‘Cumulus clouds are often precursors of other types of clouds.’

March 27th, 2000

Pitter patter, says the rain. It pounds on the windows in a staccato beat, tapping to the rhythm of the creaking roof shingles. The entire manor is whining about the storm, ancient scaffolds creaking this way and that. And the rain is telling me to wake up, screaming louder than the radio alarm on my bedside table. But I don’t want to wake up. The duvets are soft and fuzzy against my bare skin. I am lying in a cloud of my own creation, drifting through the flight of half-wakefulness.

The sky is an ashen smear on the window, tinged with shades of grime and blue-grey. I erase the sight and sounds by burying my head into my pillow heap, and close my eyes once more. Hell, I could fall asleep forever like this.

It is already after 10 AM. Breakfast, school, and early morning routines have already passed me. That means I can sleep in — just a few more hours. Today can be an exception as the last day of winter.

The storms would let up later today, according to the newspapers and the man on the TV news station. Today, when I wake up again, I can see the sun for the first time in forever.

So just…

RING RING

a few more…

RING RING RING RING

Hours.

RING RING RING RING RING RING

“Hnrgnrnnrggn.”

I recognize that ringtone. Flip phone default sound. It’s coming from the only outlet across the room, where my phone is charging. The cursed thing is buzzing like crazy on the oak dresser, rattling like a fussy tambourine. But that distance is insurmountable. These five meters might as well be somewhere in the stars.

A wall of cold slaps me as soon as I peek out from underneath the covers — a straight, no-nonsense chill. I duck back into cover and fish around for my undergarments and nightgown, which had been lost at some point during the night.

Maybe a miracle could happen. I reach out towards the flip phone and pray with all of my might: I pray that gravity will disappear for just one moment, and that the phone will leap to my hand like magic. I pray I can wind back time and tell myself to not stay up to 6 AM binging rented movies with Erika — I keep forgetting that she doesn’t sleep some days. Nor does she actually need to. But I still do. Gods, I need a few more hours. Please.

But that prayer of mine is mercilessly crushed. The phone does not stop ringing, nor does it magically teleport to my hand. And I still need to find all my clothes. I count to five, then haul my sleep deprived bones out of bed. The floorboards creak with something like disappointment, chiding me for my poor sleeping habits. Halfway to the phone, my stomach lets out a shameful growl.

“I already fed you last night. Dumb body. Dummy.” With the world in half-focus clarity, I stare at the phone.

It has rung over thirty times now. Either the person calling has nothing better to do, or this is an important call. I can already see the caller ID — somebody from the highschool is calling. They wouldn’t contact my flip phone directly, so it must be somebody I know. And there’s only three people I’ve given my number to.

The sky is a gloomy grey overcast and nothing but. My room faces the ocean, and today, the waves crash against the shore like it’s trying to drag the cliffs back into the sea. And — absolutely hell — it’s cold. My nightgown is meant to protect against bad dreams, not the angry essence of winter’s death throes. I shove my fingers between my thighs to warm them up, and hobble over to the still-ringing phone.

My lazy day will disappear in a puff of smoke when I answer this call. I know this for sure. Every muscle in my body is telling me to ignore the call and crawl back underneath the sheets and drift back off to blissful nothingness.

But I am a lass of my word. Can’t ignore this one, now. Not after making a big speech and everything in front of a whole crowd of people. I’d disappoint myself, and that’s the last person I’d want to disappoint. Right after Erika, and my onetime idol Snack-Attack, the greatest cereal-video-game-movie mascot that everyone tried to forget.

I pick up the flip phone and snap it open.

By the time I reach the academy grounds, the storm is slowing down. In the distance, a single fracture of sun shines through the grey overhead like a mirage. But the storm is far from over. My blue umbrella still feels the tap of an unrelenting drizzle, and the streets still run with little creek streams of dirty water.

If the weather reports could be trusted, the storm would clear up by the latter part of the afternoon.

“Good for you lot, I suppose.” Unlike the weather, my luck isn't clearing up anytime soon.

I walked here in the rain on an empty stomach, nursing the mother of all headaches on the way. There was an old half-eaten granola bar in my coat’s pocket that I took a chance on, but it wasn’t nearly enough to qualify as any three of the day’s meals. And after this so-called “business”, I gotta walk all the way back home. Joy.

Sucking the leftover peanut bits in my teeth, I stow my umbrella and walk through the academy’s front doors.

The hallways echo with my footsteps, and my footsteps alone. Empty classrooms, abandoned lockers. The windows show the muddied fields around the academy, which still have football flagpoles installed from before the rain reason started. Alas, it is only natural — the curse known as “spring break” had struck the school grounds, releasing the souls imprisoned here for one short week.

And, for some god-forsaken reason, I’ve returned a few days early. I should have gone back to bloody sleep. I can’t see a single other person here. All the other students are off enjoying themselves and doing whatever highschool students do on their time off. Except for me. I’m stuck here. Just brilliant.

In the reception area, a sign that says “ON BREAK” has replaced the little old secretary. I opened office door #14 and stepped inside. And there, my science teacher is sitting at his desk.

He wears a white lab coat, but stands in a pair of fine Belgium leather shoes. Today, his muddy brown hair is slicked back, held in place by a pair of headphones connected to a hidden cassette player. A lollipop hangs from his lip, much like a cigarette would for somebody cooler.

I slam the door behind me.

The teacher looks up from his notebook, as though he expected the slam. “Ms. Weiss, good to see you, too.”

“Good morning, Mr. Pelchat.” I try my best to not seethe the words, but Mr. Pelchat looks at me with an amused expression.

“I see that the company was able to get a hold of you. What did they tell you?”

“Nothing in particular. The man on the line said I had to come here today a few hours ago. During my time off. Without warning.”

“Sounds about right. The corporate types sometimes work with as much subtlety as a brick to the face.”

Mr. Pelchat laughs, then takes a swig from a blue and white can on his desk. The man is somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties, but he acts too casually for a teacher. It is unprofessional. And really, if he can’t act like a proper teacher, then what’s the point of working as one?

“Just tell me what you want.”

“Well, to start, you are the president of the joint sciences club. That means you’re the most qualified person to interact with the newest transfer student we’re getting.”

A transfer student? Out here, in the middle of nowhere? “Wait. Aren’t you the science teacher? Wouldn’t you be more qualified?”

“Ahaha… Well, I require some important figures from the student body to help me out with this situation, in particular. I need somebody to keep an eye on him as he gets used to things around here. For procedure’s sake.”

That means he’s giving his job of showing the student the ropes to me. After making me walk in the rain and dragging me away from my time off. And on top of everything, he called me at the last minute.

Goddamnit.

“So, you think you can help?” Mr. Pelchat taps his lower lip with his knuckle. “I’m sure you two can get along fine. He seems a little low on energy today, but it might just be the weather.”

“I have one question.”

“Oh? The boy’s name is Felix Conti. He’s a senior, like you. Only got one year to go. He came here from all the way down from Boston to finish up here, partially because he’s working on a research internship.”

“Yeah, thanks. I could figure all that out on my own.” I cross my arms and stare down at the smug man. “Why exactly did you call me in particular? We have a designated outreach member in the science club specifically for things like this.”

