#I want to draw Wally with the Magic Man hat!

[catliker49]

They're going on a stroll!

Here is two backgrounds!! I could not decide which one to use! The outfits were very fun to draw :o)

I just finished watching Adventure Time, Wally and Barnaby remind me of Finn and Jake haha!

[mandareeboo]

Unfinished Work #28: “Unnamed”

It’s a shame I never finished this one tbh! It was gonna have action, it was gonna have Anne being a snail girl, it was gonna have Wartwood resuing her from being a moron, it was gonna have her trying to protect Wartwood, etc. Maybe one day I’ll get back on it!

Title: None

Summary: Anne bites off more than she can chew when a familiar face comes around Wartwood.

________________________________________________________________

"I dunno," Maddie drawled. "I'm still getting some serious dark magic vibes."

"Banana bread isn't dark magic, dude," said Anne, who was drawing a loaf of bread in the dirt, lopsided sticks that could, generously, be labeled as bananas sticking out. "It's super delish, and a way to merge the Plantar stand with the Flour bakery for the ultimate profit."

Polly leaned her bulbous head over the edge of the stand to examine the scribble. "Looks pointy. Can I weaponize it?"

"Anything is a weapon if you're not a coward," the Flour girl replied.

"Sounds like yer not workin' them hard enough, Hopidiah," Mrs. Croaker said from the front of the stand, handing the old frog a copper coin for her basket of vegetables. "If'n yew ever need to get 'em outta yer hair, yew can always send 'em o'er to my ranch."

Hop Pop tipped an imaginary hat. "Much obliged, Sadie. I'll give 'er some thought."

"Sounds like you're getting sold off."

"Eh." Polly shrugged. "Wouldn't be the first time."

A flash of movement caught Anne's eye. The human was sitting at such an angle in the dirt that she could see Stumpy's Diner across the way- a vantage point she enjoyed, typically, were it not for the familiar red-brown skin that caught her eye as the door swung shut.

She stood up. "I'll be right back. Gotta take a leak."

"Remember- leaves of three!" Hop Pop called after her.

Anne pushed her way through the restaurant door, only to be met with total silence. Stumpy's was as busy as ever, smelling vividly of home, but every frog sat, frozen, as they stared at the toad sitting at the bar, swirling a wooden mug of gloppy dew water. Stumpy motioned slowly for her to get closer, handing her a small knife. She nodded.

"Here, love," Wally whispered, handing her his mug. Dew water didn't have any affect on her, but Anne took a swig to be polite before stalking over. Her heart hammered in her chest.

"Bog," she said.

"Anne," Bog said. "You're looking as freakish as ever."

"Where's Mire and Fens?" Anne demanded. "Or were they smart enough to stay out of Wartwood?"

The toad captain huffed out a laugh. "Can't a guy enjoy a drink in peace?"

"Depends. You gonna pay?"

Bog snorted.

Anne palmed the knife. It wasn't anything special- it reeked of onions and cheap dish soap- but it could cause some damage if she put her mind to it. "Look, Bog. I've got some copper saved up. I'll pay for you- you just gotta leave when you're done. We gotta deal?"

"I'm almost touched. But a little copper ain't gonna pay fer a new tower." Bog slapped the table with a clawed hand and stood. "Someone in this frog god forsaken town owes the toads for a sewers-full of boom shrooms. I'm here to collect. Simple as that."

Wally audibly swallowed.

Anne made a split-second decision and responded, "I ain't got that kind of pay, old man."

"Then yer gonna pay in labor. You're getting drafted, Anne."

"I'm not leaving Wartwood, and I'm certainly not joining you."

Bog's typical smirk fell into a scowl. "You think I want you around, Anne? You think I want you mucking up a perfectly good toad battalion with your spindly limbs and inability to dodge a mace? But orders are orders, and they're comin' straight from the top." He held out his hand. "C'mon, kid. We'll even let you pick out a nickname. Scarecrow or somethin'."

Anne grabbed the front of his armor and yanked him close, knife trained to his neck. "You tried to kill my family."

"Family," he sneered, twisting his head slightly to hock up a loogie. "Lemme put it to you like this, then. You come help us, or this 'family' of yours'll be excavating the damn tower brick by brick."

