The Tin Cowboy

[MalReynolds]

Re: The Tin Cowboy

There was probably sensory input from the film that effected my dream, but having never since seen the movie or even heard anything about it, I can not know. My dream was summarily strange and relaxing at the same time – it combined the sandy beach from the east end of town with the cages. I was locked inside one of them as it bobbed up and down in the ocean, with sharks circling. Their fins cut streaks in the water which bled and clouded until I was in nothing but a torrent of red and a feeding frenzy between the sharks, with the occasional hammering of their faces against the cage I resided in.

But the cage would not fault, it would not crack. It remained steadfast and afloat the entire time, leaving me to watch the spectacle as it unfolded. There was nothing left at the end of it except the red water that lapped the edges of where I was seated, dumbfounded.

When the lights came back on the theatre, I woke up. Liza was lightly dozing next to me and I nudged her awake.

“The movie was way too long,” she said, yawning and stretching.

“Was it?”

She nodded and stood up, turning to watch the audience exit around us. My eyes locked on the floor – my head was swimming and I felt like I was about to pass out. My hands were shaking and my breath was short.

If I had some kind of illness, some kind of disease Before Westing, now would be a rotten time to find out. I shut my eyes and tried to focus on breathing in a more regular pattern, but my breath was still escaping in short, jagged pieces, falling to the ground and shattering like razor blades made of glass. There was a cold sweat over my forehead and I could feel it seep into my shirt.

I rubbed my face to be met with equal cold.

“Tim, are you alright?”

“I don’t know.” I started to cough.

“What’s the matter?”

“I – don’t – know,” each pause punctuated with a cough.

My windpipe was closing. It burned trying to breathe and I could hear my breath whistle in and out.

“Hold still,” Liza said, reaching into her pocket. I began to writhe on the floor.

“Hold still,” she repeated, holding out something. “Relax,” she said, placing her hand on my chest.

“Just relax.”

I was staring at the ceiling, watching the employees that had now flooded the room. They were walking back and forth, I could tell, trying to figure out just what to do with the dying man on the floor.

I closed my eyes.

“Open your mouth.”

I opened my mouth. I could feel something snaking its way down my throat, slowly, to my lungs, where they filled to the point of bursting.

“Exhale, Tim.”

As I let the air out of my lungs, I could feel my throat loosen. My muscles relaxed and I stopped shaking.

“Look at me,” Liza called from what seemed a thousand miles away.

I turned my head and tried to find her, but was met with darkness. From the center, a light burst and expanded until I could see the theatre staff. They had stopped pacing and instead had gathered around me. Liza was in the center, her hand still pressed to my chest. I watched her raise and lower with each breath I took.

“You’re going to be fine. You didn’t tell me you were Aeroplexic. You’re lucky I am too, otherwise…”

“Sorry, I must have left my medicine in my bag.”

“It’s okay,” she said, smiling and extending her hand, helping me to my feet. Carrying those heavy books helped out her arms, I thought, as she almost single-handedly pulled me up.

“You need to get some rest, Tim,” she said, hooking her elbow in mine and helping me walk out of the theatre.

“Yeah, I feel tired.”

We walked back to the main road in silence, and by the time the beach had disappeared from view, I was able to walk on my own. Our trip time was double what it should have been only because I had to stop and catch myself every hundred or so feet, but Liza never left my side.

I walked into the dorm and showed my card to Ms. Tinsley, who nodded. Liza walked past with me, a mirror image of the events of the night before. I managed to get a look at a clock as we were walking up the stairs – it was around 2 now.

“Don’t you have class?”

“Yeah, but don’t worry about it.”

“You should go,” I said, walking over to the guest dorm door and pulling out my card.

“I’m not going to leave you like this,” she said, smiling. “Come on, get your bag.”

I walked into the dorm and checked behind the bed on the far left side of the room – my bag was still in place, just where I had left it, but the room was now empty. The only thing that remained of the vagrants the night before was a thin officious smell that wafted through the room.

Out of view, I opened the bag and took a more serious inventory of the items inside.

Six white shirts, four pairs of jeans, twelve pair of socks and boxers, and wrapped inside one of the socks, a small orange medicine bottle.

“Aeroids.” Clever, clever. Something, I took it, for Aeroplexia, whatever the hell that was. Whatever condition it was that I had that almost killed me.

I sat on the floor and counted out the money. Jesus, there was enough for me buy one of the apartments across the street instead of rent one.

And in the back of the bag, a small black pouch, which I withdrew and opened.

Inside were two small vials, each with a lightning bolt on them.

My heart skipped a beat.

Christ, I was in possession of Flash.

I could hear footsteps coming over and I saw Liza above the beds making her way towards me. I threw both vials under the bed and shoved the black pouch back in the tennis bag.

“Everything alright, Tim? You got your medicine, right?”

I shook the bottle and feigned my best smile.

“Good.” She paused, looking at me. “Look, I don’t want you recovering in here. It’s not really safe in the daytime, they don’t have patrols or anything to check on the sleepers. George still has class, Tyler has class until six, and Dylan – well, forget Dylan. You can get some rest in the women’s dorm, if you’re all right with that?”

I sighed and got to my feet. “I don’t really think I have much of a choice,” I said, wanting to distance myself from the two vials under the bed, less than three feet away.

She gently placed her hand on my arm and led me out of the room, down the stairs and across the quad. Now knowing what to look for, I saw kids standing in the corners, behind trees, handing off money in discrete transactions, hidden from all except those that were looking for them.

Liza led me behind the first set of buildings, and behind was another tall building, much like the Westing Dorms I had seen on the other side of the quad. There was an identical street running in front of this other set, and an equally as grouchy woman checking ID.

“Liza and guest,” she said. The woman grunted and we walked up a flight of stairs.

“I’m over here,” she moved towards a door, removed a key and opened it.

Sam was sitting inside, trying to type something on a desktop computer.

“I can’t get the Gee-Dee arrows to show up, Liza,” Sam said, turning. Her face turned bright red when she saw me and I couldn’t help but smile.

“Hey, Sam, Tim had an Aeroplexic attack and he needs a place to lay down.”

“Why not the guest dorms, Liza,” Sam sighed, putting enough emphasis on the word “Liza” to make the name seem alien, drawn out and nasal.

“Because they’re not safe during the day, and you know that.”

Sam let out an exasperated cry and kicked back from the computer.

“Well, it’s great that you asked!”

I hobbled over to the computer and looked at the screen. Sam was trying to pull me away, but the sound had gone from my ears. I didn’t much care about the paper – it had something to do, of course, with religion and secularism – but the format of the program was familiar enough to me, so that in three quick mouse clicks little black arrows were showing up in all the right places.

I stepped back. Liza was grinning, Sam was frowning, and I once again felt like I was about to pass out. Liza guided me over to one of the beds (God, the room was so small it felt like there was only enough room for one bed, let alone two twin sized, a desk and a closet) and made me sit.

“I have to go to class, Tim, but I think it’d be best if you tried to get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” I said, setting my tennis bag down, removing the pad and paper, and kicking it under the bed.

I looked up and saw Sam still trying to figure out just what I had done with the computer, but to be perfectly honest, I had no clue either. It had been nothing but a few steps of intuition, the invisible guiding force that tells you what’s what.

Sam got up and left for class, but not before shutting the computer off and taking the power cord with her, and Liza left shortly after.

I saw the shadows move across the room like they were alive, like time was something that couldn’t keep still, growing until I could barely see in front of me.

I jotted down a few more things before I let myself go.

“Tyler isn’t that dumb.

“Sam is just as cold.

“Dylan doesn’t want me here.

“I don’t want to forget Liza.”

It was all I could do to make myself fall asleep, terrified that when I awoke I might actually forget again. Again, as if this may have happened more than once before.

My final cognizant thought before drifting off to sleep was, “I’ve been sleeping too much lately.”

[MalReynolds]

Re: The Tin Cowboy

It was growing dark by the time I woke up again. There was a faint pounding in my head, but that was all. Sometime in my sleep, I had kicked the blanket onto the floor and managed to pull even the fitted sheet off of the bed. This time, I couldn’t recall what I had been thinking about while on that other plane.

There was the sound of a key in the lock and Sam stumbled in, looking exhausted.

“Gee-Dee it,” she kept muttering under her breath, taking the power cord from her purse and restoring electricity to the computer.

“What?”

“Don’t talk to me, I have to focus,” she said, before spitting out another ‘Gee-Dee.’

“Is this about your paper?”

“No, it’s not, now will you let me think please?”

“Sure. No, never mind. What’s it about?”

She mumbled something under her breath.

“What was that?”

“It’s Tyler’s birthday tomorrow and I forgot.”

“Oh. Why can’t you get him something before you see him tomorrow?”

“I have class and I can’t miss another day or else I’m going to fail out of my Advanced Quadratics. I already have a low enough grade.”

In the shadows, Sam looked like a real person. No longer regal, no longer sitting astride a horse, she was a slumped over silhouette, a shade of what I had seen. I could tell from the cracks in her voice and the way her back was moving that she was on the verge of tears, and I felt something for her I didn’t think possible – pity. Did she have to live with such a prim and proper image of herself constantly, was she living a charade?

I wondered if she knew I could see her quietly sobbing.

“I can get him something and give it to you,” I offered.

“You don’t even know anything about Tyler,” she said, letting her voice fully go.

“I know he loves history, and that Chapel that he met you in. He like’s a challenge, is confident, kind, smart, good at pool and follows the rules you set.”

Her shadow looked over at the bed.

“Why would you do something like that for me?”

“I dunno. Cause I know what it’s like to forget, I suppose, something so important like that.”

“I don’t know, Tim.”

“Does Liza have class tomorrow?”

“No.”

“I’ll take her with me, if she doesn’t have any other plans. That way, I know I’ll be heading in the right direction. She can say if the present says anything about you, I know if it’ll say anything about Tyler. Do you have any idea what you want to get him?”

She shook her head.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Just tell Liza – tell her to meet me at the boardwalk tomorrow morning, around nine.”

A voice came over the loud speaker. “Attention, ladies and gentleman, the Night Scan will commence in ten minutes. All unauthorized personnel will be escorted off the premises if not in place by Night Scan. Thank you.”

“I have to book it,” I said, standing, grabbing my things. “Sorry I messed up the bed,” I said as I walked towards the door.

“Thank you,” Sam managed as I closed the door.

I moved down the hallway quickly in-between the throng of people who were enamored with the idea of sleeping in doors and down the stairwell past the teaching buildings and into the quad. I broke into a quick jog, the tennis bag bouncing against my side as I moved down the foot path towards the male Westing Dorms.

A shadow emerged from behind the trees as I was jogging, almost knocking me backwards.

“Wanna cuddle?” The voice said.

I tried juking to the left, to the right, but the man was fast.

“I said, wanna cuddle? I’m soft…”

“No thanks,” I managed.

The figure broke out into a whooping cough, covering his mouth with one tattered glove, swaying. It sounded like his throat was being torn apart with each exhale, as if he were coughing out the linings of his vocal chords.

“Got any Flash,” he muttered, sticking out a hand.

I tried passing him again, but to no avail.

“Got ANY FLASH,” he repeated.

I managed to say two things at the same time. I said “No,” with my voice, and I said, “No,” with a fist simultaneously. The man sprawled out backwards, and I stepped over him, breaking into a run, when I felt a hand clap on my shoulder.

“Got any FLASH, I said!”

I threw an elbow backwards, knocking him down again, but by the time I had turned my back, he was up. I kept shoving him, hitting him, knocking him down, but he would get back up and be on me before I could take five steps. Eventually, we had danced our way all the way across to the dorms, to the safety of the light that spilled out around the border of the building.

The mans face was no longer there, instead a bloody mess that had been instated with each elbow, punch, shove – his face had been impeached in lieu of a bloody paste. The torrent of blood that ran down his countenance was only discontinued when he chose to breathe, and blood would flow into his mouth, causing a recess in the waterfall of gore.

“Flash…” he managed to mutter before I threw him against the building.

He turned to the window and looked inside at the students milling around. They chose not to look at him as he clawed at the glass, as if it was a common occurrence for something like this to happen.

Now I understood what the fuss was about when it came to the Night Scan.

The vagrant clawing at the window was docile. I shuddered to think of what would happen if I had been attacked by one who was angry.

I ran around the building and was met with the site of people filing in. I imagined myself standing beside the sign that said, “Westing College,” naked, save for the lettering, and walking inside with the group of them.

Had that only been twenty four hours before? It felt like a lifetime had passed in this one day.

I joined the line going into the building and flashed my guest pass to Tinsley, who nodded, made a tick mark on the card, and let me through.

I punched the code in the Guest Dorm door and was met with the old smell of death and dirt. I carefully stepped between the bodies to the corner where I had slept the night before, and dropped my bag on the ground. I slid down, my eyes open, watching as more people entered. Some tried to get beds, others were content like myself with having even a corner to themselves.

I laid against the bag and shut my eyes, thinking about the Flash that sat under the bed less than ten feet away.

-

The next morning, Tyler poked his head in.

“Happy birthday, Tyler,” I managed.

“Hey, thanks! How’d you find out?”

“Liza told me,” I lied.

He nodded. “I got something for you.”

He tossed something into the room which landed at my feet. It was a towel.