“Oh, that.” Mr. Pelchat makes an awkward sounding laugh, then rests his hands on the back of his neck. “Well, Mr. Conti is a particular person. I figured it would take somebody with a similar wavelength to break through to him.”

“What’s… that supposed to mean?” I can’t think of anything good that could come of this. So I’m going home directly afterwards, then I will crawl back into bed and forget that today ever happened.

“You’ll see.”

My headache is only getting worse. I hold my head with one hand and listen to the sounds of the rain beating against the windows. Pitter patter, says the rain.

He has been waiting for exactly three hours, thirty-five minutes, and twenty-two seconds, according to his radio wristwatch. And it has been raining ever since he got here. Only now is the storm starting to cease.

He can trust the wristwatch, unlike these small town analog clocks. His watch receives updates from the WWVB signal, run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. No matter where he is, his watch will always have the correct time. That’s why he needs to pay attention to it. He could never know when the next irregularity would happen. Every second is one second. Until it isn’t.

Outside, the fields have the empty stillness only a small town could have. This is good. Small towns are hotspots for abnormal phenomena. There is a glimmer of truth in the strange fictions penned out by authors delving into the depths of their imagination. The unknown is unknown. One can not know what is in the unknown. Therefore, anything could happen in the unknown. He holds his watch up to the window and the still grey beyond, and waits. It is only a matter of time.

Until then, the boy closes his eyes and listens to the sound of the rain. His internal clock clicks away to the same rhythms of the wristwatch. Tick Tock. Such is the speech of time.

Mr. Pelchat gave me the transfer student’s dossier on the way to the classroom. Just as he said earlier, the kid’s name is Felix Conti. He’s the same age as me, nice and even eighteen.

According to the dossier, his home is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That doesn’t seem right. From my cursory knowledge of the States, that’s a university somewhere way up north. He only needs to take a single English-literature class at this academy, and then he’s out of here, presumably back towards the actual university he came from.

And it looks like we’re sharing that class. Great.

There is only so much room for eccentrics in society, and that goes doubly so for a small town. This place already has its fair share of weirdos. We really don’t need another one.

“So this guy lives at an actual university, yet is coming all the way here to finish a single course.”

“Yeah. It’s strange, but heck. We’re receiving one hell of a grant with this kid. You have any idea how much candy I could buy?”

Candy. All of this for candy.

“Hey, it was a joke. Please don’t scowl at me like that.” The teacher laughs and rubs his neck. “Felix will only be here for a few months. It’s no big worry.”

“Mr. Pelchat, you are not helping the situation.”

I want to give up and go home. I can already feel my warm blankets and cup of tea with two sugars and one cream.

“Sorry, sorry…”

Every step towards classroom 3A-2 brings another pang of head pains. Little clusters of snap-jacks are going off in my head. This is the worst headache I’ve had in years — there are lights flashing in my eyes. Every raindrop is a crack of thunder.

I always got these kinds of headaches once in a while, but they usually happen before something bad happens.

Usually.

I also get these headaches whenever I forget to take care of myself. If I had to guess, the distribution of headaches would fall somewhere in the 80-20 range of premonition headaches to normal headaches.

And since I forgot to sleep and eat today, I wonder which one it is this time. I force my mind straight through the pain and close my fingers around the cold metal of the classroom’s door knob.

11:34:28 AM

11:34:29 AM

11:34:30 AM

11:34:32 AM

There. It happened: the second that is no longer a second. It came through general relativity, through the sound of two pairs of footsteps — one heavy, one light.

He snaps his eyes open and updates himself on the current situation. Right now, he is in a room with eight-teen desks and tables, two blackboards, a projector, and several science posters on the walls. All of them are the same poster, a smorgasbord of general constants. Gravity. One kelvin. Every point on a circle is the same distance away from the center. A perfect shape.

He is the only person in this room. The windows are shuttered. The aging heater set into the radiators is coughing up bare amounts of heat, barely enough to warm his fingers.

Then, the classroom door opens.

A gothic beauty stands in the doorway. She must surely be from another era, another place, another galaxy.

Hair shaded a color between blonde and brown. Piercing green eyes. White jacket, grey-blue scarf. Her face is twisted in a scowl.

There can be no doubt. She is related to the second that is not a second. This girl is an iron stake against an altar. She stares through him with merciless eyes.

Felix. Felix. He remembers. Felix is his name. Felix Conti, born in New York, a boy who specializes in oceanology. He is a normal boy with only a slightly eccentric outwards appearance.

Therefore, Felix smiles. He hides his watch underneath the desk and nods.

“Mr. Conti, apologies for the wait,” Mr. Pelchat says. “May I call you Felix?”

“You may,” the boy says.

He’s staring at me, now, with big grey dough ball eyes. His hair is a messy brown that covers his eyes, and if he had antlers or horns, I would have probably mistaken him for a deer. He’s got that kind of docile ‘startled wild animal’ look to him, and his smile looks like it’s torn out and pasted from a magazine.

So this is what people from the big cities look like. I already don’t like him. The fading twinge in the right side of my brain is telling me not to interact with him any more than necessary.

“Righty ho. I am Mr. Pelchat, the humble science instructor of this facility here.” The teacher jabs a finger at me. “This is Miss Marie Weiss. She is the president of this academy’s science club. We’re pleased to have such an esteemed guest come out of their way to greet us.”

The boy wears a fuzzy grey bomber jacket over a dress shirt. His clothes sag from his shoulders, which means that they’re a bit too big for him. Maybe he’s just skinny?

“I hope you two can get along, since you’re basically some of the only people at this academy with a future.” And with that, Mr. Pelchat gives a bow and stares at me.

That bastard verbally trapped me. Double bastard.

I clench and unclench my right fist, then walk to a desk a few seats away from the kid. My hands rest on the scratched laminate tabletop. His eyes follow.

“Just call me Marie.” I stare at the desk Felix is sitting at. He’s hiding something underneath the table.

“Nice. That’s certainly, most definitely a name.”

This Felix guy speaks a bouncy accent, like a rubber ball that’s suddenly learned how to talk. He might be from Boston, or New York.

Mr. Pelchat is already edging his way to the door. “Well, I’ll be in my office if you two need me. Don’t let the grownups bother whatever you kids talk about these days.” And he gives a fake sounding laugh that sounds more like a cough.

The man leaves.

Even though the girl is giving him a fierce stare, he can only smile in turn. The research expedition has already begun.

But her arms are crossed. She is not in a good mood.

Drizzle rain taps against the windows. A thousand little drums.

Felix sneaks a glance at his watch.

11:39:38 AM

He can’t be sure that time is still running. The radio broadcast stations operate on atomic clocks that measure time by the oscillation of a Cesium-133 atom. Precisely 9,192,631,770 oscillations measure exactly one second, and manmade machinery tells the rest of the world that time. He puts his trust in those societal machinations that measure the process of time, just like he must put his trust in this girl.

And there is only silence.

I give up. This Felix guy won’t start a conversation, and that placid stare is starting to get on my nerves. I give up on being irritable as well, since it’s probably only making my lingering headache worse.

“That teacher is useless.” I inspect my fingernails and sigh. “How could a guy like that even be an adult?”

“Some mysteries in this world can never be solved.” Felix looks out the window into the breaking storm. “Some children never grow up.”

“I’m sure you know.”

