THE OVERWOODS [[Midnight's Notebooks]]

"I..." I paused. "I think they might work in the Webwork... for the Union of Stars." When was the last time I ate? "I don't know them really beyond that, and I'm not really even sure... that I've... bumped into them."

This place is pretty.

ORBIPLOSIONS.

Another voice in my head, a male voice. But so blurry; so muffled by the water; so muted by the rain; so stifled by the heat. "I am not letting him do this to you again."

Who? Do what? WHAT WATER? WHAT RAIN?

WHAT HEAT?!

ORBIPLOSIONS.

Caleb looked like the kind of guy Wyatt would hang out with. It was just one big UGH- like UGH, almost a red flag, or to me it was. I'd stay away from nine out of ten people that looked like that or gave me that vibe. Although his voice was actually quite nice, to me at least.

But he wasn't speaking anymore.

ORBIPLOSIONS.

That voice sounded like me.

But what on earth is an orbiplosion?

Another voice this time; the same voice from earlier.

"Hang on, buddy," it said. "I got you." Who? Who got me? That sounded scary. But I knew who it was... and yet I didn't? If you can imagine one moment walking down a street you've walked down a million times, and then THE VERY NEXT instant you are in a place you don't recognize; no idea where or who you are. Or you know but you just can't get to it. That was how it felt.

And sometimes, I hate that I still remember it.

"Just hold on. We're saving you from this, so JUST HOLD ON."

Saving you from this? Bullshit. No one ever saved or helped me- no one EVER did. I always hated whenever people pretended they had helped me- in any way- when they never, ever, ever did.

I saved you

Don't bother.

WHO THE FUCK TRIES TO BRAINWASH PEOPLE?

I can't-

Just don't bother for right now; he won't remember you. You'll only make it worse. I know how it feels.

Why were there voices in my head? Why were there so many of them?

Okay, I don't know where I am.

I like sunflowers

Well, this is probably what I get for even THINKING about Wyatt-

THIS SHIT MAD GULLY BRO

The older man, in the other transparent capsule, looked like a nice guy. I remember thinking that maybe he had a family; maybe a son and daughter and a bunch of dogs and cats at home, all waiting for him to come back.

I have to save this man.

"It's like I'm not even here!" blubbered the guy in the first transparent capsule- Caleb Samuel Davenport- for whatever reason. My ears practically recoiled at the volume. "This can't be; it isn't possible!"

He and I locked eyes before he spoke again.

This really weird, insane stranger has like SUPER NICE eyes like the color like wow

If only he didn't give me the creepy Wyatt Shafer vibes.

"This isn't possible," he repeated, but softly that time. The very opposite of the way he said it the first time. I had no idea what was so confusing to him. We lived in the Overwoods- fucked up shit happened all the time, left and right and up and down and center. But I also knew I was there to kill every evil and destroy the scum, in any and all of their forms.

That gave me a moment.

Why do I... do I normally think like this? No, I probably didn't. And the man was still talking.

"I... I can't believe this," he said in some sort of tone of disbelief- disbelief that I couldn't really explain.

He can't believe what?

I can.

So, the guy is trapped in a fancy glass cell, underground, in the Overwoods. He whines like Sam did at age four. Was he born yesterday?

Damn.

That's a really fucked up thought, I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm thinking like this-

THAT'S STILL NOT WHAT I MEANT

Shut the fuck up bro I didn't whine LIKE THAT

Hands on the back of my head

Also, it's not a glass cell.

WHERE IS ELYZA?!

Hands on my mind, hands on my mind

But that wasn't possible, was it?

Hands on my mind...

I like sunflowers

Just when I thought miss orange sunshine was the only one who thought about flowers.

I DON'T think about flowers.

She's lying.

"I feel really sick," I suddenly blurted out, to no one really- but everyone standing near me heard it; I didn't know why I was even saying it to start with. "Can you all stop thinking so loud and so much?" I touched my fingers to my eyebrows. Why was there so much blood on them. Really fresh blood, too. "It's starting to hurt."

That was a lie. Starting to hurt? STARTING TO HURT? I was IN SO MUCH PAIN ALREADY.

"I lied," I said out loud to no one. "I literally lied; I'm already in pain. Like, a lot of it. But... why is everyone thinking so much?"

DO YOU SEE WHAT HE'S DOING TO HIM?

This is JEFFERY PHILIP CHRISTIAN TOBLER we're talking abo-

Wait a second.

WAIT. A. SECOND-

There are hands on my mind and I can hear thoughts.

You always hear thoughts.

Wait, no he doesn't.

His own? Just like we all hear ours?

I'm kinda dizzy...

WHERE IS ELYZA?

Y'all, he's probably just hungry???

I can guarantee you that he is absolutely NOT JUST HUNGRY.

I'm here.

Shit.

I don't think he even remembers telepathic shield...

Telepathic shield?

A barrier, Chris. Can you remember how to use a telepathic barrier?

Well. Uhm. Like, I knew what a barrier was?

Like, you know, when there's, like, traffic or a flood and you, like, put sandbags around something?

Right?

Maybe telepathic guard? Maybe he remembers it like that?

Telepathic guard? What's a telepathic guard?

He is literally the smartest idiot in the world right now.

I swear that comment still makes me cry to this day.

What did Kaylee do to get her memories back?

You know, because it's honestly the nicest compliment I've ever received.

Corgi corgi corgi boing boing boing boing

That's THE PROBLEM, y'all- ONLY CHRIS KNOWS!!!

Does it look like he knows if all he's thinking about is corgis

And Kaylee doesn't?

NO I DON'T MISS I-PUNCH-EVERYTHING-ON-EARTH-TO-GET-MORE-DRUGS-AND-I-THINK-IT-MAKES-ME-SO-COOL

I swear I should've hit more of that dope yesterday

I know someone who's selling.

THAT IS ILLEGAL how have y'all not lost y'all's jobs

Fever dream, fever dream, it was a fever dream.

Because, it HAD to be a fever dream.

Christopher Midnight, this is NOT a fever dream, so just HOLD ON.

Maybe they were all just my own thoughts, from a half-entered-into dream; maybe I was so tired that I was falling into a half-sleeping state- right there, on my feet, and in front of THE actual Mr. Tobler.

Well, the ONE Mr. Tobler.

Because there was another one...

Another one where?

I focused my eyes on the older man. He stared straight back at me, but somehow it wasn't uncomfortable.

He has a family he has to go home to, is what I remember thinking to myself. He has a family he has to go home to... so I have to save him.

But I can barely think. I'm not sure why; I'm usually good at mental vigilance. Hypervigilance even.

EVEN with zero food, zero sleep, and blood loss. Wait, where did I put my stuffed husky again?

I shook my head. And wow, did shaking my head HURT.

Do ONE THING right, I thought to myself. GET THIS MAN BACK TO HIS HOME AND HIS FAMILY. I always wondered what that might be like. Having a house at all, a family at all.

Wait, was the ground even here? Somehow, it didn't feel like it. Certainly not to me. I felt like the ground beneath me was moving; I felt like I probably had to hold on to something or else I was going to fall- for the millionth time.

My gaze dropped to the floor.

Dark red tile...

"Chris," said James's voice telepathically.

His telepathic voice was one I was trained to recognize. Or maybe when you hate someone you make yourself recognize their voice no matter what, so you can avoid it. Maybe that or he just made it so clear and so forceful. As much anger as I felt, there was no way I could deny that he was a powerful telepath.

Perhaps even as strong as his brother-

"What?" I responded.

"I got a surprise for ya."

--ovw--LXIV--ovw--

"I got a surprise for ya."

MONDAY

11:04 AM

A total mess, somewhere below ground level. UGH

But at least with some friends around me

Status: Available

"I got a surprise for ya."

"No thanks," I said.

"Look up."

I looked above us, and as I did, Tia and Lyca and Ember did the same- there he was: James, flying down fast, or should I say descending, passing flawlessly through what looked to me like semi-translucent black-and-gold barriers which looked like glass- some of which were broken... possibly by me- as he manipulated the material effortlessly and practically surfed toward us on an invisible wave of telekinetic power and brilliance; beneath the soles of his shoes a thin pane of what to me... was either really really shiny glass or some kind of actual diamond. I remember thinking that he looked like a drunk skateboarder, magically floating down from the top of a large theater.

That's some description.

Corgi corgi corgi boing boing boing boing

Except, I didn't know if skateboarders were real; I only saw them in magazines and picture books from the library.

I smiled.

And then I remembered where I was.

At that moment, an elegant blond woman walked, in light blue stilettos and aquamarine glasses, gracefully from the foyer to the living room to this chamber, and she beamed at Jeff.

Wow, she is breathtaking

You're gay, for CRYING OUT LOUD, YOU'RE GAY

Yes I am but I'd still marry her

Who on earth was so bothered that I liked ELYZA?

Oh, yeah... I knew her name. Elyza. Elyza Jacobs, was it? It would've been hard for me to forget the name of someone I found so attractive.

THE ONE WHO KISSED YOU!

What?

THE ONE WHO KISSED YOU THE NIGHT YOU GOT THE FIRST TEXT MESSAGE.

I like sunflowers

Elyza COBB. COBB!!!

Wait, what first text message?

Doesn't matter. Kissing is not the only thing we did, and you don't even remember!

T M I

Corgi corgi corgi boing boing boing boing I eat bread.

Pulling up in dat whip, I done dat dumb shit

THAT SONG ROCKS

See? THE Christopher Danny Midnight gets my taste in music. I love u my bro.

He's brainwashed.

I love u more, Sam :DDDD

BUT HE'S GAY

YES I AM

"Pleased to see you again, Jeffery." Her voice was cool; not calm exactly; just... pleased almost.

"Hi, Liquid Nitrogen," I said, even though she literally wasn't even talking to me. I wondered if she liked my new-but-not-even-new look. Bloody, thin, and starving. Very stylish indeed. I ran a hand through my hair to put more blood on it.

"Hey," she said to me, and then, to Jeff, "Your little shifting-glass puzzle was much too easy to decode, Jeff. I can see why you had to set them on fire. The kids would've all lived otherwise."

Jeff didn't respond. He was, apparently, too fixated on James. They glared at each other. I wasn't even sure if glared was the right word at all- they were staring daggers at each other. Yet, at the same time, it wasn't the most obvious thing in the world. I could just tell by very, very subtle shifts in their eye and body movement; their posture. Almost like two large wolves sizing each other up, not engaging, not making any sound.

Wolves or clownfishes, anyway. Swimming around in a slow circle.

Another message buzzed in. I didn't tap on it; I just quickly glanced at the notification preview at the top of the holographic display.

"ONE MORE LAYER TO GO. SAM WILL GET THERE FIRST AS ALWAYS. - ARRVN"

Corgi boing boing boing boing boing

What? Who was that, wand what did they mean by-

Corgi.

Boing boing boing boing boing.

Dogs are happiness

Dogs are happy

Happy = dog

Cute = dog

I hate Wyatt

I couldn't shut my mind up.

And to be clear, I don't think I hated him. Or maybe I did; it just wasn't worth thinking about.

A stab of pain started in my left hand- near the wrist and metacarpals- and traveled up my shoulder to the muscles on the left side of my neck. Where did that pain come from?

The pain was so bad; I stopped and I thought about it. That pain had to come from something, somewhere. A training injury? From gymnastics? Possibly... I flexed my fingers, slowly, on both hands.

If it was from a recent fall, I probably would have felt it sooner than this- not just out of the blue; not just now.

Where did that pain come from?

Perplexed, I took a breath. I counted down from five. I didn't know how, or why, but I felt the answer to that question was an important one. I didn't want to, but I asked myself again.

Where did that pain come from...?

The flash of a memory. An ugly one.

Maybe you can guess which.

I still don't know to this day (not for sure anyway) but a PTSD flashback... possibly served us all well, maybe just that one time.

Who knows?

Because suddenly I remembered what a telepathic guard was.

"Kaylee, no engaging," I said, super duper quickly, telepathically- perhaps the most rushed I had ever ever sounded in any telepathic conversation. "Tell her NOT to engage. I'm talking about Sam; DO NOT ENGAGE. If you're with the cute raccoon and the cute doggo- tell them to NOT go down here. I mean- tell Connor to tell them that. Radio silence, out."

This was all I said, and then I got up, and offhandedly walked over to a counter with a barstool and several sets of expensive wineglasses. Beside them: Vystir poisoning antidotes.

Yep. Just the ones I had to bargain for with James not that long ago...

Well, I supposed if you considered how much had happened in that one year alone then maybe it REALLY WAS that long ago.

The only thing there that still reminded me of where I was, who I was with, and who my real friends were... was the physical pain.

So I had to hold on to it; I had to hold on to it to survive this. Tobler was by far the only man I knew who had the power of mind control; the power to brainwash. Or, in my case, attempt to brainwash. I knew that in moment I was losing, but for how long?

If I looked over my shoulder- which I did- I saw the deep red carpet that lead to that now-open red door which led into the midnight-sky-and-stars bedroom. As horrible as it was, a small part of me had to admire the design of this place. I could see the glow of that same lava lamp from where I sat elevated on the barstool.

--ovw--LXV--ovw--

If I looked over my shoulder- which I did- I saw the deep red carpet that lead to that now-open red door which led into the midnight-sky-and-stars bedroom. As horrible as it was, a small part of me had to admire the design of this place. I could see the glow of that same lava lamp from where I sat elevated on the barstool.

MONDAY

Still 11:04 AM

Party at the torture place.

Status: Available

Party my butt.

As Kaylee rightly foreshadowed, Sam was next to arrive; she entered in a similar fashion as James- and I think possibly I- did, straight down through those black-and-gold semi-translucent glass barriers. She zipped past the already-created openings and holes (YOU'RE WELCOME SAM) and immediately stood beside me at the counter and poured herself a glass of... what looked like some kind of dark red wine.

"Sam," I whispered.

"WHAT?" she hissed at me. "I can't 'engage,' right?" She was being discreet and yet also very sarcastic, or so it seemed to me anyway. "How else am I gonna have fun?"

Kaylee and Connor- fully visible- walked down from a grand, curved, polished dark-wood styled staircase that extended from somewhere above the living room, right beside the foyer and their absolutely, absolutely breathtaking fireplaces. Connor's face was bleeding, and Kaylee's leg was wrapped heavily in stielvine. The warm glow from the fires undulated off their bloody upright bodies like slowly, subtly flashing combustiflies on those totally unpredictable fall nights- because, in the Overwoods, there was no scheduled fall. Fall happened overnight, and whenever it wanted to.

Kaylee and Connor stopped where they stood, about four feet away from Tiana Ambervi and Emberion Myelantic.

I stared at the carpet in front of them. At a very specific spot on the carpet, in fact- and like I thought, almost disguised by the colors but not quite, the slight smears of my blood which I tried but never could quite wash out completely (yes, Jeff made me wash my own blood off his floors) were all still there.

And, here, in this place, as I spoke the words "Sam, put that down, that's probably literally my blood from years ago," I had to process all that had been in front of me in the last couple of hours, alone. From the Talon I had no idea existed outside the areas near V8, to the alleged individual that looked like me in some way or shape or form, that the Talon somehow thought might experiment on them again- WHICH STILL BRUISED MY EGO BECAUSE THAT MADE NO SENSE it being me- to the man I let die, to the seventh or eighth failed suicide attempt. Officially, probably the fifth if you count only the ones after En Gail.

