phlogiston9000

Grey, Part Two

2007-05-30T20:17:48Z

So, I've been gone for a while. Family issues, School finals, etc. My reasons for neglecting livejournal are neither original nor entertaining. But I do not return empty handed. I present to you the first eight chapters of Grey, heavily revised. This post renders all the previous chapter posts obsolete. Thanks, you're all wonderful, kisses for everyone, but don't touch me.

Because of posting limits, this post is broken into two parts.

The Fifth: Luminescent

The icy water has forced strength into my body, and painful clarity into my mind.

I don’t know myself well. I don’t know my mind or body or past. I can’t speak or write or lift heavy objects. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. What do I want? A jacket or sweater or long sleeve shirt to cover my arms and keep them warm. A book to read. I’m feeling greedy. I can’t do much. I can’t ask for much. But if this is a dream…I want to know someone who won’t pick me up with one hand. I want someone to ask me if I like their shoes. And… what monopoly piece do I want? Only I can’t pick the dog because that’s theirs. Red hotels and green houses. I see myself moving the thimble past boardwalk, past Go. I put a hand against the side of the tub to keep from losing my balance.

Soaked and shivering in the shower, I resolve that I do not want to be here any longer. This is an Important Mental Step. I frown at the thought, unsure of where it came from.

I shut off the shower. I climb from the tub, puddles of water forming on the floor. As I peel off my wet shirt, curiosity cements. I want to look at myself while I’m naked. Maybe I will realize I am beautiful, or that my eyes aren’t so different. I leave my clothes in a heap on the floor, and climb on top of the sink, to look in the mirror there.

The tattoo is so dark, it makes my skin seem to shine white. I try to be nice and call myself slender in my head, instead of skinny.

I look nineteen, or twenty. I…I think maybe I’m pretty. I look like I bathe in estrogen. I have nothing but curves.

I don’t meet my own eyes. I’m afraid I’ll see my secrets in them.

Since Alice has not left me any dry clothes, I wring out my wet ones as best as I can, and dry my hair with a towel.

The only door out of the room is locked, with a keypad. The only window has the same lock and keypad. The numbers on the keypad seem sized right for my fingers. I press “A”, and see I have space for ten letters. I finish “Alice”, and press “enter”. The words “Invalid password” scroll across the screen. I try “Penelope.” Invalid password. I try “Grey”. I try “Red”, “Purple”, “Hate”, “Love”, and “Anger.”

The window lock pops. Her password was “Anger”. Knowing that, I pray I will never face her again.

The window is heavy. I push against it in vain. I readjust my handhold, and press upwards, straining my arms. It lifts enough for me to slide a shoe under. I hook my fingers into the crack held open by my shoe, and heave the window up enough for me to slide through.

I land on hard dirt, jarring my knee, and run. It’s a moonless night. I push through tall grass, leap over rocks, and scale tree stumps before reaching a fence of iron bars. It takes me only seconds to squeeze through the gap between the bars.

I reach pavement. A road. The yellow dividing stripes of paint are faded and erratic. The trees lining the road feel possessive. I can’t run anymore. The pain in my side is a roar. I’ve got no stamina. I’ve got no strength. I won’t make it far before Alice finds the bathroom empty. The trees watch. They don’t want me to get far.

Alice has murdered your friends, trees! I’ve seen the stumps! Let me go, so I can bring Laurel a friend, so I can grow strong like you. Don’t let Alice have me.

Rain descends from the sky. The water on the road doesn’t sink in or trickle away. It thickens, clumping together, rising like bread. A bubble, and then a sphere rises from it. It’s transparent, with a purple center.

A screeching flash punches through the sphere. It takes a few seconds for the fireworks in my eyes to die off. A soft chiming reaches my ears.

A car has pulled off the side of the road, ahead of me. I make out two silhouettes against the car lights. I’ve taken a step backwards, when a man’s voice reaches my ears.

“-saying anything if you were hit.”

“I saw nothing. There would be blood and dents and screaming,” a female voice answers. Her words snap together like puzzle pieces, but she puts no pride in them. She is like a talented sculptor who daydreams of being an ice skater as she half-heartedly chips rocks into wonders.

“Not if…”

They’ve seen me. I shield my eyes against the light. The man is tall…or maybe he isn’t. Anyone I meet towers above me, on a separate plane I cannot reach.

He wears a leather jacket. He’s clean-shaven, and all hard lines.

Around the woman, light seems dimmer. The way she moves is not natural, not the way people are supposed to move. It’s like she has read the instruction manual that came with her body, but never used it before. She’s got dark hair, but not much of it, and her skin is nearly as white as mine.

“Are you alright? What are you doing out here?” asks the man. The woman is still studying me.

They’ve got a car. Please, let them take me away from here. I pull my hand from my pocket, to show I’m not hiding a gun or knife. My hand comes out holding a shred of paper.

The paper disappears, and it’s several seconds before I realize the woman has snatched it from my hand.

“Grey,” she reads aloud. Hurriedly, I point to myself.

“Can you speak?” asks the man. I shake my head, and point to myself again.

“It’s her name,” the woman announces. “If I told you my name was miss White and he was Mr. Black, we could rob a bank and if you were caught you wouldn’t be able to reveal my true identity.”

“I’m Randy,” says the man.

“I’m Lume,” says the woman, the paper back to me. I fold it away nicely, because it’s my name, and I can’t write it or say it. “We didn’t hit you with the car like Randy thought, but-“

I catch Lume’s hand, and wrap her arm around me. Her nails are painted black.

“Little one found by the side of the road in the dark of the night, I am not about to abandon you to the wolves, or whatever predators might stalk you. Cars, from the look of things.”

If another person had said the same words, it would have been a speech. Coming from Lume, it’s no different, except everything Lume says sounds like the start of speech.

“Your hair is wet. Your clothes are damp. Randy, it hasn’t been raining.”

“She’s not bleeding is she?”

“Not unless water runs through her veins.”

Lume inspects the scabs the handcuffs left on my wrists, but says nothing.

I pull her towards the car. She lets me drag her into the back seat with me. Randy climbs in front, and when I point out at the road, he starts driving. Heated air hums from the air conditioning vents. Lume snaps on a light.

Her eyes are like mine.

They’re grey and soft and a watery like she might start crying any moment now and they’re just like mine.

“The time you ate last is long past, yes?” I…I suppose it is. I cannot remember when I ate last. I’m handed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a bottle of water.

“We are in a horror movie,” announces Lume.

“We are not,” says Randy.

“A girl stumbles from the woods, wet and starving, unable to speak of the atrocities she has witnessed.”

“I don’t know where I’m driving.”

“I do. She has my eyes.”

I watch Lume’s eyes over the top of my sandwich. There is something savage in her, something Alice had that Penelope didn’t. She moves like her body is just a tool or a puppet, not herself. Her eyes are always laughing, like life is a joke to her, even when the rest of her face is serious.

Randy hands back a pen and pad of paper. Lume sets them on my lap, and asks, “Did you recently witness a terrible atrocity, such as one might see in a Hollywood horror movie, and are now rendered mute from the trauma?”

I start the line for N, not sure when I should stop it. I panic, and wrench the line off course, then I swoop back to enclose the polygon. I add some adjustment lines to the top to clarify, and balance it with a series of zizags.

This isn’t the letter N. I scribble it out. Lume takes the pad from me, and sets it on her lap. I’m never given enough time.

With her own pen, Lume writes the letter “N” on the page. I duck under her arm, and try to copy her “N”. As I focus on her letter, my pen drifts through it, slicing it in half with my line. I’ve ruined her letter. Her pen descends, and adjusts the impaling line so that it curves back around. The letter looks like the start of jagged monster teeth to me, so I add a few more, completing a mouth of menacing fangs. Lume’s pen continues in an arc, showing me that this is going to be a sea serpent, so I start drawing in the scales.

When it’s time to work on the ocean, I climb into Lume’s lap and hold the paper steady for us. I feel the vibrations of her voice when she speaks.

“The serpent is old, and tired of chewing on shark skin. The oceans are overrun with human ships and he no longer has the strength to sink them. Bitter and alone, he hides in a storm.”

A ship appears under our pens.

“The captain is old, and tired of pulling in crab traps. The oceans are crowded, competition is fierce, and he doesn’t care to race against fiery captains and freshly painted boats. Bitter and alone, he hunts in a storm.”

A spear appears in the serpent’s side. The captain’s boat comes into focus, shattered and broken from the serpent’s tail.

I finish drawing the last bubble in a turbulent ocean.

The Sixth: Inertial

“A product of cooperative genius,” said Randy. I press my cheek into Lume, clutch at her shirt, and feel the vibrations of her voice mix with her heartbeat. Her hand plucks at strands of hair hanging down my back.

“…thousands of men, women, and children…starving children, helpless with wide innocent eyes and…” Lume looks down at me, “…tiny women with very long hair and pale skin. Trembling, they were scattered in the woods in picked off not by wild animals, not by psychotic cultists, but by a tongue-devouring monster. The monster made no sound, only ripping the tongues from those who spoke or cried out.”

I rise and fall with each breath Lume takes. Randy’s voice comes from the front of the car.

“What were a thousand starving children and…” I see his eyes watching me in the rearview mirror. “…women doing in the forest?”

“Dragged from their beds by the oily tentacles of the tongue devouring beast!” declares Lume.

“Was her tongue devoured?”

I lock eyes with Lume. Without looking away, she says “No.”

“She hasn’t opened her mouth.”

“She has my eyes.”

“And you’ve got her tongue?”

“No.” Lume’s confident voice hums through me. She twists strands of my hair into knots.

“Well…?”

“She cannot speak from the trauma of witnessing a thousand tongues torn from their mouths. The fear of the beast who did it, who still-“

“-not a stupid horror-“ interrupts Randy.

“-roams the land!” finishes Lume fiercely.

Silence with an edge cuts between them. The car speeds through the silent night. Thump. Thump.

“Is she asleep?” asks Randy, at last.

“No. She’s listening to my heartbeat.”

“Why?”

“Maybe it will stop beating. Pull over.”

Randy pulls the car over to the side of the road without protest. Lume hands me a black coat to put on. It’s long enough to reach past my knees.

“We’re going outside, where the cold will get you,” she says, pulling the coat around me. She’s only wearing a T-Shirt. I touch the jacket, and then touch her shoulder.

“I don’t need protection from the cold. I am the cold.”

Lume forces the car door open. I close my eyes against the stinging wind. It tosses my hair from my face and streams it out behind me. My hair gets caught in the car door when Lume shuts it. She has to open the door again, so I can pull long strands of hair out and hold them against myself to stop them from trailing out behind me like a kite.

Randy waits in the car while Lume leads me away from the road. She slides down a steep bank of loose rocks. She rides the growing wave of rocks like a surfer, until she reaches flat dirt and the rocks and dust spread in a pool around her.

It could be a sport. Slope surfing. Mountain surfing. That’s called skiing. Not if there isn’t any snow. Then it’s avalanche surfing.

“Grey! Focus!” Lume hollers up at me. I take my first step onto the slope. Some gravel is knocked loose, but my footing holds. I can’t surf like Lume, so I’ll take baby steps.

A rock to my left looks steady, but it rolls away when my foot touches it.

“To your right, Grey!”

I look around my right foot, but I see nowhere to put my it.

“It’s right there. Yes…no…a little to your right…there!”

I see only darkness there. There’s no moon tonight. I shake my head at Lume.

“There! Put your foot down!”

I put my foot down into nothing. I stumble, then tumble forward. Lume catches me under my arms, slowing my crash into a gentle touchdown.

“I appreciate your faith in me. As you’ve just proven, it is not unfounded.”

I follow Lume into the trees. She walks slowly so I can keep up. Crickets chirp, sticks snap underfoot, and bushes rustle. I feel clumsy and loud. I hold my hair clutched against me, for comfort as much as to stop it from catching on things.

I wonder if someone could pick me up by my hair alone. Would it support my weight? I have a lot of hair, and there’s not a lot of me. If I was a criminal, maybe they could hang me without a rope.

My lungs burn and my legs feel like they are made of rubber. The ground is at an incline. Lume has stopped further up, waiting for me. She watches my slow progress.

“May I carry you? We’re only about halfway there. Randy has fallen asleep listening to some talk show on the radio, but when he wakes up in a few hours he’ll be upset if we’re not back.”

I nod gratefully. As she lifts me up, she says, “You don’t need to be strong. I am your strength.” I lay my head against her shoulder and watch the trees fly past. I think of when I saw myself in the mirror two days ago, at Jack’s house. I had been confused, but…my mind seemed…clearer then. Things hadn’t been moving so quickly.

I’d been upset because I’d thought I was stronger than the person I saw in the mirror. Maybe the mirror defeated me. Maybe I hadn’t been the person in the mirror until I saw her. Maybe once I saw her, I gave up, and became her. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. But things hadn’t moved so quickly back then.

“We’re here.” Lume sets me down.

A wall of rocks squats in front of me. It’s taller than me but not as tall as Lume. It’s just big river rocks, stacked and balanced on one another. I don’t see any trees on the other side.

“This is your wall, Grey, and it’s the problem.” Lume paces in front of the wall. Again I notice how bizarre and erratic her movement is. I’ve seen it somewhere before.

“This wall is your obstacle. Every person who has ever lived desires what lies on the other side of this wall, though not every person will admit it. Few people have found this wall, and none have overcome it.

I’m lucky. I’ve just found this wall, and I believe I can overcome it. I think others have made the mistake of trying to destroy this wall.”

