Z-Quips

Agents Of Caleb...

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 10:11:43 GMT

I’ll always remember how out of place the white, puffy clouds seemed against the bright, blue backdrop of morning. The sky was so vibrant and full of life. The ground, on the other hand, not so much.

Even swaddled by a winter coat, cold managed to prickle whichever pieces of me it could reach.

Gloves. I groaned. I should have spent a little longer searching for them. Frantic hands were tossing things from under the bed when my roommate announced the arrival of Teagan, his girlfriend. Due to our history, my face was the last she wanted to see. The announcement was a formality, basically a dismissal: “I don’t know where you’re going, but it can’t be here.” Was heavily implied.

It’s amazing how removing one cog in a machine can reveal how important that piece truly was. Nobody hears the creaks. Nobody checks the cracks. The breakdown almost always goes unnoticed at first. So unnoticed that when it finally comes crashing down, it’s almost as if out of nowhere. We were all friends once. Me, Landon, Teagan and… Mentally, I sighed. Keyword: Once. Funny how without this story, you would have never known that any of us had ever shared the same space. We were strangers now.

Remnants of snow flurries from the day before sloshed beneath my every footstep. The parts that weren't smashed into the grass clung to the bottoms of a pair of shoes I instantly regretted selecting as soon as I slammed the car door.

Had I known the yard was going to be so watery, I probably would have put a little more effort into my excuse as to why I couldn't be there. Problem being: All the excuses I could string together fell apart the second I'd heard Landon's "So what're you doing today?"

He didn't even bother to greet me. He just started talking, as if we'd only just exchanged words moments ago. This was made worse by how his voice sounded to me. Yes, he was excited, but somehow I could make out the threads of loneliness lying beneath.

Or maybe it was the guilt I had been dragging around for the past couple of months convincing me that I was hearing something that wasn't even there.

I hadn't exactly been the best friend he'd always known.

Perhaps he wasn't lonely at all. Maybe I was the lonely one.

I approached the door, smirking at the loud rock music wafting from inside.

His text said he would be in the garage and from the sound of it, he was in the middle of a one man concert; off key. I raised my knuckles to the door. When there was still no response, I tried the doorknob.

Some band I didn't recognize washed over me. The cold spun through the room, alerting Landon of my presence. He clapped both his hands over the naked skin of his bare arms. "Dude, it's cold as hell out there!" He exclaimed, motioning me in. "Hurry up and close the door!"

"What hurry? I almost died getting across here." I did my best to kick the slush from the bottom of my shoes before closing the door. "Have you seen your yard?"

The weirdest grin I'd ever seen curled its way through his expression. Well, that's not creepy.

"No, I've been out here for three days now. What's wrong with the yard?"

Three days?! "Your yard's a mess. Looks like a slushie machine puked all over the grass." I said, shrugging out of my coat. The second it was off, I wanted to pull it back on. "How are you out here like this?"

"You'll get used to it." He pointed at the corner to the left of me. "But just in case, I brought mom's heater out."

My thoughts were still circling the "three days" part. "Where did you sleep?" Every syllable I spoke was accompanied by a swirl of condensation reminding me this discussion could have been held in the house.

"Floor." He replied, shrugging. He nodded at some rolled up blankets. "Same as we used to when we were kids."

Back when things were normal, before his dad had got sick, before a lot of things, Landon and I used to camp out in the garage all the time. We were allowed to as long as we kept our hands off the tools.

I dragged the heater over to a plug, questioning my sanity the entire way. "So what's up?"

“I wanted you to see this in person. You're definitely going to be glad I called you." He said, cackling like a mad scientist.

"See what?"

"Well, you definitely won't be seeing much of anything over there." He said. The closer I became, the more excited he got. "Come on! I feel like you're walking slow on purpose!" When I reached the table, he pointed at a cardboard box. It was entirely too large to say there wasn't much of anything in it outside of broken glass and gears.

"Really?! I cut like, fourteen lanes of traffic for a box of scraps?!"

"Not just any scraps." He assured me, turning over the box. Two cracked lenses, some knobs, and a mess of wires rolled out. "Luminous scraps."

I rolled my eyes. "Man, how many times do I have to tell you that shit ain't real?" I grumbled.

"And how many times do I have to tell you that it is?"

I had to put in effort to keep my eyes from rolling, no matter how much they wanted to. "Until you can prove it."

He fluttered his hand dramatically over what I could only see as junk. "Well, here it is."

This is a prank. "Um, dude… No."

He picked up one of the lenses. "This is what's left of a pair of their goggles." He said, flicking it at me.

I snatched it from the air between us. "Let me get this straight: You called me all the way over here to sort through some trash?"

Scratch that. This had better be a prank.

"Luminous trash!" He declared confidently. "I'm telling you, man. I know I'm right."

"Landon…" I groaned, feeling my hopes of this being a prank being dashed. My thoughts traveled with an annoyed scowl, recalling how many times my friend had been "right" in the past. There was the time he was "right about a bracelet". Oh, and let's not forget the time he was "right about these boots". No, no… The time he was "right about this watch because it has the Luminous insignia on it" and this was after me reminding him countless times that he had no idea what their insignia looked like because Luminous didn't exist. Before cancer, the organization was just a passing hobby for him. He collected all sorts of memorabilia and talked constantly about what he would do if it were real, the same as one would while daydreaming over what they would do if they ever won the lottery.

After his dad passed and his mom practically became a zombie, Luminous went from being just a hobby to taking over Landon's life.

"Honestly, this looks like a smashed pair of some steampunk goggles you could get off eBay." I said, shrugging. The majority of his memorabilia was purchased off that site. If the place did exist, there was a good chance almost every penny Landon earned was funding it.

"Funny you should mention that." He walked over to one of the shelves to collect two more boxes.

"What's that?"

He cut the tape off both boxes. As I looked on, trying to contain my annoyance, he popped open the flaps, revealing two pairs of goggles. "This is how I'm going to fix those." He dangled one set in front of me. "Amazon has them too."

I smirked despite myself. "You're going to use cosplay goggles to fix something that is allegedly technology based?"

"All I need is the base. I think all the wires and knobs are here."

"How would you know that?" I snatched the goggles from his finger. "For all you know this mess goes to something else."

"Oh, ye of little faith."

"Which brings me to, once again, why did you call me?"

"Because I'm going to make you eat your words. Luminous does exist."

"You could've sent that through text."

"I know." He started fiddling with the wires in an effort to avoid eye contact. "It's just, we haven't really hung out since… Ya know…"

By the inflection in his voice, I knew he wasn't about to make this about his dad. This one was on me. He didn't need to say Kara's name for the implication to suddenly suck all the air out of the garage. Not too long after his dad, I found myself burying my girlfriend after some drunk ran her off the road. I tried to lay my feelings alongside her, but just the idea of her was still damn near crippling and I hated it. Though he was careful not to say her name, it was instantly my only focal point.

Kara. Kara. Kara.

She was the missing cog. Virtually overnight, Teagan became somebody we used to know. Her breakup with Landon came swiftly and blindsided the both of us. In hindsight, it explained why even after taking up with my roommate, she refused to see me. I was a dark smudge; a reminder of the past. She was ready for a future and it was obvious that the one she craved didn’t center around us.

Over time, not long after Teagan disappeared, though our friendship existed long before there was a Kara or even a Teagan for that matter, my interactions with Landon became less and less until they were almost nonexistent. No longer did I check in with him.

His mom may have become a zombie, but I had become a ghost. The cold now forgotten, I was suddenly very hot, almost suffocatingly so.

Immediately noticing the change in me, Landon's expression fell. "Sorry man. I didn't mean to… I mean, I wasn't trying to… Ya know…" He went to one of the lower shelves to grab a toolbox.

"The anniversary is coming up." I said, offering to help lift it onto the table.

"I know. My dad's just passed, remember?" We hoisted the toolbox onto the table. He started patting his pockets. Mid-pat, he paused to look at me. "You can't keep closing yourself off, man. It won't-"

Anger welled up in my chest. "If you're about to tell me it won't bring her back, I'm about to leave." I wanted to say something along the lines of "I'm not you," but no matter how annoying his antics could be, this was still Landon.

He shifted his attention back to the toolbox. "Dammit, I forgot the keys. Be right back."

The door swished open, spinning a new wave of cold through the room before closing, leaving me alone. I turned to the mess of wires Landon had abandoned.

Something about them caught my eye. All the dark, deeply purple lines had tiny inscriptions on them. It wasn't in any language I'd ever seen but with English and one failed semester of French being my only sources, there was no telling what I was looking at.

Cold wind swirled through the room once more, announcing Landon's return. "Have you ever seen electrical stuff like that before?" He asked.

I turned to the sound of jingling keys. "Dude, what happened?!"

His fingers were dusting frantically through the tangled locks on his scalp. "Don't you dare laugh!" He shouted.

I swallowed the lump of laughter that was making its way up my vocal cords. "What happened?" I repeated, this time, strained.

He was still swiping at his hair. Flakes of white fluttered free, disappearing midair. "I fell, okay? Damn, ya happy?"

I couldn't hold it any longer. Landon's head jerked upwards at the sound, as if it had been ages since he last heard a laugh. He stared at me; sizing up my one hand still on the wires, the other on my heaving chest.

The smile started in his eyes first. It weaved a slow line through his features until it was a full on laugh.

He wiped his eyes in order to sober, took another look at me, then dissolved into a fit all over again.

I was the first to stop. Probably because standing there laughing with my friend felt surreal, as if it were someone else's experience.

"So," Landon shook his mind free. "Keys." He crossed to the toolbox, still smiling broadly. "I've missed you, man."

I nodded, but didn't speak, anticipating my next sound to not be as upbeat as the last. Seemingly from nowhere, tears had formed in the brims of my eyes.

The lid flipped open, revealing his dad's tools. Landon selected a few pieces. "Even if it's a waste of time," He said off handedly, tossing me a screwdriver. "I was thinking it would be a good way for us to spend time…" He shrugged. "I dunno. Together. Like the old days.”

There was so much I wanted to say, starting with a heartfelt apology, but nothing came. Instead, Landon nodded as if I'd been speaking the entire time then we went to work.

******

Over the next couple months, Landon and I practically lived a silent existence in his garage. The only signs of life were the clicking of tools or an occasional food inquiry.

Though I didn't believe in Luminous, after that first day, I no longer felt the need to poke holes in his theories. His obsession had become my focal point.

It was the middle of summer when Landon finally snapped the lenses in place. He'd assumed this to be a one and done task, but there were no instructions to sift through. All the knobs and buttons needed replacements and don't get me started on the quest for a new keypad. As I said, it had been months.

He grabbed a cloth and some glass cleaner. "So, what do you think?" He asked, spraying them down.

Mentally: I think we just poured months into some expensive ass cosplay goggles. Aloud: "This was your project, man. What do you think?"

"What powers these things?" He said absently. He continued to shine though there wasn't a speck of dust on them. "I mean, I didn't notice a charging port or anything." He flipped them over. "Did you?"

That's because they're cosplay goggles! "No."

He started pushing the buttons, avoiding the numbers.

I looked on, awaiting his inevitable disappointment. Suddenly, the lenses lit up. A deep, bronze hue reflected back at me. "Hey, what did you just do?!"

"Huh? Why?"

Those things had to have cost thousands. Landon turned them in order to see what I was talking about. A few numbers had appeared on the left side. "I wonder what these are." He was a little too calm for me. "They're warm." He ran his fingers across the keypad. Immediately, the numbers on the front reacted, warping to a new set. "Wow."

"Wow?" I repeated. That's it? "Are you going to sell them?"

His face folded into an offended glower. "Why would I sell them?"

"They've got to be worth a mint." I noted. "Where did you say you found them again?"

"I didn't." He said, now eyeing me suspiciously. "And here I thought these last couple months had opened your mind a little.”

There isn't a person alive who isn't open to money. I was thinking this at the same time as his "I'm going to use them."

"For what?" I hadn't noticed a costume anywhere. "Is Comicon coming up?"

He sighed. "I'm telling you, Luminous is real."

No. No, it really isn't. The look on his face kept those words off my tongue though. If he wanted to believe, who was I to challenge his faith? Instead, I inquired about the aspect of "using them".

His expression softened, but not by much. "If my research is right, these are how they travel."

They?

"You know, their agents." He must've read the confusion right off my eyebrows. "The goggles receive their coordinates then transport them anywhere across time. Well, almost anywhere. Apparently they're not allowed to cross their own paths in time."

I zoned out. He might as well have been speaking in calligraphy. "Since you're such an expert, what are those numbers?"

He frowned. "Now that, I don't know." He typed something else. "Ugh."

"What?"

"I don't want you to be right. I really don't. I need it to be real." He leaned in closer, his nose almost grazing the buttons. "It just has to be." His face contorted into a pained look. "I mean, imagine having that kind of power, man. I could bring back my dad." Again, he didn't speak her name, but the look in his eyes when he glanced up at me was enough to know that Kara had also made the cut in his crusade. His voice cracked. "What's wrong with me wanting everything back to how it was?" His fingers flitted across something else. "I just want my life back." On the right, some words appeared. And with that, POP! I was alone in the garage.

I ran to the now empty spot. "Landon!" The toolbox rattled across the floor, sending tools sprawling everywhere as I all but threw myself under the workbench. Again, I was searching for a prank, only this time, it was more of a prayer.

Again, this was no prank. He wasn't there. I tripped over my shoelaces, stumbling to throw open the door. "Landon!" Again, nothing. I ran across the grass, tossing his name every few feet. My shouts were swallowed by the windy night air. "Landon!"

His mom. I ran to the house. It seemed as if my fist reached the door before the rest of my body had a chance to hit the porch. "Mrs. Pereira!" I slammed my knuckles against the wood harder. "Mrs. Pereira!"

I was on my way to try the backdoor when I made out the sound of hinges groaning to an opening door. She seemed confused to see me darting up the porch, as if I'd shook her from a dream. She offered no words of her own. Instead, she continued to stare, seemingly through me.

"Mrs. Pereira?"

I hadn't noticed the smell of alcohol before, but now there was no mistaking the putrid aroma twirling in the air between us. Slowly, almost painstakingly so, cobwebs of slumber crept from a pair of red, puffy blue eyes. Just when I thought she was about to ask who I was, her lips parted in a silent inquiry. Instead of speaking, she pulled the sash to her robe a little tighter.

"I hate to bother you, Mrs. Pereira, but have you seen Landon?"

The woman that I knew, who found time to bake chocolate chip cookies for each and every sleepover Landon and I had ever had and the woman who was staring off into the space behind me, clutching her robe as if I were a stranger, were not one in the same. I almost expected her to say "Landon who?" Instead, she squinted. "Isn't he with you? He told me you two were working on something huge."

Up until that exact second, it hadn't occurred to me that I hadn't seen so much as a hint of her the entire time we were in the garage. To my recollection, I hadn't even asked about her. I wanted to shove the blame on Landon for not bringing her up, but it wasn't his fault. He was my friend. Allegedly my “best.” I should have asked. The tips of my ears flamed with unspoken embarrassment. "He isn't in the garage." Guilt coated every syllable.

She blinked. It was a sluggish gesture. The sweep of her cheeks was so stagnant, she could have easily been asleep and I wouldn't have known the difference. "It's okay. It's fine." She said suddenly. "He never goes far. I'll tell him you were looking for him when he gets back."

Before she closed the door in my face, I already knew it was a long shot, but I didn't have the heart to tell her that her son had vanished.

******

"Then what happened?"

I met the strangely colored eyes across from me. "What do you mean?"

"Sounds to me like you didn't even believe in Luminous… What flipped all that?"

I frowned at the memory ambling through my mind. "Murder."

"Murder?" She repeated me, only her version didn't sound nearly as forlorn.

"They thought I killed him." I said. "His mom was sure of it. She told every ear that would entertain her." Memories of cops swarming my dormitory couldn't be erased. For how many cars that scattered the campus, you would have thought I'd taken hostages.

Memory after unshakable memory plagued my mind.

My hands in handcuffs. My roommate's shouts of "What did you do?!" over and over. To pour salt into the wound, his arms were wrapped around Teagan in a protective embrace, as if whatever it was, I was already convicted. "As soon as I made bail, my research into Luminous began and the rest, as they say, is history."

"Did you ever find him?"

"Who?"

"Your friend… Ol' whatshisface… I mean, Landon. Did you ever figure out what happened to him?"

In the few months since receiving my goggles, I hadn't seen nor heard from or about him. I wouldn't allow myself to embrace the idea that he could be dead though. I couldn't. He was out there. He had been right about Luminous the whole time. He needed to hear it and it needed to come from me.

"No." I shook my head. "He really did vanish." The initial reason for accepting my goggles was to return Landon to his mom, but alongside the fates of several agents before me, I found this to be an illegal action. There would be no bringing him back.

Not by any of my efforts anyway.

"That's crazy." The girl said.

Crazy? I glanced up at her again. A sympathetic smile greeted me. Pulled away from her face was a reddish brown ponytail. She started to stand, causing it to sway, but thought better of it. Instead, a gloved hand was shoved in my direction. "I don't think I caught your name earlier."

I scrutinized the hand between us. "Caleb." My mind was doing its best to shuffle past the fact that her glove was fingerless.

"Caleb?" She tilted her head thoughtfully. "Which one are you? I'm looking for Caleb A."

"That would be me."

She smacked her head. "That's crazy! Something told me it was you!" She bobbed my hand up and down enthusiastically. "I'm Ava! You're part of our group."

"Group?" There wasn't a mention of a group when I was told to report to the library.

"Yeah, they're grouping us in fours for something major." She shrugged, releasing my hand. "No idea what that is, but it's me, you, a girl named Odyssey and some guy called Bob." She grinned. "I wonder if that's his real name. Who the hell would willingly go by the name Bob?"

I stared at her until the voice was stripped away, leaving only the movement of her lips. To anyone else, her immediate friendliness might have felt warm and inviting. To me, it seemed intrusive. My goggles hadn't been on my head for long, but they'd been there long enough for me to understand that "groups" weren't the norm.

Again, Landon weaved his way through my thoughts. His original investment in Luminous wasn't from a selfish place. It was just a concept that he'd immersed himself in, the same as one would with comic books or anime. So many things had "gone wrong" since then.

His dad.

Kara.

His mom.

Me.

Desperation had taken over. Or at least, that's what I'd told myself. His desperation to be a bandaid in all our lives was so deeply rooted that he was willing to throw his entire soul behind something nobody believed in.

I'd told myself so many things about my best friend. I'd called him delusional, desperate and on more than one occasion, crazy.

Only to discover how right he truly was. I was the one who was wrong.

"Hey, Earth to Caleb?" A pair of fingers snapped in front of my face. She grinned at my reaction. "Where did you go?"

When I didn't respond, she said: "I was saying I think that's Odyssey and Bob." She made a face at "Bob" before pointing across my shoulder. Lace from her bracelet brushed across my left cheek. "Over there by the door. I'm going to go check." She pushed from the table. She was on her way past me when she paused and backed up a few paces. "You know, you could always come along."

"Thanks." I replied, shaking my head. Tears were starting to well in my eyes. "But no."

I couldn't let her see my shame. I hadn't killed him, but everyday I was haunted with one burning question: Would things have gone differently had I believed not in Luminous itself, but in him?

The answer to this was harsher and loomed over me no matter where I was in time…

Even with all the advanced technology at my fingertips, there was a strong possibility that I may never know.

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Squid Game... Kim Minjun: Part Two

Wed, 29 Dec 2021 20:42:47 GMT

Over the next few days, I hardly left my room. The only time they assembled us was to oversee the construction of games. I had no idea how long the players were gone, but I was very aware when they returned. The man in black was right. Almost every player had reentered the game. Amongst the returned was Player 240. She entered the playground with her nose pointed defiantly in the air, as if she were on a street in her neighborhood and not another death game. She sauntered right past me, allowing me to catch something I hadn’t caught the first time: The little jewel pierced through her nose.

The players were instructed to pick a shape between a circle, a star, a square and the worst of the four, an umbrella. Mentally, I prayed that Player 240 stayed far away from that shape. She was already standing too close to it before the rules were explained.
“Choose a shape and stand in front of it immediately.”
After the instructions were relayed, she took a few steps back and that is when I noticed she was one of the stragglers. No team, I mean. There were so many cliques that she and many of the others by themselves stood out.

I paused long enough for her to select the line for squares. Like the others, she was instructed to accept a tin. Once in hand, she chose a spot beneath the clouds, against the red and green fence posts, her hair pressed against the bottom loops. It was probably a few seconds too long, but I had to be sure.

“Take a moment to open the tin and view the contents.” We had been debriefed that today’s assignment was to wade through the sea of players, seeking out the ones who damaged their honeycomb in any way. Today we were not there for show. Today we were present to eliminate. I walked through the players, hoping that nobody’s shape would break beside me. I was sure that every triangle they chose had some type of military or police background, but that couldn’t be true if they chose me. I had only ever fired a gun on hunting trips with my dad before he stopped bonding with me and started bonding with the bottle. That was my only experience with firearms and even as I mimicked the other circles pulling the revolvers from their holsters, that fact didn’t change. The players were starting to open their tins. Gasps of disbelief were erupting from all four corners of the makeshift playground. The majority of the reactions were probably coming from the umbrellas. Had it been me, I would have been sobbing. Of course they hadn’t told them the importance of their choice. Why would they?

I flitted my gaze to Player 240. With the square cradled within her fingers, if she was nervous, that was pushed to the side to make time to roll her eyes at Player 244, who was whispering over his tin. I didn’t know what was in his, but whatever it was either required prayer or this was just a part of his personality. Either way, her eyes did a full rotation around their sockets (Not once, not twice, but three times.) before turning her attention back to her own tin. She lifted the lid, revealing the shape that she had chosen. She sighed a triumphant little sigh then got to work with the needle.

POW! I bet he had an umbrella. I thought, watching Player 360's body slide down the slide. He left a long, bloody streak before stopping at the very end, dead. The game was only ten minutes long and as each second ticked by, the players were becoming more and more frantic. I noticed a square confronting a… What was a circle doing there? I knew I was supposed to be watching the players, but this was interesting. I decided to make my way to the other side before the square could tell that once again, I had stopped for a few moments too long. On the other side of the slide, Player 456 had taken to licking his honeycomb. Luckily, my smile was covered by a mask. Even in such a dire situation, I couldn’t help, but wonder if he gave his wife the same attention he was giving that umbrella. I already knew the answer was probably no because I’d heard the squares discussing a few of the players, waging bets on who was guaranteed to return to the games. As a gambling, deadbeat father, Player 456 had received the most votes. In second place was some guy who had embezzled a lot of money. Quite possibly more than I would see in my lifetime. When I finally looked away, Player 240 was gone.

Suddenly there was a scream. Player 219 was dragging a pink jumpsuit across the floor. The white square could be seen from where we were already getting in formation. This man had no idea what he was doing screaming about shooting that square. None of them cared. We were all expendable. Instead of opening fire on him, the back row pivoted to shoot the remaining players who hadn’t succeeded. Their time was up. On my side of the formation, Player 219 was demanding to know why some players had received easier shapes, as if he hadn’t chosen the umbrella. All of us were pointing at him now. There was no way he thought he was leaving that area alive.

“Take off your mask!" He shouted, shoving the jumpsuit in front of him. When there was hesitation, he added: “Don’t make me shoot.” The square reached for his mask. The white lining was lifted in the air, revealing a face. I almost gasped. It was a boy! He couldn’t have been anymore than sixteen or seventeen. He’s just a boy! Squares were our leaders. They gave us our orders. Our orders were coming from a child.

“Turn around okay.” Inch by meticulous inch, he turned until the face that we saw was now seen by Player 219. “You’re just a kid. What did they do to you?” Without awaiting the response, he lifted the gun from the child and pointed it at his temple. For the second time in my life, I was watching a bullet sail through somebody’s skull.

I hadn’t seen him enter the room. The tall, mysterious blocky mask was almost in a jog as he crossed the playground. He pulled the trigger. The boy fell backwards, dead. “Remember… Once they find out who you are, you die.” He said, turning away. As quickly as he’d appeared, he was out the door once more, almost as if he was never there. I exhaled the breath that I’d been holding. Once again, I’d narrowly escaped having to shoot my gun. The circles entered the room, ushering in a few carts with black boxes. Each box was adorned with a gigantic pink ribbon. They stopped by the fallen players one by one and placed them in a box.

“Dinner time.” A square said suddenly.

Dinner?

The contents of my stomach churned in protest.

******

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Squid Game... Kim Minjun: Part One

Wed, 03 Nov 2021 22:58:23 GMT

"Nobody can ever see your face…”

They repeated it so many times…

As if we would forget.

Last year, in the American games, I was an O and I didn't see myself going any higher. Despite each and every one of us pacing those stairways in hot pink, there was an obvious hierarchy. The squares were at the top of the food chain. They barked orders and took all the credit. There was a rumor that they knew who was under each mask, but I'd only heard it in passing. There was no way to be sure. Mostly because the rumor came from a triangle and one thing was obvious: The triangles talked more than the squares ever did and boy did they enjoy their gossip. At the very bottom, buried underneath their mop buckets and toolboxes, were circles. Circles were basically the clean up crew. Only a lucky few actually got to see the games unfold. The rest, like me, had never seen how it was done, but were on hand to drag the bodies to the incineration hall and mop up the gallons of blood pooled across the floors. With the smell of death wafting through the O on our masks, we would line the floors with figure eights to soak up as much carnage as we could before it was time to set up for the next game.

Last year, some guy, Player 32 if I remember correctly, managed to escape through the air ducts. I was given the credit for his capture, but the story that was told and what had really happened were not one in the same. I was opening the bathroom door when he fell from the ceiling. My hand was still on my zipper when it happened. He landed on top of me. Kind of puts a spin on“It's Raining Men", does it not? Humor aside, when two triangles found us, one celebrated my quick thinking while the other swiped his revolver from his hip. He pulled the trigger without so much as a warning. The bullet penetrated his forehead so quickly. Up until that moment, I'd never seen such a thing! I knew my face had turned green. It had to. There was no way it hadn't. I wanted to throw up all over the inside of that stupid mask, but I knew better. I couldn't show weakness and I couldn't tell what had really led to Player 32s capture. Even without being told, I knew that my reaction would control whether I left that hall vertical or horizontal. So I faked it. I was the hero. Yes I was! I would do it again! Yes, yes I would.

After that, as soon as the games ended, I just wanted to put it behind me. I wanted my life back. No, I wanted me back. So I went home. I returned to Seoul; to a mother who looked down on me for failing out of college and a father who was drinking himself to death before I left and from the looks of it, he still had plans on that early grave. It's amazing how separating yourself from something can cloud your perception of it. In my haste to fly home, I'd forgotten that I was returning home without a diploma in hand. I was deemed a failure, not the conquering hero. The revulsion drenched "Minjun", brought the reality crashing down all around me. In more time than I cared to remember, I hadn't heard my real name. So much so that even from my own mother, it sounded foreign. She was so angry with me. For some reason, they had placed all their eggs in my basket. I had brought dishonor to them.

I hadn't planned on returning to the games. One swirly cloud of gunpowder was enough for me. Honestly, until the evening I was approached, I had no idea that the games were powerful enough to follow me across the ocean. They picked a good day to approach me too. I was sitting on a bench in the subway station. My mom had just tossed all my clothes out on the front lawn because quote:“I'm tired of lying about my son! I want something to be proud of! Your name is supposed to mean intelligent and all I got was you!" It pierced my soul to have her look at me with such disgust so I left. I didn't bother to pick up so much as a sock. I needed a place to think. How I ended up choosing the crowded subway station is beyond me, but there I was and I hadn't been seated for more than four minutes when suddenly, there he was. He'd tapped me on the head, as if that was okay. As if he knew me. I wasn't a player so there was no game to play. He handed me a golden, shiny card embossed with a circle, a square and a triangle. On the back was an address. In my eyes, there wasn't a choice this time. Nobody wanted me, but the games...

They wanted me.

The van door opened. A square mask poked its head out and handed me a hood.“Put this on." He ordered briskly. Nodding weakly, I did as I was told. I understood the same as I did in America. We had to cover our heads, lest we know who we were working with. A high pitched whistle that I recognized as knock out gas filling the vehicle sounded behind me.

My eyes popped open with a start. I sat up quickly to check myself. From the looks of it, other than being in my boxers, I was relatively unharmed. The room was almost an exact replica of the one I'd occupied in America. On a desk in the corner, below a mirror, was a hot pink jumpsuit with a black mask. To the right of the mirror was a sign with three drawings marked

1. Always wear your mask outside the room

2. Do not converse without permission

3, Do not leave the room without permission

I got up to collect my O only to be met with a triangle. I gasped. I already knew I didn't want this job.

Giving it back? Not an option. Switching? Not an option. Making a run for it? Only possible if I wanted to meet the same fate as so many players, and allegedly, a few pink jumpsuits, before me. Slowly, slowly, almost as if the white triangle was going to somehow warp into an O, I reached to pluck it from the hot pink fabric. I held it up to the light. Nope, still a triangle. In the corner, propped against the wall, was an MP5, equipped with two straps. I definitely didn't want this job. I didn't have to turn to know that there was a camera above the door not only watching, but recording my movements. I shuffled back to the desk to get dressed. As I lifted the jumpsuit, I noticed the hand revolver underneath. A knock on the door caused me to jump.“Number 13, hurry up. Count is in five!”Somebody barked. I threw my apparel on as fast as I could to get outside. The MP5 felt so clunky against me as I connected the two straps and put the revolver in the holster. When I opened the door, I was stunned. Apparently I was one of the last to stand under their number. We were instructed to stand under the number right next to our door, same as in America. 13 reflected above my scalp, marking not only which room was mine, but now, who I was. No longer did I have to carry the burden of a name my mother was ashamed to even mention in conversation. I was officially a number, same as the players.
"The first game is Red Light, Green Light." One of the squares, announced. I didn't turn to see if the voice was coming from the left or the right.“If I stop in front of you, you are selected to work this game." Ah, it was coming from the right. One by one, they selected their soldiers. To anyone else, the announcement of“Red Light, Green Light" was probably jarring, but for me, who had actually aided in clean up after the massacre, I knew this was not the case. EIther that, or my ego was whispering through my thoughts. For all I knew, I was on a hall full of second, third, or possibly even fourth timers. "Number 13." I was so deep in thought that at first, I didn't register that it was my number. "Number 13!" The squares didn't like repeating themselves, this I knew from experience. I stepped forward before it could be said again.
"Follow me!" In two rows, we fell in step behind him like the dutiful soldiers we were. I couldn't help but marvel at how the set up was almost exactly like the one in America, right down to the pink stairs. There were a few differences here and there, but for the most part, it was almost as if I'd been transported into a fever dream. Another thing I noticed was that I was one of few looking around. Almost every other mask was pointed at the back of the pink hoods of the squares in front of us.

I stifled the gasp that wanted to tear from my throat. In America, triangles were present during the game, but they weren't leading us inside. As we passed, I caught a glimpse of the same creepy, gigantic doll. It looked like something that would be cute and fun to have around were it smaller, but in that scale, coupled with what I knew, she was damn near horrendous. I averted my mask to face forward, but before it landed on our leaders, I was able to catch the little Squid Game symbol on her hair, placed as if it were a purple bow. They led us until we arrived in what I could only describe as a huge cave. Squares instructed one row to line up in a single file and hold their guns forward, as if in a silent warning.“You will watch over the circles bringing down the eliminated players." Came the instruction.

As I said, In America, I'd been one of the circles tapped to clean up after“Red Light, Green Light." I'd imagined them entering the room as I dusted the ground with my mop bucket full of dirt, as a way to give my mind something to do, outside of focusing on the task at hand. They wanted the area to look as if nothing had happened, but this wasn't a standard mop job. We were covering blood with dirt. Every few seconds, I would look at the door, camouflaged within the bright, beautiful cloudy day muraled on the walls, imagining the players filing in, one by one, all with various versions of smiles, some of them curious with wonder. Some were joking, others were quiet, simply studying their surroundings. It was easy to tell they only knew they would be playing games. Possibly not even what kind. Simply a politician's version of events and they were good to go. Giving information, without actually giving information, I mean. "You will be playing popular games from childhood" is what they were probably told. That, and nothing more. There's no way they would be walking through those doors with that kind of gusto if they had been told everything. Or maybe they did know. I had no idea. I was only part of the cover up. One by one, she would pick them off with four simple words: "Red Light, Green Light.”She knew their movements. Analytical down to the last detail, if so much as a drop of sweat dripped from their terrified brows, they were instantly eliminated. Or so I had been told.

In Korea, again, I would not see the game. Only this time, I had no interest in imagining their smiles or their curiosity. I knew why they were there now. Drowning in debt and feeling like they were out of options, they were no different than me. That's what scared me the most, you see. This new understanding meant that yes, I was carrying the guns, but I was no different than any of the faces being gunned down on the orders of that stupid doll.

"The rest of you will follow me." Now instead of two, we were one row. Up the stairs we followed until we were standing at a gigantic set of double doors. "Guns at the ready." Though I welcomed the shift in weight on my shoulder, I wasn't exactly excited to point that thing. Six stayed outside. The rest were ordered inside those doors and unfortunately, my triangle was one of those selected. Nearly all the players were arguing in the middle of the floor. Some were shouting. Others had graduated to grabbing and shoving. All of it signaled that they had played and they had won, but of course, it was hard to see it that way and why would they? So many tracksuits were plastered in bloody designs. There was no need for a politician's explanation now. They knew what this was. Despite being winners, one tilt in fortune and they could easily become losers. The room was alive with a bone chilling vibration of fear. The beds, stacked higher than any bunk beds I'd ever seen, almost kissed the ceilings. I didn't need to be interested in these people, but it was too late. I was already learning the curves of their fearful faces. Nestled by the leg of the third stack of beds was a face that curiously, didn't have a stitch of fear etched into it. She looked annoyed. Her eyes weren't on the players arguing. She didn't even wince when our leader square fired his gun. There was so much happening around her and yet, she only had eyes for a man a few feet away, Player 244. He was rocking back and forth. I was too far away to hear, but for how vehement he was about his movements, I was willing to bet he was deep in prayer. The hunch in her back was so deep in concentration that I couldn't get a full look at her number. How she was positioned, I could only manage to make out a two. Or at least I was pretty sure it was a two. It could've easily been a three. Player 218 was in the middle of regurgitating the contract they had signed. Some weren't exactly fans of our leader's explanation as to why they were there. They wanted to leave. I needed to get my head in the game. Waiting for the girl to relax a little, I'd missed the ushering in of these tall blocks. One with a red X, the other, a green O. They were given a chance to vote on their freedom and as we looked on, one by one they approached the blocks to press a button. Finally, I saw her number: She was Player 240. She pressed the red X and I wasn't surprised. She didn't strike me as a quitter. In the end, it was decided that they were free. I hadn't seen that one coming. In America, the concept had never come up.

We followed our leader square from the room. Down the hallway we walked until we were back at the staircases. It didn't feel like it, but many hours had passed. My stomach growled loudly in anguish. Up the stairs, down the stairs. Down the halls, up the halls. Did they not know the concept of lunch? My question was soon answered as a resounding no. Another square joined our ranks. Then another. And another. "Follow him." One said. That one wasn't my group. Mine was the next.“You will be overseeing the circles in the set up of the next game.”

The next game? I thought, confused. Were they killing every player who voted green and ushering in a new batch?

There was no time to ponder this. I had to focus. I stopped in front of a pair of circles who were painting a green and red fence. Up on ladders, other circles were working on puffy clouds. In the middle of the dirt, a larger group were assembling playground equipment. Since nobody had actually told me where to stand, I chose to watch them. There was no rush about them as they selected their metal poles. By the time the slide was lifted into the air, my stomach felt as if it wanted to tear through my back. The doors opened, revealing a tall figure, cloaked in all black, his face covered by a blocky looking mask. I'd never seen him before, but something about how he moved cast an important air about him as he walked from each piece of equipment to inspect the circles' efforts.

One of the squares turned as he heard him stroll up behind him. "Sir?"

"We are going to proceed as planned." He said, nodding at the structure. He continued to speak, almost as if to himself: "The players will return. They think it's better out there, but they are cowards. Each and every one of them. At the sign of real trouble, we won't have to make any strides. They'll be begging to be let back in.”

"Sir!" The square gave a quick nod.

Satisfied with the response, he turned to head to the next piece. Piece by piece, he walked until he had stopped in front of all the equipment. With what I assumed was a smug gait, he headed for the doors. As soon as they closed behind him, one of the squares made a circular motion with two fingers on his right hand. The other squares nodded. "Dinner time." The one closest to me said.

******

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Soul Of Moons: Snowden Mackery... (Part 3)

Mon, 12 Jul 2021 18:02:57 GMT

By the time I was in high school, my personality was no longer seen as “colorful” and “imaginative”. What had once been whispered about in hushed tones, was now out in the open on full display. Though my dad was openly ignoring the chatter, as long as it didn’t cost him the church, I was allowed to be the town fruit fly. Other than every Sunday when he would thank the Lord above for his family, I doubt he really cared about me. He would carry on conversations with people as if I were not in the room and by that, I mean if I tried to interject with an opinion, he would immediately switch subjects. At first, I thought it was an oversight on his part, but it didn’t take long for me to figure out that when it came to my dad, my opinions had no place in his ears. Whenever I would try to catch him alone, his wallet would magically appear. In a hail of dollar bills, he would practically throw money at me in order to get me to disappear.

Needless to say, I was probably the best dressed kid at Morris High School. I spent hours upon hours in the local thrift stores trying to stretch my dad’s hush money. All my clothes had to have coordination, right down to my shoes. Each pair of which I had painstakingly sequined to match my outfits. Ninth grade was when I made my first, real friend: Julian Graves. Oh man, it was like someone had taken extra time to outline the type of sexy Julian Graves would grow into, right down to his perfect, chiseled jawline. We were the only two guys in Home Ec. and I knew why I was there. Shit, everybody did. No one forced me. I really did want to learn how to sew. But Julian Graves… He was a man of mystery. Why would someone like him not want to be front and center in Shop so that the girls could giggle and comment on how good he was with his hands? According to something I’d heard Malcolm say to one of his buddies, that was the best reason for anyone to join Shop. Also, from listening in on Malcolm, whom I failed to mention was a Junior, I learned that Julian was new to our area. Actually, that part wasn’t hard to figure out on my own. He kind of stood out. Besides being Warhol painting beautiful, Julian Graves was one of few white students at our school.

At lunch, he would sit at the table to the far right. My brother used to say that only nerds would dare to sit so far away from the doors, but no way was he referring to Julian Graves. He made those ratty, outdated tables look positively refreshing. I assure you, no matter what I dared to drape across my figure, I did not have the same effect on the décor as Julian Graves. Which was a travesty in itself seeing as how I was also one of the kids fortunate enough to have a table all to themselves during lunch. That is, until a rainy Autumn Monday in the middle of November when a wave of blonde hair and bottomless green eyes placed a tray in front of me. At first, I didn’t look up. I was used to Malcolm sending over his friends to antagonize me from time to time. Instead of the usual hateful jeer, I was treated to “What’re you writing?”

