#i had the cat lady 'inside' segment stuck in my head when doing this. like not only the song but like the actual scene from the game lol

[harbingersecho]

it died inside — there's someone inside

[frickfracksnatchisback]

Fixing the Broken Past (AGIT AU-Part 3)

Why hello there! Welcome to the blog where I write too slow! (In all seriousness, this should have been done ages ago.) After seven years I have managed to crawl from the depths of my crave and gift you this! So yeah, please be merciful about how long it took for me to finish this. Make sure to check out @shaykai / @hatsparadox​ if you haven’t already! They’re super awesome and make amazing content!

Warning! You should know the drill by now. But if you don’t, dark angsty stuff at about halfway through this. I bet you can guess why~

Enjoy your robo-fluff and robo-angst!

***

It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining brightly in the cloudy sky and spreading sunlight everywhere it could. It shone on the grass, on the sidewalk, and through the windows of many different homes in the suburban area. But even as the sunlight shone through the window of one particular cozy house, someone just wasn’t waking up. The sunlight lit up a child’s room, making the inhabitant of the bed toss and turn. They lifted the covers over their head to block out the rays, turning them into a simple lump on the bed. This person was so obsessed with wanting extra sleep that they didn’t even hear the door of their bedroom creak open and close. They also didn’t hear a small hatted intruder tip-toe over to the side of their bed. But they were about to.

“Mu! Wake up, wake up, wake up!” Hat Kid said excitedly, poking and prodding at the lump of blankets in middle of the bed.

“Mhmm...no.” the lump mumbled back, not moving a muscle. Hat Kid huffed a little and put her hands on her hip in frustration.

“But I want you to see it! C’mon and get out of bed!” Hat Kid kept on, climbing up onto the bed and beginning to bounce on it.

“See...what?” Mu slowly peeked her head from out the blankets. Her blonde hair was an absolute mess and her eyes were heavy and tired. She wasn’t even wearing her signature hood, which was laying nearby on her bedside table. Hat Kid reached over, grabbed the hood, and threw it in Mu’s face. Mu grumbled in protest, but still didn’t get up from the covers. She just simply pulled the hood from off her, revealing Hat Kid’s grinning face inches away from hers.

“I want you to see me switch him on, silly!”

“WHAT?!” Mu’s eyes went wide in surprise. She got up from her covers in a flash, knocking Hat Kid down onto the floor. She didn’t even bother brushing through her hair, or getting out of her pink pajamas. She just simply pulled her hood over her head and made for the door. But she was immediately stopped from going any further as the door was opened by someone else.

“Sugar, is everything going alright?” the soft voice called as the door creaked open. That voice belonged to CC, the care taker of the house. She was a maid bot built to look like a cat, dressed up in a metal chef’s uniform with an non-matching real chef’s hat. She had rotating ears, a movable metal tail with segments, and even antenna-like whiskers! Though one of her ‘whiskers’ were bent, and her orange metal had a few painted on stripes, she was still a very functional robot thanks to Hat Kid.

Once she opened the door, she was greeted to Hat Kid laying upside down on the floor and Mu in nothing but her hood and pajamas. “Ah, I see your awake already! Did HK wake you up with all her excitement?” she asked Mu cheerfully and Hat Kid giggled behind her. But once she noticed what a mess Mu was, her care taking protocol soon kicked in. “Honey, you need to brush through your hair! You’ve got some awful bedhead.” she said, worried.

“No I don’t! I’m fine!” Mu said confidently, trying to squeeze past her. But CC was having none of it.

“You’re not even dressed! Here-” she said, picking Mu up off the carpet and carrying her in her arms. “Let’s get that pretty blond head of yours brushed out, alright?” she smiled at Mu, cradling her in her arms. But Mu struggled in her arms to try and escape, not wanting any part of it.

“Nuh uh! I want to see Hat Kid switch it on!” Mu said, trying to pry out of her grasp.

“You’re not leaving your room dress like that, young lady.” CC took an authoritative tone, making Mu stop her struggling. Mu sighed, once CC talked like that there was no use fighting it.

“Fine. But put me down!” Mu said, and CC did. Once she gently set her back down, Mu quickly rushed to her dresser.

“And don’t rush! You’ll have plenty of time to wait.” CC reminded her.

“Yeah! I’m not gonna turn him on without you!” Hat Kid added, making Mu a bit more relieved.

Once Mu was dressed and did her hair up in it’s normal fashion, she quickly went to bolt out the door again. Hat Kid and CC were waiting outside, with CC quickly checking Mu to make sure she was all straightened up for the day.

“I’m fine! Can I go now?” Mu huffed, crossing her arms.

“Are you sure? You haven’t even had breakfast.” CC said, her ears slightly drooping. “Here-” she offered, opening her upper chest compartment and taking out a croissant. “You can at least take this. You should never go on an empty stomach!” CC held up the pastry for Mu to take. Mu was reluctant, but only for about five seconds.

“Fine.” Mu sighed, snatching the croissant from CC hand. “...Thank you.” she mumbled, starting to nibbled on the bread.

“You’re welcome sweetie.” CC smiled warmly, closing her compartment. “Now you two can go. And have fun!” CC gently pushed the two on their way.

“We will!” Hat Kid called back, as the two made their way down the hallway. “Why do you always sleep in so late?” she ask Mu, poking fun at her.

“I don’t sleep in late! You wake up too bloody early!” Mu said back, croissant still in her mouth. This just made Hat Kid laugh, making Mu blush in embarrasment.

“C’mon! Race ya!” Hat Kid said, running to the door at the end of the hallway.

“Wh- hey!” Mu said, quickly stuffing her face with rest of her croissant. “No fair! Wait for me!” Mu called back, trying to catch up to Hat Kid while eating what was still her mouth at the same time. But Hat Kid was already there, skidding on the floor and reaching for the door knob.

Hat Kid opened the door that had a child’s drawing stuck to the top of it. The drawing, which was obviously her own handy-work, read ‘Hat Kid’s Workshop!’ with stars and rainbows adorning the sides of the paper. The door, however, didn’t actually lead to a workshop of sorts. It just simply lead to the garage, which Hat Kid had basically turned into her workshop. Since the household had no real need of a car, she had transformed the space into a place where she could tinker as much as she pleased. This included fixing or touching-up CC, creating neat robo-gadgets, or even...housing new robot friends!

The garage workshop was almost like a regular workshop, except much tidier. Books on robot maintenance were housed in a bookcase, one workbench was piled with organized blueprints, another workbench was covered in neatly arranged tools, and recharging stations in the back of the room. The only thing that seemed out of place in all of this, was the giant robot in the middle of the room. It was hoisted up in some sort of metal mechanism, keeping it staining straight. Hat Kid looked at it and smiled excitedly. She had been wanting to switch him on the moment they brought him home. But after doing a few scans, she had discovered that he was more damaged than she first thought. But once she patched up a few places on the outside, fixed a few things on the inside, he was ready to be switched on! There was still a lot of work to do, like his arm which she still hadn’t replaced yet, but she just couldn’t wait any longer!

“Hey! You cheater!” Mu yelled, grabbing Hat Kid’s hat from behind her.

“Give that back!” Hat Kid yelled back, she hated it when Mu took her hat. Mu laughed as she got her revenge by playing keep away with her newfound toy. But she soon stopped once she caught sight of the robot in the room.

“Woah...” she whispered, not caring that Hat Kid had taken her hat back. Mu quickly went up to it, her face glowing with excitement. “Look at him! He looks less like a pile of junk now!” she laughed, knocking the robot’s lower body.

“Hey! Be nice!” Hat Kid scolded Mu, shooing her away from the robot.

“What? It’s not like he care hear me.” Mu scoffed, rolling her eyes.

“Well...no. But you should still be nice to him!” Hat Kid huffed, placing her hands on her hips.

“Sure. Fine. Whatever.” Mu chuckled to herself, before going over to the tools workbench. “So were do you keep the stun gun around here?” she asked, shifting through all the tools and making a mess. “I mean, it’s got to be around here somewhere. Do you keep in a drawer or something?” she kept looking through the tools, not being able to see Hat Kid starting to look a bit nervous.

“I don’t...have a stun gun.” Hat Kid said meekly. Mu perked up at this and whipped around to stare at Hat Kid in surprise.

“You don’t have a stun gun?!” she yelled fearfully, and Hat Kid slowly nodded. “How are we suppose to protect ourselves?!” Mu said in panic, going over to shake Hat Kid.

“I’m not gonna hurt him!” Hat Kid said defensively, shoving Mu off of her. Mu stared at her in disbelief.

“It doesn’t matter if we hurt him! What if he hurts us?!” Mu kept on panicking.

“He’s not gonna hurt us! Mu just listen-”

“But what if he-”

“Mu! Listen to me!” Hat Kid yelled out and grabbed Mu by the shoulders, getting her full attention. “He won’t hurt us. Trust me.” she said calmly. Mu considered this, but bit her lip in worry.

“Are you sure?” Mu asked her, still very unsure.

“I’m sure.” Hat Kid nodded, smiling. “If we have stun guns, he’ll see us as a threat. We just need to give him some space and let him calm down, alright?” she explained, Mu growing more suspicious.

“And what if he gets really mad? You know? With the whole ‘hostile’ thing?” Mu reminded Hat Kid. But Hat Kid just smiled at her with no worries at all.

“Don’t you see, silly? That’s why I brought you with me! He won’t attack us after he sees how big and strong you are!” Hat Kid complimented Mu, making her grin with confidence.

“Well, I am the best!” Mu boasted, posing heroically.

“Yeah! And a huge dork!” Hat Kid laughed, ruffling Mu’s hood.

“Oh yeah? Look who’s talking, nerd!” Mu pushed her playfully, making the two laugh. They hugged each other and laughed for a few minutes, the tension dying away. They both caught their breath after awhile, still smiling at each other.

“Okay! Lets switch this guy on!” Hat Kid announced, rushed over to a metal platform on the floor.

“Got it!” Mu saluted, before going over to the control panel on the right wall. Hat Kid stood firmly on the platform, giving a thumbs up to Mu. Once she signaled that everything was all good, Mu flipped a single switch. Hat Kid wobbled a bit, barely losing her balance, as the platform she was standing on raise itself up. It kept going until it almost reached the ceiling, then it stopped in place. Hat Kid was now at level of the robot’s head, giving her just enough access to its activation button.

“Boop!” Hat Kid said as she pressed the button playfully. Hat Kid leaned over from behind the robot’s head to give Mu another thumbs up. Mu saw this and flipped the lever back up, bringing the platform back down. Hat Kid riskily jumped off the platform, before it was fully on the ground, and rushed in front of the robot. Mu quickly joined her, looking at the robot in excitement.

“Is it on? Is it on?” Mu asked twice, bouncing up and down.

“Shhh! Give him a minute...” Hat Kid shushed Mu, getting her to stop bouncing. The two listened very closely for any sudden noises…

A low whirring noise came from inside the robot. The two girls gasped in amazement, but tried to keep their excited squeals to themselves. It made a few more noises, small clicks and beeps, before letting out steam from its joints. The two girls jumped back as steam fell to the floor. The robot’s body tested itself out, its joints squeaking as it opened and closed its single hand. Then, a yellow hologram projected itself onto the robot’s face. Its eyes were closed, as if it was still sleeping, but it made Hat Kid lose her absolute mind.

“Oh! My! Gosh! That’s so cool!” Hat Kid bounced up and down and closed Mu into a tight hug.

“Hey! Let go of me! I wanna hear want he says!” Mu squeezed herself out of the hug.

The robot began to open its holographic eyes slowly. Hat Kid and Mu were silent, observing it with absolute wonder. It stared back at the two, its face completely blank. Hat Kid smiled wide in delight, making little squeeing noises as she lightly shook Mu’s shoulder. Mu was too busy ‘oohing’ in fascination to notice. The robot blinked, not reacting at all. Or smiling...it didn’t seem to have a mouth projected on yet.

