Antony remained on his not-quite-dumpster couch, slumped and still, up until the moment Irene gave her predictable knock at the door of his dressing room.

“Come in,” he called quietly. She entered, like normal, holding a fat roll of low denomination cash as she found him on the couch. He must not have seemed to be in a good mood, with the way her brows furrowed.

“Got your cut here.” She gestured with it until he started to rise up to meet her. He put on his smile, started to thank her, but right as he reached for the money, she pulled it back. Irene hesitated, looking him up and down, thinking carefully for just a moment. But his stance at this moment must have been convincing enough, because she shrugged as she came to a decision.

“Well, couple things came up since the end of your show. You’re a popular guy tonight.” That didn’t sound ominous at all.

Antony raised a brow. “What now?”

She smiled and crossed her arms over her chest, now, tucking the cash against herself to hold his attention hostage. “Lenny said he turns sixteen next week.”

“Okay, happy birthday to him….” Irene let him hold his look of confusion for a few extra seconds than necessary.

“Yeah, he wants his birthday present to be to work here.” Right as Antony was about to say it, Irene added, “What a dumb gift.” He laughed. “Anyway, he wants to be your assistant—like you were to Michael. Literally how he said it, too.” The humor faded. Unsmiling, he shook his head right as Irene dismissed it with a wave. “I know, I know. But he’s such a good kid. I didn’t want to just say no right to his face so fast. So I said I’d talk to you about it.” Yes, leave the breaking of Lenny’s heart to him. How thoughtful. Antony took a step back and gestured to Irene with his hand.

“Well, what about you? I can’t imagine you enjoy dealing with tickets and microphones all night. Maybe he could do that or something instead.”

Irene snorted. “I’m not paying someone something I do for free. Or close to free or something.” She uncrossed her arms and started to gesture with the wad of cash again. “I know my time isn’t free-free—my point is I’m not adding to the list of employees out of the goodness of my heart.” Now came her pointed look, both eyebrows up, squinting, waiting for him to make a suggestion she all but danced around. The real reason she didn’t just flat-out tell Lenny “no.”

Now it was Antony’s turn to roll his eyes. “Fine,” he said. “Take it out of my cut, whatever.” This wad of cash would eventually go with most of the other wads of cash he collected over the years: with the dust and dirt under the floorboards currently holding up the couch.

“Gentleman and a scholar,” was her simple reply. Now she offered him his money and let him actually take it. “Next thing: got another reporter asking about you. I already said you were a part of the mob with the last one, so I was thinking with her, I can say—” She trailed off when he shook his head. “What?”

“I don’t think that’ll work on this one,” Antony said. He didn’t think it was possible for his heart to jump and sink at the same time. All it did was make him nauseous. But at the sight of his change in demeanor, Irene’s smile sparked and spread.

“Oh! She already got to you! I was the follow-up!” Her glee only fueled his irritation enough to turn around and set the cash on the vanity.

“Follow-up,” he echoed. His shoulders ached with how much he had to fight the urge to curl into a ball.

“Oh, yeah. If she already talked to you, and she’s going around to everyone that works here—” Irene laughed. “You’re so fucked.” After a few more chuckles, she sobered. “So, um, does that mean you’re gunna get deported or something? I don’t know your situation and I don’t wanna know, but—”

“No,” he reassured. “She can ask all the questions she wants and make whatever assumptions. Doesn’t mean anything’s going to change.”

“So what do you want me to do about the next time she shows up, or when she starts talking with everyone?”

He shrugged. “Whatever you want. If you brush her off, she’ll just show up again.” He wasn’t sure what kind of fake secret he could start planting to make the reporter stay away, anyway. He’d have to think on that.

Irene grabbed the door knob to start to make her leave. “Well, whatever article comes out of it gives the theatre more publicity, so forgive me if I exaggerate a couple of your exploits. Don’t be surprised if people start to suggest you’ve slept with the entirety of the Rocky cast.”

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Antony smirked. “As long as no one tells the entirety of the Repo! cast.”

After Irene left his dressing room, Antony decided against hanging around. He grabbed the wad of cash off the chest of drawers in one hand, then placed his other hand on the face of the top right drawer of the vanity. His finger brushed against the keyhole of the lock, and it clicked to indicate he could now open it. Inside the drawer was a stack of thick looseleaf parchment papers, a box of simple matches, a folded pocket knife, and the one contraption he searched for: a fat, closed fountain pen casing. Lazily, he just set the cash in that drawer and locked it upon shutting it.

Antony stepped up to the standing mirror with the pen in his hands, twisting either side of it.

This pen, made of a brushed gray metal, had a cap on either side twisted into place. The first cap he removed turned out to be the wrong side, the felt tip used for writing. He twisted off the other side. It was the end of a needle with quite a large gage like a syringe without a plunger. He didn’t need a plunger, though, when he shoved the needle into the palm of his left hand.

It stung, like usual, but other than remembering that it hurt, he didn’t give the action much more consideration.

The pen, still stuck into his flesh, absorbed the blood he willed to fill the well inside. The felt tip of the other end began to glisten, and so he pulled out the needle from his skin and replaced the cap to cover it.

His palm bore the puncture wound for only a moment. The very second his blood touched oxygen, it activated and darkened to the point of looking almost completely black. It spread around the puncture mark and got to work repairing the skin cells so that by the time he stepped up and pressed the felt tip of the pen to the antique glass, it looked as if he never stabbed himself in the first place and the remaining blood soaked back into his body.

