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Three men deal cards in a mobile trailer that looks as new as the day it was put up on blocks. The masked one is the first to notice the new player’s arrival. The boy appears in the back row, buckled into his seat, his blond head on his chest. “Hey, Tomas!”
Tommy jerks upright and fumbles with his restraints, only relaxing when the belt retracts back up into the ceiling. “What are we doing in the drug van?”
Wilbur smiles. “Is that what you see?”
“Want some blue?” Schlatt’s rolled the dye into a makeshift cigarette with a shell of old newspaper. “You’re old enough for it now, I say. Old as you’ll ever be, ha. Here, it’ll put some hair on your chest.”
Tommy blinks in confusion. “Is it a drug?”
“The very best,” says the man in the friendly mask.
Wilbur says, “So is aspirin.” He draws a card and puts it back.
Tommy stares between the three familiar faces. “Is this heaven or hell?”
“Both.” Schlatt exhales a plume of sapphire smoke. He coughs.
“Neither,” says Mexican Dream. He makes a crease in the ace of spades.
“What are you talking about?” laughs Wilbur, “I swear this is just my hotdog stand.”
Tommy touches his face. He has no new scars, but his eye sockets hurt. “I’m really dead, then?”
Schlatt claps him on the shoulder. “Congratulations.”
Wilbur says, “You weren’t supposed to be.”
Mexican Dream pulls off his mask and snaps the porcelain over a granite countertop. “I doubt it. You can never be quite sure what’s going to happen next.” He has a kind face underneath his smile.
“Good. Unfair of you to wear that shit,” the horned man growls, “I can never tell whether or not you’re bluffing.”
There’s a lime green strand of thread around Tommy’s neck, hidden under his bandana. It’s tied loosely but it slips tighter. He pinches it between his fingers. “What’s this?”
Mexican Dream grins. “Told you.”
He shivers. “Is Dream coming here?”
“Yeah.” Schlatt bites his cigarette. A bit of ash falls out and smolders on the floor. “We all do, in the end. No matter how much we deny it.”
“Depends how much he wants you back.” Wilbur squeezes his brother’s hand. “Get ready for him to pull on the leash.”
Tommy clears his throat. He doesn’t want to be dead. He wants to run his hotel and see his friends and fly through the rain and feel the sun on his face. But he doesn’t want to be back where Dream is. Dream can always hurt him.
Wilbur pulls him into a reassuring hug. “Think of this as one last visit.”
“He didn’t stop.” He thinks of fists pummeling his cheek into the unforgiving rock. And he thinks also of hooves. “Even Technoblade stopped, and that time I was fighting back.” Twice now he’s been beat to a pulp in a cramped box while crying his best friend’s name. “I kept asking him to stop. He knew exactly what he was doing.”
Schlatt nods. “Sending a message.” He lays a card face-up. “The tower, reversed.” He nudges Wilbur. “Your turn.”
Wilbur plays an eight. “Clubs.”
Tommy asks, “What game are you playing?”
“A new one,” says Mexican Dream. The green string tugs. “Watch closely.”
“The resurrection book,” he asks hollowly, “It’s real?”
“Yes.” Schlatt meets his eyes. “Raise.”
But this isn’t adding up. Dream lies; doesn’t he always lie? “Why would you have something like that?”
“Because unlike some people here,” he steals a poker chip from Wilbur’s pile, “I didn’t fucking want to die.”
Wilbur grins. “Yet here we are. So much for your plan. Tell him.”
Schlatt sighs. “You know how some rich assholes have their bodies put on ice? Hoping that maybe, some years down the line, when folks have learned how to bring back the dead, some poor schmuck will thaw out yours truly?”
“Yeah,” says Mexican Dream, “Cowards.”
“Well, Dream promised to bring me back, so I let him have the keys to my cryo-tank, as it were.”
“God, what an idiot you are,” says Wilbur, “And Dream knows it.”
“I knew he was evil. I didn’t know he was a liar.” He spits purple phlegm; it lands on the toe of his own loafer. “Got any threes?”
“Go fish,” says Mexican Dream. He flashes his hand at Tommy and winks. It’s all jokers.
The string is getting tighter. It’s digging into his neck like a cheese wire. Maybe he could have slipped it over his head when he first arrived, but now it’s far too late. How long has he been here? The men say they’re on the twenty-third round. They still haven’t dealt him in. He scratches at his collar. “It’ll be over soon.”
“No,” Mexican Dream corrects, “This is just the beginning.”
“I have a gift for you,” says Wilbur.
“Can I really take it with me?”
“This one you can.” He whispers in Tommy’s ear. “There. Remember that.” Tommy smiles widely.
“You’re a good man, Tomas.” The man throws down his hood and clasps Tommy’s trembling hands in his. “I wish we’d met under better circumstances.”
“I’m still not sure if you were ever even real.”
“I’m as real as your thoughts.” His grip is warm. “You are strong and brave. I knew you at your lowest point. I believe in you.”
The thread jerks at his throat, and Tommy gasps. Schlatt snickers. “That’s one way out of the labyrinth.”
“Do you know the difference between a labyrinth and a maze?” Wilbur asks. Tommy shakes his head. “Oh, it doesn’t matter.”
“A labyrinth has only one path,” says Mexican Dream, tossing his cards to the floor. “You can’t get lost. You rarely win, Tommy, but you won’t lose in the end.”
“Give ‘em hell, kid,” Schlatt wheezes, “Make ‘em all pay.”
“Really?”
Wilbur touches his cheek softly, and his is the last voice Tommy hears before he’s yanked back through the void. “Yes and no. Do whatever your heart says. I love you, and I’ll see you in a long, long time.”