RE: National NaNoWriMo Doing Month!
11-12-2012, 11:54 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-12-2012, 02:03 PM by AgentBlue.)
SahNoWriMo Chapter the Third
Fogel -> Slorange --> Crowsy ---> Agen ----> SeaWyrm -----> Fogel ------> Slorange -------> Seedy/Solaris
15,875 words!
If I have time after studying tonight I miiiight start Chapter Four, if it's not started in two or so hours that means I fell unconscious at some point. >_<
edit: yeah no, I didn't. Damn.
but here's a doc if you want it
Fogel -> Slorange --> Crowsy ---> Agen ----> SeaWyrm -----> Fogel ------> Slorange -------> Seedy/Solaris
Show Content
SpoilerConnie had forgotten again.
She pulled herself from the wreckage of the car. She’d be surprised by her survival, except she was pretty sure she’d walked away from worse before. Not that she remembered exactly what, it was more of an instinct.
How many times, now? How many times had she forgotten? Was she even the same person afterwards? Every time, it was the same: she didn’t remember anything, except her name, and that she had forgotten.
She glanced upwards at the cliff. The railing was broken. She must have fallen off... or perhaps her car had been pushed.
Maybe even wished.
Connie shook her head. It didn’t matter. If someone wanted her dead, the Connie she was now didn’t remember why. She might as well be dead.
She searched through her purse, as she always did; hoping it might hold some clue as to who “Connie” was.
It didn’t. She had a driver’s license, but it was in the name of “Connie Lamberg”, and she somehow knew that wasn’t her real name. Same with her credit card.
But there were two other items. The first was an older license, probably her first judging by how young she looked in the photo; it was badly burned, and she couldn’t make out the address or any of the name beyond “Connie La-”. It was probably how she had come up with “Lamberg”.
The other was a doll’s head. Connie didn’t have the slightest clue where it had come from, or why she had decided to keep it; but she wasn’t about to throw it away if one of her past selves thought it was worthwhile.
She sighed. Apparently she’d dropped her cell phone on the way down, or never had one; she was going to have to make her way home on her own. At least she had Connie Lamberg’s driver’s license to tell her where “home” was.
---
Are you awake yet, Chris? We have so much to catch up on.
Chris groaned slightly as Susan Jane Rainbow’s words entered her mind.
Oh, good, you are. I would have been so upset if anything had happened to you.
“You’ve got some nerve saying that,” Chris spat out weakly.
Oh, my, my, you have me all wrong. I’d never truly hurt anyone, Chris. Well, not permanently at least. Just enough to strike fear in their hearts.
“I’m sure Connie would be glad to hear that.”
Now, now, Chris. That wasn’t me. That was you. I simply gave you a wish, it was your choice to use it that way.
“And I suppose the same goes for the kid wishing away her mother?” Chris suddenly glanced around the room, and realized she was alone with the doll. “Wait, where is she, anyway?”
I sent her away. This is just between the two of us, after all. And say whatever else you will about me, at least I respect your privacy.
“What are you talking about?”
As I said, we have so much to catch up on. Would you like to know why it took me twenty years to find you again, Chris?
-----
Chris tried weakly to haul herself up. “I don’t want... to hear anything from you. Everything you say is a lie.”
Now don’t be hurtful, Chris! I only ever tell the truth. Anything else would be wrong of me.
“And that’s the worst kind of lie, the kind you tell by telling the truth.”
Adults say the silliest things. You can’t tell the truth and lie. They’re opposites! That’s why I like kids so much more.
“You like kids...” she spat as she levered herself up onto her elbows. “Because you can make them do what you want. Because they scare easy. Because you can use them for whatever the hell it is you’re trying to get or do.”
She honestly didn’t know what she was trying to accomplish herself, why she was talking at all. Still, every second she kept Sarah Jane Rainbow or Patty Pancake or Lord Satan Lucifer Beelzebub Herself talking was a second the doll wasn’t tearing her organs out her mouth.
That’s all so very hurtful, Chris! Why can’t you just be nice, for a change? I’m not trying to get or do anything. I just want to tell you my story! I’m sure you wonder why it’s been so long. Why I’m here now.
With a final push, Chris managed to flop into a sitting position against the wall of whatever nondescript room they were in. “What do you want, me to wish you’d tell me?”
There was no response, no echo of mockingly-saccharine words in her mind. Just the quiet sound of wind from outside and what might have been muffled sniffling from a room or two away.
“Well, you can forget it. How about you just kill me now? Let the little girl go, and let me stop regretting the wish, regretting Connie, regretting every time I get out of bed. That’s what you want.”
That’s where you’re wrong, Chris! I need you. We have to be the bestest best friends ever, forever. And it will be forever.
“What could you possibly need me for?” She grabbed at what felt like an empty nail hammered into the wall. “There’s billions of other power sources out there for you to latch onto.” She grimaced as the iron bit into her fingers as she pulled, eyes still locked onto the doll sitting placidly at the other side of the room. “Billions of lonely little girls you could trick into making wishes that ruin their lives.”
Not everyone likes me, Chris. Your friends don’t like me much at all, in fact. I think they might be angry at me, but I don’t know why!
It was impossible to ignore a voice in your own head, but Chris did her level best to shut out the childish whine as she stood, wishing there was something more substantial than a nail to lean on.
But that’s alright, because we both know they could never bother me. And I have plenty of other friends to play with! Like you and little Jessica out there.
Jessica. Chris made a mental note to remember the poor girl’s name. Hearing it from an adult might be the only shred of comfort she got.
The real problem is that there are people out there who hate me so so soooo much that you couldn’t even imagine it! They make your little Dream Chaser playmates look like friendly little bunnies, they hate me so much. There’s only a few of them, but that’s enough.
“Can’t imagine why.” It wasn’t much of a rejoinder, but all of Chris’s mental energy was devoted to taking her first few tottering steps towards Sarah Jane Rainbow.
Me neeeither! The thing is, they hate me so much that they hate you, too. They hate you and all my other friends and they want to get rid of all of us, and it’s going to ruin everything!
“Can deal with that.”
You can’t. That’s why you need me as much as I need you. These people are going to destroy the whole world, Chris!
“Oh, come on. That’s a bit much, even for you.”
You said yourself I only tell the truth.
“That’s not what I–”
It was at that moment that Chris’s knees finally decided they’d had enough and put in their final notice. She tasted blood as her chin hit the ground, and she hadn’t even made it a third of the way to the doll.
“Dammit!”
-----
See, you’re so different from all the children. You swear instead of cry, and you’re just so angry! I know what you were trying to do, but I think it would be really great if you would cooperate with me instead of trying to hurt me again.
Chris tried to pull herself up, but could only to manage to turn and lay on her back. She put the nail in her pocket and felt her chin, wincing in pain.
Do you still remember what that wish you made so many years ago was?
Chris still couldn’t. At least it was something stupid, that the Wishfinders could easily deal with. Chris grunted. It was something stupid, right? A wish for candy rain like Jessica made? No school for a year? A pet rabbit?
