PEARL JAM'S 'Black' played; the pre-Medusa classic with the male singer crooning of despondent lost love was on the speakers in the bar—Roberta was reflecting on the words. She seated on a barstool and drowning deep into the lyrics.

She downed another double and reordered the next drink rudely from the Intersexual junior bartender—who was aware of the temperamental captain presence; also was aware of what she did to his own kind for a living.

She brooded while waiting for the refill. Her thumb rolled her wedding band on her finger. Roberta saw countless dating couples at tables and the booths behind, observing them all from the reflection of the beverage display bar mirror—she now missed her wife badly after sixty hours since her own sister's abduction in LA...

There was some sense of regret in her eyes for the blunders and bad judgments she has inflicted on Lilya—who was only trying to protecting the flowers whom she cared among the Aryan vines of thorns, planted by her old rival Roxanne Gilman. Despite Lilya's crying and pleading in between the pain and anguish protesting that Joana does not have a brother, and knowing there were no records on any possible 'Joe Gilman' in the database; Roberta's harsh abusive actions have physically harmed the future mother of her twins. This has now slapped a restraining order to stay a clear distance from her wife, or else Roberta may be reprimanded from her illustrious career as the once ago hero-cop now turned wife-beater.

She also realized that she had been barking at the wrong tree—Joe was a nobody; Kiki the snitch has told him that recently—but yet she disbelieved.

It was Reeves that she should have focused on instead—Laura's bastard son.

It was also more compelling that he was now a leader of one of the Preacher covert underground cell groups which were planning to assassinate President Cory. He had abducted Laura now, his biological mother—where there was something ensuring telling that he will not harm her when Roberta saw that in his eyes when he drove that Mustang away that night; that was some comforting reassurance for now that Laura will not be dead yet in this search.

Roberta realized she was caught up deep in own emotions of rage and insecurity that she has always overlooked Reeves—it was now entirely her fault because she had blanked Reeves off her mind since the bastard was born eighteen years ago. She has always felt deeply more by the rage of Reeves' rapist janitor father whom she had bludgeoned then into a pulp when she was nine for hurting Laura —but Reeves' birth after that was more of a shame to her.

Since his birth, the 'trash' was disposed out for adoption—from that day, Roberta had erased the existence of the bastard-child and she blanked her own mind. Even now, she kept seeing the Intersexual as someone who was 'faceless' of non-existence—until her encountering him at the hospital's carpark 3 days ago; it exasperated her that the shemale looked a lot like Laura when she was his age. The 'faceless' now has a face...

Two Lauras.

It then reminded herself when she was ten again; Roberta was once into social media networking, it was in Facebook, she recalled—and she did not put up a profile photo into her wall so to remain anonymous. Her friends who added her then nicknamed her as 'faceless'. Now Reeves was playing the 'faceless' game by blurring her judgments and the torturing anguish—that shemale had beaten her and that was distorting her mind into the insanity of personal police work blunders...

She had wanted to kill him with the Cobra derringer while being cuffed at the hospital underground parking lot in LA—but the sneaky smart-bastard was a step ahead and somehow knew about her hidden second pistol which was strapped in her ankle holster—now Laura has taken away by him after her years of protection from Columbus to Washington DC.

All Roberta had been doing since her suspension was to get into the thought pattern of her 'she-fuck' nephew—'Where could have the bastard taken Laura to?' It has been almost 3 days since the shootout at in LA...

'...where will he have taken her sister who was in a coma?'

She was wrong for the assumption of him heading to Mississippi. There was a huge shakedown in that state to extirpate the hiding Aryans Sisterhood populace. The cunning 'faceless' will not be stupid to leave California with Laura with the roadblocks ahead over there. But if it was out of the country—the runaways can't be routing south to Mexico—all the boarders' entries were closed with the bombing by the US armed forces on that country to capitulate the terrorist Preacher...

'Canada? —now that was a possibility...'

But there were massive police checkpoints and roadblocks since the city riot lockdown. Most of the states in the west coast were under Cory's party flagship which also played to Roberta's advantage—hoping that 'faceless' will soon get sloppy and taken into custody while in the road incursion...

The desperate Roberta was impatient too...

But the snitch Kiki said that he was still somewhere now in California—but where exactly? 'Has he been on the move or has he stayed put?' Even either to both the borders, the word was out now, and someone will eventually identify him with the $100,000 bounty that she had placed on his head...

She swore to herself that she would literally skin his face off—so that that nickname 'faceless' will stick permanently to the bastard...

No one else should like Laura in her eyes.

*

Roberta's rumination was distracted by her police-observation, peeking into the bar display mirror—she recognizes a butch who was kissing a woman at a dark booth corner...

It was Det. Wanda Callahan's boyfriend whom she met some months ago at her own wedding reception...

'What is the botanist-pubic-hair-shaving, dickless cunt doing in D.C.? Did Wanda break up with her?'

Today, Roberta was preoccupied and doesn't give a fuck about any Lotharios. She finished up her double bourbon and paid the tab without bothering to tip the serving Intersexual junior bartender.

Roberta walked pass the booth with the couple making out in the dark—she left through the front door feeling sorry for Wanda back in Columbus. But the bitch made her choice and chose the botanist over her when at the time she badly wanted Wanda to be her girlfriend back then—the jilted Roberta decided to surrender her broken heart to the stowaway teen Lilya; who was deeply in love for who she really was—the ruthless and brutal super-cop who will stop at nothing to serve, protect and profit with her brand of justice.

But the enigmatic Lilya Devon too had deceived with the secretive life of her Aryan-Mississippi past—she obstinately gambolled a lot her past life for her own personal greater-good...

