Richie twitched his eye as he stared in disbelief at the black lump of canine occupying the couch - they had a couch now? - dozing casually as though it were normal for apartments to have wolves in them.
“Cuppy,” Richie said, sweat breaking on his forehead, “this is a wolf. Why is there a wolf in the apartment?”
“Well she doesn’t want to sleep outside. If you’re cold, they’re cold.” Cuppy said.
“That’s besides the point. There’s a wolf in our house.” Richie emphasized.
“Apartment. We don’t have a house.” Cuppy corrected.
“Cuppy, don’t be that kid in class, you technical little fuck, you know what I mean.” he gestured to the sleeping wolf that was Freyja, curled up and dozing comfortably under her shimmering slick coat of glossy ebony fur. “We can’t have a wolf in the apartment. Why do you do these things? Can’t you just get a goldfish? We can’t bring the forest into our house to live with us.”
“Apartment.” Cuppy said again. “It’s ok though, don’t worry, she isn’t really a wolf.”
“She looks pretty much like a fucking wolf to me.” Richie protested.
“No no, it’s fine. She’s a shapeshifter.” Cuppy said.
“Come again?” Richie asked, scratching his head.
“She shifts shapes.” Cuppy answered.
“Oh, well thank you for clearing that up. What?!?” Richie twitched again, fingers typing invisible keys back and forth with his frustrated jitters.
“She’s actually a girl, human like us - presumably. Are we human?” Cuppy asked.
“If it walks like a duck.” Richie said.
“It’s a wolf. Actually, it’s a shapeshifter. And the shapeshifter is a girl.” Cuppy said.
“When you say girl, you mean like, a girl, girl? Female, and all that?” Richie asked warily.
“Yep. There are twin x chromosomes in that wolf, correct.” Cuppy nodded.
“And her default form is a human, you said?” Richie asked.
“Yes.” Cuppy nodded.
“And the human is a girl too, right?” Richie said.
“Last I checked.” Cuppy said.
“... fuckin’ rephrase that…” Richie shuddered.
“The wolf is a girl, and the person she shifts shapes into is also a girl. The collection is female.” Cuppy affirmed.
“So, when she feels like it, or when whatever this magic is wears off, that wolf-” Richie asked.
“Will turn into a human girl, yes.” Cuppy nodded.
“Approximate age?” Richie asked.
“18, like me.” Cuppy said.
“Making me,” Richie said.
“Still the baby of the bunch, yes.” Cuppy nodded.
“So what you’re saying is there’s a girl on our couch, and you brought her home?” Richie said.
“It was cold outside. If you’re cold, they’re cold. Bring them inside.” Cuppy nodded.
“Is she pretty?” Richie asked hesitantly.
“Very.” Cuppy nodded.
“I’d rather it was just a wolf. Fuck that, get it out of my apartment.” Richie shook his head rapidly. “You can’t keep it.”
“No way! Freyja is part of the family!” Cuppy pouted, shaking his head emphatically.
“I don’t deal with pretty girls, fuck that. You can just get a goldfish.” Richie said.
“What if she can shift shapes into a goldfish?” Cuppy asked.
“Then flush her down the toilet.” Richie said.
“But Richie!” Cuppy whined.
“Don’t ‘Richie’ me! No estrogen in this house!” Richie shook his head.
“Why are you afraid of girls?” Cuppy asked.
“I’m not afraid of girls, ok? I just feel the need to run and hide when pretty girls are anywhere near me, in cramped living spaces, that’s all.” Richie said.
“Oh, well that clears that up.” Cuppy parrotted, a dumb smirk on his face.
“Look here you little shit!” Richie growled.
Freyja had in fact been awake since this argument began, and was merely pretending to be asleep, a feat growing increasingly difficult as she struggled not to crack up. Was this the same boy she spoke with in the dreamspace of the Backyards, the one she had run and played with shortly before circumstances drew her out of that realm and into the waking world? If so, the thought that he had merely been dreaming clearly relieved him of his rather cement-like inhibitions. It was fascinating to watch this little science experiment play out. How much longer could she play dead? Maybe she should shift into her human form and sit bolt right up with a “boo” and scare him through the roof? That could be fun. They didn’t have cable yet, so this could be a viable way to get entertainment. Should she do that sultry eyelash-fluttery thing? So many possibilities.
