\n\u201cThis is disgusting.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou\u2019re just being difficult.\u201d He always accuses me of being difficult.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cNo, it\u2019s disgusting.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWould you just go with it? This is supposed to help you.\u201d He shifted his weight to his other foot, that way he does when he\u2019s trying to look like he\u2019s not pouting.\n<\/p>\n
\nI sighed and rolled my eyes at him, even granted him a little smirk. Partly because he\u2019s still cute \u2013 the salt-and-pepper at his temples is probably my fault \u2013 and partly because the hip-shift caused a weird little disturbance in the hologram being shot up by a hundred little projectors embedded in the floor. \u201cFine.\u201d I could survive this. I was promised pizza afterward.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThank god.\u201d He turned and started a little at the projection he had interrupted. There was part of a woman there, jaw agape in surprise. When he stepped back, the rest of the image was unimpeded, and her arm materialized in front of her. This exhibit was supposed to be solemn. I giggled anyways.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThis isn\u2019t funny.\u201d His pout gone, he now had on his stern eyes.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d I hoped it sounded genuine.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThis isn\u2019t going to work unless you at least try to be serious.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI know, I know.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nHe considered the hologram woman for a moment, now that he wasn\u2019t standing inside her. She was lit up from the front, and her line of sight indicated something horrifying behind us. I knew what it was. I didn\u2019t want to look yet.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cMichael Whitmore.\u201d He read the tag that hovered next to the woman frozen in fright, her hand covering her face.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cHer name was \u2018Michael?\u2019\u201d I tried the smirk again.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cStop.\u201d He sounded real serious this time.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou like this sort of thing. You brought me here.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cBecause your therapist thought it would be a good idea.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nPepperoni. \u201cRight.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nHe looked down at the glossy pamphlet he held tight in both hands, then back up at me. \u201cIt\u2019s a safe way \u2013 \u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a safe way to relive a traumatic event, allowing me to process it with higher-order thinking skills, to help the healing process.\u201d She\u2019d been feeding me that shit for weeks now, ever since the financing came through.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt could help.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThis has nothing to do with \u2013 \u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cStop. We both know why she recommended this.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYeah, but you secretly love it. It\u2019s like the Hiroshima museum.\u201d I wasn\u2019t going to go down without saying my piece.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou\u2019re deflecting.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cFine.\u201d I leaned my head way back, stretching my neck. He could have this one. Besides, he did love museums. Who was I to deny him this?\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cMichael Whitmore.\u201d He faced the woman again. \u201cShe was a zookeeper, meeting the Thai ambassador to discuss breeding a captive Asian Golden Cat.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cBoring.\u201d I could taste the crust, flaky on the outside, steamy on the inside.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cShe was a mother of two. Over there was where the shooting started. At least in this building. She was the first victim.\u201d A red line on the floor indicated her eyeline, just in case visitors were too dense to figure out what she\u2019d be looking at.\n<\/p>\n
\nA man in a light brown t-shirt very obviously pointed a rifle in her direction. Only, the rifle wasn\u2019t displayed in the hologram. So he just stood there like an ass with one hand twisted up by his nipple and the other cradling the air in front of him. Something about trigger warnings. Triggers. We could have opted into the tour that showed everything, but the therapist had other thoughts about that. Baby steps.\n<\/p>\n
\nA blue square resolved a few meters beyond the woman, a crowd of people appearing with it, all responding to the same empty-handed assailant. There was a fat man with an unoccupied holster at his belt. He was frozen for all eternity trying to retrieve nothing out of it. Or until they needed the building for something else. Nothing lasts forever.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhitman,\u201d he read the security guard\u2019s badge. \u201cHe\u2019s the only one named in the group. These were the \u2013 \u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhitmore and Whitman. No relation.\u201d I tried to get him to crack a smile. \u201cWhitmore and Whitman, attourneys at law? Nothing?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cBabe.\u201d He tilted his head to the side. Tired now. Another reaction for the bingo card.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cOkay,\u201d I sighed, a little more dramatically than I intended, and he turned away.\n<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019d been through worse. And there was cheese and tomato at the end of this rainbow.\n<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWe can either go down here, or across the way.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat\u2019s across the way?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nHe scanned the flyer again. \u201cUh, downstairs follows this shooter as he made his way through the building. Across the way is the adjacent building, where the other gunmen were.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThis is morbid.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt\u2019s history.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cHow long is this gonna take?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIf we only do the one tower, it\u2019s a little over an hour for a walkthrough. According to the flyer.\u201d He offered it to me like it was another testament of Jesus Christ.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cCan we just do the one tower? I\u2019m hungry.