Lume pushes a rock off the top of the wall. I hear it hit the ground on the other side.

“If you destroy this wall, you will destroy what it protects. That is what I believe. But I know another way. May I show you?”

When I nod, Lume picks me up again. Using one of the rocks on the bottom of the wall for a foothold, she steps over the wall.

It’s a cliff. We’re standing on a ledge only a foot wide between the wall and a twenty-foot drop into a lake. The wall was there to protect us.

Lume sits down, legs dangling off the edge. In her lap, I lean backwards.

“It’s terrifying,” she says.

Lume picks a rock off the ground. It’s the one she pushed off the wall. She rolls it around her palm before throwing it. It arcs through the air into the lake. I remember the phrase “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line”, and then someone who countered, saying, “The most beautiful distance between two points is a curve.”

What if thrown objects weren’t beautiful? Imagine if they went in a straight line, then suddenly went straight down at a ninety-degree angle, like they’d hit an invisible wall. You could play Tetris.

“A thousand times. I could throw that rock a thousand times. The thousandth time I threw it, my arm would ache, and I would not even bother to watch the rock splash in the water. But you would still watch it. You would watch it like it was the first step on the moon, like it was still amazing.

I shouldn’t be speaking of this. It’s something you need. You need to have that. I’ll need to have that.

That’s not what we should discuss. We should ask ourselves: What if the big bang theory of creation is true? The universe is essentially an explosion. And the earth, and life, and you and I, are just particles in this massive expanding fireball of a universe.

It would have to be just another cycle. Cycle of life, cycle of nature, cycle of the universe. There would be the great implosion one day, and then another big bang. And if the big bang happened exactly the same way, then planet earth would happen the same way, and you and I would be here again, doing the same thing. And we’d do it again the big bang after that.

We must choose our actions wisely, because we’ll be repeating them for all eternity. And that makes us immortal.”

Lume pushes us off the edge.

The Seventh: Relative

We arc towards the lake, beautiful, for a moment. Straight as a needle, Lume pierces the water first. But we fell together, how could she-

Hit the water like frozen steel pipe to the gut. I lose my air, and try not to choke on the liquid ice sliding through my teeth. It’s too dark to see which way is up. The tail of my jacket catches on something. I’m hauled upwards, sputtering and choking into the air.

Lume patiently treads water like she has hopped into a public pool. She’s laughing. She laughs until she can barely swim, as she pulls me to the shore. I crawl onto land, and press my forehead into the dirt, feeling ill.

“I’m so-“ Lume tries to apologize through her laughter. “I’m…I’m sorry, hahaha.”

I inhale slowly, afraid I’m going to throw up lake water. I roll onto my back and lay against the dirt, fighting nausea. A drop of water, one among many, slides down my arm, trying to gain enough weight to fall to the ground.

It doesn’t make it to the ground. Lume intercepts it with a towel. She lifts me into sitting position and drapes the towel around me. She sits next to me, soaking wet, grinning like a demon.

“Falling from that precipice, did you fear for your life? Were you expecting death, immortal?”

I press my face into her bare, cold, wet arm. She puts her arm around me.

“You would say I shouldn’t force you through such a trial. Consider the alternative: walking all the way back down the mountain trail. Tiresome. Mundane.”

She sighs. “But not for you, I suppose. It would be better for you. I will make a confession. I’m not immortal. Not even if the universe explodes infinitely. I would live infinite times, but I would also die infinitely. What does that make me? Not immortal, but infinitely mortal.”

Infinitely mortal and Immortal, I repeat in my mind. Infinitely mortal would be essentially immortal if only you got to keep your memory. If everyone could remember their past lives, how would the world be? Would there be more crime, because the death penalty had less power? No, justice would just be dealt out in pain and misery.

You’d count each life. This was your fifty-eighth life. Each life, each world, would be a different level, but communication could only be one way, only through death. Each world after the last would have greater technology, because our scientists would retain their past knowledge. Thomas Edison would invent the light bulb as soon as he was old enough to speak.

But then things would be different. Things would happen differently. The universe wouldn’t be able to collapse the same way and wouldn’t explode the same the next time. Infinite mortals can’t have memory. Mortals cannot know their infinite selves, or their infinite selves will not be.

Lume carries me back to the car as I think on her words. Randy is asleep in the front seat, while a man on the radio says, “-and our policies are only promoting it! It sickens me. It sickens me. It really does! And I’ll tell you-“

“Turn it off,” interrupts Lume’s voice.

“Wha…?” Randy sits up. I fold my arms.

“-sucking us dry-“ the radio warbles on. My throat starts to tighten.

“-it off!”

“-and the world is just…it’s just falling apart in their hands and they’re not going to take any responsibil- “

Fear knots in my chest. I fight it, trying to remember something funny Jack has said.

Crack!

Lume has leaned into the front seat, and smacked the radio into silence.

“What the hell?” asks Randy.

“Look at Grey!” growls Lume. They both turn around to look at me. With both of them watching me, I choke, and tears sting my eyes. I turn away from them.

Lume puts her hand on my head.

“What’s wrong with her?” asks Randy.

“The radio messes her up. Drive Randy,” commands Lume, as if she had told him three times before.

Randy starts the car and pulls back out onto the road. In my mind, I picture the car as an impenetrable airtight fortress, capable of driving through the middle of a battlefield, unaffected by artillery shells or missiles.

“The radio messes her up…what is she an alien? Is this…Is it really a horror movie?” mocks Randy.

“She’s sensitive.”

“I’m sensitive too! But I don’t burst into tears because the radio is on!”

“It’s just a thing, Randalf. It’s just a thing.”

It’s nice to have Lume defend me, especially since I don’t understand my own tears. She seems to understand me better than I understand myself. I suppose that isn’t hard.

The car’s engine lulls me to sleep. I’m too exhausted to figure myself out.

Wind rushes across my face. I’m hanging, suspended, a hundred feet above the highest point on the roller coaster beneath me. I twist, trying to see what holds me. I catch a glimpse of purple before I spin back the other way.

Penelope’s voice magnified a thousand times reverberates around me.

“We suffer a tragic fate, sister.”

Her face fills my vision, too big for me to watch all at once. I focus on the purple iris of one of her eyes.

“We cannot ride the roller coaster. I am too big. You are too small.”

Damp, hot, spearmint-tinted breath washes over me as she speaks, making my eyes water. Purple lips bounce and roll as she chews her gum.

“Don’t come here, little one. Stay away from this place.”

I sit up. Lume’s hand pushes me back down, pinning me against the seat of the car. My shirt sticks to me, damp from Penelope’s breath. No, it’s wet from the lake, or from sweating in my sleep. I don’t know.

Her hand covers my eyes.

“What if you were blind, as well as mute?” asks Lume. “There are some who have both these qualities.”

I’m not sure it would bother me. When watching a scary movie, people often close their eyes. Maybe life would be easier to take with my eyes shut.

“How much further?” asks Lume.

“Not much,” replies Randy.

“Grey is blind. Her eyes give everything away, taking nothing from the eyes of others. Her eyes wander and drift, afraid to look straight ahead.

“Her enemies are aware of her eyes, and their habits. They feel safe, knowing that her eyes will take nothing from them, and their defenses wane. Grey must only wait for her opportunity.”

The car stops. I hear Lume open the door, and I’m pulled outside. With her hand still over my eyes, like we are playing “Guess who?”, Lume speaks.

“Look ahead, like you did for me with Alice. Watch for your enemy’s appearance. I know it is difficult for you. I hope to see you again soon, Grey Winters.”

The Eighth: Frozen

Lume has left me. Outside of Jack’s house. My house? I’m not sure.

I walk towards the house, watching the path for missing bricks.

“Grey! I know your- ah!”

I look up in time to see Susan fall from the roof. She lands on her feet, but a loose brick betrays her, sending her sprawling backwards. Before I’ve sorted out what I’ve seen, she grins, apparently unharmed. She pulls me down on top of her, squeezing the breath from me in a crushing hug.

“I didn’t think they’d give you back and Jack wouldn’t tell me anything and I haven’t slept in days because I’ve just been sitting on the roof- Are you okay? I mean, where’s your sweatshirt? I mean, Jack’s sweatshirt. I mean, did they hurt you? What have you eaten? Are you okay?”

And then she starts to cry. She’s so huge that I shake with each of her quivering breaths, caught up in her earthquake. I’m reminded of how I feel when I’m around Alice, the only person I know as big as Susan, but even on this moonless night I can see Susan’s eyes are sharp blue and full of worry, not Alice’s furious red.

Susan carries me into the house, nearly knocking down the door to Karen and Jack’s room.

“-Winters is it. I don’t have anything real-“ Jack is saying, ignoring the sound of the door slamming against his bedroom wall.

He and Karen are facing away from us, hunched over a notebook.

“She’s back,” interrupts Susan. Jack and Karen jump up together.

“Where? How-“ Jack starts.

“Someone just dropped her off. She isn’t talking,” Susan tells him, while Karen takes me from her and showers me in kisses. I feel like a new baby being passed around.

“That’s okay. That’s just fine. She doesn’t have to talk. She shouldn’t be talking. Who is someone?” asks Jack.

“I don’t know. It was dark.”

“Could you tell if it was a man or woman? Or if they were wearing purple?” Jack presses.

“Purple? I don’t know! It was dark.” Susan gives Jack “I demand more sanity” looks.

“Okay, that’s okay. I thought maybe you’d developed night vision, perched up on the roof like an owl all night. Are done with that now? Can you go to sleep now? All the cool people are doing it. Grey is doing it right now,” Jack tells Susan.

I’ve only got my eyes closed, leaning my head on Karen’s shoulder. “What’s this?” Karen asks. I know without looking that she has spotted my tattoo.

“They put their mark on her,” grumbles Jack, sounding only annoyed at the news.

“Who?” demands Susan.

“Who…ever took her!” Jack growls, as if it should be obvious.

They pause, like they are listening to a fifth person I cannot hear.

“She needs a dry shirt. I mean, hers is damp. Does it have to be so cold in here?” asks Susan.

“Yes. Yes it does. But she can have my shirt. She can have all my clothes. I won’t complain anymore. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m a new man. A naked one, apparently!”

“We,” says Susan, taking me from Karen, “are going to bed. Before Jack gets naked.”

She leaves the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Still, I hear Jack’s voice faintly saying, “She isn’t speaking so…” until we enter my room and Susan shuts that door behind us as well.

Susan has apparently decided she will sleep on the floor of my bedroom, with a single blanket and a wadded up sweater for a pillow. I change into a nightshirt from the dresser and crawl into bed. As I slide under the covers, a stray strand of hair covers one of my eyes.

When my hair gets in my eyes, it’s like bits of black are creeping in from the sides. Susan uses hair clips and accessories I don’t like to keep hers up, but I wonder what it would be like to have bits of blonde intrude on your vision instead of bits of darkness. Would I even mind? Lume has hair the same color as mine, but she keeps it short.

Lume knows my last name. I didn’t know my last name. Grey Winters. Lume _____? Lume knows me. Lume found me by accident on the side of the road, but she knows me. How is that possible? It couldn’t have been an accident. Was she waiting for me to escape? “Look ahead, like you did for me with Alice”, she said. She knows Alice. Does she know Penelope too? Is she one of them?

One of who? The colored sisters? Purple Penelope and Red Alice? Penelope’s entire room was purple. I woke in it less than a day ago. No, I was woken, by an erratic shadow. By Lume. No one else moves like that. Lume snuck into Penelope’s room, propped me against the door, and woke me up so I would hear Alice and Penelope’s conversation, and then she escaped through the window and waited for me to break out.

Why didn’t she just help me escape herself? How did she know I would guess Alice’s password? Why would she pretend not to know me when she found me by the side of the road? Who is Lume? Who am…

Lying in bed, I feel the end of a long strand of hair that has slid underneath my knee. It tickles the back of my leg, so I shift my position, curling my legs up. My legs scrape against the sandpaper blankets around me. I push the away the blankets, and they feel like bricks against my fingertips. Susan watches me as I pull a pillow that seems to be stuffed with caltrops from its case. I try to lay my head on the bed instead of the pillow. Sharp aches so concentrated they feel like cuts spread across my body. It’s as if they used tiny knives instead of springs for this mattress.

I get out of bed, and sit next to Susan on the floor. I wait for a moment, afraid this will continue and the floor will feel like hot coals.

“Grey Winters…do you feel cold?” Susan asks me the way another person would ask if I had heard gunshots. Her words are the trigger. Excruciating cold slices across my feet. I feel, but cannot see, an icy disc of pain no more than an inch in height rising through me. My toes feel fine as radical subzero ice sizzles up through my ankles.

I jump up, trying to get away from The Cold, but it continues to slide up my legs. I start sucking air through my teeth. Susan pulls my legs from under me. I fall back onto the carpet, where Susan pins me. She covers my mouth with her free hand.

“It’s cold, right?”

My cry leaks through her fingers.

“Shhh! You can’t scream. I know it’s cold.”

It reaches my kneecaps, and my legs start to kick and spasm until Susan presses them into carpet fibers.

“Please, for your own good, try not to scream too loudly,” Susan begs. For Susan, I clamp my mouth and bite my tongue. I trust her more than anyone at the moment.

“It’s like…maintenance or something, I don’t understand. You’re doing it to yourself. Don’t try to fight it. Don’t fight it. It’s going to get bad. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”

Susan keeps me pinned as The Cold sears its way through me. My stomach heaves and twists when it slides across my belly. It reaches my chest, and I need air. In a slow, excruciating fog, I cannot decide if I am hyperventilating or unable to inhale at all. Black lines flit across my vision.

