Just give me the trees Who: Kal & Max What: More floor shenanigans Where: The Deluxe Floor When: Backdated to April 19
Kal didn’t know what day it was anymore. He couldn’t keep track of what had and hadn’t happened. Everything was weird. The dreams that were like real life, the real life that seemed to be dreams. He couldn’t break out of the damn apartment, he couldn’t find Anaise, and he buried his annoyances with both issues through the random hallway alcohol and his stash of weed.
Now, however many days into the week of strange floors, Kal found himself meandering the halls and investigating the different floors and all the various offerings they gave. He still had a pocket filled with chocolate protein bars for Anaise, if he found her that is, and another pocket filled a couple blunts he had happily been working through floor by floor.
When he reached the deluxe floor, he paused in the doorway and smiled. “Hey, look at you,” Kal said with a wild grin as he spotted Max down the hall.
Max had long since abandoned her tattered pajamas from days ago, instead wandering briefly back to her apartment for her bikini and a few pairs of shorts and crop shirts for lounging on the banks of the Nile. A campfire smoldered in front of a little makeshift hut she’d thrown together out of reeds and palm wood and leaves on her first day here, the inside lined with plush pillows and blankets pilfered from other floors. Cali was scampering about in the sand after a tiny gecko she’d found, batting it around with her paws and wiggling her butt as she prepared to pounce. Max looked up from her baby and smiled widely at Kal, her sun-bronzed skin caked with sand as she stood on bare feet and wandered over to him.
“Well hello to you to,” she grinned up at him, looking for all the world as if she was completely at home in her desert paradise. “Care to join me?” she asked, gesturing to her stash of pilfered fruits from around the beach - grapes, dates, figs, pomegranates, melons, a few sandy unmarked bottles of rum from her floor, and of course a small pile of various meats she found on a few altars around the building which she and Cali were far more interested in than the fruit.
“Sure,” Kal said with a grin. He wandered the hall and smiled at the little beach dwelling Max had created. “I’m guessing you’ve seen other floors other than this one, right? It’s amazing that every one of them doesn’t just look different but feels different. I’m definitely overdressed.” He held out his arms to indicate the ratty gym shirt and hiking shorts he was wearing along with hiking shoes.
Max grinned at him, “well this is the exact opposite of 7-11 - no admittance if you are wearing a shirt and shoes,” she laughed. She led him back to her camp and resumed her cross-legged vigil beside the coals of her fire where she’d been roasting some meat on a stick. “It’s amazing,” she said, returning to his marveling over the transformations. “I managed to pilfer some good stuff from the different floors,” she said, reaching behind her as she spoke for one of the bottles of rum that was still full and popped the cork, taking a swig and handing it to him. “Did you find anything good? What does your floor look like? I found a machete on the tenth floor so I could build myself my little love nest,” she grinned, tilting her head back towards her hut. “That floor is messed up, man.”
“It’s like we’re living in a tree,” Kal replied, sitting down beside Max and bending over to work on taking off his hiking boots. One boot was kicked off, then the other, followed by his socks. Kal stretched his legs out in front of him and began work on his ratty shirt, pulling it off in one motion and leaving it on top of the boots. “Roots and shade, but also massive kegs of booze. That’s pretty fucking great, just gotta lean out our door and we have something to drink. Chris and I got shitfaced off of it. Well, Chris probably did more than me. Hey, you haven’t seen a little girl running around, have you?”
Max’s eyebrows rose at the description, so incredibly different from where they now were, but she could somehow picture it in her mind. She may have to visit that floor, at least for the free booze. But she shook her head when he asked about the little girl, a look of alarm in her eyes now. “No! There’s a lost child? I didn’t know...I should go help find her, there’s crocodiles and stuff around…” she said, getting up from the sand. A fierce protectiveness suddenly taking hold of her, and she looked around herself as if the little girl would suddenly appear out of the tall grass.
“Yeah, her name is Anaise,” Kal began to explain as he reached into his pockets and pulled free a blunt. “Little thing, like five or so, and super cute. We were going to go hiking on Sunday and she literally disappeared from sight. Her mom made a post on the network, hasn’t made any updates. I’m guessing she still hasn’t found her.