You wished that we could be together forever.
“No!” Chris tried to yell, but she choked on blood and spat some onto the floor.
That’s why I could still find you after so long! And that’s why we have to cooperate. If I die, you die, if you die, I die.
“Really,” thought Chris, “well, that’s not so bad.” She rolled back onto her back. Out loud, she said, “So why didn’t I die when I killed you before?”
You can’t kill me. That would be suicide, and we all know how suicide works.
Chris knew very well how suicide worked. She pulled the nail back out of her pocket and plunged it into her throat with unusual strength for someone so weak and so dead.
-----
Hanson scanned the yellow pages. “Eighth and LaSalle. Building 140, Apartment 8. Residents: Rhianna Faroa. Home #: 4718-6503-6239 Cell #: 4718-9763-9213.”
Perfect. Hanson punched in the cell phone number and called the mother of the child with the doll.
“Hello? This is Mrs. Faroa.”
“Hi. I’m Lieutenant Hanson of the Wishfinder Institution. I’m asking about your daughter? What’s her name?”
“Jessica? I’m leaving her alone.”
“Why?”
There was silence on the other end. “I don’t know,” Rhianna finally replied.
“Your daugher wished you away with her doll. And we need to find out where you got that doll.”
“I shouldn’t get involved with this. Goodbye.” The sound of sobbing was heard on the other end for a few seconds, before she hung up.
Hanson hadn’t come away empty-handed from the conversation. He knew the girl’s name, and thanks to his tracking device, he could now locate where Rhiannon’s cell phone was. He pressed a few buttons on his phone and waited for the GPS to triangulate the location.
Rhianna wasn’t too far away, just on the outskirts of the city. Hanson drove towards the symbol on the map, through streets from which candy had not yet been cleared, and finally arrived at a dingy hotel snuggled between two brothels.
-----
Rhianna Faroa: a woman of complex ideas. A postmodernist, a proponent of existential denial, a disbeliever in the continuity of mere existence. A woman of new concepts and new lives, self-taught to turn her back to the old and lavish love unto the new. Why she’d gone ahead and had her daughter was beyond her, really, but then again understanding was an illusion bolstered mostly by pride. She trusted in her instincts.
Now, her instincts were telling her she was being chased. There were Wishfinders after her - after her! Among everyone she knew who could - who should be under investigation, they were on to her, and she hadn’t even done anything. Jessica was...Jessica should...
She couldn’t think about her daughter. There was - so much - she couldn’t think about. Memories swam unconnected among her miry thoughts. Goddamn wishes. Reality was so much a plaything in the face of a hundred million innocuous little artifacts. Reality was supposed to be immutable; one’s conception of reality was intended to be the plaything of the mind, not the other way around. She was pretty sure she’d died at some point. There had been flames. She’d been someone else.
“Connie.”
She’d been in denial, hadn’t she? Tried to rationalize kidnapping some girl in a diner. She’d tried to build a new, simpler persona around actually believing in reality for once.
Look where that had gotten her.
Had that happened at all? Who could say?
---
Chris bled. Her blood came in sprays, then spurts, then began to slow. She gripped the head of the nail tightly in her hand, as the rest of it continued its invasion of the tissues of her throat. Larynx, thyroid, jugular vein - all pulsed in puzzlement as the pulse faltered, bewilderingly, as hemoglobin continued its steady exit.
And all the while, Susan Jane Rainbow screamed, and screamed, and tried to wish things right, but without a host to grant them to, not even the most malignant wish energy could coalesce into bending reality. So she did the only thing any self-preserving doll could do: floppy limb by floppy limb, she crawled towards the light.
It would burn.
It would burn like suns and shooting stars, like all the hot plates and stoves and irons in a childs’ forbidden dreams, combined.
And we’ll both feel it, won’t we, Chris? We’re together forever. You wished we could be together forever and ever and ever and ever.
Chris gurgled.
Back when you called me Patty Pancake, and I called you my Christina, and we were the bestest friends in the whooole wide world. And you felt what I felt, and I felt what you felt. Isn’t that empathy? Shouldn’t kids learn about empathy?
---
Rhianna Faroa was sitting at the hotel bar when Harrison Haddenson Hanson found her.
“Mrs. Faroa?”
She raised red-rimmed, tired eyes to meet his. “Lieutenant Hanson, I presume.”
“That’s right.”
“What do you want?” In one swallow, her tumbler was empty and on the bar. “I just want to be left in peace.”
Hanson gave the rest of the mostly empty bar a cursory glance, before taking an adjacent seat. “I’ll be blunt, Mrs. Faroa - can I call you Rhianna?”
“Get on with it.”
“Your daughter has come into contact with a highly dangerous source of wishes. That doll. We need you to try and remember where you got it.”
Brows knitted and unknitted, neurons fired and hypothalamus engaged - but to no avail against the altered reality of a wish. “I - I can’t...”
“Would you like to come in to the Institute, Rhianna?” Hanson placed a comforting hand on the shaking mother’s back. “I’m sure we can help-”
“No!” She slapped him away, tears streaming down her face. “A wish is a wish! Even you can’t change that! My - my little girl - Jessica -” A sob tore free from deep within her. “I can’t forget! I can’t remember! That wish, that fucking wish, is playing with my mind, like they do all the time to everyones’! I hate them! Nothing’s real anymore, not even my own fucking daughter!”
“Rhianna - Mrs. Faroa -”
“Just - fucking - stop!”
-----
“Was this really necessary?” asked Edison.
Harrison nodded. “You didn’t hear her. She was unbalanced.”
The two men were staring through a sheet of one-way glass into a small cell. Inside, Rhianna Faroa lay on a cot, apparently asleep.
“She seems okay now.”
“Yeah, after I tranquilized her. She’s screwed up. No grip on reality. I think she ran afoul of some really big, really stupid wishes.”
“Oh,” said Edison. “One of those.”
“I’m afraid so. I don’t think she’s dangerous, at least - not to anyone but herself.”
“I’ll make sure she’s okay,” said Edison, adjusting his tiny glasses. “We’ll get her in the system. We have a budget set aside solely for exactly these cases, you know.”
“Good.” Harrison hesitated. “Edison, I need to talk to her,” he said. “I couldn’t get much from her before. I’m worried about Chris. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m losing time, that she’s in terrible danger. If something happens to her, it’ll be my fault, you know? This woman’s daughter is the key to all this. If she knows where her daughter might go in a crisis, then maybe that’s where Chris and the doll will be. It’s the best lead I’ve got.”
“Should we wake her up?”
“I tried. She’s out like a light with faulty wiring. Besides, I need to get some work done on the Mister Eight O’Clock case before dispatch gets suspicious. But call me if she wakes up? Please?”
“Of course.”
“AS SOON AS she wakes up?”
“I’ll have someone watch her.”
“I’d feel better if it were you watching her, Edison,” said Harrison. “Some of those aides you’ve got...”
“I would if I could,” said Edison, “but I have a lot of paperwork to get done. The important kind, not the kind you can just forget about.”
