Pale: 5.c - Interlude

Interlude

“Excuse me!  Excuse me!”

Clementine stopped in her tracks on the path that led along the river.  She turned to see a family approaching.  Dad, mom, and a daughter that was maybe ten, all fairly nicely, normally dressed.  They’d come running up to her, and were a bit out of breath.

The dad had brown hair, pale skin, and a wiry beard he’d tried to tame with wax.  He wore a salmon colored polo shirt, khaki shorts, and athletic sandals.  The mom was short, overweight, maybe Italian, with grey shooting through very thick hair, with a zebra-print shirt and red dress that didn’t really suit her.  The kid looked like a mix of the two, with a slim look closer to her dad’s, black hair, a pink tee, jean shorts, and strappy sandals.  The kid was bent over, one hand on her knees, catching her breath.

“Yes, um, sorry.  My daughter lost something, and it’s very valuable.  I’m wondering, did you happen to find anything odd lying around?”

“You’d have to be more specific.”

“Because we’d pay.  We’d pay, or trade. Or whatever you want.”

“I can’t give you what you want unless you tell me what it is you’re looking for.”

“Daddy!” the girl cried out, her face crumpling.  She put it into her hands.  “I don’t- I want-”

Clementine backed up a step.

“No no no, don’t run,” the mother called out.  “Listen, it shines, it’s- it’s so pretty, this-”

“Can we convince you?” the dad asked, still catching his breath.  “You haven’t said no, and it’s- we would really appreciate it.  I have, we have sixty thousand in our account.  And we have a camper RV we’ve been traveling around in.  Would that do?  That’s-”

“That’s crazy,” Clementine said.

“What if we agreed to half upfront, then you could show us, and then half later?”

Clementine backed away another step.

She’d dealt with a lot, over the years.  She could count the periods of calm, so to speak, more easily than she could count the times her life had been turned upside-down by something or another.

And she could count on one hand the number of times that anyone had tried to take back one of these messy things.  Sure, she’d had buyers for what she put out there, or if she showed someone her stock.

But someone coming after her unprompted?  She touched the scar at the side of her neck, where it was like a strip of flesh an inch wide and three inches long had been ripped away, the skin never growing right there again.  Pink and sunburning easily, rippled like a stretch mark.  Another similar one from the same incident extended to the corner of her lower right eyelid, making it never open all the way.  Not that it mattered because her vision in that eye was foggy.

This kind of reminded her of that.  It reminded her of the eating of a dead bird, a cringing thought that made the smallest involuntary sound escape her lips.  A habit she’d picked up, in a long series of attempts to try to break bad thought patterns.

“Daddy!  Mom!  She’s not accepting!  We need it!  It’s so bright.  It’s so Right.”  The look on the kid’s face was borderline panicked, changing to something almost dazed at the end of the sentence.

“Hush, dear,” the mom said.

“Do you want to deal, miss?” the man asked.  “What do you want?  Anything you desire.”

“I want an ordinary life,” Clementine said.  “The money’s nice, but… I want an ordinary life.”

“Yes, yes, daddy, we can-”

“Yes,” the father talked over his daughter.  “Okay.  An ordinary life, and if you want the money… would you settle for fifty thousand?”

“That easily?” Clementine asked.

She was aware that all three members of the family were still panting for breath.  Big, short breaths, one after the other, with a steady rhythm.  In keeping with that, they didn’t stand completely straight.  The more she looked, the more off they seemed.

“Not easy,” the mother said.  “But we can do that.  Absolutely.”

“Absolutely,” the girl chimed in.

“Yes,” the father said.  He smiled.  “If you’ll give me an hour, I can run off into town and get that settled, come back to you.  My family could stay with you.”

“The banks don’t open until morning.”

“Oh, the money!  Yes, no, the money-” He laughed.  The mother laughed too.

“We keep the money in our RV,” the girl said, casually.  “All bundled up in neat stacks.  That’s easy.  My mom and I can grab that.”

“I- then what’s in town?”

“What life do you want?  Are you particular?” the dad asked.  “Do you want to take a boy’s life?  A girl, man, woman?”

“Uhhh… I want my life back.  Without all this… really scary stuff in it.”

His expression changed at that.  He huffed out breaths, rhythmically.

For a moment, the three members of the family were almost synchronized in that heavy, huffy, regular breathing.  They exchanged looks.  The mother nodded.

“That’s much, much harder,” the dad said.

“But not impossible?” Clementine asked.

The family exchanged another look between them.

Clementine reached into her pocket, then pulled out the earring.  “For this?”

No words from them.  The steady, loud breathing had ceased, and it was only now that it had stopped that she realized how loud it had been.

She had goosebumps, and it was warm out.

“When you were going to give me a life… what were you going to do?  Take a life by killing someone?” Clementine asked.  “Do you do that a lot?  Kill?”

She moved her hand, and their eyes tracked the dangling ornament, a blue gemstone that was narrow and long to the point it was almost a spike.  It caught the light no matter where she held it.  A little thing that had snagged on her shoelace.

“What about a trade?” the man asked.  He resumed the breathing in the wake of his question.  The other two remained silent.  He touched his wife’s shoulder, and she dug into her oversized handbag.

She handed the father what looked like a disc.  It was a black stone, carved to appear like a snake, coiled up into a tight spiral with no gaps between the lengths of its body, head at the center, tail tip at the edge, a half-foot across.  It looked heavy, the way he held it.

“A key.  You’d have to carve a hole into a door.  Or make a door with a space that’s soft.  A panel of clay.  Push it in, then turn it.  Then you walk through a darkness so long you might worry you’ll never get out.  Then at the end, you get an audience.”

“It’s better if I don’t say.”

Clementine shook her head.

“She might be able to give you what you want.”

“I’m not interested in a ‘might’.  And you didn’t answer my question.  Were you going to take a life by killing someone?”

“We’re very proficient,” the girl said.  She resumed the heavy breathing, head bent in a way where she was almost looking up at Clementine.

A man, decked out in blinking lights so he was visible in the dark, dog trotting beside him with flashing LEDs on its collar, was coming down the path.  There were sparse buildings and trees to Clementine’s left.  The river and rocky shore to her right.

“I don’t really care about this.  I’ll give it to you if you’ll agree to stop killing people.  And give me the money,” she said.

The biker, behind them, was still approaching.

She wanted this resolved before he caught up, which wasn’t that long.

“I tried to be nice,” the father said.  “We were willing to resolve this with some reasonable conversation and deals.  But if you’re going to be unreasonable, I think we’re just going to take-”

The bike guy approached.  Clementine tensed.  He saw them and gave them a wide berth, driving out onto grass, so the dog wouldn’t run into them.

She worried the family would do something to intercept.  She didn’t expect the guy on the bike to turn his head, following the gemstone, and then crash his bike because he wasn’t looking where he was going.  The dog yelped and had to jump to avoid the bike’s tire as it went sideways.

It seemed to startle the family too.

“Are you okay?” Clementine asked.  She closed her hand around the earring, and the family members tensed.  The little girl’s expression turned to a resentful glare.

She slipped a hand into her pocket, found some change from her shopping at the gas station, and palmed a quarter.

“I’m- yes.  Sorry.  I’m so sorry,” the man said, as he climbed to his feet, righting his bicycle.  “Did you- what was that?  Did you have something?”

“Look after your dog, sir.  I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Can I see what you were holding?”

The ‘dad’ sidled closer, his attention caught between Clementine’s right hand and the bicycler.

“Don’t come any closer,” she told him.

His expression remained blank.

Something tackled her, clawing at her side.  She shrieked, briefly, only to realize it was the dog, nosing at her closed hand.

While she was distracted, the young girl darted forward, running at her.

“No!  Back-” Clem started.  And before she was even done the sentence, she realized it was useless.  She twisted, put both hands together, and then threw, full strength.

The young girl managed to scream at the same time she chased, her mom right beside her.  Down the slope, across the shore.

Glinting in the minimal light, it sank into the river.  Mother and daughter stopped at the water’s edge.  The dad had pulled away, making it partway down the slope.