Crap. I catch myself verbally, biting the tip of my tongue before I can say anything else overtly hostile sounding.

But Felix doesn’t seem to notice. He’s just staring out the window, looking for something.

“You look like you’ve in a rough mood,” he says. “You’ve been scowling at something this entire time. Is something the matter?”

He drops a rock on my head. I hold my breath and poke myself on the cheek, trying to work out all the creases and frowns.

Erika reminds me about this every so often, but I didn’t realize that my resting expression was like this.

“One day, you might actually kill somebody by looking at them,” she said. “Normal people can’t handle your kind of pressure.”

“It’s nothing.” I take a deep breath and try to force everything out on a long sigh. I think about nice things, like sleeping, sleeping, and, most importantly, sleeping with Erika. I can feel the tension in my chest draining at the thought. “Just a bit tired.”

“Same. I haven’t slept in two days. Hahaha. Ha. Mhm.”

I cough. A fact like that shouldn’t be something you just admit. “Alrighty, then. You have it worse.”

“I think I’m about to pass out,” he says, staring at his watch.

“Maybe do that in a place where you won’t get locked in until spring break is over.”

“Let’s get some fresh air, then.” He stands up and floats past me with a single graceful swoop.

This guy isn’t just weird — he’s on an entirely different level. It’s like trying to talk to a zenned-out bird. Much more like a canary than a raven, though. Ravens never shut up.

We spend a whole minute walking through the abandoned halls, following the luminescent exit signs. His footsteps are indoor raindrops, miniscule squeaks compared to the drum beat of my boots. Hell, his shoes are clean, too. Fancy blue sneakers. I wonder how he managed to get here without getting them dirty. Did he get a ride?

“So what exactly did you do at MIT?” I ask, trying to break the awkward hallway silence. “Pelchat said you came from there. Doesn’t that mean you already have a university degree?”

“I never formally graduated high school. I figured this would be a nice diversion while I’m working on my assignment.”

Ho oh boy. Whenever eccentric types mention an assignment, it’s usually something terrible. It would be best not to ask, but at the same time, I’m a bit curious. “What’re you working on?”

“I’m helping some researchers at MIT set up some ocean probes in the nearby waters. I’ll be monitoring them for any major changes in the Gulf Stream. Maybe get a part time job, too.”

Innocuous enough. Honestly, with the way he was acting earlier, I was half-expecting him to admit to making a time machine, or performing horrible human experiments for fun and profit.

“Neato.”

Felix rubs his neck and looks at the space above my head. “It’s actually a pretty easy job. It’s like being a fisherman, but I look for probes instead of mackerel.”

“You have the patience for fishing? Damn, dude.” I rest my hands against my nape, then stare at the divots in the ceiling tiles. “I tried it once. Gave up after about twenty minutes and went to the market.”

He laughs — a wheeze brimming with a hint of mirth. “If only you could run down to the market and grab another scientist. Wouldn’t that be swell?”

We step out the front gate of the Reyes Cooper Academy and stand in the shelter of the bicycle shed. The rain is only a fine mist. A wall of prickly fine moisture. If Erika wouldn’t scold me for getting my nice clothes all wet, I’d love to stand in the rain for a little while. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to cut loose.

“Do you know any good coffee shops around here?” Felix asks, sticking out his hand to catch raindrops. “I could use a cup or two about now.”

The question strikes me like a stake — I wasn’t expecting him to ask anything of the like. “Block 3’s pretty cool, I guess. You can’t miss it. Right on the main road.”

“I see, I see. I’ll take a note.” He yawns. “Might be best to part, now.” The collected water in his palm dribbles down his sleeve and stains his bomber. “I’ve gotta head over to the church.”

Those are the last two words I would’ve ever expected out of this guy’s mouth. The church. This guy seems like the type of person who’d have a lifetime excommunication handed down directly from the Vatican. I bite my lower lip to suppress a snicker. “My place is the other direction. But, are you actually going to come to school? You really don’t need to.”

“It’s one hour and thirty minutes out of twenty for hours in a day,” he says. “A total of fifty or so hours over two months. It might be interesting.”

A planner type, then. I make a divine effort to not make any more snide comments, forcing my best smile. “Suppose I’ll see you Monday.”

“Monday,” He says. He nods like he’s just discovered some new theory of relativity. “I’ll see you then, Marie.”

My umbrella pops — a blue circle against the cold grey sky. A life raft of colour. I start walking first, taking a left down Sapphire Drive. I pass by the gnarled old maple tree out front, where the flowers in its shade have long been a pale shade of grey. The sharp scent of ozone and ocean breeze mingle. A pang rings out in my head.

I turn and steal a gaze at the strange boy. He stands in the rain — already soaked — and stares at his watch, as though counting the seconds until the storm ends. For a brief second, I consider offering him my umbrella out of pity.

“Nah,” I decide. “I’ve dealt with enough weirdos for today.”

I keep walking westbound on Sapphire Drive, the only soul on the quiet road. With how the storm is dwindling, it’s going to be sunny by the time I get home. Maybe I could stop by and eat something on the way.

There aren’t many places to eat in this tiny town — most people wouldn’t even call it a town. Sapphire Isle isn’t much more than a barrier island that’s fifteen kilometers, maybe nine and a half miles long, and ranges from being anywhere between two kilometers and two hundred meters wide. The thin sections are where all the season vacation homes and residential areas are. The thick sections — The Ridge, The Point, Archer’s Note, Black Pine Shores, and Walther Forest — are where people go to live their peaceful day to day lives. And Sapphire Drive is the highway that connects all of it. The strait’s straight. An incision that cuts the town open. The hamlet’s artery and vein in one, always running with rainwater and cars. I twirl my umbrella and smile a private smile at my internal poetry.

Umbrellas aren’t really a thing around these parts. Most folk deal with the rain when it comes, but I like my blue umbrella. I can’t exactly remember where I got it, but seeing a bit of colour against the seemingly endless monsoon seasons always brightens my mood. There’s a three-bit umbrella rack at the front of Reyes Cooper Academy, and every day, my umbrella is the only one in there.

Recently, there’s been a story circulating around the academy about how the blue umbrella is a modern day will-o'-the-wisp — a cursed ghost light that leads travelers to their dooms. Anybody who follows it will inevitably face a terrible doom at the hands of nature. But apparently, the story stars me instead of a supernatural entity. Maybe that’s why all the juniors try to avoid me.

Underneath that cursed umbrella, I keep walking at the side of the road, hearing only the drowning sounds of footsteps and waves, distant cars, and dying rain.

The Reyes Cooper Academy is formally known as the Sapphire Isle Reyes Cooper Academic School, but nobody calls it that. Way too wordy. And, as the name implies, it’s located in Sapphire Isle — a squat brick and mortar building on the western front of the Ridge. You can see the entire town from the classroom windows; a picture-esque beach town that looks more alive than it actually is.

Long ago, Sapphire Isle used to be the vestigial remains of a whaler’s community, but it’s been steadily growing over the past few years. Ever since the bridges to the mainland opened, new buildings pop up every spring like fungus. A cabal of corporate developers pumped their life savings into the isle, and forcibly injected concrete into the decayed wooden shacks.

Across the northern Borough Bay, the actual city of Borough is a thriving fishing town with a Marine Corps base, and there’s a proper national forest past that.

