zion of arcadia
too much of my own quietness is with me
- Pronouns
- she/her
- Partners
-
author’s note: remember how I said I had a weakness for writing surreal scenes? yeah… you’ve been warned, lol. this chapter was really really really hard to write and underwent copious revisions. in the end, I decided to just post if I ever wanted to finish lmao.
“Actually, you said Love, for you,
is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s
terrifying. No one
will ever want to sleep with you.”
The shower water had long since run cold. Cool, wet ceramic pressed against Tobin’s back. She rested her head between her knees. Water spooled through her hair, pooling around her toes before swirling down the drain.
She stood up, turning off the water. The nozzle flow slowed to a stop. She stayed still, dripping wet. Blank white walls sectioned into corners by sharp horizontal lines consumed her vision.
Eventually, she stepped out of the shower.
Tobin dried down, chasing away the goosebumps running along her arms. The towel was soft. Her short hair hung in damp clumps around her face.
Hazel eyes underscored by dark bags stared out the mirror as she brushed her teeth. Up, down, around, and then once more with feeling. Tobin’s hair had taken on a bit of a frizz, fringes curling up into a cowlick. She spent a good minute finger combing it into submission.
The reflection twisted. Her skin sagged and greyed, teeth jagged and black. One tooth shone gold. Gnarled hands clasped around her neck; Tobin thought she might choke and die. (Nothing happened.)
Tobin exhaled. Her breath fogged up the mirror. The witch of the woods was gone.
Putting the ranger uniform on was like donning a suit of armor. Stiff, starched fabric zipped up and over soft, supple skin. The scattered pieces were stitching themselves back together. Tobin straightened her jacket.
She walked back out into the main cabin. Brit still slept, sides steadily rising and falling. Peppermint was awake, fixated on The Rotom (it had become a title denoting the inevitable) parading around in the corpse of Tobin’s capture styler. The disc sparkled with golden jubilance, spinning midair in lazy loop-de-loops.
Peppermint: Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
“Yeah, yeah.” Tobin pulled up a chair. She reclined all the way back until it groaned with protest. Resting her feet on the desk, Tobin glowered at The Rotom. It hadn’t tried anything. Yet. But it had also been evasive as hell the entire previous night. “Oi. What was all that noise you were making before about princesses and princes.”
The disc halted at the apex of its loop. Gravity took a moment to reassert itself, and the disc plopped back onto the bed. A glowing orb of energy hovered above the disc.
Brit startled awake, glancing around, before narrowing his eyes at The Rotom. It sparked and shifted, orange body sharply ethereal, flickering in and out of existence. Then The Rotom vanished. It left behind a message pulsing in neon shades:
I said what I said
race ya for it ;)
Tobin swore loudly. Storming over to the desk, she wrenched the bottom drawer open. Inside the recorder rattled like the warning rasp of an ekans’s tail. Tobin slammed the drawer shut, recorder untouched, sitting down with a thump.
She seethed. She fumed. Peppermint watched her.
Peppermint: If you want the rainbow, you have to tolerate the rain.
Tobin turned on the television. Knights of Castellia was playing. The music shimmered like sequins in the sterile air. Micah hated musicals. He would always complain about how randomly bursting into song was distracting and took him out of the story.
A piece of paper torn from the pad on the desk had a few half-hearted scribbles from the night before. They were notes Tobin had jotted down while attempting to grill The Rotom for information. It read:
thorns and towers
ghost types are douchebags
surveillance maybe saw... something
Tobin couldn’t exactly jaunt up to security with this, though. Even if she could, she didn’t want to involve those bumbling morons unless absolutely necessary. And it might still be an elaborate hoax. She didn’t trust The Rotom.
Brit peered over her shoulder. He tapped the second line with his bright red talon. Tobin underlined the word douchebag for emphasis. At least they agreed on one thing. He took the pen out of her hand, adding another comment:
rape?
Such an ugly word.
Tobin desperately wanted a cigarette. All these years later and the urge still threatened to overwhelm her from time to time. The ghost of nicotine past kissed the back of her throat.
…
Tobin liked tennis courts. The sharp white lines bisecting bright green clay. Rectangles within rectangles. Every obstacle had a place, every rule had a purpose. It was a safe space.
