Fourteen years a captive of the city with the bleeding sky. Fifteen years in December. Tenebrous characters walking the streets like spectres barely there. The night is swiftly approaching. Dusk came from the east as the sun fell to the west; every color shifting and fading but for the tint of crimson. Crimson, never blue.

She wasn’t supposed to be out at night. Auntie was always so strict about it.

“Don’t let me catch you sneaking outside, Penelope. Especially at night! If you make it back, you’ll be grounded for a year!” That’s what she’d say, waggling her finger in faux sternness. Auntie was nice like that. She always found time to be a little silly. It was nice. But Penelope took her warnings all too seriously. Never go out at night. Never go out alone. Her city is a cruel, unpredictable place. Tragedy hiding behind every corner, It lurking in the shadows waiting to strike.

That’s what made tonight so odd.

Tonight, she and Auntie were outside the apartment, walking the city streets like rats scurrying from shadow to shadow. They weren’t alone at least. They were walking in a group, some twenty people strong. Stepping in quick time, footsteps creating crackled rhythm on the pavement.

“Auntie…” Penelope whimpers, clutching tightly at her Auntie’s sleeve. She’s stumbling over her own feet, out of rhythm, trying and failing to keep up. As she trips once more, her grip causes a little rip at the seams of Auntie’s shirt. Another hole to match all the others.

Auntie shushes her, voice quiet but sharp. Auntie was never sharp with her. Why was Auntie being sharp with her? Why were they outside? It’s nighttime; it’s dangerous! From the moment her Auntie had dragged her out of the smaller-than-a-baby’s-shoebox-sized apartment, Penelope's heart had been thumping something wild. Her heart had only thumped harder and faster when the group of walkers passed them on the curb. Sometimes, when Penelope was feeling rebellious, she’d watch the night overtake the sky from the apartment window. The walkers, usually a group of at least ten or more, walked the same path every night, although the people in the group weren’t the same every night. There was always someone new walking and someone old missing. Why they walked, she didn’t know and refused to ask.

Her heart had skipped a few beats when Auntie, a spring in her step, had marched into the group of walkers as if she belonged. Like they were old friends. Like nothing was out of the ordinary. And although Penelope trembled, Auntie pulled her along the path the walkers took. Random left and right turns, aimlessly changing directions from thin always to wide city street. In the past, Penelope had wondered where the walkers were headed. She had wondered if they know themselves. It seems, like it or not, her questions would soon give her answers.

Penelope’s eyes water, stinging harshly at the corners. She didn’t want answers. She wanted to go home.

Seeing her nieces tears, Auntie scoops her into her arms, pace never faltering. She tucks Penelope’s head under her chin but says nothing. No one in the group is talking, and that’s the only thing that makes sense.

They had left the apartment half an hour ago, right as the sun had set. Penelope had known they were doing something new tonight, she just hadn’t known what or why. Auntie had been talking about tonight for a year. Every time they went to the market for food, Auntie bought less which was weird when they could already afford so little. Every time she brought home her paycheck, after work at the factory, she stashed away a few more coins than she usually did. Auntie had been saving for tonight. Penelope still didn’t know why.

It’s humid and, as usual, there’s no wind. The stars are blurry and tinted crimson.

Auntie carried her the rest of the way. Excitement made Auntie’s lips twitch but nervousness still had her checking over her shoulder every couple of minutes. The same could be said for all the adults in the group. Even some of their children were double-checking each shadow they passed. Waiting for the worst to happen. So many things could go wrong tonight. So many things might just go right.

Finally, the group arrives.

In the city center is a courtyard. The gates encircling the courtyard are lit with lanterns, glowing a dull yellow, orange, and red. The courtyard is large. Barren of flora, black with the dry dead remnants of what long ago was a blossoming city park. But despite that, the courtyard is packed with people. They’re standing in a long line leading to the courtyard’s center, where an old townhouse stands. No one is talking. Not even a whisper. Total silence still reigned over them like the harshest of kings. Nothing but breathing and the occasional cough.