“What kind of idiot would want to settle here?” I stop and stare at the stream flowing around my rainboots. At least walking downhill through the forest is easier than walking uphill. “There’s nothing to build on.”

Development in Sapphire Isle is centered around the Ridge and Black Pine shores, where the two bridges connect to the mainland. Contractors only built around Archer’s note because there were only a few trees to mow down to build a boardwalk. The rest of the isle is pine tree and redwood forest crossed with a marsh, the kind of place told about in ghost stories and horror movies. There’s no shortage of people that ignore the warning signs and drown in the tangles. But even despite that, maybe this place could be an actual city in a few years if the mayor could convince the seasonal multi-millionaire homeowners of Archer’s note to settle down here.

There are a few pictures of what the town used to look like. The Point was the blip of civilization on the isle, a settlement forcibly hacked out of the wilderness that couldn’t have housed more than fifty people. The original Reyes Cooper Academy was a church-house turned schoolhouse at the edge of the woods, run by the few priests of the time. Nobody really knows what happened to the original settlement. At some point, it was abandoned for whatever reason. There isn’t a single trace of civilization left at The Point besides some ominous carved stones.

Then again, it has been a long time since that little town disappeared. The United States declared independence, and a whole bunch of other things have happened since.

The new Reyes Cooper owes its existence to a descendant of the original founder, who happened to give a very generous donation for a new school house. Bastard struck it rich in oil and real estate, apparently.

Most of the people who live in Sapphire Isle are just like that wealthy investor. During the summer, the population explodes with tourists — most of the place caters towards the rich folk that end up spending their days on the overpriced boardwalks. The beach is nice and almost always sapphire coloured, yeah, but I wouldn’t really call it a twenty-dollar-club-sandwich nice beach. Outside of the summer, it’s always raining, dreary grey, and empty. Like me, most of the residents dream of the day they can make enough money from tourists to leave this place.

“Oh well. One day.” I twirl in the late-March rain, feeling my mood improve as I reach the paved sidewalks of the Ridge. Blessed actual civilization. “One day, I’m going to move to New York, or maybe Tokyo. London, Prague, Stockholm, maybe even Paris. One day...”

For what it’s worth, the western section of the Ridge is the lively and bustling part of town. Even in this weather, there are still people in vibrant raincoats going about their day to day lives. I can’t help but hum underneath my breath as I reach the clusters of department stores and cafes. Just down First Street, Sapphire Station’s many red buses crawl like army ants in the rain, dropping off flocks of tourists that seem to be trying to beat the summer surge.

I don’t really have shopping I need to do besides picking up some food for later, so I decide to reward myself for dealing with the earlier events with style and grace. Across the street’s sidewalk is Block 3, a cozy urban cafe that has the best cinnamon peach strudels and drip coffee I’ve ever had in my life.

Ever since it opened a few years ago, me and my friends usually end up hanging out here after school. But today, I figure I might treat myself. I can end the day on a high note. There is a bit of traffic, so I wait for the crosswalk sign countdown. Black and red SUVs scoot by, obeying the fifteen mile an hour speed limit. I wonder what I should get today—

My throat tightens. The moment freezes. Something is watching me, a sensation like gravity from my right, where I was planning on walking home. My heart beats a single time in my chest.

Just out of the corner of my eye, by a green copper street light, I see a flickering wisp of light in a blue dress.

It is something that does not belong in this world. An anomaly of the highest grade. The right side of my head explodes — in the falling fragments of my skull and mind are glimmers of the past, of the now, of changing seasons, of impossibilities condensed into a single broken heart squeezed dry of blood. A spiral among attentive audiences, as many eyes as there are stars in the sky. The wisp turns to me through the snow.

Then it smiles.

I blink.

The crosswalk is telling me to keep walking with a sudden series of beeps. I turn to look at the street light, but there isn’t anything there. Somewhere, a gull shrieks.

“Huh. Must’ve been my imagination,” I lie to myself.

I swallow the air in my throat and force myself to walk across the street. A familiar sensation of ice runs down my spine, and I suck in a lungful of humid ocean air. The salt washes away the sudden dread, leaving the sounds of the car tires and rain.

“I wonder what Erika wants,” I mutter.

It is a strange game they play sometimes. Sometimes people expect each other to know what they’re thinking without saying a word. And sometimes, there are winners of that game.

I’ve always had these strange hallucinations and thoughts. I’ve never thought much of them, and now hardly seems like a good time to start. This one was a little closer than the others. I should take one extra pill today, just in case.

Feelings have a tendency of travelling in unexpected ways.

Perhaps a long-lost feeling has finally reached me.

The altar has a time. The time is 3:47 PM EST, but the altar is not 3:47 PM EST. That’s because logic must follow a certain pattern of steps before reaching a conclusion. A schema like this should be obvious, but it only works when the premise is correct. To reiterate, the altar dedicated to Jesus Christ and his saints has a time. It exists, therefore it has a time. But is the time really accurate? Most people wouldn’t question the passage of time. Most people go their entire lives without questioning the innately human construct.

But not Felix. He’s seen evidence that contradicts the passage of time. Once, long ago, in the confines of a laboratory coffin, and now he’s seen it again. He checks his watch again, then stares up at the cathedral’s cross. Today is another day where time ceases to be.

This observed phenomenon may be just the thing to prove the existence of unreality.

Felix has been awake for around fifty-seven hours. He couldn’t sleep on the flight over, nor the bus, and he’s much too giddy to go to bed right now. So he’s standing at the front of the church, basking in the shadow of a cross.

There is no one else inside the Closure Point Church besides him — at least, there shouldn’t be. Felix attached a motion sensor to both the front entrance and the side entrance. His watch should have vibrated if there was anybody; it would have been his sign to scamper away back to his temporary dorm. But his ears pick up the faintest sound of soft footsteps on sanctified tiles.

“My apologies if I’m bothering you, Sister.”

He turns to the noise, to a faint shadow hiding behind one pillar holding up the second level nearby. It is the only humanoid shadow hiding in the warm orange light, a refuge from the endless grey rain outside. Every person has a shadow, after all. At least, they should. This girl still has a shadow, despite her current condition. Her tenacity is beyond admirable.

“Ah… I was just checking in on you...”

A faint voice comes from the pillar, the sound of a spring whisper. It belongs to a girl in a white and black tunic, who peers timidly from around the corner. A glimpse of her blonde hair — almost gold — falls out of her partial headdress, curled into gentle twirls near her shoulders. But her eyes are closed. The surrounding area is scarred with pink flesh that mars her otherwise pale skin, evidence of burns that never fully healed.

“Thank you for concern,” Felix says. He clicks his tongue, then stands up. “Actually, I wanted to chat with you. Perfect timing. If I may have a few moments of your time, of course.”

With her hands clasped in front of her, the girl nods.

They sit together on an ancient oaken pew, beside a cracked angel statue. The fleeting tendrils of stained glass light grasp at their feet — her black felt slipper shoes are tied with perfect butterfly knots. And now, she looks somewhere past him, with a thin smile and perpetually unseeing eyes. She can’t be any older than twenty.

“Do you mind if I call you Jules?” He crosses his legs and glances at the silver cross hanging from her neck.

“I don’t mind.”