She shoved him onto his seat. Hard. Anne stood over Bog with nostrils flaring. "Look here, you creep. You can call me whatever you want. You can make me pay your tab. But I draw the line at messin' with my fam." She took the mug and slugged it down, chucking it at his head. "If you're a toad, you'll meet me on the edge of the stream tonight and fight me. I win, no money or frog power. You win... I come with."

Bog saluted, and Anne got the distinct feeling that the toad had won this argument. "See you then, scarecrow. And try to find a better weapon than that toothpick." He hopped off his stool and strode to the door, glancing back behind him. "Oh, and that's your drink now."

Anne stared after the toad. She hated that she was shaking. Hated that she felt sick. Hated that she was so easily riled up.

A gentle blue hand touched her wrist, taking her mind off Bog and his threats. Wally blinked tearfully up at her. "Thank you, Anne. You... didn't have ta' do that."

Anne handed the knife back to Stumpy. "S'no biggie, Walls. You know I hate people who push other people around."

________________________________________________________________

Anne has a lot of memories from home in the basement. Her bookbag, her multitude of outfits, her phone- which, in the rare times it wasn't on her, was tucked carefully away in an old drawer. The mattress had been through hell in a handbasket by now- floods, the weight of multiple frogs jumping on it, a couple droplets of blood from errant scrapes and other boo-boos- but the blanket was brown and fuzzy and entirely hers by now, littered with stickers and human hair. She also had a set or armor and a couple of swords laying around. They're a new reminder of a new home, and all she's done to defend it. Even as she straps in, Anne doesn't feel alien. She feels strong. She feels like she's going to go whack some toad butt. And if her hands shook taking up the sword, it was only because metal was heavy.

Anne carefully heaved herself out of the basement via the side doors, not wanting to risk waking a Plantar by going through the front. She closed the doors; then, for good measure, she stuck a chunk of wood through the handles. It never hurt to lock up.

"Be back soon, guys," she promised.

She made it about halfway across the yard when a familiar chirping noise caught her attention. Anne smiled in spite of her mild nerves as she came up on the stables, patting Bessie's head. "Heya, girl. Come to wish me off?"

[halfusek]

Hello, question concerning your Amazon Abomination comic Verse: What do you would have happened, if Henry stayed? I don't think it would've changes mich in the whole creating live thing and Joeys growing Obsession with it, but what would've happened to Henry?

Lemme clear something up - Abomination is nothing else but an interpretation of what in my opinion has happened in the studio. In the beginning, I wanted to make it a thing focusing on Joey and Bendy only but then I started getting more and more ideas which made me figure out a way to tell the whole story (in the way I see it at least).

At first I wanted to shortly answer “there would be no Abomination lol” but then I gave it some thinking and… get ready for an essay:

What would happen if Henry didn’t leave the studio?

I believe we have an answer for this concerning just Henry himself in the game.And it’s not a pleasant one.

“Local Artist Pushed Himself Too Hard, Found Dead At Desk”. I mean that’s basically what staying would mean for Henry - pushing harder.

I don’t think this newspaper is telling us what happened to Henry Stein, I got that impression the moment I saw the headline, but after a while, I realised it doesn’t really… make sense.

The whole point of Joey and Henry choosing two different roads is that Joey held onto working and creating while Henry chose family over work. (Even though Henry showed some signs of workaholism, I think Linda could be the one helping him choose what’s right and better for him - I mean why even mention and focus on her at any moment if she wasn’t important in any way?)Does that make sense? Make this whole “Henry chose the right path and didn’t push himself too hard” just to say that he pushed himself too hard in the end? Yeah, no, I’m not buying that. I mean it could be true but not really satisfying to me.

So I think it’s just a “what if”. What if he stayed.He would overwork himself.And since he would choose work over family then maybe he would lose Linda in the process, maybe not but either way their relationship wouldn’t be doing well.

Now let’s do a small comparison.

To me, Henry seems like a sorta passive person, especially with his “just keep drawing”. Don’t question anything, just keep doing what you do.On the other hand, we have Joey who is like “just do whatever it is you do and trust me as your leader”.