Penelope squirms and Auntie puts her down. Holding hands, they stand in line and wait. When the people in front of them step forward, they do the same. More people get in line behind them. It feels like they stay in line for an eternity. Fear is no match for boredom, so Penelope relaxes. She tugs at a hole in her pants pocket, having nothing better to do.

Auntie gives her a look. She knows what Auntie would say if they weren’t sworn to silence. ‘Don’t make more holes than you already have! You’ll look like a raccoon.’ That’s what she’s saying with that wrinkled nose. Penelope stops tugging. She keeps her head down, unwilling to look around for fear of meeting a stranger’s eye.

It’s odd. Their clothes always had holes. Thread was expensive. New clothes were even worse. Why was she and Auntie Anja dressed so fancy tonight? These clothes were definitely their best, they had the smallest holes and almost no stains. Auntie had rubbed a spoiled beat against her lips, making them all glossy and red. She did the same to Penelope’s cheeks. It’s made her face stiff and sticky. They’d have smelled like rotten beats but Auntie had splashed them both with the water from a can of fruit. Now they smelled like rotten beats with a hint of peaches.

“Tickets please.” A flat, monotone voice rumbles from above. Penelope peaks up through her fringe.

They’re at the front of the line, on the doorstep of the old townhouse. A man is standing in the entryway, glassy eyes focused on Auntie. The light from within, in shades of white and yellow, casts a shadow over his face. His skin is pasty looking, matted and billowy like rising dough. His arms unfold from behind his back. He draws his hand outward, outstretched and waiting palm up.

“Your tickets, madam.” He repeats, neither hasty nor heated. Only a dull expectancy.

“Sorry, sir. One second, sir, if you please…” Auntie frets. Both she and the man are whispering, the only voices willing to bravely echoing into the night. Penelope turns to look at Auntie. She’s fumbling with her wallet, which has three tiny locks. Nerves make her fingers clumsy, and they bungle the combination on the second lock thrice until she eventually gets the numbers right. Auntie sighs in relief and the man is as silent and calm as ever. She pulls a pinky sized key out of her pants pocket and cracks the final lock open. The people waiting behind them grumble wordless under their breath, making Auntie blush.

“Sorry,” She laughs through her embarrassment, “You can never be too careful, after all...” Two cream-coloured tickets, words too small for Penelope to make out, are handed over. The man takes one in each hand, raising them to the light. He squints, gaze searching the paper. It takes a second but soon his head bobs sharply up and down.

“Anja Bosch. Have a magical evening.” He hands one ticket to Auntie Anja. His head swivels to Penelope, looking at her for the first time. Penelope flinches under his watchful gaze. Bending straight at the hip, the man leans down.

“Penelope Bannerman. Have a magical evening.” Her ticket is pushed gently into her hands and the man rises, straight as an arrow.

“Next please.”

Penelope doesn’t move, too busy staring at the ticket, but Auntie Anja pulls her up by the arms and carries her through the entryway. The ticket has her name on the top left corner, scrawled in her Aunties handwriting. On the top right side is a cursive O.A. colored gold and red with a line of sparkly violet circling the symbol. Underneath both her name and the symbol is a calendar of the month. July.

Penelope holds the ticket against her chest and watches the man grow smaller over Auntie’s shoulder. She’s not supposed to talk outside at night, it isn't safe to be loud. But she isn’t outside anymore so, against her better instincts, Penelope croaks a squeaky, “Thank you, mister...!” that should have been too weak for the man to catch. Penelope immediately turns her gaze away but, although she can’t be sure, she thinks she might have heard a “You’re quite welcome, Miss Bannerman...” rumble thoughtfully behind her.

Penelope is jostled slightly when the rhythm of Auntie Anja’s footsteps shifts. They’re going down a flight of long carpeted stairs. Were they heading to the basement? The townhouse appeared different in size and structure from the outside. It shouldn’t have been able to fit a staircase so large. How far down did it go? They walk quietly or a while, hearing nothing but Auntie’s footsteps and the distant thump of the people walking both behind and in front of them.

