Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection
by Elliot Bowers
Chapter 21
…
1.
…
Not only was it a well-established fact by now that other versions of Silent Hill exist in other realities, another truth came in how parts of that screwed-up town also exist between realities. There was so much Silent Hill that all of the town just couldn't be contained to one world. Therefore, one could say that the town kind of leaked between realities just as other realities leaked in, which allowed Heather to go on a merry trans-dimensional jaunt with Janice by way of something in one version of Silent Hill and into another, and then another…so on and so-forth. It was this leakage which allowed creatures other than Heather and Janice to slip between the worlds like a demonic equivalent of a foreign student-exchange program. A lot of those Silent Hills were appropriately described as being screwed up, too—all those dog monsters and fog monsters, crying monsters and flying monsters. The fog, especially don't forget that kick-ass fog, not quite hiding everything a person doesn't want to see.
Oh, but the Silent Hill of this reality was going to see different days. This town was all fouled up for far too long in an all-enshrouding and light-killing fog, if not hope-killing fog. Too long was this town cut off and away from the rest of the normalcy from where it came. For too damned long, its people were cut off and away from humanity just as the edges of town were cut away in the days in which the fog came…and those damned monsters. With the death of the Presence, all of that was an undone deal.
That infamous fog was heated up and cleared away by the bright golden rays of full sunlight from the real sun, a bright golden thing shining from the sky. Survivors had long since come out of their hidey-holes within the depths of buildings with boarded-up windows and row-houses reinforced as so they resembled homemade fortresses against the forces of darkness. Darkness gone with the fog, now the people could come out. Their eyes were widened and skin paled in adjusting to how things were before. Now everything was all bright and clear again for these townies. They squinted and looked around and saw clear views of streets and houses, trees and parked cars at the sides. The day was open and belonged to the people. For the sake of considering how some folks of other worlds aren't human, let it be known that this day belonged to human people—daylight brought by the return of real sunlight from a sun that wasn't scheduled to dim for another few billion years in this reality.
The mildew and mold, along with other kinds of vegetable-like life that that didn't even belong in this world, all of that started to dry up as the environment here was becoming dry and all sunny. And if those forms of other-worldly life were getting weak and dying off, so were the monsters. Like the mildew and mold, the monsters were just so aggressive and strong before. Now they were all gimped.
Science could maybe explain this. If one believed in science explaining everything, perhaps one could say that some kind of essential chemical nutrient vital to the monsters' survival was being leeched out of the environment with the fog being vaporized. An alternate explanation could be had in regards to the physical aspects of their habitat, the climate changing in ways to make life inhospitable to them. The world was a-changin'…again, and the monsters weren't changin' with them. Now the monsters may as well go the way of the dinosaur even if it took those king lizards a good long time to die out. These monsters were going to be done in days.
Then again, it's too bad science has the bad habit of being wrong for too-long lengths of time. Recall that scientists are the first jokers in line to start ragging on anything that doesn't fit their scientific world view. Scientists call ghost-hunters a bunch of hoaxers, frauds and loonies. Yeah, and scientists were ragging on spiritualists since the Victorian Era in England. The loch ness monster is an old fisherman's tale, so say those well-dressed guys with official opinions. Loch ness monster, my ass! Scientists therefore classify such phenomena in the same folders as the ones used to store tales told by country bumpkins about rocks falling from the sky and giant sea-monsters washing up on shore. And scientists kept denying rocks coming out of the sky and the existence of sea monsters…right up to the time that meteors were discovered and when dead specimens of giant squid really did wash up on shore. Oops, science fumbles again, and again. As for ghosts and demons… Well, anybody from this screwed up town will tell all about that.
And if one cottoned on to the more spiritual and supernatural explanation of things, there was plenty of justification to be had for the monsters dying out. Spiritually, maybe it was the unseen presence which gave those monsters the means of slipping through into this world and staying here. The unseen presence could have given them some kind of spiritual energy or something to stay alive even while their bodies were so malformed as to be barely viable. With the unseen presence having become the Presence, physically manifested and killable—then killed—the big boss who kept their ugly monster-asses alive was gone, baby. They couldn't stay healthy in this world without that spiritual nutrition. Also, they sure as Hell had a hard time going back to where they came from since reality was a lot more solid now.
