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Rita had been watching Larry for the last ten minutes. Well, she had been watching Larry’s body for the last ten minutes. The Spirit had left his body long ago and was now floating through the grounds, terrorizing the other members of the household, leaving Larry abandoned and discarded where he was.
At least it had left him in a deck chair this time, as rickety and weather-worn as it was.
She had first seen the Spirit drifting aimlessly, curiously, through the halls, and she had turned harshly away from it and run down the stairs before she even realized that her feet were moving, almost losing the form of her legs as she did so. Her worry was warranted, and not such an over-reaction, as Larry and the others sometimes liked to believe. The Spirit had an irritating habit of leaving Larry’s body at inopportune times and at the worst places, like the middle of the stairs or on hardwood floors or at someplace in the kitchen while and open fire was going or he had a knife in his hand.
But Rita found him, thankfully, in the front yard resting in an off-white deck chair, slightly yellowed from age, a book resting on the grass from where it had slipped from his slack fingers. She had been so relieved that she came to an abrupt halt on the verandah, and all she could do was watch him for a moment. She knew that he hated it when the Spirit left him so suddenly, but she couldn’t help but feel like he looked so… peaceful.
At some point she had been joined by Jane- just Jane this time, which was a rare occurrence lately. It was some sort of a blessing because Rita wasn’t sure if she could deal with Hammerhead or Baby Doll today- and lent next to her against the wall with her arms crossed. “He’s been sitting there for about an hour. I’ve been keeping tabs,” she said. “I was watching just in case it decided to drop him in a garden bed or something. He was talking to himself before it happened, and it didn’t sound too good, but you can never tell if it’s Larry talking to himself or arguing with the thing inside his head, these days.”
Frowning even deeper than she already was, Rita turned to look at Jane, who didn’t take much notice to Rita’s existence as a whole. “What exactly do you mean by ‘not very good’?”
“‘Existential crisis levels of bad news’, I’d say,” Jane replied and Rita inwardly cringed. “Are you going to deal with it? I watched it bothering Vic before. Backed him into a corner and started messing with his wiring and shit. It was pretty funny, but Vic didn’t seem to appreciate.”
Pursing her lips, Rita hummed. “Yes. I do believe that this nonsense has gone on long enough. Give me a moment if you wouldn’t mind.”
As Rita pushed away from the wall and made her way down the garden towards where Larry was resting, Jane made an audible noise deep in her throat. “Knock yourself out. You’re the only one who can get through to that freaky thing, anyway. You must be it’s favourite or something. Lucky fucking you.”
Hoisting her skirt up so the hem didn’t drag across the fresh mud, Rita ignored her. She sounded bitter, but she didn’t really mean it. Honestly, she was just glad that it wasn’t her. But Rita marched across the garden with intent, and the first thing she did was pick up Larry’s book resting on the ground, the pages slightly damp, and placed it neatly on his lap. She retrieved another yellowed deck chair sitting close by on the grass and dragged it over beside Larry’s, tipping it over a little so the water from last nights storm could drain out of the seat before she folded her skirt under her and sat down, giving up on trying to stay clean and dry.
It was a nice day, all things considering. The dark clouds from last night had passed and now resided in the distance, the storm having moved on to another town, and the clouds above them in the bright blue sky were white and fluffy. The grass was healthy and green, and the sun was behind them, warming up their backs. Larry’s plants and flowers were vibrant and alive, and even the ones within the bus flourished in the sunlight.
There wasn’t much more that she could do right now other than wait for the Spirit to return. She couldn’t summon it back. She couldn’t wake Larry up without it. All she could do was sit back and appreciate the scenery.
Eventually, the Spirit did return, not ten minutes later, and snapped Rita out of her drowsy day-dream. It stopped in front of her, confused and with its head cocked to the side, not expecting her presence at Larry’s side. The air smelled like ozone as the area immediately became electrified at its arrival.
“Right, you,” Rita waved her finger at it as she sat forward in her chair. “I think you’ve had enough gallivanting around the house for one day, so I say you hop right back into poor Larry where you belong. You’ve been very harsh on him this week, and I think it’s time you return to him and leave him in peace for a little while. In you go, don’t make me tell you twice.”