“I’ve been saving for this for a while, Penny.” Auntie Anja draws her attention with an excitable whisper, “I just hope this place is as nice as they say it is. Oh, I hope you like it! We can stay as long as you want, the Theatre is open all night!”

“... The Theatre?”

“... Have a magical evening.” A voice, higher than the man’s, says in the distance. The bottom of the staircase is approaching where there is a booth blocked by a glass window that stands to the right of a large wooden door. Much like they did with the man, Auntie gives the woman in the booth their tickets. She doesn’t spare the paper even a passing glance. Not breaking eye contact, the woman punches a tiny hole in each ticket and hands them back. Then she reaches under the booth.

“Have a magical evening.”

The door swings open. It startles Penelope when noises, loud and boisterous, burst from within, burying her thoughts in an avalanche of laughter and song. It’s brighter than it was in the staircase. By the time her eyes have adjusted, Auntie’s already carried her inside.

Her eyes adjust. This was The Theatre, nestled snugly under the earth. This was only its foyer, but how magnificent it was.

A colossal palace, carved in the shape of a teardrop, reflective golds of lantern-light dazzling off of the silver metal walls. Red carpeting, soft like silk and spotlessly clean. The high ceiling has drapery dangling heavy from the balconies like kittens languishing loosely, half on half off the couch. The drapes have no holes, rips or loose threads. It’s a large room but there are so many people that it feels almost cramped. Yet somehow it’s comfortable in its crampedness. Although people bumped shoulders and stepped on each other’s toes, they never pushed or shoved. Only bumbled and brushed past, ‘sorry’ and ‘excuse me’ flowing easily off their tongues. How odd it was. Hearing such politeness. Such open-hearted grace.

So many voices freely flowing out of happily smiling mouths.

The people here were smiling, dressed in nearly holeless garments, talking incessantly to each other without a care in the world. Red lips and cheeks, colored eyelids and long lashes. Unshackled voices flutter across the room. Lively and excitable like Auntie was, or pretended to be when she thought Penelope was watching.

“... What do you think?”

Auntie takes her by the hand. Looking up at her, Penelope notes the happy tears bubbling at the corner of her eyes.

Penelope swallows thickly, then speaks, “Where are we, Auntie? Why… why is everybody so… so…”

“So happy?” Auntie laughs, “Welcome to The Theatre, Penny.”

Auntie takes her by the hand and they walked across the room. On the far side is a set of metal doors with no handles. Penelope watches as the doors slide open, metal panels disappearing laterally into the wall. The room inside is small and people are packed like sardines inside. The people inside step out and more people step in. The doors slide shut.

“Those are elevators. You stand in that little room and they take you up or down to the other rooms.”

Penelope marvels, “Other rooms?”

Beside the elevator is a big sign embedded in the metal wall. It’s an odd drawing. A tiny house with these giant tunnels underneath, separated into sections that piled like tiers of cake. Each tier has tiny numbers written all over that rarely repeated. Beside the drawing is a long list.

“Ten whole floors, my darling!” Auntie coos, “Look! There’s a playground on floor seven, a puppet show on floor four. We are in the central hall right now, in a few hours they’ll have a concert with music and lights! All the activities are listed right here. We can go do whatever you want, Penny!”

Penelope stares blank-faced. She stares so long that Auntie’s smile falls from her face.

“Penny…?” Auntie hesitates, “Don’t you like it--?” Auntie startles when a giggling squeal erupts from her niece, who’s face blossoms into the widest smile Auntie had ever seen on her little red cheeks.

“I love it!” Penelope gushes and giggles, jumping up and down in excitement, “I love it! I love it! I love it! I love it!”

Auntie laughs in relief, “Do you, darling? Do you really?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” Penelope beams up at her Auntie.

Auntie snatches her off the ground, squishing her in a tight, teary hug.

“... Happy Birthday…”

Penelope freezes. “... It’s my birthday?”

“You’re so much like your father. So forgetful,” Auntie laughs wetly, “Happy ninth birthday, Penny.” She turns, Penelope still in her arms, back to the map “So, what floor do you want to visit first?”

