My Perfectly Normal Trip To IKEA

by 1979twilight

Cody Camargo needs to do three things: 1. Buy a new bedside table (Easy) 2. Go back home (Easy) 3. Never see the outside world again (Challenging, but possible) He's sure #3 will prove easier than expected, but he's actually stuck on #2...

7. Part Eight

—PART EIGHT—

"How's jumping to conclusions going for you so far?"

I'm tracing my finger around the circumference of the combination lock.

"My twice-validated opinion isn't 'jumping to conclusions'," I replied to her.

She never makes eye contact. She's said eighty-four words to me in total, but not a single one has been uttered whilst looking me in the eyes. It's hard to tell if she even knows who she's speaking to.

It's hard to tell if she cares who she's speaking to.

"And that validation is from… someone reliable?" She says. "Not the confirmation bias you've been dwelling on for the past week?"

She's beautiful in a semi-obvious way. It's just so blatantly obvious that her face should exist. It's the same face that's routinely assigned to any fake woman in my head when I'm daydreaming. Her flawless confidence looks easy. Not intricate, just essential. For God to have waited until my small little span of time in the universe to make her… it's so baffling.

"I didn't make anything up. His punk-ass excuse for a 'boyfriend' did."

"Ah, I should have realized it's a homophobic thing. You look like someone who's openly intolerant."

How would you know? You've never looked at me.

"He's my best friend, I'm not homophobic. I'm allowed to be mad at a gay person like anyone else. Being close doesn't mean he can use me for someone else's attention."

"Thucydides would have hated you."

"Sorry, does that mean you're agreeing with him?"

She finally looks at me.

"It means I'm flirting with you… probably the same thing Chandler is doing, but you're being too insecure to take it as a compliment."

I'd been unfamiliar with a perfect distance of toe and line. I felt like I had been hard-wired to be very angry with her just because of what she was, but I wasn't angry.

I was too busy being sedated by her pristinely elegant dignity.

"GET IN THE VIEW OF THE FUCKING WINDOW!" She screamed at me through the closed door.

Cody Camargo: Twenty-Eight days in.

—

The door to the cell briskly opened, as I stood against the back wall with my arms spread out. Elijah walked in, throwing me a water bottle as I swatted my arms in to catch it.

"Big day big day big dayeeeee!" Elijah chanted. "How you feel?!"

I drank half the bottle before answering him.

"Ready to piss myself," I said.

"Ugh, that's all you ever think about, isn't it? What an empty life it must be."

He patted himself on the back as Natalie walked in behind him, already looking annoyed with me.

"Morning," I said to her emptily before finishing my water.

"Did you get any sleep?" She snapped. "Unfriendly reminder that if you collapse out there, we are not coming to find you."

I got maybe… two hours? Even with my new freedom of sleeping in whatever position I wanted, I was consistently getting the worst sleep of my life every night. Pandora's Box had been opened, and my nightmares were constantly running rampant the second I closed my eyes.

I can't be granted the power to sleep outside the point of total exhaustion.

"Well rested. Don't you see how chipper I am?" I threw back at her.

I had actually given up trying to sleep about three hours earlier this morning, and started pacing around the room in the dark until the lights came on outside. Walking around this cell in circles might sound like a gourmet recipe for losing your noodle, but after growing accustomed to being so cramped up in that chair 24/7, it kind of feels like I've learned how to move in the fourth dimension. Walking is my new best friend. Our relationship has been through a lot of ups and downs, but I'm pretty happy about where we're at these days.

"Hey," Elijah said as he clapped his hands. "In honor of this momentous occasion… maybe Cody could, I don't know, go piss on his own like a normal human?"

He batted his eyes at Natalie, sprinkling his fingers through the air.

"Sure," She started. "Then we can start a petition for zoo animals to leave their enclosures and use the human bathroom to relieve themselves."

"Alright well, a yes is a yes," He replied before turning to me. "You wanna go for a walk?! Outside?! Outside?!"

He patted his thighs with both hands.

Today was the fifth day of my five-day promise to Elijah. Over the past four of those days, it was made unmistakably clear between the two of us that I was not very fond of him. I had almost completely given up the effort to suppress my passive-aggression, as he had completely embraced his effortless ability to make me remarkably apoplectic.

"Maybe," I said. "I'm pretty okay with the dresser-drawer routine for now."

His eye twitched. Despite our annoyance with each other, we had built up enough familiarity by the third day to address my elephant in the room. The dresser drawer that day had been occupied by a solid, not a liquid. I internally shivered along with him.

"Godda-…" Natalie said. "Just… take him to the bathroom, please."

Elijah smiled.

"PRIMO! Alright, follow me," He said.

"I only respond to 'Here, Boy'."

He sent an L'Ombrello my way and slipped out of the door. I began to follow him, before her leg blocked the doorway, stretching up in front of my waist.

Please don't do things like that when I have to piss…

I sighed.

"Yes?" I said, in the most irritated whine I could muster.

"If you're really up for it," She began. "Feel free to just croak out there where no one can stop you."

Gi-goddamn-normous talk from the person who couldn't pull the trigger.

"You say a lot of things that make me want to lose more teeth."

Her brow furrowed violently, as she gracefully retracted her leg. I hurried past, a little scared of the front of my body facing hers in the next ten seconds.

"Elijah," She called from behind me. "Meet me back with him at the pantry the second you're done."

"Relax," He said, spinning around to walk backwards. "It's not like I'm taking him to Disney World."

"Elijah!"

"Yes, Ma'am. I will," He whined, facing forward again.

I quickened my pace to stick close.

"Hey," He said. "Is irritating me really worth pissing in a cabinet-receptacle?"

"Yes, Sir," I answered militaristically. "Can we walk a little slower?"

—

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—

"What are the chances?"

"Huh?" He said, as we approached the bathrooms.

"What are the chances of a Café and bathroom being right next to each other?"

"Teeny-friggin-weeny. The bathrooms are part of the actual Return and Exchange counter. They're employees-only."

We came up to a somewhat large structure, with a black star embroidered on the front above its entrance. It looked like a giant blue drywall chimney was protruding from the heart of the building. It stretched to what I would say was about half the height of the walls that surround R&E, before stopping abruptly in the awkward middle of the air. I faced back down, as Elijah held open a horribly color-clashing door for me. I entered the building's lobby to see a long curved desk about thirty feet back. The left side wall had ten chairs pushed up against it, three of which were occupied by three women chattering to each other. They went quiet and stared at me rudely as I entered the room. I froze, for only a moment, meeting eye contact with them. When I was so used to Natalie's invasive gaze, the stare/glare of anyone else seemed comparably meaningless. Still, I looked away as their conversation continued, a little quieter now.

I began to walk before stopping again, as I looked down to the material changing beneath my feet. Instead of the random carpets that cloaked most of this building's floor, I was now standing on a plastic blue square that read "Returns & Exchanges".

I turned back to Elijah.

"Is this… it?"

"I know I know, everyone says we should make a museum for it or something. I see it as a Hollywood star, but I get why other people see it in a little bit more of a disrespectful light."

"Yeah, I do too… and you got the name wrong."

He rubbed his neck.

"What were they supposed to do?" He said, "Build two communities to keep the name plural?"

"Colorado Springs is plural."

"Yeah, because they have springs, like… multiple springs, dude. I didn't name the place-I wasn't even born yet when it was made."

"Did you have any meaningful civic role in the world before coming here? 'It's before my time, so it's not my concern' is not a very healthy mindset."

"Will you go take a piss please?"

I smiled to myself as I walked away in the direction his hand waved. I strolled down past the right side of the desk to a walkway, suddenly constructed of that same blue drywall. They must have built this building around what was already standing, as there was a small, uncomfortable gap in the wall between where the random mess of materials ended, and the IKEA structure wall began.

I heard a door click open as I faced back forward. I saw the door swing widely, as the boy I'd recognized from his uncomfortably large eyes shot out of the room.

"I'm sorry, dude!" He said to someone. "It was just-… oh… hi."

I think he might have just seen a body, and assumed I was somebody else.

"Hi," I awkwardly replied. "Is that… the bathroom?"

I motioned to the door he had just exited.

"Yeah, um… sorry if it-… sorry."

I winced a little.

"Hey, you're… that new guy, aren't you?" He asked.

This was currently the furthest I'd been forced into meeting someone new on my own. It immediately made me nauseous to picture how many times I might have to answer that same question.

"What are you talking about? I've been here for months, man."

He began to nervously shiver.

"What, really?" He said. "I didn't even… uh… I'm sorry, I just have staring problems, so I get in my head and mix up people's faces. I'm sorry if we've talked before I just-"

"-Hey… I was like… totally joking."

He STARED at me for what would have probably been forty-five minutes if I hadn't side-stepped around him after ten silent seconds.

"Sorry, dude," I said sincerely as I passed.

"Oh," He said behind me. "It's cool… but that was kinda… really really really embarrassing for me."

I opened the bathroom door, considering just walking in and leaving him paddling.

"I can tell. I'm gonna… go to the bathroom now but…. try to ummm," I began. "Try to stay strong about it."

I closed the door behind me, immediately cringing at myself. That was such a painfully Elijah thing to say.

The boy had left the light on. The space was quite small, just a size up from an airplane bathroom. My wingspan would have exceeded its width. It seemed much cleaner than what I'd anticipated. There was a small sill next to the door with a stack of papers on it. Above the stack was an IKEA bathroom cleaning log (the same log that made up the pile of papers), thumbtacked to the wall. The column for "time-of-day" had been crossed out and replaced with full weekdays. The next column was filled with signed initials, crossed out down to the tenth row.

The eleventh row was a Wednesday.

CWM

Is it a Wednesday today?

There was a small post-it note plastered to the bottom right of the page.

Is this bathroom clean? If not, please tell Connor so that he can use the body of whoever's turn it was as a mop.

I involuntarily exhaled slightly, before forcing my face straight. Nothing here is allowed to be funny.

I locked the door, and submitted to looking at myself in the cracked mirror. They can't just go get a new one? Why would anything ever be broken here? I let the image of my face rest symmetrically on a slanted fault-line. I THINK… mycondition has improved enough to reach escape velocity from its previous stratum. I would, arguably, no longer prefer to be dead. That's a complicated declaration to confidently claim, but I feel its authenticity rearing its head.

I've recently adopted a guilty shame about the responsibility of this body. The world I'm living in is one that does not like the human body, but I still feel disappointed in myself for the hell that mine has been through. Honest to someone's God… I'm scared about today. I'm scared of doing more damage to the body that's fought through so much to keep me pumping. It doesn't deserve any more of my stupidity and horrible decision making. It's been so strong to protect the brain that keeps flippantly putting it in such perilous danger. The idea of trying to motivate myself in the mirror feels manipulative.

When did I decide to let myself agree to this? Does anyone remember? I had come to this depressing conclusion already, hadn't I? I once knew that forcing myself to continue was a horribly cruel idea, but I've moved backwards somehow.

I continued staring for a while before my body reminded me of the reason I was in this room.

—

I pissed out the entire Baltic Sea and closed my eyes. I could ignore it for now, but I knew that I was still incredibly tired. My energy was a barely flickering match in a pitch black aircraft hangar. I took a deep breath before fully absorbing the aroma that the boy had left in the room. I stifled my breath a little too fast and let out a slight cough.

A slight cough was enough to fill the air of the hangar with petrol vapor. The fit began as I placed my hand on the sill, prepared for a horrible episode.

—

—

—

Twenty-eight hacks in total. Coincidence…

I breathed deep, ignoring the smell for the sake of my lungs. I had lived in a hole with a stench that made this room smell like roses. I zipped up my pants, standing up straight and composing myself.

BANG BANG BANG

I almost gasped into another fit as the door erupted in a pounding behind me. A voice screamed at me through it.

"SLIPS! I SWEAR TO GOD IT'S EVERYDAY WITH YOU NOW-I'LL START PISSING ON YOUR WELCOME MAT IF YOU CAN'T START TELLING TIME!"

I, sadly, remembered exactly whose voice that was. I spun around and practically sprinted over to the door, swinging it open and stepping out face to face with him. Sean stared at me as his face slowly crumpled into a snarl.

"You are definitely not who I thought was in there…"

I wondered how much R&E social credit I needed to afford saying whatever I wanted to him.

"Should've known when I saw your caretaker in the lobby-"

"-Do you need something?" I asked rudely.

"Is that a rhetorical question?" He returned. "Please leave before a conversation starts between us."

Who the hell foreshadows a threat? That's what the threat itself is for.

"It doesn't look like you're standing in a puddle," I said. "You could have tried knocking softly. I didn't even hear you jiggle the doorknob before you started screaming."

Face of pure perplexity: Minus ten points.

"It's my time slot, that means it's my fucking bathroom," He said. "You're standing in my bathroom right now. Leave."

Time slots? 129 people, I guess that makes sense with only one set of bathrooms. Maybe the dresser drawer is genuinely a preferable option.

Still though…

"I was going to leave anyway. You don't need to be an impatient asshole."

Sean stepped the only step closer he possibly could have without our noses touching. I didn't move, but his voice changed my confidence's tune a little.

"Let me ask you something," He said. "Is this your thing? Am I going to have to prepare for this every time I see you? I just want to say right here and now, that shit's gonna get old."

Sean is 6'2" if I had to guess. Considerably less muscular than Roman, but everyone is. Sean is still built.

"If we're going to have an issue together, let's get it taken care of ahead of time," He continued as I stood silent. "Because your self-defense is such goddamn overkill."

If I had a nickel for every time someone used that term…

But do I have a thing? I personally think it saves a lot of future effort to just remind a person how I feel about them every time we speak.

"I would never feel the need to defend myself around you," I hissed.

"YO!"

I turned up the hallway to see Elijah looking towards us.

"On a schedule, am I right?!" He demanded to me.

Goddammit, I'm kind of in the middle of something here. Now I'm gonna have to walk away silently after he says some snide bullshit. Something like-

Sean shoved me out of the way, stealing the doorknob from my palm.

"Just go blow off some steam, braveheart," He said, closing the door behind him.

I blew my hair over my forehead and choked down the last word I didn't get in. I walked over to Elijah.

"I didn't ask you to rescue me," I huffed.

"Rescue you? You two could fall over each other for hours," He said. "I just didn't want you getting distracted."

Elijah was in spitting distance.

"I'm sure she's already mad," He continued. "I'm sort of tired of the complaint filing that revolves around your being."

Don't ask your mom to get a dog if you can't take care of it.

"You're the one that brought me here," I said. "Could've pissed in the cell just fine."

We began moving back to the entrance.

"Jesus, who used that word around you? Natalie? It's not a cell, dude."

He opened the door and walked out on his own without waiting for me like he usually does with doorways.

"I came up with the word myself," I said as I walked outside. "Sorry if you're a big fan of that room."

He began walking in a direction I wasn't familiar with as I moved to his side.

"You know," He began. "Prison is supposed to be an educational reform to bring someone back into society better than they were before..."

I actually got goosebumps from how pretentious that statement was.

"Have you ever heard of the word 'Kalopsia'?" I asked.

He turned to me.

"Can you walk behind me, not alongside me?"

I stared at him blankly for a moment, before slowing my pace. We stayed silent with each other for a moment as we walked.

—

"Do you guys really know what day it is?" I asked.

"Do you?"

"I wasn't asking to test you…"

He ticked his tongue a few times.

"We have someone who says they do," He said. "We go by that."

"… just… one guy? Out of 129 people?"

"130, and it's a girl."

"Please stop responding to my questions like that. I'm just gonna keep asking the question a second time."

—

"She decided what day it is," He said. "How are we supposed to know if time is even moving parallel in here?"

"How does that affect someone who shows up with their own differing opinion of what day it is?"

He sighed.

"You should be an expert about where newcomer comfort lands on our priority list," He said. "They can adjust. Time is time."

That reminds me…

"How do the time slots work?" I said.

—

"Let's talk about this later, okay?" He said. "I want you to focus on the run."

"Okay… because you don't wanna talk about how you definitely know the time of Sean's slot by heart, right?"

—

—

"In his defense, you were really taking your time," Elijah said.

"And you're suddenly interested in his defense?Didn't realize you two were such good friends," I said somewhat mischievously. "Guess you warmed up to him a lot while I was locked up, huh?"

He scoffed.

"Anything is better than your moping."

I let my lip curl a little, retracting my check. Empty life/empty bladder.

"By the way," I said. "That kid's government name isn't actually 'Slips', is it?"

Elijah looked back to me, smirking a little.

"I wouldn't recommend telling him any deep dark secrets. Let's just say he didn't look like you after his entrance interview."

I will let Elijah be funny ONCE a day.

"Also," He continued. "He is one slippery little bastard. He's been circumscribed by fourteen staff at a time and escaped untouched."

"He's been WHAT by fourteen staff?!"

He glared at me as I smiled. I was allowed to be funny as many times as I wanted. He turned back forward with a cold shoulder.

"I'm putting you on an exposition time-out," He said. "You can have whatever info you want when you learn to be mature."

Keep throwing alley-oops…

"Maybe if you followed Margo's advice of not using words you learned two minutes ago…"

—

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"The Pantry" was, in my novice architectural opinion, a quite unnecessary building. Just like Elijah said, there was an entire Café placed in the impossible sweet-spot proximity to the Returns & Exchanges counter. The perfect weather condition to support life in a lifeless plane. Still, this "building" seemed a strange allocation of resources just to put a ceiling and walls around a point of interest that didn't really need them. The large space didn't feel like it went very far, as a claustrophobic blanket of random materials had been placed haphazardly over its area. It was fine, but I hope this community is aware of the fact that they didn't build the Café just because they drew a box around it.

The entrance came out to the dining area as Elijah guided me in. The two of us walked by a table with a thirty-something-man in a plaid T-shirt (not a short sleeve button-up, a plaid T-shirt. Who even makes those?).

He was reading a book titled "Calypso".

"Still working on that, yoop?" Elijah said to him.

"You suddenly a sage example of speed-reading?" The man mumbled without looking up.

"That's a little passive-aggressive…" Elijah replied as we passed.

The serving line was longer than the other cafés I had seen so far, as it kind of freakishly curled around and in on itself to the left side. The Great Destroyer was leaning against the queue counter by its opening.

"Where'd all the time go?" She said snarlingly.

"Do you know what day of the week it is?" I said to her.

Natalie looked at Elijah with a raised eyebrow.

"Explain the question I just got asked," She said to him.

"Or you could just ignore him," He said to her. "I know that's not something fun for you to do, but I think it's the sage option."

Real person, by the way.

Natalie had just a moment of looking flustered before she pushed off the counter and stood up her-version-of-straight.

"Let's make this quicker than everyone expects us to make it," She said.

She confidently walked around the Dr. Seuss curve of the left side of the queue, as Elijah followed, swishing his head to beckon me along.

The three of us walked behind the counter, and through a gap of fridges to a back-room kitchen area. I was swept up by sensory overload the moment I entered. It smelled like a whirlwind of lemon and eucalyptus. Typical as it was on inspection, the lighting of the room felt so loud. Wrapped in a porcelain majesty, every appliance seemed to be as clean as if it had only just been materialized into thin air. Every marble counter was flooded with every as-seen-on-TV-esque utensil and device you could probably ever find. They couldn't have all been from Earth. It was ginormous and… so clean. Back in my semi-clean three-bedroom, I avoided any x-second-rule for the principle of not feeling like a dog. I'd get right next to Kanata to eat off the floor of this kitchen. Rachael Ray would have stars in her eyes.

Natalie did not have stars in her eyes.

"Where the hell is Margo?" She said to Elijah.

Elijah looked around lazily for a couple seconds before looking back to her.

"I'm not sure, I can ask her though," He said. "I just have to go find her first."

Natalie had her hand around his arm by the time he was turned, pulling him back as he smiled.

"Seems a little irresponsible for you to not know your 'buddy's' whereabouts," I said.

Elijah's smile disappeared instantly as he shot me a wide eyed threat. He sent me a "stop talking" swipe of his hand under his chin before Natalie crushed his dreams.

"Oh, Cody, thanks for reminding me," She said. "Elijah…"

She thrust Elijah towards me as we stumbled over each other, both grabbing to the counter to keep from toppling.

"Meet your new partner," She added as we recovered. "Surprise."

Elijah's eyes went about as wide as Slips' could. He turned around to her, standing up again.

"Wait, what?" He said.

"It's just a title, dude," She said, crossing her arms. "You're already spending more time with him than most people spend with theirs. Why not make it official?"

"Margo is already Elijah's buddy," I interrupted sarcastically.

She looked past a dumbfounded Elijah to squint at me.

"Did I ask you, Regis?" She spat. "Not anymore she's not."

Elijah's jaw wavered up and down as he seemed to be having trouble forming a sentence.

"Well… what about her? What's she supposed to do?" He asked.

The tone of Elijah's voice made me realize that we weren't just sarcastically joking with each other.

"Well, I'm not changing my position," She said to him. "There's not many other people around here that don't currently have a partner…"

Elijah's disbelief immediately turned to anger.

"No. Absolutely fucking not," He growled.

"Excuse me?" She snapped sharply.

Elijah was curling his fist. This "hidden" side of him wasn't much of a surprise to me anymore, but I still hadn't seen it in a good number of days. I grew anxious as I saw it slipping into his face.

"There's gotta be an alternative," He said, a little more level. "There's just no reason for the two of them to have to be shoved together-"

"-no reason? Is that a joke-Elijah, neither of them are a concern at the moment. This is about Cody," She replied. "Right? I'm trying to do my best to professionally swallow this pill you're force-feeding me. If you want me to meet you halfway, you've gotta be halfway-"

"-Yeah but that's not me, that's Margo. I don't want her to have to be with him-"

"-Oh Elijah-for what?! You scared she's gonna fuck him?!"

I genuinely felt like I had just been stabbed. I was so immediately horrified by the energy-shift between the two of them that I wanted to dash out of the room. It's strange. With each of them separated on their own, neither felt threatening to me anymore. Not really. You kind of get used to their brand of intimidation and manipulation by the second or third round, but when they're together…

Natalie had begun smiling sadistically. It was unbelievably threatening.

"Say that again," Elijah said.

"A little louder this time?" She said venomously.

"Hey…" I said warily.

I hadn't even meant to, it was a totally reflexive exclamation. They both turned back to me with faces that made me sea-sick, before my body was thrown gracefully ashore with the sound of footsteps.

We all turned as a tan boy with long, curly-black hair walked into the kitchen. He stopped and looked around at the three of us nervously.

"Alright," He said. "Before you do anything crazy, ask yourselves if you really know what beef is…"

Elijah stayed on guard, but Natalie sighed, and visually shook herself out of the tension.

"Nikko," She said. "Why were neither of you in here?"

"What?" The boy, Nikko, replied. "Margo's here."