“Come on, man, you don’t go anywhere without your towel, you know?”

“I don’t get it.”

Tyler smiled. “You smell like crap. Liza told me about your Aeroplexia, and the running you two did – you smell like crap. So, shower time!”

He led me down the hall, past Dylan’s room, to a communal bathroom. I clutched my bag to my chest.

“The showers have curtains, just don’t – don’t touch the shower curtains from the inside. They’re filthy. And I managed to sneak these away from Dylan last night,” he said, dropping a pair of shower shoes. “Because the floor is equally as gross as the shower curtain.

I slid them on and stepped inside.

-

I felt powder fresh, despite the lower water pressure and varying temperatures. Tyler waited outside for me to finish, keeping an eye on my real shoes.

There was a small feeling of renewal, of a quick rebirth as I turned the water off and the cold air assaulted my body. It felt so good, so new, so cold and relieving.

“Here are your shoes, man,” Tyler said, sliding them over. I saw the door to Dylan’s room crack open and a groggy man emerge. He shuffled past me in the direction of the Rec Hall without saying anything except, “Nice shoes.”

Tyler and I exchanged a quick glance as he tottered off.

“Anyway,” he said, “I thought you might need the shower. Busy day yesterday, you know?”

“Yeah. I probably smelled like I looked this morning,” I said, rifling through my bag and removing the orange bottle of Aeroids, slipping them into my pocket.

“We’re having a birthday thing for me at the Rec Hall tonight around eight. I expect to see you there,” he said.

“Sure thing.”

He nodded, grabbed the shower shoes, and ran down the hallway.

I glanced at the wall clock. It was closer to nine than I had thought – I had spent far too much time in the shower. Sighing, with the time in mind, I left the building with the bag at my side.

I half ran, half jogged in the easterly direction towards the boardwalk, trying not to remove the soapy fresh smell from my skin. At least I loved being clean.

Liza was hunched over the railing like she was yesterday after she had taken my hand and taken me away from myself. I tapped her on the shoulder, and she turned.

“Hey! Glad you made it back to the Guest Dorm all right,” she said, grinning.

“Yeah. It was no big.”

“They say a vagrant got attacked out in the quad last night. He had a guest pass on him – that could have been you. I was worried – I know you’re not a vagrant, but gossip doesn’t.”

I thought about the break in the waterfall of blood as the man inhaled and shuddered.

“He’s dead, the guy that got attacked.”

“What?”

“They say someone beat him up pretty bad, but he had his throat cut.”

The throat cutting – I most definitely did not do that. I didn’t even own a knife.

“Looks like a robbery. They said they found Flash all in his coat like someone broke a vial of it.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. I said the same thing. Oh – Oh! Speaking of which, I think it’s incredibly sweet what you’re doing for Sam.”

I couldn’t help but smile at Liza being reminded of Sam because of Jesus.

“No big, Ohm.”

She blushed.

[ShastaTwist]

Re: The Tin Cowboy

Br00tal.

[MalReynolds]

Re: The Tin Cowboy

“I don’t know any good places to shop,” I said, motioning to the city around us. “I’m still new here. Any ideas?”

“The Center has most of the good stores.”

“I was just about to suggest that.”

“Really? And how would you know about The Center?”

“Did you forget who I spent yesterday with? Captain History. I could probably tell you the starting history of the doors in the college, or the cue-ball on the pool table, the amount of time I spent with him.”

“You spent about three hours with him.”

“And that, that was enough to learn all of that.”

“Alright then, grand master of history, take me to The Center.”

I paused. “I may know about The Center, the man who built it, his father, and his father’s mistress, but I don’t know my way around here,” I smiled.

“Follow me,” she said, turning and walking towards the left, the opposite direction we had gone in the day before to get to the movie theatre and subsequent Aeroplexic attack. I nervously patted the pills in my pocket, hoping I wouldn’t fall on my face or have to use them.

There were a few side streets before we emerged onto a grassy field, which was completely surrounded by four tall mechanical buildings. In the center of the field, a large domed house shot up from the ground, and all around the building were people on blankets, picnicking, throwing Frisbees – an almost identical scene to the Quad, but this one felt safer.

“A lot of drugs run through here?” I asked.

“Not so much,” she said, motioning to the four buildings. “They put cameras in.”

“Ah.”

Liza anticipated my next question. “Cameras are too expensive for Westing.”

“How obscure,” I said.

We walked up a slight hill to the slate that comprised the front steps. I was surprised at how many buildings around this area were still brick, but as we got closer, I saw that it was just metal painted in painstaking detail to resemble the red rock.

The front doors were massive – extending far beyond five feet over my head, but they opened very easily. Inside was a small room, which led to another small set of glass doors. The floor was tiled with marble and shone in the hanging lights above. The glass on the doors was tinted, so I myself could only get a good look inside once Liza had moved ahead and pushed them open.

The tile continued into the main hall, which was larger than I had anticipated, given the size and look of the building. It extended as far back as I cared to strain my eyes, and from side to side could fit two school busses.

There were three floors, from what I could tell, before a ceiling. There were shops and kiosks littered around, with stairs, elevators, and escalators and your nearest convenience.

But what took me aback most about the place was not the sheer size, the enormity, or how empty it seemed, but instead the smell. It was a mixture of wood pulp, paper, coffee, sugar, sweets, perfume, cologne, bath beads, hand sprays, lotions, and a hint of french fries. Everything pleasant invading my olfactory sense at the same time.

I could hear Liza’s shoes clicking against the marble before I knew she was walking, simply because I was still staring at the ceiling, which had a replica of The Sistine Chapel printed on it.

“Come on, there’s a bunch of stores. What do you think Tyler would like?”

“God, something to do with history. Or pool.”

We walked in silence, looking at the shop names. Liza had probably seen them all a thousand times before, but they were new to me, so we slowed our pace and took our time. “The Coffee Beanery,” “Sweet Tooth,” “Bed and Body Bath.”

Once we had reached the far end of The Center, which took the better part of ten minutes, we stepped onto the escalator, Liza first. She turned, looking down at me, and smiled. I smiled back.

The second floor was just as intense, but we were confined to the borders. At first, all I wanted to do was stand and watch the people walking around the first floor from my vantage point, to see where they went, to reaffirm that I was living a waking life and that I was not the only person alive.

From up here, it all looked like memory.

It made me feel safe. It made me feel like a metaphor.

But now, now I didn’t want safe. I wanted to be normal, I wanted to walk and talk like nothing was wrong, like I was a person that had a known history, like Westing, or The Center, or The Kinder – I wanted to be a building more than anything with someone who could chronicle who I was and never forget, because they cared.

I started walking again, this time pulling Liza away. It took ten minutes to cover one end of The Center to the other, once again, but we had to double back to cover the other side. So far, there was nothing that I had even seen remotely that would say “You’re a cool guy, Tyler, From – Sam,” much less, “I love you, Tyler, From – Sam.”

My wonderment had left after we ended up back at the escalators. All the stores, so intoxicating before now seemed generic and to serve no purpose other than to have me fail in my mission.

“The third floor is the food court,” Liza said. “But there’s a few high priced shops at the end.”

I sighed and stepped on the escalator. The food court was a mix of anxiety of all people, servers and customers who were just trying to get by. There as a feeling of urgency spread evenly throughout the room that something important needed doing, and that people were just wasting their time. I certainly felt like I was.

Through the fluxuating crowd towards the back took more time than both floors combined, and when I was at the other side, I was sure I had lost whatever pleasant scent I had gained from the shower – instead, I now smelled like grease, obesity, and fried food, all of which go hand in hand together.

There were three stores – One of which seemed to be closed indefinitely.

One was a customized teddy bear store, which seemed like a good enough failsafe.

And the other was a book store.

The only book store I had seen in the entire building.

“Are book stores rare?” I said, turning to Liza.

“Who wants to read anymore? It’s so time consuming, you know? Plus, the attention span – it’s not worth it. In The Kinder, they don’t even have books, you know? They just watch a TV all day, and they say that generation is getting smarter every day.

“I still love to read, though,” she said, walking into the store.

It smelled great, like new paper and old paper, leather and binding, imagination and fancy. I took my time walking through the front of the store – they had entire shelves devoted to new authors who had refused to give up their craft in lieu of a new system. Shelf after shelf of horror book, of wry comedy, of satire and history, all of which could be condensed into a three minute lesson on a TV – Books were truly a luxury.

And if price was any indicator, boy were they ever.

I didn’t even know if Tyler liked to read, but a feeling in my gut said that whatever gift was purchased, it should be from this store.

Near the back, I found a section devoted to hobbies.

A few books in Pinball, a few books on old computer programming, and one volume that caught my eye.

“The Complete History of Billiards, Nine Ball, and Pool Sharks.”

Alarms went off in my head.

Oh yes, this was the gift.

“Hey, Liza, come over here,” I motioned.

She had her nose stuck in some book, which from the cover alone, seemed to be based on a deserted New York City overrun with tiny monsters. I pointed to “The Complete History of Billiards, Nine Ball, and Pool Sharks.”

“Yeah? What do you think?”

“I think,” she said, picking the book up, “That it’s a little expensive.”

[MalReynolds]

Re: The Tin Cowboy

She was right. Had I not been completely loaded, it would have put a dent in my wallet, but as it stood, it was only a very minimalistic chunk of what I had with me.

“Gosh,” I managed, “That is pretty pricey. I guess I’ll look for something else.”

“Really?”

“No!” I said, snatching the book out of her hands and running towards the register. The look on her face was priceless – a mix of shock and appreciation. I slammed the book down on the counter and fished through the tennis bag until I found the money, which I also slammed on the counter. The man behind the register looked unimpressed.

“Thank you, have a… day,” he said, before putting the purchase in a bag.

“Have a day too,” I said back as Liza and I walked out of the store.

“What’s that supposed to even mean?” She asked.

“Well, I guess he doesn’t want me to have a good day or a bad day. The day he wants me to have, ideally, would be one where the day exists. So, he’s pretty right on.”

“He was just wishing existence on you,” she said, not asking, but stating the fact as if trying to wrap her mind around it.

“Yes. It was very kind of him. Thoughtful. I’ve though about not existing before.”

“What was it like?”

“What, thinking about not existing?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I – I’m not really sure. I was just trying to be coy.”

We were riding down the escalator, and we were both fishing for things to say. I was more embarrassed than anything else – I hated lying to anyone, I knew that much, so opening doors to my past was a bad idea, if I was in fact to have ‘a day.’

Liza leaned over the railing, arms folded, and stared at the people walking along, much like I did. There were more people on the bottom floor than I cared to count, a precariously large number. Class had probably let out at some point and the students took it upon themselves to violate The Center.

And then there was a gunshot. The tile near my feet shattered and blew upwards, shards of porcelain grazing my cheek. I looked down at the hole in the floor, past to the barrel of a gun, a slow arm of smoke moving up. I pulled Liza back against the wall as another two shots rang out, another two holes appeared right where she had been standing.

I held my arm across her, moving along the edge, trying to find an open store, but there was nothing. The escalators were too far away, and I couldn’t presume to know the intention of the man with the gun – for all I knew, he could be after me.

Liza was shaking, her hair falling in front of her face. I slid down the wall, pulling her down with me, making us as small as possible if he decided to come upstairs.

“Shh, shh,” I whispered. She looked at me, her eyes watering.

There was another shot followed by a series of screams. Using the noise to our advantage, we bolted towards the up escalator, back to where the floor was solid and we could distance ourselves.

We took them two at a time, and I afforded a glance behind to see the gunman making his way up the stairs. Our eyes met and he seemed to have no interest in me, instead, breaking to the left.

What had struck me as odd about the gunner was how he had the same eyes as the homeless man the night before. They both had the same glazed over indelible look of defeat and yearning. It was so pathetic it could easily, in both cases, invoke pity had the assailants not been assailants.

There were a few more shots. The people in the food court were doing what any crowd would do in the presence of such a frightening sound, and in the midst of the panicking throng, I managed to upturn a table and pull Liza down behind it.

“There’s enough people here to take the man, why the hell aren’t they doing anything?”

Her voice tremoring, she made an effort to speak. “They don’t – involved – the police – not good, you know?”

I shook my head but motioned for her to be silent. I looked out from behind the table and saw the brown shoes of the gunner making their way down the hall, the erratic step-step-fumble of a man who wasn’t quite in his own mind. He was muttering something under his breath, something that sound thin and raspy.

“Come, come, come, crash with me, crash with me and that’ll be that,” he would say before extending his gun arm and firing a shot. I watched a woman drop in front of me, her dead eyes meeting mine. I had to put my hand in front of Liza’s mouth to stop her from screaming.

“Come, come, come, crash with me, crash with me and that’ll be that,” his gun said, punctuated with a bang instead of a period. Another crash.

“Come, come, come, crash with me, crash with me and that’ll be that,” the barrel spat.

His footsteps were growing closer to the table. Liza was shaking more violently. I clutched the bag in my hand, readying it at my side in case he should walk past and give me the opportunity to swing.

“Come, come, come, crash with me, crash with me and that’ll be that,” but instead of a gunshot, there was a click. “Riddles, riddles,” he said, and I stood, staring at him. The floor had, for the most part, remained the most occupied floor of the building. People were running, arms over head, screaming, but I could hear him.