I looked up, startled at first. Outside of Piper or Malcolm’s minions, (I can't think of a single time that Malcolm himself had approached that table. Truth is, he did everything he could to distance himself from the label of “The Gay Kid’s Older Brother") people stopping at my table was a rarity. Sitting was damn near unheard of.

“Uh… Uh…”

“And here I thought you were one of the intelligent ones.” Julian joked. And then, it happened. He sat down right in front of his tray. “Is this seat taken?”

Marry me. "Um..." Mentally, I kicked myself. Come on brain, give me this one. “Asking to sit when you’re already sitting defeats the purpose.” He smiled at my retort. I nearly melted through the chair. “I’m-”

“Snowden, right?” He shoved his long, slender fingers in my direction.

I shook his hand, careful to keep my squealing safely tucked away in my thoughts. Julian Graves knew my name! “Right.” I said instead.

He skinned his piece of fried chicken breast and started to chew. He swallowed carefully then tried again: “What are you writing?” He nodded at my notebook.

“My suicide note.” I replied wryly.

“I seriously doubt that.” He tilted his head slightly to the right. A habit that had not gone unnoticed by me in class.

“Notes?” I have no idea why I was trying to scare him off, but it didn’t matter because it wasn’t working.

His smile brightened, if possible. Or maybe I was memorizing the way his lip curled slightly on the left whenever he would smirk at me. In my mind, his entire being was racked with a supernatural glow, which was graciously beaming down on my undeserving scalp.

“I can’t imagine a person who puts as much time into dressing themselves as I can tell you do, killing themselves.” He drew the word “killing” out as if he were speaking each letter individually.

“I’m a writer.” I admitted, awaiting the ridicule that I’d become accustomed to.

“Oh really?” He said skeptically.

Instantly I was suspicious. “Yeah, why?” I demanded defensively.

I knew it had been too good to be true. Malcolm had probably put him up to it because Julian was the one person I wouldn’t immediately suspect. Tears stung my eyes. I snatched my notebook from the table and retreated to the first available door on the hallway: The boy’s bathroom.

The door slammed as I dropped rather unceremoniously on the toilet. Tears spilled from my eyes though I was fighting them with everything I had. This was a different kind of pain. As sure as I was that Malcolm despised the very ground I walked on, I didn’t think he would hurt me like this. As silly as it sounded, all I wanted was a friend. Any ol’ friend would do.

I listened to the bathroom door's old age groaning in protest under the pressure of someone pulling it open. I held my breath, listening to the sounds of shuffling until a pair of black tennis shoes came to a stop beneath the frame. Three sharp whacks on the door caused my tears to dry faster than a raindrop in the Sahara.

“Occupied.” I snapped, wiping furiously at the few strays attempting to hop from my eyelids.

“I am aware.” Came the reply.

Shit. Even in a poorly decorated boy’s bathroom, Julian sounded like sex on a stick. Two sticks. Legs. I sighed a long, defeated sigh. “I know Malcolm put you up to this.”

“Who is Malcolm?”

Through a tiny crack, I could see him standing there staring at the door. He reached out to knock on the door again.

“I heard you the first time.” I grumbled, hugging my notebook to my chest.

“You forgot your bookbag.” He held up the bag that I’d carefully sequined a large “G” on the front flap to the stall. “What’s the G stand for?”

Gay. I thought, recalling the years of mockery despite wearing who I was as a badge of honor. “You can slide it under the door.” I replied, sidestepping the inquiry.

“You can come out.” He countered.

“What do you want?!” I wailed. Gah, I wanted to flush myself down the toilet so bad.

“You to come out.” He said. I watched him sit my bag on the floor against the wall. He crouched down on the floor. Stunned beyond words, I watched as Julian Graves lowered his belly to the floor in order to crawl the few centimeters it took for him to stick his head beneath the door. He turned at a weird angle so that he could face me. “Unless you want me to come in.”

“I’m coming out! I swear!” No matter how much I fantasized about being in close quarters with Julian, the idea of actually doing it was too far above my pay grade.

He disappeared, and I unlocked the door. Before I could completely open it, he dangled my bookbag in front of himself. I stepped out and reached for it. He backed up. One step. Two step. Three more steps until his back was against the door, blocking my freedom.

“Like I said, you forgot your bag.”

I wanted so badly to slither back into the stall where Julian Graves and his perfect hippie golden locks couldn’t see me. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I’ll give you your bag if you answer my question.” He gave me a quick once over, pausing on my bedazzled shoes. I pretended not to notice. Everyone always noticed my style of shoes if they didn’t notice anything else about me. These were a pair of old penny loafers that I’d sequined tiny shapes on but again, I’m getting off topic.

“Why can’t you just give me my bag?” Is what my face started to say. I had the smooth, masculine edge to my voice too, but for some reason, it came out as a chirp of: “Okay.” I have no idea what happened.

He held the bookbag out at me. Slowly, he started to sway it from side to side. “So, Snow…”

“Snowden.” I corrected.

“Why not Snow for short?” He shrugged, still swaying my bag. “You’re a classic. Be a classic.”

I stood before him, Julian beautiful god-like (Don’t tell my dad I just said that) creature Graves as myself, Snowden who sat alone by himself because he was an outcast Mackery and the longer he was swaying my bookbag, the more I wanted to just let him keep it and run.

“Why do you eat lunch by yourself every day?”

I watched as my bag continued to swing on his finger. Finally, I reached for it. This time he didn’t move.

“Nobody likes me.” I replied, placing the bag on the floor so that I could tuck my notebook away.

He looked on, probably wondering why he wasted his perfectly good lunch chasing down a loser with a shoe fetish.

“I find it hard to believe nobody likes you.” He said after I had slung my bag over my shoulder. “As long as you like yourself, there isn’t much room for background noise anyway.” He shrugged. “Never let the background noise of the world become your permanent soundtrack.”

“You asked why I eat alone. You didn’t ask if I let it affect me.” I snapped.

“True.” Julian Graves nodded his Julian Graves’ nod then he opened the bathroom door. “Shall we?”

We? I almost fainted.

From that day forward, even in Home Ec., Julian and I were inseparable. My days started with him and no matter what occurred in the middle, they also ended with him. I went from the gay kid to the gay kid who hung out with Julian Graves virtually overnight. All of a sudden, people who were openly shunning me only days before were walking up to me in the hallways gushing about how great Julian was and how awesome I had to feel to be blessed with his presence. Okay, there’s a chance it wasn’t worded exactly that way, but the fact that becoming friends with Julian had turned me into some sort of a celebrity was baffling to me.

One day, on our walk home, Malcolm came up behind me and hissed: “It’s because he’s white, ya know?” He nudged me with his shoulder, hard. “Do you really think a guy like that wants to hang with the gay scene? You’re both outcasts.”

“That’s not true!” Is what I said, but secretly, I’d voiced those same concerns in my diary.

“Oh, it isn’t? What pure bred American in their right mind wants to be your friend, Snowden?”

I choked back the angry tears that were threatening to make an appearance. “It’s Snow!”

“Leave him alone!” Piper shouted at him, but it was too late. The damage had already been done.

“He’s using you.” Malcolm laughed in my face. “What’re you going to do? Cry?”

The next day in Home Ec., I stomped past Julian to sit in the back of the class, alone. Every thirty minutes or so, he would glance back at me, only for me to exaggerate an interest in improving my cross stitch. After class, before he could stand up, I was out the door and up the hallway, fully prepared to return to my life as a pariah at lunch. I was almost inside the double doors when a hand reached out and grabbed my bookbag. I whirled around, fully prepared to kick Malcolm in his balls.

What met me was Julian's curiosity. “What’s up with you?” He sounded worried.

Julian Graves was my first life lesson in understanding that just because someone said something, that doesn't make it true. After I'd explained what had happened the day before, he grabbed my hand (!!!) and all but dragged me over to where Malcolm and his goonies held court. Malcolm, who had always been quick, was on his feet and balling his fists before Julian approached them. Julian didn’t even speak. He swung his left fist. It connected with the right side of my brother’s head. Malcolm stumbled, but didn’t lose his footing. He swung. Julian caught his wrist and pulled. Malcolm tripped over his shoes and landed, face first, on the cafeteria floor.

He turned to me and put his hand out. My eyes shifted from Malcolm glaring at me from the floor to Julian. I could jump to my older brother's defense, or I could admit that my brother wasn’t worth the time it took our parents to make him. It was my choice and mine alone to make. No longer willing to wait, Julian took my hand in his and led me to our table underneath the window. I took my seat across from him as life slowly breathed its way through the cafeteria once more.

“We don’t have any food.” I said finally, breaking the tension.

Julian shrugged. “Then let’s go get some.”

He made a move to stand up. I reached out to stop him. “It’s fine. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

He wasn’t looking at me. I didn’t have to be a brain surgeon to know who he was glaring at and I wasn’t about to add fuel to the fire. Julian Graves had flung my brother on the floor and the whole school would know about it by the end of the day. Malcolm wasn’t about to let that slide. “If you’re hungry, we're eating.” Julian said firmly.

I opened my mouth to voice a few concerns when someone came up beside me. I had seen her around school many times, but Jasmine Waters and I didn’t have any of the same classes. She sat down beside me as if she’d been doing it her entire high school career. Julian broke the death stare that he and Malcolm were holding to wonder if she were lost.

“Are you lost?” He said it just like that. No pauses. Gone was “Kumbaya my lord” Julian Graves.

“No, I'm Jasmine. Lost kind of sounds like the name you give a kid you want to fail in life.” She replied curtly. “Is this seat taken?”

“No.” I replied quickly.

Julian’s shoulders relaxed slightly. “You don't strike me as a failure.” He said, applying his focus to our guest.

"Far from it." She took a bite out of her school lunch supplied burger. My stomach rumbled at the sound of the lettuce snapping between her teeth. She nodded towards Julian after swallowing. “We have first period together, remember?”

He tilted his head slightly to the right. “You sit like, two rows up, right?”

She nodded again.

From that day on, it was Julian, Jasmine and I. We were our own version of The Three Musketeers. We weren’t allowed to spend much time at my house for obvious reasons, but nonetheless, my mom encouraged me to hang out. Sometimes she would send a tray of cookies. Honestly, I think she was secretly relieved that I wasn’t destined to die alone in a cave. For the most part, we lounged around Jasmine’s house. Her mom worked nights, so we pretty much had the run of the place.

“Where’s your dad?” I had asked the first time we were invited.

She had sighed as if it were a question she’d been answering longer than desired. “My mom left him when I was like, five.” She twisted the key in the lock to push open the door. “I don’t remember him and I’m not about to ask my mom if she keeps polaroids of the dude who used to put his hands on her.”

Julian shot me “a look” but there was no way I could unask such a question. Once it’s out there, it’s pretty much out there. “Dads aren’t so great.” I’d said, shrugging.

“Oh, I know. We drive thirteen miles every Sunday just so that we don’t have to go to your dad’s church.”

I had laughed until I saw the photos on the living room mantle. Jasmine’s mom was the one and only Ms. Dandelion. I had seen her around town so many times. Always alone. I wondered if the congregation knew that the woman who kept their tongues wagging was a single mom.

Now that I’m older… Wiser… I understand that not only was there no way they didn’t know, they had to have known about Jasmine every time they sat in front of a plate of my mom’s cookies to gossip about Ms. Dandelion. My mom, as the pastor’s wife, had to have known too. That’s what unsettled me the most.

On this particularly bright, spring, Wednesday afternoon, we were curled up on Jasmine’s bed like alley cats doing what was quickly becoming our favorite pastime: Gossiping about our classmates.

“Did you hear about Mason and Abby?” I asked. My head was nestled against Julian’s shoe. We were in tenth grade now and hanging out in the afternoons was expected, neither of my parents bothered to question it now. (Not that my dad had ever started. Whatever my mom had told him was enough and that was that.)

Jasmine made a circular gesture over her stomach. “I heard her parents are sending her to live with her mom’s family in Vermont. Nobody is supposed to know why.”

“Sounds like a poorly kept secret if both of you know.” Julian observed with a smirk.

“What secret?” I shrugged. “Mason keeps blabbing to every ear that’ll have him. I heard it from Kevin, who heard it from Evette, who heard it from some guy on the football team. There’s no telling who all knows.”

A pregnancy in high school wasn’t handled the way it is now. You didn’t get to waddle to all your classes. Whether you kept the baby or not, all of it was handled in private. We either saw you after it was over, or we never saw you ever again. In a deeply religious community, having me showing my face was blasphemous enough. I could be covered up; blatantly lied about even. Having Abby Hendrix’s baby bump on display was an entirely different dragon.

“That’s not all I heard.” I said. “I heard that at this Wednesday's prayer meeting, the deacons are allegedly,” I did little air quotes for “allegedly” “discussing whether or not it would be in Mason's best interest to be shipped off to Military school.”

“Best interest for Mason” was what was said. “Best interest for the holier than thou image that we work hard to protect” was what was meant. It was obvious in how the sisters whispered it.

“Why?”

I looked up at Julian. “Supposedly, this sin can’t just be prayed away. He’s getting the out of sight, out of mind treatment.” The discussion was nothing more than a formality. Mason was definitely going to military school.

“That’s bullshit.”

“Your mom and her hens stay clucking.” Jasmine laughed humorlessly. “I seriously doubt shipping him off to some school will stop Mason’s dick from getting hard.”

“Especially with all those men in uniform.” I added, pretending to swoon.

“Now see, this is why we can’t have nice things!” She chuckled, shaking her head. I could hear an air of humor this time but only for a second. "Okay, Snow… If you could kill anyone at our school knowing you would get away with it; no evidence, no witnesses, not a single day behind bars, who would you kill?" We were always playing games like these. "Who would you have sex with?" "Who would you marry? "Who would you appoint President?" "And why...?" You can't forget the "And why...?" because the question was just the spark. The "why" was the flame. Who would I kill? Malcolm was the first name that manifested at the edge of my thoughts, but no. That wasn't who I was. I wasn't the type of person to joke about death... Even in our game. Even with my friends.

"Nobody."

I could tell Jasmine didn't believe me. "Nobody?!" She wasn't exactly trying to hide it.

"Nope." I said, shaking my head. "I am not about to get my clothes all bloody. You've seen the news. People fight and a fighter I am not. Screw all that. I know how to kill without even lifting a finger. No blood, no body... All gore."

Julian shifted. I followed so that my head was now propped up by his ankles. "You can't kill people without touching them unless you put a hit out on them and that's going to take money."

I poked him in the leg with my index finger. "So, you wouldn't kill for me, Julian?"

He winked down at me.

"Wait..." Jasmine interjected, "I wanna hear this. How do you kill someone without touching them?"

"Allow them to fall in love with you. Dangle the prospect of a beautiful, fairy tale life right in front of their nose like a carrot and just when they reach out for a taste, snatch it away. Move on but be mindful about keeping them in your life. Tell them you just want to be friends and own that shit. You're going to need them front row center to watch the existence you create unfold like an origami swan, fluttering to the ground in a silent pirouette before their eyes. That way, each day, a tiny piece of their soul, who they are... Their very being will fade away and die out; obsessing over what could have been."

I could almost see the words marching through Jasmine’s mind. Finally, she whistled. "Who knew beneath all that glitter was a mind so dark and twisty?"

"I did." Julian said, winking down at me again. "Snow's going to be a famous writer someday and all of us will be looking back saying we knew him when. Isn't that right, Snow?

"Well..." I thought about the prospect. "Maybe." I sat up. "But never too famous to forget about you guys."

"I know!” Jasmine clapped her hands. “You should work at a newspaper. I would love to start my day with grits, eggs, and style."

I laughed. So did Julian. Our eyes met and for a fraction of a second, Jasmine's presence went completely forgotten. He held my gaze for longer than necessary before her voice ripped through my thoughts: "Get a room, you two!"

Both of us snapped to attention.

Julian cleared his throat nervously. "Bathroom break." I sat up so that he could shuffle off the end of the bed. His feet were barely out of the room when Jasmine pounced: "What was that all about?"

Maybe I should have gone to the bathroom too. Aloud: "Nothing."

"I don't get it. Everybody already thinks you guys are the gayest of unicorns and Julian never argues against it so why not?"

Why not? I thought, sighing. It wasn't as if my morning didn't start with thoughts of Julian and end the exact same way. Julian's perfect jawline positioned just so, beneath his mesmerizing, piercing green eyes. Not that I'd noticed, of course.

"It's not some crap that Malcolm said, is it?"

I averted my eyes, embarrassed.

"What did he do this time?"

I continued to stare at the ripple in her sheets where Julian's head used to be.

Jasmine cleared her throat. "Hello? Earth to Snow?" She tugged at my arm. "Was it that bad?"

I inhaled a deep breath. "He told me if I so much as breathe on another guy, I'm going to catch AIDS." It came out in one gush, so it probably didn't sound nearly as eloquent as how I’m saying it now.

"Huh?" Judging by the look on her face when I looked up, this assessment was correct.

"AIDS. Malcolm said I'm going to catch it."

"Oh. Is that all?" She smirked. "What did you say to him?"

"I told him sometimes I use his toothbrush when I'm feeling a little sick... Then I coughed super dramatically and slammed my door in his face."

Jasmine's expression contorted as she did her best to not burst out laughing. She folded her face back into a neutral position before speaking: "Malcolm's an uneducated jerk, you do realize that, right? Please tell me you know that, Snow."

"I want to know that so bad." I whispered fiercely.

"Do you know why out of every community, ours was the one hit hardest by HIV and AIDS?"

I shook my head. No, I didn't know, but I certainly wanted to understand.

"Lack of education. Fear. Bigotry." She paused. "Need I go on?" I didn't move. "You see, in our community, nothing is more damning than a gay child. It is seen as a symbol of failure. I'm sure you know that." I nodded. I knew a little too well. "African Americans were throwing their gay children out into the streets by the thousands and those were the lucky ones. Some were killed by the families that they thought loved and wanted to protect them. Can you really blame them for walking into a closet and nailing the door closed? You knew the risks. If you didn't want the same fate, you kept up the charade. They were on the down low, so to speak." I had no idea what a "down low" was. I did, however, get the sense that it was a lonely existence. "To this very day, people will huddle, freezing their toes off, in front of some prison gates chanting 'Free whoever the hell' even if he committed armed robbery and full on murdered two people on the way out the door before they'll stand for the little gay black kid who didn't do a thing to anyone. I wish I was lying but you have no idea how hurtful it is to know that in our community, it is more acceptable to support a dude who pumps drugs into the veins of our own rather than support someone whose life does not directly affect your own. I mean, the black man is supposed to be a strong, kingly figure so a gay man is not accepted with open arms but a man who abandoned his own kids because he couldn’t handle the responsibility is more times than not welcomed with open arms to the dinner table. The one who you know beats his wife or girlfriend? Again, more times than not, accepted. Have a seat. Pass the gravy. His gay brother, uncle, cousin or whatever the fuck? Again, more times than not, thrown away like trash. Treated as if they were never born. It's amazing what is accepted in our community versus what is condemned." Angrily, she wiped a few loose tears as they tried to escape. "You think I don't know what people say about my mom?"

Whether in passing conversation or sitting in my mother's kitchen, everybody knew of Ms. Dandelion. "My dad used to beat her. Does anybody ever mention that?" No. "A day didn't go by where she would somehow earn herself a bruise by his fist. He only had to hit me once for her to leave. Years and years of abuse she endured and yet, he barely tapped me, and she packed me up and bailed. I bet he’s accepted at every table amongst his family but you..." She placed her hand on my leg. "Even in my own home, with a mother as strong as mine; the same woman whose own family wants nothing to do with us because in their eyes, she gave up on her family. Not she protected herself. Not she protected me. They blamed her and turned their backs... Even with a woman who knows exactly what it's like to be shunned, I have to lie. I have to keep who you are a secret. That's why HIV and AIDS spread through our community like it did, Snow. We would rather accept the worst from our own than call to order an epidemic that's wiping us off the planet one by one. AIDS doesn't see sexual orientation. Our ignorance does."

"Couldn't have said it better myself." We both jumped at the sound of Julian's voice.

"Sad part is, my dad would probably be more welcome with my mom's family than she is." Jasmine spat, shaking her head.

"How long have you been standing there?" I said, adjusting so that he could get back on the bed.

He didn’t move. “Enough to know it’s time to ask a very important question.” He replied, leaning against the open door.

“What’s that?” Jasmine and I asked at the same time. She laughed at the accident whilst still dabbing the tears from her eyes.

“Would you like to be my boyfriend?”

“Huh?” And that, dear reader, is how I died. With the goofiest, happiest, most stunned lop-sided grin on my face. Is what I wish were true. Honestly, at fifteen, had my life ended the second that question fell from his lips, my life would have been short, but do you know what else it would have been? Worth it.

“You heard me.”

“I did.” I said slowly. “I’m just making sure you heard yourself.”

“I want you to be my boyfriend.”

I have no idea why but something about the way he'd said ‘boyfriend” scratched a nerve and not just any nerve. The right nerve. It turned my brain to mush. I had so many things I wanted to say. Starting from when he was my only friend and anywhere else my mind would take me, but anything I could scrape together felt as if it wasn’t enough. Julian deserved so much more than just words. And yet, “Okay.” Was all I could manage.

“Okay?” Julian tilted his head the same way he always had only this time, this tilt carried the weight of the world and all my emotions along with it. I wanted to scream.

“Okay.” I repeated, nodding.

Jasmine squealed a high pitched, excited squeal. She dove on top of me and hugged me tightly.

“I… can’t… breathe…” I wheezed.

She jumped off the bed to hug Julian. “I’m sorry. I’m just so…”

I laid there for almost a solid minute. I never wanted this memory to be any less clear than it was in that moment. Julian reached out so that I could be included in their embrace. I had no idea what we were all so emotional about. People started relationships all over the world, every day. Up against my “Okay”, there were probably thousands of people replying to the same question and with more eloquently versed responses. Not my fault. Out of every scenario I imagined with Julian (Get your mind out of the gutter!), not once had I imagined this. I mean, I was me. Up until the day he sat down in front of me, no one wanted anything to do with me and now there we were, our own little trio.

My heart craved our bubble to be infused with its own super powers to withstand anything, but as with any bubble, it could pop; and pop ours did.

The next year, Ms. Dandelion’s name was all over the church. I mean, one could argue that it was always all over the church, but this was different. This time it travelled all the way to Julian’s neck of the woods. Usually Jasmine and I would school him on the ins and outs of our community, but this time there was no need. He already knew and to make matters worse, the gossip had unfolded in my own backyard.

Without all the gory details, a couple months into the year, it was my dad’s shiny, black leather, preacher shoes seen leaving Ms. Dandelion’s back gate. At first, there were only murmurs but that’s the thing about a rumor: The juicier it is, the more life gets breathed through it. By the end of June, right before school let out, every lip was telling their own version of events. Oddly enough, the only people silent on the matter were Ms. Dandelion and my dad himself.

He wouldn’t even discuss it with our mom and if they had discussed it, whatever was said was not what she wanted to hear. Dinner became a tense affair. It felt like every breath and every word were measured and analyzed. Malcolm did most of the talking. Piper would try but she couldn’t carry a conversation quite like our older brother. As for me, I was always too busy watching our parents. Conversation was one thing, but only a moron couldn’t tell that the real show was in their facial expressions. They were practically screaming at one another without uttering a peep. It was remarkable really.

I couldn’t talk to my siblings about the situation so as usual, I found myself sitting amongst Jasmine and Julian.

“What did your mom say?” Julian asked.

“She said he came over to see if she would consider rejoining the church.” Jasmine said, doing everything not to meet my eyes.

“Wait, it is true?” I whispered, as if my hushed tones would change anything. “Did something happen?”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

I wanted more than anything to comfort her. It’s not like I didn’t know my dad was a hypocrite. Preaching against adultery on Sunday, only to be committing it by Wednesday. There had been whispers around town about my dad for years. This time was different though. This time he’d actually been seen. A rumor with no legs is just that: A rumor. A rumor with witnesses was an entirely different narrative. My mom had always taught me that the hardest thing to separate someone from was their truth.

“Our preacher’s sermon this week was about the power a woman has over man. How a woman can convince even the godliest of men to betray his robes, all she needs is to whisper the right words in his ear.” Jasmine’s head snapped to attention at Julian’s words. “He said that a woman’s design is to entice the senses and weaken the mind. He started talking about how Eve convinced Adam that just a tiny bite from that bright, juicy, red apple would be of no consequence to them… That the smooth, silkiness of a woman’s voice is a dangerous weapon. The body is the root of temptation but the tongue… blah, blah, blah.” He smirked.

“All I heard was it’s being spun that my mom is some kind of succubus.” She pointed at me with her pinky. “And your dad is some poor, unfortunate wilted flower in all this.”

“That’s the way the religion works in this town.” I shrugged. “My dad hasn’t so much as breathed in my mom’s direction since all this started. I guess she was fine when it was just rumors.”

“We’re moving.” Jasmine blurted.

I’ve seen the word “gasp” several times in written works, but this was the first time I’d heard the act in action; and coming from me. I clapped my hands over my mouth.

“What? Why?” Julian grabbed Jasmine’s arm.

A tear dropped on his hand. “My mom said it’s best we move on.” She sniffed. “She didn’t even ask what I thought. Just: ‘Jasmine, we’re moving.” She looked at me. “What I wanted to ask her was why your dad. Out of all the men in this stupid town, why? I wanted to scream it at her.”

We huddled around Jasmine as we always had for one another, whether the news be good or bad.

The next day, Jasmine was gone. If I couldn’t recount so many memories of her, it would have been as if she never existed. After school, there was no sanctuary to gossip in.

For the first time in almost three years, I found myself walking home with Malcolm and Piper. He had already graduated, but until he went off to college, my mom insisted Malcolm walk Piper home since I had plans. For some reason, it'd slipped my mind that he would be there. We were barely out of the school parking lot when Malcolm turned on me: “I wonder if your friend was just as easy as her mom.” He thought it over. “If she was, she couldn’t have been any good ‘cause you still look gay to me.”

Before I could consider repercussions, my fist was already connecting with Malcolm’s cheek. He tried to punch me back, but I dove on top of him and kept swinging. Each swing was for something different. Every hateful name. Every snide comment. Every chance he had to be my brother. Every time he chose not to. He tried to fight me off, but to avail. Make no mistakes, I knew it wasn’t because I was stronger than him but right then, none of that mattered. I just kept swinging until Piper started to drag me off him. As she was pulling, I managed a swift kick to the back of his left leg. I didn’t realize I was sobbing until I felt a pair of new, significantly stronger, set of arms gather me up.

“Let me go!” I shouted, fighting against the grip.

“Snow! Stop! Stop! It’s me!”

All the fight left my body instantly. “J-Julian?” What on Earth was he doing there?

“I was going to walk you home, but one of Piper’s friends said you guys were already heading home.”

“So you followed us?” Malcolm spat blood in the dirt. I could almost imagine what our mom was going to say about his busted lip. “What kind of sense does that make?”

“Hey man, I just saved your life.” I could hear the laughter in his voice. “Don’t I at least get a thank you?”

Malcolm’s right eye was already beginning to darken. “He got a few lucky hits.”

“Lucky? So that’s what they’re calling an ass whooping these days.” He didn’t release me though. “Start walking, dude.”

Malcolm’s eyes zeroed in on Julian clutching me. “Faggots.” He spat in the dirt again.

Julian shrugged. “I could let him go, you know.”

Malcolm’s gaze left me. I could tell he and Julian were staring one another down. Finally, he gave one last spit before turning on his heel. “Let’s go, Piper.”

I glanced at my sister. Always the yin to Malcolm’s yang, she gave me one last look before following him. Julian waited until Malcolm was far away enough to loosen his grip.

“Wow. I didn’t know you had it in you.” He was doing everything not to laugh, but I could tell not only was he shocked, he was genuinely impressed.

“He said something about Jasmine.” Was all I said.

“Malcolm’s full of shit.” Julian said. “And after all that, he’s probably full of dirt too.”

“Ah ha. Ah ha.”

“Here I thought I was going to surprise you.” He dragged me to my feet and helped dust off my clothes.

I spit on my fingers so that I could wipe some of the dust away from my shoes. It had taken me all night to glue the little purple glitter flowers to them and now they were in desperate need of attention. “My shoes!” I wailed.

“Oh yeah, you definitely did a number on them.” Julian said, gesturing down at the scratches. “Come on, I’ll walk with you to Tabbies.”

Tabbies was positioned in the middle of town and it had everything; right down to the glitter I needed to fix my shoes. Mostly, people went there when they couldn’t afford the mall. Which meant the majority of our town frequented the establishment. The double doors swished open with our arrival. You had a choice when you entered Tabbies: Turn left and you were flourishing your grocery list, possibly designing a menu for a Sunday feast. Everyone knew after church you gathered together for Sunday dinner. It was an unwritten rule passed through every family from generation to generation. Turn to the right and it was a smorgasbord for even the pickiest of shoppers. It didn’t matter what it was, it was sold in Tabbies. As a matter of fact, the glitter I was searching for was four aisles up from the guns.

“What shade of purple are you looking for?” Julian asked.

I froze. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Miss Calvin. I could tell by her humming that she had yet to notice that we were on the same aisle. The more time I spent with Jasmine and Julian, the less I saw of her narrow face. Our run ins had been reduced to church on Sunday. Did I mind? Of course not.

Julian waved his hand in front of my face. I blinked back to reality. “Miss Calvin is on this aisle.” I hissed at him.

“So, um… Am I supposed to know who that is?”

Still humming what I now recognized as page forty-seven in our church’s hymnal, clearly distracted by the list in between her fingers, she was only a few feet away now. I had two choices: Grab Julian and bolt without my glitter or confront the interaction head on. I grabbed Julian’s arm to flee. The second my fingers grazed his bare arm, I swear the powers that be saw fit for her to see me and of course, she was quick to note where my hand was. A smooth, conniving smile twisted across her lips.

“Oh, is that you, Snowden?”

“Of course, it’s me. You see me every week at church.” Is what I wanted to say, but I knew Malcolm was probably already filling our mom’s head with his version of events from earlier. I wasn’t about to add my disrespect of one of the deaconesses to the list. I settled for a deflated sounding “Yes ma’am.” Instead.

“Who’s your friend?” She said the word “friend” with the same disgusted tone I’d heard from her mouth before.

“Julian Graves.” I was so glad his vocal cords still worked. Meanwhile, I was busy wishing the floor would swallow me. He extended his hand. For the tiniest of moments, I thought she would ignore the gesture, but her fleeting Christianity wouldn’t allow her to be openly rude.

“Oh,” It had always annoyed me when she would start her sentences with “oh”. Today was no different. “How do you know our Snowden?”

Our? I rolled the word both backwards and forwards in my mind. This lady couldn’t stand me last I checked.

“We go to school together.” And there was Julian chatting away like he wasn’t carrying on a conversation with The Wicked Witch of The South.

“School? But…” She cleared her throat to allow the rest of her sentence to die out. She wanted to ask in what world would Lydia Mackery see fit for her bouncing baby boy to be seen with a gorgeous piece of man meat in public. Okay, so there’s a chance I exaggerated her thoughts for my own entertainment, but I’m the one telling this story so never you mind.

“But… What ma’am?” Julian, being Julian, knew exactly what she meant. He just wanted to see if she would dare say it.

“Nothing.” She replied quickly. “I just realized I’m on the wrong aisle.” She held up the momentarily forgotten list in her hand. She stepped away from us then moved to pass. She was nearly seven inches away when she turned and looked dead at me. “Oh, Snowden, be a dear and tell your mom I said hello.” Is what she said. “Tell your mom I’m going to ask her point blank did she forget the town’s already talking about where her husband’s dick vacations. Does she really want them talking about you parading your lifestyle down the arts and crafts aisle too?” Is what I heard. I don’t know. Going by the way she said it, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she was on the porch when I got home so that we could walk in together.

I grabbed the purple glitter with my now shaking hands.

Julian put his hand over mine. “She goes to church with you, I’m guessing.” He squeezed it for a few seconds.

“She also visits my mom’s house to gossip about everybody over cookies.” I said, nodding.

“And here I thought all our gossip sessions were unique.”

“They were. None of us ever baked cookies.”

“But your mom did sometimes.”

My lips moved to curve into a smile. “So she did.” The action didn't survive the trip to my mouth.

Anything that I could think to smile about was on a different aisle, clinging to the hem of Miss Calvin’s vindictive skirts.

When I got home, Miss Calvin wasn’t on the porch, but my mom was. I sat down beside her, still clutching the purple glitter.

For what could almost be measured by an eternity, we sat together on the porch, silent.

Finally, my mom's voice pierced the edge of our peace: “Malcolm said he got jumped by some guys after school.” She spoke in a quiet, worn down tone.

“I- ” What could I say to that?

“Piper told me it was you.” She said in the same tone. “She told me that he said some hateful things and you stood up for yourself. Is that true, Snowden?”

Now, as a professional, up and coming member of the human race, one thing I knew as sure as the color of my skin was that if a mom asks you “Is that true?” more times than not, she already knows the answer. She’s only testing to see what kind of a person she has raised. Tell the truth and whatever punishment she has concocted won’t be so bad. Lie and you cause the type of pain she’ll never show you. You’ll never know it’s there because she’ll never say but deep down, a part of her will feel as if she failed you as a mother. So as I sat there with the sun setting in the distance, I ran the pros and cons of both outcomes and then I asked myself: Was I still the “good boy” my mother raised?

“Yes ma’am.” I said finally.

She sighed. “Good for you, son.” She stood up. Before walking away, she reached down and patted the top of my head like she used to when I was in elementary school and managed to make it through a day of school without begging to stay home with her.

“Miss Calvin told me to tell you she said hello.” I said as she was opening the screen door. “I saw her in Tabbies.”

“I know. I just got off the phone with her.” Was all she said as the door slammed behind her.

For a long time, until the sun had completely disappeared for the evening, I sat on the porch in silence, wondering what kind of strength it took for a woman like my mom to soldier on.

The following year, on an unusually cool, summer afternoon, before the start of my senior year, my mom drew her last breath.

My whole world came crashing down in a matter of moments. Only a few days before, she’d been in Tabbies helping me color swatch fabrics. I wanted to make an outfit for school. I’d spent the whole summer perfecting my sewing and there was no way I was going to waste my new-found talent. It was going to be a black smoker’s jacket with bright, red trim. I’d already sequined a pair of Piper’s old Mary Janes for the occasion.

Instead of sitting in front of my sewing machine, I was sitting in the back pew of our church, listening to our dad make funeral arrangements. None of which, the Lydia Mackery I knew would approve of. Did my dad even know his wife? When I tried to interject, he swatted me away, so I left. My retreat found me back at home. The phone was ringing off the hook. It hadn’t stopped since the news had made the rounds. My dad wasn’t exactly an unappealing man so most of the calls were probably trying to take my mom’s place before the dirt was tossed on the coffin. You know, just in case there was a slim chance she could rise from the dead and reclaim the throne at my dad’s side.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Every couple seconds, I would hear the sound. Tap. Tap. Tap. I looked all over my room, including beneath my bed. Nothing. Tap. Tap. Tap. It was driving me nuts. I flung open the curtains only to be greeted with Julian’s smiling face. I opened the window. “What are you doing here?!”

He dragged me into a hug. “Are you alright? I was going to come yesterday but when I got here, your yard was covered in cars.”

I smirked. “You saw all those mourners.” I did air quotes around the word “mourners.” “Are you hungry? Just about everybody brought a dish.”

“Remember how Jasmine used to say white people made the best funeral food?” Julian said.

“White people make the best funeral food. You can taste all the tears, sorrow, and regret that went into each dish. It's therapeutic honestly.” I remembered, repeating her words with a nod. I shrugged. “We still reign supreme over Sunday dinner though.” How I wished I could call her. I missed Jasmine so much. Julian reached for me. Though I knew I would be joining my mom in the ground beside her were my dad to walk in on us, I clung to Julian’s shirt. He tilted my face towards his. I allowed his kiss to wash over me. Desperately, I yanked at his shirt. He didn’t hesitate to tug it over his head. I pushed Julian back on my bed and attacked every naked inch of him.

I sat up suddenly. “I love you, Julian.” He needed to know. I needed him to know.

The sound of my voice pulled his attention back to my face. His silence was unnerving to say the least. He reached up to place his hand against my chest. “I love you, too.” Our lips met once more. In hindsight, I can honestly say I wished my super powers were more useful. Had they been, I probably would have heard the car pull up. I would have heard my dad come into the house. Most importantly, I would have known he was standing in the doorway as I was undoing Julian’s belt.

The sound of my name was enough to freeze the blood in my veins. What happened next is all a blur. I remember my dad screaming at us. I remember Julian jumping to defend me. I remember my dad threatening to tell his family about us. What I will always remember no matter how old I get is that Julian didn’t back down.

“We love each other!” He shouted in my dad’s face.

My dad seized one of Julian's arms. I dove from the bed to protect him. He shoved Julian into the hallway. Julian tried to reenter but my dad slammed the door and locked us in.

“You can’t stop us!” He cried out, banging on the door.

I fought against my dad until there was no fight left. He pushed me on the floor. I knew practically every homophobic slur, but I’d never known them from him. I laid there in the fetal position, begging my dad to either let Julian in or let me out.

“You’ll be on the first bus to military school!” He shouted at me. “Do you hear me, Snowden?! This will be your last night in this house!” The windows rattled as he slammed the door closed.

I waited a few seconds. Once I was sure, I ran to my door. I opened it to the tiniest of cracks. The hallway was empty. I could hear him stalking around every inch of that house, searching for Julian.

I didn’t go to military school, but my dad was right about one thing: It was my last night in that house.

******

"And then what?” Zo asked, her glossy eyes widening with each word.

“I ran away.” I replied. “I’ve told you that before.”

“Wait…” Archer wiped some loose tears from the corners of his eyes. “What happened to Julian?”

I averted my gaze to the table. “Tears stung the edges of my eyes. “Knowing him, he was probably going to get help. That’s who he was, you see. Always trying to protect me."

"What does that mean?” Raina asked.

"J-Julian’s dead?” Coral reached out to take my hand in hers.

"No.” I wiped my eyes to face them. “Julian got hit by a car that night. He’s....” I sighed. “He’s been in a coma ever since. His dad has long since passed but I keep in contact with his mom. Sometimes I send her songs she can read to him. She knows how much I still love him.”

Raina took Zo’s hand in hers. It was a small gesture, but their rings glistened under the kitchen light.

“And you guys know the rest.” I said, still eyeing the silver bands.

“Wait, didn’t you say once that you didn’t attend your mom’s funeral?” Garrett asked. “Where were you then?”

“Already coming to the realization that the streets weren’t for me.” I admitted, shrugging. “I tried to go back to make amends, but the for-sale sign was in the yard and my family had turned into a blip in time. They moved on without so much as a forwarding address. For a long time, every time I spotted a UHAUL, I would think it was them. Or maybe I was hoping that my dad wasn’t the type of man who would move away and leave me behind. Be they for the good or for the bad, every step I took after I realized I’d been left behind brought me to today where I am able to be here for you guys.” I cleared my throat. “But enough of that. I have a show tonight and my gown needs a few finishing touches.”