This is… a really bad mix.Even worse when you take into consideration that they are friends. And you are willing to push yourself harder for someone like that. For a friend.

Since we already are going kind of against Henry’s character by assuming he wouldn’t leave, we might as well assume he wouldn’t really change the way he’s working. He would keep pushing, just as Joey wants him to and as an old man thinks would magically fix everything but… no, I honestly doubt that.

I don’t think studio’s successes/failures depended on Henry either, he was one amazing animator, we can surely give him that (it took a few people to replace him), but Joey still managed to (temporarily) succeed without him.

I honestly doubt the debt the studio was later in could be easily fixed by one person. Maybe Joey would listen to Henry more than other people (like Grant, his goddamn accountant), but the thing is that at some point they were successful and well things often rely on luck, economy and stuff like that, so many ideas could have seemed fine until things weren’t really fine. I mean Great Depression made some people really rich and some really poor, it was really tricky to make financial decisions.Plus - Henry is passive. He just keeps drawing.Joey believes Henry would push him to do the right thing, maybe he would try but then again - Henry ends up overworking himself, so in the end, it’s almost as if he just left.Can’t really push if you’re dead.

So we actually end up with a similar set up to what we have in the original story.

The only exception is that we could have a 6th labelled coffin. With Henry’s name on it. So it could somehow go even more unpleasant from now. How? Oh, it’s pretty simple:

…kind of. As Henry would die from overworking himself and wouldn’t be actually… killed. But still, there is something which I think is worth noting.

It seems to me as if the inkwell is associated with Henry. I mean if any of the items was associated with him, it would be this one and no one from the workers doesn’t really fit (except for Joey, but “The Illusion of Living” fits him waaay better for obvious reasons). Also, let’s assume here that the items are connected to actual workers because they could just represent something else, but in this interpretation, I take them this way. I think I should elaborate a bit on how I see it works, which I actually did include in Abomination:

I did some math. And I don’t like it.

We have 14 characters: Joey, Henry, Wally. Thomas, Sammy, Norman, Jack, Johnny, Susie, Allison, Shawn, Grant, Lacie, Bertrum.(I’m going to aggressively count Johnny even if it’s not his name because the organ moans in pain and there has got to be someone in it and I like things making sense in the game, even if it’s just a reference to something else.)

6.

12 (next to Norman’s and Grant’s there is an unlabeled coffin).

Another unlabeled one in that hallway after you exit Allison’s and Tom’s safehouse. So 13…

14.

Now, I’m not counting this one:

As it’s not a physical coffin, only a drawn one. It’s another symbol of death and death is connected to Henry a lot.

(The last one could be just referring to the ink as in the Ink Machine or to the inkwell, or maybe even to both, who knows.)

But the best/worst is:

The actual offering has a skull and crossed bones on it.Ink = death.Scythe being a “reward” for not dying a single time and killing everyone on your way. And activating all the flashbacks which help Henry realise he’s in a cartoonish loop. By entering the death tunnel on purpose. When Henry is most lucid.“You bring death”.And, heck, even him playing “The End” and setting everyone free (by playing “The End” and in some ways killing everyone in the studio) is something death-connected.

Whatever the symbolism is, let’s go with the inkwell being an offering connected to Henry’s soul.

Also, let’s go back to the number 14.

Workers with coffins: Norman, Grant, Bertrum, Lacie, Susie.

Workers with offerings: Henry (inkwell), Joey (book), Shawn (doll), Sammy (record), Thomas (gear), Wally (wrench).

Workers without labelled coffins nor offerings: Allison, Jack, Johnny.

Unlabeled coffins: 3.

