‘A day is but a drop in the well of life. How many does it take to poison the waters?’

April 10th, 2000

Two weeks. It has been fourteen days and some hours since Felix has arrived in this strange tourist town, and he’s made plenty of progress towards his research. He has breached the phenomenon of inconsistent time, but such an experiment will take much time to fully decode.

In the meantime, he’s been working on those human social circle things. He’s been making friends. Yeah, that sounds about right. Friends are nice. Good friends don’t ask too many questions. And, really, he can act like a normal person when he wants to.

Felix has perfected the art of nonlinear thinking. The best sort of science requires a dash of imagination, and he has that in droves. And right now, he’s directing all that ambient creativity towards the pre-lecture classroom’s blackboard.

“That looks like a dragon,” he says, snapping his fingers at the partially erased chalk marks from last lecture. “Absolutely, definitely a dragon.”

“No way,” Gabriel says. He looks back at Felix like he pulled a dragon out of a tophat just now — his dark blue eyes doubt him with all of their genetic power. “That looks like a staff. Like a wizard’s staff, if you know what I mean. There’s no way a dragon is straight and long like that.”

“My friend, you need to broaden your horizons.”

For the past two weeks since Felix formally started his compulsory education, this is how he passes the time before English class. In the period before, a history teacher leaves a mess on the blackboard before vacating room 1-1C. Every single day, the incomprehensible half-erased marks look like something different. It’s much better than cloud-gazing — the mess on the blackboard isn’t going anywhere, unlike the constantly moving clouds.

“The eastern concept of dragon is completely different from what we have in the west.” Felix flips to the back of his notebook, snaps open his pen case, and begins illustrating a sketch diagram with a fountain point. Twin flex nubs, of course. “Although, the Ouroboros would come close. Not sure if that originates from Greek or Egyptian iconography...”

“It was ancient Egyptian, my dude.” Gabriel leans back in his chair and dusts the shoulder of his black and blue varsity jacket. “The symbol entered the western cultural sphere through the greeks, and then, was adapted into a major symbol through alchemy during the middle ages. Everybody knows this stuff.”

Although Gabriel looks the part of a stereotypical ‘jock’ archetype — a bruiser only interested in sports, in truth, he’s much more than that. He’s a bruiser with a gifted brain, which is arguably a thousand times more horrifying. A small town ubermensch with a knack for western mysticism.

Felix finishes his doodle of a Lung — an elongated chinese-style with a long frill on its back — and turns the notebook to Gabriel. “See the similarities now?” He points at the blackboard scrawls. “Same general body shape, and the head has the same long whiskers.”

“I think you’ve taken some drastic artistic liberties. Hell, you could put this in a museum. You sure you’re not an artist?” Gabriel furrows his brows and looks back at the scrawls. “Now I can’t stop seeing it. Damn.”

Felix flips back to his notes and sighs. “Ideas are contagious. If you aren’t careful, you’ll spread them everywhere.”

English class comes with the chime of a bell. In almost cliché literature analysis fashion, the topic of the past nine classes is the Heart of Darkness — an age old tale about some dude losing his mind in a jungle by Joseph Conrad. It is foolhardy to expect teenagers to have a remote interest in classical literature. Even Felix has already skimmed through the work several times; he can already recite the theme of humans being capable of evil from memory. But a fact like that is more or less common knowledge.

Notably, Marie is present in the class, but she spends the period sleeping on the table. Just like the other nine classes they’ve shared. The teacher for this class, a poor old lady who looks like she should have retired twenty years ago, doesn’t bother her. Interesting.

Felix can relate. He’s been having a tough time sleeping in the church — something disrupts him in his sleep. Even a basic task like feigning attention to a lecture is difficult.

He can’t exactly figure out why. He’s been taking his emergency sleep medication before bed, sometimes in much greater doses than recommended, but nothing seems to help. He’s even had a few sips of holy water.

He’s always considered himself blessed to not have dreams — they sound like they’re too much trouble for what they’re worth. But some twisted mental growth has taken root in his mind. He can’t remember the specifics of his dreams, but there’s always one constant.

Mirrors. The mirrors are watching him. Copper mirrors are broadcasting his mind in his sleep, carried along by the shadow of scales. Felix knows it’s ridiculous; dreams are only dreams, nothing in them should affect the waking world. But with each consecutive night, he’s forced to question his own sanity more and more. Perhaps it's the influence of the time consistency, but he doubts it. Only he and Marie are seemingly affected by a severe lack of sleep. Perhaps he could ask her — if she’s ever free. That girl always seems to be busy with something.

Had she also seen the mirror dream? Felix ponders the question, gritting his teeth, fighting against the lull of sleep. He has to stay awake. There is no way to know what he could dream next — the entity in his dreams could become real if he slept at a time where no one else would be sleeping.

Exactly as it started, English class ends with another chime of a bell. The time on the classroom’s clock reads 12 PM, but his watch reads 12:01 PM. A negligible difference in this context. The old lady lecturer gets up and leaves — the class disperses. And Marie gets up and leaves without so much of a glance at anybody else in the room.

Felix starts after her, but a firm hand stops him by the shoulder. Gabriel’s hand.

“Hey man. Let’s head out — my treat today.”

On second thought, conditionally free lunch isn’t bad either.

Felix and Gabriel are part of the elusive breed of student that happens to have an income. This means they can indulge in food that isn’t the existential threat sludge served at the cafeteria. While the other students eat their carefully packaged rations — or, gods forbid, actually eat at the cafeteria — they would be the ones dining like fast food kings. But they only have a single hour.

“Let’s move out,” Felix says, sliding on his bomber jacket. “The usual?”

Gabriel nods, as serious as a drill sergeant. “The usual.”

They had become fast friends at the end of spring break. The conditions were optimal for a relationship — they both happened to frequent the same shop. The board game shop. It is a sanctified refuge behind tinted black windows down on sixth street, a private hideaway for those who indulge in the forbidden arts of unorthodox entertainment. There, other like-minded souls had agreed to a pact: for nights at a time, they would leave their fate to the dice.

