Richie clutched the back of his head, then the small of his back. Bright sunlight was pouring down into his eyes through the circle of trees, and his backside was slick with mingled sweat and morning dew. He must have rolled onto his back in his sleep, and it felt ready to break from the unyielding compact soil and half-buried rocks he had the misfortune to be draped over. In the dream, there had been a night moon. Did that part really happen, and he had slept through a whole night here, unprotected?
Richie pulled himself into a sitting position, groaning. He felt something cold and hard brushing his bare ankle, and looked toward his feet to see the baseball bat right there where the wolf left it, rather than being buried up to a sword hilt in the dirt a dozen yards off from the center of his duel with the ghostly remnant.
“Some Excalibur… just a rusty, bent piece of crap. I’ve lost it completely, that’s the only explanation.” Richie repeated this mantra, seductive in the false comfort it offered, knowing all the while that the warm touch on his face from the hands of his mother’s ghost, and by the same token the cold steel of the slasher’s claws upon his shoulder were too real to be just a dream. Besides, dreams couldn’t crack your ribs, and Richie’s screaming sides swore by that incident having legitimacy. If the restless vengeful spirit of the dearly departed crackhead alley thug was drifting above Richie now, he was surely cackling in his unmarked grave at the irony.
Richie flipped off the patch of sky where he pictured the vagrant’s ghost mocking him. “I’m still here and you’re not, fuck off.”
He stood and stretched himself out, hearing things crack inside his body as though he were one giant set of popping knuckles. He was tender and the sensation struck raw nerves, but he felt better when he was done all the same, as though he had revived from a night in the morgue and was cracking himself back into shape out of rigor mortis.
He looked in all directions, verifying he was indeed in the same forest he remembered entering. He could see the blue tops of the duplexes behind him, beyond the ruined fence. The air smelled of dewdrops and wildflowers, and the distant chatter of cicadas or other noisy insects was a drumbeat to the operatics of songbirds making merry in the branches.
It was quaint and all, but the so-called great outdoors wasn’t so great when you were homeless.
A patch of green out of the corner of his eye struck him as being off-color, far too vibrant green even in the dreamy light of this fairytale forest. He turned his head to what looked like a bundle of lime-green rags or towels folded over a tree branch, dangling what could have been empty sleeves across either side. A glint in the light alerted Richie to what looked like a messy tangle of strings knotted around the twigs and branch, white and thin like fishing wire.
"A kite stuck in a tree?" Richie wondered aloud.
He retrieved a nearby long stick to reach into the tree's rafters, and try to hook the kite out of its snagged entrapment. Did it groan at him? He felt off balance from the awkward length and flexibility of the stick, but after some dexterous trickery, Richie caught a loop of wire around the stick. He gave it a yank, and a loose string was pried free, unfurling before Richie, and dangling there like a chain-style lamp light switch.
Richie shrugged and grabbed the string. Weird, it felt warm in his palm, almost like it had a pulse. He yanked on it, and heard a squeaky yelp of surprise, immediately followed by a loud crack as the tree branch gave way. Then the broken limb, and the form it cradled, both plopped on top of Richie, flooring him to his stomach by his backside and knocking him breathless.
Ok, so it's not a kite.
Richie sat himself back up forcefully, and the object rolled backward off of him, dropping into his line of sight and uncurling from its protective ball. He caught a glimpse of a pair of curious blue eyes a split second before a wavy fall of curly blond hair fell in front of and hid them. Richie jumped back and scooted away as quickly as his ass would carry him. Giving another yelp of his own, he clumsily tried to retrieve first his prodding stick, then his baseball bat.
Before him was a diminutive youthful-looking boy cloaked in bright green, hooded like the nightmare figure within the apartment. His hair was soft-looking and exaggeratedly bright blond and together with his rounded face made him look kind of like a cherub. He stood maybe 4 feet 0 inches flat, and his body type was hidden under that cloak. Richie saw, but didn't truly process that those silver wires connected to the boy's fingertips in front, and were anchored to the interior of some kind of backpack almost as big as he was on his back.
"What the- another monster?!" Richie balked.
"Me? I'm Cuppy." the boy said. His high-pitched voice, almost girlish, and his stature put him at around 10 years old if Richie were to guess.
"And is Cuppy a monster?" Richie asked, eyes narrowed. His hands had found his prodding stick, and was putting it to good use poking at the strange specimen.
"Cuppy is Cuppy. But how did Cuppy get here?" the boy held his chin, visibly thinking.