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe other tower is where the first of the explosions went off.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cDon\u2019t sound too excited about this.\u201d I again tried to be playful.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe daycare is in the other building, too.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI really don\u2019t want to see that.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI don\u2019t either.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nOne time, at that museum in Japan, he had been weirdly drawn to this one replica of a schoolboy\u2019s uniform. The title card said they couldn\u2019t find a complete one, so the display had been cobbled together from the bodies of three separate children. This place wasn\u2019t trying to echo that one, though. It was trying to do its own thing. Experimental. Pushing some envelope.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThere were three gunmen in the other building,\u201d he rattled on. \u201cDocuments found later said this guy wanted to go it alone.\u201d He shuddered.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cLet\u2019s just stick to this one then.\u201d Shortest distance between two points. \u201cWe can look online later at what\u2019s in the other one. Like a highlight reel.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cAlways with the jokes.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nI stopped. \u201cYou have to let me process this my own way.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI just want you to take it seriously. If you\u2019re just gonna keep being snarky it\u2019s not gonna help.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cBaby steps.\u201d I finally gave him the eyes I knew he was looking for. He always gets all mushy when I give him that look.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe next floor down sent us around a corner and we were standing behind the same shooter, a wall of people rising in front of the three of us. They were all scrambling, parted in the middle like the red sea, those to our left falling right and those to our right falling to the left. He was empty handed still, in Rambo-pose, one leg cocked out in front of him, so masculine.\n<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019ve shot my rifle plenty of times. I\u2019ve never kicked my hip out quite like that. Motherfucker had been grandstanding.\n<\/p>\n
\nStrapped to his back was an olive backpack. Some hovering text told us that was where he\u2019d schlepped the bomb along with him. It had dangly straps.\n<\/p>\n
\nI stepped right in the projection of him, my frame smaller than his in most places. I tried to kick my leg out in front of me the same way he was, but my bones never came back together right so it hurt to pop my hip out like that. I blocked most of the hologram, even sticking my arms out in front of me, not-holding the gun the same way he had been. I couldn\u2019t cover the backpack, making it sort of look like I was wearing it, and the sides of his chest were bigger than mine, so my boobs jutted out in front. Something about the position of my head kept his from rendering though, so I mostly blocked him from existence.\n<\/p>\n
\nI wondered how many other people had done this. I pictured teenagers coming here and mocking the tragedy. They wouldn\u2019t have lived enough life to know better.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nMy heart dropped, thinking he might be thinking that I was trying to make fun in the same way.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou wonder if other people come here \u2013\u201d I lowered my arms, and the gunman\u2019s flickered in front of me again. \u201cDo they come here and pretend if they stand right here, they can stop this from happening? Like retroactively?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cNot for real, dummy.\u201d I stood up straight again, much more of the gunman revealed now. \u201cLike, do they come here, and just for a minute, pretend like if they stood here, then he wouldn\u2019t exist, and all of those poor bastards there would still be alive?\u201d My gaze fell to an old guy in a janitor\u2019s uniform. Probably had expected this to be a typical work day. Wonder who he\u2019d left behind.\n<\/p>\n
\nHe continued reading, something about a French restaurant below us, bomb placement, the structural integrity of this building.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhere was the bomb in the other building?\u201d I\u2019d only been half-listening.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cUh, says the next floor down over there was an electrical room. The uh, the model of the blast over there is actually limited to the floor above the explosion, since the floor they detonated it on was unoccupied.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cNot much drama there.\u201d All these people are still dead. And yet you\u2019re still here.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou okay?\u201d He asked, emotional roulette making it all the way to \u201cconcerned\u201d now.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIf this is too much \u2013\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cNo.\u201d I on-purpose said this with what I hoped was resolve. \u201cI want to see it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIf you\u2019re sure.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou started this. \u2018C\u2019mon, let\u2019s go to the memorial museum. It\u2019ll be fun.\u2019 Like I don\u2019t know you\u2019re in cahoots with her.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019m in some of those sessions with you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nI cherish the moments I get to deadpan him.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cRight. Kidding again. I just want to make sure you\u2019re okay. I want to push you, but not too much.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019m a big girl. I\u2019ll tell you if you\u2019re taking things too far. Besides, I know you\u2019re eating this up.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou have to admit, it is interesting.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cMaybe for you. You know I think \u2018museum\u2019 is spelled B-O-R-I-N-G.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou sure you\u2019re okay?\u201d Damn him.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThere are some things you just don\u2019t want to see again.\u201d He waited patiently for me to say it. \u201cNo, let\u2019s go. I\u2019m not going to let a display scare me away. Let\u2019s at least have a look. That way you\u2019ll get your money\u2019s worth.