A moment of silence passes. Jules’ hands tighten in her lap.

“What was it like, growing up without eyesight?”

“Ah.” Her smile mellows. “It wasn’t very easy. Every day was a struggle.” She shrugs. “I’m not entirely blind, mind you.”

That much was already evident. When Felix arrived several days ago, Sister Jules was one of the first people he met in this small town. According to Father Rajmund, the priest of this humble church, Jules is blind and deaf in her left ear. She came to this church seven years ago, which means she was only but a girl when she started working as a nun.

Felix did not let this inconsistency pass. He’s been observing her in his moments of respite, measuring the extent of her condition. According to his observations, she is still somewhat receptive to motion in the environment, yet the exact details elude her. With a few haptic hints in the form of braille markers on the wall, she can perform most tasks required of her. And she began working at an age where most children have just entered the yearly cycle of education.

This is very interesting. This conversation marks the first time he has conversed with her in a casual manner, besides greetings and idle pleasantries.

“How much can you see?” he asks, already knowing the answer.

“A little bit.” She opens her eyes, revealing clouded white pupils and soft brown irises. Then she closes them. “Faint outlines, at best.”

She could be suffering from cataracts, the clouding of the eye’s lense, but a mere case of cataracts wouldn’t explain the phenomenon he observes. It is as though a single LED light shines within her eye, bright with the bioelectricity of her soul. Although, this particular case may just be Felix’s overactive imagination.

“A lot of people would crumble from that kind of stress. You have some serious perseverance, I’ll give you that.”

“You think?”

“Definitely. Just knowing that people can tough it out with a smile makes me happier, second hand.”

“Humph. The usual reaction I get is pity.” Jules places a hand on her shoulder and glances in his general direction. “You’re a strange person, Felix Conti.”

He chuckles, resting both of his palms against his nape. “You’re the fourth person to tell me something like that today.”

“Who were the other three?”

“The cashier at the Cashmere Bakery didn’t accept any of my cards. I came back thirty minutes later with cash from the only ATM in this town, and he looked at me like I was a maniac.”

“Hmm.”

“Then there was the manager of the resort. I had a suite there, but there was too much radio interference. I told them to switch off their 10 megahertz interference signals if I was going to stay there, but he just told me to leave if I didn’t like it.”

The corner of Jules' mouth pulls down in a frown. “Then you ended up here.”

“And then there was the girl who greeted me from the Reyes Cooper Academy’s Science club. I think her name was Marie.” Marie Curie, the scientist who died from not knowing the consequences of her experiments. Felix feels the same sort of Marie-energy coming from this new Marie. Emerald eyes like radioactive sludge.

“Marie Weiss.”

“You know her?”

Jules nods. “My sister talks about her when she talks about school. Apparently she’s an incorrigible and stiff person, but she seems nice enough. I’ve only seen her a few times before, though.”

The owner of a second-that-is-not-a-second is Marie Weiss, and she’s a hardass. Felix interalizes this fact. “Everybody seems to know each other in this place. So this is what a small town is like.” He yawns. “I like it.”

“Not everybody. Marie’s almost an outsider — she lives in a manor far to the east. She seems to have amiable relationships with people, but… nobody really knows her.”

“You seem to know a lot about her,” Felix observes.

“I talk with my sister a lot, even though she’s no longer formally part of the church.” Jules smiles. “She still helps out around this place on the weekends.”

“Familial bonds are something else. Sometimes they’ll reach you, even when you don’t want them to.”

“Are you speaking from experience?”

“Second hand, mostly. I was never really close with my parents, but I know plenty of people who are.”

“Ah.” Jules looks away, sighing at some internal thought. “If I may ask, what was it like in the big American cities? I heard you came from MIT, wherever that is...”

“Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” She specified American cities, for whatever reason. Could she be from overseas? “It’s a really big university, with lots of buildings for different kinds of research. Almost contradictory, too.”

“Contradictory? How so?”

“Most of the buildings weren’t built at the same time, so you end up with lots of modern glass and steel buildings right beside red brick and mortar ones. If you pick a random direction and walk, you never know what era you end up in.”

“Sounds nice.”

“I spent most of my time at the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. If you picked five random people who worked there, chances are you’d end up with enough knowledge to model the entire world, from sea to sea, shore to shore, and star to star.”

Jules tilts her head. “Which part were you part of?”

“I guess you could say I was part of all of them, in a way.” Felix looks back up at the ceiling, smiling at the warmer memories of his experiences. The lab coats and fluorescent lights are a comforting thing, even though some part of him says that it shouldn’t be. But the sterile white was a constant in the chaos. There was a common goal: to understand the world of humans, every single part of it. “I am… was…”

He tries to force out more words, but some ephemeral weight presses down all around him. It’s a closing realm of fuzzy bleak shadows and borrowed time. His body can no longer keep up with his mind. “Very sleepy,” he manages to mutter.

He watches his body lean towards trajectory aimed at the back of another wood pew, but a string pulls taut and catches him mid-fall — a firm hand catches him by the shoulder. A hand that carries much hidden strength.

“Remember to take care of yourself,” Jules says.

“Later. There’s... still work to be done.” He tries to pull the strings in his legs, but they refuse to answer his call.

“No. You’re going to sleep until you’re well rested again. Father Rajmund specifically told me to make sure you don’t run off and work yourself to death.”

“But…”

“No questions.”

“Bluh,” he says. It’s getting hard to fight against the failure of his body’s systems. And his head is now, somehow, resting on Jules shoulder. It’s soft — he can’t help but feel a certain sense of deja vu. This has happened before, some where, some time. But he can’t figure it out. It’s a confusing mess of frayed yarn thought wires and blubbery blue nothing thoughts.

‘Note to self,’ he says to himself, drifting along the black current of afternoon sleep, ‘thank this girl after you wake up.’

And for some reason, he knows he’s thought the exact same thing before.

“Hey Marie. Do you have any plans for after high school?”

“I’ve got a few plans, but nothing solid. I don’t know, maybe I’ll roll a dice and see what happens.”

I ran into Aniya when I entered Block 3 earlier, and we’ve been sitting around in the cafe's bookshelf-and-leather-sofa cozy corner for half an hour. We’re on our third round of drip coffee, a wonderful hazelnut and chocolate blend that tastes heavenly even without cream or sugar. I take another sip.

Outside, the first rays of summer are piercing through the overcast ocean — like the sky itself is finally breaking apart and falling in pieces towards the waters. It’s a welcome change.

“You can’t be that laissez-faire with your future, dude.” With her copper red hair tied into a bun and always-new white blouse, Aniya looks like a secretary transplanted from a big-shot corporation into this seedy island town. She even has the pursed lips of maternal disappointment. “SAT exams are right around the corner. Pelchat’s been riding the science club’s collective asses to study hard.”

“Hey, I’m just thinking it out. I’m not sure which university I should go to. Or, If I should actually go to university.”

Aniya gives me the look of somebody who just looked at a fresh corpse. “God, I don’t even want to consider the possibility of that last one. For any of us.” She shivers. “Us youngins shouldn’t have to be marooned in a dead-end town like this.”

“There’s always the midnight train,” I say, as straight-faced as possible. “They say it’s going… anywhere.”