Penelope’s smile beams bright and, for the first time in a while, completely carefree.

Ten whole floors to explore! Or at least, that’s what they wanted people to think. Little did they know, there weren’t ten floors. Little did they know, there were eleven. The final hidden floor, masking the Theatre’s greatest secret deep underground.

~*~

Down in the Theatre’s deepest recesses was a dowdy little room. Half opened books dangle off shelves and rolled out scrolls spread their way across the length of the area several times over. The abundance of loose papers creates a distinct musk. It had a library’s smell. The dry, woody aroma of adhesive and ink. There are three desks; one too tall, one too short, and one just right. A creaky wooden chair. A dinky mattress and a few tiny blankets are pushed into the corner. There is barely any space to stand let alone walk. Somehow, there’s enough space for one little lady.

The little lady is short. Not even five feet tall.

She’s hunched over a blackened cauldron, comically large goggles almost covering the cranky frown etched harshly on her lips. Beside the cauldron is the widest of the three desks which had an assortment of vials, balances, flasks, and beakers rested upon it. Beside the desk were several boxes of scrap metal, boxes of sand, and three big toolboxes. With all her tools, she continues her work. Going through the motions like a familiar dance. Pour the vials, measure the scrap metal. Mix the cauldron, stoke its fire.

She works, and works, and works. Until, startling her out of her rhythm, there’s a knock on her door. She stops.

“Finally,” The little lady mutters to herself, slipping her goggles over her forehead and stretching her aching limbs, “It certainly took them long enough.”

Carefully stepping over the scrolls and papers littering the ground, she squeezes between her desks as she makes her way to the door. She steps out of the room for a moment, undaunted and unsurprised that the person on the other side was long gone. She only cares for the package. A basket of new vials lying in the dust at her feet. Behind her, the cauldron continued to bubble. Inside was a vortex of white liquid, little ribbons of colour stark against the prevailing silver. The substance melds and swirls in on itself so quick you could scarcely tell the yellow from the orange.

~*~

Earlier, when the sky was a crimson tinted blue, there was a boy so thin you could see the bones of his spine protruding from his thin, grainy robe. He had a list in his pocket which he followed quite diligently. Every item collected and placed in the basket he had under his arm.

He was sweating as he ran with light and nervous feet between the narrow alleyways and behind market stalls. He leans against the side of a dirty alley wall, resting his hand against his chest as he gulped in a breath of air.

“Why did I agree to this again?” He thinks bitterly to himself.

He closed his eyes and his back slid down the wall till he was sitting on the muddy dirt ground. It was silent. Until he heard it. A scraping sound from outside the alleyway that made him drop his basket in nervous fright. He froze and listened with bated breath.

For a moment, silence remained.

Nothing until, again, he heard a scrape. Like the sound of dragging feet or dull fingernails scratching over wet wood. That small noise sends fear tingling up his spine. He sniffs the air. Iron attacks his nose. Iron like blood and choking like death. He jumped to his feet and in doing so knocked over his basket, breaking one of the little glass vials which leaked a sticky red content over the ground.

He curses, picking the basket off the ground and sprinting down the alley, away from the approaching sound. It grows louder; more dragging footsteps and more scratching nails.

Distantly, a loud and clear bell rang.

The chase continues. Into the streets where people were filing out of their homes to the chime of the bell signifying the time for the people to freely traverse the city. The boy bolts into the marketplace, busy with people out to buy their bread from the bakery and their meat from the butcher.

The early silence was barely a distant memory. In only a few seconds the streets were filled with the yelling of salesmen and the bickering of customers.

“This bread looks stale!” One man sneered.

“The price was lower yesterday!” The woman screeched.

“You call this fresh fruit!? It’s mushier than the canned stuff!” A person cried.

The young boy ducks between the people and slides under the stalls, never checking back to see his pursuers, confident he could lose them in the crowd. The scraping sound was thin. There couldn’t be many of them.

He wasn’t scared. The scraping sound grew fainter. What did he have to be scared of? It was just a sound. It could have been anything else. It might have been anything else. Just a sound.

