Cuppy ambled up and down the chrome streets of Station Bay, finding that all evidence pointed toward the electric power still being intact. A display window for an appliance shop boasted big flat screen TVs that were still in working order, and HD to boot. One of them was running glitzy ads for the circus extravaganza slated for the massive casino in the gambling district. A lion's roar broke the cacophony of spinning slot machines, the tumble of roulette wheels, and shot dice, and ushered in a screen-wipe transition that changed the scene to a grand in-door arena at the center of hundreds of seats lined in a circle around the center stage. Acrobats swung to and fro across trapezes, clowns juggled flaming pins, half-dressed tan men in flashy pants swallowed ornate curved swords, and an elephant rolled about the ground floor atop a giant, brightly-colored beach ball. At the apex of the commercial, a blond man with a perfect smile threw off his elegant red overcoat, and the garment obscured the camera. When it passed, the man was in a wrestling ring, in a golden speedo and boots, gesturing "come on" to some muscle-bound hulk in a luchador mask.
Cuppy watched the display in fascination.
"I could probably get me a job at the circus. That could be fun." he entertained the idea.
"Yo! Cuppy!" Zeke ran up to Cuppy from farther up the sidewalk, followed closely by Simon. "Small world. How's it hanging?"
Simon looked at the display Cuppy had been watching, and blinked rapidly in disbelief as a massive lion performed a bodyslam on the downed heel.
"Huh?" Zeke turned to see what the big deal was. "Oh, they're lining up new shows at Carnival Top. You gonna go?"
Cuppy shrugged. "Broke, at the moment. I just wanted to see if the city was having any problems with the power. There was a passing outage back home."
Simon shook his head. "Not a total lights out, but the downtown area had some glitches. No one got seriously hurt, but the traffic lights wacked out and there was a crash."
"We just came from rubbernecking at it, actually." Zeke said.
"What were you doing downtown?" Cuppy asked.
"Huh?" Zeke made an annoyed expression. "We can walk around if we want to. It's not like there's a curfew."
Simon pulled on Zeke's sleeve. "Well, actually,"
Zeke lightly shoved him away and stuck the brim of his hat in Simon's mouth. "Nope, no curfew. Not in the middle of the day, anyway. You never got back to us, so we just continued urban legend gathering without you. Word on the street is that all the monster sightings are connected to the sewers. We were going to check them out."
Cuppy scratched his nose. "I think that might be a bad idea."
"Why's that?" Zeke asked.
"Well, the toxic fog is probably gas leaking up from the sewers through cracks and pockets." Cuppy fibbed. "It isn't safe to go poking around down there."
Simon twiddled his fingers. "Actually, my cousin doesn't think so."
Cuppy cocked his head. "Your cousin?"
"Foreign exchange student back from his study abroad or some crap." Zeke said.
"Risk assessment analyst. He's a consultant for when people wanna build things. He told me Station Bay's geological and geographical situation doesn't line up with gas leaks. He's seen them before, like at the rims of active volcanoes where you have to wear heat-proof suits and fume hoods and shit. Even if there were leaks, monstrous hallucinations aren't a well-documented symptom. Which means either mass hysteria-" Simon said.
"Or a cover-up." Zeke concluded, clapping Simon on the back. "Smart cookie, this one, eh?"
"What makes you say that?" Cuppy asked. He had his own agenda. Just cause his school friends were right didn't mean he had to confirm anything, and he was curious how they had reached the same conclusion with far less evidence.
"Cause someone tried to buy him off to keep quiet." Zeke whistled.
"Really?" Cuppy asked.
Simon nodded. "He's keeping his mouth shut for now. He has his own theories."
"If I were a shady government guy," Zeke said, "and I made some critters that busted out of the lab, I'd want to keep that shit quiet too."
Cuppy blinked.