What made me start thinking deeper about this is the fact that none of the workers has both a coffin and an offering.Also an interesting thing with how… corpses in the game act:

workers with coffins: Norman/The Projectionist, Susie/Alice - corpses don’t disappear (hard to tell what’s with Grant and Lacie as we can’t be sure of their fates and Bertrum is an octopus ride but his head doesn’t seem to go anywhere)

workers with offerings: Joey/The Ink Demon, Sammy/The Prophet, Wally/Boris - corpses sort of disintegrate/vanish? (except for Sammy in the searcher form but yeah he is a searcher which work differently, again we don’t know Shawn’s fate and Thomas/Tom didn’t die in-game)

the rest: Allison doesn’t die in-game, neither does Johnny (lmao imagine killing the organ) but Jack is crushed by a box and we can’t really tell what happens to his body but… his hat stays

other deaths: Searchers - they go back to the puddles, same with the Swollen Ones and the Lost Ones buuuuuuuuuuut!

the Butcher Gang - corpses don’t vanish but sort of? collapse? which is confusing (in a way Grant, Shawn and Lacie’s fates are so they aren’t necessarily crossed out of being at least some of the Butcher Gang members)

So the thing I think is that while not everyone was sacrificed, Joey still has some control over their souls. Or, if you please

owns.

And let me tell ya seeing as older, slightly more rationally thinking Joey still was playing with Henry’s soul making him go in an endless loop, leaves me with zero doubt that he would play with it 30 years earlier.I mean the inkwell has always been included in the packet. ;)And definitely Henry’s death would impact Joey, but I’m afraid…

…nothing good would come out of it.

[bluboothalassophile]

Oh man JayRae and 🌾 I NEED that sweet lil hayride FLUFF

Hello,

I can totally do that, though I don’t know how fluffy this is by your standards.

The King of Fuck Ups & the Queen of Hell…

“And we’re here, why?” Raven asked, focusing on her corn on astick.

“Cause this is what Bats dragged us off to do,” Jason grumbled.She slammed her elbow in his stomach which had him glaring at her. Innocentlyshe took another bite of her corn.

“Cause it’s fun,” Tim answered.

“Well, that’s not what I mean, I get why you’re here,” sheanswered. “I mean why am I here? I’m not family.”

“Cause, this is fun, and you’re honorary family. Cass and Stephanieinvited you,” Tim reminded her.

“Yes, and I just got back from Wally and Artemis’ wedding. Ihave school.”

“Live a little.”

“And If I Have To Be Here, You Do Too.” Jason growledmenacingly which had her frowning as she looked up at him.

“I don’t scare, I’m a demon, not a weak little girl,” Raven growledback.

“Little bird, I am not going to hell alone.”

“I’m the Queen, do honestly think you can keep me trapped inhell?” Raven demanded.

“Yes. Yes I Can.”

“Oh, hayride! Let’s go!” Raven decided smugly grabbing his armas she dragged Jason after her. There was no way she was going to pass up the opportunityto make his life miserable after all the crap she had endure because of hisscrewy family.

“No.”

“Jason. Peter. Todd. You. Owe. Me.” Raven growled at him asshe saw eyes landing on them, Jason hid a bit more under his Gotham Knight hat.

“I hate you.”

“You adore me, so come along minion,” she countered as shedragged him along.

“Advisor,” he disgruntledly corrected as he caught her waistand picked her up onto the hay ride before she grabbed his hand so he followed.

“You wish.”

“I’m warning you, just cause you’re the queen does not meanyou get to demote me at whim.”

“Fine, you can remain an advisor,” Raven sighed as she sat almoston Jason’s lap; there was no room with the other people here. Jason just sighedand she squeaked when she was tugged down onto his lap, his arms looping aroundher waist as his chin rested on her head.

“You’re a pain in the ass little bird,” he muttered.

“This from you?” she sputtered. His amusement was rollingoff him in waves, she could almost see his shit face grin and she kind ofwanted to punch him for that grin; though she couldn’t see it.

“Hey, how was New Mexico?” he asked.

“It was… good,” she sighed just leaning on him now. “Reallygood. Unnervingly good. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.”

“It was good, sunshine,” he pointed out.

“True, but I mean, given my history, good stuff never stayslong.”

“Look at you brother and moms,” he countered.

“All of them picked me. They had a choice, Alice and thefamily, they’re related to me whether they like that or not, and as they saw, I’m…I…” she sighed.

“You’re a Queen Rae,” he reminded her.

“Queen of Hell,” she snorted.

“Semantics,” he dismissed. “And after all the pushing you doon me about my family I’ll push this to annoy you.”

“You would,” she sighed.

“So do you like them?”

“I don’t think like is the operative word, Jay.”

“Then what is?”