Perhaps one day I would tell them about my life on the streets, but right then, more than anything, I needed a moment. I made a swift exit to my room.

With a long, drawn out sigh, I dragged a trunk from my closet. I sat on the edge of my bed before unlatching the lock. At the very top, was a picture of Jasmine, Julian and I at our table in the cafeteria. I cradled the picture in my hands and cried. Once they were free, I couldn’t stop them. Tears sprang forward for all the years I couldn’t or wouldn’t, for that matter.

I cried for Jasmine.

I cried for my mom.

I cried for Julian.

But more than anything, I cried for the Snow I was underneath it all, still waiting for my love to come home.

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Soul of Moons: Snowden Olos... (Part 2)

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 22:38:05 GMT

My mother was the typical stay at home mom. She was part of that house. The walls, the furniture, the ugly little chipped mug in the kitchen, all of it was my mom. She was fiercely proud of every inch too. Mostly, from my view, she cooked, cleaned and raised us while my dad preached in a pulpit.

Whereas my mother was the picture of motherly love, my father fades in and out. I wasn’t the son he wanted, therefore, unworthy of his attention. It’s not like I was a serial killer or anything. Truth is, how he behaved, one would think my dad would have preferred to find out I was the next Ed Gein. No, I’m not kidding. I think he would have preferred a son bringing him home a candy dish made from a human skull than a boyfriend.

I was born on October 31, 1977. According to my mother, I was a bright, happy, loving baby. Out of my siblings, I was the well behaved one. My first vivid memory of being alive was going to church with my family every Sunday. I come from a strict, southern Baptist background. Everything was Jesus this, church that. The bible was the shield in our home. Probably the sword and the shield. I remember my mom used to sit me in between my older sister and brother because they would pinch each other if she didn’t. I would sing along with the hymns and swing my legs back and forth, proud to be helping my mom in any way I could, even if it was sitting in between Malcolm and Piper.

Malcolm and Piper were always referred to as “busybodies”.

Piper was Dad’s little princess. Same as every other Daddy’s girl on the planet. His little golden babe. Piper could do no wrong. Tell him she burnt down the house and he’d swore it burst into flames on its own. God’s will be done. Not his Piper. Nu uh. No way. His Piper was a good girl. Malcolm, on the other hand, was a brown-nosing waste of air. I didn’t grow up with a strong sense of kinship when it came to my older brother. For some reason, a relationship between the two of us never seemed likely. I was only six when I realized my brother hated me. He liked fighting with Piper, but me? No. He didn’t even want to be in the same room with me if it could be avoided. Malcolm hated it when mom would shove me in between them. He would spend the rest of service with his eyes glued to the green fabric on Daddy’s robe with the sullenest expression he could muster. Piper, on the other hand, would sing hymns with me, beaming proudly at our dad.

Our father wasn’t just any preacher. He was the preacher. I didn’t realize until I was older that this was significant in any way. In a small town, the church, our church was the only one where we held court and by “we”, I mean African Americans. A highly sought-after position according to my mother’s hushed conversations with the neighbors. “Everyone wanted it but not everyone deserved it.” Is what she would tell anyone who came over. I forgot to mention my mom had a bit of a gossiping problem. She didn’t have friends. Not in the traditional sense. She had the “sisters” from the church who would shuffle over to our house where my mom would make “oh my, I had no idea you were coming” cookies and gossip for hours on end about everything from the members of our church to the neighbors on our block. They even gossiped about Ms. Dandelion, the woman who lived at the end of our street. I didn’t find out until I was older why they had it in for Ms. Dandelion. That wasn’t even her real name. That’s just what I called her because her yard would stay covered in them in the spring. Ms. Dandelion was, according to one of the “sisters”, a bit of a “woman of the night”. At such a young, tender age, I had no idea what Ms. Dandelion did to earn such a title, but eh, it wasn’t my job to understand church talk. Why did I care if Ms. Dandelion’s skirts barely covered her underwear? Or that a certain deacon had been seen more than once slithering through her back gate? As you can see, my mom and her “friends” had boring conversations. Nope, I was in it for the cookies. My mom only baked them for show. The “sisters” knew it, she knew it. It was an unspoken truth between them that I was perfectly okay with as long as I was allowed to partake. Which I was so I didn’t bother them too much about their gossip sessions.

Personally, I didn’t like the church “sisters”. They would come over and it felt like their behinds would make permanent indents in our chairs.

One day, the subject of conversation veered to me. I was sitting on the floor playing with one of Piper's dolls when Miss Calvin, who was single by choice, (Not because she was a nosy know-it-all who treated people like crap. No, of course not.) glanced over and noticed me. She’d been there a clean two hours and this was her first time acknowledging my presence. Her dark, beady eyes narrowed and zeroed in on my scalp. Even though I wasn’t looking directly at the kitchen table, I was highly aware of the judgement levels in the house rising to a record high. It went from partly cloudy to partly cloudy with a chance of isolated bitchiness real quick.

“Lydia,” She somehow managed to give my mom’s name six syllables with her southern drawl. One of her short, stubby fingers pointed down at my feet. “What on Earth is your boy wearing?”

I willed myself to stay in my “good boy” lane. It was not my job to point out that it would be easier to gossip about the deacons playing poker on Wednesday nights instead of the prayer service they were always going on about than it would be for her to care about the glitter I’d decorated a pair of Piper’s old shoes with. According to my mom, I could keep them, but they were not allowed to make an appearance outside her front door. Not that I understood. I thought Piper’s raggedy Mary Janes looked absolutely stunning in glittery blue and gold. I’d even crafted little swirls around the heels. Ever the good boy, I cradled Piper’s doll to my chest and got up to leave. Before I made my exit, since I had to pass them anyway, I paused to collect three cookies. I was barely out of the kitchen when I heard: “You keep on and the whole town will be talking.” Translation: I will be talking. Keeping my trap closed is too much of a chore.

“It’s just some shoes.” My mother muttered. I knew she knew I was standing at the door eavesdropping. I was the good one but I was also a gossip in the making and I wanted to know what was so wrong with my shoes that I’d spend hours perfecting.

“Just some shoes?” Miss Calvin’s voice had taken on a disgusted tone.

“Yes, shoes.” Something wasn’t right. My mom only used that tone with Malcolm and Piper when she wanted them to do as she said right then, no questions asked. No back talk. No lip.

“No need to get testy.” Miss Calvin said calmly, as if my mom were overreacting. “I was only asking because…” She paused. “How old is Snowden? Six?” She inhaled a gulp of air before spitting it out: “The minister’s son can’t be gay, honey. It’s a disgrace.”

“What makes you think my son is gay?” My mom’s first lady façade was starting to crack. One thing I knew about my mom at this point from snippets of conversation here and there was that she wasn’t always the prim and proper woman these women knew. My grandmother on my dad’s side was always calling my mom a “wild one.” From the smile beaming from her lips every time she said it, one could get the idea that she would have been perfectly fine if my mother had popped out of her belly.

“Oh Lydia, you don’t have to be so protective. I’m just making sure you’re keeping around your doorsteps swept. A gay son could tip the scales at the monthly vote. You know how this town is. Small town, strong, Christian values.” The way she said “Christian” sounded suspiciously like a threat. She did say: “Gay son, loose house.” but she might as well have.

I jumped at the sound of a hand slapping against a counter top. “I think it’s time for you to go, Donna.” My mom said calmly, her timbre calmer than Miss Calvin’s. The first lady mask had finally slipped off. Her voice was saturated in intent.

The chair slid back a few inches, probably leaving a black mark on the linoleum, which my mom hated. For some reason, I didn’t have the sense to run before Miss Calvin knew I had been listening. When she scurried past, I was still standing against the wall, the back of my head pressed against my mom’s three day old paint job. (I don’t know why she bothered to paint. Every house within a hundred mile radius was splattered in eggshell. We were a parody of the modern family.) Miss Calvin hadn’t even touched the doorknob when she realized I was watching her. Again, her eyes zeroed in on my shoes.

Shaking her head, she hissed: “Shame!” Like she was a snake slithering through a garden somewhere and not a plump church lady fleeing my mom's kitchen. “Shame!” The door slammed behind her.

“Snowden…” My mom’s voice sounded so far away.

I never told another soul until right this very second but for months on end, even when Miss Calvin was smiling at me and giving me peppermints from her bag, all I could picture was the look of revulsion in her eyes. At night, I would toss and turn with nightmares of her chasing me around the church with a bible screeching “SHAME!”

A few weeks after the Miss Calvin incident was my first day of school. I wish I could say I loved school and everything about going made me swell with joy, but I won’t just sit here and prattle off lies so allow me to talk about school. First of all, where I’m from, the parents were allowed to keep their kids home until there was nothing more they could teach them. I’m sure there was plenty more Lydia Mackery could teach me, but at the end of the day, having me home during the day was becoming a problem. She never said it was partially because of Miss Calvin’s comments and I’m glad because she didn’t have to. I already knew.

Because of the month my birthday fell in, they chose to put me in Kindergarten. My first vivid memory of ever getting in trouble was in Kindergarten. No, I am not kidding. All I remember is sitting in a cell with little more than bread and water in some lady’s classroom for a crime I didn’t commit. I do not remember my kindergarten teacher’s name, so as of this second, she's Ms. 5K.

I know at the beginning of this I said something about being in a cell with only bread and water. I can’t confirm nor deny, but there’s a chance I might have embellished a tad. What really happened was she made me sit on a wooden stool with my face pointed at the wall. I had the esteemed privilege of dining with my other classmates when lunch time came around but when it was over, my face was repositioned in front of that wall and that’s where it stayed until my sentence was served.

The whole class should have been wearing those “Justice For Snowden” T-Shirts that I'd designed in my imagination but since I couldn’t seem to imagine a patent, let me back up and tell you exactly how I got in trouble. I was not popular in Ms.5K’s class. Luckily, kids of today will probably never know this issue. Walking into kindergarten already knowing how to read and write is not a big deal. As a matter of fact, they invented 3K and 4K to help today’s kids get on the road to greatness as early as possible. When I was in school though, it made me unpopular. Kids avoided me. They didn’t want to be associated with the know-it-all who sat in the back writing and mumbling to himself. (Yes, I talked to myself. I was my only friend and for the most part, those kids were idiots.) What was Ms. 5K’s response to such a child? She tried to get me to learn to be like the other kids. She would say: “Aren’t you tired of being alone, Snowden? Wouldn’t you like to play with the other kids?”

How did I respond? For one, I was working on an anthology series called "The Mouse From Mexico". The day she grabbed my arm, I went home and ended the series by having his neck get caught in a mouse trap. SNAP! It was a torrid, gruesome affair, but imagining her face while I was scrawling it out made it worth my time. In class, I protested her attempts at normalcy by correcting her spelling and or grammar every chance I got. Every chalkboard or sheet of paper was scrutinized down to the last letter. I wasn’t raised to be like everybody else and she wasn’t going to be the one who made me start.

Mr. K was just a casualty of one of the many injustices I suffered throughout elementary school. Who was Mr. K? Mr. K was one of the twenty-six letters Ms. 5K had lined against the wall in the classroom. We were to address them as Mr. or Mrs. and each letter had an accompanying backstory to better help us remember.

There was this kid whom I only feel comfortable referring to as Little Snot Nose who really had something against me. I never said or did anything to Little Snot Nose, I swear. For some reason though, it did not matter. Little Snot Nose had it in for me all the same. He had plucked Mr. K from his coveted location between Mrs. J and Mrs. L (I spent most of my Kindergarten years wondering why Mr. K didn’t marry one of them. They were such fine, upstanding cardboard cutouts. Mr. K, you set your standards way too high) and was pretending he was a cowboy. Mind you, these were not huge letters. They should not have had anyone galloping around a room shouting, “Giddy up!” just because the teacher had stepped out of the class for five seconds. Especially a hateful, butterball of a brat. He wasn’t halfway across the floor when Mr. K split beneath him, sending him spiraling to the floor.

Everyone, including me, laughed.

For some reason, when questioned, every finger in the class pointed directly at me. Not one tried to defend me. They all said I did it.

Ms. 5K didn’t even attempt to listen to me. Didn’t read me my rights. Didn’t offer me one phone call. I didn’t even get to see my lawyer. Just three quick swats with a ruler to my ass and then a wall for the rest of the day. Just in case you missed it, I came up at a time when you were allowed to get spanked in class. Ms. 5K didn’t hit hard so it didn’t faze me. Or, it could be that I was so mad I didn’t feel anything.

I openly shunned Little Snot Nose and my entire class for the rest of that year. Did I try to get to know any of them? Hell no! They didn’t deserve me. Not that they were lined up to get to know me but after that day, even if they had, I was more than closed for business. Screw all of them.

I was Snowden, the pariah and not just any pariah. Oh no, I just had to go that extra mile and be the gay pariah.

No, the term “gay” wasn’t openly tossed around, but ever since Miss Calvin had released the term into my atmosphere, I had claimed it as my own. Before I had a clear understanding of what the word meant or why Miss Calvin practically had to shove it off her tongue, I embraced it. I was Snowden, The Gay Boy. Somehow, I had made up my mind that if I were a superhero, that would be my name. I would wear all spandex with a gigantic glitter G on the front.

After the Mr. K incident, I doubled down on begging my mom to let my stay home. Each morning I would start off with a list of reasons as to why I should be able to stay home. Whether I was brushing my teeth or slinging my bookbag on my back, in between, I made time to beg for permission to quit school. Each time, with a patient smile, she would shake her head and say school was in my best interest. One day, while Malcolm was walking us to school, I asked Piper why school was in my best interest.

“Because Mom is terrified she’s raising a fag!” Malcolm blurted, stopping in the middle of the long, dirt road. He placed a hand on each of my shoulders and shook, hard. “She wants you to be a man and you’re more of a lily in a valley of faggots.”

“Stop it, Malcolm!” Piper shouted, shoving him.

He didn’t release his grip on me though. “You think I don’t see the drawings? You’re no superhero. Just wait ‘til dad finds out.”

“Let him go!” Piper pleaded, grabbing his arm.

“Why?” Malcolm sneered, shaking off her hand. “He’s not going to do anything! He’s always sucking up to mom.” He leaned in closer. “She’s all you’ve got, isn’t she? No one else wants you around. No one wants you.”

I didn’t say anything. I just stood there. What was I supposed to say? My older brother barely uttered a single syllable in my direction, let alone touch me. I didn’t understand what was going on but I kind of got the feeling that being my brother was becoming a bit of an embarrassment to him. More than anything, that hurt.

“You’re the faggot!” I screamed, swinging my leg upwards. The glitter encrusted tip of my shoe connected with Malcolm’s crotch, spiraling black flakes to the ground. Some clung to the fabric of his pants.

He howled and finally released me. I backed up as my brother crumpled into a pile in the dirt. I kicked a quick burst in his face. “I am a superhero!” I exclaimed proudly, stepping over him.

Perhaps I should have helped him to his feet, but no. The ship had sailed on any amount of help that I would ever extend to my brother.
Instead, with my head held high, I continued to school with Piper.

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Epilogue: Agents Of Farewell...

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 18:03:55 GMT

"I figured I had to be dead cuz-" He made a motion at Toilyn. "This one hugged me when I sat up. What sucks is now I'm sure of it 'cause you're here." He nodded at Juniper. "I never imagined you to be a part of my Hell loop and yet, here you are."

I wanted… No, NEED… I needed to be the one to tell him. "You're not dead, Jan." His gaze swung from Juniper to me. Our eyes locked and in that moment, none of it mattered. He was here, alive. The entire room melted away as I rushed to his side. He gathered me in his arms as if we'd always been this way.

I clung to the fabric of his shirt, willing my cheeks to remain dry. There was no time for tears. I would not cry.

"Get a room." The dry humor of Toilyn's voice tickled my ears, reminding me of where we were… Of who I was.

I released Jan immediately.

"So where are we?"

I stood, grateful for the subject change. "This used to be Dr. Patil's home." Juniper explained before Toilyn or I could respond. "Who's apparently dead now, according to your story."

"I told you guys everything I could remember." Jan said quickly.

Juniper nudged my shoulder. Just a little longer. My heart pleaded. Can't we just be in this moment for a little while longer…

I moved so that she could get closer to Jan. "You're going to save the timeline, Jan."

"There's no way!" He burst out laughing. His laughter sobered as he realized none of us had cracked so much as a smile. "Wait, you're serious?"

"I am." She replied, nodding. "The technology that you created will save the lives of the doctors at Altura who are working on Covid-99 so that Luminous can remove them from this timeline."

"Doesn't that mean it'll still happen in 2019?"

She nodded somberly. "It has to. It's a historic event. We cannot alter historic events in any way, that's the rules."

"But the people…" I said. "Millions…"

Again, Juniper nodded. "Removing the virus from this era will mean the doctors, nurses and scientists who are tasked to be on the front lines will go on to do those things. Without this reset, the team who goes on to figure it out will parish."

"All of them?" Toilyn asked, her voice cracked with disbelief.

She didn't even hesitate. "Yes."

"If Jan is the cure, why not place him in 2019 before any of this happens?"

"You already know that answer, Toilyn." Juniper said. She turned her attention, first to Jan, then to me. "I will give you two a little time then we have to go."

She gestured at Toilyn, whose neck was still locked on Jan. For a few seconds, I could see the turmoil in her expression. Juniper reached to grab her elbow, but Toilyn snatched out of reach. She was out the door, stomping down the stairs before Juniper could react. She chanced one last look at me, then Jan: "Five minutes."

"You saved my life." Jan said as soon as the door closed behind her.

"You saved me first." All of a sudden, my throat felt extremely dry. "When I found you… I thought…"

"I thought the same." He began to fiddle with the blanket covering his legs. "Ya know, when you're a kid, screaming with laughter is something you become accustomed to. It's just a sound and you would think all your screams would sound similar no matter how you age, but that's not true. I don't think I'll ever be able to shake the sounds of my screams in that lab."

"Jan…" Look at me! My thoughts screamed. He wouldn't. His gaze stayed on his fingers tracing lines on the blanket. "I've got something for you."

When he still didn't look up, I fished through my pockets to find the picture of him. I slid it in front of him. He picked it up. Once, twice, he turned it over; almost as if he didn't recognize the people. "It's Mavis." He murmured finally. "Where did you get this?"

I explained as much as I could, without getting into my suspicions. The tips of his fingers were trembling on the edges. I wished that he would look at me, but no. His eyes remained on the picture. "She didn't die because of me." The words were weaved with an undertone of relief. "It wasn't my fault."

"No." I replied.

"You went through a lot to find me."

"I did."

"Z…" Blue eyes fell on me finally. It was mere seconds but it might as well have been hours. I would have given anything to be a mind reader in that moment. "And now I'm supposed to save the timeline." His words were quiet, as if he'd meant to say something else, but changed his mind. He flipped his hand over. A tiny ball of blue and gold fluttered from his fingers. It did tiny pirouettes down the bed before disappearing through the wall. "I need to know…" He punched the bed angrily. "This wasn't supposed to happen to me! I could have taken that dude and I know it! They caught me with my guard down and I have to live with that!" He punched the blanket again. "I'm going to kill that guy one day."

"Get in line."

"There's a line?" A tiny smile swept his lips. "Will I ever see you again?"

"Of course." I answered at the same time as Juniper's tiny knocks signaled the end of our time.

I turned on my boot. Jan's hand shot out to grab my wrist. I looked down at his fingers wrapped around my naked skin. I'd never noticed how lithe and artistic they were. My eyes studied the tips of his fingernails, which still had a bit of dirt beneath them. Unlike me, he had not bitten his nails down to nubs.

"Jan…"

Our eyes met.

He smiled.

I smiled.

For a few fleeting moments, that's all that mattered.

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Epilogue: Agents Of Revelations...

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 18:00:59 GMT

For four days, we took turns playing look out while Jan slept. Every time his body would stir, the glow would return. It didn't work when Toilyn tried, but for me, when I would touch him, the blue and gold would calm itself. Once again out of sight, but never out of mind.

"What's that all about?" She'd questioned on the second night.

I removed my hand from Jan's chest to turn to her. "What?"

"He wasn't a traffic light last we saw him unless I missed something."

I shrugged. I had as much understanding as she did: None.

"You should get some sleep." Toilyn advised as I followed her down the stairs. Again, we were huddled inside the doctor's home. Not the best plan, but at the moment, our only plan. We had no idea what was going on at Luminous. There weren't many available options.

"Hey, what's that look?" Toilyn asked, waving her hand in front of my face. "Cheer up. We're still alive."

"For now." I replied, throwing my legs over the arm of the loveseat.

Toilyn settled across from me on the couch. "It's been three days."

Exactly. I thought, rolling everything through my mind like a tumbleweed. It felt as if we'd been in this forever, but only a small amount of time had passed. In three days, how were we still alive?

"You never explained what happened back there." I said, changing the subject. "At Noir."

"Which part?"

I mimicked how she'd held up her palms in the lab.

"So you're saying you've never pushed the red jewel?" She tapped hers with the nail on her middle finger.

"Obviously."

She fiddled with the lace on her bracelet. "It's a kill switch. Ashes everything the beam touches. Well, no. That's not quite accurate. I think our moods control it because I've used it to subdue a few agents without actually killing them." She tilted her head thoughtfully. "I'm sure they wished I had though. It's never pretty."

"Is that why your record at Luminous is so long?"

She continued to fiddle with the lace, now guiltily. "I don't use it often, but it has gotten me out of a lot of tight spots." She smiled thoughtfully. "Since Jan messed with yours, it probably spits out roses or some shit now."

Jan… Somehow all conversations led back to him. I turned my nose upwards as if he could be seen through the floorboards.

"Hey, he's going to wake up and we're going to save the world…" Toilyn's gaze took its place alongside mine on the ceiling.

"What do you think they did to him?"

She moved as if she was going to shrug, but thought better of it. "Have you considered that whatever happened to Jan, Luminous knew it had to happen?"

Yes. No matter how much I didn't want to absorb the suspicion, I couldn't shake the feeling. Aloud: "But what?"

She rested her elbows on her knees. "The tech."

"What about it?"

"If Bateman's assignment was to watch Jan, Luminous had to know that Noir would eventually get interested in him."

"The remote, Toy. We already knew that."

"What if Noir's motivations were about his remote, but Luminous' are about the rest of it?"

She had my attention now. "He can't do anything else."

"Oh yes he can." She nodded thoughtfully. "Remember how his chest had all that dried up blood with no marks?" She crossed a line on her chest. Two more before: "He can heal himself. All of this has to have something to do with that tech."

"Altura!" I sat straight up excitedly. "When Gillian cornered me in her office, she said that my meddling turned two assignments into one."

Toilyn mumbled something.

I tilted my head. "Huh? What?"

She jumped up and started pacing back and forth around the coffee table. On her seventh rotation, she snapped her fingers triumphantly.

"Care to share with the rest of the congregation?"

"Him! Jan!"

Oh, well that explains everything… "Him, Jan… What?"

"I think…" She clapped her hands. "No, I'm almost certain. Jan's the cure."

"That would mean Luminous knew he needed to be captured by Noir for his tech to… I don't know. Whatever they did to him."

"Whatever it takes." Only the voice wasn't coming from either of us. Coming down the stairs, slowly, slowly… Almost as if she were floating, was the last face I expected to see: Juniper. "Z…" She greeted as her boot lifted from the final stair. "Toylin…" Inside the corridors of Luminous, her essence always carried a familiar air, almost as if she was meant to be there, but here… Here inside our “safe house” she seemed out of place, otherworldly even; reminding me that she always was, we’d just somehow forgotten. Juniper just was and at that moment, she was outside the library, where we’d never seen. Where she didn’t belong.

Turquoise and purple waves of hair swayed from side to side as she glided around the couch. She came to a stop beside Toilyn, whose mouth was now hanging open.

"Are you planning on catching flies in that thing?" She smiled, though the humor didn't quite touch the glassiness of her white eyes. She waved at the couch behind them. "Shall we sit?"

Toilyn didn't relax until Juniper had already taken a seat and even then, she took her place apprehensively.

"Don’t you have some books to file?"

"Gillian thought it best if I come."

"Toilyn's right, isn't she?" I questioned. There was no need for pleasantries, only honesty.

"For the most part." Juniper's voice swirled through the room, brushing every surface like a feather.

Toilyn gritted her teeth. "Luminous knew then. Luminous knew the whole time."

"I knew." Juniper said quietly.

"You're Luminous!" I snapped.

Juniper's head jerked up at the harshness in my voice. "Not everything that exists within those walls is Luminous." She paused as if contemplating her words. She nodded though neither Toilyn nor I had uttered a sound. "I saved your job all those years ago."

She didn't go into specifics but then again, it wasn't needed. The trimmers of Brie's ghost never left the deepest caverns of my subconscious. No matter the lengths I took to cast her out, she would always be there, lying in wait.

"Gillian was going to terminate you, but I couldn't allow that to happen. I knew in order for the timeline to be spared, you had to exist." Juniper continued.

"Then why were they trying to take her off the case?!" Toilyn demanded.

"Because I told her you needed to believe nobody would go after him."

"Wait… What?" I didn't like how any of this sounded. They used me… Us. They used us. "You tricked me!"

"I knew Toilyn wouldn't let you go after him alone, yes." Again, Juniper's head was nodding and again, I didn't like what was falling from her face.

"We could have died!" Toilyn exclaimed, jumping to her feet. I knew that fiery burning in her gaze all too well. She was already flexing her fingers.

"I knew because of her bond with Jan…"

"Who?! Not me!" Juniper was one wrong syllable away from Toilyn's fist connecting with every body part they felt like pummeling.

"No. Not you." If Juniper was worried in any way about Toilyn, her poker face was unclockable. "You."

"We don't have a-"

Her hand was up, swatting my protests away. "I knew you wouldn't stop until you had him back."

"No, stop trying to pretty this up, Juniper. Luminous sacrificed us." Toilyn said angrily. "Nine times out of ten, since Z had broken law before, Gillian had no problem sending her in there with no back up. In her eyes, Z is expendable."

"You were there." Juniper stated matter of factly. "As I knew you would be."

"Only me!" Toilyn's fists were shaking now. "That means in your eyes, I'm expendable too!"

"And yet, you made sure she made it out." Her face still a mask of tranquility, she glanced up at Toilyn. "As I knew you would."

"I'm going to check on Jan before I do something I won't regret." Toilyn turned on her heels and stomped away from the living room. She continued to stomp each and every step until she was at the top.

"Are you angry with me too?"

Yes. Aloud: "No, I'm confused. When I was at the library… Juniper, you spoke to me." Something clicked. "Wait a second, when I came to you for advice, were you just keeping me distracted?"

"He had to open the letter." That wasn't an admission, but all the same, it spoke volumes.

"But the wreck, his assistant, none of it was his fault."

Glassy white eyes cascaded through the betrayal in my expression. "He needed to believe it was." She blinked once. Twice. "Had he not humbled himself, neither you nor Toilyn would be alive. Opening that letter set into motion the man who protected the both of you." She stood. "I'm not apologetic in any way if that's what you're seeking. He's the cure. One man can save millions of lives in this timeline."

"But what about us, Juniper? What about me? I thought… I thought we were friends. Wait… Where are you going?"

Her tiny feet were almost at the stairs, as if I wasn't questioning every conversation that had ever passed between us. Light illuminated the curtains, allowing sunlight to peek through as the sun rose. The shroud of what was left of night had slowly fallen away during our conversation, giving way to the fourth day.

Her hand on the banister, Juniper paused to look at me. "My silence gave him the push he needed to protect you." Even with the distance, I could tell that I'd hurt her somehow. Oh, the irony! She allowed Luminous to use us for a suicide mission and somehow I was being offensive. Before I could raise this point, she continued: "Don't ever question my love for you, Z. We are friends."

POV: Jan

I had no concept of time. It could have been hours, possibly days. For however long, when I regained consciousness, my wrists were bound above my head. Some type of conversation was always happening around me. How frazzled it sounded, they were determined for me to wake up. Whoever "they" were.

I had no idea when someone had graciously relieved me of my shirt, but I was reminded to thank them every time that sliver of leather lashed across my bare chest. Sometimes it was needles. I had overheard them mentioning they were attempting to synthesize the pills in my utility belt. From what I could gather with strained hearing, they were shooting me up with it like I was some kind of a fiend. Though their curiosity was keeping me alive, something about the revelation didn't sit right with me.

One thing I was careful to make note of was how I was hardly ever alone. There was always the sound of shoes in the room, except when those shoes were boots. Somehow I knew the boots were more important. They carried a different kind of weight.

Female weight, I'd theorized by the aroma of perfume wafting towards my nostrils whenever she was near.

Another day had come to a close, or so I'd told myself.

Again, I could hear boots. Step. Step. Step. The same steps I had been listening to for the longest, but dared not lift my head. If she knows you’re awake, she’ll come over here. I warned myself. Somehow I knew this to be true. Though I willed myself to remain statuesque, the silent chant meant absolutely nothing to her. The more I mentally begged her not to, the closer she came until I could feel the warmth of her breath tickling my skin. I resisted the urge to jerk away as she ran her fingers along an already healed lash across my stomach.

“I know you’re awake.” Her words were like a fist punching through my chest to grip my heart. Almost instantly, it started to beat faster. “I can see the sweat beading on your brow.” I couldn’t help but wonder if she could smell the terror seeping from my pores. She backed up a few inches. I couldn’t see her, but I was still aware of her presence. Whenever anyone else was with me, they paid the doors no mind. Everything about her felt different, right down to how she vacated the room. She was always careful to close the door behind herself.

“Do you know where you are?” From the sound of it, she was further away now. A lot further. Good.

Don’t open your eyes… Don’t open your eyes… The last thing I remembered was saving Toilyn's life. After that, my entire existence was a blur. Time seemed to pass slowly yet, I was aware the world was ambling along without me. I had no idea how long my hands had been roped to that ceiling, but I knew it had been forever since I was near a friendly face. Z… Toilyn… Were they alive?... And if they were, were they elsewhere in a similar predicament?

Through the slits that I would chance here and there, I could tell I was in a lab of sorts. I had no idea who she was, but I could make out a hazy view of the boots I'd come to memorize. They were a deep, leathery brown. Above those, she was wearing a black jumper. Swaying in the small of her back was a long, sleek, black braid. Her hand was hovering over a metal table, in deep thought. Finally she selected a syringe. She flicked the needle before holding it up to the light.

When I first awoke, because she was always alone, I thought I'd imagined myself a companion. A few days later, maybe she was a ghost. (Or maybe I was hyping up my thoughts to override my common sense.) Either way, neither was not the case. The hands I was watching were of a darker complexion. Definitely real, definitely alive.

"Dax!"

I knew that name. This was bad. A separate set of boots shuffled into the lab. I barely had enough time to reclose my eyes.

"You screamed?"

"Funny." She didn't sound like it was hilarious in the slightest. "Did you find Dr. Patil?"

"Yes. I disposed of him. We caught up to the wife, but we're unable to locate the kids."

"Forget the kids. A man is more likely to spill his guts to the woman of the house. Not the babies."

"Suri…"

Suri. Did I say bad? I was mistaken. This was the stuff of nightmares. "Going by your tone, I can tell I'm not going to like what you're about to say next." I could hear movement. Possibly her turning to face him. "Let me guess: Your team didn't locate the blueprint."

His reply was inaudible, but her "Dammit, Dax!" was not. "How could you have been so careless in the first place?!" The sound of a slap resonated through the room. "Find them!"

"Suri…"

"Don't Suri me…" She mimicked his tone flawlessly. "Do you realize what your stupidity may have cost us?!"

"Stupidity? Need I remind you that you were the one who insisted upon toting them to the college? Why were they on you in the first place?"

Sounds of a struggle, at first. Those merged into ones of a different kind of connection. Were they really… Yep, no mistaking that sound. They were full on making out like I wasn't hanging just a few feet away. Ugh… Dax and Suri… Ew. Just wait 'til I tell Z. Mentally, I sighed. If I live that long.

"You worry too much." Dax's voice whispered into what I imagined were a pair of lustful eyes attached to a sadist.

"We almost didn't grab him!" I was ninety-six percent certain the "him" in question was me. "If we're going to crush Luminous once and for all, there can be no more mistakes."

"There won't be. Let me handle this."

A few days later, or nights, or whenever, for some reason, I could tell something had happened. I didn’t feel any different as they bustled about me, but I knew something wasn’t the same as it had been. For one, though movement in the room always felt unsure and rushed, this felt more grave, as if they were trying to move onto something else. I waited just in case someone decided to double back. Finally, I couldn’t take the suspense any longer. I opened my eyes to a tiny slit. I looked down at my torso. It appeared no different than the last time I’d seen it. Whenever that was. Bruised but nonetheless, healed. I studied my pants then chanced a look at my arms. Both sets were filthy but at least I wasn't just a Christmas ornament in my boxers. For all intents and purposes, I was relatively unharmed. I was so busy scrutinizing my limbs that I didn’t hear the footsteps at the door. The knob turned slowly, catching my attention.

I barely had time for my eyes to slam close before Suri burst into the room: “Wake up!” She slapped me. It stung, but with all the practice of staying motionless, I had enough sense to not react. She did it again.

"I know you're awake!" She pressed my cheeks between either of her fingers, hard. "All we needed was your tech!"

She shoved me away from her. I could make out the sounds of her pacing back and forth. "If they're here, (Somebody's here!) there has to be more to you than that stupid remote." She jabbed a finger at my chest. "Marlo!"

"Yes ma'am?"

"Get the defibrillator."

"Ma'am? Why?"

"If he wants to pretend to be a corpse, perhaps we should treat him as such."

"Ma'am?"

"If you ma'am me one more time… Get the defibrillator, Marlo!"

Instantly, all pretenses drained from me. My heart began to race; threatening to tear its way out of my chest. I struggled against the restraints.

Suri grabbed me once more. "I knew you were awake." She sneered though I had yet to open my eyes. I didn't know what was about to happen, but my knowledge of defibrillators was enough to know I didn't want to watch it happen.

I could hear the door opening again. "Shiloh, where's Marlo?"

"Suri, you can't do this." Whoever it was, her tone was pleading. "This is Dax. This isn't you."

"I don't know why you're even here. Where is your idiotic brother?! He's such a waste. I don't know why you insist on keeping him around." Suri snapped.

"The same reason you've obviously forgotten about." I heard whoever Shiloh was, murmuring.

"What did you just say?"

"N-Nothing." Came the hasty response.

"That's right, nothing. Now, bring me the damn defibrillator!"

"Suri…"

"Now Shiloh or you'll be the next thing I hang from this ceiling!"

There was a short silence. A set of nails raked my torso, a small warning that Suri was still present. I could hear the door reopening. Three words, full of reluctance, filled my ears: "Plug it in.”

Please… There was enough hesitation for me to scrape together a little hope. All of it dissolved under Shiloh's sigh of resignation. "Just turn this dial and when you're ready…"

"I know how to use it!" The sounds of what I assumed was Suri snatching the paddles from Shiloh prickled my eyelashes. "Get out!"

"Are you sure?"

"I want that damn tech!"

The cool touch of metal caressed my skin. I jerked away from the invasion. "All you have to do is tell me what I want to know." When there was no response, she tiptoed so close to me that I could smell what she had for lunch on her breath. "Fine then."

There was no need to shout "Clear!" This wasn't a medical drama.

I couldn't keep my eyes closed any longer. Every piece of me felt like it was on fire. A scream ripped from my vocal cords. I thought I knew every sound that my body could ever produce, but no. Pain tore from every part of me and there was nothing I could do.

Her laughing face warped into an expression of pain. She clapped her hands over her ears. “Stop it!” She shrieked.

Blue began to tear from my feet. It started as a slow burn, at the tips of my toes before crawling up my legs. I attempted to close my mind off from the pain, but it rippled from me anyway. I was a slave to the throbbing agony.

“Stop it!” She was screaming now. Our screams mingled in the middle of the floor. The blue was now curling from the tips of my fingers. It poured uncontrollably from me. She tried to scramble from the room but the glow had all but blinded her. She clambered to a wall in order to feel her way out.

"Shiloh?!" She steadied herself on a piece of railing. "Dammit, Shiloh?!" I could still make out her silhouette, screeching for Shiloh as she frantically pulled herself through the door.

Toilyn… Z...

There was a time where I imagined our paths crossing again. Were these my last moments, I didn't want to waste them crippled with torment. I wanted to think of better times, better scenery. I wanted to remember how Toilyn's nose would scrunch up right before she said something sarcastic or how Z would smile at nothing in particular when she thought nobody was watching. I wanted to embrace them. No, cling… I was clinging to them. Neither of them liked me much, but they were friends… My friends…

And I was going to miss them.

My lips parted, releasing the only sound that meant anything to me: “Z...”

And then, the world went dark.

comments

Agents Of Noir...

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 17:46:13 GMT

"I'm guessing this is Dax's little hidey hole."

We had no idea where we were. To the left of us was a desk with a small, white lamp lying on its side. To the right, a dresser with the majority of the clothes strewn across the floor. Behind us was a four post bed with the sheets and blankets rolled beneath a yellow pillow.

"From the looks of it, whoever was here left in a hurry." I whispered.

"If we're in the right place," Toilyn said, surveying the clothes. She picked up a sweatshirt and sniffed it. She scrunched up her nose. "Luminous has a lot of explaining to do."

"What's that face? It smells?"

She tossed the shirt aside to rummage through the rest. "No. I mean, come on, Z… We don't live at Luminous." She held up a pair of pants. "For the bad guys, they sure are hospitable."

I continued to watch the door while she stalked through what could end up not even being Dax's possessions. "They make sure their agents are comfortable." I said quietly. "The more comfortable you become, be the situation good or bad, right or wrong, the human mind will cling to what we know. Comfort zones are in our nature. We can't help it."

"So you're saying defecting is in our nature?"

"You honestly want me to believe that you, of all people, have never thought about it?" I shrugged though her back was still turned to me. "I can only speak for myself, but when I considered the idea, it was because Noir made so much sense. Not only that, it seemed so much easier. They basically do whatever, whenever, no consequences. For an amount of time that I'm not even comfortable admitting to, I felt like a prisoner of this job. I wanted to do whatever I wanted, consequences be damned. It wasn't until…" I paused. Brie.

Toilyn threw me a quick glance over her shoulder before returning to her task. "Brie… Right?"

"Right." I replied to her slouched form. "After all of that, I wanted to blame Dax, blame Noir… Blame anybody and everybody but the person who caused all of it and it was getting harder and harder to face her in the mirror." I sighed. "Truth is, by the time I accepted my part in it, too much time had passed and Brie was already a higher up in Noir. More than anything, I just wanted to apologize for bringing her back. I wanted to tell her not only had I accepted that this was my fault, I wanted her to know that never again would I put someone else on the line for my own interests." My voice cracked. Despite my best efforts, my eyes were trying to tear up. "I wanted her to know that I put all that selfishness behind me, that I really had changed."