"Yeah. That's probably it." - he couldn't exactly tell them they were way off the mark without opening a can of worms. They would ask questions, and he would have to pull them into the same rabbit hole that had swallowed him, Richie, and Freyja. Come to think of it, hadn't Miss Yule - or Holly rather - warned the class not to enter the red power tunnel underground? Knowing what he knew now about her connection to the Institute, Cuppy realized that this tunnel he had crossed through and watched brighten as one of those tracer things was conjured up must have been created by the Institute themselves, along with the robotic bugs he had sensed tailing them from time to time. They called the monsters ferals, it was obvious that clean-up was their primary agenda. Even so, Holly's grudging transparency had opened more questions than it had provided answers. She confessed the distressing feeling that she was being kept in the dark - locked out of the loop. Yet, Mason had shown no real concern that Cuppy and Freyja could expose the masquerade after having battled a feral up close and personal. Did the Director really think they had more to lose as squatters than he did if someone blew the whistle on him?
The more he puzzled over it, the more he realized that, no matter which way he looked at the situation, the Institute wasn't acting - and, by implication, thinking - rationally. Neither was local government. The butchering of the police station that Dean described before his untimely death had never been made public. Was the city really prioritizing its reputation and dignity over the safety of thousands? Why weren't they doing more to warn people about the cereal killer?
Suddenly, Cuppy remembered that he had missed a few days of school. "How's Miss Yule?" he asked casually enough, but was worried he might not like the answer.
"She hasn't shown up." Simon said.
"Vacation?" Cuppy asked.
"No idea. She didn't announce anything to us, or the school. Had to scramble for a substitute teacher a day late and a dollar short. No one was there the first day to let us into class." Zeke said. "Not that I'm complaining, mind you."
Cuppy's eyebrows furrowed. Had the agents of the Institute seen Holly spill the beans? Had they silenced her?
Cuppy was going to have a talk with Director Mason.
-
Richie heard the floor creak from behind him as he turned his wrench at the plumbing of the kitchen sink, hooked up to a temporary indoor water tank in the absence of working plumbing, and the reservoir awaiting purification. His hairs began to bristle, then calmed as he recognized the familiar scent of Freyja creeping back into the apartment, no doubt to slack off on the couch.
“That was a short trip.” Richie said after a pause, then returned to his work.
“I took a short jog around town in wolf form. Back’s acting up on me today, so I’m calling it a day. Cuppy’s a big boy, he can take care of intel on his own, I’m sure.” Freyja said, stretching and cracking out her afflicted back.
“Sure, play the crippled card.” Richie chuckled, rolling his eyes half-heartedly.
“Turn around.” Freyja said.
Richie could tell from her voice that her face was pouting, and she had her hands on her hips in an irritated, disapproving stance. He froze up.
“I decline. Why?” he asked.
“Whenever it’s just us two in the house, you never look at me. Am I really that scary?” Freyja asked, mock hurt in her voice.
“You’re a werewolf thing from Hell, as far as I can tell. Do you really need to ask?” Richie chuckled again.
“Don’t change the subject. You’re comfortable enough hanging out as a trio when Cuppy’s there to be a buffer between us, but the moment the midget is gone, you get all awkward on me. As roommates and friends, that’s frankly unacceptable.” Freyja huffed.
“When did you get so well spoken?” Richie grumbled, tensing up further. “Look, it’s nothing personal, I just get… skittish, around girls.”
“I don’t have a pussy to fuck with you.” Freyja said.
Richie smacked his head on the underside of the kitchen sink cabinet. “Ow!” he clutched at his skull, even as his face flushed red. “Jesus! Don’t just come out and say it like that!”
Freyja dug in her heels, growing increasingly irritated. “Pussy pussy pussy, tits tits tits.”
Richie curled into a fetal position, turned resolutely away from Freyja, curling his chin into his chest and trying to disappear inside his jacket like a turtle shell. He was bright scarlet from collar to hairline.
“Triggered?” Freyja asked conversationally.
“You really are a demon.” Richie mumbled - squeaked, rather.
“I can’t believe someone so street-hardened is such a shrinking violet.” Freyja sighed and shrugged. “What’s the deal with you and girls, anyway?”
