Randy Rudolph was fucked from the word "push."
I mean, fuck, who named their kid Randy in this day and age? It was even worse when you realized it was alliterative. Randy motherfucking Rudolph. You could smell the little shitty snot-nosed child playground woodchips-in-nose-and-eyes bully-torment from twenty miles downwind. His parents didn't give two shits, no, not two shits that they had effectively birthed a son with the name Randolph Rudolph. He should have been named Sue, for all the good it would have done with. That was even more acceptable in this godforsaken day and age. Never-mind the fact that his Dad's brother Cristoph had a successful life with a successful kid with a bad-ass name. Max. Short for Maximilian, probably. Now that was fucking sick. It didn't matter at all that Max was a good four years younger than he was, Randolph bowed at his feet, came at his beck and call.
Like, okay, when little Max came in from throwing a football with his Dad one year at the Thanksgiving party at the successful!Rudolph household, looking sad as fuck and worried and distraught, what did Randy do? Randy gave him some chips, and Max looked substantially less fucked in the butt. He went upstairs and didn't come back down for a few hours afterwards, whatever, but that didn't really register with Randy. It didn't need to register with Randy at all. Randy understood. He was so taken with happiness and the feeling of being understood that he could not come back down because he was crying, that was it.
He really just wanted to be close to his cousin. He grew up believing that when you didn't have friends, you went to your family, and if Randy had a stock for each friend he had he'd have shorted them. Randy knew fuck all about stocks. Truth be told, Randy was an idiot. He had an apartment and was doing well as a plumber—vocational school was the best decision his Dad ever made for him, even if it wasn't enough to redeem, y'know, Randy—and had money for anime figurines and blue-rays and he was almost done paying off his computer parts just in time to upgrade to new shit, sure, but he didn't feel like he was here because he was smart enough to deserve it. When Randy clocked in, his brain checked out. He just kind of went at it when he did his plumbing job. For what it was worth, he was apparently pretty decent at it. His boss thought he was some kind of young prodigy, or something, but Randy knew that the way there was paved with failures. Maybe less failures than the average person, but, fuck, Randy didn't even understand it consciously.
Max, though? Max was there because he deserved to be. Dude was smart as fuck! Sure he was some kind of alt-right-groomed-wunderkind, it didn't take two looks at the guy's bookshelf to know that, but reading what he wrote? Shit was probably good! Randy and Max maybe saw each other once every so often around Chattanooga. Saw each other at the same donation drives and charity places and soup kitchens and food pantries. Max invited him to his house out of courtesy once a year. Randy invited him over a bunch more, but he barely came over. If Max was a friend and not family, he'd just be an acquaintance, but Randy gave him a lot more in his mind. A lot more time of day. He lived for any kind of acknowledgement from little cuz.
When Max went missing Randy basically wanted to go commit die. But he didn't, because at least Randy'd get to see him win. Max deserved it, one hundred percent. Strong, smart, and kind, Max was God's fucking favorite for the win. He didn't even need to, on this June day, know for sure that it was Survival of the Fittest. It was pretty obvious though, even to Randy. He schlepped over to the 8chan /sotfg/ threads to check what they were saying—equal parts "this is a false flag" and "church of GHHS"—and knew then from the trademark shit-flinging that this was one of thooooooose! It got his gears turning. Brain stopped checking out at work, and started running on all cylinders. He'd been with his ma and pa over to the god-god-goddamn successful!Rudolph's to console and calm them, and they were all teary-eyed as they should be. When Randy asked if they were gonna watch, they looked at him terrified and asked what he meant, and Randy shut the fuck up. Randy's parents probably wouldn't miss him. They'd probably watch and cheer and stuff when he killed and be sad when he died but move on. Hell, they'd probably try and make some money off the whole thing. They were hurting for it.
And then, crouched over the pipes one day, Randy had an epiphany.
Randy just loved Max, that was all. Really cherished him, as a guy. That's what made what he was about do fine, right? He wasn't just some asshole profiting off some kids, he was an asshole who wanted to offer random people to opportunity to understand the place these kids lived and the things they did and the people they were. He had the space, his digs were nice, he just needed to move his figs and wall-scrolls to his bedroom, yeah, but otherwise he had a pretty neato pad. Perfect Airbnb material.
It surprised him just how instantly it was booked. He listed it and almost right away he got a booking for a couple weeks in advance, towards the start of July. Check-in July 10th, check-out July 16th. Two adults, a girl and guy. He wondered if it was a couple? Maybe the girl was cute. Either way, it was easy money in the bank, and time to talk to his landlord about it, too!
Randy awaited them eagerly. They seemed nice over the phone, too. Weird for them to get in contact so early? He didn't care!
Randy didn't know shit.
Writing the Enigma
Rated E for Enigma [Ongoing] [MSMU]
-
MethodicalSlacker
- Posts: 1231
- Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2018 2:18 am
- Location: Here And There Along The Echo
- Contact:
/ 
- 
/ 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- -
MethodicalSlacker
- Posts: 1231
- Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2018 2:18 am
- Location: Here And There Along The Echo
- Contact:
"Beep! Beep! Beep!"
...
"Beep! Beep! Beep!"
Randy's eyes closed tighter. The alarm clock began to beep once more, but this time Randy was ready; his fist shot out from under the blanket and slammed down on the top of the clock, setting it to snooze for a little bit more. That did absolutely jackshit, as far as going back to sleep went; once Randy was awake, he wasn't falling back asleep for a long time. Sometimes more than two days on end, usually on the weekends. With a grunt, he kicked the blanket off of him, stared down at his shirtless, hairy, slightly pudgy body, and groaned. Even though Randy wasn't unfit, he definitely wasn't in shape. He'd given up on magically transforming into a cute anime girl a long time ago, but even with that set aside, Randy was nowhere close to his ideal body, which wasn't something he could entirely help. Technically he could wear platform shoes to get those few extra inches, Todd Howard style, but he wasn't enough of a degenerate for that.
He got out of bed and stuffed his fat feet into his pink bunny slippers. The alarm clock started beeping again, and this time Randy picked it up and turned it all the way off. He almost considered giving it another whack just for good measure. Having a Himouto! Umaru-Chan alarm clock made hitting snooze so, so much more satisfying. Sometimes when he was bored he'd even whack it with his Asuka body pillow. He didn't sleep with it anymore, because he was getting too normie for waifu's and he liked Misato better anyway, so it made for a good bludgeoning smothering thing.
Oh, speaking of, how's Max doing?
Randy checked his phone and sighed. July 10th, and still no live streams? It had been a full fucking month, and still no sign of the George Hunter High kids. It was usually a long wait, but this felt a little overkill. That said, Randy hadn't really been around for the last few. He had only started browsing /sotfg/ when Max was taken. They seemed a little more than upset that the wait was so long. Even if at first there had been a good deal of doubt whether or not they were actually taken, they'd eventually flipped once Canon made it, well, y'know. Yesterday someone compared it to Half-Life 3 and immediately got shat on by literally everybody, which was so funny that as Randy was falling out of his Devoko Ergonomic Gaming Chair and clutching his sides he briefly thought he was dying.
"Grrrr," his stomach rumbled, and Randy remembered he had to feed himself. He threw on a pink bathrobe and left his room. The rest of the house was looking pretty nice, he thought. Couches all made up with throw pillows and whatever, figurines set up in Randy's room, wall-scrolls moved or even sold, bathroom cleaned (as long as they didn't look too hard behind the toilet). Yup. Gamer time. Now all he had to do was wait until noon or so when his guests would arrive, and he had plenty of time for that. Randy opened his fridge and pulled out a box of toaster pancakes, the breakfast food master race. Fuck toaster waffles. That shit was weak, and absorbed syrup like sandpaper. He loaded all four slots of the toaster and set it to 4 numbers out of 5. He didn't understand what each one meant, but figured it was time or something like that. 4 was just the best way.
He scratched the stubble where his neckbeard had been as he browsed his phone. Randy had been to the barber a couple days before and got all tidied up. For his part, he was trying his fucking hardest to appear normal, okay? Like, this wasn't even an effort he went to for his family, though that was maybe because they had given up on him a long time ago. Randy scrolled idly through Twitter as he waited for his pancakes to-
"Bzzt!"
The phone rumbled in his hand with a Twitter notification. It looked like the Nihilist Arby's bot (necessary once the original account went effectively dormant) had tweeted again, which Randy found strange. After all, the bot usually only tweeted at 11:30 AM and 11:30 PM, on the dot, for some stupid lore reason, and if it was buzzing now, that meant that it was 11:30 AM. But, that couldn't be, right? Randy's alarm was set to go off at 9:00 AM, and he had just woken up. Wait, come to think of it, he hadn't really looked too hard at the clock before he punched it, had he? 11:30 wasn't out of the question.
Randy's eyes strayed upwards, and widened. He gulped when he saw the time at the time of his phone screen. 11:47 AM.
"Ding!"
His waffles were ready.
"Ding-dong!"
And his guests were here early!!
"Shit!"
He hoped they couldn't hear that through the door, but he had mumbled it like a fucking dumbass so he figured he was good. Randy snatched a thing of pancakes from the toaster and stuffed them down his throat dry. His hunger was too great not to immediately address. Then, he stumbled to the bathroom and turned on the sink, splashing his face with water. He opened the medicine cabinet and took out the thing of Listerine, poured some into the cap, and then said fuck it and took a shot straight from the bottle, the absolute madman. Making his way from the bathroom, he skittered to his bedroom, threw off his bathrobe, opened his closet, and realized with horror that the only thing he had washed was a fucking Yama-Con 2017 T-Shirt. All of the work that had gone into hiding his power-level went down the drain with all the green goddamn Listerine.
You know what? Fuck it. Randy put it on. They'd figure out he was a filthy weeaboo degenerate at some point anyway. He also put on a pair of jeans, for good measure, throwing his Fullmetal Alchemist sweatpants in the general direction of the corner of his room. They caught on his room fan, but that was okay. He'd move them later. Everything was chill. Think comfy thoughts. He was just about to leave his room when his phone buzzed with a couple messages from—
Oh fuck.
...
"Beep! Beep! Beep!"
Randy's eyes closed tighter. The alarm clock began to beep once more, but this time Randy was ready; his fist shot out from under the blanket and slammed down on the top of the clock, setting it to snooze for a little bit more. That did absolutely jackshit, as far as going back to sleep went; once Randy was awake, he wasn't falling back asleep for a long time. Sometimes more than two days on end, usually on the weekends. With a grunt, he kicked the blanket off of him, stared down at his shirtless, hairy, slightly pudgy body, and groaned. Even though Randy wasn't unfit, he definitely wasn't in shape. He'd given up on magically transforming into a cute anime girl a long time ago, but even with that set aside, Randy was nowhere close to his ideal body, which wasn't something he could entirely help. Technically he could wear platform shoes to get those few extra inches, Todd Howard style, but he wasn't enough of a degenerate for that.
He got out of bed and stuffed his fat feet into his pink bunny slippers. The alarm clock started beeping again, and this time Randy picked it up and turned it all the way off. He almost considered giving it another whack just for good measure. Having a Himouto! Umaru-Chan alarm clock made hitting snooze so, so much more satisfying. Sometimes when he was bored he'd even whack it with his Asuka body pillow. He didn't sleep with it anymore, because he was getting too normie for waifu's and he liked Misato better anyway, so it made for a good bludgeoning smothering thing.
Oh, speaking of, how's Max doing?
Randy checked his phone and sighed. July 10th, and still no live streams? It had been a full fucking month, and still no sign of the George Hunter High kids. It was usually a long wait, but this felt a little overkill. That said, Randy hadn't really been around for the last few. He had only started browsing /sotfg/ when Max was taken. They seemed a little more than upset that the wait was so long. Even if at first there had been a good deal of doubt whether or not they were actually taken, they'd eventually flipped once Canon made it, well, y'know. Yesterday someone compared it to Half-Life 3 and immediately got shat on by literally everybody, which was so funny that as Randy was falling out of his Devoko Ergonomic Gaming Chair and clutching his sides he briefly thought he was dying.
"Grrrr," his stomach rumbled, and Randy remembered he had to feed himself. He threw on a pink bathrobe and left his room. The rest of the house was looking pretty nice, he thought. Couches all made up with throw pillows and whatever, figurines set up in Randy's room, wall-scrolls moved or even sold, bathroom cleaned (as long as they didn't look too hard behind the toilet). Yup. Gamer time. Now all he had to do was wait until noon or so when his guests would arrive, and he had plenty of time for that. Randy opened his fridge and pulled out a box of toaster pancakes, the breakfast food master race. Fuck toaster waffles. That shit was weak, and absorbed syrup like sandpaper. He loaded all four slots of the toaster and set it to 4 numbers out of 5. He didn't understand what each one meant, but figured it was time or something like that. 4 was just the best way.
He scratched the stubble where his neckbeard had been as he browsed his phone. Randy had been to the barber a couple days before and got all tidied up. For his part, he was trying his fucking hardest to appear normal, okay? Like, this wasn't even an effort he went to for his family, though that was maybe because they had given up on him a long time ago. Randy scrolled idly through Twitter as he waited for his pancakes to-
"Bzzt!"
The phone rumbled in his hand with a Twitter notification. It looked like the Nihilist Arby's bot (necessary once the original account went effectively dormant) had tweeted again, which Randy found strange. After all, the bot usually only tweeted at 11:30 AM and 11:30 PM, on the dot, for some stupid lore reason, and if it was buzzing now, that meant that it was 11:30 AM. But, that couldn't be, right? Randy's alarm was set to go off at 9:00 AM, and he had just woken up. Wait, come to think of it, he hadn't really looked too hard at the clock before he punched it, had he? 11:30 wasn't out of the question.
Randy's eyes strayed upwards, and widened. He gulped when he saw the time at the time of his phone screen. 11:47 AM.
"Ding!"
His waffles were ready.
"Ding-dong!"
And his guests were here early!!
"Shit!"
He hoped they couldn't hear that through the door, but he had mumbled it like a fucking dumbass so he figured he was good. Randy snatched a thing of pancakes from the toaster and stuffed them down his throat dry. His hunger was too great not to immediately address. Then, he stumbled to the bathroom and turned on the sink, splashing his face with water. He opened the medicine cabinet and took out the thing of Listerine, poured some into the cap, and then said fuck it and took a shot straight from the bottle, the absolute madman. Making his way from the bathroom, he skittered to his bedroom, threw off his bathrobe, opened his closet, and realized with horror that the only thing he had washed was a fucking Yama-Con 2017 T-Shirt. All of the work that had gone into hiding his power-level went down the drain with all the green goddamn Listerine.
You know what? Fuck it. Randy put it on. They'd figure out he was a filthy weeaboo degenerate at some point anyway. He also put on a pair of jeans, for good measure, throwing his Fullmetal Alchemist sweatpants in the general direction of the corner of his room. They caught on his room fan, but that was okay. He'd move them later. Everything was chill. Think comfy thoughts. He was just about to leave his room when his phone buzzed with a couple messages from—
Oh fuck.
-
MethodicalSlacker
- Posts: 1231
- Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2018 2:18 am
- Location: Here And There Along The Echo
- Contact:
"You sure this is the house?" James asked, hand hovering a few inches from the doorbell where it had been for the past, oh, minute or so?
It was maybe the stupidest question that Marie had ever had put to her personally. Of course this was the house. He was holding a phone with the address on it, and looking at that same address reflected by the door in front of her. Sure, it was one of a few apartments in the same general area that all sort of looked the same, but it was very clearly the one indicated by the listing. There was not any, and should not have been any, question about that. The only logical explanation for James' confusion was that he thought, some-fucking-how, that Mr. Rudolph had somehow repeatedly and consistently gave the wrong address of his apartment across many different occasions. Like, all the felt like fifty times Marie had asked him the right place, just to be totally sure.
The past several hours were a bit of a blur, for her. She woke up very early in the morning Phoenix time to arrive somewhat later in the day Tennessee time, and the hustle and bustle of airports didn't really help her feel any more comfortable with that time change. The first few times, going back and forth from university to reality, back when she was a total newbie to the world of airports, the jet-lag destroyed her for a few days. Now somewhat seasoned, though nowhere near George Clooney Up In The Air levels, it wasn't quite as hard for her to make the change, though her body's internal clock was still a little confused at what meal it should be expecting next. Breakfast? Lunch? Maybe even some dinner?
James had been bugging her all trip long. Back when they met for what was probably the first time in her basically-an-adult life, a couple years ago, his character had been mythologized to hell and back in her mind. The aimless renegade that had strayed too far from the nest, got caught up in the world, and had to leave forever. Of course, once he got in regular contact with her, she realized that he was kind of just an impulsive idiot most of the time. He worked menial labor jobs that paid decently for what they were but absolutely only enough to support himself. Most of his personal savings went to this little trip. He was decently overeager to be welcomed back in any form by any relatives, any surviving members of the family, that he made a big show out of being able to afford the expenses on this trip. Marie wasn't hurting for cash herself, for the college student that she was—her financial aid package was pretty decent, all things considered, and she had been working during the school year and saving money for her own reasons anyways—so really if she wanted to chip in here and there she could have done so, but James absolutely rejected that. Her input was meaningless.
Which is exactly why, when James asked if they had the right house, Marie indulged him instead of fighting against it.
"Let me text him," she said, "I'll tell him we're outside, and if this is the right house, then he'll open the door."
