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Time passed differently inside of Steeplechase, Montrose mused. After all, the difference between July and February was tenuous at best in a place where the sky never changed.
Of course, that didn’t mean it was unaffected by the passage of time. Dentonic, in keeping with its reputation as a friendly neighborhood mega corporation, celebrated holidays with a sort of all-encompassing, money-is-no-object enthusiasm that was quite frankly breathtaking, even to someone who’d had the pleasure of witnessing many, many of its iterations.
Not all layers were destinations for every holiday, however. Sure, Passion’s Cove was worth its weight in gold around Valentine’s, but people weren’t exactly lining up around the block for a St. Patrick’s Day edition of the raunchy, horny dating show.
“Hey, Montrose, can you pass me another string of lights?”
Ustaben, though. Ustaben came to life for Candlelights. Eleven months out of the year, the nostalgia layer was considered something of a dud. Slow, outdated, boring. Nothing at all like the heart-pounding drama of a Gutter City bank robbery.
But nobody, and he meant nobody, was immune to the longing for a mug of hot cocoa on a cold winter night. Sleepily dozing on the sofa, petting the family cat and/or dog, and watching the fire crackling merrily in the fireplace… Waking up in the morning, wrapped up in a homemade quilt gone soft with age, and knowing with certainty that all plans had been cancelled in favor of a snow day… Ustaben was the destination for Candlenights.
“Montrose!”
With a jarring spike of adrenaline, Montrose leapt forward to catch Emerich before he could hit the ground. The pair of them blinked owlishly at each other for a moment before looking up at Beef, who was standing inadvisably high on an inadvisably tall ladder, his hands pinning a string of lights above his head.
“Sorry about that,” Emerich said, apparently not discomfited in the slightest by his near brush with bodily harm or his current position being held bridal style by Montrose. “Since you were distracted, I thought I’d help Beef with the lights.”
“No, I’m sorry, fellas,” Montrose said, depositing Emerich. “I suppose I was a little lost in thought.”
“Oh, you know I’m not one to judge for that,” Emerich assured him.
“That’s great, guys. Can somebody please pass me the lights so I can get down from here?” Beef called down to them.
They finished up without further incident, and once they were all back on solid ground, the trio stood back to admire their (Beef’s) handiwork. The Candlenights lights adorned every edge and eave of Poppy’s Arcade, blinking red, green, yellow, and blue against the overcast white of Ustaben’s perpetual snow day sky. It was perfectly classic, timeless. Nostalgic.
“I still think it could use a little extra touch of hardlight,” Emerich observed. “Maybe a flight of migratory geese to occasionally pass overhead.”
Busy packing up the ladder, Beef said, “Knowing you, you’d probably make them sentient and we’d never get rid of them.”
Emerich tilted his head in consideration of the claim. “Sentient geese shouldn’t be too hard, come to think of it,” he mused.
“You can’t just,” Beef began before cutting himself off with a sigh. “Montrose, you tell him.”
“I support you both wholeheartedly,” Montrose said reflexively, already distracted again.
The other two glanced at each other.
“Let’s head inside and warm up,” Beef suggested.
Poppy was waiting inside for them with mugs of hot cocoa, complete with marshmallows and peppermint sticks. “Hey-o, boys!” he said cheerfully. “Great job with the decorating, you’ve really gotten this old place looking—”
“You haven’t even stepped outside to look, you old freak,” Montrose told him, already snatching up his cocoa.
“Right you are, Montrose, right you are” the man chuckled. “What are your plans for the rest of the day? I can cover the arcade if you boys want to go to the back and, I don’t know, talk about your feelings with each other, or—”
“Stay in your lane, you nasty old pervert,” Beef interrupted, adding a heaping pile of marshmallows to his.
Emerich grabbed the third mug and used it to warm his icy hands. “Did you poison this cocoa? I think I smell arsenic.”
“Haha, no of course not! I used almond milk to make it easy on your stomachs. I know how you boys struggle with the IBS!”
Montrose was already exiting towards the back. Over his shoulder, he warned, “I’m going to drink this poison cocoa, Poppy, just so I won’t have to see your face ever again.”
