tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46440020947984015132024-03-07T23:30:17.664-08:00Super Short Scary StoriesAuthorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.comBlogger77125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-5280166309232143252020-08-18T00:45:00.003-07:002020-08-18T00:45:25.121-07:00A Collapse of Horses<p> <em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px;">This story has been drawn from the February/March issue of the American Reader, available <a href="http://subscribe.theamericanreader.com/" style="background: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(50, 50, 255); box-sizing: border-box; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;">here</a>.</em></p><p><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px;"><img src="http://theamericanreader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/collapse_of_horses_evenson.jpg" /></em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">I am certain nobody in my family survived. I am certain they burned, that their faces blackened and bubbled, just as did my own. But in their case they did not recover, but perished. You are not one of them, you cannot be, for if you were you would be dead. Why you choose to pretend to be, and what you hope to gain from it: this is what interests me.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: blue;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">✖</strong></span> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">Now it is your turn to listen to me, to listen to my proofs, though I know you will not be convinced. Imagine this: walking through the countryside one day you come across a paddock. Lying there on their sides, in the dust, unnaturally still, are four horses. All four are prone, with no horses standing. They do not breathe and do not, as far as you can see, move. They are, to all appearances, dead. And yet, on the edge of the paddock, not twenty yards distant, a man fills their trough with water. Are the horses alive and appearances deceptive? Has the man simply not yet turned to see that the horses are dead? Or has he been so shaken by what he has seen that he doesn’t know what to do but proceed as if nothing has happened?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">If you turn and walk hurriedly on, leaving before anything decisive happens, what do the horses become for you? They remain both alive and dead, which makes them not quite alive, nor quite dead.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">And what, in turn, carrying that paradoxical knowledge in your head, does that make you?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: blue;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">✖</strong></span> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">I do not think of myself as special, as anything but ordinary. I completed a degree at a third-tier university housed in the town where I grew up. I graduated safely ensconced in the middle of my class. I found passable employment in the same town. I met a woman, married her, had children with her—three or perhaps four, there is some disagreement on that score—and then the two of us fell gradually and gently out of love.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">Then came an incident at work, an accident, a so-called freak one. It left me with a broken skull and, for a short time, a certain amount of confusion. I awoke in an unfamiliar place to find myself strapped down. It seemed to me—I will admit this too—it seemed for some time, hours at least, perhaps even days, that I was not in a hospital at all, but in a mental facility.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">But my wife, faithful and everpresent, slowly soothed me into a different understanding of my circumstances. My limbs, she insisted, were restrained simply because I had been delirious. Now that I no longer was, the straps could be loosened. Not quite yet, but soon. There was nothing to worry about. I just had to calm down. Soon, everything would return to normal.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> <span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: blue;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">✖</strong></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">In some ways, I suppose everything did. Or at least tried to. After the accident, I received some minor compensation from my employer, and was sent out to pasture. Such was the situation. Myself, my wife, my children, at the beginning of a hot and sweltering summer, crammed in the house together with nowhere to go.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">I would awaken each day to find the house different from how it had been the day before. A door was in the wrong place, a window had stretched a few inches longer than it had been when I had gone to bed the night before, the light switch, I was certain, had been forced half an inch to the right. Always just a small thing, almost nothing at all, just enough for me to notice.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">In the beginning, I tried to point these changes out to my wife. She seemed puzzled at first, and then she became somewhat evasive in her responses. For a time, part of me believed her responsible: perhaps she had developed some deft technique for quickly changing and modifying the house. But another part of me felt certain, or nearly so, that this was impossible. And as time went on, my wife’s evasiveness took on a certain wariness, even fear. This convinced me that not only was she not changing the house, but that daily her mind simply adjusted to the changed world and dubbed it the same. She literally could not see the differences I saw.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">Just as she could not see that sometimes we had three children and sometimes four. No, she could only ever see three. Or perhaps four. To be honest, I don’t remember how many she saw. But the point was, as long as we were in the house there were sometimes three children and sometimes four. But that was due to the idiosyncrasies of the house as well. I would not know how many children there would be until I went from room to room. Sometimes the room at the end of the hall was narrow and had one bed in it, other times it had grown large in the night and had two. I would count the number of beds each morning when I woke up and sometimes there would be three, sometimes four. From there, I could extrapolate how many children I had, and I found this a more reliable method than trying to count the children themselves. I would never know how much of a father I was until I counted beds.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">I could not discuss this with my wife. When I tried to lay out my proofs for her, she thought I was joking. Quickly, however, she decided it was an indication of a troubled mental state, and insisted I seek treatment—which under duress I did. To little avail. The only thing the treatment convinced me of was that there were certain things that one shouldn’t say even to one’s spouse, things that they are just not ready—and may never be ready—to hear.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">My children were not ready for it either. The few times I tried to fulfill my duties as a father and sit them down to tell them the sobering truth, that sometimes one of them didn’t exist, unless it was that sometimes one of them existed twice, I got nowhere. Or less than nowhere: confusion, tears, panic. And, after they reported back to my wife, more threats of treatment.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: blue;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">✖</strong></span> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">What, then, was the truth of the situation? Why was I the only one who could see the house changing? What were my obligations to my family in terms of helping them see and understand? How was I to help them if they did not desire to be helped?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">Being a sensible man, a part of me couldn’t help but wonder if what I was experiencing had any relation to reality at all. Perhaps there was something wrong with me. Perhaps, I tried to believe, the accident had changed me. I did try my level best, or nearly so, to see things their way. I tried to ignore the lurch reality took each morning, the way the house was not exactly the house it had been the night before, as if someone had moved us to a similar but not quite identical house as we slept. Perhaps they had. I tried to believe that I had three, not four, children. And when that did not work, that I had four, not three, children. And when that didn’t work, that there was no correlation between children and beds, to turn a blind eye to that room at the end of the hall and the way it kept expanding out or collapsing in like a lung. But nothing seemed to work. I could not believe.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> <span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: blue;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">✖</strong></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">Perhaps if we moved, things would be different. Perhaps the house was, in some manner or other, alive. Or haunted maybe. Or just wrong. But when I raised the idea of moving with my wife, she coughed out a strange barking laugh before enumerating all the reasons this was a bad idea. There was no money and little prospect of any coming in now that I’d had my accident and lost my job. We’d bought the house recently enough that we would take a substantial loss if we sold it. We simply could not afford to move. And besides, what was wrong with the house? It was a perfectly good house.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">How could I argue with this? From her perspective of course she was right, there was no reason to leave. For her there was nothing wrong with the house—how could there be? Houses don’t change on their own, she told me indignantly: this was not something that reason could allow.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">But for me that was exactly the problem. The house, for reasons I didn’t understand, wasn’t acting like a house.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> <span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: blue;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">✖</strong></span></p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">I spent days thinking, mulling over what to do. To get away from the house, I wandered alone in the countryside. If I walked long enough, I could return home sufficiently exhausted to sleep rather than spending much of the night on watch, trying to capture the moment when parts of the house changed. For a long time I thought that might be enough. That if I spent as little time in the house as possible and returned only when exhausted, I could bring myself not to think about how unsound the house was. That I would wake up sufficiently hazy to no longer care what was where and how it differed from before.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">That might have gone on for a long time—even forever or the equivalent. But then in my walks I stumbled upon, or perhaps was led to, something. It was a paddock. I saw horses lying in the dirt, seemingly dead. They couldn’t be dead, could they? I looked to see if I could tell if they were breathing and found I could not. I could not say honestly if they were dead or alive, and I still cannot say. I noticed a man on the far side of the paddock filling their trough with water, facing away from them, and wondered if he had seen the horses behind him, and if not, when he turned, whether he would be as unsettled as I. Would he approach them and determine they were dead, or would his approach startle them to life? Or had he seen them dead already and had his mind been unable to take it in?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">For a moment I waited. But at the time, in the moment, there seemed something more terrible to me about the idea of knowing for certain that the horses were dead than there was about <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">not</em> knowing whether they were dead or alive. And so I hastily left, not realizing that to escape a moment of potential discomfort I was leaving them forever in my head as not quite dead but, in another sense, nearly alive. That to leave as I had was to assume the place of the man beside the trough, but without ever being able to turn and learn the truth.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: blue;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">✖</strong></span></p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">In the days that followed, that image haunted me. I turned it over, scrutinized it, peered at every facet of it, trying to see if there was something I had missed, if there was a clue that would sway me toward believing the horses were alive or believing they were dead. If there was a clue to reveal to me that the man beside the trough knew more than I had believed. To no avail. The problem remained insolubly balanced. If I went back, I couldn’t help asking myself, would anything have changed? Would the horses still, even now, be lying there? If they were, would they have begun to decay in a way that would prove them dead? Or would they be exactly as I had last seen them, including the man still filling the trough? What a terrifying thought.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">Since I’d stumbled upon the paddock, I didn’t know exactly where it was. Every walk I went on, even every step I took away from the house, I risked stumbling onto it again. I began walking slower, stopping frequently, scrutinizing my surroundings and shying away from any area that might remotely harbor a paddock. But after a while I deemed even that insufficiently safe, and I found myself hardly able to leave the house.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">And yet with the house always changing, I couldn’t remain there either. There was, I gradually realized, a simple choice: either I would have to steel myself and return and confront the horses or I would have to confront the house.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">Either horse or house, either house or horse—but what sort of choice was that really? The words were hardly different, pronounced more or less the same, with one letter only having accidentally been dialed up too high or too low in the alphabet. No, I came to feel, by going out to avoid the house and finding the horses I had, in a manner of speaking, simply found again the house. It was, it must be, that the prone horses were there for me, to teach a lesson to me, that they were meant to tell me something about their near namesake, the house.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">The devastation of that scene, the collapse of the horses, gnawed on me. It was telling me something. Something I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: blue;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">✖</strong></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">At first, part of me resisted the idea. No, I told myself, it was too extreme a step. Lives were at stake. The lives of my wife and of at least three children. The risks were too great.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">But what was I to do? In my mind I kept seeing the collapsed horses and I felt my thoughts again churn over their state. Were they alive or were they dead? I kept imagining myself there at the trough, paralyzed, unable to turn and look, and it came to seem to me my perpetual condition. In my worst moments, it seemed the state not only of me but of the whole world, with all of us on the verge of turning around and finding the dead behind us. And from there, I slipped back to the house—which, like the horses, seemed in a sort of suspended state: I knew it was changing, that something strange was happening, I was sure of that at least, but I didn’t know how or what the changes meant, and I couldn’t make anyone else see them. When it came to the house, I tried to convince myself, I could see what others could not, but the rest of the world was like the man filling the horse trough, unable to see the fallen horses.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">Thinking this naturally led me away from the idea of the house and back instead to the horses. What I should have done, I told myself, was to have thrown a rock. I should have stooped and scraped the dirt until my fingers closed around a stone, and then shied it at one of the horses, waiting either for the meaty thud of dead flesh or the shudder and annoyed whicker of a struck living horse. Not knowing is something you can only suspend yourself in for the briefest moment. No, even if what you have to face is horrible, is an inexplicably dead herd of horses, even an explicably dead family, it must be faced.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">And so I turned away from the house and went back to look for the paddock, steeling myself for whatever I would find. I was ready, rock in hand. I would find out the truth about the horses, and I would accept it, no matter what it was.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">Or at least I would have. But no matter how hard I looked, no matter how long I walked, I could not find the paddock. I walked for miles, days even. I took every road, known and unknown, but it simply wasn’t there.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">Was something wrong with me? Had the paddock existed at all? I wondered.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">Was it simply something my mind had invented to cope with the problem of the house?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">House, horse—horse, house: almost the same word. For all intents and purposes, in this case, it was the same word. I would still throw a rock, so to speak, I told myself, but I would throw that so-called rock not at a horse, but at a house.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: blue;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">✖</strong></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">But still I hesitated, thinking, planning. Night after night I sat imagining coils of smoke writhing around me and then the rising of flames. In my head, I watched myself waiting patiently, calmly, until the flames were at just the right height, and then I began to call out to my family, awakening them, urging them to leave the house. In my head we unfurled sheets through windows and shimmied nimbly to safety. We reached safety every time. I saw our escape so many times in my head, rendered in just the same way, that I realized it would take the smallest effort on my part to jostle it out of the realm of imagination and into the real world. Then the house would be gone and could do me no more damage, and both myself and my family would be safe.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: blue;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">✖</strong></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">I had had enough unpleasant interaction with those who desired to give me treatment since my accident, however, that I knew to take steps to protect myself. I would have to make the fire look like an accident. For this purpose, I took up smoking.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">I planned carefully. I smoked for a few weeks, just long enough to accustom my wife and children to the idea. They didn’t care for it, but did not try to stop me. Since my accident, they had been shy of me, and rarely tried to stop me from doing anything.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">Seemingly as a concession to my wife, I agreed not to smoke in the bedroom. I promised to smoke only outside the house. With the proviso that, if it was too cold to smoke outside I might do so downstairs, near an open window.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">During the third, or perhaps fourth, week after I took up smoking, with my wife and children asleep, it was indeed too cold—or at least I judged that I could argue it to have been such if confronted after the fact. So I cracked open the window near the couch and prepared the images in my mind. I would, I told myself, allow my arm to droop, the tip of my cigarette to nudge against the fabric of the couch. And then I would allow first the couch and then the drapes to begin to smoke and catch fire. I would wait until the moment when, in my fantasies, I was myself standing and calling for my wife and children, and then I would do just that and all would be as I had envisioned. Soon my family and I would be safe, and the house would be destroyed.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">Once that was done, I thought, perhaps I would find the paddock again as well, with the horses standing this time and clearly alive.</p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: blue;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">✖</strong></span></p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">And yet, the fabric of the couch did not catch fire, instead only smoldering and stinking, and soon I pressed the cigarette in too deeply and it died. I found and lit another, and when the result was the same I gave up on both the couch and the cigarette.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">I turned instead to matches and used them to ignite the drapes. As it turned out, these burned much better, going up all at once and lighting my hair and clothing along with them.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">By the time I’d flailed about enough to extinguish my body, the whole room was aflame. Still, I continued with my plan. I tried to call to my wife and children but when I took a breath to do so, my lungs filled with smoke and, choking, I collapsed.</p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: blue;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">✖</strong></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">I do not know how I lived through the fire. Perhaps my wife dragged me out and then went back for the children and perished only then. When I awoke, I was here, unsure of how I had arrived. My face and body were badly burned, and the pain was excruciating. I asked about my family but the nurse dodged the question, shushed me and only told me I should sleep. This was how I knew my family was dead, that they had been lost in the fire, and that the nurse didn’t know how to tell me. My only consolation was that the house, too, the source of all our problems, had burnt to the ground.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">For a time I was kept alone, drugged. How long, I cannot say. Perhaps days, perhaps weeks. Long enough in any case for my burns to slough and heal, for the skin grafts that I must surely have needed to take effect, for my hair to grow fully back. The doctors must have worked very hard on me, for I must admit that except to the most meticulous eye I look exactly as I had before the fire.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: blue;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">✖</strong></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">So, you see, I have the truth straight in my mind and it will not be easy to change. There is little point in you coming to me with these stories, little point in pretending once again that my house remains standing and was never touched by flame. Little point coming here pretending to be my wife, claiming that there was no fire, that you found me lying on the floor in the middle of our living room with my eyes staring fixedly into the air, seemingly unharmed.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">No, I have accepted that I am the victim of a tragedy, one of my own design. I know that my family is gone, and though I do not yet understand why you would want to convince me that you are my wife, what you hope to gain, eventually I will. You will let something slip and the game will be over. At worst, you are deliberately trying to deceive me so as to gain something from me. But what? At best, someone has decided this might lessen the blow, that if I can be made to believe my family is not dead, or even just mostly dead and not quite alive, I might be convinced not to surrender to despair.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">Trust me, whether you wish me good or ill, I do hope you succeed. I would like to be convinced, I truly would. I would love to open my eyes and suddenly see my family surrounding me, safe and sound. I would even tolerate the fact that the house is still standing, that unfinished business remains between it and myself, that somewhere horses still lie collapsed and waiting to be either alive or dead, that we will all in some senses remain like the man at the trough with our backs turned. I understand what I might have to gain from it, but you, I still do not understand.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> <span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: blue;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">✖</strong></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;"> </p><p><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px;"></em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 32px;">But do your worst: disrupt my certainty, try to fool me, make me believe. Get me to believe there is nothing dead behind me. If you can make that happen, I think we both agree, then anything is possible.</p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-82891601280553848712020-08-18T00:42:00.004-07:002020-08-18T00:42:36.130-07:00How to Get Back to the Forest<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">“You have to puke it up,” said Cee. “You have to get down there and puke it up. I mean down past where you can feel it, you know?”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She gestured earnestly at her chest. She had this old-fashioned cotton nightgown on, lace collar brilliant under the bathroom lights. Above the collar, her skin looked gray. Cee had bones like a bird. She was so beautiful. She was completely beautiful and fucked. I mean everybody at camp was sort of a mess, we were even supposed to be that way, at a <em>difficult stage,</em> but Cee took it to another level. Herding us into the bathroom at night and asking us to puke. “It’s right here,” she said, tapping the nightgown over her hollow chest. “Where you’ve got less nerves in your esophagus. It’s like wired into the side, into the muscle. You have to puke really hard to get it.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="How To Get Back to the Forest by Sofia Samatar (illustrated by Galen Dara)" src="https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/how-to-get-back-to-the-forest-by-sofia-samatar-575x442.jpg" /></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Did you ever get it out?” asked Max. She was sitting on one of the sinks. She’d believe anything.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cee nodded, solemn as a counselor. “Two years ago. They caught me and gave me a new one. But it was beautiful while it was gone. I’m telling you it was the best.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Like how?” I said.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cee stretched out her arms. “Like bliss. Like everything. Everything all at once. You’re raw, just a big raw nerve.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“That doesn’t sound so great,” said Elle.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I know,” said Cee, not annoyed but really agreeing, turning things around. That was one of her talents.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It sounds stupid,” she nodded, “but that’s because it’s something we can’t imagine. We don’t have the tools. Our bodies don’t know how to calculate what we’re missing. You can’t know till you get there. And at the same time, it’s where you came from. It’s where you <em>started.</em>”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She raised her toothbrush. “So. Who’s with me?”</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Definitely not me. God, Cee. You were such an idiot.</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Apparently, a girl named Puss had told her about the bug. And Cee, being Cee, was totally open to learning new things from a person who called herself Puss. Puss had puked out her own bug and was living on the streets. I guess she’d run away from camp, I don’t really know. She was six feet tall, Cee said, with long red hair. The hair was dyed, which was weird, because if you’re living on the streets, do you care about stuff like that? This kind of thing can keep me awake at night. I lie in bed, or rather I sit in the living room because Pete hates me tossing and turning, and I leave the room dark and open all the curtains, and I watch the lights of the city and think about this girl Puss getting red hair dye at the grocery store and doing her hair in the bathroom at the train station. Did she put newspapers down? And what if somebody came in and saw her?</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Anyway, eventually Cee met Puss in the park, and Puss was clearly down-and-out and a hooker, but she looked cool and friendly, and Cee sat down beside her on the swings.</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You have to puke it up.”</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We’d only been at camp for about six weeks. It seemed like a long time, long enough to know everybody. Everything felt stretched out at camp, the days and the nights, and yet in the end it was over so fast, as soon as you could blink. Camp was on its own calendar—<em>a special time of life.</em> That was Jodi’s phrase. She was our favorite counselor. She was greasy and enthusiastic, with a skinny little ponytail, only a year or two older than the seniors. <em>Camp is so special!</em> The thing with Jodi was, she believed every word she said. It made it really hard to make fun of her. That night, the night in the bathroom, she was asleep down the hall underneath her Mother Figure, which was a little stuffed dog with <em>Florida</em> on its chest.</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Come on!” said Cee. And she stuck her toothbrush down her throat, just like that. I think Max screamed. Cee didn’t start puking right away. She had to give herself a few really good shoves with that toothbrush, while people said “Oh my God” and backed away and clutched one another and stared. Somebody said “Are you nuts?” Somebody else said something else, I might have said something, I don’t know, everything was so white and bright in that moment, mirrors and fluorescent lights and Cee in that goddamn Victorian nightgown jabbing away with her toothbrush and sort of gagging. Every time I looked up I could see all of us in the mirror. And then it came. A splatter of puke all over the sink. Cee leaned over and braced herself. <em>Blam.</em> Elle said, “Oh my God, that is disgusting.” Cee gasped. She was just getting started.</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Elle was next. All of a sudden she spun around with her hands over her mouth and let go in the sink right next to Cee. <em>Splat.</em> I started laughing, but I already felt sort of dizzy and sick myself, and also scared, because I didn’t want to throw up. Cee looked up from her own sink and nodded at Elle, encouraging her. She looked completely bizarre, her wide cheekbones, her big crown of natural hair, sort of a retro supermodel with a glistening mouth, her eyes full of excitement. I think she even said “Good job, Elle!”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Then she went to it with the toothbrush again. “We have to stop her!” said Katie, taking charge. “Max, go get Jodi!” But Max didn’t make it. She jumped down from the third sink, but when she got halfway to the door she turned around and ran back to the sink and puked. Meanwhile Katie was dragging Cee away from the sink and trying to get the toothbrush, but also not wanting to touch it, and she kept going “Ew ew ew” and “<em>Help</em> me, you guys,” and it was all so hilarious I sank down on the floor, absolutely crying with laughter. Five or six other girls, too. We just sort of looked at each other and screamed. It was mayhem. Katie dragged Cee into one of the stalls, I don’t know why. Then Katie started groaning and let go of Cee and staggered into the stall beside her, and <em>sploosh,</em> there she went.</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Bugs.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s such a camp rumor. Camp is full of stories like that. People say the ice cream makes you sterile, the bathrooms are full of hidden cameras, there’s fanged, flesh-eating kids in the lake, if you break into the office you can call your parents. Lots of kids break into the office. It’s the most common camp offense. I never tried it, because I’m not stupid—of course you can’t call your parents. How would you even get their number? And bugs—the idea of a bug planted under your skin, to track you or feed you drugs—that’s another dumb story.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Except it’s not, because I saw one.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The smell in the bathroom was terrible now—an animal smell, hot; it thrashed around and it had fur.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I knew I was going to be sick. I crawled to the closest place—the stall where Cee knelt—and grabbed hold of the toilet seat. Cee moved aside for me. Would you believe she was still hanging onto her toothbrush? I think we both threw up a couple of times. Then she made this awful sound, beyond anything, her whole body taut and straining, and something flew into the toilet with a splash.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I looked at her and there was blood all over her chin. I said, “Jesus, Cee.” I thought she was dying. She sat there coughing and shaking, her eyes full of tears and triumph. She was on top of the world. “Look!” she breathed. And I looked, and there in the bowl, half-hidden by puke and blood, lay an object made of metal.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It actually looked like a bug. Sharp blood-smeared legs.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Shit!” I said. I flushed the toilet.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Now you,” said Cee, wiping her mouth on the back of her wrist.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I can’t.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Tisha. Come on.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cee, I couldn’t, I really couldn’t. I could be sick—in fact I felt sicker than ever—but I couldn’t do it that hard. I remember the look in your eyes; you were so disappointed. You leaned and spat some blood into the toilet.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I whispered: “Don’t tell anyone. Not even the other girls.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Why not? We should all—”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“<em>No.</em> Just trust me.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I was already scared, so scared. I couldn’t bear the idea of camp without you.</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We barely slept that night. We had to take showers and clean the bathroom. Max cried the whole time, but for at least part of the night, I was laughing. Me and Katie flinging disinfectant powder everywhere. Katie was cool, always in sweatpants, didn’t give a shit about anything.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You know your friend is a headcase, right?” she said.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It was the first time anybody’d called Cee my friend. We got out the mop and lathered up the floor. Everyone slipped and swore at us, coming out of the showers. Cee went skidding by in a towel. “Whee!” she shrieked.</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You cannot feel your bug. I’ve pressed so hard on my chest. I know.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“<em>I</em> could feel it,” said Cee. “After they put it back in.” It wasn’t exactly a physical thing. She couldn’t trace the shape of the bug inside her, but she could feel it <em>working.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Bug juice,” she said, making a sour face. She could feel bug juice seeping into her body. Every time she was going to be angry or afraid, there’d be this warmth in her chest, a feeling of calm spreading deep inside.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I only noticed it after I’d had the bug out for a couple of weeks.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“How did your parents know you needed a new one?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I didn’t need one.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“How did they know it was gone?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Well, I kind of had this fit. I got mad at them and started throwing food.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We were sitting on my bed, under my Mother Figure, a lamp with a blue shade. The blue light brought out the stains on Cee’s Victorian nightgown. We were both painting our toenails Cherry Pink, balancing the polish on my Life Skills textbook, taking turns with the brush.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You should do it,” Cee said. “I feel better. I’m so much better.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I thought how in a minute we’d have to study for our Life Skills quiz. I didn’t think there was bug juice in my body. I couldn’t feel anything.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’m so much better,” Cee said again. Her hand was shaking.</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Oh, Cee.</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The weird thing is, I started writing this after Max came to visit me, and I thought I was going to write about Max. But then I started writing in your book. Why? This book you left me, your Mother Figure. You practically threw it at me: “Take it!” It was the worst thing you could do, to take somebody else’s Parent Figure, especially the mom. Or maybe it was only us girls who cared so much about the moms. Maybe for the boys it was the dads. But anyway, taking one was the worst; you could basically expect the other kids to kill you. A kid got put in the hospital that way at a different camp—the one on the east side—but we all knew about it at our camp. They strung him up with electric wires. Whenever we told the story we ended by saying what <em>we</em> would have done to that kid, and it was always much worse.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But you threw this book at me, Cee, and what could I do? Jodi and Duncan were trying to grab your arms, and the ambulance was waiting for you downstairs. I caught the book clumsily, crumpling it. I looked at it later, and it was about half full of your writing. I think they’re poems.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em>dank smells underground want to get back</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em>no pill for it</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em>i need you</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t know, are they poems? If they are, I don’t think they’re very good. <em>A nap could be a door an abandoned car.</em> Does that even mean anything? <em>Eat my teeth.</em> I know them all by heart.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I picked up this book when Max left. I wrote: “You have to puke it up.” All of a sudden I was writing about you. Surprising myself. I just kept going. Remembering camp, the weird sort of humid excitement there, the cafeteria louder than the sea. The shops—remember the shops? Lulu’s was the best. We’d save up our allowance to go there. Down in the basement you could get used stuff for cheap. You got your leather jacket there. I got these red shoes with flowers on the toes. I loved those shoes so much! I wonder where they went? I wore them to every mixer, I was wearing them when I met Pete, probably with my white dress—another Lulu’s purchase I don’t have now.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It was summer, and the mixer had an island theme. The counselors had constructed this sort of deck overlooking the lake. God, they were so proud of it. They gave us green drinks with little umbrellas in them and played lazy, sighing music, and everyone danced, and Pete saw a shooting star, and we were holding hands, and you were gone forever and I forgot you.</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I forgot you. Forgetting isn’t so wrong. It’s a Life Skill.</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t remember what my parents looked like. A Parent Figure cannot be a photograph. It has to be a more neutral object. It’s supposed to stand in for someone, but not too much. When we got to camp we were all supposed to bring our Parent Figures to dinner the first night. Everyone squeezed in at the cafeteria tables, trying to find space beside their dinner trays for their Figures, those calendars and catcher’s mitts and scarves. I felt so stupid because my Mother Figure was a lamp and there was no place to plug it in. My Father Figure is a plaque that says <em>Always be yourself.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jodi came by, as the counselors were all going around “meeting the Parents,” and she said, “Wow, Tisha, that’s a <em>good</em> one.”</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t even know if I picked it out.</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“We want you to have a fabulous time at camp!” Jodi cried. She was standing at the front with the other counselors: Paige and Veronica and Duncan—who we’d later call “Hunky Duncan”—and Eric and Carla and the others.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Of course they’d chosen Jodi to speak. Jodi was so perky.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She told us that we were beginning a special relationship with our Parent Figures. It was very important not to <em>fixate.</em> We shouldn’t fixate on the Parent Figures, and we definitely shouldn’t fixate on the counselors.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My stupid lamp. It was so fucking blue. Why would you bring something blue? “The most important people in your life are the other campers!” Jodi burbled. “These are the people you’ll know for the rest of your life! Now, I want you to turn to the person next to you and say, <em>Hi, Neighbor!</em>”</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em>Hi, Neighbor!</em> And later, in the forest, Cee sang to the sky: <em>Fuck you, Neighbor!</em></p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Camp was special. We were told that it was special. At camp you connected with people and with nature. There was no personal tech. That freaked a lot of people out at first. We were told that later we’d all be able to get online again, but we’d be adults, and our relationships would be in place, and we would have learned our Life Skills, and we’d be ready. But now was special: Now was the time of friends and of the earth.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cee raised her hand: “What about earthquakes?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What?” said Veronica, who taught The Natural World. Veronica was from an older group of counselors; she had gray hair and leathery skin from taking kids on nature hikes and she was always stretching to show that you could be flexible when you were old.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What about earthquakes?” Cee asked. “What about fires? Those are natural. What about hurricanes?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Veronica smiled at us with her awesome white teeth, because you could have awesome white teeth when you were old, it was all a matter of taking care of yourself with the right Life Skills.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What an interesting question, Celia!”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We were told that all of our questions were interesting. <em>There’s no such thing as a stupid question!</em> The important thing was always to <em>participate.</em> We were told to participate in classes and hikes and shopping sprees and mixers. In History we learned that there used to be prejudice, but now there wasn’t: It didn’t matter where you came from or who you loved, <em>just join in!</em> That’s why even the queer girls had to go to the mixers; you could take your girlfriend, but you had to go. Katie used to go in a tie and Elle would wear flowers. They rolled their eyes but they went anyway and danced and it was fun. Camp was so fun.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cee raised her hand: “Why is it a compliment to tell somebody it doesn’t matter who they are?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We were told to find a hobby. There were a million choices and we tried them all: sports and crafts and art and music. There was so much to do. Every day there was some kind of program and then there were chores and then we had to study for class. No wonder we forgot stuff. We were told that forgetting was natural. Forgetting helped us survive, Jodi told us in Life Skills class, tears in her eyes. She cried as easily as Max. She was more like a kid sister than a counselor. Everybody wanted Jodi to be okay. “You’ll always be reminded,” she said in her hoarse, heroic voice. “You’ll always have your Parent Figures. It’s okay to be sad! But remember, you have each other now. It’s the most special bond in the world.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cee raised her hand: “What if we don’t want us?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cee raised her hand, but of course she raised her hand. She was <em>Cee.</em> She was Cee, she’d always been Cee, do you see what I mean? I mean she was like that right from the day we arrived; she was brash, messy Cee <em>before</em> the night in the bathroom, before she supposedly puked out her bug. I couldn’t see any difference. <em>I could not see any difference.</em> So of course I had second thoughts. I wished so bad I hadn’t flushed the toilet. What if there wasn’t anything in it? What if somebody’d dropped a piece of jewelry in there, some necklace or brooch and I thought it was a bug? That could have happened. Camp was so fun. Shaving my legs for the mixer. Wearing red shoes. We were all so lucky. Camp was the best thing ever. <em>Every Child at Camp!</em> That was the government slogan: <em>ECAC.</em> Cee used to make this gag face whenever she said it. <em>ECAC.</em> Ick. Sick.</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She took me into the forest. It was a mixer. Everybody else was crowded around the picnic tables. The lake was flat and scummy and the sun was just going down, clouds of biting insects golden in the haze.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Come on,” Cee said, “let’s get out of here.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We walked over the sodden sand into the weeds. A couple of the counselors watched us go: I saw Hunky Duncan look at us with his binoculars, but because we were just two girls they didn’t care. It only mattered if you left the mixer with a boy. Then you had to stop at the Self-Care Stand for condoms and an injection, because <em>becoming a parent is a serious decision!</em> Duncan lowered his binoculars, and we stepped across the rocks and into the trees.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“This is cool!” Cee whispered.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I didn’t really think it was cool—it was weird and sticky in there, and sort of dark, and the weeds kept tickling my legs—but I went farther because of Cee. It’s hard to explain this thing she had: She was like an event just about to happen and you didn’t want to miss it. I didn’t want to, anyway. It was so dark we had to hold hands after a while. Cee walked in front of me, pushing branches out of the way, making loud crackling sounds, sometimes kicking to break through the bushes. Her laugh sounded close, like we were trapped in the basement at Lulu’s. That’s what it was like, like being trapped in this amazing place where everything was magically half-price. I was so excited and then horrified because suddenly I had to take a dump, there was no way I could hold it in.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Wait a sec,” I told Cee, too embarrassed to even tell her to go away. I crouched down and went and wiped myself on the leaves, and I’m sure Cee knew what was up but she took my hand again right after I was done. She took my disgusting hand. I felt like I wanted to die, and at the same time, I was floating. We kept going until we stumbled into a clearing in the woods. Stars above us in a perfect circle.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“<em>Woo-hooooo!</em>” Cee hollered. “Fuck you, Neighbor!”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She gave the stars the finger. The silhouette of her hand stood out against the bright. I gave the stars the finger, too. I was this shitty, disgusting kid with a lamp and a plaque for parents but I was there with Cee and the time was exactly now. It was like there was a beautiful starry place we’d never get into— didn’t <em>deserve</em> to get into—but at the same time we were better than any brightness. Two sick girls underneath the stars.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em>Fuck you, Neighbor!</em> It felt so great. If I could go anywhere I’d want to go there.</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The counselors came for us after a while. A circle of them with big flashlights, talking in handsets. Jodi told us they’d been looking everywhere for us. “We were pretty worried about you girls!”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For the first time I didn’t feel sorry for her; I felt like I wanted to kick her in the shins. Shit, I forgot about that until right now. I forget so much. I’m like a sieve. Sometimes I tell Pete I think I’m going senile. Like premature senile dementia. Last month I suggested we go to Clearview for our next vacation and he said, “Tish, you hate Clearview, don’t you remember?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s true, I hated Clearview: The beach was okay, but at night there was nothing to do but drink. So we’re going to go to the Palace Suites instead. At least you can gamble there.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cee, I wonder about you still, so much—I wonder what happened to you and where you are. I wonder if you’ve ever tried to find me. It wouldn’t be hard. If you linked to the register you’d know our graduating class ended up in Food Services. I’m in charge of inventory for a chain of grocery stores, Pete drives delivery, Katie stocks the shelves. The year before us, the graduates of our camp went into the army; the year after us they also went into the army; the year after that they went into communications technologies; the year after that I stopped paying attention. I stopped wondering what life would have been like if I’d graduated in a different year. We’re okay. Me and Pete—we make it work, you know? He’s sad because I don’t want to have kids, but he hasn’t brought it up for a couple of years. We do the usual stuff, hobbies and vacations. Work. Pete’s into gardening. Once a week we have dinner with some of the gang. We keep our Parent Figures on the hall table, like everyone else. Sometimes I think about how if you’d graduated with us, you’d be doing some kind of job in Food Services too. That’s weird, right?</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But you didn’t graduate with us. I guess you never graduated at all.</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve looked for you on the buses and in the streets. Wondering if I’d suddenly see you. God, I’d jump off the bus so quick, I wouldn’t even wait for it to stop moving. I wouldn’t care if I fell in the gutter. I remember your tense face, your nervous look, when you found out that we were going to have a check-up.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I can’t have a check-up,” you said.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Why not?” I asked.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Because,” you said, “because they’ll see my bug is gone.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And I just—I don’t know. I felt sort of embarrassed for you. I’d convinced myself the whole bug thing was a mistake, a hallucination. I looked down at my book, and when I looked up you were standing in the same place, with an alert look on your face, as if you were listening.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You looked at me and said: “I have to run.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. The whole camp was monitored practically up to the moon. There was no way to get outside.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But you tried. You left my room, and you went straight out your window and broke your ankle.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A week later, you were back. You were on crutches and you looked . . . wrecked. Destroyed. Somebody’d cut your hair, shaved it close to the scalp. Your eyes stood out, huge and shining.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“They put in a bug in me,” you whispered.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And I just knew. I knew what you were going to do.</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • •</p><p class="noindent" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Max came to see me a few days ago. I’ve felt sick ever since. Max is the same, hunched and timid; you’d know her if you saw her. She sat in my living room and I gave her coffee and lemon cookies and she took one bite of a cookie and started crying.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cee, we miss you, we really do.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Max told me she’s pregnant. I said congratulations. I knew she and Evan have been wanting one for a while. She covered her eyes with her hands—she still bites her nails, one of them was bleeding—and she just cried.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Hey, Max,” I said, “it’s okay.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I figured she was extra-emotional from hormones or whatever, or maybe she was thinking what a short time she’d have with her kid, now that kids start camp at eight years old.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It’s okay,” I told her, even though I’d never have kids—I couldn’t stand it.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">They say it’s easier on the kids, going to camp earlier. We—me and you and Max—we were the tail end of Generation Teen. Max’s kid will belong to Generation Eight. It’s supposed to be a happier generation, but I’m guessing it will be sort of like us. Like us, the kids of Generation Eight will be told they’re sad, that they need their parents and that’s why they have Parent Figures, so that they can always be reminded of what they’ve lost, so that they can remember they need what they have now.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I sat across the coffee table from Max, and she was crying and I wasn’t hugging her because I don’t really hug people anymore, not even Pete really, I’m sort of mean that way, it’s just how I turned out, and Max said “Do you remember that night in the bathroom with Cee?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do I remember?</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Her eyes were all swollen. She hiccupped. “I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m scared.” She said she had to send a report to her doctor every day on her phone. How was she feeling, had she vomited? Her morning sickness wasn’t too bad, but she’d thrown up twice, and both times she had to go in for a check-up.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“So?” I said.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“So—they always put you to sleep, you know . . .”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Yeah.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I just said “Yeah.” Just sat there in front of her and said “Yeah.” Like I was a rock. After a while I could tell she was feeling uncertain, and then she felt stupid. She picked up her stuff and blew her nose and went home. She left the tissues on the table, one of them spotted with blood from her bitten nail. I haven’t really been sleeping since she left. I mean, I’ve always had trouble sleeping, but now it’s a lot worse, especially since I started writing in your book. I just feel sick, Cee, I feel really sick. All those check-ups, so regular, everyone gets them, but you’re definitely supposed to go in if you’re feeling nauseous, if you’ve vomited, <em>it might be a superflu!</em> The world is full of viruses, <em>good health is everybody’s business!</em> And yeah, they put you to sleep every time. Yeah. “They put a bug in me,” you said. Camp was so fun. Jodi came to us, wringing her hands. “Cee has been having some problems, and it’s up to all of us to look after her, girls! <em>Campers stick together!</em>” But we didn’t stick together, did we? I woke up and you were shouting in the hall, and I ran out there and you were hopping on your good foot, your toothbrush in one hand, your Mother Figure notebook in the other, and I knew exactly what they’d caught you doing. How did they catch you? Were there really cameras in the bathroom? Jodi’d called Duncan, and that was how I knew how bad it was: Hunky Duncan in the girls’ hallway, just outside the bathroom, wearing white shorts and a seriously pissed-off expression. He and Jodi were grabbing you and you were fighting them off. “Tisha,” called Jodi, “it’s okay, Cee’s just sick, she’s going to the hospital.” You threw the notebook. “Take it!” you snarled. Those were your last words. Your last words to me. I never saw you again except in dreams. Yeah, I see you in dreams. I see you in your white lacy nightgown. Cee, I feel sick. At night I feel so sick, I walk around in circles. There’s waves of sickness and waves of something else, something that calms me, something that’s trying to make the sickness go away. Up and down it goes, and I’m just in it, just trying to stand it, and then I sleep again, and I dream you’re beside me, we’re leaning over the toilet, and down at the very bottom there’s something like a clump of trees and two tiny girls are standing there giving us the finger. It’s not where I came from, but it’s where I <em>started.</em> I think of how bright it was in the bathroom that night, how some kind of loss swept through all of us, electric, and you’d started it, you’d started it by yourself, and we were with you in that hilarious and total rage of loss. Let’s lose it. Let’s lose everything. Camp wasn’t fun. Camp was a fucking factory. I go out to the factory on Fridays to check my lists over coffee with Elle. The bus passes shattered buildings, stick people rooting around in the garbage. Three out of five graduating classes join the army. <em>Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change!</em> How did I even get here? I’d ask my mom if she wasn’t a fucking lamp. Cee, I feel sick. I should just grab my keys, get some money, and run to Max’s house, we should both be sick, everybody should lose it together. I shouldn’t have told you not to tell the others. We all should have gone together. My fault. I dream I find you and Puss in a bathroom in the train station. There’s blood everywhere, and you laugh and tell me it’s hair dye. Cee, it’s so bright it makes me sick. I have to go now. It’s got to come out.</p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-69204221253286733152020-08-18T00:41:00.004-07:002020-08-18T00:41:30.921-07:00Please Momma<p> <i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;"><b>1989</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>In the car. On the way to see Her.</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>She scares us. They say</b></i> . . .</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Why do you always do that? I hate when you do that.</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>Do what?</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Narrate our story. Where we’re going. What we’re doing. You know I can hear you. I hate it so much.</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>But they’ll want to know one day. She said they’ll need to know.</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>No one cares about you, girl. No one cares about us.</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>They will.</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cars never bounce around the way they make them appear in the movies. No, instead they glide, more like the lull of a boat on stale waters. And they’re just as loud as the boat’s engine, even with the windows rolled up there are always loud swooshing noises assaulting the senses. The sounds should be calming, like the ocean, but they never are. They are annoying and invading. Or at least it’s what the girls always imagined what the beach and ocean should sound like. They had never been farther than Kentucky Lake, a few hours away from where they were now. The water there was so muddy that you couldn’t see your hands in front of your face and everything that moved within its depths looked like invading, misshapen piranha out to devour your flesh. But the girls loved it so. Except when the motion threatened to make them sick.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The car swerved around a sharp corner, another wave threatening to take over, and the girls swayed in the back, holding on to each other. Their tummies were not holding up well under the stress, though it probably had nothing to do with the car ride and everything to do with their destination. The girls looked at each other, their minds quiet for a moment. There was no need to speak, nothing to say.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the driver’s seat, the girl’s aunt turned to stare at their mother. Auntie’s eyes, dark and weary, stared for so long that it was scary. As the car veered toward the middle of the street, the lines on the road before them slid by between the tires of the car. After what seemed like a long moment, the woman turned away and righted the car, putting them all back on track.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>March 26th</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>6:30 p.m. on Sunday afternoon.</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>In the car with momma. She’s sad. Auntie’s driving us to see her, but if she’s not careful, she’s gonna kill us before we can even get there.</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>So, that’s what you’re worried about? Dying?</i> The girl seemed insulted. <i>Momma’s not sad, she fucking sick. She’s not getting better.</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>She’s not sick. Stop saying she’s sick.</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>She’s fucking sick. Stop pretending that you don’t see that.</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>You stop cussin’. I’m the oldest, so I said stop it! I mean it, Baby. Stop it.</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sissy reached out to nudge her little sister, reassuring her. They didn’t fight often, but when they did, she always pulled the “oldest” sister card to get her way. It had always worked in the past but it was beginning to get old — literally — and her sister, Baby, wasn’t going to be so easily controlled anymore. Baby avoided her touch, rolling her eyes. Why couldn’t she just get her sister to understand that she knew what was best for them, she just wanted to protect her? It was her job, to protect her sister.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Baby put her cold hand on her sister’s face. <i>I do understand. But you can’t protect me. It’s not your job anymore.</i> She smiled. <i>Let me protect you sometimes.</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Sissy, Baby, stop it. Stop fooling around!” Momma turned toward the girls, her eyes fixed, moving between the two. “You’re so loud. You’re so goddamn loud. In my head. All the time. Talkin’, talkin’, talkin’. Just stop it!”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Their aunt put her hand on Momma’s leg. “That’s enough, Mae. Stop it. She wasn’t saying anything. It’s the roots. We’re gonna get it off ya. Just . . . calm down until we get there. Just . . . just stop it.” The woman looked at Sissy through the rear view mirror, tried to smile but failed, then looked away quickly.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the silence, Momma burst out laughing. For a long time. “Roots. Roots. Roots,” she mocked. “You think someone put roots on me? You’re gonna wish that’s it, by the time I’m done with her.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Auntie pulled the car into a parking spot in a tiny little shopping plaza. The neon lights blinking PSYCHIC were the only visible signs of life inside. White curtains covered the storefront windows. Auntie switched the car off, dropped the keys in her purse, then turned to her sister. “I’ve listened to the things you’ve said about your own children lately — the nasty, vile things you’ve said about them — and I’ve tried to understand, because I know you’re hurting, but if you think about putting a hand on her again, I will lay you flat. Do you understand me?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Momma smiled. “Not her,” she placed a finger to her temple. “Her.”</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • • •</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>Momma is not sad. She’s sick. It’s something in her mind. Something really bad.</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>I can’t see it. I keep trying but I can’t see what’s wrong with her. I’m scared.</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>Me too. She don’t talk to me anymore. She seems scared to look at me. I think she hates me.</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Baby shook her head. <i>She don’t hate you. She just ain’t well. The Lady will help her,</i> Iyaafin <i>can help her, I’m sure of it.</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>I don’t like her and I don’t like it here.</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>She’s gonna help momma.</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>She’s not. I don’t think anyone can help momma anymore.</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The sisters held each other standing in the dimly lit foyer of the PSYCHIC with the giant neon hand. They didn’t want to let go, didn’t want to move, didn’t want to have to be in that room, for that reason, with these women. Grownups are supposed to protect children, supposed to keep them safe, but they don’t. Not, the girls realize, because they don’t love their children, but because that is how things are. The world is a very big place, and very big things happen and grownups are never big enough to stop them. Instead, Iyaafin had constantly reminded them, <i>mommas, aunties, and grands have little girls and they want everything to be perfect, and pink and happy and it never ever happens that way; and daddies, uncles and papas just want little boys and are never ever happy if they don’t get them.</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But their daddy had not wanted little boys. He had been happy to have his baby girls from the day that they had entered the world, one right after the other, within minutes of each other. He had held them and cared for them and protected them. But his heart wasn’t big enough for all the love that he held for them, so it gave out one day. It just stopped beating in his chest and he died. He took his big heart with him, and left only its weakness. The girls had been four years old, and now they were eight and a half. Almost big girls, their auntie told them. Almost big enough to understand things, big, grownup things, almost big enough to put away childish things, let go, accept what had happened. The twins did not want to let go. They did not want to accept what had happened. They wanted to stay like this, holding on to each other for as long as they could, until they were forced apart.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I see that for as much as things change, they forever stay the same between you two, ômôbìnrins, eh?” The girls, as she’d called them, looked up as the woman walked from the back of the building, through a sheer curtain. She was wearing a long, one piece dress with drawings of eyes of all shapes and sizes. Auntie said that the woman did enjoy her comedic side, playing into what everyone expected of her. The Lady thought it was funny, but she always looked the same, spoke the same, behaved the same way, always. They’d been coming to her since their father had died and the girls didn’t like the way she always wanted to separate them, wanted to force them to grow up too quickly, accept things that they weren’t ready to accept. Iyaafin had convinced their auntie so now she mimicked what the woman said. They all trusted her so. The whole town and the surrounding community trusted her.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The twins did not.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Ẹ ku abọ, all!” she welcomed the group, ignoring the girl’s disdain for her. Suddenly the woman stopped for a moment, and slowly turned her neck to look at Momma. She squinted her eyes, cocked her head. Walking over to the woman, she placed her hand on her forehead for a long while. Nothing moved, no one spoke. They all knew to let the woman do whatever it was that she did. After what seemed like forever, she turned to look at Sissy. “Does it still hurt? Your eye. Your mother did that, right?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sissy shook her head. “No.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“She did. Don’t lie for her, ômôbìnrin.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’m not lying. I mean . . . no, it doesn’t still hurt.” Beside her their auntie began to cry. Their mother just stood, quietly. Unblinking, unfeeling, emotionless. She had been that way lately. She only ever showed emotion anymore when she was angry. At Sissy. Always at Sissy. As if she blamed her for everything.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Lady looked back at their Momma. “They do it to please you, you know. Always have.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Iyaafin . . . Lady — ” their Auntie started to interrupt, but the woman put up a finger to silence her.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“That’s why they can’t let go. Because you can’t let go.” Momma acted as if she could not even hear the woman, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. As if she did not have children that depended on her.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What the hell is wrong with her? What’s wrong with my sister? Did someone put roots on her? Can you fix it? Please!”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The woman did not speak for a long while, as was her way. She spoke slowly, when she was good and ready. The others waited. Still there was silence. “No. No one could do this to her. This one she invited onto herself.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What? We thought it was roots. Nothing else can explain why she’s so angry all the damn time.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“No. This is no magick. No trick of roots. No one person hates her this much. This is . . . much deeper. It’s big and wide and solid. It’s the world, it’s hate, it’s like a big boulder of centralized hurt and anger and rage and internalized hate, all balled up into one big bad thing riding her back like a clown on a unicycle. And your sister ain’t the clown.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I don’t understand. What’s wrong with her? Can you fix her?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For the first time Iyaafin could not meet the eyes of anyone in the room. She stared at the floor, seeming to think about what to say next, contemplating her words carefully. “Your sister is not in control of herself anymore. I suspect it has been like this for a long time. I . . . don’t know if I can help her.”</p><p class="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">• • • •</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Daddy used to lift the girls on his back, spin them around and pretend they were all helicopters, each a part of the machine that made it run safely. He was the engine and they were the propellers. Momma would stand and watch to make sure that everything was safe while they all played. Every now and again he would pitch one of the girls to her and she was always waiting to catch them, arms out, trusting daddy to have good aim, while he trusted her to be there to receive them. When the girls were too big to carry them both, he would swing them one at a time. It was never quite as much fun that way. Perhaps it was because they were getting too old for this to be fun any longer or perhaps because daddy’s heart was no longer strong enough to propel the engine of their four-person machine. Perhaps, though, being apart was not as important as being together.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The girls had never really learned to let go. This, Iyaafin insisted, was part of the problem.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Iyaafin stood in front of Momma, the woman’s hands on Momma’s head. Momma’s eyes were closed and neither of the girls thought she was with them anymore. If the Lady were telling the truth, perhaps she had not been with them for a long time. Maybe even since that day. Auntie stood nearby in case something went wrong. She looked nervous and no doubt had no idea what she could do to help, but she was there and it made the girls feel better since they no longer trusted that Momma could catch.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The girls watched as Iyaafin, her left hand still on Momma’s head, rubbed her right hand down the woman’s back. She stopped mid-way, her fingers tapping Momma’s spine like a drum. There was movement under Momma’s shirt. At first the girls thought that it had just been their imagination, but as they watched, it wiggled again, as if a hornet’s nest vibrated just under her shirt. Auntie gasped, jumped back, knocking a bottle off the table behind her. The glass clinked to the floor, bounced, then rolled toward the girls.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Be still,” the woman warned.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Very carefully the woman reached out and laid her right hand on Momma’s back, right were the hornets lived. She closed her eyes and held it there, unmoving. When she opened her eyes the whites were red, as if she had been drinking too much Whiskey, like uncle used to before he found the lord. “Help me get her shirt off.” Their auntie hesitated for only a moment, then she ran over and pulled Momma’s shirt over her head. Momma didn’t care. There was no way that if Momma had been well she could have showed her chest to anyone. Although she was wearing a bra, she always said that respectable women only bared their flesh to the lord and then only to clean any dirt and filth away.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Momma’s back was naked except for her bra strap and it looked wrong. It was much lighter than her dark brown skin and had large boils on it, clusters and clusters of them filling her back from her neck to the top of her pants. The boils bubbled just beneath the skin, threatening to burst. Momma’s eyes were closed, and the girls thought for a moment that she had passed out.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Lady grabbed Momma, holding her tight, sending a wave of power through her body. The woman’s body jumped, looking like all the people on TV who got shocked by electricity. Iyaafin shocked her again, and again and again. As the last bolt shot through her body, a small form appeared crouching on Momma’s shoulders, its claw-like nails digging into her flesh. The Lady stumbled backward, hands up as if she was afraid to touch the thing’s pale, moldy skin.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Simultaneously the girls jumped to their feet. Sissy began to gasp for air. She tried to calm down the only way she knew how.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>1989. Iyaafin’s place. Momma is sick. She’s very</b></i> — deep breath — <i><b>very sick.</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The girls did not take their eyes off the creature, who stared at them, smiling. It tilted its head, peculiar-like, seeing them, actually observing them.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>What the #@&% is that?</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>Did you say #@&%? How’d you do that? In my head. I just see a bunch of gibberish clouding my mind.</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>You told me not to curse. I didn’t curse.</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” their Aunt asked. She moved closer but the Lady raised a hand to stay her.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After getting her composure, Iyaafin walked up to Momma, placed her hands on the woman’s face and sent a powerful jolt through the tips of her fingers into Momma’s mind. Momma jerked out of her seat and landed on the floor, sliding across the marble, her butt scraping the floorboards. She sat up, crawled back toward the Lady. She looked up and suddenly her eyes were clearer than they had been in a long time. She looked around the room, as if just realizing where they were.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Oh, god, Mae! Are you okay? Jesus!” Auntie was breathing hard, like she’d run all the way here, with the girls strapped to her back. She turned to Iyaafin, “You did it, Lady.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The thing on Momma’s back continued to grin as Auntie walked toward Momma.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Don’t,” Iyaafin yelled. “It’s not over. Is it?” She seemed to be talking to the thing, but it did not answer her. But it was clear to the girls that it was aware of them all, watching, almost mocking them with its crooked smirk.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What is it? What’s wrong?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Lady stared at the thing. “It’s an Onírárà, a rider, a parasite. It hitches on to people who are . . . hopeless. Suffering. It feeds from them. But that’s never enough, they always want more.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What? What did you say?” Momma was talking clearly. She could understand what was going on. She was Momma again. The girls wanted to go to her, but the thing was still there, taunting them, daring them to come closer to it.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“How you feel?” Iyaafin asked her.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Strange. I’ve been so overwhelmed with . . . hopelessness and I had all these vile thoughts.” She looked over at the girls. “Oh, my god, Sissy, did I do that to you? Jesus. I remember wanting to hurt you so bad, and I just could not stop thinking it. I wanted to, I knew it didn’t make any sense, I just could not stop the terrible thoughts from popping into my head. I just cannot believe that I actually did it. I don’t remember any of it.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“This Onírárà is really strong. It’s able to take completely over you. It feeds from you and the kids taking energy from your grief and fear and sadness. It’s a parasite, it feeds.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Feeds? Off what? What does it want?” Auntie had been quiet but she looked worried and scared.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It wants her soul.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What? My soul?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“No. Not you, Mae. It wants the little girl.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Everyone turned to look at Sissy. She looked frightened, alone.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Momma stood completely still, her face filled will the emotion that she had been unable to express for the last few weeks. Sorrow, hurt, pain, anger. Her face screamed it all, at once. “It can’t have her. She’s all I got left.” Momma cried. Finally.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Iyaafin shook her head. “Not her.” She turned to the ghost of the girl who once existed but could no longer hold her mother’s hand and yet could never lose her heart. “Her.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Then to the living daughter: “You see her, don’t you, girl. You know she’s still here, among you. When I came into the room, I could sense you two. Both of you. The way you had been just after your father died, when your mother first came to seek my advice. Is your sister afraid of what’s beyond?” the Lady asked.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>No.</i> “No.” Sissy repeated her sister’s words. <i>I’m scared for you and momma.</i> “She’s afraid to leave us. She said we need her. I’ve told her that’s not true. Lots of times, but she won’t listen.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Because it’s not you holding her here.” Iyaafin shook her head, angry. “I told you when you first came to me, Mae, that you would lose her. Her heart, like her father’s, just could not sustain her. You couldn’t accept it then, and you still refuse to let go now.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The woman shook her head. “My baby girl. I miss her so much.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It’s your sorrow, your pain that’s keeping her here. She’s trapped because you love her so much that you can’t, you won’t let her go.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“But you said that thing wants her.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Yes. It wants her soul.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“How can you expect me to do that? What do you expect me to do, hand my baby over to that, that thing, whatever it is?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It’s attached to you because it senses her. If you’d let her go in the beginning, then she would have already passed over. But she’s been stuck here for so long that she’s victim to them, they smell her innocence like fresh food. If you don’t let her go, you’ll lose them both.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What? I don’t understand.” Auntie seemed to barely follow the conversation. She kept looking around the room as if she expected to see the boogey man jump from behind a curtain.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“This thing is powerful. It’s not leaving until it gets what it wants. It will stay in you, or anyone protecting Baby, holding on to her, keeping her on this plane. It’ll consume you with impure thoughts, making you do things to yourself, to your daughter until nothing else is holding her here. If Sissy dies, it’ll consume them both. Their strength is in the fact that they have one soul, but two bodies. They’re twins. But if it can get ahold of one, it’ll be satisfied because it can’t sense living souls. So it’ll hold on to you, Mae, take control of your memories, your thoughts, make you . . . hurt and kill her, because she is attached to Sissy, but you are what’s keeping her here. It’ll take them both. Do you understand? You have to let her go.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You keep saying that. Let her go. Let her go. I cannot do that!”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“She’s dead already. What do you want? A dead daughter whose soul you hold on to, or a live daughter whose soul you give away?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I want them both. Don’t make me choose.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Do it, Mae! Let her go.” Auntie walked over, putting her hand on Sissy’s shoulder, reassuring the girl.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Then what will I have? A dead husband? A dead daughter?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You’ll have a living, breathing little girl.” The Lady was angry. She seemed so sure that this was the right thing.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“And sacrifice one for the other?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Tell her to let me go, Sissy.</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>You’re not scared of that thing? I’m scared. I don’t want it to get you.</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>I just want you to be safe. And I don’t want to be tired anymore.</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><b>If . . . if I die, and let it have me, then I can protect you. I can do what I couldn’t do when you died. I’m the oldest, I’m supposed to protect you.</b></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>You’d leave momma alone? She’d have no one. Not daddy. Not me. Not you.</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">. . .</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Tell her, Sissy. Tell her to let me go.</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“She said to let her go, momma.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The woman stared at Sissy’s scarred face, tears running down her cheeks. “I can’t.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Please, momma.</i> “She’s begging.” She was so strong for a little girl, her pain was on the inside, deep, deep down inside.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Tell her that I would have died for her.” Tears streamed down Momma’s face.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Would you</i> . . . “Kill me for her, she asked? Baby . . . she wants to die to save me.” <i>Please, momma.</i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Momma mumbled her answer and only the Onírárà could hear.</p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-6611892540620183292020-08-17T22:10:00.006-07:002020-08-17T22:10:59.610-07:00His Face All Red<p> h<img alt="" height="150" src="http://emcarroll.com/comics/faceallred/title.jpg" title="" width="342" /></p><p align="center"></p><p align="center"><img alt="" height="592" src="http://emcarroll.com/comics/faceallred/0101.jpg" title="" width="719" /></p><p align="center"></p><p align="center"><img alt="" height="402" src="http://emcarroll.com/comics/faceallred/0102.jpg" title="" width="719" /></p><p align="center"></p><p 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align="center"></p><p align="center"></p><p align="center"></p><p align="center"><img alt="" height="923" src="http://emcarroll.com/comics/faceallred/0606.jpg" title="" width="719" /></p><p align="center"><img alt="" height="1278" src="http://emcarroll.com/comics/faceallred/0701.jpg" title="" width="719" /></p><p align="center"></p><p align="center"><img alt="" height="1350" src="http://emcarroll.com/comics/faceallred/0702.jpg" title="" width="719" /></p><p align="center"><br /></p><p> </p><div align="center"><div align="center"><img alt="" height="255" src="http://emcarroll.com/comics/faceallred/0801.jpg" title="" width="660" /></div><div align="center"><br /></div><div align="center"><p style="text-align: start;"> </p><p style="text-align: start;"></p><p style="text-align: start;"> </p><p style="text-align: start;"></p><p style="text-align: start;"></p><p style="text-align: start;"> </p><p style="text-align: start;"></p><div align="center"><div align="center"><img alt="" height="251" src="http://emcarroll.com/comics/faceallred/0901.jpg" title="" width="660" /></div><div><img src="http://emcarroll.com/comics/faceallred/byme.jpg" /></div><div><br /></div></div></div><div align="center"><br /></div></div>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-16787188407030922912020-08-17T22:07:00.004-07:002020-08-17T22:07:52.330-07:00Hello, Moto<p> <span style="color: #545353; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">“African women in general need to know that it’s OK for them to be the way they are – to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence.”</span></p><p style="border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">—<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wangari Maathai, Kenyan environmental activist and Nobel Laureate</em></span></p><p><img alt="" src="data:image/png;base64,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" /></p><blockquote style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 50px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; quotes: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is a tale you will only hear once. Then it will be gone in a flash of green light. Maybe all will be well after that. Maybe the story has a happy ending. Maybe there is nothing but darkness when the story ends.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We were three women. Three friends. We had goals, hopes and dreams. We had careers. Two of us had boyfriends. We owned houses. We all had love. Then I made these… wigs. I gave them to my two friends. The three of us put them on. The wigs were supposed to make things better. But something went wrong. Like the nation we were trying to improve, we became backward. Instead of giving, we took.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Walk with me. This is the story of How the Smart Woman Tried to Right Her Great Wrong.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="more-60164" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dawn</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">With the wig finally off, Coco and Philo felt more distant to me. Thank God.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Even so, because it was sitting beside me, I could still <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">see</em> them. Clearly. In my head. Don’t <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ever</em> mix juju with technology. There is witchcraft in science and a science to witchcraft. Both will conspire against you eventually. I realized that now. I had to work fast.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It was just after dawn. The sky was heating up. I’d sneaked out of the compound while my boyfriend still slept. Even the house girl who always woke up early was not up yet. I hid behind the hedge of colorful pink and yellow lilies in the front. I needed to be around vibrant natural life, I needed to smell its scent. The flowers’ shape reminded me of what my real hair would look like if the wig hadn’t burned it off.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I opened my laptop and set it in the dirt. I put my wig beside it. It was jet black, shiny, the “hairs” straight and long like a mermaid’s. The hair on my head was less than a millimeter long; shorter than a man’s and far more damaged. For a moment, as I looked at my wig, it flickered its electric blue. I could hear it whispering to me. It wanted me to put it back on. I ran my hand over my sore head. Then I quickly tore my eyes from the wig and plugged in the flash drive. As I waited, I brought out a small sack and reached in. I sprinkled cowry shells, alligator pepper and blue beads around the machine for protection. I wasn’t taking chances.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I sat down, placed my fingers on the keyboard, shut my eyes and prayed to the God I didn’t believe in. After all that had happened, who would believe in God? Philo had been in Jos when the riots happened. I knew it was her and her wig. A technology <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I </em>had created. Neurotransmitters, mobile phones, incantation, and hypnosis- even I knew my creation was genius. But all it sparked in the North was death and mayhem. During the riots there, some men had even burned a woman and her baby to death. <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A woman </em>andher<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">baby!</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I didn’t want to think of what Philo <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">gained</em> after causing it all. She never said a word to me about it. However, soon after, she went on a three-day shopping spree in Paris. We could leave Nigeria, but never for more than a few days.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I meant well.” I opened my eyes and looked at my screen. The background was a plain blue. The screen was blank except for a single folder. I highlighted the folder and pressed “delete.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I paused, my hands shaking and my heart pounding in my chest.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“If this doesn’t work, they will kill me,” I whispered. Then I considered what they’d do if I didn’t finish. So many others would die and Nigeria would be in further chaos, for sure. I continued typing. I was creating a computer virus. I would send it out in a few hours. When they’d both be busy. Then all hell would break loose…for me, just me. Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My name is Rain and if I didn’t get this right, the corruption already rife in this country would be nothing compared to what was to come. And it would all be my fault.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Market</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I am beast. I am lovely. I am in control. I was born beautiful.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">All this Philo thought as she walked through the fruit and vegetable section of the open-air market. Around her, women slaved away. They sat behind tables and in booths selling tomatoes, peppers, plantain, egusi seeds, greens, yams. All those things that they’d have to cook at home for their families after a long day. Philo didn’t live that life. She’d chosen better. She was above all of them.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Philo was tall and voluptuous, as she sashayed past women and men in her pricey high heels and brown designer dress that clung to her every inch. Her foundation make-up made her skin look like chocolate porcelain. Her eyelids sparkled with purple eye-shadow. Her lips glistened bright sensual pink. Perfect. Sexy. Hot. And her wig was awful. A washed-out black with auburn frosted tips, it looked as if it were made of colored straw and sat on her head like it knew it did not belong there.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Here,” a woman said, running up to Philo and handing her a roll of naira. “Take. You will make better use of it than me.” The woman paused and frowned, obviously confused by her own actions and words.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Thank you,” Philo said, with a chuckle. She grabbed the money with her long nailed painted fingers and stared into the woman’s eyes. Philo felt her wig heat up and then a dull ache in the back of her head. Then she felt it behind her eyes, which turned from deep brown to glowing green. Philo sighed as the laser shot from her eyes into the woman’s eyes. The woman slumped, looking sadly at her feet. It always felt so good to take from people, not just their money but their very essence. Philo quickly moved on leaving the tired sad-looking woman behind.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She passed a group of young men. They stared and she stared back, zapping and taking. Their ravenous looks grew blank. Philo smirked knowingly. She felt amazing. She strolled into a booth where a man sold hundreds of Nollywood movie DVDs. She glanced over the array of colorful dramatic covers where women and men scowled, wept, grinned, pointed, accused, laughed. “I’ll take this one,” she said, picking a DVD at random. She’d watch it. She’d enjoy it. She loved Nollywood. These days, she enjoyed everything. The world was hers. Soon it would be, at least.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She tucked the DVD into her purse and left the booth without paying. No one stopped her. As she stepped into the sunshine, she turned, absolutely loving herself. She knew everyone was looking at her, just as she knew she was sucking the life from them as they stared. Her wig’s heat increased and her brown eyes glinted a bright green as she smiled at any man who caught her eye. By the time she left this market, she’d be weighed down with naira given and life juices taken. Market by Market. It was like this every day.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Her cell phone went off. A male voice happily drawled, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6OXwTqpWbs" style="border: 0px; color: #448aae; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="external-links-new-window">Hellllo Moto</a>,” then upbeat music began to play. Everything about Philo rattled as she stopped and lifted her purse- the jangling bangles on her arms, her jingling earrings, and her three gold chain necklaces. She was clicks and clacks, shines and sparkles.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Oh where is it,” she said, digging in her purse, mindful of her long nails. “Where, where where.” She pushed aside her lipstick, her unnecessary wallet, tissues, compact case, a pack of gum, wads and rolls of naira. Her cell phone continued going off. She laughed. She already knew who it was. Rain, the weakest link in the chain. She could tell by the ring tone. However, she could also tell by more than that. In her mind’s eye, Philo could see Rain standing outside her compound, next to some flowers, holding her cell phone to her ear, waiting. Philo found her phone, flipped it open and held it to her ear. It clicked against her long gold earring.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What?” she said, grinning with all her teeth. She heard nothing. “Rain, I know it’s you. Say someth…”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She felt it before she saw it. A coolness that contrasted horribly with the heat of her wig. She frowned as the phone made an odd beeping sound. She held it before her just as the phone glinted a deep green similar to the one her eyes flashed when she sucked psychic energy from those around her. Her phone buzzed, an electrical current zipping across it before disappearing. Green smoke began to dribble from it.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Chey</em>!” Philo exclaimed staring at it. If she were smart, she’d have dropped it. But Philo was never really that intelligent. Just greedy. Rain didn’t know that before but she knew that now. A text message appeared on the screen but Philo could make no sense of it. It was a series on nonsensical symbols, rubbish. She dropped the phone, pressing a hand to her wig. “That bitch,” she snarled, looking around with wide enraged eyes. “How dare she even try.” In the sunshine, her canines almost looked pointed.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Right then and there, Philo disappeared in a flash of green.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">His House</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Coco had just lit a cigarette. She leaned back on the plush white leather couch and crossed her legs. She held her glass of champagne up to the photo of her husband on the wall. He was out. He was always out. Working. For her. She laughed, scratching under her itchy wig with her long-nailed index finger. <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Scritch scritch</em>. It was spiky, dark red and short and no one in his or her right mind would wear it. She got up and looked at her reflection in the glass that protected her husband’s photo. Her skinny jeans and t-shirt fit wonderfully snug. Her face was flawless. And her hair was power.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Mwah,” she said, blowing herself a kiss.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She ambled into the living room where two fans were blasting. She stood very still between them, her wig’s “hairs” blowing about her face. It felt secure, despite the blowing air. She shut her eyes and inhaled deeply. Behind her eyelids, she could see. Then she began to draw it in from…</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The busy street. People sitting in bustling bush taxies and perched atop hundreds of okada motorbikes. Market women walking alongside the road. The mish-mash of old and modern buildings of Lagos. Disabled beggars in the road. Boys playing soccer on a field.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When she opened her eyes, they glowed a deep green and the wig glinted an electric blue. The blowing fans made the heat from her wig more bearable. Her cell phone went off and she nearly jumped. “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6OXwTqpWbs" style="border: 0px; color: #448aae; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="external-links-new-window">Hellllo, Moto</a>,” it said as it played its dance music.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ah ah</em>, what now?” she muttered. But she was smiling. The wig. It always left her feeling so <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">good</em>. Minus the heat, which left the actual wig feeling like a burning helmet. She ran to her cell phone on the couch. It was Rain. What did she want now? In her mind, the wig showed Rain standing outside her compound looking worried. The woman always looked so worried; she should have been at the top of the world.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Coco held the phone to her ear as she brought out some lipstick. “Hello?” she said, smearing on a fresh coat. She grinned, sure of what she’d hear. She frowned. “Hello? Rain, what is it? Speak up.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But she heard nothing. She held the phone to her face when it suddenly became like a chunk of ice in her hand. “Iiieeey!” she exclaimed, throwing it on the couch. As she stared at it, appalled, the cell phone began to dribble green smoke. A text box opened on its screen. Coco squinted trying to read it. It looked like rubbish. But, like Philo, Coco understood what was happening.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Oh,” Coco said, out of breath. “You want to play now, eh? Ok.” She threw her lipstick on the leather seat, the lid still off. It left a smear on the pillow. “Someone will die today, o. And it will <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">not</em> be me.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She disappeared.</p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">*</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I have made my choice. That’s why I am still here, standing in these lilies. I run my hand over my shaved head. Waiting. The sun shines bright and happy in the sky, unaware of what’s about to happen to me. Unaware of what I have done and will soon suffer the consequences for. Unconcerned.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Philo appears. She is standing on the lilies, mere feet away from me.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What is wrong with you?” she shouts. She looks beautiful and ghastly in her tight brown dress that probably cost more naira than a market woman makes in two years.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’m…” Fear pumps through my veins like adrenaline and blood.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Why is your wig off, eh? You look horrible.” Her wig flashes as the digital virus tries to cripple it. Notice I say “tries”.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I took it off,” I snap. “This is wrong, o! This is wrong! Wake up!”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Philo chuckles. “And what is wrong about it? We have everything we want.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Stealing from people is not what I made these for! I made them to help us <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">give</span>! To cure the deep seated culture of corruption by giving people hope and a sense of patriotism. Remember??”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She looks at me as if I am crazy. The wig has made her forget. </em>Na wao<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">. Tricky tricky things, these wigs.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Put it back on,” she says, pointing a long nail at me.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“No,” I say. “It has made us cruel witches. Look at you!”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Coco appears behind me. She hisses like a snake. She is in no mood for words. Her wig flashes. The virus is not working. When you mix juju with technology, you give up control. You are at the will of something far beyond yourself. I am done for.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">See how it all ends? Or does it begin? I am watching them approach me now. I tell you while my life hangs on its last thread. I am putting my wig on. It is so hot. I should have paid more attention to the cooling system when I made these. I hear the heartbeat of everyone around me now, including the irregular rhythm of Coco and Philo’s. But oh, the power. It rushes into me like ogogoro down the throat of a drunk.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">See Philo bare her teeth. They are indeed sharp like those of a bloodsucker. The virus is working through her wig now. But something has gone very wrong. They are both smiling. For a year, we have been psychic vampires but now as they come at me, mouths open, teeth sharp, I see that they have become the blood-sucking kind.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I feel my own teeth sharpening too as I prepare to defend myself. This is new but I can’t think about that right now. I tear the wig off and throw it aside.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Come then!” I shout. Then, I…</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The End</em></p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p align="center" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Hello, Moto” copyright © 2011 Nnedi Okorafor</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Art copyright</em> <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">© 2011 Jillian Tamaki</em></p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-86669248571359286782020-08-17T22:06:00.005-07:002020-08-17T22:06:54.399-07:00Patient Zero<p> <strong style="color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">September 19</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The picture came! Veronica tapped on my glass and woke me up, and she held it up for me to see. It’s autographed and everything! For you, Veronica mouthed at me, and she smiled a really big smile. The autograph says, TO JAY—I’LL THROW A TOUCHDOWN FOR YOU. I couldn’t believe it. Everybody is laughing at me because of the way I yelled and ran in circles around my room until I fell on the floor and scraped my elbow. The janitor, Lou, turned on the intercom box outside my door and said, “Kid, you gone crazier than usual? What you care about that picture for?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t they know Dan Marino is the greatest quarterback of all time? I taped the picture to the wall over my bed. On the rest of my wall I have maps of the United States, and the world, and the solar system. I can find Corsica on the map, and the Palau Islands, which most people have never heard of, and I know what order all the planets are in. But there’s nothing else on my wall like Dan Marino. That’s the best. The other best thing I have is the cassette tape from that time the President called me on the telephone when I was six. He said, “Hi, is Jay there? This is the President of the United States.” He sounded just like on TV. My heart flipped, because it’s so weird to hear the President say your name. I couldn’t think of anything to say back. He asked me how I was feeling, and I said I was fine. That made him laugh, like he thought I was making a joke. Then his voice got real serious, and he said everyone was praying and thinking about me, and he hung up. When I listen to that tape now, I wish I had thought of something else to say. I used to think he might call me another time, but it only happened once, in the beginning. So I guess I’ll never have a chance to talk to the President again.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After Veronica gave me my picture of Marino, I asked her if she could get somebody to fix my TV so I can see the football games. All my TV can play is videos. Veronica said there aren’t any football games, and I started to get mad because I hate it when they lie. It’s September, I said, and there’s always football games in September. But Veronica told me the NFL people had a meeting and decided not to have football anymore, and maybe it would start again, but she wasn’t sure, because nobody except me was thinking about football. At first, after she said that, it kind of ruined the autograph, because it seemed like Dan Marino must be lying, too. But Veronica said he was most likely talking about throwing a touchdown for me in the future, and I felt better then.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This notebook is from Ms. Manigat, my tutor, who is Haitian. She said I should start writing down my thoughts and everything that happens to me. I said I don’t have any thoughts, but she said that was ridiculous. That is her favorite word, ridiculous.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Oh, I should say I’m ten today. If I were in a regular school, I would be in fifth grade like my brother was. I asked Ms. Manigat what grade I’m in, and she said I don’t have a grade. I read like I’m in seventh grade and I do math like I’m in fourth grade, she says. She says I don’t exactly fit anywhere, but I’m very smart. Ms. Manigat comes every day, except on weekends. She is my best friend, but I have to call her Ms. Manigat instead of using her first name, which is Emmeline, because she is so proper. She is very neat and wears skirts and dresses, and everything about her is very clean except her shoes, which are dirty. Her shoes are supposed to be white, but whenever I see her standing outside of the glass, when she hasn’t put on her plastic suit yet, her shoes look brown and muddy.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Those are my thoughts.</p><div class="divider" style="background-color: white; background-image: url("../images/spritesheet.png"); background-position: -5px -144px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; height: 13px; margin: 10px auto; text-indent: -9999em; width: 150px;">#</div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>September 20</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I had a question today. Veronica never comes on Fridays, and the other nurse, Rene, isn’t as nice as she is, so I waited for Ms. Manigat. She comes at one. I said, “You know how they give sick children their last wish when they’re dying? Well, when Dr. Ben told me to think of the one thing I wanted for my birthday, I said I wanted an autograph from Dan Marino, so does that mean I’m dying and they’re giving me my wish?” I said this really fast.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I thought Ms. Manigat would say I was being ridiculous. But she smiled. She put her hand on top of my head, and her hand felt stiff and heavy inside her big glove. “Listen, little old man,” she said, which is what she calls me because she says I do so much worrying, “You’re a lot of things, but you aren’t dying. When everyone can be as healthy as you, it’ll be a happy day.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The people here always seems to be waiting, and I don’t know what for. I thought maybe they were waiting for me to die. But I believe Ms. Manigat. If she doesn’t want to tell me something, she just says, “Leave it alone, Jay,” which is her way of letting me know she would rather not say anything at all than ever tell a lie.</p><div class="divider" style="background-color: white; background-image: url("../images/spritesheet.png"); background-position: -5px -144px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; height: 13px; margin: 10px auto; text-indent: -9999em; width: 150px;">#</div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>October 5</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The lights in my room started going on and off again today, and it got so hot I had to leave my shirt off until I went to bed. Ms. Manigat couldn’t do her lessons the way she wanted because of the lights not working right. She said it was the emergency generator. I asked her what the emergency was, and she said something that sounded funny: “Same old same old.” That was all she said. I asked her if the emergency generator was the reason Dr. Ben took the television out of my room, and she said yes. She said everyone is conserving energy, and I have to do my part, too. But I miss my videos. There is nothing at all to do when I can’t watch my videos. I hate it when I’m bored. Sometimes I’ll even watch videos I’ve seen a hundred times, <em>really </em>a hundred times. I’ve seen <em>Big </em>with Tom Hanks more times than any other video. I love the part in the toy store with the really big piano keys on the floor. My mom taught me how to play Three Blind Mice on our piano at home, and it reminds me of that. I’ve never seen a toy store like the one in <em>Big. </em>I thought it was just a made-up place, but Ms. Manigat said it was a real toy store in New York.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I miss my videos. When I’m watching them, it’s like I’m inside the movie, too. I hope Dr. Ben will bring my TV back soon.</p><div class="divider" style="background-color: white; background-image: url("../images/spritesheet.png"); background-position: -5px -144px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; height: 13px; margin: 10px auto; text-indent: -9999em; width: 150px;">#</div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>October 22</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I made Veronica cry yesterday. I didn’t mean to. Dr. Ben said he knows it was an accident, but I feel very sorry, so I’ve been crying too. What happened is, I was talking to her, and she was taking some blood out of my arm with a needle like always. I was telling her about how me and my dad used to watch Marino play on television, and then all of a sudden she was crying really hard.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She dropped the needle on the floor and she was holding her wrist like she broke it. She started swearing. She said Goddammit, goddammit, goddammit, over and over, like that. I asked her what happened, and she pushed me away like she wanted to knock me over. Then she went to the door and punched the number code really fast and she pulled on the doorknob, but the door wouldn’t open, and I heard something in her arm snap from yanking so hard. She had to do the code again. She was still crying. I’ve never seen her cry.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I didn’t know what happened. I mashed my finger on the buzzer hard, but everybody ignored me. It reminded me of when I first came here, when I was always pushing the buzzer and crying, and nobody would ever come for a long time, and they were always in a bad mood when they came.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Anyway, I waited for Ms. Manigat, and when I told her about Veronica, she said she didn’t know anything because she comes from the outside, but she promised to find out. Then she made me recite the Preamble to the Constitution, which I know by heart. Pretty soon, for a little while, I forgot about Veronica.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After my lessons, Ms. Manigat left and called me on my phone an hour later, like she promised. She always keeps her promises. My telephone is hooked up so people on the inside can call me, but I can’t call anybody, inside or outside. It hardly ever rings now. But I almost didn’t want to pick it up. I was afraid of what Ms. Manigat would say.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Veronica poked herself,” Ms. Manigat told me. “The needle stuck through her hot suit. She told Dr. Ben there was sudden movement.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I wondered who made the sudden movement, Veronica or me?</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Is she okay?” I asked. I thought maybe Ms. Manigat was mad at me, because she has told me many times that I should be careful. Maybe I wasn’t being careful when Veronica was here.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“We’ll see, Jay,” Ms. Manigat said. From her voice, it sounded like the answer was no.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Will she get sick?” I asked.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Probably, yes, they think so,” Ms. Manigat said.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I didn’t want her to answer any more questions. I like it when people tell me the truth, but it always makes me feel bad, too. I tried to say I was sorry, but I couldn’t even open my mouth.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It’s not your fault, Jay,” Ms. Manigat said.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I couldn’t help it. I sobbed like I used to when I was still a little kid. “Veronica knew something like this could happen,” she said.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But that didn’t make anything better, because I remembered how Veronica’s face looked so scared inside her mask, and how she pushed me away. Veronica has been here since almost the beginning, before Ms. Manigat came, and she used to smile at me even when nobody else did. When she showed me my picture from Dan Marino, she looked almost as happy as me. I had never seen her whole face smiling like that. She looked so pretty and glad.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I was crying so much I couldn’t even write down my thoughts like Ms. Manigat said to. Not until today.</p><div class="divider" style="background-color: white; background-image: url("../images/spritesheet.png"); background-position: -5px -144px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; height: 13px; margin: 10px auto; text-indent: -9999em; width: 150px;">#</div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>November 4</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A long time ago, when I first came here and the TV in my room played programs from outside, I saw the first-grade picture I had taken at school on TV. I always hated that picture because Mom put some greasy stuff in my hair that made me look like a total geek. And then I turned on the TV and saw that picture on the news! The man on TV said the names of everyone in our family, and even spelled them out on the screen. Then, he called me Patient Zero. He said I was the first person who got sick.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But that wasn’t really what happened. My dad was sick before me. I’ve told them that already. He got it away on his job in Alaska. My dad traveled a lot because he drilled for oil, but he came home early that time. We weren’t expecting him until Christmas, but he came when it was only September, close to my birthday. He said he’d been sent home because some people on his oil crew got sick. One of them had even died. But the doctor in Alaska had looked at my dad and said he was fine, and then his boss sent him home. Dad was really mad about that. He hated to lose money. Time away from a job was always losing money, he said. He was in a bad mood when he wasn’t working.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And the worse thing was, my dad wasn’t fine. After two days, his eyes got red and he started sniffling. Then I did, too. And then my mom and brother.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When the man on TV showed my picture and called me Patient Zero and said I was the first one to get sick, that was when I first learned how people tell lies, because that wasn’t true. Somebody on my dad’s oil rig caught it first, and then he gave it to my dad. And my dad gave it to me, my mom and my brother. But one thing he said was right. I was the only one who got well.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My Aunt Lori came here to live at the lab with me at first, but she wasn’t here long, because her eyes had already turned red by then. She came to help take care of me and my brother before my mom died, but probably she shouldn’t have done that. She lived all the way in California, and I bet she wouldn’t have gotten sick if she hadn’t come to Miami to be with us. But even my mom’s doctor didn’t know what was wrong then, so nobody could warn her about what would happen if she got close to us. Sometimes I dream I’m calling Aunt Lori on my phone, telling her please, please not to come. Aunt Lori and my mom were twins. They looked exactly alike.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After Aunt Lori died, I was the only one left in my whole family.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I got very upset when I saw that news report. I didn’t like hearing someone talk about my family like that, people who didn’t even know us. And I felt like maybe the man on TV was right, and maybe it was all my fault. I screamed and cried the whole day. After that, Dr. Ben made them fix my TV so I couldn’t see the news anymore or any programs from outside, just cartoons and kid movies on video. The only good thing was, that was when the President called me. I think he was sorry when he heard what happened to my family.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When I ask Dr. Ben if they’re still talking about me on the news, he just shrugs his shoulders. Sometimes Dr. Ben won’t say yes or no if you ask him a question. It doesn’t matter, though. I think the TV people probably stopped showing my picture a long time ago. I was just a little kid when my family got sick. I’ve been here four whole years!</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Oh, I almost forgot. Veronica isn’t back yet.</p><div class="divider" style="background-color: white; background-image: url("../images/spritesheet.png"); background-position: -5px -144px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; height: 13px; margin: 10px auto; text-indent: -9999em; width: 150px;">#</div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>November 7</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I have been staring at my Dan Marino picture all day, and I think the handwriting on the autograph looks like Dr. Ben’s. But I’m afraid to ask anyone about that. Oh, yeah—and yesterday the power was off in my room for a whole day! Same old same old. That’s what Ms. M. would say.</p><div class="divider" style="background-color: white; background-image: url("../images/spritesheet.png"); background-position: -5px -144px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; height: 13px; margin: 10px auto; text-indent: -9999em; width: 150px;">#</div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>November 12</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ms. Manigat is teaching me a little bit about medicine. I told her I want to be a doctor when I grow up, and she said she thinks that’s a wonderful idea because she believes people will always need doctors. She says I will be in a good position to help people, and I asked her if that’s because I have been here so long, and she said yes.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The first thing she taught me is about diseases. She says in the old days, a long time ago, diseases like typhoid used to kill a lot of people because of unsanitary conditions and dirty drinking water, but people got smarter and doctors found drugs to cure it, so diseases didn’t kill people as much anymore. Doctors are always trying to stay a step ahead of disease, Ms. Manigat says.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But sometimes they can’t. Sometimes a new disease comes. Or, maybe it’s not a new disease, but an old disease that has been hidden for a long time until something brings it out in the open. She said that’s how nature balances the planet, because as soon as doctors find cures for one thing, there is always something new. Dr. Ben says my disease is new. There is a long name for it I can’t remember how to spell, but most of the time people here call it Virus-J.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In a way, see, it’s named after me. That’s what Dr. Ben said. But I don’t like that.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ms. Manigat said after my dad came home, the virus got in my body and attacked me just like everyone else, so I got really, really sick for a lot of days. Then, I thought I was completely better. I stopped feeling bad at all. But the virus was already in my brother and my mom and dad, and even our doctor from before, Dr. Wolfe, and Ms. Manigat says it was very <em>aggressive, </em>which means doctors didn’t know how to kill it.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Everybody wears yellow plastic suits and airtight masks when they’re in my room because the virus is still in the air, and it’s in my blood, and it’s on my plates and cups whenever I finish eating. They call the suits hot suits because the virus is <em>hot </em>in my room. Not hot like fire, but dangerous.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ms. Manigat says Virus-J is extra special in my body because even though I’m not sick anymore, except for when I feel like I have a temperature and I have to lie down sometimes, the virus won’t go away. I can make other people sick even when I feel fine, so she said that makes me a carrier. Ms. Manigat said Dr. Ben doesn’t know anybody else who’s gotten well except for me.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Oh, except maybe there are some little girls in China. Veronica told me once there were some little girls in China the same age as me who didn’t get sick either. But when I asked Dr. Ben, he said he didn’t know if it was true. And Ms. Manigat told me it might have been true once, but those girls might not be alive anymore. I asked her if they died of Virus-J, and she said no, no, no. Three times. She told me to forget all about any little girls in China. Almost like she was mad.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m the only one like me she knows about for sure, she says. The only one left.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">That’s why I’m here, she says. But I already knew that part. When I was little, Dr. Ben told me about antibodies and stuff in my blood, and he said the reason him and Rene and Veronica and all the other doctors take so much blood from me all the time, until they make purple bruises on my arms and I feel dizzy, is so they can try to help other people get well, too. I have had almost ten surgeries since I have been here. I think they have even taken out parts of me, but I’m not really sure. I look the same on the outside, but I feel different on the inside. I had surgery on my belly a year ago, and sometimes when I’m climbing the play-rope hanging from the ceiling in my room, I feel like it hasn’t healed right, like I’m still cut open. Ms. Manigat says that’s only in my mind. But it really hurts! I don’t hate anything like I hate operations. I wonder if that’s what happened to the other little girls, if they kept getting cut up and cut up until they died. Anyway, it’s been a year since I had any operations. I keep telling Dr. Ben they can have as much blood as they want, but I don’t want anymore operations, please.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dr. Ben said there’s nobody in the world better than me to make people well, if only they can figure out how. Ms. Manigat says the same thing. That makes me feel a little better about Virus-J.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I was happy Ms. Manigat told me all about disease, because I don’t want her to treat me like a baby the way everybody else does. That’s what I always tell her. I like to know things.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I didn’t even cry when she told me Veronica died. Maybe I got all my crying over with in the beginning, because I figured out a long time ago nobody gets better once they get sick. Nobody except for me.</p><div class="divider" style="background-color: white; background-image: url("../images/spritesheet.png"); background-position: -5px -144px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; height: 13px; margin: 10px auto; text-indent: -9999em; width: 150px;">#</div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>November 14</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Today, I asked Ms. Manigat how many people have Virus-J.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Oh, Jay, I don’t know,” she said. I don’t think she was in the mood to talk about disease.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Just guess,” I said.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ms. Manigat thought for a long time. Then she opened her notebook and began drawing lines and boxes for me to see. Her picture looked like the tiny brown lines all over an oak-tree leaf. We had a tree called a live oak in our backyard, and my dad said it was more than a hundred years old. He said trees sometimes live longer than people do. And he was right, because I’m sure that tree is still standing in our yard even though my whole family is gone.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“This is how it goes, Jay,” Ms. Manigat said, showing me with her pencil-tip how one line branched down to the next. “People are giving it to each other. They don’t usually know they’re sick for two weeks, and by then they’ve passed it to a lot of other people. By now, it’s already been here four years, so the same thing that happened to your family is happening to a lot of families.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“How many families?” I asked again. I tried to think of the biggest number I could. “A million?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ms. Manigat shrugged just like Dr. Ben would. Maybe that meant yes.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I couldn’t imagine a million families, so I asked Ms. Manigat if it happened to her family, too, if maybe she had a husband and kids and they got sick. But she said no, she was never married. I guess that’s true, because Ms. Manigat doesn’t look that old. She won’t tell me her age, but she’s in her twenties, I think. Ms. Manigat smiled at me, even though her eyes weren’t happy.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“My parents were in Miami, and they got it right away,” Ms. Manigat said. “Then my sister and nieces came to visit them from Haiti, and they got it, too. I was away working when it happened, and that’s why I’m still here.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ms. Manigat never told me that before.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My family lived in Miami Beach. My dad said our house was too small—I had to share a room with my brother—but my mother liked where we lived because our building was six blocks from the ocean. My mother said the ocean can heal anything. But that can’t be true, can it?</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My mother wouldn’t like it where I am, because there is no ocean and no windows neither. I wondered if Ms. Manigat’s parents knew someone who worked on an oil rig, too, but probably not. Probably they got it from my dad and me.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Ms. Manigat,” I said, “Maybe you should move inside like Dr. Ben and everybody else.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Oh, Jay,” Ms. Manigat said, like she was trying to sound cheerful. “Little old man, if I were that scared of anything, why would I be in here teaching you?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She said she <em>asked </em>to be my teacher, which I didn’t know. I said I thought her boss was making her do it, and she said she didn’t have a boss. No one sent her. She wanted to come.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Just to meet me?” I asked her.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Yes, because I saw your face on television, and you looked to me like a one-of-a-kind,” she said. She said she was a nurse before, and she used to work with Dr. Ben in his office in Atlanta. She said they worked at the CDC, which is a place that studies diseases. And he knew her, so that was why he let her come teach me.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“A boy like you needs his education. He needs to know how to face life outside,” she said.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ms. Manigat is funny like that. Sometimes she’ll quit the regular lesson about presidents and the Ten Commandments and teach me something like how to sew and how to tell plants you eat from plants you don’t, and stuff. Like, I remember when she brought a basket with real fruits and vegetables in it, fresh. She said she has a garden where she lives on the outside, close to here. She said one of the reasons she won’t move inside is because she loves her garden so much, and she doesn’t want to leave it.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The stuff she brought was not very interesting to look at. She showed me some cassava, which looked like a long, twisty tree branch to me, and she said it’s good to eat, except it has poison in it that has to be boiled out of the root first and the leaves are poisonous too. She also brought something called akee, which she said she used to eat from trees in Haiti. It has another name in Haiti that’s too hard for me to spell. It tasted fine to me, but she said akee can never be eaten before it’s opened, or before it’s ripe, because it makes your brain swell up and you can die. She also brought different kinds of mushrooms to show me which ones are good or bad, but they all looked alike to me. She promised to bring me other fruits and vegetables to see so I will know what’s good for me and what isn’t. There’s a lot to learn about life outside, she said.