"Don't let him go, Violet!" a young feminine voice, riddled with anxiety, shouted. "I'll hold your briefcase!"
"I need to be certain that she wasn't hurt," the more monotone of the two replied. "Miss Marlborough," she added, "does not seem to possess any injuries that I know of, save for a few sealed scars."
I-is that tha fookin' Battle Mehden of Lyd'n'shaft-whatevah? An awtomah'tick dah'll?!
Grey, lying prone, tightened his grip on the knife, feeling her soft voice tug on his ears like the serene wail of a siren luring its victim. Two other voices—presumably those of the redheads—chattered as he'd tried to mentally map out the safest route to his bike, and thought of finding a back door.
"I-I never thought I had an aunt! I'm so glad we got off the train in time to see you alive," the girl perked up. "How come Dad never told us about you? What," she shivered, "happened with that man who just tried to kill you?"
"An aunt?! You had two, young lady! Two! Why, that dastardly Clay took my share of the land, passed and forgot all about us", she moaned, "for all I knew, he sold his share off to foreigners, decked himself out with a mustache and left us for Leiden without word one!" she erupted before turning around to the blonde and back, "Wait, no, that man I-"
The younger man stepped forward with his crutch[i], slurring his words in a vaguely threatening tone, "hey," Grey heard the throwing of hands, "don't run your goddam mouth if you won't keep Dad's name out of it!"
"Spencer!"
Run.
The old man grabbed the mouse traps off the floor, held them back-to-back in his hand and left the kitchen, stuffing a lamp along with a couple wine bottles in his bag. Is there a window he could jump out of? Only the chimney was on the east wall—no dice. With the sound of broken glass cracking under his shoes, he barreled upstairs, putting the mouse traps down on the steps.
"Your father lacked the humanity to show up to his little sister's funeral!"
Interrupted audibly for a second by these words[ii], a light and swift pitter-patter entered the kitchen downstairs. Grey grimaced as he'd braced himself for what was to come, gasping for air. What's wit' all tha com-moh-tion in this bloody home?! And 'ere oi am, runnin' fer dear loife loike a dog from an awtohmaton?! This is wha' me woife doiyed for?
The sound of mouse traps triggering, and the doll's moans of pain reverberated throughout the second floor of the mansion. "Argh! Stop immediately!"
Another, sluggish set of footsteps came in second, with the floppiness of a wobbly table about to break. "Violet, no! I hired him!"
"Did you hire this man to kill you?" she turned around, taking the mouse traps off her cherry-red boots. "We can't let a killer walk away," she coldly reported.
"Y-yes, but not-"
The traps flew up and away as she pulled them off her feet, throwing them and unwinding them in midair with one hand and holding her axe with the other. "Your stairway is hazardous," she seemingly complained to Evanthelia, sprinting up the stairs with nary a beat to skip. The traps were quickly put between the balusters.
The older woman wore a sheer look of terror on her face, and quietly lamented something to herself. "How long must that bedeviled picture haunt me…"
The doll's blue dress and pale furbelows nimbly blurred through the hallway, zooming past each bedroom in pursuit of the fresh hand marks on the dusty wallpaper, only to find the senior gone; with a listening ear, though, she had picked up that he'd wandered into the bathroom, walking up to the closed door. "Sir, please exit the bathroom. I vow not to harm you."
"Bloody hell," he let out an exasperated yelp from behind the door, "what's yer biss'ness wit' meh?"
"I watched you commit a crime that threatened my client's safety. Please come out, I must ask you a few questions." The doll pounded on the door with her prosthetic hand, striking its gears like a hammer on an anvil. "If you do not cooperate, I will be forced to break this entrance with my weapon."
"No, no!" the white-haired woman shouted. "Don't break it, Violet! He's not dangerous!"
Luculia's head was on fire, feeling like her scarlet hair was made of flame. Her braided headband was about to come apart under the sharp pressure in her head, as it were.
Holding back her stout brother from knocking their relative out and lifting the burdensome briefcase her friend left behind, she'd almost tripped helping him into the living room. With the last of her breath, panting and reaching at the older woman's dress with her fingernails, she begged her for answers. "Please, Aunt Evanthelia, what's happening? What do you mean, he's not dangerous?" she sobbed.