"Yes." Toilyn turned so that she sat Indian style across from me.

I brushed the vulnerability from my cheeks. Toilyn was the only one allowed to know that side of me. Never again would I risk someone catching even a partial glimpse into my soul. "Yes what?"

"I've thought about defecting in the past." She fiddled with the flooring between her knees. "I changed my mind after I found something worth sticking around for."

"What was that?"

"You, Z." She stared down at the floor, lowering her voice. "Dammit, I stayed for you, okay?"

"Me?"

"You're my best friend, my family. If that's not worth seeing this through to the end, what is?"

Throughout time, space and all that was in between, no matter what, we always chose each other. Us before them. Us before Luminous. Almost at the same time, we both reached to wipe stray tears from our eyes.

"I love you, Toy."

"I love… Wait a second, what's that?"

So much for mush. "What?"

She jabbed her finger at the bed. "Right there. Under the bed." She crawled to reach under the bed. "Right… There. Here, get this." She waved a cracked picture frame back at me. "There's something else." She sat up, straining to pull something free. "Little help?" I tossed the frame on the bed to lend a hand. Together, we dragged a large, vintage looking trunk from beneath the bed. She hopped to her feet. I don't know what she was about to say, but instead her eyes clouded over. "Uh, Z?"

I looked up from the trunk. "What?"

"Did you look at that picture?"

"No." Was I supposed to?

"It's Jan." She said.

Though I heard her perfectly, my brain didn't compute. "Huh?"

"The picture." She snatched it off the bed to hand to me. "It's Jan."

My jaw dropped. "Where are we?" In frame was Jan and a girl, in what appeared to be her early twenties. Her lips were curved into a pinched smile, as if someone had to beg for its presence. His face was completely blank. Gone was the sarcastic confidence that we'd come to know. Neither of them looked particularly comfortable. It was just that, a picture, and they just happened to be in it. I dropped the frame on the floor to stamp the glass free.

"What are you doing?"

"What if this means something?"

"It means that guy is definitely single." Toilyn smirked. "Or he was after they took that pic. Those two have zero chemistry."

I almost threw the glass at her. Almost. Instead, I plucked the photo free then shoved it in my back pocket.

"Why are you keeping that?" Toilyn's eyes narrowed as if she could see the photo through my jeans. "You know what? Nevermind." She leaned down, disguising her annoyance within a heavy sigh. "Help me lift this onto the bed."

I took my place on the other end of the trunk. "Ready?" When our eyes met, I nodded. "3… 2… Lift."

We hoisted it from the floor. "It definitely didn't feel this light when we were dragging it." Toilyn muttered, attempting to lift the lid. "Figures. Locked." Her eyes scanned the room before going back to the keyhole. "Do you still have that weird looking key from that stuff that jerk off gave us?"

"Why would he have a key to…" I thought about it. "Here? Wherever here is." I fished around my pockets. If I still had that key after everything, it would be a miracle. Finally, my fingers brushed across the brass. "I one hundred percent legit doubt…" I began, watching her slide it in the keyhole. To both our surprise, we heard a click. "I stand corrected."

"Keep an eye on the door." She hissed, throwing open the lid. "On second thought…"

I was already beside her. "What is this stuff?" So many colors. The amount of OCD it had to take… The clothes were color coordinated, folded so neatly that the creases were sharp enough to cut glass. Pants and shirts. Sweaters and shorts. On top of it all, placed directly in the middle, was a rolled up poster looking thing alongside an envelope.

Toilyn selected the rolled up paper. "I'm starting to think this isn't Dax's hidey hole… These are floor plans." She spread the poster across the nearest empty swatch of bed. "Why are floor plans stuffed underneath somebody's bed?" She asked, smoothing the edges so it would stop rolling back up.

"Hold on, I think this a letter."

Toilyn glanced up from the plans. "Man, the last time somebody snatched up a letter…"

"So you're saying I shouldn't?"

"Oh no, no, no. We're royally jacked anyway. What else could happen?"

I held the envelope up to the light. One thing I knew for sure was it wasn't a bomb, but that was about it. I tore at the edges. Instantly, I recognized the handwriting from the college. "Dr. Patil wrote this." I told Toilyn. If eyes could roll free from their sockets, she would have been an expert.

"Ugh… I'm tired of this fool. What?"

"If you're reading this, I'm either in hiding or I'm already dead."

"Hopefully the latter."

"Shhhh. Hold up a sec." I cleared my throat. "In this chest you will find the floor plans of Noir Corporation. I acquired them from one of their agents, Dax."

"That would explain why Dax was here… Wherever this is. Does it happen to say how he managed to get these from Dax?" She tapped her chin with an index finger. "I just can't imagine Dr. Busy Body winning a fight against that guy."

"Shhhh."

"You're going to shush me one more time…"

"Toilyn…" I groaned. It's not like she was paying attention. I started scanning ahead.

"Fine, fine." She held up her hands in surrender. "What else does he have to say for himself?"

"I'm guessing this trunk is supposed to be some sort of apology."

"How? There's no way this is his stuff." Toilyn started sifting through the clothes. "These are women's clothes."

"Oh?" I looked up. She was dangling a dress over the trunk. "Oh."

"None of this makes sense." She said, dropping it. "Is there anything useful in there?"

I shrugged. There wasn't much. "It says he didn't know his involvement would cause as much trouble as it has. Not only did they threaten him, they manipulated him by not disclosing how intricate this job can be."

"He's no victim." Toilyn scoffed. "All I'm hearing is that letter says exactly what he was blubbering about that night. So what."

I waved off her irritations. “I think this was Jan's assistant's dorm.” I observed as I gave our surroundings another look.

"Um, whatsherface… M name, right?"

"Her name was Mavis."

"I was close."

Not even a little. I thought, shrugging. "It would explain the clothes."

"Either that or the good doctor moonlights as a drag queen. How much does a professor make anyway?" When I didn't respond, she sighed. "Come on Z, why would that guy be hanging around some chick's dorm? That's a little creepy."

She had a point. "Because nobody would check the dorm of a dead girl."

"Hello? Dax was just here."

Another solid point and yet, I was right. I was sure of it. It would explain so much. He'd made it a point to tell us she was a former student of his. On the one hand, it could have easily been small talk, but what if it wasn't? What if it was a crucial detail, meant to lead us to the place that we were now standing in by sheer chance?

Only one way to find out. "Let's go."

"Go?" Toilyn looked on, confused. "Go where?"

"What do you mean? Toilyn, this has longitude and latitude."

"And I have zero patience. That doesn't tell me squat."

"No, no. The floor plans." I pointed at the plans excitedly. "We can get into Noir!"

"How?"

Sometimes she was so… So… I typed the coordinates into my goggles in order to show them to her. She nodded, finally understanding. "Oh. Okay, okay. Longitude and latitude."

Really? I shoved her shoulder playfully. "You're so full of shit sometimes. You know that, right?"

She shoved me back. "Stop trying to act like you don't like it."

******

"I really, really don't like this."

From the looks of it, we were in a boiler room of some sort. Toilyn scanned our surroundings before nodding that we were indeed, alone. "No time for chitchat. There's no telling where they've stashed Jan." She pointed to the left of us. "We've made it this far. Ugh… I wish I'd brought my gear now."

"It's too bulky."

"Well, it's now or never. What's it going to be?"

"We've gotta save-"

"Jan. I know, I know. Enough already."

Neither of us had the stomach to digest the fact that we could be on a mission to retrieve a body. The truth of the matter hung in the air, wafting over our skin, lest we forget and that was heavy enough.

Toilyn peeked out of the boiler room door. "All clear." She pushed the door open.

"You there!"

All clear, huh? She was down the hall before I could react. She wrapped her hands around his face. SNAP! Even from where I was standing, I could hear the faint click of his esophagus as his neck broke. She started dragging him towards me. I reopened the door so that she could stash him.

"You said all clear…" I muttered.

"This is a long, dark hallway." She grinned. "Let's go."

"I'm so glad you're enjoying this."

"Oh no, if I'm dying today, I'm going to have some fun first."

I fell in step behind her. We came up on another door. She grabbed the knob. "Alright, you ready?"

I nodded. "Ready." She jerked it open. I threw myself in front of her, hands at the ready. "Clear."

"I'm guessing there's an elevator somewhere down here." Toilyn said.

"We wouldn't be able to take it anyway." Duh. "Come on." I started up the stairs, this time with her flanking me. At each floor, we would risk a glance. We were surrounded by Noir.

"We're going to have to blend in somehow." I said on the sixth floor. "If Jan is here, this would be the floor." Neither of us understood how to read the blueprints but I did understand that the sixth floor hardly had any surrounding rooms. It had to mean something. Toilyn didn't like the idea, but the longer we debated it, the more it became clear that we really didn't have much of a plan so the sixth floor was the plan.

She pointed at my belt. "The goggles. Switch your goggles with Dax's and I'll take mine off."

Noir's goggles were solid gold. They were hard to miss, even in a fight. The toggles and switches were a stark contrast to Luminous' black and bronze. I switched mine out with Dax's.

"How do I look?"

Toilyn made a face. "Like this is already a bad idea."

"So, on theme? Perfect."

"Ah ha. Ah ha."

I opened the door ahead of her. A couple agents waved at us absently. I waved back.

Toilyn grabbed my hand. "What are you doing?"

"Blending in." Every face was smiling and either waving or nodding. I didn't know this version of Noir. I lowered my voice. "Fix your face. You can read the distrust off your eyebrows."

"Um…" Toilyn's expression folded into a bright, friendly smile.

"Hi, you guys."

Uh oh. I almost stopped breathing. He approached us quickly. Instead of engaging in conversation, he said "Excuse me." And kept going. I exhaled the breath of air I'd been holding. "Toy, my arm." Her fingers had nudged a scarlet pattern in the skin.

"Huh? Oh."

"Relax." I whispered.

I led us through the swarm of agents, each smiling. Each nodding. Each welcoming. In their eyes, we were one of their own.

Finally, I paused in front of a set of double doors. "If I remember correctly, he should be around this area."

Toilyn threw a few more agents a hasty smile. "Don't you think there are too many agents for those blueprints?"

"What do you mean?"

"The floor we were looking at didn't have many rooms and this one is swarming with Noir."

"Blueprints don't show people, Toy." I replied, though I was already having the same feeling. "He's here." Again, I inhaled a deep breath. He has to be.

Exhaling, I pushed the silver panel. Empty. It looked to be some sort of lab.

"Toy…"

"Shhhh. Shhhh. Close the door behind us."

Frantically, we began searching for something. Anything. We threw open every cabinet, every previously unopened door. I shook my head in defeat. "Nothing."

"There are two more rooms with doors like this one." She didn't speak further, but I could hear the doubt in her voice.

Thankful for the lack of "I told you so", I followed her back to the doors.

"Come on, we can-"

"Wait a second, what's that?"

"What?" Toilyn braced herself, same as we always had.

"No, no, there. Over there." I pointed to several buttons poking from beneath a shelf. "Over there. Under that shelf." The closer Toilyn got, the more I understood exactly what we were looking at. I clapped my hands over my mouth. "It's… Toy, no… Toy, no…"

It was Jan's remote. It was broken in four places but still recognizable.

"This doesn't mean anything, Z." She picked up the pieces. The face plate for coordinates was cracked. When she lifted it, it started to flash the last set, the last place he ever was: The doctor's home.

"Why did we come here?" My voice cracked with unshed tears.

"Because he's here." She grabbed the latch on my belt. "Where are those plans?"

"Back pocket." I mumbled, handing them to her.

She unfolded them on the nearest countertop. After a few seconds, she muttered something that sounded a lot like "That explains all the agents."

"What?"

"Ugh… Z, we're on the wrong floor."

"No we're not."

"Come here."

I leaned across her shoulder. From this angle, I could clearly see that we were supposed to be on floor 9. Not 6. Rookie mistake.

She refolded the plan. "Howsabout I hold on to this?" She tucked it away without waiting for a response. I knew she wanted to say something else but again, was choosing not to. Probably "You idiot!" or "How could you be so stupid?!" or "So you're telling me you couldn't tell you were looking at it upside down?!?!?!" Whatever thoughts were jogging through her mind, her lips remained closed as she turned on her heels. "Let's go." Was all she offered.

Again, we were wading through the murky sea of Noir agents. Each a face of welcoming and trust. The Noir we were being presented with was not the Noir either of us had come to know. It was jarring each time somebody greeted us.

Once we were inside the stairwell again, I asked Toilyn was her silence because she was mad at me.

"No." She assured me. "I'm just worried about you. Let's face it: That's something I would do and we would just laugh and laugh because I'm the screw up. You're supposed to have it together."

"I'm freaking out about-"

"Jan." She interrupted. "I'm starting to think this is less about him and more about you."

"What do you mean?"

"You have always blamed yourself for the Brie thing. You know what I think? I think in your eyes, if we don't get him back, it's another scratch in your book of life and this one would mean more because he saved not just your life… But mine."

"Toy… I'm glad he saved you."

"Oh no, I know. But come on, save two damsels in distress, die in Noir. Nobody deserves that. Especially not Jan."

"Especially?" Despite our circumstances, a smile crept across my face.

"What can I say? He's grown on me." She sighed. "I need you to get your head in the game, Z. I don't know what's up there but I do know that there's only two of us to fight it. Me and you, right?" She looked back at me.

I nodded. "You and me."

"Besides, it's not like it was a total bust." She patted the lumps from the remote in her right pocket. "Either he or someone dealing with him was in that room."

I knew she was trying to help, but it was having the opposite effect.

"You're going to drive yourself crazy with all that worrying." She poked my cheek. "Do you want to hear a stupid idea?"

"You know how much I adore a good ol' fashion stupid idea." I said sarcastically.

"Hear me out." She jabbed a finger at my head. "We made it all the way down here with just those goggles. Why not risk the elevator?"

"Oh yeah, that really is stupid." I answered. "What's wrong with the stairs?"

"Nothing. It's just," She shrugged. "If we don't hurry up, we're going to run out of time." She opened the door to look out. "Come on."

With anxiety doing everything it could to glue my feet to the floor, I followed her out. As we carved our way down the hall, my mind was reeling. What I really couldn't wrap my head around was why Luminous was so hell bent on leaving Jan behind. As far back as I could remember, we weren't allowed to risk civilian lives, ESPECIALLY if Noir was involved. What made Jan different? From what I gathered, Luminous had eyes on Jan in his timeline from the beginning, probably because of his research. Bateman had been tracking him for a while but not to bring him in. Instead he was only keeping an eye on him. The real question was: Why? What was I missing? Jan was obviously a cog in an even bigger machine, but why?

"Hello."

"Hi."

"Hey."

Wave. Wave. Wave.

More warm expressions and greetings. This time, Toilyn did all the smiling and nodding. Noticeably, there were less smiles in the mix. A few faces were folded with tension. Several goggles were disappearing into rooms, speaking in hushed tones. Finally, she nudged me. The elevator was opening. Noir agents, these more focused and tense, scurried past. My gaze bounced after them. That's weird. Outside of a faint "Excuse me," they barely acknowledged us.

The door was closing when a hand appeared, stopping the door from closing. The Noir agent noted us. First Toilyn, then me. Her gaze stayed on me longer. I shifted uncomfortably. Her eyes scanned mine as if she was searching for something. Suddenly they widened with recognition. “Hey!” Her finger lifted, landing directly in the middle of my chest. “You're-”

Toilyn jumped on her before her sentence could see its end. She attempted to break free, but Toilyn was faster. SNAP! She was placing her in a sitting position when the alarm sounded.

Both of our mouths fell open. The elevator screeched to a halt as red lights started to flash from the walls.

"This can't be good!" I shouted over the alarms.

"Oh, you think?!" Toilyn shouted back.

"What-" my "are we going to do?" was swallowed by "Agents of Noir…" The voice that was vibrating from the ceiling was one I knew all too well. "Our base has been infiltrated by Luminous agents."

Dax. "It's Dax!"

"Just great!"

"Now what?!"

He was in the middle of describing Toilyn and I right down to our bootstraps. "Approach with extreme prejudice. Shoot on sight."

The alarms felt as if they were growing louder by the second. The elevator sprang back to life. "Get ready!" Toilyn warned at the same time as Ding! The elevator doors opened on Floor 9. Two sets of eyes fell on us. No time for pleasantries. I threw my hands to the left of me. The blast reflected off the glass window, knocking out both agents.

Toilyn smirked. "So, no more smiling and nodding?!" For the first time since our paths had crossed, one of us was pushing the red jewel. I had no idea what it did but for how confident she was when she slapped her palm on it, Toylin knew exactly what it did.

"Check every floor, every room! Luminous has infiltrated Noir!"

Red and white siren lights echoed up the hallway. "We need to secure the floor!" Toilyn turned to me. "I've got this! Go find him!"

"I'm not leaving you!" I shouted over the chaos.

"There's no telling how many more are up here! I'm right behind you! I promise!" She shouted back, pushing me. "Go, Z! GO!"

With one last nod, I took off to the left of her. I froze at a familiar hue. It can't be. Slithering through the red and white was a low hum of blue and gold flickering on the wall in the middle of the hall. It has to be. I rushed to the window. It is. I gasped and backed up a few steps, covering my mouth. Jan.

Tears flooded the brims of my eyes. I blinked them back, blurring everything but not enough that I couldn't make him out in the middle of the floor. Bound to some sort of hook, made noticeable by the surrounding blue and gold emanating the walls like a candle wick, was Jan. I tried the door. Locked. Of course it is. I shook the handle again. "Jan!" I slapped my hands on the glass, screaming though I knew he couldn't hear and even if he could, the alarms were swallowing my words, snatching them out of reach.

I wiped my eyes. "Dammit! Think, Z! Think!"

At the end of the hall was another set of doors. I'll be right back. I promise. I nodded at the glass before rushing to them. Locked. I screamed in frustration. This was not supposed to be happening. I scrambled down the hallways, twisting the knobs on each room, all locked. There weren't a lot, but in my frenzy, it felt like hundreds.

By another elevator, I found a closet, fully expecting another locked door. I will never be able to express how relieved I felt when it clicked. I flung the door open. Frantically, I pushed the brooms and mops behind me. As I was shoving the third set of buckets out of the way, I noticed a rustic shimmer in the corner. I jumped over a bin of cleaning supplies for a closer look. I knew I was making too much noise, but there was no time. Noir already knew we were there; is what I kept screaming mentally. We are out of time! I noted a triangular base of wheels. I grabbed the base and pulled. At first, it wouldn't budge. Of course not. I pulled once more, gritting my teeth. I barely stumbled backwards just in time for a stack of bins to topple out of the way, revealing a chair.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

I rolled the chair back to the blue and gold wall. With each step, I whispered a prayer under my breath. Please let this thing be heavy enough. Please…

I approached the blue with caution. Not once had I checked my surroundings. What was I thinking? Moreover, where was Toilyn? I chanced a quick glance behind me before stopping at the glass. I placed one hand on either side of the chair. A few flakes of rust crumbled onto my fingers.

Okay, Z… You've got this…

1… Totally. I've got this. 2…

THREE

With every ounce of strength I could scrape together, I lifted the chair and launched it at the window. It shattered beneath the weight, echoing the presence of an intruder. I didn't have time to worry about how far the sound carried. I knocked the rest of the glass out of the way so that I could climb through.

Now closer, I could see that his chest was bare and there were bloody streaks on his skin. I checked around him, just in case.

"Jan…" His head snapped up suddenly. His sockets reflected gold across my skin.

"Z…" He whispered. I reached to touch his cheek. I mean, he was alive. Before my hand could connect, his head dropped again.

Shit. I grabbed him around the waist and pulled. As soon as my fingers touched him, the glow grew brighter, stronger, almost blindingly so.

I couldn't see her but was relieved at the sound of Toilyn's voice cutting through the light. "Z?!"

"I'm in here!"

"Z?!"

"Here, Toilyn! HERE!"

My eyes were squeezed shut against Jan's chest. "Toilyn?!"

"I'm here! Holy shit, what is this?!"

"It's Jan! Help me, Toy!"

"Back away from him!"

"What?! Why?!"

"Dammit, Z… DUCK!"

I dropped to the floor beside Jan's bare feet. He fell backwards onto the linoleum. The glowing ceased immediately.

"What did you do?!"

"No time! Grab his other side! I cleared the floor but I'm sure they've figured out we're here for him!"

As if summoned, four agents appeared in the now glassless window.

"Toilyn!" I was on my feet before they could climb all the way through. “Look!”

She whirled her hands in a circle. As the fourth boot was entering, she screamed. A bright red, even brighter than the alarm filled the room. She held her position, both palms up. When she finally lowered her hands, ash and dust swirled across the room.

"Grab him." She all but snarled at me.

She jammed coordinates into her goggles. I did the same. Knelt on the cold floor, Toilyn warned me not to lift. Both of us slung one of Jan's arms over our shoulders.

"NOW!"

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Soul of Moons: Snowden Olos... (Part 1)

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 19:38:33 GMT

Even with the threat of snow bristling across every corner, people were on the streets and in the restaurants, ready to spend money on a day that was designed to make people spend money: Valentine’s Day. Heart this. Teddy Bear that. What a joke. As if your celebration or lack there of determined how much love and devotion you felt for another person. (Read as: Commercialism in the streets. Consumerism in the sheets.) The holiday was designed to control the masses to the point that if you really think about it, your first time celebrating was probably in kindergarten. Maybe even earlier. Go ahead. Think about it. The best way to curve and mold a mindset is to start the brainwashing while they’re young.

Minerva usually worked this particular shift, but she was at home with food poisoning. Why they would call me of all people to fill her shoes was beyond me. Everyone at Charms had dubbed me “The Love Scrooge” so me being summoned seemed unnecessary and out of place.

Carefully, I removed the two pins from the left shoulder of my garment. On the other side I slowly, almost at a snail's pace, removed two more. I pulled the base upward from the mannequin so that everyone could see. “What do you think?” I had spent the entire night painstakingly gluing each stone, just so.

“It’s gorgeous.” Gingerly, Coral accepted my night's work. “How long did this take?”

I cracked my knuckles. “You don’t want to know.” I could hear Raina and Zo laughing in the hallway. They stumbled into the kitchen, clinging to one another.

“Oh wow! It came out perfect.” Zo plucked the fabric from between Coral's fingers. “How long did this take?”

“He said we don’t want to know.”

“Hey, don’t stretch it.” I reclaimed the gown before the “I had it first war” could break out.

“Where’s Garrett?” Raina asked, pulling out a chair. She flipped it backwards and sat so that she was still facing the table. “I thought he was helping with..." She made a gesture at my mannequin. "This.”

“I’m right here.” Garrett held up some red glitter heels. He nudged her with one of the shoes on his way by. “I just finished these. Will this work, Snow?”

I sat back down to inspect the straps. If Coral or Zo had… So help me… “My show is in a few hours. I wanted to give my outfit as much red as I could. I want to seem approachable and attainable.” I did a shimmy with my shoulders. “And yet, not.”

“Why?” Coral was sitting on her knees now.

“Because if one is to be believed, the father of this stupid holiday, St. Valentine, started this entire craze with his head being chopped off.”

“Wait…” Raina snapped to attention. Of course, she did. “What?”

“As fascinating as that may be, I’m more interested in your issue with today.” Garrett took the seat beside Raina. “What’s your deal, Snow?”

“Not everybody is itching to spend their last dollar because our good ol’ US of A compels them to do so.” I said.

Garrett nodded. “Uh huh. I get that, but it’s more than today. I remember at the wedding-”

“Okay, okay.” I threw my hands up. “I’m going to tell you a love story.”

“You’re going to tell us a love story or your love story?” The way Raina said “your” sounded like more of a threat than an inquiry.

"Mine." I was familiar with that tone and quite frankly, I was not a fan. A shiver ran up my spine; twisted with a memory long forgotten. “My story.”

“Archer!” He was already thundering down the stairs before Coral was on the second call. “ARCHER!!!”

His face appeared before his shoes, signaling that he had tripped over his shoelaces or something of the sort. Fortunately for him, he caught hold of the door frame before his lips could kiss the floor. “What?” His gaze panned over every face at the table. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you really think I would call you from the kitchen for an emergency?” She joined the rest in their laughter. He failed to see the humor; as did I. When she caught my expression, she sobered quickly: “Snow said he’s going to tell us a story. I just didn’t want you to be left out. Are you busy?”

He selected a chair on the other side of the table, alone. “A story, Snow? What about?”

Raina smirked. “Probably about why he single-handedly goes out of his way every year to suck all the joy from Valentine’s Day.”

“That wouldn’t be a good story.” Garrett shrugged.

“But Snow's a great storyteller.” Coral interrupted. “Maybe it’s a tale of thousands of valentines twirling through the air, set ablaze one by one, encaptured by the smoldering gaze of a scorned lover.” She thought about it. “Or maybe it’s the gripping saga of hundreds of cupids slaughtering one another in the streets to earn the title of the one and only cherub to don the diaper and shoot arrows at unsuspecting-”

“Do y’all want to hear this or not?” I gathered up my gown and shoes. “I mean, there are other things I could be doing.”

“Oh no. I almost fell down the stairs.” Archer cut his sibling a glare. “We’ll be quiet.”

“More times than not, the first love you know is the love of your mother.” I began.

Raina leaned back in the chair. “Uh, no.”

“I said more times than not.”

“My mom’s love was my first love.” Archer said quickly. “Zo’s too.”

Zo's eyes darted from Raina to him. “Oh no, do not drag me into that.”

I rolled my eyes. “Did I mention I have something I could be doing?” I pretended to stand up.

“Wait! Wait!” Coral all but wailed. “Raina…”

“Sorry Snow.” Raina lowered her chin to the table. “Last interruption. I promise.”

I cleared my throat for dramatic effect. “Before there was the Snowden Olos you know, there was Snowden Mackery, preacher's son..."

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Agents Of Luminous...

Fri, 23 Apr 2021 23:22:58 GMT

Toilyn and I had been sitting in front of Gillian's office for what felt like an eternity. Every once in a while, a lower ranking agent would stop to wish us luck.

Facetime with Gillian was reserved for the higher ups and Toilyn and I were practically the lowest level of bottom feeders. If we saw more than the hem of her pants, it was considered noteworthy. "This is ridiculous. I'm just going to walk in there." When I didn't say anything, she smiled: "What?"

"Don't hold back on my account." I retorted. "I want to see you kick that door in." I was only partially joking. I stood up. "I'm going to knock again. There's no way she doesn't know we're out here."

My fist didn't get the chance to touch the wood. It swung open, revealing Rurick, Gillian's assistant. A quick scan over and around her revealed that she was alone.

"I need to speak to Gillian. It's urgent."

"Come in." Rurick said, watching Toilyn stand to join me. "No, no." She shook her head. "Just her." She stepped back far enough for me to pass. With one last glance at Toilyn, the door closed.

"Rurick, I-"

"You're Z, correct?" She interrupted as if this was the first time our paths had ever crossed.

"Look-"

"You know Gillian doesn't open her office unless it's an emergency."

"I said it was urgent when you opened the door." Realizing the irritated tone I'd suddenly taken, I quickly threw a "ma'am" on the end.

"So you did." She turned on her heels to face me: "Am I to assume that your insistence on seeing Gillian has to do with a failed assignment?"

No. Yes. No… With yes undertones? I almost shrugged. "It has to do with my current assignment." I held up Dr. Patil's toggle switch. "It has to do with this."

She leaned against the corner of the desk behind her. As she folded her arms, a few wisps of hair slipped away from the severe, raven colored bun atop her scalp. "And Gillian is supposed to…?"

I hadn't thought that far ahead. "I lost Jan." Though the voice had fallen from my lips, I still couldn't believe the words were being said.

"What's that?" She jabbed a finger at my hand. "Does it go with that thing?"

"It…" He. "He's a person. He's my assignment."

"Well, where is he then?"

Even as she was asking, I could tell she already knew. The inquiry was nothing more than a formality.

Anger slid to the front of my thoughts: "You already know, don't you?"

She smiled coyly, reminding me that I never really liked her. She was Gillian's right hand but nothing would have made me happier than cutting off the left.

"You two… You and…" Though she said "that one", I knew she was referring to Toilyn. She said her name as if she'd just stumbled across a new disease. Apparently, the dislike was mutual. "There's always something. You know Luminous' policy on the matter, do you not?"

You've got to be kidding me. "Rurick, if I don't get in contact with Gillian, it could mean the destruction of humanity as we know it."

"We don't know it." She said matter of factly. "We're Luminous."

Is this a joke?

"As an agent of Luminous, you are tasked with completing assignments, whatever it takes, are you not?"

"Yes, but-"

"No, no, no. See, that's your problem now. You waltz in here looking high and low for answers, hoping they're plastered on the walls. You want us to hold your hand and lead you instead of garnering your own solutions. If we have to figure things out for you, what do we need you for?"

It was taking every ounce of strength I had left not to punch her in the face. "Why did you even open the door if you weren't going to help?"

"Your tone, agent." She was enjoying this, I could tell. "I opened the door so that I could be the one to tell you that you're off the assignment. We'll handle it from here."

"Rurick-"

"No. There will be no more questions on the matter as far as you're concerned, are we understood?" She started to walk around the desk. "You are dismissed."

"No." I planted my feet, ready for a fight.

"No?" She repeated it as if it was the first time she'd ever heard such a concept.

"What about Jan?"

Her back still to me: "Are you hard of hearing, agent?"

"I'm not leaving him with Noir."

"Were you this passionate when you handed him over to Noir?" She threw herself in Gillian's chair. "Get out."

"I didn't hand him-"

"Your actions caused this! Yours!"

I was already thinking it, but hearing it aloud cut deep. Tears threatened the brims of my eyes as I backed away. My hand was on the doorknob when I thought better of it. There was no way I was leaving Jan.

I inhaled deeply. Exhaling, I steeled my spine. "You know what, Rurick?" There was a chair in the corner that I imagined was reserved for higher ups. I took measured, leisure steps over to it. Just slow enough to give Rurick enough time to realize my intent. "I am not leaving until I see Gillian."

She stood up. Even with my entire employment history flashing before me, I wouldn't budge. If I was to be terminated, let it be that… But not with Rurick's shady, beady little eyes thinking she'd made me stand down. Screw that.

Instead of towards me, she walked to the wall on her left, my right. She pulled the Luminous logo plaque forward. The wall groaned as it rose into the air.

"Follow me."

I will not.

When I didn't move, she made a gesture at the gaping hole in the wall. "Gillian will see you now."

My eyes swung from Rurick to the wall. Who did she think she was fooling? "If Gillian is in there, you're more than welcome to let her know I'm willing to wait." I crossed my legs. "I'll be right here."

Rurick's eyes rolled in an entire sphere around their sockets. She grumbled something before stomping through the hole.

Stairs? I could hear the downward trajectory. Or maybe I couldn't. Curiosity compelled me to inspect further.

What is this? I'd imagined Rurick humming a catchy little ditty as she tightened the screws on a pair of shackles. This type of assignment seemed right up her alley: Keep Z at Luminous, whatever it takes. Instead of two chains linked from a wall, I was faced with a staircase spiraling towards… To where? Maybe the shackles were at the bottom.

No longer could the click clacking of Rurick's heels be heard. Nope. Not even.

"Z."

I whirled around. I hadn't heard the door open behind me. Even without a name in the air between us, I knew. She walked around the large, Oakwood desk. Not once did her pale, green eyes leave my face. Her hair was weaved into a long, red braid. It swished behind her as she lowered her frame into the chair. She gestured at the chair that I'd left unoccupied.

After we were both seated, her face relaxed into a warm smile. "Why didn't you leave when Rurick told you to?"

I don't like Rurick. "Ma'am…"

"Please… Call me Gillian." The introduction was merely a formality. The regalness projected with her every step made it impossible to imagine any other name crossing her lips.

I don't know what I was expecting. What I did know was that the inviting warmth to her posture probably wasn't meant to be intimidating, but it couldn't be helped. "Um, Gillian…" I stammered.

"What's that?" She pointed at my right fist, which was still curled around the toggle switch.

"Noir apprehended my assignment." They already know that, stupid. "That doctor… Uh, Dr. Patil… He… They enlisted him. He gave me this."

She motioned at me. I stood long enough to put it on her desk. "Ah…" She held it up to the light. "It's a homing device." She sat it back down. "You press the button. They show up." She was thinking about something. "Did you kill the doctor?"

"No ma'am." I said quickly. I did not need "Killed doctor who brought Covid-19 to 1999" penned on my record.

"Good." She nodded. "I'm removing you from the case."

"Excuse me?"

What about Jan?

"Your assignment was the timeline change of Covid-19 to Covid-99 was it not?"

"Yes, but-"

"The assignment did not list a person." She spoke in long, measured words that reflected "don't let the smile fool you" across my face.

"Yes, but-"

"What I've gathered is you decided this, this…"

"His name was Jan." I flinched. Is.

"Jan." She repeated. "You decided he was your assignment without proper research into Altura."

"Dr. Patil." I said quickly. "He caused the timeline change by choosing to help Noir."

She nodded despite it being obvious that she already knew that.

"They were after Jan."

Again, she nodded. " So what I am to understand is that through your meddling -"

"Jan." I couldn't hold it any longer. "They took Jan!"

"He wasn't your assignment. He was someone else's."

My spine went rigid. "Excuse me?"

"We've had eyes on him for a while. A man who unlocks time travel in a lab will always be a person of interest." She said, ignoring my jaw scraping the floor in shock. "Because of your interference, two assignments became one assignment."

"Was Jan Toilyn's assignment?" I had to know.

"Not that it's any of your concern but, no." She folded her hands on the desk. "I was unaware of your involvement until Bateman informed me that he encountered the both of you in the library."

So he was Bateman's assignment. "This is not my fault." He always was.

"Fault?" Her smile curved into a smirk. "You're off the case. You'll be receiving a new assignment shortly."

"I'm not leaving Jan with Noir."

"Am I to understand that you're refusing to stand down?"

He saved my life. "You don't understand!" Standing down was not an option.

"Oh I do. I understand that you should be terminated and yet, I am choosing reassignment instead. What more is there to be understood?" Gone was the warmth in her posture. "Need I remind you that you took a person unaffiliated with Luminous to Area 51?" In its place, a cold, calculating glare. "Your interference led to Noir apprehending not just anyone but a man who has the ability to time travel unchecked! Do you not understand the gravity of this situation?!"

Better to be terminated than a coward. "You can't just leave him!" I shouted defiantly.

"Stand down, agent!"

"I won't leave him!"

"Then you leave me no choice."

The hole in the wall that Rurick had disappeared through was once again filled with her annoying form. Only she was flanked by two other agents.

My eyes darted from the agents to Gillian. "What is this?"

I had not noticed her hand slide beneath her desk until it was too late.

"Take her."

"What the hell?!"

The agents on either side of Rurick rushed towards me. I slapped my hand on my wrist, hoping I turned the correct knob. Blue ricocheted from my hands. The impact sent them flying backwards, one across Gillian's desk, to the left of her. The other sprawled into Rurick. Startled by the sudden onslaught of flailing arms, she attempted to dodge, but lost her footing. They collapsed in a heap on the carpet. Before anyone could gather themselves, I was on my feet and out the door.

Toilyn's head jerked up. "What's going on?!" I didn't need words. She was already on her feet running down the hallway beside me.

"We've got to save Jan!" I shouted above the rising sounds of boots stomping the floor behind us. The elevator ride to the bottom felt longer than the one up. The second the door opened, I shouted “Scatter!” Please understand. Hopefully she understood. I didn't check to see if she was still behind me. Agents were blurring as I passed, some calling after me, most not.

What mattered was me putting as much distance between them and me as fast as I could.

******

The suitcase still laid in the middle of the front yard, abandoned. A few ties and a shirt had blown to the other side of the street.

With storm clouds now sprinkling rain across the roof, Dr. Patil's house appeared every bit of dreary as it had the night before.

I sighed. None of this was supposed to be happening. Though the droplets had developed into a full storm, I didn't seek shelter in the house. I had no idea how long I stood at the edge of that abandoned lawn but, what I did know was I had no idea I was holding my breath until Toilyn suddenly appeared beside me.

I threw my arms around her, relieved. She returned my embrace for a few seconds before holding me at arm's length. "We should go inside. He owes us that much."

I followed Toilyn across the yard, nodding the entire distance. He did owe us.

The front door was wide open. Toilyn paused on the porch long enough to place an arrow in her bow.

With me practically glued to her back, we walked the entire foundation. We checked bathrooms and bathtubs, upstairs and downstairs, kitchen cabinets and closets and we didn't stop opening doors until Toilyn nodded that we were indeed, alone.

We were on our way out of the kitchen when I thought about it. "What about the garage?"

The kitchen had three doors. One to the backyard, one we were in front of, and one that was by the refrigerator, still open, leading to the garage. "If anybody's here, they had to of heard us by now."

When I didn't say anything, she crossed to the open door, arrow tip first. She disappeared for a few seconds before reappearing. "Clear." She passed me. I waited before following.

She was shrugging the quiver off her shoulder as I was entering the living room. She looked up. "So, are we going to talk about what happened back there?"

I took my place on the loveseat across from her. "I don't even know where to start." I admitted, sliding my hands down my face. I really, really messed up.

She slid over the edge of the couch and folded her arms across her chest. "Start with what the heck we were running from."

I opened my mouth. The longer I spoke, the deeper the furrow in her eyebrows became. She leaned forward. I could almost make out the thoughts dancing in her eyes. Were it not for the fact that I knew her, one could easily mistake that she was meditating.

When I finally closed my mouth, she shook her head in disbelief.

"Wait… Before anything else, do you honestly believe that I would've kept it a secret had Jan been my assignment?"

That's what you got out of that?! "I had to be sure."

"One, you know how I feel about offline assignments." She was right. It was how the term "Offline" drew its first breath in the first place. I did know. "Two, I wouldn't do you like that." She said, obviously offended. "You're my best friend. I jump, you jump, remember?" She stuck her fist out. "I'm just going to chalk this up to temporary insanity. Cool?" We bumped knuckles before her face relaxed. "Now that that's settled, what are we going to do and are you sure Luminous doesn't know we're here?"

"I have no idea."

"Huh?"

"That's your answer to both." I shrugged. "I don't know."

"Perfect." She smacked her fist into her open palm. "Just perfect."

"We have to go after Jan." That was the only thing I knew for sure.

"If they had plans to kill Jan, why didn't Bateman do it when he caught up with him before? Think, Z. Why only adjust his remote?"

"I don't know! What if it were me, Toy?!" I shouted, frustrated. "Would you be sitting here trying to make it make sense if this was about me?!"

"Okay then…" She settled back against the couch cushions. "Let's go get him." She frowned. "How though?"

I held up the homing device, which I'd managed to reclaim during the commotion. "If this summons one of theirs, we can use it to gain some sort of information, right?" Please say "yes".

"Z…" Toilyn tilted her head thoughtfully. "What if Brie answers the call?" It wasn't a "No".