“HI!” Hat Kid shouted, making Mu jump back.

“Jeez HK! Don’t scare him!” Mu pushed Hat Kid.

“Oh yeah! Sorry...” Hat Kid smiled nervously. “Hi there mister! Welcome to your new home!” Hat Kid smiled as she presented the garage. The robot’s eyes looked around, but its head didn’t move very much. “People call me HK! And this is my friend, Mu!” she introduce, poking Mu’s shoulder.

“Sup!” Mu greeting, trying to ‘play it cool’. The robot’s eyes switched between them, not sure of which one to pay more attention to. The two girls waited for a response, or anything for that matter. But the robot said nothing to either of them. They looked at each other, the conversation gone a bit awkward.

“Hey...are you okay?” Hat Kid asked it, worry growing on her face. But the robot just kept on staring at her.

“I think you broke him.” Mu whispered in her ear. But Hat Kid just shoved her away.

“Can you not speak? Do you not have a mouth?” she kept on asking. The robot cocked it’s head a bit in curiosity, which made her rather relieved. She was afraid she really had broken him for a second there. “See? Like this!” she demonstrated, pointing to finger at her own mouth and smiling.

The robot’s eyes seemed to widen in surprise. A small beeping noise came from inside it, as it’s final facial projector finally came online. The two girls watched in surprise as its mouth started to form from yellow static, a thin mouth with two added fangs poking out. Its was completely expressionless for a moment, before its mouth started to turn up a bit. It turned from a small smirk, to a grin, to a wide curling smile. It was a very wide smile, almost reaching up to its eyes. It was much more creepy than inviting, but Hat Kid was too overjoyed to notice.

“Hello.” the robot purred in a deep, foreboding voice.

His voicebox sounded a bit odd, since it hadn’t been used in a while. It sounded like it had a small trace of static and was a bit echoed. But Hat Kid didn’t care, as her eyes were glowing in admiration. Mu...not so much. The robot’s voice had caught her off guard. Very off guard. She knew he wasn’t exactly a ‘good bot’, but that voice didn’t sound welcoming at all. It sounded creepy and...off somehow. It made her feel like something was wrong, forming a pit of dread in her stomach.

“Umm...HK?” Mu tried to nudge Hat Kid. But she was too busy staring at the robot and smiling a gigantic smile.

“OH MY GOSH! THAT IS SO COOL!” Hat Kid yelled out, surprising both Mu and the robot. “You can talk! I mean, of course you can but-” she started to ramble. “Oh my gosh, this is the bestest day ever!” she hugged herself, happily giggling and not staying in one spot at all.

But while Hat Kid was having her moment, Mu looked back at the robot warily. The robot wasn’t paying much attention to her, his sight never leaving Hat Kid. And he was giving her a look that Mu did not trust one bit. It was an ‘evil bad guy’ sort of look. And she knew her bad guys all too well...

“What are you smiling about?” Mu asked him, trying to look intimidating. But the robot simply looked at her, still smiling the same.

“Oh, I was just thinking what a nice place you’ve got here.” he said, taking his eyes off of Hat Kid and looking around the room. “Very nice, very cozy...” he hummed to himself.

“You really think so?” Hat Kid beamed, proud of herself.

“Although...its a bit too cozy for my liking.” he said as he tried to move around, but found that he couldn’t. The metal structure keeping him up was also restraining his upper half, keeping his wheel off the ground. “Hey, kid, would you mind getting me out of this thing? I’d like to have a bit more freedom, if that’s alright with you.” he asked Hat Kid softly, luring her into a trap.

“Sure thing!” Hat Kid said, taking the bait. She started to go and rush for the control panel. But before she could get there, Mu grabbed one of her arms to stop her. “Hey! What gives?” Hat Kid fussed, before noticing the look on Mu’s face. “Mu? Are you doing alright?” Hat asked, concerned.

“Uhh...” Mu mumbled, looking at Hat Kid and then looking back at the robot. “Could you give us a minute Mr. Robot? Alone?” Mu asked him, reluctantly. He looked like he was suspicious for a moment, before smiling ‘warmly’.

“But of course! Its not like I’m going anywhere...” he said with only the teeniest, tiniest bit of sarcasm in his voice.

“Okay, perfect.” Mu nodded, dragging Hat Kid as far away from the robot as she could. Once their backs were facing the robot, Mu tried to warn Hat Kid as best she could. “HK, I don’t think this is a good idea.” she whispered, making sure the robot wasn’t eavesdropping on them.

“What? Why not?” Hat Kid asked in her normal tone of voice, before Mu shushed her to keep quiet.

“Did you not see the huge smile he had on his face?” Mu said, mimicking the robot to prove her point. Hat Kid just stared at her blankly.

“...Yeah? What about it?’ Hat Kid gave Mu a confused look, unsure of what was wrong. Mu look back at her with a mix of disbelief and disappointment, before face-palming.

“Okay...” Mu groaned, not understanding why Hat Kid couldn’t see the danger. “What about his voice? He just sounds...creepy and evil.” Mu shuddered.

“Mu! His voice-thingie is just a little old, that’s all.” Hat Kid told her, giving her a scolding. “Besides, you shouldn’t judge him on the way he talks. You know what they say, ‘Never judge a bot by its cover’!” she stated firmly. Mu gave her a look of Are you kidding me right now?

“Isn’t that supposed to be ‘book’?” Mu asked, partially fed up with Hat Kid’s nonsense.

“It still works!” Hat Kid huffed back, before noticing Mu’s look of doubt. “Hey, I think we should give him a chance.” she tried to calm Mu’s worries. “Thor said he doesn’t like humans, but maybe we can help him! And that means we have to let him get comfy and used to his new home.” she explained, trying to sound as rational as she could. “Just...trust me on this, please? Pretty please?” she asked, giving Mu a hopeful look. Mu hesitated, she really didn’t like where this was going. But at the same time, she really didn’t want to get her friend’s hopes up…

“Okay, I guess you’ve got a good point.” Mu sighed in defeat. “But promise me you’ll be careful.” she said, a hint of worry still her voice.

“Thank you! I will!” Hat Kid jumped up and headed to the control panel. The robot perked up, flashing his smile again. “Are you ready?” Hat Kid asked the robot, reading her hand to press down the big red button to let him go.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.” the robot chuckled, the strange tone still there.

“Here we go!” Hat Kid announced, smacking her hand on the button.

Whirring and beeping noises filled the air, as the structure lowered itself to drop the robot’s wheel on the ground. The top part swung open, freeing the robot’s upper half. Mu watched nervously as the robot steadied itself, checking his balance. He brought up his single hand up to inspect it, curiosity and wonder in his eyes.

“There we go! Feeling better?” Hat Kid asked him, scooting up next to Mu.

“Is that comfy enough for you?” Mu added in, keeping her distance from him.

The robot looked back at the two of them, smiling again. But he smiled much wider this time, and slower too. He then started to laugh softly, putting his hand on his face. Hat Kid gave Mu the side-eye, confused as to what he was doing. His laughed started to get louder and louder, until it was so loud it filled the entire garage.

“Ha ha ha...” Hat Kid laughed with it nervously, puzzled as to what was happening. “What’s so funny?” she asked him, as his laughter slowly started to die down. Mu got goosebumps as the robot look at them both with a deadly gaze.

“That was too easy.”

“Wh-” Hat Kid was about to ask, before the robot held his claw up. Mu froze in fear, he was going to attack Hat Kid. She had to act fast.

“LOOK OUT!” Mu screamed, tackling Hat Kid to the ground. Hat Kid didn’t have time to react, as the robot’s claw barely missed her by a hair. The two tumbled to the ground, Hat Kid’s hat falling off her head and onto the ground. Mu quickly looked back at the robot, not caring about Hat Kid fussing at her. The robot looked mean, not to mention incredibly angry. He scowled at her, a look of pure hatred.

“FOOOOOOOOOLS!” he bellowed out, making the two children shrink in fear. “DID YOU REALLY THINK I WANTED TO PLAY NICE WITH YOU BRATS?!” he yelled, getting closer to them. “YOU BETTER MOVE OUT OF THE WAY OR I’LL-” the robot shouted, before he started to wobble in place. Its upper half was too heavy for its little wheel mechanism to carry, making it unsteady.“Woahwoahwoah!” the robot cried out, almost falling to the ground. He managed to catch himself though, straightening himself out in surprise. “Huh...Well that could’ve gone a lot wors-”

“TAKE THIS YOU JERK!” Mu shouted, getting up lightening fast and ramming herself into the robot.

The robot was nearly tipped over, but he managed to smack her away to the side. That didn’t stop him from wobbling, however, as he flailed his remaining arm widely. He yelped out in surprise as he started to fall forwards instead of backwards. Hat Kid quickly saw this, and tried to dash out of the way of the falling robot.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHH!” the robot screamed as it plummeted to the ground, Hat Kid getting safely out of the way. It fell to the floor with a loud clang, groaning in pain afterwards. “Ouch...” it grumbled, its face on the floor. It then quickly scrambled to get up, but found that it couldn’t stand itself up on its wheel again. “W-what?! NO!” it yelled in fury, trying its best to push itself up with only on arm. It slipped, stumbling and crashing on its face again. It started to try move again, before sighing in defeat and staying immobile. “P**k it...” it said before going still, its auto-censor bleeping out the swear.

Hat Kid peaked out from the workbench she had hid behind. Seeing the robot face-down was...an odd sight to say the least. Her thoughts of fear were clouded over with worry. He wasn’t moving at all now. Was he okay? Did he hurt himself on accident? Hat Kid crawled out from under the workbench, making her way over to the robot. She took each step carefully, not wanting to alarm it. As she got closer and closer, the robot still wasn’t moving.

“Mister...are you okay?” she asked, genuine worry in her voice. She reached out a hand to try and help him-

“BACK OFF!” he screamed as his head popped back up, giving Hat Kid a fright. Hat Kid fell back on the floor, fear in her eyes as she saw the robot glaring at her. “Don’t you dare touch me!” he growled back at her. She started to crawl away to safety...before she saw the robot’s face. As angry as he was, his eyes very threatening, he almost seemed scared. Like he was afraid that she was going to hurt him. What had happened to him? Did humans do something terrible to him in the past?

“Back away from my friend.”

Hat Kid turned her head swiftly to see Mu standing not too far away from them. She looked unbelievably mad at the robot, standing tall to intimidate it.

“Oh yeah? And just what are you going to do to me if I don’t?” the robot sneered at her, flashing off his projected fangs. Mu’s face turned slightly pale, she hadn’t thought that part through.

“I’ll...I’ll...” she panicked, trying to look around the room for something. She grabbed the first thing that was closet to her. “I’ll hit you with this!” she said, keeping her makeshift weapon. As first, Hat Kid couldn’t exactly tell what she had grabbed. But once Mu held it up, Hat Kid saw that she had grabbed-

A crowbar.

The robot face had an unreadable expression, before turning into one of pure rage.

“You come at me with that, and you’re as good as dead.” he hissed deeply, showing off his clawed hand. Mu shook a little in fear, before shaking it off and taking initiative.

“I’m not afraid of you!” Mu shouted out, rushing over and holding the crowbar above her head. The robot readied himself to-

“STOP!”

Hat Kid used herself as wall, blocking the two from each other. She put both of her hands in front of them, getting their attention. “Mu, drop it.” she said, complete authority in her voice. Mu looked back at her with surprise and panic.

“What?! Are you crazy?! I can’t just-”

“Mu! Drop it now!” Hat Kid shouted at her, standing her ground. Mu looked back at her, then back at the crowbar she was holding. She closed her eyes, sighing long, before letting her grip go. The crowbar hit the ground with a metal clang, making the robot flinch a bit.

“There. I dropped it.” Mu said, holding up her hands in surrender.