The Spirit let out a low, mournful sound, disembodied and directionless, like an argumentative teenager trying to argue for more time at the park, but Rita didn’t let up, and eventually, it reared back and dove into Larry’s chest, his body convulsing slightly at the force of being re-acquainted with his ghostly counterpart, and he straightened up as his chest rose with a gasp that almost sounded painful.
“Welcome back, dear,” Rita said as Larry got his bearings. “That looked like it hurt, but I do hope you enjoyed your nap while it lasted.”
Still breathing hard, Larry held his face in his hands and rubbed at his temple. “How long was I gone?”
“About an hour and a half, give or take,” Rita replied and Larry groaned. “But you shouldn’t worry, you weren’t needed. How are you feeling?”
“Like I got hit by a truck and dropped off a mountain,” Larry grumbled. “I hate it when it does that with no warning.”
“Well, at least it dropped you in a chair this time,” Rita said as she examined her nails, pretending not to seem worried, but she couldn’t help sneaking glances at Larry when she didn’t think he was looking. “From what I can tell, my dear, you haven’t exactly been having the best of times as of late. Would you like to talk about it? Speak your mind?”
Sighing, Larry rubbed at his bandages as if trying to re-arrange them without really having to touch them. “Rita, come on, let’s not-”
“Oh, my dear Larry, I think let's,” Rita insisted, and Larry groaned so loudly that the Spirit flared brightly within his chest in irritation at being disturbed. “You’ve been acting ridiculously strange this past couple of days and even through your bandages, I can tell that you’re unhappy. I know you well enough, and we’ve known each other long enough for you to know that I am a very good listener and that nothing you could say to me would surprise me. If your foul mood and poor temper has something to do with that terrible, insensitive space ghost you have as a roommate living inside your chest cavity-”
This time, it was Larry’s turn to interrupt her. “Keeg,” he said. “Its name is Keeg. K-E-E-G.”
She frowned. “Your intergalactic roommate has a name ?”
“Yeah,” Larry said quietly. “And it’s… it’s got nothing to do with... Keeg. The Negative Spirit. Whatever you want to call it. I’m not sure it actually gives a fuck what you call it, I just thought you should know.”
“Well, then,” Rita wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. “If it isn’t this… Keeg, then what is it?”
Even through his darkly tinted glasses and thickly layered bandages, Rita could tell that Larry’s eyes had fluttered shut and he rolled his eyes beneath his eyelids. “Rita, really, it’s nothing. You know how I get sometimes. It’s fine.”
“Larry,” Rita said simply. “Come now, spit it out. We haven’t got all day.”
They did, in fact, have all day, but Larry didn’t mention it and instantly turned away so he didn’t have to look at Rita and he couldn’t tell if she was looking at him. She was a hard woman to say no to. Rita waited. “I looked at myself in the mirror for the first time in months the other day.”
“Ah,” Rita wasn’t sure what else she was expecting. “Of course,”
“See? I’m sorry,” Larry said. “I told you it was stupid.”
“No, no, anything that bothers you to this degree at least deserves a conversation,” Rita insisted, crossing one leg over the other. “Though, if you want my honest opinion, as your best friend, I don’t know why you still have that silly old thing, especially considering how it makes you feel. You should get rid of it.”
Larry rubbed at the back of his head. “I can’t just get rid of the mirror, Rita. That’s impractical, and not going to solve anything.”
“Why not?” Rita asked. “What do you need it for? I mean, really. You don’t use it as it is, and all you do is reapply your bandages every now and again. It’s not like you need to put your makeup on every morning.”
There was a moment of silence and Rita turned to Larry, who was shifting is his seat and fiddling with the sleeves of his jacket, his hands in his lap, his head down. “I told you that we should have dropped it. It’s… not important.”
Though the bandages covered his features and not a single patch of charred, irradiated flesh was visible through the overlapping, itchy, specially treated wraps, but Rita had known Larry for a great many years, and she knew when he was upset. It was more a body language thing than a facial expression thing, at least with dear old Larry. She had gotten good by now at identifying when her housemates were in a particularly bad mood. Unlike Cliff or Jane, Larry wasn’t verbal when it came to his feelings unless it got so much that he felt like he was going to explode. But Rita knew Larry, maybe better than he knew himself, and she knew what he would need to hear right about now.