"Oh yeah?" Natalie said. "Is she hiding in the icebox? I didn't remember to look for her in there."

He looked confused.

"Well Allen is here, also I-… wait are you messin' with me or have you actually not checked in there yet?"

Natalie rubbed her face in both hands as she spoke through her circling palms.

"Nikko, you can't leave this kitchen unattended," She said as her hands slipped from her face. "Twice in one month is far too frequent of a happening. It's a bad look for The Pantry and, to me, a pretty bad reflection of your faculty for responsibility. I'm perfectly fine moving you somewhere else."

She blew a bang away from her eye as I lost interest in the stranger completely. I really liked it when she got more articulate. It felt so surprisingly intrinsic from her tongue.

"But since you're here," She continued to him. "You can explain to Cody what we need."

I kind of flinched, jumping out of my shallow daze as she waved her hand to me again. Nikko looked over to me.

"Right," He said begrudgingly. "Not like I was doing anything…"

"Yeah," She said. "I know you weren't, because you better have not been breezing in here for what I think you were at 10:17 AM."

I saw his face flush a little at whatever that statement implied.

"Maybe if it was your morning, I would've thought you were just popping in and out like a tardy asshole," She said.

"I was… just coming in here to tell Margo something-"

"-Like fucking what?!" Elijah yelled.

"ELIJAH!" Natalie stomped. "What is wrong with you?! Stop!"

Elijah sunk into silence as he leaned against the counter. Natalie slowly turned away from him back to Nikko.

"Train, please," She said to Nikko.

A typical interaction between me and Natalie was usually quite vitriolic, so I tended to look at her as an all around vitriolic person. The more time I've spent here though, the more I've seen her trying to talk herself down from aggravated edges. That's not to say she was good at it, just that she tried.

Nikko sighed as he walked towards me.

"Help me out with something, will ya?" He said as he passed me.

I looked towards Natalie for approval.

"Today, asshole," She said.

Heard, Chef.

"Uh, sure," I said to Nikko, as I followed him around a counter and to the back of the kitchen.

He led me to a large closet with giant shuttered doors. He jiggled the fold aggressively until I heard the door snap back onto its track and slide open. He walked into a dark room, turning to his left and smacking a switch. It illuminated a room full of fridges… like, genuinely full of fridges.

"Alright," He sighed. "Be honest, you want me to go get Roman?"

I croaked a little, keeping down a sudden urge to cough.

"I… don't even know what you're doing," I replied.

"WE… are gonna move these fridges out of the way. Come get this side."

He walked up to a smudged, dented fridge that had long since lost the shine of the appliances in the other room. I stared at him blankly. He looked back to me after I had been silent for a moment. He groaned and walked back towards me.

"Sorry, dude. I know she said it but… I'm Nikko."

He put his fist out as I looked at it nervously.

"Don't be a bitch," He added. "It's nice to meet you."

I looked back up to his eyes as I fist-bumped him weakly.

"Cody."

He nodded.

"What made you wanna do this stupid shit?"

I shrugged.

"I didn't totally volunteer…"

"Mmmm," He nodded. "Community service?"

"Uhh I'd say closer to drafting from death row."

He rolled his eyes and walked back towards the same fridge.

"That sounds the slightest bit dramatic to me," He said.

BANG

We both turned as we heard something metal being slammed, or punched, in the kitchen.

"GODDAMMIT LISTEN!" I heard Elijah scream.

I turned to run out of the closet.

"Ah beh beh beh beh," Nikko called. "Highly recommend whatever is the antonym of you trying to get in the middle of that."

I vacillated in place for a moment, feeling desperate to do something.

"Doubt that anything you say is gonna simmer down either of them," He added. "You could try it out on me if you want. I'll give you my opinion on what its level of effectiveness would be."

I moved away from the door a little, back towards him.

"I'm… not feeling very clever right now anyway."

He smiled.

"Good, I'd much rather you feel motivated to grab the other end of this fridge."

I walked over to it awkwardly.

"Are they… both always like this?" I asked as I stood across from him. "Like, eternally?"

"Um, with each other? Basically. Only one of them is consistently like that in separation though. I bet it's not the one you'd think, either."

I winced slightly.

"Actually, I uh… I think I know," I said.

He popped his eyebrows up and down to tell me that I was right.

"Let's just trade off. Pull towards the door," He said.

I nodded and got a good grip on the cold front and back of the fridge, my right hand latching in the grooves of the back vent. He groaned and took a noisy scraping pull on his side. I steadied myself, and tried to pretend I hadn't just realized this was a bad idea for me. I sunk the effort into my left side, and held my breath until my half of the fridge had mostly reached the same distance as his. I let out two slight coughs into my arm and breathed slow and deep.

Nikko gave me a strange look.

"Roman?" He asked.

I waved my hand.

"Fuck Roman," I declined.

Nikko smiled a little, before it turned into a grimace with him moving his other half.

"Why does he get like that anyway?" I said.

"Roman?"

"Elijah," I corrected, as I squared my body for the second pull.

"Ask Margo that question," He said. "Not me."

I strained through, taking light puffs instead of holding through the tear.

"Okkkaaayyy," I said, almost suffocating myself with that extended word. "Thought the guy that told me not to be a bitch would be more open to conversation-"

"-I'm not being rude. I'll answer anything else you wanna ask… something else. Not anything."

He walked away from the fridge, smacking his hand on the side of another to call me to his aid.

"Can we start with why you guys have a room full of fridges?" I said.

I took my previous form again on the second fridge.

"They uhhh… kinda just keep showing up," He said.

He grunted and pulled from his side.

"Showing up? From where?"

"What kinda question is that dude? You gettin' logistical about anything that happens in this place?"

"Nononono, I mean like… when you say 'showing up', I don't think you mean that they're being hand delivered, right? You said they keep showing up here. I just thought that this room was like this when you guys got here."

He stretched the arch of his back and dusted his hands.

"It was like this when I got here," He said. "There's a fridge out there that keeps… replacing itse-… or um… how do I say it-there'sa spot out there where a fridge should obviously go, and a fridge is usually there. Usually there, usually working, usually running like… normal. Totally normal. It's just that every once in a while, totally arbitrarily-"

"-huh?-"

"-Another one just appears. But… in the same spot the old one is already in."

"What does that word y-… wait, what?"

He nodded slowly to confirm I heard him right.

"You mean… exact same spot…" I said.

"Exact same spot, exact same fridge, and, whatever is putting it there, it's trying to put it there at the exact same time. Don't know how to describe what happens to the old one other than… zoooom."

He airplanes his hand through the air lazily as I sit in disbelief.

"That sounds…" I began. "Like a Final Destination level of ridiculous comic danger."

"It sounds exactly like it is."

I sort of giggled morbidly at the thought of that even happening. Seeing whatever other biblically-accurate anomaly this place had to offer had not made my threshold of wonder any lower. Seeing that up close must be so…

"Anyone ever gotten hit by one?" I asked.

He tilted his head back and forth.

"Yeah. Me."

I ticked my tongue in a very "bullshit" kind of way. He raised his eyebrows.

"You think I'm lying?"

"I think you'd be dead," I said. "Unless it isn't as ridiculous as you're making it sound aaannnddd you're just telling me fairy tales-"

"-Fairy tales?!-I'll give you a fucking tail."

Nikko turned around, lifting the back of his shirt to show me his bare skin.

"Jesus Christ, dude!"

My outburst was completely genuine. There was a giant, slanting, bubbly valley of a gash that stretched from the small of his back to the center of his left shoulder-blade.

"What the fuck is that?!" I tacked on.

"That's the body make-up I wore on the set of Final Destination 3."

Stars had truly found their way to my eyes. I almost felt the same as when I was looking at Natalie.

"Can I… touch it?" I asked.

"What?! Hell no, dude-What kinda freak shit is that?"

"Nikko, that is easily the coolest scar I have ever seen in my life."

He let his shirt drop back down over his spine as I whined.

"Yeah, thanks," He said lethargically. "Can you pull the rest of your side, please?"

"How'd it happen? I mean I know how it happened but… what was it like? The moment, I mean…"

Nikko was giving me a worried look that I was very familiar with. I felt the smile on my face slowly shrinking in its proximity. He noticed.

"I was knelt down on the floor, thank God," He began. "I think I was picking up a strawberry or something-I don't even remember. I just know I was down there when I heard this-… it isn't like a bang it's like a uhhh… you ever heard lightning? Like lightning striking so close that you hear the actual current? That's what it was like. I think I'd actually been on my way to beginning to stand. I just blinked and my face was on the ground. Sandra was surprised it didn't wring my neck into silly putty. I'm surprised it didn't barrel right through me. Take off the left side of my torso completely or… something…"

I was trying so hard not to smile. It probably wasn't hard enough as he glared at me.

"I'm sorry," I said. "That is just awesome. It was awesome, right?"

"Sure, after all the blood loss? It was fuckin' tubular."

I backed off that line of questioning and steadied myself to the fridge. I scrunched myself in, and tried to make the pull, but immediately choked. I stood up, backed away and began coughing into my arm. Out of my peripheral, I saw Nikko running up to me. I quickly threw my other hand out to keep him away. I slowly breathed and recovered. I closed my eyes and felt my lungs expanding and retracting as gently as I could operate.

In the blackness of my eyelids, I heard the scraping of the fridge. I opened them to see Nikko standing up from what used to be my side of it. He turned around to me, stretching his back again.

"Are you gonna collapse the second you step outside?" He asked.

I shook my head.

"No, I'm good."

He nodded his head.

"… well, I'm not gonna flat out say that I don't believe you, I'll just say that it was nice knowing you for these ten minutes."

"Did you just say it's been ten-"

"-NIKKO!" Natalie screamed from the kitchen.

"WE'RE COMING!" He screamed back.

I knit my eyebrows as he walked away through the space we had made. I followed him over.

"Alright," He said. "This is really all you're gonna need."

He placed his hands upon the dirty railing of a dolly cart that was wedged in the mess of appliances towards the back of the room. It had what must have been at least sixty random Tupperware containers stacked into and over each other on its bed. There was also a large opaque storage bin.

"Is this what Patrick used?" I asked.

Nikko whirled around his head and gave me a dirty look.

"You typically name-drop the dead that casually?"

The bones of the fallen and all that, but that seemed like an overly-sensitive question.

"Well," I said. "I feel like I'm in a makeshift mortuary right now, so I guess I lost touch with my subtly."

He noticeably shivered.

"Not funny, but… morbidly interesting idea," He said sarcastically. "I'll run it by Vernon."

I smiled in thanks.

"Anyway," He said, as he jiggled the cart out into the open space. "Just sweep any fridge they have with the big bin, pack everything else in Tupperware and stack them over the drinks in there. Fifty gallons. Should have no problem cleaning house. Lot of these containers won't be big enough for a whole tray of whatever is over there, so if you run out of space just start shoving things in with each other. Make it a little sensible when you do. Hot with hot, cold with cold, room temp with room temp."

"You… want me to just mix it all?"

"I want you to get whatever you're able to get, which should be everything."

"It's gonna be a gross fucking mess. Especially in these dusty ass containers."

"That's what Margo and I are here for. You get the shit, we'll make it look pretty. Deal?"

I've gone over this thought process before, but painting this exchange with as much simplicity as Nikko was painting it with was worrying to me. It needed to be explained to me why someone couldn't have done this long before I got here.

Yeah, you want a hot towel with that too?

"I… okay, sure I guess."

"Sick, sounds like we're completely on the same page. Get out of this room before your girl comes in here and gives me a second Grand Canyon on my back."

He walked away towards the door.

"Don't… call her my g-…ugh…" I mumbled to myself.

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I followed Nikko, pulling the cart along behind me. I kept spinning around because I couldn't decide if I should push it facing forward or pull it looking backwards.

Natalie turned around as she saw us.

"You think you've got an immunity idol this week, Nikko? Why are you smiling?" She said.

Nikko rubbed the smile off of his face with his palm.

"He's here. He's ready," Nikko said. "You're cool to spend the rest of your morning getting mad at him."

"Heh," Elijah chuckled. "She already spent her day's worth on someone else-"

"-Get ready to have a serious issue if you say anything else," She said to Elijah. "Can we be out the door? Now?"

She stared at my stupid face.

"Why are you asking me a question?" I said. "I'm a lot more comfortable when you're confidently ordering me around."

She ground her teeth together, probably imagining my throat between them.

"Door. Gate. Run. Food. Now."

Elijah's behavior alone was truthfully scaring me, and I realized I did not want to be an accomplice to Natalie's headache anymore. At least for the rest of the morning.

"Just food?" I replied to her. "You don't need anything else?"

"You looking for extra credit or something? Food-"

"-Food, yeah, I can get the food. I was just asking. I'm surprised you guys even have toilet paper."

"We can swap it for blankets and a pair of scissors if we run out," She said.

It isn't fair for her to say something funny.

"Sounds like it would be clogged a lot," I said, trying to let her know that I was in on her obvious joke.

"Not a chance," Nikko said. "Pipes are like a Delta P in these bathrooms-"

"-Delta pee," I whispered.

"Alright, that's the cue that this is taking way longer than already way too long," Natalie said, turning to the door. "Just food, Cody."

"Okay…" I said, before thinking like a dumbass. "You sure you don't want me to add a new mirror to that grocery list for you?"

She spun around, face red.

"What the fuck did you just say to me?!"

I quickly realized what that sounded like without context, and my tone hadn't helped.

"The b-… the mirror, the bathroom mirror. The broken one… you want… do you want me to get a new one?"

She looked even angrier for a second, before her mind visibly shifted somewhere else. She seemed to become distant for a moment.

"Natalie?" I asked.

Her anger shot back to the forefront as immediately as my lips had finished writing that word. Though she had submitted to telling me her name, I could easily see that she hated the sound of it coming out of my mouth. Still, she visibly calmed herself.

"Nikko," She said while still staring me down. "Please stay here until lunch. I'll go find where Margo is-"

"-Hey," Elijah interrupted. "I can find her myself. How about I go look for her, and you can take Cody to the-…"

Elijah went silent and pale as Natalie strode over and towered above him, staring at the side of his face.

Fully straight. A real straight. Taller than him.

"Elijah, you're being insubordinate. You are going to knock that shit off. Now."

Nikko and I stood there silently as Elijah visually cowered into obedience. She backed away slowly, still staring daggers into his side.

Finally, she turned back to me.

"I'm gonna manifest you sounding like less of an idiot today. Try to start thinking about a sentence before you say it."

She began to walk out of the room, speaking to Elijah and I.

"If Cody is not outside of that gate in the next ten minutes, you're both gonna need Roman to protect you."

She exited as Elijah stood there angrily silent. His social resemblance to her was bleeding its hand like crazy.

And as I watched him nervously, I saw it just…

"Eh," He sighed as he looked to me and smiled. "I'll find Margo later. She's probably off polishing her Jane Eyre impression or something. You ready?"

I had a lot of alarm bells going off in my head, all of them telling me that it was not a good idea to be around this person. While I didn't disagree with them, I did think they were being a little dramatic.

"Um," I began. "Can I get like… some peanut butter crackers or something first?"

"Hang on," Nikko said beside me, as he walked over to a cabinet.

"He's fine, Nikko." Elijah interrupted sharply.

Nikko and I both stared at him, as I realized that it was very important for me to take some initiative.

"Yeah," I said as quickly as I could. "I was just kidding."

I looked towards Nikko.

"Thank you, though."

He nodded, eyes wishing me good luck.

"Sure, no problem," He said.

Thanks, I'll need it.

I turned back to Elijah.

"Human meat as I'll ever be..."

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Elijah and I walked silently through town, the only sound between us being the wheels of the dolly cart, skidding on the commercial epoxy. I pushed from behind, keeping a slow pace to not hit Elijah's ankles. I had sprung to the orientation of keeping the cart between the two of us. It gave me a sense of security that I was sure I didn't need, but enjoyed nonetheless.

As much as my resentment had flourished for him this past week, my choice of silence towards Elijah was not solely based on my current unease in his presence. Truthfully, I was trying my best to avoid bringing up his interaction with Natalie. I was worried that any conversation between us would lead to it somehow, and I didn't want him to have to talk about it. It would be such an easy leg up in our childish seesawing, and I, regrettably, felt a little bad for him.

Even though I couldn't exactly explain why…

"Hey," He began unprompted. "Are you giving me the silent treatment again?"

Even responding to that question felt like a minefield.

"No… I'm just nervous. Lost in my head…"

I was trying to lie to him about being nervous at all, but I think I had made it sound like I was nervous to be around him.

He nodded without turning to me.

"For sure, you've got a lot to be thinking about," He said, rubbing his head. "Well, I won't give you anymore."

I cringed, but resisted feeding into his company-starved misery, the same way I had fizzled out before further toying with Natalie's knee-high-to-a-grasshopper-fuse. I wasn't nervous about anything, and I wasn't scared of Elijah. I simply didn't have the drive to offer any kind of trivial discourse to him while he was clearly teetering.

I needed to remember that most everyone here was probably looking for someone to trigger their "you know what? Fuck it" tripwire.

Plus, I had already spent my vitriol on Sean this morning. Maybe it was unnecessary, but I felt good about that encounter. Sean had thought I was Slips when I was in the bathroom, and the barbaric harshness that I had heard in his voice made me ridiculously unhappy. The thought of Slips opening the door to him and slinking away in fear while Sean continued to assert his dominance… it was driving me up a wall.

This place breeds an easy irritability. Maybe I should recognize that in myself more, but personally, I'm not taking that as a valid excuse for anyone deserving my sympathy. That's just as true for Sean as it is for Natalie and the boy walking in front of me.

"Hey," He said. "I don't know what Natalie said to you, but I'd definitely prefer it if you didn't die out there."

I didn't care if he was lying or not. I felt nothing for it either way. Apparently he'd been silently begging for me to bring up Natalie in some way, shape or form.

"Her concern, or lack thereof, is more important to me than yours," I said to him rudely.

"Pfff, could've figured that out myself, Fabio…" He mumbled.

He didn't turn around to see the anger spread across my face.

"Anyway," He continued for some fucking reason. "I just want to make sure you're okay to venture out again. Your wounds do look a lot better."

"They are," I answered shortly, feeling like I was trying to get out of a nagging conversation with my parents as fast as possible.

It seemed to work for a small little moment.

"That's good," He said. "You should be able to take physical care of yourself out there, if making this trek doesn't reopen anything."

"I thought you didn't want to give me anything extra to think about."

"I don't. I'm just…" He began. "I guess I'm only bringing it up because you're going to be walking a lot, and I haven't seen the wound on your left foot in a while."

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"What?" I said, considering whether or not I should feign obliviousness.

"The giant gash on the bottom of your left foot… the one that you already had when you got here… ringing a bell?"

I didn't answer.

"There were regular bandages on it," He continued. "Not sure where you found those in here, but I'm assuming that's because you didn't find them here."

What do you want?

"You remember what you did to get that injury?"

He turned around slowly as I brought the cart to a halt, and we both stood motionless.

"I definitely don't remember showing up here barefoot," I said.

He smiled.

"Well, I've learned not to put too much trust in your memory," He said, smiling.

He turned around and began walking again.

I felt like I just gave a confession, but I didn't know why the incident would mean anything to him. I assumed he was picturing something much bigger than the cage match of me and a piece of furniture, but I was still confused about his desire to get it out of me.

I nervously followed him, as the sound of the cart began to buzz again.

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I found myself back in the vestibule of Hell, as the giant gate loomed ahead of me. I stared up at it helplessly, kind of hoping it would magically break off its hinges and crush me to death before I had to go through any more trouble.

The power couple, Tim and Carolette, had appeared to take up a post by the handles. I continued staring up in a daze, paying them no mind.

"We can… start whenever his high wears off," Tim said to what I assumed was Elijah.

"Super!" Elijah said, walking past my side. "He's as sober as a straightedge!"

By now, I'd learned to only daydream in shallow waters. Elijah's voice had rudely shocked me back down to earth. I looked towards Tim and Carolette as Elijah joined them in front of the handles.

"Just to put it out there," Carolette began. "I'm not going dainty on you or anything, but I wouldn't mind him taking my spot."

She motioned to me.

"You know, if we're gonna be doing this everyday now," She added.

Elijah shook his head.

"I'd like to conserve at least some of his energy if possible," He replied. "It seems unavoidable that he's going to be spending a lot of it arguing with me everyday."

She rolled her eyes.

"I know the feeling," She said.

Tim's face shrunk in confusion.

"You… you do?" He said. "Since when?"

"Alright," Elijah said. "I got told he needs to have been gone like two minutes ago. Let's kick him out. Is Sean here?"

"It's a little too calm for Sean to be here," Tim said. "Don't you think?"

Elijah nodded in agreement.

"Hey, you guys um…" He said awkwardly. "You haven't seen Margo yet today, have you?"

Carolette shook her head nervously.

"I thought Nikko was standing in so you two could bring him here together?" She said.

"Sooooo did I," Elijah replied.

He stared into space for a moment, before shaking his head.

"Whatever, let's go."

The two of them nodded to him, and all three of them moved to the handles. Tim lifted the giant bar up and to the side, as Elijah took one hook. Carolette took the other as Tim ran to join her.

I watched silently, as the three of them slowly heaved the door open. There was no real Roman-esque powerhouse amongst the three of them, so it took them about a full minute to get the gate to a reasonably opened sliver. I felt the dolly cart jiggling from the vibrations of the floor. Even with due credit to my current condition, watching them made me embarrassed about my inability to pull one side of a fridge earlier today.

Finally, the three of them gasped, catching their breath as they backed away from the door.

"Mercy," Elijah said in exasperated huffs before looking at me. "You wanna see if you can find me any Grapes of Luxury out there? We deserve to have a servant feed them to us after that… doesn't have to be you."

I glared at him for a moment as his smile kept itself anchored. I began pushing the cart through the slit that was made, breezing past Tim and Carolette as well. I didn't exactly want to treat them with the same disregard, but since they were obviously friends with Elijah, they were as guilty by association as was necessary to forgive myself.

That being said, my ignorant energy was snuffed out quite quickly as my head spun in the wake of the wilderness. I had been pumping myself up for it this entire time, but of course it didn't help when I was actually standing on the edge of it again. My bladder felt suddenly full.

I heard Elijah thanking the two behind me as they reciprocated. His footsteps followed me outside of the gate, and I felt his presence standing behind my right side. We hung in silence for a moment as I stared forward.

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"You know," He said. "I see it from up there like every other day, but standing in front of it is always different."

I stayed silent.

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I felt his finger tapping my right shoulder. I turned around angrily.

"What?" I hissed through my teeth.

He pouted slightly, his right arm hiding behind his back.

"You're so mean," He said like a schoolgirl, the same thing he was currently posing to look like. "I got a present for you."

