CHAPTER FIVE: Amateur Hour

He looked at the can.

INGREDIENTS:

Navy Beans (49%)

Water

Tomato Puree (19%)

Thickener (1422)

Salt

Flavoring

Color (160c)

Jacob Irwing didn’t know what to do with this information. He barely knew what to do with himself. He was twenty-six years old, he worked in a milk-bottling plant and his life had been turned upside-down.

He was seated at the one small table in his apartment and he was doing...he didn’t know. He was waiting? He’d followed Agent Z up to the rooftop, saw her kill something that he couldn’t see until it was dead and then she had told him a bunch of weird shit before freaking out and excusing herself. She’d told him she needed ‘to get something handled’.

And now here he was, alone in his apartment, staring at cans as if that’d get his life back on track.

What the fuck was he supposed to do with any of this?

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Someone was knocking at the door.

His first thought was that it was Zed, back from whatever task she had given herself. But that didn’t make sense. He was only thinking that because it seemed that his thoughts were only ever ‘Zed this, Zed that’ tonight. But she didn’t seem like a knocking person. No, considering that the sun was down and mail was unlikely, this was probably his apartment manager.

Jacob didn’t have any friends in the apartment complex. It wasn’t the kind of place you went to make friends.

So, with that in mind, when he looked through the peephole he wasn’t expecting to see absolutely nothing. He hadn’t heard anyone running in the hall outside. He opened the door just enough to stick his head out, so that he could look up and down the hallwa-

A click of a lighter. The fwoosh of a flame and the steady smell of burning.

Standing in the hallway in front of Jacob was a very tall and very pretty woman. She was several inches taller than Jacob himself, she had to be six and a half foot at least. To Jacob’s eyes she looked Hispanic, with light brown skin and dark brown hair half-bound behind her hat in a cascade of curls. And she was wearing an absolutely absurd getup. She was wrapped in a suit that was all various shades of white, from coat to tie to undershirt. And over even that, she was wearing an unbuttoned white trenchcoat and a panama hat that was, you guessed it, white. It was the kind of outfit you saw in viral photos, like the one that Jacob had wanted to take of Agent Z, where some photographer has captured an image of someone who looks like they live in a video-game or a Watchowski film. It didn’t feel real. Or maybe it was too real. Here was a main character.

“Hello!,” she said brightly. She was smoking, a long thin cigarillo between her fingers. A plume of smoke obscured much of her face and she reeked of whatever was in it, which smelled like a high school chemistry classroom. She was smoking despite the entire apartment being a NO SMOKING zone. Despite the smoke detectors in every room and every hall. Jacob, his eyes stinging from the fumes, looked down. Her shoes (white) were covered in grime, as were the bottom half of her trousers and the hem of her long coat. Some of the filth had been there for a very long time.

“Yeah okay,” Jacob said. “No thanks.” He shut the door. He might have been out of his depth but he wasn’t an idiot. This lady was clearly some sort of monster.

“Hey!,” he heard her cry from the other side of the door. He still had the awful smell of her in his nose. “What was that for?”

Jacob grimly reached over to his bed, which was near the door, and grabbed hold of the steel baseball bat he kept by the bedside. He didn’t own a gun and this was the best he had. (Don’t worry, by the way, a bullet cannot hurt this creature). He didn’t trust the door to keep the woman out but the moment it opened, he was resolved to clock the first thing that walked through with a full-power swing.

He was oddly calm and some part of him registered a sort of dull shock at his response. Was it just over-exposure? Had the day just worn him right out of fucks to give, having eroded its way through all of his adrenaline and all of his fear until there was only something cold and concrete left? Was he just tired of feeling scared? Or, and he had to think this, even if it wasn’t useful, was seeing that lady doing something to him? Was his mind being destroyed even now, just as Agent Z had done? He had to consider that.

“Tell you what,” the attempted intruder said. “I can see that you have a very sturdy bat there.” The door was closed. It was still closed. It was still closed. Don’t swing yet, don’t swing, keep an eye on the knob-

“Let’s try this again.”

He looked at the can.

INGREDIENTS:

Navy Beans (49%)

Water

Tomato Puree (19%)

Thickener (1422)

Salt

Flavoring

Color (160c)

Jacob Irwing didn’t know what to do with this information. He barely knew what to do with himself. He was twenty-six years old and-and-and- He was holding his baseball bat for some reason? He stood up, his train of thought disrupted. His mind drifted free for a moment, as human minds are wont to do when confronted with a blind spot. Already he was concocting very normal stories to explain it. Stuff like: ‘I grabbed it without thinking when I was pacing my apartment and just forgot’.

But you and I know better, don’t we?

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Someone was knocking at the door.

His first thought was that it was Zed, back from whatever task she had given herself. But that didn’t make sense. He was only thinking that because it seemed that his thoughts were only ever ‘Zed this, Zed that’ tonight. But she didn’t seem like a knocking person. No, considering that the sun was down and mail was unlikely, this was probably his apartment manager.

Jacob didn’t have any friends in the apartment complex. It wasn’t the kind of place you went to make friends.

So, with that in mind, when he looked through the peephole he wasn’t expecting to see absolutely nothing. He hadn’t heard anyone running in the hall outside. He opened the door just enough to stick his head out, so that he could look up and down the hallwa-

A click of a lighter. The fwoosh of a flame and the steady smell of burning.

Standing in the hallway in front of Jacob was a very tall and very pretty woman. If you want to think about her description a little more than that, you can follow Jacob’s current thoughts just a few paragraphs up. That’s what he’s thinking again. But there’d be no point in just repeating text that’s already been put out in this very chapter, would there?