"A-and how come Spencer and I've never heard of you until," her voice took on a more pleading tone, "we got your note? Why'd you hire an Auto Memories Doll and then a killer?" she burst into a tearful panic. "Was Dad hiding something awful from us?!"
"What's your deal? Drop the high hat, you wet sock!" Spencer restrained himself, leaning on a drawer.
The older lady turned around, smacking away Luculia's hand. Stiffened by wrath, her forearms were shaking. "Am I awful? Is this home awful? Is my dead sister awful?" She pointed at the remains of the vase on the staircase balustrade. "What about the vase this idiot upstairs broke?! Why were these shards moved?!" she scolded, noticing the glass shards had been moved while the pair of roses that'd been within stayed in place.
Evanthelia raised her hand almost as if to slap her niece, taking one good look at her pleading emerald irises before she and Spencer (who was shaking a spider off of his hand) exchanged scowls, taking on a mildly more welcoming inflection. "Why don't you two sit down?" she suggested, before an ear-shattering slam and crack upstairs shook all three of them, and she adjusted her eyeglasses.
"Is that gangster still here?" Spencer concealed a pang of fear, watching his sister drop the doll's heavy chestnut briefcase in shivers over her shoe, biting her lips in pain.
With the swirl of a toilet flush, the bathroom turned dead silent for another minute.
"Stand back!" the doll shouted, firmly yet fruitlessly gripping the handle. Delivering a swift kick to the unmoving entrance, she decided to pulverize the planks and hinges with her oversized axe—reducing it to a mere bundle of plywood.
"Stop!" the older woman's vocal chords strenuously blurted, late to the damage as her aged limbs played catch-up with the doll to no avail, in no small part due to her dread of each step on the staircase, watched by the tense siblings.
The sink and bathtub showed no trace of use, before she'd noticed multiple empty rolls of toilet paper strewn over the floor, and the window wide open with a rope of sorts made out of them; the wet tiling of the floor, however, highlighted in mud the shape of his footsteps leading into the closet.
"Stop hiding!" Her calm demeanor broke, revealing a mild undercurrent of annoyance.
The moment she checked it, she realized it'd been a ruse. At the bottom of the closet were two shoe trays, yet she'd only found one with a pair of rubber slippers.
A distant, nearly inaudible wordless cry of pain—unmistakably Grey's, as she'd heard his voice—slipped out of his throat from afar, followed by the sound of metal squeaking and screeching from abrasion. The wobbling gutter pipe by the windowsill creaked and pulled on a length of loosely-twisted white rope hung around the curtain rod, her sight had immediately pierced: toilet paper, hastily set up.
In a bizarre sort of trance, the maiden put down her axe on the floor and spun around it, propelling her waifish figure off the wall through the curtains of the ajar window ahead.
Soaring through the air, leaves flew off the windowsill. The man huffed and panted heavily underneath her, grasping his knees and groaning.
It took her no more than one gesture to dig the sharp tip of her axe into the pasture on landing, her body gently sliding down along the handle; she found herself face-to-face with the awkwardly-moving man rushing over to his bicycle.
"A-ah, so ya're 'ere ta kill meh? Thass' it?" he gripped the knife, keeping the handle close to his bosom and looking at the drying streaks on her cheeks. "Whass wit' tha tears?"
Her mesmerizingly soft blue eyes held him hostage with fiercety. "Who's with you?!"
Grey contemplated sending her off with a caustic remark about minding her business, before he'd reconsidered in light of the proportions of the apparatus apt for lumberjacking he'd been presented with. "Deehd people," he sheepishly quivered.
Her face betrayed waves forming in the oceans of her mind, eroding the bedrock of her patience. "Is there anyone else trying to kill Miss Marlborough?"
"No-bodeh."
"Please disarm yourself," the girl made a request the senior could not refuse, passing by his side to take the reins of his modest bicycle from the oak. "Thank you."