He pulled his right arm out from behind his back, and revealed that his hand was holding my notebook, noticeably stained in my now dried blood. I stared at it for a second, before my gaze drifted slowly back up to his face.

"I uhhh…" He began. "I knew that Natalie would probably want to permanently confiscate it when she found it on you, so the night you came back I just… borrowed it… for its protection."

I think I felt my mouth slowly parting in a dumbfounded gape.

"How's that for insubordination?" He added.

Seeing the notebook was truthfully more exciting to me than I'd like to admit, but…

"Where were you keeping that this whole morning?" I said.

"In safe hands… in a safe place anyway."

A reflexive jolt shot through me as I snatched it out of his hand roughly. I felt like I had gone slightly feral for a moment.

"I didn't read it, in case you were wondering," He said.

"I wasn't, because I know you did."

He frowned.

"Okay," He said. "Honest to God truth, I read like one corny line of it before I realized it was obviously personal. I shoved it closed right away. I promise."

I… sort of believed him, but even one line was more than I was really comfortable with.

"What um… what was it about?" I mumbled.

He scratched his head.

"Uhhh, it's hard to say without context but… I think it was just some weird fever dream you were having," He said. "Something about an ocean maybe."

I didn't really remember that, but I wouldn't tell him if I did. I generally don't write down my dreams.

"It's not a dream journal," I said.

"Yeah, doesn't seem like it would be. Maybe you were just daydreaming about someone."

I scowled.

"Do you have my phone?"

"Uhh, not on my person."

"Then please get the fuck away from me."

I turned around, placing the notebook on the bed of the dolly cart, and my hands back on the railing.

"I don't know if she told you, but Carolette's a writer," He said. "There's actually a notebook she just like that in the library from her. She'd probably love to talk to you about it. Again, not the best authority of quality literature, but I think it's some pretty strong shit."

"… good for her," I said more to myself than to him.

I heard him chuckle a little, as his footsteps strolled away from me again.

"Alright then, lonely," He said. "Have whatever you want to eat or drink when you get there. It should be Brunch-ish. I'll still get you something substantial for dinner later, but you've earned a self-portioned meal."

Didn't need your permission.

I waited for the sound of the massive scraping gate to begin.

"Oh, and Jebediah?" Elijah called out in a southern accent that I absolutely refused to turn around for. "You remember that you're coming back, right? This isn't another exile, there's a lot of people counting on you… me being one of them."

I waved the farmgirl my favorite small appendage and began rolling away with the cart. Soon after, the sliding wheels were silenced by the colossal groan of the sealing entrance.

As I heard it latching closed, I froze, and immediately regretted not bullying the ever living shit out of Elijah.

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I'm surprised I'm even speaking to you again.

Before today, the last thing cataloged here was before I'd even fallen into the warehouse. I spent so much time down there thinking about this notebook sitting on my dead-body, with the last notable entry being about my perseverance to start living again.

I don't care how dead "dead" is, that would have to have been enough embarrassment to never let my soul cross the River Styx.

I'm pulled over on the side of the road right now. I was trying to catch up the record on foot, but I kept getting distracted and forgetting the details of what I was trying to recount. You know how some people can't walk and talk? Well, I can't walk and write. I really don't want to keep being dramatic about it either, but a little too much of my mental capacity is still being spent on simple motor-skills. I'm just having some trouble focusing.

It's almost like there's something else I'm supposed to be focusing on right now…

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I had begun walking again, a little too long after the gate had finished closing. Anger pulled my feet as I couldn't believe I was sent out without at least one water bottle to start me off. Unfortunately, I knew I could make it there without it. I began slowly crawling into the endless network.

I watched the first clock as it passed on my left.

10:39 AM.

I discovered a negligible, but existent nonetheless, new calm wash onto me. I did know I wasn't being exiled. I had a place to return to. A place that, in some backwards sense, I belonged. I was just going for a very purposeful walk. Alone time. That's all it was. Well, maybe without the knowledge of experiences I've had in the past. I wasn't in love with the idea of staying in one spot for any considerable amount of time, but the first thing on my mind was almost immediately to create an opportunity for myself to stop and write.

I didn't look back, but I was sure that one or more of them were watching me from the observation deck. After traveling a somewhat considerable distance, I started weaving myself into avenues without being too obvious about avoiding their line of sight. The reliable muscle memory of my one paramount movement was remaining steady. I didn't feel like I was going to fulfill everybody's less-than-satirical assumption of my collapse. I even began to feel like I was getting some figurative fresh air. My depression had really pulled a hat-trick of proficiency when I was locked in that dark room for so many consecutive days. The visitation certainly hadn't been helping. My brain was working a little more reasonably out in the open, washing out the blue color that had been splattering all over it for the past week.

I knew the general location of the Café, and if ever I felt I was losing my way, a bookshelf climb would set me back off in the right direction. I began making the distance needed to hide myself from the view of the observation deck.

I looked up at the fake sky, ready to make the best of my first "real" day under it.

—

Feel free to set a timer of how long that optimism will last.

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After feeling like I was successfully off the radar, I had found a nice little egg swing to bunker down in and write. The model patio reminded me of a much more cliché version of the backyard patio that Chandler's parents had. I used to go there after school every Friday, sometimes even without him or Toby. It was a good place to get work done, and his parents used to like me.

I sat down like the ignorant little kid that the space had taken me back to being, and let myself be hypnotized.

I was muttering to myself like a goblin the entire time, going through a halfway trauma of the emotions I've had the past week or so. I wrote about the abyssal ghastliness of The Warehouse. I wrote about making peace as the Staff member had stood over me by the couch. I wrote about the pit of pitch black radiation that slowly sucked the lifeblood out of those seven. I wrote about the dead-horse attrition of Wyatt's skull. I wrote about the sound of Anne Marie's neck snapping. I wrote about Anthony's eternal scream that I've been hearing every time I close my eyes. I wrote about my attempt to sacrifice Kanata. I wrote about the corpulent mass of what I thought was Elizabeth's untimely corpse in my arms. I wrote about Abel.

I wrote about Nick.

I wrote about the uncomfortable burden that still being alive had colored itself to be for a while there...

I kept expecting to chronicle the sequence of my own death somewhere in between the events, and I even began laughing a little at how outlandish it all was. Did I really do all that? How am I alive right now? It seemed ridiculous that all of it had happened, but more ridiculous that after it all… I was just sitting here. Like I should have a goddamn lemonade in my hand or something. Sitting here on this fake patio, writing in this stupid notebook. For what, my own sanity? I mean, does this get old?

Traumatic situation arises, I make some jokes because I'm ignorant to the consequences of reality, but afterwards, I'm human and recognize my own mistakes, that's why I keep making them and keep hurting people, which I'm ignorant to, but sometimes I'm not, and sometimes I have a humane revelation of my care for other people, and that makes all the other times okay… wanna hear me make a joke about that?

That's stupidity, right? It's stupid for me to be making jokes with every asshole in R&E while there's so many thousands of dead bodies floating around in this place's stomach.

Stupid isn't a good word, disrespectful is better.

This journal is so fucking disrespectful.

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I finished writing what I felt was sufficient enough to help you feel caught up again, but not enough to be out here for too long. Well, that was the goal anyway...

I looked at the clock next to me and immediately cursed as if I had woken up late for my first day at work.

11:53 AM.

"Jesus H. Bleeding CHRIST!"

I'd sat there for over an hour?! How?!

I ran back to the cart where I had parked it outside, groaning as I felt my back being slightly thrown out. I began speed-walking. I had been prepared to run if need-be today, but was well aware of the fact that any genuine need to run would probably have just been the end of me. I felt winded in just seventeen seconds as I slowed my pace, holding in the cough. I took small sharp breaths until I trusted myself to slowly inhale and exhale again.

Elijah was talking to me about brunch. Surely they didn't expect me to be back in just a few hours, but I had burned so much time lying completely motionless. Maybe that mattered, but when all of them were expecting me to crumple to my death at any moment, the timeline for my return was likely more lenient than I was making it out to be.

I shouldn't be pushing myself…

My imagination of running from something made me realize that I didn't have the pole with me anymore. I hoped they hadn't scrapped it to turn it into a support beam or something. It had a somewhat emotional value to me that I hadn't signed up for, but knew I would be somewhat sad to lose. It was more just about the comfort of having it, but again, here's to hoping I didn't need it for anything. I would hope I don't have ANY encounters in the ominous daylight.

Really, I just needed to make sure I didn't meet any more staircases.

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11:58 PM.

I opened a closet in a faux mudroom. There was a really nice backpack on a hook in it, SwissGear (not sponsored). It was pretty big, the kind an adult would bring to an office, saying they prefer it to a briefcase for their commute. I had always tried to not bring work home with me (in a literal sense anyway), so I usually never used either. I was only ever carrying my lunch, and that was never big enough that I needed, I don't know, a dolly cart to wheel it into my room.

I took the empty backpack and slung it over my shoulder. There was a flashlight sitting on a high shelf. I clicked it on to see that it shined like the battery had never been touched. I assumed it probably hadn't if it had just materialized here from nothing. I zipped it up in the main compartment, and zipped up the notebook in the safer small one. The rest was just coats. I was sure I hadn't yet appreciated this place for the paradise it could be for changing my musty attire, but I would rather save that for another trip. I mentally promised myself a makeover day when I felt a little better.

Apprehensive as I was in this open abyss, I kept wanting to stop and investigate everything I walked by. After the ice-bath dive of getting myself out here, my only option to calm my stress was to try and cherish how cool the randomly generated homeliness was. However, remembering the time I was supposed to be keeping kept my childlike wonder on an unappreciative leash.

I realized that if I returned today with the facade of focusing on the mission the entire time, they would expect that hour to factor into the time I needed to complete a run. That meant, if I pretended to always be on my best behavior, I could have an hour to do whatever I wanted everyday.

Just have to… figure out what that is.

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12:38 PM.

I hummed a little Kid Cudi. I accidentally started thinking about my mom. I realized how I never got the chance to watch True Detective, and now I'll never know if McConaughey deserved the Academy award or not. I realized I should have settled for spoiled milk that morning (Or, if I had just clipped someone's mailbox on the way to Five Guys, I could probably be having a pretty relaxing time at home right now). I felt kind of horny, but not enough to feel like stopping again. I thought about Hannah.

I stopped thinking about Hannah.

I thought about the Encyclopedia Britannica. If I ever ended up back in the real world somehow, I would see who I could talk to about getting an Encyclopedia IKEA published (Emphasis would be on the I there. "Encyclopedia I-kee-a" (Also, remember when I was sounding out IKEA'n? I think rather than I-Kee-ya-en, or even I-Kee-an, it would be I-Kin-Nee-en. I know that's adding a letter that isn't in the word, but it's the only way for it to not sound awkward. Places with names that don't work for demonyms would normally just make a relatively close word anyway, so I think it works (Did you know people from Glasgow are called Glaswegians? They know the North Sea still exists, right?))).

I stopped thinking about the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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Have I ever said IKEA'n?

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Sorry. It's easy to record events from experiences in R&E, but I'm a little out of my groove when it comes to projecting my stream of consciousness. Also, in case I didn't make it clear earlier, this concept of keeping you informed of what I'm doing with this journal has started making me sick to my stomach. I'm a little nauseous regardless. I've been looking straight forward for so long that my brain is playing tricks on me, and my vision is tilting the floor. Like the entire IKEA is lopsided. It would be funny if it wasn't an eye trick, and the whole complex was doing an Inception tilt. What would happen if everything went vertical and I fell from the side? I guess I would be falling forever, at least until I starve to death midair. Does terminal velocity kill you with no other factors? I feel like my organs would eventually be popped like pimples by the g-force. I think I would pretty immediately try to swipe my arms until I could propel myself back towards the "floor". Just to bash my head open on the first thing it touched at that speed.

I'm not a fan of… falling. Heights are fine, it's just that feeling. Jumping into the pit had been just about as fun as being in it. To be in that state forever…

Maybe the Hell I got here wasn't the worst roll of the dice.

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1:24 PM.

Okay, wow. I swear it didn't use to suck this much. Did I used to have fun walking? I feel like this is WAY more unbearable than I remember. If I had to see a pie-chart breakdown of what activities occupied my time for the past month, I think that walking is higher than even sleeping. Was it always this awful? I feel like I want to lie face down on the ground, give a long exhale, and never inhale again.

Before I let myself melt, am I even close to this fucking Café? Eight goddamn miles. EIGHT! And if you think I'm forgetting about that .1 that the homeless Ernest Mach had thrown in…

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2:10 PM.

It took all of three shelves to calm me down when I climbed up above the tree-line. I saw the small decorative spindles of the Café. It wasn't exactly close, but I could make it in less than an hour. My feet were starting to ache. I should've asked Elijah if he had a pair of shoes more suited for a hike than Converse.

As if. I couldn't get a stick of gum if I sold them my liver.

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2:47 PM.

I'll probably be there in about fifteen minutes.

How was I talking to you alone for three whole days? Was I giving you crazy backstory? I just remembered that I never finished telling you about her. Hannah. Obviously I… could have. Basically none of this is being written at the time it's happening anyway. That story just isn't fun to tell or hear. My brain's already retold it to me about five trillion times through dream sequences.

Haven't I already made that excuse?

Sorry, I can't. Not right now. I just don't want that reminiscence to be the straw that makes me throw this notebook away into the distance. I need to be a little happier to tell you about her. Will that ever happen? Ummmmmm…

Let me just skirt around it a little longer. I'll trade you something that's almost as emotionally disquieting to talk about instead. Something liiikkkkeeee…

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Ooooh, I know.

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I can't call Mom and Dad bad parents. I think my mother was an incredibly strong woman. Having one boy is the test of that. Having two is probably a weak woman's parallel to an infinite IKEA. Three and four? I'll just say from the bottom of my heart, I never would've blamed her for going absentee the second I came out.

Hell, marriage itself is already a lifelong commitment to taking care of a child. My father wasn't a child, I just think he kept forgetting what he was doing. If I had to guess why he never showed emotion, I wouldn't say it's because he felt too proud to, I simply don't think he ever realized that he was expected to.

I had both of my parents around for the crucial years of my childhood, and that's more privilege than I could ever argue against with surrounding circumstance. They didn't abuse me, they didn't abuse each other. They were good at what they did, and they did it four times without letting themselves slack off on "the next one". They worked so hard.

But that's all it was, I think. Work. Parenting is work, but you usually do it because you love your child. I don't know… I think it was just their jobs and nothing else. That's not isolated to me either, it was all four of us. They didn't play favorites or least favorites, we were all equal to them no matter the age or behavior. I was the only one who was still "there" when they split. Eddie wasn't going anywhere, but by the time I was seventeen, I felt like his name was just an important word I had to remember. He never tried wasting his time in college, but he never really moved out either. His stuff was always at the house, but he never was. I took as much of it as I could when I moved in with Chandler's family at nineteen, but I would guess that that shit is just rotting in their basement now.

Mateo had called me the day after our parents told me they hadn't been interested in each other for years. He told me he was surprised they ever were. I knew exactly what he meant. They were always just… there. I didn't think they were empty or vacant, I just felt like they were always waiting to be told they could go. Like they had better things to do. I told you once about how I only saw my father cry one time. My mother cried a lot, but it wasn't an overwhelmed kind of crying. Not weak. She could do it strategically. There were so many days when she came home, ruffled my hair, and broke down sobbing on her way upstairs to her bedroom. I would hear her heaving for twenty minutes, door open, not trying to hide it, before coming down to start making dinner like she had just hit a reset button.

Whistling with the radio on. Talking to Eddie about his lacrosse team. Complaining to herself out loud about my grandfather giving her bad genetics and smokers lung, seemingly for no reason relatable to anything that was happening at the time. Doing renditions of old Andy Kaufman bits to make me laugh, pretending they were her own jokes when we both knew they weren't.

She was sweet, I loved her… for so long.

I don't want to blame it on Leo's passing, because if I wanted to, I could blame everything that happened in that family on it in some way, and it's just a lazy reassignment of fault.

Plus… I don't want Leo to have to be here anymore. I don't want his memory to be tied up.

No, that wasn't what started shutting her down. She was fine for too long afterwards for it to have been causation. I don't think it was any of us, not even dad. One day… I think someone just finally told her she could go. She didn't listen to them right away, she knew it wasn't right for the time. She fought against it, she damn sure did, and as much as I want to say she didn't, I'd be a lying little bitch if I said she hadn't tried.

But Eddie started drifting for a reason. Mateo stopped visiting for a reason. I started feeling sorry for myself for a reason.

A month or two before my sixteenth birthday, Mom came home in the middle of the day when none of us were there, and went into Leo's room. We hadn't ignored it like you're supposed to do with a normal late family member, we cleaned it everyday. She cleaned it everyday. Every. Fucking. Day. It was an unhealthy habit, yeah, but it was an unrelated one. Because… I don't really know how to say this, but I don't think it's because she couldn't let him go. I think it was rooted in a genuine belief that if she wasn't respectful enough of the gravity of his passing, it might undo itself. I have absolutely no idea where that would have come from for her, but that's what the paranormally superstitious nature of that family had begun to feel like. The way she acted about that room… it was just weird. Look, everybody grieves differently, but that shit wasn't grief… it was obstruction. She behaved as if she was warding off the encroachment of something horrible that had made itself known to her. Maybe that's what had spoken to her, and she had begun living under it as if it had always been there.

My only explanation for her shift in behavior is that some… "thing"… had given her the permission for it.

That day, she emptied that room like it was nothing. All of his belongings that could fit in a box were in the back room of a Goodwill before I even got on the bus home that afternoon.

In a more realistic sense, maybe it was a way for her to hurt herself. Not to take away something she cared about, but to disrupt a foundation of routine that she had very much relied upon to feel like she was in a safe bubble of lucidity. She broke her own unspoken rule that was understood by all of us not to be disturbed.

I didn't care, not at that time. Dad did.

Somehow I don't remember a single word of that fight, and I DO NOT block shit out of my memory (as I've made abundantly clear). That misleadingly destructive day was the start of a sixteen month timer, counting down to the day where our family would be officially nothing but a group of people with a loose association. Truthfully, it's quite self-important to call my day of discovering mommy and daddy don't love each other the "end of the family".

The end of the family was probably the day I was born, simply because… that was the day it was done being made. The day we were all finally here. The rest was just waiting.

The aftermath of perspective was not good to me.

I learned quite soon after moving out that it was a blessing to have lived in a time where my father had shown no emotion. Any day which I crossed paths with that man again was a very bad day. For someone who had spent so much time playing possum, he seems much more at home flying over the Cuckoo's nest. Everything I could call him is an undiagnosed label, so I won't give you the laundry list, but that man acts like he was sold a broken Geiger counter. For summarizing reference, I made it a point to never ask my father's opinion on my felony conviction.

My mother on the other hand… sadly, I think her wits are more about her than they've ever been. She has hence learned something very integral about herself: She does not have the energy to let someone's feelings down easy. If that means breaking the news to her son that she is hardly interested in reconnecting with him after all these years...

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Is that enough useless fucking backstory for the next couple entries?

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3:01 PM.

I got you your fuckin' money…

I immediately booked it to the drink fridge, unscrewing the first bottle of water I could get my hand wrapped around. I learned from my old errors, and slowly enjoyed the sustenance. I sipped in somber relief, as I found the loveseat that I had dragged over to a table during my previous visit. This was weird. Being here again was weirding me the hell out and I couldn't describe why. I slung the backpack from my shoulder and placed it on the cushions. I retrieved the notebook, and flipped back in it until I found my entry from the day I was here.

I made an I Love Lucy joke? Why?

Ugh, the teeth. Yeah, that shit sucked.

Not as much as that "living" speech though, Jesus. Reading back, that thing is solely embarrassing enough even without an ironically subsequent death.

I placed the notebook on the table and brought the cart over to the buffet line. I parked it and grabbed a tray, focusing on my own hunger first. I would be fine, but I didn't want to stay for very long at all. I had to remember how long it took me to get here, and plan to avoid a situation where I was even remotely close to lights-out when I returned. Wow, she can call it community service if she wants, but this schedule feels like a perfectly real job to me. Walk for about four FOCUSED hours, maybe get a nice hour of a lunch break, walk back for another four. Maybe it's healthier for me than sitting at a desk, and at least I'm lucky to be aliv-oh whatever you know how I feel about this.

I went to consider my once again free decision of whatever I wanted to eat for the first time in almost two weeks, before that freedom made me realize the other beautiful liberation I had just been granted. I placed down the tray and walked over to a random spot in the middle of the fucking floor.

I then proceeded to piss in the middle of that fucking floor. God Bless IKEA.

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Chicken, macaroni & cheese, greek salad, water, water and water.

I sat down in the loveseat, running a finger over the rib that had originally encouraged me to retrieve it. Pressure was an almost negligible nerve pinch these days, but I was trying incredibly hard to avoid having any excessive amount of it applied. Case in point: My retreat from the front lines of Natalie's anger this morning.

I grabbed a fork and rooted up a bite of hot macaroni. Feeding myself, chewing soft and slow, I closed my eyes and let the warmth run down to my stomach. My teeth felt better, but something in the back left was either chipped or broken. It must have been from Wyatt, not Natalie, as it pulled on a different discomfort than the one I had recorded before. Well, the discomfort wasn't dissimilar, the location just was. I tried to chew on only the right side of my mouth, but I kept accidentally tapping the problem area. It didn't matter, as it wasn't enough to ruin the euphoria of the meal for me. I even grinned a little as I took another bite, and that bite was good.

Then, I got through about three gnashes of teeth with the next mouthful before I spontaneously burst into tears.

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It stopped like a mood swing, but it felt right. I felt my brain say "Okay, that's enough". I had already felt pretty good before, but now… I felt satisfaction.

Like hitting a reset button.

I finished the rest of my meal with a clear head.

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I placed my tray back on the rack before returning to the cart and counter. I stood stationary for a moment, looking around with one hand on my hip, and the other holding the mini hot dog I was still chewing.

I considered the idea of making a stash of food somewhere, and telling them the rest was all there was. For no other reason than for fun. Not too much, just a container or two-worth so they couldn't possibly notice. I didn't want it for myself either, I'd rather dump it on the ground to fucking rot. If I did that everyday for months, the amount that cumulatively piled up would probably have been enough to feed everyone for at least days. Maybe that's not as much as I think, but the idea of pettily ripping the hypothetical food from their mouths was engrossing me.

For like… a minute or two.

I really no longer felt the same echoing call for vengeance towards R&E that was basically printed on my forehead. I definitely wasn't going to the polls for them or anything, but I felt like I was being a little much. I'm ALSO not trying to say my post-cry clarity turned me into Ghandi, because I still didn't like them, but I understood them. That little episode I just had, I really think it was because of the food. Just hunger playing with my emotions. Was that why I was so optimistic all the times that I was on my own? More importantly, maybe that's the more reasonable excuse that all of them have for being assholes. They're all just putting up the Bat-signal for a Snickers bar. Doesn't excuse them all being a lot-much, but it's an understandable reaction. I guess, I don't know dude, I'm trying here.