“I think I’m… fascinated by them. They were… Alice isnothing like my mother, and yet there’s this fire in her that’s so much likewhat my mother had,” Raven admitted. “She also reminds me of my mother,” shewhispered.

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“I know. But… being around me, Mary’s… magic manifested,”she said in a hushed tone.

“Roy said something like that, said there was a school in Louisianashe was offered to go to too.”

“I know, but… Jay, magic like that, it wasn’t… it wasdormant, she was normal, she was free, and then she hangs around me and… nowshe’s not…” she managed awkwardly not wanting to draw attention to themselves.

“You can’t blame yourself for magic, little bird. You’repractically walking magic,” he said smugly.

“That’s not the point Jason, she was normal. She was a normalthirteen year old girl, who didn’t have to deal with that sort of responsibilitynor did she have to have the crushing weight of the truth shoved on hershoulders about my magic. I destroyed her innocence,” Raven murmured.

“I doubt that. Look, I don’t know much about thesupernatural or the magic of the world Rae, but you, you are magic, and you don’truin things by being magic,” he said and she looked up at her best friend now. “Takeit from the King of Fuck Ups, you’re in the clear Queen.”

“And now I remember how charming you are when you’reschmoozing it on.”

“I’m schmoozing nothing, little bird!” he squawked.

“You know, I still think you’re the best friend I’ve everhad.”

“So you forgive me for stealing your book and mind and I’moff the shit list to live my life in peace as a Tibetan Buddhist Monk?”

“Not a chance.”

“Fuck, it was worth a shot.”

“Thanks Jay.”

“For what?”

“For being my best friend.”

“I don’t do chick flick moments, but right back at you, andwe are never letting the demon brat find out about this or he’ll think up more decrepitthings than the mistletoe and KissCam,” Jason sighed.

“We gotta figure out how to get him to stop that,” Raven admitted.

“Until the little gremlin actually gets pervy we can leavehim to his decrepit fantasies.”

“They’re getting annoying.”

“True, but we’re cool so why worry about the demon spawn?”

“I’d be insulted, but I know what you mean.”

“Besides, it’s not like we’re ever going to be more thanbest friends, so he won’t succeed.”

“True, he’s still an annoying little gremlin.”

“Ah-ha! So you admit he’s a gremlin!”

“I’ve never denied it.”

“Then what the hell are the rest of us!?”

“Dick’s an angel, Tim’s a vampire, Damian’s a gremlin, Terry’sa werewolf, Cass is a fairy, Stephanie is an agent of Chaos, Helena is ananimagus, Mar’i’s a sprite, and Duke’s obvious some sort of wizard.”

“What the hell am I!?”

“I thought it was obvious you were a Zombie.”

“Bloody demon, I’d feast on your brains first!”

“It’s only embarrassing that you’re a zombie and you havenever thought your family’s brains are appealing.”

“They don’t have brains. It requires an iota of commonsense, they obviously have none.”

“Well, as the Queen I ‘d advise you to look else where foryour brain fetish.”

“It’s a feast. And why!? You’re be so tasty with how smartyou are!” he whined.

“They’re safely tucked away, in a different book.”

“The travesty of that.”

“But you see, they’re safe, you’d never harm a book!” shemocked the challenge.

“Well, if I ate your brains, I’d be stuck with nitwitsanyway, and that’s a travesty I cannot handle little bird. All my stimulatingcompany narrows to just Alfred, and he’s a god, but busy.”

“And this is why I’m the Queen.”

“The Black Queen on the chess board.”

“I could be the White Queen!”

“Love, you are neither blonde enough, nor are you sluttyenough to be the White Queen.”

“Are you mocking me?”

“No. Merely stating facts, and hey, look, a scarecrow. Can Imail that to Arkham?”

“And you wonder why people have issues with Gotham.”

“I’ve never wondered!”

“Uh-huh. At least my Mets don’t suck balls like the GothamKnights.”

“You’re fitting dirty demon, don’t start something we can’tfinish.”

“Test me, human.”