And so she fired off a few messages in his general direction. It was around noon, so he could have decided to go run some errands before they arrived and been late that way. When she heard some commotion inside, she reacted maybe a little too strongly, firing off a message describing what she heard without considering that, if for some stupid reason Marie was wrong and they did in fact have the wrong house, then what she described was entirely besides the actual apartment owner's concern. It was just the fact that her fingers were already over the keyboard. And even then, so what if there was some noises inside? Maybe it was some last minute cleaning. Marie was tempted to look through the mail slot.
"Jeez, I hope he's alright in there," James said for no reason. Marie rolled her eyes.
"I'm sure he's fine," she replied just as aimlessly, "he's probably just getting things ready, or someth—"
Marie was interrupted by the sudden opening of the door, an inward pull that was so fast it sucked some of the air from outside in.
Standing on the other side of the doorway...
It was weird that he wasn't saying anything, though. He just sort of stood there in the door for a few seconds, seconds that felt like an eternity, looking awkwardly back and forth between her and James.
Then, suddenly, he sprang to life.
"Uhh, hi!" he said, extending a hand intended to be shaken, "I'm Randy, nice to meetcha!"
Marie took it and shook it.
"Hey, I'm Marie," she said, running up on the end of his sorta really slow speech with the start of her own sentence, "and this is my older brother James."
Older brother. She could swear she saw Randy's eye twitch in a weird way, but it didn't matter—he stuck his hand out to greet James all the same. Retracting his hand, Randy motioned to the inside of his house.
"Come on in, make yourselves at home, can I help you with your stuff, you look like you got lots of stuff," he started to offer.
"We're good," James said, picking up both of their rolling suitcases and hefting them over the threshold.
"Of course, of course," Randy said, "well, your room is the one down and to the left, not to the right, that's the restroom, to the left, but anywho, feel free to get sitch-oo-ayted in there however you feel like."
Marie followed inside after James and closed the door behind her. Randy stepped over to the kitchen, and opened up the fridge.
"Y'all must be pretty hungry after your flight?" he half-asked, "Want me to fix ya' somethin' to eat?"
James disappeared inside the guest room with the suitcases, leaving Marie and Randy in the open common area, Marie by the door sitting on a little stool taking off her shoes and Randy looking over somewhat expectantly from the kitchen.
"Sure," she said, "but, uh, James is vegetarian, so—"
"Not at all an issue!" Randy interrupted, "I got some veggie samosas, some greens, other stuff, I'm sure you'll find somethin'—hey, mee case-ah is ehs too case-ah, right?"
Marie got up from the stool, her socks still on, and looked around the room a little more. There was a sorta small TV hooked up to an unfamiliar looking kind of cable box thing, and what looked like a PlayStation 4 hooked up to it too. The cabinets underneath the TV table were slightly open. There was an analog clock on the wall with a weird hummingbird in the middle, with several beaks that acted as the hands. It was so kitschy it seemed almost forced, like there was no way a person could actually use that thing to tell time on an active basis.
James emerged from the room. "Marie," he called, "come on, unpack your stuff. Oh, and samosas sound good."
"Alrighty," she said back, walking around the couch past the kitchen, "I'll have some too."
She shut the door to the bedroom behind her. The walls were painted a light blue, and the bed had a darker blue quilt on top of it. Pillows were white, somewhat immaculately. The floor was carpeted in gray. There was a brown dresser in the corner of the room. There were a couple windows, long and vertical, across from the bed, with curtains to draw. Currently open, they let enough light in that Marie didn't see the need to flick the switch on. There was an A.C. in one of them, even though the light had a ceiling fan. James' suitcase was currently open on the bed, and he was stuffing his clothes in the dresser.
"Isn't that a little presumptuous?" Marie asked.
"Hey," James said, "mi casa es tu casa, right?
"You just can't beat southern hospitality."
It was maybe the stupidest question that Marie had ever had put to her personally. Of course this was the house. He was holding a phone with the address on it, and looking at that same address reflected by the door in front of her. Sure, it was one of a few apartments in the same general area that all sort of looked the same, but it was very clearly the one indicated by the listing. There was not any, and should not have been any, question about that. The only logical explanation for James' confusion was that he thought, some-fucking-how, that Mr. Rudolph had somehow repeatedly and consistently gave the wrong address of his apartment across many different occasions. Like, all the felt like fifty times Marie had asked him the right place, just to be totally sure.
The past several hours were a bit of a blur, for her. She woke up very early in the morning Phoenix time to arrive somewhat later in the day Tennessee time, and the hustle and bustle of airports didn't really help her feel any more comfortable with that time change. The first few times, going back and forth from university to reality, back when she was a total newbie to the world of airports, the jet-lag destroyed her for a few days. Now somewhat seasoned, though nowhere near George Clooney Up In The Air levels, it wasn't quite as hard for her to make the change, though her body's internal clock was still a little confused at what meal it should be expecting next. Breakfast? Lunch? Maybe even some dinner?
James had been bugging her all trip long. Back when they met for what was probably the first time in her basically-an-adult life, a couple years ago, his character had been mythologized to hell and back in her mind. The aimless renegade that had strayed too far from the nest, got caught up in the world, and had to leave forever. Of course, once he got in regular contact with her, she realized that he was kind of just an impulsive idiot most of the time. He worked menial labor jobs that paid decently for what they were but absolutely only enough to support himself. Most of his personal savings went to this little trip. He was decently overeager to be welcomed back in any form by any relatives, any surviving members of the family, that he made a big show out of being able to afford the expenses on this trip. Marie wasn't hurting for cash herself, for the college student that she was—her financial aid package was pretty decent, all things considered, and she had been working during the school year and saving money for her own reasons anyways—so really if she wanted to chip in here and there she could have done so, but James absolutely rejected that. Her input was meaningless.
Which is exactly why, when James asked if they had the right house, Marie indulged him instead of fighting against it.
"Let me text him," she said, "I'll tell him we're outside, and if this is the right house, then he'll open the door."
And so she fired off a few messages in his general direction. It was around noon, so he could have decided to go run some errands before they arrived and been late that way. When she heard some commotion inside, she reacted maybe a little too strongly, firing off a message describing what she heard without considering that, if for some stupid reason Marie was wrong and they did in fact have the wrong house, then what she described was entirely besides the actual apartment owner's concern. It was just the fact that her fingers were already over the keyboard. And even then, so what if there was some noises inside? Maybe it was some last minute cleaning. Marie was tempted to look through the mail slot.
"Jeez, I hope he's alright in there," James said for no reason. Marie rolled her eyes.
"I'm sure he's fine," she replied just as aimlessly, "he's probably just getting things ready, or someth—"
Marie was interrupted by the sudden opening of the door, an inward pull that was so fast it sucked some of the air from outside in.
Standing on the other side of the doorway...
| ...was one of the most normal looking individuals Marie had ever laid eyes upon. Almost absurdly mundane, he was. Just slightly portly, around the edges. Decently average height. His hair was averagely bad, bedhead looking fluffy feathery brown stuff that clung to his head rather whatever-ly and probably looked professional combed down. He wore wire-frame glasses on his average face. His nose was a little weird and muppet-y, but that was just about the standard facial aberration that Marie expected from most average people that she expected to meet. He was wearing a boring, baggy pink colored t-shirt with some words on it that she didn't understand the context of, and some boring jeans, and bunny slippers. He was average and unassuming enough. What was interesting, though, was his youth. He couldn't have been much older than James was a couple years ago, which was how old Arthur would be now. She had pictured someone with the name 'Randy Rudolph' to be old and stately, or else with a beer gut, the guy from the Quaaludes video her first roommate showed her before she decided to transfer out back home to community college. The first roommate, that was. It was the kind of video you expected to go viral due to some weird quirk of the YouTube recommendation algorithm at some point, and Marie had no idea how she had found it. The house behind him looked average enough, too. There was a brown couch that looked pretty cushion-y, and a kitchenette off behind it with a small table that looked rather cozy and practically screamed that this guy usually lived alone. That was one of the things Marie had been worried about; that this guy lived with some strange live-in-girlfriend named Wanda, Wanda almost-Rudolph or something oddly harmonious like Randy. Randy and Wanda. Whatever. Minimal clutter, hard wood floors. A little spot for shoes by the door. It was all very, very normal. Marie was disappointed. |
...was one of the most beautiful looking girls Randy had ever seen, and also a weird dumpy looking guy too. The girl, firstly, was basically a perfect pixie individual descended from the heavens. She had this blue hair thing going on, and. well, blue hair kind of did it for Randy. Her face was small and mousey, and her eyes were sparkly and bright, and she was shorter than Randy but not too much shorter, like ideal placing-shoulder-on-head-all-moe-like height. She was wearing a red cardigan over a white v-neck t-shirt and black jeans, and while that'd be weird if not for the strange punk-ish dude standing to her...left? But it was clearly an alternative person trying to look as not alternative as possible. She had, like, pretty average tits, and look for all the fanservicey big tit shit Randy consumed on a daily basis he had to say that he largely preferred flat chested girls, or average girls, just people that didn't look like they'd realistically be in pain because come on he had had man boobs before he knew how inconvenient they were when they got to a certain size, and he wouldn't really wish that on anyone. The weird punk dude was scary, though. Looked like some kind of addict. His hair was basically black, slicked back, cut short. A vaguely sharky looking expression crossed his face, or was just the way that his face was? Who knew. He was a good, good deal taller than Randy, like, probably half a foot or so, and he felt much taller. He gave off the yeah I'm important fuck you vibe that Max did sometimes, but in a much more threatening stabs-as-a-warning way. Dude had fucking ear piercings, and lots of them. How the hell did he get that through TSA? He wore a black leather jacket and a thickly striped white and gray t-shirt underneath, and it went without saying that he had some tight black skinny jeans with rips in the knees on. Black high top converse sneakers too. Leather as well. Gulp. Scary couple if he ever saw one. |
It was weird that he wasn't saying anything, though. He just sort of stood there in the door for a few seconds, seconds that felt like an eternity, looking awkwardly back and forth between her and James.
Then, suddenly, he sprang to life.
"Uhh, hi!" he said, extending a hand intended to be shaken, "I'm Randy, nice to meetcha!"
Marie took it and shook it.
"Hey, I'm Marie," she said, running up on the end of his sorta really slow speech with the start of her own sentence, "and this is my older brother James."
Older brother. She could swear she saw Randy's eye twitch in a weird way, but it didn't matter—he stuck his hand out to greet James all the same. Retracting his hand, Randy motioned to the inside of his house.
"Come on in, make yourselves at home, can I help you with your stuff, you look like you got lots of stuff," he started to offer.
"We're good," James said, picking up both of their rolling suitcases and hefting them over the threshold.
"Of course, of course," Randy said, "well, your room is the one down and to the left, not to the right, that's the restroom, to the left, but anywho, feel free to get sitch-oo-ayted in there however you feel like."
Marie followed inside after James and closed the door behind her. Randy stepped over to the kitchen, and opened up the fridge.
"Y'all must be pretty hungry after your flight?" he half-asked, "Want me to fix ya' somethin' to eat?"
James disappeared inside the guest room with the suitcases, leaving Marie and Randy in the open common area, Marie by the door sitting on a little stool taking off her shoes and Randy looking over somewhat expectantly from the kitchen.
"Sure," she said, "but, uh, James is vegetarian, so—"
"Not at all an issue!" Randy interrupted, "I got some veggie samosas, some greens, other stuff, I'm sure you'll find somethin'—hey, mee case-ah is ehs too case-ah, right?"
Marie got up from the stool, her socks still on, and looked around the room a little more. There was a sorta small TV hooked up to an unfamiliar looking kind of cable box thing, and what looked like a PlayStation 4 hooked up to it too. The cabinets underneath the TV table were slightly open. There was an analog clock on the wall with a weird hummingbird in the middle, with several beaks that acted as the hands. It was so kitschy it seemed almost forced, like there was no way a person could actually use that thing to tell time on an active basis.
James emerged from the room. "Marie," he called, "come on, unpack your stuff. Oh, and samosas sound good."
"Alrighty," she said back, walking around the couch past the kitchen, "I'll have some too."
She shut the door to the bedroom behind her. The walls were painted a light blue, and the bed had a darker blue quilt on top of it. Pillows were white, somewhat immaculately. The floor was carpeted in gray. There was a brown dresser in the corner of the room. There were a couple windows, long and vertical, across from the bed, with curtains to draw. Currently open, they let enough light in that Marie didn't see the need to flick the switch on. There was an A.C. in one of them, even though the light had a ceiling fan. James' suitcase was currently open on the bed, and he was stuffing his clothes in the dresser.
"Isn't that a little presumptuous?" Marie asked.
"Hey," James said, "mi casa es tu casa, right?
"You just can't beat southern hospitality."
-
MethodicalSlacker
- Posts: 1231
- Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2018 2:18 am
- Location: Here And There Along The Echo
- Contact:
Late that night, after unpacking and getting well situated in the Airbnb—Randy disappearing into the ether that was 'errands' and 'business' and 'some stuff he had to take care of', Marie and James went to the Blue House Cafe and Diner for some food. For some reason, it reminded Marie of a cross-section between Cheryl's and the Diamondback Ice Cream Parlor from back home, as far as atmosphere went. Of course, it didn't exactly sell ice cream, nor did it have notoriously bad, well, food, no. Quite the contrary. In their searching online for a place to eat, Marie saw that it had actually good reviews. Plus, it was a good deal cheaper than Amatore's, or some of the more high-end pricey shit downtown, let alone the mall—like hell she'd go to get dinner at that ziggurat monument to greed. There wasn't really stuff like that back in Kingman, and the town was better for it.
Blue House also let her write on her laptop while she picked at a bowl of french fries. She'd bought the thing before the college school year started, an Asus running Windows 10. It had a good deal more processing power than the junker desktop back home, the "family" computer that really only belonged to Arthur by default, since he was the one who used it the most. A sort of naturalization based approach to personal possessions, in the Bernstein household. It wasn't her first choice for a laptop, or her dream computer—far from it—but it more than got the job done.
The job in question? Marie wasn't sure yet. She knew that she was using her experience here to fuel a sort of personal view on the tragedy, the abduction, the everything-but-officially-named seventh iteration. Part of that involved a comparison to her own personal experience. Another part of that had to do with living the experience of the people in town. Just walking around, Marie felt something gloomy in the air, in the worried and often downcast expressions of some of the people she passed on the street. It was still nothing like what happened in Kingman. Chattanooga was a substantially bigger city. Just about six times bigger, as far as population went. It was a bigger class that went missing, sure—Marie had managed to pick up a class roster through a contact online—but overall, proportionally, it was a smaller loss to the community.
A single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic, and one hundred and fifty deaths was just Survival of the Fittest.
Marie wrote that one down. It sounded good, even if it was a little edgy.
Someone came around and tapped her on the shoulder. She looked up, and saw that it was her brother, looking a strange mixture of restless and sleepy like always. She wasn't quite sure why he came along, anyway. There were vegan options on the menu, but he didn't choose to have any. Weird. Maybe this place just wasn't his speed?
"I'm going to go out, and walk back," he said, "maybe have a smoke, too. Interested?"
She shook her head, and nodded towards the computer screen.
"Jeez," James mumbled, "that much? Already? Actually, how many words even is that?"
Ctrl-Shift-C.
"Oh, wow, okay, well, I guess I'll leave you to that, then. You're uh, clearly on some kind of roll, here."
Marie nodded. James shrugged his shoulders and made to walk out of the restaurant, but was interrupted by someone coming through the door.
"Sorry! Comin' through! Gotta use the restroom!"
James, for his part, got out of the way, letting the man speedwalk inside and around the corner to the toilet. James looked back at Marie one last time, shrugged his shoulders again, and walked out. From her seat by the window, Marie watched James cross the street and take a right. She followed him with her eyes until he disappeared from view around a corner, and promptly set to working on her document again. It wasn't anything concrete, really. Just a bunch of disconnected paragraphs and sentences she had come up with, alongside all her notes, all trapped in the same Google doc file. She was pretty sure that if anyone who wasn't her took a look through and tried to make sense of it all, they'd have a hard time. It was some kind of... puzzle. Yeah. It was a puzzle to wrap the mind around. The bell above the door jingled with the exit of the man who had to use the bathroom, and for a moment all was silent again. Silent meaning returned to the base level noise of a coffee shop that Marie was used to, and could tolerate.
A car went by on the street outside. Then, another one. Someone in the back of the cafe spilled a drink, muttered a few expletives under their breath. Marie rolled her eyes. She wished she brought her earbuds. Even the ones they gave her on the flight over would have done, but in her fatigue she didn't think of keeping them. Didn't James have a pair? There was no point in asking him for them now; he was probably long, long gone. Probably lost, too, but if he was lost he wouldn't say anything anyway. In truth, Marie didn't totally expect him to come back later at night. He was off doing his own thing, and he'd get involved in whatever he got involved in. Such was James. The most interesting thing about him was that interesting things occasionally happened to him. A waitress came by—someone with cleaning supplies, she couldn't quite tell in the window's inward reflection exactly who it was—to clean up the spill. Noise levels went up by a good deal. Marie knew that if she rolled her eyes harder, they'd get stuck.
