District 9 - PoHa - 03b

Chapter 3 - There's a prawn on my couch - Part 2


* = Prawn talk

Ana felt the call of nature sometime after midnight. Maybe a long time after midnight. It took her a few moments to regain full consciousness of the events that had taken place earlier that night. When she did she looked over at the prawn.
He was still sleeping peacefully, though at some point he had moved and laid down to rest his entire body on the couch. Ana watched him for a few seconds until her bladder gave a painful throb and she had to get up.
On her way to the bathroom she heard a snort and the prawn's breathing stopped. She turned around to see him peek over  the couch's arm, looking for her.
"I'll be right back, keep sleeping."
Ana disappeared behind a door and the prawn shifted lazily on the couch and started looking around at the walls and ceiling, taking in all the details that he couldn't enjoy a few hours ago for exhaustion and pain. A short while passed in which he kept himself entertained with everything a single human's dwelling could offer visually, and then a sound of clicking door lock and he sat up to receive Ana.
But Ana was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the front door swung open and another female human entered the room noisily dropping a handbag on the ground and stumbled her way through the living room looking extremely sleepy. The prawn wished he could sink in the sofa and disappear, because the woman was about to walk right past him. He pushed himself hard back against the sofa in anticipation for a panicked reaction, but the human came into view and passed in front of the sofa so heavy-eyed she didn't even notice there was an alien sitting on it. Her hair was short and shone bright blue even in the dim light.
"Hey, Ana… going to bed…" she mumbled and went through a door, closing it behind her and leaving the shocked prawn staring in its direction. At that very instant, the door on the other end of the living room opened –sounds of flushing could be heard inside –and Ana came out of it looking suspicious.
"Is there a draft in here?" she said, frowning, before locating Syrup's handbag on the floor and realizing what had just happened.
The prawn started clicking stuff at her and pointed nervously at her roommate's bedroom door. Ana hurried over to the sofa, shushing him.
"Shut up!" she breathed "for God's sake, shut up!"
She tip-toed up to the closed door and listened. A few moments of silence later she opened the door just a bit. It was dark inside. Since Syrup didn't speak up, she presumed her to be already fast asleep. Syrup was a celebrated sleeper.
Ana exhaled with relief and turned to face the prawn. He was wide awake now, waiting tamely for her to make the next move.
"It's ok, she's asleep."
The prawn sighed and visibly un-puckered his tentacles.
"Didn't she see you?"
He shook his head. Ana wasn't surprised.
"How are you feeling?" she asked sitting back down on the armchair in front of him.
The prawn clicked something.
"So… What, better?"
"Za'ih."
"Ok, 'zackee' I understand. How do you say 'no'?
"Kau."
"Good, that's a start. So how's the leg? Think it will heal?"
"Za'ih."
"Will the shell grow back?"
The prawn took a sad glance at the bandaged up talon.
"Kau."
She clicked her tongue.
"Sorry to hear that… But… you will be able to walk, right?"
"*I think so" he nodded.
"Good. I, uh… I threw away your legwarmer, it was completely destroyed.  Hope you don't mind."
He nodded again, then turned his attention to his feet and seemed to ponder for a moment. Then he bent over and took off his right legwarmer and put it on his left leg instead to even up his look. He gingerly slipped the striped piece of cloth over the patched up talon and, having one last look at himself,  decided he looked good enough.
Ana waited patiently until he was done and sat looking courteously at her again.
She smiled.
"My name's Ana."
The prawn made an odd gesture. Ana thought he could be smiling too, in his own way.
"Ana" he said with pretty good results, considering it was hard for a prawn to pronounce the 'n' sound.
"What's yours?" she asked.
The prawn spoke. He had told her his name, of that she was sure. She just couldn't make it out.
"Sorry, what was that?" she said feeling a bit embarrassed.