When it hits my throat I feel as if a vortex of wind is squeezing a thousand Hot Pockets through. I taste pizza coated in peanut butter. I smell perfume and sweat and Susan’s fabric softener. The world screams at me.

“Watch for your enemy! I exist for my name! She’s isn’t talking if she would speak-“

I see Jack. His beard fades, and his hair darkens. He’s become Lume, but Lume is already shrinking. Her hair expands around her, and she looks up at me. She’s Grey.

I’m strong. I’ve spoken before. I can communicate. I told Jack I thought he was my friend. I can say to her, “I wish I were you.” I should be Grey. Everyone wants to be Grey. I want her.

I won’t fake it anymore, I promise. I’ll be little. I won’t speak. I’ll live in grey. I won’t I won’t won’t won’t wwww-

Ah…

I uncoil. My vision and hearing pop back into place.

Susan is crying. Her tears land on my face. Are they my tears, once they are on my face? I kiss her wet cheek. She holds me and sobs silently.

I taste copper. Blood. I touch my tongue and my hand comes away with a dark smear. Susan’s hand is bleeding too. She wraps a purple shirt around her hand.

“You hate this shirt anyhow,” Susan tells me. I don’t have any feelings for the shirt, but I let her think what she wants.

“Are you oka…how do you f…can I look at you?” Kneeling on the floor, she holds me out at arm’s length. Her arms support all my weight. I’m sure I could not stand on my own. My muscles feel like they’re pinned by lead weights, impossible to move after exercising them beyond exhaustion.

She examines me, even turning me around so she can look at me from behind. Eventually her eyes come to rest on mine. I can only stand the bright blue of her eyes for a few seconds, before I close mine. Her words rise through the darkness.

“I’ve learned that posture is amazing, Grey. It’s like, Every person holds themself in a different way, and you can tell a lot about them from that. I mean, if two different people took turns using the same body, you would know…”

Her voice distorts into static, swinging into a high-pitched whine. It slides back down through the octaves until it’s too low for me to hear, then begins curving upwards again. Eventually it stabilizes, and explains everything to me. Then I wake up.

Grey, Part One

2007-05-30T20:16:53Z

The First: Unbalanced

We’re going to start with the stops.

I’m going to Disney Land. I don’t want to. No, I do.

Someone spoke of parades and dazzling lights. I thought that lights shouldn’t dazzle people so often, since they could always glow or shine or sparkle instead. Maybe they should let something else dazzle once in a while, like rocks.

I suppose gems could be considered dazzling.

Someone said I would enjoy it. The lights would be many different colors. Maybe some would spin, or change colors in sync with other lights to form patterns.

But no one would come with me. I was given a bus schedule, printed out in purple ink. I had to come here alone. I’ve got a plastic bench to sit on. It has gray splotches on it where people had put stickers, and other more irritated people had peeled them off.

A man approaches. His chin is covered in patchy half-hearted stubble, and he’s smiling with only one side of his mouth.

“I’m Jack,” he says, “and I’ll be your guide.”

“I thought you were my friend,” I say, my voice thin and hoarse.

He reacts as if I’d pulled a gun on him, stepping back and raising his hands, fear stretched over his features. And then he recovers, his half-grin resuming its position.

“I can be both,” he assures me. Jack steps aside to reveal a woman who has been using him as cover. She looks like she belongs in a laboratory, lacking only glasses and a clipboard to complete the image, but her blonde hair is dyed with streaks of random colors. Slashes of red, gray, purple, and orange overlay a backdrop of gold.

“This is Karen,” Jack introduces. Both Jack and Karen are absurdly tall people. Karen has to get down on her knees when she shakes my hand. I brush my hair out of my eyes.

“And if you turn around…” Jack suggests. I turn, to see another woman behind me. “There’s…” he sounds tired, “Susan…”

Susan is a giant, bigger than Jack and Karen. My neck starts to burn when she drops to her knees to engulf me in a hug, like I’m her best friend back from the dead. It’s dizzying. I nearly lose my balance, thrown off, when she rises to her feet. She keeps my hand in hers, unwilling to let go. She leads me by the hand like a child.

Jack leads us up a crooked brick path to the house behind my bench.

“Disneyland is the way of the future. Disneyland is tomorrow. Today, we must make due with this house,” announces Jack.

It’s not a grand house. It’s flat. Or it wants to be. It may have been a proud rectangle once, but it’s old and defeated now and the lines aren’t straight anymore. Corners that should jut fiercely toward the sun have dulled and given up on the heavens, sagging towards the ground instead.

The lawn seems to have gotten the attention the house needs. It’s weed free and trimmed neatly. But the brick path running through the lawn is missing a few bricks, and it’s crooked enough to make me feel off balance.

The inside of the house is freezing. The icy air feels ancient to me, like this is the origin of all the cold in the world. It fills my bones from the inside out.

Susan gives me a tour of the house. The kitchen. Jack and Karen’s room. My Room. She moves so quickly I can’t follow. She tells me she sleeps on the couch in the living room every night, even when I am not here.

Unsure of myself, I sit on a chair in the kitchen. My eyes follow the flow of the tablecloth pattern. Black squares and white triangles have entrenched themselves on the fabric. Simplicity. A world divided precisely. I only need to choose a side. Black square or white triangle? I cannot make up my mind.

On the table, a portable radio begins to speak, woken by some internal timer.

“-not the question I asked you!” it shouts in woman’s voice. I move towards the radio, hesitantly, afraid it might lash out at me somehow.

“Look, you called me for help, and I’m telling you this: Your children come first. If-” I grab the radio in mid sentence, and push it out the nearest open window like it is a live grenade. I hear plastic crack against pavement. I wipe my hands on my pants, like it has left some mark on me. No one in the house has noticed what I did. I resume my place on the chair in the kitchen, knees folded underneath me.

My hair keeps getting in my eyes when I try to study the tablecloth. A conspiratorial whisper informs me, “There’s hairclips in the bathroom.” It’s Jack, leaning against the refrigerator.

In the bathroom is the mirror. There’s a woman in the mirror. She has deep black hair, nearly long enough to touch the ground, which makes her skin look ghostly white. Her eyes are haunting, a muted gray color. I realize, comparing her to the vast bathroom landscape behind her, she’s extremely small. She’s a delicate thing. I want to hold her.

She’s…She is…I wrap some of my hair around myself and press it to my chest, like her. Like me. I’m stronger than her. I’m not her. She looks ready to cry. I realize the mirror is too big. This room is too big. I sink onto the bathroom mat, overcome with dizziness.

With the truth in front of me, I have to fight tears. I’m almost crying because I thought I was someone else strong enough to handle a situation like this without crying. I’m crying because the girl in the mirror is crying. I’m crying because I’m crying. Is this ironic?

Susan’s thunders her way into the bathroom, her towering frame filling the background behind the girl in the mirror. It’s difficult for me to think of the mirror as a reflection instead of a portal. At least Susan is a friendly giant.

She crouches over me as I sniff and rub tears from my eyes. “I think Jack has something to show you,” she says gently. She reminds me of a mother trying to cheer her child up by offering her sweets. I imagine Jack is waiting for me in the other room with an ice cream cone.

Jack is leaning against the bookshelf in my room. A folding card table has been set up in front of the door to my bathroom. A black box is sitting on the table next to a pitcher of water. I cannot tell what the box is made from. Plastic? Cardboard? Wood? A faint mist rises over it.

Jack is wearing leather gloves. “I thought you might like to see what you are made of. See, I’m not made of sugar, or anything nice, but I am made of spice. You, though…” Jack rummages in his box, before withdrawing with a white cylinder.

“You’re filled with ice,” he says, holding it out to me. “Careful, it will burn you if you hold it for more than a few seconds.”

I take it from him, balancing it on my palm. It’s shocking on the initial contact with my skin, then immediately descends into a sort of pins and needles numbness. It starts to hurt. It’s so hot. I clamp my other hand over it, pressing it between my palms.

“Hey, doesn’t that hurt? You’re going to burn yourself…” Jack reaches for my hands. I try to back away, but he catches me by the arm.

“Come on, let go,” he says, getting worried. I focus on keeping the burn locked between my hands. It’s excruciating, but I’ll stop when I want to.

“Susan…Susan! Susan!” Jack yells. Susan swoops into the room like Jack has called for air support.

“She’s going to burn herself. She isn’t letting go. Her fingers are delicate, I’m afraid to pry…”

Susan swiftly pulls my hands apart, and tosses the cylinder to Jack. My palms are red, and they throb painfully. Susan wraps her arms around me, pressing my back against her and pinning my arms to my sides.

Jack gives me a pained look. “I’m sorry,” he says, setting the cylinder on the table. He pours water from the pitcher over it. It billows and disappears into fog, spreading over the table.

“And there you go…” he says as the fog dissipates, leaving only a puddle of water on the table.

“Why did she do that?” asks Susan, her voice cracking.

“She’s Grey.”

The Second: Tangled

I’m standing in a line that leads into Disney Land. The cold has caught me again. It’s a tense, silent, early morning freeze.

I wait. My breath comes out frosted. I imagine that it is so cold that even if I were teleported to the tropics, my breath would still come out frosted for the next six hours. I cannot see around the person ahead of me in line, so I examine my hand, red from the cold, blistering from the burn. I should play the piano, with such long fragile fingers. But they only look long to me. I’ve got to think about relativity. Susan’s fingers are nearly twice the size of mine. I realize my hand is shaking, slightly. Just slightly, but I can’t make it stop.

Susan is holding my other hand like I’m a child who might run away. I’d protest, but her thick fingers radiate heat.

Disneyland would be nothing without its suspense-building lines.

“You look excited,” says Susan. I’ve been rocking back and forth on my heels. “What ride do you want to go on first?” My teeth chatter in response. I don’t want to tell her Peter Pan is my ride of choice. I want to learn how to fly.

“Ah! I said bring a sweater!’” Susan scolds me. I don’t remember her saying that. I do remember her suggesting that I cut my hair, and the pang of panic I felt. What would I hold onto? I twist some hair around myself. Susan catches Jack’s arm in the middle of an extravagant gesture. “Give her your shirt Jack.”

“What?” His voice is thick with skepticism. “You’re just trying to steal all my clothes! Your tactics could use some more subtlety. I feel like a movie star. I should sell my clothes on ebay. And my hair. And I should take one bite of a bagel and sell the rest.”

“I meant-“ Susan struggles with suppressed laughter. “I meant your…your sweatshirt! She’s freezing herself to death, like she always does. You know how it goes.” Karen pulls Jack’s sweatshirt off him before he can protest anymore.

“Arms up!” she announces, before dropping it over me. It wrinkles and bunches, and spreads over me. The sleeves hang off my arms far enough that I am able to tie them in a knot to keep the warmth in. Each time the cloth scrapes against the blisters on my hands, pain knocks the breath from me. By the time the sweatshirt has comfortably enveloped me, I’m sucking air through my teeth.

“They’re opening the gates,” says Karen. I can’t see around her.

Jack leans down and whispers, “It’s just the band that plays inside the park.” Jack likes to whisper. I run my unburned forefinger along the inside of my sweatshirt’s zipper, making sure it’s unbroken. Jack grabs me around the waist and lifts me up into the air.

“Can you see the band?” he asks. My fingers dig into his hand. I can see the band. I can also see thousands of people. And they can see me in my oversized sweatshirt. People elbow their friends to point me out. I try to not to meet any of their eyes. It’s impossible. I close my eyes.

“Tell me what you see.”

I open my eyes, and look down at Jack. His eyes are brown. He sets me back on the ground.

“Never mind.”

The line moves forward. A “magic” noise plays from the speakers each time a person pushes through the turnstile into Disneyland. Susan and Karen go through. They have a list that tells them what ride they will go on and in what order. Jack said that he and I “will not be bound by the constraints of…constraining…lists. No, we are free hawks or eagles or what have you and there’s probably soaring and open skies and freedom involved. Tons of freedom, actually. And we’re going to have a lot more fun than you.” I push my ticket into the slot. It pops back out, reminding me of bread from a toaster. I push it back in, thinking that I’d like my ticket toasted so long I’d have to take a butter knife and scrape the burnt bits off. It pops out again.

“Look at me.”

Jack puts a hand on my shoulder, and crouches so he is closer to eye level with me. He whispers, “This is serious. Walk slowly around the corner behind me, and hide behind something. A bush, a garbage can, whatever. Don’t run. Don’t attract attention. Go now.”

As I walk away from Jack, I feel justified, like I’d practiced fire drills for years in a building that just caught fire. Around the corner, things are quieter. A shaky bent man clutching a bouquet of red roses trudges across an empty concrete courtyard. Once he is past, I kneel down between a bush and a fence separating the courtyard from Disneyland.

I pull my knees inside the sweatshirt. Hidden behind the bush, unable to see anything but leaves, I listen for Jack’s voice. He’ll tell me he’s got a girlfriend I don’t know about, and he didn’t want her to see me with him while I’m wearing his sweatshirt because she’s a jealous person, and then we’ll both laugh.

Ten minutes pass. I change my mind. Jack must have spotted a sniper. He saw a man with a Bomb Gun Knife Stick with Pointy End and he’s gone to alert Disneyland Security The Police Proper Authorities. Would I hear gunshots or screaming or police loudspeakers?