Yanking the bewildered man on the back of the bicycle after he'd let go of the knife, she lodged the sharp tip of her axe in the tree's trunk with its harness slung on a branch.
"Witchcraft will remain here until my return," she spoke without addressing anybody in particular, drifting off into some form of concern. Her eyes, however, hadn't skipped eye contact with the man for a second, freezing him in place even as she dusted off his coat.
"Time is running out. I'm taking you to the authorities," she bounced back into her monotone as quickly as she pedaled, sending the two of them speeding through the valley's dirt road, bringing back the sights Grey'd seen blazing by almost like a slideshow and slowly draping themselves in the blue shades of the evening.
Her hands had suddenly seemed to let go of the bike once it'd reached level ground, frightening the man behind her who'd held on to her prosthetic shoulders for dear life.
His feet rested on the rear axles, and his mind fixated on the soreness of his ribcage—he'd done well to keep away from her dress, lest he further stir up her clockwork ire by staining it.
Her fingers entered a delicate prance in midair from one moment to the next, grabbing the bicycle's handles once every third movement as she saw fit. "May I ahsk," the senior, adjusting his hat in the face of the wind, "why in tha world 'er ya movin yer 'ands loike this instead oof worrying a-bought fallin' oof and killin' us b-" he coughed, "both?"
"I am memorizing my words for a letter. There is no need for concern," she noted. "I am curious, sir, where were you detained?"
"Da-tehned?!"
"It had come to my attention that you had rigged Miss Marlborough's gutter with a rope of twisted hygienic paper, likely in order to structurally stabilize it as you climbed down."
"Wh-whatuvit," she felt his pulse rise on her back.
"Such skills," she raised her hands to type a few more words in the air, "are commonly learned and taught in institutions such as prisons by inmates attempting to escape."
Deliberating for a moment whether to speak, Grey scratched the tip of his nose with his sleeve. Ta hell wit' it, what's tha worst flappin' me tongue at an awtohmaton will do?
"Gelteh as chahrged. Ah wuss 'eld for two bloody yeers at a labor camp aftar a foight whan oi was a young'un in me village back in C'treegall," the senior recounted, "two yeers, oi was noineteen at tha toime. That was where oi learnt ta read 'n' wroite fer tha first toime," he'd watched her hammer away at the air as he spoke. "Nevar been gladdar ta be free than tha day ah got out."
"I… see," she nodded, "I'm afraid I do not understand what it means to be free."
"Neithar do the bloody buggars of Noortharn Lyd'n'shaftlick!" he'd spun into a rant, "ah cross'd tha continent ah tell ye, and tha bone-idlest clots oi've seen were in Lancastyre. Naasty li'l chavs ronnin' up 'n' down blocks wit' clubs 'n' surplus shovels in their hands."[iii]
A loud splash through a puddle had smeared mud and water all over the tires, right as the whirring of an automobile had passed them by on tarmac. Grey turned around while making sure to hold his hat from falling: it was a black flivver, with only one older man's silhouette visible inside. The vehicle had seemingly veered off into his client's home: he'd quickly read the name of a road sign behind: "Roswell-upon-Herne," his face quickly paling in horror.
Tha Butcher! Ah need me ta speak ta 'im now!
Evanthelia climbed up the stairs at a crawl pace, looking over her shoulder at the picture frame as she circled the stairwell.
"Somebody has to get up there, it's gotta be me. Beat it!" Spencer chimed in, racing past her with one hand on his crutch. "I can't let somebody get hu-"
"Spencer, you foozle!" Luculia rushed to his side, helping him up. "You can't go by yourself!" she chided, putting her foot ahead of his.
The three of them stood around the corner; with their aunt listening on with her ears stuck to the wall to the chaos in the hallway, the brother and sister surged up from the staircase, calling their friend's name in unison.
"Violet!"
A square of toilet paper flew through the disturbingly serene hallway, over the leftovers of the restroom door, admist a deafening silence broken by Spencer. "Look! The window's open!"
"Witchcraft is lodged in that tree over there," the sister pointed out the window to her brother.