Nightingale.

Sorry. I try.

Ahem. So there we all were, for a moment, quietly all assessing each other, perhaps aware of just how much damage, both physically and otherwise, that this one Jeffery Philip Christian Tobler was capable of causing. The story to it all... I was only just still about to find out.

Or so I thought. Because, as with a lot of things in life or so it seemed to me anyway, things took time.

And he had such a... such a nice, nice looking name too. Jeffery Philip Christian Tobler- that could be a CEO of a... a... bank or a charity or even a hospital or a rehab facility for sports injuries, or something. Anything.

Yet, here he was. The man that abused me. This... this was what he CHOSE instead.

I got up.

"Chris, stay back."

I kept walking.

"I only have a question," I said, as behind me Sam took a sip and immediately put the glass down and looked like she was going to throw up. I was probably right- it probably really was my blood from years ago. "Jeff, you in Nightingale and the man that used me back in the Lowdown, years ago... I-" I took a quick breath, tried to compose myself, and yet felt like I was about to drop a thousand feet down into the earth again- "I know you're can't be Belinda. But are you the same as the man that used me as a CHILD INCOME SOURCE in my childhood years, in the Lowdown?"

Marshmallow on a spinning plate, marshmallow on a spinning plate.

Happy place happy place

Happy place

"Chris, you got it," said Kaylee's voice, only to me telepathically- in the split moment I forgot to keep my guard up from the relentless attacks of the awful PTSD and memories and flashbacks and... the FACT that this man was in front of me.

Did I say "man?"

Apologies.

MONSTER. SOULLESS.

GARBAGE.

ABOMINATION.

I put my mental/telepathic guard up immediately just as soon as I could- but not before someone else threw a thought in there, and it was Caleb Samuel.

Don't say you forgot how I kissed you-

UGH. UGH, WHAT?

SHUT UP! I said telepathically, closing them all out once more. I heaved a sigh.

What was up with all these crazy people around me? I would never kiss that guy, he's disgusting, like, ew!

Ew ew ew ew ew ewwwwww

I flexed my fingers and cleared my throat, softly, quietly. But in the quiet of this chamber, still, all could hear. You could even hear that strange, subtle, very subtle snap of the bone and ligaments in my left hand which still happened every single time I moved it; it was audible only in a large, echoey room full of silence.

"I asked a question," I said.

"Yes, Midnight," answered his brother- James. "That was him. Half the time, it was him. The other... the other half, that was someone else."

"So the actual guy," I said.

"Yeah." James looked at me, for only a moment, and I could have sworn there were actual tears in his eyes. "The man standing in front of you now just took advantage of that."

"You mean the abomination."

"Say what you want about me, son, you are still mine at the end of the d-"

"AT THE END OF THE DAY ONE OF US WILL BE DEAD," I said, interrupting, "AND I DON'T CARE IF IT'S ME." And then, there, in front of all my friends and my worst, absolute worst enemy- I began to cry. "I don't care if it's me. I just want to be in a world that does not have you in it."

And, apparently, those were the words that destroyed him.

--ovw--LXVI--ovw--

The words I spoke:

"I just want to be in a world that does not have you in it."

And, apparently, those were the words that destroyed him.

I know what evil looks like.

And it's the ugliest thing you can possibly ever look at on this planet.

--ovw--

Some pages of these red notebooks seem to be torn out, and missing...

But this pen is awesome!

So tell me now

Does it fix you?

So tell me now,

why you always want to die

Tell me now, does it fix you?

When your every word

is made up;

just a lie.

Tried to sell us what you never believed in

Tried to sell us what you don't even believe in

--ovw--

So tell me now

Does It Fix You

--ovw--

MONDAY

11:07 AM

Party at the torture place. Shit was hitting the fan here- like, TOTALLY, REALLY hitting the fan. This was NOT good.

Status: Available

And one of the FREAKS trapped in a human-sized cylindrical capsule for experiments of torture behind me, apparently, had no other things to consume his mind AT THAT AMAZING MOMENT OF EVERYONE'S TERROR- apart from pretending that he kissed me OR THAT I KISSED HIM.

What else could have possibly gone wrong after, right?

Spoiler alert: WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH

Spoiler alert: Oh God please no

Please don't get me wrong, I swear in another situation, I might (kiss him?) maybe! I was gay. I AM gay. Triple gay, at that. SO TRIPLE GAY, IN FACT, SO TRIPLE GAY THAT I FREAKING SHOOT RAINBOW LASERS OUT OF MY HANDS WHEN I WAVE TO SECURITY GUARDS AT SHOPPING MALLS (if and when they stare at me for way too long, only). So, maybe I would freaking kiss the guy, somehow, in an alternate set of circumstances. Anything is possible, right? OH WHAT IS MY POINT?! I'm just trying to be nice and trying not to be mean. He was probably a great guy (???), maybe. I didn't know.

And I wouldn't have known.

Because I didn't know him.

--ovw--

"AT THE END OF THE DAY ONE OF US WILL BE DEAD," I said, interrupting, "AND I DON'T CARE IF IT'S ME." And then, there, in front of all my friends and my worst, absolute worst enemy- I began to cry. "I don't care if it's me. I just want to be in a world that does not have you in it."

And, apparently, those were the words that destroyed him.

Flash of blinding, white light, an enormous, astronomic tremor that shook probably not only my bones but likely also the lining of my intestines and possibly my brain- a spark and then an outward resonance that blasted everybody but Abomination Tobler off their feet and into the walls or a counter or a mantle or a sofa- Elyza was the lucky one. Whereas, Connor fell unconscious immediately and Ember was blown back into... I didn't know what it was. A... an antler? A sharp decoration of some kind. Kaylee and I ran immediately toward him when a very strong arm grabbed me by the waist, from behind, and kept me in place- Abomination Tobler's arm.

OKAY OKAY WHY ON EARTH IS IT THAT GENETICS DICTATED THAT I **HAVE** TO BE LIKE HALF THE SIZE OF EVERYBODY AND EVERYBODY IS TALLER THAN ME AND I AM A SKINNY PENCIL THAT ANYBODY CAN LIFT

JUST

WHY

W H Y ????!?!? !?!?!?? !????

I resisted the urge to drive my heel straight up into his balls with ignite and then spin off-

Wait. Actually, he might have liked that...

UGH.

W H Y ????!?!? !?!?!?? !????

"Let the boy, go, Jeffery," James growled, so unlike the warm tone I was accustomed to. So unlike his usual; his baseline. "His friend needs him."

I stared at Ember, his hooves on the ground facing us and his... I wasn't sure; his side or his leg or something in his horse-human-horse-like body had been gutted- the artifact mounted on the wall so gloriously, and so perfectly, was in fact some kind of dead animal's sharp, tenacious antlers. I assumed they were possibly those of the mutated sabretooth-deer hybrid, also seen usually around V8. Seen usually around V8 or that's what I was told. What did any of us know, now, after the encounter with the Talon? But it could have been any animal's. I wouldn't really have known.

"HERE'S what's going to happen-" Abomination started. "You simply let me keep the boy, and nobody gets hurt. You let me take him, off to some kind of an island somewhere, and I have him, where he belongs... and we all carry on with our lives." He smiled, the same smile he put on when he would lure me in with food or a treat or warmth and then then physically damage me in some way immediately after- "I'm sure none of you would like to anger me. How's that?"

Well. It was... my choice, was I to let him keep me and do whatever he wanted forever, or potentially sacrifice my friends?

Was this an actual debate?

"Let me go help Ember," I choked, squealing like a pinched hamster, "and you can have whatever you want- leave them all alone."

"That's ridiculous!" snarled Sam.

"Sssshhhh," I hissed at her. "This is someone that's capable of all, and I mean all of the damage in the world and more."

"He's right!" Abomination Jeff Tobler beamed, he practically sang the words in the perfect acoustics of the grand, amazing, astronomically expensive place.

James stared at me.

"Can I..." I hesitated, choking, still crying somewhat but focused on Myelantic, "Can I just stay here again? I can have visits from my friends, can't I?"

From the back, just barely in the periphery of my field of vision- I saw Liquid Nitrogen. She nodded at me, as she proceeded to slowly walk toward the very same screen that I had already unlocked earlier.

"No visits," he replied. "And we don't want to stay here. You never wanted to stay here, anyway, right?"

Well... he had a point.

"Chris, just let me talk to him," said James.

"We're all getting exactly what we all want- I'm perfectly satisfied!" beamed Tobler. He really was practically singing now. It was insane because I'd heard it before- and half the time he wasn't actually even bad at it. It only scared me further. "And if you want the ring that's responsible for the fourteen-year-old girl, you already have Peters. She has your answers."

It wasn't a bad deal. My friends live, walk away unharmed, never see me or this man again.

Never see me, or this man again.

I... I remember thinking I could live with it.

I could live with it...

He had the perfect plan. Murder, chase, lure me back. I suppose he'd tried this on many occasions before and simply failed; in the last two years alone I've ignored so many attempts to get my attention- because 9 out of 10 times, it's obvious. You're born in the Lowdown and you have the minimum necessary intelligence = you don't fall for things. But many of those people don't have the minimum necessary intelligence.

My dream to help and to shut down other trafficker rings or the lords of mass abuse- shut them down one way or the other way- had come to life for a year; maybe two. The rewards were more than worth it, because I didn't need a reward.

A male voice spoke loudly in my head: "WE ARE NOT LETTING HIM TAKE YOU, MIDNIGHT."

I wasn't sure who it was.

I locked eyes with Sam, who zoomed her way straight back to us and was standing only ten yards away. I saw the bandages on her shoulder again; the injury inflicted by Klein.

I am not letting her get hurt again.

Not her, not ANY of these people, who have been kind and good to me, and genuinely compassionate towards me... perhaps, with the exception of James. To even think his name was painful.

"Chris." James's voice.

Our eyes still locked, Sam positioned one of her feet slightly behind the other, one hand a fist and one hand in the process of becoming one.

NO.

"He can kill all of you," I said out loud. "He's asking for one thing." I choked on blood. "And KILLING all of you is not the worst thing this man can do. He's only asking for one thing."

He asks for one thing. And you all get to live.

I've been lured into so many things, most of which were obvious. When you've spent sixteen or so years surrounded by the most deceitful, most repulsive of liars, you can see through bullshit and you don't buy it. And I shut them down.

I haven't gotten all of them- I was still working on that. But I shut some of them down.

Permanently.

Maybe, that was enough.

People certainly had attempted to kidnap me before; it was the same for people I worked with closely- Kaylee, Connor. I supposed there were others, who may have been viewed as close to me and possibly would be targets for that reason. I tried to limit my connections to those that were strong; capable in a fight even against the odds.

People had been obsessed over me before. I supposed this was really no different. Just... the price to pay; the cost. It was a very high cost if I didn't comply. It really wasn't new. It was just like my life back at the Lowdown, all over again.

He buried his face in my filthy, blood-coated hair.

"Go help your friend," he whispered.

"NOW!" Kaylee yelled at Liquid Nitrogen, who tapped the final command to lift the capsules- the SAME capsules that spit black smoke and poison fumes that turned SKIN into POISON.

Only- one of them didn't lift. Caleb's was stuck to the ground or ceiling, two walls and two, just like Nightingale. Through a command on a device, Jeff activated that one still-buried in the ground capsule and that horrible, cruel, dreadful black smoke.

Immediately, his skin turned dark blue and dark purple and the same red holes, small red holes that oozed blood and pus and whatever else- and those awful tiny little tentacles.

I wanted to puke, but I was not going to.

Kaylee, and James, and Elyza- they had all made their choice. They knew, and they knew how dangerous this man was.

I yelled, my voice carrying like a honey-coated cotton ball trying to make a sound in a concert mosh pit- and yet, still audible- "If you value your life, LEAVE! I am killing this man and I'll take care of it from here. Or he can kill us bo-"

Jeff jabbed me hard in the throat as two blinding, absolutely blinding- beyond shining and beyond bright, giant white orbs of detonation deafened, disoriented most of us. I bit into his hand, biting until I tasted his flesh and his blood ran down my imperfect teeth- as I saw Emberion Myelantic slowly try, try to get up.

It was as if it was slow motion:

As the mansion or underground torture house or WHATEVER it was shook and rumbled, as the mine above us possibly was going to crush us all to our deaths, a glass shard, as large as my body- still glimmering in its gold and black tint- fell from five-and-a-half stories above, and Sam, who was still covering her ears, still blinking, orienting herself to perhaps throw her fists at this man that hurt me beyond any kind of repair- just like she threw her fists at anyone that ever tried to hurt me- unknowingly stood in its way before it hit the floor.

Note from the author:

Does It Fix You is on Nonfiction II: The Album (by realnotperfect).

It's an independent album from a nontalented person (me). Show love.

--ovw--LXVII--ovw--

When it's all just gone into the end

I don't feel it, feel it anymore

Catch me in the dead of night

Catch me in the dead of night

Because I'll put your crimes into the light

- from Sounds Around Me

MONDAY

11:14 AM

Jeff Tobler's hideout

Status: Available

Slow motion. That's how it happened. To this day, I'll miss her. To this day, I still cry, because I know that I will always miss her and I know that I will never, ever, forget her kindness.

Slow motion.

I can stop this from happening

I can save her

Slow motion.

I can stop this I can stop this I can stop this I can stop this

I can save her

I remember spitting Jeffery Philip Christian Tobler's blood out of my mouth with a piece of his skin stuck in my imperfect teeth, and then having to spit that out, too, and then trying to zoom and twist and spin and break my way to her-

But, he was too heavy for me.

But, his arm wrapped around my neck from behind me, and he held me in place.

But, I only had half of a second, and my hands were still too far from Jeff's face.

The giant shard of glass came into contact with the worst place imaginable- right where her heart was...

I remember it. Between her shoulder and her sternum. Just slightly to the left of the center of her chest.

That was where it landed.

I still remember tasting bile in the back of my throat. I remember choking on the disgust of having to be so near this awful, absolutely vile monster. When what I wanted was to be beside my friend.

It pinned her to the ground, where the shard broke in two and shards showered her face, splintering her green-and-turquoise eyes that always reminded me of the Overwoods snow, that we would collect into cups, sweep off of window panes together, press into each other's faces after tough days and tough SRAs, laughing about who should've won and which place Connor probably stole his motorbike from.

She is- as she always has been- the stronger part of me.

She always will be.

On the hard days, I remember her, and sometimes she makes me feel like the tears can make me become stronger, instead of the mess that often takes over most of us.

While the stranger Caleb Samuel writhed in the capsule and Kaylee ran toward him- I ignited Jeff's face, causing it to go completely on fire both inside and out, breaking two of the fingers in my right hand in the process and spun, still in what to me felt like the slowest of all slow motions, in the air to land beside her. I took her hand in mine as I stared at the small glass shards that had peppered her eyes, causing them to bleed.

"I'll..." she muttered, somehow just barely audible to me, in all this chaos. "I'll murder that hoe."

My tears and water and mucus from my runny nose fell down onto her shirt and her face; neither of us cared.

"Which one?" I said. "The man here, or Belinda?"

