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Promo history - volume 67. "Record Year"(October 29th, 2021). Michelle von Horrowitz def. Cyrus Truth [Best of Five Series: Match III](FWA: Meltdown 7).
MICHELLE von HORROWITZ in [VOLUME SIXTY SEVEN] ”RECORD YEAR.”
*****
She was going to have one. Three hours later, she sat at the bar with a half-dozen empty bottles in front of her. The general atmosphere of the room was dull and drab and gloomy, and the lack of lighting - natural or manufactured - made the bottles look dark green and thoroughly un-translucent. She counted them again, doing her best to keep her eyes away from the television screen that was taunting her with its choice of programming.
She watched, bored and indifferent, as Chris Kennedy whipped Randy Ramon into the ropes, following up with an elbow strike to the face. R3 crashed down onto the mat, immediately holding his nose as if it had been knocked loose, and Kennedy spent a few moments barking orders at Danny Toner. It seemed that a temporary alliance was forming, with Toner allowing his business with Ramon to come in between what should’ve been his true purpose with ‘the Astonishing One’. She recognised a lack of focus in him, the same that she saw in herself, and it made her sad. Dutifully, Toner began his climb up to the top rope for a double axe handle… only for Kennedy to immediately renege on the makeshift partnership, hitting Ryan Rondo with a Bittersweet Chin Symphony and knocking him from the apron. She remembered the move well, shaking her head and wincing at the memory. She felt a phantom pain in her jaw and loosened the joint involuntarily.
“Can you turn this off?” she asked. She directed her question towards Yoonho, the young bartender who wore glasses and spoke passable English. The bar was close to empty and she got the impression that this was almost always the case. Absently, Yoonho reached for the remote control and began to cycle through channels.
“Hey! I was watching tha --” a man said from the corner. His accent was thick and Australian and Michelle turned to see a fat boy with a scowl on his face. He was wearing a Chris Kennedy t-shirt and sat alone, nursing a pint of a thick, dark beer that he had been neglecting since she’d arrived. When Michelle turned around to glare at him, his anger gave way to recognition. He turned pale, and seemed unable to drag his eyes away from the young woman once he’d realised who he was directing his complaints to.
“I can watch it some other time,” he said, meekly.
Michelle’s eyes settled back on the bar in front of her. She found herself thinking about the dream she had last night. She had been walking through a park in Rotterdam with her Mother, and was holding her hand. After a short time, her Mother’s fingernails - long and curved and pointed in the end, and painted ten different colours - began to crumble and come away from her hand. The older woman faded completely, disappearing from the park before they could reach the edge of it. Michelle had looked down into her palm to find ten fingernails, left behind in the disappearing woman’s haste.
“You want subtitles?” the bartender asked of Michelle. She shrugged absently. The lout behind her called out affirmatively. Yoonho nodded and pressed another series of buttons on the remote control. On the screen, a drama was starting.
한국방송공사선물
[THE KOREAN BROADCASTING SYSTEM (KBS) PRESENTS]
단일성
에피소드 1 / [EPISODE ONE] 강우량 기록적인 해 [A RECORD YEAR FOR RAINFALL]
감독봉준호 / [DIRECTED BY BONG JOON-HO] 에 의해 작성한진원 / [WRITTEN BY HAN JIN-WON]
An old man, perhaps sixty or a little bit older, was waking up in his little cube of an apartment. We see him snoozing his clock radio a series of times, before finally he drags himself out of bed to address the world. He shivers as he makes his way across his bedroom. He opens the closet door and it doesn’t creak. He holds the handle in an awkward, somewhat uncomfortable fashion, staring at the edge of the door, tracing a line around its corner toward the hinges. With apprehension, he pushes it to once more, waits a few moments, and then opens it again. He sighs as the familiar, slow groan of the brass hinge fills the room. In his wardrobe, five identical suits are hung up next to five identical shirts. At the top of the cupboard are a series of pairs of blue jeans and block-coloured t-shirts. We view the old man from above as his fingers brush across the material of a light blue t-shirt on top of the pile. He sighs, reminiscing about the weekend just gone and dreaming on the weekend still to come.
We see the man in his bathroom. A wide mirror lines one of the walls, opposite a small walk-in shower and adjacent to a green sink riddled with mould. Damp clings stubbornly onto the corners of the ceiling, which bows slightly around a limply hanging light bulb. His bare feet stick to the damp floor as he walks, producing an unappealing squelching noise. He pauses for a moment in front of the mirror. His face is pockmarked by age, the only hairs left on his head clustered in asymmetrical fashion around his ears. The incisors either side of his crooked front teeth run in a gradient from yellow at the tip to black at the gums. His arms, once proud and strong and thick, now sag sadly around the elbows and the wrists. He slaps the thin layer of fat that covers his lower abdomen, grabbing at it clumsily and turning sideways-on. The rest of him is thin, almost gaunt, and his back is curved at both the base and the shoulders. He could never notice a difference from day to day, but he was certain he hadn’t always looked like this.
We see the man dressed in his suit and standing in front of his door. The camera is pointed at him directly, and he stares back into it with a bored and deeply sad countenance.
As he travels on the bus towards his place of work, he introduces himself in voiceover. His name is Dohyun Kang. He is sixty two years old. He has worked for Lee & Lee Business Insurance Ltd., a subsidiary of the Lee Group (itself a subsidiary of B.B. Enterprises) for forty two years: the entirety of his adult life. He muses on his day to come. Eight through eleven would be easy. His early meetings and duties were usually mere formalities: catching up on paperwork, feeding back to his superiors, a few phone calls to office suppliers. At eleven he’d sometimes move to front of house and see a half-dozen or so clients (or potential clients) before lunch, depending on how busy he was. Then lunch from twelve until twelve fifteen: four thin slices of chicken, salad, and mayonnaise on brown bread, prepared the previous night directly before bed. The more awkward clients were usually scheduled for the afternoon. Today would be no different. He had a one o’clock with Mr. Wong which promised to be difficult. Mr. Wong’s company, a beef manufacturer in the north-western district of the city, was a long-term client of the firm. Mr. Wong's father (also Mr. Wong) had been one of their very first customers, in fact, and both Wongs had dutifully and diligently paid their dues without once making a claim. Mr. Wong the Younger had been indignant on the phone. But that was this afternoon’s problem.
Outside the window of Dohyun’s bus, we see a series of tall, imposing buildings as he makes his way into the unnamed city nucleus. The structures are black and monolithic and invariably display huge billboards alive with activity. A large number of them seem to be promoting B.B. Enterprises. Words such as benevolent and frateral are used in the messaging, each of which finishes with a long, lingering shot of a smiling Korean man. Any billboard not displaying information about B.B. Enterprises is generally showing promotional packages for The Next Big Thing, a music reality show which seemingly only focuses on young women but with four old men as judges, but for the few boards that have been vandalized and are deactivated. As we reach the heart of the city, we see a work crew on scaffolding by one such billboard. They remove the screen, the anti-B.B. slogans visible alongside a single scrawled word: unity. Soon enough, the voiceover tells us, the board would be replaced and all memory of this act of defiance would be gone.
Outside of his office, a small kerfuffle is taking place between a trio of youths and the security guard at his building. One of the youths had thrown a rock at the quadruple-glazed windows (all buildings of B.B. Enterprises subsidiaries, which was essentially all buildings, had quadruple-glazed windows) only for it to bounce off in a thoroughly undramatic fashion. It landed in front of him and he stared at it as Dohyun shuffled past. The security guard was busy chasing the youths off, who were shouting about resistance and the new day and, as they always seemed to be nowadays, unity. Our protagonist doesn’t look back at the slightly absurd scene as he enters the building.
Dohyun sits behind his desk. He wears the same bored expression as when he left his house. He sighs deeply and stares blankly into the camera. Around him, on the walls of his office, are a large amount of Employee of the Month plaques. He lists each of the months in which he was successful in this company initiative: May 2023, July 2023, August 2023… and so on, culminating in his most recent in December 2028. He dully mentions, in his voiceover, that the year is now 2057. Each of the plaques is covered in a thick layer of dust.
He starts his work.
During this period of the day, as he was piped through to conversations with people in Seoul or Tokyo or Beijing, he always considered the peculiarity of his mornings. He could talk to around twenty people, more during the winter months and yet more still if you counted those waiting in their own offices for his emails to land in their inbox. That was more than the afternoon, when his more difficult clients would sit across a desk from him, usually screwing up their faces into anger or glum disappointment. And it was certainly more than his evenings, which were generally drab affairs. Things in Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing were fine. In fact, things in Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing were so fine that he placed the receiver down upon the handset a full eight minutes earlier than he had expected to. He reclined in his chair, trying to subdue a look of smug satisfaction that was threatening to break across his face. With a little flourish he rotated in his chair until he found himself observing the western riverbank through a small, poorly-kept window. He placed his hands behind his head, interlocking his fingers and even allowing the heels of his shoes to come to rest upon the windowsill. Satisfaction was dangerous, so he only indulged himself in it for a few moments.
Early lunch. The chicken was too dry and the mayonnaise was too wet. They didn’t balance each other out. He forced it down in the empty break room (he took his lunch at a different time to the rest of them to cut down on idle chatter) and went back to his office, deciding to watch the clouds drift in huge packs against a gradually darkening sky. They had been white when he’d woken this morning, but as afternoon began to take hold they were greying, an ominous and obvious prophecy of the day’s trajectory. He watched them as they glanced down at the earth with an unforgiving and sinister countenance. Soon enough they’d have to relent, throwing out their cold, hard rain, equal parts judgement and cleansing. Thank God he had his umbrella.
The day wore on. Eventually, Dohyun was ready to complete his final task. He reached for a pile of envelopes and the ink-stamp in his second drawer. They were piled high today, and soon more would arrive from the mailroom, but he didn’t really mind. This was the one part of the day where everything began to make sense. He could rely on his ink-stamp. He could rely on the envelopes to appear from the mailroom at a quarter past five. He could rely on the precise nature of his movements as he imprinted the return address in the upper left corner of each package. This was his safe time, when nothing extraordinary or unpleasant would rear its head. It was him and the stamps. He didn’t even notice the plaques behind him, memories of his former glory that were a constant and overbearing presence during the day behind him. It had been so, day in and day out, for the years, for decades now, since he’d fallen from his perch. He lamented how far he now was from the glory of his old Employee of the Month days. He clung on, but found that his grip was weak.
With a sigh, Dohyun stared down at the envelopes. He began.
An hour later, he stood in the elevator as the numbers on a little L.E.D. screen descended from thirteen to one. He was surrounded by mirrors, but did his best to avoid the eyes of his reflection.
Walking through the lobby, Dohyun gazed over towards the security desk, as if prepared to absently wish the man or woman that sat behind it tonight a good evening. The chair was empty, and it gave Dohyun a moment’s pause before he reasoned that all employees were entitled to bathroom breaks. Outside it was already dark, and the lights had been turned off in the lobby. He arrived at the glass doors, and waited for a moment whilst they picked up the lightness of his being and slid open.
“Mr. Kang,” a voice said. We see Dohyun - old and frail and with back hunched - standing at the automatic glass doors, temporarily halted again, from over the shoulder of a young man with black hair and a black suit. “Good evening. A moment of your time, if you please.”
Dohyun turned towards the man addressing him. A lack of recognition adorns him.
“Who are you?” he asked, taking a step towards the interloper. He didn’t seem threatened or concerned.
“My name is Mr. Jung,” the man replied. We are finally shown his visage, and find him young and comely. He wears a crisp white shirt and a narrow black tie. “I am a representative of B.B. Enterprises. As you are, in your own way.”
Mr. Jung walks towards Dohyun and offers a handshake. The older man, confused but dutifully polie, takes the outstretched hand in his own.
“Well, how can I oblige you, Mr. Jung? I am in insurance. Do you have a need?”
“I know that you are in insurance,” Mr. Jung answered. He was smiling and his smile seemed knowing. “I know quite a lot of things.”
For the first time in the scene, Dohyun seemed unsettled. He stopped shaking Jung’s hand, and - with difficulty - took his own back. He placed it at his side. He was still holding his coat and his briefcase.
“I don’t think I understand, Mr. Jung,” he answered. His mouth stood slightly agape. Jung still smiled, though now it seemed more of a sneer.
“Forty two years is a long time, Mr. Kang,” the interloper began. “B.B. Enterprises is very grateful for the loyalty shown by its employees. And it is my impression... our impression... that loyalty is now all that remains to distinguish you. The distinction that you earned in your youth is now just a memory. A series of plaques upon your office wall. Am I right?”
Dohyun didn’t say anything. Mr. Jung looked out of the glass doors at a Mercedes that had been parked in front of the building..
“Come with me.”
Sat in the back of the car, unburdened by his briefcase and his jacket, Dohyun looked a bundle of nervous energy. He stared out of the window as the city silently drifted past outside, doing his utmost to avoid eye contact with his new associate. Mr. Jung regarded Dohyun as if he was looking at a curiously uncurious child.
“B.B. Enterprises is a family, Mr. Kang,” he said. Dohyun continued to stare out of the window. “We have been observing you for a long time. We know what plagues your mind each day, as you watch underlings become superiors. As the people that you watched starting out in the mailroom began to give you orders. But it doesn’t have to be this way.”
Dohyun regarded Mr. Jung once more. He looked kind, but the older man felt a warning in his heart. He clutched at his chest as if that might help.
“You need B.B., of course, Mr. Kang,” he man said, staring into Dohyun intently. “But there sometimes comes a moment when B.B. needs you, perhaps more than you need it. And now, that time has come.”
The car came to a halt in front of a small, squat building. It was nondescript and ugly and plain: the sort of building that one might walk past without really contemplating it at all.
“Please, follow me,” Mr. Jung said, still smiling at Dohyun. He unlocked the door and walked into the structure. Inside, Dohyun was surrounded by grey concrete. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all wrought with the same monotonous material, unadorned by frill and excess.
“These are our guests…”
At the far end of the room... their arms raised above them and shackled to a hook on the wall, sat on the cold ground in silence, unmoving but for the slow expansion of their chests under the labor of respiration... were two young people.
“I am sure that you have heard about unity. Everyone has, by this stage. A new day is the word on the street at the moment. B.B. has seen things like this before. Movements. But we are here, unshackled and free, all the same.”
One of them was a blonde woman, a pink dress in tatters, slowly mumbling and muttering to herself about nothing in particular. The second was a man who had been stripped naked, his onyx skin shimmering under a layer of perspiration, his face resolute and stern despite his imprisonment.
“What did they do?” Dohyun asked, regarding each of the pair in turn carefully. He noticed that their ankles were bound, too. The blonde woman continued to whimper.
“It’s not what they did,” Mr. Jung began, producing a short but sharp knife from his jacket pocket. He held it by the blade, carefully, and branded the ivory hilt at Dohyun. “It’s who they are, and what they want.”
He held the knife towards Dohyun.
“Forty two years is a long time to have wasted,” Mr. Jung said. Slowly, Dohyun reached out to take the knife. The screen turned black, and the show’s credits ran.
In the bar, Michelle finished her drink and placed the empty next to her collection. She threw an ample amount of won onto the bar and, with a nod at Yoonho, turned to leave. She was pleased to find her Australian friend had already done so. The bar was empty when she left, and the streets seemed the same as she wandered through them towards the night’s real destination. It was late: already close to midnight. She couldn’t see any stars. The city was too bright, even at this time.
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art was an imposing structure, within the city but somehow standing aloof and apart from it, tall and square and off-white. She had arrived in the middle of a crisp, cool night, moisture in the air and her head as fogged as ever. It seemed to her that she now lived her life as if under a black a cloud that descended upon her as the day wore on. When she woke up, the cloud would be almost within her, and none of the placebos prescribed to her through decades of similar mornings did anything more than test her patience. The only comfort she had was the thousand other days when she’d risen and doubted that she’d make it through. She always did and here she was.
She didn't like Seoul. The show had gone well enough and she’d picked up something resembling a purpose in the form of her series with Cyrus. But the city itself did little to lift her spirits.
She entered the building. An old Korean woman on the door seemed to recognise her as she walked by and didn’t ask for credentials or identification which, of course, was fortunate, as Michelle had neither. The lobby was grand and tall and expansive, and adorned with exhibits that the Dutch woman couldn’t even begin to fathom but enjoyed looking at none-the-less. A large Soviet-style collage took the focus of the far wall, Cyrillic lettering combined with caricature-style images of eagles and lions and snakes to form a striking visual. In glass cabinets were a series of watering cans made from paper. In the middle of the room was a flute that had been carved from human bone. Michelle found herself wondering which human had given it up and if it had been freely. After spending a few minutes in the room, the old Korean woman muttered something towards her in a language she didn’t understand, before painting at an exit on the western side of the room.
The door led to a long wing emerging from the main lobby. The room was wide and stretched out for many metres before her, and the walls were lined with works from local artists. The exhibit was mainly paintings, but some photographs were framed and featured also, as well as a series of sculptures at the far end of the wing. Beyond that was a multimedia exhibit which, given the fact that it was the middle of the night, was currently turned off and only half-viewable.
Standing two thirds of the way up the room and examining a sculpture of a butterfly sitting atop a flower was a tall, well-built man who seemed a commanding presence within the empty gallery. Michelle got the impression that this was his world, and that she was merely walking through it. The appointed meeting place was a power play, she didn’t doubt, as was the manner in which this man, this Artist, didn’t turn towards her as she approached. He seemed enraptured by the butterfly. By the idea of it.
“Metamorphosis,” the man said, shaking his head. He let out a low laugh, and then turned to face the woman. “Michelle. I don’t know if it’s good to see you? This ranks amongst our very first conversations, tulip, despite our battles. But I was pleased to hear from you. A common purpose, maybe. If you follow me?”
Eli Black turned to Michelle with a smile, and she didn’t think it was unkind. He walked past her and began to look at a painting on the wall. It was Emperor Hihorito riding a unicorn, and he winced at its clumsiness.
“Strange place to meet,” Michelle remarked, looking around herself. “I usually go for bars. And isn’t this place closed?”
“I have friends on the circuit here,” he answered, continuing down the aisle of works upon the wall. He stopped at a photograph of a man with a long beard onboard a train near Irkutsk. “There aren’t many galleries in the world that wouldn’t open at this time for Eli Black. Excuse me, speaking in third person…”
He flashed her a grin.
“A common purpose,” Michelle said, endeavouring to return things towards pertinent issues. She didn’t really have much interest in the Artist’s clout in the art world. “You mean Cyrus.”
“Of course,” Eli said, leaning in towards the photograph to regard the age-lines on the Siberian man’s face. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
There was a moment’s pause. Michelle stared down at the ground.
“Maskell said I’d need to go to his level… to sink to his level… if I wanted to beat Cyrus.”
Black shrugged.
“Maybe he’s right. You’re not happy with sunset flips and eeking out wins?”
Michelle shook her head. She still stared at the ground. This was not the outcome that she wanted for any of her matches, least of all a series designed to bring about closure to the central question. A sunset flip was not conclusive. She wanted to beat Cyrus. She wanted to land something big and then pin his shoulders to the mat. This was what would bring about closure.
“You know,” Eli started, noting that Michelle’s gaze has been pointed towards the ground for the duration of their conversation. “The art is more interesting than your shoes.”
Dreamer looked up at a sculpture of a boot made of elastic bands. She wasn’t sure that Eli was right.
“I think there is some Truth to what Maskell says,” Eli began, now looking at Michelle directly. “Do not expect Cyrus to think twice about furthering his own ends at your expense. I do not mean by way of a steel chair or a stolen win. He is too noble for that. But the fact remains… he abandoned me at a critical point in my career. When we lost in the tag tournament to Gerald and yourself… well, that was about the end of my Summer of Truth. He turned his back on me, knowing that I had nothing now to focus my attention… and towards some new band-aid, as soon as the three was counted. Don’t count on this man. He will only let you down.”
Eli said these things with clarity, and without sadness. It was as if this was simply a Truth that he had come to accept.
“But he didn’t count on family. I guess that’s how I beat him.”
This wasn’t an option for Michelle. She had always been short on family, and now that resource had been expended entirely.
“My relationship with Cyrus…” Michelle began. She winced at her use of the word relationship. In reality, she knew little of the man beyond the whispers of those that used to know him. Here she was, being fed more such whispers, and glad for them even with this knowledge… this understanding of her ignorance. “My relationship with Cyrus is more adversarial. He and you… you shared a purpose in the tag tournament, but my own success will only come at the deprivation of his, and vice versa. He cannot turn his back on me until he has won, and then he has every right to.”
Black had moved on from the man from Irkutsk and now regarded a painting of a potato farm in Idaho.
“Even so… I would wager that Cyrus thinks he is helping you. Let’s face it, Michelle… Lights Out didn’t exactly go to plan for you. Or me, of course. Cyrus, too. I let go, and you are barely clinging on… but Cyrus remains steadfast. And I don’t doubt that he thinks of this best of five series of yours as him extending a hand. Cyrus likes to think of himself as the hero. And you will either accept his help happily, or become the villain, like I did. This is how he has lasted so long. This ego complex, that I utterly despise, is what drives him on. He thinks he is the saviour… your saviour, specifically… and will expect you to be grateful for his help.”
He shook his head.
“This really isn’t very good,” he said, nodding towards the picture of the farm.
He turned to look at Michelle.
“Cyrus Truth is the Gemini of the Fantasy Wrestling Alliance, Michelle. He straddles the line between honour and dishonesty. This is the nature of Truth, as I see it.”
Black didn’t want to go for a drink. That night, Michelle went to bed alone and slept for a long time and didn’t dream.
Promo history - volume 68. "Àgætis Byrjun" (November 11th, 2021). Michelle von Horrowitz vs. Cyrus Truth ends in a time-limit draw [X Rules Match, Best of Five Series: Match IV] (FWA Meltdown 8).
*****
MICHELLE von HORROWITZ in [VOLUME SIXTY EIGHT] “ÀGÆTIS BYRJUN.” - previously -
Despite a handful of trips to Japan since the time when she had called the country - if only for a brief period - her approximation of home, this was the first time that Michelle had found herself in this studio since 2012. It pained her to think that this was nearly ten years. She had been only twenty two then, on the cusp of real adulthood but with none of the naivety or hopefulness that usually accompanies such a frontier. The Sydney show was still over a week away, and she felt no need to rush ahead to scope out her meeting with the same man she’d met three times already (in quick succession and very recently). So, she had returned to the Chükogo Region and specifically Hiroshima, the city that she’d based herself in during her Japanese travails a decade prior. The city was unfamiliar now, but the studio? It hadn’t really changed at all besides the newer batch of paintings that now adorned the walls and worksurfaces. These were never a constant, anyway: as the painter sold them or gave them away or allowed them to be exhibited they would quickly be replaced with the next project. That seemed to still be the case. It was apparent that Lille was currently deep in a realism phase: the paintings were generally large landscapes, incredibly detailed and deliberately skewing as close towards photographic realism as Lille’s brush strokes would allow. Alongside the landscapes was the occasional portrait (mostly ugly and old women) and a painting of a vase of flowers sitting on an idle easel in one of the corners. When she was last here, Lille had seemed a lot more into cubism, but Michelle supposed enough time had passed to explain (if not justify) such a radical change in style. Dreamer was through looking at the paintings, and instead allowed her eyes to rest on the small, rectangular object in her hand.
“If I had anything to play it on, I’d offer to,” Lille said, nodding towards the cassette tape in Michelle’s palm. The wrestler clasped her fingers around it to obscure from view, as if the mention of the object had brought it into the room for the first time and she now wished to keep it hidden.
“What happened to the tortoises?” Michelle asked, remembering a series of paintings Lille had done of the little shelled creatures. They were invariably depicted as trapped in jars or in boxes or in bonds less physical. She placed the cassette tape back into her pocket and stretched out her limbs. The studio had in one corner a raised platform and on that was a bed, upon which Michelle currently lay.
“Tortoises have to fly the nest eventually,” Lille answered, busying herself in touching up a large canvas that hung on the wall depicting a seaside scene in the summer. She would stare intently at a part of the painting for what felt for a very long time, as if trying to will it into life, before making just one or two deft strokes and moving onto the next imperfection. “Do tortoises live in nests?”
Lille had a French mother and a Japanese father, and - just as with Jean-Luc - the French mother had won the naming rights to the child. Michelle wondered if this was a common trait for French women who married foreign men, or if she’d happened to have met two atypical cases by chance. She met Lille in Hiroshima at a screening of Pierrot le Fou. Both young women left the film after a minute or two when they’d found it to be dubbed in Japanese. Jean-Paul Belmondo lacked charm in any other language than his native one.
The French-Japanese woman was naked but for a necktie that hung, unknotted, around her neck like a tailor’s measuring tape. Michelle had once learned that it belonged to her grandfather (on her Mother’s side), a man that had taken an active role in her parenting after her parent’s divorce and before his death. She had grown up in Paris but moved to Hiroshima to study. Her father had insisted upon this as a condition if he was to pay for art school. Lille had welcomed the move and ended up staying here, though contact with her father was still seldom and, when they did meet, both approached the interaction with reluctance and a forced politeness. She didn’t talk about her family often but Michelle knew the story. When you spend a lot of time with someone, as Dreamer had done with Lille way back when in 2012 before her life had really begun, you tend to learn those sorts of things even if both parties made a conscious attempt to keep them close. Michelle knew that Lille’s father owned a successful fishing company in Tokyo but had been born in Hiroshima, whilst her Mother was a French lawyer who’d remained in Paris when her new husband had heard the call of the Japanese sea once again and sailed home. They divorced a few months later with contact thereafter limited to correspondence concerning financial matters (and specifically those pertaining to Lille).
Michelle had once asked the artist about the tie and where it had come from and that was how she had learned about her grandfather. She had wondered if the woman held onto it as an anchor to her previous life (her childhood) in Paris, or to her family, or to her grandfather specifically. Michelle didn’t ask about the relationship between the two of them: it could have been joyous or miserable or anything in-between. The specific nature didn’t really seem overly important. Another time, back in 2012, Michelle remembered approaching the young woman - at that point only eighteen or maybe nineteen, and Dreamer herself only twenty-two - and clasping the ends of the tie between a thumb and a forefinger of each of her hands. She would use it as a leash, almost, walking backwards across the room and leading Lille along with her. Michelle had stared into her grey eyes but, as she always did, the French-Japanese woman looked anywhere but back into Michelle’s, and eventually closed them to keep what lay inside hidden. At various points, Michelle found this aspect of their courtship charming, elusive, frustrating, and eventually cowardly. Dreamer remembered standing in the studio when both of them were young, her hands clasping the ends of Lille’s grandfather’s tie, turning her around in front of a large mirror. She stared at their reflection for what felt like a long time. Lille took the necktie off and placed it around Michelle instead, and led her towards the raised bed in silence. Lille always fucked in silence and with her eyes closed.
In 2021, Michelle pushed these memories from her mind and, whilst lighting a cigarette with one hand and reaching for her wine with the other, looked at the artist. She was no longer a student and had freely given up most of her youth, but was still beautiful in a more womanly way. She was fuller and more confident, though she still had trouble with eye contact to the point where Michelle found her absent and difficult. Now, she was sitting upon an old Chesterfield sofa (the same one that had been here nine years prior, only more weathered), smoking a mentholated cigarette and staring out of a dust-covered window. It was morning outside.
“Why do you paint like this now?” Michelle asked. Lille briefly turned towards her.
“I told you,” she answered. “About the turtles and the nest.”
“Tortoises,” Michelle corrected.
“It’s been a few years, Michelle. People change. Even you have…”
The artist still stared out of the window. Michelle looked at her pale skin and her black hair. The contrast between the two was stark and startling and seemed unreal, as if Lille had just walked out of one of her paintings.
“How would you know?” Dreamer asked, without scorn. There was curiosity in her voice. She thought herself to be asking too many questions.
“You’re on television in how many countries?” Lille asked, finally turning to face Michelle with a smile on her face. She managed to hold her gaze for a few seconds only before letting out a laugh and turning away. “I can’t say I watch every week. Too barbaric for a delicate soul like me. But I saw you win your championship. Congratulations.”
“I’ve lost it since,” Michelle admitted. The artist didn’t reply. She probably already knew. “It doesn’t seem fair that my life has been broadcast to the world whilst yours remains a mystery.”
“It’s not,” Lille said, pointing towards her paintings. “And besides, you never really cared for my stories. I’m surprised to see you longing for one.”
Michelle stopped staring at the young woman and decided to train her eyes on the ceiling light instead. Her hands groped at the cassette tape in her pocket. She remembered Lille’s stories just fine. She had a lot of them: she was beautiful and intelligent and exotic, and people were drawn to that and supplied her with enough anecdotes to last her a lifetime. Dreamer had indeed grown tired of them in her youth but, given the decade they had spent apart, found herself nostalgic and receptive for once.
“Tell me a story,” Michelle instructed. “From the last nine years.”
Lille stood from her Chesterfield and walked over to the bed. She lay down next to Michelle, separately and without contact. Michelle looked across at her, and noticed that the artist had closed her eyes already.
“I’ll tell you about Katzumi, if you like,” Lille said. Michelle nodded her head. The woman didn’t see, but started anyway. “Katzumi was a man I met at one of my exhibits. He bought three of my paintings and told me that his wife would love them, before returning the following week to buy another three. The third week, he told me that he couldn’t afford to buy three paintings every week, and asked me to dinner. I told him that generally I didn’t date people that bought my paintings, and so he promised to never buy another one again. Thus started the affair, although he never came here. He told me that, as I could never come to his home, he would never come to mine. It was irrelevant to him that his wife didn’t live here: he saw his presence in my studio as a slight to her, and one that would bring her great shame. He wanted to shun familiarity and comfort, and so we met at restaurants and theatres and galleries and, eventually, hotels. He had been married for thirty years and I think this was his first affair. He wasn’t really very good at it.”
Lille stared absently at the window. Michelle closed her eyes, doing her best to imagine the man being described and the illicit affair that Lille had shared with him. She found it difficult to conjure the details and thus the result was vague and unsatisfying.
“If his wife was suspicious I didn’t know and, in honesty, I didn’t really care. She didn’t exist in my world, just as - through the careful consideration of her husband and the geography of our sex - I didn’t exist in hers. Don’t mistake this care as sterility: Katzumi was passionate and present and affectionate in his own way, much more so than I was. Each time he arrived it had been a little easier for him to leave his wife and his son, and each time he left it had been a little harder for him to go back.
“One day, I received an invitation from Katzumi’s wife, who I found out there and then was named Ichika, to a dinner party she was throwing in their family home. The invitation came with a letter explaining that she wished to meet the artist who now had six paintings hanging in her family home, to put a face against their creation. I spoke to Katzumi about it and we decided that I should go. It would have seemed strange if I hadn’t: local artists rarely pass up invitations to go to parties, drink free wine, eat free food, and - if they’re lucky or persistent or both - sell a few paintings. And so I went, and I was awful. I complained about the food, about the wine, even about the water. I insulted my hosts and how they were dressed, and their taste in art. I lamented that my paintings had been positioned in what was, clearly and objectively, the very worst places for them. The light hit them in the wrong way, or the air felt damp and would corrode the paint, or they were surrounded by contradictory pieces from other artists that muddied their meaning. I told Ichika that I didn’t like her dress and that she shouldn’t wear it again. Eventually, I left just after the main course had arrived, most of mine uneaten and unwanted.”
First she sighed. Then, she shook her head. Finally, she let out a low chuckle, as if she was done mourning the memory and had moved onto mockery of it.
“A few days later Katzumi phoned me. He had left his wife. He had read my barbs and my spite at the party as envy. And this, he said, had made him realise where his heart truly resided. In reality, I had trashed Ichika’s party, her home, and her person simply because I was in a position where I could. It was clear that Ichika had no idea who I was or that I existed before my paintings started arriving in her home. And they would always be there, regardless of how shamefully I acted. I had been to the parties of rich potential patrons before and gone through the expected courtship. Here, when confronted by this woman who had given me her husband and her money and now her smiles, I decided I didn’t want to sell her any more of my paintings. She didn’t deserve them, but she deserved her husband.
“I told Katzumi that I didn’t love him and that he should go back to his wife. He said that this was no longer an option. I didn’t see him again after that.”
Michelle thought about the story for a while. It reminded her of Kennedy, and of her championship. The studio itself, and Lille as she neared thirty and traded more and more of her naivety for experience and cynicism, made her think of Cyrus. She didn’t particularly want to think about any of them.
“Why did you tell me that story?” Michelle asked.
“Because you asked me to,” Lille answered. Dreamer stood from the bed and pulled on her shoes. She made her way towards the door. “Are you leaving?”
“’Return home and do what you are capable of’ is what I told you at the start of the year. Do you think that this is what you have done?”
This is how the cassette tape had started. She had been handed it by some lackey following the Singapore show, and she’d eyed it uneasily for the entire duration of her ferry back to Hiroshima. Now, Michelle had bought a portable cassette player and sat in the shadow of the harbour when she pressed play, watching a particularly large ship rolling across the bay and towards the horizon. It was dark already. Moonlight glimmered and danced on the face of the water. Michelle chain-smoked and listened to the voice of Ryan Rondo.
“You came to Tsushima, and to me, for answers. There are still some there, and now the snows have melted they may be easier for you to find. Your old friend awaits you in Azamo Bay...”
Securing passage had been surprisingly easy. A group of fishermen were about to make the voyage to the island for the winter season, and ferried her across for a small fee. The journey was uncomfortable but relatively short and more enjoyable than the last two times she’d travelled from Tsushima to the mainland (or vice versa). The first time had been under the watchful gaze of the kaiju and his unfriendly old woman with the bokken, which hardly made for an agreeable passage. The second, after the climactic showdown with the Last Star in the Sky, had been plagued by a racing mind and a shivering body. This time, she spent most of the journey under heavy blankets, staring at the sun, and drinking the cheap Japanese whiskey that the fishermen were happy to share. The journey would’ve been perfect, had it not been for the stench of fish that was everywhere on the boat (including, most repulsively, under the nails of the fishermen) and the fact that she ran out of cigarettes a few hours out from Azamo Bay.
Michelle held her empty and crumpled packet of Camel Blue in her hand as she marched towards the small store that she’d last visited as 2020 faded. She remembered the meeting well because of the disappointing result of it: the store didn’t sell cigarettes and the next twenty four hours were spent lamenting that fact. Still, Michelle felt confident that she’d at least find something there. Rondo’s cassette had referred to an old friend. She didn’t think he meant himself: they hadn’t known each other long enough or been familiar enough to justify this. Instead, she was confident he was referring (in a slightly ironic fashion) to the old man in his store, the only other living soul she’d had any interaction with during her time on Tsushima.
When she’d walked into the shop, the old man smiled with recognition. His hands shook as he turned away from her and reached to a low shelf behind his counter. It took him an excruciatingly long time to finally steady himself and rise again, and when he did he presented her with a fresh pack of Camels. They were Gold rather than Blue, but it was something...
“How much?” Michelle asked, smiling back at him.
“Your gaijin paid me already,” the old man said, shaking his head at her and waving her money away. “And too much, too. He also gave me these.”
Again, the old man turned away from her and to the shelf. He picked up a small bundle of objects and placed it on the counter between them. She looked through each of the items: a heavy, thick, faux-fur coat… a pair of white winter boots… the golden amulet that she’d been provided with, but lost, on her first visit here… and a second cassette tape. Michelle picked up the boots and held them in front of her.
“I thought the snows had melted?” she asked. “That’s what his first tape said.”
The old man shrugged.
“Down here, maybe. But not up on the mountain. Snow still thick. Lake still frozen. And that’s where you will go.”
The walk north was easier this second time. She had made her way to the hot springs at a far quicker pace now that she knew the way. She remembered which shortcuts were good and which ones were bad, and avoided the flooded cavern which had almost finished her off the last time she was here. The conditions were more agreeable, too. It was November, but the winter was yet to really get going, and other than a thin layer of frost that sat on some of the more exposed fields she encountered no deep snow or difficult terrain until she was in the far north. She wore the amulet through nothing more than nostalgia and kept the cassette hidden in her rucksack, next to the first one that had brought her here, her new tape player, and her headphones. As she walked through the forest of evergreens that surrounded the hill like a wooden moat, she remembered the snow leopard that had sniffed her before wandering off. She wondered if it was still here.
As she travelled she mostly considered the duplicity with which Rondo had approached their first meeting. Toner too, really. The handsome man, her handsome man, had sent her to the island with a warning about the kaiju: “he can teach you to climb mountains, but not the mountain you want to climb.” And so she’d come to Tsushima, not sure what she was hoping to find other than ambiguous answers to vague questions, and she’d found Ryan Rondo. A worthy adversary and a more thoughtful man than she’d expected, but a strange encounter nonetheless. Through the discussion with Rondo as they’d fought, she ascertained that Danny had sent Michelle here more for his own ends than to help her. He wanted to coax Rondo back to America and to the FWA, allegedly. That Rondo was Donny Toner had blindsided her as much as anyone else under the big tent, and she’d kicked herself for not seeing it sooner. She was as blind as the rest of them, and embroiled in her own doomed mystery, also. Mike Parr had unmasked himself as her assailant before she’d set sail for Tsushima at the end of 2020, and she was blinded by thoughts of him, and of Bell, and of Snowmantashi. If she’d known that Rondo waited for her at the end of her journey, maybe she’d have given him more thought. But probably not. For her, Tsushima was about Michelle von Horrowitz. For the Last Star, it was about Ryan Rondo. For the handsome man, it was about Danny Toner. She saw the truth about the island and what it was only now.
She reached the foot of the hills and spied the hot springs within which she had rested before the final confrontation with Rondo on January 2nd, and - in sight of the water - a curious coincidence about her dealings with him struck her. Although she had met him, properly and for the first time, here on the island at the start of the year, she had seen him (in person and unmasked) on two occasions before that. The first was the FWA-CWA Supershow in 2017, when she and Phillip A. Jackson had teamed to face Bell Connelly and Jon Snowmantashi (the idea of getting these two in the same ring again made her salivate, and she found she became unfocused and dizzy as if intoxicated if she thought about it for too long). The second was at that year’s Back in Business, when she’d agreed to help her old friend Anzu against Taylor Toxic and Raquel Wednesday. These two events didn’t really have much in common other than their shared existence within Michelle’s memory, and for the fact that on both of them she’d watched from Gorilla position as Ryan Rondo had gone one-on-one with ‘The Exile’ Cyrus Truth.
Michelle removed her clothes and lowered herself into the hot springs, just as she had done at the start of the year. As she did, she closed her eyes and did her best to remember details about the time limit draw at the Supershow, or Rondo’s victory at Back in Business, or Truth’s eventual win in the rematch that she’d watched months later on television. She remembered everything about her own matches... down to the smell of the mat and the sound of the crowd... how tight the ring ropes were and how much give there was in the apron… but try as she might she struggled to remember details of anyone else’s match-ups beyond a vague feeling. With Truth and Rondo, it had been electric each time, and particularly so at the Supershow. She remembered standing at Gorilla, waiting to go out next… to go out and have to follow this… she remembered the sense of gravitas shared by the tens of thousands people watching in the arena, a feeling she felt extended to the millions tuning in at home. She remembered what they were then, and what she was. But now was different. She was no longer watching from behind the curtain. She remembered the haiku that she had written here, in the hot springs. It had been about herself, of course, but it was easily applicable to Rondo and Truth, too. Any exile, really:
Footprints in the snow, East, west, forever hunting,
Search becomes escape.
She rested her cassette player on the stones that surrounded the springs and carefully placed her headphones over her ears. She lowered her shoulders beneath the surface of the water and stared up towards the hill. She pressed play.
“So, you decided to come. I had a feeling that you would. You will have worked out by now, no doubt, that I am not there. I have business of my own to attend to. I’ll be half-way to Mexico City by now. But that doesn’t matter. When you came to Tsushima the first time, it wasn’t for me. The same is true now, or at least I hope it is. Danny would be crushed if he knew you were chasing me.”
The voice paused. Michelle watched the steam rising from the water.
“I told you that I came to Tsushima for a simple reason: curiosity. I don’t think you understood then, but maybe now - with all that has changed and all that you have found out in the meantime - you do. It seemed important to you, as we fought by the lake, to know my motivations. This has never been important. You asked me this only because you didn’t want to ask me about you. Not that you could’ve expected any great insight. But you travelled across the world for answers about yourself and ended up asking me my desires.”
There was a sigh that stopped just short of a laugh.
“I’ve been watching this business with Cyrus, and it seems to me that you - at least now - have developed an understanding of what you need to do. At least in the short term. Now. This is not something I saw in you in January, or when I was under the mask. I’ve heard about your search for Truth, too, and Maskell and Black don’t seem bad places to start. But I haven’t recorded this to speak to you about Cyrus.”
At the top of the white hill, a light snow was beginning to fall.
“If you want your answers, go back to the lake.”
And so she did. The walk up the hill was difficult, but she was better-rested, better-clothed, and better-fed than the last time she’d attempted it. She came within view of the lake at dusk, and was surprised to find a peculiar object sprouting from its frozen surface. As she approached she realised it was a bokken, and closer still came the realisation that it was her bokken. For a moment, she wondered if it had been here all year, but soon remembered the circumstances of the contests’ finish. She and the bokken had both taken a plunge into the icy cold lake before Rondo fished her, unconscious and freezing, out of the water. She would’ve been grateful but for the fact that he had caused her to fall in in the first place. The bokken had remained submerged and lost as she’d regained her strength, Rondo having already taken his leave of her whilst she slept uneasily. He must have fished it out later on, or had someone do it for him, and recently placed it in position sticking out of the ice as it had for most of their fight in January.
She walked across the lake and brushed her hand against the hilt of the wooden stick. She grasped it with her fingers, but didn’t pull it from the ice. It seemed oddly in its place as it was.
On the other side of the lake was a large wooden box, and Michelle opened it to find heavy blankets (the same ones, in fact, that Rondo had left her after retrieving her from the frozen lake) and a third cassette player. She sat on the chest and placed the blankets over her legs whilst fishing her cassette player and her cigarettes from her rucksack. It was difficult to light one in her gloves and she didn’t want to take them off but eventually she managed it because persistence is an excellent trait to have. She placed the cassette into the player and her headset into position. The moon was beginning to rise at the foot of the hill.
“I imagine the lake seems a lot calmer tonight. It used to be a place of great solitude for me. A place I’d come to think. It is still that now, but I find my mind is more chaotic upon its shore. Some things are difficult to compartmentalise.”
From her rucksack she reached for a bottle of Jameson, a few pulls remaining in the bottom of it. She took a careful, rationed sip and watched the moon continue its climb.
“I must admit that an apology is due. I told you that you could tell people you won, if you wanted, and then proceeded to tell Danny everything. He wouldn’t let it go. But I’m sure that’s no bother to you, given what you’ve been up to this year. But November is not August, and you are back amongst the chasers. Cyrus is a worthy scalp to aim for, and you’re doing quite well with that, it seems. But remember why you lost here…”
Her eyes moved from the moon to the bokken in the ice.
“You thought you had me beat, but you overlooked the bokken, and the lengths that people like me… people like Cyrus… will go to to win. Even on a frozen lake on the top of a mountain on an island in the middle of the sea, with nobody watching but the two dogs in the fight. Hubris and overconfidence. A belief that the job was already done, because you had willed it so.”
She stood up and let the blankets fall onto the snow. She had the cassette player in her hand and walked back across the ice.
“I watched your match in Tokyo. Danny and I stood together and I saw him fall apart when you lost. He was the same as you: he knew that you were going to win. Right up until the moment that you didn’t. I saw it here on the ice, too. And now I worry for Sydney and for Denver. I fear this to be a natural and inalienable state of mind for Michelle von Horrowitz, as opposed to a hurdle to overcome.”
Once more, her hand gripped the end of the bokken. Her fingers clasped the hilt.
“But you are still young, Dreamer. It’s not as late as you think.”
Michelle pulled the bokken from the ice and, holding it at her side, began to walk back down the hill.
Promo history - volume 69. "Stroopwafel Blues" (November 26th, 2021). Michelle von Horrowitz vs. Chris Crowe (FWA: Meltdown 9).
MICHELLE von HORROWITZ in [VOLUME SIXTY NINE] ”STROOPWAFEL BLUES.”
*****
”We can go anywhere, but we’ll always be where we are.”
- “Souls” || Car Seat Headrest.
*****
To the writer that adorns his character with a fear of flying, it is - initially - a mere quirk, designed to round out the character and to imply a need to anchor oneself down. In this case, the dynamic between the writer’s character and the world in which she exists is a tenuous and delicate one, and a physical abstraction from the Earth - in the form of air travel - seems (to her and, by extension, to him) dangerous, and is to be avoided. Of course, having read this character's travails over the past eighteen months (or five years, depending on when you came into this story), you will know that mentally she has been apart from this world, or at least slipping away from it, for quite a while. This need for physical and literal grounding is the character's last ditch attempt to keep hold of a world that is doing its best to buck her from its back.
For the character thus imbued with these neuroses, only very occasionally will they flare up into anything dramatic or memorable or noteworthy, when the boarding of a plane becomes unavoidable within the narrative. Most of the time, it leads to tedium. Drama must instead be found in the mundane… in the everyday. Usually, to symbolise the incremental but almost negligible progress made in every other sphere of her existence, she crawls across the face of the planet via bus or train or ship whilst The Unburdened jet by overhead. But, in November of 2021 and for the first time in quite a number of years, Michelle von Horrowitz joined the airborne out of great necessity and with great reluctance. The flight from Sydney to Los Angeles took thirteen hours, each second of which was a dull, nagging torture, the familiar and unsettling feelings of sheer, relentless dread clawing and biting at her heart as she cruised eleven kilometres above the Pacific Ocean.
Great necessity. This is how she framed it to herself, when she had braced and then embarked. Usually, the two weeks between shows crawled along at a snail’s pace, especially if she’d lost on the previous one (and she couldn’t regard her exploits on Meltdown 8 as anything other than a failure… a lost opportunity…). But fourteen days wasn’t enough to traverse the ocean by boat, as she would prefer, and so she found herself gripping the arms of an airplane chair for thirteen excruciating hours. And what was this great necessity? A match with Chris Crowe. A main event, yes: this always meant something. But what did Chris Crowe mean to her, other than a name on a card? When she thought about it for longer than a moment, the need to torture herself for thirteen miserable hours seemed to diminish and disappear.
Before the flight she convinced herself that it was a possibility that she’d catch a second, onwards from L.A. and to Meltdown 9 in Bolivia. She soon came to realise that this was the masochist within her speaking: the realist knew how unlikely it was she’d see that plan through. So, she booked the first leg of the journey with enough wiggle room afterwards to go on by land, if she so wished. As she emerged from the airplane, ghostly white and shaking, having aged thirteen years in thirteen insufferable hours, she swiftly concluded that a second flight was not her wish. Instead, she cowered in a corner of the arrivals hall for what felt like a long time, regathered her strength, and then made for the Greyhound station.
And so, Michelle von Horrowitz continued her journey in the same manner that she invariably did: slowly, cautiously, and with both feet planted firmly on the ground.
Eventually, she would make her way to Tijuana, where a ship waited to take her on to South America. She had the time, though, to indulge herself in a task that she’d half-fancied since her next opponent was announced. Her search for meaning with Truth - a hunt that had taken her from Dan Maskell to Eli Black and finally Ryan Rondo - had been fruitful, in its own way, though it had mostly borne strategy as opposed to understanding. Bolivia would bring her a week of respite from the Exile, which was appreciated (by both body and soul) and lamented all at once. She didn’t want her momentum to stagnate even further after the unsatisfying tie they’d shared in Sydney, and had spent a couple of months learning the Wayward Warrior and his methods. Now, he would be replaced across the ring from her by the Showman, and she was back at square one against another alien and purportedly dangerous foe.
As she travelled westwards towards the Rockies, her mind was constantly drawn back to the man who had sat next to her on the flight. At one point, he ordered a coffee and took a stroopwafel out of his satchel. He carefully removed the lid from his cup and rested the circular waffle on the top of it. Michelle watched as the integrity of the stroopwafel failed over time as the coffee’s steam bombarded it from beneath.
She arrived at the trailer park a little before sunset. It was positioned maybe a dozen kilometers from some nondescript town that would (by design) remain nameless to her. It was in the shadow of the Rockies and a cold wind blew through it, the Winter beginning to gather strength and thoroughly ambivalent towards anyone stupid enough to build their home in its path. The sign to the left of the main entrance was colorful, but old and faded, and the second ‘A’ in 'BADLANDS' had disappeared completely. It was difficult to say whether time or vandals had come for it. Michelle stood beneath the sign and smoked a cigarette. She pulled her jacket more tightly around her to shield herself from the wind and the oncoming night.
She had rented a double-wide for one night and one night only. Initially, she was surprised to find an in for the park so easily, but soon enough she reasoned that you could find just about anything on the internet with enough perseverance. In fact, she’d had a choice of three different trailers in the park, and had chosen the one she had because of its central location and the lime green paint finish, which was disgusting enough to be charming. She was met at the entrance by Clint, who introduced himself with a misplaced sense of gravitas as the Trailer Park Supervisor. Clint led her towards her temporary abode with an expression that stopped just short of a smile.
“Not often we get many out of towners,” he said, without looking at her, as he stomped on up the path. “To be honest, when Kyle suggested we rent out a few of the unused trailers online to tourists and holidayers and the like, I thought he was crazy. But here you are. Maybe I’m just out of touch.”
Just by staring at the old man - with his white, untidy beard, his pockmarked skin, his ill-fitting and old-fashioned clothing, and his low, stooped posture - it was quite clear that he was very much out of touch. But not for that reason.
“What do you plan on doing here, anyway?” he asked.
“A bit of sitting around,” she answered, absently. “A bit of talking. A bit of drinking.”
“Doesn’t sound overly exciting,” came Clint’s reply. “Nothing more interesting you could be doing?”
“I’ve been asked that before,” Michelle conceded. The sun was setting over the back of a hill to their west. Michelle watched the orange disc disappear as they went on through the park, uniform lines of similar-but-different trailers arranged all around them. “But that’s sort of what I do.”
Clint didn’t say too much more. He pointed at a couple of trailers that she should steer clear of if she didn't want trouble, and others where she would find certain essentials that she might not have with her in her rucksack (food, cigarettes, drugs, and the like). She nodded whilst half-listening as she was led up to her lime green double-wide.
A few hours later, Michelle reclined in a deck chair in front of the trailer, her heavy Winter coat - the one that Jean-Luc had bought for her during their first snow season in Moscow - drowning her but not quite doing enough to stave off the cold. The whiskey was doing a far better job at insulation. She was drinking it out of the bottle and, after each pull, she rested it beneath her thigh and the side of the chair for ease of access. They were outside of the city enough for the stars to be clear and beautiful, and there was nothing that Michelle liked looking at more than stars. She had always resisted the advice that one shouldn't stare directly at the sun, and observing the stars felt like a reasonably acceptable loophole.
It seemed that sitting in front of your trailer with a bottle of some variety was a common pastime for those in Badlands Trailer Park, and she was somewhat surprised to find those in her direct vicinity were forthcoming with their company and their conversation. Usually, of course, this would be considered an immediate and severe mark against the place, but staring at the (admittedly breathtaking) scenery wasn’t going to tell her any more about Chris Crowe than she already knew. Her neighbours on the right were Costello and his wife Presley. They were named after different Elvis’s and revelled in this extensively when introducing themselves.
“I’ve seen Elvis six times,” he was saying, a cigarette perched between his lips and a can of beer in his hand. “Costello, of course. Presley was dead long before I was born. But Costello? Yeah -- six times. Once in Seattle, twice in Los Angeles... Denver, Austin, and a couple of years ago in Buffalo. My folks live out east, so I managed to see him whilst visiting them.”
“What’s your favourite Costello song?” Michelle asked.
“I’ve never really cared for his music,” Costello said whilst scratching his ankle. “But, come on, my name’s Costello!”
Michelle nodded in half-hearted and insincere agreement. To the left, her other neighbour, Hollis, let out a low, rumbling laugh. He didn’t really say much, but was prone to mirth at the drop of a hat. Michelle found herself wondering if Costello and Presley had married because of the coincidence of their naming, too.
“Will you ever get tired of telling that story?” Gabe asked. Gabe lived on the other side of the road and had pulled his deck chair up next to Costello and Presley about an hour ago. The married couple had a firepit going that was attracting some peripheral gatherers. Gabe was joined by his Slovak girlfriend whose name was Svetlana. She was older than Gabe but far more beautiful than him also, and her mystery was only amplified by the fact that she made less noise than even Hollis. She only smoked and drank and stared off into the distance at nothing in particular.
“She wanted to hear it,” Costello answered, defensively, whilst gesturing towards Dreamer. The Dutch woman shrugged.
“What about you?” the final guest at the fire asked. She was a young woman, a few years Michelle’s junior, who had an accent and demeanour that suggested she was from around here. Even in her internal monologue, She was nursing a light beer whilst leaning back in a red deck chair, and her question - as well as her gaze since she had joined the circle around the fire - was directed at the interloper into their community.
“What about me what?” Michelle asked. She immediately lamented her lack of eloquence.
“You don’t sound American, even...” the girl said. “Difficult to guess what sort of business you have in this trailer park.”
There was a pause in the conversation: sudden and ominous as opposed to a lull, and during it Michelle allowed her eyes to flit from one face to the next. Almost all of them were moulded into an expression of expectation. Costello and Presley were both leaning in towards her, as if prepared to hear a secret, whilst Gabe and the local girl were reclining but with eyes trained intently on Michelle. Even Hollis, who had mostly stared up at the night’s sky as his neighbours conversed with this newcomer, was now turned to face Dreamer. Only Svetlana remained aloof.
“What do you know about Chris Crowe?” Michelle asked. She figured there was no need to beat around the bush.
Although most in the circle continued in their confusion, Michelle sensed at least some understanding on the faces of Svetlana and, more profoundly, the local girl.
“What’s Crowe to you?” the local girl asked. Michelle took a sip from her whiskey, and winced when she found it empty. The Slovak woman smirked at her misery. She offered her own bottle: it was unmarked and contained a colourless alcohol. Michelle fancied that she could smell it from the opposite side of the circle. Still, she nodded, and Svetlana busied herself in preparing a second glass. ”He must be something, to bring you here.”
“An opponent,” Michelle said, matter-of-factly.
“You working for Carnivale?” Gabe asked.
“Who is Carnivale?” Michelle replied.
“Are you conducting a census?” the local girl asked, derisively. “Why do you want to know about so many of our neighbours?”
“I don’t,” Michelle offered, meekly. “At least not all of them. Just Chris Crowe, and his sidekick, really. I’m a professional wrestler, and next week I’m due to face your neighbour. But I don’t know the man from Adam. I’ve never heard of Carnivale.”
The local girl leant back, not quite content but no longer on the offensive, either. Michelle lit a cigarette and sipped at her strange, colourless drink. It stank of alcohol and dill.
“But if you don’t want to talk to me, I’m content with the drinks.”
It was Hollis that replied first, and Michelle realised they were the first words she’d heard emerge from his mouth.
“Crowe is okay,” he started. Dreamer noticed that Gabe was nodding, as if in agreement. “It’s that bastard Harry you need to watch out for. Crazy motherfucker stole my car.”
“Stole your car?” Michelle asked. In her mind, she had pictured Crowe and Harry as the white knights of the trailer park: as local celebrities deserving of plaudits and worship. In retrospect, she figured that Crazy Harry must have got his nickname from somewhere, and the other inhabitants of this community were probably its most likely source.
“Crazy motherfucker stole my car,” Hollis repeated. When it became clear that the old man had no intention of continuing or elaborating (only consolidating), Gabe picked up the conversational slack.
“Hollis does work for Carnivale. Harry boosted it from the parking lot of one of his shows. Those two, Harry and Chris, have a problem with Lucian. Always have. It’s better to stay out of it, really. You wouldn’t believe the shit that they get up to in this trailer park,” Gabe shook his head and sipped his drink. “Not that we see them much now, really.”
“You don’t watch the show?” Michelle asked. She knew the answer. They hadn’t recognised her and seemingly had very little interest in Crowe’s travails either. Hollis let out his low, rumbling laugh in response.
“No, not really,” Gabe said, absently. “But, yes: you always got the impression that Chris was destined for more… more than this...”
He gesticulated with his hands in a vague manner, symbolising that he was referring to the trailer park itself.
“... and this wrestling thing is what he wants. Part of me is pleased for the guy. It’s not often someone like that gets out of a place like this. He grew up just on the other side of town, you know.”
Michelle thought about Crowe’s escape, and framed it in the context of her own life. Escape had been a constant theme. Existence had become a series of abandonments: of people, of places, of ideas. She had given up on her family before they had reached their end, and the death that surrounded her was only a full stop on her own dismissal of them. She had turned her back on Rotterdam… on Marseille… on Paris and on New Orleans… on Hiroshima, on Marienbad, on Moscow. In 2017, during her first American adventure, she had preached an overthrow of the system; a dismantling of the apparatus of the state. Now, this idea was behind her, too. Now, she only wished to use the apparatus that already existed, albeit remoulded in her image. She wondered if she would go on like this: a deserter by nature, predisposed to turning and running, unwilling to allow anyone or anything a permanent place within her life.
“He still lives here though, right?” Michelle asked.
“Of course,” Gabe asked. He waved towards the north. “His trailer’s over there somewhere. You know, I think he’ll be back, soon enough. Most people come back pretty quickly.”
The comment extended from the trailer park to the wider world. She thought about Jean-Luc, who took himself to Berlin and then to Moscow (as did she) to escape an old life that he was unable to give up on entirely. He still worked at his father’s companies, drank with old friends, and kept old habits, and eventually he was bound for American shores and a rehashing of his old life again. Even Rondo, who had hid himself on the other side of the world, on top of a mountain on an island in the middle of the ocean, was drawn back to what he was.
She thought about herself alone amongst them: the only true deserter. It made her feel special. She was content to go on like this until life’s final betrayal, and the absence of it thereafter. Most people stay where they are forever. Of those that do get out, most will go back homebefore the end.
After finishing the thought, Michelle looked up at the local girl. She found her vision to be blurred to the point where she couldn’t quite determine where the woman ended and the air around her began. She strained her eyes onto the glass in her hand, and only with unerring focus could she discern the colourless liquid inside.
“What’s in this?” she asked, looking at the Slovak girl. Svetlana shrugged her shoulders.
“Vodka, and knives,” she said. Her accent was thick and out of place.
“Knives?” Michelle asked.
“Yeah, you know… knives.”
Michelle finished her drink. A half hour later, she passed out in her deck chair beneath the stars.
...
…
…
The train pulled into the station.
Almost all of the details were exactly the same as she remembered them from when she was actually here. It differed from ’reality’ on only two points:
the fact that the train and the station were both devoid of people, something that she couldn’t remember ever experiencing in waking life.
the large, black wings that sprouted from her shoulder-blades.
She stepped out of the train and onto the platform. The doors closed behind her, and she read the word МЕТРО, painted in red on the side of the white vestibule, as it disappeared into the tunnel. The subterranean station itself was silent without the unwelcome interruption of the train. Overhead, a crow circled, keeping a tight radius around a mural depicting scenes from a car factory and flying close to the ceiling. Michelle felt a sudden empathy for the creature, beholden to her new winged nature. She looked from the bird to the walls on the other side of the track, where scenes from the old Republics - farmhands working, soldiers marching, maidens reclining - had been painted onto the white walls. In the opposite direction she was separated from a large hall by a number of wide arches, within which a series of bronze statues were erected. As she passed through, her fingers brushed over the nose of a dog that sat at the feet of a crouched soldier. The locals touched it for luck, and as a result of constant contact it shone gold, in stark contrast to the dull brown metal of the rest of the statue.
She stood in the hall and looked up a wide, marble staircase. She struggled to pinpoint a precise location, although this task was always problematic when carried out in the halls of her subconscious. The mural on the ceiling was from Avtozavodskaya, the paintings from Kievskaya, and the statues Ploshad Revolyutsii. Now, in the vast white hall of the stone, she didn’t feel as if she was in Moscow at all. She felt as if she stood within a disassembled and disused Grand Central Station in New York City, and was suddenly startled to find that she was no longer alone. At the top of the marble staircase stood a tall man in a Tom Ford suit. He had his back turned to her. She began to walk towards him.
Before she was halfway towards the foot of the staircase, a baby’s carriage rolled past the man in the suit. He made no efforts to stop its momentum, and it slowly moved over the first step and began a clumsy, disjointed descent of the marble. Michelle was frozen in position at the foot of the stairs as it slowly made its way down them, each incremental drop seemingly quicker than the last, the sound of the wheels hitting the stone echoing around the empty hall. The baby within began to cry a familiar wail.
The pram reached the bottom of the stairs and rolled towards Dreamer. It stopped in front of her, and it was empty.
“But I heard it crying,” she said, directing her meek and hollow voice towards the man in the Tom Ford suit. He didn’t reply. Instead, he walked towards the exit.
Michelle followed, pushing open the heavy doors and emerging onto a beach. The man in the suit was nowhere to be found. The sand was soft beneath her feet, which we now noticed were bare. Her black wings lay limp and impotent from her shoulders. She suddenly realised that she had no idea how to use them.
Above her, the sun - a large, golden stroopwafel - reigned omnipotently in the sky.
The beach led to a chaotic sea that played host to a vicious storm. To her right, the land reached in a long, accusing finger to a tall, singular mountain, the top of which was capped with snow. On the surface of the water was a small row-boat. Michelle strained her eyes, but found that she couldn’t make out more than the figure of a man lying in the boat. The waves were pushing it towards the jagged rocks of the mountain, which stretched out towards him like a greedy hand. She was suddenly and absolutely filled with the creeping dread that accompanied her in her waking hours… that was usually and thankfully absent from her Dreams… she steeled herself and, taking off her clothes, walked into the sea.
She swam against the tide for a short time but she was suddenly weak, and when her wings became wet they were heavy and cumbersome and succeeded only in dragging her beneath the waves. Under the surface, she followed a long, silver chain to a plug. She held the chain as if it were a length of rope, planted her feet on the seabed, and pulled it out. The water swirled and she found herself caught in the natural centrifuge, the sea filled her lungs. She flashed to a watery grave. An unmarked tombstone. The ocean comes. A handsome man with flowers stood next to it, a set of dog tags around his neck and his head bowed low. Water washed over his wrestling boots.
She coughed up the sea. There was much less of it now. She stood to find herself in a large basin. There was no sign of water other than the small amount that she herself produced from her lungs, but she still held the chain in her hands. She set the plug on the floor but couldn’t find the hole through which the water had disappeared. She wondered if the sun had dried up the sea, and stared up at it. It loomed larger than ever. The stroopwafel’s integrity was holding up well, considering that it was blazing at a temperature of about ten thousand degrees.
In front of her, a path led through a tall, grey Inari shrine before forking off either side of a bubbling hot spring. The left-hand path led towards a house: her house. As much as it was possible to associate any sense of self with the young girl that had once lived in this building somewhere in the suburbs of Rotterdam. To the right, the road led to a watchtower. She could see Gerald standing patrol on top of it, a pair of binoculars in his hands.
As she moved between the legs of the shrine, she heard herself reciting:
“Footprints in the snow,
East, west, forever hunting,
Search becomes escape.”
She checked with pale fingers that her mouth wasn’t moving, but she heard the words in her own voice all the same. She took the left-hand path and arrived at the house. From the outside, it was exactly as she remembered it, but within was something else entirely. She found herself in the Marseille classroom within which she spent several of her formative years. In the students’ seats were arranged family members, close and distant alike. In the front row were her mother and her father, along with Isobel, her sister. Then her cousin Melville. There was an empty chair on the edge of the front row, and she noticed that Aunt Maude had chosen to leave it unoccupied. Behind them were the rest of her family. Michelle barely knew most of them. They had cut ties with her mother when she’d chosen to marry a Jew with no family and no hopes. To be fair, they had been vindicated eventually, albeit at the expense of any relationship with Michelle’s lowly branch of the family. But here they all were: and Dreamer realised that they were waiting for her.
On the blackboard were scrawled three words: Michelle von Horrowitz. It had been underlined twice and a period suggested finality at the end of her surname. She realised that her relatives had all turned towards her. Most of their faces were pale and lifeless. As she moved to the front of the classroom, she wondered if any of the people she didn’t really know were still alive.
She stood awkwardly at the front of the room. After a deep breath, she began.
“My name is Michelle von Horrowitz,” she said.
“That’s not your name,” Isobel interrupted. “That’s the name of the course.”
Michelle looked from her sister’s face to the blackboard, and then back to her expectant students.
“Right,” she offered. She had no more. She found that she was glancing across each face in her familial audience, some of the faces better defined than others. They waited for her to begin, but - as the silence stretched and stretched and stretched - all she could do was look at them for some sort of help. None was forthcoming.
“Do you need a break?” her mother asked. Michelle nodded. Her mother pointed towards a staircase at the back of the room, which Dreamer promptly ascended. At the top of a short flight of stairs she found a bag. But the bag was moving, as if small paws were uselessly fighting for escape from the inside. She crouched over it and undid the rope that was tied around the neck, and when she worked it loose a black cat appeared from within. It ran past a series of bystanders before hopping up onto the windowsill. It stared up at the stroopwafel sun.
Dreamer looked up at the people that lined the upstairs corridor, and realised that the nearest woman to her was a replica of herself, only unwinged and solemn. Michelle pushed past her, finding the next in the line a slightly younger version of her, and then another, and another. At the head of the line stood a young girl, pale and blonde and clutching a stuffed tortoise, looking through an open bedroom door at the lifeless body of her dead Aunt. Maude lay in the bed, patient and breathless, as she had half a thousand times in Michelle’s tortured Dreams.
She walked towards the bed, but heard a voice drift in through the window.
“Dreamer!” She looked up through the glass at its source. Gerald was waving to her from his watchtower. He had a wide grin on his face. “Don’t stay there! Come up here! You’ll be happier!”
He motioned her onwards, and Michelle leant through the open window.
“I thought you were going through a dark phase now? Shouldn’t you be moodier” Michelle asked.
“Don’t conflate out there with in here,” he answered. “Come on, fly over!”
Michelle looked nervously from her left wing to her right one.
“I… don’t know how they work.”
Gerald sighed, and then crouched down out of sight. He emerged with a long length of rope, which he threw across to Michelle. She caught it and swung up to Gerald, her partner and friend helping her up with his strong, capable hands. She stood atop the watchtower with GiGi and smiled. She felt comforted around him. She asked for his binoculars, which he gave over freely, and then she pushed him from the tower. He let out a yelp, akin to a dog being put out of its misery, on the way down, before landing with a dull thud. Michelle watched the dust rise from the ground around the point of impact, before turning away and taking in a three-sixty of her surroundings.
Michelle found herself unsure what the watchtower was guarding, for in most directions was an endless green vista that rolled and stretched on to the horizon. Her short, insignificant, and unimpressive family home was the only feature in view. She lifted the binoculars and looked through one of the windows on the second floor. It had been her parent’s bedroom.
Inside, Bell Connelly wore one of her mother’s furs, and only one of her mother’s furs. She straddled Chris Kennedy, the world championship on his chest. She had both of her hands pressed against its plate. They both looked back at Michelle with eager eyes. She lowered the binoculars.
At the foot of the watchtower, the man in the Tom Ford suit waited. The stroopwafel sun hissed angrily. Its edges were beginning to blur as its own heat eroded its integrity.
She climbed down the ladder but, upon reaching the ground, she found that the man in the Tom Ford suit had already left. Another figure replaced him. This one - dark, strange, and otherly - was positioned in the shadow of the Inari shrine. His face was veiled.
Michelle stood motionless. She felt transfixed by him -- held in position by his aura. He breathed heavily. He breathed.
“You are not an honest person.”
The figure spoke Ryan Rondo’s words, but in the voice of Cyrus Truth.
The three remaining fingers on her right hand clutched at the dog tags around her neck. She read the word UNGER that was engraved onto it.
The stroopwafel sun dripped a large dollop of caramel between them. Her eyes remained on the shadow standing within the Inari shrine.
Slowly, her wings unfolded. They were huge and black and huge. The shadow didn't flinch.
With one flap of her wings, she was taken high up into the sky, and creation quickly stretched out before her. She flew towards the blue of the ocean, as if called by the waves. A plane flew beside her. In place of its tail wing were eight purple tentacles, and all of its passengers held bouquets of roses and chrysanthemums and tulips. The plane’s tentacles groped at the wind as the plane struggled to keep pace with Dreamer. Its engines strained, and then spluttered, and then gave up.
She watched on as the plane plummeted towards the ground, and then landed in a mess of fire and tentacle.
Michelle turned away from the smoke, and flew towards the stroopwafel sun.
…
…
…
Michelle awakened with a jump. Her head throbbed, and for some release she reached down for the whiskey bottle that was leant up against the leg of her deck chair. She was disappointed to find it still empty. Across the road, the local girl hung her clothes on a washing line that ran between a corner of her trailer and a utility pole.
“You okay?” she asked, staring across at Michelle. Dreamer was surprised to find the girl smiling, as if spending a night out in the cold was enough to blunt her edge.
“I’m fine,” Michelle answered, as she began to think about standing to her feet. It seemed quite a large task. “I was just dreaming.”
“What was it about?” the girl said. She had stopped hanging clothes and leant against the utility pole.
“Lots of things.”
“About Crowe?”
“No,” Michelle answered, firmly. “Not one second of it.”
Promo history - volume 70. "Test Dream" (December 14th, 2021). Michelle von Horrowitz def. Cyrus Truth [Best of Five Series: Match V] (FWA Mile High).
MICHELLE von HORROWITZ in [VOLUME SEVENTY] “TEST DREAM.”
She could taste that sort of copperish taste that blood has in the back of her throat, which assumedly wasn’t a particularly good sign, as she stared up at the large painting in an unenthused and distant manner. It was a work she knew well, having studied Almond Blossom at school and enjoyed the piece more than the vast majority of books, poems, symphonies, or - as in this case - paintings that her unenthused and distant teachers introduced her to. It had a hopefulness to it, and when she was thirteen and naive and generally quite clueless she had found some comfort in the flowers - pure and lovely and white - that blossomed from the gnarled wood. What was hard and coarse and angular gave way to something more beautiful, and she took comfort in that. But that was when she was thirteen, naive, and generally quite clueless.
The painting - a reproduction, no doubt - was hung upon the wall of a waiting room (which was cubic with dimensions of four or five metres) and was the only such art piece in what was otherwise a rather barren and uninspiring space. In the centre of the room was a glass coffee table, upon which was arranged a variety of reading materials for the people trapped inside these walls to amuse themselves with. Two such men were sitting on a couch along one side of the coffee table, absorbing information with a dull lack of enthusiasm from said magazines. On the left was Cyrus Truth, who was entertaining himself with an issue of Woodworker’s Weekly, whilst to his right Chris Kenendy nodded as he leafed through the latest edition of The Gardener’s Digest.
“What are you reading about?” Cyrus asked, looking over Chris’ shoulder for a better view of his counterpart’s article.
“I want to plant some cuttings in my garden,” Chris answered, without looking back. “The trick, apparently, is to cut just below the leaf node. There are some darling tulips just outside. Almost a shame to cut them, but they’ll look better in my garden. I’ll do it when I leave.”
“You think you’ll leave soon?” Cyrus asked, placing his magazine down to give Chris his full attention. The Astonishing One didn’t reciprocate, and instead continued to scan his article with his eyes.
“Oh, yes. Without a doubt,” Chris answered. Behind him, Dave Sullivan was pacing this way and that, tapping away at his phone and scratching the side of his head with a sharp sense of impatience.
“How long have you been here?” Cyrus asked Chris. The Exile’s eyes drifted up towards the only door in the room. It was unlabelled and unimpressive, but Michelle got the sense that this was what they were waiting for. Finally, Chris placed his magazine down onto his knee, and stared off into the distance, as if trying to recall a long-forgotten memory.
“You know, I’m not quite sure,” Chris answered, before returning to his magazine.
Finally, Dave placed his phone back into his pocket and walked with purpose up to the door. He slammed his clenched fist into it four times before repeating once with his boot.
“How much longer do you intend to keep me waiting?!” he roared to the faceless prison guard on the other side of the door. “I don’t even want to be here! I’m supposed to be next door! With Joe!”
“That won’t accomplish anything,” said Devin Golden, who was laid on his back in the opposite corner of the room. He had a tennis ball in his hand and was in the process of throwing it up against the wall in front of him before catching it again. He had enough skill at this to suggest that he’d been at it for quite some time. “Just take a seat. You want to play catch?”
Dave sighed in a frustrated fashion before stomping over towards the coffee table. He took a seat on a maroon armchair perpendicular to Chris and Cyrus, before reaching to collect a copy of Franz Kafka’s The Trial from the top of the stack of hobby-orientated periodicals. The Exile and The Astonishing One looked at one another, sharing a wry shake of the head at the youngster’s impetuous streak, before continuing in their reading.
Michelle stared at the white flowers and the gnarled branches.
She awoke peacefully, as if walking onto the beach out of the gentle sea, but soon enough the harsh realities of reality were upon her like an army at the gate. She had her head pressed up against the cold, hard window of a Central American bus (to the knowing, this is all the description that is necessary for such a bus), every crevice and canyon in the road causing the large vehicle to judder and her head to vibrate against the glass. She squinted at the morning light streaming through the window, doing her best to adjust in the face of such indifferent cruelty. She was sitting next to a large Guatemalan man who spoke only Spanish, which wasn’t one of the languages that Michelle had a command of, but didn’t allow this to stop him from rambling at her until she’d finally fallen to sleep. She sat herself up straight and stretched as best she could in her constricted position.
“¿Buen descanso, hermana?” he asked, his toothy grin plastered on his face as she stirred slowly into consciousness. She answered si as she had done for much of the ride: the Guatemalan man took this sincerely when he wanted her to agree, and laughed uproariously when he didn’t. It seemed that Michelle wasn’t the only one re-entering the world of the living: up and down the old and dilapidated bus, people were stretching and stirring, turning to their loved ones if they had any to wish them luck in the day ahead.
The bus slowed down as they came to the border, the long ride up through Mexico finally at its end. They were simply waved through the Mexican side but were prompted to disembark as they reached the American station, forming a line to be checked off by one of the stern-looking, middle-aged men that found employment there. She stood behind the Guatemalan man in the queue and found herself growing more and more frustrated as each crosser took longer to be processed than the last. The man on the seat next to her was the slowest of all, and for a while it seemed he lacked the required paperwork to make the rest of the journey. Michelle felt no sympathy; only impatience. She yearned for the guard to make a decision, to let him through or to turn him away, so she could go about her day. It was a long way back to Guatemala but there was no point in delaying.
In time, they both made it through and onto American soil, with her new Guatemalan friend ecstatic despite the violations he’d just encountered at the station. He virtually danced onto the large blue Greyhound Company bus that waited to take them the rest of the way. Michelle took a seat towards the back of the vehicle and was devastated to watch the Guatemalan saunter and frolic his way onto the adjacent one. He began to speak frantically and hurriedly in Spanish, gesticulating freely and smiling from ear to ear.
“You want me to translate?” a young man asked. He was seated in front of her and was turned around with his legs in the aisle to communicate. He had been on the bus since Panama, but had seemingly been emboldened to break his silence by the feeling of America beneath his feet.
“Not really,” Michelle answered. The Guatemalan continued his frantic monologue.
“He’s going to visit his daughter in Dallas. She moved there last year. She’s getting married to an American chartered accountant named Lionel Stephens,” the young man from Panama clarified.
“I didn’t want you to translate,” Michelle said, but the cat was already out of the bag. The young man shrugged and grinned.
“You’ve got to humour him,” he insisted. She wasn’t so sure she had to do anything of the sort. “He’s never been to America before. He’s excited… ¡Felicitaciones, amigo! ¡A tu hija!”
The young man produced a hip flask and lifted it in a toast, and the older one reached into his bag to collect a beer. Michelle stared at it longingly, letting out a deep, mournful sigh. The Guatemalan gave a hearty laugh, before reaching into his bag to produce a second Estrella.
“¿Ahora eres mi amiga, hermana?” he smiled his toothy grin again as he handed her the bottle. She took it from him and watched as he cracked open the lid with his teeth. She popped her own with her lighter, and the three of them toasted the happiness of the Guatemalan’s daughter and the American chartered accountant Lionel Stephens.
“It’s not your first time?” she asked of the young man as the pair of them watched their older compadre drain half his bottle in one lung gulp. “In America.”
“No,” the young man answered. He seemed easily distracted, and his eyes flitted frequently between Michelle, the Guatemalan man, and the scenery outside of the bus. They had just begun moving again, and were now snaking their way northwards through Texas. “I’m from Panama City, but my older brother moved to Houston ten years ago, when I was nine. I’ve been many times.”
Michelle noticed that he was still grinning. There was something alluring about the boy. He was very young and very unattractive, but that wasn’t the point. He was naive - almost giddy with naivety - and hadn’t yet realised how foolish and unobtainable his hopes were. There was a charm in this, but it was nostalgic, and ultimately he’d learn like the rest of them already had.
“You don’t get bored?” she asked, sipping at her beer. She wanted a cigarette. She couldn’t help but think about Cyrus as she asked the question. “Of coming to the same place, again and again…”
The young man shook his head almost immediately. He continued to stare at the Texan lowlands through the window of the Greyhound.
“It’s got it’s problems, sure, and it isn’t like it used to be. Not that I remember it like that, anyway. The America you read about in old books and watch in old movies… I don’t know if that ever really existed. But there’s still something special about it. Always will be.”
She knew what he meant, but she disagreed. She nodded none-the-less, and then began to stare out of the window. There was no traffic and they hurtled along at a fair pace through the southernmost regions of Texas until they began to hit the roads that fed into Austin. It had been many years since she had first sat on a Greyhound and stared out of the windows and contemplated the vastness of this country, but it was something one always felt acutely whenever confronted by it. Now was no different. Michelle struggled to keep her eyes fixed on anything in particular, instead only succeeding in drawing a vague sense of insignificance into her psyche, a sense that grew with each moment; with each outburst of the vehicle’s engine; with each rotation of its giant wheels, reverberating through the metallic shell and causing the window to vibrate slightly against Michelle’s head and shoulder. She closed her eyes. It was still there: the world, waiting and biding its time. Eventually it would be the end of all of us.
She helped herself to a key in a toilet cubicle in the bathroom of the Dallas, Texas bus station, and afterwards she sat upon the closed lid of the lavatory with her legs stretched out in front of her. She was hunched forward, her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, breathing in slowly, her eyes closed and her mind dulled.
She had to change buses here and she’d wished an almost-fond adiós to her new Guatemalan and Panamanian friends before promptly forgetting them on the way into the station. The wait was over an hour, so she settled herself in the coffee shop in the corner of the building and ordered a black coffee. She sat next to the window with her styrofoam cup and reminisced of the journey behind her, and that which was still to come. Fate had given her almost a month to snake her way up through the top of South America, along the narrow bridge of Central America, up Mexico, and now finally into the States. She was tired and her body ached, but she’d made good time, and would have a week to relax in Denver before her fifth and ostensibly final dance with Cyrus. She’d rewatched the previous four in a hotel in Bogotá (not Meltdown 9’s failure against Chris Crowe, though… not yet), and a large part of her heart feared that all that waited in Colorado was a lack of closure. Defeat would place her and Cyrus back on an even keel, and she had no more time to waste on The Exile.
She knew what was closing the show in Denver, of course. Fallout had done its best to devalue the FWA World Heavyweight Championship even further with its series of ever-diminishing title matches over the Second Chapter, and the culmination of that - the nadir in place of a would-be, should-be, could-be crescendo - was the Mile High Massacre match. Randy Ramon, exactly one year after he and Devin Golden defeated Gerald and herself, would walk out into the Ball Arena with the World Heavyweight Championship… her World Heavyweight Championship… to defend against four of his compatriots from the purple brand. And then it would be back. Whichever of the five emerged from Denver’s main event with the gold would simply be tasked with laying it at her feet. For that reason, more than any other, this business with Cyrus had to be tied up and finished at Mile High.
A man sat next to her and cleared his throat. Reluctantly, she drew her eyes away from the large windows that dominated one wall of the station-bound coffee shop. Uncle J.J. JAY! had taken a seat at her table and was regarding her with a pensive expression. Michelle squinted and blinked, but he was still there.
Suddenly, Uncle turned from her and pointed towards the girl behind the counter.
“LATTE! Extra frothy!”
After issuing his order he turned back to Dreamer and employed the same countenance as before.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, after the silence went on for a little longer than was comfortable.
“I am being pensive, Michelle!” Uncle answered, refusing to relinquish her from his gaze. “P - E - N - S - I - V - E, Michelle. Pensive!”
She blinked at him and shuffled uncomfortably in her chair. Uncle’s coffee arrived in front of him. His tentacles were gently wafting before his face as he went on beholding her, a manic gin now and then visible beneath the mask.
“Why are you here?” she asked, sipping at her own coffee. She suddenly wanted a cigarette.
“I’m here to see you!” he declared, happily. He looked down at his coffee, his tentacles guarding his mouth from his cup, causing him to turn back towards the woman behind the counter and point at her once again. “STRAW! Extra lengthy!”
“No… why are you here?” Michelle gesticulated as if to indicate their specific surroundings. “In this bus station? Don’t you have a space ship?”
“Ah, there you go again, Dreamer!” Uncle started, shaking his head. His straw arrived and he pushed it through the top of his cup before taking a long sip. “Always asking questions about me! Don’t you remember the mess this got you in at Lights Out? I know that I’m fascinating, Dreamer, but this obsession has gone on too long.”
Finally, Uncle took his eyes off the young woman in front of him. He allowed them to drift over his surroundings, taking in the mostly empty coffee shop. He watched as an old man struggled to gum open a sachet of sugar. He sighed deeply and shook his head.
“This is what you’re doing, Dreamer? Really? You’re on the road to a big feud-ending match and you’re sitting in a coffee shop in Dallas, Texas? I take it you’ve just been riding the bus? Anything fun happen in Colombia? Any moments of reflection in Honduras? Subtle conversations with strangers in El Paso? People don’t like that shit, Michelle! You need to do something exciting!”
“I lost when we did a space adventure,” Michelle answered, digging her heels in. “It’s not my fault these shows have so much distance between them. I am being hampered by the geographical decisions of the bookers.”
“I said you need to do something exciting, Dreamer! Not we! You! Look, everyone has heard about this thing you’re doing with people that used to know Cyrus. Or still know him, or whatever. Eli, Maskell, Rondo. Yes, I heard about Rondo. Somebody bootlegged the cassette tapes and Thomas downloaded them for me. I guess that stuff is fine but it’s not really getting you anywhere, is it? I mean: what exactly do you know about Cyrus Truth, after all this time?”
She thought for a moment. Eli, Maskell, and Rondo had been helpful in their own ways, but had all alluded to strategy over insight. Eli and Maskell were blinded by their own failures, and Rondo by his respect. The Last Star had spoken of the Exile’s will to win, and her own shortcomings in that sphere, whilst Black and the Heretic had challenged her to sink to a level they deemed necessary to win. But all of this was external to Cyrus Truth. She found that she knew nothing of the Wayward Warrior that hadn’t been broadcast to the world on weekly episodic television, and wondered whether any of them - Black, Maskell, Rondo, or the rest - were any different.
“Not a lot,” she conceded. “No more than anyone.”
“Exactly! Look, I don’t want to say that this whole thing has been a waste of time. You got two wins and a tie from those promos. Let’s not talk about the tie. The two wins have got to count for something. All winners are worthwhile, Dreamer! But diminishing returns are important to consider. I know it might be tempting to do a Shannon O’Neal interaction in a flashback to the Lost Treasures Tour or something, but I’d look to the future instead. That whole BWW thing was a mess. Doesn’t bear thinking about. If you really need to keep that theme up to completion, just talk to the rest of the Nephews and I about Cyrus. I mean, sure, we’ve never met him, but we know Konchu. And Konchu knows Cyrus. So, by the transitive property of knowing, we know Cyrus. And we’re interesting, at least. Thomas West is the most interesting person in the world. And just look at right now, Dreamer! You’re three thousand words in and I’m the most interesting thing that's happened so far in this promo. Got to count for something.”
“Would you stop calling this a promo?” Michelle said. “This is my life.”
Uncle shook his head, and then laughed.
“That’s exactly the problem!” He stood from his chair and began to search in his pockets. From the one inside his jacket he produced a small white bottle, which he placed down on the table next to his empty styrofoam cup. Benzodiazepine. “Maybe get some more sleep. Perhaps there’s something in that waiting room. I’ll see you in Lamar, Dreamer. Unless you want a ride?”
She sipped at her coffee and offered no response.
“Suit yourself. Until next time, Nephew!”
And with that, he left. Michelle popped one of the pills and headed for the bus.
Dave was still sitting at his corner of the glass coffee table, and had taken to picking up each of the publications in front of him in turn, leafing through the pages, absorbing as much information as he could with a cursory scan, and then placing it back down into a second pile. This stack, which grew and grew as the other diminished, was his read pile, and it seemed to Dreamer - as she observed the Saint from her corner across the room - that the cataloguing of these magazines had become more important to him than the enjoyment of them. He rarely looked up from his work. The doings of the other four inhabitants of the small waiting room were none of his concern and never would be again. His interest lay only in the menial and accomplishable task that he had set out in front of him.
Devin had stopped throwing his ball against the wall but was still laid flat on his back with the souls of his boots pressed against it. He was pushing off the wall with the heels of them, as if trying to activate his calves, whilst focussing on his breathing. The ball lay to one side, discarded and disused until a suitable catching partner stepped forward to keep him amused.
In the middle of the room, Cyrus and Chris were still thoroughly invested in their own literature.
“That’s a fine birdbath,” Cyrus declared, showing the Astonishing One a photograph in the centrefold of his magazine. Chris nodded approvingly. “Form and function. Breathtaking.”
“You don’t see workmanship like that often anymore,” Chris agreed, before reading aloud a passage about chrysanthemums. He sighed afterwards, as if filled with nostalgia. “Nobody builds. Nobody tends. A layer of varnish and a layer of gloss is enough.”
Cyrus paused in his own reading whilst Chris recited his floral soliloquy. Even Devin rolled onto his front, staring over at the two other former champions with a cocked eyebrow. Sulley, for his part, only waited impatiently. He had come to the end of his reading list but for the two publications in the hands of his peers.
In her pocket a telephone rang. She pulled out the alien Apple device and looked at it disapprovingly. She turned it over in her hands, the weight of it surprising and strange. She grasped it tightly in her right hand and slid the icon over with a finger on her left, as she’d seen other people do a thousand times before in passing.