I shrugged. I hadn't considered that. "We'll cross that bridge if it gets here." We wouldn't exactly have a choice. As far as either of us knew, no Luminous agent who had ever entered Noir had exited in the same condition. With that being said, in the grand scheme of things, neither of us knew where Noir was. The homing device was our only option. "All I know is we can't just abandon Jan."

"And we won't." She stood up and stretched, yawning loudly. "Ya know, I think I'm going to take a shower. If I'm going to die today, I might as well be fresh when it happens." She hopped over the back of the couch.

I watched as she disappeared from eyesight. Despite her lack of presence, I could still hear her rummaging around above me. Toilyn wasn't exactly known for her discretion.

I threw my legs over the arm of the loveseat. On the one hand, I knew we needed Luminous to back us on this and then there was the other hand: The one that knew Jan was the primary focus for a reason and needed to be saved. But from what? That was the real question. Were we saving Jan from Noir or were we protecting him from Luminous?

My eyes weighed heavily with the burden. I didn't realize how exhausted I was. I kept blinking to stop the sleep from pushing down my lids, but to no avail. With one last struggled blink, my eyelashes settled on my cheeks.

I awoke to Toilyn frantically shaking my leg. "You're kidding me!" I rubbed my eyes sleepily. I hadn't realized I was asleep if we're being honest here.

"You can sleep when you're dead and with how this day is shaping up, it'll be soon." She held out her hands. I placed mine in hers. Once I was on my feet, she said: "You know what I was thinking about in the shower?"

"Do I really want to hear this?"

"Pervert." She smirked. "One of the sheets in the envelope we had laid out a paper trail."

"Yeah, so?"

"Altura stands to rake in billions manufacturing a cure for the disease they created."

"Okay…"

"Is that what happened in 2020?"

I gasped. The thought had never crossed my mind. "From my understanding, they stumbled" I did air quotes for "stumbled". "Upon Covid-19 in a lab somewhere in Asia and the testing went south quick. People were blaming the consumption of bat soup for a while."

"We both know that's not true."

"But what if that's what happened?"

"First we save Jan." She dragged her gear off the floor. "Then we can swap COVID conspiracy theories while we save the world." She gestured at the homing device, which had fallen from my hand while I slept. "I don't think it would be wise to press that button here. There's a good chance this is the only place that isn't being watched. If nobody comes a knocking, we're going to need it for Jan."

I reached down to pick it up. "Okay, where then?"

She shrugged the arrows over her shoulder. "We could always go back to the nursing home since that's obviously where the good doctor was rubbing elbows with Noir."

I punched the coordinates into my goggles as Toilyn did the same. "Nursing home it is."

******

"So, upstairs or down?"

Toilyn pointed upward at the hole in the ceiling. "You only have to teach me once. I'm not interested in going through that again."

"Down it is then." I held up the homing device. "Ready?"

She turned to press her back against mine. I waited long enough for her to plant her feet before pushing the button.

I don't know. I guess I thought the hallway would immediately swarm with a Noir agent or ten. I didn't expect to see Dax's mendacious hazel eyes manifesting across from us.

"Well, well, well… This is unexpected." He said calmly. Almost too calm. "Z… Long time, no see. How's tricks?"

I pushed my hands out in front of me. The blue spiraled, aiming for his head, but he dodged it easily. "Oh, I see someone has an up-" Toilyn released her grip. The arrow connected with his left shoulder. He stumbled backwards, holding the stem. "What the hell?!" I nodded at Toilyn. She returned the gesture, immediately understanding. His gaze narrowed on the both of us as we approached. "Someone has been busy." He strained against the pain. He clenched his teeth. "To what do I owe this honor?"

"Cut the crap, Dax." I wasn't the agent that he thought he knew. I didn't have time for the mind games.

His hand still wrapped around the stem, he stood strong. "Okay then, what do you want?"

"We want access to Noir, you prick." Toilyn's aim had not lowered from his face.

Surprisingly, of the emotions his eyes were reflecting, fear wasn't one. "And why…" Pain was. "Why would I do that?" He winced.

"You know why." I said.

He laughed menacingly. "I'm guessing you're… You two…" He laughed again. "The inventor, am I right?"

"Take us to Noir or I'll put this through your throat." She gritted her teeth. "Your choice."

"How long…" His fingers tightened around the stem. "How long…" He snapped it off at the end. "How…" Again, he grunted. "... Did you practice that line?" The tip's jagged edges disappeared as he pulled himself free.

I threw my fist in front of myself. The impact slammed into his chest. He slumped down to the hardwood floor.

"Okay Z, I see your hustle. I really do, but um… Don't we need him to get into Noir?"

"No." I crouched down to snatch the goggles off his head. "Their goggles are basically a rip off of ours, right?"

"Uh huh."

She had to be kidding me. "Ours keeps a hold of our last coordinates for twenty-four hours." I pushed the buttons on the side.

"I hear you." She held up her hand like we were in the back of a classroom somewhere. "Who's to say those coordinates are Noir's?"

I hadn't thought of that. "We've got to try."

"Hey, this is your show. I'm just a side character tagging along for the side quest." She punched in the coordinates. "One that we might die on but that's neither here nor there."

"Toy…"

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Agents Of Perfidy...

Sun, 14 Mar 2021 14:46:17 GMT

"Tell me again why you thought this was a good idea."

The longer we were huddled in front of Dr. Patil's garage door, the more my thoughts were in agreement with Toilyn. "He's a doctor."

Lights flashed from behind us. There was no way we could turn without dropping Jan. A door slammed. "I thought that was you. Why are you here?!" Dr. Patil's shrill, panicked voice cut through the darkness. His voice hadn't lost its air of fear since we'd last encountered him. "What do you want?!"

I sighed in relief. "We need your help. It's Jan." I shifted to better balance Jan's weight against me.

"Why didn't you take him to a hospital?" Dr. Patil scurried around us. He looked down at Jan, scrutinizing him. Just as I was bracing myself to be turned away, he sighed his resolve and reached down to pull the garage door upward. "Nevermind. Bring him inside."

"Could we hurry this up? I'm supporting him and my gear." Toilyn strained. "He's short, not light."

Dr. Patil led us to a workbench. From the looks of it, it was fresh off the presses, never used. We placed Jan on the wood as gingerly as we could manage. Dr. Patil ducked out of the garage. When he returned, there was a pillow pressed between his hands. On instinct, Toilyn and I flinched to our bracelets. "Wait, wait… This is for his head." He said, hurrying to lift Jan long enough to slide the pillow underneath. "See?"

I hadn't noticed the blanket that was tucked beneath his arm. "He saved my life." I said quietly, watching Dr. Patil cover Jan.

"No, he saved our lives." Toilyn corrected. "When she… When she clipped me… Z, I thought- I thought I was dead."

Dr. Patil leaned over Jan. "His pulse is weak. Why here?"

"Aren't you a doctor?" Toilyn shrugged her gear onto the floor. She rotated her shoulder at the relief.

"I'm not that kind of a doctor." Dr. Patil rebuffed. "I'm a psychologist. I specialize in the study of the mind."

"So you're a head doctor." Toilyn said, turning to head to the garage door. “Well, he got hit on the head pretty hard.” She threw her eyes across her shoulder one last time, first to Dr. Patil then to me before: "Fix him."

She stomped off into the darkness.

Dr. Patil pushed a black button on the wall. The garage door lowered to a close. He sighed the same resolved sigh from earlier. "Just in case the neighbors noticed a body being dragged up the sidewalk."

"Look, Jan has the ability to heal certain things. He put the same tech in my bracelet…" I held up my arm so the doctor could see, as if he had a clue what I was talking about. "When I tried it after he blacked out…" It was stupid. I had no idea what to do. I'd tried without discussing with him which way I was supposed to turn the dial. Was it left to heal or was it right? It was left. He'd gotten lucky on that account. I placed my hand on Jan's shoe. His laces were untied. "It didn't work, okay? I don't know if he made a mistake with the installation or if…" I didn't, no I couldn't… I couldn't say it could be my fault. Not again.

"How did he black out?"

"I don't know!" I shook his leg angrily. "Jan…"

"That's not a good idea." Dr. Patil said though he didn't move to stop me. "I need a better understanding of what happened. I know you can't tell me everything but give me something."

"The roof of the nursing home that was in that packet you gave us…" I was pacing now. "It collapsed. He saved my life. If it weren't for him… He saved Toilyn not twenty minutes later. I thought he was fine." I stopped abruptly. "The last thing he said was 'She's fine'."

"Sounds like a concussion." Dr. Patil said.

Something dawned on me. "No no, wait…" Something he'd mentioned. "He said that his tech allowed him to heal minor injuries. He collapsed a few seconds after healing Toilyn."

"Could be overexertion, could be both." Dr. Patil said. Not helping. Like, at all. "It could be that because his body was already in a weakened state when he healed your friend, he didn't have enough energy to sustain his own life force." In english? "My apologies." Apparently my face was projecting what my mouth wouldn't. "What I mean is, when he healed your friend, whatever adrenaline that was holding him up was spent. He was probably already damaged from the crash but sometimes you tap into strength you didn't know you had when you're protecting loved ones."

We barely know him. "Whoa there… It's not like that. He's just…" Suddenly, the fact that the garage floor was carpeted was more interesting than it should have been. "He's just my assignment."

"I don't think it's the bracelet that's not working." He didn't have to voice the "delusion" for me to hear it in his voice. "Would you like to try something?" He offered me his hand. When I didn't move to take it, he continued: "Maybe if we hold hands while you try."

"Hold hands?" I repeated, practically turning up my nose.

He didn't acknowledge my reservations. Instead his hand remained dangled between us. "From what you've told me, I believe in order for his tech to work, you have to offer a little of yourself. In theory, I would say your attempt didn't work because you didn't have much left to give after the crash." I stared at his hand for a few more seconds before taking it. The warmth felt foreign yet welcoming. With his encouragement, I switched the dial on my bracelet and placed it on Jan's forehead. Heat pulsated through my body. It pushed upward, fighting through my uncertainty. Golden flakes glittered from beneath my hand. "Jan…" The glowing gold grew brighter until it encased his entire body.

I stumbled but other than that, I was otherwise unharmed.

Dr. Patil released my hand to check Jan's pulse. "It's getting stronger."

"I… I um…" Despite being afraid of us, Dr. Patil had helped. It said a lot about him and I wanted him to know that I understood that. I just didn't know how. "I…"

He pushed the button on the wall. "You should tell your friend."

I watched Jan inhale and exhale a few more times before agreeing.

I found Toilyn sitting on the front lawn, staring at the sky. "Ya know, a part of me is hoping you're here to say you figured it out and the rest of me is already falling apart because it knows how much that guy went through. He didn't deserve to go out like that."

I took the empty space beside her. "H-He's alive, Toy."

She turned towards me. The brims of her eyes shone with unshed tears. "He is?"

I reached for her hand. She linked hers with mine and our fingers nestled in the grass. Together we stared at the stars, holding hands. We sat there in silence, breathing breaths decorated with relief because neither had the courage to voice that we'd almost gotten Jan killed. Finally, I broke our chain. Toilyn glanced at her hand, now alone in the grass, then back at my face: "We should check on him. I don't know how long that stuff takes."

"Neither do I."

I offered her my hands. She accepted them so that I could pull her to her feet. We headed across the lawn to the garage door, now closed. Toilyn tapped on the door three times. When she received no response, she did it once more. And again. And again, urgently this time. I stepped on the tips of my toes to peer through the dusty window. The pillow and blanket were on the workbench, but no Jan.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, Toilyn punched her hand through the glass. She unlocked the latch and I lifted the door manually.

"Toy, your hand."

"No time." She grunted, wiping the blood on her shirt.

With glass crunching beneath our boots, we surveyed the room. Other than the abandoned workbench and surprisingly, her gear, the room was deserted. Toilyn snatched her bow off the floor.

"Wait!"

"For what?!" Her boot was already flying through the adjoining door, leading us into a dark kitchen. The tip of her arrow was the lead, with me following close enough to watch her back.

We were making our way through the living room when I saw it. "Toy…" Through the curtains, I could make out some sort of shadow darting across the lawn out front. "Look!"

I stumbled over a coffee table. A lamp and a vase shattered in the darkness but that was of no importance. Toilyn didn't turn to see if I was alright. She was already out the door. I caught up as she was aiming at the back of whatever we were chasing.

“Wait!” I shouted, darting past her. A silent prayer on my lips, I purposely blocked her aim. I kept running, awaiting an arrow that thankfully never tore through me. I dove forward, crashing into the shadow. From both hands flew a single suitcase. One rolled down the carport until it came to a stop in the middle of the street, open.

"Don't hurt me! Please don't hurt me!"

Dr. Patil?!

“What the hell?!” I jumped to my feet.

"I'll tell you everything! Just don't hurt me!" Dr. Patil cried.

“Everything?” Toilyn jogged to a stop beside me, her aim steady. “What the heck would you have to tell us?”

On the ground, Dr. Patil was still cowering, both hands barely muffling his wails.

I ignored his pleas. “Why is he even out here?” And if he was here, where was Jan?

“Nah. Nope. No. Did you not see the suitcases?” She was talking to me, but glaring down at him. “He was making a run for it.”

There was no way he would be able to tell us from whom he was fleeing with an arrow through any parts of his anatomy. “Would you stop pointing that thing down at him before you accidentally shoot him?” It wouldn't have been an accident, this we both knew.

“Fine. Have it your way.” Toilyn shoved her bow in my arms. “Where's Jan?!" She shouted, jerking him off the grass. "If you so much as flinch crooked, I'm going to break your arm, maybe both. You got that?"

"Yes, yes." He was sobbing now.

"Where is Jan?!" His tears meant nothing, we only wanted answers.

"They took him! That's who they were after the entire time!"

“Who the fuck is they?! I'm going to need more words.” Toilyn growled hauntingly. “Now, talk!"

"Noir. Noir has him."

"Tell me you didn't just say Noir." Toilyn's voice lowered to barely a whisper. "How do you know that name?"

"No. No they don't." I couldn't unhear it but I also didn't want to believe it. "You wouldn't do that." Colleges taught Luminous Studies and that was all. Luminous kept an obsessively shined magnifying glass to the ground in their efforts to maintain that fact. What was this?

SMACK! Toilyn's hand connected with the side of Dr. Patil's face. "What did you do?!"

"T-They threatened my family. I- I didn't have a choice." He stammered. "Mavis was supposed to bring him and it was all going to be okay but she got in that wreck."

"So the wreck wasn't Altura or Noir?"

"No." He replied though he was turned to me and not Toilyn. His right cheek was now flamed red from the slap. "It really was just an accident. He didn't read the letter so things didn't move ahead like they were supposed to."

"So all the boo-hooing you did at the college was just an act?" Toilyn's palm was ready for another swing.

“Hold on.” I put my hand up. "Let him finish."

"They were after his research. Periodically, they've been attempting to pop up on him but it wasn't working. He always evaded capture."

Something fell into place that I didn't want the answer to but I needed it: "Luminous reprogrammed his remote to be like our tech. Is that why the target changed from the remote to Jan himself?"

Dr. Patil nodded weakly. "They were going to murder my children."

"Oh, shut up!"

“Toy…” I knew Toilyn wanted to smack him again but we needed answers.

“Don't you see?” She asked softly. “That's why they added Brie to this.” It almost went unheard. Almost. "You knew… Didn't you?" She hissed in his face.

Because of my history with Dax… Because of my history with Brie… Because of me…

"So all this covid mess?"

"Everything I put in that packet was true… Except for the nursing home." He shook his head. "I was never told that my interference would have ramifications. When they came to me about Mavis' boss, they told me to use her suspicions regarding Altura. They told me what to do, I swear!" He hiccuped. "They were going to-"

"Kill your family. Say that shit one more time and I'm going to rip your vocal cords out and use them to strangle you to death!" Toilyn spat at him. "Do you know how many families will be wiped out if we don't fix this?!"

"You doomed hundreds of thousands just to set up Jan?!" My hands were beginning to shake. "What does it matter if you saved your family today only for Covid-19 to wipe out generations tomorrow?"

"I don't know what Covid-19 is!"

99… 19… None of that mattered now. "That's beside the point!" Toilyn grabbed him by the collar. "You sentenced innocent people to their deaths, you piece of shit!"

He was heaving wet sounding, heavy breaths now. "They… They… This. They gave me this…” He turned his right pocket towards Toilyn. When she didn’t react, he inched his pocket closer. “Take it, please… They gave… This…”

She snatched him forward. “What the hell is that?”

She dropped something on the ground. It rolled to a stop at the end of my boot.

Don’t touch it. Too late. My fingers were already wrapping around it. The metal shined beneath the moonlight. I pointed it at him. “What is it?”

His sobs echoed louder. I couldn’t even make out what he was saying. “Toy…”

She balled up her fist.

He caught his breath quickly. “I said that’s how I contact them!” He cried. “You push the button… There. There’s a button on the bottom.”

“What does it do?”

“It’s how they find me.” He hiccuped.

It was him. Realization clicked into place. All this time. It was never Jan. It was him the whole time. My free hand had balled into a fist. "You… You caused the timeline change." My knuckles were smashing into his face before I could think better of it.

Toilyn's grip slipped. His eyes disappeared to the back of his head. He fell backwards with a soft THUD! in the grass.

"Well, now what?" She said, placing her hands on either side of her head.

"I don't know. I don't know." I really didn't. My mind was struggling with the comprehension that we'd walked Jan into the arms of the enemy. "Let me think."

"I know what you're doing." I felt the warmth of her hand on my shoulder. "You can't do this to yourself. There's no way you could have known."

"It was my idea to bring him here."

"And it was my idea to go to the nursing home." She interjected. "You don't have to carry this one alone. We both made mistakes.”

"We've got to save him." I said, turning the apparatus over a few times. It glistened beneath the moonlight. “Here.”

She looked down at her bow between us then back at him. “You should have just let me shoot him.” She said, accepting it. She flicked the string, her face a mask of pure disdain. “At least let me kick him.”

I nodded my permission. From the looks of it, she was going to do it with or without my approval anyway. (Knowing her, she was waiting for me to turn my back long enough.) She landed a kick to his ribs before nodding with a weirdly triumphant grin on her lips. "Ah, that’s better. So, where are we going?" She stepped over him, careful to run the back of her boot across him on the way.

"To get terminated probably."

"You want to involve Luminous?"

"Do you not see this mess?!" I exclaimed, jabbing a finger down at the doctor's unmoving body. "This is bigger than us. We've got to fix this and I don't know how, do you?"

"I wish I did, Z." She said, shaking her head. "I've got nothing."

"I don't mean any ol' higher up either."

Toilyn cut her eyes at me. "Yes you do."

I shook my head. "No I don't. We've got to ask to see Gillian."

"Oh, you're trying to get fired, fired."

comments

Agents Of Scrutiny...

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 14:55:28 GMT

Whack! Whack! Whack!

Three sharp knocks on the door snapped me to attention.

We weren't supposed to be sleeping anyway but after leaving the library, neither of us were in any condition mentally to question another person.

The blanket that I had rolled up to create a barrier between us was now burritoed around Jan. He'd spent the first few hours upon arrival tinkering with my bracelet.

"Surely you would like this thing to do something better than what it does." He'd said, plucking a tiny screwdriver from his utility belt.

I was standing inside the bathroom door toweling my hair.

"You just can't keep your hands to yourself, can you?" I'd said though I didn't try to stop him. For years, I'd silently yearned for an upgrade. I grabbed my clothes from the floor to get dressed. When I returned from the bathroom, he was in the bed, face pointed at the ceiling, snoring so obnoxiously that the windows vibrated with each exhale.

My bracelet was still on the table by the door, insides on display. Oh, he is so fixing this when he gets up. I had every intention of hitting the road as soon as we were both showered but instead I found my hands rolling up a blanket so that he couldn't suck the skin off my face with his snoring.

Whack! Whack! Whack!

There it was again. I grabbed Jan's gun from its holster to peek out the window.

"I can hear you breathing."

Toy. I swung open the door.

"I was about to start kicking." She said, pushing past me. She noted Jan's still sleeping form. "Before you ask, finding you wasn't hard. I could hear his snores all the way on the other side of prohibition."

She put her fist out. I bumped her knuckles. "What's that?" I asked, though it was a stupid question.

"This is why I left you guys at the library." She held up the bow. "Judging by how quickly you've decided to play house with this one, I'm sure you managed without me just fine." She shrugged the quiver of arrows off her shoulders.

Play house? "Really Toy?"

Her laughter stirred Jan. "Nice of you to join us, Sleeping Beauty."

He sat up. His hair was in a tousled pile atop his scalp. "Ugh, I must be having a nightmare."

She winked at him. "Nope, it's me." She sat the bow beside the quiver. "Juniper told me where you guys were going so I headed here."

"What's up with the gear?" I ran a finger tip along the backside of one of the feathers. "Can you even shoot?"

"I found these on display in some old museum. According to my research, they're native to an Iroquois tribe. It was love at first sight but you know how Luminous is so I hauled them to headquarters to see if keeping them would disrupt the timeline." She shrugged. "Gillian said I could have them so I hightailed it out of there before she could change her mind."

"Hold up, you saw Gillian?" Gillian was the elusive mother of Luminous. The most I'd ever seen of her was the back of her heels at the end of a hallway once.

"Now you know damn well…" Toilyn's sentence trailed off.

I tilted my head. This was important.

"Okay, okay… I saw her-esque. Her adjacent."

"Huh?"

"Her office door was open. I totally caught a glimpse of what I'm sure was her leather jacket. It was this red and rather form fitting number might I add… That is, before Rurick shoved these at me. I

tried to get around her but she's not stupid. I'm sure she's used to agents trying to sneak a peek." She said, shaking her head. "Like it's completely unnatural to have an interest in your employer."

"Is that why you left us at the library?"

"To roll up on Gillian?! Are you insane?!" She grinned.

When my face didn't crack, hers softened. "Aw, you weren't worried, were you?" Now completely fascinated by her gear, anything to avoid my irritation, she continued: "Oh! As Rurick was trying to get rid of me, I overheard some higher ups whispering about Alaska."

"The Alaska?"

“The one and only.” She said. First, she looked at Jan. Then, as if he couldn't hear, she lowered her voice. "But that's not all."

More elusive than Gillian herself, was Alaska. Whereas Gillian had sightings here and there, I didn't know anybody who had been anywhere near Luminous' sister site. What I did know was that allegedly, somewhere in Alaska was another base of operations. I was starting to think it was just an urban legend. "When she caught me watching them, Rurick gave me a package to take to the library like they don't have people for that."

Apparently you. You're people. "So?"

"I swear, it was like they didn't want me to hear what they were talking about."

She had to be kidding. “Um, we're not even allowed to know who what when where why Alaska is.” I pointed out, only half joking. We assumed Alaska to be a place but knowing Luminous, it was some bunker under ground guarded by stone gargoyles. Truth was, we didn't know more than what we'd heard here and there. That was the truth of it.

"I hate to interrupt, but I'm still here." Jan said, clearing his throat a little too dramatically. When our heads turned, "What's Alaska?"

Time for a subject change. "Did you open it?"

"Open what?"

I shot her a look. "What? Her package? No. Just my luck, Juniper would've seen my crimes all over my face." She said, catching on. "Since I brought her up, Juniper said y'all managed to scrape together a lead from that letter. A Dr. Carlito Patil if I remember correctly."

As she was prattling on and on, I couldn't help but start combing my memories. No matter what, I was one hundred percent sure I'd never mentioned any of that to Juniper. Like I said, she just seemed to know everything about everybody.

"... and then I came here, like I said."

Uh… I hadn't heard anything before that.

"Which reminds me…" She stepped over the towels that I'd left on the floor. "Just in case you forgot to, I went ahead and did the groundwork for you. The good doctor has tenure at a college not far from Altura. He used to teach a Psychology course but after your assistant's untimely demise, he switched to a course on, get this, Luminous Corp!"

Jan visibly flinched at "assistant's untimely demise". As quickly as it appeared, he erased the pained look in his eyes. He all but bolted to the bathroom and slammed the door.

I awaited the sound of running water before turning on her. "Really, Toy?"

"What?" She flopped down on the now unoccupied bed. "Something I said?"

I caught her up to speed with Mavis and how Jan tied into the entire ordeal. She waited until I was done to speak: "So all of this could have been avoided is what I'm hearing."

"Toy, don't be an ass." I shook my head. "He's really struggling with this and I need him to keep it together."

"I'm not trying to be an ass." She said, leaning back on the bed. "Some accountability could be the type of humble pie this guy could use a plate or seven of."

"Do you want to be constantly reminded of your worst mistake?" I snapped. "To spend every day with the reminder that you made the wrong choice?! To know that no matter what you tell yourself, it's your fault?!"

"Whoa…" Toylin sat back up. "This isn't about you, Z."

"I didn't say it was."

"Uh huh." She nodded knowingly. To her credit, she didn't press the issue. Instead, she gestured towards my still mangled bracelet. "What happened there?"

"You really have to ask?" I replied, grateful for the tonal shift.

"Is he, uh, going to... Ya know, put it back together?"

"I intended to last night." We hadn't heard the door reopen. Jan didn't look at either of us as he pulled the chair from beneath the table. "I finished it but I was so tired."

I threw all my best signals at Toilyn with my eyes. She tried to ignore me. Finally she sighed grudgingly: "Hey Jan, look, about earlier, I wasn't trying to be a jerk."

"Some people just can't deny their natural talents." Jan muttered.

Toilyn cut her eyes at me. I shook my head quickly. What we didn't need in that tiny hotel room was a fist fight.

I grappled for a subject change. "So um, what's it going to do when you get finished?" I averted my gaze from Toilyn's fourth eye roll.

"I have no idea."

Of course he doesn't. I could almost hear Toilyn mouthing the words. He cleared his throat: "I was trying to put this…" He slipped a bottle from his utility belt. He held it up. "I'm attempting to put this tech into your bracelet."

Toilyn beat me to it. “What does that tech do?”

“They give me the ability to heal certain things and I can shoot from my hands."

"Shoot what?" I noticed that both of us were inching closer to Jan's freshly showered back.

“Energy beams. They don't kill but they'll put a guy down.”

Toilyn scrunched up her nose. “Then why do you carry a gun?”

“To keep a guy down.” He was still clicking the gears and springs back into place.

“So what's with the pills?” Toilyn asked.

“I created them at Altura.” Jan replied, shaking the bottle a little. “I couldn't see myself swallowing all those wires no matter how tiny they were so I came up with the idea to modify pills. The wires dissolve internally, releasing the tech into my system.” He shrugged before putting them away. “I have to take one everyday.”

"What happens if you don't?" I pressed.

"I almost died once so I'm leaning towards death. I would probably die." He said casually, like it wasn't that big a deal. He weaved the lace back through the band. "I've never gone a full day. After that experience, I wasn't stupid enough to try it again. If I'd known the side effects, I definitely would have weighed other options.” He held up the bracelet. "You won't have the same issue because I combined my tech with Luminous'."

Toilyn studied it while I was clasping it around my wrist. “Are the wires going to dissolve in there?”

“No.” Jan snapped curtly.

"Uh huh.” Her expression was going through an entire metamorphosis. Whatever she was thinking of saying, I could tell it wasn't from a kind place. “We've got to get going." She said finally. "Dr. So and so doesn't know we're coming."

"Obviously." Jan stood up.

"Guys…" I could see the argument coming.

Toilyn typed the coordinates into her goggles then tilted them so that I could see. Jan typed the same into his remote. He disappeared before either of us.

She rolled her eyes. "He is so…"

"So what did they say about Alaska?"

She shrugged. "Whisper, whisper… Alaska… Whisper, whisper. I got nothing. As usual."

"One day we're going to find out there is no base and Alaska is code for something else. Watch."

"Could you imagine?" She reached up to tighten her ponytail. "Let's hurry up and catch up to your boyfriend."

Boyfriend?! I nodded at her new gear. "You bringing that?"

"Why?" She scanned my face. "Are you blushing?!"

"Ugh, are you bringing that or not?"

"You are!"

"Toy!"

She burst out laughing. "Oh, come on, I'm just messing with you, Z." Noting the aggravation carving its way through my expression, she snorted back her giggle and cleared her throat. "No, I doubt we'd keep the element of surprise with me dragging those around." She replied, pressing the sides of her goggles at the same time as I did.

Within a blink, we were standing in an empty classroom. The first thing I noted was the lack of Jan.

Humor drained from Toilyn in an instant. "Where is he?!" She hissed like I had him shoved in my back pocket or something.

"Definitely not in here." I replied, rushing to the door. I flung it open. Several students paused to look at us but other than that, we were practically invisible.

"When I get my hands on him…"

"Toy, what's your deal with Jan?"

"What do you mean?"

Really? I almost stuck my boot out to trip her. Almost. "Nothing. Nevermind."

"No, I want to hear this."

"Just forget I brought it up."

"Uh huh." She stopped abruptly.

"What?"

"Nothing." She pointed at the end of the hall. A wooden bar with large, gold letters marked the room as 202 Dr. Carlito Patil. "His classroom is right there."

We fell in step behind a purple and red backpack until the carrier opened the door to the classroom.

"Dammit."

Dammit was a fair assessment for the wall to wall seating. Each and every chair had a student clinging to Dr. Patil's every word, including one by a gigantic chalkboard which was occupied by Jan. He nodded at two empty seats to the left of him. We managed to maneuver around the classroom without calling too much attention to ourselves. Every once in a while, a student would grumble in protest as we bumped into the back of their chair.

"Any questions so far?" Dr. Patil turned from his dry erase board. When he noticed Toilyn and I, his body went rigid. His eyes flashed a panicked brown to his students. They continued taking notes, unaware. He inhaled a huge breath in an attempt to compose himself. It was obvious that he hadn't counted on the object of his teachings to show up for a class. That would be like teaching a course on Paleontology only to have a T-Rex come crashing through the ceiling. Talking about something isn't the same as experiencing, though judging by the way his eyes panned frantically across us every few seconds, he probably would have preferred the T-Rex.

"C-Class…" He tried after about fifteen minutes. "We're going to dismiss early." He spoke the words slowly, as if to give his students time to object. They were out of those chairs and gathering their things before he could change his mind. I watched the door, lest he decide to scramble out after them.

The entire time they were filing out, I didn't avert my gaze. When the final head was out the door, he moved to close it behind them.

I was thinking it would be best if Jan were to speak first since his assistant might have mentioned him at the same time as his mouth was opening: "We need to ask you a few questions, Dr. Patil, if that's alright."

Dr. Patil swung his eyes from Toilyn, to me, then stopped on Jan. "I know you two. You're Luminous, right?" Before we could get the words out, he continued: "Who are you?"

Jan's cheeks flushed a bright crimson. Apparently he'd forgotten that in this timeline, he was a nobody. "You knew my assistant, Mavis Crowley."

Dr. Patil shuffled behind his desk to sit down. A deafening silence crept across every surface in the room. We exchanged looks. Toilyn leaned forward first: "Did you know that his assistant passed shortly after agreeing to meet up with you?"

Dr. Patil nodded. He looked like he could use a stiff drink. "I saw it on the news." He inhaled deeply. "So you're the inventor she was talking about. Her… Her boss."

"Jan." Jan reminded him.

"She didn't call you that. She called you-"

"Look, Mavis left me a letter saying we were to meet up with you but I didn't get to read it until recently." Jan's voice slashed the rest of Dr. Patil's sentence in half.

I glanced at Toilyn to see if she'd caught that. Her eyes were still trained forward, intent.

Dr. Patil opened the bottom drawer on his desk. I flinched to my bracelet at the same time as Toilyn. He pulled out a manila envelope. "I was going to give her this." A shaky hand held it upwards. "Please don't hurt me."

Toilyn stood up. We followed her to the desk. The closer we became, the more unhinged his body seemed to become. He released the envelope with a slight yelp.

"We aren't going to hurt you." Jan assured him.

Dr. Patil's nose wasn't pointed in his direction. "I didn't mean you."

"Who?" Toilyn gestured from me back to herself. "Us?"

He nodded shakily. "I know what Luminous does."

"So, teaching a stupid college course makes you an expert?" Toilyn chuckled. She sat down on his desk. "I barely know what Luminous does. Enlighten me."

I shook my head. "Toy…”

"What? He's the one with all the fancy degrees." Dr. Patil all but melted into his desk chair as she moved closer. "I'm seeking an expert's opinion." She leaned a little closer, her breath now able to flutter his hair. "So, by all means, what do you know about my occupation that I don't?"

"Toy…" I grabbed her shoulder to pull her away from him. "We aren't going to hurt you. Why do you think we would?"

"Mavis was worried she was being followed." He admitted though his position in the seat didn't relax. "She was asking too many questions. I warned her. She said our only hope was her boss, J-" He thought better of it and nodded at Jan. "You. She said that you were unraveling the secrets to time travel. I told her that Luminous already existed. That there was no need to figure out something that already existed." He sighed. "For weeks she was scrambling around, gathering as much information about them as she could. When her efforts barely scratched the surface, she came to me about you again. She said she knew if she could prove to you that she was right, you would help us." He sighed. "I set up the meeting. I told her to bring you to me. She said she was on it. The next time I heard about Mavis, her car was wrapped around a tree."

"Luminous had nothing to do with her death." I hated my job, but not that much. "That's not what we do." I assured him though he didn't appear convinced.

"Altura did this." Jan murmured. "You said it yourself. Before she started in on Luminous, she was sure she was being followed." He slammed his fist down on the desk. "I should have listened to her!"

"You're not the only one." Dr. Patil said quietly. "I told her she was being paranoid. That nobody was going to track her every move over a few books."

"But it wasn't just a few books, was it?" Toilyn asked.

"No." Dr. Patil shook his head. "Altura has been conducting research on different pandemics that have occurred throughout history. They started with the Spanish Flu." He paused. Though nobody posed the question, he continued: "I've never worked at Altura but Mavis used to be my student. I shouldn't have helped her. I have a wife. K-Kids. I have kids, a family." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I suggested that we meet up because of what's in that envelope."

We left him at his desk, still shaking his head, wiping at tears that were falling faster than he could brush them away.

******

Toilyn busied herself displaying the contents of the envelope as Jan and I looked on. It was only four sheets of paper and a key. I reached across her at the same time as it slipped out. She picked up one of the papers and began reading. Jan moved to do the same. It was quiet for all of thirty seconds. His voice rose above our thoughts: "It says here that a patent was obtained to do the testing on Coronavirus."

"Yeah, but that didn't happen in 1999." I said quickly. I held up the key. "I wonder what this goes to." It didn't look like a house key or anything typical that I could think of.

"Wait a second, this says that Altura paid millions in order to do testing." He handed me his paper. He tapped his finger on the middle paragraph. "See? Right there. It says that Altura bought the rights."

"I'm guessing in the original timeline, when Altura burned to a crisp, whoever bought the rights decided to do what they wanted to do, but for whatever reason, they didn't move forward for years." I shrugged, accepting the paper. "It's crazy how Coronavirus got its start as just a strand of the common cold."

"In the wrong hands, it became a bomb." Toilyn mumbled absently.

Jan and I glanced at one another. He looked as if he was about to say something then decided against it. He opened his mouth twice before grabbing the other piece of paper.

I scanned the paper he'd given me. The majority was figures; the paper trail if you will. At the very bottom, something caught my eye: "Guys, listen to this: Altura's research was leading them towards human testing. Right here it says they were funding a nursing home as a front for testing."

Toilyn's head jerked up. "Uh uh. That sounds like you're trying to say that Altura was about to start testing on defenseless old people."

"It wouldn't be was, Toy." I handed her the paper.

She didn't even look. Instead she balled it up and went to her quiver. "Let's go." She said angrily. "No more reading. I know all I need to know."

"Here's the address of the nursing home." Jan pointed at his paper.

"Wait a minute! What if we missed something?!" I held up the key. "Did anybody see anything about this?"

"Girl, are you deaf? No more reading. We've got to stop these pieces of shit." She didn't state as much but I knew she was thinking of the only person who had her back when she spoke her truth: Her grandmother. "Grab everything because I doubt we'll be coming back here."

"What about this?" Jan had gathered all the papers.

"Burn it."

******

"I didn't see this coming."

The three of us stood in front of the abandoned building in shock. "What the hell, Jan? Did you get the coordinates right?"

"Don't look at me. You're the one who wanted to storm the castle… So where's the princess?"

"There's no way this is the place." I couldn't believe it. No, I wouldn't believe it. "But, we have to check it out anyway."

"Why? It looks like the big bad wolf has already been by. One more huff and puff and that roof is as good as gone."

"Sounds good to me." Toilyn was already inserting an arrow in her bow. "Let's go."

Jan grumbled something unintelligible as he tightened the loops on his utility belt. He pulled his gun and fell in line behind Toilyn. Why we were following the one armed with a bow and arrow, I'll never know. She kicked the rickety gate open.

"I don't think this is such a good idea." Jan murmured as Toilyn's boot was connecting with the door. It groaned in protest beneath the weight, but didn't budge.

"Stand back."

Jan turned to keep an eye on our backs. I stepped out of the way but kept my attention on Toilyn, lest we find ourselves under fire. She threw her entire weight behind the next connect. The door swung off the hinges and landed on the inside. Again, nothing.

"Is this how you guys always do this kind of stuff?" Jan came through the door, still backwards. "I mean…"

"Shhhh!" Toilyn said quickly. "Do you hear that, Z?"

I heard it. Unlike when we found Jan, there were so many holes in the foundation that the hallway was well lit. To the untrained ear, we were alone but buildings have a language all of their own. Murmurs warning us of the presence of inhabitants by the squeaks of feet attempting to sneak across the linoleum sounded on the other side of the wall. In the busyness of daylight, such sounds would go unheard, but this was an abandoned building. Allegedly.

Before we could react, the wall to the left of us caved. Jan threw himself in front of me as the ceiling crashed on top of us.

"Jan?! Z?!"

I could hear Toilyn but I couldn't move. Jan was across me, pinning me in place. I didn't know if anything was broken but that was the least of my concerns. "Jan?" I whispered. I needed him to be alive. Please, PLEASE let him be alive. "Jan? Jan?!" My voice sounded so far away. "Jan?!" My eyes had not produced so much as a shadow of a tear since 2011 in my own timeline but they were pouring now. It wasn't even the pain that was ripping through my head that was hurting me. "Jan?!"

"Z? Z?! I can hear you!" I could hear Toilyn frantically attempting to free us. "Keep talking so I can get this right."

“T-Toy!” I strained beneath his weight. “Jan's unconscious!”

"I can't move!"

"Hold on! I've got you!"

I could see a few lights above us as Toilyn was throwing rubble. "We shouldn't have come here! This is my fault!"

"This isn't about fault, Toy! We should have known with the timeline change that this was a possibility! This is on both of us."

"And… Me." Came a pained groan.

"Jan?!" If I could move, I would have hugged him.

"Shit." He coughed. "What the hell happened?"

"Toy?! Jan's alive!"

"And probably deaf after that." He said.

"Something's wrong. I don't hear Toilyn anymore." Moreover, I couldn't hear anything. "I can't get to my bracelet."