“I’ve come to find that many people who reside in this abode have something against the very idea of mirrors,” she said, somewhat absently, and slowly Larry turned to look at her. This time, it was Rita’s turn not to look at him, but it was mostly Larry’s sake than anything else. “Think about it. Everyone hates their own reflection. Vic hates being reminded of the parts of him that aren’t human because seeing it makes it a reality. Cliff knows that he’s nothing but a brain in a tin can, but to see what he looks like just drives home the fact that he could never have a normal life again. And Jane… she doesn’t quite seem to know who she is anymore. Is she Hammerhead? Is she Baby Doll? Is she the Hangman's Beautiful Daughter? Or is she Jane? Mirrors remind her that she doesn’t know who is looking back at her. If you want my opinion, we should just get rid of the wretched things entirely.”
Out of respect for Larry’s shyness and privacy, Rita had avoided looking at him while either of them spoke, but Larry didn’t seem to have that kind of issue now. “And you? Do you hate mirrors just like the rest of us?”
It was somewhat of a rhetorical question. They had known each other for longer than either of them would have liked, lived in the same house with 64 different crazy women stuck in the same body and a talking melodramatic tin can and a cryptic man in a wheelchair who never gave a real straight answer. So really, Larry didn’t need to ask. He knew exactly how she felt about the very idea of mirrors, the love-hate relationship she had with them since her accident. The accident that wasn’t really an accident…
Normally, Rita would have scoffed and changed the subject, maybe told him to stop asking questions he already knew the answer to, but he just looked so honest and genuinely curious that Rita couldn’t find it within herself to turn him away, to say something cruel.
“I used to love mirrors,” she said. “I loved sitting in front of one every morning and doing up my hair and putting on my makeup and picking out my favourite outfits and… taking my time to look at myself and all that I had done as I recited my lines for the day. Some would call me vain, but I like to think that I was proud. I was Rita Farr, the greatest actress of that era, I had every right to be proud. I would sit there in front of that old mirror and practice my smile and hold my head up and do everything I could to be the Rita that everyone expected to see. Nobody saw the Rita with mascara streaked down her face and with her hair a great rats nest atop her head and her breath reeking of alcohol on the odd occasion the fancy stuck. Mirrors were my friends. I needed them.”
“And now?”
“And now I have pictures of myself up all around my room, not because of vanity or pride, but because I fear that every time I wake up as that vast, formless blob I will forget what Rita Farr is supposed to look like, and I’ll have to put myself back together again not knowing if everything is where it should be. My nose may be a little to the left, my eyes may be too far apart, my mouth could be a little smaller than previously proportioned- but those are the positive outcomes. What if my face no longer belongs to me, and I look like a stranger, a woman with no semblance of what I looked like before? What if I no longer look like Rita Farr, the greatest actress of an era, proud and vain and now nothing but an unlovable monstrosity?”
“You’re not unloveable, Rita,” Larry said quietly, and Rita knew that he meant it. “Or a monster.”
“Oh, please, Larry dear. You’re too kind. I love you too. But you know that you don’t count,” Rita waved him off, and though Larry looked disheartened, he laughed a little, knowing what Rita was like. “I’ve been trying to get better, with mirrors. How can you be sure you put your jaw back to the right place without pictures? How do you know if your cheekbones are sharp enough? It’s all very confusing. I wish it wasn't, but it is. But that’s my lot. I’ve made my bed, and now I must rest in it.”
There was a long pause as they both just sat there and thought for a little bit. The sun hid behind a cloud, and the warmth on their backs disappeared and the garden was plunged into darkness. “I don’t remember who I am anymore,” Larry said eventually. “When I look into a mirror… it doesn’t look like me. Like who I was. I couldn’t even tell you what Larry Trainor used to look like, it’s been so long.”
Rita hummed. She understood. They all, to some degree, understood. “Look at us, huh? You were burned to a crisp in a terrible accident and I became a giant pool of porridge by falling into a toxic lake. What a pair we make.”