The older woman, in turn, had come in behind them. "The… they're both gone! A-a-and my bathroom's been massacred!" she'd come on the verge of a breakdown, before she and her brother had their shoulders grasped tightly by Luculia's soft hands. "It's okay, it's okay. We'll go sit downstairs," she looked at her aunt, "is that okay with you?"
Eyes closed, sigh and shrug, Evanthelia meekly lowered her head. "I suppose. I hardly understand what I'm doing," clasping her hands. "I haven't been in my right mind for a long time now; why don't you two stay until that doll comes back?"
"Well, actually, I'm an Auto Memories Doll too. Violet and I went to the same school," Luculia made small talk as they'd all headed away. "I can't thank her enough for… helping me get through to this big guy," she chuckled, looking at a frustrated Spencer and pecking his cheek bandage with a kiss.
With the briefcase in her lap, the two made their way down and sat down on an ottoman, waiting for their aunt. A moment later, she'd come down, flicked the lights on and sat on the piano chair, turning around to face them as they admired the light fixture.
"You two… don't seem to get along very much with your attitudes." the dame inquired, raising an eyebrow.
"Truthfully, up 'till a month ago[iv], we barely talked since we were kids. We scraped by in some dinky room in Leiden," Spencer spoke up before his sister, who'd been tying up her ponytail, could compose a diplomatic-sounding answer in her head. "moreso, I lived in whatever joint wouldn't kick me out, downed pint after pint of giggle juice, and the streets when that didn't work out, and when that didn't work out, Lula's couch. She made ends meet for the both of us until I found work in a warehouse," his tone took on self-pity, leaning away to avert his sister's gaze. She turned her head back and forth between the two, watching his eyes and mouth strain. "I couldn't be more grateful for what she's done. I'd probably have… no, I'm glad it's done," he pointed his open hand over at his sister.
"Hmph. I couldn't believe Clay had gratitude in his blood. And now, his children are with me to tell me about it," she mixed surprise and derision in her tone. "Every day, he'd go on about how living on the farm wasn't good enough for him, that he deserved more," she'd taken on mocking her late brother's voice. "Didn't stop him from fighting me over our parents' wills, naturally."
"That… doesn't sound like Dad at all," Luculia instantly replied as if to parry away her aunt's words.
"Maybe he showed you all a different face from the Clay I knew, but it very much was him," she picked up the photo album, flipping various pages of sepia, then black-and-white photographs taken over the years, leaving the two siblings to gaure frigidly at the progression of their father from a toddler to a young man.
"H-he looks a lot like you, Spencer! I told you you're handsome!" Luculia's slack jaw closed into a grin.
"No, no way! He had way darker hair!"
The dame stopped flipping the pages, with her finger on one photo in particular. "This was us standing side-by-side at the office of our family notary, Baillehache. If I hadn't signed this slip of paper, he would've dragged me to court, he says!"
"And he sold his share of the land to… foreigners so he could go live in Leiden?" Luculia asked. "Is that what you said earlier?"
Her aunt sighed, before shutting the album and putting it back on the instrument. "Yes. He said he'd never want to step foot in Herne again."
"But Dad died there! He went there with Mom for a trade conference, or… ah!" Luculia's hand covered her mouth, failing to hide her gasp while Spencer carried a somber look of silence on his face.
"I never felt like the war was much of anything real, until Sarge hit me with the discharge papers. First, we thought it was just Dad. Then, Mom was found too," Spencer took an old military rations card out of his pocket.
"We owe a lot to Violet, really," she continued, "especially with how she went as far as she did today just to show us the note she had typed up for you before it was too late… but if you didn't know about us, who was this person you'd addressed it to?"
"Gillie. A let-ter to a dead person!" she broke into hysterical laughter, "and to think that Violet doll asked me three times," her voice cracked, "ah-hah-hah! Three times! To repeat my surname, at the very last moment she'd written my signature. I thought she meant the little gravestone I'd pointed out to her on the hill!"
"…The one up from the barn?" the young girl's eyes widened in recognition, getting up.
"Up th-ere with the Three Saints Chapel... or what used to be as much."
"Spencer, Aunt Evanthelia," she called for their attention, "let's take the roses from your sister's broken vase so that we can lay them on the coffin."