They couldn't stay either, becoming just so weak and in a dying state. Everything in full town daylight was all crisp and clear. The monsters' bodies were failing. All of those ugly mutant-bastards, big and small, squat and tall, they just couldn't handle it.
Not only were the monsters physically weak, they were also a heck of a lot less scary in full daylight. Those freaks were not any less ugly, mind, just not as scary. Inhuman beings with extra limbs, shambling creatures with fur, things that were once human and things that weren't even from worlds that had humans in them, all of those things were limping along the street in dazed conditions or cowering from the clear brightness, hiding themselves whereas they once strutted so proudly like they owned this town.
So monsters don't look like ordinary folks or ordinary animals for that matter. Yet they were mostly harmless by this point. The worst of them were laid out in the open and lazing about, sick and weak in the unfamiliar air. In short, the monsters were pathetic.
It's party time. "Kill the monsters!" shouted one of the townspeople, a shout in the bright day, raising a lead pipe in a clenched fist. All kinds of laws in Heather's world outlawed lead in piping a long time ago. Not in this one. If the surgeon general was around, he or she would say something about lead pipes being used as bludgeons can be harmful to monsters' health.
For those whose attention spans are still up to par thus far, this needs bit of extrapolation. Lead causes all kinds of long-term toxic maladies when used in piping and dinner plates. It drove the rich folks in Ancient Rome absolutely nuts because that was exactly what the Ancient Romans used lead for—pipes and plates. Eating off of lead dining-ware, drinking water out of lead pipes, that's bad news. The stuff gets into the blood, and into the brain… It made lots of rich and important Ancient Romans sick and dying but not before they had some more influence on language used even thousands of years into the future. Lead, plumbum in Latin, like the lead used in lead pipes. That's why it's called plumbing. It doesn't take much stretching of the ol' thinkworks to realize where the word plumber comes from. And by the way, certain kinds of professionals in Ancient Rome kept the entrances houses and homes safe from trouble—the Latin word for door being janua. Janua, Janitor, it's too easy to figure out that connection, especially the connection to certain lost professionals who had dealings with certain pathways between dimensions… (Also try reading the name Janice out loud to a student of that very same civilization. See what you're told.) Ah, those Ancient Romans and their extended influence on realities far beyond their own, gotta love 'em!
All this talk of ancient civilizations and professions aside, things are just about to get savage—the townsfolk getting medieval on some monsters' asses. Kill the monsters! Kill them all!
Other people took up this savage battle-cry and moved accordingly. There were plenty of wasted monsters lying around in the open that were just waiting to be bludgeoned, butchered, bashed, stomped, slaughtered, obliterated and just plain obliterated. Therefore, there was plenty of action to be had around here. Before this, the people had plenty of exercise in running from some monsters and fighting others where they could. The townspeople were also well-fed since hoarded supplies of canned and preserved food also lasted pretty long since the human population was thinned out—most humans having disappeared or being done in by nasty things that crawled into this universe from whatever trans-dimensional toilet or gutter they came from. Not anymore, dudes! It would be the townspeople who were doing the killing now.
Kill the monsters! Kill 'em! Kill 'em a-a-a-all! Now everybody was in on the action, lody-doddy every-body. People all had their trusty bludgeons and sharpened implements which were well-used in that long time of surviving the time of fog. Axes, baseball bats, pickaxes, fire-axes shovels with the edges sharpened by scraping them along the street, even angled car-jacks, you name it, and they were using it. Wham! Smash! Squish! Spl-l-l-lat! (Ooh yeah, especially splat.)All kinds of sounds came from all of those things being used on all kinds of monsters! Yes-sir-ee-Bob, killing monsters is fun for the whole family.
With all of this monster-killing going on, it was inevitable that a lot of monsters would end up dead—which was sort of the whole point. Heaps of malformed creatures, inhuman beings and things that didn't look even close to human, whole piles of those dead things were building up on ever street and street corner, along with every sidewalk. Dead and dying monsters were dragged along and tossed onto sidewalk heaps made of their downright ugly brethren to make the heaps even bigger. More of them were being heaped on all the time.