Clem ran, the shriek of the kid behind her.

She looked back over one shoulder, and the guy on the bike and the dog were gone.  The shriek stopped.  The girl and her parents were halfway up the slope, slowly making their way uphill, expressions distorted.

She looked back again, over the shoulder closest to them, to make sure they wouldn’t catch up or pick up speed, and they barely moved in the entire time she checked.  She left them well behind.

People kept appearing and disappearing around her, or getting stuck.  Time was inconsistent.

She stopped running as she reached the end of the trail, looking around for the RV family.  She couldn’t see them.

This far down the river, the town was barely visible; the water caught moonlight and lapped against dark rocks.

“I need to find a way to deal with you,” she told the watch, checking it.  She unfolded her other hand, and checked the jewel.  She’d tossed the quarter, and in the dark, it had been enough to trick them.  She’d hoped they’d dive in, but they’d seemed afraid of the river, shallow and small as it was.

Looking at the river, she could see glinting light, and remembered that she was trying to track down Daniel.  That kind of light seemed like something he’d notice, and she found herself searching for the source.  What was it reflecting?

In the end, as insanely dangerous as it was, she pulled off her shoes and socks, then ventured across the shore.  Rocks bit into the bottom of her feet without breaking the skin.

It was silvery light, like moonlight but more, and even the moon wasn’t quite that bright or clear.  She waded in further, aware of the danger of what she was doing.

“Daniel!” she called out.

The rocks were wet and slimy beneath her feet, and she was walking on a slope.  The slate rocks were hard-edged, and a fall would hurt, if she wasn’t dragged into a deceptive spot where the water poured over and cycled.

From a point in the river, she could see the source of light.  A cave.

She crossed the river, shoes in one hand, the earring and watch in the other.

A head rose from the water.  Long, like a horse’s, and it was roughly that size, but it looked like a dog more than a horse.  It had pale eyes and the long, shaggy hair was soaked, drifting on the water’s surface.  It seemed intent on her right hand.

When its mouth opened, that dog idea was reaffirmed.  Sharp teeth.

As it got closer its upper body rose out of the water.  The ribs and spine were very visible amid the froth of water, the joints knobby.

She moved fast, hurrying more than she should on slippery rocks, and waded through algae on her effort to get to dry land.

The thing, like a gaunt horse-dog, had drooping breasts and human hands at the end of its overlong, knobby limbs, held together so the backs of the hands almost touched.

It was silent, watching her while she backed away.

As she got to the cave entrance, it dipped its head below water.

She maybe wouldn’t cross the river, next time.

She turned her full attention to the cave.

A silvery blade was stuck in the floor, reflecting moonlight across the cave.  Across the blood and bloody footprints and shoeprints that littered the cave floor until it looked like more blood than stone.

“The gilded lily,” a voice spoke from the darkness, deep.

“I don’t know what that is,” she answered.  “Are you dangerous?”

“I’m wounded and healing.  That is my blood painting this floor.”

“But are you dangerous?”

He laughed, and it was a laugh that was deep, low, and carrying close to the ground.  Good natured, like it promised to lift her up.

“The answer depends on who you ask.”

She looked at the sword.  Another one?

“Have you seen Daniel?” she asked.  “He’s a skinny-”

“He was the one who wounded me.”

“He’s not that type of person.”

“Whether you’re right in that or not depends on the half of a word you left out.”

“He was not that type of person.  Correct.  Your statement stands.  He is not?  I’d call you a liar.  Not that it matters if I do or not.”

“What changed?  This sword?”

“No.  This is a trick of light, with exceptional sharpness.”

“It’s not all that often that I get instructions with things.  Usually when I do, it’s a trap.  Where did Daniel go?”

“I’ve not moved, miss Clementine, ever since your traveling companion departed.  The state of the floor might give you an inkling of why.”

Clementine looked down at the blood.

“I need to find him,” she said, as she looked at the patterns formed as shifting moonlight and the various shades of crimson played against one another.

“We need you to find him.  And to take him far from here.”

“A girl I talked to… Daniel called her a deer.  I don’t know if that was symbolic-”

“She said to leave, too.  Why is it so important?  What’s going on?”

“Among other things, Clementine Robertjon, he’s stabbing people like myself.”

Clementine absorbed that, reflected on it, tried to put her finger on her frustration over the lack of answers, and then just settled on saying, “Fair.”

“I can help you find him.  I can’t go with you, so you’ll have to continue alone.  Take that with you.”

She looked at the sword.  “And if I say no?  That I don’t want or trust it?”

“That is your choice.  Hold out a finger.”

She could hear him blowing out a breath.  The air in the cave stirred, brushing up against her bare arms and legs.

A single hair settled on her fingernail, brown and as long as her forearm.  The two ends of it pointed in separate directions, more like the hands of a clock than anything that followed the wind.

“Find him.  Take him far from here.  I’d tell you to take him far from that building where the two of you live, but I know that is futile.”

“How do you know so much about me?”

“I listen,” the deep voice said.  “People tell you a lot if you listen.”

“They don’t tell me what I want to know,” she said.  “Like what is going on.  What am I?  You called me a gilded lily.”

There was no response from the darkness.

She strode forward, and she lifted the sword from the ground.  The cave was briefly illuminated, and then the light moved with her, basking the area around her as she ventured into the darkness, toward the last source of the voice.  She held it up.  “What is this world?  What are you?  Why won’t anyone tell me!?”

She slashed the sword at the darkness as she asked that last question.

She pulled, she tugged, and it didn’t move in the slightest.  Caught on darkness, just beyond the pool of light it shed.  Or held, somehow.  More firmly than the stone had held it.

“Please,” she said.  She adjusted her grip, then reached into her pocket.  She held out the earring.  “Do you want this?”

The laughter came slowly, starting as a sound she wasn’t even sure was there, then rising in volume and intensity.  She jumped as she realized how close it was to her.

“Do you want it?  I want answers.”  She remembered the family coming after her, trying to kill her.  “If you don’t give them to me, I’ll-”

She held the earring against the blade’s edge.  She could gouge it, or scrape it, or ruin it.

The grip on the silver blade’s tip shifted, pulling until the long, narrow sword bent in an arc.  It caught the light, the light flashing in her eyes, and then she felt it slip from her hands, the blade scraping along the pads of her fingers without touching them.

He held the handle, somewhere out of sight, and that blade that caught the pale moonlight extended toward her, point at her throat.

“I don’t want it,” he said.

“The earring?  But-”

“But everyone seems to want it.  Keep it, use it if you will.  But wear it only for one scene, one event.  From the moment you put it on, you should be entering a new place or doing a single thing.  Attending an evening ball, or talking to one important person.  This is not a hard limit, but two points make a line, and three can be a constellation.  It would leave you hollow, if too many of your relationships are touched by that glittering light.  Seal it away in a box covered in jewels on all six sides to confuse and refract its light or wear it, but don’t hold it as you are now.  Worn, it makes you desirable.  Appropriately boxed up, it sits quiet.  Held… people will kill you to have it.  Collected as a set of two earrings, two rings, diadem, necklace and pin, the wearer will be king or queen of all things in their awareness, but you would not get that far.  It is as good as inevitable that you would die trying.”

“You know what it is?”

“No, but I know of enough things like it that I can work out its meanings.”

“Okay, well, thanks.  That’s answering a question, but it’s not answering my questions.”

“It’s not my place to answer your questions.”

“Why not!?” she shouted, still mindful of the blade’s point.  “Why the hell not!?  I’ve lost everything, over and over again!  I’ve barely built up a life, I’ve finally found something that almost seems peaceful, and I can’t even appreciate it.”

“Answer me!” she shouted.  “Answer me!  Tell me!  Tell me, do I lose it all, all over again?  Is that inevitable, like it’s inevitable I keep finding this-”

She almost threw the earring.  She stopped herself before she did.  She had the puzzle bracelet too, but she had to stop herself before she tore it off and flung it down.

She would regret it.  She knew.  She had so few things she was confident she could use.  The bracelet was one.  The earring, if he wasn’t lying or leaving something out, was another.