Richie collapsed suddenly.
"Richie?" Cuppy asked.
"Yes?" he gave a muffled reply with his face pressed into the floor, his body numb and limp.
"Are you ok?" Cuppy asked.
"What do you think?" Richie asked irritably. "Are you going to just stand there, or are you going to help me up?"
Cuppy rigged marionette strings to Richie's body, stringing him up to the ceiling so that his feet touched the floor.
"Not exactly what I meant, but ok." Richie said. "I wanted to ask you - what happened down there in the sewers? I'm missing a significant chunk of time I can piece together. How long was I gone for when you found me wandering around?"
"You don't remember last night?" Cuppy asked.
"No, it's blank. What happened?" he admitted.
"You stepped off a train, and we jogged back here together. Got tailed by a weird cat, and I unveiled a new invention - my Cuppy Pellet Surprise, Spicy Edition."
"Doesn't ring a bell." Richie said blankly.
Cuppy frowned. "Fiddlesticks. I worked really hard on making napalm."
"Excuse me, what?" Richie asked.
"Moving on. I led an expedition into the underground to sniff out some trolls, remember?" Cuppy said.
Richie twitched. "That's an odd way of putting 'dragged me through literal sewers for shits and giggles'."
"See, your memory's coming back already." Cuppy clapped.
"If I could move right now-" Richie growled.
"But you can't." Cuppy pat his head. "Then the little guy got cranky, drank some poop, and became a not-little guy. You threw me out of the way and took the clobbering for me."
"Not my first bad decision." Richie growled.
"Lot of sass for someone in tickling range." Cuppy chided. "You fell into the icky river - we all did - and then you were gone. We got separated, and Freyja there fished me out of a pollution outlet."
The memory of that obnoxious green midget with a chip on his shoulder picking a fight with them flashed through Richie's mind again. He instantly remembered how he had hesitated - frozen up - when he should have fought back. The venomous drawl of the clawed cereal killer floated through his mind, and the cold indifference to conscious, living beings as though they were cheap toys to be broken on a whim had stayed his hand. Richie opted not to make a decision, and that inaction itself was a decision. The wrong decision. One that almost got the both of them killed. It had been easy to act in self-defense when the threat had just been a dumb bed sheet ghost, like a poorly-programmed NPC in a video game. But, when the threat had been a living, breathing little man with a human appearance - all he could see was the dead face of the junkie he had killed by leaving him a sitting duck for the killer. Comparing himself negatively to others had always been a stubborn part of Richie's psychological makeup ever since he had been turned out on the streets, and it seemed that flaw matured into paranoia that he could just as easily be the psychopathic murderer under different circumstances. Long before literal monsters started turning up, Richie already knew that monsters passed through the streets every day. Corrupt cops, pragmatic thugs and rival thieves, even - or especially - the well-to-do passerbys who looked down their noses at him and denounced his meager existence.
Perhaps in all his time, the thing that gave him the pride to survive had been his silent resolve that he wasn't the piece of shit the world was content to pass him off as - that he had worth, and would die fighting for it. Deciding on his own authority to put down another person with lethal force - how would that be different from every anonymous judge jury and executioner who had condemned him as a waste of breath?
Cuppy's mind hadn't been clouded by such self-doubt. There was no hesitation in him. He saw a "jerk" trying to hurt them, and he reacted accordingly in brutal fashion, paying violence unto violence. If that meant the leprechaun died, sucks to be him. Was it self-worth and conviction that his and Richie's lives were worth protecting? Or was that just psychological projection on Richie's part? Nothing so complicated, he realized. Cuppy reacted with the same straightforward logic as the child he resembled. He was pure - innocence and curiosity incarnate. That purity had no need for morality to justify itself, and it carried no shame. People could think whatever they wanted - Cuppy was Cuppy.
All at once, it dawned on Richie - he envied Cuppy. He saw the purity he had lost. He also saw the chance for redemption in those dumb owl-like eyes.
"When did this all happen?" Richie asked.
"A couple weeks ago." Cuppy said.
Richie nodded. "Where was I?"
Cuppy shrugged. "We couldn't find you, but I knew you were alive, so you must have washed up somewhere else. Must have been far away, since you had to take a train back."