She made this horrible... this... horrendous, ghastly, absolutely horrid croaking noise- I still hear it in my nightmares, at times, but at least I get to see her- I felt like I was the one that was dying; I wanted it to be me.

"Both of them," she barely groaned; agonized. Her blood covered her light yellow shirt and covered all of her bracelets; all of the little cute trinkets that she wore. The rainbow flag. The little fox, the one with the white mane. The cat, the white one, with the yellow nose and the pink ribbon on its left ear. "Kill them both, Danny, Danny- promise me."

"I promise," I whispered back at her. I didn't know if it was a lie. But my next words, I meant, I meant more than any other words I had ever spoken. "I love you, Sam."

"Kill them," she said. "I love you, too, Danny Christopher Sunlight. Midnight." She made this awful, croaking, gurgling, dying sound again- as she inadvertently sprayed both her saliva-digestive-enzyme-spit and blood, with the FUCKING DAMNED bits of glass at me. "You're the kindest friend that I ever had, in the Lowdown and V4 and anywhere outside a' thyeah. Give Chaquille all my dope. Thank you. Thank you so much, for everything. You really... you really are my morphine."

And that was that. She died. Blinded by blood, glass, and my tears- the skin on my face white streaked with black from stealing all of her pain in the last minute I had together with her- I walked toward Jeff, who was writhing, madly causing ruptures, destruction, death, explosions- not unlike how he was back in Nightingale; not unlike how he was in the bedroom, Nightingale, or Lowdown.

I cannot describe, not even now, what happened after.

It is almost impossible, to describe and to relive what happened after. The pen itself isn't shaking or trembling; both of my hands are.

In fact, I think I was barely conscious as it happened. I can only- just barely- remember the way that it did happen. I'll try, though.

Because I can still remember the words.

"I was given so little."

I walked toward him. He was blinded by the pain. By the 1/1,000,000,000th sampling of the amount of pain he inflicted upon me at four years old; at five years old; at all of the years after until I finally left him; left him to forever stagnate on his own or with other monsters, as the evil disgusting scum that he will never, ever, ever be more than-

"But you took that away from me, too."

Explosions rattled the massive torture house. I was tortured there. I died every day, and then I was kidnapped, and then I was tortured, every day.

"I made myself a promise- "

There, in the darkest of "lighthouses."

There, in the darkest of "fellowship halls."

With a God who always, always watched over me, but not in the dictated way that the abusers said He did or would, I walked past the shards and explosions and flashes of pure, blinding, soulless, Satanic, demonic false light.

I walked right past all of them.

" -that if I ever saw you, ever saw you again and I WAS STILL ALIVE…"

No fears; no emotions; no coldness; only a very slight heat, and the warmth in my hands, where all of my own blood was.

My blood.

My blood, was mine.

My blood, was not owned by an extremely delusional man who claimed he was my father; a father does not exploit his own son, like a sack of flesh to be sent, daily, into a house of slaughter- or in my case, to very, very many houses of slaughter.

For ego. For narcissism. For financial gain; for power; for status. For perceived, bogus, fake, false, insincere, pure lies, fraudulent cordiality.

My blood was always mine. It was never his. It will never be his.

And that is why he even felt the need to speak his next delusional words:

"I WILL ALWAYS, ALWAYS CONTROL YOU!" he growled like the animal he acted like he was, though he was far, far lower than that, than any animal in the forever-longest-and-forever existence of the entire universe and of all things far and beyond, "I AM THE CONTROLLER OF YOUR MIND! I AM THE CONTROLLER OF YOUR SOUL!"

At that point, he wasn't even just screaming; he was chanting; he was singing terribly. Loud and extremely off-key.

All I was to him:

A toy

A tiny bloody punching bag

An insurance policy

"I MADE YOU! I CREATED YOU! YOU SERVE, YOU SERVE ONLY FOR ME! YOU LIVE ONLY FOR ME AND FOR WHAT I WANT! WHY ARE YOU SO REBELLIOUS? WHY ARE YOU DISRESPECTING GOD?"

I was fourteen years old when I finally realized it: He was not religious; not even spiritual; not even any kind or form of a truthful believer; he worshipped only himself.

He just made it look otherwise. He was almost good at that.

Almost.

I do not know you.

My blood, was mine.

My blood is mine.

"YOUR SOUL BELONGS ONLY TO ME!"

Earthquake-level tremors in the torture house; more psycho-level, massive physical explosions of blinding bright white light; the dismantled wooden shards from a black bookshelf cut into my scalp and ripped off handfuls of my blood-coated hair-

"I CREATED YOU; YOU CANNOT HAVE A LIFE WITHOUT FIRST SERVING MINE!"

I kept walking. I heard those words before. Thousands, if not trillions, of times.

Four steps away from him.

"Stop it, CHRISTOPHER! STOP IT, NOW! This is NOT PLEASING TO GOD! THIS MEANS THAT YOU AND ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS will, you will all- you WILL ALL FOREVER BURN IN AN EVERLASTING HELL!"

He'd said that before. All the same words, every time.

Every time he coped; every time he abused me even farther and further and farther into a pure-senseless-madness-oblivion torture hell, and further than anything else on earth could-

Two steps.

I made myself the promise.

"That I would kill myself, before you do."

One step away. His abomination monster hands were still covering his face. He still could not handle the tiny, tiny fraction of all the pain which he inflicted upon me.

With water and blood first pooling up in both of my now pure-white eyes before rolling down onto the corrupted ground, I cocked my head, ever so slightly, ever so softly, to the left.

"But I don't need to kill me if there is no you."

I took every memory, every flash- flash of light and of pain and of torture and my screams and every single minute moment of abuse- of the entire first eighteen years of my life; every hour and day he forced me to be in his planet-prison-venomous-Satanic-demon-hell because he lived in it and wanted to drag me so far down to him just to feel like he had company, so that he would not feel lonely in the depths of vile immoral pathetic delusional narcissistic corrupted depravity he dug down into HIMSELF; I took every moment from Nightingale; every imperfectly used word and every grammatically incorrect phrase I ever wrote; every poem and every single song I ever recorded on pages WHICH HE TORE IN FRONT OF ME; I proceeded, ever so softly-

Ever

So

Softly-

To return to him all of the torture and hell he tried to place upon me.

Welcome, to my mind.

"I do not remember you."

One hand in one pocket, taking the knife.

"I do not know you."

Other hand in the other pocket- taking the other knife.

"These complete strangers around me; I know them more than I know you; remember them more than I can ever remember you- "

I crossed my forearms, wrists, and fists, holding the sharpest of small knives- blades on both sides- pressing, positioning both of them into the back of my neck; cutting locks of black hair.

"Because they come from kindness; from intelligence; from the truth; a language that I speak; not from sick, twisted, abusive, narcissistic delusions."

I felt every last moment of manipulation and lies he put me through exit my mind; the cleansing of my heart- as all of those twisted, horrible, awful moments entered him instead.

All back, to where they came from.

It goes around; it comes back around.

"Your curse, that you have kept passing… it ends here."

I took one last breath.

"It ends with me. It ends, and so does this cursed bloodline."

--ovw--

Never aimed with

A weapon pointed at your mask

Never screamed it, I never needed to be loud

Because every message that you want I will not write

Can you understand this

I don't try to be the best

All I do is put imperfect to the test

I won't be writing just to impress under a spotlight that you think that you're in

So go ahead and scream until you're empty

Is that a song or a psycho's plight

Do you believe that if you resent me

You come towards the light

No, I see the wristband, I see the cuts, I see the spite

I like your projecting, it lets me know it'll be all right

Because every message that you want I will not write

So go ahead and scream until you're empty

Is that a song or a psycho's plight

Do you believe that if you resent me

You come towards the light

All you see is what you are, do you wanna fight me

No, I'll let you break my heart, I knew what it was right from the start

And if you don't release me

You'll see what comes from scars

You come towards the light

Can you understand this

I don't try to be the best

All I do is put imperfect to the test

I won't be writing just to impress under a spotlight that you think that you're in

So go ahead and scream until you're empty

Is that a song or a psycho's plight

Do you believe that if you resent me

You come towards the light

So go ahead and scream until you're empty

Is that a song or a psycho's plight

Do you believe that if you resent me

You come towards the light

Do you believe if you resent me

You come towards the light

Towards the light

--ovw--

I saw a pool of blood. I saw a few friends, from my old school, far in the distance; the long-ago classmates who let me borrow magazines and books, old CDs from thousands of years ago and copies of cartoon movies.

I saw people; people I met before, and even more people who I never met. They did not look like me; they were not covered in filth. But to me, they looked beautiful, because they looked like kind people; like compassionate people. I felt a moment of awkwardness, knowing that they were likely staring at an unfed young adult covered in so much ugliness, covered in so much dust and pollution and dirt.

Until I realized that all of my clothes were clean. The filthy bandage wasn't on my left hand. And there were no scars on it. I had never seen my left hand- or either of them, for that matter- look so unscarred and unmarred.

I put one hand to my face. My eye- bloody and tender and raw like a slab of undercooked human meat only moments ago- was not bleeding; was not sore; was not in pain.

I was not in any pain.

I finally, finally, knew what painless felt like.

Three figures, fur-coated fluffy animal figures, ran toward me. And Jupiter One was one of them. I hadn't seen Jupiter One in so many years. I was young; so young when he was killed.

He ran closer toward me.

I smiled.

A girl I knew waved at me.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

She mouthed words at me, but I could not quite hear her. I pushed myself off the ground. The ground was white- but not a disturbing kind of white; it felt clean. Pure.

It felt like safety.

For some strange reason which I could not fathom, the floor changed color; back and forth, from white to amber and to white again.

Back to white.

Back to amber.

Back to white.

--ovw--LXVIII--ovw--

You wrote me a song I

I'm never gonna believe

So sit on the throne and die

I'll stay with the covers for you

So sit on the throne and I

I'll stay with the covers for you

- from I'm Gonna Kill Me Before You Do

Why was she pushing me away?

I saw a girl I knew.

But, what she did next, I did not understand. Somehow, she was pushing me.

She pushed me; I was trying to run toward her- but she pushed me. I was trying so hard to run toward her; I wanted to embrace her. I just wanted to embrace her.

That was all I wanted.

All I wanted to do.

I just wanted to embrace her.

"This is not your last fight," she said.

I blinked, and darkness- or in my case, light- was not all that I saw; my hands were still moving.

--ovw--

With nothing left except the awareness that I had lost more than anyone else- anyone else on earth- ever possibly could have, from all of the time and life and purity... and the innocence... and all of the inherent foundational human RIGHTS that were all taken from me, seemingly in one go- one knife buried itself into the hand that covered Jeff's left eye; another knife buried itself through his neck- sideways; another into the same hand and eye and again and again and again and again into the heart as I started to dig all of my fingers into the hole in his chest; the pool of blood was nonexistent- it did not exist to me. What existed was Sam, the girl who bought me the cold strawberry pudding. The girl who defended me from everything that she could; the one that was going to help me find the murderer of this fourteen-year-old victim.

But no.

No, not anymore.

--ovw--

My fingers, broken and otherwise, buried inside the open flesh of Jeff Philip Christian Tobler's chest- feeling, feeling desperately for his nonexistent heart; I began to wail, moaning, groaning and howling like a wounded deranged female tabby cat in heat, as the mine above us shook with the last few blinding, disorienting bright white explosions; their remnants rattled the foundations of all of the things I'd ever known.

What occurred next was not in my plans.

--ovw--

MONDAY

11:18 AM

Jeff Tobler's hideout

Status: Available

Lyca tackled me hard, shoving me off of Jeff Tobler's body as another large shard from the crystal-like barriers so high above us effectively severed his entire head off- or that might have actually been me and the glass shard just pushed it off further; I didn't know- and then, Lyca pointed at Ember. He seemed unconscious, lying on the ground beneath a broken fireplace mantel.

Emberion…

Do one thing right PLEASE

PLEASE

I cut through the air toward him with a superhuman, adrenaline-loaded speed and with almost perfect trajectory. The rumbling threw me off slightly.

What mattered more, though, was that a circle of light spawned to my right and forced my body to do a triple forward rotation with 1 & 1/2 twist(s) which I did not intend to do.

Orbiplosions.

I landed on my head and watched the world turn purple, such an ugly shade of purple that I had never before seen, the blood from my eyes mixing with new blood from my nose and moisturizing my lips. And also my chin, which had glass in it. And also my left ear and also I think the eardrum. And my shoulder, too.

And I TRIED to get up quickly.

And I really, really tried...

Wyatt is such an idiot

I swear I HATE that guy

Can we think of something else

NO

From the ground I saw Lyca pick up Jeff's body- like it was a feather, which to her it probably really was- and snap it in half from the back. She slammed his body on the ground hard- so hard- but still not as hard as I wanted; not as hard as when he hit me when I was a child.

And all I could do then was cry. I know I still do.

And then I watched Lyca sprint toward the capsule Caleb Samuel Davenport was trapped in. I was more than willing to bet that the container was not only small to Lyca, but perhaps even fragile, like a snowflake.

Snowflake...

Sam.

I can save her, screamed a hysterical voice in my head. The voice itself seemed to be exploding. To me, it was the only thing still exploding- even though the entire mine above us was still rumbling; even though smaller- but still sizeable- orbs of blinding white light were still everywhere. One staircase, where one of these circular explosions spawned, was no longer anything more than a pile of powder that reminded me of ash. But it didn't smell like ash- it smelled like death; it smelled like evil; it smelled like Jeff Tobler.

Orbiplosions.

Blinding light in perfect circles.

I could've sworn I'd seen them before somewhere...

I can save her.

My own voice was in every nearby telepath's head- though I wasn't trying to broadcast it. Even I couldn't shut it up at that moment... though I doubt it was as much a nuisance as the remainder of the orbiplosions, and the falling death from above. It was a game of Get Rained On, You Die- Kaylee and I's version of The Floor Is Lava that we would still play together even post-Nightingale.

You know... because, of course, it made like absolutely tons of sense to play The Floor Is Lava with me.

I can save her

Miracle apples are in Vicinity Eight.

Where was my mind? Where was anything?

I can save her

Sam is not gone, I can save her.

I really love French toast.

Shut the FUCK up! I screamed telepathically, at myself. Or was it at myself? Every telepath around heard it, too. No, no, I can save her. She is not gone.

From where Kaylee stood she gave me... a look like she wanted to stab me with a fork. Or that's what it looked like to me. I wanted to stab myself, too. Her tears were probably like mine- except mine had blood in them, and were turning black.

Hers probably had tiny invisible sunflower seeds in them. I wouldn't know.

Can you do ONE THING RIGHT???

I fumbled like a dying animal. I fumbled like an ant crushed by a boot. It felt like ten years, the time it took me to drag myself over to Skittles's body.

But Skittles is dead?

SKITTLES WAS KILLED YOU IDIOT

I felt for the smooth doggy coat- no, no, horse coat, right beneath the skin of my only-slightly-more-functional hand. Was it my left one or my right one? I didn't even know left from right anymore. It's strange how now, I look back and what I seem to remember more vividly than everything else was how hungry I was. I remember the colors and the blood, but my stomach still feels empty and stinging and just physically really absolutely horrible at the memory. Kaylee also says she feels that way...

I wasn't breathing when my hands turned Myelantic's elegant white coat red.

"Come on, Ember." The whisper was audible to myself only at first, and then, also audible to every telepath around. Come on, Ember.