”Riddles, riddles,” he pulled bullets from his pocket and clicked the gun open.

“Riddles, riddles,” he said, staring at me, and sliding a bullet into the chamber.

“Come, come, come, crash with me, crash with me,” I braced myself, holding Liza down, “And that’ll be that.”

Instead of one gunshot, there was a volley, and the gunners body danced. He was moving his feet like he had nothing to lose, his head tossed back in laughter. His arms shook at his side, and he brought his head up and looked me in the eyes.

“And that’ll be that,” he said, leveling the gun at me again.

The loud crashes continued around me as the five armed officers walked past, firing their guns at the man. He continued to dance as the bullets hit his body, continued to sing, ramble, and stare at me.

Until one of his eyes disappeared.

Then he fell over.

I stood gasping, my hands slick with sweat, the bag dropping from my hand.

He fell over so slowly. His body hit the ground, and everyone stopped. Or had they stopped when the officers had started firing?

His body hit the ground, and I sighed.

I looked down at Liza, who had been staring at me the entire time. Tears were running down her cheeks, but her eyes were full of regret. “I wish this was the first time this had happened,” is what I took away from her sad stare.

“This, this is certainly a day,” I thought to myself.

The police were surrounding the body. One of the officers fired two more shots into the prone body and it jerked like it was still alive.

“Is anyone hurt?” The first officer asked. “Did anyone try to confront this man?”

No one moved.

“I’m going to ask again – Did anyone try to confront this man? Did anyone provoke him in any way? Did anyone SAY anything to him before he started shooting?”

A young man, who couldn’t have been more than my age, judging by his eyes, stepped forward. “He – Downstairs, he asked me for some money, and I told him to get lost.”

“And of course, you saw him. You looked at him.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Come with us.” It wasn’t an option, it wasn’t an order. It was an ultimatum. They had their guns drawn.

He stepped forward, and before anyone could say anything, his head disappeared into a crimson bag and he was escorted.

“Anyone else? Please, honesty is the best policy – we’ll review the tapes and if we see ANYTHING at all suspicious and you didn’t step forward – you’ll wish you did.”

The officers grabbed the body by the arms and dragged it to the escalator. They cast one last glance over the room and disappeared.

I don’t know who I was more afraid of – the gunner, of the police.

Liza stood and dusted herself off, for all the good it did – dust doesn’t have a particular way of attaching when you’re shaking like a dryer.

“No one tries to stop those things anymore,” she said, repeating herself, trying to restore normalcy in her head, “Because you get taken by the police.”

“Why?”

“The shooter – he was on something, and I’d say Flash from the way he was looking, and most of the time, Flash addicts are docile until – until – everyone has a different trigger.”

She was staring at me. She inhaled sharply through her nose and rubbed her wrist against her eye, catching a tear.

“And the police don’t care if you’re on Flash, but they care if you go off like he did. In their eyes, the man who set him off is just as responsible as the man who shot the gun.”

“But he wasn’t any older than I was.”

“Yeah, well, there was a war on drugs, and now there’s a truce. Anyone who violates it – well, that’s that,” she said.

“This has happened to you before, hasn’t it.”

She nodded. “Twice. Once at college, and one time when my father was visiting, he refused to tip the waiter, and the waiter took a knife to another patron. He had just started using Flash, but he was already gone – so was the woman.” She paused.

“So was my father.”

I sighed and pulled her in for the most awkward hug I presume I've given in my entire life.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“I was too,” she said into my chest.

Already someone had come through with a mop and bucket, and employees were rigorously trying to right all the fallen tables and chairs. The food court was beginning to look more and more like a room again.

I could only hope that Liza and I were beginning to look like people.

[MalReynolds]

Re: The Tin Cowboy

When we got back to Westing, I made sure she was okay. She headed off to class and I went and left the book on Sam’s keyboard. While inside the room, I helped myself to a newspaper that had been lying across the bed.

I skimmed over the headlines right into the articles, trying to find something about the homeless man who had died the night before, who I had shared a room with less than two days ago.

There was nothing of any great relevance that Liza hadn’t already told me. The vials of Flash he had, his throat was cut, campus security was alerted and the Night Scan would be far less lenient. As if it had been lenient before.

I kept flipping through, thinking that maybe if I was lucky I would see a picture of myself, hand sketched no doubt by some police artist, that said I was missing.

If I could only be so lucky.

With nothing else to do, I set the paper down and walked out to the Quad.

I stood in the back of the women’s dorm and watched people walking around, but I kept glancing at the borders. There were people littered in between the trees and as close to the neighboring buildings as they dared, and they all repeated the same hackneyed ritual. One would reach into their pocket, presumably for money, and high five the other. Then they would shake hands and walk away.

Some of them were more sloppy than others, but it seemed like a universal way to transfer drugs from one person to another.

What kind of high there must have been when you took Flash. I couldn’t even begin to imagine – I had achieved a brief runners high the other day with Liza, but the pure bliss that had to come from Flash was almost tempting in and of itself. There had to be some kind of payoff that I wasn’t seeing, because the laundry list of reasons not to do it were rather compelling. Maybe it was cheap, hell, I don’t know, but it had to provide a good enough high to keep new buyers coming even with the side effects.

From what I had seen myself, there was madness, dulling of the senses, no reception to pain, aggression, lust, loss of mind, and what seemed like a homicidal rage. I couldn’t understand how the police didn’t crack down on the dealers more, but it seemed like they had reached an impasse. Don’t provoke someone whose about to go mad and we won’t mess with your business.

Right as rain.

Yeah, acid rain.

The amount of transactions going on across the Quad was almost sickening, especially considering what Liza had told me – that addiction levels vary, but the end game is always the same, some people just get there ahead of others. And almost every person that was playing Frisbee or laying down on a blanket at one point or another stood up, stretched their legs, and walked to the border.

Hundreds of people.

The word “Epidemic” wasn’t quite enough to really define what was going on.

How hollow their lives must be to have to resort to something like that, something that will kill you, fracture your brain, make you kill – it was giving me a headache thinking about it. I had no choice but to turn and walk away – I had been watching for nary two hours and I had seen more transactions than I cared to.

Where the hell was all that money going? The kids selling sure looked ratty enough, and for every transaction there is an equal and opposite transaction, so the money had to be going somewhere.

And then it dawned on me.

Most likely, the money was going to the police. Helping to prosecute the people who set off the buyers, killing the buyers that went red with rage.

Of course, it was little more than a conspiracy theory. There was nothing factual to back up what my mind was saying, which was fine. I didn’t want to think that corruption ran that deep and that thorough.

My thoughts had taken my feet and I had walked west, away from the school and away from the beach. All the buildings were haunting me, there was nothing warm about Westing in the least. After about an hour and a half, the buildings began to taper and the sun was able to break through. The road, which seemed like such a main road in the city thinned out to two lanes.

And the buildings shrunk. I kept walking until I reached the end, which was punctuated with a church.

I turned and looked at the sprawl. The city, looming in the distance with three or four small buildings like this church inside of it, and it thinned out like the Golden Gate Bridge until it was just flat.

When I turned to look back at the church, I was surprised to see the door open and a small woman standing inside.

“Hello, child.”

I nodded, stuffing my hands into my pockets. The glare off of the buildings was tremendous.

“Why don’t you come inside? It’s bitterly cold out.”

“Oh, no thanks, but thanks. I was about to head back into the city.”

She smiled. “That’s fine. Do you go to school in the city?”

“No, no, but I’m staying there.”

“The church is much nicer to stay in and we don’t charge for guest passes, in case you’re low on money – “

“I’m not homeless –“ I paused. Well, I was. “I’m not poor,” I corrected myself, “And I’m not crazy. I don’t do that Flash stuff, I just needed a place to stay to get my bearings.”

“What better place,” she scoffed, “Than a church?”

“Next time I – Next time I wind up somewhere I’m not supposed to, I’ll consider it.”

I looked at the bulletin board next to the old woman. I walked over and started reading some of them – many uninteresting, but one caught my eye. It was for a bingo night, every Thursday. And above the bulletins in faded gold letters, “Westing Chapel.”

“Oh, I know this place,” I muttered under my breath. “Why would Tyler come all the way out here?”

“You know Sam?” The woman sounded shocked.

“Churchy religious type? Kind of cold, holier than thou art?"

“So do you know Sam? Sam Feldspar?”

I paused and held back a laugh. “Samantha? ... She’s dating Tyler, right?”

“And buying herself a ticket to hell at that.”

“You know Tyler, then.”

She nodded. “I don’t much care for the boy.”

“I can tell. You’re not exactly subtle, miss…”

“Feldspar.”

Naturally.

“It’s his birthday today, Mamma Feldspar,” I managed.

“Oh, and what did my Sam get him? More sin? Another list of things to atone for? Or did she get him a new set of parents to wrench her away from.”

“She got him a book on pool halls.”

Feldspar turned and walked through the door. I sighed and followed her inside. The architecture was amateurish compared to the perfection and sterility I had seen inside the city. This was much more human – the stained glass that sat atop the organ, the geometry was not perfect. It was handmade. The bricks that made up the floor were green with moss and the bricks themselves were uneven.

“It used to be much nicer than this,” Mother Feldspar said. “Back when people came to the church, it was much nicer.”

“Why did they stop?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the walk got too long. Maybe people just stopped believing.”

“I always thought faith was something you grew into, not out of.”

“For some. Not every person is the same. Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that. You know Sam and Tyler. Polar opposites on so many things, and yet – “

“And yet they’re together.”

“I always thought,” she said, “She’d end up with the boy I was pushing her towards, but free will can be such a pain in the A.”

I smiled. Like mother, like daughter.

“I had the perfect boy picked out, too, but he disappeared.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. A good, God fearing man who would take care of my Sam.”

“What happened?”

“I said he disappeared. No one knows much else about it. Sam and Mark grew up together, practically, and I was always pushing for their team. Mark was such a nice boy, such a very nice boy.”

“God fearing.”

“Exactly, and he always treated my Sam right. Always.”

“Well… How long ago did he – “

“It was the day of his eighteenth birthday party. There was a big celebration and he was going to ask Sam out, he told me himself, but as the night waned, I never saw him come out of his room. I went to go check on him, but his room was empty, his things still in tact. We spent the next two weeks looking for him, and we prayed in shifts. This was before – before they put those buildings up, back when this was a community. God, those buildings appeared so fast.

“But we never found him. Sam was heartbroken.”

I could only imagine.

“Well… I mean, she got over it. Shouldn’t you?”

Mother Feldspar looked up at me and sat down in a pew.

“If I give up on Mark, I don’t have much else. I know one day he’ll walk through the doors of the church, maybe to play bingo like he used to. I know holding on isn’t healthy, but it’s all I can do. The church is in disarray, my Sam is not here and to top it all off, she’s galavanting around at college with some atheist.

“I know I shouldn’t hold on to the past like this. I know.”

“Why don’t you get some of the old clergy in here to help you clean it up?”

“Most of the old clergy has long since left. After the Rebirth, they saw the city as a place of sin and low morals, and quite frankly, I can’t blame them. They scattered to the wind and urged the few us that chose to remain behind to flee with them. Of course, we didn’t, but the revival of this church would be such a massive undertaking.”

I nodded. “And you all, you watch the church in shifts?”

It was her turn to nod. “Of course.”

“What’s to stop someone from just ransacking this place?”

“Well, it’s a church. It’s far too cold at night to try and travel down here – you’ll most likely lose yourself to the wind before you even make it half way down here. And people just stopped caring.”

I kicked at the brick at my feet.

“There was a magnificent revival about ten years ago for the church. Highly unorthodox, but – it was brilliant. It was a rebirth of itself, and then as soon as it started, it stopped. We were able to ride that wave for just a little bit before everything fell apart again.

“But I think I’ve figured it out.

“Who needs faith when you have yourself?”

[MalReynolds]

Re: The Tin Cowboy

I couldn’t really answer. I myself had no strong feelings at the moment towards God or Darwin; instead, I was more confused. I didn’t register a particular pull towards hatred of the woman or the place I was in, nor did I find myself completely indifferent to the situation. Instead, I felt pity slowly creep over until I realized I was frowning.

The Westing Chapel used to be a happy place. Most of the bulletins outside were for services or weddings or bingo nights, and now, what was it? It was a place that needed to be watched over by old women and men who refused to let go of an antiquated past. The future was a few miles down the road.

“This is the last bastion,” she said, “Against what the world will become.”

Godless, I thought to myself. And at the same time, I didn’t fear how the world would become without God. I only feared for the safety of those that refused to accept change. Do I accept change? Considering my circumstances, I think I accept change better than most people ever will.

Through the window, I could see a few women similarly dressed to Mother Feldspar walking around through the small graveyard outside. Every time a wind kicked up, they would lower their heads but keep walking, keep the conversation going as if it was a kerosene lantern that would protect them from the harsh weather.

Just keep your head down and power through. That’s all you can do sometimes.

I realized I was still kicking the moss on the brick – well, not quite. I had eroded the moss from the brick and was now kicking one of the only red spots on the entire floor. The pew I was seated in was made of knotted wood, which was not exactly comfortable, but at the same time, felt slightly better than the floor I had been sleeping on for the past two nights.