"Oh! Oh!" the dame snapped out of place. "I don't want anybody messing you two up. No, no, the chapel was already torn apart with a missile, I'm not letting you join that list. Not until Violet is back safe and sound!"
"Are you sure, though? It's just the three of us out here, as far as I could see. Violet seemed to handle herself."
"Uh," the older redhead scratched his neck, "maybe I'm behind the grind, but nobody told me about a vase," the embarrassment flushing his face red once his sister walked across the living room, over to the roses. "Ah, yeah… Hold on, Lula, you might hurt yourself," his sight caught on to the glass shards left by Grey around her low-cut shoes. "We should fix that thing," he suggested to the two women, now looking at him. "Not that my hands are good for this kind of job, heh."
"If that's so, I'll make dinner first."
"Dinner? Why, would you look at the time!" Evanthelia looked out the window. "Spencer, would you be a dear and let the oxen into the barn? I'll get a lantern," the dame went briefly upstairs before bringing down a lustrous brass-arched gas light. "This was our father's lucky charm. The craft and the leather ornaments were tailor-made for some nobleman," she handed it to him. "Keep it close."
"That's a hard find, but alright," he'd waded out the home, off to untie the stake and let the animals in.
All by himself, the crickets in the herbs, the clinking of his crutch against the soil, and the gallops and bellows of the oxen entering the barn were the only sensations keeping him from falling asleep. He stopped to look at the sky, which was starting to display the constellations, before shutting the barn door.
A strange shape popped over the horizon; black and boxy, moving smoothly over the hill with its lights flashing into his eyes, one he'd recognized eventually as an automobile. He wondered who was inside, raised his extended hand to his forehead to cone his vision; before he could peer into the silhouettes behind the windshield, the car turned around, and veered off into the twilight, startling him.
With the lantern in his right hand, and the crutch in his left, he'd scurried up the slope, watching the blades of grass move as if a predator were moving underneath, before he'd noticed a camera fallen near the creek. He'd almost wished Witchcraft were sentient enough to protect him or dig him a trench, before forgetting about it once he'd recalled the condition of the bathroom door; fortunately, he'd soon enough heard its owner's voice. "Spencer! Are you okay? I have ensured that the armed man is held at the Herne police station for questioning." She stood over his shoulder, with a look of concern before briefly mouthing the camera.
"I'm-I'm okay," his eyes were closed, "can you hold this," he gave her the lantern, "for me?" he clutched his knee, licking his chapped lips and wiping the sweat off his brow. In contrast, the idyllically-dressed girl did not bear the faintest trace of being marred when she stood close to him, even after the hectic events of the day and had taken the camera off of her mouth as if it were a pacifier. "Are Luculia and Miss Marlborough inside?" She looked at the lights shining out the window.
"Yeah, none of us are really feeling like going anywhere for now. I saw a car drive right past by and disappear... and I don't know where that camera's been," he raised his hands as if they were stop signs, "so I don't recommend chowing down on it. Anyway, head on in and I'll catch up."
The two trekked back down, with the blonde taking the lead, packing a lantern, a camera and later a muddy knife from beneath the tree. The doll passed by the dip in front of the porch left by the old man she'd thrown; her metal hands rang as she knocked on the door with a one-of-a-kind clink, leading Luculia to hastily open it with a smile and hug her friend. "Woah! You're back! Is Spencer alright?"
"Yes. I have encountered him carrying this lantern," she raised the lamp as it swung from its hinge. "He will be here shortly."
The pleasant scent of seasoned food and gravy enveloped her nostrils with comfort; the dusted-off furniture and lit chandelier bestowing upon the room its most welcoming air. Four dishes were laid side-by-side on the tablecloth, with steaming servings of cut-up wieners, mashed potatoes and beans. "We're having dinner now, Violet!" Luculia took the burden off her friend's hand, carefully shutting the gas out and putting it by the glued-together vase in the middle of the table.
"I am very thankful for your hospitality, Luculia," the doll blushed from the warmth of her friend's arms around her back, "but I do not require much in order to do my job."