"You knew I was alive? How?" Richie asked.
Cuppy beamed up at him. "Cause you're cool! Duh."
Richie blushed vividly, and began stuttering creative obscenities at Cuppy about him being an idiot and pulling his logic out of his and other asses.
Freyja sat up, sniffing the air. "Oh? You hit him in the soft spot." she told Cuppy.
"And now the wolf is talking." Richie said.
"Shiftshaper." Cuppy said.
"Yeah, that." Richie said.
Freyja dropped down from the couch and stood up on her hindquarters, sniffing the air around Richie.
"Your scent is stronger since last time." Freyja said.
"Have we met?" Richie asked.
Freyja focused the encircling golden lenses of her eyes. "Yes. We have."
Richie was awestruck all at once. "That's right, I do remember you. In the ivy tunnel, right?"
The black wolf nodded. "Ding ding, we have a winner. But, for the sake of formalities,"
She began to change back into her human form right before Richie's widening eyes. Her fur retracted into her flesh, which smoothed itself out and paled, and her pawpads began to flatten and elongate curved claws into slender human fingers. Ears shrank down, but seemed to keep a slight pointiness, and snout and muzzle flattened into a pretty face with lips painted black.
"Ta-da." Freyja said deadpan, making sarcastic little jazz hands.
"Oh my god it's really a girl." Richie gulped, face flushing again.
"What, you saw a wolf and assumed it was male?" Freyja chuckled.
"I didn't assume it was a shapeshifter!" Richie said, trying to twist and turn in his strings to no avail.
"They shift shapes." Cuppy nodded.
"Cuppy, get me out of these damn puppet strings now!" Richie said, swinging his legs back and forth with renewed strength. "You were supposed to keep demons out. You had one job!"
"Don't worry, hon, I don't bite." Freyja said. "Hard." she flashed her canine fangs.
Cuppy tilted his head at Richie, then began poking and jostling him again as the strings went taut again under the strain of sudden deadweight.
"He passed out." Cuppy said.
Freyja dropped to the floor on her back, laughing herself into tears till her belly hurt, and kicking her leg like a dog.
"Poor thing couldn't take it!" Freyja wiped tears from her eyes. "I needed that. It's been a long month for all of us, by the looks of it."
Cuppy examined Richie's body, moving about him and turning his strung-up form as needed.
"He's got some bruises and abrasions, I think he must have gotten in a scuffle or two on the way back." Cuppy said.
"He must have passed through the Backyards when he got swept away. That would explain why he doesn't remember what happened. I wonder why we can only recall bits and pieces?" Freyja asked.
"We'll have to go over it all together later, put everything each of us knows in one pile to figure out. It could be that we only have a few puzzle pieces between us, and won't know the bigger picture till we corroborate stories." Cuppy said.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
"Ok, but can we get the ice cream first?" Freyja asked, her wolf tail unfurling and wagging excitedly.
The sun was beginning to rise, bathing the skyline in a gorgeous watercolor orange, and the smell of dew drops on the lawn were enticing invitations to step out into the morning.
"I think Richie would prefer that. He'll probably shake me again if I delay him. How about that ice cream parlor at the boardwalk?" Cuppy asked.
"Works for me." Freyja nodded happily. "It's been so long. Literal years!"
-
They stood in the black and white checkered tile room of a hole in the wall parlor at the edge of the docks. The bay was a glistening stained glass mirror of the wider Atlantic Ocean beyond its nominal borders, and smelled crisply of sea salt. It was a comforting, nostalgic smell in Freyja's sensitive nose, and she struggled not to let her wolf tail unfurl and start wagging in public. A slanted glass display shielded dozens of different buckets of ice cream in every conceivable color combination. Richie, always making sure to keep Cuppy between himself and Freyja lest he contract cooties, suddenly forgot his wariness at the sight of the promised land, heart stirred by his inner child taking the mantle again. Like Freyja, he had not had an ice cream cone in years. His and Cuppy's faces pressed to the glass like little kids gawking at aquarium fish, and much like an annoyed attendant getting after them not to disturb the fish, the ice cream vendor irritably tapped his chubby fingers on the red velvet counter.
"You're spooking the ice cream." he said gruffly.
