ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. _|_|_|
Stan
After Craig had left with Disarray, I didn't want to wait around for another ferryman to show up, so I straddled the bank with my right foot on solid ground and my left on the stone in order to untie the rope on another of the three boats. I'd been pointed off to the right. Lethe. God help whoever got Styx.
I walked the boat along for a few paces, tugging it by the rope until the red dust at my feet began to char. Not wanting to stand too long on active volcanic rubble, I climbed into the boat and took the time, while I still could, to observe the Carnival around me. The ferry made its way toward what looked like the mouth of a great cave, but the river's current was slow enough to allow me a glimpse at least.
Everything looked half-complete. Tents were crooked, and the small buildings which inevitably sheltered either games or darkhouses looked dilapidated and rotten. The only things that seemed even close to pristine were the RING-CATCH sign glowing beyond the roofs and the stronghold at the top of the volcano. Even the little boat I was standing in seemed like it might spring a leak any second.
It held up long enough for me to pass through the mouth of the cave, at which point I made a note to add flares or at least motherfucking matches or, hey, a flashlight to my arsenal. My vision went dark as the light from outside filtered further and further away.
Water lapped at my boat and dripped from above, but the echoes made it hard for me to place exactly how far over my head the ceiling was.
The air was cold and damp, and something more than intuition was telling me not to reach out and touch the surface of the water. I thought I could hear something swimming in it, but I couldn't be sure. Then again, I learned long ago not to question the sensation of hearing things.
I was alone in the dark for only a minute or two before a small lighted sign came into view up ahead.
It read: "E.O.D. The Tunnel Without. Attraction Two."
Tunnel Without? Oh, God.
"Welcome, Marsh," came a voice from somewhere overhead. I looked around, trying to place speakers or a screen, but found nothing. As I passed under the sign, however, lights began to illuminate a narrow watery path ahead. "Welcome to the attraction created just for you. The Tunnel Without."
Just for me? THIS? What the fuck?
"Aw-aww," I groaned. "Is this seriously a tunnel of love ride? Fucking weak."
"For once," said the overhead voice, "agreed. Love will make you weak. Lust for the unattainable clouds your judgment."
"Unattainable? Give me a break." I glanced around. No visible exits. The water churned beneath me. "I'm no worse than the other guys when it comes to—"
"No, no. You are one of a kind." There was a laugh, and I pegged the voice to be Tenorman's. It was tough to tell with the cavernous echo, but the egotistic mocking tone was, unfortunately, something recognizably shared with Eric Cartman. Who was probably in deeper shit than I was about now. "Your every action is ruled by passion."
I looked overhead again. No visible cameras, either. I couldn't tell where Tenorman was, or from which location he was watching me at least. "Caring too much about the people I love and the causes I believe in is not a sin," I argued into the dark.
"Perhaps not. But such thoughts will still destroy you."
"Bullshit," I mocked him, hoping I sounded bored enough to rile him up. There was no answer, so maybe I'd gotten to him.
The air was getting colder, but I tried not to let it bother me. Craig had been right in his observation, though, the pores on my arms seemed to be sweating despite the chill. Whatever I was going to be up against in this ride, I hoped that it could somehow lead me away from my constant shivers and nightmares.
Though I remained at the ready, the ride led me through nothing but blackness and fog, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the sound of water lapping at the little boat. Naturally, I couldn't stop thinking about what Tenorman had warned moments ago: that my caring for others would somehow hurt me. Bullshit. Right?
Yes, I care. A lot. I hadn't necessarily been sharing my thoughts on love and concern with the people closest to me lately, but I still cared. I have a tendency to internalize things. I like being able to comfort and help others. I had just never been great at letting them help me. I wouldn't say things if I didn't think the moment was right.
Unfortunately, I had still been doing that around Kyle. I had still been keeping things in, putting myself second as usual and trying to support him as best I could. I'd even kept a lot of my pain and worry regarding my nightmares from him, and he'd called me out on it the night before. We'd gotten into a fight about it and hadn't quite resolved that yet, and it was eating at me. Fuck Craig for having noticed.
Before Kenny had stopped by my house with the lamp the previous night, I'd had a dream so vivid that returning to reality had been difficult. Even though I knew I was sleeping, I knew I was relatively safe, I felt myself being pulled—really pulled, as if something had me by the chest—away from my house and my town and everything I knew and into an ancient, dead swamp where I was knee-deep in glittering gold water. The force kept pulling me, making me wade through the swamp. In the dream I was barefoot, and I kept feeling myself stumble, kept feeling my toes brush against watery weeds and smooth gold coins. I'd just been walking, walking, walking, not questioning anything. I felt cold, real cold—not like winter, not like a frigid rain, but the way I'd felt in the seconds before I had died in the alley behind the Park County police station four years prior.
So I was dead, in the dream, and I accepted it. I could feel the bullet wound in my ribs, and my side was numb with the cold. The farther I walked, the further that unseen force pulled me, the better I could see an enormous thing straight ahead, some kind of living thing, like one of R'lyeh's embodied nightmares. I'd kept on walking toward it until I'd fallen out of bed and shocked myself awake.
Kyle had woken at the same time and said, "Holy shit, Stan, are you okay?!"
But all I could do for a while was lie on the floor staring at my room, feeling incredibly disassociated for a few minutes while I came back to reality. Kyle and I hadn't had much of a chance to talk about it until after Kenny had shown us the lamp and after we'd returned upstairs, and that was when the fight happened.
"Stan, what happened?" he'd demanded. "I feel like these nightmares are pulling on you and like… pulling you out of reality. I'm worried about you, what's going on?"
Stupidly, I'd responded with a lie: "I'm fine."
"No, Stan, you're not!" he'd argued. When I didn't say anything else, Kyle started seething and said, "Okay, you know what, fuck you. I'm trying to help."
The fuck you hurt, but I didn't dwell on it. "Well, maybe there is no helping this, Kyle," I'd said instead. "Maybe I'm just stuck with the nightmares until we beat Damien or whatever."
Close to irate tears, Kyle said, "And is that good enough for you? Jesus, Stan, we don't even know where these nightmares are coming from. Don't you want to figure that out? What are some external issues that might be exacerbating them, you know?"
"External circumstances."
"Yeah. You know, like… like how, with my quirk, I was able to hone it better when there were more immediate things to deal with. You haven't talked to me about your nightmares as much until they really flared up again recently. And honestly, Stan, you don't even really talk to me about them, like, at all." Kyle had started pacing, grabbing at his hair and trying not to cry. "You tell me they happen, but you don't really say anything. I want to help, Stan! I want to figure out what could be causing them."
While he paced, I was frozen. "I don't know, Kyle!" was my response. "I… honestly, yeah, okay, they are worse when all this demonic shit is happening all around us."
"Okay! There's something. We also started seeing those paintings that freak us both out. You found out that awful family shit."
"Old enemies are back," I agreed, listing off other recent circumstances. "Kenny's shadow came back. Your quirk came back."
That was when Kyle had stopped pacing, and I should have been more sensitive. I was too tired and out of it to be much of anything, though.
"…What?" Kyle asked, looking right at me.
"I said—"
"I heard you. My quirk." Panicking, he said, "D'you think I might have something to do with this?"
"What?"
"That would make sense, wouldn't it? Oh, fuck. Jesus. What if it's me?" Kyle lamented, eyes wide as he angrily grabbed at his was overthinking, but I was not in a state of clearheadedness enough to calm him down. "We're always together. You've been saying more and more that you feel cold at night, and meanwhile what am I doing? I'm honing this thing again, I'm stabilizing it. You never talk to me about your nightmares but you're always helping me out, Stan. You don't give us room to be concerned about you. I want to help you but what if I'm actually making it worse by being some… some… I don't know, negative supernatural energy, or…?"
When I didn't respond, Kyle's panic kicked into overdrive. "Aren't you going to say anything? I'm fucking serious, Stan. Do you think I'm making things worse? Do you think that being around me is giving you nightmares?"
And my stupid, horrible response was: "I don't know. Does it seem logical to you?"