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Well, I don’t want Ms. Manigat to feel like I am a waste of her time, but I know for a fact I don’t have to face life outside. Dr. Ben told me I might be a teenager before I can leave, or even older. He said I might even be a grown man.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But that’s okay, I guess. I try not to think about what it would be like to leave. My room, which they moved me to when I had been here six months, is really, really big. They built it especially for me. It’s four times as big as the hotel room my mom and dad got for us when we went to Universal Studios in Orlando when I was five. I remember that room because my brother, Kevin, kept asking my dad, “Doesn’t this cost too much?” Every time my dad bought us a T-shirt or anything, Kevin brought up how much it cost. I told Kevin to stop it because I was afraid Dad would get mad and stop buying us stuff. Then, when we were in line for the King Kong ride, all by ourselves, Kevin told me, “Dad got fired from his job, stupid. Do you want to go on Welfare?” I waited for Dad and Mom to tell me he got fired, but they didn’t. After Kevin said that, I didn’t ask them to buy me anything else, and I was scared to stay in that huge, pretty hotel room because I thought we wouldn’t have enough money to pay. But we did. And then Dad got a job on the oil rig, and we thought everything would be better.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My room here is as big as half the whole floor I bet. When I run from one side of my room to the other, from the glass in front to the wall in back, I’m out of breath. I like to do that. Sometimes I run until my ribs start squeezing and my stomach hurts like it’s cut open and I have to sit down and rest. There’s a basketball net in here, too, and the ball doesn’t ever touch the ceiling except if I throw it too high on purpose. I also have comic books, and I draw pictures of me and my family and Ms. Manigat and Dr. Ben. Because I can’t watch my videos, now I spend a lot of time writing in this notebook. A whole hour went by already. When I am writing down my thoughts, I forget about everything else.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I have decided for sure to be a doctor someday. I’m going to help make people better.</p><div class="divider" style="background-color: white; background-image: url("../images/spritesheet.png"); background-position: -5px -144px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; height: 13px; margin: 10px auto; text-indent: -9999em; width: 150px;">#</div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>November 29</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thanksgiving was great! Ms. Manigat cooked real bread and brought me food she’d heated up. I could tell everything except the bread and cassava was from a can, like always, but it tasted much better than my regular food. I haven’t had bread in a long time. Because of her mask, Ms. Manigat ate her dinner before she came, but she sat and watched me eat. Rene came in, too, and she surprised me when she gave me a hug. She never does that. Dr. Ben came in for a little while at the end, and he hugged me too, but he said he couldn’t stay because he was busy. Dr. Ben doesn’t come visit me much anymore. I could see he was growing a beard, and it was almost all white! I’ve seen Dr. Ben’s hair when he’s outside of the glass, when he isn’t wearing his hot suit, and his hair is brown, not white. I asked him how come his beard was white, and he said that’s what happens when your mind is overly tired.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I liked having everybody come to my room. Before, in the beginning, almost nobody came in, not even Ms. Manigat. She used to sit in a chair outside the glass and use the intercom for my lessons. It’s better when they come in.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I remember how Thanksgiving used to be, with my family around the table in the dining room, and I told Ms. Manigat about that. Yes, she said, even though she didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Haiti like Americans do, she remembers sitting at the table with her parents and her sister for Christmas dinner. She said she came to see me today, and Rene and Dr. Ben came too, because we are each other’s family now, so we are not alone. I hadn’t thought of it like that before.</p><div class="divider" style="background-color: white; background-image: url("../images/spritesheet.png"); background-position: -5px -144px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; height: 13px; margin: 10px auto; text-indent: -9999em; width: 150px;">#</div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>December 1</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">No one will tell me, not even Ms. M., but I think maybe Dr. Ben is sick. I have not seen him in five whole days. It is quiet here. I wish it was Thanksgiving again.</p><div class="divider" style="background-color: white; background-image: url("../images/spritesheet.png"); background-position: -5px -144px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; height: 13px; margin: 10px auto; text-indent: -9999em; width: 150px;">#</div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>January 23</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I didn’t know this before, but you have to be in the right mood to write your thoughts down. A lot happened in the days I missed.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The doctor with the French name is gone now, and I’m glad. He wasn’t like Dr. Ben at all. I could hardly believe he was a real doctor, because he always had on the dirtiest clothes when I saw him take off his hot suit outside of the glass. And he was never nice to me—he wouldn’t answer at all when I asked him questions, and he wouldn’t look in my eyes except for a second. One time he slapped me on my ear, almost for nothing, and his glove hurt so much my ear turned red and was sore for a whole day. He didn’t say he was sorry, but I didn’t cry. I think he wanted me to.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Oh yeah, and he hooked me up to IV bags and took so much blood from me I couldn’t even stand up. I was scared he would operate on me. Ms. Manigat didn’t come in for almost a week, and when she finally came, I told her about the doctor taking too much blood. She got really mad. Then I found out the reason she didn’t come all those days—he wouldn’t let her! She said he tried to bar her from coming. <em>Bar </em>is the word she used, which sounds like a prison.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The new doctor and Ms. Manigat do not get along, even though they both speak French. I saw them outside of the glass, yelling back and forth and moving their hands, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I was afraid he would send Ms. Manigat away for good. But yesterday she told me he’s leaving! I told her I was happy, because I was afraid he would take Dr. Ben’s place.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">No, she told me, there isn’t anyone taking Dr. Ben’s place. She said the French doctor came here to study me in person because he was one of the doctors Dr. Ben had been sending my blood to ever since I first came. But he was already very sick when he got here, and he started feeling worse, so he had to go. Seeing me was his last wish, Ms. Manigat said, which didn’t seem like it could be true because he didn’t act like he wanted to be with me.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I asked her if he went back to France to his family, and Ms. Manigat said no, he probably didn’t have a family, and even if he did, it’s too hard to go to France. The ocean is in the way, she said.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ms. Manigat seemed tired from all that talking. She said she’d decided to move inside, like Rene, to make sure they were taking care of me properly. She said she misses her garden. The whole place has been falling apart, she said. She said I do a good job of keeping my room clean—and I do, because I have my own mop and bucket and Lysol in my closet—but she told me the hallways are filthy. Which is true, because sometimes I can see water dripping down the wall outside of my glass, a lot of it, and it makes puddles all over the floor. You can tell the water is dirty because you can see different colors floating on top, the way my family’s driveway used to look after my dad sprayed it with a hose. He said the oil from the car made the water look that way, but I don’t know why it looks that way here. Ms. Manigat said the water smells bad, too.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It’s ridiculous. If they’re going to keep you here, they’d damn well better take care of you,” Mrs. Manigat said. She must have been really mad, because she never swears.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I told her about the time when Lou came and pressed on my intercom really late at night, when I was asleep and nobody else was around. He was talking really loud like people do in videos when they’re drunk. Lou was glaring at me through the glass, banging on it. I had never seen him look so mean. I thought he would try to come into my room but then I remembered he couldn’t because he didn’t have a hot suit. But I’ll never forget how he said, <em>They should put you to sleep like a dog at the pound.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I try not to think about that night, because it gave me nightmares. It happened when I was pretty little, like eight. Sometimes I thought maybe I just dreamed it, because the next time Lou came he acted just like normal. He even smiled at me a little bit. Before he stopped coming here, Lou was nice to me every day after that.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ms. Manigat did not sound surprised when I told her what Lou said about putting me to sleep. “Yes, Jay,” she told me, “For a long time, there have been people outside who didn’t think we should be taking care of you.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I never knew that before!</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I remember a long time ago, when I was really little and I had pneumonia, my mom was scared to leave me alone at the hospital. “They won’t know how to take care of Jay there,” she said to my dad, even though she didn’t know I heard her. I had to stay by myself all night, and because of what my mom said, I couldn’t go to sleep. I was afraid everyone at the hospital would forget I was there. Or maybe something bad would happen to me.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It seems like the lights go off every other day now. And I know people must really miss Lou, because the dirty gray water is all over the floor outside my glass and there’s no one to clean it up.</p><div class="divider" style="background-color: white; background-image: url("../images/spritesheet.png"); background-position: -5px -144px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; height: 13px; margin: 10px auto; text-indent: -9999em; width: 150px;">#</div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>February 14</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3 6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3 6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I remember the numbers already! I have been saying them over and over in my head so I won’t forget, but I wanted to write them down in the exact right order to be extra sure. I want to know them without even looking.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Oh, I should start at the beginning. Yesterday, no one brought me any dinner, not even Ms. Manigat. She came with a huge bowl of oatmeal this morning, saying she was very sorry. She said she had to look a long time to find that food, and it wore her out. The oatmeal wasn’t even hot, but I didn’t say anything. I just ate. She watched me eating.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She didn’t stay with me long, because she doesn’t teach me lessons anymore. After the French doctor left, we talked about the Emancipation Proclamation and Martin Luther King, but she didn’t bring that up today. She just kept sighing, and she said she had been in bed all day yesterday because she was so tired, and she was sorry she forgot to feed me. She said I couldn’t count on Rene to bring me food because she didn’t know where Rene was. It was hard for me to hear her talk through her hot suit today. Her mask was crooked, so the microphone wasn’t in front of her mouth where it should be.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She saw my notebook and asked if she could look at it. I said sure. She looked at the pages from the beginning. She said she liked the part where I said she was my best friend. Her face-mask was fogging up, so I couldn’t see her eyes and I couldn’t tell if she was smiling. I am very sure she did not put her suit on right today.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When she put my notebook down, she told me to pay close attention to her and repeat the numbers she told me, which were 6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I asked her what they were. She said it was the security code for my door. She said she wanted to give the code to me because my buzzer wasn’t working, and I might need to leave my room if she overslept and nobody came to bring me food. She told me I could use the same code on the elevator, and the kitchen was on the third floor. There wouldn’t be anybody there, she said, but I could look on the shelves, the top ones up high, to see if there was any food. If not, she said I should take the stairs down to the first floor and find the red EXIT sign to go outside. She said the elevator doesn’t go to the first floor anymore.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I felt scared then, but she put her hand on top of my head again just like usual. She said she was sure there was plenty of food outside.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“But am I allowed?” I asked her. “What if people get sick?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You worry so much, little man,” she said. “Only you matter now, my little one-of-a-kind.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But see I’m sure Ms. Manigat doesn’t really want me to go outside. I’ve been thinking about that over and over. Ms. Manigat must be very tired to tell me to do something like that. Maybe she has a fever and that’s why she told me how to get out of my room. My brother said silly things when he had a fever, and my father too. My father kept calling me <em>Oscar, </em>and I didn’t know who Oscar was. My dad told us he had a brother who died when he was little, and maybe his name was Oscar. My mother didn’t say anything at all when she got sick. She just died very fast. I wish I could find Ms. Manigat and give her something to drink. You get very thirsty when you have a fever, which I know for a fact. But I can’t go to her because I don’t know where she is. And besides, I don’t know where Dr. Ben keeps the hot suits. What if I went to her and she wasn’t wearing hers?</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Maybe the oatmeal was the only thing left in the kitchen, and now I ate it all. I hope not! But I’m thinking maybe it is because I know Ms. Manigat would have brought me more food if she could have found it. She’s always asking me if I have enough to eat. I’m already hungry again.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3</p><div class="divider" style="background-color: white; background-image: url("../images/spritesheet.png"); background-position: -5px -144px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; height: 13px; margin: 10px auto; text-indent: -9999em; width: 150px;">#</div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>February 15</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I am writing in the dark. The lights are off. I tried to open my lock but the numbers don’t work because of the lights being off. I don’t know where Ms. Manigat is. I’m trying not to cry.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What if the lights never come back on?</p><div class="divider" style="background-color: white; background-image: url("../images/spritesheet.png"); background-position: -5px -144px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; height: 13px; margin: 10px auto; text-indent: -9999em; width: 150px;">#</div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>February 16</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s so much I want to say but I have a headache from being hungry. When the lights came back on I went out into the hall like Ms. M told me and I used the numbers to get the elevator to work and then I went to the kitchen like she said. I wanted to go real fast and find some peanut butter or some Oreos or even a can of beans I could open with the can opener Ms. M left me at Thanksgiving.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s no food in the kitchen! There’s empty cans and wrappers on the floor and even roaches but I looked on every single shelf and in every cabinet and I couldn’t find anything to eat.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The sun was shining really REALLY bright from the window. I almost forgot how the sun looks. When I went to the window I saw a big, empty parking lot outside. At first I thought there were diamonds all over the ground because of the sparkles but it was just a lot of broken glass. I could only see one car and I thought it was Ms. M’s. But Ms. M would never leave her car looking like that. For one thing it had two flat tires!</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Anyway I don’t think there’s anybody here today. So I thought of a plan. I have to go now.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ms. M, this is for you—or whoever comes looking for me. I know somebody will find this notebook if I leave it on my bed. I’m very sorry I had to leave in such a hurry.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I didn’t want to go outside but isn’t it okay if it’s an emergency? I am really really hungry. I’ll just find some food and bring it with me and I’ll come right back. I’m leaving my door open so I won’t get locked out. Ms. M, maybe I’ll find your garden with cassavas and akee like you showed me and I’ll know the good parts from the bad parts. If someone sees me and I get in trouble I’ll just say I didn’t have anything to eat.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Whoever is reading this don’t worry. I’ll tell everybody I see please please not to get too close to me. I know Dr. Ben was very worried I might make somebody sick.</p><div class="divider" style="background-color: white; background-image: url("../images/spritesheet.png"); background-position: -5px -144px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; height: 13px; margin: 10px auto; text-indent: -9999em; width: 150px;">#</div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: jaf-bernina-sans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; margin: 24px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">© 2000 by Tananarive Due<br />Originally appeared in <em>The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction</em>.<br />Reprinted by permission of the author.</p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-48288089955042792352020-08-17T22:06:00.001-07:002020-08-17T22:06:02.316-07:00The Lady of the House of Love<p> <span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px;">At last the revenants became so troublesome the peasants abandoned the village and it fell solely into the possession of subtle and vindictive inhabitants who manifest their presences by shadows that fall almost imperceptibly awry, too many shadows, even at midday, shadows that have no source in anything visible; by the sound, sometimes, of sobbing in a derelict bedroom where a cracked mirror suspended from a wall does not reflect a presence; by a sense of unease that will afflict the traveller unwise enough to pause to drink from the fountain in the square that still gushes spring water from a faucet stuck in a stone lion’s mouth. A cat prowls in a weedy garden; he grins and spits, arches his back, bounces away from an intangible on four fear-stiffened legs. Now all shun the village below the chateau in which the beautiful somnambulist helplessly perpetuates her ancestral crimes.</span></p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Wearing an antique bridal gown, the beautiful queen of the vampires sits all alone in her dark, high house under the eyes of the portraits of her demented and atrocious ancestors, each one of whom, through her, projects a baleful posthumous existence; she counts out the Tarot cards, ceaselessly construing a constellation of possibilities as if the random fall of the cards on the red plush tablecloth before her could precipitate her from her chill, shuttered room into a country of perpetual summer and obliterate the perennial sadness of a girl who is both death and the maiden.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Her voice is filled with distant sonorities, like reverberations in a cave: now you are at the place of annihilation, now you are at the place of annihilation. And she is herself a cave full of echoes, she is a system of repetitions, she is a closed circuit. ‘Can a bird sing only the song it knows or can it learn a new song?’ She draws her long, sharp fingernail across the bars of the cage in which her pet lark sings, striking a plangent twang like that of the plucked heartstrings of a woman of metal. Her hair falls down like tears.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">The castle is mostly given over to ghostly occupants but she herself has her own suite of drawing room and bedroom. Closely barred shutters and heavy velvet curtains keep out every leak of natural light. There is a round table on a single leg covered with a red plush cloth on which she lays out her inevitable Tarot; this room is never more than faintly illuminated by a heavily shaded lamp on the mantelpiece and the dark red figured wallpaper is obscurely, distressingly patterned by the rain that drives in through the neglected roof and leaves behind it random areas of staining, ominous marks like those left on the sheets by dead lovers. Depredations of rot and fungus everywhere. The unlit chandelier is so heavy with dust the individual prisms no longer show any shapes; industrious spiders have woven canopies in the corners of this ornate and rotting place, have trapped the porcelain vases on the mantelpiece in soft grey nets. But the mistress of all this disintegration notices nothing.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">She sits in a chair covered in moth-ravaged burgundy velvet at the low, round table and distributes the cards; sometimes the lark sings, but more often remains a sullen mound of drab feathers. Sometimes the Countess will wake it for a brief cadenza by strumming the bars of its cage; she likes to hear it announce how it cannot escape.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">She rises when the sun sets and goes immediately to her table where she plays her game of patience until she grows hungry, until she becomes ravenous. She is so beautiful she is unnatural; her beauty is an abnormality, a deformity, for none of her features exhibit any of those touching imperfections that reconcile us to the imperfection of the human condition. Her beauty is a symptom of her disorder, of her soullessness.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">The white hands of the tenebrous belle deal the hand of destiny. Her fingernails are longer than those of the mandarins of ancient China and each is pared to a fine point. These and teeth as fine and white as spikes of spun sugar are the visible signs of the destiny she wistfully attempts to evade via the arcana; her claws and teeth have been sharpened on centuries of corpses, she is the last bud of the poison tree that sprang from the loins of Vlad the Impaler who picnicked on corpses in the forests of Transylvania.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">The walls of her bedroom are hung with black satin, embroidered with tears of pearl. At the room’s four corners are funerary urns and bowls which emit slumbrous, pungent fumes of incense. In the centre is an elaborate catafalque, in ebony, surrounded by long candles in enormous silver candlesticks. In a white lace négligé stained a little with blood, the Countess climbs up on her catafalque at dawn each morning and lies down in an open coffin.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">A chignoned priest of the Orthodox faith staked out her wicked father at a Carpathian crossroad before her milk teeth grew. Just as they staked him out, the fatal Count cried: ‘Nosferatu is dead; long live Nosferatu!’ Now she possesses all the haunted forests and mysterious habitations of his vast domain; she is the hereditary commandant of the army of shadows who camp in the village below her chateau, who penetrate the woods in the form of owls, bats and foxes, who make the milk curdle and the butter refuse to come, who ride the horses all night on a wild hunt so they are sacks of skin and bone in the morning, who milk the cows dry and, especially, torment pubescent girls with fainting fits, disorders of the blood, diseases of the imagination.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">But the Countess herself is indifferent to her own weird authority, as if she were dreaming it. In her dream, she would like to be human; but she does not know if that is possible. The Tarot always shows the same configuration: always she turns up La Papesse, La Mort, La Tour Abolie, wisdom, death, dissolution.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">On moonless nights, her keeper lets her out into the garden. This garden, an exceedingly sombre place, bears a strong resemblance to a burial ground and all the roses her dead mother planted have grown up into a huge, spiked wall that incarcerates her in the castle of her inheritance. When the back door opens, the Countess will sniff the air and howl. She drops, now, on all fours. Crouching, quivering, she catches the scent of her prey. Delicious crunch of the fragile bones of rabbits and small, furry things she pursues with fleet, four-footed speed; she will creep home, whimpering, with blood smeared on her cheeks. She pours water from the ewer in her bedroom into the bowl, she washes her face with the wincing, fastidious gestures of a cat.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">The voracious margin of huntress’s nights in the gloomy garden, crouch and pounce, surrounds her habitual tormented somnambulism, her life or imitation of life. The eyes of this nocturnal creature enlarge and glow. All claws and teeth, she strikes, she gorges; but nothing can console her for the ghastliness of her condition, nothing. She resorts to the magic comfort of the Tarot pack and shuffles the cards, lays them out, reads them, gathers them up with a sigh, shuffles them again, constantly constructing hypotheses about a future which is irreversible.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">An old mute looks after her, to make sure she never sees the sun, that all day she stays in her coffin, to keep mirrors and all reflective surfaces away from her–in short, to perform all the functions of the servants of vampires. Everything about this beautiful and ghastly lady is as it should be, queen of night, queen of terror–except her horrible reluctance for the role.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Nevertheless, if an unwise adventurer pauses in the square of the deserted village to refresh himself at the fountain, a crone in a black dress and white apron presently emerges from a house. She will invite you with smiles and gestures; you will follow her. The Countess wants fresh meat. When she was a little girl, she was like a fox and contented herself entirely with baby rabbits that squeaked piteously as she bit into their necks with a nauseated voluptuousness, with voles and field-mice that palpitated for a bare moment between her embroidress’s fingers. But now she is a woman, she must have men. If you stop too long beside the giggling fountain, you will be led by the hand to the Countess’s larder.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">All day, she lies in her coffin in her négligé of blood-stained lace. When the sun drops behind the mountain, she yawns and stirs and puts on the only dress she has, her mother’s wedding dress, to sit and read her cards until she grows hungry. She loathes the food she eats; she would have liked to take the rabbits home with her, feed them on lettuce, pet them and make them a nest in her red-and-black chinoiserie escritoire, but hunger always overcomes her. She sinks her teeth into the neck where an artery throbs with fear; she will drop the deflated skin from which she has extracted all the nourishment with a small cry of both pain and disgust. And it is the same with the shepherd boys and gipsy lads who, ignorant or foolhardy, come to wash the dust from their feet in the water of the fountain; the Countess’s governess brings them into the drawing room where the cards on the table always show the Grim Reaper. The Countess herself will serve them coffee in tiny cracked, precious cups, and little sugar cakes. The hobbledehoys sit with a spilling cup in one hand and a biscuit in the other, gaping at the Countess in her satin finery as she pours from a silver pot and chatters distractedly to put them at their fatal ease. A certain desolate stillness of her eyes indicates she is inconsolable. She would like to caress their lean brown cheeks and stroke their ragged hair. When she takes them by the hand and leads them to her bedroom, they can scarcely believe their luck.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Afterwards, her governess will tidy the remains into a neat pile and wrap it in its own discarded clothes. This mortal parcel she then discreetly buries in the garden. The blood on the Countess’s cheeks will be mixed with tears; her keeper probes her fingernails for her with a little silver toothpick, to get rid of the fragments of skin and bone that have lodged there.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Fee fie fo film <br style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" />I smell the blood of an Englishman.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">One hot, ripe summer in the pubescent years of the present century, a young officer in the British army, blond, blue-eyed, heavy-muscled, visiting friends in Vienna, decided to spend the remainder of his furlough exploring the little-known uplands of Romania. When he quixotically decided to travel the rutted cart-tracks by bicycle, he saw all the humour of it: ‘on two wheels in the land of the vampires’. So, laughing, he sets out on his adventure.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">He has the special quality of virginity, most and least ambiguous of states: ignorance, yet at the same time, power in potentia, and, furthermore, unknowingness, which is not the same as ignorance. He is more than he knows–and has about him, besides, the special glamour of that generation for whom history has already prepared a special, exemplary fate in the trenches of France. This being, rooted in change and time, is about to collide with the timeless Gothic eternity of the vampires, for whom all is as it has always been and will be, whose cards always fall in the same pattern.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Although so young, he is also rational. He has chosen the most rational mode of transport in the world for his trip round the Carpathians. To ride a bicycle is in itself some protection against superstitious fears, since the bicycle is the product of pure reason applied to motion. Geometry at the service of man! Give me two spheres and a straight line and I will show you how far I can take them. Voltaire himself might have invented the bicycle, since it contributes so much to man’s welfare and nothing at all to his bane. Beneficial to the health, it emits no harmful fumes and permits only the most decorous speeds. How can a bicycle ever be an implement of harm?</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">A single kiss woke up the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">The waxen fingers of the Countess, fingers of a holy image, turn up the card called Les Amoureux. Never, never before … never before has the Countess cast herself a fate involving love. She shakes, she trembles, her great eyes close beneath her finely veined, nervously fluttering eyelids; the lovely cartomancer has, this time, the first time, dealt herself a hand of love and death.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Be he alive or be he dead <br style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" />I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">At the mauvish beginnings of evening, the English m’sieu toils up the hill to the village he glimpsed from a great way off; he must dismount and push his bicycle before him, the path too steep to ride. He hopes to find a friendly inn to rest the night; he’s hot, hungry, thirsty, weary, dusty … At first, such disappointment, to discover the roofs of all the cottages caved in and tall weeds thrusting through the piles of fallen tiles, shutters hanging disconsolately from their hinges, an entirely uninhabited place. And the rank vegetation whispers, as if foul secrets, here, where, if one were sufficiently imaginative, one could almost imagine twisted faces appearing momentarily beneath the crumbling eaves … but the adventure of it all, and the consolation of the poignant brightness of the hollyhocks still bravely blooming in the shaggy gardens, and the beauty of the flaming sunset, all these considerations soon overcame his disappointment, even assuaged the faint unease he’d felt. And the fountain where the village women used to wash their clothes still gushed out bright, clear water; he gratefully washed his feet and hands, applied his mouth to the faucet, then let the icy stream run over his face.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">When he raised his dripping, gratified head from the lion’s mouth, he saw, silently arrived beside him in the square, an old woman who smiled eagerly, almost conciliatorily at him. She wore a black dress and a white apron, with a housekeeper’s key ring at the waist; her grey hair was neatly coiled in a chignon beneath the white linen headdress worn by elderly women of that region. She bobbed a curtsy at the young man and beckoned him to follow her. When he hesitated, she pointed towards the great bulk of the mansion above them, whose façade loured over the village, rubbed her stomach, pointed to her mouth, rubbed her stomach again, clearly miming an invitation to supper. Then she beckoned him again, this time turning determinedly upon her heel as though she would brook no opposition.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">A great, intoxicated surge of the heavy scent of red roses blew into his face as soon as they left the village, inducing a sensuous vertigo; a blast of rich, faintly corrupt sweetness strong enough almost, to fell him. Too many roses. Too many roses bloomed on enormous thickets that lined the path, thickets bristling with thorns, and the flowers themselves were almost too luxuriant, their huge congregations of plush petals somehow obscene in their excess, their whorled, tightly budded cores outrageous in their implications. The mansion emerged grudgingly out of this jungle.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">In the subtle and haunting light of the setting sun, that golden light rich with nostalgia for the day that is just past, the sombre visage of the place, part manor house, part fortified farmhouse, immense, rambling, a dilapidated eagle’s nest atop the crag down which its attendant village meandered, reminded him of childhood tales on winter evenings, when he and his brothers and sisters scared themselves half out of their wits with ghost stories set in just such places and then had to have candles to light them up newly terrifying stairs to bed. He could almost have regretted accepting the crone’s unspoken invitation; but now, standing before the door of time-eroded oak while she selected a huge iron key from the clanking ringful at her waist, he knew it was too late to turn back and brusquely reminded himself he was no child, now, to be frightened of his own fancies.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">The old lady unlocked the door, which swung back on melodramatically creaking hinges, and fussily took charge of his bicycle, in spite of his protests. He felt a certain involuntary sinking of the heart to see his beautiful two-wheeled symbol of rationality vanish into the dark entrails of the mansion, to, no doubt, some damp outhouse where they would not oil it or check its tyres. But, in for a penny, in for a pound–in his youth and strength and blond beauty, in the invisible, even unacknowledged pentacle of his virginity, the young man stepped over the threshold of Nosferatu’s castle and did not shiver in the blast of cold air, as from the mouth of a grave, that emanated from the lightless, cavernous interior.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">The crone took him to a little chamber where there was a black oak table spread with a clean white cloth and this cloth was carefully laid with heavy silverware, a little tarnished, as if someone with foul breath had breathed on it, but laid with one place only. Curiouser and curiouser; invited to the castle for dinner, now he must dine alone. All the same, he sat down as she had bid him. Although it was not yet dark outside, the curtains were closely drawn and only the sparing light trickling from a single oil lamp showed him how dismal his surroundings were. The crone bustled about to get him a bottle of wine and a glass from an ancient cabinet of wormy oak; while he bemusedly drank his wine, she disappeared but soon returned bearing a steaming platter of the local spiced meat stew with dumplings, and a shank of black bread. He was hungry after his long day’s ride, he ate heartily and polished his plate with the crust, but this coarse food was hardly the entertainment he’d expected from the gentry and he was puzzled by the assessing glint in the dumb woman’s eyes as she watched him eating.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">But she darted off to get him a second helping as soon as he’d finished the first one and she seemed so friendly and helpful, besides, that he knew he could count on a bed for the night in the castle, as well as his supper, so he sharply reprimanded himself for his own childish lack of enthusiasm for the eerie silence, the clammy chill of the place.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">When he’d put away the second plateful, the old woman came and gestured he should leave the table and follow her once again. She made a pantomime of drinking; he deduced he was now invited to take after-dinner coffee in another room with some more elevated member of the household who had not wished to dine with him but, all the same, wanted to make his acquaintance. An honour, no doubt; in deference to his host’s opinion of himself, he straightened his tie, brushed the crumbs from his tweed jacket.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">He was surprised to find how ruinous the interior of the house was–cobwebs, worm-eaten beams, crumbling plaster; but the mute crone resolutely wound him on the reel of her lantern down endless corridors, up winding staircases, through the galleries where the painted eyes of family portraits briefly flickered as they passed, eyes that belonged, he noticed, to faces, one and all, of a quite memorable beastliness. At last she paused and, behind the door where they’d halted, he heard a faint, metallic twang as of, perhaps, a chord struck on a harpsichord. And then, wonderfully, the liquid cascade of the song of a lark, bringing to him, in the heart–had he but known it–of Juliet’s tomb, all the freshness of morning.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">The crone rapped with her knuckles on the panels; the most seductively caressing voice he had ever heard in his life softly called out, in heavily accented French, the adopted language of the Romanian aristocracy: ‘Entrez.’</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">First of all, he saw only a shape, a shape imbued with a faint luminosity since it caught and reflected in its yellowed surfaces what little light there was in the ill-lit room; this shape resolved itself into that of, of all things, a hoop-skirted dress of white satin draped here and there with lace, a dress fifty or sixty years out of fashion but once, obviously, intended for a wedding. And then he saw the girl who wore the dress, a girl with the fragility of the skeleton of a moth, so thin, so frail that her dress seemed to him to hang suspended, as if untenanted in the dank air, a fabulous lending, a self-articulated garment in which she lived like a ghost in a machine. All the light in the room came from a low-burning lamp with a thick greenish shade on a distant mantelpiece; the crone who accompanied him shielded her lantern with her hand, as if to protect her mistress from too suddenly seeing, or their guest from too suddenly seeing her.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">So that it was little by little, as his eyes grew accustomed to the half-dark, that he saw how beautiful and how very young the bedizened scarecrow was, and he thought of a child dressing up in her mother’s clothes, perhaps a child putting on the clothes of a dead mother in order to bring her, however briefly, to life again.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">The Countess stood behind a low table, beside a pretty, silly, gilt-and-wire birdcage, hands outstretched in a distracted attitude that was almost one of flight; she looked as startled by their entry as if she had not requested it. With her stark white face, her lovely death’s head surrounded by long dark hair that fell down as straight as if it were soaking wet, she looked like a shipwrecked bride. Her huge dark eyes almost broke his heart with their waiflike, lost look; yet he was disturbed, almost repelled, by her extraordinarily fleshy mouth, a mouth with wide, full, prominent lips of a vibrant purplish-crimson, a morbid mouth. Even–but he put the thought away from him immediately–a whore’s mouth. She shivered all the time, a starveling chill, a malarial agitation of the bones. He thought she must be only sixteen or seventeen years old, no more, with the hectic, unhealthy beauty of a consumptive. She was the chatelaine of all this decay.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">With many tender precautions, the crone now raised the light she held to show his hostess her guest’s face. At that, the Countess let out a faint, mewing cry and made a blind, appalled gesture with her hands, as if pushing him away, so that she knocked against the table and a butterfly dazzle of painted cards fell to the floor. Her mouth formed a round’ o’ of woe, she swayed a little and then sank into her chair, where she lay as if now scarcely capable of moving. A bewildering reception. Tsk’ing under her breath, the crone busily poked about on the table until she found an enormous pair of dark green glasses, such as blind beggars wear, and perched them on the Countess’s nose.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">He went forward to pick up her cards for her from a carpet that, he saw to his surprise, was part rotted away, partly encroached upon by all kinds of virulent-looking fungi. He retrieved the cards and shuffled them carelessly together, for they meant nothing to him, though they seemed strange playthings for a young girl. What a grisly picture of a capering skeleton! He covered it up with a happier one–of two young lovers, smiling at one another, and put her toys back into a hand so slender you could almost see the frail net of bone beneath the translucent skin, a hand with fingernails as long, as finely pointed, as banjo picks.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">At his touch, she seemed to revive a little and almost smiled, raising herself upright.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">‘Coffee,’ she said. ‘You must have coffee.’ And scooped up her cards into a pile so that the crone could set before her a silver spirit kettle, a silver coffee pot, cream jug, sugar basin, cups ready on a silver tray, a strange touch of elegance, even if discoloured, in this devastated interior whose mistress ethereally shone as if with her own blighted, submarine radiance.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">The crone found him a chair and, tittering noiselessly, departed, leaving the room a little darker.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">While the young lady attended to the coffee-making, he had time to contemplate with some distaste a further series of family portraits which decorated the stained and peeling walls of the room; these livid faces all seemed contorted with a febrile madness and the blubber lips, the huge, demented eyes that all had in common bore a disquieting resemblance to those of the hapless victim of inbreeding now patiently filtering her fragrant brew, even if some rare grace has so finely transformed those features when it came to her case. The lark, its chorus done, had long ago fallen silent; no sound but the chink of silver on china. Soon, she held out to him a tiny cup of rose-painted china.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">‘Welcome,’ she said in her voice with the rushing sonorities of the ocean in it, a voice that seemed to come elsewhere than from her white, still throat. ‘Welcome to my chateau. I rarely receive visitors and that’s a misfortune since nothing animates me half as much as the presence of a stranger … This place is so lonely, now the village is deserted, and my one companion, alas, she cannot speak. Often I am so silent that I think I, too, will soon forget how to do so and nobody here will ever talk any more.’</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">She offered him a sugar biscuit from a Limoges plate; her fingernails struck carillons from the antique china. Her voice, issuing from those red lips like the obese roses in her garden, lips that do not move–her voice is curiously disembodied; she is like a doll, he thought, a ventriloquist’s doll, or, more, like a great, ingenious piece of clockwork. For she seemed inadequately powered by some slow energy of which she was not in control; as if she had been wound up years ago, when she was born, and now the mechanism was inexorably running down and would leave her lifeless. This idea that she might be an automaton, made of white velvet and black fur, that could not move of its own accord, never quite deserted him; indeed, it deeply moved his heart. The carnival air of her white dress emphasized her unreality, like a sad Columbine who lost her way in the wood a long time ago and never reached the fair.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">‘And the light. I must apologize for the lack of light … a hereditary affliction of the eyes …’</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Her blind spectacles gave him his handsome face back to himself twice over; if he presented himself to her naked face, he would dazzle her like the sun she is forbidden to look at because it would shrivel her up at once, poor night bird, poor butcher bird.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Vous serez ma proie.</p><div class="story-page-ads-container" style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><ins class="adsbygoogle story-page-ads" data-ad-client="ca-pub-6230295467299812" data-ad-format="auto" data-ad-slot="1644267085" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"></ins></div><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">You have such a fine throat, m’sieu, like a column of marble. When you came through the door retaining about you all the golden light of the summer’s day of which I know nothing, nothing, the card called ‘Les Amoureux’ had just emerged from the tumbling chaos of imagery before me; it seemed to me you had stepped off the card into my darkness and, for a moment, I thought, perhaps, you might irradiate it.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">I do not mean to hurt you. I shall wait for you in my bride’s dress in the dark.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">The bridegroom is come, he will go into the chamber which has been prepared for him.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">I am condemned to solitude and dark; I do not mean to hurt you.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">I will be very gentle.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">(And could love free me from the shadows? Can a bird sing only the song it knows, or can it learn a new song?)</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">See, how I’m ready for you. I’ve always been ready for you; I’ve been waiting for you in my wedding dress, why have you delayed for so long … it will all be over very quickly.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">You will feel no pain, my darling.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. She has the mysterious solitude of ambiguous states; she hovers in a no-man’s land between life and death, sleeping and waking, behind the hedge of spiked flowers, Nosferatu’s sanguinary rosebud. The beastly forebears on the walls condemn her to a perpetual repetition of their passions.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">(One kiss, however, and only one, woke up the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood.)</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Nervously, to conceal her inner voices, she keeps up a front of inconsequential chatter in French while her ancestors leer and grimace on the walls; however hard she tries to think of any other, she only knows of one kind of consummation.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">He was struck, once again, by the birdlike, predatory claws which tipped her marvellous hands; the sense of strangeness that had been growing on him since he buried his head under the streaming water in the village, since he entered the dark portals of the fatal castle, now fully overcame him. Had he been a cat, he would have bounced backwards from her hands on four fear-stiffened legs, but he is not a cat: he is a hero.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">A fundamental disbelief in what he sees before him sustains him, even in the boudoir of Countess Nosferatu herself; he would have said, perhaps, that there are some things which, even if they <em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">are</em> true, we should not believe possible. He might have said: it is folly to believe one’s eyes. Not so much that he does not believe in her; he can see her, she is real. If she takes off her dark glasses, from her eyes will stream all the images that populate this vampire-haunted land, but, since he himself is immune to shadow, due to his virginity–he does not yet know what there is to be afraid of–and due to his heroism, which makes him like the sun, he sees before him, first and foremost, an inbred, highly strung girl child, fatherless, motherless, kept in the dark too long and pale as a plant that never sees the light, half-blinded by some hereditary condition of the eyes. And though he feels unease, he cannot feel terror; so he is like the boy in the fairy tale, who does not know how to shudder, and not spooks, ghouls, beasties, the Devil himself and all his retinue could do the trick.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">This lack of imagination gives his heroism to the hero.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">He will learn to shudder in the trenches. But this girl cannot make him shudder.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Now it is dark. Bats swoop and squeak outside the tightly shuttered windows. The coffee is all drunk, the sugar biscuits eaten. Her chatter comes trickling and diminishing to a stop; she twists her fingers together, picks at the lace of her dress, shifts nervously in her chair. Owls shriek; the impedimenta of her condition squeak and gibber all around us. Now you are at the place of annihilation, now you are at the place of annihilation. She turns her head away from the blue beams of his eyes; she knows no other consummation than the only one she can offer him. She has not eaten for three days. It is dinner-time. It is bedtime.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Suivez-moi. <br style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" />Je vous attendais. <br style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" />Vous serez ma proie.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">The raven caws on the accursed roof. ‘Dinnertime, dinnertime,’ clang the portraits on the walls. A ghastly hunger gnaws her entrails; she has waited for him all her life without knowing it.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">The handsome bicyclist, scarcely believing his luck, will follow her into her bedroom; the candles around her sacrificial altar burn with a low, clear flame, light catches on the silver tears stitched to the wall. She will assure him, in the very voice of temptation: ‘My clothes have but to fall and you will see before you a succession of mysteries.’</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">She has no mouth with which to kiss, no hands with which to caress, only the fangs and talons of a beast of prey. To touch the mineral sheen of the flesh revealed in the cool candle gleam is to invite her fatal embrace; in her low, sweet voice, she will croon the lullaby of the House of Nosferatu.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Embraces, kisses; your golden head, of a lion, although I have never seen a lion, only imagined one, of the sun, even if I’ve only seen the picture of the sun on the Tarot card, your golden head of the lover whom I dreamed would one day free me, this head will fall back, its eyes roll upwards in a spasm you will mistake for that of love and not of death. The bridegroom bleeds on my inverted marriage bed. Stark and dead, poor bicyclist; he has paid the price of a night with the Countess and some think it too high a fee while some do not.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Tomorrow, her keeper will bury his bones under her roses. The food her roses feed on gives them their rich colour, their swooning odour, that breathes lasciviously of forbidden pleasures.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Suivez-moi.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">‘Suivez-moi!’</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">The handsome bicyclist, fearful for his hostess’s health, her sanity, gingerly follows her hysterical imperiousness into the other room; he would like to take her into his arms and protect her from the ancestors who leer down from the walls.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">What a macabre bedroom!</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">His colonel, an old goat with jaded appetites, had given him the visiting card of a brothel in Paris where, the satyr assured him, ten louis would buy just such a lugubrious bedroom, with a naked girl upon a coffin; offstage, the brothel pianist played the <em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Dies Irae</em> on a harmonium and, amidst all the perfumes of the embalming parlour, the customer took his necrophiliac pleasure of a pretended corpse. He had good-naturedly refused the old man’s offer of such an initiation; how can he now take criminal advantage of the disordered girl with fever-hot, bone-dry, taloned hands and eyes that deny all the erotic promises of her body with their terror, their sadness, their dreadful, balked tenderness?</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">So delicate and damned, poor thing. Quite damned.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Yet I do believe she scarcely knows what she is doing.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">She is shaking as if her limbs were not efficiently joined together, as if she might shake into pieces. She raises her hands to unfasten the neck of her dress and her eyes well with tears, they trickle down beneath the rim of her dark glasses. She can’t take off her mother’s wedding dress unless she takes off her dark glasses; she has fumbled the ritual, it is no longer inexorable. The mechanism within her fails her, now, when she needs it most. When she takes off the dark glasses, they slip from her fingers and smash to pieces on the tiled floor. There is no room in her drama for improvisation; and this unexpected, mundane noise of breaking glass breaks the wicked spell in the room, entirely. She gapes blindly down at the splinters and ineffectively smears the tears across her face with her fist. What is she to do now?</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">When she kneels to try to gather the fragments of glass together, a sharp sliver pierces deeply into the pad of her thumb; she cries out, sharp, real. She kneels among the broken glass and watches the bright bead of blood form a drop. She has never seen her own blood before, not her <em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">own</em> blood. It exercises upon her an awed fascination.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Into this vile and murderous room, the handsome bicyclist brings the innocent remedies of the nursery; in himself, by his presence, he is an exorcism. He gently takes her hand away from her and dabs the blood with his own handkerchief, but still it spurts out. And so he puts his mouth to the wound. He will kiss it better for her, as her mother, had she lived, would have done.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">All the silver tears fall from the wall with a flimsy tinkle. Her painted ancestors turn away their eyes and grind their fangs.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">How can she bear the pain of becoming human?</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">The end of exile is the end of being.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">He was awakened by larksong. The shutters, the curtains, even the long-sealed windows of the horrid bedroom were all opened up and light and air streamed in; now you could see how tawdry it all was, how thin and cheap the satin, the catafalque not ebony at all but black-painted paper stretched on struts of wood, as in the theatre. The wind had blown droves of petals from the roses outside into the room and this crimson residue swirled fragrantly about the floor. The candles had burnt out and she must have set her pet lark free because it perched on the edge of the silly coffin to sing him its ecstatic morning song. His bones were stiff and aching, he’d slept on the floor with his bundled-up jacket for a pillow, after he’d put her to bed.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">But now there was no trace of her to be seen, except, lightly tossed across the crumpled black satin bedcover, a lace négligé lightly soiled with blood, as it might be from a woman’s menses, and a rose that must have come from the fierce bushes nodding through the window. The air was heavy with incense and roses and made him cough. The Countess must have got up early to enjoy the sunshine, slipped outside to gather him a rose. He got to his feet, coaxed the lark on to his wrist and took it to the window. At first, it exhibited the reluctance for the sky of a long-caged thing, but, when he tossed it up on to the currents of the air, it spread its wings and was up and away into the clear blue bowl of the heavens; he watched its trajectory with a lift of joy in his heart.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Then he padded into the boudoir, his mind busy with plans. We shall take her to Zurich, to a clinic; she will be treated for nervous hysteria. Then to an eye specialist, for her photophobia, and to a dentist to put her teeth into better shape. Any competent manicurist will deal with her claws. We shall turn her into the lovely girl she is; I shall cure her of all these nightmares.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">The heavy curtains are pulled back, to let in brilliant fusillades of early morning light; in the desolation of the boudoir, she sits at her round table in her white dress, with the cards laid out before her. She has dropped off to sleep over the cards of destiny that are so fingered, so soiled, so worn by constant shuffling that you can no longer make the image out on any single one of them.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">She is not sleeping.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">In death, she looked far older, less beautiful and so, for the first time, fully human.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">I will vanish in the morning light; I was only an invention of darkness.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">And I leave you as a souvenir the dark, fanged rose I plucked from between my thighs, like a flower laid on a grave. On a grave.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">My keeper will attend to everything.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Nosferatu always attends his own obsequies; she will not go to the graveyard unattended. And now the crone materialized, weeping, and roughly gestured him to begone. After a search in some foul-smelling outhouses, he discovered his bicycle and, abandoning his holiday, rode directly to Bucharest where, at the poste restante, he found a telegram summoning him to rejoin his regiment at once. Much later, when he changed back into uniform in his quarters, he discovered he still had the Countess’s rose, he must have tucked it into the breast pocket of his cycling jacket after he had found her body. Curiously enough, although he had brought it so far away from Romania, the flower did not seem to be quite dead and, on impulse, because the girl had been so lovely and her death so unexpected and pathetic, he decided to try and resurrect her rose. He filled his tooth glass with water from the carafe on his locker and popped the rose into it, so that its withered head floated on the surface.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">When he returned from the mess that evening, the heavy fragrance of Count Nosferatu’s roses drifted down the stone corridor of the barracks to greet him, and his spartan quarters brimmed with the reeling odour of a glowing, velvet, monstrous flower whose petals had regained all their former bloom and elasticity, their corrupt, brilliant, baleful splendour.</p><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;">Next day, his regiment embarked for France.</p><hr style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" /><p style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: none; padding: 15px 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">*This story is taken from The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. Published by Vintage, 1993. Copyright © Angela Carter. Reproduced by permission of The Estate of Angela Carter clo Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN.</em></span></p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-85090524140238802342020-08-17T21:59:00.000-07:002020-08-17T21:59:04.270-07:00The Doll<p> Lost for more than 70 years, this dark story of a man's obsessive passion for Rebecca, a mysterious violinist, hasn't been published since it appeared in a small collection in 1937</p><div><img alt="Woman playing the violin" src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/4/27/1303919956275/Woman-playing-the-violin-007.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=6ea83ac716dc1902d41de8b55e543e74" /></div><div><div>Foreword.</div><div><br /></div><div>The following pages were found in a shabby pocket book, very much sodden and discoloured by salt water, tucked away between the crevices of a rock in —Bay.</div><div><br /></div><div>Their owner has never been traced, and the most diligent enquiries have failed to discover his identity. Either the wretched man drowned himself near the spot where he hid his pocket book, and his body has been lost at sea; or he is still wandering about the world trying to forget himself and his tragedy.</div><div><br /></div><div>Some of the pages of his story were so damaged by exposure as to render them completely illegible; thus there are many gaps, and much of it seems without sequence, including the abrupt and unsatisfactory termination.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have placed three dots between sentences when words or lines were undecipherable. Whether the wild improbabilities of the story are true, or whether the whole is but the hysterical product of a diseased mind, we shall never know. My sole reason for publishing these pages is to satisfy the entreaties of many friends who have been interested in my discovery.</div><div><br /></div><div>Signed. DR E STRONGMAN.</div><div><br /></div><div>—BAY, S ENGLAND.</div><div><br /></div><div>R</div><div><br /></div><div>I want to know if men realise when they are insane. Sometimes I think that my brain cannot hold together, it is filled with too much horror – too great a despair.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Sign up for Bookmarks: discover new books in our weekly email</div><div> Read more</div><div>And there is no one; I have never been so unutterably alone. Why should it help me to write this? . . . Vomit forth the poison in my brain.</div><div><br /></div><div>For I am poisoned, I cannot sleep, I cannot close my eyes without seeing his damned face . . . If only it had been a dream, something to laugh over, a festered imagination.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's easy enough to laugh, who wouldn't crack their sides and split their tongues with laughing. Let's laugh till the blood runs from our eyes – there's fun, if you like. No, it's the emptiness that hurts, the breaking up of everything inside me.</div><div><br /></div><div>If I could feel, I should have followed her to the ends of the earth, no matter how she pleaded or how she loathed me. I should have taught her what it is to be loved by a man – yes – a man, and I would have thrown his filthy battered body from the window, watched him disappear for ever, his evil scarlet mouth distorted . . .</div><div><br /></div><div>It's the hot feeling that has filled me, the utter incapacity to reason.</div><div><br /></div><div>And I am deceiving myself when I say she would have come to me. I did not follow her because I knew that it was hopeless. She would never have loved me – she will never love any man.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes I can think of it all dispassionately, and I pity her. She misses so much – so much – and no one will ever know the truth. What was her life before I knew her, what is it now?</div><div><br /></div><div>Rebecca – Rebecca, when I think of you with your pale earnest face, your great wide fanatical eyes like a saint, the narrow mouth that hid your teeth, sharp and white as ivory, and your halo of savage hair, electric, dark, uncontrolled – there has never been anyone more beautiful. Who will ever know your heart, who will ever know your mind?</div><div><br /></div><div>Intense, restrained, and soulless; for you must be soulless to have done what you have done. You have that fatal quality of silence – of a tight repression that suggests a hidden fire – yes, a burning fire unquenchable. What have I not done with you in dreams, Rebecca?</div><div><br /></div><div>You would be fatal to any man. A spark that lights, and does not burn itself, a flame fanning other flames.</div><div><br /></div><div>What did I love in you but your indifference, and the suggestions that lay beneath your indifference?</div><div><br /></div><div>I loved you too much, wanted you too much, had for you too great a tenderness. Now all of this is like a twisted root in my heart, a deadly poison in my brain. You have made of me a madman. You fill me with a kind of horror, a devastating hate that is akin to love – a hunger that is nausea. If only I could be calm and clear for one moment – one moment only . . .</div><div><br /></div><div>I want to make a plan – an orderly arrangement of dates.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was at Olga's studio first, I think. I can remember how it rained outside, and the rain made dirty streaks on the window-pane. The room was full, a lot of people were talking by the piano – Vorki was there, they were trying to make him sing, and Olga was screaming with laughter.</div><div><br /></div><div>I always hated the hard thin reed of her laugh. You were sitting – Rebecca was sitting on a stool by the fire.</div><div><br /></div><div>Her legs were twisted under her, and she looked like an elf, a sort of boy.</div><div><br /></div><div>Her back was turned to me, and she wore a funny little fur cap on her head. I remember being amused at her position, I wanted to see her face. I called out to Olga to introduce me.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Rebecca," she said, "Rebecca, show yourself." . . . flinging off her cap as she turned. Her hair sprung from her head like a savage, her eyes opened wide – and she smiled at me, biting her lip.</div><div><br /></div><div>I can remember sitting down on the floor beside her, and talking, talking – what does it matter what I said, dull stuff, nonsense of course, but she spoke breathlessly, with a sort of constrained eagerness. She did not say much, she smiled . . . eyes of a visionary, of a fanatic – they saw too much, demanded too much – one lost oneself in them, and became incapable of resistance. It was like drowning. From the moment I saw her then I was doomed. I left her, and came away, and walked down the embankment like a drunkard. Faces spluttered up at me, and shoulders brushed me, I was aware of dim lights reflected on wet pavements, and the hazy throb of traffic – through it all were her eyes and her wild impossible hair, her slim body like a boy . . . all coming clear now, I can see each event as it happened, each moment of the game. I went to Olga's again and she was there.</div><div><br /></div><div>She came right up to me and said "Do you care for music?" gravely, like a child. Why did she say this, I don't know, there was no one at the piano – I answered vaguely, and noticed the colour of her skin, pale coffee, and clear, clear as water.</div><div><br /></div><div>She was dressed in brown, some sort of velvet I think, with a red scarf round her neck.</div><div><br /></div><div>Her throat was very long and thin, like a swan's. I remember thinking how easy it would be to tighten the scarf and strangle her. I imagined her face when dying – her lips parted, and the enquiring look in her eyes – they would show white, but she would not be afraid. All this in the space of a moment, and while she was talking to me. I could drag very little from her. She was a violinist apparently, an orphan, and lived alone in Bloomsbury.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yes, she had travelled much, she said, and especially in Hungary. She had lived in Budapest for three years, studying music. She did not care for England, she wanted to go back to Budapest. It was the only city in the world.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Rebecca" someone called, and she glanced over her shoulder with a smile. How much could I write about Rebecca's smile! It was so vivid, so intensely alive, and yet apart, unearthly, it had no relation to anything one said. Her eyes would be transfigured as if by a shaft of silver.</div><div><br /></div><div>She left early that day, and I crossed the room to ask Olga about her. I was in an agony of impatience to know everything. Olga could tell me little. "She comes from Hungary," she said, "no one knows who were her parents, Jewish, I imagine. Vorki brought her here. He found her in Paris, playing the violin in one of those Russian cafes. She won't have anything to do with him though, she lives entirely alone. Vorki says her talent is marvellous, if she only goes on there will be no one to touch her. But she won't work, she doesn't seem to care. I heard her at Vorki's flat – it sent cold shivers down my spine. She stood at the end of the room, looking like something off another planet – her hair sticking out, a sort of fur bush round her head, and she played. The notes were weird, haunting, I've never known anything quite like it, it's impossible to describe."</div><div><br /></div><div>Once again I left Olga's studio in a dream, with Rebecca's face dancing before my eyes. I too could see her playing the violin – she would stand straight and firm as a child, her eyes wide open, her lips parted in a smile.</div><div><br /></div><div>She was to play at Vorki's flat the following evening, and I went to hear her. Olga had not exaggerated, with all her palpable, shallow insincerity. I sat like a drugged man, incapable of movement. I don't know what she played, but it was shattering – stupendous. I was not aware of anything but that I and Rebecca were together – out of the world, away, lost – lost in unutterable bliss. We were climbing, then flying, higher – higher.</div><div><br /></div><div>At one time the violin seemed to protest, and it was as if she were refusing me, and I were pursuing her – then there came a torrent of sound, a medley of acceptance and denial, a confusion of notes in which were mingled desire and sweetness, and intolerable pleasure. I could feel my heart beating like the throb of some mighty vessel, and the blood pounded in my temples.</div><div><br /></div><div>Rebecca was part of me, she was myself – it was too much, it was too glorious. We had reached the summit, we could go no farther, the sun seemed to strike into my eyes. I looked up – Rebecca was smiling at me, the violin broke on a note of exquisite beauty – it was fulfilment.</div><div><br /></div><div>I leant back exhausted on the sofa, my senses swimming – it was too wonderful, too wonderful. Three minutes passed before I came fully conscious again. I felt as if I had plunged in the black abyss of eternity to sleep – and had come awake once more.</div><div><br /></div><div>No one had noticed me, Vorki was handing round drinks, and Rebecca was sitting by the piano turning over some music. When they asked her to play again, she refused, she was tired, she said. They implored her so she took up her violin and played once more – something quite short, but very lovely and pure, like a child's prayer.</div><div><br /></div><div>Later in the evening she came and sat beside me, for a few moments I was too moved to speak. Then I cursed myself for a fool, and turned to her, and looked into her face.</div><div><br /></div><div>"You gave me a marvellous sensation when you played," I told her, "it was beautiful, intoxicating, I shall never forget it. You have a rare – no – a very dangerous talent." She was silent, and then spoke in her restrained, breathless little voice. "I played for you," she said, "I wanted to see what it was like to play to a man." Her words bewildered me, they seemed utterly inexplicable. She was not lying, her eyes looked straight into mine, and she was smiling.</div><div><br /></div><div>"What do you mean?" I asked her. "Have you never played for anyone before, do you use your gift just to satisfy yourself? I don't understand."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Perhaps," she said slowly, "perhaps, it's like that, I can't explain."</div><div><br /></div><div>"I want to see you again," I told her, "I'd like to come and see you alone, where we can talk, really talk. I've thought about you ever since I saw you in Olga's studio, you knew that, didn't you? That's why you played to me tonight, wasn't it?"</div><div><br /></div><div>I wanted to drag the answer from her lips, I wanted to force her to say yes. She shrugged her shoulders, she refused to be definite, it was exasperating.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I don't know," she said, "I don't know." Then I asked for her address, and she gave it to me. She was busy, she would not be able to see me until the end of the week. The party broke up soon after and she disappeared.</div><div><br /></div><div>The days that passed seemed interminable, I could not wait to see her again. I thought about her ceaselessly.</div><div><br /></div><div>On Friday I could stand it no longer, so I went to her. She lived in an odd sort of a house somewhere in Bloomsbury. She rented the top floor as a flat. The outlook was dull and dreary, I wondered how she could bear to live there.</div><div><br /></div><div>She opened the door to me herself, and took me into a large bare room like a studio, with an oil-stove burning. I was struck by the cheerlessness of it, but she did not seem to notice anything, and made me sit down in a shabby armchair.</div><div><br /></div><div>"This is where I practise," Rebecca told me, "and have my meals. It's a bright room, don't you think?" I said nothing to this and then she went to a cupboard and brought out some drinks, and a few stale biscuits. She took nothing herself.</div><div><br /></div><div>I found her strange, detached – she seemed bored at my being there. Our conversation was forced and there were pauses. I found it impossible to say any of the things I wanted to say. She played to me for a while, but they were all classical things that I knew, and quite different from what she had played that evening at Vorki's.</div><div><br /></div><div>Before I left she showed me round her tiny flat. There was a little scullery place she used for a kitchen, a poky bathroom, and her own small bedroom which was furnished like a nun's cell, quite plain and bare. There was another room leading from the studio, but she did not show me this. It was obviously a fair-sized room, as I saw the window from the street afterwards, and watched her draw the heavy curtains across it . . .</div><div><br /></div><div>(Note. Here some pages were completely illegible, covered with blots, and discoloured. The narrative appears to continue in the middle of a sentence. Dr Strongman.)</div><div><br /></div><div>. . . "not really cold," she insisted, "I've tried to explain to you that I'm odd in some ways, I've never met anyone to care for, I've never been in love. I've always disliked people rather than been attracted by them." "That doesn't explain your music." I broke in impatiently. "You play as if you knew everything – everything."</div><div><br /></div><div>I was becoming maddened by her indifference, it was not natural but calculated; she always gave me the impression of concealment. I felt I should never discover what was in her mind, whether she was like a child asleep, a flower before it has blossomed – or whether she was lying to me throughout, in which case every man would have been her lover – every man.</div><div><br /></div><div>I was tortured by doubt and jealousy, the thought of other men was driving me insane. And she gave me no relief, she would look at me with her great pale eyes, pure as water, until I could swear that she was untouched – and yet, and yet? A look, a smile, and back would come my torture and my misery. She was impossible, she evaded everything, and yet it was this fatal quality of restraint that tore at me and broke at me, until my love for her became an obsession, a terrible driving force.</div><div><br /></div><div>I asked Olga about her, asked Vorki, asked everyone who knew her. No one could tell me anything, anything.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm forgetting days and weeks as I write this, nothing seems to have any sequence for me, it's like rising from the dead, it's like being reincarnated from dust and ashes to live it again, to live my whole cursed life again – for what was my life before I loved Rebecca, where was I, who was I?</div><div><br /></div><div>I had better write that Sunday now, Sunday that was really the end; and I didn't know it, I thought it was the beginning. I was like someone walking in the dark, no, walking in the light with his eyes open and not seeing – deliberately blinding himself.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sunday, day of hollow and mistaken happiness. I went to her flat about nine in the evening. She was waiting for me. She was dressed in scarlet – like Mephistopheles, odd strange clothes that only Rebecca could wear. She seemed excited, intoxicated – she ran about the room like an elf.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then she sat down at my feet with her legs tucked under her, and held out her thin brown hands to the stove. She laughed and giggled childishly, she reminded me of a mischievous child planning some naughtiness.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then all at once she turned to me, her face pale, her eyes strangely alight. She said, "Is it possible to love someone so much, that it gives one a pleasure, an unaccountable pleasure to hurt them? To hurt them by jealousy I mean, and to hurt oneself at the same time. Pleasure and pain, an equal mingling of pleasure and pain, just as an experiment, a rare sensation?"</div><div><br /></div><div>She puzzled me, but I tried to explain to her what was meant by Sadism. She seemed to understand, and nodded her head thoughtfully once or twice.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then she rose and went slowly across the room to the door I had never yet seen opened. She looked oddly pale as she stood there, her mass of queer savage hair springing from her head, her hand on the knob of the door. "I want to introduce you to Julio," she said. I left my chair and went towards her, I had no idea of what she was talking about. She took my hand and then opened the door. I saw a low round-shaped room, whose walls were draped with some sort of velvet hangings as if to deaden any sound, and long thick curtains were drawn across the window. There was a log fire, but it had burnt very low. Near the fireplace was a divan, covered with cushions thrown anyhow, and the only light came from a small shaded lamp, thus leaving the room in a half darkness.</div><div><br /></div><div>There was one chair in the room, and this was facing the divan.</div><div><br /></div><div>Something was sitting in the chair. I felt an eerie cold feeling in my heart, as if the room were haunted. "What is it?" I whispered.</div><div><br /></div><div>Rebecca took the lamp and held it over the chair. "This is Julio," she said softly. I stepped closer, and saw what I took to be a boy of about 16, dressed in a dinner jacket, shirt and waistcoat, and long Spanish trousers.</div><div><br /></div><div>His face was the most evil thing I have ever seen. It was ashen pale in colour, and the mouth was a crimson gash, sensual and depraved. The nose was thin, with curved nostrils, and the eyes were cruel, gleaming and narrow, and curiously still. They seemed to stare right through one – the eyes of a hawk. The hair was sleek and dark, brushed right back from the white forehead.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was the face of a satyr, a grinning hateful satyr.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then I was aware of a strange feeling of disappointment, a helpless sensation of not understanding, of dumb incredulity.</div><div><br /></div><div>There was no boy sitting in the chair. It was a doll. Human enough, damnably lifelike, with a foul distinctive personality but a doll.</div><div><br /></div><div>Only a doll. The eyes stared into mine without recognition, the mouth leered foolishly. I looked at Rebecca, she was watching my face.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I don't see," I said, "what's the point of all this? Where did you get this loathsome toy? Are you having a joke with me?" I spoke sharply, I felt uneasy and cold. The next moment the room was in darkness, she had turned out the lamp. I felt her arms round my neck, and her mouth upon mine.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Now shall I tell you I love you?" she whispered, "shall I?"</div><div><br /></div><div>A hot wave of something swept over me, the floor seemed to swing beneath my feet. She clung to me and kissed my throat, I could feel her fingers at the back of my neck. I let her hands wander over my body, and she kissed me again. It was devastating – it was madness – it was like death.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't know how long we stood there, I don't remember anything, words, or thoughts, or dreams – only the silence of that dark room, the feeble glow of the fire, the beating of my heart – the singing in my ears – and Rebecca – Rebecca—. When, – and whether hours had passed or years I cannot tell – when I raised my eyes above her head I looked straight into his eyes – his damned doll's eyes.</div><div><br /></div><div>They seemed to squint at me and leer, one eyebrow was cocked, and his crimson treacherous mouth was twisted at the corner. I wanted to leap at it, and smash its beastly grinning face, trample on its sordid human body. Was Rebecca mad to keep such a toy, what was her motive, where had she found it? But she would not answer my questions.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Come away," she said, and dragged me from the room, back once more into the hard glaring light of the bare studio. "You must go now," she said breathlessly, "it's late – I had forgotten." I tried to take hold of her, once more, I wanted to kiss her again and again, she surely did not mean me to go now.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Tomorrow," she said impatiently, "I promise you tomorrow, but not at the moment. I'm tired and bewildered – don't you see? Let me alone just for tonight, it's been too strong, I can't realise anything."</div><div><br /></div><div>She stamped her foot with impatience, she looked ill. I saw it was hopeless. I took my things and went – and walked, and walked – all night I think.</div><div><br /></div><div>I watched the dawn break on Hampstead Heath, grey and sunless; heavy rain fell from a leaden sky.</div><div><br /></div><div>My body was cold, but my brain was on fire. Once more I was certain that Rebecca had lied to me – from the moment she kissed me I knew that she had lied to me.</div><div><br /></div><div>She had known five, 10, what matter the number, 20 lovers – and I was not one of them.</div><div><br /></div><div>No, I was not one of them.</div><div><br /></div><div>I found myself near Camden Town, buses rumbled along the streets; it was still raining, people straggled past me, their figures bent under umbrellas.</div><div><br /></div><div>I found a taxi somewhere, and went home. I got into bed without undressing, and slept. I slept for hours. When I awoke it was dark once more; it must have been about six in the evening. I remember washing mechanically, and then once more walking in the direction of Bloomsbury.</div><div><br /></div><div>I reached the flat and rang at her bell.</div><div><br /></div><div>She let me in without a word, and then sat down in the studio before the oil stove. I told her I was going to be her lover. She said nothing. There were red rims under her eyes as if she had been crying, and thin lines round her mouth. I bent towards her to kiss her, but she pushed me away.</div><div><br /></div><div>She began to speak rapidly.</div><div><br /></div><div>"You must forget what happened last night. Today I realise I made a mistake. I'm not well, I haven't slept. All this has worried me considerably. You must leave me alone."</div><div><br /></div><div>I tried to seize her, and break down her iron restraint. It was like hammering at an iron wall. She lay cold and still in my arms. Her mouth was icy. I left her in despair. Then followed a week of doubt and torture. Sometimes she sat apart from me without a word, sometimes I could have sworn that she loved me. And she would not let me touch her, she was not in the mood she said. I must wait until she wanted me again. I must wait in suspense, in agony. She never mentioned Julio. We never went into that room again. I asked her what she had done with him. I wanted to know what was at the back of it all. She would answer evasively and change the subject. It was useless to press her. She was maddening. She was intolerable.</div><div><br /></div><div>And yet I could not keep away from her. I could not live without her.</div><div><br /></div><div>One evening she would be gentle and affectionate. She would sit at my feet and talk about her music, about her future plans. She was always changing. She was never the same.</div><div><br /></div><div>I felt hopeless. My position was ridiculous – but what was I to do? She had become a madness to me – an obsession.</div><div><br /></div><div>I've now come to the last evening, the very last. Then crash – blankness – the depths of hell – and desolation – utter desolation.</div><div><br /></div><div>Let me get it clear – when was it, what time was it? Seven, eight perhaps. I can't remember. I was leaving the flat and she came to the door with me.</div><div><br /></div><div>She suddenly put her arms round me and kissed me . . . There have been men in arid deserts where the sun has so disfigured them that they have become things of horror – parched and blackened, twisted and torn. Their eyes run blood, their tongues are bitten through – and then they come upon water.</div><div><br /></div><div>I know, because I was one of their number.</div><div><br /></div><div>Laugh at all these comparisons, call me a madman, but the laugh is on my side.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are women – but you have not kissed Rebecca, you cannot know.</div><div><br /></div><div>You are a fool asleep. You have never begun to imagine. . .</div><div><br /></div><div>(Note. Much of this seems completely unintelligible, and the quarter page that follows consists of nothing but broken sentences and half-formed ideas. Then the narrative continues.)</div><div><br /></div><div>It was shattering. She let me kiss her again and again. I took her face in my hands and looked down into her eyes.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Who were your lovers?" I said. "How often did you kiss them like that? Who taught you to kiss them like that? Who was the first, the very first? Tell me."</div><div><br /></div><div>A haze of fury was before my eyes, my hands shook.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I swear to you that you are the first man I have ever kissed. I swear to you there has been no man before you. Never. Never."</div><div><br /></div><div>She looked straight at me. Her voice was firm. I saw that she was speaking the truth.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Now you must go," she said, "tomorrow you shall come, and then we shall have so much to tell each other, so much."</div><div><br /></div><div>She smiled at me. I saw right through her wall of restraint, right through ice to the flame, the hidden fire.</div><div><br /></div><div>I remember leaving the flat, and having dinner somewhere. My head was on fire. I seemed to walk among the gods. It was incredible that Rebecca should love me, it was incredible that I should know such happiness. I wanted to shout. I wanted to chuck myself off a roof.</div><div><br /></div><div>I went home, and paced up and down the room. I couldn't sleep, every nerve in my body seemed alive.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then suddenly, at midnight, I could stand it no longer. I had to go to Rebecca, I had to.</div><div><br /></div><div>I felt my love for her was so strong that she would know. She would wait for me. She would understand. She would have to understand.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't know how I got to her flat. Seconds seemed to flash by, and I was standing outside in the street, gazing up at the windows.</div><div><br /></div><div>I persuaded the night porter to let me in, he was half asleep and he let me pass upstairs. I listened outside her door – not a sound came from within. It might have been the entrance to a tomb.</div><div><br /></div><div>I put my hand on the door knob, and turned it slowly. To my surprise it was not locked – Rebecca must have forgotten to turn the key after I left.</div><div><br /></div><div>I stepped inside, everything was in darkness. "Rebecca", I called softly, "Rebecca". No answer.</div><div><br /></div><div>The door of her bedroom was open, there was no one inside.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then I went into the kitchen and the bathroom, both were empty.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then I knew. Something gripped my heart, cold, clammy fear.</div><div><br /></div><div>I looked towards that other room – his room – Julio's room.</div><div><br /></div><div>I knew that Rebecca was in there, with the doll – with Julio.</div><div><br /></div><div>I felt my way across the room and beat against the door. It was locked. I kicked against the panel, and tore at it with my nails. It gave way beneath my weight. I heard a cry of fury from Rebecca, and she turned on the lamp.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh! Christ, I shall never forget her eyes, the terrible light – the unholy rapture in her eyes, and her ashen – ashen face.</div><div><br /></div><div>I saw everything – the room, the divan – I knew everything. I was seized with deadly sickness – a terrible despair.</div><div><br /></div><div>And all the time his vile filthy face was looking at me. His eyes never left me, staring with a lifeless, glassy immobility. The wet crimson mouth was sneering – the sleek dark hair hung in streaks across his cheek. He was a machine – something worked by screws – he was not alive, not human – but terrible, ghastly.</div><div><br /></div><div>And Rebecca turned to me. Her voice was cold – apart – unearthly.</div><div><br /></div><div>"And you expect me to love you. Don't you see that I can't – I can't? How can I care for you, or any man? Go away, leave me. I loathe you. I loathe you all. I don't need you. I don't want you."</div><div><br /></div><div>Something cracked inside my heart. I turned away. I left them. I left them alone. I ran into the street – tears were pouring down my face – I sobbed aloud – I shook my fist at the stars . . .</div><div><br /></div><div>And that is all, there is no more to say, no more to tell. I went the next day and she had gone, they had both gone. No one knew where she was. I asked everyone I saw – no one could tell me.</div><div><br /></div><div>Everything is dim, everything is useless. I shall never see Rebecca again – no one will see her again. It will always be Rebecca and Julio. Days will come, and nights, and nothing – they will haunt me – I shall never sleep – I'm cursed. I don't know what I'm saying, what I'm writing. What am I going to do? Oh! God, what am I going to do? I can't live – I can't cope . . .</div></div>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-3852422409962230712020-08-17T21:57:00.006-07:002020-08-17T21:57:42.820-07:00The Yellow Ranch<p> B<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px;">ut is the house really haunted?” Tasha asked Arturo, leaning over a chrome café table, a metal glow lightening her eyes. They were in Boulder, a desolate patio on Pearl Street. He was visiting for only a few days.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px;">“It was,” Arturo said and let out a clipped laugh. He wasn’t wearing his wedding band and was husky in designer denim and mall cashmere. “I had the cleansing done by a local woman, Lucille Mestas. She described it thoroughly, how the house held unrested spirits, a little girl, she had said, attached herself to me.”</span></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Horrible,” Tasha said. “I don’t know if I can stay in a haunted house.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“It’s just an old house now,” he said. “All the spirits are gone.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">He drank a cappuccino from a white cup, trailing his upper lip with foam. Tasha ran her index finger along her own lip. Arturo grinned, dabbing a paper napkin to his mouth of pretty bright teeth. He appeared much younger than fifty-two, early forties at most. Tasha thought there should be a word for the way he made her feel, but she found too many at once, and so she settled on <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">pulled.</em></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">She then asked with seriousness, “It’s safe, right? I’ll be OK alone?”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Not just safe,” he told her. “It’s sacred. People are different down there. You’ll see.”</p><h2 class="body-h2" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Quase, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 2.25rem; line-height: 1.2; margin: 1.875rem 0px 1.875rem 47.6px; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.3125rem;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">*</span></h2><div><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px;">El Rancho Amarillo spanned hundreds of acres, tall dark fields dotted with distant porch lights and the shining backs of cattle, an adobe home nesting like a brown pearl at its center. The house has stood for over seventy years, sighing and shifting mud walls into muddier earth. The land originally belonged to his grandmother’s family while the house was designed by Arturo Lobato’s paternal grandfather, Francisco Torres Lobato, the adobe bricks molded by the hands of his two small daughters. When Tasha first heard this story, she felt the house was built, in some way, piece by piece, by its women, and she wondered why Arturo hadn’t mentioned any of their names.</span></span></div><div><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px;">She had accepted the invitation to visit El Rancho Amarillo after Professor Arturo Lobato, Distinguished R. F. Morley Chair of Architecture at Cornell University, delivered a guest lecture on her campus.</span></span></div><div><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;"><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha was a first-year MFA student at the University of Colorado, studying photography and multimodal narratives. <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">Attend at least one art talk outside your discipline</em>, stated her Ideation in Photo Representation syllabus. She had no interest in architecture, but the talk fit her Thursday schedule and on that mild spring morning as Arturo Lobato took the stage in that small black auditorium, standing erect with a potbelly above pressed denim, Tasha was surprised to find him handsome. He spoke on indigenous architecture and the historical significance of building with earth, noting that his theoretical work was profoundly influenced by his childhood in an isolated alpine valley of Southern Colorado, a portion of the state which had once been Mexico. Tasha wiped her fingers along her jeans until, meekly, she raised her hand, wanting to know more about this valley.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“San Luis,” Arturo said swiftly.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“It’s just, my own grandma was born there. A town called Saguarita.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Ah,” he said, “you’re a Manita.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Afterward, students descended the auditorium stairs, they rushed the exists in backpack mass, Tasha among them when she felt a shock—a hand around her wrist, the dampness of touch, gold wedding ring, brown leather watchband, and those white-flecked nailbeds that people often said were a sign of some deficiency.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“I’d love to learn about your background.” It was Arturo, vivid. “Shall we get coffee?”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha peered upward, keeping her eyes halfway hidden beneath clumped-mascara. “Now?”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Arturo ordered their drinks, paid, and selected their seats—outside, away from others, cherry blossoms blowing through the air. What was she was studying? Could he see her work? What a fine eye for detail. She should have applied to the ivies, a shoo-in. Tasha lowered her gaze as she smiled, felt warmth in his attention. They stayed on the patio a long while as violet-blue dusk seeped into the brick road. Tasha searched her iPhone photos for a Día de los Muertos altar, paper marigolds and brass baby shoes, an installation on the cement floor of a Denver gallery named Redline. “For my Grandma Luisa,” she finally said, revealing her screen to Arturo and leaning forward. “She left the San Luis Valley in the 1960s.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“We could be cousins,” Arturo teased. “But I’m not related to any Espinosas. Not that I know of, at least.” He scooted his chair close. He smelled of pine. “Do you know much about the Valley?”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha shrugged in a kind of shame. When her grandmother was still alive, she had emphysema and an old Southern Colorado Spanish accent, making it difficult for Tasha to understand her tales of that dreamlike region to the south. “Not really,” she said. “But I’ve wanted to visit.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Arturo’s invitation was presented then, as if awaiting its summons. “You’ll get to see where you come from,” he suggested. “Or at least some of you.”</p><h2 class="body-h2" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Quase, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 2.25rem; line-height: 1.2; margin: 1.875rem 0px 1.875rem 47.6px; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.3125rem;">*</h2><p class="body-dropcap" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Like a retreat?” her best friend Chantel had said later that week over brunch mimosas at a restaurant called Quartz, in Denver. Chantel was a coordinator at a youth non-profit on the Westside. She had a loud, hoarse voice and always dressed in black. Earlier they had hiked Table Mountain, still drunk from the night before, smoking weed along the path. Tasha had photographed volcanic rocks and wildflowers. Stretching against a trailhead sign, arms high in neon sleeves, she had gazed east through a smoggy veil at Denver’s skyline.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Or is he trying to fuck you?” Chantel said abruptly.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha looked to the restaurant’s dirty floor. “Rude.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Do you want to?”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">She made a face, exaggerated offense. “He’s old.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“And married,” said Chantel. “And the Chair of some fancy Department. What an asshole.” She gulped the last of her clear-ish yellow drink, more champagne than orange juice, her tarantula-like eyelash extensions flapped over her freckled cheeks. “Will anyone else be there? Will <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">he </em>be there?”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“No,” Tasha said with resolve. “I’ll be alone. It’s fine. Just a few days.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Who the hell is this guy? The wizard of OZ?”</p><h2 class="body-h2" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Quase, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 2.25rem; line-height: 1.2; margin: 1.875rem 0px 1.875rem 47.6px; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.3125rem;">*</h2><p class="body-dropcap" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">She arrived in the dark, parking her red Camry in the dirt drive and slamming the trunk. Tasha dragged her hard-shelled suitcase over mushy ground, languidly, as if the land had reached up, gripping her ankles. At the dim door, her back to a seemingly endless field, Tasha pried cakey mud from the soles of her black sneakers with a long white stick. Great, she said entering the house and flipping on the lights. Mud had spread from her shoes to her hands and across her leggings. She was filthy cold, and The Yellow Ranch, as she called it, was stoically silent, smelling of soil and coal.<br style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;" /></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">All of it—the long main room with a cast iron stove, the walled kitchen sink with a string of twinkly lights, and those barren lopsided bedrooms flanked on either side. Everything seemed dusted in night, lonely, unlived-in. The furniture was an odd mix of 1960s wooden chairs and southwestern inspired West Elm rugs. There was a record player, shelves of old books, and Chicano Power posters, mounted and framed, from the 1970s. The only original art was a triangular God’s Eye woven in green and blue yarn. <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">Ojo de Dios</em>, her Grandma Luisa had once said, <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">keeps an eye on the dead.</em></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">That night, after two glasses of Yellow Tail and half a joint labeled Black Hole, Tasha got into bed and posted a photo on Instagram. It was the county road she had driven in on, the cottonwood trees blurred and ridged, gravel varied in headlights, a long dirt way, lonesome and dark. Tasha saturated the image, captioning it, <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">Blue Velvet</em>, and she wasn’t surprised when Arturo soon messaged.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">u arrived</em></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">It’s nice… so far. :)</em></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">good. u deserve nice. btw, thanks again</em></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">for what?</em></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">last night, my stunning subject</em></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;"></em></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha winced, remembering the photo. She had cropped her face, and that had to count for something. He had asked, slipped the request into a text as if inquiring about the weather. It was an old one, topless and taken for herself over floral sheets but Tasha lied, told Arturo— <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">Just. For. You.</em> Mindlessly, she tapped to like his last message. Tasha was high now, recalibrated with weed. She tossed her phone across the patchwork quilt and then switched off the lamp, the darkness heavy, rich, as if sleeping underground.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha Nicole Espinosa Spencer was depressed, but it wasn’t always this way. Sometimes it felt like the entire universe was powered by an affectionate current, running from sky to earth and into each person’s veins. It was better than being drunk or stoned and only matched occasionally by sex. But these moments were rare, and for a long while, Tasha had been adrift. For the two years between college and graduate school, Tasha worked for a tech start-up, selling ad space to real estate companies while sitting in a cubicle on the dreary 5<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14.25px; line-height: 0; outline: 0px; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> floor of a glass and steel high rise, overlooking the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art. The day Tasha was laid off, she was standing at the window, the coolness of the view emanating onto her skin, when her supervisor, a white woman from Indiana or was it Ohio, asked to speak with her privately.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Do you like that sculpture,” Tasha had said before turning around, her breath fogging the glass. “The one outside the museum, the dagger through the heart? A little cartoonish, huh?”<br style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;" /></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">She was only twenty-six, but she wondered about dying, the finality of it. During her time at the start-up, Tasha used dating apps. She photographed well, her lips naturally plump, her eyes deep mournful pools. There were many matches. Tasha got drunk and met men who had recently moved to Denver and lived off their generational wealth in loft apartments. They smelled of musky soaps, new cars, metallic snow, and expensive booze. One crushed her during sex, laid across her body with all his weight, a tall man over six feet. She had sputtered and gasped for air, and wondered for a moment if this is how it felt to die.</p><h2 class="body-h2" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Quase, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 2.25rem; line-height: 1.2; margin: 1.875rem 0px 1.875rem 47.6px; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.3125rem;">*</h2><p class="body-dropcap" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“How do you like it so far?” Arturo asked over Facetime audio.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“No cell service is weird, but thank God for Wi-Fi.” Tasha stood at the stove, scrambling eggs with salt and pepper, sipping her coffee black. El Rancho Amarillo was airy with open windows, the sheer curtains breathing a sage-scented breeze. Sunflowers blanketed the nearby fields and Tasha imagined napping beneath their sunny petals.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“The house has nice energy,” she said after some time.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Any spirits visit you in the night?”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha laughed, lowering the stove’s flame. “Thankfully, no. I did have a weird dream, though.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Oh yeah?”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Yes,” she said, scooping her eggs onto a white dish. “I dreamed an owl was looking at me through the bedroom window.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Maybe it wasn’t a dream.” Arturo teased. “Maybe it was real.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“No,” she laughed. “Because it was hovering.” Tasha set her breakfast on the long cedar table. “Like a hummingbird.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Arturo asked how the dream ended, and Tasha knew he wasn’t fully listening, anyway.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“It was the strangest thing. The house closed the curtains, just shut its own blinds.”</p><h2 class="body-h2" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Quase, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 2.25rem; line-height: 1.2; margin: 1.875rem 0px 1.875rem 47.6px; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.3125rem;">*</h2><p class="body-dropcap" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">That afternoon Tasha drove into town. Four miles over the country road through farmland rows of lettuce and wheat, and something else. Barley. She studied the fields, abandoned barns and adobe school houses, grooved waterlines of the acequias, those irrigation ditches of the former Spanish Colonies. She thought to return later to take photographs. Each farm house was miles from another, and Tasha couldn’t imagine living with so much space, a dizzying reminder of inconsequence. She wondered about her Grandma Luisa as she passed the oldest church in Colorado, Our Lady of Guadalupe, with its bright Spanish doors and double brick towers, a marble statue of La Virgen at its center. <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">There were a lot girls I knew</em>, she once said, covering the tracheostomy hole in her throat with her right index finger, <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">who never got to leave, the land had a way of trapping.</em></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha ended up at The Green House, hot springs housed inside a metal hangar at the base of the Great Sand Dunes, overlooking the impressive National Park. As a little girl during catechism, she had learned about Lot’s nameless wife and Tasha imagined the massive white dunes were piles of salt clear to the blue sky. She swam in a vintage black bikini through the mineral rich pools, coming up for air on the far end of the springs and resting her head upon her hands against the stone ledge. There were several pools of different temperatures and sizes. It was busy. Locals, she imagined, and some white tourist families on National Park road trips. Flashes of ancient tattoos faded and winked among freckles and moles. Tasha wondered if she looked out of place, especially as a woman. She was small and noticeable, and most everyone else was partnered or grouped.</p><div class="embed embed-pullquote embed-pullquote-align-center" data-align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0e1111; font-family: Quase, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 1.75rem; line-height: 1.2; margin: 4.375rem 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px; text-align: center; width: auto;"><div class="embed-inner" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;"><blockquote class="pullquote" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p aria-level="2" role="heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0.625rem 0px;">"Tasha Nicole Espinosa Spencer was depressed, but it wasn’t always this way."</p></blockquote></div></div><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">The hot springs were decorated in neon lights and subtropical plants, a tiki bar served box wine and beer and $2 U-Call-Its. Tasha lay across a woven beach chair and sifted through the books she had brought from the ranch library. The first was <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">The San Luis Valley: Ghosts, Legends, and UFO</em>s, a 1990s paperback written in a mixture of old Southern Colorado Spanish and academic jargon. Tasha made it through the introduction before moving onto another book. She had laughed upon seeing it on the shelf. Dr. Seuss, <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">The Lorax,</em> and the cover immediately reminded Tasha of a time she was often trying to remember, filling her mind with images and sounds from the past. Tasha was interested in memories and the Valley felt familiar, though she had never spent time there before. Maybe if a people have been somewhere for hundreds of years, that place, and its memories, is part of them.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“I prefer his later work,” said a crisp male voice. He stood against the garage light, shirtless and smiling, a nice build with red swim trunks. He held a can of Tecate with specks of lime pulp down his thumb.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha placed the open book over her stomach, feeling naked speaking to a stranger while in a bikini. “A true fan,” she said.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Hell yes,” the man said, lowering himself into the pool before Tasha’s feet. He was now eye-level to her legs. He was close enough, Tasha thought, that he could reach out from the water and touch her ankles.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;"></p><div class="embed embed-pullquote embed-pullquote-align-center" data-align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0e1111; font-family: Quase, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 1.75rem; line-height: 1.2; margin: 4.375rem 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px; text-align: center; width: auto;"><div class="embed-inner" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;"><blockquote class="pullquote" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p aria-level="2" role="heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0.625rem 0px;">"The Valley felt familiar, though she had never spent time there before."</p></blockquote></div></div><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;"></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“<em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">Oh, The Places You’ll Go</em>. A Classic,” he said. “Perfect gift for quinceañera, graduations, funerals.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha laughed and sat up straight, tucking her legs together and placing the book across her lap. “Quite the range.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“It’s a life cycle, baby.” He laughed and dunked his face under water, coming up in a tremor of waves, his striking smile gleaming, his black hair shiny blue.</p><p class="body-dropcap" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;"></em></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">He told her his name was Marcus Quintana, and that he was a diesel mechanic nearby in Alamosa, born in Capulin. “You’re a city girl,” he said. “I see your manicure. Get it.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha pretended to ignore him, drifting back into her book, smirking between the pages.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“You know,” Marcus said from the water, “I didn’t want to tell you what happens in the end, but I heard he speaks for the trees.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha looked up from her book. She laughed. “As if they can’t speak for themselves.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Exactly,” said Marcus. “That’s why I want you to come with me to the tiki bar.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha rolled her eyes. She asked what he meant.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Tell that nice lady what you’d like to drink.”</p><h2 class="body-h2" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Quase, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 2.25rem; line-height: 1.2; margin: 1.875rem 0px 1.875rem 47.6px; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.3125rem;">*</h2><p class="body-dropcap" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">His black Silverado tugged at sunset along the two-lane highway. Tasha followed Marcus in her Camry, the windows down, hay-scented warmth of oncoming night moving through her hair. She was listening to the radio, country music, old Rihanna songs, snippets of faraway voices discussing something about wolves in Colorado and then something about sheep. Ridiculous. What she was doing wasn’t rational, but it didn’t matter because it was summertime and it was late but it was still light out and everything was beautiful and open against the green fields.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">They pulled into town, a bar called the Broken Bluff with a red sign, a horse standing on a mesa outlined in bulb lights, many gone dark. The town was a single road with a post office, a small library, a diner, few scattered bars and hair salons. The near-empty parking lot was tinged a grayish night, and an old carwash sign, in the shape of a blue metal cloud, hovered over them, squeaking in the dry wind. By now the sun was fully set. They stood together against Marcus’ pickup bed, smoking Marlboro Reds and sipping from his thermos, this one filled with 1800, backup, he had said, for the flask of Jim Beam he kept in the dash. Tasha tipped her head back, swallowing the liquid warmth down her throat and into her belly. She licked her lips, felt happier and sexier standing there looking out at the parking lot, quiet as a church, Tasha wondered why she couldn’t feel this way always.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Thanks for coming with me,” she said, taking a drag. “I didn’t think you’d want to drive this far into town.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“My old stomping grounds. Besides,” he said, brushing his hand along the top of Tasha’s. That electric rush moved between them, lodging itself in Tasha’s center. “Look at this night. I’d drive through this night forever. Quiet,” he said. “Nice,” he said.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">A silver Grand Prix pulled into the parking lot then. It drove in a wide circle, the windows down, and for a moment Tasha caught the gaze of a little girl in the front seat. Her dark hair blended into the interior and her ghost-like eyes followed Tasha until the car pulled back onto the highway, retreating in a blur of taillights. Marcus tossed what was left of his cigarette after them in a burning arch. He cupped Tasha’s hand in his, and kissed her left temple, his saliva over her skin a little too cold as they headed inside, moving quickly to the bar.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Whatever you’d like,” he said, and Tasha pushed forward on her tippy toes against the old-timey wooden bar, the back mirror webbed around a bullet hole. At the jukebox, Neil Young’s "Cortez the Killer"<em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;"> </em>played beneath the scattered sports sounds of distant TVs.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Tequila,” she chirped. “A double with coke.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">First, red. The vinyl booths, the carpet, the mirrored walls, the bottles of scotch, the register, the bathroom stall, the sinks, the back door, the front door, the pickup truck’s seats, the mats on the floor, the lines she imagined on the dirt road, the inside of her eyelids against the bedroom light.…………. Then white. Amarillo, the ranch’s earthen walls, the soil smell, teeth in the night, the undershirt, the boxers, the shine of the silver crucifix around his neck, how it moved forward and back…..as he moved inside and out? And then there was dark,…………. black, the feeling of sleeping with no one………….. ………Alone……… She reached through the sheets and her fingertips grazed the chilled adobe……………………………….</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">walls………………………………………………………………………………………………………and she rested like that, keeping her hand there, remembering in some distant part of her brain that she ……………………………………………………………………………..</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">was……………………………………………………………………………………</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">..…..….steadied, grounded,………………………………………………………………………</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">that the world was not tipping on its side and dropping itself inside into nothingness…………….</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Please, she groaned to no one, and thought she had remembered saying no.</p><h2 class="body-h2" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Quase, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 2.25rem; line-height: 1.2; margin: 1.875rem 0px 1.875rem 47.6px; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.3125rem;">*</h2><p class="body-dropcap" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Do you know there are people who don’t black out?” Chantel had once told her at a Lodo bar called the Giggling Grizzly. They were celebrating it being a Thursday. They were newly twenty-one. “Like they drink and never ever have regrets.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Must be nice,” Tasha had said with genuine surprise. “That’s the ultimate in good genes.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“I know, right? So many bad things happen while I’m drunk. I lose jewelry, I spend all my money, I give my number to anyone.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Yeah,” Tasha said. “<em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">All </em>the bad things happen while I’m drinking.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“But I mean, I’m not gonna quit.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Chantel laughed. They both did. They laughed until Tasha had tears in her eyes.</p><h2 class="body-h2" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Quase, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 2.25rem; line-height: 1.2; margin: 1.875rem 0px 1.875rem 47.6px; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.3125rem;">*</h2><p class="body-dropcap" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha woke up at five in the morning—still drunk and still dark, as if she had entered endless night. She only wore a t-shirt, and it was on backwards and inside out. She was surprised and disgusted to find cold vomit beside the toilet. Was it even hers? The front door was unlocked and it felt as though the adobe walls themselves were disappointed in her, pitying her as some broken daughter of the house.</p><p class="body-dropcap" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">In bed, Tasha pulled the patchwork quilt over her head, hiding from the home. She couldn’t remember most of the night. But her body ached, her legs, abdomen, mouth and breasts, everything was tender, harmed—that’s how Tasha knew she had had sex. She needed to drive over an hour into Alamosa for Plan B, and she’d have to make an appointment to get tested. Tasha thought to call the university women’s clinic then, but there was a time, several months ago, she had slept with an old boyfriend when he visited Denver for the weekend. Tasha was mortified, when weeks after his visit, she tested positive for chlamydia. “No big deal,” Chantel had said. “It’s literally antibiotics.” But the nurse had said something to Tasha over the phone that made her want to die: “This kind of thing doesn’t need to happen. You could take better care of your body. Aren’t you in graduate school?”</p><p class="body-dropcap" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha smoked a joint, the dusty curtains drawn, filtered daylight painful on her swollen face. After some time, she staggered to the kitchen sink and drank water from her cupped hands, the liquid spilling over her bottom lip and onto her neck. She took too many Tylenol, but it all came up anyway and Tasha lay there, nauseous and pained, searching his name on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google. Nothing. A fake, and it served her right. She cried at this, heaving tears, wetting her sheets and pillows.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">After some time, Tasha tried Arturo over Facetime audio.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“I can’t talk right now,” he said when he answered.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha breathed. She mutely cried. “I just—.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Not now,” he said. “I’m with my family.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">He hung up then, and Tasha went back to bed, groggy with embarrassment, wishing she could escape herself. <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">Are you fucking kidding me? </em>Chantel had said years earlier. They were having breakfast in a small diner on the Northside, neither had an appetite. Yellow eggs and brown toast rested over plastic plates. <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">Tasha, there’s a word for what he did.</em> But Tasha shook her head. She teared up and dripped into her coffee. No, she said, this was different. The shame made her sleep that time, too.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha woke up hours later, the day all but gone. Her car, she realized, was still at the Broken Bluff, and so methodically, painfully, she dressed herself for a long walk.</p><h2 class="body-h2" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Quase, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 2.25rem; line-height: 1.2; margin: 1.875rem 0px 1.875rem 47.6px; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.3125rem;">*</h2><p class="body-dropcap" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">The county road and barbed wire fences lined the desert like a palm. The valley floor was high and wide, bordered by far-off snowy peaks and blue mesas. At the horizon, where sight edged into air, a white pickup truck stirred a halo of dust, as if the sky midway decided to rain dirt. Tasha passed few adobe farm houses, cottonwood trees along ditches, the slithering and bleak body of a bull snake shuffling into the grass. She marched with a stolid expression, her face knotted in perseverance, her dark eyes held in a squint and her mouth fixed in a sweaty line. She tried to think of nothing, repeatedly moved her thoughts to the dirt road. There was eventually a dead bird, a baby owl, stretched out in the road, cruciform in infant wings. Tasha stopped and turned toward a patch of mailboxes. She leaned with her left arm into the post, vomiting into the grass.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">The road felt infinite, a flowing dirt path, too warm for late day. Tasha considered turning back, starting again the next morning, but she forced herself to keep walking. She could do it. She had walked further before. Sophomore year of high school, Tasha’s mother had taken her to a dermatologist appointment in the suburbs. Tasha accidentally locked the keys in her mother’s minivan. She screamed at Tasha in the parking lot, told her that she was always distracted, always lazy. Tasha cried then. She felt worthless, a way she felt often. When her mother went inside to wait for the locksmith, Tasha began walking home. She had underestimated the distance by several miles and walked alongside 72<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 14.25px; line-height: 0; outline: 0px; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">nd</span> Avenue for what felt like hours. It grew dark. Cars honked and men hurled insults and trash from their windows. They yelled slut and bitch, someone even shouted cunt. Tasha intermittently ran, afraid to be dragged into a truck bed. When she arrived home, past dinner time, aching and shivering, her mother slapped her. What was wrong her? Did she want to get raped?</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“You could have picked me up,” she had said. “You didn’t even try to find me.”</p><h2 class="body-h2" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Quase, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 2.25rem; line-height: 1.2; margin: 1.875rem 0px 1.875rem 47.6px; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.3125rem;">*</h2><p class="body-dropcap" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Homes began to group, three or four trailers on a tire-filled lot. A water tower appeared over high trees and Main Street was within sight. Tasha wiped her sweaty face with the end of her black t-shirt. She thought of her grandmother, buried near Denver, and wondered if she had walked to school like this as a little girl, zigzagging over dirt roads, tucked into the desert, hidden from the major byways of the world.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Pieces of the night came to Tasha as she walked. They laughed, sitting together at the long cedar table in the kitchen. They smoked cigarettes, overlooking the cattle in the dark. A chorus of moos. It wasn’t <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">that</em> bad, she tried telling herself. She would have preferred to have been present, that’s all. Tasha cried then and bent forward, forcing her hands across her thighs. She readied herself to be sick, but there was nothing left to puke. Far above her in the sky, hawks tilted in flight and the sunflowers, sprinkled throughout the fields, lowered their golden heads, as if they saw nothing at all.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">They arrived in silence then, padded sneakers upon the earth. A whole grouping dressed in white. They came from behind Tasha carrying images of the Virgin Mary draped over tall wooden sticks. They were all ages, children, grandparents, young people with ringless fingers. Tasha stood tall and watched as they moved around her like a stream. She was swallowed by the group of twenty or so religious pilgrims. She had seen processions before, in Denver, devout Catholics sometimes walked into the mountains to visit sacred shrines. They walked the dirt road rhythmically in solitary unison. They prayed, <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;">Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.</em> Tasha didn’t know if she should adjust her pace, cross the road and walk beside them, going in the same direction separately. A woman turned around, looked deeply into Tasha’s eyes. She wore brilliant green humming bird earrings that flickered with fading light. “Pray with us, jita.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha thought to say no, but didn’t want to seem rude, and so instinctively, she nodded, stepping into the crowd.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">They had come from San Luis, a town some 40 miles west, deep in the valley. Starting at dawn, the pilgrims descended the Stations of the Cross from the high mount overlooking the entire region. Tasha told them that her favorite station was Jesus’ second fall, though she had no idea why she had a favorite station in the first place. The people smiled at her. They asked why she was in the Valley, and Tasha told them that she was an artist. “I’m visiting my ancestors,” she said, surprising herself. The pilgrims told her that it was special, to be able to create is special. They were on their way to Our Lady of Guadalupe and they carried water and fruit, granola bars tucked into fanny packs. They offered Tasha some, and she ate with enjoyment. They felt like warmth and they whispered to one another, cooing.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“We’re going to visit the sacred crown, a miracle,” said a little girl with pink ribbons in her braided black hair.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">An old man whispered that the church had nearly burned down twice. “But each time,” he said. “God protected La Virgen. She wears a crown of smoke now. She is indestructible.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Don’t you get tired along the way?” Tasha asked.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">The woman in the humming bird earrings nodded, they floated around her. “Weakness opens us up to grace.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">They arrived together in town, crossing train tracks, marching over dirty steel. At a fork in the road, Tasha said that she must turn away now. They embraced her. They smelled of sweat and stones and told her that she was welcome to pray with them anytime. Tasha’s car was in the distance, glinting in the dusky bar parking lot, indestructible, she thought, walking off on her own.