[redditnosleep]

I’m Listening

by Cymoril_Melnibone 

“A good listener” was the most enduring phrase on my school report cards. I was quiet, punctual and obedient. Many of the teachers largely forgot about my presence in the classroom, since I caused no trouble. It’s ironic, that this recurring summation of my character missed something. Certainly I was a good listener, but only because that allowed me to be a much better observer; specifically of other people, and mostly without them even noticing. If anyone had bothered to ask, I could have listed every habit of Kari Pearson, the girl who sat two desks away, or provided a comprehensive psychological profile of my teacher, Mrs Rawlins – although that would have been very much from a child’s perspective. After I left highschool, I started studying to become a psychologist. I must confess, my choice of study was an exercise in academic curiosity right from the start, rather than being born of any great desire to help people. You can’t observe humankind as keenly as I already had without realising how nasty and self-absorbed most of us are. I wasn’t sure that any amount of analysis was going to solve that problem. But as I honed my skills of observation to a wicked edge, I noticed him.

If you’ve ever tried not to be noticed, you’ll know how difficult it is. You try to quiet your breathing, stop fidgeting, and keep your eyes down, so that nobody around you has that prickly feeling of being watched. But where most people go wrong is by trying to hide, rather than simply staying unnoticed – and these are very different things. Hiding is active, not passive, and best done behind or beneath something, where only sound or movement will really give you away. The key to not being noticed is to be so ordinary that other people’s minds skip right over you. I describe my jacket as not quite grey. Perhaps it’s faintly brown, or perhaps it’s vaguely blue; in different lights, it seems to shift, to reflect the surroundings. The cut is somewhere between blazer and business, but truly neither. With it goes a blouse that is a lighter grey, with a hint of cream – but not pale enough to draw the eye. My knee-length skirt is the same colour as the jacket, and my shoes are flat and serviceable. This nondescript ensemble, combined with shoulder-length brown hair, glasses with gunmetal frames and a naturally forgettable face, allowed me to feel that I had mastered the art of blending in. I bought coffee every day at the same café, and the barista always asked for my name. My doctor had to remind himself who I was whenever I visited, flipping through my short file. Other students barely registered my presence, and I didn’t have any friends – but that suited me fine. I knew everything about my peers already, picking up the nuances of their personalities when they thought they were unobserved. And that left me with little desire to become closer to any of them. In an odd way, I felt I was more connected to humanity than anyone else around me, almost overloaded with the sheer amount of social and emotional information that saturated the air. I wondered sometimes if this was how a telepath would feel – except instead of social cues, it would be direct thoughts, constantly bombarding you, with no ability to shut them out. Indeed, if I observed someone long enough, I could even begin to predict their behaviour, even their speech patterns to a point where I could mouth their responses to myself, with enough accuracy that it would probably scare people. So I kept that to myself. Sometimes I sought out more isolated places, but there are few of those within the churn of an overcrowded city. Mostly I found solace in my invisibility.

As I said, not being noticed is an artform of carefully curated banality, of doing things so predictably ordinary that other people simply don’t register you. People are bad at remaining unobserved because at the most primitive level they want to be noticed. The ego, whether large or small, needs attention from fellow primates – it’s so instinctive that you’re not even aware of it. You want to make a mark on the world. You want to leave it changed for everyone else, simply because you exist. Our monkey brains are constantly screaming ‘I was here’ into the void. When you sit in a café, nursing your chai-spiced-whatever or your double-cream something, you hope that you’re drinking it in a way that makes you look cool to the redhead near the counter. You chose that particular beverage only because you think it’s a little bit unique. And that might make you special somehow; maybe just a little bit better than the other people around you. Your shoes are red – you’ve forgotten you’re wearing them – but you didn’t choose them because they are comfortable or durable. You chose them because you think they look good, that they make a statement, they complement and/or enhance some other feature or item of clothing. I digress, but my point is this: everyone wants to be noticed a little bit. Everyone wants to be remembered. So when I noticed the man, it was during one of those very rare moments when his absorbed humanity betrayed him. It must have only been for an instant, and not really long enough to register anywhere but in my subconscious. I left the café, still processing everything I had seen, mentally making notes as I always did. When I got home I liked to catalogue things digitally, to type up my thoughts about people, to assist me in my analysis of humankind. My fingers faltered on the keyboard as I almost remembered something, then instantly lost the thread. Reading back, I followed the chain, then my mind stumbled for an instant, as though there was a tiny gap in the train of thought – like a half-remembered smell or colour from childhood. Concentrating, I forced a more detailed replay; remembering the chatter as I observed the café – two teenage boys talking excitedly about a computer game, one clearly lying about his exploits, the other doubting him but not wanting to challenge his friend, and then… In my mind’s eye, I saw it. It was the silhouette of a man, sitting at one of the tables, but colourless and two dimensional. He wore a hat and a suit jacket, but I could discern no other details. A flat man, so non-existent, so unnoticeable that even my carefully trained senses couldn’t register him completely. A frisson of excitement tinged with fear thrilled up my spine. I had to find out who he was. What he was.