And I still had the tennis bag with me. I was carrying it around like I was getting ready to leave, walking out into the sunset. But the bag held everything I used to be inside of it, even if it wasn’t much. The money, the jeans, the shirts, the notepads, they were all me. The only traces that I could find.

“You looked lost,” Mother Feldspar said.

“Not quite. I just don’t really know where I am.”

Mother Feldspar nodded like she knew what the hell I was talking about. “The sun is going to go down soon. Don’t you need to get back to the dorms?”

I sighed. “Yeah. I probably should.”

“Go in peace.”

“Do you want me to tell Sam anything for you?”

Mother Feldspar sighed. “Tell her I said hello. And tell Tyler I said – Tell him I said happy birthday.”

“Sure thing.”

I opened the door, and the weak voice called again from behind me. “Are you going to be coming back here?”

I paused. “I’m not sure, Momma Feldspar.”

I waited to see if she would say anything, but she remained silent. I stepped out onto the brick path, to the rusty gate and turned. The cross that sat atop the building was crooked and casting a sideways shadow on the ground that I was standing in. The Sisters were still walking in circles through the small graveyard, just as rapt in conversation.

I stepped back onto the unpaved dirt road and began to follow a bicycle track back into the city.

-

It had begun snowing by the time I had arrived back at the Westing dorms, and I was lucky that both the Chapel and the dorms were on the same street – how easy it would have been to have gotten confused or lost in such a uniform place. There was a slight moment of panic when I thought that I had perhaps set off on the wrong road, until I reached the beach, the familiar cul-de-sac, and realized that I had just walked past the dorm.

Tinsley checked my ID and smiled, which was a small shock. I walked upstairs, barley making it to the Guest Dorm when I was grabbed by George and Tyler.

“Happy Birthday, Tyler,” I said as they were dragging me towards the Rec Hall.

“Thanks!” he said enthusiastically.

“I know my way there, you guys don’t have to hook my elbows like that.”

They stopped.

“Dylan said you told him you were just going to crash tonight,” George muttered, coming to a stop.

“Yeah, well, Dylan doesn’t like me. I can walk by myself.” I turned to Tyler. “I told you I would come to your party-shindig-hoe-down-thing.”

“It’s almost ten, so I had a little reason to worry.”

Christ, had I really been gone that long? How long did the incident at the mall take? The sun was barely going down when I left the church. It was possible that I was so lost in thought on the way back to the dorms that I was walking more slowly than usual, but a full two hours to make a walk that took me initially significantly less than that? And it gave Dylan an advantage.

“Well, what the hell,” I thought to myself. “I don’t like Dylan anyway.”

The three of us walked up to the Rec Hall and George tried opening the door. It got stuck a little less than halfway, and I watched as he tried to pull it open before giving up and sliding in between the door and the frame. Tyler pushed the door closed and pulled it open with a jerk, and it swung open almost all the way before the warped wood caught on a familiar scuff on the ground.

There weren’t many more people than I had met the first night. It seemed like they had reached out and invited a few more people hither and thither, though. But only a few. I made the rounds with Tyler as he introduced me to a group of people I had no interest in. Gary, Gary, Gary, Gary, Gary and Gary. Cleverly enough, they were known as “The Gary’s.”

And Clarice. She didn’t quite fit in with The Gary’s, mainly because her name was feminine, she was a she, and she had an active look if disdain for the large group of Gary’s. It also did not look like she was interested in the green sweater vests they were all wearing.

“These guys are part of an improve troupe that George used to run with.”

“Oh. Well then. What’s her story,” I said, motioning to Clarice.

“Dylan’s new beau,” Tyler muttered under his breath.

“Oh, good. Now maybe he’ll get off my back.”

“Not likely.”

I sighed and walked over to the pool table which had a large punch-bowl sitting on it. Next to the large punch bowl was a smaller punch bowl.

“The big one has booze in it,” one of the Gary’s shouted.

I made a bee-line for the smaller and fixed myself a glass. I turned and watched the room. The Gary’s were laughing at the joke the Alpha Gary cracked, and George was slowly trying to inch his was over to them. Dylan had pulled Clarice over to a corner and was rapidly gesticulating into her ear and motioning at me, while Sam sat at one of the tables and was flipping through Tyler’s gift. I couldn’t seem to find Liza, although I wasn’t particularly looking.

“Hey, Sam,” I said, pulling up a chair and sitting next to her. “That good?”

She nodded.

“Your Mom says ‘hi.’”

She looked up from the book, her face now pale. “You talked to my mother.”

“I went for a walk today and ended up at the Westing Chapel.”

“She was on guard duty, wasn’t she?”

I nodded and took a sip of punch.

“I’m sorry, she’s such a talker. If she talked you to death, I’m really sorry. She has all these stupid stories she likes to tell to everyone, and I’m really sorry if she bored you or anything.”

“No, she was pretty interesting.”

Tyler walked over and took a seat opposite Sam and next to me.

“Mother Feldspar says, ‘Happy Birthday,’” I said. Tyler, who was sipping on a glass of punch managed to both choke and shoot the red liquid out of his nose at the same time.

“You talked to Sam’s mom?”

“This seems like no one was expecting it. Also, Sam, your last name is pretty classic.”

“Shut it,” she said, blushing and turning back to the book.

“She hates me, you know,” Tyler said, wiping off the table.

“Yeah.”

“Why – “

“I guess because you make Sam happy.”

Sam was rubbing her forehead like she had a strong headache.

“She told you about Mark, didn’t she,” Sam managed after a second.

“Well, yes.”

“Why does she tell everyone that story,” she muttered. “It’s not even interesting. I wasn’t even interested in Mark. Why – that story – sometimes – G D it!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Mother acts like my life would have been so different if Mark hadn’t disappeared, but you know what? It would have been exactly the same. I didn’t love Mark, I didn’t love that I was being forced to interact with him. I would have pushed away and I think,” she paused, looking at Tyler, “That things would have turned out almost the same.”

Tyler smiled. “Well, that’s good, because Mark called me the other day and –“

“Oh, shut up,” Sam said, playfully kicking Tyler under the table.

“ - He says he’ll be late for asking you out.”

Despite the serious nature of the joke, both Sam and Tyler seemed to be taking it lightly. They looked, in that moment, very much happy with the circumstances life had given them, quite different from Mother Feldspar.

They looked almost as in love with their lives as they were with each other.

The party progressed and The Gary’s began to do some painfully rehearsed improvisation. The only gem of their act was George, who was painfully trying to keep pace with their quick dialogue as he had been invited up for one of their stage games.

[MalReynolds]

Re: The Tin Cowboy

It was both sad and amusing at the same time watching George half-step when they leapt and fall back when they rolled, and I found it hard trying to imagine him acting with them.

The Night Scan reminder was a pleasant enough way to wind down the evening – the only detracting factor what that I had not seen Liza for the entire hour I had been in the Rec Hall. I turned to ask Tyler, but he was already on his way out the door with Sam, George was all the way in the back grabbing his coat, and Dylan was Dylan. He was hidden behind Clarice anyway – I could only assume they were kissing or talking very slowly and quickly, given my vantage point.

I gave a half earnest wave before heading down the stairs back towards the Guest Dorm. I was shocked to find when I stepped inside not a large group of vagrants, rather the Gary’s, who were occupying a fair amount of the beds. They were all talking fervently amongst themselves and gave a bravado filled cheer when I entered the room before offering me one of the beds.

I considered it and even sat down to take my shoes off, but for some reason, the bed felt less comfortable to me than the floor, and so it was on the third night, the first night I was given the opportunity to sleep elevated, on a mattress, that I ultimately declined and chose the floor.

The most annoying thing about the Gary’s, despite their obvious rehearsal of the material, was the high pitched cackle they let out whenever one of them let out their genius idea. They sat in their own little circle, pontificating to no end about things that I doubt they really cared about – moreover, they chose material it was easiest to make jokes over. Most of the material was reminiscent in my mind of other comedians – but their names escaped me. They had tainted the jokes just enough to claim them as their own.

The cackle could most likely be akined to the sound of an old woman laughing or small puppies barking. The sound was a short burst that lasted for all of three seconds before a half a second respite, before launching again. It was tiresome, but they kept it up for the better part of an hour before they started falling asleep.

That would have been haven enough for me, only having four of the five Gary’s awake, but the Alpha Gary did his best to rouse Tired Gary, and the cycle started all over again, encompassing another hour of my night. I closed my eyes and prayed that I would pass out from exhaustion, from shock, from turmoil – it’s not every day I’m shot at and witness another man gunned down.

I had thought about telling Tyler about the ordeal at The Center during his party, but it seemed rather inopportune. I was also not too keen on tipping Sam’s hand, although surely Tyler could tell that she could not afford such an expensive gift by herself. “It might be something to bring up tomorrow,” I thought to myself. “Unless they put it in the papers first.”

More worrying than any of this was the disappearance of Liza. Not only did I feel fear that she might be somewhere else, I could also feel a twinge of jealousy and suspicion. She could have been out with another guy. They could be kissing right now, or worse, and I wouldn’t know about it.

Then again, would I have rather known about it?

So far, Liza is the closest thing to a normal human being I can see in my life. Would I want to ruin the image that she has in my mind? It would be an impossible standard to live up to forever, if I chose to stay, but I wasn’t ready to let her be less than she could be. With that, I forced myself to stop thinking about her.

Immediately, I was drowsy.

I fell asleep that night to the cackle of the Gary’s.

-

I awoke to that identical sound.

God, did they even sleep last night or did they spend the entire eight hours sitting up and laughing?

“Hey, guys,” I said, rolling over and sitting up.

“Hey Tim,” they responded simultaneously.

“How did you all sleep?”

“Super,” they responded as one.

“What time did you all wake up?”

“My watch,” the Alpha Gary said, “Goes off at 5. And all of their watches are synced to mine. It’s so we can get the most out of the day. Try and run some improv, you know.”

“I really don’t.”

The Gary’s laughed. The light was too much – I stared at the Alpha Gary. The only thing that set him apart from the rest was a small scar that ran over his right eye. He wore the same black shirt and black pants as the rest of them, he wore the same muddy boots and has the same buzz-cut hair.

If half of them hadn’t been obese, it would have been very difficult to tell all of them apart.

I decided the instant that I woke up that I would be flying solo today, at least from the Gary’s. I stepped out of the room and sighed as the door shut, cutting off their obnoxious laughter. I turned to head down the hall and watched as George came plodding towards the Guest Dorms.

“Hey man, what’s going on?” He said, biting down on a biscuit and pushing his glasses up.

“Not much. Just trying to get away from them.”

“They’re great, aren’t they?” It was an all new language. English mixed intermittently with the sound buffer of dough. He was speaking English Muffin.

“Yeah, like a hernia is great.”

“Quiet! They might hear you!”

“And what?”

George’s eyes went dead. “I don’t know what their trigger is, man. Why would you risk it?”

I paused. “I didn’t know they used. They don’t exactly advertise, dude…”

“You should just be more careful. You never know who uses.”

“Yeah, and that’s a major problem. What if I told you, ‘Hey, George, chew with your mouth closed.’ Would you go off the handle on me? Would you try and shoot me or beat me to death or pull Flash out of me?”

“No, because I don’t use,” he said making a conscious effort to swallow his biscuit before speaking.

“So everyone should just be as careful as they can be when speaking to someone else.”

He nodded. “I didn’t think it was a great idea to invite them to the party, but once they found out, what was I supposed to do? Tell them no?”

“I don’t – So. People who don’t use Flash are second class citizens, subservient to the fear that whoever they’re with will go bizarro on them?”

“Pretty much. Man, Dylan pulled you down from up North. You should already know this stuff.”

“I grew up in a good area. I have no reason to.”

“Not exactly broadcast anywhere, is it?” George said taking a bite out of his biscuit. “Everyone knows about it and looks the other way.”

“Nothing I can do but be courteous to everyone I meet, I guess.”

“Better safe than sorry.”

“You’re right. Sorry about that.”

“No problem. Anyway, I was coming down here to get you. Dylan wants to have a word with you.”

“Tell him I don’t care.”

“Why don’t you tell me yourself,” Dylan said, opening the door to the main hall.

“I don’t want to talk to you, bud.”

“And why not? What have I done to you?”

There was a pause before the door behind him opened and Clarice stepped through. She looked like she got about as much sleep as I did last night.

“Nothing big,” I said.

“Then why can’t we talk?”

“If I say yes, are you going to say, ‘Cool, oh wait, I have class, lemme go ditch you.’”

“I told you, I was coming back to get you.”

“I don’t have any reason to believe you, now do I? You’ve given me no reason to trust you – every time I’ve given you an inch, you’ve taken a mile. So, yeah, you can talk, but I’m not going to give you the benefit of the doubt anymore.”

Saying that felt good. No, better than good, it felt Godly.

“Whatever. Look, the other guys are alright. Tyler, George, Sam.” He paused. “Liza, they’re okay, but they don’t really like doing much except what’s around campus. I was going to extend an invitation to you, but you’d be wasting one of your Guest Pass days, because it’s an overnight thing. Just you and me, buddy boy, rowing out to Banana Island past curfew.”

“What the hell!” George said, throwing his hands up. “I want to go!”

“You’d complain the entire time,” Dylan said.

“No way. I’ve always wanted to go on one of your trips, man! Why does he get to go,” George whined, motioning towards me.