Come on, Ember.

I coughed blood and spit it out to clear my throat a little bit.

"Hey, man." My nose was a blood faucet and everything was dark purple and pure black. My eyes half-shut, I tried to search for any visible injuries; any open wounds; something; anything. "I owe you those apples, remember? From V8? Like I said I would?"

LIKE I SAID I WOULD. The stupid, dumb promises that I made to the ones who DIED IN FRONT OF ME.

But Ember isn't dead yet

I can still save her

I can save them, I can

I pinched my nose shut, and blood pooled in my mouth.

I can do one thing right

I can do SOMETHING right, I CAN

Focus on Emberion.

I'm really hungry...

THERE IS NO MORE SAM GO SAVE EMBERION

I barely registered that I was doing what I was doing- that I was even doing anything at all.

It was muscle memory; though all of the nerves in my body were fried and my face and hands were chalk-white from stealing Sam's pain.

I waited for pain to transfer, from Emberion who gave me the only pain medicine I could afford when I was still young, when I had been beaten to a broken-nosed, bloody-mouthed child slave from the Lowdown, one reduced to a defective and fragmented pulp... by what Ember called a miserable child pimp.

Ember couldn't stand me in pain; he never let me go home with with a bloody nose; he'd wrap my arms and back in an actual bandage, and made sure I could actually walk before letting me out of his sight. I know this because that is how he treated me, and none of the many favors that I ever did for him were forced or sexual, because he knew how to be a friend to me.

And that is more- much more- than what my "family" could say.

HE FED ME MORE THAN MY FAMILY DID.

Years ago, he'd call me the "little mouse that crawled out of the sewers." Except in a genuinely sweet, wholesome, horse-y way. When I began working investigation, he started to call me something else; he started to call me what Lyca called me; he called me what Sam called me in her final moments: Morphine.

What she called me in her final moments-

But for me, at twelve, morphine wasn't me. It was him.

And then suddenly I wasn't done.

I wanted Jeff alive, cut off limb by limb, tied to a stake; he deserved to be injected alive with bloodkill into every inch, every square centimeter of his distorted-corrupted-DEPRAVED-degraded BROKEN brain and nonexistent heart and body-

No, no, it didn't matter; God and karma and the universe could handle that. It then struck me that I was feeling no additional pain.

I looked down, and blinked, and blinked, to triple-check that my hands were still on Myelantic's white coat.

No additional pain.

For just a second I glanced once more at Sam's body, then focused my attention back to Ember- but just like Skittles, and just like Crayon, it was all gone before I could take it from him.

No pain. He was gone.

He was gone and I COULDN'T EVEN STEAL THE PAIN OFF HIM BEFORE he was GONE.

Fuck's sake do ONE FUCKING THING right Midnight

I can still save her

The echoes in my head, the echoes in my head...

Do you hear the sounds around me?

Focus on Emberion.

Save who? Focus where?

There is NO EMBERION

Another gigantic shard fell from the sky in front of us; I shielded my eyes from more flying confetti; from circular flashes of blinding white light; from more explosions.

Do ONE THING right Midnight

When did death and soullessness ever look so beautiful, like a rock concert from thousands of years ago shown on the school library television screen?

DO ONE FUCKING THING RIGHT

From an enormous shelf, a residual intermittent orbiplosion pushed the heavy glass aquarium of pseudosaltwater, glowing clownfish, shining pure-white angelfish, and Aequorea Forskalea down onto the marble tiles.

I can still remember how the blood and the water mixed, in large puddles on the marble floor.

Make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop

Mixed together. In little puddle tsunamis, miniature tsunamis on the expensive, elegant, luxury amber marble.

Make it stop

MAKE IT STOP!!!!

It's stopping… these… orb explosions. They're stopping.

ORBI

PLOSIONSSSS

One of the white angelfish landed next to my feet; I quickly picked it up and placed it in the deepest blood-mixed-with-aquarium-water puddle that I could access in my immediate proximity.

"You will be okay," I whispered, lying to both myself and also to the dying fish, as I placed it in the puddle- "See? Freedom!"

It flopped and then stopped moving.

Talk about freedom…

WILL SOMEONE PLEASE KILL ME

No!

You can't do anything right

THAT IS NOT TRUE

Stupid corgi marshmallow YOU CANNOT DO ANYTHING RIGHT

A hundred solved cases aren't something right?

My survival-wired-body reacted before my mind did and I rolled to my left, into a side somersault to immediate front pike.

A flash of blue light, sparks, and glass- whatever illuminated the tank.

Caleb Samuel was screaming.

You can't do ANYTHING right

I thought I heard Tiana's moans of pain.

Good, I thought. Tiana Ambervi is alive.

But she certainly wasn't the one bringing this HAUS DOWN!!!

Another explosion turned half the dark marble replica of Auschwitz II-Birkenau into rubble, ash, fire, and crushed powder.

It also took three of Emberion Myelantic's four horse legs with it, and I thought maybe, we might keep get to keep two, because one landed straight onto my face and into my arms. Did you know that Josef Rudolf Mengele's birthday was not that different from Kaylee and I's birthdays? Yup, same month, only four days apart. History lesson for you.

I screamed, a very young boy's ghastly and awful and piercing scream; ridiculously high-pitched (or maybe even a young girl's scream, or whatever the pitch-voice-spectrum is nowadays, it feels almost hard for me to keep up with terminologies sometimes, or a young nonbinary person's scream because must-be-inclusive, but you get the point, right? I apologize, please interpret the gender of the scream as you would like); impossibly high and sharp and slicing the air like the thinnest of razor blades and thinnest of knives; I should have recorded it for a song and for personal record purposes- as the heavy, giant shards still falling above us started to shatter only half of the way down, I think just because of how freakishly shrill that young-child-nightmare-scream was. It was that terrible. It's like I can still hear it, while I write this.

I remember how, even if for just a few moments, the giant shards were essentially halved and with blunter edges because of it.

Well at least maybe that saved someone.

Not that it was intentional…

I need to get the miracle apples I OWE him from Vicinity Eight

But... how

I heaved again.

If there is NO EMBERION

There is NO MORE EMBERION

And that... was when I lost my mind.

For the five hundredth time.

I didn't feel that the shaking had stopped- Kaylee was then tying my arms with stielvine, or she was trying to- because then I attempted my second suicide attempt of that day. I pushed Kaylee roughly away from me, grabbed the nearest sharp object- the one knife I had always, always saved for myself. With my right hand and using even the two broken, mis-angled and mis-aligned fingers on it, I gripped the knife hard, as hard as I clutched Sam Shilberg's hand when she died- only this time the hand was not in her hand but on the left of my throat.

The blade had just buried itself into my skin when the sudden flash of a different light- a blazing fire of strange, spiraling orange hues and deep shades of red in a spinning flame- blinded me, making me step back a moment, making me drop my knife.

The stranger, the man, Anthony, was staring at me.

"You aren't doing this to me," he growled at me. "Please! Stop!"

"No," I whispered.

"It's going to get better, I promise you!"

Liar.

FUCKING LIAR

My knife. My knife, please.

GIVE ME THE KNIFE PLEASE

PLEASE

I found it in the blood and glass, picked it up, and then a whipping long dark green vine of Kaylee Davenport's whipped it off of my hand again.

"No," I said again. "No," I said, again... and again. "My knife," I whispered to no one, "please."

I picked it up a third time when Lyca punched it straight out of my hand- effectively breaking two more of the fingers on it- and she caught it in midair, and then snapped it in two.

I had nothing left in me; I couldn't scream.

So instead I just sat on the floor and sobbed.

Anthony David put his warm red mantle to me. It was so funny; it was almost familiar- it had felt almost like he had wrapped it around me a hundred times before. It was like I knew how it felt already and I really liked it- as Elyza Cobb froze the dangling broken fingers, perhaps, to save them from coming off entirely. Lyca returned to work, smashing and breaking down the rest of the capsule- steering clear of the toxic, ugly, poison smoke, but failing anyway as a mere wisp of the smoke-like poison landed onto her arm and her skin immediately turned blue and purple; the holes and the ooze and the tentacles.

After Liquid Nitrogen froze up my broken fingers, she waited graciously for Lyca to come hold me in place, for Kaylee to wrap all of us in healervine while she gave everyone a completely tasteless avocado. Caleb Samuel was probably dying- but I felt like there was nothing in me that cared. He sounded to me like a psychopath, anyway. Imagine being so big and strong and powerful and using all of it only to hurt other people. I'm not saying that was what he was. He just gave me that vibe, a little.

James stood alone across from us as Kaylee and Elyza tried to nurse the awful, overly disgusting wounds caused by the smoke- those inflicted heavily on Caleb. James stood in front of his older brother's snapped, stabbed, decapitated body.

Decapitated.

Just like that fourteen-year-old girl.

I wondered if Belinda had answers. Maybe. Because this time, it was different.

Because although I was a marshmallow, she was now going to be talking to a killer.

--ovw--

--ovw--LXIX--ovw--

Take a step, and then it's over

And then it's over

I wasn't

Looking

For a

LIGHTHOUSE

Even though it was a really dark bedroom

Half a page is missing here. Again. But it just looks like poetry to me.

Where to put these other pages, though...

--ovw--

MONDAY

11:29 AM

Jeff Tobler's hideout

Status: Available

I wondered if Belinda had answers. Maybe. Because this time, it was different.

Because although I was a marshmallow, she was now going to be talking to a killer.

--ovw--

"Well," James said, across from all of us but not at us- his sleek red hair only a few shades lighter that that of his older brother's- "It was good to see you again, and to finally see you on the ground." He kicked Jeff's decapitated head, and it rolled over so that its face with my knives still buried through the flesh and cartilage and eyeballs were shown to us in more full, focused detail. It was not gross. "A body."

His words were almost a whisper, that, on a normal day, would have caused me to shiver.

But the warmth of Anthony's mantle and the fire that would not stop, would not cease burning, inside of me- that fire was not something that could be stopped.

I got up, Lyca immediately getting up with me and Kaylee doing the same- wrapping my left wrist, twice, immediately, in stringvine and whipvine.

I walked slowly toward James, and for only a moment, we locked eyes over the dead man's body. It wasn't what I wanted, but I had a family in Jameson Adam Tobler; it felt like more than I had ever had. No one was family- no one cared.

I looked down at Jeff's... dismembered, mangled, crushed, shattered, mutilated face; the separated head and body.

Just like the fourteen-year-old girl from the Lowdown.

I knelt down, in front of James and all my friends, even Connor who had finally come to albeit he was probably just as severely concussed as all of us or maybe even more so- and I slowly, savoringly yet almost without emotion, pulled out my knives- one at a time.

As I pulled the first one, I said, "That was for the fourteen-year-old," and as I pulled the next one, I said, "That was for me."

Between my sobs, my ragged breathing and now-shaking body, I pulled the next one, all with my left hand as my right was broken probably to bits and also frozen, "That was for Sam Shilberg." I heard Kaylee starting to wail behind us, as did Connor minus the amount of vocal sound, as did Lyca- because, even though they were rivals in and out of the ring… they still made each other better. Anthony David Malcolm wrapped his big, warm arms around me from behind- and I didn't really mind, partly because there was no way James or Kaylee or Lyca would let him hurt me in front of them (though possibly each for different reasons)- while Elyza contained herself to sniffing silently and wiping tears as she attempted to alleviate Caleb's physical torture damage/torture effects/immediate torture aftermath, using whatever chemicals and ointments she found in the torture house. Yet most of the true weeping was in the telepathy, and the empathy. The empathy that I did not ever want. I said it, once more, and so did Kaylee- we said it together. We said her name. Both telepathically as well as physically. Tangibly and intangibly. Her name is written in our minds.

The knife was for her; the knives were for her.

We- Kaylee Davenport and I- were in tortures, and out of tortures, together. She knew what I was going to say, right at that moment, and when I'd say it.

She read my mind.

Kaylee and I both said her name together.

"That was for SAM SHILBERG." Heedlessly, turbulently, I pulled out three knives- all at once- for her, and then I continued to physically speak. As more tears and more sweat and more blood coated my lips and imperfect teeth; as James and Kaylee read my mind both unabashedly and uninterruptedly; as tiny, tiny bits of diamond and pseudo-diamond glass ceiling sparkled on their way down to the floor and hit the ground like broken-emerald-glass pearls, I said more than just her name. I spoke other names:

"That was for Marie."

Tiana Ambervi, who had been knocked out early on in the explosions and came to with a severely bleeding neck and glass punctures in both arms, laid a small stone of... who knows, maybe graphite, maybe quartzite, maybe diamond for each name, each knife I pulled back out, on the ground, beside us, beside the evil's body.

I still didn't hate him, like the way I felt maybe I hated his brother, James Tobler; he wasn't worth that much; he wasn't worth the hate.

He wasn't worth anything at all.

For Sam.

She's not gone, she is NOT gone

I can save her.

The tears rolled down my face; I didn't know for how long that would happen, or if it even ever would stop. Do you know how a marshmallow breaks?

Because I did.

Again.

I can save her.

Let's just say my thoughts were no longer coherent.

She is fast, faster than shooting stars

Actually, looking back at it, I didn't even know which ones were new thoughts, or which ones were echoes of a memory. Or echoes of something I wrote about her on a page, perhaps.

That was what it looked like:

When the softest thing, breaks.

I like her

She bought me cotton once. And bandages. From Emberion. And this was before she even knew who I was.

Her eyes are like the snow...

I can save her.

She is NOT GONE

I'm hungry.

Sam is NOT GONE

"That was for Carter."

More voices in my mind. Floating, all floating in a semi-transparent haze of purple, purple and light purple, purple and dark purple, and black sunflowers and Kaylee's brown hair.

Kaylee...

In that moment, she spoke into my mind.

"So the-" her telepathic voice began. It had to creep through red sludge, poison jungles of humidity and prostitution and drugs and memories and trash, through the stuffed animals that were torn to pieces in front of me. Telepathically she had to go through all of those things; her voice needed to go through all of that to reach me. But she had already seen some of it, for herself, because of Nightingale. "...the orbiplosions-"

I thought about it once more. Nightingale, per se, may have been harder for Kaylee, because she had not seen any and all of those evils prior to the torture of the experiment, whereas... I had already seen some of those things in the past.

But that is exactly why we survived, Kaylee's telepathic voice spoke in echoes that went in invisible diagonal waves all around us.

I heard it. But my broken fingers and hands were fumbling around and still yanking out the knives.

She's right, a male voice said. I wasn't sure whose, but I assumed it had to be one of the telepaths with us. She wouldn't have survived if it weren't for you. She wouldn't be alive today, if you hadn't been there.

Gruesome, battered, and inured- I extracted yet another knife.

I'm her older brother, said the same voice. Because now, you need to be reminded.

I keep diaries. I don't need to be reminded of anything.

I tried to respond.

Orbiplosions, spoke a voice. Was it in my mind only, was it something I wrote on paper, was it my voice, was I telepathically communicating it and if so was I doing it correctly, or was I physically speaking the word, or was I trying to get my lunch money back from Wyatt or hearing the grating screeches of Avyeena or looking once again for Penguinowo, I did not know.

"Buddy- "

I looked behind me. Anthony David Malcolm.

"He doesn't know you right now," said James.