"Now, now, miss Evergarden, don't let her down," the dame sat by the lit chimney and turned her eyes to the doll.
Pressed by her friend and an older woman, the doll reconsidered her decision. "I suppose it is necessary to maintain nutrition," she obliged and sat down, more out of politeness than concern for her own well-being.
Not one second later had the brother come, bursting through the door drenched in sweat.
"Good evening! Hold on," he'd taken note of something, "you fixed the vase and put the flowers back in? Time really flies even without scotch," he quipped.
"It was easy," Evanthelia sat down to take her first taste of her niece's meal. "Pine sap resine," she picked up her fork, "We heated it up, and it came in handy this time. Oh-hohoho, how long it took me to remember!"
"Wait, Violet! I just remembered, we don't have a fourth knife."
"That's alright. I'll wash the one that man used to threaten me."
"Where's he now?" her client asked.
"He was taken care of by the authorities. He is safe."
The meal went on quietly. Spencer, coming in last, had decided to take his time in-between bites, retelling various jokes he'd heard from his time in service and in bars. Some of them upset his aunt, others made his sister pout, but they all knew to take it in good fun.
"Listen, my dear miss Evergarden, I cannot thank you enough for what you've done for me today," the dame bowed in her seat at the doll across the table.
"It is vital to my job as an Auto Memories Doll to compose letters and look out for the well-being of others, my clients first and foremost. It is a duty." Luculia shrank into herself, touching the tip of her nose after hearing her friend's reply.
Violet was the first to stand up, leaving half her plate untouched. "Miss Marlborough, I would like to have a room to myself for the night."
"I'm not sure there's enough, we've only three-"
"Lula and I can share rooms," Spencer offered. "I can fall asleep just about anywhere, anytime."
"Even at your job?" Luculia gave him an awkward glance.
"No, that's more of my boss' specialty. Ah-hahah! But really, I need to scrimp from now on. Dr. Melfi could graft me a leg like your gal's arms," he peeked at the blonde's prosthetics.
"Very well," the doll seemingly took up the offer, "I will be upstairs from now on."
Before leaving, she'd heard one more inquiry. "Hey, I know! Violet, can you take a picture of us with that camera you're carrying?"
Cheese. Click.
Once the picture came out, the three had shifted their business to commenting on how their expressions were captured.
Upstairs, a different atmosphere reigned. Dark, seemingly forsaken—the doll washed herself and dropped her briefcase by the mirror of a small bedroom. She'd picked up a flashlight, held it between her fragile-looking jaws, cocked her briefcase open and put down her typewriter with a heavy clinker.
She wanted to type something. Something important to her. And type away she did; she'd started off at a slow but steady pace, and soon enough, her hands had taken on a mind of their own—chipping away at the letters and spaces she'd memorized as she composed them during her bike ride.
It was strange for her, to be writing at this time of day and for herself of all people. She rode a bike not to deliver letters that day, but to deliver her own mind—from her troubles. There was no avoiding them now; her thoughts raced, one after the other. She did not know how to feel, until she'd looked at the last few sentences punched onto the sheet of paper.
'Am I human, Major? Won't you look me in the eye, and tell me you forgive me? Or is this my punishment, defective a tool as I am, with no trace of your body?'
The wires of her mechanical arms seemed to short-circuit. She was finally defeated, by her own words. Her tears spilled over the desk, before she'd taken a long breath.
'Or are you out there, through the looking glass?'
She'd strengthened her grip on the keys, lifting them over to the sheet, and tore it in pieces like a wolf through the flesh of its prey, leaving only that sentence intact. Returning to her senses, she'd overheard the family downstairs speaking again.
"…how slowly do you think I should take things with him? He seems to be from a well-to-do family."
"Hah-hah-hah, youth! I was quite the histrionic young girl once..."[v]
It was not her concern, so much as a reminder that life must go on.
That night, Spencer was the last to leave the living room. By the time he was alone, he'd debated with himself the urge to take a bottle, no, a shot, no, a sip from the booze closet. One to unwind? No, one for the road. No, one to celebrate. Or one to forget. One to remember. Eventually, reason got the best of him as he'd recalled lying down with a sore head… when he met Violet for the first time.