I hide behind the bush for hours. I name the bush Laurel. All the other bushes in the courtyard are in pairs. Laurel is alone, like me. I think about setting Laurel up with a partner. I’d drag in a huge plant in a clay plot, but Laurel would hold her leaves high and say, “He’s too young.” I’d have to buy plant after plant, only to listen to Laurel’s complaints.

“I don’t like the way he holds himself. He’s drooping!”
“His leaves aren’t green enough.”
“Too many insects on him.”
“Not enough branches.”

Frustrated, I would yell at her, “You have to pick one!”

Her branches would sway indignantly. “I won’t.”

“But…why?” I would ask, exhausted. Laurel would grow still, sympathetic. At last, embarrassed, she would confess, “I don’t want you to leave.”

I fall asleep behind Laurel, face pressed against my knees. Only my ears are cold. I dream there are a dozen of me, and I stand in a circle arguing with myself about who I am.

I wake in the dark, to the smell of cigarette smoke. Whenever I wake up, I feel as if I had dreamed the one true solution to all my problems, but now that I’m awake I can’t remember what it is. I don’t try to pin down the fading images this time. I’ll try next time. Something important is happening in the real world right now, if I can remember that instead…

I’m at Disneyland. Or outside it. Behind Laurel. It’s night. Where is Jack?

I yawn, and stretch so far tremors run through my body. I tell myself I must not be worried if I am yawning.

Rough knuckles press into the back of my neck, and their fingers catch hold of my shirt. The man I saw carrying roses earlier lifts me into the air. Tremors tear through his body like they did mine when I was stretching, but his don’t ever stop.

“Miss Grey, Miss Grey!” he croaks. I twist in the air, unable to grab hold of anything but myself. Laurel watches.

“Superb…finding you. Alice awaits.” He pins my arms to my sides. I clutch a fistful of my own hair, and try to decide if it’s just him shaking, or if I am too. The smell of cigarettes coats him like perfume.

His movement is nauseating. Street lamps blur and their light stretches as we pass. He stops under one of the street lamps.

A woman in red is there. Her shoes and her suit and the ring on her hand and even her hair: Red. She’s bigger than Susan. She’s hard where Susan is soft.

“Horace!” she commands, like she has said “Heel!” to a dog.

Horace drops me. Alice catches my wrist in a hold that forces me to bend my arm awkwardly.

“Don’t touch Grey, ever. I’ll tear out your heart, Horace.” Her lips press together. Red lipstick.

Her free hand lifts Horace off the ground as easily as he had lifted me. His shirt tears under his weight, sending him stumbling backwards.

She produces handcuffs from her coat and snaps them on me with an experienced hand. They’re too big. I could slip out if I tried. She pulls me to her red car, and pushes me in the back. Jack is in there.

“Tell her where she’s going, Jack.”

"I'm sorry," is all Jack says.

Before she shuts the backdoor, I hear Horace say “Apologies. Apologies, Alice.”

“Thank you, Horace.”

The Third: Rough

I'm sitting in a plastic racing chair in an arcade. The room is empty except for Jack and I, and an icy chill so cruel it seems sentient. I don't move my hand from the "Ten and Two" position on the metal steering wheel because it has warmed to my hands there.

Jack picked an easy level so there aren't many tight turns, but when I have to make them the chains from my handcuffs clink together. The noise is out of place with the game's techno music and engine revving sounds. The cold chain brushes my wrist as I make another tight turn, drawing out goose bumps. For the rest of the game, I slow down and take turns as wide as possible. I don't make it to the finish line.

"Well that was a pleasant tour of a virtual city, but you were supposed to be racing," Jack says. He'd finished the race, sixth place out of eight, but at least my car didn't look like it had been hit by a train. I don't say anything, adjusting my handcuffs. They've rubbed through my skin, and now they are getting bloody.

"Got any more quarters?" He asks. I shake my head. We'd put my only dollar in the token machine. I have two dimes left. I climb out of the chair and regret it. The freezing linoleum floor shocks my bare feet. Alice took my shoes and Jack’s sweatshirt. I try to cross my arms in front of my chest but the handcuffs won't let me.

"I've got one quarter. One whole quarter. And while the possibilities for one whole quarter in an arcade are not quite endless, we do have some decision making to do.” He takes my hand in his, trying not to bump the handcuff. He unfolds my fingers one at a time and lowers the coin into my palm. It seems larger than it should be. He has me hold it with both hands, like it is a frog that will try to leap away. I try to ignore my frozen feet, which stick to spilled soda as Jack leads me through the arcade.

"Here are the two machines in the arcade that operate with a single quarter." I see only one machine. Busta move. Jack points to the bubblegum dispenser next to it.

"Not quite endless." He repeats. I put the quarter in the left slot on the Busta move machine. The right slot is dark and has a foreign coin stuck in it.

The machine is too large. The joystick is too far back and too high for me to use. The game has one button to press, but it is too far from the joystick for me to reach while wearing handcuffs.

"Here." Jack lifts me onto the panel so I'm sitting next to the screen. I’m tired of being picked up without warning, but I don’t know how to tell Jack.

"I'll aim. You fire." Jack takes the joystick. The game is beautiful. I have a better time popping colored bubbles than I did trying not to crash my car. We're about to lose, to be overwhelmed by gleaming white bubbles, when the miniature monster assistant on our screen loads a transparent bubble for us to fire.

"See that, Grey?" Jack asks, tapping the screen.

"That bubble represents hope. That's salvation, right there, in those pixels." I do not think the transparent bubble deserves his speech. I don't think it’s as nice as any of the colored bubbles. It's a defect, a mutation of the pure bubbles.

"That bubble represents you," he continues, adjusting his shot. I'm offended.

"That bubble has meaning. Do you know what it means?" I shake my head. He has stopped moving the joystick, so I press the "fire" button. The shot ricochets off the side of the screen, and hits the row of bubbles clinging to the ceiling. The entire row vanishes, releasing the rest of the bubbles and winning the level. The little monster on the screen does a victory dance.

"It means..." He pulls me towards him. I’m afraid he is going to kiss me. But he only whispers "Everything is going to be okay." Then I think he at least deserves a hug. I'm handcuffed and balancing on the edge of an arcade machine though, so I don't try it.

"I HATE-" Alice’s voice startles me, and I fall off the arcade machine, landing awkwardly on my feet.

"-it when people tell me they don't understand. I'm SICK of speaking words no one understands." I can't tell where her voice is coming from. A man says something to her that I can't understand.

"She's beautiful, in an unkempt 'I can't take care of myself' way. A more generous person might say 'exotic'."

Alice walks around one of the arcade machines. Horace is with her. He shakes and sweats like he is suffering heroine withdrawal. I watch her, hidden by the arcade machine.

"Get out here," Alice demands. When I move forward, Jack grabs my arm and holds it up.

"Take off her handcuffs. They're hurting her." Blood trickles down my left arm. I pull it away from him. Alice kneels in front of me. She inspects my wrists, than turns me around.

“Horace, take Jack out.” Horace lurches behind the bustamove machine, returning with a sword. It’s thick, with a ruby in the pommel. It shakes at Jack.

“What the hell, ass, shit-“ Obscenities tumble from Jack’s mouth in face of the weapon. “-bitch. Where the fuck did you get a sword like that?”

“It’s mine,” says Alice. “Take him out now Horace, before I crack his skull.” Alice puts her hands to her temples, like her own head is hurting in sympathy already. Jack backs out of the room at sword point.

“Don’t trust Jack. Don’t trust me either,” Alice commands. When I don’t look at her, she says “Grey,” in a warning tone. I look up from my wrists. “You’ve got your name, at least.”

She unlocks my handcuffs and puts them, still bloody, into a coat pocket. Both of my wrists are torn up. Alice hands me a tissue, which I use to wipe the blood that has trickled down my arm, and dab at my wrists.

“I want you to know that you’re the hardest. I mean that in more than one-way, but the way that I’m going to explain to you is this: You’re probably the hardest person in this world to torture, physically. I don’t say that because you have a strong will or high pain tolerance.

“I say that because you’re so small. You’re fragile. If I misjudged anything, I’d snap bones I didn’t mean to, I’d break things that shouldn’t be broken.”

I’ve got tears in my eyes. I try not to shake like Horace. She’s speaking in “I wish it hadn’t come to this” tone..

“This is yours.” Alice pulls a grey notepad and a pen from her coat. She clicks the pen, and hands them both to me.

“Write your name, please.”

I put the pen to the paper. Grey starts with “G”, which, as a geometric figure, is not a polygon because it’s not enclosed. No, maybe I’m wrong. Well, I need a curve for the top. That’s a line, but it-

“Write your name, Grey.”

A line is a collection of points. Infinite points, or finite? I’ll start with one point, the next one goes to the left, and lower, and then to the right also I think.

The notepad is pulled out of my hands.

“This is…This looks like a triangle with a rounded corner. You’ve spent the past minute drawing a triangle, when-“

I’m on the floor, ears ringing. Pain blossoms in my head. Alice is kneeling over me.

“-your name. Just say it. Do I need to hit you again? You don’t even have to write it. Just say it. Just say ‘Grey’.” Her eyes are a softer red than her suit. She’s got contacts. She looks like she might cry.

Grey has two spellings. Some people write it ‘Gray’. Some-

Alice pulls a pistol from her coat. It’s red. My breath whips in and out, so fast I’m afraid I’ll choke. My cheeks are wet, and it feels like I’ve got a rock pushing into the back of my head.

“Say or I’ll shoot you. Say it.” She pushes the pistol into my ribs.

Grey starts with “G”, which is grrr-

“Say it. Say it! Grey, Grey, Grey. Say anything. Anything at all.” The pistol muzzle digs further, pressing against bone. I scream a throat-tearing scream of frustration.

When I finish, she’s still there. She pops the pistol’s safety. The warning red of the “safety off” tag is a lighter shade of red than the rest of the gun.

“You’re not Grey.”

I close my eyes, because I do not want to die with her eyes probing mine.

Click.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

”I hate guns.”

I open my eyes in time to see her snap the hammer off her pistol with her bare hands. She tosses the gun behind her, where it slides under an arcade machine. She sits, leaning up against the machine.

I sit up, and vomit. As my stomach rolls and heaves at nothing, Alice’s voice drifts through me, stronger than before, but deadpan.

“The real Grey isn’t afraid of death. The real Grey never speaks. You cannot speak a word to save your life, yet you are afraid of death. A good thing to know about yourself, don’t you think?”

I lean against an arcade machine, wet hands under my armpits. A feeling of detachment seeps through me. I cannot control this situation. My actions have no consequence. That’s a sort of invigorating liberation.

Now that Alice tells me I cannot speak, I feel like we can talk things over. Alice is wearing only half a grin.

“You think I’m terrible. You’re right, but I’ll tell you this: My sister is worse. I cannot condone her. You’re going to see her soon.

Before that happens, let’s talk about you.” Her eyebrows drop, and her eyes focus.

“Look where your right hand is.”

I’m rubbing my nose with my hand.

“I said ‘let’s talk about you’, and you reached to cover your mouth with your hand. You did, even though you can’t talk. Your subconscious, though diluted and confused, stopped you mid-gesture, and turned it into an innocent nose-rub.”

I pull my arms inside my shirt, and clasp my hands together.

“I can read people, Grey. You don’t want to talk about yourself. That’s not your fault. That’s why we are here. That’s why we are here…”

There’s pain in those words. There’s a lonely hurt she keeps close.

“Where do you live?”

I have no idea where I live. I’m staying with Jack, and Susan, and Karen right now.

“Do you live with Jack? Is that your home?”

I nod. Her teeth grind. I crawl to Alice, and rest my head against her.

“Aren’t you scared? You’ve made mistakes, Grey.” Her fingers glide through the hair on my scalp.

“Where do you come from?” Her fingers tighten. “Where? Before Jack, what was there? Nothing?”

She’s right. Nothing.

“It’s all one big vacation for you, isn’t it? My sister is coming. Her name, the demon’s name, is Penelope. Alice and Penelope. You won’t forget.”

“There are many kinds of demons, dearest Alice.” The voice is smooth, with words that blend and slip into one another.

Alice pushes me off, and I stumble to my feet. Penelope rests on the top of a Mortal Kombat arcade machine.

She is wearing purple bell-bottom pants, a silk long sleeve purple shirt, and her hair is a long, deep purple. She's slender and curved, not skinny and small like I am. She has a purple gift bag in her left hand. In her right, she holds Alice’s red sword.

“Succubi, Balrogs, and Imps, which am I?” asks Penelope, grinning.

“You’re a little imp. Drop my sword.” Alice advances on her.

”Well, Alice, you are an angel! Or you’ve found one, and she’s rubbed off on you. I hope you played nicely.”

Penelope flips the swords end over end through the air. Alice catches it by the blade and swings, bashing the sword’s hilt into the arcade machine. The screen shatters, and the machine crashes to the ground. Penelope lands, stumbles, and falls to her knees, surrounded by shattered glass.

“It’s my sword,” Alice seethes.

“A mere club, the way you hold it,” retorts Penelope, still on her knees.

Alice stomps away. Blood drips off her fingers, where the sword’s edge bites into her hand.

The Fourth: Frayed

A 3D man says, “Everything is over. I have nothing more to lose.” He begins to walk away. He stops, looks back. “However, I must go on.”

“Let me tell you a secret about Alice.” I try to ignore Penelope, and focus on the arcade machine instead. Penelope crouches over me.

“Goodbye, Curien. Farewell, Sophie,” says the 3D man.