Yet another car came by outside, but this one parked across the street. Looked to be some sort of gray pickup truck with odd bumper stickers. For whatever reason, the ornaments caught her eye—she figured that she was too distracted by this point between the cars outside and the constant back and forth I'm-sorry-no-it's-fine-spills-happen-no-really-I'm-sorry-about-all-this-totally-fine-you're-alright inside to do anything other than people watch, anyways. From what she could see, there wasn't anything overly political besides a bog standard Canon 2016 sticker, which she'd come to expect by now. Chattanooga was something of a liberal enclave, sure, but this was still Tennessee. The state overwhelming went with Canon. So did Arizona, for that matter. She'd lived through it, of course.
Someone got out of the front seat of the pickup truck, but they were obscured by the truck itself. Parked on the other side of the street, a little further down, going the other way, it was hard to even get a glimpse through the window who it was. They must not have been very tall. Then again, she was sitting down, so she didn't have a good vantage point to begin with. One of the bumper stickers had a weird line art-y drawing of a strange cat thing on it. It was hard to read the text on the sticker, so she pulled out her phone and zoomed in. Would you like to make a contract? Weird. Marie hadn't ever seen what that was, before, and she figured that she'd never get the chance. She resigned herself to watching the driver as they came out from the side of the car and oh god oh fuck it's Randy and he's coming right this way—
She could see the recognition in his face instantly. Obviously. Marie was the only person in probably the whole town with blue hair, or at least she hadn't seen anyone else with it. It'd be instant. Randy looked pretty caught off guard, too, a look of surprise crossing his face. Fuck. Marie wasn't good at shit like this. Back in Kingman, she ran into people she knew all the time, and that was one thing, but she had been looking forward to the relative anonymity that came with a bigger city. She enjoyed it well enough in D.C, and was hoping for the same thing here, but it seemed like fate didn't have that in store for her here. Marie closed her laptop and put on a fake smile, giving a slight wave with her right hand. Randy looked even more surprised by this, but smiled and waved back as well. There was a barber shop next door, so maybe he was going there? No, his hair was already plenty short. There wasn't anything else nearby, was there? Shit. Fuck. Shit.
Before she knew it, Randy walked through the door of the restaurant. It might as well have been hell's bells ringing as he came in. Marie didn't dislike the guy—she'd had no reason to, so far. But his arrival meant the death of her productivity. Goddammit. Really, if there was anything to hate about him, it was how simple he was, though the bumper stickers suggested something else. Randy was ordering a coffee at the register. There were empty seats to the left and right of her—she was sitting at a bar kind of thing by the front window. Shit. He seemed so overeager earlier to talk and socialize and get to know her, so there wasn't much chance that she'd manage to get out of this one. Marie stuffed her laptop in her bag, and then looked back over at the counter. Randy was being handed his drink. Fuck. He was coming over to where she was sitting. Marie felt she had no choice but to smile and offer the seat next to her. Fuck!!
"Hey," he said, putting his cup down, "I see that you're, uh, already exploring the neighborhood."
His voice cracked somewhere in there. Marie winced, but kept up her smile.
"Uh-huh, yup, sure have!"
"Cool."
Cool? Cool?! Who still said cool!?
"Yes," he continued, "very cool, splendid."
Splendid?!
"I was, uh, just in the neighborhood. Just got done with a job, actually."
Marie looked at what he was wearing. He had on light blue jeans, a navy blue dress shirt, and a blue baseball cap. He smelled faintly of sewer.
"Plumber?" she guessed.
"Hey," Randy said, lighting up, "how'd you know?"
"Just a hunch."
Randy nodded and smiled. "I smell pretty bad, I know. It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it."
Marie couldn't suppress her wince this time. He didn't have to just come out and acknowledge it like that! Randy saw her facial expression and laughed, adjusting his cap.
"Yeah," Randy said, "well, I was just gonna grab a cup and go, but I figured that I might as well stop in and offer you a ride back to the place, if you were just about to leave. I saw you packing up, anyway."
Marie's eyes widened for a split second before she realized what she had done and made herself laugh. Fuck. Fucking shit and fuck. Her excuse to leave the cafe had turned into an excuse for Randy to get her in his car. She'd really screwed the pooch on this one. Holy shit.
"S-s-sure!" Marie stammered, backed into a corner, "Um, but, I didn't want to, if you had other stuff, uh, you know, to do?"
"It's totally fine," Randy assured her, "I wasn't going to do anything important. And besides, it's the polite thing to do."
The polite thing to do.
"Hey, you alright? You've sort of just been staring out the window for a bit."
Marie was shaken back to reality by Randy's words. She had spaced out for a bit, just sort of staring past him into the street. Her gaze was fixed on a telephone pole that looked sort of crooked, and she hadn't even realized it. She looked at Randy and saw his face had changed to an expression of genuine concern and worry. It was embarrassing, she thought, to open up like that so soon, but inwardly she reckoned that was just how people were over here.
"Yeah, I'm fine," she said.
"Still want a ride?" Randy asked.
Marie sighed.
"Yeah," she said, brushing some of her hair back, "but, I have a question to ask. I've been meaning to ask it, anyway."
"Oh, sure, go ahead," Randy said, straightening his posture a bit, "I'm not the smartest tool in the kitchen drawer, but I can try to answer whatever question you might have about y'know the town, or the people, or—"
"Are you related to someone named Max Rudolph?"
Blue House also let her write on her laptop while she picked at a bowl of french fries. She'd bought the thing before the college school year started, an Asus running Windows 10. It had a good deal more processing power than the junker desktop back home, the "family" computer that really only belonged to Arthur by default, since he was the one who used it the most. A sort of naturalization based approach to personal possessions, in the Bernstein household. It wasn't her first choice for a laptop, or her dream computer—far from it—but it more than got the job done.
The job in question? Marie wasn't sure yet. She knew that she was using her experience here to fuel a sort of personal view on the tragedy, the abduction, the everything-but-officially-named seventh iteration. Part of that involved a comparison to her own personal experience. Another part of that had to do with living the experience of the people in town. Just walking around, Marie felt something gloomy in the air, in the worried and often downcast expressions of some of the people she passed on the street. It was still nothing like what happened in Kingman. Chattanooga was a substantially bigger city. Just about six times bigger, as far as population went. It was a bigger class that went missing, sure—Marie had managed to pick up a class roster through a contact online—but overall, proportionally, it was a smaller loss to the community.
A single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic, and one hundred and fifty deaths was just Survival of the Fittest.
Marie wrote that one down. It sounded good, even if it was a little edgy.
Someone came around and tapped her on the shoulder. She looked up, and saw that it was her brother, looking a strange mixture of restless and sleepy like always. She wasn't quite sure why he came along, anyway. There were vegan options on the menu, but he didn't choose to have any. Weird. Maybe this place just wasn't his speed?
"I'm going to go out, and walk back," he said, "maybe have a smoke, too. Interested?"
She shook her head, and nodded towards the computer screen.
"Jeez," James mumbled, "that much? Already? Actually, how many words even is that?"
Ctrl-Shift-C.
"Oh, wow, okay, well, I guess I'll leave you to that, then. You're uh, clearly on some kind of roll, here."
Marie nodded. James shrugged his shoulders and made to walk out of the restaurant, but was interrupted by someone coming through the door.
"Sorry! Comin' through! Gotta use the restroom!"
James, for his part, got out of the way, letting the man speedwalk inside and around the corner to the toilet. James looked back at Marie one last time, shrugged his shoulders again, and walked out. From her seat by the window, Marie watched James cross the street and take a right. She followed him with her eyes until he disappeared from view around a corner, and promptly set to working on her document again. It wasn't anything concrete, really. Just a bunch of disconnected paragraphs and sentences she had come up with, alongside all her notes, all trapped in the same Google doc file. She was pretty sure that if anyone who wasn't her took a look through and tried to make sense of it all, they'd have a hard time. It was some kind of... puzzle. Yeah. It was a puzzle to wrap the mind around. The bell above the door jingled with the exit of the man who had to use the bathroom, and for a moment all was silent again. Silent meaning returned to the base level noise of a coffee shop that Marie was used to, and could tolerate.
A car went by on the street outside. Then, another one. Someone in the back of the cafe spilled a drink, muttered a few expletives under their breath. Marie rolled her eyes. She wished she brought her earbuds. Even the ones they gave her on the flight over would have done, but in her fatigue she didn't think of keeping them. Didn't James have a pair? There was no point in asking him for them now; he was probably long, long gone. Probably lost, too, but if he was lost he wouldn't say anything anyway. In truth, Marie didn't totally expect him to come back later at night. He was off doing his own thing, and he'd get involved in whatever he got involved in. Such was James. The most interesting thing about him was that interesting things occasionally happened to him. A waitress came by—someone with cleaning supplies, she couldn't quite tell in the window's inward reflection exactly who it was—to clean up the spill. Noise levels went up by a good deal. Marie knew that if she rolled her eyes harder, they'd get stuck.
Yet another car came by outside, but this one parked across the street. Looked to be some sort of gray pickup truck with odd bumper stickers. For whatever reason, the ornaments caught her eye—she figured that she was too distracted by this point between the cars outside and the constant back and forth I'm-sorry-no-it's-fine-spills-happen-no-really-I'm-sorry-about-all-this-totally-fine-you're-alright inside to do anything other than people watch, anyways. From what she could see, there wasn't anything overly political besides a bog standard Canon 2016 sticker, which she'd come to expect by now. Chattanooga was something of a liberal enclave, sure, but this was still Tennessee. The state overwhelming went with Canon. So did Arizona, for that matter. She'd lived through it, of course.
Someone got out of the front seat of the pickup truck, but they were obscured by the truck itself. Parked on the other side of the street, a little further down, going the other way, it was hard to even get a glimpse through the window who it was. They must not have been very tall. Then again, she was sitting down, so she didn't have a good vantage point to begin with. One of the bumper stickers had a weird line art-y drawing of a strange cat thing on it. It was hard to read the text on the sticker, so she pulled out her phone and zoomed in. Would you like to make a contract? Weird. Marie hadn't ever seen what that was, before, and she figured that she'd never get the chance. She resigned herself to watching the driver as they came out from the side of the car and oh god oh fuck it's Randy and he's coming right this way—
She could see the recognition in his face instantly. Obviously. Marie was the only person in probably the whole town with blue hair, or at least she hadn't seen anyone else with it. It'd be instant. Randy looked pretty caught off guard, too, a look of surprise crossing his face. Fuck. Marie wasn't good at shit like this. Back in Kingman, she ran into people she knew all the time, and that was one thing, but she had been looking forward to the relative anonymity that came with a bigger city. She enjoyed it well enough in D.C, and was hoping for the same thing here, but it seemed like fate didn't have that in store for her here. Marie closed her laptop and put on a fake smile, giving a slight wave with her right hand. Randy looked even more surprised by this, but smiled and waved back as well. There was a barber shop next door, so maybe he was going there? No, his hair was already plenty short. There wasn't anything else nearby, was there? Shit. Fuck. Shit.
Before she knew it, Randy walked through the door of the restaurant. It might as well have been hell's bells ringing as he came in. Marie didn't dislike the guy—she'd had no reason to, so far. But his arrival meant the death of her productivity. Goddammit. Really, if there was anything to hate about him, it was how simple he was, though the bumper stickers suggested something else. Randy was ordering a coffee at the register. There were empty seats to the left and right of her—she was sitting at a bar kind of thing by the front window. Shit. He seemed so overeager earlier to talk and socialize and get to know her, so there wasn't much chance that she'd manage to get out of this one. Marie stuffed her laptop in her bag, and then looked back over at the counter. Randy was being handed his drink. Fuck. He was coming over to where she was sitting. Marie felt she had no choice but to smile and offer the seat next to her. Fuck!!
"Hey," he said, putting his cup down, "I see that you're, uh, already exploring the neighborhood."
His voice cracked somewhere in there. Marie winced, but kept up her smile.
"Uh-huh, yup, sure have!"
"Cool."
Cool? Cool?! Who still said cool!?
"Yes," he continued, "very cool, splendid."
Splendid?!
"I was, uh, just in the neighborhood. Just got done with a job, actually."
Marie looked at what he was wearing. He had on light blue jeans, a navy blue dress shirt, and a blue baseball cap. He smelled faintly of sewer.
"Plumber?" she guessed.
"Hey," Randy said, lighting up, "how'd you know?"
"Just a hunch."
Randy nodded and smiled. "I smell pretty bad, I know. It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it."
Marie couldn't suppress her wince this time. He didn't have to just come out and acknowledge it like that! Randy saw her facial expression and laughed, adjusting his cap.
"Yeah," Randy said, "well, I was just gonna grab a cup and go, but I figured that I might as well stop in and offer you a ride back to the place, if you were just about to leave. I saw you packing up, anyway."
Marie's eyes widened for a split second before she realized what she had done and made herself laugh. Fuck. Fucking shit and fuck. Her excuse to leave the cafe had turned into an excuse for Randy to get her in his car. She'd really screwed the pooch on this one. Holy shit.
"S-s-sure!" Marie stammered, backed into a corner, "Um, but, I didn't want to, if you had other stuff, uh, you know, to do?"
"It's totally fine," Randy assured her, "I wasn't going to do anything important. And besides, it's the polite thing to do."
The polite thing to do.
"Hey, you alright? You've sort of just been staring out the window for a bit."
Marie was shaken back to reality by Randy's words. She had spaced out for a bit, just sort of staring past him into the street. Her gaze was fixed on a telephone pole that looked sort of crooked, and she hadn't even realized it. She looked at Randy and saw his face had changed to an expression of genuine concern and worry. It was embarrassing, she thought, to open up like that so soon, but inwardly she reckoned that was just how people were over here.
"Yeah, I'm fine," she said.
"Still want a ride?" Randy asked.
Marie sighed.
"Yeah," she said, brushing some of her hair back, "but, I have a question to ask. I've been meaning to ask it, anyway."
"Oh, sure, go ahead," Randy said, straightening his posture a bit, "I'm not the smartest tool in the kitchen drawer, but I can try to answer whatever question you might have about y'know the town, or the people, or—"
"Are you related to someone named Max Rudolph?"
-
MethodicalSlacker
- Posts: 1231
- Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2018 2:18 am
- Location: Here And There Along The Echo
- Contact:
It took a long time for Randy to process what Marie had just said. Way, way too long. If he swallowed it quickly, he would have looked smart. Like he was waiting for her to find out, somehow. Or like it didn't phase him. If he took just a little longer than that, he would have appeared to be innocent and unassuming, because it was really a question that anyone would struggle with if they were asked. Are you related to the victim of a terrorist attack? But then reacting with surprise would indicate that he did, in fact, know who Max was, which would imply that he was related. And by the time he figured that out, he had been sitting there slack-jawed and shell-shocked for long enough that it didn't matter what he said or did. He had already told Marie all that she needed to know.
"...what the fuck?" he said, just for good measure.
Marie smirked. She sat up straighter in her chair and folded her hands in a sort of tent just below her chin.
"Someone leaked the class roster online. Multiple times, actually. Whatever. It happens, always. It wasn't like they needed to, since all that would come out at some point officially, but they did, anyways. Included the entire class. People who weren't taken and people who were. Right now, I don't have a big idea of who's on what side of the fence, if you know what I mean. There were some people left over from last time. They were going on a science trip. It wasn't a celebration, like it usually was. And it wasn't in an important place. They were going to do work. And then, poof. Gone. So, part of me wants to say that there are less left over now than last time, because this vacation is something people actually would have wanted to go on. And another part of me says that there will be more left over, since this is a big city. Well, relatively speaking.
"Anyways, I was going to come here anyway—I wanted to do an article. A write-up, of some kind. Just to see what things were like. Volunteer some, here and there. And then I saw your last name, and thought, well, that's funny. That's not the most common last name. It rings a bell, somehow. And I go and I cross-reference the roster and I see well there it is. There he is, and here you are. Randy."
He gulped. This couldn't be good. What would she do now? If Randy was a hot girl with blue hair with a liberal personal vendetta against Randy then he/she'd probably make a big call-out post on twitter and end Randy's life right then and there. Share it to all the members of his family. Hey, look, Randy wants to market to disaster tourists! And then no more money from Dad, no more calls from Mom. It'd be like operating an airline into an ISIS stronghold so that people could go on tours and "try out" the ideology. He was doing something shitty. He felt ashamed. He didn't foresee the consequences. Randy wanted to get down on his hands and knees and promise that he would do anything in order to keep the secret from getting out. Was it even a fucking secret? All his family had to do was look at Airbnb in the last month or so and they'd see he was listing for fuck's sake. Randy Rudolph was fucked from the words "Post your Listing."
Marie gave him a sympathetic look. She tilted her head to the side and stuck her tongue out, slightly. Just the tip, poking out from the corner of her mouth, as she looked into his wordless, regretful eyes.
"I want to do a profile of you for my article," she said.
And somehow those eyes went wider.
"I, uh, it might be rude of me to be so forward about it, and to confront you like this, but I didn't know how else to pin—to get it out of—sorry, to tell you that I knew. And that I wanted to write about you. I think it'd be a really great article if I could explore the city's reaction to this tragedy through your eyes, Randy. Plus, I want to get to know you, and your relation to this Max kid, and I think it'd be really great if I could compare and contrast two different reactions to this tragedy, separated by time, in a longform kind of piece, so—"
Randy cleared his throat and scooched his chair back a bit.
"Hold on," he said, "back up just a bit, I mean, a little more than a bit, back up a lot, back up to the goddamn county line for me, please. You want to do what?"