But the ritual of hobbies once confused as satanic rituals will stay as such — forbidden and concealed. Some people have reputations to uphold. Telling somebody that you spend nights rolling dice around takeout pizza, hand-drawn maps, and 2 litres bottles of diet coke is basically admitting to witchcraft.

So they started eating lunch together, away from the rabble. Over burgers and barbeque and seafood, they went on a deep dive into the nature of fantasy worlds and mythology and god-knows how many pulp novels. The chats are a rather exciting mental exercise, compared to the alternative of moping around the school grounds.

They hop into Gabriel’s dinky teal Volkswagen — seats still reeking of vinyl and age-old rubber adhesives — and roll out of the cracked-pavement school parking lot.

Ten minutes and four radio songs later, they roll into a parking stall of a certain Angler Michealson’s. A roof-top anchor painted like a striped race car greets them.

“I’ve had my eyes on this place for a while,” Gabriel says, admiring the wood-log and window exterior. “The chick I’m dating doesn’t want to step within two blocks of this place.”

“Why?” Felix asks. “Doesn’t look too bad. Getting a serious fish-market feel from this place.”

Gabriel kills the engine and runs a hand through his hair. “They’ve got Cajun food. Whatever that means.”

The entire cafeteria could sense that I didn’t belong there. The forty or so kids who are currently eating look at me like I’m an Alien. And, really, I might as well be right now.

That’s because I’m carrying around a briefcase. Black leather and gold trim. In a highschool. As a student. That just isn’t right.

Like a harbinger of death — or perhaps bureaucracy, in this case — I descend upon the table where the one rogue member of the science club sits. Today, he’s eating a home-made bacon, tomato, lettuce and prosciutto sandwich. Grilled. Club sandwich style, which means this guy’s got three sandwiches stacked ontop of each other. Bourgeoisie-type jerkass. My stomach practically festers with hunger at the sight — some animalistic part of me tells me to bludgeon him over the head and steal his sandwich as punishment for not helping me in science club duties.

But I’m more dignified than that. I think.

That’s why I keep my distance when I stare at him. “Adrian Ruiz Mullen.”

The kids who sit around Adrian look at me, then scoot away from him. Adrian himself, caught mid-conversation, freezes into metaphorical stone. He’s stuck like that for a few seconds.

I raise the briefcase. “Adrian.”

The local section of the cafeteria quiets. Everybody is looking at us with the same sort of anticipation given to a train crash. Eventually, Adrian turns to me and gulps.

For Adrian, puberty hit like a freight train, then paid for enough plastic surgery to put him on the cover of a fashion magazine. I remember when he was a meek little kid a few years ago. Now he looks like he belongs in an old time cowboy movie with his chiseled chin and slicked back hair, ten gallon and revolver included. But whenever I show up, he instantly reverts to being a highschool kid.

I avert my gaze and shake the briefcase. “Have you seen Felix anywhere? Pelchat wants me to deliver this to him.”

“I think he’s out right now,” Adrian says, visibly struggling to hide his knee-jerk flinch. “He’s been out with Gabe.”

“Where?”

“I can deliver it for you.” Adrian must’ve taken that as a threat, because he’s got his hands open. “I know the entrance where he always comes back through.”

“No. This briefcase is under specific instruction to never leave my supervision.” For some reason.

He bows his head, meekly. “Sorry…”

I rest my free palm against my eye and huff. I’m not that scary, I swear. “Just give me a text if you see him. Thanks.” I turn heel and walk out of there before one of us does something embarrassing.

This briefcase is something else. I shake it as I walk back through the empty halls towards the club room — there’s definitely something inside, but there’s no noise. I’m pretty sure I look like an assassin of some sort, carrying this around with a lab coat on. Mad scientist assassin Marie. Hmm.

I want to open it up and take a peak, but two four-digit combination locks keep it closed. I’d have to go through nearly one hundred million permutations of combinations to open it, and frankly, I don’t have the time or patience for that level of trial and error. If I used my other techniques to open it, I don’t think I’d be able to close the case ever again.

Whatever’s inside is heavy — it’s my first time seeing a briefcase in person, but I’m half decent at estimating weight. It can’t be textbooks, the thing is way too heavy for that. It could be a gun, but if it was, Pelchat wouldn’t entrust it to a random highschool girl. And I’m pretty sure a place like MIT wouldn’t be sending a gun to a researcher. I lift up the case and inspect the institution’s imprint: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it says, 1861. Science and Arts. Mens Et Manus. Mind and Hand, in English.

Maybe I’ll peek over his shoulder when I’m done filling out all of the bloody paperwork for the grant funding. I can see why people hire secretaries — the dread that comes from imagining the remaining paperwork is worse than all the creepy crawly monsters in the dark.

Trust me, I know.

Felix’s nose is bleeding. Maybe his soul is bleeding too.

There are limits to everything. The limit of mathematical functions, limits of law, time, relativity, and sensibility. And there are certainly limits to how much spice the human body can handle. This is not the time for spice. His watch reads 12:24 PM — he’s been dying for the past five minutes. His sinuses have since exploded into the puddle of mushy red tissue beside his food.

Gabriel is looking at him from across the table with an expression caught somewhere between horror and confusion. His hands are almost clasped in prayer. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

Felix grits his teeth, then reloads another wad of tissue into his bleeding nose. “It’s a good pain. It’s… a good pain.”

“If there was a textbook definition for not being okay, I could take a picture of you right now and send it in as an illustration.”

“Grghnrhnghng,” Felix says. His pores are dumping out buckets of sweat.

They had ordered the Hot Jambalaya special. Prior to this day, Felix didn’t actually know what a Jambalaya was. Now he knows.

A Jambalaya is actually a portal into a dimension of pain. Sausage, scallop and shrimp, celery, rice, and spice pain. ‘Spicy’ takes on an entirely different connotation as soon as you leave the northern part of the United States — down here, ‘spicy’ is an invitation to a localized taste bud flaying vortex of capsaicin.

The food is good. That’s the worst part. Nice meaty blend of tomato, thyme, onions and sauteed pork, all together in gentle umami harmony. Then the spice kicks in. It’s like simulating a drug addiction between every spoonful; a constant stream of highs and endless agony.