Richie stepped back and rubbed his arm, averting his eyes more in embarrassment that Cuppy was starting to rub off on him than at being reprimanded. After being arrested at a circle of guns' point capping off a young lifetime of getting into trouble, smartass comments from little mom and pop shop owners were less than mosquito bites.
They placed their orders, each stacking their chocolate-dipped cones five scoops high. Richie opted for all chocolate, topped with fresh strawberries, Cuppy ordered pistachio with rainbow sprinkles, and Freyja took dark fudge brownie, capped with a generous scoop of thick peanut butter.
"Dogs can't have chocolate." Cuppy cautioned her.
Freyja looked at him as though trying to figure out if he was serious or not.
When the attendant loudly cleared his throat, the puppeteer returned his attention to the register, framed by giant glass mason jars of toppings. When he opened his crocheted wallet, however, an actual moth flew out.
"Huh. I should have charged him rent." Cuppy mused. "Freyja, can you spot me?"
"You're right here." Freyja pointed at Cuppy.
"Thanks." Cuppy nodded.
The man gestured at them to return his wares if they couldn't afford them.
"Hey, Rich-" Cuppy turned back.
Richie was gone, having sensed the direction this was going. What was one more dine and dash to a career thief?
"Right. Strategic retreat then." Freyja shrugged, grabbing Cuppy by the hood and running off with him, leaving the puppeteer to balance both of their precariously swaying stacks of frozen deliciousness.
"You fuckin' thieves!" the store owner stepped out the door, shaking his fist after them.
Freyja ducked behind a scattershot of shrubs in a park area, and emerged out the other side in her wolf form, Cuppy sewn to her back and camouflaged by black threads. She ducked into a grove of trees following Richie's scent, then scampered up a tree after him upon spotting his dangling feet.
They sat together on a large tree branch, looking out over the park and the boardwalk beyond.
"There's a string in my ice cream." Freyja said.
"I need that back." Cuppy said, retracting the inky black thread back into his fingertip.
Richie, pushed to the outermost side of the bough hanging over the grass, happily licked at his ice cream, looking perfectly content for once. A strawberry fell from his cone, and Cuppy shot a string after it, hooking and swinging it back up, snapping it out of the air like a dolphin catching a fish treat. He opened the flap of his travel bag to reveal Cuppet, still busted from the fight with the jester, crammed inside, and pushed some ice cream into his wooden face.
"So, what I gather is that you and I have talked before?" Richie asked Freyja finally.
"Yeah. It's fuzzy, but you were the first person I saw in the Backyards in a long time. I think that triggered my ability to come back from them." she nodded.
"You can't remember much either?" Richie asked, a chocolate mustache coating his lip.
Freyja shook her head. Cuppy had quietly leaned over and bit a hole in the bottom of her cone to siphon some ice cream out, and Freyja smacked the top of his fuzzy skull with a closed fist without looking away or breaking her conversation with Richie. The smaller boy's eyes swiveled around, dizzied, and Cuppet silently laughed at him, making creaking sounds as his jointed wooden body moved its clawed chest up and down.
"Maybe between the three of us we can put the pieces together." she said.
"Later." Richie said, looking up through the leaves and admiring the sky. "I need a vacation."
"Called it." Cuppy congratulated himself, his left eye still spinning around.
"So, you're some kind of demon wolf thing?" Richie asked Freyja.
"A shiftshaper. Goddammit, a shapeshifter." Freyja smacked herself. "I don't know if I can become anything else though, I was a wolf for two years and I don't remember any other forms before then."
"But you knew you could transform before that? How?" Richie asked.
"Like you with your dragon tattoos, I guess. There was an inciting incident that triggered my discovery of my power. I call it an awakening." Freyja said.
"What about you, Cuppy? Have anything like that?" Richie asked.
"Every morning." Cuppy nodded, as absentminded as ever.
"I have a request." Richie said to Freyja.
"Well, I can try to accommodate. What is it?" Freyja asked.
"Can you do that dog thing when you eat your peanut butter? Like they do when it sticks to the roof of their mouth and they try to get it off with their tongue? It always looks really funny." Richie smiled hopefully.
Freyja's ears folded. "Are you serious?"
"Please?" Richie asked shyly.
Freyja sighed, then transfigured her face into a wolf snout and chomped up a big scoop of peanut butter. She smacked her lips and cupped her tongue as she chewed the gob of nutty goodness, mimicking a dog with peanut butter stuck to the roof of their mouth.