"I want to write about you."
"Why me?"
"Because you could be interesting. And you're relevant."
"What the hell do you mean, 'relevant'? I'm a goddamn plumber, for heaven's sake."
"You're related to Max Rudolph, right?"
"No—I mean, well—I mean, yes, he was my cousin, and I knew him well, and we hung out sometimes, but—"
"Awesome."
"—but that doesn't mean I consent to be a part of this profile! I mean, I truly appreciate your work, probably, I mean, I haven't read it, I mean, I don't know who you are, but you were writing, so you're probably someone good at it, and you type fast, you were typing last night really loud, and I couldn't sleep, but, I don't know if I want to go along with this! I, um, I'm dealing with this in my own way, too. Yeah! And with all due respect I think it's mighty rude to come along and rent out a space in my house and then, uh, tell me you want to do a pro-file of my life. Because it would be 'interesting,' or some such."
Marie frowned and leaned back in her chair. She looked out the window. Randy followed her gaze. A few cars went by on the road, but he couldn't see what she saw. What she saw was a city wrecked by tragedy. Grieving. Randy felt that a little, but it was still the city. A hundred or so teenagers disappearing was a tragedy, but it had been a long time. People moved on. It was a big city, and Randy was a small person. He didn't understand where she was coming from, with all of this. What was there to relate to—
wait a second.
"Did you say," Randy said, "two different reactions?"
"Yes," said Marie.
"What do you mean by two different reactions?"
Marie's expression went a little blank.
"Oh," she said, "right. I didn't really mention who I am, to you.
"I'm Marie Bernstein. Arthur Bernstein was my brother, and then he was taken and put in Survival of the Fittest Version Six."
She motioned with her head to Randy's truck, parked on the side of the street.
"I can tell you more while we drive, if you want."
And she stood up and picked up her things and left the restaurant. Randy watched for a few moments as she walked outside the window and crossed over to where the truck was before realizing that he, too, had to move.
"...oh, what the fuck?" he muttered as he picked himself up off of his chair.
"...what the fuck?" he said, just for good measure.
Marie smirked. She sat up straighter in her chair and folded her hands in a sort of tent just below her chin.
"Someone leaked the class roster online. Multiple times, actually. Whatever. It happens, always. It wasn't like they needed to, since all that would come out at some point officially, but they did, anyways. Included the entire class. People who weren't taken and people who were. Right now, I don't have a big idea of who's on what side of the fence, if you know what I mean. There were some people left over from last time. They were going on a science trip. It wasn't a celebration, like it usually was. And it wasn't in an important place. They were going to do work. And then, poof. Gone. So, part of me wants to say that there are less left over now than last time, because this vacation is something people actually would have wanted to go on. And another part of me says that there will be more left over, since this is a big city. Well, relatively speaking.
"Anyways, I was going to come here anyway—I wanted to do an article. A write-up, of some kind. Just to see what things were like. Volunteer some, here and there. And then I saw your last name, and thought, well, that's funny. That's not the most common last name. It rings a bell, somehow. And I go and I cross-reference the roster and I see well there it is. There he is, and here you are. Randy."
He gulped. This couldn't be good. What would she do now? If Randy was a hot girl with blue hair with a liberal personal vendetta against Randy then he/she'd probably make a big call-out post on twitter and end Randy's life right then and there. Share it to all the members of his family. Hey, look, Randy wants to market to disaster tourists! And then no more money from Dad, no more calls from Mom. It'd be like operating an airline into an ISIS stronghold so that people could go on tours and "try out" the ideology. He was doing something shitty. He felt ashamed. He didn't foresee the consequences. Randy wanted to get down on his hands and knees and promise that he would do anything in order to keep the secret from getting out. Was it even a fucking secret? All his family had to do was look at Airbnb in the last month or so and they'd see he was listing for fuck's sake. Randy Rudolph was fucked from the words "Post your Listing."
Marie gave him a sympathetic look. She tilted her head to the side and stuck her tongue out, slightly. Just the tip, poking out from the corner of her mouth, as she looked into his wordless, regretful eyes.
"I want to do a profile of you for my article," she said.
And somehow those eyes went wider.
"I, uh, it might be rude of me to be so forward about it, and to confront you like this, but I didn't know how else to pin—to get it out of—sorry, to tell you that I knew. And that I wanted to write about you. I think it'd be a really great article if I could explore the city's reaction to this tragedy through your eyes, Randy. Plus, I want to get to know you, and your relation to this Max kid, and I think it'd be really great if I could compare and contrast two different reactions to this tragedy, separated by time, in a longform kind of piece, so—"
Randy cleared his throat and scooched his chair back a bit.
"Hold on," he said, "back up just a bit, I mean, a little more than a bit, back up a lot, back up to the goddamn county line for me, please. You want to do what?"
"I want to write about you."
"Why me?"
"Because you could be interesting. And you're relevant."
"What the hell do you mean, 'relevant'? I'm a goddamn plumber, for heaven's sake."
"You're related to Max Rudolph, right?"
"No—I mean, well—I mean, yes, he was my cousin, and I knew him well, and we hung out sometimes, but—"
"Awesome."
"—but that doesn't mean I consent to be a part of this profile! I mean, I truly appreciate your work, probably, I mean, I haven't read it, I mean, I don't know who you are, but you were writing, so you're probably someone good at it, and you type fast, you were typing last night really loud, and I couldn't sleep, but, I don't know if I want to go along with this! I, um, I'm dealing with this in my own way, too. Yeah! And with all due respect I think it's mighty rude to come along and rent out a space in my house and then, uh, tell me you want to do a pro-file of my life. Because it would be 'interesting,' or some such."
Marie frowned and leaned back in her chair. She looked out the window. Randy followed her gaze. A few cars went by on the road, but he couldn't see what she saw. What she saw was a city wrecked by tragedy. Grieving. Randy felt that a little, but it was still the city. A hundred or so teenagers disappearing was a tragedy, but it had been a long time. People moved on. It was a big city, and Randy was a small person. He didn't understand where she was coming from, with all of this. What was there to relate to—
wait a second.
"Did you say," Randy said, "two different reactions?"
"Yes," said Marie.
"What do you mean by two different reactions?"
Marie's expression went a little blank.
"Oh," she said, "right. I didn't really mention who I am, to you.
"I'm Marie Bernstein. Arthur Bernstein was my brother, and then he was taken and put in Survival of the Fittest Version Six."
She motioned with her head to Randy's truck, parked on the side of the street.
"I can tell you more while we drive, if you want."
And she stood up and picked up her things and left the restaurant. Randy watched for a few moments as she walked outside the window and crossed over to where the truck was before realizing that he, too, had to move.
"...oh, what the fuck?" he muttered as he picked himself up off of his chair.
-
MethodicalSlacker
- Posts: 1231
- Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2018 2:18 am
- Location: Here And There Along The Echo
- Contact:
Q.
A. "Max was great, I mean, I don't know much else to say about him other than he was one of the smartest people I'd ever met, and I'm really dumb so you might think that anyone's smart to me but I say I'm dumb even though there's one thing that I like to think I'm good at and that's picking out who the people that are smarter than me by the most are, and Max was smarter than me by a long shot. I'm older than him, of course, so, err, I was let to watch over him sometimes, and even from a young age he was very, very bright, I'll tell you. Very into politicking, a good American, good head on his shoulders. Patriotic when he needed to be, insightful on ways we could all be better off when he needed to be too. A mind for books. He went to church, he volunteered at charities, he was really the best that one could be. Better than anyone else his age, I'm convinced, ayup."
Q.
A. "No, no, maybe once, but I usually don't have the time. Especially not now, but then too. I was busy getting certified, and doing work, and I didn't have time off that I could take to help out, sorry to say. I know, I know, it's wrong of me, to speak so highly of him and to not have actually taken what he did and said, and made it part of, um, my own self. And he's gone now, as you can see, and I'll never make him proud. Oh, yeah, it's weird, but I wanted to make him proud. Didn't like me very much, you see."
Q.
A. "Too much of a loser. Max was an athlete, too, y'see. Played a mean baseball. Very good at it, I saw some of his games, and he was, woo, I gotta say, hold on, what's this guy doing. Just about ran a red light, he did. Max didn't want to hang out with me. I was fat. Am. And I got weird hobbies, which, I mean, I guess you basically already know the worst things about me, I like anime, I like video games, I'm a plumber and I seem simple but I'm a dumb nerd with loner hobbies. I didn't have many friends when I was gettin' grown. And Max had none of that, see. Always with his nose in some book or other, talking about some philosophy, and I have no brains, absolutely none, for that, yeah."
Q.
A. "You wanna know more about tha—well, I mean, I guess it's—how much do you know about it?"
Q.
A. "Which?"
Q.
A. "Oh, those are, well, more of the popular ones. I've seen 'em, but they're not really my cup of tea. Entry level stuff. I guess I got into the hobby through those, but I like more slow shows now. I particularly, uh, like the 'slice of life' genre. Just people doing things. Normal people doing normal things, yeah. Makes me feel less bad about being a total loser, but it also makes me more of a total loser, so, I right get screwed like a pooch on that one. Can't win 'em all, can't win any of 'em. Just how it is."
Q.
A. "Right, uh, last time I saw him was just after he had his prom, see. He was about to go on the trip, and he had a bit of time, so he decided to come over and shoot the hay. Say hello and I said hello and he had some soda and we sat and watched the news for a while and, usually he has something to say, but this time he was acting all weirdly quiet, and I go and I ask him what he's so quiet for, has something happened in his life, why's he choosing to hang out with me of my own volition, and he goes and he asks me something darn personal and a bit sinful and I gotta say out of all the people I'd have expected to hear this from Max was absolutely on the bottom of the list and that he thought, well, I suppose I was a little flattered, that he thought that I'd done that before, but he asked me of all people and all at once I felt trusted, y'know, and also sort of betrayed. But, heh, mostly like he trusted me a lot. You understand, how it is."
Q. Q. Q. Q. Q. Q.
A. "Well see the nature of it's a bit personal, I suppose, so I don't know, but basically he asked me if I had been involved with a woman before. In I suppose you'd say a sexual context. And I was caught off guard by this and I said no, because the answer was no, I'd never been involved with a woman in a sexual context, and I still don't have that, experience, I guess you'd say. And Max sorta looks down and for christ's sake it's a green light please go buddy I'm just trying to get home it's been a long day and Max sorta looks away and off to the side and 'scuse me one sec I gotta roll down the window."
Q.
Q!!
A. "Looks all off to the side all shy like and he confesses to me that just the night before at prom he had a deep and what he believed to be intimate connection in a sexual context is what you'd call it, and I didn't know much about what to say to that so I sorta just let him talk about it. Told me how it made him feel, and he said good for the most part but afterwards after he had to leave and after he made sure the girl he was with was okay and good and that she had water because he felt like he should pour her a glass of water for some reason and sort of snuggled up with her for a bit he left because it was getting late and his parents called him two, maybe three times asking when he'd get home. He felt weird leaving her but felt like he needed to because her parents were about to be home and let's just say this was not Max's wife, nor his significant other of any sort, and that they'd only gotten together for this prom date, so he didn't feel comfortable spending the night, and that it seemed like the girl understood but it still made Max incredibly sad, walking home, got him real blue, and he cried on the way home and he told me it was the first time he cried in years. He managed to quit crying before he got home because well I know his Dad and his Dad ain't the kindest soul there is so he quit his crying and got home late and crawled into bed and came over and thought maybe I had some advice on what to do next since I was into, he looked disgusted with me, since I had so much experience with the video games about it, and I asked what with and he said the dating simulators."
Q.
A. "Yes."
Q.
A. "Yes, that's about accurate."
Q.
A. "I suppose that's right. In many ways it was sort of a substitute for human contact. In other ways I suppose you'd say that it was just because I wasn't getting that sort of contact in my day to day life, you'd say. What's that term, a feedback loop? That's not an inaccurate description, I'd say, but also part of it was just that it was fun. I didn't really think that deeply. See, that's half the problem, with you tryin' to do a whole profile of me, is that I'm not that interesting. Max was the interesting one, he put meaning in his life, he had things going for him. I'm a dead end of a story, Marie, and you aren't going to learn much about me from this whole project. I don't object to you doing it, because I want to help you out, but you, if you want to go interview other people I can give you a list of some people that are far more interesting and what's the word, mul-tie-faceted than me, and you'll be able to do all sorts of journalistic things with them, as a focus, as your profile goes on, and with me well I just plumb and I sit and I watch, that's all I do. Nothin' much else. Nobody wants to read about me, nobody should. Just how it is. Big ol' fat Randy."
Q.
A.
Q. Q. Q?
A. "You think so?"
Q.
A. "Well, that's kind of you, but, I dunno. Maybe we should continue this inside, we'll be home in a bit."
Q.
A. "What?"
Q.
A. "Um."
Q!
A. "Well, I wouldn't be opposed. But are you sure you know what you're getting yourself into, by asking that of me?"
A. "Max was great, I mean, I don't know much else to say about him other than he was one of the smartest people I'd ever met, and I'm really dumb so you might think that anyone's smart to me but I say I'm dumb even though there's one thing that I like to think I'm good at and that's picking out who the people that are smarter than me by the most are, and Max was smarter than me by a long shot. I'm older than him, of course, so, err, I was let to watch over him sometimes, and even from a young age he was very, very bright, I'll tell you. Very into politicking, a good American, good head on his shoulders. Patriotic when he needed to be, insightful on ways we could all be better off when he needed to be too. A mind for books. He went to church, he volunteered at charities, he was really the best that one could be. Better than anyone else his age, I'm convinced, ayup."
Q.
A. "No, no, maybe once, but I usually don't have the time. Especially not now, but then too. I was busy getting certified, and doing work, and I didn't have time off that I could take to help out, sorry to say. I know, I know, it's wrong of me, to speak so highly of him and to not have actually taken what he did and said, and made it part of, um, my own self. And he's gone now, as you can see, and I'll never make him proud. Oh, yeah, it's weird, but I wanted to make him proud. Didn't like me very much, you see."
Q.
A. "Too much of a loser. Max was an athlete, too, y'see. Played a mean baseball. Very good at it, I saw some of his games, and he was, woo, I gotta say, hold on, what's this guy doing. Just about ran a red light, he did. Max didn't want to hang out with me. I was fat. Am. And I got weird hobbies, which, I mean, I guess you basically already know the worst things about me, I like anime, I like video games, I'm a plumber and I seem simple but I'm a dumb nerd with loner hobbies. I didn't have many friends when I was gettin' grown. And Max had none of that, see. Always with his nose in some book or other, talking about some philosophy, and I have no brains, absolutely none, for that, yeah."
Q.
A. "You wanna know more about tha—well, I mean, I guess it's—how much do you know about it?"
Q.
A. "Which?"
Q.
A. "Oh, those are, well, more of the popular ones. I've seen 'em, but they're not really my cup of tea. Entry level stuff. I guess I got into the hobby through those, but I like more slow shows now. I particularly, uh, like the 'slice of life' genre. Just people doing things. Normal people doing normal things, yeah. Makes me feel less bad about being a total loser, but it also makes me more of a total loser, so, I right get screwed like a pooch on that one. Can't win 'em all, can't win any of 'em. Just how it is."
Q.
A. "Right, uh, last time I saw him was just after he had his prom, see. He was about to go on the trip, and he had a bit of time, so he decided to come over and shoot the hay. Say hello and I said hello and he had some soda and we sat and watched the news for a while and, usually he has something to say, but this time he was acting all weirdly quiet, and I go and I ask him what he's so quiet for, has something happened in his life, why's he choosing to hang out with me of my own volition, and he goes and he asks me something darn personal and a bit sinful and I gotta say out of all the people I'd have expected to hear this from Max was absolutely on the bottom of the list and that he thought, well, I suppose I was a little flattered, that he thought that I'd done that before, but he asked me of all people and all at once I felt trusted, y'know, and also sort of betrayed. But, heh, mostly like he trusted me a lot. You understand, how it is."
Q. Q. Q. Q. Q. Q.
A. "Well see the nature of it's a bit personal, I suppose, so I don't know, but basically he asked me if I had been involved with a woman before. In I suppose you'd say a sexual context. And I was caught off guard by this and I said no, because the answer was no, I'd never been involved with a woman in a sexual context, and I still don't have that, experience, I guess you'd say. And Max sorta looks down and for christ's sake it's a green light please go buddy I'm just trying to get home it's been a long day and Max sorta looks away and off to the side and 'scuse me one sec I gotta roll down the window."
Q.
Q!!
A. "Looks all off to the side all shy like and he confesses to me that just the night before at prom he had a deep and what he believed to be intimate connection in a sexual context is what you'd call it, and I didn't know much about what to say to that so I sorta just let him talk about it. Told me how it made him feel, and he said good for the most part but afterwards after he had to leave and after he made sure the girl he was with was okay and good and that she had water because he felt like he should pour her a glass of water for some reason and sort of snuggled up with her for a bit he left because it was getting late and his parents called him two, maybe three times asking when he'd get home. He felt weird leaving her but felt like he needed to because her parents were about to be home and let's just say this was not Max's wife, nor his significant other of any sort, and that they'd only gotten together for this prom date, so he didn't feel comfortable spending the night, and that it seemed like the girl understood but it still made Max incredibly sad, walking home, got him real blue, and he cried on the way home and he told me it was the first time he cried in years. He managed to quit crying before he got home because well I know his Dad and his Dad ain't the kindest soul there is so he quit his crying and got home late and crawled into bed and came over and thought maybe I had some advice on what to do next since I was into, he looked disgusted with me, since I had so much experience with the video games about it, and I asked what with and he said the dating simulators."