Antony carefully wrote his command on the mirror: his apartment address in its entirety and the instructions for the mirror to open and connect to the designated one there. His pen already began running out of his blood-ink by the time he’d gotten to the last letter, but the mirror still soaked in the words. They dissipated just as the glass began to ripple and dull to indicate it was open and ready to step through. And so, after capping and pocketing his pen, Antony did.

Traveling through a mirror this far—from his dressing room in Portland to his apartment in Onyx—was not the most pleasant of feelings, compared to when walking through them at home. The mirrors between his apartment and his dressing room were one minute and twenty-six seconds apart: one minute and twenty-six seconds of shoving his very being through time and space or whatever it was that separated the two worlds. He could never physically figure out how to move in that uncomfortable liminal space or entertain more than very simple thoughts; and because he opted to go through so often, he hardly registered the time it took anymore.

Antony stepped into the mirror from the slightly stuffy and artificially warm air of Portland, Oregon of Earth and into the humid and fresh air of Onyx, Limen of Umbra.

It wasn’t all that different, though. Perhaps at first glance, the change in air was all that indicated he was somewhere else entirely.

Antony mentally reached out to the ceiling lanterns and ignited them, bathing the main room of his apartment in a yellow-orange hue. He stepped out of a mirror three times the size as the one he stepped into; this mirror, though, was designed for being used as a travel hub all the time. It was built against the stone and concrete walls of the main space of the apartment, nestled between two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that held various literature he and his roommate had collected over the years and pieces of art that depicted favorite memories.

In a cove to the right of this hub was a simple, wooden door that led to the public hall of this apartment complex. The door had no lock on it; the handle, itself, reacted to only the tenant’s blood and will. In addition to the security it offered, apartment doors were linked to the complex entrances, so residents could bypass the entire system of complicated hallways and step out directly onto the street.

Beside the front door cove was one of the main walls of this space, with two accordion shades that opened to Victor’s and Antony’s bedrooms, respectively. The wall directly beside that one held a privacy shade for the bathroom, which seemed to have been occupied at the moment, based on the sound of flowing water into the drain on the tiled floor.

The rest of this apartment was dedicated to where Antony stood now. The outcropping across the way that held the cooking spit, butcher block, and ice chest was just as understated as it was supposed to be: a corner to cook and bring the food to this main opening, and not much else.

Antony stood in front of one of the more important pieces of furniture in his home: the dining table. Low, wide, with a beautiful mosaic pattern, this was where the majority of anyone spent their time here. Long, low chaises lay across from each other and this table, perfect for eating dinner or taking a nap.

This modest apartment was where Antony and Victor called home for the past few years (since the last one burned down). It served its purpose, of mostly a place to wait between when he would go to one theatre or the other. And for some reason, though he never had a strong reaction one way or another coming home, looking at it all now just weighed him back down to that feeling from before when he realized he needed to end the interview with Cadence.

As he sat down on one of the couches, he struggled to shake off that impossible lowness, a twinge of nerves punctuating it. He could see why worlds were destroyed over that feeling, and he only had a brief moment of fooling himself into thinking his belonging anywhere mattered. Maybe it was worse to get the promise of it, then to pull away and know it couldn’t be had again.

He didn’t hear Victor finish up in the bathroom, or even step out at first.

“…feeling alright?” his friend asked. Antony glanced up without fully registering the words. Victor stood in the hallway, still dressed from work—a long, heavy set of draping robes over his simple day clothes. This morning he had long, shoulder-length hair, but now wore it cropped close to his scalp.

Antony knew to expect this sudden change, as this ceremony his roommate returned from was similar to one for boys coming of age: shave away the old, let the new grow in its place. For boys, it was their first beard. Maybe for Victor rising to the status as a city representative on the council, a beard wasn’t enough and he had to shave his head, too. It certainly made him look older, more intense.

“Tony?” Victor began to take off his braided stole, then the sash that kept his robes together.

Antony hardly remembered to switch to his native tongue before he asked, “Say that again?” Talking to Victor in English was a surefire way to spill his secrets when he felt like this.

“You’re back early,” Victor said, taking off yet another one of his layers. Only the slate gray base robes remained; otherwise, his clothes were not that different from Antony’s: linen pants, plain shirt. “I was asking if you were feeling alright. I just got back from the rites ceremony, myself.” His rites ceremony of promotion, the one thing that should have been on Antony’s mind this entire time, but he instead selfishly focused on…Earthly worries.

“I, um—I was just lost in thought,” Antony said, rising from the couch with his arms outstretched. “So, tomorrow’s your first day as the Junior Representative of Onyx! I wanted to—” Be a good friend and host celebrations in any fashion Victor wanted, not sit there and mope on the couch. “Um—well, see what you were up for, as far as celebrating. If you want to go out before and after dinner, I can get a replacement for work tonight—”

Victor beamed as he draped his last robe over his arm.

“Yes! That’s what I’m talking about!” He hardly opened his room’s partition, just tossed his clothes in there, and shut it again. “My final official night as a freeman without those extra standards attached. I was hoping you were up for causing some mischief.”

In reality, not anywhere close. But Antony slapped on an excited facade anyway.

“Alright, let’s see if they can revoke your status before you even earn it.”