"Does it s—you know what? Fuck you," Kyle said again. He stormed out of the room, then, and returned a few seconds later with a pile of linens from the hall closet, then unceremoniously dropped them into a pile away from my bed.
"Kyle," I asked, "what are you doing?"
Fuming, he grabbed a pillow from off my bed and threw it down onto one end of his messy linen pile. "What's it look like?" he seethed. "I'm getting some sleep. Away from you. So I don't give you fucking nightmares."
"Kyle," I tried.
He shook his head, still looking like he was about to cry. "I'm done," he said. "I'm done talking about this. I'm tired. Get some sleep, Stan. Please, just… fucking try to sleep. And if you don't have nightmares, well, then, I guess we'll know."
I was in such an awful state that night I couldn't reason, and my external voice of reason was worrying himself in circles. Both of us knew that of course being around Kyle wasn't exacerbating my nightmares, but we were too tired and strained to say anything. I'd slept in fits and starts that night, in and out of still more of those freezing dreams, and I'd told Kyle so in the morning. To which he'd said: "Okay. So it isn't me."
We'd stood in silence for a moment, then, and when Kyle looked like he was going to angrily walk out, I'd blurted: "I'm quitting the League."
Kyle stopped, and warily set his gaze on me. "What?" he asked in disbelief.
And I looked at him as if for both the first and last time. At his perfectly green eyes, at his tousled hair, at the sadness and concern in his expression. "After this," I said. "After this fight is over, after we finish up with the Carnival, Kyle, Toolshed's out."
"You're not making any sense."
"I've been thinking about this for a while!" I interrupted before he could say more. His eyes narrowed, but he still wasn't angry. "I want to move on, Kyle, I want a life. I want a life that doesn't involve any of… this shit."
"This shit," he repeated. "Jesus. You're not serious. I know you're not. You're just scared."
"Maybe I am scared, and maybe that's the point!"
"God! What the fuck is going on in your dreams?" Kyle had then stormed up, grabbed my face in his hands, and stared right into my eyes. "It's like you check out, Stan, you're not all here! I know you, and I know you don't mean this. Quit the League? That's not you, dude. Something's going on and it has to do with those nightmares."
But I shook my head, convinced that I was making sense. "I have to do this, Kyle. I have to."
And he'd let out a huff of breath, dropped his hands and then folded his arms across his chest, and made himself step back. "Do whatever you want," he said after a few seconds. "But I'm so worried about you, Stan. When you're ready for me to help, just let me know."
But my problem was, whenever I wanted to help him with something, I'd refuse help for myself. I was more concerned with the burns on Kyle's arms than I was about my own terrifying dreams, when really I should have known I could make room in my head for both issues. The thing was… it really did get harder and harder for me to concentrate on League-related things when there was something more emotionally serious pressing on me. I wanted us to be solid, I wanted our personal lives to have a good foundation first and make the League and all the terrifying shit we'd get into come second. That fight had basically been about both, though, and it was weighing on me.
I shook my head to snap out of my thoughts. We'd both taken the fight the wrong way. I knew he wasn't at fault, and so did he, but neither of us had apologized or talked about it or anything. I'd taken too much onto myself again; I was internalizing the problem and refusing help, even from Kyle, when really I'd needed him most.
"Hey, Kite," I said into the wire, "if you can hear me, sorry about yesterday. Just… saying."
Nothing but static for a moment. Shit.
Then, Henrietta's voice broke through on the wire: "-st-"
"What?" I asked. "Henrietta, you're gonna have to speak more cl—"
"-nd circ- is l-"
"Shit," I muttered. The cave was creating the worst interference with our communication system.
"-ybe som-ne e-"
"I can't—" I tried.
"The… the, um, the second Circle."
Well, that was weird. Gary's voice came in loud and clear. Then again, he was the only one among us devout enough to get a free pass out of Hell no matter what.
"The second Circle," the Mormon continued, "is—"
Despite his voice coming through without interference, my immediate surroundings provided other distractions; in this first case, what sounded like a scream, coming from further within the cave. It didn't sound human. It just sounded painful. I looked straight forward, forgetting completely about trying to listen to whatever advice Henrietta and Gary were trying to pass along, and noticed a gleaming blue light coming from around the bend.
I heard a splash beside me, and once again turned to the distraction. It was small and ultimately inconsequetial: a fish jumping.
The surface of the water rippled and I watched as a mossy green fish jumped again, this time splashing my arm as it ventured closer to the boat. My arm, where the water had touched it, began to sting and itch, and it caused me to cry out in alarm.
"What's wrong?" Tenorman's overhead voice mocked. "Can't handle a little salt water, Marsh?"
I let out an audible exhasperated groan. "Oh, my God, that's not funny," I complained.
Still—no, I really couldn't handle it. I looked down at my arm, my right forearm, just below my elbow…
It was dripping with wet green sludge, as if the fish had splashed me with the moss on its back. I grit my teeth and wiped the slime off and shook off my glove over the side of the boat. Looking back at my arm again, the area looked grey. And was emitting vapor.
"Shit," I said again, unsure of what to make of the situation. My arm no longer stung, but there was a sloppy grey circle under my elbow, looking like a hastily-etched tattoo.
I thought about Kyle, and the burns on his arms; of his discomfort and of how there was nothing I could do to make the marks go away. Nothing I could do to help.
I cleared my throat and attempted to clear my head, and looked forward again. The fish did not jump a third time.
The ride began to slow the nearer I drew to the light. Keeping my gaze just further than the horizon, I set one hand on my Philip's head and kept the other free to grab another weapon… drill gun, sledgehammer, whatever I might need to fight off whatever was around the corner.
Just as I was bracing myself for a fight, the current slowed further, and rocky beaches, barely illuminated by far off phantom lights, appeared on either side. I thought I could hear echoes coming from my right, but there seemed to be no activity in that direction.
There was, however, life on the left bank. If I could call it life. I didn't really know what to think.
Standing, hunched as if with age beside an algae-covered rock was what I suppose I could call a man. There were qualities too icthyic in his presence to call him human. He wore clothes, I guess I could say… tatters, really, as if strung together from scraps like curtains. Or sails. All in crusted browns and blacks, he blended in with the rocky shore in a way that made me nearly pass him for being a statue.
Who—other than Wilcox, I suppose—would carve a statue so grotesque, though? The creature's neck was thick, and so help me sported gills near where his collarbones protruded from his sternum like nails through rotted wood. His face was flat, his nose negligible particularly in comparison to swelled lips and enormous, filmy, unblinking white eyes. He had hair, but not much; his forehead was sloped, and his skin was tinted like the rock he stood beside. His fingers were webbed and covered with algae.
Definitely not one of Tenorman's Ginger clones. I kept a firm grip on my screwdriver.
Behind him on the bank was what looked like a row of slanted wooden houses. And on either side of the river, on each bank before the opening to the rest of the cave, stood a large black urn.
"Your name," the creature croaked. Oh, Jesus fuck it could speak.
I gathered my breath. "Figured you'd know it," I answered.
The thing took a slimy step forward. I tried not to flinch. Its gait was slow, something between a slide and a limp. It was unsteady, as if it hadn't been meant to walk on land. "I do," it said, its voice still raw and tired. "Good of you to join us."
"I'm not here because I want to be."
"No, but you have known we were here." It slid nearer to the bank. "You knew you would find us. Find yourself. Here."
I stared the creature down, feeling my stomach churn. I hated to admit it, but the cavern did feel oddly familiar. In it was the wet chill I felt in my recent nightmares; echoing from its walls were warnings I had heard in my sleep and forgotten upon waking.
Now I understood.
Death, or what I had experienced of it, had opened me up to what had to be the Dreamlands Henrietta and Wilcox had mentioned.
"You're the things creating my nightmares," I asked, "aren't you?"
"Showing," the creature corrected.
I clenched my fist tighter around my screwdriver. The current seemed to have stopped altogether. From deeper into the cave, something seemed to hiss.
"Whatever," I said, already taking a mental stock of my artillery to figure out which tools I could use to attack. Plus, there were the urns. Which tool opens the urn? the radio had prompted me. Sledgehammer? Chainsaw? "Where are we?"