Felix slams back half a glass of unsweetened ice tea on the burning sensation in his throat, but it does him no good. “Nevermind,” he pants, “I’m not good. Help.”

It takes a glass of milk, a worried checkup by the waitress, and a key lime pie slice’s arrival to return to normal speaking levels.

“I swear man,” Gabriel says, sipping on a milkshake, “It’s like you’ve got no sense at times. You’re like a genius dog that suddenly found itself in a human body.”

Felix stares out the restaurant's window. A flock of seagulls pecks at the pigeon corpse underneath a clear blue sky. Adapted vultures. “I’ll take that as a compliment. I think.”

“Seriously man, you’ve gotta get your head in the game. You’re getting involved in some bad business, I tell you what.”

“...Huh?” It seems like Felix missed some conversational cue. “What do you mean?”

“Her. The girl. *That* girl.” Gabriel swivels his head around, like there’s some sort of unseen observer listening in. “You know the one. You’ve been hanging out with her for the past two weeks.”

“You mean… Marie?”

“Shhhhhhh.” Gabriel reaches across the table and puts two fingers to Felix’s lips. “Shhh. Shush.”

“Mrrgrmhmm,” Felix says.

“Don’t say her name, man. You’ll get cursed.” Gabriel notices the other diners staring at them, and he settles down back into his seat. There isn’t a hint of embarrassment on his face. “Haven’t you heard the stories? She’s a cursed girl, dude. Hella cursed.”

“Man, what’re you talking about?” Felix tilts his head back and raises an eyebrow. “You mean Marie?”

Gabriel cringes — his muscles cave inwards. He freezes up for a few seconds more, glances around, then sighs. He has the look of a man debating whether he should say something out loud. “Alright,” he says, after at least a minute, “I’ll tell you the story. But you didn’t hear it from me.”

The anomaly girl already has a history of disaster. Very interesting. “My lips are sealed.”

“Alright, listen. She’s a nice girl and all — hell, I work as the science club’s treasurer. I’d like to think I’m good friends with her. But there’s some real suspicious circumstances around her. In general.”

“Go on.”

“First of all, nobody can remember what she looked like before high school. Most of us knew Marie. She was a cheery and outgoing and stern girl, all at the same time. But I remember the first day of high school.” Gabriel looks up at the ceiling. “A girl with sandy-blonde hair streaked with black and almost alien green eyes walks in — doesn’t look remotely like anybody we’ve ever seen before. We’re just all stunned silent. We didn’t know what to say to this new girl. And a few days later, she approaches us and asks us why we’re avoiding her.”

“Dubious,” Felix comments.

“Right? Then we ask her who she is, and she says she’s Marie. Our Marie. Yet, when we talked about it in private later, none of us could recall what she looked like. I’m not making this shit up, man.” Gabriel stares at Felix, almost pleadingly. “You believe me, right?”

“Yeah.” Felix rubs his chin and nods. “There are some phenomena that science can’t explain, sometimes. We don’t discover the reason until way later.”

The statement seems to reassure Gabriel; his shoulders shudder, like he’s relieved that somebody finally believes his story. He must have ruminated on the thought for a long time. “And that’s only the start. She lives all the way on the other side of the island, in the middle of Walther Forest, apparently. But nobody has ever seen her house. And that forest is freakin’ cursed. The old folks say it’s been cursed for a long time.”

“What kind of curse?” Felix asks. “Is it like a conventional fantasy curse, or something more occult?”

“Not even I know, man. It’s like, when you enter that place, you’ll always end up at the same junction before wandering back to the entrance. I don’t know how to describe it.”

The same place. A sudden jolt of pain zaps the left side of Felix’s head — he can see a flicker of the dream. The same damn dream. Brass-framed mirror. Checkerboard hallway. Endless, endless darkness in both directions. There was an impossible colour in the air — a shade that flickered between orange, black and blue, all at the same time — and time was stopped. It froze at 7:41 PM.

“I can relate,” Felix says, wincing. “Deja vu.” Deja vu is a function of memories through time.

“That’s it. But that’s not even the weirdest part, man. There were these two guys, a few years back. They were infatuated with her — she’s got a unique look, yeah? But these guys, they couldn’t get a clue.”

“Did they do something to her?”

“Oh yeah. One at a time, they followed her back to her house through the forest.”

12:34 PM.

“The first guy ended up with a bloody nose,” Gabriel says. “Marie kicked this guy’s ass straight up. Apparently she’s trained in some mystic martial arts. He moved out a year or two back, probably out of shame.”

Felix demolished his slice of pie — it was really good — and they are getting ready to head back to the academy. Bills have been paid. Jackets on. The door jingles on the way out.

“Marie kicks ass. Duly noted.” They walk through the front door and into the parking lot. There are only three cars; a silver hatchback Acura SUV, Gabriel’s dinky jelly bean Volkswagen, and a ritzy black BMW with no license plate.

“But that’s not it. The second guy is the real scary part. He was a shit ton more intimidating than the first guy — he was a football guy, you know? I know we don’t really have a good team in this small-ass town, but he was the quarterback.” Gabriel swings his arm back and forth as he unlocks the Volkswagen’s doors. “The dude who ran and threw the eggball a lot. He was a lot more… aggressive, if you know what I mean.”

Felix hops in the shotgun seat, and Gabriel slides into the drivers. Seatbelts click for safety. “Did he try anything?”

“Nothing like that. But he didn’t let up on her. Now, persistence works on most girls, yeah? But not Marie. She was basically emanating disgust every time Joe Schmoe was around. She has the same kind of aura when she’s around you.”

Felix was not aware that there was any sort of animosity between him and Marie. They’d been getting along rather fine, from what he could tell. Even though she dumped Felix onto Gabriel after realizing they were friends, she still talked to him once a day. “Huh. Didn’t think she thought of me like that.”

“But, here’s where it gets weird.” Gabriel rests his hands on the wheel and stares at the yellow lines in the parking lot. He’s got that distant look in his eye — like he still can’t figure it out. “One day, he tried to put his arm around her. It was in the fall, maybe three years ago. We were in sophomore — second year. And she actually punched him out.” He throws his fist back, hitting an imaginary face over his right shoulder. “Wha-pow. Just like that. We call it the ‘Bloody Marie’ incident.”