'Has Lilya been also unfaithful to her too? Had she had any unfaithful relationships during their marriage?'

Lilya was a hooker once who went by her street-name Snow White when she picked her off from the street—now Roberta badly wanted another drink.

Minutes later, she came out of the liquor store with a bottle in a paper bag. She kick-started her bike and rode off.

**

Waves were crashing on Dewey Beach, Roberta laid on the white sand with an empty bottle on her chest. Her mind was growing weary by the scrambled thoughts between her missing sister investigation and Lilya—her lost the love of her life which reenacted just like the Pearl Jam song lyrics...

Her eyes closed, she drifted inwards by the sound of the waves to a night of restless sleep, tunnelling back in time into the passage of events of her past pleasurable connection with Laura—their father once took the family to a carnival where Roberta was adamant to ride in the Ferris wheel—Laura was afraid of heights except her, and Roberta rode the ride alone...

Her twenty-eight-year-old self was seated alone in a Ferris wheel looking at the crowd in the carnival below—she saw the youth Reeves holding the twelve-year-old Laura's hand. Reeves looked up at her and gave a sinister smile before he lured Laura away. Roberta started rattling the caged ride-car which was locked. Screaming below at them...

"Laura, get back here! Laura!"

The lucid dream followed where Roberta was speeding on her motorbike—going neck-breaking fast zigzagging on the curving roads towards a highway with hundreds of abandon cars by the road. She then slowed down and stopped among the rotting rusted cars, calling out...

"Laura! Laura, where are you?"

A male voice replied from behind. "She went that way." Roberta turned to see a skeleton in a car's driver seat with a finger pointing out; somehow in her dream, she knew his name and replied to the bones. "Thank you, Howdy."

Roberta rode again even faster, and she soon saw her mother Martha standing at the roadside with her hand raised. "Turn back, Robbie—leave Mimi alone!" Roberta screamed back. "No, I must find her!" She was not going to heed today, after being disobedient to her mother most of her life...

She sped away on full throttle and up ahead were four dark figures fanned out in the middle of the road—it was Zinga, Busta, Kujo and Vishon—the OGA Rastafarians compatriots whom she had killed in LA. They were pointing their weapons and started to fusillade their pump action of leads in rapid succession. Roberta rode into their line of fire to run them down; she broke pass through her dangerous past, shattering into the-one-way-mirror—which now transported into the other side—to Wellsville, Utah—her tranquil forgotten hometown of her past...

She slowed down in the sunny daylight that blinded her. Roberta saw fields of corn on both sides of the road just like her Daddy's crop—she peered up back into the brightness and saw her yellow school bus from her childhood coming towards her. She stopped her bike and heard chanting getting louder...

"Robbie! Robbie! Robbie!"

The bus approached, and each window has a skeletal boy waving to her; some of them were her school friends of boys who fell sick from the virus. They were frantically pointing back from where they came...

"Laura is over there! Laura is over there!"

Robbie sped again towards the road and viewed a hanging mist ahead; she rode into the murky fog—the visibility was low just as nighttime but she saw a figure of a lone cyclist ahead. Roberta cried out. "Laura! Laura!"

The cyclist peddled faster to escape but Roberta came from behind and grabbed the 'faceless' cyclist shoulder—they both emanated out of the mist but lose their balance. Both of them then fell on the grass patch by the road. Roberta was now ten years old, and she pulled the fallen cyclist over to discover it to be the twelve-year-old Reeves—who looked like her sister when she was that age.

"Where is Laura? Where is my sister?"

"I will not tell you!" Reeves hollered back before his face transformed back to 'faceless,' and then into the nineteen-year-old face of Lilya Devon who screamed...

"No Rob, I will not tell you! You will kill the girl-in-red!"

Roberta started to punch her bloody—and the visage finally malformed to the eighteen years Reeve's face—they were both were now tussling in the hospital's underground car park in LA. Roberta was back in her mid-twenties self, striking Reeves with hard blows...

"Where is Laura?"

"No, I will not tell you!"

Roberta realized that someone was standing behind her with dozens of buzzing flies swarming around—it was her dead beat-cop partner with bullet holes in her bleeding belly. The decomposing Manny Thompson spoke as she stood by a Korean hotdog stand—parts of a dog head and paws were hanging on hooks from the cart...

"Rob, you already know where Laura is."

"Why are you here, Manny? What do you mean I know?"

Roberta then reclined to the reminisce of her dream-in-a-dream that she once had while recovering from the gunshot wounds from the street battle with the black street pimps in Columbia, Ohio. She stood by at the bedside looking at her own slightly younger self in IV drips, struggling to recover from the shooting injuries in the hospital...

The older Roberta tried hard to recall with Manny at her bedside, holding a half-eaten hotdog that was infested with inching maggots. Manny took a bite and smacking her fat oily lips and belly laughed—the eaten decomposed food seeped out from the two bullet holes on her stomach like from a meat-grinder, dropping on the floor of the hospital ward with broken half-chewed maggots wriggling in it...

"She told you where she is going the last time—can't you remember, Rob?"

Then the fruition came to her—the nine-year-old Roberta had once ridden her bicycle in the foggy road, and she saw the Two Lauras cycling a few feet ahead of her. Roberta had cried out in her excitement in that other dream...

"Laura! I caught up with you!"

Both the twelve years old grinning Lauras had half-turned their head; they replied back in amalgamated echoes...

"Hey Robbie, we are going to the lake, do you want to follow us?"

*

Roberta sat up panting long breathes and was now wide awake from her unsettled sleep on Dewey Beach. She gazed blankly at the crashing waves but her mind was getting clearer of the portent revelation; she spoke to herself...

"Laura—the Lake! Laura is at the lake!"