Richie smiled and clapped a bit, vacantly crushing his ice cream cone and spilling sticky bits all over his palms and pants.
"Shit." he said.
Strawberries kept getting plucked off his treat by thin white strings, and Richie ineffectively turned and wailed on Cuppy with one hand.
"Cuppy, keep your grubby hands off my cone!" he growled, initiating a frantic slap fight.
The remaining scoop in his cone fell out as the vessel tipped over in his clumsy offhand, and one of his dragon runes lunged off his arm to snap it out of the air. The living azure tattoo swallowed the ice cream down its throat as a single visible bulge, like a snake, with an audible gulp. Richie and Cuppy both looked at the rune in shock before Richie grabbed his tattoo by the throat and started throttling it.
"GIVE IT BACK! GIVE IT BACK, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!" he roared at the inked dragon as he shook it like a ragdoll until it was whiplashed, limp, and foaming at the jaws.
With her canine nose poking out, Freyja smelled something minty in the air. "Hmm?" She dropped out of the tree after finishing her ice cream cone in one big bite, and followed the scent trail.
Richie and Cuppy dropped down after her.
"What's up?" Cuppy asked.
"Weird mix of smells. Smells like mint with an undercurrent of a mix of creatures, with something I can't quite put my finger on, but it was there when we fought the bunyip, and permeated the fog cloud. At the time, it burned my nose, but this is much fainter." she looked past the grove of trees to a nest of green lowlands spotted here and there with shallow ponds.
Without another word, Freyja retracted most of her wolf snout into her face, leaving only her canine nose unchanged, and dropped to all fours, morphing her hands and feet into paws. Her tail sprouted, and swished back and forth restlessly. She padded off, following her nose.
Richie shrugged at Cuppy, and they followed at a small distance.
"Tell me more about this fog? Is it the same thing I saw back before I found the corridor?" Richie asked Cuppy.
"Yeah, I think that's a safe bet. You were out of town for a while, so you missed all the news. The government is claiming toxic gas pocket accumulations that can induce monstrous hallucinations, but that's just a big fib. Freyja and I saw it first hand - weird things like this big walrus pop out of the fog and go nuts. You remember the little guy in the sewer, right?" Cuppy asked.
"How could I not?" Richie reminded him, making a point of rubbing the area around his ribcage where the giant lariat had broken him like a twig and flung him into the wastewater current.
"You remember how he appeared?" Cuppy prodded.
Richie put it together, and his eyes registered that it had clicked. "That's right, he was stuck in something like a misty cocoon, then it caught fire and you pulled him out - great idea, by the way -" he glared at Cuppy.
"Putting the fire aside for now, the little guy scampered out looking for that poop he called the elixir of life. When I bapped him into the plumbing, he found it and took it all in." Cuppy said.
"And mutated. To remind you once again, I was there, and I got my ass kicked when he roided himself up into an Irish sasquatch." Richie said.
"Right. Well, this walrus appeared out of another fog cloud that covered the reservoir you and I plugged into. He ambushed Frey and me when we went to check out the dams he had made, and over the span of the fight, we noticed him getting bigger, buffer, and changing color." Cuppy said.
"I don't suppose he was just on a fast forward through puberty?" Richie ventured.
"What's that?" Cuppy asked.
"That thing you never went through. Continue." Richie sighed, scratching his head.
"We beat him up, and found out more of that poop was leaking out of the bottom of the watering hole through some furrows. The monster was sucking it up to grow bigger and stronger too, just like the little guy in the sewer." Cuppy said.
Richie held his chin. "O'Gravy said something before he absorbed that shit and transformed, right? He called it his evolution."
"Not a natural one." Cuppy nodded. "Natural selection is a process that takes thousands of years to show demonstrable adaptations or changes, on the low end. What we saw was more like a caterpillar undergoing a metamorphosis into an adult butterfly."
Richie involuntarily pictured the vulgar little leprechaun with monarch wings and hated it. He slugged Cuppy's arm.
"Ow! Why'd you do that?" Cuppy asked, rubbing his arm.
"It seemed necessary." Richie said. "Anyway, you think that black goop is what they're after, then? The invaders from beyond the fog?"