Meanwhile, people were going after stored hoards of kerosene, gasoline and lighter fluid. And when some people couldn't find spare jerry-cans of the stuff, they used lengths of rubber hose to siphon some out of those long-parked vehicles and pour the resulting liquids into buckets. It was a wonder that the gasoline was still good to use after all of this time, as if the fog had slowed time enough to prevent the degredation of that flammable chemical. Some of it wasn't good, but still… Well, it was no use keeping go-juice in cars that wouldn't run anymore anyway—being subject to the oxidizing and corrosive effects of that odd fog, the fog which wouldn't come back any damned more. What was with the fuel?
Oh goodness! Here we go with more extrapolation. Come on now, pay attention. This is really important. Sit up in your chair and cut the chatter. (And Jimmy, if you throw that wad of paper, it'll be a trip to the principal's office for you courtesy of either your own two feet or the security guard in the hall.)
Now we go back to the point at hand. Monsters are dirty, diseased, ugly, evil. Things that are dirty, diseased, ugly and evil are best disposed of in a way well-known to humanity since the mythical act of Prometheus bringing light to humanity. That means of disposal was fire.
(Since we've got fiery destruction going, you're paying attention now, huh class?) All of those jerry-cans and buckets of flammable liquids were poured wholesale onto the heaping piles of monsters. So light 'em up, dudes!
And light they did. Those heaps were becoming bonfires of malformed, deformed and strange flesh that oozed blood that was more often of colors other than Earth-animal red. It was interesting how the oily blood really did act like the bubbly stuff that comes up from the ground in some parts of the world, flammable as Hell. Somebody was always around with a lighter or a match to set to the works to get the blazes started on all the streets around here. Some kinds of monsters gave off toxic fumes—particularly the kinds of monsters with shells and scales instead of skin.
But in general, the drying bodies of the monsters went up pretty easily. Smoke was up and in the air in no time. It brings to mind that old movie where someone of the military sort glorified the aroma of a certain chemical ordnance in the A.M. Speaking of the military, it would be the palls of smoke from these street-side fires which would be seen by soldiers of the National Guard, units being mobilized and deployed to come into the newly returned Town of Silent Hill.
It was happy endings all around for the people, and it was a not-so-happy tale for the monsters. Yet this was just one ending for just one world's version of Silent Hill. There are other universes, other realities. In those other realities, the darkness and fog still remain. Things borne of the darkness still rule. Those are other stories, however—other places. This place at this time was made free of the darkness and madness. Other stories still go on. Other worlds…
…
That wasn't the end of this story. If this was a movie or a rather expensively made computer-game, the surviving saviors of that Silent Hill would go riding off into the sunset as the sweet gentle parting theme-song plays while the screen fades to black. Roll the credits, white words scrolling on a black background—a blackness darker than the darkness of the universe.
Those two girls managed to get out and away. They were not dead. Their lives went on even after all of that dark madness involving alternate-reality trips and strange sights. What a long, strange trip it's been. They've dealt with places so wrecked that not even real-estate speculators could sell them. They've also dealt with creatures so twisted, distorted ugliness that not even a mother could love—because their mothers probably would have flushed their own malformed progeny down toilets or sent them off to orphanages, whatever. (Goodness knows what mothers in other universes really do to the babies that don't look right to them. It wouldn't be surprising if they dumped 'em into nuclear-powered grinders to make baby-flesh meat patties to fry up on Friday nights. It would have to be Saturday because everybody would be too bombed to do serious cooking on Saturday.)
What was it that Janice said? Oh yes… As soon as the deed was done, the party was to be dissolved. They long suspected that Janice—as if that was her real name—had plans for them. Such plans involved the pulses of both Heathers, as in stopping their pulses. Would the Heathers be allowed to go happily sauntering off and away after transgressing upon Janice's sacred domain? Hells no. Janice was going to kill both of those trans-dimensional troublemakers as soon as they helped her destroy the unseen presence. Janice ended up being destroyed herself.
An awful lot of dying seemed to happen around the name Heather nowadays. Their mothers were dead, killed by sickness. Their dads were dead, killed in their sleep. Lots more people—human and otherwise—were also dead, dead, and dead some more. A person would think they were part-timing it for the grim reaper himself…or herself, depending on one's religious outlook.
