Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Loyalty. It’s a funny thing.”

More on the stage; more varied than the families, but just as closely joined.

“Love…”

“Friendship…”

“An oath of service…”

“There are any number of ways someone could be taken advantage of…”

“… and any number of places they could find support.”

Chapter Text

“I must have read a dozen discussions of that poem. About the time period. The social climate. The dialect. The occupation of India. The real incident it might have been based on - Private Flaxman’s murder of a sergeant. And yet, not one of them ever asked why. To ‘shoot a comrade sleeping’, he couldn’t have thought it would be easy to hide.”

The Regiment’s Disgrace stands to attention on the stage, quietly proud despite the name. His skin is ruddy-dark, his mouth broad, his nose broken and squashed almost completely flat. His voice is hoarse, and he speaks slowly and emotionlessly, and there’s a raised, roughened scar around his throat.

“Terrible crime… at least, it sounds terrible. But without context, I suppose that most anything can.” He pulls a breath and holds it for what seems like a rather long time. “That isn’t what I did, exactly, but it’s close enough, I think.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the Regiment’s Disgrace, younger, in a classroom with a uniformed man speaking to the half-asleep crowd. Disgrace is one of few who listens closely.

“I signed up for the service in highschool. My senior year. I could not afford higher education on my own and the army will pay for that. It seemed the best option and I took it. Is that not all there is to say?”

A name on a list of names and then carved into dog-tags. An army camp in Southern California. A drill sergeant and other recruits and a transfer after that. Somehow the Regiment’s Disgrace finds himself in Afghanistan with nine hundred more, head spinning and still very young.

“Many soldiers never even leave their country, these days. Of those that do, few see combat. I think that is part of how they recruit. Everyone hopes they will be the lucky ones. Very few people go in simply wanting to kill, and those that do are usually found and sent away. Maybe that could be called ironic.”

He speaks as slowly and flatly then as he does now-

“-no, it’s not a result of trauma, I always sounded like this-”

-but intelligently and kindly, and attracts a solid group of friends within his unit. A manic but harmless explosives expert with wiry dreadlocks and a huge grin, a gentle giant with fists like boulders, a bald older man with a scowl and a cleft chin, a grumpy mountain of a man and his scrawny, speedy sister in the women’s unit, and her quiet friend with one huge green eye.

“I know the stereotypes and I cannot say they are unfounded - that gun-toting veteran, demanding what he’s ‘owed’ - but many of my fellow soldiers were quite the opposite. I suppose that might have something to do with being where we were for as long as we had to be there. It wasn’t really that we were in mortal danger often, it’s the boredom that really becomes unbearable. Either way it was unpleasant. I think hard times must bring out the best in some people.” Disgrace’s expression shifts slightly. “Or the worst in others. Of course, that is not all.”

At the center of the mess tent is a rickety old table that isn’t quite so old and rickety as the ones surrounding it. Disgrace doesn’t sit there, nor do any of his friends. That honor goes to the big, burly men with obnoxiously deep voices, laughing loudly at everyone else. At the center of the center is a man with flat-top gray hair and shiny metal dog tags that read Hazzard close up. Like the label on a box of rat poison. Keep out of reach.

“As I said, I do not think they joined because they liked the idea of killing, at least not consciously. But yes, military and police and politics and any other organisation which allows its members to wield power will, sometimes, attract the people least suited to be trusted with that power. And when that includes the power of life and death, it is easy to become careless with it, especially if you lack respect for the people under that power to begin with.”

Disgrace hears sharp words from these men when he passes by - not to his face, but he hears them. Even from the only dark-skinned one, as Disgrace’s flesh is dark in a different way.

“Mixed African and Native American, if you were wondering. I ignored it, but it happened. If it was not that, they were calling me slow, and they were no better towards my friends, especially the women. I have not heard if they did anything to them, though, and I don’t think they have done. Abuse within the military is a big problem, but these particular men… I do not know if they just never got the chance, but it was not my friends who had to worry about them, then.”

Sometimes the man with the warning label and his friends leave Disgrace and his alone. Sometimes, though, they just leave. From dawn to dusk. Usually not more than hours at a time, but it goes to days on occasion, though never more than one or two.

“At first I was relieved to have them away, doing who knew what somewhere. Then I was curious. It is not as if you are required to stay on base at all times, but going off as often as he did is certainly unusual. Still, it wasn’t as if we were actively being bombarded by crossfire and he was a higher rank than me so I just assumed…” He forms a few words and then gives up on most of them. “… wrongly.”

I wouldn’t worry about it too much, the older man tells him, pointing to something far off. There’s a town over that way. If you ask me, he and his type are probably…

What is it? the Regiment’s Disgrace asks, when the sentence goes unfinished. What are you…?

Who knows. His friend looks uneasy. Maybe we oughta just… go along to get along, though.

“I do remember that I heard a lot of that. Life in the army is… It is supposed to be something of a tight-knit group, I suppose. As tight-knit as any group can be with thousands of people making it up. People have these ideas about honor and loyalty, but I believe sexual assault in the military is at an all-time high, so something must be wrong there. No, I don’t mean to imply that something happened then, I’m only trying to say that the culture isn’t quite as…”

He goes in to see a few different higher-ups on a few different occasions. With questions mostly (and some complaints). Where is Chip Hazzard running off to? Why hasn’t he been-

“I was essentially told to ‘shut up’, I suppose you could say, in no uncertain terms. Not even polite ones. That’s another thing about the military. You take what you’re given at face value. You don’t argue.” He stops to fidget with his neckline, fingers rolling over the pucker of cloth. “I… eventually decided that it might be easier on everyone if I only tried to get on with them. I thought I could do it, perhaps, if I could just grit my teeth.”

The next time he enters the mess hall, he goes over to the big men’s table and stands beside it, looking into his own reflection in their dog tags but not their eyes. The one with the warning label sneers at him, opens his mouth to say something, but the Regiment’s Disgrace holds up a hand. I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot.

“This is the part where you’ll be expecting me to say he threw me to the ground like a schoolyard bully, or at the very least my words back in my face. You’re wrong, of course, he was actually quite… Well, I should not say reasonable now that I know better, but I did think so at the time.”

Disgrace waves at the right points around the camp, when he sees the men that looked down on him. He waves and nods and doesn’t quite smile with the same importance that he clicks his heels and salutes. Some weeks later he enters the mess hall again, and heads past the big men at their crowded table.

Archer! one of them hoots. Siddown!

He does.

“You know, it’s almost funny in some ways. My school and my parents did try to teach me about peer pressure, but I didn’t think to worry about that as an adult.” He smiles grimly, touching his face. “I suppose I’ve learned the error of my ways.”

The weeks that follow are the easiest he’s seen since dropping into the scorched patch of earth. He and his don’t quite mesh with the warning-labeled men and there is still some distrust on his part (he is a kind man, but not a stupid one and he hasn’t forgotten what it was like before), but the Regiment’s Disgrace stands calm at the center and does not realize it’s the great golden eye of a desert storm. So long as the men are happy to drink his bitter beer.

“I’ll admit now that it was probably wilful ignorance, but I never imagined…” He swallows. “They eventually asked me to accompany them… on one of their outings to that town nearby.”

For the most part, most of this place looks mostly ordinary. There is a market and squat stone buildings the color of warm sand. But the locals are shifty-eyed and edgy. But they glare at Disgrace and flinch hard when he notices. But there are single digit numbers scratched above every door. A few of them are zeros, most are not. There are a few places where they’ve clearly been re-carved after being scratched out.

“I still do not know who put them there exactly. It does seem obvious, so maybe I’m twice a fool for wondering… but I don’t want to think about how they got those numbers. Enough to have them all taken down.” He stops when he sees their looks of confusion and grimaces like he wants to be sick but doesn’t have enough in his stomach to expel it yet. “You’ll see what I mean…”

He bumps into a girl passing by the market and knocks her basket from her hands, scattering the contents across the earth. She looks up at him, spooked-deer frightened, even as he crouches down with her and they both scramble to pick it all up. Go on ahead without me, he calls to the others and they walk off, nodding and fixing him with knowing grins.

“I did think there was something… off about their expressions. I would say that I wish I had known how off, but I don’t actually think that would have changed anything.”

A few of the items he knocked aside are ruined. Disgrace offers to replace them and the girl starts to refuse but stops herself when she sees the Afghanis in his hand. The man behind the counter looks almost angry with him, but he doesn’t say anything, and the Regiment’s Disgrace offers to walk the girl home.

“She did not refuse. I mistook that for acceptance, it was in a way, though I wish I had been more observant or looked closely enough to see… whatever it was that must have been in her eyes.”

Two other girls peer out from inside the house, and quickly dart away. At least one of them is very, very young. Disgrace’s eye catches the number on the doorframe. It’s a three.

“I would like to think that I am not a stupid man, slow as I sound. I didn’t want to think that could be what the number was for, but I think she must have noticed I was looking at it strangely.”

He looks at it, then quizzically at her. She bites her lip, nods, and starts to take off her scarf. Disgrace holds up his hands, eyes widening. Nakheir! No… no.

“The girls cried. I came close.”

Disgrace doesn’t cry; he puts a fatherly hand on the oldest girl’s arm, though he’s little older than her, and promises to at least try to get this stopped. Back at the barracks, he demands to know if his friends knew, and all but one are as shocked as him. The older man knows. Sorry, Arch. That kind of thing goes on everywhere… it’s better to stay out of the way.

“Unfortunately, I knew it must be a widespread problem - there were a lot of houses with numbers carved on - but it didn’t occur to me until later how high up the ladder it went.”

Disgrace goes straight to the most senior officer he can find and is greeted by the men from before, or at least the sight of them, sprawled out in front of the tent, smoking and flicking lit cigarettes in the dusty yellow sand. He storms past them, eyes blazing as they knock aside. His superior asks what he’s doing there and barely looks up when he tells him why.

“Those men were popular, maybe that had something to do with it. Maybe it was just that some of the higher-ups didn’t care what happened to those kinds of girls. I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t think I care to, it’ll be easier to sleep at night.” Everyone can see that he’s trying not to look at the Pharaoh. “Or, of course, they were likely doing something similar themselves.”

He writes letters to even higher command, and so do his friends. Nothing comes of it. He does not hide what he’s doing, or not sufficiently. He does not notice the annoyed or contemptuous or just dismissive glances from Hazzard and his friends have turned to angry glares.

“They already didn’t like me, so… Well, I did not notice, for whatever reason. And they decided to stop me.”

It’s early in the morning - early even for them - when the Regiment’s Disgrace rouses himself and stumbles for the latrine. He bangs his shin on the end of the cot across from his and stumbles out through the opening without a flashlight. He does grab his jacket; it’s bitter cold without even a touch of sun on the horizon, where it should be rising behind that distant town.

“I have enough common sense about me not to truly blame myself. Still, I wish I’d brought my gun. That is the one thing I regret in all this. Then again, they cornered me in the lavatory, so even if I had had it, it might not have done me much good.”

Hands clasp onto his arms and his collar, and he’s dragged outside, fly still open, and dumped on the ground. He opens his mouth, and a rifle barrel smacks against his head. Hazzard and friends glare down at him. One’s boot catches him in the face, crushing his broad nose into the bulldog-like state it is on the Palace’s stage.

“I don’t know if they really would have shot me. As I said before, that would not be easy to hide. I suppose they could have called it self-defence. Perhaps that would have been covered up as well. They expected what they did do would be… Of course I am a fighter, but I was not armed and they were, and there was only one of me.”

He chokes on blood and struggles to regain his footing, while they rip his buttons off and pull his jacket back to bind his arms. One, sneering, tears off his stripes of rank.

“Sexual violence is not uncommon in the military, as I said. I’m actually surprised not to have met more survivors besides myself. Then again, I can’t imagine it’s an easy thing to talk about. To go around with that much shame hanging over you - deserved or not.”

Disgrace falls down and they force him to his knees. He kneels like it’s an execution, hands bound behind him, gun pointed to the middle of his forehead. One of the men says, Don’t move. He doesn’t, even as they begin to tear away the clothing below his waist. And to call him things in English that he will never really be able to understand or to commit into words.

“I always knew dying was a possibility, even when I first enlisted. I won’t say I was prepared for it in so many words, but it was a possibility, I knew that. That being said, I did not want to die, certainly not to be murdered. So I held still.”

The Regiment’s Disgrace is frozen as the first man steps forward. Not Hazzard - he holds the gun - but one of the others. He doesn’t kiss him, but he gets in close behind him, breathing hard, and Disgrace can taste the bitter beer on his breath.

“Six of them, and they all wanted me to hurt. By the time they’d finished there was so much blood in the sand that it didn’t look yellow anymore, or brown.”

Dawn is just breaking, but little light has appeared yet; against the faint glow that has, the bloody sand looks black. Disgrace dares to breathe, but he’s forced to his feet. One of them produces a rope.

“I think they must have had some sort of plan, but they never saw fit to explain it to me. If I had to guess, they would have cleaned up or tainted the evidence and passed it off as a suicide after an assault, possibly set up someone else for the fallout if there was any. As I said, it is not uncommon, and usually nothing is done.”

There aren’t many trees in the desert, a few scrubby looking bushes here and there but not trees. There is a flag pole, empty now before the sun has risen. They use this instead.

Disgrace chuckles bitterly. “If I hadn’t been in that situation, I might have called it sacrilegious, though I doubt they’d have listened. I couldn’t say much anyway. With a rope around your neck… it’s almost impossible to speak when you can’t even scream. I remember watching the sun come up behind that town and wondering… if that was the last of it. If I would never…”

Shadows dance across the blood-soaked ground, kicking silhouettes as the Regiment’s Disgrace fights hard for his life. Then something sounds like a cannon’s blast and trumpets like a whimper overhead.

“The rope snapped, but for a moment I would have sworn the noise was my own soul as it went passing. But I wouldn’t be here if that was the case.” He rubs his neck. “One of them went for my belt, but while they marched me over I had been working my hands free.”

He throws a punch which flies wild, another which lands weakly. The men swarm him, try to pin him, but a gun slides from an improperly fastened holster and his hand lands upon it. Frantically, he pulls at it, thrusts it up and forward, and pulls the trigger.

“So, when I said I didn’t do what happened in the poem… well, I didn’t. He was awake.”

Even more blood than before soaks his front instead of his back. His assailants rush to help their injured friend; at least they have that much honour.

“It was about then that reveille sounded. They were surprised by the noise, and I ran.”

Barely. He runs, but only barely. Legs shaking, breath ragged, his feet slip-sliding through the sand as he goes and blood droplets dotting the ground. Disgrace hurries toward the sound of voices and falls through a tent flap, into a very surprised-looking young man - one of his own friends.

Archer? … Archer!

The sunlight falls in cracks through the opening in the canvas, illuminating shadows. He can feel him shaking, even as those arms hold him firm.

“I tried to explain things best I could, which probably wasn’t very well. I’m sure you can infer it was an awkward situation, considering my tent-mates were all half-dressed and I was almost naked and on the verge of bleeding out. They did their best, all things considered, I take it that what had occurred was relatively obvious so it was really only a matter of one of them running for a medic while the rest of them tried to calm me down.”

The huge-handed giant holds him steady, while the oldest man tries to stem the blood flow. The grumpy one runs to warn his sister and her friend in the women’s section. The manic demolitionist goes for the doctor. Disgrace is dazed, but conscious, and able to tell the medic what happened. To give names.

“I wish I could say he ha been shocked.”

The doctor’s face twists at the lips, jaw locking, and Disgrace will swear he hears those teeth click. He treats him, but he doesn’t look him in the eyes. At the end, when they’re in another, cleaner environment, he stands up, already stripping off his bloody gloves. I’m sorry, he says, still barely looking at the Regiment’s Disgrace.

It isn’t your fault.

Right… You should rest.

“I thought that sounded cryptic even then, but I suppose you can say I was more preoccupied with why I was lying in the medical tent to begin with. That did change a bit later when I realized… No one did anything before and it wasn’t because of the girls. It was the men I should have been considering - and these men, they were… popular.”

His friends try to pursue action on his behalf, Disgrace himself too injured to move, let alone stand to plead his case. Still nothing’s done.

“I wasn’t even out of bed yet when they sent in another sort of doctor to… evaluate me.”

A shifty-eyed psychologist with a case file he never opens and a lot of inky Rorschach tests that all look like blood on the sand and splattered brains. Disgrace answers questions through a wired jaw and gritted teeth, halting sometimes when the blots look too much like the shadow of his ghostly coffin, the gory stains on the desert ground.

“At first I didn’t think too much of it. Tests - medical and mental - after attacks of that nature are customary in most places in the Western world. And evaluations following any sort of noteworthy trauma are a fact of having a career in the military or law enforcement - most jobs that require you to exercise authority or carry a gun. I assumed that was what they’d sent the doctor for until my diagnosis - ‘diagnosis’ -” he scoffs, “- when I realized it was a ruse. An attempt to discredit me.”

A medical file in his large, calloused hands. A list of old allergies and new injuries. Blood type; name; age; date of birth. At the bottom is something new - Paranoid Schizophrenia. Whispers begin to follow him: Went crazy, shot Nitro.

“Purposeful misdiagnosis is actually fairly common in that context, I’ve come to find out, but of course, I didn’t know that at the time.”

He protests, but, of course, that’s exactly what he would say if he was ill. Besides, if he fights it too hard, he'll be charged with murder; if he doesn't resist, it will be classed as an accident. As soon as he’s walking literally again, he’s served his figurative walking papers, and nothing he or his friends can say will change the decision. He gets on the plane, still limping, looking back regretfully at his friends.

“I cannot say I was exactly sorry to leave, except… they are still there. The men that assaulted me, and so many other people. It must still be going on, and I feel guilty for hoping no one else will try to stop it. The same thing will happen to them. I wish I could at least tell those girls I tried. I do not want to be thought of as a traitor as well as a madman.”

He flies alone back to the city and spends the better part of the next few months between the gym the Replacement goes to, job interviews, and his parents’ pullout couch. He sends job applications through the mail, but it’s a long time before he hears back about any.

“Having a condition like that on your file makes you a liability in the eyes of quite a lot of people. I’m not sure if it was just that or the fact that I was refusing treatment I didn’t need to begin with, but… I found myself with very few opportunities, at least for a time.”

After half a year has passed - and two of the big winter holidays - the Regiment’s Disgrace takes a phone call. Eyes light up like they haven’t in a while at whatever he hears on the opposite end. Yes! Yes, I can start tomorrow. No, really, it’s no trouble at all. Thank you, sir.

“Eventually I did manage to find work - at an old toy store. I cannot say that I make much, but it’s better than nothing. Still, I would have preferred the college education I enlisted for. And…” His beaten face morphs into an expression of hurt. “… the children are afraid of me. I was not prepared for that.”

Little girls younger than the ones he met on duty giggle and whisper, and their mothers and older sisters shush them. Toddlers hide behind their parents. Small boys gawk openly and ask in awe,What happened to your face? The store owner’s teenage son says nothing, but looks curiously at the old rope burn on his neck.

“Still, I am not alone. I still write to my friends from my squadron, and I am developing friendships here.”

… should at least work in the back… suicide attempt… obviously unstable, whispers a woman to her friend.

The dark-haired teenager stands between her and Disgrace, arms akimbo. Ma’am, we have a zero-tolerance policy about abuse of our employees, can you at least discuss that off the premises? The woman scowls, but shuts up.

Disgrace nods. Thank you, Alan.

No prob. Say, uh, can I ask what did happen to…?

Parachute accident. The boy can tell he’s lying, but never presses.

“Even knowing what I do now, though, I would rather have at least tried than hidden away from the truth. And if they are the pride of our military, I am proud to be their opposite.” He straightens his back and taps his heels. “I lost, but if we hide from wrongdoing, we will still lose. If we fight, we may win, and the chance is worth it.”

Chapter Text

“Heeeeello ladies and gentlemen!”

The Jester backflips across the stage, spinning as she lands and throwing her arms out wide. In her forties, she has the agility of a young woman and the mannerisms of a child. She is wearing ragged shorts and a stained T-shirt, tattered leggings and weather-worn shoes. Her long hair, pulled into scraggly pigtails, has been badly dyed; dark pink, coming in black. Splatters of the color cover her clothes. Her face is heavily scarred, long scratch marks running down her cheeks. Her eyes are large, her smile larger. That smile reminds them…

She laughs and puts her hands on her hips. “Before ya ask, nooo, I am not related to the Page, or the Lizard either. Hey guys!”

The man grins and waves. The woman smirks and salutes.

“We got blood tests done and everything. But yeah, I can see why you’d think it.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a dark-haired girl runs wild through a small house, screaming and sobbing and laughing and cursing with barely a breath in between. A man and a woman look on, confused and helpless.

“I am cer-tee-fiable! Got diagnosed with Borderline at fourteen. They don’t usually do it when you’re that young.” The Jester snickers. “Innuendo not intended. But hey, relax, I’m not gonna freak out on ya.”

The Jester is driven to doctor after doctor, given capsules and tablets and many a listening ear. She receives books describing social norms. She is signed up for gymnastics, where she flips and twirls and never seems to burn enough energy.

“My folks weren’t too happy, but ya can’t blame ‘em. Who wants their only kid to be a loon? They weren’t perfect, but they did their best. And at least they were honest.” Something flickers in her eyes; something dangerous. “We don’t talk now but that’s my choice as much as theirs. I got no beef with them.”

The Jester begins her sophomore year of high school with a wide smile and an unblemished face. She floats from class to class, talking and giggling and generally ignored. At lunch, she sits next to another girl. A girl who talks back.

“Pembe Rosa Diamond.” The Jester says the name with utmost solemnity, then begins to giggle. “Boy howdy, whatta name, right? I always called her Pink. First time I met her was right after she’d been in some gardening event, and she was soooo burned…”

From the audience, the Page calls out: “How burned was she?”

“She was so burned, even a Texan would think she was overdone!”

Even without the sunburn, the name would fit. The girl is a walking swatch of pink, from her bobbed cotton candy hair to her fandango-and-amaranth outfit to her tickle-me makeup. She is tall (and taller still in her heels) and slim and easily amused. When the Jester jokes, she laughs. And the Jester smiles.

“She was my first real friend. Yeah, sixteen’s pretty old for that to be happening, but… I never clicked with anybody. What can ya do, right?”

Pink is the Jester’s elder by two years; they share no classes. But in the cafeteria, in the hallways, in any school-wide event or sport or club, the Jester seeks her out; as unerringly as flowers seek the sun. And Pink always smiles.

“She didn’t have a lot of friends either, which was weeeeird ‘cause she was super pretty and funny and loaded. Her family owned this major housing development corporation, like everybody in Washington had a house by their company. So she was rolling in it.”

The Jester and Pink walk side by side through a mall. Pink enters a store and chooses a pair of shoes. She throws a credit card onto the counter and turns her nose up at the cashier. The Jester doesn’t seem to notice.

Cut; the Jester follows Pink through the cafeteria. Another student stumbles, spilling milk onto the tall girl’s jacket. The offense is slight, the resulting stain small. Pink screams like she’s been shot. The Jester runs for napkins.

Cut; Pink storms out of her house and past the Jester, who runs to catch up. She rages about a wrong that has been done unto her, and the Jester cracks a desperate joke. Her smile is wide; her eyes are frightened.

“She had three older sisters, and I mean older. The twins were like… fifteen years older? And the oldest was nineteen when Pink was born. So they’d all been running the family business since their folks kicked it, and they wouldn’t let her help. ‘Too young’, they said, ‘too immature’.” The Jester rolls her eyes dramatically. “That pissed her off. A lot. And whenever she got pissed, we’d go to the Garden.”

Pink and the Jester walk through the rows in a nursery, sniffing the flowers and pruning branches. Pink is smiling, and the Jester finally seems to relax.

“That’s about how it went for the whole semester.”

One graduates high school while the other remains. The Jester now leaves as soon as the last bell rings. She appears at Pink’s house, always grinning from ear to ear. Pink’s own smile begins to be forced. The Jester doesn’t seem to notice.

Cut; the nursery. Pink repots a flower while the Jester dances around her, plucking the petals from roses and throwing them at the older girl’s feet. Pink glances at her briefly. She is not smiling. The Jester doesn’t see this.

Cut; Pink is walking through the mall when the Jester suddenly appears behind her. The Jester grabs her hand and begins gabbing a mile a minute. Pink frowns. It is clear to anyone she is annoyed. Anyone except…

“Once Pink hit the big two-oh, her sisters decided to let her start working for the company. They’d been wanting to stretch out to other states, and she was gonna deal with the Cali branch.” The Jester laughs. Very loudly. “It was great for her! Super great!”

Outside, the world is coated in snow. Within the nursery, where the Jester stands holding a potted geranium, it’s warm enough to burn. The flowers are gonna miss you, she giggles, tears running down her face.

Pink offers a smile that does not reach her eyes. You’ll just have to take care of them for me. And then I’ll know exactly where to find you.

The Jester is still laughing. Laughing so hard her face has gone red. Laughing so hard she’s started to cry. “NOW… now correct me if I’m wrong… but it seems to me… when you say something like THAT… it implies you have the SLIGHTEST FUCKING INTENTION OF COMING BACK!”

The Jester visits the nursery daily. She stands for hours beside the geraniums, watching the door, watching a fierce winter melt away. She graduates high school. She leaves her parents’ home. She gets a job working in the nursery. She rents an apartment nearby. And all the while she is smiling, bigger and bigger. And if her hands begin to shake, if her eyes begin to twitch, if she sometimes-becoming-often feels as though she’s going to throw up from the absolute terror of being ALONE… she laughs and bites her lip and stares just a bit harder at the door.

She is not laughing anymore. She is smiling thinly and glaring at her audience, and there’s that same familiarity that makes them glad she has no sharp objects. “Even then… I kinda had a life. There were people, at the Garden and at stores and stuff. They weren’t her, they didn’t matter like she did, but at least there were people.”

The phone rings, again and again, and the Jester lunges for it. It is never Pink. She waits for the mailman and snatches envelopes from his hand. Nothing worthwhile. Her mother, carefully and gently, suggests searching for a different job. You’re so talented, Enola. Are you sure this is what you want to do with your life? The Jester stops visiting her parents. They never reach out. And the years go trickling by.

“And then the Garden gets shut down. Economy’s a bitch, amIright? But here’s the thing, here is the thing, the thing is, I couldn’t leave. Because if I left then when Pink came back I wouldn’t be there. Because of course she was coming back. Of course.” The Jester giggles, high and eerie, and one hand comes to her cheek. “Such a fucking idiot…”

The Jester still goes to the nursery daily. Still stands beside a table and watches the door. There is no one to stop her, there is no one to shoo her away, there is no one, no one at all.

“Money dried up, like what’d you think was gonna happen dipshit, and I got kicked out of my apartment. And obviously when you don’t have money you can’t get your meds, so that just made it all about a bazillion times better.”

The Jester huddles in a corner of the nursery. Watching the door. The plants are withering around her. Subconsciously, compulsively, repeatedly, she drags her fingers down her face. Bright lines on pale skin. She smiles wide; she has to be ready for when Pink comes back. Because she will. She will.

The Jester snickers, glaring at the audience through her bangs. “But hey, we’ve all been waiting for the meat of the story, right?”

A dark and stormy night; lightning pierces the air and throws the shadows of dead flowers against the ground. The door opens and the Jester jumps to her feet. A figure in green stares back. Two eyes widen. One eye narrows.

“Some random dude. I think, anyway. Like, he definitely had a dick, but he was wearing girl clothes, so I dunno if he was trans or in drag or just didn’t have anything else. Whatever, he did the big R, so… Honestly kinda hope he was trans and he’s out there having his feelings hurt ‘cause I keep calling him a dude.”

The Jester is pinned to the ground, her face rubbed raw against the concrete floor. She sobs. She screams. She falls quiet. Her attacker leaves and the Jester remains, silent and shaking and scratching her skin.

“What the hell am I gonna do, call the cops? ‘Hey officer, I’ve been squatting in this abandoned building, and this guy- Why, yes, I have been stealing to feed myself, why’d ya ask?’ ” The Jester doubles over, cackling. “Yeah, that’s gonna go fucking well.”

The Jester remains in the greenhouse, her face coated in scabs. Now she stares at the door with a wide grin and dead eyes, and she goes without sleep for days.

“Lived like that for ten years.” The Jester whistles, then giggles. “Time flies when you’re havin’ fun, amIright?”

Scabs become scars become freshly bloodied wounds. The Jester waits (because she’s coming back, of course she is) with a desperate smile stretched across her face.

“Then I heard somewhere about social media pages. Like, when Pink left, there were only like five websites. Now it turns out everybody’s on computers and you can actually find people who… But she knew where I was. She would’ve come to me if she actually wanted to see me. Shoulda figured it out sooner, fucking idiot, shoulda…”

The Jester sits in a library at a computer, oblivious of the stares and whispered comments behind her back. She finds a Myspace page with a link to a Facebook profile; neither has been touched in years.

One hand is wrapped around a pigtail, pulling hard. “How stupid, right, how stupid do you have to be to keep thinking there’s any chance that she’s out there and she wants you and she ever cared, how stupid-”

She selects one of Pink’s friends, a twig of a woman with a face she thinks she has seen before. On this woman’s page there are pictures of smiling faces and happy people and a child…

The other hand is dragged down her cheek, again and again.“She didn’t want me, she never wanted me, she just acted like she gave a shit but she never did, no one ever did-”

… with dark eyes and baby-pink skin and a grin she knows. She scrolls further down, through a year’s worth of picture-perfect smiles, until she sees her.

Pink looks different in this photo. Her hair has grown out, long ringlets of rose (was it always so curly?) framing a filled-out face (when did she get so fat?). Her skin is paler, and she wears a white dress (where are her pink clothes?), and her hand is on her swollen stomach (what did she do?). Everything is different (everything is WRONG), but the Jester knows her. Her eyes twitch back and forth between the picture and the caption: It has been one year since Rose passed away…

Blood is dripping onto the stage, and the Mother Superior slowly gets to her feet. “Enola-”

The Jester jerks back to some form of sanity and giggles. “Hey hey hey, I thought you said we don’t use names! Keep your pants on, I’m almost done.” She runs a bloody hand through her hair and blinks at her audience. “What’s with the faces? I said I won’t lose control, and I’m not gonna.”

The Jester is shaking with laughter as she throws the computer to the floor. Liar. Liar! LIAR! Plastic and glass and sparks fly across the floor. Someone screams (maybe it’s her), and the Jester runs into the night.

“Now, let’s do the math, kids. She’d been gone seventeen years. She’d been dead for two. That’s fifteen years where she just didn’t care enough to ever try to find me or talk to me or even just say she didn’t want me anymore.”

The Jester starts a fire, burning the decayed remains of the flowers that she loved on Pink’s behalf. I’m hurting you for your own good, she whispers, though who she is addressing is not clear. She watches the flames lick up the walls of the greenhouse, and she grins. She is gone well before the fire trucks arrive.

“Like, if she’d have just said she didn’t want me… I coulda dealt with that. But she didn’t. I waited because I actually thought… Whatever. Whaaaaatever, water under the bridge, right? ‘S just my life she ruined, nothing major, no big deal.”

The Jester heads south, stopping at various libraries to double-check that Facebook page. She finally locates a family-owned restaurant, and she knows she’s in the right town.

“I’ve been trying to pull myself together, but it’s not working out so well. Still homeless, still off my meds, yada yada. The upside now is I’m at least doing things, instead of just waiting for her. I decided to come to Cali ‘cause the winters are better.”

The Jester sits in a park with her head down. She watches a trio of women lead a dark-haired toddler to the playground. She grits her teeth. Cut; the Jester visits a back-alley tattoo parlor and trades her body for a marking upon it. A heart in the center of her chest, upside down so she can peer into her shirt and see it. A date is scrawled in the center. A day in early September - the day she first met Pink - and a year in the not-too-distant future.

A shark-like grin. “People are worse, though. I mean, some are okay…”

A man huddles in the corner of tonight’s safehouse, the stench of rot rolling off him. There are bits of food in his tangled hair, molding and coloring his dark locks with streaks of green. The Jester glares at him all night. He flips her off and rolls onto his side.

Cut; a pair of boys. Child runaways. One blond and pale and slightly older, one dark-skinned and dark-haired and sporting a lumpy, red nose. The Jester asks if he has something contagious; the boy bursts into tears. She shrugs and moves to the far end of the alley.

Cut; an elderly woman enters a soup kitchen and passes a photograph, crinkled and faded, among the patrons. The Jester stares at it: a picture of a tiny girl with tiny features and strawberry-blonde hair. The Jester shakes her head, and the woman sadly leaves.

“… but ya guys gotta admit, you got some assholes here.”

The Jester is pinned down in a parking garage, held in place by a man with fiery eyes and a gun on his hip. She giggles hysterically and does not fight.

Cut; another man in an alley, glaring at her with eyes the Mother Cat wishes she could claw out. This one, she does fight; his skin tears off in chunks and stripes. She stumbles away with blood on her legs, in her teeth, under her nails.

Cut; dark-haired and dark-suited twin men pull her towards a windowless van. More alert than they thought she was, she lashes out and bites and is able to flee.

“I had a couple other incidents, but they’re not worth talking about. It doesn’t matter. I’m tryin’ to focus on improving things.”

The Jester sees that small boy over and over, watching as he grows. She giggles darkly each time he passes.

“I’ve been here… shit, twelve years now, I think? And I do think I’m starting to move past it all.”

The Jester visits a cemetery and stands before a headstone. She grins broadly, scratching her face until blood falls onto the ground. You never should have left me, she snickers. I want you to suffer. It’ll be beautiful.

“I mean, I’m not gonna lie, I still wish I could get back at her. I want to make her sorry.”

That stick-thin woman leaves a grocery store, and the Jester watches from the shadows. The bag is cheap plastic, and the contents are easy to see; cake mix, frosting, and two candles in the shape of numbers. A 1 and a 4. The Jester smirks and glares at the date on her chest. Two years to go.

She giggles, high and eerie. “But hey, no real way to do that, is there?”

Chapter Text

“What d’ya hear in your head when you’re screamin’?”

It is Carmen Sandiego who speaks. Le Canon Lâche throws his head back and pops a mint into his open mouth - and slaps her hand when she reaches to take one. There are no usual pairs by Palace standards, but even then they really don’t look like they fit together - the tired man in the brown coat and the big woman in the red jacket, lining their pockets with the eyes on the stage. The cop and the robber. Brown and red. But they have the same stiffness to them, like a couple of revolutionaries lined up against a wall by the firing squad while the crowd bays for blood.

“Now, ask most people this question an’ they’ll just say the obvious. How much ya gonna hear above your own voice anyway? I mean, ‘ll bet you can say plenty but… Well, c’mon an’ look, you guys. Look at where we are. Look at what we are.”

“I think you mean who we are, l’autre femme rouge.”

“I’m Carmen Sandiego.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; dandelions bloom from the asphalt cracks in Boston Town and Carmen Sandiego sweats in a garage in Southie. She slides herself out from beneath the undercarriage of a rocket-pop race car, arms coated wrist to elbow in thick, dark oil-grease. Zack! Toss me the torque wrench, wouldja?

Comin’ atcha! The thing is chucked halfway across the room by either a younger man or older kid with a freckled face and orange hair.

“Well… the poor man's version anyway. Guess that’s pretty fittin’, seein’ as we were never very liquid growin’ up. Sorry, that’s me an’ my li’l bro, not me an’ him… then again, you prolly coulda guessed that. S’ not like we coulda been kids together, right?”

“I… feel like I ought to be insulted by that.”

“Uh, then be ‘inzulted’ or whatever.” She snorts, playfully socking him in the arm. “Lay down the law, wouldja? Old man.”

“I’m only in my thirties! That’s not… That’s… Ferme ta bouche! How dare you talk this way to me! I am an agent of Interp-” Le Canon stops abruptly, mouth hanging open around the edges of that last aborted word. “Er, I suppose I was…”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Paris daisies grow in Poitiers, in the gaps between the walkway stones. Le Canon Lâche runs the wrong way up the street. A younger woman with black, black eyes and glasses and straight dark hair dashes after him and keeps up, hot on his heels. Try to… Try not to… He bends over, hands on his knees, panting like he’s down two lives. Miss Argent, t-try not to… slow… me… down…

Inspector Devineaux…? She reaches to touch his shoulder, but he brushes her hand away.

“I have not been back since… Well, I have not been back. This-” He opens his arms and gestures vaguely at just about everything in the room, then reaches into his coat again and takes out something that isn’t a mint to swallow dry. “-is not why. I was transferred even before… all of… of everything.”

“I haven’t been home in a while neitha. My bro an’ I, uh, we kinda got on the wrong side a’ somebody we shoulda steered clear of a few years back. Money thing, ya know?”

Carmen Sandiego and her brother sit across from a big man in an upscale restaurant. He’s on the heavy side and olive-skinned like Signorina’s grandfather, with black hair that spikes gray at the middle, giving him the appearance of a shark with a Rolex. Carmen and her brother bite the insides of their cheeks and swallow. Sharkhead crumbles breadsticks illustratively in his hands.

“We were a racin’ team back home. Amateurs, sure, but we woulda gone pro soon. Prolly. Except someone crashed our racer an’ that didn’t sit too well with the guy gave us the dough ta build her. Word ta the wise? Nevah borrow big from a loan shark - or better yet, nevah borrow from a loan shark at all. If you can help it. Be a good boy… or girl. Not like us.”

“I rather think most people know better than that.” Le Canon Lâche is apparently intent on marching on the spot where there are amends to make.

“Shut it, Mista-honhonhon-I-am-from-a-country-wiz-zee-centralized-healthcare!”

“Oh, well, excusez-moi for pointing out the obvious. A-and that is not what I z-sound like!” He crosses his arms, sulkily. “And even if it was…”

Le Canon Lâche leans over a metal-topped table and spins a keycard around on it, all twitch-trembling fingers and fidgetsome hands. There’s a woman with dark skin and short, light hair standing on the other side of the desk, in front of him, and the partner from before looking in on them from behind.

“I was transferred from my position in France about, euh, several months ago. A new position - a promotion, you would say - with a new investigative bureau. Something like that. I do not know if I am allowed to name the specifics, even if I am no longer… Even if I am currently on ‘administrative leave’.” He makes air quotes, rolling his eyes. “It was fun while it lasted, I suppose, but not what I was used to. In Poitiers they had me working in art theft and forgery, museum robberies, things like that. That was how I first heard the name Carmen Sandiego.”

“He means the real one. An’ yeah, guess that wouldn’t really mean much to mosta ya regular types. Copycat, though, maybe? Snowbird? She’s this really incredible lady. Smart an’ talented an’…” Carmen blushes until her cheeks are almost the color of what she’s wearing. “An’ she’s my boss.”

Carmen Sandiego and her brother and a young woman in a long red coat - the coat - and the same fedora that Carmen wears in the Palace and on the stage. She’s striking in a lot of ways - strikingly fast, strikingly strong, strikingly pretty - and less remarkable only insofar as her looks compare to the thing she’s holding. A pretty rock, big enough to buy half the world twice over.

“Workin’ outside the law isn’t really the same thing as goin’ against it. Whatever my friend here has ta say.”

Le Canon bristles. “We are not friends. We are business associates.”

“That mean you’re gonna start payin’ me?”

“Very funny. Ha. Ha. Ha.” He clears his throat. “What my compatriot has neglected to mention is that la femme rouge is a wanted thief - and my arch nemesis!”

La Femme Rouge dashes like a cat over slated city rooftops. Le Canon Lâche moves in the same direction, tripping over his feet in the street below. He curses in French and doubles over, panting and losing sweat on the sidewalk as Carmen Sandiego slips away like beach glass in the tide.

“Yeah you keep tellin’ yahself that.”

“I believe I will! In any case, I expect that the real Carmen Sandiego and I will have some business to attend to if-” When the not-real Carmen flinches, his eyebrows shoot up. “Ah, of course I mean when! When I see this real Carmen Sandiego we will have our confrontation ultime. The lawman and the thief!”

“Hey! Carm’s not… Okay, the thief thing isn’t wrong exactly, but it’s not that bad, promise. See, she’s… well, uh… ‘member what I said ‘bout workin’ outside the law?”

Carmen Sandiego stands back, face hidden behind a hockey mask and shadows as the woman in red pops the lock on a tight museum door. It opens silently and they enter without the fanfare of any alarm. Where d’ya want this thing? one Carmen asks another, just enough of the dim light hitting her to reveal the wrapped paper package she’s hefting in both arms. S’ kinda heavy.

Put it here, the red lady tells her, removing her hat to point - and maybe to show off just how the moon looks in her long, dark hair. Security will see it in the morning. They’ll know what to do.

“Look, I know it isn’t really what ya’d call, uh, orth-y-dox, but we get our results. The real Carm does what she thinks is right and the rest of us kinda just go along with that. Well, we did. I… I know how that probably sounds, but it’s not… It can’t be the worst thing ya ever heard in here. An’ we’re the good guys. Basically.”

“That is exactly what un criminel like Carmen Sandiego would want you to say!”

She rolls her eyes. “Cross your heart an’ hope ta die?”

“Quoi? I only mean that a thief is a thief. And let us not forget the times I have caught la femme rouge redhanded. Eh? Eh?” He gives a positively smug smile, even as the others groan. “An innocent woman does not sneak around beneath the cover of darkness or run when confronted by a member of the international police.”

“Have ya met you?”

“You… You are undermining my authority!”

Le Canon in a parking garage with that young woman from before. She comes up only to his shoulder, but they might as well be nose to nose, glaring daggers in the suspended dark. Stealing things only to return them makes absolutely no sense!

I agree. Which is why I do not believe she’s stealing these things to begin with.

“My partner - that is, my work partner - made some of these same points before… well. I’ll have to apologize when next we meet - whenever that may be. I was less than kind toward her. I am not unaware of my countrymen’s stereotypes, but I should try not to live up to them. I have to try.” He swallows and Carmen Sandiego runs a hand down his arm.

“So about what happened…”

In another city, where it’s much colder and snowbanks line the streets, Carmen’s carmine stands out like a spot of blood in an old fairy tale. She walks between the houses of Stockholm and the shops, hiding herself in the coat (which is a little tight around the shoulders) and pulling the fedora brim down low so that it covers up her face. Uniforms follow behind her as she goes.

“Like I said, I think of us as bein’ the good guys, but that doesn’t mean I’m dumb or that I don’t get that what we do isn’t… ‘zactly legal? Bit of a Guy Fawkes situation. Hero or villain, nobody knows, but people know what we look like. Sorta, anyway.” She pinches her sleeve up, tugging at the fabric. “They know this. So sometimes, when Carm needed to shake a tail, someone else had to put this baby on and, y’know… distract ‘em. Usually me. I’m a little on the big side, but I’m - I was - the only other chick there. Guess my li’l bro‘ll have do it now. I miss them a lot.”

“I…” Le Canon Lâche very awkwardly pats Carmen Sandiego on the shoulder. Once. Twice. Pat. Pat. “Euh, there there. It is… not so bad. I am sure that you will reunite with your… accomplices quite soon. Perhaps in the same holding cell.”

“You a-aren’t very good at this, y’know?”

“I’m trying to be!” he bursts out and then returns to his awkward shoulder tapping. “There. There. Erm… I was… When it happened, I want to say that I was…” He winces. “I am sure that I should not have forgotten something like this, but the fact of the matter is… I do not remember much. I know I got into another argument with my partner before it all occurred, and our superior called me…” He brushes damaged fingers over the top of his nametag. “ ‘Loose cannon’, she said. In English. Ahem. Then…”

I cannot stand the sight of you! Le Canon says to his reflection, leaning over the sink in his hotel bathroom. It has that sort of half-lived-in look of a place someone’s been in for a while without ever really calling it home. There’s a toothbrush in his hand and a soapy mess at the bottom of the bathtub, swirling around the drain.

“I think that perhaps I was brushing my teeth…? I mean, I must have been, but it’s all a fog… I don’t… I should-”

“Don’t beat yahself up about it too much. I don’t remember a lotta mine either. Just the beginning… I think they mighta drugged both a’ us. Had ta be somethin’ like that.”

Zack. Ivy. A younger-sounding voice crawls out through the bluetooth in Carmen Sandiego’s cold-reddened ear. Carmen’s offline. They must have caught her scent and doubled back.

What? How’d they figure it out? She sweeps her arms open. Look at me, I’m Carmen Sandiego.

Hallå, Carmen Sandiego. There’s a man in the street, so big that she looks even smaller than Le Canon’s diminutive partner did. The look he’s wearing is a weird mix of bloodlust and naïveté.

Carmen’s eyes go wide and she takes a step backwards, not noticing the other stranger approaching from behind. Look, fella- There’s the crackle of electricity as a taser fires, lightning racing up her back. Then she slumps and the big man slings her over his shoulder, stepping on her phone screen and breaking it as he moves off the main walkway.

“Okay, they tazed me, not drugged. But that’s sorta the same deal, right?” She laughs but stops when it turns watery. “Uh, anyway. I woke up in… I’m tryin’ ta remember where I came to again.”

“I cannot remember, not much anyway. But I am sure now that I was getting ready for bed. I, along with my former partner, had been staying in San Francisco - research for a case. It actually would have been pretty easy for someone to enter my hotel room and disturb my things. Evidently it was…” He grimaces, revealing a mouth full of browning, uncleaned teeth. “I cannot stand the taste - the sensation - of dentifrice now. And I do not know how to explain that to my dentist in a way that he’ll understand…”

The toothpaste on le Canon Lâche’s toothbrush is a different color from the stuff crusted on and around the sink. When he works it in and out there’s too much foam. More than there should be. More than can be called normal. Of course, it’s at this point that it occurs to him he can’t feel his tongue. Then he lurches forward and falls to the ground, and strangers pull open the bathroom door.

“Well, we both woke up… somewhere else, right? Somewhere different from where we were before, where we wanted to be. With me it was somewhere outside a’ Stockholm - one of those ice lodge things - with her coat off an’ my hands tied behind my back.”

It’s cold and colder still without Carmen Sandiego’s borrowed jacket. Blue eyes open to reflect the cold not-glass of the buffed, shiny ceiling and the zambonied floor. There are two men there, the ones from the street; a big one and a little one with glasses wearing the hat that doesn’t belong to any of them, draping the tight-around-the-shoulders coat over his arm.

“With me it was not quite so… clean. I woke up in a chair with my hands also restrained, but it was not in an ice lodge.”

“I thought ya couldn’t remember.”

“I cannot! But I know where the police happened to find me!”

It’s a dark, grimy-looking basement with a lightbulb on a chain hanging from the ceiling and a chain lock on the door. There is a window, but it’s high up and clouded with dirt from the street, and it’s late anyway. In the center, bound to a chair, is le Canon Lâche. He has been caught by criminals, and he knows even as his mouth opens that no one is going to hear him scream.

Bonjour, says a voice, and two figures step out from the dark. A big, brutish-looking woman in a tracksuit and a man in a wafuku with a grim face. Hard way or easy way?

“I do remember the faces, but not what they did to me. It is very strange.” He winces and pops another mint. “The best we can assume is that they… torturé me for information. I would like to think I did not give in, at least not too easily.”

“Hey…” Carmen reaches out as if to soothe him… and takes the opportunity to snatch the candy from le Canon’s hand. “PSYCH!”

“Espèce de salope sans cœur!”

“Joke’s on you, man, I don’t even know what those words mean.” She laughs and throws her head back as she swallows. “Anyway, he might not remember what happened, but I do. I, uh, they thought I was Carmen Sandiego. The real one. I tried to tell that I wasn’t, but… isn’t that exactly what most people would say if they were?”

She asks questions a mile a minute, straining against the handcuffs that pin her arms behind the chair. The little man smirks; gloats; snickers and snaps when the bigger one talks to her slowly, blinking big, blue eyes. He almost gives Carmen her coat when she asks for it, but the little man stops him again. It’s just as well; the pockets are full of lockpicks.

“That guy was… Well, it’s sorta complicated. I don’t know what was… up with him, really. Somethin’ was, I know somethin’ was, but not what. He was around my age, I guess? Maybe older? But the way he talked was kinda like a li’l kid. The complicated part is how I feel about him. I mean, I don’t think he was all there, y’know? But… he’s still the reason I’m here.”

“Hmf. I on the other hand am burdened by no such dilemma. The people - it was a woman and a man - who did this to me knew what they were doing, I am certain of it!!”

“How?”

“I am an agent of Interpol! My instincts never fail!”

“Weren’t you fired?”

“Non! I was put on administrative leave!”

The man hangs back but the woman advances, shoulders rolling like a wildcat’s as she steps past le Canon Lâche’s chair and reaches behind him with maybe-not-murder in her green pepper eyes. He swallows dry. Tasting toothpaste. Tasting the jungle juice mix of saliva and blood from the inside of his bitten cheek. Must we do this the hard way?

Oh no, handsome. She grins, holding something up. The easy way. There’s a set of stained stainless steel pliers in her hand.

“And anyway it does not take a genius to know when something has not been done to you by accident. The injuries they found me with were calculated. Someone was trying to make me… They wanted to put me through as much pain as possible. At least, that is what the doctors at l'hôpital said when they thought I was asleep.”

“Arncha glad ya don’t remember that?” Carmen Sandiego picks a scab on the back of her hand. “I would be if it were me in your shoes.”

There’s an ice sculpted thing on the floor in front of her. As almost-clear and cool-cut lustrous as the room and most of the other things in it, and shaped almost like a gnome. This is not the word Carmen Sandiego uses for it. Whoa, you Swedes really do love your tomtes.

The big man looks impressed. You know about these?

Sure! They ride around on goats delivering meatballs at Christmas. Or is it gifts?

“It’s gifts. Big guy told me so. Then he said that ‘this tomte’ would be deliverin’ a… What are those thingies called?”

“I would not know. Do I look like a mind reader, Mademoiselle Boston?”

“Whatever happened to Interpol-tuition?”

Le Canon Lâche groans. “If I had known you came here to abuse me, I might as well be the phone with mon ex-femme.”

There is blood on the floor and more on his hand, and some on the big woman with bright green eyes. The pliers lie on the floor alongside most of his fingernails. She turns back to the table where they came from and selects another shiny metal thing, twirling it casually as she unbuttons his shirt. What’s wrong, sweetheart? All sugar and arsenic. Too cold for you in here?

“As I said, I cannot recall exactly what happened that night - and perhaps I do not wish to - but I do know what sort of condition la police found me in. I… There was a doctor at the hospital… who said… who said that might be temporary. My brain trying to block out the very bad things.”

“I… don’t think mine was as bad as that. What? Honest, I don’t. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not sayin’ it was fun for me but at least nobody strapped me down and cut pieces off until I was screamin’. Even with the other stuff… Look, I was there a while an’ nothin’ happened till near the end.” She blinks; grins; snaps her fingers. “Hey! I remember what that word was! Data crystal! Yeah!”

Something hard and bright and glassy inside the gnome that is not a gnome. A shivering Carmen Sandiego sits forward, squinting as if that could ever be enough to read all of its secrets. She asks questions that the bigger man doesn’t look like he’d mind answering if the small one didn’t shut him up everytime. But he does, so Carmen stares at it while they sleep.

“They kept me fed okay, even if it was cold as a snowman’s blue-balls in there and sleepin’ sittin’ up’s a real bitch. Not as bad as it coulda been though. Not like…”

“Do not look at me like that. Ah, please. I am not a… an invalid. Though I…” He reaches for his mints again and shovels in an entire handful. “To arms, citizens, form your battalions and that. Let an impure blood soak our fields…”

More blood and tools and… gatherings on the floor. In the center, le Canon Lâche remains. He grits his teeth, eyes wide, bare chest heaving. Allons enfants de la Patrie… L-le jour de gloire est arrivé… The gray-faced man sticks to the shadows, face impassive. The woman, though, is annoyed more easily. She takes a rag from her pocket or the floor - he isn’t sure which - and stuffs it into his open mouth.

Give it a minute, she says in a voice that sounds almost deceptively gentle, he’ll be singin’ our tune. Then she reaches past her partner for something else. Now you be a good boy.

“It… What the doctors say is that I must have been… Si c'est avec un objet contondant, pouvez-vous vraiment appeler cela un viol?”

“Uhhh, I don’t speak-”

Le Penitent de Plaisir clears his throat and looks, clear-eyed, up at the stage. “Oui. Vous pouvez. Et je pense que vous le savez au fond.”

“Merci…”

“Okay then. Don’t speak French, but glad you’re havin’ fun I guess.” Carmen shrugs. “So, like, my thing didn’t hurt as much as his - I don’t think - but it also took longer before they… y’know, so maybe it evens out?”

After a few days pass, the little man gets up with the tomte and leaves her behind in the room with his enormous associate. He’s supposed to guard her. He doesn’t do the best job. Blends right in with all the ice around here, she’s saying, pretty smart! But then you hide it inside an ice sculpture? Can you say overkill?

No, the big one mumbles through his zipped-up jacket, also… Sound still muffled, he pulls the zipper down. Every precaution must be taken when selling secret launch codes.

“When he said launch I thought he meant nuclear, but now I think he mighta just been… Swedish an’ mixin’ up his words. Not sayin’ that the first option woulda been better, but… Okay, I mean he mighta not known eithah, like I said, he was… different, I think. Or maybe he did… I wish I could tell you what was goin’ on in there.”

“I would not be so sure.”

“Huh?”

“I do not think you would like reading minds very much. It sounds… lonely, and what if you cannot stand the things they say? What then? You might think better with a hole in your head.”

Again, le Canon Lâche mumbles the chorus of his song. Aux armes, citoyens, formez vos bataillons. There’s blood on the ceiling as well as him as well as the woman. The only one who looks at all clean is the man hanging back. The woman makes no comment about this. It’s a wonder le Canon says anything at all.

“If I wanted all of my shortcomings reflected back at me I could just invest in a silver mirror, Mademoiselle Boston.” He scoffs, eyes rolling while his nostrils flare. He looks less man and more thoroughbred race horse - the crazy kind, kicking and bucking around the stage. “Or better yet, I could call my ex-wife.”

“You were married? How? Who the fuck- Right, sorry, not the point. I’m just… surprised. Ya don’t really seem like the family man type.”

“Yes, well, you don’t seem like a… Tais-toi!”

“I have no idea what that is. Whatever. So anyway… The guy said launch codes. I thought that meant nuclear an’ maybe he did too since he didn’t correct me. Not too sure about his friend, but he prolly knew the whole truth, I think - somebody had ta, right? The reason why I think the kid - the big guy - didn’t is cuz he kinda freaked when he realized he’d told me.”

The big man’s face colors over with a lot of childish anger. It would almost look funny except that he looks big enough to crush an ice cube between his fingers and a brick with his hands. Don’t worry, Carmen tries to say, I won’t tell-

I will make sure of that! And he lunges for her, sliding across the icy floor.

“I kicked back, a’ course, and the stuff they had tied around my wrists snapped when I hit the wall. He tried ta take ‘nother swing at me an’ I got him with the chair. Didn’t do much, he was so big, but it did piss him off. He ran at me.” She hugs herself and the coat she’s wearing. “Y’know, I kept thinkin’ over and over, ‘What would Carmen do?’ An’ I don’t think she’d have, uh… Yeah.”

“Ah, do not say that. I am sure that you… did your best.” Reluctantly, Le Canon takes the last mint from its paper tube pucker and places it in Carmen Sandiego’s shaking hand. “It is better than I managed.”

“Thought ya said you didn’t remember.”

“I do not. But… I have seen the incident report from when they found me. I know that I had to be carried out myself and taken off the floor.” His smile is hollow but he still offers it. “At least one of us was able to put up a fight, non?”

He struggles, then sags, and finally goes limp against the hands that hold him. There’s blood on the walls. Blood on the ceiling. Blood on that stupid, stupid chair. In his private Hell, le Canon Lâche mumbles through the rag they’ve gagged him with. Bars of La Marseillaise. The names of a wife (that he hasn’t touched in years) and a daughter (who he never calls anymore). Bloody fingers knit together behind him, feeling for a wedding ring that isn’t there. Feeling for something that isn’t there. And later, in the hospital, he’ll still be feeling when there’s no one to hold his hand.

Carmen looks down at the mint in her palm and breaks it, offering Le Canon Lâche the bigger half. “He kinda… hit me then. I tried ta turn over. Tried ta get away… didn’t work. Nothin’ worked. We fought an’ I lost an’ he got on top of me.”

Grunting; groaning; wet breath; chafing. Carmen’s neck sticks to the ground where he holds her. It’s worse than having ice dropped down her back like her brother did when they were children. It’s worse than… It’s worse.

The man looks like he wants to cry as much as she does when he sees what he’s done to her. S-Sorry.

That’s alright, pal. Her hand shoots out like a dirty joke’s punchline. It comes away with something thicker than water and something else thicker than that. Ya wanna make it up to me? The ends of her fingers stick on the ice pillar. But it’s only so much of something to let a little bit of skin peel away. If what she’s been told about men is true, he’s risking more than that.

“Ever seen Christmas Story? My bro an’ I watch it every year, s’ one a’ my favorites. Or it used ta be. I dunno if I can stand to anymore, not after, uh… Y’know that flagpole scene? Yeah. It doesn't gotta be your tongue if it’s cold ‘nuff, an’ it was.”

“At least you were able to do something.”

The chair has been tipped; le Canon Lâche lays in a heap on the floor, disoriented and more than a little strung-out on sedative. There’s a sound from outside and the man in the wafuku takes off after it, blade flashing in his hand. The woman follows as soon as he’s left her sight. Sit tight, she says to le Canon behind her, tacking sweetie onto the end. Later, he will remember some still frames and audiobites from the ride in the ambulance. Now, he gets on his knees and crawls. It’s slow going, but he gets where he wants to be eventually and pokes at his clothes with bloody hands. This is slow too.

“I am told that I was able to get a hold of my cell phone. Press the button… SOS. I think that perhaps this is my ‘something’. I wish I felt like it were enough.”

“I think it’s s’posed to. Eventually. Isn’t that what healin’ is?”

She grabs the coat that isn’t hers off the wall - and the hat - and runs for the door. Then she stops and stares right through the big man where she left him. What would Carmen do?

“The real Carmen‘d nevah leave without takin’ her coat. She’d nevah leave without stealin’ back those codes. I… it was the right thing ta do an’ I had ta do it. If I didn't, who else would?”

“That was very… brave of you.”

Blood on the phone screen. Blood and blood and bloody handprints. He ghosts over contacts. Maylis - a woman with dark hair. Princesse - a little girl with solemn eyes and big teeth. And the ones without pictures: Mademoiselle Argent and Chief and just Superviseur. His thumb hovers, then comes down, leaving a strawberry smudge on the screen.

What is it now, Agent Devineau-

“I was unconscious by the time anyone was able to reach me. They tell me it was miraculeux that I had not gone into shock.”

“Well that’s us for ya. A pair of miracamigos.”

“… You do realize I am French and not Spanish, do you not…?”

“Eh, potato potahto. Point bein’… aren’t we somethin’?” She strikes a pose. “The secret agent an’ the scarlet supah thief playin’ cops an’ robbers in the worst city in the world.”

Carmen Sandiego is traffic-light red, but plenty of the people in the hotel proper are wearing big coats and bright colors. She tries to ignore the trickle of other red into her underwear as she watches the little man and a total stranger from the bar. There’s a sled with the tomte made of ice set between them. Carmen squares her shoulders and breathes.

“I kept askin’ myself, ‘What would Carmen do?’ ‘What would Carmen do?’ Only… Carmen - the real Carmen - wasn’t there. It was just me. And ‘m not… good at this.”

“I do not think this is the sort of thing anyone can be ‘good’ at. Apparently Chief - my boss - needed me airlifted to the hospital. She… We do not have the best working relationship - my name being virtual mud at Interpol, at the moment - but she did tell me I did not deserve what they did to me.” He scoffs. “Did she think I would think that I did?”

A blur of pulsing light and throbbing color. The inside of an ambulance; an oxygen mask; the sting of a needle; I consent to the exam for Agent Devineaux. He’d kill me if we lost… the evidence, even like this. Doctors sucking things out and injecting others. A cocktail of blood and morphine that is shaken like a James Bond martini until there is no difference anymore.

“Nobody deserves it. Nobody deserves anythin’. ‘S why we gotta be patient with each other. Help out where and when we can.”

Carmen running. The ice sculpture smashes in slow motion. Red sleeves; red droplets; red on the shards and the crystal and her hands. She takes off for the exit and doesn’t cry until it’s over and she’s behind the wheel - bleeding into the upholstery - of someone’s stolen car. She keeps driving. This is not what Carmen would do. Maybe not, but she’s alive.

“I got back ta Stockholm, but it had been a while. I couldn’t find…” She presses her lips together in a thin, hard line. “Carm an’ my bro weren’t… I don’t know where ta look for ‘em. I don’t know where I’d even start.”

Le Canon Lâche gives his statement from a hospital bed; the woman - who is his boss and not his partner - stands beside him until the end. I’m putting you on leave for a while, Devineaux. We’ll take care of this, obviously, but… She holds her hand up as he starts to argue. You should rest. I’ll book you a flight back to Poitiers as soon as you’re feeling better.

No, he says like it hurts him. Not Poitiers. Calisota. I… I have family there. He looks down at the cellphone in his lap and sighs heavily. My daughter is nine. I do not think I can tell her about this.

“My ex-wife and I are hardly on what I would call good terms, but beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose. And anyway, I wasn’t going to impose on them. I did not mind booking another room in a different hotel.”

“An’ I’m here because, well, I…” She reaches into her pocket and holds something up. Sharp and small and shiny. “Snuck onto a college campus, back in Stockholm, just to get the tools to read it. Microscope. Polarizah. Things like that. Not cheap, but nothin’ crazy. It, uh… it wasn’t what I expected it to be?”

There’s one code - but only one - and these words: Noah Sent Me. Then a list of numbers and coordinates and names. Calisota; Balamory; Farthing Wood; Equestria. Carmen Sandiego squints into the lens of the microscope, very carefully copying each word down.

“There was a URL code written on it - that, and a few othah things. Carmen‘d probably get Playah - he’s our tech whiz - ta check it out first, but I haven’t even been able ta find my li’l bro, let alone track him down. S-so I ran the website myself. There was a password, but… Yeah. An’ what I saw on there…” She presses a hand over her mouth and sinks down, looking up at Le Canon Lâche with watering eyes. “I think I need a minute, okay? Quick, say somethin’ ‘bout your family.”

“Ah, what should I…? V-very well. Erm, as I said before, my wife - my ex-wife - and I did not part on… great terms? We both worked a lot, but she could not stand my drinking. It set a bad example for our daughter, she said. I do not disagree, though… Ah well.” He swallows tightly. “I do not know what it was that I expected, certainly not that they would be happy about me dropping in. I… Mon ex-femme, yes, I expected… well, but with Presque-une-Adulte… it was different. Just as well that she is not here today.”

He buys a snow globe with the city in it - big square buildings and the Golden Gates of the bridge - at the airport gift shop, leaning on crutches, waiting for his flight. He holds it in his lap after boarding until they tell him to stow it beneath his seat, which he does (however reluctantly). He looks down at his phone after that, scrolling through pictures of a daughter too big to hold anymore.

“I thought that she liked snow globes. Children like… glass things, do they not? Maybe I should have gotten her into stamp collecting. Or… or storybooks! Apparently she likes those.”

“Don’t we all? I… Thanks, okay, I’m ready now.”

Carmen Sandiego stares in horror at this thing projected on her screen. A young man with limp brown hair and his legs wide open, Lichtenberg figures trailing up and down his limbs as if all four have been burned with electricity. A young woman who looks a lot like the Champion’s blondest sister. Another with dark, dangerous eyes. Young men holding each other, crying. One-

“I found… the Ark, I think. ‘S that what ya call ‘em? Y-Yeah so… You tell me if that’s bettah or worse than nuclear stuff. Never gettin’ those pictures outta my noggin eithah way. I couldn’t sleep that night, or the next one, started thinkin’ ‘bout where those coordinates might go. An’ I asked myself what she would do if she were here with me. Next day I booked a flight.”

Le Canon is dragging his feet down the sidewalk, back to an ordinary street full of ordinary houses and one that looks very, very strange. A flash of red in his peripheral vision. L-la Femme Rouge! He takes off running, seeming not to care who sees him bolt, and tackles the wrong Carmen Sandiego to the ground. Aha! I have you n-… You are not Carmen Sandiego?

Carmen looks up at him, breath catching in her throat. Please, she whispers as her tape runs backward. Please don’t.

“I suppose it is one way to make a first impression.”

“Heh. Ya could say that again.”

Le Canon Lâche and Carmen Sandiego, side by side with their backs pressed up against an alley wall. So… she says awkwardly, sorry for freakin’ out on ya like that.

S'il te plait ne sois pas. He shakes his head. Er… please, don’t be. Please. Are you… alright now?

Nope, she pulls her knees against her chest, hugging them, but this isn’t really your freakshow to worry ‘bout, right?

Believe me, he sighs, sinking down further and crossing his legs, I understand.

“I guess that’s a lotta words ta answer my own question.” Carmen Sandiego takes her hat off, twisting the bright red brim of it until her fingers fit the shape inside. “What would Carmen do? What would Carmen do?”

Le Canon hums tunelessly, nodding along. “Pour qui ces ignobles entraves, Ces fers dès longtemps préparés?”

And then it repeats. Encore; again. That’s music. These are the things they hear.

Chapter Text

“There are a few more words, but I think we’ve got all the important ones. Right?”

“Think so. Y’know, this was all Mr. H- uh… his idea. I don’t know much about… philosophy… or language… or whatever it is that we picked the names for. Sorry, that’s not important. You guys don’t care. Sorry!”

“Hmph. You can thank the Greeks.”

The Six Loves are… a strange lot, that’s for certain if nothing else is. For one thing, most of them are the odd sort that one’s bound to notice, even from down the hall or across the room. For another thing, there are more than six of them - the Underdog and the Good Samaritan make seven there on the stage.

“Oooh! OOOH! THANK YOU MR. OLYMPICS GUY!”

“That’s not what he… you know what, nevermind.”

“He never says anything important anyway.”

A Story about the Apostle of Agape

“I know that… a lot of times life isn’t really fair. I mean, just look at me.”

The Apostle of Agape stands beside the Underdog, taller than him by a head, with one pale arm draped around his shoulders - the one attached to his only hand. The other arm was amputated at the elbow a long time ago; the scars there and the ones on his cheeks have gone almost white. One of his eyes is blue and glassy, the other is glass. He pushes back tattered red dreadlocks, grinning from ear to ear.

“Sorry, did that sound aggressive? You don’t have to-”

“Stop apologizing. Please.”

“Right! Sorry.” He laughs. “I guess what I’m trying to say is… I get it. I know life’s unfair and it can even seem really scary - especially right now with all the… yeah - but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth it to keep living, right? No matter how bad things are… which is pretty bad… Sorry!”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the Apostle shoots hoops in the rough looking neighborhood of the Underdog’s tape. His face twists up in dreamy concentration, tongue poking out. He’s tired, sure, but plenty strong; he makes a basket every time. There are kids watching him from the sidelines with hollow eyes and holes in their shoes, and when they cheer, his face goes as red as his hair.

“So I guess the Underdog already told you about the part of the city we grew up in. Yeah, not exactly what you’d call uptown, but hey, it had its charms. There was the park and the basketball court we all used to hang out at, and there were a lot of good people there.”

The Apostle sets the table in their tiny apartment, cooking dinner when their parents work late. The Underdog and that other mutual brother chase each other around the room. Cut; the Apostle walks home with a stout boy who has a sweatband wrapped around his head. They laugh until people stare at them. Cut; the Apostle greets those neighborhood kids from before. Hey! That was awesome, keep up the good work! Saw you were wearing out your sneakers. Think you can fit into a pair of my old ones? Sorry! Didn’t see you there! Hi!

“Plenty of bad people too…”

“Ah, don’t be like that.”

That redheaded kid from the Underdog’s tape and the big, shaven-headed man make their appearance as a long, low note plays in the background. The Apostle of Agape is kind to them too, until he sees the way they both shove the other kids around - especially the Underdog.

“I don’t know if I really believe in the whole ‘bad people’ thing… or maybe I do now, but I didn’t then. There’s gotta be some good in everybody, right? I’d still like to think that’s true. Sorry, you didn’t come here to talk morality. Uh, where were we?”

“Larry Fowler,” the Underdog says, like the name means something. “What? It’s not like he’s ever coming here.”

“Right… Lar- him. He was this younger kid’s stepdad. I don’t wanna call him a loser, but… I think he was a failed basketball player or something - couldn’t make the draft - and I guess it made him bitter. That’s probably why he wasted so much of his time playing with middle and high school age kids. And… he’s already told you about the game?”

47-48; a shadow falls over the Underdog, beneath the basketball hoop; the Apostle throws the match in pushing him away. Oh man… we lost. He reaches out for his little brother, who now pushes him away. I’m going home.

“Yeah, we were in the ring fighting the fight and… we lost it. Oh well, at least we did everything we could, and even losers deserve a cheering section, huh?” He glances over at the Underdog. “You… you know it’s not your fault, right?”

“You shouldn’t be the one reassuring me.”

The Apostle stays where he is on the blacktop, scrubbing his soles across the hot concrete. Wasn’t your time, huh? The friend with the sweatband puts a hand on his arm. Aw, he says, don’t feel so bad. It’s just a game, right?

I’m worried about Jordan… and I feel like an asshole. I really let him down.

Oh, he’ll come around. Hey, hold on a second! I’m gonna run down to the store, get us some ice pops. That’ll cheer you up, right?

The Apostle of Agape smiles. Thanks, Stats.

“I wish I’d gone with him, or that I’d gone home when he did, but I guess we all wish that. No point now in trying to change anything. All we can do is make the best of it. Still… it wasn’t fun.” He looks cautiously over at the Underdog. “I’m sorry, are you sure you’re okay to hear this part?”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Well… here’s to us then. And… huge mistakes?”

Hey there, Michaels. A shadow falls over the Apostle from behind and he looks up to see that boy’s stepfather - one of the only people who has ever towered over him. What’s wrong? Little brother gone and left you all alone?

What do you want, Larry? I’m not in the mood.

Oh? Is wittle Wilty a sowe losew? What would Mommy say if she knew about that?

Yeah, well, some of us like to keep things fair.

The man’s fists are like weights or bags of sand when he clenches them. Heavy enough to hit him hard. He reaches out and slams the Apostle into the wall - so hard that the concrete seems to tremble - and every bone breaks in the teenager’s arm.

“I found out later he crushed it so badly that… I wanted to be an NBA player, but that’s hard with one arm, no matter how good you are. And this was before he hurt my eye… and how he did it…”

“I think he was just jealous that you had something he didn’t. Icarus is… baloney and all that. People just can’t stand genius without an apology. So…”

The man shoves the Apostle down and bashes his face against the crumbling blacktop. The contact shatters in one eye and blood pours out of it, leaking down his face. He screams.

“And… and the funny thing is, that part hurt so bad that I didn’t even think about him hurting me even worse… until he’d already done it. Then he was getting up and I was lying on the ground and everything sorta slid into place. I realized there was blood on the ground and I looked up and saw s- the stuff that wasn’t blood and I just… panicked.”

He gets up and runs… stumbles, and misses his friend when he tries to call out. He doesn’t go home - he can’t go home - so he goes anywhere else and passes out behind a dumpster, smearing the wall with blood.

“I wasn’t thinking clearly, I was scared and fifteen and something awful had just been done to me. Plus I had a concussion. I didn’t want my family… my little brother to find out and think… I don’t know, less of me?”

“Why would I-”

“Sorry! Sorry, I know it’s stupid, but I was…” The Apostle swallows. “I should have just gone home. I was bleeding and banged up pretty bad. If someone hadn’t found me there, or if it had been the wrong person…” He winces when he sees his brother flinch. “Well, that’s not what happened.”

Hey! Buddy?! Are you okay?! Mr. H, c’mon! Get over here!

The Apostle of Agape pries his one good eye open to find two figures standing over him - a tall man with a drooping mustache and a little girl with bright red hair. He scrambles backwards, trying to get away.

For heaven’s sake, boy, the man admonishes, we’re trying to help you! Why don’t you listen to common sense and hold still?!

Stop it! You’re scaring him!

The Apostle looks at the Good Samaritan and chuckles, but it sounds sad. “That’s a really really fitting name she picked out. She’s always been a good person, you know, and she was just a little kid back then.”

The Apostle’s arm is gone now and his head is wrapped in bandages, a patch covering the place where they’ve taken out his eye. He’s lying on a couch in the room where the Samaritan will someday be laid low. The man with the mustache stands beside him, playing with his hands. It… doesn’t hurt, does it?

No… sorry.

Don’t apologize! Erm… you’re quite sure there’s no one I can call? He sighs when the Apostle shakes his head. Right, well… you’re younger than the usual lot, but I’ll set you up a place here.

“I never told them anything about where I came from or who I was. I think… no, I’m pretty sure they thought I had my reasons. It helped that the cops weren’t looking very hard for me. That might have made it easier for everyone to just assume ‘child abuse’. Whatever their reasons, they let me stay.”

With one hand, the Apostle of Agape sets the table in a dining room larger than his family’s whole home. Sometimes the Good Samaritan is there to help while the man with the mustache berates them both.

Not like that! No! Not like that!

Sorry, Mr. Herriman!

Don’t be sorry. The Samaritan rolls her eyes and flashes a grin. We’re not supposed to get it right. Nothing’s ever good enough for him.

He calls her Jordan by accident and she lets him write it off as a slip of the tongue.

“I met a lot of great people during my time there, a lot of great friends. I’ll never be a professional basketball player now, but helping others… I think that might be better in a lot of ways. Then again, doesn’t it sorta have to be? Oh well, I can still play and this is what makes me happy, so maybe I shouldn’t read into it so much.”

The man with the mustache doesn’t trust the Apostle to do everything, so the lion’s share of housework is heaped upon the Good Samaritan. He does try, though, and manages more than a little difference here and there. He dries dishes, he dusts high places and runs the vacuum. One of his fellow tenants is a man with a shaved head and a belligerent attitude. He doesn’t listen to anyone, but sometimes the Apostle can calm him down.

