Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 31 (Kite & Eddie Meet Again)
Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 31 of the my online book “Excited Delirium”. Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index.
The knot in Kite’s stomach was tense and tight. He hated seeing people from his past, for more reasons than just the obvious security risk. He hated seeing people from his past because they almost always fail to recognize him for who he is. The present never exists. It’s always about the past and for Kite, a lot of traits that represented his old self are ones that he wants to keep in the past.
Eddie was no different.
As Kite saw Eddie from across the conference room, his first instinct was to duck, but he reminded himself that “The Man” would be an important tool in his next mission.
“Carl Parkfield …” Eddie said, with a big glowing smile on his face.
Kite always hated the name, as it was his official porn name. You know, the first name being that of your first pet and the last name being that of your first home or address. It makes for a funny name because most people have a cat like “Buffy” for a cat or “Slither” for a snake, but Kite only ever remembered having an uncle who had a dog named Carl. Besides, Buffy Parkfield wouldn’t work well in the corporate environment.
The game was consistent with Kite’s emotions about meeting people from the past. With these two names ground together, you get some fake alternate identity. To match the fake, alternate reality he lived in.
For both men, images of their past came hurtling forward to this moment. Eddie saw Kite as he knew him when they were at home: relaxed, yet high as a kite as a result of near-chronic use of his favourite bong. He also saw the quiet, reserved loner that never really said much when they all went out on the town for a few pints because he always seemed so nervous about everything.
Kite saw Eddie as the loud, boorish social climber. The best man on campus. Lots of booze, enough beer funnels to sink the Edmund Fitzgerald, the occasional use of drugs and many, many hugs and other signs of physical contact that now made his skin crawl.
Eddie was still an overtly gregarious personality and this always bothered Kite a little. He’s what you’d call a close talker and always interfered with your personal space as you walked somewhere. Of course, Kite put up with it because Eddie introduced him to many people in university, in essence giving him a social life. Kite also enjoyed the subsidized living that he had with Eddie while they lived together.
“Are you gonna tell me what you’ve been doing all these years or am I going to have to look you up and see what records we’ve got on you?” Eddie joked, giving him a big smack on the right arm.
“I don’t think you’d find a lot,” Kite responded quietly. “I’m working as a temp through Garamond Services. I’m helping with some of the tech upgrades.”
“Nice. Switching us over to Linux, right? I hope so. Nothin’ worse than one monopoly relying on another.”
There were a few brief introductions and then Eddie pulled Kite aside and starts to tell him more about the OMNINet. He’s bragging at first, but there’s a bit of fear to what he has to say. It’s obvious that Eddie has been in need of someone to share his experiences with, but he hasn’t had anyone around him that he can actually trust.
“We gotsta get together, buddy and I can tell you all about this crazy fucked up place,” Eddie offers. “Too bad I didn’t see you until you agreed to sign up!”
“Yeah man … let’s do that. What works for you?”
“How about later tonight after work. We’ll down a few cold ones over at Mickies.”
(Note: “Excited Delirium” is a work of fiction. Any person, place or thing depicted in this work of fiction is also a work of fiction. Any relation of these subjects or characters to real locations, people or things are an unintentional coincidence.)
Did you miss a chapter? If so, click here to see all chapters or click here to go to Excited Delirium: Chapter 1 (Prelude)
Excited Delirium by Liam Young is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.
Based on a work at www.exciteddelirium.ca.
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