“Yes?” she asked, after lifting the device to her ear. She could hear a man’s soft breathing on the other end of the line. It sounded… close, somehow. Perhaps familiar was a better word, in the conventional sense, but close felt more appropriate to her.
“What time will you be home, tulip?” the man asked. It was a voice she knew well. It belonged to her handsome man, but he spoke to her with a sort of estranged intimacy that was new and cold.
“I don’t know,” she found herself saying, her eyes tracing a line towards the door in the corner of the room. “I think I only just got here.”
“You’ve been gone most of the week,” he said, impatient but controlled and unaccusing. “The kids want to see their mother.”
She let the words wash over her. Finally, Chris was placing his magazine down on the coffee table, and Dave scooped it up immediately, as if he was suddenly overwhelmed by an urge to take up horticulture as his primary hobby.
“I have to wait,” she said. He sighed, but she sensed agreement. After a few moments of uneasy silence he hung up.
As she placed ‘her’ phone back into her pocket, the door in the corner of the room unexpectedly and suddenly swung open. All ten eyes turned towards the opening as three women emerged from it. Dinorah Redgrave, Alana Allure, and Saddle Sally appeared in a line, each holding a clipboard and wearing a name badge that labelled them as Executive Assistants #’s 1, 2, and 3. Dinorah and Alana spoke in hushed tones to one another as Sally looked up from her clipboard.
“Okay,” she said, addressing the room generally. “So who’s it going to be, then?”
Emboldened, Michelle cleared her throat and stood up from her seat. Her hands were behind her back, and the four men and three other women in the room each turned towards her in expectation.
“I need to go next,” she declared. Cyrus narrowed his eyes in her general direction.
“No cutting in line,” he said, before standing himself and leading the three women back into the hidden room.
Michelle sat back down on the floor as the door slammed shut again. She closed her eyes.
She awoke as the bus passed through the suburbs of Lamar, having spent most of the day out of it under the weight of the pills, and readjusted to her surroundings to find that it was now evening. The streetlights were beginning to stir into motion to herald the moon’s coming, and although the town was reasonably unassuming and whole-heartedly insignificant there was a certain poetry to the manner in which the bus turned through its sleepy streets. Michelle looked around at her fellow bus passengers. There were less of them now than there had been when she’d struck her serpentine path through Central America. There were no groups or pairs. Each was alone, engaged in their phones or their books or their own minds, spaced apart and with nothing in common.
They were scheduled to stop here for around forty minutes and she smoked a cigarette before heading into the small coffee shop that sat across the parking lot from the gas station. It was cold outside and a few drags of tobacco remained when she threw the end of her cigarette away. Inside, half-expectedly, Uncle J.J. JAY! waited for her at a corner table in front of a window. There were two styrofoam cups in front of him.
“I thought I’d save us some time,” he said, as she approached and took a seat across from him. He pushed her black coffee in her direction and began to undo the end of a sugar sachet and pour its contents into her cup. ”We don’t have very long here, if you’re going straight onto Denver. Which, of course, I assume you are. Why would you stay in Lamar? Unless you have a few more of Chris Crowe’s buddies to meet…”
“I’m going straight on to Denver,” she answered, taking her cup and sipping at the coffee. It was too hot and too bitter. “Where’s the Octopi parked?”
“In orbit,” Uncle answered, sipping his latte through a long straw. “Ask me another one. And if I were you, I’d make it about Cyrus.”
“But you said you’d never met him.”
“Well, no,” Uncle admitted with a nod. “But we’ll elicit your thoughts and feelings on Cyrus Truth and your match with him through a conversation with me.”
“Isn’t that what I always do, anyway?” Michelle asked. “If we’re really doing this, then that’s poor advice. That’s exactly what I did with you about Kennedy for Lights Out.”
“But this is different,” Uncle argued, lifting his finger up admonishingly. “This is grounded, Dreamer! With a cross-country Greyhound journey you get all of the mundane everyday shit you expect from an MvH promo, but still with added Uncle to retain interest. It always makes sense to involve a character far more interesting than your own. Just ask your friend Eli Black. Or your friend Danny Toner. Or Ryan Rondo, or Tommy Bedlam and that other one, or GiGi, even. All of them are doing it, Dreamer! You might as well throw yourself in!”
“Look, I just want to drink my coffee, smoke another cigarette, and then get to Denver,” Michelle said.
“Okay, okay, fine,” Uncle said, his palms stretched out before him in her direction, as if trying to placate her. “If this is how you’re going to be, I’ll leave you to your musings and self-reflection and black coffee. You should try a latte. They’re frothy and interesting. Anyway, I’ll see you in Denver. I’ll wait for you at the station. Laters, Dreamer.”
Uncle stood and threw a few dollars down onto the counter before disappearing through the entrance. Michelle watched him walk away and then finished her coffee. She lit a cigarette at a safe distance from the gas station and rummaged through her pockets for the benzodiazepine that JAY! had given her back in Dallas, but found only her crumpled packet of cigarettes, half a gram of cocaine, a few Mexican pesos, and thirty U.S. dollars. She hit the coke instead before climbing back onto the bus.
She managed to keep her eyes open and her grip on consciousness for around an hour and a half, during which the Greyhound carved its path northwards through Colorado and towards her eventual destination. For a large portion of this stretch of the journey they used a highway that cut through a large patch of woodland. The trees had been cut back to create a clearing of around ten metres on either side of the wide road, but beyond that Michelle could see nothing past the trees. It was winter, and they had all shed their leaves long ago. All that remained was a vast network of gnarled, bare branches, and Dreamer found it difficult to tell where one organism ended and another began. She remembered a dream that she’d had months ago, when her handsome man, Unger, had stalked her through a clearing in a forest. Then, in her subconscious, the network of trees had pulsed and breathed as one, suggesting an interconnectivity that was betrayed by the harsh, lonely nature of waking life. In that dream, the forest had been alive. But here the trees were dead and cold.
Around an hour north of Lamar, one lonely evergreen sat a little closer to the road. The Norway Pine was separated from its brothers by more than just its location. It seemed almost like a guard, keeping a close watch on any and all vehicles that wished to make their way northwards and had to pass through its shadow. It was tall and thick and, most importantly, green. It was the last bastion of life in what Dreamer concluded was - otherwise - a barren, dreary place. But the Pine was here, at least. She smiled at that thought as she drifted back to sleep.
Sat alone in the waiting room, Michelle’s eyes were tracing over the brushstrokes of Almond Blossom once again. The four men had each been led into the waiting room in turn without reappearing. The three women - Alana, Dinorah, and Sally - had emerged through the door four times until now, and a fifth was impending. Michelle heard the door mechanism behind her, followed by soft footsteps. She continued to look at the flowers.
“Michelle?” Dinorah said. Dreamer turned around to face the three women. “We’re ready to see you now.”
She stood up and followed them into the room, which was roughly the same size as the one in which she had been waiting for an indeterminate amount of time. This one, though, had been furnished like an office, and the only door in its walls was the one through which they entered. The others - Cyrus, Chris, Devin, and Dave - were nowhere to be seen. Behind the desk sat Jon Russnow, smoking a fat, Cuban cigar and fingering a Rubik's Cube. A half-finished bottle of Scotch was next to an empty glass on the desk, which was otherwise scattered with various documents and folders and paperwork. He didn’t look up as Michelle stood in front of the desk. The three women took their seats in a line at the side of the room.
“You know why you’re here?” he asked, working through his trusted algorithm on the Cube.
“This is my trial,” Michelle said. She didn’t know where the words came from, but she said them all-the-same. “You’re here to judge me.”
“That’s right, Michelle,” Russnow said, nodding his head, his fingers still deftly working away. “Although you shouldn’t think of it like that. But you should know that, deep down. We are here to judge you, but thinking about this as a trial implies we are judging you. Which we are. But don’t think about it that way. We just want to ask a few questions.”
Michelle didn’t say anything. She shuffled her weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. The three women turned a page over on their clipboards and produced pens from inside their jackets.
“To what extent, throughout all this,” Alana began, causing Michelle to turn towards her. “Would you say you have discussed the match itself?”
“Excuse me?”
“As well as the backstory behind the match?” Sally continued.
“And your opponent?” Dinorah added.
“What does that have to do with any of you?” Michelle asked.
“We’re your judges!” Russnow interjected. “It has everything to do with us! Just answer the question.”
“That was three questions.”
“Then answer the three questions.”
Michelle looked from one expectant face to the next. She found it daunting, and stuffed her hands into her pockets. Her posture was hunched and anxious.
“Well, I guess I spoke about Cyrus quite a lot,” Michelle started. “Other things, too. But Cyrus ran through the whole thing.”
“Sounds vague,” Dinorah said, dismissively.
“Cyrus answered that a lot better,” Russnow added.
“What did Cyrus say again?”
Russnow stopped working on his Rubik’s cube for a moment. He tapped on his desk with an idle hand, deep in thought.
“You know, thinking back, I can’t quite remember. But I remember it being very good.”
The three women nodded and made a note in their pads.
“Did you have a theme? Or a loose narrative?” Alana asked.
“Of course,” Michelle said.
”Well, yes, but was it the same theme you always have?” Russnow asked. He was back at work, and had two adjacent columns of red squares beneath his fingers already. “I don’t want to read another ten thousand words about your fear of flying or death, or about alienation and failure and just general gloom.”
Michelle blinked, unable to structure a response.
“Is the promo properly structured? I hope there’s no mis-mash word vomit monologue,” Sally said.
“I don’t know what that means,” Michelle protested. “But there’s structure. Even no structure is structure.”
“Wait,” Alana commanded. “What do we mean by structure? Do you mean like the narrative, or how it looks?”
“Narrative structure, of course,” Dinorah said. “Keep up.”
“How descriptive are you being?” Alana asked.
“Very,” Michelle answered, quickly and assuredly.
“Yeah, but did you unnecessarily describe a random tree just to add words?” Russnow chimed in with a question of his own.
“... no.”
“Yes you did!” Sally said, giddily. “You did exactly that in the section before this one!”
“That wasn’t just to add words!” Michelle argued. “Why are you singling out trees? I’m allowed to describe buildings but not trees? This is bullshit!”
“Calm down, missy!” Sally started. “We’re asking the questions!”
“Did you make the match feel important?” Dinorah enquired.
“The match is important.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Michelle opened her mouth to respond, but before she could Sally was taking up the charge.
“Did you express why you want to win? Or why you will win?”
“Why is that relevant?” Michelle asked.
“That’s the most relevant thing,” Sally posited. “You wouldn’t agree?”
“Of course I want to win,” Dreamer began, staring directly at Saddle Sally as she formed her response. “That’s a complete nonpoint. And why would it matter if I think I will win? I should do this every match? I can’t be plagued by doubts?”
“Well, you can be,” Alana conceded. She wasn’t willing to give up the whole point, though. “But you should show some sort of growth. Your doubts should subside or be confronted at least. But that’s in a different category of questioning.”
“Every match?” Michelle asked. “Isn’t that a little one-dimensional?”
The three women paused in the interrogation, and looked at Dreamer blankly.
“Look: real people have doubts, and sometimes they don’t want to address them. It’s not my job to make you believe I am going to win. Whether you believe that, and even whether I believe that, is separate from the result.”
After a moment, each of the women looked over at Russnow. With a final flourish, he completed his Rubik’s Cube and placed it down onto the desk in front of him. He smiled to himself as he poured a drink. After a long, satisfying sip of the Scotch, he looked up at Dreamer.
“Remember who is judging who here, Michelle,” he said, before bidding for the inquisition to continue.
“How unique is your work compared to others on the show?” Alana asked.
“How should I know?” Michelle asked, growing bored.
“Okay, how about compared to your past work?” Sally continued.
“I am still me,” Michelle argued. “Everything I do is unique. But I am still me.”
“To what extent are you still you?” Dinorah asked.
“What?” Michelle replied. She didn’t understand the question. Dinorah lent forward in her chair, as if affecting candour.
“Well, Michelle,” she began. “Every match result or non-match interaction should have at least a small effect, inspiring some sort of metre movement. Has this been the case?”
Michelle said nothing. She simply stared back at Dinorah with a bemused and nonplussed countenance.
“Dreamer,” Russnow started, drawing Michelle’s eyes onto him. “You need to show growth. Even if that means going backwards. But you can’t stagnate. Rambling on about the past just isn’t going to cut it, darling.”
The woman under the spotlight thought about this for a moment.
“This is an unrealistic expectation,” she answered.
The three women began to shake their heads and frantically scrawl notes onto their pads. Russnow looked back at her blankly. Finally, he shrugged.
“Okay, Michelle. We’ll let you know.”
After one more sip of his Scotch, he pulled a lever on his desk. The trap door opened beneath Michelle’s feet, and she was falling.
The bus sat in Denver station when she awoke, and she quickly collected her few belongings before breathing in the light air of the city. She lit a cigarette and looked away southwards, her mind tracing the road she’d taken. It had been long but she was used to that. We can go anywhere, but we’ll always be where we are. She thought about this line as she sucked away at the filter of her Camel. She was always the same at the end of the journey. She couldn’t change the person she was, for better or for worse. But her understanding of who that person was became sharper… more acute… more accurate. That was enough. At least for her.
In the coffee shop of Denver’s bus station, she bought a black coffee and an extra frothy latte before taking a seat in the corner. She placed a straw down next to the latte and began sipping at her bitter, lukewarm drink. It was late and the moon was high in the sky. She couldn’t see any stars above the city, no matter how hard she looked, so she settled for the moon. She sat alone for half an hour, the latte growing cold as she forced her way through her unsatisfying drink. Then she left.
Promo history - volume 71. "Moscow: December Snow, January Snow" (December 17th, 2021 - December 31st, 2021).[/I
Open Promo.
MICHELLE von HORROWITZ in [VOLUME SEVENTY ONE]
“МОСКВА: ДЕКАБРЬ СНЕГ, ЯНВАРЬ СНЕГ.”
один.
She had never read Bulgakov, but Michelle still enjoyed the romance of Patriarch’s Pond. This was especially true in the winter, when the December Snow clung onto the otherwise bare and gnarled branches of the surrounding trees. The pond was frozen over and people were walking on it, and although the young woman stopped well short of joining them she still enjoyed the picture from afar. Young couples in the first throws of love were the most plentiful amongst those shuffling on the ice, but people of all descriptions - from devotchkas to babushkas - joined the courters in their frollicks. She watched a young boy of nine or ten or something like that bound away from his parents before sliding for a few metres on his little, round belly. The little boy let out a loud and giddy laugh, and Michelle found herself envying the ease of his amusement. It had only just gone midday but already a deep and biting chill had descended upon the scene, and fresh snow had only recently begun to cascade down. A particularly large flake landed on her lip. She licked it and was surprised to taste salt.
Alexandra was walking towards her and was much better prepared for the season than Michelle was. She had a fur coat of some variety pulled tightly around her, as well as a thick hat that her grandmother had knitted for her with an oversized bobble on the top. It had the effect of ensuring that Alexandra was always visible amongst a crowd, and the oversized bobble protruding over a sea of heads was a common sight that heralded the young woman’s coming. She held a vaping device in her hand and sucked at it lethargically whilst watching the scene on the lake. Michelle lit a Camel as the other approached.
The Russian woman didn’t say anything when she reached Michelle, and instead leant on the fencing next to her and followed her eye-line to the people on the lake. This was Michelle’s first winter in the city, but Alexandra had lived here for a number of years already, and had grown up just south of Moscow in Tula. She hadn’t read Bulgakov either. Patriarch’s Pond was just another pond to her, and the fact that it froze over once a year was an obvious fact of nature that Alexandra found thoroughly unremarkable.
“I don’t know why you insist on meeting here,” Alexandra said as she pressed a button on the side of her vape and placed it back into her pocket. She adjusted her fur as if to suggest that she was cold. Michelle looked at her young, dramatic features. She was handsome but not beautiful. Severe. Sharp. “There are ponds closer to your apartment and there are ponds closer to my apartment.”
“Sometimes it’s nice to not be close to my apartment,” Michelle answered between drags of her cigarette. Alexandra began to walk around the perimeter of the pond, and the Dutch woman dutifully followed a pace behind.
“So that’s it?” Alexandra answered, passively suggesting that she’d solved some mystery. “To be away from Jean-Luc?”
“Just to be away,” Michelle said, with a shrug. Alexandra barely registered the response. She didn’t seem overly interested in the things that Michelle had to say. At least not recently. She remained distant and abstracted.
“Where will we go to lunch?” Alexandra asked, her eyes tracing across the row of restaurants in the south-west corner of the square.
“I’m not hungry,” Michelle answered, truthfully. She had chain-smoked and stifled her appetite since Jean-Luc had gone to work that morning, sitting in a coffee shop and watching the December Snow begin to gather. December Snow was the good snow. “I just want to walk.”
“As you wish,” Alexandra said. She took her vape back out as they walked through a gate at the corner of the square. They walked up to the edge of the pond but not onto it. Alexandra had no interest in joining the frollickers. “Have you given any more thought to Tula?”
Michelle had, of course. In Moscow, she had little else to do but think. She found the days here to be long, and since Alexandra - Sasha, to those with whom she was familiar - had invited her to her hometown she had been conflicted. She enjoyed the city, and it was still fresh and exciting and unique to her. Christmas meant very little to Michelle, but New Year’s was one of the few annual events she looked forward to. The fact that her birthday was January 1st did not contribute to this: the anniversary of her own emergence into the world held as little weight for her as that of Jesus. But she was a sucker for New Year’s, and bought into the concept of a fresh beginning. Given how lousy most of her years were, she sort of had to.
But another part of her knew that Sasha was slipping away, and was reluctant to let such an offer go unaccepted. Michelle feared there wouldn’t be too many more of them.
“I’ve thought about it. I’m still thinking about it.”
Alexandra nodded without looking at her counterpart. Michelle noted how infrequently they shared eye contact these days. Michelle wasn’t the most present of people, but Sasha had mastered the beguiling art of aloofness. It was this that drew Michelle towards the young woman in the first place. And now, as she became less and less open, Michelle was caught up in the enigma more and more.
“Moscow isn’t as old hat to me as it is to you,” Michelle said, as if by way of explanation. “I may want to spend New Year’s here.”
“As you wish,” Sasha repeated. She came to a halt at a bench and wiped the snow off the seat with one of her leather gloves. Michelle didn’t sit next to her. Instead, she loomed over the Russian awkwardly, somehow submissive despite her positioning.
“What will you do tonight?” Michelle asked, flicking away the end of her cigarette. She had smoked it to the filter more than a minute ago but had forgotten she was still holding it.
“I will meet with some friends,” Alexandra said, dully. She was watching a young mother pushing a baby’s carriage along the path in front of their bench, the right wheel of the pram constantly getting clogged by the snow. “Nastia, Katya, who you know. Also Boris. I don’t think you know Boris. And you? Will Jean-Luc sweep you off your feet tonight?”
Michelle scoffed at the concept.
“No,” she answered, quite simply. Jean-Luc had plans. He hadn’t been forthcoming about what they were and she hadn’t pressed the point. She had little interest in the things he did. And Adrienne, of course, was still out of the country, with little indication of when she’d return.
Neither woman said anything for more than a moment, and Michelle felt the silence acutely.
“You can come for drinks, if that is what you want to do,” Sasha said, finally. The invitation was extended in a neutral and unenthused manner.
It sometimes surprised Michelle to think about how little agency she had here. She was in Moscow as a guest. A guest of the state, first and foremost, who would monitor her comings and goings around its territory in a diligent and often intrusive manner. A guest of Jean-Luc, of course, to whose employment she owed her documents. A guest of his father’s, too, whose company it was that gave her permission to stay. A guest of Alexandra and all of the other locals who opened up their homes to her unreadily and infrequently. A guest of the city, and one that hadn’t earned her trust. She relied on Jean-Luc and on Alexandra and on Adrienne to provide her with pretty much everything. Her home, her drugs, her dinner plans. The three most important things in her current day-to-day. But, in the closing stretch of 2018, this was not a state of affairs that Michelle found particularly unappealing. She had allowed herself to be taken to Moscow, and was now kept here by her own sense of dull passivity.
Her eyes still on the Russian woman in her fur coat and woolen hat, Michelle nodded affirmatively. Sasha looked up at her, holding Michelle’s eyes in her own for a mere moment, but for long enough to stir Michelle. This moment, fleeting and sudden and wild, disappeared as quickly as it came upon them, with Alexandra’s gaze drawn away again by nothing in particular. Michelle remained silent and motionless as the Russian woman stood from her seat.
“I should get back to work,” Sasha said. “Some of us have to earn a living.”
*****
“So what are you doing here?” the young man asked her. It was a question that was put to her often. In fact, if the person she was introduced to or chanced upon was able to speak any of the same languages as her, it was invariably the first thing they wanted to know. The people here seemed to question motive much more readily and wouldn’t allow for secrecy. “Studying? Teaching English?”
Michelle shook her head.
“I’m just here, I guess,” she said. Any conclusions she’d drawn about her own motives were incomplete and hazy, and were not in any condition to be shared with Boris. She had, after all, only met the young Russian man three quarters of an hour ago, and was unsure whether he was to be trusted. “What are you doing here?”
“I was born here,” Boris answered, content that this was enough of an answer. Michelle thought about asking if he knew where they could get some coke, but thought better of it. The boy didn’t seem the sort. They sat around a large, round table in a Kitay Gorod bar. The bar was mostly underground, but long, rectangular windows ran around the top of the room, through which Michelle frequently found herself watching the boots of passers-by trudge through the snow. Boris was generally not good company, apparently, and his conversation did little to retain her interest.
Sasha, Nastia, and Katya were sitting on the opposite side of the table and were currently occupied with the small rectangular screens of their telephones. Michelle had lost count of the number of evenings she had spent with Sasha or one of her compatriots and found herself a bemused second best. At least Boris was present, or at least as much so as his meager personality would allow him to be.
The bar itself was a variation upon a similar theme that one would find replicated innumerable times within this pocket of the city. It served entirely craft ales, cocktails, and bar snacks, was in a state of modest disrepair (though this was a clear affectation), and pumped in lo-fi, lyricless beats over the general din that the mostly young, mostly attractive, and mostly Russian patrons created. She found the place to be a reasonable but uninspiring approximation of the hipsterish outfits one could find in every city in Western Europe or the States, which was quite deliberate and very popular amongst a certain contingent of Moscow’s citizens. Michelle struggled to discern whether she’d been here before but concluded that it didn’t really matter.
“Michelle doesn’t know why she’s here,” Sasha said, without looking up from her phone. That much was true.
The night washed over Michelle in waves. She had been drinking for most of the day but her head was soon enough fogged in a manner that was reserved for alcohol exclusively. Had she access to extras she’d have been able to balance herself out, but more often than not in Moscow that was not the case. Whatever drugs could be found in the city were to be consumed privately and in the comfort of one’s own home, which was seemingly an uneasy pact made between the city’s police and its underbelly that was by and large kept to. She found the company passable enough, if only for the long patches of silence in which the three women stared at their phones. Boris usually did his best to puncture this sanctuary, and would tell her about his job in a washing machine factory in Avtozavodskaya or his dreams of attending the military university after he’d finished his studies. Michelle did her best to take in as few of his words and as few of his features as was possible, both of which were plain and unappealing.
The night slipped away from her. It was after one when she found herself smoking outside of the same bar that she had arrived at a handful of hours before, with little memory of how the intermittent time had been spent. Her mind was comfortably numb, though unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for her body. She felt the harsh, cold night well enough. She hurriedly smoked her cigarette and found herself unable to think about any other image than her own shoes as viewed through the rectangular windows that ran around the top of the bar. Nastia and Sasha had left what felt like a long time ago, and Michelle struggled to remember the nature of their goodbyes. Boris was passed out at the table. Katya continued to stare at her phone screen. The night slipped away from her.
Michelle made the short walk to the Metro station and tapped her troika against the mechanism. The glass, waist-high doors opened up before her and the escalator tooked her deep down beneath the city. The platform was full with small groups of people hurriedly talking in an alien language, smiles on their faces and vacancy in their eyes. Michelle recognised the scene: they were the revelers, trying to scrape the last moments from an otherwise spent and used-up evening. The train arrived. Everyone got on together.
After emerging on the other side, she walked along the embankment towards her apartment and looked down at the river. It was partially frozen but the ice had been cut through over the day by the boats that still made their daily routes from Gorky Park to the Hotel Ukraina. Now, large shards floated atop the surface, the cracks forming a network that ran in fractals from one bank to the other. The Borodinsky Bridge was mostly quiet, but a few yellow taxis picked their route across it. Most of them headed westwards and away from the nucleus, delivering their intoxicated and flagging cargo to various apartment blocks around the city. Michelle halted her stride to watch one of them speed off up Kutuzovsky Prospekt and towards the Business District. Most of Europe’s tallest buildings stood on that one patch of land, and the image of it was one of a greedy hand grasping out from the Earth, towards the heavens. Every light in every tower block was left on overnight. What chance did the stars have?
Someone had spray painted блин! inside their elevator a few days prior and Jean-Luc had been insistent that the building’s concierge do something about it. Before he could be obliged, though, the concierge would’ve had to learn English. Jean-Luc had stood at the old woman’s booth and lambasted her for the building’s deteriorating standards. She’d stared back at him blankly and without understanding. Someone else had written с лимоном пожалуйста! beneath it and Michelle sounded it out whilst the vestibule transported her eleven storeys into the air. She was pleased with her progress upon recognition of all of the words (even if the tenses still remained somewhat beyond her) and left the elevator with a smile.
The door to their apartment was open and she walked in to find Jean-Luc in his chair, half-watching Masha and the Bear on the television and half-writing in his notepad. The city’s centrally-controlled heating system had been operating for a month now, and as a result the living room felt close to a sauna. Jean-Luc was stripped down to a pair of white underpants. He rarely felt the inclination to try and fuck her any more, but he was in this state often enough for Michelle to note his prolonged and drastic weight loss. He didn’t turn to acknowledge her, greet her, or welcome her.
”You’re home early,” she said. It was only an observation, really. He nodded in affirmation.
“Bad crowd,” he replied. “You want some coke?”
Michelle thought about it, but shook her head.
“I’m going to bed,” she answered. She had gone from being too cold outside to too warm in the apartment. She felt sick.
“I’ll be in soon,” he said. She nodded, but didn’t believe him. She retired to a dreamless sleep.
два.
“You should entertain yourself,” Alexandra was saying, from the other end of the phone line. It was clear that the Russian didn’t quite understand how difficult a task that was.“There are twelve million people in this city, Michelle. Another one can keep you company this lunch time.”
Michelle sighed deeply and turned away from the window of the coffee shop. She was in the shadow of Ploshchad Revolyutsii Metro station, a heaving focal point in the centre of the city, and the time was creeping towards midday. People were streaming in and out of the station, tightening or loosening their heavy winter garb depending on their direction of travel, and on the square in front of her she could see innumerable figures walking with purpose towards their late morning destinations. There were a large number of different types amongst the travelers, with business sorts, tourists, studentish types, and the ever-present babushkas perhaps the four most well-represented categorisations. Twelve million people in this city, Sasha purported: it seemed a large percentage of them were right here right now, and had the express purpose of smothering Michelle.
“When will you be back?” Michelle asked. When she heard her own words she pitied them. “Will you meet me tomorrow?”
“Maybe Thursday,” Sasha answered, without sadness. “It won’t wait. I’ve put off going back to Tula for too long, and my sister needs me. If you would stop being so indecisive, you could come with me. It’s really not that far…”
Michelle thought about the concept for a moment, but the idea of sitting with Alexandra in the living room of her family home - her Russian-speaking father and her Russian-speaking mother and her Russian-speaking sister all fussing over her, fake smiles and zelyony chai the order of the day - made her feel a little queasy. Of course, you encountered both passive and aggressive homophobia on a regular basis in this city, especially from the older generation. The promise of such a hospitable reception from such people for such a relationship, a promise made by Sasha when the idea had first been floated, was refreshing. Although, initially, Michelle saw it as only a foil for her first excuse not to go to Tula. But these people having a modicum of decency in their souls was not enough of a reason for Michelle to subject herself to the mundane suburban show.
“No,” Michelle said, finally. “I won’t go.”
“As you wish,”Alexandra conceded, as she frequently did. She stopped short of a sigh. “Call Katya or Nastia. Or Boris, even. I’m sure one of them will go to lunch with you. Boris loves Patriarch’s Pond.”
“Boris is not an interesting person,” Michelle replied. It didn’t surprise her that he liked the pond. He had a sense of patriotism that was intellectual in a forced and obvious sense. He loved Bulgakov and Pushkin alongside Gagarin and Stalin, as his history books at school had taught him to.
“Jean-Luc, then,” Sasha suggested. “I’m sure his English is better than mine. I must go, Michelle. My train is here. Do svidanya.”
“Goodbye, tulip,” Michelle answered, before hanging up the phone. The handset had been a gift from Jean-Luc when they first arrived here, and although she had initially been hesitant to accept it, the device proved to be useful on one or two occasions. Most notably, it (and specifically its storage of Jean-Luc’s number) had saved her a night in the drunk tank after she’d been caught with and chastised for an open container. She’d left her documents at home and was placed in the back of a van with the city’s degenerates (or perhaps with the rest of the city’s degenerates). She thrust the phone back into her pocket and finished her cigarette.
Inside the coffee shop, Michelle found a seat in the corner and waited for the arrival of the woman that she was meeting. She wondered if Elizaveta would have time to stay later and take her for lunch, but didn’t like the desperation in her internal monologue and did her utmost to stifle it. Michelle was usually quite an insular person, and had always been quite comfortable in her own company, hidden away from others. In Moscow, though, she found herself more co-dependent than she’d ever been, and less particular when choosing the co- that she was dependent on.
Michelle managed to read just over half a page of her book, Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, when Elizaveta - or Liza, for short - walked through the doors of the coffee shop. She strode past a waitress who was holding a menu in front of her and took a seat opposite from Michelle.
“You forgot to take a menu,” Michelle said, pointing back at the waitress.
“Please, Michelle,” Liza began, her voice dripping with a thick Russian accent. “We always meet in the same coffee shop. Or at least the same chain. There is more to Moscow than Shokoladnitza, you know? I know exactly what’s on that menu without looking at it.”
Michelle shrugged. The Dutch woman was leafing through her own menu. She recognised the pictures too well, and found that Liza was right. Of course she was. Michelle could predict what was on the next one before she turned the page. She had become a creature of habit since her arrival in the Motherland. Her status as an alien meant convenience was even more comforting here.
“Will you stay for lunch? I have just been cancelled on,” Michelle asked.
“Somebody else as sick of Shokoladnitza as I am?” Liza quipped, whilst waving at the same waitress she’d ignored a few moments prior. “Пожалуйста, девушка… Латте для меня и черный кофе для моего друга. И быстро.”
The waitress nodded and hurried away. Liza placed her large handbag onto an adjacent seat and looked up at Michelle. Her expression was warm and welcoming, as it always was, but Elizaveta was a busy and, at times, quite a frantic woman. She had a sardonic sense of humour and would not suffer a fool. A little older and wiser than Michelle, the Russian woman was prone to glibness and flippancy. Michelle liked her, and enjoyed meeting with her if only because it reminded her of a time before Moscow. Other than Jean-Luc, she was the only contact here that Michelle had known prior to her arrival in Russia, and her ties to the wrestling world were a safe reminder of that sphere, also. Michelle liked having a window into the world of her past whilst remaining firmly in this new and closed off present.
“I ordered your black coffee,” Liza said. Her assumption of Michelle’s order was correct. “As for lunch, not today. Maybe next week. But I will pick the place. You have terrible taste, Michelle. This week I must drink coffee quickly, Michelle. I buy new ring posts from Kazan. Man on telephone tell me that these are finest wrestling ring posts west of Ural mountain range. They arrive today and are for boxing ring. Wrong shape, wrong height. I find buyer for useless boxing posts, get money back, but I still have no posts for my ring.”
“Sounds like quite the emergency,” Michelle allowed.
“Emergency? This is a tragedy!” Liza responded, oly half in jest. “My next show is in less than a week, and I have no ring posts!”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Michelle said, with a shrug. The coffee arrived and the Dutch woman began to pour a healthy helping of sugar into hers. “Where’s the show?”
“Mutabor,” Liza answered whilst sipping her latte. Michelle noticed that she was drinking more quickly than usual, and attributed this to the urgency of her last minute preparations. “I have spots left on my card, of course. My countrymen are unreliable by nature. Dreamer would draw, Michelle.”
“People don’t call me that anymore,” Michelle said, without really addressing what had been said. This was a familiar game that the two played. Michelle would ask Liza for coffee. Liza would turn discussion onto her promotion, and try to get Michelle to take a booking. Michelle would be evasive, and eventually would politely decline. “It’s been a long time, Elizaveta. I’m not sure I’m ready.”
“Maybe,” Liza said, her eyes tracing over Michelle’s body. It was less hardened by training and battle than it had been a couple of years ago, when she’d last walked upon American soil. “You’d probably lose. Russian men are big and strong, Michelle, like bear. But something tells me you’d enjoy it.”
The Russian woman was smiling at Michelle, and the former wrestler found her gaze inquisitive and curious. She shuffled uncomfortably beneath it.
“After all,” Liza continued, still smiling. “There’s a reason you still meet with me for coffee, and go through same conversation every week.”
“Maybe I’m just enraptured by your company,” Michelle posited.
“That too,” Liza said, nodding and leaning back in her chair. “I’m just playing Devil’s avocado...”
“That’s not the phrase,” Michelle replied, without a correction.
“Will you at least come to watch?” Liza asked. She retrieved her purse from her handbag and from it collected a five hundred rouble note, as if she was making preparations to leave. “You never know, it might stir something.”
“When is it?” Michelle asked.
“Saturday,” Liza answered as she stood from her chair. She pulled her fur coat around her shoulders and began to clasp the large gold buttons on the front. “I’ll put two tickets aside for you. Do svidanya, Michelle.”
The young woman just nodded, and watched on as Liza walked out of the coffee shop. She placed another hundred roubles onto the table and collected her own jacket. Outside, the Winter was biting hard, and the Kremlin walls were causing something of a wind tunnel. She made the short walk over to Red Square and through the large archway that separated it from Ploshchad Revolyutsii. She paused at the brow of the slight hill, staring down at the brightly coloured domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral. The square was choked by people. She remembered an evening that she had cycled here with Sasha. In truth, it was early in the morning, and the two had rented bicycles from in front of her flat at the end of a night on Tverskaya. They’d cycled up the Moscow River until, eventually, they arrived at the square at sunrise. It had been abandoned but for a couple of police cars and the assembled Kremlin security going about its morning shift. They’d ridden over the cobbles, standing up out of the seat as they charged onwards to sweep the castle.
As she continued to walk across the square, she noticed how the white powder had gathered in the crevices between the stones. She tried to dig some out with the heel of her shoe but found it embedded and difficult to shift. She preferred the fresher snow that was still falling now, gathering in a fine white powder on the stones and on her clothes and on her skin. This was the December Snow: the good snow. It was here to cover up the old year and all of its excesses and failures. She looked up at the sky and allowed the flakes to fall onto the pale skin of her face.
She came upon the river at the bottom of the square and lit a cigarette. A Radisson cruise boat was cutting through the ice directly in front of her. On the top deck she could see a young couple pressed up against a wall, their mouths pushed tightly against one another as the snow fell around them. The boat disappeared under a bridge and, when it reappeared on the other side of it, Michelle found she had lost sight of the lovers.
Alexandra was never far from her mind, but the news that she was about to remove herself to Tula was only now beginning to hit her. With Adrienne still in Paris (or was it Madrid?) and Jean-Luc his usual distant self, she found the idea of the oncoming winter particularly cold and troubling. Of course, she hadn't always been like this. There were times when attachments of this sort were not so essential to the make-up of her life. This need came and went in waves, and - just now, as she stood in the shadow of the Kremlin walls and looked over the fragmented ice atop the Moscow River - she couldn't help but frame it within the context of her foray into wrestling. When she was competing, only the more lustful elements of these attachments remained necessary to her. Deeper connections were available through opponents, and there was no longer any need for lovers. She pulled the lapels of her own jacket more tightly around herself, as if to shield from the oncoming gloom.
три.
The White Rabbit on Smolenskaya is one of Moscow's premier fine-dining establishments, as indicated by my patronage here on this particularly cold Tuesday evening. I was wearing the navy blue Tom Ford that Penelope had bought me as a Christmas gift the previous year, coupled with a burgundy Cavalli tie and a Ralph Lauren pocket square that used to belong to my grandfather. I had been particularly pleased with the ensemble and didn't begrudge Francesca the elongated photography session that she insisted upon when we arrived. In fairness to her, the setting was impressive, even in comparison to the exclusive and lavish environs that people like Francesca and I routinely find ourselves in. After walking through the bar, past a variety of shellfish that were in the process of breathing their final, communal breaths (do shellfish breathe?), you were greeted by a huge floor-to-ceiling window and a quite breath-taking eyeful beyond. The Foreign Ministry building, one of Stalin's Seven Sisters, dominated the view through the glass, and behind that the whole of Central Moscow peeled back before you. The gold dome of the Christ the Savior church, the multi-coloured onions (as Nadezhda so charmingly called them) of St. Basil's, tower blocks beyond count in various states of disrepair, and the Moscow River cutting through it all. When you saw it like this, in the company of those that could afford to eat in an establishment like The White Rabbit, you almost forgot all of Moscow's many, many flaws, and the fact that you were here against your will.
"And when did you last see him?" she asked me as she pushed a fork through the corner of her dessert. She was talking about my father: the esteemed Rupert Watkins. It had been a while since I'd seen Francesca, and back then I'd been in stable employment in one of my father's more prominent and more fashionable offices in New York. My time in Berlin, time spent with Michelle and - for the most part - only Michelle, had been quite deliberately characterised by anonymity. It was the only period of my life (so far) in which I could be said to be off the grid, and a large part of me enjoyed this change of pace. But one must return to Earth eventually. Moscow brought me back into my father's employment, and - to some extent - back into the public eye.
"I'm not really sure," I said, absently. I held her eye contact so as to appear present, though in truth not a single thing Francesca had said this evening had tickled my interest. She was a beautiful creature - Italian and olive-skinned and tall - but dull as they come. She was in town for Moscow Fashion Week, but I had my suspicions that she had only taken bookings there to come and see me. That was fine. I had a soft spot for Francesca. She'd done a lot for me, and I owed her a great deal. I just didn't particularly enjoy talking to her. "Maybe two years? Not here. Father doesn't come to Moscow. I doubt he'd have given me the job here if he did. I'm not the most popular child, after what happened in New York."
"You're his only child, Jean-Luc," she replied, with a roll of her eyes. "I wish you'd stop making that joke. I'm sure your father loves you."
"Then I'm sure you don't know my father," I replied, taking a sip of my wine. She'd insisted on white, as Francesca invariably did, regardless of what food she ordered. I'd settled on a crisp Pinot Grigio, Italian and dry and quite crisp. It was good, but not as an accompaniment to the veal cutlets I'd just finished enjoying. "You have a show tomorrow?"
"The Four Seasons," Francesca answered, with a nod of her head. She was staring through the window at the rising moon, and I found myself caught in the power of her eyes, as I often was. "I'm staying there, so that's easy enough. Have you been? I assume you've been?"
"Of course," I said, feigning outrage at the question. In truth, I'd only been for dinner and drinks, but hadn't stayed in the hotel. It overlooked Red Square and boasted some of the most expensive rooms in the city. I'd never even seen the inside of a suite there, and suddenly it became more important to me to walk Francesca home. "Will you smoke?"
I took my silver cigarette case out of my inside jacket pocket and opened the monogrammed lid. Inside were twenty neatly stacked Marlboro Lights, and Francesca took one between a thumb and forefinger before leading the way outside. The doorman offered her a heavy blanket to place around her shoulders, but she insisted on her fur being retrieved from the cloakroom instead. I lit her cigarette and we stood on the balcony upon the sixteenth floor, looking out over the wide, heaving road below.
"Tomorrow I have the show," she started, sucking softly at the end of her cigarette between utterances. "The night after I have a date. Not that I wouldn't much rather be spending the night with you. But it's one of the organizers of next year's Paris Fashion Week. He's in Moscow to see me, Jean-Luc. This could be huge."
"Aren't you huge enough?" I asked, my tongue in my cheek. "Sounds like a seedy old man to me."
"This is fashion, darling. They're all seedy old men," she answered. She wasn't looking at me, no matter how hard I tried to hold her gaze. Instead she stared down at the road, watching a team of sweepers in orange trying to get the better of a large snowdrift that was blocking a bus stop. "And then the day after that I fly back to L.A. So if you want to see me again, it'll have to be in the day."
"I'll have work," I said, finishing my cigarette and stubbing it out in a nearby tray. I wrapped my arms around her, my fingers stroking the lower regions of her tight abdomen through her soft fur.
"Please, Jean-Luc," she started, turning to face me with a smile. I tried to plant a kiss on her, but she was playful and evasive. "Your father owns the company. I'm sure you could steal away for a couple hours."
"I have responsibilities, Francesca," I lied. "People depend on me. But, I have nowhere else to be tonight."
She let me kiss her, but drew back after only a moment.
"That makes one of us, Jean-Luc," she said, with a sigh. She broke away from my arms, placing her own cigarette into the tray next to mine. "Tonight is only dinner."
"More dates?" I asked. I was a little wounded, and I think it showed. "More seedy old men?"
"Give me a break, Jean-Luc," she started, smiling kindly and stroking my hand. "You're the only seedy man for me tonight. But you'll lead me astray. Drinks with you leads to a nightcap at sunrise. And I have a big day tomorrow. As you know."
I nodded, and withdrew my gaze. The Four Seasons eluded me for another evening.
"I'll order you a taxi," I offered, collecting my phone from my pocket.
"Will you come to the show?"she asked. I shrugged, and ordered her a taxi.
As I walked through the snow on Smolenskaya, kicking at a pile of it that had been stacked up by the street sweepers in their orange jumpsuits, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and opened up my messages. I didn't like the idea of being without plans of a Tuesday evening, and felt sure that the right offer would be waiting for me if only I was willing to lift my head up over the parapet a little. I wasn't quite ready to go home to Michelle, and indeed couldn't even be sure that she'd be in the apartment if I was. She was increasingly independent these days, as if she was remembering who she was before the months when she'd come to rely on me.
4 unread messages:
FYODOR. Today at 20:41.
At the Mercedes Club with Aleksei and Pavel. Pavel is ordering some girls. More the merrier!
SONYA. Today at 21:12.
I know you said you were busy. But I'd like to see you tonight. It won't be like last night. I understand now. I am sorry for my threats. I didn't mean any of them. It is just me and Mother in my apartment this evening. Please stop by to say hello. Sonya) xx.
MAXIM. Today at 21:48.
Yo bro. Got some new stuff in. You'll like. Hit me up.
FRANCESCA. Today at 21:56.
Thanks for dinner . Had fun. Hopefully see you for lunch tomorrow. Or, if not, at the show. F x.
I sent one message to Nadezhda, one to Camila, and a third to Maxim. Then I ordered myself a cab.
*****
I sat in the corner of the Mercedes Club with a Margarita, listening to Aleksei regale the group with an anecdote about his father's summer house in Yalta. He was proudly boasting about some opposition politician who had released a smear video on YouTube declaring this property, worth eight hundred million roubles and complete with its own Crimean vineyard, was in fact the residence of Vladimir Putin himself, bought with the tax-roubles of the nation's poor. Putin was a family friend, Aleksei proudly announced, and his father had scored some points with the president by deflecting that particular bullet and absorbing the lion's share of the heat.
"Of course, Vladimir has holidayed with us many times down there," Aleksei was saying to anyone who'd listen. "But it's my father's place. Maybe I'll take you, one day…"
The last line was delivered to the young woman draped over his arm. I had arrived too late to get in on the women, and three had arrived on Pavel's instruction to escort Fyodor, Aleksei, and him throughout this cold, dark evening. I didn't mind being left out: Pavel had kept the best of the three for himself, and even she looked rougher than a winter in Kamchatka. Two of them were Siberian (villagers, no less) whilst the other was a Georgian import. They had about sixty years between them and said very little beyond vague affirmations of whatever fell out of their assigned dates' mouths. I sipped at my Margarita and stared across the room at a young woman sitting at the bar. She was Europeanish and seemed interested and so I did my best to distance myself from the reprehensible group I was with without absconding from the table completely.
"You hear about Konstantin?" Fyodor asked, leaning across the table towards me. I had heard about Konstantin. Konstantin, like the four of us, worked for my father's company until very recently, when he'd been stopped by the Russian police with eight grams of cocaine hidden beneath his pocket square. "Becoming a dangerous game, picking up in Moscow."
I nodded along but had vague allusions that it had always been a dangerous game to pick up in Moscow.
"Speaking of which," Pavel began, in his high-pitched Moscovite accent. "Are you holding?"
The three Russian men at the table, speaking in English as a courtesy to me, all looked in my direction in hopeful expectation. I shook my head. I could taste their disappointment. It was a lie, of course. I'd just been to see Maxim, and three grams of raw (or as close as I could find in this black spot of a city) were currently in my back pocket. Well, three grams minus a couple of keys in the back of the Maybach on the way here.
I felt my phone buzz in my pocket and, still half hopeful that Nadezhda was around tonight (Camila had already replied with a negative, owing to visiting friends in St. Petersburg), I reached for it instinctively.
1 unread message:
SONYA. Yesterday at 23:59.
Even if you're not going to come, let me know that you're okay. I'm not sure if I'm going to be, unless I know when I'll see you next(. And at work doesn’t count. I’m waiting for your message xx
"Bad news?" Aleksei asked, sensing the despondency with which I put my phone back into my pocket. He turned to his date and, with a wide grin on his face, continued in English (which she seemingly had little understanding of). "Jean-Luc has Moscow by the balls, and yet he goes about in pity for himself."
The other men at the table laughed, and Aleksei buried his face into his date's neck. She squirmed beneath his touch and, upon locking eyes with me, let her mask slip. She wanted the world to swallow her whole, or to leave with me, or - in essence - to escape the clutches of the man who'd paid for her for the night. Aleksei was welcome to her.
A few moments later, I found myself standing next to the young woman at the bar who'd stolen my gaze away from the party I was with, albeit only momentarily. She smiled as I approached, but - in an aloof affectation that she'd ostensibly tried, tested, and refined over the short span of her adult life - she turned away to stare out of the window as I sat down on the stool next to her.
"What's your name?" I asked, directly.
"A drink gets you my name," she said, her eyes tracing over the optics hanging behind the bar.
"I don't want to buy your name," I said.
"Then you don't want to know it."
A little while later, I left.
*****
I sat in the back of the BMW X-Series, cruising silently and at pace down Tverskaya Ulitsa and towards the north of the city. This was not the direction of my apartment on Rostovskaya Embankment: I had typed in the address without really thinking and ordered the taxi with a dull sense of resignation. I checked my phone, flicking through the unread messages that again had begun to stack up.
5 unread messages:
SONYA. Today at 01:32.
Jean-Luc, I'm not saying I'll hurt myself. Not tonight. I know how much this upsets you. But I don't know what I'll do if I don't at least hear from you?
NADEZHDA. Today at 01:56.
Oh, hi! Tonight I was busy, as you probably guessed n_n but I'm free on Saturday? You can take me to dinner. Nadia) xxx.
FRANCESCA. Today at 02:10.
If we're doing lunch tomorrow, don't worry about me when picking the restaurant. I won't be eating -- on the red carpet tomorrow night! Don't let me down, Jean-Luc… I barely ever get to see you, nowadays. F x.
SONYA. Today at 02:43.
I will try to go to sleep, and hope I wake up tomorrow. I don't know if you care whether I do. I see you've read my messages. You don't have a minute to reply?
SONYA. Today at 02:45.
Good night. I love you xx.
The X-Series pulled up outside of the northern tower block. It looked out over Sokolniki Park and, from the balcony on the thirtieth floor, you could see right out into the distant portions of the park where the elks were said to walk about. I'd never seen one myself, but hiking wasn't exactly one of my hobbies. I was happy to hear that there were elks in the park, even if I'd never seen one and probably never would. The idea of it was quite poetic, but I imagine the reality of housing such beautiful creatures in the middle of this bustling metropolis was actually quite sad. I approached the tower block and typed in 1468.
"Да?" came the elderly, female voice after a few moments of silence.
"Mrs. Dmitrieva…" I began, leaning against the door with my head. It was late, and I was tired. "It's Jean-Luc. I'm sorry to call so late. I'm here to see Sonya."
"А! Хорошо!" she responded, before a buzz heralded the door's opening. "Please, come in, Gespadin Watkins!"
The elevator was tiny, stank of piss, made a lot of noise, and took a lot of time. Eventually, I emerged at floor thirty.
"Mr. Watkins, I'm glad you're here," Mrs. Dmitrieva said, as she opened the apartment door. "I don't know what is wrong with her. She's been crying all evening. Asking about you, of course. I'm glad you're here. Maybe you can settle her down."
I smiled at her, kindly.
"Let's see what we can do," I answered. The old woman led me to her daughter's bedroom and softly knocked upon it. She whispered something in Russian and then pushed it open, before standing aside so that I could enter.
Inside, Sonya was sitting on the edge of her bed in her nightgown and cap. She had been crying, her face red and her eyes bloodshot, and she looked a nervous and awkward thing. I closed the door behind me.
"You're here," she said, uncertain of the truth of it.
"I'm here," I answered. I took off my coat and placed it over the back of a chair. "Now, take off all of your clothes."
четыре.
“Sounds like you’ve been busy,” Michelle said, whilst staring down at the cobbled ground in front of her. She was once again attempting to dig some of the snow from the crevices between the stones, but it had been raining this morning and the powder had turned into a greyish sludge that clung deeply to them. She gave up on the effort and glanced over the Moscow River instead. She was standing near the Pyotr the Great monument: an ugly thing depicting the man himself standing on the bow of his ship. She’d heard that the statue had been offered to a large number of cities around Europe before it had finally ended up here. This fact didn’t surprise her.
“Always am,” Adriennne answered. Her voice crackled thanks to the international phone call that connected the pair, but her French accent and her glib delivery were unmistakable. She sounded like luxury, so close but always unobtainable, yet present. Whenever Michelle found herself caught in the cross-hairs of Adrienne’s conversation, it was very easy to forget the existence of the other twelve million souls crawling around this city. “There’s more tonight. A reading at the university here and then drinks with my French publishers. I don’t know how much more wine I can stomach.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage,” Michelle posited, whilst leaning over the railings that separated her from the river down below.
“I’m sure I will,” Adrienne agreed. She had been away from Moscow for around a month now, having snaked her way around Northern Italy and then into her home country. She was mostly giving readings at universities, it seemed, but there was a book launch in Rome and an awards ceremony in Marseilles to attend also. Thinking about it all only made the cold of Moscow feel more real and more pressing. “You should’ve come, Michelle. You’d have enjoyed yourself. I know, a frightening concept.”
The Dutch woman felt she probably would have enjoyed herself most days. Adrienne was her favorite company, but even this needed to be rationed. She found her intellectually exhausting, and had to approach dialogue with the French woman with great care. She felt that Adrienne was probably smarter than her, which hurt, but she didn’t want this fact to appear too plainly to the other woman, and to those that might see them together. A guard had to be kept up at all times, which both challenged and drained her. She would affect an ease in Adrienne’s company rather than feel one. But she found in Adrienne a shared sense of melancholy about most things in the city of Moscow, something rarely witnessed in the aggressively patriotic Russians who only stopped to consider the sadness of their history on the public holidays assigned for such reflection. Adrienne, though, wore her sadness plainly for all to see, both in the constant passivity of her countenance and in the old network of scars running up her arms. Michelle had lost count of the number of times - even in the short span of time since she’d met her - that she’d laid next to Adrienne, her fingertips tracing over this network of disfigurations; of harsh memories. Doing so was both an empathetic show of solidarity, and an expression of her own dark curiosity.
But she had not gone with Adrienne on her tour of Western Europe. She would’ve had trouble with migration thanks to her illegal registration here, and the writer intended to fly. No amount of stolen and silent afternoons in Lille, Marseille, and Milan in Adrienne’s arms were worth the ordeal of flying.
“I’ll see you when you get back,” Michelle answered, at length. She could hear the sigh on the other end of the line. She didn’t really know what it meant. “This week, you said? Moscow misses you.”
“You mean you miss me,” Adrienne replied, a little sharply. She would always insist that Michelle speak more plainly, which was surprising for a woman who made her living in metaphor. “Moscow doesn’t believe in tears. And yes. This week. I’m not sure on the day yet, but I’ll message you. We’ll go to lunch. Or the ballet. Or something.”
“I’m at the ballet tonight,” Michelle said, absently. Her mind drifted to her engagement with Jean-Luc that evening. It seemed like weeks since they’d been out together, which was a mutually agreeable situation, but she still found that he was capable of being good company if he put his mind to it. And the ballet was one of her favorites amongst the arts. It reminded her of her sister, who spent most of her years as a student in the pit accompanying such performances on her cello. Her sister, Isobel, was about the only member of her family that she could reminisce about in a somewhat fond and warm fashion.
“Lunch, then,” Adrienne concluded. “Look, Michelle, I have to go. My agent wants to discuss some things with me before the reading tonight. They put last night’s on YouTube, you know? The Lille University of Arts and Literature. You might be able to find it, if you wanted to…”
“I’ll look,” Michelle lied. She hated the idea of Adrienne at readings. Sometimes, when they’d lie together in one of their apartments, the French woman would read some of her work to her as she fell asleep. The idea of her up on stage in front of an audience and sharing her innermost thoughts in such a way was an infidelity of the worst kind.
“Okay, Michelle. Au revoir.”
“Au revoir.”
Michelle turned away from the river and walked the short distance to the art gallery that had been chosen for the venue of today’s meeting. The young woman who she had reached out to in lieu of both Sasha (who was still in Tula) and Adrienne’s company was waiting for her there, and sucked delicately at a mentholated cigarette as she did. Her name was Ekaterina, or Katya, and although Michelle had only previously associated with her in the shared company of Sasha, the pair had always got along well enough. This young woman’s amity seemed as good as anyone else’s. Katya wore a white cossack-style hat and a faux-fur coat of the same color over black leggings and boots, and a thick, woolen scarf was wrapped tightly around her neck. She waved at Michelle as the Dutch woman approached, snow once more beginning to fall on the scene. It was still the morning, just about, but clouds were thick and heavy in the sky and natural sunlight had been hard to find all day. Katya flicked her cigarette away as Michelle reached her, as if deciding for the pair of them that it was too cold to wait around on the street.
“You’re not cold?” Katya asked, regarding the thin coat that Michelle had on over her oversized black hoodie and black jeans. She shook her head, but truthfully she was freezing. The other woman let out a laugh. “You can tell you’re not Russian.”
“So everyone keeps reminding me,” Michelle replied as the two of them entered the building. Katya paid their three hundred rouble admission and, after depositing their coats in the cloakroom, they made their way into the central hall of the exhibition. It wasn’t a particularly large gallery, with two short and narrow wings protruding from the main hall and a small second floor which featured mostly photography. The main exhibit was of a Slovak artist who had spent most of his career painting in India and Sri Lanka, and the gallery was housing a large number of quite massive landscapes from the exotic subcontinent. Intertwined with these landscapes, which used rich greens and blues heavily to accentuate the lush landscape over the dull, drab buildings in grey and brown and black, were a series of photographs that the Slovak artist had taken on his travels. Most of them featured poverty-stricken villagers, usually with a young girl highlighted, a sad expression invariably upon her face. The girl was interchangeable; the countenance was not.
“Sasha said you might call,” Katya said as the two of them observed the largest painting in the room, which dominated the back wall of the main exhibition hall and featured the roof of a large, green forest. The dense network of trees was only broken occasionally for a series of tall and incongruous tower blocks which made their roots amongst those of the forest. “I wasn’t so sure. You always seemed withdrawn when we’ve met. Pleasant enough, sure. But it’s a surprise that you’d choose to spend your Wednesday morning with me.”
Michelle shrugged. She was unsure how to react to the appraisal of her social skills.
“But Sasha told me you probably would,” the Russian woman continued. It was quickly apparent that she was unable to exist peacefully at the mercy of elongated silences. “She says you’re not suited to your own company.”
Michelle grimaced at the accusation. This wasn’t strictly true. Even now, when the desire for companionship (no, not companionship… this wasn’t quite right: the desire to not be left alone was closer to the truth) lay most heavily upon her, most of her waking hours would still be spent contently alone. But contact was needed: the city felt remote and isolated, despite the sheer amount of people and activity within it, and she often couldn’t shake the impression that, if she spent too long in only her own company, she might slip off the edge of the earth and be forgotten about completely.
“I think it’s just this city,” Michelle offered as they moved onto a painting of a disused car park on the bank of a fast-flowing river.
“You don’t like it here?” Katya asked, inquisitively. Michelle could feel the question coming, the same one she’d been asked a hundred times before. “Why did you come here in the first place?”
Through repetition she’d found that she was not in possession of a satisfactory answer. Michelle allowed the silence to meander on for a little longer than was comfortable.
“Sasha says you don’t really know why you came here,” Katya continued. She seemed distracted by a photograph of a small girl in a flooded Sri Lankan village that was housed in a frame next to the painting of the car park. “She says you’re just sort of here.”
“It seems you know quite a bit about me,” Michelle replied. “At least as much as Sasha does.”
They arrived at a piece that was modest in size but quite sweeping and vast in its ambition. The background of the image was dominated by a large mountain, singular and monstrous and snow-capped, its foothills adorned by a patchwork of forestry similar to that in the previous painting. The mountain, though, was surrounded on all sides by a deep blue ocean, calm in parts, but troubled and brooding in others. The treachery of the sea ran deep, and the black, foreboding sky seemed to speak a warning. In the foreground of the shot was a small rowing boat, a man and a woman dressed in their evening wear desperately paddling into the oncoming storm, away from the mountain. Michelle wondered what had driven them to this escape, what had prompted them to face the storm head-on. She looked at the mountain, looming and eternal, casting a black shadow over the forest, the sea, and the boat.
“What does it make you feel?” Katya asked her, standing a couple of paces behind and, in that moment, quite forgotten about altogether.
“It makes me feel sad,” Michelle answered, in earnest.
“Then you shouldn’t look at it.”
пять.
Michelle sat in the corner of the rather strange restaurant that Jean-Luc had picked for their pre-performance dinner. It wasn’t strange that Jean-Luc had picked such a place: Michelle had come to expect such a choice thanks to the last year (give or take) in Berlin and now here. Even when he’d expressed a desire to lie low in the suburbs of the German capital (and then for a short time in Frankfurt), he still couldn’t resist his desire to eat out at least three times a week. Now, when no such restrictions (self-imposed, mind you) were placed upon him, he would eat out most evenings, as well as frequently at lunch and sometimes at breakfast, too. Michelle couldn’t quite place the root of this desire, and eventually concluded that it was a combination of his need to be around others (but not to engage with them) and his apathy towards taking care of himself. If he didn’t eat out, he just wouldn’t eat.
Sempre was the name of the place, and the decor was reminiscent of the Amazon rainforest in its lush, dense greenery and the veritable maze that was the restaurant’s layout. When they’d entered, a hostess had walked them around what seemed to Michelle an exaggerated loop before placing them in their corner table, deep in the bowels of the forest. The lighting was very low, and although the general din inside the place was unavoidable it was difficult to make out specific facial features of anyone but those closest to you.
The place was in the central district and the food was good enough, but Michelle sort of resented the fact that this was the sort of establishment Jean-Luc thought she’d enjoy. She had taken him to a few of the dive bars that she frequented when drinking alone and, to a man of the means and the luxurious taste of Jean-Luc, this sort of hipsterish place - with its very narrow take on the alternative, as viewed through the behind-the-times Russian lens - was, to him, exactly the same sort of thing. Or perhaps she was being unfair, and this place was his idea of a compromise. He would never take her for dinner in the place underneath the street on Tverskaya with the washing machine in the corner, just as she would never feel comfortable eating on the seventy-first floor skybar in Moscow City that he’d suggested once. She hoped he could tell the difference between this place and where she’d truly like to be, but she couldn’t pretend to know his mind.
“It’s just for the weekend,” he said, staring down at his plate and pushing the last of his venison around it with his fork. Occasionally, he’d cut off the tiniest slither from the meat and delicately place it between his teeth. He was long past the point of hunger, and was now simply filling in the corners and savouring the last of his meal’s flavours. “There’s an issue in the St. Petersburg office. Margot did tell me all of the details but I won’t bore you with them now. But I’m needed up there.”
Finally, he placed his cutlery back onto his plate and leant back in his chair. He reached for his red wine, a full-bodied and dry red from the south of France, and took a hearty, satisfying sip. Say what you will about his restaurant choices, Jean-Luc always picked a fantastic bottle of wine. Michelle had drunk most of this second bottle, and upon noticing this he clicked his fingers at a nearby waitress, signalling for a third to be brought over.
“It’s just for the weekend,” he repeated, placing his empty glass next to his plate.
“You said that already,” Michelle replied. Just then, they were interrupted by the vibration of Jean-Luc’s phone, emanating with a low rumble from the inside pocket of his jacket. A waitress arrived with another bottle and began to fill his glass as he looked down at the screen.
“I’ve got to take this,” he said, absently. He stood from his chair and walked away from the table, taking a seat at the bar and engaging in what seemed to be a rather one-sided conversation. He gave only cursory replies, and seemed bored by the whole thing, but it was important enough for him to stay on the line. Occasionally he’d rub at his temples or tear at the corners of a serviette. Once, he caught Michelle looking at him, and offered her a weak smile before turning his back to her.
It had been some time since Jean-Luc had brought her on such an outing, which was an arrangement that Michelle was perfectly content with. She had Nastia and Adrienne to rely on for company, and had long stopped needing Jean-Luc outside of merely procedural issues like her visa and invitation letters. In Berlin, it had been quite different. The proximity of that time to what had happened towards the end of her most recent stay in America was too much for her, and in that fragile mindstate she needed someone like Jean-Luc to keep her within the lines. He’d needed her, too. He was running as well, and had his own reasons for needing a respite from America. But, unlike her, he wasn’t quite ready to close off that chapter of his life entirely. That’s where Michelle came in. She was a reminder, his last reminder, of the life he was choosing to shun, and she acted as a muse for him before that decision was made with any finality.
Of course, it wasn’t merely this trade-off that kept Michelle close to Jean-Luc, even now, beyond the time when she really required him. He had lots of money, and contacts, and interesting taste, and his idea of a good time - at its essence, when the luxurious frills were stripped away - wasn’t all too dissimilar from her own. The fact remained, though, that their situation now was very much different to what it was in Berlin. He was working for his father again, and she had a sense that the time would soon come when the pull of America was too much for him.
He returned to a full glass of wine, which he immediately drained and refilled.
“The ballet should be good,” he posited. “It’s a Russian company doing an American adaptation of a Russian book. Mental.”
She knew what the ballet was about. She’d read about it when Jean-Luc had first told her they’d be going. She liked ballet but hated opera. It was an adaptation of Anna Karenina but, as Jean-Luc had already clarified, had been translated into an American setting and was first performed by an American company. Tonight was its debut with the Bolshoi Company. Both Nastia and Adrienne had been very excited about it, and expressed envy that Michelle would be there on opening night. This was for vastly different reasons: Adrienne was interested in the art, whilst Nastia was hypnotised by the exclusivity and prestige associated with the event.
Michelle didn’t respond. She only nodded, and sipped at her wine.
“You know,” Jean-Luc started, leaning forward in his chair. It was as if he was about to start down an avenue upon which he thought he should tread carefully. There was trepidation in the manner in which he attempted tact. “You don’t have to be here.”
He didn’t say these words unkindly, and she didn’t feel like there was any implication. Only curiosity.
“What do you mean?” she asked, reaching for the bottle and filling her own glass.
“Well, it’s obvious that… that you don’t really need me anymore. Not like in Berlin. If you wanted to go back…”
“Go back where?” Michelle interrupted, perhaps a little too harshly. She tempered herself and her tone.
“I don’t know,” Jean-Luc said, shrugging his shoulders and swirling his wine around in his glass. “To the Netherlands… or to France… or America. Wherever you want. You should just know that there’s nothing keeping you here. Not really.”
She thought about his words carefully, and eventually nodded.
“I know,” she answered. The thought of being in any of those places was too much for her. Especially America. She thought about all of those eyes, demanding everything and then more from her, in every city in every state from sea to shining sea. It made her shiver, worse than the isolated and bitter cold of Moscow ever did. “But this is where I want to be.”
*****
“You enjoyed the show?” Sergei was asking her. He had a look on his face that suggested that he’d already concluded that she must have enjoyed the show. “The director really is something, you know? When I heard who was involved, I knew that I just had to play Karenin. Have you read Tolstoy?”
She nodded, and opened her mouth to tell him that she found Tolstoy turgid and preferred Gogol, but before she could get a word out he had started again.
“Tolstoy is one of the greatest gifts that us Russians have given to the world! Of which, of course, there are a great many. But really, I think Tolstoy is the thing we can be most proud of.”
“What do you think he would have thought of the show?” she asked. Sergei beamed at the question, as if he’d already considered this in great detail on the long, winter nights in which he’d engaged in giddy self-reflection.
“He would think it was magnificent!” he declared, with great confidence. He was still wearing his costume, which was modern and non-traditional for ballet. A costume girl pushed between them as he beamed wildly in the Dutch woman’s direction. He stood before her in a full suit (grey with pinstripes), his hands on his hips, and his pelvis thrusted outwards. He had quite forgotten that he wasn’t wearing a leotard and that such a pose didn’t accentuate his bulge. “I feel quite certain of that, Michelle.”
Jean-Luc knew one of the ballerinas performing and, as such, was invited backstage after the show to present her with flowers and tell her what a great job she did. She played the titular role and had, in fairness, been excellent. Michelle was particularly impressed with her legs and the way she danced upon them. She wasn’t much of a critic of ballet but knew when one of the dancers had good legs.
The show itself was a strange one, but Michelle enjoyed it for what it was. She generally preferred traditional ballets to the sort of modern performance that she’d just witnessed. The discordant music used throughout, as well as the repetitive, angular, and coarse movements of a lot of the dancers (some of which purportedly (and deliberately) had been drafted in from disciplines other than ballet), had combined to produce an odd, ominous, and sometimes stifling mood in the theatre. A lot of the piece had been about death, its most direct and obvious appearance coming at the start of the production, when a construction worker’s body plummets to the concrete at a crowded train station. The titular Anna and her soon-to-be lover are both present at the event, and are touched in strange, tragic ways by what they see. Throughout their affair, the deceased construction worker would interject himself in what should’ve been their most romantic, passionate embraces, a sad and sudden reminder of the tragedy that first brought them together. The construction worker, in his ineffectual hard hat and his garish orange jumpsuit, was always between them, bringing them closer together at first before eventually becoming a wedge to drive them apart.
It was the final scenes that touched Michelle most deeply, and particularly the imagery of a child - Anna’s child, with her husband Karenin, from before the start of this sordid and macabre affair - playing with his train set, this intense and sweeping melodrama happening around him and threatening his innocence. The tragic ending of Tolstoy’s work, as Anna throws herself in front of a train to bring the narrative full circle, is only suggested, and not seen. But Anna died at the start of the play, anyway, when the man in the orange jumpsuit landed lifeless at her feet.
“It must be something, working in a place like this,” Michelle said. She looked around herself, and regarded that the back of the stage was far less grand and extravagant than front of house. The first thing that she noticed was how small it was, and right now it was crowded with thirty or forty bodies all debriefing after the performance.
“You get used to it,” Sergei answered, with a shrug. “Sergei was meant for the stage, Michelle! Such surroundings are what I’ve come to expect.”
She couldn’t help but smile at him and his bravado, but was called away from the conversation at that moment by Jean-Luc. He had retrieved his coat and his hat and looked as if he was quite ready to leave.
“You’re not taking your ballerina?” she asked, noting that he was alone.
“Maybe later,” he said, distractedly. “I have somewhere I need to be. I said I’d go to this fashion thing at the Four Seasons.”
“Busy man,” Michelle said, staring back over at Sergei. He was leaning against the wall with his arms folded, his eyes still trained upon her.
“You need some coke?” he asked her, thoughtfully. Jean-Luc was capable of rare bursts of thoughtfulness, on occasion.
“I have some,” she answered. She nodded over at Sergei, and flashed him a smile. “I’m going to see where this goes.”
“What’s he like?” Jean-Luc asked, whilst placing his hat on his head and his arms through the sleeves of his coat.
“He’s a trog,” Michelle answered. “But did you see him dance?”
“Have fun,” Jean-Luc instructed, with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. She watched him leave and wandered back over to her ballet dancer.
шесть.
She stood on the platform of Belorusskaya train station, clutching the straps of her rucksack tightly and waiting for the arrival of the Aeroexpress from Sheremetyevo. She had arrived too early through something resembling excitement, and promptly chain-smoked her way through the half hour that stubbornly sat between her and the arrival of her precious cargo. She kicked at the half-dozen cigarette butts that had accrued around her feet and decided to light another.
When she awoke that morning in the sixteenth-floor apartment of Sergei the Great in the eastern part of the city, her phone was buzzing at her incessantly to announce two missed calls that had arrived during her uneasy sleep in the arms of the ballet dancer. She kicked him off her and climbed out of the bed, and found herself lamenting the acceptance of the cell phone as a gift from Jean-Luc upon arrival in Moscow. It was something she did often, usually when silencing notifications. Later in the day, after making her escape from Sergei's apartment, she learned that these calls had come from Sasha and Adrienne.
When returning them she'd got the domestic one out of the way first, deciding to keep her interaction with her French girl as a treat for afterwards. She was sat on a bench on the corner of Patriarch’s Pond, the morning leaning into the afternoon, when the Russian woman greeted her with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.
"Michelle, Sasha said, and no more.
"Sasha," the Dutch woman responded. There was a beat, not overly long but undeniable, where both women made the realisation that the other was engaging reluctantly. Michelle struggled for a follow-up that wouldn't sound weak. In the face of this knowledge, this mutual apathy, Michelle couldn't shake the sense that the conversation had ended before it had begun. Both had taken from it all they needed to. "How is Tula?"
The asking of this question, in itself, carried weight in the conversation. The fact that the question could be asked reinforced the distance, geographical and otherwise, between them. In the silence that followed, Michelle sensed an unspoken response. You would know if you were here.
"Tula is as it always is," Sasha answered, her delivery dull. "And the ballet?"
"Very modern," Michelle said. Nothing that couldn't be found in the reviews. Her lack of effort spoke to Sasha of Michelle's opinion of her. She wasn't worthy of insight, of the time or thought it would take to offer anything but the most cursory of opinions. "When are you back?"
"The 26th," Sasha replied. "In two days. You can take me for dinner, if you'd like. We should probably talk properly."
"Okay," Michelle offered in a resigned fashion. It was all she had. And then Sasha hung up.
She sat on her bench by Patriarch’s Pond and smoked a cigarette to clear her head before calling Adrienne. As the French woman picked up, Michelle found that she was smiling again.
“Bonjour, Michelle,” the woman said warmly. “You just caught me, I’m about to fly.”
Her counterpart paused in the conversation to hand her passport over, muttering some greetings in French as she did. Michelle waited patiently, watching a family take their first tentative steps onto the frozen surface of the pond.
“I’m landing at Sheremetyevo in… well… in no time at all really. I know it’s all a bit late notice. But I wanted to see father on Christmas. Merry Christmas, by the way.”
“Merry Christmas,” Michelle answered, quite forgetting that tomorrow, to her, was just a day like any other. “You’ll find time for me though, I hope?”
“Of course!” Adrienne answered, breezily. “What are you doing this afternoon?”
“I’ll come meet you at the station.”
And so she was here, on the platform at Belorusskaya and sucking at the end of yet another cigarette. She checked the time on her phone, dismissing a notification of unread messages from Jean-Luc, Maxim, and Sasha before placing it back into her pocket. She was shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot, an involuntary twitch that belied her heightened sense of anxiety. It hadn’t been long since she’d first met Adrienne, and had done so in a museum in the south of the city that Michelle had only gone into to escape a particularly harsh Autumnal rainstorm. Adrienne had heard Michelle talking to the cashier in French and mistook her for a native, but found the fact that she was Dutch even more interesting. I won’t recount the nature of their courtship here, for that is not strictly a part of this story, but it is suffice to say that Adrienne’s frequent trips away from Moscow and the Russian Federation in general had served only to heighten Michelle’s affections for her. These affections bordered on adulation, and - in the days, weeks, or months that they spent apart, in different countries even - Michelle found herself thinking of Adrienne almost as one would a childhood hero.
Michelle always had a sense that most of this was down to how otherly the woman seemed. Everyone in Moscow was the same, really. Even the ones that were different had a limited idea of what that could mean, and instead drifted to a sort of drab centre that Michelle found little interest in. She had affections for the city: its brutalist architecture and biting cold appealed to her soul. But the people in it left a lot to be desired. At first, von Horrowitz wondered if Adrienne reminded her of home. Western Europe was a small place, really, and after spending time in Japan, in the States, and now here in Russia, she was beginning to see the differences between Rotterdam and Paris as superficial. And she had spent a lot of time living in Adrienne’s home-country, too. A few months in the capital and a lot longer in Marseilles, albeit as a student and under all of the restrictions that came with that. But there was something of a kinship between Michelle and Adrienne, and the former appropriated a lot of that to their shared heritage and their conforming cultural experiences.
Over time, though, Michelle began to round this out with another idea. Adrienne and herself came from the same place, and had travelled and seen a lot more of the world than most of the people in the places that they came from (or, indeed, from any place) ever would. But Adrienne had avoided the States for the most part, and Michelle envied her this. Her experiences in America were mostly negative, and lay heavily on her even now, months removed from her last days on that cursed continent. When she looked at Adrienne, she saw what her life could have been, had she not allowed herself to be beaten down by the bastard Uncle Sam and his rotten American Dream.
That’s not to say that Adrienne had not experienced hardships of her own. She was beautiful and rich and intelligent, yes, but tragedy had touched upon her life, too, and she had demons of her own that manifested themselves in dark thoughts and old, closed-over wounds. But that only strengthened the bond that Michelle had drawn between the two of them. She wished they had met earlier. They would have still suffered but they could’ve suffered together, and she imagined that this might have been easier.
As she began to taste the filter of her latest cigarette, the Aeroexpress arrived at the platform. The doors swung open, and a few metres away from her Adrienne stepped down onto the platform. She looked back up into the train as a large and obviously Russian man lifted her case down next to her. She smiled at him brightly. Michelle always noted that it seemed Adrienne had too many teeth for a conventional mouth but, within hers, the number seemed perfect.
A moment later, they stood a metre apart.
“You look sad,” Adrienne said. Michelle thought it was an odd thing to say.
“I’m not.”
*****
They were sitting on a bench somewhere on the lower stretches of Sparrow Hills, the impressive but imposing structure of Moscow State University at their backs and, on the other side of a steep drop punctuated with thick woodland, the Moscow River snaking by in front of them. Beyond that was the Luzhniki and the rest of the city, a network of tower blocks, construction sites, and brightly coloured church domes. There were no stars. She had quite lost track of time but she knew that it was late (or early, depending on your prerogative). Adrienne's hand was underneath her shirt and Michelle was surprised to find it wasn't cold. The French woman gently brushed her fingers along Michelle's protruding pelvic bone, stroking the fracture that she'd carried around since childhood. A host of empty beer bottles were accrued around their feet, and now the pair were engaged in trading a half-empty bottle of vodka. Or half-full, maybe. Adrienne had her head propped up on Michelle's shoulder, the two of them staring off towards the river, her soft and cool breath gently caressing her neck.
The afternoon and evening since they'd met at Belorusskaya Station had flown by quickly. Too quickly, Michelle thought, though she knew that this was always the way. They had eaten first in the food hall on Nikolskaya, with Adrienne working her way through a half-dozen Aperol Spritz and regaling Michelle with tales from her latest tour. To surmise, it had gone quite well, and Adrienne had returned from her trip with heightened motivation and a whole host of new contacts.
We use the word 'returned' carefully in this case, for it is meant only in its most literal and functional sense. Adrienne had returned to Moscow only in the fact that she was here before, left, and now had come back. The reader should not infer from this word choice that Moscow, and specifically Adrienne’s presence there, was a natural state that was being returned to. In fact, Michelle was quite certain that the exact opposite was true, and Moscow was a break in the natural order for Adrienne. She would return to normalcy only upon her exit from the city.
"Cannes was just wonderful," she was saying, just as her next (and fourth) Aperol arrived in the food hall on Nikolskaya. "I met Wes Anderson and Takeshi Kitano and that French one... Jean-Luc something... and the most surprising thing was that they knew of me. Well, except for the French one. But I'm not sure he was very aware of much at all, the poor old thing..."
Michelle was sipping on an uninspiring pilsner and hanging on every word. The place had been decked out in Christmas regalia but it was only Christmas Eve in the minds of the Westerners. The Orthodox Russians would observe the birth of Christ a full twelve days later, which meant you could celebrate it twice or not at all depending on how invested you were.
"Wes expressed an interest in working with me," Adrienne went on, watching a pair of tall and barrel-chested Russian men wander past and towards the bar. "But I've got no time for Hollywood. At least not yet. I've got work of my own, you know?"
"I know," Michelle answered. She didn't really, but she was lost in her: in her deep, brown eyes... in her soft and caramel-coloured skin... in her bright and comforting smile.
After the food hall they went to Michelle's favourite dive bar, hidden away underground beneath Tverskaya Ulitsa. All of the tables were taken and so theyd positioned themselves around the old washing machine in the corner of the room. They drank bottled Russian beer that tasted heavy and generic but did the trick.
"How long will you be here?" Michelle asked as the writer prepared herself a rolled up cigarette. It was a question that had been on her mind since Adrienne arrived, if only because her arrival was invariably accompanied with the knowledge that she would soon be leaving again.
"A few days," she answered, flippantly and non-specifically. She shrugged her shoulders as she licked the edge of her paper. "I'm moving apartment in Paris. I have to be there for that. Too many things that could go missing."
"Will I see you tomorrow?" Michelle asked, her hopefulness plain.
"We're not through with tonight yet," Adrienne answered. "Slow down. But of course, you'll see me tomorrow. I have lunch with father. Turkey and all the trimmings. But I'll keep the evening free. I have a surprise for you.”
Michelle knew very little about her father, other than that he was an Arab from Algeria who had converted from Islam to Christianity to marry a French woman. Adrienne didn’t really have any faith of any kind but liked to call herself culturally Muslim. Michelle wasn’t particularly sure what this meant. He had divorced the French woman but kept her religion, or at least the Christmas part of it. His daughter had followed suit in spite of her supposed loyalty to a competing brand.
"A surprise?" Michelle queried, a single eyebrow lifted in curiosity.
"A surprise," Adrienne repeated, whilst tapping her cigarette against the top of the washing machine to level it off. "It's Christmas, Michelle."
On their bench in Sparrow Hills, Michelle took the bottle from her companion and took a long pull from it. It was cheap stuff, and it roared through her throat before setting a fire in her chest.
"Russian vodka always tastes like deodorant," Adrienne said. She was slurring her words, but Michelle could barely muster any speech at all. She then clarified, "cheap deodorant."
"How do you know what deodorant tastes like?" Michelle asked.
"I'm a writer," Adrienne answered, still stroking the fracture on Michelle's hip bone. "I have a good imagination."
"Will the writer read to me when we get home?" Michelle asked, her heart leaping at the prospect. “Something new.”
"You know, I think I've quite lost the ability to read all together right now. Must be your influence. But maybe in the morning."
The two could hear another pair of voices, Russian and male, on the river-side path below them. They stifled their own conversation until they had passed by.
"You asked me how long I was staying here," Adrienne started, when she was quite sure that they were alone again. "What about you? Are you still without plans?"
Michelle thought about this for a long time, until the effort, coupled with the silence, began to hurt her head.
"That's not a simple question for me to answer," she said, knowing how weak of a response it was. Adrienne let it lie, and the two existed in a comfortable pause for the next handful of minutes.
Somewhat abruptly, Adrienne removed her head from Michelle’s shoulder and her hand from Michelle’s protruding hip bone in order to stand up and walk across the path in front of them. She stepped right up to the edge of the steep drop that led down to the river, but not before stooping to pick up an empty beer bottle from around their feet. She lifted the bottle with one hand, as if she was preparing to throw it, and - with a manufactured sound effect of the projectile whistling through the air - made as if to hurl it towards the river. She didn’t let go of the object, but peered off into the distance and made a soft splashing noise at the imagined point of impact.
“Reckon you could make it?” Adrienne asked, turning back to Michelle. "All the way to the river."
“Probably,” she replied. The French woman held the bottle out to her, and with implied difficulty she peeled herself from the bench and took it from her hand.
“You’ve got to be ready to run,” Michelle instructed, whilst looking sidewards on at her companion. “If I hit somebody…”
“Just don’t hit somebody,” Adrienne suggested, unhelpfully. Michelle nodded in affirmation and, without a run-up, launched the bottle through the air. The pair watched as it turned end-over-end, cutting through the night and disappearing into the darkness, before re-entering their consciousness with a soft and distant splash. Michelle turned to Adrienne with a smile.
“Easy,” she said, whilst bending over to pick up a second bottle. “Your turn.”
“Oh, I’m not a burly wrestler, remember,” Adrienne laughed, whilst shaking her head. “I’m just a delicate writer. Judge me by the power of my words, not by the strength of my arm!”
“This is Russia,” Michelle reminded her, rather obviously. She was still holding the end of the bottle in Adrienne’s direction. “Writers aren’t cowards here.”
With a sigh, Adrienne took the object from the Dutch woman’s hand. She made two practise swings, one without a run-up and one with, and decided that she much preferred the more controlled motion that came without the preceding quickstep. She positioned herself on the lip of the hill and, not exactly inspiring great confidence that she wasn’t about to fall off the edge and hurtle towards the river herself, she flung the bottle over it. Again, the pair watched as the projectile turned end-over-end through the night, before this time smashing violently against the path below them.
Suddenly, a torch stirred into life down by the point of impact, and before long it was turned upon them.
“Осторожно!” came a voice. The pair strained their eyes in its direction and found two politsiya staring right back at them. “Жди там!”
The two officers moved towards a flight of steps that led towards their position, and Adrienne instinctively grabbed Michelle by the arm, making to pull her off in the opposite direction. Michelle struggled loose and recovered the vodka before following at a light run.
A few moments later, they were on the escalator in a nearby metro station, Adrienne giggling uncontrollably as she swayed this way and that. Michelle held onto her so as to keep her from falling, gently pulling her in close to feel her light, warm breathing against her face. It was warm, and the French woman unfastened the buttons on her heavy coat, revealing the black dress that she had on underneath. It was minus twelve out but Adrienne never seemed to be cold.
They emerged onto the platform and found that they were alone, the clock at one end of the station telling them that they were approaching two o’clock and the last service of the night. A wide, knowing smile on her face, Adrienne walked away from Michelle and to the end of the platform, where she backed her shoulders up against the arched brick wall opposite from the tracks.
Michelle stood a pace away from her, and watched on as Adrienne reached down to take the hem of her dress between her thumb and her forefinger, before carefully rolling it up over her thighs, her stomach, and finally her chest. She held it in position just below her chin, her shoulders still pressed against the wall and her boots in front of them, her body angled suggestively - no, this wasn’t a suggestion, it was a command - in Michelle’s direction. Michelle stepped towards her and ran her fingertips across the woman’s stomach. Her body was everything that Michelle’s wasn’t: bronzed and toned and full. When Michelle looked at her she felt life. She was vervour. She brushed against Adrienne's lips softly with her own, her fingers running gently over her abdomen before coming to rest upon her hardened nipple.
“Merry christmas,” Adrienne said, as she let go of her dress and allowed it to hide her body once again.
семь.
When Michelle walked into the apartment at a little after midday, looking like Death warmed up and quite clearly under the weight of a sizable hangover, I couldn’t help but laugh. She was always an anxious little thing, full of neuroses and odd little quirks that I couldn’t even begin to understand. But when she was hungover she wore these anxieties more plainly, and walked around the world (or her corner thereof) like one terrified by every aspect of it. She closed the front door behind her and jumped at the noise it made, before making her way across the apartment without raising the soles of her feet even a milimetre from the ground.
“Good morning,” I said, with some added chirp for my own amusement. I held out a neatly rolled-up five thousand rouble note in her direction. “Merry Christmas, Dreamer.”
“Don’t fucking call me that,” she replied, before snatching the note from my hand. Her fingers smelled of tobacco and genitalia. She addressed the plate of white powder in front of me, upon which two neat lines were racked up next to a larger pile for throughout the day. Let it snow. Michelle picked up the credit card from the coffee table and increased the length of the lines I’d prepared - which were already sizable Christmas specials - by around fifty per cent. She leaned over the plate and huffed one up, before handing the note back to me with her eyes closed.
“I guess you won’t make Christmas lunch?” I asked, a knowing smile on my face.
“Maybe dinner,” she answered, before walking away from me. She was dragging her rucksack along the floor behind her, her head bowed and her shoulders burdened, a modern-day Atlas, buried beneath the weight of her own hangover. As she made it (just) to the bedroom, she said without turning to face me: “Merry Christmas, Jean-Luc.”
After hoovering up my own line, a Christmas gift from me to me, my buzz was somewhat harshed by the sudden vibrations of my phone, alerting me to an unwanted visitor in what had, thus far, been a perfectly serene Christmas Day. The only intruder had been Michelle, and given the sad clown act that she so dutifully put on for me I was more than happy to accept this inclusion into the day. But now it was my father announcing his presence, as indicated by the six letters reading Rupert on the screen of my iPhone. I slid across the thing and, a sense of great reluctance washing over me, lifted the handset to my ear.
“Father,” I said, attempting to affect as light and breezy a tone as I could manage. “Merry Christmas. You’re up early.”
“Quite,” came the reply, after a slow, drawn out exhalation of breath. It resembled a sigh, and I wondered why my father felt the need to express his disappointment at the fact that he had called me. “The Company never sleeps, Jean-Pierre. And it seems the same is true of me, these days. How are things in Moscow?”
“Oh, fine,” I answered, looking out of the window at the thick snow rapidly falling onto the embankment. I opened the door and felt the cold hit me like a double-decker bus. “It’s been snowing non-stop most of the month. But they just plough on regardless, if you’ll excuse the pun.”
“As interesting as Moscow’s meteorological patterns are,” father started, his impatience quite clear in his delivery. “I was speaking specifically about the Company.”