"Like I know you any better," I whispered.

"I've done the best I can. That's all I can do for you."

"Shut the hell up!" screamed Kaylee.

She ran at Tobler, slamming her massive bow into his pseudo-diamond-framed glasses, shattering both of the pristine transparent lenses, cracking the cartilage of his nose. She punched his cracked nose, and then his stomach, and then his groin, and then his mouth, knocking him to the floor.

"Kaylee- " I started.

I could've looked away.

I didn't.

This isn't a good idea! I said, telepathically, and VERY LOUDLY.

I DON'T CARE, she replied even louder.

She spawned a dozen clumps of large, mutated, thorned, poison-stinging-nettle-and-honey-locust hybrids and began hurling them at James- at his face; his arms; his now-exposed light green colored eyes.

"Don't…" James started, "make me angry!"

FUCK YOU, I thought straight into his head.

F U C K

Y O U.

Join your brother you freak dimension MONSTER

James summoned the ugliest white statue- one of a former U.S. president- from the chamber behind us, with massive shards of fallen crystal rocks off the ground, and catapulted them fast in an almost-straight line at Kaylee. Her brown eyes widened.

I gritted my imperfect teeth.

"Stop!" Tiana's voice.

Kaylee yelped, grunted, moaned; deflecting half the shards with her bow and shields of quickly-spawned, mutated snake plant before the heavier chunk of diamond debris knocked the air out her lungs, knocked her down to the ground.

She tried to get back up before getting rocked in the face with another one.

The statue was next.

With bloody eyes, I aimed at Tobler. Which Tobler? The one which wasn't a corpse… yet.

He locked the light green eyes on mine, and spoke to me telepathically.

You want to kill me that bad?

Yes.

I can kill you first. Easily. But I don't want to do that.

Because I'm profitable and a handy Swiss knife who brings you fucking Swiss cheese.

No. Because I DO care.

"JAMESON ADAM TOBLER, STOP!" Elyza's voice. "Stop this, right now! She is eighteen!"

"Doesn't matter," Kaylee muttered.

"Never mattered," I agreed.

NEVER FUCKING MATTERED.

Swiftly, Tiana Ambervi formed a wall of rock to protect Kaylee from the former U.S. president at the last possible moment.

Well- the statue, of the former U.S. president. But frankly, what was the difference?

Kaylee completely ignored Connor Meadows- who tried to offer her a hand up- tossed her hair over a shoulder, and remained seated on the floor. She shut her eyes, and doing so forced the tears out of them. She hugged her knees.

"Three months…" she continued, "three months of torture, and what you give us is 'I've done the best I can'?"

I put the knife down.

I am so hungry

"Best at being a fucking pussy-ass bitch!" she screamed.

Both Elyza and Connor's eyes widened. This was the side of Kaylee only I was familiar with.

Can I have just one jellybean please

"I can make sure that both your fathers never find employment," Jameson Adam Tobler snarled. Snarled, like an animal. The fucking animal he was. "Do not cross me, lesbian."

Kaylee hissed.

"I get more pussy than you do… pussy."

I remembered all the vomiting; I remembered tasting the cyclohexene; I remembered the desperation that I felt, the desperation that James himself probably never felt but that I had to experience every single day.

For years…

And all of the other poisons.

See, when you're as damaged by abusers as I am… you remember things. They flash like lightning. Whether you like to or not; whether you proactively choose to, or not.

"Makes sense," I said- my voice quieter now and yet still echoing throughout the massive, dark, psychotic, amber torture madhouse- vocal waves echoing both physically as well as telepathically. "Go fuck yourself, you asshole. That way you'd get more pussy."

Somewhere in my mind, I imagined what Kaylee might do to him, what I myself might do to him, if he did not hold as much power. The kind of power that he just threatened Kaylee with. Power he held all because of the position that he happened to be in; no other reason.

I glared at him. He fumed at Kaylee Davenport. Eight words in my mind as I looked at his tall body, his (now dirty) beige dress pants, his green tweed jacket with brown elbow patches:

So tell me now, does it fix you?

He looked at me, and his look of anger dissipated. I did not care why. Mine didn't.

Somewhere else in my mind, I still reached for Crayon, and for Skittles.

And for Sam.

I thought of my big little (little and also big at the same time) fluffy white pets. Fluffy, and white but not blinding. I thought of them again. Because- and even now I can still remember it clearly- there was a point in my life where a dog was my only friend.

I reached for the innocent sources of light that were no longer there; the innocent sources of light with hearts no longer beating.

And for Sam.

Something tugged at me.

The dogs.

Didn't I bury them with someone...?

Knife.

Knife.

Knife after knife, after knife.

"That was for Emberion Myelantic."

And Sam.

One knife, after another knife, after another knife.

I'm hungry...

"That was for Charlotte Miller."

After another knife.

I'm hungry. I want a cupcake.

Charlotte Miller...

And Sam. And the fourteen-year-old who I never met.

And for Sam.

I refuse for these people to simply be forgotten. I REFUSE.

They deserved better THAN HIM.

And even as I write this, I know that all things will eventually be forgotten. We all know this. But they will not fade the way HE WANTED THEM TO.

Their kindness will live.

The damage he did can become something powerful- something powerful and something beautiful, even though this damage stays in a lot of us.

The strength we have- the strength from the harm inflicted upon us- will touch others who need it.

While him and his evil DIE.

Setting fires

For all the lies he told.

Setting fires

For all the harm he has inflicted upon children and upon the truly innocent who were blamed for all the horrible things he did.

Setting fires

I'm setting fires.

--ovw--

Orbiplosions, spoke the voice again. Was the voice my own? I didn't know. I couldn't tell anymore. But a voice spoke back to her and almost to me as well. And I don't even know if it was meant as a response to Kaylee, whose aura and energy and whose entire telepathic vibe were suddenly exactly like mine: if it was an announcement to all of us telepaths in the room. White. Blinding white.

Blinding torture light. Of course I'd seen it before.

I didn't sleep for weeks.

If fear was a color- mine would be white.

Yeah, mine, too.

We knew that, Kaylee.

Midnight didn't.

Not a surprise anymore that my favorites were black and red.

Blinding white light.

In perfect circles. Exploding flashes of blinding white, white, white lights in perfect circles...

The falling of castles. The crumbling of walls.

Towers- all falling down.

The attempted destruction of the most kind but most resilient and the most superhuman of minds-

"That was for Avyeena."

Even though nobody liked Avyeena. I think Kaylee punched her once. Or was that someone else?

Kaylee shot me some kind of a look.

I want a cupcake. Or maybe some French toast. Oh, it's been so long since I had French toast!

Why is the whole world spinning all around us-

A male voice spoke in my head: "He's not doing this to you AGAIN."

Was it the flash of a memory? I had PTSD. It was probably just that.

I am SO hungry. I really want a cupcake. And this super dark red blood from my hand looks so warm and so delicious...

At one point, Tiana got down on both knees beside me, and pulled out the knife that I was just going to- and dropped it on the ground.

Where is Penguinowo right now?

"My sister," she said, in her unique and almost archaic half South Asian, and half East Asian accent, "that for my sister."

I picked up one of her earth stones and laid it on the body, following the circle of small stones she was creating.

She smiled at me, and I tried to smiled back but succeeded only for the fraction of a moment before I was weeping again.

For Sam.

Sam

I know I'm angry but she is NOT GONE

"This is for what you did to Kaylee and what you did to me," I whispered, "this for what you did to all of those children at Nightingale."

Lyca, who had stepped away for a moment, returned to us carrying Sam's body.

She was so beautiful, in life or even now, in her rest... I knew she was beautiful.

"I know where Chaquille lives," I said. "I can help out... with the... with the funeral, and arrangements, all of that."

Emberion.

I still had to go get miracle apples, for Emberion...

"I'm with you there," said Kaylee. And all I remembered next was her hugging me and water from my eyes that did not seem to stop, until, for another time on that same day, I blacked out.

--ovw--

I wasn't looking for a lighthouse

Even though it was a really dark bedroom

--ovw--

Lost page? Partially torn, but obviously from one of these notebooks.

It seems to be inserted here, though.

The ink looks a little different...

And the handwriting even, it looks a little different, too (????)

Exact time of writing: Not yet identified

Do you ever remember something, and then you have to stop moving? You breathe, but you don't feel anything?

And then you can't sleep?

Or you cry?

Do you ever remember something and then suddenly you want to scream at the world- a world that you were kept away from while you stared at it from a literal prison?

And it's not because you hate the world- but because you know it is all pointless? When you have seen every evil that this world could possibly offer?

She is gone, I tell myself now.

And so is every single part of me, I say now as I write this.

I will remember.

As I remember now.

My left hand is shaking as I write this on what I can only hope is a piece of paper that will not be torn to parts by an abuser. I do not know how I can spell any words at all. The ugliest of scars- on my leg, and on my face- will never go away. As much as I have hurt myself, I can never hurt myself enough. It will never match what has been done to us.

I am the story of a brainwashed and programmed cynic who falls both backwards and forwards on the line between empath and apathetic; between the floors of gentleness and the broken glass ceilings of physical pain that some people know and that some other people will turn a blind eye to.

I have experienced the most extreme of love and also the most extreme of hate.

I balanced on a tightrope that was once my life. How I still managed to walk across a such a length of precarious mind control is still beyond me.

It still hits me today. In my nightmares. I wish I could almost say that I'm done with all of the tears and all of the crying- but things are NOT. FINE. when you dream about it. Take the ugliest moment of your life and turn that into a nightmare and then play it in your mind in the most vivid way possible; do it every night. That is also a recipe of me.

To you who know who you are- you burned every single thing I had. You prevented me from receiving every opportunity because you never had one.

But I will not be like you.

Because, I never was like you in any way.

While I now believe that all people are selfish- which might or might not only be a phase, because now I know that everything can change in the blink of an eye or in one flash of blinding light- I will not become the monster that you wanted to impose upon me.

She is gone.

She is gone, and, in many ways, so am I.

Others that I cared about were permanently taken away from me.

But everything that feels permanent, is not.

Someone may read this one day. Perhaps not, but perhaps.

I do not know.

Maybe, that "someone" will even be me. That someone might even be a friend from a past life. Or that someone might be someone I never met.

I do not know.

But someday someone might read this.

And so:

I fight for all of the things I lost; I fight for the things and the people I didn't get to have; the things and the people I didn't get to experience life with; for all the things I was deprived of; FOR ALL OF THE OTHER PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO HAVE BEEN HURT.

Because as selfish as we are- as selfish as WE HUMANS ARE, AS DISGUSTING AS OUR ENTIRE EXISTENCES MIGHT BE- you WERE NOT and you ARE NOT ALONE.

Whoever you are- your abuser cannot win.

Because abusers abuse themselves more than they can possibly abuse anyone else, no matter how much damage they try to inflict. Their clock runs out fast while yours keeps turning.

One day, the page will be written by you.

And you, my friend, my fellow survivor- you can let these pages be your reminder.

--ovw--LXX--ovw--

I waited there in the dark for another word

Dirty water, mud puddles, shoes thin in the dirt

Take it off for the last time I get hurt, you said

Dirty water, mud puddles, shoes thin in the dirt

I keep on running now

No time to get back to you

I see you slip and then that's it

You keep on burning further

Don't even pick up now

Now I know when you're lying

See anyone can see that so you can keep going under

Minefield, minefield

I see you losing your grip in a minefield

Minefield, minefield

I see you losing your grip in a minefield

You're losing your grip in a minefield

Losing your grip in a minefield

Losing your grip in a minefield

Lie once, all it takes is one hot word

I see you sweat like the paper you stole gonna burn

Take it off for the last time I get hurt, you said

Dirty water, mud puddles, shoes thin in the dirt

I keep on running now

No time to get back to you

I see you slip and then that's it

You keep on burning further

Don't even pick up now

Now I know when you're lying

See anyone can see that so you can keep going under

I keep on running now

No time to get back to you

I see you slip and then that's it

You keep on burning further

Don't even pick up now

Now I know when you're lying

See anyone can see that so you can keep going under

Minefield, minefield

I see you losing your grip in a minefield

Minefield, minefield

I see you losing your grip in a minefield

Losing your grip in a minefield

Losing your grip in a minefield

Losing your grip in a minefield

Take a step and then it's over

And then it's over

I see you losing your grip in a minefield

I keep on running now

No time to get back to you

I see you slip and then that's it

You keep on burning further

Don't even pick up now

Now I know when you're lying

See anyone can see that so you can keep going under

I keep on running now

No time to get back to you

I see you slip and then that's it

You keep on burning further

Don't even pick up now

Now I know when you're lying

See anyone can see that so you can keep going under

See anyone can see that, anyone can see that

Don't even pick up now because I know when you're lying

I know

I know when you're lying

I know when you're lying

I think, think you're losing your grip in a minefield

Try to leave this one out, if you're coming in, honey

If you're waiting for a next time, I won't show up

You're leaving, because I'm coming in faster

Believe it? I will end your lies

You're never gonna see an ever after

You burn when you look in my eyes

You said I was going to be killed before the night falls

Before the night falls

Before the night falls

You're leaving, because I'm coming in faster

Believe it? I will end your lies

You're never gonna see an ever after

You burn when you look in my eyes

You said I was going to be killed before the night falls

Before the night falls

Before the night falls

--ovw--

THURSDAY

11:45 AM

The woods between the Bay area/the Port and V4

I stared at the surgically repaired hand, now mobile and functional, but I still had to throw roundoffs and front handsprings now and again just to remind myself that by body knew the motion.

Those blasts really messed all of us up.

I stared at the shovels. There were two of them.

Someone helped to bury Skittles and Crayon with me? Somehow, my memory didn't think it was Kaylee. Could the bodies have been heavy and perhaps it was Carter?

"Hey, little buddy."

I whipped around, instinctively pushing off the grass and soil on the ground into a simple backwards tumbling pass of two whips into a full twist.

"Sorry, didn't mean to scare ya."

The voice was somewhat familiar now. It was the man we helped rescue at the Diamond Mines, the one who wrapped his mantle around me.

"Hi, David," I said.

"I told you- call me Malc."

"Malc."

"Yes. Short for Malcolm."

He was chastising me, but I was comfortable. For whatever the reason, I was comfortable. I wonder how he followed me here.

"So... you're here... because...?"

He shrugged.

"I wanted to be here," he said.

He had a nice funny voice, deep, gruff, slightly raspy as though he smoked megacigarettes- which he didn't- perhaps ten percent the raspiness of Connor's voice, five percent the raspiness of Sam's voice, when she was here...

"Hey," he said. "Hey, I'm here. I got you."

His arms were around me before I knew anything was happening or anything was changing.

I looked up, at the sky, but his face and ultramarine eyes and trimmed, semi-maintained beard of chestnut brown and salt-and-pepper colors got in the way.

"I just..." I started. "The snowflakes. The color. They remind me so much of her-"

Of course, I tried hard not to cry and failed, as always.

"Mind if I join the party?"

Kaylee's voice.

I lit up immediately, like... like a lamp. Like a ferret in a bucket of snow, like a corgi that was about to get a treat.

"Kayles!"

My life was like that at that point- having lost so much... and then, also being told I'd lost stuff but had no idea, exempli gratia memories- just for example but I still didn't buy it having survived Nightingale and WITH KAYLEE together for that matter.