“Sorry, did that sound braggy? I just mean that I can kinda… I don’t know. I do my best.”

The Underdog pats his back. “Good for you.”

A woman with wild hair and a perpetually frazzled expression runs around, looking frantically for something she’s misplaced and talking gibberish all the while. The Apostle of Agape holds up her key. Cut; a burly giant of a man breaks down in tears, holding a torn stuffed animal. The Apostle gets the sewing machine. Cut; he helps a stranger load hay into its baler. Cut; he mows every lawn within a one block radius. Cut; he finds - and returns home - a lost little girl in a little pink sweatshirt, the kind with cute little teddy bear ears on the hood.

“I also accidentally assisted a robbery one time, but nobody’s perfect.”

“What? You?”

The Apostle smiles sheepishly. “I thought they were moving. I got off though - maybe improbably, but the judge understood. Had to be a bit more careful after that. Then… then he walked back into my life.”

The front door opens and a man with a rucksack thrown over his shoulder comes inside. Nice place ya got here… He sounds unsure of himself, but - tentative or not - his footsteps are so heavy that they shake the floor. He wears an old green jersey. He has a smooth, shaved head.

Frankie? What’s- The Apostle freezes on the stairs, looking down at the man who hurt him. L-Larry?

… Wilt?

“It had been years since we saw each other and a lot of things have changed since then. His wife broke things off a while ago, he got into some stuff. Maybe he was trying to find his way out of it. Somehow he found his way there… and, even if it had been more than a decade, we knew each other. I see his face in all my nightmares and how many other people are there that look like me?”

The Apostle turns on his heels and runs. He skips dinner that night, locks himself in his room, and goes on to skip breakfast and lunch. The house is crowded and the Good Samaritan is too exhausted to notice that he’s gone. Someone else notices and he’s woken in the night by a light rapping at the door. The man stands outside. Can we talk?

The Apostle’s hand tightens on the door. Here. I’m not going anywhere with you.

I figured. Uh, look kid… about what happened… I’m really sorry. It was a fucked-up thing… and I’m sorry.

Okay.

Listen, I can tell I’m makin’ ya uncomfortable by bein’ here and I… Uh, d’ya… want me to leave? There’s painful desperation in his voice, like he’s begging him to say no.

Yes. The Apostle shuts his eyes - one real, one glass - tightly and braces himself. Leave.

“The next morning he was gone and no one knew why except for me. I feel kinda bad about it, maybe I shouldn’t, but I do. I mean… I guess he’d changed. I used to care about that. About forgiveness… but I can’t forgive him and no matter how many times I try to tell myself that’s fine… I just feel like such a loser and… and… I can’t make myself feel any better about it.”

The year that follows chases the Apostle of Agape into himself. He hides in his room more often and forgets to help around the house. The Samaritan comes to him and he brushes her off. She begins to worry. Then she stops and he finds a shard of broken glass on the floor.

“I’m sorry I didn’t do anything sooner… I didn’t… I’m sorry. I should have helped you out more or noticed that something was wrong.”

“Don’t apologize.” She shrugs. “I was never mad at you for it. Besides, you would’ve been going on no evidence even if you had picked up on whatever.”

The Good Samaritan stands before a crowd on the Palace stage and tells a story. Later, the Underdog Ascended does the same. Cut; she pulls him into the hallway.

Listen, I don’t really do auto-

Your brother, she says, what’s his name?

“Like he said, it’s kinda hard to get the wrong person when the description of them is so obvious. How many red-headed albino guys are out there? Not that many. Even less with one eye and arm.”

“I didn’t think you guys would still be looking…”

The Good Samaritan drags the Apostle down the driveway and out to the gate, keeping his eye covered. And don’t you dare look! It’s a surprise.

The Underdog hugs him with the full force of fifteen years. The Apostle of Agape hugs him back.

“It was like everything else went away for a moment and I realized just how much I’d missed him for all that time, for all that… everything. Then he said he was sorry when it was my fault and… no. No, I’m not going there. This story has a happy ending.”

The Underdog and the Apostle sit together on the couch, talking about the furthest thing from nothing for hours on end. They have time to do it; the Good Samaritan chases everyone else away.

“Technically that’s the first time I told this story - to him, to anyone really - and I told him all of it. Even the part about… the thing that I did. Even that.”

Wilt, you know I would have gone all in and killed that guy - wrong or not - don’t you? The Underdog puts both hands on his shoulders. You have nothing to be sorry for, okay?

The Apostle of Agape lets out a sigh that’s low and sad and long. He leans on his brother, looking like he needs the support. “I really wish I could believe that.”

A Story about the Friend to Philia

“I’ve always had lots an’ lots of trouble makin’ friends.”

The Friend to Philia is a young girl with three different clips in her springy black braids and giant rainbow sleeves. Her front teeth have a gap in them and freckles splatter the area above her nose. She bounces in place, never stopping, always moving, thunking the stage with the big yellow rain boots she showed up in.

“Friends my own age, I mean. I can make friends, but a lotta them are older or way younger - grown-ups an’ nursery school kids - an’ that’s okay! You’ll never hear me complain about it, anyway. S’ lots better than hangin’ out with the kids in my class. They all think I’m weird.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the Friend lives out in the trailer park, in a mobile home splattered with paint and sticky handprints. She chatters away at women with tattoos and men with long hair and people who smell heavily of marijuana and beer and the dregs of whiskey blues. She shows them a yearbook with only the teacher’s signature on the page.

“I’ve got all that stuff that the Wildcard has! The things that start with ‘A’? Yeah! My parents say that just means I’m special. Like a rainbow! That’s pretty cool, right? I wish other people thought so, but nobody does. Not other kids, just the grown-ups - and only the ones that other people think are weird too!”

The Friend chatters away at anyone who won’t tell her to shut up. The Prophet in his wild years, who looks at her through a drug-sleep stupor with more clarity than the camera lens. The redheaded baker from Five of Shades’ tape with his rainbow pin, and the poofy-haired girl from the Kelpie’s with pinprick pupils in her eyes; they don’t offer the brownies they’re making to the Friend to Philia, but they listen to her carry on. A sprawling group of drug-addled people with technicolor hair, living in tents behind the park; a woman with a bright pink ponytail waves and smiles. Hi, Goo! How was your day?

“Hippies, gays, junkies and devil worshippers… apparently. That’s what I hear a lot from the ‘spectable grown ups and the ‘sponsible kids in my grade - they’re usually related - but I don’t see why that’s such a big deal an’ my parents always said it was better to hang out with slobs than snobs anyway. An’ low places are the easiest to fall into.”

The Friend stands on the doorstep of that big house that swallowed the Apostle whole and devoured every hour in the Good Samaritan’s day. She lets herself in without knocking and traipses through the house, looking for more friends. And she finds them; in fragile-looking psychiatric patients, in men with rap sheets a mile long, in women with track mark scars from getting as high as the ivory tower that the Samaritan’s boss seems to live in.

“That guy who runs that place is a snob, y’know, always yellin’ about everything. ‘Blah blah blah blahblahblahblah’ an’ I know I do that too, but he’s mean about it! It took forever for him to stop kickin’ me outta there, but eventually he got tired of it all an’ realized I’d just keep comin’ back again. So now we’re friends too… I think.”

The Friend to Philia bounces on the couch cushions while that man with the drooping mustache looks on, unimpressed. Can’t you do that at home?

No! She keeps bouncing. My dad is using ours for a new art thing!

He sighs, eyes rolling. Of course he is.

“He can’t stop me though, it’s like an… oasis from normal! An’ I like the people there too much! Maybe too much in general. Can that happen? Can you do that? I got no idea!”

A slightly younger boy with a pageboy cut, who wears the same red shirt every day, comes by just as often - more often, in fact - than the Friend does; mainly to see the shaven-headed man from the Apostle’s tape and the Good Samaritan’s.

“He’s not weird, but he hangs out with weirdos, an’ a whole big bunch of ‘em. No offense. I thought that he might like me for a while, then he snapped at me… then we talked an’ now… well, I guess I’ve got one friend my own age. Only one though, an’ all his friends are old people ‘sides me.”

The Friend and the boy go out to the lot behind the house, shooting baskets and missing more than half of the time. The Apostle watches them and offers tips. Cut; the bald man and the children slide down the bannister, laughing and whooping as people scramble to get out of their way. Cut; the burly giant from the Apostle’s story invites them into his room and sets out an army of stuffed animals, and he and the Friend have a tea party that the boy pretends not to like. Cut; the kids and the frazzled woman shout the same word back and forth. Cut; Cut; Cut; a series of frames that always end in someone laughing.

“The Apostle’s right, there are no bad people there - well, ‘cept that one guy an’ the lady that thinks she’s a duchess… and that one girl with the scissors and… wait, what was I talking ‘bout again?” She pauses, stroking her chin in thought, then blinks. “Oh yeah! No bad people… except for them. Everything’s alright! People still get weird ‘bout who I hang out with though.”

The Friend stands at the corner of her street, waiting for the bus. She waves as O Olympioníkis’ father walks down the other side.

What are you doing?! a classmate hisses. Don’t you know that guy was in jail?!

The Friend to Philia doesn’t stop.

“I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s the normal people you gotta watch out for.”

The Friend is walking aimlessly through some half-unknown part of town. There you are! A voice opposite the shadows. A bigger man than most comes towards her and grabs her arm; he has a voice that the Gunman and others like him might recognize.

“So I was goin’ down the street a little while ago. Nowhere special, I was just goin’, an’ this guy came outta nowhere tryin’ to grab me, y’know, like the Crybaby’s did? He was dressed all normal, but he smelled funny… like blood an’ bleach an’ perfume over dead things. I’ve smelled worse though, that was never the problem there.”

Hey! The Friend thrashes and struggles in the big man’s hold. Lemme go! Lemme go! Let go of me! He pulls her into his chest to quiet her when she starts to scream.

The kid’s got autism, he says to some concerned-looking passerby. She’s having one of her bad days.

“Jerk.” The Friend crosses her arms and huffs, puffing up her cheeks like little hot-air balloons. “A lot of people in this part a’ the story are meanies - him an’ all the people that just let him grab me like that - but not everyone.”

Let her go. Another voice, low and cold and dangerous - the guttural growl of a fox cornered in his hole. The redheaded baker stands at one end of the alley in all his glory, with his bright pink apron decorated with rainbow pins. Behind him is the Prophet, his beard matted and with wildness in his eyes, trackmarked arms or no.

“He turned around an’ tried to run the opposite way, but someone else was already behind him an’ on both sides. You guys shoulda seen the look on his face!”

Surprise and fear in his eyes when he sees Discord with an armful of groceries, along with a vaguely stoned-looking man with dreadlocks - the one who helped the Wraith - and a couple of the others who shared that cell. They form a circle around the man. Drop the kid. Now.

“He tried tellin’ them I was his. Fat chance! Both a’ my parents are black - but I guess they couldn’ta known that… or they wouldn’t have, ‘cept they do know me.”

She… she’s my-

The baker steps forward and socks him in the face. The Friend drops the ground and is helped to her feet by one of the other, more ragged-looking, men.

Are you okay?

Um… I think so, Dodger, she says quietly, thanks…

“I saw that guy again on TV - after they caught those crazy church people - an’ now I know that he killed a lotta people in a lotta not fun ways! People keep tellin’ me that I got really lucky - when they believe me about what happened, anyway - but it wasn’t really luck, was it?”

The Friend of Philia is over at that great big house when she gets the news. Faces row-by-row. One she recognizes. For one whole minute the Friend is stricken dumb. Then she bursts into tears. Against all odds, the man with the mustache is there first, fussing and holding up a handkerchief to dry her eyes. Ah, there, there… You’ll be alright.

“An’ I will… but I know if it were just up to luck then I probably wouldn’t be standin’ here.” The Friend of Philia sucks her lip through the gap in her teeth and pulls her sleeves down. “I’m alive thanks to them.”

A Story about Storge’s Sibling

“My brother is… really, really strange - difficult. Guess that’s the easiest way to say it.”

Storge’s Sibling is the boy with the pageboy cut. He’s shorter than the Friend by a head and dressed more plainly - in a red T-shirt with white sleeves and khaki pants. His brown hair has grown out a bit - grown shaggy - and his bangs hang low. He’s nursing a magnificent black eye.

“Yeah, he’s the one who gave me this. He does a lot of things like that, ever since our dad left. Mom knows what he’s like but she can’t really control him, plus she works a lot, so a lot of the time… we’re alone. I have another brother that I get along with better - kind of a blessing and a curse type of thing - but he got kicked out, so most of the time…”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; together in fraternity, the Sibling and that shaven-headed man from the tapes before crouch behind the kitchen counter as a skinny figure looms over them - a teenage boy with bad acne and worse teeth. He jumps and they scramble to get out of the way. Cut; the scene repeats, the Sibling alone hiding and running (and being caught).

“Something’s… wrong with him. I don’t know what’s wrong, but it’s something big. He’s just… he’s such a doofus - and it’s worse than it usually is with bigger kids.”

The Sibling’s brother hoists him up by the scruff of the neck and slams his face into picture frames and cabinets, breaking things and knocking them off the walls. The older boy affects concern. Mom’s gonna be so mad at you.

“He’s always trying to get me in trouble for stuff that’s his fault to begin with. It’s not fair.” He kicks his feet, scowling. “He got our other brother kicked out, you know… well, kinda.”

The Sibling’s teenage brother sobs, clinging to the legs of a woman with brown hair and an obscured face. He sheds crocodile tears, looking over at the Sibling and cowering away.

“Okay, he tried. Mom’s usually pretty good at not buying his made-up stories at least, and the real reason was that he refused to go to college or get a job… but still. He’s like my best friend. I miss having him around.” He glowers at his shoes. “Having siblings is supposed to be a life sentence, you know.”

His oldest brother leaves the house moaning and grumbling and cursing beneath his breath. The middle brother smirks at him from the window and at the Sibling from behind their mother’s back. Please, Mom, can’t he stay? I need him! But her word is final. Cut; he helps the bald man carry boxes inside the Good Samaritan’s great big house.

“Promises get broken sometimes, I guess. I’m still not too sure how a halfway house works, or what the deal is exactly. I guess it’s supposed to help you ‘reintegrate’ back into society or something like that. Maybe that’s where he needs to be right now. I still miss him… and I miss him being there. He might not have been great to Mom or done what she wanted, but when he was around it was a lot harder for Ter- my other brother to mess with me, and with him gone… everything got a lot worse.”

The Sibling presses his back against his bedroom door, leaning on it as someone pounds on the other side. His heels dig into the carpet and eventually give way. His brother bursts in, kicking and punching. He grabs the Sibling’s shirt and pushes him against the floor, hard enough that the wind comes out of him. His hands aren’t all that strong or steady, but they hit exactly where it hurts.

“I said before that our mom works a lot, and what that means is that after school and all day on the weekends, I’m supposed to be alone with him, because he’s older and she put him in charge… and without anyone else around to watch him… uh…”

The Sibling’s brother barges in while he’s in the bathroom.

Move, doofus! He’s already unzipping his fly.

The younger boy tries to get out of the way, but isn’t fast enough. Gross! Terrence! What the heck is wrong with you?!

His brother runs away, laughing.

“He started doing some… really weird stuff as soon as he could get away with it. Gross things, but only little ones at first. He never…” The Sibling looks hastily at the Apostle, then back down. “But there was a lot…”

His brother calls him into his room and when the Sibling goes he turns his computer screen. A naked woman and a half-dressed man. It’s not exactly shocking, or it wouldn’t be, but for the Sibling’s age. His face twists with disgust and the smaller boy tears from the room while his brother laughs just behind him.

“It wasn’t so bad, I mean we’re not alone together that much… Normally what I do everyday is go over to Fr- the Good Samaritan’s place to see everyone and we hang out. Nobody’s ever tried to do anything weird to me there. It’s like… having a second, better family. Where ‘the closest to your heart’, like Wil- the Apostle says, really do get the best of you!”

The Sibling walks in love-doped loops around the Good Samaritan and plays checkers with the big, burly-looking man. The old woman who runs the place bakes cookies and ruffles his hair. The frazzled-looking woman who speaks in gibberish brings him trinkets - plastic rings and rubber balls and Easter eggs - and the Apostle takes him out back to play ball. His brother asks sometimes, sounding not-so-interested, if everything at home is alright. Of course it is - Storge’s Sibling says so every time.

“But I can only stay for so long every time I go over there. Mom doesn’t know and she wouldn’t like it, so I’ve gotta get back before she comes home from work. That means that there’s still usually about an hour or so when my brother and I are alone together.”

The Sibling cries out as the older boy yanks a handful of his hair back, slapping him with the flat of his hand. What’s wrong, little baby? You gonna cry? If you think that hurts… A hand shoots out and socks something lower than his gut. He does cry.

“And even when he doesn’t do crazy things like that, he’ll… He’s got the run of the house. I can’t tell you about all the gross stuff I’ve come back to. One time he dumped his garbage on my bed - used tissues, ugh. He’s so nasty and I’ve tried telling my mom about it but she just won’t listen!”

Honestly, Mac, the woman says, not really listening as she sets down her heavy briefcase. Can’t you at least try to get along with your brother? You’ll never leave a love as rare or long as this one. Further complaints are met with, I don't have the time for this. I’ve had a long day.

“People don’t really take it seriously when you start saying things like your brother hurts you. He’s only thirteen and he didn’t actually… do what your guys did. I guess until he does no one’s gonna do anything about it and nothing’s gonna change. Blood is thicker than water, right?”

Storge’s Sibling turns up at the big house with a bloody nose and tears in his eyes. The man with the mustache gets the door and pulls a face immediately. Master Mac! You’re bleeding! No! No, I’ll get you a handkerchief… you just come inside. He asks what happened later, when the blood’s stopped flowing and the two are sitting on the couch alone. The Sibling tells him and watches the man clench his teeth like a vice. There is no moment’s contradiction.

“What really stinks is that the only people that seem to care are the ones I’m not allowed to talk to.” Storge’s Sibling pushes his bangs back, wincing when his hand brushes up against his tender purple eye. “It’s all backwards, isn’t it? I wish they were my real family, maybe then this would all make sense.”

A Story about Eros and Error

“Yeah, I’m Eros, guys. Sorry, but you’re not getting a new name.”

It’s the Good Samaritan again, playing with her hands up on the stage. She wears that same green jacket she did the first day here - and every day since - but it’s zipped up this time and she’s got on baggy sweatpants instead of a skirt. She looks tired. Like she hasn’t slept in days.

“That’s the one about the icky kinds of love, kiddos. Y’know, sex and romance…? Yeah. Thank God I’m pretty and all that.” She sighs wearily, but there’s a bittersweet smile on her face. “It must be that I’m like one of those smut novel characters - too pretty for my own good. Guess there had to be some downsides. So here I am again. Let’s just try and get it over with.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the Good Samaritan sorts through boxes and boxes of paperwork at the base of the main stairs, sitting on the carpet with her knees pulled to her chest. The place where she lost herself isn’t far away in that room, but for once she isn’t looking at it. I’m sorry, Cathy, she grumbles into the receiver of her phone.

“You know how it starts. Same old, same old, my boss sucks… blah blah blah. Whatever. Some little gentleman-” She smiles at the Sibling, who looks like he might faint. “-offered to cover for me so I could get out a little while back - girls’ night with my friends. I’d been looking forward to it and he said he’d do some filing for me so I could go. He’s the best.”

Why can’t more men be like you?! The Good Samaritan grins, picking Storge’s Sibling up and pecking his cheek. She doesn’t notice the dopey smile that spreads across it as she runs to get ready, or the awestruck looks when she comes back down - from him and his oldest brother.

“I know I shouldn’t think about it like this, but… but I can’t really help it. Maybe the neckline came too low or my skirt was too short or… or maybe he could see the scars on my back.”

Unlikely. The Samaritan spins in the pulsating, strobe-lit whirl of a dance club with a seedy little bar. Sweat clings to her, pasting hair to her forehead and dripping down the back of her neck. She stifles the smell of body odor with perfume. Someone steps from the tangle of bodies and asks before he takes her hand; an olive-skinned guy with smoldering eyes and sable-black hair. He’s handsome and charming and the Good Samaritan lets him sweep her off her feet, at least for a little while, and ply her with free drinks. She walks on clouds all the next day.

“I thought it was love. Pretty stupid, right? But I guess there’s still some part of me that thinks of myself as a hopeless romantic. Heh… He said he wanted to take me out and that sounded plenty good to me.”

Storge’s Sibling arrives to see his brother, and the Good Samaritan smiles at him, looking the way he looks at her all the time. His eyes get close to watering when she says that she’s in love.

“Poor little guy thought it was him for a hot minute. Sorry, but I am not into kids. Then his big brother got in on the action and as soon as they realized I wasn’t into one of them… well, they got a little jealous of every guy coming through the door.” She laughs. “Oh my God, that poor pizza delivery guy!”

A member of the house and a pock-marked teenager in a Pizza Planet uniform throw hands with the bald-headed man and the Sibling on the floor. They all look up when the Good Samaritan opens the door for that man with the sable hair and olive skin. She has her hair up and wears a dress with a low back, exposing a few of those broken-glass scars, and she lets the handsome almost-stranger lead her out to his car.

“He brought me flowers and I thought that was just so romantic. I didn’t… think. I always thought I was smart, and after the first time I thought I could be more careful, but this was really all it took for him to sweep me off my feet. It’s kinda embarrassing…”

“Don’t say that!”

“Yeah! It isn’t your fault!”

“Aw, thanks guys. You’re the sweetest. Anyway, we went out. He took me to some fancy French place - Gusteau’s, yeah - and I remember being so impressed. Then my weirdo friends came barging in and I was angry.”

The Sibling and his oldest brother crash her date, sitting down at the table while she glares daggers at them and they stare knives at the man who looks more than a little confused. She gets up to use the bathroom.

“I was pissed and I needed a moment just to get myself under control, but I wasn’t… I… You don’t drug people at a fancy restaurant. You don’t…” She sags miserably. “You don’t rape people on top of broken glass in their own home… When I got back he was yelling at my friends and, okay, that part I understand, but some of the things he said were way out of line.”

I didn’t spend all night playing Mr. Nice Guy just to have a couple of losers show up trying to steal my property. Then he sees her. While the grown man is rendered tongue-tied, the Good Samaritan punches him hard in the nose. The Sibling’s and his brother’s starstruck looks are back.

“If it had ended there, then maybe this would be something we could all laugh about and move on from. He was an asshole, but maybe he could have been just an asshole. Not… a super mega douchebag or… Sorry, sorry… language, sorry…”

Still angry, the Samaritan takes a long drink of water from her glass and asks for the check. She gathers the boys and calls a cab and they wait together for it to come. She stumbles in the dark outside as she’s getting in the car.

“On the way back to the house I started feeling… weird. Dizzy. Drowsy. Then I went down and my last thought was that he must have spiked my drink with something. It didn’t go as badly as it did for the Maiden, thank God, it’s really easy to overdo those things, but he… I just passed out. The guys didn’t know what was happening. My boss thought I was drunk.”

When she comes to she’s lying on her own bed, still in the dress from the night before. The man with the drooping mustache hovers over her, scowling down. He begins his lecture before she can even say one word.

“He called me lazy again… and selfish, and irresponsible, like it was his right to question everything - every skill I had, I… I… Fuck him. Fuck him,” she says again, “but he was right about that one part.” The Good Samaritan’s voice wavers, looking at the gaggle of faces all around her, begging to be taken seriously. “I brought that all on myself. I should have known better after the last time. I should have been more careful, and just because nothing actually happened… that doesn’t mean… well, something almost did, and I just… thought I was smarter than that.”

A Story about the Host of Xenia

“I don’t get out of the house much.”

The Host of Xenia still has a few missing baby teeth. He’s as small as Storge’s Sibling, but maybe a little older, and adorable, with a pair of great big eyes. He’s wearing a coat made out of patchwork - blue on yellow with visible seams - and looks up at the Good Samaritan with complete and utter worship.

“My parents don’t like it when I go outside. It’s not… I know what the Countess said, but it’s not like that. They aren’t worried about me getting hurt or anything. They aren’t worried about me…”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a big house on a nice street, the dark sky drizzling cold gray rain. The Host in a dark, locked closet with his knees tucked into his chest. The room beyond has been torn to pieces, broken toys and shredded curtains littered across the floor, making a bed for the upended bedroom furniture. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry… please let me out… There’s a little bit of blood on the floor too, and on the Host’s hands.

“See, I was born a second child, and I have a bad temper - like really really bad - and I’m working on it, but… I hurt my older brother while we were playing last year. They haven’t trusted me not to do the same to other kids since then.”

A bigger little boy with light brown skin and straight black hair is swallowed up by a man and woman with the same. They take him to school and to the movies and here and there. They don’t come back until very late sometimes and the Host can hear them coming in. He spends his time in a massive playroom, stocked with everything a child could want or need - everything but other children. Day in and day out, he’s all alone.

“They did it because they were scared, not because they hated me or wanted to hurt me or anything. They left me with a bunch of nannies and stuff, and tutors, but my parents didn’t check up on them that much so… I guess they realized there was a lot they could get away with.”

The Host of Xenia holds a book up to a bored looking woman who smokes in the same room; she waves him off when he asks her to read to him. Glumly, the Host goes back to his kingdom of toys. There are empty bowls of ice cream on the floor and the clock reads 11:30.

“I got to do whatever I wanted, they’d even give me whatever I wanted as long as I stayed in line… everything, but anybody. I still wasn’t allowed to make friends, or really go outside.”

There’s a beautiful garden and a swimming pool and a hot tub. There’s a miniature play area and a sandbox and a set of swings. He’s allowed out there - no one and nothing is stopping him - but the whole house is fenced in so he can’t get through. He’s running wild, but not running free.

“It… it was so lonely. I was so bored and restless… and that made me act out. The people my parents found to watch me never stayed that long.”

More tantrums. The woman from before runs out, clutching her face as bloody scratches dribble down into her eyes. The Host chases her out screaming and then wails on his knees when she doesn’t return. The next babysitter doesn’t last half as long; neither does the next one or the one after that…

“Whatever, none of them cared anyway. It was all about the money my parents paid them to watch me and they didn’t even do a good job! A lot of the time it was a really really bad one!”

One nanny makes out with her boyfriend on the sofa, looking up at the Host when the man fumbles with her bra. Get out, kid!

No, the guy murmurs, eliciting a giggle when he bites her ear. Let him stay…

Another babysitter leaves out a stack of movies - the kind with covers he’s never seen before. When he asks about them he’s told to sit down and shut up. This one flicks on the TV.

Another leaves something strange on the table. A toy like the ones in those videos, unlike any a child so young will have seen. She keeps misplacing them.

“Not all of them were that bad, but some were. They were the ones that stuck around for the longest time. Fran- the Good Samaritan thinks they may have liked ‘showing off’ that way. I dunno… they never seemed to like me. No one did before her.”

The Host of Xenia is between babysitters and his family isn’t home. He is playing by himself in the yard when the world outside calls him. He looks up and sees the Samaritan on the other side of the fence and rushes through the trees. Hi there!

She jumps up by half a foot, head whipping around. Who- what… Her face is red and blotchy, like she’s very angry or has been crying quite a bit.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Um… is something wrong?

Oh… it’s nothing. It’s just… my job. She laughs. Kinda hard to explain.

Try me.

“Maybe grown-ups aren’t really supposed to talk about their problems with kids - and she didn’t get into everything - but she looked like she really needed someone to talk to. No one else was listening to her. I guess maybe I should thank that boss of hers for being so ungrateful and mean, we wouldn’t have met if he wasn’t and she might have never opened up to me.”

The Good Samaritan talks about her thankless job and domineering boss and the Host listens, face heating up. They should be more grateful for everything you do for them!

No, no… it’s not like that… She looks down at her watch. I should be getting back now.

His face falls, but he keeps the smile and tells her to come back any time.

“I can’t tell you how happy I was when she did.”

The Host grabs the Samaritan by her hand and hauls her around his house. They laugh together and she mends the busted toys in his playroom. He hugs her and they sit with bowls of chocolate ice cream in front of the TV.

“We went swimming one time and I saw her in a bathing suit. I asked her about-”

“My back. I kinda… dodged the question.”

“I thought it was her boss.” He shrugs apologetically. “Sometimes you hear the wrong things hanging on the wind. I heard that in a song, I think.”

The Host’s parents stop looking for new applicants and start leaving money on the counter, paying the Good Samaritan in bits and pieces for her time. She leaves the money where it lies. They leave more. One day as she goes to the door, the Host of Xenia grabs her arm. Do you really have to go? You could stay here and… and take care of me. I appreciate you.

She opens her mouth and then pauses. I… I’ll think about it.

Don’t think! Just… just wait around for a while until my parents get home! They like you!

Alright.

“I really thought I’d won for a second there. That she was… well, I kind of thought of it like she was mine. Like she belonged to me now. I know, I know, that wasn’t okay, but that’s what I was thinking. And I felt it like… like it was underneath my skin. Sorry, Frankie.” He claps a hand over his mouth. “Sorry!”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”

They’re playing some video game together when there’s a knock at the door. The man with the drooping mustache stands there with his arms crossed and a very stern expression on his face. The Good Samaritan groans and mouths, Son of a-

There you are, Miss Frances!

She tries to reason with him, but he won’t hear a word.

“He was mad that she hadn’t shown up for work that day. He started yelling at her, then he got mad at me for taking her away from him. He said he was gonna take Frank- her back with him and that’s the part where I got upset. No, not upset… mad. He made me angry.”

The Good Samaritan’s boss grabs her arm and pulls her with him as she struggles. The Host of Xenia sees red when those gloved hands press against the Samaritan’s back. He lunges forward and doesn’t give the man the time to dodge.

“He was trying to take her away from me! I just… I just wanted her to… I thought he was going to hurt her.” The Host hides his face in the Samaritan’s sleeve. “So I hurt him first. Well, I tried.”

The Host of Xenia tackles the old man to the ground, beating at him with his tiny fists and trying to dig his nails into his eyes. He struggles of course and the Samaritan runs to help, grabbing the Host and picking him up from behind. He squirms away and keeps hitting and she grabs him again - just as one hand closes around her boss’ waistband.

What on earth was he trying to-

Not now! she scowls. Wait until I get him calmed down!

“I couldn’t do it and I’m glad she stopped me, but I was trying to… yeah. That’s what people did in those videos my old babysitter let me watch. People would… when someone was bad. I know now that a lot of that’s just acting, but… still… I’m sorry…”

“You didn’t know any better. It’s going to be okay.”

Later he sits with her on the sofa, knees drawn up to his chest, not ready to bolt, but looking like he wants to. Like he wants to run farther than he’s ever gone and away from all he’s ever known. She puts an arm around him. Listen, I promise I’m not mad, but I think we need to talk about this. What you did isn’t-

I know…

Where’d you learn to do that? As she listens her face scrunches up, brown furrowing. I think I’m going to have a talk with your parents when they get home.

“She did.” The Host of Xenia gnaws on the base of his thumb. “She did and I’m here now. I’m free.”

A Story about the Reflection of Philautia

“Philautia - the Greek concept of ‘self love.’ The ‘not flying too close to the sea’, as it were - that is, if you’ve read the story of Icarus.”

The Reflection of Philautia is a man with a drooping white mustache and neat, gray hair - the one from all the tapes prior, the Good Samaritan’s boss. He’s more than a little overdressed, wearing a three-piece suit and monocle that make him look every inch the patterned stereotype of the perfect English gentleman.

“Philosophically, it’s been defined as both an important human need and as a terrible weakness. Pri- er, hubris and all that. Apologies to the Adventurer.” He coughs to clear his throat before continuing. “I think you’ve already made up your mind about where I fall into that and I won’t pretend that judgement is unfair. All I ask is that you… just listen. Please. That’s all I want.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; two children stand before a broken vase - a skinny, awkward-looking boy and a plump little girl with bright red hair. A woman who might be one’s mother scowls down at them and the girl ducks behind her friend. It was Peter! He did it!

“I have known Miss… Samaritan’s grandmother since we were children. We grew up together, the best of friends - against all odds, I would wager. She was always a free spirit and I… well, I suppose that I’m ‘a real stick in the mud’, as the children say. Perhaps part of that comes from how often she was getting me into trouble. My fault, of course, for letting her, but… I loved to watch her smile. I love to watch you smile,” he says to the Samaritan. “I am sorry for… forgetting that.”

The Reflection and the redhead are teenagers now, standing together in front of someone’s bathroom sink. He watches as his friend mashes up a number of little orange pills. Like Ringtail and the Detective they do what is (un)usually done. Her nose bleeds. His doesn’t.

“Now, I will admit, there were a few foolish things I did in my wild youth. I experimented with… ‘Cindy’, I’ve heard it’s called now? ‘Orange crush’? Cough and cold medicine. Not quite as ‘exciting’ as Master Ringtail’s… substances of choice, but it can be quite dangerous when you take too much - and very addictive. In my early adulthood I was able to get my habit firmly in hand, but it still remains with me even today.”

The Reflection of Philautia rifles through the medicine cabinet behind the bathroom mirror, throwing out everything but the absolutely essential. Mr. Herriman? A young boy who looks strikingly like the Good Samaritan peeks around the door. I have a headache…

Not now! The Reflection glares at him. I’m busy, and the last thing you need is any of this… this filth polluting your bloodstream. Now get out.

“And it caused… rifts to form in many of my relationships. My dear friend’s husband died not long into their marriage and so I moved in to help attend to things. I was never harsh with her, but I came down hard on her son - that would be the young lady’s father. I… I worried he would fall into the same straits I did. I know that’s not any kind of excuse.”

The Reflection of Philautia talks to the boy in the same way he will to the Good Samaritan, years and years and years down the road. Lazy and Irresponsible and Good for nothing roll off his tongue without a second thought, until their relationship’s as fragile as a candle beneath the pouring rain.

“He must have resented me, though I couldn't see it at the time. Our spats - erm, my lectures - only got worse as he got older, and they came to a head when he reached his teenage years. That was about twenty-two years ago… and nine months, if you understand my meaning.”

The red-haired teenager hunches over on the couch, clutching the arm for dear life. A girl sits beside him, hand on her middle, though so far there isn’t any bump. The Reflection of Philautia moves back and forth in front of them, pacing from side to side. What were you thinking?! Why would you… What on earth are you…

We… Mr. Herriman, we want to… get rid of it, the boy says cautiously. We talked about it and-

The Reflection reels on him. Are you mad?! You can’t get rid of it! I won’t allow it!

But-

Nonsense! You made your bed and it’s your duty to lie in it, as far as I’m concerned.

“I was less than kind to him, and to her mother. I wish that I had been less harsh-”

“Harsh? You were an asshole!”

The Host kicks the Reflection in the shin.

“Ah, be that as it may, I do regret the way I handled the situation now. With the boy, and with the Samaritan when he had her.”

A wailing baby sits in her pen, eyes shining, voice unbroken. Her father, completely exhausted, lies asleep on the floor nearby. The Reflection roughly shakes him awake, demanding that he tend to his daughter and bemoaning his lot loudly when the boy’s head drops back to the floor. He picks up the infant Samaritan, still muttering beneath his breath, a few of the complaints directed at her.

“He moved away when the young lady was still a child, taking her with him of course, and he wanted very little to do with me after that. Can’t really blame him, I suppose, but it still stung. It may be that I subconsciously blamed the girl for that. Perhaps I worried she would leave too. Whatever the case, whenever she visited… I might have been kinder than I was.”

The Reflection of Philautia putters about the kitchen, barking orders at a little red-haired girl as she chops vegetables with a knife too large for her tiny hands. You’ll have to pick up the pace, Miss Francis, if we’re ever to get dinner on the table by five! She goes faster and he snaps again, berating her for cutting unevenly.

“It wasn’t entirely like that between us. I know there were a few good moments here and there… but that doesn’t excuse how I acted. I wouldn’t accept such excuses from anyone else…”

The Good Samaritan pounds on the big house’s front door in the middle of the night. She’s almost a teenager now and has clearly been crying. The Reflection sees the makeup smearing her face. One hand is on her stomach.

“When-”

“Wait…” The Samaritan puts a hand on his arm. “Don’t tell them about this part. Please. I don’t… like thinking about it.”

“… Very well.”

The tape runs on fast forward; theGoodSamaritanonthecouchandtheReflectionbringingteaandthendroppingitwhenhermouthopens.You…you’re…Who?Shegulps.Justaguy…inmyclass.Hesquints.Hedidn’tmakey-No.No,itwasn’tlikethat,Ijust…Weweren’tthinking.Hescowls.Ishouldsaynot.Andthetapegoeson.TheGoodSamaritanwithaswollenstomach,thenlessso.Thenherpoundingonthedooragain,faceawreck.Thisisallyourfault!Heblinks.Whatis?Why?TheSamaritan’sfacecrumples.Mydad…he…hetookheraway…Shedissolvesintotears.InthemorningtheReflection’sfriendsaysshe’llbestayingwiththemforawhile. The tape jumps and begins to play in normal time; the Reflection of Philautia clears out a spare room.

“I suppose what you need to know is that due to… private circumstances, she came to live with us. I insisted that she pull her weight - an unfair demand to put on a child, I know, but she rose to occasion. I’m sorry I didn’t see that.”

The Reflection supervises as the Good Samaritan makes beds and fluffs pillows, and cooks and cleans and mops the floor. She’s thirteen or fourteen at the most in this shot, but that doesn’t stop him yelling at her the way he will when she’s an adult. Nothing’s left unspoken. Berating takes place in full view of others. More medicine is flushed down the toilet as his anxiety peaks. On a few occasions, he rifles through her room.

“I was worried about her in my own way, still not much of a justification, but I don’t…” He looks directly at the Samaritan. “I know I made you think that I… It’s not that I didn’t care, I do… and I’m sorry for making you think that wasn’t the case. So sorry. I know that’s not enough.”

The Good Samaritan’s tape, piece by piece, superimposes its way across his own. She works as the Reflection shouts at her, any complaints glancing off his swollen wall of pride. She’s supposed to go on a grocery run and he doesn’t hear her come back in again. In the morning he shouts at her for not going at all and keeps shouting and keeps shouting and doesn’t stop for weeks.

“I… if I had heard anything, of course I would have stopped that… that… animal from hurting her any more than he already had, and if I had only known… but of course I know why she didn’t tell me. I just wonder why she didn’t say anything to anyone else.”

The Samaritan shows up late for work with exhausted bags beneath her eyes. She leaves early and he finds her curled up in her room. The Reflection notes every slip-up, documents every time he stands behind her and she turns to snap at him. He doesn’t seem to pick up on how she’s started to eat so much less or the times those snaps are screams.

“Then she went on that date with that other boy and I… misread the situation. I threatened to have her fired. It only got worse from there.”

The Good Samaritan locks herself in the shower while the Reflection hammers his fist against the bathroom door. Miss Frances! If you spend any more time in there, the water bill will be taken out of this month’s paycheck! Do you understand me?! She comes out looking like that candle, fiery hair dripping water like fallen rain.

“Then came the day she didn’t show up at all… and the incident with the Host. Obviously I was never in any danger - he’s a child! - but it was still… off-putting to say the least, and when the Samaritan knew what to do… That was the moment when I realized that perhaps I was the one who… I’m a proud man, but I will admit that I was wrong about her. Very wrong.”

He listens when she orders him out of the room and pulls the Host of Xenia beside her on the couch. He listens at the door too.

You should head back to Foster’s, she says, we’ll talk later… Are you gonna be okay?

You… you will be coming back, won’t you?

The Good Samaritan stares at the Reflection of Philautia for a very long time. I’m not sure.

“For the record, she did choose us in the end. That night when she came back she told me as much… and I…”

The Reflection of Philautia sits at the counter, side by side with the Good Samaritan. It’s dark outside and both hold steaming mugs in their hands - hers coffee and his tea. They talk more easily than they have in years, if they ever spoke this way at all - more honestly - and they talk for a very long time. How did you know what to do? the Reflection asks her. I wouldn’t have…

O-oh, y’know… The Samaritan laughs weakly and smiles, looking sad and uncomfortable. It’s just… I… Look, promise that you won’t get mad? Then she tells him and that cup of tea shatters on the kitchen floor.

“I… I was shocked… and then I wasn’t. That’s the trouble, you know? Realizing that it all made sense… and I still didn’t see it, because I didn’t want to. I failed my friend - I failed Fr- her.”

“It’s okay - well, not really, but y’know… I forgive you.”

“I love… ‘You’re the child in which the love remains’, aren’t you?” The Reflection of Philautia smiles for one beautiful moment before it drops from his face and he looks even grimmer than he did before. “That’s very kind of you, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself.”

Chapter Text

“You sure you’re ready to do this, man?”

“Yeah. I mean, you don’t have to…”

No one is really sure why they call themselves the Elders. It doesn’t fit any theme they can think of and the boys on the stage can’t be much older than seventeen. The Monk is big and burly, his arms and legs and chin covered in light brown hair. He’s wearing what looks like replica armor over a green T-shirt. The Barbarian isn’t wearing a shirt at all. He’s slighter and skinnier, with huge front teeth and a short red blanket-cape wrapped around himself. A Viking-ish cosplay helmet with giant, protruding horns covers up much of his face and hair.

“Silence, you fools! Of course I’m ready.”

The Dungeon Master sits between the other two, glaring at everyone from behind a pair of half-moon glasses. He’s clean-shaven with dark brown hair that comes almost to his shoulders. He’s wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, and a long red cape. He clenches one edge of it, pulling the thing around himself as if he’s cold. He’s the one, then. They can tell by the way his friends are staring, hands hovering. They want to help but don’t know how.

“Dude, it’s-”

“If I wasn’t ready I wouldn’t have come up here in the first place.” The Dungeon Master coughs sharply to clear his throat. “Alright, amateurs, let me show you how to really tell a story. I’m good at that.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a cheap old card table covered almost entirely by a rolled-out battle grid, which in turn has been covered in Cheeto dust and cookie crumbs. Three pieces have been set out. Hand-painted figurines. A tiefling and a half-elf and a dwarf. Three shadows fall across the paper. Three hands reach for twenty-sided dice. A large, hair-knuckled hand; a small, delicate-looking one; the one with long, bony fingers in between. All this captured through the blinking of a camera’s live feed.

“Yeah, so we play a lot of Goblins and Grottos. Well, Barbs and I do, and Marrrrrr-I mean, the DM here is… well, the DM.”

The Dungeon Master sighs in exasperation. “Truly, you have a way with words.”

“We gotta play out in the woods though!” the Barbarian chimes in, pulling an arm around his friend. “My parents got sick of us using the garage.”

As on the stage, a throat is cleared and a voice rings out, clear as anything. The city of Creketun is split in two by a raging river and surrounded by an impenetrable forest on all sides.

“There’s this creek out there, a big one. Goes all the way into the next town.”

“A lot of kids play out there.”

“They have for years, though. Since we were little.” The Monk puts a hand on the Dungeon Master’s shoulder. “It’s pretty far outta the way, you know? No parents around to tell ‘em what to do or anything. There aren’t even that many older kids.” He scratches his head. “I think there are these two goth chicks that go out there at night to make out - they’re in high school too - and there’s some twenty-something guy that plays paintball with his cousins… Other than that, it’s just us and the kids.” He looks uneasy. “Little kids. Elementary schoolers.”

The Barbarian smiles broadly. “They’re great! Really smart! Really creative! It’s like they’ve got a whole town back there!”

The same three miniatures as before - the tiefling and the half-elf and the dwarf - now surrounded by many, many more. Other pieces have been laid out, forming the terrain.

The great river of Creketun! Two lines of markers with water tiles between them. And the underwater kingdom of S’warr! An empty toilet paper roll leading into a tissue box. Ajnin, the warrior clan! A few figures sat atop another box. And on it goes.

“Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t perfect - they’ve got their own cliques and issues to work out. They aren’t all that nice either - well, some of them aren’t, but they’re kids. They’ll grow out of it… And they all thought we were pretty cool.”

“We are cool,” sniffs the Dungeon Master, sweeping his cape. “At least I am.”

“They ask us for advice and stuff. I’d like to think we’re friendly with ‘em.”

A montage of encounters all spliced together and badly edited. And that voice in the background…

After the banquet, someone unfamiliar pulls you all aside. Three new figures are placed on the grid now. One with a staff and two with red hair. 'Tis a party of wayward townsfolk. “Your elderships,” says the wizardly one, bowing low. “We have been sent by our village to beg your aid.”

Aid with… what?

Ask him yourself! It’s roleplay, you fool!

“They seek our ancient wisdom! Er… sought.”

“No one really goes by the creek anymore. Not since… things got… bad.” The Monk sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “I guess we should be talking in the past tense.”

Three hands move three pieces around an empty grid. Famished, you stumble tiredly into town, hoping against hope that a tavern awaits you so that you may eat and drink your fill and find a place to rest your weary heads. But the marketplace is empty and the shopkeep is nowhere to be seen. Unlike the sessions prior, there are no crumbs littering the mat and those hands are spotless, no donut dust or cheese powder anywhere.

“There’s… there was this one kid - a little girl - that had this weird snack trading operation. She’d trade anything for anything - mostly food for whatever cool stuff you had on hand. Then one day… she just didn’t make it home.” He shrugs helplessly. “No, I don’t know what happened. Nobody does, but… A lot of people have been going missing recently. All over the place. Maybe this just felt… realer because it was someone we knew.”

With no merchant to supply for them, the city of Creketun begins to dry up - only metaphorically though, situated as it is on the side of a raging river. Every day more and more of the townsfolk depart. Figurines are swept out of view; still, there are some remaining.

“A lot of kids got freaked out after that girl went missing - or their parents did. They stopped coming to the creek either way.”

“Cowards.”

“Dude, they’re nine.”

“A true warrior-”

“Dude.”

The Dungeon Master scowls, crossing his arms and tucking his legs up against his chest, hugging his knees.

More pieces are removed from the grid. A crown-wearing triton and an aarakocra with light brown feathers and a humanoid scout in blue.

“The place didn’t clear out just because of that girl though. Even after that… some kids still came back.”

“Makes sense. It was a pretty cool place to play.”

“Yeah, well, some of them went missing too.”

You venture into the plains of Archippos to seek an audience with Enzia, queen of the centaurs, and find one less attendant than usual at her side. Three figures, and three figures where there once were four.

You receive word from the capital that some unknown fiend has laid siege upon the castle and made off with the royal court. More figures in pink, purple and blue.

You venture past the Painted Canyon, a region torn apart by war, but as you walk there you see nothing out of the ordinary at all. What do you-

I roll for perception! The die is cast. Natural twenty! Yeah! Alright!

Your initial impression is the correct one. The pass is empty. There is no one there.

The Dungeon Master pushes up his glasses. “You know all those shows about free-range children? There’s a reason that stuff usually doesn’t fly in real life. It’s dangerous out there and it’s actually pretty stupid to let your, like, five-year-old run around without proper supervision. If you ask me, it’s all their parents’ fault!”

The Monk and the Barbarian glance at each other and look like they want to disagree, but they don’t say anything and allow the Dungeon Master to carry on.

“They probably know that too. That’s why… that’s why they… They were just looking for someone to blame.”

New pieces on the board. Roll for perception. The die reads 15. You recognize the blue cloaks of the city guard. “We want to ask you boys some questions,” their leader says. What do you do?

“We ended up being called in to talk to the police. Made sense-”

“No it didn’t!”

“… We were these weird older dudes hanging out in the woods with a bunch of eight-nine-ten-year-olds. It looked suspicious-”

“No it didn’t!”

“-and I guess they thought we might… well, they said ‘know something’ but we all knew that was a load of… garbage.”

Having no evidence, the guard is forced to let you go. However, you anticipate that this is not the last you’ll see of these most peculiar city men.

“Obviously, they couldn’t charge us with anything. What they had was all circumstantial. At best. Still, I could tell from their expressions that the fools thought we had something to do with… whatever it is that’s been going on. Ha! As if! What would we even do with those kids if we had them?!”

“Man, I think they-”

“I know what they thought! But… but where would we have put them?! I don’t have enough room for my manga collection! Where the hell would I put a kid?!”

Shadows fall across the grid mat. The figures placed there stand still. In the background the Dungeon Master’s voice keens and whines. Hey! Don’t touch that! Be careful! That was expensive!

“Someone decided to let the cops into our fortress of solitude.”

“That was me. I thought maybe if they looked around and didn’t find anything, they’d leave us alone.”

“And then they could focus on finding whoever it was that really took those kids!”

“They touched everything! Do you have any idea how long it took me to clean up?!” The Dungeon Master scowls. “And besides, your dumb plan didn’t even work!”

Three figurines and three figurines only. All others have been removed.

What do you do?

“Kids stopped showing up back there almost entirely after the cops started poking around. I don’t think it had much to do with us. They probably just got scared. I hope that’s it. Does that sound bad?”

“Everything sounds bad when you say it!”

“… Dude.”

“Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t mean that. I just-”

“I know. It’s okay.”

You return to your keep and find it savaged, though by what you cannot say. Claw marks scar the walls. Parchment lies in shreds upon the floor and many of your magic items have been broken beyond all repair.

I roll for perception! The Monk’s voice shakes. I-it’s a… oh, three.

That line of narration repeats itself.

“Everyone’s been really on edge lately. I don’t really blame them-”

“I do!”

“-with everything that’s happened…” Eyes that pass over the Invader and the Delusionist and the Heiress. “I get it, I guess. Parents wanna protect their kids, and they thought we might have hurt them.”

The Dungeon Master’s hands are clenching like he’s itching for a fight. “They ransacked our lair! It was worse than what the police did! Things were scattered everywhere! Posters! Game pieces! My… anime things! All of it! Ruined!”

“Right…” The Monk’s hand goes back to his friend’s shoulder and lingers there.

The Barbarian covers the Monk’s hand with his own. “… and that’s not the worst thing that happened.”

The tiefling figure is moved by the bony-fingered hand - away from the half-elf and the dwarf. They take the left path, he takes the right. I go back for supplies.

Laughter and the clatter of dice. Don’t you know, you never split the party? Now roll for initiative.

The die lands on a natural one.

“We decided to just move our stuff out of the old hideout after that. There wasn’t much to move anyway, most of it had gotten all… messed up. Um, Barbs and I helped with a lot of it, but most of the things there belonged to the DM. He ended up staying behind to go through everything while we were cleaning it out… and we went-”

“Son of a… Barry! Don’t you dare cry.”

“I… I wasn’t going to…?”

The tiefling in the middle of the grid, surrounded on all sides by other models. Female ones.

I… Shaking hands search for the dice. I… try to run! The fear in his voice is real.

The crowd is too tight around you.

I cast a fireball!

You cannot.

Well, why not?!

You just can’t.

A fist curls up, knuckles turning white. Stop railroading me!

I’m not. Blame them.

They aren’t real!

What makes you so sure?

Shadows solidify above the tabletop, as unseen players huddle in.

Now roll.

“I was clearing out the last of it alone when they found me. This group of, like, older chicks. I guess they were around my mom’s age? Maybe they were some of their moms, the whatshisface kids. Whatever. Not like it matters if they were.”

“We think they were probably the same people that wrecked everything before.”

“Uh, yeah. I don’t know if they were waiting around for us to leave him or if we just got lucky or what. Maybe they thought one was an easier target than three.”

“There were more than three of them.”

Broken terrain pieces. Dirt and snapped trees. The tiefling piece is pushed a few spaces forward. There are scratches on the trembling, long-fingered hand.

The mob follows you in hot pursuit. They will not give up so easily.

I-

What do you do?

I d-draw my sword! The sound of fabric ripping and the shadows dance across the board again.

Roll.

“I was just coming out when they saw me. One of them was just… ‘are you… my name’, and when I said yes…” His glasses are fogging up now, so much that they hide his eyes from view. “She said I was sick. A few of them spit at me. I ran, but you try running in the woods… and I’m not good at jock stuff.”

Hands - now bleeding, bits of earth and bark embedded in the palms - throw the die, rolling a…

There’s something indescribably cruel in the voice that says: Nat. One.

“They caught up to me. They caught me.”

“This one is mine,” says one woman - a warrior, you assume, for she seems every inch the mighty paladin. She draws a knife and brings it down.

I d-deflect! I raise my blade!

She doesn’t falter. Metal scraping metal rings out like a scream. “Monster,” she whispers, and then your sword is broken through. Severed at the hilt. And you must scream.

I do.

“There wasn’t any actual… um.” The Barbarian is rubbing the Dungeon Master’s back. “At least, I don’t think…?”

“There wasn’t. It was… What they did do was shitty enough.” Knees are drawn in tighter and glasses pushed up. For a moment, he meets the Adventurer’s gaze. “I passed out too. They hit a vein.”

A bloodied hand covers the tiefling piece.

Roll a death saving throw.

The die lands. 10.

“The blood clotted. You know, it’s a good thing my parents aren’t related or I might have ended up with haemophilia and died. What?”

“You are so weird.”

“Silence!”

Three figurines on the board. Two hands rolling. Two hands lifting another’s wrist.

He’s turning blue. He’s fading fast. What do you do?

The Monk’s voice. I use Healing Hands!

“I woke up in the hospital with a drip in my wrist. The guys weren’t there. We’re all minors and not related so they wouldn’t let them in. Stupid.” He mumbles something about curses. “One of the nurses, though… she told me that they were the ones that got me there.” The Dungeon Master looks away from his friends. “Um… thanks for that.”

“That’s okay, man.”

“Yeah! You’d do the same for us!”

“It was the Barbarian’s idea to go back, actually. He’s the one that got nervous when the DM wasn’t answering any of his texts or calls.”

“Oh, uh, thanks for that too.”

The tiefling piece, busted and broken and with a horn snapped off. In a sealed plastic bag. In the dark. Different voices from the ones heard before drift in and over, like the shadow of a sound.

So what’s the kid saying happened again?

Who cares? He-

We don’t know that.

But-

Do you want to set the chief off again?

“Um… the cops say that they’re doing what they can. For us. For those kids…” The Monk opens his mouth to speak. It’s a long time before he does. “I hope they find them,” he says finally, but he doesn’t say who. “Really.”

Only two players on the grid map now, but still three shadows overhead. It’s not the voice from before that supplies the narration. You’re approached in the tavern by a black-garbed tiefling. He throws back his hood to reveal long, dark hair and a severed horn. “Gentlemen,” he says quietly. “I come to you to humbly request your aid.” In his hands he carries a broken sword. It’s a much more familiar voice.

The Dungeon Master is crying now, quietly, with his face pressed into his hands. The Barbarian crouches down beside him, one hand on his shoulder and the other on his back. The Monk grimaces, whispering something only the other Elders are close enough to hear.

“I guess I just want everyone to be okay again. L-like we were before.”

They stand. They’re all crying.

In the distance; the sound of rolling dice.

Chapter Text

“I’ve a bit of a proposition for you. And, I think, an explanation.”

The Storyteller has a simple name and fancy handwriting, crawl-by-crawl spider-script dancing ‘cross her nametag in a way that might well have been stitched. She wears no makeup and an old-fashioned button shirt, with pins to hold back the reddish-brown hair that curls in puffed-up wires around her pretty, bare face. She’s holding two things - a notebook and a laptop - tucked underneath one arm.

“I trust you’ve already surmised that I’m not from around here, though I suppose quite a lot of you aren’t, yourselves, but in any case…” She coughs. “I was born in Kensington, I live in Near Sawrey, and I write things down. True things, mostly - botanical papers, mycology research - and stories. I try to tell true ones, usually, but I imagine that there’s at least a little fiction in the space between the lines, no matter how good one’s memory.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment;

Chapter One: The Tale of Peter Roberts

“Mama warned me about strangers, of course.”

Peter, who I should like to call “my friend Peter” or something similarly familiar, sits on the one side of my writing desk that I do not while I write this, sipping from a cup of chamomile tea. “It settles my nerves,” he told me. He’s a young man - a few years my junior, I assume - with the brownest hair and browner eyes, and a little blue coat which, in my opinion, looks only a little peculiar with the way it hangs so. I’ve asked him not to smoke, of course, but there’s a little package of Alluvé Lilacs in his pocket that I notice he reaches for every time I see his nose twitch.

“I suppose that he wasn’t much of one exactly, but she warned me all the same. Something about really strange men staying strange even after you’ve become acquainted, not that we ever were, really. Sorry, I’m not being clear now. Shall I try again?”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Come along, Peter! Three little girls in little red coats and one little boy in blue, on a sunny sand path through some or another strange little wood. A woman wearing a dress and apron watches from the door of a little house beneath a fir tree and waves. And stay out of Mr. McGregor’s garden, she says, your father had an accident there.

“Papa died when I was younger,” he tells me. “Something to do with work he did on a neighbor's land. It’s a small town, of course, and, there being six of us, not many options for what he could do if he didn’t want to take a job in the city. So he took up a position from a man down the way, a farmer, but we always called that spread of land ‘the garden’ - the we being my sisters and I, and our cousin, and sometimes my mother. It wasn’t a good man he was working for, but of course I’m not angry with him, he couldn’t have known that at the time. And even so…” At this he hesitates, requiring me to give my typing pause as, inch by inch, each word comes crawling out of him. “He’s gone now, so I don’t think resentment would do me much good. It was an accident. I think it was. But I was young then and still old enough to see where my mother placed all the blame.”

He sits on the bank by the water, another boy beside him, dipping his feet into the wader’s-deep depths of the shallow-ended lake. I’m sure Aunt Josephine’s just angry, the other one is saying. Father was just like that after my mother-

Maybe, but Peter shrugs like he doesn’t believe it, but your father has that awful temper. It isn’t like Mama to be so angry.

Maybe. But-

Let’s talk about something else, alright?

“Now I know either Benjamin was right and it was irrational or my mother knew more than she cared to let on. Probably the latter, in hindsight, even he agrees with me now. Whatever the case, I can’t say I handled it well, but of course I was a child. Lashing out wasn’t unexpected, something to do with nature’s chain and all.” Again he reaches for the Lilacs. “Er, I don’t mean to make it sound like I was violent, I wasn’t, it’s just that I had a bit of a tendency to make trouble. For just that farmer though, I thought at the time. Now I suppose that was foolish. ‘No man is an island’, I know what that expression means, but it isn’t… You can say the same words more than one way. We need each other. We touch each other too.”

Peter and the cousin called Benjamin gather rotted marrows and old crab-apples from the pulled-weed-picked-stone rubbish heap beside a little white farmhouse with a high wood gate. Bet you I can get one of the windows this time!

You’re on!

“Maybe the half of it was what we drove him to.” Seeming to have realized what he just said, Peter amends: “I’m not trying to justify it! I’m only saying that I know the whys of it, is all, or I’ve got a pretty good idea why the old man might have been fed up. Tell you the truth, I wouldn’t blame him much if it was just that. I was a real hellion when I was that age - me and cousin Benjamin. Always tramping through his property, once or twice we even jumped the fence.” Now he laughs. Now he sighs. “You know, they always say it’s hard to get your children to eat their greens, but Mama always seemed to have the opposite problem. Cake and candy was all well and good of course, but what I really liked best were vegetables. Radishes and carrots and lettuces,” he smiles just a little here and ends on an “Oh my.”

The fence surrounding the garden that is not a garden is higher than young Peter’s head. But there’s a gap in the sweet-smelling pine boards. But it’s not very big. But neither is Peter. But he spoils his clothes squeezing through. But Mama will never find out.

“And in any case, I was quite sure I could outrun Mr. M-… Well, you know, that was foolish. In any case… in any case, I didn’t think I’d have to. I must’ve gotten greedy. Really, I only meant to try a few things, only meant to stay for a short spell, but… oh, ma’am, you should have seen it. It really was beautiful, much as I hate to admit it. Maybe he was a powerful good farmer, but what I’d like to think is he was a mediocre one. A mediocre one with a piece of fertile ground.”

The boy curls up on his side, groaning and holding his stomach, surrounded by bits and inches of stems. He looks nauseous, cheeks puffing like he’s going to be sick at the next opportunity available. He isn’t, but it takes a full minute and some dry-heaving to stand. He does though, eventually, and sets about stumbling down one of the rows (straighter than his path is and long).

“Hard to run on that full of a stomach. That part was my fault, I know, I know. Parsley helps with a stomach ache. Not as well as Pepto Bismol or something similar, but I didn’t really have any on hand. I wish I’d just made the best of it. Or that I’d only gone down the lane like my sisters wanted, to gather blackberries…”

Stop, thief! Heavy footfalls; heavy tone; heavy boots on the ground. Peter looks wide-eyed up at a man with wild eyes and white hair and an accent so thick not even a knife could cut through it clean. The farmer drops his rake and hoe and Peter runs like a hare, stepping out of one shoe as he does so.

“He stopped to pick it up. That was strange, but I’m sure I’ve heard of stranger. What bothers me is that he kept it afterwards. What bothers me is that- Well, I guess I’ve the right to be hung up on quite a lot of it. More than enough, anyway - ah, especially in regard to what happened next.”

Thief! Another shoe lost when he tries to run. His pants catch on the bramble-briar-barbs of some bush - either rose or blackberry - and he tears his hands, tears the fabric, tearing his legs away. The sun reflects painfully up from the puddle he runs straight into, dousing himself with rainwater. He keeps running. He keeps running.

“Of course it didn’t last and of course he did catch me. Almost, anyway? I’m not quite sure what to call it. What he did was-” and now “Mr. R” tugs at the back stitching on his collar “-grab me here, see? Like you do with little animals, scruffs of their necks and all.”

Gotcha, the bearded man says when his hand closes, and he sets about pulling Peter along, towards the garden shed and it’s olive green painted door. Fingers in his buttonholes, digging down like roots, like fresh-sown seeds. And something else is growing, even though Peter is entirely too young to understand. I’ll teach you to steal from me. Wee-

“I kicked the watering can over at him, hard as I could, and ran. I was barefoot and he still had me by the collar, but he’d started to unbutton it so I… so I wriggled my way out and-” He stops, takes a few deep breaths, sips his tea. “I was given that talking-to about strange men, obviously, but Mama only told me what to do if someone had touched me in a way they shouldn’t have, not how to tell if they were planning it out. Oh yes, he’d given me a scare, but I didn’t know what I was escaping from, just that it needed escaping. Maybe if I’d been older… Well,” he sets his cup down with a shrug. “So I went home - late, naturally, but in one piece - and my mother scolded and my sisters teased.”

He’s sent to bed without any supper and doesn’t want any. His mother comes in to tuck around the covers and smooth out his hair and to offer a cup of chamomile tea. There now, that should set you to rights.

Goodnight, Mama.

Peter traces the lip of the cup with one finger and sneezes sharply, drawing a kerchief out from his pocket at just the right time. “And now, you must be thinking ‘Who in their right mind would go back in there?’ ”

~

“Bad things happen all the time, to well-behaved and disagreeable people alike - in a way, I think it’s all quite ordinary. Unpleasant, yes, but not uncommon and certainly not so uncommon as plenty of other ordinary people would like to think. That’s more of that fiction, I would wager - the kind between reality and the rest of us - and it’s why I bother with the things I do. I should like to think that I’ve done some real good with it. And that I’m not just telling stories for stories’ sake. And I would like to think that, if those stories are freely given, perhaps that’s a noble enough cause all on its own.”

Chapter Two: The Tale of Flossie Bunny

“You don’t mind, do you? I can put it away if you mind.”

Flossie is one of those sisters, now quite grown up, and wiping black-rubber chewing tobacco off on the denim-colored cotton of her skirt. Again with the brown eyes, brown hair. And she looks about as frazzled as I’ve ever seen.

“It’s for the old nerves, you see, it’s a problem in our family - nerves - but I don’t like to smoke often. Uncle does and so does my brother, but I think it sets a bad example. For… for the children.” She smiles, but I think it looks a little sad.

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Flossie herds seven brown-haired children around a cozy, warm-looking little house, assisted by a man in an old brown jacket with some shaggy brown hair of his own. Cousin Benjamin all grown up. Mama! Mama! One tugs on Flossie’s skirt, chanting. Moooother! Mother, should I build the wall? There’s a pile of blocks laying at their feet.

“We have six little ones, it used to be seven, but- It’s only six now, nine including their father and his father and I. Sometimes I wonder if I might be smothering them, but it’s just that… they’re so young, and they still need me, and when they grow up-” Again with the tin of black tobacco. “We only have six now…” I am sorry to hear this, but do not say so. I try not to say much when they come in to speak to me this way. “Benjamin doesn’t make much and someone has to care for the children.”

That unruly brood of seven lays quite asleep, on a blanket, on the sun-touched ground just outside their parents’ door, almost looked after by a larger, older man who sits back sleepily, puffing on a pipe until the smoke mists up from the bowl and clouds the air around him. Hush now, baby, baby, don’t you cry. Flossie bends down to run her fingers through the smallest one’s hair. There, there. We won’t be long.

“Please note that they weren’t all born in succession if that makes it any easier for your readers to understand - three sets of multiple births, two of twins and one of triplets - and they’re all still very young. Babies, really. Worrying over them - I suppose that’s very natural, wouldn’t you?” I might suppose, and do, though Flossie knows I haven’t any children of my own. “Still, I- well, just listen. It was never this bad with them as infants, but it’s been this bad since they were still quite young, you see?”

Do you think they’ll be alright with Father, Flossie dear? her husband’s asking.

Oh yes. Flossie nods enthusiastically and pulls Benjamin off by the hand. Uncle Boyce is very capable. Remember when he found you and Peter when you were very young?

“There was one incident in my childhood that I won’t say is the cause of it all exactly, but-” She coughs a little and I watch her nose twitch just like Peter’s. “There was some trouble with my brother when I was young. I guess one could say he was the trouble, he and my husband now, always running off and getting into things he wasn’t supposed to. There was one time when my father-in-law brought him back shaking and much later than we ought to have been out. Much later.” I think that this must trouble her, but Flossie does not elaborate. “It shook me up, but all's well that ends well, that’s what my mother used to say.”

Not long passes, just like she promised, but the children aren’t there when Flossie and her mister get back. And the old man they left to watch them sits asleep in his chair, his pipe still lit. Uncle Boyce! Uncle Boyce! Where are the children?!

Father, where are the babies?

“I’d say the real trouble started just after we’d had the last set. They were all born very close together, you understand? Close enough that even the oldest ones were little more than toddlers when our youngest were born. Maybe if they hadn’t been- If we had only waited- I… I’m sorry, I…” She sniffles a little behind all that straight brown hair as I do my human best to reassure her that really, it’s quite alright. “A-anyway, we left them with their grandfather for watching. He was always good in a pinch for that sort of thing when I was a girl, but then, I suppose I must have gotten older without realizing. And so did he.”

They tear the house up, top to bottom, looking and calling out even though the little ones are much too young to really answer or explain. Flossie is nearly beside herself by the time her husband’s on the phone with her brother, dialling up the police and eventually a younger sister who lives just over the hill. All three will be there by the end of the day; it’s some consolation, but not much, because the children aren’t. How could you let me down?! she snaps when the old man reaches out for her. I trusted you!

“He’d had someone by the house, we got that out eventually. I won’t say his name here or- actually, might I say it? So long as later you take it out? Very well. He had a man over, called… Brock. Now, he was one of our neighbors and I know it’s a small town, but it isn’t as if you’ve got to trust everybody! And I didn’t- I didn’t… You know, I recall there being something in the papers about a sort of kidnapping, locally. I think it was in connection with- Well, I wouldn’t know, but hasn’t the news been strange lately? There was another case I read about, from London - fifteen children there. If that could happen then surely seven would be- Oh dear, I’m rambling aren’t I? It’s just… supposing it had something to do with that?”

All night she sits up crying, alone in the house with just her father-in-law while her husband and her brother and both sisters run around the neighborhood and beyond it, going door to door alongside the uniforms with their badges and big leather belts. They don’t come back until late the next morning and Flossie gets her updates through the phone. Then they are back and she holds them - as best she can hold seven - in her arms. Mama’s gonna keep you right here under her wing, she whispers before diverting her attention back to the others. And Tommy Brock? The policemen shake their heads.

“Mrs. B” sighs softly, bites her lip and shakes her head. “They never did find the man responsible. Oh, we know who he is of course, but where he went… well, that’s the mystery, isn’t it? My husband says - and my brother - that they saw him in an argument with some other man. Another ‘neighbor’ with a bad reputation. I wonder-” She dips her fingers into that little tin box again and shudders. “I don’t like to think on what they might have been fighting over. I was shaken up enough as it was.”

The children play with blocks on the floor and she stoops down next to them. Of course Mama’s gonna help you build the wall. And they let her, of course, for a long time. And they all get older some more. And Flossie doesn’t notice. She’s too busy building.

“I forgave my father-in-law for what happened, family being family after all, but I never left my babies alone with him again if I could help it - and I could. My husband was more attentive, but not quite perfect, and none of us are, of course, but- I don’t- I don’t want to smother anyone and I certainly don’t want them growing up to resent me, but-”

The lake where Peter and Benjamin played as children, only now with another set setting about to do the same. No! says their mother, rather frantically tugging them from the muddy bank. Ah, no… It’s dirty, don’t you know? And very, very cold. Mama’s got to keep her babies healthy and clean. And so they go, groaning, along the way.

“I worry too much. I know I do, it’s not as if I don’t see that, and the last thing I want is to put all my fears into my children. I don’t know, I suppose it would be easier if this sort of thing had only happened once.”

Flecked granite; black plastic; pink flowers; little white coffin being lowered - slowly - into the ground. Flossie buries her face in her husband’s shoulder and wails. My baby… ooooh, my baby…

“It wasn’t… Nobody tore my little boy apart. Little mercies, I know. He had a heart condition. I’ve tried my best not to let that influence the way I- Not to coddle the children because of it, but how can you expect me not to? Really now. So I guess one could say that I may have… overstepped, just a little.”

A little girl with orange hair tussles with one of the family’s unruly brood, staining her nice, white dress in the process and letting the ribbons fall out of her hair. Her newfound playmate follows suit. Pink and white on the wet grass like a chromosome curl. Flossie covers her mouth and drags her daughter away, fussing and fumbling over skinned knees. Mother, do you think she’s dangerous?

“They’re still young now, but I know I’m already overstepping. I can see that I am but, well, I-I know that I’ve got to let them fly at some point, don’t I? I can’t very well go on like this forever, checking out all their girlfriends and boyfriends and- and waiting up all night for them to get in. I know they’ll be grown-up eventually, but… but I don’t know how to make myself believe that.”

Mrs. Bunny! Mrs. Bunny! A timid little neighbor-lady with brown-ginger hair and a portly manner, banging at their shackle-bang door. Come quickly, please! It’s about your babies!

“Maybe it wouldn’t be so difficult if… if something else didn’t always seem to happen, as soon as I had but a moment to compose myself.”

She finds her family all in a cluster, around an old rubbish heap beside an old pine fence, dizzy and snoring and mumbling in their sleep. All, of course, exempting her husband who hovers between them and mutters feverishly. I… They… I think they ate something - from the garden - I… It looked like lettuce to me…

My brother was a doctor in Afghanistan, says the little woman from before as she holds up two fingers. If you please, stand back.

Flossie sniffs now and covers her face in both soft hands, shaking. “But it does.”

~

The Storyteller sighs. “There’s some ‘science fiction in the space between you and me’ I suppose, but many of my well-behaved people who tell me half-true things are, at the least, acquaintances. Friends may be too strong a word for all my estimates, but I endeavor to use it anyways. Some of us are friends at any rate. Some of us are just friends of friends… or distant relations.”

Chapter Three: The Tale of Jemima Puddle

“I am a good mother. Really.”

I have advised Jemima to allow me to alter her full name here, at least the first of it if not the last. I do not often do this, and wouldn’t if I had no knowledge of the story she’s going to tell. As per usual, she’s ignored me and insisted against it. And she would know best, wouldn’t she? This twenty-something or so young woman picking lint off her sweater, nestling cozily into the chair. She has short hair - the whitest shade of blonde - that she wears feathered like down and a high-pitched voice.

“Everyone told me that I wouldn’t be, did you know? Because I had them so young. They told me I wouldn’t have the patience! The nerve of some people.” She rolls her eyes and snaps sweet gum that smells of fake mint imitating the fresh kind that comes from the wild. “And I do mean everyone. Even Mother and my own sister-in-law. They said I didn’t have the patience or that I was too ‘immature’. Ha! Shows how much they know, then again-” Saying this, she shakes her head quickly as if to dispel whichever notion troubles her so. “You know, I was born in England.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Jemima argues with another white-blonde white woman as four yellow-haired, beaky-nosed children run circles around them. Hmf. I will raise them all by myself, if I have to move right away from the farm!

“I couldn’t find any peace at home,” she tuts, tongue clicking. “Not when everyone was being so- so contrary. So I thought, why not go somewhere else for a little while? Come visit with, well, yours and you, naturally. Do some shopping, maybe some travelling, have a bite of the local cuisine and, oh, oh-”

She rents a cozy little room in a cozy little boardinghouse that only looks little - wholly different from the one she left at home - with friendly neighbors all about and a view of the grassy, green moor and the outcrop of field-sod and all the tracks of land between. There is a woman with three children staying in the flat under hers and a fat man with his thin wife in the one above, and another man with a thick, red beard who rents out the rest of it. There is a lovely garden sprouting flowers and other things - spices; parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme.

“It was such a nice place,” she tuts - quacks more like it, “and the children liked it here. Oh dear - oh, the children. Did I say I had four of them? I have four. Just darling little things, you know? At least, I’m sure they are darlings.” She bites her lip before it quivers. “Um, they don’t live with me anymore. There was- there was a strange incident.”

Jemima and her children and a house in the woods. She laughs at a man with ginger hair and sandy whiskers and a cambric shirt, not minding in the slightest when his hand slides into her lap. Nor does she notice when his eyes wander away from hers and down to the blond-haired little darlings, playing like ducklings by the stream. And all of them are yours?

Oh yes. Every last one, she says, picking a sprig of green from her hair and smelling it. Ah, Jemima sighs, rosemary…

“There was a gentleman I came to know here, a charmer - at least I thought so - with such manners. He was very handsome and he had two houses and- and he took an interest in my little ones. No, I didn’t think of it as strange. Not at that time. I just thought… I’m not a bad mother, I’m a good mother, but I am still a woman, aren’t I? And a lady has her needs. You can’t blame me for being interested. You can’t blame me for thinking the world of him, of course… of course not.”