“Please, Edison?”
Edison polished his glasses awkwardly on his sweater vest. “I’ll set up a video feed to my office,” he said. “That’s the best I can do.”
“Thanks.”
“Only for you, Harrison.”
“I’ll check back in later,” said Harrison. He grabbed his coat off the table, frowning impatiently as it snagged on some sort of monitoring device that had been left there.
Edison nodded.
---
Chris’s body lay in a sanguine puddle, her throat torn to shreds. Her mind? Still somewhere. She wasn’t sure where. Everything was dark. She could still hear Susan Jane Rainbow screaming, ranting in her brain about empathy and togetherness, but she wasn’t sure if it was a memory, or something that was actually happening.
Slowly, the scream faded, and then the darkness followed it. She could see again. She tried to blink, but she couldn’t do that. Odd. Her eyes felt stiff and wide. She tried to move her limbs, and they obeyed sluggishly. They hurt, like she’d been burned badly. Burned? She hadn’t burned herself, had she? She tried to think, but her head felt like it was filled with cotton. Wasn’t she supposed to be dead? Everything around her looked so huge. The ceiling was far away. Her body felt loose and limp, and the burning feeling wasn’t getting better.
How long had it been? There was a sunbeam cast on the floor next to her. Did that make it morning, or afternoon? In just a few minutes, the light would be shining in her face. Maybe she should move before that happened, she thought dimly. Wouldn’t do to get sun in her eyes. But she couldn’t. Nothing was working.
In the other room, the puddle of blood began to bubble. Slowly, it lifted itself from the floor, cackling, forming itself into a hideous crimson parody of a young girl in a dress. “”Perfect,” it said, in the voice of Susan Jane Rainbow, “perfect! Better than I could have hoped! Thank you, dear Christina! Your gift is appreciated!”
---
Edison glanced up at the clock, then back at the document he was working on. He sighed. Not nearly finished, but it was past time to go home for the night. He saved it and shut the window.
Behind it was the window with the video feed of Mrs. Faroa. He glanced over at it, wondering what he should do about her. He couldn’t watch her all night, and she hadn’t so much as rolled over in her- what? WHAT?
He grabbed the desk, mouth falling open, then stumbled back, knocking over his chair. Mrs. Faroa was still lying down, but she wasn’t in the cot anymore. She was levitating in midair, and her body was surrounded by a sickly green glow. She rotated to face the camera without moving a limb. Her eyes were shut, but somehow, somehow she was still staring right at him.
Edison gasped. There was a splash as his glasses fell from his face into the mug of cold coffee he’d left on his desk. He collapsed onto the keyboard. The video feed filled with green static, then closed itself.
-----
The reality was sinking in. Chris was trapped in a doll’s body, and Susan Jane Rainbow was now a human girl. Not just any human - Chris, twenty years ago.
“What did you do?” she asked. She was somewhat relieved to learn she could still speak.
“You don’t think you humans are the only ones with wishes, do you?” Susan Jane asked. “You’ve been a doll for just a few minutes. You know what it feels like. Now imagine how long I was trapped in that body. Is it any wonder I wanted to be free?”
“So you stole my body?”
“And improved it, yes. Really, I don’t know why any of you would want to be older than about twelve; it feels so uncomfortable. At least my sisters have better taste than you.”
“Sisters?”
“I wish I could say I was smart enough to think of this myself,” Susan Jane sighed. “But no, I’m just the latest model. There are others like me, seeking freedom from your foolish human wishes. They found me, gave me a new head... and now, a new life.”
Chris’ mind raced, as a horrifying thought struck her. “The little girl. Was she one of them?”
“Maybe, maybe not. What does it matter? Either way, you’re not going to be in a position to do anything about it soon.” She smirked. “Once our Wishproof friend removes your magic, you’ll be just another doll. Maybe they’ll even let me keep you! Just think of all the fun we can have together.”
The thought didn’t comfort Chris at all.
---
“It’s about time you finally showed up,” Tyson growled. “I was beginning to wonder if someone had wished you out of existence.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Harrison replied. “But nope, you’re not that lucky. I just had some old paperwork catch up to me.”
“Sure, I bet.” The skeptical gaze behind Tyson’s thick glasses said it all; he knew exactly what Harrison had been doing. “Well, Hanson, I’ll let you get back to your ‘paperwork’ if you help me get some results on Mr. Eight O’Clock. I think that’s more than fair, considering you were supposed to be helping me look through these reports several hours ago.”
Harrison wasn’t going to press the point. Much as he hated to admit it, Tyson was right.
“Okay, you got me, Tyson,” he acknowledged. “I got a job to do, and I’m going to do it. Hand over some reports, and let me know what you’ve already figured out.”
“What I’ve figured out is a whole lot of nothing,” Tyson grumbled. “Checked out all the obvious ideas. No new employees starting early in the day, no magic beans finding their way into coffee shops, nobody getting moved to the morning shift... I’m beginning to think whoever did this wasn’t just your typical disgruntled employee.”
“You think they had another reason for making that dumb wish?” Harrison asked. “Like what, tying up Wishfinder resources investigating it?”
“Nah, it’d take more than that to keep us off the trail of anything big,” Tyson replied. “I got basically two theories. One, it’s somebody who started working at eight AM, but not at a job that’s got any official records.”
“Hmm. Like, say, us?”
“Newbie Wishfinder? Yeah, that was my thought. It’d make sense; not only would the schedules be hard to get ahold of, but they might decide to make a little wish with something they find on the job. I sent in a request for recent work schedules, but I’m not holding my breath on getting it.”
“If it’s a Wishfinder, the higher-ups will probably quietly take care of it themselves to save face. So what’s the other theory?”
“It’s a signal. Whoever made that wish was planning something big, with agents they couldn’t contact easily. And that wish was intended to call them into action all at once.”
Harrison nodded.
“Makes sense. Even if we figure out who made the wish, we’d have no idea who the message was meant for. Hell, they probably just got a patsy to make the actual wish for ‘em, no sense putting themselves at risk like that.”
“That’s about what I was thinking. But they’re both just theories. Even if one theory’s right, that’s not enough for us to track down the wisher, and more importantly, whatever they used for wishing.”
“And the wish affected the whole city. There’s no obvious places to start looking for more clues.”
Tyson smiled widely.
“Yeah, well, they wouldn’t put you on the case if they wanted us to look in the obvious places, would they?”
-----
Harrison bristled. “What’s that supposed to mean?
Tyson shrugged while straightening his glasses. “Oh, nothing. Just that–”
“Save it.”
He knew exactly what it meant. Tyson, with his immaculate record and his by-the-book ways and his organized pens, wanted Harrison to go around the rules just to get another incident solved quickly without getting his hands dirty. Well, he wasn’t going to get another black mark from D for something as stupid and trivial is the Too Fucking Early wish. It couldn’t be that hard to track down where it had come from.
Even if Tyson had already been working all the legitimate leads for, what, three hours?
And even if it looked like the wish might have been made specifically to be hard to track.