I swallowed my last bit of hot dog and dusted my palms.

"Youth is wasted on the young…"

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Pancakes

Salmon Fillets

Salmon Wraps

Veggie Balls (bleh)

Waffles

Caesar salad

Greek Salad

Quinoa Salad

Stockholm Salad (you're out of your mind if you think I won't try to make a joke out of this eventually)

Bacon, a lot of fucking Bacon

Garlic Lemon Cod

Chicken Tenders

Cold-Fermented Buns

Mashed Potatoes

Diced Potatoes

Red Pepper Relish (gross)

Cauliflower Rice

French Fries

Chai & Chili Toasted Chickpeas

BLT Chicken Wraps

Macaroni & Cheese

Peas

Lingonberry Jam (If there is a God, then just why)

Eggs

Plant Balls (probably Bleh)

Greek Veggie Ball Wraps

Chocolate Cake (did consider hiding this somewhere for only me)

Strawberry Shortcake

Caramel Almond Cake

Swedish Apple Cake

And of course, Swedish Meatballs

It didn't seem limited at all as I menially picked apart most ofthe Café. It was what I felt was enough, and I truthfully wanted to play the field today of how much they would judge my effort. I was guessing this was probably good, but wanted to see the audacity of it not being so. I emptied the drink fridge into the giant bin, resisting my desire to drink a soda as I opened another water bottle.

I stood back and looked at the cart, stepping forward to fix some of the more precariously placed bins. Once I felt that one slight turn wouldn't cause an avalanche, I steeled myself and prepared to set back out. I felt… kind of cool? The brave explorer venturing beyond the bounds of safety to feed the village. He also hates that village, but don't leave that part in the documentary.

I began walking down the path I came. The cart was a little heavier to push, but I was feeling a lot better than when I'd shown up there. I breathed a deep breath, not even close to coughing. It felt cliche to smile, so I didn't.

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I passed by the first clock on my way back after I had already been walking for about ten minutes.

4:22 PM.

A good padding of time to get back without having to worry about curfew. I guess this really is my whole day. They'll probably shove me right back in the slammer as soon as they get this food from me. Honestly, for now, that's cool. As long as I have something to do with my day instead of constantly sitting at the table, I'll probably only feel better and better with time. Only having to sleep in a cage is a better quality of life than being a dog in a cage forever. Plus, not only will I get to walk around everyday, but I'll be consistently able to write agai-…

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The skidding wheels were silenced as I stopped walking.

There is just no way I am that obliviously stupid. I am genuinely refusing to believe it.

I stepped back to behold my own presence in the universe, as I somehow realized for the first time in ten minutes that I had walked away from the Café without the backpack on my back. I let my mind's eye picture it still sitting on the loveseat, and as it drifted to the left, it illuminated the image of my notebook still sitting on the table.

I placed my hands on each side of my head.

"No no no no no no no… gooooooooddamit."

Should… should I just leave it there? I'm doing this everyday, so I'll just be going back there anyway. I can just get it then, it will still be there. I need to get back to R&E.

It will still be there tomorrow. It will still be there…

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Why do I not believe that? I don't trust that being true. Where would it go? Of course it… of course it will still be there.

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I looked back at the clock.

4:31 PM.

"Jesus fucking Christ."

I started running back to the Café.

I immediately began sweating out the optimism and warm fuzzy feelings that this day had begun to instill in me. My back began to itch, and my rib even began to throb. I should have recognized the approach of my stupidity's resurgence the moment I "felt cool". I just can't let myself get on top of the psychology of things, because the second I do, I find a way to prove to myself that I'm like a monkey with a typewriter. Every revelation I have is being caboosed by a new punctuation of discrepancy. God forbid I ever-

Alright come on, dude. You misplaced your fucking diary, is that really the next layer of inferno for you right now? Shit happens, and you're in a place where the frequencies of shit happening and shit not happening are flipped. Can you stop acting like shit happening is this unprecedented blue moon? Just go pick it up, and get the hell back.

Yeah, I… yeah. Okay.

I made it back in what was maybe six minutes. I coughed as I pulled my pace back to a slow walk, entering back into the Café's opening. I saw the loveseat and table, both with their respective belongings of mine. I resolved my self-induced panic as I picked up the backpack and strung it over my shoulders. I took the notebook in my hand.

There, was that so bad?

No, and I probably needed the exer-

I turned around, and was about to walk back the way I came, before remembering that my internal monologue doesn't have a differing intelligence level from mine just because it speaks with reverb.

A Staff member was standing on the other side of the Café, staring at me as I froze.

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It didn't move, the same as I tried to. I was probably contorting like a shivering chihuahua as its invisible parasite eyes dug into my skull. It had been a while since I had seen one. My last encounter being with a number too large to count did not make this lone wanderer any less horrifying. My entire nervous system was twirling around itself, like my own body was trying to hide behind me.

Any input here, genius?

Ummm, I'm good. This is all you.

Typical.

Fine, let's weigh it out.

Fight it. Bare hands, preferably any object I can grab in the next five seconds (How did that thought even get past the word "Fight"?).

Back slowly away out of sight (I don't really know how their "sight" works).

Run past it back to the hallway (Seemed to work the last time before you went Wile E Coyote).

Apologize and beg it to look the other way (Did you just say "look"?)

"Hey, what's that over there?!" (Ummmmm)

That's it? Five options? Infinite IKEA and I have five options?

What happened to not using that word so much?

You're hurting my focus, please leave.

WAITWAITWAIT, I THOUGHT OF ANOTHER OPTION! How about we stand completely still forever and see if it just walks away?!

Must be mad-easy for the disembodied voice to choose the least physically possible option for my PHYSICAL body to perform.

You asked.

Fuck it, let's go with door #2.

As slowly and steadily as I could, I began rolling my feet backwards. I made an effort to have my ankles and feet remain the only parts of my body in motion. My heel almost immediately stumbled on a table base, as I listed hard to the left. I caught myself before I fell, but the table rocked back and forth quickly with an obnoxiously loud rumbling.

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Totally off-topic:

Saying something redundant like "well, that's not good" in an unbelievably life threatening situation is unexplainably fun. I think a lot of people watch action movies and find it really annoying when people are "funny" in the middle of a ridiculously over-the-top scenario. I totally get it, but I will say this: In lethal circumstances, I think one of the only realistic human ways to tie your sane composure to the ground is to have some banter with it.

Kind of like someone who decided that standing in front of a humanoid abomination was the best time to role-play a bickering argument with their own stream of consciousness.

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"Well, that's not good…"

Wasn't there an option out of those five that I recognized to have WORKED BEFORE?! What's the reason I didn't choose that one again?

The Staff member began walking towards me. It didn't scream or even run, maybe because of the time of day, but it knew that my body was something it needed to care about. Meanwhile, a clump of tubifex worms was replacing my stomach as I staggered my body around. I threw myself into the opposite tree-line of aisles out of the Café, trying to disembark from the sight-line the same way I had from the R&E observation deck. I heard the wet footsteps patrolling at a slow pace, but couldn't exactly nail down their trajectory as I began panicking. I wanted to stop panicking, as, in theory, all I really needed to do here was snake my way back around to the other side and book it back to the cart. I began doing that, recognizing the hanging Café sign that floated over the view of the bookshelves. I oriented myself, zipping towards my original path, hearing the footsteps residing in the opposite direction still.

Home-free?

I breathed a sigh of relief as I emerged from the woods, and stepped directly into the personal space bubble of two other staff members that were standing in the middle of the path. A sound left my mouth that I think was supposed to be a scream, but turned into an awkward cough as I dashed back into the bookshelves. I darted further into the reach, hearing the footsteps commence behind.

Okay okay okay, you saw It. It was just those two, just spiral around again and get back on the path to run. They're not in the same wild state that the-

KRUNCH

I heard the cracking of a large piece of wooden furniture somewhere from the direction of the two.

Listen, I'm so serious. Stop saying things. Every time you say something, everything gets so much wor-

"Hey."

As the overwhelming decision of what to do when hearing an unfamiliar human voice completely discombobulated me, I tripped and fell face first into the floor. Grace under pressure at its finest.

"Oh wow," The male voice said tiredly from somewhere behind me. "You alright, man?"

I flopped around on the ground, finally gaining the sense to scramble to my feet and turn around defensively. I saw a man that looked to be in his mid-thirties. He had a slightly long neck, with long, dirty red-hair that stretched down over it. He was wearing a navy green raincoat hoodie, and standing way too close to me for someone I didn't know.

"WHO THE FUCK-"

"-Jesus brother-calm down it's like five O' clock in the afternoon." He said. "No reason to be yelling about things."

He stepped a little closer as I stepped even further away. It was NOT in my wheelhouse to be meeting new people right now. Not only because of the so ridiculously current situation, but because of how my last encounter with strangers had turned out...

"Look," I said. "There's three of those things right over there, and two of them will be here in like ten seconds, so do yourself a huge favor and get far away from me as soon as possible. I will use you as a distraction before you ruin this for both of us, so back the fuck up-"

He held up his hands in reservation.

"-Alright alright, no need for that… name's Trent-"

"-Don't tell me your godda-… DON'T TELL ME YOUR NAME! JUST-… get out of here before I do something aggressive."

He raised an eyebrow.

"You must not get outside much," He said.

Just then, behind him, the two staff that had migrated from the path revealed themselves about thirty feet away from us. Trent turned around to notice them.

"You've definitely got an outside voice though," He muttered before turning back to me. "You want me to take care of those things? Doesn't look like you got a weapon on ya."

Don't show your hand, he doesn't know what you-

-Dude, shut up. Where's the notebook? We need to run.

I spun around to see it on the ground where I'd dropped it during the fall. I snatched it up and turned back to Trent.

"I… stand corrected?" He said, regarding the notebook. "Not sure how that thing's gonna get 'em, but I've seen weirder methods."

He didn't have a weapon in his hands, but I assumed he was packing it under his coat. If he was offering, I'd take him up on it. If anything, I'd dip out when he started screaming in pain.

"No, I… yes," I said. "Please kill them."

He shrugged lackadaisically, and turned without answering. He strode up, meeting the first Staff member halfway before pulling out a long broiler fork, and nonchalantly stabbing the shit out of the thing's face.

"SIR!" The other suddenly yelled as its friend fell lifeless to the ground.

I jolted ridiculously hard, about to turn and book it, before Trent gracefully threw himself forward, getting in the tiny little bubble of its reach, and dealing it dirty before it could wrap its arms around him. He moved with a swiftness that was almost comparable to Kanata's. The second monster fell to the ground before him. Another crash sounded somewhere in the distance, as the third one began heading straight towards us, rapidly.

Trent turned to me, holding the fork out in my direction.

"Wanna take a turn?" He offered.

I wrung my shaking hands together.

"That's probably a bad idea," I replied, as the third Staff member revealed itself.

"No shame," He said. "Not gonna twist your arm about it."

He swiftly spun around, and instead of killing it, threw himself under the Staff's right arm. It continued past him, running directly towards me instead.

"MOTHER FU-" I screamed, before the edge of the fork poked through the Staff's forehead.

The fork teeth stared at me like fake eyes in the empty grey, as the titan slid limply forward, the fork sliding from its cold flesh. I jumped backwards before it could touch me. Trent stood behind it, stashing the fork somewhere behind his coat wing as he looked at me.

"You were talking to him, right?" He said, smiling.

Two different shivers coursed simultaneously through my body. I felt like that encounter had given me an irregular heartbeat that I couldn't shake back to normal.

"Would've been nice for you to tell me you were gonna do that shit!" I said.

He wobbled his head.

"I only had ya scared for a couple seconds, didn't think you were that afraid of 'em-"

"-What, because you're not? Great for you, you seem like a super interesting guy. Can you leave now?"

He pulled the broiler fork back out of his coat and tossed it on the ground. It clattered and slid up to my feet as I didn't let my eyes leave him.

"Not really here to hurt you, if that's what you're worried about," He said. "What are you up to out here?"

I squinted, trying to look as intimidating as I could to the man that had just saved my life after I'd face-planted right in front of him.

"Are you not getting the hint that I don't want to talk to you, or are you ignoring me? Why the hell is what I'm doing any of your business?"

He frowned a little before wiping it off. His patience was clearly far beyond what I had grown accustomed to from this realm's population.

"You live up there?" He said, motioning in Return and Exchange's direction.

I fought and managed to not follow his suggestion with my gaze.

"Live where?"

He rolled his eyes.

"Whatever, friend," He said, turning and beginning to walk away.

Despite that being what I wanted, I continued yelling. Mostly because he was walking in the direction that I wanted to walk.

"How about you, huh?!" I said. "Where do you live? Do you just sit here waiting for fights to break out?"

He turned around again.

"I'm not mad you don't wanna tell me," He said. "I get it. Trust don't come too easy out here. I'm not one to know if you've even met another trustworthy soul out here before, so I'm not pushing ya."

He walked back over to me.

"But I was watching you out there," He continued. "I just hope you know the danger of walking around in the open with something as loud as that bellhop's flatbed."

Trent did not have a southern accent, but he spoke like someone who should.

"I'm fine," I said sternly. "I'd be better if there wasn't some Manson-looking fucker stalking me through the middle of nowhere."

He smiled slightly.

"See, I've gotten Ted Kaczynski when my hair was shorter," He said. "Guess those guys all had a similar style."

I was about to shoulder check him and begin walking away, but he beat me to it, side-stepping politely around me. I turned around as he began to exit.

"Yo!" I called to him. "You forgot your shitty little skewer."

He waved his hand without stopping or turning.

"You can keep it," He said. "I was gettin' bored with it anyway. Gotta keep it fresh."

He moved around the corner of a bedroom display and disappeared out of my view as I stood there, disgruntled.

"Nice to meet you," I whispered to basically no one. "Don't ever fucking come near me again."

Nice last word, man! That'll teach him to tussle with us!

I will bash in my temple with a lamp if you keep speaking.

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I reunited with the cart, and began walking back to R&E.

4:59 PM.

My heart was really starting to worry me, as I couldn't get it to calm down some twenty minutes later.

Still, I moved with a hastened effort that demanded more out of me, but was less than I minded expending. Not only was I out of the comfort zone of having ample time to get back, but I had to keep looking over my shoulder to see if I was being followed.

By Staff members, yes, but more importantly, the goddamn Unabomber. That was enough to get me in gear.

I had the fork resting on the dolly cart. It was nice to have a stand in for the pole, and I admittedly knew that this, as a weapon, was greatly more efficient. The pole was almost an equivalent to an energy crystal, as I had liked holding it for comfort more than I had felt protected using it. It didn't have much power without the help of Kanata.

At the same time though, you should probably know me well enough to know that I didn't want to use his fucking fork. If he hadn't distracted me, I would have been just fine running away. His help was only useful in the situation that HE had gotten me stuck in. That's what I'm gonna tell David Letterman when he asks about it, anyway.

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7:45 PM.

I stopped to take a quick piss in a display toilet. After finishing, I stashed my notebook away into the backpack, not wanting to show up with it in my hand.

I considered addressing what might be an unhealthy obsession to myself as I did so. That whole situation was because of this notebook. I should've left it, why am I messing around like this is a playground? Even with some stranger and two Staff members behind me, the way I had scrambled to grab it from the floor was so skittish.

The way I had ripped it from Elijah's hand earlier today…

The thing is, it kind of deserves my attention. Trent had joked about it being a weapon, but this thing has truly saved my life. I don't know if I would have stayed sane if I didn't have it. I guess the danger of that truth is that without it… I might not be able to stay sane ever again.

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But back then was different. Back then was a different monster of isolation.

Thinking about it now, I'm more surprised about meeting no people in my first four days here than I am about the lack of Staff. I'm sure the Staff are born out of nowhere in some way, like test-tube children of the complex. People are different though. Do we all start in the same place when we "end up" here?

This place seemed abandoned when I showed up, but there actually seems to be more people here than New York City. I'm being hyperbolic, but I can't be expected to believe that R&E is the extent of this place's populace. There's probably other communities thousands of miles away. Where are all these assholes coming from?

I really haven't thought about this for a long time now, because I've been so focused on my own shit, but what is seriously going on out there? How is there not a news coverage epidemic of people going missing in IKEAs? Has there been? I never watched the news very much, so maybe I could've missed it, but with how many people I ALONE have seen here so far, I would think it would be hard for me to just stroll into an IKEA.

They should've made me sign a waiver at the door.

I should really ask Elijah about it when I-…

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Actually… I don't think that's a good idea…

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8:10 PM.

I reached calling-distance of the gate as I passed by the first clock I had used to tell my departure time.

"YO!" I called. "I'M BACK!"

I brought the cart to a stop in the middle of the clearing. I stretched my back and shook my legs, only realizing now how tired my feet were. It was enough to steal my focus from the gentle cold front that was poking my skin, in a place where I usually felt no temperature.

I swayed back and forth in empty silence, as I didn't hear a single peep from over the gate. I assumed it blocked out noise pretty well, but it sounded completely barren. I looked to the top, expecting to see someone looking down at me over the edge, but no heads were present. I waited patiently for a minute or two, as I figured they might have to retrieve enough people to help open the gate or something, but I got tired of waiting about three minutes later.

"HELLOOOOO?! IT'S… KINDA LATE RIGHT NOW! CAN YOU LET ME IN?!"

Right about now was the time that one of them would probably pop out and tell me that they had changed their mind, and they weren't letting me back in. You can leave the food for sure, but go somewhere else before we shoot you dead in the street. I might have been infuriated in reality, but I found the thought of that so ridiculously scornful that it could only be funny. The continued absence of any response contradicted that possibility, though. I just doubted they would choose silence, and miss the opportunity to rub that decision in my face while I was left out here to die. There are way too many people in there that would love to memorize the look on my face when I realized I would never be allowed back in.

I walked over to the cart and opened the top Tupperware container, pulling out a cold french-fry to nibble on. I wasn't hungry, as I'd eaten more today than I had the past two days combined. I just needed something to help me think. Even as close to curfew as it was, I couldn't really force myself to be stressed about their lack of urgency. If anything, maybe I had fooled myself earlier about their expectations of my side of the punctuality, and they had just assumed I was dead like three hours ago.

"Did we have a passcode or something?"

If we did, I definitely wasn't told about it. I could just start guessing…

"1-2-3-4-5-password-asshole-qwerty-6-7-8!"

No response. Weird, seems like exactly what Natalie's computer password would be.

"Do I need to say the special character out loud at the end?!"

My floor began to warble under my feet, as the familiar horn of the apocalypse sounded before me. I tilted my head in annoyance.

"Long ass password…"

As the passage made the slightest opening, Roman entered the clearing, brandishing his sword.

"Wow," I said. "That was a little quick for you to be the first one out. I didn't think you could fit through an opening that small."

He walked up to me silently, and shoved his left palm into my chest, basically shot-putting me backwards to the ground. I coughed as my back punched the floor. I continued coughing as I lay on the ground, disoriented.

"What… the actual-"

The tip of his sword pressed against my sternum as gently as a butterfly's leg. I held myself still in its grasp.

"Why didn't you have your hands up, dude," He said down to me, less aggressively than I would have expected.

I didn't follow suit.

"Why didn't I what?! Was I yelling the word BOMB?! You almost made me crack my skull just now!"

"Sorry," He said. "But you have to listen about the hands."

"Oh shit," I heard Sean's voice say behind him. "Don't tell me no one told you about that."

I lifted my head slightly to see him leaning against a wall with a fireaxe in his hand, his other hand stuffed in his pocket.

"Kind of important, right?" He added, smiling at me sadistically. "I would've just shot you if I had been the first one out."

"No you wouldn't've," Roman mumbled tiredly without turning around to Sean. "Cody, you have to have your hands raised away from your pockets and back when you come to the gate. That's serious, that's important. You need to follow that rule."

"Dude I-…" I sputtered. "Sure, what the fuck ever, I'll do it. No one ever said that to me."

"Yeah-" I heard Elijah gasp as he stepped from the gate's opening. "I… may have forgotten to mention it, that's on me."

Roman stayed silent for a moment as he slowly retracted the sword, and I sat up on my elbows. He turned around, walking past Elijah.

"Yeah," he said to him. "It is."

He disappeared back inside the gate.

"Sean!" I heard him call from behind it.

Sean stepped up from the wall, and went to follow Roman, giving me a typically wicked side-eye.

"We makin' room for the cart?" He called to Roman. "Or are we trapping them both out here? I'm down either way!"

As the scraping began again to widen the gate's mouth, Elijah walked up to me on the floor, and held out his hand.

"I'm sorry…" He said. "I was distracted this morning… can you stand up with my hand instead of standing up on your own please?"

I couldn't even tell if I was mad. Most of this could likely get summed up as Elijah being Elijah, and I was a bit distracted by the way Roman had spoken to me just now. All of that to the side though, I recognized that this was just an occurrence of shit happening. Meaning, it was up to me whether or not I wanted to continue being a little much. If anything, I would just pace myself.

I blew my hair over my forehead, and took Elijah's hand.

"You're fine," I said as he helped me to my feet. "You probably 'forgot' to say it in an effort to rebel against your boss. I'm used to you using me to accomplish that."

"That's… fair," He replied awkwardly. "I can work on being a more creative asshole in the future."

Behind him, Sean walked back outside.

"At least you're observant, because it is late," He said to me as he passed us. "Let's get him back inside."

"Agreed, don't wanna let him go chasing a butterfly off a cliff," Elijah replied before turning to me. "Anything cool happen out there?"

Sean started rummaging around the cart behind me.

"Nothing cool," I said. "Just found a really awesome stick."

"YO!"

We both looked behind me to see Sean holding up the broiler fork.

"Yeah, that's the one," I said to Elijah.

"WHAT WERE YOU PLANNING TO DO WITH THIS SHIT?! HUH?!" Sean screamed. "No hands shown, and he tries to smuggle a fucking weapon in here-what the hell, Elijah?!-"

"-Sean, chill out," Elijah said. "He probably just thought it looked cool or something."

"I mean, I was actually keeping it to kill someone," I said.

Sean turned, hurtled the fork far into the distance and strode up to me with his fireaxe, dropping it slightly to get his hand right below the shoulder. He grabbed me by mine, and forced the bit up to my throat.

"Come on dude, stop!-" Elijah immediately cried.

"-Someone? Who?!" He pestered me.

"Anyone," I said calmly. "Should I have said something instead? Would that have prevented you from holding an axe up to my neck-"

"-what's in this goddamn backpack, huh? You got a bomb in there or something?-"

"-did you not hear what I just said to Roman?-"

"-If I hadn't picked that shit up, and you brought it inside, what would you have done with it?"