“Thank you.” Hat Kid said to her, much softer this time. She turned to the robot, who had the most puzzled look on his face. “I’m so sorry, mister. We didn’t mean to make you upset. Just...please, please, please don’t be mad at us.” she said to him, begging on her knees. The robot just stayed there, staring blankly at her.

“I’m sorry, what?” was all he could say, confused out of his mind.

“Why are you dragging me into this?! He’s the one who tried to kill us!” Mu shouted back, before Hat Kid shushed her briefly. She turned back to the robot, inspecting him.

“Did you break anything when you fell down? Anything dented?” Hat Kid asked, looking his frame over but still giving him space.

“I...no I didn’t but...” the robot said, stumbling on his words. “What is going on? Didn’t I just try to murder you? Why are you asking if I’m okay?” he asked several questions at once. Hat Kid looked back at him with concern and pity. It kind of creeped him out, if he was being completely honest.

“Because I was worried you broke something! I wanted to know so I could try and fix you up again!” she said loudly, making him jump. He looked back at her with more confusion, before quickly realizing something.

“Wait a minute...” he said, recalling past recorded memories. “That was you?! You were the one who was fixing me?!” he said, taken back with surprised. He had felt someone messing around with his insides a few days ago, but he figured it was some sort of mechanic. Not someone as small as this...child.

“Wait, how do you know about that?” Mu called to him, leaning her back on the workbench. Hat Kid shushed her again, making Mu groan in frustration.

“Of course it was me! I wanted to fix you so we could be BFFs!” Hat Kid said excitedly. The robot cocked his head in utter confusion.

“B-F-F?” he said out loud, saying each letter slowly. “Is...that a code of some sort?” he questioned, trying to run it through his processors but coming back negative each time. Hat Kid looked at him for a moment, before giggling to herself. “What? What’s so funny?” he asked her, starting to become concerned about the kid’s health.

“No, silly! It means ‘Best Friends Forever’!” she smiled at him, taking him by surprise again. But when he didn’t smile back, her smile faded away to worry. “Have you never had a friend before?” she asked, making him a bit nervous.

“Um...not exactly?” he came up with, this conversation was getting more awkward by the minute.

“Why don’t Mu and me best your first ever friends?” Hat Kid pushed on him, more excited than ever.

“What?! No! No way am I being friend with that guy, he said he’d kill me!” Mu retaliated, making Hat Kid sigh.

“Oh yeah? Need I remind you, your the one who threaten me first.” the robot smirked. “I was just acting out of self defense.” he boasted, making Mu huff and pout in the corner.

“So can we be friends?” Hat Kid brought up again, grabbing his attention.

“I don’t know...” he mumbled, that awkwardness was back again.

“I know! Why don’t I introduce myself again?” she said, before fake clearing her throat. “Hi! I’m HK!” she said cheerfully, holding out a hand. He shied away for a moment, unsure of what to do. “What’s your name, mister?” she smiled with patience, making him feel a bit more calm.

“I’m...Snatcher...” he hesitated, he had never really ‘introduced’ himself before. Since nobody had ever given him a name, he decided to choose one for himself. But it felt weird now that he was saying it out loud.

“Welcome to your new home, Snatcher!” Hat Kid said, getting up and presenting the garage again. She stopped for a moment, remembering something. “Do you...still want to stay here with us?” she asked Snatcher, giving him the puppy-dog-eye treatment. Snatcher wasn’t really fazed by it, but more fazed by her offer.

Stay with them? As in live in the same home as them? Or did that secretly mean he would become their slave, servant, or something along those lines? Well...she didn’t seem like the spoiled rich kid type. After all, he was in a garage for pity’s sake. So there was that at least. But he still felt uncomfortable at the idea of living with the likes of humans. He hadn’t lived like that in ages, and he hadn’t been planning to anytime soon. Besides, he could very much live on his own without any help from these strange children.

...But, he did have to consider a few other things.

This hatted kid, who was surprisingly eager, was the first human to show him any scrap of kindness in a long time. He couldn’t remember when he had been seen as an actual person. Actually, now that he thought about it, he was never seen as a person by anybody. The two old geezers certainly didn’t like him, the pathetic men who called themselves the ‘Mafia’ weren’t on the best terms when it came to their first meeting, and she was the last person he would ever consider as ‘kind’. But why did this little child care about him so much? She knew he was considered ‘hostile’, and yet she still wanted to repair him. But what was her gain out of all this? It just didn’t make any sen-

“Snatcher? Are you okay? Did you shut yourself down?” Hat Kid asked him, interrupting his train of thought. He snapped out of it and smiled awkwardly at her, not sure of what else to do.

“Sorry, I was thinking to myself. Force of habit.” Snatcher apologized, before quickly regretting it.  He didn’t like to think about all those years he had spent ‘shut down’. “Well...” he pondered, considering the situation at hand one last time. “Do you really think you could fix me?” he asked her, practically already knowing the reply he was going to get.

“Sure! I’m really good at fixing up robot buddies!” Hat Kid said, trying to control her unbridled joy. Snatcher paused for a moment, before finally making up his mind about his decision.

“I guess I could stay here then!” Snatcher said while smiling confidently. Hat Kid eyes filled up with glee, as she squealed happily.

“Yayyyyyy! New robo-friend!” Hat Kid said, getting off the floor so she could jump up and down in the air. Snatcher watched her, slightly concerned yet amused at the same time. The kid seemed to be infatuated with him, gasping and jumping at every little thing he did. Which gave him an advantage in all of this. That made him feel much safer, like he was in control. Maybe this was a good idea after all-

“Hold it just a minute!” Mu spoke up, causing Hat Kid to stop jumping. After sulking in the corner for so long, she decided to make her way over to Snatcher. “If you stay with us, you have to cool it with the evil...ness...” she said with authority, before trailing off near the end. This earned a snicker from Snatcher.

“Nice choice of words there, kid.” Snatcher said, trying to keep himself from laughing.

“Hey! You heard what I said!” Mu shot back as her face went red, either from anger or embarrassment. “No murdery stuff! Or else!” she said firmly, before sticking out her hand for him to shake.

“You do realize I only have one arm, right?” Snatcher said jokingly, quite prideful that it got a giggle out of Hat Kid. Mu puffed up her cheeks, not finding the joke as funny. “Alright, fine then. I won’t do any ‘murdery stuff’-” Hat Kid giggled again as he spoke. “-As long as you stop calling me...How did you put it again? ‘A pile of junk’?” he sneered back, making Mu’s mouth drop in disbelief.

“How did you-?! How could you-?!” Mu sputtered, before letting out a long groan of anger and running towards the exit door. As he heard the loud bang of her leaving the room, he laughed a bit to himself. That hooded brat was going to be fun to mess with. Especially once the other kid replaced him arm. He looked back a Hat Kid, who beamed brightly at him. Then, without warning, she pounced on him in a big hug. He froze still, how long had it been since he had received a hug? Oh yeah! Too long for his liking.

“Uh, kid? I don’t think we’ve quite reached the ‘hugging’ stage yet.” Snatcher said, squirming uncomfortably.

“Oh! Sorry, sorry!” Hat Kid apologized, getting off of him in about two seconds flat.

“You’re...fine, kiddo. Just give me a bit of warning next time.” Snatcher trailed off, still a bit uncomfortable.

This was going to be quite the adjustment, Snatcher thought to himself. Living with two small children (and whatever guardians they had) was going to be...weird at first. With all this affection, hugging, and whatnot. That was defiantly out of his comfort zone, no doubt about that. But who knows? Maybe with a bit of extra time, this kid could fix him good as new! And he had time to spare, he supposed.

Although, staying here? Permanently? That raised a few concerns. Ones that he didn’t exactly know how to answer. Sure the kid would fix him, give him shelter, and be ‘friends’ with him. But he was his own bot, he had to remember. He didn’t have ‘friends’, especially not human friends. But since this kid was giving him everything he needed for the time being...

It couldn’t hurt to stay a bit longer, could it?

***

Pain...everything...hurts….why was she...in so much…PAIN?!

Vanessa’s entire body ached and throbbed with pain. And she felt cold...so very cold. She could barely even move, her body was so stiff and weighed her down. And for some reason, she couldn’t open her mouth very well. It was like her mouth was too heavy to open. She felt like she was sitting down on the floor, which was odd. Hadn’t she been just…? Actually...what had she been doing before? The harder she tried to think about it, the blurrier the memories were. And a droning, buzzing noise in her head wouldn’t leave her, making it hard to think clearly. Was this a headache? Probably. In that case then, she needed to get out of bed to let her parents know. She slowly began to open her eyes and push herself up.

But as she tried to get up, her movements more rigid than she remembered, a loud rattling noise followed. It startled her, making her eyes wide open to gaze at her surroundings. Her vision was a bright piercing red and a bit fuzzy, which made it difficult to see the rest of her room. This wasn’t good, she worried she might’ve caught some serious disease. She had to get to her parents immediately so they could call up a doctor. She wobbled onto her feet, ready to go tell her parents that she wasn’t feeling well. But as she made for the direction of what she thought was the door, she found she couldn’t move any further. She quickly looked down at her wrists, which felt like they were being pulled by something-

To Vanessa’s sudden horror, she saw that her wrists were bound with rusty chains.

She tried moving forward again, praying that the chains would break off. But she soon found that she was chained down in more places than one. Her ankles, neck, and waist were also adorned with old cuffs clamped around them. She tried prying them off with her own hands.

Her hands...were claws.

Hideous, mangled claws took the place of her normal hands. Every single talon was skinny and sharp, like giant needles instead of fingers. And on closer inspection, she noticed more terrifying changes to her body. Her skin, once pale and soft, was coal black and shiny. Like metal...no wait. IT WAS METAL. She frantically touched her hair, it was metal too. Even the strange, black, blood-covered dress she was wearing. It too was also made of metal. She started to shake in fear, makings the chains rattle even more. Memories came back like a devastating flood in her mind. And. It. HURT. She held her head in pain as she fell to her knees, making scraping noises on the floor. The floor which was metal. The room that was metal. The maze that was metal.

SHE. REMEMBERED.

Her mind played back every single memory, like a tape recorder. And despite the insanely fast speed it was going, she could recall all of them right there. It all felt too surreal, like she was reliving everything that brought her up to this point. Her prince’s betrayal, him holding hands with the florist android. Her rage and fury, whacking him with every bit of strength she had. Trying to hide the body, an axe coming down on metal legs. It skipped ahead some more after that. The blue smoke, putting her to sleep. The terrible, mad laughter from an insane robot.  The metal table she was strapped onto, her not being able to move. The many sharp tools, ready to cut into her flesh.

And the pain the pain the pain the pain-

She glitched, stuck on an unpleasant memory. Her head twitched, before everything abruptly stopped all at once. And as if someone flipped a switch in her head, she was brought back to the present. The present, which was her metal box of a prison. She wanted to open her mouth to scream, to shout, to say anything! But as hard as she tried, she just couldn’t. So she did the next best thing. She scratched and dragged her claws against the cuffs. If she was going to have these hideous things, she might as well use them.

It did no good though, as she managed to scratch herself more than the chain cuffs. As she tried to tear at them, she just ended up leaving silver scratch marks all over her metal body. If she wasn’t already on them, she would have fallen down to her knees. She felt like she wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. Of course they wouldn’t come, she thought to herself. That red-eyed freak had turned her into a horrible, metal monster. Her beauty ruined and her life torn apart forever. Her parents wouldn’t even be able to recognize her own face now that she-

Wait a moment…her face.

She had to see what he had done to her face. As much as the rest of her body terrified her, she had to see it. She crawled on her hands and knees, trying to look for a reflective surface. She found a single patch on the wall, one that was clear of rust. She crawled faster, chains dragging on the floor. She struggled all the while, the chains on her wrists and ankles somehow allowing her to get there. But the cuff on her neck was the worse one. If her neck hadn’t been made of metal, she would have been choking herself. She reached out to the spot on the wall, her claws barely scraping against the surface. She looked at her own reflection-

No. That’s not her. It can’t be her! IT JUST CAN’T BE!