"Dreamlands," said the creature, and he took another awkward step. "You see us. You call us. You have visited us."
"I've never seen anything like you in any of my nightmares," I said. "What are you? Do you have anything to do with Dagon?"
The creature lifted its head as best it could. "Dagon," it repeated, and the hiss came again. "You wish to see Dagon?"
"I want to kick its ass and get my life back on track," I spat. "And what does any of this have to do with the Circle of Lust, anyway?"
The creature attempted to smile, and it was horrifying. That mouth wasn't made for expressions. I flinched but remained at the ready. "There is too much passion in you. You want something, no?" the creature asked. "You lust for something."
"Um… no? Not really," I said. "I've got it pretty good, thanks. Minus the nightmares."
"But there's one thing you pine for above anything else," said the creature: "a new life."
I shivered. It was goddamn freezing in that cave; it couldn't have just been me.
The fishman still didn't blink. I wondered if he could reason in a human enough way. Doubtful, if he was something that would lead straight to this Dagon deity I kept hearing about.
"I wouldn't say 'new,'" I refuted, attempting conversation all the same. "Just… more normal."
The creature cocked its head lazily to one side. "How so?"
I'd thought about this before. Kyle and I had talked about it a little—he more or less knew how I felt. Knew that I was thinking about moving on. That we couldn't necessarily stay with the League forever. It was one of those things that was both exciting and terrifying to think about.
I've always been a very family-oriented person, no matter what dumb shit my loved ones get themselves into. I want what's best for everyone in my life. It was part of the reason I kept up with being Toolshed and lately it was part of the reason why I felt that someday I needed to stop. Keeping people safe and out of trouble or harm's way was important to me… so, I figured, wouldn't I be doing good by not putting myself in the middle of danger all the time? So that no one had to worry about me?
"Less worry," I answered. "Less pain. I… I don't know, I want to settle down. Someday."
"And yet," said the creature, "you do not get the chance to dream."
The water, I noticed, began to glint gold.
"Dream?" I repeated. "Not really, since you and your Dagon god there keep fucking me up with nightmares."
"You are prone to nightmares."
"Is it because I died?" I guessed.
The fish creature did not answer me. Its eyes shifted to the shimmering river.
"Is it because I died?" I repeated, more firmly.
The water glowed a brighter gold, and a shuffling came from every corner of the cave. I shirked back, rocking my vessel somewhat as more and more icthyic and amphibic creatures began stumbling out of the shadows and toward the river.
I was completely trapped.
"Answer me!" I shouted at the first creature I'd been speaking to, now sliding his way further toward the bank. "Why am I prone to nightmares?"
"Your passions misguide you."
"There you go about passion again!"
The creature slid one foot into the water. "The river is responding to you," it said.
I shuddered and shoved out my right arm. The grey circle the water had marked under my elbow no longer let off steam, but it was starting to itch. And it shimmered when I held it out over the edge of the boat.
"Toolshed," I heard over the wire. I was frozen, staring at the glittering part of my arm. It was as if the grey circle was a ripped seam, showing me something more than skin, more than myself. I don't know why my eyes were glued to the spot. "Toolshed, don't get near that water." The voice was Gary's again, the only one who could speak louder than Hell. "You're on the River Lethe. Don't let the water touch you and for Heavenly Father's sake do not drink it."
"Why would I?" I asked, hardly hearing myself.
"I don't know, but whatever obstacle you're up there against, it's been making you tune me out for a while. I just got through to Endgame, Mosquito and the Human Kite too, and—"
I shook my head, attempting not to look at my arm or at the river. It was hard not to. "Human Kite and Mosquito are here, too?" I wondered. "How… how long have I been on this ride?"
"Hours! Nearly half a day! We've been worried abou—"
My heart stalled. Impossible. "Impossible," I said.
"Don't drink the water!"
"I didn't."
I don't think.
"This is just another nightmare," I tried to convince myself aloud.
"Then," said the creature on the bank, "dream."
It slipped into the river, splashing me from the side. I closed my eyes and shielded myself from the rising water and fell to the bottom of the hard, cold boat.
And then I heard a voice say, "Wake up."
It was another voice I knew. Kyle—of course it was Kyle, why wouldn't it be Kyle? I wasn't expecting anyone else.
"I never even fell asleep," I tried to say, blinking. Golden daylight caused me to squint again, and I lay back against the warm sofa where I'd dozed off, folding one arm over my eyes.
"Excuses," Kyle taunted me. He picked up my hand and bent to kiss me awake. "Come on, I don't get many weekends alone with you these days. I'll be damned if you spend the entire time falling asleep under your novels."
"Huh?"
I sat up with a start and a thick book fell from my chest to my lap. Dante's Inferno. Why was I reading that again?
My head felt foggy.
"If that stuff bores even you, I'm sure your students will love it," Kyle teased. He leaned in to move the book from my lap to the coffee table beside us, then set his hands on my thighs and touched his nose to mine, smiling.
I felt myself wondering where I was, wondering if this, any of this, was real. But Kyle was there, wasn't he? Solid, real? I'd just had one of those stupid afternoon dreams again, and woken up unaware of the time.
"Mmhmm," I managed as he pressed closer to kiss me.
It was warm, perfectly warm, but I felt a chill run down my spine all the same. I felt as if I'd just been splashed with water.
Kyle pulled back, concerned. "You okay?" he wondered, placing a hand to my forehead.
"Um," I said, "yeah. Just—I had this weird dream."
"Write it down for your class," Kyle advised. He stood, touched his hands to my hair, and kissed my forehead. "Don't they love your dream stories?"
I had a hard time knowing what he meant. "It was about a cave," I went on. "And a river. And something else."
"Well, don't strain trying to remember it, honey, I'd—"
Since when did he so casually drop a nickname like that?
I racked my brain for more of the dream. "It wasn't just a river, it was a ride."
Kyle sighed and offered me his hands. I took them firmly, and he pulled me up to standing. I suppose we walked, but I still felt as if in a fog. Next thing I knew, we were standing in a narrow hallway. I stumbled, and Kyle caught me, pressing my back to the wall. "It's okay," he said calmly. "I think about it every so often, too. You know that."
"What?"
"The Carnival, and R'lyeh and all that. But it was years ago, Stan. It's all behind us."
"Years?"
Kyle smiled. He was wearing thin glasses and his corkscrew hair was due for a trim. His shirt was the light blue of his old Kite uniform. I didn't see his eyes before he closed them and touched his forehead to my chin. "Seven since you asked," he said quietly.
"Asked?"
"You have got to wake up," he laughed, and lifted himself onto his toes to kiss me. I returned it. He grabbed my right arm, squeezing his hand in a perfect circle just below my elbow.
We moved in a familiar rhythm, he held me just the way I knew.
And that was when I realized I wasn't breathing.
I gently pushed him back. "Kyle, stop," I managed. "Stop."
He moved back, giving me a cautious look over. It was familiar. He was famliar, all of this was; my home, my life, everything—but something was off. "What?" he huffed.
"This isn't—" a chill went down my spine, "this isn't real."
I could hear running water.
Almost laughing, Kyle pushed me back against the wall. "Not real?" he repeated, hurt. "What the fuck, Stan?"
"I just—"
"You built this whole world around us and you're saying this isn't real?"
"I—"
"I am real, Stanley. Tell me what about this is not real?"
"No, no!" I protested. "Y-you're real, and… I'm real, I think, in some way, yes, Kyle, we're both real and this is… Kyle, where are we? Seven years since I asked what?"
Kyle let out an angry breath. I couldn't draw one in. "It's our house, Stanley."
Ours?
It felt familiar. Just as much as he did.
But did it feel familiar because it was a dream?
Had I been projecting what I wanted onto what I had?
Where was the line?
Suppose I'd imagined the whole thing…
All of it.
I am someone who needs companionship. Someone who suffers without reassurance. Someone who wants love, friendly, familial or romantic, to exist and not be tainted. Someone who knows that such things can't be perfect, but who cares deeply and fights daily to keep those ideals alive.