"I don't know, probably forgot I even had it. I didn't even use it out there."

"Then why do you have it?"

I felt myself hesitating for a small moment, as I resisted the honesty of recounting today's incident. To be honest with you, my withholding of information was simply to spite them, and I likely wasn't appreciating how bad of an idea that was. I was only appreciative of how I was slowly getting better at lying.

"Do you think I was using it to play with myself? I had it because I was scared of needing it. I get why you're mad, so I'm sorry, but if we didn't need a weapon to go outside, you guys wouldn't need me, right? It would've been nice for you to throw one over the wall after locking me outside."

He stared at me silently. I'm sure he could feel my heart beating. I couldn't get my mind off of it.

"How about you and me have our thing be communication from now on," I whispered to him.

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Elijah put his hand on my other shoulder, looking at Sean.

"I don't know where this conversation is going, but I gave him the backpack," Elijah lied. "It was just in case he needed the-"

Sean shoved him away, pushing through the both of us.

"Go fuck yourself, Elijah," He said as he walked to the gate, and disappeared behind it.

Elijah stood motionless. I kicked my feet awkwardly, waiting for a comment from him that never came. I decided to make one instead.

"Yeah I uh… I should've known bringing anything else back was a bad idea. That's my bad."

He stayed silent.

"And you didn't have to do that… lie for me," I said to him. "Especially since you're horrible at it. I know I'm easy to lie to, but most people aren't as gullible as me… he wasn't gonna do shit anyway."

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"Yeah, maybe not. I'm gonna wait a while before taking your advice on lying though," He said slowly.

I need holy water.

"I can…" He began without looking at me. "I can help you get that cart to the pantry if you're tired."

I nodded to the back of his head.

"Sure," I said.

I turned to walk back towards it, trying to hide the smile that Sean had tempted my face to wear.

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Elijah had guided me back through town with the cart. He confiscated the backpack (sans notebook), but let me take another water out of the bin as we walked. We met Nikko at the entrance of the pantry, as he took the cart from me, thanked me for my valiant sacrifice, and wheeled it to the back.

"Have any specific dinner requests while we're here?" Elijah asked.

"I'm… actually not very hungry. Just the water is fine. Is it okay if I just eat tomorrow?"

"You asking the starving people if it's alright to not eat their food?"

We started walking back to the cell.

"Did Natalie ever find Margo?" I said to him.

"Oh… yeah, she um… she found her."

"Where is she?"

Elijah stayed silent for a moment.

"Um, my 'she' I mean," I pretended.

Elijah turned to me, smiling.

"She's yours now?"

This is the reward I've been repeatedly getting for avoiding sensitive topics around Elijah.

"I just expected her to be the one yelling at me when I got back."

"Yeah, well… she got a little busy today after you left. She was… checking on someone."

"You mean Jen?"

"Uh, no. Not her….. also, I know I told you about that, but I'd be careful saying that name out loud. If anything, just make sure you don't say it around Natalie OR Roman. Sensitive topic, you know?"

It would be quicker to list what isn't a sensitive topic here.

"Hey," He said. "You can walk next to me if you want."

I… didn't really want to. I did though.

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I slid down in the chair, feeling like it was a lot more comfortable than I remember it being this morning.

"Alright," Elijah said. "We'll be here to wake you up again tomorrow. Even though I know you'll probably be awake."

That is if I didn't have a heart palpitation in my sleep. It just wouldn't stop. My attention was being drawn to every single beat that seemed like it would rocket out of my chest.

"But try to get some good sleep," He continued. "You've earned it."

I rolled my eyes a little, choosing not to mention my current physical fear to Elijah.

"It wasn't that hard, dude," I said. "Anyone could've done what I just did."

He moved to the doorway.

"Maybe," He said. "But you did it. And I know you were sort of… tasked with it but… thank you for today. For doing it, for not running away… definitely for not dying."

I lay my arms on the pillow on the table, resting my chin on them as I looked up at him.

"Were you assuming I was going to? It seemed like everybody was."

"Well, don't hold that against them. We expect the worst and are pleasantly surprised by anything that happens above that line. Everyone will be very happy to have been proven wrong."

"Everyone, Elijah?"

He shrugged.

"A lot of people will be very happy. I'm happy, Margo will be happy… Roman is happy."

Was he? I guess I knew he was. That "scolding" he served me sounded so regretful, like he dreaded having to do it. Although, if that was really the case, I feel like he could've found a way to get his point across without throwing me to the floor. I felt embarrassed by the thought of having his appreciation.

"I'd rather he not be," I said.

Elijah frowned, and was about to say something before visibly rephrasing it heavily in his head.

"That's not your choice sadly," He said. "Not sure why you would want that either, but your desires are typically an enigma to me."

Everything can't be obvious to everyone.

"Yeah well, no one should be too happy yet," I said. "Just because I didn't die today doesn't mean I'm invincible."

"Sure it does."

He smiled, as I imagined what my afternoon would be if I had decided to take my chances outside.

"Anyway," He said. "I'll see you later… are you gonna want breakfast tomorrow? You'd probably get a cramp as soon as you started walking."

I shook my head.

"I'll be fine until lunch," I said. "Breakfast is severely overrated."

"Dude, I would've been feeding you a single grain of rice per day if I knew you could live off it. One grain of rice and four bottles of water."

I smiled big at him as he stepped out of the door, dropping the lock behind him.

I shed my smile immediately.

"Fucking weird bitch."

I wish he was a worthless little slug that I could dump an entire shaker of salt on top of. Hopefully he would still scream in his own human voice.

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The lights went out some five minutes later, and I was swallowed in a darkness that didn't take long to tee-up my sleep. I used my excessive fantasies of anger to drift me out the rest of the way. A little Sean here, a little Natalie there, and a big steaming pile of screaming Elijah in the center. Robert didn't feel as satisfying as he had before, but my subconscious wasn't picky.

A little bit of myself off to the side wouldn't hurt though.

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I'm finding it hard to relate to the cold. Wind is beginning to hit like a wimp. One thousand meters until the top. No one else is trekking alongside me anymore. Troublesome breathing. Lazy and tired. Eating my own legs is sounding so appetizing. To quell my hunger as much as to disengage my own movement. Yetis could come and demolish my stubby torso. Of course I would let them. Unless they are planning on making it slow, I'm sure it would be a welcome relief. Risk/reward? How bad could it be in comparison? Every step I force myself to take is how I imagine walking through a lake of broken glass would feel. At least I could give up and float on my back in that lake. Rest in the pain. Teeth sound like a perfect life raft, because swimming is so much work. Saving myself is one thing, saving myself the trouble is another. Trapped one thousand meters from the top. One more harness to undo. Perfect.

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Cody Camargo: Twenty-nine days in.

My heart won over itself without exploding, as I found myself waking up perfectly alive the next morning. I began peeling open my eyes, much too groggy to grasp how the rest of my body felt yet. My attention wouldn't have taken that long to get there if I hadn't seen Elijah in his usual reading spot across the room.

"E-… Elijah?" I groggily moaned.

He looked up only slightly to meet my view.

"Hey, what's up man?"

He looked down to his book again like that should have been the logical end of the interaction.

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"I… don't know, what is up?" I said between yawns. "I thought I was gonna wake up from someone pounding on the door again."

"Well, I wanted to let you sleep in a little," He said without looking up. "Just for an hour or so."

As nice as the sleep had felt, I didn't really like the sound of that. I felt like I needed that hour for more than just time to relax on the road. That hour was a safety net for any fill-in-the-blank contingency.

"Is there no… schedule for when I should be leaving?"

"Are you kidding? Did you see the same Natalie I saw yesterday? You should be leaving about twenty minutes after Dawn each morning."

My heart began to feel like it had yesterday afternoon.

"But… I slept in? For… an hour? Are you sitting still because the decision for her to kill me has already been made?"

He smiled slightly as he closed his book.

"Actually," He said. "I have a little bit of a surprise for you."

I recoiled slightly.

"You aren't keeping this one in your pants, right?"

He chuckled and slowly stood, walking up to me. He reached down in front of the table, and came back up with a water bottle, placing it in front of me.

"You can go out like normal tomorrow. I got permission to do something else with you today."

I cautiously took the water bottle.

"Okkaaayy," I said as I unscrewed the cap. "Is this the real kind of permission? Or is it the kind you usually tell me about having?"

"Um, it's real," He said sassily as I sipped. "Can't imagine why you'd expect me to lie about something like that."

I suspended my disbelief, placing down the bottle.

"Whatever, what did you sign me up for?"

His smile spread wide.

"The grand tour!"

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Elijah took me to the human bathroom.

I passively apologized to a late-thirties man about being in there during his time slot. Elijah made me a promise that he would bring up adding me to the schedule. I didn't put too much faith in that promise. He closed the cornerstone building's door behind us, as I unscrewed a second water bottle he had given me.

"Alright," He said. "I'll show off the important stuff, and then I actually have to drop you off at the pantry. I have some stuff to take care of, and you've been obligated to see what happens in the kitchen. It's like 11:00 right now, so we'll go for a solid half-hour. Does that sound good?"

My heart felt better, but the fear of it was still distracting me.

"Huh? I don-… maybe dude-you never really tell me anything in detail until I'm thrust into it. What are we seeing?"

"Well, you're a citizen now. A pretty important citizen at that. I wanted to try and let you get to know your home a little better."

Home. I was definitely not going to feel comfortable using that word for a while.

"So, am I no longer on expositional time-out?"

He patted his sides as we began walking.

"I'd like to keep the questions related to what we're doing, but I'll tell you about something I can easily explain in the next two minutes."

"How am I supposed to know what's easy for you to explain?"

"I can do a game show buzzer if you want."

How has this guy not killed me in my sleep?

"Okay, so if I asked you to explain what's up with me being the sudden ninth 'member' of The Omen-"

"-errr."

I huffed and looked to the "sky", balancing to not fall as I walked blind. I thought for a second before looking back down.

"Can we do a person a day?" I asked.

He gave me an incredibly nervous glance.

"Hope you're not expecting a yes or no before explaining what 'doing' means…"

"Backstory."

He tilted his head.

"You want backstory?"

"At least a little. Don't tell me anything that they wouldn't personally tell me."

"Cody I-… you seem to know pretty well that most people here would not currently feel comfortable telling you shit-"

"-yeah but like general stuff. How they got here. What they're like-UNBIASED as you can. Maybe what they did before. I don't know. I don't want to be living with strangers."

"The way to avoid that is usually by having a normal human conversation with them, not by getting a Wikipedia preface from someone who only knows what they've chosen to tell him."

I groaned.

"Is that a no then?"

He rubbed the back of his neck.

"How about I just tell you if the person is someone you should figure it out yourself for?" He said.

"Super-deal! Not so hard, huh?"

"Well…"

"… let's do you," I said.

"Okay, let's start saying 'talk about' instead of 'do'-"

"-What'd you do before getting stranded here?"

He rolled his eyes and looked away.

"Well I'm a pretty talented guy, ummmmm… I was… an I.T. assistant-"

"-Are you making that up, or did you genuinely forget for a second-"

"-I forgot my occupational title, Young Sheldon. Shut up and let me monologue. Yes, I was an I.T. assistant, and a kinda shitty one at that."

(RA) "Tried turning it off and on again type beat? Were you Roy or Maurice?" (RA)

"The worst of both. I liked computers a lot, like a lot a lot a lot but… I only liked them because they confused the hell out of me. I worked support for a litigation plant, just one of the physical offices that did record retrieval. It was full of a bunch of people that were either just my age or double it. A.K.A. people who either took their job way too seriously or barely knew they worked there. A.K.A. people who valued their computer's wellbeing more than my human emotions or people who were completely fine if I wasn't able to fix their issue for a day and a half. Sometimes I had to help develop their database filing system with this director guy that didn't understand that there was a point where I technologically didn't know the sea from the sky. He would put me on these troubleshooting projects where I would just dick around for like four hours, and act like I was following a thread I couldn't find with Stephen Hawking coaching me. I knew a lot of things that most people who are 'good with computers' didn't, but I think he knew I was a little untrained. He DIDN'T know I was in as far over my head as I was, even for an 'assistant'. I don't even know how I got that fucking job… Indeed is an idiot's magic trick."

"LinkedIn myself," I interrupted again.

He waved his hand flippantly.

"You call that a user-interface?"

I smirked while he was looking away. That was his one time for the day.

"Anyway, I think we can skip what I'm like," He continued. "I can't remove bias from myself, and it's a little rich to assume that you wouldn't have your own bias towards anything I claim myself to be or not to be," He sang in old English.

And I have to give it to him, he can definitely make a solid point.

"What about how you ended up here?" I asked in replacement. "What was that day like? You remember?"

"Do I REMEMBER? You couldn't scrub that day off my hippo' with steel wool. You sure we haven't talked about this already?"

I nodded as he blew out a sigh.

"Let's seeeeee. Lost my DUI hearing, knew I had absolutely no one to reasonably call about helping commute, and certainly couldn't afford to Uber or Lyft thirty minutes there and back everyday. I told my job as much, asking if I could have a remote workload. That was a resounding 'no', followed by a pretty immediate termination. Well, they called it 'contestable suspension'. It was my job if I could find a way to keep doing it before they found someone else in like a week."

DUI? I wouldn't have pinned him for that in a million years.

"'Contestable suspension'? That just sounds contractually unethical-they used those exact words?"

"That bald-headed excuse for a floor manager did, yeah."

I felt a guilty urge to relate to Elijah.

"Anyway, I gave up on that fight pretty quickly," He continued. "I had a… marginally close friend that worked at one of these places."

He waved his hand through the air to regard the beautiful establishment he was referring to.

"I was gonna see if he could get me a job, and it was so much closer to home that I could realistically walk if it worked out," He said. "I just needed an in-between, but asking that favor was so daunting. Dude, I was so embarrassed that I walked in and out of every store in the immediate area for like two hours before I worked up the nerve to even set foot in this place. My last stop before ground zero was stress-eating at Dairy Queen."

"Five Guys for me."

"Now THAT sounds like a last meal request. Wish I'd done the same… I never even saw him. I remember my last thought before realizing something was wrong, was that I had very possibly confused my memory of the location that guy actually worked at. Heh… sometimes I daydream about going back and deciding to give up working entirely. Just busting out the most balls-to-the-wall plan I could possibly conjure. Fucking hitchhike to Indiana, integrate myself into the Amish Mafia, get some thirty-seven year old widow pregnant and focus on organic agriculture until the clock runs out."

He smiled to himself for a moment, before it slowly slid away, and he closed his eyes for much too long to call it a blink. I thought of the correct way to proceed and/or end this conversation.

—

"Who'd you leave behind?" I mumbled.

His immediate and extended silence would've been a sufficient indicator that the question was too much. It's Elijah though, so instead…

"…errr," He buzzed dejectedly.

Hint taken.

"Alright," I said. "Is this tour gonna be a way for you and I to have a conversation that doesn't end depressingly? Because I think we need that."

He turned to me, smiling again.

"Think we need a tension breaker? The strip club is right down this street."

—

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Elijah showed me The Infirmary.

"You should hopefully never need to know this building exists."

I had a fifteen-bullet-point list of incredible ways I could've responded to that to make him feel guilty. Instead, I just silently stared at him, slowly rubbing my rib.

"… again anyway," He said.

The Infirmary was in the heart of the town square, the dry fountain resting in its courtyard. Certainly not the easiest building to avoid acknowledging the existence of. It appeared to be the tallest building in R&E, boasting three stories with a balcony reaching out of the third floor. The scaffolding that supported it was quite similar to that of the observation deck on the gate.

"You guys housing refugees?" I said sarcastically. "What's the average population of a three-story infirmary?"

"It's only the first floor. The other two… they're a secret."

"I didn't ask you that part yet."

"Anyway, this is Sandra's domain. Unfortunately, she's becoming pretty stifled in there with our numbers increasing. The Infirmary is just as much an Urgent Care as it is an Emergency Room. We've been trying to plan the logistics of moving her into a space that better compliments her needs, but construction projects have gone onto a serious back-burner this past year. I was really pushing for it too. I think this building would be much better suited as a clock-tower."

"What priority is going ahead of the needs of your head-of-medicine?"

"No one. We've just recently lost the ability to manufacture like we have in the past. We'll get into that some other time, but trust me, we're not putting anybody ahead of her. Not even you, sir."

I was just about to request a Chickie's & Pete's.

"Can I see inside?"

"Ehhhhhhhhhhhh…. nnnnnot right now. That's a very low-tolerance building. Not only because of the things it's below, but we have a very strict 'only enter if necessary' rule for everyone except Sandra, who it's always necessary for. We try not to have people just walking in and out of there. If you wanna get a closer look you could, I don't know, get in another fight, maybe?"

"Am I getting your 'permission' to stop using my words?"

Elijah mimed zipping his lips. I've never seen a grown man do that in real life, and I hope to never see it again.

"Also, 'Head of Medicine'?" He said. "I think she would hate that title, but it would be nice to put that on a name-plate."

—

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Elijah showed me The Library.

"You CAN, see inside here though!" He said. "This is a much more sacred building."

He guided me inside a two story building with flower pots in front of all of its windows. Each story seemed to be quite tall, as it looked more like two-and-a-half stories from the outside. Stepping inside, the soft orange light felt like a warm blanket over every blood vessel in my head.

"Just in case you somehow hadn't put it together yet, you're never gonna see a TV show again in your life," He said. "If you want entertainment…"

He spun around with both his arms wide.

"… Welcome to Heaven!"

I looked around the room full of bookshelves, not only around the walls, but creating long rows across the massive room. Finding an empty spot was rare.

"This is… kind of beautiful," I said.

He smiled and snapped his wrist.

"Wait till you see this shit," He said. "Come on."

I followed him deeper into the room, breezing past random titles as they passed, before the back corner of the room led to a staircase that Elijah climbed up like nothing. Of course he did, because it was just stairs. However, I hadn't really appreciated this being the first time I needed to see the second floor of any building here. You ever seen a dog be trepidatious to climb stairs for the first time? That was me for some reason. I guess it was because of the escalator stairs were the same random-assortment-construction, but as I took a nervous first step, they felt just as stable as the floor of the vastness. I stepped up a little quicker to follow Elijah.

He stayed silently at the top until I slipped up next to him, taking in the coziest room I had ever seen in my life. Full of decorative pendant lamps, half of the floor almost covered in giant bean bags, and the other housing six L-couches Tetris'd around each other like the world's most comfortable hedge maze. It smelled like lavender and… ginger maybe? Unlike the usual assemblage job of weird random flooring, the room had somehow been fully carpeted by a mosaic rug so soft that I almost felt like I was barefoot with my sneakers still on. The aura I was standing in was making me want to put my hair in a ponytail and fuck whoever could put a cup of hot chocolate in my hand immediately.

Even the obnoxious outside-luminescence stayed to the surface of the window, refusing to obstruct the atmosphere.

There was what looked like eight people scattered around the room, incubated into what must have been the closest thing to escaping the reality they lived in. It was so peaceful.

"The books are always here obviously," Elijah whispered. "But this room is actually a pseudo-schoolhouse every Monday and Friday. It's not very intensive, just better than pretending a child's education needs don't exist. Otherwise, this room is kind of our most treasured possession. There's no schedule like everywhere else. If everyone wanted, they could overcrowd this room with 130 people at once. We don't though, it's like a circadian rhythm the way we all respect the sanctity of the calm silence in here, taking our turns without ever really discussing it with each other. I've never been in this building with more than twenty people."

A portal back to normality. I couldn't even imagine how good it would feel…

"Would I… ever be allowed to come here?" I asked.

He shrugged.

"Probably, but for now, definitely not without a leash."

We walked back downstairs and past a man I hadn't previously noticed. He was sitting at a desk in the back of the room, reading a book called "Nick Drake: The Life".

"That's Sam, he's one of the librarians," Elijah said as we moved towards the entrance. "There's three others. We take the duty of keeping tabs on the books pretty seriously. That guy will kick your ass over losing one."

He whispered that last part to me, as I looked back and noticed Sam's large frame. I was beginning to feel like I was very much on the far edge of the physicality belt curve in R&E.

"Do you have to make overdue fees?" I asked. "You don't have your own currency, do you?"

"Nah, there's no time limit, but everyone wants to read. You can't get a new book until you return your old one. If you lose or mistreat the one under your name, you have to kind of appeal for amnesty. It depends on your track record, you might just get stuck with some shitty chores for a week and then it's forgotten. If you're a repeat offender, you might get put on hold for a couple days. Might not sound so bad, but I'm sure you know that the feeling of doing essentially nothing for even one day here is like…"

"Prison."

"Uhhhh… yeah."

We reached the door as I thought about this building.

"Sounds like your collective sanity is… unhealthily dependent on this place."

Elijah gave me a weird look as he stepped outside.

"I thought you didn't want our conversation to get depressing. Can't you just focus on how beautiful it is in a vacuum?"

Well, as beautiful as it seemed, it was nice to know what building I needed to burn to start total anarchy.

—

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Elijah showed me The Church.

"I really don't want you to tell me anything about this thing," I said. "You can't expect me to believe that this is more sacred than The Library to anyone, right?"

He cocked his head, as we stopped and stared at the twisted building together.

"You would be extremely surprised… and I mean YOU specifically would be extremely surprised."

I didn't know what he meant, but I didn't want to ask any questions related to this place, so I let it fall into an obscure unknown.

"Anyway, let's not get lost in those reeds," He continued. "I don't know if you're religious, but Otto tries his best to give a sermon for those who are, so if you're interested…"

I don't know if I'm religious either. Being trapped here was a good reason to see the appeal of God beyond a notion, but my desire to acknowledge that was still in the court of insincerity. I hadn't had the most respectable history with "God". Whatever, who has?

"I think I'd like to figure out whether I'll be alive for another month first," I said. "Without… God's help."

Elijah shivered a little and began walking away.

"Sunday is whatever you want it to be," He said. "If you want to start committing, just put a chair in there somewhere. Everyone who goes has their own, and some couples just have a couch. You don't have to show up every week, it's up to you."

Just the way God intended, huh?

"Do you go?" I asked, breaking my rule.

Elijah didn't turn around as he answered.

"God gives me the heebie-jeebies. I have an idea that you feel the same…"

God does? I'd have to figure that out, but that atrocity of a building most definitely does.

—

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Elijah showed me Vernon's Workshop.

"I promise we don't have to spend too much time on this," He said to me. "Vernon is probably busy weaponizing dark matter or something, so hopefully we won't get stuck into anything too deep."

"Wait, we're going inside?"