She stared back, as if paralyzed by the thing she saw on the wall. It had horrible, jagged hair that came down in points. Since the hair was made of metal, it was like you could cut your finger on the sharp edges. Her eyes, once radiant blue, were now a wild red. Glaring eyes with no pupils, just two red lights glowing in the darkness. But that wasn’t the worst part. Its mouth was the most ghastly to look at. Giant, sharp, and rusted teeth were all you could see. They were bent and crooked, different shapes and sizes. Not to mention how long and thin they all were, like daggers instead of real teeth. Its maw was so filled with teeth it looked like it could tear someone’s head clean off. She shook terribly, not tearing her eyes away from the creature. She touched her own face, the creature did the same.

She finally found her voice, and let out a long scream.

But what came out of her mouth was not her voice at all. Instead it was a terrible shrieking noise, one that sound like a mix of monstrous screaming and grinding metal. It echoed in her room and carried out through the halls. She stopped and banged her head against the wall. Why was this happening to her?! What had she done to deserve this?! Why was fate so cruel to-

“Don’t worry, my sweet! I’ll be there in just a second!”

She immediately perked up at the voice coming from the hallway. She started to sob loudly, fearing for her life. He was coming back. That dreadful robot was coming back to do who knows what to her. She wanted to disappear out of sight, to hide somewhere. But there was nowhere she could go. So that only left one option, to break her way out of here. She got up quickly, nearly falling onto the floor, and started to slam her body against the wall. She was extremely desperate, hoping that the wall would cave in and lead to a way out of here. She slammed against the wall again, then she banged on it with open hands. She dragged her claws against the wall like a cat, the noise was awful.

“Hold on, hold on. You’re so impatient sometimes...”

She could hear him outside the door now, she was deathly quiet. She could hear strange, beeping and whirring noises from behind the door. And then it split apart to open, since it was a mechanical door instead of a regular door. She quickly snapped her head towards the sound. And there, standing in the doorway, was Moonjumper. He looked a lot different from when she last saw him. His metal skin seemed to be newer and shiner, with new metal clothes to match. He was dusting himself off and ‘fixing’ the cuffs of his metal jacket. He slowly rolled on his wheel into the room with his hands behind his back, the metal door shutting behind him. He then looked up, and flashed a smile.

“Hello, my princess. Did you miss me?” Moonjumper half-greeted, half-sneered.

He rolled a bit closer, Vanessa shrank back. “Did you enjoy your little nap, by the way? I personally don’t spend twelve years recharging, but to each their own!” he laughed madly. Vanessa was shocked at his words. Twelve whole years?! That’s how long she had been unconscious?! “Oh my, look at what a beauty you turned out to be!” he grinned wide, clasping his hands together in admiration. “I think I’ve really out-done myself this time. This is truly some of my finest work!” he posed pridefully and then looked her over. Vanessa looked down at her new claws, then glared at him with her red eyes. This was all his fault. He did this to her. The rage bubbled up inside of her until she couldn’t control it anymore.

She got up and lunged for him.

She was so close. So tantalizingly close to ripping apart his stupid metal face with her claws. Her claws were so incredibly close to him that she could almost make small pinpricks on his face, if she tried hard enough. But despite the fact that he was moments away from death, Moonjumper just simply smiled. He rolled himself backwards, still facing her. But she kept reaching, nearly taking off her own head in the process. But she tripped, falling face-first onto the floor. Moonjumper watched her, highly amused.

“Vanessa...I’m surprised at you!” he teased her, making her look up at him. “I didn’t know you would throw yourself at me the moment I came into the room. You must be obsessed with me!” he said, before bursting into a laughing fit. His laughs were that of a madman, loud and continuous. She absolutely hated that laughter, it was driving her crazy. She snarled and growled loudly, twisting and turning in her chains. This just made him more amused, holding his sides and howling with laughter. She started to roar and hiss, playing her part as the monster perfectly.

“Ah ha ha ha! V-Vanessa please stop! T-this is quite-” he snickered in between. “This is quite unladylike of you! Ha ha ha!” he kept on, spinning around until he made his way the back of the room. He leaned against the wall, still holding his sides. Stuck on the wall were different levers. One red, one blue, and one yellow. He reached for the yellow one, grabbing it but not flipping it just yet. “Okay Vanessa, you can stop now!” he shouted, cutting his laughter short. But she didn’t stop at all, she was too angry to listen. “Vanessa...” he called back to her over her screaming. But she just kept going and going, not able to hear him or just not caring. His face turn from cheery to scowling as he pulled down the yellow lever.

Vanessa screamed as her entire body was electrocuted.

Her body twitched all over as glowing blue currents went through her. Showers of sparks emitted from her joints, falling and disappearing once they hit the floor. Her screams became more distorted and warbled. And her eyes glowed brighter, it felt like she was going blind. But Moonjumper just watched, a disappointed look on his face. The electricity filled the air with noise, the light illuminating his face. And after a few more minutes of torture, he flipped the switch back up. The currents finally stopped, small fizzling noises could still be heard. Vanessa was stiff, a few twitches here and there. And after a few seconds, she fell backwards onto the floor. Her heavy body made a resounding clang once she fully crashed, still twitching from the shock.

“I think we still need to work out a few bugs...” Moonjumper grumbled, rolling over to her body.

Small pillars of smoke erupted from her body, filling the air. Her eyes were much dimmer, but she was still alive somehow. Despite the fact that she couldn’t move, her joints and circuits nearly fried, she was still conscious. Seeing no immediate danger now, Moonjumper came closer to her twitching body. He leaned over her, giving her a dirty look. He shook his head and ‘tsk tsked’ in disappointment.

“That was highly inappropriate Vanessa. And on your special day no less!” he scolded her, wagging a metal claw in her direction. He leaned down to pick her up, grunting a bit as he wrapped his arms around her. “You should really learn to be more obedient, as any proper lady should.” he huffed as he propped her body up, her head tilting on her shoulder. He moved back, looking back at her. “No no, that won’t do...” he mumbled to himself, turning back to the levers on the wall. He inspects them for a bit, before picking the red one to pull. A terrible wrenching noises could be heard behind her, along with the rattling of chains.

She was being pulled back.

She fell like a rag doll back onto the floor, getting a full upside down view of what was happening behind her. What she hadn’t noticed before was that her chains were connected to several pulley systems on the wall. She was being dragged slowly across the floor as the excess chains receded back into the wall. After what felt like an eternity she hit the back wall, the cuff on her neck helping bring her head back up up. Once she was fully pulled up, she found she was bound to the wall...again. She looked around the room, Moonjumper had disappeared. She couldn’t move, which just brought the horrible memories back into her mind. They played out like a record on a turn table, running fast but getting stuck on some parts. Like the part were she had hurt her prince. Or the part where she had been kidnapped. But the worst part she kept reliving, was the part where Moonjumper had experimented on her. The slow, painful process of being turned into robot that she could still remember so clearly. She had still been awake as the sparks flew and the blood spilled-

“I’m back, sweetheart!” Moonjumper’s voice interrupted her playbacks. She hadn’t seen him open the door, she had been much too busy in her own horrible thoughts. But as he rolled back into the room, she could she that he was holding a metal box in his arms. A metal box made to, crudely, look like a wrapped up birthday present. “Sorry if I was gone for a bit. But I knew the process was going to take awhile.” he informed her, putting the box on the ground. He then looked up, as if remembering something important.

“I didn’t tell you I was going to get your present did I?” he faked gasped before slapping his own hand. “Bad Moonjumper, I should have known better!” he giggled madly, showing off his sharp teeth. “Then again...I suppose it wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you, would it?” he laughed low, hinting at the situation’s irony. “But enough about that. Now that you’re all nice and comfy, I can give you your birthday present!” he cheered, leaning down to the metal box to open it. Hearing this, Vanessa was confused out of her mind. Birthday present? It wasn’t her birthday...or was it? Had that much time really passed by?

“I bet you thought I forgot, didn’t you? Well, I know my princess better than anyone. And I know...” he opened the box’s lid, pulling out what was inside. “...That she loves to be surprised!” he finished, bringing himself back up. He held out the present for her to see. “Tada!” he said as he presented the object in his hands. But what it was supposed to be, she had absolutely no clue. It looked like a piece of junk, different pieces of metal bolted together. Rusted parts were mixed in with much shinier, newer parts. Some were straight and flat, while others were more bent. But all of them had one thing in common. They were all flat on the bottom and pointed on top, arranged to make a circle.

“Do you like it?” Moonjumper asked, holding it out more for her to see. She wanted to respond with a loud “No”, but she couldn’t no matter how hard she tried. “It’s your new crown!” he boasted, proud of his handy-work. She would have quirk an eyebrow if she had any. That was supposed to be a crown? It looked like a dreadful piece of trash! “Your old one was much too small to fit your new frame, so I made you a new one! I think this one will suit you much better!” he smiled before going back to the box. As he was hunched over she heard a familiar click. Once he came back up, she saw on of his upper hands was gone. Instead, a small blowtorch tool took it’s place. “Now, hold still a moment...”

He came closer, very close. So close that if they had any breath, they would be breathing on one another. He placed the crown on top of her head and turned on the blowtorch. He held the makeshift crown steady and began to weld it onto her head. A blue light glow on her head and sparks flew everywhere. Some even landed on Moonjumper’s face, but he didn’t flinch. He was much too absorbed in his work. Vanessa could feel something hot dripping down her metal hair, ruining it as it quickly stuck there. She made a sort of whimpering noise, sounding more like a scared animal than a human. He didn’t hear it, he was humming over her cries. He made sure his humming was loud enough so she could her it, the metals walls making his voice echo. He then started to sing…

“Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday dear Vanessa,

Happy Birthday to you.”

His singing voice, despite his nature, was eerie yet sweet. As terrified as she was, the singing was almost calming. It reminder her of her prince. Her real prince. The prince that hugged and comforted her when she was upset. The one who danced with her and cared for her. The one that bought her flowers. She actually began to cry sorrowful tears. But her tears were not human, thin trickles of oil slid down her metal face. She realization hit her, after everything that had happened to her, of what she had truly lost. She now knew who had caused all her endless pain and heartbreak. It wasn’t her parents’ fault, or the florist android's fault, or even her dear prince’s fault. It was all her fault.

“From good friends and true,

From old friends and new,

May good luck go with you,

And happiness too.”

Moonjumper finished the song, turning off the blowtorch and standing back to admire his true work. “There we go! All fitted up for your big day!” he said, putting his hands on her metal cheeks. “Don’t you look wonderful, Vanessa? Or should I say...Queen Vanessa?” he grinned. But his grin fell once he heard her sobs. Vanessa’s motion was starting to return slowly, her body shivering in her bindings. “Vanessa are you...crying?” he asked, quite surprised that she was able to. She looked up at him, oil still pouring from out her metal sockets.

“I’m...sorry...”

She croaked out an apology in a voice that wasn’t hers. The voicebox that Moonjumper had given her was very broken, making her words glitched and warped. But Moonjumper had heard her clearly, his eyes widening in surprise. She sobbed, too devastated to be upset anymore. She understood now. This robot, as much as he was messed up in the head, was still her prince. She could still see it in his eyes. The kindness and caring that he showed her every day they were together was still there. It had lasted throughout all the years, deep in his core. Just because he was different on the outside, didn’t mean that he was gone. He turned her into this creature so they could stay together forever. And though he had hurt her, tortured her, and chained her, he loved her. He loved her just like how she loved him.

“I...love you...my prince...” she spoke again, her voice becoming more crackled and fuzzy with static. She wanted to reach out to him, to hold him again. She had missed his gentle touch, the way they would embrace. Even if they were both made of cold metal, she didn’t care anymore. She tried to squirm in her chains to get his attention, to silently plead for her freedom. Moonjumper’s face was blank, as if in shock.

