Goner House: The Return of Patience

Chapter 32 A Product of the Concern Corporation

  “Such a grand lady!” was his comment to them about Prevarica’s exit. “Rule the world! I asked her to bring me more water fifteen minutes ago, and she’d better be getting it.” He pointed to a plastic gallon jug on the floor beside his chair, then looked up at them suspiciously. “I admit nothing,” he said firmly. “You’ll get nothing out of me. I’ve done nothing wrong, so I expect to be vindicated. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Now leave me alone.”

  “Glad to,” Dignity said. “We just want to use your ladder here and go upstairs.”

  “You have no permission to touch my ladder or to enter my house,” Guiles barked.

  “Got to. There’s a lady named Prayer who needs some attention.”

  “Do you know what I think of her?” Guiles said, rising. “She’s a homeless, penniless freeloader, and yet she has the gall to be condescending, to look down her nose.”

  “But all of that describes you.”

  Guiles made a loud, dismissing sound and sat down again. “You want some sort of statement,” he said.

  “Not really. We just want to use your ladder.”

  “You want a statement from me, I know you do. Well, here it is. Listen carefully and remember. I have tried my whole life to live decently and do right by others, and yet I find myself persecuted and victimized by everyone. There’s so much owed to me that it can never be counted. No amount of apology would ever be enough. Not that I hear you apologizing. No, you’re too selfish for that. But I get the last laugh. In the end you can’t touch me. Why? Because you can’t take my me away from me. You probably don’t understand that. It’s really quite simple. Here I am with myself and, as soon as you’re gone from this room, with no one else. I get to have me, I’m making off with me, and all you can do is howl behind me, but you’ll never get me. Do you think I don’t know my own value? I’ll tell you a secret, I’m worth more than the whole world and everyone in it. There now, who wins then? Who are the real losers? Go on, use my ladder, I don’t care.”

  Before he had finished this speech, Reason had started up the ladder, shining her cell phone light ahead of her, and Dignity now followed. In moments they were in the Goner House basement proper, also lighted only by the ghost fires, and immediately they found Agent Prayer. She was lying on a mattress to the side of the house’s true furnace, covered with blankets, a few personal possessions around her. She was conscious, but when they tried to talk to her, appeared to be drugged.

  Reason brought out the special medicine that Patience had sent for her to ingest. It was in the form of bite sized biscuits, and on the lid of the container was written ‘Sympathy Biscuits, A product of the Concern Corporation. #3 Endurance Court, Crown Mountain, HV 70707.’ After Prayer had eaten a few, she began to recognize her rescuers but admitted she could not quite remember their names.

  “Do you remember that we’re members of the Heavenly Intelligence Mission Force?” Reason asked helpfully

  “Oh, yes, you made a joke about the Highly Improbable Mission Force,” Prayer said, suddenly remembering at least one thing clearly. “Improbable not impossible. If this mission had been impossible, I would have been dismissed from duty and sent someplace else.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll have you out of here in a few minutes.”

  “Out? Why would I want to leave? Don’t you know this has become my home? No, I’m staying right here.”