But how much of it had I been making up?
How much of what I wanted could I realistically obtain?
"Seven years since I asked what?" I had to know.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw, at the end of the hallway, a strange black urn. It was enormous, and did not look like anything either of us would ever choose to display in a home we'd venture to make together. It did, however, look terribly familiar. Kyle was talking, answering my question, but I couldn't hear him. My ears buzzed with the hum of memory as I tried and tried to rack my brain for information about that urn.
Kyle ended his thought with, "Is this some kind of game, Stan?"
"Hm?" I turned back to look at him and tried to breathe.
Breathing was something I could control, right?
My lungs felt heavy.
"I'm sorry, am I dreaming?" I asked.
At his most unimpressed, Kyle coughed out a sound of disdain. "You are being ridiculous."
"I don't—Kyle, I have no idea what any of this…"
I looked back over at the urn, and then to Kyle. He was wearing long sleeves. My ears buzzing again, pounding even, I rolled his right sleeve up to his elbow. He sucked in a surprised breath throuch clenched teeth and yanked his arm back as if I'd burned him, and that was when I saw the marks.
"Token said they'd heal," I said, believing less and less that I was in any sort of reality I could comprehend. "If it's been at least seven years, why didn't they heal?"
"Stan, stop!"
Buzzing and pounding again.
I still hadn't gotten a good look at Kyle's eyes. He was looking down, smoothing his sleeve back down over his arm. "No," he said, "they didn't heal. But it doesn't matter, does it? It happened years ago, sweetheart, let the past stay past."
"Yes, it does matter," I said. "And why do you keep calling me things like that? How long ago did you get those burns, Kyle? What is going on?"
"Forget it," he said. "Just… Stan, just relax, and forget it."
He placed his hands on my chest and lightly pushed me up against the wall again. He looked up at me, but the way the light shone off his glasses I still couldn't see his eyes. "Please," I asked, "just answer one of my questions. I'm not breathing."
Kyle grinned, and grabbed hold of the front of my shirt. "I always could leave you breathless," he said, then lifted himself up to kiss me again.
When he kissed me, everything felt familiar again, and I wanted, for a moment, more than anything, for this to be real. Kyle pushed against me, holding me passionately against the wall, but as warm as this was, it didn't feel right. He wouldn't be acting like this. Kyle would never turn my worry into something trivial, and he never solved problems by getting physical, not like this. Kyle would try to reason with me, not insist that I forget.
Forget. Lethe.
My eyes widened and I pushed him off of me, keeping him at my arms' length.
"What are you doing?" Kyle asked me.
"This doesn't feel right," I said.
The pulsing came from the urn again and I glared over at it. It was the thing making the air heavy, it was the reason I couldn't breathe. It was the reason I was here, wasn't it?
"It's that urn!" I shouted.
"What ur—oh, my God. You are being ridiculous."
"No, I'm not! I'm being logical."
Working off of what I could only describe to be muscle memory, I made my way to the garage, to a toolbox. I threw the box open and grabbed out a handful of supplies, my head still foggy and unsure.
This all felt real. I knew what I was doing here; I knew that I loved everything around me. But I could not shake that awful feeling that I had missed something.
Another chill.
I shuddered as I stood, and set my free hand on the back of my neck.
It felt moist, and cold.
I could taste mist.
Storming back into the house, I switched a few tools into my left hand and kept the flathead screwdriver in my right.
"Stan, what in God's name are you doing?" I heard Kyle call after me.
"Yeah, I hope it's in God's name," I mumbled.
"You're scaring me, you aren't making any sense."
I looked over at where he stood, finding it hard to discern where to draw a line of reality. "If this doesn't work," I said, "I'm sorry. And I love you."
Without waiting for him to respond, I stabbed the screwdriver in my right hand against the urn. Over and over and over again I scratched at the surface, and when it didn't work I switched to a hammer. Which tool opens the urn?
"Stanley Marsh!" I heard Kyle shouting at me. I switched to a socket wrench and continued in my attempts to shatter the jet black object that seemed to be sucking the life out of me. "You wanted to escape. You wanted out of that life. This is where you got out."
"Well, Kyle, maybe there really is no out," I said, switching to the awl. The urn was beginning to scratch. "Maybe there is no escape. Maybe this is what we keep doing, what we have to just keep doing."
"Stan—"
"If life's worth living, then it's fucking well worth fighting for!"
There was a large circle of scratch marks on the urn now. I dropped the awl and switched to the last thing I'd grabbed: a crowbar. I stepped back into a batting stance, held back the crowbar, and struck it into the urn, at the dead center of the circle I'd created.
I heard Kyle's voice again, this time screaming into my head as the voice of my conscience, "For God's sake, Stan, do not drink the water!"
I gasped in a breath and opened my eyes in the dampness and darkness of that horrible cave. Water lapped at my legs and I cried out, pushing myself backward onto the rocky bank. My back stung, where I must have hit the rocks.
Worse than anything, my heart ached.
I'd just seen some sort of concocted future, some kind of vision of what settling down might have looked like if I hadn't questioned the whole thing. And, yeah, part of it seemed appealing: just me and Kyle, making a home, moving on. But my heart ached because even having a glimpse of that, it wasn't right, and it wasn't enough. I'd been striving and lusting after something I couldn't even have. No… that I didn't really want. I could say I wanted to retire from the League someday, but deep down, in all reality, I knew I'd never take that opportunity. I had to fight. As much as it sometimes pained me, I had to fight.
The fishlike creatures had me surrounded in horseshoe formation.
I turned myself onto my stomach and coughed out water. Reaching forward, I grasped at the ground in front of me and saw that the grey circle under my elbow had solidified into a crude gold cuff. My arm felt weak; it was cutting off my circulation.
Coughing out another mouthful of water, I fumbled for something in my toolbelt. A socket wrench—perfect. I slammed my arm down onto a rock and clamped the wrench onto the solid cuff. Breathing carefully, and with a few tries, I finally snapped it off. The grey was gone.
I shook my hand out to regain feeling in my lower arm, then scrambled to my feet, switching out the wrench for my crowbar.
"You," I growled, stumbling toward the creatures, crowbar at the ready. "What did you do? What was the point of that?"
"To allow you to dream once in a sea of nightmares."
"Look, fuck you," I spat. "Fuck whatever your motives are. Don't mess with my head like that, forget dreams and nightmares. I'm just here to beat this ride, whatever this is."
One of the creatures said, "This is where you need to be. Where you can dream."
"Shut UP!" I shouted, whacking the thing in the skull with my crowbar, using the same stance that had broken the urn in my dream.
The thing went down with a wet thud that made me cringe, and I moved to the next creature, scratching its gut with the end of the crowbar and then knocking it unconscious across the side of the head.
Given the chance, I glanced over at the two urns and saw that one of them was pulsing with a red glow.
I darted forward, toward the urns, but one of the fish creatures reached out and grabbed me back with a wet, webbed hand. I cringed and dropped the crowbar out of disgust, then quickly turned and grabbed my hammer out of my toolbelt as the creature lurched forward.
I swung up with the claw end of my hammer, hooking the thing in the nostrils. Without losing momentum, I hurled him over my back, the hammer flying with him. Another creature approached me and I kicked out to trip it. Before it could clamber back to its bulbous feet, I grabbed out a drill gun and shot it in the eye.
As that thing lay blubbering in pain, its eye bleeding out onto the bank, I got to my feet and rushed after the first. I pulled my hammer out of its nose, spun the tool around and with the heavier end whacked him square in the forehead.
That was when I realized that the creatures' bones were brittle. They had never met adversity like this, so their thin fishlike skeletons had never known contusions or breaks.
Needless to say, even a strike from a simple hammer had bashed the thing's head in.
"Aw, dude, gross," I spat out. I'd seen worse, otherwise I may have gotten sick all over the dead but twitching thing.
Its feet were still flopping as if to rush and grab at me.
"Ugh, fuck off." I kicked the dying body in the slimy shoulder and turned just in time to see another two advancing on me.
I ducked; keeping the hammer over my head I lashed out at the other two, knocking one into the other. They went down, and I spun to smash the hammer into the face of yet another creature that was advancing on me.