His face then turned sinister, and he promptly slashed her across the face with his claws.

She screeched out in shock, her head going backwards. She now had three silver scars imprinted into her metal face. Moonjumper grabbed her chin and yanked her head up, forcing her to look at him. His eyes were filled with hatred, his face even more so. “I don’t think you understand, you brat.” he spat out the word, full of scorn and hostility. She looked back at him, deeply hurt. Didn’t he love her? Wasn’t that the whole reason of why she did this to her? So they could be together forever? He squeezed her face even tighter, nearly denting in her cheeks.

“I didn’t program you to have feelings.”

She stared blankly, making him smile somehow. “Oh, don’t tell me you haven’t gotten it by now. I thought you were a smart girl!” he mocked. “Then again, I suppose I was asking for too much.” he huffed, rubbing the oil from off her face and looking at his hand in disgust. “Don’t you see? I’ve finally fixed you up to be your true self.” he said, coming closer and whispering in her auditory sensor. “Not a beautiful princess, but a monster. Because that’s all you are to me.” he told her, breaking her heart and stepping on the shatter pieces for good measure. “Does that hurt you?” he hissed, dragging a claw on her cheek to make another mark. “Oh, I hope it does. I worked very hard on those pain receptors. I mean, what’s the point of making sometime alive...without a little pain to go with it?” he said, tapping his claw on her cheek. Vanessa was shocked, he really was alive. He felt pain and feelings just like a human could. But why was he taking it all out on her?! Didn’t he see that she loved and forgave him?!

“...why?...” was all she could manage to say.

“I think that’s enough out of you.” Moonjumper growled, making her shrink back to the wall. He stepped back, giving himself more room to work, before going to open up her chest cavity. He undid some latches and blots, making the lid fly open. He looked inside her metal frame, wires and circuits doing their jobs respectfully. He reached inside, using his other hands to hold Vanessa steady. She could feel his hand moving inside of her and touching her robotic organs, a very unpleasant experience. His hand made its way up to where her throat was. She could feel him grabbing onto something in the middle of it, causing her to make choking noises as an old reflex. He pulled on it fast, she could feel something breaking. She wanted to scream for him to stop, but her voice cut out halfway. He ripped out the part with a grunt, quickly pulling his hand out.

She saw why she couldn’t scream out in pain, he had ripped out her voicebox.

“Well! That came out easier than I thought it would!” Moonjumper chuckled, throwing the voicebox up in the air and catching it. He was too late to notice that it was leaking oil, and small back droplets splashed on his and Vanessa’s face. He looked down in his hand, dripping with the black substance. “I think I might need to freshen up a bit. You stay right here, alright?” he laughed, ‘booping’ her face right where her nose would have been. “I come back to visit you if I need any...spare parts.” he said, before cackling madly as he made his way to the door. “Au revoir, my dear queen!” Moonjumper laughed cruelly, before disappearing from the room. Vanessa didn’t have any more energy to struggle wildly or to bang against the walls. She was too deeply hurt, on the outside and on the inside. He had left her empty and broken, an even more damaged state than the one she had left him in so many years ago.

The prince had finally gotten his revenge.

[thelostcatpodcast]

THE LOST CAT PODCAST TRANSCRIPTS: S01 Ep05: They’re Only Spiders

SEASON 1: EPISODE 5: THEY’RE ONLY SPIDERS

Episode released 25th August 2014

http://thelostcat.libsyn.com/episode-5-theyre-only-spiders

Trigger warning: SPIDERS

THE LOST CAT PODCAST, BY A P CLARKE. EPISODE 5: THEY’RE ONLY SPIDERS

I was going to the loo.

Now, here’s an interesting thing: If you are the sort, and I am, to go to the loo standing up, your urine will cause bubbles to form on the surface of the water as it splashes down. Hundreds and thousands of bubbles of all different sizes. They look, for all the world, like a thousand spider eyes, staring balefully up at you while you do your business down onto them. If you are the sort to go to the loo standing up you may already know this.

But if you are the sort to go sitting down well, let me be the first to tell you: there are thousands of spider eyes staring up at you while you do your business. In the darkness, in the damp quiet, watching, waiting.

Now i’m not just trying to be crude, well obviously I amjust trying to be crude, I’m also making a point. And the point is this: they’re only spiders.

So: I was going to the loo, standing up as is my style, and staring at the spiders’ eyes in the water when they started moving. They started darkening, they started writhing as if every vein inside them had suddenly come lose and were all struggling to get free. The toilet bowl filled with the dumb  squirming of endless legs. The water became a carpet of swathing legs and then the bubbled eyes bulged out as each leg grasped ever more feverishly to escape from the pressing force from below.

The water surged upwards and then every single eye exploded up towards me in a fountain of spiders.

I leapt back, obviously, as sodden corpses of drowned spiders slopped limply onto the floor with a spattering noise as the ones beneath pushed up and out.

The spiders surged from the toilet like a hose, down onto the floor and up the bath. The spiders were a great roiling carpet of confusion spreading itself across my bathroom. Then the spiders found their footing and the chaotic wave suddenly turned purposeful and accelerated towards me.

I left the toilet, closed the door, put by back to it.

I found my house- mates in the hall.

I said, “you might want to give that ten minutes.”

But the looks on their faces told me that wouldn’t help. The spiders were spouting from the kitchen sink, they were scrabbling through every crack in every sideboard, and they were making hills of the carpets as they rose from the basement. I looked down and saw a thousand tiny legs skritching around the bottom of the toilet door for purchase.

We left the house.

And we found ourselves with a hundred people stood out on the pavements. Some in dressing gowns, some in three or four coats, all with wide-eyed looks on their faces.

“Spiders!” they called.

“Spiders!” we agreed.

“I don’t like spiders!” said the ten year old who lived three doors down.

I looked around and saw the windows of the front door slowly darken from the bottom up. I saw the curtains of my room slowly press up against my windows from some immense pressure coming from within.

And a complicated hissing noise rose up in the street that drowned out the low moan, then drowned out the roaring from the far side of the lake, that grew to even challenge continual blaring of the traffic jam.

It rose and rose until with an audible pop, spiders began spewing out of the gutters. Up and down the street a dark brown fog of spiders emerged from the sewers and poured across the pavement, spreading out in snaking rivers towards the gawping people.

I didn’t even have any shoes on.

“Close your mouths,” said Barney from next door. “Close your bloody mouths”

And as a clattering noise above us told us spiders were crawling over the roofs of the houses, the street suddenly went silent as everyone closed their mouths.

And all that was left was the infinite dry rushing of the spiders.

Rashid and his brothers had brooms, and they formed up around the gateway to their house and started brushing outwards. They broomed with such force that a cloud of flailing spiders swirled up around them and, in the wind of the day, they created whirlwinds of grasping legs that spread out along the pavement and enveloped bystanders.

A human shaped spider emerged from one whirlwind and the lady within ran down the street, her arms flailing, she knocked into trees:  and she did all this entirely in silence.

Police pulled up, scrunching thousands of the spiders as they screeched to a halt. They pulled out their guns at the perceived threat, presumably as they had been trained to do, but then stopped, as their training hadn’t really covered this sort of thing, leaving them as humans in uniforms holding guns.

One of them shot into the spiders, creating tiny spumes of abdomens in the arid sea of clattering chitin. Another pulled out his truncheon.

And I thought of my cat then, and how he acted when faced with a dog in his territory, or even a particularly large mouse.

I turned and ran like blazes.

We all of us ran like blazes.

The roaring from the other side of the lake became muffled just then, and then disappeared entirely, as if a giant wall had been erected between us and it.

Then all the light from the park end of the road disappeared and our ears popped from the air pressure change, as if some giant plunger was being pushed along our street towards us.

And so we ran the other way. Like blazes.

We were running. We were all of us running. We didn’t really know where to. Away was enough just for now.

We ran past houses on fire, hearing the deafening crackling sound of a million shrivelling spiders. We ran past trees already turning to candy floss from spiders.

Now it was Penny from the newsagents that had the idea. It was not me. My head was filled with the idea of stepping on spiders with my bare feet. What can I tell you?

No, it was Penny. She yelled: “Run to the high street! Let’s get to the Pet Rescue Centre!”

And so all of us, ran from the spiders, and towards the towering tentacles of The Leviathan, and the pet rescue centre that had been set up at its base.

When we reached the high street every car was abandoned. A bus was on its side, turned over as the man-hole cover beneath it exploded up, letting free a geyzer of spiders from below.

All around us was the high splintering sound of windows, as every pane of glass gave out in turn.

The glass fell down and hung on the webs that were already strung between the buildings above us.

We ran beneath curtains of serrated glass.

The day was giving out as we ran past large spider-covered lumps on the pavement we choose not to identify.

I ran staring directly ahead of me for the only way to deal with what my feet were covered in was to not look at them. We were all running slowly by then, as the spiders were like water around our feet.

“There!” Penny cried.

And she was right.

There at the foot of the Leviathan’s tentacles was clear ground. There were people there, ushering us in.

We all of us reached the Leviathan and crossed what felt like a boundary beyond which the spiders simply would not go. There was a line some 15 meters out from the Leviathan within which there were no spiders at all.

Those that were left of us ran to the centre and got our breath. Hundreds of spiders left our clothes by our trousers and ran in jagged lines back to the boundary, desperate to be gone from this place.

And then, as the people of the Pet Rescue Centre at the Hole Of The Leviathan approached us with blankets and support, we all of us screamed.

We screamed like blazes.

We screamed for a long time.

A good deal of crying went on.

“We’re so happy you could make it.” Said one of the staff.

“Spiders,” was all we said for quite a while.

As we calmed down we heard it. All of the animals at the Centre were lying with their heads upside down, moaning with a quiet ululating tone. This is the sound the animals make during the night when they hear the low moan coming from the Leviathan. The spiders recoiled from the sound, as if stung, and refused to come near. And there were hundreds of animals gathered around the Leviathan.

“They’ve been gathering here all day,” said a blonde, dread-locked member of staff “We knew something was going to happen.”

“But they were nice. They were always nice,” continued an older man “They just really wanted to be near the Leviathan. It’s been difficult keeping them fed, mind.”

Dozens more people turned up over the next hour, wide-eyed and silent. And all of them screamed like blazes. I very much hoped that everyone else had gotten away.

The spiders shied away from the ululating of the animals, creating a perimeter of some fifteen metres around the Hole, in almost a perfect circle. We were in the circle, and the spiders were outside, scurrying all around us, but refusing to get closer.

But the spiders kept coming. They formed up on each other and rose like a wall around us, all scrabbling to get closer, and then scrabbling to get away from the animal song.

After the first hour, no-one else came in from the spiders to the sanctuary of the Leviathan and the small collection of portacabins that made up the Pet Rescue Centre.

As the hours went by and  the night drew in the spiders rose up and up, seemingly never running out .

The wall of spiders grew over our heads creating a massive circular wall around us. And still they kept coming.

There was no way out, after that. We were there for good.

Some went to inspect them. They walked up as close as they dared to the wall, trying to see through the dense cacophony of segments, pincers and chitinous legs.

“How far back do you think they go?”

One of the brothers stuck his broom into the wall. It went in two feet or so. Then he tried to pull it out but it would not come. He struggled as hard as he could but eventually let go as the broom gently disappeared into the wall of spiders.

“Huh,” he said.

“What’d they want with a broom?” said another.

A billion baleful eyes stared back at them, not answering.

By 9 pm the wall of spiders had risen so high that it was closing in on us from above. The spiders were creating an almost perfect dome around us. At around 10:30 the spiders closed in on us fifteen metres above our heads and we all watched as the tiny patch of clouded sky shrank and shrank until the spiders formed up and closed us in.

It all went dark.

It all went quiet, save for the relentless paper-y fluttering of legs on legs on legs. All the sound from the outside was gone, and everything felt very close, like putting your head under a duvet.