Q.
A. "Yes."
Q.
A. "Yes, that's about accurate."
Q.
A. "I suppose that's right. In many ways it was sort of a substitute for human contact. In other ways I suppose you'd say that it was just because I wasn't getting that sort of contact in my day to day life, you'd say. What's that term, a feedback loop? That's not an inaccurate description, I'd say, but also part of it was just that it was fun. I didn't really think that deeply. See, that's half the problem, with you tryin' to do a whole profile of me, is that I'm not that interesting. Max was the interesting one, he put meaning in his life, he had things going for him. I'm a dead end of a story, Marie, and you aren't going to learn much about me from this whole project. I don't object to you doing it, because I want to help you out, but you, if you want to go interview other people I can give you a list of some people that are far more interesting and what's the word, mul-tie-faceted than me, and you'll be able to do all sorts of journalistic things with them, as a focus, as your profile goes on, and with me well I just plumb and I sit and I watch, that's all I do. Nothin' much else. Nobody wants to read about me, nobody should. Just how it is. Big ol' fat Randy."
Q.
A.
Q. Q. Q?
A. "You think so?"
Q.
A. "Well, that's kind of you, but, I dunno. Maybe we should continue this inside, we'll be home in a bit."
Q.
A. "What?"
Q.
A. "Um."
Q!
A. "Well, I wouldn't be opposed. But are you sure you know what you're getting yourself into, by asking that of me?"
-
MethodicalSlacker
- Posts: 1231
- Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2018 2:18 am
- Location: Here And There Along The Echo
- Contact:
It had been years since James went on vacation.
He knew that if Marie found out about this mindset of his, this treatment of their visitation as a purely recreational activity, that she would probably disown him as family, but he couldn't help it. Most of his year was spent up north back home. Up there it was, by all accounts, just as warm as down here, maybe without a few extra degrees Fahrenheit, but that heat was trapped within the cold metal confines of the city. Chattanooga was certainly urban, but in a way that worked more in harmony with nature than against it. When James saw a tree on the street back home, it felt no more alive than the pavement it was surrounded by. Here, he got a different sense, the sense that the city, though planned out just the same as his own, was doing far less to dominate the space it occupied. The air was cleaner, the sun shined brighter, and all of this on a bustling, busy city in mourning.
James wasn't callous. He knew how it felt to have someone close to him taken away by Survival of the Fittest. Arthur had been his favorite brother. Well, there were only two to choose from, but he felt the distinction was still meaningful. Charlie was a least favorite. Arthur was a most favorite. And though they hadn't exactly been close by the time that he'd been taken, James thought that if there was a way back into his childhood home, it'd be through Arthur. He knew how cold it sounded on paper, was the point. James was ostensibly a tourist, and this was by all means a disaster, and that made James a disaster tourist. If he met himself on the street in Kingman a few years ago, he'd punch himself in the face. He was confident Marie would, too. She was here on somewhat official business. She had an excuse. James was just along for the ride. The primary financial backer, also, but he had no personal reason to be here save to spend time with his sister. He was going home alone, and that didn't mean back to Kingman. After this, he'd avoid setting foot in that house if he could help it.
As James turned the corner down Randy's street, he thought about the last time he had spoken to Charlie. It hadn't been on especially good terms, and he felt bad about that, but he wasn't going to apologize for... whatever they had argued about. Years had passed, and James had forgotten exactly what their big fight centered around, but he felt like if he was going to remember it, it wouldn't be on purpose. It'd come to him at night when he was trying to sleep, or in the middle of his commute to his factory job, or when he was brushing his teeth, or tying his shoes. Never when he wanted it to. To ask for that was absurd. Randy's street was quiet. Pleasant. Just like him. He was an overeager host when it came to helping the siblings Bernstein with things, but he knew how to stay out of the way. James liked him. Good guy. Maybe a little quirky, but James didn't give too many shits about that. He'd been homeless before, and he knew the kind of strange that could equal danger down the line, and this wasn't it.
There were only a few steps up to Randy's front door. Randy didn't have a porch, just a little square landing where people could stand while they waited. It was only a couple feet off of the ground, too. No guardrail to speak of. James went up the steps and moved as if to knock on the door, but then remembered that this house actually had a functioning doorbell. Was knocking considered rude when there was a doorbell instead? There was something forceful about knocking, something intrusive and violent that the doorbell lacked. Doorbells chimed inquisitively. Door-knocks thumped interrogatively. Curiosity versus entitlement to an answer. James nodded. That was one mystery solved. A mystery that he himself had put forward, but, still.
It was when he was raising his finger to the doorbell when he noticed that there was some high pitched noise coming from within the house. Decidedly human. It sounded like human voices, and it sounded high-pitched and out of breath. Female, inter-cut with male gasping. This raised an eyebrow from James. What raised the other eyebrow was that the shades were down and the curtains were drawn. That was just odd. When James and Marie had arrived, the same had been true, and James personally thought it was because he was out on an errand, or trying to sleep, or something. Either way, it wasn't something that someone who was in the house would do, unless they didn't want someone inside to see in. This felt weird. He hadn't received a text from Marie indicating that she was home, which she had said she'd do, since she had the key. He had been planning on seeing if Randy was home. He was, in fact, supposed to be home. He told them that he'd be done with his errands later, and this was later, so he'd planned on ringing the bell and y'know maybe he didn't think this through all the way but he hadn't got the communication he wanted and then he stumbled in on this mess and he was concerned.
Concerned because on closer inspection the sounds coming from inside the house sounded like someone was in pain. That someone being the female voice. James felt sick to his stomach. Maybe he was wrong about Randy. Maybe this was an axe-murderer's AirBnB. If he rang the bell, maybe he'd hasten Marie's bloody demise and expose himself to danger. He needed a way to get into the house either without Randy noticing, or so abruptly and suddenly that he could take him by surprise and fight him. If James caught him while his guard was down, he could absolutely mop the floor with him in a fight. He was built thicker, but James knew how to scrap. He was confident Randy did not. The question was now how James intended on getting access. The house didn't have a backyard, or a back door that he knew of, for that matter. In hindsight, maybe that should have tipped him off that this was fishy. He could bust in a window, but that would hurt him too. Glass shards could cut really deep and get lodged even deeper, he knew from experience. In a panic, James looked down at the doorknob and saw that
the door
was slightly
open.
James took a step back from the door. He needed a moment to psyche himself up, but every second spent outside was a second wasted, lost to the axe-murderer. Deep breaths. A little hopping up and down to make sure he was as light on his feet as he needed to be. Shook his hands out and made them into fists for good measure. Practiced a punch. Left hook, right hook, left hook. His heart felt like it was going to jump out of his throat and run screaming down the street. Now or never, James. Bust in, save your sister, beat the shit out of Randy, and prove to Charlie once and for all that no just because you live in a crack house where everyone else does crack doesn't mean that you yourself do crack yes that's what it was about second mystery solved day saved time to move move move MOVE—
—and James ran right through the door, knocking it open with his shoulder, into the living room, with the full expectation that he'd have caught Randy off guard mid axe swing and the momentum to keep running forward until he collided with him and knocked him off of his feet, sending the axe flying through the air and clattering to the ground, ready to beat the everloving shit out of Randy, to break his hand and break his hand off and then feed him his own fingers, to snap his neck twice if he needed to, to get Marie out of whatever terrible restraints Randy had put on her and save her from whatever depraved torture she was being subjected to, when he turned his head just a little to the left and saw that maybe he needed to stop himself from running full tilt into the kitchen wall because on closer inspection Marie and Randy were just sitting on the couch, watching—
"Anime?" James asked incredulously, as he stepped on a slipper, lost his balance, and fell flat on his back.
He knew that if Marie found out about this mindset of his, this treatment of their visitation as a purely recreational activity, that she would probably disown him as family, but he couldn't help it. Most of his year was spent up north back home. Up there it was, by all accounts, just as warm as down here, maybe without a few extra degrees Fahrenheit, but that heat was trapped within the cold metal confines of the city. Chattanooga was certainly urban, but in a way that worked more in harmony with nature than against it. When James saw a tree on the street back home, it felt no more alive than the pavement it was surrounded by. Here, he got a different sense, the sense that the city, though planned out just the same as his own, was doing far less to dominate the space it occupied. The air was cleaner, the sun shined brighter, and all of this on a bustling, busy city in mourning.
James wasn't callous. He knew how it felt to have someone close to him taken away by Survival of the Fittest. Arthur had been his favorite brother. Well, there were only two to choose from, but he felt the distinction was still meaningful. Charlie was a least favorite. Arthur was a most favorite. And though they hadn't exactly been close by the time that he'd been taken, James thought that if there was a way back into his childhood home, it'd be through Arthur. He knew how cold it sounded on paper, was the point. James was ostensibly a tourist, and this was by all means a disaster, and that made James a disaster tourist. If he met himself on the street in Kingman a few years ago, he'd punch himself in the face. He was confident Marie would, too. She was here on somewhat official business. She had an excuse. James was just along for the ride. The primary financial backer, also, but he had no personal reason to be here save to spend time with his sister. He was going home alone, and that didn't mean back to Kingman. After this, he'd avoid setting foot in that house if he could help it.
As James turned the corner down Randy's street, he thought about the last time he had spoken to Charlie. It hadn't been on especially good terms, and he felt bad about that, but he wasn't going to apologize for... whatever they had argued about. Years had passed, and James had forgotten exactly what their big fight centered around, but he felt like if he was going to remember it, it wouldn't be on purpose. It'd come to him at night when he was trying to sleep, or in the middle of his commute to his factory job, or when he was brushing his teeth, or tying his shoes. Never when he wanted it to. To ask for that was absurd. Randy's street was quiet. Pleasant. Just like him. He was an overeager host when it came to helping the siblings Bernstein with things, but he knew how to stay out of the way. James liked him. Good guy. Maybe a little quirky, but James didn't give too many shits about that. He'd been homeless before, and he knew the kind of strange that could equal danger down the line, and this wasn't it.
There were only a few steps up to Randy's front door. Randy didn't have a porch, just a little square landing where people could stand while they waited. It was only a couple feet off of the ground, too. No guardrail to speak of. James went up the steps and moved as if to knock on the door, but then remembered that this house actually had a functioning doorbell. Was knocking considered rude when there was a doorbell instead? There was something forceful about knocking, something intrusive and violent that the doorbell lacked. Doorbells chimed inquisitively. Door-knocks thumped interrogatively. Curiosity versus entitlement to an answer. James nodded. That was one mystery solved. A mystery that he himself had put forward, but, still.
It was when he was raising his finger to the doorbell when he noticed that there was some high pitched noise coming from within the house. Decidedly human. It sounded like human voices, and it sounded high-pitched and out of breath. Female, inter-cut with male gasping. This raised an eyebrow from James. What raised the other eyebrow was that the shades were down and the curtains were drawn. That was just odd. When James and Marie had arrived, the same had been true, and James personally thought it was because he was out on an errand, or trying to sleep, or something. Either way, it wasn't something that someone who was in the house would do, unless they didn't want someone inside to see in. This felt weird. He hadn't received a text from Marie indicating that she was home, which she had said she'd do, since she had the key. He had been planning on seeing if Randy was home. He was, in fact, supposed to be home. He told them that he'd be done with his errands later, and this was later, so he'd planned on ringing the bell and y'know maybe he didn't think this through all the way but he hadn't got the communication he wanted and then he stumbled in on this mess and he was concerned.
Concerned because on closer inspection the sounds coming from inside the house sounded like someone was in pain. That someone being the female voice. James felt sick to his stomach. Maybe he was wrong about Randy. Maybe this was an axe-murderer's AirBnB. If he rang the bell, maybe he'd hasten Marie's bloody demise and expose himself to danger. He needed a way to get into the house either without Randy noticing, or so abruptly and suddenly that he could take him by surprise and fight him. If James caught him while his guard was down, he could absolutely mop the floor with him in a fight. He was built thicker, but James knew how to scrap. He was confident Randy did not. The question was now how James intended on getting access. The house didn't have a backyard, or a back door that he knew of, for that matter. In hindsight, maybe that should have tipped him off that this was fishy. He could bust in a window, but that would hurt him too. Glass shards could cut really deep and get lodged even deeper, he knew from experience. In a panic, James looked down at the doorknob and saw that
the door
was slightly
open.
James took a step back from the door. He needed a moment to psyche himself up, but every second spent outside was a second wasted, lost to the axe-murderer. Deep breaths. A little hopping up and down to make sure he was as light on his feet as he needed to be. Shook his hands out and made them into fists for good measure. Practiced a punch. Left hook, right hook, left hook. His heart felt like it was going to jump out of his throat and run screaming down the street. Now or never, James. Bust in, save your sister, beat the shit out of Randy, and prove to Charlie once and for all that no just because you live in a crack house where everyone else does crack doesn't mean that you yourself do crack yes that's what it was about second mystery solved day saved time to move move move MOVE—
—and James ran right through the door, knocking it open with his shoulder, into the living room, with the full expectation that he'd have caught Randy off guard mid axe swing and the momentum to keep running forward until he collided with him and knocked him off of his feet, sending the axe flying through the air and clattering to the ground, ready to beat the everloving shit out of Randy, to break his hand and break his hand off and then feed him his own fingers, to snap his neck twice if he needed to, to get Marie out of whatever terrible restraints Randy had put on her and save her from whatever depraved torture she was being subjected to, when he turned his head just a little to the left and saw that maybe he needed to stop himself from running full tilt into the kitchen wall because on closer inspection Marie and Randy were just sitting on the couch, watching—
"Anime?" James asked incredulously, as he stepped on a slipper, lost his balance, and fell flat on his back.
-
MethodicalSlacker
- Posts: 1231
- Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2018 2:18 am
- Location: Here And There Along The Echo
- Contact:
Q?
A. "Yeah, I'm okay, god, fuck, it hurts but I'm okay."
Q.
A. "Well I just thought y'know I was paranoid about I heard the weird noises you know the show you were just watching had weird noises high pitched shit I thought something weird was going on it was only a little while ago that we had that whole y'know that whole craigslist thing with the guy and the girl and listen I know that was different in a lot of ways but I still got freaked out and listen no offense Randy there's no offense meant here got it you're a cool guy even if you like anime or whatever the fuck this is goddamn my tailbone hurts but I was just worried about my sister?"
Q.
A. "I know you're not helpless Marie I'm fully aware you can defend yourself and that you're smart and all but I just hadn't seen you in a bit and this town's going a little cuckoo and what with the thing going on I just think well anything could happen you don't know there could be a string of copycat or domino effect it happens you know is when they report on it more people go along with you know maybe I think I need to get my tailbone looked at it really hurts."
Q.
A. "Sorry."
Q.
A. "No I think I'm just going to go to the room and lay down for a bit and if I still feel bad I'm gonna call a doctor or something."
Q.
A. "Yeah I got insurance, it's shitty but I got insurance, I hope it carries anime related accidents, probably not though."
Q...
A. "I know I don't look that bad but look let me just leave you to your anime marathon thing, I mean I thought you were here to write an article, I didn't know it was an article about carto— look, I'm sorry, I'm just, we're only here a few more days, I'll manage. Okay? Have fun with the show."
Q.
A. "Excuse me?"
Q. Q.
A. "You're going to what?"
Q. Q.
A. "Oh okay Marie listen I am not paying for another plane ticket so that you can go back later, I'm not delaying the flight, you might want to stay until it happens but I can't the rearrange our I the fucking our travel plans are set in stone, Marie, we have to leave in three days."
Q.
A. "What?"
Q.
A. "You're going to do that?"
q. Q. q.
A. "Honestly? Get fucking married at this point. I don't care."
A. "Yeah, I'm okay, god, fuck, it hurts but I'm okay."
Q.
A. "Well I just thought y'know I was paranoid about I heard the weird noises you know the show you were just watching had weird noises high pitched shit I thought something weird was going on it was only a little while ago that we had that whole y'know that whole craigslist thing with the guy and the girl and listen I know that was different in a lot of ways but I still got freaked out and listen no offense Randy there's no offense meant here got it you're a cool guy even if you like anime or whatever the fuck this is goddamn my tailbone hurts but I was just worried about my sister?"
Q.
A. "I know you're not helpless Marie I'm fully aware you can defend yourself and that you're smart and all but I just hadn't seen you in a bit and this town's going a little cuckoo and what with the thing going on I just think well anything could happen you don't know there could be a string of copycat or domino effect it happens you know is when they report on it more people go along with you know maybe I think I need to get my tailbone looked at it really hurts."
Q.
A. "Sorry."
Q.
A. "No I think I'm just going to go to the room and lay down for a bit and if I still feel bad I'm gonna call a doctor or something."
Q.
A. "Yeah I got insurance, it's shitty but I got insurance, I hope it carries anime related accidents, probably not though."
Q...
A. "I know I don't look that bad but look let me just leave you to your anime marathon thing, I mean I thought you were here to write an article, I didn't know it was an article about carto— look, I'm sorry, I'm just, we're only here a few more days, I'll manage. Okay? Have fun with the show."