"Luckily, I don't need a bracelet." He shifted a little. The debris glowed a soft blue before exploding into the air. It landed around us like a crime scene outline.

He jumped up and offered me a hand. I threw my arms around him. He returned my embrace before: "Do you hear that?! Something's going on!"

Toylin. Without thinking, I all but tossed Jan aside. The stairs struggled to support our weight but I didn't care. As my foot hit the top step, all the adrenaline faded from me. Against the wall was a face I hadn't seen in ages. Brie pushed herself back then whirled around, landing a kick in Toilyn's stomach. She stumbled backwards before lunging at Brie's middle. They landed on the floor, not far from the hole that almost crushed Jan and I. Toilyn jumped to her feet and grabbed a handful of Brie's hair. Brie screamed and flailed her arms in an attempt to latch on to Toilyn.

"I should have done this a long time ago." She sneered, leaning over Brie. It was damn near inaudible from those stairs, but to me, the words were echoing through my ears. To me, she was shouting.

Her hands still tangled in Brie's hair, she dragged her to the hole.

"Let her go, Toilyn!" Jan cried out.

She kept dragging. Brie's screams filled every nook and cranny in the room. Jan aimed his gun at Toilyn. "Please don't make me shoot you." He pleaded, looking at me. "Do something, Z!"

There was Brie.

There was Toilyn.

And I?

I couldn't move.

It was as if something clicked in place. Toilyn's eyes widened in realization at the sight of me still frozen on the top step. "Z?" Her grip loosened.

"Please don't." It was all I could string together. "Please."

That was all Brie needed. She swept a kick beneath Toilyn's boots. Toilyn's eyes flashed with surprise a split second before stumbling backwards.

"Toy!!!" I screamed. Her body disappeared. I listened for the connect. WHAM! Dust particles sputtered from the opening.

Brie's eyes raked across me coldly. Jan rushed at her but his legs were still aching. There was no way he would reach her in time before…

I was right. With a simple wink, she slapped her hand against her headset.

Jan barely stopped in time. "Dammit, she got away!"

"Is she- Is Toilyn-" I was beside Jan now, whose eyes were downward.

"Look, her chest is rising and falling." He jumped down and landed to the left of her. Due to his legs, he almost lost his footing in the debris. He limped to her side to kneel down. "Toilyn? Toilyn, can you hear me? It's me, Jan." He patted her cheek softly. First the right, then the left. He braced himself long enough to place his hands on her chest. "Come on Toilyn…"

I rushed to the stairs. Unlike Jan, I wasn't in denial about the pain I was in. I reached the bottom step just as Toilyn was sitting up. She shook her head groggily. "I'm… I'm okay… I think."

Jan snapped his fingers in front of her face. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Two and three broken ones if you don't back up."

"Good." He smiled and stood up. "She… She's…" His legs buckled. "Fine."

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The Darkness...

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 19:44:39 GMT

Click. Click. Click.

Back and forth across the metal bars he slides the tiny, metal cup. Click. Click. Cl- He paused the cup over the last bar. This was strange. Each morning some greasy faced guard would come down the stairs and stop in front of his cell. Not today though. No one wanted to swing by to pour salt into his wounds. Apparently, he was on his own. Click. Click. Click. It's not as if he needed the company. Who would take joy in visiting someone who hadn't seen a clean trickle of water in... What day was it again? He lowered the cup to count on his fingers. There weren't enough fingers. Of course there weren't. There never were. He glanced over his shoulder and frowned at the single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. It flickered as if to warn him it could go out at any second. He turned back to the bars. He thought about restarting his assault on them, but again, his eyes stopped on the stairs. There were voices at the top. Unfamiliar, terrified voices. Screams pulsated down the steps, seemily growing louder by the second. Shakily, curious, he pressed the cup against the bars once more. Click. The door at the top of the stairs groaned in protest. It did not care to be opened and he did not care to see who was coming down the stairs. A dark, thick mist of smoke curled the length of the entryway. It gathered at the base of the very last stair. Slowly it poured, devouring the room. First left. Then right.

"What the-" He gasped, releasing his grip. The cup clattered through the bars.

A single brown boot pushed forward from the smoke. The cup shattered beneath the imposing weight. Another boot followed. The prisoner clambered backwards to the other side of his cell, hugging the wall with his back. The smoke dissipated, leaving a duster coat with a face. Green eyes glared through the bars, searching for him.

"Well, well, well..." Only the words had not come from his lips. It was almost as if they were sounding directly from inside his head. "You look interesting."

"What... are..." The prisoner clapped his hands over his mouth.

"What am I? Is that what you were about to ask?" The darkness crept closer. "I am here to set you free. Is that not enough?"

The prisoner's eyes darted from one side of the room to the next. No windows. One door. Three walls. It's not as if he had a readily available exit. Interest prickled the nape of his neck. He willed himself to appear uninterested but he could tell the darkness had already noticed.

"I have slaughtered every last single person in this dump." The darkness hissed, moving closer to the cell. He grasped the bars and pressed his face against them. "Do you know why?" His lips were still unmoving.

The prisoner stared at the piercing emerald glaring back at him. "Are you mute?" Snapped through his thoughts.

He slid closer to the toilet almost as if he could flush himself. Wishful thinking of course; that also wasn't a solution.

The darkness' blood, red lips folded upward into a sadistic grin. "You seem nervous... Are you..." He reached through the bars. "Nervous?"

"What are you?" Was all the prisoner could muster over the sound of his heart attempting to beat out of his chest.

"I am your ticket."

"My ticket to where?"

The darkness waved his hand dramatically. "To freedom, my dear. To freedom." His smile quivered slightly. " Do you not wish to be free? I mean... After all, you are the last one. It's just you and..." He pressed his face harder. "It's just me."

"What-"

A right hand flew up. "Please... I don't think I could bare it if you ask what I am once more. You are seeing this," The words in his mind paused and sighed dramatically. "Me... You're seeing with your silly little human eyes." He stepped back and clapped his hands. "With me, you will see with better eyes."

He opened his hands. More thick clouds of smoke, the same as before wafting from his palms, enveloping the room. It crawled across the floor and climbed the length of the prisoner. He tried to fight it, but to no avail. How could someone fight smoke?

"You can't." The darkness' words slithered through his mind though he had not voiced his thoughts. "You can't fight me... And why? Why would you want to? Everyone else is dead. Only you are left... Such a bore. So boring." More sentences saturated his thoughts until they were no longer his own. "Why would you want to rot in a cell... No one to let you out? No one to bring you food? Do you even remember the clear, unrealistic taste that water puts in your mouth?" He sniffed the air. "Or how it feels to shower? Or how soap smells?" More smoke, thicker now, spun over the stone walls. The prisoner felt his legs snap together as his feet left the floor.

"We'll start with the fancy soaps. The ones with perfume baked right into the crusts. What do you, say?"

The prisoner's eyes bugged as the smoke continued to wrap around him. A string wiggled its way up his torso reaching higher and faster until it gripped his neck and snapped tight. The prisoner caught his breath.

"Oh, you're gonna love this part." The foundation of the prison shook. Rubble rattled free from the ceiling, prattling across the floor.

The single lightbulb exploded. Fragments tore everywhere.

No clicking. No words. No breathing.

A set of angry, green eyes flared in the cell. The darkness flexed the fingers on his new body. He inhaled a large gulp of air and gagged at his new stench. "Of all the bodies..." He marveled at the sound of his new voice. So gravely and very unlike the last body he'd inhabited.

The darkness crossed the room in four brisk strides. He grasped the bars. Red lightening sparked from his hands. The metal melted beneath the touch. Brown boots lifted over what was left of the frame.

"Why stay in there when you could be..." He waved his hand around as if batting at invisible wasps. "Out here?" He waited as if someone was about to reply. "Still so quiet... Oh, that'll change..."

He threw back his head. A shrill, poisonous cackle spilled from his throat, touching every corner of the room. "A lot is about to change." Smoke furled from beneath raggedy prison clothes. "You'll see..." His eyes flashed brighter. "They all see..."

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Agents Of Juniper... (Part 2)

Mon, 30 Nov 2020 21:56:44 GMT

Jan's eyes were as wide as saucer cups. "Did you end up killing her?"

"What?!” I balked, shaking my head. “No. I couldn't bring myself to do it."

"Okay, so where is she now?"

"Noir."

When a person's eyes are already widened, you would think they couldn't go any wider but there was Jan, making it work. "Wait, wait… Hold up. You're telling me Brie, your Brie, or maybe I should say not your Brie… She's at Noir like, right now?"

"Yes." Oh how I wished that were not true. "I couldn't handle that no matter what I did, she just didn't know me. The next time Dax tracked me down, he was more than happy to take her off my hands." I clicked a link at the bottom of the screen. "In the years since, I've seen her once or twice."

"Wait!" Jan slapped his hands on the back of the chair. "And she's an agent?!"

Again, I nodded. "You see, that's why Noir's organization is so large. It's not just about the Luminous agents who defect. The majority of the people they bring back, they train and put to work. I've seen several dead leaders in the field." I chuckled humorlessly. "No Hitler yet, knock on wood."

"How does that work anyway? I mean, if they can go back and undo all your hard work, what's the point of any of this?"

"Because they can only do it once. When Suri defected to start Noir, she didn't have access to all of Luminous' tech. That's what Dax was after. The data breach a few years back, that's what they were looking for."

"Who's Suri?"

"Suri used to be an agent, like me. She started Noir because of our three rules. She thought they were unfair and set out to destroy Luminous. Like I said, when she decided to make her grand exit, she wasn't high ranking so her access to our tech was limited. She could only recreate certain things and all of it came with limits."

"So what's stopping her from cracking the code?" He shrugged. "I mean, I figured out time travel. What makes her any different?"

"You figured out time travel." Emphasis on the travel. "You didn't figure out how to bring people back. If a person is pre-destined to die, warning them about their death won't change anything but how they die. What Luminous and Noir does is a little more complicated."

"What do they do?"

"That's classified. You do, of course, realize that you're only here because there's a possibility that you're my assignment, right?"

He thought about it. "Can I ask another question?"

"Depends on the topic."

"This Dax… Is he still waiting for you to uphold your end of the bargain?"

I'm sure he is. Aloud: "I don't know. I haven't seen him since he took Brie."

"How do you… You know, still have your job?"

"You said a question, not some questions."

My employment was shrouded in mystery, meaning I had no idea why or how I wasn't terminated after Brie. I used to tell myself that it was because they never found out but time had taught me that it couldn't be further from the truth. Luminous had eyes and ears on everyone and everything. There was no way that I'd managed to slip through the cracks.

I still had a job for a reason…

Had to be.

"Are there any other sectors to Luminous?"

Red flags nipped the tips of my ears to attention. "Only one other person has ever asked me this many questions about Luminous."

"Whoa!" Jan held his hands up.

I threw a glance over my shoulder, expecting Juniper's "Shhhhh!" to hiss across the both of us. "I'm just asking." He assured me.

"You ask too many questions."

"Something tells me if I was even affiliated with Noir, I would not be sitting in this chair looking at you." He looked down at his belt, indicating his remote. "That Bateman guy doesn't strike me as the trusting type. He gave it back, remember?"

He had a point. In the two minutes that I'd known the man, nothing about Bateman reflected anything close to peace and love, let alone trust. His "Whatever it takes" meter was probably as bad as Toilyn's, if not worse. My posture relaxed a little, but not by much.

"Found it!" Finally. I pointed at the screen. "See, this is the facility you were working at. According to the timeline change, it never blew up in 1999. Apparently, whatever is in that envelope could change the course of history."

"Should I open it?" He moved to get it and I stopped him.

"Before you do that, I need to speak to Juniper. I've never had something this huge happen before." I thought about it. "You can either sit here or tag along. Your choice."

"And risk her glaring at me? No thanks. I'll be here."

"Oh, before I forget… Jan?" He may not have been Noir, but that didn't automatically equal trustworthy. Until I could fully trust whatever he was, I didn't want him too far from me. I stood up. I definitely didn't want to risk Juniper on my neck about him touching anything either.

"Yes?" He looked at me.

"Don't touch anything."

I turned on my heel to locate Juniper. This was not something I needed to attempt without more intel. I found her behind her desk flipping through yet another book, eyes trained on the page in her usual haughty stare.

I cleared my throat. "Um, Juniper?"

"I was wondering when you were going to need me." She closed the book. "Found what you were looking for?" She sat it down on the desk in order to turn her attention to me. The last time I'd been close to her desk was the afternoon that Toilyn had decided that we should teach her how to play UNO. If my memory serves, that was nearly two months ago and even if it doesn't, it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. I'd never seen someone grow so intense so quickly over a card game. It was the Draw 4 that angered her the most. Her facial expression would contort into a look of pure venom, glaring at whoever dared play it as she snatched up the cards. In the time since, every once in a while, either Toilyn or I would mimic how she was practically levitating over her chair, nearly foaming at the mouth.

Neither of us could give it justice though. For one, we didn't have her ghastly white eyes. The very same orbs that were now scanning my face. "What's wrong?"

I caught her up to speed, careful to include even the tiniest of details. She listened intently, both nodding and shaking her head at different parts. When I finally closed my mouth, she sat back in her chair. She swiveled to the left, to the right then an entire circle before dragging her gaze across me again. "So what do you need me for?"

"I need to know if I should let him open the letter."

"This is quite the conundrum now, isn't it?"

You're telling me.

"This is a damned if you do, damned if you don't type situation." She said matter of factly. "Opening the letter could permanently alter the timeline to where nothing can be done whereas not opening it could cause the same outcome." She leaned forward. "What do you think the higher ups would say?"

"You're like, the most high of higher ups." I replied, shrugging. "That's why I came to you."

"Well played, Z." She smirked. "Instead of an answer, I'm going to give you something to think about: When you accepted your goggles, you signed a contract with not only Luminous, but yourself. Unfortunately, that means sometimes you have to make decisions that you cannot come back from. In this scenario, you have to figure out if not knowing is the better option because either way, there will be some kind of fallout." She swiveled in her chair once more, this time she didn't swing back around. I'd been dismissed.

These kinds of situations were when I hated Luminous the most. Somehow, a part of me knew exactly what Juniper was going to say but a different part was lying in wait, hoping she would drop enough hints that I would know exactly what to do.

I rounded the bookshelf to where I had left Jan. There he was, envelope tossed aside, eyes scanning the letter.

Before my voice could find its way up my throat, he opened his mouth: "Altura has been lying to us the entire time about our research. Meet me at my apartment in the morning. We have a meeting with Dr. Carlito Patil at eight. He said he has some information that will expose Altura. I know you said you didn't want to get involved but this could be the one. Altura's research could result in the end of life as we know it." He refolded the letter and reached for the envelope. "Her wreck was that night." Still not looking up at me, he put the paper away. "I've always had suspicions about Mavis' death. I mean, she'd been going on and on for months about Altura being up to something but I wouldn't listen. I needed Altura's labs for my time travel research. I all but demanded that she leave them out of her witch hunt."

"There was no way you could have known."

"But you see, that's not true." He held up the envelope. "I could have read this and who knows? Maybe Mavis would still be alive. I'll never know because I was so blinded by my own ambitions, I wouldn't listen to her. There was nothing there, is what I repeated to myself though deep down, I knew she was on to something."

"She gave us a lead." Though I was pissed that he'd opened the letter, there was nothing to be done now. Though she gave no hints, and if I were to ask, I knew she would deny it, part of me knew Juniper knew what he was up to.

"What lead?"

Ugh, snap out of it, Jan. "Didn't she want you to meet up with her the next day?"

"That's what it says." His face had contorted into an expression of defeat.

"Dr. Carlito Patil." I said. "She gave us a name. That's a lead."

"She died because I didn't want to listen." He murmured.

"Jan, look at me."

He dragged his eyes from the table top. "What?"

"The way I see it is, you can sit here and drown in guilt or you can pull yourself together and help me."

"Help you do what?" He blinked, releasing a single tear down the curve of his cheek. He didn't move to wipe it away.

"Like I said, we have a lead. Ten minutes ago, we had nothing." I thought about something Juniper had said to me after the breach. "There are two types of people in this world. The first are those who have already given up. Those who lay down and die. The second are those who no matter what, they get up and go. Those who never stop fighting." I crossed my arms. "Blaming yourself is easy. Holding yourself accountable enough to do something about it isn't… So which one are you? Are you a quitter or are we about to go find this guy?"

"I never took you as the type for pep talks." He said, dabbing his eyes. The ghost of a smile trembled on his lips.

"I'm not." I shrugged. "The wisest person I've ever met said it to me once and I'll never forget it."

"So plagiarism?"

There he is. "Sure." I chuckled. "Whatever it takes to get you there." I offered him my hand. "Come on, we're going back to 1999."

He stared at my hand for a few seconds before accepting it.

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Celeste...

Mon, 16 Nov 2020 22:40:54 GMT

"My name is Celeste and I'm an alcoholic."
I repeat those words so many times in my mind and yet, every time I stand in front of the group, our community of addicts, for some reason, the words shrivel up like raisins. Why? Because this was not supposed to be my life. I don't have piles of stories about an abusive childhood to sift through. My story should have been one of success, but someone stole that from me and I don't think I can ever go back. Why would I want to share my story with people who were obviously struggling with their own?
Now Meredith... Meredith, the star of this show who stands up before anyone can get a word out and starts to cry before she can even manage one syllable, because, in her words: "My alcoholism destroyed my marriage. Amongst other things." She has no problem airing out her dirty laundry. She starts to sniffle, as only she can. Long, drawn out breaths, as if she was gasping for air, but we all knew she wasn't so no one moved. No one dared flinch. "After the death of our son," We all knew the story of baby Cory. Cory, with the chubby cheeks and huge blue eyes that seemed to span his entire head. Cory, who suddenly passed away in his sleep one night when he was only seven months old. Cory, whose burial site was only three blocks away from where Meredith took her first drink. "Matthew buried himself in our nanny whom he'd swore he would never approach because she wasn't his type... I mean, I should have known. No one's tits are that perfect without a thousand men ready, willing and able to drool over those perky little nipples." She had a tendency to ramble, our Meredith. "I buried myself in vodka. The cheap kind. Not that it matters. I just," She inhaled a long, pained breath. "I didn't want to feel anymore unless I could feel the weight of my son in my arms, you know?"
In that room, the basement of Saint Margo's Catholic Church, there were so many stories like hers or in some cases, like Maddox, worse. Maddox, whose name was probably as fake as his forth nose. "My first drink was poored for me when I was eleven years old. I don't even know if I was sipping on the expensive set or some crap shit, but that wasn't the point. The point was, I was given a drink to relax me. Every part of me became loose and I could feel myself float away. When you're a kid, you don't realize what it means for your senses to leave you, but in retrospect, it was probably the best thing for me. He didn't even have to hold me down. Physically, I was there. Mentally, I was off to somewhere protected where kids like me didn't get liquored up so that some old fart can get his rocks off." He, unlike Meredith, didn't need to pause for sniffles. Maddox had this way of peering through you that pressed tears from the corners of your eyes. He didn't have to cry. Once his deep, dark, depressing gaze crawled across your face, his tears became yours. His pain gripped the base of your spine and didn't loosen until he was finally back in his chair, done sharing until the next time the feeling moved him. You weren't supposed to interrupt people during "their time", but Maddox's stories always reminded me of what could be behind each shot glass. Each wine glass. Each cheerful looking, brightly colored umbrella.
Then there was Aubrey. "Hi, I'm Aubrey." "Hi Aubrey." Of course she's an alcoholic. Aren't we all? Aubrey had been practically mopped out of a gutter no less than seventeen times due to alcohol and one of those times, her junkie boyfriend beat her for having to throw away his stash before the cops and ambulance could come poke around. We all knew about Junkie Jr. Junior because Aubrey, for the life of me, could not bring herself to blame him for the life he led because he was raised by junkies. "Two junkies in... One junkie out." She'd said once, shaking her head, this time with a slightly healed black eye. She would drink to forget he was trying to beat it into her that he wanted her for himself and no one else. "He does love me", she would proclaim, her words shaky with doubt. She was in too deep though. He'd soiled the best parts and left her to pick up the pieces. Yet, like any other puzzle, some were lost under a couch somewhere. Today was somehow different. She was different. She stood before us, behind the tall, wooden podium wearing this yellow sundress with matching sandals with this calm, happy smile stretched across her lips. Her "Hi, I'm Aubrey" didn't sound somber and drenched with regret. She was moving on, she reported. Junkie Jr. had finally been tucked safely in the local prison and his departure was all she needed to pack the baggage she'd accumulated and become reacquainted with herself.
Plain Jane looking, one hundred year old grandmother name cursed, Muriel, our moderator, was certainly caught off guard by the news. I mean, why would anyone want to move on from the dusty, religious, basement sanctuary she provided daily for us to whine about our various assortment of situations? Her mousey head snapped to attention. At first glance, no one would believe not a hint of volume, flat haired Muriel had a story of her own, but how did the saying go again? "Never judge a story but it's dust jacket?" Or something to that extent. You know what I mean. Muriel was a killer... and not just any killer. She had been in just about every news publication across the globe. Unlike Maddox, Muriel definitely wasn't her given moniker and for the life of me, I could not figure out which hat she'd chosen that one from or why. On my first day, she'd encouraged me to share, but I was too busy combing my memories for her face. I knew I'd seen it somewhere before. That night, while flipping through the pages of my twelve step manual, it hit me: She'd hit her husband with her car. Her hair wasn't always flat and dreary. Oh no, our Muriel used to be a stripper that some rich, old geaser had plucked off a pole like a rose from a bush. Only a talented florist could appreciate the art behind the beauty of plucking a rose and this man was no florist. He'd forgotten the mark of such a treasure: Roses have thorns.
After ten, glorious years of marriage, she'd come home to find him twisted around the frame of his secretary. Cliche, yes. Instead of alerting them to her presence, she'd hopped in her car and gone to a liquor store. She'd drank and drank until she could barely see. Swerving all over the street, somehow she'd managed to drive home, only to be greeted with the two of them kissing on the porch. Without a stitch of care in the world, he'd walked her to her car, only to make the error of kissing her again. As soon as the secretary drove away, all the neighbors could hear was the sound of her tires squealing through the neighborhood. She didn't even break. Later, in front of the judge, from one side, the jurors were treated to the story of a faithful wife who was slapped in the face with her husbands infidelity and from the other, a tale of a woman who had slithered her tongue across a set of old, wrinkled balls for years, just lying in wait for the opportune moment to murder him for the insurance money. Okay, so maybe it wasn't worded exactly that way, but we were all well versed on the story. From rags to riches to prison.
We watched Aubrey as she left the podium. The skirt of her sundress swished slightly with each step as she went back to her chair to grab her purse, but that wasn't what I was focused on. Could no one see how high her head was? This wasn't for show. These were the steps of a changed woman... And I was envious.
The door swung shut behind Aubrey. For the longest of seconds, no one moved. No one spoke.
Finally, when silence had crept across every inch of the basement, Muriel spoke: "Anyone else? Anyone?" Her eyes searched every face, practically begging someone to open their mouth.
"Hi, my name is Celeste." I almost didn't recognize the sound of my own voice. "Hi Celeste." The response was shaky at best. "And I'm an alcoholic." Of course, I'd always been aware of my alcoholism, but hearing the words aloud, saturated with my own voice, was completely different. I was not only voicing my truth, for the first time, I was living it.
"I had my first drink when I was twenty one just like the government says we're supposed to." Once it was on, I couldn't stop the faucet: "My closest friends were always throwing parties, but I never drank. I was Celeste, the goodie goodie. Everyone expected me to do the right thing. I was on my way to becoming a nurse, you see." All eyes zeroed in on me as I made my way to the podium. "My friends encouraged me to let my hair down, I was twenty one on that day, six years ago. So I drank. I drank and I partied like I'd watched them do so many times. At some point, I'd opened my eyes to one of my oldest friends, Brendon, pressed against my naked body. I had no idea how or why or where my..." I cleared my throat, recounting the details. "Brendon and I had been friends since we were five and there he was pumping away because he thought I was still passed out and yet, I was wide awake with him slurring my name into my skin with his alcohol drenched voice. He smelled of spoiled peaches and gallons of cheap cologne. Like he'd taken a bath in Creepy Granddaddy No. 9. When it was over, he curled against me like we'd always done when he spent the night. I cried myself to sleep. He was still there the next morning, behaving as if nothing had happened. According to my therapist, I have been searching for twenty one year old Celeste with all her hopes and dreams at the bottom of all those bottles since that night. She was never there, of course. I used to wonder would my life fall back in place were I to tell Brendon I knew what he'd done to me, but oddly enough, within days of me joining this group, he died in a car wreck. I almost went to his funeral to expose the truth to all our family and friends." I chuckled humorlessly. "Who was I to ruin everyone's perception of perfect Brendon, who masqueraded as his mother's perfect son and my perfect best friend who supported each and everyone of my perfect dreams?!" I was screaming now. "Do you know what the worst part is?! His mom bringing me this box of his shit because I was his best friend and why wouldn't I want some of his crap to remember him by?! And she was so sad, missing her baby boy because she's just a mom, burying her son. Not a woman burying a rapist."
I didn't have a purse to grab or a skirt to sway. The door slammed on my back and there I stood, breathing in the night air, musing over the irony of Aubrey feeling the need to wear a sundress in the dark.
I reached in my pocket for keys to a car I no longer owned. DUI. I didn't get to talk about how after that night, I never stopped drinking. I was still Celeste from that night, pressed in some sheets because I was supposed to be passed out.
Peering up at the stars, I lit a cigarette. I keep telling myself I'm going to quit. Which I am. Just not tonight. I watched the smoke circle through the night sky. I hadn't expected a grand gesture. Someone to follow me, I mean. Each person planted in those chairs needed help, same as me. Maybe they too were searching for who they used to be at the bottom of a bottle. It started with standing at that stupid podium, feeling their feelings. Sharing their stories.
Something on the ground caught my attention. I smirked, realizing what it was. I flipped it over and over between my fingers, allowing the moonlight to shine along its edge. It was a thirty day chip. I glanced up the street, wondering if in the rush to start her new life, had Aubrey dropped it. Maybe this chapter in her life was truly over and she was off to start a new life... In a new book.
That's who we are, you know? Our stories. We are made up of words and sentences. Carefully formed paragraphs that make up the foundation of who we are. Cracks are formed by our heartache and pain, but it doesn't break us. We are only broken if we choose to be.
I turned on my heel and flipped the coin over my shoulder. Plink! I heard the metal connect with the sidewalk. I took a long drag off my cigarette before hailing a cab.
Still at the bottom of a bottle.
Still battling for air.
Still drowning.
I opened the cab door. Music swept across my face like a crystal stream; carving a slow flowing path through my thoughts.
"Where to?"
I closed the yellow door then told him my address.
Still Celeste.

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Agents Of Brie...

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 16:29:46 GMT

As I said, I was a new agent. I couldn't have had my bracelet for a year and yet, Brie's ghost still loomed over everything I did. No matter where I travelled, she was already there, slathering every surface with reminders. She didn't want me to forget why I put on the bracelet, is what I told myself.

If you haven't noticed, all agents have a shoot on sight air about them. Guilty until proven innocent, so to speak. Back then, I wasn't like that at all. I was the know it all who knew absolutely nothing. When an agent of Noir approached me, I was on my ninth, maybe tenth, assignment. I had never dealt with Noir up until that day, I need you to understand that. Teaching somebody about something gives them knowledge. It doesn't grant them instant understanding. Back then, in my eyes, Noir had some good points. Especially when it came to their agency. Noir brought people back all the time. Why not me? Is what I swaddled myself with after that first encounter.

Dax knew exactly which buttons to press and exactly how much pressure to apply in order for me to consider defecting. "All you have to do is give me some information on Luminous."

Again, I was fresh off the boat. Aim directly between his eyes, shoot, then step over his old, feeble body as he writhed in pain is what I should have done. Instead, my inexperienced mind was already sifting through my memories, determined to unearth something of use. When I couldn't produce anything useful, he shrugged it off. "No big deal." He'd said with a calm shrug, as if we'd known one another for years. In that very second, I should have known it was time to move forward from the conversation as if it had never happened but I just wanted her back so bad. Instead, I absorbed all the flowery promises he weaved around me. He would go ahead and bring Brie back, no problem. "Easy", so he'd said. In return, one day he would arrive to collect the information I had gathered about Luminous over time.

I remember bursting into tears. Take that, Luminous! I'd thought. I was so happy! I'd finally figured it out. I remember throwing myself into his arms and sobbing uncontrollably. He'd allowed the onslaught as if people were throwing themselves at him daily.

"I'll be back." He'd murmured against my scalp. Faster than I could blink, he vanished. When he reappeared, Brie was pressed against his chest.

"Is she… She…" I couldn't bring myself to utter the word.

"Dead?" He'd finished casually, as if he said it all the time. As if the word was that simple. "No. Just unconscious." He laid her head down on the pillow before turning his attention back to me. "This ends my part of the bargain. I'll be back for yours." And with that weighted promise, he was gone.

I grabbed the nearest chair so that I would be the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes. Being the first thing was important, is what I'd told myself. Without my steady hand to guide her, she wouldn't know what to do. Or where she was for that matter. Again, Dax had arrived while I was on assignment so again, I was neglecting my duties. This was more important, I'd reasoned with myself.

In real time, it was 2020. She'd been gone for nearly a decade. In some way or another, everyone's life had ambled forward without her. Except mine. Mentally, I remained frozen in a moment in time where she was by my side. The world had changed in many ways and yet, I was the one clinging to the remaining fragments of my broken memories.

For almost an hour, I sat in that chair, watching her chest rise and fall. I fought with myself to leave her be, to not shake her from her slumber.

When she finally stirred, again, I fought with myself. The idea of having her in my arms once more… Just the thought…

Unaware of my presence, she sat upward on the bed. A coil of brown hair slinked across a bare, slightly tanned shoulder. Her eyelashes swept the curve of her cheeks several times in a blink, finally revealing a pair of inquisitive brown eyes. Little flakes of green sparked beneath the flicker of the naked lightbulb above her head, the same as they had all those years ago. I watched as she studied her hands. First the left, then the right.

Every paragraph…

Every sentence…

Every word…

What was I to say?

Slowly, ever so slowly, time caught up with our situation and she realized I was in the room. She rubbed her eyes.

We had three rules. THREE. And there I was, eye level with the one that mattered most.

"Who are you?"

No. "W-Who am I?" I stammered.

Due to my own ignorance, I thought removing someone from their timeline and bringing them back was the same. I mean, on paper, both concepts appeared so similar. Three words was all it took for me to learn how wrong I truly was.

She nodded. "Where are we?" She studied the hotel room. Her gaze combed all four walls and slowed to a confused halt on a mirror positioned by the bathroom door. She watched as her reflection traced the lining of her cheek. She did this to each side. She tugged at the last t-shirt I remembered ever being pulled over her head. It was one of mine. She rubbed the glittered four leaf clovers. Specks of glitter flaked off, forming a shimmery pattern on her lap. Her eyes never left the mirror. "Who are you?"

In an instant, my entire world shattered. No, no, no! What had I done?

"Y-You don't know me?" I tried. Maybe she needed her mind to catch up with her memories.

Before she opened her mouth, I already knew the answer but watching her eyes swing from the mirror only to form one word was like a sword being sliced through my soul: "No."

What is this?! I rushed to her side. "Look closer at me." We were so close now that if I chanced it, our lips would touch. "Are you sure?"

She held my gaze.

For every blink I offered, each a symbol of my desperation, I knew it was no use. She didn't know me.

She pointed at herself. "I'm?"

I couldn't face her anymore. I nearly tripped over the chair in my attempt to get away from her. "You're Brie!" I shouted, clapping my hands over my ears. This wasn't what I wanted. I didn't want this.

Were it not for the obligation binding me to that room, I would have grabbed my goggles and abandoned her. She didn't deserve that though and as much as I wanted to deny it, I understood that fact. She didn't ask to be there. I did.

Slowly, almost breath by breath, I removed my hands from my ears. As soon as they were down, without missing a beat, she was there: "Who are you?"

"I'm…" There was no need to tell her my real name. She wouldn't have recognized it anyway. "I'm Z."

"Do we know each other?" She was standing now. Instinctively, I took a few steps back.

"We did." I replied. "Once."

"What do you mean by once?" She crossed her arms in the same way that the Brie I'd once known used to.

What was I supposed to say? "In a former life." I tried.

Her expression folded into a look of horror. "A former life?" She repeated. A hint of fear weaved it's way to the surface. It shimmered across the tears she was now desperately attempting to fight. "Am I-" She couldn't say the word. Instead, she lowered her voice to barely a whisper: "Is this Hell?"

Get it together, Z. "You're not dead and this definitely isn't Hell." Why did people always assume Hell? No one ever said: "Is this Heaven?" or "Is this purgatory?" Always Hell. Truth be told, it said ALOT about the human condition that everyone assumed Hell, even without the fire and or brimstone.

Now her hands were on her hips. "If I'm not dead, where am I and how did I get here?"

Might as well approach this with an honest mind. "I asked for you to be here."

"Why? Where did you get me from?"

"I'm an agent of time." I braced myself. "Basically, I'm a time cop. It's our job to keep the timeline intact." I released a long, drawn out sigh. "I took the job to get you back only to learn that I couldn't so I tasked someone else with the job."

"Wait… To get me back?"

I nodded.

"Back from where? Where was I?"

Might as well rip the band-aid off. "Dead."

She slapped her hands over her mouth. I went to move towards her but her eyes had rolled to the back of her head. She collapsed back on the bed, motionless.

Well, that didn't go as planned at all.

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Agents of Juniper (Part One)...

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 16:39:25 GMT

"I stand corrected." Jan hadn't closed his mouth since we arrived at Area 51.

"This is our library." I said as we approached the gate. "People associate this place with aliens and the great mysteries of the world."

"What they don't know is that a branch of Luminous is hiding in plain sight underneath this place." Toilyn pulled out her key card. "The general consensus is that the government keeps this place under wraps to hide any proof of life on other planets."

“Jokes on them.” I scoffed. “This place existed before all the rumors started. It's actually rather shocking if you think about it.”

Jan tilted his head. “Why?”

"For all the conspiracy theories Luminous gets thrown their way, no one has ever suspected that this place…" I scanned my key card. "Is our library."

"Somewhere in 2019, people were talking about storming this place." Toilyn said, backing up for the metal bars to swing open. "It was just a joke but it was all the internet could buzz about for an abysmal amount of time."

"Storming Area 51." I chuckled. "Classic."

"So what you're saying is: Aliens aren't real?" He actually sounded a bit disappointed.

"No, we're not saying that." Toilyn said, leading the way towards the elevators. She pushed the button. "We're saying they're not here."

The doors swished open. We climbed in and I pushed the button that would send us to the library; what some would refer to as a basement for how far beneath the ground we were traveling.

The entire way, Jan's mouth hung open in awe. He marveled at the gold and silver knobs on the panels, each leading to a different sector of the library. It was obvious he had millions of questions but the death glare Toilyn had yet to put away kept the inquiries at bay.

When the doors opened on the floor she'd selected, she waited until Jan and I got out. "Well, this is where I leave you two." She said, reaching out to stop the door before it could close.

"What?!" I was taken aback. "Where are you going?"

"I'll catch up. I promise." She winked. "Later, losers." She thought about it. "Oh, and Jan?"

He perked up at the sound of his name.

"I have a solution for finding out what went wrong that only you can do."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. When you get there, you're going to have to put your hands over something. Can you handle that?"

He nodded and pulled out a tiny notepad and a pen. Of course he did. "What can I put my hands over?"

"Your mouth so that you can shut the hell up while Z figures this shit out." She let go of the door. It slid closed on Jan's infuriated facial expression. He shoved the notepad and pen back in his utility belt. I couldn't see her face but I knew wherever she was headed, she was laughing.

"I don't think we're going to get along." Jan shook his head. "Is she always like that?"

"We're going to the end of the hall." I said, biting my lip to keep from reacting. I walked away from him. Though it was funny, a part of me was wondering what Toilyn was up to. "There's no way a person can remember every moment in time. As much as we may attempt to cling to our memories, over time they become cloudy or we could remember the details incorrectly altogether. Because of this, Luminous built this place." I explained as I pushed thoughts of Toilyn to the back of my mind. I would deal with her later. "Every moment in time, be it great or small, is listed somewhere in this place. What we're looking for is…" I led him past a few agents. Slowly, almost comically so, each head turned to study Jan. One of these things is not like the other, I thought. I waited for one of them to say something but instead, they started whispering and one even flat out pointed.

"Um, Z? That's your name, right? Z?"

"Yes." I replied just as the baby goggles who dared to point tapped me on the shoulder. I whirled on him. "Baby goggles" was yet another one of Toilyn's terms. This one designated for agents who hadn't touched that sweet, sweet five year line just yet. His goggles were freshly shined, a sign of a new agent, but now that we were eye level, I could see the wear and the tell tale signs of age on the lenses.

He backed up three paces before gesturing at Jan. Every eye, including ones that weren't paying attention before, paused on us. "What is he doing here?" He asked, though it came off as more of a demand. "Do you even know who he is?" So not baby goggles.

"This is Jan."

"Oh, is that what he told you?" Yup, definitely not baby goggles. He had to be some sort of higher up. It was as if the agents who grabbed both Jan's arms had appeared out of thin air. He tried to jerk himself out of reach but to no avail.

"Tell her." The agent said, his voice drenched in the kind of warning you probably didn't want to get on the bad side of. My attention slipped from his strangely colored eyes and fell on the insignia pinned to his lapel. I'd seen that golden flame enough to know what I was looking at. He really was a higher up. "Tell her."

He and Toy would get along great. Aloud, "Tell me what?"

"This is the guy who messed with my remote." Jan explained, nodding towards the agent."Nice to see you again, Bateman." The agent, Bateman, signaled the other agents to release Jan as he was adding: "I see you're still as friendly as ever."

"So you're the Jan." The agent who had released the shoulder Jan was now rubbing said. "I've heard a lot about you. Somehow I imagined you taller and not as… " His eyes studied Jan's lithe frame. "Thin."

"Same." The other agent agreed. "How did you con her into bringing you here?"

"I didn't." Jan shrugged. "Apparently I made the assignment list."

"How did you mess up the timeline this time?" Bateman all but shouted. He looked as if he was just waiting for an excuse to jump on Jan.

Oh yeah, he and Toy would get along just fine. Aloud, "We aren't sure yet."

All three agents looked as if every fiber of their being was put into play to keep them from laughing in my face. "I brought him here to get a lead on a hunch I have." I said, ignoring their expressions. I'd seen that look so many times. I was numb to it now. I swallowed the mean remark that was festering on my tongue. "My goggles only told me what went wrong. They didn't list the cause."

"Sounds like Rurick is doing the assignments again." The right side agent said. "Last week she sent me to 1776 and didn't bother to send where in that year I was needed. I thought I was going to make sure the Declaration Of Independence went off without a hitch. Not even close." He laughed. "I didn't even get to meet Jefferson. None of them."