Elijah paused at the door of a one story shack, just about double the size of the cell. It was made out of random materials like everything else, but the walls housed a gradient of texture from left to right. It didn't make me as uncomfortable as the makeup of the church, but I felt very annoyed by this building.

He looked back to me.

"What, you… don't want to?" He asked.

"Is he in there?"

Elijah's face slumped.

"He's always in there." He whispered.

I groaned in discomfort.

I know no one will believe this, but I hate profiling people. When I met Vernon in the council meeting, I was completely willing to believe that he might've just been having a bad hygiene day. The bathroom's might have running water, but an IKEA bathroom doesn't have a shower. I've seen plenty of showers here, but not working ones. Despite that, I somehow haven't met anyone here that strikes me as being… musty. The sinks have hot water, and there's soap everywhere. The option to not smell like shit is readily, and thankfully, available. I would guess that the more persuasive folks in R&E keep that in check.

That is all to say, I don't think Vernon followed those social standards.

"Do we have to?" I pleaded.

"You will at some point in the future, yeah. But… I can just give you the synopsis that Vernon is the person who handles our tools and building… but only the physical aspect of it. He used to have a 'colleague' a year back, someone who handled the design and architecture, the practicality of infrastructure. That is… no longer the case. The two of them worked alongside each other, but not really together. Vernon doesn't really know how to plan those kinds of things."

"… wait, is he… definitely in there?"

"Yeah, for sure."

"… you don't think he can hear you?"

"Cody, he can hear my thoughts. I'm not too worried about what Vernon can hear me say."

Elijah took his hand off the door and walked past me, welcoming me to step away from the shack with him. As we walked, I made sure we were far enough away before inquiring.

"So… what does he… do all day?"

"Well we have him on call to fix anything that's threatening to burn a building down. I don't know if you remember me mentioning the electricity, but it's dangerous sometimes. He's the only one that 'understands' it. That's how he likes to say it, but it's really that he's the only one who feels comfortable fucking around with it… that reminds me. Since you're alive, you clearly haven't found out you need to be scared of this, so I'll tell you. If you see an open outlet anywhere, DO NOT TOUCH IT. To be short… it will kill you in what is basically an instant."

I stared at him blankly, as I thought about my old idea to find a charger and charge my phone.

"Otherwise, he does weird experiments and masturbates," He added in my silence.

—

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Elijah showed me the HR Office.

It was another one story building, but had a much more calmly approachable composition than the OCD hypertension of the previous point-of-interest.

"This is where you go if you have a non-life-threatening concern. Anyone can come here with an issue and pretend it is life-threatening. Now, a lot of folks are embarrassed about their concerns, a lot of folks don't like talking, and a lot of folks don't like talking to Tecca. Since his feelings are mutual, the submissions are urged to be made mostly by way of paper. Tecca sifts through them all and decides what should be brought up to The Omen. Well, Tecca sifts through most of them. There's some names that he sees and automatically throws away."

"Would my name be one of those?"

"First of all, please don't submit anything. Second of all, again, you are not a normal citizen. You can just like… voice any concern to us out loud. That way, Natalie can vocally throw it away face to face with you. Third of all, Tecca throws away the requests of people that are not really cognizant of what is and isn't a pressing concern."

"Is it really fair to expect everyone to understand that spectrum?"

"Not for the first twenty times, no. But I would say after the next forty, the communal hand-holding dissipates a little bit."

We walked inside to see what looked like a receptionist lobby. Fake ferns and disgustingly sun-stained brown leather couches neatly littered the room. Anything being "sun"-stained in here was an impossibility that made me sure they were made that way. We walked through the room to an open door on the other side. Elijah rapped his knuckles on it as I saw Tecca sitting at a desk in the center. Besides from the typically horrible walls, the spacious office looked just like Don Draper's stomping grounds. Tecca had his feet up on the desk, reading a book called "Call to Joy & Pain".

"Where's your assistant?" Elijah asked him. "No one greeted us at the door."

"She's at the jeweler's," Tecca said without looking up. "Icing out the shackles I bought her."

So cool.

Tecca sat up, closing his book and placing it on the desk. He knit his fingers politely in front of himself.

"Alright," He said to Elijah. "What'd he do?"

Elijah looked back and forth between me and Tecca a couple times.

"Who… Cody?" He said. "Nothing, I'm just showing him around. He should probably know about your office."

"Nobody should know about my office-you sure he didn't inappropriately touch someone?"

"I-… did you?" Elijah said to me. "I can't really protect you if you did."

I glared at him without responding.

"Ah," Tecca interjected. "I see. I wasn't using the proper sensitivity, ahem."

He leaned in close to the desk and shook his shoulder before staring me in the eyes. His eyes were so polarizing that I actually felt myself going a little white.

"Cody," He whispered. "Did somebody touch you?"

"What?!" I exclaimed like a cartoon. "No! I was not… touched by anyone!"

"You sure? Listen… I know it might be hard to speak up against someone when you're scared they might hurt you for it, but if Natalie is abusing you-"

"-HA!" Elijah burst out laughing.

Tecca stayed in position, but let a smile spread across his face.

"… making you feel as if you aren't safe," He continued. "I want you to know, your happiness is important. You are loved, you are seen, you are heard."

Elijah kept laughing as Tecca de-stressed and sat back in his chair.

"Sorry if this is crazy to say," I said. "But I think you guys need an HR department to protect people from your HR department. This building is a bad idea."

"You have no idea," Tecca said playfully. "You know what the worst thing about Human Resources in a cosmic IKEA is? I don't have any resources. I just have a town full of compellingly aggressive humans."

So… I'm not the only one who feels that way?

"I'm only here for people to know I exist," He continued. "The power of having someone to complain to is like… monumental. Even when your problem isn't getting solved, it's better than talking to a wall."

That sounded much too emotionally ethical for someone that seemed to not care about your feelings.

"Yeah but," I said. "Elijah said people don't like talking to you-"

"-thanks for keeping that between us," Elijah quickly said.

"What's up with that?" I said, ignoring Elijah.

Tecca giggled a little, picking up a pen and twirling it between his fingers.

"You've met me," He said. "Now imagine you've known me for years. Gets old, huh?"

That was fast. I mean, it's intimidating right now, but I couldn't imagine Tecca's dry humor growing unbearable rather than lovable. Is that really an exhaustion too major to handle?

"Also though," He continued. "It could obviously be the homophobia, but I like to imagine we're past that in this new world. Maybe that's a naive daydream."

I had kind of known, but didn't want to assign it to him without someone telling me. Some men these days are just really well in touch with their feminine side. I hadn't known with Chandler until we were like sixteen. Assumption should only be used for snakes and mushrooms.

"Doesn't seem like enough to have kept Elijah away," I said. "Interesting, no?"

"Dude," Elijah said. "What?"

Tecca's smile spread wide as he sat forward excitedly.

"This guy's pretty funny," He said to Elijah. "You should ask Natalie if you can keep him past the free-trial."

Holy shit that was such a bar.

"I know you walked in on a lax time," He continued. "But I am actually pretty busy today. I've gotten just about a million and one people telling me about the broken mirror in the bathroom. I really don't know why that's anyone's concern, and if it is, they're spending their time on the wrong things in there. Meaning, for anyone who said something about it today, I'm pretty tempted to start ignoring any concern they bring to me about those bathrooms as a whole. Unless it's like, the person before them keeps missing the bowl."

"That seems like a pretty forgiving bar of exception," I said. "You don't sound very confident about cutting them off."

"I use the same bathroom they do, I don't want it to be gross in there. There's a priority-it just depends on what they tell me. If someone were to keep overdosing heroin on the toilet or something, then I would probably wait until somebody else handled it. As long it's not the person right before me… and before you ask, we don't have any heroin to offer you. That was a joke."

The sensitive HR department, everyone.

"What are you making that face for?" Elijah said to me.

"Huh? Was I making a face?"

"Just a little judgmental one," Tecca said. "Shit, I don't blame you, but stoicism is important for me. I use it to do my job, not because I don't care… but it does definitely help that I don't care."

That's probably why he's great at doing this job.

"You know, you guys have that in common," Elijah said to him. "Maybe Cody can shadow you one day."

"Pfff, he's fuckin'… shadowing me now-short ass."

Elijah immediately continued cackling. I stood there embarrassed and angry, because I sadly thought it was pretty funny.

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Elijah walked by a small building without saying anything.

I slowed and eventually stopped, looking at the large padlock that held the front door handle closed to a post.

"Hey," I said. "What is this?"

Elijah stopped and turned around slowly, bouncing a little on his toes. He was clearly shoving his body language in my face, praying I would speak on it.

"What?" I said. "Not for me?"

"This…" He said as he approached me. "This isn't mostly for anyone except The Omen… but you should pretend you didn't see this. I know that's not possible because it's you, but it being you is the reason I would like to ignore this. Your curiosity and this building would not… mix well."

I stared at him silently. Elijah's honesty today had been pleasingly unusual for our relationship. It had been nice to have a day of not hating the person I hate. That statement he just made was much closer to what I usually expected from him. That warning was a hook with a worm. For some reason, Elijah greatly desired for me to have a rebellious interest in whatever was inside that building.

Of course he did.

"Okay," I said promptly. "I was just wondering, whatever."

He raised his eyebrows and smiled.

"Cool, thank you for your acquiescence."

He slowly began to walk away as I had a split second staring contest with the padlock. Cliche as it obviously would be for me to fall for it, it did sound really fun.

But not right now.

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Elijah walked me to the front door of The Pantry.

"That's all you need for now." He said. "There's obviously more, but we'll wait until you're trusted to hold a pair of scissors to let you worry about it."

"You don't wanna see all the sharp things I snuck into my pocket today?"

"I'm okay. Margo's in there, she'll take you for the next couple hours. I'll meet up with you later, so be a good boy and walk in there without wandering off."

He began walking away before I thought of a good way to yell at him for that.

"Can I ask what you're busy going to do?"

He turned around and smiled.

"Play along here… can I answer that question with a question?"

I shook my head to say whatever.

"Is Elijah going to tell you what he's going to do?" He asked happily.

Wow.

"… errr," I buzzed tragically.

He snapped finger pistols at me as he winked and strode away. Elijah's choice of when to be belligerently cutesy was beginning to make me distrust the water content in this place. Maybe his staving me off it had previously been a blessing in disguise.

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I saw the man, Allen, that had been there yesterday to be back again. I passed by him what was about to be silently.

"How ya doin?" He said absently without looking up from his book.

I stumbled, awkwardly pausing my step and turning around to what was already the back of him.

"… fine," I said shakily. "… how about you?"

He stayed silently distracted for a moment before responding.

"Can't complain."

I stared at him for so long that the turning of his page was what shocked me back to life. I slinked away back to where I was headed. I… guess I just wasn't used to being greeted so politely here. Somehow a redundant passing greeting had become an alien shock to me. I tried to move past it as I walked around the serving counter, which I smelled to be full again.

I moved into the entrance of the kitchen, standing on the threshold as I looked inside. All of the counters were littered with trays and Tupperware full of food. The same smell wafted over me from this room as it did from the banquet behind me. In the middle of it all, I saw the back of Margo standing at the marble island, wearing an apron with her hair tied up in a bun. She was barely moving her arms, and I could see the tension in her elbows aiding the meticulousness of her fingers unseen. I heard a gentle vibration of melody coming from somewhere in her chest. It was warm. It… reminded me of mom.

I jumped as a hand slapped off the side of my shoulder.

"I'll get his arms, you do the hitting?" Nikko called to Margo as he walked by me into the kitchen.

He smiled to me before taking a different apron off of a hook to toss over his neck. Margo turned around to see me.

"Oh shit!" She yelled as she smiled at me. "Check out the voyager! Circaaaaa-I don't know what year it is."

"It's 203-…" I started. "4… no… has it been-…"

November… what was it that day? November something, 2034. I didn't even realize I had skipped Thanksgiving like it was nothing. Twenty-nine days. Well, kinda. I've changed a few bodies of time… wait, okay. Warehouse thing, and I started counting the first morning, but what if I-

"Dude," Nikko said. "Who cares?"

He tied up his apron and took a handful of stainless serving spoons out of a drawer.

"Time's man-made. We somehow managed to squeeze the most annoying relationship out of it," He said as he passed behind margo. "Five-day work-week, daylight savings, months with different numbers of days. Jesus Christ what the fuck is a leap-year for?!"

"Hey, you know we skip a leap-year every fourth leap year?" Margo said as she turned back to whatever she was working on. "And every hundredth leap-year, we skip the fourth leap-year skipping of a leap-year."

"Like why don't they just go all the way and get a rib removed," He replied. "To be fair though, it would have been sick to be a Roman discovering the moon."

"Can you imagine if Roman discovered the moon?" Margo joked. "Probably would've evolved us into a race of werewolves, having shirt-ripping contests."

"I don't-…" I finally interjected. "I don't think they exactly discovered the moon. It was kind of 'discovered' the second a fish first looked at it."

Margo and Nikko smiled at each other before going back to what they were doing.

"Actually, it was kind of discovered when…" Margo mocked in a nasally tone.

Fun.

I walked further into the kitchen as Nikko stuck a spoon into every one of the five trays that were lined up on the far side of the kitchen. Margo turned to me, still smiling.

"Are you a part of The Queen's Guard?" She said to me. "Sit down, you weirdo."

She motioned to a stool on the left edge of the island. I awkwardly slid over to it, slowly sitting down. I had a momentary glimpse where I imagined Eddie sitting next to me. I shook it away as I looked at what Margo was doing up close. A plate was in front of her with two heart-shaped waffles, as she delicately filled each square with a tiny little scoop of quinoa.

"That looks… so fucking gross," I said to her.

"It's not bad," She replied. "It's definitely not good, but I can see why somebody would eat this."

Her finger delicately tapped the drop of the spoon, as she managed to not leave a single bead in the bowl each time. Never flicking or scooping.

"Who exactly is eating that?" I asked.

"That would be Allen," Nikko said behind her, as he carried one of the trays out of the kitchen.

"Allen is our buffer to make sure that nobody is getting out here early to snatch anything," Margo said. "It's nice in the hour or so that we're working, but he mostly just applied because he liked the atmosphere of the Café, and wanted to hang out outside of meal hours. You met Allen, right?"

"Uh, yeah I…"

I actually think we're even on good terms… Allen and I. Lord knows why.

"I met him yesterday. Even though we… didn't talk. We greeted each other today, though."

"Hey," She said. "Did you see the book he was reading today? Was it The Da Vinci Code or was it Calypso?"

"Ummm, I didn't notice today but… it was definitely Calypso yesterday… why, do you think he has more than one? Elijah told me how unholy that is…"

Nikko entered back in.

"Well, not by the library's records," She said. "I'm sure he convinced someone who doesn't read much to reserve The Da Vinci Code and let him read it."

"He doesn't wanna admit to us that he doesn't understand Calypso," Nikko said as he passed with another tray. "I think he got bored with it days ago, but wants to pretend he's engrossed."

Who's lying about media-literacy in a place where all you do is read?

"Has he lied about that before?" I asked.

"Nah," She said. "We're just making fun of him. I'm pretty stuck up about a lot of the books we have too, so I really just pester people about where their heads are at with them, no matter how far through they are."

"Can't imagine why that would make him not be honest with you about disliking a book."

She shot me an annoyed smirk, before filling the last hole of the second waffle.

"I don't blame him," She said. "I just like hearing people's reactions to ones I like. I actually have been trying to work up the courage to… form a book club here, or at least convince someone with better leadership to do it for me. I can't believe we don't already have one."

Could be because everyone seems to hate each other.

She grabbed what looked like a BLT wrap and shook all of its contents out onto another plate, placing the now empty wrap flat next to the waffles. She grabbed a Tupperware container of Lingonberry Jam, and began softly painting the bread with a knife full of it.

"Do you make everybody's weird ass lunch like this?"

"I do Allen's. Mine. Elijah's. Nikko's if he doesn't choose to make his own. About fifteen others. Yours. I guess you'll be fending for yourself now, though."

My mind flipped through a montage of the art collage meals that I'd been eating for lunch over my time here. They were all pretty weird, but all weirdly… pretty. Margo reached for a container of bacon, and began breaking up pieces to lay into the wrap. I watched her carefulness in a lull, speaking without realizing I was doing so.

"Thank you," I said lowly. "… for… feeding me."

She stopped and looked at me.

"Yeah, dude," She said. "Of course. You can thank me without sounding that creepy though."

Nikko laughed as he walked behind.

"So what do you do besides this?" I said to her. "Like what are you and Nikko assigned to do?"

"Just serving mostly, but with pizzazz. It's sometimes more that we're just bodyguards for our food. Obviously you've been told about… the rationing. I do these stupid detailed meals for the people that secretly agreed to not be fed as often… like um… making it with love to make up for what they're missing out on."

Nikko smiled softly at the back of her head as he passed with another tray.

"It's just something I like doing," She added softly.

I stared at Margo as she began chopping up some bits of chicken tenders with the lingonberry knife. This was my second time being in a calm space with her, but she seemed like a side of this world I hadn't particularly seen before.

"Anyway, love only goes so far," She said in my silence. "I try to make these unique, but I guess you know there's a limit to our inventory that, truthfully, gets old extremely fast. You kind of have to just appreciate that we have food at all, and not wish that we were trapped inside of an infinite Whole Foods instead."

She began chopping up some plant balls, mixing in the pieces with the chicken fingers. I'm sure I was facially expressing disagreement after seeing that, as she was quick to follow up to her previous statement.

"You'll get used to it. You have to, it's not really an option. You know, unless you want to lose your mind within your first year."

The phrase "first year" had never been used around me, and as calm as I currently was, I almost lost my mind hearing her say it. To ground myself, I finally spoke.

"What was yours like?"

"Huh?" She replied.

"Your…. first year."

"Oh, right. Umm….. not fantastic. Nobody's really is though, and most people's first year ends on their first day, so mine was a lot better than that."

I couldn't disagree with that surprisingly morbid statement.

"Elijah wasn't here for my first two years and… I think seven months or something so…. I was pretty isolated for what felt like a large percentage of that time."

Nikko walked by again, looking like he wanted to say something to me, but chose not to based on something Margo had just said.

"Tim and Carolette were always nice to me when they were training me for combat," She continued. "But I didn't feel like I was or wanted to be of any interest to anyone that didn't need something from me. No one ever did until this guy that handled the mess hall before Nikko or me, Gavin I think it was, offed himself."

No one here should ever be surprised by anything I say with the way they casually drop the most dismal thing you've ever heard every five minutes.

"Natalie practically begged me to take over when there was this stupid fucking mass hysteria that anyone who took his role would somehow end up in the same mental position. Maybe if those idiots knew how to see the signs of someone on the brink, that wouldn't have ever been a problem, but what the hell ever… even without having any friends, I had to talk to people a lot more once I picked up here. I was terrible at it for a while. I certainly wasn't doing stuff like this."

She sprinkled the mix of diced ingredients onto the wrap. She began rolling it back up as Nikko passed again.

"Thinking about food was a creative outlet before this all, but it was hard to be creative or even passionate with, you know, limited resources. I learned to find it relaxing, like something I just did for fun even though it was my 'job'. I felt prideful about it too… felt like I was helping people here."

She stuck two toothpicks on each side of the wrap before effortlessly sawing it clean into two.

"That was basically the only good thing about it though," She said a lot less softly than she'd been speaking for the past two minutes. "I was very you-coded for the entirety of that year. I wasn't exactly as vitriolic, but I hated it here. And I mean… I'm glad to know the people I have around me in this place, but I still hate it here. That doesn't really go away… not totally."

"Maybe not if you suck," Nikko finally said, passing with the last tray. "I love it here. No taxes. Outside of the emotional ones."

"Ha! Your bum-ass probably wasn't paying taxes anyway," Margo jabbed without turning around to him.

Margo slightly shifted the contents of the plate to make room for the last touch. She plucked three Swedish meatballs out of the tray and tucked them into the corner of the meal. She saw my face wrinkle.

"You part of the 'hell no' camp for these?" She said with a giggle.

"Is there a 'hell yes' camp?" I asked.

"Totally, and I am a proud member. I always called them the Swedish cash crop."

She laughed at herself a little, beginning to put lids back onto containers and gather up the utensils.

Swedish cash crop… why is that funny? I didn't want to laugh out loud, but I just thought it sounded clever.

I thought about Allen again, and I began to realize that for the past ten minutes, as well as the rest of my time anywhere remotely close to Margo… I had been more than a little bit confused.

—

—

—

—

"Hey…" I began. "I know this is a rude question but… why are you being so nice to me?"

She looked back at me, her smile wavering, but not really going away.

"Don't you like… hate me?" I asked.

She thought for a moment and then looked away, speaking without looking back.

"I don't hate you," She said. "Why, because I look like I hate everyone?"

"… iiiehhh… partially."

I considered backing off and saying that that was basically the entire reason. I should've said that she looked like the kind of girl that would usually cringe every time they looked at me, which to be fair, she did.

"Well, I hate to be a romantic sheep but… if Elijah likes you… I don't see why I can't find a reason to," She said.

—

—

Really? That's the reason? That's it? Does Elijah even like me?

"What… just because of Elijah?"

"Yeah, basically."

"… you've never disliked anyone he has? You guys have never had an argument at the dinner table about, 'I don't like you spending so much time around X Y Z, I don't like how you act after seeing them'?"

I can't imagine that Elijah hasn't done that at least once.

She giggled a little.

"Nope, not really," She said. "Although, he doesn't really like Robert, and I don't see anything particularly wrong with him. Outside of being unbearably old."

Um…

"How old is he?"

"Fifty-eight."

Yeah, they seem perfect for each other.

Well… besides…

"Does Elijah freak out a lot?"

Her smile finally faded as she stopped and turned to me. The corner of the island that separated us seemed like a sudden meridian of disparity. I wished I hadn't said that to her. If she didn't hate me before…

She swished her lips a little, but didn't start to look angry or troubled, just serious.

"He's got bipolar."

—

—

—

—

I really, really, really wished I hadn't asked her that.

"I'm sorry… I… I shouldn't ha-"

"-no, you're fine," She interrupted. "I get it, because… I see it. I know what he's like sometimes when I'm not in front of him. It's only Cyclothymia-and I'm not-… you know, undermining the seriousness of that it's just… he could be worse, and I'm happy everyday that he's not. I'm happy that I have any version of Elijah that's happy."

It didn't matter if she tried to make it seem okay, I had fucked up. I should've already known, first of all, but even if I didn't, where is it my place to ask his significant other that I barely know… that kind of significant question. I felt so gross…

—

—

… until she smiled.

"You know…" She said. "They say people with mental illness are usually better in bed-"

"-Jesus dude I don't wanna hear that shit, gross!"

She burst out laughing as I cringed.

"Ayo!" Nikko called from the other room as Margo swung around.