The prawn looked around. Ana was confused at first, thinking he had heard something, perhaps Syrup stirring in her bed, or worse, getting up. But he actually seemed to be looking for something. He turned his gaze towards the desk that stood in one corner of the room, flooded with papers and junk of the sort. Suddenly he began to rise. Ana reached out in a reflex, thinking he might fall. He clumsily stood on his good leg and hopped on one foot towards the desk, followed closely by Ana, who had subconsciously assimilated the responsibility of making sure he didn't hurt himself any further.
But he finally made it to the desk, took a nearby pen and turned to Ana with a notebook turned to a blank page. To Ana's amazement, he started scribbling in it in a slow, doubtful manner much like the way a child writes. When he was finished, he showed the words to Ana.
"Kyler Asher" she read. "That's your name? Kyler Asher?"
Kyler gave a satisfied huff.
"Kyler Asher" he repeated and this time Ana understood.
"But it's a human name. What's your real prawn name?"
Now Kyler shook his head, shrugging.
"Well, at least finally I have a name to call you. Here" she said, taking the notebook and the pen from him, "come back to the sofa, you may hurt yourself."
This time Ana held his arm on their way back. She began to notice how quickly she was getting used to the prawn's company. She helped him sit and before she could take away her hand, Kyler took it in his and started looking at it, making her a little uncomfortable, but still Ana let him softly pass his pointed fingers along the phalanges.
"*I like your hands" he clicked finally letting go of her hand so she could sit in her chair, smiling awkwardly.
"You got strange hands too, especially the tiny ones" she giggled stupidly still recovering from the strange feel of the prawn's alien hands and gave him the notebook and the pen back. "So…"
Kyler listened politely.
"So you know Rineke?" she said, glad to have found something to talk about.
Kyler nodded.
"Za'ih."
"Yeah, he-he said he knew you. Do you guys hang out together?"
The alien made an inconclusive gesture, but said "za'ih."
"Can a prawn be in the group?"
"*Yes, I'm in the group" he pointed a thumb at himself.
"You're in the group. What do you do in the group, besides walking around, helping other prawns out?"
Kyler signaled toward Ana's ridiculously old and small TV set.
"You watch TV? That's what you do?"
Again the inconclusive gesture.
"Sometimes?"
"Za'ih."
Then a thought occurred.
"Can you watch TV in District 9?"
Kyler seemed glad she had asked him that.
"Kau."
"Oh, I see. "
It was strange. Suddenly she felt guilty for being human.
"So what else do you do?"
Kyler clicked something, mimicking the action of writing on the notebook.
"Really? They teach you to write?"
"Za'ih."
"That's how you learned to spell your name?"
"Za'ih."
Ana stared dreamily for a moment.
"Did Rineke teach you?"
"Za'ih" Kyler started writing again on the notebook, next to his name. He spelled the word 'teacher'.
"I thought he looked like a teacher" Ana confirmed. "And he actually understands pra… your language, doesn't he?"
Kyler nodded.
"How did he learn?" she exclaimed unable to understand how a person can ever learn to make out those clicks and gargles.
Kyler shrugged.
"He must be really smart" she commented distractedly.
There was a moment's silence. Kyler stared at her, and realizing how obvious she was seeming, she thought she saw a hint of understanding in the prawn's eyes. She felt her cheeks become warm, and cleared her throat.
"So how long have you been in the group?"
Kyler held up one prawn hand and, with his other one, touched the tip of each of the three fingers.
"Three… months? Years?"
Nod.
"How old is the group?"
He hesitated, then showed her five fingers.
"Do a lot of people know about it? Is it even legal? I heard mixed or non-human political parties were prohibited."
Kyler looked like he didn't know what to tell her that she could understand.
"You know? Never mind, it's not even important. Too many questions…"
Kyler was relieved.
"Hard to keep a conversation this way" she sighed. "Wanna watch TV?"
He nodded with not so much enthusiasm. Still, she needed a rest from trying to maintain a conversation through positive and negative answers only.