It was warm.

After a while, you sort of adapt.  We simply stopped looking up.

We mostly used phones for light.

After a while, you could pretend that you couldn’t hear the endless rasping sound of the spiders at all.

We talked to keep our spirits up, though the subject was mostly spiders.

I stroked some of the cats as they lay on the ground with their heads upside down. I did it to comfort them and, I guess myself. It was habit mostly.

“Do you think the spiders are still coming?” I said, motioning over to the throbbing wall.

The dreadlocked attendant looked up and said “foolish to think anything else. But more foolish to think about it at all, I reckon. Heh.”

And he looked down at me, smiled, and tickled a dog behind its ears.

An argument broke out near one of the portacabins. Some of us were getting hungry. The staff of the Pet Rescue Centre were trying to stop the people gathered from eating any of the food they had.

A small mob of people started moving their shoulders and talking louder, they started spreading out into a semi-circle around the entrance to the building.

The blonde fellow ran up and yelled “those animals are the only things that are stopping the spiders getting in. Now we will do exactly what you say, so what do you want: the animals happy, or the spiders?”

At that moment -  worn out from climbing or crushed by the mass around them - dead spiders began falling upon us from above.

And the mob, to a man, picked up the food and laid it on the floor next to the animals.

They said, with wide eyed looks on their faces: “spiders.”

And we laid out food until the animals were happy, and all the food was gone: dog food, cat food, burgers, sausages, kebabs – everything we had.

We gave them all the bottled water too, for the taps had been assiduously bunged up.

And then we looked at each other, hungry and thirsty while the one remaining broom was handed around to clear away the fallen spider corpses.

“Well,” said someone. “What is there to drink?”

One of the staff emerged from the portacabin being used as a storeroom with some boxes.

“Well,” they said. “We have wine.”

“That’s it?”

“Animals won’t drink it.”

“Well, fair enough.”

So we sat in the centre of the circle of ululating animals, beneath the sphere of spiders. We poured out all the bottles into whatever glasses we had and sang songs to cover up the sound all around us.

And we all of us sat there together at the end of the world, and drank a glass of wine.

<music plays: Clap Your Hands, written by A P Clarke and Alex Riedl and performed by A P Clarke and W Walker-Allen>

Come on gather round, there’s a storm outside

there’s a tale to tell, about a man who lied

and he left his bride, there on his wedding night

to sail across the sea and there to fight.

Now I tried to make her happy as I kept her warm at night

and I know that she was lonely for her own

and when he died they brought her back his burnt black bones

Clap your hands, clap your hands, clap your hands to the funeral band

Come on clap your hands, clap your hands

We’re going way down to the bottom of the world.

Well we saved some wood and piano string

for the happy songs we forgot to sing

now come in close, it’s getting cold

now the fires are down all around the town

Did you ever hear the story of my sweetheart Saint Marie?

The only thing she left us were her shoes.

And when the night draws in we can burn them too.

Clap your hands, clap your hands, clap your hands to the funeral band

Come on clap your hands, clap your hands

We’re going way down to the bottom of the world.

Come on now: the band’s about to play

We had our time and now it’s gone away

so boys and girls now if you please, everyone get on your knees

and pray.

Can you feel the beat, filling up your ears?

Like a steady drum, like a rising hum.

Now you can scream, if you are scared,

but nobody will hear you for the beat in theirs

Everybody has a monster on the other side of the world

and every beat’s another step towards you.

And when he’s right behind you he will stop...

Clap your hands, clap your hands, clap your hands to the funeral band

Come on clap your hands, clap your hands

We’re going way down to the bottom of the world.

In the morning we were awoken by the strange sound of silence. We looked up and saw that none of the spiders were moving.

“So spiders sleep?” I asked.

“Give ‘em a poke,” was the answer.

So I took the broom, went up to the sphere of spiders and, very gently, gave the wall a poke. The broom handle went in with little resistance, and came out again bringing with it a little cascade of stiff, rictused spider bodies. They fell onto the clear ground at my feet and rolled about.

They were all dead.

I called back “I think they’re all dead!”

And then a crackling sound came from the hole I had just poked in the wall and carried up above our heads. Then the wall began to shudder, and more dead spiders began to fall.

And every single animal leapt up as one and bolted into the Pet Rescue Centre.

The crackling turned into a constant and rising hissing that grew louder and deeper with each moment. It rained dead spiders.

“Into the building! Now!”

And the last of us scrambled in just as the top of the sphere of spiders began to collapse in. We shut the thin door of the portacabin, put our backs to it and, mostly, closed our eyes.

And the hissing grew to a roar then grew to a noise that, in our ears, sounded like screaming. And then the Pet Rescue Centre was turned on its side by a massive, surging weight.

For an hour we sat in darkness listening to the currents of swirling spiders as they collapsed around us. The portacabin rumbled as what felt like whales passed us, presumably as some mass of larger spiders slid down.

There were moments of a high sharp shrieking. Twice the Pet Rescue Centre was buffeted about. We had no idea what was out there.

Slowly, slowly the sound drew down, until it sounded like pebbles on a beach.

And a tiny thin beam of light appeared in the Pet Rescue Centre coming from one of the windows now of the roof of the building. It threw the shadows of spiders all over me, which I felt was mean.

We opened the window, and one of the cats neatly leapt out.

So we followed it.

We climbed out of the window into a muggy day and looked out at our neighbourhood and the infinite sea of spiders that now covered it, from our tiny island next to the towering tentacles of the Leviathan.

“Well, what do we do now?”

“I dunno,” came the answer.  “I’m hungry.”

“Well, we could eat ‘em?”

“Eat ‘em?”

“Yeah. Eat ‘em.”

And we did. Everything was gone, and nothing was getting through. All we had was spiders. So spiders is what we had.

We cleared them all up, and then cooked them.  Burgers, kebabs and sausages, dog food and cat food. Vegetarians held long debates as to whether spiders really counted.

They are, as I said, only spiders.

We flavoured them with chilli and garlic. I preferred coriander and cardamom, but I was told that Chinese Five Spices worked best. Well it’s all spiders, so whatever works for you.

The food shops that refused to serve spiders closed. A lot of the corporate chains, who had had to legally guarantee the content of their food years ago because of their predilection for filling their food with all sorts of nonsense, were stuck with their recipes, unable to fill their food with spiders. They could not compete with such an abundance of free, low fat, protein-rich food, nor could they react quickly enough to alter their supply chain and worldwide company policies in time not to have their businesses fatally weakened, and many closed, making our high streets free of them for the first time in decades.

When the news reports finally came back online they spoke about the collapse of corporations and conglomerates. They said it was the end of the world.

And for them it was the end of the world. It’s always the end of the world for someone.

Is that so bad?

Anyway, I felt better in knowing that, wherever my cat was, there would be ample food for him. I could never decide if it was incompetence or laziness that made him so bad at birds and mice, but spiders should be fine, surely? Sspecially dead ones.

And so finally I got back to my house, and cleaned my room and got in to bed. And then immediately leapt out of it.

Right where I put my head, a huge, fleshy spider scurried across my pillow.

I sat on the arm of my couch, breathing heavily.

Come on, I said. It’s only a spider.

It’s only a spider.

THIS HAS BEEN EPISODE 5 OF THE LOST CAT PODCAST, WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY A P CLARKE. COPYRIGHT 2014.

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING

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facebook.com/lostcatpodcast

soundcloud.com/a-p-clarke/sets/the-lost-cat-podcast

apclarke.bandcamp.com/releases

[trustafarian-theserialfiction]

“trustafarian” part 12: delivering the wingier wing March 4, 2016 8:56 pm

The tomato/lentil curry stew thing Bruce made was really hitting the spot.  The green stuff was knotweed from someoneother’s window microgreen grow.  It went on top with some recently expired plain yogourt Bruce assured him wouldn’t make him sick with some new thing.  Dan had seen the container in the second fridge the other day or whenever it had been, and overlooked it after assuming off the bat that, like at his parent’s place, there would be a few mouthfuls of some mouldy leftovers inside.  If he’d known it was yogourt he still wouldn’t have gone for it.  One it was from the trash, two it was unflavoured, three he didn’t eat yogourt. Wasn’t that for lady tennis players or whatever?  But it was good with this.  He’d slowly eaten a bowl sitting at the kitchen island while Bruce ran around Painting The Living Room Ready. Or red-y, Dan wasn’t sure what the pun was there; either way it involved rummaging around in the tin box-shed thing built off the back of the skate ramp, and pulling out a big tyedyed sheet. This was followed by a red loveseat that looked like it was just the big square cushions off some larger piece of furniture structured together with single wall sections of milk crates and pallet slats.  The sheet went up on the wall by hooking the beam it was all wrapped around and stuck to at one end, onto a latch thing that was on a rope with a pulley dial doohickey up by the ceiling on the wall. Then he pulled out a projector from somewhere inside the halfpipe/shack storehouse of wonders. And lo and behold, appeared the laptop from behind its slider cubby-door in the wall.

It played movies for them all from the projector sitting on a pulled-up barstool, because Mouse had finally reappeared from his little room behind when the food smell got to him.  He’d been talking to himself and banging things and listening to some kind of soviet ska since finishing his half-Russian (for all Dan knew) rant about Bruce’s improper labelling on the way in.  Dan had been feeling exceptionally magnanimous since eating Bruce’s food again and drinking some filtered water from the pitcher that had been filled, but he’d stayed out of it entirely when Mouse sniped about it again before eating, which seemed fair.  At this point, from his point of view, it was really a nonissue and he was happy to not get upset about it by proxy.  Turned out he’d just been clowning himself by drinking the water from the sink for hands, which (of course) didn’t have a filter on the tap-end, because (of course) it was for hands, and steaming, and whatever.  Bruce said they filtered it again through biochar or some crackpot sounding thing, Dan had been only halfway paying attention to the human attention-craving hummingbird Bruce had become with two somewhat willing, somewhat captive “out-of-actionses” to fuss over, and was more interested in how movies looked on the resplendently ridiculous backdrop of the tyedye. It was like a sunflower field if you looked at the patterns long enough, but all lucky charms colours and every-petal-a-rainbow type sunflower field.  For some reason Bruce had decided to show them lawnmower man and was gabbing incessantly about it.  The laptop’s audio naturally went through all the various speakers around the place and with the sound too low to really hear over Bruce even though it was everywhere, the effect was a kind of entertainingly lyrical din.  A din to which Dan managed to eat more soup, at an increasing rate until he’d blown through several tentatively self-portioned half-bowls.  He suspected Bruce being perched on the top of the halfpipe he liked and blowing bags of volcano vape everywhere, was “somehow” giving him an appetite.

Sometime after dark Jean-Paul had shown up, and Dan thought it was because Bruce texted about the predicament of the two lost little lambs.  Or, whatever-Mouse-is.  A snarling little lamb on a snarled little settee that looks like a llama, honestly.  Despite all his rage he was just a guy too high to reasonably leave le Mais-on for the moment on his le Mouse-own. The maze… he squinted through the haze the room had taken on, watching Jean-Paul’s expression.