She looked back to me.

"Hey, come on, it's lunch time!" She said, before grabbing the decorative plate and sticking a fork in it.

She softly swept out of the kitchen, as I slowly stood to follow her. I moved back to the entrance, as I saw her skirting around the serving line to walk the plate out to Allen. She placed it delicately in front of him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Thanks, Margee," I heard him mumble without looking at her.

A giant smile crept over her face. She glanced over to Nikko, who was standing in front of me on the serving line.

"Yeah," She said. "Noooo problem, dear-you FIBBER!"

She snatched the book out of Allen's hands and waved it up for Nikko and I to see the cover.

"Hey come on!-" He yelled as he reeled around to us.

"-he's not even following his own list-he's reading The House On Mango Street!-are you kidding me?!-"

"-Alright alright alright, it's not a sin is it?!-I don't get on your case about your light reads-"

"-Should I check-out the goddamn Hungry Hungry Caterpillar for you next?! Where's your shame-is this even under someone else's name? I didn't even think to ask Sam if Calypso was available again-"

"-I HATE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES-and I don't care how semi it is! If it was about someone who conceptualized The Printing Press or did quantum computing it might be nice but it's just about an author buying a beach house-"

"-DID YOU EVEN REA-Oh my God we don't have time-you missed it-you missed the whole story-congratulations!"

She handed him back the book as he took it begrudgingly, but I saw them both smiling at each other. Margo walked to the entrance of the Café and stuck her head out.

"Alright, come on!" She yelled before dipping back inside and jogging over to us.

As Allen put down his book and began eating, the entrance slowly gave birth to group after group after group of residents filing into the space. Some sat down at a table immediately, while most grabbed a tray and plate before moving to the edge of the line.

"Deacooonnn," Nikko bellowed to the first man in the line. "What's filling it?"

"Hey Nikko, let me just get some Caesar and some potatoes… couple fries I guess."

"Absolutely lifeless as usual-coming right up," He replied as the man handed him his tray through the opening.

Margo took her place further down the line as another man walked up to her.

"What happened to the tie-dye idea?" He said to her.

"She's working on it," Margo replied with a laugh. "She said there's a stain in her carpet the size of Massachusetts right now, so I'll have it on tomorrow. What's up today?"

"Garlic Lemon Cod, Macaroni & Cheese," He replied. "Is that weird?

"So weird! I love it."

She mumble-sang "Corn, corn on the Cod" to herself to the tune of "Home on the Range".

"Hey Nikko," A flirty girl about Margo's age said on Nikko's side.

"Hey yourself-you're still not allowed in here right now."

"And I tried my best to stay away too-"

"-alright, chill out-what am I feedi-… what are you eating for lunch?"

A forty-something woman walked up to Margo looking kind of unhappy.

"Well?" Margo said quickly.

"I repeated every word almost verbatim... and… you know-"

"-Good 'you know' or bad 'you know'?"

The woman slowly smiled.

"… you know-" She said slyly.

"-Bitch if you don't fu-"

Margo hopped up, shadow punched the air and threw her hand under the opening to dap-up the woman excitedly.

"Word equals bond. You need some energy now, right?" Margo said happily.

I refrained from inserting myself into the scene as I leaned against the side of the kitchen entrance, watching the two of them smile as they spoke to the people that lived like this everyday. As people went to sit, they spoke with whoever was at their table, but let their conversations reach to the groups beside them. It was a shattering polar-opposite to the jagged awkwardness that had seemed to separate every human life I'd come across here. I was definitely under the impression that the camaraderie probably disappeared quite immediately after leaving this room, but standing here, this place was different. Let me not convince you that it was like the real world, as simply the aesthetic reminder of the building was enough of a backdrop to make it a strange contentment, but for what was only a moment, it was that. Contentment.

Contentment isn't a good word, home is better.

Home isn't perfect, home is never perfect. It can still be home. Somehow.

Is The Library really the most sacred building? I think it might be something else…

—

—

—

—

"Cody," I heard Margo say.

I turned to her as she was shimmying Cauliflower rice next to scrambled eggs. The woman that had taken Elizabeth from me at the gate (uh… Amelia, I think Roman said) was standing across from her. I assumed she had said something to Margo when she recognized me standing there.

"Go grab something for yourself," She said, flicking up her head towards the kitchen.

"You mean like… a spray bottle?" I said.

"No, genius. Some lunch. Elijah told me you didn't have dinner last night. Go eat something."

She turned back to what she was doing as I wavered for a moment. Margo had probably realized it wasn't a good idea to have me so out in the open, but used it as an opportunity to be kind. I kind of would've preferred if she had told me to get my ugly ass away from these people's line of sight. It all didn't feel right. I almost didn't like it. It was too much and too fast for my tide to be turning, I needed more time for that. I was fine with calling this a good enough start, but let's leave it there for today.

I slowly turned to return to the kitchen.

I walked to the island to see what was there. The container Margo had taken a BLT wrap from had another full one still sitting in it. I opened the top and immediately sank my teeth into the only substantial thing I'd eaten since the run yesterday. I sighed in beautiful relief as my eyes slid closed. I continued in delight.

—

—

—

—

—

—

"You makin' yourself at home?"

I immediately choked on the bite as I spun around with the rest of it in my mouth.

Natalie was standing there with her arms crossed.

"You're priceless," She whispered again as I stood there like a dumbass.

It made a lot more sense that Margo had seen Natalie walking into the Café, and didn't want her to see me standing there like it was nothing.

"Errwerjer-…" I garbled before taking a second to swallow what was in my mouth. "I was just… finishing."

"So I'm not interrupting you? You need me to turn around so you're not shy?"

That's the Return & Exchange I love.

"Margo told me I could."

I wasn't really trying to throw Margo under the bus if this was something Natalie was genuinely mad about, and not just gaslighting me. However, I was really just saying it to push back.

"Whatever," She said. "You're done now. Come on, I wanna talk to you."

She turned around to begin walking.

"Why can't we talk in he-"

"-no," She said as she spun around. "We talk where I say we talk. Put that shit down."

She kept walking as I sighed and followed, sadly dropping my "lunch". I trailed her out and around the counter. I made awkward eye-contact with Margo, as she made a regretful face to me. I smiled weakly, as we weaved through everyone who pretended to be happily ignorant of what I assumed were currently the two most divisive people in this community.

Wait, I forgot. Not assuming stuff anymore.

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

Natalie leaned back against the wall of a random, two-story house she had walked me to. She had guided me into the somewhat darkened alleyway between it and the one beside it.

"You see Slips before you left the bathroom the other day?" She asked me as she whipped her bang away from her eyes.

"Bug-eyed kid?"

She hardened her already apparent glare, but looked away.

"Yeah. Him… he broke that bathroom mirror yesterday, the one you told me about."

"What, really?" I said, kind of smiling. "Did he like excitedly trip into it face-first or something?"

She looked back to me seriously as I stopped smiling immediately.

"He punched it."

I should really stop talking to women here.

"He has these… manic episodes every once in a while," She continued. "… he's okay now but… something set him off yesterday."

"I had no idea…"

She raised an eyebrow.

"You… what? Yeah, fucking duh. Why would you know that? I was just telling you for the sake of it, I wasn't blaming you for an incident completely unrelated to you. Even though you are a totally insensitive asshole."

I already had that talk with myself today, so I don't need to hear it from the person that pretended Elizabeth had died to get a rise out of me.

"Sorry," I said somewhat insincerely.

She sighed slightly and looked away again.

"It happened here," She said as if she was still mad at me.

"Here like… IKEA here?"

"Yeah… he watched the Café restock one night… don't do that by the way, if you haven't already been told. Same thing for the soap in the bathroom, we have a slot that doesn't move for when it seems to happen."

"What… what is it? I thought the food just refilled instantly? What even happens?"

"I don't know, I haven't seen it. Slips doesn't even know. He said it felt like having a seizure and then he just… woke up later… it just does something to people. We had someone else that was way worse because of it."

From something Margo had mentioned earlier, I think I knew who that was…

"What happened to them?" I said, already knowing.

She kept staring away into the empty distance as her eyes slightly squinted.

"I need you to get a new mirror the next time you go out," She said, trying to ignore my question. "You could've done it that day you mentioned it… thanks for asking about it."

Did she just… thank me? Genuinely? She still wasn't looking at me, did she even know she said it to me? She does that a lot. Kind of similar to-

"And you'll go tomorrow," She said after a pause. "You can do it every other day."

"You sure?" I said. "I can do like Monday through Friday or something. I'm fine as long as nothing happens out there."

"That's too much."

"I mean, I'm alright for it. I feel a lot better, really. And it's only gonna-

"-You will do every other day. I misspoke, it's not your choice. I'm saying it, so you're doing it."

She really likes to do that. I would've dropped it with a simple "No, just do it every other". We stood in silence for a moment. She seemed like she was thinking of the right way to say something, so I gave her some time by interrupting her.

"Hey," I said. "Can I ask if I'm allowed to know something?"

She didn't roll her eyes, just tapped the heel of her foot slightly.

"What?"

I took my own time to decide if I should actually ask. That was something I was having a lot of trouble gauging today.

"Did you choose for Margo's new buddy to be Nikko?"

That did make her roll her eyes.

"Did Elijah complain to you about that behind my back?"

"Nnnnoooo, we actually didn't talk about it at all, and I didn't want to… I was honestly asking because… I could see why that would make him unhappy."

"If you think about it like a middle schooler maybe, which is what he's doing. Margo and Nikko are together more often than Margo is with anyone from the Gate Formation. It's logistical, and even if it wasn't, it's about you and Elijah, not just Elijah, and certainly not just Margo. That's what he doesn't want to understand."

I understood, but as someone who's had a troubled… romantic past (God, sorry, give me a minute), I also understood Elijah. That doesn't mean I didn't agree that he might be overreacting, it just means that I've felt what I know goes on in Elijah's head when he sees those two together.

Just to say it, Nikko is a very attractive man. Yeah, I was there, but that's as good as the two of them being alone together. I saw the way him and Margo are first-hand. I saw how he made her laugh, and vice versa.

I saw the way he looked at her, it wasn't predatory. It was soft.

"You shouldn't have said that to him yesterday," I said.

She sneered.

"I'll let you know when I'm taking your advice on what I should or shouldn't say to people."

Hypocrite's bottomless pit…

"Do me a favor too," She continued. "Make this conversation the last time you talk to anyone about that shit."

Don't gotta tell me twice, I didn't like thinking about it. I mean, I kinda did but… I didn't like that I liked it, ya follow me?

"Can I-"

"-I was…"

We both went awkwardly quiet again as we accidentally spoke at the same time.

Did she finish thinking about what she was saying?

"You can-" I began before she purposely spoke over me.

"-Just hurry the hell up. Say it."

It was better than being told to shut up, I think.

"Do you… have my phone still?" I asked.

"Yeah," She quickly replied.

Um…

"Can I… like… have it?"

"Not right now, are you done?"

Done what? Hoping? I guess so, dude.

"Yeah," I said shortly.

She pushed up from the wall to stand, unfolding her arms.

"Listen," She said. "… you're gonna live with me from now on."

—

—

—

My nervous heart-flutter immediately reappeared as that statement destroyed my equilibrium.

"… what?" I said.

"Not tonight, you'll still-"

"-I Don-… what do you mean?"

"I don't want you in that cell anymore. You're gonna live in my house."

My heart was going insane.

"Why-… we wouldn't be-…"

She tilted her head in confusion, before going red with her mouth agape.

"IN A SEPARATE ROOM YOU FUCKING IDIOT!"

I had never heard her scream in desperation. "Idiot" was undershooting. I deserved that.

"I was… I was just joking-"

"-No you goddamn weren't-you've said shit to me in that room that I should kick your ass a second time for!"

The saliva thing, please tell me that was it. I can't even remember…

"Christ-…" She kept yelling before cutting herself off and walking up the alleyway a ways.

She stretched herself back, running her hands down her scalp until they rested around her neck. As she caught her breath and turned around, I fought to not look down at the part of her body that position was accentuating.

"Vernon is making a lock for the door of that room," She said.

I clung onto the hope of reversing her anger.

"Oh, I thought he was just masturbating…"

She stared at me emptily.

"Be so honest with me," She said. "On a scale of one to ten, how funny do you think that was?"

"I just… Elijah said it earlier-"

"-Okay, let me tell you something here. You telling me that something you do is inspired by somebody else is not making it any harder for me to get mad at you, so stop doing it."

I shouldn't even keep responding. Trying to smooth over a conversation with Natalie is like putting a deadbolt on a wide open door.

But speaking of locked doors…

"Why do you want me out of the cell?" I said. "You don't seem like you're on your way to trusting me."

She crossed her arms again.

"I'm not, but if you're going to be in a house, I don't want it to be anyone else's. I don't want you to have the ability to get to someone in their sleep-"

"-Well then why are you taking me out of the cell at all-just leave me in there-"

"-Do you want to be in there?-"

"-of course not, but when did what I want become something you're concerned about-"

"-if you're-… if you're gonna be here, you can't always be a snake in a box."

"I'm not a-… are you avoiding saying the words 'rat in a cage'?"

She rubbed her head furiously and began walking away.

"Go back to the Café or I will track you down and skin you to goddamn ribbons-"

"-who have you ever heard say 'snake in a box'?!"

She flipped me the middle as she disappeared around the corner. I breathed in fully for the first time since she had appeared in the kitchen. Everything is such a fucking game. Getting apprehensive about Margo's friendliness must have set off Natalie's spider-sense of not being the most irritatingly confusing human in my life for two isolated seconds. Now she's run to the rescue of her number one spot. I don't even wanna sit here going in a mental circle of what every single stupid word she had said meant.

I mean, I do, because I really like thinking about her…

—

—

—

I'm gonna punch a fucking wall.

I began storming out of the alleyway, stopping for only a minute to look back at what I thought was possibly revealing itself behind me now that Natalie was gone. That's not what I'm worried about right now, I'm worried about some accountability.

I practically ran to catch the back of her head far in front of me.

"HEY!" I screamed to her as she stopped without turning around. "WOULD YOU JUST FUCKING TALK TO ME?!"

She stood motionless.

"This is ridiculous-if I'm gonna 'be here', then stop speaking to me like it's killing you!" I added.

She swiftly turned around, rubbing her jaw as she strode back up to me. I wasn't blind, I could tell that she didn't look happy. So be it, it's the only way to make her listen.

"You gonna punch me now? Put a gun up to my-"

She reached me, grabbed me by the collar with both hands and threw me into the front of the house we had previously been in the alleyway of.

"Get in," She said way too calmly as she pointed to the front door. "Now."

She didn't even look mad up close anymore, she just looked tired. I looked between her and the door a small enough amount of times to not make her ask again, and then I carefully turned to it.

"Who's house is-…"

I stopped my idiotic question. I took the doorknob in my hand and slowly opened the house. I stepped inside to see what looked like a coke dealer's house if it was made by people on coke. It looked like they had made Natalie's living room out of a kitchen display, but implied it was a living room by putting a couch on the left wall. The entire back half was just a beige tile kitchen. A square pillar of wood stood in the center of the room, with the staircase beside it. 'Natural' light flooded in from a window on each wall of the room.

I felt hands on my back push me inside, as I had been standing in the doorway for way too long.

"Alright alright-

"-go upstairs."

I slowly obliged.

"This is… this is nice."

"Shut up."

Maybe 'shut up' was what I actually preferred. It's better than the mystery. Like, am I going upstairs so my blood stains can't be seen by anyone else who's visiting or walking by the windows? Only one way to find out.

I climbed a staircase for the second abnormal time that day, until I reached a hallway that was about one body long on the left of the landing. With a door on one side, a window in the middle, and a door on the other side, both doors opening all the way would definitely result in them scraping against the other. I turned around to her.

"Which door here is the one that won't make you wanna kill me when I open it?"

"Too late. Right."

I nervously walked up to the door. It opened to a room smaller than the cell, but that seemed a little nicer. There was a bed, an honest to God bed, in the center of the far wall. A window was over it, a six-drawer dresser was to the left of it, and… that was… just about it.

"Is there a lock on that?" I said to her. "If I wanted to escape, could I hurtle my bloody body out of the window like Bruce Willis?"

"The window doesn't open. Are you asking if there's a lock on glass?"

I would guess the window in the opposite room had a nice view of town, because this window had a legendary view of the R&E wall and nothing else. It was okay though, because it didn't feel like a prison. Just the normal blanket of uncanniness that tucked in everywhere else here. What felt weirder to me was the knowledge of what this meant.

I turned around VERY slowly to her.

"So… you sleep right there?" I asked as I pointed to the other door across the sad excuse for a hall.

She nodded without speaking.

"And… where does Elijah sleep?" I added.

"Not here."

"… so… what's logistical about Elijah being my new partner if you chose to put me here?"

"Elijah and Margo live together, I'm not trying to make you his husband-"

"-Yeah I-ugh. I know. I'm saying… out of every place you could have put me in a locked room, why is it across from you?"

"I'll show you."

She pushed past me into the room. She walked to the backboard of the bed, right next to the window and looked back at me. I slowly walked over before she could ask me what I was waiting for.

As I stood before her, she pointed to the small sliver of space between the bed and the window. Warily and awkwardly, I stepped between her and the area she was referring to. On the wall right below the window, there was a small, strangely ominous hole. It wasn't flooding with light like I would expect it to be for being just inches away from the outside of the house. It's as if there was a tube or tunnel to something outside the house that I hadn't seen.

I turned around.

"What… what is that?"

"That's the alarm."

"… for… me to wake up in the mornings so I don't oversleep?"

"That would be me. You don't need an alarm for that."

Would've guessed that myself if I never found out the hard way.

"So… alarm for what then?" I said.

It was like her expression darkened without anything physically changing on her face.

"For when someone's at the gate."

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"I don't know what you mean," I said.

"You don't need to say that every time, I can read it on you," She said.

"I-… wait is-"

"-Patrick is dead."

I stepped back instinctively. Her bluntness had scared me, but let me be clear, I was fucking pissed. I don't care what Elijah says, I do blame myself, but I am so damn tired of hearing that name.

"Okay, what are we talking about here? Do you want a fucking apology for that? How about two hand tattoos that say 'Patrick's Blood' so I never have the ability to live it down."

She stayed silent.

"Is that what this is about?" I added. "Is that what you and me are about? Fuck that fight, fuck whatever that-… fuckin' childish ass 'interview' shit was. Is that why you hate me so much? Because of Patrick?"

"Is this your awakening moment? Had you somehow not thought of that before?-"

"-It's fucking all I think about! I don't even remember what his face looks like and it's all I think about when I see how you people look at me! The way you look at me! The way you speak to me. What would you like me to do?"

No answer.

"Look, I am so goddamn sorry-Jesus Christ-that word is such a useless little third-rate excuse for what it is that I am and I don't even need to know what he meant to you becau-"

"-it's not about him. It's about Jen… you hurt Jen."

I took the turn of silence.

"You have no idea what you did to her-"

"-I do-"

"-the fuck you do-

"-Elijah told me. She's depressed-

"-That word is what's really useless. She's not depressed, she's eradicated."

There was a very serious drop in my stomach as I heard a layer of emotion in her voice that I had never heard before.

"I don't even know where she is when I look in her eyes," She continued. "I don't care what you think you know from that room. Do you know what it's like to look at your best friend like that? Do you know what it's like to see someone that you love being sucked out of themselves in a place you can't cut the power off from?"

—

No. In short. Not from anyone I've truly loved. Not even anyone I thought I loved. Definitely not someone I would call my best friend.

She stepped closer to me.

"Your little 'sorry', is practically a joke. So stop fucking saying it, and give me the time to get over it myself. If you want to prove that you're 'sorry', stop making it worse by constantly being the most confrontationally unconcerned little bastard I have ever met in my horrible life. Acting like everybody else owes you an apology for something clearly unrelated that you've been carrying around like a reverse kick-me sign. When you get your miserable ass the fuck over that, I'll start wholeheartedly working on getting over this. Until then, that's what you and I are about."

Welcome home, Cody.

"Okay," I said shortly.

She took a moment, before beginning to walk away to the door.

"You're replacing him in the formation," She said before stopping at the doorway and turning back around to me. "Tim and Carolette will teach you how to fight, you'll start watching the wall, and when someone comes to it while you're not there, an alarm will come out of that hole loud enough to break that glass before you throw yourself through it. We'll talk about this more later. Go back to the Café."

She walked out of the room without waiting for me.

Is that what passes as a reasonable excuse for the way she bomb-dropped that? I guess I had done the same with Nikko earlier, not knowing how close he was to Patrick, but I was basically just saying the guy's name. She had said that with the express purpose of angering me. Her admission to a buried willingness to better our relationship was nice to hear, but I'll be honest, with the way Natalie uses my emotions against me, I don't think I want a better relationship with her. I've had and still am having a lot of bad moments with a pretty big list of people here, but none of them are based on the same kind of genuine rage that I somehow end up feeling after every interaction with this girl. If not rage, then fear. I dislike a lot of R&E because of myself…

I… I kind of hate Natalie. I hate Natalie because of her. To call the kettle black… I think she is simply a bad person. I don't want the two of us to get better, no matter how much lack of concern that requires of me.

I took a moment to look around before making my way to the door. The second I made the turn to reach the stairs, I jumped out of my skin to see her standing there menacingly.

"Just to be clear," She said. "I've been fantasizing about killing you. A lot. Not playfully. Perversely. I even started dreaming about it a couple nights ago. Some days it's the only thing I think about. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. It's not really about your pain, it's about my assurance that the life in your body is made as worthless as the rest of you."

We stared at each other for a moment before she made her way down the stairs and calmly out the front door.

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Cody Camargo: Thirty Days In.

This is going to be my last entry for a while. I've realized that I've just about run out of space in this notebook, and I'm going to have to find another one to continue in. I will, by the way.

I will continue.

That being said, I'll keep the events of this day as brief as I comfortably can.

—

I woke up hearing it before Natalie even started banging on the door of the cell. Kanata had been barking her head off in the distance for what must have been over an hour.

Natalie opened the door hastily as I groggily stood.

"Get it out of here before I decide I'm an experienced taxidermist-"

"-Wha-I don't even know what she's barking abo-it's a she, stop calling her 'it'-"

"-Cody, I'm going to either kill that dog myself, or it's getting put back outside to never come back in-

"-This is the first time she's done this, right? Don't go full send over it-I'm sure she's gonna calm down-"

"-Amelia didn't sign up for taking care of a dog, and Lizzie lets that thing run fucking rampant. It's not just the barking it's the shitting and the gnawing and the hiding-it keeps slipping out of their door and hiding places to scare the shit out of people that keep forgetting there's a fucking dog here. I'm done-"

"-Okay okay okay, let me take her out with me today. It'll get her some kinda fresh air and she can just get some energy out. I'll feel safer with her anyway-"

"-Now. She needs to go now-"

"-Alright, now it is. Take me to her-"

"-No, go to the gate, I'll bring her to you."