</p><h2 class="body-h2" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Quase, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 2.25rem; line-height: 1.2; margin: 1.875rem 0px 1.875rem 47.6px; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.3125rem;">*</h2><p class="body-dropcap" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">In the days after the unwelcome visitor, the young woman used more of the rooms, opened all the windows and doors. She aligned with the walls, blurred into the corners, as if built of the same earth. “It’s fine that you don’t want to talk to me,” she spoke. “It’s distracting anyway. I’m not able to focus on making art. But I want you to know, Arturo,” she said, peering through the window above the sink, in the distance beyond her shoulders, a cemetery. “I’m not just some dumb girl.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">She moved about the house, speaking and sleeping and eating and drinking. She had tendencies and tastes, a left around the table instead of a right, one water glass, rinsed each time, drying on the rack. She walked the fields in the mornings and rested in the afternoons, napped with books beside her bed. At night, she kicked the quilt and ground her teeth. When she spoke, her voice often changed. Sometimes, as if reciting her thoughts, a low tone, unadorned. But other times, she cussed and laughed loudly. And other times still, she was meek and somber. “It’s just, I have a lot to work on. But I’m glad I got to see this place, this land I come from.” She went to say more, but all that came out was, “Bye now, Arturo. Thank you, I guess?”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">The young woman had a sadness that went very deep, a well connected to a spring. But it was a pleasurable sorrow with the capacity for great feeling, a rare gift, and the house had encountered it before. The girls’ names were Teresa and Anita, and they had played in the fields, bristling in colorful dresses and strict braids. When they molded the bricks outside in the merciless sun, they laughed and told jokes in two languages, Spanish and English, and were often scolded by their father. “Back to work, no laying about, no laughing, either.” Anita was the first to spit, a clear glistening speckle of salvia. Teresa followed with a phlegmy rush. They took turns spitting into the adobe, laughing at their naughtiness, rubbing the gritty clay between their fingers, pinching at the straw.</p><h2 class="body-h2" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Quase, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 2.25rem; line-height: 1.2; margin: 1.875rem 0px 1.875rem 47.6px; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.3125rem;">*</h2><p class="body-dropcap" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">From afar the girl’s jacket caught what little light illuminated the land. Some ways down the dirt road, she walked the edges of the ditch with Our Lady of Guadalupe in blue against her back. Foolish, the old man thought, when it’s about to rain. In the distance veins of lightning spread over the mesas like a sky of shattered glass. As he pulled alongside the girl, he saw that she was older than he originally thought, very pretty and looked somewhat Spanish and Indian, though, like his own grandchildren, appeared to be a mixture of many things. He drove beside her for several seconds until she removed the white dangling cords from her ears and with a look of horror, acknowledged his presence with a stifled wave.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">The old man rolled down his passenger side window. “Hello,” he said.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Hello,” the girl said, quickly without making eye contact.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“It’s about to storm,” he said. “Are you just out walking?”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">The girl heisted for a moment, and the old man knew she must be scared.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“I was on my way to the graves, to visit my people.” He held up a fistful of wildflowers, a small stuffed bear. “This one’s for the baby.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“I’m on my way there, too,” the girl said after some time.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Pretty far,” he told her, “Another twenty-five minutes and by then you’ll be soaked. Want a ride?”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha entered the truck oddly without any fear. She’d never done something like this before, but the old man seemed gentle, the way kindness spreads from certain people. They drove without the radio on, the only sounds coming from the gravel and rocks spitting up from the ground and into the truck’s undercarriage. The old man said his name was Joseph, and he was born in San Luis on the floor of his parents’ adobe ranch in the 1940s. He asked Tasha if she was visiting family, and she lied, saying that she was staying at her cousin’s ranch, the Lobatos.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“I just arrived the other day,” she said.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Those Lobatos,” he said, and for a moment went silent. “When we were kids, I was in love with the eldest daughter, Teresa. She was a good woman. Gone now.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha let out a sad sigh. She asked about the other sister.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Anita,” he said. “Haven’t thought of her in ages. Left as soon as she could. Just married and got out. But I heard he wasn’t a good guy. She was back often.”</p><div class="embed embed-pullquote embed-pullquote-align-center" data-align="center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0e1111; font-family: Quase, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 1.75rem; line-height: 1.2; margin: 4.375rem 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px; text-align: center; width: auto;"><div class="embed-inner" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;"><blockquote class="pullquote" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p aria-level="2" role="heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0.625rem 0px;">"Tasha gazed at the land, as if it were alive, some part of its soil and rock embedded in her DNA."</p></blockquote></div></div><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">Tasha gazed at the land, as if it were alive, some part of its soil and rock embedded in her DNA. It felt like looking into her mother’s eyes, like embracing her grandmother, all the women she had ever loved. They soon came to a grouping of trailers, their metal sides dented and torn. It had started to drizzle by now, and the trailers’ metal siding blurred into the haze, as if leaking into the air.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">They arrived at the cemetery, working together to unlatch the chains around the cattle gate. Tasha helped carry the stuffed bear and flowers from the truck while the old man lifted tools from the back—sheers, a gardening shovel. They stepped past a hand-painted that sign that warned against rattle snakes. The snake looked like a petroglyph. When Tasha asked if it was safe, the old man laughed.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Snakes all over this land. I don’t know why they’re warning the dead.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Do you know much about that land over there, El Rancho Amarillo,” Tasha asked.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">The old man shook his head. “We don’t call it that. That’s the Hernandez.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“But the family—”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“That’s the grandmother’s name, the name of her people.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">“Her maiden name,” Tasha said.</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;">The old man shrugged. “I used to sheep herd around all these hills. All these bluffs. Up into those mountains. All of it. Motherland, if nothing else.”</p><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;"><br /></p><div class="breaker-ad article-breaker-ad standard-article-breaker-ad" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 1.25rem; outline: 0px; padding-top: 0.3125rem; position: relative; text-align: center; transform: none; width: 1119.89px;"></div><div class="breaker-ad article-breaker-ad standard-article-breaker-ad" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 1.25rem; outline: 0px; padding-top: 0.3125rem; position: relative; text-align: center; transform: none; width: 1119.89px;"><br /></div></span></div><div><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><p class="body-text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Charter, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem 47.6px; outline: 0px;"><br /></p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-29690323132991167062020-08-17T21:52:00.002-07:002020-08-17T21:52:41.355-07:00The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">ou ask me if I can forgive myself? I can forgive myself for many things. For where I left him. For what I did. But I will not forgive myself for the year that I hated my daughter, when I believed her to have run away, perhaps to the city. During that year I forbade her name to be mentioned, and if her name entered my prayers when I prayed, it was to ask that she would one day learn the meaning of what she had done, of the dishonour that she had brought to my family, of the red that ringed her mother’s eyes.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I hate myself for that, and nothing will ease that, not even what happened that night, on the side of the mountain.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I had searched for nearly ten years, although the trail was cold. I would say that I found him by accident, but I do not believe in accidents. If you walk the path, eventually you must arrive at the cave.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">But that was later. First, there was the valley on the mainland, the whitewashed house in the gentle meadow with the burn splashing through it, a house that sat like a square of white sky against the green of the grass and the heather just beginning to purple.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">And there was a boy outside the house, picking wool from off a thornbush. He did not see me approaching, and he did not look up until I said, “I used to do that. Gather the wool from the thorn-bushes and twigs. My mother would wash it, then she would make me things with it. A ball, and a doll.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He turned. He looked shocked, as if I had appeared out of nowhere. And I had not. I had walked many a mile, and had many more miles to go. I said, “I walk quietly. Is this the house of Calum MacInnes?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The boy nodded, drew himself up to his full height, which was perhaps two fingers bigger than mine, and he said, “I am Calum MacInnes.”<span id="more-1338" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Is there another of that name? For the Calum MacInnes that I seek is a grown man.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The boy said nothing, just unknotted a thick clump of sheep’s wool from the clutching fingers of the thorn-bush. I said, “Your father, perhaps? Would he be Calum MacInnes as well?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The boy was peering at me. “What are you?” he asked.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I am a small man,” I told him. “But I am a man, nonetheless, and I am here to see Calum MacInnes.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Why?” The boy hesitated. Then, “And why are you so small?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said, “Because I have something to ask your father. Man’s business.” And I saw a smile start at the tips of his lips. “It’s not a bad thing to be small, young Calum. There was a night when the Campbells came knocking on my door, a whole troop of them, twelve men with knives and sticks, and they demanded of my wife, Morag, that she produce me, as they were there to kill me, in revenge for some imagined slight. And she said, ‘Young Johnnie, run down to the far meadow, and tell your father to come back to the house, that I sent for him.’ And the Campbells watched as the boy ran out the door. They knew that I was a most dangerous person. But nobody had told them that I was a wee man, or if that had been told them, it had not been believed.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Did the boy call you?” said the lad.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“It was no boy,” I told him, “but me myself, it was. And they’d had me, and still I walked out the door and through their fingers.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The boy laughed. Then he said, “Why were the Campbells after you?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“It was a disagreement about the ownership of cattle. They thought the cows were theirs. I maintained the Campbells’ ownership of them had ended the first night the cows had come with me over the hills.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Wait here,” said young Calum MacInnes.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I sat by the burn and looked up at the house. It was a good-sized house: I would have taken it for the house of a doctor or a man of law, not of a border reaver. There were pebbles on the ground and I made a pile of them, and I tossed the pebbles, one by one, into the burn. I have a good eye, and I enjoyed rattling the pebbles over the meadow and into the water. I had thrown a hundred stones when the boy returned, accompanied by a tall, loping man. His hair was streaked with grey, his face was long and wolfish. There are no wolves in those hills, not any longer, and the bears have gone too.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Good day to you,” I said.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said nothing in return, only stared; I am used to stares. I said, “I am seeking Calum MacInnes. If you are he, say so, I will greet you. If you are not he, tell me now, and I will be on my way.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“What business would you have with Calum MacInnes?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I wish to hire him, as a guide.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“And where is it you would wish to be taken?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I stared at him. “That is hard to say,” I told him. “For there are some who say it does not exist. There is a certain cave on the Misty Isle.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said nothing. Then he said, “Calum, go back to the house.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“But da—”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Tell your mother I said she was to give you some tablet. You like that. Go on.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Expressions crossed the boy’s face—puzzlement, hunger, happiness—and then he turned and ran back to the white house.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Calum MacInnes said, “Who sent you here?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I pointed to the burn as it splashed its way between us on its journey down the hill. “What’s that?” I asked.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Water,” he replied.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“And they say there is a king across it,” I told him.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I did not know him then at all, and never knew him well, but his eyes became guarded, and his head cocked to one side. “How do I know you are who you say you are?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I have claimed nothing,” I said. “Just that there are those who have heard that there is a cave on the Misty Isle, and that you might know the way.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said, “I will not tell you where the cave is.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I am not here asking for directions. I seek a guide. And two travel more safely than one.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He looked me up and down, and I waited for the joke about my size, but he did not make it, and for that I was grateful. He just said, “When we reach the cave, I will not go inside. You must bring out the gold yourself.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said, “It is all one to me.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said, “You can take only what you carry. I will not touch it. But yes, I will take you.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said, “You will be paid well for your trouble.” I reached into my jerkin, handed him the pouch I had in there. “This for taking me. Another, twice the size, when we return.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He poured the coins from the pouch into his huge hand, and he nodded. “Silver,” he said. “Good.” Then, “I will say good-bye to my wife and son.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Is there nothing you need to bring?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said, “I was a reaver in my youth, and reavers travel light. I’ll bring a rope, for the mountains.” He patted his dirk, which hung from his belt, and went back into the whitewashed house. I never saw his wife, not then, nor at any other time. I do not know what colour her hair was.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I threw another fifty stones into the burn as I waited, until he returned, with a coil of rope thrown over one shoulder, and then we walked together away from a house too grand for any reaver, and we headed west.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">*</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The mountains between the rest of the world and the coast are gradual hills, visible from a distance as gentle, purple, hazy things, like clouds. They seem inviting. They are slow mountains, the kind you can walk up easily, like walking up a hill, but they are hills that take a full day and more to climb. We walked up the hill, and by the end of the first day we were cold.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I saw snow on the peaks above us, although it was high summer.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">We said nothing to each other that first day. There was nothing to be said. We knew where we were going.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">We made a fire, from dried sheep dung and a dead thorn-bush: we boiled water and made our porridge, each of us throwing a handful of oats and a fingerpinch of salt into the little pan I carried. His handful was huge, and my handful was small, like my hands, which made him smile and say, “I hope you will not be eating half of the porridge.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said I would not and indeed, I did not, for my appetite is smaller than that of a full-grown man. But this is a good thing, I believe, for I can keep going in the wild on nuts and berries that would not keep a bigger person from starving.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">A path of sorts ran across the high hills, and we followed it and encountered almost nobody: a tinker and his donkey, piled high with old pots, and a girl leading the donkey, who smiled at me when she thought me to be a child, and then scowled when she perceived me to be what I am, and would have thrown a stone at me had the tinker not slapped her hand with the switch he had been using to encourage the donkey; and, later, we overtook an old woman and a man she said was her grandson, on their way back across the hills. We ate with her, and she told us that she had attended the birth of her first great-grandchild, that it was a good birth. She said she would tell our fortunes from the lines in our palms, if we had coins to cross her palm. I gave the old biddy a clipped lowland groat, and she looked at my palm.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">She said, “I see death in your past and death in your future.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Death waits in all our futures,” I said.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">She paused, there in the highest of the high lands, where the summer winds have winter on their breath, where they howl and whip and slash the air like knives. She said, “There was a woman in a tree. There will be a man in a tree.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said, “Will this mean anything to me?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“One day. Perhaps.” She said, “Beware of gold. Silver is your friend.” And then she was done with me.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">To Calum MacInnes she said, “Your palm has been burned.” He said that was true. She said, “Give me your other hand, your left hand.” He did so. She gazed at it, intently. Then, “You return to where you began. You will be higher than most other men. And there is no grave waiting for you, where you are going.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said, “You tell me that I will not die?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“It is a left-handed fortune. I know what I have told you, and no more.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">She knew more. I saw it in her face.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">That was the only thing of any importance that occurred to us on the second day.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">We slept in the open that night. The night was clear and cold, and the sky was hung with stars that seemed so bright and close I felt as if I could have reached out my arm and gathered them, like berries.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">We lay side by side beneath the stars, and Calum MacInnes said, “Death awaits you, she said. But death does not wait for me. I think mine was the better fortune.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Perhaps.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Ah,” he said. “It is all nonsense. Old-woman talk. It is not truth.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I woke in the dawn mist to see a stag, watching us curiously.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The third day we crested those mountains, and we began to walk downhill.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">My companion said, “When I was a boy, my father’s dirk fell into the cooking fire. I pulled it out, but the metal hilt was as hot as the flames. I did not expect this, but I would not let the dirk go. I carried it away from the fire, and plunged the sword into the water. It made steam. I remember that. My palm was burned, and my hand curled, as if it was meant to carry a sword until the end of time.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said, “You, with your hand. Me, only a little man. It’s fine heroes we are, who seek our fortunes on the Misty Isle.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He barked a laugh, short and without humour. “Fine heroes,” was all he said.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The rain began to fall then, and did not stop falling. That night we passed a small croft house. There was a trickle of smoke from its chimney, and we called out for the owner, but there was no response.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I pushed open the door and called again. The place was dark, but I could smell tallow, as if a candle had been burning and had recently been snuffed.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“No one at home,” said Calum, but I shook my head and walked forward, then leaned my head down into the darkness beneath the bed.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Would you care to come out?” I asked. “For we are travellers, seeking warmth and shelter and hospitality. We would share with you our oats and our salt and our whisky. And we will not harm you.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">At first the woman, hidden beneath the bed, said nothing, and then she said, “My husband is away in the hills. He told me to hide myself away if the strangers come, for fear of what they might do to me.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said, “I am but a little man, good lady, no bigger than a child, you could send me flying with a blow. My companion is a full-sized man, but I do swear that we shall do nothing to you, save partake of your hospitality, and dry ourselves. Please do come out.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">All covered with dust and spiderwebs she was when she emerged, but even with her face all begrimed, she was beautiful, and even with her hair all webbed and greyed with dust it was still long and thick, and golden red. For a heartbeat she put me in the mind of my daughter, but that my daughter would look a man in the eye, while this one glanced only at the ground fearfully, like something expecting to be beaten.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I gave her some of our oats, and Calum produced strips of dried meat from his pocket, and she went out to the field and returned with a pair of scrawny turnips, and she prepared food for the three of us.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I ate my fill. She had no appetite. I believe that Calum was still hungry when his meal was done. He poured whisky for the three of us: she took but a little, and that with water. The rain rattled on the roof of the house, and dripped in the corner, and, unwelcoming though it was, I was glad that I was inside.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">It was then that a man came through the door. He said nothing, only stared at us, untrusting, angry. He pulled off his cape of oiled sacking, and his hat, and he dropped them on the earth floor. They dripped and puddled. The silence was oppressive.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Calum MacInnes said, “Your wife gave us hospitality, when we found her. Hard enough she was in the finding.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“We asked for hospitality,” I said. “As we ask it of you.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The man said nothing, only grunted.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">In the high lands, people spend words as if they were golden coins. But the custom is strong there: strangers who ask for hospitality must be granted it, though you have a blood feud against them and their clan or kind.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The woman—little more than a girl she was, while her husband’s beard was grey and white, so I wondered if she was his daughter for a moment, but no: there was but one bed, scarcely big enough for two—the woman went outside, into the sheep pen that adjoined the house, and returned with oatcakes and a dried ham she must have hidden there, which she sliced thin, and placed on a wooden trencher before the man.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Calum poured the man whisky, and said, “We seek the Misty Isle. Do you know if it is there?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The man looked at us. The winds are bitter in the high lands, and they would whip the words from a man’s lips. He pursed his mouth, then he said, “Aye. I saw it from the peak this morning. It’s there. I cannot say if it will be there tomorrow.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">We slept on the hard-earth floor of that cottage. The fire went out, and there was no warmth from the hearth. The man and his woman slept in their bed, behind the curtain. He had his way with her, beneath the sheepskin that covered that bed, and before he did that, he beat her for feeding us and for letting us in. I heard them, and could not stop hearing them, and sleep was hard in the finding that night.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I have slept in the homes of the poor, and I have slept in palaces, and I have slept beneath the stars, and would have told you before that night that all places were one to me. But I woke before first light, convinced we had to be gone from that place, but not knowing why, and I woke Calum by putting a finger to his lips, and silently we left that croft on the mountainside without saying our farewells, and I have never been more pleased to be gone from anywhere.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">We were a mile from the place when I said, “The island. You asked if it would be there. Surely, an island is there, or it is not there.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Calum hesitated. He seemed to be weighing his words, and then he said, “The Misty Isle is not as other places. And the mist that surrounds it is not like other mists.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">We walked down a path worn by hundreds of years of sheep and deer and few enough men.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said, “They also call it the Winged Isle. Some say it is because the island, if seen from above, would look like butterfly wings. And I do not know the truth of it.” Then, “ ‘And what is truth?’ said jesting Pilate.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">It is harder coming down than it is going up.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I thought about it. “Sometimes I think that truth is a place. In my mind, it is like a city: there can be a hundred roads, a thousand paths, that will all take you, eventually, to the same place. It does not matter where you come from. If you walk toward the truth, you will reach it, whatever path you take.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Calum MacInnes looked down at me and said nothing. Then, “You are wrong. The truth is a cave in the black mountains. There is one way there, and one only, and that way is treacherous and hard, and if you choose the wrong path you will die alone, on the mountainside.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">We crested the ridge, and we looked down to the coast. I could see villages below, beside the water. And I could see high black mountains before me, on the other side of the sea, coming out of the mist.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Calum said, “There’s your cave. In those mountains.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The bones of the earth I thought, seeing them. And then I became uncomfortable, thinking of bones, and to distract myself, I said, “And how many times is it you have been there?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Only once.” He hesitated. “I searched for it all my sixteenth year, for I had heard the legends, and I believed if I sought I should find. I was seventeen when I reached it, and came back with all the gold coins I could carry.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“And were you not frightened of the curse?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“When I was young, I was afraid of nothing.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“What did you do with your gold?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“A portion I buried and I alone know where. The rest I used as brideprice for the woman I loved, and I built a fine house with it.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He stopped as if he had already said too much.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">There was no ferryman at the jetty. Only a small boat, hardly big enough for three full-sized men, tied to a tree trunk on the shore, twisted and half dead, and a bell beside it.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I sounded the bell, and soon enough a fat man came down the shore. He said to Calum, “It will cost you a shilling for the ferry, and your boy, three pennies.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I stood tall. I am not as big as other men are, but I have as much pride as any of them. “I am also a man,” I said. “I’ll pay your shilling.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The ferryman looked me up and down, then he scratched his beard. “I beg your pardon. My eyes are not what they once were. I shall take you to the island.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I handed him a shilling. He weighed it in his hand, “That’s ninepence you did not cheat me out of. Nine pennies are a lot of money in this dark age.” The water was the colour of slate, although the sky was blue, and whitecaps chased one another across the water’s surface. He untied the boat and hauled it, rattling, down the shingle to the water. We waded out into the cold water, and clambered inside.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The splash of oars on seawater, and the boat propelled forward in easy movements. I sat closest to the ferryman. I said, “Ninepence. It is good wages. But I have heard of a cave in the mountains on the Misty Isle, filled with gold coins, the treasure of the ancients.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He shook his head dismissively.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Calum was staring at me, lips pressed together so hard they were white. I ignored him and asked the man again, “A cave filled with golden coins, a gift from the Norsemen or the Southerners or from those who they say were here long before any of us: those who fled into the West as the people came.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Heard of it,” said the ferryman. “Heard also of the curse of it. I reckon that the one can take care of the other.” He spat into the sea. Then he said, “You’re an honest man, dwarf. I see it in your face. Do not seek this cave. No good can come of it.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I am sure you are right,” I told him, without guile.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I am certain I am,” he said. “For not every day is it that I take a reaver and a little dwarfy man to the Misty Isle.” Then he said, “In this part of the world, it is not considered lucky to talk about those who went to the West.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">We rode the rest of the boat journey in silence, though the sea became choppier, and the waves splashed into the side of the boat, such that I held on with both hands for fear of being swept away.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">And after what seemed like half a lifetime the boat was tied to a long jetty of black stones. We walked the jetty as the waves crashed around us, the salt spray kissing our faces. There was a humpbacked man at the landing selling oatcakes and plums dried until they were almost stones. I gave him a penny and filled my jerkin pockets with them.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">We walked on into the Misty Isle.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I am old now, or at least, I am no longer young, and everything I see reminds me of something else I’ve seen, such that I see nothing for the first time. A bonny girl, her hair fiery red, reminds me only of another hundred such lasses, and their mothers, and what they were as they grew, and what they looked like when they died. It is the curse of age, that all things are reflections of other things.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I say that, but my time on the Misty Isle, that is also called, by the wise, the Winged Isle, reminds me of nothing but itself.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">It is a day from that jetty until you reach the black mountains.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Calum MacInnes looked at me, half his size or less, and he set off at a loping stride, as if challenging me to keep up. His legs propelled him across the ground, which was wet, and all ferns and heather.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Above us, low clouds were scudding, grey and white and black, hiding each other and revealing and hiding again.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I let him get ahead of me, let him press on into the rain, until he was swallowed by the wet, grey haze. Then, and only then, I ran.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">This is one of the secret things of me, the things I have not revealed to any person, save to Morag, my wife, and Johnnie and James, my sons, and Flora, my daughter (may the Shadows rest her poor soul): I can run, and I can run well, and, if I need to I can run faster and longer and more sure-footedly than any full-sized man; and it was like this that I ran then, through the mist and the rain, taking to the high ground and the blackrock ridges, yet keeping below the skyline.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He was ahead of me, but I spied him soon, and I ran on and I ran past him, on the high ground with the brow of the hill between us. Below us was a stream. I can run for days without stopping. That is the first of my three secrets, and one secret I have revealed to no man.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">We had discussed already where we would camp that first night on the Misty Isle, and Calum had told me that we would spend the night beneath the rock that is called Man and Dog, for it is said that it looks like an old man with his dog by his side, and I reached it late in the afternoon. There was a shelter beneath the rock, which was protected and dry, and some of those who had been before us had left firewood behind, sticks and twigs and branches. I made a fire and dried myself in front of it and took the chill from my bones. The woodsmoke blew out across the heather.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">It was dark when Calum loped into the shelter and looked at me as if he had not expected to see me that side of midnight. I said, “What took you so long, Calum MacInnes?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said nothing, only stared at me. I said, “There is trout, boiled in mountain water, and a fire to warm your bones.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He nodded. We ate the trout, drank whisky to warm ourselves. There was a mound of heather and of ferns, dried and brown, piled high in the rear of the shelter, and we slept upon that, wrapped tight in our damp cloaks.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I woke in the night. There was cold steel against my throat—the flat of the blade, not the edge. I said, “And why would you ever kill me in the night, Calum MacInnes? For our way is long, and our journey is not yet over.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said, “I do not trust you, dwarf.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“It is not me you must trust,” I told him, “but those that I serve. And if you left with me but return without me, there are those who will know the name of Calum MacInnes, and cause it to be spoken in the shadows.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The cold blade remained at my throat. He said, “How did you get ahead of me?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“And here was I, repaying ill with good, for I made you food and a fire. I am a hard man to lose, Calum MacInnes, and it ill becomes a guide to do as you did today. Now, take your dirk from my throat and let me sleep.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said nothing, but after a few moments, the blade was removed. I forced myself neither to sigh nor to breathe, hoping he could not hear my heart pounding in my chest; and I slept no more that night.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">For breakfast, I made porridge, and threw in some dried plums to soften them.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The mountains were black and grey against the white of the sky. We saw eagles, huge and ragged of wing, circling above us. Calum set a sober pace and I walked beside him, taking two steps for every one of his.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“How long?” I asked him.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“A day. Perhaps two. It depends upon the weather. If the clouds come down then two days, or even three . . .”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The clouds came down at noon and the world was blanketed by a mist that was worse than rain: droplets of water hung in the air, soaked our clothes and our skin; the rocks we walked upon became treacherous and Calum and I slowed in our ascent, stepped carefully. We were walking up the mountain, not climbing, up goat paths and craggy sharp ways. The rocks were black and slippery: we walked, and climbed and clambered and clung, we slipped and slid and stumbled and staggered, and even in the mist, Calum knew where he was going, and I followed him.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He paused at a waterfall that splashed across our path, thick as the trunk of an oak. He took the thin rope from his shoulders, wrapped it about a rock.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“This was not here before,” he told me. “I’ll go first.” He tied one end of the rope about his waist and edged out along the path, into the falling water, pressing his body against the wet rock face, edging slowly, intently through the sheet of water.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I was scared for him, scared for both of us: holding my breath as he passed, only breathing when he was on the other side of the waterfall. He tested the rope, pulled on it, motioned me to follow him, when a rock gave way beneath his foot, and he slipped on the wet rock, and fell into the abyss.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The rope held, and the rock beside me held. Calum MacInnes dangled from the end of the rope. He looked up at me, and I sighed, anchored myself by a slab of crag, and I wound and pulled him up and up. I hauled him back onto the path, dripping and cursing.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said, “You’re stronger than you look,” and I cursed myself for a fool. He must have seen it on my face for, after he shook himself (like a dog, sending droplets flying), he said, “My boy Calum told me the tale you told him about the Campbells coming for you, and you being sent into the fields by your wife, with them thinking she was your ma, and you a boy.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“It was just a tale,” I said. “Something to pass the time.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Indeed?” he said. “For I heard tell of a raiding party of Campbells sent out a few years ago, seeking revenge on someone who had taken their cattle. They went, and they never came back. If a small fellow like you can kill a dozen Campbells . . . well, you must be strong, and you must be fast.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I must be <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">stupid</em>, I thought ruefully, telling that child that tale.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I had picked them off one by one, like rabbits, as they came out to piss or to see what had happened to their friends: I had killed seven of them before my wife killed her first. We buried them in the glen, built a small cairn of stacking stones above them, to weigh them down so their ghosts would not walk, and we were sad: that Campbells had come so far to kill me, that we had been forced to kill them in return.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I take no joy in killing: no man should, and no woman. Sometimes death is necessary, but it is always an evil thing. That is something I am in no doubt of, even after the events I speak of here.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I took the rope from Calum MacInnes, and I clambered up and up, over the rocks, to where the waterfall came out of the side of the hill, and it was narrow enough for me to cross. It was slippery there, but I made it over without incident, tied the rope in place, came down it, threw the end of it to my companion, walked him across.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He did not thank me, neither for rescuing him, nor for getting us across; and I did not expect thanks. I also did not expect what he actually said, though, which was: “You are not a whole man, and you are ugly. Your wife: is she also small and ugly, like yourself?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I decided to take no offence, whether offence had been intended or no. I simply said, “She is not. She is a tall woman, almost as tall as you, and when she was young—when we were both younger—she was reckoned by some to be the most beautiful girl in the lowlands. The bards wrote songs praising her green eyes and her long red-golden hair.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I thought I saw him flinch at this, but it is possible that I imagined it, or more likely, wished to imagine I had seen it.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“How did you win her, then?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I spoke the truth: “I wanted her, and I get what I want. I did not give up. She said I was wise and I was kind, and I would always provide for her. And I have.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The clouds began to lower, once more, and the world blurred at the edges, became softer.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“She said I would be a good father. And I have done my best to raise my children. Who are also, if you are wondering, normal-sized.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I beat sense into young Calum,” said older Calum. “He is not a bad child.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“You can only do that as long as they are there with you,” I said. And then I stopped talking, and I remembered that long year, and also I remembered Flora when she was small, sitting on the floor with jam on her face, looking up at me as if I were the wisest man in the world.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Ran away, eh? I ran away when I was a lad. I was twelve. I went as far as the court of the King over the Water. The father of the current king.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“That’s not something you hear spoken aloud.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I am not afraid,” he said. “Not here. Who’s to hear us? Eagles? I saw him. He was a fat man, who spoke the language of the foreigners well, and our own tongue only with difficulty. But he was still our king.” He paused. “And if he is to come to us again, he will need gold, for vessels and weapons and to feed the troops that he raises.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said, “So I believe. That is why we go in search of the cave.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said, “This is bad gold. It does not come free. It has its cost.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Everything has its cost.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I was remembering every landmark—climb at the sheep skull, cross the first three streams, then walk along the fourth until the five heaped stones and find where the rock looks like a seagull and walk on between two sharply jutting walls of black rock, and let the slope bring you with it . . .</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I could remember it, I knew. Well enough to find my way down again. But the mists confused me, and I could not be certain.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">We reached a small loch, high in the mountains, and drank fresh water, caught huge white creatures that were not shrimps or lobsters or crayfish, and ate them raw like sausages, for we could not find any dry wood to make our fire, that high.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">We slept on a wide ledge beside the icy water and woke into clouds before sunrise, when the world was grey and blue.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“You were sobbing in your sleep,” said Calum.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I had a dream,” I told him.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I do not have bad dreams,” Calum said.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“It was a good dream,” I said. It was true. I had dreamed that Flora still lived. She was grumbling about the village boys, and telling me of her time in the hills with the cattle, and of things of no consequence, smiling her great smile and tossing her hair the while, red-golden like her mother’s, although her mother’s hair is now streaked with white.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Good dreams should not make a man cry out like that,” said Calum. A pause, then, “I have no dreams, not good, not bad.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“No?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Not since I was a young man.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">We rose. A thought struck me: “Did you stop dreaming after you came to the cave?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said nothing. We walked along the mountainside, into the mist, as the sun came up.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The mist seemed to thicken and fill with light, in the sunshine, but did not fade away and I realized that it must be a cloud. The world glowed. And then it seemed to me that I was staring at a man of my size, a small, humpty man, his shadow, standing in the air in front of me, like a ghost or an angel, and it moved as I moved. It was haloed by the light, and shimmered, and I could not have told you how near it was or how far away. I have seen miracles and I have seen evil things, but never have I seen anything like that.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Is it magic?” I asked, although I smelled no magic on the air.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Calum said, “It is nothing. A property of the light. A shadow. A reflection. No more. I see a man beside me, as well. He moves as I move.” I glanced back, but I saw nobody beside him.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">And then the little glowing man in the air faded, and the cloud, and it was day, and we were alone.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">We climbed all that morning, ascending. Calum’s ankle had twisted the day before, when he had slipped at the waterfall. Now it swelled in front of me, swelled and went red, but his pace did not ever slow, and if he was in discomfort or in pain, it did not show upon his face.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said, “How long?” as the dusk began to blur the edges of the world.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“An hour, less, perhaps. We will reach the cave, and then we will sleep for the night. In the morning you will go inside. You can bring out as much gold as you can carry, and we will make our way back off the island.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I looked at him, then: grey-streaked hair, grey eyes, so huge and wolfish a man, and I said, “You would sleep outside the cave?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I would. There are no monsters in the cave. Nothing that will come out and take you in the night. Nothing that will eat us. But you should not go in until daylight.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">And then we rounded a rockfall, all black rocks and grey half-blocking our path, and we saw the cave mouth. I said, “Is that all?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“You expected marble pillars? Or a giant’s cave from a gossip’s fireside tales?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Perhaps. It looks like nothing. A hole in the rock face. A shadow. And there are no guards?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“No guards. Only the place, and what it is.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“A cave filled with treasure. And you are the only one who can find it?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Calum laughed then, like a fox’s bark. “The islanders know how to find it. But they are too wise to come here, to take its gold. They say that the cave makes you evil: that each time you visit it, each time you enter to take gold, it eats the good in your soul, so they do not enter.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“And is that true? Does it make you evil?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“ . . . No. The cave feeds on something else. Not good and evil. Not really. You can take your gold, but afterwards, things are,” he paused, “things are <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">flat</em>. There is less beauty in a rainbow, less meaning in a sermon, less joy in a kiss . . .” He looked at the cave mouth and I thought I saw fear in his eyes. “Less.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said, “There are many for whom the lure of gold outweighs the beauty of a rainbow.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Me, when young, for one. You, now, for another.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“So we go in at dawn.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“You will go in. I will wait for you out here. Do not be afraid. No monster guards the cave. No spells to make the gold vanish, if you do not know some cantrip or rhyme.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">We made our camp, then; or rather we sat in the darkness, against the cold rock wall. There would be no sleep there.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said, “You took the gold from here, as I will do tomorrow. You bought a house with it, a bride, a good name.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">His voice came from the darkness. “Aye. And they meant nothing to me, once I had them, or less than nothing. And if your gold pays for the King over the Water to come back to us and rule us and bring about a land of joy and prosperity and warmth, it will still mean nothing to you. It will be as something you heard of that happened to a man in a tale.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I have lived my life to bring the king back,” I told him.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said, “You take the gold back to him. Your king will want more gold, because kings want more. It is what they do. Each time you come back, it will mean less. The rainbow means nothing. Killing a man means nothing.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Silence then, in the darkness. I heard no birds: only the wind that called and gusted about the peaks like a mother seeking her babe.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said, “We have both killed men. Have you ever killed a woman, Calum MacInnes?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I have not. I have killed no woman, no girls.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I ran my hands over my dirk in the darkness, seeking the wood and center of the hilt, the steel of the blade. It was there in my hands. I had not intended to ever tell him, only to strike when we were out of the mountains, strike once, strike deep, but now I felt the words being pulled from me, would I or never-so. “They say there was a girl,” I told him. “And a thorn-bush.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Silence. The whistling of the wind. “Who told you?” he asked. Then, “Never mind. I would not kill a woman. No man of honour would kill a woman . . .”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">If I said a word, I knew, he would be silent on the subject, and never talk about it again. So I said nothing. Only waited.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Calum MacInnes began to speak, choosing his words with care, talking as if he was remembering a tale he had heard as a child and had almost forgotten. “They told me the kine of the lowlands were fat and bonny, and that a man could gain honour and glory by adventuring off to the southlands and returning with the fine red cattle. So I went south, and never a cow was good enough, until on a hillside in the lowlands I saw the finest, reddest, fattest cows that ever a man has seen. So I began to lead them away, back the way I had come.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“She came after me with a stick. The cattle were her father’s, she said, and I was a rogue and a knave and all manner of rough things. But she was beautiful, even when angry, and had I not already a young wife, I might have dealt more kindly to her. Instead I pulled a knife, and touched it to her throat, and bade her to stop speaking. And she did stop.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I would not kill her—I would not kill a woman, and that is the truth—so I tied her, by her hair, to a thorn tree, and I took her knife from her waistband, to slow her as she tried to free herself, and pushed the blade of it deep into the sod. I tied her to the thorn tree by her long hair, and I thought no more of her as I made off with her cattle.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“It was another year before I was back that way. I was not after cows that day, but I walked up the side of that bank—it was a lonely spot, and if you had not been looking, you might not have seen it. Perhaps nobody searched for her.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I heard they searched,” I told him. “Although some believed her taken by reavers, and others believed her run away with a tinker, or gone to the city. But still, they searched.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Aye. I saw what I did see—perhaps you’d have to have stood where I was standing, to see what I did see. It was an evil thing I did, perhaps.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Perhaps?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said, “I have taken gold from the cave of the mists. I cannot tell any longer if there is good or there is evil. I sent a message, by a child, at an inn, telling them where she was, and where they could find her.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I closed my eyes but the world became no darker.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“There is evil,” I told him.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I saw it in my mind’s eye: her skeleton picked clean of clothes, picked clean of flesh, as naked and white as anyone would ever be, hanging like a child’s puppet against the thorn-bush, tied to a branch above it by its red-golden hair.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“At dawn,” said Calum MacInnes, as if we had been talking of provisions or the weather, “you will leave your dirk behind, for such is the custom, and you will enter the cave, and bring out as much gold as you can carry. And you will bring it back with you, to the mainland. There’s not a soul in these parts, knowing what you carry or where it’s from, would take it from you. Then send it to the King over the Water, and he will pay his men with it, and feed them, and buy their weapons. One day, he will return. Tell me on that day that there is evil, little man.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">*</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">When the sun was up, I entered the cave. It was damp in there. I could hear water running down one wall, and I felt a wind on my face, which was strange, because there was no wind inside the mountain.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">In my mind, the cave would be filled with gold. Bars of gold would be stacked like firewood, and bags of golden coins would sit between them. There would be golden chains and golden rings, and golden plates, heaped high like the china plates in a rich man’s house.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I had imagined riches, but there was nothing like that here. Only shadows. Only rock.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Something was here, though. Something that waited.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I have secrets, but there is a secret that lies beneath all my other secrets, and not even my children know it, although I believe my wife suspects, and it is this: my mother was a mortal woman, the daughter of a miller, but my father came to her from out of the West, and to the West he returned when he had had his sport with her. I cannot be sentimental about my parentage: I am sure he does not think of her, and doubt that he ever knew of me. But he left me a body that is small, and fast, and strong; and perhaps I take after him in other ways—I do not know. I am ugly, and my father was beautiful, or so my mother told me once, but I think that she might have been deceived.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I wondered what I would have seen in that cave if my father had been an innkeeper from the lowlands.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">You would be seeing gold</em>, said a whisper that was not a whisper, from deep in the heart of the mountain. It was a lonely voice, and distracted, and bored.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I would see gold,” I said aloud. “Would it be real, or would it be an illusion?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The whisper was amused. <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">You are thinking like a mortal man, making things always to be one thing or another. It is gold they would see, and touch. Gold they would carry back with them, feeling the weight of it the while, gold they would trade with other mortals for what they needed. What does it matter if it is there or no if they can see it, touch it, steal it, murder for it? Gold they need and gold I give them.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“And what do you take, for the gold you give them?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Little enough, for my needs are few, and I am old; too old to follow my sisters into the West. I taste their pleasure and their joy. I feed, a little, feed on what they do not need and do not value. A taste of heart, a lick and a nibble of their fine consciences, a sliver of soul. And in return a fragment of me leaves this cave with them and gazes out at the world through their eyes, sees what they see until their lives are done and I take back what is mine.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Will you show yourself to me?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I could see, in the darkness, better than any man born of man and woman could see. I saw something move in the shadows, and then the shadows congealed and shifted, revealing formless things at the edge of my perception, where it meets imagination. Troubled, I said the thing it is proper to say at times such as this: “Appear before me in a form that neither harms nor is offensive to me.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Is that what you wish?</em></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The drip of distant water. “Yes,” I said.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">From out of the shadows it came, and it stared down at me with empty sockets, smiled at me with wind-weathered ivory teeth. It was all bone, save its hair, and its hair was red and gold, and wrapped about the branch of a thorn-bush.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“That offends my eyes.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I took it from your mind</em>, said a whisper that surrounded the skeleton. Its jawbone did not move. <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I chose something you loved. This was your daughter, Flora, as she was the last time you saw her.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I closed my eyes, but the figure remained.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">It said, <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The reaver waits for you at the mouth of the cave. He waits for you to come out, weaponless and weighed down with gold. He will kill you, and take the gold from your dead hands.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“But I’ll not be coming out with gold, will I?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I thought of Calum MacInnes, the wolf-grey in his hair, the grey of his eyes, the line of his dirk. He was bigger than I am, but all men are bigger than I am. Perhaps I was stronger, and faster, but he was also fast, and he was strong.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">He killed my daughter</em>, I thought, then wondered if the thought was mine or if it had crept out of the shadows and into my head. Aloud, I said, “Is there another way out of this cave?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">You leave the way you entered, through the mouth of my home.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I stood there and did not move, but in my mind I was like an animal in a trap, questing and darting from idea to idea, finding no purchase and no solace and no solution.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said, “I am weaponless. He told me that I could not enter this place with a weapon. That it was not the custom.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">It is the custom now, to bring no weapon into my place. It was not always the custom. Follow me</em>, said the skeleton of my daughter.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I followed her, for I could see her, even when it was so dark that I could see nothing else.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">In the shadows it said, <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">It is beneath your hand.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I crouched and felt it. The haft felt like bone—perhaps an antler. I touched the blade cautiously in the darkness, discovered that I was holding something that felt more like an awl than a knife. It was thin, sharp at the tip. It would be better than nothing.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Is there a price?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">There is always a price.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Then I will pay it. And I ask one other thing. You say that you can see the world through his eyes.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">There were no eyes in that hollow skull, but it nodded. “Then tell me when he sleeps.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">It said nothing. It melded into the darkness, and I felt alone in that place.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Time passed. I followed the sound of the dripping water, found a rock pool, and drank. I soaked the last of the oats and I ate them, chewing them until they dissolved in my mouth. I slept and woke and slept again, and dreamed of my wife, Morag, waiting for me as the seasons changed, waiting for me just as we had waited for our daughter, waiting for me forever.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Something, a finger I thought, touched my hand: it was not bony and hard. It was soft, and humanlike, but too cold. <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">He sleeps.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I left the cave in the blue light, before dawn. He slept across the cavemouth, catlike, I knew, such that the slightest touch would have woken him. I held my weapon in front of me, a bone handle and a needlelike blade of blackened silver, and I reached out and took what I was after, without waking him.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Then I stepped closer, and his hand grasped for my ankle and his eyes opened.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Where is the gold?” asked Calum MacInnes.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I have none.” The wind blew cold on the mountainside. I had danced back, out of his reach, when he had grabbed at me. He stayed on the ground, pushed himself up onto one elbow.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Then he said, “Where is my dirk?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I took it,” I told him. “While you slept.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He looked at me, sleepily. “And why ever would you do that? If I was going to kill you I would have done it on the way here. I could have killed you a dozen times.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“But I did not have gold then, did I?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said nothing.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said, “If you think you could have got me to bring the gold from the cave, and that not bringing it out would have saved your miserable soul, then you are a fool.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He no longer looked sleepy. “A fool, am I?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He was ready to fight. It is good to make people who are ready to fight angry.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said, “Not a fool. No. For I have met fools and idiots, and they are happy in their idiocy, even with straw in their hair. You are too wise for foolishness. You seek only misery and you bring misery with you and you call down misery on all you touch.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He rose then, holding a rock in his hand like an axe, and he came at me. I am small, and he could not strike me as he would have struck a man of his own size. He leaned over to strike. It was a mistake.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I held the bone haft tightly, and stabbed upward, striking fast with the point of the awl, like a snake. I knew the place I was aiming for, and I knew what it would do.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He dropped his rock, clutched at his right shoulder. “My arm,” he said. “I cannot feel my arm.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He swore then, fouling the air with curses and threats. The dawn light on the mountaintop made everything so beautiful and blue. In that light, even the blood that had begun to soak his garments was purple. He took a step back, so he was between me and the cave. I felt exposed, the rising sun at my back.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Why do you not have gold?” he asked me. His arm hung limply at his side.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“There was no gold there for such as I,” I said.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He threw himself forward, then, ran at me and kicked at me. My awl blade went flying from my hand. I threw my arms around his leg, and I held on to him as together we tumbled off the mountainside.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">His head was above me, and I saw triumph in it, and then I saw sky, and then the valley floor was above me and I was rising to meet it and then it was below me and I was falling to my death.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">A jar and a bump, and now we were turning over and over on the side of the mountain, the world a dizzying whirligig of rock and pain and sky, and I knew I was a dead man, but still I clung to the leg of Calum MacInnes.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I saw a golden eagle in flight, but below me or above me I could no longer say. It was there, in the dawn sky, in the shattered fragments of time and perception, there in the pain. I was not afraid: there was no time and no space to be afraid in, no space in my mind and no space in my heart. I was falling through the sky, holding tightly to the leg of a man who was trying to kill me; we were crashing into rocks, scraping and bruising and then . . .</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">. . . we stopped. Stopped with force enough that I felt myself jarred, and was almost thrown off Calum MacInnes and to my death beneath. The side of the mountain had crumbled, there, long ago, sheared off, leaving a sheet of blank rock, as smooth and as featureless as glass. But that was below us. Where we were, there was a ledge, and on the ledge there was a miracle: stunted and twisted, high above the treeline, where no trees have any right to grow, was a twisted hawthorn tree, not much larger than a bush, although it was old. Its roots grew into the side of the mountain, and it was this hawthorn that had caught us in its grey arms.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I let go of the leg, clambered off Calum MacInnes’s body, and onto the side of the mountain. I stood on the narrow ledge and looked down at the sheer drop. There was no way down from here. No way down at all.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I looked up. It might be possible, I thought, climbing slowly, with fortune on my side, to make it up that mountain. If it did not rain. If the wind was not too hungry. And what choice did I have? The only alternative was death.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">A voice: “So. Will you leave me here to die, dwarf?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said nothing. I had nothing to say.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">His eyes were open. He said, “I cannot move my right arm, since you stabbed it. I think I broke a leg in the fall. I cannot climb with you.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I said, “I may succeed, or I may fail.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“You’ll make it. I’ve seen you climb. After you rescued me, crossing that waterfall. You went up those rocks like a squirrel going up a tree.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I did not have his confidence in my climbing abilities.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He said, “Swear to me by all you hold holy. Swear by your king, who waits over the sea as he has since we drove his subjects from this land. Swear by the things you creatures hold dear—swear by shadows and eagle feathers and by silence. Swear that you will come back for me.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“You know what I am?” I said.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I know nothing,” he said. “Only that I want to live.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I thought. “I swear by these things,” I told him. “By shadows and by eagle feathers and by silence. I swear by green hills and standing stones. I will come back.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I would have killed you,” said the man in the hawthorn bush, and he said it with humour, as if it was the biggest joke that ever one man had told another. “I had planned to kill you, and take the gold back as my own.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I know.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">His hair framed his face like a wolf-grey halo. There was red blood on his cheek where he had scraped it in the fall. “You could come back with ropes,” he said. “My rope is still up there, by the cave mouth. But you’d need more than that.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Yes,” I said. “I will come back with ropes.” I looked up at the rock above us, examined it as best I could. Sometimes good eyes mean the difference between life and death, if you are a climber. I saw where I would need to be as I went, the shape of my journey up the face of the mountain. I thought I could see the ledge outside the cave, from which we had fallen as we fought. I would head for there. Yes.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I blew on my hands, to dry the sweat before I began to climb. “I will come back for you,” I said. “With ropes. I have sworn.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“When?” he asked, and he closed his eyes.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“In a year,” I told him. “I will come here in a year.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">I began to climb. The man’s cries followed me as I stepped and crawled and squeezed and hauled myself up the side of that mountain, mingling with the cries of the great raptors; and they followed me back from the Misty Isle, with nothing to show for my pains and my time, and I will hear him screaming, at the edge of my mind, as I fall asleep or in the moments before I wake, until I die.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">It did not rain, and the wind gusted and plucked at me but did not throw me down. I climbed, and I climbed in safety.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">When I reached the ledge, the cave entrance seemed like a darker shadow in the noonday sun. I turned from it, turned my back on the mountain, and from the shadows that were already gathering in the cracks and the crevices and deep inside my skull, and I began my slow journey away from the Misty Isle. There were a hundred roads and a thousand paths that would take me back to my home in the lowlands, where my wife would be waiting.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">*</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">© by Neil Gaiman. Used by permission. From the collection <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Stories/?isbn=9780061230929" style="color: #e03a3a; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Stories</a></em>, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Enter the world of Neil Gaiman <a href="http://www.neilgaiman.com/" style="color: #e03a3a; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">here!</a></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">In August, Neil will give <a href="http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/Templates/Event/Event.aspx?id=6442451470" style="color: #e03a3a; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">his first reading of this story </a>at the celebrated Sydney Opera House, accompanied by illustrations by <a href="http://eddiecampbell.blogspot.com/" style="color: #e03a3a; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Eddie Campbell </a>and a musical arrangement by <a href="http://www.fourplay.com.au/" style="color: #e03a3a; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">FourPlay String Quartet</a>. Start making your travel plans now!</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">And you can follow Neil himself at <a href="http://twitter.com/neilhimself" style="color: #e03a3a; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">@neilhimself </a>. . . as if you didn’t know that already . . .</p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-220325103028725142020-08-17T21:51:00.003-07:002020-08-17T21:51:51.804-07:00The Lottery<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: TNYAdobeCaslonPro, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px;">he morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 26th, but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took only about two hours, so it could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner.</span></p><div class="grid grid-margins grid-items-2 grid-layout--adrail narrow wide-adrail" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; display: grid; font-family: TNYAdobeCaslonPro, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; gap: 2rem; grid-template-columns: repeat(12, 1fr); margin: 0px auto; max-width: 1600px; padding-left: 3rem; padding-right: 3rem;"><div class="grid--item body body__container article__body grid-layout__content" style="box-sizing: border-box; grid-column: 2 / span 6; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px auto 1rem; max-width: 1600px; padding: 0px; width: 695.575px;"><div aria-hidden="true" class="consumer-marketing-unit consumer-marketing-unit--article-mid-content consumer-marketing-unit--no-failsafe" role="presentation" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="consumer-marketing-unit__slot consumer-marketing-unit__slot--article-mid-content consumer-marketing-unit__slot--in-content" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div class="journey-unit" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play, and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands. Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix—the villagers pronounced this name “Dellacroy”—eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys. The girls stood aside, talking among themselves, looking over their shoulders at the boys, and the very small children rolled in the dust or clung to the hands of their older brothers or sisters.</p><div class="ad ad--in-content" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--in-content" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">Soon the men began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes. They stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed. The women, wearing faded house dresses and sweaters, came shortly after their menfolk. They greeted one another and exchanged bits of gossip as they went to join their husbands. Soon the women, standing by their husbands, began to call to their children, and the children came reluctantly, having to be called four or five times. Bobby Martin ducked under his mother’s grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones. His father spoke up sharply, and Bobby came quickly and took his place between his father and his oldest brother.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">The lottery was conducted—as were the square dances, the teen-age club, the Halloween program—by Mr. Summers, who had time and energy to devote to civic activities. He was a round-faced, jovial man and he ran the coal business, and people were sorry for him, because he had no children and his wife was a scold. When he arrived in the square, carrying the black wooden box, there was a murmur of conversation among the villagers, and he waved and called, “Little late today, folks.” The postmaster, Mr. Graves, followed him, carrying a three-legged stool, and the stool was put in the center of the square and Mr. Summers set the black box down on it. The villagers kept their distance, leaving a space between themselves and the stool, and when Mr. Summers said, “Some of you fellows want to give me a hand?,” there was a hesitation before two men, Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, came forward to hold the box steady on the stool while Mr. Summers stirred up the papers inside it.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box. There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here. Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off without anything’s being done. The black box grew shabbier each year; by now it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained.</p><div class="inline-recirc-wrapper inline-recirc-observer-target-1 viewport-monitor-anchor" data-attr-viewport-monitor="inline-recirc" data-event-boundary="click" data-event-click="{"pattern":"InlineRecirc"}" data-include-experiments="true" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, held the black box securely on the stool until Mr. Summers had stirred the papers thoroughly with his hand. Because so much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded, Mr. Summers had been successful in having slips of paper substituted for the chips of wood that had been used for generations. Chips of wood, Mr. Summers had argued, had been all very well when the village was tiny, but now that the population was more than three hundred and likely to keep on growing, it was necessary to use something that would fit more easily into the black box. The night before the lottery, Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves made up the slips of paper and put them into the box, and it was then taken to the safe of Mr. Summers’ coal company and locked up until Mr. Summers was ready to take it to the square next morning. The rest of the year, the box was put away, sometimes one place, sometimes another; it had spent one year in Mr. Graves’ barn and another year underfoot in the post office, and sometimes it was set on a shelf in the Martin grocery and left there.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">There was a great deal of fussing to be done before Mr. Summers declared the lottery open. There were the lists to make up—of heads of families, heads of households in each family, members of each household in each family. There was the proper swearing-in of Mr. Summers by the postmaster, as the official of the lottery; at one time, some people remembered, there had been a recital of some sort, performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory, tuneless chant that had been rattled off duly each year; some people believed that the official of the lottery used to stand just so when he said or sang it, others believed that he was supposed to walk among the people, but years and years ago this part of the ritual had been allowed to lapse. There had been, also, a ritual salute, which the official of the lottery had had to use in addressing each person who came up to draw from the box, but this also had changed with time, until now it was felt necessary only for the official to speak to each person approaching. Mr. Summers was very good at all this; in his clean white shirt and blue jeans, with one hand resting carelessly on the black box, he seemed very proper and important as he talked interminably to Mr. Graves and the Martins.</p></div><div class="grid--item grid-layout__aside" style="box-sizing: border-box; grid-column: 9 / -1; justify-self: start; min-width: 300px;"><aside class="persistent-aside" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: 2929.4px; position: absolute; top: 801.8px; transition: top 0.2s ease-out 0s; z-index: 80;"><div class="sticky-box" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; opacity: 1; position: sticky; top: 90px; transition: opacity 0.1s ease 0s;"><div class="sticky-box__primary" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="ad ad--rail" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 300px; min-height: 250px;"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="cns-ads-stage cns-ads-slot-type-rail cns-ads-slot-type-rail-0 cns-ads-slot-state-filled cns-ads-slot-size-300x250" data-name="rail_0" data-slot-type="rail" id="cns-ads-slot-type-rail-0" style="box-sizing: border-box; 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grid-column: 2 / span 6; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px auto 1rem; max-width: 1600px; padding: 0px; width: 695.575px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px;">Just as Mr. Summers finally left off talking and turned to the assembled villagers, Mrs. Hutchinson came hurriedly along the path to the square, her sweater thrown over her shoulders, and slid into place in the back of the crowd. “Clean forgot what day it was,” she said to Mrs. Delacroix, who stood next to her, and they both laughed softly. “Thought my old man was out back stacking wood,” Mrs. Hutchinson went on, “and then I looked out the window and the kids was gone, and then I remembered it was the twenty-seventh and came a-running.” She dried her hands on her apron, and Mrs. Delacroix said, “You’re in time, though. They’re still talking away up there.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">Mrs. Hutchinson craned her neck to see through the crowd and found her husband and children standing near the front. She tapped Mrs. Delacroix on the arm as a farewell and began to make her way through the crowd. The people separated good-humoredly to let her through; two or three people said, in voices just loud enough to be heard across the crowd, “Here comes your Mrs., Hutchinson,” and “Bill, she made it after all.” Mrs. Hutchinson reached her husband, and Mr. Summers, who had been waiting, said cheerfully, “Thought we were going to have to get on without you, Tessie.” Mrs. Hutchinson said, grinning, “Wouldn’t have me leave m’dishes in the sink, now, would you, Joe?,” and soft laughter ran through the crowd as the people stirred back into position after Mrs. Hutchinson’s arrival.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Well, now,” Mr. Summers said soberly, “guess we better get started, get this over with, so’s we can go back to work. Anybody ain’t here?”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Dunbar,” several people said. “Dunbar, Dunbar.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">Mr. Summers consulted his list. “Clyde Dunbar,” he said. “That’s right. He’s broke his leg, hasn’t he? Who’s drawing for him?”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Me, I guess,” a woman said, and Mr. Summers turned to look at her. “Wife draws for her husband,” Mr. Summers said. “Don’t you have a grown boy to do it for you, Janey?” Although Mr. Summers and everyone else in the village knew the answer perfectly well, it was the business of the official of the lottery to ask such questions formally. Mr. Summers waited with an expression of polite interest while Mrs. Dunbar answered.</p><div class="inline-recirc-wrapper inline-recirc-observer-target-2 viewport-monitor-anchor" data-attr-viewport-monitor="inline-recirc" data-event-boundary="click" data-event-click="{"pattern":"InlineRecirc"}" data-in-view="{"pattern":"InlineRecirc"}" data-include-experiments="true" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Horace’s not but sixteen yet,” Mrs. Dunbar said regretfully. “Guess I gotta fill in for the old man this year.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Right,” Mr. Summers said. He made a note on the list he was holding. Then he asked, “Watson boy drawing this year?”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">A tall boy in the crowd raised his hand. “Here,” he said. “I’m drawing for m’mother and me.” He blinked his eyes nervously and ducked his head as several voices in the crowd said things like “Good fellow, Jack,” and “Glad to see your mother’s got a man to do it.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Well,” Mr. Summers said, “guess that’s everyone. Old Man Warner make it?”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Here,” a voice said, and Mr. Summers nodded.</p><p class="has-dropcap has-dropcap__lead-standard-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 32px;">Asudden hush fell on the crowd as Mr. Summers cleared his throat and looked at the list. “All ready?” he called. “Now, I’ll read the names—heads of families first—and the men come up and take a paper out of the box. Keep the paper folded in your hand without looking at it until everyone has had a turn. Everything clear?”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">The people had done it so many times that they only half listened to the directions; most of them were quiet, wetting their lips, not looking around. Then Mr. Summers raised one hand high and said, “Adams.” A man disengaged himself from the crowd and came forward. “Hi, Steve,” Mr. Summers said, and Mr. Adams said, “Hi, Joe.” They grinned at one another humorlessly and nervously. Then Mr. Adams reached into the black box and took out a folded paper. He held it firmly by one corner as he turned and went hastily back to his place in the crowd, where he stood a little apart from his family, not looking down at his hand.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Allen,” Mr. Summers said. “Anderson. . . . Bentham.”</p><div class="inline-recirc-wrapper inline-recirc-observer-target-3 viewport-monitor-anchor" data-attr-viewport-monitor="inline-recirc" data-event-boundary="click" data-event-click="{"pattern":"InlineRecirc"}" data-in-view="{"pattern":"InlineRecirc"}" data-include-experiments="true" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Seems like there’s no time at all between lotteries any more,” Mrs. Delacroix said to Mrs. Graves in the back row. “Seems like we got through with the last one only last week.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Time sure goes fast,” Mrs. Graves said.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Clark. . . . Delacroix.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“There goes my old man,” Mrs. Delacroix said. She held her breath while her husband went forward.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Dunbar,” Mr. Summers said, and Mrs. Dunbar went steadily to the box while one of the women said, “Go on, Janey,” and another said, “There she goes.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“We’re next,” Mrs. Graves said. She watched while Mr. Graves came around from the side of the box, greeted Mr. Summers gravely, and selected a slip of paper from the box. By now, all through the crowd there were men holding the small folded papers in their large hands, turning them over and over nervously. Mrs. Dunbar and her two sons stood together, Mrs. Dunbar holding the slip of paper.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Harburt. . . . Hutchinson.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Get up there, Bill,” Mrs. Hutchinson said, and the people near her laughed.</p><div class="inline-recirc-wrapper inline-recirc-observer-target-4 viewport-monitor-anchor" data-attr-viewport-monitor="inline-recirc" data-event-boundary="click" data-event-click="{"pattern":"InlineRecirc"}" data-include-experiments="true" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Jones.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“They do say,” Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, “that over in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">Old Man Warner snorted. “Pack of crazy fools,” he said. “Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">them</em>. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">that</em> way for a while. Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’ First thing you know, we’d all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There’s <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">always</em> been a lottery,” he added petulantly. “Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Some places have already quit lotteries,” Mrs. Adams said.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Nothing but trouble in <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">that</em>,” Old Man Warner said stoutly. “Pack of young fools.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Martin.” And Bobby Martin watched his father go forward. “Overdyke. . . . Percy.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“I wish they’d hurry,” Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son. “I wish they’d hurry.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“They’re almost through,” her son said.</p><div class="inline-recirc-wrapper inline-recirc-observer-target-5 viewport-monitor-anchor" data-attr-viewport-monitor="inline-recirc" data-event-boundary="click" data-event-click="{"pattern":"InlineRecirc"}" data-include-experiments="true" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“You get ready to run tell Dad,” Mrs. Dunbar said.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">Mr. Summers called his own name and then stepped forward precisely and selected a slip from the box. Then he called, “Warner.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery,” Old Man Warner said as he went through the crowd. “Seventy-seventh time.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Watson.” The tall boy came awkwardly through the crowd. Someone said, “Don’t be nervous, Jack,” and Mr. Summers said, “Take your time, son.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Zanini.”</p><p class="has-dropcap has-dropcap__lead-standard-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 32px;">After that, there was a long pause, a breathless pause, until Mr. Summers, holding his slip of paper in the air, said, “All right, fellows.” For a minute, no one moved, and then all the slips of paper were opened. Suddenly, all the women began to speak at once, saying, “Who is it?,” “Who’s got it?,” “Is it the Dunbars?,” “Is it the Watsons?” Then the voices began to say, “It’s Hutchinson. It’s Bill,” “Bill Hutchinson’s got it.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Go tell your father,” Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">People began to look around to see the Hutchinsons. Bill Hutchinson was standing quiet, staring down at the paper in his hand. Suddenly, Tessie Hutchinson shouted to Mr. Summers, “You didn’t give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn’t fair!”</p></div><div class="grid--item grid-layout__aside" style="box-sizing: border-box; grid-column: 9 / -1; justify-self: start; min-width: 300px;"><div class="sticky-box" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; opacity: 1; position: sticky; top: 90px; transition: opacity 0.1s ease 0s;"><div class="sticky-box__primary" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div class="sticky-box__placeholder" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div></div></div></div><div class="row full-bleed-ad" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TNYAdobeCaslonPro, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; margin: 0px; width: 1519.2px;"><div class="ad ad--mid-content" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: -0.5rem; padding: 2.5rem 0px; position: relative; z-index: 300;"><span class="ad-label" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #979797; display: block; font-family: NeutrafaceNewYorker, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; left: 0px; letter-spacing: 0.15em; line-height: 1em; position: absolute; right: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; top: 1.6rem;">ADVERTISEMENT</span><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-content" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="cns-ads-stage cns-ads-slot-type-mid-content cns-ads-slot-type-mid-content-1 cns-ads-slot-state-filled cns-ads-slot-size-728x90" data-name="mid_content_1" data-slot-type="mid_content" id="cns-ads-slot-type-mid-content-1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; width: 1519.2px;"><div class="cns-ads-container" data-google-query-id="CIudlqb6o-sCFdNovAodN0gGFg" id="mid_content_1" style="box-sizing: content-box; margin: 0px auto;"><div id="google_ads_iframe_3379/conde.newyorker/mid-content/magazine/article/2_0__container__" style="border: 0pt none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: center;"><iframe data-google-container-id="e" data-load-complete="true" frameborder="0" height="90" id="google_ads_iframe_3379/conde.newyorker/mid-content/magazine/article/2_0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" name="google_ads_iframe_3379/conde.newyorker/mid-content/magazine/article/2_0" scrolling="no" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" title="3rd party ad content" width="728"></iframe></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="grid grid-margins grid-items-2 grid-layout--adrail narrow wide-adrail" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; display: grid; font-family: TNYAdobeCaslonPro, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; gap: 2rem; grid-template-columns: repeat(12, 1fr); margin: 0px auto; max-width: 1600px; padding-left: 3rem; padding-right: 3rem;"><div class="grid--item body body__container article__body grid-layout__content" style="box-sizing: border-box; grid-column: 2 / span 6; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px auto 1rem; max-width: 1600px; padding: 0px; width: 695.575px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px;">“Be a good sport, Tessie,” Mrs. Delacroix called, and Mrs. Graves said, “All of us took the same chance.”</p><div class="inline-recirc-wrapper inline-recirc-observer-target-6 viewport-monitor-anchor" data-attr-viewport-monitor="inline-recirc" data-event-boundary="click" data-event-click="{"pattern":"InlineRecirc"}" data-include-experiments="true" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Shut up, Tessie,” Bill Hutchinson said.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Well, everyone,” Mr. Summers said, “that was done pretty fast, and now we’ve got to be hurrying a little more to get done in time.” He consulted his next list. “Bill,” he said, “you draw for the Hutchinson family. You got any other households in the Hutchinsons?”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“There’s Don and Eva,” Mrs. Hutchinson yelled. “Make <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">them</em> take their chance!”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Daughters draw with their husbands’ families, Tessie,” Mr. Summers said gently. “You know that as well as anyone else.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“It wasn’t <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">fair</em>,” Tessie said.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“I guess not, Joe,” Bill Hutchinson said regretfully. “My daughter draws with her husband’s family, that’s only fair. And I’ve got no other family except the kids.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Then, as far as drawing for families is concerned, it’s you,” Mr. Summers said in explanation, “and as far as drawing for households is concerned, that’s you, too. Right?”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Right,” Bill Hutchinson said.</p><div class="inline-recirc-wrapper inline-recirc-observer-target-7 viewport-monitor-anchor" data-attr-viewport-monitor="inline-recirc" data-event-boundary="click" data-event-click="{"pattern":"InlineRecirc"}" data-include-experiments="true" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“How many kids, Bill?” Mr. Summers asked formally.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Three,” Bill Hutchinson said. “There’s Bill, Jr., and Nancy, and little Dave. And Tessie and me.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“All right, then,” Mr. Summers said. “Harry, you got their tickets back?”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">Mr. Graves nodded and held up the slips of paper. “Put them in the box, then,” Mr. Summers directed. “Take Bill’s and put it in.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“I think we ought to start over,” Mrs. Hutchinson said, as quietly as she could. “I tell you it wasn’t <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">fair</em>. You didn’t give him time enough to choose. _Every_body saw that.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">Mr. Graves had selected the five slips and put them in the box, and he dropped all the papers but those onto the ground, where the breeze caught them and lifted them off.</p><div class="cne-interlude-embed" data-event-boundary="click" data-event-click="{"pattern":"d"}" data-in-view="{"pattern":"d"}" data-include-experiments="true" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><figure class="cne-interlude-container" style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(229, 229, 229); border-top: 1px solid rgb(229, 229, 229); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; margin: 1rem 0px; padding: 1rem 0px 0px; text-align: center;"><div class="cne-interlude-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: IrvinText, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 0.5rem; text-transform: uppercase;">VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER</div><a class="cne-interlude-title-link" href="https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/chinatown-continues-to-handle-fallout-from-the-coronavirus" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; cursor: pointer; display: block; transition: color 0.2s ease 0s;" target="_blank"><div class="cne-interlude-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: NeutrafaceNewYorker, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.24em; margin: 0px 1rem 1rem;">Chinatown Continues to Handle Fallout from the Coronavirus</div></a><figure class="cne-video-embed cne-video-embed--margins" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 2.5rem auto;"><div class="cne-video-embed__persistent-placeholder" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="cne-video-embed__persistent-container" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="cne-player-container" id="b3a81f0a-293a-78b3-f0bc-f2fe199478b5" style="box-sizing: content-box; display: inline-block; height: 0px; padding-top: 391.25px; position: relative; transition: height 300ms ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: top; width: 695.575px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="true" allowtransparency="true" data-cne-playing="1" frameborder="0" msallowfullscreen="true" scrolling="no" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: 1px !important; left: 0px; min-height: 100%; min-width: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0px; width: 1px !important;" title="Video Player"></iframe></div></div></div></figure></figure></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Listen, everybody,” Mrs. Hutchinson was saying to the people around her.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Ready, Bill?” Mr. Summers asked, and Bill Hutchinson, with one quick glance around at his wife and children, nodded.</p><div class="inline-recirc-wrapper inline-recirc-observer-target-8 viewport-monitor-anchor" data-attr-viewport-monitor="inline-recirc" data-event-boundary="click" data-event-click="{"pattern":"InlineRecirc"}" data-include-experiments="true" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Remember,” Mr. Summers said, “take the slips and keep them folded until each person has taken one. Harry, you help little Dave.” Mr. Graves took the hand of the little boy, who came willingly with him up to the box. “Take a paper out of the box, Davy,” Mr. Summers said. Davy put his hand into the box and laughed. “Take just <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">one</em> paper,” Mr. Summers said. “Harry, you hold it for him.” Mr. Graves took the child’s hand and removed the folded paper from the tight fist and held it while little Dave stood next to him and looked up at him wonderingly.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Nancy next,” Mr. Summers said. Nancy was twelve, and her school friends breathed heavily as she went forward, switching her skirt, and took a slip daintily from the box. “Bill, Jr.,” Mr. Summers said, and Billy, his face red and his feet overlarge, nearly knocked the box over as he got a paper out. “Tessie,” Mr. Summers said. She hesitated for a minute, looking around defiantly, and then set her lips and went up to the box. She snatched a paper out and held it behind her.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Bill,” Mr. Summers said, and Bill Hutchinson reached into the box and felt around, bringing his hand out at last with the slip of paper in it.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">The crowd was quiet. A girl whispered, “I hope it’s not Nancy,” and the sound of the whisper reached the edges of the crowd.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“It’s not the way it used to be,” Old Man Warner said clearly. “People ain’t the way they used to be.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“All right,” Mr. Summers said. “Open the papers. Harry, you open little Dave’s.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">Mr. Graves opened the slip of paper and there was a general sigh through the crowd as he held it up and everyone could see that it was blank. Nancy and Bill, Jr., opened theirs at the same time, and both beamed and laughed, turning around to the crowd and holding their slips of paper above their heads.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Tessie,” Mr. Summers said. There was a pause, and then Mr. Summers looked at Bill Hutchinson, and Bill unfolded his paper and showed it. It was blank.</p><div class="inline-recirc-wrapper inline-recirc-observer-target-9 viewport-monitor-anchor" data-attr-viewport-monitor="inline-recirc" data-event-boundary="click" data-event-click="{"pattern":"InlineRecirc"}" data-include-experiments="true" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“It’s Tessie,” Mr. Summers said, and his voice was hushed. “Show us her paper, Bill.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand. It had a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the coal-company office. Bill Hutchinson held it up, and there was a stir in the crowd.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“All right, folks,” Mr. Summers said. “Let’s finish quickly.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was ready; there were stones on the ground with the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box. Mrs. Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs. Dunbar. “Come on,” she said. “Hurry up.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">Mrs. Dunbar had small stones in both hands, and she said, gasping for breath. “I can’t run at all. You’ll have to go ahead and I’ll catch up with you.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">The children had stones already, and someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. “It isn’t fair,” she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">Old Man Warner was saying, “Come on, come on, everyone.” Steve Adams was in the front of the crowd of villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him.</p><div class="inline-recirc-wrapper inline-recirc-observer-target-10 viewport-monitor-anchor" data-attr-viewport-monitor="inline-recirc" data-event-boundary="click" data-event-click="{"pattern":"InlineRecirc"}" data-include-experiments="true" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box;">“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her. ♦</p></div></div>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-45494810391164270922020-08-17T21:50:00.001-07:002020-08-17T21:50:19.380-07:00Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been<p> </p><div class="WordSection1">
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.45pt; margin-right: 20.85pt; margin-top: 0cm;">Her name was
Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning
her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure
her own was all right. Her mother, who noticed everything and knew everything
and who hadn't much reason any longer to look at her own face, always scolded
Connie about it. "Stop gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think you're
so pretty?" she would say. Connie would raise her eyebrows at these
familiar old complaints and look right through her mother, into a shadowy
vision of herself as she was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and
that was everything. Her mother had been pretty once too, if you could believe
those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone and that was why
she was always after Connie.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .2pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.45pt; margin-right: 20.85pt; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"Why</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">don't</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">keep</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">your</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">room</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">clean</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">like</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">your</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">sister?</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">How've</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">got</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">your</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">hair</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">fixed</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">what</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">hell</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">stinks?</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Hair</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">spray?</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">You</span> <span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt; mso-font-width: 101%;">don't</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;"> </span>see
your sister using that junk."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .5pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.45pt; margin-right: 8.5pt; margin-top: .05pt;">Her sister June
was twenty-four and still lived at home. She was a secretary in the high school
Connie attended, and if that wasn't <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">bad</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">enough</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">with</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">in</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">same</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">building</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">she</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">was</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">so</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">plain</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">chunky</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">steady</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">that</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Connie</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">had</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">to</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">hear</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">praised</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">all</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: -.2pt; mso-font-width: 101%;">time</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;"> </span>by
her mother and her mother's sisters. June did this, June did that, she saved
money and helped clean the house and cooked and Connie couldn't do a thing, her
mind was all filled with trashy daydreams. Their father was away at work most
of the time and when<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>he came home he
wanted supper and he read the newspaper at supper and after supper he went to
bed. He didn't bother talking much to them, but around his bent head Connie's
mother kept picking at her until Connie wished her mother was dead and she
herself was dead and it was all over. "She makes me want to throw up
sometimes," she complained to her friends. She had a high, breathless,<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;"> </span>amused<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;"> </span>voice<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;"> </span>that<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;"> </span>made<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;"> </span>everything<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;">
</span>she<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;"> </span>said<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;"> </span>sound<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;"> </span>a<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;"> </span>little<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;"> </span>forced,<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;"> </span>whether<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;"> </span>it<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;"> </span>was<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;"> </span>sincere<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;"> </span>or<span style="letter-spacing: .2pt;"> </span>not.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .25pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.45pt; margin-right: 17.25pt; margin-top: 0cm;">There was one
good thing: June went places with girl friends of hers, girls who were just as
plain and steady as she, and so when Connie wanted to do that her mother had no
objections. The father of Connie's best girl friend drove the girls the three
miles to <span style="letter-spacing: -.2pt;">town </span>and left them at a
shopping plaza so they could walk through the stores or go to a movie, and when
he came to pick them up again<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>at eleven
he never bothered to ask what they had<span style="letter-spacing: .8pt;"> </span>done.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.45pt; margin-right: 6.6pt; margin-top: 0cm;">They must have
been familiar sights, walking around the shopping plaza in their shorts and
flat ballerina slippers that always<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>scuffed the sidewalk, with charm bracelets jingling on their thin
wrists; they would lean together to whisper and laugh secretly if someone
passed who amused or interested them. Connie had long dark blond hair that drew
anyone's eye to it, and she wore part<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>of it pulled up on her head and puffed out and the rest of it she let
fall down her back. She wore a pull-over jersey blouse that <span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">looked </span>one way when she was at home and
another way when she was away from home. Everything about her had two sides to
it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could
be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was
hearing music in her head; her mouth, which was pale and smirking most of the
time, but bright and pink on these <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">evenings</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">out;</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">laugh,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">which</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">was</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">cynical</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">drawling</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">at</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">home</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"Ha,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;">
</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">ha,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">very</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">funny,"<span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt;">—</span>but</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">highpitched</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">nervous</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">anywhere
</span>else, like the jingling of the charms on her<span style="letter-spacing: .7pt;"> </span>bracelet.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .3pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.45pt; margin-right: 5.25pt; margin-top: 0cm;">Sometimes they
did go shopping or to a movie, but sometimes they went across the highway,
ducking fast across the busy road, to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>a drive-in restaurant where older kids hung out. The restaurant was
shaped like a big bottle, though squatter than a real bottle, and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on its cap was a revolving figure of a
grinning boy holding a hamburger aloft. One night in midsummer they ran across,
breathless<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with daring, and right away
someone leaned out a car window and invited them over, but it was just a boy
from high school they<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>didn't like. It
made them feel good to be able to ignore him. They went up through the maze of
parked and cruising cars to the bright- lit, fly-infested restaurant, their
faces pleased and expectant as if they were entering a sacred building that
loomed up out of the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>night to give
them what haven and blessing they yearned for. They sat at the counter and
crossed their legs at the ankles, their thin shoulders rigid with excitement,
and listened to the music that made everything so good: the music was always in
the background,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>like music at a church
service; it was something to depend<span style="letter-spacing: 1.0pt;"> </span>upon.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .3pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.45pt; margin-right: 7.5pt; margin-top: 0cm;">A boy named
Eddie came in to talk with them. He sat backwards on his stool, turning himself
jerkily around in semicircles and then stopping and turning back again, and
after a while he asked Connie if she would like something to eat. She said she
would and so <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">she</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">tapped</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">friend's</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">arm</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">on</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">way</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">out</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">friend</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">pulled</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">face</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">up</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">into</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">brave,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">droll</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">look</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Connie</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">said</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">she</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">would</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">meet </span>her
at eleven, across the way. "I just hate to leave her like that,"
Connie said earnestly, but the boy said that she wouldn't be alone<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>for long. So they went out to his car, and
on the way Connie couldn't help but let her eyes wander over the windshields
and faces <span style="letter-spacing: -.25pt;">all </span>around her, her face
gleaming with a joy that had nothing to do with Eddie or even this place; it
might have been the music. She<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>drew
her shoulders up and sucked in her breath with the pure pleasure of being alive,
and just at that moment she happened to glance at a face just a few feet from
hers. It was a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted
gold. He stared at her and then his lips widened into a grin. Connie slit her
eyes at him and turned away, but she couldn't help glancing back and there he
was,<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>still<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>watching<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>her.<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>He<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>wagged<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>a<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>finger<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>and<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>laughed<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>and<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>said,<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>"Gonna<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>get<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>you,<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>baby,"<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>and<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>Connie<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>turned<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>away<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>again<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>without<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="mso-break-type: section-break; page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
<div class="WordSection2">
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top: 4.35pt;">Eddie noticing anything.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 17.25pt;">She spent
three hours with him, at the restaurant where they ate hamburgers and drank
Cokes in wax cups that were always sweating, and then down an alley a mile or
so away, and when he left her off at five to eleven only the movie house was
still open <span style="letter-spacing: -.35pt;">at </span>the plaza. Her girl
friend was there, talking with a boy. When Connie came up, the two girls smiled
at each other and Connie said, "How was the movie?" and the girl
said, 'You should know." They rode off with the girl's father, sleepy and
pleased, and Connie couldn't help but look back at the darkened shopping plaza
with its big empty parking lot and its signs that were faded and ghostly now,<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>and<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>over<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>at<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>the<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>drive-in<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;">
</span>restaurant<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>where<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>cars<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>were<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>still<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>circling<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>tirelessly.<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>She<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>couldn't<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>hear<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>the<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>music<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>at<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>this<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>distance.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .15pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">Next morning June asked her how the movie was and Connie
said, "So-so."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 20.85pt; margin-top: .05pt;">She and that girl
and occasionally another girl went out several times a week, and the rest of
the time Connie spent around the <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">house</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">it</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">was</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">summer</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">vacation</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">getting</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">in</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">mother</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">s</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">way</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">thinking,</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">dreaming</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">about</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">boys</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">she</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">met.</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">But</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">all</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">boys</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">fell
</span>back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face but an
idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding <span style="letter-spacing: -.4pt;">of </span>the music and the humid night air of
July. Connie's mother kept dragging her back to the daylight by finding things
for her to do or saying suddenly, 'What's this about the Pettinger girl?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 17.25pt;">And Connie
would say nervously, "Oh, her. That dope." She always drew thick
clear lines between herself and such girls, and her mother was simple and kind
enough to believe it. Her mother was so simple, Connie thought, that it was
maybe cruel to fool her so much. Her mother went scuffling around the house in
old bedroom slippers and complained over the telephone to one sister about<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the other, then the other called up and the
two of them complained about the third one. If June's name was mentioned her
mother's tone was approving, and if Connie's name was mentioned it was
disapproving. This did not really mean she disliked Connie, and actually Connie
thought that her mother preferred her to June just because she was prettier,
but the two of them kept up a pretense<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>of exasperation, a sense that they were tugging and struggling over
something of little value to either of them. Sometimes, over <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">coffee,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">they</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">were</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">almost</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">friends,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">but</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">something</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;">
</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">would</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">come</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">up</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">some</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">vexation</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">that</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">was</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">like</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">fly</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">buzzing</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">suddenly</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">around</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">their heads</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">their</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">faces</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">went</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">hard</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">with</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">contempt.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .3pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.55pt;"><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">One</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Sunday</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Connie</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">got</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">up</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">at</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">eleven</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">none</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">of</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">them</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">bothered</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">with</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">church</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">washed</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">hair</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">so</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">that</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">it</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">could</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">dry</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">all</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">day</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">long</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">in </span>the sun. Her parents and sister were
going to a barbecue at an aunt's house and Connie said no, she wasn't
interested, rolling her eyes to let her mother know just what she thought of
it. "Stay home alone then," her mother said sharply. Connie sat out
back in a lawn chair and watched them drive away, her father quiet and bald,
hunched around so that he could back the car out, her mother with a look that
was still angry and not at all softened through the windshield, and in the back
seat poor old June, all dressed up as<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>if she didn't know what a barbecue was, with all the running yelling
kids and the flies. Connie sat with her eyes closed in the sun, dreaming and
dazed with the warmth about her as if this were a kind of love, the caresses of
love, and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the
night before and how nice he had been, how sweet it always was, not the way someone
like June would suppose but sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and
promised in songs; and when she opened her eyes she hardly knew where she was,
the back yard ran off into weeds and a fence-like line of trees and behind it
the sky was perfectly blue <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">still.</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">The</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">asbestos</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">ranch</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">house</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">that</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">was</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">now</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">three</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">years</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">old</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">startled</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">it</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">looked</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">small.</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">She</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">shook</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">head</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">as</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">if</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">to</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">get </span>awake.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .45pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 10.6pt;">It was too
hot. She went inside the house and turned on the radio to drown out the quiet.