Besides, Caleb Samuel and James were the only two people claiming I had been chemically or toxically memory-altered. And if I was, I knew it'd fade soon. It did in Nightingale for both me and Kaylee for the Zapryekavil stuff, so this was- what? Nothing. It was nothing.

"Your big brother still insisting that we kissed?" I said, with a smile, the dimple on the center of my left cheek and the second dimple on my right, which was closer to the side of my mouth- forcing creases into my face and the smile reaching my eyes.

"No, actually," said Kayles. "He's insisting you did a lot more than just that!"

Malc guffawed, loud, and so did I, and Kaylee did, too, albeit her laugh was a bit softer, perhaps... perhaps still under the gloom of all that had happened.

A light lilac sky and turquoise-green snow came down, slowly, gently, silently, all around us. The color of her eyes- the exact same color of her eyes.

"I'm wearing this in honor of her," said Kayles, showing off her silk double layer orange tank top- "What'dya think she'd say to me?" Kaylee smiled and laughed; some kind of giggle that clearly showed that she was not entirely over what happened at the Diamond Mines.

Neither was I. Not in the slightest.

"Uhhhhhm-" I said. "She'd say..."

Malc butt in.

"She'd say 'your mama raise you better than that.'"

I wasn't expecting it- I didn't think that Anthony Davi- I mean Malc- knew Sam at all.

I laughed hard; we all laughed hard- because, it probably would be exactly what Sam would say, but-

"But I literally don't even have a mom," Kaylee said in between her tears and laughter.

"Me, neither," I replied, in between my own tears and laughter.

--ovw--

--ovw--LXXI--ovw--

THURSDAY

12:25 PM

The Everglades: Crisanto Pacifico

My mind had been strangely blank of any Nightingale memories. Perhaps, it was the trauma- well, the more recent trauma. The toll of all of the losses. I wondered If Kaylee, who sat to my left eating purple Taro ice cream with light purple Taro bubble tea felt the same-

"Yeah," she said physically, "I haven't had many nightmares or memories lately, either."

"Oh," I said, somewhat embarrassed. "Okay."

She laughed.

"Don't be, Danny. Your mind's a nice place."

Something tugged at me.

The turquoise-emerald snow fell into my cup of hot chocolate and I sipped it afterward. Still too hot; I didn't care. Cars from the Suburbs area or the V5 area passed us as we watched them, playing a card game I completely did not understand and lost one-hundred percent of the time at- trying to figure out or next move covering the murder.

"Yeah, well-" Kayles quipped.

"Well, what?"

"You and I are off the case another week or so," she said.

I sipped my hot chocolate.

"Really, Chris?"

A red car with a light candy blue spoiler stopped in front of us; an adult couple with a child picked up their order of Wintertime Overwoods Supreme- literally tuna, pie, and chicken, and sandwiches.

The little girl, bundled up in a coat, scarf, and bright yellow mittens, took one of the sandwiches and- was I imagining it? She was running toward me like she recognized me.

"Kayles," I whispered. "Are agents or Webwork employees allowed to take their child to the SRAs?"

Kaylee shook her head, a knowing smile creeping across her light-purple-covered lips from the ice cream and bubble tea; she was already reading this child's mind. She just did it, did it all the time.

"It's not about the SRA, dum dum."

The young girl was beside me and Kayles now, insisting I take the sandwich. "Awwwwww!" I squealed like Jupiter Two got me a stick from the Bay of Bodies beach or like Happy was offering me a twig from a primrose-heliotrope-sugar maple mutated hybrid plant. I was so eternally, ever so glad I told Kayles to tell Connor to tell the adorable happy pets to stay off of and steer clear of the Mines entrance. "It's okay," I said. "You can give your mom or dad the sandwich."

The young girl left the sandwich on the table.

"This is for what you did to the bad man at the Suburb that I live at," squeaked the girl, like a mouse. "I also sent you all of my Wobux, but you haven't even logged in to Woblox! My mom gave me your Woblox username for nothing!" she warbled before she ran off.

"I haven't played Woblox for a while but I'll check!" I yelled like a normal adult.

Kaylee and I waved at both of the girl's parents before they got back in the car, and drove off.
…

The bad man.

Like... WHICH bad man at which Suburb that she li-

"Oh," Kaylee said with two spoonfuls of Taro ice cream still in her mouth. She swallowed hastily. "She meant the one where-"

"Yeah no I didn't really ask, no, thanks."

I pulled out my U.S.-issued phone and started running through facial composites.

Around eighteen men, nine women, three of unidentified gender roles. Strangely enough when I visited Anthony's house for hot ribollita and stroganoff there was a room with these same photographs in them. Anthony said that I stayed there once while on an assignment and left all the facial photographs there. It was embarrassing- I glued them onto his CEILING- I was, apparently, the WORST possible guest EVER. There were even songs written on paper there and one of my ukuleles- which was even MORE emba-

"No, it wasn't, Chris, there's nothing embarrassing about-"

"Dude," I said. "Like, shut the fuck up."

She laughed, and called a waitress's attention to order more ice cream. I returned my focus to the screen; to the disgusting faces.

"Tobler said Sarah Peters knew everything," I said. "He was higher than the Coliseum when he said it, though."

Kaylee snorted while she very daintily flipped through the ice cream menu. She wiggled her fingernails at herself; they were a glimmering color combo of light orange and light pink.

I could not help but remember Sam.

I closed my eyes.

"You really believe that?" said Kaylee.

I paused.

I opened my eyes again.

Another couple of snowflakes floated their way into my hot chocolate and then I took more sips. I liked snow-flavored hot chocolate.

"Why would he have even said it?" I replied, answering her question with a question. It was quite rude and I felt bad.

Corgi

Corgi boing boing boing boing boing boing boing

"The Coke Sandwich lady? Knows everything?" Kaylee widened her eyes at me in mock surprise. "She might know something, sure, but everything?"

Like a ghost in a horror movie, one frame not there and the very next frame- THERE, Connor appeared in the seat in front of us, across us at the table. Kaylee and I were the friends that always sat beside each other.

I gasped sharply and the light purple bubble tea with pearls in Kaylee's mouth projectile flew in water-fountain-esque trajectory onto Connor's face and glowing neon-blue facial hair, little bubble tea drops of light purple liquid dripping off of his whiskers.

I laughed, hard- like manic, crazy hard and loud as heck- and so did Kaylee.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA," squealed Kaylee when our laughter finally ran out. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

We were, very obviously, coping with a lot.

And then we both started laughing again.

I offered Connor my table napkins and he ungraciously wiped the colloidal mix off, picking half-chewed tapioca flour pearls from the bubble tea that landed on his shirt and his pants and the side of his ear.

Kaylee and I were still stuck laughing.

Yeah.

We were coping with A LOT. I attempted to think, although thinking in that moment, again, was nearly impossible.

Kaylee and I kept laughing, like two completely insane people.

Though for all I knew, maybe this was change?

Change like how

Maybe we were both starting to become more capable of handling fear; of handling grief?

An orange maple leaf came off a nearby tree and landed on our table. I held it in both hands as our maniacal laughter subsided.

Change like a part of the heart that was you has broken off but you still live and still survive regardless

Perhaps, we were slowly understanding that life is life- and it happens to all of us? I didn't know.

I just knew that Connor Meadows was covered in Kaylee's spit and chewed up bubble tea pearls and light purple Taro flavoring. Married in his early twenties and with his own house, I always assumed that he was THE PERFECT picture of adult-ness; of put-together-ness; that was, of course, until I worked with him and realized that he had just as many issues as I had.

Or Kaylee had.

Or James had.

Or, dammit, I sometimes thought, probably even more.

I stifled a tiny bit of laughter. Then I had a flashback.

And then I wondered, for only the fraction of a moment, how the uncle was...

"I'm glad to be of y'all's service," Connor said as he picked the chewed tapioca flour bits off his eyelashes. "Glad to make y'all laugh."

Kaylee clapped her hands.

"What's even funnier," Kaylee said, looking at Connor, "is how you seriously thought you'd reach that one glass tile, on the lower-upper laboratory-facility mezzanine floors!" Kaylee squealed, high-pitched like a bat. "You're lucky they weren't on fire anymore after Elyza was done; because, I swear, Connor, when Chris and I went through the-"

I tapped her shoulder, and I gave her a smile.

The smile then vanished.

"Yeah, uhm." She passed the menu to Connor. "Yeah, never mind."

"Ain't it dumb though that Wyatt's the only person permitted to work the case for this entire damn week?" said Connor. "I mean, it don't make sense to me- does it make sense to you?"

I shrugged my shoulders; shook my head. I gave Connor a look. A look of complete bleakness. A total blackout expression.

"He's the only one who technically followed the few orders he had," I muttered quietly. "He was sort of needed for interrogation, because I wouldn't do it, and therefore he wasn't out that first week like I was because I instigated the hotel search- "

Kaylee chimed in. "Saving Elyza's life and catching Sarah Crack Sandwich- "

"COKE Sandwich Peters," Connor corrected her. He spit, the way he typically did, while the accent creeped into his voice and his even his telepathic vocal waves. "For someone who reads her best friend's mind and all his warrant documents, and her fathers' minds and their files, plus who has such a fuckin' dork brother, you're not very smart."

Kaylee rolled her eyes, tossing her hair over one shoulder as she did. She looked away from Connor while the blades of grass near us changed color from light green to dark green.

"So short answer is: Yes. Also Wyatt is a fucking asshole nobody really wants to be around, because, like… he's kind of an asshole. Yeah. That. So, yes." I sipped my amazing happy hot chocolate. It was SO good! "Mmmmmmh," I said. "Literally, the taste of happiness."

I was so great at explaining everything on that day; I really was. I should've been given a great-at-explaining award.

I looked at Kaylee.

"Wait," I said. "Wait a second. You read all of the warrant documents?"

"No!" said Kaylee, rolling her eyes again. "He's lying!"

Corgi

Corgi yaaaaaaaa
yayayayayayayaaaa

"Y'all are on crack." Connor shook his head at us.

"That's kind of..." Kaylee said, "maybe ironic considering that the only one that actually does crack here is, umm. YOU?"

Connor spit on the darkened grass.

"I should have just stayed at home," he said.

I scoffed.

"But you literally texted me just to say that your wife is stoned AS FUCK, and that she set both of your thousand-dollar-steel-ovens on fire," I said. "Mixing your Phantamnyl recipe."

"Phantamnyl?" said Kaylee.

I unlocked my cell phone, leaned over, and showed Kaylee the text message.

She blinked.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA," she squealed, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

I covered my ears.

Happy the raccoon sauntered toward us, from an upturned rubbish basket. Slowly, one at a time, he gave us all an apple each; a happy little healing apple.

I patted him on the head twice and he ran up my left shoulder and poked the part of my cheek where my dimple shows up if I'm smiling or laughing or extremely unimpressed.

"There's a betting competition at the Webwork for any agents that are Level I and up-" Connor started.

"We are not into betting," Kaylee and I both said in unison.

I gave Happy the rest of my hot chocolate.

"What I was going to say," Connor's chalk-pale face turning beet red, "was that there are these three versus three SRA things going on."

"I'm listening," Kaylee said. "Chris?"

"Yeah, I'm not."

Kaylee pushed me and my chair and I fell to the grass like a pink paper rag doll (think regular rag doll but small and made of paper).

She offered me her hand.

"Still not doing it," I said as she helped pull me and my chair back up.

Telepathically, Kaylee and Connor both connected to my mind- perhaps in an attempt to change it; it was, to me, pretty obvious.

"Y'ALL NOT GETTING NOWHERE," I said.

Kaylee rolled her eyes.

"Says the guy who literally forgets his own boyfriend," she said.

This time I pushed her and her chair and she fell to the grass. I helped her up, too, of course.

"You tryna make me vomit? 'Cause it's working."

Friendship goals, I know, right? We literally pushed each other. It was so great.

Like, we pushed each other and our friends died and people died right in front of us from unnatural brutal ultraviolent causes like pretty much all the time.

Such genius.

Corgi

Corgi boing boing boing boing boing boing boing boing boing

"I mean really," I said. "Connor- what's the point?"

Boing boing boingggg

"The point," Connor said, is that all three of us are off any cases for this entire week, AND we have an excuse to show off to the entire Union of Stars' cadre!"

He was beaming at us. It made zero sense.

"Y'all insane to not want to be part of this. Miss Davenport here has been granted clearance to take part and have her own SRA entry in THE OFFICIAL RECORDS AND SCOREBOARDS."

"Be high somewhere else. Thanks."

I wondered what exactly he was high on.

"Our favorite dealer's dead."

I glared at him.

"And why aren't you?"

"Dead?"

I sipped on chocolate.

"Why aren't I dead?" he asked.

I said nothing.

I sipped my hot chocolate and called a waiter to order another one. As much as a total lunatic I was for ALWAYS saving as much money as possible, a second cup of Crisanto Pacifico hot chocolate with free snowflakes for toppings was just what I had listed on my, specifically, grieving-and-completely-entirely-destroyed-psychologically budget.

Sort of.

Kaylee shot me a quick glance before returning to side eyeing Connor Meadows. "Same," she said. "Fucking same."

And then, Connor delivered such a wonderful blow, so wonderful that to say it hit too close to home was some kind of tacky and garish understatement.

No, it HIT home. For all of us. Unless Connor was stoned on some shit- he probably was.

His next words felt like pure vile gloom; clear black-and-blue bitterness:

"You know, Sam would want you guys to be in this. She would tell you to go. She'd call you an idiot for not joining. Do it for her, because YOU KNOW she'd want you to."

I got up and walked without waiting for my second cup of hot chocolate.

"I'll see you there," I said.

--ovw--LXXII--ovw--

"You know, Sam would want you guys to be in this."

I got up and walked without waiting for my second cup of hot chocolate.

"I'll see you there," I said.

THURSDAY

12:35 PM

The Everglades: Crisanto Pacifico

I was crying before I knew that I was crying.

Fortunately, I had already faced the other way.

See, this is why Connor has a wife that would rather be STONED all the time, thought Kaylee, loudly to where any telepath that cared would hear it.

Happy the raccoon hopped off my shoulder and tried to offer me a tiny little apple, but I didn't acknowledge it. I let Happy catch up to me on his own four paws.

I flexed the fingers on both my hands- from the damaged reconstructed left one, to the even more damaged and more reconstructed right one.

"Chris," called Connor from behind me.

Almost exactly like how Emberion Myelantic did when I was trying to leave the Thornton building...

"Chris!" he said again.

I said nothing.

"I just... I just want to talk," said Connor.

Kaylee chimed in in her Southern U.S., melodic, singsong cheery cheerful vibe of a voice.

"Yeah, well. That ain't no way to talk to the guy that's just lost it all."

Thanks, I said to Kaylee telepathically.

No problem, she said. Stay safe and stay fighting.

I looked over my shoulder and offered her a smile and a wave goodbye.

"You, too," I said, physically.

I waited for the cars to pass, calculated line and distance, and threw my roundoff hard into the sidewalk across from us.

Spinning, spinning, high up and twisting. It always felt like home.

Next destination: Port.

--ovw--LXXIII--ovw--

THURSDAY

4:45 PM

The Bay of Bodies/The Port

I WILL NOT CRY TODAY.