The next day, Evanthelia, lying down in the master bedroom, looked out the window, murmuring and fumbling about in her covers. "Where's the pistol man, where's the pistol man…"
She put her eyeglasses on. Witchcraft was gone. Not a single object with wheels nearby, save for a wooden wheelbarrow. Her niece, who came in later that night to keep watch on her, asked to take her to the market after they'd decorate her sister's grave.
"Let's go. You've given me the spark for a painting, young lady!"
Bike? Gone. Bag? Gone. Gun and knife? Thankfully, not on him. Dirt on his clothes? Stuck with him for the long haul of the night. He looked into the one-way mirror of the interrogation room to his side, watching the new bandages stuck like leeches to his face where bruises had popped up. If he were free to move, he'd have kissed the ground the custody nurse walked on. By the same token, he felt there was no lower form of life than himself.
Elisa didn't mehrry tha man whose aeyes meet moine in this bloody mirror.
Red didan't call me Dad.
With that mad lass dragging him off in front of the reception in front of the whole crowd, a young buck a' tha force had been planted to keep watch on him and gave him evil eyes every now and then, or as Grey saw it, giving silent promises to multiply the bruises on his old bones if he attempted anything out of place—no amount of blarney could turn the mound of trouble he'd gotten himself into around.
Not with an eecksunt that had made the officer break every rule of polite conversation to shut him up, he thought at least. Half the people in there mocked him when he'd tried to insinuate that she was an automaton; the other half had kept mum, although their faces betrayed their skepticism at thinking a man could be so overpowered by what seemed a child half his size, unconvinced by her explanation of the words 'Auto Memories Doll'. Not that the clatter of her steel hands had helped.
His feet grew cold, his hands numb in the tight cuffs. The dry air in the back of the claustrophobic waiting room of the police station weighed down on him, watching the vagabonds and prostitutes of the day come in and out of wagons, escorted by men in black uniforms and hats herding them around with batons. Yet, the smell was a relief compared to that of the latrines he'd been to.
A tan-skinned man sporting a brown crew cut in a charcoal suit and tie opened the door of the interrogation room, marching out with swagger and silently gesturing to the uniformed officer watching him. The latter, cowed by the former's glittery badge, glared sharply at Grey. "Get in there, oldtimer."
"Aye." Grey acquiesced, putting on his most unthreatening air to follow the shorter man into the chamber.
"We'll take it from here, patrolman," the man in the suit stood by Grey's side, seeing eye-to-eye with him.
A dim light flickered on the ceiling, before going out with a flicker of the switch behind him. "Take a seat. Grey MacIntyre, am I right?"
"Ye-yes," the beaten-down man replied, buttoning his coat and clutching his sleeve.
The sharply-dressed man from earlier sat across a table from him, paired with an older-looking fellow with a veiny face clad in a dress shirt who'd pulled the blinders down. His thinning salt-and-pepper hair formed a widow's peak, barely lit by the cigar in his mouth.
He blinded the suspect with a puff of nauseating smoke to the face before quipping. "No, he's Grey Fucked-and-Tired," he'd picked up the senior's bag and put it down on the table, pounding it. "What's wrong with you?! I went down to that dump of a home so I wouldn't look like I stopped right next to you, and lost my camera because you were playing airplane with Violet Ever-fucking-garden?!"
'Tis the Butcher? Or a cop?
"You know you got off easy back in the reception, old man," the younger interrogator tossed a penny and flipped in in the air. "Two Gardarik POWs came to my bunker once back on the field. Whored themselves out for intel to our colonel just so we'd hide 'em from the Battle Maiden," he cackled, "Of course, she wasn't with us, but that was a fact, and we dealt in stories."
"War couldn't end soon enough," the older gentleman muttered with his fingers on the bag, opening it to take a wine bottle. "The good stuff. Kazaly, 1785," he sipped the drink.
Grey went ghost-quiet for a second, before his eyes flashed in recognition of the man's voice. "Co-ronar, a-ah wasn' genna kill 'er if it left a witness."