“-these nightmares,” she spoke softly, eyes down at the blood she was standing in.  “Will I lose it all, and drag the people I love and appreciate down with me?  Who can I make friends with or love, if I might end up killing them by taking the chance?”

“Near everyone who has lost has asked themselves some variant of that question.  How can we love again, if it means we might lose?”

“Don’t give me platitudes.  Don’t give me riddles or evasions.  Tell me.  Explain!”

She glared into the darkness, sword at her throat, but she managed to make her tone fitting for a warning, as if she really did have him at her mercy, at the point of her sword, his existence and hope for true peace, tranquility, and love on the line.

“I’ll give you your answer, Clementine Robertjon.  It is the answer you seek and the true reality you need to absorb and make a part of yourself, but you’ll find it unsatisfying.  You’ll resent me, but as part of my answer, I must set you on your way, and your feelings about me and my answer won’t matter.”

“If it’s really the answer I seek, I don’t see why I’ll be angry.  Unless you’re secretly the reason I’m stuck like this.”

He adjusted his grip on the blade, and the moonlight fell differently in the cave, predominantly on one side of the blade, leaving the other side dark.

He touched her hand, and the touch was so gentle that she didn’t even jump with the surprise she felt.  With a darkness-shrouded hand big enough to wrap around the both of her hands if she clasped them together, he collected one of her hands between pinky and ring finger, then after a second, pulling her hand to one side, collected her other hand between thumb and index finger.

He reversed the sword without turning it around, and laid the handle in her hands, which he held.  When he closed her fingers, he held her ring and middle fingers away from the handle.  The blade became like a faint shaft of moonlight.  He moved his finger enough for her middle finger to come to rest against the handle, and it became brighter.  He let the last finger touch, and it became a blade.

She adjusted her hold on the blade and let it become various kinds of light, from the most diffuse to something solid.

“Don’t turn back around,” he told her.  He touched her shoulder, and turned her to face the cave entrance.  She heard him move, a rustling sound too gentle for how big he had to be.  He loomed directly behind her.

“Just give me my answer,” she told him.  “I have enough weird things.”

“One more thing,” he told her.  He took a piece of paper, folded and tied with a ribbon like it was a parcel, and he folded it, sliding it into her pocket.

“I don’t want this,” she told him.

“It’s not intended for you.”

“Then I definitely don’t want it.”

“This is a world of wonder, Clementine,” he said.  He walked forward, and lightly pushed her from behind, leading her forward, out of the cave.  “It is a world where words matter, deals have a profound meaning to them, and patterns unfold in fascinating ways mankind has yet to fully grasp, but for a select few.”

“Are these more platitudes?” she asked.  “Yes, the world’s beautiful, yes, there’s a lot going on out there.  But I can’t go out to join that world with the rest of humanity because I’m constantly stuck dealing with this.”

“The world,” he murmured, and he was far taller than her, the murmur settling on her like hands at her shoulders, “ks all of these things, and none of them.”

“Please… can you talk straight to me?” she asked.

She was so tempted to turn back to look at him, but there were about a dozen items that she’d run into over the years that had taught her that when someone or something mysterious said something, she should listen.  The ring that let her turn an enemy into a friend, that she was only supposed to use three times.  The automated piggy bank that had warnings about pennies saved on the base.  That one had gone really off the rails after Canada had discontinued the penny.

“For all that we talk of karma and balance, for all we elevate people to a privileged status and then dwell on their sworn oaths, declarations, promises, and deals, and for all that we exclude others from those cutthroat worlds to protect them-”

“These aren’t the answers I want.  I don’t care about politicians or celebrities or rich kids or how cutthroat that is.  I care about these cursed things that keep finding me.”

“They find you because the world is unfair, Clementine.  That is the flip side of what I’m telling you now.  For all that this world is dressed up in fairness and measured words, it is decidedly lopsided.  Some are given everything from money to positions of power from the day they enter this world, and the small minded will laud them and pretend those elevated few have earned what they were so clearly given.  Others are given nothing but pain, struggle, or handicaps.  Sometimes all three.  Sometimes they aren’t given the slightest chance from the beginning, entering the world without the ability to draw a breath or drum their heart.  They are unfairly condemned, or the hundreds of those who struggle are said to be the cost of the handful that get it all.  And you… you struggle.”

Clementine swallowed hard, her one hand clenched tight around the sword in bitter anger.  She might have retorted, or lashed out with the sword, but she couldn’t bring herself to get air up from her lungs to her mouth, and she couldn’t really see past the moisture in her eyes, which left her unsure she could strike true.

“Grieve.  This is your bitter lot.  Harder than most.  Then once you’re finished grieving for the time being, step forward as you’ve been doing so wonderfully, these past two decades.  Advance into this headwind that’s been set perpetually against you.  Step forward into this dark, bloody night, because there is a moment coming where you’re due to laugh harder than you ever have.  To love your hardest.  Or where you’ve found a place with a view that makes it all worth it.  Your moment could be a person, or it could be a milestone reached.  It could be a show or a book you come to hold close to your heart, or a passion for a career or hobby that brings light to inner places you thought would be forever dark.  So long as you persist, there is goodness out there.  There is no way that you, in your beautiful mortality, can stand at a sword’s point and imply you’re willing to give it all up for your answers, when you haven’t even scratched the surface of the experiences out there.  You don’t know what you’d be giving up.  I do.  I have seen enough of those things to know them like I know what that earring is.  I do believe it is worth your time and endurance.”

He continued, “Weather the darkness, Clementine, and bear the weight of the now, keep experiencing, and you will be rewarded.”

She shook her head, ready to retort, dragging in a breath.

He spoke before she could.  “I say you have to, because right now, Daniel needs you, right now he is in darkness and bears a weight.  All I have just said to you applies as easily to him.  He will not make it through tonight if you do not start running now and keep running without hesitation.  On your way, give the paper to a man and woman who are trying to hide their tears, and say nothing to them, for you’ll need that breath to get to Daniel in time.”

He gave her a light push on the back.

She started forward, thought about wheeling on him, about saying something back, but she didn’t know what.

And Daniel needed her.  She believed that.

She adjusted her grip on the sword, and it became a diffuse light that she carried around her.  A moonbeam that didn’t stop focusing on her.  She took the earring, and she hesitated, because she had dearly wanted to pierce her ears as a child, but her parents had told her it had to wait until she was ten.  Then the incident had come up with the homeless man that had wanted something from her, who had made her sick.  With her ongoing condition, her skin sloughing off in places, the doctors hadn’t wanted to risk infection.

By the time she might have been able to convince her parents it was worth the risk, she had figured out something was going on.  After she’d confronted ‘Doug’ Dugal and ‘Elle’ Aurielle and realized it was the choker that drew them to her, she’d gone to juvie, and she hadn’t felt that keen on accessories after that.  She’d tried to get rid of most stuff, but jewelry in particular.

Her ears were unpierced.  Which meant, if she didn’t have a box to put this thing in…

She ran, pressing the point of the earring’s hook against her earlobe, which she pulled tight.  She felt the individual layers it penetrated, external, the meat of the inside, then external again, as it came out.

She ran through scattered homes, each with large lots, many with trees.  Many homes were dilapidated.  Some were oddly small, considering the space available.  A sign of the era and circumstances they’d been made in.

Many people here had their own struggles.

She made her way back to town, and the light of the moonbeam was eclipsed by a brighter light.  She squinted a little in the face of that light.

“You okay?” a woman called out, through an open window.

Clementine backed away a step, shielding her eyes.

“It’s late to be out running like this.  Everything alright?”

“I’m- sure,” she lied.  “I’m alright.”

“Want a ride?  Seems like you’re in a hurry.”

“If you don’t mind stopping for me to do a quick errand.  Or drop me off there.”

“If it’s in town, I’m happy to take you wherever.”

She warily eyed the sedan, the contents, the hat in the back seat, and the props that were hooked into the dash fans.

Whatever.  If one of those props landed in her lap, she’d deal with it.  Daniel was a friend.