I repeated it in my head. Over and over and over again.

"I will not cry today," I lied to myself, ripping the hanging skin off the newest wound on one of my right knuckles. "I will NOT cry today."

I said it out loud; I said it repeatedly.

Pretty dumb, considering I had already cried, like, five times on that day alone. But who expected more from me, right?

Orbiplosions.

Of course you've seen them before.

Orbiplosions.

Of course you did.

The photographs and facial composites of abuse leaders and criminals that I hadn't yet put down were pinned to a tree on my left.

To my right, punching bag, and makeshift vault.

It was practically a table, the vault. But that I could work with. I was dirt poor essentially all of my life, anyway. The punching bag was... was a gift. From someone. I... I didn't remember.

Really, I should have seen coming what happened next.

"That's because it was from me!" an awfully... awfully familiar voice hollered.

I raised both my arms above my head.

Hello and thank you but no thank you, I thought to no one in particular.

I swung my arms down with bent knees.

"Don't leave!"

I straightened my legs tightly as I pushed off, my arms going upward again and my head going back- one handspring backwards, triple back half out, front layout, two-and-a-half. I landed on the disorganized pile of old discarded knives I'd started obsessively collecting like a normal person, and selected one.

It was like he was telepathically molesting me.

"Danny-" he said.

I said nothing.

MY.

NAME-

I took one breath and gripped the blade of the handle-heavy knife that I chose.

IS.

"CHRIS!" I screamed aloud. James would have been so proud of me, had be just been there.

I threw the blade hard, mid-spin, my left hand setting the rusted knife ablaze before I let it go and flicked and arched backward onto my hands and knees on the sand.

In a slow-motion that only my damaged emotions admired, I telepathically screamed at no one.

At no one, but also at everyone, and at Jeff and at Skittles and Crayon and Ember, but most of all, at Caleb.

A screaming high pitch, like a tuning fork, exploding while also screeching in a twisted experimental accident of sound versus light versus sharp static that cuts thin like thousands of stinging razor wires all around us, followed by the words:

YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO CALL ME THAT

YOU SHOULDN'T EVEN KNOW THAT NAME

My eyes followed the speeding, flying blaze of rusted knife, my image of the astonishing orange-blue smeared by tears that constantly double-coated my eyes all the time, as I stared ahead on bleeding hands and on all fours.

I will not cry today

...

No.

I could let the water from my eyes fall here.

--ovw--

The knife collided with the ultra-shiny silver laptop Caleb was carrying, breaking it in two at the hinges, both pieces of the device falling onto the sand.

But not before a perfect circle of white light and red carbon sparks emanated from the burning knife upon impact.

Orbiplosions...

Caleb stared at the two broken pieces. He didn't pick anything up.

A small hermit crab scuttled from under a hole in the sand and started dancing on the space bar.

"Did you see that?" said Caleb.

I pushed myself to a kneeling position, taking my bleeding hands off the sand and resting my weight on my butt.

"What, the dancing hermit crab?" I said. "Yeah, I've seen one before." I rolled my eyes. "They have the right to dance if they want to, you know."

"No!" said Caleb. "No, I mean the way the impact of the knife you threw-"

I cut him off, mid-sentence. I was rude like that.

"No idea what you're talking about," I said. Well, at the time no idea, anyway. "Can you please leave so I can be alone and not have to have any judgmental eyes around while guilt and self-loathing consume every part of me?"

I was drenched in saltwater and sweat. My clean set of clothes was in the recycled cardboard bag from Baker Joe's.

Baker Joe's...

I covered my eyes with sand-covered, torn, bleeding hands.

The exact same place, I thought to myself, the exact same place where Sam got me the cold strawberry pudding. Baker Joe's.

"There's no need to go there."

"To Baker Joe's?"

"No, to get lost in self-hatred," said Caleb.

He had such a funny voice. I liked it.

"You deserve to know that you deserve better than that."

"I'm not gonna kiss you," I said.

He pressed his lips together.

"Really?" he said.

Um. Yeah.

Pretty much.

"Yeah," I said. "No."

I don't know this guy.

Clearly, I've done way more things than just kiss men and women I barely knew or didn't know at all.

Not the point, though. I still barely know this guy.

It was then that he looked hurt. Something on his face and on his eyes told me, somehow. I chose to just dabble in whatever mental aura was really about him without actually going in and reading his mind. But as soon as I got close, I regretted it. I was a mess.

I was a mess and the look on his face was right- I was just hurting someone.

"I'm crap right now," I said.

Very crap.

Very very very very very crap-

"I really am. I mean, I always was. Caleb, I'm sorry." And I really was. "I'm so sorry, it's just..."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"It's just you don't remember me," he said.

"I'm just not really sure that I've ever met you."

"There are photographs-"

"Photographs can be altered." I heaved a sigh. Half of it from exhaustion- we'd argued about this fifty-five times since I woke up from attempting to kill myself TWICE on that day in Diamond Mines- and then half of it... I had the miracle apples in my bag.

No one was going to have them.

I stepped away, trying really hard not to be rude now that I'd discovered I could now use the word fuck without too much of a painful, disturbing recoil- and tried to breathe slowly, in through my mouth, and out through my nose.

"I... want my jacket back," he said from behind me.

I didn't even look over my shoulder.

"What jacket?"

"It's in your bag."

Oh-

Ugh. I really liked that jacket, too...

"Wait," I said, burying my right fist into some hardened Overwoods tree bark, fascinated by the pain and immediate spilling of blood from the skin on my knuckles.

Caleb flinched.

"Stop," he said. "You need to stop-"

I interrupted him and continued. "So, it was yours, then." I proceeded with right-handed palm strikes and kicks and knees into the tall, dead, ossified tree stump, following into a horizontal jumping twist into my left and a backwards arched layout off the training-tree.

I REALLY LIKED THE JACKET DAMN IT

"Sure," I said.

I walked over, barefoot in the sand, to the recycled cardboard-and-paper bag from Baker Joe's. It still had biscuits that I hadn't given to either Happy the raccoon, or Jupiter Two the big adorable fwuffy Samoyed.

Big fwuffy dog

Big fwuffy dog yay c:

:3

I looked out at the water. Only months ago… it was only months ago from that moment that Sam sobbed into my shoulder at that very spot.

"Damn it," I said out loud, "Gosh, I- I really…" I wiped a tear off my face; the nine thousandth tear of that week, I could've sworn it was- "I really liked it but, it makes sense-"

I coughed; I coughed blood and spit and I think some tears that I swallowed and some kind of really gross, ugly, thick phlegm, fresh out from my severely damaged physical system, and I spat it out onto the ground beside me, to my left, beside some pink seashells which OF COURSE reminded me of Samantha Shilberg-

"IT MAKES FUCKING SENSE because it was too big on me, anyway-"

I smiled, the fakest smile in the whole entire world, and offered him the bag.

"Just take it," I said.

A pause. Just the salty, hot and humid Bay of Bodies wind- it always ran from the shores of Vicinity Seven in the south, and then north, through the Port and through to the Bay of Bodies. And then a shift in the movement of the wind blew my long hair forwards, sideways, and then backwards; I tasted some kind of strange salt; that dirty salt in the Overwoods air; the yucky kind that always blew from the ugliest parts of V4, and from the Lowdown, and from the ugliest parts of V5 and from V6. It was disgusting, absolutely fucking disgusting and awful.

Kaylee, I said, telepathically. Your brother is drunk, tell him to go home.

I felt her roll her eyes at me, even from the distance, all through telepathy.

Chris, she said. He really loves you. Kind of like I do... only he'd freaking marry you.

"Ew," I said physically and out loud, to no one in particular.

I repeated it telepathically:

Ew KAYLEE WHO THE HECK GETS ***MARRIED?!????!11!***

With less-than-perfect punctuation and with an eleven.

KAYLEE-

Deal with it, she said and telepathically hung up and closed those telepathic walls.

Yeah, NO SHIT HE DOES!!!

I remember... I remember that I had to take a moment knowing that somewhere, somewhere lost inside me- all I wanted was just to be loved.

But "he'd freaking marry you"?

Married?

Who the fuck gets married?

Nobody. That's who.

Looking back at things, I think I just didn't feel anything.

Or I was trying too hard to not feel anything.

Because the truth is this: I was in so much pain.

I shielded my face, from a frying pan and a shoe and a whip and a bible that wasn't even actually there. I shielded my face from all of the stuff it's been hit with; my forearm diagonally across my neck to make it harder to strangle me.

ORBI

PLOSIONSSSS

Orbiplosions. Explosions of ultra-flashes of ultra-white light in perfect circle-orbs.

I took a breath.

And then I took another breath.

Happy place?

Happy place

Happy place happy place

Happy place happy place

Happy happy

No, that wasn't enough on that day, either...

I wasn't coughing weirdly anymore, or at least not nearly as much. A peach-and-cranberry drink did the trick. One that Ember left at the Webwork for me, before he went running to WDSM Diamond Mine with Tiana on his back. He told White to give it to me, if I was still coughing the next time Carter decided to grab both my arms and pin me to the floor.

I shut my eyes again.

"Give me a moment, okay, Caleb?" I said. I pressed a finger to my right eyebrow. There was still a lump and a scar there, stretching a few millimeters above it and toward the bridge of my nose. Even I didn't notice it unless I decided to look closely. "It's just..." What? It's just what? How do you even say everything? To someone you literally don't even know? "It's just..."

I wiped water off my eyelashes before they could skydive.

"It's just... I don't know. I'm sorry." That was all I had. I made some kind of hissing sound, and then a choking sound. And then another weird hissing sound. "I don't know, Caleb. I'm sorry."

He shrugged his huge shoulders, and nodded, probably at my thoughts; he kept staring into my eyes, which made me uncomfortable.

"At least you remember my name," he said.

I said nothing.

"You used to really like my eyes, you know," he said. "A lot."

WHAT A FREAKING NARCISSIST-

I took three VERY deep breaths.

"Caleb's not a name that's hard to forget," I replied. "It isn't hard to remember, either."

A red squirrel- the exact same one I'd seen in the school in the Suburbs! Scurried over, with two little acorns. He dropped them at my bare feet in the sand and then scurried off.

"Thank you!" I smiled and called after it. Man, sometimes I really really wished I had Connor's superpower.

That same squirrel. That night, after Kaylee's dinner party for our birthdays and everything. Henry was so drunk and grilling me, it was AWFUL.

But...

But. There's a but.

But... what? What was it?

"Sorry," I said, AGAIN, to Caleb, who still wasn't taking the jacket that he said he wanted back. "Take the jacket, okay?" My hands began to shake and I hated it, I hated standing in front of a person in a state like that. Any person. "Just... just hold on."

Orbiplosions...

I closed my eyes, but all I could see... All I could see was just... Sam's dead body. Emberion. Sam.

Emberion, Sam.

Emberion, Sam.

Emberion.

I still had the apples...

Holy shit

Can someone please

Stop

Me

From

Thinking

My telepathic barriers fell apart for the 900th time that day.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE

The glass that ripped her; the glass that pierced and cleaved into her and... and the ANIMAL. That... that BEAST that took her from us-

IT'S DONE AND YOU'RE SAFE NOW

Will you please come back to me

--ovw--

I'm right in front of you.

Will you please come back to me?

Come back TO WHO?!

I felt the most vicious heat surge through both my hands, but channeled the inferno back into my core; I took two steps toward one of the dead tree stumps by the saltwater and threw a gainer forward leading with my right leg, this time wrapping into my left, my elbows tucked in and my body pencil-straight; double rotation backward with three-and-a-half twists leaning in towards the left side before I let the fire back out through my hands again, physically striking, fingers bent like claws on the tree bark.

"STILL TO BE FIRMLY VALIDATED

*Able to set objects on fire"

From the inside AND OUT, yahoos.

Abominations.

Validate the fact that you suck and are nothing but monsters and will never be anything BUT abominations.

Validate the fact that trying to inflict your toxic twisted poisonous greedy harm and bullshit WILL NOT FIX YOU.

WILL NEVER FIX YOU.

Validate the fact that you are pathetic. And that you will never be anything more than that.

The impact with the dead-but-massive tree stump combined with IGNITE, as I called it, smashed its way and creeped its way into the broken pillar and turned it into a pillar of actual fire- smoke and heat faintly radiating in visible waves upward, even in all this hot salty humidity.

Upward to the snow and the lilac sky.

Sam was gone now. Even the sand reminded me of her. Random things did. Everything beautiful did.

They still do.

Two things consumed me as I stood there:

1) The memory of her, and

2) The memory of the ugly voice.

"I missed injecting you, boy."

I sat down on the sand, and yes, of course- only started to cry. I reminded myself of the twelve-year-old mess I was, after Kaylee Davenport and I survived Nightingale.

I felt the large man walk toward me, his heavier-than-mine body a very perceptible shift in the air and the sand under me. Kaylee said that I loved him back.

It's...

It's, I want to! But I don't know the guy! It was almost like my days back in the Lowdown, for crying out louder-

"Don't put your arms around me," I said, getting up and brushing the wet sand grossly off my black exercise pants. "I'm really sweaty and gross and also covered in Bay of Bodies saltwater. Not a good time or idea. Not hot."

Caleb snorted.

"You're hot whatever you do," he said.

I laughed a sarcastic laugh. "Bro." I thought maybe if I bro-zoned him, he'd stop. "I'm a stick. And if I'm so hot maybe I should set YOU ON FIRE."

"Well," he said, probably not meaning to but really showing off that accent at the word well- "You're a very attractive stick."

I almost LITERALLY puked.

But only almost, thank God.

So I settled for a literal facepalm. The sound of my hand hitting my forehead was my response.

"I know," he rushed to... I don't even know, reassure me, or whatever. "I know people told you-" he stumbled and mumbled. "People told you things like that in the Lowdown."

Okay how THE FVCK with a V does he KNOW THAT?!?!!!

IS THIS DUDE JAMES'S TWIN

OR SOMETHING??!11?! with the number eleven

I seriously thought that was what it was, and I didn't need another uncle who didn't give a flying fuck about my well-being; "biological family" meant nothing but abuse.

"Yeah," I said. "And you're a genius for telling me that. You were the smart one in this supposed, alleged relationship, right?" I scoffed. "Caleb, I'm going home. Take your jacket with you."

Home was James's house in the Suburbs. He was really nice, most of the time at least. I avoided him if he was... under some form of influence of… something. Occasionally I worried about his habits; I tried not to. I really did.

I mean, he was clean a lot of the time.

"You are lying if you are trying to state that Jameson Adam Tobler is a man who is clean from drug use." Elyza Cobb's telepathic voice.

My thoughts were LITERALLY all over the place.

Everywhere.

Heard by telepaths everywhere.

I shook my head.

Okay, Liquid Nitrogen. Thank you. I did not know that.

Okay, okay. During that specific time, he wasn't clean or sober most of the time. He was still nice to me, mostly. Besides, he was very literally coping. And for fuck's sake, I totally understood it. I was coping, too. Obvious shit, right?

"Kaylee Davenport left a sandwich on your desk and it will not be preserved very long naturally if left without preventive measures," Elyza continued, her telepathic communication flowing straight into my mind like ice cubes pouring out of a convenience store beverage machine, supremely glacially light blue, and frosty and cold and ultra-chilled straight from the Arctic regions of the old world; like frozen river banks of the old Vicinity Five. "I'm freezing it now for your future consumption."
"Cool," I deliberately replied via telepathy. "Pun fully intended."