"You could always just go approach him yourself, you know." The other agent pointed out.

"I never do that." He replied. In what I'm sure was an attempt to project the image of a good little field agent in front of Bateman, he glanced at me. "Do you?"

Yes. I shifted my weight from one boot to the other. Do you always fling your coworkers under the bus? "Not for fun." To Bateman I said: "We won't be here long and if I find out I'm wrong, I'll return him to where I found him." Hastily I added a faint, "Sir."

"He won't be needing an escort. Will you, Jan?"

"No." Jan mumbled.

I grabbed his arm to drag him away from the interrogation. Even with our backs turned, I could feel six pairs of eyes practically carving a path up our spines. When we reached the door, I shoved Jan ahead of me. He stumbled. Before he could fully react, again, his mouth was hanging open in awe.

Instead of books, the walls were lined with screens. Beneath each one was a metal bar, projecting which decade it was tasked with. I'd never been inside the library before the makeover but I could only imagine what it looked like with row upon row of bookshelves instead of screens.

As she was placing a book back on a shelf (What? I'm guessing you thought I was about to say there wasn't a single book in the entire building. Well, you would be wrong.), Juniper, our resident head librarian, (Read as: The only librarian. It was her library) noticed us.

A moment or two on Juniper. Juniper had been sixteen years old for as long as I'd known her.

None of us had any idea how long she'd been that way and from the image she projected, it was none of our business. Going by the snippets of information that had fallen into my ears, what I did know was that despite being one of the youngest faces in the building, she was actually one of the oldest.

Though Luminous refused to recruit an agent before the age of twenty one, Juniper was a special case. Over the years, she'd allowed a few details from her past to slip free but for the most part, what I gathered was, without her, there would be no Luminous. No one knew her original timeline or how she came to be. What I did know was that she seemed to know everything about… Well, just about everything. Her eyes, a ghastly solid white, were now pointed at us. It was a jarring experience at first but over time, it had become a natural part of the library experience. Her purplish, turquoise hair brushed across bare, silvery white shoulders.

"Hello!" Jan shouted suddenly. "I'm Jan!"

I didn't have a chance to warn him. Not surprisingly, he automatically assumed she was blind. It was a common misconception.

Juniper, who was more than used to it, scrunched her nose at the inquiry. "Humor me, if I were blind, what exactly would all your shouting do?" She asked. "Would the bellowing from your vocal cords somehow blast the gift of vision through me?"

"You can see?" Jan said, blushing.

"It's a good thing too. I can see your obvious ignorance from way over here. Best you not move in case it's contagious." She nodded at me. "Long time, Z." She tilted her head slowly to the right of me. "Curious. Where's Toilyn?"

I shrugged. "No idea."

Juniper chuckled. "Quite the busy body, that one. So what's on the menu today?"

"November 1999. I need to sort through the entire month."

"Follow me." She abandoned the stack of books to shuffle through Jan and I. We waited a few seconds before following. She didn't have to pause in front of the metal plaques. "I just moved the 90's to the back." Juniper was saying. "I'm hoping to have this place up to standard in a few weeks. Things got moved around during…" She glanced at Jan. "... Well, you know."

I did know. For the first time since the doors had opened, the library had suffered a perimeter breach. Noir had managed to hack our security system and because of how the computers were set up, all of our information was compromised. Juniper managed to stop them before they could do any real damage but it changed her. The running gag was that she was a part of that library. From that day forward, it was no longer a joking matter. Now it was a fact. Though she never stated as much, it was obvious that she took the breach personally.

"Alright. The screen on the very end plays the year 1999." She gestured at Jan. "Make sure this one doesn't touch anything." She started to walk away, thought about it, and added: "If you need me, I'll be up front."

"I'm guessing she's not a fan of mine either." Jan said, watching Juniper. He waited until she was out of earshot before stating this though.

"You won't be making friends around here if that's what you mean." I started towards the computer she'd pointed us to. “You're not supposed to be here. I only brought you in case we were right about you."

"So you don't like me either?"

"You know what it is that I don't like?" I pulled the chair out. "People like Noir… People like you… You gain so much knowledge through time travel then you mess things up with reckless abandon."

As I was typing, he poked his nose across my shoulder: "So you've never messed with the timeline?"

“Yes.” I sighed, the sound heavy with truth. My truth. "And I pay for that decision almost everyday." I admitted.

"What did you do? Cause an earthquake?"

I held up my arm to show him my bracelet. "The day they gave me this was the day I learned what Luminous is really all about. I was naive. I only joined because I thought I would be able to bring…" I hesitated. "There was somebody I wanted to bring back. It took a lot of ground work on my part but eventually, I was able to get her back." I squeezed my eyes shut to keep the pain at bay. "Only it wasn't her. The day she opened her eyes was the day I learned why we protect the timeline."

"So what? She clawed out of her casket and attacked you?"

I pushed him away. "She wasn't a zombie."

For all the memories a mind chose to part ways with, there would never come a moment in time where mine would see fit to forget what it was like to bring Brie back. Nor would it erase the pain of having to let her go again.

I cleared my throat. "Do you want to know or not?"

He went to grab a chair. He spun it backwards and perched his head over the back of it.

"I'm listening."

"Before I start, just know when I got my bracelet, I thought I was going to be the first to outsmart Luminous. I thought I knew it all. I was so sure." I sighed. "I only fought for this job because I thought everything in my life would be fixed if she had never died."

"What was she? Like, your sister?"

I closed my eyes. "She was my world."

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Chapter Two: Agents Of Jan...

Sun, 18 Oct 2020 00:39:16 GMT

"It's too quiet. You'd think these hallways would be full of doctors." Toilyn whispered. " I don't like this."

"The coordinates said this is the place." I replied though I had the same concerns.

"Didn't Covid originate in Asia? Why didn't they send us to Asia?"

Though our thoughts were the same, I was doing everything to keep my suspicions to myself.

Plink! The sound of what could have easily been a can rolling across the linoleum caught my attention. "We are not alone." I hissed.

She held her finger to her lips a split second before flinging open the door we were crotched behind. A hail of blue and red spiraled down the hallway. I rushed out to provide cover. On the floor beside a soda can was a rat. Half baby, half old and gray. The noises it was making though… "It's safe to say you got it, Toy."

She grinned. "What?"

From behind us came a sarcastic voice: "Yeah, but who has you?"

Our eyes still locked, we froze.

She dropped and rolled across the hall, firing an array of beams. I followed suit.

"You missed." Was the response.

Toilyn snatched something from her hip and tossed it down the hallway. It smacked against the wall and burst light across all four corners, including a short, long haired guy with a silver plated revolver pointed right at us.

"On your feet." He ordered.

When neither of us moved, he started to laugh. "Typical."

Who was this guy? Though he didn't put his gun away, to his credit, he didn't open fire as we were scrambling off the floor.

"Some things never change. Relax. I'm not going to shoot." He placed his gun back in its holster. "Who are you?" He asked.

My eyes narrowed suspiciously. I wasn't exactly acquainted with every agent at Luminous but this guy definitely didn't fit the profile. "We could be asking you the same question."

"You could…” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Hey, could you put your hands down? I put my gun away."

Toilyn, whose aim was still on his face, didn't move. "Not until I know what you're doing here."

Before either of us could so much as flinch, he pulled his gun and shot to the right of us.

"What the-"

"Jeez… You two are so jumpy." He walked past us. We watched as he crouched over the rat that Toilyn had blasted moments ago. We'd completely forgotten it. "You shouldn't leave stuff like this lying around. The government would love to figure out how to use this technology." He said, placing his hands over it. It started to glow. When he stood back up, it was a normal, everyday creature again.

"How did you-" Toylin began, watching it scurry off into the darkness.

He held his hand up. "I'm guessing you're here about the timeline change." He held his hand out for us to shake. "I'm Jan."

"You're what?" I said. Neither of us moved to shake his hand.

"Okay…" He shrugged. "Jan's my name." He leaned against the wall, boot against the wallpaper. "I'm here for the same thing."

"You're Luminous?" I said.

He shook his head. "No."

"You're Noir." Toilyn's hands were up again before I could stop her. She rushed at him, fists flying.

He dodged the onslaught easily. Notably, without attempting to shoot her.

"Stop, stop!" I shouted. "Toy, he's not Noir!"

They weren't paying me any attention. "He's not Noir!" I tried again.

She was on top of him now. "What?!" She snarled back at me.

That was all he needed to launch her off of his stomach and into the wall. He pressed her against the paper with her wrist twisted against the small of her back.

I aimed my hands at him.

He released her immediately. "I'm not Noir." He said, raising his hands.

"Why are you here then?" Toilyn asked, rubbing her wrist.

"Can I put my arms down?" When I nodded, he continued: "I was trying to explain earlier before you two went all vigilante on me. Name's Jan." He smiled. "I'm an inventor."

"Why would an inventor have an interest in 1999?" I said skeptically.

"I have an interest in time in general. If I may…" His hand barely brushed his holster but it was enough for Toilyn to ready herself to dive on him again.

"Why are y'all like this? I wasn't reaching for my gun." He smirked. "In the year 2000, an inventor will crack the code to the mysteries of time travel." He held up what appeared to be a normal, everyday television remote. "I am that inventor."

I folded my arms across my chest. "If you're not Noir or Luminous, how did you get a hold of our tech?"

"I didn't." He wiggled the remote which was looking less and less normal and everyday by the second. The glass face plate shined a little. "This allows me to time travel undetected for the most part."

"It's you." Toilyn groaned, smacking her forehead. "I thought you said there wasn't an offline."

"There wasn't." I scoffed.

Jan was right behind me. "Offline?"

"It would explain why they only sent you." Toilyn replied, ignoring him.

"Or maybe they only sent me because they figured you were going to show up either way."

She gestured at Jan. "No, he's the assignment, Z. Something this dipshit does is going to change the timeline."

"Dipshit?" Jan waved his remote. "I'm hardly a dip anything. The both of you were rolling around the hallway shooting at something you didn't even have eyes on and you're calling me names?! I've run into plenty of agents in my travels and out of all of them, you two would be the dipshits."

"Can I kill him? Please let me kill him."

"Why would I be the cause of the timeline change if I just told you that's why I'm here?" His voice sounded as if she'd just made the stupidest point he'd ever heard.

Though he had a valid counter point, our very existence had the ability to affect the timeline. Apparently, in his travels, no one had mentioned that fact. Just moving a cup a few spaces to the right in 1774 could cause a tsunami in Japan in 1996. We had a meticulous occupation and they made sure we never forgot it.

I voiced this fact and slowly, almost as if something was falling into place, the smug expression on his face dissolved and his demeanor relaxed. For some reason, that made me uneasy. "What did you do?"

"What do you mean what did I do?" He blushed. "I didn't say I did anything."

"Your face is telling an entirely different story and I don't have all day."

"It's small. I swear."

Toilyn shook her head. "Earthquake wiping out millions small or a paper cut on the president small?" She asked.

Again, he was running his hand through his hair. He thought about it for a couple seconds before reaching down. We looked on as he was patting his pockets frantically until he produced an envelope from his back pocket. "I took this."

Neither of us moved to retrieve the "this".

"What exactly is that?" Toilyn asked, her fingers were only a mere millimeter from the dial on her bracelet.

"Wait! Wait!" Jan wasn't blind that was for sure. He tore the edge of the envelope and pulled out a piece of paper. "It's just a letter."

Toilyn's aim was pointed at his head now. "To whom?"

"Me! It's to me!"

"Wait a second, Toy." I pushed her hands down. "Why would a letter to you cause the entire human race to be wiped out in 2000?"

"I don't know." He opened the flaps on the envelope. "I haven't even read it yet."

"Don't read it now!" I warned him. "For all you know, reading that letter is what causes the timeline change."

"Who's it from?" Toilyn demanded.

"Before I put the finishing touches on this," He gestured at the reattached remote on his belt. "I put in my resignation at the research facility I was working for. Shortly after, someone bombed the building and my name and face were everywhere."

"Why didn't you just go back in time and find out what caused the explosion?" I asked.

"I couldn't." He blushed sheepishly. "I've caused a timeline change before." He sighed. "The agent who caught up with me did something to my remote. Now I can't go but so far into my own timeline."

I almost dove on him. Why didn't he tell us that in the freaking beginning?! I was thinking this as Toilyn was demanding the same.

"So let me get this straight: You're acting all uppity and you, you right there… You yourself have caused a timeline change?! It's nice to see that while you were stocking up that belt you made sure to pack the audacity." She turned on me. "Now can I kill him?!"

"All I have to do is say yes." I said calmly.

"Okay, okay." He rolled his eyes. "Can we get out of here first? I'll tell you everything you want to know."

"You can do that right here, right now."

"She has a point." I agreed, nodding. "Where exactly is here anyway?"

"This is Altura, Thanksgiving day, 1999. He gestured at the wallpaper. "Apparently they slapped some paint and wallpaper across it and according to my records, they will reopen in two weeks."

"This is your facility." I thought about it. "When did you get that letter?"

"In 1999, before the explosion." He frowned. "Why?"

"I'm trying to figure something out here."

"What are you thinking, Z?"

"He said he finished that remote in 2000. This place was up and running again that same year, right?"

"Yeah."

"That would mean that him going to 1999 to get the envelope could have altered the timeline to where it never got burned up in the explosion. What if this building was never rebuilt and this is the original foundation?"

"Wait a second!" Toilyn snapped her fingers. "What if whoever wrote the note knew about the explosion and was trying to warn him since they knew he was leaving?"

"Or… What if the letter is from my secret admirer?" Jan held up the paper again. "You're talking like I'm not standing right here."

"What if the note was warning him about the virus?" I said, turning my attention back to him. "Who all knew about your time travel research?"

"Nobody."

"Jan…"

He shifted uncomfortably. "Okay, one person knew."

"Was it your girlfriend?" Toilyn rolled her eyes. "It's always the girlfriend."

"No." He actually sounded offended. "I had an assistant."

“Why does it feel like we're having to keep peeling back layers from you?” I demanded. He was worse than an onion. “What aren't you saying?”

He released a long, forlorn sounding sigh. "My assistant was the one who wrote the letter. She died shortly after giving me this. I was so upset… I didn't think."

"You?" Toilyn said sarcastically. "I refuse to believe it. Say it isn't so."

"I didn't think to take it with me. I put it in my desk." He continued, ignoring her.

"How did she die?" I asked.

"Car accident." He paused. "What was that look?"

I thought it over. "You're coming with us to the library."

"We can't take an offline to the library." Toilyn said, shaking her head.

"If he really is my assignment, until we sort this mess out, he's going everywhere I go." I looked to Jan. "Right?"

He shrugged it off. "I mean, it's just a library."

Toilyn smirked. "Just a library."

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Chapter One: Agents Of Travel...

Sun, 18 Oct 2020 00:32:28 GMT

"Hello… Hello?" A hand waved in front of my face, breaking my concentration. "Earth to Z…"

"Nope. You will not."

"Oh, come on."

I swung my attention to the left of me. A tattered piece of fabric, which I was certain began its life as a white tee shirt full of hopes and dreams of a productive life was going over the head of Toilyn, my best friend. She tugged at the brownish, grayish, slightly white fabric. "I don’t have an assignment today. You don’t have an assignment… I think. Do you?” Her voice was a hair above the sound of whining. "It’s 1967. Don’t you want to see what’s out there?"

I groaned. "I swear, the only thing I remember happening this year was interracial marriage became legal. What do you want to do? Go watch both sides protest?" To be fair, the last time I had an assignment in 1967, it was to stop a Noir agent from killing some guy whose untimely demise would have directly affected Thurgood Marshall becoming the first African American Supreme Court Justice. I chased him from 1945 and finally around 1967, he got sloppy. Luminous takes a "whatever it takes" approach to stopping Noir’s agents but they didn’t like my report on how I stopped the guy. I didn’t get hauled into headquarters but "putting a high heel through his eye" is on my record. Blood was everywhere. It was a mess. I was new to the job and didn’t know that removing a sharp object after stabbing it through something is a bad idea. Write that down. It could prove to be useful someday.

Luminous had a clean up crew tasked with prettying up whatever messes we could possibly make but, the messier it was, the more likely it would appear on your record. They were finicky with even the tiniest specks of blood. To be fair, my mess wasn't nearly as bad as some of Toilyn's. Hers were legendary. Her record was as long as she was tall. All she heard was "Whatever it takes" and never looked back. Partners weren’t allowed in Luminous but our paths had crossed enough times in the field for us to become buddies and over time, buddies to damn near inseparable.

"Come on, we can go throw rocks at Stonewall. That always makes you smile."

The hotel we were holed up in was a dump. Each surface was covered in almost an inch of dust. Toilyn loved it. She hated when I would get us what she deemed as "fancy housing."

"We're here for a good time." She would balk. "Not for a long time." I would always finish.

"That's two years away." I groaned, throwing myself back on the pillows. Dust swirled around my head, sending me into a coughing fit.

1969 wasn't my favorite year but it was my go to year for just about everything. Having a bad day? Stonewall. Having a good day? Stonewall. Got my ass handed to me? Stonewall. The sun set at just the right angle? Stonewall.

I've hugged Marsha P. Johnson so many times that it's a shame she'll never remember me. I tended to either hug or shake hands with as many people as I could before WHACK! That first brick goes flying. Sometimes I just sat on the sidelines to watch. If I'm having a particularly bad day, I would join in. Nothing says blowing off steam like joining a riot. For decades, rumors have swirled that it wasn't Miss Marsha who flung that first brick. Well, I've been there enough times to tell you for certain it was-

"Z… You're blinking."

"I am not." I said, pointing my eyes at the paint peeling from the wall to the right of her.

She picked up my goggles from the floor. "Um… Yes you are." She dangled them above my head so that I could see.

I groaned. Did I mention I'm not exactly the biggest fan of my job? "1999." I read the flash from the left side and instantly bolted straight up.

"What? Did they give you an offline?"

I shook my head. On a mental scroll of words that she was constantly adding to, was the term "offline". Basically, a person unassociated with Luminous or Noir. Over time, like with most of her made up terms, it had somehow weaved its way through my vocabulary as well.

Confused, green eyes met my gaze. She dropped the goggles in my lap. "Then what? What could be more annoying than following around some offline?"

What I was looking at had nothing to do with a simple babysitting job. "What's the one thing you remember the most about 1999?"

She tilted her head in thought. I almost smacked my forehead. She had to be kidding me!

"Y2K… Toy. Y2K, remember? Everybody thought the world was going to end. How could you forget that? There were even people who thought when the clock struck midnight, the computers were going to rise up and take over."

"I remember now." She nodded.

"Holy shit. Shit. SHIT." Timeline change: Coronavirus. Covid-99. I tossed the goggles back to her.

"Wait a minute. No, no, no. Covid happened in 2020 and it was called Covid-19 not 99."

"Apparently, not anymore." I ran to grab my boots. "This cannot be happening."

"The entire world was changed forever because of it… Lives were lost. There was an economic crisis. Wait. Z, wait!"

I snatched the other boot over my knee. "What?"

"How are you supposed to stop a virus by yourself?"

"I'm not. You're coming with me. Where are your shoes?"

She shrugged. "I think I left them in 1888."

"I'm not even going to ask." I shook my head. "We'll grab you a pair when we get there."

"You know Luminous hates team ups, right?"

Says the woman who somehow materializes on almost all of my assignments. "Since when has that ever bothered you?"

"1999, huh?"

Exactly. I slid the goggles over my head and pushed the button on the side. "Yes Toy, 1999."

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Prologue: Agents Of Time...

Sun, 18 Oct 2020 00:29:25 GMT

I hate my job.

That's it. End of story.

Roll credits.

I wish. Honestly, when I decided to become an agent of time, I had no idea what I was signing up for. It reminds me of when you're a fresh eyed sophomore in high school and the military starts parking their tables at your school. They lure you in with the perks, the benefits and leave off all the trauma. For some, that's enough. For others, it's about what happens after you sign those papers. (Because let’s be real and let’s be honest: If they roll in talking about PTSD and possible homelessness, would people sign as quickly?)

Now that I have a moment to mull it over, that's exactly what it's like!

I thought I would be preventing deaths, changing timelines or you know, at least fixing them. Something major like preventing slavery altogether or possibly something seemingly miniscule, like finding out who that guy was standing out there under an umbrella in a three piece suit the day JFK got assassinated. No. That's not even close to what a time cop does. Our job is to keep the timeline intact. They don't even care how we do it as long as people are dying when they're supposed to and the already deceased stay that way.

We have three main rules in our organization, but that's the most unbreakable of all the unbreakables: We aren't allowed to bring people back. Accidentally or otherwise. The dead must stay dead.

So how did I end up taking up such an occupation? What on Earth would make me sign on for not only an unforgivable, but lonely life? Believe it or not, pure ignorance. This story starts with a death and I'm telling you right now, there will be a lot of sorrow and betrayal along the way so go ahead and do what you need to prepare yourself.

The day I found myself outside Brie's hospital room, even then, as her family was huddled around her bed whispering about how her body felt warm to the touch, none of that mattered. She could have easily been sleeping, they said.

Only, she wasn't.

By 01/25/2011, time cops were a secret organization that EVERYBODY knew about. Well, not exactly. They were a conspiracy theorists' wet dream, is what they were. Cops traveling through time, righting wrongs and changing lives. Believe it or not, at one point, time cops were giving another particularly “imaginary” secretless secret organization a run for their money. (Two syllables. First name “Illumi”. Rhymes with “Biscotti”. I'll leave you to sort out the rest) Videos, articles, entire college courses… You name it, Luminous Corporation was slathered across it.

That’s where all time cops come from: Luminous Corp. The light bearers. We bring the light. We light the pathway. What else was in that manual? Oh yeah, we are the torches in the darkest caverns of the past. Guess what isn’t in the manual? In order to bring the light, you must first go dark. What does that mean? The day half your pinky toe dips behind the doors of Luminous, you die. Can’t have people posting you across all social media platforms and putting that one picture where you look your most solemn, your most innocent, on a milk carton can they? (You know that picture. We all have at least one. If you don’t, there’s a good chance one of your family members has been waiting for the day your corpse hits the floor so they can produce it from a dusty ass shoe box. See, now they can save that picture for your obituary. Luminous is so considerate, aren’t they?)

As soon as you sign those contracts, before the ink starts to dry, they remove you from your own timeline. This comes with its own stipulations. You’ll come to find Luminous is nothing without their stipulations.

After you’re plucked from your timeline, they remove all memory of how or when it happened. From my understanding, it’s so that if you do revisit your timeline, you’re unable to warn yourself of anything. They also make it to where you are repelled by yourself or others attached to you. Anything more than seven feet reduces you to a pile of unusable mush. You puke. You cry. You… Other things. It takes a few days for the symptoms to subside. I should know. I’ve revisited my timeline several times. As morbid as it sounds, three years after signing the contract, I attended my own funeral. Safely tucked away, I observed row upon row of people I hadn’t seen or spoken to in years, snotting up tissues as if we broke bread together on the regular. Sure enough, there was that photo of me looking the picture of innocence and purity. (Ha!)

Since I brought up rules, we only have three. Before a contract touches a table, we are tasked with memorizing each and every syllable until they’re burned into our minds brighter than our own names.

1) You cannot alter your past or the pasts of your loved ones (Example: If you grew up poor, slipping your past self some winning lottery numbers is a no no. Poor is poor)

2) You cannot alter the timeline UNLESS a higher up signs off on it (Example: No matter how much you may want to throw caution to the wind and just smother baby Hitler, that is not allowed)

3) YOU ABSOLUTELY CANNOT FOR ANY REASON BRING A PERSON BACK FROM THE DEAD NOR CAN YOU ALLOW YOUR ACTIONS TO RESULT AS SUCH (If for any reason this law is broken, it is your task to right this wrong. Your failure will result in immediate TERMINATION
I’ve touched on rule number three earlier and that’s because it’s the one rule that will find you terminated from Luminous. I’ve never witnessed anything but I’ve heard rumors about how they’ve been so pissed with an agent that they dropped him back in his timeline literally six seconds before he got hit by a bus. Was that how he died originally? There’s no way to know. Honestly, after your contract is over, depending on how you part ways, they can control whether you see old age or five minutes after you get the boot. Luminous doesn’t play about their rules. They have three. You follow ALL THREE. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Each agent is issued one weapon. Males receive a watch. Females receive a bracelet. Both items do the same thing. They are embedded with a silver dial. Two clicks to the left allows your hands to release energy bursts that will turn an opponent into a baby. No, I am not kidding. What’s even crazier, or cooler depending on what kind of headspace you’re into, three clicks to the right equals BAM! Instant geriatrics! The first time I used it in a fight, I was not ready. All the guy’s teeth fell out, his skin withered up like a raisin and a coffin popped up beside him. All he had to do was climb in. Okay, okay. I embellished a tad on the coffin. Either way, reading about it is one thing. Witnessing it takes it to an entirely different level I assure you. Beside the dial is a red ruby. The day I received my bracelet, they told me one thing: “Do not touch this unless you really mean it.” So far, I’ve never used it in combat. Did they tell me what it does? Of course not. That would be too easy.

For all other issues, we are trained in hand to hand combat.

Each agent is also issued a pair of time goggles. The left side flashes the timeline you're assigned to and the right tells you the actual assignment.

Alongside that is a stern warning of “Under no circumstances are we to expose our goggles to”...

*** Water (Submersion)

*** Extreme heat

*** Extreme cold

*** Stone/Concrete

All four could cause them to malfunction or worse, cause them to not work at all.

Most of the time, our jobs are nothing more than simple babysitting assignments, but if Noir gets involved, it can get a bit tricky.

What's Noir? See, you're asking the wrong questions. The question is "Who is Noir?" and the answer would be: Trouble. Noir was what we were fighting. Noir, meaning the darkness. I’ve always found it fascinating that Luminous had conspiracy theorists peddling their merch on all four corners of the planet (Where are my flat Earthers at?!) and yet, I’d never heard of Noir until I became an agent. As soon as you join Luminous, they make sure you know about Suri, the head of Noir. There was an entire chapter dedicated to her betrayal. We were tasked with this knowledge because at one time, she was one of us. With all the restrictions we had, knowing that defecting was possible was like dangling a million dollars in front of someone then telling them they'll never be able to grab it. (I mean, it's right there.) Noir was a constant reminder that no matter what the manual said, you could leave Luminous without being dumped in your original timeline. All you had to do was defect.

For all the time spent protecting the timeline, Noir had no such restrictions.

We brought the light.

They brought the dark.

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Works Of Art...

Thu, 20 Aug 2020 20:16:05 GMT

The building was old, worn and on its last gust of wind but it served a purpose. It wasn't the kind of place schools would rally eager faced children together to tour. Far from it quite frankly and yet, through the doors and up the stairs were many exotic, beautiful things on display.
The sound of quarters jingling from several pockets twirled through the hallways. One man's steps seemed to drag slower than the rest. Almost as if he was searching for something in peticular. Finally, he chose a seat at the far end of the hall. As soon as he slipped the four coins in the socket, the lights in the room sprung to life, revealing a pair of clear, blue eyes. This one... She was the one. He could not avert his eyes from her full lips. Almost nestled in the corner was a long, silver pole. She wrapped herself around it with such precision, slowly climbing to the top. She dropped to the floor in a split right when a bell dinged and the lights went out, signaling the dollar was spent. Quickly, he counted out four more quarters. She reappeared, this time sliding across the floor as if in a dainty ballet studio instead of a room that reeked of sadness and regret. He wanted her. He had to have her for his collection. He tapped on the glass.
She stopped. The spaghetti straps of her lingerie slipped from her shoulders. He couldn't tell if the movement was on purpose or not but it did not matter.
She approached the glass, step by calculated step, not breaking eye contact before reaching out to touch it. Right palm first, then left. Again, there was a ding and everything went dark. He patted his pockets. He only had four quarters left. When the lights lit the box once more, he expected her to be in some type of pose but she was still standing palms up against the glass.
"Hello." Was all she said. "Hello" was all he needed. He expected her to do something yet, she continued to stare. He cleared his throat before asking if she would mind spending time with him. Her eyes were eager, hungry. He knew that look. She reached in her bra and pulled out a tube of lipstick. As the color touched her lips, again, darkness enveloped the room.
As she had requested, he waited behind the weather battered building. He had expected her to be wary of joining someone she'd only just met. Instead, she'd linked her arm through his and they walked. Once inside his home for the evening, she stood there for the longest of seconds, staring into space, waiting for something.
"Kiss me." She said softly. His name slipped through blood red, painted lips. He had wanted to taste them ever since the fluorescent lighting had flickered on in her box. She moaned against his embrace.
He had not expected her to be how she was. He allowed her to undress first him then herself. She insisted on removing everything before pushing him back on the blankets.
"Keep on your heels." Was his only request.
She nodded then half walked, half danced to the bed. The entire time, she barely so much as blinked. She lowered herself on him and a little sigh escaped her throat.
She repeated his name over and over as if she had been saying it her whole life. As if tonight was not her first time hearing it. She threw her hair back and clawed down his chest like a cat at a damn scratching post. He allowed her this courtesy. It was the least he could do.
She continued to ride with her eyes closed. He watched, transfixed by the beads of sweat gathering on her breasts. Drip by slow, poetically beautiful drip, beads dropped on his stomach. A clear, slick pool was beginning to form.
Again, his name escaped her mouth. Louder this time. Her hair, curly and long, bounced against her arched back. For the right man, in the right setting, her talents would not be a waste but for him... Such a pity. He could tell she was about to climax. Her ride had escalated into a full blown assault. Her nipples, hard from excitement and pleasure pointed directly at his face.
She fell forward. Carefully curled tresses swept across his face. She leaned up so that their eyes could meet. She smiled at him. The smile of a secure lover who had been held in place by a tender embrace for several magnificent years. He had to admit: It was a wasted gesture. They all smiled at him.
"Now what?" She asked quietly.
Oddly enough, this newly sweet, innocent sounding voice suited her more than the carnal moans she was slathering across the walls moments before.
He didn't break their stare. Women did things like this for some reason. As if staring deeply into someone's eyes gave them some weird, mystic key into a man's soul. Unfortunately, he knew that game and he was well versed in how to win.
"Now..." He sighed. Her breasts were pressed against his navel. He didn't need her on top of him for this.
She matched his sigh. "What are you thinking about?"
Earlier, when he had invited her back to the hotel, she had posed the same inquiry. That was a loaded question.
When he said nothing, she sat up, her back now turned from him. He could make out the lining of her ribs each time she took a breath. He could tell she had so much she wanted to say and yet, the words would not gather as she wished. He glanced down to scan the carpet. A tie was the closest thing to the bed. He reached down to retrieve it. She was lost in her own mind; deep in thoughts she could not bring herself to voice. She didn't even register his movement until he'd slipped the tie around her throat.
She tried to scream but to no avail. The spikes of her silver heels tore holes in the covers. She tried to throw them both backwards using her weight. Each time she thrashed, he pulled tighter and tighter. She reached behind herself to fight him off. He had expected this. They all tried to fight. She was not the first. Nothing she was doing earlier was close to as seductive as watching her writhe against the blankets, trying in vain to break free. Little gasps escaped now trembling lips. Mesmerized, he pulled tighter, waiting...
Waiting for that last...
She gasped and went limp.
He released his grip and tossed her to the side. Her hair showered over her face, covering it.
He had an affinity for busty, women with raven hair but this one, she was different. She masqueraded as a woman whom had known him every day of her existance. Not as if their paths had only crossed because she was on display behind a glass wall like a work of art in a museum.
"You..." He leaned down to brush the hair from her cheek. It was still warm to the touch. "You..."
He redressed, still keeping his eyes trained on her; displayed like a tragic, delicate work of art. His body twitched, recalling how she fought. Each gasp. Each thrash. He reached down to twist one of her curls through his fingers. She truly was a wasted, exquisite, work of art, tucked behind the dusty glass of a shadow box.
Never again. In his mind, he had freed her.
Tomorrow... One day or the next, someone would open the door and see her. News cameras would be salivating in the hallways, trying to catch the tiniest of glimpses for their ten o'clock news. A coroner would pull a zipper over her head, shaking his own at such a rare, stunning flower but not before an officer or four took countless pictures at every angle imaginable. She did not belong in the caverns of a weather beaten building. She belonged here...
Because now she was on display for all the world to see.

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Aioli

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 14:41:37 GMT

They say in life, the people you cross paths with are either a blessing or a lesson... It's up to you to decide which one. In my short, eighteen years of lung capacity, I'd only gotten to know one or the other until the day I stepped foot in my dormitory. The day I stepped from my mom's car as Jayden, the child, and entered the room of Aioli, the experience. Day 1 I was captivated. For a full year and a half I would watch her, memorizing who she was, not realizing that in learning someone so openly, what I was truly doing was learning about myself.
"Hello... Earth to Jayden." A pair of fingers snapped in front of my face. "Penny for your thoughts?"
"You couldn't afford me." I replied, still indulging in my daily ritual of daydreaming about my roommate while sitting in front of her and no, that's not creepy because... Reasons. "What are you doing?"
I looked on as long, lithe fingers plucked a towel from the rack. She looked back at me and smiled. She was forever smiling. "You ask me that everyday like you don't know the answer."
I returned the smile. She was always so beautiful to me. I held up the camera. "Come on... I actually want to pass this class." Earlier, I'd told her I needed a favor and as always, she was awaiting the other shoe to drop. Full disclosure: I'd known about this particular project for months, but I was pushing it last minute. I mean due tomorrow at 8am on the dot last minute.
"Fine." She lowered the towel and cleared her throat dramatically. "Do I have to say my name?"
"It would help."
"Wait, wait... Which project is this again?" I zoomed in on her right hand curling around some invisible object. She had a hand gesture for everything.
"Feminine studies."
She threw back her head and laughed until tears were carving lines in her make up. When she started to choke, I damn near dropped the camera to pat her on the back. She swatted at me like I was a hoard of angry bees. "I'm fine, I'm fine." She wheezed. "So um... Feminine studies, huh?"
"I need an A."
"And it's due... ?"
I hung my head sheepishly.
"Uh huh." She nodded though I had not spoken.
I sat the camera down to retrieve my bribe. Carefully, I stepped across the various assortment of clothing she had decorating the floor. (Read as: My friend is a bit of a slob) When I returned with the cup that I'd braved a shaky handed teenager with bad acne for, her face lit up. "Coffee?" Noticing her name in black permanent marker, she smirked. "Oh, expensive coffee." She popped open the lid and waved over the steam, ushering it up her nostrils. "And it's black... You must be really behind."
"Or, you could see this as me trying to match your brew with the depths of your soul."
"Flattery too?" She laughed again before tilting the brim to her lips. "This is due tomorrow, isn't it?" She was many things but, stupid wasn't on the menu.
Suddenly, the pile of clothes by my left shoe became more fascinating. Purple feathers... Classic. Sighing like I was back in first grade getting busted with my hand in my Nana's cookie jar, I dared drag my gaze to meet hers. She was staring right at me. Of course she was. "Uh huh." Again, nodding at words I had not spoken. She took a long, unnecessarily loud sip; staring unblinking at me the entire time. "I already said I would... So, do what you do. Aren't you the director? Lights... Camera... Action!" She sat the cup to the side.
I pointed the camera at her. "Ready when you are."
She snapped her fingers. "I stay ready so I don't have to get ready... You might wanna write that down." She reached over to pluck the cloth from the vanity once more. "I am Aioli. Simply Aioli. Last name not needed."
"Tell us what you are doing." I urged, though I already knew. I had watched her perform these moves dozens of times. These moves that transformed the Aioli I knew from a complex work of art into something I could not begin to explain. I would try, but every time I tried to describe the vast contrast between the before and the after, I always found myself at a lost for words. Which, if we're being honest here, is another reason why she was the ONLY choice for my project... That I should have brought up months ago but, details, details.
"I am removing my armor." She winked at me through the mirror. "Make up can cover what you don't like about yourself or enhance the beauty you already possess. For me, it is life's way of providing me with armor. I take this foundation..." She swipes across her chin. "And it helps me cover up the little imperfections that for some reason, only I can see." She goes across her cheeks in circular motions. "These marks..." She points with her index finger. "This contour allows me to change the shape of my face." She does a few motions on her nose. "Especially my nose. I love my dad to death, but there's no way he loved me when he fucked my mom and somehow managed to jizz his nose all up through that DNA."
I did everything I could not to laugh but, it was too late. "I am so editing that out!"
"Why? You should be willing to share all aspects of..." She winked again, this time mischievously. "Femininity." She dabbed the towel across her eyes. "You know what I like about make up the most? Why I call it my armor?"
"Am I going to have to edit it out?"
"Maybe. Maybe not." She continued to remove the black and gold around her eyes.
I braced myself.
"Outside of what I said earlier, make up is magical." Her gaze found mine in the mirror once more. "Yup, move over Harry Potter, there's some new Hocus Pocus in town." She held up a tube of lipstick. "Most people look at this and see the Passion Plum I simply cannot live without, but this... This tube is so much more than that. This tube solidifies my look." She gestures at other items on the vanity. "This mascara, this highlighter, this eyeliner, this foundation... No matter how I paint myself, in the end, it shields the person underneath. What's really interesting is I never know which me make up will unearth." She pointed at my reflection. "You see, my dear Jayden, when a person steps off the porch, whether there's a blue sky bright with possibilities or gray with uncertainty, that person will be entering a world where people who are inviting and loving live practically three clicks away from people who are cruel and hateful. Make up protects me from what makes this world so dark and dreary. I never know if it will bring out what makes me kind hearted and giving or what makes me," She pauses as if trying to figure out which words best suit her sentence. "We are not always at our best. Before I sit my make up bag on this table, I am meek and as you've pointed out many a time, a bit of a push over. Once I've painted, I feel a wave of confidence wash over me."
"You get mean." I said in the same teasing tone I always reserved for Aioli. Only this time instead of her lips folding upward, she winced. "Mean?" She let the word hang between us as if I had been struck blind, deaf and dumb. Which, given the amount of cosmetics she had yet to wash from her face, I was surprised she didn't just voice that very opinion. She swiped little circles across her forehead. "I'm not mean. I..." She waves her right hand in a circular motion. "I'm honest... Real. If people see a mirror of themselves in me that they can't handle, is it my fault?"
She pointed at the floral covered make up bag that I had purchased for her last Christmas. "Shy, reserved, introverted me would never feel comfortable enough to say the things Aioli says. That me would never." Gone was the flashy, glitter covered goddess known simply as Aioli. In her place was my roommate Ari. He turned from the table and looked directly into the camera. "When I step on stage, Aioli is all I know. My make up shields me from all the things that are wrong with this world and for those few hours, I am the real me."
"So the real you, Aioli, says out loud what introvert you would never?" I ask calmly, though I already knew.
Ari, still smiling, reached up and started digging hair pins from his wig. "You should really let me do your make up, Jayden. With your cheekbones..." He tilted his head thoughtfully. "Plus that, you never know. There could be a real Jayden up under all that stuffiness you call a personality." Gingerly, he places the purple wig on a Styrofoam head. "Throw on some pumps and a wig... Ya never know." He snaps his fingers. "You could be fierce."
I blushed. "How long have you been a female impersonator, Ari?"
Ari threw a wink to the camera. "Note that he didn't say no to the make up." Ari sat back in the chair. "It's drag, Jayden. I'm a drag queen."
"I know, Ari. This is for my class, remember?"
He stuck his tongue out a me. "Anyway, I've been doing this since I got to college so give or take a month or two, about two years. My parents have never seen her and there's a good chance they never will."
"Why's that?" This was new to me. I furrowed my eyebrows, confused. Ari's parents sent him more letters and boxes of stuff than any other kid in our dorm. As a matter of fact, I'd met his dad over the summer and he never said a negative word about his son. Why wouldn't they want to know about how talented he was?
"Now, now Jayden. I doubt your class wants to know that." He reached for the cup of coffee.
"Ari," I lowered the camera to capture his face folding into a brooding expression. I'd seen this one before. I had hit a nerve. "I could have done this project on anyone but do you know why I chose you?"
His left eye rose. "No, no I don't."
"I chose you because Aioli is everything I think a woman should be. She's strong willed, she's vocal and I'm always saying she's mean, but I know you know I don't mean it the way it comes off. Or at least, I hope you do. In truth, Aioli is more than just a stage name. She's the best parts of you." I heaved a huge breath. "And I... I am enamored with her."
"Enamored, huh?" Ari's right eye caught up to the left. "Someone studied hard for the SAT."
I ignored him. "Why do you really need armor?"
He sighed a deep, emotion filled sigh. "When I was ten, I kissed Ty Ty from up the street." He turned back to the mirror. "I didn't know you weren't supposed to kiss boys and Ty Ty was so cute. He was two years older than me, but I didn't care. At ten, for me, the world started with Ty Ty and ended at him hopping on his ten speed before the street lights came on. I will never forget the sting of my father's hand on my cheek. At ten, before I knew what it was to be anything more than a child, I was learning what it was like to be a faggot. Ty Ty wasn't allowed to play with me anymore after that and I... After that afternoon, I knew I would need protection. Not only from him but from the world. In the darkest corners of my mind, Aioli emerged. I started stealing make up from my sisters so that I could practice Aioli's look. I knew how she would sound, look... Everything. I would practice things she would say to my father. I would stand in the mirror, look myself square in the face and say 'How do you feel hitting on a kid with all three of your chins wagging in the wind?"
I burst out laughing. "Your dad isn't even fat, Ari."
He didn't share my humor. "He was back then." He nodded in the mirror. "By the time I knew I was coming here, I knew who I was and I had built my armor from the ground up. Aioli is the sword and shield. Make up is the armor. Do you understand now?"
I bobbed my head up and down though there was no way I could ever fully understand. "I never knew that about your dad." Quite frankly, I was floored.
"We never talk about the slap." Ari shrugged. "We never talk about me being gay so I know for a fact we'll never discuss Aioli and you know what? That's okay because I have you, Jayden."
My camera arm started to shake, and not because of the weight. "Me?"
"You believe in me."
"I do."
"No, I mean, you get me in ways I never thought possible when my parents dropped me off. I never told you this but, I thought when I came here I would be some kind of a pariah. You were my first friend, Jayden. You were the first to accept me for who I am. No questions." He shrugged. "Even when I started doing shows, ya know?"
"Well, we are roommates." I said, doing everything within my power for my face not to reveal how uncomfortable I felt. "If I hadn't, it would have gotten awkward quick."
Gone were the dramatic hand waves and bravado. In their place was a small smile. "Yeah, I guess you're right."
"Thanks for the help, Ari." I lowered the camera.
It was his turn to blush. "Dude, you only asked me because it's due tomorrow."
I turned the camera off so that I could sit it down on the bed. "Actually, that's not quite accurate. As I said, I am enamored with Aioli." I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. I coughed then cleared my throat. "I guess in extension, by default, I'm enamored with you."
"Wait..."
I held my hand up. "Don't turn around or I won't ever say it." I planted my eyes firmly on the wrinkles in my shirt. "I am always trying to figure out how to spend time with you Ari and one thing I've long since figured out is, to understand you is to understand Aioli. She is the you that only gets out for a breath of fresh air when you're wearing your armor. I... I love her."
"Um... Jayden?"
I shook my head. "Nope... No, I'm not gonna look up because I might burst into flames. I'm so fucking embarrassed."
He chuckled. "You love Aioli?"
"No. I mean, yes... I mean, I love you, Ari." The words bounced from my heart before I could catch them. There was no turning back now.
I felt several fingers tap me on the head. Tear filled eyes met mine when I could finally will myself to order my eyes upward. He stuck his hand out. "We should go to lunch."
"Did you hear me?" I have no idea what made me ask.
He wiped at a few stray tears. "I did."
"Well say something."
"I just did." He replied in the same rational, calm, Ari tone that his voice always carried once his armor was put away. "We're going to lunch, Jayden."
"That's it?"
"Of course." He took my hand in his. "You see Jayden, I'm going to need a full stomach to scrape together better terminology than enamored to describe my feelings for you." He thought it over. "Besides, it's not everyday that the man you love films you tucking one of your personalities away and he's totally cool with it... Even if it is for a grade. Just so you know, I might have to either marry you or kill you, Jayden." He dragged me to my feet. Our eyes met and this time... This time when it was more important than any other time, I refused to look away.
Neither of us spoke.
There was no need.
The words clung to the walls of our room like an unspoken prayer.