“Alice…” Penelope whispers. I flinch away, pressing myself against the arcade machine.

Penelope kneels, so she doesn’t tower over me as much. Her iris is purple, and it makes me feel sick.

“I believe I can see the future.” She takes my hand in hers, like she is going to do a palm reading. Our hands are not so different. Her hand engulfs mine, and her nails are painted purple, but they’re shaped the same way, the same long fingers. I wonder if she plays the piano.

“It’s all about laws, honey. I don’t think anyone could understand but you. Let’s pick a theory of creation. We’ll do the big bang.

In the beginning, all the matter in the universe was compressed into a singular gravitational field. And then it exploded, or expanded at least. What happened next, hydrogen forming and swirling nebulas and planet earth filled with life like Trojans and Greeks, leading to you, it’s all in the laws.

You just have to know gravity and how atoms and proteins are created and how the neurons in Grey’s brain fire and misfire. If you knew the laws you could be watching big bang and say, ‘Judging by the spin on that quark-gluon plasma, I’d say Alice isn’t going to get along well with Penelope.’

And you’ll know that Jack is fine, even as Grey worries that Horace murdered him. And you’ll know where Alice is going, and what Grey is going to do next.”

Penelope kisses me on the forehead.

“I brought you something, darling.”

From her purple gift bag, she produces a grey hoodie sweatshirt. It’s oversized, but not as badly as Jack’s sweatshirt had been. I actually like wearing sweatshirts that are too large for me. They’re warmer.

“Arms up!”

Inside the sweatshirt is soft and warm and dark and I say nothing when I feel Penelope pick me up, but give up trying to find the hole for my head. The slow rocking motion of her confident gait is reassuring, and the heated dark lulls me to rest.

And there’s…there is a …I can…If I just…It’ll work out…It will all work out…I’ve only got to-

“Wake up! Listen! Grey, wake up and listen. You’ve been asleep longer than you know,” whispers an unfamiliar voice. Sleep, and my understanding are wrenched from me. I’ve only got to do what?

Opening my eyes is a struggle. I see light, interrupted by flashes of shadow. As I focus, the voice whispers again:

“Listen! Hear them! You must learn, while you can.”

The shadow is condensing into a figure, full of erratic movement. It disappears with the thud of closing window, and a click for the latch.

My chest itches. I’m leaning against a wall. The room I’m in is luxurious purple. Purple silk sheets for the bed and lighter purple trim for the window and a purple that nearly qualifies as pink for the carpet.

I’m near the door. Voices slide under the doorway.

“-ruining it. You were bonding with her, not making her hate you!” I identify the voice as Penelope’s. I’m eavesdropping, I realize. I slump to the floor, like I have fallen asleep there, in case they open the door.

“She’s…arah!” Alice’s voice is so full of rage it devolves into incoherent sounds. “You’re…it’s Grey! Has she ever hated anyone? Remember when…in the hospital-“

“She didn’t even remember.“

“But, fine! I wasn’t bonding. I put a gun to her! She thought I was going to kill her. Five minutes later she wants to cuddle. It’s impossible.”

“It’s your skill Alice. You handle the people. I handle the paper. Jack’s going to come for her soon, and if she won’t stick with me…” A minute passes in silence before Penelope says, “Would you like another attempt?”

“You wake her. I’ll take her. It’s better that way.”

It’s better that way. It’s better that I hate Alice? They’re playing good cop, bad cop. How much of it is acting?

How long until Jack saves me?

Hot fingers press against my throat. Panic rips through me. I thrash away, knocking my head into the bed frame. A painful fog fills my mind. I force my eyes open. Penelope is sitting near me.

“I was checking your pulse. You were unconscious on the floor. I suppose you just rolled off the bed.” She looks hurt, like my fear of being strangled in my sleep shows that I don’t trust her. She’s right.

Penelope carries me to the edge of a bed. She checks my head, and tells me I do not have a concussion. I listen to her heartbeat, and try to sync my breathing with hers, but she breathes too slowly for me.

Breathe…breathing…in a warm embrace…of my enemy. My kidnapper? Who?

She turns me so I’m looking into a mirror. The mirror shows me that no matter how small I feel, I’m actually smaller. Penelope holds me like a child holds her doll.

“How do you like it?” she asks. I don’t know what she is talking about. “Are you alright? Alice may have given you too much of the sedative.”

Oh. I’ve been drugged.

“Here.” She taps her finger on my collarbone. She brushes hair from my eyes.

Oh. I’ve been tattooed.

There are overlapping black ovals and circles on my collarbone, with curving lines extending from the sides up to my shoulders. It’s a tattoo necklace. It’s beautiful.

It itches but I cannot find the strength to scratch it.

Penelope pulls back the sleeve of her shirt to show me a duplicate tattoo on her arm, except hers is purple. She seems pleased.

I notice as she smiles that one of her “I” teeth comes to a sharper point than the other. Is that bad? Does it bother her? What if she wanted to fix it?

Maybe a doctor would say, “Your treatment will be this soup can. I want you to poke a hole in the lid of this can with your sharp “I” tooth twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. Do that for six weeks and then I’ll check in with you to see how much it has dulled.”

“You don’t need to speak. Take Alice for example: better to remain silent and appear a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

Alice opens the door on cue. “Take your own advice, hypocrite.” One of her hands is wrapped in bandages. Red from blood, or colored that way, I don’t know.

“You shouldn’t be here, Alice.” I hear the lie in Penelope’s voice.

“Your time is up Penelope. It’s my turn.” She sounds so phony I have to stop myself from laughing.

Alice picks me up with one hand. It seems unfair that she can be so strong. I suppose she does not need to be strong to pick me up. But I’m not as strong as her, and I never could be. How does god decide who gets to be strong and who has to be small? Maybe god and the devil haggle over every person created.

The devil would say, “Alice will be angry all the time,” and god would say, “Only if she’s strong.”

“And compassion?” the devil would ask. “You always cram that in there.”

“Yes.”

“Well I’m making her a total lunatic then.”

I worry the devil got the better deal on me. He probably cheated.

Alice has carried me somewhere, and I missed it. We’re in a different bedroom now. It has a lot of red in it, on the trim and the blankets on the bed, but the walls are white and the carpet is gray. These colors do not compliment, emphasize, or blend with each other.

Alice slides a wood door I thought led to a closet aside. It leads to a cavernous bathroom, with three separate showers, a bathtub with a showerhead, a hot tub, and three sinks. The bathroom is bigger than the bedroom was.

Alice drops me in the bathtub, not gently.

“Don’t laugh at me.” There’s stillness about her. Seething.

“I know you. I know what you think. I know you heard us talking outside the bedroom. You were laughing at me, back there. I could see it in your eyes. Your eyes give away everything, Grey.”

I don’t brush the hair from my eyes. I don’t want her to see them. I don’t want to see her. I hold my hands together, just below my neck.

“Don’t speak. Do not ever speak.”

Freezing chills slide down my back. Alice towers over me, watching. It’s not until water falls from my bangs into my eyes that I realize she has turned on the showerhead. Water drips from my chin onto my shirt.

“I’m leaving. You will try to escape while I’m gone, and fail. I want you to know this Grey-“ She wrenches my head upwards and my hair falls from my face, dangling behind me. Watching red eyes, I hear:

“I am not a good actor.”

Chapter Seven

2007-04-21T20:58:01Z

I would love to have feedback from anyone whose got me friended on this piece, as it is my primary literary endeavor for now and the rest of this year. Please be as thorough as you are willing; I'm aware that you all have busy, productive, satisfying lives to attend to.

It bothers me that this chapter isn't very long, so I may merge it with the previous chapter sometime in the future. Before I continue into the next chapter, I will probably be going back and touching up the previous chapters. I use "touch up" as a euphemism here for the horrors I am prepared to inflict upon those innocent chapters. If only they would be perfect like I told them they should be, I wouldn't have to do this to them. They brought it upon themselves!

Anyhow, It's possible that I might delete every post on this journal when I repost the re-re-re-revised versions of these chapters. (Actually, that's not enough "Re"s. The first chapter has been completely rewritten six times).

I'd also like to take this part of my HTML document to once again thank everyone for their constructive feedback, and to remind anyone that if they want me to reciprocate on one of their pieces, sending me a message on LJ, AIM, or E-mail is the Pro way to make it happen. My friends page updates approximately every 3 seconds with some person posting some thing like "So Bob got a cat today and then I was laid off and Bill says he doesn't love me anymore and I'm just ANGRY ALL THE TIME. Brb cutting wrists."

So it's kind of hard to notice the one in a hundred posts which say, "Hey I wrote these words and I wish someone would write some words about how good these words are."

Earlier Chapters for people who have a scrolling disability:

The First
The Second
The Third
The Fourth
The Fifth
The Sixth

The Seventh: Relative

We arc towards the lake, beautiful, for a moment. Straight as a needle, Lume pierces the water first. But we fell together, how could she-

Hit the water like frozen steel pipe to the gut. I lose my air, and try not to choke on the liquid ice sliding through my teeth. It’s too dark to see which way is up. The tail of my jacket catches on something. I’m hauled upwards, sputtering and choking into the air.

Lume patiently treads water like she has jumped from a diving board into a public pool. She’s laughing. She laughs until she can barely swim, as she pulls me to the shore. I crawl onto land, and press my forehead into the dirt, feeling ill.

“I’m so-“ Lume tries to apologize through her laughter. “I’m…I’m sorry, hahaha.”

I inhale slowly, afraid I’m going to throw up lake water. I roll onto my back and lay against the dirt, fighting nausea. A drop of water, one among many, slides down my arm, waiting to gain enough weight to drop to the ground.

It doesn’t make it to the ground. Lume intercepts it with a towel. She lifts me into sitting position and drapes the towel around me. She sits next to me, soaking wet, grinning like a demon.

“Falling from that precipice, did you fear for your life? Were you expecting death, immortal?”

I press my forehead into her bare, cold, wet arm. She puts her arm around me.

“You would say I shouldn’t force you through such a trial. Consider the alternative: walking all the way back down the mountain trail. Tiresome. Mundane.”

She sighs. “But not for you, I suppose. It would be better for you. I will make a confession. I’m not immortal. Not even if the universe explodes infinitely. I would live infinite times, but I would also die infinitely. What does that make me? Not immortal, but infinitely mortal.”

Infinitely mortal and Immortal. Infinitely mortal would be essentially immortal if only you got to keep your memory. If everyone could remember their past lives, how would the world be? Would there be more crime, because the death penalty had less power? No, justice would just be dealt out in pain and misery.

You’d count each life. This was your fifty-eighth life. Each life, each world, would be a different level, but communication could only be one way, only through death. Each world after the last would have greater technology, because our scientists would retain their past knowledge. Thomas Edison would invent the light bulb as soon as he was old enough to talk.

But then things would be different. Things would happen differently. The universe wouldn’t be able to collapse the same way and wouldn’t explode the same the next time. Infinite mortals can’t have memory. They can’t be immortal, or the universe will end the wrong way.

Lume carries me back to the car as I think on her words. Randy is asleep in the front seat, while a man on the radio is saying “-and our policies are only promoting it! It sickens me. It sickens me. It really does! And I’ll tell you-“

“Turn it off,” interrupts Lume’s voice.

“Wha…?” Randy sits up. I fold my arms.

“-sucking us dry-“ the radio warbles on. My throat starts to tighten.

“-it off!”

“-and the world is just…it’s just falling apart in their hands and they’re not going to take any responsibil- “

Fear and sorrow knot in my chest. I fight it, trying to remember something funny Jack has said.

Crack!

Lume has leaned into the front seat, and smacked the radio into silence.

“What the hell?” asks Randy.

“Look at Grey!” They both turn around to look at me. With both of them watching me, I choke, and tears sting my eyes. I turn away from them.

Lume puts her hand on my head.

“What’s wrong with her?” asks Randy.

“The radio messes her up. Drive Randy.”

Randy starts the car and pulls back out onto the road. In my mind, I picture the car as an impenetrable airtight fortress, capable of driving through the middle of a battlefield, unaffected by artillery shells or missiles.

“The radio messes her up…what is she an alien? Is this…Is it really a horror movie?” asks Randy mockingly.

“She’s sensitive.”

“I’m sensitive too! But I don’t burst into tears because the radio is on!”

“It’s just a thing, Randalf. It’s just a thing.”

It’s nice to have Lume defend me, especially since I don’t even know why the radio bothered me. I’ve known her less than a day, but she seems to understand me better than I understand myself. I suppose that isn’t hard.

The car sways me to sleep. I’m too exhausted to figure myself out.

Wind rushes across my face. I’m hanging, suspended, a hundred feet above the highest point on the roller coaster beneath me. I twist, trying to see what’s holding me. I catch a glimpse of purple before I spin back the other way.

Penelope’s voice magnified a thousand times reverberates around me.

“We suffer a tragic fate, sister.”

Her face fills my vision, too big for me to watch all at once. I focus on the purple iris of one of her eyes.

“We cannot ride the roller coaster. I am too big. You are too small.”

Damp, hot, spearmint-tinted breath washes over me as she speaks, making my eyes water. Purple lips bounce and roll as she chews her gum.

“Don’t come here, little one. Stay away from this place.”

I sit up. Immediately, Lume’s hand pushes me back down, pinning me against the seat of the car. My shirt sticks to me, damp from Penelope’s breath. No, it’s wet from the lake, or from sweating in my sleep. I don’t know.

A hand covers my eyes.

“What if you were blind, as well as mute?” asks Lume. “There are some who have both these qualities.”