I watched and I waited, surreptitiously scanning the café while remaining as banal and uninteresting as I could. I went back day after day, hoping to see him again, to catch a glimpse of the flat man. As weeks rolled past and I couldn’t find him, I began to doubt myself. Perhaps it was an anomalous memory, some minor glitch in my brain? No, I knew I had seen something. Other possibilities presented themselves as I aimlessly scanned a newspaper, turning the pages at just the right speed and volume to draw neither positive nor negative attention. What if he had noticed me noticing him? After all, he was clearly much, much better at this than I was. Perhaps he had simply stopped coming to the café – had decided to move on rather than risk discovery. And if he was gone, if he had moved on, I would probably never see him again in my life. Nobody that good at hiding in plain sight could be chanced upon randomly. Or was he so good at being socially invisible that he was here, right now, but even I couldn’t detect him? And then it hit me, with such obviousness and clarity that I almost laughed. No matter how good he was at hiding from human eyes, surely the man couldn’t escape cameras. My phone was on the table, an essential tool for blending in. Neither a new model nor an old one, it had the default sounds, the default screens and the default apps. I didn’t take photos often and I fumbled with the settings until I found the panorama shot. Lifting the phone, I dragged it through the air, getting as much of the café in the shot as possible. Predictably, a couple of people felt the gaze of lens pass over them; postures changed, faces subconsciously rearranged themselves. But they were not noticing me. They were noticing themselves being noticed, immortalised. I closed the camera app and left the café. If the flat man was there, surely I would have caught him. Back at home, I pulled the image up on my laptop. The details of the café were crisp and bright, humans caught like statues mid-mouthful or halfway through the bathroom door, those few faces turned towards the camera. It was a large, metropolitan café, often boasting fifty customers at a time, so looking through the image was like trying to solve one of those ‘Where’s Wally’ posters on the roof of your dentist’s office. But this Wally was one you had never seen before. I knew all the regulars, so I quickly discounted them, moving on to the people who were new or infrequent customers. Each was ordinary in their specialness, none of them betraying any hint they might be my flat man. As I pored over every pixel, growing increasingly frustrated, I realised that this was less a Wally picture than one of those Magic Eye images that were so popular in the 90s. Scrolling around, I let my mind unfocus, not seeing the individual shapes as people and faces, but rather perceiving them as just colours and edges, a generalised mass disconnected from their humanity. And there he was. It wasn’t like those sci-fi movies with poorly done CGI, where the person is ‘invisible’ but the digital distortion betrays them. It was more like very skilled body-art, the subject painted to so perfectly resemble a tree or a supermarket shelf that’s it’s invisible unless you know what you’re looking at. He blended so perfectly, so unobtrusively, that it defied nature. My nape prickled. Worst of all, he had been sitting right behind me. And I hadn’t had the faintest idea he was there.