“Of course,” I answered, closing the balcony door again and fumbling around on the side for a cigarette. I could only find Michelle’s Camels, which had a picture of a dead baby on the front surrounded by cigarette ends. I grimaced and turned it over, but the same cautionary tale was on the other side, too. I guessed that was the point. “Generally fine. We won a few of the FIFA legacy contracts, as I’m sure you know. Roads, mainly. Kazan and Rostov and some place called Nizhny Novgorod. Will put a few roubles in the coffers, I’m sure.”
“Yes, I heard,” father answered, any hint of pride that one might expect absent from his voice. I could hear the workings of a fairly busy office in the background, and surmised that, if Rupert Watkins was working on Christmas Day, a lot of the staff would be, too. “Still some details to hash out, though. Gianni will be in St. Petersburg to speak to a lot of the contractors. Far too late, if you ask me. The tournament was six months. Sepp will be there, too. When do you leave?”
“Tomorrow morning,” I said. I knew that father had had a lengthy conversation with Malenkov, one of the vice presidents here, the morning before this one. I felt it likely that he already knew this information, but wished to hear it from my lips so that he could be sure I was aware of the plan. “I’m on the train. My driver picks me up at nine.”
“Okay,” he said. No more.
“How’s mother?” I asked.
“You know,” he began, absently. My asking of the question should’ve made it clear that I didn’t know, but father was always uncharacteristically evasive on this point. “Holding on.” And then, after a long pause: “I should go, Jean-Pierre. There’s a lot to do.”
“Okay,” I said. “Merry Christmas, father.”
“You already said that, Jean-Pierre,” he answered, and then he hung up.
*****
I had gambled that, despite her vague allusions that she might be, Michelle would be otherwise indisposed for the remainder of the day. This assumption was vindicated. I'd half-made plans to meet Francesca after her show a couple of nights prior, and here I was with her at Sixty for after-dinner cocktails. We'd gone to Twins Garden to eat (I'd had the turkey parfait followed by oysters and then a duck linguini, a real medley of flavours, whilst she'd played it safe with a thoroughly unappetizing prawn and avocado salad) and, in high spirits and somewhat giddy with the spirit of Christmas, we'd allowed our vague afternoon plans to roll into impromptu evening plans. Francesca was drunk, though this didn't take much and wasn't necessarily a problem. She grew gradually less vapid with each vodka tonic, and so I ordered her another.
"What are your New Year’s plans?" she asked, whilst absently staring out of the floor-to-ceiling window and over the city. We were on the sixty second floor of one of the City buildings, and occasionally the staff would open the upper half of the windows so you could lean out and touch the sky. Francesca wasn't moved by such ideas and remained seated.
"I'll probably stay here," I answered, sipping at my high-ball and allowing my leg to come to rest against Francesca's beneath the table. "I've heard New Year’s is quite the spectacle here."
"You're not bored of fireworks? At your age?" she asked, her bare and well-sculpted calf gently stroking my own. "Are you still living with that girl? The Dutch one?"
I noticed she wasn't looking at me whilst asking the question.
"I'm still living with Michelle, yes," I answered. Francesca's grimace was involuntary and fleeting. "There's nothing there, though."
"Oh, I know," she answered, with a forced smile. "She's far too complicated for you, Jean-Luc. And besides, it wouldn't really matter if there was. Not whilst you hole up here..."
"Hole up?" I asked, sensing an accusation in her tone.
"You know, some people are saying you're hiding here," she clarified.
"Six months ago, I was off the map completely," I started, a flash of anger, or probably something closer to bitterness, stirring in my stomach. "Everyone knows I'm here. I'd argue I'm doing the exact opposite."
"Argue with them, not with me," she answered, with a shrug. Her tone had become flippant.
I sat for a moment, wondering if I cared what the people back home (whatever that meant, these days) were saying. The fact that I needed to think about this belied the answer, and the amount of time I spent thinking it over suggested I cared quite a lot. Francesca had taken one of her shoes off and was inching up inside my trouser leg with her foot.
"If you're quite done with the character assassination," I said, attempting a warm and affable humour but hinting, against my will, at the sting I'd just felt. "What will you do for New Year’s?"
"Italy, I think," she answered, gracefully accepting my invitation to change the subject. She placed her elbows on the table and leaned towards me as she picked up her drink. "I have some time off. I've been a busy girl lately, but now I have nothing until the middle of January. We have a summer house there. But there's no reason you can't use a summer house in the winter."
She sipped her vodka tonic and looked at me searchingly.
"You could come with me. Unless you like the cold."
She was smiling, but I could tell that she was serious. With each millimetre that her foot crawled up my leg I began to consider the concept with more urgency. Why not? Michelle? Sonya? Michelle wouldn't really care, I didn't doubt, and was quite capable of making plans of her own. Sonya was a problem that I'd been deferring for a while. Maybe this would be the catalyst for the necessary end there, too.
"I have to go to St. Petersburg tomorrow," I said, but my tone was suggestive of this being an issue to be overcome rather than surrendered before. Francesca shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, you take me to St. Petersburg, and then I will take you to Naples," she offered. "I've never been. I can see the Winter Palace whilst you close your deals, or whatever it is that you do."
"Okay," I agreed, with a decisive nod of my head. A fresh drink arrived for Francesca and she discarded her half-finished one. "I leave at nine tomorrow."
"We'll go together," she said, sipping her vodka tonic through a long straw. "My suite is near the station. Or maybe it isn't. I don't really know this city."
An hour later, we were sitting in the back of a Maybach and winding our way towards the north of the city. Francesca was at the Four Seasons, which overlooked Red Square in the heart of Moscow, but I'd told her that I had some things to pick up from a colleague before we retired for the night. She'd acquiesced and promptly fallen asleep on my shoulder. The driver had nodded at me knowingly in the way that Russian men do when acknowledging their brotherhood. I stared out of the window and watched the city drift by.
"Ah, Gespadin Watkins!" Ms. Dmitrieva said over the intercom after I'd typed in the flat number. I looked uneasily over my shoulder at the Maybach and imagined Francesca sleeping soundly on the other side of the blacked out windows. "Пожалуйста, пожалуйста… come in!"
The door buzzed and I yanked it open. In the apartment the old woman was busy sewing badges onto a quilt whilst the news spoke about Crimea. I didn't understand the narration but the images showed the red, blue, and white of Russia flying in Sevastopol, Yalta, and Simferopol, followed by smiling Crimeans that suggested to me that the occupation was going well. The old woman nodded at the TV and said something that she must have known I wouldn't understand. I realised I was lingering and made my way to the smaller of two bedrooms in the apartment. Sonya was lying on her bed in a bathrobe, filing her nails. She looked good.
"You're here," she said, smiling warmly. Internally, I remarked on the amount of our interactions that begun like this, with the element of surprise. "I didn't think I'd see you today. It is Christmas, да? Right time for Merry Christmas?"
"Yes," I answered, taking a seat on the piano stool in the corner of the room, my legs pressed against the foot of her bed.
"Well, Merry Christmas," she said. "С новым годом."
I didn't answer. I leant back onto the piano, not realising the lid was open and eliciting a clumsy D-minor.
"You should practise more," she said. She had stopped looking at me and had returned her attention to her nails.
"Listen," I started, after closing the piano lid. "I have to go away for a while. On business."
"Okay," she answered, whilst rounding out the edge of the nail on her pinky with her file. "When will you be back?"
"I'm not sure I will be," I answered, steeling my resolve. "At least not to here."
She stopped filing her nails and looked at me, but she hadn't stopped smiling.
"Пожалуйста, Jean-Luc," she started, rolling her eyes. "Of course you'll be back."
I narrowed my view and looked at the girl. Her robe had fallen away around her thigh and revealed her white underwear. She made no moves to correct this.
"What do you mean?" I asked, weakly.
"We've been here before," she answered, moving onto her other hand with the deft movements of her nail file. "You always come back."
I stared at her for a little longer, at the tanned skin of her thigh, at the effort she was engaging in for her grooming, at the suggestion of her sexuality in the form of her displaced robe. She wasn't looking at me anymore, and I wondered what could be done to draw her eyes back onto mine. But then I remembered Francesca, and I left the girl's apartment.
In the lobby of the building I called Michelle. The phone rang for a very long time, but just before I intended to hang up she finally answered. She didn't say anything, but I could hear the hectic sounds of a city street in the background.
"Michelle?" I asked. I noticed that the old babushka in the concierge's office was looking at me reproachfully. I flashed her a nod and smile before turning my back on her. "Michelle, are you there?"
After another few seconds, she answered.
"Hello? Who is this? How are you doing this?"
It was her voice, but she sounded absent, almost vacant. The city still roared around her.
"It's Jean-Luc," I answered, looking at my watch. It was creeping past one.
"Jean-Luc?" she asked, confused. "How the fuck..."
She trailed off.
"Listen," I started, pushing onwards, thinking of Francesca. "I'm going away for a while. I won't be back until the new year. But you've got everything you need."
There was a slight pause. Only a moment.
"When can I go?" she asked. But it was little more than a whisper, and no conviction in her tone. "Where can I go?"
"There's money under the - -" I started, but the concierge tapped the perspex pane of her window booth. She was pointing at a sign: НЕ ПЕРЕМЕЩАЙТЕСЬ.. "Listen, I've got to go. I'll message you in the morning. Merry Christmas, Michelle."
She didn't say anything, and I hung up. I offered a dosvedanya in the general direction of the babushka, who was still pointing at her sign.
In the back of the Maybach, Francesca awoke as I opened the door, before lying down on my lap, stretching out, and closing her eyes once again.
"You have everything you need?" she asked. I didn't really know how to answer. I ran my hand across her thigh, foraging beneath her dress to find her hip bone.
"You've got to wake up," I said, the car beginning to cruise again in the direction of Red Square. She bit her bottom lip but kept her eyes closed.
восемь.
She arrived at the nondescript and leather-clad door, an odd entrance-way fashion choice made by the majority of Moscow's citizens, her shoulders hunched forward and the weight of an unrelenting and merciless hangover pressing down on her. It was Christmas Day, she was sure of this much, but she couldn't be certain whether it was the morning or the early afternoon. She took in a deep breath and then opened the first and second front doors, only a centimetre or two of air in-between them. God knows why there were two doors. Moscow, she guessed.
“Good morning,” Jean-Luc said, his delivery obnoxiously chirpy, as she inched across the threshold and into the apartment. Morning, she thought to herself. Mystery solved. “Merry Christmas, Dreamer.”
“Don’t fucking call me that,” Michelle answered, a flash of rage stirring at the memory. It was mellowed by two things: the extra stress that it placed on her hangover, and the neatly rolled five thousand rouble note that Jean-Luc held towards her. She took it and spied the plate in front of him. Nonplussed by the insufficient length and girth of the lines he had prepared for them, she picked up the adjacent credit card and piled more of the cocaine into each of them, lazily sculpting a vague slug-like shape before hoovering up the one on the left.
“I guess you won’t make Christmas lunch?” Jean-Luc asked after polishing off his own.
“Maybe dinner,” she offered, evasive and non-committal. She began the short journey from the lounge to the bedroom, her rucksack dragging along the floor behind her, each step a more difficult and regrettable task than the last. As she made it to the sanctuary of their sleeping quarters, she paused and turned back to the man in the living room. “Merry Christmas, Jean-Luc.”
She collapsed onto the bed and passed out to the muffled sound of Jean-Luc’s phone conversation in the other room, ostensibly with his father. Her sleep was uneasy and dreamless.
*****
She awoke an indeterminable time later to the sound of their doorbell. It wasn't a particularly soft or pleasant doorbell, and with each unnecessary screech Michelle found herself increasingly desperate to answer the call. She pressed a button on the intercom to activate the camera outside her front door, and was immediately relieved and uplifted by the sight of Adrienne staring into the camera, her hands stuffed into her coat pockets and a comfortable smile upon her face. Michelle hurriedly opened the door.
"Looks like I woke you," Adrienne said, as she glided past Michelle and into the apartment. She was looking around, as if trying to find someone. "Jean-Luc isn't in?"
"No," Michelle answered whilst wiping the sleep from her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie. "I think he'll be out all day."
"Shame," Adrienne answered, pulling a disappointed face and then exaggerating her French accent. "He likes me. I remind him of his mother."
"He's at Christmas lunch," Michelle clarified, whilst fumbling around in the fridge for a pair of beers. She opened them with her lighter and left one on the side for Adrienne, taking her own over to the couch. "Or maybe Christmas dinner. I don't know what time it is."
"A little before five," Adrienne revealed, before taking her own beer and positioning herself next to Michelle upon the sofa. "Dinner with father was a drag, but I'm free as a bird for the evening. And I still have your surprise…"
Michelle shifted uncomfortably on the sofa and sipped from her beer. It was too early and she felt too rotten for surprises. Surprises usually meant effort. But she attempted to invigorate herself, for Adrienne's benefit. She wondered if the French woman had slept at all. She still looked fresh, either way, and her eyes possessed a devilish glint as she reached into her purse and produced two bar-like objects.
"Chocolate?" Michelle asked, a vague disappointment in her tone. She took the bar from Adrienne and read the packaging: space_bar: a transcendent taste to unlock your mind. Michelle warmed up when an understanding hit her. "Oh, excellent…"
"I don't know if it's vegan," Adrienne said, opening her own bar and breaking one of the five chunks from the end of it.
"Don't check," Michelle instructed, tearing at the packaging.
*****
Kutuzovsky Prospekt, which was just a short traversal of the Borodinsky Bridge away from Michelle's apartment on Rostovskaya Naberezhnaya, was a fifteen-lane behemoth that was seemingly choked with traffic on a permanent basis. Michelle knew that it was fifteen lanes because she had counted them on several occasions, not quite trusting her memory and invariably remembering the single-lane dirt track in front of her family home in Rotterdam as she verified this fact. Each direction of travel had one bus lane and six for cars, and then a usually-empty emergency lane sat in-between them. Occasionally, a long cavalcade of sleek black cars would roar up this passage, ignoring the impatient and often stationary vehicles in the seven lanes either side.
Michelle didn't quite know how, but on Christmas Day (a Westerner's Christmas, remember) she found herself on a rented ВТБ-bike in the emergency-lane of Kutuzovsky Prospepkt. She remembered eating the two squares of Adrienne’s surprise in the kitchen of her apartment, and overcoming the sudden bout of nausea that had threatened to overwhelm her as they'd hired the two bicycles from the embankment. But how they'd got here, she couldn't guess. The nausea had retreated, and Michelle was left with a sort of fuzzy feeling, her extremities tingling as she cycled next to Adrienne in-between the traffic. Most of the drivers and passengers around her were endeared by her courage, or amused by the novelty, and gave the two women encouraging nods or honks of their horns as they pedalled past at a snail's pace.
The buildings either side of Michelle were somewhat uniform but with tiny variations, the limited ambition of their architects plain in their brutalist, uninspiring designs. But there was a beauty in it, if you looked hard enough. Especially tonight. With the surprise beginning to take its effect, Michelle noticed the contrast between each one more acutely, the subtle differences in colour and contouring becoming more pronounced and more vibrant. The buildings were tall and tonight they seemed taller, and almost arched over her as she craned her neck to see them in their totality.
As they passed by Moscow City the skyscrapers loomed above them in an ominous and foreboding fashion. Michelle and Adrienne both stared up at them as they passed through their implied shadow. The steel seemed cold and hard. The copper BORK-tower leaned over towards them, wanting a better look at the two trespassers going about their business. The most impressive of the collection of buildings was the spiral-shaped showpiece, and right now this structure appeared to be rotating slightly, as if it might be trying to drill into the Earth itself. And behind them all the sky was black and close.
"Don't look at them," Adrienne said, and just then Michelle realised she had stopped pedalling. She pushed onwards, looking directly ahead as the large archway of Park Pobedy came into view. In front of it were arranged innumerable Christmas decorations. Gigantic baubles, a huge Santa on sleigh-back, and a colossal tree came into sharper focus, shimmering beneath the moonlight as the pair continued to cycle westwards and away from the city.
Either side of her, Michelle felt as though she could discern each and every individual brick within the angular, imposing buildings. They were designed into systems of hexagons, their molecules vibrating slightly but noticeably, a mechanical dance underlying what usually seemed inorganic and cold. In each of the many windows the curtains were drawn as one, those inside shutting the night and Michelle out of their homes.
They creeped in-between the bumpers of the vehicles when they reached the park and discarded the bicycles, choosing to go on by foot. They walked across a stone courtyard in the direction of a large column that reached into the sky, a statue of an angel positioned on its top. The moon slid across the black canvas to produce a fitting backdrop for her. Around her, stars danced heel and toe on an uncompromisingly black background. Michelle could never see stars in the city and strained her eyes to check if they were real. Eventually, she concluded that it didn't really matter: they were there and she could see them.
They walked down one of the long, snaking paths that ran through the park, the infrequent greenery seldomly passing by around them, but the overwhelming impression that Michelle - that both of them - ascertained from that place on that night was one of grey concrete and war. Each monument was patriotic, glorifying the heroes of combat and the battles that they had won. They passed by an eternal flame, something common in many Russian cities from Europe out to Japan, that flickered bright and warm in the cold night. Staring at it, Adrienne felt a chill, and pulled her jacket more tightly around her. At the foot of the hill they came to a monument of four soldiers walking hand in hand and having a grand old time. There was a Frenchman, an Englishman, an American, and a Russian, as indicated by their regalia and their general demeanour. The Englishman was sickly thin and pompous, the American stout but bawdy, the Frenchman inconsequential and frivolous. Only the Russian walked with purpose, wearing his strength and pride plainly for all to see.
"Where's the Dutchman?" Adrienne asked, puncturing the silence quite suddenly and unexpectedly. Then, she began to laugh.
She was still laughing as the pair descended the escalator in Park Pobedy Metro Station. It was always noticeably long (the longest in Europe, in fact), but tonight it felt as though it might go on forever. A circular, metallic archway encased them overhead as they descended, and one of the three lanes - the middle one - was out of operation. They had ripped out some of the steps and a Kazakh workman was dangling down in the mechanisms. Michelle felt a sudden sense of dread as they passed by him, which only subsided when Adrienne took her hand.
When they finally emerged onto the platform, Michelle took her bar out of her pocket and bit into another square. Adrienne rolled her eyes. She was still laughing.
"Be careful," she advised. "Make sure you come back."
Michelle shrugged her shoulders, and finished the bar.
When the train arrived, Michelle got on and realised too late that Adrienne hadn't. The French woman was smiling at her through the glass doors as they slid shut between them. Michelle felt pale and became paler still as the train left the station.
…
...... .........
............ Michelle is a naked lump of clay: nameless, shapeless, faceless. A form without form. She waits on a long path: white marble stone unblemished and brilliant in front of her, black quartz cracked and broken and withered behind her. She doesn't move, but the black path behind her becomes longer, whilst the white road ahead dwindles. She arrives at a fork and, again, she waits.
At the end of the path on the left is Adrienne. She is as we know her in this story: full of life and vervour and womanhood. She is naked, and she waits with a smile, a welcoming and inviting smile that promises us adventure and excitement. It promises us life. On the right-hand path is Bell. She is sad and lonely and broken, sitting on the ground with her knees at her own chin, her face hidden as best it can be under the brilliant sun.
In-between the two paths is a tree, small and young but growing directly in front of the naked ball of clay. As it begins to bud, purple flowers sprouting amongst the rich green leaves, we make up our mind, moving towards the left and Adrienne. But as we step out onto this road and the finality of the decision hits us, there is hesitation and discomfort. And the vision of Adrienne senses this, and she withers away, and we watch her turn to dust. The ashes of Adrienne are carried away upon the wind. The tree continues to grow. In the distance, we think that we can hear a dull, mechanical buzzing. It rings out twice and then it disappears.
Bell is crying, and you make up your mind that this is the path. You step towards her, as you feel you must, but are suddenly overcome by a sense of unending pity. No: of shame. You turn away from her, and although you can't see it, you know that your Bell has followed Adrienne into nowhere. The naked ball of clay is Michelle once more, and she hears the same buzz on the wind. A little clearer.
The tree continues to grow, and Michelle steps towards it, running hesitant fingertips along its gnarled branches. The same sound rings out, but this time it seems to be coming from the ground. From beneath her. It rings again, and the woman descends to her hands and knees, rummaging amongst the tree's roots for the source. The buzz has become incessant by the time she finds a chord, which she pulls out of the ground, bit by bit, until at the end she finds a tin can.
With trepidation, she leans, ear-first, towards the object of her discovery. "Michelle?"
She heard the voice clearly and sharply. Recognised it, even, but only in the vaguest of senses. She looked at the tin can mistrustfully, and then continued to pull on the chord, removing more and more of it from the Earth. "Michelle, are you there?"
She stopped and looked about herself, not quite sure where this voice was coming from. “Hello?” she asked, unsure and hesitant to commit. “Who is this? How are you doing this?”
The ground felt wet beneath her feet. She continued to pull at the chord, the field turning into a bog around her as it led her towards the sun. Eventually, she came to a wall that stretched out far and wide on either side of her. She had long since discarded the tin can and now held only the rope in her hand. It disappeared under the wall and she found she couldn’t follow it anymore. “It’s Jean-Luc,” the voice answered, dragging her away from her business with the chord and the wall. She looked up at the sun. It was so red that it was almost purple, and it hurt her eyes the longer she gazed at it. She was sure it had been night not long ago.
“Jean-Luc?” she asked, whilst groping at the wall. She took a step back, looking at the sheer height of the barricade. It seemed to arch and loom over her. “How the fuck...” She couldn’t go over it, and so she resolved to go beneath it. She burrowed into the Earth and found that it was so sodden that it came away easily in her hands. When she’d succeeded in creating a small but workable tunnel to the other side, water flooded it and began to cascade across the ground beneath her. Undeterred, she took a deep breath and plunged beneath the wall. When she emerged on the other side, she was standing in the shallows of a vast sea, the surface shimmering beneath the purple sun. Away in the distance, a mountain loomed, casting a long shadow that reached out expectantly towards her.
“Listen,” the voice - which she had quite forgotten about - said. It was muffled now, less clear and sharp, as if the wind that carried it towards her had given up on its errand. “... away for a while … new year … everything you need.” She took a step towards the mountain but found that the water quickly became too deep for her. She was up to her waist after a pair of steps.
She looked at the mountain, the sun shining upon it, its face glowing red as it reared up into the blue sky. “When can I go?” she asked, of nobody in particular. “Where can I go?”
In front of her was another chord. She picked it up and pulled it towards her, the water soaking through her jeans and causing a shiver. Eventually, a tin can floated towards her on the end of it. She picked it up and looked through the cylindrical lens. Jean-Luc smiled at her on the other end. “There’s money under the - -” he started, before trailing off into silence. He seemed distracted, and his initially warm expression quickly fell away. “Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll message you in the morning. Merry Cheristmas, Michelle.”
He walked away, and she lowered the tin can. The water level was rising, and soon enough she couldn’t touch the floor. As she plunged beneath the surface, she imagined what it would be like to open her mouth and let the water flood into her lungs like it had her tunnel. She opened her eyes and saw a plug on the end of a chain that floated in front of her face. After pulling herself the short distance to the seabed, deeper ever deeper, the sun having abandoned her and a thick darkness surrounding her watery grave, she arrived at the plug and pulled it out. The water swirled around and she found it difficult to keep her eyes open. After the first sharp intake of breath, she sat up to find herself on the platform of a metro station. She couldn’t tell which one. She was disoriented and confused, but pushed herself up to her feet and began to stumble along the platform. As she went, unable to lift her head up to see what was in front of her, she observed a ‘9’ in a grey circle and a ‘7’ in a purple circle, but little more of her suddenly very real environment sunk in beyond that. The nausea was back upon her, and she needed to pause at the end of a platform that she didn’t remember arriving at.
She crouched over and vomited so hard that she coughed, her airwaves filling up with the sick and, for a split moment, giving Michelle the impression that she might just choke to death on it and die here. She spluttered, the vomit threatening to erupt through her ears for lack of a better escape route. Her eyes filled with water. Eventually, she drew in a laboured, refreshing breath, her eyes now closed tightly so as to block out the scene from her memory (but not her imagination). As she stood up to her feet she felt a hand beneath her arm. She looked up at the man who stared back at her: he was huge and Japanese, an ear-to-ear (and uncharacteristic) grin on his face. He began to laugh. It was low and rumbling and made Michelle feel sick again. He led her away and Michelle found herself unable to look anywhere but at her feet so as to keep herself from stumbling. He took her through heavy doors, up short flights of steps, and through hidden passages, the labyrinthine nature of whatever station this was laid bare before her.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked her guide. “I just want to go home.” The Japanese man simply continued to laugh, and took her up another flight of stairs.
Eventually, they arrived at a large set of glass doors. The man let her go to fumble for some keys, and Michelle considered making a run for it. She found, though, that she was only capable of leaning on his shoulder, and waited for him to take her wherever he wanted to take her. When the doors opened the cold air slapped her in the face and disrupted her malaise. She was still being guided, but towards a bench on the sidewalk that looked over a busy thoroughfare. After being sat down by her nameless guide, Michelle turned to watch him walk back into the station. The metro logo was on the back of his black jacket, and the man - bald and stout and quite clearly Russian - let out a low, rumbling laugh as he let himself back through the glass doors.
She still felt sick, but managed to flag down a taxi and mumble the Four Seasons at the driver before passing out.
девять.
As Sasha winced once more, the thudding racket of each of the young Russian's clobbering forearms finding their path into the Ukrainian's head ringing out, Michelle remarked (internally, naturally) that she really should've known better. But what was she to do? She had agreed to take Sasha out this evening, but Elizaveta had been quite insistent on Michelle's attendance at her show. Both had left multiple messages on her phone, along with one from Jean-Luc explaining that he'd gone to St. Petersburg on business and illustrating where he'd left some cash that she didn’t really need. She'd read them all in Red Square that morning after leaving the Four Seasons, lamenting the fact that Adrienne had plans with her father and she couldn't just blow everyone and everything else off.
The French woman would be gone again soon, Michelle didn't doubt, and although her brain was still frazzled from Adrienne's Christmas Day surprise, she was at least capable of a deep sense of regret and disappointment. This dark cloud had followed her around for much of the day, and was still upon her now as she sat next to the Russian girl on the back row of the temporary seating in Mutabor, watching Elizaveta's wrestling show through Sasha's fragile, innocent eyes. Michelle watched on as Sasha lifted her hands in front of her face, the young Russian bull drawing blood from his ageing opponent with the point of his elbow.
Liza - the show’s promoter - had invited Michelle here, she felt sure, to try and stir some feelings of nostalgia within the Dutch woman that hadn't really existed since she'd left America all those months again. She said as much when they'd met for coffee earlier in the week, after all. Perhaps, had Michelle been focusing on the ring, it might have been successful, but the presence of Michelle's guest added a new dimension to the show. It was clear from the opening bell that Sasha had never seen a wrestling match before tonight. Upon further reflection, this should have been obvious to Michelle well beforehand owing to the girl's delicate disposition. She had enjoyed the comedy match that started things off, guffawing merrily at a rotund Siberian wrestler's attempts to hide under the ring. She went so far as to applaud with the rest of the half-full auditorium when he overcame his much larger foe with a rope-assisted schoolboy.
Things went downhill from there. A dull battle between two older, larger Muscovites followed. The audience didn't really know who to cheer for and Sasha had quickly resorted to idly scrolling through her phone over watching the routine contest play out. Next was an old Japanese wrestler who Michelle didn't recognise kicking the shit out of an American kid. The rest of the crowd were eating it up, but it was during this bout that Sasha began to grip onto her seat with her fingernails in discomfort. A bikini contest followed. It was the sort of thing you could still get away with in Russia. In fact, the audience would've been disappointed to go home without one. Sasha tutted frequently and shook her head. Michelle shrugged and watched the contest, and eventually concluded that the wrong girl won. Always the way.
Sasha spent most of the fifth contest in the bathroom but emerged, her make-up renewed and her general aura freshened, in time for the main event. The old Ukrainian man emerged first, wearing his lineage proudly in the form of a blue and yellow cape and wrestling tights in the same colours. The audience jeered as he saluted them and offered high-fives on his way down the ring ramp. His opponent was a young local boy named Fiyero Lermontov, who came out to much fanfare but did his utmost to ignore his supporters. He was about nineteen years old, tanned for a Russian, and looked as though he was cut from granite. Even Sasha was moved by his entrance, adjusting herself in her seat and forgetting she was from Tula when it was announced that this young man was a Muscovite. She cheered along whole-heartedly with the rest of the hometown crowd.
Her hopefulness dissipated when the young man's technical and somewhat brutal style became apparent, culminating in the flurry of forearm strikes and elbow smashes that had the old Ukrainian downed and bleeding onto the mat. Fiyero didn't let up, emboldened by the hometown crowd that applauded each blow. Eventually, overcome by the display of brute force, Sasha stood up and pushed her way to the end of the row before disappearing through an exit. Michelle watched on for a few more seconds until the bell was rung, the referee having seen enough and stopping the bout. In the ring, Fiyero stood to his feet, his obnoxiously patriotic music ringing out and the audience on their feet for his efforts. The Dutch woman followed Sasha to the exit.
Outside, Michelle lit a cigarette and looked up at the full moon. It seemed smaller than it had the night before. Sasha was a few paces ahead of her, pulling her fur coat around her and sucking impatiently at her vape.
"You didn't enjoy the show," Michelle stated, after making the short approach.
"Did you think I would?" Sasha asked. She was looking at the moon.
"I don't know," Michelle answered. "I said I'd go."
Sasha clicked the power button on the side of her vaping device and returned it to her bag. She turned to face Michelle. She didn't look sad.
"I wanted to see you tonight," Sasha began, resolute. "Because I've had some time to think about things. In Tula. This isn't really going to work."
Michelle nodded.
"You're a very different person."
Michelle nodded.
"Different to me, and different to who you were when you got here."
The Russian girl walked away, but halted after only a few paces.
Sasha rounded a corner and disappeared. Michelle didn't think that the use of the word too was strictly necessary.
*****
Adrienne left on the 15:08 Aeroexpress on the twenty seventh of December. Michelle once again stood on the platform of Belorusskaya Station, staring at the train as the French woman organised her belongings by the door. A large Russian man lifted her suitcase onto the carriage and Adrienne offered him a warm, bright spasibo in poor but enthusiastic Russian. And then she turned to face Michelle.
She knew that it would be the last time she would see her, even then. Adrienne was smiling. Michelle was aware that she herself wasn't, but she made no effort to correct this. The French woman offered her a wave, and then disappeared onto the train.
They had met for breakfast that morning, with Michelle already knowing that Adrienne would fly from Moscow that day, but not realising the finality of the situation until well after the French woman's omelette had arrived. They had been discussing Christmas Day. Michelle had told Adrienne where she had gone and what she had seen, at least as well as she could remember it. Adrienne remained evasive on her own experience. Michelle had just finished describing her fellow breakfaster's demise, when she had turned to ash upon the white marble road.
"What do you think it means?" Adrienne asked. It was an obvious question but one that Michelle had asked herself.
"I'm not sure it means anything," Michelle said. Adrienne lifted a triangle of her omelette to her lips.
"It probably means something," she said, before placing it in her mouth. The Dutch woman had ordered only black coffee and sipped at the bitter, lukewarm brew.
"I think…" Michelle started, wary of revealing too much. "I think I turned away from the path that you are on, or at least the way I see you, when I went to America in the first place. And then there's Bell, who was something of a mirror held up to me during my time there... and again, I turned my back on her when I left…"
"You feel like you abandoned her?" Adrienne asked. "But you didn't know me, when you went to America."
"No," Michelle replied, quickly. "It's not about you or Bell. It's about me. I didn't turn away from you or Bell, I turned away from the idea of you, and of her… when I went to America, a large part of me died. This part I see in you, now. It's what draws me in. When I left, and came back to Europe, another part of me began to sleep. This is what I see in Bell every time I turn on a television screen and tune in to the world I turned my back on. I don't know if that part of me died, too. I couldn't see. But I felt it."
Adrienne had been listening carefully, but Michelle could tell from her eyes that she was only half-following.
"I'm glad you felt something," the writer said, warmly. "I wanted you to have something special, before I went away."
"When will you be back?" Michelle asked, perhaps a little too quickly.
Adrienne didn't answer straight away, and only then did Michelle notice the colour had drained from her face.
"You remember Hubert?" she asked. She was still smiling, and holding Michelle’s gaze.
"Of course," Michelle answered, recalling to mind the fat, balding, and rich man that Adrienne had brought to Moscow on her last visit.
"Well, we are marrying," Adrienne said, matter-of-factly. Her delivery was such that Michelle felt there was no room for negotiation. "Next year."
Michelle said nothing.
"We're moving to Toulouse," she added, as she returned to her omelette.
"I could go with you," Michelle offered. She noticed that her voice was weak. Adrienne set down her cutlery and leant towards her. She had her fingers atop Michelle's wrist, and stroked it gently.
"I want to at least make a go of it, you know?" Adrienne said. Michelle didn't really know at all. "Maybe in a few years. He's pretty old."
Adrienne took a seat on the train adjacent to where Michelle stood, watching from the platform. The engine began to warm up, and from inside the carriage the French woman blew her a kiss. The train left the station.
Outside Belorusskaya Station, Michelle kicked at the off-white and dull snow underfoot. December wasn’t even through yet, but already the December snow - the pure, white snow that covers up the old year and crunches underfoot - was beginning to turn. At least by the time spring came around there was a suggestion of green in the form of the flowering trees or renegade patches of grass emerging from the snow. That brought with it the promise of a new year, and all the expectant hopes that came with that. But the January Snow was only a grey sludge that sat atop the Earth. There was no memory of the old year and no dream of the new one.
She emerged from the entrance of the train station and lit a cigarette before turning away from the incessant traffic of the main road. A few streets back she emerged into a playground that was surrounded by high tower blocks. They loomed overhead, but not in the ominous and threatening manner that they had on Kutuzovsky Prospekt on Christmas Day. Here, they were static and inorganic, only acting as a dreary backdrop for Michelle’s gloomy thoughts. She took a seat on the swing set and gently rocked herself back and forth with the heels of her shoes.
There were hundreds, if not thousands, of playgrounds just like this one all around Moscow. They were usually surrounded by a barricade of stone, as if the swing sets and slides sat in the courtyard of a great castle and were to be protected at all costs. Adolescents and young adults made use of the basketball hoops or ping pong tables. Old men drank upon the benches. In the winter, as the snowdrifts gathered into large mounds, children would slide on small triangles of plastic down the short slopes that the road sweepers built up for them. Michelle had found it odd at first, but in time the playgrounds, numbering in the hundreds or thousands and all somewhat similar despite their vast Geographical differences, made perfect sense. The winter was harsh, and the summer could be harsh, too. This was not a city to be alone in, and the creators of these spaces had done all they could in that regard. In this part of the city, their effort amounted to a swing-set, a slide, and a short frame of monkey bars in-between them. Three park benches sat unused and covered in January Snow around its perimeter.
Michelle felt there was something in the similarity between the apartment blocks that almost all of Moscow’s twelve million people lived in. She considered this to be a deliberate attempt at brotherhood. The city was not one to be alone in. That much she felt sure of, and the ubiquitous design of the tower blocks was one of many cheap tricks employed by the city planners to convince its citizens that they weren’t alone. That they were in this together. That any pain, misery, or unhappiness that they might feel was simply part of their shared existence.
Moscow was not particularly unique in this regard. She had spent a few months in the second half of 2018 travelling from Moscow to Vladivostok and then back again, and found many replications of this similar theme dotted across the vast country. When travelling, the taiga forest had provided an almost permanent backdrop, occasionally broken up by distant mountains or wide rivers. The ‘large’ cities that she’d stopped in - Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk - had their own unique quirks but, at their hearts, were small-scale replications of the capital. Kazan might have had its Tartar influence, but it also had its tower-blocks and its centre-piece was a white-stone Kremlin. Novosibirsk was by far the worst offender. It was drab and grey and ugly, lacking the culture of Moscow but perfectly maintaining its dull, nagging defeatism.
Even in Irkutsk, where the wooden buildings at least brought some architectural novelty, and in Ulan-Ude, where the Mongolian and Chinese influences were plainer than anywhere, one still got the impression that they were walking in Moscow’s shadow. Giant Lenin heads still loomed. Marx Ulitisa, Pushkin Ulitsa, Gagarin Ulitsa. One in every city. Repeated red star motifs across a nation that spans half the globe. Even in the villages one sees the same signs, the same suggestion of worldwide brotherhood that has been carefully manufactured and manicured over centuries, not decades. One can’t escape it, no matter how long you stay on the train.
Perhaps it is better for them all to face their harsh, bitter winters together, or at least with the perception that they are together. In St. Petersburg, they have the white nights, where the sun continues to shine around the clock. But the darkness is deep when it comes. The people here have accepted half of the truth, that this place of theirs is not one to be alone in, but they refuse to accept the other half. They pretend their arms are linked, from cradle to grave.
Michelle knew this too. She knew that Moscow could be cold in many ways, perhaps more-so to a foreigner and a critic. She knew that, by definition, she was one who was predisposed to being alone, and that this was not the place to be so. Any attempts to share this alienation with those within, like Sasha, or those without, like Adrienne, were ultimately doomed from the start.
At the far end of the courtyard, a flock of blackbirds all leaped into the air as one, fluttering their wings and traversing the short distance from their corner to a tall, leafless tree. Michelle couldn’t see what had caused the blackbirds’ stir, but she watched as all but one came to rest in formation on the tree, its gnarled branches wafting slightly in the gentle wind. The last of their number continued to fly, through a gap in the wall of tower blocks, and over the river.
Promo history - volume 72. "WEREWOLF!" (December 24th, 2021) Michelle von Horrowitz def. Krash (Warehouse NYE Special II).
MICHELLE von HORROWITZ in [VOLUME SEVENTY TWO] "WEREWOLF!"
DAY I.
"The Town Protector."
"Same time tomorrow, Ms. Montgomery!" Krash said with a spring in his step and a smile on his face. He tipped his olive-coloured flat cap towards the old maiden from the bottom of her garden path, and paused in the conducting of his morning errands to smell her rather marvelous flower patch. Ms. Montgomery's flower patch had been the talk of The Town for as long as Krash could remember, and when he'd agreed to deliver the woman's painkillers, prescribed to her by Dr. Maskell after her third hip operation, he was secretly thrilled to be given the opportunity to smell her lilies each and every morning. The old woman was standing in her doorway, waving the young, affable man off. "Go inside! It's cold out!"
Krash turned away from Ms. Montgomery's door and, with a slight skip, continued about his day. He walked down the road and felt the snow crunch under his feet. He loved the way snow did that. Fresh snow was second only to old leaves, as far as underfoot sensory sensations went. He still had lots to do. He'd promised Mr. Peacock to help him learn the steps to his new dance routine, and then Mr. Truth, the town lawyer, needed help alphabetising his records. Mr. Grayson needed a new chain on his bike and Mr. Parr, the local half-wit, wanted to cosplay as a crime-fighting duo. It was a long day with lots of tasks, but he knew that this was how it was when he'd agreed to look after The Town. The Town needed someone like Krash, pure of heart and clear of mind, and it was his great privilege to ensure that everyone else was able to go about their days happily.
"Good morning, Mr. Golden!" he said, smiling at the well-to-do gentleman, who was on his way to meet Randy, no doubt. Tonight was the finals of The Town's Great Townish Elite Bake-Off Classic, and Mr. Golden had made it all the way to this conclusive stage. He seemed almost startled at the greeting, and only gradually gained recognition when he turned to face the greeter.
"Oh, yes, good morning Krash!" said Mr. Golden, whilst shaking the younger man's hand heartily. "Crisp morning today! Are you coming to the finals tonight? I hear The Town Hall has been decked out for an occasion of special magnificence!"
"I wouldn't miss it for the world, Mr. Golden," Krash answered, beaming from ear to ear. "Good luck tonight! I know you'll do just great..."
Mr. Golden thanked Krash for his kindness, and wished him a good day. It seemed, to Krash at least, that Mr. Golden was just slightly happier after their conversation, which was just about as much as anyone could ask for from any interaction. Pleased with himself, Krash continued on down the road, the snow crunching beneath his feet.
"Good morning, Krash!" said another voice as he passed by.
"Morning, Ms. Rose," Krash answered, chipperly. He began to rummage around in his satchel, hoping to tick another task off his to-do list on this chance meeting. "Oh, I have something for you. I developed your photographs, just like you asked. I took a look, I hope you don't mind. They're very... candid. It's almost as if Ms. Montgomery had no idea you were taking them..."
"Yes, quite!" Ms. Rose said, taking her photographs out of Krash's hands. "That's exactly what I... um... what we were going for. Thanks, Krash! You know, I don't know what The Town would do without you!"
"All in a day's work!" he said, and then on he went. The next building along the road belonged to Ms. von Horrowitz and Mr. Grayson, The Town's Masons, who were sitting out on their front porch in their rocking chairs despite the biting cold.
"Good morning, Krash!" Mr. Grayson said, flashing a smile and a wave in his direction. "Still on for tonight? My calves are itching! I need to get riding again!"
"You betcha!" Krash answered, pointing a pair of finger-guns in Gerald's direction. "I've got some things to do first. Around three sound good?"
"Sounds great!" Mr. Grayson answered, still smiling. Krash continued on down the road and, his heart a little lifted after the brief interaction, Gerald watched him go. "What a guy!"
Michelle von Horrowitz stubbed out her cigarette on the arm of her rocking chair.
"I don't trust him."
"What?!" Gerald exclaimed, his incredulity plain. "Krash is the nicest man in The Town!"
"That's why I don't trust him."
*****
The Town Hall had indeed been decked out for an occasion of special magnificence, as Mr. Golden so rightfully put it. When The Townspeople started to arrive, they were taken aback by the sudden majesty exhibited by their rather humble and old-fashioned Town Hall. Three glass chandeliers had been attached to the ceiling, and many candles lit within their folds, the light from which was refracted by the crystal into all corners of the room. Set up in the center of the room was a long banqueting table, heaps of food of all descriptions in place on silver platters along its length. There was olives and bruschetta and hummus and winter vegetables and bread of a baker’s dozen different varieties and three types of bird and pork and lamb and beef and pasta, pizza, risotto, omelets, sandwiches, and - of course, for they were Krash’s favourite - baked potatoes, fresh out of the oven. The food didn’t really follow much of a theme, as each of the Townspeople were assigned the task of bringing one dish to the meal, but the feast was so plentiful that nobody really seemed to mind the lack of overarching narrative across dinner.
And the ale did flow, too. Randy, the town’s biggest purveyor and consumer of various alcohols, had brought with him four large casks of his special Rockstar Brew, along with six crates of red wine from his vineyard in the country. Of course, he didn’t have much time to enjoy it himself, besides what he managed to sip on the sly whilst he beavered away in the kitchens. For, remember, the reason that they were all assembled in the Town Hall to break bread and sip wine was, of course, the finals of The Town's Great Townish Elite Bake-Off Classic. It had been a long, grueling process, and many within The Town suggested that it had gone on for far too long. The only people who didn’t hold this view were the four lucky souls who had stirred, sieved, and iced their path all the way to the final. On one team was Mr. Golden and Mr. Ramon, and across the kitchen from them were Mr. Grayson and Ms. von Horrowitz.
Just as Mr. Uncle, with his rotund belly (which he had a propensity to slap repeatedly after a hearty meal), finished the last bite that he could possibly force into his tentacled mouth, Mr. Kennedy - The Town’s oldest and most respected citizen - stood up, He commanded such respect within the room and was positioned in such a spot that, when he stood to his feet, a quick hush descended around the table.
“My beloved Townspeople,” he began, his mood jovial and his tone upbeat. “We are, of course, assembled here today for the final of The Town’s Great Townish Elite Bake-Off Classic.”
General cheering amongst the Townspeople, and a warm smile from Mr. Kennedy.
“But, if you may, it has been agreed upon by The Town Elders that, before we get onto the judging of these marvelous cakes…”
He pointed over towards a table at the head of the room, upon which were positioned the two competing desserts. Standing behind each one was a pair of chefs: Randy and Devin on the left, and Gerald and Michelle on the right.
“... we should use this occasion to do something that we should have done a great deal of time ago. Most of us here, if we are honest, are not good friends. Most of us never found the time to get to know each other. But it’s no secret that The Town isn’t really like other towns. A lot of weird stuff happens here.”
“Interdimensional kidnappings!” shouted a voice from the back.
“Twilight Cabals!” came a second.
“Rupert Watkins!” was the third cry. There was a laugh amongst the crowd, but Mr. Kennedy went on.
“Whenever there’s a problem or something weird, though… you were always there to stop it. Or, at least, to offer a smile and a hug. Most of the people here have been helped by you once or twice over the years. Mortality rates are down, and happiness is up! So, The Town offers its thanks. and gives you this…”
From beneath the table, Mr. Kennedy produced a purple umbrella.
“Krash: Town Protector.”
There was applause from the room, and a look of surprise on Krash’s face. He got to his feet and took the umbrella from Mr. Kennedy, opening up the parasol and then closing it again with a countenance of great pride.
“I… I don’t know what to say,” he managed.
“Then say nothing!” Mr. Kennedy responded, slapping him on the back. “Just eat cake!”
And that’s what they did. At the end of it, it was Mr. Ramon and Mr. Golden who emerged victorious in the Bake-Off thanks to their pound cake. It was shaped like a groundhog and was wittily entitled Poundhog Day, and was admittedly delicious but eventually started to repeat on people. It didn’t really matter, though, who had their arms lifted in victory: that night was such a festival of flavour and frivolity that it was one that stayed in the minds of The Townspeople for many years to come, and all for the right reasons. Or, at least, it should have been…
There are 17 people in THE TOWN:
1. Mr. Black, the Town Cynic.
2. Mr. Golden, a Town Elder.
3. Mr. Grayson, a Town Mason.
4. Mr. Kennedy, a Town Elder.
5. Mr. Knox, the Town Workhorse.
6. Krash, the Town Protector.
7. Dr. Maskell, the Town Doctor.
8. Ms. Montgomery, the Town Maiden.
9. Mr. Parr, the Town Half-Wit.
10. Mr. Peacock, the Town Dancer.
11. Mr. Ramon, the Town Crier.
12. Ms. Rose, the Town Watcher.
13. Fr. Sulley, the Town Pastor.
14. Mr. Truth, the Town Lawyer.
15. Mr. Uncle, the Town Cephalopod.
16. Ms. von Horrowitz, a Town Mason.
17. Mr. X, the Town Executioner.
It is now NIGHT
DAY II.
"Murder Most Foul!"
The next morning, The Townspeople were once more assembled in the Town Hall, and another hush had descended upon them. This morning, though, the hush was not one of suspenseful excitement, as it had been on the previous night. No: today, the Town Hall was filled with apprehension, suspicion, and doubt. Word had spread around The Town already, despite the Elders doing their best to keep it under wraps until the meeting. Murder most foul was the news, and everyone was a suspect!
“Multiple lacerations, appearing to come from claws or some other similar appendage,” Dr. Maskell was saying. He was stood behind a slab that housed the dead body of Mr. Golden, the Townspeople gathered around him and listening carefully to every word he uttered. Dr. Maskell was bent down low over the table, his face close to the subject of his speech, as if he was only now investigating the body and coming to these conclusions. Every now and then he’d pause to lick his lips.“Talons, maybe. I won’t rule out talons. But probably claws. Missing right leg, and left arm, suggesting a savage attack. Whatever did this is strong. And then bite marks around the neck, face, chest. A lack of defense wounds, which suggests to me that there wasn’t much time to put up a fight, and that a lot of the disfigurations were inflicted post-mortem.”
“Those on the gates tell me that there was no entrance or exit from The Town at any point since well before the Bake-Off yesterday,” Mr. Kennedy said, looking around at the frightened faces in the room. “And so, from this fact and from the testimony given by Dr. Maskell, I can conclude two things. Conclusion #1: we have a Werewolf on the loose. Conclusion #2: he, or she, is still amongst us.”
The silence in the room intensified. Everyone looked to the person on their left and then to the person on their right, a sense of doubt descending over The Town. Krash’s mustache twitched under the bright lights of the chandeliers.
“This looks like a job for The Buddy Cops!” said Mr. Parr, the local half-wit.
“Not now, Michael,” Krash instructed him.
”Well, I’m not a suspect,” put in Mr. Ramon. “We were best friends! What could I have possibly hoped to have gained from this?”
“Not everything’s about gain,” interjected Ms. Montgomery. “There’s such a thing as a crime of passion, you know.”
“I’m sure you would know,” Mr. Ramon said, pointedly.
“And what is this supposed to mean?” Ms. Montgomery replied.
“If the shoe fits!”
”This is getting us nowhere,” said Mr. Kennedy, attempting to placate the two.“Why don’t we go around the room, and each of us tell The Town precisely what we did yesterday evening after we left the Bake-Off.”
“What the fuck is this, Nazi Germany?!” Mr. Uncle exclaimed. “I don’t have to tell you anything! Fuck the feds!”
“I’d love to stay and talk about this, guys, but I have to go to work,” Mr. Knox said abruptly, getting up and preparing to leave. “I’ll be able to stay longer tomorrow.”
Mr. Knox made his hasty exit, several sets of eyes watching him go.
“Well, that isn’t suspicious at all,” said Ms. von Horrowitz.
“That’s just Knox being Knox,” Mr. Kennedy pointed out. “Does anyone have any concrete evidence, or are we just pissing in the wind here?”
“Well, I think it was probably him,” Father Sulley, the Town Pastor, said as he pointed at a man in the corner. All eyes darted to the sinister and masked figure sitting on a bar stool. He was sipping a whiskey and said nothing, but did look rather suspicious in his black mask and with his altogether brooding aura. “I mean, look at him! He’s wearing a mask! Clearly there’s something to hide. Occam’s Razor, guys! It’s that guy!”
The town looked at the masked Mr. Black for a moment, mulling over the Pastor’s suggestion. Five minutes later, they were out in the street with a noose tied around Mr. Black’s neck.
“Do you have anything to say in your defense?” Mr. Kennedy asked, at the head of a lynch-mob of Townspeople staring up at the gallows. Mr. Black didn’t respond.
“Um, guys, I’m not usually one to stand in the way of such a righteous mob,” Krash began, nervously. He had his purple Town Protector umbrella clutched to his chest. “But don’t you think we should talk about this a little longer? I mean, I’ve known Mr. Black for a long time, and he might be a sort of somber fellow with not much positive to say about, well, about anything at all really… but I’m certain he’s not capable of something like this!”
The Town looked at Krash with narrowed eyes.
“You all gave me this,” he said, holding up his umbrella. “And as your Protector, my voice should mean something here! I say that nobody needs to get hanged today. We have a perfectly good prison cell! Let’s throw Mr. Black in there and talk to him again later. Don’t you think that would be prudent? Why rush to anger?!"
The Townspeople all looked at one another, a little uncertain as to how to proceed. It was Father Sulley who spoke up.
“But… we have to lynch someone. Otherwise the Werewolf always wins.”
Mr. Kennedy nodded in agreement, and a man with a bag over his head - who, thanks to his sheer size, bore a passing resemblance to Labron James - cut the rope. Mr. Black struggled for a few moments, and then went limp. The Townspeople dispersed almost immediately, all except Krash, who stared up at the hanging body of his friend and sighed deeply.
*****
That night, Mr. Grayson and Ms. von Horrowitz sat out on their porch. They gently rocked back and forth on their chairs, Michelle nursing a Heineken and Gerald on his third O.J. of the night. He usually would be more careful than to consume so much sugar right before his bed time, but today had been a rough day. He needed something.
“You know,” he started, puncturing a long and uneasy silence as the pair looked up at the rising moon. “I don’t feel too good about what happened today. In the Town Hall.”
“Me neither,” Michelle agreed, taking a sip from her bottle. She lit a cigarette and continued to gently rock herself in her chair.
“You think it was Mr. Black?” Gerald asked.
“I don’t know,” Michelle answered. “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it was him, but not just him. Either way, I don’t think that will be the last dead body we see Maskell molesting this week.”
“You think so?” Gerald asked, wide-eyed and full of fear.
“Yes, Gerald, I think so,” Michelle answered. “And, if I’m proved right, it’ll be us they turn their pitchforks on next. We need to be ready.”
There are 15 people in THE TOWN:
1. Mr. Black, the Town Cynic. 2. Mr. Golden, a Town Elder. 3. Mr. Grayson, a Town Mason.
4. Mr. Kennedy, a Town Elder.
5. Mr. Knox, the Town Workhorse.
6. Krash, the Town Protector.
7. Dr. Maskell, the Town Doctor.
8. Ms. Montgomery, the Town Maiden.
9. Mr. Parr, the Town Half-Wit.
10. Mr. Peacock, the Town Dancer.
11. Mr. Ramon, the Town Crier.
12. Ms. Rose, the Town Watcher.
13. Fr. Sulley, the Town Pastor.
14. Mr. Truth, the Town Lawyer.
15. Mr. Uncle, the Town Cephalopod.
16. Ms. von Horrowitz, a Town Mason.
17. Mr. X, the Town Executioner.
It is now NIGHT.
DAY III.
"A Classic Case of Revenge."
And, in time, Ms. von Horrowitz would be proved correct on both counts. The next morning the Townspeople were once more gathered in the Town Hall, and once more Dr. Maskell was lowered and sniffing over a fresh cadaver. Today, it was Mr. Ramon who found himself dead and laid out on the slab, and the same sense of mistrust and anger had built amongst those gathered.
”Same injuries as Golden yesterday. Claws, teeth, and brute strength," the Doctor was saying. He paused over an open wound and took in a long, ecstatic breath. The blissful look on his face was almost orgasmic. "Still fresh."
"But we hanged the masked man!" Father Sulley said, in utter confusion and despair. "I felt certain we'd got him."
"Sorry guys, I can't stay," Mr. Knox started, whilst busying himself to leave. "I have a shift but I'll be back later..."
A few shakes of the head accompanied his exit. It was just then that Michelle noticed Mr. Truth, the Town Lawyer, staring at her from across the room. His eyebrow was cocked in accusation, and he exhaled a large plume of smoke from his pipe as he began.
"It hasn't escaped my notice," he said, each set of eyes in the room drawn unto him in turn, such was the respect that his voice commanded. "That our two bodies belong to the victors of The Great Townish Bake-Off Elite Classic."
There were whispers around the room, suggesting that he wasn't the only one to have drawn this association.
"Could this be as simple as a classic case of revenge?" he asked, rather rhetorically.
"Yes, I imagine it is that simple," Father Sulley put in, nodding his head along with the accusation. "Occam's Razor, just like I told you yesterday."
"If I catch your implication," Michelle started, carefully. She felt a lot of eyes on her and was uncomfortable under the spotlight. "Why would I do such a thing after the finals? And you all know me, and know that you would see me coming. If I were to do such a thing, it wouldn't be in secrecy."
"True enough," Mr. Truth said, silencing the mutters amongst the Townspeople. "But I wasn't talking about you, Ms. von Horrowitz."
It took a moment for the realization of his meaning to hit her, assisted by The Town's eyes shifting away from her... and onto Gerald.
"What?!" he asked, frantically looking from his ally to his accusers and then back again. "Me?! No!"
"As Mr. Ramon, God bless his soul, once said," Father Sulley began. "If the shoe fits!"
"Tell us another one, Cinderella!" shouted Ms. Montgomery. "You know, because of the shoe fitting..."
"Justice for Randy!" hollered Ms. Rose.
"Guys, just stop and think for a moment," Gerald was saying a few minutes later, having been led to the gallows and the noose placed around his neck. “I’m the Town Mason, for Christ’s sake!”
“None of us are even really sure what a Mason is,” Father Sulley shot back. “And watch the blasphemy.”
"It's me! Gerald! I'd never do such a thing, not to Randy or, or, or to Devin... or to anyone! You're not seeing things straight!"
"I know he's innocent," Michelle insisted in the general direction of Mr. Kennedy, Father Sulley, and the rest of the Townspeople.
"Let's put him in the cell," Krash remonstrated, standing shoulder to shoulder with Michelle. His mustache was twitching frantically, and against the direction of the wind. "Listen to me! I have an umbrella!"
But neither of them could stop Mr. Kennedy nodding the order at the Town Executioner. He lumbered forward, raised his axe, and cut through the rope. Gerald followed Mr. Black out of The Town, to pop a crowd of angels with the Great Anything Springboard in the Sky.
****
Michelle was sitting at the bar, drinking a Heineken and staring about herself in a somewhat lost and thoroughly despondent manner. She wasn't sure if there were more empty chairs here than usual, or if her mind - struggling under the weight of the murders and the hangings - was simply painting it this way. It didn't really matter. Perception was reality.
The seat that Mr. Ramon almost always occupied, drinking his light beers and smoking his Marlboros, sat empty in symbolic fashion. She wondered how long it would remain so. It was, after all, the best seat in the house.
"I'm sorry about what happened out there," said Krash as he approached. He was shaking his head, affecting empathy towards Michelle and her situation. "This Town... sometimes, you know, I wonder if I should hang up my umbrella and find somewhere else. This Town will drag you down..."
Michelle said nothing. She only stared at his twitching mustache.
"I know exactly how you feel," he continued in shared despondency. "Just yesterday they did the same thing to Mr. Black, remember? We've... we've got to stick together, Ms. von Horrowitz. Everyone needs a hug sometimes."
He took a few dollars from his pocket and placed them on the bar.
"The next one's on me," Krash said. "Look after yourself, Dreamer. If you won't let me look after you."
He smiled and twirled his umbrella, and then turned on his heels. Michelle watched him leave, her eyes narrowing involuntarily.
There are 13 people in THE TOWN:
1. Mr. Black, the Town Cynic. 2. Mr. Golden, a Town Elder. 3. Mr. Grayson, a Town Mason. 4. Mr. Kennedy, a Town Elder.
5. Mr. Knox, the Town Workhorse.
6. Krash, the Town Protector.
7. Dr. Maskell, the Town Doctor.
8. Ms. Montgomery, the Town Maiden.
9. Mr. Parr, the Town Half-Wit.
10. Mr. Peacock, the Town Dancer.
11. Mr. Ramon, the Town Crier. 12. Ms. Rose, the Town Watcher.
13. Fr. Sulley, the Town Pastor.
14. Mr. Truth, the Town Lawyer.
15. Mr. Uncle, the Town Cephalopod.
16. Ms. von Horrowitz, a Town Mason.
17. Mr. X, the Town Executioner.
It is now NIGHT.
DAY IV. "The Ruffling Mustache Belies the Werewolf’s Guilt."
As you may have guessed, this was not the last of the werewolf murders, and the next morning the remaining Townspeople once again found themselves gathered in the Town Hall. Dr. Maskell had his nose pushed up against the mauled gut of a fresh victim, sniffing out for anything untoward amongst the entrails of Ms. Montgomery.
“Looks mostly the same,” Dr. Maskell was saying with a nose full of intestine. He sniffed sharply and deeply. “Smells the same.” He delicately popped his tongue out and rooted around the cavity with it. “Tastes the same.” Maskell stood up from the slab and looked out at the assembled Townspeople. He took out the handkerchief from the pocket of his labcoat and wiped the blood from his hands, as well as from around his mouth. “Yes, I would say that this is almost definitely the same perpetrator.”
There was a communal groan in the Town Hall, the Townspeople at their wit’s end and close to desperation.
“It’s got to be her,” Father Sulley said, pointing an accusing finger in Michelle’s direction.
“What possible reason could I have to do away with the Maiden?” Michelle asked, defensively. “It wasn’t me.”
“Sorry guys, gotta work!” Mr. Knox said, excusing himself from further discussions.
“Well, it has to be one of you,” Mr. Kennedy said, frantically looking from person to person.
“At least one of you,” Father Sulley added.
“You’re excusing yourselves from the hunt?” Mr. Truth asked, his eyebrow cocked in trademark fashion. “Everyone’s a suspect, including you.”
“Surely us Elders are beyond reproach?!” Mr. Kennedy started in an incredulous manner. “I’ve been a respected institution in this Town for more than a decade!”
“Now, now,” Krash started, walking into the centre of the room with his palms raised in an attempt at placation. “We all need to take a deep breath, and remember - friends - that whenever we point a finger in accusation, there are four more, pointing right back at us...”
Father Sulley just so happened to be pointing at Michelle with his index finger, and slowly counted the amount of fingers pointing back in his direction before looking up at the group.
“Checks out,” Father Sulley said.
“If I may, once again, be the voice of reason and compassion here, I would point out that there aren’t just three new dead bodies in our cemetery. There are five. And if we are not careful, you people will make another one before this day is out. Ladies and gentlemen, good people of this wonderful Town, I ask you to allow reason to get the better of your emotion. We should all go home, to our loved ones, if they are still alive, and we should just… be happy.”
After a pause that felt like it would go on forever, Mr. Kennedy let out a deep, heavy sigh.
“Maybe…” he started, looking at the young man clutching his purple umbrella. “Maybe he’s right.”
Just then, another cleared their throat. From the corner, Ms. Rose, the Town Watcher, stepped out of the shadows, clutching an envelope to her chest.
“Excuse me, everyone,” she began, meek and timid and full of trepidation. “It is not usually my place to speak at such important Town meetings. I don’t want to get ideas above my station. But… I’m afraid I must say something. You see… I was over at Ms. Montgomery’s house last night. Well, not at the house... more house-adjacent. You know that patch of bushes just out of reach of the street-lights next to her house? Well, there. And… I think you should see these.”
“I don’t think they really –” Krash began, but before he could finish his sentence Ms. Rose had emptied the contents of her envelope onto the slab. The Townspeople gathered around, looking down at the polaroids scattered over Ms. Montgomery’s body. As one, they gasped.
Moments later, Krash was standing on the gallows, the noose around his neck.
“Please, friends!” he was pleading, tears streaming down his face. He was still clutching his purple umbrella. “I’m the Town Protector! You gave me this! Why would I do such a thing?!”
“We could ask you the same question,” Mr. Kennedy answered, sternly. He seemed about ready to give the order, and allowed his eyes to drift towards the Town Executioner.
“Wait! Wait!” Krash started. Mr. Kennedy stayed his hand, and the man on the gallows took a deep, laboured breath. “Fine! Fine! If you’re going to do it, you’ll at least hear my last confession.”
Father Sulley stepped forward, as if ready to take Krash’s hand.
“No, not you!” Krash snarled at the Pastor. “Fuck you and your book! The things you’ve done in this town?! What you did to Ms. Montgomery before I…”
He trailed off.
“And you,” he said, turning towards Ms. von Horrowitz. “You just stood by yesterday, your friend at the mercy of these mongrels! And where’s Ms. Connelly, eh?! She’s gone! Because you hounded her out of The Town…”
He began to speak more generally, staring over the tops of the heads of the crowd, as if eye contact was becoming too difficult for him.
“Which one of you can say that you haven’t done something just as bad as this?! And not one of you were anywhere near as nice as I was! You would think that would still count for something.”
“Unless you’re going to tell us why,” Mr. Kennedy said. “We’ll have to get on with it…”
“At the start, it was for Mr. Black. We wanted to be together in the Bake-Off. We had such high hopes, such grand designs. But… I ended up playing Cops and Robbers with the half-wit, and that old siren Montgomery got her claws in my Blacky. And we had to watch as those idiot Masons and, even worse, the oafish Town Crier and his self-interested mentor kept on baking their sponges and fondants. Such a lack of ambition. Of cohesion. We were left on the sidelines with partners we didn’t choose, lamenting the ineptitude of others from a distance.”
He paused to take a deep breath, which came out as more of a sigh.
“Mr. Black wanted me to do it and… I can never say no to him. He’s just so dreamy, and mysterious, and enigmatic…”
“Mysterious and enigmatic mean the same thing,” Mr. Uncle shouted from the back of the crowd.
“Whose confession is this?!” Krash shot back, before going on. “Anyway, when you pointed the finger at him, he obviously went down without dropping me in it, too. That’s the sort of guy that my Blacky is. So I had to finish it for him. As for the Maiden? Well, she satisfied certain urges of Mr. Black’s that I’m afraid I never could. Just a matter of biology.”
“So Montgomery was just… jealousy?” Michelle asked.
“The bitch had to go!” Krash snarled, his teeth bared and, for the first time, his true colours showing. “And that dolt Grayson! You’d have been next, Dream-Whore! Mark my words, I'll come for you in your sleep!”
He lunged at her, but the noose tightened around his neck, and he found that he couldn’t reach.
“Your motivations for doing evil things are not as just as you think they are,” Michelle said, plainly. “In fact, they are weak, and full of holes, and they make your acts even worse. That you can’t tell us in a satisfactory manner why you did these things tells me that the reasons are, ultimately, irrelevant. You would have done them anyway, under any guise of false justice.”
Michelle, in place of Mr. Kennedy, nodded at the Executioner. Krash’s neck snapped straight away, and he was left hanging in the wind for thirty days and thirty nights as a message to any Copy-Wolfs that might see his limp, lithe frame.
There are 13 people in THE TOWN:
1. Mr. Black, the Town Cynic. 2. Mr. Golden, a Town Elder. 3. Mr. Grayson, a Town Mason. 4. Mr. Kennedy, a Town Elder.
5. Mr. Knox, the Town Workhorse.
6. Krash, the Werewolf. 7. Dr. Maskell, the Town Doctor.
8. Ms. Montgomery, the Town Maiden. 9. Mr. Parr, the Town Half-Wit.
10. Mr. Peacock, the Town Dancer.
11. Mr. Ramon, the Town Crier. 12. Ms. Rose, the Town Watcher.
13. Fr. Sulley, the Town Pastor.
14. Mr. Truth, the Town Lawyer.
15. Mr. Uncle, the Town Cephalopod.
16. Ms. von Horrowitz, a Town Mason.
17. Mr. X, the Town Executioner.
It is now NIGHT.
EPILOGUE.
"The Werewolf."
Life went on in The Town, and - in time - things began to return to the normalcy they experienced before the murders. That's not to say, of course, that after the Werewolf's execution happiness was a perennial and uninterrupted state for the Townspeople, or that they were entirely free of crime and wrongdoing. This is real life, after all, and not a work of fantasy. People still killed, raped, stole, lied, cheated, and a whole host of other past tense verbs associated with the underbelly of society.
But this evil was a lot more palatable to the Townspeople, if only because it had a name and a face and could be stared down at the moment of confrontation. People feel a lot better about an evil that announces its coming, and can be faced in a manner that the patriarchy would deem like a man. There was reward and pride in such a danger and the overcoming thereof.
But the Werewolf is the dagger hidden in the sleave; the parasite sucking the host's nutrients. He is the old friend that comes to dinner and outstays his welcome, that eats your food and drinks your beer and, if left unchecked, ends up fucking your wife. He is a shadow in the night, a pack of lies, a whispered threat.
There is, of course, no dignity in what the Werewolf does. This dance - this daytime subjugation and this nighttime savagery - is one that elicits only groans from the stalls. The act, in the face of all these dead bodies, has become paper-thin. Translucent. When one looks at the Werewolf, with his fixed and false smile and his empty hugs, one finds it impossible to note the point where he ends and the space around him begins.
Promo history - volume 73. "All-Time Best Friends!" (w/Gerald Grayson)(January 13th, 2022). Michelle von Horrowitz and Gerald Grayson def. Cyrus Truth and Chris Kennedy [Tag Warz - Pool Stage Round One] (Meltdown X).
- ACT TWO -
the GRAYSON & von HORROWITZ connection in ”ALL-TIME BEST FRIENDS!”
As you probably remember, Michelle von Horrowitz spent a few tumultuous days as a reluctant guest on The Octopi (#1), and a further series of interludes occurred in which she exchanged words and ideas (but mostly words) with its captain. She had, however, never been to one of his - his meaning Uncle’s, of course - ill-renowned safehouses, and was in fact quite unaware of their existence until this very moment. You see, Michelle was currently standing in the colossal reception room of one such reclusive location, her eyes perusing the many portraits of JAY! in various costumes and poses on the white marble walls. A spiral staircase was the focal point of the octagonal room, sprouting up from its central spot and climbing further than Michelle's eyes could make out. On each wall was a door, meaning - as I’m sure all you keen fans of geometry have already worked out - there were eight in total (including the one through which she'd entered). She would have been forgiven her confusion, if she was confused: from the outside the structure resembled the small, disused shed at the bottom of the garden in her childhood home. But her confusion was stayed by the knowledge of what kind of a being Uncle was, and what he had already shown he was capable of.
A tall, old, and bald butler in a tuxedo allowed her into the reception room before fastening an elaborate series of locks behind her. Michelle, lamenting how difficult exit and entry seemingly was, was already feeling the need for another cigarette. Waiting was more likely to tickle her addiction than any other activity. Just then, partially subduing this sudden itch, the World's Greatest Podcast Host emerged from one of the other seven doors. He was smiling and dressed in his purple tracksuit.
"You're not wearing your t-shirt," Thomas said, the grin disappearing from his face as he did. Michelle remembered the Cthulhu's Nephews: Meltdown Branch t-shirt that Uncle had presented her with (and that the wizard had made) at the end of their first adventure. "Good thing Harry isn't here. He'd be heartbroken."
"Harry's not here?" Dreamer asked in reply. "I thought you guys did everything together."
"Not everything," West answered. "Cabin fever is still a thing, even for COSMIC HORRORs and wizards and super-interesting podcast hosts. Harry's with Uncle. JAY! needed a second opinion on a spell he wants to put on Jupiter."
"Why does Uncle want to put a spell on Jupiter?" Michelle asked, cocking an eyebrow inquisitively. Thomas just winked in response.
"Come on, GiGi's up here," Thomas said, beginning to walk towards the spiral staircase and beckoning for her to follow.
"Is he with his brother?" Michelle asked. "I'd rather not, if... I'm not hugely enamoured by hospital beds."
"Who is?" Thomas queried, flippantly. Michelle was taking in the portraits of Uncle that continued to line the walls as they climbed past the fifth, sixth, seventh floors. Each storey was simply a path leading from the central staircase to a single, hovering door on the octagonal wall. There were hundreds of the portraits, probably, and each was a variation on a similar theme. "But don't worry, Jay-Gi is sleeping. Fortunate, really. He's been a grump ever since he first woke up. GiGi's in the den."
The den was hidden away on the very top floor of the safe house, and inside was a ping pong table, a bowling alley, a large library, a pool table, a long bar with a variety of beer-pumps and bottles of spirits, a massage table (with a full-time masseuse on-staff), a door to a Turkish hammam, and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Gerald was in the corner, sitting at a green felt table and playing cards with Gator Guy and Quiet.
"You should be practising pool," Michelle suggested, as she took a seat next to Gerald. He had two aces in his hand and, of the five cards in the middle of the table - along with an unsuited two, four, and nine - two more were aces. He had only limped in to the pot so far, and across the table from him Gator Guy was licking his lips. Quiet had folded already and looked unenthused. "You almost ready?"
"Just this hand," GiGi said, not removing his eyes from Gator Guy. Eventually, the reptilian biped pushed a wad of notes into the table and licked his lips again. "You're bluffing."
"Three hundred is my bet, G.G. #2," the reptile said, confidently. Gerald shook his head ruefully.
"Too rich for me," he conceded, throwing his pocket aces into the burn pile. "What did you have?"
"Full house," Gator Guy said, turning his cards over to reveal a nine… and a fifth ace. Michelle found herself wondering how many Quiet had in his hand.
"Damn it," Gerald said, shaking his head. "I had you beat! One of these days, Gator Guy..."
The reptile chuckled to himself as he pulled the pile of money towards him. Gerald stood from the table.
"How much have you lost to him?" Michelle asked, watching the winner count the spoils.
"I couldn't tell you," Gerald answered. "I thought the other one was the shark..."
*****
“So, you want to talk about it?” Michelle asked, taking a sip of her beer. The two had relocated to a coffee shop in a nearby suburb, but Dreamer was relieved to find that the place had some bottles as well. She wasn’t particularly a fan of craft ale, but it was better than nothing.
“About what?” Gerald said, with annoyance in his voice. Michelle regarded him carefully. It was his idea to come for a coffee, after all. She didn’t particularly enjoy his hostility, or feel it was warranted.
“Taking that as a no,” Michelle said, regarding the young man’s obvious and presently untold anguish. He wasn’t usually this sassy. “I mean, I would rather not talk about it, too…”
A silence came about between the two tag partners, during which Michelle realised it had now been over a year since they’d teamed together. In that silence, the sounds and rigours of the cafe were enhanced. The noise from a coffee machine bustling with steam could be heard from the kitchen, ready to be removed from its chains. The ding of the cash register whenever a sale was made seemed louder than usual, and Michelle almost thought it echoed across the room, embellished by the silence between her and Gerald. The wind chimes that sounded when a customer entered the establishment resembled a short melody, but she found it uneven and without tune.
“Why would he say that?” Gerald questioned, looking to be on the verge of tears.
“What did he say?” Michelle asked, inferring - from the level of emotion plain on her partner’s face - that he was talking about his brother.
“He told me I should quit,” Gerald said. For the first time, he looked across the table and straight into her eyes.
“Quit? What? He said that?” she asked, and it became apparent that she was quite suddenly more invested in the topic. Her eyebrows were raised, as if she’d drawn her own conclusions as to Jay’s motives. Gerald thought he could sense worry in her, and wondered whether this stemmed more from the opportunity provided by the forthcoming Tag Warz as opposed to empathy. Michelle would want to win, regardless of what happened with the Bounty. Gerald sensed that she thought this was unfortunate timing for such thoughts.
“Yeah…” was the only response Gerald could offer. He was staring down into his drink. His eyelids looked heavy, as though he hadn’t been sleeping well.
“He probably didn’t mean it,” Michelle said. She knew how weak it sounded. “They’ve got him on all sorts of drugs, I imagine. Probably doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
“He seemed pretty decisive about it. In fact, he screamed it at me,” Gerald said, dully. “Then he had a seizure and we all had to get out. That might be the last thing he ever tells me.”
“Well, you can’t quit,” Michelle said nonchalantly, garnering a look from GG as if to say no shit, Sherlock.
“I’m not going to. It just sucks when your #1 supporter isn’t on your side anymore,” Gerald said.
The silence came once again. Michelle couldn’t piece together the words she thought would help Gerald feel better. Instead, she stood from her seat and joined Gerald on his side of the booth. Gerald was confused as Michelle looked at him and placed her arms around his neck, pulling his head towards her and kissing him softly on the top of it. Almost instantly, with his face buried into her shoulder, Gerald began to quietly sob. Michelle could feel the reverberations from his chest as he tried his best to silence himself.
“Thank you,” Gerald said, finally finding his bearings. His eyes were red, and he was doing his best to look anywhere but directly at her.
“Don’t mention it,” Michelle replied. Something in her delivery suggested that this was meant to be taken quite literally. She went on gazing at Gerald, trying to decipher his despair, looking for a path back to him. She wanted to drag him away from the darkness, but such tall tasks were daunting and Dreamer felt useless in the face of them. Instead, she just drained her beer and placed the empty in front of her. “You ready to go? I’ve got a surprise for you…”
*****
A short time later, Gerald Grayson and Michelle von Horrowitz arrived at another undisclosed location. This time, they stood at the green door of a Raleigh loft apartment.
"This is it?" Gerald asked.
"This is it," Michelle agreed.
"And what is it?" Gerald asked, gesticulating towards the door. "This?"
"It's a gift from Uncle," Michelle clarified, which Gerald thought was not too much of a clarification.
"Well," Gerald said, his eyes wide and his curiosity piqued. "Aren't you going to open it?"
Michelle smiled and retrieved a key from her pocket. She opened the door to reveal a mostly empty room (and the apartment was only a single room, as if it had once been a studio of some kind) but for a large and irregular contraption that was positioned in one of its corners. It looked a little bit like a race car, but it had two seats and no wheels, and the front nose was rounded off to an almost spherical edge. It was made of a translucent material, stronger than glass or perspex, and in the front of the machine Gerald could see what looked like a dormant reactor.
Gerald turned away from the contraption and towards Michelle.
"I still don't know what it is," he said, plainly.
"Read the label," Michelle instructed, still smiling and in the know. "On the back."
Gerald read the two words that were written on its rear, seemingly in tip-ex: TIME MACHINE. He turned back to Michelle, still quite clearly flabbergasted despite the realisation.
"Whoa… Uncle gave you this?" he asked, pointing a finger at the machine. Michelle nodded. "And it works?"
"Oh, it works," Michelle answered.
"You’ve used it?" Gerald exclaimed, his astonishment plain. "Where did you go?"
"Last days of Rome," Michelle said, wistfully. Gerald was in the process of circling the machine, inspecting it, hoping for some clue as to its workings.
"And..." he started, unsure of himself, until intrigue got the better of him. "And he gave it to us? To, like, use?"
"He said it was to help us get the Meltdown Branch set up," she explained.
"Huh,” Gerald said, hesitation clear in his voice. “What else did he say?"
He hopped into one of the two seats and was inspecting the many dials, buttons, and levers on the interface in front of him.
"Well, there are some rules..."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," and then a pause. "There are quite a lot of rules."
"Okay," Gerald said, turning towards her. "Tell me exactly what he said."
...
...
"Make sure you tell him exactly what I said," Uncle instructed whilst pacing in front of the machine. He had his arms behind his back and his chest puffed out, as if he was literally brimming with knowledge, whilst Michelle stood staring at the large device in amazement. "These rules are important. Can't have a repeat of what happened with Price and all those Peacocks last year. Was a disaster. But you'll be responsible, I don't doubt! I'm relying on you, Dreamer..."
"Okay," Michelle answered, running her hand over the otherworldly material from which the thing was wrought. "So, what are the rules?"
"Rule number one!" Uncle declared, holding one finger up. "Try to avoid interaction with anyone you might meet, wherever you go. This could cause a chain reaction of events which alters the present et cetera, et cetera, yada yada yada. I know you might think this comes straight out of the movies, but that's only because Uncle has acted as an advisor to all of the big Hollywood studios in his time. I've worked the lot of 'em, Dreamer! Back to the Future, the Time-Traveller's Wife, Hot Tub Time Machine... all the hits! It's where I first met peripheral Nephew Eric Bana. But that's another story, and one that is long and woeful..."
"You said try to avoid interaction," Michelle started, attempting to get them back on topic. "Sounds vague..."
"That's because it is vague!" Uncle exclaimed, suddenly full of beans once again. "That's where the fun is! The machine is fitted with a D6400 Chiral Alternate Timeline Corrective Device. I know what you're thinking: top of the line! No expense spared for Cthulhu's Nephews: Meltdown Branch! So you can get away with a little of it, here and there, but keep it limited. Essential conversations only for character progression or narrative resolution. And yours, mind you. Not mine, Dreamer! The D6400 Chiral Alternate Timeline Corrective Device should be able to stop the splices breaking out back here in the present, and Thomas or I will be along to recalibrate it every now and then.”
"Okay, got it," Michelle said. "No interactions. Or... just a few. What's next?"
"Rule number two!" Uncle started, holding two fingers up. "Fuel management! Not the sexiest topic, Dreamer, I'll admit... but still important! This thing is powered by chiral crystals, of course. What else?!"
He let out a low, rumbling chuckle, as if he was stating the obvious.
"One kilogram of fuel gets you there and back. Two trips. No more and no less. Don't think that putting more crystals in will get you more jumps. It won't. You'll just get there faster, which is a strange concept for a time machine, I agree. And you're more likely to end up with different parts of you strewn across history. An arm in the Jurassic era. A shoulder at Trafalgar. A colon at the French revolution. That sort of thing."
"Sounds hideous," Michelle said.
"Well, just measure out one kilogram. Tell Gerald that's two point two pounds. Or, better yet, get him using the metric system," Uncle paused in his pacing to hold three fingers up. "Rule number three! You can move in space and in time. I like to call this rule the H.G. Wells is a hack rule. Pretty self-explanatory: date goes here, coordinates go here. But stay on Earth. This isn't a spaceship, for Christ's sake."
He shook his head and chortled again, as if such a ludicrous concept should be greeted by a display of one's incredulity.
"Rule number four!" he said, holding four fingers up. He paused and stared directly at Michelle. He pointed a finger from his free hand at her. "Don't fuck them."
A slight pause.
"I won't," Michelle said, defensively.
"I'm serious, Dreamer!" Uncle declared, wagging a finger in her face. "You should think of the people you see in the past as projections, for observation only. Don't fuck them."
"I'm not going to f--" Michelle started.
"Now, obviously this asks the question," Uncle cut her off. "Could you fuck them? Physically? Sure! Morally? Grey area! But the fact remains that you shouldn't. The D6400 Chiral Alternate Timeline Corrective Device couldn't take it."
"Okay," Michelle said. "Crystal clear."
"Rule number five!" Uncle started, all five fingers of one hand now raised. "The machine is calibrated to drop you off an appropriate amount of time in the future when you return to the present. So, if you jumped to 1985 at midday in 2022, and spent eight hours there, it'd be eight at night when you come back here. You still get older when you're in the past. You'd start to age in jumps back here in the present, otherwise. It'd freak people out. I won't allow it. That one is more of an announcement than a rule, seeing as you can't do anything about it. Just, you know. FYI.
"Rule number --"
...
...
"Wait, how many rules are there?" Gerald asked, his initial interest waning.
"A hundred and six," Michelle said. "You should've seen him counting them on his hands, feet, and tentacles. Well, the first twenty eight..."
"A hundr--" Gerald started, aghast, before stopping himself. "Okay, well, how about this... you just tell me if I'm about to break any of the other hundred and one rules as I'm about to break it, and I won't. Deal?"
"Deal," Michelle answered. After a beat, she took a seat next to Gerald and started pressing buttons on the control panel.
"Where are we going?" Gerald said, starry-eyed.
"Everywhere, Gerald," Michelle answered.
"No," Gerald started, the edges of his mouth twitching. "Everywhen..."
<<<<<
"Okay," Gerald said, doing his best to keep up with Michelle's hurried strides. "So when are we?"
"I told you, it's a surprise," Michelle answered, checking in her pockets that she still had the keys for the machine. She had a habit of losing important things. They'd appeared a short walk from their destination in a quiet corner of a parking lot, out of the way and out of sight. Uncle had calibrated this feature - designed for discretion - into the operating system, Michelle surmised. "And I also told you to stop with the when/where gags. It's not as funny as you think it is."
"Well, you can at least tell me where we are?" Gerald continued. They emerged from the parking lot onto a busy thoroughfare, joining a pack of people that all seemed to be travelling in the same direction.
"Texas," Michelle clarified, whilst getting into the slipstream of a large Texan couple who were blocking out the worst of the oppressive, Southern sun.
"Ah, I get it," Gerald said, ostensibly proud of his detective skills. "That's where Meltdown X is. We're scoping it out. Getting there early."
"A few years early, Gerald…" Michelle hinted, preserving the mystery.
"Well, maybe we're doing a study of the city itself," Gerald mused. "How it's changed over time. How that affects us, as visitors. Sounds artsy fartsy and abstract enough. Where is it? Garland? Have to say, Michelle, with the whole of human history and, I guess, its future laid bare before is, I'm sort of disappointed you chose Garland, a few years ago..."
"Meltdown X is in Garland, yes," Michelle said, perhaps a little sharply, as they turned a corner, the space opening up into a large square. Around him, Gerald was beginning to note closer details of the 'projections' from the past. Many of them, ostensibly wrestling fans, were wearing FWA t-shirts. Gerald recognised many of the names: WOLF, Devin Golden, Ryan Rondo… and, of course, Chris Kennedy and Cyrus Truth. "But we're in Arlington, 2018."
Before the pair, the AT&T stadium reared up, huge and bustling and huge, in front of the purplish twilight sky. A colossal banner, fifty feet tall at least by Gerald's estimation, advertised the supershow that they'd arrived at: BACK IN BUSINESS XIII.
"Lots to learn, Gerald," Michelle said, taking in the scene.
"Oh! This is where Cyrus faces Kennedy, right?" Gerald asked, looking across at Michelle. She was nodding in return, her eyes intent on the two men's Mt. Rushmore-esque faces on the gigantic banner in front of them. "Gotcha."
"Now remember, Gerald, there are rules here," Michelle started, beginning at pace towards the stadium. They were passing a row of shops to their right, Michelle staying close to them to remain in the shade and avoid the sun. Her pale complexion was not meant for this heat. "Uncle was very clear that we should, under no circumstances, engage in --"
"Oh, neat..." Gerald interrupted. Michelle turned to face him, but found that he'd already disappeared into an electronics store. She watched him stride up to the counter and point at an item behind it. "One of those, kind sir!"
"Gerald!" Michelle started, walking towards her partner and grabbing him by the arm. The man behind the counter had already retrieved the item Gerald was pointing at.
"Fine choice!" he said, placing the box on the counter. "Limited edition, as I'm sure you know. And a bargain at $199!"
"Rule number one!" Michelle muttered, whilst glaring at Gerald. He was taking his card out of his wallet and soon enough had entered his pin code into the terminal.
"Relax," Gerald insisted, as they re-emerged from the shop. "This is a GoPro Hero 7 Purple! They only made like a hundred of these! And besides, if that D6400 Chiral Alternate Timeline Corrective Device of JAY!'s is worth as much as he says it is, this'll correct out and I'll never even get that bill. Free swag, Michelle!"
Gerald tore open the box and walked in the direction of the stadium. Michelle lit a cigarette and watched him enthusiastically bound towards the queue, waiting for the moment where he realised he didn't have a ticket.
*****
“Sorry, sorry,” Gerald said as he manoeuvred his way through the crowd, leading the way to two empty seats towards the back of the upper tier. He turned back towards Michelle as they reached their destination. “I don’t know how you did that, but at least we’re in…”
“We should’ve just gone to the rafters,” Michelle responded, lowering herself onto the plastic seat with a keen sense of uncertainty. “These people might come back. Someone might recognise us. Well, me. Surely this is a sell-out.”
“How do you even get to the rafters?” Gerald asked, some popcorn falling from his bucket. With one more deep breath, as if he was soaking in the atmosphere, he sat down next to her as the pair readied themselves for the next match. For the main event.
“Usually there’s a guy who’ll sneak you up there,” Michelle replied. The crowd seemed ready to explode, evidently having just witnessed the North American title match pitting WOLF against Tristan James Galloway. “A rafters guy. I used to hang out up there a bunch back in early 2020. But I sort of abandoned it. Wasn’t worth the hassle of maintaining a relationship with a rafters guy in so many stadiums.”
“But you’ve got one here?” Gerald asked. The people to their left were munching down on some chips and dip, probably regaining their strength to cheer for the next match. Michelle brushed some crumbs off her shoulder, her distaste clear, and shuffled away from them uneasily.
“Not in 2018,” Michelle answered, watching Tristan James Galloway (whoever that was) disappearing through the curtain. “I was in Berlin, or Moscow maybe. But I’m quite resourceful.”
