Tuning the Guitar Player

[7]

My first, wary impulse was this had to be the invisible bitch finally revealing herself. I immediately motioned Pars behind me with my outstretched arm. My face tightened and my jaw clenched. “What do you want?”

Nadia raised both hands with the palms out and reiterated, “I’m here to help, if I can. I’m not from around here but something came up.”

I appraised her with a focused gaze. She didn’t appear threatening, but I’d seen plenty of girls back in high school who had the appearance of benevolence, only for their real and metaphorical sharp claws to come out eventually. Her boobs didn’t sway me, as they may have done earlier in the year and back then. I had plenty bigger, situated up close and personal.

“Where are you from and what is this something?” I prepared myself to run with Pars by flexing my ankles. Running was never my thing, even since childhood, but I resolved to put this crazy bitch in the dust if she so much as cocked her head the wrong way. My main concern was how Parsley would handle it. She’d mostly figured out this whole walking thing but at a heretofore subdued velocity.

A positive sign was that this so-called Nadia kept her distance. She slowly released a breath and responded, “I’m from another reality and am investigating a mass transformation event. That’s all. I know that’s a lot to absorb.“

So, she was like some dimension cop? I declined to blurt it out, but I rolled that notion around in my thoughts like uncertain pizza dough.

“How many balls were there?” That question was a risk, but I posed it while squinting my eyes and focusing especially on her body language. I didn’t pretend to be able to read anyone, but my uncle was pretty good at it. The idea behind what I said was that my question would be utterly confusing to a random person and they would be struggling to comprehend what I just said. Their focus would be on me and figuring it out.

The important part was how some once invisible, nefarious spirit might respond. It was all supposition and the context of human emotions, but I was looking for something in particular. If this individual had any context at all for my bewildering question then their first move wasn’t going to be a focus on me, but rather a little flick of their eyes thinking through the context. How many balls actually were there? An inside joke to trap her.

Granted, if I did catch that particular body language then I had no idea what I was going to do with that information. But at least it would provide some certainty.

What this Nadia did was shift her head while keeping her focus on me. Honestly, I should’ve considered that as well. If she was some supposed investigator from another reality then who knew what her abilities or context would be. She may have somehow seen the game during which this all started. As well, I was looking for a fundamentally human reaction involving memory access. I had no idea if she was human or even had a brain that worked the same way as a human one. Too many possibilities. I pressed another question.

“Have you been watching us?”

Interesting. Her eyes did flick this time. She understood it. Of course, I had no idea if my vague body language assessment was giving me useful information. This wasn’t my field, even though I did briefly consider a minor in criminal science.

After a frown and a sigh, Nadia responded, “You could say that. I have a strange association with a place referred to by some as Beyond. Not the Great Beyond. Not even sure why it’s called Beyond. But that’s what it is. Beyond and looking through many different things. The point is… Yes. You’ve been observed, although that doesn’t reveal as much as you might think.”

“So, you never witnessed the match where we had those weird, fuzzy balls and beaked sticks?”

Her response this time was pure focus on me along with what appeared to be the vague reckoning I was a loony. Then, her eyes did a proper flick. Just like a person. Moments later, she hesitantly inquired, “Is that… a reference to Alice in Wonderland?“ I nodded.

I actually pressed her on what she knew about works first written by Lewis Carroll. Rabbit hole. Cheshire cat. Walrus. Girl getting bigger and smaller. Crazy queen yelling “off with their heads!” Card soldiers. And that was about it. Her context seemed to be the original Disney animation.

It eventually occurred to her that I was pushing more scrutiny into her than she was to me. She plucked a notepad, an actual, physical paper notepad, out of her side pocket. That was a mark against her, even though the paper appeared significantly different than what was used with the weird notes I received. All throughout this, Pars was fascinated by the strange teen but not enough to leave the safety of my arm. This was the quieter section of the mall, building a bridge between the main area in front and the new crap meant to evoke a Mediterranean utopia that Southern California pranced around with conceptually like it was actually clothed in something.

I swiftly switched to the assertion that we had played something else and I wanted Nadia to tell me what it was. That still wasn’t enough information to surmount her bewildered body language. Uncertainties and incongruities latched on to me like massive anchors, but I felt confident enough to take some of what she said at face value.