She climbed in.  “North.”

“Just north?  No address?”

She shook her head, looking out the window.

“Yeah.  Just passing through.”

“Mysterious stranger.”

“Guess I am.  Appreciate this.”

“Being neighborly.  Seen some real creeps out tonight.”

“As have I,” Clementine said, scanning the side of the road with her eyes.  When she looked at the driver, a twenty-something woman with a baseball cap on at night, inside a car, it was with a wary eye.  Just in case.

The car squealed to a stop, alarming her.

A very obese man, naked, with groin, nipples, ears, nose, and lips cut off, was running across the road with arms winging out to the side, his head lolling back, mouth open, laughing.  With the mess, it had been hard to tell where the lack of lips ended and the gums started, but it was evident as he moved his head and mouth that he didn’t have any teeth in his mouth.

“Huh,” the driver said.

“What did you see?” Clementine asked.

“Big guy.  Looked like he was having fun,” the driver reported.

Clementine nodded.  She ran into that a lot.  Like she got a clearer picture than some, but without getting the whole picture.

The car resumed moving, then stopped abruptly.

A teenage girl in a pink dress had run partway across the road, then stopped, dead in the headlights, her eyes open wide enough that the whites were clear above and below the irises, her mouth in a rictus grin.  She put her hand over her mouth and giggled loudly, before resuming running after the man.

“She’s having fun too.”

“Creepy,” the driver said.  “Drugs are a thing around here, sorry.  If you don’t drink or do drugs, you’ll find out there isn’t a lot to do in the way of social activities.  Not that I want to keep someone from coming back…”

“Yeah.  Oh, wait!  Can you stop?”

The car had only progressed a block.  They had just passed a house, and there was a couple on the front porch, sitting on the stairs.  At… two in the morning, it seemed.

Both members of the couple looked lost in thought.  Sharing a cigarette between them.

Clementine climbed out of the passenger seat, and as subtly as possible tried to pass the ‘sword’ to her other hand, even though it was really just a general, faint light.

With her newly freed hand, she pulled the paper out of her pocket.  The bleeding man in the cave had told her to give it to people who looked like they’d been trying not to cry…

As she got closer, she was sure that was the case here.

How had he known?  Or did they do this on the regular?

She ran over and handed them the paper.

“Uhh, thank you?” the mother said.

The ‘answer’ had been garbage.  Meaningless stuff about balance and words meaning stuff, that politicians and celebrities had power and people like Clementine or Daniel got it rough.  Like she hadn’t already known that.

She wouldn’t be coming back, she wouldn’t be pressing him for more answers, if he even survived all that bleeding, and she wouldn’t be coming back to this town, however much it might disappoint her driver.

She wondered if this ride she was getting was a consequence of the earring, or if the way the couple had accepted her arriving and giving them the piece of ribbon-wrapped paper would have gone differently.

Or was the earring a joke?

The driver took her north.  She wondered what she was looking for.

“Where are you, Daniel?”

“Daniel?” the driver asked.  “Boyfriend?”

“No, no.  I’ve got someone else, a… could-be.  I pine, mostly.”

“In a way.  In a lot of ways, more kid than some kids I’ve met.”

Toward what might have been downtown.  Where signs glowed and more of the streetlights were on.  Many were in an old fashioned streetlamp style.

An explosion rocked the car, almost picking it up and lifting it off the ground.  It skidded as the driver tried to get things back on course.

People fled from the direction of the explosion.  More than a few were holding their hands to the back of their pants.

“This is my stop then,” Clementine said.

Clementine got her wallet out, and she had only a five and two twenties.  She gave the woman a twenty.  “For the gas, time, and kindness.  Be safe out there.”

Clementine flashed her a smile, then climbed out of the car.

The driver didn’t start driving right away, and it struck Clementine that if the driver was caught on her in the same way the others had been caught on the earring, specifically, then she might not want to leave.

She circled around the car, mindful of the watch and the times people had previously disappeared, and did her best to keep that car and the driver in a position where other things had disappeared before.  Behind her and to the right.

When she looked back, the car was gone.

She jogged forward, past the people who were running away, and she could hear the singing.

Daniel walked backward down the middle of the street, cars behind him, arms out to his sides, wearing clothes she hadn’t seen before.  He sang at the top of his lungs.

She’d heard him sing- she had to stop to weigh it, and she had a suspicion he’d been humming or singing for at least a third of the time she’d been in his immediate company.  So much of it was tuneless, but there were moments, like back at her apartment with Sharon listening, where it came together for a few moments.

It was all coming together.  Every word, every movement.  A language she didn’t know, intense, sad, and mad.

She could see the girl Daniel had called a deer and another girl facing him down, at a time everyone else was running away.

He retreated toward a dark place.  Most of the illumination came from the headlights of cars that had been stopped on the road.  As he walked back between them and the risk of them running him over diminished, they turned onto other roads, driving off.  Reducing the illumination.

A young woman staggered past Clementine, and she sang like Daniel often sang.  Tuneless, wordless, lost.

“I didn’t think it was going to be that big,” the new girl said.  She was slim, black, and wore a fox mask, cape, and witch’s hat.

“Or have that side effect,” the ‘deer’ said.  “How did you know the fuse would run out when he didn’t have a sword at someone’s throat?”

He didn’t have a weapon.

“I timed it.  He likes to move his hands when he gets to the crescendo.”

He did flourish with his hands while he sang, which was part of why it was obvious he didn’t have anything.  The girls approached, but cars honked and some got in the way.

Clementine was able to catch up.

“You,” the Deer said, recognizing her.  “I’ve been looking for you all night.”

“Focus,” the Fox cut in.

Daniel was smiling as he sang, his hand extended toward Clementine.

Then he dashed a few steps to the side, and as a car’s headlights blocked Clementine’s vision, she lost sight of him.

“The watch,” the Deer said.  “Gold watch, broken face?”

“Can you give it to me?  It’s- I can’t tell you, but it’s messing things up.  And he knows how to use that to his advantage.”

“I know,” Clementine said.  “I don’t know how to fix it or stop it or turn it off.”

Clementine hesitated, then did.

If the man in the cave had been right, there was no time.

The Deer unfolded a piece of paper with a drawing of a circle and triangle on it, placed the watch in the center, then folded it back up.

“Do you have something weird that… I don’t know, a lot of people are interested in?  Especially creepy people?”

Clementine touched the earring.

“I only have the one piece of paper, to put stuff away, but- do you know how to turn that off?”

“A bleeding man in a cave told me how.  If I’m wearing it, it shouldn’t be a problem.  Wearing it makes people like me or something?”

“Oh,” the Deer said, laughing lightly.  “That explains it.  Whoo.  I- I don’t know if he’s trustworthy, but I don’t think he’d mislead us on something that important.  Not on a night like tonight.”

Clementine nodded quickly, anxious.

“I was just telling myself you were arriving like some badass hero, then wondering why I was thinking that way,” the Fox said.

“Daniel,” Clementine said, hurrying to take advantage of the gap in the conversation.  “He also said Daniel’s nearly out of time.”

Both of the other two nodded.

“Stay back,” the Fox told her.  “We’ll do what we can.”

They immediately began running toward Daniel.  Clementine ignored the instructions and ran after, glad she didn’t need to convince them or say more to get them moving.  The implicit idea was that they wanted to help save Daniel.  She didn’t know if that was the earring, but she wasn’t about to complain.

“Please don’t hurt him!” she called out, just to be safe.  “That explosion-”

“I told you to stay back!”

“Fuck that!” Clementine shouted.  “What was that explosion?”

“Idea was to drop it when he wasn’t looking, time it to shake him up a little and buy us a better chance to get in there and get him away from hostages.  But it blew up the stage and half the scenery,” the Fox said, as she ran.

Clementine looked back the way they’d come, and she couldn’t see any residue or debris of anything that had been blown up.

“Don’t worry!  We don’t want to hurt him too badly if we can help it!” the Deer had to call back at a higher volume, because she was already well ahead of the Fox and Clementine.

