Something tickled my nose, and I startled awake, swatting at whatever insect had been crawling across my face. My hand made contact with something distressingly solid, and I felt fur under my fingers before whatever it was got swatted away from me. I sat up, breathing hard, only to be greeted by pitch blackness. My body hurt everywhere. The fatigue that I had felt before was now translating into bone-deep pain from pushing my muscles hard, with every single one of them screaming it was time for recovery.

Groaning, I fought the urge to leap to my feet and sat very still, waiting for my dark vision to come. I'd been asleep. That answered one question. That night I'd been home after the fire, I hadn't slept a wink. In fact, since this whole loop began, I hadn't slept at all, and I was beginning to doubt that I could. I didn't have much time to feel relief. Something was in the room with me.

My first thought was a rat, having heard stories about how the malicious creatures would take bites of people. But the thing I had swatted had not been that solid. In fact, now that my heart stopped trying to break one of my ribs, I realized it had been lighter than a mouse. Large spider? My heart picked the beat back up again.

Shapes swam into view in my vision, the phantom afterimage painting a clear picture. Nothing in the direction I looked. I turned and waited the agonizing four seconds for the new picture.

I held still, resisting the urge to blink. The room faded into view. There were several dozen mouse gremlins in the room with me. My first response was relief it wasn’t spiders. Then growing anxiety, remembering that these small things could be deadly. I needed to get out of here…Or did I? Perhaps the mouse gremlins were the solution to a problem. Maybe I could reset the loop.

Slowly, not wanting to spook the creatures, I reached down and grabbed the pan without turning my head, still resisting the urge to blink by some miracle. I raised it into view and waited. My arm holding the pan up was not there, then it was. It was the same after-image quality, giving it an otherworldly light. Not-me was making a good attempt at turning Kaye's grayed-out features into an old-fashioned Clint Eastwood scowl.

"There you are. You're finally awake. Listen, this is important. I know what you're thinking. These things could kill you, and you'll get out of here, right?"

I nodded. The second I nodded, I lost sight of everything in my phantom vision. I closed my eyes. After giving my eyes some relief, I opened them again and let my dark vision swim the pan back into focus.

"Hey! Verbalize your answers, dumbass. Don't nod. We can't afford this kind of time lapse. This is critical. Do not let them kill you," Not-me said. There was urgency in his tone.

"Why?" I asked. "Because we're where we're supposed to be?"

"No," Not-me said. "Think again, smart guy. It's because I can't reset the loop. If you die, that's it."

It took me a moment of stunned silence to process what he had said. The calm I had been feeling evaporated, stolen away by the statement. The doubt that had plagued me earlier came crashing back, and I struggled not to begin to hyperventilate.

"Hey, breathe. You can do this. You've been through worse. Listen, you have got to get these cuffs off. And you've got a problem."

"Yeah?" I said through gritted teeth.

"Don't give me that tone, kid. Of course you have a problem. It looks like you have about thirty-five of them. You cannot try and unlock these handcuffs with these gremlins present. You will not succeed."

"What if I don't do anything?" I asked. “Will they swarm me?”

"There's a good chance they'll leave you alone."

"Is there any way I can get them to go away?"

"Possibly. I've never had any cause for such extensive interaction with the devils."

"Does talking count as doing something?"

"I don't think so," Not-me said.

"Okay, well, answer a couple of questions for me then," I said. "Why do I hurt all over?"

"Because I gave you memories. Why do you think?"

"That’s… not an answer.”

"Memory is not just stored in your head, kid. It's impossible to pass on the knowledge of how to pick a lock without the muscle memory too. You hurt all over because your whole body just remembered a whole lot."

"Okay…"

I wasn't satisfied with that answer, but it seemed as good as any I was going to get.

"Next question. How are we where we need to be?"

"Oh, that," Not-me said, as if this was an aside. "That's easy. This is the manufacturing center for that drug that I wanted you and Cece to get in on dealing with so that we could eventually get here. You've somehow bypassed all those steps, and you now—if you can live through this—you do not need to go deal drugs with Cece to get in on the lower level to get here eventually." He grinned. He actually grinned, seeming to be enjoying himself.

"Are you enjoying this?" I asked.

"Hell yes I am. Are you kidding? This is the most fun I've had in years."

I shook my head, which of course caused the room to go black. I thought about my next question as I waited for my dark vision to come back.

When it swam back into focus, I saw that the mouse gremlins were not doing much of anything. They were milling about and, in fact, seemed more curious than hostile. I thought back to the interactions I had or witnessed with them.

"If I gave them luck," I said slowly, "do you think they would leave me alone?"

Not-me contemplated that for a minute, then eventually shrugged. "Maybe. That is, effectively, why they're here."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Why? How much luck do you have?"

"Uh… I have one."

"Uh, you have one?” He mocked. “One what?"