“Dude, shut up. I’m going to go drown myself if I have to listen to that song one more time.” Aniya lets out a long sigh, resting two fingers on her forehead. “You made a real good choice, skipping prom. That was an absolute disaster.”

“Serious?” I rest my fist on my chin, and get ready for a scathing review of another tidbit of Aniya’s life. “Ready to hear it, chief.”

“You have no idea.” Aniya’s name means ‘God has shown meaning’ in Hebrew, which is extremely ironic, given that she’s one of the only people who complains about life as much as I do. We struck off a friendship in middle school that was basically us complaining about things together, and we just kept going until today. And, as though to counteract the irony, she is the vice-president of the humble Reyes’ Cooper science club. My right hand man. Woman. “It was literally five dudes and five chicks standing around a punch bowl and a tray of sandwiches. And Don't Stop Believin' was playing on an infinite loop. Most depressing shit I’ve seen in my whole life.”

A chuckle works its way past my lips. “Jesus. Who was supervising?”

Aniya scowls. “Pelchat and Ms. Yanikov.”

“The shriveled old prune of an English teacher? She’s, like, two steps away from looking like a fairy tale witch.”

“You don’t say.” Aniya drains the rest of her now cold coffee in a single gulp, then looks out the window. “But seriously. Think about where you’re going to go. We could apply to the same university, or something.”

Against my better judgement, I grin. “You like me that much? Should’ve just said so, dude.”

“Wh—” Her eyes go wide; she freezes into stone. A hot pink blush works its way over her freckled cheeks. “W-What the hell are you talking about?”

“You can be honest with yourself.” I close my eyes and raise my hand, contemplating an invisible rose. “I’m absolutely. I-re-sist-a-ble. Mwah.”

All I get for my theatrical efforts is a punch in the shoulder and a fuming Aniya. “Don’t kid yourself, dumbass. I-I don’t like you like that. No way.”

“Ow.” I rub the stinging spot on my arm — Aniya punches like a teenage freight truck. There are some serious muscles underneath that loose blouse of hers.

“Anyways,” she says, trying to distance herself from the outburst, “Give it some thought. Deadlines are coming up. I’m thinking about either Oxford or MIT — they seem like nice places to study astrophysics.”

“Didn’t take you for much of a star person.”

“Don’t group me in with those idiots who study astrology. I’ll dump your ass into the ocean.”

I can’t see myself right now, but I probably have the largest grin humanly possible. I wipe it away with my sleeve. “Aye, aye, captain.”

Aniya groans and glances at the bookshelves. All of the books here are ancient — the most recent dating from the second world war. “Seriously. Sometimes, I can’t help but think you’re some sort of smug bird given human form. Regal from a distance, shit-eating shitbird up close. Like a raven.”

“Hey man.” I raise my hands. “Some ravens are known for swooping in and plucking out people’s eyeballs.”

Aniya thinks on my words long and hard. “Bullshit,” she says, after pausing a while.

“Of course it’s bullshit,” I say, crossing my legs and staring at the tiled ceiling. “Ravens only go after the eyes after you die.”

A single park sign marks the edge of civilization.

The tourist buses only travel to the western edge of Walther Forest, where they stop at a wall of ritzy summer homes that overlook the southern ocean view. Jade Landing Villas, Northwall Condominiums, Seaspray Avenue; all of these places carefully tiptoe around the boundary of the seemingly impenetrable forest.

During the summer, these places overflow with the sounds and signs of tourist life — a time where the families of the rich waste away on private beaches and dine on imported cuisine. The oceanfront would be cluttered with yachts, ships, and whatever else the wealthy do with their excess cash.

But that’s only during the summer. For the other three quarters of the year, the boundary of Walther Forest is marked by empty houses and abandoned streets — save for the occasional caretaker wandering aimlessly in the street.

I walk past the Walter Forest sign, ignoring all the warnings about drowning and wild animals, just like I have for the past decade.

The only reason the forest hasn’t been paved over with a residential district is because the roots keep the island together. Barring all the mysticism and folktales, if it weren’t for the centuries old roots of the redwood and pine trees, coastal erosion would wash away the entire isle in a matter of decades. So there’s at least one constructor contractor around here with their head on their shoulders.

Eventually, the concrete road faded to a messy dirt trail. It leads to a black iron gate suspended between grey-brick walls.

A single wax candle burns in an alcove in the wall, seemingly unaffected by the rain.

I clutch the bag of groceries and treats I’ve been lugging around all day and sigh. “She’s home. Could’ve at least given me a ride…”

I press my hand against the slick, cold metal. Without a single sound, the gates swing inward, as though to welcome me home. Then, I walk on the final road home, towards a clearing on a cliff.

Some believe that there is a haunted house in the forest. That, if you watch the forest in the darkest of the night, you can see the burning blue lights of drowned souls.

Some say that hordes of birds gather in the forest, only to disappear when a human approaches.

Some say that there’s a primordial curse deep in the forest, a relic from an all consuming battle between mystical creatures long ago. Most people believe this one in order to explain the cliffs on the south-east end of the forest — where, once upon a time, this isle was part of something much more.

Some sailors dismiss the haunted house as a mere legend, as when you sail in from the south, there isn’t actually any sort of house visible.

Deep in the forest where people dare not venture, there was a place that should not exist, hidden away by the shadows. It was a thing that many had heard of, yet only few claimed to see. And, like a shadow, it disappears when the sun rises.

That place is the Schwarz Manor. A shunned manor, wedged in the suffocating wilderness. The locals know about it, but the details always vary. Haunted by a monster. Inhabited by witches. Ghosts. Angry native american spirits. Fantastical creatures. Vampires. The only thing people could agree on is that the manor is cursed.

After living here for the better part of my life, I can say for certain that the Schwarz isn’t actually cursed. It’s a german style manor built as a private getaway many years ago, just like the villas and condos, but more private. The residence is a bit bigger than a house, but not quite a full fledged mansion. The main building could easily house a hundred people, and a polished stone walkway snaked around the courtyard. Around the courtyard, a grey-brick and bramble wall blends in with the wilderness. And, to the south, where the brick wall ends, the courtyard falls away to an ocean-side cliff.

I guess I can’t really blame the townsfolk. I was floored the first time I saw all of this — a little piece of civilization stolen away from the impossible forest.

“We should really be more subtle next time...”

With a shrug, I place my hand on the front door. There wasn’t anything like a keyhole, or even a handle, but it opens all the same.

Much like the sky outside, the entrance hall is coated in streaks of luminous grey. For whatever reason, the person who commissioned this house decided the front was as good a place as any for a sky light. On sunny days, the hall is unbearably bright and cheery, and at night, the gloom of the distant stars hugs the walls. A little too inconsistent, for my tastes.

Erika’s usual shoes are resting in the shoe rack; tiny black boots. I take my rainboots off, clean them with a spare towel, and place them beside hers. If she’s home, then she’s probably relaxing in the Pisces lounge. I'll join her after tidying myself up and stowing away groceries. I give my umbrella one last twirl, then leave it to dry.

A single spiral staircase ascends four levels in the foyer. On the third floor, I take the leftmost door. There are other doors leading to the second and fourth floors, but I never really bothered exploring them before.

The Schwarz Manor is divided into four wings — North, East, South, and West. Erika gave me control over the South and West wings, but that’s way too much space for one person. I decided on three rooms adjacent to each other in the west wing as my living quarters. It was one of the only places here with electricity.