“Shame we missed the WOLF vs. Galloway match,” Gerald said, doing his best to see the ring in its totality above the head of an obnoxiously tall man in front of him.
“Surely you've watched that match?” Michelle retorted.
“Oh yeah, you’re right,” Gerald said, his mood changing suddenly. "I keep forgetting where we are."
He paused for a moment, his eyes lighting up.
"Or…"
"Don't say it."
"When we are…"
Michelle closed her eyes and sighed deeply.
“Wait a minute. You’re right! Hold up, I gotta see something,” Gerald said, standing from his seat. He looked around before focusing on the right side of the stadium.
“Here,” Michelle said, offering him a pair of binoculars from out of her rucksack. “Never leave home without them.”
He was looking for a while, his memory was foggy in that precise moment, but he knew they were there somewhere. Before long, he finally found what he was looking for. You see, back in the day, Gerald wore this gold chain and thought he was the shit. Luckily for him, it paid dividends as the gold chain shined in Gerald’s eyes as he found the exact place where he and Jay sat. Row 42, seats seven and eight.
He lowered the binoculars and closed his eyes to remember that day. He and Jay were talking about how awesome the entire event was. This wasn’t the first time they went to a show together but it was their first Back in Business pay-per-view event, so it was special to Gerald, especially because this is when Gerald decided to work towards getting signed by FWA. When he opened his eyes and re-positioned the binoculars over them, he saw Jay and his past self having a conversation. Shortly after, Jay and Gerald’s past self shared a hug, followed by a high five, followed by a handshake ritual. This was probably the part where Gerald decided he was bound for FWA.
A smile emerged onto Gerald’s face. Soon enough, the opening notes of Bittersweet Symphony were met with rapturous applause from the audience along with the souring of Gerald's countenance. Michelle found it charming that he had a low opinion of the entrant into the arena based entirely on her own tumultuous travails with The Astonishing One. Kennedy walked out onto the stage, posturing and proud, the audience doubling down on their adulation.
"What a peacock," Michelle offered, reaching over and taking a handful of popcorn.
"We could go back another ten years," Gerald said, in-between slurps of his Pepsi. "He'd still have this high an opinion of himself."
As he sauntered towards the ring, Michelle found herself placing this match within the chronology of Kennedy's Back in Business successes. It was difficult to do this with any specificity. 7-0? 8? Before, or after Kaizen? These questions had answers but Michelle found herself unable to conjure them. Of course, the primary reason that Michelle had brought herself and Gerald here was Tag Warz, and their impending engagement with Kennedy and his Back in Business VIII opponent. But Dreamer had other thoughts in her mind, too. This was Cyrus' past, but her own future. She felt sure of that fact. The Verve faded as Kennedy stood in the middle of the ring, staring up the ramp with a look of supreme confidence on his face. Next was the Champion. He walked down the ramp with a sense of gravitas and solemnity, as if his business tonight was the most important thing currently happening on the planet.
"No different," Michelle said. "His tail-feathers are just darker."
The two men, Cyrus Truth and Chris Kennedy, were standing opposite each other in the ring, tens of thousands of fans hot with anticipation, a cauldron of noise surrounding them. The bell chimed.
“The crowd is going bonkers for them! I can’t even imagine what these two are feeling right now,” Gerald said, his eyes full of stars, quite clearly awe-struck by the two men in the ring.
Michelle didn’t respond. As Kennedy and Truth began a wide circle, her eyes were drifting around the faces of those about her in the audience. She was nonplussed by their excitement, and when she returned her gaze to the ring she appeared deeply unimpressed with the men she found within it.
“Yeah, well, of course you can say that. You’re a certified main eventer now. The same can’t be said about me,” Gerald said.
“I’m not sure I agree,” Michelle said, whilst shrugging and taking more popcorn. “Well, I agree with the first part. Just might take a while for you to realise that the second part is bullshit.”
“Well, I’m getting a little impatient. But I hope it’s sooner rather than later,” Gerald said, before looking towards the ring. The crowd roared as Cyrus was sent to the floor via a boot to the face from Kennedy.
“This move to Meltdown -- it’s just what I needed. I wasn’t doing so well on Fallout by myself. I guess that’s why I gravitated towards Uncle and the Nephews. And while I’m very appreciative of them, I feel like I didn’t really accomplish much,” Gerald paused, his eyes fixed on the action in the ring. “I had an opportunity at the World Title with the Fallout Eliminator tournament but I failed at that too, losing to the eventual champion, Randy Ramon. That loss stung, not gonna lie. I thought I had that one.”
“Don’t get so bogged down with it,” Michelle offered as a response. She knew how hollow it sounded, especially coming from her given her penchant for long-running and intrusive vendettas. “You’re remembering that you lost to Ramon, the man who became the champion, no less. A man that just about beat you. What about what you did to Alyster? He’s a champion, too.”
She thought about adding a platitude, like you win some, you lose some, but she wouldn’t have meant it if she had.
“You win some, you lose some, right?” Gerald asked, scoffing. Was she that transparent? “In my case, you lose some and you keep on losing.”
”I’ve no time for this defeatism,” Michelle said. “You remember the win-streak we were on, back when we really got going? This Tag Warz event? It’s our second chance. We were so close to gold the first time. This time will be different. I know that you’re, like, chivalrous and shit, and that respect is an important concept to you, but Cyrus and Kennedy were old men then --” here, she paused to point at the two men exchanging blows on the outside of the ring. “-- and they’re three years older now. You need to remove your head from the past, and stop worrying about the size of their heads on some banner.”
Around the pair, the crowd roared once more as Kennedy was driven through a table.
“Oh shit!” Gerald got up from his seat, excited just like every other fan in attendance. Something about the sight brought a smile to Michelle’s face.
"You see that," Michelle said, nodding towards the big screen. Gerald noted that she hadn't risen from her seat with everyone around them. The cameraman was focussed on a series of small cuts that had opened up on Kennedy's shoulder and upper arm, caused by the shards of the broken table and its metal legs. He was rolling about amongst the debris, causing a chuckle to emerge from Michelle's lips. "He bleeds, just like everyone else. He's not a God, like you and all these idiots seem to think. He's just a man."
The tall man in front of them turned around and stared at her, clearly displeased to have been labelled an idiot. Michelle gazed at him, dully, willing the idiot to say something. He didn’t.
"A man that beat you," Gerald reminded her, after the tall man turned back to face the action. A flash of anger passed over her, and he could see her gripping the edge of her plastic seat. "I just think we need to be aware of what we're facing here."
"I'm aware of what Chris Kennedy is,” Michelle started, somewhat sternly and incredibly assured of herself. "It's a shame nobody else sees through it. With all of the protection and respect afforded to him, none of which has ever been offered to me, of course, he raised his game to a level we haven't seen from him in years to match what I'm doing each and every week. And even then, he only scraped through by the skin of his teeth. How many times do you think he can do that?"
"I wish I shared your confidence…" Gerald put in.
"Look, before Lights Out, Kennedy looked at me with nothing but scorn and derision, as if I were beneath him," Michelle began, retrieving a hip flask from her rucksack. "Deep into our match in Tokyo was the first time he believed, truly believed, that it was possible for him to actually lose. He won't have the same mindset on Meltdown X as he did in the weeks leading up to Lights Out. His streak will be close to mind, and his fear will make him weak."
“It’s not just Kennedy we have to deal with. And honestly? Cyrus kind of scares me,” Gerald revealed. “The only time I’ve come across Cyrus was when he was teaming with Eli Black and we beat them. After the victory, I remember wanting to get out of the ring as soon as possible because I knew what Cyrus was capable of and I didn’t want to be the victim of that.”
Gerald was shaking his head, emphasising how much he didn’t want to deal with Cyrus.
”After being drafted to Fallout, one of the brighter sides - as far as I saw it - was not having to deal with him. But now that I’m on Meltdown and dealing with Cyrus might happen more often, it’s one of the things I dread,” Gerald continued, letting out a shiver, talking about Cyrus as if he was the boogeyman.
“There’s a reason Cyrus is revered as one of the best,” Michelle paused. The crowd began buzzing once more. This time, it was because Kennedy introduced brass knuckles into the match. She noted the obvious contradiction between her line of thinking regarding the respect commanded by Kennedy, and that which Truth enjoyed in her mind. She did nothing to reconcile this contradiction. “But this hero-worship of yours, Gerald. It’s not healthy. Trust me, Alyster Black is twice as terrifying as Cyrus Truth. To be honest, I’m sick of the sight of him by now. Five matches in seven shows, and now another, maybe two more, on this one? Russnow’s low on ideas…”
“I don’t think I’ll ever not worry about Cyrus. But our chemistry should be enough to give Kennedy and Truth a problem,” he paused, stretching out his hands to show just how big of a problem the Grayson and von Horrowitz Connection were. ”A big problem.”
“Hopefully,” Michelle started, with a suggestion of a shrug. Gerald raised an eyebrow, a little concerned by the unsure tone of his partner. “It’s been a year, Gerald. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if the chemistry is still there.”
“You doubt our chemistry? Don’t let me threaten you with some team building exercises,” Gerald said playfully.
She just shrugged again, staring at the ring. Kennedy was hoisted onto Truth’s shoulders in a fireman’s carry, the Exile thinking about ending the match with his finisher.
"That's something to look out for," Michelle said, nodding at the scenario in the ring. She was pointing out the obvious, maybe, and Gerald regarded it as a transparent attempt to draw his mind away from team-building exercises. "A lot of people told me about his will to win. Maskell, Rondo, even his old partner Eli. And he is singular of mind, no doubt. But he reminds me of one of those slave-horses that drag carts filled with fat tourists around New York City."
In the ring, Kennedy was driving his elbow into Truth's temple repeatedly, and eventually was able to grab onto the top rope and drag himself onto the apron. It was a counter she'd utilised herself on more than one occasion recently.
"He's got the blinkers on, and his will to win blinds him to all else. Three times he hit Journey's End on me in our series: twice outside of the ring, and once so close to the edge of it that the ring ropes saved me. His temperament and his will for victory are touted as an asset, but they can be used against him."
“Either way, we know how good they are individually. Their experience alone will count for something. But success as individuals doesn’t necessarily make a good team,” Gerald said.
Michelle simply nodded her head.
“That’s where our advantage. Sure, it’s been a year since we’ve teamed. However, we were on such a run our first go around that we were used to winning. It came naturally, almost. Now, we’ve improved ourselves individually. You’re a former FWA World Champion. You know what it takes to get to the top of the mountain. I’ve gotten more experience under my belt. I look at things much more differently than I did a year ago.”
‘Bittersweet’ chants erupted around Michelle and Gerald, causing the pair to turn their attention towards the ring. There, we see Kennedy deliver the Bittersweet Symphony that puts Cyrus down for the pinfall, giving Kennedy the victory and being crowned the new World Champion. Again. The scene seemed familiar.
It appeared that everyone but Michelle rose to their feet after the bell rang. Gerald cheered and applauded the main event despite the two being his next opponents. He couldn’t help but admire the grandeur that came with main eventing the biggest FWA show of the year. As he applauded, he looked again to the spot where he and Jay sat. He halted his clapping to grope around for the binoculars again, and - after lifting them to his eyes - he just caught the end of their embrace. They were now conversing with one another. Jay pointed towards the ring and Gerald looked towards the spot that Jay was pointing. He knew exactly what was being said. He smiled, knowing that this is the Jay he knew and not the one he encountered earlier that day. Or four years later, depending on how you looked at it. He couldn’t help but look on as his past self replied with a nod of his head and a look of determination. Gerald watched on for as long as he could, hoping the Jay of old would come back. His #1 supporter. His all-time best friend. Moments later, Jay and the Gerald Grayson of 2018 began to make their exit from the arena.
>>>>>
Michelle locked the door to the loft apartment in Raleigh and deposited the keys in her rucksack. She turned away from the door and regarded Gerald, who stood at the top of the stairs with his shoulders hunched slightly forward and a pained, slightly drawn expression upon his face.
“So?” Michelle started, hopefully. She remembered the euphoria that had accompanied her own return to the present after her first trip with Uncle. What a splendid gentleman Caligula had been. “How was it for you?”
“It was…” Gerald trailed off as Michelle came to a halt next to him. He could see the expectation in her countenance. “Educational.”
“Educational?” Michelle repeated, pulling a face that suggested she hadn’t quite hit her target if this was the most appropriate adjective he could muster.
“Was that not what you were going for?” Gerald asked, in earnest.
“Well, yes,” Michelle admitted. “Educational and fun…”
“It was fun,” Gerald accepted, though he cut a despondent figure as he did so.
The two stood in an awkward silence for a moment, positioned at the top of the staircase.
“You want to go for a drink?” Michelle asked. “Talk about it some more?”
“No,” Gerald answered, though Dreamer felt she detected a hint of regret in his refusal. “My flight’s tonight. I should get to the airport. You’re not coming with me?”
“I fly tomorrow,” Michelle said, suddenly arrested by the realisation that she’d be boarding one of man’s greatest insults to God the next day. She shuddered at the thought, suddenly feeling sharp pains in her chest and cramps in her legs. “I’ll go get that drink.”
“Cutting it a bit fine?” Gerald asked. Michelle just shrugged in response. “I’ll see you tomorrow night. Try not to be late.”
With that, he walked down the stairs. Michelle watched him go, wondering what it would take to drag her partner out of his malaise.
*****
In the studio-apartment hidden away in one of Raleigh’s multitudinous lofts, the time machine lay almost entirely dormant. The reactor was off, the screens blank, and the state-of-the-art power switch turned firmly to ‘OFF’.
I say almost entirely dormant for, on the rear of the machine, a small needle flickered discreetly on a gauge so small that one would hardly know it was there, unless they’d listened (which ruled Gerald out) carefully (which ruled Michelle out) to all one hundred and six of Uncle J.J. JAY!’s incredibly important rules.
Below a label that read D6400 Chiral Alternate Timeline Corrective Device Strain Level, a horizontal bar ran from zero to one hundred in increments of twenty five. The quadrant on the right was red, a small arrow beneath the bar labelling the mark at seventy five as the 'danger level'.
A needle flickered just below twenty five, the handful of chiral crystals within the machine that performed this function gently vibrating against one another. If one listened carefully, he or she could hear the distant rattling of the trapped splices slowly being digested by the state-of-the-art device.
Promo history - volume 74. "Przypadek"(January 13th, 2022). Devin Golden def.Michelle von Horrowitz, Cyrus Truth, Krash, and Saint Sulley [Bounty Hunt 24/7 Challenge, FWA World Heavyweight Championship] (FWA: Meltdown X).
- ACT THREE -
MICHELLE von HORROWITZ
in [VOLUME SEVENTY FOUR] "PRZYPADEK."
*****
.ONE.
The sweat clung to her despite the early January cold that blanketed North Carolina. The sun was only a suggestion in the distance as Michelle hurtled around a corner and continued on through the city's main thoroughfare. Her chest was tight. Cardio was never something she particularly enjoyed, a fact only amplified by the ridiculous time of morning in which she found herself dashing through the streets of Raleigh. It was quite against her will and she hadn't even had a cigarette yet. Today was going to be a bad day.
Today was also a big day. The mysterious bounty hunt would go down one and a half thousand kilometres to the west of here that very evening, along with the beginning of Russnow's imaginatively named Tag Warz. Before all that was a flight, which she found herself simultaneously dreading and in danger of missing. A hundred metres or so behind her, a truck let loose with its horn, and Dreamer inferred that she was the target of this outburst. She must have looked ridiculous.
The old woman came out of nowhere. Michelle smashed into her with the force of a Busaiku knee kick, and the pair of them tumbled to the ground. They were on a city square that was separated from Grand Central Station by a wide and currently unoccupied road. Michelle felt a gash on her knee open up, but dragged herself to her feet nonetheless. The old woman was rolling about on her back like an overturned turtle, and Michelle found herself inwardly chastising the stupid fool for not watching where she was going. One of the woman’s apples rolled out of her shopping bag and towards a drain. Michelle turned and stumbled towards the station.
She managed to halt herself before the truck hit her. She remained on the sidewalk whilst it screeched passed and blared its horn again, warning her for her haste. It produced a gust of wind that almost pushed her back to the ground, but she steadied herself and cursed the line of traffic that followed the truck and halted her progress. Eventually, a gap formed, and she threw herself through it and into the station.
She rummaged around in her bag for the ticket she'd collected the day prior (possibly in anticipation of such a rush), but it was trapped between a carton of cigarettes and a bottle of Jameson. She concluded that it was quicker to hop the barricade and hasten towards her platform, which prompted some sturdy North Carolina rail-workers to shout reprimands after her. Her fingers gripped the ticket and pulled it from its lodge as she took the staircase to platform four, three steps at a time. She could see the train. She called out and ran towards it.
Just like she had with the truck, but not with the old woman, she managed to stop herself before thudding face-first into the glass doors that slid shut in front of her.
She mulled over the decision as to what she should do next in a bar a few hundred metres from the station, which she meandered to whilst sucking at a cigarette and letting out heaving bursts of coughing. Twice she had to stop and expel nondescript matter onto the sidewalk for the city's lucky commuters to find a couple of hours later. The sun was more than a suggestion now, but was happily conspiring with the cold to bite at her as she walked with her back to it. She settled into a corner of the aforementioned bar with a bottle of beer, the road to Garland much longer than it had been an evening prior when she'd said goodbye to Gerald.
One should not consider Michelle's location as her approaching this impasse with a flippant attitude. A bar was simply where she felt most comfortable, and where her mind was most clear. Besides, libraries opened later than bars.
As she sipped her Heineken, the day's hangover just beginning to rear its ugly head, the facts of the matter seemed incontrovertible. The next train to the airport was in an hour, by which time her once-daily flight from Raleigh to Dallas would've departed. She hadn't any cash for a taxi, no credit card, and the banks wouldn't be open for hours to cash one of her cheques. Garland was a sixteen hour drive from here with no traffic. If she somehow found a vehicle now, left immediately, didn't stop, and had unbelievable luck, she would arrive just as the show was ending.
Her beer was finished, so she ordered another one.
*****
The television in the bar was showing a local news channel that was reporting on some train crash that had happened near the airport. Michelle was only half-watching, and was otherwise idly engaged in tilting her bottle back and forth with her finger trapped in the top of it. Her view was fogged by a day of drinking to the point where she wouldn't have been able to focus on the screen even if she'd wanted to.
"Hey, change the channel!" a shirtless man, a newcomer to the scene, declared whilst leaning over the bar and attempting to gain the staff’s attention by clicking his fingers. "Nobody's watching this depressing shit anyway. Channel 420. You've got cable, right?"
"I'm watching this depressing shit," an old man replied from down the bar. The shirtless man turned to face him, a momentary silence passing between them. There was no tension. Nothing real, anyway.
"... the crash will go down as the most fatal in state history, with all forty two passengers on board, including the driver and six crew, tragically losing their lives in this morning's incident …"
The shirtless man had his ear angled towards the screen for the climax of the report. The anchor thanked the reporter kindly for her diligence and her poise, and then threw to a commercial for sink unblocker.
"They're done with the doom and gloom, old man," the shirtless one said as he sat back in his stool. He clicked once again with his fingers in the direction of the barmaid. "Channel 420! At least for the commercials. Then we can see who else died today, I promise…"
The old man shrugged his consent and the young woman changed the channel. At that moment, Michelle made two simultaneous realisations;
channel 420, in North Carolina at least, was the home of the WC Network, and;
the shirtless man, who until now had his back turned towards her, had a large purple ‘K’ drawn on his chest and stomach.
On the screen, Gerald's face was menaced by conflicting emotions. Anger, sadness, disappointment, confusion… all conspiring to create an anguished picture of her partner (if, of course, she could still call him that), who paced back and forth in his otherwise unoccupied corner of the ring. There was no championship belt upon his person. She couldn't watch. She went outside for a cigarette.
The phone call to Gerald - made about an hour earlier and with great apprehension - had been difficult, and in hindsight she'd made it far too late in the day. The show was underway by the time she left the bar to find a payphone. She could hear the despair in Gerald’s voice when he answered. He wore his emotions plainly at the best of times, and would've recognised the number as one from his hometown.
"Hello?" he'd started, quite simply. Michelle could hear concern for his brother in his voice, as if one of Uncle's medical team was calling him from a payphone in Raleigh to deliver bad news. "Is everything okay?"
"Gerald," she said. "It's me."
"Michelle?" he asked. There was a pause, in which she felt him piecing together the answer to the question he proceeded to ask anyway. "Where are you?"
"You know where I am," she answered. "I'm still in Raleigh."
"Yes, but… why?" he said, his impatience stewing. "Is everything okay with Jay?"
"As far as I know," she said, dully. "I haven't seen him. I missed my flight."
She could still see the entrance of the bar from where she stood at the payphone. The barmaid had directed her to it easily enough. At this moment, as Gerald breathed - almost seethed - his silent disappointment down the phone at her, she questioned why she hadn’t asked for this direction several hours prior. Back then it seemed a non-point. She wouldn’t be there, either way, and whether or not Gerald knew this seemed quite secondary. Something told Michelle that the young man disagreed.
“Has the show started?” Michelle asked, weakly. She knew that the show had started.
“You know that the show has started,” he answered, his disappointment and impatience beginning to overflow into anger. “Look, Michelle -- I have to go. I’ve already lost one match tonight. Now I need to work out how I’m going to face both Cyrus and Kennedy at the same time, not to mention on my own. I guess we’ll talk about this some other time.”
“Okay, Gerald,” she said.
“You just…” he paused, and sighed. “You just enjoy yourself doing whatever it is you’re doing. Don’t worry about me.”
“Okay, Gerald,” she said. He hung up.
Michelle finished her cigarette and went back into the bar, as she had an hour earlier after finishing her phone call with Gerald. The screen was still showing Meltdown X, but Gerald was no longer anywhere in sight. Instead, three men were assembled in the ring, a microphone in each of their hands and serious, solemn countenances on each of their faces. The volume was off, so their words remained unheard, but she of course knew who they were and what they were doing. The serious, solemn faces belonged to the Exile, the Astonishing One, and the White Wolf. Back at her booth, she found the shirtless man waiting for her. He was positioned across from where she had been seated, as if his presence there was expected and desired and pre-arranged. It was none of these things. He was smiling at her in an idiotic manner, and up close Michelle could see a smattering of chest-hair emerging from the spot where the three lines of his ‘K’ met one another.
“I knew it was you,” the shirtless man declared, triumphantly, a toothy grin still plastered upon his stupid face. Michelle just blinked at him. “I knew it! I can’t wait to tell the others! Well… aren’t you going to sit down?!”
Michelle stared from the shirtless man to the empty seat across from him and then back to the shirtless man. Her two-thirds full Heineken was across from him, and her eyes came to rest on the gently-bubbling liquid within the green bottle. She sighed, and then she shrugged, and then she sat down.
“You know, I was certain that it was a ruse,” the shirtless man said, slurping from his beer and frantically trying to take in the events on the screen and the facial features of his impromptu companion all at once. Michelle kept looking at the half-dozen chest hairs protruding from the ‘K’. “When you didn’t come out with Gerald. Some sort of sneak attack on Krash, I thought. But… I guess not! Here you are!”
Michelle didn’t say anything. She sipped her Heineken.
“Won’t your teammate be missing you?” he asked, Krash and Chris Kennedy coming to a tense stand-off in the middle of the ring. She remembered the two’s match at last year’s Back in Business, and the suggestion of her own date with Kennedy at the next one. The thought of it pained her. Everything felt uncertain now.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Michelle said, finally breaking her silence. She nodded at the ‘K’ on the man’s chest. “Won’t it just say RASH now? Appropriate, maybe, but still…”
“Missed my flight,” the shirtless man said, ruefully. Makes two of us, Michelle thought. She wondered if, perhaps, there were a million other hidden similarities between her and this nameless man… if she was destined to meet him… if this chance meeting was destiny manifesting itself. She decided not to find out. “Someone else will stand in for me. Meltdown tickets are almost as easy to sell as Fallout tickets. The group’s down sixty per cent on sex appeal without me, but they’ll make do…”
Michelle took another swig from her bottle, the weight of it decreasing to the point where it wasn’t much more than the empty. She considered moving on. To another table? To another bar? To another city? All-the-while, she watched the hairs grow at a hideously slow rate from the purple ‘K’ on the shirtless man’s chest.
“Can’t say I blame you,” he said, just as Krash and Kennedy began to trade blows in the middle of the ring. He was duking alongside his hero, living and breathing every moment of the action from afar. “Krash is going to be World Heavyweight Champion for-fucking-ever, baby! Can’t stand in the way of the wheels of progress!”
She could see the reflection of the television in the young man’s sky blue pupils, which sparkled as he gave the events on the screen his full focus. She saw, through the eyes of another, the White Wolf knock Cyrus’ head off with a One-Hit Kill, before folding Kennedy up with his illustrious Razzle Dazzle. He climbed to the top rope, as he had done countless times during their recent entanglement at the Warehouse, and leapt off with a Daybreaker to the heart of the Exile. Krash stood tall, his enraptured and rapturous audience cheering his name on all the streets from Garland to Raleigh.
It is needless to say, at least between us, tulips, that Michelle von Horrowitz did not - at least consciously - miss her flight to Dallas on account of any fear. And certainly, consciously or otherwise, not fear of Krash. She didn’t feel as though she was required to contradict the shirtless man’s assertions. She instead went on watching the scenes from Garland, as reflected upon his eyes.
“See?” he declared, turning back to face her directly so that she could no longer see the screen in his pupils. “For-fucking-ever, Dreamer! The Warehouse don’t mean shit!”
He pumped his fist whilst draining his beer with the other hand, and the empty made a thud as he slammed it down onto the table. Michelle smiled at his misplaced enthusiasm.
“The Warehouse doesn’t mean shit,” she agreed. And then: “None of it did, really.”
“Sounds fatalistic,” the man said, whilst clicking in the direction of the bar for another drink. Michelle wondered what the man knew about fatalism. “If you ask me… Grayson’s there, you’re here… sounds like you’re done.”
She didn’t argue, though she felt - at least then - that he was wrong.
“Which means Krash was your final opponent,” the shirtless man said. “Which means that Krash is the one that finished you.”
“Seems fitting,” she offered. She thought about her match with the White Wolf at the Warehouse, and her musings surrounding him leading up to the bout. She had labelled Krash as hollow and without worth, refuting his excuses for all of the objective bad that he’d done last year as empty and weightless. But, when the melodrama and frills were ripped away, the Wolf’s acts were those of one whose love for another knew no limit and little reciprocation. As she sat watching the hairs grow from the shirtless man’s chest in the dive bar near Raleigh Grand Central, she realised that this didn’t make Krash bad: it made him human. She thought of Adrienne, whose memory had been left beneath the December Snow in Moscow, and of Bell, whose memory followed her everywhere.
A short time later she left the bar and bought a Greyhound ticket on the first bus leaving the city.
*****
Michelle could've guessed that Gerald would be pissed off at the fact she'd essentially slept through the historic events of Meltdown X. What she didn't guess was the amount of other people that would be pissed off alongside him, a list that was long and varied. Firstly, there was Russnow himself, who appeared to take her non-attendance as an intellectual assault upon his genius, given the direct and adverse effect that it had on his two major new initiatives. Initially, the other teams were pissed off that Truth and Kennedy, already on thin ice with their peers due to the supergroup-ish vibes the pairing gave off, had skated to an easy victory. Eventually, Truth and Kennedy were pissed off that this easy victory was struck from the records, a decision made shortly after the Connection's disqualification from the tournament.
To hear Russnow tell it, the fans were pissed off that they'd been cheated out of a series of memorable moments on what would have been, if not for her selfishness, a glorious night. The advertisers were pissed off that one of the brand’s biggest draws had decided to take a personal day when they'd shelled out for premium advertising space. The remaining members of Audioslave were pissed off about missed royalties (though this was off-set by the net gain of the Psychedelic Porn Crumpets). Catering was pissed off that they'd prepared vegan options that nobody ended up eating. And so on.
Everybody was pissed off. And, with each new helping of anonymous vitriol that was catapulted in her direction, she found herself becoming more and more abstracted from the situation.
She read about her suspension a week later whilst sitting in a library in Denver. The allotted time period came and went, and still Michelle made no attempt to contact any of them. Bookings came and bookings were missed. She heard that her contract had been terminated whilst in a dive bar in Seattle. She read an article about the breach of contract litigation that Russnow brought against her as she sat in a coffee shop in Chicago. She saw the midget they hired and dressed up as her for a Meltdown 15 segment on eight televisions simultaneously in a sports bar in New Orleans. All of these events washed over her.
Her doings during this time were not that surprising, nor were they full of drama. The explosive moments that occur before such descents, as if to signal their coming, happened to other people when Michelle simply wasn't there. Maybe Gerald’s retelling of this story would feature the spark that was lacking in Michelle’s, given his position in the eye of the hurricane. But to her, she watched on from afar and with a sense of dull passivity as her public life unpeeled. She would see snippets of the fallout whenever she let her guard down, but for the most part she managed to knuckle under and avoid almost all news of note from The Circus for months. She mostly drank and read and engaged in meaningless, dull conversations with meaningless, dull strangers.
She watched Back in Business XVI in the basement of a bar in Munich, having felt the call of home and returned to the Netherlands for a little longer than a fortnight. This was about all she could stomach of the place before it was time to move on. She looked on, removed and impartial, as Krash, the reigning and defending FWA World Heavyweight Champion, defeated Chris Kennedy, the 2022 Carnal Contendership Winner, in a little under forty minutes. She was unmoved and unimpressed, and as she stared around the empty basement of the nondescript German tavern she was suddenly overwhelmed by her stark and total anonymity. She smiled to herself.
That night, in her motel room, she rummaged through her rucksack for her little black address book. She turned to its most recently used page. Three phone numbers were scrawled into it next to the names of their owners, and Michelle remarked internally that these three were the extent of the new contacts - actual ones, whose digits were worthy of remembering - that she'd made in the last five years.
She used the motel phone to call the second number. A few moments later, Jean-Luc answered.
"Yes?" he said. She thought he sounded impatient, but maybe he always sounded impatient. A general din was evident in whatever room the young man currently occupied. Unsurprising, really. Tonight was a big night, she guessed.
She didn't say anything for a moment. She just listened to the buzz around Jean-Luc, wherever he was. Elsewhere. Somewhere.
"Who is this?" he said, stern and blunt. "If this is Uncle again, I've already spoken to my father, and he --"
"It's Michelle, Jean-Luc," she interrupted, whilst fumbling around in her rucksack for a cigarette.
"Michelle?" he asked, after a beat. He was unsure of himself. Unsure of her. "Where the fuck are you?"
"I'm in Germany," she said, eventually. She lit the end of her cigarette and lay back on the bed. "I guess that's what made me think of you."
"Where the fuck have you been?!" he asked, ignoring any sentimentality that might have been bubbling under the surface. "People have been looking for you. You know Russnow’s sued you three times?!"
"I heard about the first two," Michelle said, absently. She didn't want to talk about litigation.
"Are you coming back?" he questioned. The scene around him, on the other end of the line, had transformed from the buzz of a party to the muffled traffic of a busy street.
"No," she answered. Nothing more.
"Why did you call?" he asked, sincerely. His voice wasn't unkind. Michelle didn't answer right away.
"Do you remember that night in Hamburg? We were blackriding on the tram back to the hotel, and I was using a hundred rouble note for a bookmark…"
She trailed off. The bookmark had fallen from her copy of Herman Hesse's Knulp and an old man troubled himself enough to point this out. He'd called it a hundred euros - which hadn't escaped the attention of a group of nearby youths, who’d followed the couple as they left the tram and quite quickly surrounded them. Michelle remembered them all standing there, their fists clenched and ready, promising battle over a piece of paper worth thirty or forty cents.
"I remember," he answered. She could hear him lighting a cigarette as she stubbed her own out.
She entered the bar as the band was starting an old-fashioned but surprisingly westernish song, and she was equally surprised to be greeted by a large amount of revellers. Almost all of them were Japanese (as was to be expected in Tokyo, really) and on the dance floor and generally having a gay time. She meandered over to the bar and took a seat on a stool next to an old man. She ordered a neat Jameson and watched the dancers, only now realising that the vast majority of them were dressed in clothing better suited for eighty years in the past.
"What is this?" she asked the old man, upon noting that he was one of the few westerners in the large hall. He smiled at the question. He was missing half of one of his front teeth.
"Just a dance," he said. His accent was American and his voice was familiar. "Not for anything, really. Fun, I guess."
She watched as the dancers went through a well-rehearsed and synchronised routine. She focused on a handsome man who was dressed as an American pilot. He was twirling a young girl in a long, floral dress, who stared into his eyes with deep respect and great appreciation. Michelle's drink arrived.
"Why are they dancing?" Michelle asked. When the words fell out of her mouth it seemed a stupid question but it had made sense in her head. The old man shrugged.
"Why does anyone dance?" he asked. It was rhetorical. Michelle couldn't provide an answer, anyway. The old man wore a tuxedo and a flat cap. He sipped frequently from a tall glass of milk. "You're not here to join them?"
"No," Michelle answered, firmly. She nursed her whiskey and watched the man dressed as a pilot deposit the young woman in the floral dress onto a chair at the side of the dancefloor. He collected another, who was all in gold except for a silver tiara, and took up his position amongst the ensemble once again with his new partner. "I was at the harbour."
"Leaving so soon?" the man asked. "But you only just got here."
He let out a low, guttural laugh that was best described as a cackle, his head bowed over the bar. Michelle realised that he was drunk.
"I've been here a long time," she answered, deliberately opaque.
"Where will you go?" he queried, having composed himself. He was massaging his temples and staring into the top of his milk. A lonely bubble was expanding upon the surface of it. "Back to Europe?"
Michelle shook her head.
"Rayong," she said. The pilot deposited his gold-plated princess next to the girl in the floral dress, and continued to dance on his own.
"Are you sure?" the man said. He was staring at her again, this time with more intent. Michelle found it difficult to return his gaze. "You know that's the end. You know you don't come back from there."
"I'm sure," she returned, and finished her drink.
"You know best," he said, with a salute. "It's later than you think."
*****
She was led through the room by a short, portly attendant who wore a heavy, black chut thai. They passed several lanes of bamboo furniture, adorned by thick, soft cushions along with the occasional lounging patron. On top of the tables were glasses containing various fluids, amber and clear and black, as well as discarded boxes of cigarettes and constantly refreshed ash trays. As the portly attendant and the Dutch woman walked past, a young Thai girl cut them off to disappear into a booth, drawing the curtain firmly behind her. Michelle continued on, the attendant pointing her towards a bed that had been set up for her. They’d placed enough pillows and throws on it for the Elephant Man to sleep comfortably. She moved a couple of them away from her spot and then parked her rear onto the low and disappointingly firm mattress.
There was very little noise emanating from roughly a dozen lethargic revellers, all of whom seemed instead content to stare off into the distance in an aloof and ultimately pretentious manner, as if their own thoughts were self-evidently more important than the other people in the room. Whatever sound there was emerged from the smooth jazz band that was assembled on a raised plinth in one corner, a double bassist laying down a low rhythm for the trombonist and trumpeter to rift over. Behind them, an ancient Thai man - almost doubled over with age - tapped away with a keen smile at a drum kit. The aroma was unmistakable, filling her nostrils and fogging her head. She closed her eyes, allowing the sounds and smells to take her over.
When she opened them again, the attendant had returned and was sitting on a stool in front of her. He smiled at her beneath his twitching moustache. He'd removed his chut thai, revealing a large purple 'R' on his chest. The pipe was prepared, the attendant holding it out to her deferentially. A candle was positioned within a tall, thin glass, and inserted into a small fissure in its side was the active ingredient. The thin and frail woman took the object from him, proceeding to hold one end to her lips and positioning the large, conical bowl over the top of the glass. Slowly but eagerly, she inhaled, closing her eyes once again and listening to the music.
… … …
In Rayong, in December of 2022, Michelle took one more long draw from the pipe, and then set it down beside her. She lay back in bed, the smooth jazz slowing to a halt, each note drawing onwards into the horizon, time meandering at an unnatural but soothing pace. She closed her eyes, and she smiled.
*****
.TWO.
The sweat clung to her despite the early January cold that blanketed North Carolina. The sun was only a suggestion in the distance as Michelle hurtled around a corner and continued on through the city's main thoroughfare. Her chest was tight. Cardio was never something she particularly enjoyed, a fact only amplified by the ridiculous time of morning in which she found herself dashing through the streets of Raleigh. It was quite against her will and she hadn't even had a cigarette yet. Today was going to be a bad day.
Today was also a big day. The mysterious bounty hunt would go down one and a half thousand kilometres to the west of here that very evening, along with the beginning of Russnow's imaginatively named Tag Warz. Before all that was a flight, which she found herself simultaneously dreading and in danger of missing. A hundred metres or so behind her, a truck let loose with its horn, and Dreamer inferred that she was the target of this outburst. She must have looked ridiculous.
The old woman came out of nowhere. Michelle smashed into her with the force of a Busaiku knee kick, and the pair of them tumbled to the ground. They were on a city square that was separated from Grand Central Station by a wide and currently unoccupied road. Michelle felt a gash on her knee open up, but dragged herself to her feet nonetheless. The old woman was rolling about on her back like an overturned turtle, and Michelle found herself inwardly chastising the stupid fool for not watching where she was going. One of the woman’s apples rolled out of her shopping bag and towards a drain. Michelle turned and stumbled towards the station.
She managed to halt herself before the truck hit her. She remained on the sidewalk whilst it screeched passed and blared its horn again, warning her for her haste. It produced a gust of wind that almost pushed her back to the ground, but she steadied herself and cursed the line of traffic that followed the truck and halted her progress. Eventually, a gap formed, and she threw herself through it and into the station.
She rummaged around in her bag for the ticket she'd collected the day prior (possibly in anticipation of such a rush), but it was trapped between a carton of cigarettes and a bottle of Jameson. She concluded that it was quicker to hop the barricade and hasten towards her platform, which prompted some sturdy North Carolina rail-workers to shout reprimands after her. Her fingers gripped the ticket and pulled it from its lodge as she took the staircase to platform four, three steps at a time. She could see the train. She called out and ran towards it.
Michelle thudded shoulder-first into the very-recently closed glass doors of the train, and then crumpled backwards into a heap on the platform. She cursed and winced and grimaced, before managing to drag herself up in time to witness the heartbreaking sight of a group of teenage girls laughing at her from inside the carriage. She let out a deep sigh, full of despair and longing, as the train departed the station and gathered speed towards the airport.
She took a seat on a bench outside the station. Her shoulder was beginning to throb again. It had started against Crowe, and only worsened through her final battle with Cyrus and her first one with Krash. She gently massaged the joint with one hand and lit a cigarette with the other, staring across the city square in front of Grand Central and summarising, in earnest, that she was fucked.
As she sucked at her cigarette, sheltered from the cold, and generally contemplated her fucked state, she eyed a payphone on the opposite side of the road. She reached for her rucksack and rummaged for her little black address book, opening it to its most recently used page and scanning the three phone numbers that were scrawled there. She smiled to herself at the realisation that these were the only three new numbers she'd added to the book in the last half a decade. It had been a good five years.
She approached the payphone and entered the third and newest number, and after a few seconds Gerald answered.
"Hello?" he said, both tired and alarmed. She didn't doubt that he'd recognised the area code as a Raleigh number, and his voice was laced with concern for his brother. "Jay?"
"It's me," Michelle said, quickly enough to spare him any prolonged suffering. "It's Michelle."
"Oh, good," he answered. She could hear him removing himself from his bed. "What time is it? I got in late. Are you at the airport?"
"I…" Michelle started, unsure as to whether she had the heart to puncture Gerald's early-morning chirp. Eventually, she concluded that she had no choice. "I think I've missed my flight. It leaves in half an hour. I… I guess I got carried away last night."
Michelle's free hand was stuffed in her pocket, and was busy fingering the empty plastic bag that lay hidden there. She found herself counting down the seconds until she could hang up the phone and go about gumming it.
"Where are you?" Gerald asked, after a deep and disappointed sigh. Michelle regretted calling him in the first place and imagined the happy life she'd have had if she hadn't. She explained where she was and listened to more of his sanctimonious sighs. "Okay, don't move. I'll call this number back soon. Don't move, Michelle. Patience."
There were four cigarette ends scattered around the handset and she was working on the fifth by the time he finally called back. She answered before the first ring ended.
"Gerald?" she said, stubbing her cigarette out next to the others.
"Okay," he started, taking to his new role of problem solver with great pride. "I think we can do this."
"Great," she answered. "What are we doing?"
"I've ordered you an Uber.”
“I don’t use U--" Michelle began.
“I know your views on taxi driver unionisation and the dangers of Uber,” Gerald cut her off, with a sense of urgency. “But now’s not the time. It'll pick you up from in front of the station. MF46 DRT. White Toyota. Don't ruin my rating. The driver doesn’t want to hear your thoughts on his industry. You're booked on the 11:15 to San Antonio. There'll be a Maybach waiting for you there. Your name’s on a sign. Or it will be, when you land. I doubt the driver's there now."
"Maybach? A driver?" Michelle asked, wondering where her kind-hearted but, until now, pretty unresourceful partner had found such a vehicle and such an underling. "Is this Uncle?"
"Sort of," Gerald answered, before trailing off.
"Sort of?" Michelle repeated.
"Well, Uncle and Jean-Luc kind of have this mentor-mentee relationship now, and…" Gerald started. She interjected.
"It's Jean-Luc's driver?" she asked, nonplussed.
"Look," he began. Michelle could tell that he was doing his placatory facial expressions and hand gestures, even from the other end of a phone line. "The important thing is you get here, right?"
"Right," Michelle answered, with a sense of dull resignation. She didn't like the idea of owing anyone anything, and this was particularly true of Jean-Luc.
"And it's just his driver," Gerald went on. He had his persuasive speech mapped out and began to amble through it. "It's not like he's going to be there. They're in Canada, right?"
"Right," Michelle said.
"The driver's there. White Toyota. Do you see him?"
"I see him."
"Okay."
"Okay."
*****
“... the train had already been delayed once whilst an obstruction was cleared from the tracks, and reports from friends and family of those onboard report that local cattle was the cause of these earlier problems. It’s unclear, at present, if livestock was to blame for the derailment, although veterinarians were called to the crash site late this morning …”
She was only half-watching the local news channel in the airport bar where she sat, waiting impatiently for the departure of her newly booked flight. She sucked at the end of a Heineken and tore at the end of a beermat, her fingers shaking and her foot beginning to idly tap against the floor beneath the table. It was a nervous tick that had followed her around since childhood, and she placed a hand atop her knee to put a stop to it.
“... the exact death toll is unknown, with new information emerging from the crash all the time, but reports suggest as many as forty people are currently unaccounted for. Tragically, local authorities dragged the first body out of the wreckage in the last hour, with four more bodies recovered since. Authorities are yet to release the names of the deceased to the press, though have confirmed that they have been identified and next of kins informed …”
Michelle forced herself to look out of the window and at the runway. Three large planes sat next to the huge window that ran from floor-to-ceiling and along the length of the western side of the airport. They looked harmless and inoffensive, positioned as they were in stasis upon the tarmac. It was only when she imagined the huge metal boxes hovering ten thousand metres above the surface of the Earth that the nausea came. A fourth plane was preparing to take off behind the three parked near the terminal. She could hear the engines. She turned back to the television screen.
“... Archibald Thurgood, Raleigh’s thirty-first Police Chief, seemed to rule out terrorism as a potential cause for the derailment, but suggested a criminal investigation into the incident could launch when new details come to light. Stay tuned, because we’ll have an exclusive report from Anthony Tintajul, who is on the ground at the crash-site for Wake County Five, your home for news in Raleigh, in Wake County, and beyond …”
The clock in front of her was creeping towards eleven. She’d positioned herself next to her gate in the small terminal so that she could keep an eye on its progress, and at that moment there didn’t seem to be much of it. She nodded to the young man behind the bar and pointed to her drink. He busied himself in cracking open a replenishment. She wondered if she could get some to take onto the plane, before realising what a terrible idea that actually was.
At her gate, an American pilot stood next to two women, as if he was saying his farewells to both at once. One of them wore a green dress, long and floral, whilst the other was all in gold. He kissed each of them on the cheek and disappeared through the gate, placing his pilot's cap onto his head and, unlike Orpheus, not looking back at either of them as he went. The two women stared at each other without a word, and then they left.
“Hey!” came a high-pitched and unfamiliar voice that seemed to cause both the drone of the local news station and the rumble of the engines on the runway to fade away. It was too close and too shrill, and Michelle found herself blinking up at a shirtless man, looming over her table as if he had every right in the world to be there. “I know who you are.”
She looked at the man: at the three chins that underlined his pale and unremarkable face, at the smattering of hair that still remained around the crown of his head, at the strange manner in which his hands were forced into the back pockets of his jeans and his elbows thrust forward, and - most of all - at the large, purple ‘A’ that was drawn on his chest. The only place in which he had hair in abundance was his upper arms.
“I’m glad one of us does,” Michelle quipped as her drink arrived. She took it greedily and helped herself to a lengthy pull, hoping to squeeze in a fourth before boarding finished (she’d had one before you rejoined the story).
“Good luck tonight,” the shirtless man said, whilst regarding her with a big toothy grin. “You’re gonna need it! I know what happened at the Warehouse but… well, with all due respect, the Warehouse doesn’t really mean anything.”
She looked at the man’s fat, hairless belly. She carefully regarded his protruding navel. It looked even more preposterous given his rotund shape. Contrarily, his arms were scrawny and thin, and the general positioning of his body was angular and uncomfortable.
“You mind if I get a picture?” the man asked. Before she could consent or dissent, he’d positioned himself behind her and reached out with one of his gangly arms, angling his lens so that the entirety of his proud ‘A’ was within shot. The shirtless man continued to grin. Michelle shuffled uneasily. She was uncomfortable with this accepted social process: the stealing of one’s image, for posterity, against their will. The man just mumbled a thanks and walked away. Michelle went back to her drink.
As for the flight itself, Michelle decided that she would never remark on this hellish ordeal, either internally or externally. She met nobody of note, for her eyes remained tightly closed from take-off to landing.
*****
As she sat in traffic somewhere just south of Austin, and looked out through the tinted window of the Maybach upon the vastness of Texas, she couldn’t help but think about the fact that she had travelled up this same road in a Greyhound bus just a month before. Life was cyclical that way. She recalled a Milan Kundera passage about how one yearns for repetition; how it is the conquering of one’s mortality. She let her head come to rest against the glass and felt the vibrations of the road reverberate through her. It didn’t feel as profound as when she’d done the same thing on the bus. It reminded her of Gerald’s head buried into her shoulder and the large shudders he’d intermittently expel as he released his pent-up emotion. She didn’t like the memory and took her head from the window.
The driver was alright. She remembered that Jean-Luc’s drivers were usually alright. He was an old man with a propensity to smile, which revealed that half of one of his front teeth was missing. He didn’t speak much, and when he did Michelle got the impression that he was feeding her riddles that she was too tired to search for the answers in. He let her smoke in the car so long as he could keep the air conditioning blasting through to mask the odour. She didn’t mind the cold. She was used to it. He asked her what music she’d liked to listen to when she first got into the car a couple of hours prior, and she told him she didn’t know any local radio stations. He sort of chuckled at that and asked her to name a band. She’d shrugged but he’d pressed her, so she named The Mountain Goats and a few moments later she was listening to them. He told her it was something called Spotify, and she’d concluded that he was some sort of wizard, like Harry or Konchu. Wizards were quite common these days.
“Always traffic here,” the old man said, smiling at her through the rear-view mirror. “Always waiting.”
Earlier in the journey, he told her that he drove both Watkinses (as he’d so artlessly (but quite charmingly) put it) around the great state of Texas. Whenever they were in the great state of Texas, that is. Which, apparently, wasn’t very often. He mostly drove the company’s executives to and from the airports in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. He didn’t get to work Austin as much as he’d like. He seemed familiar but, when she asked, he told her that he’d never worked in Moscow which, she imagined, was the only place she would ever have met a Watkins driver in her past.
Michelle looked at the clock. The show would start in five hours. They were making good time.
“How long do you think we’ll have to wait?” she asked, lighting another cigarette and opening the window for the discarding of its ashes.
“Who can say?” the driver answered. She placed his accent along the East Coast. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d seen his face before, but she lacked specificity, and she was tired. The mind plays tricks when its host deprives it of what it needs. It was a sort of revenge that Michelle thought sneaky and overall unconducive to the team ethic she was trying to promote between her bodily organs. “Some people wait forever.”
“Very philosophical,” Michelle said, losing a little of her patience for the driver. Allowing her to smoke only earned him so much of it and she didn’t have a lot to spare. “But I specifically meant on the road. There’s an answer to this question.”
“To most questions,” the man agreed. She would never know if he intended to find such an answer out, because their sanctum within the Maybach was just then pierced by the announcement of a call through the car’s in-built phone. The dashboard accredited the unwelcome interruption to [2] : J.L.W. The driver looked at her through the mirror, his facial expression asking her if she was ready.
“I’d rather you didn’t answer,” she instructed. The driver just shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ve got to answer,” he said. “It’s my job, tulip.”
“What did you call me?” Michelle asked. The driver pressed a button on the dashboard, and went on staring at her through the rear-view mirror as Jean-Luc’s voice came out of the car’s speakers.
“Michelle?”
She didn’t answer.
“You’re there, Michelle?”
She folded her arms, and stared right back at the driver. He chuckled, gently.
“I’ve got Russnow on the other line, so I’d appreciate it if you could at least give me some sign that you’re back on the waggon so I can --”
“I’m here,” Michelle said, finally. To her left, they passed a recent pile-up involving one of those long trucks that hauls disused cars along the highway on its back. It was difficult to tell how many other vehicles had been involved in the collision, and how many had been part of the truck’s cargo, but six or seven cars were strewn around it. One of them had landed up against another and remained almost vertical, like an angry and cornered beast rearing up onto its hind legs.
“Good,” Jean-Luc said. He sounded smug. He also sounded like he was eating. “The car’s tracked, of course. But at least I know for sure that you’re in it, now. You look like you’re making good time. You’ll probably miss the start of the show, but that’s fine. Was always your way.”
Again, Michelle remained silent. She seethed and kept her eyes on the road. The traffic cleared after they passed the pile-up, and soon enough they continued at pace as the city of Austin came into view directly ahead of them.
“I’m just glad I could help,” Jean-Luc continued, his lips smacking together as he chewed on whatever freshly-culled animal he’d chosen for today’s lunch. “You know, you didn’t have to go through Uncle. You’ve got my number. You can call me whenever you need me.”
The old man in the driver’s seat was still smiling, but could only look at her every now and then as he negotiated the highway. She stared into the gap where his missing half-tooth should have been. She felt she might disappear into it.
“I don’t suppose I’m going to get a thank you,” he said, pointedly. “But I’m not calling for one. You know, when JAY! asked me if I had anyone down in San Antonio, I couldn’t help but remember that night we --"
“I’m not interested in your nostalgia,” she interjected. “This sort of shit is why I don’t have a phone. We are hanging up now.”
She nodded at the driver, and before Jean-Luc could expel her name from his mouth he had been cut off. The driver was alright.
She had worked the Curtis Culwell Centre once before, seemingly in another life, during her tenure with the CWA back in 2017. She took a punt on the layout not having changed much, reasoning that only a minority of things change over a time, and told the driver to aim for a specific entrance at the rear of the building. She remembered having a cigarette outside the stadium back then. She pictured it quite vividly: it had been summer and she was due to face Harrison Wake, and as she pulled from the end of her Camel her eyes had traced over a sign reading ‘D42’ above the entrance. In 2022, as she drifted through the streets of Garland, Texas, she changed into her ring gear in the back of the Maybach, the tinted windows shielding her modesty from those outside and the driver’s seemingly good nature protecting it from the one man within. The air conditioning roared through the car and staved off the worst of the nagging tiredness that followed Michelle around like a shadow. She rubbed at her eyes and stifled a yawn.
“Bored?” the driver asked, still grinning.
“It’s been a long day,” she said.
“They’re all long,” he answered. They arrived at a security checkpoint, perhaps a hundred metres away from the stadium. Only one security guard and a half-full parking lot separated them from the entrance.
“Excuse me, sir,” the security guard started, after sauntering over to the Maybach. “Doesn’t matter how fancy your car is, you have to use the public entrance. Can you turn it around?”
Michelle watched as the driver rummaged around in his glove box and, with a warm expression on his face, offered his Watkins Enterprises Ltd. security pass to the troll guarding the bridge.
“Be that as it may, sir,” the security guard continued in his nasally voice. “This is a Meltdown show. Your employer’s on the other brand. And besides, this entrance is for the talent only.”
The driver looked at his cargo, prompting the guard to lean into his car and regard the young woman sitting in the backseat. She was wearing an oversized hoodie, wrestling shorts, and knee pads. The security guard pulled his radio to his lip and muttered a few instructions. He pressed a button on his control panel to raise the barrier and allow them through. As the car cruised up to the entrance with ‘D42’ witten atop it, Michelle took a cigarette out of her rucksack and fumbled in its pockets for her lighter. The driver was regarding her once more through the rear-view mirror.
“You sure you’ve got time?” he asked her, as she went about collecting her belongings and readying herself for the outside world. She had grown quite used to her environs in the back of the Maybach, and for a brief moment she found herself unwilling to give up that sanctuary.
“There’s always time,” she answered, without meeting his gaze. The car came to a halt in front of the entrance. Michelle opened the door.
“It’s later than you think,” the old man said. She took one more look at his pockmarked and grinning face before climbing out of the car. He drove off, the vehicle's tinted windows remaining closed as she took a seat on the steps leading up to the entrance and watched him disappear into the night. She lit her cigarette.
It was just then, as she sat on the steps outside the Curtis Culwell Centre, that she realised she hadn’t thought about either of her matches all day, outside of vague allusions here and there in the middle of other mental tangents. She had done enough of it in the weeks leading up to Meltdown X, and Gerald always insisted on a healthy amount of focus on forthcoming opponents whenever they were drawn together to fend off their foes. The second half of her 2021 had been occupied by two men: Cyrus Truth and Chris Kennedy. Gerald may have been awe-struck by the long shadows that this pair cast, but she had long since grown out of this. She had nothing left to say about either of them that couldn’t wait. Other concerns were more pressing.
Krash, for instance, was an intriguing opponent. 2021 came to a close with a battle with the White Wolf in the Warehouse, and she’d drawn first blood after an hour of back-and-forth. It didn’t entitle her to a one-on-one title shot, and the match wasn’t sanctioned (or even recognised) by the FWA. Constant reminders flooded in that, really, this victory in the Warehouse didn’t mean very much to very many people. There were perhaps two notable exceptions: herself, and, of course, the Wolf. The hour they’d spent together on New Year’s Eve could be more immediately dismissed by those watching it than by the two wrestlers entangled within the ring.
Her mind drifted to her other engagements with the Wolf. The Gold Rush barely counted. At this time, she wasn’t concerned in the slightest with Krash. In the long run she’d helped him by surrendering to a disqualification in St. Petersburg, whilst luring the idiot Heretic into a double countout a few nights later in Moscow. All of this assisted Krash’s progression, and guided him towards that championship belt he now so proudly paraded. Not that any of it particularly mattered, anyway. At least not to her. Krash and the others were all background players, keeping the crowd warm until she met the kaiju upon the ice.
The Carnal Contendership was more telling. It was the world’s first taste, and perhaps as of yet its only taste, of Dreamer and the Wolf, operating at full-speed, their eyes not necessarily turned upon each other but directed at the same prize. She felt that, over much of the last two years, her and Krash’s trajectories had been twinned, and they had arrived upon this precipice at roughly the same time. Michelle a little earlier, maybe, but with the Wolf always breathing down her neck. She saw Meltdown X as just another skirmish, just like the Warehouse and the Carnal Contendership. But soon enough the real war would begin.
She sucked her cigarette and watched the moon rising high above the parking lot. There’s a full moon every night, she thought to herself. It’s just not always bright.
“Hey -- you know where the… public entrance is?” a man asked, snapping Michelle from her malaise as she arrived at the filter of her cigarette. She looked towards him and found him shirtless, with a large purple ‘S’ drawn on his chest. “Oh, you’re --"
He was holding a half-empty beer and, at this stage, let out a small canister’s worth of gas in the form of a belch. He accompanied it by thudding his fist into the letter on his chest, as if trying to expel as much of the unwelcome gas as was possible.
“You’re Michelle von Horrowitz.”
“No,” she said.
“Yes you are,” the man argued, looking at her mistrustfully.
“No, I mean… I don’t know where the public entrance is.”
“Must be this way,” the man said, pointing around the stadium in the opposite direction from the one in which he’d appeared. He stumbled slightly, clearly quite uneven on his feet already, but ploughed on through his beer regardless. Michelle admired the ambition. “Michelle von Horrowitz... the others aren’t going to believe it.”
“You’d be surprised,” she said. And then she entered the stadium.
The sweat clung to her despite the early January cold that blanketed North Carolina. The sun was only a suggestion in the distance as Michelle hurtled around a corner and continued on through the city's main thoroughfare. Her chest was tight. Cardio was never something she particularly enjoyed, a fact only amplified by the ridiculous time of morning in which she found herself dashing through the streets of Raleigh. It was quite against her will and she hadn't even had a cigarette yet. Today was going to be a bad day.
Today was also a big day. The mysterious bounty hunt would go down one and a half thousand kilometres to the west of here that very evening, along with the beginning of Russnow's imaginatively named Tag Warz. Before all that was a flight, which she found herself simultaneously dreading and in danger of missing. A hundred metres or so behind her, a truck let loose with its horn, and Dreamer inferred that she was the target of this outburst. She must have looked ridiculous.
The old woman came out of nowhere. Michelle slammed on the brakes, dust rising from her heels as she went from sixty to zero in no time at all. The old woman dropped her shopping bag, and one of her apples rolled towards the drain, but she remained on her feet and unharmed. She chastised Michelle for her haste, but Dreamer was already on her way. She skipped in front of the truck as it turned the corner of the city square and blasted its horn at her for having the temerity to cross in front of it. She flipped the driver the bird whilst ascending the steps to the station.
She rummaged around in her bag for the ticket she'd collected the day prior (possibly in anticipation of such a rush), but it was trapped between a carton of cigarettes and a bottle of Jameson. She concluded that it was quicker to hop the barricade and hasten towards her platform, which prompted some sturdy North Carolina rail-workers to shout reprimands after her. Her fingers gripped the ticket and pulled it from its lodge as she took the staircase to platform four, three steps at a time. She could see the train. She called out and ran towards it.
She slid into the train just as the doors closed behind her, and found herself smiling at the situation despite her chest roaring at her in displeasure. Her efforts aroused a small round of applause from a group of teenage girls who’d ostensibly been watching her travails, and Michelle even considered a small and self-congratulatory bow. Eventually, she decided that her smile was enough, and she made her way to a seat towards the back of the carriage, next to the window and at a table. She stared out of the window as the city quickly began to show signs of turning into the countryside.
She loved the train. She loved train stations. There were very few things in this world that she loved, but she loved the train and she loved train stations. So many of her most vivid memories were within a carriage, upon the tracks. She even dreamed about them: about a journey with no destination, or the obvious journey to the inevitable one. Her favourite film scene was in Brief Encounter, when Celia Johnson allows Trevor Howard to deftly remove the grit from her eye upon the platform of Milford Station. She felt an affinity to Anna Karenina, and the image of the young Russian woman throwing herself before a freight train at the novel’s climax was one very dear to her. She could feel the rumbling of the train’s engine as it sped along the tracks. Ahead, a whistle sounded, high-pitched and comforting and familiar. Michelle stretched out and closed her eyes.
A man tripped over her legs and quickly apologised for it. Michelle opened her eyes to find him shirtless and bearing the letter ‘H’ on his chest. He didn’t turn to face her; didn’t realise who she was. Instead, he returned to four others who were similarly shirtless and similarly adorned (though, of course, with different letters). The one with the purple ‘H’ on his chest picked up a pair of cards in front of him and inspected those already overturned on the table. His companions awaited his decision.
They arrived at the last of the handful of stations between Grand Central and Raleigh Airport. A few more passengers boarded. It was still very early, and Michelle figured that Raleigh’s airport was probably not a particularly large or busy one. The train was formed of three carriages, and Michelle counted exactly one dozen passengers on this one (plus a pair of women who’d already been through once offering sandwiches and cold beverages). Three more joined them at West Trenton, and - for a reason that, at the time, escaped Michelle - one of them decided to sit across the table from her despite the fact that most of the carriage remained empty.
“You don’t mind?” he asked, smiling at her warmly. He was missing half of one of his front teeth, and most of his face was pockmarked by age. He spoke with a Virginian accent and Michelle had a vague recognition of his kind, almost knowing visage. “I like to face forward, and there’s no more tables.”
Michelle waved him onwards, and then went back to staring out of the window. She could see a plane taking off in the distance, and only then did she remember that she would be boarding one in the next half an hour. Provided she hadn’t missed it already. Her foot began to tap against the floor, anxiety washing over her in waves as she contemplated her not-so-distant future.
The train came to an unexpected halt a few minutes after the station. When Michelle looked out of the window and downwards, she could see that the train was upon a ridge and separated by a wooden fence from a three-metre drop to some farmland below. The tracks followed the ridge upwards around a hill before snaking over a river via a wide iron bridge and northwards to the airport. There were no more stations between here and there. Michelle watched the plane that she’d seen take off disappear and become a black speck upon the horizon.
“Wouldn’t want to get off here,” the old man said, looking down from the ridge at the farmland below. There were a large number of sheep gathered beneath them, and away in the distance some cattle silently perused their surroundings, comparing this patch of grass with that patch of grass and finding each of them equally delightful. “Bit of a drop.”
Michelle nodded absently.
“We’re sorry for the delay, ladies and gentlemen,” a voice began over the carriage’s PA system. Whoever was speaking was holding the microphone too close to their mouth, making it difficult for those in the train to decipher his words. Michelle focussed hard on his delivery. “This is your driver. Unfortunately there is some sort of obstruction ahead on the track that we’re just trying to get clear. We’re hoping to have that done in the next few minutes and then we’ll be back on our way, so just sit back and try to relax.”
“Easy for him to say,” the old man said, whilst tapping idly on the table with his fingers. “I haven’t relaxed in twenty years.”
Michelle looked into the man’s eyes for the first time, and found that he was staring back at her as if he could see right through her.
“Do I know you?” she asked. She already knew the answer to the question. Yes. Richmond, Virginia. And the other place. You know him.
The old man just shrugged his shoulders, and let her work it out herself.
“Seems we have some cattle on the tracks,” the same voice announced. The teenagers let out a collaborative giggle. The shirtless men continued to play cards. “Not uncommon, as I’m sure any locals onboard will know. We’ve moved her out of the way… gently, of course. Should be going again soon.”
A few moments later they were moving. The man hadn’t stopped staring at her. Into her.
"Do you remember?" he asked. Michelle couldn't hold his gaze, but she nodded. She remembered everything. “What do you think it means?”
She stared past the man and to the end of the carriage, where one of its crew was beginning another round. A sudden understanding accompanied the asking of his second question.
"I'm the only variable," she declared, observing the rolling fields passing by outside. The sun was rising. "Everything else is a constant."
"How do you mean?" he questioned, knowingly.
"The shirtless men… Jean-Luc's nostalgia… you…" she began. A woman, their provodnitsa, arrived at the table. "Even things like Gerald’s condescension and the American pilot… these things were presented to me. Always. Only my reaction to them could be altered."
The woman placed an ashtray on the middle of the table and bowed courteously before the pair. She presented the old man with a champagne flute, full to the brim. Michelle was given a Heineken.
"These things aren't being presented to you now," he pointed out. Michelle took a cigarette from her pocket.
"That's because I'm getting off the train," she posited. Behind the old man, the shirtless group were each given an Aperol Spritz.
"No, you got on the train," he contradicted. She rolled her eyes at his pedantry. "Jean-Luc, Gerald, the American pilot and your shirtless men… me, even. Aren't we also variables? Or is your philosophy a solipsism?"
"I don't really know exactly what you are but, as for the rest of them… there is a random element to their behaviour, of course. But most people act within a specific and well-defined range. An expected value. And, at least at my point of interface, their actions are a constant. I am the only variable."
She held back her thoughts on the American pilot, who appeared to her as a handsome but unreliable stranger. He juggled his girl in flowers and his girl in gold, often even conflating the two in his desires. She didn't know what he really wanted. He didn't know what he really wanted. She was certain only of his uncertainty.
"One way of looking at it," the old man said, with a shrug.
"Which one was real?" Michelle asked. The question brought the smile back to his face.
“They were all real,” he said, thoughtfully. “This one, too.”
“But they were all so different,” she returned. “Do I not have a destiny? Is it all just a raffle?”
“Of course you do,” he answered, the smile returning to his face. “The same as everyone's. We’re on our way there now.”
“We’re not going to the airport?” she asked. This time, she didn’t know the answer to her question, but she had her suspicions. The old man shook his head. The countryside rolled by outside as they continued to climb up the ridge. “Where are we going?”
“You know where we’re going,” he answered. “It’s the same every time.”
“Rayong?” she said. He let out a chuckle, again revealing the gap in his broken tooth.
“Sure,” he allowed. “Rayong.”
Ahead of her, she heard the mechanisms of the train begin to screech, an unexpected and powerful exertion forcing itself upon the wheels at the front of the vehicle. Behind her, the engine rumbled and roared, upset by the sudden interruption to its routine.
“You remember now?” he asked her. She nodded. She felt pale. He didn’t say the words, but she heard them anyway.
Out of the window, she could see the front of the train. Its wheels were no longer on the tracks. It was angled back towards them, floating peculiarly above the ground. She could see the terrified face of the driver. Those in the front carriage were pale, confusion and shock playing out upon their visages. Their horror appeared to her in slow-motion. The front of the train had already broken through the rickety, wooden fence, and was now succumbing to gravity, pulled down towards the farmland below. She heard the engine screaming its discontent, howling its final refrain. Time slowed to a halt as she felt herself thrown up from her chair.
Promo history - volume 75. "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" (w/ Gerald Grayson) (February 3rd, 2022).
Michelle von Horrowitz and Gerald Grayson def. Deathswitch Initiative (Tommy Bedlam and James Douglas) [Tag Warz - Pool Stage Round Two] (Meltdown XI).
*****
*****
Standing atop of a raised mound, within the shadow of a young tree, Jay Fox could make out the small but perfectly-formed figure of another of his species. This figure, though, did not belong to just any fox. His stylish auburn suit was a perfect fit for his lithe and athletic frame, and when he lifted a paw to wave at Jay, the older of the pair was filled with feelings of comfort and warmth. The figure atop the mound was quite clearly a fantastic fox, Jay thought, and he had always been rather proud to call him his brother.
"Brother!" the fox, this esteemed and fantastic fox, said as the two approached one another. He was smiling, as he always seemed to be, and there was a semi-permanent glint in his eye that suggested he just might be up to no good. "Beautiful evening. I love autumn. How's Jamie?"
"Jamie is good," Jay answered, his hands in his pockets as he regarded his brother. "More than good. Great."
"Glad to hear it," the other replied, but Jay could tell his brother's mind was already racing. He looked over his shoulder, at the mound from which he'd just approached. "How about some dinner?"
"I haven't been to the store,"Jay said. "I was going to go on the way home."
"Store," his brother repeated, feeling the weight of the word on his tongue. "How adorable. Come see what I found."
The fox in the auburn suit began to walk back up the mound, towards the sapling and the setting sun. For a moment, Jay didn't follow, until his brother turned back to him. The glint in his eye set his whole face ablaze.
"Come!"
Jay followed his brother to the top of the mound and, whilst standing in the shade of the sapling and placing a paw over their eyes to protect them from the last of the day's sun, the two looked out over a moderately large chicken farm.
"I don't know, Gerald," Jay said, gulping slightly as he spied the two large smokestacks, one on either side of the central complex of buildings, fields, and coops. This fantastic Mr. Fox (or Gerald Fox, to use his birth name) sensed an unusual apprehension in his brother, who was usually quite encouraging when it came to chicken heists (and enthusiastic at the resulting feasts).
"What's wrong?" Gerald asked, cocking one of his ginger eyebrows at his brother's reluctance. His whiskers were brustling in the gentle breeze. "It'll be easy. Come on! I've got it all worked out. You can put your trust in me, Jay!"
Jay looked from his brother to the farm, and let out a deep and exaggerated sigh.
"Okay," he said.
From there, the two bounded down the other side of the mound and into the face of the retiring sun. In unison, they sidled around the perimeter of the eastern smokestack, before scaling the side of one of the farmhouse buildings. They tiptoed across the slate roof and then leapt from it, catching hold of a clothesline to break their fall and using it to traverse a brook that flowed towards the farm reservoir. They let go on the other side and kept a safe distance around a reproachful black and white cow before diving into cover behind the chicken coop. Half a moment later, the two emerged with a chicken each between their jaws.
"Let's get outta here, Gerald," Jay said, beginning to make off towards the perimeter of the farm. His brother, though, was busy inspecting a contraption he'd found in front of the coop.
"Hey, Jay, look at this!" he replied, pointing up at a large cage suspended above them. "New fox trap!"
"Gerald, I really think we should --" Jay began.
"How do you think it works?" Gerald interrupted, looking up at a chain that hung from the cage and stroking his chin in an affectation of thought. "Spring loaded, I think. You pull this chain, and the cage falls down somewhere over there."
Much to his brother's panic, Gerald reached up towards the chain.
"Gerald, let's just --"
He pulled the chain and the heavy bars of the cage fell down around them. Gerald smiled, sheepishly.
"Guess it wasn't spring loaded," he admitted, turning to face his brother.
"Jamie’s pregnant," Jay said. Gerald began to smile. The usually devilish glint in his eye momentarily gave way, giving an impression of sincerity. "She's moving in with us."
"That's great news, really I --"
"So, if we ever get out of this situation alive, I'm never going on another farm heist again. And I want you to promise me the same thing, Gerald."
The fox in the auburn suit thought over his brother's proposal. For once, anxiety seemed to cloud him.
"Jay, I --"
"Jamie’s baby is going to need a father. And it could use an uncle, too…"
Some of the tension seemed to slip away from Gerald's frame.
"Okay," he said. "If we ever get out of this situation alive, I promise. No more farm heists."
*****
The kitchen of the Fox family’s little hole under the ground was bustling with your typical morning activity. Jay Fox was adjusting his tie and his cufflinks whilst looking at his reflection in a soup spoon. Jamie Fox, wearing a pinafore and marigold gloves, ran a towel around the perimeter of a plate before placing it in a neat stack of similar ones next to the sink. The sounds of the hurried and frantic brushing of teeth emanated from the next room, where their daughter was engaged in preparations for her oncoming school day. And finally there was Gerald, the most splendid, esteemed, and fantastic Mr. Fox, sitting at the kitchen table in his auburn suit whilst reading the article that he himself wrote in the morning newspaper.
His eyes flickered from the title of his article - Fox on the Prowl - to an advert for bandit hats (40% off).
“Does anyone read my column?” Gerald asked, lowering his newspaper and eyeing the pot of coffee in front of him. He began to pour himself and his brother a cup, sliding Jay’s over to him as he took a seat opposite. “Jamie, do your friends talk about my column?”
“Sure,” Jamie said, finishing her work and coming to take a seat with her husband and brother-in-law. “Just last week Racoon’s ex-wife said, ‘I should read Gerald’s column’. But they don’t get the Gazette.”
“Hmmm…” Gerald said, sipping his brew. Just then, Jay and Jamie’s daughter appeared at the door. She had tied a green blanket around her neck and wore it draped behind her.
"How do I look?" she asked.
“What is that? Is that a cape?” Gerald asked, turning back towards his brother and his wife.
“It’s my new look,” the young fox announced, still holding her toothbrush. She spat a mouthful of paste onto the floor.
“Sit down, Michelle,” Jamie said, placing a fourth plate of toast in front of an empty chair. “Eat your breakfast before school.”
The youngest fox took her seat with the others, and then all four briskly devoured their meals. A couple of seconds later, only the burnt edges of crusts remained on their plates. Jamie stood up and began to clear away the table.
"Remember that your Cousin is coming to visit tonight, Michelle," Jamie said, as she shovelled the discarded food into the bin. "And you have to be nice to him. His father has triple pneumonia."
"Why do I have to be nice to him?" Michelle asked.
"We all do," Jamie answered. Michelle shrugged and, with her head bowed, left for school.
“Well, I guess I better be going too,” Gerald said, standing up and collecting his hat from the stand. He placed it on his head, clicked, whistled, and pointed a finger-gun at his brother. “Don’t wait up for me tonight. I’ve got an appointment.”
“What’s that?” Jay asked.
“What’s what?”
“That thing you did.”
“What thing?”
“You know,” Jay began, before attempting to replicate his brother’s click, whistle, and point. “That thing.”
“That’s my trademark. I do that all the time,” Gerald contested. “Aren’t you going to ask about my appointment? I’m seeing an estate agent about a beautiful tree he has for sale on top of a hill. Scenic views of the countryside, and within our price range. I don’t want to live in a hole anymore.”
“Things are good here, Gerald,” Jay replied, warning him against his ambition.
“I don’t want to live in a hole anymore.”
*****
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Fox,” the badger said as he finished up the hill and greeted him at the tree’s front entrance. It was a healthy, thick oak, with a layer of moss on the lower half of the trunk and rich, green leaves blooming from its strong branches. “Thomas Badger. Pleasure to make your acquaintance. I hear you’re in the market for a new place?”
“Yeah, just got sort of sick of hole-dwelling, you know?” Gerald answered as he followed Badger over the threshold. They emerged into a large but rather barren living area. “Wanted a taste of life above ground.”
“Well, this place is pretty much perfect,” Badger asserted, whilst tapping on the walls to verify their high quality. “You can’t go wrong with oak. Sturdy, traditional, almost classical, really. And stunning views, if you’ll take a look…”
Gerald approached a window and was greeted by picturesque rolling hills, and three neat complexes of dwellings spread out before him in the distance. He turned back towards his guide and only then noticed a third was in the room. This as yet unintroduced animal was taking a spanner to the underside of the kitchen sink whilst lying on a skateboard. After one more rotation with his tool he wheeled himself into the centre of the room.
“Oh, sorry, that’s the super,” Badger said, as the newcomer sat forward on his skateboard. It was clear that it was some sort of marsupial, but he was wearing a black mask and seemed to stare back at Gerald rather vacantly. Mr. Fox held out a hand for a gentlemanly greeting. Badger proceeded with his haphazard introductions. “Quiet Possum, Gerald Fox…”
Possum continued to stare at Gerald, the handshake unreciprocated.
“.... .. ….. ….”
“Why is he looking at me like that?”
“He does that,” Badger said. “Come with me to my office and we can talk about the details.”
A handful of moments later, Gerald sat with Badger in Badger’s office, so that they could talk about the details. Mr. Fox had removed his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair whilst he leafed through the contract in front of him.
“This all seems fine,” he said, pushing the paperwork back towards the estate agent. “But tell me, Badger, when I looked out of the window, I saw three structures in the distance. What were they? Were they farms?”
“You don’t want to know about those,” Badger answered, somewhat nervously.
“But I do,” Mr. Fox said. “If there are farms in the area, I need to know about it. My accountant told me that this was the most dangerous area for my species north of the river. Is that because there’s farms? Or maybe wolves? Not that I’m afraid of wolves, or anything, but I have a right to know…”
“Mr. Fox,” Badger started, leaning forward in his chair. “Those farms are a long way away from the --”
“So, they are farms,” Gerald interjected. His face broke out into a triumphant smile. “Tell me about the farmers.”
Badger sighed, defeated.
“Alright."James Douglas is a chicken and beef farmer who weighs the same as an adolescent rhinoceros. He consumes three whole chickens for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper each day. That's twelve chickens daily, along with one eighth of a cow with his afternoon tea. He cuts a menacing figure, but by lunchtime his arteries are so clogged by cholesterol that he can barely move. His farm is patrolled by a team of miserable beagles reared and raised by his kennel-master, Rocco. Rocco might be the only living being on the farm more brow-beaten and defeated than his hounds.
"Thomas Bedlam is a dairy and veal farmer who is roughly the size of a pot-bellied dwarf. As a young man, he tried his hand at rearing cattle, but found he was unable to master any beasts that had gone past a certain age. He settled on veal farming and is probably now the most successful veal farmer in the world. He's had his face on more milk cartons than all of the world's missing people combined. His younger brother, Sammy, runs human security on all three of the farms.
"Christopher Crowe is a tobacco and apple farmer. He invented his own species of each. He survives on a diet of strong alcoholic cider that he makes with his apples. Since the easing of federal and state laws, he's also began to cultivate his own strains of indica, which he ships north of the border. He's old, but don't let that fool you: he's lean, sharp, and possibly the wildest man alive.
“The local human children sing an eerie little rhyme about them,” Badger said, finally pausing to produce a cassette player from his top drawer. He pressed play and stared directly at Gerald.
“Douglas, Bedlam, and Crowe,
One tall, one short, one old,
These horrible crooks,
So different in looks,
Were nonetheless equally cold.”
Badger stopped the recording, and a few moments of silence went by.
"Sounds perfect," Gerald replied.
"Sounds perfect?"
"Sounds perfect."
*****
After a long day with the realtor, Gerald had many things on his mind - mainly fighting the thought of living in a hole any longer, but also wanting to be there for Jay and Jamie and their child. Michelle was becoming more of a handful by the day. Gerald composed himself before entering through the door, letting out a big sigh. As he burst through the door, he instantly caught the attention of Jay.
“I’ve got great news, brother,” Mr. Fox said, in a state of excitement. “There’s this great tree just north of the river. It’s got everything we need."
“Up north?” Jay questioned, knowing exactly the dangers of that area. He continued, looking at his brother disdainfully. “Isn’t that place dangerous for us fox folk?”
“Dangerous? Come on! It's not like there's wolves up there. And it has everything we need. It has more space for your growing family. It has the structure we need when poor weather comes our way. It’s a great tree, Jay. Trust me,” Gerald said, trying to convince his brother of how good this tree really was. Of course, he tactically left out all mention of the three farmers.
“It does sound like a really good place, Jay,” Jamie interjected, nodding her head in agreement with Gerald.
Before Jay could give his opinion, a knock came upon the door, prompting Gerald and Jay to get in position to attack. Michelle even woke up from her slumber and joined everyone in the room.
“Hello there!” the voice said. A figure resembling a fox came through the open hole. However, it’s face was different - sort of like he had an octopus for a head, which confused little Michelle. As he came a little closer, she became aware that he was wearing a quite elaborate mask, hiding a lot of his white fur.
“Cousin Uncle!” Jamie said, causing Gerald and Jay to relax on their position. She gave him a hug and he did too. Jamie moved to the side so that everyone else could give their hugs to Uncle.
Michelle tugged on Cousin Uncle’s arm.
“What’s that thing on your head?” she asked.
“Michelle!” Jamie scolded.
“No, no, it’s fine,” Cousin Uncle said, letting out a nervous chuckle. “This is an octopus mask.”
“Why are you wearing it? It’s not Halloween today, is it?” Michelle asked, with false-innocence in her voice.
“Michelle!” Jamie scolded her once more.
“No, it’s not Halloween, Michelle. I wear it because… it’s for… well… I guess it’s for… comfort,” he said, smiling awkwardly as he stuttered in his response to Michelle. “I have to go meditate now.”
With that, Cousin Uncle was shown to his room, and Michelle watched him reproachfully as he retired into it.
*****
The next morning, Michelle and Cousin Uncle left their hole at approximately the same time to make their way to school. At first, Michelle did her best to stay a few metres ahead of him, but quickly found that he was much better at speed-walking than she was. She changed tact and halted to remain a handful of paces behind her cousin, but he followed suit and remained next to her. She sighed, spat on the floor, and then shuffled awkwardly alongside him.
In the morning, they had chemistry. Michelle's lab partner was a beaver named Harry. Harry was excellent at chemistry, and seemed to be able to bring about success in any planned experiment with minimal effort, almost as if by magic. He showed little interest in it, though. Today, that was truer than it ever had been. He had neglected their supply of sodium, cobalt, and cesium in favour of keeping a close eye on the new arrival to the class. Cousin Uncle was carefully laying out his elements in front of a bunsen burner and a heating stand.
Michelle watched Harry watch her cousin. She felt an intrigue in the beaver that stirred her envy.
A large weasel wearing an olive-coloured jumper with a purple P on it sidled up next to Cousin Uncle. He had a swagger and a confidence about him that put the fox on edge.
"Hey, new kid," the weasel said, leaning against the table. "Looks like we're lab partners."
"Oh, pleased to meet you," the fox replied. "I'm --"
"Yeah, I know who you are," the weasel said. "You're the freak's cousin. Are you as cussing weird as she is? What's with the mask?"
"Are you a bully?" Cousin Uncle asked, turning the bunsen burner on. "You're starting to sound like a bully."
"Hey, watch this!" the weasel exclaimed, before he picked up all three elements and threw them onto the flame. They instantly exploded in a purple cloud, eliciting large guffaws from the weasel.
"You just ruined the whole experiment," Uncle said. He reached for an adjacent fire extinguisher and dealt with the remaining embers.
Nearby, Harry the Beaver let out a sigh, full of longing.
"You're meant to be my lab partner," Michelle said.
"I am," Harry answered, looking at her sheepishly.
"No you're not," Michelle replied. "You're disloyal."
That afternoon, they played whack-bat. Michelle was in position at the crease, whilst Cousin Uncle - who up until fifteen minutes ago remained blissfully unaware that they would be doing sport of any kind today, let alone one he’d never heard of - sidled up to Coach Gator in his borrowed kit.
"Excuse me, Coach," he said, his back erect and his white fur shining in the sun. The tentacles from his mask draped lazily around his chest. "I'm not exactly sure how to play whack-bat."
"They don't have whack-bat on your side of the river?" Coach Gator asked, clutching his clipboard of plays to his chest. "Huh. Okay, well listen up. It's real simple. The player hits the pinecone and runs to knock a cedar stick off the cross rods. Then the twig-runners dash back and forth until the pine cone burns out and the umpire calls ‘hotbox’. Finally, the scores are added up, then divided by nine.”
"Okay, Coach, got it."
"Here, we'll throw you in," he said, before cupping his small hands around his snout to project his voice. "Michelle! Come out. Give your cousin a go."
"Ah, Coach!" Michelle pleaded, as she replaced her cousin on the sideline. "I was just getting into the game. At least let me finish this eighth?"
"Take a rest, Michelle," Coach Gator instructed. He was watching the game intently, eyeing up his twelfth State Whackbat Championship as the school's Head Coach. He could almost taste the Gatorade.
"I was playing well though, Coach?" Michelle asked, swinging an imaginary bat in her hands. "You think I might be as good as my Uncle one day?"
"Your Cousin Uncle, or your uncle?" the coach asked.
"My Uncle," Michelle answered. "My cousin's never even played whack-bat before."
"As good as your uncle?!" Gator exclaimed, whilst struggling to suppress a laugh. "Your Uncle Gerald was the finest whack-bat player this school's ever seen! Three-time all-state."
The coach pointed to one of Gerald's old trophies, which was housed in a glass cabinet featuring some other paraphernalia from the finest whackbat player the school had ever seen.
"Well, am I getting better?" Michelle asked.
"You're certainly not getting any worse," Gator said, lifting his whistle to his lips. "That's okay, though. Some people just aren't athletes."
"I am an athlete," Michelle contested, but the coach was busy blowing his whistle. Cousin Uncle stepped up to the crease, his bat in his hand. At the other end of the field, the weasel lit the end of a pinecone. He tossed it into the air, and with a twirl and a flourish, Uncle brought his bat thudding into it. It flew off across the field, leaving a stream of smoke behind it, as the white fox began to run the length of the field. He hopped over a high hurdle, knocked the cedar stick off the cross rods, and then slid into base.
"Incredible!" Coach Gator said, as he brought his hands together in a round of applause. "Wow! You really are your uncle's nephew, Uncle!"
"He's not," Michelle muttered. "He's from my Mother's side of the family."
"Well, kid's a natural."
In the changing rooms after the game, the weasel took it upon himself to approach Michelle as she was changing out of her sports clothes. He had his whack-bat shoes in his hand, and he peeled a chunk of mud away from the cleats.
"Hey, Fox!" he said, gathering her attention. "I heard foxes eat mud! Do foxes eat mud?"
He held the dirt out in front of her, his implication obvious. Michelle sighed. Just then, her cousin positioned his body between them.
"Stand back," he instructed. Then, he brought his hands together, as if channelling his inner strength.
"What the cuss is this?!" the weasel asked.
"I weigh less than a slice of bread," Cousin Uncle said. And then, he leapt into the air and delivered a perfect roundhouse kick into the face of the bully. The weasel staggered back, cupping his bloody nose with his hand, and then scampered out of sight.
"I can fight my own battles," Michelle said to her cousin.
"No," Cousin Uncle said. "You can't."
*****
That evening, the Fox family found themselves sitting in front of the home that Gerald had chosen for them, the arrangement for moving having been taken care of during the school day. The sun was setting behind the hill upon which their tree stood, and it cast an almost otherworldly orange glow over the scene. Jamie was standing at an easel, painting a large landscape depicting a thunderstorm, which Jay regarded appreciatively from over her shoulder. Michelle and Cousin Uncle had scaled a tree, and were negotiating a dive into an adjacent paddling pool. Gerald was reclining in his chair, his feet up on a tree stump and a thin trail of smoke emerging from his pipe.
"Mom, Dad!" Michelle shouted from her treetop perch. "Uncle Gerald! Look at me!"
The next moment, the young fox jumped from her branch. She flailed all four of her limbs about in inelegant fashion on the way down, before landing with a large splash in the pool.
"Great jump, Michelle," Gerald declared, as her head reappeared above the surface. He seemed much more interested in his pipe. “Remember to keep your tail tucked, next time.”
As Michelle climbed out of the pool, Cousin Uncle stepped up to the diving perch. He completed a beautiful four-fifty degree rotation in midair before landing with the lightest of disruptions in the water’s surface.
"Wow! What a dive!" Gerald exclaimed, standing from his seat and giving Cousin Uncle a hearty round of applause. "You sure he's not related to me? This kid's a natural!"
As Gerald engaged in patting the white fox on the back, Michelle sidled sheepishly up alongside her mother.
"How long is he staying?" the young fox asked. "I mean, triple pneumonia sounds pretty bad. His Dad can't be expected to last too long, right?"
Cousin Uncle, his ears bristling, stared over at the source of the utterance.
"I have to go meditate for an hour," he said, before disappearing into the tree.
"You have fifty nine minutes to come up with an apology," Jamie said, brandishing an admonishing finger in Michelle's direction.