Where do you go every afternoon, Jemima Puddle? asks the redheaded landlord.

Oh, a gentleman’s place, that’s all. And then, more secretively, she leans in. I think it might be true love. Then it’s off to the woods, with her children in tow, time and time again. And to the man with his sandy whiskers and razor-sharp manners like knives on dinner plates. He looks closer at her brood. They cower behind the woman who brought them here and she smiles, cheerful as always, like nothing on earth is going wrong.

“He had an acre of land at least. I mentioned that later and Rebecca was cross with me.” At this Jemima scowls, sticking her lip out in a pout. “She said I ought to have wondered where all the money came from. I just didn’t want him to think I was interested in him for only that. I-I don’t suppose you were ever in love, Miss Potter? If you have been-”

Let me give you a treat, he croons one day. May I ask you to bring up some herbs from the farm garden?

Of course!

“It was a long list, but I remember it all quite well, thank you. Let’s see, there was parsley, sage and thyme and mint, and onions - two onions!” She beams proudly. “It took me a while, but of course I agreed and he said he’d watch the children while I went back to pick them all.”

Now where are you going off with that? asks the man who owns the house she’s staying in. She answers and he smiles teasingly - Gentleman, eh? - but that look doesn’t last long. Not when she mentions the sandy whiskers and “the most beautiful, bushy hair”. And where did you say this was?

“He told me later that there’d been a previous incident in the area with a man like that, and another man, and someone else’s children. I wish he’d mentioned that to me, don’t you? That’s another of the things the family blames me for - for not recognizing - but how on earth could I? I’m certainly not from… from around.”

She may not be, but maybe the man wasn’t either. When she returns the house is empty and she waits around all night and all the next day. Until the man from the boarding house comes to find her, with two local boys in tow. My children… my beautiful children…

There, there, Jemima, he soothes, brushing parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme from her hair, let’s get you home and I’ll phone the police for you.

“They still haven’t found him yet. Or them either.” Jemima wipes her eyes on the corner of her sweater sleeve, droplets seeping into the pink angora. “Maybe they went to Scarborough. I’ve heard it’s nice there.”

~

“It’s never mundane, I’ll give you that, but then…” She pauses before continuing, carefully, “I am not the kind of person who will do or say anything to make the mundane seem less somehow. There’s a certain charm, isn’t there, to everyday life? I think so. And I do hope I’m not alone in that.”

Chapter Four: The Tale of Tom Kitchen

“Mother says we’ll be the death of her. I don’t quite know what that means.”

I can make out the woman in question, the nerve-wracked Miss Twitchit, wavering in the doorway and ringing out her hands. The other children drink milk from the plastic cups I’ve had Daisy bring out to them. Young Master Thomas wears out the skin of his lip, fidgeting in the chair before my desk. Heathery brown hair and olive green eyes and a little blue suit that fits too tight.

“Best Minette and Maude can think of is that maybe she thinks we want to kill her, but that’s just silly. For one thing, how does she expect us to manage it, seeing as we’re so much littler than her? And for another, well, why? I suppose maybe we could eat her - that’s what Maude says - but then… Well, someone tried to eat me once. And kill me too.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the redheaded child from Flossie’s tale and the rest of Jemima’s downstairs neighbors move their things around a little rented room in a faux-small farmhouse divided up into little flats. Oh dear, their mother huffs, running one long finger over tabletops and shelves, just look at all this dust!

Dust! the girls titter, scrambling to the top of the sofa. Dust! Dust! Dust!

“You know, Maude and Minette and I are from America? Mother moved there after our father went away, before we were even born. But her family still lives here. They’re… Well, Cousin Rib- Cousin Ruby is alright, I guess, but so old fashioned. She’s always telling Mother that there’s something wrong with us. And- and that she’ll have to beat it out.” He smiles slyly up at me, eyes glinting through the dust motes, glinting green. “So far, that hasn’t worked very well.”

Tom and his sisters play in the garden and ruin their best clothes climbing to the top of the old stone wall, hair turning golden in the sunlight. Jemima and her flock come by and greet them in passing while someone else watches from the top floor and under the peeled-up window blinds. Pudgy fingers on the sill that go unseen. Nobody’s looking anyway.

“We visit every couple of years or so, but this is the first time Mother’s ever had us stay somewhere like, well, here. Normally that cousin puts us up, but she said she wouldn’t now until we’re older and can-” And here young Tom affects both an accent and a high and lofty way of putting it out. “-‘behave ourselves’. Pssh, she’s still angry over the time I played cat’s cradle with one of her stupid ribbons - or was it a hat? Well, it was ‘down with the weaver’ in whatever case. Anyhow, she wanted to see Mother but refused to have us stay with her this time. I think- I think she might have changed her mind though.”

There’s flour in the air like there’s dust in the cellar, and dough on the table too. Children, his mother’s calling. Children? But Tom and those two sisters have other, very important things to do. There you are, Miss Twitchit says, snatching the girls by the collar, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.

“Mother does her baking on Saturdays,” Tom groans here and uses one finger to stir around in his cup of milk, “and she’s always making us help her with it or else go off to our rooms until it’s done. She caught Maude and Minette and they made muffins, but I crept around upstairs. I thought I’d just hide for a little while until they were done. Then I found the door that led into the hall.”

Dusty carpets and dust specks and dust. Tom coughs, but keeps on creeping. Everything smells like mice. There’s another door at the end of the corridor and he hears voices from inside.

“Mother did tell us not to go around strangers, but Mother wasn’t there and anyway, we hardly ever do what she tells us. Maybe we should. I think I will, at least. So I went in and there was this man on the sofa and he was- and he was- enormous. With long, long whiskers and- and a pointy nose.”

What do you mean by coming in all covered in smuts? says the stranger, scowling while he looks young master Thomas up from down. Then his look changes, and not in a particularly virtuous way. Oh… he murmurs appreciatively. You’re that boy from downstairs. Anna Maria! Anna Maria! And a rakishly thin woman comes in with her own hands mussed from her own cooking, eating the yellow from her fingers.

“I think it was butter. It might not have been though. She smiled when she saw me and it wasn’t a very good smile. Then she said something like ‘well what have we here’ and- and- and- and then her husband - I think he was her husband - told her to grab me.” Poor Tom winces. “And- and- and then she did.”

Dust in his hair and the air around him. The room definitely hasn’t been clean for quite a while. Dust, dust, dust and the stuff that comes up when young Thomas struggles is white and sparkling in the dim sunlight through the drawn curtains and makes the old man sneeze. Butter smears across his arms and the woman’s hands slip-slide up and down them, but she keeps her hold and doesn’t let go of him.

“Then she tasted me. I think that’s what it was.” He looks down at the milk again. “Mother always looks very sad when I mention it, but Minette supposes that must have been why. Then he tasted me - after she’d managed to get my hands.”

Two warm mouths and the taste of red and purple that will rust into green. Crimson colors the dust and the smell of mouse is so thick Tom can taste it. He screams.

“I- I cried out for Mother. I didn’t know that she would hear me, but I don’t think they did either because they didn’t bother covering up my mouth with their hands. They didn’t, but- but someone did hear me and Mother and Cousin Ruby - she came by at some point while I was hiding, sorry, I didn’t mention that - must have pieced out where the noise was coming from. They had to run down to a neighbor's…”

Someone starts pounding on the other side of the door. Open up in there! The couple look at each other, mouths dropping open to expose their stained-red yellowed teeth. They run for the other exit. Maybe they’re fast enough. Then the door opens and Tom hears his mother’s scream and sees that his sisters don’t, for that cousin has covered their eyes. There is plenty of dust in his own.

“There must have been some in Mother’s too, I think.” He blinks hard, rubbing color into cathus. “They wouldn’t stop watering for such a long time.”

~

“What I mean to do is teach someone something. Anything they care to take away, I suppose. That it can happen to anyone, perhaps, and that most perpetrators of distasteful acts aren’t half so obvious as whatever scary monster they’re picturing them to be. Oftentimes everyone involved in the proceedings is ordinary. Many times the victim of such things is even good. I think it hurts people to realize that. I think it helps them too. And, no, I don’t think bad people deserve such treatment either. I only mean that it’s hard for certain people to recognize such. Of course…” She coughs. “No one does.”

Chapter Five: The Tale…or of Gloucester

“The old man suggested - ah, Mr. Simpkin, I really shouldn’t call him that.”

Mr. Gwyn Prichard has a face that I only know from parties at Christmastime. Of course he’s overmuch welcome, but unexpected and I can’t help but worry at the way he does, pushing up his glasses for every time he blinks. His hair is brown and quite long, gathered back in one uncomplicated tail, his eyes are dark but brighter than they might be - like candles behind a wall of glass.

“The man I work for, but of course you know that. So sorry, I must be rambling - I would ramble at a time like this.” He winks. “You should know, Miss - is it Miss? - I’m a much better tailor than I am a salesman. I suppose it’s fortunate, then, that we found each other, ah, Mr. Simpkin and I, that is. He’s a good man. A lot of people aren’t, you know.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the season of Mr. Prichard’s youth is a cold one in Gloucester, way down in the fall. His hair hangs in frozen barbs around both shoulders and he squints in the daylight, face as red as the leaves on the ground and without a scarf or gloves or coat.

“I know that you’re acquainted, has he ever mentioned how we met, perchance? Yes, well, he wouldn’t. That man’s humble as a saint, quite frankly.” And here he winks at me a second time. “I must be quite fortunate, they say a truly good man is hard to find.”

There’s a small-time clothing boutique with a shop-front window that is more than twice too enormous, especially for such a thing as there is to see inside. Not too many dresses or suits and ties, but what there is looks nicer than anything the young Mr. Prichard owns or that, too, the proprietor has on. He’s an old man, even now, with skin that’s started to wrinkle and hair that’s begun to grey, but his eyes are blue and they still sparkle very blue and it’s not just the projection of kindness. The old man gets to know the funny, spotty face of the boy that passes every day and comes out to greet him with a Morning or Afternoon.

“Of course, you would have to be, wouldn’t you? To put up with That Grandson. Again, again, apologies. I don’t mean to offend, it’s just- well, how else is there to put it when surely you’ve met him?”

Sometimes when the man comes out there’s a surly-looking boy with him. He looks younger than Mr. Prichard, but not by very much, with amber eyes and his own hand shoved deep into his pockets, sporting dirty fingernails; whatever’s underneath them makes Mr. Prichard shudder to think about.

“He and I have known each other since he was a child and I wasn’t much older. Notice that I’ve said known, not liked. He has a bad temper, he is bad-tempered. A boy like that has trouble making friends and keeping them. I worry for him, I do, his grandfather has been- he’s been very kind to me.”

No coat? the old man asks in the morning, glasses fogged with the steam from his coffee. Mr. Prichard hurries by and shakes his head, face burning despite the cold. Why don’t you come inside? he asks in the afternoon. Noel, my boy! Put the kettle on!

“We were very poor for a very long time - ah, that is my family as well as theirs. Mother and Father, God bless them, did try, of course, as best they could! It wasn’t always enough to keep the lights on or food on the table or- or, well, to buy the appropriate things in winter. I can’t say the Simpkins did much better, but- but, you see, I- mm, a good man, a good man-”

There’s an awful creaking sound when the old Mr. Simpkin stoops his back, but he does it anyway, poking around inside a scrap box on the floor and sifting his hands through the many colored rags inside. Every piece is small. Now purple for the shoulder here, I think, and red for… Cut; the old man holds up a mess of patchwork, the rags now sewn together into a coat with technicolor vibrance. He hands it over to Mr. Prichard, eyes shining. For you!

“He made me a coat just like Joseph’s, different colors and all, and, of course, I was grateful, but I couldn’t- I was very worried about what I should have to do in order to pay him back. I might have done just about anything - well, almost anything - and I told him as much, but he wouldn’t hear of it. You know how he is. A good man.”

But, sir, there must be something I can… We don’t have any money, but maybe I could… maybe I could…

Well, says the old man kindly, settling a gnarled hand on his shoulder, smiling down with a tired sort of fondness, if you’re that insistent… I’m not as young as I used to be- He laughs, a crackly sort of sound, like a grackle bird breathing smoke. -sewed the cuff on with twist before I realised - and the boy’s too young to… Why don’t you come by this afternoon?”

“So I did and ever since then I’ve been… I suppose you could say his assistant? Now that I’m grown, and he’s- well, now that he’s older, I do the best that I can to keep things running smoothly. It isn’t quite so hard as you might think, or as hard as it was - not now - lately. We’ve done well for ourselves. Of course, that’s only concerning this past year.”

Mr. Prichard and the Simpkins - old and young - wear out the floorboards and burn the midnight oil, shut up in that little shop of theirs. Yellow taffeta for the lining.

Oooh! Precisely what I would have chosen myself.

Young Simpkin looks up sourly, like he hasn’t the slightest interest at all in their proceedings. Isn’t it about time we turned in for the night? Don’t you have any idea what time it is?

“It was last Christmas I think, that one was on a Sunday. There was a great to-do over the mayor’s wedding clothes. He ordered- I think that actually made the papers, red and white and yellow, silk and taffeta. It was all very expensive, to buy and to make and probably the biggest job we’d ever undertaken, the most important order we’d filled.” He removes his glasses, tapping them on his nose, against the bridge. “Easily. Things would go wrong.”

No more twist. The man frowns. I am undone.

The shops are still open now, aren’t they? says Mr. Prichard. I’m sure there’s time to buy more. You might send Noel…

Ah. Of course you’re right. Tonight, before our supper. We’ve not had the chance to do the shopping anyway. Best we turn in for the night.

Mr. Prichard nods. Tomorrow then.

“But he didn’t come in tomorrow - ah, not tomorrow, but you understand how I mean?” It takes more than my nodding for him to carry on. “The old man came down with something - I’m not sure what the problem exactly was, truth be told, perhaps some kind of fever - and his grandson was in charge of caring for him. I was left to run the shop alone - just as well that we were never very busy, the Christmas season being what it is and all that - as well as to finish the mayor’s wedding clothes. That part nobody asked of me, but they didn’t have to. I’d have done it anyway. We all would - that is, I- Mr. Simpkin was very dear to me and to my own family. They were more than happy to help him.”

The shop is not at all large at the best of times, certainly not big enough for the number of brown-haired, big-eared relations Mr. Prichard has brought inside to paw through cloth and push through sewing. No more twist, one remarks, and he shakes his head.

No, but the tailor will be better on the morrow, he assures her, I’m sure of it.

“But he wasn’t better. Not on Friday either, and on Saturday… on Saturday we’d all but finished, all but one buttonhole and the mayor was to be married on Christmas Day in the morning. One buttonhole, now that may not seem like much, but I promise you- I promise you- Ahem, apologies… I only mean to impress upon you, miss, that it didn’t look good for us. The mayor was sure to notice that his coat was incomplete and I had no means of paying for more twisted silk to do it up myself. And-”

Mr. Prichard remains after his makeshift assistants have all gone, promising he’ll follow after in due time and return before dark. Whatever else happens, Mother, it’s still Christmas Eve. There’s a thump-thump-thump at the door not an hour after. Someone knocking. It’s a woman with a wad of papers in her hand.

“And the rent on the shop was due soon. I couldn’t pay that either, and Mr. Simpkin… His grandson would barely tell me a word. As far as I knew we couldn’t have paid without the mayor paying us and he wouldn’t if we’d done a bad job of it. As it was, we were just barely keeping our heads above the water and if we missed a payment… You see, the landlady was less than sympathetic to my plight.”

Surely, Mr. Prichard, you don’t expect me to explain to a grown man the importance of paying his dues, do you?

Ma’am, it’s almost Christmas, he pleads. I just need a little more time! I… I… There’s no more twist. No more-

I can promise you there will be if the rent isn’t paid on time. You tell Mr. Simpkin that, understood? Make sure he knows-

Please! Please, I’ll do anything.

That captures her attention. Oh?

“We had no money, but I guess that one can be rich in other ways, can’t he? I-I don’t know that I’d go that far, but I know I’m not bad-looking. Maybe average, but not bad, and she was… lonely and- and willing to, well, I suppose that’s obviously why I’m here. I don’t regret it. That doesn’t mean it was particularly pleasant for me, perhaps not unpleasant enough. I’d do it again, if there should be the need.”

Well, says the landlady, straightening her skirt, I suppose I can overlook your little… transgression, just this once. Mr. Prichard barely hears her shut the door.

“After I’d collected myself, I retired to the privacy of my own home. I must have disappointed everyone terribly, going up to my room the way I did, and wallowing. ”

He collapses on the bed, biting his lip hard enough to bruise. I’ll be down in a moment, he keeps saying, but he’s up there till almost midnight. Finally, he stands when the clock hits twelve, clung to by a veil of melancholy as he reaches around inside the trunk at his feet. The old man’s coat is too small for him now, but he brushes over it with familiar hands. Once, twice, and on the third time his thumbnail catches on the mistake. Cherry-colored twisted thread.

“Do you want to know the thing that really troubles me? He came in the next morning all worn to a thread-paper. Apparently his grandson thought to hide the twist, but- It wasn’t necessary that I- I didn’t need to-” Mr. Prichard covers his glasses, one eye peeping through his middle finger and ring. “I didn’t have to. I didn’t have to. There was enough silk the whole time.”

~

“I suppose it must be awfully hard for most people to leave the pity and the blame and to tell their stories. You’d be surprised how many don’t, or how many come from… other sources. Oh, no, I don’t mean it like that. Apologies - really - I shouldn’t have implied… Ah, I’m not recording idle gossip. Think of these more like witness statements. I never disclose names or proper locations without permission anyway.”

Chapter Six: The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy Winkle

“Oh - oh, dearie me. Sorry again, ma’am, beggin’ your pardon.”

Antigone Winkle is a large, round woman with pins and pins and pins in her tight net of hair, the color of damp wheat before the picking season or the tea she’s just spilled. It really isn’t a big puddle and she needn’t worry, but she won’t hear of it when I try to tell her so.

“Please don’t trouble yourself, m'dear, I’ll just get this fixed up in no time. I’m not that old, you know? Anyway, cleanin’s what I do, when I still remember it.” Perhaps I look a touch concerned because she heaves full-bellied laughter, filling up the whole of the room. “Only sporting, ma’am, only sporting. Any case, you might mention the job, I think.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a dove lands on the rain-stained sign of a market street dry cleaner’s and Mrs. Winkle stands inside, peering out as buckets of bitter water come down and splatter against the storefront plate-glass. She looks up from her iron with the slightest smile, warm like baking bread dough. Lovely, Mrs. Tiggy Winkle says.

“Run the business right well I do, the cleanin’ an’ the starchin’. Suppose that some folk might not be satisfied with that and all, but I think you know as well as I, Miss Potter, those folk don’t come ‘round here very often.” She tuts, tongue clicking. “Not often at all. Shame though, t’isn’t it? I know right well some country folk don’t think much o’ them what are from the city, but I honestly wouldn’t mind it if’n a few were to come through every so often. Does a body good to have her some company. ‘Course their money wouldn’t hurt none, but it’s mostly the company, it is.”

There’s Peter and his family - old and young - and a little girl in a bright red coat. A beaky-nosed redhead; a fat little brown-haired man; the woman with the doctor brother from Flossie’s tale - This will be the last time for a while, I’m afraid. I’m off to the States soon. California. - and their laundry. Communion dresses and little blue jackets and bright red vests with gold-colored buttons. Damask and linen and sometimes silk.

“You meet all kinds in this line o’ work, you do. All kinds for a town like this one anyway, there’ll be more in the city. Never been myself, but I’ve heard stories - wild stories - if’n you’re to ask Mr. Timothy, ’m sure he could tell you a thing or to. Bit too much excitement for my tastes, I think though. I’m not as young as I used to be and I think what I’ve seen ‘round here is plenty enough. Ah, if it’s alright with you, Miss Potter, might I have more tea?” It takes a long time to fill the cup.

You’re a miracle worker, my dear lady. An absolute saint. Antigone Winkle passes a black-bagged hanger over to a fair and flighty man with slicked-down hair and eyes bright as aerolites. He looks less than half her age, but she looks at him with a soppy, drippy fondness and speaks with her tongue completely honey-smothered.

“There is a gentleman with whom ’m sure you are acquainted, he might not like me mentionin’ him on account o’ that. Any case, you could say that I’m sweet on him. Can’t help it, really, been right lonely since Mr. Winkle died and, well, I don’t know much about young things these days, but a woman like me wants a friendly sort - an’ his looks didn’t hurt none either.” She smiles and I return her look. Cheeky. “Not that anything ever came of it, o’ course.”

Why, Mr. Jeremy, Mrs. Winkle teases, smiling through the taste of bitter water. There’s a burgundy dress jacket dangling from the hanger in her hands. Now, who’s the special lady?

Lady…? O-oh! Good heavens, no! I… His cheeks burn like poppy flowers in June. Ah, no. There’s no lady.

“Next time he came by there was another gentleman with him. I didn’t think much of it, except that I saw that same man again a few more times, an’ never alone. Then there was the ald- I mean, another one - an’ I… Well, I suppose I understand now what he meant about ‘no ladies’. Not that it’s any o’ my business, mind.”

A man in a long blue coat and the town alderman. It’s the latter Mrs. Winkle sees reach for her young man’s hand as they go out to the car and the former who kisses him inside. On different occasions, mind, but the realization burns like soap in the eyes. Not that she ever says anything about it.

“I shouldn’t love him, I know that, but… Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, ma’am. I don’t deny it was a right disappointment, but I weren’t about to judge the poor man. A body has a right to do as he or she pleases even if’n that includes turnin’ another body’s feelings down. Decent persons ought to understand that, I think.”

I’m off to the lake this evening, the gentleman says, fishing, you understand? Hosting a dinner party. He does not seem to notice the way Antigone Winkle marks his steps after they exchange their well-wishes.

“That night I was in late. Cleanin’ up the cleanin’ place.” She laughs, but in such a way that I can well see isn’t genuine. I try to pour more tea again and it takes even longer, like the cup cannot be filled. “Dreadful tiring work, I remember thinkin’ to myself, ‘Tiggy, it can wait till mornin’, you best just be gettin’ on home’, but ‘course I couldn’t leave it alone. Rather glad I didn’t, all things considered. Mr. Je- ah, nevermind. My- our mutual acquaintance came so very late an’ I nearly had a heart attack when I saw him. You see, ma’am, he had on a white macintosh, but at first… it looked rather red, ma’am, if’n it pleases.”

Oh! Mr. Jeremy! Her hand flies to her mouth when she sees him on the doormat, dripping bloody, bitter water from his hair and mouth and clothes. Oh, what have you- What’s happened?! Please, please, come inside! He says nothing for a moment, but allows her to lead him across the threshold and through the door.

“I didn’t realize right away what happened - my own fault, it’s hard for someone my age to get their head wrapped around plenty o’ things, plenty ‘a times. The young folk have the right idea, whatever anyone else has to say- About this, I mean. You don’t usually think of a gentleman in that predicament. O’ course once I had a good look at him it weren’t a thing you could deny.”

I… I couldn’t think of anyone else to go to, the young man babbles, sobbing and wincing as Mrs. Tiggy Winkle fusses with a bleeding hand. Mother lives in the city. And… and… I haven’t got any other family.

Mr. Jeremy… I think you’d better let me drive you to the hospital.

I… He sighs. Will you stay with me?

“So I did. What could I say? An’ I care about the poor man, don’t I, ma’am? As a friend who shouldn’t love him like that and does anyway. I weren't expecting nothin’ to come of this, I just wanted to help him. I hope I did.”

It’s weeks before she sees or hears of him again. Then the man in blue comes by with a basket of dirty linen. Antigone Winkle?

Mr. Newton. It’s right pleasant to see you today.

I… I’ve got something for you, ah, along with the usual. Jerry asked me to… to bring you… Seemingly at a loss, the tongue-tied gentleman holds out the hamper and six yellow roses, wrapped in plastic so as to conceal their thorns. Thank you, he wanted me to tell you that. Thank you from us both- and from Ptolemy.

Mrs. Winkle sighs, reaching up under her hairnet to adjust the pins there. “ ‘Thank you’, he told me. Maybe I ought to send flowers too.”

~

“People have asked about the things I write and if they don’t depress me. I suppose the answer is yes, but not enough to stop any time soon. Besides it’s not as if it’s all ‘one more sad, sordid story’ after another… Well, I admit some are a little like that, to be sure…”

Chapter Seven: The Tale of Wiggins and Bland

“ ‘Tom, Tom, the piper’s son’-”

“Ah, maybe not now, dear. Er, not here.”

Porcia Wiggins and York Bland are fat, pug-nosed and entirely quite pleasant as far as I’m concerned. She has dark skin and dark hair pinned into pigtails, he’s a pinkish, bristle-brush blond, and they hold onto each other like they’ve only just remembered what love is like. I don’t know, not being an expert, but I don’t think they’re quite so old as they claim. Not that it’s any of my business, I suppose.

“Oh-” Wiggins laughs and uses her elbow to poke and prod young Bland in the side while, at the same time, leaning her head back against his arm, twintails falling over one shoulder as they nuzzle in. “He’s too serious.”

“Yes, well- I suppose we have my mother to thank for that, and my brothers and sisters and, well, everybody.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a large, round faced woman and eight of the family, each one rounder and more porcine than the next. They eat frightfully quickly and no sooner has she placed breakfast; dinner; supper on the table than do they begin to push and shove and gobble down everything in sight. And besides that, none but two have any inclination at all towards standing still, much less sitting.

“Oh! Oh, Yorky, tell her about your mummy,” says Wiggins, tugging at her companion’s sleeve. “And the farm! And Alexander!”

“Porcia… Ah, alright. Mother had more of us than she could manage. I don’t judge her too harshly for that. There were a lot of us and my father was out of the picture, it must have been difficult, and we were a handful to deal with at the best of times, even aside from that.” Bland snorts softly, expelling dust from his nose. “She got tired of the noise and mess eventually and decided - I’ve an uncle in another part of Lancashire, and some other relations nearer and farther away. She looked around the family for anyone who would take us and in the end… One of my sisters stayed home, one of my brothers - Alexander - came along with me. It isn’t- Please don’t look at me like that, it isn’t so bad, I promise.”

Now, York Bland, you will go to Market Street, says the woman as she fusses to clean his face and hair and straighten his little red coat. You too Alexander. And mind your clothes. There’s a boy in green beside Bland, kicking up dirt in little clouds and squirming as their mother fusses with his hair. Oh, do hold still.

“I was at least meant to go along with my brother. We’d take the train to Lancaster and walk to Market Street from there to meet my uncle. It shouldn’t have taken more than two hours in all, but-”

The boys get into a scuffle at the station, so dislodging the contents of their pockets and making them scramble to pick it all up again before the train comes rolling down the line. Young Bland’s brother scrambles harder when the ticket-taker comes around and there’s no ticket. Away he runs. Walks.

Wiggins giggles. “Over the hills and far away?”

Bland smiles at her to spite himself, utterly taken, that much is obvious. “Of course. So I went on alone.”

Until he finds the ticket with his brother’s name on it about half an hour out.

“So I doubled back. I thought- I really didn’t want to go by myself. I thought maybe I could overtake him and… It wasn’t my finest moment, and walking takes a lot longer than going by train so, well, I was still walking hours later. And then it was dark.”

Bland stumbles through the dark and cold and nearly cries at the spotty light of a little wooden house in the distance, with an old rusty truck in front and a coop for the keeping of chickens and a picket fence that wraps the whole way round. Turn out your pockets now, says the man who answers. He’s old and grey with a nose like an old potato flecked with eyes.

Bland does as he asks of him. I have nothing, and that seems to satisfy the stranger well enough.

“Now, I suppose he must have wanted to see if I had a mobile phone or- or- You must think I’m very foolish, miss, but I was cold and hungry - you’d be surprised what one can do under those conditions. Or maybe you wouldn’t, I rather think you must have heard of people doing worse for both.”

Maybe it’s the smell of something cooking or the smoke from the fire and the promise of heat and the full-bellied sleep both entail, but Bland allows himself to be led over to the stranger’s hearth rug and to find a seat on the stool atop. The man comes up behind him, leering with hands that linger for more than slightly just too long. You’ll stay for supper? And he pours out three plates for just that purpose.

“One for himself, one for Yorky, and a third.” Wiggins begins humming to herself. “Tom, Tom, the piper’s son-”

-stole a pig and away he run, Bland sings to himself the next morning, when he wakes up to find himself quite alone. And all the tune that he could play was over the hills and far away.

Over the hills and a long way off, the next verse rings from behind a door. The wind will blow my topknot off. Young Mr. Bland gets up and sits down with his back to the wood. There’s a wrapped peppermint that he takes from his pocket and slides underneath the door, then comes a crunching, munching sound from the opposite side. He falls asleep there and wakes later when night’s cold fingers dip into day.

“The old man was only just getting in,” says Wiggins, reaching down the front of her dress and taking out two sweeties, passing one to Bland before snapping up her own. I have declined the offer, generous as it might be. “He made the same dinner before he went to bed. One for him. One for York. One for - oh, I don’t want to ruin it! Yorky! Yorky, tell her what was behind the locked door!”

Bland hums the only tune he can, spoon digging thick oat porridge from the bowl. A shadow tumbles over the hearth hills beside him. My name is Porcia. Make me some more porridge, please. He stares for not nearly as long as most would be wont to. At torn-out buttons and torn-out hair and blood down the front of her dress. He hands her his bowl - More porridge? - and gets up to fetch more.

“I think I was too shocked to do anything else at that moment, though after I’d come back, I do remember asking why- why she was… Where he’d got her from. Why he had her. Things like that.”

Wiggins answers blithely, talking with her mouth stuffed full and looking wholly unconcerned about any of it. Young Goodman Bland, by distinction, is clearly put to a deep unease. Why don’t you escape?”

I shall, says Wiggins. After supper.

“But, of course, we couldn’t go in the dark. We had to be sensible about it so I asked if she might know the way home by daylight, offered to bring her with me to Lancaster, though, well, I don’t think I could have found the way myself. In either case we waited.”

“We talked for hours and hours! Until my voice got hoarse.”

What’s Market Street? she asks very quickly. How do we get there? I’ve never seen a place like Market Street. What do we do there? What’s it for? Will I enjoy it? Why do we need tickets? And surely yours hasn’t got my name on it. Then before he can answer anything at all she bursts into a fit of giggles and flounces her dress out as she spins.

Bland slumps and sighs, and not from trying to keep up with his spirited young lady. Market Street sounds perfectly horrid to me. What I would like to do is… Well, if you must know, all I’ve ever wanted is my own little garden.

Oh! Flowers! I love flowers!

… Potatoes.

“The next morning we got up early - so very early - early enough that it was still dark outside. He took my hand and away we run - ran.” She snickers. “Over the hills-”

“-and far away,” Bland says fondly, brushing a hand behind her ear.

There is a man on the road that pulls up beside them and sees the blood and Wiggins’ moon-cheeked face. There are policemen poking and prodding and asking questions. There is a police station and a hospital room and a window box brimmed with pansies that Bland snatches up so carefully that nobody sees.

“Did you know that song isn’t actually about stealing a pig? Not really, anyway, or so I’ve heard. ‘Tom, Tom, the piper’s son stole a pig’, yes, but apparently ‘pig’ is just meant to refer to a pastry. It isn’t a real animal. It never was.”

For you. Bland brings the pansies to Wiggins in her hospital room. For you. Bland brings Wiggins lilacs on her porch steps. For you. A poinsettia under the Christmas tree. For you. Lilies after a Sunday service. For you. Red roses. For you. Two little packets in a great, big box.

Hm? She tilts her head, more curious than disappointed by anything he’s offered. “What’s this?”

A promise. Red tulips. Red potatoes.

Wiggins sighs contentedly and kisses Bland on the cheek. “Neither are we.”

~

“But some other stories give you everything you need, even the unhappy ones. You might be surprised at how wonderful people can really be to each other, though… I don’t know if it really does take hardship to bring that out. Maybe all it does is present an opportunity.”

Chapter Eight: The Tale of Timmy Willy and Johnny Towne-Mouse

“I don’t think- I don’t know that I really care for the country.”

Timothy William is round and auburn and no more objectionable than rye bread and blackberry jam. John Towne-Mouse is neat brown hair and New York angles, but he has the softest eyes I can recall in recent memory. They nurse their tea - ginger with a spoonful of honey; peppermint with more than that of sugar and milk.

“It’s- it’s the quiet, I think, there’s just something unsettling about not having too many neighbors about. I can’t help but worry about having no one to scream too if I needed to scream, even though I’m sure that must sound ridiculous. Then there’s the petty things, farm equipment - and that sound it makes - and the mess that comes along with grass and dirt. I’m sorry, I’m not ungrateful, I just-”

“It’s alright, Johnny,” says Timmy Willy, laying a hand on his back. “I didn’t like the city any better, remember that?”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the sun hangs high over an opulent house in Oxford and Timmy Willy pounds hard and heavy on the kitchen side door. It is the cook who opens it, wiping her hands off on the front of a decidedly not pristine apron and, when she sees Timmy standing there, she screams. It’s no wonder; he’s bleeding and almost completely bare.

“You could say we met under… well, an unusual set of circumstances, unfortunate ones at that.”

“I was in a bad place then, figuratively and…” His laugh is wet like summer rain falling into much colder, deeper water. “I suppose literally too - a-at least before that. I-I- You see, I was born in the country in a little house, right around these parts, with a beautiful garden…”

There… there was a man… Poor Timmy stammers, at a table crowded in by faces he’s never seen and people he’s never known. Dark hair with gray running through it. Tommy something, he said his name was- Tommy Brock! He… he… he…

Timothy William lets out an unhappy sound, something between a scoff and a sigh. “I wonder if that was his real name now. No matter, he… When we met he said he was a farmer, here to make a delivery to the Ginger and Pickle’s, down the road. He said he didn’t know the town very well and asked if I might show him the way and- and he couldn’t pay me, but I might s-sample some of the merchandise. I didn’t wake up until we’d driven for quite a long time.

By then he’d been able to t-t-tie my hands, he chokes, and my feet, and he’d put tape over my mouth so I couldn’t even scream…

Oh… Oh my- I… I’m so sorry, you poor-

And he kept driving off to… to somewhere. After there was this… this… building - I think maybe some sort of warehouse? - with… with… Please, ma’am, you have to phone the police…

“Now, I am not the owner of the house he turned up in - adamantly not, in fact - but it is my home. A-at least if they’ll still have me. You see, I- I understand that- I know that… Most people don’t keep a, well, kept staff anymore. Some do.”

“Johnny’s a butler for the family, one of a few actually. They’re very… They’re from that, I guess you could say, well-to-do sort? Not bad people, not at all, but so… I didn’t quite know what to make of them - of any of them, really. Too posh. I’m lucky it was the staff that found me, not that they made much sense either, but more than proper owners would have. Besides. they have a young daughter and it’d never do to frighten the poor girl.”

He sits at the kitchen table, a space cleared of knives and dishes just for him, still wailing into his hands. The cook sets down a cup that’s steaming and plate piled high with rich, fatty leftovers from the previous meal and expensive desserts. Timmy Willy only keeps on crying. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t eat.

“We met on account of the noise, I suppose. When she saw me, the cook made such an awful racket and I was probably just as bad. Only natural that someone outside the kitchen would hear us and poke their head in wanting to see just what in the world was going on.”

Who in the world? is more like it. Johnny pokes his head around the door once the cook’s stepped out, and finds Timothy William there, undone and quite alone.

I’m T-Timmy Willy… And he tries to explain.

I’m Johnny Towne-Mouse. And they shake hands. And you’re very welcome here, I’m sure.

“My employers weren’t unsympathetic, all but fell over themselves to have him stay once Cook had explained the situation. Of course it was my job to make him comfortable, though - and I hope you’ll both believe me - I’d have taken it upon myself to do just that either way. It- it was nothing. Well, perhaps not nothing, but I’m sure that’s just what any decent person would have done.”

“Thank you all the same.”

This is the best bed, and they keep it exclusively for visitors. Johnny switches the light on in an over-padded guest room, leading Timmy Willy by the hand behind him and over to the large four-poster with pillows and blankets piled high. Have a good night’s sleep, and I hope you feel better in the morning. Good night, Timmy. He’ll have to come rushing back in later when the cat pushes the door open and Timothy William lets out a scream.

“I stayed a few weeks in Oxford, just until everything was settled with… with the hospital and the police. I won't pretend to have enjoyed it, Johnny and his friends were all very kind of course, but it wasn’t… You cannot understand the loneliness of being somewhere you don’t belong unless- unless-”

What is the matter, Timothy William? Are you ill? Johnny asks, sinking down beside his acquaintance at a table in the kitchen, surrounded by half-slugged bottles and drunken friends. Aren’t we feeding you well enough?

It’s just that I’m not feeling so well. I do so miss my home in the peaceful, sunny bank. All this excitement isn’t good for me.

“I certainly didn’t,” says Johnny, tucking hair back behind one over-large ear. “I know better now, but at the time- I- It is my job to keep people happy, but I may have been a bit overbearing about it, especially after everything he’d- I was inappropriate. I couldn’t help feeling cast away, but there’s no excuse for that.”

Where is your home, Timmy?

In my garden, with the most beautiful flowers, where I sit and listen to my friends the birds. And when it rains, I sit inside and… and talk to my friend, Robin, he waxes poetic, eyes glazing over like dust on glass.

Is that all? It sounds like, ah, rather a dull place…

“It’s all a matter of taste, I suppose, even so, I needn’t have been so rude about it. It’s not as if he chose to visit and then started up complaining after.”

“Don’t say that, you were perfectly lovely - you all were - and, anyway, you’re right. One sort of place suits one sort of person and another suits another or something like that. Besides, my ‘adventure’ in the city wasn’t really quite so bad as he makes it out to be - not after we met, at least. I am glad we met. Even so, I was ready when it was finally time for me to leave.”

Goodbye, Timothy William.

Goodbye, Johnny Towne-Mouse. Do try and visit me in the country one day, won’t you?

He’s left the same in a note with chalk on the door. They shake hands.

“Then I returned to the- well, then I came back here.”

Back from your travels, Timmy Willy? Timothy William leans on his windowsill while a red-wearing redhead flashes a grin at him.

Oh yes! I - oh - I’m so happy to be back here!

These two embrace.

“We did try to keep in contact after he left, naturally, but you know how distance changes things. Of course we had phone calls, text messages - the occasional letter…”

Sometimes they send each other treasure boxes wrapped in brown, brown paper. For Timmy: a flannel shirt; a leather coat, big-city-style; plastic crocodile boots. For Johnny: a pine cone dipped in glitter glue; a 1942 penny; a necklace with a cheap green stone. Nothing eventually.

“Fond thoughts and all, but it wasn’t- It was sort of a long time coming in regards to-”

“We lost touch. It wasn’t that surprising.”

Months pass. Timmy Willy talks to his friends and tends to his garden, and makes moony eyes at Flossie Bunny’s lady neighbor, until she moves away. Spring becomes summer becomes autumn becomes winter becomes spring and summer again. Timmy’s nearly forgotten his visit to town when what should wake him, but a pounding at the unlocked front door.

I pause in my typing now, to examine Johnny Towne-Mouse. He’s always been a thin man, I think, but there’s a hollowness to his cheeks, and something about the way his plain clothes hang off of him suggests they are not in fact his own.

“You might say it’s another chapter of the same sorry story. Nothing on the same page, perhaps, but the same book. The same book.”

H-hello, Timothy William. Johnny’s smile is not so bright now and his eyes aren’t either. There are purple band-bruises around both wrists and ankles and he’s wearing more than Timmy was, but his feet are bare in the cold sand, chilled to the bone.

O-oh! Johnny! What’s happened?! Are you… are you-

The family’s been down to the seaside - in Scarborough - for… I only wanted to… There was a man called… called… He told me his name was Mr. To- Actually, I think you’d better call the police…

“It’s only one part coincidence that we happened to find each other. I’d been given an address you know, for visiting, I’d just never taken Timmy up on his offer before now and this wasn’t… Ah, erm, in any case-”

“I don’t really think it’s so strange that the same sort of people who took me here to there could do the opposite, do you?” Timothy William spares me a wary, whirlwind glance. “A-and it was the same sort of operation, we think…”

Was it this bad for you? Johnny Towne-Mouse is asking, scrubbing his eyes with a handkerchief and both hands. With… the warehouse and the people and… and the cameras… Was it this bad for- And I was- I’m sorry! I- I- I-

Johnny… says Timmy Willy, setting down a pot of coffee and a hand on his shoulder. Johnny, please calm down. It’s… it’ll be alright… Shh… Shh… There, there…

“He’s been very kind to me all things considered. I doubt I’ve been the most accommodating house guest.”

That red-headed man pops over and, all smiles, Timothy William welcomes him inside. This wavers when Johnny sees him and cowers, covering his face with both tremulous hands. What’s wrong with your friend, Timmy Willy?

Well… Timmy flounders for an answer as he urges out some space between them. H-he’s not used to the country yet…

“Really, it’s about the least I can do.” Timothy William pushes Johnny’s cup a trifle closer to him and keeps prodding with one finger until his friend takes it up and drinks. Seemingly satisfied, he leans back next to him and smiles. “On any given day, you’d do the same in my place. You already have.”

~

“Sometimes, though, I think the best thing might be a lie. Even I get tired and some of the stories I hear are so… Ah, doom and gloom you could say. That being said… I think all stories are worth telling, even the really unpleasant ones.”

Chapter Nine: A Story about Benjamin Bunny

“My father is not ‘a man of few words’, it’s just that he never wasted any of them, at least, not on me.”

Mr. Benjamin Bunny has large teeth and ears and brown hair parted down the center, a style which he’s tousled all into disarray. I watch him pull at the sleeves of his brown leather jacket, rolling an unlit cigar between two fingers and chewing on the paper end. “It’s a nasty habit - and I ought to break it - I know. I guess old men are like that, old women too, and they’re so stubborn that all the rest of us just have to accept it. Sooner or later I’ll be one of them, and I guess I’d better accept that too. Now, don’t get me wrong here, this isn’t- He did the best he could, as best as anyone could expect him to - er, given the circumstances.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Benjamin stumbles foot by foot through a marble garden, the kind where people wear black veils and shudder and all the flowers have been cut. He’s hauled along by his hand and by a very round man, with a pipe between his lips. Father, slow down.

“Mother died when I was younger, she and- well, one might note there’s a tendency towards multiple births in the family, make of that what you must. I wonder now if that changed my father - it must have, mustn’t it? - and maybe… He was always strict, but I wonder- I’m not sure what to say, honestly. It always seemed to me we were more like… apprentice and master than father and son. But that could very well have been my doing as much as his.” He bites down hard and in doing so, tears the end off of his cigar, spitting the resulting paper and filter-drift out into his hand. “I won’t lie, I know I wasn’t an easy child. And was a bad influence.”

Peter Roberts splits off from his sisters and happens by Benjamin and his father on his way to do what he isn’t supposed to, on a well-trodden, sunny-bank path. Join me - tomorrow! Under the big fir tree!

“It’s no one’s fault but my own really. Peter will have spoken to you already, I guess, and Flossie. They’re the ones who… A-anyway, I was a troublemaker - at seven odd or so - no use denying it. Father did what he could to keep me in line, it never worked for very long, or at all, some of the time.”

Belts; switches; lectures that carry on for days. Benjamin is the class clown in school and out of it; Mr. Bunny, on the other hand, has no sense of humor at all. Or maybe it’s something to do with the danger his son is wont to flirt with: the creek that’s a little deeper than it might be, the catwalk across the roof’s ridgeline.

“I’m not going to call it what some have, but he certainly wasn’t soft on me. Ha.” He chuckles. “Before you ask, no, I’ve never done anything at all like that to one of my own. And I wouldn’t, even if I wasn’t sure that- even if I didn’t think Flossie would kill me. Like I said, I’m sure Father meant well, but I’m not sure if… It might have just made things worse, especially since he never seemed to pay much mind to me when he wasn’t cross.”

Benjamin sits in the back garden of his house alone, blowing intervals out of a dandelion mane. His father comes home to the smell of something a lot stronger. This doesn’t hurt me more than it hurts you. After that, he stays in when he can or else comes home early. This lasts two weeks. Then the young Mr. Bunny is alone again. Alone, unless of course, he ventures out.

“Not much to do around here anyway. Mostly, I’d bother Flossie or Cousin Peter - usually Peter - and if it was him we’d go on our little adventures, poking our noses where they didn’t belong.”

Fishing; teasing girls; swimming with their clothes on. Peter and Benjamin set snares in the woods. Are you sure this will work?

Not really. It doesn’t.

“And that’s how- I- we- You see, there was this neighbor my father used to buy vegetables off. Real piece of work, that old man, and Peter and I couldn’t stand him. You wouldn’t either if he was always yelling his head off in your face or getting you into trouble, though I probably ought to admit that I, ah, we did cause quite a lot of trouble for him, enough that I’m sure you could say he had his reasons for not wanting us around. Especially uninvited.”

The boys throw rocks and rotten apples at the side of the old farmhouse until the old man with the long white whiskers comes out shouting curses and threats and that he’ll call their fathers, see if he doesn’t, and - once - that his sullen wife will bake them into a pie. He follows through on the first, but not the second. It’s never enough to stop either from coming back, even if Benjamin’s had to get used to the welts behind his knees.

“I still say Peter got off easy. His own father wasn’t exactly going to- No, that’s cruel, but still… Listen, he went in there plenty of times without me telling him to, alright? It isn’t my fault that- it’s not- He told me what happened, when he went in alone…”

They slump-sit on the floor of his cousins’ bedroom, Peter wrapped in a big, pink blanket with large white dots and stripes around the edges. Goodness, who’s got your clothes?

I lost them in Mr. McGregor’s garden.

“As a grown person now I would have told him to call the police - I’d have called them myself, actually - or- I wouldn’t have suggested we go back in. But, of course, I was young, we both were, and brave and stupid, and- and stealing them back… It seemed like a cool sort of idea. Badass. Of course it wasn’t, but we couldn’t have known that much better, could we? We were so young - I was so young - not that that excuses it. And you should know that Peter didn’t want to go back. I made him.”

The two of them scale the yellow pear tree that grows beside the old man’s farmhouse and drop down from the branches and over the garden wall. Come on, Peter, says Benjamin, and quite crossly, the sooner we get your things back for you, the sooner we can go home. They do, and they don’t, rather quickly.

“I guess he wasn’t all that clever either, seeing as he’d put them on this… this scarecrow in the center of it all. Maybe he just thought he could count on nobody important seeing it, or just not caring - little town like this, and it was smaller then. Everyone knew who he was. Some people get away with a lot worse.”

The jacket’s shrunk, the buttons torn clean off, and the season of the year’s rainwater fills both shoes. Nevertheless, the two young poachers shake them down, giggling as they turn to go. That’s when the hare darts out from the hedges and they follow, as is the nature of things.

“We almost caught it, in case you wanted to know, and it’s just as well we didn’t. I’m really not sure what we would have done. Nobody was going to pay us for it, or try and hang us either. Eventually, we must’ve gotten turned around - Peter cared and I didn’t really, tripped me up running by accident and I took a nasty fall down the wooden stairs.”

Be more careful, Peter. He gets up and dusts himself off, grumbling. Whatever’s the matt…er… And there’s that hare again, followed by one of the family’s big, brown cats. Benjamin steers after and does not notice his cousin fading out behind. He keeps going, not knowing what it is he’s chasing after anymore.

“I followed the cat into the greenhouse, or was it the woodshed? Hard to remember now, I think, or maybe I just don’t want to. The door slammed shut, pretty loudly, and-”

He is not alone. What in the…? The old man turns around to face him, face heating up beneath his beard. You wee- Oh, no you don’t! He grabs him by the crown as Benjamin runs for the door. He doesn’t make it. The door is shut. One of you thieving little… I’ll teach you to steal from John McGregor…

“He did, I think. He did - or he was going to…”

The farmer’s hands shake as he adjusts and readjusts them, fastening and unfastening. There’s the sound of buttons hitting the floor, and the clothes that are still attached to them. Now hold still, the old man orders. If your father’s not gonna teach ya proper, then someone ought to. There’s blood on his nails, on his fingers. As he struggles with his grip on the child and his own waistband.

“I wonder sometimes if maybe something happened to him too. Most of the time I don’t care. Most of the time. You should know he never properly- Turns out Aunt Josephine had gotten anxious and set my father on us. Turns out Father knew me better than I had thought. Both ways, I figure, I got lucky.”

Benjamin?! Benjamin! Come out this-

He thrashes harder. The old man’s grip tightens. Eventually, though, he breaks his hold. Not a word o’ this to anyone, understand me? Or I’ll skin yer.

“I ran out and found Father holding Peter by the ear, then he grabbed mine, soon as he saw me, so hard I thought he might tear it all off clean. Then he whipped us - me first, then Peter - with a cut switch.” He winces at the recollection. “Then we went home. I don’t suppose he knew that the ‘gamekeeper’ had been about, and I didn’t tell him. Not until… later.”

His father throws him over his shoulder as he carries him away from his aunt’s house, through the shining night. To bed with you. For once, Benjamin goes without a word of protest.

“I don’t know that I would have said anything or that I was even in the right place to. Maybe, maybe not. And maybe I’ll never know for certain. Probably for the best that I don’t have to, who knows what… A-anyways…”

Father? I… I can’t stop bleeding.

Ermg… Oh, Benjamin? I thought I told you to… Wait, what?! The lights come on now and he sits bolt upright. How hard did I… I…

No, it isn’t from… I… I want Mother…

“Now I’m a father myself. Now I’m taking care of him. And you’ll have heard from Flossie already.” Benjamin Bunny laughs long and hard and loud, until he coughs just the same as anything. “Well, it’s a real delight, isn’t it? They’re just like I was at that age.”

~

“So that’s my proposition, now that you’ve heard what I think of stories.” The Storyteller pats her hair back and smiles tightly, one animal hair planted on the end of her nose. “Let me tell yours.”

Chapter Text

In THE greenEST of OUR VALLEYs

Everyone writes on the Palace walls. In highlighter marker. In sharpie. In pen. Letters and numbers and “For a good time call-”. And the Palace doesn’t mind it. And neither does the Pearl. When there are no voices to fill the silence, these are her only words. But when people are here. And when they speak inside her. Those are the ones that breathe.

Bi GOOD -ANGELs TEN/TENantTED, Once AFFAIR and STATE Lee PALACE “Radiant Palace” REARed it’s HEAD.

Instead of a spotlight-

A proper spotlight, and the cameras rolling; the Palace before time felt its way inside of her, the Palace as she was and the Pearl… Black dress; black hair; black eyes that look like they’ll burn till morning; black space beyond the edges of the stage. Must be hell’s bells! Then she bows and the crowd goes crazy. ELIZABETH BOU: A PEARL AMONG RUBIES

“In the-” “Mon-” -Arc THOTS dom In EUN IT stood THERE! “Never” Sarah F- SPREAD Awww “-pinion” OVER Fabric Half- “Sooooo” “… Fair.”

The Pearl walks among the rubies - Manta Diablo in a chorus-line tide of red. Miss Bou! Miss Bou! Can I have a moment?

Of course! She reapplies dark lipstick. But please, call me Betty. The reporter does and they have their moment and the Pearl steps out into the night, street lamps burning low.

“Ban ‘er” S- “… y’ello” Gloria’s GOLD N’ ON it’s ROOF did FLOat AND “Flo!” THIS ALL “this was” IN “the” “old” ‘N time LOOOOONG a “GO!”

Black velvet; black leather; black stretch limousine. The Pearl nods to her driver climbing in and pauses. Just a moment, sorry, I left my coat inside.

That’s alright, Miss Bou, I’ll be waitin’. And he does.

“An’ ev’ry-” “Gentle, Heir-” THAT Dall“EEEEE”d IN THAT SWEET day “All on the ram” “… parts” PlumED and PalliD A winged oder “Went away”

The Pearl in black all down the carpet, between the rows and rows of leather seats. Black shadows on red velour curtains. Black and blue bruises and the red-haired girl in red with more inside of her. Sticking in her hair as she’s thrown against the wall, down her legs. And there’s another body, looming over, flashing teeth, dressed in white. The Pearl gasps. Sharp and sheer.

“Wanderer?”S IN that HAPPY “Val-” E ‘THRU 2’ “Luminous!” WIND “Ohhhhh” “S-Saw Spirit S-” MOVEing Music A LEE Two “-alute” WELL tuneD Law ROUND ABB OUT “Ah” Throne where? sitting “Porphyrogene?” INSTATE his glory “Well…” B Fitting THE RULE “err…” OF THE realM WAS SEEN

Shut up! Damnit! And he draws his hand back and groans. More white. Pearl with the ruby on that girl’s bleeding legs. Uaghhhh… yes… yes, baby, I- Black heels; red carpet; black shapes moving over them. M-Miss Bou! I- I-

You… You what? What do you think you’re- She stops, stoops down, tilts the girl’s face up to her own. You alright, hon? Don’t worry, everythin’s gonna be okay.

“And all with pearl and ruby glowing, was the fair palace door, through which came flowing, flowing, flowing and sparkling evermore.”

I’ll jus’ call the police an’-

I… No! You can’t!

The Pearl’s eyes narrow, up to the elbows in ruby as she rises to her feet. An’ you’re gonna stop me?

I… If I… He shoves her. Just shoves her, paper paling as she falls back. Black on red, red in black as her head breaks open. The ruby on the stage kicks off her heels and runs, out the door, out past the driver waiting in the lot. The other pearl falls off the steps and keeps stumbling. Something cracks at the bottom. He never makes it half as far.

“Ah, Troupe” OF “Echo… Echo… Echo…s” ‘who’s’ -sweet DUDE TEA! Was BUT 2 SINg ‘invoice’ of “Sir, pass-” -ing BEAUTI- “The Wit… and Wi-” ZZZ DOM “-of a king”

Police tape makes room for banners make room for new For Sale signs and the process repeats one time over. An usher bumps a woman in the arm and the glass in her hand shatters (black bottle on the bumpy velvet red). And she does not notice the man beside her, never sees those fingers above her drink.

“But evil things, in robes of sorrow, assailed the monarch’s high estate; ah, let us mourn! For never morrow shall dawn upon him, desolate! And round about his home the glory that blushed and bloomed is but a dim-remembered story of the old time entombed.”

The city buys the Palace away from the desperate man who owns her now; ribbons and bells and whistles; men in hard hats come in and tear out all her red carpets and torn ruby seats (even the one with the Pearl’s name on it: In Loving Memory and Betty Bou and And Travellers Now Within the Valley, Through the Red-Litten Windows See, Vast Forms That Move Fantastically to a Discordant Melody - Edgar Allen Poe)

While, like a- “Ghastly!” “Rápid-” RIVER threw THE PALE Door A Hid “-ious” THrONG ‘RUSH’ OUT 4EVAH and LAUGH BUTT ‘SMILE!’ “NO!” “More!”

The Mother Superior with her red lips and black coat, fingers brushing over the walls to feel for dust. Her gloves are white. They are pristine. And what she says is: It will do (for now). And the Palace (and the Pearl) smiles where no one sees her. She wants to sing again.

Red hair; red face; black rubber soles on the stage’s flaky black paint. “My little guy’s not so little anymore, I guess.”

Chapter Text

“So, I have this friend. Yeah, a real one, this isn’t one of those.”

Homes is a pretty average-looking teenager. Gawky, with big dark eyes, and skinny like a newborn calf. Sometimes he mumbles under his breath in what could be English - and what could be Spanish - to someone who isn’t there.

“My best friend, right? We’ve known each other since we were little, since my family moved to the States. He, um… he called me to say he was running away from home a little while ago. He’s threatened that before, but I’m starting to think this time is different. I haven’t heard from him in weeks.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; shirtless Homes lies on his bed (if not in it) with his open mouth, open notes, open laptop - open eyes when he hears his phone. Tye? It’s almost midnight, what? What he hears next isn’t loud or spoken sharply; he still reaches to pull his shirt on, opens the window by his bed. It’s a long way down under the cover of night. Wait for me, ese. I’m coming.

“He said he was at the bus station. It’s a big city but, like I said, we’re tight, plus we live in the same area… that never hurt. I knew where he was and how to get there without a map or a compass or- Look, I told him to wait for me… to just… wait. I ran because he said no promises, because I thought I could get there on time. And I didn’t.”

His feet kick before he drops down on the pavement. He runs like he’s trying to prove a point to the wife of Lot, scraping rubber against the asphalt. No time for looking back. The station’s empty when he gets there; his friend isn’t there; the last bus has gone.

“He said he was going to Houston. Only… I checked with the ticket seller and nobody boarded that last bus to Houston when it stopped in! I thought… It was late, okay?” Sherlock taps the side of his head. “I got issues thinking clearly most of the time. But when he wasn’t at school…”

A yellow house with cracks in the plaster. Homes goes up and knocks on the door until a fragile-looking woman peeks out. She looks terrified in general, just not overly concerned when he mentions her son. He and Maurice, my boyfriend, they had another of their… disagreements last night.

What kind of disagreement?

“I knew the guy his mom was seeing was bad news, you’d need to have a hell of a prescription not to. I mean, he’d said some stuff… not a lot, but still, and I saw him a few times with bruises. But I didn’t know how bad it was. Not until that guy came in…”

Big, gruff, rough-faced. Homes is polite at first, but it doesn’t matter. His hands make fists at his sides. Don’t make faces at me, kid, or I’ll take care of you the way I took care of-

Tye? Did you do something to Tye? He doesn’t get an answer, or at least not much of one. The woman shoos him outside.

“His mom told me to try his grandfather. I did. He wasn’t there and Gramps wouldn’t listen to me… S-so I thought, I mean… The boyfriend. Nobody was listening and I- I…”

Homes lays low in the bushes, watching the man with the cruel face adjust the padlock on the garden shed. He stays out of sight until the boyfriend vanishes. Then he creeps over and tries the door. A hand shoots out of nowhere and slams him hard into the cinder bricks.

“Yeah, okay, that was dumb. In all fairness though, there wasn’t a lot else I could do! No one would talk to me and the police don’t care! I figured ‘hey, he doesn’t want anyone around that thing, ‘s gotta be a reason’, and I was right! Well,” his face falls, “sorta. I know what you’re thinking and no, it wasn’t my friend or, like, his body.”

He dodges past the man and yanks the door open. Sure enough there is no body, no boy. What there is: mountains and mountains of DVDs. The man grabs him out of the way again, already pulling his fist back, holding Homes up by the shirt. I don’t know where Shelley’s punk kid is and I. Don’t. Care.

“The funny thing is that I actually believed him, I still do. Then again, I’ve been wrong before. See, I figured the stuff in the shed was all pirated games and shit. That’s the way it was labeled. So technically illegal, but not that bad. ‘Course, I turned him in anyway. Because fuck that guy.”

Homes is asleep on (and not in) his bed again, days later. This time his phone rings at a decent hour. Huh? Did you find- Oh… yeah, sure, I can come down…

“The police called me like a week ago. At first I thought maybe they found him, but they wouldn’t call me about that. Probably his grandfather. Anyways…”

He sits in a room with his father, and an officer lady who talks like his dog’s just died. There are pictures on the table, screenshots with a lot blacked out. Is this your friend? She sounds like the world’s worst magician. Is this your card? Is this?

Homes nods dumbly. What’s this from? Is he okay?

“I wish I’d said something sooner. Or never said anything at all. Now the police know what kind of a monster he is, but they think he took Tye and… Nobody wants to say the ‘d’ word in front of me, but I know.”

Walls of iron and concrete; cinder bricks and razor wire; hound dogs growling ‘round the gate. He stares at the man through the visiting room glass. He doesn’t look so big sitting down, just bones mostly, just bread. Wait for me, kid. He doesn’t look Homes in the eye. When I get outta here I’ll pluck that heart right out of your chest and stuff your mouth with cotton. Then you can see your little punk friend again.

“I think he’s innocent.” Sherlock Homes reaches over his shoulder to rub a sore place at the center of his back. “Or maybe I just don’t like the idea of it being my fault if he isn’t. Because maybe… if he had gotten on that bus to Houston… But I told him to wait.”

Chapter Text

“Goodnight, ladies. Sleep tight.”

The girls who aren’t the Six Senses (not yet) sit in a circle on the floor - except the Sixth. She’s the little, big-eyed one in the middle. Pink footie pajamas, and a bright red ponytail held together with old rubber bands. She lies down as the door closes, and looks so earnestly shocked when the other Senses rise in the dark, clicking on their flashlights.

“What are you doing? Where did you get those?”

“What do you mean? This is required sleepover gear!”

“Okay, let’s tell scary stories!”

They laugh her off and she stares at the door like a deer in the headlights. “I dunno… my mom said bedtime…”

“She said to try and get some sleep. Parents don’t really expect kids to sleep at a sleepover.”

“This is what sleepovers are all about! Staying up, telling spooky stories, makeovers, playing truth or dare, midnight kitchen raids-”

“Ginger, you’re with girlfriends who know how to have fun. Go ahead, Sasha.”

A Story about Spectro-Sight

“Have you ever been to a room of mirrors? Sometimes the funhouse at the carnival will have one. Each mirror has its own name: Stretch, Twister, Wild One…”

The girl who will be Spectro-Sight sits up, cross-legged on her sleeping bag. Striped pajama pants and her hair in a big poof on the top of her head. She has dark skin, but it doesn’t look so dark now, bleached by the flashlight she’s holding just under her chin.

“Those are the ones that make funny faces, that look like you and not you at the same time. It’s funny. It isn’t scary… most of the time, but you’d better run if you ever see one marked ‘Doppelganger’. This is the story of a girl who met hers…”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the flags and lights of the big city carnival, three girls making faces at their reflections. One of them is Spectro-Sight, blowing kisses as she passes. There are finger-shaped bruises, and bandages, running up and down her arms. They look bigger on the wall.

“She was at the fair with her girlfriends that day.” Sight giggles and glances around the room. “Her girlfriends, uh, Jasmine and… Meg. Now, they were nice and all, and sure this kid liked them… but you know what she liked even more? Herself.”

Hey, Sasha? You okay? She turns in the mirror, arms distorted. The girls she came with come on up to her. Sasha! What are you- whoa! What happened to your-

Nothing! She crosses her arms behind her. It’s… it’s nothing… Let’s just… get outta here, okay? Can we do something else?

“If you think I’m bad then you shoulda seen her! I mean this chick was a straight narcissist! Drove everyone crazy, especially her friends - ‘course they stuck by her anyway, that’s just what best friends do. Still, you just know she drove them crazy. Especially that day. Maybe that’s why they left the house of mirrors and left her all alone. All alone,” she whispers the last part, and the hair rises on their backs. “Or was she?”

Caramel apples; cotton candy; fried onions. Sight’s friends stuff their faces, but she gags on half a corndog before tossing it out. It takes three napkins (and half a tube of lipgloss) to get rid of all the grease (and make it look that way). She stands up abruptly. I gotta find the bathroom - to wash my hands, okay?

You want us to come with? But she’s already gone before they turn to see.

“So this girl walked through the room alone. She didn’t notice her friends were gone and she didn’t care. She just kept walking until she found a curtain at the end of the hallway, and another mirror behind it. This one had a name too - Doppelganger.”

The sink is spotted and briny with an automatic faucet that doesn’t run as long as it should. Spectro-Sight splashes her face in intervals, gagging between. She sees her reflection and winces harder, gags harder, reaches for her wrist. The bruises there are darker now, and something’s bleeding. She looks around and curses. My purse!

“Now this mirror wasn’t like the others, it was perfect. At least, the ‘her’ in it was still intact. For a while the girl just stood there - watching - but then she heard something… different when she turned to leave! A sound like someone, ah, blowing a raspberry! Right. Behind. Her. Head.”

Barbie’s Third and Fourth Editions are coming out of the Funhouse when Sight goes in. Blonde, blue-eyed darlings with straight hair, narrow noses, perfect teeth, peachy-pale skin, so pretty, all white. Her reflection gets more and more distorted, the farther in she goes.

“So, obviously she looked back into it. Nothing wrong. She stood on one foot, jumped up and down and did… mirror things. Nothing at first, but eventually… You know how the drama kids have that weird matching exercise? Yeah, after a while somebody always slips.”

There’s her bag on the floor by one of the mirrors, miraculously undisturbed. Her wristband rides up when she reaches into it. More bruises. And sharp little lines that look almost like-

Sight doesn’t notice, doesn’t notice much until she’s standing up again and promptly realizes-

She looks panicked, looks around the room. A hundred Spectro-Sights (all distorted) and two hundred twitching eyes.

“She stared, terrified, but her reflection - but Doppelganger - just stared back. Then she smiled. And when the girl - the real girl - leaned in close, just to see a little better… the one in the mirror reached out and pulled her inside!”

Sight kneels on the floor, a lot of bloody, silver glass strewn around her and flickering light. She’s clutching her head, fingers in the black mass of her hair, chanting words to herself. The bruises on her arms are easier to see now…

YOU’RE SO UGLY! YOU’RE SO UGLY!

… and exactly the size of her own hands.

Spectro-Sight shifts to her stomach, face still lit up in green. “And it’s all true.”

“It is?”

“Silly, it’s just spooky stories. You should so not worry.”

“Oh! I’ve got a perfect story! You’ll love it, Ginger!”

“Ohhh… Are you sure?”

“Yeah! It’s a really good one! I guarantee it. Happened in my own neighborhood.”

A Story about Evil-Ear

“Picture cuuuute puppies at a pet store.”

Evil-Ear is like a ghost in the near-black room. Pale blue eyes, pale blonde hair, skin white enough to scare July right out of the calendar.

“Everyone loves dogs, right? And I do mean everyone. Not all dogs though, not all kinds. I mean, liking candy doesn’t mean you have to like Circus Peanuts, yeah? This girl just wanted a puppy though, she didn’t care about the specifics. At least… she didn’t think she did.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Evil-Ear presses her nose against the pet store window, turns back to her parents with huge pleading eyes. Please! Please can I have one? They’re soooo cute!

“Remember what I had to do to get my puppy? For that neighbor guy? This girl’s parents wanted her to prove she could handle it too. So they had her agree to dogsit for… Mrs. Splinters, a lady who lived just around the block.”

She picks her way up to a house that looks exactly like the one she lives in, and all the others on the street. No response. She rings the bell. Nothing for a moment, then a little man opens the door. He has fine, sharp features and dark, dark hair over very long ears, but the first thing the girl notices is that he’s very, very small - smaller than she is. But his voice is deep. What?

“Now Mrs. Splinters was going away to Paris.”

“For a three-day weekend?”

“Yes. Shut up. And she couldn’t take her dog.”

I’m here about your flyer…? Evil-Ear hovers in the doorway, unsure. You’re Taco Winters, right?

Tadeo!

Oh, shoot, sorry! I must have misheard on the phone. He rolls his eyes. She continues. See, I’ve been trying to get a puppy and-

I thought it’d be highschool girls… he mutters in his sotto voce.

Sorry?

Nothin’, kid.

“He seemed to know he wasn’t going too, the girl thought. There he was, with the door opened and he couldn’t stop whimpering. Though maybe that was because of the muzzle on his face. She asked the lady if he bit. ‘Of course not,’ Mrs. Winters said, but she wouldn’t take it off. The girl did, about ten steps out the door. Big mistake. But it took her a while to realize that.”

Evil-Ear, up to her armpits in soap-and-water, rubs down the fender of the little guy’s car. He stands on the porch step with a beer in his hand, smirking like he’s enjoying the show. Hey, shorty! You missed a spot!

“She started to hear… strange noises behind her. Little noises. Like someone grumbling under their breath, but when she turned around… nobody was there. Just the dog. So she kept walking until she heard the sound again. This time she was fast enough and… and she realized there was no one there - the dog could talk!”

She goes home and falls on her bed, exhausted. Having second thoughts? her father teases, but Evil-Ear shakes her head.

No way! The next morning she groans at the alarm clock’s buzz, but heads out again, bright and early.

“Of course she ran right home to show her parents. Mom - her mom - was in the kitchen. She held up the dog, but he wouldn’t speak. So she knew and they didn’t, which might not have been so bad… but he was a bad dog.”

Evil-Ear cleans out the neighbors’ attic with the creaking floorboards, comes down coughing and covered in dust. Whatever you’re paying me is not enough. He laughs.

“Not even an hour later he got out on the lawn and her dad told her off for not paying enough attention. She asked if he was trying to ruin her chances at getting a puppy. And he said ‘yes’.”

She pokes her head into his bedroom on the way out, finds him watching something on the computer. She can’t see what; he shuts the laptop too fast. What are you-

Nothin’! Get out! He speaks loudly to cover the sounds from the still-functioning speakers, as he covers them with a pillow.

See you tomorrow then! She smirks. Be ready to pay up! He watches her from the window as she goes.

“For two days it was terrible. Work, work, work. He even called for Chinese and blew through her entire savings! This girl was smart though, too smart for him, and she really reeeeeally wanted that puppy!”

Neat piles of folded laundry; a spotless yard; dishes stacked by the sink. There, Evil-Ear sighs, exhausted. Happy?

Not yet. I got one more, uh, thing I need you to do for me…

Her eyes narrow. What?

“If he wouldn’t talk in front of her parents, that was fine. Then he couldn’t say anything about her. Or tell them when he didn’t like little pink sweaters. Or say boo about not really having fleas… By the end he was practically begging for her to take him home.”

The grass needs-

Done!

Right, uh, but the garden-

Weeded!

The… cat…?

You don’t have one. Evil-Ear crosses her arms. You don’t have the money, do you?

Um… His voice trails off. Under her gaze, he wilts.

“Finally! Finally she got that puppy!” Evil-Ear giggles, brushing bangs out of her face. “But, on the same day, someone delivered steak pizza to her house… and nobody knew who ordered it.”

“That wasn’t even scary. It was funny!”

The door opens. The girls scream. The Sixth Sense’s mother stands in the doorway, hands planted firmly on her hips. “Ladies! My goodness! It’s time to go to bed.”

“Okay…”

“Yes, Mrs. Wisping.”

A chorus of: “Goodnight!”

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite!” She leaves, shutting the door behind her, shutting the girls into the dark, laid out in white.

They rise again anyway. “Hey! I’ve got a scary story.”

“But it’s getting late and my mom said we have to go to sleep…”

“Come on, Ginger, it’s a sleepover. It’s not about sleeping. You gotta tell spooky stories.”

“Tell it, Meygan! Tell it! Scare us!”

“Yeah, tell the story!”

A Story about Solo-Scent

“Come close and listen, listen to my story! A story about a girl. Just. Like. Us.”

The girl who will be Solo-Scent is brown-haired and freckled like brown sugar on gingerbread, clutching a stuffed purple unicorn in her lap. She’s cute in an exactly conventional way, and… not very scary, or at least not yet.

“She was at the carnival - with her sister and a friend - her sister’s friend - because her parents didn’t want her there alone. She was too little, they said. They were worried about strangers. They were right, of course, but the girl was mad anyway.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the pie counter at the county fair. Solo-Scent drinks in the smell from the back of the line. Someone grabs her by the shoulder and spins her around. Here she is! Meygan, your sister and I have been looking all over for you.

Wait, Callie, I want some pie!

“Her sister’s BFF was sorta mean and kinda bossy, not that mean though. Her sister was just bossy and they… okay, so, they were annoying, but this girl was being a brat. She kept wandering off on her own. A lot. And it scared them. Maybe that was why they wouldn’t let her do anything… or maybe they were just being jerks, like the girl thought they were at the time.”

They pass a waterslide rollercoaster, blasting kiddie-rock, with a line that stretches way, way out. Solo-Scent starts drifting towards it, smelling the gasoline and pool water. The older girls drag her back and over to the tilt-a-whirl. Cut; Scent in a puke-orange t-shirt, glaring as her sister throws the other one away.

“They didn’t like the same rides as her and made her go on all the ones that they liked instead. Icky rides like the ones you throw up on.”

They pass the pie counter again. This time it’s empty (but still smells full). Sorry, darlin’, last piece. Solo-Scent reels on her sister, yelling. They buy her an ice cream cone. She drops it.

“Guess you could say it just wasn’t her day, really. Especially when they decided to drag her into some dopey magic show. The magician guy seemed to be having fun, but his assistant wasn’t. They ended up taking her up on stage as a volunteer.”

The lights; the show; the magician; the coffin box, painted bright as a gingerbread house, smelling stuffy inside. Solo-Scent climbs from her seat while the older girls are distracted, quietly slipping out the back. No one sees her do it; there are other people outside, but no one to boss her around. No one looks twice when she yells.

“You know that old disappearing trick, right? Of course you do, it’s almost as famous as sawing some girl in half. But have you ever wondered where those people disappear to? He told her when she opened the cabinet… everyone else would all be gone. She thought he was joking, but then the noises stopped. And when the girl pushed the door away… there was absolutely no one there.”

Scent wanders through the fairgrounds. The pie counter’s full again, but her pockets are not. Stomach growling, she drifts to the ride. Sorry, hon, I can’t let you on without a grownup. She realizes she doesn’t know where the magic act is on the way back. Everything quite suddenly looks like a technicolor maze.

“At first she was having fun with it. She got to go on all the rides and eat as much as she wanted. No lines, no wait, no annoying big sister to slow her down… Eventually though, well… The Riptide was wide open. She got on. It took almost an hour to get back off again… like someone didn’t want her to leave. And the pie cart was full again, even though she’d eaten almost everything.”

Now worried, Solo-Scent speeds up, frantically searching for a trail. Faster. Faster. Someone grabs her by the wrist.

“Then she realized… she couldn’t be alone. She really knew when she heard that awful laugh.”

A balding man with stringy red hair and a tobacco-ish smell. And clown makeup. Scent thrashes in his hold and screams.

Jesus, kid! Shut up! Where the hell are your parents?

Lemme go! Lemme g- Wait… what?

“She ran, but no matter where she went that noise followed. Everywhere. Until she reached the magician’s tent. His wand was still there where he’d left it, though… she could swear it hadn’t been there when she left. Still, she climbed in the box and waited.”

The clown shoves her into her sister, grunts in acknowledgement and leaves without a word.