“I know you’re behind me,” I said quietly, my voice pitched within that range that’s hard to hear in a busy place unless you’re right next to someone, “And I want to talk to you.” I didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary, but when I next blinked, he was there, sitting across from me in the booth. Even knowing he was there, my eyes still slid right off him, as though he were made of perceptual Teflon. His hat and suit might have been grey, or they might have been tan – even the memories seem slippery, elusive. His features were a nothing; two eyes, a nose and a mouth, and a suggestion of stubble, but all so ordinary that they refused to imprint as a definitive face in my mind. He didn’t speak at first, he just smiled, his teeth neither straight nor crooked. “Come with me,” he said, his voice barely crossing the space between us, unheard by anyone else. He didn’t seem to walk so much as slide. It was so hard to keep track of him, even when aware of his presence. There was an impression that he walked, but I couldn’t tell you if his legs actually moved, how fast or slow, how tall he was, his build, nothing. My eyes began to water as I followed him out into the street; if I blinked, I’d lose him. As people closed around us, he wavered and slipped out of existence, only reappearing when I focused so hard it made my temples ache. My headache grew as I followed him down one street, then another. I would swear his clothing changed several times, merging seamlessly with the feel of each suburb; always so perfectly ordinary for the particular surroundings that he was practically a piece of the architecture. With every ounce of my keen powers of observation concentrated on tracking him, I realised I was suddenly lost, in an utterly unfamiliar part of the city. Which was impossible, because we’d walked less than two blocks from the café. The man still moved ahead, between two buildings. I hurried to catch him, stepping around the corner. And in an instant, I was no longer in the bustling, overcrowded city. I stood in a forest of towering trees, echoing with eerie birdsong not heard for a hundred years or more.

He did not blend here. Unnatural in the green paradise, the man stood out starkly, his pale features, city coat and hat completely wrong in the rustling woodland. “Where are we?” I asked, spinning to see only gargantuan tree trunks in every direction, a distant glimpse of bright sky through the dense canopy of leaves far above us. “A sanctuary. One I created.” “How did we get here? How far did we travel?” “We didn’t. This place has been here for fifty years, right inside the city.” I stared at him, bemused. “How?” He smiled that ordinary smile again, bowing his head slightly, “People simply don’t notice it, just as they don’t notice me. It bends their thoughts away, makes their feet take them in another direction. Somewhere that is less boring, where they will be seen and remembered. Somewhere that will cater to their ego and their desires.” “It’s beautiful – breathtaking even – but why is it here?” “To preserve the best of your world.” And as he spoke those words, the mantle of his carefully practised humanity slipped away. The being in front of me had skin as as grey as its previous persona, so matte and uniform that the light didn’t bounce off it quite right. There were too many forelimbs, with too many joints. Where there should have been legs, a mass of red, fungus-like fronds undulated obscenely, churning the leaf-mould. I smelled the ancient and the new, all at once. “There are many worlds like yours,” it warbled, as I stumbled blindly away, through the trees, “too many to count.” A red mouth followed me, massive as a sea-cave and bristling scarlet, coral-like structures, as the thing flowed effortlessly over the forest floor. “Most of them we don’t reach in time. An indigenous species can destroy so much in such a short span of ages. Once consciousness develops, it seems to be only a matter of time.” I vaulted a stream, the water so clear it was almost invisible. Stumbling and scrambling desperately up the opposite bank, my grey skirt was splattered with moss and mud. Those oblivion-grey arms reached for me, their star-shaped fingers filled with tiny red suckers. “And your species is especially bad.” As the alien hands closed around my wrists and ankles, lifting me effortlessly into the air, I whimpered – a pathetic, selfish sound. “I’m not going to kill you,” the nightmarish mouth said. “Then what do you want from me?” “I want to offer you a job.”

The café is quiet, and a man sits across from me in a neat grey suit, not quite fashionable, but not quite out of date. He can’t see me; he doesn’t even register I’m there. He’s too caught up in the feedback loop his cellphone has trapped him in, yearning for little red or orange icons to scratch the constant itch in the reward centre of his brain. As the world shrinks, humanity slowly caged by the growing ecological sanctuaries until only a single city is left, nobody will notice. Like flies caught in an elaborately spun web of alien technology and psychological trickery, insects don’t realise when they’ve been ensnared until it’s far too late. Your selfish egos will remain completely fulfilled, and the walls of the zoo will be invisible. But there are other places that need our services when we are done here – too many, in fact. Most of you won’t even notice the title of this story, caught up in your scrolling and need for self-fulfilment. Fewer still will read it, and of those that do, most will forget about it in a day, or a week. But a handful of people – maybe only one or two, will remember it forever. And to you few; when you feel your eyes slide off something when you’re sitting in a café, paying attention not to yourself, but to the others around you, say something. I’ll be listening.