"One small strand short of being completely zeroed out.”

"What?!" Not-me thundered. "How are you so low?"

"Well, I may have gotten tortured."

"What do you mean you ‘may have’ gotten tortured? That's not something people tend to be uncertain about."

I explained to Not-me about Gregor and my experience with the tall man, and Gregor saying that he had tortured me but me having no recollection of it. I didn't mention that I had seen what was probably Not-me getting tortured. I don't know why, but it felt invasive, like seeing something private that belonged to somebody else.

"Okay," Not-me said. "You got tortured. You passed out, and now you can't remember any of that. While you were passed out, you have it on the word of one ’Gregor’ that you healed. If you healed, that would explain where the luck went. Okay kid, I gotta think. Truth is, I'm not sure what to do here."

I looked down at the mouse gremlins. My dark vision refresh rate made it hard to watch them. They weren’t moving much. They were watching me. I was put in mind of ducks. I used to go feed the ducks with my dad. After throwing a few scraps, they would sit and watch attentively to see if you would to throw any more. The mouse gremlins’ attention reminded me of the ducks. They were watching me. They were... The thought hit me. They were hungry.

"Hi, guys," I said to them, not knowing what made me decide to treat them like friendly ducks. I remembered that one of the mouse gremlins had spoken back at the school right after I had snatched the luck from the heart squeezer. It crawled up the wall and spoke. Although, the tone and cadence of it seemed more like the thing was delivering a message than speaking for itself.

After addressing the crowd of mouse gremlins, when my dark vision refreshed, they had moved a tiny bit, seeming to give me their attention. The ones exploring the room had rejoined the pack. I couldn't discern any emotions from the oversized balls of lint. But I couldn't watch them carefully enough to catch anything subtle with my fragmented vision. Hopeful that they could understand me, I attempted to reason with them.

"Listen, guys," I said. "If you are hungry, I could get some luck for you."

I waited for my vision to refresh. No visible reaction.

"Hot shot…" Not-me said, a warning tone in his voice. "What are you doing?"

I ignored Not-me but decided to leave the reflection in my line of sight.

"Listen," I said to the mouse gremlins. "You guys can come with me, and... I'll give you luck. You just have to not..." I searched in my mind for the word. What was it they did? "Sabotage... the things I do. Okay?"

“This is so stupid,” Not-me said. “These are not friendly puppies, and they can’t understand you.”

I ignored Not-me and waited for my vision to refresh. Again, there was no visible response. Wait. They had gathered a little closer. Just a little. I shrugged. Perhaps that was the best I was going to get.

I turned my attention back to Not-me. "I figure if I avoid doing something dangerous and they're going to mess with me, I can get them to go away one at a time without any kind of catastrophe. But maybe they'll work with me," I said, feeling excited at the prospect of an ally. Sure, I had Cece and Kaye as allies. But they weren't here. Cece didn't know I was in a time loop, and Kaye didn't even know I existed yet.

When my vision refreshed, Not-me was frowning. "Ballsy. I'll give you that. But it's no worse than any plan I came up with. Go ahead and give it a try. What are you going to attempt to do that might trigger one of these critters?"

I thought about that. What was I going to do? I had the pen and the handcuffs. I had the intention of disassembling the pen and attempting to unlock the handcuffs. But that was out. If my tools broke, or worse, the cuffs became jammed and stuck, I’d be worse off than I was now.

I thought about the sorts of things that I had seen the luck gremlins do to others in the past: sabotage the world around them, sabotage personal items, and hide stuff…

I reached for my pocket—only to find my pocket where I didn't expect it to be. Then I remembered Gregor had said he had changed my clothes. I hadn't given that much thought at the time, but it seemed that he was telling the truth. I was wearing a different pair of pants. Too many other things had been going on, and I hadn't noticed. But I had the pen in my pocket. Gregor must’ve put it back.

‘Why?’ I wondered. ’Why would he put my stuff back?’

I reached for my back pocket. I carried one other thing on my person. Everything else I shoved in my backpack, which I didn't have—Reaching for your back pocket while your hands are cuffed in front of you is actually quite difficult—It took me several tries, and I had to get up into a kneeling position before I was able to get a hand around. Sure enough, in my back pocket was my school ID.

It was a simple photo ID with my name and student number, the name of the school, and a magnetic strip on the back. With the way technology had progressed, it was strange that anyone opted for magnetic strips. But schools seemed to be two to three decades behind any sort of technology—so it made sense they were stuck in the 90s.

I placed my student ID on the ground in front of me, then turned my back and took a step away. I still held the pan in my hand so I could continue to speak with Not-me.

"What are you doing?" Not-me asked.

"An experiment," I said.

"Care to elaborate more than that?"

"Well, I figure with this many gremlins, anything that I need—if they don't intend to work with me—they're going to take and hide."