Meygan! Are you… Are you alright? I was so worried! Are you hurt?!

I… I’m fine. Tonya, I’m fine! And… and I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have just…

“For years and years and years she’d wonder two things. Was any of it real?” Solo-Scent pauses for dramatic effect. “And, if it was… what would have happened if she’d stayed?”

The other girls start to giggle, all except for the Sixth Sense in the middle of the circle, hiding under her blanket - shaking and pretty and completely stark white.

“What’s wrong, Ginger?”

“Do we have to tell any more…?”

“Of course, it’s fun!”

“Come on, hostess with the mostest, don’t you wanna hear my story?”

Something creaks then like the lid of a coffin, startling almost all of them.

“What was that?!”

“It was nothing,” the Sixth Sense says quickly, “a shutter or something! Nothing! Just… Okay, just go ahead and tell your story.”

A Story about Tinsel-Touch

“You know those charm bracelets? The ones that are so popular at school?”

The girl who will be Tinsel-Touch has a little too much makeup and golden highlights in her long dark hair.

“My mom wouldn’t get me one, said it was too ‘extravagant’. Looking back now I can see her point, but still… Everyone has one! Everyone but me. I tried to tell her that, but she wouldn’t listen. She said it was just a fad.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Tinsel-Touch strikes a pose in her bedroom mirror, both hands on her hips. Her wrists are bare. Someone screams from downstairs. Once. Twice. The first one is unintelligible. The second is her name.

“But the day we had that fight was right before… you remember Dana’s birthday party? Yeah. She dropped me off at the mall, told me to pick out something nice - for her, obviously. The thing was, the gift shop is really close to the jewelry store. Maybe if they hadn’t had the exact thing I wanted in the window then I wouldn’t have gone in… but they did. And I spent almost all the money on me.”

Tinsel-Touch descends the stairs two at a time and finds her mother at the bottom, picking her phone up from the floor with shaking hands. Mom…? Are you… okay? When she sees her daughter she drops it again.

“With what was left over, I bought that vase I gave her. The one her cat knocked over and broke?”

A red convertible speeds through traffic. Touch eyes her mother nervously from the passenger seat of the car. The police called. They said… you bought one of those bracelets a few months ago… Is that-

You’re not mad, are you?

Mad?! Baby, is this why you didn’t tell me?

“I know it was wrong. I knew that as soon as I’d done it, but I figured it was too late to take it back. I got lucky though since Dana liked it. I mean, she also liked my bracelet… But I figured, if I could fit in with you guys… um…”

Tinsel-Touch places both hands on the table in front of her. A woman in blue holds up a clear plastic bag, little silver charm inside. Do you recognize this at all? Touch nods, slowly. Her mother sobs. The camera zeroes in. It’s one of the knick-knacks from the Asteroid Crew’s tape, the ones that had belonged to their businessman - a tiny bicycle with wheels that really spin.

“You were over it pretty quickly-”

“What are you talking about?”

“Yeah, charm bracelets are still popular, princess, you said so yourself.”

“Guyyyysss, I’m telling a story! Anyway, I guess I didn’t like the thing as much as I thought I did on its own. That night I put it away in my jewelry box and I didn’t put it on the next day when I was getting ready for school. I know I didn’t… but around lunchtime? I opened my bag and there it was.”

That’s, um… I think that’s from the bracelet I bought at Avalor. I… Am I in trouble?

Of course not. We just want to know how it ended up here. The officer kneels down beside Tinsel-Touch, putting a hand on her shoulder. Did you lose it?

“At first I thought maybe it was a mistake so I put it in my locker. It was in my lunchbox next. Back in the jewelry box. This went on for weeks! By that point I was really freaking out, I even tried to throw it in the creek just to… just to get rid of it. It was on my wrist by the time I got home though. That was the night Dana called my mom about the vase.”

A confused-looking Touch sits in a black and white ice cream parlor, staring at her mother, playing with her spoon in sticky fingers. What was that about?

Nothing, dear. It was… nothing.

“I went right over. With- you guessed it…” Tinsel-Touch shuts off her flashlight. “It should have been hers all along.”

There’s that creeping, creaking noise again. This time the door cracks open.

“My mom!”

One by one the girls fall in rhythm, lights hidden in their sleeping bags. The Sixth Sense’s mother puts her head in, blows a kiss and shuts the door on the kids. Again they rise.

“You don’t know what a scary story is, but you will when you’ve heard mine.”

“Tell it! Tell it!”

“I know, let’s go to sleep.” The Sixth Sense looks down at the ground and then into their eyes. “I’m afraid my mom will hear us!”

“I’ll whisper.”

“But… but what if she does?!”

“Your mom seems so sweet. She wouldn’t get upset about us telling spooky stories, would she? I mean, come on, it’s a sleepover already.”

“Yeah, Ginger! Get in the spirit! Get it? Spirit?” The others groan and pelt her with pillows. “Okay, okay! I’m sorry. That was a bad one.”

“Are you really that scared of your mom, Ginger?”

She lowers the blanket silently, eyes huge, but she shakes her head.

“Well, what is it?”

“Okay, okay! I’m a sissy! I admit it! But… but golly, girls, spooky stories really do scare me! And right now I’m positively petrified!”

“But this is just getting good.”

“And Jade hasn’t had a turn.”

“Yeah, guys, Jade needs to tell her story and then we’ll stop. Okay?”

“You don’t want us to tickle torture you, do you?”

“Okay, Jade, go!”

A Story about Terror-Taste

“Okay, some kids were at an amusement park…”

Terror-Taste is the palest of them. Easy. With pitch-black pigtails sticking out on either side. She doesn’t giggle like most of the others did. She’s calm.

“Four girls, all BFFs, just like we are. Waiting in line for this one ride at the county fair. Monster Dungeon, you know the one? Rumors say a boy got on once and never came out.”

“Oh, like Meygan’s sister!”

“No, shut up!”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Spectro-Sight; Tinsel-Touch; Evil-Ear, in line at the carnival. Terror-Taste stands behind them, arms crossed, licking cotton candy from her lips. Look around, it’s a kiddie ride. Totally wimpy.

“Now this one girl had heard the stories. From the guy who worked the cars, from her friends. She didn’t believe them though. She didn’t believe in monsters. At least… that’s what she told everyone, but maybe she was just embarrassed. Maybe she really was scared… deep, deep down…”

Angel, maybe you get scared of little things like spiders and black cats and germs, but I don’t. I’m not really scared of anything. Especially things that aren’t real. Like monsters? Get serious.

Shh! They’ll hear you!

“They got on the coaster anyway. Even though she was being obnoxious, and even though they were mad. And the cart rolled away into the dark.”

Next! Please watch your step! Have a nice ride! The girls argue as their car takes off, rolling down the track. The decorations are tasteless schlock, the kind Rasalhague would make and love. Terror-Taste’s face remains unchanged. So does her griping as the ride goes on.

“It wasn’t that bad at first. Plastic monsters, fake torches on the wall. Creepy, but not so bad - you know how it is - that is, until they got halfway out there. And. The. Cart. Stood. Still. Just for a moment, but in that moment she thought she saw the friend next to her with glowing yellow eyes.”

Taste stifles a gasp when the car lurches to a stop, throwing her against the front, so hard that she bites her tongue. Whoa! I mean… You guys okay? Is it supposed to do that? No answer. Um… guys? Yasmin? Sasha? Cloe? Hey-EEEEEK! Someone reaches out and grabs her in the dark. CLOE!

“The next time the lights went out she felt something else beside her. Not her friend’s hand, a clawed one - all gross and sharp and hairy. Three pairs of glowing eyes this time. And then they came back on again… Her friends were gone.”

Taste screams her head off, covers her face, bile rising up her throat. She can still feel those hands around her, getting tighter. NO! NO! NO! Leave me alone!

It’s okay! It’s okay! It’s over.

Her hands lower. It’s light outside. It’s only her friends; it only ever was. Yeah?

“She tried to scream, but no one could hear her.” Terror-Taste smirks at the dark room, teeth flashing - white as china teacups. “And so the monsters. Ate. Her. Up.”

“Oooh! That was a great story, Jade! I’ve got goosebumps!”

“Spooky!”

“Ginger? Are you okay?”

The Sixth Sense clings to her pillow, obviously terrified. “That was simply awful! Now can we go to bed?”

“No. It’s your turn.”

“M-my turn?”

“You have to go.”

“Come on, make it scary. You tell us a really spooky story, scarier than mine, and then we’ll go to bed.”

“But I told you girls, spooky stories give me the willies. I can’t stomach hearing them so what makes you think I could tell one?”

“How could you host a sleepover and not like scary stories? Give it a try. I bet you're better than you think. And then we’ll go right to bed.”

“You promise? That’ll be it?”

“Promise. But you gotta really scare our pants off.”

“Well… Okaaay, I guess… Uh, let’s see, there once was this girl-”

The “shutter” again.

“What’s that noise?!”

“I… I don’t know!”

“Well, go on with your story…”

“And she invited her friends over for a slumber party… They had finger sandwiches, pigs in a blanket, cupcakes and punch… played games like pin the tail on the donkey, charades, had a fashion show, dance contest… They had a really good time-” Her voice is getting higher, breathy. “-and got to know each other! Their hostess could tell they were all going to be the best of friends.”

“Wake me up when you get to the scary part.”

“Go on, Ginger, but you might wanna pick up the pace a little bit.”

“Then it was time to go to bed… They rolled out their sleeping bags on the floor and- and-”

“What?!”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the Sixth Sense is crying now, shaking hard, shaking her head. No… No, it’s too terrible! I can’t go on! I can’t! The door slams behind her and the light goes too.

“Kooky. What was all that about?”

“Oh my gosh! Is she really upset or just fooling?”

“Guys, I think she’s really upset.”

Touch flicks the light on, but there’s nobody in the hall. Just dust. Just boxes. They did just move here… They go on a little further. There’s that sound again. Creaking.

“She was really scared. Why didn’t I listen to her?”

“And she was so nice to invite us…”

“Guys, we’ve been really obnoxious.”

Ginger? The Senses call out softly. Mr. Wisping? Mrs. Wisping? More creaking, only louder, only closer. On the counter lies a collection of knives.

Jade! What are you doing?!

I… have a bad feeling. Don’t worry, I’ll put them back…

Dust and more dust and cobwebs. Hey, there’s that weird sound again… Behind the door of the master bedroom. Taste cracks it open and the rest lean around her to peer inside. It’s a mess. Broken things and old things and small clothes on the floor - stained with icing, dark as gingerbread. They don’t understand (even their unhappy stories never showed this) but they know something’s wrong. The couple’s laid out white and wrapped around each other. Naked and near-asleep - and still moving - in each other’s arms, making the mattress scream beneath them.

Ewww!

Shh! Look! Is that… a camera? A video feed, anyway. Empty beds in an empty room - a flickering, not-so-beautiful sight.

“Let’s go find her and apologize. She’ll never want us over again.”

There’s an old china teacup on the mantelpiece. The girls turn it over. More on the lips than long-dead flies; the camera’s blinking eye. There’s an old doll in the grass when they run out screaming. Spectro-Sight twists her ankle tripping up.

“It’s okay, Ginger. If you’re not ready-”

“No! I… I want to.”

A Story about the Sixth Sense

The lights; the crowd; the Palace. And the Sixth Sense, white as a ghost - or like she’s seen one.

“The worst part of all stories is The End.”

Chapter Text

“Look, with where we are this might be taken the wrong way, but it’s the first thing I can think of to say, so… I really, really love kids. In an appropriate way.”

The Voice is enormous, as big as the War Maiden’s father, as the Imposter’s fosterer, as Herne’s hunter… and his ears look to be made for a man even bigger. His nose is long and curved, his smile curved even more so. The light dances on his long jacket, making silver sparkle out of gray. His own voice is soft, and surprisingly cheerful for his location.

“Kids are great. I always wanted to work with them. Couldn’t make the grades to be a, um, teacher-type teacher, if you know what I mean, but I teach swim classes and run a nature club, and I’m fostering a baby at the moment. People kinda overthink kids, you know? A small person’s still a person, just gotta treat ‘em with the same respect as anyone else.” A cloud crosses his face. “Some people don’t. That’s kinda why I’m here. The people who actually got hurt are with private doctors now, didn’t feel up to crowds, but I was kinda shaken up by it, so I thought I should come and talk it out.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the Voice of Reason, wearing khaki shorts and plenty of sunblock, creeps through the wooded underbrush of a forest hiking trail in an effort to keep pace with a throng of unruly kids of varying ages. They run laughing down the path, slowing down sometimes to admire the flowers, or take a sip from their water bottles, and sometimes when the Voice says, Hold on!

“We do run programs in the winter - swimming lessons are indoors and it’s usually not so cold that we can’t still do some of the outdoor stuff, but in the summer you can always do more. There usually isn’t too much homework to worry about, except sometimes book reports with the older kids, so the day trips can be longer and I don’t have to worry as much about tuckering them out. A few times we’ve gone camping, not as many as you’d think - it requires a lot of paperwork. We didn’t do anything this year. I’ve been trying to be extra careful lately. Ever since that girl drowned in the river, and those Herkleton kids started to go missing. I’ve been telling mine to be careful, but not everyone likes that. Or that I said why.”

A few times, he runs into a sour-faced woman with cropped brown hair who wrinkles her nose and tosses her head at him like she’s offended at the Voice’s being there. She always comes to the park with her son, a meek boy - ten years old with bold thoughts in his eyes - who hides behind her when other people get too near. Theoretically she’s there to watch him play, but the Voice of Reason has never actually seen her let go of his hand.

“Nobody wants bad things to happen, I think that’s true about most people at least, but I also think that might be part of the problem. Who wants to live in a world where things are bad and hard and scary? That’s no fun, so… I think that maybe some of us try to push all the scary things away. We’ve had a few problems with parents that think I’m blowing everything out of proportion. It’s like how people deny mass shootings or pretend that the ‘isms’ aren’t a big deal anymore. They don’t want to believe that their kids could be in danger, so they don’t believe it. And people like that are really hard to reason with. There was this one lady in particular who was like that. She didn’t want me to scare the kids.”

The littler kids, led by the Voice, draw imaginary boxes around themselves from neck to thigh, chanting. Stop! Don’t touch me there! That’s my no-no square! They giggle, but they remember.

And what do we do if someone does? he asks them. Or if they try to make you touch theirs?

Fight! Yell! Run! Tell! they shout in unison.

Even if it’s your teacher?

YES! comes the chorus.

Even if it’s a policeman?

YES!

Even if it’s your parents?

ESPECIALLY YES!

He beams. Great job!

“Kinda silly, yeah, but it got the point across without getting too in-depth, right? I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that, but she did.”

She screeches; he pleads. How are they supposed to know what’s not okay if we don’t tell them?

“I worried about her kid more than any of the others, honestly. He was either going to grow up to be afraid of everything or nothing and end up… Well, I know how that sounds, but I really just wanted the kids to know how to look out for themselves, to know… I’ve seen what happens when people are too overprotective - that’s almost as bad as not caring enough.”

Some kids show up with their hair unwashed and stomachs growling. One or two with bruises. The Voice reports this of course, but not much is done. A few of the kids are pulled from the program. He learns to keep snacks and dry shampoo in his trunk.

“It sucks when that happens, it really does, but there’s not much I can do. I try, though. I promised when I got the job I would, and I meant it. Those kids need me.” He sighs. “Even the ones from good homes do - that’s where things started.”

A smiling, slightly awkward man in blue and a long-ponytailed woman in orange flank a small boy, maybe thirteen, in black and gray, pasty-white-faced and with sunken shadows under his eyes. The Voice shakes the adults’ hands and greets the boy, who nods hesitantly and says nothing. For just a minute he wonders if he might be deaf as well as bang-blinded. He knows he isn’t dumb.

“This kid was going through a phase of not talking, breaking curfew, hiding in his room, moody teenager stuff. His mom and dad thought that was all it was, but you can probably guess it wasn’t. I mean, I’m here, right? That comes a bit later on, though. I thought he was just sulky too. I think I would be if I was him - huge birth family, lotta sisters and cousins, plus a revolving door of foster kids and all their friends in and out visiting all the time, and he was the only boy in the house. We thought he just needed some space to make his own friends, you know?”

The Voice watches the kid from a not-so-great distance while the usual crowd thunders around, shouting like wild animals. He tries to engage him, tries to push him towards the others his own age, but he stays shut up inside his own head. It’s a few weeks into the summer program that the Voice begins to seriously worry that something is very, very wrong. And then only after the boy falls, out in the woods.

“He tripped over a rock while we were hiking. It could have been worse, I guess, but he still cut his knees up pretty bad, and his hands. I let the other counselors know we were headed back to the park center so I could get him cleaned up and he didn’t complain. Well, he didn’t say anything, but you get my point. I remember thinking that was weird, actually. It was like… he just had no reaction. Like he didn’t even realise he was supposed to be in pain.”

He gets a first aid kit from his car. Band-Aids and swabs and rubbing alcohol. The kid says nothing, but lets the Voice roll down his sleeves and jean legs. There are bruises underneath, the size of an adult’s hand.

“That was, well, pretty conclusive. Wasn’t sure it was, you know, at the time, someone could have just dragged him around or something, but I knew it was plausible it was more. I dropped the first aid kit on my foot.” He chuckles humourlessly. “My first thought was his dad. He seemed nice and all but it’s almost always the parents, sadly enough. But the handprint looked bigger than his hands were, so I figured it probably wasn’t him. Left a lot of options, though, and of course the kid wasn’t talking.”

Jojo? The Voice kneels beside him, equal parts guide and leader, as close to eye level as he can get. Did something happen? You’re not in trouble, I just wanna know, okay?

The boy squeezes his lips even tighter and looks away. Something takes his mind somewhere that minds don’t usually go; an amazing journey, but inconvenient. It takes a while and much cajoling for the Voice of Reason to get a response. And he still won’t speak.

“I thought maybe a relative then? Or a family friend? Normally when kids don’t say anything… usually it’s someone they know, but… it didn’t really look small enough to belong to most women and like I said, there really weren’t that many guys in the house. So it had to have been someone else… probably. Look, sorry, I guess I didn’t really know what I was doing. I’d only ever dealt with hypotheticals before! A few minor physical and neglect cases, but nothing like that.”

You know I’m going to have to report this, right? Do you want me to talk to your parents?

The kid grabs the Voice’s arm so hard that nails dig into flesh and he violently shakes his head. If possible, he’s gone another shade of starkly pale.

Okay! Okay, I won’t tell them.

“That pretty much cemented my idea that something must have been going on at home, that maybe I was getting the hand size thing wrong. So I kept my word there. I wasn’t about to tell a potentially abusive parent that I thought they were abusive, and anyway, I don’t like lying to kids. I did have to tell somebody though, and I’m one of those mandated reporters, so I put in a call to CPS.”

Mother Superior’s coworker, a woman in blue, listens to his call, makes notes.

“Thing is his dad was a high-up local politician over in Whoville, really popular too, so… touchy situation. If it was him we’d have a heck of a time getting anything done about it. I’m sure all you guys know.”

He keeps an eye on Jojo’s parents. Everything seems normal. Jojo doesn’t seem to be afraid of them… but it’s so hard for the Voice to read him, he can’t rely on that impression.

“I tried harder with the kid. It wasn’t even to get him to participate anymore, I just wanted him to talk to me. That way I could actually help. But he just… wouldn’t, or maybe he couldn’t, I’m not too sure. I tried asking the other kids to be extra nice to him, thinking that might help him break out of his shell, but he didn’t seem too interested there either. He just… I didn’t know how to deal with him and I think he might just have wanted me to leave him alone.” He chuckles dryly. “I didn’t, obviously.”

You know you can tell me if something’s bothering you? he asks Jojo for what might be the ten millionth time. I’m here to help. You know that, right? The Voice’s best reassuring smile falls a little when his only answer is a shrug.

“It took a long time to get him to trust me, if he ever really did. Even then it’s not like I could drag the words out of him. Answers… It’s always hard dealing with teenagers, even the healthiest ones. They never believe you when you say you want to help.”

It starts raining halfway through the afternoon. The rec center in the middle of the park is the only dry place big enough to fit all of them so the Voice and his coworkers order the kids in there. Some of them take out their phones to play with, some talk or read. Jojo is in the former category and the Voice is so busy watching him that he almost doesn’t notice when another counselor turns on the old box TV. The news is on and there’s a picture of a tall stranger, bald and leering, dressed in black. Jojo flinches.

“That got me thinking. See, that guy was another local politician, and he’d run against the kid’s dad for mayor a couple years back. I knew the kid had been to City Hall before, and it could just have been that the guy was creepy, he scared me, but…”

His hands are in the shot. Long, craggy fingers; claw-like nails. About the right size.

“So I kept watching. Kinda hard to do that when you’ve never actually met the guy you’re on to, but at least it was some kind of an idea, which was more than what I had before. There were a few more days with bad weather, but those times that guy wasn’t on TV.”

In the end what convinces him is when Jojo’s father picks him up and blithely offers one of the other counselors a chance to take the kids on a tour of the city hall. The Voice overhears this, and is the only one who seems to notice the way the darkly-dressed boy stiffens, color draining as he ducks around his father’s arm. He’s not all that surprised to see him looking green-gilled the day of the tour.

“I kept the kids close while we were there, just in case. I’m not completely irresponsible, even if this wasn’t my greatest plan. I just wanted to have a look around. Maybe meet the guy… Maybe I was wrong, I was hoping I was wrong.”

The city hall isn’t actually all that interesting. A lot of polished marble and old paintings, but nothing really worthy of photographs. The younger kids chase each other through the hallways; one or two older ones actually take note of the tour highlights. The rest are bored. Jojo wanders off about fifteen minutes in. Finding him again takes almost an hour.

You in there? The Voice of Reason knocks on the door of one of the bathrooms, crouching outside of it, ear to the door. Jojo? He’s sure the boy hears, but he doesn’t answer to the call for a long, long time. Eventually the door cracks open and a gloomy, dark-haired head pokes out. Are you okay? The silence is enough of an answer. Is it someone here? Very slightly, Jojo nods.

“It’s my fault for putting him in that situation, I know. I just thought I needed to know for sure. Then I could do something. That was my watershed moment. But the thing is… knowing something isn’t the same as being able to prove it.”

He goes home after the tour has ended and kicks himself for not getting ahold of the mayor. He doesn’t have a personal number or the Voice might call it. He doesn’t want to leave a message at his office where anyone might hear.

“I decided I’d try talking to him the next time he dropped his kid off at the park center, but that wouldn’t be for another week, and more if it rained so… I kinda… sorta maybe mentioned it to one of my coworkers…”

A day or so later he finds the sour-faced woman with the quiet son and the cropped-short haircut standing, arms crossed, in front of his door.

“I guess word travels fast, huh?”

The woman holds her hands over her son’s ears and screeches louder than ever. Scaring the children… rumour-mongering… slander… are you covering something up? At that, he’s indignant enough to be angry; he tries to send the boy out of the room but she won’t allow it, so he’s restricted in how visibly angry he can be, not wanting to scare the child further.

“See, the guy who I suspected was not just on the city council, he was a major source of funding for a lotta stuff, including the nature club… and she worked for him, and he promoted the heck out of the same homeschooling program stuff she used. I guess she trusted him over me, and she said some really not-nice things. I don’t know if she actually thought it or was just mad, but she accused me of hurting the kids and trying to take the attention off myself, and she must have said things to some of the other moms because a bunch of the kids were taken out.”

Smaller groups travel through the underbrush; a number of are kids missing and the Voice does not expect to see them again. The groups get even smaller. He tries to pull the man in blue aside more than once and each time is intercepted. The sour woman always seems to be there and in the way when he tries to get him alone, interrupting and fawning and talking over. She glares at the Voice over the mayor’s shoulder, never letting him near enough to say what he needs to say.

“I tried everything I could to get him alone, but someone was always there. Blocking me. I tried talking to the kid, but he wouldn’t… Well, he wasn’t saying anything to anyone at all. At first I thought that maybe whatever happened was just a one-time thing and he just didn’t wanna dwell on it, but he kept showing up with bruises, so I knew that whatever I was doing… I wasn’t doing enough.”

Listen, kiddo, the Voice lays a heavy hand on Jojo’s shoulder, I need to talk to your folks about this. If you don’t wanna tell them, that’s fine, but I will. Cut; he stands outside the mayoral residence, one big hand pounding hard against the door.

“Kid wouldn’t give me their phone number, and I couldn’t talk to the guy, but I had to do something.”

It isn’t the mayor or his wife or Jojo who gets the door, but one of the many, many girls. Uh… hi? Can I help you?

The Voice hems and haws a little, stumbling over what he means. Can… can I talk to your mom or dad? Is one of them home now?

“When I finally did get to talk to them alone… it wasn’t pretty. I don’t think they really wanted to believe me, not about that. Who would? But there wasn’t really any way to make it untrue, so I figured telling them was the next best thing.”

He’s in a chair in the living room. Jojo’s father is on the couch. It should be quiet, but it isn’t; the Voice has to speak up, even with the door closed, to override the noise from upstairs and the hall.

I’m sorry, Horton, what was that?

The Voice raises his own. I said is there anywhere else we can talk?

Eventually they end up in the attic, though running feet and shouting children are still audible through the floor in quiet vibrations, and they debate climbing out onto the roof. The Voice vetoes that, fearing tiles won’t take his weight. We can’t be overheard here, that’s what’s important.

Jojo’s father sees the Voice’s clasped hands and downcast eyes, and starts to look worried. Did… did something happen to Jojo?

Gulp. Y-yeah…

“I was almost worried that he would be… I dunno, angry? Or something. But he was actually pretty reasonable. He didn’t blame me and that… kinda made things worse? I’d dealt with that one lady yelling at me all the time, but with this guy… I just felt sorry for him.”

The Voice stands beside the mayor, awkwardly patting his back and shoulders. Um, hey, it’s… alright. I mean… Do you need a minute?

The man makes a garbled, choking sound and nods faintly. Thank you… I… are you sure?

Pretty sure… yeah, I’m sorry, I would have told you sooner, but…

You didn’t… did you think it was me…?

The Voice inhales through his teeth. “I told him the truth, I didn’t think so but I had to be sure before I said anything. I hope he got that. It’s not an easy situation. No way to come out of it feeling good, but I hope I didn’t make it worse.”

I should tell my wife… talk to him… right? I should talk to him? He looks up at the Voice, tears shining in his big brown eyes. I’ll call you. Once we get this sorted out.

“He did… later. A lot later. He didn’t sound great when I talked to him. I can’t really blame the poor guy. And the kid… I didn’t see him for a while after that. Not at the program, I guess they didn’t wanna force it. I actually saw him again at the house after his parents invited me back there. He seemed… I don’t know if okay is the right word. He still wasn’t talking to anybody.”

The Voice sips coffee on the sofa, he and Jojo’s parents talking in muted tones. The house around them isn’t quiet, but certainly more so than it was before. He hears light, tip-toeing footsteps and catches something in his periphery - the back of a dark mop of hair as a certain someone presses his ear up against the door. Something wrong, Horton? He doesn’t say anything. He does catch one crystalline glance of those eyes transmitting all they know.

“Of course they wanted to go to the police, but we needed evidence. His dad was popular, but the other guy was important too and it might have looked bad to just accuse him without any proof. I don’t know who it was that said something about looking for other victims, but this kind of thing… it usually doesn’t happen just once.”

The Voice takes the dwindling group of his kids out like usual and keeps them closer than he did before. You’d tell me if something was bothering you at home, right? he asks more than once, but the answer is always yes - spoken with some confusion. He goes home every night - to his quiet vibration land of an apartment and his crabby roommate - and stares at the answering machine. Sometimes the mayor calls him and they whisper other children’s names.

“There was a lot of back and forth and all that. I think his dad asked me once if I knew any good doctors, so… part of the drag might have had to do with him looking out for his own kid first. I dunno if that’s it, but it’s something, and probably a good call. The boy knew more than us about what happened and… he still wouldn’t talk about it.”

The kid sits sullen, scared and silent, eyes hidden behind his bangs. The Voice of Reason hangs back while his parents try to cajole him. Maybe you should let me talk to him? Alone - I mean, if that’s okay!

“I mean, we tried everything with this kid and… yeah, no dice. Technically you can go ahead with a case like that anyway, if the victim is under eighteen, but… This guy was almost as high profile as his dad and it was mostly my word against his and… and that woman? Her word too. Besides, he was young, but not a little kid, you know? Teens don’t like it when you go over their heads like that, and we needed him to keep trusting us. So all our hope for resolution was on a kid coming forward.”

Not likely. The sour-faced woman shows up at the park and the Voice’s house (once) and (a few times) on the evening news. It’s a local station, nothing crazy, but… I think it’s just terrible, all the stories people are telling these days! And after everything he’s done for the city! Does no one care about the truth anymore?! She stares into the camera. Hard. Jojo is the only one that doesn’t flinch, or seem to be listening as his father fumbles to turn it off.

“All we could do was make sure the kids knew we would listen.”

We are here, we are here, we are here, said in a thousand different little ways. Open kindness and caring and doing their best to make the kids feel at ease. Talks with the Mother, and cards from the Palace and from every helpline in the county left on desks and mantelpieces, where kids can see them and memorise the numbers without having to ask directly for them. More parents join the cause, and the word spreads… but some remain silent, and some more pull their kids out. Soon only Jojo and a mere few others are left.

“That was scary - if we lost too many members the nature club would have to shut down for good, and then I couldn’t help the kids at all. She knew it, too. I saw her around once or twice and she looked so darn smug, she was sure I was gonna be fired soon.”

I don’t know why it didn’t happen sooner, Horton. I mean really, a grown man playing with children? It’s embarrassing! He shoves past her. Jojo follows him out. He doesn’t say anything, but he reaches. The Voice of Reason smiles sadly.

Hey, whatever happens… it’s not your fault.

“I guess he didn’t believe me. I… I know it’s not like I had any way of knowing that… Probably.”

He’s talking with the parents again, while the kids take over the living room. A couple times the adults bow out and poke their heads in to check. When the Voice peeks around the doorframe, the girls are running wild and Jojo… isn’t. No surprise there. He’s on the couch with his nose in some kind of magazine. Hey, whatcha reading?

He holds it up for him. Wireless tracking; security cameras; spyware.

“I just thought he was being a kid, you know? Teenagers are weird. They like weird stuff. I never would’ve… not in a million years if… I didn’t know!”

Not long after, on a trip out in the woods, the Voice spots Jojo looking at his phone.

“Normally I don’t let the kids bring their phones, but I didn’t wanna push him away any more, y’know? He kind of had enough to deal with, so I let him. We get lousy reception out there anyway, and he put it away for most of the trip, but when we got back to the parking lot…”

It’s late afternoon. Jojo looks at his phone one more time, and his pale face turns clammy chalk-white. He hurries up to the Voice and tugs his sleeve, and utters the first words the Voice has heard him say: I think I did something really bad…

Rewind: Jojo sneaks into the empty office of his father’s fellow politician, and hooks up a tiny camera in an unseen spot. On his way out, his father passes by; Jojo hides, and scurries away.

“See, uh, he’d been using that stuff he’d been learning. The way he told me, he’d been going to…” The Voice gulps. “… go back and let the guy get to him again, catch it on the camera, and show the police. But things didn’t work out that way, it turned out…”

The video rolling; the man in the black coat, in his office. There he is filing papers. There he is making phone calls. Jojo fast forwards. There he is. And someone else is there too.

“Guys like that… it’s almost never just a one-time thing, and if they lose access to one kid…” The Voice of Reason gulps.

He leans over the desk, different from the way he’d sit down. Leans over a different little boy. It’s the sour woman’s son. Stop! the Voice almost shouts and the video pauses. Jojo… what… did you…?

I th-thought I was doing something! So you wouldn’t- So… He bursts into tears.

“I didn’t blame him. I wasn’t happy, but he’s thirteen, and it’s not like he meant for anything bad to happen… to anyone else. Still, I had to tell him it was dangerous and we had to go to the police and… I wasn’t angry with him - and I didn’t think his parents would be, or that he’d be charged for making the film or anything - but… what about the other kid’s mom?”

The Voice goes to the sour woman’s house. Expectedly, she’s shocked to see him there, but rallies. Come to apologise, Horton?

Uh, no, ma’am, not exactly. I’m afraid I have some bad news…

“I don’t think there is a good way to take news like that, but if there is, well, she didn’t.”

Screaming and screeching and the neighbours opening their doors to listen. Delusional… liar… bringing my Rudy into your vendetta… or did you touch him-

No, Mom. The words are quiet, but firm. Her son stands behind her, and rolls up his sleeve. An adult’s handprint bruised there, thin and scraggly and claw-marked, and undeniably not the Voice’s big blocky one. Y-you gotta take me to the hospital…

“She… wasn’t happy, obviously. I know we have our differences, but I never wanted… Nobody likes it when kids cry, but I think it’s worse sometimes with the grown-ups. A few days later she called me to apologize.”

The Voice of Reason stares at the television, watching as two big officers wrestle two spindly arms, attached to two scraggly clawed hands, behind the bald man’s back. Two hands; two boys; two little words. I’m sorry, Jojo mutters, dipping his chin past the collar of his shirt.

“It’s not his fault, we’ve all tried telling him that. But you try reasoning with kids that age.” The Voice smiles incredulously and makes a sound like a sob and a laugh mixed together. “I used to think I was good at that.”

Chapter Text

A Chapter about Pestilence

“I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.”

Pestilence scratches the side of his face and winces. White cream; white bandages; white collared shirt. He smiles at the Dulcimer Player, fixes his bowtie, combs back his hair. It’s as light as her youngest “sister’s” is.

“Book of Revelation. Personally, the argument for the first rider being disease has never made much sense in my opinion. Actually, some sources call him - or her - ‘Conquest’ and… Well, we’re here to talk about horses, not theology. Er, something like that anyway…”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; white horses on a narrow trail, up in the snow-capped mountains. These ones are wild. Pestilence works a curry comb down another’s side. This one is tame. And brown. There’s a white patch, though, on the breast bone, and the rest shines like a golden crown (which is, really, just as good).

“My mother owns a riding school outside the city, a little ritzy, but it’s been in the family for years. I don’t have a father, I do have a sister, and we own horses. And yes, I know we’re very… fortunate. Not that fortunate, though, seeing as we ended up here. Even before, well, business has been better. Business has been worse. Still, no need to look a gift h- oh, you know what I mean.”

Blue blazers and khaki pants, riding high up, high-waisted. English saddles, a smattering of accents, and- MARIE! Stop that! A girl with a pink hair bow lunges eight feet up at an older boy, Pestilence snatches her back by the shirt, and they both go down in the mud. It covers him worse.

“Nothing wrong with a little competition, of course, but it gets to a point where…” He takes his glasses off and polishes them on his sleeve. “We were losing students. Frankly, I don’t see why. ‘Don’t swap horses in the middle of a stream’ and that… that’s beside the point. The real trouble was where they’d all run off to, and how smug their riders got about it. Some of it was well-deserved smugness, I’ll give them that - they did have better riders, they did usually beat us in competition - but there’s being up on your high horse and then there’s, well…”

Three boys ride by, laughing; Pestilence rolls his eyes at their careless horseplay. A few more run up and snatch his glasses and his sister bowls him over chasing them down. The earth is shaking like an old man’s hand.

“To be honest, I’ve never been much for riding. Oh, I know how to and everything, and I love the animals, but I was never quite as… gingered-up about the whole thing as my sister was. The physical aspect anyway, anything with too much mess. A management position for me, in the future.” He preens like Mrs. Astor’s pet horse.

He reaches under the mare’s mane to comb it and draws his hand back with a yelp. Yellow-white pus on his hand. His horse whinnies so sharply that he jumps and stumbles back, falling into the muck at the bottom of the stall.

“I picked up MRSA from that, in case you were wondering. It’s actually quite rare to see in people, but common in horses, and the symptoms are… unpleasant. You’re familiar with staph infections? Yes, well, I must be lucky - very lucky. At first we just thought it was acne.”

More of the white and yellow; he’s standing in a mirror, squeezing a spot on his face. Cut; he’s out in the yard while the vet speaks to his mother, shining scalpel in one hand. Pestilence puts a hand on the mare’s back, stroking her neck (below the mane). Later, he chokes down horse-sized pills with water.

“By the time we realized, it had started to spread. Painful, but not deadly, exactly. Mother made an appointment with our doctor and put me on bedrest until I was feeling better. I ought to have stayed put… but I didn’t. There was a full moon that night, bright enough to see the wild horses on the mountain. My sister and I - my horse and I-”

The house is big enough that no one hears them leave, but they head out with their boots off, holding them in one hand. The door to the stable opens; the horses nicker; the sun is black as mud outside. Pestilence swings his leg over, holding onto the reins with rubber gloves. Come on, girl. We’ll take it slow. And they go to see wild animals on the mountain, moving like the ocean across the land.

“They almost looked too white that night, like ghosts. I’ve heard that’s some kind of omen, and if I believed in things like that…”

Something snags on his ankle as he rides back. He realizes it isn’t something on the way down. The mare runs, spooked, into the forest; his sister screams from behind. Somebody’s laughing; somebody holds him by both arms and starts to pull his shirt off - and screams. The moon looks like blood overhead. He isn’t bleeding.

“I’d like to take some satisfaction in two things. One: my horse got back to the house without us, all in a panic - that’s how my mother knew.” Pestilence exhales shakily, picks absently at his scab. “And two: the ones that… they broke out on their hands a few weeks later, and that’s how the police did.”

A Chapter about War

“And another, a red ‘orse, went out; and to ‘im who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from Earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to ‘im.”

War is the standout. He’s the biggest; he’s the loudest; his outfit is a brighter red than Herne’s hair, than the Sergeant's angry face. He’s also not allowed to have his riding crop here anymore.

“There is no such thing as a true red ‘orse. Strawberry, yes, but not red. If there were, I would already ‘ave one. Le rouge est ma couleur, Maman says it brings out my eyes.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; red horses and a rider with a saber, cantering across the butcher-paper sky. Puis-je voir? War lies on his stomach, coloring in the clouds. There’s another boy beside him, leaning over for a better look. War scowls and balls the page up in his hands.

“They’re just dumb animals, of course, but so beautiful. Our family ‘as been breeding them for years now, ever since I was a boy, since we left France. I would ‘ave been twelve then… and my brother was thirteen. I only remember because our mother wrote it on the back of a picture taken around that time.”

Philippe et Etienne - 12 et 13 ans. His brother is smiling, War is not. There are wild horses on the mountain behind them. Garçons, regardez!

Maman, Etienne me pince!

Menteur!

“We ‘ave… never been close, I admit it, but I ‘ave never been particularly close with anyone. Jealousy! It brings out the worst in quite a lot of people, doesn’t it? But I guess that can’t be ‘elped. If two ride on a ‘orse, one must ride behind. Still… it made for a lonely childhood - what? Why are you looking at me like that?”

War with a grey horse in her stable, red ribbon hanging on the wall. War turns on his brother coming in behind him, holding the blue. He kicks the wall once, and one of the mare’s stockinged feet.

“I would ‘ave been our best rider if not for ‘im! And I ‘ad to work twice as ‘ard!” A hand sweeps over his face. “I am not blind, you know! Or deaf! It took years for them to take me seriously and even then - even then - the one thing I couldn’t ‘elp made me less than ‘im! ‘Oh regarde, c’est Philippe. Ce pauvre cheval! Let’s all make fun of Philippe! Hahahahaha-’ ” He goes on like that for a while. Until he’s more purple than red in the face.

War smiles at a girl in a dark blue sweater, pushes back his hair. She smiles too, but backs away slowly, retreats into her circle of friends. The next time he sees her she’s with his brother, twining hair around her finger, lips pursed. Even the horse is laughing as War storms out (seems like it, anyway).

“I was better, but ‘e was lighter, I stand by that. But sometimes lighter means faster and… are you familiar with the concept of the Steeplechase?”

War whips his horse’s side in a frenzy, red coming up from grey. His brother pulls a neck ahead of him, and then by two front legs. And clears the jumps just like it’s nothing. Later War will find him with another boy behind the stables and crush the bright red ribbon in his hand. He runs straight to their mother. She doesn’t seem to care. Occupe-toi de tes oignons!

“Still, it went on. Years ago we were actually offered a place on the equestrian team when l'Amérique went to the Olympics. One place. I thought it should be me! I wanted it more, I deserved it! I… I was ‘oping to be the dark ‘orse…”

He looks at his red wall full of second-place trophies, at his own beaten horse, and into the other stall. War moves like an unkind wind. And then the door is open. And then the crop comes down. And then. And then… He calls for his brother (once) and heads up to bed. The stars fall. His mother shakes him awake hours later, screaming in French and pointing to the yard at the trail of trampled fruit below.

“I did get to ride with l’équipe américaine that year.” War looks like he can’t decide if he’s sad or angry. “I came in second place.”

A Chapter about Famine

“I looked, and be’old, a black ‘orse; and ‘e who sat on it ‘ad a pair of scales in ‘is ‘and. And I ‘eard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, ‘A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; but do not damage the oil and the wine.’ ”

Famine smoothes his sweater out with a lint brush, tall, dark and handsome as a black and white picture-show. One from the many; he’s looking at everything in the room but right beside him.

“Some of us know what it is like to be ‘ungry.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the black horse running, and Famine right behind him. Reynaud! Revenir! F-fais… dodo, Reynaud, mon’ p’tit… frère… Reynaud! He touches one flank for half a moment, near the ridge, and goes down so hard that the mountains move out of place around his spinning head.

“I’ve always loved ‘orses. More than people, I think, sometimes. Maman used to tease me…” He shudders. “Not so much anymore. When we were young she would take us to picnic in the mountains, to see the wild ones there. They were the brightest white I ‘ave ever seen… But Rey- my ‘orse, ‘e was black. Like oil. Maybe it’s appropriate then that I loved ‘im best… ah, even after ‘e kicked me in the ribs.”

He lies there shaking for hours on the ground, the stallion nudging him with his nose. Famine’s too out of it to hear the voices or the braying, but his eyes open up in black. He groans as he comes to. Big mistake.

“You know the, ‘ow you say, drill by now.” A curt nod to the Emperor, to the Wiseman’s empty chair. “I may never know if it was that they were stalking me or… Per’aps it was just coincidence. Per’aps it was the ‘orses they were after… ‘ungry and… and I also know ‘ow that feels.”

Another warehouse with drains and drains and muck on the floor. This one’s been divided up into stalls. For horses, for dogs. For people. At least the animals don’t have to share.

“I mean… it isn’t as if we were kept in there at all times, non? So not… s-so terrible? Or at least that wasn’t the most terrible part. Most of the time they ‘ad us cleaning. Some of the time they ‘ad us… well…”

Black eye; black horse; black lens of the camera mounted in the farthest, highest corner of the room.

He loses his balance and sinks down on the stage, looking nauseous. “Sometimes there were men of course, and probably women, but that’s not the part I most remember.”

Sometimes he refuses. The first time; the third time; three measures of barley; three measures of wheat. They lock him in the stall with the animal and he stays there. Three days and no food. Famine eyes the trough. They stop feeding the horse.

“There’s a market for almost anything, as it turns out. There are children ‘ere, why don’t we… leave the details alone.”

Man and horse lay down together. One with his head in the other’s naked lap, the other’s back pressed into the wall. Fais dodo, Reynaud, mon’ p’tit frère. Fais dodo, t’auras du lolo… Both shaking like feathers in a whirlwind. The scene repeats. They get smaller, small enough that the camera picks up the outline of Famine’s crooked ribs.

“I can’t tell you when it was that I realized… we were almost certainly going to die. Three years in at the most, maybe sooner? Though that’s not quite ‘ow it ‘appened, in the end. I suppose that was because they only thought to lock up their ‘uman livestock. Or maybe they didn’t account for the fact that even a relatively weak ‘orse may still be strong enough to kick down an ordinary door.”

Black horse; black sky; blacked-out windows. This time it does wake him when he feels the muzzle against his hair, teeth working. Cut; the sky parts like a scroll being unfolded, people streaming behind them out the door. Not all of them will make it. He almost doesn’t.

“I would not ‘ave, if not for my ‘orse. And I mean that in more than one way. This place was not the one some of you ‘ave been in - more like Madam and the Sergeant’s. Up in the mountains, far away from anywhere, so it was ‘arder for anyone to stop them.”

It’s a long, long trek to anything resembling civilisation, and both of them are sick and weak. They have to take it very, very slowly. It takes long enough for an already-hungry man to starve. The scrubby vegetation cuts his tongue and chokes him. The horse eats it without issue. Famine eyes the ground and waits.

“Pestilences’s problem was a skin infection. The… particular types of bacteria carried by ‘orses in… the other manner mostly do not transmit so easily to ‘umans. It is possible to survive that way.” He swallows. “Though not advisable, if there is any alternative. In my case, there was not.”

The best that can be said is that it keeps him alive. That it’s not as bad as what he did back in the rooms. They walk on, Famine leaning on his steed, until finally the sun comes up over the both of them, sprawled out on someone else’s lawn, not stirring once, even when someone screams. Cut to the hospital; as soon as the doctors let him, he eats like a horse.

“I work on the other side of the mountain now.” Famine fishes through his pocket for a tissue and comes up empty. “Whatever grows there tastes like candy.”

A Chapter about Death

“I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.”

Death dances in place, bouncing restlessly, hands hovering over the ribbon in her hair. Pale face; pale eyes; pale… blondeness. In her pockets are four little plastic horses, bought specially after the four chose their theme, which on arrival she cheerfully introduced to everyone as Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty To Animals, Really Cool People, and Things Not Working Properly Even After You’ve Given Them A Good Thumping. She immediately became the favourite of the Palace’s assorted fantasy fans. No one is laughing now.

“My horse is grey too - well, really, it’s more of a heatherish - with a big white spot in the middle of his forehead!” She shows them with her hands. “And I have a little white dog called Popcorn and Max has another called Sebastian, and-”

“No real names, remember?”

“Oh. Oh! I mean Popcorn…ball, and Seltzer! How’s that?”

Pestilence only sighs.

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a pale horse, and being pulled right off of it. They catch the lead this time and she joins her brother on the ground. One of them pulls her up just as quickly, shining silver in the light. Hold the kid, he says to two. And, Hold the horse, he says to three. It takes four of them to grab her and cover Death’s mouth as she kicks and screams. Shut up! Shut up!

“They aren’t all bad, you know. I mean, they are for doing that, but not all of them. We got Etienne from their neck of the woods, right? So they can’t be all bad! And my cousin likes to kiss on one of the other boys. Well… sort-of cousin? What exactly is the difference between a second cousin and a first cousin once removed?”

In the end they flip her over on her stomach. And one of them stands on her back. And one of them pushes her face into the earth, hiding it. And she’s still screaming. And Pestilence is screaming. At the mountains, at anyone as they keep him back. One… two… three… four…

“I thought the sky might fall in on us before anyone else got there, Heaven knows we were loud enough.” She has a laugh like waterlogged bells. “In a way, it sort of did.”

Four bigger, older boys to hold her - one on her brother, two on the great, pale horse. Hot pink leather; heat lightning; feet coming down like a television sermon. Hard enough to break Death’s shoulder. Hard enough to break open one boy’s head. Then everyone is screaming. Then she lies there. Then the other boys run like Hell is right behind them. Marie? Hey, Marie?

“That’s the worst part, but not the ending. Mummy found us before it was even morning. She brought me to the hospital, and we called the police. I feel bad for that guy’s parents. It can’t be a good feeling… Of course, if they weren’t being so mean about it I’d feel even worse!”

Her mother drives her back from the hospital, through a line of people waving signs. Look, Marie! It’s Barbie! Except she isn’t looking that way. She’s out before they’ve fully stopped in the driveway.

Where’s Pussywillow?

Honey-

“They’ve been pushing to have him… you… you know… because of what he did. And because they’re rich and… and sad… I think they might actually…” Death wraps the bow from her hair around her wrist and smiles tightly, brightly, like nothing could outshine it. “ ‘Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult.’ That one’s from the Bible too.”

Chapter Text

“It’s not a very happy story - berry happy. Heh.”

The Baker’s Dozen are far fewer than they should be. Four pretty little girls with button noses and great big eyes, and a boy with brown hair. Strawberry Shortcake and Orange Blossom and Gingersnap on her crutch and metal leg - wan, small, quiet - looking older and younger than their teen years both at once. Apple Dumplin’ is younger. Huckleberry Pie looks… well, they aren’t quite sure how old he is, but fine enough.

“Of course none of them are, but, um… I’ve always had a bit of a sweet tooth, right? I think that’s true with most kids. We start out with more tastebuds than we have later, right? I’m sure I heard something about that somewhere… We usually didn’t get many treats though.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a few more than the Baker’s Dozen, a little younger than they are now. Strawberry holds a small Apple Dumplin’ and smiles tightly, climbing into the back of Panthera’s bright red car. Gingersnap puts a little toy plane together while an older boy watches and snatches the remote. Orange Blossom chases butterflies through different parks and only the holes in her shoes stay the same. Huckleberry goes skating through the wrong side of town, late at night. There are other kids too, girls mostly - gingery redheads and sunny blondes.

“Mosta us don’t have whatsoever-any-at-all-around-living parents! Or any family for that matter! You do, don’t you, Strawberry Shortcake?” Gingersnap talks quickly, not waiting for a response. “And that’s just-about-absolutely it! I know I don’t have anyone, that’s for sure! Unless you count mean foster siblings… Do you count mean foster siblings?”

The Dozen shift around a lot, occasionally once or twice brushing up against each other - Strawberry and a girl with creamy pigtails; Orange Blossom and Huckleberry Pie - but not often. They blow out ten birthday candles in ten different cities, in ten different states.

“It wasn’t, I mean, it wasn’t awful or anything. We had clothes and food and… yeah, so some of what we needed, just not enough. But I might just be saying that because now I know what worse feels like.”

A girl with frizzy purple-black curls runs along the river bank of an unfamiliar town, looking behind her. There’s a marina down the way and a man waiting there, smiling. Where’s the fire, kiddo? You need a ride? Darkness. Cut to about eleven other scenes that play out in different flavors. They all end the same.

“We fell through the cracks pretty easily,” Orange Blossom says, short and sweet and to the point. “We blamed ourselves for the longest time, but that’s garbage. Those guys picked us out because no one else would stop them. People don’t go looking that hard for strays unless somebody makes them. And nobody cared that much.”

Apple Dumplin’ puffs up indignantly. “I did!”

“You were a baby.”

The smell of sweat and another kind of sugar. The Baker’s Dozen - a proper dozen, Apple Dumplin’ nowhere to be seen - sit up, blinking in the hazy low light of another dozen strange empty rooms. Then, before long, something lurches underneath or around them. A few of the girls smash their heads against the floor.

“We met - properly - in… Scotland, right? Somewhere very far away.”

Planes and trains and automobiles… and boats. Fake passports and fake IDs and Sir, this is my daughter! and finally a great grey island in the great grey sea. Twelve children locked in a great grey room together. There are metal bunks built into the wall; other than that it’s completely bare.

“And not just from the city! It was super-crazy-extremely far away from absolutely everywhere… everything? So far, far, far away that nobody could help us because nobody knew we were there! That’s where we met!”

“Yeah, and except for Huck… we were there for years.” Strawberry wrestles her hair back. “They made movies…”

A dozen bodies crammed together. A dozen paper plates on the floor. A strawberry-blonde comes back with red jelly smeared across her tooth-line, the pigtailed girl comes back with piped icing on top of her hair. A man comes by and beckons them out again, pockets full of candy.

“No clients, but it wasn’t fun. Sometimes all they’d take was pictures… sometimes they made us…” Strawberry Shortcake turns strawberry red and shrinks in on herself. Apple Dumplin’ rubs her back. “And there were still… some of the guards…”

A girl with brown hair curls in on herself, crying, blueberry bruises spotting her face. A girl with black hair getting longer lays on the ground, on her side, and bleeds. A lot. And mumbles something in Cantonese. Strawberry Shortcake gazes down unsurely at her own body, raspberry jam and sugar syrup on her hands and legs.

“They’d tell us we were pretty…” She shivers. “I didn’t get how. I sort of thought all adults liked girls who looked like… like the Dulcimer Player’s mom. I don’t think I wanted to understand that they liked us because we didn’t. And they’d imply we were, like, bad because of what they did? Stupid for letting them get us? We were kids, we believed them. It’s hard not to still think that.”

It’s your fault, it’s your fault, repeated in a dozen different ways. Too young. Too beautiful. Too vulnerable.

“I guess a lot of you know. We were kids, we’d never thought about this sh- stuff before, we didn’t know what it was. The adults - the nice adults, I mean, the ones locked in there with us - tried to explain, but it didn’t really help.”

“I kinda did know, some of us did. A lotta foster parents are really religious, and some of us got some who, uh, told us a lot about what we shouldn’t be doing, way too young for us to want to be doing it. Maybe we’d have been here because of that anyway, I don’t know. Doesn’t really matter now.”

“It was really bad there, no lies, but… we had each other near the beginning. Just each other.”

Orange Blossom is shoved inside and the door slams shut behind her. Sobbing, she falls to her knees. Strawberry catches her, but it’s Huckleberry that she grabs onto. Clem? Hey, what happened? Clementine? Down the corridor they can hear somebody older start to sob.

“There were other rooms too, and other people - more than just the ones keeping us there, I mean. Most of them though were grown-up ladies or girls our age that seemed grown-up at the time. Some grown-up men. Some boys too, but not that many, and after a while I guess they decided no boys at all. So we stayed… and Huck didn’t.”

He goes screaming. The sea spray tastes like salt water taffy. The back of his mouth tastes like blood. The grey fades out behind him and they don’t stop moving until the water runs clear. The Duke’s island is a lot of lights and colors and… but by now he’s used to this part. The Dozen hasn’t been a baker’s from the beginning; now they aren’t even twelve.

“He…” Orange Blossom looks at him. “He doesn’t talk anymore, but he wrote about what happened there. I guess you know a bit. He figured out what they did to the kids who got old…”

Fine hair grows in new places, turns coarser. Huckleberry swipes candles, burns his skin, tries to mix in lotion to soften and cool the wax. That doesn’t work, but he’s heard of another way; a sloppy mix of lemon sugar leaves his lip and legs as shiny-soft as they were before. His voice starts to crack. He stops using it. He stays popular, but he stays alive.

“Then the island got found and he got rescued. So that was going on, and then there was us.”

“After he left… it didn’t get worse exactly, just longer, and we got older.”

“Some of the others came and went and all that super awful sad stuff! Not us though! Not us!”

“Not yet anyway-”

“No, don’t tell them about this part yet! I’m not-”

“When, then?!”

Their hair gets longer, Strawberry’s gets darker, Orange Blossom learns to twist hers into braids. The world stays as grey as ever. Then they wake up to the sound of screaming; cherry syrup slips under the door. A long, long time later, someone opens it. You kids can come out now, it’s alright.

“I don’t know whose idea it was to… to turn the whole thing over, but it happened, and when somebody came to let us out there were… a lot of people on the floor. Not moving. Guards, you know, a lot of them… but plenty of other people too. Dead and… twitching. And… like I said, I’m not sure what happened, but… there were less of them than there were of us - still alive, I mean.”

“They had us help clean up… afterwards. We were still strong enough to do that then.”

They walk barefoot through the berry-red slush, dragging limbs and hair behind them, over to the water. The salt crusts to their hair like rock-candy. Afterwards the Baker’s Dozen stands there in the windchill, on a completely barren dock. Slowly it begins to rain.

“There was a boat but I think some of the guards had taken it, the ones that lived anyway. We didn’t really want to take our chances swimming so… we waited. At that point we still had time to wait… and it wasn’t so bad. Not really.”

Proper showers. Proper clothes. A man with curly hair and a purple jacket dumps sugar-saturated oatmeal out onto the girls’ plates, winking. Sweets to the sweet.

“It wasn’t so-extremely-very-truly bad until the food ran out! It rained pretty often and there were filters for freshening saltwater, so we still had enough to drink, but not enough food.”

Picking seaweed from the rocks. Catching tiny fish with clothes for nets. Digging up ragworms. No one knows how to find anything better.

“That was still fall, and by then…”

Strawberry Shortcake starts to bawl.

Thinner; smaller; dark circles under her eyes; the girl from the riverbank stands on the water’s edge, the wind ripping through her knots of hair. Her knees are two veritable rainbows of bruises, just from kneeling. She shivers like she’s snowbound. One of the other girls shrieks at her in French, but she goes in anyway. She doesn’t make it very far.

“R-Raina went for help,” Strawberry sniffles, “or tried to, I guess. She was a good swimmer, but it had been a while and… I think they got her body later. It was hypothermia that did it, they said, she didn’t drown. The water was just that cold.”

“After that nobody wanted to risk it. Maybe we coulda built a raft, but… everything was made of metal or made of concrete.”

“Even then it wouldn’t have made a great-big-very-huge difference! The weather is bad there when it gets cold enough! And it was really, really cold!”

The girls push their mattresses together and crawl one by one into a pile on this one shared bed. In the morning only nine of them sit up. The girl on the end is white like uncolored sugar with blue raspberry frostbite on her lips and fingers and toes. Livia?! Orange Blossom shakes her by the shoulders, but the poor, dead girl doesn’t stir.

“They wouldn’t let us put her body in the water.”

Apple Dumplin’ looks back at her sister with wide, innocent eyes. “Huh? W-”

“You don’t wanna know, okay? You really, really, definitely-”

Sweets to the sweet. Old paper plates with stains and cold, damp grease leaking through them. No one wants a taste of the blueberry muffin; everyone needs one. The Baker’s Dozen chew it slowly and find it not so very sweet at all.

Most of them shudder. Strawberry wrings her hands and moans. “That’s not even the worst of it because… b-because some of us-”

“Angel.”

“Because she wouldn’t eat!”

You can’t be serious, can you?! Long blonde hair and a gaunt, pale face. She was our friend! You can’t just… just… She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t last very long after that.

Sweets to the sweet.

“Some of the adults cracked too, after a while. They stopped. We didn’t. Maybe they wanted to keep us going? Or maybe… maybe they just couldn’t take it anymore. If I was older… I don’t know. But they all… went eventually. By the end of the season it was kind of up to us.”

Another blonde and a dark-toned auburn. Jaundiced yellow as a lemon, fever-flushed cordial red. Sweets to the sweet. Their bones sink into the water. Strawberry always cries. A girl in red and white stands beside her, scowling as they go down.

“There was this… Pepper was a little prickly. Is that mean? I’m not trying to be! Really! It’s just… She couldn’t handle it, the way things were.”

Their graveyard food stores are getting lower; their already-tiny waists get smaller. The girl in red’s temper gets worse. She screams at the others till her throat is raw, screams at the ocean. She stops eating. Then she’s gone.

“Maybe she really did hate us, or just thought she was making it easier, I don’t think anyone can say for certain. It wasn’t easy though. It was never easy.”

They cry again and it leaves them all exhausted. They eat. They run out again. For days they huddle under the covers, skin and skin and skin and bone. We’re going to die here, aren’t we?

Don’t talk like that!

It’s true though, isn’t it? You know it-

Not yet!

Gingersnap stomps one foot on the stage, a hollow thud ringing out. “Nobody made me do it. Nobody! I’m just that-”

“You almost died.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t, though!”

She lies down on the warehouse floor and grits her teeth. SNAP! Orange Blossom holds the knife, the French girl holds the bandage. And cherry jam oozes across the concrete.

“Better my leg than my hands, huh? Gotta use these babies! I mean, I’d like to not lose anything, but… do or die, right? The doctor said it’s kind of an absolutely-splendid-extremely-rare miracle that I didn’t go into shock! I told him-”

Strawberry covers her sister’s ears.

“And when we ran out of… that…”

The girl who spoke Cantonese on their first night mutters in muddled English now - and draws her hand along sharp metal. Cherry juice runs down her arm. Think of almond tea. Down the Baker’s Dozen’s (what remains of it) blue lips. It’s getting colder.

“We would have died if we were there for that much longer. That’s not me exaggerating. We would have died. The only reason we didn’t is because… It was winter, way up north…”

The sea sits completely frozen over. Powdered sugar and unshaved ice.

“You know, you always find a few ghost ships, wherever it gets cold enough. Sailors would break up on the ice and walk the rest of the way over it. ‘Far from the Shores of England’…” She hums a few bars. “No one was coming to save us. It was the only chance we had.”

Rosa, come back! What are you doing?!

Strawberry Shortcake stands on the crust above the water. It holds. Don’t worry, Kaihua, it’ll be okay… They keep shouting until she’s gone.

“I got lucky. There was an island that wasn’t that far away, and there were people there and… and…”

She stumbles - twelve steps - past the shoreline, eyes fixed on the Pepto-Bismol-pink castle on the hill, and collapses, startling the ice fishers at their work and the passing jogger in yellow. Please… P-please, you’ve… you have to help me… You have to help my friends! She keeps shrieking as a man wraps her up in his coat. Call… call… somebody… Please…

“It was hours before we knew if she was dead or not, or if she made it. Mostly I thought that the best case scenario was that she’d come on back. But… she didn’t… There were strangers and-”

“Look, I know we all speak English and everything, but it’s crazy-extremely-very-difficult to understand English people when they’re talking way too fast.”

“Scottish people.”

“Whatever. They weren’t making sense and I wasn’t either. It was scary…”

“And we still didn’t know where Strawberry was.”

Sitting up in a hospital bed; shivering under about a dozen thermal blankets; burning her tongue on the hot, watery tea the nurses keep handing off to her. Are my friends okay? Are my friends okay? There’s no answer for a long time.

“They didn’t ask that many questions at first. Sure, I could tell they wanted to, but… Maybe they knew it’d just make things worse? Eventually, though… they started in on us. ‘Where were we from?’ and ‘What were we doing there?’ and… and… ‘What about the bodies at the bottom of the…’ Oh… oh God…”

“I’m never going to forget what his face looked like, I don’t think. He kind of… I think he wanted to throw up.”

The French girl sits very still and pale and quiet, looking back at the policeman. What… what ‘appens now? The rest of the Dozen asks the same.

“Kaihua went back to China and Suzette went home to France, sometimes we still talk. The rest of us…”

Apple Dumplin’ shifts from foot to foot, squirming as a candy-apple car kicks up dust on the country road, stops by the sign that reads Sweet Apple Acres.

ROSA! she screams when the older girl gets out. Then stops. Then starts up again and jumps up into Strawberry’s arms. She’s crying. They both are.

“I’m not gonna lie, it’s hard. We hated being there, but it was normal by then, y’know? And now we’re, I guess, home, or the nearest thing to it…”

“… it’s pretty hard to adjust.”

School. The Dozen zone out, sleep, cry, hyperventilate, at random times. They say inappropriate things, ignore rumours. They get sent home to change out of skirts too short, having spent too long wearing nearly nothing to care. A boy pinches Orange Blossom’s dress up. Another one snatches at Strawberry’s chest.

It’s my bad, it’s my fault, they say, unfazed, to their guardians, to teachers and the principal. I guess nobody taught them not to. The principal and the parents talk, and the Dozen are pulled out of school altogether, given online classes. It’s safer that way.

“Our fosters agreed we should come here. We can’t only talk to each other forever, but other people wouldn’t understand.” Orange Blossom holds Huckleberry’s hand.

Strawberry Shortcake stands tall. “We’ll be fine. We survived, right? The hard part’s already over. We can get through anything else.”

The group join hands, and shake on it. Apple Dumplin’ hugs her sister. “And I’m gonna help out too!”

The Baker’s not-quite Dozen giggle and push as they climb down from the stage. Nothing could be sweeter.

Chapter Text

“Oh, isn’t it just the most scrumptious day?”

Bows and flows of angel-hair (though she might disagree with that assessment), the Castle-Builder is a pigtailed redhead with the most freckles you ever did see. Her dress is blue denim, plain, designed to be practical, and she’s wearing a crown of slightly-wilted flowers in her hair - wildflowers (dandelions and snapdragons and Queen Anne’s lace); she picks them in the parking lot before coming in (“Just don’t tell Marilla- oops!”).

“I only wish my friends could be here to see it - I have lots of friends, you understand, maybe more than would fit in this room. Most of them don’t live here. I was born a great, long ways away.” She pauses for dramatic effect. “Of course it’s lovely here, but I do miss them sometimes.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a little girl runs her hands over a cracked glass bookcase, a little speck of blood welling up at one fingertip. Oh, Katie, you’re hurt!

Someone yells for QUIET from the other room.

“I’m an orphan, that’s the tragedy of it, and I never even knew my parents. They died when I was very young - within three months of each other - and I went to live with a… family friend, you could say. Oh, no! It was perfectly… experience, truly it was! It was there I met Katie Maurice, poor thing. Now, she was an orphan too, and her fami- the family that she lived with wasn’t very kind.”

There are other children in the house. The Castle-Builder changes diapers, reads bedtime stories, soothes colic and fevers and tantrums with… some success. Cut; the Castle-Builder drops a glass and it shatters. Her foster mother slaps her face, leaving a red mark. Cut; the Castle-Builder lies on her bed in the fetal position, clutching a ripped-open pillow, nursing a split lip and a black eye. A drunken man stands between the feather canyons, at the foot of the bed, refastening his belt. Cut; she stands in front of the cabinet again, eyes overflowing. K-Katie? What have they done to you?

“It was perfectly awful! Day and night they worked her, looking after their own children, then they’d come home and… oh! It was dreadful! Poor Katie Maurice… I was quite beside myself with despondency - that means sadness. It was worse when I had to leave her, but maybe she’s found herself a place like this. Oh, imagine running into her after all this time,” she swoons, “wouldn’t that be terribly romantic?”

The clouds block the sun as she drives away. The rain turns into snow.

“After our premature separation I was sent to live with another family - not this one, not yet - and that was where I met sweet Violetta. She couldn’t speak very well, you see, so we didn’t have very involved conversations, but I quite like quiet people. I don’t mind filling the silence up myse- People say I talk too much, do you think I talk too much?”

They drove through the valley to get here, but now the Castle-Builder looks down from the other side. Hello! And the sound echoes back. She settles there and talks about moons and Junes and ferris wheels until a woman yells her name from the house. Don’t worry, says the Castle-Builder, I’ll be back!

“The people she was staying with had twins three times in succession, do you believe it? And that’s so much work, naturally she had to help out a great deal - until she was the kind of dizzy you get from dancing too much. It was like a real-life fairy tale, like Cinderella. She always sounded so, so sad… maybe if they had just loved her a little then it would have been easier to bear. I tried to love her as best I could to make up for it. Alas, I don’t know that I could do it very well.”

Not much has changed. The Castle-Builder looks after children she’s scarcely bigger than. The mother beats her. The father ignores her. She sleeps on a mattress, but at least she sleeps the whole night through. Cut; the Castle-Builder stares out across the valley, blows on a cigarette stub on the back of her hand. Oh, dear Violetta, that must have been perfectly horrid!

“My foster f-… The man who let me stay with him died of a heart attack, I was late bringing his lunch to him. Violetta was dreadfully unhappy to see me go, but I couldn’t very well have stayed there. I hope she’s happy, truly I do.”

Laughter fills the canyon as the Castle-Builder turns to go. She leaves then, without looking back. New city; big brick building; big woman in a bright pink dress.

“I’m told orphanages don’t really exist anymore, but I was moved to a children’s home. It’s different, I’m just not sure how.” She clasps her hands in front of her chest. “And there were lots of other girls there, you know. Sometimes it was hard to be around them… It was that kind of place where people don’t care enough, but I care so much and… I always give myself away, I think. Ah, well, I met Elaine there! Elaine and Azura, and Iphigenia - my tragically beautiful friends, inside and out.” Again, she swoons.

The Castle-Builder slips a green dress over her head. Cut; the Castle-Builder waits beneath the overpass, until a car stops and lets her inside. Cut; the Castle-Builder trudges through the doors of the children’s home, and the woman in pink snatches the money from her hands. Cut; she reads beneath the covers with a borrowed flashlight: King Arthur, The Good Witch Azura, and Iphigenia in Aulis…

“They all had such sad lives, just like Katie and Violetta - it was a travesty, you must understand. The woman in charge there was very unkind to them, and they used to go on an awful lot of dates with an unsavory lot of gentlemen, supposing you can even call them that. I don’t believe there was any love lost there, but then again… I really don’t know love at all. I couldn’t take them with me when I left.”

Tears and fears and circus crowds; Avonlea on a painted white sign. It’s a little farming community a ways outside the city, and not a long ways at that. There’s a man waiting at the train station when the Castle-Builder steps out onto the platform. Cut; she bounds up to the house and the woman in the doorway - severe-looking, with a sharp nose and tight gray hair.

Matthew… she begins. Where’s the boy?

“I have a family now. They meant to adopt a boy, but… Matthew and Marilla are excellent people, I think they love me. This is where I met Diana, my bosom friend Diana. Oh, she’s wonderful too! And… and Felicity is less wonderful, but we’re friends too - sometimes - and of course there’s Felix and… Gilbert… and Ruby is my friend because the others don’t care to know her very well.”

The Castle-Builder runs up to the older pair again, near knocking the man over. Awkwardly the woman takes the girl in her arms. Cut; she recites poetry to a dark-haired girl from down the lane; flower crowns and ribbons. Cut; another girl in pink drags her brother past the Castle-Builder on the way to school. They wave, her begrudgingly, him… not so much. Cut; a boy tugs her hair in class. Cut; You must be Ruby Gillis, I’ve heard so much about you. The Castle-Builder is all alone.

“I wonder if my old friends would say I’ve changed if they saw me now. I think they would, but don’t most people? It’d be awfully boring if we didn’t. Still, some things stay the way they always have, I suppose. Ruby hasn’t had an easy life… For one thing she’s popular with boys, which isn’t nearly as nice as you might think.”

And they grabbed her pigtails when she tried to get away!

Anne, the dark-haired friend says gently, there is no Ruby Gillis in Avonlea. What’s going on?

Nothing… Nothing! But it’s nice to pretend…

Cut; her caretaker stands in the Castle-Builder’s bedroom. I want to hear it from both sides, now, not just Mrs. Barry’s. What on earth have you been saying to the girls at school? The Castle-Builder on the bed starts to cry.

“Marilla said I could borrow this for when I go to meetings, as long as I take special care not to drop it. It belonged to her mother.” The Castle-Builder on the stage twists a brooch around on her collar; amethyst. It isn’t flashy; it isn’t plain. “I don’t think I ever had jewelry like this. All I remember are illusions.”

Chapter Text

“People don’t think about the beach in winter.”

The Derelict and the Mate keep looking at each other but not at the same time, one of them aiming, the other shying away. They aren’t brothers, but they could be; the rogue and the gentleman with their dark hair and their bright eyes. They say only one of them has a story. Only one of them has a scar.

“During winter, yes, but I didn’t say that. The whole sky turns white, the ocean turns gray and everything looks black between them - branches mostly, some birds. Then the ground hardens… you could break your foot kicking sand.”

“I actually did,” the Mate admits, “and he watched me do it. How many years ago was that anyway? Seven?”

“Longer. I think we were about nine years old.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; waves crashing, ocean churning, sky overcast - two boys in parkas run up and down the surf. The one in red trips and falls. The one in blue hurries over, hair flying out behind him. There are ships docked in the harbor.

“We were friends then, we’ve been friends for years.”

“Since diapers.”

“Just about, not that my father was ever too keen on that. He’s president of the yacht club, and a big enough politician that what happened was… a bit of a scandal, you already know. He didn’t like how much time I was spending with someone from ‘the other side of town’. It was worse once we got older and the Mate dropped out.”

“I got a… job on one of those touring ferries. It is what it is, you meet plenty of interesting people.” A strand of hair’s come loose from his bandana. “Your father was right.”

The Mate weaves in and out of hot crowds of sweaty tourists and his hands work as he does. Wallets; watches; jewelry. He’s caught eventually, of course, but not soon enough. Cut; in the police station and a holding cell, he watches two men with the Wildcard through the bars. Cut; the Derelict is waiting when he stumbles through the doorway. He drives him home without a word.

“I spent a few nights in jail off and on after that, more than a few in some cases. Nothing too exciting happened, don’t get ahead of yourselves. I’m not that interesting, I was only in for petty theft… and I know I’m not bad-looking, but I think they wanted pretty. Or something.”

“Eloquently put.”

“Hardy har har. Very funny. Or maybe it was just that there was a guy who looked like me already in there a lot - dark hair, beard, he always had a bandana too - ah, see, Ace knows who I mean.”

They get bigger. For the Derelict there are birthday parties and new cars and graduations. The Mate spends a few more nights in jail, watching as the Friend’s friend shakes off what the officers do, as the compatriots of Mewtwo slink out limping. Cut; the Derelict on the arm of a beautiful woman with gold hoop earrings and dark brown hair. Sinbad, I want you to meet my fiancée - Marina.

“She was… Well, our parents introduced us, but I do love her - really - we had plenty in common besides that. She and I were both political science majors, we both have this same fascination with history… I actually took on a part time job at the museum, but she- My old flame wanted something - someone - more exciting, in the bedroom and out of it. I couldn’t give her that…”

“I could. I did. And I shouldn’t have.” The Mate’s expression turns guilty. “I never meant for it to go this far, I mean, I was seeing someone too. Total nutjob but… Ugh, this is her fault as much as mine. That’s what you get for actually calling the numbers you see on bus station walls.”

There’s a black-haired woman flitting in and out and between the cuts - oozing, more like, she walks like oil splatters. Proteus, this is Eris, my… uh, this is Eris. They go to bed together and he thinks about the Derelict’s fiancée. She’s gone in the morning and he doesn’t miss her. He doesn’t even miss the pistol stolen from its safe. He doesn’t even notice that it’s gone.

“When she took off I can’t say I was torn up about it. I am now, mostly because of what happened after. I said too much. She saw too much. I… I don’t know how, but maybe she knew what I wanted… and maybe that’s why she did what she did.”

That winter’s night there’s a party at the Derelict’s museum and a very old book on display. The Mate dances with Marina and they stumble out together, more than a little drunk. The next morning she creeps out and creeps home again, makeup smeared, hair undone. The Mate wakes to the police pounding on his door close to noon.