"How should I know? You're the one who was stuck taking a siesta in a tree, that's your own business to figure it out." Richie breathed a sigh of relief, dropping his stick.
"Not a siesta." Cuppy said.
"Huh?" Richie returned, still a bit dazed.
"Siestas are naps in the afternoon. It's morning. See?" the short boy pointed through the clearing sky, and scooped up an intact dewdrop from the grass, balancing it on his index finger.
“Ok, you are immediately on my shitlist.” Richie pinched the bridge of his nose. He gasped suddenly, feeling his ribs protest at the sudden, seemingly casual movement. He collapsed to his knees again, clutching his sides. Perhaps the collision with Cuppy had jarred his ribs while his senses were dulled by the shock of the petite boy falling atop him.
“Are you ok?” Cuppy asked.
“Peachy.” Richie said through gritted teeth.
Feeling lightheaded again, Richie passed out once more.
When he woke up, it was to the sight of a bumpy white ceiling staring back down at him. His back was pressed into some kind of bedroll, and there was a pillow under his head. “What the…?”
This wasn’t a hospital ceiling, they were usually white tiles and fluorescent lighting in his experience. He avoided going to hospitals when he could, both because of the paper trail his pursuers could track him by, and because of extravagant medical costs he had neither means nor intentions of paying, forcing him on the run while recovering from whatever ailments landed him there in the first place. It was more economical just to have a working knowledge of basic self-first-aid and hope for the best.
Richie tried to lift his head to get a better look of his surroundings, but a surging pain in the back of his neck made him hiss and flop back down.
“Oh, you’re up. Good evening.” Cuppy greeted him, seated in a corner out of sight from the sounds of it.
Richie heard the quiet turn of glossy magazine pages.
“What’s going on? Did you put me on a mat?” Richie asked.
“Among other things. You really shouldn’t move though, you’ve probably got a few hairline fractures. There’s a dent in your sternum too, big purple bruise with mottled splotches. Kind of pretty, really, like a fingerpainting.” the boy chirped.
“You have an odd bedside manner.” Richie felt his sides and saw that they were wrapped up in bandages. “You dressed me?”
“Huh? No, you were already dressed. I bandaged you though, cause you probably have a few hairline fractures.”
Richie twitched. It was a good thing he was paralyzed by pain at the slightest movement, because otherwise he was going to smack that little green moppet for his peanut gallery running commentary.
“Cuppy, right? So what’s your story? You’re not one of… them, right?” Richie asked.
“One of what?” Cuppy asked.
“The last guy I saw in a cloak was ten feet tall, psychic, and an asshole. He bad-touched my brain and was just generally unpleasant. Your cloak looked kind of similar, but you’re considerably shorter, I guess.” Richie said.
He had nothing else to do besides look up at the ceiling, tracing the little ridges and rises of the popcorn-like roof with his eyes as he conversed with the hooded boy in green.
“What did he look like?” Cuppy asked, his tone more innocently curious than anything else.
“I don’t know. I never got a good look at his face. Actually, that’s not quite true, it’s more like he didn’t have a face at all. Just an empty black hole where it should have been, like the inside of his hood went on forever. It felt like it sucked me in, and - why the hell am I telling you this? Who are you, anyway?” Richie interrupted himself.
“Cuppy is Cuppy.” Cuppy said.
“Yes, we covered this.” Richie rolled his eyes.
“Probably because you’re lonely and have nobody to talk to.” Cuppy ventured, a little slow on the draw.
Richie chose not to comment on this oddity, figuring out pretty quickly that if he made bones about every little eccentric action or sentence out of the boy that he’d probably give himself a stroke.
Richie tutted. “What makes you think I want to talk to anyone? No one asked you.”
“I dunno, just a guess. I mean, since you are talking to me, after all.” Cuppy said.
“Don’t get the wrong idea, I just want to know what’s going on. Why did you drag me out of that forest to patch me up?” Richie demanded.
“Do I need a reason? You needed help.” Cuppy answered.
Richie could feel the boy shrug. He gave a bitter chuckle, adopting a wry grin that didn’t match his sad eyes. “Lots of people need help. Someone’s starving or dying in a gutter every day, and the world keeps turning with or without them. If you stopped to help every fly stuck in a web, you’d never see the end of it.”
Cuppy was silent a few moments. “A web, huh?”
Richie answered with a momentary silence of his own. “Yeah, pretty much.”
He looked downward, retreating to himself once again. A web… when did I start thinking of this world as a web? Am I just another fly caught in strands none of us can ever perceive? Is that all I can do with one human life?