She sat on the edge of her bed, barefoot, and listened for an hour and a half
to a program called XYZ Sunday Jamboree, record after record of hard, fast,
shrieking songs <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">she</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">sang</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">along</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">with,</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">interspersed</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">by</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">exclamations</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">from</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">"Bobby</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">King":</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">"An'</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">look</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">here,</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">girls</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">at</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Napoleon's</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Son</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Charley </span>want you to pay real close
attention to this song coming up!"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">And Connie
paid close attention herself, bathed in a glow of slow-pulsed joy that seemed
to rise mysteriously out of the music itself and lay languidly about the
airless little room, breathed in and breathed out with each gentle rise and
fall of her chest.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .55pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 17.25pt;">After a
while she heard a car coming up the drive. She sat up at once, startled,
because it couldn't be her father so soon. The <span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">gravel </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">kept</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">crunching</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">all</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">way</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">in</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">from</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">road</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">driveway</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">was</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">long</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Connie</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">ran</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">to</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">window.</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">It</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">was</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">car</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">she</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">didn't</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">know.</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">It </span>was
an open jalopy, painted a bright gold that caught the sunlight opaquely. Her
heart began to pound and her fingers snatched at<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>her hair, checking it, and she whispered,
"Christ. Christ," wondering how bad she looked. The car came to a
stop at the side door<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and the horn
sounded four short taps, as if this were a signal Connie<span style="letter-spacing: 1.45pt;"> </span>knew.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">She went
into the kitchen and approached the door slowly, then hung out the screen door,
her bare toes curling down off the <span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">step. </span>There
were two boys in the car and now she recognized the driver: he had shaggy,
shabby black hair that looked crazy as a wig<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>and he was grinning at<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>her.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"I ain't late, am I?" he said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"Who the hell do you think you are?" Connie
said.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="mso-break-type: section-break; page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
<div class="WordSection3">
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .5pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top: 4.85pt;">"Toldja I'd be out, didn't
I?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"I don't even know who you are."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">She spoke
sullenly, careful to show no interest or pleasure, and he spoke in a fast,
bright monotone. Connie looked past him to <span style="letter-spacing: -.25pt;">the
</span>other boy, taking her time. He had fair brown hair, with a lock that
fell onto his forehead. His sideburns gave him a fierce, embarrassed look, but
so far he hadn't even bothered to glance at her. Both boys wore sunglasses. The
driver's glasses were metallic and mirrored everything in<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>miniature.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top: .05pt;">"You wanta come for a
ride?" he said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-right: 329.25pt;">Connie
smirked and let her hair fall loose over one shoulder. "Don'tcha like my
car? New paint job," he said. "Hey." "What?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top: .05pt;">"You're cute."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-right: 329.25pt;">She
pretended to fidget, chasing flies away from the door. "Don'tcha believe
me, or what?" he said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top: .05pt;">"Look, I don't even know who
you are," Connie said in disgust.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">"Hey,
Ellie's got a radio, see. Mine broke down." He lifted his friend's arm and
showed her the little transistor radio the boy was holding, and now Connie
began to hear the music. It was the same program that was playing inside the
house.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .55pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"Bobby King?" she said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-right: 380.7pt;">"I
listen to him all the time. I think he's great." "He's kind of
great," Connie said reluctantly.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top: .05pt;">"Listen, that guy's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">great. </i>He knows where the action
is."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 17.25pt;">Connie
blushed a little, because the glasses made it impossible for her to see just
what this boy was looking at. She couldn't <span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">decide<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>if she liked him or if he was just a
jerk, and so she dawdled in the doorway and wouldn't come down or go back
inside. She said, "What's all that stuff painted on your<span style="letter-spacing: .5pt;"> </span>car?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 9.35pt;">"Can'tcha
read it?" He opened the door very carefully, as if he were afraid it might
fall off. He slid out just as carefully, planting his<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>feet firmly on the ground, the tiny metallic
world in his glasses slowing down like gelatine hardening, and in the midst of
it Connie's bright green blouse. "This here is my name, to begin with, he
said. ARNOLD FRIEND was written in tarlike black letters on the <span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">side, </span>with a drawing of a round, grinning
face that reminded Connie of a pumpkin, except it wore sunglasses. "I
wanta introduce myself,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm Arnold
Friend and that's my real name and I'm gonna be your friend, honey, and inside
the car's Ellie Oscar, he's kinda shy."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ellie brought his transistor radio up to his shoulder and balanced it
there. "Now, these numbers are a secret code, honey," Arnold Friend
explained. He read off the numbers 33, 19, 17 and raised his eyebrows at her to
see what she thought of that, but she didn't think much of it. The left rear
fender had been smashed and around it was written, on the gleaming gold
background: DONE BY CRAZY WOMAN DRIVER. Connie had to laugh at that. Arnold
Friend was pleased at her laughter and looked up at her. "Around <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">other</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">side's</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">lot</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">more</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">wanta</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">come</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">see</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">them?"</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .35pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"No."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-right: 529.5pt;">"Why
not?" "Why should I?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 284.7pt; margin-top: .05pt;">"Don'tcha
wanta see what's on the car? Don'tcha wanta go for a <span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">ride?" </span>"I don't<span style="letter-spacing: .1pt;"> </span>know."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"Why not?"<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="mso-break-type: section-break; page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
<div class="WordSection4">
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 507.7pt; margin-top: 4.35pt;">"I got
things to do." "Like what?" "Things."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 19.05pt; margin-top: .05pt;">He laughed as if
she had said something funny. He slapped his thighs. He was standing in a
strange way, leaning back against the car as if he were balancing himself. He
wasn't tall, only an inch or so taller than she would be if she came down to
him. Connie <span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">liked </span>the way he was
dressed, which was the way all of them dressed: tight faded jeans stuffed into
black, scuffed boots, a belt that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>pulled his waist in and showed how lean he was, and a white pull-over
shirt that was a little soiled and showed the hard small<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>muscles of his arms and shoulders. He looked
as if he probably did hard work, lifting and carrying things. Even his neck
looked muscular. And his face was a familiar face, somehow: the jaw and chin
and cheeks slightly darkened because he hadn't shaved for<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>day<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>or<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>two,<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>and<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>the<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>nose<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>long<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>and<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>hawklike,<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>sniffing<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;">
</span>as<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>if<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>she<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>were<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>a<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>treat<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>he<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>was<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>going<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>to<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>gobble<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>up<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>and<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>it<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>was<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>all<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>a<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>joke.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .2pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%;">"Connie, you ain't telling
the truth. This is your day set aside for a ride with me and you know it,"
he said, still laughing. The way he straightened and recovered from his fit of
laughing showed that it had been all fake.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .5pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 329.25pt; margin-top: .05pt;">"How do you
know what my name is?" she said suspiciously. "It's Connie."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"Maybe and maybe not."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 6.6pt; margin-top: .05pt;">"I know my
Connie," he said, wagging his finger. Now she remembered him even better,
back at the restaurant, and her cheeks <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">warmed</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">at</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">thought</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">of</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">how</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">she</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">had</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">sucked</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">in</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">breath</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">just</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">at</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">moment</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">she</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">passed</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">him</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">how</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">she</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">must</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">have</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">looked</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">to</span> <span style="letter-spacing: -.2pt; mso-font-width: 101%;">him.</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;"> </span>And
he had remembered her. "Ellie and I come out here especially for
you," he said. "Ellie can sit in back. How about it?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .55pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-right: 529.5pt;">"Where?"
"Where what?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top: .05pt;">"Where're we going?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">He looked at
her. He took off the sunglasses and she saw how pale the skin around his eyes
was, like holes that were not in shadow but instead in light. His eyes were
like chips of broken glass that catch the light in an amiable way. He smiled.
It was as if the idea of going for a ride somewhere, to someplace, was a new
idea to him.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"Just for a ride, Connie sweetheart."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top: .05pt;">"I never said my name was
Connie," she said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 7.0pt;">"But I
know what it is. I know your name and all about you, lots of things,"
Arnold Friend said. He had not moved yet but stood still <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">leaning</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">back</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">against</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">side</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">of</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">his</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">jalopy.</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"I</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">took</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">special</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">interest</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">in</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">such</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">pretty</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">girl,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">found</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">out</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">all</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">about</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">like</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">I</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: -.2pt; mso-font-width: 101%;">know</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;"> </span>your
parents and sister are gone somewheres and I know where and how long they're
going to be gone, and I know who you were with last night, and your best girl
friend's name is Betty.<span style="letter-spacing: 1.0pt;"> </span>Right?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">He spoke in
a simple lilting voice, exactly as if he were reciting the words to a song. His
smile assured her that everything was <span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">fine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>In the car Ellie turned up the volume
on his radio and did not bother to look around at<span style="letter-spacing: 2.55pt;"> </span>them.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .5pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 20.85pt; margin-top: .05pt;">"Ellie can
sit in the back seat," Arnold Friend said. He indicated his friend with a
casual jerk of his chin, as if Ellie did not count and she should not bother
with him.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .5pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"How'd you find out all that stuff?" Connie
said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">"Listen:
Betty Schultz and Tony Fitch and Jimmy Pettinger and Nancy Pettinger," he
said in a chant. "Raymond Stanley and <span style="letter-spacing: -.25pt;">Bob
</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Hutter<span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt;">—</span></span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .55pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-right: 465.1pt;">"Do you
know all those kids?" "I know everybody."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top: .05pt;">"Look, you're kidding.
You're not from around here."<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="mso-break-type: section-break; page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
<div class="WordSection5">
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top: 4.35pt;">"Sure."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"But<span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt;">—</span></span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">how</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">come</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">we</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">never</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">saw</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">before?"</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-right: 53.75pt;">"Sure
you saw me before," he said. He looked down at his boots, as if he were a
little offended. "You just don't remember."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"I guess I'd remember you," Connie<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 20.85pt; margin-top: .05pt;">"Yeah?"
He looked up at this, beaming. He was pleased. He began to mark time with the
music from Ellie's radio, tapping his fists lightly together. Connie looked
away from his smile to the car, which was painted so bright it almost hurt her
eyes to look at it. <span style="letter-spacing: -.25pt;">She </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">looked</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">at</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">that</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">name,</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">ARNOLD</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">FRIEND.</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">And</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">up</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">at</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">front</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">fender</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">was</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">an</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">expression</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">that</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">was</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">familiar</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">MAN</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">THE</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">FLYING </span>SAUCERS. It was an expression
kids had used the year before but didn't use this year. She looked at it for a
while as if the words meant something to her that she did not yet know.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">"What're
you thinking about? Huh?" Arnold Friend demanded. "Not worried about
your hair blowing around in the car, are you?" "No."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 430.4pt; margin-top: .05pt;">"Think I
maybe can't drive good?" "How do I know?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 20.85pt; margin-top: .05pt;">"You're a
hard girl to handle. How come?" he said. "Don't you know I'm your
friend? Didn't you see me put my sign in the air when you walked by?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .5pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"What sign?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 17.25pt; margin-top: .05pt;">"My
sign." And he drew an X in the air, leaning out toward her. They were
maybe ten feet apart. After his hand fell back to his side<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the X was still in the air, almost visible.
Connie let the screen door close and stood perfectly still inside it, listening
to the music from her radio and the boy's blend together. She stared at Arnold
Friend. He stood there so stiffly relaxed, pretending to be relaxed, with one
hand idly on the door handle as if he were keeping himself up that way and had
no intention of ever moving again. She recognized most things about him, the
tight jeans that showed his thighs and buttocks and the greasy leather boots
and the tight<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>shirt, and even that
slippery friendly smile of his, that sleepy dreamy smile that all the boys used
to get across ideas they didn't <span style="letter-spacing: -.2pt;">want<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>to put into words. She recognized all
this and also the singsong way he talked, slightly mocking, kidding, but
serious and a little melancholy, and she recognized the way he tapped one fist
against the other in homage to the perpetual music behind him. But all these
things did not come<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>together.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .3pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">She said suddenly, "Hey, how old are you?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;"><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">His</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">smiled</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">faded.</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">She</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">could</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">see</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">then</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">that</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">he</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">wasn't</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">kid,</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">he</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">was</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">much</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">older</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">thirty,</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">maybe</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">more.</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">At</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">this</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">knowledge</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span>
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt; mso-font-width: 101%;">heart</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;"> </span>began to pound faster.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .5pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 309.85pt; margin-top: .05pt;">"That's a
crazy thing to ask. Can'tcha see I'm your own age?" "Like hell you
are."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-right: 380.7pt;">"Or
maybe a couple years older. I'm eighteen." "Eighteen?" she said
doubtfully.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 17.6pt; margin-top: .05pt;">He grinned to
reassure her and lines appeared at the corners of his mouth. His teeth were big
and white. He grinned so broadly his eyes became slits and she saw how thick
the lashes were, thick and black as if painted with a black tarlike material.
Then, abruptly, he seemed to become embarrassed and looked over his shoulder at
Ellie. "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Him, </i>he's crazy,"
he said. "Ain't he a riot? He's a nut, a real character." Ellie was
still listening to the music. His sunglasses told nothing about what he was
thinking. He wore a bright<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>orange shirt
unbuttoned halfway to show his chest, which was a pale, bluish chest and not
muscular like Arnold Friend's. His shirt collar was turned up all around and
the very tips of the collar pointed out past his chin as if they were protecting
him. He was<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pressing the transistor
radio up against his ear and sat there in a kind of daze, right in the<span style="letter-spacing: 2.7pt;"> </span>sun.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .2pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"He's kinda strange," Connie said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 17.25pt;">"Hey,
she says you're kinda strange! Kinda strange!" Arnold Friend cried. He
pounded on the car to get Ellie's attention. Ellie <span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">turned </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">for</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">first</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">time</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Connie</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">saw</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">with</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">shock</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">that</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">he</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">wasn't</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">kid</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">either</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">he</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">had</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">fair,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">hairless</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">face,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">cheeks</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">reddened</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">slightly</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">as</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">if </span>the<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>veins<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>grew<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>too<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>close<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>to<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>the<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>surface<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>of<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>his<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>skin,<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>the<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>face<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>of<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>a<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>forty-year-old<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>baby.<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>Connie<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>felt<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>a<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>wave<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>of<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>dizziness<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;">
</span>rise<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>in<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>her<span style="letter-spacing: .35pt;"> </span>at<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="mso-break-type: section-break; page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
<div class="WordSection6">
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 20.85pt; margin-top: 4.35pt;">this sight and
she stared at him as if waiting for something to change the shock of the
moment, make it all right again. Ellie's lips kept shaping words, mumbling
along with the words blasting in his ear.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .5pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"Maybe you two better go away," Connie said
faintly.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 17.2pt; margin-top: .05pt;">"What? How
come?" Arnold Friend cried. "We come out here to take you for a ride.
It's Sunday." He had the voice of the man on <span style="letter-spacing: -.2pt;">the </span>radio now. It was the same voice, Connie thought.
"Don'tcha know it's Sunday all day? And honey, no matter who you were with
<span style="letter-spacing: -.2pt;">last </span>night, today you're with Arnold
Friend and don't you forget it! Maybe you better step out here," he said,
and this last was in a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>different
voice. It was a little flatter, as if the heat was finally getting to<span style="letter-spacing: 1.5pt;"> </span>him.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-right: 472.65pt;">"No. I
got things to do." "Hey."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"You two better leave."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-right: 418.25pt;">"We
ain't leaving until you come with <span style="letter-spacing: -.25pt;">us."
</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">"Like</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">hell</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">I</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">am</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 17.25pt;"><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">"Connie,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">don't</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">fool</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">around</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">with</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">me.</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">I</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">mean</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">I</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">mean,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">don't</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">fool</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">around,</span></i><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">he</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">said,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">shaking</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">his</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">head.</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">He</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">laughed</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">incredulously.</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">He </span>placed his
sunglasses on top of his head, carefully, as if he were indeed wearing a wig,
and brought the stems down behind his<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>ears. Connie stared at him, another wave of dizziness and fear rising in
her so that for a moment he wasn't even in focus but was<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>just a blur standing there against his gold
car, and she had the idea that he had driven up the driveway all right but had
come from nowhere before that and belonged nowhere and that everything about
him and even about the music that was so familiar to her <span style="letter-spacing: -.25pt;">was </span>only half<span style="letter-spacing: .1pt;"> </span>real.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .15pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 430.4pt; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"If</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">my</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">father</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">comes</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">sees</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">" </span>"He ain't coming. He's at a
barbecue." "How do you know that?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 6.6pt; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">"Aunt</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Tillie's.</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Right</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">now</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">they're</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">uh</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">they're</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">drinking.</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Sitting</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">around,"</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">he</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">said</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">vaguely,</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">squinting</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">as</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">if</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">he</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">were</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">staring</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">all</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">way</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">to </span>town
and over to Aunt Tillie's back yard. Then the vision seemed to get clear and he
nodded energetically. "Yeah. Sitting around. <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">There's</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">your</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">sister</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">in</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">blue</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">dress,</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">huh?</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">And</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">high</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">heels,</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">poor</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">sad</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">bitch</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">nothing</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">like</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you,</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">sweetheart!</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">And</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">your</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">mother's</span> <span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt; mso-font-width: 101%;">helping</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">
some</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">fat</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">woman</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">with</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">corn,</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">they're</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">cleaning</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">corn</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">husking</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">corn</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"What fat woman?" Connie cried.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"How do I know what fat woman, I don't know every
goddamn fat woman in the world!" Arnold Friend laughed.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="tab-stops: dotted 141.45pt;">"Oh, that's<span style="letter-spacing: .85pt;"> </span>Mrs.<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>Hornsby<span style="mso-tab-count: 1 dotted;">....... </span>Who<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>invited<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>her?"<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>Connie<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>said.<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>She<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>felt<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>a<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>little<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>lightheaded.<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>Her<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>breath<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>was<span style="letter-spacing: .3pt;"> </span>coming<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>quickly.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 17.25pt;">"She's
too fat. I don't like them fat. I like them the way you are, honey," he
said, smiling sleepily at her. They stared at each other <span style="letter-spacing: -.25pt;">for<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>a
while through the screen door. He said softly, "Now, what you're going to
do is this: you're going to come out that door. You re<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>going to sit up front with me and Ellie's
going to sit in the back, the hell with Ellie, right? This isn't Ellie's date.
You're my date. I'm<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>your lover,<span style="letter-spacing: .1pt;"> </span>honey."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">"What?</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">You're</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">crazy<span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt;">—</span></span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 17.25pt;">"Yes,
I'm your lover. You don't know what that is but you will," he said.
"I know that too. I know all about you. But look: it's real nice<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and you couldn't ask for nobody better than
me, or more polite. I always keep my word. I'll tell you how it is, I'm always
nice at first,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the first time. I'll hold
you so tight you won't think you have to try to get away or pretend anything
because you'll know you can't. <span style="letter-spacing: -.25pt;">And<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>I'll come inside you where it's all
secret and you'll give in to me and you'll love me<span style="letter-spacing: 2.05pt;"> </span>"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">"Shut
up! You're crazy!" Connie said. She backed away from the door. She put her
hands up against her ears as if she'd heard something terrible, something not
meant for her. "People don't talk like that, you're crazy," she
muttered. Her heart was almost too<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>big
now for her chest and its pumping made sweat break out all over her. She looked
out to see Arnold Friend pause and then <span style="letter-spacing: -.2pt;">take<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>a step toward the porch, lurching. He
almost fell. But, like a clever drunken man, he managed to catch his balance.
He wobbled in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>his high boots and grabbed
hold of one of the porch<span style="letter-spacing: .9pt;"> </span>posts.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"Honey?" he said. "You still
listening?"<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="mso-break-type: section-break; page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
<div class="WordSection7">
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .5pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 471.45pt; margin-top: 4.85pt;">"Get the
hell out of here!" "Be nice, honey. Listen." <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"I'm</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;">
</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">going</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">to</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">call</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt; mso-font-width: 101%;">police</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.7pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">"</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 20.85pt; margin-top: .05pt;">He wobbled again
and out of the side of his mouth came a fast spat curse, an aside not meant for
her to hear. But even this<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>"Christ!" sounded forced. Then he began to smile again. She
watched this smile come, awkward as if he were smiling from inside <span style="letter-spacing: -.7pt;">a </span>mask. His whole face was a mask, she
thought wildly, tanned down to his throat but then running out as if he had
plastered make-<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>up on his face but had
forgotten about his<span style="letter-spacing: .65pt;"> </span>throat.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-right: 77.1pt;"><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">"Honey</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">?</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Listen,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">here's</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">how</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">it</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">is.</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">I</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">always</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">tell</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">truth</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">I</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">promise</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">this:</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">I</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">ain't</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">coming</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">in</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">that</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">house</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">after</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt; mso-font-width: 101%;">you."</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">
"You</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">better</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">not!</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">I'm</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">going</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">to</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">call</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">police</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">if</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">if</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">don't</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top: .05pt;">"Honey," he said,
talking right through her voice, "honey, I m not coming in there but you
are coming out here. You know why?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">She was
panting. The kitchen looked like a place she had never seen before, some room
she had run inside but that wasn't good enough, wasn't going to help her. The
kitchen window had never had a curtain, after three years, and there were
dishes in the <span style="letter-spacing: -.2pt;">sink </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">for</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">to</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">do</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">probably</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">if</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">ran</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">your</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">hand</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">across</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">table</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you'd</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">probably</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">feel</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">something</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;">
</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">sticky</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">there.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">"You</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">listening,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">honey?</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Hey?"</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"<span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt;">—</span></span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">going</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">to</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">call</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">police</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"Soon as you touch the phone I don't need to keep my
promise and can come inside. You won't want that."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 10.35pt; margin-top: .05pt;">She rushed
forward and tried to lock the door. Her fingers were shaking. "But why
lock it," Arnold Friend said gently, talking right<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>into her face. "It's just a screen
door. It's just nothing." One of his boots was at a strange angle, as if
his foot wasn't in it. It pointed<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>out
to the left, bent at the ankle. "I mean, anybody can break through a
screen door and glass and wood and iron or anything else <span style="letter-spacing: -.35pt;">if </span>he needs to, anybody at all, and
specially Arnold Friend. If the place got lit up with a fire, honey, you'd come
runnin' out into my <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">arms,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">right</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">into</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">my</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">arms</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">an'</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">safe</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">at</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">home</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">like</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">knew</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">I</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">was</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">your</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">lover</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and'd</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">stopped</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">fooling</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">around.</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">I</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">don't</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">mind</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">nice</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">shy</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">girl </span>but I don't like no fooling
around." Part of those words were spoken with a slight rhythmic lilt, and
Connie somehow recognized <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">them<span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt;">—</span>the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">echo</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">of</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">song</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">from</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">last</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">year,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">about</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">girl</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">rushing</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">into</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">boy</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">friend's</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">arms</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">coming</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">home</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">again</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .2pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-right: 170.05pt;">Connie
stood barefoot on the linoleum floor, staring at him. "What do you
want?" she whispered. "I want you," he<span style="letter-spacing: .25pt;"> </span>said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top: .05pt;">"What?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"Seen you that night and thought, that's the one, yes
sir. I never needed to look anymore."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 7.5pt;"><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"But</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">my</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">father's</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">coming</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">back.</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">He's</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">coming</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">to</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">get</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">me.</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">I</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">had</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">to</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">wash</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">my</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">hair</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">first<span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt;">—</span>''</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">She</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">spoke</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">in</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">dry,</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">rapid</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">voice,</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">hardly</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">raising</span> <span style="letter-spacing: -.35pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">it</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;"> </span>for him to hear.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .55pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">"No,
your daddy is not coming and yes, you had to wash your hair and you washed it
for me. It's nice and shining and all for me. I thank you sweetheart," he
said with a mock bow, but again he almost lost his balance. He had to bend and
adjust his boots.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 20.85pt; margin-top: .1pt;">Evidently his
feet did not go all the way down; the boots must have been stuffed with
something so that he would seem taller. Connie stared out at him and behind him
at Ellie in the car, who seemed to be looking off toward Connie's right, into
nothing. <span style="letter-spacing: -.2pt;">This </span>Ellie said, pulling the
words out of the air one after another as if he were just discovering them,
"You want me to pull out the phone?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">"Shut
your mouth and keep it shut," Arnold Friend said, his face red from
bending over or maybe from embarrassment because Connie had seen his boots.
"This ain't none of your business."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .5pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"What<span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt;">—</span></span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">what</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">are</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">doing?</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">What</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">do</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">want?"</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Connie</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">said.</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"If</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">I</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">call</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">police</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">they'll</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">get</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">they'll</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">arrest</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 17.25pt;">"Promise
was not to come in unless you touch that phone, and I'll keep that
promise," he said. He resumed his erect position and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>tried to force his shoulders back. He sounded
like a hero in a movie, declaring something important. But he spoke too loudly
and it was as if he were speaking to someone behind Connie. "I ain't made
plans for coming in that house where I don't belong but just <span style="letter-spacing: -.25pt;">for </span>you to come out to me, the way you
should. Don't you know who I<span style="letter-spacing: 1.45pt;"> </span>am?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"You're crazy," she whispered. She backed away
from the door but did not want to go into another part of the house, as if this
would<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="mso-break-type: section-break; page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
<div class="WordSection8">
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top: 4.35pt; tab-stops: dotted 395.4pt;">give<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>him<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>permission<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>to<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>come<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>through<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>the<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>door.<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>"What<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>do<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>you<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>.<span style="letter-spacing: .45pt;"> </span>.<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>.<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>you're<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>crazy,<span style="letter-spacing: .4pt;"> </span>you.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1 dotted;">..... </span>"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"Huh? What're you saying, honey?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">Her eyes darted everywhere in the kitchen. She could not
remember what it was, this room.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">"This
is how it is, honey: you come out and we'll drive away, have a nice ride. But
if you don't come out we're gonna wait till your people come home and then
they're all going to get it."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .5pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">"You
want that telephone pulled out?" Ellie said. He held the radio away from
his ear and grimaced, as if without the radio the air was too much for him.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .55pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">"I
toldja shut up, Ellie," Arnold Friend said, "you're deaf, get a
hearing aid, right? Fix yourself up. This little girl's no trouble and's gonna
be nice to me, so Ellie keep to yourself, this ain't your date right? Don't hem
in on me, don't hog, don't crush, don't bird dog, don't trail me," he said
in a rapid, meaningless voice, as if he were running through all the
expressions he'd learned but was no longer sure which of them was in style,
then rushing on to new ones, making them up with his eyes closed. "Don't
crawl under my fence, don't squeeze in my chipmonk hole, don't sniff my glue,
suck my popsicle, keep your own greasy fingers on yourself!" He shaded his
eyes and peered in at Connie, who was backed against the kitchen table.
"Don't mind him, honey, he's just a creep.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 17.25pt; margin-top: .3pt;">He's a dope.
Right? I'm the boy for you, and like I said, you come out here nice like a lady
and give me your hand, and nobody else gets hurt, I mean, your nice old
bald-headed daddy and your mummy and your sister in her high heels. Because
listen: why bring them in this?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">"Leave me alone," Connie whispered.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-right: 142.75pt;"><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">"Hey,</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">know</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">that</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">old</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">woman</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">down</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">road,</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">one</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">with</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">chickens</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">stuff<span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt;">—</span></span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">know</span> <span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt; mso-font-width: 101%;">her?"</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;"> </span>"She's
dead!"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 350.2pt; margin-top: .05pt;">"Dead? What?
You know her?" Arnold Friend <span style="letter-spacing: -.2pt;">said. </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">"She's</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">dead</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top: .05pt;">"Don't you like her?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">"She's</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">dead</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">she's<span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt;">—</span></span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">she</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">isn't</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">here</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">any</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">more</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">"</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">But don't
you like her, I mean, you got something against her? Some grudge or
something?" Then his voice dipped as if he were conscious of a rudeness.
He touched the sunglasses perched up on top of his head as if to make sure they
were still there. "Now, you be a good girl."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-top: .05pt;">'What are you going to do?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">"Just
two things, or maybe three," Arnold Friend said. "But I promise it
won't last long and you'll like me the way you get to like people you're close
to. You will. It's all over for you here, so come on out. You don't want your
people in any trouble, do you?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .5pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">She turned
and bumped against a chair or something, hurting her leg, but she ran into the
back room and picked up the telephone. <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Something</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">roared</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">in</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">ear,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">tiny</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">roaring,</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">she</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">was</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">so</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">sick</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">with</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">fear</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">that</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">she</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">could</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">do</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">nothing</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">but</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">listen</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">to</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">it<span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt;">—</span></span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">telephone
</span>was clammy and very heavy and her fingers groped down to the dial but
were too weak to touch it. She began to scream into the phone, into the
roaring. She cried out, she cried for her mother, she felt her breath start
jerking back and forth in her lungs as if it were something Arnold Friend was
stabbing her with again and again with no tenderness. A noisy sorrowful wailing
rose all about<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>her and she was locked
inside it the way she was locked inside this<span style="letter-spacing: 1.45pt;">
</span>house.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .15pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 142.75pt; margin-top: .05pt;">After a while she
could hear again. She was sitting on the floor with her wet back against the
wall. Arnold Friend was saying from the door, "That's a good girl. Put the
phone back."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-right: 418.25pt;">She kicked
the phone away from her. "No, honey. Pick it up. Put it back right."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 329.25pt; margin-top: .05pt;">She picked it up
and put it back. The dial tone stopped. "That's a good girl. Now, you come
outside."<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 195%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="mso-break-type: section-break; page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .5pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 20.85pt; margin-top: 4.85pt;">She was hollow
with what had been fear but what was now just an emptiness. All that screaming
had blasted it out of her. She sat, one leg cramped under her, and deep inside
her brain was something like a pinpoint of light that kept going and would not
let her relax. She thought, I'm not going to see my mother again. She thought,
I'm not going to sleep in my bed again. Her bright green blouse was all wet.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 17.25pt;">Arnold
Friend said, in a gentle-loud voice that was like a stage voice, "The
place where you came from ain't there any more, and <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">where</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">had</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">in</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">mind</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">to</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">go</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">is</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">cancelled</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">out.</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">This</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">place</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">are</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">now</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">inside</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">your</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">daddy's</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">house</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">is</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">nothing</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">but</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">cardboard</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">box</span> <span style="letter-spacing: -.7pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">I</span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;"> </span>can knock down any time. You know that and
always did know it. You hear me?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText">She thought, I have got to think. I have got to know what
to do.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 18.25pt;">"We'll
go out to a nice field, out in the country here where it smells so nice and
it's sunny," Arnold Friend said. "I'll have my arms tight around you
so you won't need to try to get away and I'll show you what love is like, what
it does. The hell with this house! It looks solid all right," he said. He
ran a fingernail down the screen and the noise did not make Connie shiver, as
it would have the day before. "Now, put your hand on your heart, honey.
Feel that? That feels solid too but we know better. Be nice to me, be <span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">sweet </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">like</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">can</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">because</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">what</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">else</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">is</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">there</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">for</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">a</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">girl</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">like</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">you</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">but</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">to</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">be</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">sweet</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">pretty</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">give</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">in?</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">get</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">away</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">before</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">her</span><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"> </span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">people </span>come<span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;">
</span>back?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .15pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">She felt her
pounding heart. Her hand seemed to enclose it. She thought for the first time
in her life that it was nothing that was hers, that belonged to her, but just a
pounding, living thing inside this body that wasn't really hers either.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .55pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 195%; margin-right: 142.75pt;">"You
don't want them to get hurt," Arnold Friend went on. "Now, get up,
honey. Get up all by yourself." She stood.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 5.5pt; margin-right: 20.85pt; margin-top: .05pt;">"Now, turn
this way. That's right. Come over here to <span style="letter-spacing: -.2pt;">me.—Ellie,
</span>put that away, didn't I tell you? You dope. You miserable creepy
dope," Arnold Friend said. His words were not angry but only part of an
incantation. The incantation was kindly. "Now come out through the kitchen
to me, honey, and let's see a smile, try it, you re a brave, sweet little girl
and now they're eating corn and hot dogs cooked to bursting over an outdoor
fire, and they don't know one thing about you and never did and honey, you're
better <span style="letter-spacing: -.2pt;">than </span>them because not a one of
them would have done this for<span style="letter-spacing: 1.05pt;"> </span>you."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">Connie felt
the linoleum under her feet; it was cool. She brushed her hair back out of her
eyes. Arnold Friend let go of the post tentatively and opened his arms for her,
his elbows pointing in toward each other and his wrists limp, to show that this
was an embarrassed embrace and a little mocking, he didn't want to make her
self-conscious.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">She put out
her hand against the screen. She watched herself push the door slowly open as
if she were back safe somewhere in the other doorway, watching this body and
this head of long hair moving out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: .5pt;"><span style="font-size: 8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 105%; margin-right: 20.85pt;">"My
sweet little blue-eyed girl," he said in a half-sung sigh that had nothing
to do with her brown eyes but was taken up just the <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">same</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">by</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">vast</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">sunlit</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">reaches</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">of</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">the</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">land</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">behind</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">him</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">and</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">on</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">all</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">sides</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">of</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">him</span><span style="letter-spacing: -4.55pt; mso-font-width: 102%;">—</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">so</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">much</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">land</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 102%;">that</span>
<span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">Connie</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">had</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">never</span> <span style="mso-font-width: 101%;">seen</span> <span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt; mso-font-width: 101%;">before</span><span style="mso-font-width: 101%;"> </span>and
did not recognize except to know that she was going to it.<o:p></o:p></p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-76900847248519703542020-08-17T21:47:00.005-07:002020-08-17T21:47:55.773-07:00Haunted<p> Kid-friendly ghost story from Arkansas about a haunted house with some spooky ghosts with a serious knack for baking. Written by Harris Tobias.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the town of Blakeslee, Arkansas, there was a house that everyone knew was haunted. It was an old neglected house on a side street in the oldest part of town. Sometimes, the most wonderful smells issued from the house and filled the street with the heavenly odor of fresh baked bread. Whenever that happened, people would say that the old house must have been a bakery or, at the very least, the former home of a fabulous baker.</p><p><br /></p><p>Sometimes, the neighbors would hear the sound of music and laughter coming from the empty house as if there was a wonderful party in full swing. Whenever that happened, the neighbors would look at each other and say, “It sounds like a nice party, I wish I was invited.” Whatever ghosts haunted the old house, they were benign and friendly ghosts. But even the friendliest spirits are scary and no one ever actually went inside the house. With the possible exception of a young boy being dared by his playmates, no one ever even stepped foot on the front porch.</p><p><br /></p><p>One day a man moved into town from a distant city. He saw the empty house and asked the neighbors, “who owned it?” He was told the owner was unknown and that the property could be bought for back taxes. No one told the stranger about the house’s curious history. The man went to City Hall and purchased the property. Soon after moving in, however, strange things began to happen– odd noises in the night, weird lights drifting from room to room, the smells of baking from a cold kitchen and, worst of all, the sound of a party when the new owners were trying to sleep.</p><p>After a few days, the man’s wife declared that she could no longer live in so haunted a place and moved out taking the children with her. Before long, the man gave up as well. He was forced to find another place to live but he was angry at the neighbors for not warning him about the house’s reputation. He was angry at the town board for not telling him that the house was occupied by ghosts. In fact he was angry at everyone in town for treating him so badly. So he went to the mayor to complain and see if he could get his money back. The mayor refused saying he never misrepresented the house as anything it was not. “Just because a house is haunted,” he said, “doesn’t mean you can’t live there. The trick is making friends with the ghosts, learning to get along with them.”</p><p><br /></p><p>So the man went to the Pastor of the local church and told him his problem. The Pastor said, “You’ve been in town for a month and only now, when you’re having a problem, do you come and see me? Well, sit down and tell me what’s on your mind.”</p><p><br /></p><p>So the man sat and told the Pastor about the haunted house he’d bought. Now the Pastor in this village was considered a wise man, set in his ways, conservative in his manner and beliefs. He wasn’t open to new ideas but, reluctantly, he agreed to visit the house and see exactly what the man was talking about.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Pastor accompanied the man to the house. As they approached the block the house was on, the Pastor’s smelled a delicious smell. “What’s that wonderful smell?” he asked.</p><p><br /></p><p>“It’s the ghosts baking bread,” the man replied.</p><p><br /></p><p>When they got closer, the Pastor stopped to listen. He turned to the man and inquired, “I hear music. Is someone having a party?”</p><p><br /></p><p>“It’s the ghosts having a party,” replied the man.</p><p><br /></p><p>They went inside and looked around the empty house. The Pastor sat at a table while the man looked for something to serve his guest. He found an old bottle of whiskey and poured a glass for the Pastor and one for himself. They toasted each others health and drank.</p><p><br /></p><p>“So you moved from Little Rock to Blakeslee?” said the Pastor. “My parents live in Little Rock, I know the town well.”</p><p><br /></p><p>The man, it turned out, knew some of the Pastor’s relatives. They talked and joked about those things they had in common and felt a friendship growing. They were having such a pleasant time that before they knew it, three hours had passed.</p><p><br /></p><p>They were gone so long, the man’s wife began to get nervous. “He went to the Pastor’s house hours ago,” she said to herself. “Maybe the ghosts got him.” So she picked herself up and went to the Pastor’s house and introduced herself to the Pastor’s wife. Together they pooled their misgivings about ghosts and their worries about their husbands and went to the haunted house together. They peeked in the windows and saw the two men sitting at a table drinking , laughing and having a good time. The wives joined their husbands and found that they had much to talk about.</p><p><br /></p><p>The laughing and talking attracted the neighbors who stopped by and introduced themselves. Pretty soon the kitchen was filled with the smell of cooking. A neighbor brought his fiddle and another brought his guitar. And just like that, there was a party. The old house filled with real smells and real laughter. It was alive again and that, of course, was what it wanted all along.</p><p><br /></p><p>From that day to this, the old house came alive again and its ghosts were laid to rest never to be seen or heard of again.</p><p><br /></p><p>THE END –</p><p>About The Author:</p><p><br /></p><p>Harris Tobias lives and writes in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is the author of several novels and dozens of short stories. His fiction has appeared in Ray Gun Revival, Dunesteef Audio Magazine, Literal Translations, FriedFiction, Down In The Dirt, Eclectic Flash, E Fiction and several other obscure publications. His poetry has appeared in Vox Poetica, The poem Factory and The Poetry Super Highway. </p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-45288740289961206972020-08-17T21:46:00.005-07:002020-08-17T21:46:59.870-07:00All the Fabulous Beasts<p> </p><div><p class="frontmatter" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #848484; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: italic !important; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Fabulous Beasts” by Priya Sharma is a horror novelette about a strange woman living in luxury with her lover, but irrevocably tied to her childhood of deprivation and dark secrets in northwest England. The woman recalls the unravelling of the family upon her uncle’s release from prison.</p><p class="frontmatter" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #848484; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: italic !important; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Please be warned that this story deals with difficult content and themes, including child abuse, incest, and rape.</p><p class="frontmatter" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #848484; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: italic !important; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></p></div><img draggable="false" srcset="https://i1.wp.com/www.tor.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/fabulousbeasts_story_full1.jpg?fit=472%2C+9999&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C820px&quality=100&ssl=1" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; display: block; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; height: auto !important; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /><div><br /></div><div><p class="frontmatter" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #848484; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: italic !important; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="more-174801" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Eliza, tell me your secret.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes I’m cornered at parties by someone who’s been watching me from across the room as they drain their glass. They think I don’t know what’s been said about me.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Eliza’s odd looking but she has something, don’t you think? Une jolie laide.</em> A French term meaning ugly-beautiful. Only the intelligentsia can insult you with panache.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I always know when they’re about to come over. It’s in the pause before they walk, as though they’re ordering their thoughts. Then they stride over, purposeful, through the throng of actors, journalists, and politicians, ignoring anyone who tries to engage them for fear of losing their nerve.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Eliza, tell me your secret.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’m a princess.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Such a ridiculous thing to say and I surprise myself by using Kenny’s term for us, even though I am now forty-something and Kenny was twenty-four years ago. I edge past, scanning the crowd for Georgia, so I can tell her that I’ve had enough and am going home. Maybe she’ll come with me.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My interrogator doesn’t look convinced. Nor should they be. I’m not even called Eliza. My real name is Lola and I’m no princess. I’m a monster.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We, Kenny’s princesses, lived in a tower.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kath, my mum, had a flat on the thirteenth floor of Laird Tower, in a northern town long past its prime. Two hundred and seventeen miles from London and twenty-four years ago. A whole world away, or it might as well be.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ami, Kath’s younger sister, lived two floors down. Kath and I went round to see her the day that she came home from the hospital. She answered the door wearing a black velour tracksuit, the bottoms slung low on her hips. The top rose up to reveal the wrinkled skin that had been taut over her baby bump the day before.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Hiya,” she opened the door wide to let us in.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ami only spoke to Kath, never to me. She had a way of ignoring people that fascinated men and infuriated women.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kath and I leant over the Moses basket.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What a diamond,” Kath cooed.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She was right. Some new babies are wizened, but not Tallulah. She looked like something from the front of one of Kath’s knitting patterns. Perfect. I knew, even at that age, that I didn’t look like everyone else; flat nose with too much nostril exposed, small eyelids and small ears that were squashed against my skull. I felt a pang of jealousy.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What’s her name, Ami?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Tallulah Rose.” Ami laid her head on Kath’s shoulder. “I wish you’d been there.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I wanted to be there too. I’m sorry, darling. There was nobody to mind Lola. And Mikey was with you.” Kath must have been genuinely sorry because normally she said Mikey’s name like she was sniffing sour milk. “Where is he now?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Out, wetting the baby’s head.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kath’s expression suggested that she thought he was doing more than toasting his newborn. He was always hanging around Ami. <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Just looking after you, like Kenny wants</em>, he’d say, as if he was only doing his duty. Except now that there were shitty nappies to change and formula milk to prepare he was off, getting his end away.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ami wasn’t quite ready to let Kath’s absence go.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You could’ve left Lola with one of my friends.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ami knew better. Kath never let anyone look after me, not even her.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Let’s not fight now, pet. You’re tired.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ami’s gaze was like being doused in ice water. It contained everything she couldn’t say to me. <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fucking ugly, little runt. You’re always in the way.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You must be starvin’. Let me get you a cuppa and a sandwich and then you can get some sleep.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We stood and looked at the baby when Ami had gone to bed.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Don’t get any ideas. You don’t want to be like your aunt, with a baby at sixteen. You don’t want to be like either of us.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kathy always spoke to me like I was twenty-four, not four.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tallulah stirred and stretched, arms jerking outwards as if she was in freefall. She opened her eyes. There was no squinting or screaming.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“The little scrap’s going to need our help.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kath lifted her out and laid her on her knee for inspection. I put my nose against the soft spot on her skull. I fell in love with her right then.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What do you wish for her?” Kath asked, smiling.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Chocolate. Barbies. A bike. A pet snake. Everything my childish heart could bestow.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Saturdays were for shopping. Kathy and I walked down Cathcart Street towards town. We’d pass a row of grimy Victorian mansions on our way that served as a reminder of once great wealth, now carved up into flats for social housing or filled with squatters who lay in their damp dens with needles in their arms.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After these were the terraces, joined by a network of alleyways that made for easy assaults and getaways. This model of housing was for the civic minded when everyone here had a trade, due to our proximity to the city of Liverpool. The ship-building yards lay empty, and the 1980s brought container ships that did away with the demand for dockers. The life inside spilled out into the sun; women sat on their steps in pyjama bottoms and vest tops, even though it was lunchtime. Fags in hand, they’d whisper to one another as Kathy passed, afraid to meet her gaze. A man wore just shorts, his pale beer belly pinking up in the sun. He saluted when he saw Kathy. She ignored him.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I followed Kathy, her trolley wheels squeaking. The sound got worse as it was filled with vegetables, cheap meat shrink wrapped on Styrofoam trays, and bags of broken biscuits.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kathy stopped to talk to a woman with rotten, tea stained teeth. I was bored. We were at the outskirts of town, where the shops were most shabby. House clearance stores and a refurbished washing machine outlet. I wandered along the pavement a way until something stopped me. The peeling sign over the shop window read “Ricky’s Reptiles”. The display was full of tanks. Most were empty, but the one at the front contained a pile of terrapins struggling to climb over one another in a dish of water.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The shop door was open, revealing the lino floor that curled up at the corners. It was a shade of blue that verged on grey, or maybe it was just dirty. I could see the lights from the tanks. The fish were darting flashes of wild colour or else they drifted on gossamer fins. I was drawn in. The man behind the counter looked up and smiled, but to his credit he didn’t try and talk to me, otherwise I would’ve run.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Then I saw it, a long tank along the back wall. I went closer. The snake was magnificent, from the pale skin on her belly to the brown scales on her back.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She slithered closer, eyeing me and then raised her head and the front third of her body lifted up as if suspended on invisible thread. I put my forehead against the glass.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“She likes you,” the man murmured.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She moved up the side of the tank. I realised that I was swaying in time with her, feeling unity in the motion. I was aware of her body, each muscle moving beneath her skin, her very skeleton. I looked into the snake’s black eyes and could see out of them into my own. The world was on the tip of her forked tongue; my curiosity, the shopkeeper’s sweat and kindness, the soft flavour of the mice in the tank behind the counter.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A hand gripped my shoulder, hard, jerking me back to myself. It was Kathy.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Get away from that thing.” Her fingers were digging into me. “Don’t you ever come in here again, understand?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She looked at the snake, shuddering. “God, it’s disgusting. What’s wrong with you?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She shouted at me all the way home, for putting the wind up her, letting her think some pervert had taken me. I didn’t realise just how afraid she was. That she was looking at me like she didn’t know what she’d birthed.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The novelty of motherhood soon wore off. Ami sat in the armchair of our flat, her toenails painted in the same tangerine shade as her maxi dress. She was sunbed fresh and her lips were demarcated in an unflatteringly pale shade of pink. Her hair was in fat rollers ready for her evening out.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Guess where I went today?” she asked, her voice bright and brittle.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Where, doll?” Kath puffed on her cigarette, blowing a stream of smoke away from us.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If Ami was slim, Kath was scrawny. The skin on her neck and chest was wrinkled from the lack of padding and twenty-five cigarettes a day. She wore a series of gold chains and her hands were rough and red from perpetual cleaning. Her face was unbalanced: nose too small and large ears that stuck out. Round eyes that never saw make-up. I forget sometimes, that she was only twenty-four then.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“To see Kenny.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tallulah got up and I thought she was leaving me for Ami but she was just fetching her teddy. When she sat back down next to me, she wriggled against me to get comfortable. Ami bought Tallulah’s clothes. Ridiculous, expensive things to dress a toddler in, old fashioned and frilly.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Kenny always asks after you.” Ami filled the silence.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Does he?” Kath tipped the ash from her cigarette into the empty packet. God love her, she didn’t have many vices.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“He never says but he’s hurt. It’s all over his face when I walk in and you’re not with me. You’re not showing him much respect or loyalty. All he wants to do is look after you and Lola, like he looks after me and Tallulah.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I don’t want Kenny’s money. He’s not Robin Hood. He beat a man to death.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“He’s our <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">brother</em>.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Which was funny, because I didn’t know that I had an uncle.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kath’s face was a shutter slamming shut.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“He loves to see pictures of Lola.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Photos? You showed him photos?” Kath was blowing herself for a fight.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I only showed him some pictures. He wanted to see her. What’s up with you?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Lola’s <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">my </em>business. No one else’s.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Well, I’m taking Tallulah for him to see next time.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“No, you’re not. Not to a prison.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“She’s mine. I’ll take her where the fuck I want.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You’ve done well to remember you’ve got a daughter.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What’s that mean?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You’re always out with your bloody mates. You treat me like an unpaid baby sitter. She spends more time here than with you and then you’ve got the cheek to tell me to mind my own.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“So it’s about money?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“No,” Kath threw up her hands, “it’s about you being a selfish, spoilt brat. I’m your <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">sister,</em> not your mum. And it’s about how you treat Tallulah.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“At least I know who her dad is.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kath slapped her face. A sudden bolt that silenced them both. It left a red flush on Ami’s cheek. Whenever I asked about my dad, Kath told me that she’d found me in a skip.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’m sorry, Ami…” Kath put out her hands. “I didn’t mean to. I mean…”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Tallulah,” Ami snapped, holding out her hand.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tallulah looked from me to Kath, her eyes wide. Ami pulled her up by the arm. She screamed.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Be careful with her.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Or what, Kath?” Ami lifted Tallulah up, putting her under one arm like she was a parcel. “Are you going to call Social Services? Fuck off.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Calling Social Services was a crime akin to calling the police.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tallulah was in a full on tantrum by then, back arched and legs kicking. Fierce for her size, she proved too much for Ami who threw her down on the sofa. She lay there, tear stained and rigid. Ami had started to cry too. “Stay here then, see if I sodding care.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are times when I feel lost, even to myself, and that what looks out from behind my eyes isn’t human.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m reminded of it each day as I go to work at the School of Tropical Medicine.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Peter, one of the biochemists from the lab downstairs has come up for a batch of venom. He watches me milk the snakes when he can overcome his revulsion.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Michael, my assistant, tips the green mamba out of her box. I pin her down with a forked metal stick, while Michael does the same, further along her body. I clamp a hand just beneath her neck, thanking her silently for enduring the indignity of this charade. If it were just the two of us, she’d come to me without all this manhandling. I’ll make it up to her later with mice and kisses. She’s gorgeous in an intense shade of green, her head pointed.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You have to stop that work when you get too old,” says Peter, “you know, reflexes getting slow and all that.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The deaths of herpetologist are as fabled as snakes are touchy. There’s no room for lax habits or slowness. Handled safely for years, a snake can turn on you, resulting in a blackened, withered limb, blood pouring from every orifice, paralysis and blindness, if not death.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Peter’s a predator. He’s been a swine to me since I knocked him back. I turn to him with the snake still in my hand. She hisses at him and he shrinks away.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I hook the mamba’s mouth over the edge of the glass and apply gentle pressure. The venom runs down the side and collects in a pool.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What Peter doesn’t know is that when my darlings and I are alone I hold them in my arms and let them wind around my neck. Our adoration is mutual. They’re the easy part of my job.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“They like Eliza,” Michael is offended on my behalf. There’s not been a bite since I’ve been here.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Concentrate.” I snap at him as he brings the mamba’s box to me. I regret my churlishness straight away. Michael is always pleasant with me. He never takes offence at my lack of social graces but someday he will.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Snakes are easy. It’s people that I don’t know how to charm.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tallulah trailed along beside me. She looked like a doll in her school uniform; pleated skirt and leather buckled shoes. I didn’t begrudge her the lovely clothes that Ami bought her. She jumped, a kittenish leap, and then she took my hand. We swung arms as we walked.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We turned onto Cathcart Street. Laird Tower was ahead of us, dwarfing the bungalows opposite. Those used by the elderly or infirm were marked out by white grab handles and key safes.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A pair of girls sat on a wall. They jumped down when they saw us. School celebrities, these playground queens, who knew how to bruise you with a word. They’d hurt you for not being like them, or not wanting to be like them.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Is she your sister?” Jade, the shorter one asked Tallulah.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“No,” Tallulah began, “she’s…”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Of course not,” Jade cut across her, keen to get out the rehearsed speech. Jade didn’t like my prowess in lessons. I tried to hide it, but it occasionally burst out of me. I liked the teacher. I liked homework. I even liked the school, built in red brick, that managed to still look like a Victorian poorhouse.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jade was sly enough not to goad me for that, going for my weakness, not my strength. “You’re too pretty to be Lola’s sister. Look at her ugly mug.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It was true. I remained resolutely strange; my features had failed to rearrange themselves into something that would pass for normal. Also, my sight had rapidly deteriorated in the last few months and my thick lenses magnified my eyes.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Be careful.” Jade leant down into Tallulah’s face. “You’ll catch her ugliness.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tallulah pushed her, hard, both of her small hands on her chest. Jade fell backwards a few steps, surprised by the attack. She raised a fist to hit Tallulah.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My blood was set alight, venom rising. Water brash filled my mouth as if I were about to be sick. I snatched at Jade’s hand and sunk my teeth into her meaty forearm, drawing blood. I could taste her shock and fear. If she was screaming, I couldn’t hear her. I only let go when her friend punched me on the ear.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After I’d apologised I sat in the corner of the room while Kath and Pauline, Jade’s mum, talked.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I thought it would be good if we sorted it out between us, like grown ups,” Pauline said.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Social Services had already been round to confirm that I was the culprit.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Has she ever done anything like this before?</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">No,</em> Kathy was calm and firm, <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Lola wasn’t brought up that way.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’m so sorry about what happened.” Pauline lifted her mug of tea, her hand trembling a fraction. She took a sip and set it down, not picking it up again.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Why?” Kath sat up straighter. “Lola bit Jade.<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> I’m</em> sorry and I’ll make sure that she is too by the time I’m done with her.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Yes, but Jade was picking on her.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“That’s no excuse for what Lola did. She should’ve just walked away.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It’s time that someone cut Jade down to size.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“My daughter <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">bit</em> yours.” Exasperation raised Kathy’s voice a full octave.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“She was asking for it.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kathy shook her head. Then, “How is she?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jade had lain on the pavement, twitching. Red marks streaked up her arm, marking the veins.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“She’s doing okay,” Pauline swallowed. “She’s on antibiotics. She’s a bit off colour, that’s all.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“The police and Social Services came round earlier.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’ve not complained. I’m not a nark. I’d never do that.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I didn’t say you had.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You’ll tell Kenny, won’t you? We’re not grasses. We won’t cause you any bother. I’ll skin Jade if she comes near your girls again.” We were known as Kathy’s girls.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Kenny?” Kathy repeated dully.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Please. Will you talk to him?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kath was about to say something but then deflated in the chair.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Ami’s says she’s visiting him soon, so I’ll make sure he gets the message.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kathy closed the door after Pauline had gone.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What did you do to her?” It was the first time she’d looked at me properly since it had happened.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It wasn’t her fault.” Tallulah stood between us. “She was going to hit me.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What did you do to her?” Kathy pushed her aside. “Her arm swelled up and she’s got blood poisoning.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I don’t know,” I stammered. “It just happened.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She slapped me. I put my hands out to stop her but she carried on, backing me into the bedroom. She pushed me down on the floor. I curled my hands over my head.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I didn’t bring you up to be like that.” Her strength now was focused in a fist. Kathy had hit me before, but never like that. “I swear I’ll kill you if you ever do anything like that again. You fucking little monster.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She was sobbing and shrieking. Tallulah was crying and trying to pull her off. Kathy continued to punch me until her arm grew tired. “You’re a monster, just like your father.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We stayed in our bedroom that night, Tallulah and I. We could hear Kathy banging about the flat. First, the vacuum hitting the skirting boards as she pulled it around. A neighbour thumped on the wall and she shouted back, but turned it off and took to the bathroom. She’d be at it all night, until her hands were raw. The smell of bleach was a signal of her distress. There were times when I thought I’d choke on the stench.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The skin on my face felt tight and sore, as if shrunken by tears. Tallulah rolled up my t-shirt to inspect the bruises on my back. There was a change coming, fast, as the shock of Kathy’s onslaught wore off.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It hurt when Tallulah touched me. It wasn’t just the skin on my face that felt wrong. It was all over. I rubbed my head against the carpet, an instinctual movement as I felt I’d got a cowl covering my face. The skin ripped.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’ll get Kathy.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“No, wait.” I grabbed her wrist. “Stay with me.” My skin had become a fibrous sheath, my very bones remoulding. My ribs shrank and my slim pelvis and limbs became vestigial. My paired organs rearranged themselves, one pushed below the other except my lungs. I gasped as one of those collapsed. I could feel my diaphragm tearing; the wrenching of it doubled me over.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I writhed on the floor. There was no blood. What came away in the harsh lamplight was translucent. Tallulah held me as I sloughed off my skin which fell away to reveal scales. She gathered the coils of me into her lap. We lay down and I curled around her.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. When I put out my forked tongue I could taste Tallulah’s every molecule in the air.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The morning light came through the thin curtain. Tallulah was beside me. I had legs again. I put a hand to my mouth. My tongue was whole. My flesh felt new. More than that, I could see. When I put my glasses on the world became blurred. I didn’t need them anymore. The very surface of my eyes had been reborn.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My shed skin felt fibrous and hard. I bundled it up into a plastic bag and stuffed it in my wardrobe. Tallulah stretched as she watched me, her hands and feet splayed.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Tallulah, what am I? Am I a monster?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She sat up and leant against me, her chin on my shoulder.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Yes, you’re <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">my</em> monster.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I ache for the splendid shabbiness of my former life, when it was just Kath, Tallulah, and me in the flat, the curtains drawn against the world and the telly droning on in the background. Tallulah and I would dance around Kath, while she swatted us away. The smell of bleach and furniture polish is forever home. Kath complaining when I kept turning the heating up. Being cold made me sluggish.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Endless, innocuous days and nights that I should’ve savoured more.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“How was your test?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Crap.” Tallulah threw down her bag. “Hi, Kath.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Hi, love,” Kathy shouted back from the kitchen.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tallulah, school uniformed, big diva hair so blonde that it was almost white, a flick of kohl expertly applied at the corner of her eyes.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’m thick, not like you.” She kicked off her shoes.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You’re not thick. Just lazy.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She laughed and lay on her belly beside me, in front of the TV. She smelt of candy floss scent that she’d stolen from her mum. Tallulah was the sweetest thing.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There was the sound of the key in the door. I looked at Tallulah. Only her mum had a key. We could hear Ami’s voice, followed by a man’s laugh. A foreign sound in the flat. Kathy came out of the kitchen, tea towel in hand.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ami stood in the doorway, flushed and excited, as if she was about to present a visiting dignitary.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Kath, there’s someone here to see you.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She stood aside. I didn’t recognise the man. He was bald and scarred. Kathy sat down on the sofa arm, looking the colour of a dirty dishrag.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Oh, God,” he said, “aren’t you a bunch of princesses?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Kenny, when did you get out?” Kath asked.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“A little while ago.” He took off his jacket and threw it down. A snake tattoo coiled up his arm and disappeared under the sleeve of his t-shirt. It wasn’t the kind of body art I was used to. This hadn’t been driven into the skin in a fit of self loathing or by a ham fisted amateur. It was faded but beautiful. It rippled as Kenny moved, invigorated by his muscles.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Come and hug me, Kath.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She got up, robotic, and went to him, tolerating his embrace, her arms stiff by her sides.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’ve brought us something to celebrate.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He handed her a plastic bag and she pulled out a bottle of vodka and a packet of Jammy Dodgers.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Just like when we were kids, eh?” he grinned.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“See, Kenny’s got no hard feelings about you staying away.” Ami was keen to be involved. “He’s just glad to be home.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">They both ignored her.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Now, girls, come and kiss your uncle. You first, Tallulah.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Well, go on.” Ami gave her a shove.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She pecked his cheek and then shot away, which seemed to amuse him. Then it was my turn. Kath stood close to us while Kenny held me at arm’s length.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“How old are you now, girl?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Eighteen.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You were born after I went inside.” He sighed. “You’ve got the family’s ugly gene like me and your mum but you’ll do.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For what?</em> I thought.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kenny put his fleshy hand around Kath’s neck and pressed his forehead against hers. Kathy, who didn’t like kisses or cuddles from anyone, flinched. I’d never seen her touched so much.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’m home now. We’ll not talk about these past, dark years. It’ll be how it was before. Better. You’ll see. Us taking care of each other.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Georgia’s unusual for a photographer in that she’s more beautiful than her models. They’re gap toothed, gawky things that only find luminosity through the lens. Georgia’s arresting in the flesh.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I hover beside our host who’s introducing me to everyone as though I’m a curio. We approach a group who talk too loudly, as if they’re the epicentre of the party.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I find Georgia distant. And ambitious.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“She lives on Martin’s Heath. In one of the old houses.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Bloody hell, is that family money?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Rosie, you’ve modelled for Georgia. Have you been there?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“No.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Rosie sounds so quiet and reflective that the pain of her unrequited love is palpable. At least I hope it’s unrequited.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Have you seen her girlfriend?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Everyone, meet Eliza,” our host steps in before they have a chance to pronounce judgement on me within my earshot, “Georgia’s partner.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I shake hands with each of them.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Georgia’s last shoot made waves. And I didn’t realise that she was such a stunner.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We all look over at Georgia. Among all the overdressed butterflies, she wears black trousers, a white shirt, and oxblood brogues.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Don’t tell her that,” I smile. “She doesn’t like it.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Why? Doesn’t every woman want that?” The man falters, as if he’s just remembered that I’m a woman too.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">These people with their interminable words. I came from a place where a slap sufficed.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Don’t be dull,” I put him down. “She’s much more than her face.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What do you do, Eliza?” another one of them asks, unperturbed by my rudeness.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’m a herpetologist.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">They shudder with delicious revulsion.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I glance back to Georgia. A man with long blonde hair reaches out to touch her forearm and he shows her something on his tablet.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m a pretender in my own life, in this relationship. I know how my jealousy will play out when we get home. I’ll struggle to circumnavigate all the gentility and civility that makes me want to scream.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Eventually Georgia will say, <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What’s the matter? Just tell me instead of trying to pick a fight.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She’ll never be provoked, this gracious woman, to display any savagery of feeling. I should know better than to try and measure the breadth and depth of love by its noise and dramas but there are times that I crave it, as if it’s proof that love is alive.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ami took Tallulah away with her the first night that Kenny came to the flat.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“But it’s a school night. And all my stuff’s here.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You’re not going to school tomorrow.” Ami picked up her handbag. “We’re going out with Kenny.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tallulah didn’t move.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Mind your mum, there’s a good girl.” Kenny didn’t even look up.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After the front door closed, Kathy locked and chained it.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Get your rucksack. Put some clothes in a bag. Don’t pack anything you don’t need.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Why?” I followed her into her bedroom.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“We’re leaving.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Why?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Just get your stuff.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What about college?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kathy tipped out drawers, rifling through the untidy piles that she’d made on the floor.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What about Tallulah?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She sank down on the bed.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“There’s always someone that I have to stay for. Mum. Ami. Tallulah.” She slammed her fist down on the duvet. “If it had been just us, we’d have been gone long ago.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Stay?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She wasn’t listening to me anymore.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I waited too long. I should’ve run when I had the chance. Fuck everyone.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She lay down, her face to the wall. I tried to put my arms around her but she shrunk from me, which she always did when I touched her and which never failed to hurt me.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If we were his princesses then Kenny considered himself king.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Kath, stop fussing and come and sit down. It’s good to be back among women. Without women, men are uncivilised creatures.” He winked at me. “Tell me about Ma’s funeral again, Kath.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ami sat beside him, looking up at him.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“There were black horses with plumes and brasses. Her casket was in a glass carriage.” Kath’s delivery was wooden.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“And all the boys were there?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Yes, Kenny. All the men, in their suits, gold sovereign rings, and tattoos.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Good,” he said, “I would’ve been offended otherwise. Those boys owe me and they know it. I did time for them. Do you know the story?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Bits,” Tallulah said.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I told her, Kenny.” Ami was keen to show her allegiance.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You were what, twelve?” He snorted. “You remember nothing. We did a job in Liverpool. A jeweller who lived in one of those massive houses around Sefton Park. We heard he was dealing in stolen diamonds. I went in first,” he thumped his chest. “At twenty-three I was much thinner back then, could get into all sorts of tight spots. I let the others in afterwards. We found his money but he kept insisting the diamonds were hidden in the fireplace, but his hidey hole was empty. He kept acting all surprised. He wouldn’t tell, no matter what.” Kenny shrugged. “Someone grassed. A copper picked me up near home. Under my coat, my shirt was covered in his blood. I kept my trap shut and did the time. The others were safe. Eighteen years inside. My only regret is what happened to Ma. And missing her funeral.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“There were white flowers, everywhere, spelling out her name.” Ami said. He patted her arm in an absent way, like she was a cat mithering for strokes.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I wish they’d let me out for it. Ma was a proper princess, girls. She was touched, God bless her, but she was a princess.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kath sat with her hands folded on her knees.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Do you remember what Dad said when he was dying?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kath stayed quiet.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“He said, <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You’re the man of the house, Kenny. And you’re the mother, Kathy. Kenny, you have to look after these girls.</em> Poor Ma, so fragile. When I heard about her stroke, I was beside myself. It was the shock of me being sent down that did it. Whoever grassed me up has to pay for that, too. I should’ve been here, taking care of you all.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I managed,” Kathy squeezed the words out.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I know. I hate to think of you, nursing Ma when you also had a baby to look after. You were meant for better things. We didn’t always live in this shithole, girls. We grew up in a big rambling house. You won’t remember much of it, Ami. Dad bred snakes. He was a specialist. And Ma, she was a real lady. They were educated people, not like ‘round here.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The words stuck in my gut. ‘Round here was all I knew.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Happy days, weren’t they, Mouse?” Kenny looked directly at Kathy, waiting.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Mouse,” Ami laughed like she’d only just noticed Kathy’s big eyes and protruding ears, “I’d forgotten that.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mouse. A nickname that diminished her.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What’s <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">my</em> pet name?” Ami pouted.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You’re just Ami.” He said it like she was something flat and dead, not shifting his gaze from Kathy.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There it was. Even then, I could see that Kathy was at the centre of everything and Ami was just the means to reach her.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s a photograph in our bedroom that Georgia took of me while we were travelling around South America. It embarrasses me because of its dimensions and scares me, because Georgia has managed to make me look like some kind of modern Eve, desirable in a way that I’ll never be again. My hair is loose and uncombed and the python around my shoulders is handsome in dappled, autumnal shades. My expression is of unguarded pleasure.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Let’s stay here, forever,” I said to her when she put the lens cap back on, “It’s paradise.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What I was really thinking was <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What would it be like to change, forever, and have the whole jungle as my domain?</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Do you love it that much?” Georgia replied in a way that suggested she didn’t. “And put him down. Poor thing. If he’s caught he’ll end up as a handbag.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So it is that serpents are reviled when it’s man that is repulsive.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I got off the bus at the end of Argyll Street and walked towards home. Kenny sat on a plastic chair outside The Saddle pub, drinking a pint. He was waiting for me.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What have you been doing today?” He abandoned his drink and followed me.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Biology.” I was at college, in town.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Clever girl. That’s from your grandparents. I used to be smart like that. You wouldn’t think it to look at me.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There was an odd, puppyish eagerness to Kenny as he bounced along beside me. I darted across the road when there was a gap in the traffic. The railway line was on the other side of the fence, down a steep bank. Part way down the embankment was a rolled up carpet, wet and rotted, and the shopping trolley that it had been transported in.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Let me carry your bag. It looks heavy.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I can manage.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I wasn’t always like this. I had to change for us to survive. Fighting and stealing,” he shook his head, embarrassed. “I only became brutal to stop us being brutalised. Do you understand?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The sky had darkened. Rain was on its way.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“We lost everything when Dad died. The house. The money. Your grandma lost her mind. It was the shock of having to live here. We were posh and we paid for that. On our first day at school a lad was picking on Kathy. Do you know what I did? I bit him, Lola. Right on the face. He swelled up like a red balloon. He nearly choked. Nobody picks on my princesses.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nobody except him.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Are you special, Lola?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I don’t know what you mean.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I dodged him as he tried to block my path. Tallulah wouldn’t have told him anything. Ami though, she had told him to prevent Pauline and Jade getting a battering.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I can wait,” he didn’t pursue me, just stood there in the drizzle. “We have lots of time now.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“We’re going for a ride today.” Kenny followed Kath into the kitchen. He’d started turning up at the flat every day.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I can’t, Kenny, I’ve got loads to do.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It can all wait.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kenny had the last word.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Where are we going?” Tallulah asked.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You’re not going anywhere except to Ami’s. She needs to get her house in order. A girl needs her mum. She’s sorting your bedroom, so you’re going to live with her. Properly.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I don’t want to.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Want’s not in it.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kathy stood between them. He pushed her aside.