“They said there’d been a robbery, his pistol had been found… it didn’t look good. For a long time I thought that was why he hadn’t called me right away. Though, I did get in to see him and he said… and he said…”

I didn’t do it! The Mate’s handcuffs clatter on the table like drum beats. How many times do I need to say that? … How many people do you need in here anyway? The man with the beer belly; the man with the mustache; the syrupy blonde… Suddenly the door opens again. And something else happens. And nothing does.

“We’ve known each other for years, of course I believed him. The trouble was that nobody else would. Call it stupid all you like - and maybe it was, in a way - but I couldn’t think of much else in that moment. He had a record, he’s poor. If he went down for it his life was over, at least I had a chance. So I… I… Yes. And because I worked there they believed me.”

The Derelict speaks quietly with his father from the other side of a wide glass pane. His hand rests on the window. His fingers are bruised. His lip is split. Marina visited yesterday… Would you please ask Sinbad to come in?

“I knew he didn’t do it either, I was a coward about it though. I already felt guilty for spending the night with his girl and here he was lying his ass off to save mine… I couldn’t cope.”

“You managed it eventually.”

The Mate and the woman shout at each other through his door, so loudly that the neighbors make a police report. His roommates snicker. His dog barks. When Marina leaves, she kicks the wall for good measure, leaving an imprint of her foot. Cut; the Mate stands in the prison visitor’s area between strips of yellow tape.

“At first I just meant to be there for him. At least until I saw her waiting for me on the way out - not her as in the fiancée, her as in… This is getting confusing. I’m talking about my ex.”

The dark-haired woman oozes toward him, oozes around him, covers his back. I’m surprised to see you out and about. She nibbles on his ear. You get ten years for this kind of thing.

What? Eris, I… You! She grins and his arms aren’t strong enough to hold her. Cut; Marina, open the door! I need… you have to listen to me!

“We knew the police probably wouldn’t. With no evidence? With a confession? Nobody wants to open closed cases, you know. It makes the department look bad… but his father had money. And Ba- the Detective was still around…”

Know it All and the not-so-happy couple, and a man with silver hair. He writes a number down on a slip of paper. The Detective nods and they shake hands while another set forces the Derelict against the wall of the shower, holding him there as the water turns cold and red swirls around the drain.

“You would think people in such dire straits would band together, but in practice… My case was well-known and I was from a wealthy family. Some of the men I was locked in with disagreed with my father’s policies. The worst of it came from the guards, sometimes officers if they made an excuse to happen by…”

“God, why didn’t you say anything?”

No response.

They call him Your Majesty. The Derelict doesn’t hear them, his mind’s gone miles over the hills now, far, far, far away. That night he looks out through the bars, letters scattered across his cot. He hasn’t slept in days.

“I thought they’d let him go right away if we found the right person, but as it turns out the law doesn’t work that way. Making a false confession is still illegal.”

“But like I said before, my father has money, my family has influence… There’s a bit about making a false statement on my record now, but eventually I got off on time served.” The Derelict slumps. “When I did get out, the Mate was there to pick me up.”

His oldest friend reaches out to shake his hand and the Derelict throws both arms around him. Then his knees buckle and they both go down. Cut; the Mate paces up and down the white hospital corridor. Cut; Listen, there’s something I need to tell you… A-about-

Marina?

… How long have you known?

“I saw the way you looked at each other and… some things fell into place. I suppose you’re all expecting this to be some kind of great betrayal, but even before, I knew she was unhappy… I love them both.”

The Mate delivers the Derelict to his father that night, dodges the old man’s ice-cold gaze. There’s his apartment downtown and the liquor store on the way, and a blur. And a razor. He wakes up the next afternoon with a killer headache and a bandage across his neck.

“Were you trying to take your head off?!”

“She asked me that too… and no - I don’t know, I can’t remember. Maybe I just wanted to do the right thing for once. Or get away from… from everything. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” The Derelict lands a few tentative pats on the Mate’s shoulder, then his arm drops to his side, hanging limp. “I did it because I wanted to.”

Chapter Text

“I don’t understand.”

Peppermint chews a fingernail, playing with his candy-striped sweater sleeves. He’s a long, tall man with dark red hair and bright red blotches on his nose and cheeks. Cellophane rustles in his pockets when he shifts around - more of his namesake no doubt. He doesn’t seem to mind, but the smell hangs like a cloud of incense in the air (strong enough to turn one’s eyes around).

“We’re supposed to be nice to people, right? Isn’t that how this works? I don’t…” He shakes his head. “I’m no good at this kind a’ thing. Grownups have a way harder time making friends… well, maybe not all grownups. It’s okay, you can say so - I know I’m not the normal kind.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Peppermint putters around his cluttered three-room apartment. There are potato chips and candy bars in the pantry and sodas in the fridge, board games and plastic toys and cartoons playing on the little TV - but nothing new. There’s a bath and a kitchenette and just one bed. Someone knocks on the door.

“Gotta pay somebody to do what my parents did… um, sort of. That’s like having a best friend, right? Friends go shopping and out to eat all the time, and to the movies - sometimes we even have sleepovers and… and…” He lowers his voice to a stage whisper. “We keep each other’s secrets too.”

The man at the door has a clipboard, Peppermint has a great big grin. They go inside together and he pulls his “friend” from room to room, opening cupboards and drawers. It doesn’t take very long. Can we do something fun now?

In a minute, says the friend who is not a friend at all, setting down his pencil, unbuttoning his shirt.

“I didn’t tell anyone about that! I didn’t! That’s not what friends do. Sure, he wasn’t very nice some of the time but I wouldn’t do that to him. For one thing it wouldn’t be fair, he helped me out a lot too! Like at the store and the bank and stuff, until I figured it out for myself. He wouldn’t do that for no reason, right?”

Peppermint holds up a deck of cards, a board game. What do you think we should choose?

Who cares?

“Sometimes I make friends with other people too, like the guy at the library and the lady at the laundromat! Uh, but we don’t stay friends for very long. People don’t like me. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong - I mean, it’s gotta be somethin’… right?”

Occasions, persuasions; Peppermint approaches a woman - a stranger - while she rifles through her bag of clothes. The unfortunate reality is this: she doesn’t pick up on his innocence, he can’t tell that nervous smile she gives him from a real one. Neither one of them has that good sense. He talks and talks and she backs away and he gets closer. It’s the same story most places - sometimes he catches a fist to the jaw.

“I have to see a doctor sometimes and we talk about stuff like this, but nothing ever changes. I think that maybe I’m just a lunatic. He says I need to work on my point of view.”

The support worker sets… something in the sink to soak (it’s nearly as long as a yardstick). Peppermint pulls back the blinds. Children skipping rope on the street below. He keeps watching until one of them waves at him and parents usher the rest away.

“It’s easier with kids. They don’t care as much about stuff like this - they don’t seem to - not like grownups. Plus the things they wanna do are actually fun, yeah? I’d rather go to the park or watch cartoons than… whatever. Nobody as big as me ever wants to do that kind of stuff, so I try to make friends with the little people. That’s another thing I don’t understand - what’s so wrong with that?”

Peppermint spends time in the park near his home. He likes to watch the beavers in the pond, patting mud up on the roof of their dam, and the color of time on the water when the sun sinks behind the trees. People eye him strangely, but no one says anything at first - at least not to his face. Sometimes there’s a girl with lollipops on her jacket and a big plastic crown (I gotta wait for my sister - Christine’s practicing for the FSC). Sometimes there’s a little ginger-haired boy with cookie-crumb freckles all over his face (How come you can see and stuff? My mom says only blind people need dogs like that). Peppermint digs around in his pockets, candy-smear on the palms of his hands.

“Jib and Lolly are my favorite people! She’s a princess and he’s super-duper smart and has all these neat books to read - like about dead kings and stuff - and knows all these great big words… I really like them but not, you know, in a bad way… Is there a bad way to like someone?”

Mr. Mint! Mr. Mint! And the kids come running up to him. What game do you wanna choose?

Who cares? he laughs. People are staring - like the frosty blonde girl, dangling a pair of skates by their laces. Cut; What’s going on?! I don’t wanna go- Let go of me! Peppermint babbles meaningless nouns.

Sir, please, you’re making a scene-

“I didn’t do anything! So why… why did her sister call the police? I didn’t… What did I do?! What’s wrong with me?!”

He wails the same way when they press him at the station - louder this time, much louder and the policeman fumbles for words. It takes the better part of an hour and more than a few dixie cups of water before he’s calm again. Longer for him to really understand why he’s there. Oh, you thought… His hand on his neck, trailing lower. No! It’s bad to do that to kids. Everybody knows that.

Right… The uniform peers closer, then draws back when he sees the bite mark between Peppermint’s fingers. Red and white, like a candy cane saw.

“I don’t have any friends now. And I’m supposed to come here.” His chin grinds against his shoulder and he hugs himself. “I guess it’s wrong to do those kinds of things at all?”

Chapter Text

Chapter 1(pleas see the end of for notes)
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It was not much-only an ordniary looking cassle in the lady’s town of Milkweed(AN: no its not big enough to be a city, so stop calling it one) which was home to the very important, very exclusvie Milkweed Academy for Wizards. Sigmund better known as Sigmund the Sorcer for his impresive wizard skills at magic and the like. He was a young lad with perfect skin and cremy eyes and platinam hair like satan cloth. He wore leather pants and a lether jacket and shoes all of it was black with out being gloomy. His skin was perfct and his teeth was straight. Naturally hed been a shoein for acceptance into Mirkweed the school, not the town and much euthanized about coming actually.But now he was started to have second thoughts. It looked so plane and he was so brilant but not in a bragging way. Is this going to be a good place for me to learn? He pondered as the carriage stopped before the ramshackle ivory gaits...

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Kyle_The_Conjurer is not so perfect and not so blond. A little car pulls up in front of an enormous school. A boy, with the worst set of braces, presses his nose to the window, grinning so hard it hurts.

Here we are then… Don’t blow it, his father says, tousling his hair.

Comments: 2

TheGoodWitchApproves:
OwO
Omg i luv this Sigmund is such a cool oc name cant wait to see what happens next!!!!

Kyle_The_Conjurer:
But of course.

Dorm room; schedule; ties and buttons and the same striped cardigan. His eyes flash when his ID picture’s taken and there are bits of food caught in his teeth. Cut; first day of classes; first class of the day. He’s called to the front of the room to introduce himself and makes a joke that isn’t funny. He falls on the way back to his seat. Everyone laughs.

Chapter 6
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Sigmunds POV:
I did not need the schalarship because my family was quite very wealthy, however I nonetheless received one anyways. Just as as well as their were no better candidates than I - Sugmind the Sorcerer. The class new this on the first day of class and even the teacher had pulled some strings to get me into it. I was know Hetace must be jealous of me for stealing the attention she covets so dearly away...

There’s a spot for him at the center lunch table until there isn’t anymore. There’s a spot for him at the table by the window until there isn’t anymore. There’s a spot for him at the table on the stage until there isn’t… Everyone gets tired of the weird wiz-kid eventually - pity’s a fragile, flightless thing - and he starts to take his lunch in the library alone. A copy of The Good Witch Azura sits open in his lap.

Hecace POV:
I hate him. I hate Sigmund. But why I was up masticating all night? Aruza told me thats what love is but I’m not so sure… How cloud someone like Sigmund love ME anyways, witches like me are no good and I’m mean and evil… but only sometimes. Maybe I AM IN LOVE WITH SIGMUND! OH NO! Nooo… I wail in aguish, tears wiggling my breasts. “Someone like that could never love me” I quavered feebly...

The principal has an office. The vice principal has an office. And there’s a headmaster too - it’s a very nice school. Kyle_The_Conjurer watches as Tinsel-Touch’s friend shuts the door behind her, hand clenched around her wrist, around her bracelet. Concerned, he steps up, hand hovering above her shoulder. There’s a sharp intake of breath, then she jerks back.

AN: Next chapter might take a little while too write. Please leave a comment if you liked this one, it helps me focus and write faster. I'm going to start a writing class at school soon.
- Kyle

Comments: 2

They catch him reading in class and send him all the way down. The big bald businessman stares down at him, behind his big, black desk. Who is it?

K-Kyle Bloodworth-… -T-T-Thomason… I’m sorry, I think I have the wrong room…

But the Businessman isn’t listening. Take a seat.

Chapter 13
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The first day of advanced spell clasting casses, Sigmund manifested so well his teacher got jealous and expelled him all the way to depths of detention. It was there that Sigmund met professor Flan who ejaculated that: “My name is professor Jonathan James Jasper Jackson Jamarcus Jaminiquide “J.J.” Flan, Jr., Mr. Sigmund, but you may call me professor Flan.” Sugmend tried to be excused in order to use the the lavatory but Professor Flan sufistically gave him more many detentions for the rest of the week...

Kyle_The_Conjurer in the back of the room with his head down, pencil lying at his elbow, ignored. He goes up to the board and jots an almost-right answer; someone pulls his chair out from under him when he sits back down. Of course he jumps up, shouting. Of course he’s sent out into the hall.

AN: Please leaves more comments, chums! I beg of you. This is Actually very hard to write(writing is hard) and I could use some encouragement. NO FLAMES(or I will have to report you).

Comments: 2

The same girl creeps out of the office. This time he nods at her. She still scuttles away with her head down. No surprise there - he’s still the weird kid with bad teeth… and she isn’t. Cut; the janitor emerges from the office. Kyle_The_Conjuror nods to him too. He doesn’t even notice. When it’s Kyle’s turn to leave the office, no one is there to sympathise at all.

Chapter 43

WARNING - This chapter is vry sad.

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~***Im so tyred of being here**~
~***Supresed by all my childish feers**~
~***And if you have to leave**~
~**I wish you wood just leave**~
~**Cause your presents still lingers here**~
~**And it wo’nt leaf me alone**~

*Hecatie POV*

I was so mad and sad. I came out of the office and it was raining and flashing lightening witch was just like how my soul felt deep inside after Professor Flan was so cladistic to me. Azara asked if I was okay. I said “I am fine go away!” I said.

~***These wounds wont seem to heel***~
~***The pane is just too real***~...

Comments: 4

Mark:
This is really rough. If you want it to be, you know… readable then you need to start drafting. Find a beta. Something. Use spellcheck at least.

freakofnurture:
Oh. Oh my god. This CANNOT be real.

He slinks from the car to the garage and up the stairs. His father lets him go and doesn’t knock until dinner. That’s enough time to pick the hair out of his braces and to think up a few dozen pictures of putting a bullet in his headmaster’s great, bald head- Kyle? Nana made raspberry flan!

Chapter 66

WARNING - Heavy stuff ahead!

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Of course he had known that professor Flan looked like a pedo, everyone had knew that from the very start. But today when the detention door open Sigmund saw him with AZURA. She way lying over the desk while he rapped her and he’d cut off both her hands.

“Your next,” he uttered intimidatingly to Sigmund the Sorcerer and laughed synergistically. “Don't even try to run away.”

The headmaster’s office again. Kyle_The_Conjurer gets down to his knees.

No.

N-no? What do y- He yelps as the bigger man pulls him to his feet and pins him. To the desk. On the desk. Like a mounted butterfly. He struggles and kicks, trying to get away… and brings a model airplane down on that great, bald mountain (he doesn’t question why there should be a model airplane there at all).

“Run Sigmund!” Azura whimpered sharply. “Don’t let him get you to!”

But Kyle was a sorcerer and sorcerers don’t run away ever. He drew out his wand and flickered his rist and-

Soon his professor was a raspberry flan.

Now Kyle_The_Conjurer sits in a different office - arms crossed, legs crossed, holding an expulsion notice written on pink and signed in red. His father sighs. I thought I told you to be good.

Comments: 6

TheLastMabelcorn:
Hi! Srry, but can you tag this for noncon? Im not so great with stuff like this…

Kyle_The_Conjurer:
Fine.

That night at dinner nobody says anything. Kyle_The_Conjurer sits there and picks at his food. The next day at breakfast nobody says anything and nobody leaves. His father says something about making a phone call. Kyle_The_Conjurer locks himself in his room.

Comments: 10

Reverser:
This… is kind of amazing.

welcome2bonetown:
“tears wiggling my breasts” im… ded… everyone else go home, this is the greatest thing ive ever read lol. XD

MarquessaDeWoo:
It’s not real. Guys, come on. This has to be a troll fic.

Flutterina:
God, I hope it’s real.

New school; new class; new classroom. He comes in like a lion - faking an accent, wearing a cape. Most of his classmates don’t go for it, but two boys follow him around, roping him into their game of pretend.

Comments: 60

TheIncredibleOwlMan:
It’s not even funny though. Seriously, people already think fans are a bunch of weirdos. This is just gonna prove them right. GOSH!!!

red_like_roses
I like how everyone just randomly has a gun. Aren’t they wizards?

Comments: 100

R0seQ4rtz:
Ok… can we talk about how he ATE his professor??? Poetic cinema XD 11/10

QueenoftheGuins:
The OUTFITS!!!! Gof jbfekbgrkegk…

TheQueerestTheyEverDidSea:
Well, this is definitely the first time I’ve seen a two page description of suspenders (does anyone even wear pants in the books?) and my sister is a fashion model.

Yoshino-Chan:
Nor have I. I’m an author.

Comments: 542

princessbooboo:
Ok… wut? io1io42flejgejriohjoi5h58jyhh

Barabarian:
Behold its magnificence!!!!

Comments: 1000

DoubleTroubled:
“Why was I up masticating all night?”

Mermista:
He tortured them “superficially”? Well, what are they complaining about then?

Comments: 1800

Hexazura:
If somebody doesn’t do a dramatic reading i stg…

freakofnurture:
oh no, there definitely is one: check it out here

PurplePuma:
THEY EVEN SANG THE FULL-CAST MUSICAL NUMBER (well kinda sang it) OMG IM DYING

Kyle_The_Conjurer scrolls through his phone in the dark, the books on his floor all opened to the end. Hecate/Azura… Azura/OC… Hecate/OC and it goes like that… Rape/Non-Con, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery… and it goes like that too.

Authors note
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AN: I’m going to delete this fic. I’m sorry if you guys licked it, but I can’t write anymore. Please don’t repost it belongs to me. Please stop redding it id you didn’t like and I promise ill never write anything again, ok?
-Kyle

R0seQ4rtz:
What??? We’re reading it BECAUSE we like it!

DoubleTroubled:
That, I think, might be his problem.

It was not much-only an ordniary looking cassle in the lady’s town of Milkweed(AN: no its not big enough to be a city, so stop calling it one) which was home to the very important, very exclusvie Milkweed Academy for Wizards.

Sigmund the Sorcerer

The-Demon-Pill

Summary:
Original was deleted so imma reposting it here.

thegoodwitchapproves:
kinda sad “sigmund the sorcerer” got taken down. it was weird, yeah, but the guy was learning. hey, writer dude, if you ever see this pm me? i’d like to collab or like… talk or something. don’t listen to the haters or… whatever, EVERYONE starts out weird lol.
#pretty sure purplepuma wrote an ace hart/ducktective crossover where ace cooked and ate the duck.

Chapter Text

“Look, don’t touch.”

Jezebel Joe takes a comb from his pocket. He doesn’t use it, he already has perfect hair. And perfect teeth. And eyes like spring skies and sapphires - whatever you fancy so long as it’s blue. His clothes are nice, but not the right style. His cologne isn’t noble, isn’t cheap. He’s wearing makeup. They do not see the scar.

“Never had to drop a line like that before. I have used fake names. Most of us need to, in my line of work - the idea is that it’ll protect you from all the crazies. As if. Though in my case it wouldn’t have mattered.” He shrugs. He smiles. “Why do they call it the ‘oldest profession’ anyway? There’s gotta be something a little more… sensual than that.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Jezebel Joe drifts between patrons in the hotel bar, looking perfectly at home there. He stops by one of them - a woman - and fixes her with a smile and a wink. She turns her head away. He shrugs and keeps going, keeps his face as friendly as possible, all worries hidden under a layer of glitter and a sheen of sweat.

“I have a price, I’m not ashamed of it. Can’t say everyone’s the same way, but… some people are. The ones I know at least. It isn’t bad work, you gotta understand, I don’t hate it. And the pay’s okay. I could do something else if I wanted to - and I don’t, not yet anyway. My sister and I always said that we’d make it to the Olympics. Maybe someday. But skating’s expensive. I don’t know what the deal is with the other girls - and it is girls, pretty much - the ones I come with or the ones who pick me out. You aren’t supposed to follow anyone back to their room.”

A black-haired girl winds herself around a businessman with a ring on his finger. Joe intercepts his wife. Smiling; winking; a door opens behind him - a contender! He sets foot in the room and… no, he’s after the one in the pink dress, strawberry blonde hair down to her hips. So charming; so beautiful; the woman is gone when Jezebel looks for her. Oh well, maybe later. Maybe later someone will come.

“We’ve been collared a few times - not as many as you would think. Fancy place, rich clients, nobody wants to embarrass judges and lawyers even if they are johns. Makes things easier, maybe too easy. It was a woman who… Not that it matters, it’s just that I- It was a woman,” he says again, “but not someone I took to bed with me.”

No luck again tonight; Jezebel Joe puts an arm around his sister and they drift out into the street. A young lady watches from a distance, from the overhang, like an angel above the dancefloor - an angel with pale lips and blonde hair, dressed in white and blue. Cut; Jezebel Joe glides up to the hustler with the fox tattoo, whipping out his wallet, flashing banknotes. The woman’s watching from the stairs this time.

“There are a lot of people who… don’t understand sex work. Some of them hate us - a lot of them hate us. Some of them think it’s expla- exploitative. They’re not wrong, exactly, it can be… but…”

His sister and a top-heavy blond man: he brings her flowers. Lancelot (before the Cook, before the baby) and a girl with peacock feather earrings: she kisses him on the cheek on his way out the door. Jezebel Joe and three blonde coworkers. Apsu and Tiamat. Okay, who’s wearing the bikini? The blonde woman’s at the hotel again, and she watches as they file out into the hall.

“Hell, I’ve met a lot of folks that don’t go all the way. Some of them just want someone to talk to. Some of them need dates. S’ all the same to me, money’s money whatever you get it for. And my clients are mostly decent people, I like them. We’re friends, we’re all friends - me and them and the other girls.”

You’re “Lorna’s” friend, aren't you?

Friend of a friend.

Poor Cock Robin gestures with her head. The Thrush sits on a leather lounge seat in the corner, talking to a woman with such wonderful hair - all curls and frizzles, all platinum under the strobe lights. Did she tell you? Not all the way… Just dancing. Let me get close to you.

Do you want to talk about it?

She bites her lip. Maybe. I just… I need a male friend right now.

“Long story short, I guess someone got the wrong idea. I said already - not one of my ‘girlfriends’. I… I know I recognized her from somewhere. See, this is why we aren’t supposed to break from the group.”

No one’s biting tonight. Jezebel Joe walks home alone. It’s cold for California. His shirt is too sheer. He looks vulnerable in a way that most men don’t at night. Like a target. Not a threat. He doesn’t see the woman behind him hesitating, hesitating, looking down at her phone. Just do it. Then he hears the footsteps. Then he starts running.

“I almost got away clean. Almost. But almost isn’t good enough. No, I don’t blame myself, I’m not… I don’t know, insecure… about it. I just wish it hadn’t happened. I can’t help thinking of how it-” Jezebel chokes up, a runny trail of mascara under each eye and on his sleeve where he tried to wipe them both away. “She caught me. I started to ask what she wanted and-” He touches the side of his head, wincing.

His eyes widen in horror as the woman holds up her fist and the pipe comes down. Hard. He collapses and she kneels down beside him on that filthy side street and rolls Joe over onto his back. P-please, just take my money! I’ll give you whatever you want… His pockets are empty.

Busy night, huh? You’re disgusting, you know that?

“She’d worked out what my friends do for a living, got the wrong idea about me though. Maybe she didn’t think a man would turn tricks for anything. She probably still does. And she spewed a lot of junk about johns… that’s when I realized what she thought I was.”

She drags him back towards the hotel. Light as a feather; stiff as a board. No one is around. Even if they were, they might not say anything. Softly, softly, Jezebel Joe begins to cry.

“She left me, and I crawled back inside. I was lucky there were a few people who knew me in the lobby. Coworkers and some friendly clients, or my friends’ friendly clients. I suppose there’s something to be said about being paid to make people like you…”

The Thrush and his puffy-haired coworker run to pick him up, dab at his head with perfumed handkerchiefs. The big blond client stands in front of them, broad as a wall, runs interference when passersby look - It’s okay, he just hit his head, nothin’ to see here…

“I asked the hotel about who stayed in the room that night and they blew me off. They let her disappear. I haven’t seen her since then… Maybe she’s as scared as I am, but I was never planning to make a report. I just want to know who it was…”

He sits on a metal table, sterile pads to suppress the bleeding. No eye contact. No insurance money either. I already told you, nothing happened! I… it was consensual, okay? Happy?

The lady doctor stares at him. I don’t understand how you managed to-

It… she used a pipe…

“I’m back at work now, I guess. Same hotel. Different name. Whatever.” Jezebel Joe points his chin outward, smiling like a moviestar. “No one should have to dance alone.”

Chapter Text

“Something, something…” Drifting. Like… like- What is that? German?

The foreigner hustles down the empty bar, jostling napkins and empty plates. Twisting. Tourist, probably. He’s got red hair and a red parka and red rims around his nostrils. And no matter how red his face is now, it’s white underneath. Whiteout. His hands are scabbed, but not all the way over - fingers curled with blood in the spaces between.

More German… Dutch… Gutch…ness. Whatever he’s speaking, it isn’t Sherpa. Mikyo waves him off. Tries to. Offers gestures that he hopes come across the way he means them (“I don’t work here” and “I’m not a guide”). But the foreigner keeps talking - more panic now, more urgency. It can’t be that he’s speaking Nepali either. Words in flurries. Vanilla swarms.

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a nine-year-old boy moves closer to the television, turning up the volume all the way. It’s National Geographic. And it’s big cats. Hunter’s dream. A male lion yawns at the camera, flicking flies away with his tail.

Mikyo scoots back in his chair but the foreigner follows him, breathing heavily. He looks over his shoulder and back again, points in the direction of the men’s room. More of… whatever he’s saying, but he stops halfway through, mimes scribbling on the palm of his hand.

The foreigner’s on TV now, not just watching one. He smiles for the camera, holds a lion cub in his arms - bottle feeding. Cut; he points out a sunning crocodile, kneels on the riverbank with his arm stretched out. Footprinted mud. Blackbird-Braille. Cut; suede couch; chirpy interviewer; live audience. There’s a snake wrapped around his shoulders. The foreigner cracks a joke.

He makes a stick figure and draws a star around it. And a square. Then he points at himself. Then back at the napkin. And again. He makes another figure - a man with a camera, a woman too - at least Mikyo thinks it’s a woman - with long curly hair.

The foreigner’s assistant has brown skin and curls and a nice smile when she isn’t angry with him. She’s there when his boat turns over in the Everglades. Six stitches and a concussion; fantastic ratings. She’s there in California when the network calls and he escalates to screaming. Look, even if they pull us off the air-

If they do then I’m done for! Do you understand that? I’ll lose the house-

You don’t know that it’ll come to that… and if it does, you can stay with me, okay?

She’s there at the base of the Himalayas. Creme-bouffant. Lukla. Meringuerpeaks.

There’s that stick figure again - the first one - and there’s a dollar sign. There’s the start of a triangle arching over them. Mikyo points to the mountains. The foreigner shakes his head. He adds the walls and floor.

Brenda- Brenda, I’m a desperate man! He gets down on his knees in front of his assistant, begging, reaching for her hands. We’ve got a hit here, I can feel it, so please- But she pulls away and shakes her head. There’s a box on the table next to them - stilts and white fabric. Blown-from-polar fur.

He draws the cameraman again and an eight-legged thing with a slash through it. It’s the same with the woman. Now the mountain. Now another figure. Now another. He bites his finger and colors one red.

He stands outside in the freezing night. Stellatundra. With his cellphone clamped against his ear. He’s breathing into it, still pleading. No response. Something touches his shoulder. You’re a reporter, right? If you’re looking for shots I’m your man.

The blood’s dripping down his wrist now. Mikyo puts a hand on his shoulder. The foreigner throws both hands up in front of his face. Shrieking. People are staring. Do any of them understand him?

They meet at sun-up the next morning. They climb the mountain. The air is thin… but not that thin. They stand on the ridge before the sun sets. Anklebreaker. The foreigner snaps a picture and sends his guide startling. He knocks the camera from his hands, knocks him over. Don’t move. If you do then we’ll both fall. He doesn’t scream either. He’s not the Frost Giant - there’s too much snow overhead. Avalanche.

He draws a circle and tears the napkin. The pen bleeds onto the table. The foreigner bleeds onto the table. He draws the lines anyway. The circle becomes a sun. He draws a crescent. He writes a number: 2. It looks… off somehow. He can still read it.

Fifty hours. He helps set up camp once it’s over. He could run. He wouldn't make it far on his own. That guide says as much. And they lie together in the same sleeping bag. They leave in the morning. I said I’d take you to the top, didn’t I? The foreigner doesn’t ask about coming down again. He falls before they make the next village. Mountainsob. An icicle falls and breaks to pieces on the bloody snow. Twenty-two to go.

They’re all out of napkin. Mikyo points to one of the stickmen. The “clean” one, but he still gets blood on his finger. Then he reaches out, the foreigner recoiling and shaking his head. He stops when Mikyo does - just short of the bruise on his chin. Nodding now. And a small, sad sound. Like floorboards. Swans-a-melting.

Two days and two nights. Most people make it in two and one. The third day, in the early morning. Most hotels aren’t open yet, nor are the hostels. They move toward the one that is. The foreigner steadies himself on a bar stool. The guide tells him to wait and heads for the restroom. None of the signs are written in English. He says the right words but no one seems to understand them. He turns his attention to the closest stranger - a giant, burly-looking man. Bundled in white. Fur and nylon and melting snow. Shimmerglisten.

The snow has melted now, Mikyo realizes. There’s a puddle on the floor and one on the counter that the napkin’s absorbing, ink drowned in drops from his hair. The bathroom door opens and the foreigner pales. He stands there panting, staring at Mikyo, scrambling for something else to write on. The other man says something now and sets a hand on his shoulder like Mikyo tried to. The foreigner shoves him - it’s a weak gesture at best. He looks thin and pale and papery. Robber’s veil.

D-do you speak English? Please, you’ve got to help me- Please! Forty-four steps and white on the floor. Albadune.

Gently, very very gently, Mikyo moves the foreigner behind him. Stands between the two strange men. He still doesn’t understand, not really, but it’s pretty clear by now that there’s a right and a wrong thing here. Deep’n’hidden.

He still doesn’t move when he sees the blood on the stool. It doesn’t change anything. Vanishing world.

Chapter Text

“I’ve… never been to a place like this before.”

Samson looks around awkwardly, hands firmly on its (“not his, not her, not their”) thighs, eventually glancing down. It chuckles bitterly, side-eyeing the others. Shadrach. Meshach. Abednego. Big, bigger, biggest… to the point where it really isn’t funny. The tallest one stands like the Tower of Babel. If bodybuilding was a testament to God…

“I’ve been to two therapy sessions, but they didn’t really work out for me. I’m only here because of these guys. And they had to get on their hands and knees, told me I needed to go… ‘You can get better, you just need to learn healthy coping skills’,” it quotes, glancing to the smallest friend. “I wish I believed them, but this kinda stuff can’t be fixed.”

“It’s bad to talk about yourself like that!” Shadrach (the smallest) reaches out to pat Samson’s shoulder, but ends up drawing his hand back.

“It’s true, though. I just- I just can’t.” It stares down at the bandage wrapped around its forearm with a shamed expression, a face of regret.

“Don’t lose hope, B-” Abednego (the biggest) coughs awkwardly. “I mean, Samson.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a child in an orange and white-clashed athletic shirt with black shorts is practicing on a punching bag, an imagined threat to its safety. Samson lands three warning jabs with its left hand before swinging its right fist before kicking high and hard. Focus on your right hand, and make sure that punch is purposeful instead of swinging it. Try again, its father orders as it sighs in frustration.

“My dad taught me a lot of self-defense and karate when I was four. As much as I’ve learned from him, though… we’re not exactly close anymore. The way he taught me… viewed me… and uh, raised me…” It mumbles the last part under its breath.

Samson’s father glares down upon it as it cowers with bruises on its arms, knees, and right cheek. If looks could kill, poor Samson would be crushed by its father’s reddened pillars, his evil eyes. You’re weak. Imagine if I were someone else in this situation, its father growls. Again!

“He literally punched you while training, though. Not to mention the things he said,” Shadrach interrupts. “Screw that guy!”

“… I would usually say that getting punched is a way of learning to not make the same mistake again, especially in martial arts…”

“See, this is why we had to drag it here,” Meshach (the moderately sized one) speaks out into the crowd.

Months of training become years of training, years become a decade.

“When I was about, uh… fourteen or so, I figured out I kinda sorta liked more than just men. Actually, I’m pansexual and I don’t really… conform to gender norms, I guess? Hell, I don’t even know what my gender situation is most days… Uh, this is heading where you guys think it is, hang on.”

Cut to a pubescent Samson, gawking at a local magazine cover of a model in white shorts, top exposing her stomach. Her hair is long, silky and bluish-black. It reflects off the summer sun, the beach as a background.

“Teenagers will be teenagers.” Samson rolls its eyes. “I didn’t really have time to be one for very long though, since I was dumb enough to not hide it well enough. Spoiler alert, my father doesn’t like people who… ‘deviate from the path’. I was… I was with a friend of mine at the time, and we held hands before I gathered up the courage to… k-kiss her.” It blushes.

Two friends sit near the beach and talk about the usual; school, boys, and their parents. The girl slowly slides her hand to touch Samson’s, flinching away for a moment. But its hand stays still. Is it the physical warmth? No, it’s ninety-five degrees out. Is it for emotional warmth? Maybe. It tests this small hypothesis by plugging in the dependent variable, leaning in and pressing its lips to hers.

“And that was my first kiss.”

The hypothesis is proven true. A scientific law.

“I didn’t realize that my dad was behind me the entire time, though…”

The back-and-forth turns into screaming, the screaming turns into words that they can’t take back. Pack your bags. You’re no longer my daughter, as far as I’m concerned…

“I was a crying mess when I left with a duffel bag full of clothes and a few toiletries and stuff. I didn’t really care to pack anything else, I just… I didn’t ever wanna see him ever again.” Its eyebrows furrow in anger. “Ever.” It looks down at its arms, both having many scars that will never fully heal up. “I didn’t really know how to handle everything, so I kinda sorta started to…” it points at one of its wrists, “… cut myself.” It mumbles the last part.

Cut to a fifteen-and-a-half Samson underneath a bridge with tears and drippings from the ceiling streaming down its face, with an X-Acto blade in one hand and the other one shaking. It’s all its fault, if it were the daughter Dad expected it to be, it wouldn’t be here. If it were a “daughter” at all and not a mess of contradictions… If it were normal… It’s all its fault, it’s all its fault, it’s all its fault-

“I’m not proud of it. I’m not. I, uh… I do it to punish myself, mainly. The other reason is that it just relieves stress for me. You know, it’s pretty stupid. It’s a punishment but it’s also some sort of thing that relaxes me. What do they call those again? An oxymoron? Yeah…”

Cut to the aftermath, the thin red lines that are uneven and asymmetrical. Some longways while others are sideways, but more of the former than the latter. Feelings of relief and shame. It hangs its head as it wraps its wounds up with a cloth bandage.

“An oxymoron.” It is silent for a minute.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m sorry. It’s just really hard to talk about.”

“Take your time.” Abednego puts her hand on its shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“… W-well… Let me tell you how I met these three.”

It’s raining cats and dogs, and the streets are empty… sans Samson, walking alone. It is soaked from head to toe, shivering and miserable. It limps and stumbles forward. It is famished, but its wallet is emptier than its stomach. A poor sight.

“The three of us found it passed out right outside the gym! We were cleaning and closing up since there weren’t going to be any customers because of the thunderstorm, and Abednego saw someone outside face down on the pavement.”

“It’s a miracle you didn’t drown in the puddle since you were unconscious,” Meshach sighs in relief.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego lift Samson and open the gym door, running to the spare room. The walls have cracks in them and the bed is small and hard and worn, but at least it’s a room, at least it’s a bed. They look Samson over, yell for the owner. He walks in, tilting his head. He’s taller than the rest of them, fingers long and slender, his hair as white as snow.

“I didn’t really remember what happened while I was passed out on the bed, but I remember almost coming to. It felt like someone was over me.” Samson averts its gaze and starts to scratch at its forearms. A nervous habit. “I felt hot breath on my face a-and my wrists being held down, but then I fell asleep again.”

“T-that’s… that’s news to us.” Meshach’s eyes widen both in astonishment and anger. He’s too angry to speak. Shadrach and Abednego’s expressions follow suit.

“I thought it was a dream… but with what happened, I don’t really know anymore.”

“It clearly wasn’t a dream.”

“W-well… Anyway…” it stutters. “I came to about a day later. Woke up with new bandages and a new change of clothes. I wonder who did that, actually.”

“I did.” Abednego raises her hand. “I gave you some of my clothes, even though they were a bit too big,” she adds.

Samson wakes up in the small room with wet hair. Its new change of clothes are damp and quite large, but at least they aren’t soaked like the clothes it was in before. It wakes with the usual “where am I” and “what is this place”, but those questions aren’t answered. It’s alone in the room and its hair is unkempt and its clothes are wrinkly and disheveled. H-huh…

“We started to freak out when you woke up and came downstairs.”

Oh, u-uh, hey there! Shadrach rushes towards it. Our boss bandaged you up. Um… try downstairs. He wanted to see you anyway! He smiles nervously. It could light up any room.

What were you even doing before you passed out? Meshach tilts his head.

I was trying to get out from under the rain, Samson replies hesitantly before going downstairs. It awkwardly opens the door and the man behind the desk smiles with his arms stretching out welcomingly.

“I remember his face when he first saw me,” Samson sighs. “He was very charismatic the first time I met him.”

His office is much larger than the room it slept in, the walls papered with many motivational posters, mainly bearing excerpts from scripture or images of the cross (or both); he smiles and welcomes it in by holding out his hands. Ah, it’s so good to see you’re awake and well. His shirt is tight and stained with sweat.

Samson tilts its head and looks around the office before sitting down on one of the chairs. Where am I? it asks.

I like to call this place “the Sword”. It keeps staring. He sighs. We’re a gym dedicated to teaching and enforcing Christian values-

So, a crossfit place.

They keep talking. Samson gets agitated. The owner gets frustrated. He points to the bandages on its arms. I know what’s under there.

“When he said that, I… I was about to bolt, snap back, anything other than what I actually did,” it sighs dejectedly. “I just stood there and took it.” It laughs bitterly. “I’m not strong. I can’t even fight back when I need it the most.”

We have room for you, all you have to do is just work for me and I’ll provide you with a place to stay and some spending money. Can’t say no to that offer, can you? He chuckles. Just think about it, okay? Although… it’s either out there in the cruel world where nobody loves you or with me, someone who cares enough to take you in.

“And, well… I did. I started training more, working, and I made new friends. It was… nice. At first. One day though, he and I were alone. The guys were off getting some groceries, and I was in my room. He, uh…” It begins to stutter. “He, uh… he came i-i-in and…”

He enters without knocking as Samson is sitting up on its bed, and he motions it to scoot over without saying a word. You know- He begins to wrap his arm around Samson. -there’s something about you that’s so… special. He gives it compliments that amount to and mean nothing. You’re smart. Smarter than the others… Stronger… And much, much, much prettier.

Cut; What’s wrong? His free hand travels up and down its thigh, and Samson begins to tremble, terrified. It’s not like this is a bad thing… It tries to move, say something, fight back. Something. Oh God, get him off of me please gethimoffofmepleasegethimoffofmepleasegethimoffofmeplease- And then it happens anyway.

“I couldn’t move. I wanted to say something, tell him to stop! I wanted to kick him away, I wanted to get out of there. Anything. I just… I just sat there like an idiot. I didn’t want it, but… but I just fucking sat there!” Lightly scratching at its arms turns to digging into them.

He pushes it down on the bed, restraining its hands as Samson begins to whimper. Like the real Samson, tied down by Delilah. The screen fades to black. Then it’s over. The owner lazily tosses the blanket over its naked body as he turns the light off and closes the door.

“He told me to not tell anyone or else I’d be out on the streets. It would be a betrayal of our bond, our trust. I had no choice but to say yes at the time. I was scared of him, and what he would do, y’know? I, uh…” Samson continues after taking a deep breath. “I started to do… that again after about two months of being clean.”

This time, the cuts run deeper. It remembers how it could just peel the skin back if it wanted to. Most leave permanent scars while they used to heal up almost completely. And - looking at them - Samson regrets.

“I needed it. I couldn’t fight back whenever he would do that to me, and I needed to punish myself. It’s my fault that my dad kicked me out, and it was my fault that he had to hurt me. So I started to… ‘train’ myself again, started working out more. I didn’t want to be weak after what happened. Not again. Not again…”

Cut to an angrier Samson, getting into a fighting stance. One foot in front of the other, not too far apart, knees bent a little, and fists protecting your center line - where the most vulnerable places are. Three left jabs before it steps in with a right hook that makes the punching bag sway.

“I trained almost every day. About three or four hours. I gotta admit, it wasn’t the… healthiest schedule,” it chuckles awkwardly. “But I didn’t care at the time. I just wanted to be strong, no matter what I had to do.”

Shadrach walks up to it, candy bar in hand and smiles as it wipes the sweat off its brow. Take a break! You haven’t had anything all day. At least eat this… Please.

“I didn’t even want to eat. I… I didn’t want to get out of shape. Plus I didn’t deserve it. I don’t deserve it…”

I’m not hungry. It pushes the bar away. Not now, I’ll eat it later.

“Those… incidents with the owner… He did it to me more often. Once a month turned into two times a month turned into, well, whenever he felt like it. It wasn’t even violent and I… I still couldn’t do anything. I hated it. I hated myself.”

It runs on the treadmill as hard and fast as it can. Dizziness takes over, but it can’t stop. Not now. It needs to be faster. Stronger. It can’t fail now, it just can’t. Samson’s eyelids close slowly, its footwork is less steady, its heart is pounding out of its chest…

“I over-exercised to the point of passing out, and it hurts even more when you fall off a moving treadmill.”

“Meshach and Abednego carried it to the bed while I took care of the rest. It was out for a while. I made sure it ate, and there wasn’t much else we could do.”

“It’s funny, I can’t even care for myself.” It glances over at its friends, at the looks on their faces. “Eventually I just broke down. I broke down and told them. Then I immediately packed my bags to leave. Of course, they wanted to go with me, but I told them that I didn’t want them to ruin their lives just for me. I already felt bad just telling them and getting them involved…”

Cut to a duffel bag being hastily packed by shaking hands. It leaves in the dead of night, the moon and the stars nowhere to be seen, and it goes back to the bridge it used to sleep under. Clouds gather, and rain begins to fall.

“When you left, Abednego, Meshach and I went right to him and we threatened to call the police.”

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego have the owner up against the wall, demanding answers. Just what were you thinking?! Wani, call 911!

And tell them what, exactly? No evidence? No complaining witness? Not to mention Beatrice is disturbed! I’ll call the police on you for trespassing!

“He probably couldn’t have, looking back on it. Tenant’s laws and all. But at the time… We packed our bags a little while after it did, and we were looking. Looks like we ended up in the same boat anyways. We were homeless after that.”

“Well… not technically. We didn’t hear about what happened with you until much later.”

“Yeah…”

Underneath the bridge, with the sound of thunder roaring and the rain pattering on what passes for a roof, along with the imperfect symphony of horns honking and cars going by. Samson feels numb.

“After I left, a lot of things were going through my mind. Really bad things. And I… decided to act on them.”

Something its father gave it. A little tarnished, a little old. The blade is long, about one inch too long for it to be legal. Not that it matters. No one is going to care about that.

“I decided to end it. So I just got myself to bleed a lot - to the point where I could die - along with taking a capful of pills. Two ways of dying, basically. Don’t ask me where I got those.”

Its eyes open slowly, and a pool of blood is on the pavement along with vomit on its face, on its neck, on the ground. G-Goddammit… God… Dammit. Its hand curls up into a fist as it hits the concrete.

“As you can see I’m still here. It didn’t work. A police officer saw me bleeding, vomiting everywhere, and he called for backup and they escorted me to the hospital.”

“And that’s a good thing.”

“I’m not really sure if it is. Like, I’m here… What now? I can’t be fixed. I tried working out and fixing myself but I failed at that. I couldn’t stop him, and I can’t stop… this.”

What in God’s name were you doing?

… I was trying to get out from under the rain.

“I’m weak,” Samson says. “I’m weak. I spent all this time preparing and fighting for when something like this happens.” Its hands curl into fists, knuckles turning pale, and its nails dig into its hands. “But when it actually happens, I just stand there. All of my effort was for nothing. For nothing.” Samson looks down, avoiding the concerned glances from Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. “The stuff with my dad, the stuff with him, the things that go through my head… I can’t do anything right.”

“Don’t say that,” Meshach intervenes. “You’re trying, you’re here, and you want better.”

“But do I deserve better? I tried fighting for it last time, but look where it led. Fighting is all I’m good for, and I can’t even do that right.”

Chapter Text

“Is it alright if my thing’s not very… recent? I didn’t realize until recently just how bad it was. Or at least, I didn’t want to say it out loud until recent- oh, I’m repeating myself. Sorry.”

The Wallaby is in his forties, but his small stature and big brown eyes paint a practically pubescent picture. His thinning blond hair and faded blue shirt, patterned with a dated deco design, hint at his true age. He twiddles his thumbs and stammers with a faint accent.

“For those confused, a wallaby is a little marsupial that lives in Australia - like a kangaroo, but smaller.” The Wallaby pushes his hands together to illustrate his point. “I grew up in Australia, you see – maybe you can tell, from my voice and all, but not everybody catches on, so…” He taps the tips of his fingers together. “So that’s where I’ll start, I suppose.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment: a younger Wallaby and his parents in an airport. There’s no time for affection; the Wallaby can only shout a goodbye as he hurries off and away.

“A lot of people joke that Australia’s nothing but shrimp and killer animals. It’s actually a pretty nice place, lovely sunshine, beautiful houses, and quite affordable. But I didn’t get on with everybody there, so I wanted to find a better state.”

He crosses from the boarding gate and is nearly run over by a pool of strangers, all rushing towards the same destination. Mere seconds after the terminal doors shut, a taller, angrier man stomps onto the scene, scouting out the prey. Back on the plane, the Wallaby is sandwiched between a crying baby and a messy eater. He buckles up and waits for relief to set in.

“But it wasn’t long after I landed that I realized… America can also be a very dangerous place. I don’t even try to start things, you know, but trouble seems to find me anyway. Sometimes it’s like I’m c-” A glimpse at the J-Word in the audience. “Well, my point is, I get into a lot of scrapes.”

A strange suburb of strange houses with strange modernist designs. The Wallaby heaves a trash bag out the front door, but doesn’t get to the sidewalk before dropping it and rushing back inside. The drool of a snarling bulldog drips onto a moldy trash heap, dirtying up the bright green lawn.

“At first, I figured I could just stay home as much as possible. I still had to get groceries and do my laundry and all, and that wasn’t quite fun - ever have to rescue your dog from a butcher’s shop?”

Pua Mae raises her hand. “My dog knocked down a whole fruit stand once!”

The Wallaby blinks at Pua Mae. “I guess it’s sort of like that.” He shakes his hands and smiles unsteadily. “The point is, I tried to avoid bad luck by staying in my neighborhood, but uh… that didn’t quite work.”

A summer afternoon. The Wallaby mows his lawn in a neat little line. He wipes his brow with one hand. With the other hand, he waves to the woman in the neighboring window. The glass is steamed up, partly from her hot tea and partly from her breath.

The Wallaby gulps. “F-for the record, she’s actually quite a nice lady, most of the time. Or at least, she’s not nearly as frightening as her husband.”

The tape skips to a flickering image of said husband. He sports the world’s biggest frown, and his shouting often echoes across the city. Every night, when the neighbor’s headlights shine on the driveway, the Wallaby scampers inside for safety. This does not prevent the neighbors’ arguments from piercing through his walls. The Wallaby picks up bits and pieces - “work all day” and “like we used to” and “passion” and “bed”.

“I-I think she was just lonely, you know? And at the time… I thought m-maybe all she wanted was a friend to keep her company while Mr. B- her husband was at work.”

The Wallaby looks up from his raking to see his neighbor’s wife towering over him, dressed in clothes far too small for her size and her age.

“She asked if I could… help her around the house. Was that supposed to be code? She was a bit older than me - I mean, she still is - I assumed she just, you know, needed help.”

The Wallaby is good-hearted but responsible, and informs his neighbor, Actually, Mrs. Bighead, I’ve got quite a lot to do around here- He is unable to finish before she raises her voice. She doesn’t even need to drag the Wallaby inside - he follows behind, terrified, while she hums a happy tune.

“In hindsight, I probably should have seen the signs, but…” The tiny man tugs at his shirt. “I had no reason to assume she’d be attracted to a dag like me. I didn’t have too many friends yet, and yes, she was a bit scary, but I figured she was one of those people who’s intimidating without realizing it. She seemed to be a lovely host.”

Cut; the neighbor mixing two drinks, spending a little too much time on the one she serves to the Wallaby. He’s not quite thirsty, but he sips it to wipe the frown off her face.

“And nothing she had planned seemed to be too dangerous.”

Cut; the woozy Wallaby and his woozier neighbor on the couch watching a then-in-fashion CRT, emanating moans and grunts and funky music. Hands folded, the Wallaby tells his captor, It’s very well lit. He avoids any discussion of the film’s subject matter. Much like he avoids looking at her tube top, which has “accidentally” slipped down an inch.

“And I felt a little bad for her. I thought she needed my help.”

Cut; the “fresh lemonade” coming up the neighbor’s throat much less smoothly than it went down, and now the Wallaby needs to take off his shirt. The neighbor doesn’t have a replacement - Laundry isn’t done yet, maybe you can help me later?

“Now that I know a bit more about what counts as… harassment… I’m wondering if she actually liked me, or just liked that I was next door, that I was following her every command…” The Wallaby blinks, as if erasing images in his mind. “I followed her to the bedroom.”

The Wallaby sits on the bed while his neighbor fiddles with a gown. Rocko, dearie, could you help me? Of course he obeys.

“She said she needed help zipping up her dress… but I think she knew it wouldn’t fit.”

The Wallaby wrestles with the dress, only stretching it further. Eventually it tears open, and the woman it clothed is in no hurry to cover up. She chuckles and grabs a bathrobe. She does not tie it shut.

Hey Rocko, what do you think of these? The bathrobe opens in the Wallaby’s face.

“How do you respond to that?!” He clutches the sides of his head. “I mean, I did respond, ‘cuz I thought it was polite, but she took that as an invitation to…” He gags.

The Wallaby says they look nice. She backs him against a wall, a wicked wide grin on her face. Now he learns how they feel. How other parts of her body feel. He doesn’t quite know how he feels.

“She wanted me to talk to her… to touch her… tell her how pretty she was. And if I didn’t say the right things then she yelled and grabbed me… and she was strong.” The Wallaby rubs his wrists. “She never got my pants off, thank God. But then we both got an awful surprise.”

Footsteps and a voice booming, Bev? Are you home? The Wallaby feels his back slam against the wall. He tries to push his predator away, but his hands just sink into her flesh. When the door swings open and the two are exposed, the Wallaby’s captor pushes her red wet lips against the small man. When she surfaces, she flaunts a smirk at her husband and ignores the Wallaby’s panicky shudders.

“I tried to explain things to him, but he wouldn’t believe me. You didn’t hear much about that sort of thing happening to men in the nineties. Heck, we barely talked about it happening to women. I also think she slipped me something… Uh, not one of those things that knocks you out, but something that’s supposed to get you… uh, excited.” He crosses his legs in shame.

The tape rewinds to show the Wallaby sipping his drink and panting at the surprisingly spicy taste.

“My body reacted, but my brain never caught up. But only one of those things was visible to him.”

Fast-forward to a waist-up shot of the Wallaby, stammering, eyes darting around for a way out. His neighbor stares daggers down at him. The next shot shows the Wallaby, black-eyed, lying on the front lawn. His house is a few feet away, but the walk feels like an eternity.

“Like I said, lots of bad stuff happened to me all the time. I just chalked this up to another strange day and tried to forget it.”

The Wallaby sinks into his couch and flips through channels. Market crashes, polar shifts, space junk… His body’s still tense. He settles on his favorite channel, playing reruns of his favorite slapstick cartoon. A married couple, bearing a (perhaps uncoincidental) resemblance to the Wallaby’s neighbors, beat the daylights out of each other. The logic of their universe lets them bounce back unharmed. The Wallaby feels safe laughing. Glitzy ads for chicken and hamburgers play every hour. It’s okay. It’s all familiar.

His arms cross; not out of fury yet, but out of a need for security. “But he never really forgot it.”

The Wallaby and his neighbor, mysterious papers tucked under the latter's arm, walk down parallel driveways and step into their cars. The smaller man’s friendly wave goes unreturned. As the Wallaby gets onto the street, his neighbor’s car “accidentally” grazes his bumper.

“Maybe he wanted to forget it, or at least forget me, considering what he eventually decided to do.”

Rows of colorful comics sorted into shelves, thrown back haphazardly by equally colorful consumers. As the Wallaby tucks them back into place, the smell of ink and paper is dwarfed by the stink of cigars. I need to speak with you immediately, the source of the smell demands. Like always, the Wallaby complies.

“Apparently my neighbor pulled some strings and claimed I’m not an American citizen. Now it’s true that I was born in Australia, but I had my citizenship papers so I thought I’d be okay.” His face falls. “Well… I had citizenship papers.”

A small, spunky puppy bangs open a closet, itching for a snack. What he finds is low on nutrition but easy to chew, and that’s all the reasoning he needs.

“The Internet was still young then and it was harder to contact people about this sort of mishap. But they barely even gave me the time!”

He has one week. Court hearings are fruitless, and replacement papers won’t come in time. A (male) friend offers a green card marriage, but it’s waved off as too risky an endeavor. The best that the Wallaby can do is pack his bags and throw the saddest party of his life.

The Wallaby wrings his hands together. “It was a scary time, but I actually wasn’t alone. My best friend decided to leave with me.” An amused shake of the head. “It was wildly impulsive of him, but he had some family issues himself, so I guess he didn’t have much to stay for.”

The Wallaby yet again squeezes into an airline seat, now accompanied by a friend: a heavyset fellow in doofy suspenders with an even doofier smile. Dissolve; he tunes out his friend’s snoring and sleep-talk and stares at the clouds. Dissolve; a rough landing jostles the Wallaby’s friend awake, and they step into Gold Coast Airport. Familiar faces - family faces - smile at the Wallaby when he arrives.

“We spent over two decades there. Got an apartment together not far from my parents’ house, worked some odd jobs here and there. My other best friend would visit sometimes, though he has kids, so he couldn’t afford to uproot his life like we did. I totally get it. I didn’t want to go through any more changes myself.”

A confidential envelope with a first-class international stamp. The Wallaby tears it open. The seal of the Department of Homeland Security; the Wallaby’s real name digitally inserted into a standard apology notice. It ends with an invitation to reapply for citizenship. The Wallaby tosses it into a smelly corner of newspapers.

The man furrows his brow. “Frankly, in that moment, I saw no reason to return to America. The years I spent adjusting to that country and trying to be friendly didn’t do me much good. I had my family, and the few friends I did make, and I felt safe. Or at least, safer.”

Snapshots of the Wallaby’s midlife down under. A visit from an American friend, a stocky nebbish man in a large green sweater and thick glasses, showing pictures of himself with a redheaded wife and five near-perfect mixes of the two. A trip to the beach - the Wallaby under an umbrella and fully covered up. A trip to a national park, where the Wallaby watches his own namesakes scamper about; he’s almost envious. There are few new faces in the montage, and almost no women.

“It wasn’t a very busy life, and when I had to do something unexpected, it usually wasn’t too scary. And I liked it that way. I needed light in my life, and I got it.”

Repetitive shots of the Wallaby and his friends on a couch, eyes glued to the light on the TV - the same slapstick cartoon of the man and woman hitting each other. The friends laugh at jokes already burnt into their memories. One could practically see the television static reflected in their eyes. There’s static behind their eyes, too.

The Wallaby folds his hands and looks into the distance. “But all it took was one sudden change for that to fly out the window.”

Despite outsider jokes about killer animals, the biggest threat to Australians is heart disease, especially for the elderly. Three young men in brand new black suits enter an empty house - once home to three, then to two, and now to none. The Wallaby cautiously places two urns on a dusty fireplace. Two hands pat his back, one from each friend he has.

“My parents’ death kind of sent me into a crisis. Most of my relatives were spread out across the globe, and when we worked out the will, I realized I wasn’t actually attached to my house in Queensland. And there were signs cropping up that maybe I needed to get away again.”

Three friends clean up a living room - or rather, the Wallaby cleans up while his friends sit on their asses and pick one thing up every ten minutes. Everything but the TV and VCR is covered in dust. The heavyset friend moves his hand under the couch and pulls out a stained, wrinkly envelope. He squints at the lettering. Hey, Rocko, what’s “homeland security”? The smack of a broom handle dropping to the floor.

“Out of curiosity, I looked up my old street. Nobody’d bought my house in twenty years. Maybe my neighbors kept them away.” Intended as a joke, but the delivery is bitter. “The price had dropped massively, though. And like I said… I don’t necessarily like big change.”

The house hasn’t changed a bit, besides the lawn desperately needing to be mowed. The neighborhood, however…

“I wasn’t a total caveman. I could dial a smartphone. I have a Gmail account. But I live right by Conglom-O headquarters, and they pushed all sorts of new technology onto us. My friends caught on fast, but I felt like I was on another planet.”

Wallaby’s friends play with 3D printers and stick their mugs under self-serve yogurt machines. They buy the latest phones and then trade them in a month later for the latest latest phones. They offer to FaceTime the Wallaby. He grumpily holds up his brick of a Nokia.

“They replaced my comic shop with a kiosk and the grocery store with an indie bookstore. All I see is expensive clothing and weird devices and frozen yogurt and coffee places. So. Many. Coffee places.” The Wallaby throws his arms open in exasperation. “I thought I knew this place, I thought I could just settle back in, a-and then they go and… change it!” He breathes and folds his hands meekly. “And speaking of things I thought I could handle…”

The neighbors never left their humble abode. The man of the house isn’t thrilled to see the nearby “For Sale” sign disappear. As the Wallaby brings boxes into his house, he tries and fails to avoid eye contact. While the man who sent him away keeps his distance, his former assailant warmly greets him with a hug, seemingly oblivious to his wide eyes and pounding heartbeat. Perhaps she sees it as a sign of warmth in return? It’s not like he’s pushing her away.

“I still feel tense around them, but I don’t hate them or anything. She’s not weird to me anymore - she sometimes makes funny comments, but she does that with a lot of men and doesn’t mean anything by it. And she and her husband seem a lot more mellow. I guess they have to be, since they’ve been married fifty years. It wouldn’t do me much good to open old wounds, would it?”

The Wallaby politely accepts a dinner offer, but stays at the far end of the table. The husband chews his food while staring unblinkingly at his (wife’s) guest. She catches the Wallaby up to recent events and explains her husband’s sour mood - Things aren’t going well at work. Surely that’s the only reason, right?

“She also talked a lot about their son. A cartoonist, an amazing one.” A faint blush fades onto his cheeks. “I probably can’t say her name outright, or mention her work, cuz then people’ll figure out who her mum is…” The Wallaby coyly covers his mouth and smiles. “Oh yeah, when I say ‘son’, I mean they thought she was their son, and so did I until I saw her again…”

The Wallaby finds the “son” at her new ice cream truck. When she takes her hat off, long purple locks flow out. A close-up of her face; she’s wearing makeup. She tells the Wallaby her new name and he accepts it without question. She’ll take another name later on, inside the Palace.

“Yeah, that might give it away a bit, her transition was big news in the cartoon community, but don’t say anything outside this building.”

They get to talking, and the Wallaby’s cone has melted before they’re half done.

“Turns out she was going through a crisis too. Not the same kind of crisis, I assume, but she also left home for a while.” The Wallaby waves his hands frantically at the audience. “Don’t worry - nobody in the family hurt her. They have a rough history, emotionally speaking, but they’re good now. Her father didn’t really get the trans thing at first, but he’s figuring it out. And her mum adores her, truly.” The Wallaby gulps. “It’s sweet, but it makes things weird for me.”

A knock at the Wallaby’s worn-down door. He opens it and sees the woman, in a new dress and sensible pumps and holding twin chocolate bars. Everything about the image is pleasant, and he can’t help but blush. Hello, Rachel. You look lovely tonight.

Thanks, his friend replies. My mom bought me the shoes, and I feel like she’ll cry if I don’t wear them at least once.

It’s played off as a joke, but the Wallaby knows far too well what that older woman is like when her wishes are denied. He quickly changes the subject. So, uh, what time is the movie?

“I like their daughter. I… really like their daughter.” He twiddles his fingers. “I hardly knew her back then and even I can see how much happier she is now. She’s been nothing but kind to me since I came back, and she’s so cool and brave, and we like all the same shows, and she and her cartoons are the only things keeping me sane. Even more than my other friends.”

The Wallaby and his not-quite-date walk out of a movie theater, nibbling bits of popcorn. A dirtbag leaning against the wall shouts a false “compliment” at the girl. Something snaps in the Wallaby and he tries to retort, but all he can muster is a pile of nonsense words. The woman being catcalled doesn’t even look back. Just keep walking, she tells him. And like always, he complies.

Are- are you okay? the Wallaby asks, wringing his hands nervously.

The woman keeps smiling. I’m fine. Believe me, Rocko, I’ve heard and seen worse.

Oh. The Wallaby is once again at a loss for words.

Yeah. People suck sometimes. She waves him forward. Come on, my mom’s making burgers. It’s a quiet walk home from there.

“She doesn’t like to talk about her history very much, so I don’t want to bother her with mine, especially when it involves her family. They’ve all gone through so much themselves, and they finally seem happy. I feel love coming on, and I want it… but I feel stuck in the past.” The Wallaby looks to the audience, desperation in his baggy eyes. “Oh, why can’t the world just change for me?”

Chapter Text

“Pretty sure some of you believe in God.”

Abraham’s Daughters aren’t really a group of five; more like four plus one, and that one isn’t a daughter. Jerusalem thumbs through a journal, messenger bag thrown over one shoulder, head held high. There’s a rainbow ribbon braided into her long red hair. There’s a hand on her shoulder and an arm wrapped around her waist. Lower lip trembling, Al-Quds leans heavily to one side. There’s a purple unicorn on her sweater. Briefly, she lets go of Jerusalem, and adjusts one of the pins on her blue hijab. Shalem nods approvingly, petal-pink lips curled into a smile, shaking out her own glossy hair. Even now, she’s tap-tap-tapping away at her phone. Her sister repeats the motion on a calculator. Pink and blue hair dye; pale skin; white tracksuit. Zion throws a few glances over her shoulder, expression indiscernible.

Nineveh sits on the steps, dejected, blue cap resting on his knee: airline-issued, airline security.

“It’s okay if you don’t! It’s not a big deal or anything, I mean, hello? It’s a free country… -ish. And it’s not like we agree on everything, just because we all pray to the same God.”

“Ah, it’s a little more complicated than that…” Zion says.

“See! We’re having a dialogue, people! That’s what I’m all about!”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Jerusalem plays with Nineveh, who is not nearly as large as he will become. The camera switches to Al-Quds, half a world away, walking holy ground with casual giddiness. Another switch: Shalem and Zion together, climbing side by side onto a plane, just like their mom and dad. Remember, kids, if anyone asks, it was a family reunion.

“We have different faiths. Well,” Jerusalem corrects herself, “arguably they’re all different branches of the same original faith. Nineveh and I are Christian, see, and Al-Qud’s Muslim, and Zion and Shalem are both Jewish. But they’re all Abrahamic religions. The roots are the same but the practices are different. It’s all rather fasci-”

“Spot the Bible scholar, everyone.”

“For your information, I’m a Religions Major. My dad was a professor and I… well, I guess he rubbed off on me. He’s… gone now, probably, but he was a good dad. And a good Christian. A lot of people can’t be either.”

A boy pushes Jerusalem down in front of the church. A man with glasses (her father) argues with a blonde woman (the boy’s mother). You’re a Christian, Carlyle, you should start acting like one. At least for her sake… He lets Jerusalem sleep in next Sunday. He’s waiting for her in the living room with cupcakes and the Bible… and two other books.

Al-Quds in a Mosque, head lowered to pray. At home she takes to the internet, looking up all the things she didn’t understand… when she can remember them.

Zion celebrates her Bar Mitzvah, and Shalem giggles when they lift the chair.

That’ll be me soon!

Then you’ll be a woman. Her mother smiles fondly. Her father does not.

Nineveh in Sunday school with the woman who argued with Jerusalem’s father, sitting next to the boy who shoved her.

“Most of us grew up here, in Calisota. We just didn’t run into each other, for the most part. Maybe the different religions had something to do with it? I don’t know.”

Jerusalem listening to her father in wide-eyed curiosity. I wanna friend who’s different from me too! Just like Jesus!

Her father smiles at this. I actually think I may be able to do something with that…

“The only exception is Al-Quds - hey, how did you meet Jerusalem anyway?”

“Oh! We signed up for the same penpal program! Well, more like email-pal, but that’s not as catchy.”

“They have internet over there?” Nineveh blinks in shock.

“Of course, sillyb-” Al-Quds stops and freezes up, apparently horrified at what she’s just said. “I-I mean… I… I…”

“She’s Palestinian, not Martian. They have McDonald’s there too,” Zion scoffs. “Shalem and me were a little more, ah, let’s say… sheltered, as far as friendships went. We knew the same people our parents did, so basically just Jewish family members and… the WASPs.”

Girls crowd around Shalem at the country club, giggling and chatting and pushing each other into the pool. Zion hangs back, shirt on, arms crossed, wearing swim trunks. Zachariah, her mother pleads, you’re embarrassing me!

“It was kinda… private. Country club people act so high and mighty, but when they’re alone? When they think you’re one of them? You’d be surprised what comes out of their mouths.”

“Our parents didn’t want anyone to know we weren’t Christian, or Protestant for that matter. It’s complicated… Or… maybe not that complicated. People can swear up and down that they aren’t racist or antisemitic or homophobic, then they see the menorah in your window and you lose yourself a business deal.”

Nineveh nods, saying nothing.

Nineveh and the boy again, the latter’s lips curled in disgust. I don’t get it! How could anyone get along with them?!

Sunny seems to…

My mom told me Sunny doesn’t count.

“People are idiots.” Jerusalem rolls her eyes. “It’s really not that hard to get along with someone. All you have to do is talk to them! Only hanging out with the same people all the time… that’s how bad ideas get passed around.”

Al-Quds on one side of the screen and Jerusalem on the other. We’re gonna be best friends forever and ever and ever! She nods and smiles back.

Nineveh and his other friend: eating Graham crackers, riding bikes… The boy snatches Jerusalem’s doll out of her hands and Nineveh hands it back to her. He doesn’t say anything to his friend.

“Yeah,” Zion says. “Sometimes, though… you have to be careful. Our parents told us that a lot. Mom was… always preoccupied with what the neighbors would think. Dad too, but he-”

“Let me tell them. It’s my… I was the only daughter for a while. The rules are… different. And he thought they should be.”

A regular check-up, he says, shortly after his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah. It seems regular at first, normal even… height, weight, temperature. It’s not until the doctor says Lie down for me that something different occurs.

“Dad started taking me to this… doctor. At least Dad always said he was a doctor. I don’t know if he really was. I looked it up, there’s not a whole lot of practicing doctors that offer those, um, services.”

“Some people’ll do just about anything if there’s money involved,” Zion says tentatively, studying her sister’s expression. “He wasn’t having sex with her. Maybe they thought… it wasn’t that bad. Our old man thought it was necessary. And, yeah, I think he believed that.”

He takes Shalem out for lunch afterwards. Whatever my little petal wants for being such a good girl. She doesn’t eat much. That night she cuts up every magazine in her room - cuts the men out of all those pictures. No temptation. No boys.

“He wanted to make sure I was a virgin. I know people talk about Christians being repressed, but they don’t hold the monopoly.”

Nineveh cringes. Jerusalem glares at him.

Zion sits next to Shalem on the couch, playing with the cuffs on her jeans. Um… so yeah.

Okay… Do you have a new name?

Not yet. Shrug. Dad never picked a girl name for me, they chose after the ultrasound. Maybe I’ll ask what they think now-

Don’t, Shalem says icily. Don’t. Tell. Dad.

“Found out when I told my sister I was a girl. And here I thought my thing would steal the show.” Zion looks at Shalem. “She didn’t tell me exactly what it was…”

Zion on the tape frowns. What special doctor? And Shalem closes her mouth and goes pale.

“… but unlike Dad, she never said anything about talking to Mom about it. Or… about anything else we said.”

Zion in her mother’s bedroom, pacing back and forth. They’re squawking at each other like ill-mannered birds, just low enough that Shalem can’t quite hear with her ear pressed to the door, so still she dare not breathe. Eventually though, something gives and the mood drops like rain breaking through humid summer air. Their father isn’t at breakfast the next morning.

Cut; Zion in an interview room, her mother in the doorway. Zac-… Zipporah? It’s okay, just tell her what you told me.

“I… He got in trouble for some kind of medical thing because I was so young. It wasn’t really rape or… or sexual abuse legally, but… I still talk to him on the phone every once in a while. Or we meet up at a cafe or… I know that probably underscores the idea of me as a victim. He’s still my dad…”

“I get it,” Jerusalem says softly. “You do what’s right for you.”

Jerusalem grows up, grows older. Al-Quds starts wearing her hijab.

Are those unicorns?

Aren’t they pretty?!

Cut; Jerusalem tries on contacts. Cut; Al-Quds looks up other terms online… some religious, some not. Cut; Jerusalem on a college campus, showing off a picture on her phone, while Al-Quds does the same in her own country.

This is my girlfriend.

Isn’t she beautiful?

“My dad was totally supportive. I think he always kinda thought I might be gay, at least since puberty. I did have a lot of, ah, spicy Renaissance paintings in my room.”

“You can’t even thirst without nerding all over it.”

“DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR!”

Al-Quds giggles. “Yeah! DEATH! My family didn’t care that much either. I mean, Israel’s not the best place in the world if you look like me, but the whole ‘gay rights’ thing is better than it could be, y’know? And we had other things to worry about.”

Al-Quds with purpling bruises, sobbing on the video call. Jerusalem soothes from the other side of the world. Hey, it’s… it wasn’t because of me, was it?

Her girlfriend shakes her head, holds up her hijab. It was because of this.

“We live right on the border of that disputed zone. Things get… difficult.”

Jerusalem reaches over and squeezes Al-Qud’s hand. “It’s… not really a ‘dispute’ when one side has a formal army and the other doesn’t.”

“Or when one group is being pushed off their own land.” Zion looks into the crowd. “I know what my name means to some people. I’m sick of my people being used as a scapegoat or an excuse to do something that everyone should know is wrong.”

“You would have gotten along with Jer-Bear’s dad! He used to say things like that about… oh.”

“It’s okay.” Jerusalem forces a smile. “It’s been a year since he… yeah.”

A knock on Jerusalem's door. The Tailor and Pyrrhus with sorrowful faces. Ms. Starrett?

That’s me, what is this about?

There’s, ah, we have some bad news… concerning your father.

Cut; the name Carlyle Starrett repeats in the prayers of Jerusalem and her congregation. It disappears from the latter’s… never the former’s.

“He must have been jumped outside the airport in K of E. They never found a body, just a lot of blood. I don’t want to believe he’s dead, but… what else is there?” She looks briefly at the Emperor. “Some of the options are worse.”

Nineveh comes by with a pie wrapped in tinfoil. They sit together on the porch and the conversation turns to someone who has yet to offer condolences. I wish you wouldn’t take Jacob so seriously. You know how he is.

That’s the problem!

“I… We had this friend-” Nineveh wrings his hands. “-basically since diapers. He was always kinda… rude, I admit it, but I just thought he had an edgy sense of humor…”

“If it walks like a duck,” Zion mutters.

Nineveh and his friend together. Mostly good times. Mostly good conversations. Some off-color jokes he chooses to ignore.

“I mean, I always kind of thought it was just his mom. You know? She was always… intense. Very much one of those Christians. Well, uh, not those those, sorry, she and he were as shocked as anyone about the whole murder cult issue. Christians aren’t divided that neatly into good and bad. They were shocked and I thought that meant what they did do and say wasn’t a problem. I thought… I mean, I figured it was just jokes between friends.”

Jerusalem looks away. “… Never felt that way to me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’ve said that.”

She vents her frustrations at her computer screen, and the ever-faithful Al-Quds nods along. Oh, geez, Sunny, I wish I could be there…

About that…

Cut; Al-Quds steps off a plane.

“Pride was coming up. I thought… I don’t know what I… Maybe I just wanted to show off my beautiful girlfriend.” Jerusalem’s smile begins to dim. “Now I wish I hadn’t asked.”

“Don’t say that! It’s not your fault that-”

“I know, baby. I know.”

Rainbows and ribbons and music fills the air. Al-Quds and Jerusalem posing for pictures, splitting ice creams, kissing softly. It’s all fun and games until somebody shouts LESBO! And then they see Nineveh’s friend - red face, red eyes, redneck…

“He tried to rip my hijab off… except, um, minus the ‘try’.”

“I laid him out on the floor.”

Al-Quds has Jerusalem’s jacket on her head. Jerusalem has Sodom in her hands. The fuck’s wrong with you?!

It’s just a joke-

Newsflash, asshole! You ripped off a piece of clothing. Would you rip off my shirt?!

By now they are drawing a crowd.

“Long story short, we both kinda got kicked out.”

“Weren’t you just asked to leave?”

“Like I said. Kicked out.”