Q.
A. "Excuse me?"
Q. Q.
A. "You're going to what?"
Q. Q.
A. "Oh okay Marie listen I am not paying for another plane ticket so that you can go back later, I'm not delaying the flight, you might want to stay until it happens but I can't the rearrange our I the fucking our travel plans are set in stone, Marie, we have to leave in three days."
Q.
A. "What?"
Q.
A. "You're going to do that?"
q. Q. q.
A. "Honestly? Get fucking married at this point. I don't care."
-
MethodicalSlacker
- Posts: 1231
- Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2018 2:18 am
- Location: Here And There Along The Echo
- Contact:
When James' exit came up, he took it. Maybe he leaned in a little too hard. When Marie woke up on the day of what was now only James' flight home, he was already gone. His sleeping bag was, indeed, gone from the floor, leaving only a faint imprint, a minor disturbance in the color of the carpet. His red wheeled suitcase had disappeared from its place against the windowsill, the resolution to its perpetual half unpacked limbo one that Marie would never bear witness to herself. Somewhere above the clouds, he was playing with the loose threads in the armrest of his economy class chair, staring out the window, only sort of listening to the true crime podcasts he'd made such a big deal of marathoning just a week ago. Probably having a bit of trouble staying in his seat, if he was as injured as he said he was. James was bound for Arizona, and then for Michigan after a couple more days on the Bernstein couch. Charlie had been saying that Dad hadn't been around the house much, that he was thinking of selling the place and moving in with his girlfriend.
Which left Marie alone, here.
Alone with Randy.
Marie kicked the sheets off her bed and went to her suitcase on the floor. It was almost time to find a laundromat somewhere nearby. Randy didn't have his own washing machine, which could mean any number of things. His extended family had a large presence nearby; he could be washing his clothes at his parent's house, or his uncle's house, or his third cousin twice removed's nephew's roommate's sister's house, or he could be stopping at the corner laundromat coin op every weekend like everybody else. It was also likely that he just didn't wash his clothes at all. Perhaps he did all of these sometimes, and none of them sometimes too. Marie legitimately did not know.
And that's been the best part, Marie mused as she put her head through her shirt.
The past few days had been nothing short of elucidating, as far as the purpose of her article went. A deep profile of Randy as a preview of the future to come. Permanently checked out of the rat race, content to live a life adorned with cheap moe waifu wallscrolls and the filtered mental waste byproducts of semi-reactionary imageboard culture. James hadn't tagged along the other day when Randy took Marie to his local manga store, an afterthought of physical space, nestled deep into a shopping mall and claimed by technicolor haircuts and dinner plate eyes, a smattering of actual anime on disc—even the store owners just stream it, he said—in a sea of merchandise branded needlessly with all but the most obscure of throwaway characters. She'd been places like this before with friends in university. None of them could recognize every character, from every item sold, by name and series and air-date like Randy could.
If you could have listened to Randy describe it, he'd lived in the shadow of greatness his whole life. A self-proclaimed simpleton in a family of habitual overachievers, the only one to put himself in a trade instead of some path through university in quite some time. His cousin Max (the reason she was here in the first place) was the one whose shadow Randy found himself in the most. The way Randy told it, Max was on track for pre-law or poli-sci. Though there were other cousins of similar age to Randy and Max in the family, they were either closer to Randy and already started their careers or they were a bit younger than Max and just pulling themselves through the start of high school. Max was the one with the most potential, Randy said. Classically precocious kid. Started reading super early. Could read better than Randy could after not too long. Always talked to the adults at family get-together's because the other kids couldn't figure out what he was saying. A bit out of touch because of it, but still a thrill to even breathe the same air as.
So a profile of Randy also necessarily needed to be a profile of Max. This was the emotional buy-in, with the piece, the strong contrast between Randy and Max as people. The latter, departed, self-styled as a classical renaissance man, eternally doted on, winner of hearts and minds. The former, left behind, made so irrelevant as to take refuge in not even the mainstream, but the nerd-outcast-loserdom of a culture he did not speak the native language of, made to feel so infantilized that he slept not with a teddy bear, but a body pillow with an illustration of his "waifu," a googly eyed patron saint and guardian tenshi, printed onto the pillowcase. There were others that Marie would need to interview, of course. Any other cousins Randy could get in touch with. Max's parents, most likely. A few of his surviving classmates, if she could find a way to reach out. It'd be tough, but the path was clear.
Marie slipped on her slippers and walked out the door into the kitchen. Over in the front room, an HDMI cable ran from an unfamiliar laptop—Randy's, by the looks of the Arisuchan.jp sticker on the back, a slightly angry looking anime face inside a computer screen next to a classic tower style build, printed in cyan and magenta—to the television, upon which a video feed played, zoomed in on, a square of flickering video almost like surveillance footage, bleeding bitcrush and compression, set on a backdrop of solid black. Randy sat in the center of the couch, rapt, hunched forwards with his elbows on his knees and his knuckles on the bottom of his chin. Tropical ambiance played from the TV's speakers at half volume, swollen with digital artifacts and muffled by the breeze.
"Fuck," Marie said.
Randy turned just in time to see her run back into the guest room. When she came back out, she had her phone in her hands, thumbing out a message without looking at the touchscreen.
"How long has this been going on for?" she asked.
"Four minutes," Randy said, scooting over to make room on the couch.
"Shit."
"It's not really, uh, 'going on,' so much as it's been up for that long."
"Yeah, I know, it's—"
"Already happened."
"—Already happened, yeah. Fuck."
"Mhm."
Marie scrolled through the newsfeed on her phone. It was all going on at once. A social media bot said something, and that thing was picked up and reposted basically everywhere all at once. It was an event, but an increasingly common one. Everything was livestreamed now. Marie could watch a space rocket take off on YouTube. If she was lucky, she could even see it explode. People were streaming all the time now. The livestreamed aspect of this particular act of serial terrorism felt obsolete, to her. The novelty was long gone. Especially since it ran on a delay. This was more like a video premiere than anything else. A synced watch-through of events that already happened. People did this on Twitch every day. Someone went off and killed some people livestreamed on Facebook a few months ago. It was a drive-by shooting. Anyone could do what these terrorists were doing. The impact of Survival of the Fittest came from the scale, and that the people kidnapped did the violence themselves. Even though it was with a gun to their head, or more specifically a bomb on their neck.
"I'm guessing this is—"
"Max's, yeah," Randy answered. And off in the corner of the screen, there he was, asleep under a tree. It was hard to make out his face from this angle.
Marie hadn't tuned in soon enough to see what it was like for Arthur when he woke up. She scrubbed back in the video as far as she could to check, but it was only months later when she came across a torrent of the streams that she'd see what it was like for him. He woke up in the sand, dusted off his hat, and got up to take a look around. Right afterwards, he found himself some people to talk to, and then he wasn't alone much for the rest of his run. Max was asleep, still. The time in the corner of the screen said it was early in the morning. There were some pixels moving in the distance, vaguely human shaped, but for the most part the picture was still.
"Do they usually take this long to get up?" Randy asked. Marie turned and shot him a glare. "I mean, Max wasn't the lightest of sleepers, but it's been a little while, and I've been flipping through a bit—"
"I'm guessing he got a bit much of the drug they use," Marie said coldly. "To sedate them."
"Oh." Randy shut up quick.
Still, this was taking a bit long to get going. Whatever was happening in the distance was pretty much over by now. One could vaguely make out that Max was still breathing. He didn't look like he'd been roughed up at all in transit, but none of them did. Hurting the students before they got put on the island went against the spirit of whatever it was that the terrorists were trying to say. Some of them might get a little more of the drug than others, but apart from that—
"Gull!" Randy shouted, straightening up and pointing at the screen. Marie nearly jumped out of her skin before she saw what Randy meant—a seagull had landed on Max's chest and was poking his forehead with its beak. Max's face scrunched up in confusion with each peck before finally he opened his eyes, saw the bird standing on him, and immediately began batting it away with his hands. The bird, itself spooked, almost immediately took off and decided it wasn't worth it. It disappeared off the left side of the frame just as Max pulled himself up to look around. The point of view changed to a closer camera and zoomed in on Max's face.
Marie could see the family resemblance, just a little. Both Max and Randy had the same sort of blond hair, though Max's was a good deal shorter and lighter in color. Max was a good deal more physically active than Randy was, she had heard and could tell. Depending on what weapon he drew, he could do well. But he was still taking everything in. There was something dizzied about the way his face looked that made Marie wonder just what he had been dreaming about. She'd wondered what Arthur had been thinking in these moments too, considering how little time he spent before he got up and started walking. It was strange to see someone unfamiliar in a place where she had really only imagined either her brother or herself before, the former to figure out the gaps, the latter to chase a hypothetical.
He took a step forward, and stopped to look down at something by his feet. Max's bag was nearby, a foot from the camera. He hadn't gone to check it yet. This, then, must have been his weapon. Randy mouthed something that Marie couldn't figure out just as Max stepped over the weapon and started walking into the distance.
In the direction of the pixels.
"Can we see what's over there?" Randy asked, moving his hand towards a USB mouse on the table that Marie hadn't noticed before, "Like, I saw a location feed earlier—"
"Hold on, hold on," Marie said, stopping Randy's hand with her own, "it'll change to stay with him, look."
And they did.
Just in time.
Which left Marie alone, here.
Alone with Randy.
Marie kicked the sheets off her bed and went to her suitcase on the floor. It was almost time to find a laundromat somewhere nearby. Randy didn't have his own washing machine, which could mean any number of things. His extended family had a large presence nearby; he could be washing his clothes at his parent's house, or his uncle's house, or his third cousin twice removed's nephew's roommate's sister's house, or he could be stopping at the corner laundromat coin op every weekend like everybody else. It was also likely that he just didn't wash his clothes at all. Perhaps he did all of these sometimes, and none of them sometimes too. Marie legitimately did not know.
And that's been the best part, Marie mused as she put her head through her shirt.
The past few days had been nothing short of elucidating, as far as the purpose of her article went. A deep profile of Randy as a preview of the future to come. Permanently checked out of the rat race, content to live a life adorned with cheap moe waifu wallscrolls and the filtered mental waste byproducts of semi-reactionary imageboard culture. James hadn't tagged along the other day when Randy took Marie to his local manga store, an afterthought of physical space, nestled deep into a shopping mall and claimed by technicolor haircuts and dinner plate eyes, a smattering of actual anime on disc—even the store owners just stream it, he said—in a sea of merchandise branded needlessly with all but the most obscure of throwaway characters. She'd been places like this before with friends in university. None of them could recognize every character, from every item sold, by name and series and air-date like Randy could.
If you could have listened to Randy describe it, he'd lived in the shadow of greatness his whole life. A self-proclaimed simpleton in a family of habitual overachievers, the only one to put himself in a trade instead of some path through university in quite some time. His cousin Max (the reason she was here in the first place) was the one whose shadow Randy found himself in the most. The way Randy told it, Max was on track for pre-law or poli-sci. Though there were other cousins of similar age to Randy and Max in the family, they were either closer to Randy and already started their careers or they were a bit younger than Max and just pulling themselves through the start of high school. Max was the one with the most potential, Randy said. Classically precocious kid. Started reading super early. Could read better than Randy could after not too long. Always talked to the adults at family get-together's because the other kids couldn't figure out what he was saying. A bit out of touch because of it, but still a thrill to even breathe the same air as.
So a profile of Randy also necessarily needed to be a profile of Max. This was the emotional buy-in, with the piece, the strong contrast between Randy and Max as people. The latter, departed, self-styled as a classical renaissance man, eternally doted on, winner of hearts and minds. The former, left behind, made so irrelevant as to take refuge in not even the mainstream, but the nerd-outcast-loserdom of a culture he did not speak the native language of, made to feel so infantilized that he slept not with a teddy bear, but a body pillow with an illustration of his "waifu," a googly eyed patron saint and guardian tenshi, printed onto the pillowcase. There were others that Marie would need to interview, of course. Any other cousins Randy could get in touch with. Max's parents, most likely. A few of his surviving classmates, if she could find a way to reach out. It'd be tough, but the path was clear.
Marie slipped on her slippers and walked out the door into the kitchen. Over in the front room, an HDMI cable ran from an unfamiliar laptop—Randy's, by the looks of the Arisuchan.jp sticker on the back, a slightly angry looking anime face inside a computer screen next to a classic tower style build, printed in cyan and magenta—to the television, upon which a video feed played, zoomed in on, a square of flickering video almost like surveillance footage, bleeding bitcrush and compression, set on a backdrop of solid black. Randy sat in the center of the couch, rapt, hunched forwards with his elbows on his knees and his knuckles on the bottom of his chin. Tropical ambiance played from the TV's speakers at half volume, swollen with digital artifacts and muffled by the breeze.
"Fuck," Marie said.
Randy turned just in time to see her run back into the guest room. When she came back out, she had her phone in her hands, thumbing out a message without looking at the touchscreen.
"How long has this been going on for?" she asked.
"Four minutes," Randy said, scooting over to make room on the couch.
"Shit."
"It's not really, uh, 'going on,' so much as it's been up for that long."
"Yeah, I know, it's—"
"Already happened."
"—Already happened, yeah. Fuck."
"Mhm."
Marie scrolled through the newsfeed on her phone. It was all going on at once. A social media bot said something, and that thing was picked up and reposted basically everywhere all at once. It was an event, but an increasingly common one. Everything was livestreamed now. Marie could watch a space rocket take off on YouTube. If she was lucky, she could even see it explode. People were streaming all the time now. The livestreamed aspect of this particular act of serial terrorism felt obsolete, to her. The novelty was long gone. Especially since it ran on a delay. This was more like a video premiere than anything else. A synced watch-through of events that already happened. People did this on Twitch every day. Someone went off and killed some people livestreamed on Facebook a few months ago. It was a drive-by shooting. Anyone could do what these terrorists were doing. The impact of Survival of the Fittest came from the scale, and that the people kidnapped did the violence themselves. Even though it was with a gun to their head, or more specifically a bomb on their neck.
"I'm guessing this is—"
"Max's, yeah," Randy answered. And off in the corner of the screen, there he was, asleep under a tree. It was hard to make out his face from this angle.
Marie hadn't tuned in soon enough to see what it was like for Arthur when he woke up. She scrubbed back in the video as far as she could to check, but it was only months later when she came across a torrent of the streams that she'd see what it was like for him. He woke up in the sand, dusted off his hat, and got up to take a look around. Right afterwards, he found himself some people to talk to, and then he wasn't alone much for the rest of his run. Max was asleep, still. The time in the corner of the screen said it was early in the morning. There were some pixels moving in the distance, vaguely human shaped, but for the most part the picture was still.
"Do they usually take this long to get up?" Randy asked. Marie turned and shot him a glare. "I mean, Max wasn't the lightest of sleepers, but it's been a little while, and I've been flipping through a bit—"
"I'm guessing he got a bit much of the drug they use," Marie said coldly. "To sedate them."
"Oh." Randy shut up quick.
Still, this was taking a bit long to get going. Whatever was happening in the distance was pretty much over by now. One could vaguely make out that Max was still breathing. He didn't look like he'd been roughed up at all in transit, but none of them did. Hurting the students before they got put on the island went against the spirit of whatever it was that the terrorists were trying to say. Some of them might get a little more of the drug than others, but apart from that—
"Gull!" Randy shouted, straightening up and pointing at the screen. Marie nearly jumped out of her skin before she saw what Randy meant—a seagull had landed on Max's chest and was poking his forehead with its beak. Max's face scrunched up in confusion with each peck before finally he opened his eyes, saw the bird standing on him, and immediately began batting it away with his hands. The bird, itself spooked, almost immediately took off and decided it wasn't worth it. It disappeared off the left side of the frame just as Max pulled himself up to look around. The point of view changed to a closer camera and zoomed in on Max's face.
Marie could see the family resemblance, just a little. Both Max and Randy had the same sort of blond hair, though Max's was a good deal shorter and lighter in color. Max was a good deal more physically active than Randy was, she had heard and could tell. Depending on what weapon he drew, he could do well. But he was still taking everything in. There was something dizzied about the way his face looked that made Marie wonder just what he had been dreaming about. She'd wondered what Arthur had been thinking in these moments too, considering how little time he spent before he got up and started walking. It was strange to see someone unfamiliar in a place where she had really only imagined either her brother or herself before, the former to figure out the gaps, the latter to chase a hypothetical.
He took a step forward, and stopped to look down at something by his feet. Max's bag was nearby, a foot from the camera. He hadn't gone to check it yet. This, then, must have been his weapon. Randy mouthed something that Marie couldn't figure out just as Max stepped over the weapon and started walking into the distance.
In the direction of the pixels.
"Can we see what's over there?" Randy asked, moving his hand towards a USB mouse on the table that Marie hadn't noticed before, "Like, I saw a location feed earlier—"
"Hold on, hold on," Marie said, stopping Randy's hand with her own, "it'll change to stay with him, look."
And they did.
Just in time.