The noonday sun beat down overhead. Wingull trailed behind the cruise ship, neat white vees in a crisp blue sky. One of the crew members had told Tobin a wives’ tale several days earlier: wingull only ever followed captains who beat their partners. It was a bad omen.
Sweat dripped along the dip of her forehead. Her clothes stuck to her skin. Tobin struck the tennis ball backhanded, slicing it toward Darren. He lunged, his own racket narrowly missing as the ball spun away.
Peppermint declared the ball had already gone out of bounds, awarding the point to Darren.
“Bullshit!” Tobin shouted. She fought the urge to hurl her racket at the hard ground.
Darren stood doubled over, hands resting on his knees. Pit stains darkened the entire upper half of his t-shirt. Sweat dripped off the bridge of his nose.
Beside him, his dewott twirled her own racket. The blue otter had bounced around with ease, occasionally pulling off an acrobatic flip for no reason at all. Show-off.
Tobin glanced over at Brit and saw agreement reflected back in his gaze.
Peppermint: He who expects no gratitude shall never be disappointed.
Tobin raised a choice finger in the sky.
“Maybe… a break…?” Darren suggested.
“No way that was out.” Her mouth set into a stubborn line. Darren just shrugged, panting hard. He looked so pathetic she couldn't help but take pity on him.
Tobin walked over to the side of the court where their water bottles waited, squeezing a stream into her mouth. She tossed Darren the bottle, watching with mild amusement as he plopped down and doused his face.
Brit and Darren’s dewott started a new round. Love-love. The word tasted funny on Tobin’s tongue. Romance had become a means of keeping score.
No longer held back by their human companions, the pokémon went all out. They zoomed across the court as the ball whizzed almost faster than the eye could track. The ball made a satisfying thud whenever it connected properly with the racket. Streaks of sludge trailed behind it from Brit’s strikes, purifying into sweet-smelling water whenever it was volleyed back.
Peppermint made another bullshit call. Both pokémon paused to shoot them a withering look. The game continued.
Tobin licked her lips and tasted salt. She thought about the ocean.
“Have you noticed anything strange lately?” Tobin absently grabbed her foot, arching her back. She held the position for five seconds, feeling the pull in her calf, before switching to the other leg.
The ship swayed, hitting a wave of turbulence. Tobin almost lost her balance. Darren laughed, propping himself up on his elbows.
“Stranger than yesterday?”
“Along those lines.”
Tobin stared out at the court.
Darren scrubbed at his wet face. Water glittered on the pads of his fingers, between the swell of his knuckles. The dots connected into the shape of a pokéball. It shook once and then clicked success. A critical capture.
The ship rocked again, hard and jarring. Tobin didn’t stumble this time. A cold breeze whipped across the bow.
“Miguel has been quiet recently.” Darren shivered. “Well, more quiet than usual. We were chilling at that nice bar down below, the Crystal Wailord.”
Tobin flopped beside him. She traced concentric circles on the smooth clay. If she breathed deeply she’d catch a whiff of hot plastic. The cruise liner whined under the weight of its passengers and their baggage.
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. After we liquored him up a bit, he was mumbling some story his ma told him as a kid. Something about, uh”—Darren scratched under his chin—“a gardevoir that would drown children or whatever. Why?”
“Just wondering. This trip has been weird.”
The sky was so blue. And the ocean below them, too. Two domes meeting on the line of the horizon. And at the end of the line maybe they’d find Arceus. Or Unova. Whichever came first.
“Yeah. I was surprised you wanted to hang out again, honestly,” Darren said.
Tobin fiddled with her wedding ring. The gold band cut into her flesh. It no longer fit properly: a sign she was growing fat and lazy.
“It was cool, though,” Darren added, “the way you marched in there last night. Very Ranger-y.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And sexy.”
“Give it time,” Tobin said, deadpan.
She wondered what Micah would think if she fucked Darren. Taking a disadvantage and turning it into a deuce. Would he be jealous? Would he even care at all?
Darren laughed.
Brit and Darren’s dewott switched sides. Brit puffed out his throat sac, strutting past. Darren’s dewott twirled her racket in response. Such unnecessary posturing, yet that was half the fun (maybe Brit was a show-off too).