“You were the first person I saw.” Cuppy said.
Richie felt startled out of his contemplation. “What, you mean since arriving here? Did you drop out of a plane or something, was that tangled backpack of wires supposed to be your parachute?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember anything before falling out of the tree. We literally crashed into each other, so I just went with the flow.”
“You can’t remember anything?”
“Besides my name and stuff, yeah. That and this backpack.” Cuppy slid the straps free of his shoulders, and Richie could hear him riffling around in there. “It’s where I keep my brother.”
Richie blinked. “Excuse me?”
Suddenly, a marionette carved in Cuppy’s own likeness dangled over Richie’s face. Richie grimaced and impotently tried to shrink back. “Ack! That’s creepy!”
Cuppy retracted his puppet duplicate and hugged it to his chest. “Hey, that’s mean! You hurt his feelings!”
Richie growled. “The last puppet-looking thing I saw spat shit at me and busted me up. If I never see another puppet again, it will be too soon.”
“Rude.” Cuppy huffed.
“Whatever.” Richie rolled his eyes again. “Hey, where are we, anyway?”
“Where? In an apartment.” Cuppy said.
Richie’s eyes opened. “In the blue duplex? Outside the forest?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Cuppy answered.
Richie tried and failed to sit back up, collapsing in angered, pained hysterics where he writhed on the mat, sweating with cold panic. “Get me the fuck out of here right now!”
“What’s wrong?” Cuppy asked.
“This place is haunted, you dumb shit! This is where I got attacked by that freak in the cloak! Why’d you take me back here?! Drag me out of here on this mat, we’ve got to go, NOW!” Richie raced through a frantic explanation.
“Haunted? Why didn’t you say so?” Cuppy asked.
“I didn’t know to! You carried me like forty feet from where I got suckerpunched by that weird-ass ghost! We can’t stay here, it’s dangerous!” Richie said.
Cuppy stood from his corner of the barren apartment, closing his gossipy magazine - it was a dry read anyway. “If you freak out, isn’t that just playing right into their hands? Ghosts aren’t made of stuff, like we are, they’re made of not-stuff, right? It’s not like they can touch you or anything.”
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
Richie managed to lift an arm and gesture a thumb at his dented chest. “I look pretty fucking touched to you, don’t I?!”
“What were you thinking about when it hurt you?” Cuppy asked.
“Who gives a shit?!” Richie said.
“Was it something scary?” Cuppy persisted.
“Quit yapping your flap and get me out of here!”
“Hmm… nah.” Cuppy said.
Richie swore he felt a blood vessel in his brain go. “...Excuse me?!?”
“I don’t feel like it. Feeling kind of nappy, really. You’re kind of heavy to a little guy like me, I think I’m calling the rest of the day a break.” Cuppy shrugged.
“I don’t care if you fucking feel like it, I want out of this house of bullshit right now!” Richie shrieked.
“If you’re that worried, get up and leave.” Cuppy said.
“I can’t move!” Richie answered.
“Then it’s really not my problem.” Cuppy shrugged again.
“Why you little-”
“You can’t move, anyway. It wouldn’t be safe.” Cuppy said.
“Huh?”
“If your ribs are broken, one could poke into your lung like a spike. If you have a cracked back, you might sever your own spinal cord. If an internal organ is swollen, jostling movement might be the last straw that tears it and bleeds you out from the inside. Even if you could move, there’s no promise you’d make it somewhere safe before the things you’re worried about finding us just cornered you again. Then you’d be less than useless - a rat in a trap. You can’t move to defend yourself after whatever roughhousing you just did, so it’s probably just as well to hold out here for a while till you can move a bit better on your own.” Cuppy said.
“What part of this place being haunted didn’t sink in?!” Richie countered.
“I’ve got just the thing for that. Here, I’ll give you a better viewing position though.” Cuppy waltzed over to Richie, and grabbed him under the arms.
“Hey, wait, what are you-”
Cuppy yanked forward with a strained grunt, and propped Richie up against a wall.
“Fuck!” Richie screamed through the crackling in his body.
“See? So don’t move.” Cuppy went back to his backpack, where he had stuffed his puppet lookalike back into hiding. Digging through other contents unknown to Richie, Cuppy retrieved a palette of paint, tubes of paint themselves, and a brush, as well as dozens of sheets of blank white paper. “You can make keep-out signs for ghosts and stuff. They ain’t solid, so locks and barricades don’t stop them from coming in. You have to use something that has influence on their layer, where it lays over this one. That’s why old priests and monks made these kinds of things to lock them out.” Cuppy said, selecting a black paint and scrawling some manner of Buddhist marking over a piece of paper, which he then plastered to the wall with duct tape.