-
MethodicalSlacker
- Posts: 1231
- Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2018 2:18 am
- Location: Here And There Along The Echo
- Contact:
Something connected Kingman and Chattanooga. Marie was sure of it. There had to be some logic in how the terrorists selected their victims that went beyond throwing darts at a board. Kingman was small, and by taking and killing over 100 of their adolescents the terrorists effectively decimated one of the smallest segments of the town's population. Chattanooga was several times larger, and suffered no such loss, but it was in the air all the same. It was in the ground all the same. She could feel it pull tighter in the sidewalk beneath her feet when she walked. Stress in the joints. Rotting 20th century American kitsch. Manufactured colonial novelty. A town in the desert where the only river for miles was the road. An enclave in the not-so-deep South known for its trains and the noises they haven't made for, well, ever. Marie never knew a time when Kingman was great. Almost everything she read online about the city was negative. Moving to Kingman? Have fun getting a job at the prison. My favorite thing to do in Kingman is leave. Oh, it's not such a bad town if you're into making eggs on the sidewalk. Stuff like that. And she couldn't say they were wrong.
But Kingman was once great, years before. It was never a big town, but it once knew some relevance, some splendor. The truth was that in every city and town's future was Kingman. That was the great lesson of history. Desertification, ruination, and humans as hangers on. Crawling into places they were never meant to be. Turning nature inside out. For what? A roadside museum in the ruins of an old gas station. An empty park named after weather that almost never comes. Diners and restaurants sugar coated in 50's Americana. There is no more Route 66—unless you live in Kingman, of course, in which case a segment runs Northeast for a few miles before merging with the main road. The last pathetic fart of a dying corpse.
Chattanooga was not so outwardly rotten, but it made no difference. Even as she walked in the gloaming shadow of Cameron Hill, taking long steps on her way back from a day out taking pictures downtown, it was still there. Tension, just below the surface. Chattanooga could bend—but would it break?
A day had passed since Max's feed went live. In the past 24 hours, Marie counted just three spent asleep. Max wasn't one to let up—after making his speech to the camera (which Marie had managed to grab the audio of with her phone, but not the video), he promptly set to marching and quickly found some companions before setting off deeper into the wood. Randy filled in the gaps with cherished anecdotes and explanations of Max's behaviors. Marie had met his type plenty before. They weren't that deep. Just load up the memory with a bunch of raw, unparsed text from various old dead people, and, without any knowledge of critical theory or tradition, misconstrue and repurpose to fit rhetorical needs at whim. That was, essentially, what Max's speech amounted to. It had the structure and affect of a moral, philosophical argument—and not eight hours later did he have a wide-eyed and panicked girl on the other end of his claw. Marie would have challenged Randy to find the philosophy in that, would he—if he hadn't nearly fainted when it happened.
Max made camp with the accidental murderer in tow and Marie spent some time browsing the night-time cameras until her eyes started to droop. Then it was time for coffee and arranging the day's notes. A transcription of the speech would have to wait for tomorrow, or another slow day. Her best chances at finding a moment of reprieve were all in the first few days. Her town got off to a slow start, at least. She figured Chattanooga would be the same way. So she scheduled a quick mid-day run to grab some photographs of the city and get some Vox Populi interviews. Armed with her tape-recorder and notepad, Marie took to the street.
34th Street, to be precise. People around Randy's side of town were too used to seeing her around. She caught a bus uptown instead, and with a hop, skip and jump around the streets, she found herself deep in the North Side. After gathering a few interviews from restaurant goers outside Blue House, where she'd been just a day prior. The staff didn't seem bothered much; the waitress who dropped the silverware saw her from the window and quickly hurried back inside. Getting the interviews was simple enough. She introduced herself as a member of the press from Washington D.C. (not entirely a lie), then proceeded to probe interviewees about their familiarity with the attacks. If they'd known anyone who lost a family member in the abduction. Their thoughts on the continued activities of the terrorists responsible. That sort of thing.
It only took an hour to get a diverse enough sample for Marie to shift location. She caught as many flavors of "everyman" as she could imagine. Most people didn't know anyone. Big city. Proportionality, as previously understood, helped Marie set her intentions there. Most people were at the café on lunch break and didn't have long to talk—Marie needed a more in-depth set of responses from someone with a hotter take, someone counter-cultural, off-beat. A worthwhile contrast with the boring, friendly, stiff Chattanoogan. An online search and a short walk later, she was on 34th in front of the Wicca store.
The front of the building was painted blue. On an unvarnished wood panel hung above the door, the words "Seven Stars" were painted in thick crimson. Two large windows revealed the whole of the store to the street. In the front were more mainstream books, self-help guides and political manifestos. "Capitalism 101," and "How to Unf*ck Your Sh*t: The Guide to Being Nobody's B*tch Ever Again." A book of poems about caterpillars, and some coloring oversized volumes for the children. Against the right hand wall but before the counter were the tarot cards and guides, several different colorful decks from many different eras and styles. The counter itself was glass. Many different colorful gems sat on the counter. Some were set in jewelry. Others were available to be purchased raw. On the left hand side, running about forty feet to the back, was a shelf of many books. Three shelves occupied the last third of the store in the back, and the difference in empty floor space made up by a long table upon which sat occult books intended for more casual purveyors. Paintings sat on the tops of the shelves with price tags scrawled on index cards in pencil punctured through the bottom corner, one step or two above gas station fare.
There was an elderly man inside by the front left window with a sketchpad on an easel, deftly pulling his pencil across the page with thick, straight strokes. His eyes looked focused; Marie thought it best not to bother him. Two others, a man and a woman, both somewhat raggedy and worn looking, like loose shoes, stood behind the counter stuck deep in conversation. It was probably best that Marie not bother them either. There were only a handful of shoppers in the store, and all of them looked like regulars, if Marie could tell from the various occult images and symbols arranged on their clothing. She'd have to wait for any of them, any at all, to leave the store.
In the reflection of the window she saw that a leaf had fallen and gotten itself caught on the sleeve of her shirt. She had on a white shoulder-less sweater top with black tank top straps. Today she wore her blue hair down, and it fell just below her ears. Blue jeans covered her legs; there were two holes like a vampire bite above her left knee where she'd tested the sharpness of a knife her friend had given her once. Marie hadn't packed an incredibly extensive wardrobe for this trip, but she could make do. This was a more casual look for her, speaking generally. She tried to look approachable when she was doing interviews.
With her eyes fixed on her reflection in the glass, Marie failed to see who was coming towards her from the west. Dress shoes clacked hastily on the pavement, sending warning shots across the street. Marie failed to hear them. He breathed heavily out from his nose as he dragged himself down the sidewalk. Marie was stuck staring into the spring.
Perhaps he was not watching where he was going himself. It mattered not. In only seconds time since he rounded the corner, the man bumped right into Marie's side, knocking her from her stupor and sending her stepping wildly away. The drawing man inside looked up from his canvas.
Marie regained her balance and looked angrily at the hurried man, who was looking down at her with wild, inscrutable eyes. He had on a black business blazer and a white shirt, over which he wore a black tie with white diagonal stripes. His blazer was matched by his black pants and brown loafers.
"Jesus, watch it," she said, brushing off her shoulders, "what's your problem, anyway? Look where you're going."
The man said nothing. Marie stood and waited for an apology, or some other kind of response. Instead, the hurried man stood silently, his eyes whipping around in their sockets. By his sides, his hands clenched into fists. His legs shook slightly. Marie looked him up and down once with concerned eyes before taking a step, two steps, three steps towards him.
"Are you alri—"
The man's arms shot forward. Tightly he grabbed Marie, his long fingernails digging into her bare shoulders. Marie let out a yelp and tried to step backwards. The bell above the door to Seven Stars rang—with pencil still in hand the drawing man had stepped out onto the sidewalk, mouth open in protest. Marie's ankles felt like they were to snap backwards in her shoes. The hurried man's gripped her tighter, drawing blood. Now the drawing man was on the hurried man and had his own hands on his shoulders, trying to pull him off of Marie. Marie, for her part, tried to strike the man with the recorder she still had in her right hand. But with his fingers in her shoulder, she was unable to get her arm high enough or far enough back to strike.
With a face full of hives and molasses between his teeth, the hurried man pointed his face down at Marie and moved his mouth to her ear;
"Water!" The man cried out, "Oh, water!"
Marie screamed, and just as suddenly the man was off of her and on the ground with a shoe on his chest, held down by the drawing man, who was cursing at the hurried man in some eastern European tongue. Marie stepped back and gasped for breath, pressing her fingers to her shoulders. Red seeped out from six points on either side of her neck. That was right—six, Marie counted, one more than the man should have on either hand. She looked back down at him and saw that indeed, the man only had five fingers on each hand.
"Water, please!" He continued to scream and writhe on the floor, "Oh, please, water!"
But Kingman was once great, years before. It was never a big town, but it once knew some relevance, some splendor. The truth was that in every city and town's future was Kingman. That was the great lesson of history. Desertification, ruination, and humans as hangers on. Crawling into places they were never meant to be. Turning nature inside out. For what? A roadside museum in the ruins of an old gas station. An empty park named after weather that almost never comes. Diners and restaurants sugar coated in 50's Americana. There is no more Route 66—unless you live in Kingman, of course, in which case a segment runs Northeast for a few miles before merging with the main road. The last pathetic fart of a dying corpse.
Chattanooga was not so outwardly rotten, but it made no difference. Even as she walked in the gloaming shadow of Cameron Hill, taking long steps on her way back from a day out taking pictures downtown, it was still there. Tension, just below the surface. Chattanooga could bend—but would it break?
A day had passed since Max's feed went live. In the past 24 hours, Marie counted just three spent asleep. Max wasn't one to let up—after making his speech to the camera (which Marie had managed to grab the audio of with her phone, but not the video), he promptly set to marching and quickly found some companions before setting off deeper into the wood. Randy filled in the gaps with cherished anecdotes and explanations of Max's behaviors. Marie had met his type plenty before. They weren't that deep. Just load up the memory with a bunch of raw, unparsed text from various old dead people, and, without any knowledge of critical theory or tradition, misconstrue and repurpose to fit rhetorical needs at whim. That was, essentially, what Max's speech amounted to. It had the structure and affect of a moral, philosophical argument—and not eight hours later did he have a wide-eyed and panicked girl on the other end of his claw. Marie would have challenged Randy to find the philosophy in that, would he—if he hadn't nearly fainted when it happened.
Max made camp with the accidental murderer in tow and Marie spent some time browsing the night-time cameras until her eyes started to droop. Then it was time for coffee and arranging the day's notes. A transcription of the speech would have to wait for tomorrow, or another slow day. Her best chances at finding a moment of reprieve were all in the first few days. Her town got off to a slow start, at least. She figured Chattanooga would be the same way. So she scheduled a quick mid-day run to grab some photographs of the city and get some Vox Populi interviews. Armed with her tape-recorder and notepad, Marie took to the street.
34th Street, to be precise. People around Randy's side of town were too used to seeing her around. She caught a bus uptown instead, and with a hop, skip and jump around the streets, she found herself deep in the North Side. After gathering a few interviews from restaurant goers outside Blue House, where she'd been just a day prior. The staff didn't seem bothered much; the waitress who dropped the silverware saw her from the window and quickly hurried back inside. Getting the interviews was simple enough. She introduced herself as a member of the press from Washington D.C. (not entirely a lie), then proceeded to probe interviewees about their familiarity with the attacks. If they'd known anyone who lost a family member in the abduction. Their thoughts on the continued activities of the terrorists responsible. That sort of thing.
It only took an hour to get a diverse enough sample for Marie to shift location. She caught as many flavors of "everyman" as she could imagine. Most people didn't know anyone. Big city. Proportionality, as previously understood, helped Marie set her intentions there. Most people were at the café on lunch break and didn't have long to talk—Marie needed a more in-depth set of responses from someone with a hotter take, someone counter-cultural, off-beat. A worthwhile contrast with the boring, friendly, stiff Chattanoogan. An online search and a short walk later, she was on 34th in front of the Wicca store.
The front of the building was painted blue. On an unvarnished wood panel hung above the door, the words "Seven Stars" were painted in thick crimson. Two large windows revealed the whole of the store to the street. In the front were more mainstream books, self-help guides and political manifestos. "Capitalism 101," and "How to Unf*ck Your Sh*t: The Guide to Being Nobody's B*tch Ever Again." A book of poems about caterpillars, and some coloring oversized volumes for the children. Against the right hand wall but before the counter were the tarot cards and guides, several different colorful decks from many different eras and styles. The counter itself was glass. Many different colorful gems sat on the counter. Some were set in jewelry. Others were available to be purchased raw. On the left hand side, running about forty feet to the back, was a shelf of many books. Three shelves occupied the last third of the store in the back, and the difference in empty floor space made up by a long table upon which sat occult books intended for more casual purveyors. Paintings sat on the tops of the shelves with price tags scrawled on index cards in pencil punctured through the bottom corner, one step or two above gas station fare.
There was an elderly man inside by the front left window with a sketchpad on an easel, deftly pulling his pencil across the page with thick, straight strokes. His eyes looked focused; Marie thought it best not to bother him. Two others, a man and a woman, both somewhat raggedy and worn looking, like loose shoes, stood behind the counter stuck deep in conversation. It was probably best that Marie not bother them either. There were only a handful of shoppers in the store, and all of them looked like regulars, if Marie could tell from the various occult images and symbols arranged on their clothing. She'd have to wait for any of them, any at all, to leave the store.
In the reflection of the window she saw that a leaf had fallen and gotten itself caught on the sleeve of her shirt. She had on a white shoulder-less sweater top with black tank top straps. Today she wore her blue hair down, and it fell just below her ears. Blue jeans covered her legs; there were two holes like a vampire bite above her left knee where she'd tested the sharpness of a knife her friend had given her once. Marie hadn't packed an incredibly extensive wardrobe for this trip, but she could make do. This was a more casual look for her, speaking generally. She tried to look approachable when she was doing interviews.
With her eyes fixed on her reflection in the glass, Marie failed to see who was coming towards her from the west. Dress shoes clacked hastily on the pavement, sending warning shots across the street. Marie failed to hear them. He breathed heavily out from his nose as he dragged himself down the sidewalk. Marie was stuck staring into the spring.
Perhaps he was not watching where he was going himself. It mattered not. In only seconds time since he rounded the corner, the man bumped right into Marie's side, knocking her from her stupor and sending her stepping wildly away. The drawing man inside looked up from his canvas.
Marie regained her balance and looked angrily at the hurried man, who was looking down at her with wild, inscrutable eyes. He had on a black business blazer and a white shirt, over which he wore a black tie with white diagonal stripes. His blazer was matched by his black pants and brown loafers.
"Jesus, watch it," she said, brushing off her shoulders, "what's your problem, anyway? Look where you're going."
The man said nothing. Marie stood and waited for an apology, or some other kind of response. Instead, the hurried man stood silently, his eyes whipping around in their sockets. By his sides, his hands clenched into fists. His legs shook slightly. Marie looked him up and down once with concerned eyes before taking a step, two steps, three steps towards him.
"Are you alri—"
The man's arms shot forward. Tightly he grabbed Marie, his long fingernails digging into her bare shoulders. Marie let out a yelp and tried to step backwards. The bell above the door to Seven Stars rang—with pencil still in hand the drawing man had stepped out onto the sidewalk, mouth open in protest. Marie's ankles felt like they were to snap backwards in her shoes. The hurried man's gripped her tighter, drawing blood. Now the drawing man was on the hurried man and had his own hands on his shoulders, trying to pull him off of Marie. Marie, for her part, tried to strike the man with the recorder she still had in her right hand. But with his fingers in her shoulder, she was unable to get her arm high enough or far enough back to strike.
With a face full of hives and molasses between his teeth, the hurried man pointed his face down at Marie and moved his mouth to her ear;
"Water!" The man cried out, "Oh, water!"
Marie screamed, and just as suddenly the man was off of her and on the ground with a shoe on his chest, held down by the drawing man, who was cursing at the hurried man in some eastern European tongue. Marie stepped back and gasped for breath, pressing her fingers to her shoulders. Red seeped out from six points on either side of her neck. That was right—six, Marie counted, one more than the man should have on either hand. She looked back down at him and saw that indeed, the man only had five fingers on each hand.
"Water, please!" He continued to scream and writhe on the floor, "Oh, please, water!"
-
MethodicalSlacker
- Posts: 1231
- Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2018 2:18 am
- Location: Here And There Along The Echo
- Contact:
Marie got her interview with the store owners soon after that. They were gracious towards her, even let offered her a discount on some gemstones, which she politely declined. Journalistic integrity was one of Marie's foremost concerns, and that would have counted as some form of bribe. Or inside dealing. One of the two, or many other gaffes that could have been, but weren't. The drawing man got the thirsty man away from the store, walked him down the street. Wouldn't say where he was from. Just some transient or other blown through town. The drawing man offered to do her portrait for a reduced price. Marie said she would think about that one. After all, he wasn't an interview subject. They set the date for later that week. When he smiled, she saw he was missing his front two teeth.
The store owners remarked that a few of their regulars had been taken in the kidnapping. A group of high school girls who used to frequent the store—they hesitated to apply the term 'coven' when pressed, but admitted they fit that description somewhat—had appeared on the broadcast. The store owners only knew a few by name, and weren't willing to disclose any personal contact information. However, Marie had a note that one of their sisters came into the store earlier that month before the feeds went live, or before anyone really 'knew for sure,' making a fuss about their store being 'demonic' and that her sister "willed this to happen" and so on and so forth, random crazy nonsense that Marie assumed was solidly out of their pay-grade and above their wheelhouse. She calmed down when it was clear the clerks didn't know what she was saying. Violet Schmidt was a regular customer, even splurged one year on a robe well out of what had been to that point her previously established limit and range of purchase. Nice girl, always in and out of the store in a hurry and never when it was crowded, certain what she wanted to buy, never making her questions known.