The only one left standing was the first one I'd seen upon arrival.
"You must state your name to undergo the task," said the thing, its fishy eyes unblinking. "You must use the proper instrument to open the urn that will reveal the exit. One leads to the life you desire, the other leads to the life you fear; always fighting, always defending. Which do you choose?"
"Both," I answered.
"You cannot choose both."
"Bullshit. I choose both." I took in a deep breath. "I've figured it out. Hell for me isn't fighting for the rest of my life. It's having nothing to fight for at all."
"You must state your name."
Without hesitation, I drew one of my drill guns from my belt, held it between the thing's eyes, and answered, "Toolshed."
I fired, and the creature went down.
All around me, the cave began to rumble. "You hear that, Damien?" I shouted up at the ceiling. "You can't use my own fucked-up family history against me! You can't use fucking anything against me!"
"No?" the muffled voice of my opponent came from everywhere overhead. "Then it's time to wake up."
"I am awake!" I shouted.
"Oh, no, no, Marsh, not you. This."
The hissing from deep within the cave grew louder, then turned into an inhuman screech. A rumbling came from somewhere on the dark horizon, and then, slowly, a huge shape filled the cavern.
Out from the blackness came an enormous thing, much like the fish creatures I'd just been fighting but several times the size. It was crawling on its hands, if I could call them hands—they were humanlike, several feet tall, webbed, and covered with grey and green scales. The head was humanlike, too, with fishy, smoke-grey eyes and teeth like a shark. It had pulled its way out from the cavern up to its torso, where it cast a shadow over the two black urns, over the banks, over the bodies of the things I'd just destroyed.
It was disgusting to look at, but as soon as I'd seen its eyes, I knew that this was the thing I had to destroy to wipe out my nightmares. The grey fog that seemed to fill those eyes… that was the color of the world I saw when I tried to sleep.
"Are you Dagon?" I shouted up at it.
The thing moved its massive head to look at me and let out a screech.
"Well," I said, when the sound died down, "whatever the hell you are, I'm gonna try to make this quick. I've got a promise to keep."
I'll find you, was the last thing I'd said to Kyle before entering the Carnival. I wasn't about to let those be my last words.
I took up both drill guns, steeled myself, and fired.
– – –
Ike
"They've been in there a really long time."
Mysterion had made the observation, but we were all thinking it.
Endgame and Toolshed had entered the Carnival five hours prior, giving the rest of us time to set up a communications base at the edge of the forest. While those two had carved up a path, Iron Maiden and I set up his laptop in the League van and synced it to Delphi's in the Tenth Circle vehicle. Henrietta read through her books in her usual cloud of smoke, and Mysterion was pacing. A lot.
"Calm down, guy," I said to him at one point. To which he'd just snapped back, "I am calm. You don't want to see me not calm." I'd shrugged and gone back to work.
Now, though… there was no indication about when Mosquito and I should head in. We held the next two tickets, followed by the Human Kite and Guardian Angel.
"It's not like they're going to invite us in," Mosquito pointed out impatiently. "I want to get in there. We should move. I hate this radio silence."
"You're telling me," I said. I hated not having my iPad, and started silently cursing myself for giving it to Cartman. Not that he'd break it or anything… I just wanted to know what was going on.
I always liked knowing everything that was going on. I'd been the Leauge's eyes and ears since I'd joined as a kid, and that wasn't a role I was about to give up now at fifteen. Karen, Timmy and I were the League when the other guys were away at their respective universities, and I ran my operations like a machine. I knew how to do stealth surveilance. I knew how to hack, decrypt, code and scramble. Maybe I'd taken my League identity from my Canadian roots, but I'd defined myself as the head technician more than anything. I understood computers, and I felt at ease using those tools to their full potential.
At least I still had my phone. I could probably get some kind of reading from the Carnival on that once I was inside.
"Should we wait a little longer?" That was Gary, who was nervously drumming his fingers on the Book of Mormon, which he'd been holding onto tightly for at least the past hour. Iron Maiden and I had outfitted him with a full headset that was tuned into everyone's wire frequencies. If he was along for the full mission, he had to be suitably connected.
Marpesia sighed and leaned back against the van. "This would be the point the Coon would probably start complaining that he was hungry," she pointed out, shrugging out one hand. She glanced over at Delphi, in the driver's seat of the other vehicle. "Speaking of, though, did anyone think to bring food? We might be here a while."
"I stocked up," Delphi said. "I figured a few of us are gonna be out here for the long haul, and you guys'll at least be hungry when you get back. Not to mention Red."
Almost everyone turned to Mysterion at that point. He shirked somewhat, glared out at the path to the Carnival, then turned back and declared, "All right, that does it. We've waited long enough. Red Serge. Mosquito. You're up."
I gave him a salute and said, "You got it, buddy."
"We'll let you know if anything goes wrong," Mosquito added, shaking Mysterion's hand before we started out.
The path to the Carnival gate was pretty clear, and we found the huge iron gate easily. I saw Endgame's handiwork in the melted padlock, and above us a couple of way out of date speakers belched out hurdy-gurdy music.
"If I never hear another fucking Radiohead song in my life," Mosquito said, "I'll be perfectly happy." I couldn't recognize the song, but then, I'm not all that big into music beyond just having some background noise.
Other than the distorted music that seemed to be hanging in the air like a cloud, the grounds were way too quiet to be a Carnival. Yeah, we were the only ones allowed in, currently, but the fact that there were no Infras or anything anywhere was suspicious. No workers, nothing. There were rides, sure, but nobody to man them.
Except, we noticed at the same time, for one little fuck who seemed to appear out of nowhere at the convergence of three rivers.
"Disarray," Mosquito said, and I heard it reverberate in my wire. Smart of him to keep his frequency on no matter what. "What's the deal? Or the game, or whatever?"
"And where," I followed up, "are Endgame and Toolshed?"
The little villain lifted his cloaked head and I could see his twisted grin in shadow underneath it. "Your companions," he said, "have already descended into their own personal Hells."
"Personal Hells, huh?" Mosquito repeated for the sake of anyone who was listening.
"It is not my duty to escort either of you to your own," said Disarray. "I'm waiting for your Wrath."
"I've got plenty," Mosquito said, pulling out one of his stunners and aiming at the undead kid.
Disarray waved him off. "No, no, you won't do," he said. "Mosquito, you'll be heading much, much closer to the center. Go on, now."
"Don't order me around you little—"
"I'd advise you to move."
The ground rumbled, and both of us took a step back. I glanced up at the volcano, the mouth of which was glowing but not yet completely alive. "Dude," I said to my companion, "we should probably follow whatever rules these guys've laid out. At least until we hand over our tickets."
Mosquito angrily tucked his stunner away and said, "They're fucking with us."
"Yeah, no kidding," I said. "So we should just mess 'em up right back, all right? Bend the rules from within whatever paths they want us to follow."
After an angry glare back at Disarray, Mosquito looked back at me and nodded. "You're a smart kid, Red Serge," he said. To Disarray, he then said, "I'm not finished with you. None of us are."
"On your way, you greedy bastard," Disarray said, pointing toward the center of the Carnival grounds.
Mosquito scoffed, and the two of us began walking along a path of sulfur and coal that wound its way around the attractions settled on the rivers. They were marked, I noticed as we walked, with I to the left, V in the center, and II on the right. Five. Five was Kyle. That didn't necessarily mean that my brother was the Wrath that Disarray said he was waiting for, but if they wanted someone with a lot of fight in him for Attraction Five, they couldn't do much worse than him. Kite and Mysterion were probably the two most relentless fighters in the League, even surpassing the Coon. I'd been keeping up with everyone's stats long enough to know who did the most damage. My brother was far and away pretty high at the top of our resident destructive forces. Not in terms of killing people. He'd never killed anyone. No, just in terms of sheer fuck-shit-up-ness.
As we walked, I tested my wire and said, "We're in. Anyone copy?"
"We can all hear you for now," Henrietta responded. "We've found that once you're in your attractions, Gary has the best shot of communicating. We'll see if that holds up for you two."