"All right… makes sense. But have you considered that with such a luck deficit, they wouldn't consider anything except extreme harm or detriment fair game for their collective activity?"

I frowned. I had not, in fact, considered that. "Do you think that's the case?" I asked.

"I don't know, kid. I have never in my long life seen anyone at such a luck deficit as you are now, or even close to what you are now."

I squinted at the pan. "I thought you said you couldn't see luck."

The next time Not-me's image resolved, he had thrown his hands up in the air. "You don't have to see luck to deduce whether or not a gremlin swarm is following some poor fool around, genius."

"Oh," I said, feeling foolish.

"Well, they don't seem to be taking the bait. They're very interested in you, though."

"You can see what they're doing?"

"Of course I can. The fuck have we been talking about all this time? I could see them before you ever could."

I sucked on my teeth, thinking. "You got another idea on how we could test this?" I asked.

"You could go stand underneath that cement wall where it’s crumbling and see if it falls on you."

"That doesn't sound like a good idea."

"Probably not."

I turned and retrieved my photo ID.

"Thanks, guys," I said to the gremlins, just in case it made any difference to their temperament. I may as well get these cuffs off. That would be the real test.

I sat down on the floor, hesitating at first because I didn't want to put what I was doing in closer reach of the gremlins. But remembering the episode with Billy and his vape, I concluded it didn't make a difference. It would be easier to work on the cuffs if I could keep the pieces of the pen in the same place.

I began to take the pen apart, pulling off the cap and working the metal clip out. Then I tried to pull it apart. It took me three attempts, and finally, I had to use my teeth to pull the end off.

"Damn child hands," I said. This was already harder than I remembered.

I extracted the long ink tube with the hard metal nib in the end. In movies, you could unlock a pair of handcuffs with just the metal clip from the cap; in practicality, that only worked on toy handcuffs. What you needed the metal clip for, was guiding the tube to apply the right amount of tension to the spring. The movements came easy, but my fingers didn't have the strength to do them first try.

Only belatedly did it register in my head what I had just said. ‘Damn child hands.’ Brushing it off as a problem for later, I got the pieces I needed and set to work on the first cuff.

This was difficult with my dark vision delay. It took me sixteen seconds to get the two pieces in place so that I could attempt to move the tensioner to release the handcuffs.

“Charles would kick my ass if he could see how slow I’m doing this,” I muttered as I concentrated.

Fortunately, whatever these were, they weren't standard-issue police cuffs because they didn't have the proper tension on the spring. After fiddling with it for a second, I was able to put enough pressure on it to loosen the cuffs a notch. I felt a tickle on my arm.

I froze.

When my vision resolved, the mouse gremlins were right up in my business, staring with their tiny, lambent eyes at what I was doing. I held still until my vision resolved again. They were still there, watching. They hadn't interfered, so I contorted my wrist until I got another tooth out of the gears, then released it and pulled my wrist from the cuffs.

I sighed in relief. My wrist hurt, but it was par for the course with how I felt today. My whole body hurt. I wondered why the little strand of luck I had didn't go towards trying to heal my fatigue. Shrugging, I set to work on the other cuff. Having just performed the maneuver, this went twice as fast, and soon I was free from them.

They clattered to the cell floor, and it was like I could breathe again. I hadn't realized how restrictive the cuffs’ magic—or whatever—was. It felt like stepping out of a room full of noxious fumes and getting a breath of fresh air for the first time in hours. I breathed deep, settling and resting.

I noticed that outside of my resolving dark vision, I was now seeing little pinpricks of light in my periphery. Tiny things. I held very still, trying to figure out what I was seeing. They drifted towards me like dust motes in sunlight, pulled in a breeze. After several coalesced and then landed on my skin, I realized what I was witnessing. This was the ambient luck that Jemima had commented on back when we performed the seance with my future self. The handcuffs had been preventing me from drawing ambient luck. I'd never been able to observe the process before. My aches began to ease. Not a lot, but they stopped being a constant six out of ten.

I held the pan up. "Okay. Can you reset the marker now?" I asked.

"Yes… and also no," Not-me said. "There's a problem."

"Problem?" I asked. "What problem?"

"I can only move the marker back 24 hours, kid."

"So?" I said, "let's go."

"And I can't move it back."

"Why not?"

"Because the cuffs are in the way. 24 hours ago, you were already wearing them."

“You mean it’s tomorrow? I’m not in the loop anymore?”

“Not currently you’re not. I can still feel the marker, which is unexpected. I’m not sure if it will work like it did before. What I am sure of, is for the next 24 hours, if you die, it’s permanent.”

At that moment, the door to the room opened, the light from the hallway blinding me.

“Get up!” barked a rough voice. “Miss Caroline wants you now.“

A big man I hadn’t seen before stood in the doorway. He had a pistol in one meaty hand, pointed at my chest.

***