“Jesus. That’s intense.”

“Blew his entire nose out. Few of his friends came at her and bang.” Gabriel throws up a few mock martial arts moves. “She took them all out. Dudes almost twice her size came at her — she took them all down. Like, real martial arts movie shit. Punch, roundhouse kick, judo throw.”

Note to self: don’t sneak up on Marie.

“Marie walked out of there like it was nothing — I know her well enough to know she was embarrassed to shit and turned herself into an ostrich in the bathrooms. But not Joe Schmoe. His nose was bleeding for the rest of the day. And he was angry about it. Guy spent the rest of the day talking about how he was going to get even to the rest of the football team.”

“What happened after that?”

“He followed her back home. And then, nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Gabriel mimics a bird with his scarred knuckles. “Woosh. He was never heard from again. He went into the forest, and never returned. The official story is that his family moved to Miami. But I don’t buy that for a second.” He shakes his head. “I saw a recording a few days later that showed Joe Schmoe entering the forest. Something happened in there, man.”

Felix takes a few moments to absorb all the information. He can’t help but feel a bit giddy past the fear. All the evidence is pointing towards hypernatural phenomena. This is what he’s been looking for — even if it may kill him. “Sounds like it, dude. I’ll keep my eyes peeled.”

“What I’m trying to say is this, Felix.” The Volkswagen’s engine sputters to life — a rattling cough of machinery well past its prime. Dying cogs. Zombified engines. “Don’t get too close to her,” Gabriel says. “It’s for your own good.”

The first lock clicks open at 3127. It took me ten and some minutes, but I did it. This is the most fulfilling thing I’ve done all day — I try to ignore how depressing that fact is and start fiddling with the other combination lock. Even though it’s a complete breach of privacy, I can’t really stop myself.

Hell, the thought of what could be inside the case is more exciting than what may actually be inside. Could be anything. Could be a prototype laser pistol, a wrist-held time machine, maybe even a spy’s utility belt. Felix could be a science spy from MIT, eavesdropping on the locals to discover the long hidden secrets of an abnormal town.

But that would be a bit cliche, wouldn’t it? He’s not really a spy-sort of person. I’m pretty good at sensing people’s intentions — at least, I think I am — and Felix didn’t really have the making of a spy. His intentions were too clear. Every time I’ve interacted with him, he’s been checking the time on his watch like he’s waiting for something to happen. At first, I thought he was impatient and wanted to stop talking to me, but he’s been doing it everybody. And he always gives a different answer to why.

“My schedule,” he said. “Waiting for something.” “Just fidgeting.” “I really like my watch.”

Bah.

Either way, it’s frustrating. Almost as frustrating as trying to brute force this second combination lock. Annoying. Annoying, annoying, annoying. I close my eyes and empty my thoughts, focusing on the cold clicks of the combinations spinning by.

The spiral of possibility goes on and on. Each digit brings potential. Perfect circle. The future can only go in a single direction — there is no need to look back. A singularity, burning white, black, and blue hysteria past the event horizon, invites me. Revere and revile, hand in hand. Faster. Faster and faster and faster and faster—

Shrill ear-scratching buzz. I look up.

It’s 1 PM. Class begins now, but I have a spare period to lounge around and laze about. I should have a spare period, but not today.

Once again, Felix has robbed me of my relaxation time. The second combination lock reads 5712 — I release it and reach for my flip phone.

Adrian sent me a message, but embarrassingly enough, I was too engrossed by the fiddly sounds of a combination lock to actually notice it. Whoops.

FOUND FELIX, the message reads, SOUTH WING ENTRANCE. GOING TOWARDS LIBRARY WITH GAB.

The library. I don’t think anybody’s willingly stepped foot in the Reyes Copper library for a very long time. It’s private enough for a small interrogation. I don’t think Gabriel is willing to get in my way.

I scoop up the grant papers, shove them in a blue file folder, and dump them into my bag, reset the first combination lock, then make my way out of the room.

As soon as I take a step out the front door, I realize I still have my lab coat on. No — I’ve been wearing around a lab coat like a science weirdo for the past few hours. I step back into the club room, take a moment to bury my face in my hands, and silently wish I could turn back time.

Felix doesn’t have any classes in the afternoon, but he likes to hang around. The library has a few old timey books he’s had his eye on for a while. Real leather and parchment books, apparently. They might prove of some use, or, at least of some entertainment for a few hours.

“Man, you’re lifesaver,” Gabriel mutters, walking through the halls with Felix. “I still don’t understand why they don’t bother teaching calculus at this academy. It’s like they don’t want us to succeed in further academia.”

“Don’t mention it. It’s not that bad once you get used to it.” Felix takes a drag of his take-out iced tea. “It’s just a different kind of thinking. Like legos, but cursed and math.”

“I do like me some legos.”

The last of the highschool kids are filing into their matchbox classrooms, learning with all the enthusiasm of a five day old corpse. Some of them have perfected their zombie shamble, staggering as though their souls are escaping through their feet.

Felix stops and checks his watch. 1:04 PM. “I know this is a bit out of the blue,” he says, “but I’ve been wondering something.”

Gabriel stops, sneakers squeaking on tile. “What’s up?”

“Have you been having any weird dreams as of late?”

“Weird dreams? Hmm.” He shrugs. “Can’t say. I’ve been sleeping like an oversized muscle baby these past few weeks.”

“Anything at all?”

“I’ve had normal dreams. I can tell you about those.”

It’s a start. Strangeness and the mundane are merely different points on the axis of knowing. One man’s mundane is another man’s strange. “Sure. Every point of data helps,” Felix says.

They follow the signs, two pairs of footsteps clattering towards the north wing’s library. Even their footsteps seem to carry a certain treble, a certain rhythm of monotonous staccato and empty head pain.

“My dreams are usually pretty exciting,” Gabriel says, resting his hands on the back of his neck. “Like, fantasy and swords and magic and dragon type dreams.”

“Exciting.”

“Yeah. Lots of world saving going on, even though it might not be *real* world saving. If you know what I mean.”

“I gotcha.”

“Like, the whole thing’s got me wondering sometimes.” Gabriel glances out the window, stepping around patches of floorbound sunlight. “The hell are dreams, anyways?”