My bedroom is the last room at the end of the long hallway; a small room furnished with a queen sized bed, a dresser, a stained-maple table with a barely used macintosh, a chest, and a closet for my clothes.

I’m halfway finished stripping when a thought pokes my mind. “Oh, right. Today’s the day the experiment should be finished.” I throw on my favorite red sweater and a pair of sweatpants, then move to the study next door.

The study is a room much unlike my bedroom — it’s stuffed to the brim with brass measuring instruments, glass vials, loose tomes, and astrolabes. If my bedroom was my present, then this would be my future.

At least, it should be.

On the floor, where I had scrawled out an intricate circle shaped glyph in silver dust and red ink days before, that I had spent the past week nearly completely sleepless to complete, is a scorch mark. There was some sort of overload — like a fuse that had explosively burnt out.

“Oh, dear.” I sigh and cover my mouth. “There goes a week of effort. I thought I maintained the particulate signatures, too...”

I’m going to have to spend all night cleaning this up. But I don’t mind the failure. As long as you learn from your failures, then everything will turn out fine in the end. I pull out a carpet and lay it over the burnt glyph. This may just be a piss-poor excuse at covering up my own mistakes, but who’s really keeping track? I grab the groceries and shrug.

Back downstairs, I enter the northern door on the first floor of the lobby to a pitch-black hallway. I flick the light switch — one of the only light switches in the manor — and enter the first door on the left into the kitchen.

I dump the groceries into our half-full fridge, and, very carefully, take out the brown paper box with the extra peach strudel I bought for Erika. I grab two forks, put the strudel on a plate, then step towards the door opposite of the kitchen.

The Pisces lounge is a room straight out of a fairy tale. The walls are decorated with vibrant tapestries and scrolls sourced from the far and near east, and silken rugs smother the floor. Grand-sized sofas sit at the edges of the room.

And, right in the middle of it all sits a big fat forty-inch Panasonic flat-screen, in blissful ignorance of the rest of the room. But it isn’t even the most striking thing in the lounge.

A girl in a dress sits on a dark purple sofa, eyes cast downwards towards a faded green book. Her silky black hair looks as if they are curls of shadows, and her skin is almost parchment grey. She looks as delicate as a snowflake — like something that could disappear from a touch.

Even if one scanned over her with a magnifying glass, they would not find a single shred of humanity.

“Marie,” she says, glancing at me with luminescent emerald eyes. My eyes. Or, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that I have her inhuman eyes. “Welcome back. Did you have fun?”

“Afternoon, Erika.” I raise the box. “Grabbed you a snack from a cafe.”

A dream. There is a strange sense of surrealism to her smile, as though she doesn’t exist in the same world as the rest of humanity. She’s looked like this for as long as I’ve known her. The glimpse of exposed pale flesh on her thighs is enough to seize my heart, even though I’m a girl.

She is the other resident of the cursed manor. Erika Weiss.

“My thanks.” She cracks a grin, then flits her attention back to her book. “You know, if you’re jealous of my figure, you should stop eating sweets, darling. Feeding me more isn’t going to do much.”

I place the somewhat crumbled pastry in front of Erika, then take a seat across from her. My body gives an involuntary sigh as I sink into the plush seat — soft, warm, and melty cushiness. Just like I had brought her something almost reflexively, she prepared two tea cups. I fight the sensation of sleep, forcing myself to pour a cup of tea from the still-steaming warm teapot.

“Well, you’re cheating.” I warm my fingers around the old porcelain and take a sip. It’s the imported stuff — an orange vanilla bean mix. Tastes like an orange creamsicle without any of the sugar, which happens to be surprisingly good. “If I could have your metabolism, I’d take it in a heartbeat. I’m the one who’s still supposed to be growing up, remember?”

“Ah, the wonders of youth.” Erika exhales through her nose and smirks. “Back in my day, we used to hunt for our food. We took our ritual knives and gutted the nearest creature, then roasted it on an open pyre. And that’s all we ate.”

“I feel like you’re exaggerating a bit.”

“We seasoned it with primordial ooze, ground filo bones, and a crack of black pepper. Called it a sacrifice feast, yeah?”

“Mhmm.” I can’t tell if she’s joking or not. I cradle my tea and quickly realize this is one of those times I probably shouldn’t question any further. The cup is like a miniature sun in my hands. A second sip. “You can’t find tea like this anywhere around here. Honestly, it’s a bit of a miracle that we still have things like this here. You wouldn’t believe what goes on around here.”

Erika peers upwards from her book, exposing a glint of green eye. “Oho. Did something happen today?”

After living together for a long time, we’ve grown used to each other’s quirks. I’m finally starting to read Erika, but she’s always seen through me like a pane of glass. Maybe she’s always been able to read my mind. I pull up my legs and lean back.

“Well, the experiment failed. Everything was in order for the whole week but the ether... er, mana, it overflowed at the last minute, I suppose. I was going to check up on it this morning, but it kinda slipped my mind. I had to run off to the academy and help out with the transfer student I talked about last week.” I cross my arms and huff. “Complete waste of time.”

Page flip. She doesn’t glance up from her book. “Is that so?”

I shrug, then massage my left shoulder. “This guy is some sort of teenage prodigy — he’s already studying at MIT. Oceans, I think. He said he was finishing up a GED while on some oceanography mission, but I didn't buy it. Complete oddball, too.”

“Sounds like a curious guy,” Erika says, with surprisingly little comment. Usually, she’d make some sort of snide or smug comment. The pastry in front of her is untouched.

She’s still smiling, but she’s looking down at her book with a concentrated effort. I close my eyes and continue. “I don’t get it. There’s nothing really worth studying out here, besides how to rip off tourists. I guess the Gulf Stream is around here, but it’s way out at sea.”

“Hum.”

“The guy has an obsession with the time, from how often he checked his watch. I think you’d get along with him.”

“I am sure he’d be a wonderful companion to chat away the cold nights with,” Erika says, completely indifferent. Chances are, they’re never going to meet anyways. “Only the best.”

The urge to mention the strange feeling from earlier comes up, but it doesn’t seem like Erika is willing to hear any more of my idle rambling. “So, anyways, I’m not exactly sure when the bounded circle gave out. I didn’t feel anything until I checked up on the study, maybe twenty minutes ago.”

“I got back home an hour ago.” Meaning she was out, for once. Strange.

“Either way, I suppose I’ll just have to try again. My course load shouldn’t be that bad, outside of studying for the SATs and whatnot.” I brush the hair out of my face and nod. “This was more of an experiment, too. This one was a quadruple layered formulae.”

“I’m disappointed in you, Marie.” The air freezes when Erika says those words.

Some uncanny reflex forces me to open my eyes and stare in her direction, as though she has some sort of optical-gravitational pull. Erika's lips are twisted in an idle smile, but her eyes are full green moons of ice. Every hair on my arms and neck and legs stands up — I reflexively inhale.

The shadows in the room are suddenly heavy — Erika is inspecting me from all angles. I ball my fists and wait for my fate, fully aware of how terrified I must look. There’s a bore in my back that’s being filled with distilled dread.

But nothing comes.