This didn't leave the girls unaffected. All of that death put a real damper on things. They both shared the pain of their own lives from other worlds. Now that they had each other as well as their reawakened abilities, this constant pain and suffering imposed upon them by others had to stop. They would make it stop.
Also let it be known that, though both Heathers looked especially human on the outside, they were not borne of this world themselves. They were especially susceptible to the contaminants of a certain other dimension. Dark fluid began to mingle within their seemingly human bloodstream. All of that exposure to the bad radiation, the toxic air, all of that weakened the human aspects of their physiology. And the pain, don't forget about the pain. The dark fluid within their bodies reacted to the pain and fed off of it. That was exactly how and why their inhuman abilities were able to surface. Was it too much to say that this could mean big trouble?
…
That little radio-which-really-wasn't-a-radio was…resting upon a darkened desk-that-really-wasn't-a-desk. It goes without saying that this room really wasn't just a room, not anywhere in this world. That would mean it was actually nowhere. This nowhere-place radio (which really wasn't a radio and all that) sat silent for a little while. All was just so quiet.
As they say, it's quiet before the storm. Who the Hell is this mystical and all-knowing they, by the way? They say this, and they say that. The last group of entities described as they ended up being burnt up with their nasty buddies in those great big heaping piles of monster-corpses. This was a different kind of they, those humans who say goofball and immortal sayings like, better to have loved and lost than not have loved at all and about how bad things happen in threes, all those folksy sayings from all over the world, many of the worlds where they had a human language.
Speaking of silence before climactic chaos, a big storm of static flared out from the radio's little speaker. Given the noise that sucker was making, a person would think the radio was being tortured, slaughtered and gutted, its seemingly little electronic life being snuffed out by a would-be radio killer who couldn't take the noise. People who use lots of paper get called tree killers. People who experiment on helpless little critters in laboratories for the advancement of medical science are called animal killers. Why not radio killers?
Blasting static and loud squealing shrieked out and let the world know that the electronic radio wasn't happy at all. This time, there was no subtlety in the radio's noise of fearful screams. It was an out-and-out loud warning about what was going to happen. There were no subtle lyrics with double meanings this time. Something really wrong was…coming, really wrong, really bad, heaps of big trouble on the way…!
…
2.
…
This world went on as usual, things in this city. Darkness made for the sky overhead—an infinite darkness, seemingly starless as miscellaneous urban pollutants washed out the light from the stars. Darkness above, the streetlamps illuminating streets and there being a lot less traffic around. Most people were asleep or ought to be in their little apartments within big apartment buildings. The coming of night means that people ought to take it easy.
It was in the depths of this city night that a limousine seemed to flow along the streets—a coffin-black sleek metal vehicle of dark shines with tinted windows. Something shiny and black, there was something intriguing about an object which had almost no color but also reflected light, something odd about that. There was also more than a little something odd about that limousine, such as how the thing was able to drive along with the headlights off. It had no trouble zooming along even in the parts of town where the streetlamps weren't exactly the brightest. No police officer stopped the thing. This was even though the vehicle must have passed about a baker's dozen of cop cars in the course of its travels among and along the streets—a vehicle of darkness that sounded like the breeze itself. A baker's dozen really isn't just a dozen, and the limousine was not just a limousine. It's something more.
A sweeping gust of autumn-feeling night air swirled and blasted along one street in particular, a street with one apartment building in particular. It was one of those sudden unsettling cold gusts that cause an extra chill to someone all used to the air being balmy and humid. Weather should be either warm or cold. Not only did the wind suddenly turn chill, it stayed chill. Little wet droplets of condensed moisture beaded the outside of the apartment-building's windows. The changeover from summer to fall was supposed to be really slow and gradual. No way was it supposed to go like this. It was like something was sucking the warmth out of all the air all of a sudden. And…were the nearby streetlamps now dimmer?
A fresh howl of cold night wind matched the arrival of the limousine out behind the city apartment building. Its six tires—a pair up front for steering and two sets in back—made crackling sounds as the thickly inflated rubber eased to a stop on the suddenly cold hard surface of the parking lot.