“Some researchers say they’re the result of your brain’s bioelectricity going crazy when you sleep.”

“Yeah, but there’s gotta be something more than that. Everybody has them, right?”

Felix bites his lower lip. “Sure.”

“I know the whole logical conclusion is some undiscovered process with how the brain goes and consciousness and whatever, but sometimes, it almost feels too real. Like there’s actually something more to dreams.” Gabriel huffs and swings his arms back to his side. “The world would be a lot more interesting that way, I think.”

Felix gives it a single thought, then shrugs. “I don’t think so, man.”

“Eh? Why not?”

“Nightmares are also dreams.”

“I think it’s a good trade-off,” Gabriel says, rubbing his chin.

“And given how horrifying nightmares can get, I’d rather not there be some actual horrible entity haunting humanity.” Felix waits a few moments, letting the implication settle in. “The last thing I’d want is Lovecraft to be right. Cosmic horror and all.”

“You know what? Fair enough, man.”

They reach the library’s dingy white plastic door, who’s plastic LI--ARY sign is missing a few letters, and step through the push door.

Although the Reyes Cooper library is technically a library, calling it a library would be an insult to the proper libraries of the world. Felix switches on the lights, illuminating the twelve black bookshelves lining the walls. He’s passed through this place several times before, but now that he’s trying to look for particular books, the empty spots and poor taste are more than apparent. Really, what kind of asshole keeps three copies of the same vietnam war history book?

“I think we were going over integration last time,” Felix muses, dumping his bag on a creaky foldable table. He checks his watch. 1:08 PM. “Got your stuff?”

Gabriel plops himself in a plastic chair — damn thing nearly shatters underneath his steel ass — and takes out his notebook, pencil, and a clear-plastic tumbler the size of Felix’s thigh. He launches into a lazy salute. “Ready to die, Chief.”

And Felix can already smell the artificial vanilla whey-protein the thigh-sized bottle filled with. He nearly gags. For a second, he’s left wondering if the body builders of the world are truly human.

I can hear them through the library door. Professional slacker Gabriel Markov and Career Weirdo Felix Conti have somehow slacked so hard that they've swung back around into being productive. It’s almost like magic.

The incomplete library door sign stares back at me as I consider whether to barge in or not. On one hand, this whole briefcase business seems pretty urgent, and the curiosity stirring up my brain is irresistibility sweet. On the other hand, this impromptu tutoring is a legitimate small town miracle. This may be the very first time I’ve seen Gabriel using his free time on something productive — he’s always wasting his time on either getting muscles, doing donuts in the local chain coffee store’s parking lot, or partying. It’s a mystery how the club still has money with him as treasurer.

On top of that, I’ll have to deal with Felix directly again. I take a deep breath and try to wring out all the bad thoughts.

You’ll only have to deal with him for a few minutes, I tell myself. Just try not to concentrate on how annoying his near-whimsical mannerisms are. Or how he never seems to be really paying attention. Or that dopey half-smile of his. All of him makes me want to claw out my eyes, and since I can’t figure out why that makes me want to claw my eyes out, I want to claw out my eyes even more.

“Gods, I think I’m turning into an angry angsty black cat. Somebody take me out before that happens.”

I make a decision. I’ll count to ten, then barge in regardless — these little details shouldn’t matter to me. I’ll drop in this briefcase, take a peek at what’s inside, then leave. I can go back home and get back to work, maybe catch Aniya somewhere and subtly beg for some help reading all of the garbage dumped on me. All in a day’s work.

I start counting, curl my toes and look at the sparse polk-a-dot pattern in the ceiling tiles I’ve somehow never noticed until now, reach ten, then barge into the library shoulder first.

Like a rock thrown into a tranquil pond, the busywork atmosphere disintegrates into ripples as I step into the classroom sized library.

Felix and Gabriel stare up at me as I enter — in between them is a table full of looseleaf mathematical scrawls and cans of off-brand soft drinks. I can practically smell the corn syrup and leftover vanilla stink from Gabriel’s daily whey-protein abomination.

But I’m here to do a job. I march up to Felix and place the briefcase in front of him. “Conti. You’ve got a delivery.”

He looks up at me, confused. “For me?”

“Do you see anybody else named Conti?”

“Uhhh…”

Felix actually has the gall to look around. I bite my tongue and suppress the urge to quip at his absolute clueless nature.

“But I wasn’t expecting anything,” he says, looking between me and Gabriel.

“Damn dude,” Gabriel says, putting his pen down. “That case looks like it would have nuclear launch codes inside. Maybe a gun or something.”

I look at Gabriel — he throws up his hands in defeats and stops talking.

“Pelchat told me to give it to you.” I cross my arms. “It’s from MIT. Hurry up and get it open.”

Felix takes a single glance at me, then nods. “Alright. Give me a moment.”

No resistance. I was expecting him to tell us to leave, to throw a fit, or maybe do a spy thing and take out a hidden pistol and tell us we know too much. It’s almost disappointing. Does this guy not value his privacy?

After a full minute of fumbling with the combination locks, Felix rubs his chin. “I don’t actually know the combination,” he says, like he’s made some sort of great discovery.

This guy. This absolute dunce of a guy. “Why the—”

“I’ve got an idea,” Felix says, before I can finish my sentence. He leans in close to the briefcase, closes his eyes, and starts fiddling with the locks the same way I did.

Not even thirty seconds later, the first combination lock pops open. I can tell how he did it, but not how it’s possible. He’s picking up on the nearly nonexistent clicks of the pins locking into place — but that shouldn’t be possible. Good locks are designed to give off nearly no noise. And this guy is picking them up over the ambient sounds of air conditioning, our breaths, his own heartbeat. This guy is something else. No, this guy has to be something else.

But what the hell is he?

“Holy shit,” Gabriel says, summarizing my inner thoughts, “That’s some real spy shit.”

The second lock clicks open in under a minute. I wasn’t keeping track of the time, but it couldn’t have been longer than a minute. An untrained observer would think Felix actually knew the passcode.