“Do you meditate in a crystal garden too, you little fruitcake?!” Richie growled.
“No way, that’s boring. Why clear my mind when there’s so much interesting stuff in it to look through? Like a big picture book.” Cuppy said, scrawling more symbols and sigils.
The marks seemed to have no cohesion whatsoever. An ankh. The wiccan pentacle. The solar cross. Various letters or words written in what looked variously like Hindu, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and a bunch of what Richie could only guess were phrases in dead languages near and far. They weren’t just limited to that stoic black paint either - Cuppy’s choice in color arrangement was as chaotic as the consistency of his communication - bright reds and oranges, cool blues, vibrant green, obnoxiously bright yellow - any practitioner to any of the spiritualist or occultist stylings Cuppy was bootlegging with a skip in his step would as soon weep as give them praise, such was the effect of the boy’s disregard for tasteful renderings.
The placements were all over the place too - walls, floor, ceiling, windows - everything was fair game. Richie could only watch, perplexed as the boy made quick work of his stack of paper sheets, and his reserves of paint.
“Stop, stop, you’re giving me a headache with all this shit. Is that the plan? To give ghosts migraines when they try to come in?” Richie asked.
“It’s more like just encoding a big fat ‘No’ in a poster or something you can stick up. All those ideas kind of lead to the same thing, so I don’t think it’s really the marks themselves that matter. It’s all about your intent. If you want to make this place your house, you gotta be assertive.” Cuppy said. He offered the brush, and a page to Richie. “You wanna try?”
Richie glared at the boy. “I can’t move, remember?”
“Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Huh? What’s that? You think I should?” Cuppy turned his head to the right, looking at and speaking to someone or something that existed only to Cuppy himself.
“What are you raving about?” Richie asked, suddenly concerned at being alone and paralyzed with this subdued lunatic.
“This might tickle a touch.” Cuppy said, turning back to Richie.
The boy splayed his fingers out, and thin white threads emerged from each tip, coiling there in his grasp like cobras before a snakecharmer. Richie could only gape again as he saw the strange scene play out before him. Moving his fingers as though they were striking piano keys, Cuppy directed the threads toward Richie, and they painlessly pierced his skin, moving underneath into his arms and chest. Richie could see them make little furrow-like bulges in the skin where they tunneled.
“Wh-what the fu-” Richie was lost for words, the sight too freaky to articulate or process fully.
He felt a strange sensation of pins and needles, like when your feet fell asleep. It wasn’t exactly a bad feeling, just tingly, and strange. He could feel each individual thread wrap around nerves, and muscles, and bones, and anchor themselves there, where they started to sew themselves closed, drawing frayed flesh and bone back together again. The pain and numbness in his weary arms began to fade, and the ache in his sternum dissipated as well, feeling like a great weight had been taken off his chest, and he could breathe freely again. The ten strings ultimately detached from Cuppy’s fingers, as though they were fishing lines that had run out, and burrowed themselves completely under Richie’s skin, where they were lost. Richie reflexively wiggled his fingers, and clutched his hands closed, testing the apparent repairs.
“What did you just do?” Richie asked tonelessly, blinking in rapid confusion up at Cuppy.
“I used my strings to sew your body back together internally. It’s not really the same thing as healing, you’re still broken, but they can kind of hold you together and let you forget your pain and fatigue for a little while. You’ll regret it later when you ache like heck after the effects wear off, but if you really wanted to, you could walk around and do stuff for a bit now.” Cuppy explained.
“Where’d you learn a trick like that?” Richie asked, mystified.
“I don’t know. Can’t remember. I only realized I could do that because my brother here -” Cuppy indicated his backpack, where his marionette was stored and dormant, “- reminded me. I think he might have a bit more of an idea where we came from before we got hung out to dry on that branch, but he isn’t very talkative. Even I don’t always understand him or what he’s thinking.”
“Where you come from, you keep saying that. Do you think it’s possible you come from another world? The tall guy in the cloak - the faceless man - said something about that - multiple other worlds. I took a few walks through some tunnels or pathways into what could have been what he’s talking about, but I thought I was just going crazy or something. They all felt like dreams, but now I’m not so sure.” Richie looked down again, standing and stretching out his back as he enjoyed the freedom to move afforded to him by Cuppy’s anesthetizing strings. “The sheet ghost freak though, the guy who put a dent in my chest, I was wide awake when that happened, I’m sure of it.”