Water and acid now littered the court. All that wonderful geometry, ruined. Competition was a beautiful, terrible thing. It divided the world into winners and losers. Trying to impose order over violence only inspired chaos.
“You better clean that shit up when you’re done!” Tobin shouted. Brit waved his compliance before contorting to reach for a corkspin. Refocusing, Tobin added, “I used to play tennis with my husband. He liked playing, but hated playing against me.”
She set the wedding band on the ground between them. There it lay trembling, subject to even the subtlest whims of the ship’s movements.
“Can’t imagine why.” Darren grinned. “Figured you were gonna beam me with that thing several times.”
Tobin pointed the racket at his forehead, right between the eyes. The racket was swathed in fur. Soft beige strands clung damply to her fingers. If she flexed she could feel the antler handle throbbing beneath the fur coat. (When the passing seasons changed would it change too? a racket that bloomed in rhythm with the cherry blossoms.)
Then Tobin dropped it, the clatter loud and jarring, folding her arms behind her head. She drawled, “I play to win, baby.”
Darren smiled his slow, easy smile. A sudden commotion distracted them. People were gathering along the starboard bow of the ship, pointing and gesturing. Many had pulled out their phones. The flashes were almost as bright and loud as the crowd.
Tobin and Darren glanced at each other. They stood in unison. Brit and Darren’s dewott continued their tennis match, clearly uninterested in the growing spectacle.
Tobin had long ago mastered the art of forcing her way through a crowd. She pushed ahead, stubbornly uncompromising, ignoring the indignant glares and grunted curses. Some of them recognized her uniform and respectfully subsided. Darren trailed meekly in her wake.
A school of alomomola were racing alongside the cruise ship. Tobin had never seen them move so quickly before; usually, they floated placidly upon the surface of the sea. And yet here they were soaring freely.
Pink ink unfurled across the ocean’s blue parchment. Songs lyrics about love and healing were scrawled in the margins. (No one could read what they wrote, not even the clever ones.)
Water flowers swelled around the surging school. They spilled forth like a spoiled secret, propelling the alomomola ever onward. People cheered, urging them to outstrip the cruise liner. Children sat on their fathers’ shoulders and waved their chubby arms in the air. More lights from phones flashed.
It was difficult to think of towers and thorns in moments like these.
“A good omen, yeah?” Darren asked. A cigarette hung loosely between his lips. “Sure you don’t want one?”
She shook her head. Darren shrugged before pulling out his lighter. The cigarette tip shimmered gold; Darren ignored the dirty looks from those around them. He touched her, a bit hesitant.
Tobin realized she’d left her ring behind.
She glanced up at the sky. The wingull still tailed them. Darren’s light touch caressed her lower back. She missed being intimate with another person.
Her capture styler hummed. When Tobin pulled it out, The Rotom had left a message:
found something, you slacker. are you even trying??
…
The virtual reality system ARGO had been closed down due to a malfunction. Tobin had no doubt that The Rotom played a role in the matter. She stared at the hulking machine, hands in her pockets, expression inscrutable. ARGO was a massive spherical building painted nauseating shades of orange. The interior was dark and cool, all the lights shut off.
Beside her sulked Brit. Disapproval radiated off him in waves.
“Chill the fuck out. He stayed with us all last night and nothing happened.”
But Tobin felt a touch nervous herself. She had trained in VR before; motion sickness caused issues almost every time. If this turned out to be some sort of trick she would be pissed.
Clusters of mushrooms clung to ARGO’s walls. They glowed, softly phosphorescent, squat and bulbous, their gills breathing in and out to the rocking of the ship. Several morelull lay huddled together, observing them with dark eyes. The faint scent of moldered yeast lingered on.
Corded ropes hung limp and lifeless on faded rings. The hemp clumps dangled around them like knotted strands of blonde hair. Tobin swallowed down her rising bile.
Her styler turned on. The Rotom had resurrected it, the disc ducking away from her. A line of golden thread stretched out, guiding her beyond a myriad of possibilities. Somewhere in the darkness perhaps lurked the unturning, waiting with shears to determine how another might die.
Tobin followed the line.