“Because he and I got off on the wrong foot. I want to make things right between us.”

“What the hell is Banana Island?”

“It’s a lot less flamboyant than it sounds. It’s about half a mile off the coast, near The Kinder. There’s a light house on it, the Island isn’t much bigger than the quad, but they say it’s haunted by the ghost of some ex-hooker. I was reading about it a few nights ago and didn’t really have a second person to invite until you showed up.

“However, I understand if you don’t want to go. It’s going to be cold and you’re going to be out all night. I wouldn’t want to offend your sensibilities or anything – I mean, lord knows, you have to get your beauty sleep for class and everything.”

I winced. What a backhanded invitation. But it felt sincere – I would have been far more suspicious had he decided to be nice to me. This felt right at home.

“Besides, it’ll give us a chance to talk through some stuff that’s been bothering me,” he said with a smirk. “I’ve got class now, but think about it. If you want to go, meet me by my room around seven.”

[MalReynolds]

Re: The Tin Cowboy

He didn’t quite storm off; he turned, grabbed Clarice by the arm and made a hasty exit out the door. I stood almost dumbfounded before turning to George.

“What the hell?”

“Dylan, he gets these weird ideas sometimes. Like, he has a list of places stashed in his room somewhere, like small islands and abandoned buildings, and he loves to go exploring them and trying to find ghosts and stuff. But he always takes a second person just in case something goes wrong.

“He’s never picked me. Not even once, and he knows how bad I want to go. I love doing stuff like that. No building is off limits, no window too high for me to scurry up the drain pipe and crack open.”

I stared at him. Maybe he hadn’t looked at himself in a mirror lately, but he didn’t quite seem to be the fastest person his feet.

“I don’t trust it, George.”

“So what are you going to do, then?”

I paused. “Well, go out to dead-hooker island with him, naturally. I know he doesn’t like me because Liza talks to me, but there has to be something else. No person can be that simple and that petty.”

“He just ditched you at breakfast, man. I think you might be reading into this a little too deeply.”

“He invited me to stay here and then skips out on me? To hang out with you – no offense.”

“None taken.”

“Is he this brash and abrasive to everyone?”

“He’s not exactly a kindred spirit to most people, but yeah, I can see where you’re coming from.

“So, you going to do some dectectivery? Get to the bottom of your almost self-created mystery behind Dylan and why he hates you?”

There were bigger mysteries to get to the bottom of, but that one was on my priority list. I doubt I could stay the other six days here without running into him, and even then, the only person who knew me before Westing was Dylan. He was the only thing I had that was even a ghost of a chance of getting my memory back.

It was bad to put all of my eggs into one basket like that, especially such a selfish one, but the situation did not leave me with much of a choice. There’s a chance I could have known Liza, as well, but at the same time, at first she was almost indifferent towards my appearance here, as if she didn’t recognize me. I had impacted Dylan somehow and now he was making it his missive to let me know that I messed up somewhere back there. At least, that’s what I could make of it.

George just stood there while I worked this out in my mind, nodding along to my nods, before smiling, turning, and walking away. I could hear the faint sound of the doorknob turning from the Guest Dorm and quickly followed suit, exiting before The Gary’s could come through and harass me.

Because even if they were ready to be triggered, I sure as hell didn’t want to be pleasant towards them.

-

The Kinder was less frightening the second time. It still wasn’t quite home – I doubt children in cages will ever be described as ‘home by many – but I had a fair appetite by the time I was in the cafeteria. I could have gone through the back door, but I wanted to see if I had grown accustomed to the way of life at Westing. And the answer was “Yes, but not quite.”

The same young kids behind the serving counter, the same plastic trays, only this time I had eggs instead of cereal, with bacon and sausage. The total cost was about the combined cost of the breakfast for Tyler and myself that first day, but it was supremely good. I had forgotten what it was like to actually enjoy food – the entire time I had been at Westing I had done nothing but worry about myself, choosing not to indulge in any kind of simple pleasure such as eating. But here it was, and it was good.

You forget who you are, and all of a sudden you don’t really think about kissing a girl or eating a pancake. You pretty much bounce into what I call ‘apprehensive survival mode.’ Don’t do anything to mess up, don’t do anything to stand out, go with the flow and try to recover as much as you can.

When I finished breakfast, I felt my chest tighten. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the pill bottle, tossing one into my mouth. It immediately vaporized when it hit my tongue and slid down into my lungs. It was a pleasant feeling, like I had been iced over on the inside.

And then my chest stopped hurting.

I took the pill bottle and held it up to the light. There were several dozen small, round pills inside, but there were no markings on the bottle except a few places where the label had stuck when I peeled it off. The top to the pharmacy bottle had been replaced with one from a plastic film canister.

I was getting ready to get up and leave when the back door opened and Liza walked in. I paused, half standing half sitting to see if there was anyone walking in behind her, but she was alone, carrying a few books in front of her. She stepped into line and I walked up behind her, trying to come up with something sly or clever to say, something to bounce me out of apprehensive survival mode.

But she noticed me first. Well, that’s not entirely true. She knew someone was standing uncomfortably close to her and took me to be some kind of assailant, perhaps someone who had been Triggered, and she turned, slamming her books against my mid-section and sending me tumbling over the small railing that divided the lunch room from the tray line.

It didn’t hurt. I landed on my tennis bag and I thanked my lucky stars I had ditched the vials of Flash, otherwise this would have been more than a bad situation. She was standing on the other side of the rail, books raised over her head, before she realized just quite who I was.

“God, Tim, I’m sorry – No I’m not. That should teach you for sneaking up on me.”

As angry as she sounded at being had, she extended a hand and helped me up.

“Yeah. My bad. I was actually trying to come up with something coy to say.”

“Next time think of it from across the room, shout it out, or at least try saying it before you reach the person. You sacred the daylights out of me.”

“So I noticed. Can I buy you breakfast?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Please, I insist. It’s quite all right. I do this to everyone I terrify early in the morning.”

She smiled. “Well, that was pretty coy.”

“I know.”

She had fruit salad Jell-o, and I took an orange juice. We sat in silence as she ate, not really knowing what to say.

“Well, Dylan invited me to Banana Island.”

“God, you’re not going are you?”

“Of course I am. Why would I not go?”

“Because Dylan is a possessive, demonizing guy? You don’t know his intentions. He might take you out there and beat the ever living mother out of you, you know?”

“I can take him in a fight, I think,” I said, remembering the brief confrontation with the Triggered hobo. “Besides, this could be a good opportunity to smooth things over between us.”

“No, it’s not going to be. He doesn’t like you for the sole reason that I like you – “

After this, it became a little fuzzy. I was trying fervently in my mind to work out whether or not she meant, “Like you like I like this Jell-o,” or “Like you like I like you without clothing.” I was hoping it was the latter, and yet at the same time I wouldn’t have been totally disappointed had it been the former.

“… and that’s just the type of guy he is,” she said, defiantly spooning Jell-o into her mouth.

“Well, I’m sorry, but I’ve made up my mind.”

She sighed. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you come back with a black eye, don’t expect any sympathy from me.”

“Alright.”

“There’s a library across the street from The Center. Mostly recordings, but they have newspaper archives, in case you’re interested in Banana Island.”

“Why thank you Angel-May. I might hop over there and check it out.” Who was I kidding? What else was I going to do with my day?

“Oh, before you go, why weren’t you at the party last night?”

“Clarice and I don’t get along,” she said carefully.

“Does this have to do with Dylan?”

“No. Personal history between us. She’s my cousin.”

“I never would have guessed.”

“Well, there it is. I have to run,” she said, standing and grabbing her books. “Sorry for flipping you over that railing.”

“Sorry for scaring you.”

“Yeah. If you don’t want to scare me, don’t go to Banana Island.”

I paused. “Sorry for scaring you.”

She frowned before turning and walking out the back door.

It was a new feeling, letting someone down like that. Directly going against their wishes, and it didn’t feel very good. But I had to be an opportunist. Even if it was a setup, even if Dylan was going to smack me silly with a boat-paddle, the pain of not knowing was more than the pain of letting Liza down.

And for that, I was truly sorry.

-

Naturally, the library wasn’t called ‘the library.’ If a shopping mall is called The Center and the gradeschool is called The Kinder, it didn’t surprise me that this library was known as ‘The Archive.’ I’ll hand it to the building planner – the name matched the interior.

This was directly across from The Center, like Liza had mentioned, but it had taken me a few minutes of aimless strolling to locate, because instead of a small, homely pre-rebirth building, it was one of the metal goliaths. There were a few entrances, and the one on the leftmost side simply read, ‘The Archives.’

But above the gold lettering were a few faded letters that read out, ‘Side Street Library.’ Slightly less modern.

[MalReynolds]

Re: The Tin Cowboy

Slightly less modern and I could see that they had to change the sign to accommodate the new style they were aiming for.

The inside of the building was an oddity. The door had been located on the far left side, and several other doors had been spaced out with different signs hanging over top. When I entered The Archives, I noticed that the floor did not cover the entire span of the building, instead it stopped short at a wall. I was faced with a long hallway, three doorways wide, and to the right was a divider between The Archives and whatever location lay on the other side. It was strange after seeing The Center to have something extend so far back and up to avoid crossing over into the territory of another.

There were escalators and elevators that went up and down in the back, and the Dewey Decimal system was still being used, much to my chagrin. The reference desk was against the window, and a small woman sat in a wicker chair, stamping books.

“Hi,” I said. “Are there any newspaper archives I could take a look at?”

“Only for the last sixty years. You might want to specify what you want to look at, young man.”

“Banana Island.”

She lowered her glasses and looked at me over the lenses. “There was a young man in here looking up articles about it the other day.”

“Was his name Dylan?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Could have been. My memory just isn’t what it used to be – All I can remember are books and sometimes faces, but I’m terrible with names.”

“How can you stand it?”

“This is my life. I would rather have this than the ability to remember the name of every snot-nosed kid that came through here. Come on,” she said, stepping out from behind the desk. “It’s up a ways.”

We stepped into an elevator and she pressed one of the buttons. It looked like 3E, which threw me for a loop. I soon realized what the “E” was for as the glass door elevator began to move sideways and backwards through a few narrow hallways before coming to rest in a small room with a desk, a projector, a few shelves and some lamps.

“Hold on while I get the slides,” she said, moving to the shelves and removing a small book. She flipped it open, but instead of a paper page, there was a thick plastic sheet that she began to tap rapidly with the end of a pen. After a few seconds, she took the book and placed it face-down on the table, motioning for me to have a seat. The book moved down into the table and I heard a small mechanical whirring.

I looked under the table and watched the book descend into a small glass cube, still face down. A bright laser began to trace shapes under the glass, coming up from the floor and making sweeping patterns over the book.

I looked up, and the archivist was fiddling with the projector. She kept hitting what I could only assume was the power button, and nothing was happening. Finally, she sighed, picked up the lamp and hit the projector with the bottom of it. The projector, finally having enough, sprang to life and old newspaper articles were splashed against the wall.

“Most of these have the word ‘banana’, ‘island,’ or a combination of the two in there. You can narrow the search field, though,” she said, tapping the desk. A keyboard flipped up and out of a panel in front of me.

“Well, I’ll leave you to your research,” she said, “But I’ll be right outside. Don’t even think about messing with the laser.”

I nodded and she walked through a wooden door at the far end of the room, opposite of the elevator.

I turned my attention to the screen, which featured a story about a banana boat that had run aground on an island due to the lack of a light house.

“While the Island was not particularly banana shaped,” the article read, “It was soon deemed ‘Banana Island,’ by cautious sailors who from then on were very careful to remain clear of the small stretch of East Massachusetts coast which was home to many rocky shores and unidentified islands.”

Massachusetts. And they found me at a party up North.

Canada?

The article rambled on about sailors and superstition to the end, which wasn’t what I was looking for. I kept scanning the newer articles.

“Lighthouse Construction to Begin on Banana Island.”

“Grand Opening Ceremony on Banana Island.”

“Banana Island Lighthouse Good for Economy, Better for Sailors.”

It was a pleasant enough timeline. The article headlines continued on and on like that for a few more papers, before –

“Local Girl Missing – Police Search Banana Island.”

“Police Search Intensifies – Banana Island Lighthouse Closed.”

“Body Found Off Shore of Banana Island.”

“Body Identified as Marlene Gibbons.

“Marlene Gibbons, born and raised in Westing, was found drowned to death off the coast of Banana Island last Friday. After having been missing for several days, the police were shocked to find that it was not a kidnapping, rather a suicide. On her body was a note that simply read, ‘If he does not love me, no one will.’

“Parents are worried that the death of Gibbons will arise thoughts of suicide in the minds of their young children. Marlene, a local dancer at The Burlesque, was a popular dancer among many, -“

The article continued. There was only one other line that caught my interest.

“Although Marlene left a note, police are not ruling out foul play.”

There were a few more articles, but that was the catalyst. Soon after Marlene died, the officials’ shut the lighthouse down; afraid that impressionable youths would imitate her behavior. The lighthouse fell into disarray before being condemned, but local funding for the demolition fell through.

And to this day, the lighthouse stands.