Mosquito said, "Thanks for the tip."
"If Kite's there," I added. "Tell him to be careful when he follows us in, eh?"
"Why?" Kite himself responded.
"Disarray ignored us and said he's waiting for you."
Kite let out a scoff. "Thanks for the heads-up," he said. "If it's a fight he wants, he'll definitely get it."
"Just be careful," I cautioned.
"Same to you."
I really couldn't have asked for a better brother than Kyle. He'd been protective of me for longer than I could remember, and as soon as I was able, I'd tried to start returning the favor. I hadn't been able to do much, but when opportunities came up I always sprang to his defense. Now that I was seeing more field action, too, I didn't want to take any chances or let anything bad happen to him.
But for now, I did what I'd always done best: record keeping. I took out my phone and started snapping photos of landmarks and the ground.
"Dude, what are you doing?" Mosquito asked as we rounded a turn around the somehow enormous Attraction II.
"Sending intel back to Iron Maiden," I said. "Coon's got my tablet, so I'm helping the guys out with a new map."
"Isn't that kinda fucking dangerous?"
I shrugged. "Damien didn't say not to," I said, and took a photo of the glowing volcano.
Mosquito shoved my hands down. "Listen, this isn't just a caution, Red Serge, this is an order," he said sharply. "Do not go overboard on that. Look, I get that you're a good hacker and everything, but if you are then that means that these pricks might have someone good on their side, too. For all we know, they could be monitoring any device we bring in here."
"Okay, okay," I relented. I put the phone away, for now, but I had plenty of security built up to protect from simple shit like that. Iron Maiden and I had a system, and it had worked for years and only gotten stronger. I could rely on my devices.
Mosquito seemed satisfied for the time being, and when we'd walked to seemingly the far right side of the Carnival grounds, another path opened up and led us closer to the center. The ground seemed to be laid out in rings, and when we crossed from one to the other, another rumbling came from beneath our feet. "Think that's the volcano?" I asked.
"Either that or it's actually Hell getting ready for… whatever this is," Mosquito answered. He looked so stone terrifying with that blood splatter on his mask, but I didn't tell him so.
Within the second ring of circles, a hastily-constructed sign pointed in two directions. To the right, the numeral III; to the left, IV. "Guess this is where we split up," I said.
"Watch yourself, kid," Mosquito said to me.
I hated still being called kid. I was fifteen. I was just shy of how old they'd all been during the R'lyeh crisis and I was well older than they'd been the first time Cthulhu had showed his disgusting face in the Gulf. But again I didn't say anything about that, and instead just saluted and said, "Same to you, guy."
But as we parted and I followed the sulfur path along to the right, I stewed. I wasn't a fucking kid. So I didn't have a driver's license yet, so I was still in high school, so what. I was still smarter than some of the guys and I held down the damn fort while they were off at university. If it weren't for my tech skills and the team that was myself and Iron Maiden, those assholes would be sunk. They didn't get the tech the way I did. They didn't keep up with the best information available. I absorbed it all and I could have eyes anywhere I wanted. I was formidable and it was time they knew it.
Maybe the others were pissed off that the Carnival was separating us, but at least it was my chance to prove that I belonged here just as much as they did.
Karen had called me a glutton for punishment recently. Maybe I was. Maybe I ate up every tiny bit of praise the others gave me, or soaked in whatever kudos for coming up with an idea I got, but I was sick of scraps at this point. I wanted to stop being treated like a kid and get my fair fucking share.
My path ended at the most brightly-lit part of the entire Carnival, the sight of which made me sick. Even these damned Ringleaders were treating me like a kid.
I was standing in front of a garish, old-fashioned, brightly-painted carousel, with rings hanging from the tented top and pastel wooden animals staring at nothing with their lifeless red eyes. Above the carousel was a bright neon sign reading RING-CATCH. "Are you kidding me?" I complained to no one.
But the ride had a wooden sign in front of it reading III: Gluttony.
"Gluttony?" I said, the word tasting sour in my mouth. "Hey!" I shouted in case Damien or Scott Tenorman could hear me. "Isn't this better suited for that fatass Coon? How am I stuck with Gluttony?"
"Gluttony?" I heard over my wire. Oh—I'd been tuned in the whole time, too. Of course I was. I always was. I liked being connected to everything. The voice was Gary's. "Red Serge, do you have any sort of vice they could trap you with?"
"No," I spat. "I'm not that gross."
"It doesn't have to mean anything literal," Gary said. "If there's anything, Red Serge… think. Be careful."
"It's a carousel," I said. "What could they possibly do to me on a carousel?"
The safest ride at any carnival. Goddammit.
I pulled my phone out again and snapped a photo to send to Iron Maiden. In the photo, I saw that one horse's pole stood out as redder than any of the others, so I made my way toward that one. It looked so much like the one in the Gluttony painting back at the coffee shop: the carousel horse with the red pole on a background of void.
Next to the wooden sign post, I noticed, stood a rusty ticket-taking machine of a very simple design. It was only about six feet high, with the ticket slot at roughly my waist height, and an old speaker was positioned treacherously on the top, still churning out hurdy-gurdy music.
"Jeez," I said, taking out my ticket and sliding it into the machine's slot, "you had all the time in the world to come up with this scheme and you couldn't build in any new equipment?" The machine clunked as it accepted the ticket, and the carousel lit up and started groaning to a slow start.
"How astute of you," came a voice from the radio. I looked up, despite knowing it was just the speaker. As far as I knew, though, there could be a camera in there.
I grinned and stood back, folding my arms. "Well, well," I said. "Scott Tenorman. I was wondering when we'd hear from you again. Your speakers need tuning, I could hardly tell it was you."
"Well, little genius, perhaps you could fix things up for us," Tenorman said through the speaker distortion. Little? What a dick.
"I'm not offering," I said. "And what's with the carousel? Kinda lame, even for you."
"It's no mere carousel, boy, it's a game," said Tenorman. "Win, and you can roam freely through the Carnival. Lose, and be devoured. It's a spectacle for us either way."
I had to laugh. "Be devoured, huh?" I taunted. "What, are the animals gonna come to life and eat me? What the hell kind of game even is there for a carousel?"
"See those rings in the rafters?"
I glanced over at the ride, which was still moving slowly, its painted animals hardly even moving up and down with the poles. Stationary, however, were the multiple rings hanging from the top from unseen clasps.
"Catch enough of those," Tenorman instructed, "to fit the length of your arm, and you win the ring-catch. Simple as that."
"Huh?" I glowered back at the speaker. "This is stupid."
"What happened to following the rules, Red Serge?" Tenorman broke off into laughter after that. "You're not afraid of a simple little child's game, are you?"
I grit my teeth and refrained from reaching up and punching the speaker. Instead, I hollered at it, "As soon as I beat this thing, I'm coming after you! I'm gonna re-arrange your face for how much you've been fucking with my brother!"
With that, I turned on the heel of my boot and stormed up to the ride. I stepped on and was just reaching up to grab a ring when a disembodied and, surprisingly given the management, female voice announced: "The game cannot start until everyone is safely fastened in. Please keep your hands and arms inside the ride at all times. Please do not stand up while the ride is in motion. Turn off all electronic devices."
"This is a waste of time," I muttered, and walked around the slowly-spinning carousel until I'd reached that horse with the bright red pole.
The thing's eyes, like the rest of the animals', were bright red, too, but something about standing this much closer to it made me cringe. The painted horse's mouth was open, complete with a wooden bit and attached leather reins, and something about the red eyes and the open mouth made it look like it was in pain. I shuddered but took a photo of it on my phone anyway, just in case. I sent the photo to Iron Maiden with the message, Wilcox's paintings more informative than I expected.
When I mounted the wooden horse, it occurred to me that despite basing my League identity on the uniforms of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, I'd never actually ridden a real horse. Never even Googled how to do it. Not that this was real, but it was the closest to one I'd ever been on. Which was probably what Damien and Tenorman were going for, if they were personalizing things.
"Please turn off all electronic devices," the voice said again.