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Seven Deadly Sins: Envy...

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 14:34:13 GMT

In my mind, I would like to start this with "It was a dark and stormy night", but to do that would mean I would like to dance around what brought us to this place. It would mean I'm pissing on our history and that is not the case at all. Quite the contrary, actually.
Our history began almost a hundred years ago on the dead end of a long, narrow dirt road. Our house is two stories high with seven rooms. As this story unfolds, you'll come to find how fitting this was. The first owner was how I came to be. Johnathan something or nother. As time has gone on, his name has grown shorter and shorter. Soon, Johnathan Whoever He Is will be nothing more than a letter. Probably not even a J, but that's not the point. He was the first owner. He built this house for his lover, Simon Trask. I still remember Simon's last name because was my vessel. Without Simon, there would be no me. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. You can be the judge of that.
The day Johnathan nailed down the final nail, he sent for Simon. What Johnathan didn't count on was Simon had already settled down with someone else. Not only was Simon tucked away in the real world, his world came with a wife and kids and no room for Johnathan.
"I built this for you... And for what?!"
Next thing I knew, Simon was on the floor and I existed. I stood over Simon for the longest of times, wondering what it meant to be brought into a strange new world. Johnathan buried Simon in front of a tall, Oak tree. I wish he had not done that. Him doing that trapped me here and here is not where I wanted to be. As for Johnathan, the forty seven times he stabbed Simon had to be washed away quickly. He scrubbed day in and day out for six days and on the seventh day, he rested. You know... Like God. Only darker.
As time went on, Johnathan became depressed over what he had done to Simon. Each day, he would sit under the tree and sob over a pint of vodka. He would beat the ground screaming "Why?!" as if the answer wasn't as simple as him keeping his hands to himself. I'm not sure how but somehow these late night sessions inspired him to bring home Jerry. Jerry, with his perfect cheekbones and smoldering good looks. Jerry, whose relationship with his reflection meant more to him than his fling with Johnathan. It didn't take long for him to join Simon under the oak tree.
What I didn't count on was a tall, statuesque beauty to appear after the twenty-second jab through Jerry's stomache. She had these legs that seemingly went on forever. For what felt like an eternity, she stood still, watching Johnathan continue to stab an already deceased shell. Long, flowing purple hair swept across her back as she turned, finally noticing me.
"Who are you?"
My immediate reaction was to claim I had no idea as I shook her hand but "Envy" was what popped out instead. Envy. Was that who I was?
"Vanity."
And that's how it happened. One by one, they appeared as Johnathan turned the loving foundation he built for he and Simon into a house of horrors. Days turned to weeks and on they went until years had faded into decades. In that time, Vanity and I were joined by Avarice, Gluttony and Sloth.
Then came Marisol. She wasn't like any woman who had stepped into the home either. This woman didn't walk. She floated from one part of the house to the next, leaving a trail of sensuality in her wake. None of us understood why she was there because Johnathan was pushing eighty-eight and all he ever brought home were men. She would talk to him like he was a baby in a carriage somewhere. And then there was the word that was vibrating through the walls: “Bride.”
"I wonder how she's going to go out." Sloth said lazily. He was sitting on the floor, bundled up in a heavy coat; his shield from the rest us. He didn't so much as glance in their direction and as I had come to learn, that wasn't about to change. Sloth was just a piece of decoration in our little piece of purgatory. He didn't do more than he was asked, if he did what he was asked for that matter.
"He's too old for all that stabbing." Vanity pointed out. This was our lives. We lived to observe whatever vessel Johnathan lured into his home only to welcome a new... Whatever we were.
Again, time passed with us observing this woman. Watching. Waiting. Wondering why she was there.
"I figured it out!" Avarice proclaimed one day. He wore a business suit and black trimmed glasses that he was constantly pushing up the bridge of his nose. On the day he arrived, when asked why he wore such uncomfortable clothing, he just shrugged and replied: "Why are you wearing a... what are you wearing anyway?"
I had no idea why I was wearing an emerald dress comprised of shredded fabric. To be honest, I had no idea why I cared what he wore. Avarice was annoying. More annoying than Sloth and that was saying something.
"She's poisoning him." He clapped his hands excitedly.
"I don't know what you're so excited about. She's doing it through the food!" Gluttony exclaimed in dismay. "Envy, do something!"
I couldn't wait to hear this. "Like what?"
"I don't know." Gluttony was stressful. No matter what we had figured out about our current situation, it was never enough. He wanted more. He was itching to reach out and touch something. Not that I could blame him.
It was a cold, winter day when Johnathan Whoever he Was drew his final breath. He was standing in the kitchen, back gnarled with old age, stirring tea in a slightly dusty China cup. His fingers rippled with arthritis and yet, he was in mid-stir when the poison finally caught up with him. His eyes disappeared to the back of his head and he stumbled backwards. He scrambled to catch hold of the wall, but there was nothing to be done. He crumpled to the floor like a pile of clothes, straining for the right to his last moments. Meanwhile, upstairs, as she did every day, Marisol sat in a chair in front of the mirror, applying blood red lipstick to her lips. She smiled at her reflection before heading to her walk-in closet to select the perfect “I’m mourning my husband who just dropped dead from mysterious circumstances” garment. It was a black shimmery number with a barely legal plunging neckline. The town’s lips would be wagging over her choice, but did she care? Did she care indeed… I looked on, wondering how it would look draped across my shoulders were it in my size.
“Um, what’s that?!” Vanity’s scream shook my attention away from Marisol. I was about to reprimand her for always being so dramatic when I saw the thick, black clouds forming above our heads. The lack of color we inhabited everyday was replaced with blackness. We scattered but, there was nothing to hide behind. We could see through all the furniture. From the clouds, the glowing red tip of a cigarette appeared first. Second, a pair of angry, red eyes. When the rest of him emerged, he sneered down at us in a glare of judgement before acknowledging anyone’s presence.
"Oh, this is rich." He bellowed, laughing. He flicked the cigarette to the floor and ground out the tiny ember with the heel of his shoe.
We scrutinized him, our reactions equally confused and intrigued. Who was this dark cloud?
Vanity motioned for Gluttony to approach him, but he shook his head hard and firm. Which, for him, was a vast improvement. This left me to volunteer as tribute because suddenly Avarice could not see nor hear and Sloth had all but evaporated. I half expected him to throw Vanity in front of him as a shield for how tightly he was huddled behind her skirts.
“W- Who-”
“Shh. Shh. Watch this.” He didn't even look at me.
I turned to where Marisol was now standing over Johnathan Whoever He Was’ body. Her face was dry as a bone. She had not one tear to spare for her husband. Carelessly, she stepped over him. She ran her fingers through her hair as she leaned against the counter, wondering which spot on the grounds would attract the least amount of attention. She was daydreaming about the old oak tree when she reached back to pick up the China cup Johnathan was stirring only moments before. She smiled at the aroma. The tea had not been for him. It was for her. It was her favorite: Butterfly Pea Herbal Tea. He’d already stirred in the lemon, transforming it to a light purple just like she liked. She shrugged coldly and tilted the cup to her red lips. Down to the last drop she swallowed, her eyes narrowed in an annoyed fashion at the body on the floor. She was halfway up the stairs when it caught hold of her.
She gasped desperately as realization twisted through her face. She wasn't the only one dabbling in poison. She couldn't speak but there was no need. With her left hand, she clutched her throat. With the right, she reached helplessly for the handrail, but to no avail. She tumbled step after step until she crashed to the bottom, her head dangling from the last. Blood dripped from her open mouth, staining the snowy white carpet that Johnathan Whoever He Was had chosen specifically for Simon years ago.
Our mysterious guest rubbed his hands together. Again, I struggled at my relationship with basic communication and again, he shushed me before I could gather a syllable or two together.
Within seconds, seemingly miles upon miles of sheer red fabric spun through the air between us all. When it settled, a red, glittery, high heeled shoe stepped forward, leading another pair of red eyes but these were different... These were sensual and reflected mischievious intentions into each of our eyes. She towered above us all, worse than the dark cloud who was glaring at her unblinkingly, drinking in how her red hair cascaded across her face though there was no wind. Or maybe that was what I was looking at. Her appearance breathed new life into the area. Sloth slinked from behind Vanity, but he made sure to stay within ducking distance. Gluttony, as always, could not control himself but this time, it was different. He all but knocked Avarice across the room to get to her. I was there everyday and he’d never thrown anyone anywhere to see my face. "Who are you?" I was surprised he didn’t slip and drown in a puddle of his own drool.
She reached out and ran a red nailed finger down one of his ample chins. He blushed and backed away. Avarice, for once, not pausing to fiddle with his glasses, glanced from the dark cloud to the red… Whatever she was before trying the safer looking of the two. "Who the hell are you?" He demanded. Again, she moved towards the speaker and again, she made a seductive motion with her hand. Only Avarice was having none of it. He grabbed her hand mid-air. A silky smile slithered across her lips.
Red eyelashes swept snowy cheeks in a blink. Before her lips could part, the dark cloud tapped Avarice on the arm. Avarice cowered as if he would have given anything to melt into the floor. Instead he did a shaky little bow and back away from the newcomers. They stood toe to toe, staring down one another, neither giving in. Finally, the dark cloud reached out and placed his hand on her bare, milky white shoulder. “She’s Lust.” His voice was barely a whisper but we heard it all the same.
“Then who the hell are you?” I finally choked out.
The others gawked at me then past me; searching desperately for a nonexistent exit strategy. His gaze still planted on the woman he had called Lust, he replied: “I am Wrath.”
No one dared asked why.
As time dragged forward, our identities began to merge with the rooms of the house. This had never happened before. There were no bars and yet, I could not walk past the open door and neither could they. My room, my new prison, was draped in beautiful emerald green from top to bottom. As always, we could see through everything so why couldn't we leave our rooms? I stood in the middle of the floor, waiting for answers to questions I did not know how to ask to find me.
Seven rooms...
The irony.
For once, there was nothing in this world that I could find to be envious of.

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Colloquium... (Based on a true story)

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 14:15:07 GMT

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
A woman, whose origins were unknown, gazed kindly from the picture frame. Her long, graceful fingers pressed either side of a bowl and yet, her attention was not on the contents. Her piercing, baby blues coaxed you to acknowledge the words above her head. It was a quote by Mark Twain. For several years, that sign watched me pass twice daily. Since it was right around the corner from the cafeteria, I used to think they hung it there to remind us not to judge the people we broke bread with. I never thought the day would come when my faith would be tested and I would come face to face with the apparition in the flesh. Every piece of literature I’d ever held in my hands had preached Satan was not just any fallen angel. He was the fallen angel. The one whose misdeeds brought forth the birth of sin itself. An angel who wanted too much only to be banished for his greed and in human form, he was a she.
Whispers passed from priest to priest did not sound like the description of a soul that needed saving. My robes bristled every time a new story found its way to my ears. I’m sorry to admit, the more I heard, the more I couldn't believe she had the nerve to ask for a priest. Yes, I am a man of God, but everyone has their limits and this happened to be mine. Whispers about tongues being carved out and tossed to the side like trash.
She had the choice of whether or not to see a priest and she wanted one. Everyone was entitled to final words before an execution but, why was she allowed to use her tongue? The irony. Unfortunately, it turned out to be me. How could they? Letting such a monster have the last word! Is what I wanted to argue, but there would be none of that. No one wanted to be the one to listen to her story, but someone had to.
I'd lost when we drew straws.
As I was walking down the hallway, for some reason, I began to feel hints of intrigue creeping through my disgust. I wanted to know what could turn a woman into a killer. Women were supposed to be nurturers. To know a woman was capable of such violence... The thought was unnerving to say the least.
I approached the warden. He was accompanied by a prison guard. Their backs were facing a large metal door, standing guard as if they were trying to keep a wild animal inside.
“I'm taking it that you're Father Tatum.” He stated authoritatively. “She's in there. Take all the time you need. Just knock on the door when you're done.” He cleared his throat.
The prison guard withdrew a ring of keys from his belt to unlock the door. I slipped inside, immediately wondering why it was so dark. Before I could ask though, the door slammed shut behind me. The next thing I heard was the click of the lock. Lord, they'd locked me in the dark with... With what? Who? Where was she? Frantically, I ran my fingers up one wall, then the other, in search of a light switch. When I couldn't locate one, I began to panic. Tiny beads of sweat were began to form on my skin. I have to admit: I was terrified.
“There's a cord hanging from the ceiling.” Came a voice from the darkness. “Above your head.”
My hand shaking, I reached up in search of the cord. The sight that met me when light filled the room startled me.
"Hello." She greeted me. "You must be Father Tatum. Do you know who I am?"
I nodded anxiously.
Her eyes were brown, empty yet attentive, inhabited with so much anger. She scruntinized my habit, eyes staying on the rosary beads. Her skin was practically covered in grime beneath dull, gray shackles. There was a deadly air about her that made her seem all the more beautiful. Nothing like the woman I'd heard whispers about. She didn’t appear as if she would hide from anything. You would always see her coming. Everything about her screamed that she had been on death row for quite awhile. Tomorrow was her last day though. She would never see the inside of this prison ever again... Or anything else for that matter.
“You're here because I requested a priest aren't you?”
Again, all I could offer was a nervous nod.
“Well, I requested one because they said one was allowed.”
"You cut out his tongue." I didn't even pause. I slapped my hand over my mouth, embarrassed. I hadn't meant to blurt it out that way.
"A man with no tongue doesn't have time to weave lies." She said as if she was reading off a random item on a grocery list. "There were so many opportunities for it not to happen but he left me with no choice."
"He chose to have his tongue cut out?"
Despite the gaze pausing on my face, it didn't feel as if she was watching me at all. I might as well not have been there.
"I recognize your tone." The way she said it caused the hair on my arms to stand at attention. "He used to speak to me that way."
The chains on her wrists momentarily forgotten, I almost dove from my chair.
"I only killed him once." Were it not for us being the only two in the room, her voice would have gone unheard. "He spent years upon long, agonizing years chipping away at who I was. His death was quicker than mine." Her voice became an angry whisper. "Do you think I've spent everyday in fear; regretting what I've done? I'm not being put to death tomorrow. I'm already dead. The me who would be trembling right now has been dead for longer than I care to remember. If you've come here searching for a confession filled to the brim with shame and regret, you’re in the wrong place. These halls are for the forgotten. Just know that yes, I carved out his tongue... It was the last thing I did." Though her eyes never left my face, now her gaze carried a cold, angry reverie. "This is not the place for conscience or remorse."
"He was the father of your-"
She held up one chained wrist, slashing the end of my sentence. "He was whatever he wanted to be. He hid behind the veil I provided for him. I was a single parent in a two parent household. He did no real parenting. All the weight of child rearing fell to me. He was no father. He was a body. Don't cross that line again."
"Why ask for a priest if you aren't ready to be honest?"
A humorless smile crept across her lips. "Is it honest that this was spun into a racial debate? Is it honest that this was treated as if I, a black woman, took the life of a hard working, doting white man? Is it honest that every step I took was put on display and yet, he was cast as the good man? The recovering addict? They all but called him my savior." She leaned forward. "Were my skin as pale as a sheet of paper, would it have been treated differently?"
I remembered the headlines. Who could forget the picture of the police dragging her from their home with her legs dangling behind them? Nestled in the corner of the display, a moment I'll never forget: Four children in tears. Their little hands pressed against their faces in a silent scream so loud that I could hear it in my head: "MOMMY"
"No one looked at the facts. Not even my lawyer." She spat. "Court appointed counts for nothing when she's looking at you with distain. They all did." She sat back in the chair and sighed. "Still do."
"If things were so bad, why did you stay?"
She didn't bother to pause to think it over. "Stupidity. We are all in possession of toxic traits. We live our lives trying to ignore them, carry on as if they aren’t there, but no one is immune. My biggest and the most damaging was that I wanted to be the solution to everything for everyone. I convinced myself that no matter what, I had all the answers." Her eyes shifted back to the table. "I was too stupid and embarrassed to admit that in some cases, the only answer is to walk away."
"So what you're after is to be humanized?"
"Why would I need that?" She snapped. "Even behind bars, am I not still human... Or did they take that too and no one informed me?"
"You..."
"No." She shook her head. "You can take the world from a person, but only they have the power to leave their humanity behind. I don't need someone jogging through those doors to give me what I never lost."
"Then why did you do it? You don't seem like..." I gathered my thoughts to choose my words carefully. "You don't look like a murderer."
"And yet, here we are."
"Why? Why did you do it?"
"Now you're asking real questions. Everybody always starts their story with 'we were young when we blah, blah, blah,' but in our case, it was true. We were young when we started our family. In some ways, too young. He wasn't ready to be a father but he let outside influences gas him up to believe he was ready. The only person who was equipped for that kind of job was me and within three months of our son drawing his first breath, it was already starting to show. He didn't want the responsibility. He wanted the title, you see. It wasn't long before he was hooked on drugs and avoiding even that. He let his auntie convince him he wasn't the father; as if she had front row seats to all the sucking and fucking."
I flinched at the onslaught of vulgarity. Another humorless smile found its way to her lips. "I lost my virginity to him so obviously, I took it hard. I mean, how could someone allow someone to convince them that someone they claimed to love would trap them with a baby and not just any baby, a baby that they were hardly ever home with? How is it a trap when your ass was never home to fall in?" Her eyes flashed angrily into mine. "It wasn't long before we were evicted twice and living out of hotels. I chose to move on on my own. When he came back, all was forgiven but I wasn't completely honest. I should have told him that I had changed. Everything had changed in those two and a half years that we were apart. I would undergo many changes as time went on but this was the first major one and now that I think on it, the most important." She sighed and adjusted in the chair once more. "Things were fine until I found out about the drugs. He assured me that he'd left that life behind and I trusted him... I wanted to believe because of what I'd left behind to choose my family above myself."
"What did you leave behind?"
"The most important ingredient." She answered as if it were obvious. "Myself." She held up her shackled wrists. "Long before these found my arms, I was chained down in my own mind. There was no right. No wrong. After awhile, I used what was going on around me to venture out and experience life on my own terms."
"Terms?" I rolled the word around in my mind. “You mean-“
“Don’t you dare.” She hissed. “I know what you’re about to say and don’t you dare say that name. I’ve all but stripped those four letters from my vocabulary. I won’t have them here. Is that why you’re really here; hoping to be on the front lines of all the salacious details? I hate to spoil all the fun but this isn’t that kind of discussion nor will it ever be.”
“Why do you get the final say?”
“Have you seen any petitions? Who was all lives mattering over this mess? Where were my thoughts and prayers?” She didn’t wait for a response. “Exactly. Not a single soul wanted to hear my truth and now that I’m ready to talk, you want to waltz in here in your skirts and tell me what I have to say. No… Fuck that.” She narrowed her eyes. They faded from brown to a haunting black. “Fuck that.”
"I got tired of feeling like a man who was desperately trying to stay in the running to become America's Next Top Crackhead felt he had a right to cast a shadow over who I was. I allowed him back in my home, my life... And what was my thanks?" She shook the silver links.
"He didn't put you here. You did."
"It's amazing the kind of perspective you can provide from an outsider looking in standpoint isn't it?" She shrugged. "From that side of the room, it's easy to prattle off what you think or how you feel, but as a priest, aren't you saying that it is your right to judge a story that you know nothing about? Pfft. Some priest. You're just like everybody else... The only thing separating you from the rest of the world is that." She gestured at my rosary beads. "Without those, you're just a man in a dress sitting in a chair thinking he has all the answers."
"These are robes." Was my only response. I didn't want to give her the pleasure of knowing she had a point. Tucked safely in a chair with nothing more than a table between us, it was easy for me to wrap myself in my ideals. For the longest of seconds, she held my gaze, searching for something. Whatever it was, I could tell when she felt as if it had been found. Slowly, a real smile found its way to her lips.
"He had a way of chipping away at me. A way that was so silent, such a slow crawl… I didn't even realize was what happening so I didn't know to protect myself. An insecure soul that latches to a free spirit will do everything within its power to tether it to the ground so that it can't flutter away. An insecure presence will feed off the energy of those around it in order to sustain itself... Its sense of control, so to speak. They control you in such a way that you'll convince yourself that all the changes you've made were to protect their security when in reality, all it does is place you beneath the heaviest thumb known to man."
"But you-"
Her eyes flashed a look I couldn't quite place. "I remained silent on many things around me and how was I rewarded? Drinks laced with drugs.” She paused at my expression. “He did it for a week. Didn’t matter what he was handing me. A cup of soda. A cup of Kool-aide. None of it mattered. What mattered was he was sprinkling meth over each cup like it was a fucking garnish.” She made a sprinkling movement with her right hand. “I didn’t tell him for years how I figured it out. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even know I knew until the day I said something because I had to have a drug test. He sat there with the blankest of looks. Like he couldn’t believe I knew. Each time something happened, I would remain silent. I wouldn’t tell a soul but, do you know what silence does to a person? Silence gives the impression that you’re okay with your surroundings. What you feel. What you’re going through. Silence is consent. You’re pretty much giving the go ahead each time you choose to remain silent. For years, I went through it all, drowning more and more every year in a sea of silence.
Cheating even though he never had to… When he met me I had both a girlfriend and a boyfriend. I’ve always dated in multiples and was fine with the same. He told me he couldn't be with someone who thought that way. I was so stupid. So fucking stupid. I muted that part of myself because I loved him so much… Only for him to turn around and cheat. He never had to but he did. I guess what he meant was he was completely into monogamy but for me… Not him." She shrugged. "He stole from me! Money constantly plucked from my wallet. Money snatched from my pants pockets. Money stolen to the point that I started hiding it just so I could stay afloat. I never told him that; about the money. For years he went thinking he'd outsmarted me when in reality I was putting money in places knowing it would be stolen. What he didn’t know was why the entire situation caused yet another change in me. The money situation had gotten out of control. I was drowning and nobody knew about it… Then came the rent money. He stole the entire envelope. He even helped me look for it as if there was a chance in hell that it was under the couch cushions and not in some dealer’s greedy palms. I couldn’t find anyone to lend it to me. Nobody wanted to help me but everyone had a front row seat to my downfall. The next day I was offered help. I should have said no. I should have walked away at the suggestion, but where else was I going to come up with the money on such a short notice? Who was going to help me? No one knew. I walked in that house myself and walked out several thousand richer but it changed me. It changed me to know why I allowed someone to stuff my pockets with money I should have never needed. Not only did I forgive, I moved forward… Again, in silence. The money I had left over after bills, I slipped all over the place, knowing it would be taken. My family, my responsibility. I wasn't a part of his family. He was a part of mine."
“Is that why-“
She stopped me again. "You will never be able to turn back time to before the moment you put a price tag on something so valuable... So priceless. Every move I made... Every choice... Was easy after that day. Any value I had was destroyed in that house. I know who you want to discuss and I know why. It’s easy to focus on those four letters because of what they stand for. I did so many things after that day. Made so many choices. Most of them… Bad. I was fueled by depression though,” She smirked. “That sounds like such a typical excuse, doesn’t it? Depression made me do it. Just know; it didn’t make me do it. I did those things. Understanding why we do things doesn’t excuse our actions and my reactions were never right. Cause and effect, so to speak. Because of this, I did that. My choices were always wrong but things just kept happening. It didn’t end. It felt like it never would. After awhile, I was so numb to the world around me that we were living two separate lives and every once in awhile, we would check in with one another. I felt nothing. I still don’t.”
"I've seen photos of you at family functions." I said, though a part of me was busy combing her expression and my memories for the look in her eyes. “You were a part of his family.”
She scoffed. "Pictures are just that. Pictures." Her brown eyes bore down into mine. "A flash in time. They don't show you all the times I went disrespected by his mother and he did nothing. He huddled behind her skirts like a frightened little lamb and allowed it to go on for years. They don't show him threatening to throw my son and I out into the streets because his friend felt comfortable calling me a nigger…" She paused at my left eyebrow rising faster than my mind could stop it. "Yes, that happened. He got angry at slurs thrown in my face but not at his friend… No, at me. Like I was nothing more than a slave on a plantation somewhere and because he was paying the bills, I had to accept being treated as such." She smirked humorlessly. "That's the thing though. He wasn't paying the bills. We got evicted twice. So many things happened…" She shook her head. "When I stood up as the head of the family, I forgave all of it. I even showed up to give him a place to lay his head after his own blood relatives didn't see fit to allow him a slot on the family couch. I protected him from being arrested. Not once but three times. I didn't even get mad at him when I found out that the reason he couldn't be at my bedside when I almost bled to death is because he was busy getting his knob slobbed by some piece of work. I forgave all of it so to have you feeling like you have the right to pass judgment on me with your fancy robes and your shiny beads… It's almost laughable. I remained silent to the point that my own family and many, many of my friends thought I was doing wrong by a good man. I even had who I thought was my best friend; tell me that he could do so much better than me…" She shrugged. "In hindsight, maybe she was right. If we'd parted ways, he would still be alive and I…"
"Your forgiveness was commendable but, why? Why did you stay? Why push forward when you knew how you felt?"
"At first, it was for love. After awhile, it became more about the responsibility. Like I already said, I was stupid… I was embarrassed." She leaned back in the chair, eyes pointed at the ceiling. "I wasn't ready to leave home when I left. Pictures don't tell you that either. They also don't tell you how I listened to my mother repeatedly remind me of the responsibility I had and after awhile, I took on this my happiness be damned mentality. Once that settled into my soul that was a wrap. I began to tell myself nobody cares if I was alive or dead as long as I kept my family intact. After awhile, I started to call home less and less because I didn't have the heart to open my mouth." Her eyes still on the ceiling, she shook her head. "Because of this, when I did try to speak, it came off like I was the problem. What made it worse was the road to accepting that I may not have been the entire problem but I was a part of it. To this very day, my family and possibly his as well, believes we never married because of me. That I had commitment issues. I never corrected this way of thinking. Who was I to tell the world that our wedding dreams went up in smoke the day I walked in on him in the bathroom practically putting vacuum cleaner companies to shame over some pills? My part was I participated in the illusion. I helped project this perfect image. I allowed myself to be villainized so that he could masquerade as the good guy, the man who was doing it all right. The recovering addict.
"And now you've made him a martyr."
It was shining brighter now that her eyes were back on my face. Before, there was a faint glimmer of it. Now it was undeniable. Tearing through her pained expression, smothering all else: Rage.
"I'm so tired of that shit!" The table trembled beneath her palms. She slapped the table once. Twice. "I didn't make him shit. Do you know how many times I had to listen to the ideals that I wasn't respecting how many years we’d shared knowing what I knew? How many times I had to listen to it was my fault, MINE, the reason he was the way he was the way he was?! When I fucked up, it was my fault. When he fucked up, it was still my fucking fault?! How hard it was to always choose to move forward not just suspecting but knowing that he was only apologizing to silence me further? He wasn't sorry and after awhile, neither was I. That's when we should have parted ways, but that's not what happened."
"So what really happened that night?"
"You know what else a picture will never be able to convey?"
When I didn't respond, she repeated the inquiry. I hadn't realized she was expecting a response. Honestly, I hadn't prepared myself for answers. Only questions of my own.
"Leave." One word. One syllable. Very final.
"W-What?" I stammered, taken aback.
"I spent years ignored, forgotten and disrespected. Do you honestly think I'm going to allow the same from you because you have Jesus on your side? Get the fuck out!"
She dove from the chair, fingers reaching for my throat. Halfway across the table, she remembered the chains, but it was too late. She landed face first against the wood.
To this second as I'm writing this, I cannot fathom why I didn't flee. With how petrified I was, I probably would have tripped over my robes before my hand could grab the doorknob, but even with fear tickling my senses, for the second time, I didn’t move. Petrified was actually an accurate description.
She tilted her head upward. From her lips, a chilling, empty laugh rang. "Pictures don't tell you that tomorrow they will put a needle in my arm. Tomorrow they will tell me that I'm so wrong for killing that man. No… That white man." She forced herself from the table, still laughing. "Ask yourself this: Were he a black man, would you know this story? Would you even be interested?" Now sobering, her laughter faded into the air between us. "Would you be in here judging me or would you be like everybody else… Shrugging your shoulders like it's another day in the hood? I want you to think about that."
"Y-You cut out…"
"Stop." She shook her head. "I'll never forget how I felt opening the bathroom door to him cradling his meth stash like a toddler being caught with a hand in the cookie jar. It was like I was frozen in time. I closed the door and went to sit down." For the first time, vulnerability weaved its way through her words: "I'd taken out a loan for this vacation and there he was: Packing meth amongst his tube socks and underwear." A single tear lined the curve of her cheek. It splashed to the wood when she closed her eyes. "He got in the tub as if everything hadn't changed. See, I blame myself for this. I should have thrown him into the streets years ago but I didn't and in that, I was accountable. I adapted. I accepted. I accommodated. I reduced myself to the role of enabler. Silence is consent, as I said." Tears were flowing uncontrollably now. She wiped away a few. "I grabbed a tennis racket from his suitcase. He didn't hear me re-enter the bathroom so there was no time to react. I swung. He tried to fight me off but I was too fast. Too angry. Too everything. I kept swinging until blood was dripping from the ceiling. The racket had snapped in half by then. I stabbed him over and over with the jagged ends until I was too tired to lift my arms anymore. One stab for every time I forgave. One stab for every time he promised me change. One stab for every time he chose the outside world over our family." She swiped a few more tears though they no longer mattered. "I fell to the floor thinking: What had I done? Why didn't I stop? I didn’t have to get close to know it was too late. There was no going back. On the floor, covered in splotches was an Altoids tin. For what felt like an eternity, I sat on that floor holding that tin. I thought about how meth was the reason our family lost its way in the first place. I thought about how he drugged me with that shit. I thought about how I dragged our baby boy to that meth house every Tuesday though he had no interest in being a father. I thought about how I could have been killed. I thought about how I had been thrown away time and time again. I thought about every lie, every promise, every chance wasted to do right by our family… Then I thought about how many times I was too stupid, too embarrassed. How many times he would say: “I’m not that bad.” Or “It’s just…” Insert bullshit here. I thought about all the work I’d put into mentally crawling back to the last time I’d truly felt value. How I changed everything about myself because I was told that’s what was needed and I believed because I couldn’t bring myself to blame him. Through it all, I never saw those things as him. Not once. All the therapy. The two years I’d spent proving my location to the point that for four years, I barely took a step outside our home. Proving who I was talking to. Proving that I was different. Constantly proving that I’d changed. I thought about how I’d gotten back on my depression meds, not for me, but so that I could deal with everything around me. I used to say: ‘I was the ideal ride or die until the day I faced my reflection and realized I was the one who had died. What I never told anyone was that I killed pieces of myself bit by bit, day by day until there was no me left. I was still clutching that tin when I reached in the tub. I don’t know. I was just shaking… Sobbing even. How could he? How could he not only know but see every ounce of my change, accept it and then do this to me?" She wiped her face once more. "Inside the tin was his razor. He was probably about to snort some lines before he slithered into that fucking tub for a shower. Before I knew it, I was carving out his tongue with the same razor… Then I curled up beside my suitcase and fell asleep."
I sat straight up, taken aback. "Wait… You took a nap after all of it?"
She dabbed the remaining tears from her eyes before responding: "I was so tired and I don't mean physically. I'd given up everything only to be disrespected at every turn then forced to listen over and over as I was presented as the problem. The second I dropped his tongue on that bathroom floor, that was it. The last of me." She shrugged. "You know, in my Uber, on the way home, a feeling of calm like I'd never known washed over me. I was free." Before I could voice my thoughts to the contrary, she shook her head. "You're about to say but I'm here. You're about to point at these." She shook the shackles. "Even with these, I'm no longer tethered to the ground. My heart isn't heavy with his hypocrisy. My heart isn't aching under the weight of his thumb. My soul isn't wrapped around him. There's only me. No matter what these cold, stone walls tell you, I'm free." She went to stand up. "And that's what you can whisper into every ear that will have you. No matter what anyone believes, no matter what they say, when that needle goes in my arm tomorrow, I've been gone a long time ago. They're throwing a shell in the ground and nothing more." She nodded at me. "And that's all I have to say."
For what could only be measured in forever, she stared at me. I averted my gaze to the left of me. The wooden planks on the ground shown upward, reminding me where I was. Finally, I inhaled a small breath: "Guard!"
She watched me stand, still silent. Still angry. I marched to the open door, my spine ridged with the weight of her steely gaze. I touched the wall with my right hand and chanced a glance backwards. Her eyes had not left me.
Finally, in such a way that normally would have gone unnoticed, she nodded.
On my way home, I could not help but ponder how far someone had to fall to see prison walls as an escape and death as freedom. The light turned yellow. I slowed to a stop at the flash to red. As I waited, tears sprang to my eyes. I pressed my head against the steering wheel and sobbed. I didn't even know what the tears were for. I clutched the wheel and held on, trying to catch my breath.
HONK!!! I jerked upward. The green light signaling that I should have been on my way seconds ago startled me. HONK!!! The horns from several cars behind me snapped me back into my reality. Slowly, ever so slowly, I lowered my foot to the gas. My car purred to life. I watched the cars in my rear view mirror, some probably heavy with choice words me, but in that moment, I didn't care.
I reached in my pocket to grab my rosary beads.
But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
For the first time, I had an answer for her; that woman cradling the bowl. What if Satan wasn’t a demon at all, but someone who was haunted by what they'd become? Smothered slowly, slowly day by day until the only solution was to break free... Wouldn’t that reasoning alone mean Satan needed the prayers more than anyone? My lips brushed across the beads once more.
I didn't wipe a single tear from my face. I didn't try to stop the new ones either. I just drove and drove as I normally would have and yet, it would never feel the same again after that conversation.
Nothing ever would.
And I couldn't help but wonder if it ever should.

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