Dan was feeling a lot better than Mouse seemed to be, and he was glad to see Jean-Paul, who seemed nonplussed by the whole situation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mechanical separation, he thought. Mechanically separated was the only phrase he remembered now from the zine he’d pondered briefly in the kitchen, thinking instead mainly of the pictures. Dan asked himself why, what it was about the phrase. Jean-Paul is explaining about his job: Dan tried to focus.  It was riveting really, but he was really unclear on why his friend of lo these ten years had chosen tonight to explain that he ran around having sex for money.  And that it ran in the family, so to speak, which explained everything about the weird moment he’d had with Andreah last month and maybe something about why she hadn’t tried to get in touch at all.  But that wasn’t the case, he realized, running it by himself a few times; she had played it off really cool, she must have understood that Jean-Paul used to say whatever, to his old friends.  People he was scared wouldn’t “get it” or whatever. Dan wasn’t sure he got it.  Andreah hadn’t been sure he’d get it, or wasn’t sure she was supposed to tell him.  Since he didn’t know.  Apparently it wasn’t worth bringing up unless he was all juiced up on The Brew.  Maybe he’d seemed relaxed or something.  He had felt pretty relaxed, now that he was feeling much less high and much more level.  Mouse still seemed agitated as all get-out but hadn’t left, or seemed interested in anything that was going on aside from the movie playing directly over his head and occasionally begrudgingly responding to something Bruce was on about in the background, over all their heads.  Jean-Paul had perched himself on the halfpipe itself, in a square he cleared in the rummage against the short pallet wood leg of the second segment of strawberry red “couch” that Dan had been lounging on fully extended for some time before Jean-Paul had arrived.  He had been feeling like a big happy cat, all snug in its basket or whatever. The couch was holding together pretty well, like two big armless Adirondack chairs conjoined, it didn’t shift and it sandwiched Dan pleasantly in the middle.  He still felt snug, but now it was sort of like, he couldn’t get away if he wanted to.  He went about not feeling like he’d rather not bail. "So, I mean, how do you...Did your mom give you like, a welcome basket of …rubber gloves and condoms when you were legal or something?" "What?" He sounded quite scandalized, but amused.  Dan guessed this was going better than he’d anticipated. "I was picturing some like, eyes wide shut scenario," he'd never seen it, didn't know how the sexmask club recruited, "or something. With y'know, welcome baskets and… business cards. With italic font...fancy...in cursive..." he waved his hands vaguely, splashing it out in lights: "club ...somethingorother." "The Moulin Rouge," Jean-Paul laughed at him. "Alice linked me up, actually. I mean obviously I always knew, about my mom, like she never hid it from me, but I understood to repeat whatever job she said she had, when it came up. I'd never really thought about following in Ma'mere's footsteps but I'd never thought up any other backup plan for the band manager thing falling through. That was sort of step one in a whole...career I had planned out. Apparently I'm bad with setbacks." Maybe Jean-Paul had secretly been waiting to retire since before even starting. Dan had always wanted to retire, himself. Maybe he'd dropped out of retirement. For the first time. He was technically a freelancer.  He was freelancing.  If he factored in the cost of his room and board, if it had been in a rentable place of equivalent amenities, he was doing really well.  Astronomically well, even.  It wasn’t a penthouse downtown or anything but he’d really only been in town three months.  Or two months, that always confused him.  He counted forward from January on his fingers, and was surprised to find that it had only been two months. "So, how'd it, how'd you end up asking Alice...about it," he frowned at his accidental echo. Go ask Alice, he heard Andre tell him in the past, again, still there, next to the dumpster Bruce was in.  The bike was there. "She parties around town, there's places where you meet clients pretty easily, which is to say, where you make friends who look like bankers even naked and they give you various drugs people don’t really do anywhere else, and later you hit them up for rent when they,” he made a noise like was considering how “iffy” to be about it, ”require further service. Female-identifying people get in free so Alice is all over it, I’m not really one for the sex bar scene.  I go to my bar, where I know people, with people I know, and I don’t take dates there. Anyway Alice and I have a similar enough client base, or, there's enough overlap where she was able to set me up with a few guys who weren’t looking for what she’s offering now.  So there’s a nice wingman thing in it for my friend, too; she gets to say there’s a brand they can switch to, they in turn might forward whoever, to her.”

Well, that seemed to explain that.  Dan wasn’t sure where to go from there.  Was he supposed to check that Jean-Paul was okay or something?  He seemed fine.  No more not fine than anyone else he knew.  Generally pretty poised and in control.  It seemed pretty condescending to get all weird, so he tried “Okay.  Well, cool? Are you …all good?”

Jean-Paul laughed and looked at him sidelong.  Dan realized there were easy entendres there and he felt his face groan. Graciously Jean-Paul overlooked the joketake and said “overall it’s, ah, quite a fulfilling occupation, actually.  I encounter some very,” Dan saw his mouth shimmy as he pursed his lips in a sort of fond way “interesting older gentlemen. All groovy, ground control,” he said.

Bruce screeched “good morning starshine the earth says hellooooo,” over at them, obviously and obnoxiously eavesdropping.

With a wave of his hand, Jean-Paul ignored Bruce and continued, “it’s excellent work, honestly” sounding extremely honest.  Dan wasn’t sure whether to believe him, and chose to reserve judgment. He had found the word “overall” dubious.  He supposed Jean-Paul’s clients never yelled at him in bars.  If anything—Dan cut the power to that thought, blinked and decided the movie was interesting again, because it was a different movie, a movie so interesting he had no idea what he’d been about to think, even, or why that would’ve mattered.  Jason was in space in this one, huh?

“Pete says he’ll be here in a couple hours if we order a sumptuous Chinese meal in the betweentime.” Bruce continued to pester-yell, sounding very happy. “I have a twenty I found on the ground! All freaky and new! I think the machine 3d prints them from plastic bag pellets! Don’t quote me! I can get more out if you all are gonna stay away-ay-ayyychk?”

Staying awake for Pete sounded like kind of a-hurdle-too-many for him, but he didn’t want to run away just when Jean-Paul had come out to him or whatever about his line of work.  Seemed like that might come off as overly mindboggled about it, which would probably mean he wasn’t really that cool with it, in the light of day.  This all swam into his mind as he stared at the projected square on the wall and at everyone, the others.  Mouse and Bruce and Jean-Paul, all together in his line of vision, their heads looking sort of cherubic in his fading potion-paisleyed view.  He felt a sort of conduit of sympathy between them run in a circuit, then, and breathed out so he didn’t startle, feeling like he might.  He had a funny sense of the others as ectoplasms or something, like visible souls.  The scene seemed like an apparition of a stage play, with four ghostly players, watching an even ghostlier play as it played out on its own borax box.  The space ship or whatever it was, satellite or something, in the movie, reminded him of their house, all compartments of a unit. He was trying not to pry into the others in some way, by focusing away from them.  It immediately seemed overly intimate to investigate them too intently.  Instead he thought back to the question he’d been asked, so long ago it felt like but it couldn’t have been, Bruce had just asked and was distracted again.  They were on the same setting now, it seemed.  The same frequency.  It came back to him, hadn’t Bruce said something about that on an episode of the podcast?  He had intuited what Jean-Paul would think if he bailed, because Jean-Paul was thinking it.  And Jean-Paul had realized he’d realized because Dan been thinking it.  And the others knew too, or it felt like—it had felt like they had.  He felt like the best option was to be circumspect about his drug-fuelled revelations, but, not wanting to bet on being wrong, he finally announced that he couldn’t pitch but had been planning on eating more of what Bruce had made anyway.

“It is very homey,” Jean-Paul commented his way, watching the movie.  He had brought his knee up in front of him one at a time, alternating after a while, since sitting, and was now on the left one, hands clasped in front of it.

“Did you just call my cooking HOMELY,” Bruce wailed in feinted anguish. He was rolling around on the strip of halfpipe next to Mouse’s perch, between two pile-esque rows of whatheverthehell (looked like big sheets of fabric, paint rollers, chairs of various folding types, just a bunch of random shit like you’d see in the back of a school multipurpose room or a scout hall, which was probably exactly the type of place it had all come from originally), holding his balloonbag of vapor like an otter with a clam.

“Like home cooking,” Dan clarified redundantly, to contribute some chatter for its own sake.  For the sake of homeyness, and homieness, he figured.  It kind of felt like Bruce figuring it.  He was probably spending enough time around him for it to be catching, he smirked to himself.  Thinking of things catching brought him back to the almost electric jolt he’d felt earlier, when he’d had that sensation like they were all conducting something back and forth and it was an impressionistic soup of stuff, and he’d thought about how Jean-Paul was doing, or how he’d feel if Dan left, which brought him back to a half-had idea from before Bruce had distracted him, and he said “I can trade you spots so you’re not on the floor, or move my feet or something,” to Jean-Paul.

Jean-Paul opened his mouth, seeming to reply, but sounding a lot like Bruce cutting him off.  “Don’t bother I was gonna-unna go get Pete and me and him some padding.  I’ll get you another bowl too so you can stay a warm little patty all sandwichy and full of spices.”

“Are you calling me ginger,” Dan wasn’t heard, or if he was he wasn’t answered.  Bruce had bounced his way over the lip of the curved ramp and down the other side, and now he was in the kitchen, bustling. “Thanks,” he told Bruce with feeling, receiving more delicious mush on what he took to be a b-line to the second floor for supplies. Supplies.  He’d been thinking about asking about something from in there, but he couldn’t remember what it had been.  Somehow, though, it reminded him to ask Jean-Paul for clothes, since he did remember wanting to ask about clothes.  He tried to think of what the other thing had been, and amended to ponder it in a shower, after asking.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He wasn’t sure whether Jean-Paul would still be upstairs with them when he got out of the shower, and thought that if he wasn’t, if he’d gone back to his own floor, Dan’d do the same, except that his floor was right below where this impromptu slumber party was taking place.  Bruce pretty much had him corralled either way, he realized, sudsing his scalp with someone’s old Lush product. It looked filmed in dust enough to belong to no one who was there to care.  When he came back out, towelling his hair with a hand-towel while he held a larger towel around his waist with another hand, he spotted the new additions to the landscape he’d been wanting; a change of clothes was on the back edge of the red couch thing.  But he also felt himself deflate slightly at Jean-Paul’s absence from the scene.  Cast adrift, slightly, he tried not to scurry his way over despite feeling the wintery chill of the evening, wondering where Bruce was as well.  Mouse was still posted up on the settee, looking angry and watching the movie.  The cloth of the towel felt surreal somehow, like if he’d been higher he’d have taken on its properties and melted.  He wanted to have on things that didn’t need holding.

“Uh, did you want more,” he asked Mouse when he came back clothed. “While I’m standing,” he added.  It wasn’t his plan to get back up.  In fact, he planned to eat another half bowl himself and pass out in the chair thing, so he wouldn’t seem avoidant like it felt going down to his room now would be.  He wasn’t sure about being high around Pete, it seemed like it might quickly max out his always taxed ability to tolerate white people.  Passing out seemed prudent, and so it was his plan.  Otherwise who knew what would happen, maybe Pete would convince him somehow to run out into the night to host some kind of live event only to chide him for never learning to use a turntable.

Looking churlish at best Mouse said “no.” Dan decided Mouse was also reaching max on an always taxed ability of some sort, or, whatever was going on it looked like getting into it would hurt.  Like it would result in a fist to his face or something.  Mouse seemed to find him as fun as he found Mouse.  Not very.  But he liked Mouse, also.  He didn’t want to be annoying, but he couldn’t become unannoying by going away, because he’d be conspicuous somehow as the hole in the floor, he still felt like.  It was at this juncture that Jean-Paul came back, followed by Bruce, both of them lugging spare futon-type things.  One seemed to be foams in a duvet cover and the other looked circular but otherwise futonlike.  The circle was slotted into a cleared space on the halfpipe next to Mouse, between which and Dan a square longboard had been laid across two milkcrates of some cymbal stand stuff and pedals and random guitar strings and piles of melted wax.  The foams in a duvet went up on top of the halfpipe next to the silver vape, that ziggurat of canna-conveyance.

“Can I get that—”  Jean-Paul started to say to Bruce.