Al-Quds pulls Jerusalem away. It takes an hour for them both to stop shaking - fear; rage; adrenaline all around. Nineveh sits in his friend’s car, listening to him rant. Cut; camera phone pictures; half a video clip. Jerusalem and Nineveh listen in on different calls.

“He and I worked airport security. I know a lot of people say the TSA is racist-”

“They kinda are.”

“-but still, when they saw the video… they let him go. He wasn’t happy.”

“And they offered me a huge discount on tickets,” Al-Quds says glumly. “Enough to pay for Jerusalem to take a round trip home with me, and for me to fly back.” She turns to Jerusalem, eyes crinkling, face creasing. “I’m sorry.”

“Shh. Shh, it’s okay… Hey, c’mere.”Jerusalem draws her in, scowling at Nineveh behind her back. “I’m here… it’s okay…”

Jerusalem and Al-Quds hold hands as they walk into the airport. Neither sees Sodom in the crowd.

“We didn’t… I’d known him my whole life and we didn’t see him somehow. If… if I’d only known…”

Shalem offers a sad smile. “Uh, this is actually where we met them. We were supposed to be on the same plane.”

Zion and Shalem towards the front of the line. You left your big shampoo in the checked bag, right?

Uh… yeah, totally. Shalem turns her attention towards her phone.

“She did not leave her shampoo bottle in the checked bag.”

The alarm goes off as they’re passing through. Shalem roots through her bag and pulls out a bottle of hairspray. The alarm goes off again. And again.

“Eventually they just had me go with one of the security guards to have my things searched. Ugh. But yeah. I’ve really gotta work on my packing skills.”

I’ll meet you at the gate, she says. And Zion waits there. Waits there. Waits…

Ma’am, could I see you over here for a minute? Sodom holds a box in one arm - office supplies; locker contents; an uneaten lunch. He positions them over his chest, so she can’t see the badge that’s missing. I’m with the airline.

A sigh. “I was so… so stupid. So dumb. I should have known something was up.”

She follows him, and when she realizes she’s going into a closet, it’s too late. Sodom has a gun to her head.

“A stun gun, actually, but I thought it was the real thing. He had me get out my phone and put in a number - I didn’t know whose, at the time.”

“Mine,” Nineveh says tentatively. “You've probably guessed that by now.”

A finger tapping a hands free device. Hello, Abram Hitch-

This is Officer Storm of the Calisota PD. I’m calling in regard to… a suspicious person… on the premises.

His eyes widen. Someone we should watch out for?

Someone you should detain.

“I tried to talk as weird as I could get away with. I thought maybe he’d get it. I was wrong.”

“I-in my defense, I thought she was a police officer.”

“What, do you do everything you’re told?”

“Yes!”

Nineveh with a hand on Al-Quds’ shoulder, eying her hijab like a loaded gun. If you’ll just come with me, Miss. Jerusalem pushes between them, first confused, then shocked, then angry.

“I ended up going with her. Because someone wouldn’t listen to reason…”

“Jerusalem!” Al-Quds places a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. He… he didn’t realize. It’s not his fault.”

Nineveh sighs. “You don’t have to say that.”

A detention room in the back. Shalem pouting on the side; Al-Quds walking in meekly; Jerusalem glaring daggers. Zion says what she is ordered to say, and Nineveh listens. Miss, I’ll need you to remove that hijab, we have a report there might be something in there.

Al-Quds holds onto the scarf. O-oh, um… that’s fine, but could you maybe ask a female officer to check? I’m not supposed to remove it in front of a man.

Nineveh pauses, starts to nod. Then something - someone (Officer Storm) - stammers in his ear. There’s no time!

“I kinda… didn’t let him. Like, I tried to push him off. Maybe I-I shoulda just went with it, but… but… He wasn’t supposed to see me like that! He’s not my brother, he’s not my dad…”

“I just did what she told me to,” he says quietly, nodding at Zion. “I know, that sounds bad. I know…”

Nineveh holds up the scarf while Jerusalem screams at him. Shalem stands petrified against the wall. Al-Quds covers her eyes and whimpers, pepper spray still thick in the air.

N-nothing in there, Ma’am.

She’s probably hiding it under the rest of her clothes.

“But… I couldn’t find anything, even when I took them off.” A sigh. “I-I should have known something was wrong. I should have…”

“I-it’s okay,” Al-Quds says quietly. “You didn’t… you didn’t realize-”

“It’s not okay, and you don’t have to pretend it is just to make me feel better!”

Jerusalem throws herself at him, her ponytail flying, bow in the air. You’d better let my girlfriend go!

I’m telling you, Nineveh says once more. There’s nothing there. I think you’ve got the wrong person-

Then she must be hiding it inside. Zion’s voice is shaking, but not enough.

“I believed him… her… whatever… I still… I’m sorry…”

Trying to rub the pepper spray from her own eyes, Jerusalem frantically grasps at nothing. She reaches for Al-Quds, Nineveh… either one of them. Shalem drops down to her knees.

“I’m not, like, traumatized from what happened when I was a kid or whatever. I’m fine now. I just don’t like seeing people naked, okay? And the way he was leaning over her…”

Nineveh snaps his fingers in front of Shalem’s face. Miss? Miss, are you okay? She screams and flails away from him. Just like Al-Quds. And - this time - the sound echoes through the receiver of the phone.

“And… I… I couldn’t help it. I yelled out.”

Oh my God! Philippa!

Something occurs to Nineveh at that moment. Ma’am… where did you say you were calling from again?

“I called the police. I asked if there was an Officer Storm who worked there, and if she’d called me, and if the airport had reported any… threats… recently.”

“Lemme guess- no, no… annnnnd no.”

“Yes.”

His phone rings a few more times while they wait. Jerusalem on the floor, Al-Quds with her face buried in her scarf. Nineveh sits, despondent, next to Shalem, staring straight ahead. Cut; handcuffs; policemen; sinks full of milk. Zion gives her shaky statement to the Tailor’s girlfriend. Shalem helps Jerusalem help Al-Quds into the back of a cab. Cut; Nineveh and Sodom. Two holding cells. They glare at each other through the bars till golden-haired Gomorrah arrives.

“Not gonna lie, it was hell. He - my… ex-friend got bailed out before me. His mom. It was like she didn’t even see what the big deal was, like- They’re not good people. Why didn’t I notice it before?”

Jerusalem gazes sadly at him. “Because he was your friend.”

Chapter Text

“My father trains horses for a living, gives riding lessons, things like that.”

The Horse-Tamer rides shotgun in a truck, fiddling with something - a heart-shaped locket - weaving the cord between her fingers till the skin turns white. She’s slight, but in that wiry way, and simply dressed, jeans and boots and an orange ribbon pulling back her tangled mane of hair. Her lip’s still wet and there’s an open bottle of water in the cup holder beside her. She keeps both hands out of her lap. Her legs are twisted and there’s blood on her jeans.

“We don’t make as much money as you might think that way. Running a farm’s expensive. And messy. And Danny and Molly are too little to help much, so Mom and I ‘ve gotta do it. The feeding, the mucking out the stalls - you know, that stuff.” A bite of the lip. “It’s… gotten harder since the business started slowing down.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a man with a curry comb and mud up to his elbows, pulling burrs from the mane of a thoroughly unimpressed stallion. The horse pulls against the rail and bridle-reins wrapped around it. The Horse-Tamer lays her hand on his muzzle, whispering gently. And the stallion calms.

“I guess it started a few years ago… There was a string of disappearances nearby. I sometimes heard the grownups talking about it. All supposedly unrelated.” She shrugs. “I don’t know a lot about it, all I really know was that it was mostly kids. I, uh… I guess I know exactly where they were taken, now.”

She rides into town with her father, holds her sister’s hand in the store. Her brother is harder to control.

Megan, look!

And he points to a mural of fluttering paper faces. Missing posters - old and faded, new and still-glossy. It’s not enough to cover the wall completely. But Halley is a small, small town.

“It wasn’t too many at first, but every time we went into town there were more of them. My parents… they love me, okay? They love me. They weren’t too worried about us though - the house was out in the middle of nowhere. You could run for hours - you could ride for hours - and never get anywhere at all. Th-that’s how I found my castle.”

Black ash against the broad, western skyline. A ruined structure, stone and wood and rubble, and a silo tower blasted black as winter sky on one side. The Horse-Tamer stumbles through it, nose wrinkling at the smell - something fouler than wood smoke, but not stronger. In the Horse-Tamer’s eyes, the blocks of stone seem bigger, the tower stretches higher, and she’s sure she sees a window in the top.

“I liked to think that was what magic smelled like.”

She makes a throne in the middle of the fallen palace - red robe, blue stone at the middle of her forehead. You look beautiful, princess! She smiles and looks out over her public. Wild horses kneeling before her on the ground… but not just horses.

“We would play games with my Equestranauts toys. I’m good with real horses, but they don’t have horns or wings or anything… and Molly always wants to play her way at home.” She rubs her eyes with the heel of her hand. “A-and Danny’s a boy so he always p-pretends like he’s not… into… things like that… I just wanted some friends my own age. Most of them weren’t, though.”

Seven maids and a single boy, counting the Tamer herself. There’s a white-blonde witch in a long pink dress and a pigtailed stablehand with freckles across her cheeks. The klutzy, sun-tanned jester. The fae pair with feathered wings and colored hair. And the dragon and the little knight, even younger than the Horse-Tamer is. The rest are older.

“The bricks and stuff shifted around sometimes, they were pretty loose, and we found cool stuff under them. I’d use those for the games too. I thought maybe I was right and there really had been a wizard’s war there.”

Broken blades of pixie swords and pikes. Long glass-and-metal wands with gleaming tips and wires still hanging out. Pieces of chain and rope. And a magic mirror. Smooth glass, obsidian-bordered, with a gleaming green gem set at the top. Through it she sees the barest flicker of a fair-haired princess, dancing, and then it dies.

“I started going out there every day once my chores were done - sometimes before if I could manage. I told Mom once, about it and about my friends… but I don’t think she believed me.”

Megan, honey, I think you’re getting a little old to play princesses. The Horse-Tamer doesn’t mention it again.

“I told my siblings too, but not where it was. I didn’t… I thought they might make fun of me. Or that my friends would like them more. Silly, right? Yeah…”

She runs through the creek with the pink-winged fairy, shaking water from her hair. One trail; one shadow; one set of footprints through the dirt. And the ruined tower glares down at them.

“I had to return Mom’s bathrobe eventually. She wasn’t too happy that I got it dirty… and eventually my sister wanted her necklace back. That was okay though, we just played without them.”

No robes, no stone; the tower stands abandoned. The Horse-Tamer conjures the dust up in front of her and the wizard answers in kind, hands aflame.

“I kept thinking about the thing I was using for a magic mirror. No one in my family is, uh, tech-y, but my dad has a tablet he uses for accounts and emails and stuff, so I know what one is, and I recognised it. I thought it was broken, but I remembered it came on for a moment when I pressed the button the first time. So I started taking it home to charge it. I mean, if it’s showing stuff, it’s an even better magic mirror, right? And it didn’t belong to anyone anymore.”

It must have done at some time. She finds what looks like an email program. Typed and recorded messages, and saved video chats. A scrawny man with thin brown hair, dressed in ragged brown. A huge man, ruddy-faced and with a bushy beard of flame-red shot with ashen grey, sometimes with a curly-haired child in pastel colours at his knee.

Centaur: I need another shipment by the end of the month - say, about four girls? 1980Ff’s all washed up.

Gargoyle: How’s Spike?

Centaur: Fine for now.

The Horse-Tamer doesn’t read or listen closely. Boring grown-up things, she thinks.

“It showed me my friends, too.”

Her friends move across the screen like living tapestries. The witch screams, burning red dots all over her body - a living star map. The knight stares into the ‘mirror’ and forces a smile, eyes huge and terrified. One of the fairies puts a hand between her legs and the camera zeroes in on it, going lower… lower… lower… until the Horse-Tamer can’t see her face anymore. None of them are wearing clothes. The Horse-Tamer thinks nothing of it. She’s swum naked in the creek before.

“But… but my friends didn’t like that.” She coughs up dust. “At least… I-I don’t…”

She returns with the mirror at the end of the next day. To an empty field. To an empty castle. And her friends are nowhere in sight.

“I called out for them. I got really worried. I… I started looking through the rubble. I know it’s dangerous to climb on fallen rocks, but I thought they were hurt.” More coughing, not quite laughing. “They were.”

She thinks she hears calls of Go back, go back! But she doesn’t. The Horse-Tamer climbs, sure-footed as a goat until the rubble shifts. She loses her footing, pitches down from the tower into the dungeons below.

Firefly! Medley! Twilight!

But nobody catches her and she lands with both legs twisted under.

“It hurt so bad. But… once I caught my breath, I remembered the mir- the tablet. I wish I hadn’t…”

The shallow light illuminates the pocket she’s found herself in. And that the Horse-Tamer is not quite alone.

“Th-there were my friends, down there with me, but… but not like before…”

About all that’s left to recognise is their heights. Scorched skin drawn tight over skulls, mummified fingers grasping. Traces of unburned hair in her friends’ colours, still clinging to the rubble-crushed, fire-ravaged bones. Bits of red between their fingers. The Horse-Tamer screams and screams and screams, and no one is there to hear, even long after her call falls silent.

“I don’t know how long I was down there! Hours and hours, maybe days. It was so dark and I couldn’t move, there were gross bugs and rats and stuff and I couldn’t even sit up, and there was no water or anything.” She holds up her rodent-bitten fingers. “I thought I was gonna die…”

Trapped away from wind and sun, not sure if she’s dreaming, sure she’ll never stand up again, she hears her friends’ voices, sees them in shadow. Hold on, Megan, hold on… just a little longer… please… The tablet’s still lit up, the charge not yet burned away.

“I didn’t know how to get it to call 911 or my parents, the messaging thing is weird and it only calls a few people? So… so I called you.”

The driver takes one hand off the wheel and puts it on her arm. Hair so red it hurts to look at.

“Thanks so much, Mr. Centaur.”

Chapter Text

“So, uh, the Swallow can’t actually come here, but you said no real names mentioned.”

Heungbu has dark hair adorned with purple flowers, matching her violet eyes. Pumpkinseed has blue eyes and much longer brown hair. Both are in their early-to-mid teens and both look nervous.

“Growing up, my aunt Christie would tell my cousins and me fairytales about- well, from Korea. Janghwa Hongryeon jeon, Heungbu and Nolbu. We thought of using those for names, but Nolbu’s the bad guy in that story… kind of. It was written in the Joseon dynasty and-”

“Um, Heung? We’re getting a little-”

“Sorry, sorry…” She giggles, more out of nerves than anything. “This isn’t a fairytale. And if it was, it’s more like the old ones, where people get their eyes gouged out.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Heungbu and Pumpkinseed, leading normal lives. School; part-time jobs at Heungbu’s family bakery and a pet shop on the bottom floor of Pumpkinseed’s apartment building; more friends and the kind of harmless enemies schoolgirls make.

“We’re having good lives, generally, and good things to show for them.”

“Yeah. What happened didn’t exactly happen to us. In the story, the bad thing happens to the swallow, so…”

The other side of the world; hi-tech signs in hangul. A brown-eyed woman with a long braid, and a small, slight girl with a blue flower in her purple-black hair. This is the Swallow, long before she meets the speakers, before either party knows the other exists, before any of them need a Palace name.

“I think her mom’s a consultant - one of those jobs where you have to travel all the time. And Pumpkin’s dad is a pilot.”

A man with graying brown hair, in and out of the apartment at odd hours. He drags a red travel suitcase behind him. Pumpkinseed meets him at the airport, carrying around its clone.

“They’re cheap. A lot of people have bags like that. A lot of people… I mean, I don’t anymore. And Dad threw his away. After… what happened, it felt weird to keep them.”

The Swallow carries no bag, and her mother only a handbag - and that is purple, not red. They step from the elevator in a high-rise building, into a shiny, friendly clinic. It might seem like a simple doctor’s appointment, if one only reads English. Inside the doctor’s office, there are photos of faces with dotted lines drawn around eyes and along cheeks, like craters on the moon.

“See, the Swallow was- is from South Korea, like my family. It’s like what Kotei said about Japan, a lot about it’s great, but a lot really isn’t. And one of the things that’s not great is they’re really, really fixated on how you look. Something like one in five women there has had plastic surgery, and there’s no legal age limit on when you can start. The Swallow’s thirteen. She was gonna get her eyelids tucked. Bigger eyes are supposed to be prettier. That’s actually been a thing in Asia for centuries, though I guess it’s not true to say there’s no influence from white people involved. America sets the world’s beauty standards.”

“She said it was her twelfth birthday present. That makes her mom sound bad, but Heungbu’s aunt said it’s not so much like that. I don’t like the sound of it, but… a lot of moms there apparently feel bad for passing on whatever genes made their kids not be born ‘prettier’ and they’re trying to ‘fix’ it. Pretty people get better jobs and stuff, too, and it’s not like that doesn’t happen here… She just wanted her to have an advantage.”

The “doctor” draws two big circles around the Swallow’s eyes. She smiles up at him nervously. Migug sonyeocheoleom! He lowers the mask over her mouth and nose.

“There are a lot of scam clinics there too. Some of them fake their license. Some of them don’t use the right medicine - people die that way, you know? And sometimes… Well, we’re here. He didn’t ‘fix’ her eyelids, he just put her out and waited for someone to sneak in through the back. Like she was just… a thing! Something to take!”

There’s more than one elevator in such a big building, and such a small girl is easy to fold up in a crate. She sleeps through the truck journey, and before she knows it she’s over the water and it’s too late.

“We don’t know if it was the Ark, but they’re the ones who dare to take people who’d be missed, right? The Swallow had a mom who loved her and might have been listened to if she told, and they took her in broad daylight. Gotta be them. There’s no risk for people like that.” Pumpkinseed hugs herself. “It’s scary. My dad loves me too, but he’s around even less than her mom.”

“She did mention a Mr. Pig,” Heungbu says. “So yeah, gotta be them. They took her over to Europe, she doesn’t know where. She was there for… a while.”

It’s Malta, though the Swallow can’t tell. She can’t speak the language and she catches only a glimpse of outside. The place she ends up is more like the Castle-Builder’s one-time institutional home than the warehouses; she’s kept in a small room, with bars on the windows. She scrabbles and claws and beats at the bars until her hands bleed. N-nal bonaejwo! It does no good.

“And they did some stuff to her there.” Heungbu bites her lip. “Not like… They wanted her to stay pretty so it was mostly things that wouldn’t leave a mark.”

People, mostly men, come and go. Even while she cries they’re laughing.

Naneun dangsin-i geugeos-eul hage duji anh-eul geos-ibnida!

Of course she has no choice. They hold her jaw and instruct her to Swallow. A woman does the same when she won’t eat without force. Then they beat her until she bleeds.

“Eventually they moved her again. Best we can figure is some guy in the States…”

A porky, snout-nosed man comes to take her and the Swallow is too small to fight - would be even if she was healthy, and she hasn’t eaten well in months. Another man presses another mask over her face. They wrap duct tape around and around her arms. Cut; the Swallow wakes up in total darkness for a second time. She tries (and fails) to scream.

“And that’s where the suitcases come in.”

A flight back from Dover. Pumpkinseed and her father take cases from a baggage carousel. Pumpkinseed messages her friends - i brought souvenirs for you all! - and doesn’t notice “her” case has air holes.

“I do kinda-volunteer work for this lady who runs the pet shop near my apartment. My ‘coworkers’ are mostly older kids - but not that much older. Not weird older. Besides Vinnie, but he’s… Anyway.” She clears her throat. “We were all really excited so I opened the bag in the middle of the store.”

The smell of urine hits them first. Then the zipper comes down completely. The stark naked Swallow staring up at Pumpkinseed, skinny little body wrapped in tape and little else.

O-ohmygosh! Are you okay?

The Swallow shakes her head - out of terror and not understanding. The group rush to help, offering jackets and blankets and water.

It’s okay! It’s gonna be okay! Where did you come from? What’s your name?

The Swallow babbles, trying to say everything at once and saying very little. What comes out is Han'g, Cho Jebi! Han'g, Cho Jebi!

“Kind of the other way around from the fairytale. The swallow brought the pumpkinseed to Heungbu in that.”

“I don’t speak Korean, and the Swallow didn’t wanna talk to adults - I guess I see why - so Heungbu helped calm her down.”

“She said a lot of stuff like ‘I won’t let you’ and ‘please don’t’, and… well, she wasn’t making a lot of sense.”

Heungbu translates. What was that about a weasel?… Oh, sorry, she’s speaking really fast… She says her name is Jebi Cho. Heungbu comforts. Gwaenchanh-ayo. Pumpkinseed runs to the phone, lets the law know.

“That was before… everything, but the officers who came to talk to us were really nice! I feel bad for the Swallow, though. It must have been really scary. They didn’t have anyone on staff who knew Korean, so…”

The Swallow in a hospital room, crying hysterically. Heungbu’s aunt stands next to her - cajoling, encouraging - and eventually persuading her to open her mouth. Nal nwajwo! Nal nwajwo!

“The Swallow told me, too, but we’re kind of old enough to guess anyway. No one takes a kid’s clothes and ties them up for good reasons.”

“Still, I kind of hope no one who worked for the bad guys got killed over the mixup. Even if they’re not good people, I don’t wanna be responsible for that. It could happen to anyone, right? Well, at least we could get the Swallow home.”

Skype calls and the Swallow and her mother weep and wail and hug the tablets. Pumpkinseed’s father steps onto his hired plane that moonless evening, and whisks her up and away with Heungbu and Pumpkinseed waving her off, and she’s home before the morning.

“So I’m here because I heard and understood all of what she said. I didn’t translate all the details she gave me, but Pumpkin might still have needed to come…”

“… but really, I’m here because it was my suitcase. I’m the one who saved her, but it wasn’t because I did anything heroic. If I hadn’t done something dumb no one would ever have found her, and that feels weird. And I’m also here because… the case that was really mine had my name and email address on the tag.”

The inside of an evidence locker. The Swallow’s case is pushed inside by hands in blue sleeves. The luggage tag lists an address. Cut; that address is an empty house still For Sale in a nondescript area. No names mentioned. No leads. No nothing.

Pumpkinseed is pale as a Casperita, pale as the moon. “Not my home address, and I’m a minor and my last name is pretty common, so it’s a little harder to find me than it could be, but still. I friendslocked all my social media and changed my email address, but I don’t know if that’s enough. I hope they’ll never find me.”

Heungbu rubs her arms and gulps. “It turned out… it could be worse. We did a good thing, she got to go home. But she’s not a magic fairytale swallow. If we need it now, she can’t help us.”

Chapter Text

“How we got here is mostly his story.”

All eight members of Tent D sit upon the stage, legs crossed or bent or dangling. All are boys, the youngest twelve, the oldest sixteen; different heights and weights and races, but all with fading tans and calloused palms. The one who spoke wears bottle-bottom glasses, and goes by X-Ray. The one he pointed to is gangly and curly-haired, sitting in the middle of the group at centre stage’s edge. He’s called Caveman.

“I guess,” he says, shrugging.

The boy next to him, also curly-haired and far smaller, says, “Sure it is. Well, ours, I guess.” This boy is Zero.

“Yeah, his too,” Caveman says, and nudges Zero.

“Well, yeah, but he don’t talk much.” Another boy in a backward baseball cap. White-skinned and with sandy hair, eyelids flicking, fingers clicking. Twitch.

“Caveman, c’mon, you gotta at least start it.” A huge boy with arms like tree trunks and a distinct sweaty smell. Armpit.

“Just like you finished it.” A brown-haired boy with a persistent scowl. Squid.

“And your part goes way back. Like way back.” The tallest boy, with a shock of blond frizz and eyes just like the Page’s. Zigzag.

“Yeah!” A boy with a strong Mexican accent and hair hidden under a do-rag. Magnet. “Tell ‘em about your no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealin’ great-great-grandfather!”

Caveman laughs, and the boys thump each other on the back and ruffle each other’s hair; but there’s a strange caution to their movements, as if they are relearning how to move around each other, watching for a cue to stop, from each other or their audience. As if they’ve never expressed affection before.

“Okay, okay, guys, quit it! I’ll start!” Caveman sits up straight and clears his throat. “So it all began with my no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing great-great-grandfather… and the one-legged gy- er, sorry, Dancer - the one-legged Romani.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a century and a half and more ago, a farming town in the hills of Latvia.

“His name was Elya. Elya Yelnats. Slavic name. And he was… not in love, I wouldn’t say, but at least in like with this girl.”

“Myra Menke.” Zero doesn’t speak exactly, but his lips form the words.

A girl who is not quite yet a woman, with an aging father and golden hair. The beauty of the tiny town. All heads turn as she passes by, most notably those of an older and a younger man. A pig farmer with a bulging stomach and gray beard… and Caveman’s grandfather, with a face that is still pretty and simple clothes and dark, dark hair.

“Her father wanted her to get married and obviously my-”

“His no-good-dirty-rotten-”

“Twitch.”

“What?! It’s fun to say!”

Caveman sighs. “Well, he wanted to be the one - duh - but there was this other guy too. A gross old dude, but he was rich. Myra’s father cared more about that.”

“That was back when they still had dowries.”

“And the old dude offered his biggest pig.”

“So Elya went to the old fortune-teller-witch lady - yeah, Dancer, we know not all Romani are witches, but this lady was.”

She gives him the smallest piglet of her sow’s litter. It will grow, she says, and provides instructions.

“This was back when everyone believed in magic, too.”

“He had to take the piglet up the mountain…”

“… let it drink from the stream…”

“… and sing it a song.”

“G’wan, Caveman, sing!”

Caveman flushes, but sings, and not too badly.

“If only, if only, the woodpecker sighs,
The bark on the tree was as soft as the skies,
While the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely,
He cries to the moon ‘if only, if only’…

“Well, my family translated it from Latvian, obviously. But that’s kinda the gist. And he had to do that every day, and at the end, he had to carry Madam Zeroni - that’s the witch lady - up the mountain too.”

The man and the piglet climb the mountain to the stream. Again and again. And it does grow larger, true to the old woman’s words. Before long so does the man that carries it, his arms and back and legs strengthened by the weight and by the climb itself. Up and down and over and over. On and on and on it goes. Ja tikai, ja tikai, tad dzenis nopūšas, koka miza bija mazliet mīkstāka…

“Pretty soon the piglet was full grown and really big. Like really big.”

“Big enough that he thought he might win over her old man.”

“Right. So he went to the guy’s house and the old guy went and they both brought their pigs with them. The dad wanted to measure them.”

“And get this,” Zigzag says. “They both turned out to be the same size.”

“Daddy dearest let his daughter choose.” A long whistle. “And did she ever take her time.”

The girl’s brow furrows and she thinks, and thinks, and thinks, and finally lights up. I know! I will think of a number between one and ten…

Yelnats tears up and throws down the bouquet he brought. Marry Igor. You can keep my pig as a wedding present.

“So, yeah. He realised she didn’t care any more than her dad did, and I guess he was a passionate guy. Changed his mind really quick. He packed up and sailed away for America that same day, but… he hadn’t taken Madam Zeroni up the mountain like he promised. So, bit more of a roundabout theft than you’d think, but he agreed to a price and didn’t deliver, so it counts.”

“ ‘Pig-embezzling great-great-grandfather’ don’t sound as good, does it?”

“And Madam Zeroni, she was mad about that! So… ”

“… she cursed his whole family, forever and ever!”

Caveman laughs. “We never really believed in curses, but now I wonder.”

The tape runs on fast forward. Yelnats in America. He meets a woman, lands a job (though not in that order). Things are hard for him, often going wrong, but he’s Ellis Island and Slavic on top of that. And things go wrong in these troubled times for people like him. Eventually he gets married and has a son.

“They named him Stanley. My great-great-grandmother liked it. Yelnats backwards and an American name. My family’s named all their sons Stanley ever since.”

“Nice going, genius, you broke the rule.”

“What? Oh…” Caveman chuckles. “Um, I guess you know what my name is now?”

Stanley Yelnats the Fourth, a.k.a. Caveman, grows up in a tiny apartment filled with himself, his parents, his grandfather, his father’s attempted inventions, a smell which brings the neighbours around to complain regularly, and the rhyme from long-ago Latvia, hummed or whistled or sung over and over again.

“See, my dad’s like crazy smart, and he’s an inventor, but not like the Pioneer sort of inventor, not really a gadget type. He’s a chemist. What he was working on since I was a kid was a cure for this really nasty strain of foot fungus. Weird thing to fixate on, but he was sure he was gonna find the cure any day. And that was where my bad luck kicked in… ”

Caveman walks home from school, and happens to walk through an underpass. As he exits, a pair of designer sneakers fly from the railing, silhouetted against the sun for a moment, before they land directly on his head.

“That was weird, not gonna lie. What’s weirder is I recognised the smell. It was the same thing my dad was trying to cure - and a bad case, too. Not really a religious guy as such, but I thought if anything was a gift from God this was. If Dad could clear up the smell of these shoes he could cure anything. Thought the family’s luck was turning around… but nope.”

“This is where my story comes in,” says Zero, “at least for a little bit.”

Another spotlight brightens the image, another fragment starts to play; a young woman and a tiny Zero travel by day and night, from place to place, never stopping - or at least, not for very long.

“My mom and I were homeless. I think we might have had a house once when I was super little, but I’m not sure. I do remember a yellow room.” Shrug. “Most of what I remember is just shelters, though, or bridges, or doorsteps. Whatever was there.”

Zero sits on the jungle gym structure of a old playground, clutching a ragged stuffed giraffe. His mother is nowhere to be seen.

“When I got older, she started leaving me alone more and more, and for longer periods of time. One day she didn’t come back. Then I was on my own.”

Hunger drives him to leave the playground, and to steal. Flash-cuts over years.

“Problem was, well, livin’ like that, I never actually went to school, and I never learned how to read. So I couldn’t understand signs…”

A homeless shelter full of wealthy people; a charity auction. A pair of sneakers on a table. Zero cannot read the name on the sign above them.

“I didn’t know the shoes were famous. I just thought they were shoes and I didn’t have any. So I took those.”

He reaches into the display case and walks out with the sneakers. No one stops him, but someone notices their absence on his way to the door. Panic erupts around him and Zero panics too. As soon as he can, he disposes of the evidence, tossing the shoes from the overpass.

“Wanna know the really stupid thing? I got busted a couple days later tryin’ to lift some other sneakers from a store. Ugh. But, uh… yeah, it was kinda my fault, what happened to him.”

“If it hadn’t we’d all still be back there.”

“Guys, they did say there’s a rule about no blame-throwin’ here.”

“Right, right. So, uh, those shoes? Caveman’s name wouldn’ta been on the news ‘cause he’s a minor, but you know Clyde Livingston? Those shoes.” Tent D and the audience all wince at L’Ingenue’s and Five of Shades’ high-pitched squeals of recognition. “Yeah, yeah, and he was sellin’ ‘em for charity, so the judge’n’jury were all mad from the start.”

“I got found guilty real quick, and the judge said I could go to jail or to Camp Green Lake. And Green Lake’s pretty far from Calisota, and no one Googles random juvies regularly, so I didn’t know what it was really like.”

“Lucky you.”

More spotlights, more movie fragments; bits and pieces of each boy’s life. Squid in an apartment that smells of alcohol. His mother and her revolving boyfriends, some of whom leave her black and blue and others with wandering hands and eyes. Zero as a street child, too young to understand yet the danger of dark alleyways and strange men. For others, blue uniforms dance across the reel. Faceless men and women with voices not unknown to the likes of Gorgon and the Brother Night.

“A lot of us did have some idea what we were getting into, yeah. None of us are really choirboys, if ya know what I mean. We’ve done some shitty things, had worse done to us and… yeah.”

“The camp was worse than the other stuff, though… I think.” Twitch gets defensive under the other boys’ collective gaze. “At least for me.”

“How’d you figure?”

“I just really hate fuckin’ holes, man.”

Being teenage boys, the others burst out in uproarious laughter upon hearing that.

“Hey! It’s not funny!”

Still laughing, Caveman wipes a tear away. “No, it’s not.”

Caveman arrives, the lone passenger on a bus, handcuffed to the seat. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake, and nothing green but lizards; only a vast expanse of dirt pockmarked with circular holes as far as the eye can see. The sun stings his eyes and skin. Nothing grows but two scraggly oaks, their bare branches casting the nearest thing to shade that can be seen. Somebody’s strung a rattlesnake up on the door of the cabin beside them. Caveman gets most of one night of rest; before dawn each boy is dressed in orange, handed a shovel, and ordered to dig.

“There used to be a lake there, I know. Not a huge one, but definitely a lake. But it dried up really suddenly, twenty-odd years ago. No one’s sure what happened. Hasn’t rained there in forever, the streams feedin’ it got blocked, it drained out through the streams goin’ outwards… Either way, all there was there when we were there was acres of dirt.”

“The story ‘round camp was someone drowned a wicked old witch in the lake and she dried it up with her last magic.” Twitch glances to Kissin’ Kate. “Sounds like every kind of person but a witch got drowned there some time or another.”

“Green Lake’s philosophy: if you take a bad boy, and make him dig a big hole in the hot sun every day, it will turn him into a good boy. No, I never followed the logic either.”

Dig they do, all of them, over and over and over, day after day after day.

“It was never really about that, though, was it?”

Let us know if you find anything, go the words of the boys’ overly-positive counselor.

Anything like what? Caveman asks.

Oh, just… anything. Anything you might not expect to find.

What are we looking for?

You’re not looking for anything. You’re digging to build character.

Caveman doesn’t believe him, but he’ll be digging either way.

“At first I thought he might’ve meant fossils, but, no. We were digging for something a lot bigger than that.”

“That’ll come up later though. For now, you guys just need to know a little about what living there was like. We got up early and dug holes every day.”

“And the food sucked.”

Zigzag snickers. “That’s not the only thing that-”

“Dude,” Armpit says. “If you finish, I’m gonna throw you off the stage.”

Three of the boys cry out in unison: “That’s what she said!”

The routine is strict and the rules are many, but there is on above all; don’t upset the Warden. The Warden is a woman, the sole female at the camp. Unassuming at first, but with a certain look. One many of the group would recognise. Her second-in-command, a moustached man who constantly gnaws on sunflower seeds, has that look too… except around her. Around her, he’s fearful.

“He made us call him Mr. Sir.” X-Ray looks mad enough to spit. He doesn’t, thankfully; Mother Superior has enough to deal with. “Not his real name, obviously. Pretentious fuck.”

“Outta everythin’ you could say, you pick prentious?”

“Pretentious, Armpit.” A roll of the eyes. “And yes.”

Not-so-occasionally, the man called Mister and Sir will shout out a last name. In the mess hall or the rec-room or in the tents before lights out. Sometimes - often - in the hot desert sand. Washburn! or Johnson! or Victoria!, Kosaburo!, Coppola! More often Nanba! And very often Zeroni! And the boys go with him, sometimes shaking, sometimes snarling, sometimes screaming and kicking as he drags them by the hair. Often - always - with a wild look of their own. It is a look that lingers long after he lets them go.

“Now, me,” says Caveman, “I didn’t know what was going on. Nothing like that had happened to me. Not even when I first got arrested - I spent some time in the holding cell and those cops were still workin’ there, but they passed over me, I guess. We think it’s partly ‘cause I’m white and partly ‘cause my family obviously love me and would believe me - sorry, guys, not tryin’ to imply anything - and maybe ‘cause what they thought I did wasn’t violent or anything, so they couldn’t spin it to excuse any bruises or anything they could have given me? Or maybe they just didn’t get the chance for a while? I don’t know, and not knowing is kinda creepy, but… better than the alternative. Except it meant that what happened at camp came as a surprise.”

One day the name is Yelnats! Out in the desert this time.

Caveman follows Mr. Sir behind the water truck. Am I in trouble, Mr. Sir? He has no idea what he did. The truth is nothing, but that’s not the answer he receives.

“I still can’t believe nobody warned me about him.”

The other boys shrug. “Wouldn’t it have been worse if we had told you?” asks Zigzag. “If we’d just let it hang over your head.”

“I… don’t know.”

“Not like we coulda done anythin’ either way, man. Either way, you make the holes, you be the holes.”

Man and boy both emerge, one shivering, teeth chattering despite the heat of the day, and the other adjusting his clothes. He mumbles something under his breath that sounds a lot like Walker, but Caveman isn’t paying close attention.

Well? Mr. Sir barks at him. This ain’t the Girl Scouts, sweetheart. Back to work!

“He had some kinda fixation on Girl Scouts. Guess that made more sense when we found out what else he did… but that all comes at the end.”

“So that was goin’ on, and… Do that to a kid enough times, it fucks us up, man.”

Awful noises filling up the rec-room. Echoing through the tent at night. Mr. Sir isn’t here. The boys are. Only the boys.

X-Ray and Armpit and Squid and Zigzag shift uncomfortably where they sit.

Four of them surrounding Caveman. X-Ray pulling at his hair while Armpit holds him down. Squid and Zigzag grabbing at his jumpsuit and pulling at their own.

“We… Not all of us dealt with it well.”

Zero and Armpit and Squid and Zigzag. The smallest of them remains silent the whole way through. They leave him lying on the floor.

“Man, none of us did.”

X-Ray and easy targets. Silent Zero and motor-mouthed Twitch. It’s cold at night out here, don’t you wanna stay warm? Don’t you wanna help me? he whispers, climbing into Twitch’s cot. A harder target in Armpit; C’mon, man, you owe me…

“Some worse than others.”

Squid and Zigzag bend Magnet across a cot, Squid yanking at his zipper, Zigzag’s fingers scrabbling for purchase on his buzzcut hair. Another day - Zigzag lifts Squid off his feet and presses him against the shower wall; another - Squid straddles Zigzag in his cot, wrenching one arm behind his back.

“Yeah…”

Armpit and Squid and Zigzag and X-Ray in the showers with an unnamed boy, three sets of hands holding his throat and ankles and wrists. The water has shut off, but they remain naked. There is no drain; water dries on the ground, leaving only rusty blood. The unnamed boy screams but no one comes running. He knows they won’t. He still screams.

“There was another guy in our tent before Caveman came along.”

“Barfbag.”

“Y-yeah… he… he was cool…”

“I’m pretty sure he’s dead now.” Zero looks at the audience head-on. “He got bit by a rattlesnake.”

“Yeah.” Armpit coughs. “Got bit.”

The unfamiliar boy - Barfbag - spies scales and hears a rattle as he digs, tears falling from his face and drying up before they hit the ground. He looks around, sees he is unseen, and takes off his shoe. Their souls never rested easy before, but that night all Tent D’s eyes pour precious water, hidden under their ragged blankets.

“I think there’s a hospital helicopter, but it takes like an hour to get there. Pendanski did drive him off in the truck, the copter might have arrived back at camp. We weren’t allowed to go back and see, an’ he was gone by the time we did get back.”

“Coulda been worse.”

“Yeah. Coulda been a lizard. Don’t laugh.”

“Yellow-spotted lizards. Thought they were a myth till I got there.”

“Takes you slow, man, and there’s no cure.”

“At the camp they told us, one of those gets you, go lie in the Warden’s hammock in the shade. Might as well. There’s nothin’ anyone can do to you anymore.”

“To be honest, when I heard that I thought it was like a… a hazing thing. I mean, c’mon, guys, yellow-spotted lizards, that’s like… like Bigfoot!”

“Or mountain lions!” Everyone looks at Twitch. “What?!”

“Um…” Caveman opens his mouth, closes it again and shakes his head. “Never mind. Point is, I thought they - the lizards, I mean - were some kinda urban legend. But they’re real.” He shivers. “They’re real alright.”

Other tents wind up digging near them one day. Not close enough to talk, but within raised-voice distance, near enough that Caveman can make out the worst of the dirt on some of their faces. One is an ex-friend of “Me”, tall and gangly, forest-green dye growing out of his hair and red R nearly invisible on his sunburnt hand. The other is the Delusionist’s tutor, with his bright orange hair and matching scruff on his face. Quite suddenly the runner’s shovel drops to the ground and he lurches forward, knocking the tutor into what he couldn’t have known would be his own grave. He catches his shovel and returns to digging and manages to look as surprised as everyone else when his victim begins to scream.

“Everyone was freaked out by that.”

“The Warden wasn’t.”

“They… they just made the guys in his tent cover him up and keep going.”

One day, Caveman happens to uncover something that is not a deadly reptile, and picks it up for a closer look.

“There was, like, this lipstick tube. Solid gold. Engraved and everything, and there were these initials on it. K.B, I think. That’s what it said.”

“And he gave it to me to give the Warden,” X-Ray says. “I’d been there months and never found anything, and I…” He has the grace to look shamefaced. “I told him it wasn’t fair he found somethin’ after like a week.”

“No biggie. If I had handed it in,” Caveman says, and shudders, “they’d have known where it really turned up, and then… Well, we’ll get to that.”

X-Ray shoves Caveman, and he teeters on the edge of a hole, crying out. He can’t see any lizards in this one, but that doesn’t mean they are not there. He hands over the lipstick tube, no arguments. Zero watches silently. X-Ray hands it to the counsellor, who calls the Warden.

“She got really, really excited about that. Made us all go to X-Ray’s spot where he said he’d found it an’ dig it bigger and bigger and bigger. Never found anything else there, and after a few days things went back to normal. As normal as they got. But that seemed so weird to me, so I made sure to remember where I really found it. I just got a feeling there might be more there.”

He doesn’t mark the place exactly, but his eyes track where it is. He doesn’t forget. He wouldn’t - not now.

“It went like that for a while. With nothing really happening except the kind of stuff that happened all the time.”

Names called out from the truck or behind the buildings, over and over. Sometimes the campers are the best of friends, and sometimes they’ll pin one of their number down and take and take and take and leave the boy glaze-eyed and with an ever-deepening hollow hole in his heart.

“Guess some of you have had people tell you you’re only good for holes. Not quite that way, though.”

“And then, uh…”

It’s Magnet’s turn to shift around. “I fucked up.”

The hot sun lights up the desert sand. One hole left half-finished. Mr. Sir behind the water truck with another boy. He isn’t there to see when another figure creeps around.

“So, he had this thing about his sunflower seeds. I think he went cold turkey on smokin’ and… yeah. Addiction workin’ in weird ways an’ all that.”

“He was always munchin’ on ‘em, droppin’ seeds everywhere.”

“I thought it’d be funny, y’know… to snatch ‘em up and see what happened.”

The truck drives off and Magnet pulls the sack from inside his shirt. The other boys laugh. Caveman is cautious. As usual, Zero says nothing at all.

“Didn’t think he noticed, and we all grabbed a few. Ya get hungry out there, y’know?”

“And when they tossed the sack over to me…”

… it spills everywhere, in Caveman’s half-dug hole, and the boys are too busy laughing and mocking him to see the truck turn back.

“Turns out he did notice. I said it was me but he figured I was coverin’ for Magnet, and he dragged me up to the Warden’s office… but she was madder at him for botherin’ her than at me for stealing.”

The Warden, very slowly, paints her nails a bloody red.

“She started going on about how she made the polish herself. With a special ingredient.”

“Rattlesnake venom,” Zero says and mimes claws scratching his face.

Don’t worry, the Warden says. It’s perfectly safe… when it’s dry. Her hand lashes out. Mr. Sir screams.

“Ouch.”

“He didn’t die, but yeah, it wasn’t pretty. His face was all fucked up when we saw him again. Swollen. Really swollen and… nasty.”

Caveman shudders. “And… he was really mad at me.”

Mr. Sir does not return to work for quite some time. Some of the boys begin to half-heartedly whisper that he’s dead. They dare to hope. He returns with jagged-looking scars running long across his face and a look of such hatred in his eyes that the sun feels very cold. Yelnats, he calls, and Caveman cannot move.

“I knew he was gonna mess me up, thought he might even kill me. He kept calling, and I tried to run to Dr. Pendanski - that was our tent’s counsellor - ‘cause he’d never done anything to us. No one likes snitches but at least the guys prob’ly wouldn’t murder me over it, right? But… You know what Wildcard said about his mom? Pendanski already knew, and he wasn’t gonna do anything. I think he was just hoping it’d go away if he ignored it.”

Caveman yells and begs and shakes the counsellor’s shoulders as Mr. Sir approaches, followed by a wild-eyed Zero. Dr. Pendanski smiles vaguely and offers false reassurances. Zero’s hands clench tight around his shovel haft.

“Caveman had been friendly to me when a lot of the guys weren’t, and I’d been kinda Mr. Sir’s favourite before. Plus I owed him for the shoes thing, and for some other stuff… Didn’t go so well, though.”

The tape rewinds. Zero and Caveman in the rec room, in the tent after dark. Leaning over old TV guides and letters that will send lies home. What’s that say?

It’s my name. Stanley, see? That’s an S and a T and an A and…

Now in the present; the shovel blade comes down, flat-first, on the counsellor’s head, then Mr. Sir’s. Pendanski goes down like a felled tree. Sir does not, and turns on Zero in a rage. Zero drops the shovel, and runs for his life.

“Camp Green Lake never had a fence. They had the only water for miles around. You ran, you died.”

“We ran anyway.”

Caveman and Zero take off, and the other boys, from Tent D and beyond, watch with their jaws hanging open wide.

“There was an attempt to steal the water truck in there, but, uh, it didn’t go so well.”

The keys turn alright and the engine starts just fine but Caveman isn’t much of a driver and rams the thing straight into one of the countless holes in the sand. More running, with their pounding hearts and bottles full of nothing.

“It’s kind of a miracle we didn’t keel over. Kind of a miracle. Kind of dumb luck.”

“Well, they always told me they called me Zero because there was nothin’ inside my head. Guess it’s only fair that we get to cash in on the luck part of that, right?”

They have to stop eventually, panting and falling over in the hot dust of the desert sand. They might be crying or sweating buckets or both - they don’t know - and shaking hard, but they’re somehow still alive.

“It would’ve been better than whatever Mr. Sir was gonna do to me, even if I had died out there.”

“Probably. Yeah.”

They’re silent for a while, and Caveman clears his throat. “Skippin’ back a bit in history, you remember what I said about my family curse? Well, the first Stanley Yelnats, son of the pig-stealing guy, he made a fortune and headed for Cali, and lost it all when bandits robbed him and left him in the desert. Mom always said he couldn’t have been too unlucky since he lived. After about two weeks out in the desert he made it to the lake, and he must have picked up some disease out there ‘cause he was rambling and couldn’t really remember a lot. But he said he ‘found refuge on God’s Thumb’. The family’s always remembered that…”

“And it was lucky they did.”

Two days of walking, no food, no water, until they bump into an overturned boat. Thirty years old at least, and so are the jars of pickled peaches inside it, but the seals are unbroken and the contents prove edible, if sickly sweet. Their bellies are full, but the sugar only increases their thirst.

“Great stuff, Miz Kate,” Zero says, waving. “We called it Sploosh! Not bad, either. Reckon those jars could have survived another hundred years out there and been good.”

“But, uh, we ran out pretty quick.” Caveman’s face goes red. “We both thought we were gonna die, and… like we said, the stuff we went though can mess a kid up, so it seemed like a good idea to…”

“They had sex!”

“Thank you, Twitch.”

It isn’t comfortable and it isn’t safe. Neither really know what it is they’re doing or why. They do it anyway. Maybe because it’s better to die wanting something, maybe just to make the past months seem less awful than they really were. Caveman doesn’t know. Zero doesn’t care.

“Maybe it was just that we wanted to see if it was… really that bad. I mean, Zero had never done anything like that and wanted it before, and before Green Lake I’d never done it at all… I kinda just thought maybe if this went okay the rest wouldn’t seem so bad…”

“I’m not a shrink, but I don’t think it’s s’posed to work that way.”

“Shut up.”

“Honestly, even if you want it, it probably does mess you up worse if you’re twelve at the time. We didn’t know that, and we didn’t really care. I mean, how much worse could we feel?”

“It was weird, it kinda felt like the boat was an appropriate place. Sorta had a vibe of… welcome-ness.” He doesn’t say “love”.

They don’t talk about it the next morning. There’s no water in the boat. They have to keep moving. They get up, and they walk, and walk, and walk.

“And then I found out what my great-grandpa had been talking about…”

A mountain peak, visible in the distance, shaped almost like a thumb. Storm clouds around its peak, on the other side from the desert. They march in its direction, and when they’re close enough to know it’s not a mirage, they break into a stumbling run… until Zero falls down, groaning, gagging.

“Seems the Sploosh wasn’t all as well-preserved as we thought. Or maybe eating nothing but pickled peaches on an empty stomach with no water isn’t good. Either way, he was sick, really sick, but the water was at the top of the mountain. It dried up by the time it got to the bottom. So we had no choice but to get up there…”

Caveman’s arms and back and legs are strengthened by the months of digging, and even though he hurts all over, he lifts Zero’s tiny form onto his back and starts to climb.

“That was brutal. I’m not gonna lie, that was really, really bad… but it would’ve been worse if he…” He swallows thickly.

“I was messed up pretty bad anyway. Started seein’ things, there were birds and lizards and bugs and stuff around and I saw all of them with Caveman’s face.”

“Aww, you wuv him!”

“Shaddup, Twitch!”

“We got to the top. There was water up there, and not just that…”

An oasis. Not one full of flowers and fruit like the stained glass pictures of Eden, but there is water and there is grass and they lie in the shade of the trees. Along the bank of the spring are pale green stalks that smell strong and sweet. Wild onions - or not so wild as the case may be. Caveman pulls a muddy bulb from the ground.

“Not the healthiest thing to live on entirely, but it was food.”

“We spent a few days up there. I was still really sick, kind of out of it, and Caveman, well, he did the first thing he could think of to help me sleep it off - guys, don’t joke, it wasn’t that again. Ew.”

Caveman carries water in his hands to Zero’s mouth, and strokes his forehead, and sings to him. If only, if only, the woodpecker sighs…

“I’m gonna have to break the rule too for this story to totally make sense,” Zero says. “His real surname is Yelnats. Mine’s Zeroni.”

“So… yeah. I didn’t know who his great-great-great grandmother was then and he didn’t know about my great-great grandfather, and it could be a coincidence, but… it sorta seems like our luck changed after that.”

“You have lifted the currrrse! Oooo-ow!”

Zero’s fever breaks the next day and he sits up. Still weak. Still tired. Neither of them think that they’re going to die.

“We coulda stayed up there for a while longer. There was food and water and all, but like he said, it wasn’t really healthy. And there’s only so much you can do hanging out in the middle of the desert. We had to leave eventually. We always knew that.”

They still have their water canteens from the camp. The Warden has a phone; the food trucks can be stowed away on; the water truck can be stolen properly. They plan to get help, and walk back, determined.

“Which would have been great, except we never managed to go through with it.”

“The plan was pretty far-fetched, but at least we had a plan. See, we thought if we had something to bribe a counsellor or truck driver with it’d go better, and Caveman knew where he’d really dug up that lipstick tube, and it looked like real gold. So, we thought there might be more stuff down there we could use. We’d spend one night digging, after everyone else was gone, and if we couldn’t find anything we’d come up with something else…”

Caveman digs and digs and digs, and Zero keeps lookout and fetches water, scurrying to the spigot and back in the dark. Inch by inch, the hole expands, and the shovel strikes something metal. Fraction by fraction, the metal is exposed, and it’s a box. Zero slides into the hole to help dig it from the hard-packed earth…

… and a flashlight shines down on them, held in the Warden’s red-nailed hand.

“No offense, Caveman, but how the fuck are you still alive?”

Light in their faces, the boys squint and blink and eventually their vision adjusts. Behind the woman, in the shadows stand two men. The counselor and Mr. Sir. The latter of them holds a gun.

“She wanted the stuff. Told us to hand it over. We didn’t. Maybe that was stupid, I mean at the time we didn’t even know what it was, but she wanted it. So we didn’t give it to her.”

“They mighta just shot us,” Zero says. “But that woulda been kinda… messy.”

“No kidding.”

“Then the lizards showed up.”

The adults back away, horror in their eyes, and the boys don’t know why until they feel things crawling on their shoulders.

“We’d disturbed a burrow. Yellow-spotted lizards live in colonies. There can be something like twenty of them in one hole. Felt like even more.”

“Again. How are you alive?”

“Told you the curse was lifted.”

“Neither of us dared to move. They’ll go for anything that jumps or makes a noise.”

“And a lot of things that don’t!”

Paralytically still, the box weighing heavy in Caveman’s shaking hands, the boys let the lizards crawl over them - in their hair, down their backs, inside their filthy jumpsuits - for hour after hour after hour.

“It… it felt like someone touching us again. Only worse. Mr. Sir never tried to poison us, at least.”

“The adults wouldn’t leave the box behind, and we couldn’t move to hand it to them even if we’d wanted to. They didn’t wanna make any sudden moves either. Those lizards can jump.”

He isn’t wrong…

“One good thing about Mr. Sir, he was a fine shot.”

A lizard makes contact with a bullet and explodes in midair. Blood splatters Caveman’s face. Still he does not move.

The Warden speaks. Plenty of graves to choose from.

Pendanski speaks. Hey, Caveman, guess what? You’re innocent.

“My lawyer had come over the day before. Great timing for the curse to break, huh? She got suspicious when they wouldn’t turn me over, and came back that morning… and she found us there.”

A little woman in a pressed dress suit. Her hair has been permed and sprayed and sits in a dome on top of her head. Her eyes flit between the Warden and Mr. Sir and the counselor and the boys. One, two, three times.

“She… she was the first adult I’d seen in months that actually wanted to do something. To help, I mean. So of course the rest of them didn’t want her there.”

Rewind; Hold the other boys in the mess hall, and tell ‘em if they don’t talk they won’t have to dig holes anymore, the Warden says. But if they do, they’ll be severely punished. Pendanski falls into one of the many other holes in his haste to get away.

“She turned up with some folks from the sheriff’s office nearby. Not, y’know, our old sheriff’s - another one. They weren’t too happy when they found us down there.”

The warden, getting desperate, tries to lie. He broke into my cabin, she says. He’s got my suitcase!

It’s his suitcase, says Zero, and points. It’s got his name on it.

And indeed, impossibly, it does.

“Remember I told you about my great-grandfather who was robbed by bandits in the desert? It was his suitcase.”

Inside the box are stacks and stacks of old dollar bills - a small fortune, but only that.

“The money was enough to get my family a new house. Start a few nest-egg savings accounts. Not much more than that. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something.”

“Besides, your old man already had his foot juice stuff.”

“Do you have to word it like that?” Caveman groans. “Yeah, while I was gone, my dad kinda figured out the formula to his weird anti-foot odor stuff. A formula that actually worked. That’s how he paid for an attorney in the first place.”

“You’ve probably seen the commercials,” Zero adds. “They're the ones with Clyde Livingstone.”

“Still can’t believe you got ‘im to call it Sploosh.”

“Yeah, well, shut up.” Caveman rolls his eyes. “So, that’s where the money came from. That’s what was in the suitcase, and neither of those things are the really interesting part.”

“See, the cops got kinda curious. I mean, that sure was a lot of effort to find one little box, and when we told ‘em about the lipstick tube… well, that didn’t come from his grand-daddy or nothin’. So they started diggin’ for a change.”

Unlike the campers, the cops and rangers and their army of volunteers have metal detectors. Not always useful; not everything they’re searching for is metal. But they help. So do the dogs. The campers, curious, dig their last holes to help. What they find is scattered, piecemeal, but vital.

“See, the Trout Walker murder? Thirty-ish years ago? He was in good with God’s Will First, and he let them use his land to bury evidence. They didn’t really go in for stealing valuables, guess it woulda killed their righteous buzz, but they had to put ‘em somewhere.” Caveman swallows. “Bodies, too.”

Bodies ranging from half-scattered bones to mummified flesh. Not all of them, but one or two of the cult’s. And many more who were not.

“Calisota’s a fuckin’ dangerous county, man.”

“And guess whose daughter our Warden was? She wasn’t too righteous to steal from the dead.”

The case makes the news in several counties beyond that one. The Warden’s face is splashed across newspapers and television screens. The boys are lost in the footnotes. The horror of the corpses in the desert is enough to overshadow the rest.

“That’s… part of the reason people haven’t really been talking about us, I guess. That and we’re all minors so they weren’t really allowed to release our names. Even the cops seemed kinda more worried about what was under the earth than what had been going on on top of it, but… we did tell them about how they’d been treating us. About the digging and the Warden and… and Mr. Sir. I don’t think they expected to hear that part.”

The boys in individual interview rooms. Some looking nervous and more looking angry. Caveman cries. Zero stares at the floor. The uniforms seem annoyed at first, though only with some of them. That changes as soon as they notice how hard even the angriest kids’ hands have begun to shake.

“We weren’t even sure whether to take it to court. I mean, they were probably never gettin’ outta prison anyway, after the whole ‘attempted murder and covering up dead campers’ thing. It wouldn’t make much difference, practically speaking. But we all talked about it, and we agreed, and we did.”

“We… Some of us… Stuff we’d done at the camp came out too, and if we testified at their trials, it’d make things less likely to go south for us.”

Barfbag’s story is told. Armpit and Squid and Zigzag and X-Ray clench their fists and teeth and hold back tears. They’re young enough and hurt enough that their interviewers feel sympathy for them. They don’t want it.

“Mom and Dad wanted me to press charges against the guys too,” Caveman says. “So did Zero’s mom. But… now I know the kinda shit that happens in places like Green Lake, how could I send anyone back to one? That’s not gonna make anything better.”

“ ‘F I was you I’da wanted to kill us,” says Armpit.

X-Ray looks up at him and says, “You haven’t killed me.”

“I said wanted to. I figured Caveman’s right. I coulda pulled your arms off but that’s not gonna help.”

“We already stopped hurtin’ each other,” Zigzag says, and shifts closer to Squid, who claps him on the back.

“Don’t wanna sound like a Jesus freak here, and forgiveness ain’t the right word yet, but…” Magnet pauses thoughtfully. “Like, we’re still mad at each other. We still don’t wanna be alone around each other, ‘cept the lovebirds there, but we all went through a shitty thing together and there’s kinda a bond in that? We all thought we’d been hurt enough. It’s better to try bein’ friends.”

The police finish up. Offer the contact details of lawyers. Most of the boys can’t afford one. Caveman’s family can, now.

“We testified for Barfbag, man.”

“Yeah. Owed him big.” Armpit mimes pouring out a bottle.

“Plus the settlement is payin’ for our therapy.”

“Thought I was gonna go back to jail when they found out about me and Zero, but it turned out okay… Speaking of. We’re kinda… not sure what’s going on. Sort of starting again, I guess? Much, much slower and from a healthier point?”

They meet up in the police station lobby and hug and cry into each other’s hair. Zero’s mother hasn’t yet been found, so he stays in Caveman’s apartment. Even when they move into the new house with space for two beds they share one, with deepwater-blue sheets in a yellow-painted room, but they stay fully clothed and back to back.

“We don’t even really know if either of us is actually not-straight or not. Only just started really thinkin’ about it when everything went down and I don’t have a non-traumatic comparison.” He looks at Zero, and smiles. “I kinda hope we’re not.”

Zero gets up on his knees to hug him. The boys hoot and laugh and make kissy faces, but no slurs are thrown, no malice.

“So the camp got closed down, and everyone who could be trusted not to go on a killin’ spree when they were out was sent home. I guess so we wouldn’t sue the gov’ment? Figured we’d suffered enough?”

“Funny thing, though…”

Rewind; just before the boys are put on the bus to leave. They blink as something hits their faces. They look up; the first clouds they’ve seen in months are above them, and the first rain Green Lake has seen in years begins to fall.

“It hasn’t really rained there in somethin’ like a hundred years, and we said the lake’s been gone for thirty.”

“An’ all of a sudden, whoosh! Pourin’ from the goddamn sky.”

“Sploosh, even.”

Someone laughs. Some of the boys start to holler. The bus is delayed as the boys howl and whoop and jump and dance in the growing storm that blacks out the sky. The sand turns to mud on the ground and still the rain comes down.

“Maybe Caveman broke more ‘n one curse.”

“Maybe he did,” says Zero.

A woman, with Zero’s springy locks of hair, exits the doors of the women’s penitentiary and flies to embrace her son.

“And you know what’s really funny?”

The lake starts to refill slowly but surely; just a pond for now, but growing daily. The land is seized and sold. Building projects are discussed; streams from the mountains will be dug deeper to ensure a constant water supply, sinkholes will be filled in, and nicer cabins will be built by the spot which was (and will be) the lake’s edge. The Honey Bees, the very children Mr. Sir once stole from the woodlands, pose for a photo brochure in their uniforms and badge sashes.

Caveman grins. “Pretty soon it really will be a Girl Scout camp.”

Chapter Text

Water nourishes Wood.”----------Metal collects Water.
“Wood feeds Fire.-----Earth bears Metal.
Fire produces Earth.

Xiāngshēng flicks his lighter open and closed a few times. Back and forth. Back and forth until it flickers and dies. He doesn’t smoke. (“I just like the way it feels.”) Scorched holes in his leggings, blisters on his fingertips; the smell of ozone and burning hair. A few of them raise eyebrows at the short shorts and bright red ribbons. More stare at the name printed on his T-shirt (even the Carabastion learned to cover his up).

“Something something regeneration. Something something philosophy. Whatever.” He yawns. “I don’t really care about any of that stuff.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a snot-nosed kid alone in the city. It isn’t quiet (it never is), but the sound of his footsteps echoes off the pavement and all the way down. Hey, kid, you lost? He keeps walking, glass clinking under his feet.

“ ‘Rents kicked me out a couple years back. Why’s not important. So anyway, I was like twelve…”

Metal cot; cork-pad ceiling; awful - just awful - posters on the wall (Youth Homelessness is Too Much, Man… What’s up, Doc? GET VACCINATED… Billy Joe Cobra Says No 2 Drugs…). Shēng hugs his knees to his chest, face blank. A man with wire-rimmed spectacles lays down a bundle on the bed: dollar-store toothbrush, donated clothes, kid-sized sneakers with wheels on the bottom. And a cup of ginger ale.

“There’s a shelter in Chinatown that takes homeless kids from the area. Someone spray painted ‘Guild’ on it once and the name stuck, I guess. It’s mostly Chinese kids, mostly Chinese people who run the place. Same deal with volunteers. For obvious reasons. Damn. I could tell you guys a lot of crazy stories…”

A big, bulky man with a face made from leather. He doesn’t look Chinese to Shēng, but he speaks Cantonese without too much of an accent, and Mandarin with none at all. He doesn’t make Shēng shake his hand.

“Viridiana poaches Japanese kids from San Fransokyo, Vachir went after us in Chinatown… Okay, look, I’m not defending the guy, but I think his motives here were mostly… okay-ish.” He sulks. “I guess. He had more than one way to keep the wild kids in line.”

There’s a liquor store on the street parallel to this one. Shēng leaves with beer and cigarettes, hands them over to the plainclothes outside. Wash, rinse, repeat.

“That was kind of his grand plan for keeping us off the street. I think the end goal was that we’d join up at eighteen and try for the academy. So, yeah,” he shrugs, “whatever. Little baby narcs.”

He does the same thing in alleyways, on street corners, at house parties. The same officer waits - out front, down the street, just in earshot - in an unmarked car. You done good, kid. He ruffles Shēng’s hair. He offers a glass of something stronger than ginger ale.

“Whatever.”

Naza Li?

Who wants to know?

Metal gleaming between thorn-thin fingers. A hysterical teenager pushes Shēng against a wall. You little bastard! Look at me! Look at what you- Shēng kicks him in the stomach and the other boy doubles over, wailing. He runs past him.

“I didn’t understand then. Hindsight’s twenty-twenty and all, so I won’t say that I should have. I’m not about that whole self-blame thing you guys have going on. ‘Get off the cross, we need the wood.’ Blah, blah, blah. ‘I’ll tend to the flames, you can worship the ashes.’”

The next time it’s two people, when he’s out walking alone. Two knives. One of them cuts his clothes open. One of them sits on his back. His spirit is wild and he struggles, but they make him buckle and bend.

“In a place like this, the problem isn’t that nobody hears you - it’s that nobody cares.”

Hey! They’ve just started when the voice breaks through the lamplight. Four men - bangs over one eye; tiger tattoo on one arm; no expression; rose leaves and chrysanthemum petals poking out of a messy ponytail - and a little boy with dark hair. What are you-

Forget it, Zhu. One pulls another back in. He’s a snitch. And they walk away.

Shēng closes his eyes and turns his face away from them. He looks like he feels heavy.

Hey! They’ve just finished when the voice breaks through the dark. One man - leathery skin, bent nose, police uniform, flashing badge - Vachir, it says. What the hell are you…? His eyes trail down. He sees Shēng’s face. Naza!

“If it hadn't been for him they might have killed me. If it hadn’t been for him… they might not have done it in the first place.”

Sir, are you the father? I can’t let-

We gonna have a problem here?

The nurse backs away.

“He stayed with me all night, and brought me back to the Guild when I was discharged. He did… care.”

Come down to the station, when you’re feeling up to it. They’re all worried aboutcha, kid. Shēng vists a week later.

“I wanted things to go back to normal. And for a while it went like that. Then, you know, shit happened. I went down to the station for maybe the millionth time. I asked for him. They pointed me to the back.” He presses the lighter against his wrist. “I found him in one of the holding cells.”

Vachir stands over another teenager. Brown hair slipping out of a ponytail. Bloodshot eyes. One hand poking through the bars. He looks up. And Shēng sees him - knows him - but he doesn’t look away.

“I wanted to leave him.”

Wood depletes Water.----------Shēng reaches through the bars.
Water rusts Metal.-----Earth smothers-fire
Metal impoverishes Earth.

“When he turned around and saw me, he… he looked so confused.” Xiāngshēng takes his finger off the button. The flame fizzles out in his hand. “I bet the scar’s still there.”

“Wood parts Earth.----------Metal carves Wood.”
Earth traps Water.-----Fire melts Metal.
Water dampens Fire.

Xiāngkè unfolds into a lotus position. Long brown hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, tangled up with rose leaves and chrysanthemum petals , dangling over his glassy red eyes that drop with grief. Maybe he’s been crying . Maybe he has allergies .

“That’s more of a Han thing. My friends always said-” He grooms a seedpod from his hair and breaks it open. The pips scatter on the floor. “China didn’t want my grandparents, they went to Vietnam. Vietnam didn’t want my parents, they went to Laos. Laos didn’t want me… We came here as refugees before the city really touched the woods.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Kè trips and falls, scraping his knee on the unpaved road. High trees and little houses and-

Zhu, c’mon!

-and three other little boys.

“Our granddads fought together in Vietnam, for the, um, losing side. They thought about maybe going back to China, then the Cultural Revolution happened and… yeah. A lot of people did that. A hell of a lot.”

The cut on his leg swells, bursts, oozes with infection. His mother carries him to the house down the street. Garlic and honey between the bandages, and herbs crushed up in his food. The old man says he’ll be good as new in no time. And he is.

“Technically, Longyou Forest has always belonged to the city. We had a market and an elementary school and… everything. I had to go to high school in the city. It’s kind of a long drive, more if you take the bus. My mother told me once, ‘bury some seeds and expect some strong branches.’ The subway station seemed like a good idea…”

So does the bakeshop, and the new coffee place, and the Wholesome Foods. His neighbors groan when they pass the construction. It takes Kè a while to understand. White city folk buy what was never their right and further confine the town.

“It was cool at first - especially when they put the arcade in! Oh, and the movie theater! My friends and I spent hours at both. Pretty soon, though… the rent went up. And it didn’t stop climbing. Xuhai told me one time about how lobsters don’t die if you don’t kill them, they’ll just keep growing and growing and… It’s kinda like that.”

White women lining up at the new grocery. Too many people; too many cars. They put in a new parking lot where the market used to be. He gets lost on the way home from the station - identical houses, identical construction sites, filling up the street. His friends tie themselves to trees when the loggers come. Kè spends the night in a holding cell.

“Seriously, don’t worry. Nothing happened.” His eyes cloud for a moment… but only for a moment. “It sucked, though - I mean, here these… these people were! Ruining everything! And when my brother was born- well, half-brother… It wasn’t just for him, you know… but I thought he should be a part of it. And the guys seemed onboard with that.”

A tumble-top ball of black hair and big eyes. Kè reaches to run his hand through it, but the kid runs past him - up to his friend, the one with the bangs over one eye.

How’s it feel? one of the others asks. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he likes Fengxi better than you.

They all laugh.

“I didn’t mind. I was just happy to have him there - and that the others didn’t seem to mind. I thought they loved him as much as I did. I was happy because I loved them too.”

The world creeps in a little further. Kè’s friends make a plan.

“There was a construction site we could walk to from our houses - at night, so no one would see us coming in. We didn’t set out to kill anyone, but, you know, we could have. It’s… not that hard to build a bomb.”

I’m coming with you guys.

What?! No way! This is dangerous. Hei-

Bangs puts a hand on Kè’s shoulder. He’ll have to learn at some point.

“It’s all my fault.”

They crawl back, just as it’s getting light out. His family might hear them - so they sleep in the garage.

We thought we’d go out for breakfast. And nobody questions it. And life goes on.

“But the police didn’t stop looking. A few days later, Feng- one of my old friends called the house. It was late, the little guy was already in bed. I brought him along anyway, because they asked me too.”

The smoldering ash, the smoldering wood. His friends are waiting. Kè helps his brother from the car. And there’s another man when he turns around. Cut; Fengxi! Fengxi, please just listen to me! Let me do it, okay?! Let me do it! He reaches out for his brother. The others hold him back and they hold him still. And then it’s over. Kè drops to his knees and cries.

“Turns out someone did see something… maybe. They said they did. The guys made a deal, and… and… I didn’t protect him! I j-just stood there! It should have been one of us. It should have been me.”

He carries Hei back, helps him with the seatbelt, tucks him into bed. Kè lays down beside him and doesn’t sleep that night, dozes off by morning, starts awake again when he feels the heat on his side.

“He wouldn’t wake up,” Kè whispers. “He wouldn’t wake up and it was all my fault and I didn’t know what to do and-”

Help! Help me… Please! He runs into the emergency room, holding onto his baby brother for dear life. He won’t wake up… He’s- Somehow he chokes the words out. They ask him what happened. They get the whole truth. Cut; a man in blue sits by Hei’s bedside. Cut; a man with a rhinoceros nose puts a hand on his shoulder. It’s heavy. And hard.

“So we went to jail. And I didn’t get to see Hei until… until my sentence was over. I should still be there. I didn’t want to leave. And I know what you’re thinking - I know what that bastard told you - but nothing happened.”

He’s right - a lot of nothing happens: against the wall, in the showers, all over the floor. He tastes a lot of nothing at the back of his throat as he lies on his back at night. He feels a lot of nothing when they drag him past his old friends. And they stare right through him.

“A-and even if it did… not to anyone who didn’t have it coming.”

Nothing; nothing; nothing-

“They tried to let me out earlier than they should have. Good behavior. I took a swing at the guards.”

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. And then it stops.

“I still got a lesser sentence than the others though. I work at a flower shop now.” He gestures to his hair, a little sheepishly. “I thought that was a coincidence until my manager’s dad turned up at the store.”

Unimpressed stare; blue-black ponytail. It’s the officer from his brother’s hospital room. Luo Zhu, he says, you’re Xiaohei’s brother? He wants to see you.

Go to Hell.

“I haven’t spoken to my family since I was arrested. I didn’t open their letters, I didn’t take their phone calls. I know our father is married now. I turned down the offer for a day release. I have a little stepsister now, apparently. It’s better for everyone if I just… stay away.”

The man comes by again and doesn’t stop coming. This time he doesn’t come alone. And it feels like the world is ending.

Kè turns on Lord Gorgon (a man who can meet all his needs) and spits on the stage. “Why’d you have to ruin everything?”

Back to the police station - in a more comfortable room this time. I’m here to give a statement…? Nothing happened! You can quote me on that.

Wood depletes Earth.”----------Metal overharvests Wood.
“Earth obstructs Water.-----Fire vaporizes Metal.
Water extinguishes Fire.

Xiāngkè pulls his hair loose, letting the leaves and flowers tumble. He goes back to murmuring - something that nobody else can hear.

Wood dulls Metal.”----------Earth rots Wood.
“Metal de-energizes Fire.-----Water muddies Earth.
Fire evaporates Water.

Chapter Text

“Well… it’s been fun, ragazzi.”

I Triatleti smile the same guilty smile, fingers tapping the notes to Il Pescatore on the lacquered wood. They might pass for siblings in some other light. Maybe if la Nuotatrice’s nose was flatter (or rounder). Maybe if i Ciclista had a deeper tan…

“Our flight leaves first thing tomorrow. To Geno-”

“To Rome, actually. Then we catch the train at Roma Termini. Then Genova. We’ll be back for vacanze di Natale and all, but, um, you probably won’t see us again until next summer. Non credo che vorrai.”

“We came here to say we’re sorry for scaring you. For lying to everyone.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Radunatevi, viaggiatori stanchi! La Nuotatrice on the lip of a marble fountain - red hair; red eyes blazing. I Ciclista dips his feet into the bowl.

We’ve, uh, got something to tell you… It’s important.

Important?! It might just save your lives!

But only if you listen.

“So, um… I guess I should…”

“Don’t blame Nuotatrice! It’s not her fault, I mean, I lied to her too. And I lied to her first…”

There! She points. No, no! Before the breakers… just along the wayyy- Si! You got it. There’s a sign that says ‘Attenzione! La bestia della baia!’

We, uh, found it when we were training for the cup.

A frowning face in the crowd. A man with bushy eyebrows and one arm. La Nuotatrice averts her gaze.

“Every summer there’s a big triathlon race in Little Italy: cycling, swimming and… eating pasta - that’s true, you can look it up. And we really did find something while training - at least I did.”

A sneering face in the crowd. A man (a boy?) with two sad little whiskers. La Nuotatrice raises her voice. You know guppies grow to fit their tanks? He did, except the sea’s got enough space he never stopped! Ate so many pescatori that he’s taller than… than- OH! And his teeth are as sharp as scissors! And he has claws like knives! And it’ll be even worse when you get swallowed by him!