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I live <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">here</em>.” Tallulah wouldn’t be moved.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You live where I tell you.” He had this way of standing close to you, to make himself seem more imposing, and lowering his voice. “You act like you’re something with that pretty little face of yours. Well, I’m here to tell you that you’re not special. You’re fucking Mikey Flynn’s daughter. And he’s a piece of dead scum.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Poor Mikey Flynn, rumoured to have done a runner. I wondered where Kenny had him buried.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Go home, Tallulah.” Kathy raised her chin. “Kenny’s right. You’re not my girl. You should be with your own mother.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tallulah’s eyes widened. I could see the tears starting to pool there.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Go on, then,” Kathy carried on, “you don’t belong here.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Mum,” I opened my mouth.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Shut it.” Kathy turned on me. “I’ve been soft on you pair for too long. Now help Tallulah take her stuff to Ami’s.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“No,” Kenny put a hand on my arm, “Lola stays with us.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As Kenny drove, the terraces changed to semis and then detached houses. Finally there were open fields. It felt like he’d taken us hours away but it wasn’t more than thirty minutes. We turned up an overgrown drive. Branches whipped the windscreen as Kenny drove.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Kenny.” Kath’s voice was ripped from her throat. He patted her hand.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The drive ended at a large house, dark bricked with tall windows. It might as well have been a castle for all its unfamiliar grandeur. Overgrown rhododendrons crowded around it, shedding pink and red blossoms that were long past their best.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Come on.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kenny got out, not looking back to see if we were following.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kath stood at the bottom of the steps, looking up at the open front door. There were plenty of window bars and metal shutters where I grew up, but the windows here were protected by wrought iron foliage in which metal snakes were entwined. The interior was dim. I could hear Kenny’s footsteps as he walked inside.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“This is where we used to live.” Kathy’s face was blank. She went in, a sleep walker in her own life. I followed her.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Welcome home.” Kenny was behind the door. He locked it and put the key on a chain around his neck.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kenny showed us from room to room as if we were prospective buyers, not prisoners. Every door had a lock and every window was decorated in the same metal lattice work.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I stopped at a set of double doors but Kenny steered me away from it. “Later. Look through here, Kathy. Do you remember the old Aga? Shame they ripped it out. I thought we could get a new one.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He led us on to the lounge, waving his arm with a flourish.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I couldn’t bring you here without buying <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">some</em> new furniture.” He kept glancing at Kathy. “What do you think?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The room smelt of new carpet. It was a dusky pink, to match the sofa, and the curtains were heavy cream with rose buds on them. Things an old woman might have picked.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Lovely, Kenny.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I bought it for us.” He slung his arm around her neck. It looked like a noose. “You and me, here again, no interference.” His face was soft. “I’ve plenty of money. I can get more.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Go and play,” Kath said to me.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’ll shame me forever that I was angry at her for talking to me like I was a child when all she was trying to do was get me out of his way.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I went, then crawled back on my belly to watch them through the gap in the door.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kath broke away from him and sat down. Kenny followed her, sinking down to lay his head on her knee. Her hand hovered over him, the muscles in her throat moving as she swallowed hard. Then she stroked his head. He buried his face in her lap, moaning.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What happened to us, Mouse?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mouse. He’d swallow her whole. He’d crush her.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You said you can get more money. Do you mean the money from the job in Liverpool?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He moved quickly, sitting beside Kathy with his thigh wedged against the length of hers.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Yes.” He interlaced their fingers, making their hands a single fist. “I want you to know that I didn’t kill anyone.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You didn’t? You were covered in blood.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It was Barry’s son, Carl. He always had a screw loose. The man wouldn’t tell us where the diamonds were and Carl just freaked. He kept on beating him.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“But you admitted it.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Who would believe me if I denied it? I did the time. Barry was very grateful. I knew it would set us up for life. I hated waiting for you. I imagined slipping out between the bars to come to you. I was tempted so many times. I hated the parole board. There <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">were</em> diamonds, Kath. I took them before I let the others in. I stopped here and buried them under the wall at the bottom of the garden. I nearly got caught doing it. Then the police picked me up, on my way back to you. That’s why I had to do the stretch, so nobody would suspect. They’re safe, now. Shankly’s looking after what’s left of them.” He laughed at his own cryptic comment. Every Merseysider knew the deceased Bill Shankly, iconic once-manager of Liverpool Football Club. “Did I do right, Kath?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Then she did something surprising. She kissed him. He writhed under her touch.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Mouse, was there anyone else while I was inside?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“No, Kenny. There’s never been anybody else.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He basked in that.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It’ll be just like I said.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I sensed her hesitation. So did he.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What’s wrong?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It won’t be like we said though, will it?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Why?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It should be just us two.” She leant closer to him. “Lola’s grown up now. She can look after herself.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Lola’s just a kid.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I was a mother at her age.” She put her hand on his arm.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“No, she stays.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Her hand dropped.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Lola,” Kenny called out. “Never let me catch you eavesdropping again. Understand?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’ll just say goodnight to Lola.” Kath stood in the doorway to my new bedroom, as if this game of fucked-up families was natural.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Don’t be long.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I sat on the bed. The new quilt cover and pillow case smelt funny. Kenny had put them on straight out of the packaging without washing them first. They still bore the sharp creases of their confinement.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Lola,” Kathy pulled me up and whispered to me. “He said to me, when we were kids, ‘I’m going to put a baby in you and it’s going to be special, like me and Dad,’ as if I had nothing to do with it. I can’t stand him touching me. When I felt you moving inside me, I was terrified you’d be a squirming snake, but you were <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">mine</em>. I’d do anything to get him away from us and Ami. I was the one who told the police.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Uncle. Father. Any wonder that I’m monstrous?</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Kenny’s always been wrong. He thought it was from Dad, although he never saw him do it. It’s from Mum. It drove her mad, holding it in. She nearly turned when she had her stroke. I have to know, can you do it too?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“We can’t waste time. Can you turn into,” she hesitated, “a snake?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Yes.” I couldn’t meet her gaze.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Good. Do it as soon as I leave.” She opened the window. “Go out through the bars. Will you fit?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I don’t know if I can. I’m not sure that I can do it at will.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Try. Get out of here.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Panic rose in my chest. “What about you?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’m going to do what I should’ve done a long time ago.” She showed me the paring knife in her back pocket and then pulled her baggy sweater back over it. It must’ve been all she had time to grab. “I won’t be far behind you.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What if you’re not?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Don’t ask stupid questions,” she paused, “I’m sorry for not being stronger. I’m sorry for not getting you away from here.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Kathy,” Kenny’s voice boomed from the corridor, “time for bed.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After she left I heard the key turn in the lock.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I went through the drawers and wardrobe. Kenny had filled them with clothes. I didn’t want to touch anything that had come from him. There was nothing that I could use as a weapon or to help me escape.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’d not changed since the time I’d bitten Jade. I lay down, trying to slow my breathing and concentrate. Nothing happened. The silence filled my mind along with all the things he would be doing to Kathy.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I dozed, somewhere towards early morning, wakening frequently in the unfamiliar room. I missed Tallulah beside me in the bed we’d shared since childhood. I missed her warmth and tangle of hair.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When Kenny let me out it was late afternoon.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Where’s my mum?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Down here.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There was a chest freezer in the basement. Kenny lifted the lid. Kathy was inside, frozen in a slumped position, arms crossed over her middle. Frozen blood glittered on the gash in her head and frosted one side of her face.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kenny put his hand on my shoulder like we were mourners at a wake. I should’ve been kicking and screaming, but I was as frozen as she was.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">One of Kathy’s wrists was contorted at an unnatural angle.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“She betrayed me. I always knew it, in my heart.” He shut the lid. “Now it’s just you and me, kid.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He took me up through the house, to the room at the back with the double doors. There were dozens of tanks that cast a glow. Some contained a single serpent, others several that were coiled together like heaps of intestines.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“My beauties. I’ll start breeding them.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There were corn snakes, ball pythons, ribbon snakes, though I had no names for them back then, all of which make good pets. I stopped at one tank. He had a broad head with a blunted snout.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Ah, meet Shankly.” Kenny put his hand against the glass. “He was hard to come by. They’re called cottonmouths because they open their mouths so wide to show their fangs that you see all the white lining inside.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The cottonmouth must have been young. I remember his olive green colour and the clear banded pattern on his back, which he would lose as he got older.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Are you special, Kathy?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’m Lola.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Yes, of course you are. Are you like me?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’m nothing like you. Leave me alone.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’ll look after you. Like you’re a princess. You’ll want for nothing. And you’ll look after me because that’s how it works.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Don’t fucking touch me.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kenny pressed my face against the tank. Shankly showed me his pale underbelly as he slid towards me.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Be afraid of him,” Kenny nodded at the snake, “he still has his fangs. I’ll make a mint from his venom.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Shankly climbed up a branch in his tank and settled there.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kenny pushed me down with one hand and undid his belt buckle with the other.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’m your daughter.” It was my last defence.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I know.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Then he put his forked tongue in my mouth.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I couldn’t move. The place between my legs was numb. I’d already tried sex with a boy from college. I knew what it was about. We’d fumbled and fallen in a heap in the bushes by the old boating lake one afternoon. It wasn’t an experience to set the world alight but it was satisfactory enough.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This wasn’t just a sex crime, it was a power crime. Kenny wanted my fear. I shrunk into the distant corners of myself trying to retreat where he couldn’t follow. His orgasm was grudging, delivered with a short, gratified moan.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Afterwards he sat with his trousers open, watching me like he was waiting for me to do something. I was frozen. I’m not sure I even blinked. That was how Kathy must have felt, forever stuck in that single moment of inertia and shock that kept her in the same spot for a lifetime. She was right. She should have run while she had the chance. Fuck her mother. And Ami, for all the good she’d done her.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kenny stood up. I thought, <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s going to happen again and then he’s going to dump me in the freezer.</em> Instead, he went upstairs, his tread heavy with disappointment.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Don’t stay up too late, pet.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I think I was waiting for something too, when I should’ve been searching for something sharp to stick between his ribs. I couldn’t summon anything; I was still too deep inside myself.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I was colder than I’d ever been before, even though the summer night was stifling. The room felt airless despite the window being wide open and butting up against the grille. Sometimes, when Georgia’s away, I feel that cold.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Get up, get up before he remembers you and comes back down for more.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Lola.” A voice carried through the window.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It was Tallulah, a pale ghost beyond the glass. Her mouth was moving as she clutched at the bars.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I turned my face away, in the childish way of <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">if I can’t see her, then she can’t see me.</em> I didn’t want her to see me like this. It occurred to me that she might have been a witness to the whole thing. I turned back but she’d gone, so I closed my eyes.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I should’ve known that Tallulah would never leave me. The snakes swayed in their tanks, enraptured. Tallulah was long and white, with pale yellow markings. Slender and magnificent. She glided over me and lay on my chest, rearing up. I couldn’t breathe because she took my breath away. I could feel her muscles contracting and her smooth belly scales against my bare chest.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Get up, get up, or he’ll come down and find her like this.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Are you special?</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Her tongue flicked out and touched my lips. I had no choice. I had to do it, for her. There was the rush of lubricant that loosened the top layer of my skin. The change was fast, my boyish body, with its flat chest and narrow hips perfectly suited to the transformation.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I crawled out of my human mantle. Moulting was good. I shed every cell of myself that Kenny had touched.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Both Tallulah and I are unidentifiable among my extensive research of snakes, bearing properties of several species at once. We made a perfect pair for hunting. The pits on my face were heat sensitive, able to detect a variation of a thousandth of a degree, feeding information into my optic nerves. I saw the world in thermal. Kenny’s heart was luminous in the dark. I slid up the side of his bed and hovered over his pillow. Tallulah lay beside him on the mattress, waiting.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Look at your princesses, Kenny. See how special we are.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kenny snored, a gentle, almost purring noise.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s a myth that snakes dislocate their jaws.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I opened my mouth as wide as I could, stretching the flexible ligament that joined my lower jaw to my skull. I covered his crown in slow increments. He snorted and twitched. I slipped down over his eyes, his lashes tickling the inside of my throat. He reached up to touch his head.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tallulah struck him, sinking her fangs into his neck. He started and tried to sit up, limbs flailing, which was a mistake as his accelerating heartbeat sent the venom further around his circulation.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Trying to cover his nose was the hardest part, despite my reconfigured mouth. I thought my head would split open. I wasn’t sure how much more I could stomach. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t trying to swallow him whole. A fraction more and I was over his nostrils completely.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There was only one way to save himself. I recognised the undulations he was making. I could feel the change on my tongue, his skin becoming fibrous. I had to stop him. I couldn’t imagine what he’d become.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He was weakening with Tallulah’s neurotoxins, slumping back on the bed, shaking in an exquisite fit. He’d wet himself. I stretched my flesh further and covered his mouth and waited until long after he was still.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I woke up on the floor beside Tallulah. We were naked. My throat and neck were sore. The corners of my mouth were crusted with dried blood. We lay on our sides, looking at one another without speaking. We were the same, after all.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“How did you find me?” I was hoarse.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I had to wait until Ami went out. I found the house details in her bedroom drawer. I didn’t have any money so I had to get a bus and walk the rest of the way. I’m sorry that I didn’t get here sooner.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It doesn’t matter now.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tallulah picked up our clothes and then our skins which lay like shrouds. It was disconcerting to see how they were moulds of us, even down to the contours of our faces.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’ll take these with us. We can burn them later.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I went upstairs. I edged into the darkened room as if Kenny might sit up at any moment. He was a purple, bloated corpse with fang marks in his neck. I fumbled with the chain around his neck, not wanting to touch him.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Where’s Kathy?” Tallulah asked.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I told her.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Show me.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“No, I don’t want you to remember her like that.” I seized Tallulah’s face in my hands. “You do know that she didn’t mean what she said, about you not belonging with us? She was trying to protect you.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tallulah nodded, her mouth a line. She didn’t cry.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“We have to bury her.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“We can’t. Tallulah, we have to get out of here. Do you understand? Ami will come for you when she realises you’ve gone. There’s something else.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I put my hand in the cottonmouth’s tank. It curled up my arm and I lifted it out, holding it up to my cheek. He nudged my face.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Lift out the bottom.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tallulah pulled out bits of twisted branch and foliage, then pulled up the false base. She gasped. Out came bundles of notes and cloth bags. She tipped the contents out on her palm. More diamonds than I could hold in my cupped hands.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We loaded the money into Kenny’s rucksack and tucked the diamonds in our pockets.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What about the snakes?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We opened the tanks and carried them outside. I watched them disappear into the undergrowth. Except for Shankly. I put him in a carrier bag and took him with us.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are days when I wake and I can’t remember who I am, like a disorientated traveller who can’t recall which hotel room of which country they’re in.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m hurt that Georgia didn’t want me to collect her from the airport.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s been a delay. I won’t get in until late. Go to bed, I’ll get a cab.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I wished now that I’d ignored her and gone anyway instead of lying here in the dark. The harsh fluorescent lights and the near empty corridors of the airport are preferable to the vast darkness of our empty bed.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Not going is a stupid test with which I’ve only hurt myself. I’ve resolutely taken her consideration for indifference. I want her to be upset that I wasn’t there, as if she secretly wanted me there all along.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">See, I confuse even myself.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The front door opens and closes. I should get up and go to her. She comes in, marked by the unzipping of her boots and the soft sound of her shedding clothes.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Love isn’t just what you feel for someone when you look at them. It’s how they make you feel about yourself when they look back at you.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Georgia is the coolest, most poised woman that I know. We’re older now and our hearts and flesh aren’t so easily moved but I still wonder what she sees when she looks at me.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Do you love me?” It’s easier to ask it with the lights off and my head turned away from her.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Everything about us is wrong. We’re lovers, sisters, freaks.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">She answers in a way that I have to respond to. I glide across the floor towards her and we become a writhing knot. We hunt mice in our grandiose pile and in the morning we are back here in our bed, entwined together in our nest.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When we wake again as human beings she says, “Of course I love you, monster.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When we shed the disguises that are Georgia and Eliza, and then the skins that are Lola and Tallulah, we <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">are</em> monsters. Fabulous beasts.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p class="frontmatter" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #848484; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: italic !important; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Fabulous Beasts” copyright © 2015 by Priya Sharma</p><p class="frontmatter" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #848484; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: italic !important; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Art copyright © 2015 by Jeffery Alan Love</p><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-19908521340951852552020-08-17T21:45:00.005-07:002020-08-17T21:45:55.195-07:00Abraham's Boys<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: grey; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 20px; text-align: right;">Joe Hill’s 20th Century Ghosts is one of my favorite collections of the past few years, and I’m thrilled that we’re finally able to bring you one of his stories here. “Abraham’s Boys” reminds us that all stories, at heart, are about taking the awesome, irreversible leap from innocence to knowledge—and about the terrible weight of the landing.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">aximilian searched for them in the carriage house and the cattle shed, even had a look in the springhouse, although he knew almost at first glance he wouldn’t find them there. Rudy wouldn’t hide in a place like that, dank and chill, no windows and so no light, a place that smelled of bats. It was too much like a basement. Rudy never went in their basement back home if he could help it, was afraid the door would shut behind him, and he’d find himself trapped in the suffocating dark.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max checked the barn last, but they weren’t hiding there either, and when he came into the dooryard, he saw with a shock that dusk had come. He had never imagined it could be so late.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“No more this game,” he shouted. “Rudolf! We have to go.” Only when he said <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">have </em>it came out <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">hoff</em>, a noise like a horse sneezing. He hated the sound of his own voice, envied his younger brother’s confident American pronunciations. Rudolf had been born here, had never seen Amsterdam. Max had lived the first five years of his life there, in a dimly lit apartment that smelled of mildewed velvet curtains and the latrine stink of the canal below.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max hollered until his throat was raw, but in the end, all his shouting brought only Mrs. Kutchner, who shuffled slowly across the porch, hugging herself for warmth, although it was not cold. When she reached the railing she took it in both hands and sagged forward, using it to hold herself up.<span id="more-597" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">This time last fall, Mrs. Kutchner had been agreeably plump, dimples in her fleshy cheeks, her face always flushed from the heat of the kitchen. Now her face was starved, the skin pulled tight across the skull beneath, her eyes feverish and bird-bright in their bony hollows. Her daughter, Arlene—who at this very moment was hiding with Rudy somewhere—had whispered that her mother kept a tin bucket next to the bed, and when her father carried it to the outhouse in the morning to empty it, it sloshed with a quarter inch of bad-smelling blood.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“You’n go on if you want, dear,” she said. “I’ll tell your brother to run on home when he crawls out from whatever hole he’s in.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Did I wake you, Mrs. Kutchner?” he asked. She shook her head, but his guilt was not eased. “I’m sorry to get you out of bed. My loud mouth.” Then, his tone uncertain: “Do you think you should be up?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Are you doctorin me, Max Van Helsing? You don’t think I get enough of that from your daddy?” she asked, one corner of her mouth rising in a weak smile.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“No, ma’am. I mean, yes, ma’am.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Rudy would’ve said something clever to make her whoop with laughter and clap her hands. Rudy belonged on the radio, a child star on someone’s variety program. Max never knew what to say, and anyway, wasn’t suited to comedy. It wasn’t just his accent, although that was a source of constant discomfort for him, one more reason to speak as little as possible. But it was also a matter of temperament; he often found himself unable to fight his way through his own smothering reserve.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“He’s pretty strict about havin you two boys in before dark, isn’t he?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Yes, ma’am,” he said.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“There’s plenty like him,” she said. “They brung the old country over with them. Although I would have thought a doctor wouldn’t be so superstitious. Educated and all.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max suppressed a shudder of revulsion. Saying that his father was superstitious was an understatement of grotesquely funny proportions.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“You wouldn’t think he’d worry so much about one like you,” she went on. “I can’t imagine you’ve ever been any trouble in your life.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Thank you, ma’am,” said Max, when what he really wanted to say was he wished more than anything she’d go back inside, lie down and rest. Sometimes it seemed to him he was allergic to expressing himself. Often, when he desperately wanted to say a thing, he could actually feel his windpipe closing up on him, cutting off his air. He wanted to offer to help her in, imagined taking her elbow, leaning close enough to smell her hair. He wanted to tell her he prayed for her at night, not that his prayers could be assumed to have value; Max had prayed for his own mother, too, but it hadn’t made any difference. He said none of these things. <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Thank you, ma’am </em>was the most he could manage.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“You go on,” she said. “Tell your father I asked Rudy to stay behind, help me clean up a mess in the kitchen. I’ll send him along.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am. Tell him hurry, please.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">When he was in the road he looked back. Mrs. Kutchner clutched a handkerchief to her lips, but she immediately removed it, and flapped it in a gay little wave, a gesture so endearing it made Max sick to his bones. He raised his own hand to her and then turned away. The sound of her harsh, barking coughs followed him up the road for a while—an angry dog, slipped free of its tether and chasing him away.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">When he came into the yard, the sky was the shade of blue closest to black, except for a faint bonfire glow in the west where the sun had just disappeared, and his father was sitting on the porch waiting with the quirt. Max paused at the bottom of the steps, looking up at him. His father’s eyes were hooded, impossible to see beneath the bushy steel-wool tangles of his eyebrows.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max waited for him to say something. He didn’t. Finally, Max gave up and spoke himself. “It’s still light.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“The sun is down.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“We are just at Arlene’s. It isn’t even ten minutes away.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Yes, Mrs. Kutchner’s is very safe. A veritable fortress. Protected by a doddering farmer who can barely bend over, his rheumatism pains him so, and an illiterate peasant whose bowels are being eaten by cancer.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“She is not illiterate,” Max said. He heard how defensive he sounded, and when he spoke again, it was in a tone of carefully modulated reason. “They can’t bear the light. You say<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />so yourself. If it isn’t dark there is nothing to fear. Look how bright the sky.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">His father nodded, allowing the point, then said, “And where is Rudolf?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“He is right behind me.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The old man craned his head on his neck, making an exaggerated show of searching the empty road behind Max.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I mean, he is coming,” Max said. “He stops to help clean something for Mrs. Kutchner.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Clean what?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“A bag of flour, I think. It breaks open, scatters on everything. She’s going to clean herself, but Rudy say no, he wants to do it. I tell them I will run ahead so you will not wonder where we are. He’ll be here any minute.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">His father sat perfectly still, his back rigid, his face immobile. Then, just when Max thought the conversation was over, he said, very slowly, “And so you left him?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max instantly saw, with a sinking feeling of despair, the corner he had painted himself into, but it was too late now, no talking his way back out of it. “Yes, sir.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“To walk home alone? In the dark?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Yes, sir.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I see. Go in. To your studies.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max made his way up the steps, towards the front door, which was partly open. He felt himself clenching up as he went past the rocking chair, expecting the quirt. Instead, when<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />his father lunged, it was to clamp his hand on Max’s wrist, squeezing so hard Max grimaced, felt the bones separating in the joint.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">His father sucked at the air, a hissing indraw of breath, a sound Max had learned was often prelude to a right cross. “You know our enemies? And still you dally with your friends until the night come?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max tried to answer, but couldn’t, felt his windpipe closing, felt himself choking again on the things he wanted, but didn’t have the nerve, to say.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Rudolf I expect not to learn. He is American. Here they believe the child should teach the parent. I see how he look at me when I talk. How he try not to laugh. This is bad. But you. At least when Rudolf disobey, it is deliberate, I feel him engaging me. You disobey in a stupor, without considering, and then you wonder why sometime I can hardly stand to look at you. Mr. Barnum has a horse that can add small numbers. It is considered one of the great amazements of his circus. If you were once to show the slightest comprehension of what things I tell you, it would be wonder on the same order.” He let go of Max’s wrist, and Max took a drunken step backwards, his arm throbbing. “Go inside and out of my sight. You will want to rest. That uncomfortable buzzing in your head is the hum of thought. I know the sensation must be quite unfamiliar.” Tapping his own temple to show where the thoughts were.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Yes, sir,” Max said, in a tone—he had to admit—which sounded stupid and churlish. Why did his father’s accent sound cultured and worldly, while the same accent made himself sound like a dull-witted Dutch farmhand, someone good at milking the cows maybe, but who would goggle in fear and confusion at an open book? Max turned into the house, without looking where he was going, and batted his head against the bulbs of garlic hanging from the top of the door frame. His father snorted at him.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max sat in the kitchen, a lamp burning at the far end of the table, not enough to dispel the darkness gathering in the room. He waited, listening, his head cocked so he could see through the window and into the yard. He had his English Grammar open in front of him, but he didn’t look at it, couldn’t find the will to do anything but sit and watch for Rudy. In a while it was too dark to see the road, though, or anyone coming along it. The tops of the pines were black cutouts etched across a sky that was a color like the last faint glow of dying coals. Soon even that was gone, and into the darkness was cast a handful of stars, a scatter of bright flecks. Max heard his father in the rocker, the soft whine-and-thump of the curved wooden runners going back and forth over the boards of the porch. Max shoved his hands through his hair, pulling at it, chanting to himself, <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Rudy, come on,</em> wanting more than anything for the waiting to be over. It might’ve been an hour. It might’ve been fifteen minutes.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Then he heard him, the soft chuff of his brother’s feet in the chalky dirt at the side of the road; he slowed as he came into the yard, but Max suspected he had just been running, a hypothesis that was confirmed as soon as Rudy spoke. Although he tried for his usual tone of good humor, he was winded, could only speak in bursts.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Sorry, sorry. Mrs. Kutchner. An accident. Asked me to help. I know. Late.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The rocker stopped moving. The boards creaked, as their father came to his feet.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“So Max said. And did you get the mess clean up?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Yuh. Uh-huh. Arlene and I. Arlene ran through the kitchen. Wasn’t looking. Mrs. Kutchner—Mrs. Kutchner dropped a stack of plates—”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max shut his eyes, bent his head forward, yanking at the roots of his hair in anguish.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Mrs. Kutchner shouldn’t tire herself. She’s unwell. Indeed, I think she can hardly rise from bed.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“That’s what—that’s what I thought. Too.” Rudy’s voice at the bottom of the porch. He was beginning to recover his air. “It’s not really all the way dark yet.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“It isn’t? Ah. When one get to my age, the vision fail some, and dusk is often mistake for night. Here I was thinking sunset has come and gone twenty minutes ago. What time—?” Max heard the steely snap of his father opening his pocket watch. He sighed. “But it’s too dark for me to read the hands. Well. Your concern for Mrs. Kutchner, I admire.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Oh it—it was nothing—” Rudy said, putting his foot on the first step of the porch.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“But really, you should worry more about your own well-being, Rudolf,” said their father, his voice calm, benevolent, speaking in the tone Max often imagined him employing when addressing patients he knew were in the final stages of a fatal illness. It was after dark and the doctor was in.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Rudy said, “I’m sorry, I’m—”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“You’re sorry now. But your regret will be more palpable momentarily.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The quirt came down with a meaty smack, and Rudy, who would be ten in two weeks, screamed. Max ground his teeth, his hands still digging in his hair; pressed his wrists against his ears, trying vainly to block out the sounds of shrieking, and of the quirt striking at flesh, fat and bone.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">With his ears covered he didn’t hear their father come in. He looked up when a shadow fell across him. Abraham stood in the doorway to the hall, hair disheveled, collar askew, the quirt pointed at the floor. Max waited to be hit with it, but no blow came.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Help your brother in.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max rose unsteadily to his feet. He couldn’t hold the old man’s gaze so he lowered his eyes, found himself staring at the quirt instead. The back of his father’s hand was freckled with blood. Max drew a thin, dismayed breath.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“You see what you make me do.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max didn’t reply. Maybe no answer was necessary or expected. His father stood there for a moment longer, then turned, and strode away into the back of the house, towards the private study he always kept locked, a room in which they were forbidden to enter without his permission. Many nights he nodded off there, and could be heard shouting in his sleep, cursing in Dutch.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">*</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Stop running,” Max shouted. “I catch you eventually.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Rudolf capered across the corral, grabbed the rail and heaved himself over it, sprinted for the side of the house, his laughter trailing behind him.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Give it back,” Max said, and he leaped the rail without slowing down, hit the ground without losing a step. He was angry, really angry, and in his fury possessed an unlikely grace; unlikely because he was built along the same lines as his father, with the rough dimensions of a water buffalo taught to walk on its back legs.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Rudy, by contrast, had their mother’s delicate build, to go with her porcelain complexion. He was quick, but Max was closing in anyway. Rudy was looking back over his shoulder too much, not concentrating on where he was going. He was almost to the side of the house. When he got there, Max would have him trapped against the wall, could easily cut off any attempt to break left or right.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">But Rudy didn’t break to the left or right. The window to their father’s study was pushed open about a foot, revealing a cool library darkness. Rudy grabbed the windowsill over his head—he still held Max’s letter in one hand—and with a giddy glance back, heaved himself into the shadows.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">However their father felt about them arriving home after dark, it was nothing compared to how he would feel to discover that either one of them had gained entry to his most private sanctum. But their father was gone, had taken the Ford somewhere, and Max didn’t slow down to think what would happen if he suddenly returned. He jumped and grabbed his brother’s ankle, thinking he would drag the little worm back out into the light, but Rudy screamed, twisted his foot out of Max’s grasp. He fell into darkness, crashed to the floorboards with an echoing thud that caused glass to rattle softly against glass somewhere in the office. Then Max had the windowsill and he yanked himself into the air—</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Go slow, Max, it’s a . . .” his brother cried.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">—and he thrust himself through the window.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Big drop,” Rudy finished.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max had been in his father’s study before, of course (sometimes Abraham invited them in for “a talk,” by which he meant he would talk and they would listen), but he had never entered the room by way of the window. He spilled forward, had a startling glance of the floor almost three feet below him, and realized he was about to dive into it face-first. At the edge of his vision he saw a round end table, next to one of his father’s armchairs, and he reached for it to stop his fall. His momentum continued to carry him forward, and he crashed to the floor. At the last moment, he turned his face aside and most of his weight came down on his right shoulder. The furniture leaped. The end table turned over, dumping everything on it. Max heard a bang, and a glassy crack that was more painful to him than the soreness he felt in either head or shoulder.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Rudy sprawled a yard away from him, sitting on the floor, still grinning a little foolishly. He held the letter half-crumpled in one hand, forgotten.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The end table was on its side, fortunately not broken. But an empty inkpot had smashed, lay in gleaming chunks close to Max’s knee. A stack of books had been flung across the Persian carpet. A few papers swirled overhead, drifting slowly to the floor with a swish and a scrape.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“You see what you make me do,” Max said, gesturing at the inkpot. Then he flinched, realizing that this was exactly what his father had said to him a few nights before; he didn’t like the old man peeping out from inside him, talking through him like a puppet, a hollowed-out, empty-headed boy of wood.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“We’ll just throw it away,” Rudy said.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“He knows where everything in his office is. He will notice it missing.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“My balls. He comes in here to drink brandy, fart in his couch and fall asleep. I’ve been in here lots of times. I took his lighter for smokes last month and he still hasn’t noticed.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“You what?” Max asked, staring at his younger brother in genuine surprise, and not without a certain envy. It was the older brother’s place to take foolish risks and be casually detached about it later.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Who’s this letter to, that you had to go and hide somewhere to write it? I was watching you work on it over your shoulder. ‘I still remember how I held your hand in mine.’ ” Rudy’s voice swooping and fluttering in mock-romantic passion.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max lunged at his brother, but was too slow, Rudy had flipped the letter over and was reading the beginning. The smile began to fade, thought lines wrinkling the pale expanse of his forehead; then Max had ripped the sheet of paper away.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Mother?” Rudy asked, thoroughly nonplussed.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“It was assignment for school. We were ask if you wrote a letter to anyone, who would it be? Mrs. Louden tell us it could be someone imaginary or—or historic figure. Someone dead.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“You’d turn that in? And let Mrs. Louden read it?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I don’t know. I am not finish yet.” But as Max spoke, he was already beginning to realize he had made a mistake, allowed himself to get carried away by the fascinating possibilities of the assignment, the irresistible <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">what if </em>of it, and had written things too personal for him to show anyone. He had written <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">you were the only one I knew how to talk to </em>and <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I am sometimes so lonely</em>. He had really been imagining her reading it, somehow, somewhere—perhaps as he wrote it, some astral form of her staring over his shoulder, smiling sentimentally as his pen scratched across the page. It was a mawkish, absurd fantasy and he felt a withering embarrassment to think he had given in to it so completely.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">His mother had already been weak and ill when the scandal drove their family from Amsterdam. They lived for a while in England, but word of the terrible thing their father had done (whatever it was—Max doubted he would ever know) followed them. On they had gone to America. His father believed he had acquired a position as a lecturer at Vassar College, was so sure of this he had ladled much of his savings into the purchase of a handsome nearby farm. But in New York City they were met by the dean, who told Abraham Van Helsing that he could not, in good conscience, allow the doctor to work unsupervised with young ladies who were not yet at the age of consent. Max knew now his father had killed his mother as surely as if he had held a pillow over her face in her sickbed. It wasn’t the travel that had done her in, although that was bad enough, too much for a woman who was both pregnant and weak with a chronic infection of the blood which caused her to bruise at the slightest touch. It was humiliation. Mina had not been able to survive the shame of what he had done, what they were all forced to run from.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Come on,” Max said. “Let’s clean up and get out of here.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He righted the table and began gathering the books, but turned his head when Rudy said, “Do you believe in vampires, Max?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Rudy was on his knees in front of an ottoman across the room. He had hunched over to collect a few papers which had settled there, then stayed to look at the battered doctor’s bag tucked underneath it. Rudy tugged at the rosary knotted around the handles.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Leave that alone,” Max said. “We need to clean, not make bigger mess.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Do you?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max was briefly silent. “Mother was attacked. Her blood was never the same after. Her illness.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Did <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">she </em>ever say she was attacked, or did he?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“She died when I was six. She would not confide in a child about such a thing.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“But . . . do you think we’re in danger?” Rudy had the bag open now. He reached in to remove a bundle, carefully wrapped in royal purple fabric. Wood clicked against wood inside the velvet. “That vampires are out there, waiting for a chance at us. For our guard to drop?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I would not discount possibility. However unlikely.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“However unlikely,” his brother said, laughing softly. He opened the velvet wrap and looked in at the nine-inch stakes, skewers of blazing white wood, handles wrapped in oiled leather. “Well, I think it’s all bullshit. <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Bullll</em>-shit.” Singing a little.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The course of the discussion unnerved Max. He felt, for an instant, light-headed with vertigo, as if he suddenly found himself peering over a steep drop. And perhaps that wasn’t too far off. He had always known the two of them would have this conversation someday and he feared where it might take them. Rudy was never happier than when he was making an argument, but he didn’t follow his doubts to their logical conclusion. He could say it was all bullshit, but didn’t pause to consider what that meant about their father, a man who feared the night as a person who can’t swim fears the ocean. Max almost <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">needed </em>it to be true, for vampires to be real, because the other possibility—that their father was, and always had been, in the grip of a psychotic fantasy—was too awful, too overwhelming.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He was still considering how to reply when his attention was caught by a picture frame, slid halfway in under his father’s armchair. It was facedown, but he knew what he’d see when he turned it over. It was a sepia-toned calotype print of his mother, posed in the library of their townhouse in Amsterdam. She wore a white straw hat, her ebon hair fluffed in airy curls beneath it. One gloved hand was raised in an enigmatic gesture, so that she almost appeared to be waving an invisible cigarette in the air. Her lips were parted. She was saying something, Max often wondered what. He for some reason imagined himself to be standing just out of the frame, a child of four, staring solemnly up at her. He felt that she was raising her hand to wave him back, keep him from wandering into the shot. If this was so, it seemed reasonable to believe she had been caught forever in the act of saying his name.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He heard a scrape and tinkle of falling glass as he picked the picture frame up and turned it over. The plate of glass had shattered in the exact center. He began wiggling small gleaming fangs of glass out of the frame and setting them aside, concerned that none should scratch the glossy calotype beneath. He pulled a large wedge of glass out of the upper corner of the frame, and the corner of the print came loose with it. He reached up to poke the print back into place . . . and then hesitated, frowning, feeling for a moment that his eyes had crossed and he was seeing double. There appeared to be a second print behind the first. He tugged the photograph of his mother out of the frame, then stared without understanding at the picture that had been secreted behind it. An icy numbness spread through his chest, crawling into his throat. He glanced around and was relieved to see Rudy still kneeling at the ottoman, humming to himself, rolling the stakes back up into their shroud of velvet.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He looked back at the secret photograph. The woman in it was dead. She was also naked from the waist up, her gown torn open and yanked to the curve of her waist. She was sprawled in a four-poster bed—pinned there by ropes wound around her throat, and pulling her arms over her head. She was young and maybe had been beautiful, it was hard to tell; one eye was shut, the other open in a slit that showed the unnatural glaze on the eyeball beneath. Her mouth was forced open, stuffed with an obscene misshapen white ball. She was actually biting down on it, her upper lip drawn back to show the small, even row of her upper teeth. The side of her face was discolored with bruises. Between the milky, heavy curves of her breasts was a spoke of white wood. Her left ribcage was painted with blood.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Even when he heard the car in the drive, he couldn’t move, couldn’t pry his gaze from the photograph. Then Rudy was up, pulling at Max’s shoulder, telling him they had to go. Max clapped the photo to his chest to keep his brother from seeing. He said go, I’ll be right behind you, and Rudy took his hand off his arm and went on.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max fumbled with the picture frame, struggling to fit the calotype of the murdered woman back into place . . . then saw something else, went still again. He had not until this instant taken note of the figure to the far left in the photograph, a man on the near side of the bed. His back was to the photographer, and he was so close in the foreground that his shape was a blurred, vaguely rabbinical figure, in a flat-brimmed black hat and black overcoat. There was no way to be sure who this man was, but Max <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">was</em> sure, knew him from the way he held his head, the careful, almost stiff way it was balanced on the thick barrel of his neck. In one hand he held a hatchet. In the other a doctor’s bag.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The car died with an emphysemic wheeze and tinny clatter. He squeezed the photograph of the dead woman into the frame, slid the portrait of Mina back on top of it. He set the picture, with no glass in it, on the end table, stared at it for a beat, then saw with horror that he had stuck Mina in upside down. He started to reach for it.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Come on!</em>” Rudy cried. “<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Please, Max.</em>” He was outside, standing on his tiptoes to look back into the study.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max kicked the broken glass under the armchair, stepped to the window, and screamed. Or tried to—he didn’t have the air in his lungs, couldn’t force it up his throat.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Their father stood behind Rudy, staring in at Max over Rudy’s head. Rudy didn’t see, didn’t know he was there, until their father put his hands on his shoulders. Rudolf had no trouble screaming at all, and leaped as if he meant to jump back into the study.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The old man regarded his eldest son in silence. Max stared back, head half out the window, hands on the sill.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“If you like,” his father said, “I could open the door and you could effect your exit by the hallway. What it lacks in drama, it makes up in convenience.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“No,” Max said. “No thank you. Thank you. I’m—we’re—this is—mistake. I’m sorry.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Mistake is not knowing capital of Portugal on a geography test. This is something else.” He paused, lowering his head, his face stony. Then he released Rudy, and turned away, opening a hand and pointing it at the yard in a gesture that seemed to mean, <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">step this way.</em> “We will discuss what at later date. Now if it is no trouble, I will ask you to leave my office.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max stared. His father had never before delayed punishment—breaking and entering his study at the least deserved a vigorous lashing—and he tried to think why he would now. His father waited. Max climbed out, dropped into the flower bed. Rudy looked at him, eyes helpless, pleading, asking him what they ought to do. Max tipped his head towards the stables—their own private study—and started walking slowly and deliberately away. His little brother fell into step beside him, trembling continuously.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Before they could get away, though, his father’s hand fell on Max’s shoulder.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“My rules are to protect you always, Maximilian,” he said. “Maybe you are tell me now you don’t want to be protect any longer? When you were little I cover your eyes at the theater, when come the murderers to slaughter Clarence in <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Richard</em>. But then, later, when we went to <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Macbeth,</em> you shove my hand away, you <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">want </em>to see. Now I feel history repeats, nuh?”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max didn’t reply. At last his father released him.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">They had not gone ten paces when he spoke again. “Oh I almost forget. I did not tell you where or why I was gone and I have piece of news I know will make sad the both of you. Mr. Kutchner run up the road while you were in school, shouting doctor, doctor, come quick, my wife. As soon as I see her, burning with fever, I know she must travel to Dr. Rosen’s infirmary in town, but alas, the farmer come for me too late. Walking her to my car, her intestines fall out of her with a <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">slop.</em>” He made a soft clucking sound with his tongue, as of disapproval. “I will have our suits cleaned. The funeral is on Friday.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">*</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Arlene Kutchner wasn’t in school the next day. They walked past her house on the way home, but the black shutters were across the windows, and the place had a too-silent, abandoned feel to it. The funeral would be in town the next morning, and perhaps Arlene and her father had already gone there to wait. They had family in the village. When the two boys tramped into their own yard, the Ford was parked alongside the house, and the slanted double doors to the basement were open.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Rudy pointed himself towards the barn—they owned a single horse, a used-up nag named Rice, and it was Rudy’s day to muck out her stable—and Max went into the house alone. He was at the kitchen table when he heard the doors to the cellar crash shut outside. Shortly afterwards his father climbed the stairs, appeared in the basement doorway.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Are you work on something down there?” Max asked.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">His father’s gaze swept across him, but his eyes were deliberately blank.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Later I shall unfold to you,” he said, and Max watched him while he removed a silver key from the pocket of his waistcoat and turned it in the lock to the basement door. It had never been used before, and until that moment, Max had not even known a key existed.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max was on edge the rest of the afternoon, kept looking at the basement door, unsettled by his father’s promise: <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Later I shall unfold to you</em>. There was of course no opportunity to talk to Rudy about it over dinner, to speculate on just <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">what </em>might be unfolded, but they were also unable to talk afterwards, when they remained at the kitchen table with their schoolbooks. Usually, their father retired early to his study to be alone, and they wouldn’t see him again until morning. But tonight he seemed restless, always coming in and out of the room, to wash a glass, to find his reading spectacles, and finally, to light a lantern. He adjusted the wick, so a low red flame wavered at the bottom of the glass chimney, and then set it on the table before Max.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Boys,” he said, turning to the basement, unlocking the bolt. “Go downstairs. Wait for me. Touch nothing.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Rudy threw a horrified, whey-faced look at Max. Rudy couldn’t bear the basement, its low ceiling and its smell, the lacy veils of cobwebs in the corners. If Rudy was ever given a chore there, he always begged Max to go with him. Max opened his mouth to question their father, but he was already slipping away, out of the room, disappearing down the hall to his study.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max looked at Rudy. Rudy was shaking his head in wordless denial.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“It will be all right,” Max promised. “I will take care of you.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Rudy carried the lantern, and let Max go ahead of him down the stairs. The reddish-bronze light of the lamp threw shadows that leaned and jumped, a surging darkness that lapped at the walls of the stairwell. Max descended to the basement floor and took a slow, uncertain look around. To the left of the stairs was a worktable. On top of it was a pile of something, covered in a piece of grimy white tarp—stacks of bricks maybe, or heaps of folded laundry, it was hard to tell in the gloom without going closer. Max crept in slow, shuffling steps until he had crossed most of the way to the table, and then he stopped, suddenly knowing what the sheet covered.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“We need to go, Max,” Rudy peeped, right behind him. Max hadn’t known he was there, had thought he was still standing on the steps. “We need to go right now.” And Max knew he didn’t mean just get out of the basement, but get out of the house, run from the place where they had lived ten years and not come back.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">But it was too late to pretend they were Huck and Jim and light out for the territories. Their father’s feet fell heavily on the dusty wood planks behind them. Max glanced up the stairs at him. He was carrying his doctor’s bag.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I can only deduce,” their father began, “from your ransack of my private study, you have finally develop interest in the secret work to which I sacrifice so much. I have in my time kill six of the Undead by my own hand, the last the diseased bitch in the picture I keep hid in my office—I believe you have both see it.” Rudy cast a panicked look at Max, who only shook his head, <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Be silent</em>. Their father went on: “I have train others in the art of destroying the vampire, including your mother’s unfortunate first husband, Jonathan Harker, Gott bless him, and so I can be held indirectly responsible for the slaughter of perhaps fifty of their filthy, infected kind. And it is now, I see, time my own boys learn how it is done. How to be sure. So you may know how to strike at those who would strike at you.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“I don’t want to know,” Rudy said.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“He didn’t see picture,” Max said at the same time.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Their father appeared not to hear either of them. He moved past them to the worktable, and the canvas-covered shape upon it. He lifted one corner of the tarp and looked beneath it, made a humming sound of approval, and pulled the covering away.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Mrs. Kutchner was naked, and hideously withered, her cheeks sunken, her mouth gaping open. Her stomach was caved impossibly in beneath her ribs, as if everything in it had been sucked out by the pressure of a vacuum. Her back was bruised a deep bluish violet by the blood that had settled there. Rudy moaned and hid his face against Max’s side.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Their father set his doctor’s bag beside her body, and opened it.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“She isn’t, of course, Undead. Merely dead. True vampires are uncommon, and it would not be practicable, or advisable, for me to find one for you to rehearse on. But she will suit for purposes of demonstration.” From within his bag he removed the bundle of stakes wrapped in velvet.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“What is she doing here?” Max asked. “They bury her tomorrow.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“But today I am to make autopsy, for purposes of my private research. Mr. Kutchner understand, is happy to cooperate, if it mean one day no other woman die in such a way.” He had a stake in one hand, a mallet in the other.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Rudy began to cry.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max felt he was coming unmoored from himself. His body stepped forward, without him in it; another part of him remained beside Rudy, an arm around his brother’s heaving shoulders. Rudy was saying, <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Please I want to go upstairs.</em> Max watched himself walk, flat-footed, to his father, who was staring at him with an expression that mingled curiosity with a certain quiet appreciation.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He handed Max the mallet, and that brought him back. He was in his own body again, conscious of the weight of the hammer, tugging his wrist downwards. His father gripped Max’s other hand and lifted it, drawing it towards Mrs. Kutchner’s meager breasts. He pressed Max’s fingertips to a spot between two ribs, and Max looked into the dead woman’s face. Her mouth open as to speak. <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Are you doctorin’ me, Max Van Helsing?</em></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Here,” his father said, folding one of the stakes into his hand. “You drive it in here. To the hilt. In an actual case, the first blow will be follow by wailing, profanity, a frantic struggle to escape. The accursed never go easily. Bear down. Do not desist from your work until you have impale her and she has give up her struggle against you. It will be over soon enough.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max raised the mallet. He stared into her face and wished he could say he was sorry, that he didn’t want to do it. When he slammed the mallet down, with an echoing bang, he heard a high, piercing scream and almost screamed himself, believing for an instant it was her, still somehow alive; then realized it was Rudy. Max was powerfully built, with his deep waterbuffalo chest and Dutch farmer’s shoulders. With the first blow he had driven the stake over two-thirds of the way in. He only needed to bring the mallet down once more. The blood that squelched up around the wood was cold and had a sticky, viscous consistency.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max swayed, his head light. His father took his arm.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Goot,</em>” Abraham whispered into his ear, his arms around him, squeezing him so tightly his ribs creaked. Max felt a little thrill of pleasure—an automatic reaction to the intense, unmistakable affection of his father’s embrace—and was sickened by it. “To do offense to the house of the human spirit, even after its tenant depart, is no easy thing, I know.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">His father went on holding him. Max stared at Mrs. Kutchner’s gaping mouth, the delicate row of her upper teeth, and found himself remembering the girl in the calotype print, the ball of garlic jammed in her mouth.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Where were her fangs?” Max said.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Hm?</em> Whose? What?” his father said.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“In the photograph of the one you kill,” Max said, turning his head and looking into his father’s face. “She didn’t have fangs.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">His father stared at him, his eyes blank, uncomprehending. Then he said, “They disappear after the vampire die. <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Poof.</em>”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He released him, and Max could breathe normally again. Their father straightened.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Now, there remain one thing,” he said. “The head must be remove, and the mouth stuff with garlic. Rudolf!”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max turned his head slowly. His father had moved back a step. In one hand he held a hatchet, Max didn’t know where it had come from. Rudy was on the stairs, three steps from the bottom. He stood pressed against the wall, his left wrist shoved in his mouth to quell his screaming. He shook his head, back and forth, frantically.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max reached for the hatchet, grabbed it by the handle. “I do it.” He would too, was confident of himself. He saw now he had always had it in him: his father’s brusque willingness to puncture flesh and toil in blood. He saw it clear, and with a kind of dismay.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“No,” his father said, wrenching the hatchet away, pushing Max back. Max bumped the worktable, and a few stakes rolled off, clattering to the dust. “Pick those up.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Rudy bolted, but slipped on the steps, falling to all fours and banging his knees. Their father grabbed him by the hair and hauled him backwards, throwing him to the floor. Rudy thudded into the dirt, sprawling on his belly. He rolled over. When he spoke, his voice was unrecognizable.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Please!</em>” he screamed. “<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Please don’t! I’m scared. Please, Father, don’t make me.</em>”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The mallet in one hand, half a dozen stakes in the other, Max stepped forward, thought he would intervene, but his father swiveled, caught his elbow, shoved him at the stairs.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Up. Now.” Giving him another push as he spoke.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max fell on the stairs, barking one of his own shins.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Their father bent to grab Rudy by the arm, but he squirmed away, crabwalking over the dirt for a far corner of the room.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Come. I help you,” their father said. “Her neck is brittle. It won’t take long.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Rudy shook his head, backed further into the corner by the coal bin.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">His father flung the axe in the dirt. “Then you will remain here until you are in a more complaisant state of mind.”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He turned, took Max’s arm and thrust him towards the top of the steps.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">No!</em>” Rudy screamed, getting up, lunging for the stairs.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The handle of the hatchet got caught between his feet, though, and he tripped on it, crashed to his knees. He got back up, but by then their father was pushing Max through the door at the top of the staircase, following him through. He slammed it behind them. Rudy hit the other side a moment later, as their father was turning that silver key in the lock.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“Please!” Rudy cried. “I’m scared! I’m scared! I want to come out!”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Max stood in the kitchen. His ears were ringing. He wanted to say stop it, open the door, but couldn’t get the words out, felt his throat closing. His arms hung at his sides, his hands heavy, as if cast from lead. No—not lead. They were heavy from the things in them. The mallet. The stakes.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">His father panted for breath, his broad forehead resting against the shut door. When he finally stepped back, his hair was scrambled, and his collar had popped loose.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">“You see what he make me do?” he said. “Your mother was also so, just as unbending and hysterical, just as in need of firm instruction. I tried, I—”</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">The old man turned to look at him, and in the instant before Max hit him with the mallet, his father had time to register shock, even wonder. Max caught him across the jaw, a blow that connected with a bony clunk, and enough force to drive a shivering feeling of impact up into his elbow. His father sagged to one knee, but Max had to hit him again to sprawl him on his back.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Abraham’s eyelids sank as he began to slide into unconsciousness, but they came up again when Max sat down on top of him. His father opened his mouth to say something, but Max had heard enough, was through talking, had never been much when it came to talk anyway. What mattered now was the work of his hands; work he had a natural instinct for, had maybe been born to.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">He put the tip of the stake where his father had showed him and struck the hilt with the mallet. It turned out it was all true, what the old man had told him in the basement. There was wailing and profanity and a frantic struggle to get away, but it was over soon enough.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">*</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">From the collection <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061147982/20th_Century_Ghosts/index.aspx" style="color: #e03a3a; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">20th Century Ghosts.</em></a> © by Joe Hill. All Rights Reserved.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Didot, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 14px;">Pick up a copy of <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/book/buy.aspx?isbn13=9780061147982&formats=true&WT.mc_id=BI_BuyLink" style="color: #e03a3a; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">20th Century Ghosts </em></a>today!</p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-90866749129599534662020-08-17T21:44:00.002-07:002020-08-17T21:44:37.996-07:00Selfies<p> <em style="border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: darkslategrey; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Selfies,” by Lavie Tidhar, is a creepy little horror tale about the fate of a young woman who makes the mistake of a lifetime when she buys a new phone in the local mall.</span></em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: darkslategrey; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This short story was acquired and edited for Tor.com by consulting editor <a href="https://www.tor.com/tags/Edited%20by%20Ellen%20Datlow" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; color: #448aae; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Ellen Datlow</a>.</span></em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="more-134630" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i0.wp.com/www.tor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/full_selfies.jpg?fit=551%2C+9999&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C724px&quality=100&ssl=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="724" data-original-width="551" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.tor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/full_selfies.jpg?fit=551%2C+9999&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C724px&quality=100&ssl=1" /></a></div><p></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#733</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In one of the last pictures I am running. I am running down the street and it is dark, the street lamps are dim and the light oozes down sickly and yellow. I can feel my heart almost bursting in my chest, the taste of something sour and unpleasant in my mouth. I’m running as fast as I can. I have to get away.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The moon is a sickle moon. Its cheek is pockmarked with acne scars. It looks down on me; it hangs overhead like a malformed knife. They’re running behind me and they’re gaining. They’re not even running hard. They spread out around me, they match their pace to mine, easily, without effort. They whisper my name: <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ellie, Ellie</em>. Just ahead is the rusty iron gate to the old playground. I used to play on the swings when I was a little girl. They crowd me here. I don’t know if kids still use the swings. I stumble through the gate and into the playground. I just have to keep running but I take a picture then, I can’t help it, I take a picture and it’s just me and the gate and that sickle moon, and no one at all behind me.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I heard this story about a girl who went mad a few months ago.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What girl?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Her name was Ellie and she was in my year at school. I didn’t see much of her after that until they found her dead at the bottom of the old playground down my street one night, a few months ago.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Oh, I’m really sorry.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It’s all right, I really didn’t know her that well. What was funny was, when I saw her, it was only for a moment before they zipped up the bag and took her away. It was her face, see. It was the scariest thing I ever saw, her face. Here, look. Just before they zipped her up I took a photo. Look.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“. . . That’s disgusting!”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I didn’t put it on Facebook or anything.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Are those <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">eyes</em>?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“. . .”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What is she doing with her <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">mouth</em>?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I think she’s screaming. She was still holding her phone when they found her, even though she was broken up pretty bad. My cousin Dan works in the lab and he said there were thousands of pictures on her phone. Thousands and thousands.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“. . .”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“He said the police could construct her last few months almost moment by moment following the pictures. They were mostly selfies. But some of them were pretty weird. Dan said maybe someone Photoshopped them. After a while they didn’t even make sense.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“That’s pretty vain, though.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I guess.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“. . .”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You know what the really weird thing was, though?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“A couple of days later I was in the supermarket and I thought I saw her. She was standing in the aisle by the cereal shelves and she was talking on her phone. She was holding a box of Crunchy Nuts. I had this really queasy feeling when I saw her. I mean it couldn’t be her, right? Then it was, like, she knew I was standing there and she turned and she gave me this smile. She had these uneven white teeth and she had her hair in this sort of fringe. She used to be really pretty. But when she turned she looked directly at me and it was her eyes. They were like eggshells, without pupils or an iris, they were just entirely white and empty and flat and she smiled.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You’re making it up.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I had a can of Coke in my hand and it fell down and burst open, and there was a mess. When I looked up again she’d disappeared.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Did you pay for the Coke?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Yeah, I paid for the Coke. They buried her a few days later. I didn’t go to the funeral. I mean, like I said, I never really knew her all that well, anyway.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#1</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is right after I buy the phone. The shop behind me has a sign that says previously owned. I don’t know if that is its name or just a description, but it is accurate all the same. I’d gone to the mall, just browsing. At the back of the lower level, all the way back, the shops turn dusty and dark. There’s a baby clothes store that hasn’t seen a baby in years, and a shop for vegan supplies, and a video store that’s permanently shut. I’d not noticed this particular shop before. I go in and it’s filled with strange objects and all sorts of knickknacks, weird clockwork devices and creepy voodoo dolls and paintings of grotesque creatures like something on the cover of a paperback. At first I don’t see anyone in the shop but then I hear a cough and this weird old guy with a long, horse-like face and pale watery eyes, appears behind the counter, almost like he’d just been somehow cut out of the shadows and given form and pushed into the light, and he coughs again and says, “Can I help you, miss?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I say, “I’m just browsing,” and I see his face frown in displeasure and it makes me feel uncomfortable.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You’re very pretty,” he says suddenly, and I think I blush, and I shrug a little awkwardly. “No, no, really,” he says.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Thank you,” I say.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Here,” he says. He brings something out from behind the counter and it’s so startling in the shop among all the old and dusty objects: it’s a brand new phone. “Do you have one?” he says.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“A phone?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“A phone like this one.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“No, no,” I say. “I just have this old thing.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Then take this one,” he says. “From me.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“You mean, for free?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“No,” he says, and looks at me like I’m dim. “Of course not. I don’t run a charity here.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Oh. I mean . . .”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Very cheap,” he says, and he pushes the phone at me aggressively. “Take it. Take it!”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He scares me so I take it but as soon as I hold the phone I feel better. It feels so smooth and warm, and it fits snugly into my palm. I swipe across the screen and the icons blink back at me. I barely hear that awful man when he says the price and like in a dream I take out some money and give it to him. He said I was pretty but I guess I never thought of myself as pretty. I mean, I didn’t give it much thought one way or another. I step out of the shop and suddenly there is light around me, and air. My finger itches. I hold up the phone in front of me and press the camera button and it’s like something in me wakes up for the first time and something inside me dies—I can’t describe it. I don’t need to. I press the button and there’s the image, instead.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#736</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the last picture, I’m dead.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#112</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Funny thing is, I go back to the spot where the shop was a few days later and there is no sign of it. Here’s me standing with a Cinnabon behind me and the guy behind the counter said it’s been there for the past year. In the picture I’m biting my lip and looking worried. I had to keep clicking. I had to keep taking pictures, but the pictures were beginning to lie.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#447</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“That was <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">amazing</em>, Ellie!” Noah says. He looks hopped up or something. He gives me this beaming smile.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I say, “What are you talking about?”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I snap a picture. Me standing there looking vaguely irritated, in his kitchen. He has petunias on the windowsill. I don’t like the way the light catches them. They look ill, and the sunlight is all blotchy.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Last night! You were <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">amazing</em>!” Noah says. “I never even . . .” he blushes. “Where did you learn to <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">do</em> that?” he whispers. Comes close and puts his arms around me, and I can smell him, the smell of sweat and sex. And I push him away, and I can feel the tears coming, even though I don’t want them to, and I say, “But I wasn’t here last night, Noah, don’t you remember, I went to the movies with Shelly and I stayed at her place,” and he says, “What?” and his hands drop to his sides and then he smiles and says, “You’re just fucking with me,” and I burst into tears and he stands there looking confused and then angry, and he comes to me again and I push him away and I run up the stairs to his bedroom and see the rumpled sheets and, pinned to the mirror, a photo, it must have been taken last night and freshly-printed, and I am posing for the camera, naked, one hand held suggestively between my thighs while the other is out of sight, holding the camera. In the picture I am grinning into the camera and my teeth are a predator’s teeth and my eyes are—but there is nothing in my eyes. And I pull the photo from the mirror and I tear it up, into tiny pieces that fall to the floor at my feet.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#73</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dinner with Mum and Dad and Noah. We’re all smiling. Noah has his arm around me and he’s grinning stupidly into the camera and so am I. I’m feeling like there’s a fire inside me, burning from the inside out, like light falling on a negative, and it’s reaching everywhere, it’s touching everything with light.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#501</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Me in front of the mirror, but the picture is all wrong. This is after I left Noah’s place and gone home. I’m crying as I press the button, but the me in the mirror is smiling.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#210</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This photo’s a little blurry because I’m running. I’m on the street and a man is pursuing me.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#209</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Blurry as I turn away from the man, who’s still speaking.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#208</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He has a nervous excited voice and he keeps shouting about my phone. We’re both caught in the photo and for a moment his face is both almost erotically excited and incredibly terrified.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#207</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A man approaches me in the street but he’s not in the photo. He wants to buy my phone. I can’t really understand what he’s saying. He is tall and thin with a straggly beard and he smells as though he hasn’t washed for a few days. He says his name is Farnsworth and that he’s a collector. He keeps asking me where I got my phone and do I know what it is. I tell him it’s just a phone but he doesn’t really listen. He says something about mimic objects, and parasite mechanics, and things that look like other things.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dark chamber, he keeps saying, dark chamber, a <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">camera obscura</em>. I don’t know what any of it means. I start to turn away from him. I think, from the corner of my eye, I catch my reflection, standing on the street corner, only there is no mirror there.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#600</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There is someone standing outside my house under the streetlamp but I don’t dare look.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s so quiet. It’s so quiet and nothing moves. Nothing moves but I know it’s there. The silence is like a living thing or the echo of living things. It’s like a dark chamber in my room and the only illumination comes from outside. The light presses against the curtains.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Something is standing outside under the lamp.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I pull back the corner of the curtain and I don’t look out but I take a picture.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the picture something with my face is standing outside and it’s looking back at me and it’s smiling.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#342</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Someone had slipped an envelope under my door in the night and when I open it I find a piece of paper inside torn from a book. I’m holding it up next to my face. My eyes are puffy. You can just about make out the letters. It says:</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The mad Jesuit, Father Alfonse, in his 16<span style="border: 0px; bottom: 5px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">th </span>century manuscript, <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Umbra Autem Ex Tempore</em>, first wrote of the curious properties of acertain kind of light, or rather shadow, or shadows—it is unclear in view of sometimes contradictory translations. He wrote the manuscript while incarcerated in a monastery in the bogs of Scotland, where he was held for blasphemy for some several years. In it, he describes a device which he claimed to have constructed, a sort of optical instrument or <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">camera obscura</em>, that is to say, a dark chamber, for the capture of such anti-light or shadows, or possibly, in some translations, notably the French Géroux Manuscript of 1653, a soul.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The mad Jesuit committed suicide—or perhaps was killed, the record is obscure—by falling from the top of the monastery to the bogs down below. How he made his way from the stout walls of the cellars that imprisoned him to the top, undetected, is unclear, nor was there any sign of the device found after his death. Though he himself was eventually found and buried, for many months afterwards local peasants reported the unsettling sight of a man answering Father Alfonse’s description being seen far and wide, sometimes in the midst of night and sometimes, plainly, in the height of day. But the figure never spoke or, if it had, none had recorded its words.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t know what it means; it’s gibberish.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#655</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s blurry because my hand is shaking so much and you can’t make out anything.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#415</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Farnsworth again. I point the phone at him and he shrieks and runs away before I can take his picture so I take mine instead.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#416</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And another.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#417</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And another.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#418</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And another and with each one I feel better and worse like I am being cut up into a lot of tiny little pieces like bits of me are lost like there is me and me and me and me and another.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#12</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Standing in the park in the sunshine with my new phone and I’m so happy and everything is going to be all right.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#469</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Me with a crying face. Dark. I have red eyes. It’s night and I’ve just been woken. Farnsworth is outside shouting. An <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ikiry?</em> is a spirit torn from your soul by a curse, who now lives independently.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In some cultures they believe that every photo takes away a little bit of your soul.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’ll pay you anything!” he says. I can hear a dog barking. “Give it to me!” His voice is so lonely and so desperate. Then the dog stops barking suddenly and Farnsworth gives a high-pitched shriek. I don’t have to look outside to see what he sees.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#652</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Outside the supermarket.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#653</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I go into the supermarket and I bump into another customer and I mumble, “Sorry,” and then when I look just for a moment she looks back at me and she smiles with my face.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#654</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My hand is shaking. A shot of me against supermarket shelves. Shoppers pushing carts loaded with food and cans and cereal. One by one they stop and raise their heads and look up at me. They smile with my face. They have no eyes.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Someone whispers my name: <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ellie, Ellie</em>.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I run.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">#729</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In one of the last pictures I’m running. The road spreads out ahead of me, and the sleeping suburban homes. The moonlight is sucked into the asphalt. I run, the only sound the beating of blood in my head. The air is scented with jasmine. Ahead of me is the old playground where we used to play. I don’t look back when I take the picture, but I know they’re there.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: darkslategrey; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Selfies” copyright © 2014 by Lavie Tidhar.</em></span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545353; font-family: merriweather, georgia, times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: darkslategrey; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Art copyright © 2014 by Greg Ruth.</em></span></p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-78742295449067810822020-08-17T21:42:00.001-07:002020-08-17T21:42:19.561-07:00The Left Right Game Part 10<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Well then… here we are.</span></p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I have to be honest; when I posted the first of these logs from my bedroom in North London, I didn’t think it would go very far. After all, why would it? I wasn’t a regular contributor to this site, nor a seasoned veteran of the paranormal. I was just a man who missed his friend, seeking a few words of wisdom from an online message board, open to the idea that it wouldn’t lead anywhere.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Suffice to say I couldn’t have been more wrong.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Over the past two months, the incredible advice I’ve received from this forum, and the amazing leads you’ve sent my way, have opened up entire worlds of possibility. It’s thanks to all of you that I’m where I am now; sitting in a rental car on a quiet street in Phoenix, Arizona, posting the last of Alice’s records.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I realise I’ve written more than usual for my part. Apologies for this. If you want to skip straight to Alice’s section, that’s fine.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Otherwise, please consider this the prologue to the epilogue.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s very, very early in the morning over here, with only the gravest of the graveyard shift out on the streets. By all rights I should be in bed, and not wasting petrol on an aimless drive through the city. The ritual helps me think however, and I’d recently been given a lot to think about, courtesy of a young woman at a local bar.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">She was a forum member, who’d contacted me over Direct Message. When we met up earlier in the night, it was clear she’d done a great deal of research; charting every mirror shop in Phoenix in an attempt to reconstruct the route Alice took on February 7th 2017.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We spoke for quite a while; about the game, about Alice, and about life in general. Once closing time rolled around, she handed me a printout of the most likely route, with all the key locations circled. Then, in the final minutes before we parted ways, she nervously asked me two questions. The first put me in a rather sour mood. The second provided the fuel for my 3am drive.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Question One; Are you sure she wants you to find her?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve been hearing the same query from a few of you recently, especially since Part 9 was posted. People commenting that Alice made a clear choice when she left Rob behind in the silent city. That I was searching for someone who wasn’t seeking return.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’d like to take a moment to respond to this, as I responded to it earlier tonight. To be clear, the Alice I know wouldn't do that. She was planning to come back, she’d told us as much. I’m not going to waste your time with my theories, but we’ve seen what the road can do to people's minds, how it can carry them away against their better judgement. I understand why it's being asked but if those sorts of questions are all you have to offer, I’d kindly ask you find another way to help.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Question Two was less clear cut; what are you going to do now?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s something you guys have also been asking me, but that was the first time I’d heard the question out loud. In the awkward silence that followed it became obvious to her, and in some ways to me, that I didn’t yet have an answer.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I decided to take a drive while I figured it out… I’ve been in my car for the rest of the night,</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">After an hour of aimless meandering, I realised I was close to one of the marked locations; the alleyway where Alice first entered the underpass, the point at which she first disappeared into the road. Turning into the side street, just after a large intersection, I was briefly relieved to see no sign of the tunnel. The part of me that still hoped this game was a fiction swelled at the sudden lack of evidence. My reaction was short lived of course, as I quickly realised that the tunnel wouldn't have shown itself to me anyway. Even if the game were real, I’d hardly been sticking to the rules on my way here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">There was no denying that the place resembled Alice’s descriptions however, and with a long time to go until I’d feel remotely tired, I decided to work my way back along the route, retracing Alice’s steps towards Rob Guthard’s street.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">OK so I have to admit at this point, I suffered from a momentary lapse in intelligence. In a fog of distraction, residual jetlag and general dullardry, I drove for longer than I’d care to admit under the misconception that I <em class="_7s4syPYtk5hfUIjySXcRE" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">wasn’t</em> playing the game. I thought this because I was heading in the opposite direction, and had started my run with a right hand turn, when the rules explicitly state that you begin by turning left. Of course, as I’m sure all of you would have realised immediately, that didn’t mean I was out of the game, it just meant I started playing with my first left turn, one road later.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Alice was always the smart one.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">What I’m trying to say is that, due to this fairly mindless oversight, I wasn’t exactly looking out for the Woman in Grey as I drove past what should have been her corner. There wasn’t a mirror shop this time of course, that’s only the 34th turn when you’re coming the other way, in fact I’m not sure which of the many passing streets it was. It is strange though, as I think back through my journey, I feel like I would have noticed her. The streets were practically deserted, so much so that any pedestrians stood out immediately. I know I should’ve been looking more closely but, if you asked my honest opinion… I don't think she was there at all.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The moment I realised this, I felt it again; the faint perverse, hope that I’d been misled, that the entire story was nothing more than a twisted, elaborate fabrication.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It wasn’t long until I passed an old mirror shop and, 34 turns later, arrived on what must have been Alice’s starting street. It was an inner-city neighbourhood whose residents were all fast asleep. From the moment I realised that the game was in play, I’d been thinking less and less about this particular road, and more about the one directly after it, resting just beyond the crossroads. I’d come halfway across the world on the strength of Alice’s account, but I’d seen no first hand proof of the Left/Right Game. If the whole thing was a hoax, then the next road should just be another street. If it was real, then I’d know soon enough.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I crawled up to the junction with my heart in my throat. With every inch of road that passed under my tyres, I found myself hoping more and more that it wouldn’t be true. Let someone be playing a prank on me, let the logs be counterfeit... let Alice be anywhere else but on that road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I took the corner in a wide arc, parking myself in the centre of the crossroads, my headlights facing down the next turn.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Ahead of me was a quiet residential street; lines of neatly parked cars, rows of well-kept yards and squarely drawn windows. Yet at its centre, in utter defiance of the modest surroundings, the road sank into a deep and dimly lit corridor, cutting beneath the street, and disappearing into complete darkness.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’d always known it was true.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In the presence of grim confirmation, the question I was asked earlier that night started to ring in my ears, as if echoing out of the tunnel itself. After an entire night’s driving, after two full months of searching, I still didn’t have a response.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In the end I just left the engine running, as if turning it off would somehow be a sign of retreat, and decided to type up the notes you’re reading now. I thought maybe the process of putting it all down on paper would bring me clarity, and leave me with either a note of farewell or a note of apology to Alice, for not having what it took to find her.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">And now… here I am; still undecided, still writing, still sitting in this rental car on a quiet street in Phoenix, Arizona.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Though perhaps the street’s not as quiet as I thought.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve just looked back to the previous road, down the street where Alice began her journey. As I type this very paragraph, I can see a figure standing on the sidewalk, just outside one of the houses. It isn’t the woman in grey this time.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Though it’s almost too dark to make out, I can tell the figure is an older male, well built and imposing, the rugged features of his weathered face half lit by moonlight. I’ve never seen this person before, yet he bears a striking resemblance to another man; a man whose description has been well recorded within the pages of Alice’s logs.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">He watches me in silence, staring through the window of my still running car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I wonder if he can help.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Left/Right Game was once nothing more than a 9-page document, peeking out of a yellow envelope, resting quietly on my desk.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I remember reading it on my lunch break.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I remember it made me laugh.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The submission had arrived with the first post, quietly making its way around the office, treated by everyone as a short-lived novelty of little journalistic value. The story was easy to dismiss, appearing all too similar to the rambling ghost stories and blurry UFO sightings that filled our mailbox on a daily basis, and which most of the senior staff had learned to instinctively ignore. Doomed by association, the document was quickly passed over, my desk merely a pit stop on its way to the rejection pile.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I was curious however and, after an uneventful few months in my new role, I had no compunctions about fishing from the scrap heap. Placing the envelope in my satchel, alongside a misfit crowd of similar rejects, I slipped away to a local coffee shop, reading it in an armchair by the window.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Somewhere around page three, between the description of the game’s rules and the exhaustive list of “Required Skills”, my mouth started to curl into an irrepressible smile.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">They’d been gloriously wrong about this one. It wasn’t some paranoid diatribe, nor a sensationalist plea for attention. Within those pages lay an introductory glimpse of a man’s passionate obsession. As I read on, something about his earnest eccentricity, incredible thoroughness, and unquestioning confidence made it impossible to put down. When I turned the final page, reading the last of Rob Guthard’s charming and refreshingly well formatted submission, I knew that this was the story I wanted to tell.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Later that day, I found myself in the editor’s office making a case for it. They didn’t quite see what I saw, but I was intent to win them over regardless. I told them the story would be characterful, colourful, thought-provoking and, at the very least, that I wouldn’t be gone long.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s been twelve days since then; ten since I first entered the Wrangler in Phoenix, Arizona, five since I commandeered it myself, leaving Rob behind in the silent city. I haven’t updated much recently, save for a regular set of notes made for my own benefit. In all honesty, after I finished writing up my account of the city, I was struck by an overpowering sense of needlessness. There was no one left to receive these logs, no friends to proofread, no editor to hand them to. It seemed pointless to maintain the same prosaic format as before.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I still largely agree with this assessment. It’s only due to a set of exceptional circumstances that I’ve chosen to type up the following account in full.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Whoever this reaches, I want to thank you for reading up to now.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m quite sure this will be my final instalment.</p><hr class="_2ACwpV3Y0LKhHHKbsxNmmY" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: 0px; border-image: initial; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 1px solid var(--newCommunityTheme-bodyTextAlpha20); color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; margin: 8px 0px;" /><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The moon has broken, and in my entire life, I’ve never witnessed an evening so still.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The air is cool and quiet, and the Wrangler cuts cleanly through it as I glide down a stretch of even tarmac. The scene is defined by calm and absence. Not a cloud in the sky, not a solitary whisper of breeze, not a single blade of grass stirring on the dark green banks beside me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet even on a night as peaceful as this, I can’t help but feel far away from home. The city had served as a turning point in that regard. Before we reached those titanic monoliths, the landscapes we passed through generally resembled the world I once knew. A few obvious exceptions aside, there was nothing about the environments that looked truly divorced from reality. That’s all changed now. The aberrant aspects of this new world are unignorable, constantly hanging at the corner of my eye, passively injecting a sense of wonder and disconcertion into the otherwise silent night.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A few days ago the moon started to crack like old porcelain. I hardly noticed at first, my eyes fixed on the road as it loomed above me, quietly splintering into three jagged pieces. As of tonight, the empty space between each fragment has significantly increased. If I focus on the sky for a little while, I can almost see them falling away from each other, charting infinite and lonesome trajectories through a barren cosmos, against a backdrop of foreign constellations.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The stars themselves fall further than they should. The night sky travels down past the horizon and continues below it, wrapping underneath the grassy bank. It’s as if the road, and the narrow plains on either side, are suspended in the middle of a vast abyss; a platform in the middle of open space.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">At least that’s what I thought it was at first. It didn’t take long before I noticed the broken moon was appearing twice in the sky, both above and below me. A pair of orbiting satellites; identical and in perfect alignment. That’s when I realised that there were no stars below me. I was merely staring across a flat surface so flawlessly mirror-like as to cast a perfect reflection of the heavens above.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I was driving through the centre of a lake.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The water is impossibly still. Since leaving the shoreline proper yesterday night, I’ve seen neither a wave, nor a ripple across its placid surface. It’s also undeniably vast, reaching beyond the horizon in every direction and continuing further still. Without being sure how I know, I’m aware that the waters carry on for an unspeakable distance, that I would sooner reach the stars themselves before setting foot on its opposite shore.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I lean over and switch gears. The act of driving the Wrangler was a daunting one at first, but after the first two days I’ve managed to make do. An old scarf wrapped tightly around the steering wheel serves as a makeshift handle, allowing me to navigate corners one handed. I don’t have an elegant solution for the gearshift, but I’ve quickly grown used to the process. If I’ve learned anything from the road, it’s that grace is the first casualty in the fight for survival. Adaptability, no matter how clumsy, outlasts it at every turn.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A few minutes later, the Wrangler pulls up to a spacious verge. A large circle of land surrounded entirely by dark waters. At the far end, the grass seems to fall away, dropping sharply into the lake with a dead stop. The road continues of course, but it's the only thing that does. With nothing on either side, it forms a narrow bridge of perfectly flat asphalt, raised on a bed of mud and rock.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I press my boot onto the brake pedal, easing the Wrangler to a steady halt at the centre of the clearing. For the first time today, I open the car door and climb out of my seat. The dull tap of asphalt shifts to a soft rustling as I make my way over to the lakeside.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s something on the shore, a barely discernible object, almost entirely concealed by a shock of verdant undergrowth. It’s a miracle I’d managed to spy it from the road, though perhaps something about the stark uniformity of the landscape had made it stand out.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As I advance towards the water, and the object draws near, its indeterminate form solidifies in my mind.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s a human arm, reaching out from the water and onto the bank. I crouch down to examine the few pertinent details. The fingers are still embedded firmly into the soil. The thumbnail is broken, coloured by a peeling coat of faded varnish. There’s a pallid, emaciated quality to the skin, spreading down the arm until it disappears beneath a thick, woollen sleeve. At the point it meets the surface, the water soaks into the fabric, turning it black from the original grey.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">With a sad exhalation, I rise to my feet and lean over the water’s edge.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The body of Marjorie Guthard lies against the silt, her cheek resting on the lake bed, her wide bewildered eyes staring out into the open lake. She’s been almost perfectly preserved. Save for the striking tautness of her skin and its mottled, grey pallor, she looks exactly like the woman I saw on the 34th turn, who’d tried to repel me from the road, who’d spoken of a lake drinking her wounds clean.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It seems her ramblings weren’t completely void of fact. It’s clear to see that Marjorie has been exsanguinated, so completely in fact that the only evidence that blood ever flowed through her veins, is a large dark stain across her shredded blouse.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It doesn’t take long before the perpetrator makes itself known.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As I stare into the water, a steady stream of formless whispers sink up through the depths of the lake. The softly spoken murmurings drift up to my ears, taking root in the back of my mind and instantly blooming into a flurry of deeply persuasive promises.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I find myself entirely transfixed by the still water, as a myriad of generous offerings unfold in throughout my consciousness. The whispers suggest an end to the phantom pains in my absent arm, perhaps even a completely restored limb, stronger than it had been before. Furthermore, it shows me a glimpse of its incomprehensible span, its furthest bank reaching across countless worlds, its deepest point lying below everything. I’m offered total knowledge of every league, every fathom, every inconceivable shore.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My hand reaches down as the whispers continue, every bargain steeped in sweet beneficence. A moment later, my outstretched fingers brush against the soft grass, and wrap around Marjorie’s exposed arm.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Digging my heels into the ground, I lean myself backwards and pull. The water ripples and splashes as I drag Marjorie’s lifeless body slowly onto the bank. I feel the voices in my mind grow louder, erupting in anger as I back away from the lake.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The promises had been convincing, each quiet solicitation undeniably persuasive. But after seeing Marjorie’s wretched fate and the look of eternal betrayal in her vacant eyes, I found myself aware of a subtle undercurrent behind every syllable, a sense of desperation and timeless hunger emanating from beneath the lake’s surface. I already have a clear understanding of what would have happened if I’d lost myself to those waters. I suspect it’s no coincidence, that of the countless shores it showed me, all of them appeared to be deserted.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Marjorie wouldn’t have stood a chance. She’d left the forest alone, grievously wounded and without a vehicle. She’d walked the whole way here, bleeding endlessly, the road’s rejuvenating power battling every moment against her body’s natural inclination to die. I suspect the road’s influence wasn’t strong enough, and when a whispering voice promised, ever so sweetly to mend her, she would have been in no position to refuse.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Her other sleeve brushes against dry land, her body leaving the water for the first time in decades. I keep pulling until my boots hit asphalt, laying her down on the grass just beside the Wrangler.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">After a moment of sober vigil, I walk to the back of the car and fetch Rob’s foldable spade.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A long few hours follow. I’ve never dug someone’s grave before, and my injury is hardly conducive to the task. My fleece tied around my waist, pearls of sweat running down my brow, I manage to slowly chip away at the damp earth. Five hours later, my back cramping, my hand raw from gripping the shovel, I attempt to lower Marjorie into the rough pit with some semblance of grace, her legs dropping limply into the soft soil despite my best efforts.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It takes over an hour to shovel the soil back. It’s a sobering and ugly task. As a layer of dirt covers her face, I realise this will be the last time a living person lays their eyes on Marjorie Guthard. Burying her suddenly feels disrespectful, as if it’s an act I don’t have the right to perform.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Once it’s done, I drop onto my knees, a dull ache in my muscles as I smooth out the disturbed ground with the back of the shovel.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">MARJORIE:</span> You.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Even before I turn to face her, I can hear a scowl in her voice. There’s an odious depth to that one acrid syllable, a potent witch’s brew of contempt and accusation that feels like it’s been festering in her drowned lungs for decades.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Reluctantly, I rise to my feet and turn around, finding myself face to face with the woman I just buried. She looks different now, her clothes are dry, her skin clear, with nothing to be seen of the deep, dark gash in her blouse.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Marjorie.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Unlike the empty vessel below us, the woman in front of me is by no means at peace. She shakes and wretches with the same indignant fury I witnessed when we first met. When she speaks, her words shudder under the weight of her own turbulent emotions.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">MARJORIE:</span> I chased you. I ran to you. I… I gave him up for you.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I’m… I’m sorry Marjorie, I don’t know what you mean. Tell me what you mean.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">MARJOIRE</span> The things I saw, things so beautiful. And I saw her, walking alone through the new worlds. I gave everything up for you!!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t know quite what to say. It’s pointless to ask her what she means, to try and understand her frenetic ramblings. In the end, I can only try to speak her language.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Marjorie I… I didn’t mean you to.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Marjorie’s trembling breaths burst into a despairing fit of laughter.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">MARJORIE:</span> Oh… oh yes you did. Yes you did. And now… now you’re here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Marjorie’s wild and volatile demeanour shifts once more, her laughter degrading further into a desperate crying panic.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">MARJORIE:</span> And what do I do now? What- What do I do?!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Marjorie cringes with the terror of the self-imposed question, placing her head in her hands and repeating it over and over again. As I watch her wrestle with despair, I’m struck by an idea I’ve never before considered. The disconcerting notion that, in death, we are not transported to a set destination by some ethereal attendant. That in fact, nothing is decided for us. Perhaps the manner in which we spend our afterlife is down to us, a decision we have to make ourselves.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Marjorie is standing over her own lifeless body, still lost, still entirely unmoored.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">There's no sign of boundless paradise, inescapable damnation or everlasting nothingness, and the common thread they share, a final release from the weight of our own agency, is similarly absent. Perhaps we never get that freedom, perhaps we continue like we always do, accompanied by all our imperfections, uncertainty and discontent.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Perhaps we must choose our eternity.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">After all my time on the road, that’s possibly the most terrifying notion I’ve encountered.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> He never stopped looking you know.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Marjorie snaps out of her wretched despair, instantly aware of who I’m referring to, staring up at me with an expression I’ve never seen her wear before.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I saw him, walking on the road. He didn’t stop. He was never going to stop. I think he was looking for you Marjorie, he still is.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Marjorie stares through me. For the first time since we met on that quiet Phoenician corner, I can see the faint spark of something other than misery and rage across her tear stained face.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I hold her gaze for a moment more, before pulling my phone from my pocket. In a single sweep of my contacts, I delete every number except for one. A number I pulled from the Nokia during our second night on the road. A number that connects to a lost wanderer of the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I don’t know if this can help but… stranger things have happened.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As she stares up into my eyes, I feel like we’re finally meeting for the first time. Without a word, Marjorie reaches out a quivering hand and takes the phone from my outstretched fingers.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Before I can say anything more, Marjorie Guthard is gone.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A few moments later, a refreshing breeze lands against my cheek, a soft zephyr, cooling my still warm face. It’s a welcome sensation, and the first movement I’ve witnessed in the air since I set out onto the lake. Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I stare quietly along the bridge, the breeze picking up around me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s a subtle wind at first, brushing stray hairs across my forehead, chilling the perspiration on my neck. Yet as I reach my hand out, and feel the air slip between my fingers, I’m witness to a steady rise in both strength and magnitude.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The sound of the wind grows from a whisper to a howl, Seconds later, the hanging sleeves of my fleece begin to stream sideways. My hair lifts from my back, billowing in the throes of a developing gale.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I back up against the Wrangler’s hood as the air finally erupts into a roaring, cacophonous cyclone. My hand reflexively seeks the sturdy frame of the Wrangler, my fingers wrapping around the grille, my arm tensing as the unrelenting wind threatens to drag me from the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Squinting through the violent tempest, I focus on a single point in space, just above the threshold of the bridge. In the midst of the storm, a jagged line of white hot light bursts out of the ether, tearing through the night’s fabric, a crackling fissure that widens and yawns, forcing apart the curtains of reality as they frenetically struggle to recombine.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Staring through the shuddering fracture, I’m subjected to the briefest glimpse of a boundless, and impossible vista. It is a faraway place in both distance and time. An achingly beautiful and gloriously terrifying dreamscape, enduring on the majestic shores of infinity. Every moment there spans a millennium and unfolds in countless directions at once. Every passing shadow holds a darkness beyond measure, their edges burned by the glare of a waking sun which looks across every conceivable world with a hollow, rancorous intent.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In the midst of this maddening landscape, a singular entity approaches, gliding towards the portal with the clear intent to pass through. As it breaches the shuddering gateway, and the wind dies down around it, I stare up at its grand celestial form.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The being is unlike anything I’ve ever seen; composed entirely from electric arcs of brilliant, magnesic light which burst from a volatile and blinding central core. It sounds like a lightning storm, its plasmatic tendrils snapping and crackling, bursting chaotically through the night air before collapsing in on themselves. As they fall back into the creature’s centre, they emit pale clouds of vaporous fractals that fade softly into the air.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Somehow, even as my eyes barely adjust to the stark light, I realise that the entity usually burns much brighter. It's dampened its glow for my benefit, so that it can appear before me without scorching my eyes from their sockets.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It’s you… isn’t it. You’re the voice I’ve been hearing. You’re the one who brought me here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The bristling maelstrom of light hangs in the air, crackling and shifting, its transient limbs strobing with chaotic incandescence. Part of me wants to hide, part of me wants to run, but neither are an option anymore. Releasing my hand from the Wrangler’s grille I take a single step forward, standing on my own and staring up into the entity’s smouldering core.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Can I get an interview?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The creature doesn’t react. In the following silence, I feel it observing me. When it finally responds, its voice ruptures the night, echoing through my skull.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> There is little time, but you may ask what questions you have.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Each reverberating syllable forms a string of literal shockwaves in the surrounding lake, emanating outwards from the being in a perfect circle. I watch the waves roll into the distance, showing no sign of ever diminishing, and I think about what question to ask first.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In the end, it comes to me quickly; a promise is a promise after all.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> What happened to Marjorie? Why did she do what she did?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The being pauses, as if considering its response. When it does reply, it speaks with a calm sobriety.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> She glimpsed an echo of the future, dreamed of the road, of the things that it passes through.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Like whatever’s through there?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I gesture through the gateway, which is now almost entirely blocked from view by the creature’s spiralling form.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> She dreamed of untold frontiers. She saw a lone woman walking them. Over time, the fulfilment of that vision became everything to her.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> But it wasn’t her… she thought she was seeing her own future… but it was-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> It was you.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Those three words, as they burst into the open air, casting three narrow waves across the boundless water, hit me with a deep and heavy force. Unbeknownst to myself, decades before I was even born, Marjorie had been driven insane by dreams of maddening grandeur, of a life of boundless possibility and true significance. She had given everything up to chase a shadow… a shadow that eventually turned out to be mine.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I hadn’t just pulled Rob into this game, I was the reason for everything. I was the cause for the tragedy that befell his entire family,</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> She didn’t just dream those sights. You influenced her. You let her see them… the same way you made Rob see me in Aokigahara. You pushed and you prodded wherever you needed so that I’d end up here. Are you the reason Bobby got the rules in the first place?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> Yes.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> But… why? You toyed with so many lives across… across decades. Why me? Why does it matter that I travel the road?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> Because across all humanity, across every conceivable permutation, you are the one who makes it the furthest.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It speaks plainly, as if the statement were a foregone conclusion. Yet its words strike me into silence.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The creature continues.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> I’ve watched you work your way here, through skill and through tenacity… and undeniably through luck. You were brought here because of these qualities, and they will carry you further along the road than any other.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Then why didn’t you just bring me here? All that influence and you didn’t lift a finger… after everything that happened-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> Events transpired as they needed to.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> As they… needed to?! People died! Marjorie. Bobby. Ace. Apollo. Eve. Lilith. Everyone. They’re all gone. Do you not care at all?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In response to my words, the entity remains silent for longer than usual.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> I care more than you know. There are things greater than your understanding, forces that exist beyond the realms of your comprehension that you would consider a threat to everything you hold dear. My actions were guided by a higher standard of knowledge. Your protests are predicated on false understanding.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You’re saying I don’t understand death?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> You don’t.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> ... That still doesn’t make it right.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> Regardless, my influence is necessary. That which is necessary must be.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> What even are you?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE::</span> I cannot answer that question in any way you’d understand.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> That's not good enough.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The creature doesn’t respond, as if it doesn’t feel it needs to. So far it’s returned my every argument with impenetrable certainty. From the domain it occupies, knowing what it knows, my arguments must seem entirely facile. Even if it did feel the need to justify itself, after seeing the place it hails from, I wonder if there’s any way I could ever comprehend its motives.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Still, that doesn’t mean my arguments are invalid, and the creature’s lofty dispassion does little more than stoke my desire to oppose it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> And what if I don’t want any part of this?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> You are travelling the aberrant strand; a singularly stable flaw in the fabric of reality. As it carries you further from the world you know, you will be freed from the influence of the old laws. You have already noticed the effects in those who settled the road, those who were lost to it and in yourself; energy without consumption, knowledge without requisite experience. You are shedding entropy, and causality and in time you will reach realms of understanding you cannot currently fathom. You will find answers to questions you never thought to ask. You will discover absolute truth. For this reason, you will carry on.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> That’s the only reason?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> Do you need another?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It doesn’t come across as a question, but rather another blunt statement of fact. I understand the effect it’s speaking of. Ever since the city, I’ve been encountering vague notions and fragmented ideas that occur to me randomly and without announcement. New avenues of thought leading to revelations that would otherwise lie beyond my mortal reach.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve started to comprehend things I could barely have conceived of back home, and though the onset of these notions had been terrifying at first, they grow less so with every passing day.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> No… no, I don’t trust you. I don’t-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> Your trust is immaterial. You will travel the road regardless.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The creature’s already stark glow starts to intensify.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> I’ve watched you, on every turn … across every moment of your journey.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">One of the creature’s countless protrusions lashes out at the empty air, forming another harsh, glowing fissure. It wrenches itself open in a few stilted jolts, a transparent, almost crystalline membrane stretched across the gap. Through it, I can see myself, in the centre of a cornfield, examining a block of C4 explosive.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s as if I’m staring into the past through a jagged shard of one-way glass.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> I’ve watched you questioning.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Though we can’t be seen through the aperture, I see the glasslike membrane shake with the force of the creature’s voice. As the window collapses, I can see the rows of corn thrown into a frenzy.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A second arc lashes out at the sky, forming a second aperture. This time I’m expecting the sight before me. I see myself, crying in the forest… a silent radio by my side.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> I’ve watched you struggle.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The second window closes. The creature has made its point.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> I’ve watched you fight… to make your way here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> You will not turn around.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You make it sound like I don’t have a choice.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> You do have a choice Alice, but you have already made it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As much as I’ve grown to detest the creature’s presumption, in that moment, I know it’s right.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">What it’s saying is true. I’ve done things I never would have imagined in order to get where I am now. In fact, if this being hadn’t arrived at all, I’d already be heading out over the bridge.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m not proud of what drives me; that same, ugly impulse that led me to refuse Rob’s offer of return, that made it so easy to leave him behind in the silent city. But there’s no denying the impulse is there. It’s been with me the whole time, long before I ever arrived in Phoenix, Arizona… and it’s buried deeper than I’ve ever wanted to admit.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Can I… do I get to say goodbye?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The entity says nothing. It hangs in the air, flickering and coursing with rupturing bolts of light. The next thing I hear is a faint mechanical hum emanating from the Wrangler behind me. Turning around, I pace briskly back to the car, opening the door and reaching into the passenger seat. My notebook is booting up, seemingly of its own accord.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Picking up the laptop, I lift the lid as I march back towards the bridge. I stare up at the silent being before me. When I look down to the laptop, my email client is already displayed on the screen.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> How… how long do I have?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> Long enough.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The entity begins to regress, its arcs diminishing as the being at its core turns away. Its message has been delivered. There is nothing more to discuss.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As it passes through the gateway, into an unknowable world far removed from my own, I call out after it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I’m still not certain I trust you.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The being focusses on me once more, as the fracture begins to close. A final set of waves pass across the surface of the lake as it solemnly replies.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> … I remember.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A moment later, the being is gone.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I stand motionless in the middle of the road, the entity’s final remarks washing over me, its curious choice of words echoing in my head. In the renewed silence, the faint stirrings of an overwhelming and terrible revelation start to form in my mind.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It could have simply said that it knew of my mistrust, that it heard the overtones in my voice, saw the disdain across my face or otherwise sensed it in the space between us. Instead, the being spoke as if my current feelings were a memory, dwelling somewhere within its depths.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It was undeniable that my time on the road was changing me, but in all this time I’d never truly considered how those changes might evolve as my journey continues.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’d never thought about what I might gain, what I might lose… or about what I might inevitably become.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A short while passes before I lower my eyes from the empty space above the bridge, to the screen of my notebook. Lowering myself down, I cross my legs and rest my back against the Wrangler.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">If you’ve been reading from the beginning, you’ve finally caught up with me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I hope you’ll allow me a few personal messages.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">To Rob. I hope you’re able to read this someday, and I am so, so sorry for everything I’ve done; for everything I may do. I hope you understand that I didn’t know, and that none of this was your fault. You did the best you could, and the days I spent with you were the most significant of my life. It was an honour to know you and I hope that, among these pages, you find the answers, and the peace, that you deserve.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">To my mum and dad, I’m sorry I won’t be sending this to you. In the end, I was carried along this road by a profound selfishness, and I just can’t bring myself to face you. I can’t imagine the pain I’ll be putting you through, and I won't try to justify my actions. All I can say is that I love you and I’m sorry that my last act towards you was one of cowardice.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">And finally to you; the person to whom this message will be addressed. I’m sorry. I always thought I’d see you again someday, that the roads I took would eventually lead me home. That doesn’t look so likely now. Though I could say a lot to you, I’m not going to.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">But I wish we could have been friends for longer.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It feels like a lifetime since I first arrived at Rob Guthard’s quiet street. I remember the uncertainty as I waited for him to open his door, with no concievable idea what was about to transpire.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Like so many other things, that’s now changed. Despite being in an entirely new world, further from home than anyone’s ever been, I know exactly what’s going to happen next.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m going to take a drive. Take a left, then the next possible road on the right, then the next possible left. I will repeat the process ad infinitum, until I wind up somewhere new.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">And from there I’ll keep driving, beyond worlds, beyond time, beyond the bounds of my imagining. To a place where the lake runs dry, where the broken moon drifts away, and the stars disappear in the rear view.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To a place where everything has fallen away, and the road is all there is.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-78327275228746142002020-08-17T21:41:00.000-07:002020-08-17T21:41:42.614-07:00The Left Right Game Part 9<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">As the darkness closes in, I find myself dragged deeper and deeper into the depths of my own subconscious, until I sink through the back of my mind into an indescribable place. A featureless, directionless, timeless void that exists at the weakest point of life.</span></p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can feel myself drifting away, surrendered to an almost imperceptible tide, carried slowly but inexorably from the world.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The rest of the night unfolds in fleeting snapshots.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I briefly feel my body lift up from the ground, gravity pulling at my limbs as I’m conveyed through the forest.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">An unknowable stretch of time later, I feel a distinct burning sensation to my right. In the world I currently inhabit, only an echo of the pain reaches me, but I can tell that it was once substantial. Unable to divine its purpose, I let the sensation fade away, before descending once more into the placid darkness.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When my eyes finally work themselves open, the sun is beginning to rise. Without an ounce of strength left in my body, all I can do is peer through my eyelashes, taking in the vague scene before me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m in the back of the Wrangler, propped up against a soft pillar of luggage. There's somebody kneeling beside me, tugging at my right shoulder. When I try to address them, I discover that my voice has withered to a spectral whisper, so frail that it hardly exists at all.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> … Rob…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Hearing my voice, the figure shuffles round and kneels before me, staring into my eyes as they slowly regain their focus.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> You just lay back Miss Sharma, I just finished patchin’ you up but I gotta make sure it’s good work.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Wh… what happened to you?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Denise had me at gunpoint, had to act like I was all but dead. When she into the forest, I got free, took the med kit into the trees, fixed myself up a little. I was comin’ to help when I heard this awful noise. Went to check it out... that’s when I found you.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span>... Is the engine running?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Wanted to warm up the place for you. You were in shock, and since the battery don’t run down anymore I thought-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> No I mean… how? The key, it got-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> You think I’d risk gettin’ out this far with only one copy of my car key?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob seems almost insulted, and thinking back to everything I’ve learned about him over the course of this trip, I can see why he might be. Even in my weakened state I can’t help but laugh; though it admittedly comes out as stilted wheezing, diffusing quietly into the air.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> No that’s… that’s actually very “you”. I think Bluejay would’ve appreciated that information last night.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Yeah well, she didn’t ask.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> … I’m glad you made it Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Glad you made it too. They build’em tough down in London.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I rest my head back against the luggage.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I’m from Bristol.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Of course… yeah of course that’s… sorry…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob tries to recover his smile, but it slips quickly from his grasp. In its absence, his features cringe into sudden, uncontrollable sadness.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Miss Sharma I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob Guthard’s weathered face bursts into a heaving mess of tears. He repeats those two words as he lumbers towards me, throwing his arms around my waist and resting his head on my left shoulder. My hand feels like lead as I raise it up and brush it against his hair, holding him against me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As the man continues to sob, I let my head roll slowly to the right, observing the damage to my arm. Last night, lost in the muddled throes of shock, the harm had been unquantifiable, the details drowned out by the encompassing haze of severe blood loss and a blaring, primal alarm which had forced me to move without questioning why. Now that I’m on the other side, bathed in the quiet warmth of the Wrangler, I’m able to fully assess the extent of my injury.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Everything below my right elbow is gone.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It feels almost like a dream. My upper arm is practically unblemished, save for a few dark bruises from last night’s fall, yet it descends an impossibly short distance before ending in a blunt, surreal stump. The wound itself is hidden from view, swaddled in fresh white bandages.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can’t seem to figure out how I should feel and, consequently, I don’t seem to feel anything.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It’s ok Rob. It’s ok.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I never… I never meant for any of this to-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I know… I know.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob pulls back, his eyes still watering.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I’ll take you home, ok? I’ll find somewhere to turn around and we’ll get you home.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can tell Rob’s offer is genuine, and to be honest I’m a little surprised. I still remember our verbal agreement, forged at the mouth of the tunnel; that he would not be turning his car around until he reached the road’s end. I never expected he’d be the one to renege on the deal.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m aware this could be my best chance to leave it all behind; to flee from the horrors of the road, before they take even more of me. I know the way back. I know that it leads to safety, to family, to blessed normality. However, as an insidious voice in the back of my mind quietly notes, it doesn’t lead to answers.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span>... I’m still game if you are.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob sends me a heartbroken smile, which I would return if I had the strength. In that moment, a sombre understanding develops between us. An understanding that after everything we’ve seen, everything that’s happened, we’re both still choosing the secrets of the road. The decision reveals something about us, exposing a driving force behind our actions that negates our concern for survival, and overshadows the imagined protests of our loved ones.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s a decision only two broken people would make.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob spends the morning packing up the Wrangler, giving me time to rest. The fact that he’s walking around at all is remarkable, let alone conducting his usual routine at his usual pace. As I begin to feel life crawl slowly back into my veins, I wonder whether the strange force that has sustained us both, as well as the Wrangler’s fuel tank, could also have a mild restorative effect. The notion should bring me comfort; instead it makes me feel like a lobster in a tank.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A few hours later, Rob carries me out of the car, letting me rest in the doorframe. In front of me lie three mounds of dirt, raised slightly from the surrounding earth. Two are headed by crosses, formed from knotted sticks bound tightly together. The grave on the far left lies bare, bereft of any religious affiliation.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Is that… Bluejay’s? Without the cross?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Didn’t think she’d want one.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> She wouldn’t have done that for you, you know.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Good thing I ain’t her then. I buried what I can, but that was some state she was in. Did the child kill her?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob goes to throw a foldable spade into the back of the car. For a brief moment, I consider letting his statement go unanswered.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> No, it didn’t… I did.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob immediately marches back round, his brow furrowed in confusion.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I hid a C4 charge in my satchel. When she took the bag I… well…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I gesture to the bare grave. Rob looks as if he’s seeing me for the first time.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Where did you-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> From your son’s car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I watch as my quiet assertion strikes Rob’s ears, as its meaning burrows through his consciousness, its implications contorting his features into a look of shame and damning revelation.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can tell from his reaction that I’ve got it right.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We haven’t had a chance to speak since I learned his son’s name. That piece of information formed the crucial thread, stringing together the strange and seemingly incongruent discoveries I’d encountered on the road. Earlier in the week I may have been worried to confront him with this information, but things are different now. We’ve come too far, we’ve been through too much and, if he’s truly ferrying me somewhere with malicious intent, I’m powerless to stop him anyway.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I raise a weak hand towards him; a quiet request for assistance.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I think it’s time we had a second interview.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Following a tense and guilty silence, Rob simply nods and helps me into the passenger seat.</p><hr class="_2ACwpV3Y0LKhHHKbsxNmmY" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: 0px; border-image: initial; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 1px solid var(--newCommunityTheme-bodyTextAlpha20); color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; margin: 8px 0px;" /><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> It wasn’t military. It was commercial.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Wrangler continues to crawl through the forest. I’ve stayed quiet for almost half an hour, letting Rob formulate a response in his own words, and in his own time.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Commercial?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Yeah, explosive charges for controlled demolition. Bobby was in the business, had his own firm.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You must’ve been proud.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Yeah… yeah he built that place up from nothin’. Tourin’ his office was one of the best days of my life.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> So… how did he end up out here?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob grows quiet, reluctantly accepting that he’ll have to start from the beginning.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> … Bobby was a smart kid… smarter than I ever was. He coulda run the farm at 15 but, country life didn’t take. Instead he moved away to Phoenix, picked up a college degree, got himself a steady career.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> A steady career? That’s pretty rebellious for a Guthard.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Hah… well we were pretty different people… didn’t always get along. I was still a courier in those days, always jettin’ off somewhere new. ‘Course I went to Japan, stayed there a while. Then…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Aokigahara.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> That’s right. Changed everythin’. Came home after five years with a new hobby. Bobby didn’t care for the stories but... his ma had died sudden while I was away; we both wanted to start over, be in each other’s lives more so... he came with me to the Pacific North West, trackin’ down Sasquatch. Creature didn’t show, but Bobby had a good time campin’ so he kept joinin’ me. Before long he was doin’ the research himself, organisin’ trips, pickin’ up rumours of strange stuff all across the country.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Sounds like a nice time for you both.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> It was.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> So… was it Bobby who discovered the Left/Right Game?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> … He called me up one day, outta the blue. This was about three years ago. Said he’d found a set of rules; said we should try out. To be honest, I thought our trippin’ days were over; I was back in Alabama and he was startin’ up a family of his own, but suddenly he’s tellin’ me to meet him in Phoenix so, of course I went along.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> And this time, you both realised it was real.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Bobby knew as soon as we reached the tunnel. He passed that way every day, knew it wasn’t supposed to be there but… there it was. He said that was the most amazing thing he ever saw. We charted it over the next year, whenever we could get the time together, but we moved slow, mapped the place out, turned back on the regular. It took us a while before we got the courage to stay on the road overnight, both of us were terrified the tunnel would disappear or somethin’.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can tell Rob is replaying the events in his head. The reminiscence almost makes him smile.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Bobby’s wife was a real doll. Used to work in his office. Kindest girl I ever met, funny too. There was a decade between’em but you could tell they were good for each other. He shared everything with her, including the road. In fact, once Bobby got a little more secure with the rules, they started to map it together…explorin’ their own little world.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">After a brief pause, Rob’s expression sinks slightly; the reminiscence is growing darker.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Few months go by, I’m hearin’ from Bobby a little less but, I expected that. Then one evenin’ I get a call from the hospital, tellin’ me my boy had walked into some ER in Phoenix.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Was he ok?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> No. He was in a bad way. Leg all busted up, delirious, askin’ for Marjorie. They found her bag in his car but... she was nowhere to be found.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Bobby lost her on the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Yeah, that’s right.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> On our second night here, after we lost Ace, you told me the road had never hurt anyone before.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Well, that wasn’t a lie at least. It wasn’t the road that got’em.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> … What do you mean?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> They made it to the forest. None of us had got that far before but… this time they pushed a little further than usual.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Do you know why?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> They were gonna have a kid. Marjorie was almost due… wasn’t travellin’ so well. I think they knew they wouldn’t be hittin’ the road for a while. It was like a uh… like a last hurrah I guess.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> But only Bobby came back?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> They explored the woods till nightfall. When Bobby said they had to turn back… Marjorie didn’t want to. He never told me why, never told me what happened. By the end of that trip, Marjorie was still out there and he was in a hospital bed.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob takes a moment to collect himself, to put the facts in order. The trees are starting to grow thin, sunlight bursting through the widening gaps in the canopy. It looks like we’re nearing the forest’s end.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Bobby took a month or so to recover. Boy was desperate to get his wife back, and of course he’d become a suspect in her disappearance. Needless to say the first thing he did was head onto the road to find Marjorie.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> But he didn’t.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Nope… No he found her. Just uh… a little sooner than he thought.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I take a moment to process Rob’s implication. Suddenly I feel a stone drop in my stomach.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> She was on the 34th turn.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob nods solemnly.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Wasn’t the woman he knew of course. Stood there all day, just mumblin’ about the road. Didn’t even recognise him. I remember he called me up right after he first saw her there, his heart breakin’. He tried almost every day from then on, always stoppin’ at that turn. He’d yell, he’d plead, he’d bring pictures and gifts but… she never responded. Don’t know if it was really her but, whatever was on that corner, it belonged to the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Bobby lost somethin’ of himself on that corner. After a while, his fascination with the game turned sour, turned to hate. He thought the road was somethin’ evil, that it had no place linking into our world.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I was checkin’ up on him at that point, every few days or so. One weekend he said he was doin’ better, even said he’d been in to work. I thought maybe things were turnin’ round but... then he went quiet; didn’t pick up his phone for three days. I had my place in Phoenix by that point, and a spare key to his house. That’s where I found the note; tellin’ me he’d gone back through. One last bid to find his wife… and if he couldn’t bring her back well-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> He was going to destroy the tunnel.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Cut the road off from the world. I played the game in Phoenix, Chicago, a few different places, but that one tunnel is what links you to the road. I looked around his garage, found the box for a phone, lot of electronics all over the place… pretty clear what he’d done. So I jump in my car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We pass out of the forest, onto a long narrow road. In the distance, I can see our route winding up a towering wall of sandstone, disappearing into a set of rolling mountains.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> He passed me on his way back, just before I hit Jubilation. Thunderin’ down the road at full speed, drivin’ like crazy. That’s when I knew he hadn’t found her… that he was goin’ to take out the tunnel, end the game once and for all.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> But he never got that far.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I tried to talk to him. Called his cell, tried the radio frequencies, there was a number on the sim card documentation that he had, god help me I even messaged him on that one. In the end it was just me and him, racin’ back to Phoenix. He was faster than me but I was drivin’ better. After few bad corners I caught up...</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You ran him off the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob stares out at the faraway ridges, his hands grasping the steering wheel.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Cell service don’t work through the tunnel. He knew that. He was either goin’ to blow it up on this side… or while he was in there.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> So you were trying to save him or save yourself?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Neither. I was tryin’ to save the road... Say what you want about this place Miss Sharma, but it’s a doorway out of everythin’ we ever known. It’s the road out of… out of reality. It may be the most significant frontier we ever cross and that’s… part of me knew, that was too important for one man to take away.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">For the second time today, Rob battles back tears, and for the second time, he fails. They roll silently down his cheek as he continues on.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> He was more injured than I thought. He’d hurt himself bad before he reached me, that’s why he was headed to the tunnel so quick. He wanted to destroy it while he still could.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> The road had taken almost everythin’ from him, and then I took the rest… I denied him his hope, took away his chance to leave the world on his own terms. In the end he didn’t even seem angry… he just asked after Marjorie. Asked me why she did it, why she left. I laid him to rest there, visited the place often but… I never had a good answer for him. That’s when I started preppin’ the next run.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> So you posted his logs online, and pretended to discover them.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Thought people would ask less questions that way.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> And where did we all fit in to this? Why did you bring us here with you?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I guess… I thought it was time the world knew. Didn’t want all this to end up an old man’s secret. Honest to God, if I knew the road was gonna… I swear I never woulda brought you here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob’s features tighten, all his shame and guilt rising to the fore. I can’t say it isn’t deserved. Despite his intentions, despite his penitence, the man had blinded himself to clear dangers, hurt those closest to him and, on a road where secrets had killed so many, he’d kept the most significant one of all.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Well, perhaps not the most significant.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You didn’t bring us here Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob turns to me, confused.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I met someone in the forest last night, a figure, just like the one you saw in Japan, “looked like static you see on a TV screen” … I think it was you Rob. I think I saw you and I think that… all those years ago…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In my current state, the mechanics of the event, and their stunning implications, lie beyond my explanatory capacity. In the end, I just raise my lost right arm, and wait for Rob to make the connection.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A moment later the car screeches to a halt.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob stares straight ahead, his knuckles white against the steering wheel. I’m aware that beneath his stone-set features, every square inch of grey matter is fighting to process the fresh revelation. If it’s true that, in those quiet woods, I somehow reached across the decades to a young Rob Guthard, then it changes everything. The twisting narratives that led us to this point, Rob’s burgeoning obsession, his son’s tragic fate, they all took root in that single moment. More than a decade prior to my own birth, I’d placed us on the path which would lead me to his door.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As chaotic as the road often seems, that moment in the forest hints at something deeper, something intentional.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob steps out of the car for a while, before wordlessly climbing back in and firing up the Wrangler. From that point on we continue as two silent passengers, lost in thought, disappearing into the sandstone mountains.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We travel across the thin mountain road for the next two hours, a wall of crooked rock hemming us in. When we pass onto the other side, and the outcrop falls away, the landscape below us has changed completely, and we’re treated to a strange and breath-taking sight.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Wrangler is traversing the cliffs above a vast, flat desert; a tundra of vibrant orange stretching as far as the eye can see. I can just make out the road, cutting a meandering path through the sand far below us. At the centre of this otherwise featureless expanse, a collection of monolithic structures, towering columns of glass and metal, rise from the ground, connected by a web of long perpendicular streets.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> There’s a city… there’s a city on the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob keeps his eyes forward. Despite the epic majesty of the cityscape below us. I can tell that his mind is elsewhere, that he’s still digesting the contents of our interview. In the end, I think it best to leave him alone with his thoughts.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We stay on the mountain for another twenty minutes, before finally winding down to the desert floor. The space ahead of us is two-tone; the sharp saffron of the desert and the deep blue sky, separated by a thin, even horizon. The only objects that cross this perfect boundary, are the hulking grey towers of the city, rising from the sand, and bursting through into the heavens.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We snake along the desert road, the city looming ever larger as we make our tentative approach toward the border. There’s an eerie contrast to the threshold as we cross it; the cupreous glow of the sand switches to grey, the scorching heat instantly cools, and perhaps most notably, what little sound there was is negated entirely. As we delve down an empty, perfectly maintained throughway, I realise that I can’t hear anything at all except for the Wrangler’s steady rumblings.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It’s quiet.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> That’s fine by me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Who do you think built this place?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I don’t know. Maybe whatever brought us here. Could be that no one built it… maybe it just is.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I wonder if he’s right. It’s hard to think such a place would exist for any practical purpose. The city looks off somehow, as if it was built from conjecture, by an architect who had only heard of cities through poorly translated rumour. All the broad features are present, skyscrapers, lampposts, window cleaning platforms, but nothing deeper. It’s an empty shell. An ornament in the middle of the desert.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As we turn down the next few roads, I stare up at the monolithic structures, each one standing at least a hundred stories tall. My eyes track back down the countless strata of dark windows, as I contemplate what it might be like to live in such a place.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When I reach the ground floor, I’m presented with my answer.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s a young man standing at the ground floor window, his hand resting against the glass. He’s wearing a dark grey suit, and a look of almost mesmeric shock. His mouth open, his hands shaking, his unblinking eyes staring past us as the Wrangler rolls by.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My eyes quickly track back up the skyscraper’s glass facade, scrutinising each row of windows in turn. I’d naively hoped the buildings would be empty, that this place would be nothing more than a colossal ghost town. Now that I know otherwise, each pane of glass feels like a dark pool of water; still on the surface, but with sinister potential lurking within its depths.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A few seconds later, more of them arrive. There aren’t many at first; just a few scattered figures stepping up to their windows, pressing themselves against to the glass. However, like a light sprinkling of rain that erupts into a downpour, the frequency of their arrival quickly doubles, then triples, until not a single space lies unoccupied. The Wrangler shrinks, subject to the scrutiny of countless individuals, on every floor, in every window, all of them clad in the same monochromatic formalwear and staring down at us like the emissaries of a grand tribunal. As the Wrangler passes by, they continue to stare straight ahead, though it’s clear they’re aware of our presence.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob. Rob there’s-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I see’em.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob puts his foot down, shedding the weight of a thousand pairs of eyes as he leaves the building behind. As the final column of windows slips by us, I glance back, hoping to see them return to the depths of the building. Instead, in those last few moments, I witness their collective demeanour fracture into a desperate frenzy, their mouths opening in a silent scream as they slam their fists against the glass.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Turning back around, I stare into the buildings that currently flank our vehicle. The figures have already arrived at the windows, and their calm is already fading.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob, we need to go faster.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I’m on it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Wrangler growls with renewed ferocity as Rob plants his foot onto the gas. We lurch towards the next corner, accelerating down the road as Rob scans for any hidden turns. I achingly shift in my seat, keeping an eye on the scene developing in our wake.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Shards of broken window begin to rain onto the asphalt. Watching the shattered pieces tumble through the air, it’s apparent that the quiet in this city isn’t simply due to a lack of activity. The torrent of splintered glass is completely silent, even as it crashes against the impervious ground.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Nothing in this city makes a noise. Nothing except us.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The thunderous engine of the Wrangler has never sounded so loud.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Looking up, I witness hundreds of hands gripping the shattered window frames, unable to turn myself away as thousands of polished black shoes step over the threshold. The figures stream out from every floor, forming an incomprehensible deluge of humanity.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The first wave strikes the ground, with more and more landing against them; a heap of tangled figures struggling to separate themselves. Much like the residents of Jubilation, and everyone else we’ve encountered on the road, they appear impervious to the fatal harm such an act should impart. Those that landed on their feet hardly even stop, turning towards us, and sprinting after the Wrangler. It doesn’t take long for the rest of the writhing mass to resolve itself, its constituent individuals joining the frantic stampede, their chaotic charge and desperate screams bereft of any perceivable sound.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Even in the midst of the frenzied pursuit, as a foreboding shower of glass falls from every building we pass, the world outside remains silent; the chaos made even more incomprehensible framed against the ungodly stillness in which it takes place.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob screeches around the corner, drifting onto a long and open street. The roadway ahead is flanked by skyscrapers disappearing to a narrow vanishing point. As we race down this next stretch of road towards a large intersection, the ever growing mob bursts onto the street behind us, taking the corner with supreme coordination and continuing tirelessly in our direction.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A split second later, I’m struck by an abrupt and pervasive idea. It feels unlike any thought I’ve ever had before, less of a notion, and more a prescient hybrid of intuition and de ja vu, as if the course of action we must take is obvious to me, despite my not knowing why.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I force my voice above a grating whisper.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob. We need to drop something behind us… something loud.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> What’re you thinkin’?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I uh… you just have to trust me ok? We still have most of the plastic explosive could you-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Nah, if you took out the blasting cap I ain’t got time to make a new one.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob’s glances into the rear view, then back to the road. I can almost hear the gears turning in his head.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> But that the only explosive on-board. Think you can drive?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I guess we can find out.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The car thunders across the tarmac as I clumsily grasp the wheel, shifting myself over and working my foot onto the accelerator. Rob lifts himself away and climbs past me into the back of the Wrangler. In my weak state, every shuddering motion makes my bones rattle. With each subsequent gearshift, I’m forced to take my remaining hand off the wheel and reach across to the stick. The effort is precarious and awkward, my aching limbs puppeteered by will power and adrenaline, every passing second a battle to maintain control.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The windows up ahead are starting to fracture. The noise of the Wrangler is carrying, and the entire city is starting to pre-empt our arrival. Behind me, I can hear the ripping of duct tape, the tearing of fabric and the clattering of falling luggage. I’m not sure what’s taking place behind me. I just have to trust that Rob has a plan.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I hear the back door swing open just before we reach the intersection, a metallic scraping along the Wrangler’s floor, and a pained grunt from Rob as he throws something onto the road behind us.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Reaching the crossroads, I slide my hand along the wheel and twist it sharply to the right. As the car lurches round, and onto the next road, I feel my heart sink dramatically. We’ve been overtaken. The windows ahead of us are shattered, the front doors lay broken on the street, and the building’s desperate inhabitants are rushing towards us, blocking off our only means of escape.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I slam my foot onto the break, and the Wrangler shudders to a halt, the engine stalling and cutting out. The streets are now spilling over, an overwhelming swarm converging on our position from four directions. I look back to Rob, and he meets my gaze, his eyes brimming with dismayed finality.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">An explosion shudders through the air behind us. I look out the back window to see a shattered jerry can, one of Rob’s now superfluous fuel reserves, its dark green shell violently compromised, its contents spilled out across the road and cast alight. Now that the engine isn’t running, the echo of the blast and roar of the primal, balletic flame fills the afternoon air.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The trajectory of the maddened crowd changes instantaneously, the silent Wrangler has fallen from their collective attention, as they refocus onto the smouldering flames. Those up ahead continue to rush past us, streaming around the Wrangler as they scramble to the spilled pool of gasoline, digging their hands into the blaze, grasping hopelessly at the fire.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Delicately, careful not to make a single shred of noise, I climb out of the driver’s seat, joining Rob in the back of the Wrangler.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">He addresses me in a confused whisper.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Why don’t they care about us? What are they doing?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> … It’s the sound. They want it for themselves.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t how I’m so sure, but I know that it’s the case. The jerry can creaks and screams as the city dwellers tear it into smaller and smaller pieces, frantically examining every jagged scrap. With each passing second, as the fire dies down, the crowd grows increasingly distressed, as if a precious commodity is slipping through their fingers.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> They don’t understand it. They’ll pull it apart trying to figure it out and they’ll never get any closer… and then it’ll be quiet again.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Where you gettin’ this from?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I don’t know, just a uh… just a feeling.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Well... pretty sure they woulda pulled us apart too. I’d say we’re pretty lucky.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Hah, yeah… pretty lucky.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As the last of the gasoline is eaten up, and the fire dies away, the city dwellers remain in the streets. Devoid of their momentary sense of purpose, their prize vanishing into the ether, the crowd’s desperation fades into a hushed despondency. I watch them as they pass by, countless faces wracked with sorrow, their aimless shuffling forming a lonesome sea, a grayscale ocean that spans the desolate city.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Wrangler is now adrift in the centre of that ocean. It’s clear that any attempt to start the engine would bring the entire city down on us, reigniting their futile hope, causing them to tear through the car, and anything inside it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">For the foreseeable future, we’re completely stranded.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Don’t worry about it, ok?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I don’t think they’re going to leave Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> They’ll leave.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Ok… and what then? They’ll still be everywhere.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Hey, we’re a smart pair. We’ll think of somethin’.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In the eerie, pervasive calm that surrounds us, I sit myself down next to Rob and lean back against the wall, with nothing else to do but wait for our situation to change. After watching the figures outside for over an hour, the only thing that’s different is a strange needling sensation that feels like it’s emanating from now absent forearm.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> My uh… my arm hurts… how’s that possible-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Don’t worry that’s uh… it’s called Phantom Limb. You got some sensation right? Like you still got somethin’ there? A lotta people get that after amputations. Here…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob reaches into his medical kit and retracts a blue jar of tablets. Twisting off the cap, he shakes two pills free.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> You’re gonna need these for the pain.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I stare at the tablets for a moment, before collecting them from his open palm. He passes me his canteen and I swallow them down in two weak gulps.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You have a lot of experience with amputations?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> … More than you’d think.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My brow furrows. Though I’d meant my remark as a passing jibe, Rob’s response rings with a strange sincerity. It takes me a moment to realise why that is.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I forgot... you were drafted. You never talked about it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Been thinkin’ about it a lot though. Bunch of strangers brought together under false pretences, told that we were servin’ a grand purpose by some old liar. Guess it’s interestin’ how time repeats itself. Now that I think about it, he drove a Jeep too.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob… I told you, you didn’t bring us here-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> That don’t change nuthin’. Don’t change what I did… to you, to Bobby, to any of ‘em. Maybe you were there in the forest but I was the one who started this, the one who kept askin’ what was at the end of the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> What do you think is at the end Rob?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Startin to think that ain’t for me to know. I been movin’ from place to place so long, seen everyone else settle down. Far as I can see, the end of the road is just wherever you decide to stop.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I rest my head on Rob’s shoulder. He gently places his arm around me. It isn’t long before medication starts to take effect, quietly overtaking my already weakened constitution. The pain subsides, dulled along with the rest of my senses. The sun is still streaming through the windshield as my eyes begin to drift shut.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I watch the figures pass the window, my eyelids getting weaker.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I don’t want this to be the end Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I know Miss Sharma, I know.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The last thing I see before I fall into a dreamless artificial sleep, is Rob Guthard’s hand reaching for the rifle.</p><hr class="_2ACwpV3Y0LKhHHKbsxNmmY" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: 0px; border-image: initial; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 1px solid var(--newCommunityTheme-bodyTextAlpha20); color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; margin: 8px 0px;" /><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When my eyes work themselves open, the sun is beginning to set.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve been moved. As my vision adjusts, it becomes clear that I’m still in the Wrangler. My head resting against a pile of fresh clothes, a soft travel blanket laid across me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I glance around to find that Rob’s nowhere to be seen.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Momentarily forgetting the situation outside the car, I attempt to call out for him. The syllable catches in my throat as a shambling figure passes by the window, wringing its hands in despair and casting a long shadow through the car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">With a renewed sense of caution, I slide the blanket to one side, and slowly make my way to the up front.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The cabin is similarly empty, except for a single scrap of paper, torn from my notebook. It lies on the driver’s seat, a small object hidden within the fold. When I open it, I find my headphones and five neatly written words:</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">“Channel One To All Cars”</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My hand starts to shake as I rest the note on the dashboard, slowly climbing through and placing myself gently into the driver’s seat. My heart in my throat, I insert the headphones into the jack of the CB radio, take a single, quivering breath in, and press the first button.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I’m uh… I’m sorry Miss Sharma.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob, where are you?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Down the road a little. Got myself to one of the rooftops. I know I always hated cities but, once you’re above it, the view’s really somethin’.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Come back Rob. Come back... please.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I wish I could. I do. But we both know those things ain’t leavin. And you need the car to get where ever you gotta go so… best I can do is make some ruckus, draw’em outta your way.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I rest my head against the steering wheel, bracing myself against the weight of his words.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I can’t do this without you.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I don’t think that’s true Miss Sharma. I think whatever’s on this road… it wants you to make it all the way. All I was meant to do was bring you this far. Now you don’t have to listen to it, you can turn around and head home… but either way only one of us is drivin’ outta here. So I guess the only question left is... which way d’you wanna go?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Well… are you ahead of me or behind me?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I can be anywhere. It’s your choice Miss Sharma.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In the wake of Rob’s words, in the shadow of the decision, I’m cast into silence; not because the choice is hard, but because I’m ashamed that it’s so easy. It was made the moment I first stepped into the Wrangler, and renewed in every perplexing moment since. The need to know, to comprehend, to uncover the truth has been with me all my life, but I never knew its roots ran so deep, that it would endure so ardently when everything else, everyone else, had been stripped away.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I stare into the rear view mirror, seeing myself for the very first time, and I have to admit I’m scared.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Stay where you are Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Hah… ok Miss Sharma… you ready?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> … Yeah. I’m ready.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Alright then… suppose it’s about time this thing did some good.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The shot explodes through the radio, before a faint booming echo reaches me on the quiet city air.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Its effect on the city dwellers is immediate. Their collective melancholy shatters in an instant, replaced by a renewed fixation. Before I know it, the disparate crowd unites once more into a stampeding horde, rushing past the windows of the Wrangler and back down the road towards the source of the noise.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> They on their way?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As the last of the city dwellers disappear behind me, I run my hand across the steering wheel, and down to the ignition.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Yeah… yeah they’re on their way.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ok then... what’re you waitin’ for?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">With a fateful twist of the key, the Wrangler roars back to life. The wheels kick against the asphalt, transporting me through the streets of the city. As I barrel away from the intersection, I see a small contingent of pursuers rushing around the corner behind me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob fires the rifle again, maintaining the attention of the majority. The stragglers fall away in my rear view mirror, losing ground against the Wrangler.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I take the first left, then the next possible right, then another left, a few minutes later I eventually find myself on the last stretch of road, leading me back into the vast and empty desert.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> So, you gonna make it?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Yeah, I’m gonna make it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Good. That’s good. Miss Sharma, if uh… if you find Marjorie, if you get a chance to let me know… well it’s more than I deserve but-.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Of course… of course I will.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I appreciate that. Ok, they’re gonna be here soon so… I’m gonna go radio silent for a while. If I call, you’ll know I made it out. If I don’t call… you just assume I made it out, ok?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Please tell me you’re going to be alright, Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> … It’s been a real honour drivin’ with you Miss Sharma.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The sound of a final shot reverberates through the radio, its echo drowned out by the roaring engine of the Wrangler. The world shifts around me as I burst out of the city, and back onto the desert road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The way ahead is laden with immense possibility, yet as I disappear into the vastness of the desert, I can only think of what I’ve left behind. Rob J Guthard had his flaws, marked by loss, driven by obsession, his good intentions often paving the way to tragedy and heartbreak.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As the tears begin to roll down my cheeks, I decide to remember him differently; as a valued friend, a good man and, above all else, a great story.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">No matter how you tell it.</p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-53645171767562849372020-08-17T21:40:00.005-07:002020-08-17T21:40:40.771-07:00The Left Right Game Part 8<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">As the darkness closes in, I find myself dragged deeper and deeper into the depths of my own subconscious, until I sink through the back of my mind into an indescribable place. A featureless, directionless, timeless void that exists at the weakest point of life.</span></p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can feel myself drifting away, surrendered to an almost imperceptible tide, carried slowly but inexorably from the world.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The rest of the night unfolds in fleeting snapshots.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I briefly feel my body lift up from the ground, gravity pulling at my limbs as I’m conveyed through the forest.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">An unknowable stretch of time later, I feel a distinct burning sensation to my right. In the world I currently inhabit, only an echo of the pain reaches me, but I can tell that it was once substantial. Unable to divine its purpose, I let the sensation fade away, before descending once more into the placid darkness.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When my eyes finally work themselves open, the sun is beginning to rise. Without an ounce of strength left in my body, all I can do is peer through my eyelashes, taking in the vague scene before me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m in the back of the Wrangler, propped up against a soft pillar of luggage. There's somebody kneeling beside me, tugging at my right shoulder. When I try to address them, I discover that my voice has withered to a spectral whisper, so frail that it hardly exists at all.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> … Rob…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Hearing my voice, the figure shuffles round and kneels before me, staring into my eyes as they slowly regain their focus.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> You just lay back Miss Sharma, I just finished patchin’ you up but I gotta make sure it’s good work.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Wh… what happened to you?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Denise had me at gunpoint, had to act like I was all but dead. When she into the forest, I got free, took the med kit into the trees, fixed myself up a little. I was comin’ to help when I heard this awful noise. Went to check it out... that’s when I found you.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span>... Is the engine running?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Wanted to warm up the place for you. You were in shock, and since the battery don’t run down anymore I thought-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> No I mean… how? The key, it got-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> You think I’d risk gettin’ out this far with only one copy of my car key?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob seems almost insulted, and thinking back to everything I’ve learned about him over the course of this trip, I can see why he might be. Even in my weakened state I can’t help but laugh; though it admittedly comes out as stilted wheezing, diffusing quietly into the air.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> No that’s… that’s actually very “you”. I think Bluejay would’ve appreciated that information last night.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Yeah well, she didn’t ask.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> … I’m glad you made it Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Glad you made it too. They build’em tough down in London.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I rest my head back against the luggage.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I’m from Bristol.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Of course… yeah of course that’s… sorry…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob tries to recover his smile, but it slips quickly from his grasp. In its absence, his features cringe into sudden, uncontrollable sadness.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Miss Sharma I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob Guthard’s weathered face bursts into a heaving mess of tears. He repeats those two words as he lumbers towards me, throwing his arms around my waist and resting his head on my left shoulder. My hand feels like lead as I raise it up and brush it against his hair, holding him against me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As the man continues to sob, I let my head roll slowly to the right, observing the damage to my arm. Last night, lost in the muddled throes of shock, the harm had been unquantifiable, the details drowned out by the encompassing haze of severe blood loss and a blaring, primal alarm which had forced me to move without questioning why. Now that I’m on the other side, bathed in the quiet warmth of the Wrangler, I’m able to fully assess the extent of my injury.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Everything below my right elbow is gone.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It feels almost like a dream. My upper arm is practically unblemished, save for a few dark bruises from last night’s fall, yet it descends an impossibly short distance before ending in a blunt, surreal stump. The wound itself is hidden from view, swaddled in fresh white bandages.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can’t seem to figure out how I should feel and, consequently, I don’t seem to feel anything.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It’s ok Rob. It’s ok.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I never… I never meant for any of this to-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I know… I know.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob pulls back, his eyes still watering.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I’ll take you home, ok? I’ll find somewhere to turn around and we’ll get you home.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can tell Rob’s offer is genuine, and to be honest I’m a little surprised. I still remember our verbal agreement, forged at the mouth of the tunnel; that he would not be turning his car around until he reached the road’s end. I never expected he’d be the one to renege on the deal.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m aware this could be my best chance to leave it all behind; to flee from the horrors of the road, before they take even more of me. I know the way back. I know that it leads to safety, to family, to blessed normality. However, as an insidious voice in the back of my mind quietly notes, it doesn’t lead to answers.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span>... I’m still game if you are.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob sends me a heartbroken smile, which I would return if I had the strength. In that moment, a sombre understanding develops between us. An understanding that after everything we’ve seen, everything that’s happened, we’re both still choosing the secrets of the road. The decision reveals something about us, exposing a driving force behind our actions that negates our concern for survival, and overshadows the imagined protests of our loved ones.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s a decision only two broken people would make.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob spends the morning packing up the Wrangler, giving me time to rest. The fact that he’s walking around at all is remarkable, let alone conducting his usual routine at his usual pace. As I begin to feel life crawl slowly back into my veins, I wonder whether the strange force that has sustained us both, as well as the Wrangler’s fuel tank, could also have a mild restorative effect. The notion should bring me comfort; instead it makes me feel like a lobster in a tank.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A few hours later, Rob carries me out of the car, letting me rest in the doorframe. In front of me lie three mounds of dirt, raised slightly from the surrounding earth. Two are headed by crosses, formed from knotted sticks bound tightly together. The grave on the far left lies bare, bereft of any religious affiliation.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Is that… Bluejay’s? Without the cross?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Didn’t think she’d want one.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> She wouldn’t have done that for you, you know.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Good thing I ain’t her then. I buried what I can, but that was some state she was in. Did the child kill her?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob goes to throw a foldable spade into the back of the car. For a brief moment, I consider letting his statement go unanswered.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> No, it didn’t… I did.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob immediately marches back round, his brow furrowed in confusion.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I hid a C4 charge in my satchel. When she took the bag I… well…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I gesture to the bare grave. Rob looks as if he’s seeing me for the first time.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Where did you-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> From your son’s car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I watch as my quiet assertion strikes Rob’s ears, as its meaning burrows through his consciousness, its implications contorting his features into a look of shame and damning revelation.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can tell from his reaction that I’ve got it right.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We haven’t had a chance to speak since I learned his son’s name. That piece of information formed the crucial thread, stringing together the strange and seemingly incongruent discoveries I’d encountered on the road. Earlier in the week I may have been worried to confront him with this information, but things are different now. We’ve come too far, we’ve been through too much and, if he’s truly ferrying me somewhere with malicious intent, I’m powerless to stop him anyway.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I raise a weak hand towards him; a quiet request for assistance.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I think it’s time we had a second interview.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Following a tense and guilty silence, Rob simply nods and helps me into the passenger seat.</p><hr class="_2ACwpV3Y0LKhHHKbsxNmmY" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: 0px; border-image: initial; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 1px solid var(--newCommunityTheme-bodyTextAlpha20); color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; margin: 8px 0px;" /><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> It wasn’t military. It was commercial.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Wrangler continues to crawl through the forest. I’ve stayed quiet for almost half an hour, letting Rob formulate a response in his own words, and in his own time.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Commercial?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Yeah, explosive charges for controlled demolition. Bobby was in the business, had his own firm.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You must’ve been proud.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Yeah… yeah he built that place up from nothin’. Tourin’ his office was one of the best days of my life.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> So… how did he end up out here?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob grows quiet, reluctantly accepting that he’ll have to start from the beginning.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> … Bobby was a smart kid… smarter than I ever was. He coulda run the farm at 15 but, country life didn’t take. Instead he moved away to Phoenix, picked up a college degree, got himself a steady career.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> A steady career? That’s pretty rebellious for a Guthard.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Hah… well we were pretty different people… didn’t always get along. I was still a courier in those days, always jettin’ off somewhere new. ‘Course I went to Japan, stayed there a while. Then…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Aokigahara.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> That’s right. Changed everythin’. Came home after five years with a new hobby. Bobby didn’t care for the stories but... his ma had died sudden while I was away; we both wanted to start over, be in each other’s lives more so... he came with me to the Pacific North West, trackin’ down Sasquatch. Creature didn’t show, but Bobby had a good time campin’ so he kept joinin’ me. Before long he was doin’ the research himself, organisin’ trips, pickin’ up rumours of strange stuff all across the country.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Sounds like a nice time for you both.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> It was.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> So… was it Bobby who discovered the Left/Right Game?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> … He called me up one day, outta the blue. This was about three years ago. Said he’d found a set of rules; said we should try out. To be honest, I thought our trippin’ days were over; I was back in Alabama and he was startin’ up a family of his own, but suddenly he’s tellin’ me to meet him in Phoenix so, of course I went along.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> And this time, you both realised it was real.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Bobby knew as soon as we reached the tunnel. He passed that way every day, knew it wasn’t supposed to be there but… there it was. He said that was the most amazing thing he ever saw. We charted it over the next year, whenever we could get the time together, but we moved slow, mapped the place out, turned back on the regular. It took us a while before we got the courage to stay on the road overnight, both of us were terrified the tunnel would disappear or somethin’.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can tell Rob is replaying the events in his head. The reminiscence almost makes him smile.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Bobby’s wife was a real doll. Used to work in his office. Kindest girl I ever met, funny too. There was a decade between’em but you could tell they were good for each other. He shared everything with her, including the road. In fact, once Bobby got a little more secure with the rules, they started to map it together…explorin’ their own little world.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">After a brief pause, Rob’s expression sinks slightly; the reminiscence is growing darker.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Few months go by, I’m hearin’ from Bobby a little less but, I expected that. Then one evenin’ I get a call from the hospital, tellin’ me my boy had walked into some ER in Phoenix.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Was he ok?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> No. He was in a bad way. Leg all busted up, delirious, askin’ for Marjorie. They found her bag in his car but... she was nowhere to be found.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Bobby lost her on the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Yeah, that’s right.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> On our second night here, after we lost Ace, you told me the road had never hurt anyone before.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Well, that wasn’t a lie at least. It wasn’t the road that got’em.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> … What do you mean?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> They made it to the forest. None of us had got that far before but… this time they pushed a little further than usual.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Do you know why?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> They were gonna have a kid. Marjorie was almost due… wasn’t travellin’ so well. I think they knew they wouldn’t be hittin’ the road for a while. It was like a uh… like a last hurrah I guess.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> But only Bobby came back?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> They explored the woods till nightfall. When Bobby said they had to turn back… Marjorie didn’t want to. He never told me why, never told me what happened. By the end of that trip, Marjorie was still out there and he was in a hospital bed.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob takes a moment to collect himself, to put the facts in order. The trees are starting to grow thin, sunlight bursting through the widening gaps in the canopy. It looks like we’re nearing the forest’s end.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Bobby took a month or so to recover. Boy was desperate to get his wife back, and of course he’d become a suspect in her disappearance. Needless to say the first thing he did was head onto the road to find Marjorie.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> But he didn’t.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Nope… No he found her. Just uh… a little sooner than he thought.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I take a moment to process Rob’s implication. Suddenly I feel a stone drop in my stomach.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> She was on the 34th turn.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob nods solemnly.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Wasn’t the woman he knew of course. Stood there all day, just mumblin’ about the road. Didn’t even recognise him. I remember he called me up right after he first saw her there, his heart breakin’. He tried almost every day from then on, always stoppin’ at that turn. He’d yell, he’d plead, he’d bring pictures and gifts but… she never responded. Don’t know if it was really her but, whatever was on that corner, it belonged to the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Bobby lost somethin’ of himself on that corner. After a while, his fascination with the game turned sour, turned to hate. He thought the road was somethin’ evil, that it had no place linking into our world.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I was checkin’ up on him at that point, every few days or so. One weekend he said he was doin’ better, even said he’d been in to work. I thought maybe things were turnin’ round but... then he went quiet; didn’t pick up his phone for three days. I had my place in Phoenix by that point, and a spare key to his house. That’s where I found the note; tellin’ me he’d gone back through. One last bid to find his wife… and if he couldn’t bring her back well-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> He was going to destroy the tunnel.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Cut the road off from the world. I played the game in Phoenix, Chicago, a few different places, but that one tunnel is what links you to the road. I looked around his garage, found the box for a phone, lot of electronics all over the place… pretty clear what he’d done. So I jump in my car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We pass out of the forest, onto a long narrow road. In the distance, I can see our route winding up a towering wall of sandstone, disappearing into a set of rolling mountains.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> He passed me on his way back, just before I hit Jubilation. Thunderin’ down the road at full speed, drivin’ like crazy. That’s when I knew he hadn’t found her… that he was goin’ to take out the tunnel, end the game once and for all.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> But he never got that far.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I tried to talk to him. Called his cell, tried the radio frequencies, there was a number on the sim card documentation that he had, god help me I even messaged him on that one. In the end it was just me and him, racin’ back to Phoenix. He was faster than me but I was drivin’ better. After few bad corners I caught up...</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You ran him off the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob stares out at the faraway ridges, his hands grasping the steering wheel.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Cell service don’t work through the tunnel. He knew that. He was either goin’ to blow it up on this side… or while he was in there.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> So you were trying to save him or save yourself?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Neither. I was tryin’ to save the road... Say what you want about this place Miss Sharma, but it’s a doorway out of everythin’ we ever known. It’s the road out of… out of reality. It may be the most significant frontier we ever cross and that’s… part of me knew, that was too important for one man to take away.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">For the second time today, Rob battles back tears, and for the second time, he fails. They roll silently down his cheek as he continues on.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> He was more injured than I thought. He’d hurt himself bad before he reached me, that’s why he was headed to the tunnel so quick. He wanted to destroy it while he still could.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> The road had taken almost everythin’ from him, and then I took the rest… I denied him his hope, took away his chance to leave the world on his own terms. In the end he didn’t even seem angry… he just asked after Marjorie. Asked me why she did it, why she left. I laid him to rest there, visited the place often but… I never had a good answer for him. That’s when I started preppin’ the next run.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> So you posted his logs online, and pretended to discover them.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Thought people would ask less questions that way.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> And where did we all fit in to this? Why did you bring us here with you?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I guess… I thought it was time the world knew. Didn’t want all this to end up an old man’s secret. Honest to God, if I knew the road was gonna… I swear I never woulda brought you here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob’s features tighten, all his shame and guilt rising to the fore. I can’t say it isn’t deserved. Despite his intentions, despite his penitence, the man had blinded himself to clear dangers, hurt those closest to him and, on a road where secrets had killed so many, he’d kept the most significant one of all.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Well, perhaps not the most significant.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You didn’t bring us here Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob turns to me, confused.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I met someone in the forest last night, a figure, just like the one you saw in Japan, “looked like static you see on a TV screen” … I think it was you Rob. I think I saw you and I think that… all those years ago…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In my current state, the mechanics of the event, and their stunning implications, lie beyond my explanatory capacity. In the end, I just raise my lost right arm, and wait for Rob to make the connection.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A moment later the car screeches to a halt.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob stares straight ahead, his knuckles white against the steering wheel. I’m aware that beneath his stone-set features, every square inch of grey matter is fighting to process the fresh revelation. If it’s true that, in those quiet woods, I somehow reached across the decades to a young Rob Guthard, then it changes everything. The twisting narratives that led us to this point, Rob’s burgeoning obsession, his son’s tragic fate, they all took root in that single moment. More than a decade prior to my own birth, I’d placed us on the path which would lead me to his door.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As chaotic as the road often seems, that moment in the forest hints at something deeper, something intentional.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob steps out of the car for a while, before wordlessly climbing back in and firing up the Wrangler. From that point on we continue as two silent passengers, lost in thought, disappearing into the sandstone mountains.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We travel across the thin mountain road for the next two hours, a wall of crooked rock hemming us in. When we pass onto the other side, and the outcrop falls away, the landscape below us has changed completely, and we’re treated to a strange and breath-taking sight.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Wrangler is traversing the cliffs above a vast, flat desert; a tundra of vibrant orange stretching as far as the eye can see. I can just make out the road, cutting a meandering path through the sand far below us. At the centre of this otherwise featureless expanse, a collection of monolithic structures, towering columns of glass and metal, rise from the ground, connected by a web of long perpendicular streets.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> There’s a city… there’s a city on the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob keeps his eyes forward. Despite the epic majesty of the cityscape below us. I can tell that his mind is elsewhere, that he’s still digesting the contents of our interview. In the end, I think it best to leave him alone with his thoughts.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We stay on the mountain for another twenty minutes, before finally winding down to the desert floor. The space ahead of us is two-tone; the sharp saffron of the desert and the deep blue sky, separated by a thin, even horizon. The only objects that cross this perfect boundary, are the hulking grey towers of the city, rising from the sand, and bursting through into the heavens.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We snake along the desert road, the city looming ever larger as we make our tentative approach toward the border. There’s an eerie contrast to the threshold as we cross it; the cupreous glow of the sand switches to grey, the scorching heat instantly cools, and perhaps most notably, what little sound there was is negated entirely. As we delve down an empty, perfectly maintained throughway, I realise that I can’t hear anything at all except for the Wrangler’s steady rumblings.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It’s quiet.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> That’s fine by me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Who do you think built this place?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I don’t know. Maybe whatever brought us here. Could be that no one built it… maybe it just is.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I wonder if he’s right. It’s hard to think such a place would exist for any practical purpose. The city looks off somehow, as if it was built from conjecture, by an architect who had only heard of cities through poorly translated rumour. All the broad features are present, skyscrapers, lampposts, window cleaning platforms, but nothing deeper. It’s an empty shell. An ornament in the middle of the desert.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As we turn down the next few roads, I stare up at the monolithic structures, each one standing at least a hundred stories tall. My eyes track back down the countless strata of dark windows, as I contemplate what it might be like to live in such a place.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When I reach the ground floor, I’m presented with my answer.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s a young man standing at the ground floor window, his hand resting against the glass. He’s wearing a dark grey suit, and a look of almost mesmeric shock. His mouth open, his hands shaking, his unblinking eyes staring past us as the Wrangler rolls by.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My eyes quickly track back up the skyscraper’s glass facade, scrutinising each row of windows in turn. I’d naively hoped the buildings would be empty, that this place would be nothing more than a colossal ghost town. Now that I know otherwise, each pane of glass feels like a dark pool of water; still on the surface, but with sinister potential lurking within its depths.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A few seconds later, more of them arrive. There aren’t many at first; just a few scattered figures stepping up to their windows, pressing themselves against to the glass. However, like a light sprinkling of rain that erupts into a downpour, the frequency of their arrival quickly doubles, then triples, until not a single space lies unoccupied. The Wrangler shrinks, subject to the scrutiny of countless individuals, on every floor, in every window, all of them clad in the same monochromatic formalwear and staring down at us like the emissaries of a grand tribunal. As the Wrangler passes by, they continue to stare straight ahead, though it’s clear they’re aware of our presence.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob. Rob there’s-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I see’em.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob puts his foot down, shedding the weight of a thousand pairs of eyes as he leaves the building behind. As the final column of windows slips by us, I glance back, hoping to see them return to the depths of the building. Instead, in those last few moments, I witness their collective demeanour fracture into a desperate frenzy, their mouths opening in a silent scream as they slam their fists against the glass.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Turning back around, I stare into the buildings that currently flank our vehicle. The figures have already arrived at the windows, and their calm is already fading.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob, we need to go faster.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I’m on it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Wrangler growls with renewed ferocity as Rob plants his foot onto the gas. We lurch towards the next corner, accelerating down the road as Rob scans for any hidden turns. I achingly shift in my seat, keeping an eye on the scene developing in our wake.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Shards of broken window begin to rain onto the asphalt. Watching the shattered pieces tumble through the air, it’s apparent that the quiet in this city isn’t simply due to a lack of activity. The torrent of splintered glass is completely silent, even as it crashes against the impervious ground.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Nothing in this city makes a noise. Nothing except us.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The thunderous engine of the Wrangler has never sounded so loud.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Looking up, I witness hundreds of hands gripping the shattered window frames, unable to turn myself away as thousands of polished black shoes step over the threshold. The figures stream out from every floor, forming an incomprehensible deluge of humanity.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The first wave strikes the ground, with more and more landing against them; a heap of tangled figures struggling to separate themselves. Much like the residents of Jubilation, and everyone else we’ve encountered on the road, they appear impervious to the fatal harm such an act should impart. Those that landed on their feet hardly even stop, turning towards us, and sprinting after the Wrangler. It doesn’t take long for the rest of the writhing mass to resolve itself, its constituent individuals joining the frantic stampede, their chaotic charge and desperate screams bereft of any perceivable sound.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Even in the midst of the frenzied pursuit, as a foreboding shower of glass falls from every building we pass, the world outside remains silent; the chaos made even more incomprehensible framed against the ungodly stillness in which it takes place.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob screeches around the corner, drifting onto a long and open street. The roadway ahead is flanked by skyscrapers disappearing to a narrow vanishing point. As we race down this next stretch of road towards a large intersection, the ever growing mob bursts onto the street behind us, taking the corner with supreme coordination and continuing tirelessly in our direction.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A split second later, I’m struck by an abrupt and pervasive idea. It feels unlike any thought I’ve ever had before, less of a notion, and more a prescient hybrid of intuition and de ja vu, as if the course of action we must take is obvious to me, despite my not knowing why.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I force my voice above a grating whisper.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob. We need to drop something behind us… something loud.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> What’re you thinkin’?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I uh… you just have to trust me ok? We still have most of the plastic explosive could you-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Nah, if you took out the blasting cap I ain’t got time to make a new one.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob’s glances into the rear view, then back to the road. I can almost hear the gears turning in his head.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> But that the only explosive on-board. Think you can drive?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I guess we can find out.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The car thunders across the tarmac as I clumsily grasp the wheel, shifting myself over and working my foot onto the accelerator. Rob lifts himself away and climbs past me into the back of the Wrangler. In my weak state, every shuddering motion makes my bones rattle. With each subsequent gearshift, I’m forced to take my remaining hand off the wheel and reach across to the stick. The effort is precarious and awkward, my aching limbs puppeteered by will power and adrenaline, every passing second a battle to maintain control.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The windows up ahead are starting to fracture. The noise of the Wrangler is carrying, and the entire city is starting to pre-empt our arrival. Behind me, I can hear the ripping of duct tape, the tearing of fabric and the clattering of falling luggage. I’m not sure what’s taking place behind me. I just have to trust that Rob has a plan.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I hear the back door swing open just before we reach the intersection, a metallic scraping along the Wrangler’s floor, and a pained grunt from Rob as he throws something onto the road behind us.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Reaching the crossroads, I slide my hand along the wheel and twist it sharply to the right. As the car lurches round, and onto the next road, I feel my heart sink dramatically. We’ve been overtaken. The windows ahead of us are shattered, the front doors lay broken on the street, and the building’s desperate inhabitants are rushing towards us, blocking off our only means of escape.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I slam my foot onto the break, and the Wrangler shudders to a halt, the engine stalling and cutting out. The streets are now spilling over, an overwhelming swarm converging on our position from four directions. I look back to Rob, and he meets my gaze, his eyes brimming with dismayed finality.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">An explosion shudders through the air behind us. I look out the back window to see a shattered jerry can, one of Rob’s now superfluous fuel reserves, its dark green shell violently compromised, its contents spilled out across the road and cast alight. Now that the engine isn’t running, the echo of the blast and roar of the primal, balletic flame fills the afternoon air.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The trajectory of the maddened crowd changes instantaneously, the silent Wrangler has fallen from their collective attention, as they refocus onto the smouldering flames. Those up ahead continue to rush past us, streaming around the Wrangler as they scramble to the spilled pool of gasoline, digging their hands into the blaze, grasping hopelessly at the fire.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Delicately, careful not to make a single shred of noise, I climb out of the driver’s seat, joining Rob in the back of the Wrangler.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">He addresses me in a confused whisper.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Why don’t they care about us? What are they doing?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> … It’s the sound. They want it for themselves.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t how I’m so sure, but I know that it’s the case. The jerry can creaks and screams as the city dwellers tear it into smaller and smaller pieces, frantically examining every jagged scrap. With each passing second, as the fire dies down, the crowd grows increasingly distressed, as if a precious commodity is slipping through their fingers.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> They don’t understand it. They’ll pull it apart trying to figure it out and they’ll never get any closer… and then it’ll be quiet again.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Where you gettin’ this from?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I don’t know, just a uh… just a feeling.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Well... pretty sure they woulda pulled us apart too. I’d say we’re pretty lucky.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Hah, yeah… pretty lucky.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As the last of the gasoline is eaten up, and the fire dies away, the city dwellers remain in the streets. Devoid of their momentary sense of purpose, their prize vanishing into the ether, the crowd’s desperation fades into a hushed despondency. I watch them as they pass by, countless faces wracked with sorrow, their aimless shuffling forming a lonesome sea, a grayscale ocean that spans the desolate city.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Wrangler is now adrift in the centre of that ocean. It’s clear that any attempt to start the engine would bring the entire city down on us, reigniting their futile hope, causing them to tear through the car, and anything inside it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">For the foreseeable future, we’re completely stranded.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Don’t worry about it, ok?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I don’t think they’re going to leave Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> They’ll leave.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Ok… and what then? They’ll still be everywhere.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Hey, we’re a smart pair. We’ll think of somethin’.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In the eerie, pervasive calm that surrounds us, I sit myself down next to Rob and lean back against the wall, with nothing else to do but wait for our situation to change. After watching the figures outside for over an hour, the only thing that’s different is a strange needling sensation that feels like it’s emanating from now absent forearm.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> My uh… my arm hurts… how’s that possible-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Don’t worry that’s uh… it’s called Phantom Limb. You got some sensation right? Like you still got somethin’ there? A lotta people get that after amputations. Here…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob reaches into his medical kit and retracts a blue jar of tablets. Twisting off the cap, he shakes two pills free.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> You’re gonna need these for the pain.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I stare at the tablets for a moment, before collecting them from his open palm. He passes me his canteen and I swallow them down in two weak gulps.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You have a lot of experience with amputations?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> … More than you’d think.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My brow furrows. Though I’d meant my remark as a passing jibe, Rob’s response rings with a strange sincerity. It takes me a moment to realise why that is.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I forgot... you were drafted. You never talked about it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Been thinkin’ about it a lot though. Bunch of strangers brought together under false pretences, told that we were servin’ a grand purpose by some old liar. Guess it’s interestin’ how time repeats itself. Now that I think about it, he drove a Jeep too.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob… I told you, you didn’t bring us here-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> That don’t change nuthin’. Don’t change what I did… to you, to Bobby, to any of ‘em. Maybe you were there in the forest but I was the one who started this, the one who kept askin’ what was at the end of the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> What do you think is at the end Rob?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Startin to think that ain’t for me to know. I been movin’ from place to place so long, seen everyone else settle down. Far as I can see, the end of the road is just wherever you decide to stop.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I rest my head on Rob’s shoulder. He gently places his arm around me. It isn’t long before medication starts to take effect, quietly overtaking my already weakened constitution. The pain subsides, dulled along with the rest of my senses. The sun is still streaming through the windshield as my eyes begin to drift shut.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I watch the figures pass the window, my eyelids getting weaker.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I don’t want this to be the end Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I know Miss Sharma, I know.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The last thing I see before I fall into a dreamless artificial sleep, is Rob Guthard’s hand reaching for the rifle.</p><hr class="_2ACwpV3Y0LKhHHKbsxNmmY" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: 0px; border-image: initial; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 1px solid var(--newCommunityTheme-bodyTextAlpha20); color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; margin: 8px 0px;" /><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When my eyes work themselves open, the sun is beginning to set.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve been moved. As my vision adjusts, it becomes clear that I’m still in the Wrangler. My head resting against a pile of fresh clothes, a soft travel blanket laid across me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I glance around to find that Rob’s nowhere to be seen.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Momentarily forgetting the situation outside the car, I attempt to call out for him. The syllable catches in my throat as a shambling figure passes by the window, wringing its hands in despair and casting a long shadow through the car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">With a renewed sense of caution, I slide the blanket to one side, and slowly make my way to the up front.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The cabin is similarly empty, except for a single scrap of paper, torn from my notebook. It lies on the driver’s seat, a small object hidden within the fold. When I open it, I find my headphones and five neatly written words:</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">“Channel One To All Cars”</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My hand starts to shake as I rest the note on the dashboard, slowly climbing through and placing myself gently into the driver’s seat. My heart in my throat, I insert the headphones into the jack of the CB radio, take a single, quivering breath in, and press the first button.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I’m uh… I’m sorry Miss Sharma.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob, where are you?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Down the road a little. Got myself to one of the rooftops. I know I always hated cities but, once you’re above it, the view’s really somethin’.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Come back Rob. Come back... please.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I wish I could. I do. But we both know those things ain’t leavin. And you need the car to get where ever you gotta go so… best I can do is make some ruckus, draw’em outta your way.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I rest my head against the steering wheel, bracing myself against the weight of his words.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I can’t do this without you.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I don’t think that’s true Miss Sharma. I think whatever’s on this road… it wants you to make it all the way. All I was meant to do was bring you this far. Now you don’t have to listen to it, you can turn around and head home… but either way only one of us is drivin’ outta here. So I guess the only question left is... which way d’you wanna go?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Well… are you ahead of me or behind me?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I can be anywhere. It’s your choice Miss Sharma.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In the wake of Rob’s words, in the shadow of the decision, I’m cast into silence; not because the choice is hard, but because I’m ashamed that it’s so easy. It was made the moment I first stepped into the Wrangler, and renewed in every perplexing moment since. The need to know, to comprehend, to uncover the truth has been with me all my life, but I never knew its roots ran so deep, that it would endure so ardently when everything else, everyone else, had been stripped away.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I stare into the rear view mirror, seeing myself for the very first time, and I have to admit I’m scared.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Stay where you are Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Hah… ok Miss Sharma… you ready?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> … Yeah. I’m ready.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Alright then… suppose it’s about time this thing did some good.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The shot explodes through the radio, before a faint booming echo reaches me on the quiet city air.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Its effect on the city dwellers is immediate. Their collective melancholy shatters in an instant, replaced by a renewed fixation. Before I know it, the disparate crowd unites once more into a stampeding horde, rushing past the windows of the Wrangler and back down the road towards the source of the noise.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> They on their way?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As the last of the city dwellers disappear behind me, I run my hand across the steering wheel, and down to the ignition.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Yeah… yeah they’re on their way.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ok then... what’re you waitin’ for?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">With a fateful twist of the key, the Wrangler roars back to life. The wheels kick against the asphalt, transporting me through the streets of the city. As I barrel away from the intersection, I see a small contingent of pursuers rushing around the corner behind me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob fires the rifle again, maintaining the attention of the majority. The stragglers fall away in my rear view mirror, losing ground against the Wrangler.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I take the first left, then the next possible right, then another left, a few minutes later I eventually find myself on the last stretch of road, leading me back into the vast and empty desert.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> So, you gonna make it?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Yeah, I’m gonna make it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Good. That’s good. Miss Sharma, if uh… if you find Marjorie, if you get a chance to let me know… well it’s more than I deserve but-.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Of course… of course I will.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I appreciate that. Ok, they’re gonna be here soon so… I’m gonna go radio silent for a while. If I call, you’ll know I made it out. If I don’t call… you just assume I made it out, ok?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Please tell me you’re going to be alright, Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> … It’s been a real honour drivin’ with you Miss Sharma.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The sound of a final shot reverberates through the radio, its echo drowned out by the roaring engine of the Wrangler. The world shifts around me as I burst out of the city, and back onto the desert road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The way ahead is laden with immense possibility, yet as I disappear into the vastness of the desert, I can only think of what I’ve left behind. Rob J Guthard had his flaws, marked by loss, driven by obsession, his good intentions often paving the way to tragedy and heartbreak.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As the tears begin to roll down my cheeks, I decide to remember him differently; as a valued friend, a good man and, above all else, a great story.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">No matter how you tell it.</p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-51360407629480913282020-08-17T21:40:00.001-07:002020-08-17T21:40:08.746-07:00The Left Right Game Part 8<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">In the brief interlude before I hit the ground, I find myself alone with the stars.</span></p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As I fall backward towards the slope, my gaze rising to meet the night sky, I feel a sudden weightlessness take hold, as if I’m being granted an audience with the heavens. The rich and endless firmament shines down through the canopy, with no earthly light to dull its glow. Despite everything that’s happened, I’m unable to ignore how magnificent it all is, how gracefully detached from the ugliness below. Though the moment lasts no more than a second, it feels longer, like I’ve been gifted some fleeting respite, a transient sliver of time in which to appreciate the calm and quiet cosmos. A moment to escape, however briefly, from the events that are to come.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t know how much longer the moment might have lasted. I suppose I never will. It’s with a sense of genuine sadness that I turn myself away, twisting my body around in mid-air. The stars disappear from view, and I am left staring down the slope into the valley’s dark, uncompromising depths. My commune with the heavens has ended, and I’m returned to the cold, unforgiving earth.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It doesn’t welcome me back.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I hit the slope, immediately bouncing off one shoulder and landing on the other, barrelling forcefully and unstoppably downhill. My entire body is thrown into chaos, tossed into a frenetic, uncontrollable dance, swept along by the rushing earth towards the impatient valley floor.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The back of my ankle flails against a hard, jagged rock. My face rolls into a small bloom of stinging nettles, their caustic leaves scraping against my cheek. I battle to bring order to my descent, my hands grasping at the undergrowth, clawing through loose soil in a frenzied search for stability.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rocks and dirt cascade around me as I pull myself onto my back, finally managing to descend with my feet pointed downhill. I’ve regained control just in time, looking ahead to see a large tree, bursting out of the hill a few metres below me. A split second before I would have collided with the thick, knotted trunk, I throw myself to the side, my wrist ricocheting against the bark and sending a shooting pain down my arm.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The valley’s base comes into view, hurtling towards me as I plummet through the rushing undergrowth. I can make out the bodies of the deer who made this hazardous journey before me. I can hear the pained braying of the survivors, moaning in hollow resignation as they struggle to stand on broken legs.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A moment later, I join them.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The slope doesn’t level out gradually. Just before the bottom, the sharp incline I’ve been hopelessly traversing drops off into a sheer rock face. Before I can stop myself, I’m launched from the slope, kicking dirt into the air. I spend the final three metres in freefall, before landing on my hands and knees, my whole body subject to a complete, bone rattling halt.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My body tensed and aching, I pick myself up off the valley floor. The second I stumble onto my feet, a harsh beam of torchlight strikes the ground to my right. My muscles groaning, I jump back against the natural rock wall as the light swings my way, sweeping directly over the spot where I just landed.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay is looking for me. I would have expected nothing less. The beam glides along the ground, scanning the base of the slope, lighting up the twisted bodies of countless deer. Fortunately, the shadow cast by the rock wall offers a measure of sanctuary, shielding me from the torch’s restless glare.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">About half a minute after it arrived, the beam rises through the trees and cuts out.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t expect her to come after me. I certainly don’t expect her to drop down the slope. Perhaps she could walk back down the road, taking a gentler route downhill, and pursue me through the valley once it levels out, but that walk would probably take half an hour each way. If I were her, I wouldn’t want to leave the Wrangler unprotected for that long.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Despite the fact that she’s showing no signs of entering the valley, Bluejay is clearly eager to locate me. The torch suddenly illuminates the damp soil ahead of me as she points it back down into the valley. I suspect she turned it off just long enough for me to feel overlooked, allowing me to consider stepping out into the open. I also suspect that, should the torchlight find me scrambling around on the valley floor, a bullet will quickly follow it, putting me down to lie with the deer. From that point, all she’d need to do is walk down and slip the Wrangler’s key from my cold, limp fingers.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Catching my breath, my back pressed against the rough rock wall, I run through my current priorities. I need to stabilise Rob, I need to lure Bluejay away from the Wrangler, and, most pressingly, I need to contact Lilith.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I reach to the back of my waistband, my hand searching for my personal walkie talkie. My fingers touch denim, finding an empty space where the transceiver should be. My stomach drops as I search along my back. It’s gone. I’d had it with me when I dropped onto the slope, but at some point during my furious descent, it must have gotten away from me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The torchlight swings back around once more.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Though it’s something I never thought I’d have to do, I find myself making a mental inventory of the convoy’s radio transceivers. Before we set out on the road, Rob handed a walkie talkie out to each of us. Since then, it’s safe to assume that those belonging to Ace, Apollo, Eve, Bonnie and Clyde are no longer in play. Lilith must have lost hers when her car sank into the ground, which is why I gave her Rob’s before she ran into the forest. That just left mine, which could be anywhere on the hillside, and Bluejay’s.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The torchlight disappears once more.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I cautiously lean out from the shadows, scanning the forest around me. Bluejay’s walkie talkie had been in her car when the child pushed it from the road. If I’m correct, then her transceiver is the only one left that I can use to contact Lilith. The car itself doesn’t seem to be anywhere around me, but as I turn my head and scan the dark hillside, I can see it resting on the slope. The entire car has been stopped mid-fall, resting precariously on its side, the vehicle’s crooked undercarriage crumpled around the trunk of an old and battered tree.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">If I’m going to get in touch with Lilith, I’m going to have to climb up there.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I edge along the rock until Bluejay’s car is almost directly uphill from me. Turning around, and running my hands against the damp, shrouded wall, I’m able to discern a few passable handholds. Placing my fingers into a large groove above my head, I jam my boot onto a small outcrop just above the wall and push myself upwards.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It isn’t an easy climb. My hands are cold, my arms are tired and I’m certainly not wearing the right shoes. My boots repeatedly slip from their holds, causing my arms to throb as they’re forced to bear my weight. After painstakingly scraping up the first two metres, I run out of places to put my hands, my outstretched fingers falling roughly 10 inches short of the top. I take a quick breather, letting both arms straighten as I lean back and observe the wall above me. As the torch sweeps past overhead once more, it illuminates a small twisted root on the very edge of the cliff.