Richie went quiet a while. “I didn’t have a great social life growing up. The only girl I ever saw was my own mother, and the only other people in my life were family friends who delivered our supplies in secret. On the occasions I snuck out to taste what life was supposed to be like, I only met a few other kids in passing, and we weren’t in contact often enough to really be called friends. My friends were books. Fairy tales, then comic books and action novels when I got older. I liked to watch cartoons on Saturdays a lot too. I remember asking my mom why they seemed to only marathon on Saturdays, and I’ll never forget the pained look she had when she explained that it was cause most kids - kids who actually went to school - had Saturdays off. She had to explain public school to me, and I could see preschool through grade school on tv programs. High school showed up a lot too. I always wanted to know why I could never go to school and see other kids. It’s not like I liked textbooks - I hated them like any other kid, in fact, but at least I got to power through my homeschooling on my own hours - but I still felt like something was being kept from me, or like I was being denied entry into a world other kids took for granted. I never got to really bounce off of other people. The first stranger I ever met instilled absolute fear in me. He tried to kill me. Then, I was surrounded by kids. Dozens of them, maybe even hundreds - I don’t know how far the halls went for in that godforsaken kennel.”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
He had rolled up his sleeves unconsciously, and was beginning to pull tracts in his skin, leaving red marks that seemed to dangerously teeter on the edge of breaking skin. Freyja thought to speak up, but, looking at the faint but prominent slits up her arms and wrists, she felt she didn’t really have room to talk. Besides, this was the most unbroken information Richie had volunteered about himself to her so far, and she wasn’t about to break his stream of consciousness.
“Those kids were all just like me, and not just cause they had tattoos like mine.” Richie glared resentfully at his exposed dragons. “They all wore the same faces - despair, confusion, pleading - and above all else, terror. They hadn’t done anything to deserve getting rounded up like cattle for the slaughter. I’ve never forgotten the one feeling that trumped even my own terror then, when I saw that sea of crying faces - guilt. Guilt compounded by how my own mother had been gunned down in cold blood… and how I ran from her and didn’t look back. It was like those faces were accusing me, reminding me that it was my fault again. I totally dissociated from those memories for a long time, and in that time I had lived on the streets since the very beginning, as far as I was concerned. The full picture didn’t come back to me till the Faceless Man shoved it back into my skull, like a big throbbing nightmare-”
Richie held his tongue, face screwing up in mixed disgust and shame. He hadn’t been aware of the extent of how violated he had felt by that intrusion into his mind and soul. How desanctified. Freyja had a sympathetic look that Richie couldn’t see because he still refused to turn to see her.
“Anyway,” he said after a pause, “I lost perspective on the order of events, but that guilt stayed with me. I just forgot where it came from. Maybe I thought it was the guilt of stealing from others to survive, or a result of societal gaslighting that I was a waste of flesh and a blight on their clean, pretty ideal world. All of it, I guess. Shame that I had been born. I guess now that I remember everything, it’s more accurate to call it survivor’s guilt. I just forgot that I had survived. Ever since then, and every day straight through to this one now, I’ve been a survivor. But that’s all I’ve been doing. I didn’t make anything, I didn’t live, I didn’t do anything with the potential my mother always believed in, or the new lease on life she gave her own to bestow upon me. It was… cold, like you’ve said. I had no fires to warm myself by. When that junkie attacked me, I just did what I’d always done - react on reflex, and damn the consequences. Nothing was real but my own animal instinct to survive. There wasn’t room for compassion or putting myself in someone else’s shoes, especially when that someone was willing to stab me and bash my brains in. I’d started to see the kidnapper’s face everywhere. Everyone was just an enemy who hadn’t sprung their attack yet. That junkie is dead now. And, right or wrong or whatever, it brought the first trickle of guilt pouring back. Now that the memory blank is gone, it isn’t just a trickle anymore - it’s a goddamned great flood.”