I knocked on the door and asked the old lady to take me to a reference section for local urban legends. It was another ride in the elevator, moving forwards, left, up and down before coming to a stop back on the first floor, but in the rear of the building. She led me to a shelf which had about a dozen books as thick as I was, before pulling a slim one off the shelf.

“That’s all we have.”

I nodded, and moved over to a table, sitting down. I opened the book and was met with a plastic cover like the archivist had dealt with in the newspaper room. There was a table of contents, and a stylus that was attached to the side of the book. I picked it up, and clicked to the next page.

There were a few legends referenced in the book about burned out buildings and haunted parks, and I thought there might be something missing about Banana Island. The last selection, something that ran for one minute and three seconds, was the local legend of the lonely girl of Banana Island.

I clicked it with the stylus and waited for the book to load. Instead of being greeted by a complete text, I was met with keywords and a voice that emanated from inside the covers of the book. It began to warm up as pictures flashed on the left side. The voice was calm, cool, and decidedly British.

[MalReynolds]

Re: The Tin Cowboy

“On any day you could row out to Banana Island, given that you can find a boat, but it is only at night that you would have the opportunity to come into contact with ‘The Black Ghost,’ decidedly named as such after living such a sinful life. Although there are no confirmed reports, many people have claimed to see a ghostly figure clothed entirely in white walking around the viewing platform of the lighthouse, where Marlene Gibbons is said to have flung herself. Would you like to hear this article again?”

I tapped ‘No,’ with the stylus and was prompted with another page that offered a few bits of supplemental material that to my surprise, were not narrated. There were a few cross references about Banana Island, mainly having to do with the newspapers I had seen just a few minutes before.

And then there was a brief blurb about The Burlesque and Marlene’s local hangouts. I kept scanning for a few lines before coming across one tiny bit of information – she was part of the church revival that Mother Feldspar had told me about just a few days before her death.

Not knowing what to do with the information, I shut the book and placed it back on the shelf. I turned and jumped, staring into the wrinkled face of the archivist, who had been standing behind me for some time.

“Find everything you need?”

I nodded.

“I couldn’t help but see you were looking up things on Marlene Gibbons.”

“Mainly the Black Ghost,” I said.

The archivist nodded. “That’s one of the best spook stories we have around here. There are a few more places that are supposed to be ‘more haunted’ than that lighthouse, but that one has consistently satisfied curiosity seekers. You planning on going out there?”

“No,” I said, shoving one of my hands into my pockets. “Even if I was, I don’t know where to get a boat around here.”

“Well, it’s all in who you know,” she said, turning. “Is that all the help you’re going to need?”

“I guess so. I’m going to head out.”

She laughed congenially to herself before walking down the floor to the front desk. I followed behind her, not too closely, and exited the building. I sighed as the sun hit my eyes, giving me a brief headache. The air outside burned my lungs, and I took off toward Main Street. I stopped at the Main Street entrance to the board walk, across from The Kinder, and looked out into the ocean, trying to see if I could locate Banana Island or the lighthouse, but there was a gentle haze settling over the bay.

I turned and plodded very carefully down the road, past Westing, and into the outskirts of town. This wasn’t an aimless wander like it had been yesterday, rather with the information I now had, I had a few questions. The outskirts seemed much more unfriendly than the day before, but perhaps that could be attributed to me paying attention. As the buildings thinned out, the spaces between the buildings increased. Many of them were boarded off, but the alleys between the buildings were empty. It wasn’t frightening, rather it was ethereal and ghostly, made more so by the church looming in the distance.

There were no sisters walking in the graveyard today, nor was there a tiny woman waiting for me at the door. I walked up and knocked, and when there was no answer, I let myself in.

A man cried out and charged the door. I stepped out of the way and he slammed against the frame, knocking the door shut with a grunt. I stood there dumbfounded as the large man reeled back and prepared to punch me.

“Wait,” I cried out. My voice was mirrored by another soft female voice coming from the front of the church. Mother Feldspar stood at the altar, staring at the door, and the man lowered his fist.

“I thought you were Mark,” Mother Feldspar said, stepping down. “I thought he was walking in just like we talked about.”

“And so you send this gorilla to attack Mark?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I wasn’t Mark then,” I said, calming down. “Would have hated to mess that up for you.”

She smiled and moved in front of a window, bathed in a pale light. “What brings you back here, son?”

“Nothing much. Looking for excitement.”

I turned to the man, who was wearing priests clothing. His round face was bright red, like a tomato, he huffed.

“Looks, like I found it, too. Who the hell is this guy?”

“That’s my husband.”

Naturally.

“Hello, Father Feldspar,” I said, sitting down.

-

Mother Feldspar had recessed into the back of the church to get refreshments. I had asked her if I could snack on some sacrament, but she didn’t seem to enjoy my light-hearted joke. She emerged with a tray of tea, sugar cubes and biscotti which were harder than the actual body of Christ would have been had it been readily available. After almost breaking my tooth on the biscotti, I used it to stir my tea, which was quite a step up from the stale cracker.

“I’m going out to Banana Island later tonight,” I said, sipping my tea, “Trying to find the Black Ghost with one of my friends from Westing.”

Mother Feldspar sighed and Father Feldspar took a seat next to her, taking her hand.

“Why on Earth would you want to do that?” She finally said.

“Honestly, I have nothing better to do. The friend I’m going with has been showing me some undue animosity as of late, and I’m trying to figure out why. That’s part of it. But then, at the same time, it seems exciting, trying to find a ghost like that.”

“Mother Feldspar knew Marlene Gibbons. Do you know who Marlene Gibbons is?”

“The supposed Black Ghost, yes.”

“Mother Feldspar was part of the church revival. That seems like so long ago, doesn’t it dear?”

She nodded. “Marlene was an exotic dancer. But there was something about her, something so worldly. And she was so charming, I couldn’t help but be taken in by her. She said she reformed, but she died before she could prove it to anyone.”

“That’s a shame,” I said, taking a sip of my tea. “What exactly happened? I read some old articles at The Archive, but they were pretty bare-bones. Nothing but theory. I thought it might help if I could get straight to the thick of it, and you were the only person I knew who was alive during the revival of the church.” I paused. “Well, now I know two people,” I motioned towards Father Feldspar.

“I don’t even know what happened to her,” Mother Feldspar said. “But I know she didn’t kill herself. There’s no way – she was such a sweet person, so strong. I don’t think she could have ever thrown herself from the viewing deck like they said.

“She was intent on getting into heaven. She told me one day, and I believed her conviction. And then three days later, she went missing. I knew something happened. I knew it was too good to be true, to get a reformed sinner like that that was so devoted to their cause.

“Marlene helped both Sam and I out more than I think you could ever fathom,” Mother Feldspar finished.

“Sam knew Marlene?”

“My husband’s name is Sam as well, but yes, she also helped my daughter.”

I nodded. “So do you believe in any of this ghost nonsense? I came here to try and make heads or tails of it.”

“Well,” Father Feldspar began, “Typically a ghost is a remnant of another life.”

I was nodding along like I understood exactly what he was saying.

“While they haven’t documented any real paranormal activity, if she died with great sadness, like the police implied when they say she killed herself, then her ghost may linger. Or if she was angry at circumstances, but it all boils down to what you believe in. Do you believe when you go out there tonight that you’ll see something supernatural, or do you think it’s a load of rubbish?”

“I don’t know.”

“In any case, you’ll probably have much more fun if you go in with an open mind. Every bump and falling rock will make you shiver.”

I paused. “I’m not sure if I want adventure. I’m not sure what I want. I don’t know if I’d like it or if I’d hate it or if I’d wet myself when a ghost pops up. I just don’t feel like I know the type of person I am anymore, if you understand.”

Mother Feldspar shook her head. “Completely. Sometimes things happen in life, we don’t know why or to what purpose. It’s easy to get lost like that, but you still have your humanity.”

I would rather have my memories than my humanity. What a Gift of the Magi it would be if I gave up my humanity to find in my past I was inhumane. I would fit right in.

“You just have to take everything you have and try and make something of it,” Father Feldspar said.

Three days worth of memories wouldn’t serve much, I thought to myself. I have a potentially fatal disease, a girl that makes me uneasy, and I’ve been attacked more times than I care to remember.

Maybe that was the norm, though. Maybe every person runs into a Triggered beast every day, and surviving is an adventure in itself.

I thought about the day at The Center, staring down the barrel of a gun. I had stood, prepared to swing my book bag at his face, but his footsteps had been so misleading. He was further away than I had thought, and all I could do is stand and watch while he reloaded the gun. I had been shaking, my adrenaline had been pumping, and there was a twinge of regret for not being able to protect Liza better.

And if I had helped stave the attack, I would be in prison.

But after, it felt good. The faux sense of bravery that had come across felt good, like it was something I was supposed to be doing. It felt good to be a risk taker.

The homeless man that tried to catch me that night on The Quad, that had tried to drag me down. More adrenaline.

And it felt, for some reason, like a change. When I opened my tennis bag for the first time and knew to skip the bump in the middle, it was like that. It felt like I was doing something I wanted to be doing, surviving in a world where I didn’t quite fit in or understand. Every risk I took was rewarded by my body, mind, and surroundings.

“I think I believe in ghosts, Father,” I said finally.

“Then I think you’ll have a good time,” he said.

“If you do see Marlene, Tim, please tell her we say ‘Thank you for everything.’”

“If I see a ghost and I still retain the ability to speak, I will most certainly pass along the message,” I said.

We sat and talked for a few more minutes, mainly about the decay of the outside of the city. The Feldspars’ seemed to think it was indicative of some kind of interior collapse. Mother Feldspar noted that there were many buildings that were scheduled for destruction, but at the last minute funding was pulled.

That explained the extreme number of hollow shells that littered the path back in to Westing. Father Feldspar said that while not everyone believed in religion, that they had a sense of morality, right and wrong that was indelible. People in the city abandoned all hope when they stepped across the limits, and that was that. They went in to Westing to forget about everything and were handed a whole new set of problems to deal with to help compensate and accommodate their changing lifestyle.

There was truth in his words, and I found myself agreeing whole heartedly. He was an entertaining speaker with a salt and pepper beard that looked like it needed a trimming. When he spoke, it would bounce up and down, and when he furrowed his brow, he looked quite like a pug. He was in stark contrast to Mother Feldspar. The more I looked at her, the more I was angry at myself for not realizing her as Sam’s mother. They looked so incredibly similar, save for one or two small features. The biggest was the sense of sincerity and warmth I received from Mother Feldspar when I first arrived at Westing Chapel as compared to when I first met Sam at Westing College.

Father Feldspar was a portly man who had a bellowing laugh, and Mother Feldspar, while never really laughing, always found a good opportunity to smile.

It was a shame such a nice building and such nice people were wasted by such a heinous society. It wasn’t that long of a walk, and Mother and Father Feldspar were such kind people. The Chapel was a place that felt more like a home than a church, and when I looked back at the city from the open front door, it actually pained me that I would have to leave them behind.

Before I left, I promised them that I would return the next day with any report I had, Black Ghost or otherwise, and try and bring Sam along with me. They didn’t seem to agree with the last part.

“If she wants to come, she’ll come,” Mother Feldspar said. “Don’t try and force it.”

“I won’t if you don’t want me to,” I said. “I’m sure she misses you two, though.”

“Please. You had no idea who I was when you first arrived here, Tim. She doesn’t talk about us much, does she?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve only been here for a few days, and I’ve known Sam for the same amount of time, but I rarely find myself having the time to sit down and chat with her. She’s busy with class, I’m busy with – I keep myself busy, I suppose.”

“Well, that’s –“ Mother Feldspar wanted to say “Good.” There was a crease across her face that said she was glad that she didn’t have to give up on Sam just yet, that there was hope that Sam still talked about her parents. Instead, she said, “Something. Well, that’s something.”

Something good, something bad, something noxious, something poisonous, something deadly, something depressing, something. In the space between her intentions and her words was something. Regret, defeat, hope, love, hate, pain, bliss, something.

I stood, not having any words. I tipped my invisible hat and stepped out the front door, catching a few last words from Father Feldspar as the doors closed. They sounded like, “Nice boy,” but I couldn’t quite be sure.

Mother and Father had nothing but something. And that’s all they had.

-

I walked back into Westing with a sense of commandment overflowing, a newfound sense of authority. Outside of a few obvious and choice moments, I had found something I had in fact liked about my existence, and that was thrill. Not immediately associated with fun or safety, but I had found something to help drive me. Instead of being hollow, I was certain I had found something that I had lost. God, it fit and God, it felt good.

I knocked on Dylan’s door, despite being fifteen minutes early from his taught seven o’clock deadline. When he didn’t answer, I turned my back to the door and walked to the guest dorm, sliding my ear to the door and listening in for any sign of The Gary’s. When I could hear nothing, I let myself in and pried the bed from the left wall, revealing the recess where I had left my bag earlier. I slid it back down and pushed the bed back into place, putting the bolts that should have held the bed to the wall back in just for show.

And then I checked under the far bed. The two vials of Flash were safe underneath. I was surprised, honestly. The amount of vagrants that stayed in this very room and they hadn’t found the drugs yet. It was quickly turning into not only a place to sleep for the upcoming days, but a safe-house of sorts.

Content with the safety of the bag, I left the Guest Dorm and headed back to Dylan’s room, once again knocking.