It brought her to a cubby filled with VR equipment. She pulled one out, the headgear dark and heavy in her small grip. Tobin started strapping it on before pausing and glancing over at Brit.
He reached for a headset of his own. She shook her head; his hand dropped to his side. Brit’s middle finger burned red.
“This better have a point,” Tobin said.
aw don’t be like that! you can trust me ;)
The words beat against the inside of the VR headset like the face of an alarm clock. A light tingle of electricity arced along her arms. Blue eyes swirling with fractals swam into view before everything went dark.
05:00 05:00 05:00 05:00 05:00
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00:00
The pied piper was a meloetta who had lost her red slippers. Her once green hair was now bleached white; the black notes crawled across the music sheets in an unending wave. She sounded like the ocean.
She stood at the edge of the bridge, watching a line of rattata line up in a row, as if waiting to be shot. We could tell when others used to be in love; those rattata swan dived into the ocean but didn’t drown. Their wings burgeoned just in time. The rest weren’t so lucky.
We found Arceus—summer haloed by the chirping of kricketune—in the space between trembling whiskers. We were still waiting for our wings, but they never came. Our shoulder blades ached from the lacking.
Underneath the bridge, the cruise liner was docked. It idled in the water like a penned tauros. It could be easy to forget just how large the ship truly was. At max capacity, it held more people than many small towns on the fringes of Unova.
A name tattooed the ship’s side. We realized we had never cared to remember it. It had fallen away in a subtle reckoning.
All the color had been drained from the attractions adorning the ship. They were lifeless. Inert.
Inertia was the tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged. We remember someone we once loved telling us that once upon a time. An object in motion would stay in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. It was friction, like the friction stemming from rubbing against someone we wanted to fuck.
We asked the pied piper to let her hair down. She listened. It uncoiled off the edge of the bridge with the thudding cadence of a leitmotif.
We climbed down the hair. Music beat beneath our breast. Grey stains cast shadows over our hands. We could go mad here, caught in this liminal space between bridge and boat.
But we returned to earth; our feet brushed the wood floor, anchoring us to reality. The hair pulled away. The music stopped. The silence stretched out before us.
We descended deeper into the bowels of the cruise liner. No one else was around.
The layers were peeling away, leaving only a barren hallway. Panelled walls loomed over us, stripped of color. The sheer volume was so much more prominent without people or pokémon. The ship’s maws were slowly clamping around us.
The hallway opened into a chapel.
An organ covered the far wall. Pipes wove and tangled together like a lower intestine. Music rumbled in rhythm with the ship’s heartbeat as the pedals and keys shifted up and down. It was jazz played in reverse. Painted red eyes bore down from the ceiling.
A NEW PERSPECTIVE WILL COME WITH THE NEW YEAR
Trevor sat sprawled out on the furthest back pew. His pignite lay before him, hogtied, an apple shoved in his snout. Burnt pork filled the sterile air. One sanitizer dispense—of pitch black and rake thin plastic—stood upright beside them.
“It’s a miracle. An absolute fucking miracle,” Trevor drawled. His pignite turned to glare at us. Trevor gestured toward the sanitizer dispenser. “Wash your goddamn hands.”
The clear gel stung. We started with our fingers, then our knuckles, then our palms, then worked our way up to our elbows and finally our shoulders. No one could doubt we weren’t clean. The scent of rubbing alcohol mixed with the scent of smoke. Just to be certain, we even rubbed behind our ears and the back of our neck. It tingled.
“What the hell you waiting for?”
Trevor had pulled out a carving knife. He traced looping circles on his pignite’s skin. The cuts bled white. We looked at them and then at the black confessional box. It threatened to swallow the room whole; it rose above us like an indomitable tower we had to scale.
Each step felt like it might be the last taken. Ever. That final footfall would herald with it billions of eyes closing in unison. We stepped inside.
The confessional box’s interior left us blind. We sat there (the sound of straw being spun into gold could be heard; if only we knew his name) and waited. Salt water dripped from the ceiling into our eyes. We saw clearly for the first time.
Brit sat on the other side of the confessional. Mesh segmented his rubbery skin into miniscule octagonal dots. His throat sac had been sliced away and stapled to the ceiling. He couldn’t speak, only watch.