Through all the yelling and the racket of the busy marketplace, the scraping of his followers was muted out. The stuffy aroma of sugars and spices replaced the balmy scent of metal, which was constant stench while in their presence. It was both comforting and nerve-wracking. Were they in the crowd or still in the alley? Several feet behind or just a few steps away?

The boy never turned back. If they came into the crowd, there would be even more chaos, more than there is now. They weren’t pursuing him anymore. Still, he continued running far across the city. If only to be sure. He wasn’t running away. He still had other orders to pick up and deliver, anyway.

A few hours passed. He had traversed across the city in the same time as the sun had taken to drift across the sky.

After his last delivery, to some rich assholes ordering blow and cheap liquor, he heard the scraping sound again. Was it after him? He wasn’t sure. Was it even them? Or was that sound coming from some other innocent force? He wasn’t going to take the chance. He ran. Breath heavy and feet blistering. Running until he found himself squeezing his way under a gate he had never seen before. How odd. The boy was a native of this city. He had thought he knows its streets like the back of his hand. He didn’t know this place.

This time, he did not allow himself to relax as he waited for the sound.

It didn’t come.

“Good...” He gave an exhausted laugh but as he reached for the basket he once again cursed his luck. He hadn’t noticed until this very moment that what was left of the now crushed vial was empty but for a few teensy drips. He checked his list again. It highlighted the item as ‘Very Important’. He banged the back of his head against the wall and put a hand to the side of his face.

“Fuck! She’ll never pay us now...” He mumbled. He throws his arms up and pulls at his hair, “This is what we get for agreeing to work for that bitch!”

He stood up and snatched at the basket before looking up at the sky. Already the daylight was dwindling. No time to go back to collect another sample. Fucking perfect.

He turned back in the direction he came, planning to head to the meeting spot anyway. Maybe with a bit of begging he could still get half his promised pay.

He took a few steps and then he noticed it.

The wall he had been leaning against was dripping with some mystery liquid. There was a splatter of it against the stone, dry at its edges but still wet at its centre. The boy stumbled back to the wall and looked at one of the stray lines of liquid running down the cracks. He inspected it. It was crimson and sticky. He picked up the broken vial and inspected the liquid. It was red and gooey.

The boy grinned.

~*~

‘Magic’, as the rest of the world liked to call it, is a funny thing. It’s often like an untrained puppy. Hyperactive with a nose for finding trouble. It can also make a huge mess on your nice clean carpet.

The woman returns to her room with the basket of vials. She swipes a pile of papers that she no longer needs off the shortest desks and set the basket in its place. Placing the goggles over her eyes, she rummages through her more important papers.

“No… no… no.” She grumbles under her breath as she picks up, looks at, and then puts down each paper. She moves on to a different pile and clicks her teeth, “Where is it...?”

Eventually, she finds the pile she sought for. She picks up a large stack of papers and drops them onto the desk beside the cauldron. Reading from the text, she simultaneously picks up two of the vials; a reflective metallic liquid sloshed against the inside of the glass. She weighs them against some scraps of metal. With another vial, filled with water and an assortment of white particles, she pours it into the cauldron. The contents of the cauldron stops swirling and begins sizzling.

She works with the same speed and intensity that she had been excluding for the past few weeks.

Has it been weeks yet? Or months? Only days?

It doesn’t matter. Not when there was more work to be done. Not when she was almost finished.

Finally, she picks the last vial out of the basket. It’s filled with a thick crimson liquid. She moved to her cabinet and plucks out another vial with a red liquid. She pulls a surgical mask over her mouth so she wouldn’t breathe in any fumes. The little lady takes a deep breath, preparing herself, and pours the vials into the cauldron. She stirs until the substance is homogeneous.

The bubbling stops. The vortex goes still. She bites her lip and waits with bated breath. For a good few moments, there was nothing, until the swirling slowly continued. She looks down at the contents of the cauldron with a puzzled expression and then turns away, reaching for another vial.

“Perhaps I need to add a little more-”

An explosion of colour knocks the little lady against the far wall. A startled squeal from the sudden impact escapes her throat.