"Connor Meadows has not returned to work yet and the papers from his desk are now on yours. They are organized by case date and placed on top of the papers from Belinda Klein's desk which are also on your desk. And I have placed one of my snow globes on top of them to keep them all in place."

--ovw--

So it turned out Belinda was right. It looked like I was, in fact, going to spend the rest of my life doing her paperwork.

"Done talking to Elsie?"

I looked away from Caleb, rather than my default, which was usually to look at him if he spoke.

I said nothing.

From a branch in a tree, the red squirrel I was friends with threw an acorn at me- at my HEAD. I flinched for a moment while the acorn bounced off and dropped to the ground at our feet.

Hey, that hurt.

LOL jk

"Ow!" I said, to/at the little animal. "Improve the aim next time?"

Fwuffy c:

:3

A soft breeze pushed the leaves and branches and hot salty air around us. Between my fight training and vault workouts and the ignite on the tree and now, the sky had turned from the light lilac to an even more relaxed and calming sky blue; light blue. The way it was in posters, before the world and its islands and its people had mostly all destroyed each other.

Well, I was... probably destroying the guy right in front of me...

And then, oddly, I remembered something.

I read a book, in the library, once. It focused on how, eons ago, people were enslaved by men and women with pale, white skin. There was a flag, a strange one, it was striped and I think it had some stars on it. It was a rattling, agonizing read. Maybe, probably, because it reminded me too much of my own life. It was extremely difficult and horribly painful to comprehend. And so, of course, I read it twice. Except in my life, instead of having to grow crops or pull weeds off the ground or build houses or wooden horse stables or fill buckets with cotton or eat pig intestines or cultivating tobacco for the absolute most evil of powerful men and women…

Instead of that…

I looked at Caleb again.

He was wiping a tear off his cheek. He still had to go see both Elyza Cobb and Tiana Ambervi's family to speed up treatment for the poisons. Apparently, his tolerance or body defenses were not the same of that as Kaylee's, or mine. His Caucasian white skin was some kind of almost-sunburned shade of orange-red, and it clearly wasn't from a tanning bed. Though who was I to judge at all, right? I had eczema. It was rarely ever noticeable, really, but- still. So yeah, who was I to go judge that.

Right?

He sniffed, and wiped another tear before he spoke again. "Just don't forget me forever, Chris."

"I don't know the future."

And I proved myself right, again- because the very next thing that happened was Caleb got a phone call, from Wyatt Shafer.

He picked up.

"Bye," I said.

I had only time to put my socks on before Caleb was at me again.

"It's..." he began. "He wants to talk to you."

Caleb tapped the speakerphone button. The white light from the cell phone screen shined off his glasses. The white light traumatized me.

I stopped looking at him and deliberately turned my focus instead of the rolling droplets of dirty, sandy, covered-in-bark-bits-on-nettled-skin blood droplets; the ones on my right hand.

They're kinda pretty

Speeding into me, like a bullet train, it's the last thing I will see

"IT IS NOT THE LAST THING YOU WILL SEE, DANNY," said Caleb.

I ignored him.

Speeding into me

Like a bullet train

It's the last thing I will see

I smiled.

"You're on airplane mode, Midnight," said Wyatt in a chastising voice, scolding me as always, berating me; as if I needed it, I already berated myself.

"I am on airplane mode and I am also not supposed to be working," I said robotically.

"Well, change of plans. James will talk to you."

"What's going on, Mr. Shafer?"

"Did I tell you I love how you call me that?" Wyatt laughed.

"Back off," said Caleb.

This only made Wyatt laugh even harder.

I rolled my eyes.

"Dude," I said. "Tell me now or I go home and James can just tell me when he's..."

"When he's sober?" said Wyatt.

"Yeah," I said.

Wyatt laughed like a crazy person. Again. I kind of liked it; I think I kind of related now- at that point.

"And tell me, mister Midnight, painkiller of the Union of Stars-" there was the sound of the squeaking of a chair- "protector of the animals, how often, exactly, has your very loving boss and father's brother been sober lately?"

A moment's silence. Caleb was seething, but beneath the seething was only more hurt. Meanwhile, I had no good answer for Wyatt. In some way, I could see what made the tentacle tendrils black hole violence giant monster the interrogator he was- at least, in some situations. And it wasn't just his sadism and brute force. Thing is, I still didn't believe in forcing information out of people through sadism.

"Whoa." The voice on the cell phone crackled. "Slow down, tiger."

I am not a tiger; I am a corgi.

Stupid sadistic fuck.

"Hey-" Wyatt whined, over the staticky audio travelling through the very un-wonderful Overwoods beach reception. "I AM NOT SADISTIC!"

I rolled my eyes.

"You'd agree if you even knew what it meant," said Caleb.

"I'm not talking to you," said Wyatt. "I'm not… I'm not sadistic in that way."

I heard Caleb make some sort of scoffing, growling sound. He was angry. And anger… that was something I understood completely.

Most especially in that moment.

A strange, and small, and almost-dead-but-not-quite-completely-killed-off part of me wanted to hug him. Because I knew how it felt. Weird. But I didn't know the guy. And the guy was HUGE.

But if he responded to that kind of physical touch with a body slam- because if I was his size and with my memories, I think I probably likely TOTALLY COMPLETELY WOULD, you know, if you placed my mind and my experiences into that kind of body- then I would not be breathing for an entire week.

"I didn't know you could use any words longer than five letters, Shafer." Caleb glared at his phone. He spoke in such a thick, Southern-ish, Union of Stars mainland-type accent. Oddly, I had the sense that I used to like it; that I used to like how it sounded. In my befuddled mind I tried to grasp at a feeling that seemed one-hundred percent gone. But in that moment, I absolutely despised it. I despised how he talked; it disgusted me. He continued. "Consider me surprised."

"Sorry," crackled Wyatt's voice on the phone. "I didn't know your daddy gave you any Union of Stars teaching licenses."

Not breathing. For an entire week.

Okay, well, that would kill me.

Okay

Well okay maybe he should body slam me after all

Caleb shot me a look.

"I wouldn't," he said.
No such luck for fuck's sake

Fuckity fuckity fuck.

Of course not.

Caleb looked at me, like he didn't recognize me. Which was how it should've been. I never met the guy before the trauma at WDSM.

He shook his head at me with so much disapproval.

"DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THAT HE BRAINWASHED YOU?" Caleb blared at me. "I have NEVER hurt you! Not intentionally!"

"I don't like men or women who yell at me," I said, "so you must be lying about our alleged relationship. Thanks."

Was he right?

Maybe.

Did it matter?

No.

Did I care?

Oh look, a butterfly

They were rare in the Overwoods. Not as common as combustiflies, at least. I watched it fly off into the nearby unmutated hybrid trees; following the beautiful large black wings spotted with white, until I saw two familiar figures.

I smiled, and I began running toward the empty road ahead of me.

Empty, except for one giant giant giant fluffy white dog and a tiny little brown, silver, and white floofy raccoon!

"OH MY GOSH HI OH MY GOSH HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII," I said slightly coherently, "HI HI HI HI HIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!"

Oh my gosh happy

Yas

: DDDD

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas

Happyyyyyyyyyy

I literally rolled on the sand right before the stretch of empty road and laid there, letting the dog rest half his massive floofy body on mine while I wrapped both my arms, dirty and bloody as they were, around him. Happy the raccoon fumbled with a small, dark red apple, still unsure as to whether he should approach me since I ignored him completely only hours ago when he offered me one.

"I'm sorry," I said to the tiny floof with the apple. I wasn't sure he understood me, but it did not matter. Happy scuttled toward me and stuffed the apple into my pants pocket.

I'd recovered from traumatic brainwashing before. If he was right- if Caleb Samuel Davenport was right- and that was what happened, then I'd recover again.

And the fire would come back even stronger.

And the fire

will be

even

stronger.

Because that's how I was; how I still am.

Try to throw me down- I'll only rise much higher.

--ovw--

THURSDAY

Roughly 5:00 PM; I wasn't looking at any cell phones

Still at The Port, near the Bay of Bodies

"Still talkin' to you, Midnight."

Wyatt's voice; drowned out by all my mental-contingency-plan-formulating-efforts; I was still making lists of immediate actions in the event that the guy next to me did physically attack me, or assault me in any kind of way, to any extent at all. The wirings of the severely C-PTSD mind; the cravings for safety but also seeing threats in every single thing, any single thing at all that is remotely tied to what happened to you in the past. Fuck the fact that this guy had to be so much bigger than I was.

FUCK THIS BULLSHIT

Of course, I was smaller than… almost everybody. Not necessarily his fault.

Not Caleb's fault, I mentally reinstated to myself. Please calm the fuck down.

Wyatt sighed.

"It's been... it's been a while on this case. And Peters and Klein refuse to talk to me. They're not making it easy." A moment's silence; a boiling and aggravating one; one full to the brim of insanity. That's what it felt like, I think to all of us. "We need your help, Midnight. We all do."

I said nothing.

"Please, Chris."

Why the fuck was he begging me?

"BECAUSE," he said, "James has threatened to have me fired."

Caleb laughed, and I said nothing. I drew a smiley face in the sand, with my foot.

Caleb drew one next to it.

"I don't even know why, dammit," Wyatt continued. "I'm the best brute force interrogator he's ever had."

Caleb scoffed.

"I can guarantee Connor, Belinda, and Carter all did better than you," I said.

"C'mon," Wyatt pleaded. "Help a guy out, Christopher."

"Oh, boo hoo," I said, completely indifferent; callous. "You need me? Tell them their little friend killed two of mine- and they could be next. Next," I repeated. "And tell Belinda that the only one who was going to be CRYING TO JAMES after all was her, and YOU. Though I doubt that'll do her any good to go crying to the powerful and never-sober mister Tobler. Tell her that the next time we fight, it won't be in an SRA."

The late afternoon sky was shifting slowly into evening; light blue with visible clouds to a very deep violet, almost black. The stars that twinkled up there were... actually the exact same color of Caleb's eyes. I stared for just a moment. It was fascinating.

Then I caught myself- we both did; I cleared my throat and waited for someone to say something.

Apparently, Wyatt had been stunned- he said nothing, and from the telepathic aura he just barely gave off from miles and miles away, he was dumbfounded.

Was it because I could say the word fuck now without too much difficulty?

"Chris," said Caleb softly. "This... this isn't you."

"This is me trying to survive on a planet where monsters kill your friends, and a strange man that's even weirder than I AM claims we kissed-"

"You know," said Wyatt, "we kissed too, my sweet Danny boy."

I don't think we did, but... I kind of liked the endearment.

"SHUT UP," Caleb said.

"I can't crack them," Wyatt said. "I can't. I've tried everything. James and I both feel they'll talk to you. And, Belinda... she even said she'd talk to you. She said she'd be willing to."

I looked at the waves; the white-mixed-with-tinted-green Overwoods "fall" sand. I blinked away tears as I fought, yet again, more memories of Samantha Shilberg.

I said nothing.

I stared at the colors of the sky; they blurred and shifted slowly into each other- transformed the way the Overwoods sky always transformed. It wasn't like that it the U.S. mainland, at least not during the times I was there. Or, maybe, I just wasn't paying attention. There was very heavy rain and hail and snow when I was assigned work there, after all. I still said nothing. I continued walking, Caleb Samuel Davenport still following me.

"Don't forget me like I was nothing," he said under his breath, I think to nobody in particular.

I said nothing.

I didn't even look at him.

Small harmless insects- combustiflies, as they were called by most of us- took to the air and started glowing in small, mesmerizing circles.

"Aww!" I remarked, also to no one in particular. "They're so cute, aren't they?"

"James had you approved for an interrogation-filled shift tomorrow," continued Wyatt Shafer, over the phone. "It'll be great to have you around, sweetie."

I generally did not like the guy, but it felt nice to be endeared. Perhaps, really nice just to be endeared at all at that moment- judging by the fact that I was vulnerable, broken, and damaged.

I'd been messed up; I was in a cloud of sadness and darkness and my barely frozen PTSD shocks and nightmares weren't even something I could feel at the time- and I just barely knew it.

Memories attacked me, flashbacks attacked me, and I stopped walking.

I buried my dace in both hands.

"Fuck. My. Life," I said, physically; out loud, and also telepathically. I'm pretty sure half of the Overwoods' telepath population heard it, too, actually. "Ughhhhhhhhh."

Between all the mind-numbing lightning flashes of grief, powerlessness, anger, motivation, ice-cold fear, and searing-volcano-fire fury, I glanced at the man standing next to me.

"Ohhhhhhh can somebody please stop me from thinking?!" I whined into the massive telepathic web and out loud; I felt like all the telepaths in the universe, even the ones in the Union of Stars' mainland, probably heard that, too. I was pathetic.

Absolutely PATHETIC.

"No, you're not." Whyatt Shafer's voice. "Elyza Cobb says hi and she might have new pieces of evidence."

"You're lying," I said to Wyatt.

"Okay, I'm lying," Wyatt replied, with a laugh almost as pathetic as I was. "But I am trying to get you come over. Let me quiet that mind."

By the look on Caleb's face, I could tell that all he wanted to do was hang up. And, honestly... I almost felt bad for the guy.

I locked eyes on him.

But why would an eighteen-year-old former forced-child-prostitute that starved for all of his life who got consistently abused ever feel bad for the rich, powerful, unconcerned privileged man?

Caleb looked at me like I'd just verbally told him the most damaging insult of his life.

"I am not unconcerned," he just barely whispered.

I tied my long black hair back in the typical, signature Danny ponytail. Because, as I see it now, that version of Danny died, completely died, with Samantha. So, I tried to honor him, by doing my hair in the simple fashion; the exact same way.

Thoughts I had then, in that moment, that I sometimes still have now. I started tucking the sandy, ocean-misted strands of black behind my ears.

Two bands of elastic, black, triple-looped low near the neckline, as low and close to the shoulders as possible.

I looked at Davenport; looked at his phone; looked at the time on my own phone, lost my patience, and dumped the contents of the Baker Joe's recycled cardboard-and-paper bag onto the sand, including "his" jacket apparently which I loved so much.

I checked the time again.

"Thanks, Wyatt," I said, "I guess… I'll see you."

"Tonight?" he asked, excitedly.

"TOMORROW," I replied. "Hang up the phone."

I locked my eyes with Caleb's as I slowly, deliberately, dropped the now-empty Baker Joe's recycled cardboard-and-paper bag at his feet.

There. Free advertisement for Baker Joe's. I was generous like that.

"There's a million girls and boys on this planet who would love to have you," I said. "It's a shame we never met."

"If it's the very last thing I do," he replied, "I am going to change your mind."

I walked away.

Because I wasn't planning to stay more than half an hour.

END OF BOOK ONE

--ovw--Possible end of book one.--ovw--

POSSIBLE OOOOOOOOOOOO

--ovw--Performed and recorded versions of all the songs referenced throughout this book were originals and are on both YouTube and Spotify.--ovw--

Check out the author's random videos!

youtube.com/realnotperfectofficial

--ovw--The main character, Danny, is based off of the author's real-life personality and experiences (singer/author/songwriter Danny Mier).--ovw--