Cuppy tilted his head. “Well, if you have a door going somewhere that you can go into, it’s not like something inside of it can’t come out too, right?”
Richie scratched his head, eyes closed. “Yeah, I guess. This conversation feels like an acid trip, I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. After that shit I just saw you pull off though, I guess anything goes. Must mean these guys are real too, then.” Richie looked at both of his arms, flexing his biceps. His dragon runes were inactive, but their eyes still caught his, like they were fixated on his face and following him.
He felt uneasy still, a sick, sinking feeling showing up in his gut.
A door that can be used both ways…
“Aw shit.” Richie griped, suddenly alert and startled.
He ran to the door and flipped its lock. Luckily, there was also a chain lock and he slid it into place too. There was nothing to bar the windows with, but he rushed to their edges to peek out over the backyard grounds for the clawed killer.
"What's up?" Cuppy asked.
"Keep your distance from any closets or darkened spaces, stay as close to the center of the room as you can. I just remembered, it wasn't just us and that ghost in the forest. Some psychopath who needs an urgent nail trim fucked with me after that. He says he's the serial killer who's been operating in this city, and I sure as fuck believe him." Richie said, scanning the yard with eagle eyes.
"Cereal killer?" Cuppy scratched his head.
"No, I'm not talking cornflakes, you drip! You know, a multiple mass murderer, a slasher, one of those caricatures on late-night crime dramas, a serial killer." Richie elaborated.
"Cereal isn't alive. I hope it's not." Cuppy answered.
"A fuckin' bad guy! Not very sociable, self-important, very opinionated on people's flesh being in ribbons, get the picture yet?! I got thrown in the slammer for a few days cause the fucker set me up, then broke into the jail to taunt me. He can use these doorways or whatever they are to move around freely and spring his attacks. He called that place the Backyards, like it's somehow connected to this place, I don't fuckin' know. Just keep your eyes peeled-"
"That would hurt." Cuppy said.
"WATCH OUT FOR SPOOKY STRANGERS, IS THAT CLEAR ENOUGH, FUCKFACE?!?" Richie cracked.
"Oh. Okie dokie." Cuppy made an 'ok!' hand sign.
It would be night soon. Cuppy extracted a lantern from his travel pack and set it alight. "You need to sleep sometime. How are you going to run away from a guy who can appear anywhere? You should take advantage of the peace and rest while you can."
Richie shook his head emphatically. "No way, far too risky."
"But if you get exhausted and drop, it's the same thing. Checkmate." Cuppy said.
"What would you suggest, then?!" Richie snapped.
"Why don't we just take shifts on lookout duty? Sleep with two eyes open, y'know." Cuppy said.
"As in, rotate turns guarding the apartment so the other guy can sleep?" Richie asked.
"Yeah, why not?" Cuppy answered.
"Can I trust you? You're a kid, shouldn't you just burn up all your hyper-ass kid energy and crash before the clock strikes 10?" Richie asked skeptically.
"I ain't a kid." Cuppy said.
Richie pat the top of his head mockingly. "Yeah yeah, every kid says that, squirt."
"I'm 18 years old." Cuppy said.
"...what?" Richie asked.
"I'm 18. I'm a grownup." Cuppy smiled.
"...What?!?" Richie twitched. "You're older than me?!"
Cuppy nodded and pat Richie's back. "So you should sleep soon, it's almost bedtime."
"I guess that's another thing you remember, then." Richie scratched his head. "You think pieces of your memory will come back bit by bit like this?"
"Maybe." Cuppy shrugged.
The topic was apparently closed. Cuppy moved onto continuing his paintings. He had discarded occult and religious symbols for now, and segued into painting Japanese kanji, of which he apparently understood some to an extent. Richie tried to peak over Cuppy's shoulder curiously.
"Whatcha working on there, midget?" Richie asked.
Cuppy happily showed Richie his handiwork, a squiggly, sloppy mess that was supposed to be the shorthand for sora - "sky". To add insult to injury, it was in turquoise, Cuppy having begun to blend the paints.
Richie stared at it, feeling bad for the kanji as though it were a sick animal that needed to be put down.
"My heritage weeps." Richie said after a moment. "Gimme that." he gestured for Cuppy to lend him some paper and a spare brush.
Cuppy obliged, watching intently.
"Your calligraphy leaves a lot to be desired, let me show you how it's done." Richie dipped his brush in classic black paint, then started sketching.