"What about that other bug with the lantern I saw in there earlier?" the coroner took another sip from the bottle, "did you also suck his cock on your way out?"
Grey's hands moved over his gut under the table, hardening into trembling fists. "Boss been pootin' the wrong jobs on meh, I swears," he begged, "Me last client was some vet'ran, 'e was drunk and jabbed a knoife at me foarehead last minute, went in me foare-arm. Nothin' oi can do, innit."
"Nothing you can do?" he coughed. "You're giving me an ulcer, Grey."
The tanned man broke his silence, handing the coroner another cigarette. "Take it easy, Fassid."
He turned over to Grey. "Look… we all do our part in here. He calls suicides murders, I file them like a good dick, the DA puts them on whoever the fuck runs against the mayor and we're all playing hot potato with grenades here, so that your boss and the mayor can write fairy tales in the press. We don't do this, you don't do this, we're in Altair Prison getting reamed by Edward Jones[vi]. Kill people nobody cares about: your job was that simple."
Grey maintained a cool voice, furrowing his brow at the detective who'd just emptied his bottle down a drain. "She changed 'er mind when those li'l bastards showed up," he stretches the 'o', "so," he read the tanned man's nametag, "Detective Macquet, Coroner Fassid, ya gae ta fuck wit' this job. Fifty kohls fer this, fifty kohls fer that—get yerselves one a' those, Auto-Misery Dolls ta write yu a fookin' resignation letter fer Boss while ye're at it!"
Snap. Crack! The bottle was slammed against the wall, leaving jagged pieces in the corner of the room. The detective swung the upper half of the bottle around the room, spinning it in his hand as he closed in on Grey.
The senior's forehead ran with sweat as he'd anticipated what was to happen, before he'd dodged a swing aimed at his temple.
Survival was the only thing left on his mind. In a blur, he'd rammed his fists up the younger man's solar plexus, knocking the tip of the bottle off of his hand. Snatching it off his hands, the senior kicked the table as his assailant cried out in pain.
Biffing it with all his strength to knock away the coroner who'd made a beeline for him, he swung the bottle squarely at the oncoming detective's jaw, leaving a bloody mess over his face and suit. A key fell out of his breast pocket—the handcuffs' key, he thought, grabbing it and tossing his knapsack through the blinders as fast as his hands could to break the glass.
And he fled. He fled feeling no dignity, no respect from the world around him but his bag. Were he to disappear in the fog of this existence, he would feel it entirely fitting for his being as he slid down the slope of the police station lot.
The air outside was cold, yet clean. Various vehicles were parked around him on a fenced lot, and he wandered around them like a stray dog chased by wolves. Was this the only way to live?
Thare's more ta life than this tripe.
The rusty bicycle presented itself to him, like a noble steed coming to the rescue of a knight; he felt a daze in his head, almost as if he were in a dream, uncuffing himself with the key as he ran with the voices of multiple men behind him, and riding off on his bike, speeding away from the men and hounds mercilessly chasing him, riding off away into the city limits.
It was time to cross the continent again.
[i] Spencer's leg is apparently paralyzed as of Episode 3. I don't recall any indication of him recovering. My best guess is that he can't afford prosthetic legs the way Violet could.
[ii] I imagined that Violet might feel injured by Evanthelia's words if they reminded her of the Major. However, I wasn't able to convincingly show this in detail without breaking the perspective of the paragraph (Grey's.)
[iii] Violet claims to Iris in Episode 4 that the North, due to its mineral industry, amassed large wealth yet attracts crime and conflict, and has been the cause of war in a manner likely analogous to the conflict over Dantzig in WWII. I imagined his employers would've sent him from there.
[iv] Spencer and Luculia apparently moved into a cleaner and bigger home between Episode 3 and 9. Spencer had also made some effort to clean up his alcoholism and clean his act up.
[v] Luculia in the Gaiden movie seems to have a fiance. I alluded to it.
[vi] Edward Jones was one of Violet's clients in the book's second volume. He is a war criminal, arsonist, rapist among other things, and was locked up in a maximum security prison.