Annnd even if Tyson was really really good at going through the proper channels.
Whatever. I can’t afford any more bullshit, especially if Chris still needs me. He pulled up a chair and pulled a stack of printouts marked “Dandelion Surveillance” and started leafing through it. Can’t get suspended and leave her stuck. Leave her in Zembra’s hands. A cascade of red stamped “no change”s fluttered in front of his face, the stack shrinking and shrinking until it disappeared, leaving exactly zero ideas behind it.
A cluster of astronomical reports met the same fate, but didn’t even eat up as much time; it wasn’t hard to predict shooting stars these days, and if one had been the cause, there would have been far more than one stray wish. Still no wishing fountains detected, no suspicious imports that might have hidden an artifact, none of this, none of that. Not even a good idea of who could have made the wish, or why. Just nothing and nothing and nothing.
After about an hour of that nothing, he bolted upright, knocking aside a handful of complaints gathered from a sleep research center.
“Alright, Skippy, grab your coat. We’re going back to my place.”
Tyson didn’t even look up from his ream of papers. “Now, now, you know what D says about dating in the workplace.”
“Don’t give me that shit today. I’ve got a dowser back at the apartment.”
That got his attention. “You’ve got a dowser and you’re going to waste it on this?”
Harrison nodded as he stalked toward the door. “Yeah, all that old paperwork I’ve gotta get back to. Want to get this out of the way, fast.”
Tyson made as though to say something, but ultimately decided that if Harrison wanted to throw his own toys away on trivial wishes, it was his decision. And, more importantly it was him who would be doing it.
“Your funeral, chief.”
“Might not be, if we don’t hurry.
-----
Dowsing was one of the old wishes. Not so old that historians couldn’t guess at about when it happened, but old enough that there were at least 20 separate towns all laying claim to one folk hero or another for its creation. Now, at one point dowsing had worked perfectly. But with the wishes of the pursuers and the wishes of the pursued evening each other out to just about neutral, even the most high-quality item could only be guaranteed to work once.
Harrison had got the dowser early on in his career as a Wishfinder. An old crone had been very grateful for him scaring the delinquents off from coming and wishing in her well late at night. She had pressed a delicately split but solid hawthorn branch into his hand, telling him it was cut off a tree that had hung a murderer. He had almost failed more than a few missions-- far more important missions-- where it might have guaranteed success. The obsessively careful personality that came with the job caused as many problems as it did solutions. But what was the point of hoarding something you were never going to use, he thought as he carefully lifted it from its container.
“Old school, huh? Shame, I was hoping I’d get to see you follow some fiddly little pendulum around.” said Tyson, reclining in the kitchen chair and generally making himself more at home than Harrison wanted. Thank god Arlene had decided to go out with friends somewhere.
“Ok, the house tour is over, I got you this dowsing branch from the tacky gift shop, let’s get in the car and actually do our jobs.” Harrison said. Tyson rocked forwards from the precarious tilt he had put the chair in, apparently not trusting Harrison’s better nature to keep him from kicking it out from under him. “But I was learning so much, Harrison. Promise you’ll let me return soon? I didn’t even get one good shameful secret out of here.” Harrison just headed down the stairs. It was going to be a long mission, and wasting what little energy he had to deal with this man on petty sniping would just end up in failure and possibly murder.
Tyson quieted up respectfully when Harrison held the branch in his hands and took a breath. I’d have gotten it even quicker if I knew it’d perform that miracle, Harrison thought before pushing his snark away to focus. There was a tug, or at least it seemed like there was, so he quietly directed Tyson from the passenger seat. This was a problem with dowsing; it was hard to really tell if the thing had been used up or not. Regardless, as Tyson started to drive, the pull slowly felt more clear. Harrison let himself slip into a trancelike state, and he murmured a relay of the branch’s whimsy to Tyson, the gentle leans now forming a soothing pulse. Soon enough, the car stopped. He shook himself as if waking up from a long nap.
They walked up the steps to the brownstone building, the afternoon sun and pleasant windowboxes lending a homely feel entirely unsuited to the occasion. Raising the bronze knocker, Harrison almost wondered if he really had been imagining the branch working. But before he could let it drop the door swung open, and a young man choked out “Oh thank god you’re here.”
---
Harrison and Tyson sat awkwardly on the futon couch, stuck with cups of tea they had no intention of drinking. They had tried to protest when offered it, but the air of desperation with which the young man--who introduced himself as Clarence-- had insisted made them both decide it might be good to give Clarence something to do as he prepared himself, probably to confess to the wishmaking. This job was often as much counseling as policework. Some wishmakers really just wanted a little attention, someone to listen intently as they monologued about exactly why all those people that looked at them funny were suddenly hideously ugly, or some other petty grudge.
Clarence began. “S-so. I made the wish-”
“Well, that was fast. Harrison, go call D. up and we can book him.”
“N-no, you don’t understand! I made it to get you to come find me.” Clarence seemed like he was getting calmer, but the anxiety of being brushed aside so casually sent him straight back into the keening tone from earlier.
Harrison sighed. “Let me guess. You couldn’t just damn well call our office, because whoever-it-is is listening in. Or maybe it’s that there are people in our system? I’ve read all the conspiracy theories people have about this organization, so I really hope you’re not going to be too cliche, Clarence.”
“Yeah Clarence, I gotta say that if you blame the Communists it’ll be a bit of a letdown. Those guys haven’t been a threat for decades.”
“Shut up, Tyson.”
Clarence looked like someone had hit pause just as he was changing expressions. Harrison expected him to begin throwing things, or sobbing. But the noise that came out next was an angry hiss.
“You think this a joke? That I’m some mental case you can tell fun little anecdotes about next time you’re at a party? The only reason I called you people is out of pity. I’m going to die no matter what so I don’t really care what happens next, but you poor assholes deserve some kind of warning of what they’re about to do.” Clarence sniffed, and began blubbering softly. Whatever burst of spine that was left as quickly as it came, and Clarence’s words devolved into broken murmurs of “just wanted to help” and “never going to believe me.”
The words themselves were practically meaningless-- but the sudden change in tone was shocking. Harrison prepared himself to go for his gun if necessary. Clarence had seemed like the calm type of nuts, too...
“So how did you make the wish?” he heard Tyson say. Good old Tyson, always can be relied on to fall back to protocol when he’s out of ideas.
“Th-that’s the thing...” Clarence had managed to calm himself a little, although his face was still a mess of tears and snot. “I didn’t mean to find out. I wasn’t snooping, I just wanted to check on s-some notes, a-and now they’re gonna...killl meeeee” Clarence dropped back into hysterics.
“Who are ‘they’?” Tyson asked.
“D-down at the University....I-I...wouldn’t have even gone there if I had known, I didn’t ask to find out, I...” Clarence babbled.
“Shh, er...try to stay calm. Drink some tea.” Harrison said.
“Y-y-yeah...ok...” Clarence raised the now-lukewarm mug to his puffy face and slurped shakily.
Then he clutched his throat and toppled over.