A mechanical click-clomp, and the back door of the limousine opened. First a pair of sneakered feet set down onto the asphalt—the ankles covered with jeans. This was followed by another set of feet—this pair covered with socks. Those feet belonged to two girls both known as Heather—the one in sneakers wearing jeans and middie-baring top, the other with socks on her feet and a thin white long-shirt for her torso. The difference in clothing mattered little because both resembled physical doubles of one another to the point where they both had heads of straight dark hair framing their faces.
These two girls made their way to the rear entrance of the apartment building, the entrance with a caged light-fixture set over the metal doorway in. Meanwhile, this limousine out here would just stay here and sit. The limousine wasn't going anywhere—not without its new owners who just went into the apartment building for the night. It was just for the night, for tomorrow it would take them elsewhere and anywhere they so desired. After all, this limousine was not really just a limousine. Like something out of this world, one would say. Far out, dude! Far out!
Blink-flicker… That caged light over the apartment's rear entrance did that flickering thing. Flick-flicker, went some of the nearby streetlamps along the street in front of this apartment building. A faint high and loud sound came from off and away in the city. Was it a random squeak of tires, or was it a scream? That was hard to tell since the sound was just so far away. Lots of things were hard to tell, such as what exactly was going on here and how things would turn out
…
Remember that ancient and immortal group of wise-folks known as they?Remember those guys to whom everybody credits almost every single wise thing ever said? Remember, they said that bad things happen in threes? When they came up with that one, they were most certainly not just sitting around, alcoholic beverages going in one end of their bodies with piss and farts coming out the other, idly speculating drop-dead awesome things to say from a state of intoxication. (Lord knows some people think they're the sages of all eternity if they get enough booze in them, like that guy who said he single-handedly invented gravity and the Internet. Makes someone wonder what he was doing with the other hand, and he certainly wasn't massaging his ego.) Or perhaps the all-knowing they simply had to be drunk or some other altered form of consciousness to the point of being maybe a little bit flatulent in terms of wisdom—their forebrains in a suppressed state of consciousness to allow them access to the subconscious mystical core of the universe, able to see the deeper truths behind everything. One of those deep truths beyond reality could very well be that whole evils-in-threes deal. But, jeez-cheese, why does it have to be three? Why couldn't it be a nice even number divisible by two, like six or four? Everybody likes even numbers because they're just so neatly divisible. So why not let it be even numbers when calculating bad events? Better yet, just have it as so bad news just happens in twos at the most and be done with that because people can only take so much really, really bad news before they start to crack.
Bad news is maybe hearing that one's credit card bill is a day past due and they tripled the interest on that sucker just because they can. (Should've read the fine print, eh sucker?) Really bad news is maybe in the category of hearing that one's pet cat is dead after being run over by a rather large vehicle. To go one better (or one worse), consider really, really bad news—like about how Grandpa Gipper just up and died. Yup, Grandpa Gipper had a heart-attack while driving that rather large vehicle. Guess what else happened? When he died, his sorry excuse for a corpse put pedal to the metal and made the car run over one's pet cat named Mr. Snugglepaws! (Talk about driving with a lead foot. Make that a dead foot, ha-ha. Bartender, make that a dead foot with a shot of rum!) Guess what else, about that credit-card? It wasn't paid on time because of personal scheduling convolutions around arranging a funeral for one body and disposal of the other. Given how Grandpa Gipper—or his corpse—did a dirty deed, Mr. Snugglepaws would be getting the full and proper funeral. Who cares about the Gippster? Let grandpa get tossed out with the trash. But don't dump 'em with the clothes on. Strip him buck-naked and sell those pricey clothes for quarters to use at the Laundromat and some groovy books to read while doing clothes there. And in some realities, that's actually allowed by the laws, dumping dead bodies in the trash. Then we've got those realities where dead folks get eaten with the full blessing of those laws—which is somewhat beside the point but not too far from it.
But anyway, back to the issue of back-to-back bad news. A credit card, a cat and a coronary, it's math so simple that even a caveman could do it without running out of fingers. That's a trio perfectly in line with that whole bad-news-in-threes stuff. You and me and the devil makes three, went a song from a while ago—grammatically incorrect as it was.