“We’re sorry we said not to boat there. It’s not dangerous. There is no sea monster. There is no la bestia della baia. And it’s not going to eat you…” I Ciclista blushes furiously. “And it won’t do anything else.”

Or maybe he’s a serpent that came straight from… you know… I Ciclista stares at his feet. To eat people’s souls and stuff. Bad people - like the pirates that used to come here. Hundreds of years ago. Why d’you think there aren’t any now?

“I got the idea from my Uncle Ugo. He was in this weird movie about a giant lantern fish and… you get the picture. I just wanted people to stay away from the bay. Then I met Giu- I-I mean Nuota… I mean-”

“Me. He means me. I don’t even believe in land monsters. I never have.”

“But you believed me.”

“Stai zitto! Would you stop that?!”

“Ow…”

“It was my choice too, you know!”

You know that Hook guy from the news? They say nobody knows what happened to him, just that it was bad. How do you think he lost his hand, eh? And that… uh, drug… selling… guy? The one who used to set his beard on fire…?

He turned himself in to get away from that thing.

Yeah! And… and it’s not just bad people either! He eats kids-

Santa Parmigiana! He doesn’t just eat them!

W-what are you…?

Lucaaaa. Remember what you told me…?

“L-Lo strupro. The worst thing I could think of.” He breathes in and out. In and out. Gasping like a fish.

“But that’s not why we thought of it.”

Li violenta! Mi ha violentato! His eyes widen when he realizes what he’s said.

It’s true. He got me too.

Their listeners are too innocent to hear that she sounds more proud than scared.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I just wanted to… I didn’t mean to make things worse!”

“It’s my fault!” La Nuotatrice sniffles, latching onto him. “I should have told someone as soon as…”

“But I asked you not to! I made you promise!”

So remember: no sailing, no rowing - definitely no swimming. Not even as a shortcut for the race.

If you aren’t careful he’ll gobble you up! La Nuotatrice mimes claws and gnashing teeth. He’ll chew you up and spit you out! And worse, you might end up with him inside of y-

I Ciclista nudges her with a foot. So stay away! Remember what the sign says! ‘Attenzione! La bestia della baia!’

“So… I guess you wanna know what really happened. I… Okay. Okay. As long as it stays between us. It was… months ago. I kinda sorta ran away from home - my parents are really overprotective. I thought maybe I could stay on the beach for a while. Kinda like a hobo? A-and anyway, so while I was there I found… um, the same thing Signore Marcovaldo did.”

L’uomo con le sopracciglia - Nuotatrice’s father - with a solemn expression, with a knife in his hand. He stops at the sign and keeps going.

Va bene, bastardo! I know you’re out here!

Something rises from behind him. Ragged clothes. Sandy curls. A chain with one end trailing back into the deeper waters of the shallow bay. Arm deformed, skin warped and healed around the hook driven through it. A face the Duke and the Merman might remember. The beast child looks up at the man with haunted green-amber eyes.

Who did this to you, ragazzino?

S-stay back!

I Ciclista reaches for la Nuotatrice. She squeezes his hand. “I’m the one who wrote the sign. ‘Beware the beast of Redfish Bay’.”

Chapter Text

“Uh, the others got in an accident, so it’s just going to be me doing this.”

The Teen Girl Squad is usually four, but right now there’s only one. The girl on stage is seventeen, with black stringy hair and baggy clothing. The kind of girl that’ll blend into the background, normally. She’s called “What’s Her Face” here. She speaks in a rough voice, as casually as one would mention their friends being held up in traffic.

“They’re fine, but they need to stay in the hospital for the injuries to be treated. I even got the tablet out so they can still be here, more or less.” She holds up the item in question; on the screen, three more girls wave. “Yeah, we named our group the way we did for a reason. We’re just a bunch of teens, nothing special, at least not in the good way.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; What’s Her Face and three other girls around her age, staring at an older boy. I think I have a chance with this guy, she says… And then a shorter boy takes a baseball bat to her knees. Two of the others rush to her, one concerned, the other annoyed, while the last is too starstruck by the guy to really notice.

“We’ve been through a lot of near-death experiences, even aside from the relevant stuff here. Lot of broken bones, lot of head injuries. I guess you could say we’re damaged, and not even in a cool emo way. It’ll be a miracle if any of us live to be twenty.”

What’s Her Face in a hospital bed, in a cast, lecturing the ashamed-looking boy who had the bat. Look, Thomas, we can still be friends. Just don’t pull that shit again. People change. Not all childhood romances actually happen. And doing stuff like that will just make people want nothing to do with you.

What’s Her Face leaving the emergency room in a wheelchair. The starstruck girl is there too, with their other friends, watching the other boy being taken into the ER. He got into an accident with a truck. Hopefully he makes it, since the guy braked.

The four girls are quiet for a while; pensive. One breaks the silence with, Let’s get yogurt!

You guys know I’m vegan, right?

There’s probably something there you can eat.

“Nothing really happened to me, but it happened to them. They texted me the okay to do this, so I’ll tell their stories for them instead. This counts for the star thing, right? Oh, whatever. I’ll tell them in the order of when I found out.”

A Story about The Ugly One

“Yeah, her name’s kind of a misnomer.”

The Ugly One in question doesn’t really live up to her title. More homely than ugly, with messy poofy black curls, black catseye glasses and a sickly green dress, and notable bruising accompanying raised red flaky patches. Her grin shows slightly crooked teeth, gappy and sharp.

“She’s insisted on calling herself that here. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; four toddlers playing at pre-school. The Teen Girl Squad is a Teeny Tiny Girl Squad. The Ugly One stands out like a sore thumb even then.

“She does kind of stick out from the group, even beside appearances. Kind of forgets to shower, among other things…”

The Ugly One gives Valentine’s day cards to lunch ladies. Is too nervous to talk to some older boys at the beach, to the point of literally sticking her head in the sand. Wears a strangely-designed bathing suit with three pieces. Hangs out with an old guy. Is oddly suggestible to anything the “leader” of the group proposes. Confuses PCP with a rapper and gushes about it during health class. It goes on.

“She’s weird, but the kind of weird that’s endearing. Ironically, she’s a lot more popular than me. But then again, a lot of things about our group are weird. Anyways, her story started around lunchtime.”

The school cafeteria. Two of the girls have no food with them. What’s Her Face has a granola bar on standby that she’ll eat later. The Ugly One brings a pile of corn. The others stare silently at it.

“Uggs invited us to her sweet sixteen birthday. We were kind of hesitant to go to it because last year was themed to something she had a hyperfixation on. But then she mentioned it was a mixed boy/girl party, and, well, our minds changed.”

We’ll be there like shareware!

The Ugly One is ecstatic. She flaps her hands around in excitement, babbling about what later will bring.

“Yeah, all of us kind of fall under the ‘boy-crazy teen girl’ stereotype in some shape or form. Uggs especially.”

The girls chattering. I have a crush on every boy!

Pfft. A young man wearing a red mask and gloves. Well, this is probably going to happen to you then. He holds up a crudely drawn stick figure picture of The Ugly One with several arrows driven into her body, emitted from the mouth of a balding middle-aged man.

“Cheerleader’s ex-step brother. One of her folks married his mother - briefly - but it didn’t work out so they split off sometime after and her folks got remarried. Entire side of that family has issues.”

A father that walked out on them when the youngest was born; a mother that did the same when the eldest hit eighteen, the checks and occasional phone calls the only indication that she’s still alive. The eldest with anger issues and several mental problems. The middle one with a criminal record a mile long and delusions of coolness, unpleasant to everyone, even the people he likes. The youngest an outcast, so different from his family people suspect something (though no one says anything). A foster kid constantly in and out of prison, just like the mother who put them in foster care to begin with, with a hyperactive six-year-old sister - always a handful.

“He made a couple of comics that are loosely based on events that happened in our lives, after she asked him to draw us. Would be mad, but they're amusing. Made fifteen issues, two create-your-own comics, and defaced a coloring book as a way to get some hippie to talk smack about a band that was judging some music competition thing. Somehow, it worked.” What’s Her Face shrugs and moves back to the tale. “Ugly One’s family is a lot better. It’s only her and her dad, but they care about each other. He does the best he can. He’s got one issue, but that’ll come near the end of this.”

The party’s in full swing, everyone having fun. High school girls and boys, and some college kids, even. So far, the guest of honor has yet to show up.

“The three of us went to the party. Uggs was taking some time to make herself presentable. We decided to split off and do our own thing.”

One flirts with some older boys. The other talks to a redheaded guy from school. Meanwhile, What’s Her Face makes a beeline for the snack table.

“I really wanted some of the chips. Eventually her father came to announce the guest of honor. And plug his second-hand electronics shop.”

A heavy-set balding man with a microphone stands at the bottom of the stairs. And here she is! Joy Uhlig!

If The Ugly One didn’t live up to the name before, she really doesn’t now. Hair straightened and styled. Makeup covering the red blotches. Ruby red lipstick. Form-fitting short red dress that complements her curves. Everyone at the party stares. Several blush at the sight, including What’s Her Face and another friend.

“She… really wanted to look good for the party.” What’s Her Face clears her throat.

Thanks for coming to my party, everyone! Now let's get it on like Diddy Kong!

“She and others went to the dance floor. Mostly fast dancing. I’m not much of a dancer, so I just watched.”

Distracted, What’s Her Face grabs a handful of chips and stuffs them in her mouth.

“They went down the wrong passage.”

Choking, gasping, falling down to the ground. Struggling to breathe.

“That was bad enough, but then…”

What’s Her Face, still choking, watches as some seniors pull The Ugly One away through the crowd, laughing their heads off.

LET ME GO! LET ME GO!

They don’t; if anything, they pull on her clothes even harder and grip her wrists tighter. What’s Her Face struggles to get up, to save her, but she slowly loses consciousness…

“Thank God I didn’t die there. Watching one of my friends about to be assaulted by some douchebag seniors is not the last thing I wanted to see before I die.”

She wakes up, coughing up mush and unchewed chips. Someone is clutching her under the ribs; a boy with a goatee and long brown hair. Thank you! she calls as she rushes off, unaware that he’s running behind her too.

“Luckily one of my boyfriend’s friends managed to notice me choking and saved my life. I’ll call him DnD - my boyfriend’s friend group all have the exact same first name, like a nerdy male version of Heathers. Anyway, it turns out a couple of other people beat us to the punch.”

What’s Her Face and DnD discover the seniors shoved against the wall outside, with trash dumped on top of them, bin and all. One has his fly down. The Ugly One’s hair and clothes are disheveled. Not a single drop of white marks her; the only red is her smudged lipstick. One of her saviors hands back her glasses, with a crack in one of the lenses.

“The ex-stepbrother I’d mentioned, and one of the football players from the school team. Let’s call him Quarterman.”

Quarterman helps The Ugly One up as she places her glasses back on. Joy, all this time I was looking around, and you weren't right there in front of me. The Ugly One gazes at Quarterman in awe while DnD, What’s Her Face, and the ex-stepbrother make sure the seniors won’t attempt to pull that off again. But I realized when I was looking around that you were right there in front of me all this time, Joy Uhlig.

The Ugly One flaps happily and grins like he said the most romantic thing in the world. That makes so much sense! She hugs him and gives him a kiss.

“Yeah, that’s not the type of dialogue you’d find in romance novels. But that’s not the first time you guys heard about football players’ attempts at romance.” The Captain blushes while the Warrior gives him a playful nudge. “Anyway, we’re at the part with Ugg’s dad’s major issue. See, he’s a bit overprotective of her, and he ‘only wants the best of the best dating his baby girl’. There was one time he almost strangled DnD because he took Uggs to prom and he wasn’t on the basketball team like he’d said. Luckily, Uggs managed to get him to stop and they stayed friends despite the awkwardness.” What’s Her Face pauses briefly, then says, “The seniors weren’t so lucky.”

The seniors in question, some time later. All of them gutted like sheep.

“Nobody really found out who did it, but nobody really cared to look into it when word got out about what they tried to do. I think her dad’s part of the Mafia or something, if there’s a non-Catholic version. Uggs never really mentions anything connected to the business, but he sure is loaded for a single dad running a second-hand electronics shop… Anyway, Quarterman and Uggs started dating after that.”

The next day after the party, Quarterman waits in the living room for The Ugly One. She comes downstairs, this time with her usual appearance. Uh, I don’t think I’ll be able to be… pretty again for a long time.

You look plenty pretty to me.

The Ugly One beams.

“He’s definitely a keeper.”

A story about So And So (or the Over-Achiever Bandit)

“She had some trouble picking out a name for this place.”

So and So is on the tablet now. Her blonde hair flips at her elbows and she wears a plaid schoolgirl skirt. She has an ice pack over her eye, a splint on one arm, and a cast on one leg. She’s doing her best to appear professional, but there’s some indication of nervousness in her body language. Beside her are several school books, one already cracked open.

“She mostly goes by the former, but I think the latter's much more fitting. She’s the kind of person that would get a baby to study for the SAT. That’s not an exaggeration, she literally tried to get a baby to study for an SAT once. It’s weird.”

Teeny Tiny So and So, busy studying basic pre-school stuff when she isn’t playing with the other kids.

“It’s not her folks. Hell, they tried to get her to back off it a couple times, even in conversations where they had no idea we were listening. Granted, I never met her birth mother, but her parents split before she even moved here, and she was five then.”

The Teeny Tiny Girl Squad playing together. So and So is closest to What’s Her Face. Both have fun playing patty cake, hopscotch - typical stuff girls their age like to play. They hang out by themselves in the preschool playground.

You know, says What’s Her Face, I wonder why girls can’t date each other like boys and girls are supposed to.

Maybe we could try it.

What’s Her Face gazes at her with curious childlike wonder. Really?

“She’s so desperate to be the star student that her social skills are pretty much non-existent. She’s not completely lacking a social life, though, she just likes to prioritize academics.”

Years later. So and So sits beside What’s Her Face, embarrassed and hesitant. Look, I know you’re dating Sci-Fi Greg, but I was wondering, maybe… we could follow up on that thing we sort of promised as kids before we knew that being gay was a thing?

What’s Her Face is surprised for a moment, then ponders. Hmm… poly’s a thing. I’ll go over it with him. I think he’ll be good with you.

One relationship talk with the boyfriend later, she has another partner, all content with the arrangement.

“I should be getting to her story now. It started a while ago. The rest of us went to some summer camp we usually go to for a week each year. So and So couldn’t make it that year because she got a job at a T-shirt shop.”

The Teen Girl Squad at the bus station. Three leaving to go camping, bags full of summer clothes; one staying behind.

Sorry I have to skip. Judith is making me stick with the job.

Your stepmom is a fascist.

She waves the others off.

“She had a really terrible manager. Wouldn’t let her have a moment to breathe. Insisted on calling her Mark, even putting it on her name tag.” Some of the audience wince, and What’s Her Face looks apologetically at Ringtail. “And she framed her for stealing a shirt.”

The rest of the Teen Girl Squad at the camp. What’s Her Face gets a call on her cell phone. The Ugly One listens in. As they speak, their other friend canoes across the lake. Joy, Virginia. don't make the same mistakes I did. You guys are young. You got your whole lives ahead of you. Me? I'm looking at life plus whenever my step-mom picks me up.

“So and So even believed it herself. It was a shirt she found trés cutée, but she was planning to buy it with her paycheck. But the truth was discovered rather soon because…”

So and So’s stepmother escorts So and So out of the police station. In the background a man is restrained from punching the manager’s lights out.

“Turns out the manager was a part of God’s Will First Junior - the ones that didn’t realize they fucked up anyway - and apparently they killed a family dog in an attack that she lead on that astronaut’s kid.”

Several people arrested or questioned; the baker’s sister, the ex-friend of the Fae, the two constant tormentors of Six of Shades, and So and So’s manager among them.

“Luckily the charges were dropped after that, and none of the cops got to her. You can thank her blonde girl whiteness for that. But the whole thing left her paranoid of the cops, especially after word came out.”

Some time later. The Teen Girl Squad hang out with So and So while she babysits. A knock on the door.

Open up! It's the police!

So and So pales in fear. AHH! THE POPO! I can't do another nickel! She rushes towards the kitchen while What’s Her Face answers the door.

“Fortunately, those cops’ abuse of power was ‘crashing at their friend’s house to watch pay-per-view’. She hurt her foot in the garbage disposal when she tried to climb out the window and slipped into the sink, but it wasn’t too bad. They paid the hospital bill for the injuries they accidentally caused and gave us the snack mix they brought. Otherwise, she had no issues with the cops in that way, but…”

What’s Her Face leaves her boyfriend’s house. The boyfriend, a guy with blond hair that hides his eyes and a sparse moustache, kisses her and asks, You sure you don’t need anyone coming with you?

No worries, got a couple cans of pepper spray and two knives. I’ll be okay.

“See, once news of the cult broke out, we thought either me or Uggs would have been the ones they most likely would target.”

Despite the reassurance, the boyfriend doesn’t look convinced. Uhhh… I think I should walk you home just to be on the safe side. Don’t want my fair maiden to be harmed for the crime of going back home.

What’s Her Face chuckles. Fine. I’ll let you hang around me for a bit longer before I head back. I feel weird walking alone anyway.

“Me, I’m asexual demi-bi-ro and poly, kinda butch, agnostic, bi-racial, and I’m not sure what they’d think of this but I’m also vegan and autistic. Uggs is Jewish, autistic too, and…”

Rewind; the Teeny Tiny Girl Squad again. A younger Ugly One, rubbing the back of (t)he(i)r head. I’m… not entirely sure if I’m a boy or a girl.

Hopefully you’ll find out soon enough. Because I need to find which one of you to prepare for romancin’ before we’re older.

But what if-

My point still stands.

“She experimented with gender briefly as a kid. Kind of like our gym coach, but shorter-term before she finally settled. Come to think of it, I think the coach might have a story too, but this is complicated already… See, So and So’s also my girlfriend. Neither she or my boyfriend are dating each other, just me. A lot better than how another childhood romance went, at least.” What’s Her Face rubs one of her knees.

What’s Her Face’s boyfriend looks concerned and confused. Uh, are you sure we should be going here?

It’s a shortcut. The sooner we get home, the better, right?

“Anyways, my boyfriend, we call him Sci-Fi, decided to walk me home for obvious reasons. I decided to take a shortcut through the grove. It was a good thing we went.”

What’s Her Face and Sci-Fi cry out in horror at the sight; a slumped, barely conscious figure stained (especially her skirt) in red and white. Sci-Fi takes his shirt off to make bandages while What’s Her Face calls 911 (already on her speed dial).

“It would be bad enough if we’d stumbled upon someone we didn’t know…”

The figure mumbles something. -inia?

What’s Her Face’s blood runs cold. Kristen?

“But this was even worse. Someone hurt her, and she could have vanished - she could have died there and we might never have known.”

So and So and What’s Her Face sit in the waiting room, Sci-Fi calling up his friends nearby.

When the fuck are they going to get to my turn? I want this awful taste out of my mouth.

They’ll get to you soon, What’s Her Face reassures, holding her tightly but gently.

What’s Her Face gazes at the floor. “She never really told us what they did or what the ‘charges’ even were. Maybe she was worried that I might blame myself for it.” She clears her throat to get rid of a lump in it. “And them getting to her once would have been bad enough. They must have realised she was still alive and come back later to finish the job.”

Three out of the four picking a broken cellphone off the ground, arguing amongst themselves until they see So and So. She’s limping, covered in glass shards, dishevelled and scrape-kneed, marked with panic and fear.

Kristen-

GIVE ME THE DAMN PHONE! I NEED TO CALL THE COPS!

They freeze, and she takes a working phone from What’s Her Face and dials.

“She passed out after she gave the second report. She was lucky to recover after that.” What’s Her Face’s breath hitches. “She only managed to escape by breaking the window and jumping from a moving car.” What’s Her Face takes a couple of deep breaths and glances guiltily at the Caballeros, the Spirit Speaker, and the unaccompanied Observer. “I really wish it didn’t have to lead to what it did for those bastards to finally be caught. Those fucking monsters should have been stopped the moment they decided to do any of this shit.”

A Story about the Cheerleader

“Yeah, she’s not an actual cheerleader.”

The Cheerleader’s on the screen now. She has blonde hair tied in pigtails, freckles sprinkled around her cheeks, and a pink sleeveless dress with a red heart on it. One of her arms is in a sling, her legs are splinted, and some wrapping covers her forehead. She looks annoyed, but her expression softens when she notices some boys in the audience, and she waves with her spare hand.

“She’s more of a cheerleader trope type, in the way she dresses and treats other girls.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Cheerleader yelling at What’s Her Face over who she picked to date. What’s Her Face simply flips her the bird and walks off.

“Not sure why she’s a part of our group. Only Uggs actually tolerated her for a long time.” Shrug. “She acted like a spoiled entitled brat. No surprise that she’s the least successful with getting a relationship. She’s the only one of us that’s still single, which only matters as she’s the only one that really cares about this sort of thing.”

Cheerleader talks to Quarterman. So, Quaker, how's about you and me?

How's about you get some brains?

Cut; So and So at the bottom of a six-foot hole. What’s Her Face and The Ugly One stifle laughter as they wait for assistance. Cheerleader looks extremely offended.

Cut; the Ugly One’s sweet sixteen birthday. Cheerleader approaches a table surrounded by several college boys playing poker. Any a’ you boys wanna ditch this preschool party? I know of a couple HAWT junior college jams we could hit. She’s rejected fast as a caber toss.

Cut, cut, cut; a montage of times she’s tried and failed to get someone, anyone, to date her. Occasionally her efforts lead to injuries.

“I would say she’s the worst, but she’s not completely awful.”

What’s Her Face watching a garage band live, eyebrows rising as she notices Cheerleader nearby. Are you here to see Brainkrieg?

Cheerleader shrugs. I come for the wuggas, but stay for the jiggy juggas.

“She’s just your typical spoiled teenage brat that has parents a bit too busy keeping their upper middle class life afloat. She hadn’t had any humbling experience to get her to knock that shit off. Not to mention she’s like the youngest out of the group.”

What’s Her Face on the phone, waiting in the front of the office where So and So is getting her forensic kit done. Yeah, thank God her stepmom gave the okay to something for once…

“How I found out began around the same time as So and So’s. I called the others to let them know about it as she got the kit done.”

The phone call devolves into an argument. FOR FUCK’S SAKE, JENNIFER, KRISTEN GOT SHANKED AND NEARLY LYNCHED BY A FUCKING RAPIST BIGOT CULT! THERE ARE THINGS MORE IMPORTANT THAN BOYS! What’s Her Face is left panting by the force of her shout, but her anger disappears at the reply.

… I’ll be right over. Cheerleader speaks so softly, sadly, and with a hint of knowing, before she hangs up.

“I’d never seen her act like that before. I had to ask her…”

Cheerleader enters the waiting room, looking uncharacteristically worried. How bad was it?

She’s getting the kit done, but she’s probably going to stay overnight at least… Are you okay?

… Can I tell you something?

“I was slightly wary, but I decided to let her. It took a while but she finally told me. It happened a week or two before Ugg’s sixteenth birthday party. She went to a different party, and she got a cab to bring her home.”

The cab driver rambles along, Cheerleader feeling extremely uncomfortable.

“He was acting all weird about her, asking if she wanted to go to some ‘boom-boom club’. She kept insisting he should take her home.”

Cheerleader repeats Take me home over and over, in response to every comment and question, to the point of shouting. Her voice cracks when she notices he’s driving with one hand, his constant ramble drowning out the jingling of his belt and the slap of skin on skin.

“He did take her home. But when she got out of the car…”

As she climbs out, she feels one hand caressing her hair and another on her chest. After one heartstopping squeeze, she’s let go. Cheerleader enters her house as fast as she can, trying to suppress chills and tears.

“That was all he did to her, but it was still pretty bad. Her parents reported him when she told them and he got fired. He didn’t really do the things that almost happened to Uggs and did happen to So and So, but-”

-it felt so awful. Cheerleader’s eyes fill with tears. She grips onto What’s Her Face’s hand tightly. After a shocked pause, What’s Her Face pulls her into a close hug. There are tears in her eyes, too.

“Cheerleader started to treat us nicer after that. That’s cool and all, but I still wish that hadn’t happened to her. Nothing’s worth that. She shouldn’t have to be damaged to be wiser.”

So and So leaves the hospital, a business card in her hand. The rest of the Teen Girl Squad wait for her, and huddle around her protectively as they walk her to a car, where they share some chili fries.

“So and So picked up the card at the hospital after the second kit. Took us a while to find the time, and, well…” What’s Her Face gestures to the tablet, and the girls on it wave harder. “But we’ll try to come over more. We’re an odd bunch, but I think we’ll fit in okay here, and despite everything, they’re too good friends to lose. Hopefully coming here will help all of us.” She rubs her neck awkwardly and laughs. “Maybe I'll be able to feel like I’m actually seventeen for once.”

Chapter Text

“He never actually hurt us…”

Arithmetic is the only boy in the trio. A carrot-top in a green shirt, dancing a yo-yo up and down the string.

“But there’s more than one way to hurt somebody.”

Geometry wears a yellow sweater and blue skirt. She paces the stage, fussing with her beaded necklace.

“And we know he definitely meant to hurt us.”

Calculus is the youngest by two years, but already in their grade. A bespectacled brunette currently standing on her head.

“Still feels a little weird, though. We’re here and… and our friend isn’t.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; one, two, three… four. The Mathletes in competition, alongside an older boy with a beak-like nose. They aren’t champions - yet. The day is surely coming. Calculus is the undisputed star of the team; for her, the numbers come together in some kind of third dimension.

“She’s always been the smart one.” There’s no jealousy in Geometry’s voice; only pity.

Calculus sighs slightly. “I wish I wasn’t. It almost makes it my fault…”

“No,” Arithmetic says firmly. “It was his fault. Just his.”

One man appears at most tournaments; sometimes as a judge, sometimes as a spectator. Always with his eyes on Mathletes. Purplish coat, pronounced chin, synthetic hair gelled back.

“It seems like he was maybe like that Ratty-gan guy. He… liked smart people.”

“Liked to hurt smart people.”

“Even if the smart people are kids.”

Geometry shrugs listlessly. “Or maybe we’re totally wrong. Maybe there was no reason for picking us. No reason at all.”

The older boy watches the stranger with narrowed eyes. He sticks close to the Mathletes and subtly steers them away. Stay clear a’ that guy.

What’s up, Didge?

I don’ like the looks a’ him. That’s all the explanation he gives, and as far as they’re concerned, it’s not a good one.

“We didn’t know it, but he…”

Arithmetic sighs. “He hurt our friend. But Di- he never told anybody, so…”

Calculus looks almost angry. “He never told us. So how were we supposed to know?”

The older boy is protective, but he’s not always there. They have their own homes. Their own interest. Their own computers. One message, three screens. This is Hieronymous Hackman. I’d like to offer some tutoring before your next competition.

“My mom thought it was a great idea,” Geometry says. “Things like word problems have always been hard for me. She thought maybe he could help.”

Arithmetic nods. “My grandparents liked it, too. Anything academic, they’re totally onboard.”

“ ‘Every little bit helps’,” Calculus agrees. “That’s what my dad said.”

“We all told our adults. We got permission. We did everything we were supposed to do.”

At first, Mr. Hackman is the picture of professionalism. Virtual lessons. Digital worksheets. The occasional friendly banter. He doesn’t attend their next competition; isn’t there to see them take home the silver. None of them mention the tutoring, not to their older friend or to each other.

“We all trusted him, and he started… what’s the word?”

“Grooming,” Calculus says softly. “He was grooming us.”

Arithmetic kicks the stage. “I hate that word. ‘Grooming’ is what you do to a dirty animal. We’re not animals.”

The “friendly banter” starts to take up more and more of the lesson. And it gradually becomes more personal. More complimentary.

With Calculus: You’re awfully intelligent for such a young lady. Much more than anyone else I know.

She smiles and blushes.

With Arithmetic: I worked on a farm when I was twenty. It was such hard work - you must be very strong.

He laughs and flexes his muscles.

With Geometry: Your hair is absolutely lovely. Good for you, keeping it natural.

She grins and strikes a pose.

“He made me - made all of us - feel special. Like, y’know… He wanted to talk to us. Not every grown-up does.”

“So we… we felt safe telling him things. Our problems and stuff.”

“We should’ve known better. I should’ve…”

Geometry. I don’t… always feel pretty. I know I should, it’s just… hard sometimes.

Arithmetic. We don’t have the kind of money other families do. I… I get jealous, sometimes.

Calculus. The championship isn’t such a big deal right now, but Mom says it’ll look good on college applications. I’m going to be the first person in my family to go to college.

Three screens, one response. I might be able to help…

Hackman helps Geometry set up a social page to post her selfies. Donates forty dollars to Arithmetic’s virtual wallet. Pulls strings to get Calculus into an online college math class. And now, what will you do for me?

Calculus takes a shaky breath. “He said I owed him.”

Arithmetic shudders. “He said I had to thank him.”

Geometry holds herself. “He said it was the least I could do.”

Let’s start with something simple. One, two, three, four computer screens. Three on camera mode. One receiving, downloading, saving.

“It was… weird, but not really sketchy. He wanted videos of me exercising. Clothes on.”

“With me, it was dancing. Nothing raunchy.”

“Reading from my favorite books.”

The Mathletes know him. Know their caretakers trust him. Believe with all their hearts he is their friend. And what he wants is… innocuous. They do question it, and the answer - I get lonely sometimes, and seeing your face, hearing your voice, helps - feels authentic.

“I still didn’t know he was doing the same thing to them. I thought…”

Geometry nods thinly. “He… made me feel special. Like I was the only one.”

The price seems paltry compared to the rewards. Geometry is flooded with compliments until she feels like Miss America. Arithmetic buys the name-brand things he never could before. Calculus scores high on every test and daydreams about Stanford.

“It was a month before he…” Geometry is hyperventilating now, almost running from one end of the stage to the other.

Hackman messages them again. Now I want something else.

At first, they are curious. What do you want? And then they are disgusted. WHAT?! And then they are angry. No! And then they are horrified. … How?

Calculus has finally flipped over. She sits with her knees pulled tight against her chest. “Deepfakes,” she mumbles. “Dirty ones. Some of them were all three of us together. That’s how we found out about each other.”

Pixels moving across their screens. Sound bytes they’re too shocked to mute. Not their own words, but their voices. Not their own bodies, but they could be.

“He got tired of the fake stuff.” Arithmetic flicks his yo-yo so hard, his wrist cracks. “He wanted to see how we really looked.”

I could send these to your parents.

Geometry’s shaking hands go to her buttons.

I could send these to your friends.

Arithmetic stands staring at the camera, blushing redder than his hair.

I could send these to your school.

Calculus huddles in her closet when it’s over, sobbing.

“How many times did you guys…?”

“One.”

“Two.”

“Three for me.” Calculus shakes her head. “I don’t know what that means, if he… liked me, in a gross way, or if he really really didn’t.”

Sleepless long nights follow, and days of not-so-little lies.

More money comes into Arithmetic’s account, but he never even counts it up; it can’t buy back what he had before.

Geometry deletes her social media page without a second’s hesitation, leaves her followers with nothing. They want more, and explanation at the very least, but she never gives it.

Calculus is a different student now, jousting constantly with her teacher. When she knows the answer, she yells it; when she doesn’t, she gets tears in her eyes. Her teacher suggests she drop the class, and she burns her textbook.

Together, the Mathletes dance around the topic. Did he make you…? Did you really…? They can’t quite bring themselves to ask or to answer, but they know.

“There are numbers too big to even have names. There’s math so complicated, there aren’t even answers. That’s how I felt - like all the hurt was too big to ever explain, and it wasn’t ever going to be fixed.”

Their caretakers notice the changes, of course, but what can be done when the Mathletes won’t talk about it?

“We probably never would have told anybody - at least, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t…”

“Except our friend found out by accident.”

One, two, three, four children in Geometry’s room. The Mathletes and the older boy. Them smiling through their teeth, not looking each other in the eye. Him frowning. Alright, what’s the deal?

A ping on the computer answers him. Geometry jumps, but the friend is closer. He looks at the screen and his brow furrows deeper. Why’s he messaging you?

No… no reason…

Calculus bursts into tears.

“We told him the truth, and each other.”

They’re quacking like Peabody ducks, stumbling over each other to spit it out, get it over with, bring it into the open air. It’s horrible, but it helps. Even more horrible and somehow more helpful: I… I know what you’re goin’ through.

“He did the same thing to our friend, a few years ago. Except he actually wanted to… hurt him. In real life.”

I let ‘im do it, the boy mutters. And after that he left me alone.

The Mathletes stare at him, eyes wide. Then: Why didn’t you tell us about him?

“He said he was trying to forget it happened.” Geometry folds her arm. “I… I know he got hurt, and he was scared, but… He should have warned us, right? Am I a bad person for thinking that?”

Calculus sobs into her hands. I don’t want him to… to…

The older boy squares his shoulders. He won’t.

“He finally told the cops about his thing, and he helped us tell about our thing.” Arithmetic holds his yo-yo for a moment, staring at the red plastic. “The guy got arrested.”

There’s evidence enough on his computer, but x does not equal y. There’s no proof he ever touched their friend, so that charge never goes through.

“He won’t talk about it with us - I think maybe that’s part of why he doesn’t want to come here.” Calculus taps her fingers on the stage. “I understand it, I do, the cops need to know for sure, but… He was finally brave enough to tell, and it’s like it doesn’t even matter.”

Regardless, the charges that stick stick hard. A “mistake” in paperwork sticks him in general population. A shiv sticks him in the ribs. His body sticks to the ground when they try to carry him off, blood thick and pooling.

Arithmetic shuffles his feet. “He should still be alive. He deserved to spend all that time thinking about what he did to us - all four of us. Being dead is too easy for him.”

“I’m glad he’s dead,” Geometry says. “ ‘Cause now I know I don’t ever have to see him again. I don’t need to be scared about him getting out. All of that’s over.”

Calculus shrugs. “I don’t really know how I feel. It’s like… a mess of things and I can’t tell them apart. I used to know a lot of things, but now I don’t even know what I’m feeling. It sucks. I feel like everything sucks now. Even math.”

Chapter Text

Hair like blood snow. Eyes that gleam. Teeth too long. Hands too thin.

THINGS AREN’T ALWAYS WHAT THEY SEEM…
👀x8 ❤️x8 👣x8

Comments:

AbominableSnowman

The Snowman’s camera. The Snowman alone.

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; children playing in the snow, farther out than they probably should be. As the foreigner stumbles past them. They don’t stop. They don’t fear him. And he stumbles on. Another man pulling at his side. Broken Sherpa on a tongue that can barely manage English. Kids! I… I… chill near dead… where am home and family? Take me home with you? They’re not afraid but they don’t help him either. Maybe they would if he spoke well enough to understand. The Yeti Bar. He meets the Snowman. And becomes the Snow Beast, nearly scratching his hide off when the heat hits frozen skin.

Episode One: The Snowberry Clearwing ▶️

Hair like blood snow. Eyes that gleam. Teeth too long. Hands too thin.

00:00
“Hemaris diffinis. The hummingbird moth. The flying lobster. Or, as it’s most often known-”

01:00
“-a common species, found in the United States and parts of Canada - Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and of course British Columbia. Heh.” He laughs, but it doesn’t come naturally. “My personal favorite-”

02:00
“-as you can see, the caterpillar may be hosted by a variety of plant life. Mostly sweet things - strawberry and honeysuckle - but sometimes dogbane. As an adult, it feeds on nectar from a variety of flowers, not just the snowberry from which it takes its name, but also on-”

03:00
“-with a wingspan of about an inch and a half, the young moth is highly flight active. Note that the pupa loses its scales early in development, rendering its wings as clear as that of a bee’s. Unique in terms of lepidopterans. Like bees they also act as pollinators in the regions of-”

04:00
“-in weeks, the larva will reach full size. This female lays her eggs on a strawberry plant. Though it appears that her sisters have chosen another host-”

05:00
“-the clearwing larva reaches its pupal stage, spinning a silk cocoon around itself. If you live in Canada or the States, you may come across these on the ground. Sometimes attached to twigs or leaves. Do not disturb-”

06:00
“-pupate throughout the winter, only emerging as full grown moths in the summer or the spring. Adults live about a week and in that time act as pollinators as they look, first for a mate, and then for a place to lay their eggs. There are two broods every-”

07:00
“-most of their lives spent sleeping through the winter. Wrapped up and waiting. In the dirt.”

08:00

Comments:

PrincessFrosta *posted eight months ago
Is this what he was filming when the allegations broke?
* SapphireFox *posted eight months ago
-Allegations?
** PrincessFrosta *posted eight months ago
--Here
--EDIT: Okay, so I got in trouble for posting NSFW content (which is ironic given the ads on this hellsite). Basically what happened is [NSFW]
*** SapphireFox *posted eight months ago
---O_O
*** PrincessFrosta *posted eight months ago
---Yeah it’s awful. Even worse, people are apparently blaming the Sherpa for [NSFW] and taking it out on the people in Namche Bazaar. Y’know… the ones who *saved* him.
*** CujoCamouflage *posted eight months ago
---Did you just fucking say people being a little racist is worse than a guy being raped? What the fuck is this shit?
---EDIT: Okay, so apparently he lied, but my point still stands.

aBominable *posted eight weeks ago
INPORTENT!!! I am link proof of Percy Patterson lie about [NSFW]
* SnowAngel *posted eight weeks ago
-Hi!! Um, I’m Sherpa and if this is true… wow that’s awful. But…
** aBominable *posted eight weeks ago
--What am you mean ‘but’?
*** SnowAngel *posted eight weeks ago
---This isn’t proof he lied. Just proof that he recanted. And the thing is… [NSFW] victims DO recant!!! They recant all the time.
*** JackieFrost *posted eight weeks ago
---Spot the feminist

Sophire *posted eight days ago
dailyplanet.com/search/PercyPatterson
* SapphireFox *posted eight days ago
-????? So he wasn’t lying? Or… he lied about lying??? What???
* NorthWind *posted eight minutes ago
-My head hurts.

AbominableSnowman *posted eight seconds ago

The Snowman and the Clearwing. Plastic cast covers. Purple plaster. Frost-bitten fingers and broken arms.

Sooner, rather than later, the world finds out. It’s an ugly story but people like those better than any other kind. Pictures circulating of a frozen Snow Beast. Hair frozen. Eyes like ice. The people here are kind to him. The press doesn’t care. And the story runs away from him, casting off the Snow Beast like old skin. Percy Patterson Raped in Namche becomes Percy Patterson Raped by Guide becomes Percy Patterson Raped by Sherpa becomes…

Episode Two: The Snow Bunting ▶️

Hair like blood snow. Eyes that gleam. Teeth too long. Hands too thin.

00:00
“Plectrophenax nivalis-”

01:00
“-four subspecies, differing from each other in the plumage found on breeding-age males. Plectrophenax nivalis nivalis, Plectrophenax nivalis insulae, Plectrophenax nivalis vlasowae and Plectrophenax nivalis townsendi-”

02:00
“-order Passeriformes, family Calcariidae-”

03:00
“-native to the Arctic Circle. Noteworthy in its status as the most northerly placed passerine in the world. As far as we know, anyway. Flocks are sometimes called snowflakes, and it’s not hard to see why.” He whistles. Loud and sharp and clear. “Just look at them. Aren’t they-”

04:00
“-common feature is their black wingtips and snow-white inner wings. All male snow buntings have these, regardless of subspecies or type-”

05:00
“-sexually dimorphic. Females are plainer and more sparrow-like. Usually brown with smaller white patches. Males will appear similar outside of the breeding season.”

06:00
“-Bunting feeds her young. They mature quickly, doubling in size in a matter of days. Though in this case, it’s the mother feeding the chicks, the father Snow Bunting also acts as provider, caring for and feeding the clutch like other passerines.”

07:00
“-a hardy species with a lifespan of about nine years. Give or take?”

08:00

Comments:

ow_ye *posted eight months ago
Oh jeez. Just heard what happened during the filming of this series. @Percy, you probably won’t see this, but if you do… hope you’re doing okay.
* SnoWhite *posted eight months ago
-STAY STRONG PERCY!!!<\3 <\3
* CujoCamouflage *posted eight months ago
-See this is exactly why you don’t go to backwater countries like whatever the fuck. Fucking communists. China drove out all the women so they’ll fuck anything as long as squeals.
** WinterKing *posted eight months ago
--This is, unfortunately, why my father had to leave Siberia. Of course, I’m no racist, but [NSFW]
*** NindroidNoKori *posted eight months ago
---Fact Check: You Are Racist.

TheAvatar *posted eight weeks ago
Got here after watching Patterson’s confession vid. I can’t believe this is STILL getting views.
* ThatPerfectGirlIsGone *posted eight weeks ago
-I know. It’s shameful. Especially after visiting so much negative publicity on the people of Namche Bazaar. (Not to mention the Sherpa as a whole.)
** CujoCamouflage *posted eight weeks ago
--If it's so shameful, why are you here driving up the view count?
*** TheAvatar *posted eight weeks ago
---What viewcount? This is the fuck mothering pirate website. Yohoho, bitch.

BaltoTsar *posted eight days ago
So… Any word on if he’s gonna be charged or not?
* SnowAngel *posted eight days ago
-What? For recanting?
** BaltoTsar *posted eight days ago
--Yeah. I mean… I feel for the guy, don’t get me wrong. But it’s a weird situation legally. I think? I mean, I’m not a lawyer…

AbominableSnowman *posted eight seconds ago

The Snowman and the Snow Bunting. Brown swallowed up by snow-white gauze and bloodied bandages. And - like the Clearwing - black around the fingertips.

The tourism dries. Dries. Then returns eightfold. The climbers have never been respectful. Of the people. Of the mountain. Now they’re outright hostile. Someone throws a stone through the mayor’s window. Cracking open his teenage son’s head. Spilling patches of blood like roe across the ice as he stumbles for help.

Episode Three: The Snow Crab ▶️

Hair like blood snow. Eyes that gleam. Teeth too long. Hands too thin.

00:00
“Chionoecetes. Queen Crab. Spider Crab. Actually not a species-”

01:00
“-genus of crab native to the cold North Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Occasionally found as far north as the Arctic. Generic name coming from ‘chion’ - snow - and ‘oiketes’ - inhabitant.”

02:00
“-very popular menu item, commonly fished for in Norway, Greenland and Newfoundland as well as Japan, around the Bering Strait and in Alaska-”

03:00
“-pools of melting sea ice. Young develop in temperatures well below two degrees celsius while adults can’t tolerate conditions below five degrees. Currently, while still common, their breeding ground has decreased due to threats imposed by global warming-”

04:00
“-each spawn of about a hundred thousand-”

05:00
“-and this year saw a significant decline in the Bering Sea-”

06:00
“-seven recognized species in the genus. Chionoecetes angulatus, Chionoecetes bairdi, Chionoecetes elongatus, Chionoecetes japonicus, Chionoecetes opilio, Chionoecetes pacificus, and,” he takes a breath, “Chionoecetes tanneri-”

07:00
“-dwindling numbers and scarcer breeding space. Something will have to change. Someone’s got to do something. Which, I suppose, viewers, is up to you.”

08:00

Comments:

DragonBuster *posted eight months ago
Ugh. This is why I don’t travel. Crazy Broke Asians. We lived in Japan for a few years when I was a kid and you know how they are. Fuckin pedophile island. I guess what happened is marginally better… Percy Patterson is either twenty nine or thirty something.
* NindroidNoIce *posted eight months ago
-Fact Check: You Are Racist
** CandiceCream *posted eight months ago
--Yeah, jeez. And I don’t even like Yamato Japanese most of the time…
*** DragonBuster *posted eight months ago
---Go screw yourself. I didn’t say anything about Asians as a race. If calling out pedophilia and rape bother you so much maybe you should work on that lol

PrincessFrosta *posted eight weeks ago
I know you guys are mad at Percy for lying about what happened, but can you maybe take that discussion elsewhere? Some of us just wanna watch a guy with some cute animals.
* KillerFrost *posted eight weeks ago
-Check this out lol
** PrincessFrosta *posted eight weeks ago
--I’m not clicking that.

TruTru *posted eight days ago
So… is the video going around real or not? Or like… what????
* FruFru *posted eight days ago
-Which one? The confession? Or [NSFW]?
** TruTru *posted eight days ago
--The one with the yak.

AbominableSnowman *posted eight seconds ago

The Snowman and the Crab, the Clearwing’s brother. Protective plating around his abdomen. Metal bars holding up his arms from his sunken chest.

Stones and slurs and sometimes little fires. It gets worse. It gets worse…

Episode Four: The Snow Goose ▶️

Hair like blood snow. Eyes that gleam. Teeth too long. Hands too thin.

00:00
“The white morph version of Anser caerulescens-”

01:00
“-native to North America. Snow geese breed in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and eastern Siberia, as well as some parts of Mexico and the United States-”

02:00
“-massive increase during the 1900’s. Snow geese and their dark morph siblings - blue geese, as they’re commonly known-”

03:00
“-two subspecies. The greater snow goose, breeders of North Western Canada and Greenland, and the lesser snow goose, which breeds in Siberia, Alaska and the Canadian Northeast-”

04:00
“-usually mate long term, starting at year two. Pairs tend to form a while before the couple decides to breed-

05:00
“-are philopatric, so the pair will follow her lead, returning to the place she was born and raising young there year after year. Chicks will be cared for equally by both mother and-”

06:00
“-forming occasional hybrids with the Canada, the cackling and the greater white-fronted goose. And not-as-occasional, fertile hybrids with Ross’ geese.”

07:00
“-can live as long as fifteen years.”

08:00

Comments:

BaltoTsar *posted eight months ago
Wow. Okay. Not calling anyone out directly, but… Can we maybe cool it on the racism? Seems like it’s everywhere in the comments under this guy’s vids.
* CujoCamouflage *posted eight months ago
-It’s not “racism” to call out rapist brown people. Fuckhead.
** BaltoTsar *posted eight months ago
--It is when you blame it on them *being* brown. Asshole.

WeissQueen *posted eight weeks ago
Does anyone want to talk about how Percy Patterson can straight up lie about [NSFW], admit to lying ON CAMERA and still get off with a warning. Meanwhile someone like Bobby Demayo, a queer woman of color who - while definitely abusive - experienced a ton of trauma leading up to what she did had her whole life ruined (and deservedly so). Also… it seems to me that men get caught lying in court more than women do. Especially about abuse and rape. But nobody measures it.
* WinterMaiden *posted eight weeks ago
-Men lie more 100%. Especially in order to vilify their wives. Women lie too, but usually in order to frame other women. Look at any court case where a man kills his family, you’ll see it.
* WinterMaiden *posted eight weeks ago
-Oh and leave off with that “Bobby Demayo is guilty” whingery. I don’t associate with the stupid.

ow_ye *posted eight days ago
Jeez. Do you think Mr. Burnish has seen the video?
* TheAvatar *posted eight days ago
-The yak video?
** CandiceCream *posted eight days ago
--Who’s Mr Burnish?
*** TheAvatar *posted eight days ago
---I think he’s the guy behind FederalTerrestrial.
*** ow_ye *posted eight days ago
---Full name: Burnish *Patterson*. I think they had some kind of falling out.
*** TheAvatar *posted eight days ago
---Um. I HOPE he hasn’t seen it.

AbominableSnowman *posted eight seconds ago*

The Snowman and the Snow Goose. More like a blue goose. She’s all mottled black from the neckbrace down.

The mayor of Namche invites the Snow Beast into his own yard. And they talk. And talk. And talk. Well hid inside. Take it back, the mayor begs him. The Snow Beast doesn’t ask why.

Episode Five: The Snowy Owl ▶️

Hair like blood snow. Eyes that gleam. Teeth too long. Hands too thin.

00:00
“Bubo scandiacus. The polar owl. The white owl. The arctic owl. The-”

01:00
“Native to the Arctic and the Palearctic, the Snowy Owl breeds mostly on the tundra, using its bright white feathers to blend in with the ice and snow.”

02:00
“-are largely nocturnal. This little lady, on the other hand, is active during the night and the day. Especially in summer. Extremely adaptable hunters, they prey on lemmings during the breeding season, and on-”

03:00
“-nomads. They do not breed philopatrically like the snow goose, and rarely remain in one place for very long outside of the time it takes to rear their young-”

04:00
“-develop fairly slowly. Chicks tend to be born during the arctic summer, leaving the nest later, in the fall. They almost never breed outside their own, though there have been some claims-”

05:00
“-especially prized for their pure white coats - one of the best insulated of any bird, second only to the Adelie penguin-”

06:00
“-back to hunting. These ingenious little monsters are known to kill and eat even other predatory species such as goshawks and gyrfalcons-”

07:00
“-in fact, the adult snowy owl has only a few known predators. Foxes and wolves, mostly when nested. Foxes and wolves. And humankind.”

08:00

Comments:

CujoCamouflage *posted eight months ago
Anyone else wanna know where that black assistant chick went? Where was she in all this?
* WinkleWings *posted eight months ago
-wdym?
** CujoCamouflage *posted eight months ago
--Did she ditch him in the mountains or… what? Did she set this up?
*** KillerFrost *posted eight months ago
---Wouldn't put it past her. She looks suspicious AF in all the interviews.
*** CujoCamouflage *posted eight months ago
---Why are they even interviewing this bitch? Big narc energy.

JackieFrost *posted eight weeks ago
Okay, now we know the allegations were false… who wants to bet Brenda made him do it? Big Sloppy Demayo energy.
* BaltoTsar *posted eight weeks ago
-Why would she ever do that? People don’t just make this stuff up out of nowhere.
* NindroidNoKori *posted eight weeks ago
-Fact Check:

CujoCamouflage *posted eight days ago
Okay now we KNOW Brenda Aldenburg was involved.
* JackieFrost *posted eight days ago
-THIS. She probably made the poor guy recant because of all the negative press she was getting for leaving him alone.

AbominableSnowman *posted eight seconds ago

The Snowman and the Snow Crab’s father. Snowy Owl with a sunken mouth and broken teeth. Lips beak-like, black and twisted. Long broken though. Long deformed. Age. Not trauma. Physical or otherwise.

Scattered and shattered, but not slain, the Snow Beast goes on to the Arctic. The Network releases the first season of his show. He reads the comments. He regrets it. He goes back to Namche. He regrets that even more. The people here: shattered and scattered. And even slain.

Episode Six: The Snowflake Eel ▶️

Hair like blood snow. Eyes that gleam. Teeth too long. Hands too thin.

00:00
“Echidna nebulosa. Puhi-kapa. The clouded moray-”

01:00
“-the Hawaiian word derived from a nickname for the first King Kamehameha-”

02:00
“-species is native to the Indo-Pacific. Found in parts of Africa and Micronesia and in Coastal South America, making its home in the seagrass there-

03:00
“-named mostly for its appearance. The snowflake eel’s body consists mostly of yellow, black and white-”

04:00
“-blunt teeth and pharyngeal jaws, best suited for a diet of crustaceans-”

05:00
“-extremely hardy and especially attractive to hobbyists. Snowflake Eels are often found in aquariums, displayed for onlookers. They do well in captivity and may live to be as old as fifteen-”

06:00
“-in captivity they are most often compatible with other large and aggressive fish such as tangs or even other-”

07:00
“-will bite and kill crustaceans and smaller, less violent fish.”

08:00

Comments:

LowKey *posted eight months ago
I wish someone would bite and kill me…
* BipolarBears *posted eight months ago
-I bet Percy does too tbh. You guys in the comments are so unhinged.
** LowKey *posted eight months ago
--Oh please. He doesn’t read them.

BipolarBears *posted eight weeks ago
I take back everything I said before. Percy Patterson is a liar and a hack. I hope he does see these comments and I hope he burns in hell. Or freezes. Which ever hurts the most.

Iciclayla *posted eight days ago
@bipolarbears Would you care to reevaluate your previous statements?
* BipolarBears *posted eight days ago
-AGAIN????

AbominableSnowman * posted eight seconds ago

The Snowman and the Goose’s brother. Pale as a ghost. Blotched with purple-black bruises. Eyes cloudy with pain. A few teeth blunt and others broken - even his tongue is blotched, darting between them.

He takes it back. He takes it all back. To anyone who will listen. Percy the liar. Percy the freak. Percy the disgrace… But at least Namche is safe and free.

Episode Seven: The Snow Leopard ▶️

Hair like blood snow. Eyes that gleam. Teeth too long. Hands too thin.

00:00
“Panthera uncia. Also called the Ounce-”

01:00
“-probably the most iconic of all my animals. She really is stunning, isn’t she-”

02:00
“-native to the mountain regions of South and Central Asia. Alpine and subalpine zones. Tibet, Mongolia, China and-”

03:00
“-here we are in the Himalayas. Been tracking our girl for a little over a week. Eight whole-”

04:00
“-classified as vulnerable. The species is threatened by poachers and by diminishing habitat-”

05:00
“-carnivores. Diet mainly consists of raw meat. Lack of habitat has led some to prey on livestock. Capable of taking on most ungulates in its territory aside from the mountain yak-”

06:00
“-skittish creature. Tend to be easily driven away from livestock and even from recent kills-”

07:00
“-contrary to popular belief, there are no recorded cases of a snow leopard killing a human being. They’ll rarely even defend themselves.”

08:00

Comments:

CujoCamouflage *posted eight months ago
Maybe we’ll get lucky and one of those things will take out the POS rapist. Maybe the rest of Namche along with it.
* BaltoTsar *posted eight months ago
-Oh so we’re just straight up advocating genocide now. Wow.
** CujoCamouflage *posted eight months ago
--Are you stupid? It’s a glorified mountain lion. Fuckin genocide. How would that even work?

aBominable *posted eight weeks ago
I am rewatch confession video with @SnowAngel and feel why he did it. Altitude sickness. It does strange things to foreigners heads.
* SnowAngel *posted eight weeks ago
-This exactly. If you listen to the whole interview they talk a bit with the mayor, it sounds like he went a little crazy and got confused.
** aBominable *posted eight weeks ago
--He still need to apologize though
*** SnowAngel *posted eight weeks ago
---Well, yeah. 100%.

WinkleWings *posted eight days ago
Well… this changes everything.
* Sophire *posted eight days ago
-I don’t understand. If it being a lie was a lie itself... Why did the mayor back him up?

AbominableSnowman

The Snowman and the Snow Leopard. Signing back and forth. Spotted with bite marks and the bruises filled inside them. Two small bandaged places where her cochlear implants were ripped away, sticking up like kitten ears.

Children playing in the snow. Farther out than they should be. And a stranger walking near. Walking by them. Rubbing the old handcuff marks from his wrist. Long white hair and eyes like ice. That’s the guy Mr. Patterson lied about. And they pity him.

Episode Eight: The Snowshoe Hare ▶️

Hair like blood snow. Eyes that gleam. Teeth too long. Hands too thin.

00:00
“Lepus americanus. The snowshoe rabbit, the varying hare. Alternatively-”

01:00
“-in some ways, it can be argued, is the opposite of the male snow bunting. Another northern-dwelling animal that goes from brown to white and back again. Unlike the bunting though, the snowshoe hare is white during the winter and brown during the summer and spring-”

02:00
“-fur on the soles of its feet to prevent freezing. The color change is similar to that of the Eurasian ermine. Going pale in the colder months, to better blend into the snow-”

03:00
“-prized as a pelt animal. Hunted by both furriers as well as natural predators such as the Canada lynx-”

04:00
“-distributed throughout Canada and the northern United States-

05:00
“-nocturnal and crepuscular. Active at dawn and dusk, and at night.”

06:00
“-females practice polyandry and may mate, and thus sire children, with multiple males-”

07:00
“-it’s fine when rabbits do it, I guess.”

08:00

Comments:

ShreddedSnowFlakes *posted eight months ago
Ugh this show is all my brother watches on repeat. This Patterson guy is awful. No wonder’s Frank’s depressed. Would it kill him to at least act like he’s having a good time?
* WinkleWings *posted eight months ago
-Percy Patterson was [NSFW] during the filming of the Snow Leopard Episode.
** ShreddedSnowFlakes *posted eight months ago
--Oh.

CHOCOLANNA *posted eight weeks ago
Of course Percy Patterson is a liar and a creep. So much for that celebrity crush.
* QueenHoneyBee *posted eight weeks ago
-What is it with you and redheads?
-EDIT: I’m so sorry, Anna, I didn’t know.

DragonBuster *posted eight days ago
What the fuck is going on?

AbominableSnowman *posted eight seconds ago

The Snowman and his own father. Feet in a bucket of steaming water. Wrappings discarded. Bits of white, but mostly brown. And large, and rabbitish, and chipped front teeth.

Chapter Text

“The school year’s almost over.”

The Parts of the Bus are spread across the stage; some standing straight, some sitting criss-cross, some dangling limbs over the edge. A rainbow of hair colors and skin tones. And all somber faces.

“We don’t know yet if we’re gonna be in the same class next year - and we’ll definitely have a new teacher. So…” One sighs, reaches out with both hands for support. “This might be our last chance to talk about it together. And we’re all ready now, so…”

“I’ll… I’ll go first… I guess.”

“Um, hi. I’ve given speeches before, about rocks and stuff… so I kinda know what I’m doing.”

Thick glasses and orange hair. Blue jeans and a yellow striped shirt. The Wheel shifts awkwardly from one foot to the other, eyes on his notecards.

“I mean, this is different - obviously - but…” He trails off and clears his throat.

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment: twin brothers clap each other on the backs at the hospital, stare adoringly through the window at a pair of curly-headed infants.

“My cousin was born an hour before me. She’s always been kind of bossy to everybody, but it’s really bad when it’s just the two of us.”

She crawls first, walks first, talks first (and never really stops). She goes first for every activity, gives the orders during every game. The Wheel rolls with it; he’s always been the meeker of the two.

“It wasn’t so bad until last Thanksgiving.”

As is often the case during family get-together, the Wheel and his cousin are told to entertain themselves. Usually he shows her his rock collection or she shows him her latest magic trick. Today, though, the cousin corners him in her room and gives a command. And for the first time, he truly balks at the order.

“She wanted to see my… you know. And I thought it maybe it was just a joke, but she kept telling me to…”

I’m not gonna do that! the Wheel whisper-shouts. Why do you even want-

What’s the problem? Is there something wrong with it?

No! I just-

Prove it.

The Wheel huddles into himself. His eyes are shiny behind his glasses. “I didn’t want to, but she kept telling me and telling me and… She didn’t make me, so I don’t know if it counts…”

His cousin circles him, ‘round and ‘round. Not laughing, not smiling; her expression is unreadable. It’s smaller than… She trails off, and suddenly she looks angry. Put it away.

“And then she acted like it hadn’t happened. When my uncle asked, she said we were playing video games. It was all so weird and I didn’t understand… I still don’t. Especially because…”

The Wheel returns to school more cowed than he used to be; he frequently complains of stomach or head pains, pleading to go home early. His cousin still comes by every few weeks and he fearfully waits for the order to come again. It never does.

Cut; Arnold, we need to talk about Janet. Something happened to her, just before Thanksgiving…

He wants to be sympathetic - he truly does - but all he feels is fear.

“… It scares me that I did it. ‘Cause now I keep thinking, what if someone else tells me to do something even worse? What if I can’t say no?”

“My grandma doesn’t know.”

The Light has curly brown hair, pulled back and pulled up. A fuschia sweater-dress cut by a stripe of blue. Blue leggings. Guilty expression.

“I mean, she knows, but not… all of it. Is that bad? Am I a bad granddaughter?”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the Light likes knowing the facts. She’s more skeptical than most kids her age. She doesn’t believe in monsters or fairy tales or superheroes; she believes in logic.

“She’s already worried enough, I don’t want to bother her - and it’s not like anything really happened…”

She has a friend, an older boy, who she often meets after school. He teases her and she snarks back at him and they laugh. And it’s fine, when that’s all it is. But then it gets strange.

You’re pretty smart, Keesh. Got the brains and the body.

She laughs uncomfortably.

Strawberry lipgloss? How ‘bout giving me a taste?

She frowns and backs away.

Those tights look great on you. Did you wear ‘em just for me?

She gapes in disgust.

“I’m not stupid, okay? I knew how messed up that was, and I told him off! I had it under control.”

She stretches to her full height of four feet and shouts, What is WRONG with you?! The boy tries to play it off as a joke, but the Light keeps yelling. And the boy stops smiling.

The Light pauses, cheeks flushed, breathing hard. “I had it under control,” she repeats. “I did. I…”

She starts to stomp away - and feels a hand come down over her mouth. For the first time she realizes exactly how much bigger her “friend” is.

“… That’s the part Grandma doesn’t know. That he actually touched me. I really think she’d kill him if she knew.”

The Light doesn’t believe in magic or supernatural powers or last-minute rescues. She believes in facts that can be proven true. She doesn’t believe most slapstick comedy either, but a well-placed kick proves at least some of it’s real.

“I ran home and told Grandma what he said… but not what he did. I’m not supposed to talk to him anymore - not that I’d want to - and if I see him anywhere I’m supposed to go where there are lots of people and call her.”

At night, the Light lies curled up in bed. The screen of her phone blinks on and off. Hey, I’m sorry. Can we talk? She blocks the number and she doesn’t sleep. Not that night or for most nights after.

The Light sighs, kicking her legs. “I thought he was my friend,” she mumbles. “I think that’s the scariest part.”

“I gotta say, being here is a real… drag.”

The Wiper looks around expectantly, and his companions groan. Black hair. Blue hoodie. Grin, despite everything - but there’s fear under the surface.

“I guess you guys don’t get it yet, huh? Um, so there’s this thing called ‘drag’…”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the Wiper at the local dinner theater, watching a performer tell jokes onstage. Glittery dress. Bubbly blonde curls. After the show, the Wiper runs over.

Great job, Dad - you killed ‘em!

Horus waves from the audience, and the Wiper waves back. “It’s different from being a lady who people think is a man by mistake. Drag’s when you’re a man and you dress like a lady just for fun. That’s all it’s supposed to be - just fun.”

The Wiper runs home, waving a flyer. Schoolwide Event - Dress Like Your Parent Day. Can I borrow one of your dresses? Please, Dad, it’ll be so funny!

“He loaned me a skirt and one of his wigs, and he even put makeup on me. And at first it was great.”

The skirt that he wears goes swish-swish-swish. The other kids laugh. The Wiper speaks in a dramatic falsetto: How rude! Stop that giggling this minute! The other kids laugh louder. A few start playfully shoving the Wiper, and he obligingly squeals in mock horror. You brutes! Don’t you know to respect a lady?

Sorry, Miss Ramon!

“We were on the playground, waiting for the bell to ring. And a kid from another class came over. I thought he was just gonna shove me again, but…”

It happens in an instant, a hand touching where it shouldn’t. No one else seems to realize. The Wiper can barely comprehend. You don’t feel like a lady!

The Wiper hugs himself. “I… I laughed, like it was funny. But it wasn’t. I just didn’t know what else to do.”

The bell calls them all to class. The Wiper runs to the bathroom, rips off the skirt, scrubs his face until the skin is bright pink.

“At first, I lied to my dad, told him it was great and everybody laughed and I had fun. I didn’t want to freak him out…”

The Wiper makes more jokes than ever before; he’s loud, raucous, borderline disruptive. He also flinches when anyone comes too close. His father invites him to another show and he refuses. Cut; his father returns home and the Wiper rushes to embrace him, tears streaming down his face. Are you okay?

Of course, Carlos. Why wouldn’t I be?

It takes the Wiper a long time to answer.

He shrugs. “I just wanted to make them laugh, but now I don’t really laugh at anything. Irony. That’s a kind of joke.”

“Um… Hi guys. I’ve missed you.”

The Door looks out at the audience, her eyes falling on several individuals; the Top Performer, Awe, the Nine of Shades, Mew. She clutches a book to her chest - “A Child’s Guide to Trauma”. Purple turtleneck. Turquoise skirt. Blonde pigtails. Tear tracks down her face.

“I’m…” A shaky breath, a pause, and then she’s sobbing again. “I’m so sorry!”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the Door is reading almost before she is talking, and as she grows the books only get heavier. Rarely anything fictional; she’s hungry to know how the real world works.

The Wiper pats her shoulder, and the Door composes herself. “I was part of the study at the college. I think I was… kind of snobby about it…”

The invitation is accepted almost immediately. The Door tells all her friends and most of her acquaintances; It’s a study for gifted children. She spends the day with her nose and her hand in the air. And when she’s asked to let someone else answer, she smirks.

“I’m sorry for bragging. I’m sorry for being annoying. I’m sorry for-”

“You don’t need to apologize,” one of her companions says gently.

“… I’m sorry.”

The study doesn’t seem quite as glamorous once she’s there; she does her homework and chats with some of the other participants, but she’s soon watching the clock. She excuses herself for a drink of water and takes the opportunity to explore the halls.

“Um, I should’ve said - sorry - nothing happened to me…”

Doors and nameplates, posters and display cases. And the sound of crying. She follows it to one door, opens it - and finds herself staring up at a smiling stranger. Hello, my dear. Can I help you?

“He was with a boy from the study. He doesn’t come here, I didn’t really know him… but he was crying.”

The eyes of the Door go open and shut. What’s wrong with Dexter?

The man places one large (so large) hand on the boy’s shaking shoulder. His cat recently passed away. We were talking about the unfortunate facts of mortality, weren’t we, Dexter?

The boy gives a silent nod…

“… and I b-believed him.”

The Door doesn’t think of it again; not until the smiling stranger appears on the news. And then she can’t stop.

She hugs the book even tighter and whispers, “I thought I was smarter than that…”

“I guess my thing is kinda tame, considering…”

The Key fidgets, tapping a pencil against his notepad. Blue shirt. Black hair. Lead smudges on his finger tips and the edges of his sleeves.

“But everybody’s saying that’s okay, that it doesn’t have to be bad-bad.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the Key draws like the Door reads - constantly, passionately. He sketches his friends and his family and his house and his school. Anything. Everything.

“I’ve always loved art, ever since I was real little. I’m usually drawing while everybody else talks - and I’m okay with that. … I was…”

His mother smiles at one of his sketches. Tim, I don’t know how you do it. I mean, people would pay for these. And that starts him thinking.

“My dad’s birthday was last month. Usually Mom gives me money to buy him a present, but I wanted to buy him something on my own. And… I thought I knew a good way to earn some money.”

The Key sets up shop in the local park; sketchpad, pencils, sign - Potraits, $2. His customers are sparse, but not nonexistent. Mostly older people who make speeches about his business sense.

“There were these girls - high schoolers, I think. They came over and asked if I’d draw them. And then…”

Giggling, one of the girls pulls her shirt up. Will you draw these?

The Key drops his sketchpad. The girls cackle and hurry away. Oh my god, I can’t believe you really did it!

The Key blushes and stares at the floor. “I’ve been to art museums. I’ve seen… But never in real life before. It was… weird, and gross, and embarrassing.”

The Key sits there for a long, long moment. The pencil in his hand goes twist, twist, twist. He swallows, shakes his head, starts packing up.

“I let Mom give me money for Dad’s present. I still have what I earned that day, but I don’t know what to do with it. I kinda wanna forget it exists.”

The Key keeps drawing, but there’s less heart to it now. Half the time he doesn’t even realize he’s drawing; and when he sees what he’s put on paper, he flinches.

“I wanna forget the whole thing,” he amends. “But I don’t think I can.”

“I miss my old school.”

The Change sits swinging her legs, tapping the edges of her shoes against the stage. Red dress over a yellow shirt. Brown hair held back by a yellow head band. Tired, tired eyes.

“My new school is fine, but… I’d been going to the old one since kindergarten. It was really nice…”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the Change walks the halls, smiling at everyone and being greeted by name. She sits with a sizable group of friends at lunch. And - occasionally, affectionately - she’s called the teacher’s pet.

“Everything was okay until… until I started fourth grade.”

She’s always been a good student, but now she’s receiving straight A’s. Her teacher frequently uses her as an example of excellent work, her bracelets jingling as she gestures enthusiastically. The Change is constantly called to answer, even when she wasn’t raising her hand. And several times she’s asked to stay after school.

“She would tell me how much she liked the papers I wrote or the things I said… She told me I was a joy to have in class. I thought that was really great, but now I feel icky when people say nice things about me.”

It goes like this for a few months. The A’s keep coming. The praise is even more frequent. And then…

Oh no, it’s raining! And you have to walk home, don’t you, dear?

Yes, but it’s okay. I have a umbrella-

I won’t hear of it! Come on, I’ll give you a ride.

Really? Thank you!

“Nothing happened while we were driving, we just talked about stuff. She didn’t even ask to come in or anything. I thought she was just being nice…”

And then the letters start arriving. Unsigned, unposted, slipped directly into the mailbox. You’re wonderful. You’re incredible. We belong together.

“That was really scary. I told my dad, and we called the police, but we didn’t know it was her. Not yet.”

A new letter arrives, and something else comes tumbling out of the envelope. The bracelet from the letter goes clink-clink-clink. The Change stares at it. She’s seen it before.

“That’s when we knew. And the police arrested her.” The Change hugs herself. “She had pictures of me, from school… and from my house. It was already scary, but knowing it was her made it even worse. I thought she was so nice. I trusted her.”

At her father’s insistence, the Change transfers to a new school. There’s talk of moving into an apartment. There’s talk of leaving the state.

“Daddy says a change of scenery might be nice. I don’t know, though. I think I’m going to feel like this everywhere.”

“My mom’s a doctor. She works a lot, and it used to kind of bug me.”

The Horn has his hands on his hips and his eyes on his feet. Brown hair tucked under a backwards red cap. Green jersey with a big red R across the front.

“Now, I’m kinda glad. When she’s working, she’s not hovering.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the Horn with his nose buried in a comic book; staring wide-eyed at the TV; with a group of his classmates at recess.

I’m telling you, Mr. Ruell is a cyborg! How else can you explain the battery pack on his arm?

He’s diabetic, Ralphie!

“I mean, I get it. She’s scared it’s gonna happen again. I’m scared too.” He gives a very weak laugh. “Scared I’ll be stupid again…”

A work emergency; no time to find a sitter. The Horn sits in the back of the car, watching the scenery.

Now Ralphie, while I’m working, you have to stay in my office. Understand?

Sure, Mom.

“I did… mostly. But then I had to use the bathroom. That’s not my fault, right? What’s a guy supposed to do?”

He passes a doctor on his way back, and the man stops him. Hey, you’re Dr. Tennelli’s boy, right? I work with your mom.

“He seemed cool. We talked about baseball and movies, and he offered to show me some stuff. He even said he’d take my X-ray…”

The machines in the room go beep-beep-beep. The doctor explains how the process works… mostly. Now, before you put on the apron, I need to take your picture.

How come?

If you have a bad reaction to the X-ray, you’ll get a rash. We like to have a picture of all our patients before the X-ray so we can see how their skin looks normally.

The Horn nods and starts to remove his shirt.

“What was that word, D?”

The Door clears her throat. “ ‘Gullible’, but you’re not-”

“Yeah I am.”

The Horn’s mother finds him sitting in her office, right where she left him. She doesn’t see the black corner of film sticking out of his backpack. He doesn’t mention it.

“He got arrested not too long after.” The Horn glances towards the Pup. “The police had to find all the guys he had pictures of. They showed them to my mom.”

She comes home in tears, dragging the facts out of a confused Horn. You’re sure he didn’t hurt you? You’re sure?

How would he hurt me?

She’s hesitant to explain, but he won’t be satisfied with less than the truth - and he isn’t satisfied with that either.

“Everybody keeps saying it’s his fault, not mine…” The Horn heaves a sigh. “Seriously, though. We’re all thinking it.”

“I never used to be scared of anything.”

The Engine has her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands. Black hair. Pink shirt. Red vest. She doesn’t look afraid; mostly, she looks sad.

“My favorite roller coaster is Action Mountain. My favorite holiday is Halloween. My favorite movies have monsters in them.” Her shoulders slump. “But… none of that stuff is actually dangerous.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the school doors open and the students pour out. Some line up to ride the bus; some wait for parents; some head down the sidewalk. The Engine runs to the woods.

“My mom writes articles about science stuff. She’s been to lots of cool places and done tons of cool things. I liked exploring in the woods and pretending I was a scientist too.”

Toads and slugs, beetles and birds. The Engine scribbles down notes and narrates her findings for an imaginary audience. Cut; the shadows are stretching across the ground. She tucks her notepad into her pocket and hurries down the path.

“Usually there was nobody else in the woods - sometimes somebody walking a dog or whatever, but not usually. But that day…”

A smoldering cigarette butt on the ground. A crinkled can. Leering eyes. The teenager says Va-va-voom. The Engine frowns.

Wha-?

And then she’s on the ground.

“He was bigger than me, and stronger too. A lot stronger. That was the scariest part - I was fighting as hard as I could fight but it didn’t even matter.”

Hands on the Engine. Leaves in her hair. Dirt under her scuffling feet. The teenager leans down, lips parted-

It’s slight, but it’s undeniably a smile. “He tried to kiss me. I bit him.”

And she hangs on, hard as she can, against the punches raining down and the shrieking in her ears. Her mouth fills with blood that is not her own. Her eyes fill with tears from the pain and the fear. Still she holds on - until she feels him tear away.

“I was able to run while he was crying. He had to get a buncha stitches, and then he went to jail. Mom bought me pepper spray so if it ever happens again, I can get ‘em in the eyes. And I’m signed up for karate now.”

The Engine doesn’t walk alone anymore, doesn’t accept hugs from her family, can’t sleep with a blanket on top of her. Any weight against her body makes her start throwing punches.

She squeezes one of her biceps. “I wanna be stronger, so it won’t happen again. So I can stop being afraid.”

“I’m their teacher, in addition to the obvious.”

The Driver stands behind the children, her gaze flickering from one to another to another, all down the line and back again. Frizzy red hair. Pitying eyes. A navy blue dress decorated with stars. And everyone’s seen the little yellow bus in the parking lot.

“The principal agreed to let them come here during the school day. We all felt it could be helpful.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the Driver’s up at 3:30 on the first day of school, stuffing her car full to bursting with lesson plans and science kits and activities. Cut; the students file into the classroom and she gives them a smile that could light up the solar system.

“I don’t need to be here, exactly. But… I do feel a certain amount of responsibility…”

Ms. Frizzell, a man with graying hair says impatiently, fourth grade is simply too young for sexual education. Your students will get all the information they need in middle school.