The substance seemed to fly out of the cauldron, erupting like lava from a volcano. It swirls violently along the jagged rocks of the ceiling. She presses herself close into the corner between her mattress and the wall. Tightly curled into a ball, arms wrapped over her neck and head tucked between her knees, the little lady could do nothing but wait for it to end.

The vortex rages on. It pulsates like thick slop.

Spits of chemical rain down. A whirlwind of pigments and metal send parchment flying.

The sounds it makes, how it made her ears ring. Deafening howls. Thundering clinks, crashes, and clatters of furniture tipping over, scattering books and scrolls across the floor. Every vial, beaker, and flask that she had is sent crashing to the ground, cracking apart and sending glass sky-high. It knocks the boxes of sand and metal to the ground, covering her in dust and scratches.

Abruptly, it stops. The substance drops to the ground, splattering and rising in a giant wave that crashes back down over the floor and furniture. It floods half the room. Luckily it’s the half she’s not kneeling in. Nothing more than dotted splashback landed on her, burning through her clothing like acid.

She breathes harshly, almost gasping, as she slides her way up the wall and to a stand. The glass and metal shards glitter like freshly fallen snow. The papers are soaked through with the substance. It isn’t a rainbow color anymore. It’s only red with blue.

She stares ahead, unblinking. Unwilling to take her eyes off the empty cauldron, tipped over and leaking. If the room was a mess before, now it’s mayhem.

Another bitter, horrible, soul-crushing failure. She didn’t even have it in her to be angry. She walks with the broken aimlessness of a puppet without enough strings to her chair, picking it off the ground and falling like a ragdoll into the seat. Elbows on her knees and hands on her head she leans forward in defeat. She stays like this for some time.

Her phone rings. Wiping her face, she leans over and plucked the rotary phone off the wall and fiddle with the cord as she answers it.

“Yes?...” She speaks with a calmness one wouldn’t expect considering the circumstances, “Ah, already time?... I know I promised to be there… I’ll be up in a moment...”

The person on the other end asks a question, and the lady grips the phone a little tighter, “We shall discuss it later. I am on my way.”

She hangs up.

A gentleman’s chest, knocked over on its side, blocks the door. The little lady doesn’t bother trying to pick it up. She only yanks a few of its cupboards open and fishes out a comb to slicked her hair back and off her forehead. She removed her work clothes, tossing them onto her chair. They were already dirty, so what did it matter where they laid?

How long had it been since she changed clothes? Or showered?

A tailcoat with patches, a neckerchief with loose threads, and elbow-long gloves with holes that let her fingertips stick out. Mossy green, with some mismatching patches, to contrast the redness of her hair. Good enough. It’s better than what most of the customers could afford.

Nevertheless, the customers won’t be seeing her, anyway. Not as she truly was.

The little lady reaches into the chest one final time. From it, she fetches a swarthy cloak wrapped in a bundle. It’s a dingy thing. Ill-fitted and oddly textured. Unwrapping it, there’s something hidden within the bundle.

She sighs, relieved, “Oh good. I was worried you’d been broken during the... whatever that was.”

For now, she sets it aside. When she fastens the cloak around her neck, another anomaly occurs. The fabric doesn’t fall around her torso. Instead, the cloak builds up around her upper back and shoulder blades, creating a hunchbacked figure with the hood stretching far past where her face ended. She looked nothing like herself. And that was just as she wished to be.

And the final touch to pull the whole outfit together. A mask. Made and crafted of solid glass. It had the face of an old haggard woman clearly feeling the years she had lived.

She flips the mask around. There’s a small hole in the mask’s back. From the opening, the little lady inspects the thin almost invisible tubes running through the mask’s face like veins. The tubs are empty.

She clicks her teeth in annoyance. “Perfect. Are they all empty?” Rummaging through the chest she finds, to her frustration, that all her other masks were as clear and colorless as the one she held in her hands.