Freyja laid a gentle hand on Richie’s back. He tensed a moment, fighting back blush, but allowed it and took a few deep breaths to steady himself.
“I guess the long and the short of it is that I’ve never properly adjusted to people. I called that freak in the clown getup a psychopath, but really I’m not so different. He just goes the extra step to kill his enemies he hasn’t met yet. That’s what really pissed me off about him when he compared the two of us. It’s cause he was right. I’m not like other people. All I’ve known for far too long is distrust, fear, and a bitter grudge against the whole damn world. Them. People. Other people who had it so easy. People who had a warm bed to sleep in, and friends and family still around to love them and hug them. It’s easy for someone who hasn’t lost their hopes to point a finger at me and call me scum. But… they don’t even know me. That’s no excuse, I know. The bottom line is that my faith in other people totally atrophied. I can’t bring myself to care about anyone else. It isn’t safe. It’s like having extra doors in the house for someone to hide behind, or showing my hand in a high stakes game. Trusting other people isn’t a risk I’m willing - no… that I can afford to take.”
Freyja sat behind Richie, turned around in a crisscross sit, and leaned her back against his.
“Uh,” Richie began to protest at this physical contact.
“Don’t freak out, ok? I’m not facing you. This should be fine, right?” Freyja said.
Richie said nothing.
“So, what I gather from that then… where it ties back to you being afraid of girls, I mean - is the same reason you’re always on guard around everyone else. Except, it’s complicated. You went through puberty keeping all your feelings locked down tight. Hehe, you’re still just a nervous little boy deep down, aren’t you? Afraid of cooties?” Freyja giggled.
“Shut up! See, this is why I didn’t want to talk about it!” Richie said defensively, getting hot under the collar again.
“It’s kind of cute, really. Like there’s a nugget of innocence deep down inside you, under the crusty, edgy exterior.” Freyja said.
“...thanks?” Richie said. “Not sure how to take that.”
“Consider it a compliment.” Freyja said.
“Whatever you say.” Richie rolled his eyes.
He allowed himself to smile. He wasn’t about to admit it out loud but Freyja was… kind of charming, in her own terrifying, demonic couch potato way.
“I think that’s a good sign that you still have an untapped well of innocence down inside you. Still waters run deep. It goes back to that same place where you believed in Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny. When magic existed and anything could happen. When cops were superheroes you’d go find if you ever got lost and needed help, and not just enforcers with gilded badges. A world where ‘please and thank you’ actually get you everywhere, and nice guys never finish last. The kind of mindframe good dreams come from, and with them, peace, hope,”
“Love?” Richie asked despite himself.
“Yeah.” Freyja said. “Those were concepts I watched from afar. You and I have some shit in common. In a way, I envy you. You got fucked over hard by your own ill-fated destiny, but you still had someone who loved you for a few of your formative years. You had a brief window to enjoy the ignorance of bliss. I know it’s not fair to be jealous of you, you’ve clearly seen more than your share of loss and pain, but that felt like what I was missing. Locked out from, like a neglected dog left chained up outside in the snow.”
“Both outsiders, the two of us, eh?” Richie asked.
“Yems.” Freyja nodded. “I have to disagree with you on one detail though.”
“And what’s that?” Richie asked.
“You aren’t like that asshole with the claws, not by a long shot.” Freyja said.
“How do you know? We spend a few weeks on the same team and you think you’ve got a solid read on me already?” Richie bristled a bit.
“No. Part of it’s just instinct, but you already showed your hand, so to speak, and you didn’t even realize it. You said that you can’t spare any energy toward or for the feelings of others, and you can’t bear to trust them. But, if you aren’t trusting me now by admitting all of this, then what is a gesture of trust?” Freyja asked.
Richie looked up. “You might have a point.”
“Letting your little puppet friend invite the big scary wolf girl into your rundown paradise isn’t exactly what a die-hard antisocial hermit would compromise on, right?” Freyja asked.
“You’re something of an outlier. You saved Cuppy’s life. And mine, I think, if that was you in the woods when the baseball bat got tossed at my feet when I needed it.” Richie said.