Gerald surveyed his niece as she hunched her shoulders forward and stormed into the tree. The door closed with a slam.
"Well, don't wait up," he declared, collecting his hat and placing it on his head. "I've got business to attend to tonight."
"What kind of business?" Jay asked.
"You know, fox-business," Gerald answered. He flashed his brother a click, a whistle, and a point, and then made his way down the hill.
*****
“So, you in?” Gerald said, leaning forward in anticipation of Quiet Possum’s answer to his query.
“.. …. .. .....”
Quiet stared at Gerald.
“C’mon. This’ll be the easiest heist of your life. The farm is basically unguarded and we’ll have free reign to do whatever we want. Considering who the farmer is, we’ll be able to get everything we need in only a matter of moments,” Mr. Fox said. “And don’t worry about the beagles. I’ve got just the thing for them. And this Rocco is renowned as a sub-par beagle breeder. I’ll say it again: this’ll be the easiest heist of your life!”
“... .. .. . ….....”
Quiet sat there stoically.
“The plan is to hit the Douglas farm. He has the best chickens this side of the river,” Gerald paused, noticing Quiet had leaned forward. “Yeah, I thought that’d perk your interest, possum, Douglas has no mind of his own and can’t act without someone like Crowe telling him what to do. In fact, other packs have also hit his farm numerous times because of how mediocre the security is. His patrol unit is led by Rocco, the kennel-master, but he’s nothing to worry about,” Gerald explained. “But because of how rich they are with resources, they replace them - just like that.”
He snapped his fingers to emphasise how quick the resources were replaced.
“............. ..”
Gerald blinked at the possum before continuing.
“Like I said, this’ll be straight-forward. With our speed and my knowledge of the layout of the farm, we’ll be in and out of there in a few minutes,” Gerald paused. He spread out a scroll of paper which laid out the architectural features of the farm. “Here, have a look at this.”
Gerald went over the plan of the attack for this heist, pointing at various points on the piece of paper as Quiet Possum looked on with intrigue. He focused on one point of the layout and made a gathering motion with his hands before celebrating with his hands in the air, marking the completion of the heist.
Quiet sat there, stroking his chin, pondering the information Gerald presented to him. He took his time, taking longer than Gerald would have liked. Finally, Quiet stood up stoically, not giving any indication of what direction he’s going in. He looked at Gerald right in his eyes - and gave him a thumbs up.
“Perfect. With you on board, this heist will be even easier,” Gerald bounced up from his seat in joy, standing with his hands on his hips as if he was a superhero. “Put this bandit hat on.”
Gerald presented Quiet with a black balaclava, which the possum placed over his mask. Mr. Fox put his own on, and the two made their way towards the door.
*****
Back at the tree, Michelle had just climbed up the wooden ladder that led up to her top bunk, and was now busying herself in pulling the covers over her small frame. Her cousin was just finishing up with the brushing of his teeth, which Michelle thought he conducted at an obnoxiously loud and inconsiderate volume. He emerged into the bedroom just as Michelle turned off the lights.
"Um, Michelle..." he said. Michelle quickly sat straight up and switched on the light again.
"Yes?" she asked, deliberately sharply. She noticed that her cousin was still wearing his octopus mask.
"I was hoping you'd allow me to move some of your books from the bottom bunk. I don't want to be an imposition, but sleeping on the floor underneath the bed isn't going to be good for my spinal --"
"Seriously?!" Michelle barked, by way of an interruption. "I see what you're up to, Uncle. This sad and sorry houseguest thing might be working with the rest of them, but I'm onto you. My family may be fooled, but my family are idiots. I know what you're up to with Uncle Gerald. And now you want to try and steal my room, too? Please! Just go to sleep."
Michelle turned the light off and lay back down. A few moments later, her cousin lowered himself onto the floor and shuffled awkwardly beneath the bed. There was a period of silence, and then Michelle began to hear a series of soft, painful sobs. She lowered her head from the top bunk, and although she couldn't see the tears, hidden away under a mattress and behind a mask, she knew that her cousin was crying.
She climbed down the ladder again and took a seat next to her train set. She pressed a button and the small, metal vehicle spurred into motion. It was slow at first, as it negotiated the patchwork of little wooden trees that surrounded the model station buildings. A few seconds later, her cousin shuffled out from underneath the bed. He took a kneeling perch next to Michelle, watching on as the train rounded a corner, disappeared into a hillside tunnel, and then re-emerged in front of a barrier. They heard the soft click of the mechanism as the red and white barrier lifted, and the train sped back towards them.
*****
Long after the cover of darkness had fallen over the area, Gerald Fox and Quiet Possum arrived at the electrified perimeter fence around Douglas Farm.
"Wait," Gerald instructed, holding a hand out in front of Possum to halt his path. "This fence wasn't on the plans. Must be new. Hold on, let me think... are possums burrowing creatures?"
Quiet lifted his claws up for inspection, and Gerald smiled at them.
"Follow me," Gerald said, before digging beneath the ground. The possum dug in another area and, a moment later, both reappeared on the other side. Each lifted their heads above the surface from their tunnels, spotted one of Rocco’s guard-beagles, and then disappeared back beneath the ground. The next time Gerald emerged, he had a pea shooter in his mouth, from which he fired a blueberry. It landed at the feet of the nearest beagle, whose eyes lit up as he stood and creeped towards it. He swallowed it down, smiled with satisfaction, and then toppled over to the floor. The strong sleeping agent that Mr. Fox put inside them did its work quickly. And beagles loved blueberries.
The most splendid, esteemed, humble, and fantastic Mr. Fox sent a half-dozen more blueberries flying in the direction of the other beagles, and one by one each of them fell to the ground. Content that the coast was finally clear, Fox and Possum emerged from their tunnels and made their way over to the chicken coop. Here, they paused, so that Gerald could dispense some hard-earned wisdom during a last minute consultation.
“You’ve got to be quick,” Gerald declared, looking directly into the possum’s rather vacant eyes. “Chickens are stupid, but they’re also very paranoid. One bite. You got it?”
“... …. .. ……. …..”
“I’m going to assume that’s a yes,” Gerald said, before disappearing into the coop. The sound of jaws and teeth at work could be heard and a few feathers were sent into the air before the dangerous duo left the chicken house again. Gerald had three dead chickens in his jaws, whilst a still-living one was clucking around in the possum’s. “I said one bite!”
“... .. ……. .. …”
“I guess that’s my fault,” Gerald admitted. “Do possums even have incisors? Are you gumming it? Here.”
He took the chicken and finished the job, and the two made away with their loot. They quickly found the tunnels that they’d made on the way in, wriggled through them to avoid the fence, and then scarpered off in the direction of home.
A few minutes later, Farmer Douglas appeared in his front yard. For a moment, he was worried that his poor beagles had been harmed in some way, but he was somewhat relieved to find that they were only sleeping. We treat dogs with kindness here. In fact, they sounded quite peaceful, almost harmonious, as they snored gently and neglected their patrol. The reader can be assured, in fact, that as a direct consequence of our hero's actions, these dogs were enjoying their most satisfying sleep in years. Farmer Douglas shook his head, and imagined the fun he’d have whilst admonishing Rocco for the hounds’ laziness. He patted one of the beasts on its neck and smiled to himself as he stood. He was about to turn back towards the farmhouse when he noticed a small, blue sphere on the ground. A blueberry.
He walked over to the blueberry and picked it up. He held it in front of his eyes, checking it over between his thumb and his forefinger.
Of course, anyone who knows anything about sleeping agents will be well aware that one causing peaceful and serene effects in dogs will cause torturous and painful ones in humans.
Finally, he threw the blueberry into his mouth and swallowed it. A moment later, he toppled over onto the ground, fast asleep.
*****
Gerald and Possum arrived back at the tree with their loot, and pushed open the front door whilst attempting to maintain as much silence (and therefore secrecy) as was possible. Fox led the way, two chickens in his hand, and the possum followed with two more. Both had their bandit hats peeled up over their faces, though Quiet’s was still hidden beneath his mask.
Suddenly, the living room light was switched on, and Michelle was revealed in the rocket chair. She looked at the two thieves reproachfully.
“Are those bandit hats?” she asked.
“Don’t tell your parents,” Gerald said.
*****
That morning, three differing figures sat in the large front room of a well-stocked farmhouse. Two of them shuffled nervously under the third’s gaze. This observer, older than the other two by some way and quite clearly their superior, smoked his pipe as he listened to the testimony of his underlings.
“There was an intruder or two last night. They were slick. Professionals probably,” Douglas assumed. “They knew the layout of the farm and used stealth tactics to retrieve four chickens.”
“Four chickens are missing?!” Crowe shouted at Douglas.
“I don’t see what the big deal is. We have an abundance of chickens,”Douglas said nonchalantly, drawing the ire of Crowe.
“For too long we’ve been made out to be fools!” Crowe slammed his fist on the table, causing Bedlam and Douglas to flinch backwards. “Or, to be more accurate, you two have!”
Crowe was seething, and all Bedlam and Douglas could do was look on with fear in their eyes. Moments later, Crowe calmed down, as if overcoming his momentary outburst of unfavourable emotions. He massaged his temple and tapped his boot on the floor repeatedly. He closed his eyes to further his calm state.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Crowe said, motioning for Bedlam and Douglas to listen intently. “Bedlam, tell your boy, Sammy, to double, hell, triple his patrols, both human and hound, on all three farms until further notice. This sounds, to me, like the work of a fox. And I’ll be dead in the ground before I’ll be outsmarted by a fox and reduced to the laughing stock of the farming community! We need to show our dominance, and this is exactly how we do it.”
“Yes, sir,” Bedlam said, quickly.
“Yes, sir,” repeated Douglas. Both were nodding their heads.
“Do not, and I repeat, do not, fail me,” Crowe threatened, and that was Bedlam and Douglas’s cue to leave the room.
*****
Also that morning, at the tree, Jamie Fox opened her pantry and made a strange, unexpected discovery. Plucked and primed, and almost ready to be placed in the oven, were four large chickens. Almost ready, for around each of their ankles was a bright yellow tag emblazoned with the words Douglas Farm.
Gerald, that most admirable, steadfast, esteemed, and fantastic Mr. Fox, sat with his newspaper and his morning coffee at the breakfast table. Possum was going about his superintendent duties in the garden around the house, where he was engaged in repairing one of the fences near the kitchen window. Gerald kept a close eye on him above the top of his newspaper, making sure that he was making a proper job of it and not cutting any corners. Just then, right as Gerald was concluding that Possum was doing a decent job of things after all, his peace and quiet was disturbed by the simultaneous clearing of two throats. When he looked back over the top of his newspaper, his brother and his wife stood directly in front of him.
“Gerald,” Jay began, doing his best impression of either a reproachful father or a curious inspector. “There are four fresh chickens in the pantry.”
“I know,” Gerald answered, flashing his brother a click, a whistle, and a point. “Fresh is exactly right! Picked them up from the store just this morning.”
“They still have the Douglas Farm tags around their ankles,” Jay pointed out.
“That’s how you know they’re fresh,” Gerald contested, nervously. “What are you insinuating?”
“You wouldn’t be heisting again, would you?” Jay asked, narrowing his eyes at his younger brother.
“No, Jay, I made a --" Gerald began.
“Because you made a promise,” Jay interrupted, finishing his brother’s sentence for him. “Remember?”
“Of course,” Gerald said, displaying his pearly whites in a broad, beaming smile. “I never forget anything.”
His brother nodded and, followed by his wife, left the room. Possum had approached the window, and was now poking his head through it, staring towards Gerald Fox with his blank, unknowing eyes.
“Tonight it’s Bedlam,” Mr. Fox whispered, in the possum’s direction. “Meet me here after dark. Bring your bandit hat.”
*****
Gerald smiled as he spotted Quiet Possum's head poking above the window next to the front door of their new home. He crept onwards, down each creaking step with about as much care and delicacy as he could muster. Eventually, he reached out for the door knob, ready to greet his accomplice and head off to the second part of his three-part plan. As he touched the handle, a sole lamp was turned on from the middle of the room.
Sitting in the cone of light produced by the shade was Michelle. She was wearing a homemade bandit hat, crafted from a loose-fitting sock, in which she had cut holes for her eyes and ears.
"Going somewhere?" she asked. She was cocking an eyebrow, though it couldn't be seen through the red and white striped sock upon her head.
"What are you doing awake?" Gerald asked, defensively. "It's past your bedtime."
"Take me with you," Michelle instructed, standing from her armchair and walking towards him. "I already have a bandit hat."
"That's not a bandit hat," Gerald corrected. "And besides, your parents would kill me. And you're way too young. Although, your cousin would probably be an asset. You see that dive? He's clearly a natural athlete..."
"Take me with you," Michelle repeated. "Or I'll tell my parents."
Gerald stood motionless, but for the narrowing of his eyes.
In the main control room of the security building of Bedlam Farm, Sammy Bedlam - younger brother of Tommy - sat back in his chair and scanned with his eyes across the many screens in front of him. He was eating a leg of chicken from the neighbouring Douglas Farm with his left hand and sipping a glass of strong, alcoholic cider from the neighbouring Crowe Farm with his right. The slight but noticeable noises associated with enjoyment of this sort emanated from him frequently as he continued to nibble his food and sip his drink.
He had been told, as you already know, to re-enforce the watches on all three farms tonight, and he’d done as he’d been told. Even the youngest beagles, the ones still in training, had been sent out to patrol the yard, and Sammy took great pleasure in phoning the forty three men who were due to have tonight off to tell them they were expected after all. He could see pretty much all of them on the screens in front of him, and as he continued to chew on the chicken leg he reached for a pencil to record the names of a handful of men and a pair of beagles who he perceived to not be working hard enough.
Just then, the top left screen on his display - which was a large, four-by-six grid - began to flicker. Sammy’s eyes instantly drifted across to it. It was one of the cameras on the outer perimeter, atop the electrified fence. It continued to flicker for a moment, and then it went black.
“Huh?” Sammy asked nobody in particular as he leant forward in his chair.
A moment later, a second camera, this one pointed at the northernmost smokestack, spluttered and died in the same manner as the first. Then went the one overlooking the reservoir. Followed by the three outside the milking barn, and then the one next to the window of Thomas’ bedroom.
Sammy, now beginning to feel a sense of panic wash over him, placed his chicken leg and his cider down on the table in front of him. He scanned all of the images simultaneously, looking for any semblance of activity beyond the expected movements of his men.
Finally, he saw it: upon the screen showing the camera directed at the central granary, he saw the grinning face of a detestable, audacious, disease-ridden fox.
The fox winked, and then all of the screens went off at once.
“It’s him!”
*****
“Bingo!” Gerald said, as the three foxes and possum emerged into the huge warehouse where Bedlam housed much of his stock. He looked about himself at the cuts of meat, gallons of milk, fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, preserves, and heavens knew what else that lay about him. “Quick, fill your loot sacks.”
“You know, Mr. Fox,” Cousin Uncle began. “I’m very glad to be included and all, and am grateful for this bandit hat, but I’m not sure my parents would really appreciate me going along on an escapade of this sort.”
“Don’t mention it, kid,” Gerald replied, ignoring the main thrust of Cousin Uncle’s speech.
“He gets a bandit hat,” muttered Michelle. Just as Gerald and Quiet began to load their sacks with whatever they could carry, the lights came up in the warehouse and alarm sirens began to ring out.
“Quick,” Gerald repeated. “Fill your loot sacks!”
Moments later, the quartet emerged from the warehouse and sped across the yard, the sirens still blaring around them as they went. They could hear the distant mumbling of men and beagles, and soon enough their location had been discovered.
“Climb!” Gerald shouted as they arrived at the electrified fence. They did as they were bid, gunshots ringing out behind them, the fence buzzing them each and every time they laid a paw upon it. Mr. Fox let out a feeble cry as they climbed over the top of it and fell down to safety on the other side.
“Is everybody okay?” Cousin Uncle asked, having landed lightly and deftly on his paws.
“My tail!” Gerald screamed, searchlights starting up behind them. “They shot off my tail!”
“Help, grab an arm,” Cousin Uncle said to Michelle, the pair positioning themselves beneath each of Gerald’s shoulders and carrying him back as quickly as they could towards their tree.
*****
Crowe had his back to Bedlam and Douglas, massaging his temple, irate that there was another breach on their farms. There was a ton of glass on the floor, seemingly broken by Crowe’s rage. He looked like he was about to explode.
“Boss, look,” Bedlam started, trying to tread lightly around Crowe as if that might gain his favour. “We didn’t catch the culprit… but at least we know who it is now,”
Crowe turned around.
“Who was it?” he asked.
Bedlam held up a primarily orange fox tail with hues of white towards the end. Douglas seemed to be licking his chops, knowing exactly who the fox tail belonged to. Bedlam himself looked sinister as he held up the tail for his boss to see.
“So it was Gerald Fox, huh?” Crowe shook his head, almost impressed with Mr. Fox. “Hasn’t been seen for two years. And now I’ve got his tail…”
Crowe looked out of the window thoughtfully, and then turned back towards the two oafs in front of him.
“You should both be ashamed of yourselves. Of the ‘work’ you’ve done here. Letting a fox get one over on each of ya,” Crowe scolded Bedlam and Douglas. “But we’re going to fix it… and we’re going to fix it right away. I want you both to gather everyone - your entire workforce. How many men is that?
“I’ve got forty eight men,” Douglas said.
“I’ve got forty nine,” Bedlam put in.
“And I’ve got fifty, so that’s,” Crowe began, before pausing to complete the arithmetic. “That’s one hundred and forty seven men. Get them all out in front of the main gate in one hour.”
Here, he turned away and pulled a phone out of his jacket pocket. He dialled a number and lifted the receiver to his ear.
“Harry? Yes. Round up the men and meet me in front of the main gate in one hour. Thomas and James are doing the same. We’re also going to need twelve diggers, one hundred and forty seven shotguns, one hundred and forty seven pitchforks, fifty turkeys for lunch, and, hmmmm, six large bottles of strong, alcoholic cider.”
Crowe hung up his phone and turned back towards the other farmers. He smirked, the bad intentions behind his words clear.
“We’re going to pay the Fox family a little visit.”
*****
When Jamie Fox opened up her pantry the following morning, she expected to be greeted by the sight of the three remaining Douglas Farm chickens, along with the small amount of groceries she’d purchased herself from the store earlier in the week. Instead, she found a packed larder. Meat, vegetables, dairy, eggs, and just about every other farm-grown foodstuff you could imagine was crammed onto every single shelf. Jay appeared at her shoulder, and the pair exchanged a mournful gaze.
“You’re heisting again, aren’t you?” Jay asked, confronting his brother at the kitchen table once more.
“No, I made a promise, and Jay, look at me,” Gerald began, lowering his newspaper and looking his brother in the eye. He was smiling warmly, as if ready to put all his fears to rest… when, in the distance, the family heard the low rumbling of a machine. No: of many machines. “What the cuss…”
Upstairs, Michelle and Cousin Uncle looked through their bedroom window to see a dozen bright yellow diggers, surrounded by countless men holding shotguns and pitchforks, all bounding up the hill and towards the tree.
“Diggers!” Michelle screamed, alerting her parents and her uncle before descending the stairs with her cousin. The five foxes stood in their living room, each staring out of a different window as the machines began to surround their home. “What are we going to do?”
“Gerald?!” Jamie shouted.
“Do something!” Jay instructed.
But, up until this moment, Gerald Fox - that esteemed, acclaimed, most admirable and venerable and fantastic Mr. Fox - had simply been staring at the ground and stroking his chin. Then, a lightbulb shone brightly above his head, illuminating his eyes in the process.
“We dig!” he instructed. A moment later, all of the foxes were digging downwards, just as the machines outside began to chew away at their tree and at their hill. They didn’t stop for a good while, instead tunnelling and burrowing their way deep into the earth. The soft mud at the surface soon gave way to harder and less agreeable terrain, but they still didn’t stop until the muffled sounds of the diggers on the surface had all but disappeared.
The four other foxes looked at him, the two adults wearing their disapproval plainly and almost growling at the one in the auburn suit. Their next move was stayed, though, by a distant but approaching rumble, and for a moment they feared that the diggers had chewed right through the earth and uncovered their subterranean sanctuary in no time at all.
Their fears were allayed, though, as one of the adjacent walls gave way and a series of animals from the local area found their way in. There was Thomas Badger and his family, along with Quiet Possum, the Weasels, Harry the Beaver and his parents, Coach Gator and his wife Meg, and a host of others that Mr. Fox was more or less acquainted with.
“There he is!” Badger exclaimed, pointing at Gerald. “Get him!”
The other animals lunged at Gerald like a lynch mob, only for Jay and Jamie to block their path. The two foxes snarled at the animals until they made a brief retreat.
“What are you doing?!” Gerald asked. “We’re friends!”
“Those diggers cussed up our homes, too!” Badger explained, whilst brushing dirt away from his suit. “The flint mine’s flooded. Roads are underwater. The whole city is cussed! And it’s on you, Fox!”
Gerald looked over at Possum, who stared back with blank, expressionless eyes.
“Look, things aren’t all bad,” Gerald said. “Not when we’ve got each other!”
“We have no food!” Coach Gator declared. “Can we eat you?”
“What?! No!”
“Then what are we going to eat?” Mr. Beaver, Harry’s father, asked.
Once more, Gerald furrowed his brows and gave himself up to complete, deep thought. The rest of the animals were gathered around him, waiting to hear the great proclamation from this esteemed, acclaimed, well-respected, well-groomed, ecclesiastic, affable, admirable, venerable, and most fantastic Mr. Fox. Eventually, he raised a finger into the air, and looked directly at Quiet Possum.
“I think it’s time for part three,” he said, the devilish glint returning to his eye. “Crowe Farm: tonight. It’s the last thing they’ll expect!”
“Gerald,” Jay said, after clearing his throat. Mr. Fox’s enthusiasm was for a moment halted, and he turned around to face his brother and his wife, both of whom were looking at him with countenances expressing disappointment and annoyance. “A quick word.”
“Sure,” Gerald replied. “Go ahead.”
“In private,” Jay said. Gerald looked about himself, at the two dozen animals that were gathered close around them.
“Where do you want to go?” Gerald asked.
“Just through here,” Jay answered, pointing at a nearby wall. The two burrowed through it and into a small, natural room on the other side of it. They must have been close to the salt mines, for the walls around them were glowing and sparkling in white and silver. “What do you think you are doing?”
“What do you think I'm doing?” Gerald asked, in his best attempt at deflection. “Those animals out there need saving! They’re hungry! I’m helping them…”
“Gerald, you promised,” Jay said. His eyes were fixed onto his brother in accusation. Gerald loosened his shoulders, and let out a heavy and tortured breath.
“I know what I promised,” Gerald conceded. He turned to face Jay, and there was sadness in his eyes. But also an acceptance: an acceptance of who he was. “But… I guess I just couldn’t do it. Farm heists and chicken thefts… the thrill, the risk, the reward… all of that stuff just means a lot to me.”
“But why?” Jay asked, in earnest. In his heart, he truly didn't understand his brother's nature.
“Because I’m a wild animal.”
*****
Just a pair of hours after the dramatic and emotional conclusion of our third chapter, Mr. Fox returned to the host of underground critters with what could earnestly be described as a feast fit for kings. He, with only Quiet Possum as an accomplice (no matter how hard he'd pleaded with Jamie, Michelle had not been allowed to come along), had quickly and absolutely raided Farmer Crowe's larders.
"It was just like I said it would be," Gerald proclaimed, whilst standing at the head of the table. More roast chickens, turkeys, and ducks were being brought out from their makeshift kitchens. "With Crowe so busy looking after Bedlam and Douglas, and searching for me of course, the spoils were left unprotected. And now, we feast. But first…"
"How did you know where to dig?!" Badger asked, in wonder, whilst staring at yet another plate of roast vegetables being laid out on the table.
"A fox always follows his nose," Gerald explained, whilst shooting a click, a whistle, and a point at the questioner. "But please, if you'll hold all questions until the end of the speech. My fellow creatures of the woods, the fields, and the trees…"
Meanwhile, as Mr. Fox was beginning to launch into his monologue, Michelle leant over towards her cousin at the other end of the table. She had managed to get her hands on a glass of strong, alcoholic cider, of which there were whole vats in the kitchens, and was feeling all of a sudden rather courageous.
"Uncle," she said to her cousin, being careful to keep her voice to a whisper. "I've got plans of my own. Come with me."
She snuck away from the table, and after giving a long, apprehensive sigh, the white fox in the octopus mask followed after her. She led him to a small passage at about knee level: obviously much too small for a human, but just about perfect for a fox.
"I have a bad feeling about this, Michelle," Uncle said, scratching behind his ears. "What sort of plan did you have in mind?"
"A heist," Michelle answered.
"A heist?!" Uncle exclaimed, shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot. "Is that your answer to everything on this side of the river? I happen to agree with your parents in that we're much too young for heists. Besides, your uncle already stolen more food than we could eat in a month."
"We're not going for food," Michelle explained. "This tunnel leads into the sewer system below Bedlam Farm. That’s where my uncle was shot. We're going to go get his tail back."
"Can't we just wait for it to grow back?"
"Foxtails don't grow back. That's lizards."
"I still don't think this is a good idea," Uncle protested.
"Come on! The strings I had to pull for you at school?! Not to mention with my family! They all wanted you gone. I've treated you with nothing but compassion ever since you arrived, and you won't do me this one favour in return?!"
Again, Uncle sighed.
"Okay," he conceded.
"Okay,” Michelle said. “Have you got your bandit hat?”
A short time later, they had tunnelled their way into Bedlam Farm, and proceeded to look high and low for Gerald's tail. First they checked the barn that housed the sleeping cows and then the one storing the veal crates (calves not quite 'alive' but breathing nonetheless inside them), before realising these were probably the last places that such an item would be kept. They checked the perimeter fence, thinking that perhaps it had been left there as a message to other foxes, but after making a complete circuit they were still empty-handed.
"I think this is where we started," Michelle said as they arrived back at the veal-house. A young and uselessly male calf screamed out in terror from inside the wooden building, making the young foxes shudder.
"Maybe we should just leave," Uncle suggested.
"We're going to have to go inside," Michelle said. "It'll be in the house."
"Quiet," Uncle instructed. He pulled his cousin behind a nearby barn as two voices came more into focus.
"You hear about what happened at Crowe Farm?" the first voice said.
"That fox took everything, so they say," the second replied. "Crowe's not so smart now, eh? That fox got him the same way he got Douglas and Bedlam."
"Well, it's just a matter of time," the first said.
"Until what?" the second asked.
"That fox has gone back underground," came the answer. "And Old Crowe's going to flood him out. Will drain every reservoir we have to get that fox, I'd bet you. But he'll get him…"
The voices began to fade as the two farmhands walked off into the distance. Cousin Uncle turned to Michelle with pleading eyes.
"We should go back and warn them," Uncle insisted.
"No," Michelle shot back. "We're so close."
She led the way onwards to the farmhouse, and within a moment the pair were creeping through an open window. They emerged in essential silence into the Bedlam family kitchen. Their eyes scanned this way and that in search of the tail, but instead they came to rest on a small plate of brownies.
"Ever tried one of Ms. Bedlam's world-famous triple chocolate all organic purple amnesia space haze brownies?" Michelle asked.
Cousin Uncle licked his lips. His eyes flickered over to the clock, which ticked on relentlessly.
"Maybe just one," he said.
A handful of seconds later, the two foxes had devoured the whole plate, and were lying on their backs whilst rubbing their own bellies.
Just then, the kitchen door opened.
And in walked Sammy Bedlam, the head of human security on all three farms. He had an axe in his hand.
"Run!" Michelle declared, and a moment later the pair were hurtling through the window again. The searchlights were turned on and sirens began to sound. Nearer by, the barking of beagles was carried onto their ears by the wind, and torches held by farmhands shone brightly in their eyes. They made their way back to their tunnels and, the sound of gunfire chasing them, leapt down into the sewers.
"Hello, boys," said a voice, purring and raspy and full of low cunning. Before them, blocking the way through the sewers as well as the shaft of light that came through one of the overhead drains, was a large and black rat. He took a step towards them, his damp whiskers brustling, and flashed them a smile with a mouth full of gold teeth. In one hand was a large bottle of strong, alcoholic cider. In the other was a sharp knife. Michelle gulped.
“Who are you?” she asked, instinctively backing away from the rat. “Do you work for Crowe? Bedlam? Douglas?”
“I work for me, baby doll,” the rat said. Onwards he came, his eyes ablaze with a predatory hate. “I work to protect what’s mine, to keep my cider cup full to the brim. And anything that keeps you foxes down… well, es bueno for us rats. That’s the way it’s always been, girl. Ahora… y… siempre.”
“Stand back,” Uncle said, taking a step towards their assailant. He brought his two hands together in meditation, and stood up so that he was perched upon one leg. “I weigh less than a slice of bread.”
The rat laughed, and took a step towards them.
“I was expecting Gerald as well,” he said, still grinning at them with his golden mouth. “But you boys will do… for starters.”
Cousin Uncle lunged at the rat, and with a perfect roundhouse kick he knocked the knife from his hand. It hit a nearby wall and landed with a light splash in the sewers. The rat charged, and for a moment both he and Cousin Uncle cascaded into the water.
“Now!” Cousin Uncle said, after disentangling himself from the rat. The two foxes bolted up the sewers, and Michelle ran as fast as her four legs would take her. She reached the passage that led towards their subterranean refuge and, without turning back for even an instant, she fled up the dark tunnels, thinking about her family and what was left of their home. Eventually, she emerged in a bluster of heavy breathing and sweat. She rolled on her back as the familiar voice of Mr. Fox found its way into her ears. It seemed he was just about wrapping up his speech.
“And that, my dear friends, is what really matters,” Gerald was saying. “Now, let us enjoy this feast.”
“He’s still talking!” Michelle said, rolling back onto her front and looking back towards Cousin Uncle. It was only then that she realised he wasn’t there alongside her. “Cousin Uncle?!”
Above her, she could hear a low rumble.
“Mom! Dad!” she shouted, emerging into the feasthall. The host of animals housed there turned towards her in unison. “Uncle Gerald! They’ve got Cousin Uncle! And they’re going to flood the tunnels!”
“What?!” Jamie said, standing from her chair and approaching her daughter.
“Where’s your cousin?!” Jay asked, following his wife.
“Flood the tunnels?!” Gerald asked, just then beginning to notice the low rumbling coming from above. “Who are ‘they’?”
Michelle was quite prepared to answer these questions, and any others her family or the community at large might have had, but it was at this very moment that the first drops of water came in through the cracks in the ceiling. Then, a stream leaked in through a large entranceway to the north of their cavern. Soon enough, water in unimaginable volumes was beginning to leak in through every crevice and crack. Every animal present, along with each ounce of unconsumed food (for they had been patiently awaiting the end of the fantastic Mr. Fox’s quite fantastic speech), was washed away.
The family were lucky to all eventually end up in the same place, minus - of course - Cousin Uncle. When they each stood to their feet, finding their clothes drenched and their senses thoroughly disorientated, the three adults each turned upon Michelle in unison.
“Where is your cousin?” Jamie asked.
“He’s at Bedlam Farm,” Michelle said, eliciting a gasp from her audience. Just then, more and more animals were beginning to wash up in the same patch of sewers as the foxes. “We went to get Uncle Gerald’s tail back.”
In that moment, the stance of both Jamie and Jay seemed to mellow, and each of them turned to face Gerald. He had the same realisation as them, that he had led Michelle and her cousin down this path with his insistence on poking at the farmers, even after they had shot off his tail.
“I know,” he said. He took off his soaking wet shirt and picked up a thin piece of driftwood, before tying the white material to the end of it. He waved it apologetically in a symbol of surrender. “It’s me they want. This will get Cousin Uncle back.”
He turned away from the couple.
“Gerald, you can’t,” Jay said. “There’s got to be another way.”
“It’s the only way,” he answered, without turning back. He walked towards a tunnel that led towards the surface. At the last moment, he turned back to the crowd, and offered them a faint click, a tepid whistle, and a tired point.
He would have gone, too. If not for the fact that, at that very second, a handful of pamphlets began to emerge from the passage to the surface into their sewer. Some thudded into the walls, others landed face down in the waters, whilst more arrived at the feet of the animals. Mr. Fox reached out and caught one from the passage mouth, noticing that they were being blown into their basin by some sort of manufactured wind tunnel. He glanced down at the images on the sheet of paper: at the faces of the smiling farmers and at the thin band of text that offered a lifetime’s supply of strong, alcoholic cider in exchange for knowledge of Mr. Fox’s whereabouts.
“What’s this?” Gerald asked, focusing on one of the photographs.
“It’s just triumphalism,” Jay declared, shaking his head.
“They’re trying to flush you out,” Jamie offered.
“No,” Gerald said. He was looking at one particular image. It depicted a cuss-eating grin on the face of Farmer Crowe. “Around his neck.”
“That’s your --" Michelle started.
“That’s my tail!” Gerald exclaimed. It was: as plain as day, around the fat and old neck of Farmer Crowe, was the thick, brown tail of our beloved hero, that most esteemed, magnanimous, highly-acclaimed and greatly sought after, that inspired, energetic, high-flying and free-wheeling most fantastic Mr. Fox. He was wearing it like a fashionably furry necktie.
“This…” Gerald started. “This is too much.”
“Oh, I agree,” Jay said, nodding his head. The rest of the animals were beginning to feel their own senses of pride being attacked too, and a communal anger was stirring. Looking to make the most of it, Mr. Fox leapt up onto a nearby empty barrel, ready to speak to his peers one last time.
“These three farmers… this Douglas, this Bedlam, and this Crowe… these Bog-forsaken cuss-lovers…. they have messed with us for the last time! They dug up my tree! They flooded our homes! They tried to starve us! They kidnapped my nephew! And now they're wearing my tail!”
Badger, beaver, possum, and gator, otters, weasels, and foxes, all listened to Gerald carefully, and each asked themselves what they could do to help him.
“And now, we’re taking it back,” Gerald declared, already in triumph. “All of it!”
*****
The convoy consisted of two motorcycles, which really is the smallest convoy that you can have, and it sped on up the quiet, country road with some sense of urgency. A train sped by in the opposite direction and it felt to the five (actually six, as you'll find out) creatures within the motorcycles that they were going twice as fast as the train. The wind gushed into their faces and blew their whiskers back, if they had any whiskers.
"Now, gentlemen," Gerald started, his eyes trained on the outline of the farm that was getting larger and clearer in the distance. He had been thinking what to say ever since the small team had left the sewers and climbed above ground, formulating an impromptu speech to steel their nerves. "It's important to remember that we five are wonderful, beautiful, fantastic individuals, each one of us, with fancy, Latin, scientific names and special attributes that make us who we are. I'm sure that, with all of our skills combined, this mission is going to be a piece of cake. How about a little roll-call? Thomas Badger!"
"Here!" the badger cried out from his position in the sidecar of the other motorcycle. He had his hands on top of his helmet, fighting against the wind to keep it on his head.
"Meles Meles! And what makes you special?"
"Well, I'm a pretty good communicator," Thomas mumbled. "I guess that's got to count for something."
"That's right!" Gerald declared, enthusiastically. "And Harry Beaver! Castor fiber! What about you?"
"I'm pretty good at science," he said. "Explosions and stuff."
"Vehicle hire!" Gator proudly declared from the driver's seat of the other bike. "These are my hogs!"
"And where would we be without them?" Gerald asked, rhetorically. "Quiet Possum! Didelphis virginiana!"
".... …. … ………"
"And of course, vulpes vulpes!" Gerald declared, readying himself to deliver his trademark click, whistle, and point.
"Here!" Michelle said, emerging from next to the possum and the beaver in Gerald’s sidecar.
"Wait, what the cuss are you doing here?!" Gerald asked.
"I'm here to help," Michelle contested, adjusting her red and white sock (with eye- and ear-holes cut out) on her head. "I brought my bandit hat."
"That's not a bandit hat," Gerald said, shaking his head in frustration. "But fine. There's no time to go back. Everyone clear on the plan?"
"Clear."
"Clear."
"Clear."
"Clear."
"......"
"Right," Gerald said. Click, whistle, point. "Let's do this."
*****
In the control room in one of the towers surrounding Crowe Farms, one could forgive Sammy Bedlam for having fallen asleep. It was, after all, still quite early in the morning, and he'd spent much of the night either being told off by one of the three farmers or helping to flood the system of tunnels beneath the farms. This was the first moment he'd had to himself in days, and he was quite happy to make the most of it.
If he had stayed awake, though, he might have seen a series of small figures - belonging to foxes, possums, beavers, badgers, and the like - creeping around one of the largest storehouses in the farm. He would have seen this on one of the many screens in an array in front of him, showing footage from the numerous CCTV cameras stationed around the farms. He didn't see it, though, because, as we've already established, he was fast asleep.
He also didn't see the leader of this pack of creatures pick the heavy padlock on the storehouse, and then pull the door ajar.
He was soundly snoring when the first of the farmhands found the open storehouse. Sammy didn't see the worker approach the door with hesitancy, for this man knew what was inside the barn. This was where Farmer Crowe kept his strong, alcoholic cider, and it was usually locked safely away so that the workforce couldn't get its hands on it.
Sammy continued to snooze as this great discoverer snuck into the barn and reemerged with a few bottles of the golden stuff. The array of screens told a story of a rumour spreading around the premises, and soon enough more and more farmhands were approaching the barn with apprehension, before reappearing in a state of giddy excitement, bottles of cider beneath their arms and in their pockets.
And Sammy continued to sleep. He dreamt of goats.
*****
Farmer Crowe sat on his porch in his rocking chair. He was nursing a glass of strong, alcoholic cider and staring a hole through the other two farmers, who were shuffling awkwardly and anxiously in front of him. There were large, black bags beneath his eyes, the sign of the many sleepless nights he'd endured in the run up to today.
"How many are too drunk to report?" he asked, before taking a large glug of his own drink.
"Half of my men. Two thirds of yours. Nearly all of Thomas's," Farmer Douglas said, nervously. Crowe stood from his seat and, without uttering a word, launched his half-finished glass of cider into the side of his house.
"It's just a cussing fox," he declared, his fists balled up tightly. He glowered at his underlings, who shook before him in a puddle of their own making. "Where are they now? Someone has eyes on him, I assume?"
Bedlam and Douglas looked at each other, at a loss. They were saved by Rocco, the kennel-master, who just then arrived and stood between the farmers, slightly out of breath.
"Excuse me, sirs," he said, still panting. "But someone's let the dogs out. All of them. I don't know who let the dogs out. Who? Who? I can't say, sirs. But someone's let the dogs out."
"It's the fox," declared Crowe, reaching for his gun.
"That's not all, sirs," Rocco continued. "There's been a small explosion in the main courtyard, in front of the foie gras hut. Probably linked, sirs, if you ask me."
"You think?" Crowe asked, his question dripping in sarcasm.
"Well, lots of things are related," Rocco started, before trailing off.
"Assemble the rest of the workforce," Crowe ordered. "The ones that aren't high from my supply. Get every gun we have and meet me on the main courtyard."
He cooked his shotgun, a cigarette hanging from his mouth.
"That's where this little cusser is."
*****
The badger, possum, beaver, and two foxes (Coach Gator having remained on the perimeter to keep the bikes warm) were hiding behind a crate near the foie gras hut. They were well aware of the marshalling forces on the other side of the courtyard. Gerald kept a close eye on them through a crack in one of the slats. There were the three farmers, Bedlam, Douglas, and Crowe, Rocco the kennel-master, a recently-woken Sammy, around fifty remaining farmhands bearing pitchforks and shotguns, and around the same number of beagles that were meekly wandering around the yard. Mr. Fox had hoped his setting them free would convince them to stage a mutiny against their keepers, but they mostly just meandered around the place and sniffed the concrete in pursuit of blueberries. Gerald lamented not having any to give them.
"We've got to find Cousin Uncle," Gerald said, uselessly.
"You keep them distracted," Michelle said, pulling her bandit hat down over her head again. "I'll find him."
With that, she ran out from behind the crate, and bounded on all fours towards the farmhouse. She leapt up onto a drain pipe, crawled up it, and crept into the house through an open upstairs window.
Meanwhile, Gerald stepped up onto the top of the crate behind which they had been hidden, drawing the gaze of the farmers and their men.
"It's nice to meet you, farmers," Gerald said. He offered them a click, a whistle, and a point.
"We've met before," Farmer Crowe said, stroking the foxtail that he still wore around his neck.
"That's just your problem, Crowe," Gerald said, sticking out his chest. "You've become so attached to that trophy of yours, and others like it, that you've forgotten about what really matters. You can surround yourself with oafs and goons and call these serfs your friends, but you don't know what it's like."
Here, Gerald paused, and observed Crowe tightening his grip on his shotgun.
"You don’t know what it’s like for me. Or for Michelle. Or Jay, or Uncle, or Quiet or Thomas or Harry. You don't know what it's like to be part of a family."
A silence lingered, during which Crowe's cigarette burned down to nothing.
"Got nothing to say to that?!" Gerald asked.
"Fire!" Crowe returned with a roar, and then the guns let loose. Mr. Fox leapt behind the crate, where he and the others cowered in terror.
*****
Meanwhile, in one of the basements beneath Crowe’s farmhouse, Michelle finally managed to fix her eyes upon the object of her search. In a cage on the end of a long, high table was Cousin Uncle. He was sitting with his back against the iron bars, rolling a blueberry around on the floor in order to amuse himself, and cutting a generally dejected figure.
“Cousin!” Michelle said, before scaling the table and walking along its top until she was face to face with the white fox in the octopus mask. Just now, she noticed that the cage had no bottom, and by forcing it off the edge of the table her cousin would surely be able to crawl to freedom through this opening.
“Thank Bog you’re here,” Cousin Uncle said. He stood up and threw his blueberry in his mouth. “This is a most disagreeable situation. I haven’t eaten anything all day other than these blueberries I brought with me on our heist. But you came for me.”
“Of course,” Michelle answered, whilst attempting to push the cage over the edge of the table. It was heavy, and she found that it wouldn’t budge.
“I tried myself,” Cousin Uncle said, observing the difficulty she was having. “If only I was on the outside of the cage. I’d be able to roundhouse kick it over the edge. But, of course, if I was outside of the cage, there’d be no reason for me to kick it in the first place.”
“You can teach me,” Michelle suggested. She backed away from the cage, and Cousin Uncle noticed that her breathing was laboured. Her cardiovascular conditioning was poor. “Teach me the loaf of bread thing.”
“Michelle, it took me years to be able to unlock that power inside of myself,” Cousin Uncle said. “I’m not sure I can just teach you. But I can try.”
First, Cousin Uncle brought his hands together, as if meditating, and Michelle aped him. Next, one of his feet was raised into the air so that he was balancing on the other leg, and his cousin did her best to replicate it, but found that she struggled with the concept.
“Now, imagine that you’re weightless,” Cousin Uncle said. “That you could run upon the air itself.”
Michelle closed her eyes, and focused.
“I am lighter than a slice of bread,” Cousin Uncle said.
“I am lighter than a slice of bread,” Michelle repeated. She hopped up into the air, attempting to rotate around in completion of a roundhouse kick, but lost her footing and fell headfirst into the cage. It rocked for a moment, then teetered, and then it dropped over the edge. It landed with a clatter on the floor, and Michelle shook the cobwebs loose on top of the table before climbing down to check on her cousin. He seemed mostly unharmed, and she helped him up to his feet.
“Thanks for coming,” Cousin Uncle said. Michelle just nodded.
Their moment was interrupted by a low and solitary bark coming from the entrance to the room. Both of their eyes were diverted to the source, and they saw a large, black beagle standing in front of them. Its mouth was covered in saliva and filled with yellow teeth, and it had more than a suggestion of a rabid look about him.
“What do we do?” Michelle asked. The dog barked at them, a little more violently. Uncle took a blueberry out of his pocket and rolled it towards the beagle. The hound sniffed at it mistrustfully, before placing it into his mouth and swallowing the berry. Fortunately for him, no powerful sleeping agent was hidden within, and he enjoyed the taste of the blueberry with the good fortune of his full consciousness. Such was his satisfaction that the beagle lightly padded over to Cousin Uncle and sat lazily in front of him.
“I think he likes me,” Cousin Uncle said, offering him a second blueberry. The dog took it and then smiled weakly at his master. Through the window, the pair (or trio, if you include the beagle) heard the instruction of Farmer Crowe to fire, and then the emptying of gun barrels as his men hurried to obey his commands. “Come on, let’s go.”
*****
“Hey, you got him!” Gerald said as they were rejoined behind their crate by the two young foxes and their new canine friend. “Good work! I gotta say, I didn’t think you had it in you. But here he is! Here, take this…”
Gerald took a bandit hat out of his back pocket and offered it to Michelle, who was still wearing the one she had made out of a red and white sock.
“No, thanks,” Michelle answered. “I prefer mine.”
Gerald nodded, and then turned to face the farmers again. He noticed a lull in the fire, and decided what his next course of action would be. He was quite confident that a speech of some sort was exactly what was needed to put this situation to rights, but before he could even properly map out his preamble, he noticed the big, black beagle that had arrived with Michelle and Cousin Uncle walking out into no man’s land between them and the farmers.
“Woof!” the big black beagle said, loudly but calmly. The farmers muttered to each other on the other side of the courtyard, but they didn’t yet reach for their guns.
“Woof!” came the return cry of a second beagle, and then “woof!” was the repetition of several dozen others from around the yard. Before long they had joined the big, black beagle to occupy the space inbetween the foxes and the farmers.
And then, they turned on Crowe. In an instant, the hounds ran almost right through him, tearing his clothes off his body and chasing him around in circles. Gerald afforded himself a little peak above the parapets, and admired the long purple bloomers that Farmer Crowe was wearing as underwear. The dogs continued to chase him, and he realised that escape was becoming more necessary by the minute. Crowe leapt over a nearby stone wall and ran as fast as he could over the adjacent fields, hounded as he went by Rocco’s unfaithful beagles.
Back in the courtyard, Farmer Bedlam looked over at Farmer Douglas.
“Well, what do we do now?” Bedlam asked.
“I’m not sure,” Douglas replied. The silence seemed to stretch on for a few awkward moments. “I guess you’re in charge?”
“I’m not in charge,” Bedlam answered, doing his best to absolve himself of such a responsibility. “You’re in charge!”
“I can’t be in charge!” Douglas shot back.
“Why not?” Bedlam said.
“Well, I guess I could be,” Douglas said. “But I wouldn’t really know what to do.”
“Me neither,” Bedlam admitted.
The two looked at each other nervously for a moment.
“I guess we better go home, then,” Douglas said. Bedlam nodded, and the two left in opposite directions.
Meanwhile, from the stone floor of the courtyard, Gerald retrieved his somewhat mangled tail. It had been discarded by the beagles as they had torn away Farmer Crowe’s clothes, and now it looked a sorry sight as he went to observe it. Just as he tried to pick it up, the other end of it was grabbed in the snout of the big, black beagle, who tried to playfully tear it away from Mr. Fox’s grip.
With a smile, Gerald let go, and watched the hound carry his tail back off to the kennels.
“You can keep that, boy.”
*****
The party sped back along the country road on the two motorcycles that Coach Gator had been keeping warm, and spirits were generally high amongst the foxes and other critters as the cool autumnal breeze streamed past their faces.
“Michelle, that was pure wild animal craziness,” Gerald admitted, a hint of admiration in his voice. “I’m proud of you.”
“Better get a message back to the sewers,” Badger said, pressing buttons on his mobile phone. “Let them know we’re safe.”
“That’s a good id --" Beaver began, before the sentence trailed off. He abandoned it in favour of another one, which seemed a lot more urgent and imperative. “Don’t. Turn. Around.”
“Why?” Gerald asked, and instinctively - of course - he turned around. His bike screeched to a halt, and Gator’s did the same a few paces ahead.
Each and every set of eyes was turned towards a snowy mountain, flanked on either side by a dense woodland that seemed to stretch on right up to the horizon itself.
And then, upon the foothills of the snow-capped mountains, a White Wolf padded softly into sight.
Mr. Fox stared up at the beast.
“Where did he come from?” Gerald asked of the others. And then, to the Wolf: “Where did you come from? Why are you here?”
The Wolf said nothing.
“Canis lupus,” Fox said, pointing at the Wolf. He then pointed to himself. “Vulpes vulpes.”
Still, the Wolf said nothing.
“I don’t think he speaks English or Latin,” Fox said to his crew. Once more, he projected his voice to the Wolf. “Pensez-vous que l'hiver sera dur?”
Still, nothing.
“You know,” Gerald went on, still talking to the solitary, unnamed creature. “I have a phobia of wolves.”
The Wolf stood on the foothills of the snow-capped mountain, and Mr. Fox found that he was not terrified, or even nervous. Instead, he looked at the proud, magnificent beast, and a sense of beauty and wonder was stirred within him that he hadn’t felt stirred in quite a number of years.
Mr. Fox lifted a fist into the air.
“What a beautiful creature,” Fox said. “Wish him luck out there.”
The Wolf wandered off into the forest, and Gerald started his engine again. It was time to go home.
Promo history - volume 76. "The Master of the House"(February 15th, 2022). Michelle von Horrowitz vs. Uncle J.J. JAY! [First Blood Match] (FWA: Fallout 012).
MICHELLE von HORROWITZ in [VOLUME SEVENTY SIX] “THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE.”
*****
Michelle von Horrowitz, Barney Trent, and Esteban St. Regis were three quite different people, but for two coincidences of varying significance to this story:
All three of them were born on the first day of January, albeit in different cities and in different years.
All three were present in the village of Fittlewicket, in the early hours of the third day of January in the year 2009, which is where and when our story concludes.
There were and are, of course, many other similarities between these three human beings which could be construed by the reader as notable coincidences, also. They are not enumerated here for brevity's sake, or - in at least one case - to preserve the drama of the narrative, though the most glaring of them is that they are each fictional, and exist only in the mind of the writer (though we may disagree on who that is). They are all mostly white, mostly middle class, and mostly only vaguely differing projections of the aforementioned writer's self. But for now, we will settle only on coincidences one and two, as above.
Barney Trent was born on the first day of the year 1969 in Oakenwood, which was the twenty fourth largest town in England (excluding all of those with city status) according to the 2007 census. It sat within the eaves of a large forest upon the western edge of the Peak District in the north of the country, and boasted a population of just under ninety thousand people. Barney was raised in Oakenwood and rarely left Oakenwood, though had infrequently visited other parts of Derbyshire and South Yorkshire and once caught the Megabus to Manchester. So he had travelled, only not particularly far. At the time of our story's beginning, Barney was working in the shipping department of the same steel company that he found employment in when he left school in 1985, which equated to twenty three and a half years spent in service to the alloy. Barney would pass his evenings in either The Swan or The Half-Full Cup in Oakenwood, unless he was taking a ride on his mountain bike to one of the villages within the radius of a leisurely and slightly-fogged pedal home. On Fridays and Saturdays, he would visit the bookmakers to place bets on horse races that he'd read about in the newspaper in the preceding week. He enjoyed scratchcards, almost all sports (though not golf, bull-fighting, or anything involving ice), and reality television.
Esteban St. Regis was born on the first day of the year 1981 in Edinburgh, the capital and second largest city in Scotland. Edinburgh boasted a population of four hundred and seventy four thousand people according to the 2008 census. 'Esteban St. Regis', as a name, is the result of a Spanish mother and a Scottish father. Esteban grew up in Edinburgh, but left to school in London before attending university in Berlin. He promptly returned to Scotland after graduating, and moved to Derbyshire in 2005 when he was left a farm in the north-west of the county in the will of an uncle he'd met two or three times as a very young child. He took a large number of hallucinogens but was proud of the extent to which he was still able to function whilst under this influence, as well as the fact that he hadn’t spoken to either of his parents in seven years (not including legal proceedings regarding his Uncle’s will. Esteban enjoyed long walks and the sunset, which he watched every evening without fail from a spot he’d carefully pick upon his introduction to the day.
Michelle… well, you know Michelle quite well already, though not at this time in her life. And it is possibly true that many of you don't know her as much as I'd like you to, anyway. Michelle was born on the first day of the year 1990 in the second largest city (by population) in the Netherlands. She meandered through an uninspiring childhood in suburban Rotterdam. Her maternal grandfather was independently wealthy but, unfortunately or fortunately depending on your stance on such matters, Michelle's branch of the family tree was sundered from the old man and his pots of gold. She lost her father young, as well as her Aunt Maude (part of the familial stem initially cut away from the loot) soon afterwards, though the fat, old woman had the good grace to marry rich, outlive her ever fatter and even older husband, and write a kind-hearted will before she went. This was enough to put Michelle and her older sister Isobel through schooling in Marseille. At the time of this story's beginning, Michelle's mother was clinging on to life but, thanks to alcoholism and general melancholy, was estranged from her daughters and using the last of the Maude inheritance to live out the rest of her days in a facility for such people. Isobel moved to NYC to study music at eighteen and Michelle, upon finishing school in France, went with her. She'd lived in New York for a time, but Europe was really her home. She came back here when she was old enough to do so on her own and began to take bookings on the European independent circuit, having trained to a reasonable degree in the States and back in Marseille.
Her presence in Fittlewicket in the early hours on the third day of 2009 is, perhaps, the strangest of the three on the roll call at the top of this story. We have already established that Barney lived and worked in Oakenwood, which was around eight miles from the village and well within range for Barney, who was a solid rider and a steady drinker. Also known is that Esteban inherited a farm in North Derbyshire, and in fact The Rambler's Arms - where, you'll find out, our climactic scene takes place - can be seen from quite a few of the fields he claimed as his. Michelle, though, was only passing through, meandering aimlessly between bookings in the north of England and making friends with as many sheep and cows that she possibly could on the well-trodden footpaths along the Hope Valley.
*****
Part One.
Our story starts, as I have already said it would, on the first day of the year 2009. We begin in Oakenwood, for although the twenty fourth largest town in England (excluding those with city status) is not the subject of our story, it is at least a secondary location in the events with which we concern ourselves. We open, tulips, at the bar of The Swan. It is necessary to state 'bar', for around two thirds of the pub's space had been lost to the food trade. Barney understood that it was necessary if places like this were to survive, but he still didn't like it. He sat in his corner pew and nursed a pint of bitter, watching on ruefully as another pair of diners were shown to their table in the other part of the room. He'd never seen the couple before in his life and doubted they were locals. He could barely remember what this place looked like before the restaurant business had all but taken over, when he would visit on a Thursday night with his father. He tried to focus his mind on happier things. This was, after all, his fortieth birthday, and there was no reason for him to let himself get bogged down in such trivial irritations. He reached for the largest pork scratching in the open bag in front of him. He'd been saving that one for the end, but maybe it would perk him up.
Work had been a drag, but work was usually a drag. They remembered his birthday, which was at least something, but the 45 on his cake was a little disappointing. Barney wasn't particularly a self-conscious man, but he'd never felt so old as he did when he looked at the wax 5 on top of his Victoria Sponge cake. He almost didn't want to blow it out. But they'd remembered, at least, and the candle wasn't going to last another five years. He sipped his drink. Bitter was always good in The Swan. They kept the pipes well.
It was only Thursday. He picked up his copy of today's Racing Post and turned to look at tomorrow’s odds. He examined the form of the runners in the 3.10 at Leominster, but the field was wide open with five of the seven horses having won at least twice this season. He shook his head and chuckled softly, wondering what calibre of chancer would place money on any of them. The 3.40 at Wolverhampton was a little more reasonable. He settled on a pony who'd finished third and fourth in his last two outings, but favoured shorter races. He'd won a pair of such races at the start of the season, and Barney fancied he'd found himself a steal at 4/1. With an almost giddy smile, he lifted his HB pencil and underlined the horse's name: Dreaming Dorris. His little Dreamer. He leant back in his chair and sipped his drink. The barmaid was watching his tepid excitement whilst running a rag around the inside of a pint glass. He reached for another scratching.
It was around then, whilst chewing through the fat surrounding the crunchier part of the bar snack (and, incidentally, fancied that he felt a few strands of dry hair against his tongue), that Barney realised he'd spent three of the four evenings this week in this chair inside The Swan. Furthermore, this chair inside The Swan was where he'd spent his thirty ninth birthday, as well as his thirty eighth. He struggled to remember what he'd done three years ago, but could call to mind one particular birthday (which just so happened to also be New Year’s Day, not that this really meant much to Barney) when he took a ride down the Foxtrot Path and up the Splinterhills to Fittlewicket. A few moments were needed to remember the name of the pub on the crest of the hill, but he smiled to himself upon recalling the sign on the front of The Rambler's Arms. It depicted a weary traveller removing his muddy walking boots, and flapped freely in the wind as Barney chained his bike across the road on that night in whatever year it was in the middle of the decade.
It was probably at this moment, upon recollection of this memory, that an urge was stirred in Barney that could, to the meek-minded and unambitious, be thought of as adventurous. It was June, perhaps, when he last dusted off his bike, and - provided the layer of rust that was bound to have gathered over the six proceeding months wasn't too thick - he inwardly pledged that tomorrow would see him climb back into the saddle. He hoped he hadn't forgotten how to pedal, and sipped his bitter with an air of nervousness whilst considering the steep banks of the Splinterhills that lay between here and there.
*****
Twenty eight years ago today, Dermot and Matilde St. Regis smiled down upon the face of their first (and what would eventually prove to be their only) child, pride and joy swelling in their up-until-now unfulfilled hearts as they mumbled the name Esteban and choked back their tears of happiness. They were in a windowless room in the Royal Maternity Hospital, obviously unable to see the sun setting, but he'd been told when he was a child that he was born at that time of day and that his mother could feel the glow even if she couldn't see it. On the first day of 2009, on his twenty eighth birthday, Esteban adjusted his back against the wall of rock he'd chosen for this evening's display. His legs dangled over the edge of a sharp cliff, the moors spreading out before him and the village of Fittlewicket separating him from his farm. He could see the quad bike parked outside of the stables. He yawned.
The sunset was his favourite time of day. Dermot and Matilde once told him that he'd emerged into the world in a serene fashion, and only began to cry once the cord had been cut and he was in his mother's arms. Matilde's poetic heart deduced that her baby's tears were his reaction to the sun going down. He liked to remark, at least to himself, about experiencing the same feelings of passivity each and every night at the same time - as the sun finally disappeared beyond the lip of the world, leaving those upon it to their own devices - as he had upon expulsion from the womb. He could spend every night from now until his last one watching the sunset, if he wanted to. The fat of the land. This was the life. The one he'd chosen.
Beyond Fittlewicket, he could see the quad bike begin to move along the southwestern boundary of his land. Johnny (whose real name wasn't Johnny) must have finished his work in the stables, and would around about now be thinking about preparing dinner for Esteban and his sisters. They would eat around the campfire in the First Field, as they called it. It was the same every night. He straightened his legs, the lower half of them still suspended over the edge of the cliff. He let his shoe dangle from his foot. He breathed in the fresh air. Tasted the wind.
In the Summer, this spot would be crawling with tourists from nearby cities and towns, and Esteban would be forced to watch the sun's retreat from one of the vantage points upon his own private land. They weren't quite as stark and drastic as Crow's Nest, which was what those from the village below and the surrounding farms dubbed his current location. It was the first night of the year, though, and the winter still lay thick about him. A layer of frost covered the moors between here, upon the crest of the hill, and the village down below. It was dry and clear, but the chill was biting to those who came unsuspectingly. He pulled his own coat more tightly around him and spied the one other soul who'd made the short climb to the Nest. She was young and pale and pretty, but seemed intent on keeping herself to herself. She wore a thick black coat, and the hood from the jumper beneath was pulled up over her short, blonde hair. A joint dangled from her lips, which she was doing her best to shield from both the wind and Esteban. She was failing on both counts.
The young girl, his only companion as the last of the sun's light was cast out from the horizon in the form of a bold band of orange and gold, cupped one hand around her smoke whilst attempting desperately to light it with her other. Eventually she managed it, and she inhaled deeply before staring off into the distance, the orange glow beginning its slow transformation into the purplish-blue herald of the oncoming night. She was a few metres away from him, but was close enough for him to see the cobalt blue of her eyes and smell the fresh, fruity zest of her smoke. Esteban smiled. She reminded him of one his youngest sisters.
"Can I use your lighter?" he called down to her, having retrieved a pre-rolled cigarette from a silver smoking tin. She seemed a little startled at first, but then shuffled about awkwardly on her rock to retrieve a lighter from her back pocket. He caught it with one hand when she threw it to him and lit his cigarette. She used two when he threw it back.
Esteban smoked his cigarette and quietly thought about the twenty eight years that had led him here, to this darkening hill in South Derbyshire. His mind was clear and content. The only disturbance was the occasional sounds of the pale girl re-lighting her joint, and the sharp coughing that would sometimes accompany her inhalation. The streetlights in the village below were beginning to switch on, one by one from the centre point (the pub, naturally) outwards. On the other side of the valley, upon the brow of the opposite hill, the outer barn in the Lily Field was also illuminated. Peter would be milking the cows and the goats ahead of supper. He fancied he could almost see the slow, lumbering outline of what had to be Joe walking up the Steeple-path in the direction of the Thatch Barn. It was getting dark quickly, though, and it was quite possible the light was playing tricks on him.
"Better get back down soon," he suggested, to the pale girl. She nodded without looking over at him. He was smiling so as to appear non-threatening, but she didn't seem all that threatened, anyway. "Good place to watch the sunset, though."
"I was hoping it would be quieter," she said. At this, her first utterance, Esteban noticed that her voice was almost as alien as his, which was a peculiar blend of a thick and coarse Scotsman's with heavy influences from his mother's more poetic, latin accent. Dutch, he'd guess. He was still smiling. She was still staring ahead at the first stars beginning to appear above Cottler's Hill. One of his hills.
"There's a point, not far from here," he said, pointing over at a high summit across the valley and perhaps four kilometres north of Fittlewicket. "It's called the Octopus. I don't know where you're staying. The people in the village know how to get there, if you ask."
The pale girl was staring up at the summit that he was pointing at. It looked perhaps twice as high as their current position, and dominated the landscape on the other side of the valley.
"What's on the other side?" she asked.
"You'll have to go and see," Esteban replied, with a smile. He stood up and dropped his cigarette onto the rock. It continued to give off smoke for a moment whilst he put his shoes on properly. Eventually he got around to stepping on it. "You might pass a couple of gates. No entry. That sort of thing. But go ahead."
The pale girl cocked an eyebrow.
"Farmers are generally angry people," she said, as if this warranted caution.
"Fortune favours the bold," Esteban posited. He was taking one last look at the crescent moon in position on the purple backdrop. It was climbing beyond the Thatch Barn, the bottom part of the celestial body hidden behind the structure. "Besides, they're my fields. My gates. My Octopus. I won't release any hounds. My name's Esteban."
Finally, she turned to look at him. Her cobalt blue eyes seemed to sparkle beneath the moonlight. He smiled warmly at her, and then strode off in the direction of the village.
*****
The astute and eagle-eyed amongst you will no doubt have determined that this pale girl is, of course, the third and final of our protagonists, linked through coincidences one and two to Barney Trent and Esteban St. Regis. Namely: Michelle von Horrowitz. Almost an hour later she arrived at The Rambler’s Arms and sat in the corner with a pint of the only European lager the place sold (Stella). She sipped it quickly and thought about the sunset, and of the youngish man with the Scottish accent, and about the Octopus on the top of the biggest hill on the other side of the valley. She thought about New York, and about Camilla. She thought about Camilla most of all. There was the Irish girl, still, but Belfast was not New York. Her mind raced with her, she swam in her, to the point where the sunset was forgotten and her foot was involuntarily tapping against the floor beneath the table. This nervous tick accompanied spikes in her anxiety levels, and was becoming a more frequent fixture in her days, as the past's phantoms and the present's neuroses plagued her addled mind. The more time she had to think, the worse it was. And all she had was time to think. She wondered what Camilla was doing now. The picture was lukewarm and unimaginative but still filled her heart with a deep and painful sorrow.
She did her best to focus on the faces of those around her in the pub. The man behind the bar was old and bald, and his forehead sort of sagged over his eyes to the point where Michelle surmised his vision had to be at least partially impaired by it. There was a middle aged couple in the corner who stared off into space and said nothing to each other. The man was overweight and had a half-eaten steak in front of him on the table, which he picked at infrequently whilst he and his prettyish wife (?) lived quietly amongst their own thoughts. Three youths of about fifteen hid themselves away in a booth on the other side of the bar, drinking alcopops and very occasionally peering out from their sanctuary to check if anyone was paying any attention to them. The people here were normal. Unremarkable, even. Though, I have of course just remarked on them, which introduces a contradiction. Nonetheless, Michelle found taking in their features, one by one, to have an irrationally soothing effect on her oft-racing, oft-fogged mind. The tapping of her foot began to slow until it stopped. She massaged her knee in triumph.
She began to think about the fact that she turned nineteen today. She felt indifferent towards this.
Her glass was empty, and so she was faced with a decision that she commonly faced, sometimes as often as six or seven times a night: one more, or the walk home. Oakenwood and her uncomfortable bed in the smallest guest room above The Swan was a lengthy walk away, and she didn’t quite yet feel prepared to undertake the ordeal. And a question burned in her mind. Many, actually, but only one that she could get answered here.
She walked to the bar, taking her empty glass with her. The old man standing behind it put down his newspaper and eyed her up.
“What’ll it be?” he asked, his voice thick with an accent she had no clue how to place.
“One more,” she answered.
He nodded at her and, with a stooped back and a generally tired look about him, took her glass and poured her another Stella.
“Do you live here?” Michelle asked, nervously. The man didn’t seem too thrown by the question, or perceive it as the invasion of privacy that Michelle feared he might. In fact, he continued to pull the pint, and didn’t look up at the pale girl as he replied.
“Not in the pub itself, no,” he said, lifting the pull and finishing off the head. “But in the village, yes. Most of my life.”
"Who owns the farm to the north of here?" Michelle asked, as her drink was placed in front of her. The old man leaned back against the wall where the optics hung.
"Well," the man started, at length, after crossing his arms. Michelle began to prepare a cigarette on top of a beer mat on the bar, being careful not to get the paper wet. "To the north-east you've got lots of small holds. Braithwaite Farm, and then Egerton Farm just beyond, and then I guess Swanson has most of the land east of that. But the old St. Regis Farm to the north-west is far bigger. Good land. Young Esteban took over when old man St. Regis passed. Then to the south you’ve got the bigger farms. Colton Gray’s got most of the land between here and Little Yeoman. Billington Farm up on the hill, and then…”
“The St. Regis Farm,” Michelle interjected, as she tucked the tobacco down into her paper. "The Octopus is there?"
"Yes," he answered, with a nod. He took his own pipe out of his back pocket and began to pack tobacco into it. "All of Cottler's Hill. And The Long Barrows, Bridgestone Pike, and the Three Peaks. Driftwood Reservoir, too, but that's been drained, I think. Not really a working farm, anymore. Which is a shame."
"What do you know about the owner?" Michelle asked. She was unsurprised to find that the St. Regis farm wasn't operational. Esteban didn't really look or sound like a farmer.
"Esteban keeps himself to himself," the old man answered, lighting his pipe behind the bar. Michelle motioned to him with her cigarette and lighter, as if to ask permission, and he nodded her on. “He’s a nice enough boy. Polite and pleasant, whenever he’s in the village, which admittedly isn’t very often. Generous, too. But… peculiar.”
“Peculiar?” Michelle repeated, whilst inhaling from her cigarette. She rotated her glass upon the surface of the bar with her other hand. “How so?”
“Well, it’s no secret that the St. Regis Farm isn’t what it was,” he explained. “The old man, Graham his name was, he turned that tract of land into something. It was good land, and still is, and I’d wager he made more out of it in his time here than Swanson, Billington, and even Gray. But he was different when he got older. A lot of us are. He started to talk about Esteban a lot, and how he’d always been kind to the animals when he visited as a child. None of us even remembered him. Odd, really: Esteban is a memorable name. But Esteban arrived a few weeks after old man St. Regis died, and I don’t think an animal’s seen the inside of that slaughterhouse ever since.”
The old man shook his head ruefully, as if this was something to be lamented, as he sucked from the end of his pipe.
“What’s more, he buries the ones that do die. Out on the northside of Cottler’s Hill. My niece, little Jessica, she’s seen it. But he doesn’t usually like visitors over that way, other than those he invites himself. Generous, mind. He provides the village with dairy, wool, eggs. That stuff he has more of than he or even the animals can use. I would wager that nobody in Fittlewicket has bought so much as a pint of milk in the last five years.”
Michelle thought about the old man’s description whilst she sipped from her pint. She felt her leg begin to tap against the floor again. The man behind the bar said little else to her, except an enquiry as to where she was staying. Upon finding out she had a long walk through the winding and pitch black country roads ahead of her, he insisted she take with her his torch. She thanked him and promised to bring it back the next morning.
*****
Part Two.
Michelle made the reasonably short walk between her bed in Oakenwood and the inn at Fittlewicket as the sun rose, her head still a little dulled by the previous evening’s drinking but clearing with each moment thanks to the fresh air and the pre-rolled joint that she inhaled from as she went. It was another cold, January morning, but she was protected from the worst of the bite by the dense patch of woodland surrounding the sunken footpath that the locals called the Foxtrot. Eventually, this path would begin to climb up and out of the trees before snaking along the westernmost foothills of the valley’s shoulders. Here, the bitter cold could not be escaped, exposed as one was to the elements on all sides once you emerged into the vast, open space of the moors. A narrow dirt track snaked in and out of the mounds known as the Splinterhills, before forking off at Choker’s Point. The eastwards path would take you to Fittlewicket, whilst the steeper one to the north seemed to wind up towards Cottler’s Hill and the Octopus beyond.
It was just after nine when she arrived at The Swan, and she was disappointed to find it closed for two reasons. Firstly, this made it more difficult to return the torch that was given to her by the old man behind the bar the night prior. Secondly, she had some plans to revisit the dog that bit her before embarking on her day’s walk. She completed a quick circuit of the tavern and, through a side window, handed the torch to a cleaner with a description of its owner. She then walked a few hundred metres back on herself to a petrol station she’d passed near the fork in order to purchase four cans of Heineken, before finding the junction itself and taking the northward path towards Cottler’s Hill.
She came to a gate, the path running onwards after it but a hefty padlock and a foreboding sign blocking the way. The text on it read no entry - private land, and a purple octopus was drawn below on a white background. She hopped over it, emboldened by the hand-painted cephalopod and the slight smile on its face. The path wound around the foot of the hill at first, but soon enough began to climb up its side, where it grew more and more steep until a few stone steps had to be mounted to reach the thicket of trees that coated much of the hill’s upper half.
It felt as though she spent much of the next two hours in the trees, though it was difficult to tell for sure without a consistent view of the sun. At first, the branches were stark, gnarled, and bare, and the ground underfoot was still smattered with grass and moss. Soon enough, though, the sky was all but blocked out by thick conifers and firs, a ceiling of rich green leaves forming above her head. She came to a river at three different points and, unwilling or unable to cross it, always took the path that led up the hill as opposed to down and back towards the valley. That seemed right, at least.
As she walked, her mind was inevitably drawn back to Camilla. In her mind, the girl was still waiting for her at Grand Central, sitting on a bench on the platform, reading her book to idle away the endless hours spent in anticipation. The other platforms would fill with people until a train arrived to take them away. But Camilla’s platform always remained empty. No train ever came, and she was the only one that waited. As always, Michelle found herself smiling when the girl’s ghost danced into her mind, but soon enough that would ebb away. She was left with only regret, and the sad, sharp realisation as to the nature of her being. I am not a good person, she said to herself, under her breath, as the lights were turned off in Grand Central.
Eventually, she emerged out of the thicker trees, but was disappointed to find herself still on the western side of the forest. She sighed heavily as she observed the sun already half-way towards its apex. Most of the morning had disappeared behind her, and the village of Fittlewicket was still prominent and clear in her eye-line perhaps three kilometres below her and to the south. She had at least covered some distance, albeit in the wrong direction, and was now reasonably near the summit of Cottler’s Hill. It was maybe a kilometre off to the west, and a series of dilapidated farm buildings sprouting up between here and there like freckles upon the hill. In the distance, she could decipher the outline of a few dozen sheep, settling in for their mid-morning meal in their chockablock schedule of perennial grazing. Michelle reached for a can and a joint from her bag, positioned her back against the sturdy trunk of a large, old oak tree, and stared out over the humble vista.
When her can was half-drunk and her joint was half-smoked, Michelle noticed that a quad bike had snaked down towards the field with the sheep from a barn near its crown. She watched as a man emerged from the vehicle and went about his work, checking over a few of the sheep before spending a few minutes replacing one of the posts in the wooden fence on the perimeter. At first, Michelle thought that perhaps it was Esteban, but the more she stared over at the tall and long-haired figure, the more she doubted it. He was too long and too slender, and upon further consideration she found she couldn't imagine the man she'd met yesterday upon Crow's Nest replacing fence posts.
She was put beyond all doubt as the man in the quad bike got back into his vehicle and, after making a large circle around the lower stretches of the foothills, came to a halt around ten metres away from her. She had just finished her joint and hid the end with one of her shoes, but the young man who got out of the vehicle and leant up against the front of it didn't really seem the sort to mind about littering, anyway. He was smiling at her beneath a bustling moustache and an irregularly large and hooked nose. He was topless and used the chequered shirt that had been removed at some point throughout the day to wipe the oil from the quad bike from his hands.
The valley was silent, and more acutely so, Michelle thought, under the gaze of the tall, shirtless man. He was smiling, but she still shuffled uncomfortably beneath his glare. She felt her foot, the one that hid her recently extinguished joint, begin to tap involuntarily against the ground.
"I…" she began, as the man threw his chequered shirt back onto the seat of the quad bike. "I got a little lost. I'm looking for The Octopus."
The other nodded, as if he'd already surmised this much information from looking at her.
"Did you not ask for directions in the village?" he asked. His voice was from the south of this country, and his delivery was slow and drawn out. Michelle couldn't work out if this was because he placed importance and weight on each of his syllables, or if he just had to think carefully about each word before he used it. "He usually tells them to ask for directions in the village."
"No," Michelle answered, whilst placing a hand on her knee to stop her foot from tapping against the floor. She sipped from her can and realised it was empty. He had told her to ask for directions, she just now remembered, and she wasn't sure why she hadn't followed his instruction. "I guess I just wanted to find my own way. You know where it is?"
"Of course," the man said. He removed one of his hands from his pockets and pointed off towards the forest. "You want to head into the woods until you hit the stream. Follow it north, against the flow of the water and up the hill. You'll come to a clearing and a waterfall, and you can cross there easily. Then just head eastwards. The trees will get thicker before they clear. You'll come out in the Long Barrows, not far from the reservoir. Well, it's just like this big basin now. No water anymore."
"The Octopus is near there?" Michelle asked. The man nodded.
"You'll see it. You can climb the hill from the reservoir, and then you just follow the path along the ridge. Can't miss it."
She stood as if to leave. The man didn't move.
"What time is it?" she asked. He paused again, and then looked up at the sun. He kept his eyes open and didn't flinch.
"It's still early," he said.
"Thanks," Michelle offered, awkwardly. She found her eyes tracing along a scar on the man's abdomen. It originated from just below his right nipple and traced across his stomach, thickening until its deep root below his navel.
"Don't mention it," he said. She left and followed his directions, retracing her steps back towards the woodland. When she reached the eaves, she turned back towards the scene. The man still leant against his quad bike, and offered her a wave before she hurriedly turned away and plunged into the forest.
*****
The morning of the second of January was not going particularly well for Barney Trent. He was sitting in his office (where else would he be, I ask, at eleven in the a.m. on a weekday?) and staring at the screen of his computer, alert but far from enthused as another email trickled its way into his inbox. Some people wanted to know where their steel was. Others wanted to buy more steel. Yet more were enquiring as to the delivery rates for hypothetical steel they were yet to even purchase. He let them continue to accumulate, not particularly interested in carving his way through them and instead deciding it was close enough to lunch for him to start running down the clock.
It must be said that Barney wasn’t usually like this. He prided himself on being a good worker, and he still attended to his duties in a diligent fashion, conscientious to the bosses that were paying him for this service. The firm once showed him a video about time theft, and since then Barney was quite wary of how he was using the time that his company generously paid him for. But this morning was different. A quite substantial order had fallen through the cracks yesterday on his watch, and upon arrival at the office that morning he’d been greeted by the snarling face of Mr. Cassavetes, the son of the owner (also Mr. Cassavetes). His name was Bryan but he insisted on Mr. Cassavetes without the suffix of junior, which made it confusing whenever his father was also in the vicinity.
Sitting in his office a little after eleven, Barney replayed the hostile conversation he’d had with Mr. Cassavetes at eight forty two (which was, it should be noted, a full forty eight minutes before Barney was due to start work, not that this mattered to his superior).
“The Quarry order didn’t go out,” Mr. Cassavetes said, sharply, after Barney was led into his office. The utterance stirred a quick and deflating recollection in Barney that brought a wince across his face. “Yes, precisely.”
“We’ll get it out first thing this morning,” Barney replied, anxiously. He stood from his chair and made to move off towards the door, as if the business was to be attended to now. Mr. Cassavetes lifted the palm of one of his hands, signalling for him to stay.
“You’re aware that it’ll be late,” Cassavetes answered, sternly. “Look, Trent. This isn’t the first order that’s been forgotten. Routine paperwork is sloppy. Nobody’s denying that you’re a hard worker. You get here early. You leave late. But… it’s inefficient work, Trent.”
His delivery was still sharp and stern, but Barney didn’t think him to be unkind. There was almost a soft edge to the words that he spoke, if not in the way that he spoke them. Barney’s mind, though, was racing, the thought of being fired and tossed out onto the breadline the most pre-eminent and pressing amongst the many thoughts swimming around his mind. Part of him wanted Mr. Cassavetes to say it. To say the words. He imagined the clarity that would wash over him upon hearing them.
“Have you thought about taking a holiday?” Cassavetes asked. It took Barney a long time to answer, but eventually he did so after a nod, mumbling through his plans to cycle out to Fittlewicket after work tonight. His boss listened carefully to his words, a look that expressed both reproach and concern upon his face. “I think that’s a great idea. Perhaps you should stay over. Look, Trent, I’m giving you the afternoon off. Use your time this morning to tie up anything important for today, and then bring your trip forward. Make the most of it.”
Barney just sat in his chair, and only now noticed that his fingernails were digging into the arms of it. It was apparent that he wasn’t getting fired, and his mind remained as chaotic as ever.
“That’s an order, Trent,” Cassavetes said. Barney said nothing. “You can go now.”
As the clock moved on past eleven ten, Barney turned around in his chair and looked at the motivational poster that hung on his wall. It had been there for a couple of decades now, but he diligently dusted it every other day, so the picture was still reasonably clear and didn’t look at all dated. There was a picture of an igloo in the midst of a vast, snowy vista, and then two lines of text:
ENDEAVOUR.
if only to show that you can.
He sighed deeply as his eyes traced around the poster’s rectangular frame. He’d always thought that a window would be perfect in that exact position, but his cubicle was in the middle of the office block, and he’d only be able to see into his neighbour’s workspace.
When he was a child, Barney remembered the thing that he looked forward to most upon leaving his hometown was the thought of returning to it. He'd once told his parents this, and they'd chuckled and shook their heads, and told themselves that he'd grow out of it when he saw more of the world. But Barney never did see more of the world, and for a time this feeling of belonging in Oakenwood persisted into his adult life. Very rarely, his work would take him away from the town, or he'd indulge in an evening at one of the neighbouring villages, just for the sake of novelty. But the return to Oakenwood would be something happily sitting on the frontier of his mind.
That wasn't really the case anymore. The younger Mr. Cassavetes wasn't really like the older Mr. Cassavetes at all, and most of the things he loved about the town were gone or going. The Quarry, the very reason for his dressing down by Mr. Cassavetes that morning, was no longer the place he remembered playing in as a child (the one time in his life he recalled having friends), but a centre for development of one-bedroom apartments. The Swan and The Half-Full Cup were no longer the same pubs that his father had sat in every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights whilst drinking with his friends, certain in his hubris that his mother wouldn't smell the tobacco smoke deeply entrenched into his clothes when he got home. It was all different, and he struggled to pinpoint when exactly that had happened.
Perhaps his own attitude towards the town of Oakenwood began to shift when his brother moved away to the city to study, or when his parents decided it was about time they finally made the transition to the south coast that they'd often spoken about. Whenever any of them returned it wasn't quite the same. They were outsiders now, and were quick to point out changes that had passed Barney by completely.
Meek in his obedience, Barney moved his mouse and clicked from his browser to a new window of his browser. There were a pair of guesthouses in Fittlewicket: one only a stone's throw from The Rambler's Arms and then a second, larger and more modern, out past the petrol station to the south of the village. He booked the one closer to the nucleus, deciding to treat himself, and entered his sixteen digit card number whilst worrying about internet banking fraud and other such quite real concerns.
The time had crept past eleven twenty, and Barney was becoming more aware that he'd been doing nothing for a long time. He clicked back into his inbox and began to formulate a reply to an email about shipping costs.
*****
Esteban arrived at The Octopus a few minutes before the sun was due to set, alone and with a bottle of Johnny Walker Red in one of his deep back pockets. He’d spent a few minutes pondering existence from the bottle of the hill, which he wasn’t sure of the formal, Ordnance Survey name for but which he’d always called the Windbreak, and peering up at the rock formation that dominated the crest of the hill when viewed from its northern banks. There was a large stone dome, covered in a patchwork of moss, and then from this central formation sprouted a series of white tentacles that sprawled across the ridge and down towards the foothills. This is why, of course, it was called The Octopus, although in truth there were only five proper tentacles and then a sixth sort of nub that rested on the very summit of the Windbreak. It was quite the sight, especially as it was carefully concealed from view from the south by the shoulders of the hills, giving the impression that it was Esteban’s own little private wonder.
He found the girl sitting on the rock after making a slow climb of about two hours up the northern side of the hill. She had her back against the large, mossy dome, and was straddling the fourth tentacle (not including the stub on the summit) with her view pointed towards the west. Esteban knew that this was the best spot from which to view the sunset, but didn’t begrudge the girl from taking it. There would be other evenings for him. He approached her slowly, finding her drinking a can and watching the disappearing sun just as she had the previous evening.
“Glad to see you found it,” he said, whilst taking a seat a few metres down from her on the same tentacle of rock. “Johnny said that you were struggling a little, this morning.”
The pale girl glanced over at Esteban, who was smiling in a warm, open manner as he welcomed her to the top of his hill. Her own countenance was far from the same. There was a blankness and a passivity about her on the surface, but Esteban had the sense that a storm was brewing not far beneath.
He took in a deep breath of the fresh, clean air, for himself. For his own storm clouds.
"I got here, eventually," the pale girl replied. She stopped looking at Esteban, her eyes settling upon the sun as it made its retreat. She took a pair of large, black sunglasses and a second can from her rucksack. "Johnny, if that's his name, was… well, he was helpful, at least."
"That's Johnny," Esteban said, though we have already established that Johnny's real name wasn't Johnny. The young man removed the bottle of whiskey from his back pocket and busied himself in unscrewing the cap. "And a day spent scrambling around these hills isn't entirely wasted."
Here he paused to drink from his bottle. In his mind, he always described this hill and the half-dozen others around it as his hills, for that is precisely what they were. He looked about himself, at Cottler’s Hill and the Three Peaks, and the Windbreak on which they now sat, and he felt the storm retreat. The clouds became less black. He took a cigarette from his silver tin and lit it, the girl doing the same a few metres up the tentacle. Her smoke was longer and more conical, and her eyes - hidden away behind her shades - were focused on the orange-red sunset as she brought it to her lips.
"And for some people, that's precisely the point," he continued, picking up his thread about a day spent aimlessly scrambling in these hills. In his hills. A moment afterwards, the young girl's eyes drifted over to his, as if involuntarily admitting that he'd got the truth of it. "Why are you here?"
The girl shrugged. Esteban, of course, didn't know it, but it was a question that had chased her around for a long time already, and one that would continue to do so for much of her life.
"For work, I guess," she started. Her delivery lacked confidence, the quivers in her pitch and tone belying her uncertainty.
"You're working in the hills?” he asked. He sensed her shuffle uncomfortably. Her closed nature was revealed more fully in that moment, and this was probably more telling as to her character than any answer she could give with words. Esteban sensed that the conversation crawled upon the edge of a knife. He inhaled from his cigarette, waiting to find out which way the girl would fall.
“I’m between shows,” she admitted, opaquely. “I was in Sheffield last week, and I’m meant to be in Manchester on the day after tomorrow.”
He nodded his head, not wishing to prod too far into specifics and details. The truth he’d hit upon earlier was far more interesting to him, and vague enough so as to not appear personal. The frightened animal would flee, if probed too quickly and too directly. He joined her in watching the sunset, which was reaching its climax, and finished the remainder of his rolled up cigarette. A few wisps of cloud hovered above the horizon, black silhouettes upon the red glow of the sun’s last whispers.
“Why are you here?" the pale girl asked. Esteban turned away from the dying sun an eyebrow raised, as if to suggest he wasn’t expecting the question to be turned back on him. This was his hill, he thought. Furthermore, she knew that it was his hill, and still asked the question with what he perceived to be sincerity. After a moment spent pondering the girl in front of him, Esteban forced his warm, open smile back onto his face.
"I think you already know far more about me than I do about you," he posited. The girl took her sunglasses off and pulled her arms through the sleeves of her coat. She didn't register the statement, really, but just then Esteban noticed that her foot was idly tapping in a soft, nearly rhythmic fashion upon the stone. "You know that my name is Esteban, for one. You know that this is my farm, if you can still really call it one. You've met Johnny. The villagers, too, know some things about me. Though I'm not quite sure what they would say, precisely."
"They say that you're peculiar," the pale girl revealed.
"How so?" Esteban asked. To his surprise, this elicited the first smile from the girl that he'd seen, though it did little to add to the overall warmth of her face.
"You know, I think I asked the same thing," she said, whilst sipping from her can. Her joint still hung between her fingers, though was now close to the roach. "They say you're reclusive, but generous. And that you don't kill the animals."
Esteban thought about this for a short while.
"I guess they could say worse things," he concluded, eventually. The girl stubbed out her joint.
"My name is Michelle," she conceded. Esteban returned the smile to his face once more.
"Michelle," he repeated, whilst hopping down from his seat upon the stone tentacle. He landed a metre below on the soft, green earth. "It's almost dinner time. You should come and meet my family."
Michelle finished her can and placed the empty in her bag, and took up Esteban's offer of the Johnny Walker. She stood up on the mossy white stone and looked out over the valley below as she took a long pull from the bottle. It burned as it roared into her throat, the frost softly glistening over the gently rolling hills stretching out before her.
