Chapter 26

Cogs and Cuffs

Ty stared at the ceiling above his bed. Well, at this point, calling it his was a stretch.

Wherever he was—in this place—he no longer owned anything.

He flexed his right hand. His many burns protested, but he pushed past the pain. He felt as empty as his right hand did without the hilt of his sword in it. How could he have let it burn? What was he going to do now?

He heard footsteps from the hallway. He sat up on the bed and spun to face the door. A knock came, then his father's voice, “Stop moping, boy. Your girlfriend is here.”

If he hadn't already been sitting, Ty would have fallen down from that bit of information. Instead, his body did the opposite and he sprang to his feet.

“My… girlfriend?” He said as the door swung open to reveal someone very familiar.

Anna stood in his doorway. Or, what was supposed to be Anna in this messed up world. Her eyes and face looked a little like his friend. The rest was some horrid monster.

Okay, not really, but the imitation was such a polar opposite of Anna it might as well have been.

She wore a dress. Not a skirt—a full on dress—and every inch of it was pink. Bright pink. And on her face… makeup? Ty didn't have a lot of experience with makeup, but he couldn't picture Anna ever touching the stuff. This Anna covered herself in it.

The girl smiled a cheerful, girlish smile, and Ty could only gape. She exclaimed, “Ty!” leapt into his room, and wrapped her arms around him. Ty tried to wiggle free, but she possessed an unnatural strength.

Ty saw the corner of his father's mouth twist up in a smirk as he backed into the hallway and said, “I'll leave the two of you alone.”

Ty wished he wouldn’t.

She pulled away from him, went to the doorway, and stuck her head out into the hall, looking, Ty guessed, to see if his father was really gone. Now would be a great time to escape. Seeing as how he couldn't get past her, the window was the only option. How bad would it hurt to fall two stories?

He never got to find out. As soon as he started for the window, Anna came up behind him, grabbed his wrist, and pulled him into a kiss. This kiss was nothing like the one he received that night on his trampoline. Where that kiss was filled with magic, this one was only wet and uncomfortable. Every second was torture, but his misery did come to an end.

Their lips made a loud slurp noise when they parted. Ty fought the urge to barf.

“Happy birthday, sweetie.”

“Um… thanks.”

“Want your gift now!?” There was a weird edge of hysteria in her voice, a psychotic mass murderer or a little kid hyped up on sugar.

Ty lost his balance trying to get away from her and toppled back onto his bed. He used that to his advantage and rolled to the other side, putting a whole bed between them.

“No, that's okay, you didn't have to get me any—”

She whipped a present out of nowhere and slung it at him. It slammed into him (hurting more than he cared to admit) and bounced off his chest. Anna jumped onto the bed, caught it, and plopped down on the edge of the bed in one amazing, fluid motion.

She stuck her hands out, presenting the gift she held again. “Open it!” She said, pleasant as (pink) punch. Even so, Ty picked up a “Do-it-or-I'll-kick-you” undertone. At least that sounded like the Anna he knew.

He took the present from her. It was about the size of both of his palms put together, not very big, but Ty's mind invented all kinds of horrible things that could fit inside of it. Most of them pink.

As he tore the wrapping paper away, he noted that it was actually colored—pink, of course. Personally, he preferred the plain gray. With the paper off and on the floor, he hesitated. Bad move on his part.

Anna darted forward, said, “Open it, sweetie!” and then their lips touched again. Ty reeled back to get away, almost falling, but Anna grabbed his hand and pulled him to her, lips puckered up.

Ty used the present as a shield, pushed it between himself and her lips.

“Okay, okay!” Ty said, desperate to fend off Anna's onslaught. “I'll open it, just stop!”

Her “attacks” ceased, and she went back to sitting on the edge of his bed, smiling huge. Ty paused to catch his breath and, with great hesitance, pulled the top off the box. Inside was a pair of handcuffs. Ty didn't want to know the reasoning behind the gift.

Anna snatched the present out of the box and cuffed his left wrist, so quickly he didn't even register that the box was empty.

“What are you—!?”

She locked his cuff and put her wrist in the other one, doing the same. She leaned her head back and held the key over her open mouth.

“Hey, whoa, wait!” Ty said. He knew very well what she was about to do and it was not good for him at all. “Don't—!”

She swallowed the key whole. That was one place Ty refused to go and she knew it.

She leaned closer and rubbed him under the chin.

“You're my property now,” she cooed.

Ty could no longer hold in the urge to barf. At least it gave a little more color to the drab carpet.

A normal reaction from a normal person in the situation where another human being has thrown up, usually falls under one of two categories. Either a complete gross out where the person backs away as quickly as they can while trying not to look at the mess on the floor. Or, a very nice and considerate person—a janitor, at least—would hurry to clean things up and get the poor sick soul some medical attention.

Anna did neither of those things. She didn't even wait for him to finish.

“What are you doing, silly,” she said, pushing him slightly on the back. He almost fell face first into the puddle on the floor, saved only by Anna's handcuff on his wrist. “We have shopping to do!”

“What? Shopping? I just threw up! Shouldn't I go lay down or something?”

Anna looked back and forth between Ty and the throw up on the floor, as if trying to figure out how both of them were connected. Her eyes brightened as she reached some sort of conclusion.