“I can’t confirm or deny.” Freyja said. “Bit blurry. But, you guys saved my life too. Again.”
Both Richie and Freyja looked up at the same time, eyes widened in subdued shock.
Again? they thought at the same time, and it almost seemed like they could hear each other.
“Freyja… you were stuck in the Backyards for two whole years, right?” Richie asked.
“Uh huh.” she nodded.
“And you didn’t get out until you pulled Cuppy out of the pool, right?” Richie asked.
“Yeah.” Freyja acknowledged.
“The first time I went into the tunnel was a bit before Cuppy and I crossed paths. Do you think you and I could have met each other in the Backyards?” Richie asked.
“I think we did. We must have. People who’ve barely spoken to each other and just kind of awkwardly share the same living space like us don’t feel this familiar with each other by default.” Freyja said.
“Does the name Garm ring a bell?” Richie asked.
Freyja looked up toward the popcorn ceiling. Her head was beginning to hurt, and she lost interest in the conversation. Her back ached along with her head.
“Who knows?” she trailed off.
…
“So, I think this heart to heart means we can say we’ve officially broken the ice, don’t you think?” Freyja asked.
“Y-Yeah…” Richie was still looking down.
“I’ll give you your space. I just wanted to thank you - both of you - for taking me in.” Freyja said.
“If you’re cold, they’re cold.” Richie parroted Cuppy.
“Bring them inside.” Freyja finished.
She smiled warmly, and Richie was able to bring himself to look at her, albeit still blushing.
“So, do you think you can try and acclimate to me being a girl? Just a little? I won’t bite, I promise.” Freyja said.
“No promises.” Richie quipped.
It was clear between the both of them though - it was a promise.
“Besides, you aren’t ripe yet anyway.” Freyja trilled.
“Huh?” Richie asked, beginning to get unnerved again.
“You’re jailbait at the moment. But, the moment you get your next birthday - you’re mine <3” Freyja showed fangs again, letting little hellfires burn in her eyes.
“Succubus!” Richie gave Freyja the double bird in the form of a crucifix, both middle fingers intersecting at a right angle.
Freyja couldn’t help herself, and cackled hysterically, slumping against the wall as her belly began to hurt from breathless strain.
Richie, his heart going a mile a minute, dropped his head, sighing again.
The rumors had it all wrong - the trolls weren’t in the sewer; they were up here with everyone else.
Suddenly, Freyja’s ears perked up. They had broken the ice. Broken the… ice…
“Uh oh.” Freyja gulped.
She had forgotten about the frozen pond of liquid darkness, the very reason Richie was forced to rig an alternate fresh water supply to the sink now. They had all forgotten about it. The bitchsicle’s deep freeze wasn’t going to last forever.
Freyja trotted out over the black ice and winced as malignant intents and grudges seeped up into her being through her bare feet on the ice, like nutrients in the soil through a plant’s roots. The malice of the Black Rain imprisoned under Chikita’s temporary cryokinetic ward was beginning to leak through. A crack was ever so slightly visible down its middle. Where the hell had Cuppy gone off to again? If he was going to figure out how to modify his strings toward filtering contaminants from liquid - if he even could focus his abstract power toward something so granular - he was going to have to do it quickly.
-
Cuppy, for his part, had been sidetracked twice over. He waited in the dark corner of Director Mason’s office, cloaked under his green hood, eyes hidden. A single scissor blade was concealed under the folds of his garment. His eyes burned into the back of the suit’s head.
Going through proper channels was plebeian. Hunters with places to be and promises to keep didn’t ask for permission. They never asked for permission from bullies. Not after what happened at the reservoir with the poor hippo thing. Never again. Cuppy had decided a while ago without letting it slip to any of his friends that he was never going to mind his own business while injustice happened in front of him ever again. Not when he could act. He felt his coils of string in his palm, slithering like venomous snakes.
Oh yeah. Cuppy could heckin’ act.