What in tarnation does this have to do with life, the universe or anything at all? You see, the above-mentioned little series of vignettes sounds an awful lot like what happened to a certain female co-worker of a certain cute nineteen-year-old girl. Meg, yes Meg, the slender blonde co-worker with a strong resemblance to a human version of Barbie. That young lady was not feeling so buoyant and pretty at the moment. Instead of wearing her usual revealing outfits which were cut short or tight down there and tended to be tight and a little unbuttoned up there, Meg was dressed like a tired frump. Her outfit was baggy. Those wrinkled beige pants looked like the kind worn by depressed celebrities in the candid-celebrity shots that the tabloid magazines keep getting, those pictures arranged alongside pages with images of the alien-created love-child of Jason Voorhees and that squid-lipped lady who keeps getting caught adopting kids from poor countries and giving them names befitting one-eared mutant sewer scrubbers from Dimension-X. Meg's top was worth a rant all its own—a top was a big baggy sweater that looked like four other people could climb into that thing and ride out another global warming-induced record-breaking hurricane season. And for once, Meg's footwear consisted of sneakers—not having changed out of her exercise footwear that morning. Good thing too, because Meg was going to be doing some running soon enough.
With sneakers on her feet and big baggy celebrity-letting-it-all-out clothes on the rest of her, there was something Meg was not wearing today. That would be makeup. No makeup was on her face, because makeup would have run when tears went down her face. Thin people in times of mourning can sometimes have that really sunken-eyed look when their lower eye-lids get all puffy and dark while the space around their eyes, looking like natural eye-shadow of sorts.
About those vignettes of someone's grandpa dying, the corpse driving the car over a cat, and then there being a credit bill big enough to sink America's budget for another thousand years. No, it wasn't true that her grandfather died while driving a rather large vehicle and croaked while driving. Actually, what happened was…Meg's grandfather didn't die until after he stepped out of his rather pricey car. That was after his car's tires altered the shape of a certain feline. And unlike that little above-mentioned fictitious anecdote, the tabby in question wasn't named Mr. Snugglepaws. That was because Meg's cat was named Mr. Snugglepuss. So grandpa ran over a Snugglepuss instead of a Snugglepaws, big whoop.
It was a big whoop to Meg, that's what! Her grandfather was not sympathetic. The old codger was anti-sympathetic. Hell! When a man came from a lifestyle making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for himself in making millions of dollars a week for other people, a man thinks he has a God-given right to make Hell for everybody else on Earth. And so the Hell what if his car's wheels made Mr. Snugglepuss' (Snugglepuss, Snugglepaws… I don't give a flying fork about your forking furball, Meg!) guts go squirting! Those guts went squirting out of the cat's little cat-butt and his little cat-mouth and his big cute eye-sockets when his eyes absolutely popped out of his fuzzy little feline noggin. Mr. Snugglepuss' insides became outsides when they exited both ends of his kitty digestive tract, his brains ejecting as well when the canopies of the eyeballs were shot. (One could almost imagine the left and right hemispheres of the kitty's brain—co-pilots of a feline body—saying something like, Direct hit! We're punchin' out!)
While pretty blonde Meg was standing there and bawling her own eyes out in front of her pretty condominium townhouse, having stood there and waited for grandpa to arrive and see the cat-based tragedy unfold, big old ugly Grandpa Gipper kept standing there and still yelling, dressed in that same kind of tailored ten thousand-dollar black business power-suit he wore every day of his financial management career. He was getting all red in the face while yelling about that damned cat that should've been damned sensible enough to move its damned lazy cat-ass out of the damned way! Stupid cat! He had it coming too!
Getting all angry and yelling is not good for anybody—not even people in their thirties, their forties, or their fifties or sixties. Grandpa was in his eighties. Let's see… Blood pressure went up, went up too high, him getting red in the face, then that face becomes decidedly grayish while a hand goes to the chest as cardiac arrest sets in. The Gipper's ticker just couldn't take the pressure of someone who spent much of his life yelling and crying over stock-tickers between meals of too-expensive food and drinking too much expensive wine at fancy restaurants. (Now you see, this is where sexism plays in. If it had been a female complaining, they would call it bitching.) Alright, just to be equally obnoxious to both official sexes, we'll say that Grandpa Gipper was bitching. The dude would've been better off eating roast dog instead of the heavily salted stuff they served alongside glasses of liquid made from the rotten grape-juice that kills brain cells and rots the liver. Now that's why they call it rot-gut. It's not as if alcohol leads to the direct bacterial decomposition of internal organs, but all kinds of tissue damage get done anyway.