"Nah, fuck that, eh," I said, and took a photo of the rings hanging from the carousel top.
The carousel creaked and sped up marginally, and the horse began moving up and down. I looked at the photo of the rings and noticed they were hanging in a predictable pattern. I scoffed and, without even looking up, I reached up with my left and and sure enough grabbed onto one. It gave, and I let it slide up my arm. This was too fucking easy.
With the game figured out, I did take advantage of the spinning ride to take a look out onto the rest of the Carnival, snapping photos with my right hand while I reached up each time the horse moved upward to catch another ring and slide it up my left arm. The most interesting landmark to me was a small stronghold built into the top of the volcano, just next to the mouth. That had to be where Damien was monitoring everything and everyone.
My left arm started to feel heavy and tired just a few minutes in, but when I stole a glance at my arm, the rings only went from my shoulder to my elbow. I scoffed and opened up the e-book of Dante's Inferno I'd downloaded. If the ride was a waste of time, I'd at least try to do some actual work while I was stuck on it.
I scoured the Canto on Gluttony a few times to see if there was anything in there that could possibly explain why I was stuck with this attraction. Apparently, the hellhound Cerberus was supposed to be there, but no, I was stuck with a painted horse. And there was something about walking a circle toward the end, but that was it. Why the hell was I in the circle of Gluttony?
I'd been on the ride for at least two hours by that point. My arm was getting very heavy, and I felt something pinching at my wrist and sides, making it hard to feel my pulse or even breathe.
There was silence, and then the voice again: "Please turn off all electronic devices."
Did I know that voice? It wasn't Kenny's girlfriend, but it had sounded like someone I knew. "Ms. Cartman?" I asked, glancing up.
And that was when I saw the wooden animal in front of the horse. It was facing me; a black dog with three heads and bright red eyes. I gasped but my lungs felt tight, and when I tried to move my left arm it fell limply and weighted to my side. "What the-" I started, and looked down.
I'd collected far more than an arm's length of rings, but I'd kept myself too distracted to notice. Somehow they had collected into a length of chains, which had snaked around my waist, torso, and left arm and were holding me in place on the ride. I tried to move my left hand but barely could.
I looked up at the painted dog again, and it barked loudly with all three mouths.
I should never have underestimated that ride.
The horse I was on dropped to the floor, the red pole breaking off into ash as the hooves hit the ground, and then the thing bucked, spooked by the three-headed dog. And then it broke into a gallop and leapt off of the carousel. It was heading straight for the volcano.
"Shit!" I shouted. "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!"
The horse let out an ear-piercing shriek of a whinny and galloped faster toward the volcano, the chains holding me to it rattling with every step. I was completely tied on except for my neck, head, and right arm and shoulder. Thinking fast, I tried to tuck my phone away but could not find a break in the chains to reach a pocket in my coat or pants. "Damn it!" I hollered.
I glanced up at the volcano, coming closer and closer, and that was when I figured it out. Karen was right: I was too attached to my screens, and I never looked up. Maybe I did have gluttonous tendencies, burying myself in that shit and not honing my own natural senses of observation. Kyle was a puzzle solver, and I liked to think that I was like him in that way, but I was so engrossed with the digital that I lagged behind with everything else.
Pissed as all get-out, I did what I knew I had to and flung my phone away. The horse had carried me to the base of the volcano at that point, and my phone sank directly into a pool of lava, where it hissed and sparked and was gone. "Fuck," I muttered, then tried to forget about it and looked up at the mouth of the volcano again.
I couldn't wonder whether or not the horse could scale it; it was something concocted by the son of the Devil, so I figured it could. I had two tasks now: turn the horse around and get out of those chains somehow. I'd been grabbing the rings with my left hand… I leaned forward onto the horse's neck to get a closer look at the chains around my lower left arm and wrist. Sure enough, there was a padlock there.
Lucky for me, I had at least looked up how to pick locks once after I'd been typing that particular ability into Toolshed's file. I reached up to grab a pin out of my hat with my right hand and leaned forward again. The horse was starting its way up the incline of the volcano, and I felt the chains around my waist grip tighter, holding me to my ride.
I took a deep breath, tried to focus, and jammed the pin into the padlock. It was fucking hard trying to maneuver the lock with just one hand and on a moving horse, but I tried. The air grew hotter and heavier the higher the horse ran, to the point that I could feel sparks singeing the skin of my face. I winced and angled the brim of my hat down to try to shield myself, all while still trying to jostle the padlock free.
Finally, when I was sitting at roughly a ninety-degree angle, the padlock let out a reluctant click. I let out a sigh and held the hatpin in my teeth, then tugged at the chains until they fell looser around my left arm. I could barely feel that arm but I made myself move.
A spark flew from the volcano and burned off the horse's leather reins; we were steps away from the volcano's mouth so, thinking quickly, I took up the chains, hoisted them into the horse's mouth, and pulled up hard with my right hand.
The horse let out another shriek and spun around to the right. I glanced back and saw its hooves kicking rubble into the sizzling opening of the volcano. No time to breathe easy, though, as the horse then started careening back down at at even faster pace. I shook the chains off my left arm enough to grab hold with that hand as well, and as soon as the horse hit the ground at the base of the volcano, I pulled hard on the makeshift reins with both hands.
The horse shrieked and came to a sudden halt. I was thrown over the front of it, still very much entangled in the chains that wound around my waist. I hit the ground hard and felt the chains start heating up from the volcanic ground—with time absolutely not on my side, I writhed until I was able to grab at the ground with both hands. It was a miracle I hadn't swallowed that hatpin. As best I could, I pushed myself up to kneeling and finally managed to shake off the rest of the chains, which had to be about ten feet long.
I took the pin out of my mouth, picked up my hat which had flown off in the fall, jabbed the pin back in, and ran back to the horse. I'd half expected it to have frozen solid again, back into nothing but a wooden accessory, but it was champing at its section of the chains and pawing at the ground.
When its red eyes looked right at me, it bucked again and started running off. "No, you don't!" I shouted after it. I drew my sword and jammed it into the ground right in the center of one of the chain links. The horse was yanked backward and it shrieked at me. "You've got something to do with the way I'm going to win this stupid game, right?" I asked, as if it could answer. "So you're not going anywhere till I've figured this out."
Lose, Tenorman had said, and be devoured.
So it was Cerberus after all. That three-headed dog back on the ride.
"Hey," I asked into my wire, "any Hell tips on how I might beat Cerberus? Anyone? Hello?"
Gary came through. "Cerberus?" he repeated. "Hold on… Henrietta is telling me that according to Dante—"
"I know, I read it and I've seen the thing," I interrupted. While I spoke, I started pulling the horse back toward me by the chain. It resisted, but I kept the sword in the ground so it would catch if I lost my grip. "Any tips, I'm asking?"
"Um…"
While Gary hesitated, I managed to yank the horse within a few inches of me. It still just looked like a painted carousel accessory, but its eyes were completely glowing. It probably wasn't alive, it probably wasn't real, but it definitely wasn't mechanical. If I had to guess, it was more than likely able to move the same way the Ginger Infra clones could, with help from Damien's sentient conjured shadows. Which meant that the carousel version of Cerberus I was up against might have been, too.
"I'm afraid I don't have anything for you right now," Gary finally said. "Hold it off best you can and I'll contact you if we find anything, all right?"
"Got it," I said.
"Mysterion is sending in the Human Kite and the Guardian Angel," Gary added. "You and Mosquito have been in there for three hours… Endgame and Toolshed for six. Mysterion's getting worried. We all are."
"Well, I've almost got this figured out, okay?" I said. "Let me know the second you figure out anything about Cerberus."
"Be careful."
I cut out the call, held the carousel horse in one place with my right hand and yanked my sword out of the ground with my left. "All right, you," I said to the horse. "Let's finish that thing off, eh?"
The animate wooden horse tried to relent, but I held firm, mounted it again, and whacked its rear with the blunt side of my sword. The horse sprinted forward into a gallop, and I held tight to its chains as the carousel and Cerberus drew closer and cloesr into view. Until Gary got back to me with intel, I'd have to improvise.