*****
Barney heaved his calves around in a circular motion, pushing down on the pedals of his mountain bike and forcing himself onwards up the banks of the Splinterhills. The Foxtrot Path was already behind him, as were much of what were in reality only the gentle foothills of the much steeper peaks and ridges that lay beyond Fittlewicket. Barney thought about these hills, which might as well be mountains, safe in the knowledge that his bike would be properly chained up and stored away before he ever saw them properly. But the Splinterhills, gentle though they were, were more than enough for him. He cursed his poor fitness as he pedalled on.
It is here that I will choose to reveal to the reader a quite integral part to the eventual semi-resolution of this drama, that which indeed fuels one of the major events of its climactic throws. I do this for two reasons. Firstly, so that it will not come too much of a shock to the reader, who may think it to be quite a stark and drastic turn in what has been, for Barney Trent at least, rather a mundane tale of life in and around the countryside. That night, or in the early hours of the following morning, Barney would be convinced that he, along with all but one of the eight billion human beings crawling around the face of this all of rock, was not real. This realisation, whether or not it was one of truth or one of fantasy, will lead Barney Trent to experience a mental episode the like of which he - up until around nine hours in the future - believed only to exist in melodramatic movies.
The second reason that this is revealed to the reader now, and not during the proper point during the narrative, is because this idea - which would, admittedly, be innocuous and quite insignificant in a mind like yours or mine, but proved to be far more dangerous in a mind like Barney Trent’s - is best considered in conjunction with the monotonous and rather dull sort of activity that he was engaging in at this very moment. The sun had already disappeared behind one of the larger hills to his left (he believed it to be Cottler’s Hill, but couldn’t really say for sure), leaving him to pedal hard and breathe even harder amidst the descending darkness. As he pushed his legs ever onwards, it seemed to Barney that he had spent a rather large proportion of his life doing activities like this. The workrate deserved a better reward. But what else was he going to do but pedal?
He reached the modest peak of the first mound of the Splinterhills, and stopped pedalling for a moment to allow his wheels to come to a halt on the crest. He knew that if he turned around and strained his eyes, he would be able to see Oakenwood still. He wasn’t that far from ‘home’, or the place that he had once been able to comfortably refer to with that word and all of its pleasant connotations. But he resolved to simply not turn around, and to not strain his eyes. That way he’d be able to fool himself. In the distance, he could see the village of Fittlewicket sprouting up before him in small clusters of Tudor-style buildings. He took in a deep breath of what he hoped would be fresh air, but the usually-satisfying scent of the country almost seemed to stick in his nostrils. He was too close to the town, probably.
Before he climbed back into the saddle, Barney rested his bike against the sturdy trunk of an elm and gave his pockets one last thorough check to ensure nothing important had been left behind. He’d already completed a couple such checks earlier in the journey, but he would feel like such an idiot if he reached the village to find he’d left his card or his phone back in Oakenwood. He felt the hard, heavy phone next to his wallet, and his purple debit card was nestled in-between one for the supermarket and another for the library. Tucked in behind it was the betting slip he was given in the bookmaker’s that morning. He pulled it out from behind the card and, as a gentle but cold breeze rolled over the moors, read his own handwriting on the slip. Dreaming Dorris. £300 at 7/2. He hadn’t quite been able to get 4/1, but he still liked the odds and, whilst doing a little jig atop the westernmost of the Splinterhills, licked his lips in delight.
Of course, the race had already run, and Barney was none-the-wiser as to whether his little Dreamer had won him £1050 or lost him his stake. It was to be his only flutter of the whole weekend, which in part explained the large stake, and as such Barney had decided not to check the result until the end of his weekend in Fittlewicket, as a little treat for his return to Oakenwood. The idea of it made him shudder, and so Barney Trent began to pedal again, across the ridge atop the Splinterhills and towards the village - and his oncoming mental breakdown - below.
*****
Part Three.
The First Field, as Esteban called it, was located to the rear of the main farmhouse, which was a moderately large complex made of red brick and wood with a thatched roof, after the manner of most of the non-functional barns they'd passed by on the walk from The Octopus to here. There was a smattering of elm trees around the field, which was nestled in-between the two mounds known to the reader as Cottler’s Hill and The Windbreak. A wooden fence separated the chosen venue for dining from the two hills, upon which Michelle could discern perhaps four dozen sheep grazing here and there for their own evening meal. The frost was thick here, explained by the lack of natural sunlight, and from here the entirety of Fittlewicket village was blocked from view by the two hills or by the farmhouse itself. The Long Barrows stretched out beyond, and she could just about make out the outline of the drained reservoir beneath the Three Peaks.
This extended description of Michelle's current geographical location is intended so that the reader is to understand that, although the village of Fittlewicket is close at hand and the town of Oakenwood only a handful of kilometres beyond, one of our three protagonists finds herself entirely cut off from what we will describe as the known world. Here, in the First Field, she could - if she wanted to (and she did want to) - pretend that this new frontier was the only frontier, and the dark green, shadowy silhouettes of the hills acted as a border to reality itself.
"It's good," Michelle said, of the vegetable casserole she'd been given by one of Esteban's sisters upon arrival. At the moment, there were only two of them positioned around the campfire alongside her and Esteban. A few young men (one of whom she met earlier as Johnny, although - as is known - his real name is not Johnny) were gathered a little way from them, sat with their backs against a particularly thick elm trunk and drinking soup from a tin. "Who made it?"
"Karina made the casserole," one of Esteban's sisters, who was introduced to her as Esta, replied. She had an accent that was strange to Michelle, but may be well known to some of you as one from the south-west of England. The other, who was invested in the eating of her own meal and was doing so with her eyes closed, as if she wanted to focus on that and nothing else, was named Olga and spoke with a Scandinavian accent that Michelle couldn't quite place with any specificity. "Karina makes all the food."
"Who is Karina?" Michelle asked, placing her bowl down on the floor in front of her and taking a sip from her whiskey, which Esteban had prepared for her. The young man was lighting a thick, tightly-rolled joint.
"Karina is one of my sisters," Esteban said. He was still smiling his strange little smile, which Michelle thought was perhaps a permanent fixture upon his face. Her eyes drifted over to the farmhouse, where a third woman walked out with a bowl full to the brim with water. She threw it out onto the grass before disappearing back into the house.
"How many sisters do you have?" Michelle enquired.
"I have quite a few sisters," Esteban said, whilst handing his joint to Esta. She inhaled from it deeply before offering it to Olga. The Scandinavian girl was too busy with her food, and so instead it was given to Michelle.
"How long have you all lived here?" Michelle continued whilst inhaling. It tasted a little like hash but perhaps heavier. Michelle didn't quite know how to describe it, but her head was lightening quickly.
"Different times," Esteban answered. He was staring down into his own whiskey cup whilst rotating it slowly in his hands. "I came here four years ago, when my uncle died. The rest of us came along whenever it was time for us to do so."
Michelle took one more drag from whatever it was that Esta had given her. She found that she was staring at it burn, and imagined herself with black eyes like a beetle. Thick, pungent smoke rose from the cherry in plumes.
"It isn't weed?" she asked, as she passed the joint back to Esteban.
"It isn't weed," he repeated, taking it from her. Her head was light, but her limbs felt all of a sudden rather heavy. She made a ball with each of her hands before opening them up again, repeating the process in an attempt to keep full control over her extremities.
"Why did you come here?" Michelle asked, in the general direction of Esta. She would've asked Olga, too, but the Scandinavian had just finished her casserole and was now engaged in lying along the top of a large tree stump. Her hands were placed in her front pockets, her eyes were still closed, and like that she remained for what felt like a really long time.
"Same reason as you, I would guess," Esta answered. There was a glint in her eye that Michelle couldn't explain. "The question, really, is why did I stay here."
From the farmhouse, the slightly older woman who earlier emptied her water bowl appeared with a cigarette in her mouth. She lit it before walking over to Esteban and, without even so much as glancing in Michelle's direction, began to whisper in his ear. The young man listened attentively, and went so far as to nod along on a couple of occasions, but didn't make a reply. Eventually, the two of them stood up together.
"I'm afraid I'll have to leave you to it, for a short while," he said. He had eyes only for Michelle, as if his sisters had faded out from existence temporarily whilst he beheld the pale girl. "Esta knows where everything is. Olga, too, if she ever wakes up again. But I have to go with Yelena. Master of the House stuff. Quite dull, really…"
He offered her a deep, formal bow and then followed Yelena into the house, passing the joint on to Esta before he went. The Cornish girl began to suck delicately on the end of it whilst Michelle watched Esteban disappear.
The three sat in perfect silence for a short time.
"So?" Michelle asked, looking at Esta. She was mid-inhale, and looked at Michelle with wide eyes and a slight cough. She shrugged her shoulders, conceding that she hadn't made the intended inference and sought clarification. "Why did you stay here?"
Esta smiled broadly, and only then did Michelle notice that she was missing one of her front teeth.
"Esteban is a really special person," she said, wistfully. "You should stick around for a while. You wouldn't believe what he can do."
She leant forward on the edge of her stump, as if about to impart some secret knowledge onto Michelle and was worried about the gently snoozing Olga stealing it.
"You wouldn't believe who he is."
Michelle was given the joint and she found it difficult to inhale. Around then, two more girls, both with ginger hair and freckles and giving off the distinct impression that they were sisters but not in the sense that Esteban used the words, appeared from the farmhouse. They each wore dungarees and introduced themselves as Olivia and Sandy.
Esteban didn't return for a couple of hours, during which time Michelle felt as though she couldn't move from this precise spot even if her life depended on it. Instead, she sat back on her stump, stared up at the stars, and listened to her new companions talk freely and endlessly about the Master of the House.
*****
Barney Trent sat in the corner of The Rambler’s Arms and ran his fingers along the wood of the under-side of his bench. It was coarse to the touch, and after a moment he had to draw his hand away and deal with the associated splinter, but also soft and almost wet, as if it was slowly rotting away and giving up under the pressures of time. Just like everything else around it. Barney instead wrapped his hand around his pint glass and looked over the bar, shuffling his weight awkwardly on his seat and thinking about the food he’d ordered. At least that would be the same. He closed his eyes and thought about the fat sausages, sculpted by Gods from the freshest and most local swine one could hope for, and the creamy mash that would be making its way to his table soon enough. He could almost smell it. He pictured his father across the table from him, tucking into the same dish with his cigarette resting upon an ashtray. Those were the days.
His arrival was plagued by wind and the one burst of rain that the region experienced all day, which seemed to almost shepherd him into the village. Furthermore, there was nowhere to store his bike at the guesthouse, and the owner - a sort of tawdry and frumpish woman with a po-face, probably in her mid to late forties - took one look at the mud on his tires and wouldn’t let it in the house. He’d thought about asking one of the local farmers if he could leave it in a stable, but didn’t know how to start such a task. He’d been forced to leave it outside, and shuddered as he thought about the rust accumulating upon it, chained up as it was to a lamp post outside the guesthouse. When he returned to the door, the landlady took just over twelve minutes to find his reservation, and then told him they’d double booked his double room, but that he was welcome to the single instead. Barney Trent stood on the threshold of the guesthouse and looked at this moon-faced, middle-aged woman. He sighed deeply, and then he let her show him to the single room.
It wasn’t long after that he found himself in the Rambler’s Arms, ordered a pint of bitter from the bar and brushing his fingers over the betting slip still safely stored away in his wallet. His little Dreamer. The race would’ve finished a few hours ago now, and he imagined the jockey - Bill Something-Or-Other - celebrating with the owners and a few close friends with a bottle of champagne in the paddock. At that very moment, his bitter was placed in front of him, and he afforded himself a little smile. It was short-lived, though. The pint had that sort of soapy flavour that you get if the pipes were cleaned by someone who didn’t know what they were doing. He looked at the two people behind the bar, wondering which one of them was to blame for this assault on his taste buds and on his patience. Unable to determine either way, he gave up on the idea of revenge and took his seat in the corner.
With the knowledge that Barney Trent might be enjoying his last few hours, or even moments, of ‘sanity’, the reader will no doubt scrutinise these final events and classify the described irritations as mere trivialities. And they would be correct. But, although you have been reading this story for a very long time, you still joined it a long way from the start. It is important to remember that Barney Trent has been experiencing these trivialities… these irksome little disappointments… these tiring and incessant little pricks of the needle, the slow and creeping death, the eventual, inevitable submission… well, it is important to remember that disappointment has become a natural state of being for poor Barney. Too much time spent in one’s own mind with one’s own thoughts for company is a difficult thing for many, especially when one’s own mind can’t control itself and one’s own thoughts are black and poisonous. For Barney Trent, on the day after his fortieth birthday, in the Rambler’s Arms on the main stretch of Fittlewicket village, the dull, pricking sensation in the back of his neck returned, slow and painful and nagging, and without a foreseeable end.
Barney, though, hadn't the slightest clue about his upcoming mental episode. He sat with his eyes half-closed, thinking about his food.
"Once I had a love… and it was a gas…" Barney Trent began to sing, his eyes still only slightly ajar. The two old men on the table next to him halted their conversation for a moment to stare over at the singer, but when it became apparent that he wasn't going to look back they went on with their evening. “Soon turned out had a heart of glass…"
Nobody in the pub would know it, but Barney Trent was not usually the sort of man to break out into modest song in public. The two old men sitting adjacent merely assumed he was one of those peculiars from the city that they'd read about in the newspaper. But all were in agreement that Trent didn't have a particularly good voice, and that his mumbling baritone was not well suited to the song he'd chosen (or many others, probably). Fortunately, the performance was swiftly cut short by the arrival of Barney's food.
His eyes now fully open again, Barney beheld his plate in all its glory, a tear coming to his eye as a sharply drawn memory was stirred within him. It looked exactly the way it did in his mind’s eye, and a smile slowly spread over his face. The mash looked like a cloud had been brought down from the sky and smothered in gravy just for him, and the sausages were thick and succulent and piping hot. He thought about taking a photograph, but instead decided to just breathe it in. He reached for the knife and fork which had been just perfectly placed on either side of his plate and cut diagonally through the top of the first sausage.
It looked like he'd pictured it. It smelled as he'd imagined it. So, imagine Barney’s horror, if you will, upon biting into the thick, succulent, piping hot sausage and being suddenly overwhelmed by the taste of fish. Not bad fish, mind you, but fish nonetheless. Three times he re-checked the food menu, after spitting out the unwelcome surprise back into the gravy, and there was nothing on there to explain this unquestionable realisation. He could only find the locally sourced, organic, 100% pork sausages that he felt certain he'd ordered.
Barney wondered if, perhaps, this was the trick of one of the men or women (but mostly men) sitting around the pub at this moment. He stared down at the two and two thirds sausages that remained untouched, and then at the semi-masticated heap that he'd spat out. It had to be some sort of trick. But for how long had he been its victim? Had the punchline come and gone many times before, but only now - with the salty taste of fish still clinging to his gums - had he the wherewithal to figure it all out?
His eyes scanned around the bar. He suddenly felt as though many more were on him, although it had to be conceded that none of the other patrons were really paying Barney and his great realisation any mind.
He retrieved a pencil from his pocket and, certain that this was the correct course of action, began to write a list on the first in a pile of napkins that arrived with his meal.
*****
As the night wore on, Michelle learned enough about Esteban to warrant a continued interest in him, though not enough to justify the testament of his sisters. She also met many more of them: on top of Esta, Olga, and Yelena, there were the red-headed pair, Olivia and Sandy. She'd also briefly met the oldest of them, a woman of sixty who introduced herself as H. before disappearing back into the farmhouse, along with Katsu, who was in tow with the older H. during her brief visit and had only just now returned to the group. She sat next to Esteban and listened with starry eyes as he regaled them with a story about an Indonesian girl he'd met whilst climbing a volcano on the island of Java. Michelle couldn’t remember the details, but for many months afterwards could remember the deep sorrow in the young man's eyes as he spoke about the woman. It reminded her of Camilla and her hopefulness, before Michelle had drained it away.
Several more of the weighty and sort of hollowing joints were rolled and passed around, but Michelle mostly passed on them. She was still feeling the effects of the first one, when the moon was still low and only a pair of Esteban's sisters sat around the campfire. She did partake in a bitter and acidic fruit punch that tasted like shit but had a drastic but unpredictable effect. She felt intermittently focused and lethargic, as if her body was giving up whilst her mind prepared to take full control. Another sister joined, who sat in-between Olga and Yelena before promptly lying down beneath the stars and going to sleep.
Johnny and the other two 'farmhands', if they could be called that, kept a safe distance from the group, and drank a thick apple cider which they poured into metal tankards from a plastic demijohn.
“When are you leaving?” one of Esteban’s sisters, Esta, asked Michelle. She was still sitting next to the Dutch newcomer, this interloper, as she had been for much of the night.
“Tonight, I guess,” Michelle replied. “I’ll need to walk to the village.”
At this point, Michelle noticed that one of the red-heads was looking at her from across the campfire. She leant forward, almost as if she was attempting to listen in to the conversation. She made no real attempts to hide this. The interloper glanced back at her, at her pale complexion and the network of freckles on her pronounced cheekbones. Her eyes were green and cold. Michelle’s foot was tapping idly against the ground, and she wondered how long it had been doing so. The rest of her was heavy and leaden.
“It’s later than you think,” Esta said, looking up at the moon, high in its apex on the jet black sky. Counting the innumerable stars would’ve been a fool’s errand. “There’s plenty of space in the house. Or you can sleep out here. Margot always does.”
Here, Esta nodded at the sister who’d appeared late into the night and promptly fell asleep between Olga and Yelena. She was gently snoring away whilst the evening went on around her.
“I should probably get back,” Michelle said.
“Would anyone miss you?” Esta asked. She was smiling in a kindly manner at the Dutch girl. The younger red-head, Sandy, still watched the scene from across the fire.
“I guess not,” Michelle conceded. She looked over at Esteban, who was lying flat on his back over his stump, his arms and legs spread out like a starfish. He had a joint perched between his lips, plumes of thick smoke emerging from it as his rib cage expanded with each breath. “But I should probably get back.”
“You’ll stay,” Esta said. “If Esteban wants you to.”
“Is that why you stay?” Michelle enquired, glancing at the young girl in front of her. She didn’t flinch before the question. “Because he wants you to?”
“I stay… because he’s real,” Esta said, nodding at Esteban. “And we’re not. It’s the hardest thing to accept. But… when you can… well, it’s a release. No more sadness, no more loneliness, no more fear. Do you understand?”
“No,” Michelle answered. “I don’t understand at all.”
“I think,” Esteban began, addressing his voice to the group as a whole and lifting himself forward into a seated position on his stump. He collected his cup of punch from the ground and raised it, as if in toast. “I think it is time for tonight’s celebration! It’s been another long day, but another peaceful one, and another one during which I thank whatever force it is that has led me to today, in the company of my family. In the company of those who see things as I see them.”
He drank deeply from his cup, and his sisters followed suit. Michelle noticed that Johnny and the other boys were beginning to grin in their separate cluster. Sandy still had eyes for only Michelle.
“I celebrate you all, on each and every one of these beautiful days. But each night one of you, my sisters, my muses, my ideas… one of you is chosen to sit with me in a position of honour. And it is a pleasure to do this in front of our guest tonight. In front of an outsider. Katsu, tonight you will be honoured!”
There was a short burst of applause, during which Katsu stood from her seat with a sheepish grin. Johnny had already lumbered over to where she and Esteban were positioned, and followed the girl into the farmhouse when she excitedly hurried away.
“What’s happening?” Michelle asked.
“Just a celebration,” Esta answered. “Don’t worry. Throw yourself in.”
The sister handed the joint to Michelle, who took a hesitant drag, not quite willing to let the thick, heavy smoke all the way into her system. She quickly handed it back, and Esta went on sucking at it happily. Michelle couldn’t work out if she was aware that the younger red-headed girl was still watching them both carefully.
“Why are you staring at me?” Michelle asked. The red-head shrugged, but didn’t stop staring.
A few moments later, Katsu returned. She was being led on a long leash by Johnny, who was smiling from ear-to-ear like a content simpleton, and made her way across the yard on all fours. She still wore mostly the same clothes as she did before, but over her head was black, leather dog mask with angular contours around the ears and the snout. Johnny led her to Esteban, to whom he handed the leash, before rejoining the other farmhands in their own separate circle.
“Why is she wearing that?” Michelle asked. Katsu was now sitting on her haunches next to Esteban, who was holding her leash but otherwise paying her no mind.
“This is acceptance,” Esta answered. “Of what we are. And of what he is.”
“I…” Michelle stuttered, and found that she couldn’t keep her eyes on the girl in the mask. “I need the bathroom.”
She stood to her feet, and realised then that she hadn’t been vertical for a good few hours. She was unsteady and wavered, and her limbs still felt heavy.
“I don’t feel so well.”
“I’ll take her,” the red-head offered. Esta waved her on, and Michelle followed after the freckled girl as she led the way around the circle of sisters and then towards the farmhouse. Esteban smiled warmly at Michelle as she went, but the interloper was more concerned with her steps, each of which was a little more difficult than the last.
“You said you don’t understand,” the red-head said, as they rounded the main complex of the farmhouse and passed by a latrine. “But that’s because you’re not trying to.”
“Can’t I just use that?” Michelle asked, pointing to an outhouse with an old, disused toilet inside.
“No,” the red-head said. “It’s this way.”
The freckled girl continued to the edge of the forest. Looking over her shoulder, Michelle could still see the fire, but they were far enough away from the group that the voices were inaudible. Eventually, at the eaves of the woods, the girl stopped. Michelle came to a halt alongside her.
“Well?” the red-head asked, impatience in her delivery. “Do you want me to go with you? Through there. Five paces.”
The girl with the freckles handed Michelle a torch. She took the prescribed five paces. There was no toilet, but on the ground in front of her was a metal hatch door.
“Hurry up,” the girl with the freckles shouted. She seemed further away. The sudden utterance was enough for Michelle to drop her torch. It clattered against the hatch door, the noise from which echoed around the trees.
Michelle picked up the torch, and then, much to her confusion, she heard a knock emanating from the other side of the hatch.
And then she heard a low, hoarse voice:
“Help.”
*****
Part Four.
Those of you fortunate to be in possession of a long and good memory (though it could be argued that those people are thoroughly unfortunate) will remember that we begin our introduction by introducing coincidences one and two. Coincidence one, regarding the happenstance similarity between their birth dates, played out at the beginning of our story to little grand effect. Coincidences two, pertaining to their mutual presence in Fittlewicket during the small hours of the third of January, is about to come into play as our protagonists converge on our final setting. Those with an even longer and even better memory will also recall allusions to a third striking coincidence, which was hidden from you, tulip, to 'preserve the drama of the narrative’.
You will, no doubt, have begun to guess at what this is, and many of the wheels are already in motion. The train has left the station, in fact, and there's no going back. The train only goes one way. This coincidence three, as it shall be known, regards the mental state of Messers Trent, St. Regis, and von Horrowitz. You already know, as I have told you, that Barney Trent is on the cusp of an episode, and it is also true that the poor, tame fellow will never quite recover and ‘return’, not that his life before this point was really anything much worth returning to. The reader is also aware, both from other works and from the nagging Molotov Cocktail of neuroses and memories described here, that Michelle von Horrowitz is not precisely a picture of good health herself. Long ago, I described to you the cyclical nature of Michelle’s well-being, of the periodical descents and recoveries that have run through her life in an almost rhythmic fashion. The first was when she was fifteen, the most recent thirty one. The manic episode that we concern ourselves with here occurred somewhere between the first and the last, and its position in the line-up is unknown, owing to the number of them that there have been.
But similar is not the same. Though Barney Trent and Michelle von Horrowitz will suffer severe and sudden chemical imbalances in the next episode of our story, Esteban St. Regis will instead continue to experience the more creeping mental quirks, those without fireworks and often without a timely and proper conclusion, that he has done for much of his life. You have heard the claims about Esteban's being from Esteban’s sisters, rather than from Esteban himself, though you would have done if you'd only joined the story earlier. It is up to the reader to decide the nature of Esteban St. Regis. Whether he is a manipulative charlatan, a delusional cultist, or, if you’re easily misled, if he is telling the truth is completely up to the reader. I’ll not try to cloud your judgement in any way, as I would, after all, simply be providing my own opinion, which is no better in this matter than your own.
It is to Esteban that we return to now, stood to attention and illuminated, still, by the light of his campfire. In front of him was Olivia, the younger of his two red-headed sisters, who had her hands behind her back and looked up at him with an unreadable passivity about her. Her older sister (in the biological sense) stood next to her, silent but supportive, as Esteban questioned her about the newcomer’s quite sudden disappearance. Meanwhile, Johnny and Peter were preparing the quad bike for the expected excursion from the compound, whilst Joe lumbered through the wheatfields in the direction of the stable.
Olivia told Esteban that the girl had bolted away from her and into the forest after hearing voices. She told him that she heard the voices too, and that they'd been asking for help. The girl with the freckles told the Master of the House about how she'd tried to follow, but that the pale girl was fast and she'd soon lost her once the trees got thicker. Some of this was true. Esteban concluded that they should try to find her, ostensibly so that they could return her back to the village or to the town, if that's where she wanted to go, and his sisters generally concluded that this was a good idea. H. was sent for and exchanged some hurried words with Esteban, before rounding up the sisters and sending them off to bed.
Esteban and Peter jumped on the back of the quad bike, which Johnny drove to the stable. Peter was waiting there with two horses, the old black stallion that they called The Assessor and the piebald mule, and - here, hidden from the moon by the old wooden stable - Esteban issued his instructions. Joe was to take The Assessor up to the moors between the Windbreak and the Three Peaks, whilst Peter would tour the southern stretches of Cottler’s Hill and around to the Splinterhills on the mule. Johnny would take Esteban to the village, upon which you already know our three protagonists to be converging, where he felt quite assured that the girl would surface soon enough.
Whilst sitting on the back of the quad bike and traversing the short distance between here and there, Esteban made a rare phone call to Old Jennings, who he correctly surmised would be behind the bar at The Rambler’s Arms. He calmly told him that one of his younger sisters was coming back to the farm that evening, and that he was due to meet her in the village. Without much prompting at all, Jennings agreed to keep the inn open for a pair of extra hours, owing to the younger St. Regis’s renowned generosity in the local area, and an innate willingness on the part of the old barkeep to provide a helping hand to any young damsel in distress.
Upon arrival at the inn, Johnny was directed to remain in the corner of the car park, the quad bike out of sight in the adjacent field. Esteban went inside and ordered a neat whiskey before taking the only empty seat in the bar, which just so happened to be next to a middle aged man currently engaged in frantically scribbling on a napkin. Several more, already filled with notes, sat strewn around the table.
After taking a long sip from his whiskey, and pausing to regard the other at his table carefully, Esteban picked one such napkin up. It happened to be the first of the dozen now covered with notes. Upon it, he read the following:
“List of grievances, compiled by Barney Reginald Trent of the Shields of Oakenwood Steel Company, addressed to The Creator.
1. For the large and unnecessary disparity between expectation in reality (in a large number of areas of life, but most recently these sausages).
2. The concept of change.
3. Owings on horse races, to the value of thirty five pounds (estimated average) per week for twenty two years, equating to a total of forty thousand and forty pounds, to be made payable to Mr. Trent at the earliest possible convenience.
(and so on...)”
Esteban thought that he understood the gist, and didn't feel the need to cover every word on every napkin. Instead, he again glanced over at this ‘Barney Reginald Trent’, an eyebrow cocked and his mind carefully pondering what sort of melodrama he'd descended into in his haste to make the village. Barney, for his part, simply continued to scribble.
"Who do you intend to post them to?" Esteban asked, drawing Barney's gaze from his napkins for the first time in quite a while. He gazed at the still full but now stone cold plate of food in front of him, as well as a pint of bitter (two thirds empty) that he couldn't remember ordering.
"I'm not going to post them," Barney replied, shaking his head a little frenetically. "Can't trust the Royal Mail. I am going to get a meeting."
Esteban smiled at the middle-aged man's dogged perseverance.
"Well, I have some time free now," Esteban said, checking his watch. "But only a few minutes. Creating is busy work, Barney."
Of course, Barney Reginald Trent's full name was written right there on the napkin Esteban happened to pick up, along with his place of work and his chief grievances. But Barney had written this introduction some time ago, and so he only blinked back at the strange, young man with a vague concern surrounding his knowledge of his name.
“I can’t just make all of these problems go away,” Esteban continued. “But I can give you knowledge. A certain kind of wisdom, maybe. Understanding and acceptance of which, I think, will alleviate some of these problems you’ve been having.”
Here, Esteban waved a hand over the reams of grievances that Barney had written on his napkins.
“Are you… him?” Barney asked, uncertainly. The other continued to smile. It felt warm, somehow.
“The one and the same,” Esteban said, leaning back in his chair in an affectation of easy comfort. “So, how about it? Do you want to know?”
Barney stared up at Esteban with doughy eyes, and he nodded his head.
“As you go through your life in Oakenwood, you make a series of gambles," the younger man began. At the same time, he reached over and picked up Barney's wallet from next to his disused plate. The older man just watched him do it. "Investing time into your career in the steel industry is a gamble. Every choice you make from a menu is a gamble. The horses you pick… well, quite obviously these are gambles. Or so it would seem."
Esteban opened up the wallet and retrieved Barney's betting slop: Dreaming Dorris. £300 at 7/2. The young man held it up between his thumb and fingers.
"But what if I could tell you, or even promise you, that with a click of my fingers, all chance will be removed from your life. All of these dangerous and cheating concepts of randomness and luck… gone."
Esteban clicked his fingers, and then placed the sllp of paper onto the napkins. Barney was quick to scoop it up.
"And this can be had, with the acceptance of the simple fact that you’re not really here. Only one thing is really here.”
Barney continued to stare at Esteban. He felt he understood.
“Do you know what this one thing is?” Esteban asked.
Barney nodded.
“I can prove it to you,” Esteban said, slowly reaching for the fork that sat discorded next to Barney’s plate. He picked it up and offered the handle to his older counterpart. “You’re not here, Barney Reginald Trent. Neither is the fork. Neither is this seat or this tavern or this village, or your plate of underwhelming sausages. And, most importantly, neither is your boredom, your suffering, and your pain.”
Barney took the fork out of Esteban's hand and, certain that he wouldn't feel a thing, plunged the utensil into the fleshy part of his thigh.
The reader can explain the fact that Barney didn't feel a thing in a few different ways. Perhaps it was adrenaline, with Mr. Trent finally coming to what he sees as a drastic and important realisation. Or maybe whatever other synapses in his head were currently misfiring in his head had triggered a shorted circuit in the pain receptors of his right thigh. It's a possibility, too, that Barney felt no pain upon the fork's spires clawing into his leg because, well, maybe Esteban was telling the truth (though we, as serious people, will only entertain this notion for so long). Perhaps the most likely explanation is another of our first paragraphs declarations: that Trent, along with St. Regis and von Horrowitz, was fictional, and exists only in the mind of the writer. But whatever the reason, Barney sat in his corner seat of The Rambler's Arms, rather serene and content despite his current predicament.
"Yes," Barney said, slowly and whilst still looking at the protruding fork. "I think you're quite right. Thank you. I've never seen things with quite so much clarity as I do right now."
And that much was true. You have to think, dear tulip, of what it is like to go through forty years of existence with a gradually increasing sense that something wasn't quite right, that some sort of joke was being had at your expense… and then to stumble upon proof of that fact, after finally resolving to take up your grievances with the one who put you in this mess. And, as it turned out, this Creator was no demon, but a charming and affable young man who offered him the light.
And with this light, Barney Trent picked up his plate of uneaten sausages and mashed potatoes, and launched it across the room. It hurtled and somersaulted its way over the inn on its way past the bar, and Old Jennings was lucky to duck at the last second and miss the explosion of shards and gravy.
Of course, every eye was now turned onto Barney and Esteban. The latter was slightly nervous, having expected to coax a reaction from the young man, but not quite this one. The former simply grinned from ear to ear.
"It's okay," he said. "It's not real. They're not real sausages. That's not real gravy."
And with that, Barney got up and walked out of the inn. Esteban watched him go, and then spent a moment gauging the confused reactions of the old men and occasional wife that were sitting on stools and pews around the room.
He didn’t follow Barney straight away, but if he had he would’ve seen one such wife - Mrs. Heggarty, the wife of old Geoff Heggarty, the village baker - arriving to pick her husband up in her new Fiat Punto. Mrs. Heggarty was quite proud of her sleek and smart new car, and spent a moment brushing a fleck of dirt from the front bumper before striding towards The Rambler’s Arms.
She of course saw Barney Trent emerging from the pub, waving his arms and hollering something nonsensical that she didn’t really try to understand. She assumed that he was just some drunk from the city who’d been drinking in the hills and now was drinking some more in the village. She tried to give him a wide circle, but he barrelled into her with a rugby tackle, taking her down onto the cobbled ground and popping her hip bone out of place. Esteban emerged from the front door of the tavern as Trent straightened himself up.
Both of them turned towards the hedges that surrounded the car park, and the noise of someone falling through them and into a heap next to Mrs. Heggarty’s pristine Fiat Punto. Esteban St. Regis walked over to Barney Trent, who was illuminated by a streetlamp and would have a much better view of the scene’s latest and last character. The older man still clutched his betting slip. Mrs. Heggarty still lay in a heap, face-down on the cobbles, clutching her hip and whimpering.
“It’s okay!” Barney shouted, to none of them and to all of them. “They’re not real sausages!”
Michelle von Horrowitz emerged from the hedges, her face paler than ever, and her eyes black and bulbous like a beetle’s.
Around fifteen minutes earlier, Michelle bolted upon seeing the metal door of the hatch and hearing the distressed voice from beyond it. She didn't stop to check whether the red-headed girl was in pursuit before she went, or at any point during her escape, but if she had she would've seen the girl, who we now know to be Olivia, watching her dart away without even the slightest urge to follow. We won't stop and examine this young, freckled girl's motivations: they are manifold, and easily guessed at anyway. We will stay with Michelle.
As she darted through the undergrowth and noticed the trees getting thicker, she surmised that she must be heading towards the nucleus of the forest and the isolation that she so suddenly found herself desiring. It is a wonder that she was able to travel at the speed that she did, for her limbs felt heavy and her head was fogged. At one point, she tripped through a gnarled root that protruded from the ground and broke right through it. Instead of bark and wood, she looked back to find frayed cables, buzzing and hissing and sparking at her angrily. Branches were stretching and groping arms. The wind was a harsh shriek that assaulted her ears and her frail mind. But still she ran.
She emerged onto one of the low moors below Cottler's Hill, and a short time later emerged in the carpark of The Rambler's Arms. The distance between the latrine behind the First Field and the village of Fittlewicket is two point three kilometres, as the crow flies, but in truth Michelle had done closer to four thanks to winding her way through the forest during the descent. Despite this mad scramble, conducted at a frightening pace, she was not out of breath at the end of it. Pale and with eyes black and bulbous like a beetle’s, as I mentioned, but otherwise she seemed surprisingly calm and collected.
She saw the man she didn't know holding up his little piece of paper, and the woman she didn't know lying on the floor nearby. She also saw the man she did know striding up towards the other, an unfamiliar look of concern plastered on his usually serene face.
She was only a pair of metres away from the two of them when the older one swung a closed fist into Esteban's face. The tooth flying across the parking lot was a vivid and sharp image. It landed in front of her shoes.
“My little Dreamer!” this unknown man exclaimed, as he turned around to face Michelle with a wide and manic grin in place. He thrust his betting slip into the young woman’s pale face, and out of nothing more than instinct she bit down hard into the man’s index finger. Barney Trent let out an inhuman yelp, and then slumped to the floor. Michelle spat the upper third of his finger down onto the concrete.
She looked down at the end of the finger for a short while: at the nail that had been bitten down by its previous owner through rampant and crippling nerves, at the granules of dirt at its corners suggestive of a lack of hygienic care, and at the clean plane created by her swift and apparently decisive bite. Whilst staring at the severed digit, lying as it was upon the cobbled floor of the car park, Michelle experienced something similar to the moment of clarity that Barney thought he’d stumbled upon earlier in this chapter. The weight began to leave her limbs, the fog to lift from her mind. After one more deep breath, she took in the chaotic scene before her.
Attracted by the screams and grunts and general disarray, more people emerged from separate directions. Half a dozen old men emerged from the pub, and at the same moment Johnny stepped through a gap in the hedge surrounding the parking lot. The latter hurried to help the Master of the House, who was still holding his cheek in despair after the quite bludgeoning blow from the deceptively strong middle-aged man. One of the elderly patrons of the tavern stormed over to his felled wife, half in rage and half in concern. The others conspired to tackle Barney Trent, who was seen to throw a plate of uneaten sausages and mashed potatoes across the bar a few minutes prior and was generally considered to be the undoubted source of the mayhem, to the ground and hold him there.
Faced with all this, Michelle decided that the best course of action was to leave.
I could, of course, continue to tell you what happened next, after coincidence two has played out and the climax of this story - which is but an interlude in three very different and much fuller lives - has been seen. Perhaps you would like to know about the swift legal action brought against Barney Trent by Mr. and Mrs. Heggarty, along with Old Jennings, and the institute he spent some time in shortly after. Or maybe you’d rather know about Esteban St. Regis’ return to the farm, where he would find his hatch unlocked, his stores raided, and a certain pair of red-headed twins missing from their beds. It’s possible you’d like to know what Johnny’s real name is. But none of this really matters. The strands will never fully be tied up. Take Camilla, for instance, and Michelle’s yearning and regret. Closure doesn’t exist. Some thoughts and feelings linger forever. Rather than to worry about what happened next, I would rather we enquire after what if. What if coincidence two never came to pass? Would coincidence three still have followed? Does the lonely tulip grow the same as those that bloom together?
Promo history - volume 77. "Deus Ex Machina!" (w/ Gerald Grayson)(February 18th, 2022). Michelle von Horrowitz and Gerald Grayson vs. Devin Golden and Lizzie Rose [Tag Warz - Pool Stage Round Three] (FWA: Meltdown XII).
the GRAYSON & von HORROWITZ connection
in “DEUS EX MACHINA!”
*****
As Michelle sat on the white sand beach, staring out at the sun as it breathed its last series of breaths, Michelle felt as though she was on the very edge of the world. Of course, that wasn't strictly true: it was time itself that Michelle was sitting upon the edge of. One of Uncle’s rules (number forty five or forty six, she couldn't quite recall) laid out the limits of the machine in terms of when it could actually travel to (around four billion BCE to around five billion CE, if you're interested), and past certain points either way the machine would implant you with a dissolving microchip to help you survive a hostile atmosphere. She hadn't bothered to go back to the start yet. The end was what she was interested in.
She could inhale and exhale without problems thanks to the chip, but she could still see the toxicity of the air before her in the form of a thin and ever present fog. The air was sort of heavy, though, and if she breathed in too quickly it sort of dulled her head. Even through this slight mist one could see the sun, swollen as it was, a deep red in colour with a purplish-blue blur around its circumference, sitting upon the lip of the horizon. She could see it burning, even. Her Kimoa Chiral-XG Sunglasses, a gift from JAY! and with a slight and sexy purple tint in the lens, strained under the dying screams of the hydrogen-starved sun.
Upon the beach, massive, crustacean-like creatures dragged themselves over the fine, white sand. Upon arrival, Michelle had been wary of these beasts, and gave them an extremely wide circle when she'd left the Machine to investigate her surroundings. They were slow, and paid her no mind whatsoever. They were lonely creatures, crawling the Earth without predator or prey, sullen captains slowly going down with their rotten ship.
Michelle's watch began to beep at her. She sighed deeply, dragging her eyes away from the dying sun to look down at its display and clicking a button to silence it. Uncle had insisted she buy one if she was to be using the Machine, so she'd found this old Casio number in a North Carolinian thrift shop. Same brand as her calculator. Camel, Heineken, Casio. Her sense of brand loyalty stretched only this far.
It was time to go back. She wondered if they'd all still be there, upon her return. Michelle climbed into the Machine and checked the return date coordinates. The seventeenth of February of the year two thousand twenty two. She found herself musing upon the tepid wonders that awaited her there, took one last look at the sun, and then pulled the level in front of her towards her body.
<<<<<
Just like that, Michelle was back in the present. She took a moment to compose herself with time travelling being something that she wasn’t used to just yet (nor was she sure she’d ever get used to it). Before long, she climbed out of the Machine as quietly as she could. She looked around, making sure the coast was clear, knowing Gerald would not approve of her solo adventures. After concluding that the area was all clear, Michelle was all smiles, making her way towards the kitchen.
“You never listen, do you?” Gerald suddenly appeared, having been lurking in a corner, prompting Michelle to get into a defensive stance.
“God damn it Gerald, you scared me. Do that again and I won’t hesitate to throw some fists,” Michelle threatened as she threw a few shadow punches.
Gerald rolled his eyes, walking towards the Machine. He ran his hand across it before immediately drawing it away due to how hot it still was from Michelle’s solo travels. He shot a look towards Michelle and if looks could kill, that’s exactly what would’ve happened. Michelle avoided Gerald’s look like the plague. Instead, she resorted to a meek whistle, as if nothing suspicious was going on.
“This can’t keep happening, Michelle. We said we’d only use the Machine if it’d help us win matches. We are meant to be a team, remember?” Gerald reminded her.
“Yeah, yeah,” was the only response Michelle could offer at the moment. Gerald didn’t appreciate how flippant she was.
“I’m serious. I doubt stuff like this is happening with teams like the Gang Stars or Golden Rock. Both these teams are a cohesive unit. It’s basically instinct for these teams when it comes to knowing what to do next,” Gerald said.
”Well, Devin Golden currently thinks Randy Ramon doesn’t exist,” Michelle retorted. “I would hardly call that cohesive, Gerald. At least I believe you’re real.”
“Enough gags, Michelle,” Gerald said, looking at her with concern. “If we clean things up, I have no doubts we will be as dominant, if not, more dominant than these teams ever were.”
“Okay, I apologise. I was a lonely tulip for a long time, Gerald. Sometimes I regress. I can’t help it. Plus, it was only a short trip anyway,” Michelle said snarkily.
Gerald smacked his head with the palm of his hand.
“Look, all I’m saying is, it’s dangerous to go out on these solo travels of yours. It’s always good to have someone have your back, alright?” Gerald said, trying to reason with Michelle.
“I guess,” Michelle said. She seemed disinterested, and made her way into the kitchen. The loft apartment was all one room except for a small bathroom that sat behind a white door in the corner. Gerald folded his arms and glared at Michelle from opposite the room.
She looked at him, and found herself taken aback by his glare.
“Oh c’mon. You can’t still be on this subject, Gerald,” Michelle said. “It’s boring, Gerald. You’re being boring. Just… stop telling me what to do, okay? I don’t tell you what to do.”
But Gerald was absolutely still on this subject. He continued to glare, one eyebrow lifted in accusatory fashion.
“You can’t be mad at me forever,” Michelle groaned from the kitchen, grabbing her trusty flask.
“Watch me,” Gerald said in response. He kept his arms folded and took a seat on the couch. Despite his new position he continued to stare over at his partner. Michelle simply rolled her eyes at the childish nature of her tag team partner. After a few more moments observing Gerald’s pouting, she took a seat next to him.
“Look, I’ve got an idea to make it up to you,” Michelle said, perking Gerald’s interest.
“I’m listening…” Gerald said, turning to Michelle.
“How about we take the Machine for a spin?” Michelle suggested.
“Really? That’s your solution to all of this? To do the one thing I’m angry at you about. Really?” Gerald scoffed.
“You’ll like this. Trust me. Didn’t you say you wanted to use the Machine to help us win as a team?” Michelle said sarcastically, using Gerald’s words against him. Gerald let out a long sigh. Knowing he couldn't win an argument with Michelle, he looked at her in defeat. Michelle stood up from the couch in triumph. “Alright. Grab this.”
Michelle threw her flask to Gerald, who frantically re-positioned himself to catch it. Dreamer was always impressed with his footwork. She grabbed her jacket from the chair in the kitchen and put it on as the pair walked towards the Machine.
“Where are we going?” Gerald asked eagerly.
“Patience, my friend,” Michelle offered in response.
“Oh c’mon! You always get to choose where we go,” Gerald pouted.
“And?” Michelle asked.
“And what if I want to decide this time!” Gerald said as a counter argument. It was Michelle’s turn to smack her forehead with the palm of her hand.
“Okay, where did you want to go then?” Michelle asked.
“Uhm…” Gerald paused, not expecting Michelle to actually give him a choice in the matter.
“Well?” Michelle stood there waiting, tapping her boot on the floor. Gerald still pondered his answer as sweat began to build on his forehead. “This is exactly why you don’t get to choose. You can’t make up your mind!”
“Well, give me a minute! I didn’t rush you, did I?” Gerald shouted back at her.
“Gerald, just get in the Machine and enjoy the ride, will you?” Dreamer said, absolutely done with this whole thing. Gerald pouted once more. This time, he heavily stomped his Oreo Jordan 1s on the floor, like a little kid who didn’t get his way. Michelle rolled her eyes so far into her head that the whites of her eyes were the only things you could see for a good moment or two. She also hated his stupid fucking shoes.
After weighing out a kilogram of chiral crystals and placing them into the still-dirty reactor (she’d clean it later), the duo sat down in the Machine and Michelle typed in the coordinates for Garland, Texas and the date of January 24th, 2022. They estimated that the Maskell-Crowe snooze fest would be over by about 8:20 Eastern and aimed for then, though in truth the Machine could drop them off a couple minutes either side of that depending on how bumpy the ride was.
“Seatbelts,” Gerald instructed, as Michelle’s hand moved to the lever. “Safety first, Michelle.”
She sighed and yanked her belt around her, and the pair pushed their respective clasps in at the same time. As they did, they each felt a slight pinch in the shoulder that the strap sat on.
“Huh,” Michelle said, looking down at the disturbance in her shoulder. It felt like the insertion of a microchip, as if they were going billions of years in the future and needed some assistance to survive the atmosphere, but Meltdown X was only a few weeks ago. And, other than a strong and pervading smell of bullshit, there wasn’t anything too drastically wrong with the air in Garland that night.
Either way, MIchelle pulled the lever towards her, and off they went.
With the Machine on auto-pilot, Michelle leant back for a moment and took in her surroundings. The temporal tunnel that they were in looked like it always did: a swirling maze of purple and white and silver, through which they hurtled at a pace that didn’t really seem physically possible. She tried to relax herself, but Gerald pulled a lever to the left suddenly, causing Michelle to jolt forward. They veered towards the ‘wall’, if the side of the tunnel could really be called that, before he released the lever and they drifted back into the centre of the road. At this point, Michelle was beyond annoyed with Gerald and his childish behaviour.
“Gerald, I swear to every deity in the universe, if you don’t quit this bratty shit, we’ll go back right now and I’ll just meet you in New Orleans,” she threatened. Gerald responded by blowing a raspberry in Michelle’s direction.
Michelle slammed on the brakes, coming to a quick halt in the middle of the temporal highway. Gerald seemed a little taken aback by the sudden stop, but was glad to have his seatbelt on.
“Look, we’re both adults here. I’ve made mistakes and so have you,” Michelle paused, seeing Gerald was about to interrupt. She shot him a glare and that changed Gerald’s tune. “So please, act your fucking age and be my co-pilot because if not, you can just get out here. I can do this on my own. You and I both know that I have better knowledge of this whole time travel thing.”
Gerald lifted an eyebrow.
“And that means that if I wanted to drop you in some time period that you hated, I could definitely do that,” Michelle sneered.
“You wouldn’t…” Gerald questioned, a bit of fear mixed in his voice.
“Try me,” she challenged Gerald. FWA’s resident Daredevil wasn’t feeling like hot shit anymore. He gulped before adhering to Michelle’s command of being her co-pilot. She pushed the lever back forwards, and on through the temporal highway they went.
In the blink of an eye, they were transported to Meltdown X. The Machine materialised in a disused cubicle of a gender neutral toilet that was marked as out of order in one of the central concourses of the arena. The pair headed for the nearest entrance turnstile, and emerged in the front row on the camera side. Michelle immediately began to touch her face, realising they shouldn’t be seen. But when she looked at Gerald, who handed her something.
“From the gift shop in Raleigh,” he said. Michelle looked down at the Occisor mask in her hands, and then pulled it over her head. Gerald did the same with a Custos mask, and they found a pair of empty seats on the front row (little did they know that two rowdy copycat Krash fans who only had the ‘K’ and the ‘R’ assembled had just been ejected from them). The Connection let out a sigh of relief as the crowd began to cheer at the action going on in the ring. Inside the ring, Golden and Saint Sulley started the match for their teams.
“You see there? First mistake by both men,” Gerald said observantly. “No one’s making the first move. Huge mistake and a missed opportunity, I say. For me, I’d rather set the pace for the match and not let the opponent dictate that.”
”Sometimes it’s better not to rush in,” Michelle replied, thinking about the trouble that had got her in before now. Next to her, an old man who seemingly had little interest in the events in the ring was gently snoozing away. He had a large carton of popcorn on his lap, and Michelle helped herself to a handful.
Sulley and Golden hooked up, vying for supremacy in the middle of the ring. Michelle watched these two champions carefully: one from her past and one from her future. Lizzie Rose stood on the far apron, loosening up again. The pairing watched on, mostly in silence, as the action unfolded in the ring. There was a brief respite when Jon Russnow appeared on the big screen and attempted to eject Alyster Black from the arena, during which every eye in the place (including The Connection’s) was drawn away from the battle between the ropes. Michelle smirked and shook her head. She reached for more of her neighbour’s popcorn.
“Good luck with that,” Michelle said, referring to the authority figure’s futile attempts at keeping Black Jesus out of things. In the ring, Sulley finished cycling through his Three Rivers suplexes, eliciting a round of applause for the fans. Michelle turned to her partner, adjusting the mask on her head as she spoke. “Isn’t this where you tell us we’ll be too quick for them? Too ruthless? I mean, they struggled with Burr and Sulley…”
Inside the ring, Saint Sulley was gearing up in the corner, having already hit a judo throw and a DDT on the recently tagged in Lizzie Rose. He came on, looking for his RKO, and for a moment Dreamer thought he saw him hit it… but the associated pop from the crowd woke up the man next to her, and he threw his popcorn up into the air in his startled state. Michelle’s eyes were drawn away from the ring and onto him as he settled himself back down (and promptly fell asleep once more). She looked back at the match, where Lizzie Rose was hitting a stomp on Saint Sulley before tagging in the World Champion.
“Burr and Sulley are no slouches,” Gerald answered. “And am I that predictable? That stuff is true, though. Golden is getting old. You beat him once before, way back when on Meltdown 4. Before we used the Roman numerals, even. He might be champion, but it’s fair to say he wasn’t crowned under usual circumstances. You had his number then, and you’ll have it again…”
“What about Lizzie?” Michelle asked.
“I… worry for her,” Gerald admitted. “Not about her. For her. She’s naive. Innocent. You know, I can see some parallels of myself in her. But… I don’t know, she seems a lot more anxious than I ever was. And Golden’s either taking advantage of her, or a dangerous influence.”
Gerald shuffled uncomfortably in his chair. Inside the ring, Lizzie was tagged in and ascended to the top rope, where she proceeds to clothesline Burr off Golden’s shoulders.
“Maybe she can take care of herself,” Michelle suggested.
“Doubt it.”
A few moments later, the match was over. Golden had hit his ‘Golden Touch’ frog splash on Joe Burr, and the three count followed. The audience regarded the victorious and rambling champion carefully, utterly perplexed, but offered him and Rose and polite and congratulatory applause regardless.
"What's up next?" Gerald enquired whilst adjusting his mask. He wasn't used to wearing one and found the whole experience thoroughly uncomfortable. God knows how people wrestled in them.
"I win the title," Michelle answered, nodding at the big screen as it stirred into life. She then clarified: "Interim title."
The opening of her standoff with Cyrus began to play, and she pointed her eyes at the ground. She'd watched it back already once (not using the Machine, just on the internet) and replayed the evening a host of times in her mind, as well. She got to her feet.
"Come on," she said to Gerald, whilst beginning to shuffle down the line.
"Where are we going?" Gerald asked, putting his popcorn down and hastening after her. He apologised to the FWA fans attempting to watch the events unfolding on the screen as he pushed by.
"I guess we've got kind of crossed wires about our purpose here," Michelle started, having reached the stairs and now beginning an ascent towards an arched turnstile entrance. "You're trying to do reconnaissance. Examine the opponents. Formulate strategy. That sort of thing. That's fine, and useful I guess. But that's not my motive."
She reached the turnstile and turned to Gerald, noting that he had paused a few steps down from her.
"Gerald," she said. "Come on!"
"Sounds like you're looking to change the past," Gerald began, still motionless and a few steps away. "That was Uncle's first rule, Michelle…"
"Let's talk about this on the way," Michelle said.
"The way to where?"
"The parking lot."
"Uncle told you those rules for a reason," Gerald warned, whilst following behind Michelle with acute trepidation.
"You're one to talk," Michelle said, as the pair walked past a few mostly empty concession stands. The screens were showing Cyrus, the current Interim World Champion, throwing Michelle onto the hard concrete with a belly-to-belly suplex. “First thing you did when we got this Machine was buy one of those limited edition GoPro things.”
“That’s a good point, but not for the reason you think it is,” Gerald replied. “That limited edition GoPro thing didn’t survive the trip back, anyway. I think that Corrective Thingy Uncle told you about sort of trapped it in the past. To make sure things aren’t different back in the present. So I’m not sure you’ll be able to change anything properly anyway, Michelle.”
“Then what are you worried about?” Michelle asked, as the duo reached a door with a sign reading ‘talent and staff only’ pinned upon it. Dreamer took the lead and removed her Occisor mask, with Grayson quickly following suit with his Custos one. “Let’s just have a little fun, and then when we get home it’ll all be the same.”
“Well, I don’t know if we’re meant to test the strain of that Corrective Thingy,” Gerald protested, as a security guard allowed the tag team into the restricted area. If we’d stayed with him, we would see him look up at the screen and see the same woman who just walked past him winning the Interim World Championship. He would cock an eyebrow, wrack his brain, and then go back to reading his book.
“That thing’s stronger than you think,” MIchelle answered, referring to what Gerald had called ‘that Corrective Thingy’, but which Uncle had dubbed the ‘D6400 Chiral Alternate Timeline Corrective Device’. “I may have been playing somewhat fast and loose with some of the rules already.”
“Which ones?” Gerald asked, as they pushed through a side-exit in the back left of the venue and emerged into a small parking lot connected to a one-lane road.
“Keep your mind on the task at hand, Gerald,” Michelle instructed, her eyes beginning to scan around the vehicles surrounding them. “Lizzie and Golden made their getaway in a black Toyota Camry. It’s got to be here somewhere.”
“I don’t see one of those anywhere,” Gerald said, scratching his head. It wasn’t a particularly large parking lot, and there wasn’t really any shaking the fact that Gerald was right. “Maybe it comes later? You think Ramon drops it off or something?”
“Ramon’s on Fallout,” Michelle pointed out.
“Like that means anything now,” Gerald said, with a shrug. Either way, Michelle was content with the assertion that the black Toyota would come later, and led the way back inside. “You know, Lizzie can’t even drive. Kleio mentioned to me that she used to get rides to shows with Daphne Shelley all the time. God knows how Golden and Lizzie made it out of here alive. Adrenaline, maybe?”
“Luck," Michelle corrected, as the duo emerged back into the concourse. On the screens, images of Tobias Blume and Aka Yurei duking it out for a chance to lose to Dear Harry were being intercut with those showing Michelle attempting to escape from a Saint Sulley assault. They quickly put their luchador masks back on as a group of fans emerged from the stands in pursuit of hot dogs.
Gerald looked up at the screen, at Sulley holding Michelle in a rear naked choke hold, and couldn't help but feel a little uneasy for various reasons. Of course, primarily, there was the fact that his friend and tag partner was in distress (albeit in the past). Probably more than that, there was also the nagging sense that they were watching Michelle's attempts to win and hold onto the World Championship, whilst soon enough he and she would be walking out to Cochise for the first time, ready to do battle with Kennedy and Truth in the squared circle. Maybe that is where they should've been. He couldn't shake the feeling that more was to be learned there. But here they were, watching Michelle chase the big belt, hiding under masks from unsuspecting fans.
Tag Warz was about the Tag Team Championships, too, but Michelle had been quick to correct him upon arrival at Meltdown XI that there was another goal. The Big Belt. He was in the running for it too, of course. Her success was dependent on his, and vice versa, and for now they were bonded again by that fact. But he could still remember The Elite Tag Team Classic, as well. When only the tag belts had been the prize, Michelle allowed herself to be distracted by her business with Bell, and they'd lost. Then, they parted ways, as Dreamer achieved her destiny in Paris, finally winning the belt that she was now again picking up the hunt for. He was hunting, too, he reminded himself. But it was MIchelle that was in the ring with Golden before Meltdown XI’s main event, in his town of Raleigh, and not him.
Deathswitch, he reminded himself. It was because of Deathswitch. I would have been there, too. And so would’ve Harry.
Michelle’s gaze, meanwhile, was trained upon the monitor. She sort of huffed when Cyrus showed up to save her from the rear naked choke. He nailed Sulley with a discus punch as Michelle plotted her escape, and just like that we were back to Blume and Yurei.
“We missed the Golden promo,” Grayson said, looking across at Michelle. “That might’ve been important.”
“It’s not,” she replied. “Only to him. But the next part is. It’s the stand-off. Let’s go.”
“Look, Michelle, you know that I’m always up for an adventure,” Grayson began, whilst struggling to keep up with her. He wasn’t quite sure where the appointed place for stand-offs was, exactly, but Michelle seemed to know. “But, maybe we should talk about, I don’t know, us?”
“We talk about us quite a lot,” Michelle said, as they walked through a side corridor and removed their masks. They remained here as discreet as possible and made their way through catering.
“How do you think we’ve been doing, recently?” he asked, nervously. “You know, since we teamed up again?”
“Fine,” Michelle said, pushing on through a double door and into a warehouse of spare seating and stage equipment in the northern wing of the arena. “Two matches, two wins.”
“In the ring, yeah,” Gerald admitted, whilst stuffing his hands into his pockets. He was slightly concerned that this was, maybe, all that really mattered to his partner. “But… out of it? Do you think we’ve been in-sync? Look, I know you didn’t ask for the bounty hunt on Meltdown X. That night in Garland was about you, and the world championship. I get that. But Raleigh is my town.”
Michelle paused for a moment at the end of the warehouse, in front of a pair of double doors, allowing her partner to finish his thought.
“I know that Deathswitch did what they did, and that can’t be planned for. And I told you to finish off what we had planned. You did that, for the most part. But… how much of this is about the tag team championships, for you?”
His question was asked in earnest, and she noticed he was biting his lip. Michelle placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Have I made you promises before?” she asked.
“Yes,” Gerald said.
“And have I ever broken them?” she asked.
“Yes,” Gerald said.
“When?” Michelle asked, slightly offended. She removed her hand from his shoulder.
“That time you promised me you’d be early for your flight to Texas before Meltdown X, most recently. I had to bail you out with Jean-Luc, remember? Then there was that time you promised me you couldn’t come to my Motorcross event because your sister was in town, and then I found out your sister’s been dead for five years. You promised you’d quit doing cocaine around me. You promised me you’d got be a Virgin Sex On The Beach at that Full Moon Party in Vietnam. You promised - -”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Michelle cut him off. She didn’t want to hear the rest of the list. “Have I ever broken any of the important ones?”
“I guess not, no,” Gerald admitted, after a moment of thought.
“Okay,” Michelle said, smiling at him again. “So, I’ll make you a promise. It’s just like the old days, after we lost to Parr and Krash: lose and we’re out. We’re undefeated, but we still have no room for error. I promise you that these two matches are all that matter to me between now and the Grand March. And I promise you that, when we get our hands on Golden in Illinois, it won’t be a triple threat match. It will be a handicap match. I promise you that we’ll kill him, and when he’s buried we’ll embrace in the ring, and then have a match. In the competitive spirit. Like we have before, and like we surely will again. And then…”
Here, Michelle placed her hand back on his shoulder.
“I promise you: if Golden Rock can hold onto the belts for long enough to face us, we’ll kill the team that killed us. Think about how perfect that would be.”
Gerald followed the instruction, and thought about how perfect that would be.
“Okay, Michelle,” he said, smiling back at her. “Let’s go.”
They quietly pushed the door ajar. If you’d have been standing in the correct position - in about the position that Devin Golden and Michelle von Horrowitz’s past projections were standing, actually, but they were too focused on one another - you would have seen Gerald and Michelle’s head pop out from this crack in the exit. Their little heart-to-heart, if you’ll excuse the expression, had taken long enough for them to almost miss Michelle and Devin’s interaction entirely, and they arrived just in time to see Krash wipe The Golden One out with a One Shot Kill. Meanwhile, Dreamer scrambled away, her beloved FWA World Heavyweight Championship clutched in her grasp. Gerald was there, too, helping his partner in her mad dash away from the melee.
“This isn’t looking good for Golden,” Gerald said, almost looking away from the destruction that was about to ensue.
“Yeah, how the hell did Golden even survive this?” Michelle said, still bewildered at the situation.
“This is what I’m talking about. Had this been you in trouble, I would’ve been there in the blink of an eye. No questions asked,” Gerald reassured Michelle.
“Golden and Lizzie are the definition of makeshift,” he paused, witnessing Golden being taken out by a One Shot Kill by the moustachioed one.
“Golden is literally a babysitter for Lizzie. If we were opposite them in a ring, we would wipe the floor with them. Whatever problems we may have, we’re a team. I’ve never been more confident in a statement in my life, Michelle.”
As they agreed on that point, they noticed that the Gang Stars had concluded their beatdown of Devin Golden and were making their way towards the exit… which just so happened to be precisely where Michelle and Gerald were standing. They quickly ducked behind a nearby stack of tables, the door opening as Alyster and Krash appeared in the warehouse.
What happened next was strange, and will only be described exactly as it occurred. The Gang Stars, fully fleshed out characters in this melodrama, took a few steps away from the exit. They turned to each other and nodded, before placing their hands on their hips. Then, Krash seemed to sort of disappear, before reappearing again after a mere moment. Black did the same, and when he re-emerged, his edges seemed to be static, his binary base code momentarily revealed.
Then, they both disappeared completely.
Michelle and Gerald turned to one another.
“That was strange,” Gerald said.
“Like a… glitch,” Michelle offered, her eyebrow cocked. “Come on, let’s find Lizzie.”
“Are we even that friendly with Lizzie?” Gerald asked, again finding himself hurrying after Michelle as she led the way through the corridors.
“Her and I spoke last week,” Michelle said, shrugging her shoulders.
“Well, yes, but… that hasn’t happened yet,” Gerald reasoned.
“Don’t worry,” Michelle instructed, as they made a b-line for Lizzie’s locker room. “We don’t need to be friends for this.”
“What are you going to do?” Gerald asked. “She’s just a nice girl. You don’t need to be mean.”
“A nice girl?” Michelle asked. “You got the hots a little there, GiGi? Don’t worry, it’s like you said: it won’t matter anyway, once we return to the present. Loosen up.”
Gerald tried to loosen up, and they embarked on a search for Lizzie Rose around the entirety of the arena. Unfortunately, the girl wasn’t in her locker room (which happened to also be the janitor's closet), and nor was she present in catering or in medical following her match. They checked the spot where she’d show up randomly at the end of the show, in one of the concourses near the back left of the arena, but it would still be quite a while until the camera found her there. Michelle and Gerald didn’t find her, either. One more trip to the janitorial department and then the women's bathrooms proved equally unfruitful. Eventually, they settled on remaining in the concourse and awaiting the evening's climactic procession. Michelle got herself a beer whilst Gerald ordered nachos.
“So, which one’s did you break?” Gerald asked, dipping a nacho into the cheese dip.
“Which what?” Michelle replied. She was watching a nearby screen, which was showing the conclusion of the three-way match between Deathswitch Initiative, the Stocke Market, and the team of Reagan Cole and the recently returned Jason Randall. She remembered her tangles with The Wildcard and licked her lips.
“Of Uncle’s rules,” Gerald clarified.
“You really think that’s important now?” Michelle said, nodding at the screen.
“Uncle seemed to think they were.”
“You know, if you’d have let me finish telling you them, you would know that they weren’t even Uncle’s rules. Thomas is the time travel guy. Uncle was just showing me the ropes because West was on The Octopi No. 2 with Megalodon Man and Gator Guy. Something about a peasant revolt and a miner’s strike in the Valtror-X50 Galaxy.”
This promo isn’t about the Valtror-X50 Galaxy, but it’s safe to say that the system as a whole, and particularly the planet Celeborn-F450, had unusually high chiral density.
In the concourse, Michelle looked back at the screen. The tag match had wrapped up, and a playlist of entrance themes, each heralding the coming of a former World Champion, began in the arena.
“You know,” Gerald said, thinking to himself. “We should ask Uncle about getting an Octopi No. 3. Meltdown Branch could use a little interstellar travel.”
“The guy gave us a Time Machine,” Michelle replied. “That’s not enough?”
“Maybe, you’re right,” Gerald conceded. “Anyway, you’re changing the subject. Which rules did you break?”
“Rule One, really,” Michelle said, with a shrug. She shuffled awkwardly in her chair under the cross-examination. “Rule One a whole bunch of times.”
“Rule Four?” Gerald asked.
“Which one was that?”
“The one about fucking them.”
“No, Gerald,” Michelle said, with a sigh. On the screen, the ring had slowly filled up with bounty hunters. “Look, it’s starting. She’ll be here soon.”
At that moment, their eyes were drawn towards a staff only corridor, the double doors of which swung open with the emergence of a bald, fat member of the production team onto the concourse. Gerald and Michelle happened to be looking this way, and the doors just happened to be open, as Lizzie emerged into existence on the breath of the thin air, with a gentle boop.
“Another glitch,” Gerald said. “That’s two.”
“Three,” Michelle corrected. “There was another. During the match. I don’t know, it looked to me like Sulley had won. Or had things wrapped up. Just for a second. And then things sort of… re-set. Re-calibrated. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me at the time, but we’ve been seeing this sort of shit all night.”
Lizzie walked out into the concourse, just as the fighting in the arena spilled out into the crowd.
“What are you going to do?” Gerald asked, looking across at his partner. In turn, she was staring at Lizzie Rose and sipping her beer.
“There’s too many people here to do anything,” Michelle said, placing her empty plastic cup down on the table. “Let’s go to the parking lot. That Camry has to be there.”
And they did. They made their way to the parking lot, just as a loud crash behind them signalled a vending machine being pulled down to block a crusading Alyster Black’s path. Devin Golden was the perpetrator, and now he bounded on up the corridor after them, leading Lizzie in tow. Michelle and Gerald had a head start, though, and they arrived into the parking lot a minute before their chasers (who, it must be said, were unaware that they were actually in pursuit of Michelle and Gerald, whilst also being pursued by another version of them, along with the Gang Stars, Truth, and Sulley). They walked towards the bay where they felt sure the black Toyota Camry would be, only to find it once again empty.
“Huh.”
They paused for a moment, the noise of the fans behind them building and building as the action neared their location. Michelle and Gerald continued to stare at the bay.
And then, with a soft boop, a black Toyota Camry appeared out of nowhere right before them.
“Glitch,” Gerald said.
“Deux ex machina,” Michelle added.
“What?”
“As if…” Michelle paused, and stammered. “As if the writer is writing his way out of a hole.”
The door behind them clattered open, and in rolled Golden and Lizzie. The wolves were in hot pursuit. Michelle grabbed Gerald’s arm and dragged him behind a nearby Range Rover, before proceeding to creep behind the line of cars to another exit.
“Where are we going?” Gerald asked, his voice little more than whisper.
“Back to the Machine,” Michelle answered. “We need to go back. This is pointless, and something fucking weird is going on.”
Gerald agreed, and the two re-entered the building and bounded back towards the location of the Machine. They found it nestled in the same spot that they’d left it, but upon approach Michelle felt her limbs becoming heavy. She had a headache, and fancied that she could hear a distant and ominous buzz that those she passed were unaware of.
“Can you hear that?” Michelle asked. Gerald nodded his head.
The two climbed into the Machine, but rather than being greeted by the usual complex interface - crammed with buttons, dials, levers, and screens - the control panel in front of them was blank but for one large, red button, and two words:
WAKE UP.
“What’s going on, Michelle?” Gerald asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered, her hand hovering over the button. Gerald placed his hand on hers, and they pressed down upon it together.
It was the same, but different. They whirred their way through the temporal tunnel, a faint wave washing over them, the result a hyper-aware inertia. But rather than the usual purple and silver temporal highways they were used to, they were surrounded by white walls of marble, and they hurtled towards a gold, glowing light.
Suddenly, they were there. Wherever there was.
The duo climbed out of the Machine, and found themselves in what appeared to be the large waiting room of a medical facility. The receptionist paid the Machine no mind, as if it and they had always been there, and continued in her work as Michelle and Gerald made their way towards a door that led to a corridor.
“Where are we?” Gerald asked. Michelle didn’t answer. She was as clueless as he.
Through the doors, they came into a corridor lined on either side by glass walls, each separating the pair from a hospital room. In the nearest one was a bed, and in that bed - hooked up to a complicated system of wires and machines - was “The Golden One”, “The Rotted Gold”... Devin Golden. At the end of the corridor, another door opened. A man walked in. He was holding a clipboard and, when he came closer, Michelle read his name-badge and found out that he was Dr. Randall, and that he was a psychologist.
They also found Dr. Randall to be staring at them beneath his bushy eyebrows with a look of mistrust.
"Who are you?" this psychologist, this Randall, asked. It was strange to finally hear someone else speak.
"We are… uhm…" Gerald started.
"We're visiting doctors from the National University of Psychology in Amsterdam," Michelle put in, quickly. She gave Gerald an elbow, and he affected a thoughtful pose he deemed fitting for a psychologist. He considered an accent, also, but Michelle’s next utterance would negate the need for one. "I am Dr. von Horrowitz. This is my American colleague, Dr. Grayson. He was selected for the trip for his local knowledge, of course. You'll have to forgive him his uncouthness. He's from the Carolinas."
Randall looked at the pair of them, and for a moment Michelle feared that he was about to ask for their credentials. Or a particularly hard psychology question (but, really, how hard could a psychology question be?). He didn't, though. Eventually he just nodded, and then turned away from the visiting doctors. He entered the patient’s room and began to talk with another young woman wearing a name badge. On the other side of the bed was the man’s family, huddled and slightly hunched, drenched in a deep sadness.
It must be said that, for a reason that she couldn’t quite explain, Michelle felt a sense of clarity when standing in that corridor, staring through that glass window and into that hospital room. Perhaps it was just the sheer contrast between this place and where she’d come from. It seemed calm and serene, and away from the thousands of people who’d been chasing them through the corridors of Garland.
“Do you feel…?” Michelle asked.
“Yes,” Gerald answered.
Just then, the door opened and the young woman who Dr. Randall had exchanged words with emerged into the corridor.
“Oh, hello,” she said, smiling warmly at the pair. “Uhm… Dr. Randall told me who you were… he said that maybe we should talk, when you have a minute…”
Michelle read the girl’s name badge: Elizaveta Rosebudd. Psychology Department.
“You’re not a doctor?” Michelle asked. The young girl winced.
“Well, no… not yet…” the girl admitted. “But soon, hopefully. That’s why I’m here. I’m studying Devin - -”
She paused, as if regretting her informality. She quickly corrected herself.
“I’m studying Mr. Golden. Dr. Randall is being nice enough to support me in my studies. He’s been a real help.”
Michelle just nodded. Gerald was staring through the window at the patient. Dr. Randall was observing one of the machines, and there seemed to be a look of concern upon his face.
“Well, I should go,” Rosebudd, the psychology student, said. Both Michelle and Gerald recognised her. She turned on her heel and she left.
Just as she did, Dr. Randall lowered his nose so that it was almost touching the screens of one of the machines.
“Maybe…” Michelle started.
“Maybe we should stay here?” Gerald finished the question for her. She nodded her head.
Dr. Randall was still observing the machine that traced the comatose patient’s heart rate, the beeping from which was quickening, and then…
… it flatlined.
The family stood to their feet, their faces dripping with shock and concern.
Dr. Randall appeared grave, his back straight and his face pale.
And then the siren began to sound. From the door at the opposite end of the corridor, a medical team appeared with their emergency equipment. They barrelled past Michelle and Gerald and into the room. One of the doctors began to administer CPR, whilst another prepared the electrocardiogram.
Michelle and Gerald continued to look through the window. Gerald reached out and took her hand.
The voice was smooth and female and slightly familiar. Gerald recognised it, after some thought, as one of the incarnations of the computer’s voice aboard The Octopi No. 1.
Around them, many of the figures began to dissolve and eventually disappeared, as did much of their surroundings. After a series of soft boops, only the two of them remained in the room, which was now the same Raleigh loft apartment they’d stood in together a few hours before.
The bathroom door opened, and - with a hearty laugh that emerged from deep within his barrel-like chest - in walked the COSMIC HORROR himself… the Nightmarer, the Footgrabber… the 5D Go Master… Your Favourite Uncle’s Favourite Uncle… Mr. Fallout… Uncle J.J. JAY!. He slapped his thighs as he continued to guffaw merrily at Michelle and Gerald, who looked at one another and then at him with sheer confusion.
"JAY!, what the - -" Gerald started. He was cut off by a fresh doubling down of laughter from Uncle.
"None of it was real," Michelle offered.
"None of it?" Gerald asked. "Meltdown X? What about the rest of it? All the other adventures?"
"Most of it was real," Uncle said, wiping a tear from his eye and finally straightening up. "Just that last trip. And you believed it…"
"No we didn't," Michelle shot back.
"Yes you did!" Uncle said, starting to laugh uncontrollably again. He managed to get out a few words in between each bout: "Maybe we should stay here!!"
Michelle sighed and glared.
"But… how?" Gerald asked.
"Easy, really, with these things," he answered, as he reached out with a hand to each of their necks with two identical utensils. They felt a sharp pinch as Uncle retrieved the microchips that had been implanted when they climbed into the Machine. "Then it's just a combination of programming, CGI, nanomachines, and light trickery. Harry put a lot of it together. Not that he knew what it was for, of course. So don't hold it against him. It's also how the British government convinces the public that the Queen is still alive. I lease them the technology."
"You're asking the wrong questions," Michelle offered. "Not how… why?"
"Three reasons, Dreamer," Uncle said, after turning to face her. He held his index finger up. "Reason one, and I can't stress how often this is a reason for things that I do… because it was really funny. Maybe we should stay here?!"
Again, he began to laugh, but managed to get control of himself a little more quickly. He held up a second finger.
"Secondly, to get you thinking about your opponents. You never do that enough. Especially you, Dreamer. And that worked, at least. I knew you'd go to Meltdown X, and I wanted you to really put yourself into his mind. I heard you on XI, Handgrabber! It's easy to mock and disregard the deluded. But we are, after all, each as prone to such maladies, and are separated from it only by some programming, CGI, nanomachines, and light trickery… but although your experiences weren't actually real, the realisations you made along the way were, Nephews!”
He winked at her, and then held a third finger up.
"And finally, Nephews, this episode is a sort of punishment for your mistreatment of this here machine. I was quite clear. Or, rather, Thomas was, through me. He is the time travel guy, really. I’m only here because he’s busy on Valtror. Big load of chiral crystals coming in, Nephews! I had to send Quiet with The Octopi No. 1 to share the load. I had to take the bus the other day. I need a third Octopi. But I digress… as I was saying, this thing’s a mess. I don’t think you’ve cleaned out the reactor since I gave you the keys. And how many rules have you broken?”
“I’m not sure,” MIchelle conceded. “Rule One, a few times.”
“A few times… looks like you’ve been having some fun with Rule Four, too?”
Gerald shot Michelle a look. She didn’t flinch.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she returned.
“Well, take a look at this,” Uncle said, approaching the Machine. He tapped a little panel on its rear that read ‘D6400 Chiral Alternate Timeline Corrective Device Strain Level’, with a little horizontal bar below it. The bar was divided into quadrants, with the rightmost section between 75 and 100 shaded in various degrees of red. At the moment, the bar hovered between 5 and 10. “When I got here two weeks ago, the needle was already at 65. Thomas had to come all the way back from Valtror to repair the thing. Do you know how far that is? Of course you don’t. Anyway…”
“You’re ranting, Uncle,” Michelle said. She reached into her pocket for her box of cigarettes, realising that she hadn’t smoked in quite a while. Not since the beach, with the purplish-red sun.
“Yes,” Uncle conceded. “Anyway, time travel privileges have been restricted for now. At least until Thomas is back from Valtror.”
“About right,” Gerald said, sheepishly stuffing his hands into his pockets.
“Anyway… safe-house, anyone?” Uncle asked. “Most of the Nephews are away, but at least that means there will be nobody on the bouncy castle.”
Gerald nodded. Michelle took a cigarette out of her pocket and placed it between her pursed lips. Uncle led the way out of the room.
In actuality, Thomas West was currently sat a distance of thirteen billion lightyears away from the events in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was night where he was, in the sense that most people there were tired and therefore asleep. But the Valtror system was a celestial oddity in that it orbited no star, and so to the beings there the concepts of day and night seemed rather arbitrary.
Thomas, though, wasn’t asleep. He sat in his office, adjacent to the bridge, with his feet up on the control panel in front of him. A paddle-ball lay discarded next to his boots. He seemed almost bored as he pressed a few buttons on one of the many boards in front of him. The screen closest to his eye line flickered across various sources of surveillance he’d set up, some in this system and some in many others.
In the Valtror system, he was shown the hidden, secret base of the peasant revolutionaries through his hidden, secret camera, which had remained more hidden and secret than the base itself. It was built high in the pale blue mountains, where a thick perma-fog hung and the ground glistened with frost. Most of the guards were sleeping, too, though some of the patrols could be seen going this way and that on their nightly cycle. They seemed bored and tired.
Thomas clicked a button, and the feed switched to a second source elsewhere on the planet Celeborn F450. Here, a second camera pointed westwards away from the mountain and out of the mouth of the chiral mine that the Nephews had set up there. Megalodon Man and Gator Guy were leading a team in the expedition on-surface, and the reptile could be seen sitting on the lip of the entrance to the mine, staring off into space. The ongoing uprising meant that attention was directed away from the planet’s resources for the time being, but still they couldn’t be too direct in their approach. The crystals had to be mined manually and transported up to the Octopi (No. 2) using the Octo-pods. It was a slow, painstaking process, but they were almost done. And then they could go home.
Thomas pressed the button again, and the camera shifted to one he’d set up in the Yamaha P-Alpha H:E system, overlooking the imperial base in Sky City. Wisps of cloud floated by beneath the hovering settlement’s foundations. Raised up on one particularly large cumulus was a huge, quartz castle, flags in every colour imaginable billowing in the wind from its turrets. Behind the fort, the twin suns of the Yamaha P-Alpha H:E system burned brightly, one close and bulbous, the other distant. In one of the towers, the General held his own daughter captive. Thomas had promised to return one day, and the camera was set up so that he could pick his spot.
Another click, and he again channel hopped, this time to the Delta Hu-X76 Galaxy. It was pointed at the prison cell of a vengeance demon who Thomas owed a large sum of credits to. The podcast host had duped him, framed him, and left him to rot, but not before setting up surveillance on the door of his cell. He could see the demon sleeping, and he wondered if he was dreaming of revenge.
One more, and he was on Earth. In Raleigh, North Carolina, to be specific. The camera was pointed at the Time Machine, and with a few more clicks he zoomed in on the D6400 Chiral Alternate Timeline Corrective Device Strain Level reading. He saw the needle at about five, and began to softly chuckle to himself.
Thomas looked down at the ground beside him, where a large box marked ‘Fake D6400 Chiral Alternate Timeline Corrective Device Strain Level Reading Devices’ was open in front of him. He pressed another button on his keyboard, and a screen to his right lit up. On its display was a line of text reading ‘Actual D6400 Chiral Alternate Timeline Corrective Device Strain Level’. Below it, a needle upon a bar flickered in the deep red quadrant, between 85 and 90. Well beyond the danger level.
If you were close to the Machine, and knew what you were listening out for, you would be able to make out the faint buzz of rattling and discordant chiral crystals. But he’d sent Uncle. Uncle didn’t know anything about time travel.
West leant back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, still laughing in a devious and knowing manner. He watched the needle flicker on his screen, chaos about to ensue upon his behest.
the GRAYSON & von HORROWITZ connection will return in
”SPLICE!" THE DRAMATIC CONCLUSION OF GERALD AND MICHELLE’S ADVENTURES IN TIME!
Promo history - volume 78. "SPLICE!" (March 1st, 2022). Michelle von Horrowitz and Gerald Grayson def. The Stocke Market [Noah Stocke and Sean Hughes], Krash and Cyrus Truth [Jailhouse Blues Match] (FWA: Meltdown XIII)
Dear Thomas,
I am sorry that it has been so long since I last wrote to you. I have been that invested in my studies that I'm afraid I haven't quite had the time, up until now. I'm sure that, after you've finished reading my words, you will appreciate the irony of this situation. You, my friend, as a leading figure on the occult, are the last person I should've been neglecting during the rather strange experiences that I've been through as of late.
As you're aware, I came here to continue my work on the indigenous peoples of South America. There's really no substitute for fieldwork, but you of all people know that. This whole thing started just over two weeks ago, when my research team learned of a Man who had simply appeared in the middle of the Brazilian rainforest, and that a crater had been opened up the size of a basketball court at the point where he'd first materialised. He caused havoc in Pueblo, a village a little East of the crater, nestled in tightly between the trees and the Atlantic.
Reports of the strange being were sporadic and unclear. Some said he went from tree to tree dancing like a maniac. Others alleged that he preyed on the weak and the infirm in the settlement. He didn't attack any of the stronger men, and waited until they'd gone to work in the cocaine plantations before he'd strike. Reports were that he feasted on worms and rambled about The Boogie Man. The suggestion was that he was a menace, but not necessarily of the ruthless sort. More just annoying, really.
When it became clear that the being was speaking some hackneyed variant of English, my team was called in. We cornered him by the cliffs to the north of Pueblo and, after a little scuffle upon the rocks, we captured him and brought him in for questioning. He was duplicitous and resistant. We managed to discern that his name was Chris, but about his life before he appeared in the rainforest we discovered only a little. He had been an athlete, preparing for the biggest moment in his career, when he’d been kidnapped. He spoke about his time spent as a phantom, and of a cage as dark as it was strange. And then he’d woken up in the forest. He now trusts nobody.
I hope that my letter finds you well, my dear Thomas, and that this little story is of some interest to you. I know that you still travel far and wide, and this will probably seem like little more than a triviality when compared to the grand melodramas that unfold before you on a daily basis. But I look forward to hearing from you, even if you are unable to offer any guidance on this mysterious Chris and his sudden appearance here in Northern Brazil.
Sincerely,
Mark Anthony.
*****
the GRAYSON & von HORROWITZ connection
-- and -- cthulhu’s nephews in
a time-travelling, intergalactic saga in six chapters, three interludes, and a prologue.
*****
Chapter One. The Council of Uncle.
[Location: Raleigh, North Carolina.]
[Local Time & Date: 01.37 || 29.02.2022.]
Michelle found herself back in Raleigh, though - since Uncle's embargo on the Connection's use of his rather majestic Time Machine - not in front of the building which housed the loft apartment where Gerald and her had spent much of the winter. Instead, she sat on a wooden bench in front of what looked like a disused and ramshackle garden shed. It was the same one that she'd met Gerald within after the events of Mile High, still fresh from triumph over Cyrus Truth in her Best of V series and hopeful about the Bounty Hunt still to come. Gerald was feeling decidedly less positive. He was (understandably) still dwelling on his brother, who remained somewhere inside of the medical bay on the ground floor of the complex. Her eyes traced over the tiny garden shed, which didn't seem large enough to house a pair of lawnmowers. It was bigger on the inside.
She was just coming to the end of her cigarette when she spotted Megalodon Man striding through the alley leading up to the courtyard. He was smiling at her, and lifted his left fin to wave as he made his approach. She noticed that he was holding a doggy bag from l'oie en orange (stylised in all lower case), Raleigh's premier fine dining establishment. Michelle concluded that his supper had been interrupted by the summons.
"Must be big news,” Meg said, coming to a halt in front of her. "If he's called the Meltdown Branch in, as well."
As Meg licked some orange sauce from around his lips, Michelle's mind was drawn to the short but frantic phone call she received from Uncle on the phone in the bar an hour earlier. She didn't question how JAY! knew where she was. JAY! just had a habit of knowing those sort of things. She hadn't heard him like that - uncomposed and frenetic - since they'd been together in the bridge of The Octopi #1, in a gentle and steady orbit around Geltrex D-48600 in the Nebulonox Gamma-40 System. Dreamer didn't like to think about that time in her life.
"Where's your GiGi?" Meg asked.
"On his way," Michelle answered, stubbing her cigarette out on the bench. "Where's yours?"
"Inside already," Meg said, looking over at the entrance. "I think he's playing cards. I was worried that poor Gerald was giving him some more credits."
"Where did Gerald get Galactic Credits?" Michelle enquired. Meg shrugged.
"Somewhere in the Galaxy, I guess," he said. At that moment, the low rumbling of a motorcycle became louder and louder, until Gerald's Kawasaki Ninja rolled up the alley and into the courtyard. He brought it to a halt outside the shed.
"You ready?" Gerald asked. "Where's the meeting?"
"The Basement Gardens," Meg said, following Michelle and Gerald as they entered the safe-house. They were greeted by Jeeves, who stood in his top hat and tails as if he had been waiting for them in the octagonal lobby with the white marble walls. The butler smiled as he took their coats, before wordlessly removing himself from the reception room. A moment later, Uncle appeared from a trapdoor.
"Ah, Nephews!" he said, whilst seating himself upon the lip of the hole in the ground. He lifted his legs over the edge and bundled himself up to his feet. He gave each of them a hug in turn, starting with Meg and finishing with Michelle. "I'm glad you could make it! I was just coming to find you. You're the last to arrive. Please, follow me!"
They descended a short stone staircase beneath the trap door and emerged into a long, narrow, and cold basement. The room was mostly being used for storage, and Michelle noticed bags shining and shimmering with chiral activity amongst the more mundane items (chunks of marble, large vats of purple, pink, and silver paint, various firearms). At the far end of it, though, was a silver door, and it was through there that they emerged into a vast, open vista. The Raleigh night had been dry but windy, and a biting chill hung in the Carolinian air, but here a brilliant, yellow sun was rising into a clear, blue sky. They were in a sort of valley, with mountains of white stone covered in moss surrounding them on all sides, and closer by a thick woodland sprouted up in thickets either side of the white, marble path. The sound of babbling brooks and singing birds filled their ears.
