Chapter 16 – The Reflection
He knows this place.
The squids physically recoil at the sight of him, pressing against the edge of their tanks into a prismatic bundle of nerves. He shrugs off their judgment and keeps on.
He enters the auditorium of the theater and sees Buster Moon on the stage. The koala has an unnatural amount of energy, zipping around, bouncing back and forth like a grinning firecracker. Moon continually adjusts the stage scenery with meticulous precision, never fully satisfied.
He is halfway to the stage when the koala finally notices him. The smile on Moon's face quickly fades when their eyes make contact and the intentions are clear. Moon flees to the crescent moon hovering at the center of the stage. The koala makes a desperate throw with a wrench at an apparatus in the wings.
Moon has gotten away with too much already. He won't get away again.
He hears the pulley system at work while Moon clings desperately to his namesake. He chases after Moon, diving and latching onto the crescent moon, and they're both catapulted up, up at a startling pace. When they reach the rafters, he already has Moon's collar in his clutches.
"I didn't mean to!" Moon cries out like a child. A child that was warned of the consequences and didn't care until they caught up with him.
"I didn't mean to!" Moon repeats. They are the koala's last words before gravity takes over. The collision of flesh, bone and wood fills the auditorium with a blunted CRACK.
He can feel the curl tugging his muzzle, his work finally complete.
There is a hole in the wall up here in the rafters. He passes through it to enter another familiar space—his abode, anything but humble. He climbs one of the twin staircases toward his bedroom. Leaning on the railing outside his bedroom door is the snow leopard Cleo. She glares at him, immediately filling his chest and throat with an indignant lump. She has the look of a woman that thinks she's always right, even when she isn't. He looks at the smug expression of judgment on her face and wonders how he ever found her attractive.
"You're like a child," she chastises him. "You never learn. I don't know why I even bother with you."
The feeling is mutual, but he doesn't respond with words. Words are Cleo's forte. Her arguments wear him down with logic, moralizing, and hypotheticals. He is done with words. In comparison, his actions are deafening. In one motion, he snatches her by the throat and hurls her over the railing.
She crashes into a statue of him below. It breaks and topples onto her crumpled body. He'll miss the statue, but it was sacrificed for a noble cause.
Opening his bedroom door, he witnesses his world shift once more. It's his office, his second home situated right where he belongs—high above the city. Jerry is here waiting for him, petrified and on the verge of tears.
"I'm so sorry sir! I'll do better, I swear!" Jerry cries out.
He is annoyed by the feline's sniveling, but it passes. He doesn't understand why Jerry is this upset. With every step he takes forward, Jerry takes a step back.
"Sir, please! Have mercy!"
Jerry flees for the closet and shuts himself inside. He chases after Jerry and throws the door open, only to find Porsha huddled inside, trembling. Clinging to her is a pale bundle of fur with rosettes so light they are nearly indistinguishable. The bundle turns its head and he recognizes it as Taiga. Both of them stare at him in terror.
"Stay back!" Porsha screams. He's never seen or heard her have this reaction to him before.
"My mom should've never helped you," Taiga says, his eyes the color of the sky—and carrying contempt.
He wants to—what does he want? To tell them that to be quiet, that they're wrong, that he isn't to be feared?
"How could you be so monstrous!" a voice demands from behind. He whips around to find Jerry pointing at him, eyes glistening with pain and fury. No, not pointing at him, behind him.
He turns back to the closet to find Porsha and Taiga's lifeless corpses, their throats slashed. He looks down at his bloodstained claws as if the concept of blood is completely foreign to him.
"I didn't!" he croaks. "I wouldn't!"
"I was wrong. You aren't worth loving," Jerry hisses. The feline evades his advances, ignores his confused explanations and scuttles onto the balcony.
"Jerry, wait!"
When he follows, he finds Jerry teetering on the edge of the balcony. He reaches for him but the cat goes over—or jumps—and suddenly, he's plummeting too. Freefalling. Dozens of stories pass him by, there's a glimpse of his flailing body across the polished glass surface of the skyscraper, and when he looks down again the ground is—
Jimmy splashed water across his face from the running faucet. The wolf in his bathroom mirror had been laid bare for all to see, in more ways than one, and he found him unrecognizable.