She went closer to him, patted him on the cheek. “Aww, I'm sorry. Is my baby sick?” She said, then exploded with, “Let's go to the mall and get you some medicine!!”

She jumped up and ran for the door, dragging Ty along for the ride. He latched onto the door frame as he passed, trying to pull himself back into the room. But with one mighty yank, Anna broke his grip and into the hall they went.

Ty didn't try to struggle after that and followed obediently behind Anna as he wondered where they were really going. His town didn't even have a mall.

#

After hours and hours of inspecting the puppet, San couldn't find a single thing that gave Gentry's wooden body life. It was so frustrating he would have pulled out all of his hair… if he had any.

How was he supposed to kill something that had no logical reason for being—and staying—alive? He slammed his fist on the table where Gentry lay, his body giving a little jolt from the force of the blow. The sock monkey guards behind him snickered as the plush creatures assisting San jumped in fright. Worthless fools, San thought, poor replacements for the Elves…

“S-sir.” A rabbit appeared at his side, an ear and one eye missing from his features. “I think you should see this.”

He held up a glass container the size of his torso. It was a huge struggle for the rabbit to keep it up. Inside, Gentry's cloak swam around, its dark tendrils desperately searching for escape.

San took it from him.

“Have you found out what it is?” San asked as he tapped the glass. The cloak reacted by slamming against the part of its prison that San's long finger touched. Pleasant creature.

“N-not exactly sir. But we did find out something.” The rabbit gestured to another creature behind a computer who swiveled his monitor toward San.

“A way to kill him?” San bent over the computer screen to get a closer look.

“No. Something I think you'll find better.”

Annoyed, San continued to read the screen's contents. What could possibly be better than the puppet's death? As he read, his smile grew larger as he found his answer.

“Will this work?”

The creature behind the screen answered, “If what you told us about the events in the Square are true then, yes, it should.”

“Do it,” San commanded. “Build it.”

He beckoned for his guards to follow. They stopped their game of rock-paper-scissors and fell into step behind him, slower and clumsier than the Elves would have. The other plush creatures bowed as they left.

Yes, this was much better than killing his enemy. If you can't beat them… tear out what makes them who they are, bend it to your own will, and force them into submission.

He liked that; maybe he would make it his motto.

#

Turns out, there was a mall in this version of Ty's town. A very big one, looming over the neighborhood from directly across the street. “MALL” was written on it in large boring letters. They hadn't even bothered giving it an annoying mall name.

Back home, his neighborhood was much like a giant web of interlocking streets and homes. There was order, but you would be hard pressed to notice it. There were streets, turns, and twists. Not so here.

In this town, the houses were aligned in a circle forming a town square, with another door in the very center. The same as San's factory and its surrounding area.

Wait a second. Another door? What did that mean? Would it take him home? Or were there more weird mini worlds to face? It didn't matter. He needed to get closer to it and find out if it was locked like San's had been.

He pushed the door from his mind for now. As long as he was attached to the psychotic girly girl Anna, there was nothing he could do about it.

As they continued from his home, Ty noticed the details of the houses: they were all his. Same roof, windows, door, color—everything. This was a major change from San's world, where the buildings were so drastic in their differences the only thing they had in common was how unique they all were.

While Ty examined the houses, every door flew open in the exact same manner, at the exact same time, and by the exact same person.

On every doorstep, there stood a man in a black business suit with a briefcase in hand and a hat atop his head. In every doorway stood a woman dressed in a long, flower-patterned dress. Every woman, in every identical doorway, kissed their identical husbands on their cheeks as the men filed off the porch, down the driveway, and got into their identical black cars. The cars reversed to the end of the driveway and, one at a time in perfect harmony, the cars flowed onto the road. In the same direction and at the same speed.

The cars circled around the neighborhood and exited on the lone road out, leading to, now that Ty really looked at it, a far off building, jutting up into the sky. About where the forest would be on the outskirts of San's factory.

Ty and Anna made it to the sidewalk and waited for the last of the cars to drive by. Ty used the opportunity to ask, “Why are they like that?”

“Like what?” Anna said in an out of place sing-song voice.

“Everything about them is the same.”

“Why, that's what it looks like to be grown up, silly.”

And that was all she had to say on the subject. She accepted that they were the pinnacle of being “grown up,” and there was no other alternative. No, she didn't even think about an alternative, didn't ponder, wonder, or care. It was fact to her and she didn't need another answer.

Ty needed another answer. He refused to believe in a bleak, unchangeable, inescapable future that everyone was destined for.

“Will you be like that, when you're older? A woman in a dress seeing your business suit clad, suitcase wielding husband out the door?”

“Yes, I will. And you will be that husband.”

Ty tried to ignore that last comment—and the eyelash batting she did as she said it—and asked, “You're really okay with that? Being the same as everyone else and doing the same thing, day after day?”

“Yes,” she sounded angry now, and grew angrier with every word. “That is my future, that is your future, that's all there is and it will be wonderful, so quit asking me stupid questions.”

Ty opened his mouth, prepared for a comeback of some kind, and Anna's fist pounded into his skull. She dragged the unconscious boy behind her, skipping cheerfully along.