"Probably. And Frey smelled some bad juju right over major sewer junctions that all happened to be prone to the so-called toxic gas leaks." Cuppy said. "I think they're connected. The ones that go berserk are being enticed by that poop, and tear the place apart trying to find it so they can take it into themselves and transform into stronger shapes. Really, it's not that much different from survival of the fittest and evolution in principle. It's like an arms race to become the most powerful thing in Station Bay before anyone else. The question is why. If things like the little guy and the walrus are so desperate to power up, what exactly is it they're expecting to fight?"
"And who's bringing them here in the fog in the first place? What purpose does it serve to make a bunch of bestial berserkers rampaging around?" Richie asked.
Evolution. Why did that idea sound so familiar?
Freyja continued to lead the way, stopping to continue sniffing here and there before continuing on.
"Are we part of this food chain?" Richie asked. "Did the leprechaun attack us first cause he thought we were competition for the elixir?"
"Could be." Cuppy said.
"Course, my biggest question is if that shit's flowing around in the sewer lines somewhere, then how'd it get there and why?" Richie asked.
Cuppy held his chin some more as they walked in silence behind the scouting Freyja.
"Why do you put down chicken feed?" Cuppy said.
Before Richie could truly comprehend the horror that implied, another terror gripped his heart.
"Cuppy?" he said, looking pale.
"Yes?" Cuppy asked.
"Did you say the black gunk was leaking into the reservoir? Our reservoir?" Richie said.
"Yeah." Cuppy nodded.
"So… have we been drinking it?" Richie asked hesitantly.
"Hmmm…" Cuppy thought about it. He shrugged. "Maybe."
"No! Unacceptable!" Richie tore at his own hair, feeling violated inside and out.
"I'll let you know if my eyes start glowing red or I grow fangs." Cuppy said.
Fangs. That gave Richie an idea.
"Hey, wolf girl - if you're a demon, do you know anything about that black stuff?" Richie asked.
Freyja looked back at him with an unimpressed expression. "In case you weren't listening, I don't want anything to do with that crud. Whatever it is, it's not my byproduct, if that's what you're asking. Besides, 'demon' is just a word. I need to call myself something, and 'demon' or 'hellhound' fit the bill."
"Shiftshaper." Cuppy said.
Freyja threw a rock at him without breaking her stride.
Evolution. Evolution. Why was that word sticking to Richie? How did it all work? He ran the equations in his head as they walked.
Station Bay called him to the wandering corridor, and gave him a precognitive vision of those who would get in his way, as if to ensure his arrival. He found an abandoned complex overgrown by wilderness, and in the fence beyond he found the tunnel to the place all of them inexplicably thought of as the 'Backyards' together yet independently of agreeing on that name. Freyja had already been lost in them two years when they met, and after coming back out, both of them experienced a big chunk of memory loss, as if they had awakened from very fragile fleeting dreams. Richie was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and got mixed up with that maniac with the claws. Subsequent events made it clear to him that the killer knew more about the Backyards than any of them did, and would logically have to in order to use them freely as a weapon against his unsuspecting victims. Then the fog started happening. Richie was new in town, but he wasn't that new that he wouldn't have noticed those clouds before now. He had felt something too - presences inside the fog. He got attacked by one of those Phantom Pain things - some kind of hollow remnant that had had its existence ripped from its frame - ripped away by what? - and summoned Excalibur to help strike it down. His mother was there. She gave him strength. She saved him the first time he almost lost his soul. The first time? Were there others?
Cuppy didn't need his strings to tell that Richie was troubled, thinking deeply about something. It was written all over his face.
What was he missing? It was driving him crazy.
"Cuppy, you and I met in the forest, right? When you found me injured on the ground?" Richie asked.
Cuppy nodded.
"How did you get there? Don't you remember anything at all?" Richie asked.
Cuppy shook his head. "I didn't, at first, but when we went into the sewers, and I saw that red tunnel-"
It clicked together for Cuppy. "That's how I got to Station Bay. I was running through that tunnel."
"Another corridor?" Richie asked.
"No, it can't be. You and I both saw it. And Miss Yule, the school teacher, she said it was an electric tunnel they used to expand the power grid. It runs all the way under the bay, out to the islands." Cuppy said.