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nThe bottom floor of this wing of the museum had to have been where all the funding went. It was a twisty, turn-y corridor, and we followed our favorite tan-shirted mass murderer as he entered the foyer of said restaurant, did a teenage girl with a long, pretty ponytail, crouched to reload, and then moved in to the main dining room. There were people, frozen forever in a futile leap for safety, finding cover wherever they could. The whole thing was sick, but it was interesting to be able to view the incident from such a detached lens. I didn\u2019t kid him again about how silly the censored gunman looked, but it made me think of a mime. A bald-headed, square-jawed murder-mime. Wish my sense of humor wasn\u2019t so fucked up sometimes.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe next bend took us into a recreation of the kitchen. Our de-facto tour guide was menacing a waiter in a white shirt and black tie, and there was a chef, complete with the stupid hat, standing behind him, brandishing a frying pan.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou have to admit, that\u2019s a little funny.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nHe finally gave a little, but it only showed at the corners of his eyes. There was my baby again, like he used to be. Always so worried ever since I got my deployment orders; always so serious now. I\u2019m not going to break.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cSo it says here the exhibit is designed this weird way, following him, you know?\u201d He had the pamphlet open again, his nose stuck all the way into it. Geek. \u201cThey wanted to introduce him from Michael\u2019s perspective, so you get the idea he was an invader, but then they wanted to depict the whole thing from his POV, I guess to try and humanize him? They didn\u2019t want him to look larger-than-life the whole time.\u201d He folded the paper closed and frowned.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThere\u2019s no humanizing monsters like this.\u201d I reached out and grasped at the projection of the frying pan. \u201cI\u2019m going to clobber you,\u201d I growled.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt kind of does lessen the impact,\u201d he agreed. \u201cBut I guess it really happened. This chef\u2019s name was \u2013 \u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cLet\u2019s go.\u201d I just wanted some pizza.\n<\/p>\n
\nYou know, Brooklyn Pie is right over by the museum. Eat shit.\n<\/p>\n
\nWe rounded the next bend and our man had his backpack on the floor, unzipped. The pamphlet said something about the cameras that day catching how violently the gunman ripped the bag open, and psychologists had pored over the footage in the years since, trying to deduce anything about his mindset via that jerky motion. Maybe the zipper had just been stuck. It happens. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe explosion room was just ahead, just around the next corner. He was still reading aloud, something about this being the first 3D model to be recreated with the projectors, but he sounded far away. My heart beat beneath my collarbone. I wondered how hot it would be in there, how thick the air would be, what it would smell like. There were no smells in this museum. Maybe I\u2019ll get mushrooms too.\n<\/p>\n
\nHe must have caught me breathing hard, because he got quiet. How long had I been doing that? How long had he been quiet? I was sweaty, and that was gross.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cLet\u2019s go,\u201d he said. \u201cLet\u2019s get lunch.\u201d He reached out towards me and I jerked my arm away, harder than I meant to.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019m fine. I want to go in.\u201d The corner was just up ahead. I could see some of the ambient light around it. The website claimed this was the more \u201cvisually stunning\u201d of the explosions. There\u2019s no way some stupid hologram can capture the force, the impact, the forever ringing in the ears, the aftermath of something like that. Why even try? For remembrance? It\u2019s not sacred, its sacrilege.\n<\/p>\n
\nI could walk right in there and pretend like I was a giant monster stomping through an explosion in a city.\n<\/p>\n
\nHe touched my elbow. \u201cAre you sure?\u201d Those fucking sad-for-me eyes again. But he wasn\u2019t trying to do something for me, or make me do anything. He was just waiting. Like he always did. Waiting for me.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cLet\u2019s go.\u201d I went around, leaving him behind.\n<\/p>\n
\n
\nI got my pepperoni. And mushrooms. Big, foldy slices, the kind where the paper plate gets all greasy and translucent and loses all structural integrity after you\u2019ve been sawing at them with a plastic fork.\n<\/p>\n
\nI kid. Who eats pizza with a fork? Terrorists, that\u2019s who.\n<\/p>\n
\nAnd I got to seem cooperative, which would get both of them off my back for a while. Progress! the psych would say, over her glasses. And then I\u2019ll smirk and lie about how much better I feel, how the blast hadn\u2019t taken away anything I couldn\u2019t get back. Baby steps.\n<\/p>\n
\nHe sat there with his hand on my knee, fork in a salad, still buried in the brochures he\u2019d snagged on the way out. He always goes for my prosthetic leg when he wants to caress me. He confessed once that he did it so I still felt like a whole woman.\n<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019ve never told him that I don\u2019t like it, because I know it\u2019s way more reassuring to him than it is to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThis is disgusting.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re just being difficult.\u201d He always accuses me of being difficult. \u201cNo, it\u2019s disgusting.\u201d \u201cWould you just go with it? This is supposed to help you.\u201d He shifted his weight to his other foot, that way he does when he\u2019s trying to look like he\u2019s not pouting. I sighed and rolled my …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106249,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19780],"tags":[19779],"class_list":["post-136539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-tcl-30-winter-2019","tag-the-colored-lens-30-winter-2019","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/106249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=136539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136540,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136539\/revisions\/136540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=136539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=136539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=136539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}