When I was only about ten feet away from the large three-headed dog, I yanked the makeshift reins to one side and the horse swirved, kicking up and continuing its course in the opposite direction. I looked back and watched as the three heads barked and snapped behind us, and the dog took chase. Not super good.
"Any minute now," I said testingly into the wire.
"Just in time, Red Serge," Gary replied, thank God. "Delphi and Iron Maiden might have a solution. Cerberus is traditionally put to sleep by music."
"I'm not a Goddamn bard!" I snapped, immediately put off by the idea. The dog was gaining on us, so I whacked the horse with the sword again and it sped up. The carousel zoomed by beside us, and I tried to rack my brain for some kind of alternate solution. "If I sing at it, it'll probably make the damn thing angrier!"
"Could you play some music from your phone, then?" Gary suggested.
"My phone's gone," I said bitterly. "I'll figure something out."
"Wait—"
"I don't really have time. I'll figure it out."
Cerberus was at the horse's heels, and the center head nipped. The horse let out another horrible shriek and kicked back, shoving me forward as it put its weight onto its front hooves. Just as I thought I was going to be thrown over its head, it reared again and started running away from the carousel.
But behind us came the automated voice that sounded too like Liane Cartman to be coincidental: "Thank you for turning off all electronic devices. Please remain seated for round two."
"Round two?" I repeated.
And that was it.
"Hey, change of plans," I said to the horse, pulling the reins back again. "We're heading back."
The horse tried to tug against me, but I pulled just hard enough to get it to turn. Cerberus had given chase again, but we veered around it, beelining into the carousel. I glanced up as the horse began running around in its intended monotonous circle and saw that there were still several rings hanging from the top. I sheathed my sword and, keeping one hand on the reins, began once again collecting the rings.
This time, I kept track, and stayed aware of where we were in relation to the dog. If it charged toward us, I stopped collecting rings and turned the horse around, or made it swerve, but the longer I went on avoiding Cerberus and collecting rings, the more often the three-headed dog would stop to eat one of the stationary carousel animals. One by one it devoured them, and with each animal it consumed, Cerberus grew slightly larger.
My heart started pounding but by the time I'd collected enough rings to once again make a long, long chain, Cerberus had exited the carousel and now loomed twice as large as the horse I was riding.
Usually whenever I saw field action, I was up against people. People are predictible, I can deal with what they're generally capable of. This thing, though, was reminding me of all the reasons I hated improvising. But I was not about to be eaten by some hokey-ass carnival ride, so I did what I had to do and spurred the horse around the giant dog and toward the pit of lava at the base of the volcano.
One good thing about my opponent growing larger was that it made a much better target. I, however, was shit with a lasso. But I tried. I tied the chain into a pretty crappy loop if I do say so myself and attempted to rope it around one of the dog's necks. I managed to whack it in the eyes of that particular face which only pissed it off, and then had to quickly yank my ride to the left in order for it not to run me straight into the lava pit.
As I rode past, one of the heads bit at me, but I managed to duck. No time to celebrate that, though; somehow I had to get that thing into the lava. I figured my sword would do nothing to it, and the only thing I had working for me was speed and molten rock. So I'd have to make do.
I tried again to lasso a head, but it was another no good attempt, only making the dog angrier. I could try to rope it around the legs, but that would probably take even more skill that I didn't have. But I could trip it.
After Cerberus once again tried to chomp down on me, I kicked the horse into the fastest gallop it could manage and unsheathed my sword. When we were only a couple feet from the lava pool, I leaned over and jabbed the sword down as hard as I could into the ground and spun the horse around so as not to fall in. The dog was getting impatient but did start lumbering toward us. I pulled the horse in the direction of my sword again, leaned down to tie the chain I'd been trying to use as a lasso around it, and looked up.
Cerberus was directly overhead, and the horse was running headlong into the lava. The only thing I could do was jump, so I did. I bailed off of the horse, which careened into the pit and began to burn up, then ran to one side, pulling the chain taut behind me as I did. Sure enough, as Cerberus took a step closer to me, I was able to swipe the chain forward, thankful that the sword held, and trip the beast.
Cerberus fell forward after the horse, and far behind me, I heard the carousel completely power down.
I heaved out a sigh of relief and retrieved my sword as the two carousel animals smoldered into nothingness in the pool of lava. "I think I won," I said into the wire.
But of course that wasn't the end.
Just as I'd suspected, the two animals had remained 'alive' by means of Damien's controlled shadows. Two shadows shot up out of the lava as the last of their hosts disappeared, and splatted onto the ground beside me. I yelped and stumbled back, but the shadows had no interest in me. They remained still for a moment, then sped off, away from the lava, and in a very specific direction.
Oh. This was good.
I lamented not having my phone to keep a record of their path, but this really wasn't the time for a digital log. Everyone was separated and it seemed like Gary was our only real link anymore anyway. So I ran off after the shadows. I was exhausted and my legs were killing me from trying to learn how to ride a horse on a Goddamn wooden one of all things, but I kept going.
The shadows led me around a long arching line of white chalk in the ground, around a few more attractions and toward not the bullseye, as I had started to assume, but past a flashy three-storey arcade, past a helter-skelter, past a House of Wax, and toward the back lot. They slithered around a row of black trailers, each marked with the insignia the Gingers had all been wearing, and disappeared from view.
I hid behind one of the trailers for a moment, and that was when I heard it. The low grind of the hurdy-gurdy, belching out Radiohead's No Surprises. I peered around the trailer as much as I dared, and there in plain view was a giant red circus tent. And in front of it, sitting in a lawn chair and listening to the muddled music on an enormous victrola, was Scott Tenorman. He drummed his hands on the fools' gold tip of his cane with one hand, and held in the other an '80s-looking two-way radio, one thumb poised on the button he'd press to speak.
I gasped and ducked back behind the trailer. Trying to cover my tracks in the dust, I scurried away and as far out of the light as I could possibly get, glad I was skinny enough to hide in the shadow of the wheel of one of the trailers on the end of the row.
I'd found it. I'd found it and I was the only one who knew, as far as I could tell. I'd found the fucking headquarters, and I knew without a doubt what those trailers were for.
"Red Serge?" I heard Henrietta ask over the wire. "We just saw a huge fireball. You know anything about that?"
"Henrietta?" I asked quietly.
"Yeah," she answered. "Ugh. It's getting obnoxious only having Gary be able to talk to anyone. Anyway. Fireball?"
"Yeah I kinda burned up Cerberus."
"And I fucking missed it?"
"Sorry. But listen, I'm requesting permission to go dark for a while," I said. "Don't call me. I don't want anyone calling me."
"What?" That was Delphi. "Red Serge, what are you doing?"
"Timmy," Iron Maiden echoed. He was a good partner, though—he'd understand.
"Iron Maiden. Cut off my transmission for… let's say two hours, okay?" I requested. "I can't risk blowing my cover. At least I'm wearing red, I blend in surprisingly well here."
"Timmah?"
"Yeah, dude, I know that's weird of me," I said, "but listen. I've got a lead and I'm not about to lose it. Give me two hours of silence and I'll get back to you."
Henrietta asked, "Why, though?"
"Because I'm pretty sure I know exactly where they're keeping the Gingers," I said. "Maybe even Red. I just need a better look."
– – –
– – –
Authors' Notes:
South Park is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker!
Sorry for the ridiculously long radio silence! Life is crazy, but we're committed to finishing this story. We never really completely left it, it was just on hold for a while and it hadn't yet been the right time to come back. We are committed to actively posting again but can't give a definite schedule as to posting times - but we are working on it, and are very excited to be diving back into this story. I will try to post updates on future chapters on my Tumblr (jizena dot tumblr dot com).
The next chapter will be getting to yet another new narrator - each hell gets its own, and then the final string will be just the original four. Thank you so much to everyone who has commented and been in touch during our long hiatus! You have said so many kind and encouraging things about this series and we are very grateful for this awesome readership. We're excited to be back (again)! (And of course excited for the Coon and Friends video game that drops in just a few days omg.)
Much love,
~Jizena and Rosie Denn.~
– – –