Now all of Grandpa Gipper's brain cells and his internal organs were dead…as were both hemispheres of Mr. Snugglepuss when the before-mentioned ejected from of his eye-sockets in a manner similar to how fighter pilots will eject from a jet that took a critical hit. Grandpa Gipper's once-angry brain was so quiet and peaceful, along with his poor old stock market stress-abused heart, and the lungs he used to yell at Meg just as those lungs were used in serving the dark side, bellowing out hatred at so many economic underlings. There would be no more yelling from Grandpa Gipper anymore, not in this lifetime, because dead people don't care. Being dead can have a very calming effect.
Speaking of gone people… The glass-and-steel doors of this bookstore opened up, and in walked two dark-haired girls in mall clothes. Meg stood up and took in sight of these two female strangers who maybe weren't fully strangers. Though their close-fitting clothes shouted mall rat, their straight dark hair lent an air of another kind of beauty.
Both of them approached the counter, both girls regarded Meg behind this counter. Said the girl on the left, "We'd say good afternoon, but things aren't exactly good, huh?"
Added the girl on the right, her voice and face perfectly identical, "Nope! If her floppy clothes mean anything, I'd say her emotional state isn't exactly in the best of condition."
It took this long for Meg to recognize the girl on the left. Or was it the girl on the right? The body was the same. Or rather, their bodies were the same. So were the clothes clinging to those bodies—tight jeans and middie tops on nineteen-year-old girls who looked fit to fight. Even the sneakers were the same. But the hairstyles… It's funny how a change in hairstyle can make a girl look like a totally different person—changing the outline of what is revealed in the face, altering the shape of the head. That's girls in this case. Changing hairstyle doesn't change voices, though.
Dye those heads of hair blonde and add some fluffy curls to the ends, and you get… "Heather?" asked Meg, looking at the one on the left, then the one on the right.
Which was which? That failed to matter. They were both Heather—both girls of the same mind-set. Sharing that mind-set, both of them were of the same purpose and intents. And their intents were especially far from anything good for the blonde-haired bitch who troubled them for so cursably long. This wasn't so hard to believe because they had already done quite a bit to Meg's life already.
Said the dark-haired Heather on the left, "I'd say something like expressing condolences and all that, but that'd be a lie. And who likes liars? Your grandpa was probably one of the biggest damned liars in the world too. So be happy he's taking a dirt nap! It's one less lying bastard in the world, lying down until his corpse gets all rotten and smooshy as his el-cheapo coffin gets bio-degraded. He did get a wooden coffin, right? Cheap bastard to the mortal end. He'd probably be late to his own funeral if it'd save him a penny." A grin. "He was late, wasn't he?"
"Oh, dear sister! Is it not cruel to speak ill of the dead?" went the Heather on the right, her voice being just so-o-o melodramatic.
The back of her left hand went to her forehead, the way that bad actresses in old movies pretended to be near fainting. If this was an old-time book, they would say swoon. Truth was, women back then actually swooned because their bodices were laced too tight, squeezing their insides, not because they were emotionally weaker than men—as was the explanation. (At least those bodices weren't tight enough to make brains yank the eject lever to exit the canopy of the skull.)
That same Heather smiled and added, "I've been doing something Meg doesn't do too often. That is, I've been thinking… How cruel do we have to be before we're officially bitches?"
"I'm not sure, but we're getting there in a hot hurry," went the dark-haired Heather on the left. "It's too bad we weren't there when Meg's cat bit the big one…so we could laugh. Now that'd add beaucoup points to our bitch-score right then and there." Leaning closer to her sister and saying in a low voice, "It was probably really awesome, too. This talk is getting pretty crunchy, huh? "
"It'd be even more awesome and crunchy if dead grandpas made crunchy sounds when their hearts explode," went the Heather on the right. "Which sounds more awesome when it dies, a cat or a human?"