To thread through this nuance, I recounted a measure of my fucked up day so far. But I altered key elements on the first pass. My brain put Drew on a pogo stick before resolving that indoor badminton could be played with pool cues. Nadia paused in her notetaking more than once with several clear confusions. By the time my bus was full of clown rodeo riders and Parsley started out as a three-hole punch, this Nadia stop using her pen to take notes. Her eyes even narrowed slightly as she listened to my growing mound of absolute bullshit. What hurt the most was thinking about Parsley listening to all these untruths.

She would have to learn about lying eventually as a human. And she probably learned something of deception from scouring the rules of the card game. Couldn’t she just forget this particular incident?

I amended that to the correct iteration once I was finished. Nadia caught on and made a few addendums of her own on her notepad. All the while, the occasional shopper wandered through this misbegotten stretch of mall choked on both ends by better and fancier siblings. We probably looked like a stray, feral performance piece without the money for a real set or actors.

Despite how cagey and evasive I’d been since she showed up, this Nadia continued with her explanation. Mass transformation. It had been sensed at a level of thousands. Considering there were still dudes around the mall, I had to deduce that the University had been involved. She was able to provide details that Cressman University was now, and had been since its inception in 1959, a women’s college. Some quick googling confirmed this and that its admissions criteria were even stricter on this than Wellesley. Oddly, several of the pages were roughly edited or marked with 404 errors. I’d have to get back to campus sooner or later and deal with the wreckage and fallout.

Nadia vigorously rubbed at her eyes, as though she had some persistent grit that decided to settle down and embed itself into her flesh where not even the most persistent finger could pry it loose. I could empathize but avoided dipping into those waters. She got a version of my account on the bus with certain details, like my lack of underwear, skipped over. I limited details about Parsley to the fact she used to be a guitar but now she was fully human. On this point, a frown settled across Nadia‘s lips. It didn’t take her long to express her concern.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Turning things human has a lot of complications. Most often, they don’t last long before sublimating to essential energy. Imagine a dress. Someone wears and cares for it. It feels the ebb and flow and infusion of humanity. No matter how much it has, nothing can truly prepare it for the dangers and problems faced by being human. Entities of darkness will crave something like that. I’m sorry to tell you that.” She moistened her lips and pulled them back with her head down.

Fuck that. I did my best not to get mad at this Nadia. Just a messenger. Instead, I was mad at the universe and the way things were. Still mad at the letter writer bitch who could unmake my girl. An accident. She was no accident. Whatever dangers and problems popped up for Pars, I would beat their asses right into the ground and beneath the surface of the earth. Whatever dark entities meant or were, they would have to get through me. I would summon the song eluding me so far and blast them with music beyond their comprehension. Rock their asses into oblivion.

I looked at Parsley, deep into her beautiful eyes. She seemed to innately understand what this strange girl meant. Softly, with a warm countenance, she began a note of heartfelt appreciation and thanks. I quickly stifled it with several fingers to her mouth. I shook my head. No. No goodbyes. No thank yous for a handful of meddling hours showing off an overdeveloped shopping plaza when my girl deserved to see the majesty of the Grand Canyon impossibly spread out before her, witness surreal Chinese rock towers with misting waterfalls that shamed the best Hollywood CGI, dance barefoot through a dense forest with trees as her playful partners, and make music all her own to an adoring, astonished crowd showering her with the longest standing ovation. At a bare minimum, she had to have all that. I pulled Parsley close and promised her that destiny.

Nadia shifted the subject and explained that somewhere around here they had detected something unusual. It was specifically at the mall. She arrived to check it out and fortuitously came across us. She otherwise glossed over the tools, resources, and capabilities at her disposal. I probably wouldn’t have understood a lick of it anyway. One last, disheartening note she shared with me was that she was on her own. Investigation out of her jurisdiction or something like that in other realms and worlds. Assuming she was just some other, different flavor of nut job. I hadn’t completely ruled that out yet, which is why I kept Parsley positioned behind me.