There wasn't much on TV at that hour. They couldn't afford many channels. After five minutes of watching some random depressing stuff on the 24h news channel, she noticed Kyler wasn't even looking at the TV, but curiously gazing around the room and occasionally at the notebook. She caught him taking a glimpse at her as well.
Ana thought he looked doubtful.
"This is getting on my nerves" she said pointing at the boring-looking anchorman in the TV before getting up to press the on/off button. "Nothing good at this hour anyway."
Kyler agreed and looked at her timidly.
"Something you wanna tell me?" she asked out of intuition.
Kyler looked hesitant for a moment, then grasped the notebook and started writing with a guilty expression on his face. Ana looked at the resulting words.
I'm hungry.
"Oh!" She jolted, making Kyler jump and look warily at her, thinking perhaps he should've kept that to himself.
"Oh, ok, I'm sorry, I'll get you something!"
Kyler looked outright gleeful as Ana got up immediately and ran to the fridge. She thought she was starting to get the hang of the prawn's body language and felt rather pleased with herself. But as soon as she opened up the fridge's door, she froze.
"What do you guys eat, exactly?"
Kyler made to stand up, but she stopped him.
"No, no, don't get up, I'll tell you what I got. I got, uh… some pasta, chips, uh… spam, eggs… chocolate" she stopped to look at Kyler, who was staring with wide eyes, listening. He made a gesture that made her think any of what she had just said was good. "I'll just take out a few things."
Kyler then said something in that clicking language of his that she didn't understand, but he worriedly pointed in the direction of Syrup's bedroom and stared questioningly at her.
"What, you wanna eat my roommate as well?" Ana asked casually. "Sure, be my guest."
At first Kyler stared at her, frowning. And then he started giving off a series of shy but noisy huffs and guffaws, what most probably was the prawn equivalent of laughter.
Ana laughed with him.
"Don't worry, I'll tell her I had a friend over and ate it all, she won't even care that the food is gone" she added, satisfied that she had just made a prawn laugh, then returned to the sofa and placed everything on the table. Kyler seemed to be containing himself from jumping at the food.
"Would you like a fork?" she said, holding the metal object out to the hungry prawn. He took it, looking a little awkward, and turned it around in his fingers until the pose was right, then glanced at Ana for permission to begin. "It's all a little cold, but if you don't mind…"
Kyler shook his head eagerly.
"Dig in, then."
The most fun thing was watching him use the fork to get the food close to his tentacles so he could then use his mandibles to tug it in his mouth. She didn't see any evidence that there was any chewing involved in the whole process. And the weird thing was it didn't disgust her as much as she thought it would, disconcerting though it was.
"Have you had anything to eat at all today?" she asked shyly, unable to take her eyes off the scene.
Kyler briefly lifted his head towards her, shook it, then resumed eating. When he got to the eggs, Ana watched in bewilderment as he just seemed to drop them inside that cavern that was his throat without even bothering to break them open first. After that she decided to pick up a nearby magazine and read for the rest of the episode so she didn't have to look anymore, if only out of courtesy.
By the time the food was gone –and the fridge practically depleted –it was almost dawn. There was a mixture of lethargy and excitement in the whole situation that made Ana feel like the times she woke up from a nightmare, but without the fear. There was no fear. Kyler looked so grateful after the meal she automatically felt fond of the scary creature she had just met. All these contradictory emotions were making her drowsy, but the light horizon was reminding her of the urgency of the situation.
"You know? We should really go in my room, my roommate usually wakes up around this hour to do all the things she didn't do before bed, like… peeing and stuff" she explained. "Come on, I'll help you up."
And she did, holding him under his arm and offering her shoulder to serve as a walking stick. Kyler still couldn't set his wounded foot on the floor, so he hopped all the way to her room. He didn't complain as much, but Ana could tell it still hurt.