I’m not sure it would bother me. When watching a scary movie, people often close their eyes. Maybe life would be easier to take with my eyes shut.

“How much further?” asks Lume.

“Not much,” replies Randy.

“Grey is blind. Her eyes give everything away, taking nothing from the eyes of others. Her eyes wander and drift, afraid to look straight ahead.

Her enemies are aware of her eyes, and their habits. They feel safe, knowing that her eyes will take nothing from them, and their defenses wane. Grey must only wait for her opportunity.”

The car stops. I hear Lume open the door, and I’m pulled outside. With her hand still over my eyes, like we are playing “Guess who?”, Lume speaks.

“Look ahead, like you did for me with Alice. Watch for your enemy’s appearance. I know it is difficult for you. I hope to see you again soon, Grey Winters.”

Chapter Six

2007-04-11T20:15:00Z

The Sixth: Inertial

“A product of cooperative genius,” said Randy. I press my cheek into Lume, clutch at her shirt, and feel the vibrations of her voice mix with her heartbeat. Her hand plucks at strands of hair hanging down my back.

“…thousands of men, women, and children…starving children, helpless with wide innocent eyes and…” Lume looks down at me, “…tiny women with very long hair and pale skin. Trembling, they were scattered in the woods in picked off not by wild animals, or a psychotic cultists, but a tongue-devouring monster. The monster made no sound, only ripping the tongues from those who spoke or cried out.”

I rise and fall with each breath Lume takes. Randy’s voice comes from the front of the car.

“What were a thousand starving children and…” I see his eyes watching me in the rearview mirror. “…tiny women doing in the forest?”

“Dragged from their beds by the oily tentacles of the tongue devouring beast!” declares Lume.

“Was her tongue devoured?”

I lock eyes with Lume. Without looking away, she says “No.”

“She hasn’t opened her mouth.”

“She has my eyes.”

“And you’ve got her tongue?”

“No.” Lume’s confident voice hums through me. She twists strands of my hair into knots.

“Well…?”

“She cannot speak from the trauma of witnessing a thousand tongues torn from their mouths. The fear of the beast who did it, who still-“

“-not a stupid horror-“ interrupts Randy.

“-roams the land!” finishes Lume fiercely.

Silence with an edge cuts between them. The car speeds through the silent night. Thump. Thump.

“Is she asleep?” asks Randy, at last.

“No. She’s listening to my heartbeat.”

“Why?”

“Maybe it will stop beating. Pull over.”

Randy pulls the car over to the side of the road without protest. Lume hands me a black leather coat twice as big as it should be from the front seat of the car.

“We’re going outside, where the cold will get you,” she says, pulling the coat around me. She’s only wearing a T-Shirt. I touch the jacket, and then touch her shoulder.

“I don’t need protection from the cold. I am the cold.”

Lume forces the car door open. I close my eyes against the stinging wind. It tosses my hair from my eyes and streams it out behind me. My hair gets caught in the car door when Lume tries to shut it. She has to open the door again, so I can pull long strands of hair out and hold them against myself to stop them from trailing out behind me like a kite.

Randy waits in the car while Lume leads me away from the road. She slides down a steep bank of loose rocks. She rides the growing wave of rocks down like a surfer, till she reaches flat dirt and the rocks and dust spread in a pool around her.

It could be a sport. Slope surfing. Mountain surfing. That’s called skiing. Not if there isn’t any snow. Then it’s avalanche surfing.

“Grey! Focus!” Lume hollers up at me. I take my first step onto the slope. Some gravel is knocked loose, but my footing holds. I can’t surf like Lume, so I’ll take baby steps.

A rock to my left looks steady, but it rolls away the moment my foot touches it.

“To your right, Grey!”

I look around my right foot, but I see nowhere to put my foot.

“It’s right there. Yes…no…a little to your right…there!”

I see only darkness there. There’s no moon tonight. I shake my head at Lume.

“There! Put your foot down!”

I put my foot down into nothing, sending me stumbling into a fall. Lume catches me under the arms and slows my crash into a gentle touchdown.

“I appreciate your faith in me. As you’ve just proven, it is not unfounded.”

I follow Lume into the trees. She walks slowly so I can keep up. Crickets chirp, sticks snap underfoot, and bushes rustle. I feel clumsy and loud. I hold my hair clutched against me, for comfort as much as to stop it from catching on things.

I wonder if someone could pick me up by my hair alone. Would it support my weight? I have a lot of hair, and there’s not a lot of me. If I was a criminal, maybe they could hang me without a rope.

My lungs burn and my legs feel like they are made of rubber. The ground is at an incline still. Lume is stopped further up, waiting for me again. She watches my slow progress for a moment before walking back to me.

“May I carry you? We’re only about halfway there. Randy has fallen asleep listening to some talk show on the radio, but when he wakes up in a few hours he’ll be upset if we’re not back.”

I nod gratefully. As she lifts me up, she says, “You don’t need to be strong. I am your strength.” I lay my head against her shoulder and watch the trees fly past. I think of when I saw myself in the mirror two days ago, at Jack’s house. I had been confused, but…my mind seemed…clearer then. Things hadn’t been moving so quickly.

I’d been upset because I’d thought I was stronger than the person I saw in the mirror. Maybe the mirror defeated me. Maybe I hadn’t been the person in the mirror until I saw her. Maybe once I saw her, I gave up, and became her. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. But things hadn’t moved so quickly back then.

“We’re here.” Lume sets me down.

A wall of rocks squats in front of me. It’s taller than me but not as tall as Lume. It’s just big river rocks, stacked and balanced on one another. I don’t see any trees rising behind it, like there are on our side of the wall.

“This is your wall, Grey, and it’s the problem.” Lume paces in front of the wall, but it’s an awkward pacing walk, and again I notice how she holds herself so strangely, like her body is only a puppet.

“This wall is your obstacle. Every person who has ever lived desires what lies on the other side of this wall, though not every person will admit it. Few people have found this wall, and none have overcome it.

I’m lucky. I’ve just found this wall, and I believe I can overcome it. I think others have made the mistake of trying to destroy this wall.”

Lume pushes a rock off the top of the wall. I hear it hit the ground on the other side.

“If you destroy this wall, you will destroy what it protects. That is what I believe. But I know another way. May I show you?”

When I nod, Lume picks me up again, and using one of the rocks on the bottom of the wall for a foothold, she steps over the wall.

It’s a cliff. We’re standing on a ledge only a foot wide between the wall and a twenty-foot drop into a lake. The wall was there to protect us.

Lume sits down, legs dangling off the edge. In her lap, I lean back against her.

“It’s terrifying, but you get used to the idea.”

Lume picks a rock off the ground. It’s the one she pushed off the wall. She rolls it around her palm for a moment before throwing it. It arcs through the air into the lake. I remember the phrase “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line”, and then someone counters, saying, “The most beautiful distance between two points is a curve.”

What if thrown objects weren’t beautiful? Imagine if they went in a straight line, then suddenly went straight down at a ninety-degree angle, like they’d hit an invisible wall. It would make it easy to build real walls like the one behind us. You’d just put down your invisible wall and throw rocks at it, and they would go straight down on top of each other like it was Tetris.

“You’re amazing. You’re amazing because I could throw that rock a thousand times, and you wouldn’t get tired of it. It’s child-like, isn’t it? You’d never think it was growing dull and become an adult. But you are an adult, and that’s why you’re amazing. Maybe that’s why you’re so small, like a child.

Let’s change the subject. What if the big bang theory of creation is true? The universe is essentially an explosion. And the earth, and life, and you and I, are just particles in this massive expanding fireball of a universe.

It would have to be just another cycle. Cycle of life, cycle of nature, cycle of the universe. There would be the great implosion one day, and then another big bang. And if the big bang happened exactly the same way, then planet earth would happen the same way, and you and I would be here again, doing the same thing. And we’d do it again the big bang after that.

We must choose our activities wisely, because we’ll be repeating them for all eternity. And that makes us immortal.”

Lume jumps off the cliff.

Chapter Five

2007-04-02T20:38:43Z

Chapter Four

2007-03-31T19:49:14Z

The Fourth: Frayed

A 3D man says, “Everything is over. I have nothing more to lose.” He begins to walk away. He stops, looks back. “However, I must go on.”

“Let me tell you a secret about Alice.” I try to ignore Penelope, and focus on the arcade machine instead. Penelope crouches over me.

“Goodbye, Curien. Farewell, Sophie,” says the 3D man.

“Alice…” Penelope whispers. She sticks her tongue in my ear. I flinch away, pressing myself against the arcade machine.

Penelope kneels, so she doesn’t tower over me so much. Her iris is purple, and it makes me sick.

“I believe I can see the future.” She takes my hand in hers, like she is going to do a palm reading. In comparison, our hands are not so different. Her hand engulfs mine, and her nails are painted purple, but they’re shaped the same way, the same long fingers. I wonder if she plays the piano.

“It’s all about laws, honey. I don’t think anyone could understand but you. Let’s pick a theory of creation. We’ll do the big bang.

In the beginning, all the matter in the universe was compressed into a singular gravitational field. And then it exploded, or expanded at least. What happened next, hydrogen forming and swirling nebulas and planet earth filled with life like Trojans and Greeks, leading to you looking like a tiny angel here, it’s all in the laws.

You just have to know gravity and how atoms and proteins are created and how the neurons in Grey’s brain fire and misfire. If you knew the laws you could be watching big bang and say, ‘Judging by the spin on that quark-gluon plasma, I’d say Alice isn’t going to get along well with Penelope.’

Or if you know the laws, you could be standing here, and know that the very best way to get Grey to stop watching House of the Dead and pay attention to you is to stick your tongue in her ear.

And you’ll know that Jack is fine, even as Grey worries that Horace murdered him. And you’ll know where Alice is going, and what Grey is going to do next.”

Penelope kisses me on the forehead.

“I brought you something, darling.”

From her purple gift bag, she produces a grey hoodie sweatshirt. It’s oversized, but not as badly as Jack’s sweatshirt had been. I actually like wearing sweatshirts that are too large for me. They’re warmer.

“Arms up!”

Inside the sweatshirt is soft and warm and dark and I say nothing when I feel Penelope pick me up, but give up trying to find the hole for my head. The slow rocking motion of her confident gait is reassuring, and the heated dark lulls me to rest.

And there’s…there is a…it’s moving…I can…If I just…It’ll work out…It will all work out…I’ve only got to-

“Wake up! Listen! Grey, wake up and listen. You’ve been asleep longer than you know,” whispers an unfamiliar voice. Sleep, and my understanding are wrenched from me. I’ve only got to do what?

Opening my eyes is a struggle. I see light, interrupted by flashes of shadow. As I focus, the voice whispers again:

“Listen! Hear them! You must learn, while you can.”

The shadow is condensing into a figure, full of erratic movement. But it disappears with the thud of closing window, and a click for the latch.

My chest itches. I’m standing. Leaning, actually, against a wall. The room I’m in is luxurious purple. Purple silk sheets for the bed and lighter purple trim for the window and a purple that nearly qualifies as pink for the carpet.

I’m near the door. Voices slide under the doorway.

“-ruining it. You were bonding with her, not making her hate you!” I identify the voice as Penelope’s. I’m eavesdropping, I realize. I slump to the floor, like I have fallen asleep there, in case they open the door.

“She’s…arah!” Alice’s voice is so full of rage it devolves into incoherent sounds. “You’re…it’s Grey! Has she ever hated anyone? Remember when…in the hospital-“

“She didn’t even remember.“

“But, okay! I wasn’t bonding. I put a gun to her! She thought I was going to kill her. Five minutes later she wants to cuddle. It’s impossible.”

“It’s your skill Alice. You handle the people. I handle the paper. Jack’s going to come for her soon, and if she won’t stick with me…” A minute passes in silence before Penelope says, “Would you like another attempt?”

“You wake her. I’ll take her. It’s better that way.”

It’s better that way. It’s better that I hate Alice? They’re playing good cop, bad cop. How much of it is acting?

How long until Jack saves me?

Hot fingers press against my throat. Panic rips through me. I thrash away, knocking the back of my head into the bed frame. A painful fog fills my mind. I force my eyes open. Penelope is sitting near me.

“I was checking your pulse. You were unconscious on the floor. You just rolled off the bed, I see now.” She looks hurt, like my fear of being strangled in my sleep shows that I don’t trust her. She’s right.

Penelope carries me to the edge of a bed. She checks my head, and tells me I do not have a concussion. I listen to her heartbeat, and try to sync my breathing with hers, but she breathes too slowly for me.

Breathe…breathing…in a warm embrace…of my enemy. My kidnapper? Who?

She turns me around, so I’m looking into a mirror. The mirror shows me that no matter how small I feel, I’m actually smaller. Penelope holds me like a child holds her doll.

“How do you like it?” she asks. I don’t know what she is talking about. “Are you alright? Alice may have given you too much of that sedative.”

Oh. I’ve been drugged.

“Here.” She taps her finger on my collarbone. She brushes hair from my eyes.

Oh. I’ve been tattooed.

There are overlapping black ovals and circles on my collarbone, with curving lines extending from the sides up to my shoulders. It’s a tattoo necklace. It’s beautiful.

It itches but I cannot find the strength to scratch it.

Penelope pulls back the sleeve of her shirt to show me a duplicate tattoo on her arm, except hers is purple. She seems pleased.

I notice as she smiles that one of her “I” teeth comes to a sharper point than the other. Is that bad? Does it bother her? What if she wanted to fix it?