“I tried to break out of a couple windows to get to the police and I can’t. Been looking for her on and off since Sunday and I haven’t seen her anywhere. It’s kind of awful.” Kal laid back into the sand and held the blunt off, inspecting it and ensuring it was perfect for use. “I’ve definitely been going back and forth between being high and drunk, and looking for the kid when I’m sober. So maybe stay here if there are crocodiles, just to make sure she doesn’t come in here and get eaten by one.”
Max’s concern wavered a little the moment she saw the blunt in his hand, and her eyes didn’t leave it the entire time he spoke. Hungry eyes, watching his every move with it. “At least we know she can’t have gotten out of the building,” she reasoned distractedly. “Maybe she’ll find her way home eventually.” If the crocs don’t get her first, she thought in the back of her mind.
“Did you bring enough to share with the rest of the class?” she asked, eyebrow raised, eyes finally sliding from his hand to his eyes.
“I’ve got two,” Kal reached into his pocket and withdrew another. Max smiled widely, shifting closer to him on the sand like a cat spotting something delicious in someone else’s hands. “You don’t mind, do you? I mean with a campfire and all that, I guess we aren’t going to smoke ourselves out with this floor being the way it is.” He shifted onto his elbows and frowned, having already gotten sand onto his bare stomach, but reached out to offer the other blunt to Max all the same. “I suppose if I can’t get outside to surf, at least I can lay here.”
Max happily took the blunt from his fingers, gently as if she’d break it. Shifting on the sand, she reached towards the glowing coals in her campfire, pulling out a half-burned stick and using it as a lighter, passing it carefully to Kal when she was done. Once it took, she pulled a long drag from the other end and held it for a long time, sighing it out slowly with a smile. “You could always swim in the river,” she said with a grin, gesturing behind him to the body of water not far from them. “Though if you get bit I’m not wrestling a croc for you,” she added with a wink.
“I could wrestle with a crocodile,” Kal announced as he lit his own blunt and took a long drag, closing his mouth and eyes as he held the smoke within his lungs before slowly blowing it out of his nose. He stretched out his legs into the sand and propped his head up with an arm. “Have you ever been to Egypt? Or the Middle East? You seem so content in this element.”
“Compared to what? You hardly know me,” she said with a playful smirk, but he was right, she was. Being here in the sand was...the happiest she could ever remember being. “I was deployed in Afghanistan for my first...and last...tour of duty,” she said, shifting in the sand onto her back and taking another long drag. “It was different there,” she said after exhaling, “total chaos. Here...it's peaceful.”
“Afghanistan is a lot different from Egypt,” Kal replied with a voice of knowledge. He looked at Max from the corner of his eye and nodded to himself as if to answer a question he asked internally of whether or not he should push the conversation a little further. “And if you were there for the military, it’s certainly worse. I didn’t realize you served; you glad you’re home?”
She shrugged, “It’s the Middle East though,” she said, eyes fixed on the sky and the incredibly real looking whisps of clouds overhead. She listened to his question, realizing she’d walked into it on her own, so she couldn’t exactly change the subject now. “Yeah,” she said simply, “yeah it kind of sucked. I liked it at first, but...they didn’t like me, so whatever.” She shrugged again as if it was no big deal, even though it most certainly was a big deal, and took another drag of her blunt, holding it long enough for her lungs to burn before letting it out slowly.
“Well, you’re better off here. Where else can you walk out of your apartment and sit by the Nile in a hallway then go down a floor and steal some mead?” Kal teased lightly, not wanting to press the issue as he noticed Max’s general discomfort. He let his head fall back to the sandy shore and sighed. “This entire week I’ve been either stoned or drunk. I think it’s the only way to keep myself from going insane. You know, I tried to break a window to get out and the window was unbreakable? I used a fucking pick ax and it still wouldn’t chip.”
Max was grateful for his change of subject. She felt a chuckle bubbling up inside her at his escape frustrations. “I’d like to have seen that,” her laughter turned into a fit of uncontrollable giggles as the mental image just got funnier and funnier. “Did you like, bounce off it or something? Like, are we trapped in an unbreakable rubber room or something? Maybe we’re living UNDER THE DOME like in that show I saw once…”
“It did bounce off,” Kal laughed, causing more peals of laughter from Max, so that she rolled onto her side clutching her stomach with one hand. “The whole damn thing bounced off and flew backwards. It chipped the side of my cabinets in the kitchen. If I think about it too much, it gets a little worrisome. Like, what the hell would we do if there was a fire? But at the same time, with all that’s happening, I have to also believe we’re somehow safe. At least that feels like the right thing to believe. I really miss being outside though. I want to surf.”