"Sit here, on my bed" and just as she sat him down on her mother's flowery bedcover, there came a knock on the front door and they both looked over in alarm. "Stay here and do not make a sound, ok?"
Kyler nodded with a worried look in his face and she hurried over to the entrance, closing the bedroom door behind her. Before she could check, a voice made its way through the wood.
"Ana? Are you there?"
It was Rineke. Ana gave a sigh of relief and opened the door.
"Hello."
"Hey, is everything alright? I tried calling you, but I think your phone was turned off" he said and he also looked relieved.
"Really?"
Ana checked her cell phone. It was, indeed, off. The battery had died, maybe hours ago, and she hadn't noticed.
"Huh…" she said curiously. "I… didn't notice… Too many things on my mind."
"Is Kyler here? Is he alright?"
"Yeah, yeah, he's –well, come in and –oh" she stopped dead in her tracks, for Syrup had just made her first appearance of the day in her star-patterned pajamas.
"Hi, Ana, what's going on?" she asked sleepily.
"Oh, I hope I didn't wake you" Rineke said politely.
Then Syrup seemed to take a better view of him. Ana could tell because suddenly her posture was upright and a little playful, and her gesture was now lively and awake.
"Oh, that's ok" she smiled. "Friend of yours, Ana?"
"Yeah, he's uh… well, this is Rineke. Rineke, this is… Syrup."
"Syrup" Rineke repeated in amusement as he took Syrup's hand in his. "Nice to meet you."
"You too. Will you stay for breakfast?"
"Uh, actually I was just passing by" he said and gave Ana a meaningful glance, which Ana took as a question of where was Kyler. "I need to get going right away."
"Oh… Well, come by any time, Rineke" Syrup said pleasantly.
"Alright. I'll… see you around, Ana" he winked, then closed the front door behind him.
Ana felt like she needed to do something to rapidly get Syrup out of the living room so Kyler could come through.
"Syrup, are you going to use the bathroom now? I'm just saying, cuz the water heater's broken again and there might not be enough warm water for the two of us. I was really feeling like taking a shower."
That was all it took. Syrup immediately assured her how very important it was that she took a shower now before going back to bed, since otherwise it was going to be difficult for her to fall asleep again. Ana pretended to be mildly upset with her and Syrup hurried off to get hold of the supposedly scarce hot water, leaving the way clear for Kyler.
When she went in her room, Kyler was distracted with the object that she had dropped before, when she was searching for the masking tape, thus breaking it open. It was an alarm clock, one of those old, really noisy ones. It was the only thing that could wake her at seven in the morning, and she had brought it here from her home back in her old city. It was such a pity that its clockwork now lay scattered on her bedroom floor.
Kyler had picked up a few pieces and was examining them closely, as well as the inside of the clock's carcass. He seemed to like it a lot.
"Rineke's here to pick you up" she informed, but the prawn didn't put the clock down. "You like it?"
"*Yes, a lot."
"I was thinking of getting it fixed somewhere, but if you really want it you can have it."
Kyler looked up at her and back at the clock. There was no question. He was holding it the way someone would hold a kitten and barely took his eyes off it as Ana helped him across the living room, carrying the clock herself. When she opened the front door, Rineke was there waiting.
"Hurry now that no one's looking."
And together they got him across the tiny front yard to Rineke's car, in the copilot seat.
Rineke closed the car door and turned to face Ana.
"Thank you for not calling MNU, Ana" he said. "Yesterday could've ended much differently for Kyler if it hadn't been for you."
"Sure, I mean… no problem" she stuttered.
"I will see you around, I hope" he added with a smile, placing his right hand on her shoulder, something that made her feel absolutely thrilled.
"Yeah" she answered, not really knowing what she was saying yes to.
Rineke got in the car and the car started. But before it moved, the copilot window opened up and Kyler peeked out from it and looked fixedly at Ana with his two big round eyes. The broken clock and all its loose cogs were sitting between his legs. He said "thank you" in the best English that he could manage and the car was off.