“Hold on, hold on,” he said through the door. “I’m coming.”

I casually leaned against the adjacent wall and waited. After a few minutes, Dylan opened the door and looked out at me.

“So, you decided on this after all,” he said, hoisting a small backpack.

“Yeah. Not much to lose.”

He nodded. “Well, good. Wouldn’t have gone without you.”

“Really?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself. I just don’t want to be out there alone. Could be dangerous.”

I sighed. “Well, if you throw me in the line of fire and I live, you’ll have to answer to me.”

“Look at this tough guy,” Dylan said to no one in particular.

“Are you ready or are you going to stand in the hallway mocking me until I die of boredom?”

“Oh, I thought you might have wanted to pack something.”

“Like what? Do I look like I have a coat? Maybe a change of pants in case I get scared? Forget about it. I’m ready.”

Dylan shut the door and reappeared a second later, throwing a denim coat at me.

“Put that on. You’ve gotten some never, sure, but it’s cold out there. I don’t want you freezing to death, especially if we hit a cross wind.”

I stared at him blankly before sliding the coat on. It was a surprisingly tight fit.

“That’s your coat,” he said, stepping out and shutting the door. “You left it that stupid party up north. I took it in case I happened to see you again, so you can keep it.”

“I know it’s my coat, Dylan. I’m not an idiot,” I said, looking at the sleeves. “And you said you didn’t think you would see me again.”

“Caught me. I planned on keeping a ratty denim coat for myself. Oh, I’m a criminal mastermind, just you watch out, Tim Unknown Last Name.”

“Smithson,” I said quickly as if the name actually belonged to me. “Tim Smithson. Your memory is worse than mine.”

“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” Dylan said, standing, trying to size me up. He knew something had changed, but wasn’t sure what.

“What, you’re going to turn around now? We’re too far gone to turn around,” I stepped forward in front of his door. “It’s your plan, Tonto, so let’s get it done with.”

He sighed and shifted the bag on his shoulder. “As you wish,” he said, heading towards the stairs. “As you wish,” he repeated under his breath when he thought I was out of earshot.

I watched him jaunt down the stairs, having to slow his pace to adjust his thin glasses. His brown leather coat looked like my wallet, but suited him well, as did his backpack. He had torn all identifying corporate tags off, but they were still visible, lines of dirt and clean patches outlining them perfectly.

He turned and muttered, “Hurry up,” as I was walking down the stairs, before rushing out the front door. I followed, and we disappeared into the night.

[FoJaR]

Re: The Tin Cowboy

massachussets *wink*

[MalReynolds]

Re: The Tin Cowboy

Dylan was hop-stepping instead of walking down the street, which in turn made me half jog to catch up with him. His book-bag was jumping up and down with every other step he took.

“What do you have in there,” I finally caught up with him.

“Clothes, water bottles, map, baseball bat.”

“A baseball bat?”

“I always carry one around when I do stuff like this. It’s the most intimate sincere form of protection I can think of, outside of a gun. And if you’re caught with a gun by the police, well, you can kiss the rest of your life goodbye.”

I felt very defenseless. After a brief period, we reached the Main Street boardwalk entrance, when Dylan and I vaulted over. He started running down, in the direction of The Kinder, his footfalls echoing off of the petrified wood, slamming against the buildings and reverberating over the serene ocean. I kept my eyes open, staring across the bay trying to catch any glimpse that I could of Banana Island, but the haze had set in very well in the last few hours and completely obscured my view. I did, however, see the outcropping of rocks that jutted from the coast.

Dylan signaled for me to follow him out onto the rocks. I wondered why he didn’t speak, but I saw his face in the failing light. The walk or run or whatever you would call it had taken a lot out of him. His legs were wavering and he was very out of breath, waving for me to step with him.

I didn’t think the water could be too deep as we crossed the spaced rocks, but it was hard to tell in the growing darkness. I reached into my pocket and dropped a coin, but it disappeared from view before I could see the bottom. It was perhaps more treacherous than I had originally thought, and even if the water wasn’t an endless abyss, the cold was sure to take you within seconds of falling in. I pulled my jacket closer against my body and began to step more carefully as the water began to lick hungrily at the sides of the rocks, as if it had sensed the presence of two beings that it would love to have.

When we reached the end of the outcropping, Dylan took his bag off of his shoulder and removed what looked like a small bill. I didn’t understand what he was doing with it until I saw the shape move. There was an old man sitting at the end of the rocks in a black rain coat that was slick with ocean water. His face was cracked and gray, and after he removed his hood, I saw that the majority of his head was covered with burn marks. He grabbed the money from Dylan and I saw he had the same marks along his hands.

There was a small boat tethered to the edge of the outcropping with an even smaller rope. The old man climbed into the boat and motioned for Dylan and I to follow, but I was apprehensive. The boat looked like it had enough trouble sustaining one person, much less three. But Dylan didn’t hesitate. He stepped right into the boat, pushing it a little further out.

Sighing, I too stepped off of the outcropping, my legs forming a bridge between the famished water. I sat in the middle of the boat, between Dylan and the old man.

“Well, what are you waiting for,” the old man spoke. “Row.”

“What? It’s your boat,” Dylan retorted.

“Aye, and you’re renting it. I’m here to make sure I get it back, see? Only thing I have left, see? But my hands, they’re too far gone to grip a paddle or grease an oar lock. We can sit in this boat all night if you want, but you all don’t want that, so row.”

“Where did you find this guy,” I said over my shoulder to Dylan.

“I’m not ‘some guy,’ kid. My name is Wesley, see, and I used to be real famous around here. A real to do.”

“Where did you find Wesley,” I repeated over my shoulder to Dylan.

“I asked around if anyone knew about any boats that could head out to the island past curfew and that old bitty at the archives told me about Wesley.”

“Great,” I thought. Dylan has never met this guy before. It was pure impulse.

I liked it.

I grabbed both oars and pulled them back as Wesley pulled the line in, dropping the wet rope in the boat. Within five strokes, my shoulders ached and my ears hummed, but as the number of pulls grew, the less I seemed to mind the constant strain on my muscles. Dylan was trying his best to give me directions to the Island, and all Wesley could do was laugh at how we were nautically challenged.

Waves started crashing against the side of the boat as the wind picked up. Dylan was wrapping a scarf around his neck, still trying to give directions through the wool. After a few minutes, he pulled out a water bottle and took a swig, before putting it in the bag, not bothering to offer me any.

My face had a thin sheen of sweat covering it and my white shirt was sticking to my body. It was uncomfortable in the cold, like the hands of a sick girlfriend clinging all over my body, but I rowed on. I finally lost the feelings in my arms and we slowed down.

“I’d row,” Dylan said as I let the paddles drop, “But I need to navigate.”

“Yeah. Just let me take a little rest,” I gasped.

“Oh, come on man. We’re losing time here. Every second we spend idling in the ocean is another we won’t get to spend on the Island.”

“Don’t talk to me like I don’t know that, Dylan, it’s difficult.”

“Well –“

“Will you shut up, you pansy!” Wesley yelled before falling back, laughing, and slapping his knee. As he rollicked, the boat tipped back and forth uncomfortably. I only hoped he was talking to Dylan and not me.

“Hey man,” Dylan’s voice was shaky, “Could you not rock the boat, please?”

“Oh, don’t be afraid little man. I know the limits of this vessel, see, I built it myself. Was going to be a present for my wife, see, but things happen. And I know the limits of this vessel, because I built it myself,” he nodded satisfactorily, his voice tapering off before being caught in the wind.

I picked the oars back up much to the dismay of my shoulders and chest. I pushed my feet against the bar at the bottom of the boat and pulled back as hard as I could, trying desperately to find a rhythm to work with, and hoping even more that my arms would go numb again. But there was no such luck for me in store that night. Instead of being overcome with a cool numbness, my arms were breached with a burning fire that roared every time I moved in any direction. After a few minutes of grunting, Wesley reached outside the boat and splashed water on me.

“Cool off, soldier, you don’t have much more to do.”

I laughed. Easy enough for him to say, he was sitting and watching me row. How many times had he made this very trip, though?

“I bet back in the day you were quite the sailor,” I grunted, pulling the oars back. It was all I could do to stop from yelling.

“Oh, never much for me, you know. The wife, she loved it, that’s why I built her this boat, see? We would go out rowing all the time, see, before the Rebirth and it was always fun, see?”

“What happened to your wife,” Dylan piped up from the back. “No one talks about their wife in the past tense like that unless something happened.”

“She died a while ago,” he said. His voice sounded a frown. The sun was completely gone and all I could see was his silhouette on the horizon line.

“How’d she die?” Dylan asked.

“Come on, man,” I muttered under my breath.

“Fire. I tried to save her, but there was no way. I barely made it out myself.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I coughed, pulling the oars back again. “That’s very tragic.”

Wesley perked up, turning his attention in another direction.

“Land ho,” he yelled. I looked in the direction he was gesturing and saw the Island looming in the distance. The shore looked somewhat accessible, but I still could not see the light house through the fog. I dipped my arms in the water before grabbing the oars and pushing us towards shore.

When our boat hit the sand of the beach, I jerked forward, and I dropped myself out of the vessel, rolling out. I could feel the sand sticking to my wet shirt as I lay outstretched, staring at the sky. Wesley stepped out of the boat, standing over me.

“You did good, but don’t be such a baby about it,” he smirked.

“Whatever,” I said turning over and climbing to my feet. The beach gave way to a few dirt paths that were now overgrown. I could only imagine they were used for construction of the light house.

“I’m waiting by the boat,” Wesley said, turning and standing with his feet in the ocean. “But take your time,” he pulled the boat further up shore, stepping inside and sitting in the back, lowering his hood and nodding off.

Dylan and I stepped up to the first trail. I was glad to be on solid land. Not even the shifting sand was enough to satisfy me. It felt good to have something consistent under my feet again. My arms hung dead at my side as we moved forward.

The path moved into a grove of trees that spanned the length of the Island. The Island itself wasn’t too wide. It took less than ten minutes to traverse it from side to side, and once we found there was no way around, but rather through the trees, Dylan began to express regret.

“They’re just trees, man.”

“I want to know if the boat is still there, or if that burned freak took off without me. Without us.”

“I don’t think he’s the type of guy –“

“Whatever, man, I’d just rather be safe than sorry,” he said, checking his watch.

“What time is it?”

“It’s almost nine.”

“Took us two hours to get out here?”

“Round about.”

“So even if we left now, Dylan, you wouldn’t be able to get back into the dorms. Especially given the condition of my arms and the speed at which I would be rowing.”

“You’re right.”

“Better to spend the night out here than back on shore with the crazies,” I said, turning to the trees.

Something was moving in the corner of my eye. I saw something dart into the trees, pushing branches out of the way, but when I turned to see if I could get confirmation, I just found Dylan yawning.

“I thought I saw something run into those trees, Dylan,” I motioned down the line.

“Yeah right. Stop trying to freak me out.”

I rolled my eyes and stepped off of the dirt trail into the woods. I held the obstructing branch for Dylan, and he slowly stepped through.

It was almost cave darkness in the grove of trees. The only light that we had to assist us was from Dylan’s dinky flashlight and the moon, which didn’t find it prudent to break through the branches of the trees except in select spots that were entirely useless to traversing the Island.

[MalReynolds]

Re: The Tin Cowboy

The grove was much thicker from the inside than I had thought. The branches seemed to block our path at every turn, grabbing at my back and hair. Soon they stopped feeling like branches and began to feel very much like tiny claws trying to hold us back from progressing any further. I could hear my shirt rip as I tried to step though, and thorns scratching at my leg. The path ahead was impossible to tread given the sheer density of the forest, but Dylan and I persevered, pushing on harder. And just as soon as the branches started grabbing at us, they stopped and the path became easier to tread.

Now the moonlight came down and bathed the grove in a comforting glow. The gnarled and twisted roots that came up out of the ground at the base of the trees cast odd shadows, but were illuminated and glowed white. There was a slight fog by our feet that cleared away with every step we took forward, and through the canopy of trees I could see the stars hanging in the sky above. The branches hung out at odd angles from most of the foliage, and there were odd shrubs here and that that seemed out of place, but this area was much at odds with the one we had just passed through.

Soon, as we continued, there was sound. Frogs started croaking and I could hear birds in the distance, despite not being able to see any nests. There were creatures moving about, most likely squirrels or something else rodent in nature, and as my eyes followed the sound of one that ran under the leaves, my eyes came across the shadow I had seen dash into the grove ahead of us. This time, I did not take my eyes off of it, but the light around it had failed and all I saw was a slight figure. I could not tell if it had seen me or not, but we both stood still. Dylan, unaware, moved ahead.

And as soon as I blinked, the shadow was gone.

Dylan had stopped some feet ahead at the trunk of an overly large tree and was staring at the ground near the roots. He hunkered down and began to paw at something, which garnered my curiosity. Dylan reached into his bag, pulled out a bottle of water, glanced over his shoulder, and tossed it at me. To be honest, I hadn’t been expecting the notion, and the bottle bounced off of my shoulder, tumbling to the ground.

“Come on, slick, take a look at this.”