But given all that’s happened over the summer, I really feel like we should at least tell them what to watch out for.

I’m sorry, but this is the decision the board has made. You can bring up your concerns at the next meeting.

And she does, but it changes nothing. Studies show… Parents feel… She’s only a teacher, what does she know?

“I wish I’d done things differently. I’m always telling the kids to take chances-”

“Make mistakes,” the Wiper says with a smile.

“And get messy!” the Engine adds.

The Driver chuckles. “Exactly. But I didn’t take a chance when I should have.”

The Driver teaches them what she is allowed to teach; science, math, art, history. She’s an engaging teacher, and her students love her. They give her conversation and jokes and little trinkets they’ve made, and she gives them what knowledge she can.

“And maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference, but it might have. Maybe I could have given you the tools to better protect yourselves.”

Eight different days; eight different screens.

The Wheel approaches her desk at lunch time, eyes bleary and sleepless. Um, Ms. Frizzell? I think I need to go to the nurse again.

She sets down her pen. Arnold, is something bothering you?

Cut; the Driver sits at her desk after the last bell has rung. The door bangs open and the Light rushes in. Ms. Frizzell, he’s in the parking lot!

What? Who, Keesha?

Cut; the Driver walks down the hall before class begins. The Wiper stumbles out of the nearest bathroom, face flushed and trying not to cry. O-oh, hi.

Carlos, what’s wrong?

Cut; P.R.’s face crosses the Driver’s TV screen. The next day the Door looks pale. Ms. Frizzell, can I talk to you?

Of course, Dorothy Ann.

Cut; the Driver passes the Key’s desk, frowning at his sketch. A boy. A girl. And two… Tim, that sort of art isn’t appropriate for school.

Oh… I’m sorry… I just…

Cut; the Change and her father are introduced to the Driver. The father frowns behind his sunglasses. I’m sorry to have to transfer Phoebe in the middle of the year, but…

He trails off, and the Change clears her throat. At my old school…

Yes?

Cut; the science fair. The Driver walks among the displays, snapping pictures. When she comes to the Horn, he dives out of the shot. Don’t!

Goodness, Ralphie! What’s wrong?

Cut; the Driver cleaning up the playground. The Engine suddenly runs out of the woods, clothes torn and blood-splattered. Ms. Frizzell!

Wanda! What on Earth-?

Eight explanations. Eight wide-eyed silences. Eight I’m so sorrys.

“It wasn’t your fault,” the Horn says softly.

“And it wasn’t yours either,” the Driver points out. “But sometimes it’s hard to believe that, right?”

After every incident, the Driver becomes a little more subdued. A little more grim. She’s good at hiding it - very good indeed - but she comes home to an almost-empty house and lets the mask fall.

Arnold went home early again today, she tells her lizard. Phoebe got a perfect score on the test and she looked like I… And then Dorothy Ann got scared that something had actually happened.

She wonders what they do when they’re home. She wonders how their worlds would be if she’d followed her gut.

The Driver heaves a sigh and gives her class a smile. “But that’s why we come here, isn’t it? To help move past the bad feelings. To be better.”

The Driver on the bus says Board be damned. She tells the kids what she wants them to know: that the world can be cruel and dangerous and frightening. That horrors can be fought in different ways. That nothing can truly break them, no matter how it hurts. Most of all, she lets them know that she’ll be there for them whenever they need her.

“And we will be better. Little by little. Day by day. Now,” she adds, clapping her hands, “it’s time to go home.”

Chapter Text

“Yeah… we have connections with Noah, if you get our meaning.”

Three girls on stage - Ham, Shem, and Japheth. Two fifteen, one sixteen. Some already knew their faces before they turned up here, but they don’t look like an idol group right now. Right now, they look like a group of nervous girls who got caught up in something they shouldn’t.

“So, who goes first?”

“I’ll do it. Mine has the fewest threads. I’m the youngest. And the names are in order.”

“Nothing really happened to me, per se.”

Ham plays with her long wavy blonde hair. She wears pink and purple, marked with a pin with blue, pink, and white stripes, and a necklace with a sideways heart pendant. She looks nervous, guilty even.

“But it happened to people close to me. Not just to one of us - others too.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; young Ham, spending time with a woman whose only resemblance to her is having freckles.

“I’m adopted. I found out earlier than most kids - I was curious as to why I had to call my caregiver ‘Aunt’ rather than what you normally call moms and stuff. For the longest time I never knew what happened to my folks.”

I don’t know, the aunt answers when she asks. Ham accepts it, not noticing the tears in her eyes.

“Regardless, my aunt is great. I’m glad I was raised by her. Eventually I found out what happened, though - that was after I joined the band.”

Ham at a smoothie bar, being served by a boy with dark brown hair. She appears worn out and miserable.

Cheer up, losing a babysitting gig isn't the worst thing, the boy says. He hands her some macaroons and a coffee.

Easy for you to say. It's the third job I've been fired from! Ham stirs her drink roughly and a little spills. The boy points to a bulletin board.

“A childhood friend of mine suggested I audition. I was kind of hesitant, as while I do like to sing, a lot of… weird coincidences used to happen when I did. Just bad luck, I hope. I can’t help but feel a little superstitious about it.”

Ham and the friend at the lake docks. Ham sings with the voice of an angel, but the ducks still swim away quickly when an icy hailstorm starts. Cut; young Ham singing in the bathtub, splashing water all over the floor; her aunt slips and nearly falls. Cut; she sings while changing, knocks a mirror on its stand and it hits her on the head. Cut; the babysitting gig from the night prior, Ham so absorbed in singing a lullaby that she doesn’t notice the kid is out of bed and causing chaos until the mother gets home.

“My friend convinced me to try anyway, so I did. I was nervous, but I needed a job.”

Ham steps up on stage. Her companions from the Palace are the only judges. Ham sings her heart out. The judges are impressed, but distracted; one stares at her necklace, the other checks a photo. They’re about to speak… And then the ground shakes.

“Everything went great, but then an earthquake happened. It only lasted a minute and there was no serious damage, but like I said, I can be superstitious. I was about to run off afterwards but I got stopped.”

Ham rushes over towards the frazzled judges, as a cat jumps into the arms of one - Shem. Are you okay? I'm so sorry! Is this my fault?

Shem puts down the cat and takes hold of her arms. I think it’s best if you take a drive in the limo with us. Besides, we all need to go to the hospital. We need to confirm something…

“I was brought in to take a DNA test. I was extremely confused about it. I’d never met these girls before, so I had no idea what they were talking about. They did say I made the cut for the band regardless of blood ties, but they still wanted to check.”

What’s this all about? Ham asks as they wait for the results.

Shem wipes away a happy tear. Oh, we've been searching for you for a long time.

… Huh?

They explain, and Ham is horrified.

“They told me everything. See, I was born into a rather wealthy family from Atlantic Canada. Then some mob guy called Gramorr got involved. He had ties to the Ark. He wanted our money so he decided to get rid of the competition - my family and some of their friends. Some of them were killed or sent to SDC like Robin, the younger ones… yeah. We were a few of the lucky ones that managed to escape that fate.”

Her companions hug her as she cries, feeling like fast friends already.

“For the longest time, they thought I was dead or worse. Shem didn’t give up. Japheth thought I was dead and they were both expecting a dude, but they figured otherwise when they saw this.” Ham lifts up her necklace. “This is a sort of family heirloom. My dad gave it to my mom, and my mom gave it to me. For the longest time, we didn’t know how I managed to escape what happened to them, but that’ll be explained later. I need to get through some other stories first.”

Some days later, the test results arrive in the mail at Shem’s house; they’re positive, and there’s no other known family member she could be. The girls hug and laugh and cry. Cut; Ham comes home, surprised when her aunt hugs her tightly the moment she walks in. The aunt holds a phone, and tears pour out of her eyes.

“See, this next one came when the major bust of most of that creepy cult happened. All our families got calls as we all ended up on their hit list in some way. Me, because, well…” She taps the pin. “Found out early. My aunt is very supportive and helped out with my transition. Again, she’s the greatest. It would have been bad enough if it was just the mention of being a target. But, well…” The other girls give comforting hugs and back-rubs as she tries to calm herself.

The aunt tells Ham everything, even about her missing cousin. She cries herself and pulls her into a hug much tighter than before.

Eventually she recovers. “See, my aunt has a sister who lives around here, in the San Fransokyo district. There used to be another sister, but she and her husband died a while back, so the first sister raised the two kids they left. One went missing for a while…” Tears spill. “The cult burned him alive. There wasn’t a body left. He wanted to be a doctor. Wanted to help people. He was one of the sweetest people I have ever met and they killed him.”

Ham dressed in black, holding funeral chopsticks; it’s tradition on the other side of the family, though there are no bones left to pass. Her aunt tries her best to comfort her. Doctor Robot stands nearby. Ham notices how closed off the younger brother of the deceased seems. She goes to comfort him, but he turns away.

“I visit often now, but I wasn’t as close to him. Can’t imagine what his family and friends are going through.”

Ham cries into the arms of her childhood friend. He lets her, hugging her tightly, cold anger in his eyes. Let it all out…

I want to kill them! I want to inflict the pain they did to others!

The friend blinks, rather shocked.

“Since then, I have been having these… dark thoughts in my head. I think they’re intrusive thoughts, but it tends to go to people I hate…” A bitter, guilty look at the floor. “… most of the time.”

Ham dreams of burning the cult alive herself, torturing them until they beg for the sweet release of death.

“I never acted on them, but having too many revenge fantasies can’t be a good sign. Especially since I wasn’t hurt, at least not in that way. But I need to move on.”

A bratty girl with black hair and olive green eyes. Oh, how Ham wants to stab her, cut her up into tiny bite size pieces and feed her to the animals.

“And there’s this girl. She’s the worst. Constantly picked on me since we were kids. Tried to get my childhood friend to date her. Would do almost anything to make me miserable.” Ham groans.

Various scenes of the girl tormenting Ham, attempting to flirt with the childhood friend despite his obvious discomfort. She always gets away with just about anything; her father’s on the city council.

“Why can’t she take a damn hint and move on to boys that pretend to be interested in her because she’s rich? I always wanted her out of my life. I just wish it didn’t take…”

Ham stops in the doorway of the smoothie bar, shocked. Her friend lies on a couch, head right on her smirking rival’s lap.

Y’re pretty he slurs says in a delirious lovestruck tone.

“I actually thought…” She doesn’t finish the sentence.

Ham storms out of the smoothie bar, slamming the door, planning destruction, burning, using his photos for dartboards for his betrayal. Maybe stabbing him in the heart too. She bumps into a boy, white-haired though he’s barely older than her. He’s concerned.

What happened?

“I had met this guy once before. I won’t get into how, but he’s not exactly a stranger. I was pissed and not in a good mindset, so I thought nothing of running into him and I told him what happened.”

She explains everything, bitter tears in her eyes. The boy gives her a hug, and she returns it.

What does he see in her?

The white haired boy puts a hand on her chin, making Ham look up at him. She sees what she takes for sympathy in his face; others might see guilt.

It’s his loss. You’re an extraordinary girl, Iris, whoever you end up with is extremely lucky to have you.

“He asked to meet up later that night, since he wanted to give me something in private. Considering the circumstances of our previous meeting, I was hesitant about taking the offer. At least my anger and heartbreak didn’t blind me entirely.” Ham clenched her fists.

I’ll think about it, she answers.

The white haired boy looks strangely relieved. Hey, don’t worry about it. The offer is still up if you change your mind. He walks away, a bit too quickly. Ham doesn’t think much about it as she returns home, still angry. Her cellphone rings.

“I didn’t find out the truth until later that night. That boy was working with the bad guys, along with some other kids around our age. The ones who were tough and sneaky enough to be worth more as kidnappers than as merch. One of them gave that girl Rohypnol to sneak to my friend. Apparently she was gullible enough to believe it would help make him actually love her. Or so she claims. He was so out of it that he didn’t know what was happening, even when she…” Ham puts her hands over her face. “She only stopped when he threw up during a kiss.”

Ham rushes into the hospital, running to meet three other girls in the waiting room - her bandmates and a girl with short poofy dark brown hair. Is Nathaniel okay?!

“He was found by my roommate.” Ham points to the girl in the audience, “Runaway Regina” on her tag. “She ran away from an abusive foster home and wanted to find her mother, she’s been staying with us ever since. It was another kind of abuse that this place doesn’t cover, so she’s mostly here for support of us… and finding what happened to my guy friend.” Ham hugs herself. “They did all that to isolate me. They used him because he was easier to get to than my bandmates.”

Ham hugs her friend, apologizing over and over, while the other girls stand outside the hospital room, giving them the space they need.

“I wish I could hate him for what he did, but…”

The next day, Ham comes to the hospital alone and leaves alone. On a shortcut, she’s grabbed from behind by a lavender-haired boy and a cleft-lipped girl, little older than her but fast and strong. Ham fights back, but is only freed when her assailants fall to the ground, thanks to the white-haired boy and the baseball bat in his hands.

Run, girl. They won’t be down long and their buddies will come soon. You deserve to be freed. Go.

“… he wasn’t involved willingly, and he was the one who ended up saving me. You guys will find out what happened to him, right? I hope he’s okay…”

Ham only looks back once. Her traitor gives her a bittersweet smile. For the first time in a long time, she feels concern for an enemy, no bitter thoughts attached.

“The only good thing to come out of this is we have a restraining order on that awful girl, and she actually faced consequences for her actions for once. She’s finally out of my life, I just wish it didn’t cost so much. I wish I didn’t assume the worst when he was… I should get around to how I escaped the fate of my parents. I found out some time later.”

Ham goes out to look out at the stars. En route she hears her aunt talking on the phone. I just wish I knew how to tell her what happened…

Aunt Ellen? The aunt stops talking when Ham speaks.

“My curiosity got the better of me, so I went to see what she was talking about. I kept silent as I listened to the rest of the conversation. I only made myself known when she mentioned some things I thought only my friends and their families knew. Turns out, she knew all about me all along. She was the one who saved me. She wasn’t exactly lying when I asked her about it. She just didn’t tell me everything.”

Years in the past; Ham’s aunt with a baby wrapped up in a blanket of blue and pink and a simple necklace with a sideways heart. She holds the baby close, running like their lives depend on it (which they do). Tears spill from her eyes while the baby sleeps, oblivious, occasionally mewling for a mother that she probably won’t ever see again.

“Eventually my parents got rescued. I don’t know how, but… hey, Magician, it was your sister, wasn’t it? Please thank her for me! She was able to find them somewhere in Japan. It sounded a bit too good to be true, but she said she was getting them flown here. We brought security just in case.”

The girls walk through the woods to the private airfield designated as the meeting point, hired security following at a short distance. Burgundy-haired twins watch from the shadows behind the trees.

“Common thugs. We ran into them before but we thought they were just regular bullies. Didn’t think they could take us, and they couldn’t in the end, but I thought I was going to die there.”

The female twin holding a knife near Ham’s throat, laughing, gloating… too distracted to notice the bodyguards and their guns. Ham closes her eyes. A gunshot rings out.

Ham remains silent for a moment.

MEPHISTO! The female twin rushes to her brother’s side. Talking constantly, trying to soothe him, sobbing her eyes out in a way Ham and friends would never have expected. The others are horrified. Ham, though…

Let’s go, before she tries that shit again. She stalks off without a word, leaving her friends behind. She suppresses any concern. She has parents to find.

“I was hoping that would be the only thing we would have to deal with, but…”

Now it’s just Ham and two security guards rushing towards their destination. Only to be pulled off the path by two armed men in masks - one in black and green, one in black and red.

I shouldn’t hire those buffoons to do my job.

“… turns out Gramorr sent them. I wasn’t sure if my parents’ rescue was a trap all along, or if he somehow intercepted the call and decided to use it to get me, but whatever. I completely blacked out about what happened afterwards.”

Ham’s face turns cold, serious. Security catches up; one raises a gun, but before he can use it, she snatches it. She shoots the green-cloaked man’s hand, making him drop his own weapon. Before he can react, she shoots him below the belt. Both shots are shaky, but by some miracle both hit.

“When I came out of it, I was covered with bruises and blood. He was, um, dealt with. Shot multiple times, brutally beaten… I think my security guys dealt with him.”

Ham approaches Gramorr. He’s her prey now. She stamps on his wounds, punches him in the face, breaks his stupid mask off. She beats him over and over again. A giant manic grin eclipses her face. He begs for mercy; he’s probably heard those same words countless times. She gives the same answer he would have given her.

“He had some bad burns too. Must have not been careful with his lighter.”

Her guards pull her away from him. One holds the red-cloaked man at gunpoint, but he doesn’t seem interested in intervening anyway. Ham’s not finished. She picks up the dropped lighter. She lights it up and drops it on him, setting his coat on fire, and turns to run. She has business to attend to. Behind her, he swats out his smouldering coat with his broken mask, crawls to the path on his hands and knees, unaware of the black-cloaked man smirking behind him, drawing his own gun.

“Regardless of how he got involved, I finally got my parents saved. I was sorta worried how they’d take me being a girl now, but I guess that was silly - after everything they didn’t think that mattered at all. Of course, we took them to the hospital to get them tested and stuff. I thought everything was finally over…”

The group finally arrive at the airfield. Ham’s parents step off the plane, battered and malnourished but alive.

Mom! Dad!

They rush together and hug, tears pouring from their eyes. After so long, they’re finally together again.

Cut to the hospital; the parents and friends enter, while Ham forgets her purse in the car and goes to retrieve it. The parking lot has enough potential witnesses around that she fears no more serious violence, but as she turns, she receives a punch that knocks her down.

You little bitch!

“In hindsight I should have expected some reaction from…”

… the livid female twin, her face twisted in rage, fists clenched. Knuckles stained with red. Eyes filled with tears. You’ll fucking pay for what you did to my brother. I’ll make damn sure of it! She runs too fast for Ham to follow, and disappears before Ham can respond.

“I was surprised that she would be that angry over him. Never knew how close they were…” Ham makes a disgusted face. “Ew, not like that. I think. I just didn’t think she cared, you know? She was always mean to everyone, even him.”

In the hospital waiting room, Ham recounts the tale. Her friends are shocked. Meanwhile Ham… feels nothing. Shouldn’t she feel something over this? He was the nice one. He didn’t deserve what happened to him, did he?

“Hell, I didn’t even know why they were working for that guy.” She points towards the girl sitting next to Runaway Regina, who wears a tag reading “Ne M’oublie Pas Jumelle”. “Then, the next day, we got the answer delivered right to our door.”

Ham hears her friends screaming and runs to the front door. There’s a large wooden crate, and in front of it is a girl their age, in lingerie and a tacky blonde wig. The wig slides off, revealing the same hair color as the twins.

“Turns out Gramorr used their younger sister to get them to work for him. The kit showed Jumelle had no damage, uh, there, but that doesn’t mean nothing happened to her. Either way, she’s staying with us for now.”

Do you remember anything? Japheth asks.<

The girl shakes her head. Just a name… Paxina somebody?

“My parents are in witness protection now. The original plan was to move back to Canada, but it’s safer if we just lie low until the Ark’s finally dealt with for good. I have mixed feelings about it, but I’m happy to spend time with the friends I made here a bit longer.”

Ham and her childhood friend in front of her current home’s door. They hold hands and kiss.

“Me and my childhood friend started dating after all this. I thought things calmed down, but-”

When Ham opens her eyes, she’s sure she catches a glimpse of cold eyes watching from behind the hedge. She breaks off from the kiss in a panic.

Iris, are you okay?

Ham looks again, but the eyes are gone. It’s nothing. L-let’s get inside.

“-I think Pr- the female twin might be planning something. I've been feeling like I’m being watched ever since that day. Is she going to hurt me? My friends? My family?”

Outside the Palace, hidden not so far away. The female twin watches. She’s waiting for the right moment…

“I don’t know.” Ham tugs on her necklace. “It could just be my imagination.”

“Look, I had no idea of the implications when I decided to call the band that.”

Shem rubs her elbow as she gazes over the crowd. She has dark red hair tied in a side ponytail with a periwinkle bow, autism and ADHD ribbons on her shirt, and a cat on her lap, purring comfortably.

“I just thought of combining LOL and rock, and ‘I’ is catchier than ‘Y’. Besides, wasn’t the book about how that kind of thing was bad? I guess the fashion association isn’t too far off though.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a young Shem in a huge mansion. She’s playing with a bunch of other kids, adults watching nearby but not interfering.

“Probably not the wisest move to leave naming the band to the person who has English as a second language. Yeah, I grew up in Albuquerque, Mexico, with a big family. Me, my parents, my abuelita, my nine sisters and…”

An older boy with orange hair and the same eyes as Shem, rustling the younger Shem’s hair.

“… my brother.” She clings to the third girl. “My family was really great and supportive. Of course, I knew something bad happened to Ham’s family as they were close friends of theirs, worked with them in the fair trade gem business that got us all wealthy to begin with. But I didn’t know the details. I don’t think my folks were comfortable telling that story to a little girl. But one day…”

The mansion set on fire. Shem and her brother running for their lives.

“Gramorr must have had a lot of resources to make his attacks on us all. Must have saved a lot for mine because…”

Shem tries to pull her brother along with her, but he pushes her out to safety, urging her to leave him behind. She runs out of the burning building with tears in her eyes, only looking back once. The masked man in green corners her brother; she’s never seen him look so scared. She slips away before anyone can find her.

“He kidnapped most of my family, or maybe killed some. I don’t know what happened to all of them.”

Shem sobbing in front of Abuelita and two sisters as she tries to explain. Meanwhile, her brother, parents, and seven of her sisters are trapped in one room. The mother holds the youngest close.

“We moved to America after that. My abuelita raised all the ones left of us ever since, and we lived close to another friend of the family.”

A sleepover. Japheth seems upset, so Shem hugs her without pressing for answers. Japheth holds a medallion; a gift from a loved one, perhaps?

“Me and Japheth have basically known each other our entire lives. She’s the greatest-”

“Shem.”

“Right, anyway. I wish I could say that’s the only case of… that kind of trauma I’ve dealt with, but more happened later.”

Shem opens a map of Calisota on her phone. Japheth stares.

You want us to go there? To the rape capital of the world?

Reported rape capital! The rate’s not really worse than anywhere else in America, it’s just more… visible.

That’s not reassuring.

Hey, that’s why we might find info there. Maybe we could even find him.

I doubt it…

“Well, she was right in that it wasn’t a him we found.”

Ham’s audition. The best one yet. Shem looks at the girl on stage, at the pin on her blouse, and back to a photo of a baby in a blue blanket who looks a lot like her.

“Japheth wanted to keep all the Ark investigation secret - that’s why we sent the DNA results to my place, she didn’t want Ham’s aunt to know. The only reason we’re telling you guys all this is the confidentiality policy, we wanna keep things hush-hush. Us, our therapists, and the twins were basically the only ones who knew about it that weren’t part of that.”

Ham is horrified as they explain what happened to her folks (and what they thought happened to her). Did this Gramorr guy do this to anyone else?

Shem sadly pets the cat on her lap. Two other families were targeted… Shem shows off a photo on her phone; her Bat Mitzvah, her two remaining sisters lifting her for the horah. Photos of the rest, conspicuously absent from the party. Japheth, as usual, is quiet, even when Shem looks pointedly at her.

Shem sighs and looks at Ophiuchus and the Manager. “You guys have already heard some horror stories about the music industry. It makes sense we would have some to spare. Granted, we actually have a good manager so we weren’t, like, forced to do… things we shouldn’t be doing to get ahead.”

A chubby Korean man with orange dyed hair, orange painted fingernails, wearing shades, wielding a text-to-speech. He makes sure the band doesn’t over-exert themselves during practice. Only schedules tours and performances after running them by the band. Teaches them self defense and buys them pepper sprays. Does extra background checks on all security. Discourages paparazzi. Tries to keep their lives as normal as he can.

“I’m still pissed at this one user on WaddleWorld that keeps talking shit about him, like he’s grooming us or something. Fuck. Guy helped me out of those incidents. I swear when I get my hands on that brat-”

“Shem.”

“… Anyway. Our manager is great. We’re even helping out with the soundtrack for his upcoming indie movie. No, the issue comes from… obsessive fans.”

Shem runs the official blog for the band. Reports, blocks, and deletes several unwanted messages, but they keep on coming. Every member of the group has gotten at least a few, but Shem most of all. They save the paper letters for kindling or return them to sender.

“Man, I don’t mind fans and all, but geez. Some of them can come off as creepy. I really hope none of them find a way to come in here and try something.” Shem shudders at the thought.

Shem flirting and talking to some boys, mostly her age, the older ones not older by very much. Flirting with girls, likewise, and others.

“Hey, I find basically everyone cute. Pansexual. Me and Japheth have been dating each other since, like, two weeks after we started the band. No worries, it’s an open relationship. I mean, she could see someone else if she wanted to-”

“Not interested.”

“Well, I was just saying.”

“Still want to make that point clear. Don’t want people to assume anything about me with my relationships. Again.”

“Look, I said I was sorry for the misunderstanding with the medallion.”

“You’re literally the first person I came out to as a lesbian.”

“I still think you shouldn’t have made Kyle over this.”

Ham smiles awkwardly. “That was a G&G thing. We recorded our campaign for a podcast, Shem even got cosplays made. It’s fun, despite some… questionable plot choices at points.”

Runaway Regina sits behind a GM screen. And so, using the magic given to you by Shanila and the medallion, you reset time to near the start of the game session. Only you and the twins know about what happened back there.

That’s bullshit! Ham explodes. Resetting all that just makes the entire development meaningless! Ham’s boyfriend and Shem try their best to stifle their laughter.

“It’s best if you don’t know about that part.” Shem clears her throat. “Anyway, despite that, I’m not going to do anything more than just kissing and hugging until I’m at least eighteen. Still, some entitled assholes would think otherwise.” Japheth takes her hand. “It happened when we were the opening act for another band our manager works with, Cool Tapes. We just finished the act, so we decided to go backstage…”

Shem wanders away from the others. She checks out the prop room, filled with glittering mannequins, humming along with the music from the stage, not paying attention. Outside it’s foggy, inside it’s dark. Easy for someone who isn’t supposed to be there to sneak in. She’s grabbed from behind by a stranger, face murky in the dark. Come out in the garden, baby.

“You know the whole fight, flight, freeze thing? Well, I’m basically the first one… for the most part.”

Shem screams. She kicks below the belt. She grabs the nearest prop - a large plastic dog covered in rhinestones - and uses it to beat her assailant over the head.

“Luckily the others overheard me screaming bloody murder. And yeah, I know being hit in the head and the crotch both leave lasting damage and stuff. But the prick should have thought of that before he got the bright idea to try and rape me.”

Ham holds onto Shem protectively. Shem shakes like a leaf, tears in her eyes. Still holding the dog mannequin. Japheth tries to hold the would-be assailant back, but he pulls a Swiss army knife and slashes at her arms. He only stops when Cool Tapes’ bassist arrives and knocks him out cold.

“Good thing the other band heard too. Don’t know what other damage he would have done if they didn’t step in.”

Both the bands inside a limo. Cool Tapes’ drummer cleans Japheth’s wounds. Shem says, I’m really sorry about cutting the concert short-

Forget the stupid concert! the guitarist insists. This is much more important to deal with.

“We stayed at Ham’s place for a bit, but after that we decided to go back to our manager’s place. Once would have been bad enough, but well…”

At the manager’s house, Shem sleeps in the same bed as Japheth. Sometime later, at the end of a concert, there’s a knock at the dressing room door. A man with a backstage pass; Snowdrop would know him well. Hey, mind if I get an autograph?

Oh, no trouble at all. Shem goes to fetch a pen; he follows her and the door closes behind him.

“Let’s just say we kind of knew of a common enemy of yours already, considering, well-” Shem runs a hand through her ponytail.

Shem turns to find the man closing in on her, backing her up near the wall, caging her in. Shem freezes, closing her eyes and bracing herself for the worst-

“Good thing we tend to share dressing rooms.”

A scream, and a sound and smell of spray. Japheth wields a canister; the man drops to the ground. Now get the fuck out before I call security.

Shem sighs. “I didn’t think to report since he was stopped before he even did anything to me, and I thought the police won’t take me seriously because of that and… other things. I kind of wish I did sooner. A lot of hurt might have been prevented.” She’s quiet for a moment, thinking, then shakes herself and hugs her cat tighter. “… Yeah, the industry can be rough if this is, like, one of the tamer stories. Especially in Japan. They once made a girl shave her head and demoted her from the group just because she was caught with a guy at her place. I mean, how fucked up is that? And no one even knows what happened to the Q-Teez. And don’t get me started on the whole scandal with the former member of CHAM, but I’m getting off topic. Ham mentioned some other things, but there are some details that me and Japheth know a bit better.”

Shem and Japheth are approached by a panicking Runaway Regina. She holds a barely conscious boy in her arms, shirt off, pants askew, vomit on his lip. Do you guys know where the hospital is?! Both girls are badly shaken, especially once they recognise the boy.

“See, Regina found Ham’s boyfriend after his assault. She caught the girl running away from the juice shop he works at with vomit all over her shirt and mouth, and she went to see what caused it for herself. Kind of thought that chick would have been above this kind of thing, considering she never bothered to misgender Ham despite the whole petty mean girl rivalry stuff.”

The band in their limo. Ham cries. I don’t want to say goodbye to everyone.

Shem puts a comforting hand on Ham’s. Hey, there’s still the internet. You don’t have to say goodbye.

“Ham was extremely nervous about leaving her life here behind. That was why she put off going steady with her boyfriend. Don’t have to worry about that for a while now, at least. We went with her to the airfield…”

En route, the twins attack. Shem watches as the boy shoves the girl away, taking the bullet himself.

“I… witnessed what happened to the boy twin. He just wanted to make sure his sister didn’t get hurt.” Shem wipes her eyes. “They went to my school. I’d hang out with him sometimes. He is - was? - really nice, once you get past the petty crime thing, and he didn’t want to do the really bad stuff.”

Shem lingers. The boy’s still breathing; she hurries over and rips off her sleeve for a makeshift compress. Please call a doctor, she says, and runs to catch up with the others before the girl can respond.

“And when I saw the aftermath of… the confrontation, you have no idea how relieved I was to see Ham okay.”

Shem pulls Ham into a tackle hug which lands them both on the ground, sobbing in relief. They embrace and cry for what feels like hours, though it must be only moments - Japheth urges them up, not wanting them to delay the meeting any more.

“I was also the one that discovered Jumelle. Not entirely sure if it was because of a shipping error, or she was sent to us on purpose for whatever reason, but she ended up at our house either way. Kinda like Noodle, remember her?”

At the manager’s place, Shem opens the door when the bell rings, only to find a large crate, whoever delivered it already gone. The lid breaks off easily to reveal Ne M’oublie Pas Jumelle, and Shem screams.

“She’s remembered a bit more since then. We’re… trying to help out the best we can.”

Regina and Shem listen to Jumelle. I remember cameras, someone taking a lot of pictures of me, being made to strip… a black haired girl who hated chickens for some reason, a friendly ghost in the walls… and a nice but creepy blonde girl who’s a daughter of a… dragon?

“She really wants her memories back.”

I know they’re most likely going to be a lot of… sad ones, Jumelle admits. But they’re important. They might contain something that could help take that place down… and I want to know about my family. Well, outside of what you guys told me about them, anyway.

“I think something happened to a friend of our manager at one point, too. I guess that’s none of my business, but I’m worried anyway.”

Shem comes to get a glass of water late one night, noticing a pale guy with an underbite and transparent arm prosthetics making a call on a cell phone, looking slightly nervous and speaking quickly. She asks the manager about it, but he only tells her It’s nothing you should worry about. She wonders, but doesn’t press.

“At the very least, Gramorr can’t come back for us. But my parents and most of my siblings are still out there.” Shem’s hair is coming loose; she tightens her ribbon. “You guys helped us, can you help find the rest of my family too?”

“… It’s all my fault.”

Japheth’s eyes are downcast, her expression bitter. She has long dark brown hair, slightly crimped in texture, and she wears a lot of gold and blue. She focuses strongly on the medallion in her hands.

“I know, the people responsible are the ones that actually hurt her, but I can’t help but wonder, if I did things differently… she’d be okay.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Japheth is a lot younger, and a lot more playful, cheerful. Wouldn’t mean much if it wasn’t such a contrast to how she acts on the stage.

“I grew up in Florida. My dad’s Black and my mother’s Native, from the Calusa tribe if you want specifics. They’re great, but a bit overprotective, considering what happened to our friends’ families and the fact that we’re not White. I picked up pretty early that we might be brushed aside for people who are, if anything happened to us.”

Japheth doesn’t really pay much attention to her parents’ worried conversations. The adults can handle anything, what are they so scared about? Right now, she’s focused on school and games, the things kids her age normally think about.

“Only one has been taken from my family, but one is still too many.”

A girl several years older than Japheth. Dark eyes, hair same color as Japheth’s but tied up in a bun. Japheth’s medallion emblem is currently part of her hair decal. Like all siblings they have their conflicts, but Japheth looks up to her.

“My sister. She’s the good one, the responsible one. The one that always tried to keep me safe…” Shem pulls Japheth into a hug. Japheth is clearly trying hard not to break down. “She was sixteen herself when it happened. I wanted to go to the Calusa Day festival. It was only about a block away.”

Late at night. Japheth’ parents are out at the theater. Japheth sneaks to the door.

Talia. Japheth jumps as her sister speaks. You were sneaking out to go see the festival, weren’t you?

… Maybe.

“We got into an argument.”

You know how dangerous it is to go out! Those… bad people could come after us next-

Ugh! Don’t throw a tanty! Japheth throws up her hands.

I am not throwing a tanty- a tantrum. I am telling you what you need to hear. If you get caught-

La-la-la-la. Boring talk! Boring talk that’s no fun! La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la! Japheth holds her hands over her ears.

“I didn’t think much about it, since I was only seven. And I thought my sister would always be there to protect me, like nothing could catch her off guard…”

It’s only once a year! Come on, Izira. I’ll start getting serious about all that stuff tomorrow. I promise.

You promise?

With my heart’s truth.

“Eventually she let me go there, on the condition she came with me, but before we went-”

The sister hands over her hair decal.

But this- It’s special. It’s real sapphire…

Wear it today for good luck. You can give it back to me tomorrow. That’s when we start being very serious about all this. Deal?

Deal!

“I’m so glad I hugged her and said I loved her before… As I said, it was near our house and the streets were pretty well lit. She saw something going on back down the street so she went to investigate. I never thought much of it at the time, even when she didn’t come back.”

Japheth returns from the festival with a skip in her step, only to discover the door wide open. It wasn’t windy and her family insists on not leaving the door open. Concerned, she rushes inside.

“During that time, he broke into my house and…”

Izira…? Japheth stares at her trashed and messy home. She hears footsteps. She hides behind the thrown-aside couch. She puts her hands over her mouth and nose to keep quiet. The masked men walk through the hall, dragging… something.

A shame we can only find one of the family, Banes, but it’ll do. It’s a pity. I was hoping she would put up more of a fight.

Japheth tries her best to contain her gasp, tears welling up in her eyes.

“I think his little minion might have suspected something. He came so close to the spot I was hiding…”

Japheth hears the “minion’s” feet approaching, feels his shadow coming close. Japheth closes her eyes, doesn’t open them until the door slams behind them.

“That day, everything changed.”

Japheth doesn’t leave her hiding spot until her parents come home. She falls into their arms and sobs.

“I vowed to change my ways, do anything in my power to find her. I never gave up. I didn’t let myself get lost completely, though, I still had a life of my own. Shem and I started singing as a duo a while back before we decided to form a trio. Let’s just say there was hardly any competition.”

Japheth and Shem watch performer after performer, wincing at most of them.

Thank you! Um, we’ll call you if we’re interested.

We’re not interested.

“Shem thought the audition might be able to find the missing kid. I was doubtful - seemed like relying way too much on coincidence even if they weren’t dead, not to mention I thought the missing kid was a boy and all the auditioning singers were girls. In hindsight I should have thought of that, but I still thought it was unlikely Ham was the real deal.”

Ham steps on stage. Japheth is impressed. This is the best singing she’s heard all day (not that that’s saying much). However, her eyes fix on the necklace she recognises from photos - supposed to be one of a kind.

“Of course, we had to make sure, just in case we were mistaken.”

Auriana thinks you might be the child of a family friend of ours, Japheth explains.

What? Ham is stunned. You're joking.

Oh, she’s not, Shem says. For one, she never jokes. And secondly… you have the necklace.

“I never wanted to discuss what happened to my sister. Only my therapist and parents knew what happened for a while. Then one day, we got into a confrontation with those twins, and Ham saw the medallion for the first time and heard one of them mention that I shouldn’t have it.”

Why shouldn’t you have it, Talia? Where did that medallion come from?

Because it isn’t mine! Japheth yells, trying to hold back tears.

Huh?

The medallion isn't mine. Japheth goes to look in her purse, only to gasp. It’s gone!

Shem grins sheepishly. “Okay, to be honest, I thought an ex gave it to her. I thought she was experimenting with her sexuality for a while before we started dating and didn’t want to go public with it to avoid a scandal or something, and that’s why she didn’t tell me about it.”

Japheth scowls at Shem, but says nothing back. “We went back to the venue to get it. Of course, the others wanted to know why.”

Japheth searches in a frantic panic. Her bandmates are confused.

Talia, talk to us, why is that medallion so important?

She’s just worried that her super-secret millionaire ex-boyfriend will be mad that she lost his present, Shem says, only half joking.

I DON’T HAVE A SECRET EX-BOYFRIEND! Japheth collapses and sobs into her hands. She’s gone. She’s gone, and it’s all my fault. I’ve lost everything.

“I told them after that.”

“I actually thought she was an only child for the longest time,” Shem says guiltily.

The medallion belonged to my sister. Japheth tells them everything, still crying. They hug her, crying themselves too.

“Eventually we found the twins stole it. Planned on selling it online. Luckily we got it back from them.”

“The Kyle thing was inspired by someone’s assumptions during that. It was kind of a joke.”

And so she hooked up with the entitled guy, but it’s okay, because his entitlement was actually something the bad guys did, so it’s perfectly okay for her to hook up with him because all girls need to have a boyfriend and other options are simply a joke, even though there’s nothing compatible between the two of them. I mean, that’s what people expect for her to do, right? The passive aggression is practically dripping in Japheth's voice.

Everyone sits in awkward silence until Regina says, All in favor of canning this episode and never speaking of this ever again?

“He only appeared in one game session that’s an official lost episode of our G&G podcast. We, ah, sometimes work personal stuff out through the game.”

And so, she foolishly never considered that her best friend was brainwashed for someone else’s plans. Even though she should be aware that he never felt about her that way and should have expected something’s up-

Iris, Ham’s boyfriend interrupts her. It's nobody’s fault but the one that actually hurt me.

But I could have prevented it from ever happening in the first place!

The others silently wait as Ham’s boyfriend works on calming her down.

“That wasn’t the only time our trauma bled in. We had to edit some of those eps pretty heavily.”

So even though the memories made her sad, she decided to get them back anyway, because he’s her brother, and families should be able to stick with one another no matter what… Runaway Regina silently hands Jumelle a tissue.

“The others pretty much covered their stories, and I was there for those.”

The hospital. Shem calls Ham in a panic as they wait for her boyfriend. Eventually Japheth has to take the phone in order to explain what happened in a calm matter; she’s just as freaked out as the others, but one must appear stable while others can’t.

“I really don’t have much else to add to them.”

Japheth holding an extremely frazzled and panicked Ham as she leads her and a police officer to the place the white-haired boy saved her, only to see nobody there. They search, but he’s never found.

“One is one of my closest friends, the other is my girlfriend.”

The hospital again. Japheth’s left arm is covered in bandages.

He mostly got my arm. They won’t be all that noticeable.

The band’s manager raises his eyebrows. Dude. Your arm looks like a self harm addict’s. Or at least someone who owns a really feral cat.

They’ll heal, and Auriana only got her voice hurt. That’s all that matters.

Shem’s sitting in a chair beside the exam table, still holding the rhinestone dog tightly like her life depends on it.

“I don’t regret doing what I’ve had to do to protect them, not at all.”

Japheth walks in on the man cornering Shem. Good thing she has pepper spray. Shem has carried her own ever since that day, and the rhinestone dog and its matching partner sit beside her bed.

“Both of them.”

How are we going to explain this to your aunt? Japheth wonders as they walk through the woods.

Don’t worry, she already knew. She was the one that saved me. Would have told you guys sooner, but she wanted it to be a secret between us.

“Well, as much as I could know anyway.”

Shem runs to help the bleeding male twin. Japheth glances back but reluctantly follows Ham; she’s likely the one most in danger.

“I don’t think they’re helpless, but-”

Japheth arrives in time to witness Ham beating the ever loving shit out of Gramorr, taking sadistic pleasure in doing so. If this was anyone else, she would be extremely concerned. She keeps silent, not sure if Ham is pretending to have forgotten or not.

“I’d rather fail than do absolutely nothing if I knew I was needed.”

Japheth catches sight of the female twin watching the group from the shadows. She thought the brother lived, but the female twin is completely alone. She dreads to think what happened to him.

“Meeting Jumelle was something, though.”

The manager’s ponytailed girlfriend fusses over Jumelle and the manager finds her a long coat, while Japheth brings Shem a glass of water - Jumelle’s taken care of and Shem’s had a shock too.

We'll find something else for her to wear after the examination, the girlfriend says.

I can just wear this, it looks fine-

No! everyone else exclaims.

“We’re all helping her the best we can.”

Japheth hears Jumelle talking to Regina and Shem as she passes by in the hall.

I remember… two people across from me killing themselves with a gun. And the guy next to them was… relieved?

Cut; in private, Shem worries. If she continues to remember, will the memories hurt her?

Japheth puts a comforting hand on Shem’s arm. We’ll have to see this through. For her sake.

“I also came across a couple other stories myself as well. How close I was to them varied.”

Japheth meets So and So at the library to study, and sometimes they run into Mew. So and So offers to help when she restarts her thesis study; Mew flinches. Japheth quietly asks, but Mew brushes it off. Japheth knows her past and doesn’t blame her if she needs time off, but suspects that’s not the only reason.

“I don’t know all the details. I don’t even know who one girl was.”

Japheth sees the man from the dressing room again on the street, another redhead hitting him, flipping him off, and walking away. She assumes it’s a lover’s tiff, until news comes out and Shem goes to testify.

“They’re not my stories to tell either way.”

At the end of a concert, Japheth finds a card with a note attached to it:

One of my foster bros got fucked over by this kind of shit. Entire family got messed up by it as well (except for the deadbeat, anyway). The situations with Auriana probably fucked with all of you too. Hope this place helps out.
- T.C

“My sister is still out there. I don’t have any idea beyond that besides that she’s still alive.”

A lot of ghosts surround the Palace. Japheth would consider them hallucinations if it weren’t for the fact that she’s glimpsed the spirits of those she hasn’t met. So far, her sister isn’t there. It’s the only solace Japheth has… Still doesn’t mean her sister isn’t out there suffering. Just that she isn’t dead from it yet.

“What makes me think that? I just have the feeling.” She rubs the medallion between her fingers. “Either way, I want my sister found, no matter what. I never stopped searching for her since the day she was taken. I’m not stopping anytime soon.”

Chapter Text

“I just think it’s important, is all.”

Context picks at her skirt. She’s either twelve or thirteen, with long pink hair, pink clothes, and an orange headband with an orange rose on it. She looks concerned.

“Context, I mean. Something needed to explain the full picture. Nobody has the full story of things in real life, and, well… something came up in my life that made me think about it more.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a Japanese man and a Breton woman in a lavish hospital room. In the arms of the latter is a crying Context. The two of them look at her fondly.

“My parents are old money diplomats. So they tend to not be home a lot. Or at all.” Context sounds sad.

Context lives in luxury. But, save for devoted servants, she’s alone. She’s homeschooled, and her only means of contact with others are letters from family and their friends and admirers (wanted and otherwise, and she knows why the house’s security is so strong) and some online spaces she quickly leaves when she sees how toxic they can be. She has vague memories of an older girl or young woman she knew in France, but she hasn’t seen her for years, can’t even recall her name. She calls her parents constantly, but it’s not the same.

“I kind of had no friends for most of my life. Just admirers - I was a gifted kid. Not smart gifted, but I’m good with sewing and playing music. And video games. My parents decided it was best to homeschool me. Mainly as a precaution for… It gets boring, and rather lonely.”

Context views the world from her window. Nice neighbourhood, though sometimes rougher types show up on their way to the once-hotel now halfway-house not too far away. One which sticks in her memory is a motley crew of six or seven men playing a lively jazz jam as they walk; a redheaded man half-skips backwards ahead of them, miming conducting motions and laughing. She knows nothing else of them (save for seeing the redheaded man on the news once), but she doesn’t ever quite forget them.

“Until one day, I met someone.”

Context takes a Palace flyer from her mailbox, pausing as she hears the gate buzzer. It’s a boy around her age (maybe a year or two older) with blond hair and black clothes, a younger child with black hair beside him. Hi! I’m your new neighbor.

“I’m going to call him Agreste, mostly because he reminds me of that model boy from the fashion brand. Physically anyway. He helps me understand our Wiccan stuff a bit better.”

Agreste laughs at her when she fails to stomach the more out-there French cuisine, and at her clumsy attempts to learn new things. But she gradually improves and he slowly starts to act nicer to her.

“He’s kind of a jerk, but he’s not so bad once you get to know him.”

Context visits his house one day. All evidence suggests the only occupants are him and the other child. So are your parents busy like mine, or-

I’m emancipated, Agreste explains. Context guesses there’s more to this, but he says it with zero hesitance nor awkwardness, and she doesn’t know enough about emancipation to argue, so she doesn’t push.

“I think he might be hiding something from me, but I don’t know why. That’s kind of why I started volunteering here. I wanted to know how to help without pushing him.”

How about this? Context passes her nametag warily and nervously towards Mother Superior. A pile of rejected nametags in Context’s handwriting lie on the desk, each with a line going through the name. A-and, um, I’ll buy a new pack of tags. Two packs!

“I know, he doesn’t owe me an explanation or anything, and he should tell me when he’s ready, but I can’t help but be worried. Is that wrong?”

Context refills the coffee pot and replaces crayons, and listens to everyone’s stories. Most she takes at face value; with some she suspects something significant has been left out. Most of the time she doesn’t like to ask.

“I asked him more about his life before he came here, and all he said was that he and his sibling just took a different path in life. He wouldn’t tell me any more.”

Context runs down the street after a young woman, calling for her, knowing the woman would turn and talk if only she could remember her name to call… She jolts awake, blinking. She calls her parents.

Did we ever know a girl with white hair?

Oh, Madame Bonfamille’s daughter… Poor girl disappeared without a trace, how terrible…

“I once saw Agreste burning a bunch of photos. I don’t know why, but it looked cathartic to him. They burned before I saw what was in them.”

The nights feel very dark when the staff are sleeping and her parents are working, and darkest of all (if her memory serves her right) when she hears scratching noises from the backyard. Context picks up a lacrosse stick.

“I sometimes heard him crying, and the sibling he’s with comforting him. I think they’re the only one who knows the full story.”

Context finds three much younger children creeping through a gap in the fence. Only about five or six years old. They’re dressed in grubby cast-offs, though their faces are clean. Even though they don’t look hurt, Context can’t help but fear the worst.

Can we stay with you? Mama stopped loving us.

Hey, I won’t ask any questions. You can stay here for as long as you like.

She’s sure she remembers the girl’s face, but she’s never heard her name.

“Not that I’m going to bother them. Might have more on their plate.”

Context and the children bond. The cook feeds them and they eat as much as their little bodies can hold, but they’re slowed by their perfect manners. They look like street urchins but they speak French and English perfectly and at least enough to say Hello and Thank you in a few other languages. Context wants to ask, but doesn’t want to scare them, especially when she grows closer to them (especially the girl). And all seems well for a few days, until the red-haired man (whats-his-face? She never heard his name) knocks on the door.

Kids? Kids, are you in there? Marie! Toulouse! Berlioz! Miss Magne says she saw you here!

The kids hide behind the couch, and Context assumes the worst.

“I once asked him if he had any regrets. He admits he had many, but they’re useless in his mind. I asked if he’d turn back time if he could change things, and he said no, because,” she gives a simple, wistful smile, “if he did, he might not have met me.”

Context stands in front of the door, kids still hiding, lacrosse stick in hand, glaring at whats-his-face. She tries to keep a brave front, but she’s shaking, dreading what he might do to her.

Look, I don’t know what the fuck your plan is with these kids-

I can explain!

Start telling! she snaps.

“I confess, he’s in my head. And it’s a bit annoying, we’re just friends.”

She listens to whats-his-face tell the whole story, feeling by turns embarrassed, guilty and heartbroken. She drops the stick. I’m so sorry…

Hey, whats-his-face reassures her, I would have done the same thing.

“But anyway…”

She leads them outside, and…

Thomas!

Context can’t help but stare at the woman who clings to whats-his-face’s side as soon as he steps past the gate. (Are they married? There’s certainly love.) Context remembers her face, but she can’t recall her name.

Do I… know you?

“I hope he’s okay, even if he never tells me.” Context tugs on her ribbons. “I hope whatever is bothering him happened forever ago.”

Chapter Text

“The academy is willing to take me back. But only me.”

Victim Advocate (“You can call me V.A. if that’s easier”) is a skinny, excitable, blue-haired young woman. She stands on the stage with five others: the lanky Highway Patrol; the elderly Fire Marshal; the wide-eyed Game Warden; the muscular State Trooper; and the hulking Special Jurisdiction. None of them wear badges, not even outside, but the stars on their name tags shine.

“I hate to say this, but… maybe because I’m post-op and feminine? Maybe they think I’m less of a liability this way? But I’m not going back. Not without you guys.”

Instead of a spotlight, a series of movie fragments; the Fire Marshal says goodbye to his wife while the Game Warden says it to his kids. The Special Jurisdiction promises to be just like her dad. Patrol, Trooper, and Advocate have no one to send them off, but they get by. And all six end up in the same place.

The Fire Marshal smiles sadly. “After everything that happened, we thought the town needed new cops.”

“Better cops,” the Special Jurisdiction adds quietly.

“So we joined the police academy,” the Game Warden says.

The State Trooper folds his arms. “We want to help people. Make a difference.”

“And we were doing so well!” the Victim Advocate exclaims. “All of us, we were… we were so close.”

Tests. Training. Rules. Regulations. The Game Warden studies like his life depends on it. The State Trooper spends hours at the range. The Highway Patrol sets a new record for the mile run, while the Special Jurisdiction has the wall climb mastered by her second attempt. The Fire Marshal excels at criminal psychology. The Victim Advocate is a top-notch negotiator. It’s not easy - of course it’s not - but they rise to the occasion, and people take notice. Their fellow trainees clap them on the back. Their instructors smile. And one woman watches them thoughtfully.

“I guess we can’t really use her name, right? I think a lot of you know it, but it’s the rule, so… Miss D’s what we’ll call her. She was a tech designer and she worked with the police sometimes.”

“She hosted a party for the graduating class. We were all there.” The Highway Patrol chokes out a laugh. “Not the first party I wish I’d skipped, but…”

Most of them are young, and they’re off the clock. The bar is free and top shelf, and Miss D hands out drinks with a generous hand - especially to the Badge Bearers. And though none of them drink much, they’re soon stumbling around the room.

“Drugged,” the Special Jurisdiction mumbles.

The Victim Advocate nods. “I thought the stuff was harder than what I was used to, but… Well, we found out later.”

Miss D’s brother helps lead them to a quiet room where several cots have been set up. We figured some of you might go too hard, he chuckles. You can sleep it off here- no, no, I insist. It’s the least we can do for our first line of defense, right?

“I remember… feeling sick. And then I fell asleep, and when I woke up…”

Someone is screaming. The Victim Advocate struggles to her feet, stumbling (why are her pants so low?) towards the woman on the floor. Half-dressed and bloodied and…

Don’t touch me! she shrieks. Don’t touch me! And no one does.

“She was another graduate. We all knew her but none of us were her friend exactly.” The Fire Marshal takes a long breath. “She’d been assaulted, that was… fairly obvious, and all of us were in a state of undress.”

Miss D rushes into the room, shouting and swearing and ordering the Badge Bearers to stay where they are. The police arrive soon after, leading the graduate to an ambulance and the Bearers to various squad cars. In the holding cell, the accusations start.

The Victim Advocate glances shame-faced at her companions. “Of course, everybody said they didn’t do it, and that makes everybody else feel like they’re being blamed. I wanna say we believed each other, but we really didn’t. I still feel really really bad about that.”

The Game Warden sets a hand on her shoulder. “We all do.”

Blood samples are taken and bails are set - high. None of them are wealthy, and neither are their families. And even if they were, even if they could help…

Please, the Victim Advocate sobs into the phone, please, you know what they’ll do to me-

And I hope you suffer as much as that poor girl.

The Special Jurisdiction hugs herself. “We did.”

They aren’t cops, but they’re close enough. Other prisoners welcome them with fists and curses and hands going where they shouldn’t. The guards intervene - sometimes. Not often enough. Not soon enough. Everyone remembers the last group of abusers, darkening the name of the CCPD. No one is eager to defend the Bearers.

“That almost hurt more,” the Highway Patrol says. “They swore an oath - ‘protect and serve’. The same oath I was going to make.”

The State Trooper smiles sadly. “So. We do it ourselves.”

They pour their hearts and souls into it, watching each other’s backs and facing each other’s fears. Every Badge Bearer still feels bitterness, still feels that the others put them in this place; but still they defend each other.

“It was the right thing to do,” the Fire Marshal says softly. “But no one else was doing it. Makes you lose a little faith, honestly.”

They walk a razor-fine line until the time comes to meet with a lawyer. The Victim Advocate sits in a room with a nervous woman in a blue suit, desperately pleading her case. Whatever fingerprints o-or hair they found, it’s there by mistake! I didn’t-

Miss Fields, your… there was, um, fluid at the crime scene and on the victim which was traced to you. Now, if you can be honest with me-

Wait. The Victim Advocate’s eyes widen. What… what kind of fluid?

“So… remember I said I was post-op? That’s actually important to the story. It was kinda like the opposite of that thing with Ringtail and Kelpie’s friend.”

“That was when we first began to suspect we’d been framed.”

Confusion leads to fury leads to intense discussion. I’ll figure this out, the lawyer says firmly. I promise.

“She did.”

The Victim Advocate gently touches the Special Jurisdiction’s arm. “Yeah, she did.”

The Fire Marshal clears his throat. “I’m afraid I have to speak a bit frankly here, please excuse me, but… there was a reason the six of us specifically were set up…”

The lawyer makes her opening remarks, eyes fiery, voice strong. Moreover, the jury will see that my client and the other accused were among the many Americans who have chosen to freeze sperm. The jury will see indisputable evidence that Ms. Evelyn Deavor, the true perpetrator of this heinous crime, stole my client’s and the other accused’s sperm. Furthermore…

“And she proved it. Got us out of jail and put Miss D in - briefly.” The Victim Advocate huffs slightly. “She’s a major tech mogul. Her bail was triple any of ours. Didn’t matter.”

The Fire Marshal shrugs. “Even if she was still there, it wouldn’t have changed much.”

The Badge Bearers look at each other sadly. “No,” the State Trooper agrees quietly. “Not much at all.”

The Badge Bearers are free - but how free are they?

The Victim Advocate is screamed at in the street, words she never thought she’d hear directed at her. It’s worse online - so much worse.

The State Trooper calls his parents, but they won’t talk to him. Neither will his uncle. Neither will his cousins.

The Fire Marshal wakes up to a crash and a scream. He runs to his wife and almost trips over the rock. The front window lies in shards on the carpet.

The Special Jurisdiction tries not to blame her father, but every day he leaves wearing a badge, and the glittering gold fills her eyes with tears.

The Game Warden jumps when he hears footsteps, no matter where he is. He stops leaving the house, but silence is almost worse.

The Highway Patrol wakes up in the hospital, bruised and bleeding and broken-toothed. One doctor walks into the room and immediately turns around. A different doctor treats him.

“Folks think we must have done something,” the Fire Marshal says. “Otherwise, why would we have been arrested, right?”

“People have told me I deserve it for wanting to be a cop,” the Victim Advocate mumbles.

“Or woman,” the Special Jurisdiction adds softly.

The State Trooper sighs heavily and rubs his neck. “We have it bad, but she has it worse.”

And everyone nods their agreement.

Across town, there is a woman with a police academy diploma stuffed into a drawer. She double checks her locks, steps hard on her cellphone, gulps a handful of pills.

“Miss D assaulted her while she was passed out. The evidence proved it. But some people think she lied, or that she was part of it. You probably heard, she tried to… yeah.”

The Victim Advocate breaks down on the floor when she finds out.

On stage, she brushes a hand over her eyes. “Um… So that’s why we came. If we can’t help people as police, at least we can help here.”

“For her,” the Special Jurisdiction says.

“For us,” the Highway Patrol adds.

“For everyone here-” the Fire Marshal.

“And everyone who should be.” The Game Warden.

“For a better world.” The State Trooper.

The Victim Advocate nods. “As long as we’re here, this is our oath. And however heavy that oath becomes, we won’t buckle. I promise.”

And though they’re only foil, the stars they wear seem to gleam.

Chapter Text

“I’m fourteen, almost fifteen. People tend to think I’m older - or younger.”

The Preconceived Notion stands on the stage, her yellow skirt rustling as she shifts from one foot to the other. Her hair (black, and held by a red ribbon) is styled in an old-fashioned way. Her voice is high and delicate, sweet as a song.

“People tend to think a lot of things about me. And once someone has made a decision, it can be very hard to change their mind.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a man and woman hold their newborn daughter - at least, one assumes that is what they hold. On the tape, from their perspective, the babe in arms is a dark-haired cherub with a halo above her head. There is the faintest sound of an infant wailing, but the angelic Notion is dry-eyed and smiling, pretty as a picture against her mother’s chest.

Cut; the girl grows but also doesn’t. Even when crawling gives way to toddling, even when cautious stumbles become steady steps, still she appears as an ethereal and infantile angel. And then - quite suddenly - the Notion becomes a morose child decked out in black dark as the night. The very picture of a gothic orphan.

“My mother died when I was very little, and my father… I love him, but he was a bit old-fashioned. He thought a girl needed to be raised by a woman. If she had only been a nanny…”

White dress and white flowers and a kiss without even a shadow of affection. A snot-nosed, sneering Notion grabs the thin wrist of a dark-haired woman, nails digging as deep as a bite. You look beautiful! Just like a princess! So she says, but the woman is certain she can hear a mocking tone just under the words.

“I don’t believe he loved my stepmother. I don’t think she loved him either, which I guess makes it a little better. It would be terrible to love someone and know they didn’t love you back… But then again, maybe she did. Maybe that’s why she was the way she was.”

Sometimes the Notion is a princess; enviable mannerism, delicate smile, perfection incarnate. Sometimes she is a monster; scathing tones, cruel glances, corruption in its purest form. Sometimes she is both at once. It all depends on which adult is looking at her.

“When I was six, my father was hit by a car. My stepmother told people his passing affected me deeply. She said I became scared to leave the house, and then she said I had gone to a school that would help me.”

The skinny woman glares at the Notion, dirty-faced and dressed in rags and scowling. She forces a mop into the girl’s hand and tells her to start working.

Cut; the Notion throws the mop into a closet (though it lands as gently as if it was carefully placed) and bellows, I’m done, Stepmother.

The woman’s eyes narrow. No. You aren’t

“The chores weren’t too bad. I like cleaning, and I could hum or tell myself stories. But I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere except the yard. And there were no people to talk to.”

To mice and birds and the occasional rabbit, the Notion is all but invisible; nothing more than hands full of food and a voice as quiet as a mouse. Please don’t be afraid. It’s okay, you can have some. Sharing is a kind thing to do, you know. Father told me.

“And she wouldn’t let me go to school. There are a lot of things I still don’t know. At least I could read a little, that helped.”

A tiny black shadow creeps through the large house, stealth as a tiger. The specter reaches a door and fiddles with the lock. It finally opens - not onto the outside world, but into a small library. The shadow creeps in, pausing for a moment to stare at a framed painting hanging from a fixture. A man and a woman. The Notion flickers briefly into a reflection of her mother; tender eyes, gentle expression. Then she returns to the task at hand. She leaves laden down with books - mostly tragic romances (for that is what her mother enjoyed), and also a dictionary to help with unknown words. Cut; the Notion lies in bed with a pilfered flashlight and mouths the words as she reads. Her reflection in the window shifts continually: a helpless servant girl; a troubled governess; a reluctant bride. In the morning the Notion stands before the bathroom mirror and practices putting on a brave smile.

“It was hard sometimes, but… not terrible. Not as bad as it could have been.” A tiny gulp. “Not at first…”

The Notion gets bigger, but her appearance doesn’t change; she remains a filthy, brutish thing, ugly as a toad and mean as a wolf. And then the woman brings home a man - gaunt face, sallow skin, sunken eyes - and the Notion is suddenly something different…

“She started seeing someone last year. At first I was glad - I thought maybe she’d be less… But he wasn’t a good man.”

When he looks at the Preconceived Notion, he sees the perfect nymphet: full lips, beckoning eyes, a body untouched by time. Pure as he wants her to be. He speaks to her in sultry tones, and she coyly shies away. When the woman looks at the Notion, she sees a bitter rival: skimpy clothes, garish makeup, every movement an exaggeration of eroticism. Filth of the lowest class. She screams herself hoarse, and the girl only smiles scornfully.

“He made me uncomfortable, but he never tried to touch me, not like that. And he looked… sickly - I know he smoked, maybe that was part of it - I felt like if he did do something, I’d be able to get away.” The Notion shuffles her feet. Her cheeks have turned pink. “Um… He stayed over, sometimes. And one night I… I stood outside the door…”

Flickering between a spy and a shame-faced child, she listens and thinks of scenes from her mother’s books. She hears grunts and gasps and groans. And then she hears her own name, drawn out on a throaty breath. And she does not hear any sounds of shock or horror.

“That… really scared me. I started hiding when I knew he was in the house, but sometimes he’d find me and try to talk to me. Once, he touched my hand… I think my stepmother knew about some of it. Soon after, she told me I was going to a boarding school.”

The Notion stands before her mirror, seeing the girl (she hopes) she is going to become; a cheerful student, ladened down with books, surrounded by friendly faces, as silly as fun and finally carefree. She is so taken with this reflection, she doesn’t question her orders to pack nothing. It doesn’t matter, she tells herself. I don’t need anything. I’m going to school.

“My stepmother knew exactly what to tell me. I wanted so much for it to be the truth, I made myself believe her.”

A man she has never seen before comes to the house. He shakes her hand but will not look her in the eye. Mr. Hunt is driving you to the school, I’m far too busy to take you myself. The Notion, younger than she is and so, so hopeful, follows him to the car. He holds the door open for her and she smiles, blood dripping from her mouth.

“We drove for an hour before he…” The Notion swallows and wipes her eyes with a shaking hand. “He told me there was no school. My stepmother had paid him to… to hurt me.”

They sit parked on a dirt road deep in the woods. The man stares straight ahead as he speaks. The Notion’s eyes widen in horror as her clothes disappear; as a long bloody slash crosses her throat. She reaches for the door and the man finally looks at her; and she is once again a child. But I’m not going to.

“I’m not sure I can call him a good man. There must have been a reason my stepmother trusted him. But he was kind to me. He said he could take me to the police, but we both thought that would be pointless. My stepmother was wealthy, well-connected, well-liked. She probably could have talked or bribed her way out of trouble - and even if she had gone to prison, I know she would have found a way to hurt me.”

Continuing down the road, the trees seem to reach towards the Notion. She stares out the window, wanting to be bear-brave, but she keeps finding faces among the shadows. Finally they stop, and she braces herself.

The Notion smiles. “He arranged for me to stay with some men he knew. They became my uncles.”

It’s a simple cottage; no internet connection or satellite dish or phone line. What there is, is a group of men - most old and bearded and stocky, one young and bare-faced and scrawny, all at least a head shorter than the Notion. They stare at her, and for the first time she looks almost the same as she does on the stage.

“There are seven of them. I was scared at first, of course, but… I hate to gossip and I don’t know anything for certain, but the cottage only had one bedroom before I moved in, if you see what I mean. Whatever the case, I never felt threatened by them. Not ever.”

The Notion with seven different men at seven different times.

One sits beside her at the table, a book spread out between them. California’s here, of course, and then Nevada and Mew Nexico- I mean… He huffs and adjusts his glasses, and the Notion stifles her giggles.

One stands outside with her, holding a switchblade. These is good fer a woman to have - ye can keep it in yer bag or yer blouse. Then if a feller tries sumthin’, ye go for his thighs. He stabs at the air, then hands her the blade.

One rests on the grass with her, reclining and red-faced with mirth. A-and then… then while Gunner was yelling… a bug flew right into his mouth! He almost falls over, he’s cackling so hard, and her laughter is louder than any noise she’s made on the tape.

One directs her to the bathroom cabinet; he is also red-faced, but for a different reason. I, um… I dunno if you, uh, really… need this sorta thing yet, but… Well, I thought it would be better to have some. And if there’s, um… if there’s a different brand or, ah, type that you- A blushing Notion shakes her head, and he’s more than happy to change the subject.

One kneels beside her in the garden, weeding and inspecting leaves for bugs. We gotta keep an eye on the potatoes, last year they- He breaks off in a series of sneezes, and the Notion runs inside for his allergy medication.

One helps her furnish a recently converted storage room. I’m sorry it’s so small- But she isn’t, because it’s cozy and safe and completely hers. -but I think we can make it comfortable for you. He offers her an old hand-stitched quilt, and she hugs it close, feeling warm as the sun.

One sprawls on the floor while she rolls a pair of dice, claps while she moves her game piece. His roll scatters the dice across the room, and they spend several minutes hunting on hands and knees. Even so, the Notion is giggling, and the man grins wide.

A handful of moments among a hundred, a thousand; and for the first time since her father died, she feels as free as a bird.

“They were all kind to me, even Gu- even the most temperamental one, and they did so much without asking for anything. But of course I wanted to thank them, so I found ways to help out.”

Cleaning is second nature to the Notion by now, and the cottage is so much smaller than her stepmother’s house. She has less experience with cooking, but the men make a great show of enjoying her meals and subtly pick around the burnt edges. And the Notion glows as light as day.

“I lived with them for months, and I loved it. I loved them. I was so, so happy…”

Across the state, the Notion’s stepmother and the sallow-faced man scream at each other. There is no sound on the tape, but the breath escaping their mouths is visible - and it slowly takes shape.

The Notion - a filthy scrap of a thing, teeth bared in a sneer.

The Notion - a pale seductress, lips pursed and softly smiling.

The Notion - a brutish creature with filthy hands balled into fists.

The Notion - a sultry figure with hands sliding down, down-

The stepmother, scarlet-faced, opens her mouth and the Notion is suddenly on the floor. Patches of rot and of insects, dried blood and dried… Sliced abdomen. Twisted neck. Soulless eyes.

They stare at each other for a long moment, as the Notion between them leaks pus and viscera and fluids onto the carpet. And then the man speaks aloud: Where’s the body?

“I don’t know how, but my stepmother found out that I was still alive. I don’t want to think Mr. Hunt told her, but that does seem the simplest explanation…”

Questions and then demands and then threats. Mr. Hunt gives vague responses and starts making his own arrangements. He doesn’t get far. Cut; bound to a chair and bleeding, his answers get less and less vague.

“I guess she decided she couldn’t trust anyone else to… So she disguised herself. And… well, I don’t think I can give you her name, but I’d guess several of you know of her - some of you may have even met her. She’s been called ‘Calisota’s Special Effects Queen’-” The Star gapes; the Eel curses softly; the Rooster’s father sucks in a breath; and the Notion gives them a bitter smile. “I thought so…”

Month after month. Sketches, redesigns, silicon, paint. With nothing to hold his interest, the sallow-faced man leaves; but this is no longer about him. It’s about the caricature of the Notion standing in the corner. Another two weeks; to break in the mask, to find a voice, to perfect her mannerisms. To pick her poison.

“My uncles were all out of the house - they used to work in a mine, when they were young men, and now they take people into the mine to look around. Sometimes they let people visit the cabin since it’s so old, or hikers in the forest will come to look… It’s isolated there, but we still see people. That’s why it didn’t seem strange.”

Someone knocks on the door and the Notion goes without fear. On the other side is her stepmother - but what the Notion sees is a withered stranger with long white hair and a crooked nose and deep creases in her skin. And so she smiles sweet as sugar and does not run.

“I’m really trying not to blame myself, but it’s hard. I’ve known her for most of my life, I feel like I should have been able to tell…”

Her stepmother makes some rambling excuse of having lost her way in the woods; and the dull-eyed cretin the Notion has become offers to lead her to the main road.

“We walked for a while, and then she said she needed to sit. She… she had some apples, and she gave me one. I should’ve been smarter, I should’ve- But it was just an apple! How was I supposed to know?”

The first bite is sweet and wet, and the Notion gives a drooling smile. Then her thumb brushes a notch in the apple’s red skin; a pin-prick hole, thin as a needle. Whag… The question catches in her throat and seems to seal it shut.

“I couldn’t breathe, I-I tried and I just couldn’t. I was… I was so, so scared, and she just… she pushed me down, and she said-”

Let’s see if anyone wants you now. And then she walks away, leaving a thrashing Notion on the forest floor.

“I… I got up and I tried to run, but I couldn’t. A-and then I started hitting a stick on a tree, I thought maybe somebody would hear that, but then my arms… I couldn’t even hold it after a minute. And then… I remember starting to shake, and then I passed out.”

No one but the Notion, exactly as she is; convulsing on the ground, bile leaking from her mouth, eyes rolling back, chest heaving helplessly… And then she becomes something else.

“Like I said, people came into the woods to do things - to hike, or have picnics. And I hadn’t known, but that day there was a Scout troop setting up a campsite.”

A teenaged boy crouches over a CPR dummy- a dead body- the Notion, pressing down hard and shouting for help. His fist rests just below her chest- sinks deep into silicon- comes up bloody and presses down again, again, again. A teenage girl, blonde hair tied in a ponytail, calls the ambulance.

“One of the boys kept me alive until the paramedics showed up. He broke a few of my ribs, but that happens sometimes - it wasn’t his fault. I keep telling people that, but once someone has decided something, it’s very hard to change their mind.”

In the hospital: the Notion lies in bed, shaking and frightened and incredibly young. She speaks in a wheezing voice to her rescuer - a man with leering eyes and wandering hands. In the hall, one nurse rolls her eyes and whispers to another. Wouldn’t be surprised if he just wanted to feel her up.

In the cabin: the Notion’s uncles sit around the table, greasy beards brushing their hands, stained teeth visible as they gape in shock - or is it shame? A police officer glares at them and throws his hands in the air. You’ve had an underaged girl living in your house without her guardian’s knowledge or consent - what do you expect me to think?!

In the police station: another officer leans against her desk, flipping through photos of a car crash… and a body. A woman curled into a ball, burned and screaming and suffering. Hell of a way to go, poor lady…

“Everything is… complicated now - it probably would have been complicated anyway, but… After she.… left, my stepmother tried to drive out of the woods. There are a number of roads, but not all of them are safe for regular cars. The police don’t know the specifics, but she picked a bad road and ended up crashing. And then her engine caught fire.” The Notion shakes her head. “I’m not exactly sorry she’s gone, but I’m not happy either. Especially since… When someone dies in an awful way, people feel sorry for them. And when someone dies while everyone thinks they’re a good person, it can be hard to prove they really aren’t.”

Police officers speak kindly to the (bad-tempered, unruly) Notion, but they don’t really listen. It can be hard to lose your parents - and easy to resent whoever takes their place…

Outsiders hear the story - through the news, online, from friends. Many don’t listen to the (sneering, delinquent) Notion either, and their words are full of poison. There’s literally no evidence - she’s just a liar!

“The police confirmed I hadn’t been ‘away at school’ for years like our neighbors thought, but everything else is difficult to prove. The doctors know I was poisoned with sodium azide, but that’s often used in airbags, so the traces of it found at the crash weren’t concerning. She made masks for a living so it makes sense she would have one in her car. She never actually hit me so I don’t have any scars or broken bones, except for my ribs, and that… Well.” The girl sighs and hugs herself. “I… I’m starting to think I shouldn’t have said anything. Because it’s not just me they’re calling a liar.”

Some of the people who hear the story do listen - Oh, that poor girl! - and then go a step further. She doesn’t even know what those men were doing! And the wide-eyed, naïve little Notion can say nothing to change their minds, because how would she know anyway?

“People think my uncles actually did hurt me, or were going to - the word ‘grooming’ has been used quite a bit. The police haven’t found any evidence of that, obviously, but people are still saying things. It doesn’t help that one of my uncles is much younger than the others, and he’s… I think ‘intellectually disabled’ is the phrase?”

That is what strangers call him - among other things. Every time her uncles visit the hospital (or, later, the children’s home where Notion is sent), people whisper behind their backs. They were holding her prisoner - her and that autistic one and She was slutting it up with the geezers and the retard - she knew what she was doing and They were going to - I know they were going to…

But it’s even worse when her rescuer visits.

“The boy who saved me is sort-of my boyfriend now. He’s only fourteen months older than me, and very kind, and a complete gentleman. But a lot of people are making accusations about him manipulating me, or saying he actually molested me - because teenage boys only think about sex, even when people are dying… I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be angry, it’s just… He’s demisexual. He cares for me, but he’s not even ready to kiss me yet, let alone do anything else. And no one will listen.”

When the Notion and the boy are together, they are themselves - almost-fifteen and barely-sixteen, black hair and brunette, soft faces and hands the only things touching. But others look and see a child and a man, one who is innocent and one taking advantage. And however the Notion argues, whatever the boy says, these images don’t change.

“He might come here some day. My uncles might too.” The Notion gives her audience a meaningful look, straightening her shoulders, furrowing her brow. For a moment she looks as royal as a queen. “It can be quite upsetting, you know. When people think you’re something you aren’t.”