Dear Diary,
Hell is justice. A miraculous place where everyone gets exactly what they deserve, not a cent more, not a dollar less. Each artisanal torture is overseen by absolute authority. Where punishment calls home. It’s comforting, in its uncompromising order.
It’s nothing like life. Everything in life is uncontrollable. Uncertain. Unfair. The pillars of truth and order are long-buried in the sand. There is no authority. There is only us. Natural disasters who run the world.
With all the love left in my heart,
H.
-
The city laughs at her own joke. Across the plastic expanse of school desk, the city giggles dangerously through the mouth of tiny little Tsubaki sitting next to me. There’s a pressure growing in the room like an oncoming storm cell, and I’m struck with the urge to laugh along with her. Something resembling a smile cuts across my lips. I open the corner of my mouth to release a deflating laugh.
Tsubaki gives me a look, a head tilt.
“What a nasty laugh,” she says, to me.
“What a nasty joke,” I say, to the world.
She tilts her head the other way. Smiles with her eyes closed. “I think you and I are going to get along just fine,” she says. Then she gets up.
“I’ve got to buzz off, now. Very normal schoolgirl business to attend to. You know how it is. See you around, Helly!”
There’s nothing keeping us here in detention. The teacher is sleeping like a corpse. Tsubaki skips away through the halls, humming a cheerful tune. The click of her shiny shoes echoes all the way down the linoleum tunnels. Click. Click. Click.
Then she’s gone, and I release a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. The walls pull away from me, the building’s breathing. Wheezing.
I need to move.
-
Outside. The sky is flying away in every direction. I tilt my head down until my world is just the next few feet of concrete. The next few inches of sidewalk. One step at a time, a perfectly straight line. One step at a time, everything will be fine.
-
The city is toying with me. Trying to provoke me into doing something rash. She’s impatient. She wants a show. My double life, the high wire balancing act, it’s not stimulating enough. She wants blood, she always wants more blood. My blood. Red and liquid and worthless until spilled.
Tsubaki. I don’t know what she is, yet. A honey bee or a hornet? I don’t have conclusive evidence. She practically sparkles with the magic of overconfidence. But there’s still the off-chance she’s just another one of those quirky types who hasn’t yet grown out of playing pretend heroine. Girls who weren’t born with any spark, but think they can still make a difference through pluck and good attitude. I’ve seen plenty of those spirited types. They usually don’t make it to high school before getting the spirit beat and bullied out of them.
Most people aren’t born to be anything special. Tsubaki certainly thinks she’s special. That’s for certain.
Let’s assume she is a Magical Girl. It isn’t unheard of for small-timer Magical Girls to go undercover. Some of them investigate small crimes, take on private cases, make sure the school curriculums are up to scratch, those sorts of things. If they do it right, you don’t know about the job until it’s done. So why would she blow her cover to some freak who hates her kind? Just when I think I can start to understand them, Magical Girls always prove they’re far from any sense of humane logic.
That isn’t even what’s nagging at me the most. The prickliest thorn is that Tsubaki’s a three-star. Going undercover isn’t a three-star’s job. Three-stars are too flashy to hide in plain sight. They sell out stadiums, fight giant monsters, and blow up terrorist cells. The kinds of troubles that take place in ordinary schools should be far below her pay-grade.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
What could she be doing here? What does she know? Is she on to me? I don’t think I’d still be breathing if she knew enough about me to act on it. But why would she tell me her secret? What’s the punchline?
No, I don’t have time for questions. Questions are for catching up. I need to be ahead of the curve, where questions don’t matter. Gain control of the narrative.
Dangerous as it is, I’m going to have to keep close to Tsubaki. Spend some quality time together. Study sessions, meals, maybe even club activities if I’ve got the time. Be her mirror. Her shadow. Her friend. Give an inch, take a smile.
Car horn. Screeching brakes. I wake from a daze in the middle of a crosswalk, lit by the floodlights of a self-driving commuter car, several other cars lined up behind it. The salaryman in the front seat looks up from his phone to glare at me, but only for a disinterested moment.