I already have an over-shoulder view, but Gabriel abandons his notes and scrambles over. He takes up a spot on Felix’s other shoulder, and presses his hands against the table — the musclehead is practically vibrating with puppy-dog excitement.

“Here goes,” Felix says, cracking open the case.

Inside the case is what looks to be a ruler merged with a vice clamp — a caliper, I think — and a bright yellow camera-gun thing. The caliper looks heavy; a hunk of extendable metal that looks like a retractable baton crossed with a medieval maul. You could crack a skull with that thing, no doubt.

The three of us stare at the contents for a while.

Felix rubs his chin for a few seconds, then nods triumphantly. “I have no idea what this stuff is.”

“Oi. What do you mean, you don’t know what this stuff is?,” Marie says in an alarmingly low voice. “It was sent to you. You.”

Felix can sense Marie giving him some sort of death stare, but the contents of the case seem a little bit more important. There was nothing in his assignment’s details about any sort of equipment — even though the case and MIT emblem are genuine, it couldn’t have been the department. Somebody else sent him these tools.

He picks up the caliper in his hands and adjusts the measuring grips. Unlike conventional calipers, this one is well-balanced. Concerningly balanced. “I’m not really sure what I can do with these.”

The camera looks waterproof — all of the plastic seems to be hermetically sealed with a fine layer of rubber-like adhesive. A label on the camera’s grip says IR RECORDER, and both the camera and caliper have an odd fruity smell to them. Machine oil?

For the first time in his relatively short life, Felix has no idea what he’s looking at. He flips the camera’s switch and points it at the table — the room lights up in hues of blue to red on the screen. The spot where Gabriel was sitting has stains of red heat coming off it, and there are orange handprints all over the table.

“Loitering is against school policy,” Marie says, disappointment nearly dripping from her voice. “If you want to play around your toys, I recommend you go elsewhere. Before you wreck something.”

Felix turns — Marie is glaring down at him with narrowed green eyes. She wears an indifferent frown like a scar.

“Is that a legitimate campus rule?”

“Yes. Are you going to abide by it?”

“Are you the proper person to enforce such a rule?”

Marie taps her finger on her arm. A sudden shrill silence pervades the room — Gabriel is holding his breath, three steps away.

The only sound is the tick of the library clock, counting second by second.

“Alright,” Felix says, “You saw through me. You already knew, didn’t you? Your mind is a priceless thing.”

Quietly, he packs the tools back into the briefcase, shuffles his papers back into his bag, and walks past Marie towards the library door. Without a single glance back, he stops and nods to himself, then leaves.

I don’t understand him. I don’t think I ever can. I keep my eyes forward, staring at nothing in particular.

What the hell did he mean by that? Priceless? I don’t even know where to begin with that.

“Prez, what did he mean by that? Priceless?” Gabriel says from my side.

What did he think I saw in him? Does he think that I see something in him? What’s all this about already knowing?

“Marie?” Gabriel waves a hand near my face. “...You there? Marie Curie? Marie Weiss?”

“Stop talking.” I take a deep breath and rub the bridge of my nose — there’s a tiny ache in the right side of my head. “Don’t call me stupid nicknames.”

“Yeesh,” Gabriel says. He tears his gaze away from the library’s door and starts packing his bags. Picks up a notebook and twirls it in the air. “Have you finally realized why most normal people avoid you? Are you finally back in the land of the living?”

“I could hear you perfectly fine, thanks. You’re annoying.” My toes uncurl. I take a deep breath. “You’re a lip-flapping machine. I thought you’d stop talking by yourself.”

“Oh, hell no. Like you’re one to talk.”

“More qualified to talk than you are.” I scoff. “At least I actually have brain cells to waste, unlike you.”

“I think you may be getting brain cells confused with ground beef.”

“Go ram your car off a bridge.”

Although Gabriel is smart enough to not say it, the look he’s giving me says that he knows I’m in a worse mood than usual.

“You’re going to give your heart attack one of these days, getting worked up about the strangest goddamn things.” Gabriel takes a step forward and sits at the edge of the table. “Seriously.”

“Maybe I will. A free ticket off this mortal coil sounds pretty nice, right about now.”

I’ve known this jackass named Gabriel for a long time. He hasn’t changed at all from his earlier years — he’s always had this awful irreverence, even as a wee lad. Maybe that’s why we’re still friends; some sort of mutual respect found in being an arrogant prick. But I’m not as big of a prick as he is.

“Did something happen between you two?” Gabriel asks, sucking air through his teeth. “I don’t know, that seemed a little bit harsh.” He pauses. “Even for you.”

I glance at him, frowning. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Hrnnghhnhghn,” Gabriel says.

“...Not that much.” I roll my shoulders and stare at the library door. “I suppose I’ve already realized that we’re never going to properly communicate. We’re too different.”

“You can tell that after just two weeks?”

“I have my ways, y’know? Get off my back, will ya?” I can feel some vein twitching in my forehead. “Don’t you have a girlfriend to get all mopey with?”

Gabriel almost looks offended. “Having a girlfriend and trying to talk with female friends aren’t mutually exclusive. What’s with you?”

He actually asked what’s wrong with me. I turn on him and brace against the library’s table. “Oh, maybe if you actually did your job, I wouldn’t have to waste my slowly dwindling free time on paperwork!”

“I do my job just fine!” Gabriel crosses his arms. “Everything gets done before the deadline, every time. They’re called deadlines for a reason!”

Somehow, our conversation has ended up in a screaming match. I swing my backpack and start digging through it. “Well, you’ve got another job! Finish filing all of this bullshit for Pelchat so we can get some extra money before we graduate!”

Gabriel pauses. “Isn’t this actual embezzlement?!”

“Screw you, just do it!”

“Watch me, I will!”

I take out the blue file folder, and Gabriel tears it out of my hands and shoves it into his bag. “It’ll be done by tomorrow morning, you goddamn bitch!”

“Good!”

We stare at each other in angry silence for a good while — then burst into laughter. The nostalgia almost hurts.

“Man, it’s been a while since we’ve done that,” Gabriel says, standing up and stretching his arms.

“You don’t say.” I have to crane my neck upwards to look at him. “Been a while, for sure.”

“It’s only a month until we graduate, too.”