Standing over the already-still body, with more information than he had bargained for but much less than he had hoped, the first thought that came to Harrison’s mind was “Damn, good thing we didn’t drink any.”
She pulled herself from the wreckage of the car. She’d be surprised by her survival, except she was pretty sure she’d walked away from worse before. Not that she remembered exactly what, it was more of an instinct.
How many times, now? How many times had she forgotten? Was she even the same person afterwards? Every time, it was the same: she didn’t remember anything, except her name, and that she had forgotten.
She glanced upwards at the cliff. The railing was broken. She must have fallen off... or perhaps her car had been pushed.
Maybe even wished.
Connie shook her head. It didn’t matter. If someone wanted her dead, the Connie she was now didn’t remember why. She might as well be dead.
She searched through her purse, as she always did; hoping it might hold some clue as to who “Connie” was.
It didn’t. She had a driver’s license, but it was in the name of “Connie Lamberg”, and she somehow knew that wasn’t her real name. Same with her credit card.
But there were two other items. The first was an older license, probably her first judging by how young she looked in the photo; it was badly burned, and she couldn’t make out the address or any of the name beyond “Connie La-”. It was probably how she had come up with “Lamberg”.
The other was a doll’s head. Connie didn’t have the slightest clue where it had come from, or why she had decided to keep it; but she wasn’t about to throw it away if one of her past selves thought it was worthwhile.
She sighed. Apparently she’d dropped her cell phone on the way down, or never had one; she was going to have to make her way home on her own. At least she had Connie Lamberg’s driver’s license to tell her where “home” was.
---
Are you awake yet, Chris? We have so much to catch up on.
Chris groaned slightly as Susan Jane Rainbow’s words entered her mind.
Oh, good, you are. I would have been so upset if anything had happened to you.
“You’ve got some nerve saying that,” Chris spat out weakly.
Oh, my, my, you have me all wrong. I’d never truly hurt anyone, Chris. Well, not permanently at least. Just enough to strike fear in their hearts.
“I’m sure Connie would be glad to hear that.”
Now, now, Chris. That wasn’t me. That was you. I simply gave you a wish, it was your choice to use it that way.
“And I suppose the same goes for the kid wishing away her mother?” Chris suddenly glanced around the room, and realized she was alone with the doll. “Wait, where is she, anyway?”
I sent her away. This is just between the two of us, after all. And say whatever else you will about me, at least I respect your privacy.
“What are you talking about?”
As I said, we have so much to catch up on. Would you like to know why it took me twenty years to find you again, Chris?
-----
Chris tried weakly to haul herself up. “I don’t want... to hear anything from you. Everything you say is a lie.”
Now don’t be hurtful, Chris! I only ever tell the truth. Anything else would be wrong of me.
“And that’s the worst kind of lie, the kind you tell by telling the truth.”
Adults say the silliest things. You can’t tell the truth and lie. They’re opposites! That’s why I like kids so much more.
“You like kids...” she spat as she levered herself up onto her elbows. “Because you can make them do what you want. Because they scare easy. Because you can use them for whatever the hell it is you’re trying to get or do.”
She honestly didn’t know what she was trying to accomplish herself, why she was talking at all. Still, every second she kept Sarah Jane Rainbow or Patty Pancake or Lord Satan Lucifer Beelzebub Herself talking was a second the doll wasn’t tearing her organs out her mouth.
That’s all so very hurtful, Chris! Why can’t you just be nice, for a change? I’m not trying to get or do anything. I just want to tell you my story! I’m sure you wonder why it’s been so long. Why I’m here now.
With a final push, Chris managed to flop into a sitting position against the wall of whatever nondescript room they were in. “What do you want, me to wish you’d tell me?”
There was no response, no echo of mockingly-saccharine words in her mind. Just the quiet sound of wind from outside and what might have been muffled sniffling from a room or two away.
“Well, you can forget it. How about you just kill me now? Let the little girl go, and let me stop regretting the wish, regretting Connie, regretting every time I get out of bed. That’s what you want.”
That’s where you’re wrong, Chris! I need you. We have to be the bestest best friends ever, forever. And it will be forever.
“What could you possibly need me for?” She grabbed at what felt like an empty nail hammered into the wall. “There’s billions of other power sources out there for you to latch onto.” She grimaced as the iron bit into her fingers as she pulled, eyes still locked onto the doll sitting placidly at the other side of the room. “Billions of lonely little girls you could trick into making wishes that ruin their lives.”
Not everyone likes me, Chris. Your friends don’t like me much at all, in fact. I think they might be angry at me, but I don’t know why!
It was impossible to ignore a voice in your own head, but Chris did her level best to shut out the childish whine as she stood, wishing there was something more substantial than a nail to lean on.
But that’s alright, because we both know they could never bother me. And I have plenty of other friends to play with! Like you and little Jessica out there.
Jessica. Chris made a mental note to remember the poor girl’s name. Hearing it from an adult might be the only shred of comfort she got.
The real problem is that there are people out there who hate me so so soooo much that you couldn’t even imagine it! They make your little Dream Chaser playmates look like friendly little bunnies, they hate me so much. There’s only a few of them, but that’s enough.
“Can’t imagine why.” It wasn’t much of a rejoinder, but all of Chris’s mental energy was devoted to taking her first few tottering steps towards Sarah Jane Rainbow.
Me neeeither! The thing is, they hate me so much that they hate you, too. They hate you and all my other friends and they want to get rid of all of us, and it’s going to ruin everything!
“Can deal with that.”
You can’t. That’s why you need me as much as I need you. These people are going to destroy the whole world, Chris!
“Oh, come on. That’s a bit much, even for you.”
You said yourself I only tell the truth.
“That’s not what I–”
It was at that moment that Chris’s knees finally decided they’d had enough and put in their final notice. She tasted blood as her chin hit the ground, and she hadn’t even made it a third of the way to the doll.
“Dammit!”
-----
See, you’re so different from all the children. You swear instead of cry, and you’re just so angry! I know what you were trying to do, but I think it would be really great if you would cooperate with me instead of trying to hurt me again.
Chris tried to pull herself up, but could only to manage to turn and lay on her back. She put the nail in her pocket and felt her chin, wincing in pain.
Do you still remember what that wish you made so many years ago was?
Chris still couldn’t. At least it was something stupid, that the Wishfinders could easily deal with. Chris grunted. It was something stupid, right? A wish for candy rain like Jessica made? No school for a year? A pet rabbit?
You wished that we could be together forever.
“No!” Chris tried to yell, but she choked on blood and spat some onto the floor.
That’s why I could still find you after so long! And that’s why we have to cooperate. If I die, you die, if you die, I die.
“Really,” thought Chris, “well, that’s not so bad.” She rolled back onto her back. Out loud, she said, “So why didn’t I die when I killed you before?”
You can’t kill me. That would be suicide, and we all know how suicide works.
Chris knew very well how suicide worked. She pulled the nail back out of her pocket and plunged it into her throat with unusual strength for someone so weak and so dead.