Maybe a doctor would say, “Your treatment will be this soup can. I want you to poke a hole in the lid of this can with your sharp “I” tooth twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. Do that for six weeks and then I’ll check in with you to see how much it has dulled.”

“You don’t need to speak. Take Alice for example: better to remain silent and appear a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

Alice opens the door on cue.

“Take your own advice, hypocrite.”

“You shouldn’t be here, Alice.” I hear the lie in Penelope’s voice.

“Your time is up Penelope. It’s my turn.” She sounds so phony I have to stop myself from laughing.

Alice picks me up with one hand. It seems unfair that she can be so strong. I suppose she does not need to be strong to pick me up. But I’m not as strong as her, and I never could be. If I did pushups and lifted weights every day of my life, I wouldn’t have the strength she has in a single finger. How does god decide who gets to be strong and who has to be small?

Maybe god and the devil haggle over every person created.

The devil would say, “Alice will be angry all the time,” and god would say, “Only if she’s strong.”

“And compassion?” the devil would ask. “You always cram that in there.”

“Yes.”

“Well I’m making her a total lunatic then.”

I’m worried the devil got the better deal on me. He probably cheated.

Alice has carried me somewhere, and I missed it. We’re in a different bedroom now. It’s got a lot of red in it, on the trim and the blankets on the bed, but the walls are just white and the carpet is gray. These colors do not compliment, emphasize, or blend with each other.

Alice slides a wood door I thought led to a closet aside. It’s a cavernous bathroom, with three separate showers, a bathtub with a showerhead, a hot tub, and three sinks. The bathroom is bigger than the bedroom was.

Alice drops me in the bathtub, not gently.

“Don’t laugh at me.” There’s stillness about her. Seething.

“I know you. I know what you think. I know you heard us talking outside the bedroom. You were laughing at me, back there. I could see it in your eyes. Your eyes give away everything, Grey.”

I don’t brush the hair from my eyes. I don’t want her to see them. I don’t want to see her. I hold my hands together, just below my neck.

“Don’t speak. Do not ever speak.”

Freezing chills slide down my back. Alice towers over me, watching. It’s not until water falls from my bangs into my eyes that I realize she has turned on the showerhead. Water drips from my chin onto my shirt.

“I’m leaving. You will try to escape while I’m gone, and fail. I want you to know this Grey-“ She wrenches my head upwards and my hair falls from my face, dangling behind me. Watching red eyes, I hear:

“I am not a good actor.”

Continued in Chapter Five

Chapter Three

2007-03-26T07:49:20Z

The Third: Rough

I'm sitting in a plastic racing chair in an arcade. The room is empty except for Jack and I, and an icy chill so cruel it seems sentient. I don't move my hand from the "Ten and Two" position on the metal steering wheel because it has warmed to my hands there.

Jack picked an easy level so there aren't many tight turns, but when I have to make them the chains from my handcuffs clink together. The noise is out of place with the game's techno music and engine revving sounds. The cold chain brushes my wrist as I make another tight turn, drawing out goose bumps. For the rest of the game, I slow down and take turns as wide as possible. I don't make it to the finish line.

"Well that was a pleasant tour of a virtual city, but you were supposed to be racing," Jack says. He'd finished the race, sixth place out of eight, but at least my car didn't look like it had been hit by a train. I don't say anything, adjusting my handcuffs. They've rubbed through my skin, and now they are getting bloody.

"Got any more quarters?" He asks, trying to distract me. I shake my head. We'd put my only dollar in the token machine. I have two dimes left. I climb out of the chair and regret it. The freezing linoleum shocks my bare feet. Alice took my shoes and Jack’s sweatshirt. I try to cross my arms in front of my chest but the handcuffs won't let me.

"I've got one quarter. One whole quarter. And while the possibilities for one whole quarter in an arcade are not quite endless, we do have some decision making to do.” He takes my hand in his, trying not to bump the handcuff. He unfolds my fingers one at a time and lowers the coin into my palm. It seems larger than it should be. He has me hold it with both hands, like it is a frog that will try to leap away. I try to ignore my frozen feet, which stick to spilled soda as Jack leads me through the arcade.

"Here are the two machines in the arcade that operate with a single quarter." I see only one machine. Busta move. Jack points to the bubblegum dispenser next to it.

"Not quite endless." He repeats. I put the quarter in the left slot on the Busta move machine. The right slot is dark and has a foreign coin stuck in it.

The machine is too large. The joystick is too far back and too high for me to use. The game has one button to press, but it is too far from the joystick for me to reach while wearing handcuffs.

"Here." Jack lifts me onto the panel so I'm sitting next to the screen. I am sick of being picked up without warning, but I don’t know how to tell Jack.

"I'll aim. You fire." Jack takes the joystick. The game is beautiful. I have a better time popping colored bubbles than I did trying not to crash my car. We're about to lose, to be overwhelmed by gleaming white bubbles, when the miniature monster assistant on our screen loads a transparent bubble for us to fire.

"See that, Grey?" Jack asks, tapping the screen. Hearing my name makes me feel better.

"That bubble represents hope. That's salvation, right there, in those pixels." I do not think the transparent bubble deserves his speech. I don't think it’s as nice as any of the colored bubbles. It's a defect, a mutation of the pure bubbles.

"That bubble represents you," he continues, adjusting his shot. I'm offended.

"That bubble has meaning. Do you know what it means?" I shake my head. He has stopped moving the joystick, so I press the "fire" button. The shot ricochets off the side of the screen, and hits the row of bubbles clinging to the ceiling. The entire row vanishes, releasing the rest of the bubbles and winning the level. The little monster on the screen does a victory dance.

"It means..." He pulls me towards him. I’m afraid he is going to kiss me. But he only whispers "Everything is going to be okay." Then I think he at least deserves a hug. I'm handcuffed and balancing on the edge of an arcade machine though, so I don't try it.

"I HATE-" Alice’s voice startles me, and I fall off the arcade machine, landing awkwardly on my feet.

"-it when people tell me they don't understand. I'm SICK of speaking words no one understands." I can't tell where her voice is coming from. A man says something to her that I can't understand.

"She's beautiful, in an unkempt 'I can't take care of myself' way. A more generous person might say 'exotic'."

Alice walks around one of the arcade machines. Horace is with her. He shakes and sweats like he is suffering heroine withdrawal. I watch her, hidden by the arcade machine.

"Get out here," Alice demands. When I move forward, Jack grabs my arm and holds it up.

"Take off her handcuffs. They're hurting her." A blood trickles down my left arm. I pull it away from him. Alice kneels in front of me. She inspects my wrists, than turns me around.

“Horace, take Jack out.” Horace lurches behind the bustamove machine, returning with a sword. It’s thick, with a ruby in the pommel. It shakes at Jack.

“What the hell, ass, shit-“ Obscenities tumble from Jack’s mouth in face of the weapon. “-bitch. Where the fuck did you get a sword like that?”

“It’s mine,” says Alice. “Take him out now Horace, before I crack his head.” Alice puts her hands to her temples, like her own head is hurting in sympathy already. Jack backs out of the room at sword point.

“Don’t trust Jack. Don’t trust me either,” Alice commands. When I don’t look at her, she says “Grey,” in a warning tone. I look up from my wrists. “You’ve got your name, at least.”

She unlocks my handcuffs and puts them, still bloody, into a coat pocket. Both of my wrists are torn up. Alice hands me a tissue, which I use to wipe the blood that has trickled down my arm, and dab at my wrists.

“I want you to know that you’re the hardest. I mean that in more than one-way, but the way that I’m going to explain to you is this: You’re probably the hardest person in this world to torture, physically. I don’t say that because you have a strong will or high pain tolerance.

I say that because you’re so small. You’re fragile. If I misjudged anything, I’d snap bones I didn’t mean to, I’d break things that shouldn’t be broken.”

I’ve got tears in my eyes. I try not to shake like Horace. She’s speaking in a melancholy voice, like this makes her upset.

“This is yours.”

Alice pulls a grey notepad and a pen from her coat. She clicks the pen, and hands them both to me.

“Write your name, please.”

I put the pen to the paper. Grey starts with “G”, which, as a geometric figure, is not a polygon because it’s not enclosed. No, maybe I’m wrong. Well, I just need a curve for the top. That’s a line, but it-

“Write your name, Grey.”

A line is a collection of points. Infinite points, or finite? I’ll start with one point, the next one goes to the left, and lower, and then to the right also I think.

The notepad is pulled out of my hands.

“This is…This looks like a triangle with a rounded corner. You’ve spent the past minute drawing a triangle, when-“

I’m on the floor, ears ringing. Pain blossoms in my head. Alice is kneeling over me.

“-your name. Just say it. Do I need to hit you again? You don’t even have to write it. Just say it. Just say ‘Grey’.” Her eyes are a softer red than her suit. She’s got contacts. She looks like she might cry.

Grey has two spellings. Some people write it ‘Gray’. Some-

Alice pulls a pistol from her coat. It’s red. My breath whips in and out, so fast I’m afraid I’ll choke. My cheeks are wet, and it feels like I’ve got a rock pushing into the back of my head.

“Say it before I shoot you. Say it.” She pushes the pistol into my ribs.

Grey starts with “G”, which is grrr-

“Say it. Say it! Grey, Grey, Grey. Say anything. Anything at all.” The pistol muzzle digs further, pressing against bone. I scream a throat-tearing scream of frustration.

When I finish, she’s still there. She pops the pistol’s safety. The warning red of the “safety off” tag is a lighter shade of red than the rest of the gun.

“Grey!” Alice calls out in a tone of voice I would expect to hear from someone who had just discovered the bloody body of a loved one.

I close my eyes, because I do not want to die with her eyes probing mine.

Click.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

”Fuck guns. I fucking hate guns.”

I open my eyes in time to see her snap the hammer off the back of her pistol with her bare hands. She tosses the gun behind her, where it slides under an arcade machine, then sits, leaning up against the machine.

I lean into sitting position, and vomit. As my stomach rolls and heaves at nothing, Alice’s voice drifts through me, stronger than before, but deadpan.

“Grey cannot speak a word to save her life. A good thing to know about yourself, don’t you think?”

I lean against an arcade machine, wet hands under my armpits. A feeling of detachment seeps through me. I cannot control this situation. My actions have no consequence. That’s a sort of invigorating liberation.

Now that Alice tells me I cannot speak, I feel like we can talk things over. Alice is wearing only half a grin. She’s playing me. I’m supposed to feel this way.

“You think I’m terrible. You’re right, but I’ll tell you this: My sister is worse. I cannot condone her. You’re going to see her soon.

Before that happens, let’s talk about you.” Her eyebrows drop, and her eyes focus.

“Look where your right hand is now, Grey.”

I’m rubbing my nose with my hand.

“I said ‘let’s talk about you’, and you reached to cover your mouth with your hand. You did, even though you can’t talk. Your subconscious, though diluted and confused, stopped you mid-gesture, and turned it into an innocent nose-rub.”

I pull my arms inside my shirt, and clasp my hands together.

“I can read people, Grey. You don’t want to talk about yourself. That’s not your fault. That’s why we are here. That’s why we are here…”

There’s pain in those words. There’s a lonely hurt she keeps close.

“Where do you live?”

I have no idea where I live. I’m staying with Jack, and Susan, and Karen right now.

“Do you live with Jack? Is that your home?”

I nod. Her teeth grind. I crawl to Alice, and rest my head against her. I’m tense; she might hit me again.

“Aren’t you scared? You’re fucked up, Grey.” She glides her fingers through the hair on my scalp.

“Where do you come from?” Her fingers tighten. “Where? Before Jack, what was there? Nothing?”

She’s right. Nothing.

“It’s all one big vacation for you, isn’t it? My sister is coming. Her name, the demon’s name, is Penelope. Alice and Penelope. You won’t forget.”

“There are many kinds of demons, dearest Alice.” The voice is smooth, with words that blend and slip into one another.

Alice pushes me off, and I stumble to my feet. Penelope rests on the top of the Mortal Kombat arcade machine.

She is wearing purple bell-bottom pants, a silk long sleeve purple shirt, and her hair is a long, deep purple. She's slender and curved, not skinny and small like I am. She has a purple gift bag in her left hand. In her right, she holds Alice’s red sword.

“Succubi, Balrogs, and Imps, which am I?” asks Penelope, grinning.

“You’re a little imp. Drop my sword.” Alice advances on her.

”Well, Alice, you are an angel! Or you’ve found one, and she’s rubbed off on you. I do hope you played nicely.”

Penelope flips the swords end over end through the air. Alice catches it by the blade as it flips towards her, and swings, bashing the sword’s hilt into the arcade machine. The screen shatters, and the machine crashes to the ground. Penelope lands lightly among the shards of glass.

“It’s my sword,” Alice seethes.

“A mere club, the way you hold it.”

Alice stomps away. Blood drips off her fingers, where the sword’s edge bites into her hand.

Continued in Chapter Four

Chapter Two

2007-03-13T08:52:25Z

The Second: Tangled

I’m standing in a line that leads into Disney Land. The cold has caught me again. It’s a damp, silent, early morning freeze full of tension, waiting to shatter.

I wait. My breath comes out frosted. I imagine that it is so cold that even if I were teleported to the tropics, my breath would still come out frosted for the next six hours. I cannot see around the person ahead of me in line, so I examine my hand, red from the cold, blistering from the burn. I should play the piano, with such long fragile fingers. But they only look long to me. I’ve got to think about relativity. I realize my hand is shaking, slightly. Just slightly, but I can’t make it stop.

