (Literally, not figuratively.) ]