The downtown area had a district that had apparently been painted in shades of black, purple, and dark blue.  It was maybe a remodel, but it was a creepy remodel with a heavy focus on design.  There weren’t just alleyways, but archways that fed into corridors between buildings.  Two buildings on opposite sides of the street were connected by a bridge that arched over the road.

As Clementine noticed the people, she could see that this wasn’t right.  They were too beautiful, too dressed up, too cold, somehow.  It wasn’t like people from a small town had dressed up for this.  It was more like polished actors had all gotten together, with careful attention to every detail, with clothes picked out or designed by professional fashion designers.  The place itself was more carefully decorated than movie sets.

They looked around as they passed into this neighborhood, and ran far enough through it that Clementine was pretty sure they should have been out of this fancy, dark end of downtown and back in the sleepy ski town instead.

The Deer ran this way and that, looping around a block and then returning.  The Fox ran a straight line.

“I hear it,” the Fox said.

“You’ve got better ears than me,” the Deer said.  “Which way?”

It was all Clementine could do to keep up, despite the fact she was older, her legs a bit longer.

The singing carried.  It seemed to reverberate off of the walls and buildings, and if sounds bounced, then the curvature of arches cupped the sound, let the sound run up and along the arch, and sent it off in a new direction with a different pitch and volume.

They rounded a corner, and slowed.

A building, a spire, stabbed skyward.  And Clementine had no idea if it was five floors tall or fifty, because it was jet black and it was made purely in the colors of the night sky.

Balconies and ramps extended up the length of it, and those balconies and ramps were occupied.  Where they had illumination, it was hard to tell those specks of light from the stars, in similar pale blues and dots of orange.

Running down the center, almost invisible because they reflected the night sky, there were mirrors.  Curved and angled and warped, linked together into a chain like the double helix of DNA or water from a narrow waterfall frozen in time, as the building’s center mass or spine.

People on the balconies danced and partied, writhed in slow motion and moved against and with one another in a way that made it seem like they were one person, not two.  Or one many-armed body, not ten people in close proximity.  The dances were improvised and synchronized at the same time.

“I’ve got one more assblaster,” the Fox said.  “But I don’t think we can use it here.”

“A what?” Clementine asked.

The Fox held up a firework that was bigger around than her arm.

“Stinkbomb?” the Deer asked.

“I’ve got it but the first firework was over the top.  What does the stinkbomb do?”

“Right.  It might peel the wallpaper or make the building melt or something.  If we bring the building down and he’s in there, what happens?”

“What is this?” Clementine asked, looking around.  “Another dimension?”

“Our dimension, dressed up,” the Deer said.  “By Daniel.”

“How?  It’s like a dream, or a nightmare, but it’s so detailed.  More detailed than real life.”

“Try not to focus on it too much,” the Fox told her.

“He lived in a place like this for a long time,” the Deer said.  “He doesn’t talk about it?”

“I don’t know.  He says a lot but he doesn’t make sense a lot of the time.”

“Ave,” the Fox interrupted.

The ramps and balconies formed an almost labyrinthine ascent.  A ramp became stairs became stairs going around both sides of an arch, which passed through to a bridge that led to more stairs.

They moved through a crowd of scarily beautiful people, that only got denser as they progressed.

And there, a man that wasn’t so beautiful, by contrast, with a lean body and deep gouges from acne in his face, especially his nose, and a wiry ginger beard that traced only from the edges of his chin.  He looked bewildered, dancing amid beautiful young women, one of them peeling off his short sleeved flannel shirt, another combing fingers through his hair.  Others touched him, lifted him up, until he was almost surfing the crowd, his back arched, lean chest thrust out.

Where fingers pulled at his hair, it stayed where it was put.  They stroked his beard and shaped it or removed it, touched his face.  It was hard to tell whether they were applying makeup or caressing him, or both.  But the gouges disappeared beneath that touch.

Making him into one of them, almost.  Except even as they changed his skin and made it flawless, changed his hair and turned his beard into a wicked point at the chin.  Even as they dressed him in something that could have been silk and could have been leather, he managed to retain that faint edge of being rugged, that made him stand out in this crowd.

There was a child and a mother, and they were fighting, fighting so hard to maintain a hold on one another’s hands.  Their voices were drowned out by Daniel’s singing, which throbbed through the building, formed its own choruses on the architecture and the town below, and were picked up by the crowd, who sang along.  It wasn’t like a normal crowd, where so many would sing a note before, or sing below. All here played into the sound perfectly, like they knew their parts.

Clementine pushed harder through the crowd.  Hands brushed up against her arms, touched her hair, and fingernails scraped faintly against the fabric of her clothing.  Beckoning.

She had to get to that kid before-

The grip between mother and child broke.  A crowd of four standing on the stairs threw the little girl up, out off and away from the balcony.  The child yelped and called out.

People on the balcony above caught her, but they did it by the hair, fingers in black hair.  As if she were a spool of thread come undone, the hair remained and the young girl tumbled, spinning, almost faster than the eye could follow.  A dozen, two dozen, a hundred feet of hair streamed behind her, catching the wind and making her almost buoyant, floating.

The Deer lunged, reaching, and tried to catch her.  Hands caught her instead, pulling her back.

Other hands caught the child before she could hit the ground or a railing.

Using the child’s hair, some of the slender, beautiful people came down, holding white threads.

White threads hooked on a button on her top, on her ear, on her fingers.

As fast as she’d gone down, she was sent up again.  The Deer lunged again, reaching, and caught the girl’s hand.

A spider crawled out of the white threads and across the girl’s face.  She flinched, and let go of the Deer’s hand.

The Deer stepped onto the railing, then leaped, straight up, catching the side of an arch.  She reached for the kid, but the kid was having trouble reaching back.  There were more spiders, and they were winding more threads, which limited movement.  Creating a dress, elaborating on hair, braiding it.

The kid screamed as she realized the extent of what was happening.  At the same time, there were people, beautiful and indeterminate in age, who were running this way and that, winding the hair around the tower, decorating the railing.

Clementine was separated from the Fox as the building shifted and an archway became a stairway.

She kept heading up, one eye on the kid, another, foggier eye kept out for the Fox and Deer.  So long as she kept moving up…

She looked at the mirrors.  The building was more window than wall, and the windows allowed a peek in, at mirrors clearer than looking through a window without glass in it.  Clearer than any television could accomplish.

Daniel, portrayed from various angles, at various magnifications, singing, addressing a crowd.  The song was upbeat, intense, elevating everything…

And slowly, surely, it became something darker.

The little girl screamed, frantic.

Her dress had been given legs like a spider, as long as she was tall, and she was terrified of those legs.  She was terrified of the small spiders that drew out silk in patterns as elaborate as frost on a snowflake, decorating her ears.  Drawing out a chain from nose to ear.

Clementine adjusted her grip on the sword, which she had nearly forgotten.  She could cut that thread, grab that kid-

The light from the sword shone across the balcony.  The people who were dancing and singing went still.  Eyes with narrow pupils fell on her.

She switched from blade to intense light, and she shone that light on everything.  People shielded their eyes, stopped moving, and stopped doing things.  She kept it on the little girl, who had her tongue extended to its fullest length, pinched between two fingers in leather gloves and held there by a woman suspended in the air by near-invisible threads.  The woman held a spider, and the kid’s eyes were wide.

The spider’s legs drew together, spiraling, and became more of a pin.  To pierce and become a piercing.

Clementine shone the light on her, angling it to focus it more.

Momentarily blinded, the woman lost her grip on the threads and spider both, falling until she was caught in the band of hair, five feet across and more lustrous than a shampoo commercial.

People reached through to embrace her, pulling her into the crowd.  The child shrieked as people above began to dance, hands and arms extended, winding the hair and spider silk threads up and pulling the child up toward them.

The Deer, holding onto thread, came down, swinging, and seized the child.  Together they swung around behind a band of black hair.

The thread she’d been holding kept going forward, but the Deer and child were gone.

Below, the mother was dressed in black silk, with silver-scaled snakes thinner than a finger weaving in among one another to braid together and become part of her dress, or to be jewelry or something else.  Her attention was purely on Daniel’s image in the mirrors, and on reacting to the singing.