I let her lead the way to this supposedly unusual spot in the mall. No tricorder or screwdriver came out of her pocket, she just peered around with her eyes squinted slightly. Patches of this end of the mall had the lights off, as though it were close to closing. The original homes of several big box department stores were shuttered with the idle promise that they would be turned into something greater as soon as the next tenant arrived. I could practically smell the larger, newer mall food court at the back even though I couldn’t yet see it.

Just around the curve, I spotted a peculiar location that also drew Nadia‘s attention. It had a slim profile and was set back from the larger store next to it. Black velour drapes spread over the interior of the windows. The dimensions recalled one of those trendy tiny shops with Japanese and Korean trinkets and snacks thriving on the other end of the mall. A simple, paper sign twisted backward with just the bottom strips of tape holding it to the glass. Awakening my tired cell phone to project a feeble light, I read off the handwritten text, “Magic Store…” Nadia leaned against the glass. The drapes washed out her reflection.

After a moment, she concluded, “Missed them. Time flows differently over here.” We continue to press our faces against the glass until I noticed a gap in the drapes which allowed me to look through to the empty store within. Several generic, off-white counters flanked a central point decorated with scrambled colors and tipped-over displays. Only a single sign, drooping badly, was legible in the low light. I read it aloud while I snapped a few photographs on my phone.

“Flashlights For Sale.” Thankfully, there was no E in the first word. Not that it made much difference. What intrigued me though was the similarity of the paper sign to the paper messages I’d received. The handwriting wasn’t enough to tell, especially with the angle, but I swore the type of paper used here was the same. Of course, there were plenty of varieties of generic paper that anyone could buy and use from any store. Some sort of watermark or line or header would’ve helped immensely, but I didn’t remember anything distinctive on the notes and this had even less to go by. Parsley helped by dragging her face across the glass to pry out any sight I might’ve missed.

Nadia backed away and lamented, “I really did hope this might be a lead into what’s going on. But I am supremely fortunate to have met both of you. Hoping for a positive result. I won’t be able to check in often because of other duties… And school… volleyball…and a bunch of things. But I will follow up. Thank you very much for your time. Just one more thing…”

She took a deep breath and paused before relaying, “If you ever run across an entity, or entities, which may be supernatural or alien… especially alien… I recommend memorizing a song of at least four minutes in length with clear lyrics. Keep that song in your mind and focus on your determination. Everyone carries a powerful light within them to change the world.”

With that, she bowed her head and slowly faded to see-through before completely vanishing. Cautiously, I poked the space where she once stood to see if she had simply gone invisible. Nothing.

So… Mass transformations. Guitars turning into girls. Invisible spirits. Mind alteration. Reality investigators. Magic shops with… Magic flashlights? And a topper of aliens beaten by having a favorite song to sing. Makes total sense. Whatever…

My concern was Parsley. She got a smudge on her face from the glass. We walked over to the water fountain off to the side and I dabbed the spot to clean it off. Gosh, I was basically her mom. Not that it bothered me too much.

We set aside the bags to do our exploring. I recovered and wrangled the lion's share onto my shoulders. My shoulders ached from a variety of things. A spot right next to my elbow in front felt like it was tenderized. Rubbing helped a little, but I checked in with Parsley to see how she felt. My girl gave a cute little sneeze after sipping some water and told me she was fine with a cheerful smile.

So many different things lingered in the air like a smoky funk, but Pars’ presence cleared it all away. I could tell she had something bothering her and there were a multitude of perpetrators. She was going to get the best massage though. In fact, there had to be places selling all sorts of manual massage tools. Getting something for each of us sounded like a great idea. First of all though, the food court was not far away and I was up for at least a snack, if not dinner. The cafeteria on campus would be open soon. With this mass transformation, I didn’t even want to imagine what sort of chaos was brimming all over the place.

I noted the location of a pop-up massage store around near where we could loop back as we arrived at the food court. Parsley gave a whimper and hunched over with her head down. Oh no. Stomach? That new, human digestive system not quite working yet? I had to be prepared for anything.

A weird shimmer started to waft off her skin like trails of sand or golden smoke with glimmers of blue glow.

Faintly, she said, “Mom... feel like I’m… going to break…”