"You can write moonspeak?" Cuppy asked.
"Kanji, and yes." Richie said. "My mother was Japanese. She taught me a lot of classical Japanese skills - bonsai, tea ceremony, traditional music - you get the idea."
"Was? What happened to her?" Cuppy asked.
Richie paused a moment, his paint stroke stuck in place. "She passed away some time ago. I've been on my own since then." he sighed.
"What about your dad?" Cuppy asked.
"I never met my father. Mom said he was a powerful warrior, and that I'm a lot like him, but I know nothing else about the man. He may not even be from this world, if the freak in the cloak's word can be taken at face value."
Richie finished the last stroke, and turned the finished page to show Cuppy.
天
"What's it mean?" Cuppy asked.
"It's pronounced 'ten', like the number. It means 'Heaven'. The top line is the sky, you see, and the bottom lines are a person standing with their arms spread out, like they're reaching toward it." Richie explained.
"Do you believe in Heaven?" Cuppy asked.
Richie thought a few moments. "I didn't. Ever since I've been on the run, cheating and stealing to survive, I was driven solely by my survival instinct - blind, animal drive. I didn't know what I was running towards, or what each day would bring. I've been mugged, jumped, shot at - death was never very far away. I never thought twice about what dying actually entailed. I had no reason to think it wasn't just lights out. Nothing before, and nothing after, just a small bit of consciousness in between. But now I'm not so sure. When I fought that creature, it threw a lot of things into question." he said.
"You think it was some kind of ghost, right?" Cuppy asked.
"Kind of, but not really, I just don't have a better word for it. It didn't feel alive. I know, ghosts aren't alive anyway, but I mean I didn't get the feeling it actually knew what either of us were doing. More like a virus that can only hijack the cells of things that are actually alive. Like a mindless spectral parasite without a will or a soul." Richie struggled to explain. "What got me thinking about whether or not death was the end was what happened during that fight. I saw my mom, as real and solid as you are in front of me right now. She gave me encouragement, and I felt her touch. It was warm. It was alive, like living hands on my face, flesh and blood. But it didn't last long. She said she had to go back - back to the world spirits belong to. I don't know if that's supposed to be Heaven, or Hell, or the Greek fuckin' Underworld. It wasn't concrete like that. Just felt like the bright light people say they see when they almost die, and come back from the brink. Time slowed down… everything felt so quiet." Richie trailed off.
Cuppy lingered in respectful silence.
"I'd like to think she found peace. She said she was always with me, but I don't know how that and her going back to an afterlife can both be true. It doesn't make much sense to me. I don't believe in Heaven, but I can hope." Richie shrugged. "Anyway, it isn't necessarily a direct translation. It can be read as the heavens, like the sky or the cosmos. In certain combinations with other letters, it can mean things like divinity, or the Domain of the Gods. More like Mount Olympus than a fluffy cloud heaven with pearly gates and winged angels. For me, I guess it's kind of like an ideal to live up to. A new height to climb. I'm not exactly sure where I'm climbing to or what I expect to find, but mother wanted me to live for something. So, I'll find out what I want when I get there, I guess." Richie finished, feeling some small twinge of hope.
Cuppy's stomach growled.
Richie, irritated that his heartfelt confession had gone to waste, held his tongue from lashing out when his stomach growled as well, spurred on by Cuppy's.
"Got any snacks?" Cuppy asked.
"I'm a fuckin' homeless drifter, no I don't have snacks. This whole ridiculous situation collapsed on my head like an avalanche cause I was scavenging for dumpster treats." Richie said.
"That sounds icky." Cuppy stuck his tongue out.
"Tell me about it." Richie agreed.
"Well, let's go get some grub." Cuppy chirped.
"You have any money?" Richie asked.
"Who needs money when we have a private reserve to ourselves? I've got some fishing poles, and we can get bird eggs from the trees. Things like fennel and berries grow in the ground, we can forage for some garnish while we're at it." Cuppy said.
"I was planning on checking out the greenhouse for growables, but I don't feel like making that walk at twilight." Richie said. He looked out over the backyard and edging forest worriedly. "You sure it's safe?"
"Nope! Come on, let's go." Cuppy grabbed Richie's hand and began yanking him out into the yard.
Richie was hesitant, but as he recalled it, the killer had said that he would wait for him in that other world, as though it were an invitation to a duel. Could Richie trust he wasn't going to be ambushed and hacked to bits when he least expected it?
"Eh, fuck it." Richie shrugged.