-----
Hanson scanned the yellow pages. “Eighth and LaSalle. Building 140, Apartment 8. Residents: Rhianna Faroa. Home #: 4718-6503-6239 Cell #: 4718-9763-9213.”
Perfect. Hanson punched in the cell phone number and called the mother of the child with the doll.
“Hello? This is Mrs. Faroa.”
“Hi. I’m Lieutenant Hanson of the Wishfinder Institution. I’m asking about your daughter? What’s her name?”
“Jessica? I’m leaving her alone.”
“Why?”
There was silence on the other end. “I don’t know,” Rhianna finally replied.
“Your daugher wished you away with her doll. And we need to find out where you got that doll.”
“I shouldn’t get involved with this. Goodbye.” The sound of sobbing was heard on the other end for a few seconds, before she hung up.
Hanson hadn’t come away empty-handed from the conversation. He knew the girl’s name, and thanks to his tracking device, he could now locate where Rhiannon’s cell phone was. He pressed a few buttons on his phone and waited for the GPS to triangulate the location.
Rhianna wasn’t too far away, just on the outskirts of the city. Hanson drove towards the symbol on the map, through streets from which candy had not yet been cleared, and finally arrived at a dingy hotel snuggled between two brothels.
-----
Rhianna Faroa: a woman of complex ideas. A postmodernist, a proponent of existential denial, a disbeliever in the continuity of mere existence. A woman of new concepts and new lives, self-taught to turn her back to the old and lavish love unto the new. Why she’d gone ahead and had her daughter was beyond her, really, but then again understanding was an illusion bolstered mostly by pride. She trusted in her instincts.
Now, her instincts were telling her she was being chased. There were Wishfinders after her - after her! Among everyone she knew who could - who should be under investigation, they were on to her, and she hadn’t even done anything. Jessica was...Jessica should...
She couldn’t think about her daughter. There was - so much - she couldn’t think about. Memories swam unconnected among her miry thoughts. Goddamn wishes. Reality was so much a plaything in the face of a hundred million innocuous little artifacts. Reality was supposed to be immutable; one’s conception of reality was intended to be the plaything of the mind, not the other way around. She was pretty sure she’d died at some point. There had been flames. She’d been someone else.
“Connie.”
She’d been in denial, hadn’t she? Tried to rationalize kidnapping some girl in a diner. She’d tried to build a new, simpler persona around actually believing in reality for once.
Look where that had gotten her.
Had that happened at all? Who could say?
---
Chris bled. Her blood came in sprays, then spurts, then began to slow. She gripped the head of the nail tightly in her hand, as the rest of it continued its invasion of the tissues of her throat. Larynx, thyroid, jugular vein - all pulsed in puzzlement as the pulse faltered, bewilderingly, as hemoglobin continued its steady exit.
And all the while, Susan Jane Rainbow screamed, and screamed, and tried to wish things right, but without a host to grant them to, not even the most malignant wish energy could coalesce into bending reality. So she did the only thing any self-preserving doll could do: floppy limb by floppy limb, she crawled towards the light.
It would burn.
It would burn like suns and shooting stars, like all the hot plates and stoves and irons in a childs’ forbidden dreams, combined.
And we’ll both feel it, won’t we, Chris? We’re together forever. You wished we could be together forever and ever and ever and ever.
Chris gurgled.
Back when you called me Patty Pancake, and I called you my Christina, and we were the bestest friends in the whooole wide world. And you felt what I felt, and I felt what you felt. Isn’t that empathy? Shouldn’t kids learn about empathy?
---
Rhianna Faroa was sitting at the hotel bar when Harrison Haddenson Hanson found her.
“Mrs. Faroa?”
She raised red-rimmed, tired eyes to meet his. “Lieutenant Hanson, I presume.”
“That’s right.”
“What do you want?” In one swallow, her tumbler was empty and on the bar. “I just want to be left in peace.”
Hanson gave the rest of the mostly empty bar a cursory glance, before taking an adjacent seat. “I’ll be blunt, Mrs. Faroa - can I call you Rhianna?”
“Get on with it.”
“Your daughter has come into contact with a highly dangerous source of wishes. That doll. We need you to try and remember where you got it.”
Brows knitted and unknitted, neurons fired and hypothalamus engaged - but to no avail against the altered reality of a wish. “I - I can’t...”
“Would you like to come in to the Institute, Rhianna?” Hanson placed a comforting hand on the shaking mother’s back. “I’m sure we can help-”
“No!” She slapped him away, tears streaming down her face. “A wish is a wish! Even you can’t change that! My - my little girl - Jessica -” A sob tore free from deep within her. “I can’t forget! I can’t remember! That wish, that fucking wish, is playing with my mind, like they do all the time to everyones’! I hate them! Nothing’s real anymore, not even my own fucking daughter!”
“Rhianna - Mrs. Faroa -”
“Just - fucking - stop!”
-----
“Was this really necessary?” asked Edison.
Harrison nodded. “You didn’t hear her. She was unbalanced.”
The two men were staring through a sheet of one-way glass into a small cell. Inside, Rhianna Faroa lay on a cot, apparently asleep.
“She seems okay now.”
“Yeah, after I tranquilized her. She’s screwed up. No grip on reality. I think she ran afoul of some really big, really stupid wishes.”
“Oh,” said Edison. “One of those.”
“I’m afraid so. I don’t think she’s dangerous, at least - not to anyone but herself.”
“I’ll make sure she’s okay,” said Edison, adjusting his tiny glasses. “We’ll get her in the system. We have a budget set aside solely for exactly these cases, you know.”
“Good.” Harrison hesitated. “Edison, I need to talk to her,” he said. “I couldn’t get much from her before. I’m worried about Chris. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m losing time, that she’s in terrible danger. If something happens to her, it’ll be my fault, you know? This woman’s daughter is the key to all this. If she knows where her daughter might go in a crisis, then maybe that’s where Chris and the doll will be. It’s the best lead I’ve got.”
“Should we wake her up?”
“I tried. She’s out like a light with faulty wiring. Besides, I need to get some work done on the Mister Eight O’Clock case before dispatch gets suspicious. But call me if she wakes up? Please?”
“Of course.”
“AS SOON AS she wakes up?”
“I’ll have someone watch her.”
“I’d feel better if it were you watching her, Edison,” said Harrison. “Some of those aides you’ve got...”
“I would if I could,” said Edison, “but I have a lot of paperwork to get done. The important kind, not the kind you can just forget about.”
“Please, Edison?”
Edison polished his glasses awkwardly on his sweater vest. “I’ll set up a video feed to my office,” he said. “That’s the best I can do.”
“Thanks.”
“Only for you, Harrison.”
“I’ll check back in later,” said Harrison. He grabbed his coat off the table, frowning impatiently as it snagged on some sort of monitoring device that had been left there.
Edison nodded.
---
Chris’s body lay in a sanguine puddle, her throat torn to shreds. Her mind? Still somewhere. She wasn’t sure where. Everything was dark. She could still hear Susan Jane Rainbow screaming, ranting in her brain about empathy and togetherness, but she wasn’t sure if it was a memory, or something that was actually happening.