"Who cares? Humans, cats… They're all a bunch of forkin' meat-puppets!" said the Heather on the left, starting to bang her left fist onto the bookstore sales counter like a sadistic cheer. "Meat-puppets! Meat-puppets!" Bang-bang-bang! "Meat-puppets! Meat-puppets!" Bang-bang-bang!
"You are whole-heartedly correct," agreed the Heather on the right. Hitting on the word heartedly was—of course—a dig at what happened to Meg's grandpa and his ticker—the grandpa which would yell no more, his ticker which would tick no more.
"Check this out," said the Heather on the left. "Let's see how well this meat-puppet likes her protein strings getting yanked?"
Thwack! Meg felt the slap across the face and wondered who delivered it. Then Meg saw how her own left hand had done the seemingly impossible trick.
With all of that mentioning of tickers, how was Meg's ticker in the course of all of this? It was absolutely racing. Her eyes were wide-open (e-e-eject) while her lower lip was all quivery. Then Meg's eyes were squinched up tight as her voice seemed to explode in this mall bookstore. "Not funny, Heather! Not funny!" The distraught girl suddenly made a dash around the sales counter, running between the shelves of books and ran sobbingly for the glass-and-metal doors out.
Those were doors which wouldn't open. Sounds of sobs met with sounds of the doors being rattled as Meg was trying to get the Hell out of this store before her already on-edge sanity was destroyed by these antics. And…nope, the doors still wouldn't open. What's going on here? The doors weren't locked because locked doors wouldn't give at all. These doors gave just a little bit, just enough to tantalize Meg into thinking they'd open. And Meg didn't think Heather had the key to lock the doors. Not locked mechanically, it was more like the doors were being held closed.
That didn't make a lot of sense because Meg couldn't see anybody doing the holding. But that was exactly what it felt like. It was like a set of hands was holding directly onto the handles and wasn't letting go. Then there was the fog on the glass as if somebody was breathing heavily onto the glass on the other side—making those little patches of what kids call fog on glass. (Fog is actually condensed water vapor in emulsion and not condensed spit-air on glass, but what do kids know, more intent on staring at their text messaging rather than the lessons in front of them?) It was the kind of wet patch of seeming fogginess which allowed a person to take a finger and draw temporary smiley-faces or some shenanigans like that.
No mischievous kid was on the opposite side of the bookstore's glass doors, though. Nobody was there. But somebody had to be there. Somebody had to be breathing onto the glass and was holding the doors closed while not letting her out! And…was something growling?
"Hey! Those doors are ours! You break 'em, you bought 'em!" came a shout from one of the Heathers, back over there by the sales counter. "Yeah, that's right! The boss-lady was too kind to give us this store after we gave her a few hundred thousand for her troubles. Hah, what's a few hundred thousand? We've got money to burn, baby!"
Continued the other Heather or perhaps with the same Heather talking, "Dad's books are making money all of a sudden, and people can't help but giving us hot deals. We're rich, bitch! So you might not want to get on our nerves now. Just let go of the bad attitude you had before."
Meg suddenly tumbled backwards, wheeling her arms in the air and falling onto her own butt. It wasn't that anybody or anything unseen hit her. It was just how whatever was holding the doors closed suddenly let go.
Whatever. The doors were open now. Meg had a golden opportunity to get the Hell out of here. That opportunity was one taken in a hurry—Meg's own sneakers being put to athletic use with her running away.
Both Heathers stared at the double doors through which Meg had fled. Meg likely would not be back to work for a while. If Meg did return, though, then some actions performed by unseen servants could be used to weaken her hold on her sanity. If Meg did not return, then her male co-worker and sometimes love-interest would make for especially interesting moments as his sanity was chipped away too, coming under attack by creatures he could not see even as they performed acts he could see and feel. Then there would be the inhabitants of the apartment building who maybe said things about her. They too would come to know the unseen servants. After that, there would be the landlord of the apartment building, the entire building. It would not be the Heathers who would experience pain and suffering. This time, it was the world's chance to feel the pain—no more being grabbed or slapped, no more being hurt. Things are going to be very different around here.