"What is this place?" Michelle asked.
"This isn't Raleigh?" Gerald added.
"No, Toto," Uncle started, after closing the door behind them. They seemed to have come from the inside of a mountain, and now that it was closed Michelle found it hard to distinguish the outline of the door through a thick layer of moss. "These are the Basement Gardens. Beautiful, no? No better place to, I don't know, read a long book, or scramble to finish a promo before Fallout. And yes, this isn't North Carolina. You somewhere along the border between Switzerland and Italy. Some people call this place the Secret Vale..."
"But… how did we get here?" Michelle asked, stammering mid-question as she struggled to take in all of the beauty that quite suddenly surrounded her.
"Come, Michelle!" Uncle said, as if he was offended by the question. "You think that a COSMIC HORROR who has mastered both inter-dimensional navigation and time travel wouldn't know how to set up a simple teleportation portal? The second you step through the shed door in Raleigh, you’re no longer in Raleigh. The whole safehouse is in this here mountain. In fact…”
Here, he paused, and leant in towards the Connection, as if about to let them in on a secret.
“All of the safehouses, the world over, are stored in these mountains. Whatever outhouse, studio, or shed that I’ve built in Raleigh, Paris, Istanbul, or Pyongyang… they are merely doors to this place. Each of their basements lead to these gardens. Quite elegant, don’t you think, Nephews?”
Michelle thought about this for a moment.
“That could save me a lot of time and money on buses,” she offered, as Uncle led the way along the sunken path between the trees. Soon, they arrived at a winding stone staircase, which led up to an octagonal courtyard, raised high above the forest below. A waterfall crashed in white foam as a backdrop to the plateau, and erected upon the high cliffs behind it was a summer house built of white timber. On the octagonal, whitestone courtyard, a series of chairs were set up in horseshoe formation around a pulpit in the center, some of which were occupied by familiar faces and others by those she didn’t recognise. There were four empty seats, and Meg shuffled along to take the one next to Gator. Michelle and Gerald took the two empty chairs at the other end of the line next to Harry, who smiled at the pair as they sat down. Uncle took up his place at the pulpit.
“Nephews, thank you all for coming,” Uncle said. “I know that each of you are very busy people. Everyone is here, even ÑŒ-I. Except, as you’ll notice, Thomas…”
At that point, Uncle waved a hand haphazardly at an empty chair. A large monitor was wheeled out by two Jeevses, and was left at the other end of the horse shoe to the one that Gerald and Michelle sat at, inbetween Meg and Stop Sign #2. It was switched on by one of the butlers, and Thomas West’s face filled the screen. He smiled and waved, before placing his hands back on the steering wheel of some sort of ship and re-focusing on the complicated array of buttons, lights, and dials on the interface in front of him.
“Thomas is on his way to the Brazilian village of Pueblo. He left the Rio safehouse earlier this morning, under my instruction. We’ve had reports from a variety of sources over the last few days… very disconcerting concerns… of things which defy conventional logic and an easy explanation. BRING OUT THE BOOGIE MAN!”
This last instruction was delivered more loudly than the rest of his introduction, and brought about the banging of drums by a large, barrel-chested man in the orchestra pit beneath the plateau. At the same time, the same two Jeeveses who had appeared with the monitor led a man in bondage into the middle of the courtyard. He stood, his hands tied behind his back and his chest pushed out, and stared around the horseshoe. It was a naked, shackled, but proud Chris Peacock, who spat on the floor as he looked at Michelle and Gerald.
“You,” he said. “Aren’t you going to help me?! You’ve taken up with this madman, now?!”
"Tell them what you told me," Uncle commanded.
"Why should I do anything that you ask?" this Peacock snarled.
"Because, if you don't, you'll be spending another pair of hours locked away with Quiet, here," Uncle answered. Here, the masked man offered a vague thumbs up in the direction of their shackled guest, who gulped audibly.
The pause went on. Peacock glared at each of the assembled Nephews.
"Out with it, then!" Gator interjected, whilst shuffling impatiently in his chair. "Some of us have plans this week…"
"More cards?" Meg asked, his eyebrow cocked.
"Give him some time," instructed Maiden of Death. ь-I nodded along. "He's obviously been through a lot already."
"Speak!" Uncle said, looking over the kneeling prisoner.
"I…" the man started, locking eyes with Michelle and Gerald. "The last thing I remember, I was in Geneva. It was the night of the 16th Anniversary Show. Just a normal match day, you know? Light training session, relaxation, that sort of thing. And then… and then I saw you two..."
He still glared at the Connection, and it was fairly clear that he held them responsible.
"At Gorilla position… and then the next thing I knew, boop... darkness! I was without body, without form, without hope... I could not see or touch… but I could think, and I could feel. There were others like me, and many more unlike me, in that strange prison. I cannot tell you how long I was there. It felt like years. But then… I awoke. Near here, in the Mountains. And then I was brought here..."
"You caused a fair bit of mischief in between waking up and being brought here, mind you," said Alphonse the Swiss Sherpa. It was he who had found this Peacock, in a village eighty kilometers south of Zurich, leading local youths astray by teaching them how to disco.
"Let's not get bogged down in the details, Nephew," Uncle said, raising his palms towards Alphonse in a placatory gesture. "This is much bigger than a few disco-dancing teenagers in the Swiss foothills. It seems that our guest here is not the only of his kind that's shown up as of late. Thomas…"
"That's right, Uncle," West began, on his screen. He was still driving an Octo-pod, and kept his eyes on the airspace in front of him whilst he gave his report. "I'm on my way to see an old friend in Brazil, as you already know, about another mysterious person of the same description who appeared in the rainforest two weeks ago. He left a crater of roughly the same shape and space as your new friend did in Switzerland. I'm also getting some reports of Peacocks in Siberia, in the Gobi Desert, and one a little closer to 'home' in Yosemite. And some…"
A brief pause, as if the next fact was troubling him.
"There's been some reports of non-Peacock sightings, too. Alternate Chris Peacocks are quite a common natural occurrence, and not necessarily something to be worried about. But these other reports… well, they are more troubling. And point to one cause."
"Thank you, Thomas," Uncle said, leading his Nephews in a round of applause. "Very informative. Truly, a wonderful report!"
"Great work, Thomas!" Harry asserted.
".... … .. . ………!" Quiet agreed.
"Thomas is quite right. The most troubling news concerns non-Peacock sightings. My honoured guest, the Prince, now it is time for your report."
Here, a man that Michelle didn't recognise stood from his seat, which was positioned in-between Maiden of Death and Eric Bana. He spoke with an African accent (Michelle placed it as roughly Sudanese, but dripping with a French influence) and was dressed regally, as if he was of royal descent. Which, as you'll find out, he was.
"My fellow Nephews. I know many of you. To some of you, I owe my life…"
Here, the Prince nodded at Gator Guy, as if sharing in a memory of deep, troubling times with the reptile. Then, he looked at Michelle and Gerald.
"Others here, I do not know. But that you have been asked here is enough, for I am tied to my dear Uncle through an ancient covenant. I am Price Cthu'ulh'u of Nephkanda, and for centuries my royal line has been loyally tied to those beings known as COSMIC HORRORS. My father has sent me to your Council, Uncle, as he felt a great disturbance in the chiral network as of late, and upon investigation we found a crater the size of a basketball court in the northern oilfields of our country. The peasants found the Wanderer. My fellow Nephews, on my father's life, it is Mother Teresa come again. I swear it to be. Do not fear, she now rots in our cells, never to see the day again."
"Sorry, what?!" Gerald asked. "Surely Mother Teresa is one of the good guys?"
The rest of the Nephews looked at poor, unsuspecting GiGi in horror.
"You mean you haven't heard about what she was doing with the Duvalier family in Haiti?" Maiden of Death asked, incredulously.
"Do you not care about the plight of the Haitian peasant?" ь-I added. Gerald shuffled uncomfortably, but remained silent, which allowed Prince Cthu'ulh'u to pick up his thread.
"The witch's testimony is similar to our friend, Chris Peacock, here. She said that she was preaching in Calcutta, in 1987, when she had a strange conversation with two 'foreigners'. She described the same dark prison, and the same loss of self. I am glad that I came here, for hearing this man speak has only made me more certain that this woman must be dealt with."
"That she must," Uncle added. "But Nephews, now is the time for knowledge, and for learning --"
"Uncle?" Thomas interrupted. All eyes were drawn to his screen. He had arrived at his destination, and the Octo-pod was parked up on the outskirts of the village of Pueblo. "I'm here. I'm going to have to go. We're on a tight schedule, after all."
"But I'm just about to explain the time travel part," Uncle remonstrated. "You're the time travel guy."
"Duty calls," Thomas said, with a knowing smile. He pressed a button and the screen went off.
"Okay, fine, I'll do it," Uncle conceded, whilst scratching his head and returning to his pulpit. "Most of you are aware that Cthulhu's Nephews came into possession of a Time Machine, owing to Thomas' former occupation and old connections. Misuse of this machine has led to the predicament we now find ourselves in.”
"Not surprising," said Alphonse the Swiss Sherpa.
"Should never have given it to the Meltdown Branch," Meg said, shaking his head.
"Now is not the time to point fingers, Nephews!" Uncle went on, undeterred. "Now is the time to band together! Things are bad, I grant you. But things could be much worse…"
Here, Uncle took a device out of his back pocket and placed it onto a stone table in front of him. It was about the size of a grapefruit and oozed a thick, black oil.
"This is a D6400 Chiral Alternate Timeline Corrective Device. It is top of the line and state of the art, and performs a very important purpose. When a time traveller engages with a person in the past, it is possible that they irreversibly alter that person's path through history. If that is the case, then this gadget here is responsible for capturing this splice before an alternate timeline can be opened up. These offshoots are stored within a chamber, and are eventually broken down and digested, so that the present version of that being can go on unmolested. Unless, of course, the Machine is not properly cared for, or if its burden becomes too great."
Here, Uncle paused, shaking his head ruefully. Michelle half-thought she saw him glaring at her, and muttering under his breath.
"Well, then," began Alphonse the Swiss Sherpa, whilst reaching for his sherping axe. "What are we waiting for?"
He took a handful of strides towards the pulpit and, whilst swinging his axe over his head in a smooth, crescent-shaped arc, brought the sharp down onto the very centre of the machine. His axe was blunted, and he was thrown back by the force, though the device remained unharmed.
"This device cannot be destroyed, Alphonse, by any device that we possess here. And besides, we don't really need to destroy it. I only brought it here as a sort of symbol. I removed the device from the Machine this morning and manually dealt with any splices that might still have been lingering. No more will leak out. But that doesn't help us with the ones that are already here. We know that they have been arriving for at least two weeks, Nephews. There could be any number of them by now."
"What if they're friendly?" Gerald asked. "I mean, there's a good chance that they're not all going to be Chris Peacocks. No offence."
The Peacock shrugged, as if accepting that it was a fair cop.
"We can't have duplicates," said Gator Guy, whilst folding his small arms as best he could. "The universe doesn't like duplicates."
"That's true," Harry agreed. "Thomas told me that."
"You shouldn't think of the splices as friendly or unfriendly, Nephew," Uncle began, once more. "They are not even human, Gerald. They aren't full of bones and blood, like you and I, but rather zeros and ones, and cogs and cables, and other such things. And this is not their place. They know that better than me. Soon enough, a splice begins to long for his own time. Or at least to find and kill his own duplicate."
"Or her own duplicate," Maiden of Death pit in.
"Yes, sorry, Nephew," Uncle said. "You're right. Kill his or her duplicate. And rightly so, for Thomas is right. The universe doesn't like this trickery, and will correct soon enough. No, my dear, sweet GiGi. There is only one plan that we can have."
Here, Uncle reached into his pocket and pulled out his revolver. He pointed it at the Peacock's head.
"Find them all," he started. "And kill them all."
He pulled the trigger, and the Peacock fell down forward onto his face.
"Ooh, like Blade Runner!" Gator Guy said.
"I thought we were doing Lord of the Rings?" Harry asked.
"It's not any one thing," Uncle answered.
Meanwhile, Gerald had been inspecting the puddle of red developing beneath the dead prisoner's punctured skull.
"Um, Uncle…" he said, uncertainly. "That certainly looks like blood…"
Chapter Two. King Cyrus the Great and His Golden Crown.
[Location: Baghdad, Iraq.]
[Local Time & Date: 19.03 || 29.02.2022.]
Who would stand before the righteous man? Who would block his path from the light? As the crownless King stood before the two meagre, petty, and 'modern' men, a slight smile emerged onto his solemn, grave face. Where he'd come from, the place he called home, there wasn’t a soul alive who would dare to oppose the righteous man in this manner. He regarded them carefully, allowing his piercing eyes to trace across their identical uniforms and their blunted weapons.
It had been a strange day.
That morning, when he'd first woken up and left his crater, he recognised his surroundings as a bend in the Euphrates River that he'd once swam in as a boy. It was true, though, that both the river and the hills surrounding it looked somehow different to how he remembered them. This was also the case in Babylon, but more drastically so, which was no longer the pristine metropolis that he ruled before his imprisonment. Only a few crumbled ruins remained of his old palace, and a new building - strange and angular and wrought of peculiar materials - overlooked it from the hill.
What had become of his beloved city? The jewel of his Achaemenid Empire… the shining light of ALL the Persian Peoples… now only a smattering of foundational ruins? For how long had he been shackled?
He remembered his city and himself at his former strength, when the world itself had lain down before him and asked to be conquered. And he'd done it gladly, taking what was his and what was not his in equal measure, until his name was synonymous with violence and victory. Of course, nothing remains in stasis forever, and new pretenders had risen both from within and without that would threaten his iron-fisted claim upon the throne. New alliances, both political and militaristic, were made, and he hated each concession that came with them. But these were necessary if he was to keep what was his. He was only shifting with the times. Only now, time had shifted a little too quickly for him to keep up with.
He felt the anger swell up in his stomach. It was not the anger of the common thug or of the cheated husband: it was the anger of a righteous man. Such anger was pure and bold. He clenched his fists at his side.
He was about to leave the ruined site of Ancient Babylon when, just as the sun was rising away to the east, two pale-skinned foreigners with strange, metallic devices around their necks appeared over the lip of the hill and began to meander towards him. They were unguarded and brazen, clearly foreign, and walked with a sense of freedom that he couldn't understand. Was this the ruin of his city? Of his people? Had the usurpers from the west succeeded whilst he'd been in bondage?
When they stood only a few metres away from him, he realised that they were alarmed by his naked form. Their clothes were peculiar. Possibly the uniforms of a rival and aggressive state. But, for now, they mostly only looked alarmed.
As Cyrus the Great beheld the pair, his mind was transported back to HIS time, when he had been at home. Shortly before his imprisonment, he'd been introduced to two beings who claimed to be visiting Europeans. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but he felt this interchange and his subsequent bondage were somehow linked.
"Who is King here?"he asked, in the Imperial Aramaic that he once dreamed would become the world's lingua franca. The two only stared at him, gaping at his impressive and semi-erect manhood. The female of the pair lifted the metallic device around her neck and pressed a button upon the top right of it. It clicked and it flashed, and then she went on staring with her mouth agape.
In need of clothing, King Cyrus the Great took it upon to bludgeon the pairs with his clenched, righteous fists to alleviate himself of this requirement. He walked a short distance up the river, where he found a man who looked more like his kin, sitting upon a rock and casting his long rod into the Euphrates.
"Who is King here?"he asked again. The man's response was alien, but Cyrus picked out a few words. Enough to understand.
"King?"the fisherman repeated, in Arabic."There is no King. We are a federal parliamentary representative democratic republic."
"What is the kingdom called?"King Cyrus asked."Where is the capital?”
"You're in Iraq,"the fisherman answered. He was growing tired of the conversation, and was applying more focus to reeling in whatever had bitten the end of his line."The capital is Baghdad. Fifty miles north of here. On the Tigris."
"Thank you, fisherman,"the King said."You have been most helpful. When I am returned to my throne, I will send word for you to be rewarded."
The fisherman didn't respond. Whilst making his way north, the King remarked on a peculiar feeling that had been sort of fermenting within his stomach since he'd awoken. It had been calling him northwards, anyway. 'As north as north goes'. It was a happy accident that the Capital and whatever King sat the throne there lay on this route. He crossed the lowlands between the Euphrates and the Tigris, keeping a healthy distance from any irregular settlements that cropped up on the horizon and thinking fondly of the restored glory that awaited him.
Darkness was gathering when he entered the town. He was faced with strange and bizarre sights that his brain couldn't even begin to fathom. Large groups of youths roamed the streets unchecked, seemingly emboldened by the lack of soldiers out on patrol. Metal boxes powered themselves across the wide roads, needing no horses to gather steam. People spoke into little devices that they held up to the side of their faces, or pointed at each other or at buildings before clicking. The King could make no sense of this modern world. And, strangest of all, he found banners with depictions of himself, only in statue form, directing potential patrons towards the National History Museum. Spurred on by his curiosity, the King followed these arrows to the locked up building where, allegedly, the statues he'd commissioned of himself two and a half thousand years ago were now being housed.
Although the doors were locked, the King found a low window that was easily smashed with his elbow, and inside was more than just his old statues. One of the wings was seemingly dedicated to HIM, with much of his old clothing and possessions stored in glass cages. He picked out his finest battle regalia, and took his old sword down from the wall. And then he saw his crown, gleaming and golden, even after all this time.
"Hey, you!"came the call from the entrance to his wing. King Cyrus looked up. The first call was in English, with the security guard having seen the King's discarded western clothes upon the floor and leapt to an incorrect assumption. Upon seeing his face, he went on in the vaguely familiar but still remote language of modern Arabic."You can't be here. The museum is closed."
The King didn't really understand the words, but he detected the hostility in the man's tone. He didn't hesitate to bring his sword down in a large crescent motion onto the man's skull. It was blunted by time, but such was the force of Cyrus' blow that the man fell dead to the floor nonetheless. The King took his crown, and let himself out of the front doors.
This is where you came into the story, with King Cyrus standing in front of two more security guards in front of the museum he'd just raided. One could argue that the things he'd taken belonged to him anyway, of course. The King himself would make that argument, naturally. He always found truth and honour in his own actions.
With two more fell blows, the King's righteous anger made short work of the pair that opposed him. He smiled to himself as he felt the strength roaring through his old veins once more, and let this youthful sensation linger as long as he could. It was dispelled by outside forces, though. Loud, mechanical bells were ringing, and drawing closer by the second, and soon enough a host of black, metallic carts screeched onto the road. There were no horses; only pigs. Lights were blaring upon their roofs, sirens screaming to herald their approach. They surrounded him in an instant. Men in strange armour climbed out of the boxes and pointed metal cylinders at him. He gripped the hilt of his sword.
The night was cold.
The air was still.
He could see his breath in front of him.
"Drop your weapon,"came the call, in a few different languages. The King didn't understand any of them. He didn't drop his weapon.
Overhead, he heard another mechanical sound, this time a strange whirring that accompanied the entrance of another alien vehicle. This one flew, and cast a shadow over both the King and his assailants as it came across the moon.
Its belly opened up when it was in place, directly above Cyrus the Great. A thick rope was thrown down towards him.
"Don't move a muscle!"shouted one of the assailants, as he crept closer towards the King. With his sword in one hand, Cyrus wrapped the other around the rope.
And quite suddenly, he was pulled into the air, away from the museum. The rope was hauled up as the aircraft gained altitude, and soon enough the King was heaving his form up into the innards of this peculiar, mechanical bird.
Inside were four identical men. One of them was at what seemed to be the craft's control panel, whilst the other three engaged in a queer sort of dancing to a repetitive and almost electronic sounding beat that blared through the vehicle. Cyrus didn't know the steps, but there was no denying that the three dancers had excellent pelvic rhythm.
"You saved my life, it seems,"the King said, as he stood to his feet."Thank you. When I am returned to my throne, I will send word for you to be rewarded."
"Groovy,"offered one of the dancers. He had one hand on his hips whilst the other rhythmically pointed towards the sky with the beat.
"You can understand me?"the King queried. The dancer tapped his ear.
"Babel fish."
The King walked over to the pilot, and with great wonder looked down upon the clouds that they had climbed above.
"Where are we going?"the King asked.
"'As north as north goes',"said the pilot.
*****
Interlude I.
SS9000’S LOGS - COMMUNICATIONS TRANSCRIPT octopi #1 central data system // entry 46823 earth time and date: 09.37cet 29.02.2022
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [boisterous, with keen sense of hope] “Ah, here we all are, Nephews! Well, a lot of us! I just dispatched Michelle and Gerald to New York. They’re going via the safehouse. Three splices have been spotted in the business district. Wall Street, I believe it’s called.”
OCTOPI #2 PILOT’S HUB: [curious, but knowing] “I trust you gave the instruction to question before killing, Uncle.”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [flippant] “I allow my Nephews to trust their own judgement. And besides, you’ll be closer to them than me. Take Gerald’s bike and the Octopi #2 into a hovering pattern above Manhattan. Drop the Kawasaki near the safehouse. Something about the situation there tells me we’re not just dealing with plain old Peacocks.”
OCTOPI #2 PILOT’S HUB: [begrudging] “Roger.”
OCTOPI #2 PILOT’S HUB left the call. OCTOPI #2 COMMS HUB left the call.
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [dreamy] “Thomas, what’s your status? Any news from Brazil?”
OCTO-POD TW01: [faux-helpful] “It’s as we thought. Another Peacock. Easy enough to deal with. I questioned him first. He kept talking about travelling north. ‘As north as north goes’, he’d say. More of my contacts are reporting similar sightings in Northern Canada. That’s where I’m heading.”
OCTO-POD TW01: [with urgency] “Okay, over and out.”
OCTO-POD TW01 left the call.
OCTOPI #1 PILOT'S HUB: [thoughtfully, in a 'big picture' kind of way] "Prince Cthu'ulh'u, what news of the Peacock Risings in the East? Have you reached China yet?"
OCTO-POD NK04: [exasperated] "Negative, Uncle. I'm afraid I've been re-routed. Distressing reports from home. It appears the Witch, Mother Teresa, has escaped her shackles. We think she had help, but we do not know for sure. Her cell was found empty this morning. I make for Nephkanda and the hunt."
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [changing the subject airly] "Alphonse! How goes it with the Swiss Guard?"
OCTO-POD EU08: [passive] "Intransigent as ever, of course. Looks like they want to retain their neutrality. But I will persevere."
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [understanding] "You must. The world depends on it, Alphonse."
OCTO-POD EU08 left the call.
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [less urgently] "Eric? How are you doing with the spring clean?"
Eric's iPhone: [keen] "I'm almost done with the command toilets. Will move onto the kitchens next. Boy, it's been a while! This grime clings deep!"
Eric's iPhone left the call.
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [meaning business] "Okay, that's everyone. We're for Siberia, A-Team. It seems that 'distressing reports' is the order of the day. I'm hearing reports that a whole village of Peacock Splices just sprouted up overnight on the eastern shores of Lake Baikal."
OCTOPI #1 MEDICAL HUB: [horrified] "A whole village of Peacocks?!"
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [knowing] "I know. Set the coordinates, Quiet. As fast as this old thing will – wait, are we the only ones on the call? We're all in the same room."
OCTOPI #1 COMMS HUB left the call. OCTOPI #1 MEDICAL HUB left the call.
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [state of slight confusion] "How do I –? Where's the thing to end it? SS9000! How do I disconnect?"
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB ended the call.
*****
Chapter Three. Francesca and the Charging Bull.
[Location: New York, New York.]
[Local Time & Date: 04.01 || 29.02.2022.]
“Whoa whoa wait, whoa… what is that?!” Gerald shouted at Michelle, backing away from her.
"Oh, this?” Michelle said nonchalantly before taking out the double-barreled shotgun slung over her back. “This is Francesca."
She clutched her weapon of choice near to her and kissed the barrel.
“Okay, well… don’t be pointing that thing just anywhere, will you?” Gerald exclaimed.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Michelle replied, rolling her eyes.
“Dramatic?!” Gerald slapped his forehead.
“Relax, will you? Let’s go do this thing I don’t even want to do,” Michelle said, putting Francesca away, much to the relief of the Daredevil. "Maiden of Death and ÑŒ-I have left already. Wouldn't be a good look for the Meltdown Branch if the reinforcements arrive before us."
“Before we go, I wanted to talk. After hearing what type of match we’ll be in, it’s best we get on the same page,” Gerald suggested, stopping to talk with Michelle where they stood.
“Ugh. Can this wait?” Michelle said, with annoyance in her voice. "Every single time that we're about to go on some grand, inter-dimensional adventure, you want to talk match strategy. It's boring, Gerald. Can't we go and restore the fabric of time or whatever first?"
Gerald furrowed his brow at her.
"Okay, fine. What did you want to talk about?”
“Jailhouse Blues. Not exactly the most common match type,” Gerald paused. “Sure, we’re undefeated in this tournament so far but we’re going up against two very good teams who have fought hard to make it to the final. We need to be on the same page."
“They worked hard to get to this final match, sure. But so did we. We deserve to be here, too. More than they do, I'd argue. To be honest, it's sort of a slap in the face that we even have to do this final. We're undefeated. They've both lost already. Simple equation, really."
"Sort of like us and Golden Rock in The Elite Tag Team Classic?" Gerald pointed out. Michelle winced.
"I’d be lying if I said that loss to Golden Rock back then didn’t still sting,” Michelle admitted. Gerald nodded, remembering their lost opportunity.
“This is our shot to make it right. To get the titles that we are owed. This Jailhouse Blues match will be tough. Any time a steel cage is involved, things get turned up a notch,” Gerald said, speaking from experience.
“Noah Stocke, Sean Hughes, Cyrus Truth, Krash. These are the four names that stand in the way of a potential rematch against Golden Rock. The dissent between Golden and Ramon is clear now – I won’t have them make any excuses as to why we beat them this time around. I want them to know we beat them because we are the better team,” Michelle said, more focused than Gerald thought, as he nodded in agreement. “You should believe that I won’t let these four get in our way, Gerald – and I know you won’t either. Not this time. Not again.”
“That’s the beauty of this partnership, Gerald. Maybe not from day one, but pretty soon after I'd taken my blinders off… I knew we’d work as a tag team."
Gerald leaned forward, interested in what Michelle had to say.
“Some people have alleged that I am perhaps not the easiest person to work with. But you never let that get in the way of our tag team. You always found ways to make things work, which allowed me to focus on doing damage to our opponents."
Here, she paused. And then, whilst prodding at Gerald's chest with an outstretched finger.
“You make this team work, Gerald."
Gerald gave a half-smile, looking down, pondering how to respond.
"Thanks,” he stopped, putting his hands in his pockets. “You know, there were many times I wanted to give up. But I didn’t, because I knew that things would work out. When I was down, you were there to pick me up each and every time. That says a lot about a person, Michelle. Despite the hard exterior you like to portray, you care – and that’s all I can really ask for in a tag team partner."
“Too much… too soppy…" Michelle said in response, garnering a chuckle from Gerald. "Come on, tulip, let's go."
“Right, so where exactly are we going again that warrants you bringing a double-barreled shotgun?” Gerald asked, retrieving a helmet in the trunk of his bike, before handing it off to Michelle.
“Her name’s Francesca,” Michelle emphasised. This time, it was the Daredevil doing the eye-rolling. “We’re going to Wall Street."
Gerald insisted she wear a helmet for her safety and for this one time, Gerald had won this battle. She packed Francesca on her backside then adjusted the strap on her helmet. They were still standing outside the entrance of a disused public toilet that acted as the gateway into Uncle's New York safehouse. They climbed onto the back of his motorcycle, conveniently parked outside of the portal, and Gerald accelerated it a few times to get it warm as they prepared to make their way to Wall Street. Before long, Michelle sat behind Gerald, clasped her arms around his waist, and the Connection were off.
Gerald manoeuvred his way through traffic. With the wind in their faces, the Connection was focused on their task at hand.
“Can you go any slower?” Michelle asked sarcastically.
“I definitely can go slower than this, if you're worried,” Gerald retorted, in jest. It wasn’t just Michelle’s ire that Gerald drew. He also drew the ire of the handful of pedestrians and vehicles also out on the road at this time in the morning. Each car Gerald passed by fired their car horn at the Connection as they drove past them.
“Couldn’t Uncle have taken care of this himself?” Michelle suggested, already done with this whole ordeal.
“Well, it was sort of our fault, to be fair…” Gerald shouted over the gusts of wind.
Finally, they were at their destination. Wall Street was eerie at this early hour in the morning, devoid as it was of the tourists and businessmen that usually swarmed over it. At least they'd be able to locate their targets. Gerald parked his bike near the Charging Bull and safely locked it up in case anyone had ideas of stealing it. Getting into the building was easy: they found the main entrance unguarded and open, as if they weren't the first to arrive in the dead of night. The pair ghosted in and up a flight of stairs to find a long, narrow balcony that overlooked the atrium below. They stared down from their balcony perch over a railing, where they saw the three figures laying wires and what looked like cylindrical rods of nitroglycerin around the ground level of the New York Stock Exchange.
“Are you sure this is enough, Leon?” one of the men said. He spoke in English but in a thick, Russian accent, his moustache bristling freely as he did. He wore full military uniform, as did one of his two companions. Michelle recognised him instantly as Joseph Stalin. The man that he spoke to, who was busy laying down more dynamite, was the frantic and squirrely figure of Leon Trotsky.
“Yes, I’m quite sure, Joseph,” Trotsky replied, whilst rolling his eyes. “You always want more. An explosion can be too big, you know?”
“That’s just your limited ambition speaking,” Stalin said. His arms were folded as he oversaw the other’s work. “I’m sure if Vladimir was here, he’d want more.”
“Well, Vladimir isn’t here,” Trotsky replied. “A state of affairs that you should probably get used to, Joseph.”
“You’ve given up already?” Stalin asked. “The great leader lies sick in his hospital bed… but not dead, Leon.”
“Maybe,” Trotsky said. “But he isn’t here.”
“And what are we doing all of this for, if not to go back?”
“Would you two stop] bickering?” the third figure said. His American accent contrasted the Soviet pair, and Gerald placed it as of Ohio upon hearing it. This man was less recognisable than the other two, though both Michelle and Gerald knew who he was. They had met him on a trip on the Machine to 1903, where he - Orville Wright - and his brother Wilbur were preparing to test their miraculous flying machine. They’d had a short conversation with Orville only whilst his brother was conducting his final checks. That must have been when the splice was created. “Finish up in here. I’ll go and warm up the engines.”
Stalin and Trotsky watched Wright make his exit, and then looked at each other with cocked eyebrows.
“What’s his problem?” Stalin said.
“His brother abandoned him, he says,” Trotsky explained. “Hasn’t seen him since he woke up. I guess it’s like us with Vladimir. Only, at least we have each other.”
“I feel a certain amount of envy for Orville,” Stalin replied, with a grunt. Trotsky went on laying the dynamite. “You know, I think the stock exchange is a little more abstract of a concept than this. I’m not sure blowing this place up will derail it.”
“It’s a symbol, Joseph,” Trotsky shot back.
“Always with your symbols, Leon…” Stalin said. “This is like Nizhny Novgorod again, isn’t it? Give me concrete results over symbols, any day…”
The two went on arguing as they continued in their work, and meanwhile Michelle and Gerald leant in close towards one another.
“I remember meeting Orville,” Gerald said. “But not the Russians. Was that one of your solo trips?”
“Might have been,” Michelle admitted. “And they’re not Russian. One was Ukrainian, the other was Georgian. Or is, I guess.”
“Okay, thanks for the geography lesson,” Gerald quipped. “But that’s a lot of dynamite down there. I don’t fancy going in all guns blazing.”
“Maybe we don’t have to,” Michelle said. She reached down towards the watch that Uncle had provided her with, and pressed a button on the side to open up a communications channel with The Octopi #2. “Maiden of Death? Are you there? Come in, Maiden of Death.”
“Maiden of Death reporting,” came the answer. “Do you need back-up? Cavalry is nearby. Just say the word.”
“A helping hand, but something a little stealthier than the cavalry,” Michelle answered. “We need blockades on all the doors. Gerald and I will handle Exits 1 to 4. Can you get the rest?”
“On it,” was the reply. Michelle looked over at her partner.
“You take the first two. I’ll meet you by the bull.”
The pair split up with the idle chatter of the two Soviet revolutionaries audible in muffled form in the background. As Michelle made her way around the outer concourse, she spied a large, green ‘3’ above the first of her two assigned doors and crept towards it. She clicked the lock, Stalin and Trotsky none-the-wiser and busy within the atrium, but deemed the blockade flimsy and so engaged herself in pushing over the adjacent vending machine. It came down with a crash that echoed through the halls and caused a sudden halt in the conversation from within.
“What was that?” Trotsky asked.
“I don’t know,” Stalin replied. “Better check it out.”
“Clumsy work, Dreamer,” came the Maiden of Death’s denouncement over the communication device on her wrist.
“I’ve got eyes on them,” Gerald said, again through the watch. “One of them’s headed for Exit 4. The other’s lighting a cigar. I don’t think he understands dynamite very well.”
Without a word, Michelle continued around the outer concourse towards the next exit, hiding herself behind another vending machine so as to remain hidden from the doors. They swung open and Leon emerged, looking this way and that before choosing the path in the opposite direction to Michelle. She sidled around the vending machine and locked the door. Amidst the now heavy silence, the gentle click of the lock’s mechanism seemed to echo as much as the fallen vending machine.
Leon turned towards her, and his eyes lit up with recognition and warmth.
“Michelle!” he said, with something resembling a smile emerging onto his face. “You have returned! Even now....”
Michelle took Francesca from her back. Trotsky’s smile wavered slightly.
“You know, the funniest thing happened,” Leon began. “It was shortly after our latest meeting. I was sitting in my chambers in Kazan, when suddenly… boop. I was imprisoned. Just… darkness. And then I woke up here. Of all places! In the belly of the beast! The same thing happened to Joseph.”
Michelle lifted her wristwatch towards her lips and clicked a button on its side.
“Maiden… Execute Order 19 in ten seconds. Gerald… get out. I’ll need a lift.”
“Who are you talking to?” Trotsky asked, taking another step towards her. “What is that thing?”
“Sorry,” Michelle offered. “Really, I am.”
She gave him both barrels, and then darted for the nearest exit. She heard Stalin slamming his fists against the door as she emerged onto the street, just in time to see Gerald brake at the curb in front of her. She hopped onto the back and wrapped her arms around him, a sudden gush of wind hitting her face as he powered full throttle away from the building. Behind them, the building promptly burst into flame.
“Could we not have done it without blowing up the New York Stock Exchange?” Gerald asked.
“I want to stop the splices, too,” Michelle offered. “But that doesn’t mean all their ideas are bad.”
As the two sped across the Williamsburg Bridge, they looked to their left and saw, high in the sky, The Octopi #2. To their right was the rudimentary flying machine that Orville Wright had made his getaway in.
“Only two out of three,” Gerald said.
“One for later,” Michelle answered. “Where’s the rendezvous?”
*****
Interlude II.
SS9000’S LOGS - COMMUNICATIONS TRANSCRIPT octopi #1 central data system // entry 46826 earth time and date: 10.52cet 29.02.2022
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [enthusiastically] “Ah, Nephews! How about a late morning progress report! GiGi -- how did you and Dreamer fare in New York?”
OCTOPI #2 R&D HUB: [with hesitation, slightly traumatised] “Well, we took out two splices, but a third one got away and I’m pretty sure we can expect some blowback on the whole blowing up the New York Stock Exchange thing…”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [flippantly] “Try not to dwell on it, Nephew! Two out of three’s not bad. Were they Peacocks?”
OCTOPI #2 R&D HUB: [voice not recognised! tone descriptive database cross-reference error!] “No. Trotsky and Stalin, both now dealt with. Orville Wright got away in a plane of his own making.”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [annoyed] “Wait, is that Dreamer? Don’t talk on Gerald’s device, please.”
OCTOPI #2 R&D HUB: [voice not recognised! tone descriptive database cross-reference error!] “Why not?”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [still annoyed] “Because it messes up the output of my communications transcripts! You should see them, Dreamer. Beautiful presentation! All colour-coded and everything, and with a state of the art tone-description feature. But if you talk on Gerald’s machine in fucks everything up. Connect on your phone.”
OCTOPI #2 R&D HUB: [voice not recognised! tone descriptive database cross-reference error!] “I don’t have a phone.”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [still annoyed] “Then go to the library. But let Gerald do the talking. Gerald?”
OCTOPI #2 R&D HUB: [lingering tones of trauma] “Nothing more to report.”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [moving on, recovering from flashes of annoyance] “Okay, moving on, now that I’m recovering from those flashes of annoyance. Gator Guy… Meg… cheer me up with news from the Middle East.”
OCTO-POD GG02: [grave] “It’s not good, Uncle. Surprising, really. Things are usually very cheery over here. But the mood is sombre at the moment. And there’s an air of confusion surrounding a giant crater that appeared overnight near the site of Ancient Babylon. This thing is colossal, Uncle! I think it’s the biggest one yet. We sent the measurements to the central database. Two tourists were found dead near the ruins, with one of them stripped down to his underwear. I don’t think it’s anything sexual. Probably just the old stormtrooper disguise trick.”
OCTO-POD GG02: [losing hope] “Quite a few. We’ve dealt with a good number, but they all just seem to say the same things. They’re heading north, mostly. Any news from Thomas on that front?”
OCTO-POD TW01: [faux-helpful] “Lots, Gator. There's Peacocks in large numbers crawling over North Canada. I've seen large communities of them in the Yukon and Nunavut territories, as well as a few other splices that seem to be acting almost as shepherds. Jack the Ripper is garrisoning Boogie Men in huge numbers near Whitehorse, and Napoleon seems to be teaching Peacocks to horse ride in a camp within the Arctic Circle. Large numbers are heading more north still, whilst others are appearing from the south."
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [thoughtful] "It seems the problem is more out of hand than we thought. Where are you going now, Nephew?"
OCTO-POD TW01: [decisive]] "Well, 'as north as north goes', I guess. I'll head for the Arctic Base."
OCTOPI #1 MEDICAL HUB: [proud] "Very logical, Thomas!"
OCTOPI #1 COMMS HUB: [proud] "..... . ……., …….!"
OCTO-POD TW01: [with a healthy degree of apprehension] "There's a lot of them though, Uncle. I might need back-up. I could use the Meltdown Branch with me."
OCTOPI #2 R&D HUB: [eager] "We're on our way!"
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [exhibiting keen leadership qualities] "Not so fast, GiGi! Northern Canada isn't the only concern! I'm worried that the Prince hasn't joined this call, and there are reports that the Witch, Mother Teresa, has returned to her ministry in India. You at least should come with me. Both Octopi are to head for the rendezvous point near Ancient Babylon. Meg, take your pod and Michelle from there to meet Thomas in the Arctic. Gerald will come with us to Calcutta. Maiden of Death, ÑŒ-I, and Gator will investigate the Babylonian crater. Eric, are you there?”
Eric’s iPhone: [enthusiastic] “I’m here, Uncle!”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [inquisitive, airy] “How’s it going at your end?”
Eric’s iPhone: [enthusiastic, slightly dampened] “Just mopping the engine room, Uncle. There’s a lot of oil down here.”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [commanding] “Okay, try to hurry up, Eric. This is serious business. We need all hands to the pump! Over and out, Nephews.”
OCTOPI #1 COMMS HUB left the call. OCTOPI #2 COMMS HUB left the call. OCTO-POD GG02 left the call. Eric’s iPhone left the call. OCTOPI #2 PILOT’S HUB left the call. OCTO-POD MM01 left the call. OCTOPI #1 MEDICAL HUB left the call. OCTOPI #2 R&D HUB left the call. OCTO-POD TW01 left the call.
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [beleaguered] “Where’s the thing? Why can I never find the thing? SS9000! End the call for me, please!”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB ended the call.
*****
Chapter Four. The Unholy Covenant of Mother Teresa.
[Location: Calcutta, India.]
[Local Time & Date: 18.31 || 29.02.2022.]
“We’re here to locate the Mother Teresa Splice, eliminate her, and get out of here. I don’t want to be here long. This place gives me the heebie jeebies,” Uncle shuddered.
“You just don’t like Mother Teresa,” the voice of the Daredevil said. Uncle scoffed and went back to looking through the binoculars for the titular maiden.
“It’s not that at all, Nephew!” Uncle retorted. “India just happens to be one of the eight countries I can’t legally enter. I don’t like coming here.”
Gerald and Uncle were perched on top of the roof of a tall building, looking into the massive crowd at the famous plaza in Calcutta. They had received intel that Mother Teresa frequented the areas as there were many vendors and a lot of foot traffic.
“You’re telling me Mother Teresa purposefully comes here and looks for people to help?” Uncle paused. “Disgusting,” he said, looking through the lenses of his binoculars.
“I’m sure she’s a nice, elderly woman,” Gerald said with confidence.
“Pfft. Next, you’re going to tell me you think Krash is nice,” Uncle retorted.
There was a silence that hung in the air for a few seconds
“Krash is nice,” Gerald said, confused at what Uncle is insinuating. Uncle put his binoculars down and slowly turned his head towards Gerald for the dramatics. He glared at Gerald as if he had insulted his mother. Does Uncle even have a mother? Gerald felt like that’s an idea that needs exploring. Anyway.
“You think.. Krash – is nice?” Uncle questioned. “GiGi, my boy. Krash is many things, but nice is not one of them.”
“Why not?” Gerald questioned argumentatively.
“GiGi, I will not argue with you on this. But I want you to really think about it. Krash may seem nice to you but I assure you, he is not. Really think about his actions. Do they scream nice or do they say otherwise?” Uncle spoke seriously to Gerald before looking down at the plaza through his binoculars.
Gerald has never seen Uncle so serious in his entire time knowing Uncle. This led the Daredevil to ponder whether Krash was actually nice.
…
…
Come to think of it, when Krash turns violent, it’s bad. I could see that, plainly enough. Back when they were in disguise before revealing themselves as the Gang Stars, they attacked Golden Rock from behind with steel pipes. That’s not very nice. That easily could’ve been Michelle and I had we beaten Golden Rock for the vacant tag team titles.
In fact, I don't think we got a proper explanation for their actions. The best Krash offered was since Alyster wanted to do it, he agreed to do it. If Alyster were to jump off a bridge, would Krash willingly do the same?
To be fair to Krash, Alyster is someone not a lot of people like, so it may be taking a toll on Krash himself. I mean, I’ve had my share of wrongdoings. Like when I travelled to the past to find why I started doing all of this back at Back in Business XIII. But does that make me a bad person for breaking the rules? No. I mean, sure, the rules were broken but I did it for a good reason.
But the rules were still broken. Fuck.
Do these examples prove Krash is not nice? That he’s been portraying this holier than thou character and getting away with it? Was I too blinded to see Krash’s true colours?
…
…
The enormity of the question snapped Gerald back to reality (oop, there goes gravity). Gerald flinched backwards before balancing himself by spreading his arms out. Uncle looked at him with a furrowed brow.
“Are you okay?” Uncle asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Gerald said, almost immediately, taking a huge gulp.
“You had an inner monologue, didn’t you?” Uncle grinned while Gerald took a moment before replying.
“Maybe,” Gerald offered as a response, not liking Uncle being right in this instance. He went on, trying to change the topic immediately. “Is Mother Teresa here yet?”
“No, she’s not. Unless the Witch is masking her movements,” Uncle said with an annoyed tone. “Wouldn’t put it past her.”
“I don’t know what you have against Mother Teresa but I’m not liking your vibes, Uncle,” Gerald said.
“GiGi, Mother Teresa is the definition of fake as fuck. She pretends to be this nice person when deep down, she’s actually super icky. Eww…” Uncle offered as a response.
“I mean, from what I learned about her in school, she doesn’t seem too bad,” Gerald said, crediting the American school system a bit too much.
“The school system is flawed, GiGi! Don’t you know the saying? Girls go to college to get more knowledge. Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider. There’s an obvious flaw in that -,” Uncle was cut off by Gerald.
“There!” Gerald said, pointing in front of him. He wasn’t really sure what Uncle meant by the Jupiter line, anyway.
The Mother Teresa splice finally arrived. Her appearance looked just like the woman herself, except she was sort of glitching all over the place. Clothed in her patented white and blue gown, she walked to the nearest fruit vendor and began a conversation with them.
“Let’s get that Witch!” Uncle said, ready to mess Mother Teresa up. Gerald shook his head in disagreement but soon followed suit. Before long, Gerald and Uncle were hiding behind big stacks of rice, readying their plan of attack.
“Alright, you go left to cut her off and I’ll go engage her,” Uncle said, pulling out a sharp katana that glistened in the sun. Gerald had a katana too but didn’t look as bloodthirsty as Uncle did. And that was just a guess as Uncle’s octopus mask didn’t give out much of his facial features.
“This is Purple Octopus, I’m about to engage the splice. Navy Blue Tasmanian Daredevil is manning the rear in case Mother Teresa tries to escape. We should be finished here in a few. Prepare the Machine for extraction,” Uncle radioed the Octopi #1 through his wristwatch
“Copy,” SS9000 said.
“There is no escape for you!” Uncle shouted at the Mother Teresa splice, announcing his presence. In return, her eyes glitched out unbeknownst to those around her. She acknowledged Uncle but proceeded to play the original Mother Teresa character.
“Excuse me? I am but an elderly woman looking to help those in need,” the splice said.
“You’re not fooling me,” Uncle swiped at her. Just then, a young man wielding dual metal pipes came into the picture to stop Uncle’s attack. He went on the offensive, backing Uncle up. The splice began to back away from the crowd. “Gerald! She's getting away!”
Gerald began his chase on the splice. Soon, there were fruits, chairs, vendor stands, and many other things put in front of Gerald as the splice tried to slow him down. The Daredevil would prove too athletic for the elderly Teresa and gained on her, before tackling the splice to the floor.
“Don’t resist,” Gerald pleaded. The splice began glitching out again, first appearing to be there then not and back again. Suddenly, a big man, weighing about 300 pounds, tackled Gerald, forcing him to relinquish the splice. Using his bare fists, the man gave his best punch combos and while Gerald didn’t take a direct hit by blocking his body, the shots took a toll nonetheless. Just then, Uncle and the young man came onto the scene, still doing battle with their weapons of choice. The assailants surrounded Gerald and Uncle as the duo were back-to-back.
“Not how I envisioned this to go, GiGi,” Uncle said, catching his breath after the battle with the young man.
“Yeah, well, you and me both,” Gerald said, spitting some blood out of his mouth.
"I guess the Witch has been ministering again. Some of these are human," Uncle said. Silence filled the air once more. However, Gerald started to control his breathing, closing his eyes, moving with Uncle as they kept their opponents in front of them. “Any ideas?”
A few moments of silence. Teresa cackled, as if in triumph.
“Trust me, this is a tag team knowledge bomb I’m about to drop on you,” Gerald said confidently.
“A what?” Uncle said in confusion.
“There’s this thing Michelle and I do whenever we get into sticky situations much like this one,” Gerald paused. He had his back still to Uncle. He couldn’t see Uncle’s reaction, but Gerald just knew Uncle would see things his way. “We suggest a plan and no matter how ridiculous it sounds, if the other one says to trust them, we do exactly that. So Uncle, trust me.”
Before he could make a move, Uncle sprung into action against the 300-pound man that Gerald was previously dealing with. With Uncle going on the offensive, the big man did his best to avoid the katana attacks, tiring him out. Meanwhile, Gerald unleashed a few combo punches against the dual steel pipes-user. Not expecting the sudden attack, Gerald easily bested him, almost immediately knocking the pipes off their hands. With no weapon, Gerald knocked out the young man with a superman punch between the eyes. The Daredevil looked back to Uncle right on time as Uncle put the big man down with multiple shots to the head using the hilt of his katana.
Uncle nodded his head towards Gerald. They turned their attention to the crowd that had formed around them, scanning each face. But their search seemed to prove useless. At least at first. However, a whistle from above sounded off that caught Gerald and Uncle’s attention. They looked right above them to see the Witch looming. She was on top of the roof of a tall building, waving her hand at Gerald and Uncle. She smirked before mouthing goodbye, and then glitched further and further away towards other rooftop upon other buildings. All Gerald and Uncle could do was watch as their target made its escape.
When they returned to the Octopi, Harry played a transmission back for them that they'd received during the chase. It was sent from Meg's Octo-Pod, but the voice wasn't his.
“Pur —- Oct —- us, cooooo – in. Thi – izzzz – Deat – den ,” the words were slurred, but they were sure it was Michelle on the other side of the radio.
Gerald and Uncle looked at one another.
“Arct – ic – now,” she said as the radio’s signal cut off.
“Arctic. She’s in the Arctic. She probably needs our help. We gotta go,” Gerald said. Uncle nodded in agreement. The group left immediately, applying the boosters and taken the Octopi #1 into a low orbit.
*****
Chapter Five. Arctic Thunderdome.
[Location: Nephews’ Base, the North Pole.]
[Local Time & Date: 14.28 || 29.02.2022.]
Meg's Octo-Pod, upon which Michelle was merely a passenger and a guest, skipped and skidded over the white, snowy landscape. She tried to relax as best she could, which was never particularly easy when traveling with Uncle or any one of his Nephews. The Arctic Base, a massive complex of underground buildings, was hidden from sight but, at least according to the Octo-Pod's navigation systems, was coming up quickly in front of them. Michelle gripped the arms of her chair. They were a little too far from the ground for her liking.
"Try to relax," Meg instructed, rather unhelpfully. "I'm an experienced pilot, you know? Gator and I have been on a large number of side adventures, many of which aboard the Octopi #2. Which I piloted myself."
"I'm sure," Michelle conceded. Meg pushed forward the thrusters and the Octo-Pod started to slow down. It gradually descended to the ground, and Michelle thought her stomach might lurch right through her throat and out of her mouth. With quite a large and disconcerting skid, they reached a halt.
"See?" Meg said, as he turned the engine off. "Safe and sound."
Michelle wasn't so sure. Something didn't quite feel right. She felt she could hear a rumbling from deep beneath her.
"Can you hear drums?" Michelle asked.
"Might be my stomach," Meg suggested, whilst clicking a button to release the doors. "It gets like that sometimes. Busy day! I'll have to find something to eat in the Base."
The pilot descended to the ground first, and Michelle followed after him. She wasn't wearing snow boots or anything remotely suitable or adequate for the environs, and quite quickly she found herself freezing to death on the spot.
"How do you get in?!" she asked, impatiently. Meg was looking around himself at the ground, but the snow stretched out endlessly and uniformly.
"It's around here somewhere…" Meg said. "Ah!"
Just then, a large trap door opened and from it emerged a dozen Peacocks, solemn and serious and armed to the teeth. Michelle gripped Francesca but, noting the high grade weaponry that her ambushers had at their disposal, instead threw the weapon back into the still open Octo-Pod. She'd come back for her later.
The Peacocks led Michelle and Meg, unbound, down a long set of stairs and into a vast, octagonal entrance room with eight identical doors opening up from each wall. None of the apparent guards said a word, and neither did the loose prisoners. They were led into the centre of the entrance room and then surrounded by the Peacocks, who waited with their backs against the walls and their guns pointed at the interlopers.
After a few moments of silence, one of the eight doors opened. Through it walked Thomas West.
"Dreamer!" he exclaimed, with warmth in his tone. "I'm glad you've come. And Meg, too. It's not quite GiGi #1, I'll grant you, but it's something! Please, Peacocks, lower your weapons. These are friends!"
"What's going on, Thomas?" enquired Meg, breaking the newcomers' combined silence.
"Please," Thomas said, holding out his hands in welcoming fashion. "Follow me."
He led the way through the door which he'd appeared from, and the trio found themselves on a high, stone bridge that overlooked a vast, wide cavern. Staircases sprouted from either side of the bridge, but Thomas didn't seem all that interested in the descent. Instead, he pushed on towards a door at the other end of the long and narrow bridge. Michelle and Meg looked down at the pit many metres below them to see Peacocks numbering in the thousands. They were filing this way and that, preparing rudimentary, black spacecraft for what seemed like an urgent and impending departure.
"What are they?" Michelle asked. "Why are they here?"
"They're my Splice Fleet," Thomas answered, as if that was enough. "And they're here because I called them."
When Michelle looked harder, she could see other figures amongst the Peacocks that broke up the uniformity. Some of them she recognised from their own times, and from her adventures - both with Gerald and alone - aboard the Machine. There was the old, Achaemenid King that they’d holidayed with in his Persian castle. Napoleon was there, standing on a raised platform and giving orders to a group of nearby Peacocks. Samuel Johnson sat quietly in the corner, smoking his pipe and reading a newspaper. Many more of various levels of note and fame were dotted in amongst the Peacocks. One of them was wearing a pilot’s cap and fiddled about with the mechanics of one of the spacecraft.
“That’s Orville Wright,” Michelle said. “He was at the Stock Exchange.”
“Oh, yes, you two have met,” Thomas replied. “Fine pilot. But, to be honest, he’s used to ships even more basic than these. A quick learner, though.”
“I’m glad to see some other familiar faces,” Michelle went on, as she spied Homer directing a Boogie Battalion towards the largest craft in the fleet. “I was worried that we were exclusively encountering stand-ins for our Jailhouse opponents. I thought maybe this was one of Uncle's tricks.”
“Not on the whole, no,” Thomas said. “But he’s most likely directing you towards the ones he thinks are the best metaphors for the other Tag Warz finalists. Probably why he insisted Gerald go with him to confront Mother Teresa. That’s Uncle’s way, Dreamer! Manipulation is the order of the day!”
“But why are you helping them?” Michelle asked, drawing her eyes away from the colossal army of ineffectual soldiers in the pit and onto the door ahead of them.
“Why are you helping him?” Thomas asked. “I heard about what you did to Trotsky and Stalin. Orville told me. Impressive stuff. But really, they all just want to get back home. Seems a worthier cause than whatever that infantile, manipulative megalomaniac is plotting next.”
“I’m sensing some Uncle-centric tension,” Meg put in. He had been quietly listening to the interaction whilst keeping up on his short legs. “Is this about your ‘errands’, again?”
“No,” Thomas answered, quickly. “Well, sort of. But not really. That’s a symptom. But this all started with the Time Machine, of course. For Uncle to give such a thing as a gift, without really even consulting me?! I mean, I’m the time travel guy! A cursory consultation, at least, you’d think!”
“Your repairs,” Michelle realised, drawing conclusions. She could still hear the drums. Louder, now. “You let the Machine fall into this state. You allowed the Corrective Thingy to reach danger level.”
“Of course!” Thomas answered. “You think I’d let this sort of amateur hour time disaster happen by accident? This is just a taste.”
Finally, the trio reached the other end of the bridge. Michelle took one more look back at the army in the pit before following Thomas through the door. They emerged into another octagonal cavern, this one carved into the form of a gigantic coliseum. Splices of all varieties lined the stone rafters, and down below in the arena a dozen or so Peacocks were fighting with knives for their amusement. Thomas began to file through the crowd towards his box.
“You say that all these people want to go back,” Michelle began, looking around herself at the identical Peacocks screaming with bloodlust. Down below, two Boogie Men dressed in loincloths danced with daggers, swiping at each other and dodging out of the way in turn. “But it doesn’t work like that. Time.”
“Ah, maybe not for you,” Thomas said. Maybe not for her. She found herself thinking about The Elite Tag Team Classic. Its final match was meant to be the culmination of their journey. The one they’d made together. Instead, they’d failed, and it had been her fault. The phantom of Bell still danced tantalisingly in front of her. Michelle sighed, deeply. She only wished what Thomas was hinting at was actually possible. To go back. “Touched a nerve?”
“It's not possible for me,” Michelle began, drawing her mind back to the present. The two Peacocks that danced before were still going at it, but a third sprang from behind a large boulder and plunged his knife into one of their backs. The other leapt forward and sank his own dagger into the assailant’s shoulder. A fourth appeared, swiping at the only survivor from the original trio, and the two began their own dance. “Or for anyone else. You can’t go back.”
“There’s a place…” Thomas began, but his words were guarded. He had taken his seat in the grand box overlooking the colosseum. The drums still pounded in the pit. A Peacock in servitude appeared with a large bunch of grapes and began to feed them to West. Meg’s stomach rumbled once more. “... where such a thing might be achieved.”
“But… that’s cheating.”
Thomas couldn’t help but let out a laugh.
“Enlighten me, Dreamer,” he said. “How so?”
She thought about Tag Warz, and how in many ways she had seen it as a chance for redemption for the events of 2020. She and Gerald both knew that they had failed at Mile High in the tournament final because of her own hubris, and that she’d turned his back on him to pursue her own glory in the immediate aftermath. In a way, Tag Warz was Michelle going back, to right the mistakes that she’d made at the tail end of 2020, when Gerald had dragged her from the mire and shown her some light. At the start of this current tournament, a small part of her was reluctant to throw herself in to the process, if only because it felt as though she were cheating time by taking this second chance. She thought Uncle knew this, too. That’s what the gift of the Machine was about in the first place. This idea had been what this whole thing had been about.
But, after seeing off Devin Golden and Lizzie Rose and booking their place in the tournament finals with an undefeated record, she no longer felt that she was cheating. She felt cheated. Jon Russnow, by booking them to face the defeated Stocke Market and the defeated Krash and Cyrus Truth (no loopholing, tulips) in some sort of ludicrous tournament ‘final’, was erasing the last three weeks of his own programming.
But that’s not how it worked. Those three wins happened. Their dominance happened. Russnow could attempt to erase this with a hackneyed ‘final’, but it was the truth.
And it would be the same for the splices, Michelle thought. The past was a constant. There could be no 'reset', not even with Thomas’ help. But she also concluded there was no point in arguing, and so she changed tact.
“Where is this place? Where time can be rewound?” Michelle asked, as down below in the pit the last two Peacocks faced off. One had already been opened up across his cheek, whilst the other had a large gash upon his chest. Thomas chuckled at the question.
“I can’t tell you that, Dreamer,” West said, as he took more grapes from his servant. “But I could show you. If you wanted to come with me.”
Down below, one of the Peacocks lunged in with his dagger. The other caught his wrist and wrestled him to the floor. He plunged his knife into his neck, eliciting a great, fervent roar from those assembled in the colosseum.
“I’m not going to come with you,” Michelle said.
“Very well,” Thomas answered, with a smile. “You can stay here. But it’s about time that we left.”
Down in the pit, the triumphant Peacock lifted his arms. The splices in the audience were happy that the winner was a Peacock, for that meant that they were winners themselves.
“Attention! Announcement from Central Control!”
The P.A. system inside the colosseum lurched into life, and those lining the seating were called to attention immediately (just as the voice instructed).
“Phase IV of the Great Exodus is commencing. Remaining splices should now relocate to their deployment point.”
All around them, Peacocks were filing towards the exits, a sense of urgency suddenly descending upon them.
“Where are they going?” Michelle asked.
“Attention! Announcement from Central Control!”
“Answer the question, West!” Meg exclaimed.
“Phase IV of the Great Exodus is commencing. Remaining splices should now relocate to their deployment point.”
“They’re going to their deployment points,” Thomas said. “And then, home. Farewell, Dreamer!”
And with that, Thomas sauntered towards the nearest exit, leaving Michelle and Meg in the rapidly emptying arena, the P.A. system continuing in its endless repetition of the peculiar instruction.
They returned the Octo-Pod to find it beaten up and refusing to start, of course, but managed to send a muffled distress call to the Octopi #1. Meg wouldn't let Michelle smoke in the vehicle, so she lit up outside in the snow and waited to be rescued.
*****
Interlude III.
SS9000’S LOGS - COMMUNICATIONS TRANSCRIPT octopi #1 central data system // entry 46830 earth time and date: 16.14cet 29.02.2022
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [welcoming] “Good afternoon, Nephews! GiGi #1 and #2, are Dreamer and Meg back in pocket?”
OCTOPI #2 MEDICAL HUB: [impatient] “We’re here.”
OCTOPI #2 PILOT’S HUB: [dutiful] “And on our way back to the Basement Gardens, as directed.
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [hopeful, like a good captain should be] “Good. I think we should all rendezvous there, immediately. Dreamer and Meg informed me of some distressing news before we started this group call. I’ve shared the transcript in our Microsoft Teams. I hope you’ve had chance to look over it.”
OCTO-POD MD01: [overworked, underappreciated] “I think it’s unfair to expect us to have read a document that you shared only a couple of minutes before the meeting.”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [deflective] “Well, read it now, if you haven’t had chance.”
OCTOPI #1 MEDICAL HUB: [overflowing with worry] “Grave tidings, if Thomas has really gone rogue again.”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [resolute, proud] “Maybe. Though it does show excellent initiative.”
OCTOPI #1 MEDICAL HUB: [proud] “Undoubtedly.”
OCTOPI #1 COMMS HUB: [proud] “....... ………”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [glad] “In the meantime, I’m glad to see that you’ve rejoined us, Prince.”
OCTO-POD NK04: [also glad] “Me too. I was on the way to Calcutta to confront the Witch, when I was waylaid by a Persian King and a host of Peacocks. If it wasn’t for Alphonse and the Swiss Guard, I might not have made it out of there alive. And now it seems this King is with Thomas, as north as north goes.”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [thoughtful] “Which is why we need to know where Thomas has gone, and how he plans to achieve this ‘re-set’.”
OCTOPI #2 COMMS HUB: [well-meaning and insightful, though meandering] “If I may, Uncle… I used to travel with Thomas quite a lot to the Institute of Time. I take it upon myself to acquaint myself with all such epicentres of academia. It’s part of what I bring to the team, of course. Meg would come with me, from time to time. But not to the Institute. There was an excellent steakhouse on-planet that he’d fill his boots in whilst Thomas and I visited the Gurus. They were strange, grave fellows, mostly. Always talking about ‘the fabric of time’ and the ‘space-time continuum' and the like. Very doom and gloom and, if you ask me, pretentious about it. Not all of them, of course. There were a handful of --"
OCTO-POD MD01: [impatient, with a lack of tact] “Hate to press you, Gator. But time is kind of against us at the moment.”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [precious] “Don’t rush him! That was a beautiful monologue, Gator! Please, take your time.”
OCTOPI #2 COMMS HUB: [a little wounded] “I was about to come to my point. There were a handful of Gurus that were friendly to me, and one of them I kept in contact with. He may be able to shed some light on Thomas’ strange allusions.”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [boundlessly enthusiastic] “Perfect! We go to the Institute of Time. Uhm… where is it?”
OCTOPI #2 COMMS HUB: [more logically-minded] “I thought we could probably just add him to this call. I have his details.”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [contrary] “What? No! I had this whole chapter planned where all of the Nephews go to the Institute. It was going to be educational and fun, GiGi #2! A phone call isn’t going to be as descriptive or as interesting.”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [insistent] “It’s about the journey, Nephew!”
OCTOPI #2 COMMS HUB: [meta] “Depends how long the journey is.”
OCTO-POD MD01: [rightly focussed on the task at hand] “This is taking us as long as actually going there. Add him to the call, Gator.”
OCTOPI #2 COMMS HUB added TIME_GURU_69 to the call.
TIME_GURU_69: [unrecognised voice profile!] “Yo yo Gator-bro! How’s tricks?! Woah… there’s a lot of people in here.”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [indignant] “Yo yo Gator-bro? Isn’t this guy meant to be a Time Guru?”
TIME_GURU_69: [unrecognised voice profile!] “You think we’re all little carbon copies of each other, bro? All bookish and dweeby, with those long cloaks with the hoods. What are those things called? Yo, Gator-bro, what are those things called with the long cloaks and the hoods?”
OCTOPI #2 COMMS HUB: [quick, sharp] “Druids?”
TIME_GURU_69: [unrecognised voice profile!] “Druids, yes! Yo, you smart, bro! We’re not all like that, whoever this is. I hope Gator-bro didn’t add me to a group chat with a bunch of boomers.”
TIME_GURU_69: [unrecognised voice profile!] “Nah, bro. It’s fine. Most of us are like that, to be fair. What can I do for you guys? Is Mega-Man locked up again?”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [attempting to hurry things up, conscious of time] “No. There’s no time to explain. I’m sending you the transcripts of this communication. I’m sure you know Thomas. Seems he’s gone a little… off the deep end.”
TIME_GURU_69: [unrecognised voice profile!] “Got ‘em, bro. Just skimming through now. Woah… your communications transcript output has a tone-description device? What’s that, the TX460?”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [proud] “TX860.”
TIME_GURU_69: [unrecognised voice profile!] “Nice. Colour-coded, too. Great kit, bro. Okay, let me see here. Right… fabric of time, et cetera, destroy the space-time continuum, blah blah blah, revolutionary splices, something about Peacocks and… ah, a reset! Thomas wants to achieve a reset? Well, there’s only one place he could even dream of doing that.”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [intrigued] “Where?”
TIME_GURU_69: [unrecognised voice profile!] “Well, near the Point of Singularity, the oldest branch of my order serves within the Sands of Time. It’s there that the fabric is held together, bro. I guess that’s where you’d go if you wanted to achieve a re-set by force, which is what Thomas is trying to do. At least according to these beautifully presented transcripts. Seriously, bro, five out of five transcripts, presentation-wise.”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [sold] “Can you send me the coordinates?”
TIME_GURU_69: [unrecognised voice profile!] “No probs, bro. Hey, you want me to give the Gurus here a heads up? We can probably meet you there.”
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [proud] “No. We’re good. This is our mess. We’re going to clean it up ourselves.”
TIME_GURU_69: [unrecognised voice profile!] “Okay, dawg. Look, I got stuff to do. Never enough time, right? Not even for a Time Guru! Anyway, take it easy, bros!”
TIME_GURU_69 left the call.
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [regretful] "I should've asked him if he was interested in becoming a Nephew…"
OCTOPI #1 MEDICAL HUB: [curious] "Primary or peripheral?"
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [more pragmatic] "It would be a negotiation, I imagine. Or maybe I should wait to meet a more classical Time Guru. There's no point rushing in, you know?”
OCTO-POD MM01: [even more pragmatic] "Speaking of rushing in..."
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [stirred to action] "Ah, yes! Maiden of Death is right! Sometimes, one has no choice but to rush in. There is no more time for idle chatter! The time has come for the Nephews to stand as one… to look into the eyes of this –"
OCTOPI #2 MEDICAL HUB left the call. OCTO-POD MD01 left the call. BASEMENT GDNS 001 left the call. OCTOPI #2 PILOT’S HUB left the call. OCTOPI #2 R&D HUB left the call. OCTO-POD NK04 left the call. OCTOPI #2 COMMS HUB left the call. OCTO-POD MD02 left the call. BASEMENT GDNS 002 left the call. Eric’s iPhone left the call.
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [outraged] "Wait, why did they all leave?! I was just building up to a monologue!"
OCTOPI #1 MEDICAL HUB: [placatory] "We're still here. You can monologue to us."
OCTOPI #1 COMMS HUB: [mute] ".. … …. …"
OCTOPI #1 PILOT’S HUB: [acceptant] "But you're all in the same room! Okay, fine, I'll do it in person on the way back to Base. At least I can do hand gestures then."
OCTOPI #1 COMMS HUB left the call. OCTOPI #1 MEDICAL HUB left the call.
[Local Time & Date: UST 04:16:αδε:ZE:48264:1922:14 (universal standard time)]
Michelle and Gerald stood in the bridge of the Octopi #2, staring out of the huge windows at the front of the ship and into the recesses of space beyond. Up until now, the journey had been a flurry of haste and activity, though finally the spacecraft had come to a halt and all within it were taking the final deep breath before the storm. Maiden of Death was at the pilot’s hub, checking the ship’s vitals on the central interface. ÑŒ-I was opening up a communication line to the Octopi #1 and Uncle. The Leviathans were at the R&D bay, checking the samples they'd collected along the way from Earth.
Outside the window, a variety of objects existed to break up the endless black landscape that would otherwise stretch before them. Michelle felt that these objects could be categorised into five clusters.
The nearest was what Gerald had dubbed during the journey, in a moment of linguistic cunning, the Octo-Fleet, which consisted of their Octopi #2, along with the Octopi #1 (manned by Uncle, Harry, and Quiet). Between them was a pair of Octo-Pods, one housing the Prince and the other containing Alphonse and Stop Sign #2. They were affecting a holding pattern, and the two Pods were waiting for instruction from Uncle before embarking on their scouting mission. The Octopi #1 hovered a few metres ahead of #2, and through their front window Michelle could see Eric straddling the side of Uncle’s ship in a harness, whilst scrubbing away at the exterior with a toothbrush.
The furthest of the five objects from them, but still nearer than any human alive could really hope to see it, was the Point of Singularity, which appeared to them as an almost star-like object, but vast and white and almost crackling against the black canvas. Not only could they see it, but Michelle and Gerald fancied they could hear it and feel it, too. They didn’t want to get any closer to it than they already were. Even that felt too close.
A little nearer to them than the Point of Singularity were the Sands of Time, which again formed a peculiar and passive figure upon the landscape. It was less remote and less still than the Point, and took the form of shifting continents of sand, almost like the innards of an hourglass set free from their shell. Michelle found it hard to believe that the Time Gurus were hard at work inside the swiftly shifting body, but that is why they were here.
A little closer to them than the Sands was the Splice Fleet. There were hundreds of huge ships, rudimentary in design but sturdy and swift. They were all pointed towards the Sands, and when the Octopis had made their approach they’d picked up the Splice Fleet’s transmission, directed at the Gurus: to give in to their demands, or face an assault that would split the Fabric itself. So far, the Gurus had made no answer. They had held out long enough, for despite the Fleet’s massive number they couldn’t match Uncle’s fire power. And it seemed that most of them were blissfully unaware of the Nephews’ presence.
The last object visible through the window was the loneliest, and took the form of a single Octo-Pod in transit between the Splice Fleet and the Octopis. It slowly and silently grew larger and larger, until the licence plate became clear enough to read: TW 01.
“Come in Octopi #2,” came Uncle’s voice, over the ship’s radio. “Can you hear me? Octopi #2? Octo-Pods?”
“Roger that,” Gerald said. “Loud and clear.”
“Same here in the Pods,” replied the Prince.
“Okay, great,” Uncle started. “It’s pretty wonderful for us all to be here. Even Stop Sign #2 and Eric! We should do this more often. But, you know… in lighter circumstances.”
“And maybe when we don’t have a tournament final next week,” Gerald put in.
“This is training!” Uncle answered, quickly and decisively. “And besides, this whole thing is your fault to begin with, so cut the sass. Your fault, Dreamer's, and Thomas’s. Speak of the devil, I’m getting an incoming call from him. I’ll patch him in.”
“Uncle? Are you there?” Thomas’s voice rang out over the radio.
“We’re all here,” Uncle said.
“All of you?” Thomas asked.
“All of us,” Uncle said.
“Hi, Thomas!” Harry put in.
“.., ……!”
“Really, Thomas, some top notch initiative throughout,” Meg began, from the R&D hub of their ship. “But maybe a little too drastic, all things considered?”
“Maybe?” Uncle repeated. “Thomas, you know that any of my Nephews can always speak to me! If you have something on your mind, something that’s driving you towards genocide and inter-dimensional time crime… then my office door is always open.”
“Is it open now?” Thomas asked.
“Open to pod doors, SS!”
There was a few moments of silence. Maiden of Death maintained the holding pattern, as did the other crafts in the Octo-Fleet, and the sound of the pod doors of the other ship creaking open sounded out over the radio. Thomas’ pod disappeared into #1, and soon enough he could be heard on the radio again, conversing with Uncle in person on the other bridge.
“I knew you’d catch up with them, eventually,” Thomas said. “I didn’t expect it to go this far, even. It’s just a bunch of splices, and look at all of you! Teaming up like this!”
“I guess you brought it out of us,” Uncle conceded, taking a conciliatory tone. “It’s certainly nice to have the whole gang together.”
“And who wants to die in a dark prison?” Thomas asked. “Not even splices deserve that! I gave these guys the chance for a hero’s death.”
“Speaking of which,” Uncle said, still over the radio. “Maiden of Death, are you ready? I don’t think we need a scouting mission, any longer. Re-dock, Octo-Pods. Open fire!”
Out of the front window, the first of the photon blasts emerged from the Octopi #1. Maiden of Death quickly followed suit with her own weaponry.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling more prepared for our Jailhouse Blues match after going through what we’ve gone through with the splices,” Gerald said, standing up. Seemingly indifferent to the exploding Splice Fleet in front of him, he began doing some warmup exercises to pump himself up.
"Really?! Now?" Michelle asked, as Maiden of Death sent a photon ricocheting off the wing of one ship and into another.
"Always!" Gerald replied.
“You’re very… peculiar, Gerald,” Dreamer said, looking at her tag team partner.
“No… really, I’m feeling good. I might even call up Russnow right now and request to be one of the first entrants in the match,” Gerald said, doing some shadow boxing now. Michelle shrugged, not too fussed about what Gerald wanted to do.
“We just need to trust each other,” Michelle suggested.
“Funny you say that,” Gerald stopped his shadow boxing to look at Michelle. In the background, three members of the Splice Fleet went up in flames as Uncle unleashed the Octopi #1's Hydrogen Canon. Michelle leaned forward towards Gerald with interest on her face, waiting for Gerald to continue. “When Uncle and I went after the Mother Teresa splice…”
“You mean, when you and Uncle failed to eliminate the Mother Teresa splice,” Michelle interrupted.
“Yeah, whatever. Anyway!” Gerald quickly changed the topic. “We were in a pretty bad predicament, which ultimately led us to fail the mission. But!” the Daredevil paused. “I had this serious moment with Uncle where I told him about a plan that seemed so ridiculous at first – and… well, it was ridiculous. But I told him to trust me and without hesitation, he did,”
Gerald felt proud of that moment. Michelle nodded her head, approving of his methods.
“It’s how we work, Michelle. We have enormous trust in each other that we’ve built over time. It wasn’t easy to do that, but things that are worth it are never easy at first,” Gerald said to Michelle, garnering a half-smile from Dreamer. “That’s why when we enter what others think would be a match no one wants to participate in, I am going in with no worries because you’re going to be by my side.”
Gerald held out his fist.
Michelle bumped it without response.
Suddenly, Michelle turned her attention to the controls. Maiden of Death had consternation upon her face.
“Something’s up,” she said, calling Gerald over.
“There’s something wrong with the weapons systems,” interrupted Maiden of Death, struggling with her interface. “Uncle? You’ve stopped firing too?”
“Yes, it’s the same over here,” Uncle replied over the radio. “They went down around a minute ago. It’s not a technical fault. We’re picking up two unidentified life forms in the Octopi #2. They must have come over in a certain pod…”
There was a moment’s silence, during which the Nephews aboard #2 were certain that Uncle was giving Thomas a stony glare, even if they weren’t aboard the same ship.
“Michelle, Gerald… get down there and take a look. One’s near the Engine Room, and the other is near the Inter-Octopi Portal. I’m sending you the coordinates of their locations. The Octopi #2 has essentially the same layout as #1, though it’s inverted to assist navigation of the Southern Hemisphere.”
“We better go,” Michelle said, dragging Michelle by the sleeve. Whilst intermittently checking their wristwatches and the floorplans of the second Octopi, they descended into the bowels of the ship and towards the portal. Each ship had a room dedicated to housing such a device, which allowed instantaneous travel between #1 and #2. It was there that they found Orville Wright, skulking about whilst providing a poor lookout for he and his accomplice’s impending escape plan.
“If only my brother was here,” he was saying, in a rather sulky fashion, whilst guarding the door to the Inter-Octopi Portal. “Things would be better if my brother was here. We’d be winning if my brother was here. I wouldn’t be stuck guarding a portal if my brother was here.”
Michelle and Gerald crept down an adjacent corridor, remaining silent as shadows as they approached the splice. Gerald gripped the hilt of his katana. Michelle unslung Francesca from her back.
“Oh, Wilbur! Where for art --”
The Wright Brother’s thespian aspirations were drowned out by the blast of the shotgun, and a few moments later Orville sat against the door he was guarding with a hole in his belly.
“Say hello to Trevor for us,” Michelle said.
“What… does… that… mean?” asked Orville. Before Michelle could tell him that it wasn’t for him to get, he died.
“That was surprisingly easy,” Gerald said.
“Come on,” Michelle replied, acutely aware that another was lurking somewhere nearby. She turned as if to lead the way… but before she could walk more than a few paces, a mountain of a man brought the flat of his sword thudding into her chest. It drove the wind out of her, and forced her down onto the ground, where she spluttered for breath and clutched at her ribs. The huge man looked up at Gerald. The Daredevil drew his katana.
The sword fight was asymmetrical. Gerald scored A for effort, but against the might and power of King Cyrus the Great he was no match. After deflecting a rapid but ultimately ineffectual torrent of attacks from the Daredevil, the King swatted his slender katana aside with his own massive weapon. He then proceeded to drive his goliath fist into Gerald’s chest. GiGi was worried that perhaps it’d been caved in. The next thing he knew, he was on the floor, struggling for breath. Gerald reached for his katana, but before he could pick it up the King kicked it away from his grasp. And then on he came, looming and impressive, his golden crown gleaming as if new, his sword sharpened and spelling doom. Gerald could do nothing but crawl away.
“Stop crawling,” the King said. “Face your destiny like a man!”
“You still don’t get it, do you?” Gerald asked. He had made his way back to a resting place against a wall, somewhere near Orville Wright’s body, and now he stared up at Cyrus with dull, passive eyes. “It doesn’t matter if you kill me. You can chop me into pieces, if you’d like. It doesn’t change the fact that… you can’t go back. You can’t alter the past. Well, you can, but you shouldn’t. And you won’t be able to. Even if I don’t stop you, it’ll be Michelle. Or Uncle. Or any one of the twenty-odd Nephews upstairs. Because, at the end of the day, when all is said and done --”
“Wait, wait, wait!” the King interrupted, impatiently, whilst momentarily resting his sword arm. He dug the point of his blade into the floor of the corridor and leaned on the hilt. “Are you monologuing right now? You dare to monologue against me?! The First King of the First Persian Empire?! Let me tell you, boy, they call me Cyrus the Great because of my deeds and my words! My righteous soliloquies moved armies. They conquered kingdoms, boy! I’m mentioned in your bible and in Wu-Tang songs. And you dare to speak against me?“Let me teach you, child, about the long and winding road that I have taken to this point. Through prison and torment, where I had only the Truth for company. Just as before, I have made allies that I do not seek to keep. Their existence is only for the furthering of my own aims. Only now, instead of rival kings of neighbouring realms, I am compelled to seek the help of Macedonian charlatans and primitive birdmen. But whilst these people fall, I stand. And when the smoke clears, it is I, King Cyrus the Great, who raises his fist towards the heavens, not in anger, but in a symbol of my own path towa --”
The King was building to his crescendo, but had no chance to reach it. He was interrupted by a katana being pushed in-between his shoulder blades, and when he slumped to the ground Gerald saw Michelle holding the dripping weapon behind him.
“I guess his own monologuing did for him in the end,” Gerald said.
“Tragic, really,” Michelle offered.
“Come on. Let’s go home.”
*****
[Location: The Basement Gardens, the Swiss-Italian Alps.]
[Local Time & Date: 02.14 || 01.03.2022.]
Somewhere along the border between Switzerland and Italy, in a deep valley surrounded by the white peaks of the Alps, a campfire was burning. Its principal fuel was the Time Machine, though Harry had helped it along with a few spells, and Uncle threw on a couple of chiral crystals just for good measure. For as long as they could, the Nephews stayed awake in horseshoe formation around the purple-blue fire, until one by one they fell asleep under the twinkling, white stars.
*****
cthulhu’s nephews -- fallout & meltdownbranches
will collide again -- in -- ”TENKA’ICHI BUDŌKAI!” ’NUMBER ONE UNDER HEAVEN!’ -- 014 // xiv --
Promo history - volume 79. "Perfume." (March 12th, 2022). Michelle von Horrowitz def. Gerald Grayson, Nova Diamond [Triple Threat Match, FWA World Championship] (FWA: The Grand March 2022)
MICHELLE von HORROWITZ
in [VOLUME SEVENTY NINE]
[Paris. 1738.]
"And what, Madame, is the infant's name?"the priest asked. He sat at his rectory table, holding the baby in front of him and remarking to himself that it was but a few weeks old. The woman shuffled uncomfortably in her seat and adjusted her skirts.
"Her name is Michelle Grenouille," she answered. The clergyman didn't like her curt and impatient tone. Nor did he much care for the name itself. Though, as he looked at the baby's pale face and its sunken features, he couldn't deny that there was something inexplicably frog-like about her.
"And you’ve others in your care?" he enquired. He was fully aware that the city paid women like this to feed hungry mouths when nobody else would.
"I currently have thirteen infants, including Michelle Grenouille."
"And you intend to keep the others?" the priest asked, whilst placing the infant down and reaching for his wine. The woman nodded. "Then why do you wish to give up Michelle?"
She didn't say anything.
"Her mother cannot take her back?" he asked.
"Her mother is dead," she clarified. She explained that the child was left in a crate of scraps beneath a meat stall at the market. The mother’s intention was for the stray dogs to discover her, but the vendors did first. The police hunted, tried, and executed the mother for attempted infanticide that same day.
"I see," the priest offered. He was disquieted by the story, though he'd heard such accounts were not uncommon amongst the city’s peasantry. "It happens that I do know someone who could perhaps take the girl. Another man of the cloth, who operates an institution for such infants a few miles north of here. Though, it would be better if I were able to tell him why your own arrangement with the city has not worked."
"There have been problems… problems with Michelle Grenouille and the other children."
The priest looked down at the newborn.
"The child is still young," he said. "What problems could she possibly cause, at her age?"
The woman remained silent. The clergyman noticed the baby’s pug-nose wrinkling itself up for a series of sharp, repetitive sniffs.
"Speak," the priest commanded. The woman again shuffled and fiddled with her garments. She took on a panicked expression, as if she felt her opportunity to offload the infant was disappearing. She employed a more sincere and earnest tone out of desperation.
"Father," she began, leaning towards him. There was fear in her eyes. "It is my belief that this child is possessed by the Devil."
The priest looked from the young woman to the baby, who was still sniffing at the surrounding air. He couldn't stifle his laughter.
"Possessed by the Devil?!" the Priest repeated. The woman asked him if this was not something the church dealt with often. Her mother had told her about possessions and exorcisms. The priest concluded that old wives’ tales were addling her mind, and shook his head ruefully. He explained to the woman that just last week he'd been part of a team of priests who'd exorcised an old woman in the Parisian suburbs… but that the Devil would have no use for the docile form of a newborn child. It was clear that the clergyman thought her assertions ludicrous.
He wasn't swayed by her descriptions of the child's incessant sniffing, which he admitted to observing himself during their brief conversation but thought nothing of. She failed to move him with tidings that the child’s eyes remained tightly shut at all times. He was only amused by accounts of the baby's sleep-crawling, chalking this up to vivid dreams and an overactive imagination. The woman reached the end of her tether.
"And, worst of all…" she started, with mounting frustration. "She has no smell."
The clergyman cocked an eyebrow.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, all newborns have a sort of smell," she explained. "Sort of musty, almost earthy… I've cared for many infants, Father, and every one of them had this same odour. But not her. She has no smell. At all."
"I still think we are a far cry from an exorcism," the priest said. "But it seems your mind is made up. If you will no longer fulfil your obligations to the state with this child, I will see to its care. You may leave the baby with me."
The young woman thanked the clergyman repeatedly with a look of unending relief. He bade her farewell and arranged for the child's transportation to the orphanage the following morning. That night, though, the priest verified the young woman's claims by removing the child from its bedding to examine its scent. She was quite correct… though he had not the experience with children to deduce whether this was particularly unusual. Nonetheless, he went to bed that night feeling vaguely disconcerted. He was pleased to see Michelle Grenouille removed from his rectory at sunrise.
Michelle spent her formative years in the ecclesiastical orphanage a few miles north of the city, but she was not out of the cot before both of the supporting characters in our prologue met their demise. The young woman was run over by a horse on the rue de fleurs whilst returning from the cheesemongers, and the clergyman fell into the Seine and drowned whilst staggering back to the rectory from a public house.
The nuns at the orphanage soon noticed the same habits as the poor woman who found her end beneath trampling hooves on the rue de fleurs. Michelle did, eventually, open her eyes, though it was apparent that she didn’t particularly enjoy what she saw and preferred to keep them closed. The sisters, particularly the mother superior, also perceived her to be a slow learner, and raised eyebrows at her refusal to speak until her seventh year. Some of them gave up hope of her doing so at all, but the abbess persevered with her schooling stubbornly. Only when Michelle noticed she was being treated differently to the other children did she realise that speech was expected of her.
When she finally obliged and began to communicate, it became clear that she had not only been sniffing during her long periods of silence, but also smelling. She was interested mostly in vocabulary of this sort, and against each new noun she placed (if she had one) a memory of its associated smell. She built an olfactory catalogue in her mind of all the odours available in the orphanage. She made no real distinction about their pleasantness or worth: all were new and exciting to her. The old wood of her bed frame. The dry feathers in her bedding. The grass and soil in the surrounding fields. When her vocabulary grew - as new, alien nouns that weren't readily present in the orphanage were taught to her - so did her understanding of the limited scope of this place.
She gained the favour of the sisters through simple tricks that they found astounding, like identifying rotten vegetables prior to unearthing, or pointing out which cuts of meat would cause illness. Soon enough she was advising the gardeners on which patches of the commune's land were richest in nutrients. Sisters or orphans who'd lost anything precious would invariably ask Michelle Grenouille if she could sniff it out. Often, though, it was she who had taken the thing, finding its hiding place when scurrying around the building with her eyes closed. She could navigate best this way, by following her nose, and soon began to wander regularly at night when everyone else was soundly asleep.
This sort of mischief will eventually get one into trouble. The wonder experienced by the sisters upon discovery of Michelle's talents soon turned to mistrust and fear. At nine years old, after a stockpile of stolen treasures was uncovered beneath her bed, Michelle was turfed out of the orphanage by the mother superior and made her way to the city. It is not particularly important to the story, but is noteworthy that our stubborn and stern abbess met her end only ten days after Grenouille left her care, when an eroded statue of the Virgin Mary fell from the orphanage's roof during a storm and crushed her upon impact.
Meanwhile, Michelle hadn't been within the city's boundaries since leaving the rectory as a baby, and had no expectations of Paris other than to add readily to her olfactory catalogue. She was not disappointed, and in every corner of the city she found new and exciting smells that filled her nostrils and dizzied her senses. There were the bakeries in the morning, and the markets with their rich spices and rotting meats and fresh fish, and the canals and the slums and the flowers. For months she remained a happy wanderer.