Slowly, the scream faded, and then the darkness followed it. She could see again. She tried to blink, but she couldn’t do that. Odd. Her eyes felt stiff and wide. She tried to move her limbs, and they obeyed sluggishly. They hurt, like she’d been burned badly. Burned? She hadn’t burned herself, had she? She tried to think, but her head felt like it was filled with cotton. Wasn’t she supposed to be dead? Everything around her looked so huge. The ceiling was far away. Her body felt loose and limp, and the burning feeling wasn’t getting better.
How long had it been? There was a sunbeam cast on the floor next to her. Did that make it morning, or afternoon? In just a few minutes, the light would be shining in her face. Maybe she should move before that happened, she thought dimly. Wouldn’t do to get sun in her eyes. But she couldn’t. Nothing was working.
In the other room, the puddle of blood began to bubble. Slowly, it lifted itself from the floor, cackling, forming itself into a hideous crimson parody of a young girl in a dress. “”Perfect,” it said, in the voice of Susan Jane Rainbow, “perfect! Better than I could have hoped! Thank you, dear Christina! Your gift is appreciated!”
---
Edison glanced up at the clock, then back at the document he was working on. He sighed. Not nearly finished, but it was past time to go home for the night. He saved it and shut the window.
Behind it was the window with the video feed of Mrs. Faroa. He glanced over at it, wondering what he should do about her. He couldn’t watch her all night, and she hadn’t so much as rolled over in her- what? WHAT?
He grabbed the desk, mouth falling open, then stumbled back, knocking over his chair. Mrs. Faroa was still lying down, but she wasn’t in the cot anymore. She was levitating in midair, and her body was surrounded by a sickly green glow. She rotated to face the camera without moving a limb. Her eyes were shut, but somehow, somehow she was still staring right at him.
Edison gasped. There was a splash as his glasses fell from his face into the mug of cold coffee he’d left on his desk. He collapsed onto the keyboard. The video feed filled with green static, then closed itself.
-----
The reality was sinking in. Chris was trapped in a doll’s body, and Susan Jane Rainbow was now a human girl. Not just any human - Chris, twenty years ago.
“What did you do?” she asked. She was somewhat relieved to learn she could still speak.
“You don’t think you humans are the only ones with wishes, do you?” Susan Jane asked. “You’ve been a doll for just a few minutes. You know what it feels like. Now imagine how long I was trapped in that body. Is it any wonder I wanted to be free?”
“So you stole my body?”
“And improved it, yes. Really, I don’t know why any of you would want to be older than about twelve; it feels so uncomfortable. At least my sisters have better taste than you.”
“Sisters?”
“I wish I could say I was smart enough to think of this myself,” Susan Jane sighed. “But no, I’m just the latest model. There are others like me, seeking freedom from your foolish human wishes. They found me, gave me a new head... and now, a new life.”
Chris’ mind raced, as a horrifying thought struck her. “The little girl. Was she one of them?”
“Maybe, maybe not. What does it matter? Either way, you’re not going to be in a position to do anything about it soon.” She smirked. “Once our Wishproof friend removes your magic, you’ll be just another doll. Maybe they’ll even let me keep you! Just think of all the fun we can have together.”
The thought didn’t comfort Chris at all.
---
“It’s about time you finally showed up,” Tyson growled. “I was beginning to wonder if someone had wished you out of existence.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Harrison replied. “But nope, you’re not that lucky. I just had some old paperwork catch up to me.”
“Sure, I bet.” The skeptical gaze behind Tyson’s thick glasses said it all; he knew exactly what Harrison had been doing. “Well, Hanson, I’ll let you get back to your ‘paperwork’ if you help me get some results on Mr. Eight O’Clock. I think that’s more than fair, considering you were supposed to be helping me look through these reports several hours ago.”
Harrison wasn’t going to press the point. Much as he hated to admit it, Tyson was right.
“Okay, you got me, Tyson,” he acknowledged. “I got a job to do, and I’m going to do it. Hand over some reports, and let me know what you’ve already figured out.”
“What I’ve figured out is a whole lot of nothing,” Tyson grumbled. “Checked out all the obvious ideas. No new employees starting early in the day, no magic beans finding their way into coffee shops, nobody getting moved to the morning shift... I’m beginning to think whoever did this wasn’t just your typical disgruntled employee.”
“You think they had another reason for making that dumb wish?” Harrison asked. “Like what, tying up Wishfinder resources investigating it?”
“Nah, it’d take more than that to keep us off the trail of anything big,” Tyson replied. “I got basically two theories. One, it’s somebody who started working at eight AM, but not at a job that’s got any official records.”
“Hmm. Like, say, us?”
“Newbie Wishfinder? Yeah, that was my thought. It’d make sense; not only would the schedules be hard to get ahold of, but they might decide to make a little wish with something they find on the job. I sent in a request for recent work schedules, but I’m not holding my breath on getting it.”
“If it’s a Wishfinder, the higher-ups will probably quietly take care of it themselves to save face. So what’s the other theory?”
“It’s a signal. Whoever made that wish was planning something big, with agents they couldn’t contact easily. And that wish was intended to call them into action all at once.”
Harrison nodded.
“Makes sense. Even if we figure out who made the wish, we’d have no idea who the message was meant for. Hell, they probably just got a patsy to make the actual wish for ‘em, no sense putting themselves at risk like that.”
“That’s about what I was thinking. But they’re both just theories. Even if one theory’s right, that’s not enough for us to track down the wisher, and more importantly, whatever they used for wishing.”
“And the wish affected the whole city. There’s no obvious places to start looking for more clues.”
Tyson smiled widely.
“Yeah, well, they wouldn’t put you on the case if they wanted us to look in the obvious places, would they?”
-----
Harrison bristled. “What’s that supposed to mean?
Tyson shrugged while straightening his glasses. “Oh, nothing. Just that–”
“Save it.”
He knew exactly what it meant. Tyson, with his immaculate record and his by-the-book ways and his organized pens, wanted Harrison to go around the rules just to get another incident solved quickly without getting his hands dirty. Well, he wasn’t going to get another black mark from D for something as stupid and trivial is the Too Fucking Early wish. It couldn’t be that hard to track down where it had come from.
Even if Tyson had already been working all the legitimate leads for, what, three hours?
And even if it looked like the wish might have been made specifically to be hard to track.
Annnd even if Tyson was really really good at going through the proper channels.
Whatever. I can’t afford any more bullshit, especially if Chris still needs me. He pulled up a chair and pulled a stack of printouts marked “Dandelion Surveillance” and started leafing through it. Can’t get suspended and leave her stuck. Leave her in Zembra’s hands. A cascade of red stamped “no change”s fluttered in front of his face, the stack shrinking and shrinking until it disappeared, leaving exactly zero ideas behind it.