“...I guess it can’t be helped, though.” Erika closes her eyes, gives a small shrug of her shoulders, and nods sagely with audible thinking sounds. “Remember to brush up on your basic math. If your calculator breaks, then you just can’t count on it anymore.”

I bite my lower lip. “You…”

“I knew a pirate back in the day. He always got high Cs!”

I groan and bury my face in my hands while Erika breaks into a giddy cackle. She’s always like this. The jokes are so bad that I end up giggling like an idiot through my hands, almost against my will. Sometimes, I wonder if she secretly has a grimoire of terrible jokes hidden away in the darkest section of the library.

So this is what true madness is like — laughing at stupid jokes. Terrifying.

“Gotcha,” she says, tapping her pale lips with a wink.

With a roll of my eyes, I pick up my teacup and take another sip. I’d probably be in a cemetery a thousand times over if bad jokes had an LD50.

At the same time, I already know what Erika is trying to say. It’s an unsaid fact for the creatures in our world.

The faces we wear at home are completely different from the faces we wear in public — it’s always been this way.

Somebody like me is just hiding in plain sight. Erika was always against the idea. From the very start, she said mingling with society proper was a complete waste of time.

This is one of the only times she’s ever said she’s been disappointed in something I’ve done. Across the table, past the untouched strudel and cooling teacups, she’s silently shaking her head at me.

She’s telling me to hurry up.

Today’s experiment wouldn’t affect anything in the long run — things can always be tried again. But, out of sheer coincidence, the delicate balance of my life went one way instead of the other. I always knew trying to balance something like this was impossible, but I can’t stop trying.

But the end result is still inevitable. One will consume the other.

“We’re all tools for you to use, Marie.” Erika tilts her head. “Even me. I don’t mind.”

This is what I’ve been groomed for my entire life — I don’t mind it at all. In the end, I know it’s what I want from the bottom of my heart. But I still want a bit more time to clad myself in the illusion of normal life. Just for a little longer.

Maybe I’m being sentimental, though. As long as I have Erika, maybe things will work out one way or another.

“Alright. Let’s try it again next week. I think I’m ready, this time.” I sigh. “There’s no way I can prepare everything on my own, though.”

“Leave it to me. Shall we use the same place? The line’s strength may waver, now that we’re between seasons.”

“Yeah. Nobody’s going to bother us out there.”

“Very well.” Erika looks up at me and beams. “I’m glad you’re finally being decisive for once. It’s about time.”

And like that, the conversation has moved on. I release my fists and nod. Just like every other night, we’re going to indulge in casual chatter until I pass out. But even simple pleasures like this are priceless.

“What’re you reading?” I ask, shifting the conversation as far away as I can.

“The Philosophy of Money by Georg Simmel.”

I raise an eyebrow and lean forward. “That’s the last thing I expect you to read.”

Erika retrieves a silver bookmark from her sleeve and stuffs it into the book’s pages. “It’s a pretty interesting read. It’s a bit on the drier side of things, but it divulges into the value and evolution of money through history. I’m reading it for research purposes myself — brings up a few good points.” She flips back to another section of the book. “Simmel suggests that money only has worth when everybody believes in it, like a religion. The ideas around that may help when it comes to determining what kind of… currencies, per se, actually work for us.”

“Huh. Sounds interesting,” I say, with as much forced enthusiasm as I can possibly muster.

Despite our alarming similarities, our tastes in entertainment might as well be inhabiting different planets. Even when it comes to reading material, I vastly prefer a scientific textbook when it comes to it — I like reading about universal facts. I could never really accept the hypothetical situational mumbo jumbo that comes with philosophy and related fields. That fact that Erika reads this kind of stuff for fun still baffles me. The only thing that we can really agree on is what to watch for movie nights.

“This notebook is in your grandmother’s handwriting. Seems like she translated most of it from german by hand.”

“Most of it? What about the other bits?”

Erika shrugs. “Helps to be multilingual.” She snaps her book shut and rests her chin on a raised fist. “Check out chapters two and three when you’ve got the time. The most important bits are annotated.”

“Maybe later.” I flop on my side, too lazy to sit up properly. This day has been a bit too draining for me — the lounge’s clock reads 5:03 PM.

“Also, I saw something interesting today.”

It’s not every day that Erika finds something interesting enough to bring up in casual conversation. I tilt my head towards her. “Hmm?”

“There was an ice cream cone running around and chasing children in the rain,” Erika says, with a completely straight face.

Once again, I can’t tell if Erika is trying to make a bad joke, or if this is actually something she saw. I clear my throat. “Okay. How big was this ice cream cone?”

“Man-sized ice cream cone.”

“...Are you sure it wasn’t some dude in a costume?”

“It was definitely an actual ice cream cone,” Erika says, still deadpan. “Big ol’ strawberry cornetto. Those kids were absolutely terrified.”

It seems highly unlikely that a renegade ice cream cone would suddenly animate and take revenge upon children for its fallen comrades. Extraordinarily unlikely. “I heard ice cream trucks are going out of style. It could be an au nouvelle marketing stunt, I guess. Lots of short term attention from the tourists, only at the cost of a few mentally scarred children.”

“Marketing through terror. I see, I see… I see greatly.” She clasps her hands together and smiles. “You have an excellent sense of aesthetics, Marie. In time, you might be even better than me.”

I feel like I’ve suggested something I shouldn’t have. I fumble around for the TV remote and turn the dead static into the daily 5 PM news report. A news anchor rambles about the growing collection of unsolved missing persons cases, then about budget casserole recipes, and then, the weather report for the next few weeks. Clear and overcast skies for three weeks, then the final stretch of monsoon season.

One last storm before summer.

But my mind drifts, settling on the slight pang in my stomach. I turn down the TV volume and glance at Erika. “Say, what should we do for dinner?”

She offers a single questioning palm. “If you bought groceries, we could try to make something.”

And by that, she means she wants me to cook something. “I’m not feeling very inspired right now. Could make soup and sandwiches, but we’ve already had that for three days in a row.”

We could also try to order delivery, but our physical address makes it a very contentious service. Most people aren’t willing to drive out this far into the supposedly cursed woods, and the few pizza delivery guys who ended up at the front gates ended up being scarred for life. I don’t think there’s a single place in town willing to cater to us.

“Screw it,” I decide. I grab a nearby pillow and squeeze the fuzzy black cover against my chest. “Let’s go out tonight. Carnitas with a bit of salsa fresca sounds absolutely delightful. Lobster. Oh, we could grab some yaki udon. It’s been a while since we’ve been to Komiya’s.”

“I’ll change into streetwear,” Erika says, rising with her book. She stretches her arms high above her head, yawning and flicking about her black tongue. “Meet me in the garage — make sure you bring your wallet this time.”

I cover my eyes with the pillow and deflate. “In a few. Let me ride out this wave of comfiness for a little bit. Five minutes.”

“Very well.” Erika’s footsteps tip-tap away towards the lounge door. Then the sound stops. “By the way, thank you for the strudel. It was absolutely delicious. Maybe I’ll come with you next time and see what all the hubbub is about.”

“Wait.” I look back at the table — the peach strudel and all of the whip cream has disappeared without a single trace. All that remains is a clean plate with a fork in the middle. “How did you…?”

Erika leans against the doorway and shrugs. “Maybe an ice cream cone took it.”