Her laughter calmed a little when he started talking about sobering things like the possibility of being trapped in a burning building, but she had to agree with his assessment. Something about this thing that was happening, these changes...she didn’t feel vulnerable. She felt safe and secure where she was. She was sure that nothing would hurt her; she doubted even the crocs were dangerous, though didn’t really want to find out for sure.
“If you want to surf, I heard there’s ocean on the ninth floor...or was it just ocean sounds? But we can swim here. I don’t know how far out it goes, but I’ve been taking a dip in the water at least once a day since I got here. It’s nice and warm,” she said with a wan smile, taking another drag of her blunt and lying back on the warm sand.
“Hmm, maybe after we finish this,” Kal replied happily. He rolled to his side and looked at Max with a smirk. “You’re as content as your kitten. Speaking of, I met Brent, isn’t he the guy who may or may not have attracted cats into the apartment? BB and I sprayed him down with a hose.” He moved back onto his back, smiling at the memory, and brought the blunt to his lips.
Max laughed loudly at the thought. “Ohh, he needs it,” she giggled. “He was up here, although he didn’t like the heat very much. And he drank my rum. AND he wouldn’t help me build my hut!” she said with a playful pout, glancing over at her makeshift home. “But he aiight,” she said with a shrug, “he helped me with Cali when I first found her wandering around all alone, so I’m kind of in his debt.” She took another drag, watching her kitten play in the sand and letting out a long sigh of pleasure. “Would have loved to see him get hosed though,” she added, giggling, the sounds turning into full-on peals of laughter as the mental image came back.
“It was great but he was pissed. I mean, understandably, his fucking place was soaking wet but it was kind of like a hoarder’s nest. It might help him out or something. He was singing with a karaoke machine and it was just awful” Kal tried to imitate Brent’s singing, all high pitched and nasal, his hands moving as if he were holding a microphone.
Max laughed even harder, “ohh my god, you sprayed him IN his apartment? No wonder he was so mad, you probably ruined all of his stuff!” His horrible imitation of something attempting to sing sent her into even more peals of laughter. “That’s AWFUL! At least you put him out of his misery!” She took another drag, though was laughing so hard she started coughing a little. She picked herself up and found a half-full bottle of rum near her pile of food, taking a good swig to still her throat. She was about to bring it back to Kal, but then thought better of it and grabbed a few random pieces of fruit and meat on a leaf, bringing those too.
“One thing I can say about all this weird shit happening, is the food is great,” she said, handing Kal the bottle of rum and pulling apart a chunk of roasted meat she’d found on an altar a few floors down, popping it in her mouth.
Kal took a sip of the rum and grinned. “The floors are pretty great, and the booze, but I do wish we could be more a part of it or get out of the apartment. One or the other, none of this in between crap. The fourth floor is like Hawaii and it makes me homesick.” He closed his eyes, nestled on the ground and drunkenly sleepy.
Max’s brows rose. “What? There’s a Hawaii floor? Is there ocean there? You could surf!” she tore more bits of meat and offered some of them to Cali when she wandered over with a hopeful meow. She took another drag of her blunt, burning it almost to her fingers and holding the smoke in for a long time before letting it out. “Dude, we need more of this,” she said, holding up the end of it in her fingers. “That’s some good shit.”
“I don’t fuck around when it comes to my bud,” Kal said with a smile, ensuring the roach of his blunt was out and tucking it back into his pocket. “And yeah, the fourth floor reminds me of Hawaii. Not chance to surf though, but it’s nice. I’m thinking I should fly back to Hawaii sometime soon. Maybe take my grandmother with me, she’d definitely love it.” He closed his eyes and let out a sigh. “Lay down, let’s enjoy the high.”
Max grinned and shifted on the sand, abandoning her little picnic and settling in on her side next to Kal. “I’d love to go to Hawaii some day,” she said, rolling onto her side so she could snuggle up against Kal’s side, her cheek pressed against broad chest and one arm snaking across his waist. “But for now, I’m happy here.” She paused and looked up at him, a gleam in her eye. “I’ll smoke your bud anytime,” she grinned, shifting back to lay against him and letting the warmth and the high lull her into a pleasant sleep.
“It’s a deal,” Kal murmured before he too fell asleep.