"I think it got brighter when those rings of fire started clamping down on O'Gravy." Richie said.
"I… I'd been there before. The tunnel itself wasn't a corridor, but maybe I connected one to it when I was running from - something? Someone? Somewhere, maybe? Somewhere that isn't here." Cuppy said. "There was a big piggy-wiggly that I had a little traffic accident with, and he was burning up too."
"You're starting to get your memory back?" Richie gawked.
"Yeah. Those red rings closed on the big pig and burnt him to bits, and the pressure wave and heat threw me clear out of the tunnel." Cuppy smacked a fist into his open palm.
"So how'd you end up in my tree? I didn't see any Cuppy-shaped holes in the ground." Richie said.
"Maybe the same way you somehow dropped off in the junkyard the first few times? Something like thin spots where corridors intersect or the boundaries are iffy? Maybe the fog is something like gas plumes welling up from magma when the earth's crust shifts during earthquakes, but the interior itself isn't defined just by those vents. Maybe they're like big breaks in the border that let critters and spooks rush through from somewhere else before the walls close again?" Cuppy said.
"Or get herded through." Richie said grimly.
What Cuppy had said about the elixir of life being chicken feed - to fatten up the beasts - had just settled into him. Something was importing, concentrating, and feeding lost beings from other worlds here, using Station Bay as their own personal game preserve. So what role did Richie and other explorers play in all of it? Were they a nuisance getting in the way? Unwitting guard dogs putting down escaped members of the flock? Or were they on the menu too?
"That guy in the dark blue cloak. He warned me against going into the corridor. I didn't know it was the Backyards yet, it actually looked kind of like the Station Bay sewer. In hindsight, that was a big clue. When I escaped back to the living room, he showed up, scolded me like I was some child, and said that my tattoos - my runes - wanted to see their creator. That they smelled him inside. I've had these runes all my life. They're practically birthmarks, as impossible as that should be. What about you, Cuppy? Were you born with your powers like me, or did you somehow pick them up later?" he asked.
"Dunno." Cuppy said blankly.
"Of course." Richie released an exasperated sigh. "Evolution… that was it. The cloaked asshole said that he wanted to see 'the next stage of evolution'" Richie mimicked his affect, and clawed his hands for spooky dramatic flair. "And have a hand in its dawning! Ah-ah-ah!' he gave a cliche vampire laugh.
Upon getting no chuckles, Richie cleared his throat and continued. "Anyway, he made it out to be some kind of game. Made a big deal of whether I would survive the stages to come or some pretentious cryptic bullshit."
"Did you make it?" Cuppy asked, his big owl eyes blinking.
Richie stared at him disbelievingly. "No, Cuppy, I didn't make it, I'm a fucking ghost."
"Wouldn't be the strangest thing." Freyja gave a scarce bit of commentary back over her shoulder, then turned back to her resolute march.
"The point is, I'm in some kind of contest, and I don't even know the rules. You guys are probably contestants too." Richie said.
"Like the cereal killer?" Cuppy asked.
"Yeah, like the cereal killer. Speaking of which, that's half the reason I came back here in the first place. We need to figure out how the corridors and the Backyards work too, that way when I see that freak in the mask again I'll be ready to floor him." Richie punched his fists together.
"Early bird gets the worm." Cuppy said.
"Yeah, the early bird gets the worm." Richie agreed. "...what?"
Cuppy raised a pointer finger to Richie. "Frey and I blew him up already."
Richie's face became a glorious concoction of confusion, twitchy eyelids, and a vague sense of having been ripped off.
"Blew him up? Like, with explosives, right?" Richie asked.
"Yeah." Cuppy said. "He got a few good whacks in first. Tore a new window in my brother. See?" Cuppet popped out of the backpack like a meerkat, exposing his gaping chest wound, and waved at Richie.
Richie did his best to ignore that.
"So, did you find his body?" Richie asked.
"No." Cuppy said.
"Fuck." Richie clutched his forehead. "I wouldn't assume we're done with him then."
"If he's a contestant, and we're contestants, and he wants to kill us," Cuppy said.
"You think he's eliminating us from the game?" Richie scratched his head.
"What did he say to you when you first met?" Cuppy asked.
"He offered to make me a guest in his Backyards." Richie said.
"Hmm." Cuppy thought inwardly to himself.