"What the hell was that?" he muttered, running his fingers through disheveled fur. The bathroom's light was pale and harsh at this hour in the morning; the sun wouldn't wake up for at least another hour.
He'd had a litany of dreams about getting payback on Moon, especially when he was incarcerated, but this was a bonafide nightmare. Getting his hands dirty was never something he was too afraid to do, but he always knew who his enemies were when the situation called for it. Hurting Cleo, Porsha, Taiga or even Jerry... he couldn't imagine a scenario where something like that could come to pass. Even when Porsha betrayed him by throwing in with the troupe that ruined his reputation and his life, the thought of laying hands on her never crossed his mind.
And yet the dream felt so real.
It would be easy to blame it on all this empathy business. But why would something that was supposed to connect him with others lead to nightmares full of indiscriminate killing?
He'd have to get his answers from the source. He needed an emergency session with Maxine Winters.
"Sir, are you decent?" Jerry called from behind the bedroom doors.
"I'm better than decent," Jimmy replied, throwing open the doors. "I'm fantastic."
Jerry gawked. The wolf towered over him in a crisp, clean suit, his pearly white fur radiant in the morning light. It wasn't a new sight, but it never got old.
"Jerry, you're drooling."
"I'm... I'm not..." Jerry murmured, dabbing around his open maw to be sure. He looked up to see Jimmy's wry grin. "I'm glad to see you're in good spirits, sir."
"I've decided it's gonna be a good day. Positive thinking and all that, y'know?"
"That's wonderful, Mr. Crystal," Jerry said, but the undercurrent of uncertainty haunting his voice betrayed his words. Warily, he looked down at the envelope in his hands, the paper starting to crease from his tight grip. "Before we start, sir, I'd like you to have this."
Jimmy took the envelope and opened it, skimming the letter within.
"My job has always been to make your job easier," Jerry began. "But ever since I did a really stupid thing, it's been very tense between us, and I haven't been able to serve your needs. It's obvious my presence is a hindrance to you, so... this is my resignation letter."
Jimmy finished skimming the letter and summarily ripped it in two. "I reject your resignation."
"What!? Why?"
"Truth is, you're not the problem. I am. I knew you had feelings for me that night. I shouldn't have let it go as far as it did. I'm not tryin' to lead you on."
"I never thought you were leading me on, sir."
"Yeah, but I could've handled the fallout much better. I shouldn't have pushed you away and treated you like crap over that. I'm sorry."
Jerry gasped, backing away until he bumped into one of the doors. For all his years working for Jimmy, he'd never heard those two words sincerely uttered before, toward himself or anyone else. Jimmy folded his arms with faint traces of a scowl.
"I-I accept your apology, sir!" Jerry said quickly.
"Good. And you know what else? Don't beat yourself up anymore. You're not a worthless loser."
It took monumental effort for Jerry not to cringe thinking back to his world collapsing after the kiss went awry as Jimmy echoed his own words back at him. "You heard me?"
"Jerry, I've got cameras all over my property, remember?"
"Oh my gosh, you saw me have that breakdown?"
"I guess I should've said something then, but I wasn't in the right headspace at the time."
"When I told you how I felt about you, and you weren't repulsed by me, I guess I believed in a stupid fantasy, lost my inhibitions, and reached out for something impossible."
"It's not impossible," Jimmy remarked, sounding almost playful.
"Sir...?"
"The timing was bad. That guy that was drunk and depressed on that couch, that's not me. No one deserves that version of me. There's a... right way to do this. Just give me some time. When things settle down around here and I'm feeling better, I'll treat you to the full Crystal Experience."
"The Crystal Experience," Jerry repeated in breathy awe. He knew Jimmy was serious from the sultry glow in his eyes. The wolf was practically smoldering.
"Don't think about it too much. It'll be a surprise," Jimmy said as he strolled out of his bedroom, and the feline nodded vigorously as he followed. "C'mon, Jerry. I'll do a quick session with Maxine and then... it's time to give a kid a gift he'll never forget."
A/N
Experimental chapter. I want to write more things in present tense and decided to try it with Jimmy's dream. It adds a layer of immediacy to what's happening. Also, there's going to be some dramatic turns in the next few chapters. This is the calm before the storm, you could say.