Highschool graduation. For some, life ends there — any time after that is an endless pit of mediocrity and aimless drifting. Thankfully, it seems like the people still around Reyes Cooper have slightly better futures.

“Hey, maybe you can go and flip burgers after you flunk out of college ball.” I rest my palm on my cheek.

“And maybe you can become a hooker or something. Maybe you can get one of those garter belts that have magnets, so you can roll around and pick up spare change on the stage.” Gabriel starts miming like there’s a stripper pole behind him.

I roll my eyes. “I’d rather be dead.” And suddenly, an idea crawls into my brain. “Say, you and Felix hang out often, right?”

“Just about.”

“Whaddya talk about?”

“Everyday things. He’s pretty good with fantasy.” Gabriel’s casual smile freezes; the look of somebody who’s been caught doing naughty things. “I told him about the ‘Bloody Marie’ incident earlier.”

“You told him about that?”

“Conversation kinda drifted there.”

“Well, I guess.” I stretch my arms above my head and yawn. “It… was probably my fault that the rumors got as bad as they did. Whoops.”

“Moping around with your signature scary look won’t do any favors, yup.”

“Oh well.” Given Gabriel’s generally blasé attitude, he probably wouldn’t have found out much about Felix. This is the same idiot who hung out with me for two months before even learning my name. “Whatever.”

“One thing, though.” Gabriel stands up and walks to my front, standing two heads taller than me. “Do you have some sort of grudge against Felix?”

“A grudge?” I drum my fingers against my cheek, thinking. “Not in particular. I can’t really stay mad at things.”

Gabriel winces. “But what about Sher—”

“She keeps giving me new reasons to dislike her,” I say, reflexively. She’s that one girl who I can never remember, but I keep hating her every time she shows up. Snobby cunt.

“Riiiiiiight.” Gabriel nods, then cocks an eyebrow. “But if you don’t keep grudges — supposedly — why do you keep trying to rile up Felix?”

“He annoys me.” I can’t get more specific than that, because I’m really not sure why he annoys me. “Everything he does. It’s all so bothersome. And that goddamn faux-zen aura... “

That may be it. It’s like Felix refuses to get mad, or, maybe, he can’t get mad. Either way, it makes me mad. I know it’s ironic, but it still pisses me off to no end. There’s something wrong with him that makes me want to knock him over the head. If I hit hard enough, maybe it’ll fix itself like a DVD player.

Gabriel backs up and picks up his backpack, much like one would back away from a ticking time bomb. “Alright, you do you, Marie…”

“I think I’ve figured it out just now,” I realize. I turn away and knock my knuckles with my palm. “He always looks so goddamn self-satisfied. That’s it. Like an oversized fat cat. I swear I’m gonna…”

“If anything, you’re more like a…” Gabriel trails off before he finishes his thought. He takes a step back towards the library door. Then another. And another.

My knuckles crack as I look at him. “Eh? Wanna finish that sentence, punk?”

“Hey man, I’m just saying — you know he likes you, right? Just saying.”

He’s halfway to the door. I sling my bag over my shoulder and casually walk at him.

“And? You think I care?”

“Listen man, I’m not taking the fall for this — he’s the one who wants to get involved — he didn’t back down after the story — c’mon man —”

“People with unfounded infatuations should drop dead. Maybe I should help you out with the process of that.”

Even more veins in my forehead are twitching. I might have to bap Gabriel a bit harder than usual.

Gabriel gives up trying to negotiate with me; he makes a break for the door. I chase after him. He gets there one second earlier — my fingers brush by the rough collar of his varsity jacket — and he swings through the door. I’m caught by the slowly closing hinges. But I’m going to make him pay.

“Hurry up and die!” I shout, forcing the door open with a barely hidden grin.

“I’m too pretty to die!” Gabriel shouts, sprinting away. He’s only ten steps away.

And it’s just a chase from there.

There is another reason Felix cut the lecture short. The books he was looking for weren’t in the library. There wasn’t even a single leatherback — it was all recent dime book dredge and trite popular history. He didn’t even need to check his watch to know the school’s collection was much too mundane for his attention.

He turned his attention to the blue sky and the tiny streaks of cirrus clouds far above. According to the forecast, the weather isn’t going to last.

Felix makes the most of the fragments of sunshine and decides to walk back to the church, his temporary new home. He walks through the Ridge, the heart of Sapphire Isle, passing through commercial hubs and bus stations. There is an almost a crowd on the streets — a colony of pre-season tourists mingling with the locals. Corralled in alleyways made by miniature skyscrapers, the streets look like a pint-sized snapshot of a proper city. It is almost cute.

Where there are people, there are events. History happens in every moment, yet only some events are worth recording. Even in the smallest ramshackle village, there is bound to be a public record of some form.

And for the first time, Felix has enough free time to justify a visit to the book shop he passes by every morning.

The store is a two story bookstore, with a lean portico protecting a small table displaying best sellers beside the front doors. There are plenty of interesting titles up front, if one happened to be interested in the new hackneyed best seller. But none of these things interest Felix — they may as well just be burnable tabloids. The good stuff is always inside. Allowing himself a small smile, he steps in.

A fat grey and white tabby cat greets him from the checkout, staring at him upside down. It flicks its tail at him, then returns its attention back to licking its paw. A pudgy, balding man nods to Felix — a silent greeting. It seems like Felix passed the entrance exam.

Felix takes in the old paper smell and speckled dark green carpet and iridescent lamp lights, smiling wider. Black racks filled with mismatched books populate the entire first floor, a maze with only genre labels to navigate by. Thriller, romance, sci-fi, all the usual suspects. He wouldn’t find anything interesting on this floor. “Howdy there, kitty,” he says, walking towards the staircase lodged in the back of the shop.

The tabby only looks at him once, makes a listless meow, then turns away.

Felix goes upstairs, footsteps tapping on a hardwood spiral staircase.

Compared to the first floor, the second is subdued. There are no genre labels — always a good sign — and the isles have more glass cabinets than plain old metal racks. He picks a row at random and delves into the weird and esoteric.