“I’m on it,” was already being shouted back from behind the divider wall.  Bruce was making noise like he was going through the stuff on the back of the divider.  He came back in short order, waving a smushy, folded stack of melted-looking clear green plastic.  Bouncing up onto the back of the halfpipe from the back end, he appeared like a gargoyle, curling his legs and feet under himself neatly.  Dan was impressed by his dexterity and recalled the other day, when he’d turned out to not be two-litre-jug-hoisting strong, lately.  He made a raincheck-resolution to make a resolution with himself when the weather changed for real, to get back to normal as soon as humanly possible.  He felt vague about what he had intended to do in the intervening time that wasn’t getting back to normal, and it seemed like the answer was, because he had some music to backlog for Bruce first.  While the backlogging was good.  Before whatever seismic shift in reality that everyone seemed to wait all winter for, occurred.  He remembered Andre telling him he should see it in the summer. The pace would change after the lousy smarch weather stopped, he understood, but he wasn’t sure how that new pace looked or what it would mean for him.  But it sounded like a lot of distractions.  Dan was distracted just now in fact, by Bruce using an attachment to make the volcano inflate the smushy pile, which was an armchair, in fact.  He tossed it over Dan in an arc, eventually, and he watched it sail sort of like a forlorn beachball at a very empty, dark rave, over to “JP!” who Bruce reminded “head’s up,” after the fact.

Jean-Paul toed wider the space he was using for seating and dropped the chair into it.  It seemed really incongruous to Dan that he’d be using a chair that seemed both conspicuously fragile and attention-grabbingly lacking in taste.  In his mind Jean-Paul would leave a room before sitting on a piece of furniture like that—something so contrary to his essence—like tackiness was contagious.  That was the same note of surprise he always hit with Jean-Paul, now.  Here.  Maybe it’ll stop being surprising sometime, he tried to log in his mind, so it’d stick.  Jean-Paul made kind of a production out of seeming more fastidious and fancyminded, than he actually was.  Dan had no idea why really, it was the opposite of what everyone tried to do in his experience, except for his ex and her family, but that was because she was like that.  Bougie.  He thought everyone hated that.  Everyone who wasn’t like that, anyway.  He’d always found it sort of annoying about his ex, himself—and at times acutely mortifying, depending how annoying someone she wasn’t paying attention to found her as they provided some service to her.  She was really transactional about everything, he recalled.  It seemed like a counter-intuitive affectation to give people the impression that people like his ex were more similar to yourself than they were, particularly in the context at hand, in which Jean-Paul existed as a part of some broadly inclusive “anti-authoritarian” community.  Then again, Dan realitychecked himself and noted that for months, he’d been wearing clothes his ex had picked out.  And they made him look kind of, if not fancy then different, in a not-homeless way.  He had no idea if he looked bougie or not.  He knew they wore clean clothes all the time.  His ex almost never took laundry out to get it done, she usually just bought another store-washed vintage thing and threw it on one of the piles when she was done.  Probably bougie people threw away clothes that needed mending, he realized.  Besides, “fitting in” didn’t really seem to be the point of being an anti-authoritarian, so dressing to fit in seemed kind of counter-intuitive, itself.  Which meant anyone judging him based on his group sameness score probably fit in less than he did, in the relevant way, so he could forget about what his clothes said and speak for himself.  His current wardrobe said, Jean-Paul repainted his place beige at some point, or did something else that got some of his ninja-monochrome clothes smeared in paint.  There was a terrycloth hotel robe as well, for extra wrapping.  He felt very snug and dry, and the increasingly gentle, circular ribboning of his psychedelic musings was diffusing some edge of tension that apparently had been propping up his eyelids.  He felt himself drifting in and out of a hazy sleep, half an ear open to the room as Bruce’s chatter bubbled into it like a pump-looped fountain in a midrange sushi restaurant bathroom.  Bruce was intermittently reading through a paper menu he had from some place off St. Clair a few blocks over, and bickering affectionately with Mouse, who sounded impatient about delivery arriving, now, as opposed to ambiently murderous to have found himself on a surprise detour into his brain’s own toon town.  Mouse insisted the food was better from the Vietnamese places at the Runnymeade intersection and Bruce insisted Pete hadn’t said a sumptuous Vietnamese meal so they had to order from yum-yums or wherever.  So on and so forth. Apparently there was a congee place way further north up Keele that would deliver via some thirdparty courier app, but it was vetoed for hassle despite the nearby place not having congee.  Whatever that was.  This all reminded him an awful lot of making similar calls with his ex.  He tried not to let the remindedness roll in like a fog and contaminate the evening for him.  This wasn’t like then.  This was an actual gathering of friends being friendly.  Which was fun, not fatiguing.  Dan was fatigued, but not emotionally.  Which was a weightlessness he’d been waiting for possibly forever, but at least since before his relationship had started to hit turbulence.  Maybe it was the same feeling has Magic card gatherings in highschool. Sort of closeby, like different tints of the same hue.

By the time Bruce’s chunky old flip-phone was letting them know food was outside by blasting a midi of reggaestep at them indiscriminately, Dan had managed to get all the way over to the other side of the waking divide, and he felt himself swimming back up to the other world ponderously, unsure of the way and feeling like it was easy to get lost somehow.  To cul-de-sac in a somnambulistic sub-realm somewhere before where eyes open.

The food-smell did the whole job of getting him online again, and he sat up, watching Bruce spread out the array of vessels.  There wasn’t enough space on the longboard and he ended up decamping three items to his perch on the halfpipe.  It was precisely at the most convenient time for a buffet haul, and Pete chose it as the time to show up, appearing from the direction of the bedrooms, where he might or might not have been sitting around alone waiting to eat.  Dan assumed he’d texted Bruce his part of the order.  It looked like more than twenty dollars worth of food and it looked like it was supposed to feed more than just Mouse and Bruce and Pete.  This was confirmed for him by Jean-Paul rotating several little cartons toward himself to check the sigil expressing their contents on each, before snagging what seemed to be his own individual order of deep fried tofu in chili sauce.  Dan guessed that was his version of junkfood. The rest of the spread was closer to his own, minus what was later revealed to be a container of green beans in sauce, which everyone seemed to treat as what Jean-Paul called a crudité.  Dan still wasn’t entirely sure what that was, but it seemed to be small portions of healthy stuff you could eat as finger food. Maybe cooked didn’t count, maybe that was how tapas was different.  His ex liked tapas.  That was right up her alley; small portions, fancy name. Bougie.  She’d have been hard pressed to pick something out of tonight’s line-up, although, she’d have been the only one.  There were two kinds of glistening barbecued meats to tantalize the appetite, as well as pineapple fried rice, two orders of fries and three boxes of chicken wings in varying preparations.  Bruce had also ordered a bunch of cans of soda even though there was soda down the block for less, and there was water to drink in the Maison.  Really going all out hosting the big ball, he thought at Bruce.  Just as he thought it, Bruce’s head rotated unerringly toward him and he found himself being beamed at, maximum beam.  

“Mange, mange!” Bruce shouted over from his spot, making a rotating eat-eat gesture with his hand in front of his mouth as he did.  It reminded him of Andreah ordering take-out on that snowy night in Kensington, and a ghostly gust of cold air made him shiver.  He should really do some reaching out textwise before Andreah decided to forget his name when she saw him again.  It seemed like only a week ago that they’d had breakfast, less than, even.  But no, here it was, days into March.  Soon a month would’ve passed since they’d talked.  That seemed both wrong in the sense that it was rude or kind of cold or whatever, and in the sense that she was the only person he knew who didn’t live in the same building as him but might be willing to let him stay in hers for whatever arising reasons might be forthcoming but premonitions of which were unforthcoming to Dan in the moment of consideration.  He wasn’t sure she was a great escape route but escape routes were the kind of thing you wanted to keep track of, he’d learned that the hard way from his breakup; turned out he’d never even thought about it before needing to, and that Jean-Paul had been his only escape route.  He’d been lucky, so lucky, in all this, he re-affirmed to himself.  He’d felt a lot less lucky about it since moving in here, but that wasn’t really on the people or the place, since they all seemed to click together tidy-as-all-get-out.  Figuratively tidy.  Feeling dejected and out of sorts all the time because he found the environment stressful was a stupid way to interface with free housing that had come along when he needed it, Dan made another point of it to himself while he ate his way through a chickenwing.  It was sublimely greasy in the most fantastically covert way, the savoury tide of runny melted fat being held around the muscles and bones by a faintly fryer-popped mantle of crisp fried skin that was seasoned delectably with something very salty and faintly sweet, salt and MSG and some kind of spice; he vectored in on it out of appreciation, feeling high on chicken.  He was pretty sure there weren’t wings like this for delivery in Vic.  The closest thing he could think of was the little deep fried wings at kfc, which came frozen and preseasoned unlike all the other bone-in chicken, and dropped in the fry oil station baskets in the prep area, away from the piece production kitchen.  The wings were pointedly small and yet, pointedly expensive, so no one who didn’t eat them for free ever got them, but they were leagues ahead of anything else on the menu in terms of their desirability to Dan and their actual nutritive food-value by weight. And the wings from this place a few blocks away were at least twice as good as those wings, if not three times.  And it wasn’t just because they were three times larger for the same price, or that he was embedded currently in the process of wasting away from not eating enough.  They were actually just, better. Freshness, he found the attribution.  They sell these things all night every night, that’s why it’s perfect.

Pete had been making quick work on his own wingfeast, piling up bones on a container lid as he went, looking pleased.  “I know, right,” he said to Dan cordially over the longboard table, as if he’d heard the whole thing, that whole line of thought about the wings.  It felt comfortably and uncomfortably like he had.  Pete had that way about him, Dan realized.  He assumed it was a skill Pete had developed on purpose to keep people on edge, seeming confidently aware of what you were thinking.  His older-older sister did it too, she was usually bluffing.  Dan knew how to bluff along, he could play it by ear.

“Not the worst wings I ever had,” he agreed back.

“‘Not the worst’,” Pete quoted him, laughing.  This made him feel really sharp and conversationally functional for a second before he realized that was stupid and told himself to get a grip and learn to not-care-one-way-or-the-other better.  He’d been working on not-caring-one-way-or-the-other for a long time.  It should have been paying off, by now.  “That’s so, uh, wasp-y, why can’t you guys ever just like things. Openly.  Honestly. Directly.  This is why you don’t get chicks—if that’s like, something you wonder about.”

“Yeah well, let me know when you figure out how to keep them,” Dan started, and stopped, noticing Pete was not a person with a face like he was having some fun banter with a friend.  Mouse, however, suddenly exploded with barks of laughter, spraying micromorsels of sumptuous Chinese meal into the air around him for a few seconds, mercifully derailing whatever horrifying social snafu had been about to go off in place of a spit take with a laugh track.

“I believe you have just gotten served,” Mouse chortled at Pete, clearly annoying him.  Bruce seemed to be chiming in with some giggles about it as well. Dan didn’t turn his head to look at Jean-Paul’s read, but interpreted the dense silence near his feet to mean a tongue was being bitten over there, or his friend was just apprehensive about the sudden decline in ambient camaraderie.

“You can make volleyball analogies when you’ve finished highschool equivalency. Or started it,” Pete groused at the small crumple of person just over his left shoulder, sounding like he was trying to land a hit on a sore spot.

“You are a cunt,” Mouse announced back, still sounding amused with himself and the situation.  Bruce made hooting noises at them and chanted that they should fight.  Dan couldn’t tell if it was serious or not, the goading.

“Takes one to get some,” Pete primly deflected.  “Eat some fries, you look thin.”  He handed a box of no-longer-steamyfresh fries over. Mouse had only eaten meat so far, picking at each different kind in turn.

“Disgusting,” Mouse told him, eating fries anyway.  Dan wasn’t sure he meant the fries.  It hadn’t occurred to him before now to wonder about who Mouse thought about dating, if anyone.  Now that it had, he assumed it was a short and fraught list, if it existed at all.  

So this is it, the thought gelled, this is a night in at Maison Rokkoku. He watched the currently-playing movie for a second, trying to get his bearings in the image as it traversed another image, the sunflowers. He couldn’t make sense of what the action on screen was.  A fight or something, or some kind of choreographed routine.  Oh it was sports; he finally hit on the swing of things and magic-eye style it all settled into coherence.  They were watching some old football team underdog, come-from-behind, island of misfit toys-type romper room feelgood fan favourite or whathaveyou.