“At least we’ll always have each other,” Larry chuckled. The thing within his chest flared up again, as if it had been listening, and was agreeing with every word being said. Rita wasn’t sure how to feel about that. “A couple of freaks.”
“We’re all freaks. That’s why we’re here, in this house, with a robot, a superhero, and a bunch of feisty women. Freaks, the lot of us, I say. But it could always be worse,” Rita said, nudging Larry with her elbow. “I could still be stuck in that asylum. You could still be experimented on in the Ant Farm. Cliff could be dead, or just a brain in a jar in some crazy persons study. Jane could still be in that hospital. Victor… well, I suppose he’d be fine, being a superhero and all, but he wouldn’t be having nearly as much fun.”
Larry looked out over the garden, at all the flora he had planted and tended to and cared for over the years, at the trees with lush branches, at the storm passing away in the distance and ruining someone else’s day, at the sun peeking out from behind the cloud and washing them in golden light. “I like it here. Even if the houseguests are a little… annoying.”
“Annoying is a very kind way of putting it. More kind than I’m capable of doing,” Rita said. “Are you feeling better? You’re finished with that dreadful mood you were in?”
“Yeah. I’m better,” Larry said, but he was looking at Rita with such intensity that she almost looked away. Almost. She was Rita Farr for gods sakes. “You’re not unloveable, Rita. You know that, right?”
“I know, dear. Thank you. And neither are you, for that matter,” Rita replied. “Your John had the right idea.”
The sound Larry made was a cross between an exasperated sigh and a chuckle, one that Rita knew well, and she looked the opposite direction to hide her smile behind her hand. “Thanks, Rita. You’re too kind to me, you know.”
Shrugging, Rita reached a hand out towards him over the arms of their chairs. “What else are friends for?”
Larry looked at her hand for a few long, tense moments before eventually, he took her hand in his gloved one and held it tightly. Even through the specially treated bandages and thick leather of the glove, Rita felt her hand humming a little bit at the radiation that poured from Larry’s skin. “I don’t know about you, but I like to think that after all this time, we’re a little more than friends,” he said, and Rita was willing to agree. “You wanna get out of here? I can see what I can cook up for lunch?”
Suppressing a laugh- she couldn’t believe that after all this time she found it funny- Rita nodded towards her legs. Well, the puddle of pulsating, moving lump of skin and body and muscles that used to be her legs that now surged outwards and took up part of the hard and swallowed the legs of her deck-chair. She had been so wrapped up in the conversation that she had forgotten to dedicate part of her concentration to keeping her form and hadn’t even realized that she’d lost both her legs. “I would love to, but I have a very firm feeling that I won’t be going anywhere for quite a while.”
“That’s alright,” Larry said with the hint of a smile lighting his words, and Rita believed him. He tightened his hold on her hand, even as her skin was slowly beginning to slip through his gloves, but he didn’t seem to mind. “I’m happy to stay out here for a little bit longer. It’s a nice day, anyhow. I’ve got nothing to do.”
“Lovely,” Rita said, as she quietly tried to force her hand back into its proper shape. “I’d be happy for the company.”
He didn’t say anything else, but Rita knew that he was grateful. For what, she didn’t know, and would probably never know, but she was more than happy to leave him be and let him feel whatever he wanted to feel if it meant that he was in high spirits and she could enjoy the peaceful afternoon with him. Even the Spirit seemed to settle back.
“Larry!” Came a scream from inside, and they twisted in their seats to see Jane push away from the wall, her face shimmering as tattoo’s bloomed across her chest, and Hammerhead stormed inside to yell at Cliff who was pacing back and forth through the mansion. “Larry! Your stupid lightning ghost short-circuited my charging station and I can’t- Larry! Larry! La-Ow! Hammerhead, what the fuck- OW!”
Rita looked to Larry. “We’re not going to tell him that we’re out here, are we?”
“Nah,” Larry said. “Let him figure it out for himself. I’m sure Hammerhead will deal with it for us.”
“I’m fine with that,” Rita said, and she was surprised to find that she meant it.