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I have no idea if I can reach it, and there’s every chance it will give way immediately, causing me to topple helplessly back to the earth. However, I can already feel my grip weakening, a noticeable ache running up my forearms. I’m not going to be able to stay where I am much longer, and I suspect I won’t have the energy to make it this far again. Edging my feet up, scrabbling the side of my boot against the wall until it sticks in place. I bend my legs slightly, poising myself to make the jump. Gritting my teeth, and with a sharp, tentative intake of breath, I swing myself up into the air and let go of the wall.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I feel grossly vulnerable, hanging in the air with nothing but a harsh fall below me and a harrowing climb waiting above. I throw my arms forward as I hit the peak of my jump and just manage to catch the root with both hands. A heavy jolt wrenches my shoulders, threatening to yank me back to the ground. Fear and adrenaline alone sustain my desperate grip, my arms on fire as I swing my leg up to the ledge, hooking my heel over the top after a few clumsy attempts.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I force myself over the edge and onto the soft soil, just in time for the torchlight to start circling back towards me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">With one final surge of effort, I push my aching body upright and struggle over to the nearest tree, falling at its base and pressing myself against the bark. The light travels quickly. The tree’s darkening shadow swings over from the right, covering me, and then fading again as it stretches out to my left. The light leaves me in darkness, certain to return soon as Bluejay continues her frenzied surveillance.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It's started to rain a little. A few sporadic droplets fall through the sparse canopy and land on my outstretched palm. It doesn’t take long before these scouts are reinforced by a steady downpour, drumming against the leaves and grass, soaking through the loam. The already punishing incline is going to prove completely unclimbable if the rain has enough time to slicken the grass and pound the soil into mud. I also doubt I’ll be able to make the initial climb again, especially if the rock wall becomes coated in a layer of cold rain.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As much as I have to move quickly up to the car, I also need to move carefully. It’s becoming increasingly clear that this will be my only attempt at reaching the radio.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The vehicle is only a short climb away. I can see its undercarriage laying against the tree, the entire left side of the vehicle pressed into the ground. Only now I’m nearby do I hear the ominous creaking sound that emanates from the car, as it rocks almost imperceptibly around a thin focal point.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I wait for the torchlight to swing past me once more before pulling myself out from the shadow of the tree. My dirt covered hands grasping at any conceivable purchase, I crawl up the bank towards Bluejay’s vehicle. My feet slip on the grass with every other step as the rain seeps into the ground, soaking through my fleece.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m completely exposed as I make my way on towards the car. Though it remains a constant concern, the torch seems to be exploring another section of the hill as I arrive beneath the chassis, the undercarriage looming imposingly over me. I briefly glance up to check on Bluejay’s movements then, slowly, steadying myself against the incredible incline, I climb out into the open once more and pull myself up until I’m in line with the warped, twisted hood.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay’s transceiver is still fastened within its dock. Despite the car’s battered condition, the windshield is frustratingly intact, with nothing more than a small jagged, irregular hole near its centre. It will take a bit of manoeuvring, but it should be just big enough to reach through and pull the radio free. Slowly, and tentatively, I thread my arm through the centre of the opening, shards of serrated glass encircling my skin. My hand reaches the dashboard, slowly brushing along its surface towards the walkie talkie as I lean into the car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The torchlight starts to swing back across the hill. Bluejay is walking along the ledge in a frantic mission to find me. In my current position, out in the open and trapped in a slow and delicate procedure, there’s no way I can get out of the way in time.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My hand grasps the transceiver as the light reaches me. Though I’m ashamed to admit it, for a brief moment, drowned in the revealing glare of the torch’s beam, I’m stunned into inaction. The light has stopped moving, fixed directly on me, casting my stark shadow down into the valley. I can imagine Bluejay’s triumphant glare as her desperate search is finally rewarded.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Returning to my senses all too late, I grit my teeth, and wrench the walkie talkie from its dock. With no time for grace or care, I retract my arm from the windshield, inhaling sharply as an aberrant shard of glass scrapes across the back of my hand.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It turns out I have greater things to worry about, as I hear a loud bang from up the top of the hill, followed instantaneously by a disgusting zipping sound that flashes past my ear. I flinch instinctively from the noise, my sudden reaction causing my boots to give way beneath me. I slam into the earth and career down the hill. What little control I have over the slope, I give away in a desperate bid to roll into the car’s shadow and out of the light. I don’t have time to right myself as I’m dragged chaotically down towards the valley, and cast over the edge once more.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The base of the valley flashes into view mere seconds before my body slams into it. The air is ripped out of my lungs, my pained cry forming a visible plume of steam that dissipates into the cold night air. I lay on my side, cradling the walkie talkie in my hands. At the very least, I’d managed to keep a hold of it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The torch dances erratically around my position. I pick myself up and drag my body the last few metres, collapsing against the wall as torch beam lights up the ground in front of me. As I raise the radio, I realise my hands are violently shaking. I don’t think I’ve ever been as close to death as when that bullet passed by me, and although the noise itself died quickly, it’s horrific implications echo in my skull. Bluejay shot Rob as a bargaining chip, to drag us out of the Wrangler. It was a show of force. A power play. The bullet that she just fired in my direction had no nuance, no pretence, no objective other than its primary function.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay’s prepared to kill me, which means she’s prepared to kill any of us. I raise the transceiver, and switch through the channels until I find Rob’s frequency.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> This is Bristol to Lilith. Bristol to Lilith. Do you copy?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The radio crackles as I release the button. I wait twenty interminable seconds for Lilith to respond. She doesn’t.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> This is Bristol to Lilith, can you hear me?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">This time I let a minute pass. Still nothing. Everything I’ve been struggling for since I jumped into the valley has come up against a wall of silence. I feel a swell of frustration inside me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It isn’t fair.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Jen? Jen… are you there?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Another minute goes by. I sit in silence the whole time, watching as the radio I risked my life to collect transforms into a useless hunk of plastic. After a while I loosen my grip and let it drop into the wet soil.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I bring my legs up to my body, wrap my arms around them, and rest my head against my knees. In a moment of rest, my breathing becomes shallow. A set of fresh tears well up behind my eyes, spilling out down my face. The rain falls around me as I quietly cry, sitting in the middle of a dark forest, muddied, injured, and alone.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m ripped out of my melancholy as the rain is blasted in every conceivable direction, whipping against my face, and splattering against the rock with incredible force. The air is whipped into a furious maelstrom, and a familiar, booming sound crashes through the ether.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> I’ve watched you struggle.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As soon as it arrives the voice is gone. The wind quiets down and the rain begins to drop vertically once again.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Hello?! Hello?! Who is that?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The air is still, absent of everything but the rain. I wipe the tears from my face as I call out to the air.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Can you help me? Please can you... just…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The voice has disappeared, and I suspect I won’t be hearing it again any time soon. Perhaps it just wants me to know that it’s watching. One thing is certain, if the voice is attempting to bring me comfort, or make me feel less alone, then its methods are horribly misguided.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH (VO):</span> Alice are you there?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My eyes fixate on the crackling radio.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH (VO):</span> Alice are you still there? I’m sorry I couldn’t…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Jen! Jen, are you ok? Are you safe?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH (VO):</span> Yeah I’m ok, I thought you were… what happened to you?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I uh… I jumped down the hill, got Bluejay’s walkie, she shot at me… how’ve you been?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH (V.O):</span> She’s gone fucking crazy. I made it to a clearing in the woods. It’s straight on from the car, or at least I hope it is. I still haven’t seen that… that thing anywhere.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Well, it’s a big forest. Maybe it’s gone. Can you stay near the clearing?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH (V.O):</span> Yeah I can keep hidden nearby. What are you gonna do?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I’m going to make my way to you and we’re going to get Bluejay away from the Wrangler.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH (V.O):</span> How?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I’m still working on that. I’m about half an hour away. Keep your volume down but stay in touch alright?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH (V.O):</span> Yeah. Ok… ok will do. I’m glad you’re alright Alice.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Yeah, you too Jen.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I fasten the radio to my waistband. My body still aches from the fall, blood dripping slowly from my hand, and my fingers are almost numb from the cold. Yet hearing Lilith’s voice on the other end of the radio has brought back something I lost in the valley. A sense of resolve that jumpstarts my tired muscles, pushes me to my feet and sets me off to rejoin road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m still stuck in the middle of a dark forest, I’m still muddied, bloodied, and injured, but I’m no longer alone.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It isn’t long before my boots hit asphalt. I follow the road, sticking to the tree line as I work my way back up the hill. I’m reluctant to place myself within sight of the Wrangler, where Bluejay will almost certainly be camped out and waiting. Unfortunately, it’s the only point of reference in an otherwise unknowable forest, the only location from where Lilith’s location can be divined.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Once the road levels out, I take the precaution of heading deeper into the trees. The road is almost impossible to see now, but I’ll need the cover if Bluejay is still on the lookout. Even though I’m only a few metres deep, the woods fill me with a palpable sense of unease. Every shadow feels predatory, every twig that snaps under my foot sounds like the crack of a whip.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When the Wrangler comes into view, Bluejay’s nowhere to be seen. Curiosity getting the better of me, I creep closer to the road, observing the scene as the trees thin out. The place is deserted, with neither Bluejay or Rob anywhere to be seen. I have no idea what could have forced her to move him. Perhaps he managed to get away.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Something feels wrong.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Creeping up to the Wrangler, I find the passenger side window broken, a thousand splinters of glass spilled across the ground, trodden into the mud. The glovebox has been left open, the boxes of ammunition either emptied or removed. The next thing I notice makes my blood run cold, and forces me to curse my own stupidity.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The light on the CB radio is on.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When I’d reached the bottom of the hill. I’d correctly calculated the number of active radios, arriving at the conclusion that only me and Lilith would be able to communicate. Technically I’d been right, we were the only two who could talk, but that didn’t mean we were the only ones who could listen. I’d forgotten that the CB radio in Rob’s car had its own independent battery, and in-built speakers. Most importantly, he’d been using it throughout the trip to broadcast and receive across all our frequencies.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I switch the frequency of the walkie to a random channel, lift the receiver to my mouth and hold the talk button.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Bristol to all cars.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My voice crackles out of the CB radio. Bluejay must have known I was going to contact Lilith, and she’d broken into the Wrangler to spy on the conversation. I can’t believe I didn’t think about it before now.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I switch the radio back to Lilith’s frequency.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Lilith you need to get moving. Bluejay heard us. She’s not listening now but she knows I’m meeting you near the clearing. Get yourself back here ok? Lilith can you hear me?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY (V.O):</span> Bring me my fucking key Alice.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My heart sinks. Now it makes sense why Bluejay wasn’t guarding the Wrangler. She’d eavesdropped onto my conversation and, instead of waiting for me to get back up the hill, she’d gone after Lilith. Despite all my efforts, all my good intentions, I led Bluejay right to her.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Bluejay, where’s Lilith?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY (V.O):</span> She’s here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I hear a refrain of quiet sobbing in the background of the call, I can hear Lilith meekly calling my name.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Ok… ok let me speak to her.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY (V.O):</span> Hah what?! No no. No you’re not going to trick me again, Alice. You don’t get to confer. You get to bring me the key to my fucking car, and then you get to walk yourselves back home. Now what about that do you need to fucking discuss?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Bluejay this is ins… we’re not your enemy Denise ok? Please… please you have to believe me-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> You think I’ll ever believe a fucking word you say?! Bring me my fucking keys and if you pull ANY more tricks I will put a bullet in your fucking skull. Now, do you believe that?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">She waits patiently for my answer. I suddenly feel like we’ve entered an entirely new realm. Bluejay has the upper hand, and under the threat of fierce, unthinkable consequence we’ve become the subjects of her domain. Reason, diplomacy, and sanity no longer hold sway over proceedings. As long as she has Lilith remains at the end of that rifle, I’m beholden to her madness.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Fine. Ok. I’m on my way.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY (V.O):</span> Good. You need to remember Alice, I didn’t want any of this. You brought ME here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay lets go of the button, returning me to a familiar silence. If I keep the keys from her, Lilith will be at her mercy, and although Bluejay can’t really afford to kill her bargaining chip, I have no doubt she’ll be willing to hurt her as much as she needs in order to force my compliance. If I let her take the Wrangler, however, we’re both dead anyway.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I take a moment to think through my options. It doesn’t take long. There aren’t that many left.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My journey through the forest is uncomfortable, and rings with an unsettling finality. Like a guilty child heading towards an unavoidable reckoning, I’m overcome by a pervasive dread which builds with every shuffling step. I do my best to keep the Wrangler behind me, carving a straight line through the woods. All in all, it takes less than five minues before the clearing opens up ahead of me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay is planted in the very centre of a large glade, leaving too much exposed ground in every direction for me to even contemplate an ambush. Rob’s torch lies at her feet, as she keeps both her hands firmly wrapped around the rifle. Lilith kneels beside her, the barrel of the gun placed against her temple, her tearstained face contorted by a mixture of despair and vitriolic anger. Her hands rest against her lap, her wrists bound by same brand of cable ties I’d used to restrain Bonnie. I can imagine Bluejay bristled with poetic justice when she ordered Lilith to fasten the band around her wrists.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">They both see me as soon as I step out of the trees.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> You’re late.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I got turned around. Lilith are you ok?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Stop walking. Stop walking!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay grips the rifle more tightly, sending me an unignorable message. She’s keeping me at a good distance. She knows it takes her a second or two to reload the rifle, and she wants me far enough back to allow time for at least two consecutive shots. Everything she does, every action she takes, demonstrates that she’s preparing to act swiftly against us, should anything untoward take place.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Lilith, are you ok?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> I’m… I’m ok. I’m ok.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Hand over the keys, Alice.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Bluejay, take her back with you. Please. You don't have to let her… you can drop her off at a police station as soon as you’re home. But just… take her home.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Hand me the fucking keys.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span>... Fine. I have them in my bag let me-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Hey HEY! What are you doing.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay snaps at me as I reach into my bag, pointedly jabbing the rifle against Lilith. Lilith cries with distress as the barrel repeatedly prods her temple. I take my hand out of my bag, and slip it slowly from my shoulder. Every move I make is being considered a potential act of subterfuge.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Fine. Fine. Here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I swing my bag in a slow arc and throw it over to Bluejay, it lands in the wet dirt about a meter in front of her.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> That's better.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay steps forward, momentarily letting the gun’s barrel slip from Lilith temple. She quickly bends down and places the bag over her shoulder, reaching in, extracting the key to the Wrangler and placing it in her jacket pocket. In the fleeting seconds of distraction, I watch Lilith raise her hands high above her head and swing her elbows down to her sides in a single fluid motion.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The zip tie snaps open, and without wasting a second Lilith launches herself at Bluejay, grabbing her waist from behind and trying to force her to the ground. Shocked at the suddenness of it all, but aware that this may be our only chance, I find myself sprinting across the clearing towards the pair of them.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay is taken by surprise following Lilith’s assault, but she adapts to the situation quickly. Planting one foot in front to brace her sudden momentum, she stops herself from being brought down. At the same time, she swings the stock of the rifle down to her side, where it meets Lilith’s face with a sickening crack.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> You fucking bitch!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith is knocked onto her back, dazed and hurt. Without hesitation, Bluejay swings the rifle down and fires a shot into the girl’s stomach.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I find myself trapped in the moment, as if reality itself is stunned by the madness taking place before it, unsure how it will continue on. The sound of the shot thunders through my consciousness, yet at the same time seems distant, otherworldly. I can’t bring myself to speak, my lips uselessly parted as Lilith’s fitful cries resound, uninterrupted, throughout the clearing.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> What have you done… what have you-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay is backing quickly away from Lilith, putting space between the two of us while she struggles to reload. She was right to keep me at a distance early on, she’s given herself more than enough time to drive a second bullet into the chamber, and click the bolt into position.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> No more tricks Alice.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Before I know it, I’ve broken into a final, desperate sprint, casting wet mud behind me as I dash towards the shelter of the treeline. I can imagine Bluejay levelling the rifle, lowering her eye to the sights.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Another shot echoes through the cold air, flying wide and perishing with a distant thud. As I reach the edge of the clearing, I throw myself behind the thick trunk of the nearest tree. My back presses against the rough bark, as I listen for any movement behind me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Twigs snap beneath Bluejay’s feet as she advances towards me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> You did this to yourselves! You did this with your lies and your tricks and your fucking games. Well I’m not FUCKING playing any more!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A shot grazes the tree, ricocheting off into the woods, I can hear her beginning to strafe around my position, poised and ready to fire as soon as she gets an angle.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> You kept lying right until the end. Everything you’ve done, everything you are, you fucking monster! I will put a bullet in your skull and I won’t feel a fucking thing!!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">From the moment she’d first opened her mouth, spilling her bitter, dogmatic cynicism into our group, I’d been waiting for Bluejay to realise she was wrong. Every so often, in a quiet moment, I’d catch myself fantasizing about the stark and esoteric phenomenon that would stop her tongue and force her to accept the truth. I realise now there was never going to be such a moment, that nothing lies beyond her powers of self-delusion. She was lost to us, lost to the road; a twisted woman, driven mad by her own rationality.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My hand slips into my pocket.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You know what Bluejay. I believe you.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The next thing I hear is a faint, nostalgic ring tone, a sudden, deafening bang.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In the brief time I was afforded, following my tense call with Bluejay, I had taken one of Rob’s knives to the block of C4, cutting away almost everything around the blasting cap. The block was less than a pound in weight when I’d slipped it into a compartment of my satchel and buttoned it up. When Bluejay had asked for the key, I’d made sure to reach into my bag enthusiastically, I had a feeling she’d see my eagerness as a potential trap, allowing me a chance to throw her the satchel.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">She didn’t trust anything I did, and it had made her predictable.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I step out from behind the tree and look towards Bluejay, lying broken on the forest ground, a large section of her abdomen removed by the blast, her arm, shoulder, and upper thigh virtually non-existent. She struggles to breathe as blood fills her air way.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> I was ri… I was-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I turn away from her, and run towards Lilith. I drop to my knees beside her, grasping one of her hands. She grips my fingers weakly, her eyes are starting to drift shut, opening again for briefer and briefer intervals.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Hey Jen…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> H… Hey Alice.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">She speaks softly, her words hardly making it through the intense ringing in my ears.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Try to stay awake Jen. You’re going to be alright ok? We’ll stop the bleeding and we’ll get you patched up… back at the Wrangler. We’ve got Roswell… in the spring. Once you’re better we’ll go there together ok? Jen? Jen…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When she manages to open her eyes once more, the look she gives me is kind, and heartbreakingly knowing. I can’t help but think back to our time on the cliffside, overlooking the vast ocean of fields. She’d asked how many people had died being told comforting lies. She asked how many of them knew. I can’t speak for anyone else, but as she stares up at me, hushing me with a look, I can tell that she does.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> I wish we could have been friends for longer.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can’t bring myself to speak, every word seems too small, too insubstantial, too wholly insignificant to be the last thing she might hear. All I can do is stare into Lilith’s eyes as her faltering breath rises in clouds of pale steam, clouds that grow slowly thinner, and thinner, until nothing rises at all.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I lay her hand on the ground, and let her fingers slip gently from my grasp.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My legs carry me over to Bluejay. My hand reaches into her pocket and lifts out the key to the Wrangler. The metal is irreparably bent, with no hope of fitting back into the ignition. This was the potential outcome which had rendered the C4 as a last resort, only to be used if my life was in imminent danger. It had done its job, I was alive, but I was also stuck in this forest.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can’t bring myself to care about that right now. My mind is numb to the concept of future suffering, with no space left to contemplate tomorrow’s potential trials. The horrors of the present are hard enough to face, my mind eclipsed by more darkness than I can process. The only glimmering shred of solace I can muster, comes from the wishful belief that I’ve now seen all the terrors this night has to offer.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As I turn towards the Wrangler, I find myself proven wrong once again.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I stand stock still as the child’s crooked form staggers out from the treeline. It looks markedly different, now a patchwork malformation of adolescence, adulthood, and old age. The face however, is still juvenile and filled with an innocent sorrow as it lurches towards Bluejay on uneven feet.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It doesn’t seem to have noticed me. I back away from Bluejay and step slowly towards Lilith, where Rob’s LED torch still lays on ground.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The child reaches Bluejay, observing her silent, mangled frame. Through my dampened hearing I can just make out a heartbroken whine. I continue to back away as it lifts Bluejay’s limp arm, shaking it wildly as if attempting to imbue it with some semblance of animation.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Frustrated tears dripping freely from its chin, the child throws Bluejay’s wrist back down against the ground. As it looks away from her broken body, and turns its face to me, I watch as the soft innocent features contract into a scowl of juvenile rage, signifying the inceptive throes of a tantrum that could eviscerate anything in its path.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In the last few seconds of calm, I feel my boot brush up against the torch. Bending slowly, keeping my eyes on the child for as long as I can, I reach down with my right hand and lift it from the ground. My hopes that I wouldn't have to use it are dashed instantly. The child drops onto its hands and legs, letting out a tortured, furious scream, and races towards me with staggering velocity.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I dodge out of the way at the last possible moment, hitting the soft dirt as the child skitters to a stop behind me. In the time it takes to turn itself around, I’ve already switched on the torch.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Once again, the child is hit by a powerful beam of light. It's body lurches and spasms, its skin pulling and stretching over elongated bones. Crying out in pain, its voice deepening with every passing second, the disjointed figure dashes in my direction, clasping my right arm in its hands and slamming me down onto the ground.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The torch swings wildly as the creature climbs on top of me, tearing the fabric from my right sleeve, digging its nails into the skin just above my elbow. It doesn’t stop at the skin. I feel the hot, electric agony of scraped nerve endings, hear the sickening snap of breaking bone. Before I lose my chance forever, I throw the torch weakly from my right hand, and catch it in my left, pressing the beam directly into the child’s face.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It screams a scream of decades. The child’s eyes roll back into its head, overpowered by the brutal onslaught the light has wrought. I look on as its face melts and flickers through adolescence, through adulthood and middle age. The tortured scream grows hoarse and weak as its skin wrinkles and sags, rushing beyond human years into an untouched realm of decrepitude. Eventually its eyes glaze over, and its once powerful scream becomes nothing more than a grating rattle. I let the pitiful, lifeless creature fall to the ground beside me as I roll myself onto my knees.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I stumble along the ground towards Bluejay, falling repeatedly, a stream of red soaking into the soil behind me. Once I reach her, I use my left hand to unfasten the rifle’s leather shoulder strap. I clumsily form the strap into a loop, passing it beneath my right shoulder. My head feels light, struggling to maintain focus. I grab a stick from the ground and place it through the knot of the loop, using my teeth to draw the knot securely closed around it. My left hand twists the stick over and over again, each turn tightening the leather strap until it bites into my skin.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The bleeding lessens, but not nearly enough.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Picking up my tired frame, barely able to keep myself upright, I place one foot painstakingly in front of the other, struggling over the damp ground, out of the clearing, and into the trees.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I need to get back to the Wrangler.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can feel everything starting to fade, even the ringing in my ears is dulled, my vision blurry. I lock the stick under my armpit, freeing up my left hand to brace me as I start to stumble against the trees. The more I lose of my faculties, the less capable I am of perceiving their decline, but I know they’re slipping away all too quickly.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As I struggle further through the woods, a figure steps out from the trees, stopping me in my tracks. I sway on my feet, as I try to identify what I’m seeing, the very act of standing now requiring constant, dogged attention.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I have never seen the figure before. It seems to be composed of a constantly shifting maelstrom of crackling monochromatic sparks. An electric cloud of black, white, and grey, formed into a humanoid shape. As soon as it sees me, the humanoid creature falls backwards, scrabbling away from me across the ground, more terrified of me than I am of him.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t know if the entity is malignant or benign, but in my current state, my mind softly screaming against the dying light, I can’t make the distinction. As it backs up against a mound of earth, I try to ask it for help. The requisite words have already been lost to the advancing fog, and all I can do is reach out my hand towards him. Attempting to entreat some spark of humanity within the fizzling, shifting figure.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In response to my vague plea, the entity scampers off into the forest, tripping over itself before disappearing from view. As I watch it leave, a single dim beacon ignites in the far corners of my swiftly vanishing mind. A single light, whose implications kick-start my fading reason, and force me on through the forest.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can see the Wrangler through the trees. It’s close by, yet at the same time, impossibly far away.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s something wrong with my eyes. The car shifts in and out of focus, but every time it comes back in view the image is less sharp, until it exists as a pulsing dark green blur against a dull, slowly swaying backdrop.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My boot’s kick up against one another, a final stumble that brings me down to earth. When I try to get up again, I find that I’m completely unable. There’s no strength left in my body, and no amount of resolve can raise me back to my feet.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Though it may be my imagination, I think I can hear a steady rustling through the undergrowth, as if something were making its way towards me. Soon after my senses start to die away, leaving me with nothing more than the cold and the silence for company.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The dim light shines until the end however, the single strand of revelation, a solitary thought that I attempt to hold aloft from the all-consuming fog.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s a memory, a vague recollection from my first interview with Rob J. Guthard.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It was the day we met. The day he told me about his long and meandering life, Japan, Hiroji, Aokigahara, and the strange phenomenon he saw which sparked his obsession with the supernatural. The singular event that started him down the road to the Left/Right Game, that led this excursion… the moment that brought us here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB (V.O):</span> It walked up to me through the trees. Looked like static you see on a TV screen but it had a human shape almost.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS (V.O):</span> Almost?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB (V.O):</span> It was missing an arm.</p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-77154379268831571222020-08-17T21:39:00.004-07:002020-08-17T21:39:38.619-07:00The Left Right Game Part 7<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I’m followed back from the junction by an overture of birdsong.</span></p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m grateful for the company. In the wake of Clyde’s departure, I’m welcoming of any sound that distracts me from my own solitary footsteps, grasping for any conceivable antidote to the palpable silence he’s left behind. I’m am not, however, as welcoming of what the shrill, melodic warbling represents; the first symptom of impending daybreak.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’d only been up at this hour a few times before, stumbling back from Niddry Street and down Sweetmarket after an unexpectedly heavy night out. My housemates Molly, Craig and Tom would spend the walk joyously discussing the evening’s scandals, leaning against one another as we all stumbled away from a night of horrific excess.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">This time around, the circumstances couldn't be more different. I’m quite alone as I make my way up the road, and the only excess in my night has been a relentless torrent of stress and melancholy. There is one similarity however, resting in the back of my mind as much now as it did then; the nagging feeling that the day ahead will be one of bitter and immediate consequences.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As somber as this night has been, I still find myself clinging to it, reluctant to witness the harrowing developments that sunrise will bring. In a few hours time, the convoy will wake up to find they have suffered yet another loss. It won’t be the brutal, heart wrenching feeling that they experienced with Eve or Apollo or Bonnie, who perished in front of our eyes, but a muted sensation of gross unfairness, less immediate yet all the more insidious. As much as we hate to face the horrors in our lives, it can be far worse when they strike us without our knowing. To find out only the next morning that you have been affected by cruel forces acting in complete disregard of your presence and taking without concern for you.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s not going to be a pleasant morning. Nevertheless, I glad to see the convoy when it finally comes into view.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The hulking Wrangler rests by the roadside like an old relic. Right now, I can think of nothing more comforting than climbing into its secure, rugged shell. For a moment, I find it strange how an object built for transit has become the one fixed point in my world, then again, it’s not exactly the strangest thing that’s happened on this road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay’s car is parked sideways on, laid out across the tarmac. The windows are shrouded in darkness, yet for the briefest moment I think I see the red dot of a smouldering cigarette, igniting behind the glass, glowing momentarily before dropping out of sight. I fix my eyes on the Wrangler and keep walking, resolved to ignore the ominous flicker of embers, and attempting to ignore its uncomfortable implications. Even still, I shudder to think of the grim conclusions that are being drawn within that acrid, smoke-filled echo chamber.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I rest my hand on the Jeep’s passenger side door, pausing briefly to gauge the sun's progress. I probably have less than two hours before I'll be expected to step over that nascent horizon, to let Rob carry me into unknown territory, onto the unexplored section of the Left/Right Game. Whatever lies at the end of this ordeal could very well be two roads over… then again it could take a whole lot longer.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I suppose there’s only one way to find out.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I climb quietly into the car and gently position myself next to Lilith. It’s cramped, and now that she's had the space to move around it takes a modicum of contortion to properly lie down, but it still feels more comfortable than the prospect of resting on the open space that had been reserved for Clyde. For tonight at least, it would feel like a little too much like resting on a fresh grave.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The morning does come quicker than I’d like. Surprisingly, once I awake from a blissfully dreamless sleep, I realise I’m not tired at all. Perhaps it's going to hit me later in the day, or perhaps the need for sleep is yet another casualty of the road’s odd sustaining quality. It’s unsettling to think that the road is exerting some metamorphic influence over me, however convenient the effect. After losing most of my need to eat and drink, and now starting to require less rest, I can’t help but feel that something wants us to continue on the road, removing everything else that might distract us from the journey. It’s a notion that intrigues and terrifies me in almost equal measure.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When I open my eyes, I find myself staring directly at Lilith, who has turned to face me in the night. I can tell she’s already awake, quietly resting her eyes, understandably reluctant to face the morning without someone at her side.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Hey.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Hey, good morning.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> How’d you sleep?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Uhh… yeah… not too bad. This place isn’t so comfortable.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Hah yeah. You get used to it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A moment of silence passes between us.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m already aware of the empty space on the other side of the Jeep, hidden just beyond a pile of luggage and jerry cans. It would be easy for me to act surprised at Clyde’s absence, to say that I had slept through the night, to throw myself into a fruitless search effort and to realise the truth alongside everyone else.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Part of me wants to avoid the weight of recent events, to step aside and let all blame fall against the road. Yet even if I wanted to, I know it wouldn’t be right. I’m not going to contribute a new set of secrets to this journey. Anyway, for all I know, Bluejay saw me return from the junction. I wouldn’t want to give her the satisfaction of catching me in a lie.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">If I am going to tell them what’s happened, then the conversation will need to happen immediately. Certainly before they have a chance to discover Clyde’s absence themselves. The words don’t come easily. They’re impossible to form into a delicate order, and I quickly realise that any attempt is just delaying the inevitable. In the end, all I can bring myself to say is...</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">**AS:**Clyde’s gone, Lilith.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It takes a few seconds of quiet comprehension before Lilith sits bolt upright, alarmedly peering over the luggage to Clyde’s side of the Jeep.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Rob. Rob!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Lilith-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Wh… What’s goin’ on?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Something took Clyde.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob is suddenly wide awake as he twists around to view the back section of the Wrangler. I can see the realisation dawn on his face as he understands what’s happened. He turns back around and fumbles with the ignition. His eyes in the rear view are burning with desperate intention. He still thinks he can catch up with Clyde before he crosses the threshold.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Nothin’s taken him Lilith. Hold on.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob he’s gone.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> We don’t know that we just gotta-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob! He's gone. He already passed the junction.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob’s eyes flick to the rear view mirror, meeting mine. The engine stays running as he turns around to face me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> How do you know that?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The urgency has drained from the car, replaced instead by a palpable air of inquiry. Lilith and Rob are both looking at me intently and for the first time on the road, I feel like a figure of legitimate suspicion.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I was with him when he crossed over.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> … What the fuck? When was this?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Last night, about 3… 4 AM. He said that he-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In response to my words, Rob swings the drivers side door open and leaves the Wrangler. I watch him march out into the centre of the road, his entire body tensed and strained by a swell of anger.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I quickly climb out behind him.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Goddamnit! Damnit Bristol why in hell did you let him?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You weren’t there Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> We were fucking yards away Bristol! You didn’t think to wake us up?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Of course I did. He told me not to.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> OH oh ok well that’s just fine then is it?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> He`d made his decision, Lilith. None of us were going to stop him.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Well I certainly wouldn’t have let him just fucking kill himself! You tie Bonnie to the fucking headrest but you let Clyde waltz over the road without even telling us?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> That’s a… that’s a false equivalency.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> A false… Are you serious?!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Yes, of course it is, Bonnie wasn’t herself… Clyde was capable of making an informed decision.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> His sister had just died! Of course he wanted to join her. That doesn’t mean you let him fucking die! You might as well have helped him blow his fucking brains out!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Lilith!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob speaks the name harshly, forcing its owner into an immediate silence. After letting the group breathe for a moment, he speaks calmly.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Bristol… are you sure there was nothin’ we could do?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I look Rob in the eye. His words hit me harder than Lilith’s impassioned tirade. Standing before the both of them, at the intersection of their expectant stares, I feel first inkling of doubt creep into my mind. What would have happened if we’d talked Clyde back into the Wrangler, if Rob had forced him to stay. Could he have found some reason to move forwards if we had kept him for a night? A day? A week? All I can do is hold onto my recollection of the night before, reminding myself of the sense of calm finality that radiated from Clyde when I confronted him. All I can do is trust that I made the right call.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> No. No there wasn’t.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ok… well.. Then there ain’t nothin’ more to say.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob walks to the back of the Wrangler, cutting the conversation short through the quiet resumption of his usual morning routine. Lilith storms back to the car and shuts herself inside. I’m left standing in the centre of the road, wondering if I could feel any more wretched.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> I know what you did.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Well, at least that answers my question. It seems that, while I had been struggling to defend the validity of my actions to Rob and Lilith, Bluejay had very quietly climbed out of her car, waiting patiently for the rest of the convoy to scatter before directing a victorious smile toward me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Can we not do this Bluejay?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">She responds to my words by ignoring them completely.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> I was up in the night, watching you all. What a surprise when I saw you leave with Clyde, and come back alone, calm as a fucking grave. I don’t know if Clyde was in on your little game but he sure as fuck wasn’t happy with how far you’ve taken it. He had to go didn’t he?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t want to dignify her words with a response. In point of fact, I’m not entirely sure what I’d say to such an absurd accusation. Her statement rings with all the trademarks of paranoid conspiracy; the unnatural confidence, the vague language, the frenetic conclusions which are so obvious to her, yet seem impossible for me to grasp.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In the end, Bluejay doesn’t wait for my response.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> I just want you to know, that I am not falling for your fucking game. But you will not turn me around, and if you try ANYTHING like that with me… I. Will. Fucking. Kill. You.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I stare at the woman before me. Her pupils two dark pools of venom, her smile curled into a crooked smirk of unadulterated contempt.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Why didn’t you talk to the hitchhiker Bluejay?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay’s brow furrows, the smirk degrading from her face. I don’t wait for her response.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I mean… now that we’ve seen what happens, to people who spoke to him… it’s fair to assume you didn’t. Or am I wrong?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay presses her lips firmly together, glaring at me, the veins at her temples embossed against her taut skin.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It’s alright Bluejay. I was scared too.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I walk to the back of the Wrangler where Rob has pulled out the stove and four camping chairs. After helping him set them up in the middle of the road, and allowing him to cook me a bowl of steaming hot rice, I sit down next to him and eat what I can.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We can’t think of anything to talk about, and the two remaining chairs stay empty for the rest of the meal.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When I climb back into the Wrangler, Lilith seems quiet. She’s less angry now and, as I’ve seen before with her, is now being forced to confront the feelings her fury had been overshadowing. She shares a look with me in the rear view mirror, a look of being genuinely lost. I find myself reflecting the same expression as I stare back at her, and in that small sliver of glass, I think we both find a glimmer of understanding. An understanding that there have been no easy choices on this road, and that we should forgive each other, and ourselves, for the decisions we’ve had to make. After all, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are harder choices ahead.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It takes us less than an hour before we reach the woods. The drive has been predictably bereft of conversation, however as the cornfields merge into deep green woodland, and the thin opening we’re supposed to take draws nearer, Rob breaks the silence with a customary all cars address.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ferryman to all cars. Just want to say it’s an honour taking this next corner with you all. From here on out we move slow, report anything unusual and stay on the lookout for the next turn ok? Alright… here we go.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob twists the steering wheel. We turn in a slow, deliberate arc towards the gap in the forest. The tarmac disappears below us, giving way to a rough dirt track. A towering legion of knotted trees eclipse the convoy, the sun all but disappearing behind their thick canopy.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The significance of this small turn in the road isn’t lost on me. We had finally crossed the threshold, into the unknown reaches of the Left/Right Game. For all we knew, we were the first people to ever have come this far, the first explorers of an entirely uncharted world. I’m not surprised when I realise I’ve been holding my breath.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I examine my compatriots closely. Lilith isn’t even looking out the window, lost in her own tumultuous thoughts. Rob is reacting exactly as I expected, looking out of every window with an air of mystified wonder.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Well I’ll be. It’s beautiful ain’t it?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As I look away from him and back out the windshield, I find myself smiling. Even after the stressful morning we’ve all had, and the uncertain day that lies ahead, Rob’s statement rings with a joyous sincerity which I can’t help but appreciate. I also can’t help but agree with him; in its own eerie way, it’s a beautiful place.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Wrangler moves at a crawl for the rest of the day. The woods are vast and untameable. Thin, swooping branches hang lazily over the road, clattering against the light rig as we pass beneath them. Many of the trees stand at strange, crooked angles, their various disparate inclines making it impossible to see too far in either direction.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob spends every moment scanning the sides of the road. The trees that flank us are so thick, so tightly packed together, that it’s easy to denote an upcoming turn. I suspect Rob simply doesn’t want to take any chances, paranoid as he is about the road’s deceptive qualities. He needn’t have worried. There are only four turns across the entire afternoon. Each one is identified far in advance and navigated perfectly.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Before I know it, we’ve entered the early evening, with no discernable end to the woods in sight. We’ve been travelling uphill for a short while, plateauing onto a thin stretch of road, an endless expanse of forest to our left, and a dangerously steep bank to our right. With one less side of the road to look out for, Rob seems a little more comfortable holding a conversation.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> So what are you going to do, if you get to the end of the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Document it, bring it home, hand it over to the world.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> And after that?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I guess I might take a vacation. Maybe I should visit London. You want to show me round?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You’ve never been to London?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I just passed by, carryin’ packages. Never liked cities so much, try to stay outta them when I can. I’d go if I had a tour guide though.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Hah ok, well that’s my next story then. Rob Guthard Takes On London.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I don’t think folk would wanna listen to that.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I dunno I think people would tune in, or are you just worried you’ll grow to like the place?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Hah, Junior would never let me hear the end of <em class="_7s4syPYtk5hfUIjySXcRE" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">that</em>.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Fair enough. Wait… sorry?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> My son wouldn’t let me forget it. He’s always been a city boy.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I stare out into the pitch black forest, suddenly thinking back to my arrival in Phoenix, Arizona just five days before.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I recollect my formative meeting with Rob Guthard, and how I’d been treated to the briefest overview of his life. I hadn’t pushed for too much detail, wanting to hear the story in his own words and under the assumption that I could get more background after a short stint on the road. After four days of intrigue and horror and stress I haven’t had time for a follow up. In all honesty, it’s only now I think back on it that I realise just how little ground we covered in our first interview, how eager he was to skip past the formative details of his existence. I didn’t know the names of his ex-wives, or anyone who wasn’t directly involved in his work with the paranormal.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">For example, I didn’t know he referred to his son as Junior. Often used as a general nickname for a child, it can, every so often, mean something much more specific.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Is… does your son share your name?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob turns to me, confused.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Yeah, did I never-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH</span> Look out!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob snaps forwards as a fleeting blur darts across the road, before tumbling down the steep verge to our right. Over the engine, we can hear rustles and thuds as it disappears down the steep hillside and into the deep forest below.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> What was that? Was that a deer?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> That’s what it looked like,</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> It went straight off the edge why would it do that?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ain’t too bright is all.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Guys can we get moving, this is-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m interrupted by the sound of faint rumbling, emanating from the woods on the left side of the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> What is that?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> We ain’t waitin’ around to find out.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob kicks the car into gear and pulls down the track. Less than five seconds later, he slams the brake on once more, stalling the car as a small group of three or four deer burst out in front of us. A few more can he heard skittering behind the Wrangler, slamming against the back of the jeep as they hurriedly negotiate the gap between us and Bluejay.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As Rob works to restart the car, I stare out of the window and into the forest, finally aware of what I’m hearing in the trees. The thunderous sound of hooves hammering against the earth, brushing past the undergrowth, struggling over rocks and branches on their way towards us. In no time at all, the forest erupts from empty darkness into chaotic, violent life, as an unbroken horde of frenzied deer burst out from the trees.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob tries to tell us to hold on, but he doesn’t have time.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The path ahead floods with hundreds of stampeding deer, an unbroken torrent that blocks out the headlights’ beam. Lilith jumps back from the passenger door, as deep, thudding knells vibrate through the Wrangler. The deer, locked in a desperate sprint with little space to maneuver, are running head first into the side of the car. One of the smaller deer bolts out of the forest hits the deep green metal just below my window, the reverberation shaking the glass. I think I hear its neck snap.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The ones that get past the car aren’t fairing better. Locked in a frantic state and forced along by their equally desperate cohorts, I can only watch as they spill over the edge of the steep hillside. Countless bodies crash into the darkness, carried down into what I can only assume is a quickly developing mass grave of twisted, interlocking bodies.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Rob get us out of here!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> We ain’t movin’ through this just stay down!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> What the fuck is- Somebody help!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay sounds terrified. The Wrangler is taking a beating from the onslaught of desperate creatures, but is still managing to hold firm. When I look back towards Bluejay, I see a different story entirely. The car is lying at an angle, pushed towards the edge of the hill by the sheer force of the herd’s collective impact. The passenger side is on display, riddled with slick red marks and heavy, craterous dents. The creatures rush past her, clumsily clambering over the hood, and hammering into the doors of the car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay screams into the receiver, placing a hand over her eyes as one of her front tyres passes over the edge, the car’s chassis dropping down into the dirt. Luckily for her, when I turn back to the forest, I can see it’s emptied dramatically. The flood has subsided, and the last few deer are pelting through the trees and across the road, their position at the back of the herd providing them with more than enough space to manoeuvre around the convoy.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ferryman to Bluejay, get yourself over here we gotta go now.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> What the fuck was that? What the f-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> It was just a herd of deer, Bluejay, but they were runnin’ pretty hard and I ain’t lookin’ to meet whatever they were runnin’ from. We don’t have time to get you back on the road, get over here NOW!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Nothing more can be heard from Bluejay’s radio except for static and a few intermittent gasps of breathless fear.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ah Goddamnit. Stay in the car you two. Lilith, hand me the rifle, I ain’t takin’ any chances out here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith finds the rifle and hands it over to Rob. Grabbing some supplementary ammo from the glove compartment, Rob climbs out and slams the door, marching through the dirt to Bluejay’s ruined car. I clamber into the back of the Wrangler, struggling over a pile of empty jerry cans and surveying the scene as it unfolds.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In an almost herculean effort, Rob wrenches the passenger side door open and holds his hand out for Bluejay to take. I look on as she unbuckles her seatbelt, climbs out unassisted, and immediately launches herself at Rob. Crying her eyes out, and lashing at his chest with two clenched fists. She looks distraught, terrified and violently angry.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob stands there and takes it, whispering vague assurance to her as she unloads her terror and frustration into every wailing blow.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Come on Bluejay we gotta go.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith talks under her breath, willing Bluejay’s catharsis to speed itself along. I look at her, silently sharing her impatience. Then something catches my eye, something in the distance behind Lilith, slowly making its way through the trees.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I turn around, and scramble to the front of the car, returning with the radio transceiver.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob, get back here. There’s something in the forest.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Hearing my warning crackle out from Bluejay’s car, Rob turns in my direction before alarmedly staring into the forest where a pale figure is winding its way towards the pair. From what I can ascertain as it briefly leaves the obscuring undergrowth, it seems to be small, tremendously thin, and crawling unevenly on its hands and feet.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The creature stops in a clearing ahead of Rob and Bluejay, in view of me and Lilith, but shrouded from everyone in the shadow of the forest. Bluejay separates from Rob, pulling a head torch out of her bag. Slowly, and with trembling fingers, she points the beam towards the creature and switches it on.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The resulting sight is incomprehensible. The beam instantly illuminates the light frame of an thin, almost emaciated child. It's barely over a year old, deathly pale, covered in dirt, it’s skin stretched taut over frail limbs. It stares up at Bluejay, reflexively holding one arm over its eyes to shield itself from the bright LED light.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Oh my god what’s happening to it?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I know exactly what Lilith’s talking about. My hand raises to my mouth as I watch the child struggle through the stream of harsh, white light. With every step it takes, the child’s form starts to shift and change. Its limbs elongate, in jagged, lurching bursts of growth. Anything exposed to the beam develops with grotesque rapidity. It’s as if the child is aging before our eyes.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Letting out a tortured cry, the creature darts towards Bluejay, angrily swatting the torch from her grip. Bluejay screams in shock and pain as she holds her stricken hand, her attention transfixed on the child, who has seemingly aged almost three years in a matter seconds. Even in the fresh darkness, with her head torch fractured on the ground, I can tell that Bluejay is paralysed with an abject, consuming horror.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob doesn’t hesitate. He reflexively grabs Bluejay and pulls her backwards into the path of her headlights. The creature reaches out for them as they go, one hand passing after them into the light. It pulls back quickly, its eyes full of heart wrenching, juvenile tears. The fingers of its left hand aged beyond the rest of its body.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Its cries begin anew. As ghastly as it seems, the child doesn’t seem malevolent or demonic. In fact, as it looks back towards Bluejay, it seems genuinely upset, unable to comprehend the actions of those around him. As it stares sorrowfully back at its newly malformed fingers, it’s not much of a stretch to assume the transformations are as painful to endure as they are disturbing.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Stay in the light Bluejay. Keep movin’.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay breaks away from behind Rob and sprints towards the Wrangler. As soon as she begins to flee, the child lets out a high pitched scream, and strikes the hood of Bluejay’s car. The impact of the blow is impossibly forceful. In less than an instant the chassis crumples into a mass of jagged metal, the one remaining headlight disappears from view as the car is launched off the path and rolls into the valley below.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">With Rob and Bluejay now returned to the darkness, the child skitters quickly towards Bluejay, grabbing her foot as it lifts off the ground, and yanking it backwards. With all her momentum immediately halted, and one foot taken out from beneath her. Bluejay has nowhere to go but down. She slams into the earth, her chin bouncing off a sharp rock.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay looks up at us with stunned, pleading eyes. Lilith and I have only a few seconds to meet her gaze before she is dragged backwards along the ground. She screams in pain, her ankle caught in the child’s iron grip. It doesn’t even break pace as it walks back towards the woods, pulling Bluejay along like a ragdoll.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob reaches out for her, snatching for Bluejay’s hand as she writhes and thrashes against an unstoppable force. They connect, briefly, but Rob’s effort to keep a hold of her is futile, dashed immediately as she is pulled effortlessly from his hands. Bluejay resorts to clawing at the ground, dragging thick, dark soil and pulling loose rocks free from the dirt.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob somberly unstraps his rifle, swinging it around to his front. He reaches into the breast pocket of his jacket and chambers a single bullet.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay looks on as Rob raises the rifle to his shoulder, and aims for the back of the oblivious child’s head.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Oh god.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith turns away from the window, cowering away from the insanity outside the car. I can barely watch myself, as Rob places his finger on the trigger.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The shot never comes.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay shrieks as the child reaches the treeline, pulling her into the undergrowth. Robs hands are shaking, unable to do what needs to be done. Cursing loudly at the air itself, Rob lets the rifle fall to the ground. He stands immobile as Bluejay’s screams continue to emanate through the trees.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">His expression has been worn by everyone on the road. Like all of them he’s no longer present, lost to a realm of hopelessness and bewilderment. But unlike many others, he doesn’t stay that way for long. Unlike the rest of us, Rob Guthard manages to bring himself back.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Bristol! There’s a torch in the green bag. Get it now.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t have time to hesitate. I scour the contents of the Wrangler desperately, Bluejay’s screams growing increasingly distant with every passing second. Locating a large green bag in the far corner, I crawl across the Wrangler, unfasten the straps and spill its contents into the car. A heavy duty LED torch clangs against the cabin floor and I snatch it up before it can roll away.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Returning to Rob, I swing the back doors open and jump out onto the dirt track, throwing the torch toward Rob’s outstretched hand. As soon as he catches it, Rob sprints out into the forest, leaving me and Lilith behind.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The events that unfold among the trees are told to us in sound and light.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">After almost a minute of silence, the torch’s rays burst through the trees. Bluejay’s distant screeching intensifies as the child breaks into a gut wrenching cry. A large crash echoes through the night air, the sound of bark cracking as the very trees shatter into splinters. The light dances chaotically, as Rob lets out a cathartic, damaged roar. Suddenly, the child’s desolate wailing grows more distant, retreating deep, deep into the woods. Then, suddenly, silence.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Bristol… what’s… what’s happening?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I don’t know. Stay in the car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We wait for what seems like an age, lost in worry, before the gentle rustling of undergrowth calls our attention back to the treeline. A moment later, Rob emerges from the trees, holding Bluejay’s arm around his shoulder</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Oh thank god. Oh thank god.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The pair stumble over to us, slowly and painfully. Bluejay walks with a limp, her ankle is already horribly bruised. Rob sports a series of cuts across his face, but seems otherwise unharmed. He calls back to us, utterly exhausted.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span>... Nothin’ to it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">An irrepressible smile grows across my face, a pained grimace of sincere joy. I raise a hand to my mouth as tears of unbridled relief start to roll down my cheeks. It’s a brief, fleeting moment in an otherwise dark night, but for once we’ve managed to pass through the storm, battered and broken, but at the very least, still together.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay falls to the floor, slipping free of Rob’s grip and unable to hold her own weight. Rob turns around to look for where she’s fallen, and finds her crawling slowly towards the steep verge.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Bluejay? Denise, you ok?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay stops crawling, places her hands on the ground and rises unsteadily. I suppose she can stand on her own after all. When she’s finally upright, she turns back towards Rob, raising his rifle to her shoulder and fixing it on his torso.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My smile vanishes.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Denise. What are you… put it down.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> It was a child, Rob. It was a child it… what did you…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Oh my god Bristol what’s happening?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Stay in the car Lilith.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Denise… you seen it just as much as me. You saw what it did.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> It…it tore at my… it broke the skin! How… why are you doing this?!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Denise. Denise. You know what you saw, OK? You know this is real. We ain’t doin’ this to you. It’s happening… to all of us. It’s-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob stares at Bluejay, then down to the rifle, the sights boring into his chest.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ok ok. How about we turn the car around. Right now. I’ll turn us around and I’ll take you back home and I’ll drop you off outside the tunnel… safe and sound. I just want to get you home safe… what do ya say?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay looks into the Rob’s eyes, the rifle quivers in her hands. We all wait, scarcely taking a breath, for Bluejay’s response.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> … I don’t believe you.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The shot echoes around us. Rob falls to his knees. A look of surprise and disbelief carved into his face. A plume of dark red blossoms around his shoulder. There’s no air in my lungs. My entire body is paralysed by the shock, by the rank unfairness, the sheer impossibility of the scene before me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I still don’t understand how it could possibly be happening.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> OH MY GOD! Oh my god! No!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay quickly paces up to Rob, snatches a handful of ammunition from his breast pocket, and reloads the rifle with practiced efficiency. She’s stopped shaking, in fact, there’s a calm conviction to her movements which convinces me, with shocking immediacy, that I might be about to die.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I dive back into the Wrangler, slamming the door shut behind me. I find Lilith gripped by an immediate, immobilising shell shock.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> We need to go. Lilith? We need to go ok?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> I don’t… I don’t understand.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Get out of the car, both of you! I’ll kill him! I will kill him!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Do you think she’s going to kill us too?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> No. No… she was going to shoot Rob in the chest, but she aimed away at the last minute. She’s just bargaining.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Bargaining?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> She wants us out of the car. I think she’s going to take the Wrangler.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> If she leaves us here we’ll die anyway.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I know.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Well we… we can’t fight her… one of us will...</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Get the fuck out of the car, both of you! I want your hands where I can see them!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It’s ok. It’s ok. Here, take this.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I reach down and grab the walkie talkie, pressing it into Lilith’s hands.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It’s a short sprint to the tree line. We need to get round to the hood of the car, then we get into the woods as soon as there’s an opening ok?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> I… I can’t do this, Bristol.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I’m sorry Lilith. You’re going to have to.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I gently open the driver’s side door, climbing out and edging along the muddy verge, keeping low to avoid Bluejay’s line of sight.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith climbs out after me, closing the door softly behind us. Without making a sound, conscious of every rustling leaf that passes underfoot, I gesture for us to make out way around to the Wrangler’s hood. Lilith goes first, staying below the windows, working her way to the front of the car and passing around the corner. From the hood of the Wrangler, we’ll be able to make a beeline to the trees.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Don’t play fucking games with me!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Before I can make my way around to join Lilith, Bluejay’s impatience boils over. I can hear her footsteps on the rough ground as she makes her way over to the Wrangler. The situation rapidly spiralling further from my control, there’s only one thing I can do to stop her discovering the both of us.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> We’re coming out!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I raise my hands and stand up, making my way to the back of the Wrangler. Bluejay stops walking, before she gets far enough to notice Lilith. She turns to face me, raising the rifle to her shoulder. A moment later, I hear Lilith burst out from her hiding place, sprinting into the trees.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay quickly realises what’s happened, and with a yell of violent frustration, turns the rifle to face the treeline. Lilith has already disappeared into the dark forest, out of range and out of sight. I choose not to attempt to rush Bluejay in the midst of this distraction, and I’m right not to. Realising Lilith is lost to her, Bluejay quickly spins back towards me and levels the rifle at my chest.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> I knew you were all in this together, you fucking monsters!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Her eyes are practically bulging from their sockets, her entire face contorted in malicious, sickeningly righteous hatred. After all these days on the road, I’ve never seen something quite like this.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You’re not well Bluejay.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> No. No. I’m just not willing to fall for your fucking tricks!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> How could this all be a trick Bluejay? How? Apollo, Eve, Bonnie. You saw what happened to them. It’s beyond our understanding, mine and yours.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> There’s no such thing as fucking magic. Only fools and FUCKING frauds.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">There it was. In one sentence, the trigger for Bluejay’s creeping insanity. The inflexible belief that had broken her mind against a maelstrom of contradiction. With every impossible event she had witnessed, every brutal death that had unfolded in front of her, Bluejay’s unwavering skepticism had barred her from blaming the supernatural, from blaming the road. Instead she had blamed us, a swiftly dwindling pool of conspirators, whose crimes had swiftly spiralled from deception, to reckless endangerment, to outright murder.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As far as Bluejay was concerned, we were the only monsters on this road. This wasn't madness. It was self defense.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It doesn't matter anymore. You can go home ok? But just… at least take Lilith with you. Please. She isn’t part of this.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> I’m not a fucking retard Alice. Don’t you think I’ve been watching? You are all complicit, and as far as I’m concerned you can all fucking walk!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I’m sorry… I just don’t think I can let you do do this.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">She laughs, a sarcastic, ugly chuckle. Holding the rifle tight against her shoulder.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> I can't see how that's your decision.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Well… that’s always been your issue hasn't it Denise? You lack imagination.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I step backwards, allowing gravity to carry me over the threshold of the steep, dark slope. In the last few seconds before I topple into the darkness, I clench the fingers of my left hand.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When I’d been holding both my hands up, my empty palms faced vertically towards her, Bluejay could have easily mistaken the band around my finger for jewellery. As I fall backwards, Bluejay’s eyes fix on my now closed fist, as she sees what’s attached to the other side of the ring. A bottle opener, a small LED torch, and the ignition key to the Wrangler.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I disappear over the edge, bracing myself for what's to come. With nothing else to do, I surrender myself to the long fall, followed into the darkness by the enraged screams of Bluejay.</p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-29880580986407877412020-08-17T21:39:00.001-07:002020-08-17T21:39:10.017-07:00The Left Right Game Part 6<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Silence used to be an absolute.</span></p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">That’s something I definitely miss.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Back in the real world, it would stand as self-evident that a group of people saying absolutely nothing, by definition, could not be saying any less. Maybe things are different on the road, maybe I’d just never encountered it before, but it’s clear to me now there are degrees beyond silence. A pervasive realm of deafening quiet which, following the loss of Eve and Apollo, our group has unreservedly embraced. Constructed out of our collective trauma, cemented with a cruel mixture of grief, guilt, and harrowing self-doubt, it quickly becomes apparent that this silence is stronger than all of us. The challenge of breaking it remains unmet for the rest of the journey.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We spend the next few hours burrowing through a featureless corridor of maize. The stalks rise far above the Wrangler, leaving only a thin strip of clear sky visible like the painted ceiling of a renaissance church. I find myself glancing intermittently at the CB radio, half expecting, half hoping, for Apollo’s voice to crackle through the speaker, bringing words of comfort, or a much needed attempt at levity.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">After I catch myself staring at the radio for the fifth time, I decide it might be best to get on with my work. I plug my headphones into my notebook, bring up the audio files I’ve recorded thus far, and set about creating a very rough cut of our first day on the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO (VO)</span> Everybody knows Rob, Rob's the god! Ahaha</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I listen through Apollo’s first interview, making notes for the closing paragraph I’ll now be forced to write about him. When I have everything I need, I listen to the interview again, and then once more. It’s not lost on me that I just want to hear his voice, to lose myself in a pleasant digital echo, far removed from the frantic screams that followed him into the asphalt.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I listen to Eve’s interview next. She bristles with excitement as she talks about her upcoming visit to Roswell, steadfastly attempting to recruit me to the effort. She had no idea what she was heading into when she stepped out onto Rob’s front lawn. Then again none of us did.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The thin strip of sky is turning deep orange as I reach our encounter with the hitchhiker. It’s chilling to hear his voice after the fact, to revisit the conniving, veiled pleasantries he employed against us. I cringe as I hear Rob’s hand grasp my arm, ashamed that I let myself fall for the hitcher’s trickery.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB (VO):</span> You did good, I’m sorry for grabbin’ you. I just didn’t want you to do something you’d regret.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS (VO):</span> No it’s fine. I was going to. Do you know what happens if you talk to him?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB (VO):</span> Not sure. Came close myself once, a few years back. The way he looks at you when he thinks he’s got you? I don’t think I wanna know.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS (VO):</span> Rob, I-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I pause the audio file, clicking back ten seconds before pressing play again.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS (VO):</span> No it’s fine. I was going to. Do you know what happens if you talk to him?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB (VO):</span> Not sure. Came close myself once, a few years back. The way he looks at you when he thinks he’s-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I certainly didn’t notice that at the time. I’d been so shaken by my run in with the hitcher, and so curious about the abandoned car that I’d been completely blind to anything else that had come my way. Maybe Rob misspoke, maybe he meant to say weeks or months. But if it wasn’t a mistake, if it was a truth carelessly uttered, then Rob has some explaining to do.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Left/Right Game was posted online in June 2016, less than a year ago.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I glance sideways at him, a wall of corn rushing past us as we approach the rest stop. Throughout this trip, every emotion Rob’s displayed has seemed genuine. The sadness, the anger, the concern. They tell a story of a man who cares deeply about the welfare of those around him. Yet at the same time, it’s strikingly clear that there’s something he isn’t telling me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">With every new piece of the puzzle, the car, the text message, the faceless creature with the ringing phone, I’m left with the dilemma of when to confront Rob Guthard with what I know. I feel I’ve gathered enough to bring before him, enough to demand an explanation, but there’s no way I’d be able to truly verify his answer. I have a collection of strange and perplexing notions, lacking in the common thread that could bring me to any workable conclusion. If I am going to confront Rob, I need to uncover that thread. Much like the greatest journalists of our time, I should know the answer before I ask the question.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The jeep pulls up onto a large green space. Staring straight ahead, I find myself puzzled by the way the ground seems to stop, as if the horizon lies only twenty metres away from the car. As soon as the engine cuts out, I unbuckle my seatbelt, climb out and walk towards the grassy verge. The rest of the convoy pulls up behind me as I go.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I stop a few steps short of the edge, realising we’ve found our way to the top of a sheer cliff. A sudden swaying vertigo takes over, forcing me to take a few steps back. It doesn’t feel like we’ve been heading uphill, the road has been level since Jubilation, yet somehow I’m standing at the edge of a 400 ft. rock face, descending straight downwards, the distant earth shrouded by stalks of corn.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">That’s the truly strange thing about this monolithic precipice. On either side of me, the maize runs to the very edge of the cliff and, at its base, the endless harvest continues until it stretches beyond the darkening horizon in every direction. It feels like I’m standing on the cliffs of Dover, staring over a golden ocean, its waves governed by the evening breeze. I wonder for a moment where it ends, then, taking consideration of the world I now occupy, I start to wonder if it ever does.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A belligerent scream rips me from the view. The source of the noise is blocked by the Wrangler and the first thing I see as I circle around are the shocked, wide eyed faces of Bonnie & Clyde. Once I make my way past the Wrangler’s hood, my expression mimics theirs.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith has pinned Bluejay up to the side of the Jeep, a locked forearm pressing her chest against the door. Her other arm has been grasped in Bluejay’s hands, desperately stopped before it can strike her across the face. The two of them yell through gritted teeth as Lilith struggles furiously against her, vying to cause her any conceivable harm.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY</span> Get the fuck off me you bitch! Get off!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I take a few quick steps over to Lilith as Bluejay attempts to kick her away.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Lilith, we can’t do this… Jen…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith doesn’t even register my presence as she continues her assault, deafened by the bubbling vitriol in every growling breath.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Jen! We are not doing this now. Not after-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Before I can comprehend what’s happening, I’m staring at the sky, my head knocked back by the force of Lilith’s flailing elbow. A hot, raw ache radiates across my lower lip as I stagger back, raising my hand over my mouth.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Before Lilith can continue her assault, Rob swings open his door and takes two short strides over to her. He puts one arm around the girl’s waist and picks her up, carrying her safely, but firmly, over to Bonnie & Clyde’s Ford, and planting her back on the ground.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I seem to always forget how strong he is.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Damnit this is not the time.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Take it back!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay has lost her usual snide demeanour, yet her aura still radiates an unbridled scorn. In response to Lilith’s demand, Bluejay walks back to her car and sits on the hood. She takes the Marlboros out of her pocket along with her lighter, and ignites a cigarette. I imagine the burning embers are the only company she’s comfortable to accept right now.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">By the time I look back to the rest of the group, Lilith has stormed away.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> What did she say?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> I didn’t hear it all.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> What did she say Bonnie?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> I heard something about… she said Lilith was… that we were complicit.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ah goddamnit… Bristol can you…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I watch Lilith, as she sits on the grass and looks over the cliffside. She begins to cry, yet I get a strong notion that it’s not something I should interrupt. It feels like something between her and Eve, a final act of reactionary mourning reserved for them, and them alone.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Yeah… don’t worry. I’ll handle it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ok. I’ll cook us somethin’ up.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">An hour passes. Lilith grows slowly calmer, drifting from cathartic release into a cold, wordless melancholy. Finishing up my dinner, I make my way over to her.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It’s a strange view.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith looks up at me. Her face falls.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> I cut you… I’m so sorry.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It’s fine. You should see the other girl.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Hah, yeah, I bet she looks like shit right about now.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I help myself down onto the cool ground, staring alongside Lilith into the ocean below.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Bluejay thinks I’m complicit… in what happened to Eve.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I heard.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> She used to think we were morons, now she thinks we’re all in on it… doesn’t make sense.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I think she he has to believe this place is a lie. She needs it to make sense, and the harder it gets for her to rationalise the more she... Anyway, she shouldn’t have said what she said. She’s just... I guess the word is "troubled".</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> She’s a fucking thundercunt.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Umm… uh… ok.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> She’s right though... I killed her... and I killed Apollo too.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I look to Lilith, concerned, not quite sure what she means. Her eyes remain locked on the impossible horizon.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Sarah… she wasn’t cut out for this, and she knew it. She wanted us to turn back this morning… but I didn’t want to.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> That wasn’t just your decision Lilith.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Yes it was. She uh… she followed my lead. Always. Through everything. And I knew why she was doing it. I knew. But I let it continue, because it was convenient, because it was easy…. because deep down I liked having someone around who… who’d jump through fucking hoops for me… god it’s so fucked.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith rests her head in her hands.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> She was weak. She was anxious and shy and… but that should be ok, right? You’re allowed to be weak that’s… but I made her come here. I dragged someone who couldn’t swim into the fucking deep end. And the last thing I did was lie to her and she fucking knew it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith takes a few deep, frayed breaths.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> What do you mean?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> I’m not uh… I didn’t, I… I loved her, you know as a… as a friend. It was always this fucking one-way street and… I don’t think she minded but. Then suddenly she’s vanishing right in-fucking-front of me and she said what she said… I mean how else was I supposed to respond to that? I had to say it back right?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith maintains her composure as a steady stream of tears roll down her cheek.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I don’t know what I’d do in that situation.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> I could see it in her eyes that she didn’t believe me. Fuck… I wonder how many people have died while being told like… comforting lies. How many of them fucking knew?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I think you did the best you could Jen. I think you did better than most.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> You don’t need to tell me that just… are you tired? Do you need to go to bed soon?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> No, I don’t need to.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> There are some beers in uh… in Apollo’s bag. Is that like… looting? Or is that ok?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I think he’d want us to have them, as long as he got a toast.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith laughs briefly and finally smiles. She walks over to Bonnie and Clyde’s car, returning a moment later with a four pack.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We spend the next hour and a half slowly drinking them. Lilith can’t muster the right words for a toast so we just say thank you to Apollo, raising out cans to the open air. We talk about his tireless humour, his attempts to keep us all up during our first night on the road, how caringly he spoke to everyone, even at the edge of death.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We talk about Eve as well, about the pair’s misadventures, awkward college parties and the future of Paranormicon. Lilith smiles, and tells me there’s always a place for me once radio dies out.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">After everything that’s happened on the road, the night can’t help but feel bittersweet. But for once, on a solitary cliff side in the middle of nowhere, it’s more sweet than it is bitter. That may not be much, but at the end of an awful day it’s more than either of us could have hoped for.</p><hr class="_2ACwpV3Y0LKhHHKbsxNmmY" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: 0px; border-image: initial; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 1px solid var(--newCommunityTheme-bodyTextAlpha20); color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; margin: 8px 0px;" /><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The next morning goes quickly. It’s amazing how efficient a group of people can be when none of them feel like talking. Not only that, but breakfast has become a noticeably brief affair. I manage to get through half a bag of trail mix before I find myself uncomfortably full. Rob’s words about the road’s sustaining properties ring in my ears as I look around the group. Everyone leaves their bowls half empty. Lilith hasn’t eaten a bite.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">By this point, the launch protocol has been drilled into us. Despite our preoccupations, and the fractious rifts developing between us, the cars line up like clockwork as they merge onto the road. In fact, the mood of the group seems strangely procedural. All radio contact starts with the stating of a call sign, followed by that of the recipient. The cars maintain an even, careful distance between one another. We’ve seen all too clearly what happens when the rules are neglected, and no one wants to take chances any more.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> How far away are we?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> From where?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You haven’t got to the end of this road right? I mean… you’re still charting it?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> That’s right.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Well, how long until we get to… you know to… uncharted territory?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> To be honest, not too long.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> What’s going to happen once we reach that point?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> We’re gonna keep drivin’.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Until we get to the end?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> That’s the plan. You know I won’t judge you if you wanna turn around. I’m sure you can talk someone into it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Could I talk you into it?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob smiles.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> ‘Fraid not. This trip ain’t like the others. Road’s kickin’ back like never before. I think it knows I’m comin’ all the way this time.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> … What is this place Rob?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob sighs as he slowly takes the next left on a quiet, rural T-junction.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I think it’s a stray thread… runnin’ off the spool.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The radio crackles.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> Rob you just took the wrong turn.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">An instant drum of fresh panic hammers in my chest. I stare at Rob, and he stares right back. I know he’s feeling the same thing I am, though he’s doing a much better job of keeping it off his face.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">He thinks carefully for a moment.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> No… no. I been down this road before. We took a right last time.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Uhhh… yeah. Yes. The turn before this one was a right, I remember.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ferryman to all cars. Thanks Bonnie for giving us the fright of our lives. We’re on the righ… we’re on the correct road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> No no that can’t be its… that’s wrong… Martin tell them…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Our mistake Rob, let’s keep going.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Bristol…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s concern in Lilith’s voice. I lean over to my wing mirror, attempting to gauge the atmosphere in the car behind me. There’s clearly some commotion between Bonnie and Clyde, with the latter attempting to gently remove the walkie talkie from his sister’s hands.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s something else however. Past Bonnie & Clyde. Past Bluejay. An old, dilapidated road sign made of weathered timber stands by the side of the road behind us. I can’t read all of it as the peeling letters grow ever smaller, but I can piece together what it probably once said.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">“Wintery Bay – 5 Miles”</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> We’re going to turn around right?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Uhh one second Bonnie, I’ll… check the map.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I promptly switch off the radio.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Are we not passing through Wintery Bay?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob turns to me, a puzzled look in his eyes.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Through where?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In the wake of those two, innocently inquiring words, my mind reels back to the morning of our third day on the road. Watching Bonnie and Clyde wander over to Rob to confess their transgressions with the hitchhiker, the quiet conversation that passed between them, Rob’s seemingly comforting response. I’d felt wretched in those moments. A few minutes prior I had tricked and deceived Clyde… yet I’d never once considered he might have done the same to me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Is it safe to pull over?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> What? Why?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Is it safe Rob?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Uh, yeah should be.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Then pull over.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I switch the radio back on and grab the receiver. As I make a connection to Bonnie and Clyde’s car, it’s clear that an argument is brewing. Lilith is asking for me, a helpless passenger, caught in the middle of something she doesn’t understand.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Bristol to all cars. We’re stopping up ahead.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob seems acutely aware that I’m not messing around. As soon as we roll to a halt, I throw my door open and jump onto the dusty roadside, striding over to the rest of the convoy, who are just starting to get out of their own cars. I’m conscious of a driving anger behind each step I take.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You didn’t tell him.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Bristol, I…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> What’s goin’ on Bristol?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob’s marches up behind me, more than a little restless to get a grip on my motives.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Clyde?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clyde looks around a circle of expectant eyes. When he delivers his answer, he’s unable to meet any of them.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Bonnie… Bonnie talked to the hitchhiker.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob’s expression shifts, his confusion degrading into a solemn understanding.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> God… ahh Goddamnit. You knew about this Bristol?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I told them to tell you the morning of the third day. I saw them go over to you I… I thought they did.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Bonnie… thought you’d… turn us around.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Well she’s was damn right. You seen what happens when the rules get broken. You shoulda told me as soon as you saw me and headed right back home.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> That was before Ace… before everything. I didn’t know this place was-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> The rules are the rules Clyde! Is anything even wrong with Bonnie? You said she gets confused... was that a lie?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clyde doesn’t answer, avoiding Rob’s glare. As I process what Rob’s just said, I have to say I’m surprised by the deviousness of the two siblings.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When I thought they were telling Rob about the hitchhiker, it appears they’d instead told him that Bonnie was, to some degree, senile. It was a simple lie, but one that would adequately explain her odd behaviour, draw sympathy from Rob and, most ingeniously, prevent him from telling me about their conversation. A truth buried beneath an unpleasant lie, its subject matter just uncomfortable enough to head off any chance of discussion.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Still, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> We can head home if you want.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> No.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The group turns to Bonnie. She speaks in a tone more decisive than I thought her capable.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> He... the hitchhiker... he was talking about a… about the village we just passed. I was looking forward to seeing it, that’s all. I’m ok really.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You’ve been talking about it a lot Bonnie.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> It just sounded like a lovely place, I was sad that we passed it by. I’m sorry for worrying everyone. Please don’t make us turn around Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob stares at them both. His position has been made crystal clear.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> We’re stopping a little early today. Come the rest of the way with us, rest up… then tomorrow you both go home. You should count yourselves lucky you get the chance to turn around.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob marches back to the Wrangler, signalling that the discussion is over.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Lilith, you’re with us.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith doesn't even try to hide her relief as she shuffles away from Bonnie & Clyde and climbs into the back of the Jeep. It’s a little heart warming that Rob still has the awareness to look out for her, angry as he may be.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As well as his surprising strength, I also tend to forget how perceptive he can be.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bonnie, Clyde and Bluejay climb back into their respective vehicles. I catch Bonnie’s eye, the moment before she returns to the Ford. She appears truly disappointed, but otherwise resigned to keep going, satisfied to let Wintery Bay fade into the distance. It’s comforting to hear that she’s ready to put the place behind her.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s just a pity I don’t believe a word of it.</p><hr class="_2ACwpV3Y0LKhHHKbsxNmmY" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: 0px; border-image: initial; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 1px solid var(--newCommunityTheme-bodyTextAlpha20); color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; margin: 8px 0px;" /><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> It was fucking weird Bristol.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith seems happy to be in the Wrangler, enjoying the sense of security the modded behemoth affords, and also greatly relieved to be away from Bonnie & Clyde. She’s spent the last five minutes detailing the thirty second argument that unfolded between them, charting its disturbing nuances as well as it’s eerie conclusion.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> ... but I swear she was basically like crying like… she didn’t understand how we could be going the wrong way. But then like, as soon as you pulled us over and she just stopped. Like I mean… stopped.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> That must have been disconcerting.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> You have no idea... So Rob, when are these cornfields gonna fucking end?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Soon. We’re gonna rest up for the night in a few turns. Then tomorrow it won’t be long until we’re on a track through the woods.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> The fucking woods? Are you kidding? Are we talking like… Sleepy Hollow bleeding trees or what?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Hah, wish I could tell ya.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Wait, what do you mean?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I ain’t been that far yet. It’s new territory.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Oh… great. Maybe the cornfields aren’t so…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith goes quiet, transfixed by something in the rear view mirror, before quickly turning around to get a better look out of the back window.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The car behind us is out of control.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bonnie is fighting to wrest the steering wheel from her brother. The Ford swerves erratically behind us, driven mad by the dynamic power struggle taking place inside it. Rob sharply accelerates out of the way as the car behind lurches drunkenly to and fro before skidding to a shuddering halt. Rob hits the brake hard, and by the time I’ve turned in his direction, he’s already slammed the door of the Wrangler, storming across the tarmac to Bonnie and Clyde.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Cut the engine!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Ford’s engine goes silent and in the absence of its rumbling growl, new sounds emerge. The sounds of a struggle, and of wild desperate screaming.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Stepping out of the car for the second time today, I jump onto the road and cover the distance between us.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob is attempting to pull a screeching Bonnie from the car. Even with his impressive strength it seems to be a challenge. Bonnie claws at the walls, trying with all her might to regain her grasp on the steering wheel.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> Please! PLEASE! Let me go! Let me go!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob extracts Bonnie from the car and attempts to subdue her amidst a flurry of flailing hands and elbows. She writhes and kicks as he pins her arms to her sides.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Bonnie! Bonnie. Calm down ok? Let’s talk this through.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> He told me it was on our way! He said we’d pass through!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> He lied Bonnie.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> No… no we’re going the wrong way. We’re going the wrong way!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bonnie lashes out again, striking at Rob’s legs with her own. Rob holds her firmly, hit teeth gritted through every impact.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s clear that Bonnie isn’t going to let up. I run back to the Wrangler and open up the trunk. After a few moments of rummaging through my bag, I find the first aid kit and pull out an unopened pack of white zip ties.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Clyde, open the back door.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob sees me standing with the zip ties. Even in the midst of Bonnie’s incessant struggle, he looks at me with an almost questioning air, as if he’s wondering how we ever arrived at this point. As if he’s asking whether we can really do what I’m wordlessly suggesting.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bonnie answers the last question for him. In the slim few seconds of distraction, she slams her head back into his nose, eliciting a disgustingly loud thud and a pained growl from Rob. Dazed and confused, his nose immediately fountaining blood, Rob manages to keep his arms wrapped around her. But it’s clear this isn’t going to be sustainable, and that she isn’t anywhere close to calming down.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clyde has opened the door, stepping back and looking on like a frightened child as we carry Bonnie over to the back seat of the Ford. I lean in before him, adjusting the headrest until it’s pressed against the ceiling, ensuring that it can’t be removed from the bracket. I then loop a zip tie around each bracket and fasten them.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> What the fuck is going on?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay has stepped out of her car, making her way towards us. I realise that, to someone who is fighting to not believe in any of this, the following scene would appear at best as a melodramatic farce, and at worst, as the attempted detention of an innocent and distressed woman.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Sadly, I don’t have time to field her questions. I climb into the car. Bonnie working constantly against us as Rob eases her in after me, his hand on her head to prevent it bumping against the top of the doorframe.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Once she’s inside, I loop a second zip tie around the one I’ve already fastened on the right bracket, forcing her right hand inside it. I pull the plastic tab over the sleeve of her jumper.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I hope it’s not too tight, but at the very least it’s secure enough to keep her in place. Bonnie continues to pull against the zip ties, but it’s clear her strength has been sapped from her spirited battle with Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Not quite able to look her in the eye, I push a pile of luggage out of the way and climb out the other side of the Ford. Rob and I are both getting our breath back, the former pinching his nose and adjusting stoically to the fresh pain.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Hey what the fuck are… you’re not going to leave her like that are you?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Get back in your car Bluejay.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I walk back to the Wrangler, tuning out Denise’s coarse protests. Rob reaches into the Jeep’s still open trunk, and pulls out a pile of blankets and pillows. In the rear view mirror, I can see him placing them on Bonnie’s lap, giving her a place to rest her elbows.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">She leans her forehead against the back of the headrest. Even with her face blocked from view, I can tell that she’s crying.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We arrive at the rest stop some twenty minutes later, the vague outline of a deep green forest blooming on the horizon. It’s earlier in the day than we would usually stop. Rob tells us he wants the entirety of tomorrow to chart the woods, as well as good time to turn back before night fall should the need arise. I’m not complaining, I’m glad of the chance to rest up following today’s events.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">For the rest of the day, we take it in turns to keep an eye on Bonnie, making sure she has everything she needs. When the Ford pulled up alongside us, Lilith, Rob, and I expected to see a quivering wreck, tugging ceaselessly against her bonds. We were all surprised, and more than a little disturbed, to find her smiling. By the time my turn comes around, the sun is already dipping in the sky. Rob has prepared a small pot of miso soup in case anyone can bring themselves to eat. I finish my bowl, all too aware of how unnecessary each meal now feels, and pour out a helping for Bonnie.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I find her in good spirits.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> How are you doing Alice?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I’m fine. How are you doing Linda?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> I’m ok. Sorry for giving you all such a fright earlier. I feel terrible.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It’s fine honestly. I’m sorry about… about all this.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I gesture to the zip tied restraints. Rob has reapplied them, fastening bandages underneath the straps to afford Bonnie a modicum of comfort. Still the scene rings with a sinister barbarity which no kind consideration can make up for.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> It’s ok. I wasn’t myself.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I brought you soup. I know you might not be hungry.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> No no I’d love some, thank you. Everyone’s being so lovely.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Well, we just want to make sure you’re alright.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I submerge the spoon, drench up a measure of warm broth, and begin to raise it towards her.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> Oh no you don’t have to… I can feed myself…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">She gestures to her bound hands, the clear implication hanging in the air.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> No I… I don’t mind. I think it’s-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bonnie throws her weight sideways, her elbow jabbing outwards and hitting the bowl out of my hands. Soup spills over my fleece, just a little cooler than scolding hot, and soaks immediately into the fabric. I back away reflexively, and watch Bonnie’s expression flicker like a faulty lightbulb from kind tranquility to utter, burning contempt. It’s gone as quickly as it appears, just in time for the rest of the group to look our way.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> What are you doing with her?!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay storms across from her car, angrily drawing from a Marlboro and forcing the smoke draconically back into the air.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Nothing. Just an accident.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> It’s ok Bluejay, it was my mistake.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Did she get any on you?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay leans in placing her hand comfortingly on Bonnie’s, before turning to fix me with a murderous stare. It’s almost impressive how, even when caring for someone, Bluejay still manages to be simultaneously venomous to those around her.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> No no it’s ok it was my fault. It’s fine. I’m sorry for causing trouble.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay laughs at Bonnie’s submissive apology, unable to believe what she's thinking. Her eyes remain fixed on me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> You’re a fucking coward. Look what he’s making you do. Look!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My eyes follow where she gestures. I have to admit the helpless figure of Bonnie, restrained in the back seat of the Ford, rings with an innate inhumanity, and being forced to stare my actions in the face makes me feel utterly ghoulish.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The choices I’ve made must seem insane to Bluejay, but that doesn’t mean hers are not. Despite her pretensions of rationality, I can’t help but feel that Bluejay’s actions are simply being governed by a different insanity. An insanity borne out of the desperate need to explain the unexplainable, which has morphed into an ugly cocktail of paranoia, self-grandeur, and fervent antagonism.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay notes my silent expression, most likely taking it as a personal victory. Without another word she returns to her car and shuts herself inside, festering silently and alone.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> Do you want to know what’s wonderful Alice?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bonnie leans towards me, lowering her voice so no one else can hear.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> He told me there’s a house… waiting for me. My home by the sea.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I’m sorry Bonnie. I don’t think there is.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> It’s going to be a such a beautiful place. Such a beautiful place.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bonnie flashes me a broad grin.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> It’s been lovely knowing you Alice.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bonnie turns away from me, placing her forehead back on the headrest. The grin doesn’t fade as I turn away. I walk back to the Wrangler, faced with the choice of changing into new clothes or my thermal pyjamas.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">After removing my fleece and lying down for a just a moment, I end up sleeping in the clothes I’m wearing.</p><hr class="_2ACwpV3Y0LKhHHKbsxNmmY" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: 0px; border-image: initial; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 1px solid var(--newCommunityTheme-bodyTextAlpha20); color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; margin: 8px 0px;" /><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When I wake up, the Wrangler is moving.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The air mattress reverberates and my body rocks as we make a sharp U-turn. I sit bolt upright, Lilith waking up next to me, similarly bleary eyed and confused.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob is behind the wheel. The gear stick shakes as he transports us down the road at incredible speed.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob what’s happening?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Bonnie got herself free. She’s headed for the turn.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I pull myself into the passenger seat, suddenly wide awake.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> What? How did she get free?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Is she with Clyde?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> She hit him over the head, dragged him outta the car. I couldn’t wait for him, but he’s catchin’ up.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith and I turn around. Bluejay’s car is gaining on us, a distant pair of high beams steadily drowning the rear window in light.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Why’s Bluejay helping him?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> She probably wants to keep an eye on us. Rob, do you think we’ll catch up with Bonnie?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I’m workin’ on it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Wrangler continues to rocket through the darkness. We keep our eyes fixed forward, scanning the very edge of the horizon for any sign of Bonnie’s Ford.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When Bluejay pulls alongside us, I get a look at the pair. Bluejay is nought but steely determination, dedicated to reaching Bonnie before we do. Clyde looks mortified, rocked by his sister’s actions, a small contusion on his head to mark her vicious betrayal.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob screeches to a halt once we arrive at the junction. Bluejay’s headlights are already illuminating the road to Wintery Bay, and Rob’s lighting rig coats the entire area in an artificial twilight. In the middle of it all, we see Bonnie, standing next to her car, smiling.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">She’s already beyond the threshold of the turn.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Linda! Linda, please… come on back now, ok?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> You can all come with me. There’s a place for all of us. He told me. There’s a place for everyone.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Please Linda. You have to come back.