Susan is holding my other hand like I’m a child who might run away. I’d protest, but her thick fingers radiate heat.

Disneyland would be nothing without its suspense-building lines. Anything you’re willing to pay loads of cash to stand in a line for must be good.

“You look excited,” says Susan. I’ve been rocking back and forth on my heels. “What ride do you want to go on first?” My teeth chatter in response. I don’t want to tell her Peter Pan is my ride of choice. I want to learn how to fly.

“Ah! I said ‘bring a sweater!’” Susan gripes. I don’t remember her saying that. I do remember her suggesting that I cut my hair, and the pang of panic I felt. What would I hold onto? I twist some hair around myself. Susan catches Jack’s arm in the middle of an extravagant gesture. “Give her your shirt Jack.”

“What?” His voice is thick with skepticism. “Are you part of some sort of grand conspiracy to steal all my clothes? Your tactics could use some more subtlety. You could at least try to hide it. I feel like a movie star. I should sell my clothes on ebay. And my hair. And I should take one bite of a bagel and sell the rest. Everything I touch turns to gold, right?”

“I meant-“ Susan struggles with suppressed laughter. “I meant your…your sweatshirt! She’s freezing herself to death, like she always does. You know how it goes.” Karen pulls Jack’s sweatshirt off him before he can protest anymore.

“Arms up!” she announces, before dropping it over me. It wrinkles and bunches, and spreads over me. The sleeves hang off my arms far enough that I can tie them in a knot to keep the warmth in. Each time the cloth scrapes against the blisters on my hands, pain knocks the breath from me. By the time the sweatshirt has comfortably enveloped me, I’m sucking air through my teeth.

“They’re opening the gates,” says Karen. I can’t see around her.

Jack leans down and whispers, “It’s just the band that plays inside the park.” Jack likes to whisper things. I run my unburned forefinger along the inside of my sweatshirt’s zipper, making sure it’s unbroken. Jack grabs me around the waist and lifts me up into the air.

“Can you see the band?” he asks. My fingers dig into his hand. I can see the band. I can also see thousands of people. And they can see me in my oversized sweatshirt. People elbow their friends to point me out. I try to look around without meeting any of their eyes. It’s impossible. I close my eyes.

“Tell me what you see.”

I open my eyes, and look down at Jack. His eyes are brown. He sets me back on the ground.

“Never mind.”

The line moves forward. A “magic” noise is played from the speakers each time a person pushes through the turnstile into Disneyland. Susan and Karen go through. They have a list that tells them what ride they should be on. Jack said that he and I “will not be bound by the constraints of…constraining…lists. No, we are free hawks or eagles or what have you and there’s probably soaring and open skies and freedom involved. Tons of freedom, actually. And we’re going to have a lot more fun than you.” I push my ticket into the slot. It pops back out, reminding me of bread from a toaster. I push it back in, thinking that I’d like my ticket toasted so long I’d have to take a butter knife and scrape the burnt bits off. It pops out again.

“Look at me.”

Jack puts a hand on my shoulder, and crouches down so he is closer to eye level with me. He whispers, “This is serious. Walk slowly around the corner behind me, and hide behind something. A bush, a garbage can, whatever. Don’t run. Don’t attract attention. Go now.”

As I walk away from Jack, I feel justified, like I’d practiced fire drills for years in a building that just caught fire. Around the corner, things are quieter. A shaky bent man clutching a bouquet of roses trudges across the empty concrete courtyard. Once he is past, I kneel down between a bush and the fence separating the courtyard from Disneyland.

I pull my knees up inside the sweatshirt. Hidden behind the bush, unable to see anything but leaves and the inside of my sweatshirt, I listen for Jack’s voice. He’ll tell me that he’s got a girlfriend I don’t know about, and he didn’t want her to see him with another me while I’m wearing his sweatshirt because she’s a very jealous person, and then we’ll both laugh.

Ten minutes pass. I change my mind. Jack must have spotted a sniper. He saw a man with a Bomb Gun Knife Stick with Sharp Pointy End and he’s gone to alert Disneyland Security The Police Proper Authorities. Would I hear gunshots or screaming or police loudspeakers?

I hide behind the bush for hours. I name the bush Laurel. All the other bushes in the courtyard are in pairs. Laurel is alone, like me. I think about setting Laurel up with a partner. I’d drag in a huge plant in a clay plot, but Laurel would hold her leaves high and say, “He’s too young.” I’d have to buy plant after plant, only to listen to Laurel’s complaints.

“I don’t like the way he holds himself. He’s drooping!”
“His leaves aren’t green enough.”
“Too many insects on him.”
“Not enough branches.”

Finally, frustrated, I would yell at her, “You have to pick one!”

Her branches would sway indignantly. “I won’t.”

“But…why?” I would ask, exhausted. Laurel would grow still, sympathetic. At last, embarrassed, she would confess, “I don’t want you to leave.”

I fall asleep behind Laurel, face pressed against my knees. Only my ears are cold, even with two caps. I dream there are a dozen of me, and I stand around in a circle arguing with myself about who I am.

I wake in the dark, to the smell of cigarette smoke. Whenever I wake up, I feel as if I had dreamed the one true solution to all my problems, but now that I’m awake I can’t remember exactly what it was. I don’t try to pin down the fading images this time. I’ll try next time. There is something important happening in the real world right now, if I can just remember that instead…

I’m at Disneyland. Or outside it. Behind Laurel. It’s night. Where is Jack?

I yawn, and stretch so far tremors run through my body. If I’m yawning I must not be worried, I tell myself.

Rough knuckles press into the back of my neck, and their fingers catch hold of my shirt. The man I saw carrying roses earlier lifts me several feet into the air. Tremors tear through his body like they did mine when I was stretching, but they don’t ever stop.

“Miss Grey, Miss Grey!” he croaks. I twist in the air, unable to grab hold of anything but myself. Laurel watches.

“Superb…finding you. Alice awaits.” He wraps an arm around me, pinning both my arms to my sides. I clutch a fistful of my own hair, and try to decide if it’s just him shaking, or if I am too. The smell of cigarettes coats him like a thick perfume.

His movement is nauseating. Street lamps blur and their light stretches as we pass. He stops under one of the street lamps.

A woman in deep red is there. Her shoes and business suit and the ring on her hand and even her hair: Red. She’s bigger than Susan. She’s hard where Susan is soft.

“Horace!” she commands, like she has said “Heel!” to a dog.

Horace drops me. Alice catches my wrist in a hold that forces me to bend my arm awkwardly.

“Don’t touch Grey, ever. I’ll tear out your heart, Horace.” Her lips press together tightly. Red lipstick.

Her free hand drives into Horace, lifting him off the ground as easily as he had lifted me. His shirt tears under his weight, sending him stumbling backwards.

She produces handcuffs from her coat and snaps them on me with an experienced hand. My wrists are so small they almost won’t fit. She pulls me around to her car, red, opens the backdoor, and pushes me in. Jack is in there.

“Tell her where she’s going, Jack.”

"I'm sorry," is all Jack will say.

Before she shuts the backdoor, I hear Horace say, “Apologies. Apologies, Alice.”

“Thank you, Horace.”

Continued in Chapter Three

Chapter One

2007-03-13T08:50:04Z

The First: Unbalanced

I’m going to Disney Land. I don’t want to. No, I do.

They spoke of parades and dazzling lights. I thought that lights shouldn’t dazzle people so often, since they could always glow or shine or sparkle instead. Maybe they should let something else dazzle once in a while, like rocks.

I suppose gems could be considered dazzling.

They said I would enjoy it. The lights would be many different colors, they said. Maybe some would spin, or change colors in sync with other lights to form patterns. I believed them. I’m a victim of peer pressure.

The day before we were going to leave, they told me they couldn’t go with me. They couldn’t go, because of complications. But I should still go, they said, because I would enjoy the dazzling light shows. They had friends that would meet me there. They had a bus schedule printed out in purple ink.

I’m sitting in a tunnel full of echoes. The tunnel is there for cars to drive through, or at least busses, since that’s what dropped me off, but I’m alone. I drag my shoe along the concrete, trying to scrape off the red gum I’ve stepped in.

I’ve got a plastic bench to sit on, in the tunnel. It’s got gray splotches on it where people had put stickers, and other more irritated people had peeled them off. I think that there is probably a great metaphor or proverb for sitting in the center of a tunnel, but I don’t know what it is.

“Jack.”

The word jars me to my feet. His chin is covered in patchy half-hearted stubble, and he’s smiling with only one side of his mouth. His car is sitting smugly behind him. They’ve snuck up on me, in a tunnel full of echoes. I’m afraid I think too hard.

“And this is Karen.”

Karen is wearing a scarf, a jacket, thick pants and rubber boots. She looks prepared to stomp off and explore a frozen swamp.

When I try to shake Jack’s hand he takes mine and kisses it. When I ask him what the hell he is doing, he shrugs, “Sorry, old habits.”

“Don’t hassle the little dear,” says Karen. Karen and Jack are both tall people, towering over me, but I’m irritated at her condescending tone. I brush my hair out of my eyes.

“I’m fine. Besides, I thought only girls got their hands kissed like that.”

They react as if I had fired a gun, for a moment. Then they try to pretend they are not surprised.

“Of course, honey,” says Karen. They share the same look parents share when their child says “I want to be a garbage truck driver when I grow up!”

Jack holds the open the backseat door on his car for me. His car still has the “New Car” smell.

“Keep your hands and arms inside the spaceship please. Actually I don’t care what you do so long as you buckle up. If I get pulled over because someone isn’t “properly secured” I’m not paying the ticket,” Jack says, pulling out onto the road.

“Disneyland…” He’s watching me through the rear view mirror, “is a good place to bring your hookshot.”

My buckle clicks into place.

“You just shoot it up into the poles that stick out alongside the ride, and swing to the front of the line-“

“If anyone tries to stop you,” interrupts Karen, “Just stun them with your boomerang. The blue one.”

“Right,” picks up Jack, “then use your power bracelet to pick up any boulders that might be in your way, and then…save the princess.”

The car stops.

“We’re here. Leave your hookshot outside. I’m pretty sure there are no devious traps in there that require a hookshot the navigate.”

The inside of the house is filled with piercing cold. A woman introduced as Susan shuts off a huge TV. Susan is a giant, even bigger than Jack and Karen. My neck starts to burn when she drops to her knees to engulf me in a hug, like I’m her best friend just back from vacation. It’s dizzying. I nearly lose my balance, thrown off, when she rises to her feet. She gives me a cap to keep my ears warm.

Susan shows me the rest of the house. Jack and Karen’s room, my room. Susan sleeps on the couch every night, even when I’m not here.

I slide a sheet of frozen Hot Pockets into the oven. I sit on my knees at the table and wait. A combination alarm clock/radio sits on the counter, too close to the sink. Guitars screech, and someone is screaming -

You’ve left a trail of silence
Blood on your hands
Do you remember where you’ve been?
I exist for my name!
I exist for my name!
I exist for my name!

“Where’ve you been?” asks Susan. I relax my fist and point to the oven. “How do you like your room?”

My room has a boarded up window, but it’s clean, and has a full bookshelf. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know which fact is most relevant. What should I point out to her?

“Quiet, huh?” She asks, misinterpreting my silence.

I shrug. Susan arms herself with two thick oven mitts before removing the Hot Pockets. She balances the sheet on two potholders. I reach to adjust the sheet, and burn my hand. Still shaking my burnt hand in pain, I reach for a single hot pocket with my other, but it’s so hot it burns my fingers. I reach again with the few fingers I haven’t burnt yet, but Susan intercepts me. A single hand wraps around both of my wrists, pinning them together. I pause, confused. My eyes trace their way up her arms, up to her face. I feel dizzy again, looking up at her.

“What the hell are you doing?” Her voice cracks. I look at her face, but not her eyes. All the pain in my hands floods into me and I bite my tongue. I can handle it, I tell myself.

Susan wraps up my hands in cloth with ice. “What the hell are you doing?” is a question she never asks me a second time, but I think up answers afterwards. I wasn’t really thinking. No, I was. I just wasn’t thinking about Hot Pockets.

I try to read a book to distract myself from the pain, but my hair keeps getting in my eyes. It’s pretty long, I realize. It’s difficult to brush the hair out of my eyes with my hands wrapped in cloth. Jack notices, leaning up against the fridge. He whispers conspiratorially to me, “There’s hairclips in the bathroom.”

In the bathroom is the mirror. There’s a woman in the mirror. She has deep black hair, nearly long enough to touch the ground, which makes her skin look ghostly white. Her eyes are an intriguing muted gray color. She’s a delicate thing, hands wrapped in cloth, much smaller than me. I want to hold her.

She’s…She is…I wrap some of my hair around myself and press it to my chest, like her. Like me. I’m stronger than her. I’m not her. She looks ready to cry. I realize the mirror is too big. This room is too big. Dizziness drips down on me and I sit on the bathroom’s floor mat.

I’m almost crying because I thought I was someone else strong enough to handle a situation like this without crying. I’m crying because the girl in the mirror is crying. I’m crying because I’m crying. Is this ironic?

Susan enters the room, filling the background behind the girl in the mirror, too large to fit in the frame.

"Honey…Jack, why don’t you give her your cap? " Susan asks.

"What's she going to do with my cap?"

"WELL IT SHOULDN'T GO TO WASTE!" she yells.

He pulls a second cap down over the first one. My ears burn.

Continued in Chapter Two.