But her sister had never been in the store before. They had to talk her down for fifteen minutes before she'd even say who she was talking about. She wouldn't give her name, but she yelled out her phone number—to call when she was proven right.
They gave Marie the number, which she wasn't sure how she was supposed to feel about. On one hand, she had just attained contact details for another family member related to the kidnapping, as much a breakthrough in her reporting as any contact with the bereaved would be. On the other hand, this was much, much closer contact than she had come into before. And with someone who seemed less than enthused that all of this was happening, no less.
"I think you oughtta give her a ring," Randy said as they watched Max on television later that evening, "She was willing to go into a store and stir up a fuss about it. Maybe she would wanna talk to y'uh."
"And maybe she'd think I was the devil," Marie replied, "maybe she'd scream at me, on the phone."
"Oh, come on, now. You just spent a day out on the street, getting all up in people's faces while they're situated and going about's their business. What's a little phone call gonna do?"
"It's different," Marie mumbled, "I've never been good speaking to people I can't see."
Randy chewed on this for a moment. He'd spent the day at work, checking in on Max every now and again on his cell phone. His group spent their second day foraging, avoiding loud noises, hiding against the trees and the shadows of abandoned buildings. The chaos that carved through yesterday's footage was largely absent. No guns went off. Nobody was killed. Nobody they could see, at least.
"Say, what's the name of that girl, again?" Randy said.
Max lead the group through a clearing. Thickening clouds covered the sky. Suddenly, the bushes rustled, and Max tapped his claw on the ground. Jonah, Darlene, and Lucas stopped short behind him, and lowered closer to the ground. Out of the bushes ran three monkeys, who sprinted across the clearing and out of frame. Max tapped his claw again, and the group resumed their march.
"Violet Schmidt," Marie said.
"That almost rhymes," Randy said, and reached for his computer. All of a sudden Max's feed was gone, clicked off to the corner of the screen. Randy scrolled through the hypertext labyrinth, navigating deftly the wall of blue links, until towards the middle he found her—girl number seven, Violet S. He hovered the mouse cursor over the text of her name, unclicked, still blue.
"Ready?" Randy asked.
"Wait," Marie said, "this could be a bad time."
"Huh?"
"I mean we don't know what we're getting into, by clicking on this."
"Well, now," Randy said, somewhat miffed, "you didn't have much of a problem when it was my cousin you were clicking on, didya?"
"That was different," Marie affirmed, "that was the start of the game. He didn't have anywhere else to be but on the ground, asleep. We could have started with anyone at that point."
"And, so, that means," Randy continued, "now that it's the second day, you don't wanna catch someone in the middle of somethin' untoward, I take it. Or gruesome."
"I also don't want to invade a teenage girl's privacy."
"Oh!" Randy exclaimed, "oh, heavens, I hadn't even thought of—"
"You hadn't."
"I swear to God, furthest thing from my mind."
"Right."
"Honest!"
"Would you mind leaving the room, then?" Marie asked, cocking her head to the side, "just for a minute, so I can tell you if it's okay."
"Right, right," Randy said as he stood up from the couch, "I'll just, uh, be in my room for a bit."
With that, he stepped around the side of the furniture and moved through the kitchen to his door. With sweaty palms he turned the knob and shut it fast behind him, leaving Marie alone in the front room with the television, Randy's laptop, and the light pouring in from the windows. On screen, Randy's mouse cursor was still pointed at Violet's link, offset slightly to hover over the 'm' in her surname.
Marie took a deep breath. Her bones rattled. Maire thought back to the last time she clicked on a link like this. When she started watching Arthur. How she came across him sitting in the sand on the beach, looking out at the sun gleaming on the water. How she thought it was the most beautiful thing either of them had ever seen, and that it was one of the last sights he'd ever get. The endless water that had seemed so impossible to them as kids, living as they did in the shadow of a dry mountain. That was his world; surrounded by sand, then drowned in water. His life ended knee-deep in it.
She clicked the button.
Violet crouched under a tree in the rain, covered by a large leaf. At first glance Marie thought she'd made the right call in showing Randy out, but when she looked again she saw this was just a regular old sit, not a bathroom break. Violet was wearing the robe Marie had been told about. A gun lay at her feet, the long point of the rifle flecked with dirt. She had her knees pulled against her chest, her eyes downcast.
"It's okay," Marie called out, "she's just...sitting."
Randy's door opened. Marie didn't turn around to look. Her eyes were focused on Violet, looking for any shifting, any movement that would break her calm. Nothing. Violet was as still as could be.
"Sitting?" Randy asked, "ain't she supposed to be out killing?"
This time, Marie looked back to shoot Randy a glare.
"Sorry, sorry," he said, "I mean, that's what they're all supposed to do, but—"
"Zip it."
"Sorry."
Marie turned back to the screen. Still no movement from the witch. A car drove by on the street outside. Marie sat forward on the couch, putting her elbows on her knees and her head in her upturned hands. Her fingers drummed on the sides of her cheekbones. The camera angle changed, a lower shot now. Violet's eyes were closed. Her chest was absent of the rising and falling Marie would expect from her breath.
"Meditation," Marie remarked, "I don't think we're going to see anything out of her for a bit."
"Maybe try scrubbing backwards," Randy said, "see if maybe she got up to anything interesting earlier in the day?"
Violet sniffled. It sounded like her nose was runny.
"Interesting?" Marie asked, "is that what we're here for? Interesting?"
"You know what I mean," Randy scoffed, "I mean if you're going to call this girl's sister, you should know what's happened, so that you have good questions to ask."
Marie felt something inside her chest crumple. "Oh," she said.
"I was just trying to help," Randy said, downcast.
"No no it's fine, that was," Marie said, "that was actually a good idea. Good thinking. See, I'll rewind it just so—"
Marie hovered her mouse over the timeline, looking for a node she could click and drag back to dawn. There was none that she could find, and clicking points on the timeline did nothing, but a rewind button promised something to the same effect. Marie clicked on it.
For a split-second, the raindrops hung mid-fall above the ground. Violet's affected stillness became true.
Then it was moving again. Violet was still seated under the tree. Her sniffle came back around, a blip of sound against the sliding sound of reversed rain rising into the sky. The leaves on the tree bounced drops of water back at the clouds, and the wind blew back out to sea.
"Shit," Marie said, "it's just playing it backwards."
"Isn't that wh—"
"Usually rewinding things also speeds it up, so you aren't just sitting through the same thing in reverse," Marie continued, "if there's a way to increase the speed—"
She clicked the rewind button again, and the rain rose at twice the speed. Another press, and suddenly Violet was on her feet, holding her gun in her arms and wiping wetness onto her face. She stepped backwards away from the tree on a blind hike back through the woods as the clouds above brightened with hidden daylight. Backwards, backwards she ran, out and through a clearing, rejoining a path, trundling backwards towards a village. Her feet slipped backwards in the dirt until she was under the front deck of a run-down one family. Someone else stood next to her, about a foot shorter.
"Jesus," Randy said, "that's one tall girl."
Marie said nothing. The audio was silent; Marie watched the TV People carry their conversation backwards, gesturing with hands pulling air back toward their bodies. They stood far apart, then a step closer, then far again, until now Violet was walking backwards once more, tracing a path back away from the village through the jungle to the south. Her path was clear until she fell backwards onto the ground, then rose into the air, stepping with one foot just before the outcropping of a mossy rock. Then her path backwards was more hurried, more frantic, as sickness and panic reanimated in her eyes. She trampled backwards through the rice paddies, took long strides backwards up a great hill at the corner of the island, and looked set to conclude her retrograde pilgrimage in a small hut the crested its peak, when Marie reached forward and hit the pause button.
"What?" Randy asked, "why'd you stop?"
"I want you to leave the room again," Marie said.
"I—"
"I'm not arguing with you."
"But—"
"Now, Randy."
"Y'know," Randy said as he walked back to his bedroom, "I don't even know why I'm listening to you."
He shut the door before Marie could get out a word. She knew he was lying. Again, she pressed play. This time, Violet moved forward, running down the hill as the rain started to pour, panting, gasping for air. Marie simply pressed pause again, and rewound her into the temple at double speed.
When next she hit play and Violet came unstuck, she was walking into the temple.
And she wasn't alone.
The store owners remarked that a few of their regulars had been taken in the kidnapping. A group of high school girls who used to frequent the store—they hesitated to apply the term 'coven' when pressed, but admitted they fit that description somewhat—had appeared on the broadcast. The store owners only knew a few by name, and weren't willing to disclose any personal contact information. However, Marie had a note that one of their sisters came into the store earlier that month before the feeds went live, or before anyone really 'knew for sure,' making a fuss about their store being 'demonic' and that her sister "willed this to happen" and so on and so forth, random crazy nonsense that Marie assumed was solidly out of their pay-grade and above their wheelhouse. She calmed down when it was clear the clerks didn't know what she was saying. Violet Schmidt was a regular customer, even splurged one year on a robe well out of what had been to that point her previously established limit and range of purchase. Nice girl, always in and out of the store in a hurry and never when it was crowded, certain what she wanted to buy, never making her questions known.
But her sister had never been in the store before. They had to talk her down for fifteen minutes before she'd even say who she was talking about. She wouldn't give her name, but she yelled out her phone number—to call when she was proven right.
They gave Marie the number, which she wasn't sure how she was supposed to feel about. On one hand, she had just attained contact details for another family member related to the kidnapping, as much a breakthrough in her reporting as any contact with the bereaved would be. On the other hand, this was much, much closer contact than she had come into before. And with someone who seemed less than enthused that all of this was happening, no less.
"I think you oughtta give her a ring," Randy said as they watched Max on television later that evening, "She was willing to go into a store and stir up a fuss about it. Maybe she would wanna talk to y'uh."
"And maybe she'd think I was the devil," Marie replied, "maybe she'd scream at me, on the phone."
"Oh, come on, now. You just spent a day out on the street, getting all up in people's faces while they're situated and going about's their business. What's a little phone call gonna do?"
"It's different," Marie mumbled, "I've never been good speaking to people I can't see."
Randy chewed on this for a moment. He'd spent the day at work, checking in on Max every now and again on his cell phone. His group spent their second day foraging, avoiding loud noises, hiding against the trees and the shadows of abandoned buildings. The chaos that carved through yesterday's footage was largely absent. No guns went off. Nobody was killed. Nobody they could see, at least.
"Say, what's the name of that girl, again?" Randy said.
Max lead the group through a clearing. Thickening clouds covered the sky. Suddenly, the bushes rustled, and Max tapped his claw on the ground. Jonah, Darlene, and Lucas stopped short behind him, and lowered closer to the ground. Out of the bushes ran three monkeys, who sprinted across the clearing and out of frame. Max tapped his claw again, and the group resumed their march.
"Violet Schmidt," Marie said.
"That almost rhymes," Randy said, and reached for his computer. All of a sudden Max's feed was gone, clicked off to the corner of the screen. Randy scrolled through the hypertext labyrinth, navigating deftly the wall of blue links, until towards the middle he found her—girl number seven, Violet S. He hovered the mouse cursor over the text of her name, unclicked, still blue.
"Ready?" Randy asked.
"Wait," Marie said, "this could be a bad time."
"Huh?"
"I mean we don't know what we're getting into, by clicking on this."
"Well, now," Randy said, somewhat miffed, "you didn't have much of a problem when it was my cousin you were clicking on, didya?"
"That was different," Marie affirmed, "that was the start of the game. He didn't have anywhere else to be but on the ground, asleep. We could have started with anyone at that point."
"And, so, that means," Randy continued, "now that it's the second day, you don't wanna catch someone in the middle of somethin' untoward, I take it. Or gruesome."
"I also don't want to invade a teenage girl's privacy."
"Oh!" Randy exclaimed, "oh, heavens, I hadn't even thought of—"
"You hadn't."
"I swear to God, furthest thing from my mind."
"Right."
"Honest!"
"Would you mind leaving the room, then?" Marie asked, cocking her head to the side, "just for a minute, so I can tell you if it's okay."
"Right, right," Randy said as he stood up from the couch, "I'll just, uh, be in my room for a bit."
With that, he stepped around the side of the furniture and moved through the kitchen to his door. With sweaty palms he turned the knob and shut it fast behind him, leaving Marie alone in the front room with the television, Randy's laptop, and the light pouring in from the windows. On screen, Randy's mouse cursor was still pointed at Violet's link, offset slightly to hover over the 'm' in her surname.
Marie took a deep breath. Her bones rattled. Maire thought back to the last time she clicked on a link like this. When she started watching Arthur. How she came across him sitting in the sand on the beach, looking out at the sun gleaming on the water. How she thought it was the most beautiful thing either of them had ever seen, and that it was one of the last sights he'd ever get. The endless water that had seemed so impossible to them as kids, living as they did in the shadow of a dry mountain. That was his world; surrounded by sand, then drowned in water. His life ended knee-deep in it.
She clicked the button.
Violet crouched under a tree in the rain, covered by a large leaf. At first glance Marie thought she'd made the right call in showing Randy out, but when she looked again she saw this was just a regular old sit, not a bathroom break. Violet was wearing the robe Marie had been told about. A gun lay at her feet, the long point of the rifle flecked with dirt. She had her knees pulled against her chest, her eyes downcast.
"It's okay," Marie called out, "she's just...sitting."
Randy's door opened. Marie didn't turn around to look. Her eyes were focused on Violet, looking for any shifting, any movement that would break her calm. Nothing. Violet was as still as could be.
"Sitting?" Randy asked, "ain't she supposed to be out killing?"
This time, Marie looked back to shoot Randy a glare.
"Sorry, sorry," he said, "I mean, that's what they're all supposed to do, but—"
"Zip it."
"Sorry."
Marie turned back to the screen. Still no movement from the witch. A car drove by on the street outside. Marie sat forward on the couch, putting her elbows on her knees and her head in her upturned hands. Her fingers drummed on the sides of her cheekbones. The camera angle changed, a lower shot now. Violet's eyes were closed. Her chest was absent of the rising and falling Marie would expect from her breath.
"Meditation," Marie remarked, "I don't think we're going to see anything out of her for a bit."
"Maybe try scrubbing backwards," Randy said, "see if maybe she got up to anything interesting earlier in the day?"
Violet sniffled. It sounded like her nose was runny.
"Interesting?" Marie asked, "is that what we're here for? Interesting?"
"You know what I mean," Randy scoffed, "I mean if you're going to call this girl's sister, you should know what's happened, so that you have good questions to ask."
Marie felt something inside her chest crumple. "Oh," she said.
"I was just trying to help," Randy said, downcast.
"No no it's fine, that was," Marie said, "that was actually a good idea. Good thinking. See, I'll rewind it just so—"
Marie hovered her mouse over the timeline, looking for a node she could click and drag back to dawn. There was none that she could find, and clicking points on the timeline did nothing, but a rewind button promised something to the same effect. Marie clicked on it.
For a split-second, the raindrops hung mid-fall above the ground. Violet's affected stillness became true.
Then it was moving again. Violet was still seated under the tree. Her sniffle came back around, a blip of sound against the sliding sound of reversed rain rising into the sky. The leaves on the tree bounced drops of water back at the clouds, and the wind blew back out to sea.
"Shit," Marie said, "it's just playing it backwards."
"Isn't that wh—"
"Usually rewinding things also speeds it up, so you aren't just sitting through the same thing in reverse," Marie continued, "if there's a way to increase the speed—"
She clicked the rewind button again, and the rain rose at twice the speed. Another press, and suddenly Violet was on her feet, holding her gun in her arms and wiping wetness onto her face. She stepped backwards away from the tree on a blind hike back through the woods as the clouds above brightened with hidden daylight. Backwards, backwards she ran, out and through a clearing, rejoining a path, trundling backwards towards a village. Her feet slipped backwards in the dirt until she was under the front deck of a run-down one family. Someone else stood next to her, about a foot shorter.
"Jesus," Randy said, "that's one tall girl."
Marie said nothing. The audio was silent; Marie watched the TV People carry their conversation backwards, gesturing with hands pulling air back toward their bodies. They stood far apart, then a step closer, then far again, until now Violet was walking backwards once more, tracing a path back away from the village through the jungle to the south. Her path was clear until she fell backwards onto the ground, then rose into the air, stepping with one foot just before the outcropping of a mossy rock. Then her path backwards was more hurried, more frantic, as sickness and panic reanimated in her eyes. She trampled backwards through the rice paddies, took long strides backwards up a great hill at the corner of the island, and looked set to conclude her retrograde pilgrimage in a small hut the crested its peak, when Marie reached forward and hit the pause button.
"What?" Randy asked, "why'd you stop?"
"I want you to leave the room again," Marie said.
"I—"
"I'm not arguing with you."
"But—"
"Now, Randy."
"Y'know," Randy said as he walked back to his bedroom, "I don't even know why I'm listening to you."
He shut the door before Marie could get out a word. She knew he was lying. Again, she pressed play. This time, Violet moved forward, running down the hill as the rain started to pour, panting, gasping for air. Marie simply pressed pause again, and rewound her into the temple at double speed.
When next she hit play and Violet came unstuck, she was walking into the temple.
And she wasn't alone.