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A strange trail of black dust is streaming off Bonnie’s skin, rising into the air and dancing in the breeze. After a moment, it becomes clear that the edges of Bonnie are slowly degrading, converting quietly into dark ash and drifting into the atmosphere.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> I love you very much Martin. You’re always welcome.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> No please… please.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bonnie turns around and climbs into the car. Without looking back, she pulls away down the road to Wintery Bay. The trail of black particles rise from the Ford as she goes, with greater and greater volume as the entire car starts to wither away before our eyes. Less than a minute later the Ford, with Bonnie inside it, gradually dissolves into dust and scatters to the winds.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clyde doesn't speak. His entire being is quiet. Lilith immediately runs back to the Wrangler. Rob waits a while, staring at he dancing cloud of dust, before putting his arm around Clyde and gently escorting him to the Jeep.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As I turn away from the road to Wintery Bay, I take note of Bluejay’s reaction. She looks absolutely petrified, more so than I’ve ever seen her. She impulsively removes the pack of Marlboros from her pocket and holds them in her hands, before quickly returning them, unsmoked.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The night passes slowly after we return to the rest stop. All of us are exhausted, and more than willing to surrender to the escapism of sleep. Rob rests in the driver’s seat, giving up his space on the air mattress to Clyde. Everyone drops quickly enough into a quiet slumber, leaving me awake with only my thoughts for company. I find myself thinking of Bluejay, of how she could possibly hope to rationalise the disintegration of Bonnie and her car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I wonder how I’d feel if the Left/Right Game were exposed as some unparalleled magic trick. Would I feel foolish? No I don’t think so. Impressed, maybe. Relieved? Most definitely. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I miss the innocent days when I believed the game was a hoax. I suppose I see why Bluejay is so adamant about dismissing this place; trickery however elaborate is almost always a preferable alternative to genuine horror.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Jeep’s door opens and shuts</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Part of me tries to ignore it, to wash my hands of any other developments in this harrowing night. However, exiled as I am from the kingdom of sleep, I slowly find myself sitting up, quietly putting on my boots, and letting myself out.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I step out into the cool night, observing the figure before me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Where are you going Clyde?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clyde turns to face me, I initially interpret the look he gives me as one of resignation, but the word doesn’t quite fit. Resignation is a defeat, the world exacting compliance from you against your own wishes. But the man before me is as calm as the night air around him. His wishes are clearly his own. There’s no defeat in his eyes, but something else entirely… peace, maybe.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> You know where I’m going Alice.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clyde speaks softly, a quiet conviction behind every word he says. I briefly glance towards the Wrangler, wondering if I’m really equipped to handle this on my own.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Don’t call Rob. I made a mistake coming back to the rest stop. I shouldn’t have done... please. Just let me go.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Clyde, just wait for tomorrow ok? He’ll understand. He’ll turn us around and take you home.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> It won't be home anymore.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clyde’s gentle stare renders me silent.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Linda had a husband once. He was a good man. Died young. She could never bring herself to go looking again and I… I never found who I was looking for. We’ve been by each other’s side for sixty years. Sixty years. I gotta be honest, even after all we’ve been through, everything you and I have seen, I never felt like I was in a new world until now.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I don’t think I can’t let you do this Clyde.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> I’m sorry Alice, but it’s not up to you.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clyde breathes in the cool night air, exhaling through his nose.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> I yelled at her to come back, when she ran off to rob that ice cream parlour. I kept calling out and calling out. I spent so much energy trying to get her to come back to me. After a while I realised she wasn’t coming back… that I’d have to follow her. I should’ve realised it earlier. That’s all I can do.... follow where she goes.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clyde looks at me, almost apologetically.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Goodbye Alice.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">He turns away from the convoy and wanders back down the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Clyde.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">He turns around one last time.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Do you want company?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It takes roughly an hour for us to walk back to the junction. In the time we have, I’m treated to the story of Bonnie and Clyde. The warmest fragments of their life together, the moments that built them, the waves that rocked them and the places they once called home. I don’t think I’ll ever agree with what Clyde is doing, but the more he talks, the more I understand.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">His stories span more than half a century, supported by a transient cast of acquaintances and friends, but at the core of each tale is a pair of siblings who meant the world to one another. The pair existed as two relative souls, quantifiable only in relation to each other. In the absence of one, the remnant was indefinable. A drifting point, unanchored in space.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The story ends just as we reach the junction</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I hope she's out there.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> I hope so too. Thank you for coming with me, I know it’s late.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> No… it’s never a bad time to see a friend off.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clyde smiles at me one last time before turning to face the road. He steps over the threshold, past the old wooden sign. In the silence of the night, I hear nothing but his soft footsteps and the quiet breeze, which after a few minutes carries the last of him into an open sky.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s a long walk back to the convoy. My mind is numb to fear as I make my way through the dark, the corn rustling in the wind beside me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s been four days since I arrived at Rob Guthard’s house, sat down at his table, and listened to him speak about the new world he’d discovered. In that time, I’ve seen things I can’t hope to comprehend, sights that exist beyond the spectrum of our reality. Things I wouldn't have deemed possible.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">For all I know there is a Wintery Bay, and Bonnie has already arrived at her house by the sea, standing at the door, waiting with quiet confidence for her brother’s arrival.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I may never know. But I do hope they find each other, wherever they may be.</p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-20431144379606366302020-08-17T21:38:00.003-07:002020-08-17T21:38:35.374-07:00The Left Right Game Part 5<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">The next morning, everything’s the same.</span></p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s strange. We’re usually so blind to the quiet consistency in our everyday lives, only really taking notice once something changes. Yet, as I stir a spiral of honey into my oatmeal and glance around the group, it’s the notable <em class="_7s4syPYtk5hfUIjySXcRE" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">lack</em> of change that truly stands out.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Since the previous evening, the atmosphere surrounding the convoy, and the demeanour of each member, doesn’t seem to have altered in the slightest. The night has fallen short in its role as a grand meridian, failing to partition the past and future, and bringing with it neither perspective nor closure. It’s as if yesterday has spilled, like a toppled brush pot, into the next morning, colouring everything with the same temperaments, fears and divisions.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith and Eve sit facing each other, their legs crossed on a plastic groundsheet. Neither are saying very much, albeit for vastly different reasons. Lilith is still preoccupied by her own smouldering indignation, whereas Eve looks overcome with a subtle but pervasive dread. Neither have taken food from Rob’s stove, a decision I suspect Lilith made for the both of them.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Apollo, Bonnie and Clyde are across from me. Apollo is making conversation, attempting to revive his usual good humour. Bonnie and Clyde help him out, laughing at his jokes, and smiling along with his stories.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay hasn’t stepped out of her car all morning, eating her own rations and maintaining a welcome distance from the rest of the group. Her eyes meet mine as I look her way, and I’m treated to a sharp, sardonic dismissal.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">And Rob? Rob is attending to the practicalities of the road; serving breakfast, then topping up the Wrangler from one of the hulking jerry cans. It’s clear the routine is comforting to him. I can easily imagine this is how he deals with a great many problems. Compartmentalising. Recasting himself as a blunt instrument engaged in a set of necessary processes. He’s made himself too busy for grief, and will likely remain so until the feeling fades.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As coping mechanisms go, it isn’t remotely healthy. I should know. I’m doing pretty much the exact same thing.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Clyde, could I get a few words?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clyde looks up from his food, a little surprised.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> You want me?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Hah, yeah… if that’s not too much trouble.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Oh no no, no trouble at all. You want to do it now? I’m not too hungry.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> No me neither. That would be great thank you. Would you mind if we moved away from the stove?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clyde nods keenly. Putting my bowl to one side, I take Clyde to the edge of the apple grove. Nobody looks after us.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> How are you holding up Bristol?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Getting there. How about you?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> I’m uhh… yeah I’m getting by.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> So can I ask… why did you choose Bonnie and Clyde as your call signs?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Hah well it came pretty easy. We used to play outlaws when we were kids, one time Bonnie stuck up a bank.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Really?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Well, no it was an ice cream parlour. But Bonnie was pretending it was a bank and then she ran in, holding her hand like a gun. Told Mrs Gilford it was a stick-up.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Wow, that doesn’t seem like her.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Oh no she was a wild child. Always living in a story. Anyway, we got free sundaes and a new nickname in town after that. When Rob told us about the call signs it was the first thing we thought of.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It’s a good choice.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I pause, letting the previous subject fade before launching into the next one. All things considered, this may be the last time me and Clyde are on such casual speaking terms.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Bonnie told me she talked to the hitchhiker.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clyde’s disposition shifts. There’s sudden alertness that wasn’t there before, rushing to the fore in immediate response to my words. In the following silence, at the centre of his wide eyed stare, an educated guess suddenly becomes much more.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Wh.. when did she tell you?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I’m sorry Clyde… she didn’t. You just did.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can almost see the stone fall in Clyde’s throat. The deep, burning embarrassment and hurt that comes from being deceived, from a close secret you held getting out into the world. I don’t feel exceptional either. Lying to Clyde, bringing him away from Bonnie under the guise of an interview… beyond the personal abhorrence, it also flies in the face of everything I’ve tried to be as a journalist.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clyde can’t bring himself to talk, so I press forward.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I think it might be best if you call Bonnie over here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Nodding vaguely, Clyde wordlessly shuffles back to Bonnie, whispering in her ear. She puts a hand on his shoulder and helps herself up. Whatever he’s told her, she doesn’t seem angry as she joins us beneath the shade of the apple trees.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> I didn’t want to cause any trouble, a… and Clyde’s been looking forward to this trip for so long I didn’t want us to turn back. I’m sorry.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> What happened Bonnie?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> I just said two words. I wasn’t talking to him; I was doing what Rob said but then he… I just said “Bless you.” That’s all it was.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> That’s it?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> Well I… he thanked me and then he was just… so easy to talk to and I thought, “Well I’ve already talked to him, what will a few more words do?”</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> She hardly said anything else.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> What about him? Did he say anything?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bonnie starts to smile, the same way she did last night. A dreamy, enthused expression glowing with reminiscent joy.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> He told me about this wonderful place. Wasn’t it wonderful Martin?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Bonnie-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> Just a few houses by the sea, but he made it sound so nice.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Bonnie, please…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> What’s wrong? I can talk about it right?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When I look back to Clyde, his lips are firmly pressed together, his facial muscles tight. He’s holding something back, but what slips through betrays a poignant dismay.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> It’s all you talk about Bonnie. You… you mentioned it a few times after… and since Jubilation you ain’t stopped.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Are you guys talking about Wintery Bay?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clyde grimaces, and Bonnie grins, when they hear the name.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Bonnie are we heading there?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> The hitchhiker said it’s on our way. I’m so looking forward to seeing it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can’t say I feel the same, and it’s safe to say Clyde agrees with me. Before now, I’d only heard Bonnie mention Wintery Bay on two occasions, but it sounds like she’s talked about it a whole lot more. I sympathise with Clyde for what he’s had to deal with. However, the gross irresponsibility of his actions aren’t lost on me either.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Does Rob know?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> I didn’t want to-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You didn’t want to trouble him? Or did you just not want him to turn you around?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> I’m alright, really.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Well either way, you need to tell Rob before we hit the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clyde shuffles uncomfortably.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I’m not going to do it for you. But too much has happened on this trip already. Ace is… this place is dangerous ok? There’s no place for lies any more.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I hope that Clyde doesn’t see the irony, given that I’ve roundly deceived him in the past five minutes. He nods, takes Bonnie’s hand, and walks slowly towards the Wrangler. Rob is loading the last of the fold up chairs into the back of the car. The conversation doesn’t last long, but by the end of it, Rob rests his hand on Bonnie’s shoulder and sends them on their way. He doesn’t look mad. Perhaps he just has other things on his mind.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">That’s the second thing I’ve done today that’s inherently non-journalistic. I was supposed to be a fly on the wall for this story, a passenger, recording events with objective detachment without my own influence seeping into proceedings. In many ways I wish I still was. But the stakes are higher now, and though secrets make for good editorial, they’re also potentially damaging to the safety of the group. Following the incident with Ace, I’m slightly less concerned with an unbiased story than I am with getting home to tell it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob looks like he’s about to make his morning address. The group wanders over, some more reluctantly than others, and gathers around the Wrangler.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> First things first, I want to say that… well… tempers got a little heated last night, and that I’m sorry for my part in all that. I wanna thank you for coming with me this far, and if you wanna turn back, well that’s just fine.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The group stays quiet.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> If you are headin’ back. I’d say if you travel one by one, be sure to stay on the radios, retrace the route and follow all the rules that applied when you were gettin’ here. Now can I get a show of hands, who’s wantin’ to <em class="_7s4syPYtk5hfUIjySXcRE" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">keep goin’</em> on the road?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I observe my compatriots closely. The definites will be Bonnie & Clyde, who have already implied that they want to continue, and also Bluejay, who feels she has nothing to worry about from the road. Apollo is in the wind, and Lilith & Eve are probably a split vote. All in all, this could be the moment our convoy splits in half.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay throws her hand up lazily. Bonnie and Clyde, predictably, raise theirs. Apollo raises his a few moments later.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Hey, I’ve come this far.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">That leaves Lilith and Eve. After sharing a brief glance with her friend, Lilith raises her hand and Eve follows suit, albeit with an air of trepidation.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m surprised that no one’s turning back, after everything that happened yesterday, but it’s clear everyone has their own reasons. I’m just glad I don’t have to say goodbye to anyone. I set about trying to divine everyone’s motives for continuing on the road, but I quickly stop when I realise everyone’s looking at me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Oh sorry. Yeah I’m in... I’m going… that way.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I gesture to the road ahead and raise my hand redundantly.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Well ok. I guess that’s everyone then. We got a fair way to travel today but there ain’t much to see. Just follow the rules and take things as they come I guess.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As we pull out, I start to feel a little restless. The sedentary nature of travel is beginning to take its toll, and I’m starting to feel overfamiliar with the Wrangler’s passenger seat. I’m glad that I got a chance to stretch my legs last night.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rolling, Elysian corn fields span the roadside for the next five hours. Turns are few and far between, but Rob’s attention never wavers. I only manage to grasp his attention briefly.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Aren’t Jeeps supposed to have poor fuel economy?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> They ain’t the best. That’s why I always bring gas along.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It’s just… the fuel gauge has hardly moved since we left this morning.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Haha. You noticed that huh? I was wonderin’ if you were gunna.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Why, what have you done to it?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Nuthin’. It’s the road. Makes fuel burn slower.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Seriously?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ain’t just that either. You finish your food this mornin’?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> No… why?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Hardly anyone did, ‘cept Apollo. More you go, less you need to keep goin’.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Ok… wait you said the road pushes against you.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Yep.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> But now you’re making it sound like it’s helping us along.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Yep.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> So it’s hostile whilst also incentivising us? That sounds odd to me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Sounds like life to me. Reasons to stop, reasons to keep goin’.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I suppose that makes sense. Despite his well-documented obsession with the secrets of the road, Rob seems to have a strangely laissez faire attitude to its internal logic. It’s like the road doesn’t need to make perfect sense to him, or at least he doesn’t expect it to yet.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As the fresh rural air drifts in through the windows, I lose myself in the hypnotic endlessness of the passing fields. I wonder how many eyes have seen these vistas. I wonder where we are, not geographically, but in a grander sense. Are we still in the world as I know it? Are we beyond it? Below it? Or have we just slipped through the cracks, into some intermediate domain?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob slows the car down to a crawl, a precaution he takes before most corners. My eyes wander gently back into the Wrangler, finally resting on the rear view.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s something behind us. A humanoid figure, shrouded in the soft focus of considerable distance. It staggers quickly toward the convoy, unsure on its own feet.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob what is that?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob follows my gaze to the rear view mirror. His brow furrows.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Somethin’ new.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob grabs the receiver. Before he can make an announcement, the speaker splutters with static, followed by Eve’s frantic voice.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> Guys there’s something behind us... guys? Something’s coming after us. Bluejay can you see it?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay doesn’t answer. I doubt she considers it worth her time. A squealing panic rings out over the radio as Eve calls again.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> Is it from Jubilation? Guys? Guys?!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Stay calm everyone. Let’s pick up the pace a little.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob lets his foot rest heavier on the gas. The Wrangler gently accelerates, with the rest of the convoy eagerly matching our speed.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Who is that Rob?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I ain’t so sure, but we got a turn coming up. Let’s just get ourselves off the road, see if he follows.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The figure continues to stumble towards us. Its arms hang crookedly in the air and, as it comes into sharper focus, I can just make out that there’s something wrong with its face.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> Guys speed up, please. Please.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Calm down.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> It’s coming for us!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can sympathise with Eve’s panic. I’ve had the luxury of travelling at the head of the convoy. I was the first across when that godforsaken pine was dropped across the road. Eve is now second to last, relying on three other cars to make their escape before she can follow. Ace had to wait for the rest of us, and it cost him everything. Now Eve & Lilith are one car closer to being where he was.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> It’s face. Oh my god! Oh my god. Guys please!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Jesus, shut up!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Hey that is NOT helping. Rob it’s movin’ pretty fast we-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> We stay the course. It ain’t caught up yet just-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> Oh god. Oh god, oh GOD!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob’s warnings are cut short by the screeching of tires. Eve swerves out of the convoy’s neat, single file line, and onto the empty stretch of road beside us. The car accelerates past Bonnie & Clyde. Past Apollo.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I get a brief glimpse of Eve & Lilith as our windows align.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith is yelling at Eve, trying to get her to calm down. Eve is screaming into the air, the puppet of her own frenetic terror. The car shoots past us and down the long road ahead. Rob swears and picks up the radio.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The figure continues to lurch towards us.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ferryman to Eve & Lilith. Stop the car right now.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Eve slow down!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Eve goddamnit you’re gonna-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I stare through the windshield as their car stops. Not a slow, grinding deceleration, but an unequivocal, immediate halt. Their bodies are thrown forwards against the safety glass as the car becomes utterly motionless.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob what’s happening?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I told’em to be careful!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Why what’s-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I no longer need an answer. I realise that it’s written right in front of me, etched into the side of the road. A brief gap in the endless rows of golden corn, only a little wider than the Wrangler itself. A dirt track the leads off to the left, about ten metres ahead of us, about fifteen metres behind Lilith & Eve. I now understand why Rob was being so careful, and why Eve should have been as well.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">They’ve missed the next turn.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ferryman to all cars. I’ve found the turn, let’s make it quick. Eve and Lilith you stay in the car. I’m coming back to get you both.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob flicks on his turn signal, preparing the group for the sharp left corner, and slams his foot on the accelerator. Lilith and Eve disappear behind a wall of corn as we pull down the dirt track. Rob keeps driving, until enough space is left for the rest of the group.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Once they’re all safely pulled in, Rob climbs into the back of the car, grabs his rifle and jumps out onto the path. I quickly climb out and follow behind him.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When we arrive on the main road, the figure has covered a considerable distance, finally drawing near enough for me to see what’s wrong with its face. At a certain point, midway across the crown of the head, running in a straight line down past the cheeks and under the jaw, the head simply stops. It’s like the foremost section of his skull has been sliced cleanly off, and has bent inwards, his entire face concave and shrouded completely in a deep shadow. A ghastly, organic hood, that seems deeper than physics should allow.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">That isn’t all that’s wrong with the picture however. The man’s outstretched arms are bent in several places. Dark purple contusions blossom at every unnatural joint as if his arms had been broken multiple times. His leg is also bent to one side, the reason for the irregular walk that still carries him towards us.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob looks shaken as he raises the rifle to his shoulder, bidding the figure turn around.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The man ignores Rob’s demand, continuing its march. Even when a bullet hits it square in the chest, the figure hardly slows down. We’re forced to jump out of the way as it continues down the road, Eve and Lilith cowering in their locked car as it approaches.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Fear shifts into confusion as the creature passes them by, and continues down the road. It’s as if it doesn’t even know we’re here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob breathes a sigh of relief, lowers the gun, and runs back to the rest of the convoy. The moment he leaves, my mind notes something peculiar. It’s an utterly bizarre observation, especially considering the many otherworldly facets of the retreating creature, there’s something familiar about it. Specifically, its fashion sense.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The shirt, the dirt covered jeans. They aren’t dissimilar to the ones I found in the brown leather duffel bag, resting atop the block of C4.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Reaching into my pocket, pulling out my phone, I scroll through my list of contacts. As the man heaves himself down the road, I call the second number I discovered last night. The one in the Nokia’s received calls list. The number that likely belonged to whoever created the bomb, and whoever was driving the car that day.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">After a few moments, a ringtone disrupts the creature’s silent walk. I end the call, realising how reckless I’ve been and praying that the strange figure doesn’t see my action as an excuse to turn around.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m lucky, this time at least. The dial tone cuts out, and the figure continues to stumble its way toward the horizon.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The next thing I hear is a scream.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Scanning for its source, I see Eve, her door open and with one foot out of the car. She’s frantically pulling at her leg, seemingly unable to lift it from the tarmac.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Eve what’s going on?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">With shaking fingers, Eve clumsily unties her shoelace, and lifts her leg back into the car. Her boot stays in place, and it’s possible to make out a slight elasticity to the road below it, a depression in the tarmac around its base. Slowly, and steadily, the sole of the boot disappears into the road. Eve watches as the dark tarmac slowly sucks the boot down, enveloping the heel and dragging it beneath the surface.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The thought comes to Eve the same moment it does to me. We both fix our eyes on the back of the car, where same, soft indent is gradually developing around the tyres.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Eve’s terrified scream is drowned out by the blare of revving engines. I jump out of the way as the rest of the convoy reverse out of the corner and back onto the main road. Bluejay, Bonnie & Clyde, Apollo and finally Rob, park themselves chaotically around me. Rob jumps out and approaches.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> They ain’t pulled back yet?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As soon as he asks the question, he sees the sight before him. Only the neck of Eve’s boot remains above the ground, sinking ever further into the tarmac. The road gradually but voraciously churns at the car tyres, consuming the rubber, and swallowing the lowest edge of the wheel cover.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In the midst of such an impossible sight, all I can say to Rob is:</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> They’re trying.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith & Eve hit the gas hard. The engine growls at the road as it furiously attempts to reverse, the undercarriage creaking and groaning from the sheer mechanical strain. The wheels themselves, however, don’t rotate an inch. The tyres belong to the road now, taken by the unknowable forces that continue to drag them into the earth.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The engine chokes, defeated, and I can see Eve screaming into her fists as the roadway calmly continues its work.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Goddamn it we can’t reach’em. Tell’em to get on top of the car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> What the… What’s happening Rob?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Bristol! Tell’em to get on the roof!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob marches off to the Wrangler. The rest of the convoy gather on the road, just in line with the left turn, where we assume it’s safe to stand. Everyone, saving for Bluejay, looks on in anxious silence.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Eve! Lilith! I need you to get on top of the car ok? Guys?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> We’re sinking! Oh fuck… oh fuck we’re-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Eve! I’m trying to help you. Rob’s working on something, but you need to climb onto the roof of the car. Don’t think about anything else. Open the door, wind down your window and use it as a foothold.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Eve is still deaf with worry. Lilith doesn’t hesitate. She places one hand on the upper rim of her open door, one foot on the base of the open window, and her free hand palm down on the car’s roof. The door rocks on its hinges as she puts her weight on it. In one strong motion, she pushes herself backwards until she’s sitting atop the car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The tarmac has swallowed its way to the car’s lower chassis. Eve stares, transfixed by the road as it pulls her ever closer towards it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Sarah look at me!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith is crouching on the car’s roof, her hand reaching down to Eve. Her friends voice seems to be the only thing that can break Eve’s fearful commune with the waiting abyss. She turns around, Lilith’s hand a few inches from her face.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Get up here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Her eyes brimming with tears, fought back by rapid, shallow breaths, Eve grabs Lilith’s hand. Lilith gets a solid handhold around the lip of her own doorway and heaves Eve up and onto the roof of the car. Eve shrieks a little as the door swings, putting all her trust into Lilith’s grip.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">She joins her friend on the roof just as the road consumes the lower edge of the door, spilling inside the car’s cabin like magma.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Damnit they’re too far away.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob has returned from the Wrangler, rapidly uncoiling a braid of long, light blue climber’s rope. I’d seen it resting in the back of the car during the trip, never once thinking that I’d see it used.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob threads one end of the rope through a carabiner and secures it in place with a tight knot. He holds it to his side as he shouts to Lilith & Eve.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ok listen, we only got one shot at this. I’m gonna throw you the hook and you’re gonna catch it and yank it taut ok? Then you can hook it onto somethin’ and climb your way over. Don’t let it fall. Ok?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith looks pale. She nods before clambering to her feet, and stepping to the back of the car. Eve watches on, her hands wrapped around her legs.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Well, here goes nothin’.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob begins to swing the rope over his head, a large undulating circle that quickly levels out as the weight of the carabiner eases the rope onto a flat plane. I instinctively shrug down as the rope passes over my head, swinging faster and faster. Gritting his teeth, his face reddening with the towering pressure of this single throw, Rob lets the rope fly. It arcs in the air, like a cast fishing line, towards Lilith’s outstretched hands.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I watch it pass in front of her, the metal of the carabiner glinting in the sun as it falls.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">She catches it, grasping the rope in her shaking hands.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Despite her victory, I see her face contort with sudden and striking panic. She holds the rope high over her head, staring wildly down at the road between us. Following her eyes, my heart falls. She caught the rope, but she didn’t pull it taut fast enough.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Even with Rob continuing to hold his end above his head, the rope had too much slack when it landed in Lilith’s hands. It’s fallen in a sloping arc, the lowest point of which has scraped against the tarmac. It only rests a few precious seconds before Lilith finds herself unable to pull it free. It sinks into the ground. The rope starts to brush gently against Rob’s fingers before he throws it to the ground.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Goddamnit! Ok… if I just got somethin’ else. Somethin’ we can put down.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> The empty jerry cans? They could step on-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Too unstable, and we’d have to throw them perfect. Ok… ok.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The road has claimed almost half the car now, eating up the licence plate as the vehicle sinks lower and lower. Lilith looks helplessly on as we deliberate, Eve crying her eyes out behind her.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> We could get a ground sheet.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> We ain’t got one that’ll stretch.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Well what about-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> I’m going out there.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Apollo’s blank statement catches us all by surprise. Turning in his direction, I note a direct and powerful confidence in his manner.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> They aren’t gonna last much longer. It takes a second for the road to get you, that’s how they got so far ahead before they stopped. I drive out, they jump onto my car, then we climb back.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I ain’t got more rope.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> You got the winch right? If I drive out with it bunched up on my lap I can make sure it never goes slack. Then I hook it up to my roof bars and we get the hell outta dodge.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> You got the best car for it. But I should drive out there.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> You need to work the winch. Bonnie & Clyde can’t climb back.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">He skips over his rationale for not choosing Bluejay, not wanting to waste time on a foregone conclusion.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> What about me? I’m lighter, the climb back would be easier.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> But you can’t help them when they’re jumping over. We’re wasting time, you know it’s a good idea.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob takes a moment to consider it, his mind fighting for a better solution.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> You’d better get back here Apollo.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Don’t plan on hanging around there Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Apollo grins before sprinting to his Rover. Rob, wasting no time, runs to the winch, switches it to manual, and unspools the heavy duty rope. His hands cross over as he drops each new length onto the ground.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I turn back to Lilith.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Did you hear that Lilith?!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith is huddled next to Eve, attempting to comfort her as the car’s headlights disappear into the depths of the road. Her head snaps round when I call.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> What’s… what’s happening?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Apollo’s coming out to you. You have to jump onto his car and climb back over ok?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> … Ok!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">She hurries back to Eve, grasping her friend’s shoulders as she relays the plan.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ok that’ll hold.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob’s climbing down from the hood of the Wrangler. He’s fed the winch cable around and through the lighting rig, ensuring a good level of clearance on the way out and, more importantly, for the climb back. The rope has already been fed through Apollo’s driver’s side window.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bonnie and Clyde are helping to throw Apollos’ baggage out of the trunk and onto the rode behind him. The less he has to lose on this trip the better.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> All set up over here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Ok. See you on the other side Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Apollo slams his foot onto the accelerator. The Range Rover bolts forwards, and powers toward the threshold. The engine roars as he rockets past the left turn and keeps on going, into the territory beyond. In the few precious seconds he has, he crosses the distance towards the two terrified girls. The winch rope streams through the window, and then suddenly, pulls tight.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Apollo is thrown forwards as the car comes to an uncompromising stop, roughly a metre’s distance from Lilith & Eve. The impact looks brutal, but Apollo somehow manages to keep a hold on the rope and, inexplicably, his sense of humour.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> I don’t think I got the insurance for this.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Clumsily, still feeling the aftereffects of the sudden stop, Apollo throws open his door and starts to climb out.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Take in the slack Rob!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My attention fixed on Apollo, I hear the mechanical whir as the winch kicks into life. As Apollo climbs out of his car and up onto the roof, he affixes the hook at the end of the winch to one of his roof bars, securing it in place. A few moments later, the rope is pulled straight.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Apollo steps down onto the hood of his car, his arms outstretched to the girls. It’s a short jump, but they’ll have to make it from a lower elevation, the trunk of the car already sinking to ground level.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Ok come on I got you, we’ve got to move fast now.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith stands up, helping Eve to her feet before stepping down onto the rapidly disappearing trunk.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Ok… ok…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith yelps as she throws herself towards Apollo. Her front foot plants itself on the hood of the car, her other leg flailing in the air behind her. Apollo grabs her by the arms and yanks her onto the car, holding her close to him as she gets her bearing on the smooth metal of the hood. When she’s stable, he lets her crawl up onto the roof, where she immediately looks back to Eve.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> See Eve, nothin’ to it. Come on now.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Eve paces back, her hands shaking as she contemplates the jump. Fighting against her screaming instincts, Eve squeals as she steps across the trunk and makes the leap across. The toe of her shoe lifting off the car mere seconds before it descends into the murky, black pitch of the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Eve lands short of her destination. One desperate, grasping arm makes contact with Apollo’s as her legs bang and scrape against the Rover’s grill, scrambling for any conceivable purchase. Apollo is wrenched sideways by the force of Eve’s landing, thrown off balance by the unexpected application of her whole weight. In the gut churning moments that follow, Apollo tugs Eve up to his chest and wraps an arm around her, his centre of gravity passing over the edge of the car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The fall takes a lifetime. Wrapped in each other’s arms, Eve and Apollo tumble forward towards the patient, ravenous ground. In the split second before he leaves the hood of the car, Apollo uses his last inch of footing to push himself into a slow turn. The twist continues as they fall, until Eve is looking to the road, Apollo to the pale blue sky. In one final action, Apollo pushes Eve’s waist, holding her at arms length.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Apollo’s back thuds into the asphalt, his head smacking audibly against it. Dazed and concussed, he manages to hold Eve aloft, keeping everything but her feet from joining him on the hard ground.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Get back up… quickly get back up.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Her face shredded by fear and guilt and sorrow, Eve stares into Apollo’s eyes and whimpers. Collecting herself, she pushes herself off him, ripping out her laces, and leaving a shoe and a sock behind as she clambers back on to the Range Rover. With every movement she whispers a quivering apology.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> It’s ok. It’s ok. Go on. It’s ok.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">He repeats those two words over and over, until I’m not even sure who he’s talking to. The road elasticates around him, dragging him down into its depths. Eve looks back to him, her face cringing in misery.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bonnie buries her face in Clyde’s chest, unable to watch the next few moments unfold.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> It’s… it’s alright. Just get going ok? It doesn’t hurt… it doesn’t hurt, really.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Apollo’s ears sink beneath the road. Entering a new world of perfect silence, Apollo sees the end nearing.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Oh god. Rob! ROB!!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I won’t play his final moments, for your benefit and, ultimately, for his. Before he sinks into the road, Apollo asks for Rob to talk to his family. He wants Rob to tell them that he loves them. Rob nods, knowing that Apollo won’t be able to hear his response.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">After a few cries of panicked despair, Apollo’s eyes and mouth are enveloped by the road. His screams are drowned by the thick, churning asphalt.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Eve watches the rest of his body sink, while Lilith tugs at her sleeve, pulling her towards the roof.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Come on we’ve got to go. Sarah we’ve got to go!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> I’m sorry.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Whispering one last heartfelt apology to the air itself, Eve steps up with Lilith and stares at the cable.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Ok guys just let yourself down until you’re hanging from the rope and work your way across.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> I got it! You ready?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Eve looks to her friend.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> I… I don’t…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Just watch me ok? Follow right behind me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Range Rover’s wheels have now disappeared. With every passing second, the cable’s clearance diminishes, and the angle between the roof bar and the Wrangler’s lighting rig becomes steeper. They need to start moving now or not at all.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Eve looks across the length of the rope. I can feel her mind kicking back at the prospect.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> I can’t.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Sarah… we fucking have to ok? Follow behind me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith wraps her arms around Eve, hugging her stiff, shivering frame, before letting go and crouching down to the rope, slowly working her way under it. Her hands clenching the cable, her legs wrapped securely around it, Lilith starts to pull herself along the rope, shifting her feet up every few seconds behind her. She fixes her eyes on me as she drags herself to the halfway mark.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Is she following?!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The asphalt swallows the Range Rover’s lower chassis. Eve hasn’t moved a muscle. The stretch of black tarmac might as well be a bottomless ravine, the Grand Canyon. The idea of hanging herself over it mortifies her.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Sarah! Sarah it’s not as bad as it looks, please! Please come on.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith crosses the threshold. Her knuckles are white as she continues to cling to the rope. Rob marches up to her and helps her down into his arms, coaxing her hands free by telling her that she’s safe.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As soon as her feet hit the ground again, they give way beneath her, and Lilith sinks to the ground crying out.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Sarah! Come on please!!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> I can’t! I can’t… I…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Please Sarah… I need you here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Her shallow breaths quaking with anxiety, Eve slowly crouches down and grips the rope. Slowly but surely, as the asphalt consumes the car’s licence plate less than a metre below her, Eve lowers herself down and, with clumsy desperation, drags herself along the rope.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">She’s left it late. Her back hangs mere inches from the hungry ground as she shuffles unevenly towards us, lifting her feet and scraping them up the rope, her arms straining to stay locked.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> I’m not going to make it!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> You are! Keep going!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Range Rover’s window is now disappearing, inside the dashboard has been submerged. With every yard that Eve manages to climb, the lowering rope ensures she stays close to the ground, even over the final few feet.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My heart breaks the moment her foot slips.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It happens almost too quickly to register. As Eve erratically shuffles her feet along the rope, her bare left foot gives way, swinging underneath her and kicking down onto the ground. Eve tries to raise it in time before discovering that she can’t.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> No… no no no please.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Thrown entirely off balance, Eve tries to pull herself up. However, with her lower leg seeping into the dark tar, her position can’t be maintained. She falls, her body twisting, as she falls onto the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith releases a terrible shrieking cry. Eve whimpers as the side of her head rests against the tarmac, her cheek already subsumed.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> I’m sorry. I’m sorry.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> No. No. Please don’t be sorry.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> I.. love you. I love y… you Jen.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> I love you too… I’m sorry I didn’t… I’m so sorry.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Eve tries to reply, but half of her mouth is sealed shut, encased in the creeping asphalt. Her short breaths finally melt into one long inhalation, as her nose and mouth are sunk entirely.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">One remaining eye takes a final, fleeting look at Lilith, before vanishing.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I look away from what is still to sink. The important things are already gone.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith collapses on her knees, a screaming of torrent of grief expelled from her burning lungs. Rob is completely immobile, likely searching for something practical in which to bury himself. Bonnie & Clyde simply look lost, as they turn their backs on the sinking Range Rover.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay’s reaction surprises me. She stares into the tarmac, the smirk ripped from her face, replaced by a familiar look of shellshock. She repeatedly mutters something under her breath, something that sounds like:</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">“It’s not real… It’s not real.”</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We stand in silence for what seems like an age, accompanied by the breeze and Lilith’s gradually waning laments. After she’s exorcised the immediate torment, her screaming descends into a deathly stillness.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob makes the first step to approach her.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I… I can take you back home if you want to-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> No... No.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith wipes her eyes, as tears continue to fall freely down her cheeks. When she turns around, she looks enraged.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> No. I’m still going. I’m going to get to the end.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> You know I can’t tell you when that’ll be.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith stands up and glares at Rob, then looks over to Bonnie & Clyde.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Are you guys still going? Do you have a seat free?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The siblings look to one another. Bonnie nods.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> You got a place with us if you want it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Is the door unlocked?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Uhh yeah.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Then what the fuck are we waiting around for?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith marches to Clyde’s Ford and climbs into the back seat. She waits for us impatiently to finish up.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Anyone else want to turn around?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob looks to me and Bluejay. Bluejay sends a look of deep scorn his way before marching off to her own car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Bristol?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Range Rover has finally sunk. The road has settled back into a hard, permanent surface. It isn’t like Rob to offer me a ride home, and I feel overwhelmingly like I should take him up on it. But there are too many questions unanswered, too many unchallenged mysteries weaved into the fabric of this journey. Going back now wouldn’t be a return, it would be a retreat.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I’m still going.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A few minutes later, the three remaining cars roll down the dirt track. Leaving another incomprehensible atrocity behind us. There’s a part of me that can’t believe I’m still continuing down this road, a greater part of me is astonished that no one took the opportunity to turn back.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As Rob carries me on to the next turn, and the one after that, I realise we all have our reasons. I’d become obsessed with chasing the truth, as had Bluejay in her way. Bonnie had her own, unsettling motives for carrying on, and Clyde wasn’t about to abandon her. Lilith had directed her smouldering anger and grief toward the road itself, seeking deliverance at its end. And Rob? As far as he’s concerned, there’s only one direction to go.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Still, when I think of the sorrows that have already befallen us, and the potential for unspeakable ruin that lies ahead, I realise that no one in their right mind would continue down this road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I suppose no one is.</p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-45335022064148351172020-08-17T21:38:00.000-07:002020-08-17T21:38:02.100-07:00The Left Right Game Part 4<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">(Possible Opening) (I want to address you, the listener, for a moment, with an advance notice concerning the following episode. I’m sure it’s not been lost on you that every installment of the series so far has played host to some strange, unexplainable occurrence, and spanned a great many miles of travel. It goes without saying this has been by design. I’ve been summarising the countless hours of uneventful meandering and taking extra care to document the strange phenomena we’ve encountered along the way. I wanted the story to be fast moving, to have a real feel of progress with every chapter.</span></p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">If that sense of exploratory intrigue is why you’re listening to this show, I completely understand. I’m certain it’s a primary draw for almost all of you; the twists, the turns, the mysterious, strange encounters along an impossible road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">But if that is the case, I feel it’s my duty to inform you that, apart from a few notable exceptions, there will be almost no ground covered in this segment, and the monsters we encounter will be all too human; stress, divisiveness, discomfort and, as one might imagine, grief.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">If you want to read the synopsis of this episode on the website and wait for the next part, then you’ll be all caught up and I’m sure we’ll be back on our way, heading once more into the great unknown. But I feel it’s important to give the aftermath of Ace’s capture its own episode, in part due to the significance of the revelations that are unearthed in its wake, but also as a gesture of deference to the man we lost.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">This is the story of our second night on the road.)</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As we make the left turn, the horrifying space behind us is quickly replaced by a quiet emptiness ahead. The Wrangler crawls, defeated, toward the waiting convoy. The remaining four cars are parked haphazardly, taking up more than half the road. Rob drifts to the far end of the tarmac, looking to overtake and resume formation. Both of his hands rest on the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on some distant point in space. It’s not hard to imagine that behind the focus and the quiet control, there’s a man in turmoil, a man who can’t bring himself to say anything, in fear of saying too much.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> This is Bristol to all cars. We’re heading back on the road. Get yourselves in formation and make way for those around you. We’ve got a while to drive before we stop for the night.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Bristol where’s Ro… Ferryman?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Ferryman’s here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Where’s Ace?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Ace is… Ace didn’t make it across.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Uhh what?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> What the fuck? Bristol where is he?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It would be simple to describe what had taken place, or at least summarise the barest facts; what happened to Ace, where he is now, why he isn’t coming back. But for some reason, I can’t utter a word about what's transpired. Something about the event itself makes it impossible to retell, as if the requisite phrases have been locked behind glass.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> We need to get to the stopping point. It isn’t safe to stay here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Shortly after we’d turned the corner out of Sycamore Row, Rob implied that the rest of the days’ drive would be uneventful. Had he waited just a few minutes longer, he would have been entirely correct. We’re on the road for another four hours, both of us quietly attending to our own preoccupations as the forest gradually thins out. The landscape gives way to rolling cornfields, that stretch out beyond the horizon on both sides.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Nothing notable happens, which is ironic, as I find myself typing up a lot more notes than I need.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">With the sun descends through an orange sky as we pull into a clearing, beside a wild grove of apple trees. Rob turns off the ignition and the two of us sit in silence. Rob’s need to concentrate on driving had been a good excuse to stay quiet, a good excuse to not face each other. Now the wheels aren’t turning however, and the true reason for our mutual reticence is all too clear.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Do you think he’s dead?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I don’t know.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob’s response isn’t reassuring, and I’m oddly grateful for that. There are no comforting words he can give me, and any attempt would have seemed horrifically insincere, a mockery of the situation’s onerous gravity. Anyway, given the circumstances of Ace’s capture, I’m not even sure which answer I want to hear.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith appears at my window, rapping her knuckles against the glass with an aggressive impatience. I’d expect nothing less about now. Everyone in the convoy has been made to follow a unilateral order, my order, without explanation. They’ve been travelling for hours accompanied by the glaring absence of another human being. Looking in the wing mirror, I glimpse the rest of the convoy, standing by their cars, watching the Wrangler expectantly.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob’s hands still haven’t left the wheel.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">With a sharp intake of breath, I push the door open and step out onto the grass. The ground is soft below me as I walk over to the group. There’s recently been rain. I begin to address the rough semicircle, it almost feels like one of Rob’s briefings.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> What’s happening Bristol?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Did Ace turn back?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I meet Apollo’s eye. For the briefest of moments, I consider telling them all exactly that. Maybe it would save them from the slow, heavy ache that’s currently weighing down my chest. Maybe it would just save me from a difficult conversation. Either way, I know I can't lie to them. They deserve the truth, however unpleasant.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> No he didn’t turn back; they crippled his car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> The tow truck? Did he get out?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The answer doesn't come easily. I’m being pressed to say the words aloud and, in doing so, to fully acknowledge what happened. It feels like I’m being driven to a funeral, like I’m being verbally marched towards an open casket.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> What happened to him?... Bristol…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> He’s dead, Eve.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I hadn’t heard Rob step out of the car when he reaches the group. It’s hard to hide my relief as he takes over proceedings, addressing the group matter-of-factly. Now it really <em class="_7s4syPYtk5hfUIjySXcRE" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">is</em> like one of his briefings.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Two guys in the tow truck coming outta Jubilation. They got him. They took him back with them to the town. Way they were treatin’ him he won’t last long.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> Oh goodness…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> What? Rob what’re they going to do to him?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I can’t tell you. Nothing like this ever happened before.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Well we need to go back.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> That ain’t gonna happen.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> We’re not going to fucking abandon him.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Lilith…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> We’re going back!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> No we’re not.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Me and Rob can go. You know the place right Rob?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> The kid’s dead Apollo.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> But he was alive when you last saw him?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB</span> That’s right.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> So what point did you decide he was dead?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> When I saw him being carried away with a fucking tow hook sticking out his mouth! Goddamn it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob shouldn’t have said that. I understand his reasons of course; he wants to convey an important truth, that nothing can be done, or could have been done, to save Ace. His ghastly choice of words does the job, but it also sends a ripple of disturbance through the crowd, planting in everyone’s minds the gruesome image I’ve been trying all day to uproot.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bonnie covers her mouth in shock and sorrow. Eve turns noticeably pale, and even Lilith, who is intent on leading the questioning, is taken aback.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Did… did you see this Bristol?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I nod solemnly. The group bristles at my affirmation.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I saw enough. I had to close my eyes when it happened, Rob tried to save him until…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Before I can finish my statement, my words are cut off by something truly unexpected. In spontaneous response to my words, a harsh outburst of mocking, sarcastic laughter rings out from within the convoy. One by one, we turn towards its source, until we all find ourselves staring at Bluejay. Her unapologetic chuckling fills the silent night air.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Is something funny, Bluejay?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay tries to speak through her, all too slowly, waning laughter.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> It’s just… you call yourself a journalist… Hah you closed your eyes, my god… there it is! There it is.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I’m sorry?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Do you close your eyes for magic tricks too?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> What the fuck Bluejay?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Come on, this isn’t the time.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Oh the time is well fucking overdue. Seriously are you all morons? The Left/Right Game is a hoax. It’s fake! Rob Guthard’s played you all like fucking children! Ace is fine, he’s probably an actor! Like the hitchhiker was an actor and those towns people too. I mean, come on.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The group is taken aback by Bluejay’s incredulous tirade. She’s clearly been holding her tongue since day one; our reaction to Ace’s capture representing just one step too far.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I saw Rob shoot one of those townspeople with a hunting rifle. I saw the wound. It was real.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> It was a blood filled squib. The rifle was probably loaded with blanks. You can buy both from any good theatrical retailer. Seriously what the fuck is wrong with you people?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Ok firstly, I don’t like your fucking tone. Secondly, have you noticed that we’ve been the only cars on the road for almost two days? And what about Jubilation? Are you suggesting Rob hired out a whole town? That would be fucking impossible.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Oh yeah sure, THAT’S impossible, but it’s totally believable that we’re driving on a magic road. Maybe this is the highest budget scam I’ve ever seen but that’s all it is, a scam. And Al Jazeera here is giving him all the publicity he wants. I mean these people are sheep but you, you’re a fucking sycophant.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My mother used to tell me that you can’t strike a person from the high road. Staring down the barrel of Bluejay’s darkly self-satisfied grin, I’m more than tempted to make the descent.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Ok Bluejay fair enough. I’m not going to pretend to know what’s going on here, for all I know you could be right. But why would Rob spend the production budget of a Hollywood film to trick a radio journalist and two vloggers. Trust me, our website does not get enough traffic for-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Oh don’t be so self-important. It’s not YOU he’s trying to fool.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay turns to Rob, fixing him a glare of pure, unadulterated triumph.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Admit it Rob. Admit that this is all a fucking farce. Admit that you knew who I was before I even got out of my car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob’s face looks like it’s been carved from granite. The group looks to him for an answer, but he delivers his response directly to Bluejay, his eyes locked with hers.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> It’s true… … I know who you are Denise.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The atmosphere changes, and for a moment, the night erupts into a foray of whispers. Rob’s answer clearly means something to everyone but me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> Denise?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Denise Carver?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> No. You serious?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Sorry, who’s Denise Carver?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> She’s the biggest killjoy in the hobby.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Oh fuck you, you fucking air-head.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Denise here is a member of the Skeptics and Rationalist Institute of America. She likes to get herself invited on ghost hunting expeditions under a false name so she can debunk them publicly. You may've gathered she don’t believe in the supernatural.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Actually I do believe in the supernatural. I <em class="_7s4syPYtk5hfUIjySXcRE" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">believe</em> that it’s a billion dollar industry built on selling comfortable lies to the gullible, and it thrives on shitty journalists and attention whore bloggers who are willing to spread whatever shit they think will get them clicks.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> That’s why you took so long getting around the pine tree. Even when the truck was coming for Ace. You didn’t think any of it was real.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> Uhh… did you?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As condescending as her delivery may be, her words spark a sudden realisation. It’s true, that with an unspeakably high budget and a few deft stooges, you could probably replicate most of what we’d seen on the road. Yet, without realising it, I’ve found myself agreeing with Rob’s version of events, personally defending the Left/Right Game’s validity against its decriers. I’d set off on this journey much like Bluejay, as a staunch, confident skeptic, but somewhere between the tunnel and this moment, I’d become a believer.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay notes my lack of protest, and turns back to Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> I’m flattered you went to all this trouble. I didn’t know my work was so offensive to you.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I admire your work Denise. Always have. That’s why I brought you along.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BLUEJAY:</span> That is bullshit. Tell your friend Ace he can’t act for shit.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay pulls a pack of Marlboros out of her coat, lighting up immediately, and goes to sit on the hood of her nearby car. Her demeanour clearly signals that her part in the conversation is over, though her words leave a bitter aftertaste for everyone involved. To sympathise, it must be exhausting, spending two days with people whose opinions are diametrically opposed to your own, having to listen in silence while they corroborate their own seemingly preposterous views. Having said that however, I’m incredibly glad she’s stopped talking. It reminds me of a time when we got on much better.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The next question comes from Eve, her voice quivering.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> Can… can we die here Rob?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The quiet force of her words turn everyone’s heads back towards Rob. It’s clear that others have been thinking the same thing, and they’re looking to Rob for an answer.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> It’s possible. The road ain’t ever killed no one before. Not so long as everyone followed the rules.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> But you said in your emails it was dangerous.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> That’s right.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> But you didn’t feel like telling us that we could die out here?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob turns to Lilith, clearly offended by her accusation.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> In the 1920’s Jon Ebenrow killed 36 people and violated their bodies. In one of your videos, you guys went to his home in Virginia looking for the man’s ghost. Bonnie & Clyde once spent $500 to stay at the Iowa Murder House, a place that’s supposed to possess its victims and force’em to kill each other.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> If you all honestly believed in what you were chasing, you should be accepting death as an outcome every time you step out. We are looking for evidence of another world. What we’re doing here has the scientific significance of the moon landings, the cultural significance of Columbus reaching the Americas and a whole lot of people died doing both. If you accepted the risk chasing down the ghost of a two-bit serial killer, you should be willing to accept the risk for this.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith looks like she’s been scolded by a parent. There’s a fire in her eyes as she observes Rob, meeting his criticism with scorn.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Oh so it’s Ace’s fault? He should have “accepted the risk”?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> He did accept the risk. Ace made his decisions. He saw the dangers of the road first hand and he kept on goin'. I told you this place could be dangerous, and maybe you didn’t take that seriously. But you are NOT gonna treat me like I lured any of you here under false pretenses.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We stand for a few moments in the uncomfortable void left by Rob’s words. No one’s quite sure where to look.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Well what do we do now Rob? Do we turn around?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I ain’t gonna make that decision for you. If you want to split off and head back, I suggest you wait till mornin’ and stagger your leavin’ times by an hour or so. I ain’t never seen nothin’ like what happened back there before, but this is the most people I ever played the game with. Maybe that’s doin’ somethin’.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> What do you mean by that?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Well it’s the only thing that’s changed. Truth is, this ain’t our world, by all rights we shouldn’t be here. Even when it's one car the road always tries to discourage you. Maybe it’s like bacteria in a vein. One or two might slip by unnoticed but once it hits a certain point it’s like a uh…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Like an immune response. You think the road’s pushing back on foreign objects?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> And the bigger the group-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> The more violent the response…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It makes sense, until Bluejay laughs once more. Hearing her reaction, I reassess what I'm saying and I can’t help but feel a little foolish at the idea.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Maybe. It’s just a theory... I don’t know.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob collects himself, regaining his composure.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Either way, you all have the morning to decide if you want to keep on the road. Bristol, if you want to go home, you gotta find someone to take you. I ain’t ready to head back yet.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">He turns away from the group and marches to the Wrangler. I don’t see him again for the rest of the evening, and I have no intention of bothering him. Eve and Lilith immediately crowd around me, asking if I’m alright and taking it in turns to disparage Rob’s actions. I can’t bring myself to join in. All I can bring myself to say is…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Can I charge my phone in your car?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The group has very little to say for the rest of the night. A deep solemnity hangs in the air, dampening any semblance of good cheer like wet leaves on a dwindling fire. No one offers any conversation, Apollo’s reservoir of quips has run dry. Everyone’s wondering where they’ll be going from here, pondering the sort of person they are in circumstances such as this. Do they press on towards danger, or back towards safe and familiar ground. It’s a question they’ll have to figure out for themselves, ideally before sunrise.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I already have questions of my own.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">About an hour after Rob’s departure, bidding fair well to the rest of the group, I walk over to Lilith and Eve’s car. My bag is resting on the front seat, a black wire leading inside from the charging port. I’ve decided not to tell the pair that I’ve been charging the detonator for a military grade explosive less than ten metres away from them. Perhaps it will come out during broadcast. If you’re listening to this, sorry girls.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I pick up my bag and, checking that no one’s looking, make a beeline for the apple grove. I march through the small wood, the air growing still, the sounds of the convoy quickly fading behind me. In the late evening darkness, with the moon shrouded by legion of crooked trees, I’m puzzled that I’m not more afraid. I’ve seen what happens on this road and, as I pass through the grove and into the neighbouring field, intentionally isolating myself from the rest of the group, I'm quite aware that help won’t be coming for me. Even so, as the corn rises up in every direction around me, I find myself almost incapable of fear. The day's events have drained me of emotion, and I'm now with everything else pulled away, I’m left with only one driving directive; an overpowering urge to figure this road out, regardless of what that entails.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Judging the distance I’ve traveled to be acceptably out of range from the convoy, I take the block of C4 out of my bag and place it on the ground. Gritting my teeth, my body cringing with self-inflicted dread, I press the power button on the Nokia and wait for something to happen. My worries of instant disintegration are allayed slightly as the grainy image of two outstretched hands comes into view, swiftly replaced by a menu screen.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I work fast, the words on the brown paper package constantly reminding me of what I’m putting at risk with every passing second.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Firstly, I type my number own number into the phone, assuming, or at least hoping, that the mechanism isn’t activated by outgoing calls. A few seconds later my cell phone rings, giving me the Nokia’s number. Checking the call logs, I find a second, different number, which seems to have made a call to the phone three times in quick succession. If I were a betting woman, which I sometimes am, I’d suggest that this number belongs to whoever built the bomb, the calls representing an attempt to test the trigger prior to its implementation. If I’m right, then this should be the personal number of whoever was driving that crashed car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My third discovery, is a little bit more puzzling. No texts have been sent from this phone, however there is one solitary message residing in the phone’s inbox. It’s from a third, separate number, and it reads thus:</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">“Please don't do this Rob.”</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I stare at those four words, the new information grating uncomfortably against my already preconceived theories. If this text is to be believed, and my previous deductions are at all accurate, then that means Rob Guthard was driving the car. That the C4 in the trunk had belonged to him. All this time I thought Rob may have been responsible for something terrible, but what if he was run off the road himself? If that is the case, it leads to an entirely new question… who was responsible for his crash?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As I begin to think it over, the air explodes around me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m jolted out of my examination by a powerful, echoing voice which reverberates the very air. The corn is thrown into a frenzy as the noise echoes from every direction, as if spoken by the air itself.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">VOICE:</span> I’ve watched you questioning.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Without a second’s hesitation, I turn off the Nokia and throw the block into my bag. I jump to my feet and scan the cornfield for whoever spoke the words, backing away towards the convoy. Suddenly, realising how far I am from my friends, I break into a run, my boots pounding the dirt as I flee back to the woods.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Less than a minute later I burst out through the trees, my bag swinging with the weight of the block. Everyone’s in their cars, seemingly fast asleep. I’m starting to think they’re onto something. With no one to talk to, and a long day ahead of me, I suppose there’s no further recourse but to catch my breath, write up my immediate thoughts and then, finally, get some much needed rest.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I feel a dull pressure behind my eyes as I step towards the Wrangler. Quietly opening the back door next to my sleeping area, I carefully hide the block under my luggage. Then, silently closing the door again, I wander around to the passenger side, where my notes are waiting to be typed.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I reach out and grab the handle, gripping it tightly. I don’t open the door. In fact, after a moment staring through the glass, I let go.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The pressure behind my eyes gives way, and before I know it I’ve slid down to the damp ground, my back against the cool, hard metal of the door. A whine catches in my throat as ugly tears stream down my cheeks. My breath shudders as I inhale, and my attempt to breathe out plays to the world as a quiet, declining sob. The tears take me by surprise but I don’t wipe them away. In a bittersweet way, they’re welcome, necessary even. They carry with them a familiar sense of heartrending release. By the time they’ve run dry, I feel like I might just be able to move on from the events of the day. The sounds in my head are just a little quieter now I’ve paid them their due.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> Are you ok honey?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m picking myself up when I see Bonnie walking carefully over to the Wrangler. I brush myself off, a little embarrassed at being caught.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I didn’t know you were awake.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> I’m a light sleeper, and Martin… Clyde snores. Do you need someone to talk to?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I think I just need to sleep. Thanks Bonnie.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> My name’s Linda, if you’re wondering.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> … Alice.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> That’s a beautiful name. Well Alice, I know I don’t talk much, but I know how to listen… if you ever want me to.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">For the first time since the pine fell, I find myself smiling. It’s a weak smile, but a smile nonetheless.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Thank you Linda. I might take you up on that. Have a good night.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:** Have a good night.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bonnie starts to walk back to the car, before pausing and turning round. One last piece of comfort to offer.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> And remember, everything will all be alright once we get to Wintery Bay.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I frown a little, unsure what Bonnie means. She smiles back blankly, then resumes the path back to her car. She’s mentioned that place before, upon leaving Jubilation, in what seemed like a moment of idle reminiscence. How she mentioned it just now doesn’t seem like reminiscence at all.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">After everything that’s gone on, all the suspicion I’ve been directing at Rob, all my worry for Ace. Is something the matter with Bonnie?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, perhaps Bonnie misspoke, but all the same, the brief comfort her words afforded me has already faded away, leaving a familiar feeling of confusion and paranoia in its place.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I let myself into the passenger side, type up a few pressing notes and then climb through onto the air mattress. Sleep doesn’t come easily. I close my eyes and try to convince myself that tomorrow will be better than this harrowing day. Yet every time I make that particular argument, a voice in my head responds:</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“That may depend on which way you turn.”</p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4644002094798401513.post-68332839596160173752020-08-17T21:37:00.002-07:002020-08-17T21:37:40.251-07:00The Left Right Game Part 3<p> <span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Rice; non-perishable.</span></p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Soy sauce; non-perishable.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Salt; non-perishable.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Eggs; well they’re perishable but I bought’em fresh and I got hard boiled that’ll last a week.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s breakfast time, the start of our first full day on the road. Rob’s been up since 7 o’clock, cooking a meal for anyone who wants it. The aroma pulls us out of our makeshift beds, and arranges us around his portable stove. Our bowls are already full before we realise there’s a catch. The trade-off for this supposedly free food? A 10 minute lecture from Rob about the power of rice.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> See in the Pacific, our guys used to be terrified of the Japanese. Whole armies marching on grains? Thought they were super soldiers. See the Japs know the secret. You give people rice in the morning and they’re goin’ for the whole day.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">After dropping two large spoonfuls of his favourite staple into a bowl, and handing it to me, Rob breaks a raw egg over the top. The yolk clouds over as I stir it in. To be fair, the food is delicious, and it’s fun to watch Rob on his soap box. At least there are some things he’s willing to talk at length about.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I stare across the circle at Lilith and Eve. The latter has spilled rice onto her top, and her friend is teasing her playfully. Eve sees me looking over, meets my gaze, and turns back to Lilith, her tone dramatically muted. I return to my food, making a point to seem attentive to Rob’s speech. A minute later, the two girls decide they've finished their meal and I quickly realise so have I.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Devouring the last few bites, I place my bowl in the small tub of hot water next to the stove and casually wander over to their car. Lilith and Eve are facing away from me, silently packing up their sleeping bags. They refuse to look at me once I reach them, in a deeply conspicuous attempt at subtlety.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Is he watching?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I glance over at Rob. He’s still talking at Bonnie, Clyde and Apollo, asking them to guess what “Breakfast” translates to in Japanese.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS</span> I think we’re fine. So… did you see the car?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Without answering, Eve reaches into the back seat and picks up a Macbook, the repository for all of Paranormicon’s footage. She presses play as Lilith and I huddle around her, blocking the view of any potential onlookers.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The footage depicts a familiar road. Lilith and Eve must have dropped off the Hitchhiker, and just made the next corner. I can hear them talking about the experience, both terrified and thrilled at the events of the day. Eve reminds Lilith that they need to look out for the car, Lilith swears and the camera immediately starts scouring the roadside.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE (VO):</span> Look there it is!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH (VO):</span> I see it. Slow down… slow down!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The abandoned car comes into view. With Eve slowing to a crawl, and Lilith maxing out her camera’s zoom function, a precious few details can be summarily gleaned. The car’s windscreen and driver’s side window are broken, the keys are still in the ignition and, once Eve overtakes the wreck, it’s just possible to make out a dark stain soaked into the driver's seat.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH (V.O):</span> Stop the car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Just as video Eve starts to slow to a halt, the real Lilith shuts the laptop. I glance between them, trying to keep my voice as low as possible.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You stopped the car?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> I mean yeah…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> We know you told us not to, but it was like, really weird so I went over and-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You got <em class="_7s4syPYtk5hfUIjySXcRE" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">out</em> of the car?!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> For the record I was super against it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Anyway, there wasn’t much in there that we didn’t get from the road, except there was a bag on the backseat.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Did you get a look inside?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Yeah… do you wanna?”</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith nods her head towards the back of their car. It takes me a second to realise what she’s getting at.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It’s in the boot?!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> It’s in the what?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It’s in the trunk?!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Yeah obviously, we couldn’t just leave it there. Look, you can watch the rest of the footage any time, we’ll even send it to you, but you NEED to look in this bag before we hit the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I check on Rob once more. He’s washing up the bowls and cutlery, exchanging small talk with Bonnie, oblivious to what’s transpiring a mere five metres away.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Lilith and Eve escort me to the trunk, reforming our secretive huddle before Eve lifts it open. A brown leather duffel bag sits front and centre. It looks expensive but worn, probably a few decades old. The pair gesture for me to unzip it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> Just to preface this, I want to say… this whole trip has been fucking weird.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The bag isn’t exactly full. I rummage through the loose contents, finding a few sets of good quality men’s shirts and a pair of jeans. Further down I find a small and well used shaving kit. I’m starting to wonder what Lilith and Eve are so bent out of shape over when my hand hits the hard edge of a straight, rectangular object. Slowly, and with great care, I manage to extricate it from layers of wool and denim.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s a package, a heavy square block about the length of my forearm, neatly wrapped in brown paper. It seems completely unassuming except for a black wire hanging from the underside, leading back into the bag itself. Lifting the wire, a black plug rises out and swings slightly in mid-air.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> Turn it around.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">With both girls watching me intently, I turn the package in my hands. The wire connects to the charging port of an old Nokia 3210, which in turn is superglued to the package along with a few shards of exposed circuit board. Last, but certainly not least, are the words emblazoned on the brown paper, in imposing black typeface; C4 Explosive.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">My mouth feels dry.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> … I wasn’t expecting that.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> I know, fuck this road right? There was tonnes more in his trunk too it was insane.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Is this dangerous?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> Not right now. It’s basically inert unless you have the detonator.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You’re sure?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LILITH:</span> We have Wikipedia downloaded on a hard drive. It’s the only reason Eve let me bring it here. She read the article like, three times. Anyway the Nokia’s out of battery.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Ok well, I’m not even going to ask how you know that… I don’t get this why would someone bring plastic explosive for the Left/Right Game? I mean, what the hell are we heading into?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> I have no idea. Do you know if Rob has any?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> If I have any what?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When I look up, Rob’s only a few steps away from us. I hide the C4 behind my back, dropping it into my satchel next to my notebook. I just manage to pull my fingers out of the way as Eve instinctively slams the trunk shut.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Tips for sleeping in cars. These guys had a rough night.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> … Well I’m sorry to hear that. Just something you gotta get used to I guess. We’re hittin’ the road in 15/20 minutes. That alright with you guys?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">EVE:</span> Yeah totally.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Bristol, you mind helping me pack up?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Not at all.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Painfully aware of what’s hanging at my side, I step away with Rob towards the now dismantled stove. Looking over my shoulder, I see Lilith and Eve are watching us go, their faces awash with apprehension.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I can’t say I feel the same. Despite my surroundings, and the multitude of unsettling events, I don’t have space in my head for apprehension just now. All anxiety is slowly being pushed out, its territory annexed by a bolstering sense of resolve. There are far too many strange things happening on this road and, even if it kills me, I’m going to find out what they all mean.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ACE:</span> Rob, can I talk to you?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We’ve packed everything in the back of the Wrangler, and are about to get back on the road when Ace comes up behind us. Rob turns around, and I sense an icy shield raising up as he curtly addresses our compatriot.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> What is it Ace?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ACE:</span> Can I… can I ask you something? It’s… it’s ok if you need me to go home after...</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The shield thaws. This isn’t the Ace we’ve seen before and Rob’s perceptive enough to notice. He engages, albeit cautiously.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> What do you wanna ask?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Ace shuffles uncomfortably. Suddenly, he seems much younger.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ACE:</span> Does the hitchhiker… does anything happen if you… if you don’t pick him up?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Oh goddammit Ace I told you, you can’t… … tell me what happened.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ACE:</span> I… I was making my way down the road and, I was angry at how you’d been… and when I saw the hitchhiker I thought I should, you know, do what I said and... just drive by.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Ace starts to tremble, unable to meet Rob’s eye.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ACE:</span> A minute later I look in the rear view mirror and… and he’s sitting in the back of my car. He’s just… just talking about the weather. I mean I swear I didn’t pick him up, but when I think about it all these memories come back. I start to remember pulling over, letting him in. It’s like I did it, but I didn’t even…</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Did you talk to him?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ACE:</span> No, no. No, I promise I didn’t say a word.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob stares at Ace in silence. Ace hangs his head, like a penitent criminal facing judgement.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> … feel’s awful don’t it?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Ace finally looks up, confused at Rob’s words, searching the man’s expression for clues.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I did the same as you the first time. Just drove right by. Wasn’t gonna let some stranger in my car. Nearly jumped outta my skin when I saw him in the rear view.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob grins at Ace, who manages to smile shakily back.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> You ain’t got the right gear for this Ace. I like to run a tight ship and I gotta say it pissed me off. If you wanna turn that Porsche of yours around no one’ll think any less of you but if you wanna keep on this road… how about you try to listen more and I’ll try to be less of a hard-ass.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob holds his hand out for Ace to shake. It’s an offer of peace, or at the very least an offer of terms. Ace accepts it, grimacing only slightly as he faces Rob’s iron grip.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> ‘Bout time we hit the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Five minutes later we’re rolling into a deep valley, each member of the convoy appearing over the crest of the hill behind us. Everyone’s present and accounted for, including Ace.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I have to say I’m impressed.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> With what?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> With how you handled Ace. One might presume a guy who’s been divorced four times isn’t the best at conflict resolution.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Divorce IS conflict resolution.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> That’s a… good point. He seemed to be saying the Hitchhiker <em class="_7s4syPYtk5hfUIjySXcRE" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">made</em> him pull over. Is that really what happens?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Yep, he always ends up in the back seat, and you always remember picking him up.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> It's just... that’s not scientifically possible.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Get used to that.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We spend the next two hours in silence, with me typing up my notes and Rob navigating the sparse few turns that show up every now and then.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Ace’s testimony troubles me, perhaps because it stretches my favourite theory; that the game is an elaborate hoax perpetrated by Rob Guthard. I was content that the hitchhiker could have been an incredibly deft performer, but even if the man was a RADA trained thespian, that doesn’t make him capable of mind control. Ace could be insane, or an maybe actor himself, but those ideas sound exactly like the idle rationalisations I decried in Rob earlier.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m not sure what my theory is at the moment. I keep working, hoping to type my way to revelation.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A few lone trees have started to show up in the distance, towering wild pines with trunks as thick as barrels. Without my noticing, the trees grow slowly more numerous and, in that creeping way that landscapes change, it isn’t long until they span both sides of the road, encapsulating us in a deep, bright forest. Realising I’ve recorded everything of substance, and with Rob concentrating on the drive, I have no choice but to lay back in my seat and watch the world roll by. Despite the pervasive strangeness of the Left/Right Game, there is beauty on the road. Under the light shade of the canopy, the smell of pine needles permeating the still air, I actually feel myself starting to relax.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It only takes three words to change that.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The words don’t come from Rob, he’s as quiet as always. They aren’t spoken by the rest of the convoy either. The words are writ large in calligraphic gold paint, resting on a spotless white sign. Even from a distance, with the letters little more than a blur, I know what they’re going to say. They’re the words I’ve been dreading since I switched off the radio, the words I spent a long, troubled night hoping I’d never see.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">“Welcome to Jubilation.”</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">It turns out there is room in my head for apprehension.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> This is Ferryman to all cars. We’re going to be heading through a small town. No rules here, just keep driving and we’ll be fine.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob puts his radio back into the receiver, I try to ignore the distinct knot in my stomach.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> What does the name Chuck Greenwald mean to you?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> 'Bout as much as John Doe, why?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> He’s the radio DJ here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> In Jubilation? How do you know something like that?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I was listening to his show last night. What do you know about this place?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Seems like a good town. Folk don’t pay attention to ya, I just head straight through.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> You’ve never seen anything… untoward?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Some weird stuff now and again. I like to keep my eyes on the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The forest clears abruptly, like a parting curtain, to reveal a picture perfect American town, archetypal almost to the point of self-parody.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We’ve arrived in Jubilation.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s no denying this town is beautiful. We’re welcomed by a row of vibrantly coloured shops spanning the length of a long, wide street. At the far end, an ornate, grey walled town hall proudly surveys its domain. The place is immaculate. I fail to find a solitary piece of litter on the sidewalk, a single smudge on the plate glass shop windows. Every inch of Jubilation is pristine, tranquil... and noticeably deserted.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Where is everyone?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I don’t know, there’s usually some around. Maybe there’s a game on.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We take the next right, then another left. The story’s the same at every turn, a beautiful, leafy suburban town, entirely bereft of its human population. The cafés are free of bustle, the surface of the public pool is still. We even see the school, a row of finger painted faces smiling at us from the kindergarten windows as we pass by. The building itself is locked up however, which is odd, seeing as it’s noon on a Wednesday.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Eventually the Wrangler pulls onto the first residential street we’ve encountered. The sign on the corner reads Sycamore Row. The quaint shops are replaced by luxuriate houses, all of them identical; white walls, wide porches and fresh green lawns cut to a uniform length. The road stretches in a straight line for about a mile, creating an eerie corridor of copy/pasted buildings. The strangest thing about the street however, is vocalised by Rob:</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Well I guess we know where everybody is now.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In front of every house, a dining room table stands on the lawn, occupied without fail by a family of four. One husband, one wife, one son and one daughter. They’re sharing a meal together. A unit on the left clink their glasses of orange juice as they dine on pork chops and salad. The family on the right share a large hunk of meat loaf, broad smiles on their faces. Staring along the road I estimate upwards of eight hundred people, in neat subsets of four, all dining at the same time.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">None of them seem to notice us.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ferryman to all cars. Looks like we’ve come during a town celebration. Let’s not bother these good people as we pass on through.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob lets the car roll slowly down the street, his foot light on the gas pedal, trying to make as little noise as possible. The more families we pass, the clearer it becomes that every single one of them shares common characteristics. All of them are impeccably dressed. All of them consist of the same subset; husband, wife, son, daughter. Though their chosen meals vary slightly, they all share a raucous, almost oppressive happiness.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Small town America am I right guys? Ahaha</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Apollo’s jokes don’t make things any better. I feel claustrophobic. Trapped. Some screaming animal deep within me knows that it’s surrounded, on every side, by something it doesn’t understand. I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but as we’ve continued down the road, everyone outside seems to be laughing a little harder, and celebrating a little more.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We’ve successfully crept more than halfway down the street, a sharp left turn coming up at the end, representing the road out of Jubilation. Another street comes up on the right, Acer Road. While we pass by it, I take the opportunity to glance down this new avenue, curious as to whether every street is like ours.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t like what I see.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The houses are similarly prestigious, the walls pristine white, but like a spot the difference puzzle, it’s the subtle changes that make the picture. There are no tables, and no families on the wide green lawns. Almost every window I can see is broken. Cars lie abandoned in the road, with one smashed into a splintered porch. Above every door, an X has been drawn in red paint, and outside of each house, a small mound of clothes lie on the fresh cut lawn. A huge collective pile of men’s, women’s and children’s shoes tower at the end of the street… seemingly ownerless.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Great going everybody. Let’s get back out there.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We’ve reached the end of the street, I breathe a sigh of relief as we bid farewell to Jubilation. I vindictively see it off in my wing mirror as we turn the corner. I immediately wish I hadn’t when, in the split second before it disappears from view, I glimpse the 800 plus residents of Sycamore Row.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">They aren’t smiling anymore, and they’re all looking our way.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I welcome the forest as the trees rise up around us once more. The indifference of the nature is a welcome change to the saccharin, faux-civility of Jubilation.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> Towns like that make me glad I’m a city boy.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> I thought it was nice, wasn’t it like Wintery Bay?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> I don’t think I’ve been.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BONNIE:</span> Oh… maybe it was Shelburne Falls.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CLYDE:</span> Oh it was a little like Shelburne Falls.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Guys we gotta keep this channel clear.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We hurry along the next road, and turn right. The further we get from the eerie town of Jubilation, the higher our spirits seem to be.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> How long until we stop?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> ‘Bout another four hours. Nothing big in between us and there though. Shouldn’t be a problem.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Good to hear. So... what <em class="_7s4syPYtk5hfUIjySXcRE" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">does</em> “Breakfast” translate to in Japanese?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> You heard that?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Yeah, I’ve been curious all day. Does it have something to do with-</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I jolt forwards, sharp pain in my neck as my head recoils back against my seat. Rob has stamped his foot onto the brake, bringing us to an immediate and shocking halt. Before I can ask why, my question is answered, as one of the colossal pine trees slams into the road ahead of us, blocking our route forward.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Goddamn it! You alright?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> I’m fine.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Massaging my neck, I look towards the base of the felled tree. The low end is covered in straight, sharp-cut marks. Someone has brought this tree down, timing its fall in an attempt to cripple the Wrangler.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob what’s going on?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ferryman to all cars. Full reverse. Watch out for the people behind you.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The convoy pulls away, back down the road towards Jubilation. Rob waits for Apollo to start moving, then backs up himself. There’s a second jolt as Rob abruptly stops the car, surveying our means of egress.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ferryman to all cars. Road’s done for but there’s a gap at the end. Be careful.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob’s right. Though the tree has fallen across the tarmac, only the thin treetop lies over the grassy bank between the road and the forest. There’s a bit of a valley between the edge of the road and the grass, and Rob wastes no time in showing the others how to negotiate it.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Twisting the wheel, Rob dry steers towards the gap and proceeds cautiously towards the roadside. I watch the asphalt disappear beneath us moments before the tell-tale bump. The Wrangler drops down the small bankside, and turns around the fallen tree. I watch the needle covered tip brush against my window as we roll past. With a second bump, Rob brings us back onto the road and pulls us over to the far edge, turning the Jeep to face towards the convoy.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Ok Apollo make your way.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> On it Rob.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As Apollo swerves towards the gap, I hear something. The sound of a running engine, at first so quiet that it’s almost impossible to isolate it from the convoy’s own rumblings. It’s since grown louder however, and it’s growing steadily more noticeable.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob, someone’s coming.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Apollo get yourself over here right now. All car’s you're on double time. Get moving!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Apollo accelerates towards the gap. His Range Rover shudders, banking on the grassy decline, but it’s hardly any effort to pull himself around the tree and back onto the road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The noise in the distance grows louder. I can picture the vehicle careering towards the corner, just one turn away from having its windshield locked on the convoy. Though I have no idea what it might be, I don’t want to share road space with anything coming out of Jubilation.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The rest of the convoy can hear the noise now. Bonnie and Clyde roll over to the gap, and quickly but tentatively push themselves down onto the side. It’s clearly harder than Rob and Apollo make it look. After a few moments they travel across the bank, bringing themselves out on the other side.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The vehicle turns the corner.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">A white truck skids into view, its tires shrieking against the road. A metal beam sticks up behind the driver’s compartment, and a hook swings with the momentum of the hard right turn. It’s a tow truck, though something tells me it’s not here to lend us assistance.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> All cars, once you’re on the other side, drive. Wait around the left turn. I’ll radio if I they get by me.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">APOLLO:</span> What about you guys?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> I’ll come once everyone’s across. Now ain’t the time for questions. Eve and Lilith get over here now.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">We still have time to get everyone across, but every passing second feels like a precious, fleeting loss. Eve and Lilith are impatient for their turn. Dropping onto the roadside and coming back up in a matter of seconds.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The truck is gaining with incredible speed. I can just about make out the words “Jubilation Recovery” scrawled across the hood. Though the letters are rapidly becoming easier to read.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bluejay takes her time dismounting the road. In fact she’s almost casual in how she maneuvers, whittling away at the remaining seconds we have. A swell of anger wells up inside of me as her wheels hit the road again. If she’s calm about this situation then good for her, but I can see Ace drumming his fingers frenetically against the steering wheel, now stranded alone on the other side.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I watch Bluejay follow the rest of the convoy to the next turn, displaying none of the urgency anyone else has shown.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Take it easy Ace. You ain’t built for this.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Ace takes the corner, heeding Rob’s plea for caution but unwisely taking it almost head on. His front wheel thuds over the edge of the bank, and the chassis hits the tarmac. The drop is just a little too steep for the Porsche’s clearance. Rob’s warnings ring in my ears as Ace accelerates on three wheels, his car engaging in a slow turn with little forward motion.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ACE:</span> Rob, what do I do?! Rob?!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The pickup truck maintains its speed and aligns itself with Ace’s Porsche, its thunderous velocity defying all logic, all concern for Ace’s or their own safety.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Get outta the car Ace! Get out of the goddamn car!!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Ace struggles with his seatbelt, stress overpowering his motor functions. He unclasps it, and throws the belt to the side. He grabs the door and pushes. It swings open slightly, then immediately slams against the bark of the pine tree. For a moment that lasts all too long, he shares with me a look of pleading terror.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The door is slammed shut, crumpling as the tow truck collides with the passenger side of Ace’s car. Ace is launched against the the door, his head smashing against the window. The ungodly racket of shrieking metal suddenly gives way to silence.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Shit.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob climbs into the back of the car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AS:</span> Rob what can I do?</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Stay here.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I hear Rob rummaging among the luggage as the tow truck reverses out of Ace’s Porsche. The hood of the tow truck is completely and impossibly unharmed by the impact, as are its two occupants.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">They park the truck side on to us, the hook hanging a few metres away from the back of the Porsche. The the words Jubilation Recovery appear again, now accompanied by a slogan “Here to Help”. Two men in white shirts and blue overalls climb out and wander over to the ruined Porsche. They barely seem to register the situation at all, casually chatting together as they throw open Ace’s passenger side door.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The stunned Ace looks like he’s battling a concussion, only barely cognisant as he’s pulled out of the car. He quickly grows more aware as the mechanics grab him by each arm, struggling against them as his captors talk amongst themselves.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> Let him go!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When I turn around, Rob is stepping out of the Wrangler. Apparently, hidden within those neat stacks of luggage, was a loaded hunting rifle. Rob raises the stock to his shoulder and repeats himself.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> LET HIM GO!!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The mechanics pay no attention to Rob. They continue to frog march Ace over to the truck. One of them making a quiet joke to the other as they go. They laugh.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">An awful bang erupts beside me, and a deep red hole bursts from one mechanic’s torso, blood slowly seeping out of the wound. Inexplicably, the mechanic does nothing more than look down at his wound, up at Rob, and then back to the matter at hand. He hardly breaks stride as he continues towards the truck, bleeding freely onto the floor,.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">I hear Rob set about reloading the rifle.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The mechanics arrive at the back of the truck with Ace. There are two short loops of thin chain hanging from the lowest of the hook’s chainlinks. The mechanics feed Ace’s arms through one loop each, until he’s hanging by the armpits in front of the hook itself.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob fires another shot that goes nowhere.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The mechanics grab a handful of Ace’s hair, chatting as they do so, and lift Ace’s head up until his lower jaw is just above the hook.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">In that moment, despite everything, despite all my journalistic ideals, my pursuit of truth, my duty as an observer… I close my eyes.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The visual disappears into darkness, but the sound doesn’t. The impact and the sorrowful, obstructed groan that follows penetrates my bones, reverberating throughout my very being. Another gunshot, and the sharp twang of a metallic ricochet. Ace’s cries continue as the engine starts up and carries him off back to Jubilation. I hear another gunshot, that sounds like it hits nothing but air.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">As the engine, and Ace’s whimpers, grow quieter, a few moments pass before one final, measured gunshot echoes around the car.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> … Goddamnit. GOD-FUCKING-DAMNIT!!!</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Wrangler’s chassis clangs as Rob kicks the side with all his considerable might. I open my eyes to see a fallen pine tree, a ruined Porsche, and an otherwise empty road.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">When Rob climbs into the car, it’s clear he’s trying to regulate his breathing. An internalised rage lighting him up, barely under his control.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="_12FoOEddL7j_RgMQN0SNeU" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ROB:</span> We have to go.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rob turns us around, pointing the Wrangler back down the road. The quiet of the car echoes in my ears, along with other noises I can’t hope to forget. I watch the fallen pine grow smaller in the rear view mirror, overwhelmed by a feeling that I’m leaving more behind on this road than I can currently imagine.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bereft of conversation, of logic, of any semblance of comfort, Rob and I do the only thing we can.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1a1a1b; font-family: "Noto Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We take the next left.</p>Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920112643634319224noreply@blogger.com0