playing in terri windling's sandbox. based loosely on mumford's 'babel'.
Word on the street is that I'm the crazykid-halfbornchild-manicpixiedreamgirl of my B-town block and that I'm the one who puts the dead to sleep. People are generally kind of unreliable when it comes to things as important as this, so now is probably a good time to listen to me instead of them.
A) I don't know what the hell I am, and
B) I don't put them to sleep, don't be stupid. I just make them go back to being dead. There's something about this place that brings people back from where they're supposed to be. I don't know what it is- I don't have a word for it. But what I do is the opposite of whatever it is. I put them in their place. Which is where Holland comes into the story, in case you weren't already aware of that. He showed up covered in graveyard dirt, hair like twigs. People have an expiration date, and he was well past his.
These things are pulled to me, and like I said, I put them in their place. I tried. I swear to God, I tried. But sometimes things get pulled to me and latch on, and I guess sometimes you make friends with those things because they won't go away and if you can't get rid of them you may as well get to know them and I don't really even know, alright I just did what I thought was best I'm sorry if I messed it up even-
Okay.
There was a boy named Holland. He showed up at my door on the other side of death. I couldn't put him back down, so now we live together and he helps me with things.
The door slammed shut behind me. Holland shook a cigarette out of his pocket.
"Anything useful?"
I snorted. "Unlikely. She's been feeding us different stories every time. I'm thinking she made the whole thing up. Did you get anything?"
Holland sighed and tipped his head back. "It's from the river. That's what it said. I come from the river."
Bingo-presto-pumpkinpie-magic is what this was. There was a reason I kept Holland around on jobs, and now I remembered it. He's like eight-minute rice that cooks in three. "From the river. Alright. At least we have something to work with other than it's got horns and I think it's dead." Not that it was really much to go on- the river's nasty enough that any number of things could have crawled out of it. But it did mean we wouldn't have to check the Never-Never, which was a blessing.
"So you get back to work, and I'll start listening."
"Yes. You're the best."
So this is how my life turns, whether I'm the queen of the dead or a confused teenager. No one seems to give a shit about my age, which is refreshing, other than the fact that I'm short enough that no one will buy beer for me. I have a dead boy and a job that sometimes makes me laugh and sometimes makes me cry. I have masks that I wear at home, on the street, at other people's graves.
We're probably more similar than you want to think about.