Emerich followed, accompanied by the sound of Poppy’s good-natured chuckles, and was soon followed by Beef. On his way out, Beef pointed an accusing finger at Poppy. “And stay out of our room tonight. I’m going to lock the door.”
The three of them relaxed as the door closed behind them, unheeding of the cheerful, “That won’t help!” that was called out from the room they left.
Half of the back room had been converted into the illicit Darkade breakroom, while the other half had been made into a comfortable living space through the combined efforts of their little trio. However, because of the people who made up said trio, the space was also best described with words like ‘eclectic’ and ‘deeply strange.’ One might even throw in ‘bachelor pad,’ if one were imaginative enough to describe any of them as a bachelor. The floor was littered with stray tools, loose wires, glass marbles, and caltrops for some reason, along with cluttered memorabilia from various layers. On the coffee table, multiple pairs of reading glasses sat atop a hodge-podge pile of magazines (Beef’s) and romance novels (Montrose’s), in addition to a lava lamp whose origin was frankly indeterminable. This did not help the room’s ‘not a bachelor pad’ status.
“So,” Montrose began, thumping down into his spot on the care-worn couch, “I was thinking we should start planning our next heist. What do you think, boys? Shall we hit Infiniteum? Or maybe somewhere newer? There’s always that pirate-themed layer, what was its name?”
“Scurvy Central!” Emerich declared, and his companions both grimaced.
“No, I’m certain it’s not called Scurvy Central.”
“Regardless of what it’s called,” Beef said, “are you sure we should be planning a heist right now? It’s Candlenights.”
“It can be a Candlenights themed heist,” Montrose generously allowed.
“Some people go home for Candlenights,” Beef reminded him. “You know, to visit family?”
Both Emerich and Montrose looked at him blankly.
The words didn’t properly compute in Montrose’s mind, no matter how he turned them. “Families come here for Candlenights,” he clarified.
Exasperated, Beef said, “Yeah, but our families don’t. Look, I worked out a schedule so we can each take a few days to go home and see people while the other two cover things here. We won’t really have time for all three of us to pull a heist on top of that.”
He pulled out an honest-to-god planner and began flipping through pages, and Montrose once again made eye (mask) contact with Emerich. He made a little shoulder nudge towards the other, pushing him into the conversation.
“Beef,” Emerich started slowly, “that’s very kind of you, but I for one don’t plan to visit anyone for the holidays.”
Beef paused his search, taken aback. “What?”
“Who would I visit?” Emerich asked with a shrug. “The two of you are right here, and my hardlight creations are all right here in the park.”
“But this is just a job, guys,” Beef protested, looking back and forth between them. “Right? It’s immersive as hell, I’ll grant you that, but it’s just a job. We have lives outside of Steeplechase.”
“Do we though?” Montrose asked.
“Yes?” Beef replied, but it came out like a question. “You guys remember that these are personas, right? Beef Punchley, Montrose Pretty… they only exist within these walls. They aren’t real people. No offense, Emerich.”
“None taken,” the older man replied. “When it comes to me, what you see is what you get. Emerich Dreadway is my full, legal name,” he added.
As far as Montrose was concerned, his legal name was something to be left behind in the annals of history. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Let me ask you something, Beef, and I do mean it with love and not as some kind of entrapment. Who, exactly, were you planning to visit this fine Candlenights season?”
He faltered. “Well, I, uh.” Montrose’s question seemed to have hit a nail on its head, and Beef struggled with it for several moments. “I kind of… assumed you guys had people to visit, I guess. My sister would probably be glad to have me over, the kids and her wife all like me well enough, but,” he scratched uncomfortably at the stubble along his jaw, “I don’t know, it’s hard. It’s hard being there when I feel like I’m just not…” He trailed off, but Emerich and Montrose just waited expectantly for him to finish. Finally, he confessed, “I… probably would have camped out at some hotel by myself for a few days.”
If he expected to be rebuked or laughed at, that wasn’t what he got. Emerich and Montrose had been in the parks business long enough to simply nod as the story reached what was, to Montrose at least, its inevitable conclusion.
“The thing to remember, Beef, is that people don’t just get up one day and decide to work at Steeplechase,” Montrose explained. “The people who work here do so at immense cost to themselves, in terms of physical, social, and some might say psychological health.” He paused to search Beef’s face. “Am I making sense? People don’t work here if they have somewhere else they need to be.”