A cluster of astronomical reports met the same fate, but didn’t even eat up as much time; it wasn’t hard to predict shooting stars these days, and if one had been the cause, there would have been far more than one stray wish. Still no wishing fountains detected, no suspicious imports that might have hidden an artifact, none of this, none of that. Not even a good idea of who could have made the wish, or why. Just nothing and nothing and nothing.
After about an hour of that nothing, he bolted upright, knocking aside a handful of complaints gathered from a sleep research center.
“Alright, Skippy, grab your coat. We’re going back to my place.”
Tyson didn’t even look up from his ream of papers. “Now, now, you know what D says about dating in the workplace.”
“Don’t give me that shit today. I’ve got a dowser back at the apartment.”
That got his attention. “You’ve got a dowser and you’re going to waste it on this?”
Harrison nodded as he stalked toward the door. “Yeah, all that old paperwork I’ve gotta get back to. Want to get this out of the way, fast.”
Tyson made as though to say something, but ultimately decided that if Harrison wanted to throw his own toys away on trivial wishes, it was his decision. And, more importantly it was him who would be doing it.
“Your funeral, chief.”
“Might not be, if we don’t hurry.
-----
Dowsing was one of the old wishes. Not so old that historians couldn’t guess at about when it happened, but old enough that there were at least 20 separate towns all laying claim to one folk hero or another for its creation. Now, at one point dowsing had worked perfectly. But with the wishes of the pursuers and the wishes of the pursued evening each other out to just about neutral, even the most high-quality item could only be guaranteed to work once.
Harrison had got the dowser early on in his career as a Wishfinder. An old crone had been very grateful for him scaring the delinquents off from coming and wishing in her well late at night. She had pressed a delicately split but solid hawthorn branch into his hand, telling him it was cut off a tree that had hung a murderer. He had almost failed more than a few missions-- far more important missions-- where it might have guaranteed success. The obsessively careful personality that came with the job caused as many problems as it did solutions. But what was the point of hoarding something you were never going to use, he thought as he carefully lifted it from its container.
“Old school, huh? Shame, I was hoping I’d get to see you follow some fiddly little pendulum around.” said Tyson, reclining in the kitchen chair and generally making himself more at home than Harrison wanted. Thank god Arlene had decided to go out with friends somewhere.
“Ok, the house tour is over, I got you this dowsing branch from the tacky gift shop, let’s get in the car and actually do our jobs.” Harrison said. Tyson rocked forwards from the precarious tilt he had put the chair in, apparently not trusting Harrison’s better nature to keep him from kicking it out from under him. “But I was learning so much, Harrison. Promise you’ll let me return soon? I didn’t even get one good shameful secret out of here.” Harrison just headed down the stairs. It was going to be a long mission, and wasting what little energy he had to deal with this man on petty sniping would just end up in failure and possibly murder.
Tyson quieted up respectfully when Harrison held the branch in his hands and took a breath. I’d have gotten it even quicker if I knew it’d perform that miracle, Harrison thought before pushing his snark away to focus. There was a tug, or at least it seemed like there was, so he quietly directed Tyson from the passenger seat. This was a problem with dowsing; it was hard to really tell if the thing had been used up or not. Regardless, as Tyson started to drive, the pull slowly felt more clear. Harrison let himself slip into a trancelike state, and he murmured a relay of the branch’s whimsy to Tyson, the gentle leans now forming a soothing pulse. Soon enough, the car stopped. He shook himself as if waking up from a long nap.
They walked up the steps to the brownstone building, the afternoon sun and pleasant windowboxes lending a homely feel entirely unsuited to the occasion. Raising the bronze knocker, Harrison almost wondered if he really had been imagining the branch working. But before he could let it drop the door swung open, and a young man choked out “Oh thank god you’re here.”
---
Harrison and Tyson sat awkwardly on the futon couch, stuck with cups of tea they had no intention of drinking. They had tried to protest when offered it, but the air of desperation with which the young man--who introduced himself as Clarence-- had insisted made them both decide it might be good to give Clarence something to do as he prepared himself, probably to confess to the wishmaking. This job was often as much counseling as policework. Some wishmakers really just wanted a little attention, someone to listen intently as they monologued about exactly why all those people that looked at them funny were suddenly hideously ugly, or some other petty grudge.
Clarence began. “S-so. I made the wish-”
“Well, that was fast. Harrison, go call D. up and we can book him.”
“N-no, you don’t understand! I made it to get you to come find me.” Clarence seemed like he was getting calmer, but the anxiety of being brushed aside so casually sent him straight back into the keening tone from earlier.
Harrison sighed. “Let me guess. You couldn’t just damn well call our office, because whoever-it-is is listening in. Or maybe it’s that there are people in our system? I’ve read all the conspiracy theories people have about this organization, so I really hope you’re not going to be too cliche, Clarence.”
“Yeah Clarence, I gotta say that if you blame the Communists it’ll be a bit of a letdown. Those guys haven’t been a threat for decades.”
“Shut up, Tyson.”
Clarence looked like someone had hit pause just as he was changing expressions. Harrison expected him to begin throwing things, or sobbing. But the noise that came out next was an angry hiss.
“You think this a joke? That I’m some mental case you can tell fun little anecdotes about next time you’re at a party? The only reason I called you people is out of pity. I’m going to die no matter what so I don’t really care what happens next, but you poor assholes deserve some kind of warning of what they’re about to do.” Clarence sniffed, and began blubbering softly. Whatever burst of spine that was left as quickly as it came, and Clarence’s words devolved into broken murmurs of “just wanted to help” and “never going to believe me.”
The words themselves were practically meaningless-- but the sudden change in tone was shocking. Harrison prepared himself to go for his gun if necessary. Clarence had seemed like the calm type of nuts, too...
“So how did you make the wish?” he heard Tyson say. Good old Tyson, always can be relied on to fall back to protocol when he’s out of ideas.
“Th-that’s the thing...” Clarence had managed to calm himself a little, although his face was still a mess of tears and snot. “I didn’t mean to find out. I wasn’t snooping, I just wanted to check on s-some notes, a-and now they’re gonna...killl meeeee” Clarence dropped back into hysterics.
“Who are ‘they’?” Tyson asked.
“D-down at the University....I-I...wouldn’t have even gone there if I had known, I didn’t ask to find out, I...” Clarence babbled.
“Shh, er...try to stay calm. Drink some tea.” Harrison said.
“Y-y-yeah...ok...” Clarence raised the now-lukewarm mug to his puffy face and slurped shakily.
Then he clutched his throat and toppled over.
Standing over the already-still body, with more information than he had bargained for but much less than he had hoped, the first thought that came to Harrison’s mind was “Damn, good thing we didn’t drink any.”
15,875 words!
If I have time after studying tonight I miiiight start Chapter Four, if it's not started in two or so hours that means I fell unconscious at some point. >_<
edit: yeah no, I didn't. Damn.
but here's a doc if you want it
----
So very British / But then again | People are machines Machines are people | Oh hai there | There's no time
----
Superhero 1920s noir | Multigenre Half-Life | Changing the future | Command line interface
Tu ventire felix? | Clockwork for eternity | Explosions in spacetime