I moved over next to him and stared at the ground. There was an odd plant that was protruding from the soil, glowing a faint white. As I stared, I watched as the plant seemed to grow, and then expel some of the white fog that had gathered at our feet. And it repeated this motion every few seconds. I fanned my hand back and forth, clearing some of the fog and saw more of these small mushrooms, spaced out every five or so feet, coating the ground in the fog.

“These mushrooms, Tim, they can be harvested, you know? They can make you trip, but the extract, that’s the real killer.”

“What?”

“You get some of these mushrooms and run it through a purifier, you get low grade Flash.”

“What? Really?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s – How do you know that?”

Dylan sat back on the root of the tree, and opened his bottle of water, taking a swig.

“What’s life without a little mystery?” He finally said.

“Tell me.”

“A few months ago, I was maybe trying to get into the business. I didn’t think it through, didn’t realize how saturated the market actually was. I just wanted something that would help me pay for things, you know, for Liza and stuff, but – There’s no way you can make money with that stuff around here unless you have some major connections.”

“That’s brazen.”

“And stupid. Not a second I don’t regret even thinking about going into sales like that. When you start selling, they make you test your first batch.”

“You’ve never –“

“I’m not stupid.”

“Well, that’s open for debate.”

He chuckled. “Anyway, Liza found out. My trip up North was also to reconnoiter about the whereabouts of some of these, and she caught wind, and then she wouldn’t talk to me after that. That’s why things are weird between her and I. You know about her dad, right?”

“Yeah, she told me.”

“Any hatred she had for that man is superseded by the hatred she has for the drug that resulted in his death.”

“That why you don’t like me?”

“No, I don’t like you because I don’t know you. I don’t like anyone I don’t know. I was drunk when I invited you down here. Hell, I still don’t know anything about you, except that you somehow made fast friends with Tyler, Sam and Liza. That’s a trick in itself.”

“I’m personable.”

Dylan tilted his head back and laughed. “More like eager to please.”

“What’s so wrong with that? Is it wrong that I want people to be happy?”

“No. If you didn’t want people to be happy, you wouldn’t be out here with me, would you?”

I paused. “Not true. I came out here to find out why you were being such a callous bastard to me.”

“Point.”

“Here’s a question. Did you really come back to the room and try to find me?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“Put yourself in my shoes. A complete stranger shows up and takes hold of your hospitality, you don’t know anything about him except he might have a bad family and he carries around a tennis bag. That’s it. And you wanted me to go out to breakfast?”

“You extended the invitation, chief.”

“I wouldn’t if I thought you were going to accept.”

I sighed and looked down at the mushroom, puffing away.

“What’s to stop someone from coming to this island and harvesting these mushrooms?”

“Not enough in here to make any high quality Flash. Not even enough to make a series of low-grade. These mushrooms are too small, probably the sea air stunts their growth. I had no idea about them, though.”

I took a sip of my water. It was warm, but all at once it reminded me of how thirst I really was. I downed the bottle without a second thought and shoved the empty into my pocket.

“Come on,” Dylan said, rising to his feet. “The Island isn’t even that big. I don’t know how we’ve been traipsing around here for the last half an hour.”

We began to move again towards the friendlier portion of the woods. Within a minute, they had began to thin out in front of us, and I could see a moonlit field in the distance through the branches. There were flowers sprouting out of the ground, not enough to totally coat the field, but enough to draw my immediate attention away from the light house.

The light house loomed in the distance, raising three stories out of the ground. The light inside was no longer functioning, but the rotational platform that it stood was still going in circles. With very revelation, there was a loud squeak that shot through my ears. The trees inside the grove had made an excellent buffer against the sound.

We both moved forward without regard for the flowers, keeping our eyes fixed on the white building. There were patches of grey where the paint was peeling off of the bricks, and it began to look like a diseased person the closer we approached. Soon, the grey spots no longer resembled chipped paint, but indentations in a thin coating of skin that had scabbed over.

The railing along the top looked rusted, but it was hard to judge from our vantage point below. The Island tapered off after the light house into a thin point that the waves mercilessly crashed against. Any thoughts I had about rowing around the Island for easier access to the light house were immediately dashed as I saw how choppy and unpredictable the water was.

Dylan moved first around the base, which had a lip of red brick, towards a stair case which led to a damp wooden door. He made me take point as we headed up the stairs, and the door was warm to the touch despite the coldness of our surroundings. I was reserved about touching the handle, but I didn’t need to – the door pushed right open from my touch.

Dylan handed me his flashlight, and I stepped inside. There was a circular staircase that extended upwards, as well as a small one that extended into the ground. I took the smaller staircase first, down to another wooden door hidden in the center of the light house base. With a little encouragement from my elbow, the door opened and I was treated to the site of one old, rusted mattress and a window. I looked out and realized that this was the light house keepers sleeping area, back when it was functional, built right into the base of the light house, surrounded by the red brick. There hadn’t been enough room to build a cabin adjacent to the light house on either side, and putting one behind the light house would have obstructed the keeper’s immediate view of the ocean, which would have put boats at hazard.

The mattress was soaked through and through, and the box-spring it sat upon was rusted beyond all repair. When the beam from the flashlight hit it, I expected it to sound off, as a simple brushing from my passing leg had made the springs sing.

We stepped back into the main room and mounted the circular stairs. Dylan had his hand firmly planted on the smiley rail, the one pieces of metal in this brick monstrosity. We carefully stepped up, one at a time, not daring to put the weight of two people down on any given step. I would progress up three, turn, and provide the light for Dylan to do the same.

At the top, the stairs dead-ended at a wooden ladder that extended at an extreme angle up to the viewing platform. There was a thin trap door that was padlocked shut, but it didn’t take more than a brief touch to make the lock virtually disintegrate into a fine powder. I pushed the trap-door open and realized just how stale it had been inside the main chamber. The sea air hit my face and I was immediately cooled. It surprised me to find how hot I had been inside.

The trap door was almost too small for my frame, and that’s saying something. If George had been the second instead of myself, he would have had to wait on the landing below for Dylan to check the viewing platform. There’s no way he would have fit through such a tight squeeze. I propped myself up on my hands and pushed through the narrow opening, rolling over and climbing onto my knees.

I bent down into the trap door and offered a hand to Dylan, who eagerly took it. The rotational platform was ungodly loud at this distance, and I was taken aback at how it could be functioning with no sign of machinery in the depths of the light house, nor any immediate source of power.

Dylan reached his hand out slowly as the platform rotated, and as soon as his hand made contact, it stopped dead in its tracks. This made both of us jump more than the squeaking could have possibly done.

[MalReynolds]

Re: The Tin Cowboy

We both stared at the circle, and I was secretly hoping it would start again. Instead, an eerie silence befell us that not even the breeze coming off of the ocean could shatter.

We stepped out of the interior room onto the observation platform. I stared out across the expanse of the ocean until I could no longer tell the water from the night sky. The stars reflected off of the serene water and down the line, they became one. All at once I was afraid that I would drift up into the sky and I clutched the rusted metal railing.

There were faint footfalls as I realized that Dylan had circled around and was getting a better look at the Island from our vantage point. I turned and followed, and found him staring at the grove. It had felt so much larger than it looked, so much more dangerous. From our spot, it looked less like a forest and more like a thin smattering of trees that had been forgotten on the landscape.

My eyes drifted down to the flowers, the ones I had nonchalantly stepped on and over to get to the light house. It took me a few seconds to try and put together what exactly they looked like. The lilies – or whatever they were, growing in yellow, white and red – had formed an almost light-brite quality picture of a sideways skull that extended across the Island.

On the left side of the observation deck, the drop off went directly into the ocean. There was rope holding the railing together at that point, as if someone had taken the time to remove a stretch of metal.

“Well,” Dylan said, turning to face me, “Camp inside our out here?”

“It’s too damp inside and it’s too cold out here.”

“Pick one. Lesser of two evils and all that.”

I sighed. “Well, inside. In case it starts snowing.”

Dylan nodded and we moved back into the light house, carefully moving down the ladder, but keeping the trap door open to air out the interior as best we could. I leaned against the wall and watched Dylan pull a towel from his backpack, rolling it up tightly, before lying on the floor.

“Forget this,” he said, tossing me the towel. “I’m taking the bed down there.”

“Go right ahead. It’s gross.”

I unrolled the towel on the floor and laid down on top of it as Dylan marched down the stairs to the keeper’s old bedroom. Immediately warm, I removed my shirt, bunched it up, and laid my head down on it as if it was a pillow.

The mattress was making an inordinate amount of noise every time Dylan moved. Each time he so much as twitched, it delayed me from sleep for another few minutes.

“Dylan,” I called out. “What time is it?”

There was a pause, invaded by the mattress’ ambient noise as Dylan lifted his arm.

“Close to three.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I muttered. Time flies and all that.

There were no windows. The only source of light was a haphazard moonbeam that was coming down through the trap door next to me. It was impossible to measure how much time I spent lying there, thinking about sleep, or how long it had actually taken us to get across the Island.

The moon beam moved slowly, very slowly, as the Earth turned. And when it landed on my face, I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

-

When I awoke, I regretted removing my shirt. Despite wearing an undershirt, I was cold and shivering from the damp inside of the light house. My over shirt, that I had been using as a pillow, had somehow found its way out from under my head at some point and was now lying across the floor. I was still on the towel, although now I noticed all the pebbles that I had been lying on. My back was alive with pain.

The sun was much brighter inside the light house than the moon had been, and I saw that there were three small windows that punctuated the wall leading up to the observation platform.

Instead of waking Dylan, I headed back up, through the trap door, to the deck. I wanted to look out at the ocean, as it was, separate from the sky. When I set my feet down and finally righted myself, I was stunned to find someone looking out over the left side of the observation deck, where the rope was the railing.

I stepped over carefully, not wanting to startle whoever it was. My mind first flashed to Wesley, the boat-man. Perhaps he had come looking for us in the middle of the night. Then it flashed stupidly to Liza for some reason, as if she could have made her way out here in the dead of the eve.

The frame was slight and almost shivering. Whoever it was, they were far too smartly dressed for the weather. The person was wearing a red blazer and a skirt, with ordinary tennis shoes. From across the deck, I could see she was wearing a friendly white blouse and had a shock of red hair that was blowing in the wind. She had her hands outstretched on either side of the railing, and I saw that the rope was missing.

I walked over, tentatively, and tapped her on the shoulder. She turned, and seemed just as startled by my presence as I had been by hers.

She had a pleasant enough smile after she realized I meant her no harm.

“They say a girl jumped from here a while ago,” she said, turning back to the gap in the railing.

“Yeah. Marlene Gibbons, died of a broken heart. And drowning.”

“I don’t believe that one bit, sir,” she said, facing me.

“And why not?”

“I’ve lived in Westing most of my life, and while I never knew Marlene personally – Just look. It’s a perfect setup, isn’t it? The railing right here, missing like that? It had to have been something more than a depressed little girl.”

“Even if it was, I mean, what’s the point? She died so long ago.”

“What are you, new?” She asked, stepping away from the railing and leaning against the glass partition that divided the trap door and the observation deck. The wind stopped bothering her hair now, and it fell lightly around her shoulders. “If her killer is still out there, do you know what a story that’d be? It’d be intense.”

“And why would anyone care?”

“You’d be surprised what people care about, Mr…”

“Smith. Timothy Smith.”

“Josephine Robert.”

“Robert? Or Roberts?”

“Robert.”

“That’s strange.”

“I’ve heard worse.”

“Is that your real name?” I asked.

“It’s the one I’ve used for a long time. At least in my reporting. Is that you’re real name?”

“I’ve used this one for about four days,” I said, smiling. “How long have you been reporting? What paper?”

“Westing Press. It’s local and no one gives a **** about it, but it pays the bills, you know? And about ten years, give or take. Bringing the news to the people who really couldn’t care either way if the news is brought.”

“That’s a quaint way of putting it,” I said, moving next to her.

“What brings you to Banana Island, Tim Smith of four days?”

“I came here with a friend to check out the light house. Maybe to try and find the Black Ghost, if you’d believe it.”

“A sensible guy like you out ghost hunting? With a second person?” She smiled. “First rule of ghost hunting – you have to be alone.”

“Oh. Well, now that I know that, I don’t think I’ll catch the ghost. The Island is far too surreal at night for me to be here by myself, honestly. I don’t think I could stand it.”

“How did you get out here, anyway?”

“Well, there’s a boat-for-hire out there that leaves around nine. Some old codger named Wesley owns it. You know him?”

Without skipping a beat, “Yes.”

“Burns over most of his body. He’s real hard to forget.”

“Wesley and I go back some time. He was the first person to bring me out here, very nice about it. This was before he was burned up, I think. Feels guilty about the death of his wife, doesn’t he?”

“I guess so.”

“The burns he carries, those are like anchors to his legs. He can’t go much anywhere without being reminded of how he let her die.”

“That’s… A bummer, I guess.”

Josephine laughed, reached out and touched my arm. “A bummer. I like that. I haven’t heard someone talk like that in a while.”

I smiled as her hand lingered on my arm for a second. “How did you get out here?”

“I swam,” she said before giggling. “No, no, a friend of mine has a power boat. He works for the paper.”

“What’s his name?”

“It’s a nice boat,” she said, smiling. The wind was picking up again, tossing both her hair and mine.

“Come on,” I said, pulling her inside. “You’ll get blown off if we stay out here much longer.”