As Clementine made her way up, using the sharp moonbeam to forge a way, the way up became more precarious.  More of the partygoers were perched in precarious places, or hanging from threads and silk.  The railing of the stairwell became the main concourse, a foot wide and branching, with people sitting, lying, and standing on various branches.

The town was so far below them that she couldn’t see the individual lights of the buildings.

She adjusted her puzzle bracelet, turning a few cubes and adjusting a dial, then pushed her way into the main building.  The way things were constructed, every guest at this party or concert or whatever else it could be called were on the outside.  The inside was like a clocktower, but with mirrors instead of gears, all angled to catch and reflect the image of Daniel at the rooftop.  All designed to capture the sound.

She went inside, and it was empty.

Or apparently empty.  The singing echoed around her, she tried to find her way, but the puzzle bracelet didn’t shuffle this space.  There was no way to reorganize it so she could make a fast way to the top.

Someone on a lower floor, or the top floor, somehow?  Or was it not a closed space?

She, with regret, ducked out, back onto the ramps and courses that led in a constant, spiraling climb up the outside of this building, which was an unending spire of glass, obsidian, and mirrors, surrounded by its balconies and partygoers.

The singing was a lament now.  Dancing was slower, a writhing of hundreds if not a thousand or more people that was so controlled it had to have taken years to learn.  Men and women and people of ambiguous gender were dressed in almost universal black.

Her eyes watered, and her breath came short, because they were that high up.  And because the lament demanded it.  She couldn’t draw a firm line between the two ideas.

She could see up past the spire where there was a cave ceiling, riddled with more stalactites than a beach had grains, and each one was carved.  Buildings, pointing down.

Clementine ducked past a woman with silver-framed holes in her body, like ear gauges but abdominal, in the arm and leg.  A set of centipedes, decked out in jewelry, were woven through the bodily gauges.

Out and up, until the pathways were so narrow it was closer to climbing a tree, getting to the point where she might soon start clutching at twigs, instead of standing on branches.  If it swayed, it was meant to fit to the music.

She reached the top, and she found herself standing on the edge of a petal of a black rose, larger than the downtown area of the town had been.  It was obsidian or some other glossy black stone, crafted so the petals were cupped to catch the best of Daniel’s singing.

Each petal had a guest.  A person who somehow dwarfed the others from the way up.  Each was posed like a pretty picture, each more emotive in their stillness than any member of the crowd had been in their movement.

He sang to them, above all else.

The Deer was at the far side, opposite Clem.  The Fox was off to the right.

And a small black bird spiraled around the building before settling, shaking off a cloak and standing straight.  A girl in a cat mask and witch hat.

“How is he this powerful?” the Fox asked.

“He’s getting help now,” the Cat said.

“We need to stop this.  I worry what happens if…”

They were high enough up that the ground wasn’t clearly visible.

But as they looked up, it looked like that ceiling of spikes, of dark citadels that stabbed downward, was advancing on them.

They were rising to meet it.

Clementine held out the moonlight edge and let it shine on the proceedings.  Aiming at Daniel, specifically.  To get his attention, or try and stop whatever he was doing.

He crumpled.  The singing ended, and the building went silent.

The more subdued the song had become, the more dangerous the people below had seemed to be comfortable with being.  When it had started to slow down and become something less exciting, they’d started putting spiders on the little girl.  When it had become sadder, they’d began plotting to pierce her tongue with a living spider ornament.  They’d been intent on something more menacing when the Deer had saved her.

Now it was silent.  Now the apparently important figures were standing, stretching.

Daniel didn’t move, one hand at his face.

“Sharon Griggs is out there,” the Cat said.  “She can’t seem to help deal with Daniel unless she comes in here… which I don’t think she can do, because she can’t see here, or if we get Daniel out there.”

“Ave?” the Fox asked.

The Deer turned her head, then froze.  “Clementine!”

Clementine twisted, looking, and before she realized it, a woman with ash grey skin decorated with detailed silver-leaf scales embraced her from behind.  The woman took a step, the toes of her feet lifting up and carrying Clementine’s heels before Clementine could stop.  Pulling her back.

To the edge.  The woman stood, embracing Clementine from behind, her toes and nothing else at the edge of the rose petal capstone to this building.  Even Clementine’s feet weren’t fully on the roof.  She wasn’t entirely positive, but it was almost like the only thing that kept them from tipping backward was the wind at their backs.

Goosebumps stood out over every inch of Clementine’s body, and she felt that roller-coaster drop of her stomach that came with the swift falling descent.  Except it didn’t stop and it got worse by the second.

Casually, like she wasn’t standing above oblivion, the woman slid her hand inside Clementine’s, and took the sword from her hand.  She tossed it off into the darkness.  It turned end over end, becoming diffuse light, sword, intense light, sword, dark, sword, intense light again.  The flashes struck over and over again in Clementine’s peripheral vision.

The Fox dove in, past people, past everything.

“Don’t use- don’t play his game!” the Cat shouted.  She looked at Clementine.  “Why do you have to be here!?  That makes this way more complicated!”

How?  How was her being here that complicated, when they were in an impossible place, dealing with impossible things?

Clementine stood on a precipice, wondering if she’d die if she spoke.  If that puff of air from her lips would be what propelled her back into darkness.

Fox and Deer went for Daniel.  The people in the way threw out lengths of what might have been rope, or drew out blades.

The Deer changed course.  The Fox charged in.  The Cat drew something from her pocket and it produced a bright, blinding light.  For a moment, Clementine felt like she was actually falling, the light so intense it had pushed her back.  Or her swaying in the wake of it a fatal mistake.

The Fox didn’t seem to mind the light.  She slipped by, the Deer tackled a sword-wielder, and the Fox drew close to Daniel.  A knife in each hand.

Don’t hurt him, Clementine thought.

She didn’t hurt him.  She went to put knife to throat, and the knife clinked against something hard.

Cracks spread, and the mirror shattered.

A reflection of him from another place.  Another part of this impossibly tall building.  Maybe.

Clementine’s eyes widened.  “It’s-”

The woman with ash skin adjusted her center of balance a fraction.  Clementine’s stomach did a terrified quintuple-flip flop as the world tilted out of her view.  The spikes of the cave ceiling high above were what she faced, her back to the distant, dark ground.

The Deer tried to get to her, reaching out, and fell more than twenty feet short.

Another few floors.  Past balcony and stairwell and arch and everything else architectural, devoid of partygoer.

Just a building and a Daniel reflected by mirror after mirror.

Fingers dug into Clementine’s arm.  She clutched back in instinctive response.

It didn’t stop her fall.  Fingernails dragged against her skin as the Deer tried to hold on, then they were separated again by gravity.  Clementine groped for a railing and found brief purchase.  Nothing.  It only made her swing.  Out toward oblivion, well beyond anyone’s reach.

The third time, the Deer appeared.  A floor below her last appearance, gripping a rail, reaching for Clementine.

A gap of ten feet extended between their reaching hands.  She’d inadvertently swung out too far from the building.

There was a flap of wings, and the Cat caught her.  Feathers flew around the pair of them as they hurtled toward the building.  The Deer was there, but it was primarily an assist.  Clementine caught a railing above a staircase, both hands seizing it, and the Cat did too, one-handed.

The other reaching hand struggled to become a hand.  A wing, wreathed in black feathers.  The feathers rolled and danced around the hand without solidifying, then began spreading down her arm to her chest.

There was a figure down there.  One of the ones from the top of the building.  He had a hand extended at the Cat, and a thin smile on his lips.

Until the Deer caught up with him and hit him, booting him down the stairs.

The Cat, now possessed of two hands, found a handhold, and they climbed down to the stairs.

“You okay?” the Cat asked.

“I’m alive and pretty happy about it,” Clementine said.  “Deer?  Ave?”

“Messed up my arm, and it wasn’t one hundred percent,” the Deer said.  “But alive.  And you’re alive.”