“Like a pirate ship,” Emerich chimed in. “Separated from civilization, not knowing when you’ll come back to land…”
“He makes a good point,” Montrose agreed, almost surprised. “And much like those dashing rogues of the sea—who we will most definitely be posing as in our next heist—everybody here has something they’re running from. It puts a certain stink on those cherished Candlenights festivities, don’t you agree?”
Nostalgia and memory were great when they were being used to lure park guests into spending exorbitant amounts of money. In Montrose, though, that sort of rose-tinted, nostalgic yearning just buzzed around his head like a cloud of gnats. There were no idyllic snow days or quiet evenings by the fire in his past, that was certain.
Annoyed by the restless feeling in his legs, he took a large gulp of cocoa. A heist would be an excellent way to clear his mind, if everyone would just stop falling for the same old tired gimmicks they used on guests.
Staring into his own cooling mug of cocoa, Beef wore a grimace like he wanted to refute every point, but he was coming up empty-handed. At length, he asked, “Isn’t that kind of sad?”
Caught off guard, Montrose spluttered. “Sad?”
But Beef stood by it. “Yeah. I mean, Steeplechase is great, mostly, but to live your whole life here? To have no connections to the real world outside? Montrose, doesn’t that get—claustrophobic? Isolating?”
Incredulously, Montrose asked, “Do you know what exists outside these walls, in that so-called real world?” He paused for effect, glancing between the two of them, before continuing firmly, “Taxes. Jury duty. Awkward family reunions with second cousins you barely know the names of. The state of Oklahoma! And out there, when you decide to hop in a car and drive as fast and as far away as you can go, what happens?”
“You spend more money on gas?” Emerich guessed.
“You get a speeding ticket!” Montrose answered, placing emphasis on every word. “A speeding ticket! And there are no ultra cool car chases, no stunts, and no explosions! Why does anyone ever leave!?” Here, he gestured a bit too emphatically, and some of his hot chocolate flew out to stain the leg of his pants.
Watching him curse and dab at the spot with a few loose napkins, Beef said drily, “And in here, when you drive as far as you can go, you’re still right where you started.”
“Well jeez, Beef, way to darken the mood,” Montrose admonished.
Over Beef’s noise of offense at the blatant hypocrisy, Emerich said, “I like celebrating the holidays here.” They both glanced up at him. Emerich looked thoughtful, like he was still finishing up the equation of his thoughts as he spoke. “I didn’t leave much of a life behind when I came here, and yes, sometimes it does feel very isolating. But I think Montrose is right, even if it’s not in the way he meant it. Despite everything wrong with this place and how I came to be here, there’s still nowhere I’d rather spend my Candlenights than right here in Ustaben, drinking cocoa that probably isn’t poisoned with my two closest friends.” And then he smiled at them the smile of a man whose math had worked out exactly as he’d hoped, and drained his mug in three quick, alarmingly big gulps.
“Here here,” Beef agreed, raising his mug to the words.
And Montrose… for a split second, Montrose wanted to reject the words. It wasn’t a rational objection; it was the emotional equivalent of jerking wide awake because falling asleep too quickly made his brain think he was dying. Montrose Pretty did not have close friends. He did not feel things like loneliness or self-pity. He did not have any use for any of the warm-hearted, family-oriented celebrations that other people clung to. And most definitely, in all the many years he had spent in Steeplechase, Montrose Pretty did not spend Candlenights sitting around bantering with his two best friends over cups of cocoa. The realization that he was, and did, was almost vertigo-inducing—a misfired synapse to jolt him awake before he could fall too far, too quickly.
And then the moment passed, and there was only the briefest hesitation before he lifted his mug as well. In for a dollar, in for a suite. “Here here.”
There was a wet sniffle, and then a voice from the door said, “Oh, I’m just so proud of you boys. It brings a tear to my eye.”
There was a collective snarl from the crew unfortunately known as Poppy’s Pals.
“Get out of here you nasty old pervert!”
“You ruined it again Poppy!”
“Go bring us another round of cocoa to atone for what you’ve done!”