Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 21

Jason is coming down and sweating in the police general's sunken living room. He wants to find Alys.

He enters the door Alys went through; it's a long hallway with soft heavy carpet. At the end of the hall is a staircase with a black iron railing. Climbing that, there's another long hallway. The house is silent. He discovers an empty bedroom. Off of that, he spots an antique tub through another door. It is a bathroom.

On the floor is a skeleton.

This skeleton is old, yellowed with age, with any flesh it had returning to dust eons ago. It is, however, dressed in Alys's pre-punk clothing. Jason wonders if this is the mescaline. He touches the clothes, and they feel new.

So that's weird.

Panic hits Jason. Alys is dead somehow. He runs, pausing only to collect the records, putting them in their paper sleeves and jackets in full fight or flight mode. Bursting outside, chest heaving, Jason meets the brown cop. A short conversation happens, which ends with the pol running into the house while shouting "stay there" to Jason. Jason sprints to the quibble, and dumps out Alys' purse/mail carrier. No key. Jason hears a scream from inside the house. Jason starts ransacking the front dash of the quibble for the key. No key.

The cop dashes out of the house, and draws his weapon. Jason runs away as he is shot at. Plunging into the trees at the far side of the lawn, Jason sees the cop turn and sprint back in the house. Jason finds a stone wall, and remembering ALys's comment about the wall having glass shards at the top, runs along it. He soon finds a broken wooden door hanging open in the wall.

Now on the street, Jason spots a woman preoccupied with loading packages into a flipflap. He lopes over to her and tries to spin a lie to get them flying out of here. The woman is a bit "overweight" (though god knows what that means to Jason) with lustrous auburn hair, and is immediately freaked out and suspicious. Somehow, the woman accompanies Jason in the back seat while Jason himself drives. Jason notices that this is an old, economy flipflap. While Jason's mind is still rolling at full speed, the mescaline is mostly gone now, thanks to his Six physiology. Jason and the woman (who's name is Mary Anne Dominic) get to talking, first where the nearest hospital is, and then about General Felix. Jason says that Felix and Alys are twins, which does not make sense. Mary is a potter; all the packages in the flipflap are pots going into the mail for customers.

Jason flies past the hospital, and Mary is terrified again. Somehow Jason starts lecturing her on how you have to face your fear, because fear will keep you from truly being present in the moment, and may make you do worse things than hate or anger. Mary is oddly attentive to these points. Realizing at the same time he's batshit terrifying to Mary, he offers to set down the flipflap, and then, asks if she wants to go to a cafe. He just wants to talk to Mary, as he feels like the tension is winding off of his last tether of sanity as they talk. She agrees, as long as they get her packages to the post office first (afternoon pickup is two PM and I guess it is around noon? Once again, time is vague. Alys picks up Jason at 8 am, flies him to the General's place, and then about four hours passes?) After Jason offers to let her drive, she says Jason should keep flying, as she's kinda nervous right now. To Jason, this feels like a small vote of confidence.