“Thank you both.  Thank you, thank you,” Clementine said.  “This is all insane.”

“Thank you, V,” the Deer said, to the Cat. “I couldn’t have caught her without help.”

“We work best together.”

“Yeah,” the Deer answered.  With a bit of emotion in her voice, she added, “Absolutely.”

The Cat threw an arm around her shoulders.

“Above, before I was pulled off the building, I was going to say something,” Clementine told them.  “When I tried to reshuffle the interior, to see if I could get to a higher floor.  It didn’t work.”

“Because it’s not really real?” the Cat asked.

“It usually doesn’t work if someone else is inside or with me.  I think Daniel is inside.”

“No civilians around?” the Cat asked.

“I don’t think.  Everyone got lowered down or disappeared.”

“Then I’ll tell her.  You guys get downstairs,” the Cat said.  “You’ve got the rope?”

Oh.  The Cat headed up.  Toward the Fox, who was still at the roof.  That was the her.  The rope, though?

The Deer didn’t say anything on the matter.

The Deer and Clementine headed down.

“I’ve got you.  If I say the word, just close your eyes as tight as you can, okay?” the Deer asked.

There was no reason to distrust them at this point.

The detonation shook the building.

Starting with the top floor, the building began to collapse.  One floor and all of its mirrors, balcony, ramp, and other fixtures crashed into the one below, which shattered and descended.

Well.  One cause for distrust now.  What the fuck?

Each collapse seemed to accelerate the ones that followed.  Solid object struck glass and mirrors.  Mirrors and glass struck solid object with enough force to dislodge architecture.

The entire spire caved in on itself.

And, as they descended a portion without railing, the Deer took Clementine’s hand and jumped, with enough force that she pulled Clementine off balance.  Over the edge.

Clementine closed her eyes as tight as possible, wind whipping at her hair, hand clenching the Deer’s like her life depended on that grip.

They hit the ground.  The Deer landed on her feet.  Clementine sprawled.

They were at the base of the building, and she could see that cascading, beautiful collapse.

“This is all kind of fake,” the Deer said, looking up.  “A real sort of fake.”

“That only confuses me more,” Clementine said.

“I know.  I know, don’t worry.”

The collapse stopped being so staggered, and became something sweeping, instead.  A falling paintbrush, painting a long, clean stroke as it went, but that stroke was shattered glass-like stone and more glass.  Shattered reflections.

It hit the ground and splashed out, in far too small a volume.

At the center of that splash, Daniel knelt.  Not singing anymore.

“Let’s go home,” Clementine said.

He looked up, at the spire that was no more.

The area lacked music like Clementine might lack air if she held her breath.  It felt like it should return, barring more catastrophic event and injury.

But the silence was still a good thing, compared to dangerous singing.

“There are brighter days ahead, Daniel.  A different kind of bright to this,” Clementine said.  She wasn’t sure this could be called bright.

If it really was fake, it was artificially bright.  Unhealthy bright.

But mostly it was dark and shadow, and creepy constructions lit up without enough light sources.

Images were falling away, cascading out now that the building had fallen.  Building faces were shed and crashed to the ground like more sheets of glass, each individual shard breaking again on impact, only for those shards to break down further, until they were like dust.

The crowd, fake, crumbled away.  Some of the victims did.  Others huddled, or stood there, bewildered.

A singular figure remained.  A man, with floor length hair as straight as hair could be, jet black, and so perfect it could be mistaken for the obsidian of the spire’s construction.  He wore black silk that criss-crossed his body and layered, forming a dress at his legs.

He didn’t speak, and barely moved.  His hand turned, palm toward Daniel, and it lifted up.

Daniel ducked his head down, reaching for that hand.

“Daniel,” Clementine said.

He stopped, mid-way through dropping down to kneel.  The posture had to be hell to hold, but he didn’t seem able to keep going, or to back off.

The stranger waited, hand out, offering.  Waiting for Daniel to take the offer.

“You’d lose yourself, Daniel,” the Fox said.

“This isn’t a good place,” the Deer told him.

“Being a slave again?” the Cat asked.  “Screw that.”

He didn’t move, but the stranger did.  Shaking his head.

“Not a slave?” the Fox asked.  “What’s the plan, then?  Free passage?”

“No,” the Cat said.  “Maybe, uhh.  Becoming one of them?  Or another step in that process?”

Daniel looked up at the stranger.

“Your sister will miss you,” Clementine told him.

The last of the images were falling away.  It felt to Clem like they were sands in the hourglass.  From Daniel’s anxiety, it seemed like he sensed that too.

Like if he waited too long, the stranger would leave with that last bit of fake landscape.

“No,” Clementine said.

“I’m useless, in your world.  I’m a star in this one.”

“I don’t think you give off happy vibes when you’re here,” Clementine said.  “You run, you hide, you… this is amazing and bewildering but it’s also sad.”

“What does happiness matter?” he asked.  “When I can matter?”

“Unhappy?” the Cat asked.

“What’s to say I won’t be unhappy out there?”

“I don’t know,” Clementine jumped in.  “I really don’t, Daniel.  Can you find moments of happiness in this place?”

“It’s not truly about that,” he said, looking at the slender, long-haired man who still stood with hand outstretched.

“So no,” the Fox said.  “No, it’s a dismal place, huh?”

“Do you watch horror films?  For the exhilaration of it?  Or a sad film where the dog dies?” he asked.  “This is like that.  Every moment.  Horror and grief, but more.”

“I love horror films,” the Fox told him.  “But I wouldn’t want to live in one.”

“You have a sister,” the Deer said.  “If you’re on the fence, maybe… side with her?”

“And me,” Clementine said.  “And Mrs. Preston, and Natalia, and Potatoface.  We love your singing and company.”

“What do you say?” Clementine asked.

“It’s hard.  Every moment of every day can be hard, some days.”

“I know you know, cherished Clementine.  My heart regularly breaks for you.  You must find your way to true love.”

“I’ll try.  I’d like your company while I’m trying.”

The image was almost entirely crumbled.

Maybe a minute left to decide.

“If I wished to become a singer, a mundane celebrity in this world.  If I had the talent and I had the dream, and the passion, and I wanted to go… putting the fantastical aside, would you stop me?  Would you say I should lead a normal life, and bag groceries to help my sister with her rent?  Or worse, do nothing with my life except make hers more dreary?”

“She loves you.  She wouldn’t want you to alleviate that burden,” Clementine said.  “She’d hurt, every single day, if you went to live a celebrity life without her.”

“And I don’t know whether it’s right to decide on that alone.  But if it was really between you and your dream, maybe.  Maybe.  But this didn’t feel like your dream.”

“I didn’t see or hear anything you in there.  It was like you were doing it for someone else, or for them, all of that.”

He’d straightened a bit to look up.  He straightened a bit more.

The scene dwindled and faded, turning that fantastical, dark place into a drabby downtown street, the heat beating down on them even without the sun in the sky.

The stranger went with the scene, and Daniel looked just a bit defeated as he went.

“Sharon’s waiting,” the Cat said.  To her friends, she said, “We should remove our masks and stuff.”

“Sharon’s waiting, Clementine,” Daniel said, animating a bit.  “What joy, what wonder.  Whoopee, hooray.  This drabby, sad, frustrating world is welcoming me with our favorite person in existence. Sharon!  My heart bursts!  How ever could I have dreamed of that other life when Sharon is here!?”

“I’ve really missed sarcasm,” the Fox said.  “Hearing this really drives that home.”

“You’ve missed it?” Clementine asked.

“Nevermind.  Don’t think about it.”

Clementine committed to taking a good long while to think about it and make sense of it when she didn’t have her heart going a mile a minute as a residual effect of what she’d just experienced.

“Sharon!” Daniel exclaimed.  “Where are you?  I must hug you!  I came back to this world from a place of true wonder for you and you alone!”

“She has a head wound!” the Cat called out.  She removed her mask.  She was so young, and she looked so tired, her rather dense, layered bangs plastered to her forehead by sweat.  “Be gentle!”

“Who gave her that head wound?” the Fox asked.