“Fine, then.” The belt of her pants has a large pouch attached to her hip. She rummages for it under her cloak and from the pouch, she retrieves her knife. “Fuck, I don’t have time for this! I’m late enough as it is.”

Her knife is double-edged. Its hilt is black plastic with a knuckle guard fitted perfectly for either of her hands. She kept its blade sharp. Sharp and sterile. The little lady pulls the glove of her right arm down and pulls the sleeve of her tailcoat up, exposing only a sliver of her skin right below her elbow. She’s scarily pale. Borderline sickly.

With the tip of her knife, the little lady slices a tiny line across her forearm. It was only as long as her fingernail but still deep enough to bleed. It doesn’t hurt. Or maybe it does, and she’s just gotten used to it. Carefully, she presses the wound against the mask’s opening and allows her blood to drizzle down its tubes. The mask takes its fill at a leisurely pace.

“How magical…” She huffs to herself.

Impatiently, the little woman pinches the skin around the cut to force her blood out faster. This, admittedly, did sting. But it did the trick, and as the mask filled up, its face changes. No longer is its surface translucent. Her blood travels to the tubes closest to the mask’s surface and its old haggish face turns a light beige. Rosy cheeks and fleshy wrinkles. The colour fills out and its ceramic skin crinkles and becomes roughly lumpy.

“That should be enough” With that she closes the cap on the tube and places the mask on the ground. It takes a minute for her to find a bandage for her cut. Her room is soaked. And worse, it’s starting to smell. Not quite the metallic scent of blood, although the odor had the same heady tang to it, as if one could become drunk on the stench. Within its inherent booziness is a cloying smokiness. Like beeswax, ink, and seaweed. It was an odd smell. The oddest part being how addictive it was.

The little lady wanted to inhale that scent deeply. She had to wonder, was the vapor toxic? Hopefully not, but it wouldn’t do to take the chance.

Finished sterilizing and bandaging the cut, the little lady held her mask over her hooded face. It molds itself around her head. Glass stretching and fitting over the bones under her skin until it’s indistinguishable from the rest of her. The mask opened its eyes and gone was the little lady, and in her place was the hunched old hag.

The old hag then plucks her cane off the coat rack; it was a choppy wooden stick that stood barely a half meter off the ground. Before she leaves, she carefully picks up a few of her notebooks off the ground. She sets them carefully on her chair. They were too important to let them get stained. She then shuffles her way out the door of the little room, leaving the chaos behind, too ashamed and disappointed to stay and clean. That could be done later when the sting of failure was less sharp. The room was airtight. If the substance was noxious, it wouldn’t leak to the workers and customers.

The door clicked shut and locks.

Only after she had left did the true effect of her concoction presented itself.

Dully, it glows. Then brighter and brighter, warmer and warmer. Crimson sap blushes brightly in swirls that touch but never mix with the vivid fluorescent blue. It bubbles like boiling gravy and although the fire had been extinguished, the substance became hot as lava. Why didn’t it burn then? The papers and parchment soaking in its fluid remained cool to the touch.

It bubbles. Gobs popping open, fluids go flying like broken boils. Bubble, pop, bubble, pop. Bubbling and bubbling until orbs of the stuff stay airborne. Tiny orbs meld into small orbs, and further into medium orbs, then large orbs. Until one giant ball of thickly dripping ooze is gathered, hanging upwards not quite brushing the ceiling.

The papers that the mixture had spilled onto rise, dry as a bone, from the ground. They circle the orb. Spinning like a merry-go-round with no stop button. The papers draw in closer to the orb. They clump together. The orb expands. The papers blanket it like a sheet. Even now though, the reds and blues beam through the spaces between the pieces of paper.

A mini star. A spark cast off from the sun.

There’s no smell and no one around to smell it. Until, maybe, there is. The papers tear and fold themselves apart. It gouges two holes into the curtain, side by side. A slit slices its way across the parchment right under the holes. The slit curls at both its edges. One side slightly up and one side slightly down. A smile or a frown.

The holes open and close in careful rhythm. Colors swirl together within. Bright blue dots in their middle. The dots shift right and left. The dots look around.

It blinks.