How was it that some dreams felt more real than real life? Like waking up meant turning away from an entire reality, rather than returning to one?
The sound of something plastic and hard vibrating off of the nightstand was probably the only reason Cadence even opened her eyes in the first place. Otherwise, her limbs weighed ten times heavier lying in bed than they did just moments ago, when she stood in front of a blazing campfire and listened to a low, hypnotic voice. The sweat from being in that stuffy dream-hut remained on her skin, her lungs burning for air untainted by smoke.
Cadence forced herself to slide out of her bed and thudded onto her carpet to scoop up her still-vibrating phone. She may as well have been trapped in gelatin with how hard it was to flip it open and hold it to her ear.
“H-hello?” This world took too long to get into focus, but as it did, the comfort solidified her. Though she still felt the need to cough, she suppressed it, struggling to remind her body that she never actually breathed in smoke or listened to ominous warnings, that she was always as snug as bug in a rug, in bed, dreaming. No matter how vivid or real it felt, no matter how she could recall each detail as if she just teleported into her bed moments ago.
She was home. Short-fiber carpet under her legs, the cold and plastic phone against her ear, the sound of her best friend's obnoxiously loud voice rattling around her brain: home. Safe. Not chased, not confused, not alone.
“Cadence!” Rupert cried. “Alright, 'bout time. If you didn't answer this time, I was going to call your mom and say you went missing!” She scoffed automatically in response; and, without hiding her groan, began to rise to her feet.
“That sounds drastic,” she mumbled. Though now that she stood by her bed and could see out her window, her room did seem brighter than it should have been for a February morning. The sun wasn’t supposed to rise until she had already made it to work—
“She'd find you faster than the police if you went missing anyway,” said Rupert. Cadence ignored him now that she glanced at her wall clock. She nearly shrieked—waking up four hours later than she intended would certainly explain why the sun was up!
“Oh my god, how did—how is it almost ten already?” As Rupert answered her, she pulled her phone away to double-check what she saw. Cell phone battery at twenty percent, nine unread text messages, three missed calls. How did she sleep through all of that, her alarm clock, and her backup alarm on her phone? Cadence wore punctuality like a shining badge of pride, being this late wasn’t supposed to be possible.
Nestling her phone between her shoulder and ear, Cadence raced to her closet to pull out something to wear. It was so much harder to think, panicking about being late for work on top of reeling from what that dream man said—whatever it was. The dread, the tightness in her chest was the only thing she could remember. And even now, though she knew it wasn’t real, something about what he said felt far more important than having to make up a couple hours of work on the weekend.
Rupert pulled her back to reality with a loud, exaggerated sigh. “I'm about to finish my coffee just now, so I think I'll just take a medium one....” Right into the coffee bribery, of course. Rupert was as opportunistic as he was caring.
“I—I don't know how I slept in this late!” Cadence admitted as she jumped into her slacks. “Medium, black coffee—fine. You've been covering for me, right?”
“Yeah, Alec just walked right up to our desks. Wanna talk to him?” Jerk.
“Oh, shut up.” She tossed her phone onto her bed so she could pull on a pink sweater, but Rupert hadn't said anything important in the meantime. By the time she’d picked it up again to rush to her bathroom, Rupert had already continued trying to sell his lie to their boss.
“...think your lead is interesting, at least. I bet Alec would like to hear anyway—no, no, you're right. Never bring in a half-baked idea to the Editor. Sorry, boss. You know how she is.” Cadence stepped into her bathroom just in time to watch herself roll her eyes. Brown, bloodshot, exhausted. Not the eyes of a woman that just slept in an extra few hours. And her hair—normally she braided it out of the way, but she resembled someone walking out of a wind tunnel with even her bangs sticking straight up.
Meanwhile, Rupert dropped his voice to a near-whisper, “—and he's gone. Alright, so what kept you up so late that you slept through everything?”
In the time it took for Rupert to ask that question, she watched her cheeks blanch. Puffy eyes were a given, but right on her cheek like a touch of blush, was a dark smattering of soot.
As she reached up to try and wipe it away, however, she hesitated, staring at her hands. In the creases of her skin and caked under her normally meticulously tidy nails, was dirt.