Clementine sighed.  There was something about this resolution that helped a great deal, but… her heart was heavy.

It was as though she had come closer to understanding, only to have it stolen from her.

She took a moment for herself, breathing again, removing the earring, and the Deer remained close.  As if guarding her.

They wanted her and Daniel and Sharon gone.  She knew that much.

“Thank you,” the Deer said.  A young girl with freckles and strawberry blond hair.  “For the help with Daniel.”

“I’m sorry for the trouble.”

“I don’t think you could help it.  You were set up a bit.”

Clementine shrugged, uncomfortable.  “Um, where’s your younger friend?  The blonde-ish girl with circles under her eyes?”

“Babysitting, kind of.”

They walked, together, in the direction Daniel, the Cat, and the Fox had gone.

She spotted the girl who was apparently ‘babysitting’.  But who was she babysitting?  The middle aged man, or the girl?

“Mari- she’s gone,” the Fox said.  To the Cat, she said, “She was really hurt.”

“My doing,” Daniel said, sad.  “Pass her my apologies?  Even if it was her kind that did this?”

“Will she be okay?” the Deer asked.

“Charles says yes,” the Cat said.

Charles, then, was the middle aged man?

Clementine looked over, and then she paused.

The man, balding, with a scraggly beard, was standing off to the side.  Beside him was a girl, with crimped hair down to the small of her back.  She had her leg in a plastic boot, and a bit of paper with red ribbon still tied to a part of it in her hand.

She looked at Clementine, and Clementine looked back, and there was a moment where they mutually realized they were both looking for one another.

“I was told to give your parents that,” Clementine said.

“I was told to come here,” the girl said, holding up the paper.

“And I can guess why,” the middle aged man said.  He had a rough voice and made a rougher impression.  Like he was a bit unpleasant to be around, in a way she couldn’t pin down.  Was he a creep?

The girl with crimped hair seemed to be uncomfortable enough for that to be the case.  But she asked, “Why?”

“You, Melissa,” he told the girl.  “You stand at the beginning.  You want to be where she is.”

“Nobody should want to be where I am,” Clementine said.

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” he asked, his voice rougher, his tone biting, like he was calling her stupid.  “And you, Clementine.  You want the answers?”

“Then take a long, close look.  The answers don’t give you better.  If anything, it’s all worse.  You know what’s about to happen to you, and you’re caught up in it.  I had the answers.  I paid the price.  I would give anything, not that I have much, but I would give anything to be where she stands, again.”

He pointed at Melissa, who cringed away from the finger.

“And to walk away,” he said.

“I want to know so I can walk away,” Clementine said.

“Too bad,” he growled at her.

She backed away a step, paced another two steps, then stopped, frustrated.

“What about them?” she asked, pointing at the Cat, Deer, and Fox.

“They have each other.  For better or worse.  They float together, they sink together.  Time will tell.”

“Incoming,” Melissa said.

“I talked to your landlord, Clementine,” the Cat said.

“Oh?  I- you guys mentioned the setup.  You think that was him?”

“He wanted to hurt us.  Or hurt someone else through us.  He used you.  He was clear, he thinks you’re his property, in a fashion.  Tools for him to use.”

“It can feel that way.”

“It is that way.  To him, I’m pretty sure.  He talked about a trap.  I can’t get into details, but he makes it hard for you to leave.”

“Low rent, next to no utility, resources…”

“More than that,” the Cat said.  “He makes it hard to leave in the same way you… find things.”

Clementine digested that.

“If we can interrupt that…” the Cat said, trailing off.  “Can we convince you not to go back to that apartment?  Or back to him?  I talked to Sharon about it but she was stubborn.  Daniel will go where his sister is, I’m guessing, and I’m betting she’ll have reasons she doesn’t want to leave.”

“They moved a lot before, most landlords couldn’t handle them as tenants.  Daniel’s sister said a lot of people like him end up in mental hospitals or long term care for most of their lives, and she’d self destruct without him.”

“What’s going on with that?” Melissa asked.

“Wrong question,” Charles rasped.  Melissa cringed a bit.  “Look at her.  Look at the scars, and how tired she is.  She stands transfixed in between these worlds and she’s seen enough to know she wants out.”

Clem didn’t feel great about the scars being pointed out, but she did stand in a way that let this Melissa kid see.

“Clementine,” the Cat said.  “Charles and I were talking for a bit before I caught up with the others.  We’re offering a deal.”

Clementine shrugged.  “What?”

“Walk away from Bristow and the apartment building.  Have your stuff sent to you.  Leave, and we’ll give you what you want.”

“It doesn’t make things better and I doubt there’s a fix,” Charles said.  “But I can explain it to you.  I’ll answer your questions and I’ll pay for answering them.”

Clementine dwelt on it.  She’d fought against this for so long, and now she stood on the opposite end of that fight.

Fighting against what might be someone else’s whole thing?  Keeping people?  Strange people, like Figueroa, who seemed to get ahead in life the more he was an asshole?

She looked over at Daniel.

She thought about Mrs. Preston, and Arlene.

“Can I put a pin in that deal?” she asked.  “I have things to sort out.  People to look after.  Familiar faces I’m not willing to say goodbye to.”

“Really?” the Cat asked.

“I’ve lost so many people… I… it’s a harder ask than you’re making it out to be.  If I know he’s being manipulative, then I need to protect other people from him.  From within.  And I know I’m playing into that thing you’re saying he does.”

“It’s good for you,” Charles told her.  “Walking away, not taking those answers.  It’s good you’re doing that.”

“Bad for us,” the Cat said.  “It’d be nice to knock him down a peg.  Especially after everything here tonight.  That we might never recover from.”

“Not that we want to guilt you,” the Deer said.

“We don’t,” the Cat cut in, “Not unanimously.  But I would love to layer on that guilt.  Nice and thick.”

“Sorry,” Clementine told them.  “If there’s anything I can do?”

“Take Melissa home?” the Deer asked.

The young girl with circles under her eyes dragged Melissa away.  Melissa used crutches and walked awkwardly with the plastic boot.

“We’ll talk to you another time, if we can,” the Deer called out.

Melissa gave her the finger.

“Magic items,” the Cat said.

“You have the watch.”

“I do,” the Deer said.

“Take it.  I don’t know what to do with it.  Only other things, I’ve got my puzzle bracelet, but I need that.”

“We know,” the Fox said, arms folded.

“There’s the sword, but that was taken from me, at the towertop.  Thrown into the darkness.  Maybe it’s still out there somewhere-”

“No,” Charles said.  “Not in Kennet.”

“Okay,” she said.  “There’s this earring, but… I’m pretty attached to it.  I need to figure out a place to keep it, but having the option of making life easier when it can be so hard?  It’s hard to convince myself to give that up.”

“Keep it,” the Fox said.

The Cat made a noise of protest.

“And that doesn’t leave much.  There are things back at my place but I’ve sold most things that weird people are interested in buying.  Umm.  There’s the cube, but I don’t know where that went.”

“The cube,” the Cat said.  She shrugged.

“I don’t even know what it does.  A bundle of red fur and meat, in trash bags, lashed together with twine or rope or something.  It was in a car.  But the driver hid or ran away.  Uhh, some teenagers had it, last I saw.  Older teens.  Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.  Three of them.”

“Are you sure they were teenagers?” the Fox asked.

“I see a lot of weirdos.  Or monsters that look human, maybe.  I don’t think they were.  They were just kids.”

“Fucking Christ,” Charles almost spat the words.

Just about everyone from Kennet seemed stunned, or silent, or worried.

“Where did you have it?”

“I didn’t have it.  Um, but I saw it.  I’ve been running around so much I barely know where we are, especially the trip to that weird place, but if you showed me a map or asked Sharon, we could mark the spot.”

“Why did the teenagers have it?  You didn’t take it?” the Fox challenged her.

“I didn’t- I avoid stuff.  I’ve already dealt with a bunch of things in the last day.  It didn’t look convenient to transport, I gave it a pass.”

She saw the three girls wince.  Charles scowled.

“Why?” Clementine asked.