The Pamphlet of the Names, Filo's Folio, A Study in Kitab al-Loth in D-minor — the titles tickle Felix’s fancy for strangeness. The single-volume, single-edition, probably single-copy books always felt like something special to him. Books like these are time capsules from the past, meant to only reveal their secrets to a certain subset of prying eyes. It’s the literary equivalent of a peeping on a sacred woman — profane, yet utterly irresistible.

Although, realistically speaking, there are many roadblocks to such a goal. One of them happens to be monetary. Felix can definitely not afford most of these price tags at the current moment. But he’s somebody who can be satisfied with a mere spark in his imagination — he knows the voyeur-tier curiosity is something that only stems from the fetishization of the unknown.

Reality is a bitch like that, sometimes.

But only sometimes.

Art is merely the act of arranging the known into the unknown. Science and art happen to be intertwined — it takes an imaginative leap to establish new territory. Felix is technically on one of those exploratory expeditions, but he’s already made progress. At the end of the day, he’s still a normal person with other interests and needs. Detours like this help him stay sane.

He browses through two more isles, mentally jotting down notes of titles to further investigate. Before he can enter the third, some crisp sensation of chill enters his lower spine — impaled by a hypothetical icicle. The reflections in the glass cabinets sharpen to visual daggers. Felix clutches his forehead.

The same sensation. It is the same sensation again. The fleeting whispers left behind by the dreams — distant and faded jolts of heart-stopping apprehension — flood back into his mind. Deja vu can’t describe it — this is something much more visceral. He’s been here before. He’s been here one million, three-hundred thousand and seventeen times before. This is not something he is supposed to remember.

The isles are the same thing as the brass-mirror hallways, where checkered flooring haunts his every step. He can’t remember the dreams themselves, only the feelings left behind. But those feelings are here, poised with a knife above his chest. The dread drags a finger on his skin, forcing shivers on contact — somebody. There’s somebody here in the next isle over.

His instinct tells him to run and never look back, but his mind knows the truth. This is another piece of the puzzle — 3:37 PM shaped puzzle piece. The root of the strange phenomenon. This is one thing he can’t turn away from.

There is a woman nonchalantly reading through a red-leather volume of Enmeglan Fragments, a gloved hand resting on her cheek.

Somehow, Felix knows she’s searching for something. Her focus is almost palpable.

She looks half a decade older than Felix. A blue and black cross between a dress and a suit presses tight against her curves, and her slim pantyhouse-clad legs are roots that sprout from black boots.

She looks like the keeper of a library many times more impressive than whatever could be found in this town.

Her overcast grey hair, tied mostly back in a fluffy ponytail, frames rectangular glasses and gentle cheeks.

She is like a grey flower in the middle of a concrete ocean.

Felix can’t place her — she is paradoxically both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. They have never met, but he can’t help but question how the feelings managed to seep into his mind.

Slowly, her pale blue eyes drift towards his.

An invisible bullet pierces his heart.

They are the same eyes behind the mirror.

Instinct overwhelms him.

He flees. His mind shuts off — he sees a slideshow of breathless running. Stairwell. Mirrors. Door. Street. Street light, pavement, alleyway, shatter, shatter, shatter. Fragments of sky falling all around. He clutches the briefcase until his palm bleeds. The streets of the Ridge blur into a viscous visual blob.

As soon as his legs make sense again, Felix ducks into the first building he can.

People are noisily eating burgers, fries, and sipping oversized soft drinks in red and yellow booths. Fluorescent lights flicker. The cashier, a brown-haired teenager, takes orders from a small row of people lined up in front of a register with an exhausted expression. A select few are looking at Felix funny.

He finds the will to catch his breath, dropping to his knees and catching his balance with the briefcase. When he’s ready, he turns around.

There isn’t anybody following him, as far as he can tell.

He feels a little silly for running off like that — there wasn’t even a good reason. Logically speaking, he had never met the woman before, and there is nothing about Felix’s personal life that would inspire such a fearsome enemy.

But he knows he did the right thing, from somewhere deep in the animalistic fight-or-flight part of his lizard brain. If he stayed for any longer, something terrible would’ve happened. Something he can’t comprehend.

He looks down at the blood on his palm, seeping from wounds made from his own nails pressing too hard — it swims with shades of fluorescence and corporate fast-food logos.

“Sorry,” he mutters, to no one in particular.

He sticks to the main street on the last leg back to the church. The cloudy late afternoon already ushered in the first streaks of night, causing the street lamps to spill their radiance early. Tourists and locals are going about their days around him, buzzing with the sounds of commerce and early nightlife.

There are no signs of anybody following him.

His mind begins to settle, but the jittery adrenaline is only replaced by a heavy wariness. His shoulders are small boulders of flesh and lead.

Felix is exhausted, no doubt. He’s spent night after night developing theories, letting his mind run wild with hypotheticals and imaginary elements. His dreams are taking on a shape of their own.

His investigation was progressing steadily prior to today. It was merely a small side venture in addition to his normal research, something he couldn’t help but get a little bit excited about. But in this sudden moment of clarity, basking in yellow and red streetlights, he is forced to question his own motives.

There is something strange going on in this town. The people, the time, the dissociative episodes — the painful sense of deja vu. If he didn’t have his watch, he would certainly lose track of the date.

And then, he realizes it. He’s feeling fear for the very first time in his life.

“This is ridiculous, isn’t it?”

He managed to imagine himself into a manic psychosis. That must be it. Nothing good would come of prying any further into this town’s nonexistent secrets.

So for now, he decides to suspend his haphazard investigation and keep his head low with his real work.

Even though he resolves himself to forget, a creeping premonition springs on him. Something would still come after him. The briefcase has to mean something — somebody already knows where he is.

“I guess I’ve been found out,” he says, walking along the boardwalk.

He dumps all the strangeness from his mind and relaxes his shoulders. Dreams don’t mean anything. He takes out his cell phone, then wipes the memory card clean of everything. Contacts, messages, photos. The photos. He didn’t know anybody.

“What happened to the person who recorded the forest that night?”

A question suddenly pops into his mind. Gabriel mentioned a recording of the second part of the Marie incident.

Resolving himself to ask Gabriel tomorrow, he slings the briefcase over his shoulder and watches the boardwalk’s light fade to nothing through his eyelids.