“Rupert?” she asked into her phone quietly. Rupert silenced immediately at the slightest tremble of her voice. “D-do you ever get the feeling that something is about to go terribly, terribly wrong?”
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Maybe it was the sunshine and coffee, but by the time that Cadence had made it to the office, the majority of that sticky dread had dissipated.
Rupert, the large ginger man with the physique of a linebacker, squeezed himself into the corner of the break room to give her the option of sitting in the only metal chair that didn’t squeak. He sat at the ready to listen to the story of a century, but now that she sat there and said the words out loud, nothing lived up to the horror she’d built for herself.
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“The dream, though,” she murmured, as if arguing to herself that her morning really did start off that strangely, “I’m…already starting to forget it, but—I don’t know. It felt like I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be.” Before her friend could say something sarcastic, she held up a hand to stop him. “I mean, not like trespassing or anything like that. Like, there was this otherworldly feeling.”
“Hm,” Rupert sounded as he tapped the edge of his fresh coffee cup. “I mean, I had a nightmare after we saw that magic show last week. Dreamed these wizards came to town and ripped it apart. Maybe it’s delayed for you, since you’re stuck in a writer’s block? Like delayed inspiration or something?” Despite the fact that his explanation lacked just as much logic as her dream did, Cadence considered it a moment.
“Fine, maybe,” she said. It was hard to think that a few card tricks could trigger both of them to have such an exaggerated response, but there was a little merit to Rupert’s theory. Otherworldly illusions, otherworldly dream. And in both cases she struggled to offer enough logic to comfort herself about what she saw. “I guess—yeah, my dream did kind of have that same je ne sais quoi about it.” After a moment, she added, “Maybe I was—it was just a weird night. Didn’t get ready for bed properly and…. Yeah, you’re probably right, it’s probably just linked to the magic show.”
“Maybe you’re at the tail end of your block, then?” Rupert only had a moment to smile; distracted by the shadow that passed over Cadence, he hardly had time to try and kick her in the shins as a warning that the Editor-in-Chief was right behind her.
Alec sounded genuinely interested as he made his way to the fridge. He nodded in greeting to Cadence and said, “Good morning, Conway! Does this mean your lead panned out this morning? You’re writing about….” He straightened up with a bottle of orange juice, nodding as he looked back to his employees. “If you’re covering a magic show, it’s got to be something good. Now I’m curious.” And even though the tall, skinny man did everything he could to be unimposing and gentle, the excited look in his eye only twisted the nerves in her stomach tighter.
Cadence could only offer a weak smile as she turned back to Rupert, returning the under-the-table kick in kind.
“You know me,” she said awkwardly. “I like to, uh, figure out what goes bump in the night. Disprove aliens and all that.” And while that was absolutely her specialty when it came to the Posted in Portland, she’d never shoot herself in the foot so directly by covering something as simple as a magic show. What a stupid article that would be: How did the magician do it? The mystery of sleight of hand! She might as well perform a disappearing act on any future publishing deals with something that pathetic.
Alec, though, maintained his faith in her. “Yeah,” he said with a grin, “I thought there might have been something weird about that guy. I mean, great magic and all that, but….” He shrugged. Of course Alec also saw it. Rupert spent two days obsessing over the show when they came back last week.
“Wait, what do you mean?” Rupert sounded almost offended. “He was good!” Cadence rolled her eyes.
“No, no, I don’t mean like that!” Alec answered flippantly as he glanced to his wrist watch. He took a step back to indicate his intent to leave, but waved his hand. “Like I said, great show. But it’s just weird how he’s managed to scrub his identity off the Internet in this day and age.”
“You Googled him?” It was hard to see if Rupert was more surprised or relieved that his recommendation panned out.
Alec laughed. “That’d require him to show up on anything on Google. Anyway, I’ve got a meeting to prep for at the top of the hour. Cadence, write me a proposal so I can officially put you on the calendar for this, alright?” Great.
When the boss was safely around the corner, Cadence gave Rupert another kick fueled with the frustration that surfaced.
“Ow! What?”
Cadence grabbed her cup of coffee and rose from the table as she continued to stare daggers at her friend.