"Sure… thanks for calling her 'She'-"

"-shut up, Cody."

She stormed back out of the room.

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I waited at the gate with Elijah for about ten empty minutes. After he had returned the backpack to me, we had talked slightly about my time with Margo. I tried to avoid even mentioning Nikko's name.

"Tell me about Evelyn today," I eventually said to him.

"Uhhhh, Evelyn is fine but… she's got a very 'citation needed' kind of summary. She showed up with Roman, that's why he acts like her adopted grandson. Apparently he had found her out there in the halls on the day he got lost. They had been walking slowly to R&E together after seeing it on the horizon, and the lights went out when they were a twenty minute walk away. Roman had apparently carried her fireman-style as he ran the rest of the way with all the staff behind them. I obviously wasn't here to see it, but I heard it was just about the most majestic thing you've ever-"

"-whole lot of Roman in my Evelyn story right now-"

"-Sorry sorry okay. She's a ripe eighty-one-"

"-don't ever say that disgusting ass word about a human again please-"

"-but she got here at seventy-one. She was actually still a teaching assistant back then, never got the chance to retire. She even helps with the schoolhouse every once in a while, but she has some days where she isn't a big people person."

Sounds like a natural pillar of the community.

"She never married from what she's said. She likes to ambiguously refer to some guy called Fletcher, but who knows if that was her honey pie or a mailman she had a crush on. I don't like to think about it either way."

"Okay, what's 'citation needed' about that?"

"Well she um… she claims to be a Gulf War vet."

"No shit…"

"Shit… you know, ostensibly. Auxiliary Corps. She says she wood stake-out traffic points to help them move into Kuwait. Not exactly front lines, but she talked about it like it was some pretty serious shit. Again, this is whispered down the lane, because she doesn't talk nearly as much as she used to, about anything really, but especially not that. I wouldn't say her mind is going anywhere, I think she's just tired. This place would do that to anyone, let alone a veteran. I'd expect to be high-strung enough just from being here at all, and… well, there are some other things you should ask her about for yourself anyway, but with how much hysterically untenable shit has been going on here this past-…"

Elijah trailed off as we began to hear a heavy panting approaching us from town.

"Goddammit!" I heard Natalie screaming far in the distance.

"Uh oh," I said. "That's probably gonna be bad for me."

Out of the blue, Kanata burst into the courtyard as she galloped up and planted herself at distinguished attention before us.

"Hey girl," I said nervously. "What have you-"

I had noticed that Kanata had two chicken fingers in her mouth in the same instant that she darted backwards the way she came. Before she disappeared again, she looked back at me, expecting me to follow her. I had wondered where she was going at the same time as I wondered why she had stolen food and not immediately devoured it.

My two questions answered each other as I made the connection.

"Heh, what is he doing?" Elijah said with a chuckle.

"It's a she…" I mumbled.

"What'd you say?" He asked.

"I said-"

"-Fucking grab her!" Natalie screamed as both her and Kanata re-entered the courtyard.

Kanata ran up to me and hid behind my legs, before beginning to bark up a storm towards Natalie. I felt like Kanata should have been smart enough to recognize that I was not a proper line of defense against the monster that had just been chasing her.

"Shhhh," I shushed as I turned around to pet her. "Come on, stop that-"

"-She's done," Natalie said as she panted behind me. "I swear to God, she's gone. Get her out, right now-"

"-wait wait wait," I said as I stood and walked to Natalie. "I'll tire her out, she's been used to living out there in the emptiness. She probably did nothing but run around all day-"

"-Say whatever you want, but bring her back at your own risk. Because if she pulls any more ridiculous shit like that, I will make Elizabeth watch me toss her and you over the top of the gate."

She began storming away.

"AND FIND A FUCKING LEASH!"

Not the healthiest morning of conversation for what Natalie and I were defined to be.

I watched her in a daze for a while before turning around to Elijah. He was knelt down on the ground, petting Kanata as she panted happily.

"She's probably just a cat person," He said without turning to me.

He stuck his tongue out and shook his face as he did the same to hers. Their resemblance was uncanny.

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Kanata walked beside me, suddenly completely calm in this environment we both shared a much harsher memory of. Every once in a while, the wheels of the cart would move in a strange way that seemed to startle her, but she mostly stayed silent and alert.

I kind of wished she hadn't. I had anticipated that Kanata would keep me distracted, and without the frantic behavior she had woken R&E with this morning, I was alone with my thoughts.

I thought about Evelyn spending the final act of her life gracefully wilting in Return And Exchange. I tried to imagine her younger face, dressed in a baggy green-camo jumper, somewhere in a desert of the Middle East. My mind's eye tried to tear up with sonder, and imagine the colorful life she was living before being locked in this repetitious nothingness. That sounded like such an anticlimactic downgrade.

I've been referring to it in my head like that a lot recently. Nothingness, emptiness, barrenness. Despite how filled to the brim with detail the ever-unique layout of it is, this world has begun to feel very vacant to me. I suppose there wasn't much stopping it from feeling that way before, besides from the sore thumb full of intolerant drama-queens. I think I was just bored.

Maybe I'm just tired? That's what everybody says here, right?

I was generally becoming very unhappy. It seems way too late to be using the word "becoming", but I'm not depressed or sad. Though the past two days had heavily tempted it, I'm not even really angry. It's just that I couldn't feel happy. Everything that was presenting itself as a clear hook to some kind of euphoria was never catching in my cheek. In brutally honest reality, I had experienced more things to be happy about in the past week alone than I had in the entire rest of the "month" I'd been here.

It wasn't adding up though. I felt like there was just something blocking that synapse from firing. I kept trying to work out what that was, but every time I dug around back there, I kept getting jump-scared by Natalie's face, plastered over every emotion I was still capable of feeling.

She seems to have successfully stolen me from myself. Apparently that feeling was some-kind of mutual. I'm definitely not thinking about murdering her everyday, but I think about her a lot. What truly tied us together in that regard, is that I'm sure it's against both of our wills. It's clear that we've sort of become the bane of each other's existence, to a point where the fixation on the other is not so much a choice as it is a symptom of our proximity.

Maybe her mind just works faster than mine. I could possibly begin having the murder fantasies quite soon.

Well…

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I obviously can't lie to you and say that I don't have times where I enjoy thinking about Natalie…

But in my head, it's never the Natalie I know in real life.

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We arrived at the Café, as Kanata trotted into the fold in a still complete silence. I tried to scope out the area quite thoroughly before feeling comfortable, using Kanata's silence to audibly sniff for wet footsteps. After I heard nothing for a couple minutes, I also realized that Kanata would most definitely hear a disturbance long before I ever would.

I leaned against the serving line as I looked at her. She had taken up a spot on the floor, sitting up and watching me.

"You umm… you hungry?"

She didn't yip, and didn't move. Out of not only fear of The Staff, but the reunion with my outdoor buddy, Ted Bundy, I had been scared to speak to Kanata as we walked. We hadn't really seen each other since that last night out here, and I remember us having a little bit of a better connection. Even after…

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She stared at me as I began feeling incredibly awkward. Look, I know I'm talking to a dog, and she doesn't really understand me, but I felt like we both understood that there was an unspoken tension between us that I hadn't had the chance to address, let alone resolve. I can still remember that horrible sound she made when I had kicked her, and it made me sick.

I slowly approached her.

"Hey, listen I'm-… I'm sorry."

She stayed silent as I kneeled down to her. I ran my hand over her head and down the crest of her neck.

"I know you understand why I did it because… you helped me even after I did it, and I love you for that. I'm an idiot, and I don't know how to think critically, so I just… did something ridiculous to feel like I was doing something meaningful, because that felt like what it took to be that unrealistic hero for her."

She stared into my head blankly.

"You didn't deserve that… I wish I had done it to myself… I definitely wouldn't have been able to get away like you did."

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Kanata was unresponsive. She refused to nuzzle herself into my petting.

"Kanata?"

I ran my finger down her nose, and was about to boop it, when I began hearing the low growl that was rumbling in her.

I should've known to take the hint and just get the fuck away from her, no matter what our history of shared experience was. I should've understood that the concept of personal space should go double for someone with teeth like Kanata's, and especially for someone that clearly did not want to accept my apology for something pretty heinous.

But of course, I continued my trend of having absolutely zero social cues whatsoever, and proceeded to make my worst physical mistake since getting in Natalie's face in the cell.

I booped Kanata's nose.

"Boop," I audibly said.

Kanata's teeth showed for only a moment of final warning, before she lunged to the side, and sank her entire mouth of fangs into my right arm.

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I guess she could smell that Natalie had already marked her territory on my left.

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I fell backwards screaming, as Kanata stayed completely lodged into my forearm, snarling viciously. I tried to rip my arm away, even tried to pry her head off with my other hand, but I could feel the tip of her canines scraping against my bone. There was no getting her out unless she wanted out.

Or unless I wanted to start trying to hit her. I considered that, I did…

"KANATA! STOP!"

… but the same moment I started to consider it…

"KANATA!… Kanata!"

… was the same moment I realized that I didn't really want her to stop.

My eyes welled up as I had a very surreal reality check. I deserved this. I had no idea how far she would go. When she was done with my arm, would she move to my face? I didn't know, but I did know that I had already made this affirmation to myself. I had agreed with myself that I wouldn't self-harm, and wouldn't interfere with whatever plan I was being abusively used for in this place, but if my death was to come about naturally at the hands of something or someone else, I wasn't going to oppose it.

I thought about The Staff, and then I thought about every single human I'd met in my time here. As I went through the list, I quite genuinely could not think of a single soul I would be happier to be executed by than Kanata.

"I'm… I'm sorry," I cried as I tried to relax.

Kanata kept clenching tighter and tighter. I began to feel like I was having a hard time properly controlling the fingers of my right hand. I looked deep into her eyes the entire time.

I did this. This is okay. This is good.

My blood was beginning to drip more steadily from her chin as I felt myself on the verge of possible unconsciousness.

Good girl.

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Her snarling stopped. My arm remained in her mouth, but her mouth relaxed and went limp around her teeth. As I looked into her eyes with confusion, she began to whimper. I felt a different pressure as she began trying to dislodge her teeth from my arm. I winced heavily.

"Wait wait wait!"

I grabbed her jaw as I sat up. She steadied herself, planting her legs firmly for stability. I growled in anguish as I ripped her bottom teeth from my arm. They had clearly dug a lot more shallow than her top row.

"Okay, on three…"

I held Kanata's head as she looked at me with focus. I wish Kanata was a zombie-dog, and my only option was to cut this arm off completely. Just give up on the thing and get rid of it.

"… one… two…"

I held her head steady as I ripped my arm away from it. A giant piece of skin flicked away into the air as her teeth jaggedly caught it on their way out.

"ARGHHH!"

I gripped at my wrist as I rocked back and forth.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck… goddammit fuck…"

The bleeding wasn't profuse, but the holes she had left made it almost feel like her teeth were still digging into my arm. I closed my eyes as I breathed in and out as deeply as I could, where I was previously hyperventilating.

No coughs.

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I suddenly jumped as I felt a rough tongue swipe across my wound. I opened my eyes to see Kanata licking the mark she had left.

She stopped for a moment and looked up at me with sad eyes. She went back to licking before I stopped her.

"Hey… don't do that…"

I held my arm away from her before she could swallow anymore blood.

"You're gonna get sick…"

She whimpered slightly. Kanata hadn't wanted to do what she just did, but she had been angry. I couldn't blame her for that anger at all. If I was in her position, I would've started at the throat. Yet here she was, feeling sorry for hurting me when it was much less than what I should've received.

"Hey, it's okay. I'll deal with it… it's more than deserved…"

I brushed my hand over her head.

"We okay?"

Kanata yipped happily as she curled herself into my lap. I massaged her scalp the way I knew she loved. That was a spasmodic sixty seconds. I tried to remove myself from it as I hung on the floor with Kanata.

Eventually though, I felt my arm throbbing. I looked at it after not seeing it for just two minutes, and almost pissed myself. I remember thinking how bad Natalie's bite had looked almost a week and a half after its occurrence. This was bad. I know a dog's mouth is "cleaner", and Kanata doesn't have access to the outdoors like most dogs do, but this had easy infection written all over it.

I ruffled Kanata as I began to stand up with her. I needed to cover this up. Yes, for the bleeding, but there was something even more important. This was not Kanata, it was a horrible intrusive thought that I had created in her. She would not do this again if it wasn't deserved. She had just been letting me know that I was a dumbass. However, I knew that if Natalie were to see this…

It would be over. I couldn't let that happen.

"How the hell am I supposed to hide this…"

I began walking away from the Café as Kanata followed me. I found a white, thermal window curtain of a bathroom display and ripped it off its rack. I ripped it in half and tied it around my arm as tightly as possible. I felt it pulsing like crazy as I cringed to imagine what was going on inside of it. It hurt to make a fist.

I pet her again, letting her know that my stance hadn't changed.

"I'm glad you're on my side, because you are fucking brutal."

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I poured a water bottle onto a pillowcase and cleaned the blood off Kanata's chin. I fed her some chicken and cod as I ate an entire plate of Macaroni & Cheese. I finished my two pieces of chocolate cake, promised myself I would start practicing salad from now on, and downed two bottles of water before packing up the Café.

My screaming hadn't attracted any friendly strangers, so I ensured I had everything I had entered the Café with, and began our trek back to R&E.

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Kanata and I began walking back, as friends this time.

I realized the stupidity of covering the wound with a previously white window curtain, and how obvious it would be that something had happened. I decided to treat myself to some new clothes now, and went to quickly find a long sleeve shirt that would cover this bandage. As I began rummaging through a bedroom display, I first found a mirror that would somewhat nicely fit the men's bathroom back home…

Whatever, I already wrote the word before. The seal has been broken.

The mirror had a somewhat gaudy gold lining that was a little too posh for that room, but maybe it would fit nicer if we implemented a restroom attendant. I dug through the dresser drawers to find them all empty. That kind of made sense. I went to another display's walk-in closet to find a rack of really nice jackets. Surely it would get padded down if I walked up with one on. If even the possibility of taking it off existed, it wouldn't work. I spotted a white fleece with brown arms. I tried it on, and it was way too big for me. Perfect. No pockets, you could clearly see I'd taken off my other shirt beneath it, and the somewhat bulky mass of the "bandage" was completely unnoticeable below the bulk of the sleeves.

Plus, it was really goddamn cozy.

I grabbed the mirror, and was about to go back to the cart, when Kanata began whimpering beside me. I walked up to her and placed down the mirror. I knelt to her and began brushing her head again.

"Hey, you're not still worked up about it, are you?"

I rubbed her scalp and ears, patting the sides of her belly. She was looking in a different direction, and she just wouldn't calm down.

"What's up, girl?"

Kanata finally looked at me, and then looked back in the direction she was previously looking. I stood up cautiously. I looked around the room for the heaviest thing I could find. The candlestick lamp was probably good. I grabbed it before realizing it was plugged into the wall, and quickly decided it wasn't worth the try.

"Will you come with me?" I whispered to her sheepishly.

She stuck out her tongue.

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I walked in the direction for about a minute, about to give up and assume Kanata had seen a ghost, before smelling the scent that she had probably been smelling for miles. I considered urging her away and getting back on track, but something about being with Kanata put a dumb sense of confidence behind me.

I weaved through the displays as the smell of death slowly grew stronger and stronger.

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I jumped in my skin as a final corner revealed the leg of the corpse. I slowly willed myself around it to reveal the entire body.

Chest-first on the ground in front of me lay a dead woman, whose back was a completely flayed mess of dark red viscera. Her skin had been long on its way to a greenish-black, and I absolutely refused to move her head, as her mess of hair had graciously fallen in a way that kept her face hidden from view.

Kanata's whimpering began again. For a dog that was obviously tough as nails, she enjoyed a good whine. But I wasn't holding this one against her. I felt like crying too.

This was… the first time I had seen a body in such a state of decomposition. As I continued to look at her, images of Wyatt's corpse began to resurface and flash in my mind. I slammed shut my eyes and fought to keep down my stomach.

I breathed deep as it settled. I opened my eyes to see a purse sitting on the ground next to the body. Though it felt extremely inappropriate, I retrieved it and began rummaging through. It looked like a normal messy purse. Opening her wallet showed an I.D. for one "Cora Perry Millard". She looked so beautiful in her driver's license photo. It reinforced my thanks that I couldn't see her face now. The biggest thing in the purse was a book.

OSHA Safety Training Handbook: 8th Edition.

Why would she have this in her purse? Was she trying to learn for law school? Maybe she was already an attorney, and was trying to find a snag in some stipulation? From what I could tell of what remained, she seemed to be dressed in business attire. What had she been doing with herself before being trapped here.

I placed down her purse and stepped back, Kanata rubbing against my leg. I turned away to look towards the direction of R&E. When did this happen? She was so close to us. It was a fifteen minute walk at the most. The Staff had to have done this, right? Why hadn't someone heard her screaming?

Had they?

Did whoever was on the wall that night just accept that there was nothing they could do? This body looked like it must have been more than a couple days old. Of course with the environment it was in, there were no flies buzzing around it, but I could tell it wasn't fresh. That means… I walked past this the last time I was out here. I walked past this twice that day without even knowing, probably while I was thinking about some trivial shit like how I wanted to get a clever last word into a hypothetical argument with Elijah.

If I had started coming out here a week earlier, maybe I could've been there the day she was in trouble. Maybe I could've helped her…

Another whimper from Kanata brought me out of a daze. I stumbled slightly backwards.

"Come on, let's go."

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Kanata and I approached the gate as I brought the cart to a stop, reaching to grab the mirror before it toppled over and fell. The scene of me standing over a broken mirror as they opened the gate would have definitely been comedically gratifying, but I had the educated suspicion that this intact mirror was the only thing between me and Natalie's fist today.

I stepped away from the cart and put my arms out wide and high (a little lower once I realized the sleeves were almost falling down my forearm).

Kanata tilted her head at me as if to ask what the fuck my silly ass was doing.

"Hey, it's become very clear to me that I need to be on my best behavior for a while," I said to her. "Can you try to go in half on that with me?"

Her head returned to an upright position as she wagged her tail. She walked up and rubbed herself against my leg.

"Thanks."

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I considered telling her to stop feeding him… but I wasn't about to assume that position, and she was probably much better at doing it discreetly than I could ever hope to be. If anything, I would just hope that pretending Kanata could fully understand what I was saying meant that she would lump that activity in with the behavior she needed to discontinue.

The reality of the situation is that I needed to tell someone. I couldn't be the only one who knew. But who am I supposed to tell?

Elijah?

God?

I don't know.

Because hell, It would be better to kill him myself than to tell Natalie…

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This needs to wrap up pretty fast, so here's the status for now, and I'll talk to you again in a little while.

I'm in an IKEA now. It's my home, whether I enjoy calling it that or not. Trust me, I don't, and I will never be so comfortable to call it that for more than whatever day it currently is. If I wake up the next day, it's my home that day. If I wake up the day after that, it's my home again. That's a good place to start, and a much kinder fate than so many others have met here. I would like to start remembering that every day that I do wake up. No affirmations, and certainly no thanks, just friendly reminders to where I could be instead if fate had seen fit.

I feel disappointed that I didn't get the chance to fix my old self, but I think I can make this new one at least passably mediocre.

Just imagine what I could've done in the old world with the tenacity that this place has forced into my hands.

Well, hang on, because I don't want to pat myself on the back too much. I've been incredibly lucky, and honestly, gained the support of so many people I don't deserve the support of. I've broken through some personal barriers, but let it be clear, I did it kicking and screaming all the way. I've been wanting to give up since my days were in the single digits. Living is like a chore, and I should have realized it was always that way before even showing up here. This is obviously a lot more dangerous of a chore than "normal life", but I honestly have a lot less to think about. I've spent so much time here just lost in my head. I didn't have much time for that in the old world. There were always so many plates spinning that I simply didn't have the schedule opening to realize that my self-hatred was not obligatory.

I'm not really living because of some kind of tenacity anymore. Yes, this world creates a life nothing like I've ever seen, but I've just never been forced to think the way I think in here. Whilst not abandoning any emotional responsibility, I feel like I really am just someone else, for better or worse.

I'm kinda just living because I… I really just wanna find out what happens next for them.

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And mind you…

Living isn't a good word, surviving is better.

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The sound of the opening gate began, as I looked down at Kanata, who looked politely back up to me.

"You should probably put your hands up too…"

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(Part nine coming soon!)

Welp, according to the break time, this story is officially on hiatus! That ends today (and then will resume again in like two months). Somehow this ended up being the longest part (how I have managed to do that again is almost annoyingly unbelievable), but despite the time it took, I do think this is the one I had the most fun writing. It's the part so far with the most scenes that I've had the entire dialogue written for just sitting in my notes for ages. THIS is where you finally get to learn what R&E is beyond the obvious nature of it just being four walls. I get to finally let the characters breathe without too much eventful necessity, and you get to just see what life is like there. I finally get to introduce you guys to Nikko! AAGGHHHGHHG! I've been really excited about that.

And as much as I hated it, I'm really proud of the Kanata scene, because I think I always found it wholesome (AFTERWARDS). Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this!

Good news! I watched Fight Club! It's so much fun, fucker's settin' up franchises. And Edward Norton is like literally me he's literally me he's literally (I don't know how to do the thing where the text gets distorted and looks like it's being swallowed by Minecraft enchantments, so just pretend that kept going on for ten pages and slowly got more and more jumbled)

Do I have a fact? I can tell you I'm 6'2". It's funny, because I really hate being tall, and that is NOT a humble brag. If you aren't muscular, you look really stringy, and everything always hurts because it's hard to have good posture in chairs and stuff. AND BUYING CLOTHES OH MY GOD HOW HARD IS IT TO MAKE PANTS WITH A SMALL WAIST AND LONG LEGS?! I wish I was Cody's height.

I'm so happy to be back! I bet you thought I quit this thing, huh? Ye of little faith! You're not getting rid of me that easy.

Thank you guys so much as always for stopping in and following this mess, I'll TRY, AND I WILL TRY, to be back sooner than later.

Stay safe, love ya!

P.S. :

Okay, I don't wanna talk about what I'm about to say, because it's been really embarrassing the shit out of me, but it is the number one reason that this part has been the longest absence of mine so far.

I spent the last couple of months finalizing another project I've been working on for about seven years (I don't know how to determine the length, you could call it two, you could call it five, you could call it twenty-three, it's all the same). It's pretty important to me, and I know it's an eye-roll, but I would love for you guys to check it out (I think it works really well in the background for reading)!

3

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