I need the night.
-
The sun sleeps. Tonight, it feels like the air is alive. You know the feeling. Like the changing of the seasons, awakening all of the insects and spirits. When you find yourself no longer alone in the dark. The sudden awareness of every action, every perception turned up to an animal-sense. It’s as vivid as it is elusive. The harder you try to hold on to it and examine it, the more it wants to slip away and become just like any other night. I’ve learned there’s nothing to do but let go on nights like this. My feet move restlessly in anticipation- these are the nights that denote new chapters in my life. My skin shivers with nervous warmth in preparation for the new scars it will flaunt. My eyes are closed and the world is awake.
-
Roze’s big concert is only a few days away. My plans are scattered when I try to think of them, but my actions are automatic, reflexive. I know exactly what I’m doing.
Roze isn’t someone that I can fight with my fists. She’ll turn me into a mound of fertilizer if she even thinks I’m a threat. I’ll need a subtle approach. To do that, I’ll have to go back to the old ways. The photograph days. When the city was still new and inscrutable to me, before I could fully appreciate her complete and holy wickedness.
I’ve got to revert to the low life of the scavenger. A fly on the wall.
Carrion eaters are the ugliest animals alive. That’s why we don’t like to be seen. We’re ashamed of what we’ve got to do just to survive.
Underneath my bed lies a cobwebbed coffin of cardboard. Its contents have never once known sunlight, and unless I make a mistake, they never will.
The old suit.
Hoodie, ambiguous murky gray, with a logo sewn as a patch over the heart: my old symbol. Sarcophaga crassipalpis. Flesh-fly. These pests live short lives, but one hint of rot and they resurrect in swarms. They’ll outlive us all.
Camera. Poor, lonely thing. An analogue heirloom from a past life. I load it with a fresh roll of film. In the city of bulletproof angels, a camera aimed in the right direction can do more damage than a thousand guns.
Smoke bombs and flash powder, made from my custom blend. Just enough to disappear myself if I need to. Too flashy for the new Helena terrorizing the television audiences, but it’s just right for the pest of the past.
Goggles. Gloves. Spray paint. The rest of it. Just for one night. Spending too much time in the past is necromancy. It’ll rot your soul from the inside-out.
-
For some reason, I’m drawn towards Haven’s room. I can’t tell you why because I don’t know why. Light glows underneath her door. I give it one hesitant knock. No response.
I knock again. Nothing.
Nothing seems like the right thing for me to say, but words can’t help but curl and slither from some knot within me. I yank them out.
“I’m going.” Everything I say comes out like a bad apology. “Leftovers in the fridge.”
The light under her door goes dark.
-
Tonight, I’m a scavenger on the hunt for another scavenger. I have a cannibal’s madness for a certain vulture. The one who caught me at Peaches’ final scene. She’s involved in this, she has to be. She’s the only one that I know who saw me there. This vulture is talented. Useful. I need something useful right now.
One choice photograph can sustain a scavenger for weeks. But blackmail is an oily, burdensome currency. When you deal in it, you inevitably find things that should never be found.
After that building fell on my head, I was too dazed to make out her face in detail. But I heard her voice, saw how she ran. She only said ‘hello,’ but she’s told me all I need to know. There is no denying her speed. She was first on the scene by a long-shot. That’ll be her weakness.
I can’t bring down a building like last time. But I don’t have to. One trip to a payphone, one anonymous tipoff of a bomb threat later, and the trap is set. Someone’s going to blow up a memorial downtown. No vulture could resist that.
One short train trip downtown, to Triskelion Square. People are being shepherded away from a nonexistent threat. They’re more excited than afraid, pointing up at the three colorful beacons of hope lighting up the sky, signaling the approach of their saviors. Magical Girls like to show up just a little bit after they’re needed, to give the film crews a chance to set up. Some heroes they are.
I look past the crowd, toward the great golden statues in the center. Part of me is caught up in the fantasy of my threat. I'm the only one here that knows it's fake. It feels lonely.
Then the statues explode.