“What?” he repeated. As was customary for the only tiny table in their break room, Cadence pulled the table as a way to tuck in her chair, a way to give her friend a way to get out of the corner.
“Back to work for me. I’ve gotta go start researching a stupid kid’s show thanks to you.” She stuck her tongue out before twisting around to get back to the small pond of desks. Before she was out of ear-shot, she heard Rupert mumble, “That guy is not kid-appropriate.”
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The Clinton Street Theatre was a staple of Portland’s local culture, one of the oldest theatres around. For a long time, it was a rite of passage for teenagers to sneak out of their house to go see the midnight reenactment of Rocky Horror Picture Show, dressed up as a character from the famous movie and with a backpack full of random props to throw at the actors on stage. Even though this particular theatre only had one show room in total, it wasn’t unusual to see the place packed on a weekend for whatever concert, independent film screening, or drag show was featured.
Most Friday nights, locals could buy a ticket for fifteen dollars to see a peculiar local magician bounce around the stage for an hour. And while the Editor-in-Chief’s lackluster research about said magician set Cadence up for dread, she did find some stuff on the Internet regarding the show and its history. For one, the Clinton Street Theatre had only ever hosted two magicians in its near hundred-year history, one of them a current performer.
The first hosted magician went by the name the Magnificent Michael, and returned to perform magic in Portland after a long and successful career touring the nation almost ten years ago, and retired after five when his health took a poor turn. That didn’t leave the theatre without its Friday night show, though.
Michael had only one assistant throughout his entire sixty year career of performing magic—and only starting in 2002 when he returned to Portland. This assistant appeared out of nowhere, a shadow hardly noticed and hardly addressed. This dark-haired nobody only assisted as-needed, fetching props or manning lighting effects in silence until the final flourish of the Magnificent Michael’s career. In that final set of performances, the Magnificent Michael revealed the stranger’s name: Antony Devrue.
The Magnificent Michael’s successor had no digital footprint that didn’t relate to photos of post-show euphoria or advertisements for Magnificent Michael. No Wikipedia entry, no news articles, no MySpace account or social media, nothing. Cadence found through her endless scrolling that this piecemeal information presented wasn’t frustrating for only her; half a dozen forums or web sites featured conversations between Internet strangers wondering what the deal was—but to make matters even more infuriating, almost all posts and threads were locked or archived. And of course, the most promising bit of trivia about him: he absolutely refused any attempt at interviews. Just great.
Antony Devrue was only ever spotted in the background of Michael’s shows at the Clinton Street Theatre, and never elsewhere. In the nine years since he appeared in Portland, not much more information was revealed about him. That silent and insecure teenager grew into his face, grew a little taller, and even found a confident and charismatic stage persona—but before that, he might as well have been an illusion, himself.
Cadence left work that Friday night with determination, though. She was a Conway: a daughter of a family of logic. From her father, a tenured physicist professor at the university; to her mother, a well-studied historian that could gaslight and guilt-trip like no other. Every child of Ewan and Anita had an affinity for differentiating reality from fiction in one way or another. Cadence used this superpower to debunk conspiracy theories and viral trends for the Posted in Portland.
Antony Devrue’s tricks would be no exception one way or another—be it showing who he bribed to keep his name out of search engines or what kind of blackmail he used to keep his name out of forum posts. It would be a little more interesting than photos of a fake arm, at least.
The walk from the Posted in Portland building to the Clinton Street Theatre took an entire hour, but Cadence had her notebook out with plenty of ideas scratched over half a dozen pages in the meantime. She’d scribbled down some sort of out-there theories about a disguise by the time the lights of the marquee brought her back to real life.
She blinked as her senses returned to her, suddenly very aware of the crowd lining up to be let into the small theatre, of the woman that owned said theatre accepting tickets at the door. Though her vision was still blurred from staring at her notes for so long, Cadence made her way to a seat in the front row, where she could get a good, hard look at whatever prosthetics or fishing wire this Antony Devrue used in his act.
But when Cadence’s wristwatch clicked seven PM, nothing happened. The lights didn’t dim, the curtain didn’t pull back. Nothing but restless patrons and an incredibly annoyed reporter.
Well, at least if the magician disappeared, it’d make for a more interesting article.