“I feel like we got off on the wrong foot,” the smoking woman said and immediately set off alarm bells in Jacob’s head. Most people, when confronted with a statement like that from someone they’ve never met before, would probably just glaze over it, assume it to be an error or question them. But Jacob? Right now, after all the events of this day, he is primed. He has become a believer in the world outside memory.

So when a mysterious woman, one who somewhat looked like a not-real-person, sought out his apartment specifically and acted as if they’d already met? He was still holding the baseball bat and what happened next happened without the intervention of conscious thought, a remnant of his decision to swing at whoever walks through that door…

He took a swing.

He looked at the can.

INGREDIENTS:

Navy Beans (49%)

Water

Tomato Puree (19%)

Thickener (1422)

Salt

Flavoring

Color (160c)

Jacob Irwing didn’t know what to do with thi-

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Someone was knocking at the door.

For some reason this brought about a near-visceral response from him, his fingers tightening around the baseball bat. It was an ingrained decision, an auto-immune response. And all Jacob could think was: When did I pick up my bat?

He got up and looked through the peephole without entertaining any other thoughts. He saw nothing standing in the hallway outside. He opened the door. Outside was the woman. She was clutching her cigarillo in one hand and there was more of that chemical smoke, though Jacob had no frame of reference to know this.

It was a very pure white smoke.

“You fucking brute! I can’t believe you d-”

She stopped herself a moment later, holding her free hand to her sturdy bosom. Her hat was askew.

“No. Nevermind. I’ve screwed this up already.”

He looked at the can.

INGREDIENTS:

Navy Beans (49%)

Water

Tomato Puree (19%)

Thickener (1422)

Salt

Flavoring

Color (160c)

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Someone was at the door.

Jacob got up from his chair. He didn’t even realise he was still holding the baseball bat. He opened it without checking the peephole. Why would he bother looking? He had a sense it wouldn’t be useful.

“Oh!,” the smoking woman gasped when he opened the door. She cringed back at the sight of the bat, like she was surprised. She was a pretty good actor. “Please don’t hit me with that bat, sir!”

“Huh? Oh?” Jacob dropped the bat. Why did he have that? Why did he think it would be okay to answer the door with that? And why is this woman...the way she is? She was dressed in a ridiculous sense and she reeked of smoke, though the white haze drifting up from her cigarillo and sticking cloyingly to her pale clothes didn’t smell of tobacco at all. DIdn’t smell like weed either. And the smoke detectors in the hall weren’t going off. “I’m sorry miss. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

And then, a moment later, his thoughts caught up to the rest of him and he took her in and remembered much of the day and realised how suspicious this all was. So he said:

“Who are you?”

“You can call me Tilda,” she said, blowing a plume of smoke in the general vicinity of his face. It smelled not entirely unlike chlorine. She pouted. “I’m only trying to help.”

“No?” Jacob shut the door. Something very strange was going on here and he didn’t want to interact with any of it without Agent Z being there. Not that he entirely trusted Zed, she was certainly at least the second-craziest white girl he’d ever known, but she’d saved his life from the second of those headache weasels. And that had to count for something.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he said through the door. “But I don’t trust you. Can you come back later?” He reached down for the baseball bat again…

Her tone was icy.

“Do you really think that a door and a bat are all you need to keep me out, Jacob Irwing? Where do you think you get off, acting like this? To me? Now let me in before I force the issue.”

“Well now I’m for sure not letting you in.”

He looked at the can.

INGREDIENTS:

Navy Beans (49%)

Water

Tomato Puree (19%)

Thickener (1422)

Salt

Flavoring

Color (160c)

Jacob was already on his feet by the time the first knock came. It was like some part of him knew. He opened the door immediately, just a little and stared out. The smoking woman was standing there, looking much worse for wear. She looked tired, as if she’d been standing out there for the whole night.

And she had.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m here regarding your recent lottery tick-”

“Tilda,” Jacob said. And then stopped, taking a deep breath of the smoke. And just like that it all clicked. This was their thirteenth meeting and they’d all been here, like this, in this ever-moving but similar moment of time. His eyes widened. “I remember you. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Ah shit,” she said, staring down at him. She was wreathed in smoke, streamers of the stuff clinging to her. “Has inoculation already occurred?”

“What the hell are you talking about? What is- What’s been happening here?” Jacob’s mind was still struggling to process the recognition. He remembered it all now. Each of these occasions, even the ones that were edited out of the thing you are reading.

“Forget it,” she said. She sounded sad and small. “I’ll find another time. Go back to your fucking beans.”

“Excuse me? Nah! I'm gonna get a fucking answer from-"

But she was already walking away. Putting aside all theoretical best practices, Jacob flung the door open and stepped out into the hallway. “Oi! Come back here!” He strode after her, first in a fast walk and then a jog and then a run. And then she rounded a corner and he-

He stopped. What was he doing out here?

Tilda no longer existed in his head. And to tell the truth, she never had. He had just been borrowing it. Agent Z, if she was here, would call her a ‘Gemini-class’ creature. It was all about the smoke.

He looked at the can.

INGREDIENTS:

Navy Beans (49%)

Water

Tomato Puree (19%)

Thickener (1422)

Salt

Flavoring

Color (160c)

And then, with no small degree of satisfaction, he opened the damn thing and started preparing his very makeshift and very sad dinner for one. Wasn’t nothing wrong with a good set of baked beans and toast.

He was surprised, however, when he looked up and saw the first faint rays of dawn come in through the window. Where had the night gone?

And down down down and outside, standing at the foot of the apartment building, a white-gloved hand crushed a cigarillo in its fist. And then it was just smoke in the wind.