The orphan possessed little understanding of the concept of ownership, and thus it wasn't long before her first skirmishes with the law. Stealing food now brought with it fear of harsh reprimand, and a safer path was to seek steady, temporary employment. At the age of ten she found work as a tanner's apprentice. The tanner initially found the idea of her completing such duties amusing, but she quickly proved herself a valuable asset. She had little issue with the smell of dead animals, nor the odorous and hazardous chemicals used in the treatment of them. She never became ill, regardless of how often she inhaled the toxic fumes involved in processing the animal hides. Even more astoundingly, a quick wash later and she was presentable enough to be sent out on deliveries.
From Michelle's perspective, there were only three moments of real note during the six years she spent with the tanner. The first occurred when one of the city's perfumers complained about a delivery of leather he intended to somehow soak in scent (this was how the tanner put it). The perfumeries of Paris were well-known to Michelle, of course. To one with a keen interest in all things olfactory, the sweet scents of Paris's perfumers were essential. This particular proprietor was named Monsieur Oncle, but Michelle Grenouille found his perfumery to be tawdry and scopeless in comparison to the dizzying olfactorial onslaught of, say, the Perfumery d'Or, which was commonly thought to be the finest purveyor of scent in the capital. Michelle would agree with this prevalent opinion, if she had anyone to express it to her in the first place.
This first lasting memory does not pertain to the tanner's conversation with Mon. Oncle (though you shouldn't worry, as we'll get to him later). Nor does it relate to the many hours spent with the tanner in various public houses on the road back to his house. The ales consumed during this time probably did contribute to the fall he took into the Seine, which prompted Michelle Grenouille to make good on her name and leap in after him. Upon looking back at the incident, the tanner was never entirely sure how a small girl managed to drag his massive frame from the river and onto a nearby jetty. He was knocked out during the fall, waking up a short time later to suck in a lungful of oxygen and promise her that, whenever she wanted to leave his employ, he would allow her without complaint.
She intended, of course, to leave his employ at some point, anyway, with or without his complaints. But this incident in the Seine brought with it greater freedoms for which she was thankful. She was, for instance, allowed recreational time on wednesdays and saturdays, during which she often travelled to the city to add to her olfactory catalogue. It was on one such trip that the second of our three notable events of Michelle’s late childhood occurred. At the age of thirteen, Michelle witnessed a firework display for the opening of a new bridge over the Seine. Michelle was amongst the revellers, though she had no real interest in watching the display. Instead, she hoped for something new from the fireworks to add to her aromatic catalogue.
She was disappointed. Burnt gunpowder with sulphurous overtones filled the air as she stood on the banks of the Seine with a glum look upon her face. The beginning of her walk towards the tanner’s house was a sullen and abject affair, but this malaise was punctured by a gust of wind that carried upon its back the new scent that she’d hoped for. It ran over her like a horse-drawn carriage… filled her lungs like the waters of the Seine… fell upon her like a statue of the Virgin Mary. She closed her eyes and breathed it in. She vowed to find its source before it disappeared forever.
Soon enough, Michelle Grenouille walked into a garden behind a small line of adjoined houses. She had no idea where she was or how she’d get back. She didn’t really care. She was dizzy. It was easy to get into the garden through a narrow alleyway that ran along the terrace’s rear, and now she stood a few metres away from her prey. He was kneeling down in his garden, digging out earth to plant some seeds. Golden tulips grew around him. She breathed lightly and closed her eyes. He smelled of strength, of glory, of triumph.
“Hello,” he said, upon finally noticing her presence. “What’s your name?”
“My name is Michelle Grenouille,” she answered, reciting the name she had been told was assigned to her.
“I am Sans Soleil.”
Michelle couldn’t control her shaking. Her mouth was agape. Her nostrils flared. Her mind raced and swam and rejoiced. Her ecstasy knew no bounds, her ambition no limit. She wanted the boy’s smell… to keep it… for her and only her.
Sans Soleil made to stand up, but Michelle Grenouille reached for a small shovel and brought it swiftly over his head. He fell to the ground with a gentle groan, and the girl quickly and instinctively placed her hands around his throat until his soft inhalations stopped. She spent the next hour bent low over him, stealing every ounce of his scent before, eventually, he ceased to be distinguishable from the animals she worked with at the tanner’s shop.
On the way home, Michelle became besotted with the idea of possessing a smell, which was not something she'd even considered until her meeting with Sans Soleil. Until now, the cataloguing of them was enough. But the ecstasy she’d felt in the moments where the boy’s smell was hers and the horror she’d felt when she realised it was gone changed that. The moment was fleeting. She yearned for something more permanent.
Before we arrive at the third important moment during Michelle's employment at the tanner's, we must properly introduce a character mentioned earlier. This is Monsieur Oncle, who - upon a summer's evening in 1754 - was sitting in his chambers and poring over reams of notes upon his desk. Three empty wine bottles stood next to a pile of silk handkerchiefs. He was engaged in a task for which the deadline was only a handful of hours away. A task which he would never complete. It concerned a young lady who had asked for her leather purses to be scented with l'eau de soi. This was an easy enough task, but l'eau de soi was not a perfume that he himself made. Or one to which he knew the recipe.
Mon. Oncle had been a fixture of the Parisian perfume scene for two decades now, and originally found popularity with creative new scents. In truth, though, he hadn't had an original idea in quite some time, and now took refuge in pastiche and parody. He often started work too late to accomplish anything meaningful. Now, he would look at the achievements of the Perfumery d'Or, which produced l'eau de soi and made francs by the thousands with it, and wonder where it all went wrong for him. He felt the same now, standing over his desk. He'd spent the preceding hours pouring small amounts of the scent (bought by one of his underlings) onto pieces of silk, shaking it about in the air, and sniffing at it in an attempt to discern its composition. It was no use. He had failed.
As soon as it was late enough in the morning for Mon. Oncle to call for one of his servants he did so. He decided to not bother his apprentice, who would no doubt find the tactic he was about to employ reprehensible. Instead, he sent Silencieux to the Perfumery d'Or in order to buy two pints of l'eau de soi, with which he’d scent the lady's purses. Silencieux was less recognisable than the apprentice anyway, and even if Oncle had accepted defeat he didn't want the whole city to know about it.
Michelle Grenouille witnessed the perfumer's servant visit his rival to buy large quantities of the popular scent, owing to the fact that she took a great interest in much of the comings and goings from Mon. Oncle's perfumery. She felt certain that there were olfactory secrets to be uncovered inside such a shop. Mon. Oncle was a customer of the tanner, also, which provided her with the opportunity to at least speak with the proprietor. This leads us to the last of our trifecta of important events from this period in her life.
When she was sixteen years old, Michelle was sent to make a delivery of leathers to the perfumery for soaking, and it just so happened that this instruction was given on the same day that she witnessed Silencieux's clandestine visit to the Perfumery d’Or. She seized her moment. Mon. Oncle himself let her into his workshop, and as she placed the heavy sheets of leather down in a corner her eyes were drawn to the numerous glass jars on the shelves around her. She stood for a moment by the perfumer’s desk, hypnotised by the glassware housing clear and vibrant liquids by the hundreds, filling her nostrils and assaulting her senses.
“Okay?” Monsieur Oncle said, looking at the lingering girl reproachfully. “Run along home now, little girl.”
She stood her ground, and placed her arms behind her back.
“I can make l'eau de soi for you,” she said, simply. The proprietor gazed at her, aghast. He, like many of the men in Paris, was a fervent believer in the importance of courtesy and respect according to one's class. That this peasant girl from the tanner’s was bold enough to talk to him, a member of the merchant class, in such a manner was an affront.
“Excuse me?” he asked. Michelle Grenouille did not know how to say it any more plainly. She’d never learned how to use language for anything other than utility. Concepts of courtesy and respect, at least relating to vocabulary, were alien to her. So, she simply repeated herself.
“I can make l'eau de soi for you.”
A flash of anger crossed over Mon. Oncle. He stared down at the girl, at her nondescript and frog-like face, and was surprised by her sincerity. Suddenly, he began to laugh.
“Oh, you can?!” he asked, whilst opening the door for her. “Well, perhaps you should go to the Perfumery d’Or. They make a lot of it there, and I’m sure they could use your skilled hands on the production line.”
“If you want me to make something else, I can,” Michelle Grenouille posited, unmoving. “It’s not good stuff. Only, it will save you having to buy it from him, if I made it for you.”
“I should beat you for impudence, girl!” he said. “Does your master know you’re still here? Does he know about your self-professed gifts?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“Well, perhaps he will be your guarantor?” the perfumer asked, finally moving away from the door in order to clear his desk. “I will ignore your rotten attitude, and your disregard of courtesy. I will even let you use my workshop. But, if you can’t make l’eau de soi for me, then your employer will wipe clean my debts to him.”
Michelle Grenouille had no idea how much this equated to, but she had come this far, and she knew that she could do it. She nodded her head, and went to work. Of course, she didn’t know the proper way to construct such a scent, but she had her nose, and her gifts. Gifts that she knew far outweighed those of men like Monsieur Oncle or Monsieur d’Or. Oncle, meanwhile, observed as she reached for the large jar of treating alcohol first, which flew in the face of everything he knew about the process. He thought about stopping her before she’d even started, noting her struggle with the weight of the vat that she carried over towards the workbench. One spillage would be expensive, and she was likely to make many. Surprisingly, though, she reached the desk and partially filled an empty jar with the alcohol. Not a drop was on the floor. Not that it mattered, thought Mon. Oncle, given that the ethanol was to be used at the end of the process. Whatever she was making would be useless, and most likely toxic.
What happened next, though, surprised Mon. Oncle. The young girl quickly searched for and found the ingredients that he had managed to place as components in l'eau du soi's mix, like musk and sandalwood and lavender. Then, she reached for others that remained hidden from him, like oud and labdanum and estragole, that now made perfect sense. Her hands were untrained but skilled and deft. Twenty minutes later, she held out a small bottle to the perfumer.
He took his handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed it in the liquid. After shaking it in front of him, he wrinkled up his nose and sniffed at the air. There was no mistaking the clear, crisp scent of l'eau du soi.
At first, he thought that perhaps she worked for d'Or, but for the peculiar and unclassical way in which she mixed the perfume, and the fact that she'd been making deliveries for the tanner for six years. And why would d'Or want a mole in his shop, anyway? There was, in fact, no other explanation than the truth. He'd come across a prodigy, who'd stumbled into his workshop with leather and proceeded to make gold.
"So?" Mon. Oncle asked. "What is it that you want?"
"To be your apprentice," she answered.
"I already have an apprentice.”
"Can't you have two? I'll work for little. A bed and food."
"I am unmarried, and have no children. My apprentice expects to inherit the shop."
"He can have it."
"Won't your employer mind?"
"I can leave anytime."
She did the next day. Two weeks after Michelle Grenouille had left the employ of the tanner, he contracted emphysema, owing to the hazardous fumes involved in his work. After a short but arduous battle with the disease, he died in the night, with only his new and unfamiliar apprentice as witness.
Michelle moved into the spare room above the Perfumery d'Oncle and met his existing apprentice, who introduced himself as Gerard Filsgris. It was apparent that Gerard had little trust for this newcomer at the beginning, but when she expressed no interest in the perfumery business beyond making scents in the workshop he began to warm to her. And there was no denying her skill, even if her technique was hackneyed. A week wouldn't go by without her developing a new perfume that was more popular and lucrative than the last, and the Perfumery d’Oncle became more profitable than it had been in years.
For Michelle's part, her introduction to Gerard brought with it some semblance of the feelings she'd experienced on her night with Sans Soleil. The apprentice’s odour was more subtle and less triumphant, but weightier, and filled with innocence and hope. This was the first evocation of such dormant feelings since that night three years earlier, and Michelle Grenouille feared that something primal and instinctive and violent would be awakened again. She breathed in deeply, and recalled her horror upon losing Sans Soleil's scent a short time after his essence passed from his body. She was here to learn whatever secrets she could so that this sensation could be preserved. The feral urge to possess this boy's scent was repressed, and Grenouille began to learn her new trade.
Throughout this time, Michelle feared that she would never again encounter the unbridled ecstasy that accompanied Sans Soleil's intoxicating aroma. Only dull, vague allusions presented themselves to her now. There was her fellow apprentice, Gerard, but through repetition his scent became more comforting than dizzying, though there was a recklessness to it that she found alluring. Through the shop she met Monsieur Vérité, a customer who used to be an important man in the city, and who stank of pride. But it was old pride, musky and rank and beyond its best. Monsieur Oncle's rival, Monsieur d'Or, gave off all the same signs as Sans Soleil: triumph, glory, reward… but Michelle Grenouille felt this to be a facade, and merely the result of careful masking through the perfumer's potions, most of which were said to be the result of his apprentice's ideas. She felt that behind the mask there was nothing to him, a feeling which would be vindicated in time.
Although Paris was undoubtedly the home of perfumery in 18th century France, the city of Lille was a close second to it, and it was from here that both Mon. Oncle and Gerard were from. There, Michelle first met Monsieur Nouvelle, a wealthy but wearisome gentleman with whom Oncle had frequent business. Of all the souls in this secondary city, it was M. Nouvelle who most dizzied Michelle Grenouille, but his scent was more reminiscent of her first impressions of Gerard than Sans Soleil. He represented hope and promise, but it was yet unfulfilled, and there was no triumph or pride present in his aroma. Her interactions with him were fleeting, though she felt as though his eyes penetrated her skin… as if he knew her mind. Usually, she was glad to return to Paris.
A few years into her employment with Mon. Oncle, their greatest rival - M. d'Or - suddenly and unexpectedly passed away from a massive brain haemorrhage. Oncle took both of his apprentices and a great number of his servants to the funeral, but spent most of it either feigning respect towards d'Or's grieving widow, or scoping the premises for potential future customers. Michelle was mostly left with Gerard and the others from his household staff.
"Oncle shouldn't be talking to d'Or's customers," Gerard said. "He should be talking to his wife."
"He already paid his respects," said Henri, a young boy who cleaned Oncle's chambers.
"Not to pay his respects," Gerard corrected. "He should be looking at buying the business. At expansion. That's what we'll be doing, Michelle. When he finally goes."
Michelle understood enough about the city and about Gerard to know his meaning, though such plans were of no interest to her. She didn't particularly care about his meagre ambitions to one day sell enough pots of perfume to buy another shop so he could sell more pots of perfume. She wondered how many he would be able to sell without her, anyway. Not very many. Besides, she had much grander designs. She said nothing, and stared at d'Or's corpse. He had a reputation for his exquisite personal odour in life, but it was said that he had defecated in his britches shortly before his brain exploded, and nobody wanted to approach the body because of the stench. Now he smelled of nothing. His essence, as Michelle thought of it, had left his body and would never return to the Earth. She sighed at the sadness of it.
It was on a morning that Autumn that the moment Michelle was waiting for finally arrived. She'd nearly given up hoping for it altogether, as the memory of Sans Soleil's scent faded almost entirely from her mind, and no worthy replacement arrived to fill the void she herself had made. But that moment came. She was in the workshop of the Perfumery d'Oncle, working on the treatment of a new scent that Gerard had been developing for much of the season. Her own work lay neglected in the corner, for she had long ago learned all there was to learn from Oncle and his potions, and so she completed little. She almost sent her vat of ethanol cascading over the wooden floor when it first drifted into her nostrils. Gerard couldn't smell it. His nose was unrefined. But to her it was clear: Sans Soleil had come again.
She hurriedly finished her work as the aroma slowly meandered closer to their workshop. She made up her mind that, as soon as the source turned aside from the street to the Perfumery d'Oncle, she would abandon her post to go and find him. But this never happened. Instead, the scent approached directly, and soon enough Michelle Grenouille's mind was swimming in that familiar ecstacy, in that unending ocean of passive bliss. She closed her eyes. It washed over her. He was outside. Whoever he was.
"Are you okay?" Gerard asked, beholding her shaking. Convulsing, even.
"Can you not smell it?" Grenouille replied. Gerard leant over their mix and wrinkled up his nose.
"It hasn't settled yet," he said. She shook her head and wiped her hands before leaving the workshop, emerging into the store itself just as the bells above the front door rang. M. Nouvelle entered, and immediately she knew that he was who she had smelled.
She controlled herself. She took a seat, placed her hands on her thighs, closed her eyes, and took in a series of deep breaths. Now was not the time to be overcome.
"Ah, Monsieur Nouvelle!" Mon. Oncle said, as he emerged from behind the counter to shake the visitor from Lille's hand. "What brings you to the capital?"
"Business, as usual," M. Nouvelle replied, as Oncle led him to a stool at the counter. Michelle Grenouille sensed the visitor's eyes burning into her. "It seems I'll be here more often, now that I have property in Paris."
Michelle had long been able to compartmentalise smell, in that she was not only able to identify individual aromas within a room, but also each component of that odour. This was even true (usually) in the shop of the Perfumery d'Oncle, which was crammed full of fragrant things, from soaps to lotions to bath salts to, of course, perfumes. Now, though, all that she could smell was M. Nouvelle. The same promise and hope was present as when she'd met him in Lille, only know the promises had been fulfilled, the hopes realised. The strength and triumph and glory of Sans Soleil was here in him, but it was different… oppressive, even. Soleil was a peasant boy, who she felt had been loved or would be loved, but was alone with his thoughts when she'd come upon him. M. Nouvelle's strength was in its prime, and charismatic, and dizzying.
"So we are to be neighbours?" Mon. Oncle asked, whilst he prepared the two of them a drink.
"More than neighbours. Competitors. I have bought the Perfumery d'Or. Though it will be called the Nouvelle-d'Or, when we reopen our doors. I've come with an olive branch… and an offer."
"Go on," Oncle said. He seemed suddenly more guarded, now that he was aware that he was talking to a direct competitor as opposed to a loose ally. Nouvelle, for his part, attempted to appear amicable and casual.
"It's no secret that the Perfumery d'Oncle was once, well… there's no nice way to put it. Nearly out of business. Your ideas dried up. Creativity waned. And then… boop. You hire a new apprentice, and suddenly your fortunes turn."
He had been giving Oncle his full attention until now, as if this was part of his persuasive act. But at the mention of the new apprentice, his eyes flickered onto Michelle.
"I don't suppose you will sell me your whole shop. Though you should. I would keep it on as a separate entity, existing entirely as it does now. But you should at least sell me your apprentice."
Oncle had been busy pouring two glasses of wine, but at the conclusion of Nouvelle's speech he tipped one of them back into the bottle. He drank the other.
"Is this a gag, Nouvelle?" he said. He wasn't smiling anymore. "I won't sell a person. Especially one that is valuable to me."
"How much did you pay the tanner for her?" Nouvelle asked. He was still calm.
"She came to me," Uncle replied, before draining his glass. "There is no price. I wish you all the best with your venture, but you should find your own apprentices."
Nouvelle smiled and nodded, and then got up to leave. Halfway to the door, though, he stopped to pick up a small bottle of l'échouage de la mort, one of her scents. He sprayed it into the air and gently sniffed at it. He smiled wistfully, as if the odour was evoking a long-lost memory.
"Trying to back me into a corner is not wise," he began. "You've survived one dance with insolvency, Oncle, and were saved by the appearance of this prodigy. But how many more winters will you survive? You shouldn't surrender your friends so easily, especially when you cannot even see your own back. You really have to ask yourself… who is the one cornered here?"
With that, Nouvelle left the shop. Michelle Grenouille remained seated until she could no longer smell him. There was no need to chase after him. He had just revealed where he would be. When she managed to control herself, she left Monsieur Oncle's perfumery - where she had been dormant for too long - with none of her possessions. She walked south from the shop, south from the city, south into the hills. Away from civilisation, to be alone with her thoughts and her ideas and her schemes.
She reached a hill that she did not know the name of. It was surrounded by a circle of smaller mounds that were mostly covered in dense thickets of forestry. When she stood upon the foothills and looked up at the peak, she knew that this was the place. She removed her clothes and climbed, until she stood on the summit and felt the blistering gust against her pale skin. There she waited, motionless in the wind, for six hours, until finally - upon concluding that she hadn’t smelled another despicable human for all the time she had stood - she smiled.
Suddenly, she screamed into the descending night, free and alone, for she knew that there was no other soul for miles that could hear her.
A short way down from the summit was a system of caves, in which Michelle found a temporary, damp home for the next two years. Most of the time she spent deep in the cave with her eyes closed, breathing in the aroma of the earth, and thinking. Plots and schemes had been just that for years, whilst she’d been wasting time in the employ of tanners and perfumers, and here, in the heart of the mountain, she would think them into reality. Sans Soleil had come to her again, in the unlikely form of Monsieur Nouvelle, and the possession of his scent was now an obsession that couldn’t be put aside. She left her cave only to forage and hunt for food, both of which she became proficient at, with her excess prey forming the basis for her rudimentary experiments on the extraction of scent. Work she intended on building upon when she finally returned to the city.
Two years is a long time to spend in the wild, and the city of Paris would change a great deal in this time. Without Grenouille in the workshop at the Perfumery d’Oncle, times again became hard, even though Gerard continued to plough on dutifully. Whilst old man Oncle clung to life, he did little work himself and relied heavily on his soul remaining apprentice. Michelle’s departure had hit him hard, and more than just financially. The timing of it obviously suggested to Mon. Oncle that she had taken up with Nouvelle. Weeks and months went by without Grenouille’s reappearance in Paris, and so Oncle concluded Nouvelle must have sent her to Lille, where she was busy making hundreds of new scents that were conspiring to put him out of business.
Contrarily, times were very good for Monsieur Nouvelle, who continued to expand his business through the heart of Paris, and also opened up shops in Lyon, Bordeaux, and Montpellier. He became richer and richer whilst almost every purveyor of scent sold their businesses to him. Other than Oncle, of course, who held out stubbornly whilst his profits dwindled. He kept afloat through sales of Grenouille’s old aromas, which he repackaged and diminished periodically after her disappearance.
It was the winter of 1769 when the third and final act of our story begins. We shift away from Paris and to the south, towards the hills to which Michelle fled but not quite so far, to a village around forty miles from the capital. We will also temporarily remove ourselves from the company of Michelle Grenouille, and Gerard Filsgris, and indeed Monsieurs Oncle and Nouvelle. We join Capitaine Daniel Toneur, one of only two law enforcement officers in the village (along with his brother Doniel) and the highest ranking of the two. Usually, law and order in the French countryside in 1769 might stretch to disputes over cattle or, on a particularly bad day, a member of the peasantry insulting a landowner. It was a simple life, and one that Toneur would've liked to have kept.
Circumstances prevented that, though, on a particularly frosty morning in early December. One of the servants from a farmhold just north of the village was sent to fetch him to 'investigate a killing'. Daniel believed it to be a sheep or a cow, or at worst a horse. But upon arrival he found the farmer's first-born son dead in his quarters. This was his first experience with a dead body, and the smell of it turned his stomach. But he would get used to it. He concluded the killer must've been silent, considering the rest of the family was sleeping nearby at the time. More peculiar was the fact that the victim had been shaved, and there was not a single drop of sweat upon his body. It was almost as if the poor boy had been processed after his death. His name was Monsieur Poussière, and he was the first of many victims snaking up towards the capital.
When Daniel heard there was a second in a village just north of his own, he felt he had no choice but to travel there and speak with the guardsmen. They were even less well equipped than his own settlement, and so he agreed to continue the trail himself. There were a great many more bodies by the time he'd rode his horse all the way to the outskirts of Paris, always one step behind. Still more processed corpses waited for him in the capital. There was nothing he could do there besides inform the guard of the others that had guided his path. The captain of the Parisian Guard himself was to take up the case, given the recent death of Monsieur Vérité, who was once an important man in the city, and whose wife was a close partner of the captain’s. He thanked Daniel for his testimony, and bade him to head back to his own village unburdened of the hunt.
Capitaine Daniel Toneur intended to do just that, and stopped for food in a village that lay on the more direct route he planned on travelling. He placed his horse in the stables and ordered a bowl of cabbage soup, which was hot and flavoursome and almost made him consider moving his family nearer the capital. The food was better up there. He remarked upon his journey, and the fact that he’d always arrived just too late to find this phantom. Ultimately, he’d failed. The killer had made it all the way to the capital unchecked, and would continue the massacre there. There were other victims that Toneur hadn’t even had time to investigate himself. The village he found himself in now had seen two such killings, for instance. But he tried not to think about that. He was to go back to his home, unburdened of the hunt.
It was fortunate that Capitaine Daniel Toneur was dressed in his uniform, for otherwise the stableboy would not have thought to approach the handsome man whilst he enjoyed his cabbage soup. But, he did. The stableboy had spoken to another guardsman on the night that two young peasants were killed in his village.
“Did you find her?” the stableboy asked. Capitaine Toneur looked up at him over his bowl, seeking clarification. “The killer. Did you find her?”
“Her?” Toneur repeated, whilst cocking his eyebrow.
“Yes, her,” the stableboy said, matter-of-factly. “It’s like I told the other one. The other Capitaine, I mean. I spoke to her. Someone I’d never seen before, the morning after the killings. She seemed pleasant enough, but I remembered it because… well, we don’t get many visitors of her sort. We see guardsmen like yourself from time to time. Merchants, maybe. But I’m not even sure what she was. She asked me the quickest way to the capital. I pointed her towards the rue rivière. Even recommended an inn just outside the city walls. She thanked me, and off she went.”
Toneur took a description from the stableboy, as well as the name of the inn. He decided that it was perhaps worth one more foray north, to truly unburden himself properly.
Within the city, a deep panic had descended amongst the Parisians. Word of the killer spread within its walls, accompanied by an intense, foreboding paranoia. Even those that had spent the winter in the city, and couldn't possibly have committed the described atrocities, were not to be trusted. It was said at first that the killer was targeting young men, and so the aristocracy took to hiding away their sons. But then young women, like the Lady Belle la Bete and Mademoiselle Ross (the daughter of the Capitaine of the Parisian Guard, no less), were found dead too, and Vérité was an old man when he was killed. It seemed nobody was safe, and the city surrendered to fear.
You will already have realised, tulip, that Michelle Grenouille is responsible for the string of bodies leading from Daniel Toneur’s home to the capital. We rejoin her on an evening in March, the crescendo of her great work at hand. She felt confident and alive as she entered Monsieur Nouvelle's chambers above the Nouvelle-d'Or. His aroma filled her nostrils, and for a mere moment she struggled to control herself. She let it wash over her in waves, fogging her mind with its sweet, sensational, sudden triumph. And then she remembered herself. She opened her bag and first removed the hammer that she used to make sure he wouldn't wake up. Then she strangled him.
The true work began afterwards. She would not allow herself to experience the same horror as on her night with Sans Soleil, when - after a brief moment of boundless euphoria - his essence left and she was alone and hollow once more. The time for experimentation was over, and she went about processing his body so that she could keep what mattered of it. She first removed his clothes and placed them into an empty compartment in her bag. Next, she shaved his body: first his head and then everywhere else, carefully depositing the follicles into another container. Next, she removed the clean silks from her bag and covered his body in them, as if she were a spider wrapping its prey, or a slave preserving an Egyptian prince. She sat in his bed and waited, until the night was at its deepest. Finally, she unfurled the silks and carefully placed them in another bag, before stowing away all of her materials and looking down at the body. It was nothing to her now. Only a shell.
Afterwards, she went to Monsieur Oncle's workshop and busied herself in her greatest creation. Her key still worked, and part of her wondered if Oncle perhaps left it that way in case she ever wanted to return. She had, but not under circumstances he'd have liked. He, Gerard, and the servants were safely slumbering in the chambers above. This was the easy part. After a pair of hours her work was done. She stored the small, precious bottle safely in the deepest part of the workshop's warehouse, and then thought of sleep.
Michelle Grenouille had lived all of her life as a nondescript being, and so when a peasant stableboy recommended a cheap but pleasant inn just outside the city walls she hadn't thought twice about taking his advice. This is the moment that it becomes bad advice, for waiting in the tavern were Capitaine Daniel Toneur and six members of the Parisian Guard. They found the remnants of M. Nouvelle's processed materials in her bag, and she spent the next, short period of her life in a prison cell.
Michelle Grenouille said nothing at her trial. It took a little over eleven minutes before a guilty verdict was reached.
Two days before her scheduled execution, Michelle received her first visitor besides the steady stream of priests who she'd duly ignored. This one, though, prompted more of a reaction. Gerard Filsgris, now dressed more like a proprietor than an apprentice, walked up to the bars of her cell and positioned himself upon a stool.
"Mon. Oncle died," he said. She had worked that out from his attire. There was a long pause, during which Gerard filled and lit his pipe. Michelle Grenouille breathed in the sweet tobacco, having grown born of the stale, musky odour of her cell. "Did you do it? Nouvelle, I mean."
Gerard hazarded a look in her direction after asking. Her eyes were closed, but she nodded her head.
"Would you have done it to me?" he asked. She was confused by the question. "If Oncle died before d'Or, I'd have made Nouvelle's moves myself. Would've expanded across half of France by now, like he did. I've been wondering if it would've been me you'd bludgeoned, if I was in his place."
"I didn't kill him because he was a successful perfumer," Michelle offered.
"Why did you do it?"
Michelle thought about the question. She had her answers, but doubted Gerard would understand. The night with Sans Soleil still lingered in her mind, even now. The idea of witnessing such strength and glory, and to overcome it… but then to lose the euphoria so soon afterwards. With Nouvelle, she wanted it to be different. It had been different. She thought about the small but precious bottle, stored safely away in the deep recesses of Oncle's - now Gerard's - warehouse.
The elevated apprentice stood from his stool, as if he meant to leave. She hadn't answered his question.
"Gerard," she said, halting him. "I need you to do something for me. Just one more thing."
Two days later, a large crowd waited by the gallows to witness the execution. They came from far and wide: mostly from the south of the city, where the string of murders took place, but also from the north and east and west, where a murmured rumour of this soulless Devil spread upon the wind. They were crammed into the viewing paddocks beneath the bright midday sun, their excitement and anticipation growing too great for them to control.
"Bring her out!" shouted one.
"Break her neck!" called another.
"What are we waiting for?!" asked a third.
Many of them were holding stones, intending to use them as projectiles when she was brought out, hooded and bound, and led to the gallows. There, a man in a hood of his own waited, ready to deliver the blow that would release the pulley and open the trapdoor. Next to him was the Capitaine of the Parisian Guard, the Viscount, and a trio of priests. Each of them had a grave look upon their face, as if they were doing their best to not enjoy the forthcoming justice as much as the gathered mob.
When Michelle Grenouille came before the crowd, though, she was not - as they expected - hooded and bound. Instead, she walked freely, with her hands behind her back and a smile upon her face. There were no guards escorting her, as was obviously customary, and she presented herself as one who wished to be there of her own free will.
This was the moment that the mob was waiting for, when their bloodlust was to spill over upon sight of the killer. But, before they could see her, the baying mob could smell Michelle Grenouille. Or, rather, they could smell the three dabs of her greatest creation, applied sparingly around her neck. The rest of the substance remained safely in its bottle, now within her pocket. When the mob smelled what they perceived to be Michelle Grenouille they ceased to be a mob altogether. They forgot their anger. Before Michelle was even visible, they had all reached out and took their nearest neighbour’s hand.
When they did see her, and the strong, pungent aroma of strength… of vitality… of fulfilled promises and realised hope… when all of that and more filled their nostrils, they forgot themselves completely. Their baying became fawning. Each called out in their own way to her, professing their love. Their senses were dizzied, their heads fogged. She wandered past a renowned and well thought of lady, the daughter of a wealthy merchant in the fur trade, who immediately forgot herself and lunged upon a young peasant man who worked in the stables. He didn’t resist, and the two broke out into wild, passionate embrace.
They were not the only ones. All around Michelle Grenouille, more and more of the assembled justice-seekers surrendered to sudden and unexplained impulses. The Viscount and one of the priests rolled around upon the raised stage, ripping off each other’s clothes and caressing one another’s bodies. The hooded executioner was surrounded by amorous nuns, and the Capitaine of the Guard - who had lost a much-loved daughter to the hands of the killer - was busy declaring his unending and lustful serfdom to Michelle Grenouille.
Michelle stood amongst the hulking mass of people, removed of their clothes and inhibitions. Her left hand remained fixed around the small bottle of the precious liquid in her pocket. She smiled, and then left for the south.
We pick up on a night in early April, 1770, only a pair of short weeks removed from the decadent and unexpected scene at the gallows. We do not return to Paris, though, where our few remaining supporting characters do their best to return to some semblance of normalcy following their orgiastic exploits. Instead, we join a band of vagabonds, gathered around a fire on the outskirts of a village. It just so happened that this is the same village where Daniel Toneur rested his head, truly, at last, unburdened of the hunt.
Our vagabonds number twelve, and they are far from the strength and glory of our characters thus far. Of course, tulips, it is up to you to decide the qualities of these preceding characters, but you will no doubt agree that they outweigh and exceed those of the band we meet now. They are upon the peripheries of the law and of society, just as they sit around their campfire on the peripheries of the village, discussing their past glory. Glory that was to be regained again, if they were to be believed. But, as one's eye scans over them, doubt is introduced into the narrative they spin.
There is the bard, who played his harp and sang to the others of his brief dalliance in the sun.
There was the good man, who too had known glory for a blink of an eye, and related to the song all too well.
The dancer, who knew not what the bard sang about, but danced along hopefully nonetheless.
The old bandit, who did nothing but drink, and looked at the others mistrustfully.
Others, too, who are not described here, but added to the feeling of a sorry, despondent group, down on their luck.
It was upon this group of twelve vagabonds that Michelle chanced. She was travelling southwards, towards the hills, where she intended to live out the rest of her days. She had only come back to the village for the handsome Capitaine, who she remembered from the night her journey towards the capital began, and from her apprehension at the inn. She needn't have bothered, for within the month Toneur rode off one morning towards the sunrise, never to return to the village. They didn't find his body.
It was Michelle Grenouille's intention to walk through this group of downbeats, but remnants of her precious creation were still present upon her person. Although faint and distant, the vagabonds experienced hints of the same elation that had driven Paris wild. It was enough for the dancer to bundle into her, alleging his love and knocking her to the ground. She landed awkwardly upon her hip, and felt the small, precious bottle inside her pocket smash.
A moment later, the other eleven were on her, too, overwhelmed by a sudden and wild euphoria that filled their nostrils and pervaded their thoughts. Three dabs had been enough to instigate Caligulic chaos in Paris. The bottle smashing inspired a lust so strong that the twelve vagabonds quickly descended into twelve cannibals. Their hunger overcame them. They tore Michelle Grenouille apart, and consumed her.
Promo history - volume 80. "Flume."(March 28th, 2022) Thomas West def.Michelle von Horrowitz[FWA World Championship] (FWA: Carnal Contendership 2022).
MICHELLE von HORROWITZ
in [VOLUME EIGHTY] "FLUME."
The water, emerging quickly and noisily from the showerhead, was cold upon her legs, hanging as they were over the side of the bath. The gold plating of her championship belt provided some comfort, too. It was upturned on her stomach, and she found the pressure and weight of the belt as well as the temperature of the metal refreshing. Everything else was blistering hot, and she could feel the sweat emerging from almost every pore upon her body, squealing in disharmony with it, desperate to extract itself in an agitated bid for freedom. She was lying on the floor of the bathroom in her motel. She couldn't quite remember how she’d got there, but imagined she must have positioned herself here because of the soothing effect that the cool tiles had on her pale, burning skin. That sounded like something she'd do. She’d laid here so long, though, that the ceramic floor was now just as hot and cloying as the rest of existence. Another force was pinning her down to them. One that she hadn't the power to resist. She straightened her legs beneath the stream of water from the showerhead, allowing it to trickle over her calves. The lightbulb hung loosely from the ceiling on a frayed black wire, flickering intermittently as the current struggled on through. It scorched her retinas and quickened the pace of the throbbing in her head. She feared her brain was about to leak out of her ears and turned away from the bulb for respite. Sanctuary.
There was none to be found. Through the half-open door she could see a slender rectangle of the grotty bedroom. Stained curtains were drawn across cracked windows. The room's only items of furniture were a small table, upon which sat a disconnected phone, and the old, firm, yet surprisingly comfortable bed. That comfort was reserved for the nights leading up to The Grand March. Tonight, the bed was a sorry second to the tiles on the bathroom floor. She adjusted her championship belt on her stomach as if it were a duvet.
Almost in reply, the woman - the other woman, the one in the bed - slowly turned in her sleep. Half of her left foot had been protruding from beneath the sheets, which she unconsciously rewrapped herself in, in preparation for a few more hours away from this world.
Michelle was surprised that the other woman had come here, but she must have won the argument. She was no doubt staying with the other 'talent' in the four-star hotel that was closed off to the public to accommodate them. Michelle had no intention of going there. It was safer here. She was glad to have won the argument.
When she turned her head to the other side, her nostrils were assaulted by the scent of her vomit in the toilet bowl. This was not what victory should smell like. She reached up with a lethargic arm to flush it away, the sound of the plumbing mechanisms a sudden and unexpected onslaught. She placed her head back on the tiles, her hair drenched with sweat, and closed her eyes. She wondered how she'd got here.
The pressure of the shower faltered, dragging her back into the moment. It gurgledand splutteredand dripped, and then it died away all together. She stared at the showerhead, her eyes narrowing, as if attempting to will it back to life with the power of her mind.
She turned the dial and stared down at the water - mixed with blood from reopened cuts on her abdomen - as it washed around her feet before swirling down the drain. No sudden movements. She'd only left the ring an hour ago, and now was not the time for urgency. She toweled herself down with great care and uncharacteristic patience. She picked her baggiest clothes and slowly pulled them over her still-aching body, her eyes all-the-while trained on the ten kilograms of gold sitting in the opposite corner of the room.
That was what this was all for. Or, more accurately, it had been about the idea that the belt represented. She remembered the last time she'd held it, as she handed it over to the official in Tokyo. That night damaged her, damaged her intentions, and in many ways damaged the belt, too. What was to come next would be even more difficult, with the memories of those failures still fresh in their mind. Fresh in her mind. But it was hers again. At least now the work could begin.
Just as she pulled her second sock on, the door to her locker room swung open and a procession of Nephews entered one-by-one. At the head of the column was Uncle J.J. JAY!, who beamed at Michelle whilst he strode over to her championship belt for an impromptu and unannounced inspection.
"Dreamer! Don't mind if I… ?" he said, trailing off as he picked up the belt and held it in front of his face by one of its straps. "Pretty, yes! Could do with some more pink. But we'll see to that in Brazil, maybe. Thomas, catch!"
Uncle threw the belt up into the air, and West - who was second into the locker room only after their leader - caught it in both hands, with all the fleeting panic and caution that one would display if they were tossed a newborn baby.
"What a weekend, Dreamer!" Uncle continued, as Thomas's glance lingered on the gold for a noticeable and noteworthy moment before he handed it over to Quiet. Her locker room seemed large before the match, but now it heaved with a sea of humanity. Or, in some cases, something close to but not quite humanity. "Six wins for the Nephews! Pretty remarkable, if you ask me! Of course, half of them were Thomas's, but two championships are now with us! I couldn't be prouder!"
He placed one of his hands on Harry's shoulder and the other on Michelle's, and beamed widely and wildly beneath the tentacles of his mask. Quiet was flanked by the podcast host on one side and the young wizard on the other, and behind them the Leviathans loomed awkwardly. Maiden of Death, ь-I, and Gerald were gathered in the corner, whilst Alphonse, Stop Sign #2, and peripheral Nephew Eric Bana lingered around the doorway. She wondered why her tag team partner was amongst the background players. The belt was handed over to Harry, who struggled under the weight of hers and his together.
"Soon enough, Harry will be X Champion, and some combination of us will see to either the old men or the angry stockbrokers," he went on, showing no sign of slowing down. "Hot Nephews Fall might've been a tad optimistic, looking back on things. But I'm feeling quite wonderful about Spring, Nephews!"
There was a general chatter amongst the group that was excited and hopeful in tone. Michelle finished putting on her shoes. Gerald shuffled awkwardly, and several sets of eyes were drawn onto him when he cleared his throat. It was as if he meant to speak, but he didn't.
"The future is bright for you too, GiGi!" Uncle said, sensing the young man's anxiety and striding over to placate him. "The Carnal Contendership, if you want another crack at Dreamer here. Or the North American Championship again. I mean, who else is there? And you've got your tag team match, too."
"Whenever that is," Gerald said, looking up at Dreamer pointedly. She had gladly delayed their tag team championship shot when Stu and Caesar approached her about it, thinking she'd be preparing for a first defence against Mike Parr or Randy Ramon or Krash. Gerald wasn't consulted. She thought he'd understand, and even now reasoned that he probably did, despite his dour and accusatory tone.
"Whenever that is," Michelle repeated. She still felt a little hot from the match, and specifically from having to break up Gerald's sunset flip pin attempt on Nova. That wasn't part of the plan. In fact, it ran in direct contradiction to the plan.
"Look, Nephews," Uncle started, looking between the Connection in a somewhat agitated manner. "Tonight was always going to be difficult for at least one of you. We should be thankful that both of you don't feel this way! The victor is in this room. That's all that matters. It's all that matters tonight, and it's all that will matter in Indianapolis, too…"
As he delivered this last line, Uncle looked from Gerald over to Thomas, who was still examining the World Championship belt from over the shoulders of the Leviathans. It was unclear if the podcast host registered the comment.
"Now, what do you say we go and celebrate?" Uncle asked, returning to a central position in the room (its focal point, naturally) and rubbing his hands together. "I know Gator Guy wants to go to the casino on Deltranox Alpha-4, but I'm suggesting we save that until the end of the night. There's an end of the world party in the Gull System. Star's going supernova. Should be a blast! Or we could train? Tenkaichi Budokai isn't long away at all now, Nephews!"
The group exchanged hurried and private conversations, clarifying their preferences with one another. All except Gerald, who remained solemn and silent, until he finally stepped forward to bring them back to attention.
"Not tonight," he announced, his hands stuffed in his pockets and his eyes directed at the floor. "Not for me. I'm just going back to the hotel. My head kinda hurts."
"I'll give you a lift," Thomas put in, removing his car keys from his pocket and jangling them in the Daredevil's direction. "You might be concussed. Probably shouldn't be driving that Kawasaki tonight…"
The two filed out, with Gerald offering her a weak smile as he disappeared out of the door. Thomas didn't turn back at all, as if he were Orpheus, and worried that his title shot might disappear.
"Well, Dreamer?" Uncle asked, turning back towards her. "What do you think?"
”Same as Gerald, tulip," she offered, whilst standing up and collecting her belt from ÑŒ-I. "Early night."
"Suit yourself," Uncle answered, whilst moving towards the door and taking Harry under his wing. "We'll see you in a few days, Dreamer. Now, Harry, have you ever been to an end of the world party? Probably not. You gotta keep your wits about you, but a Gullanese woman's foot is really quite something…"
JAY!'s monologue was muffled when the door slammed shut behind him, and his voice trailed off into the distance as she settled back down onto her bench. She was still holding the belt. It seemed heavier than it was a year before.
A knock interrupted her thoughts.
A knock interrupted her malaise. She had no ambition to stand up from the bathroom tiles any time soon. It had taken a few minutes, but eventually her intentful staring paid off and the stream of water re-emerged from the showerhead. After all that effort, she didn't rush to give up her hard-won position upon the floor, the refreshing, ice-cold blast of water running over her legs and numbing her from the bottom up.
The second knock seemed to bring all feeling back to her, and she groaned at the audacity of it.
The third knock prompted her to uneasily and unevenly drag herself to her feet, turn the shower off, and cover up with a towel. When she was lying on the floor she'd lost half a kilogram in sweat, but now - as she stepped barefoot over the moist carpeting of the bedroom - she shivered as a biting chill passed through her bones. Her head still throbbed. Her body ached. It was all part of the same problem.
She reached the door in time to interrupt the fourth knock.
"Oh, good morning, dear!" said the man on the other side of it, his voice dripping with a southern accent. He was middle-aged and heavyset, and what was left of his hair sat in clusters around his ears and under his chin. He was red in the face through the effort of his quite extraordinarily large smile, which Michelle felt herself unwittingly reciprocating. "I'm sorry to disturb you. I was just next door and, well, between you and me, dear…"
Here, the man leaned in towards her. He was close enough so that she could smell tobacco, rum, and egg mayonaise on his breath. She turned her head away, and as she did Michelle noticed that he held a small, cardboard box in his right hand. She had to presumeit was cardboard for the outer faces had been smothered in layers of masking tape, but the weight of it and the inferred fragility from the manner in which this amiable interloper held it suggested it was so. He continued in a whisper, as if he didn't want to wake the sleeping mound of bedsheets behind her or their other neighbours along the corridor.
"Well… I heard an awful lot of noise in the middle of the night when you came in. Not that it's any of my business. You’re young and you're free and all! But, just now it sounded like someone was barfing up half of their internal organs, and I thought maybe I'd better check if you were okay before I went ahead and rushed out…"
He stared only at Michelle, and although his eyes were sunken into his bloated cheeks and overhanging forehead she could tell that they were warm and kind. He wore a beige suit and held his box a little away from his side. In his other hand was a brown, leather briefcase.
"I'm fine," Michelle offered, after having to teach herself how to speak from scratch again. The focus it took did little to quell the storm brewing in her head. "Thanks, but really… you didn't have to."
"Nonsense!" the man bellowed, forgetting about his whisper altogether. "What's to say we can't be neighbourly, even if it's only for one night?"
The silence seemed to stretch on forever, and she wondered if he was waiting for a response. She didn't have one for him.
"Well, if you're fine, I'll be off," the businessman said, standing motionless with his box and his briefcase. "Those washing machines aren't going to sell themselves."
He let out a chuckle, but still didn't move.
"That's a joke," he explained. "Because I sell printing toner. Not washing machines."
Michelle smiled awkwardly and, with the man still beaming widely in front of her, eventually pushed the door to. She pressed her ear against it to hear him stomp away down the corridor, and when she felt confident that he’d removed himself from her vicinity she returned to the bathroom, where she stood in front of the large mirror that had been drilled onto the wall above the sink. It wasn’t quite full length, and cut off just below her thighs, but Michelle removed her towel and allowed her eyes to examine the somewhat dilapidated figure that stared back at her. She was used to bruises and scars, and ran her fingers over a fresh patchwork of purplish-blue and red that spread across her left hip and much of her abdomen. She was gaunt, too: her sustained weight loss over the past half a year was the result of a lack of serious training and a sizable cocaine habit. More bruises covered her right thigh and her neck, which she rotated in a useless attempt to loosen it up and free it of its aches. Her short, blonde hair was stuck down to her forehead and neck by a thick layer of sweat, and her eyes were tired and old.
Her hand pressed down upon the most prominent cut on her hip bone and threatened to reopen it. The pain seared up through her body and distracted her from the headache, if only for a moment. Her coarse fingertips continued to brush over the soft, tender skin on her lower stomach, coming to rest in the edges of her pubic hair. As the lightbulb once again flickered above her, her eyes were drawn to a momentary shimmer of silver in the thick, dark hair between her fingers. She thought it a trick of the light, but closer inspection made the realisation unavoidable. Sitting proudly and obnoxiously amongst the thick matting of black strands was a single, knowing grey.
She attempted to subdue the sudden, mounting horror. It was no use. It overcame and overwhelmed her in an instant. She closed her eyes tightly, but against the black backdrop of her subconscious a single grey hair danced elegantly under a flickering spotlight. It bowed at her when it was finished, goading her with courtesy. She sat down on the toilet and prodded at the offending follicle with clumsy digits, questioning everything from the duration of its stay upon her person to the nature of her own mortality.
She thought of Thomas West. It wasn’t immediately clear to her why her mind made this leap, but there he was, staring back at her with his toothy, devious grin. Her relationship with the Nephews wasn’t something she really enjoyed examining too closely. They were, after all, a means for escapism, and such devices do not bear much scrutiny. Gerald was somewhat different. Her bond with him had existed before either one of them had even heard of Uncle. Perhaps it was stronger then, too. JAY!, by sheer force of character alone, had made an impression upon her psyche, also. As for the rest of them? She didn’t really spend too much time thinking about Quiet, or Harry the Sane Wizard, or any of the others including the podcast host outside of the hours she spent in their physical company.
The podcast host. A more suitable and impressive moniker was now available in the form of number one contender, though she still used the previous, more dismissive descriptors in her internal monologue. A week ago, she felt confident that she would be World Champion again, but her knowledge didn’t extend to her first challenger. She thought often during these days about the White Wolf and the Rockstar. She imagined that they shared her hunger to return to this spot… her sense of injustice at being dethroned before they could really get going. And she thought of Chris Peacock, a man with whom she shared a fleeting and regrettable acquaintance with a long time ago. He was building a head of steam over on the purple brand, albeit at the expense of invalids and irrelevants. And, of course, she had been thinking about Mike Parr, and the battles they’d shared twelve months ago. More than that now. That was difficult to believe, and the fast movements of time only served to amplify the grey hair’s mockery. NOLA still felt like yesterday, and the idea of picking up where they left off was an attractive one. Or perhaps it would be someone fresher. Kleio, maybe. She had been threatening to make waves for quite some time now, and the thought of an encounter in Indianapolis with the young Brazilian was now more frequently imposing itself upon her.
As she thought about these hypothetical challengers, strong and young and proud, her fingers and eyes alike brushed through the black hairs on the patch of soft skin below her stomach. Her mind raced to challengers of the past. To Chris Kennedy, and Bell Connelly, and Jon Snowmantashi. Three figures that had stolen so much of her thought and her time since she’d returned to the Big Tent. She failed to beat all three when it really mattered, and they stood above her and around her like monoliths still, imposing and ominous, life breathed into memory.
But Thomas West…
She reached for the pair of tweezers that sat on the top of Natalie’s wash-bag, and with a deft movement of her hand removed the errant grey.
Michelle didn’t think the queue outside a club was a particularly appropriate place to be taking care of stray hairs upon one’s eyebrow, but she watched Natalie do just this none-the-less. She had a small pocket mirror open in front of her and delicately removed those strands she felt weren’t adding anything to her face as a whole. When she’d concluded the process, she fluttered her eyelashes in the direction of her own reflection before placing the mirror back into her handbag. She turned to Michelle with a smile.
“How do I look?” she asked, as the pair shuffled forward to the front of the line. The bouncer placed his thick arm in front of them without a word.
“Drastically different,” Michelle clarified. She wasn’t really looking. She stared past the bouncer and down the black staircase that led towards the cellar whilst adjusting the straps of her rucksack. The belt felt heavy. They were let past the bouncer and to the bag-checkers, who were reluctant to allow them entry given the wash-bag and change of clothes in Natalie’s bag and the championship belt in Michelle’s. A few hundred dollar bills covered a booth and allayed their fears, and they were led down the black staircase into a vast, dingy basement where half of Chicago’s underbelly was currently housed. Nobody was dancing, instead choosing to stare passively at the imported European DJ who was listlessly spinning records on the stage. The pair were taken to the foot of a spiral staircase which led up to their booth, one of around half a dozen in total that were suspended on platforms above the dance floor. Between each booth was a cage, a dancer - naked other than an elaborate Madi Gras mask - plying their trade dispassionately but dutifully behind the bars.
“Who told you about this place? Quiet?” Natalie asked, only half rhetorically, as her eyes traced around the mostly-motionless twenty-somethings on the floor below them. Most of them wore black, some of them leather, all of them were younger than Michelle. She spied a waitress beginning her way up their spiral staircase and watched her wind up towards them. Dreamer ordered for both of them before reclining into a deep and comfortable chair. She allowed the electronic music to wash over her, for a moment quite content that everything was just fine. That was about as much as anyone could hope for. She would’ve closed her eyes, and maybe even gone to sleep, but for Natalie’s insistence on keeping her conscious. “I saw them leaving your locker room, you know? Thomas and Gerald first. Then the rest of them. Everything okay?”
Michelle shrugged. The image of the ring announcer waiting around a corner for the Nephews to disperse so that she could knock on was an amusing one.
“Not exactly my place to say anything,” Natalie started, as a pair of beer bottles and a pair of champagne flutes were placed on the table between them. The New Yorker quickly picked the fizzed drink up and took a greedy sip. Michelle sensed she was about to ‘say something’, whether or not it was her place to do so. “But I’m not sure if Uncle and those things of his are the best company to be keeping.”
“You prefer Toner, and his lot?” Michelle asked, absently. She was watching the DJ as she leant an ear into her headset, as if listening closely for something unexpected.
“Maybe,” Natalie said, aloofly. “He’s keen on you, at least. I’m not sure the same is true of Uncle.”
“Is that envy?”
“Green’s your colour, not mine.”
“Uncle’s not the only one in the group,” Michelle said. She was conceding that there was truth in her suggestion that JAY! didn’t exactly have her back. The cephalopod's motives were usually a riddle, and frequently one without a satisfactory answer. “There’s Gerald.”
“And Thomas…” Natalie interjected. She let that hang in the air between them.
“Since when were you concerned about the company I keep?” Michelle queried, becoming agitated. The wounds from tonight’s match and the fifty before it flared up and gnawed at her.
“Relax,” Natalie insisted, whilst leaning back in her chair. “You’re meant to be celebrating.”
She drained her flute, and then started on Michelle’s.
“You should just order the bottle.”
An hour and two bottles of champagne later, the pair were pressed against one another in the tight confines of a toilet cubicle. They could still hear the muffled DJ set leaking into their sanctuary, as well as the standard comings and goings of a nightclub bathroom. Michelle dug her key deeply into the mound of white powder within the small, plastic bag, held delicately between them with her thumb and forefinger. She held it up in front of Natalie and stared into her big, brown eyes, unblinking and focussed as she sniffed the powder and licked her lips. Michelle kissed her with force, backing her into the side of the cubicle with a gentle clatter.
“Be careful,” Natalie said, as Dreamer bit the other’s bottom lip, gently at first but harder as she tried to pull away and eliciting a gentle, quiet groan. Michelle backed off to let Natalie wrestle with the button on the front of her jeans whilst she delved down into the plastic bag once more with her key. As the stuff roared through her, she felt her jeans unclasp and Natalie’s long, cold fingers running over the network of disfigurations on her left hip. Her tongue was on her neck, and Michelle closed her eyes tightly to soak in the girl and the moment.
As she pulled up from the sink and the small, yellow-ish line that she’d prepared for herself on top of it, she couldn’t help but contrast the feeling she had now to last night’s euphoria. Her stomach was sort of hollow, and as she stared into the dead and black recesses of her eyes she found herself struggling to identify them as her own. Last night, the coke had served to amplify the celebration. It formed a comfortable, white blanket upon which she would lie for her coronation. This morning, its primary purpose (its only purpose) was to delay the oncoming dread. A pitiful and desperate attempt to fill the hollow space in her lurching stomach with something… anything…
In the mirror, she observed her hunched posture and the manner in which her clothes sat uneasily upon her body. She also noticed that her sweater was on back to front, and pulled the hood up so as to cover her face and block out existence, if only for a moment. She breathed in deeply, allowing the thick, black fabric to clog her airways. Finally, when there was nothing else for it, she pulled her arms back through the sleeves and swivelled the garment around on her torso. One more glance in the mirror. She wasn’t ready for the day.
Natalie still slept soundly when she shuffled back across the carpet towards the door, where her shoes waited for collection. She sat on the floor with her back against the wall whilst she pulled them on, gazing up at an exposed arm that found its way through the folds of the duvet. The hand seemed to be extended towards Michelle, and for a moment she felt like taking it in her own. But then she opened the door to leave.
Her progress was stayed at the threshold. In front of her in the corridor, on the ground before her open door, sat the same box that her concerned neighbour had held a little away from his body just a short time earlier. She stared up the corridor towards the stairs, half-expecting to see the heavyset man with his beaming smile and his rosy red cheeks glancing back at her. There was nothing but the stained, off-white walls and the dated carpeting. And, of course, the black box.
“We can’t take that,” the young woman on reception, Clarice according to her name-badge, was rather unhelpfully explaining to Michelle. “We don’t keep any luggage for guests here at the motel. Too many incidents. Drugs. Weapons. That sort of stuff.”
The receptionist chewed her gum and stared at Michelle with a bored countenance. The Dutch woman had very little interest in the motel's luggage policy.
“I don’t want to leave it,” Michelle explained, impatiently. “Somebody already has. The man in the room next to me. Room 42. He left it outside my door.”
“Then maybe he wanted you to have it,” Clarice suggested, with a gentle shrug of her shoulders. “Either way, we can’t take it.”
“Room 42?” another voice asked. A second receptionist emerged from the back office with an equally bored expression as the first. Her name was Yelena and she spoke with a European accent which Michelle hoped (incorrectly) would endear her towards her. “Big guy? Red face?”
Michelle nodded her head. She placed the box on the counter, only for Clarice to push it back towards her side, as if to make clear who it belonged to.
“He said he was on the 11:04 to Nashville from Union Station. Maybe try and meet him there,” she said, before pausing to clarify. “Union Station, not Nashville. He wanted to see Willis Tower before he went back home but didn’t know if he’d have enough time after his meetings. He sold washing machines, I think.”
“Printing toner,” Michelle corrected. Yelena narrowed her eyes, in deep thought.
“No, I think it was washing machines,” she mused, before turning around and disappearing into the back office.
She walked from the motel to a nearby cafe with the box held out in front of her, her eyes unwilling or unable to stray from the thick coating of masking tape that had been applied around it. She sat in a corner booth with the box on her table, and ate her dry toast and drank her bitter coffee whilst allowing herself to get lost in its blackness. The longer she stared, the more she was drawn into it, until the black spread itself out across her entire perception. For a while this was comforting, but soon enough a single grey hair appeared, beginning its familiar and sordid dance. She looked away and lost her appetite.
She arrived at Union Station an hour before her nameless neighbour was due to travel back towards home (she assumed) on the 11:04 to Nashville, and positioned herself on a bench near the entrance and in sight of a large, looming clock. She stretched out to wait, lighting a cigarette and watching the faces of those coming in and out of the station with a sort of morbid and detached curiosity. She waited.
Waiting was not, she thought, something that one could be good or bad at. She exhibited very little patience, of course, but a long wait was something generally imposed upon you that required enduring as opposed to overcoming. Regardless of how one approached such an enforced slumber, and regardless of how much patience one was able to conjure up in the face of it, the wait remained the same. One can force a way, perhaps, but patience only acts as an inhibitor to progress, not a catalyst for it. Michelle had known this for a long time even before she re-joined the Big Tent, and right now her mind was dragged back to the lengthy wait that she endured in-between her debut and last year’s Back in Business. Eighteen months. No weeks off, other than those forced upon her by management. And only when she’d proved herself against the entirety of the FWA’s roster in the Carnal Contendership was she finally deemed credible enough to challenge Saint Sulley’s monopoly.
Now? Well, the landscape had changed. Michelle found it difficult to decide whether it had changed for the better. She ran through the host of championship defences - few successful and many unsuccessful - that she’d been a part of or witnessed over the last year. Back in Business, the Anniversary Show, Lights Out, Fallout 007 and 008, Mile High, Meltdown X and XIII, and finally The Grand March. When men like Chris Peacock complained about a lack of opportunity she couldn’t help but scoff. She’d paved the way for this entitlement, she knew, by rallying against the closed off old boy’s club that the World Championship scene used to be. A year’s worth of Saint Sulley and Mike Garcia, coupled with her incessant rambling on the topic (as well as the incessant rambling of other, like-minded individuals) was enough to affect change, though it was quite possible an overcorrection had been made. Peacock had been given plentiful opportunities. The whole roster had.
Michelle von Horrowitz. Danny Toner. Randy Ramon. Jeremy Best. Konchu Hao. Krash. Gerald Grayson. These were not all of the names of those who had earned championship opportunities over the past year, but they were the ones who’d received their first during that time. As a direct result of Michelle kicking down the door when her knocks went unanswered. The trogs in the crowd might boo and hiss, but that didn’t really matter to her. She knew what these men owed to her. How much of this new landscape was thanks to her own heavy hands. Derision was fuel for the raging fire.
This new landscape that she had painted paved the way for Thomas West falling with style into his current position. She didn’t hold it against him. It would be hypocritical of her, after spending so much of her early career raging against the un-inclusive machine, to begrudge him this opportunity. Thomas was a man who, at least according to himself, held the secrets of time in the palm of his hands, and he had used the King of the Deathmatch tournament as a catalyst for a fast-forwarding of his own painfully slow timeline. He had waited long, also, and his progress was so painstaking and incremental that he’d had to pitch his flag to another. She contrasted this to her own reasons for assimilating into Uncle’s ensemble. Thomas was there to advance his own ambitions. She was there to fill the time. She didn’t know which was more pitiful.
Still, there was a danger in the sudden lurch forward that Thomas had taken. Just ask Alyster Black. She remembered the moment when he had skipped the line and leapt ahead of many more qualified challengers for Saint Sulley shortly after his debut. More qualified, not more worthy. Black had since shown himself to be a worthy adversary for Sulley, and one that the then-King was lucky to escape with his crown intact. But these conclusions regarding Alyster’s credentials were only drawn retrospectively, and many - Dreamer included - disregarded the masked man at the time as an upjumped pawn. Earning his reputation since had only been made more difficult by this early failure (a grand, ambitious failure, but a failure nonetheless) and the prevailing opinion of him as a weak, lazy defence. Thomas was a smart man, and an ambitious one. He would have considered all of this, and as a result the throwaway defence would be weighty and lofty in his mind. The banana skin seemed to block the whole road.
There was also the fact that, although it was clear Thomas West had benefited directly from this new landscape, so had she. The days after Tokyo still lay heavily upon the corpse of her subconscious. She remembered the pitiful days she’d spent in Japan following the most recent of her abject, colossal failures. She could still feel the outpouring of emotion that she’d experienced in some nameless city park, her stomach lurching, her head throbbing, fists clenching and tears welling… the overwhelming sense of shame, of loss, of defeat. It had taken her weeks to steady herself, whilst bedding down in a lengthy tryst with Truth and waiting for Gerald to arrive on the back of his white horse to save her. She’d expected to be away from the top of the mountain and the gold belt that currently resided in her rucksack for quite some time. But Russnow, in the context of the new landscape, had other ideas. And here she was.
And, of course, these memories of Tokyo… the phantoms of past failures, rearing their heads to mock and taunt Michelle as she embarked on this second attempt, this do-over, this mulligan… they served only to steel her in the face of this first, flimsy test.
Thomas West was nothing. Michelle von Horrowitz was everything.
The belt, within her rucksack and rested upon her knees, felt heavier than it did a year ago.
11:04 came and went, and so did the train. The black box remained uncollected on the bench next to her. She sighed, lit another cigarette, and stood up to leave.
“You got one of those for me?”
The words fell out of Natalie’s mouth as the pairing emerged from the club. Michelle was busy removing a cigarette from her pack and dutifully retrieved one for the other, who took it greedily and placed the wrong end into her mouth. Michelle was unsure if this was for comic effect, and took it from her lips with a smile before repositioning it correctly and lighting both. Natalie let out a delicate cough, her lungs struggling under the unfamiliar weight of the Camel.
“I don’t know how you do this all day,” Natalie said, whilst staring at the cigarette with dissatisfaction.
“Dedication,” Michelle answered, with a shrug. “Commitment.”
They disappeared into an alley down the side of the club and indulged in one more line that Michelle racked up on top of a dumpster with the other’s credit card. It felt more luxurious than the library card she usually used. One more turned to two more turned to three four five more and the two wandered (wondered?) out of the alleyway with a lighter and more breezy (breezier?) and some would say more real perspective on reality but that was not for them to judge they were only in the moment striding walking walking striding through the streets and michelle at least always thinking thinking thinking
thinking of kennedy and what he took and where he is now and why he isn’t here and with her and whether all of this meant more to her than it ever did to him and if he’d come back to her come back to her come back
thinking of bell too (come back to her) because the links were too obvious and she couldn’t consider kennedy without bell or bell without kennedy any more (anymore) even though there was a time when it was bell and only bell and always bell but the mind lies and the mind tricks and every thing (everything) washes away erodes disappears it all washes away erodes disappears eventually won’t ever come back some parentheses just won't close
jaw hurts stop clenching stop moving just hold it still but not like that your mouth is open you look ridiculous close your mouth jaw hurts stop clenching stop moving
thinking of gerald safely soundly sweetly sleeping like a baby innocent naive and pure was this condescension what was this? what is this? gerald was difficult to place even now with the clarity of this moment and the clear air and the gentle breeze and the night and gerald
uncle and quiet and harry and thomas and thomas and thomas thomas thomas tom he was here now closer than the rest of them and he was nothing to her nothing to anyone (any one)
the lake, the lake with natalie, the lake under the stars with natalie, the lake under the stars at the end of the night with natalie, nothing but the lake under the stars at the end of the night with natalie
concrete beneath you stars above you
so many stars
concrete beneath me stars above me
and stars stars stars so many stars against a pitch black and pressing background
stars
So many stars.
They lay there for what felt like a really long time. She thought Natalie had fallen asleep, but was corrected by a fresh line of questioning.
“Why do they call you Dreamer?” she asked. She was slurring her words, and drifting in and out of consciousness.
“I dream a lot,” Michelle explained, rather simply. Natalie thought about this for more than a moment.
“And how do they know that?”
“I used to talk about it quite a bit,” Michelle said. “But not anymore. My dreams belong to me.”
Lake Michigan stretched out before her and towards the horizon once again, but now the sun was in place in its midday apex above the water. The sky was grey and overcast, a thin layer of cloud trying but failing to block out the light. A small pile of stubbed out cigarettes lay strewn about her feet on the concrete.
The box sat a metre away from her.
She lit another cigarette, and watched on as a young woman on rollerblades slowly approached. She caught Michelle’s eye and smiled, before coming to a gradual halt in-between Dreamer and the edge of the lake.
“You got another cigarette?” the girl asked. Michelle offered her the pack, and then lit the end of it for her. The girl stared out at the water and sucked at the end of the filter.
The silence hung heavily, but Michelle wasn’t uncomfortable.
Eventually, the girl turned back towards her.
“What’s in the box?” she asked, without looking at it.
“I don’t know,” Michelle answered.
“Is it yours?”
Dreamer glanced at the box. She had to think hard about the question, which hurt her head.
“I don’t know,” she repeated.
The girl on the rollerblades held Michelle’s gaze for a moment, her expression unreadable but passive and cold. She took another drag of her cigarette, and then continued to skate along the edge of the lake.
Promo history - volume 81. "Disconnect." (w/ Jam)(May 6th, 2022) Michelle von Horrowitz and Gerald Grayson def. Joe Burr and Lizzie Rose [Tag Team Match] (FWA: Meltdown XIV - Homecoming: Brooklyn).
the GRAYSON & von HORROWITZ connection
in ”DISCONNECT.”
***
“Pass me a guy peg.”
“What the fuck is a guy peg?”
“The long, metal one.”
Michelle looked down at the collection of long, metal objects in front of her, still none-the-wiser as to which of them her tag team partner was in need of. With an audible and reprehensible huff, Gerald let go of the cable he was currently holding in order to collect the guy peg himself. She looked at the thing in his hand as he carried it back to his previous position and noted the arbitrary, minor differences between a guy peg and a regular peg.
“I thought you’d been camping before?” he asked her, whilst using his boot to force the spire down into the dry earth.
“I have,” she replied, absently, and fidgeted around in her pockets for her rolling materials. She hadn’t enough tobacco, weed, or cocaine to last more than a night, and hoped Gerald didn’t plan on elongating their impromptu and - at least to her - surprise camping trip beyond that. “I just don’t know the terms. Camping is one of those things that doesn’t need nomenclature but has it anyway.”
Gerald nodded, though she wasn’t particularly sure if he was listening. He stepped back with his hands on his hips to inspect his handiwork. The tent was now erected, under the overhanging branches at the edge of what looked a pretty meagre forest, with its ziplock door peering out over the rolling hills and towards the sunset. She didn’t know where they were. She’d resisted his bright idea to blindfold her but ignored the road signs on route anyway.
Did you bring beer?” she asked him. He turned to her with a smile, before throwing his car keys into her grasping left hand.
“In the trunk,” he clarified. She hurried off to the vehicle and pulled up its hind door. Peering back at her were two crates of Heineken, eighteen bottles in each, along with two packs of Camels. She smiled. No coke, of course. But where would Gerald find coke?
“You could’ve asked Toner or someone to find me some coke,” she complained, having worked out where Gerald could’ve found coke. She sensed his judgement as she lugged the beers over from the car to the tent. She tore open the corner of the first and cracked a bottle with her lighter.
“I’m not travelling over state lines with cocaine,” Gerald answered, turning slightly paler in the process.
“You just did,” she shot back, and continued before he could respond to that. “Some weed then. Uncle can get weed. Hell, Lizzie Rose could probably get weed. It’s probably legal here, anyway. What state are we in?”
“No weed,” Gerald answered, more as a statement than an instruction. “Besides, it’s those sort of excesses that brought you to this position anyway.”
“Brought me to what position?” she asked, with an eyebrow cocked. “You mean camping? Is this an intervention, Gerald?”
“No,” he replied, slowly and carefully. “I don’t mean camping.”
“Then what do you mean?” she hounded.
Gerald paused. She could tell he was reluctant to broach the matter that he’d brought her here to discuss. At least whilst the sun still shone.
“Maybe we should talk about it later,” he said, at length. “A walk first, I thought?”
“Great idea,” she said, with a forced and insincere smile. “What time shall we meet back here? For our talk by the campfire?”
“Don’t mock, Michelle,” he replied. She thought it almost a plea. “I thought we could walk together.”
“I’ll go alone,” she answered. “I need to organise my thoughts.”
She reached down to the crate and collected another quartet of Heinekens, which she placed into her recently-emptied rucksack. Her decisiveness and her derision elicited a deep, almost mournful sigh from her partner.
“Okay,” Gerald said. She was already half-way towards the brook that ran from the woods a few metres from their tent.
***
GERALD.
He decided to walk in the opposite direction from Michelle, and stuck to the line of the trees for a while as he tracked northwards. Occasionally, he looked out over the rolling hills to check on the location of the sun, but it generally seemed to be in the same position each time and eventually it began to hurt his eyes. He stopped looking at the sun.
Collecting a stick from the undergrowth of the nearby forest to swipe at the high grass, and then plunging into the thicket, brought back memories of similar walks he’d taken on similar camping trips as a young boy, and later as a young man. In truth, he hadn’t particularly enjoyed the concept of camping until he had grown into the latter. His younger self was an outdoorsman in an exclusively different, more extreme manner, and only as his tally of years grew did he begin to appreciate the quieter, more subdued elements of the world. He hoped that this would appeal to Michelle’s propensity for solitude, but hadn’t factored in that his presence would disrupt that.
He emerged into a clearing and paused to listen to the birds. The birds, and a babbling brook that meandered somewhere in the vicinity, anonymous and hidden. For a moment, Michelle was absent from his mind, but when he drew this conclusion she was right there again. She blocked out the sun.
There had been some good times since he’d moved to Meltdown and reunited with Dreamer. Great times, even. Tag Warz itself was a huge moment for the team, and their success in it was crushing and unanimous. In the ring, they were virtually unstoppable. As Gerald plunged on into the trees again, he found himself reliving the victories over the five different teams thrown together to face them. Jailhouse Blues had capped it all off nicely. That was his moment. Michelle let her obsession with Cyrus boil over, and got herself eliminated early off the back of it. It was him who had to claw his way back from the brink. For the team. It should have been their finest moment. The glue that bound them together for the next fifty matches.
But instead, the only adhesive they had was Uncle and his Nephews, who held them together despite the drastic and numerous differences between the two of them. At least outside of the ring. Since Mile High, JAY! had always been there. Every week, without fail. And where would they be if he hadn’t been? Gerald doubted they’d have lasted even this long.
Quite suddenly, Gerald stopped walking. He held his stick aloft, above the high grass in which he stood. His face grew more pale. His mouth stood ajar.
This sudden shift in demeanour, from aloof and absent-minded to attentive and arrested, was brought about by the only sound that Gerald could hear other than his internal monologue. A few metres from him, amongst the sea of high grass beneath the forest, the distinct sound of a rattle emerged.
He stood still, attempting to locate the source and, when he had, he backed away carefully. He’d read enough about rattlesnake safety to know that, sometimes, it’s better to pick your battles. Love to fight another day. And other such platitudes.
Still he heard the rattle. He felt vulnerable. He felt like prey.
In truth, the rattlesnake had as little interest in him as he did in it. Less so, even, for the snake felt no fear around Gerald. Perhaps it even sensed the young man’s anxiety, for it lingered in his proximity for longer than Gerald liked or expected.
The man’s fear was a result of his mind’s conditioning. The way he had been trained to think by his exploits in his day-to-day. He expanded on this thought. Part of him felt that it didn’t really matter who held the tag team belts. Stu and Caesar beat a weakened Golden Rock and then the same trio he and Michelle tore through during Tag Warz. Hollow accomplishments. Every fibre of his being felt that The Connection were the premier team in the FWA. The Men Out Of Time (which was, he felt, an altogether inferior name than The Connection, but that is a tangent that we don't have time for) held the belts for only as long as Dreamer and The Daredevil were delayed in being given what they’d earned. And every team, Meltdown or Fallout, was fully aware of this fact.
That strength weakened them. They were compromised, just as he was by the incessantly ongoing rattle, which still burst upon the shores of his ears as he backed further and further from its den. Lizzie Rose and Joe Burr were two of many snakes circling The Connection, and their position as the champions elect, and he knew that they were interchangeable with the others. Two more snakes that would eventually have to rise above the high grass, and present their heads to be cut off. But many more still circled, their names veiled but their intentions plain.
It didn’t matter. The Connection was on a course for implosion, anyway. This much was clear to him. He didn’t know if Lizzie and Joe would be the catalyst for that doom, or if it would be the next two serpentine challengers that were lined up for them a little further through the woods.
Eventually, the rattling relented. The beast slithered away.
Gerald turned and walked at a swift pace towards the brook. He followed it up an incline and into a clearing where the ceiling of forestry relented. Twilight was finally upon them. Or him, more specifically. There was no reason for him to continue thinking of himself and Michelle in tandem. At least for the time-being.
A short while and a difficult walk later, he emerged from the trees into rockier terrain, where the source of the brook finally became apparent to him. A large, clear, and deep pool was only a few metres in front of him, and beyond that a small but fast-flowing waterfall. He took in a deep breath, mostly to clear his lungs of the heavy, almost murky air ever-present in the woods. His memory of the forest painted it as denser than it actually was. Without much more thought, he took off his clothes and lowered himself into the cold, clear water.
With his back against a rock and his feet floating on the pool’s surface, he closed his eyes and tried to map out the next few months of his career and, by extension, his life. In truth, they should’ve been tag team champions already. Their shot was scheduled for Indianapolis, and the Stocke Market had tried and failed to capitalise on Michelle’s solo success in Chicago. The Grand March. He didn’t like to think about that night. The last time he’d seen Michelle before picking her up from Indianapolis to go camping was in the locker room after their triple threat main event. He’d gone with Thomas and… he wasn’t quite sure. Had he helped him? If he did, he didn’t feel particularly guilty about that. Michelle made her own decisions, regardless of how they affected him. It was time he started doing the same.
He felt happy for Thomas… and relieved that Michelle was no longer the FWA World Champion. He’d heard her mention title and streak a couple of times before, and he privately hoped she would end up with neither. Not that he wanted her to lose at Back in Business. If Michelle walked in with the gold, or managed to successfully goad Kennedy into a match, he would be behind her. One hundred per cent. He just… hoped that those matches wouldn’t even take place.
He wanted them to go to Rio together, as a team Last year, it was TxR and Golden Rock. Three Stages of Hell. Now? There was no TxR. No Golden Rock. No Gang Stars, really. Black Caramel was gone, too, with Gabrielle’s big announcement of retirement. The Division was fragmented, with the lesser half shacking up with The New Breed, of all people. Who was left, from that golden age? Only a team that wasn't actually a team for over a year. Only them.
Maybe it was time for The Connection to die, too. He didn’t like that thought, or the length of time that it persisted in his mind.
“You need a towel?”
The sudden question startled him as much as the rattlesnake had. His eyes jolted open and he found it more difficult to float than it had been before. The water was colder, more hostile, and the idea of snakes in its deeper, hidden recesses dawned on him for the first time since he’d lowered himself in. He quickly climbed out of it, looking up at Michelle.
Sure enough, she was holding a towel out towards him.
“Where did you get a towel?” Gerald asked. He had one in the car, and only now considered the long, dripping walk back towards it.
“You should always travel with a towel,” Michelle said.
***
MICHELLE.
A short, difficult walk after leaving Gerald, Dreamer emerged into a moderately large, rocky clearing. She had followed the brook from where it delved into the woodland, and paused to finish her second bottle of Heineken whilst looking into a deep, clear pool from which the stream sprung. The second beer slipped down even more nicely than the first and she hoped this trend was to continue with the third. She used her lighter to pop the cap and set the drink down carefully on the ground. She needed to piss. She squatted over the pool and pulled her jeans down around her thighs.
She thought of Thomas West, as she had more since losing to him than in all of her days leading up to that moment. Whilst she was pissing, whilst she was brushing her teeth, whilst she was showering, or completing a great number of other menial tasks. She didn’t think that the podcast host… no, the FWA World Champion... had permeated her psyche in the same way that the kaiju and Bell and Parr had, or ever would. With West, it was different. The loss to Thomas was an embarrassment. She pulled her jeans back up and fastened them around her waist.
She didn’t know for sure how long it took. Twelve seconds? Something like that? Chris Kennedy needed almost an hour, and an arsenal that would amply support an armed invasion, to keep her shoulders down for three. Thomas West needed one move, and less than a minute. Much less than a minute.
In these present circumstances, she didn’t think about Jon Snowmantashi, or Bell Connelly. She didn’t think about Chris Kennedy and Cyrus Truth, and she sure as shit didn’t think about Lizzie Rose or Joe Burr. In fact, the only thought she’d ever had about the pint-sized competitor was to wonder if he played the role of Epsilon beneath the mask. It amused her at the time. Now, there was a very real chance that she would lose to this mockery on FWA television.
That thought should have outraged her.
But who was she to feel indignant? She had lost to a podcast host… a supplemental character… a journeyman… a fucking nobody... in around twelve seconds.
She had no right to outrage. There was only shame.
She didn't think about any of these people, even those that were once obsessions, for she only thought about herself. And sometimes Thomas West.
Next to the waterfall, she found a series of footholds in the rockface that allowed her to climb to the top of the cliff. She sat with her legs dangling over the edge, watching the waterfall cascade into the pool below, and prepared herself a large cone of a mix made from Purple Kush and a broken Camel.
The crackling of burning paper comforted her, and eventually she lay back, the roll between her pursed lips and the woodland camping trip fading happily, temporarily, from her memory.
She almost fell to sleep.
Then, the crackling stopped, and was replaced by a rattle.
She opened her eyes, and - turning her head away from the clearing and to the ridge on which she now lay - saw the serpent slithering a few metres away from her.
She didn’t move.
The snake had green eyes.
It didn’t move for what seemed like a long time. It looked at her and into her.
She thought about trying to capture it. It was a distant instinct. Something animalistic and primal that didn’t warrant further explanation, for none could be given. But she didn’t move. She stared back at it, dispassionately.
She saw the reflection of her own green eyes in the snake’s.
Then, it slithered away. She watched it disappear into a patch of long grass. She picked up her lighter from the ridge, lit her smoke, and opened another beer.
A short time later, she watched with amusement as Gerald appeared in the clearing, took a deep breath, and then removed all of his clothes. She finished her beer whilst he bathed, and started on her fifth shortly after climbing back down from her perch. She fished out her towel from her rucksack whilst placing the empty inside it.
“You need a towel?”
***
Gerald built them a small but sturdy fire, which impressed her a little. But then he started talking.
“From my perspective,” he began, as she sipped on beer number six. The fifth one, consumed on the walk back, hadn’t been anywhere near as satisfying as the first four. This disappointment owed mostly to Gerald’s incessant smalltalk. Now, his talk became less small and she found herself missing it. “Things fell apart from The Grand March. I can understand, of course, why you wouldn’t want the tag team championship match at Carnal Contendership. But to find out the way I did? In Chicago, whilst I’m getting ready for our match? I feel it would’ve been fair to consult me, or at least to warn me. I shouldn’t have had to hear it from Stu and Caesar like some fan in the crowd.”
Gerald stopped talking. Michelle thought about this whilst smoking a cigarette. The silence persisted, until eventually it began to grate on Gerald.
“Are you going to say anything?” he asked, finally. His frustration was plain in the quiver of his voice.
“What is there for me to say? You asked no questions.”
Gerald blinked at her.
“You want me to tell you that your perspective is wrong?” she asked.
“You can’t tell a person that their perspective is wrong.”
“Well, you can,” she answered, dispassionately. He disliked her aloof tone. “But you shouldn’t, maybe. Society says you shouldn’t. That's why I didn’t tell you that your perspective is wrong, even though it is what I feel.”
Gerald sighed, and then breathed. It was a vain attempt to settle himself, so that some success could be scraped from this venture.
“Well,” he began, with something resembling caution, or maybe apprehension. “Maybe you should tell me how you feel.”
Michelle pulled a face. He’d picked his words a little too haphazardly. He knew that Dreamer wouldn’t go in for a discussion of feelings.
“Or how you see events from your perspective, since Chicago,” he corrected. Michelle paused, and eventually threw her finished cigarette into the fire.
“I think you acted like a coward, if not exactly a turncoat, at The Grand March.”
Another blink. He couldn’t deny, even to himself, that the words stung.
“A coward?” he asked. It was about all he could muster. “How?”
“You tried to pin Nova,” she said, in a matter-of-fact manner, with no hesitation. “That was our one rule. We would pin only each other. We would take care of Diamond, and then it would be one of us.”
“And before that?” Gerald asked, trying to drag her back on point. “Our championship shot? With The Connection?”
“I didn’t know that Grimes planned to announce that when he did,” she said. "I only found out that he did afterwards. I figured you would want to keep your mind focussed on our main event. And on Nova.”
Gerald thought about her words. Michelle lit another cigarette.
“And then where the fuck were you?” Michelle asked, between hasty, impatient drags of her Camel. Her Heineken lay discarded and forgotten about for a moment. A rare moment. “After Chicago. West gives you a lift home and I don’t see you for a month. And then you show up, for what? Camping? Where were you before Carnal Contendership? When I needed you to hold up your end of the bargain?”
“My end of the bargain?” he asked, thoroughly perplexed. “What, pray tell, is that?”
“To have my back,” she said, vaguely, with a wave of the arms. “To drag my mind onto the match, and my opponent.”
Gerald scoffed at the role he’d been assigned in Michelle’s mind. His face painted a picture of genuine shock.
“And what exactly is your end of the bargain?” he asked.
“To win the matches,” she said, bluntly.
Gerald stood up from his seat. His mind raced with memories of the last three years. Two tournaments. Countless wins. Two losses. Just two, in all this time.
What was this bullshit?
“What is this bullshit?”
“Well, of course, I wouldn’t win all the time if it was a handicap match,” Michelle explained, as if he were a child. “I need someone. But, yes, there are times when I need to drag us to a win.”
“Like in Jailhouse Blues?” he asked. “Or the countless other matches where I’ve scored the pin?”
“Come on, tulip, let’s not quibble.”
She reached for her beer. He kicked it away from her. It skidded away and spilled into the dirt.
A flash of rage crossed over Michelle’s face.
“What the fuck, Gerald?!”
“You think just anyone would put up with your fucking bullshit?” he asked.
“What fucking bullshit?” she asked, in return.
“Well, this nonsense, for a start. Not to mention your numerous, crippling additions. Caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, weed, cocaine. Am I missing anything? Cleaning up after Dreamer’s mess isn’t easy, Michelle.”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” she said, waving him away dismissively with her hand. She reached for a fresh beer.
“Oh, but you do!” he answered. “You’ve needed one since the day we met, Michelle. To drag you up from the mud when you’ve thrown yourself down onto the ground. To wipe away tears after every single fucking temper tantrum. And for what? A tag team championship shot that you don’t even seem to want, anyway?!”
“Careful, Gerald.”
“We stand aside for Stu and Caesar, and now for Konchu Hao, too? I don’t like Konchu Hao, Michelle. And why? So you can chase another dragon in Chris Kennedy, after losing the golden one for a second time.”
“A dragon you’ve only ever even seen because I showed you its lair, tulip.”
“And what is that even supposed to mean, Michelle?” Gerald asked, his rage fermenting and now flowing freely. “That's another thing. People are bored of this pseudo-intellectual bullshit. They bought it at the start, maybe. But now? It’s just fucking ten-a-penny. Predictable. Nobody wants it anymore. You need to show some fucking progression.”
“Yes,” Michelle said, dripping with sarcasm. “Maybe I should get some old cop friends to come and give me some life advice. Or a comatose brother that I eventually get bored of and forbid everyone from mentioning.”
“Don’t mention my brother.”
“See?”Michelle shot back, with a scoff.“You’re a fucking pig yourself, Gerald.”
Gerald opened his mouth to speak, but managed to resist that impulse. Instead, he thought for a moment. He didn't know why Michelle was saying these things. She was resorting to low attacks when he only wanted to bring their focus back on to Rose and Burr. Where it should be. He framed this measured but merciless vitriol as a byproduct of her recent misfortunes, and whatever torture she was inflicting upon herself as a result of that.
"You know," he started, exhibiting tact. “When I was walking, I thought a lot about you. About us.”
“I didn’t think about you at all,” Michelle returned.
Gerald paused only to sigh. He seemed defeated.
“Do you want me to drive you home?”
“No,” she answered, whilst staring out into the distance. The sun had set, but they were too close to some small city that she didn’t know the name of to see any stars. “I want you to drive yourself home.”
“What?” Gerald asked, his confusion spilling over once more. “I thought you hated camping?”
“I fucking love camping!” she fired back, passion finally infiltrating her delivery. “It’s adorable! The tranquillity. The solitude. Being at one with nature. All that outdoorsy shit. But, like most other things, including wrestling, I prefer to do it alone.”
“And New York?” he asked.
“I’ll see you there,” she answered, though she didn’t inspire confidence. “We’ll call it in the ring.”
“I’ll catch you beforehand,” he offered. It was almost a question.
“We’ll call it in the ring,” she repeated.
He didn’t ask her how she intended to get back. For once, he didn’t ask her about match strategy, or talk about their chemistry. He climbed into his car and drove to New York. When he got to a hotel, he realised he still had her towel.
. Had fun. Hopefully see you for lunch tomorrow. Or, if not, at the show. F x.