I have a confession to make:
Before the fires came, there were victini. Their dances turned winter to summer, their dances lit the path to gold. I followed them while the forest burned.
When the fires came, I fled to the hills because I saw in them my own twisted reflection. I hid there while smoke clogged the sky and flames salted the land.
After the fires came, Peppermint guided me to survivors. We rescued them together. I never told anyone anything else, and they gifted me a beautiful gold medal to wear.
Forgive me for I have sinned. My grip is a Midas Touch and my home is a Parfum Palace. I walk through it and see only shattered statues and empty mirrors.
We donned the VR headset dangling opposite us.
The crews’ quarters were much smaller than our own sleeping quarters. We had to duck to enter. Vines were everywhere: curling out of the floorboards, twining out of the cot springs, writhing out of the portholes. The quarters were dark and cramped. Our breath cut itself on razor sharp thorns.
Maria the audino sat huddled in the eye of the storm. The blackened vines contorted and knotted around her, creeping ever closer with each inexorable inhale. Her fur was disheveled and her eyes wet with unshed tears. At first she wouldn’t speak.
We pulled out the capture styler. Circles wound their way through the thick vegetation. They were a beacon of white light shining out from the darkness.
Euphoria sang across the entire cruise liner. It wasn’t real but it felt real. Maybe we were the pied piper all along. Maria the audino turned to face us.
What happened?
“I don’t remember,” Maria said.
Holographic images of people and pokémon flickered in and out of existence. They wouldn’t stop dancing.
Can I help?
“I don’t think so,” Maria said.
Bodies were gyrating on rumpled white bedsheets. Maybe if we squinted we could make out the shapes beyond the shadows.
Why not?
“Because I want to go home,” Maria said.
There were so many people in that room. They would dance until the world ended and maybe even forever after that.
But what about justice?
“There is no justice,” Maria said.
The room vanished and we were alone. Very, very alone.
Could I hew it from the blood of stone?
“Please just let me go home,” Maria said.
She looked tired. Her eyes were starkly blue in a world of black and white.
If there’s anything at all…?
“You already know,” Maria said.
We couldn’t understand. We desperately needed a reason to scream, to break. Just give us an excuse for fuck’s sake.
Maria was so dirty. Soil clogged the pads of her paws. Seeds nested there. Tender shoots burst free; unfurling on the ends were black eggs speckled with off-white dots like semen stains. Perhaps each egg was a new universe waiting to hatch. We would help her become clean again.
We took off the VR headset. Ash coated the inside of our mouth. It tasted like, I’m sorry I seduced you, left you defiled and desecrated on the altar of your own sad, pathetic creation. Poor, poor child. You can never be a lady now. Who will worship you when I’m gone?
Brit watched us leave. He said nothing because he couldn’t speak. (His eyes said, Just bleed glass. They shatter across the carpet and tear your feet to ribbons.)
The chapel was coated in viscous white liquid. It crept under the pews and flooded the cracks in the wood flooring. There would be no dove with an olive branch here.
Trevor had worked through a chunk of his pignite’s thigh. Blood and gore painted his white throat black. He wiped at the corners of his mouth, smearing even more blood into his pores in the process.
“It wasn’t me.”
We squirted out more hand sanitizer. The dollop sat on our palm, trembling in the still air. We wondered how Trevor figured such a thing could ever be true.
“If you think about it, Goldilocks is, like, that bitch. Not too hot, not too cold, but just right. The golden rule.”
We pressed the palm of our hand against our mouth. The sanitizer tasted sharp and acrid on the tip of our tongue. We spread it along the ridges of the roof of our mouth. Everything became coated in a bitter film. Trevor just laughed and took another bite from his pignite.
“I hate women. I hate everything about them. The way they go to the bathroom in herds like a pack of dumb animals. The way they whisper and titter and backstab each other with a soft word and sideways glance.
“The way their vaginas clench around my cock like the jaws of Charybdis. And then you escape and there’s Scylla off the port bow, that fucking slut. The very thought of a woman’s touch repulses me. If I could live in a world with only men, I would. I would, and I don’t regret it. I’ve never regretted anything in my entire life.”
Smoke was snorting out of his nostrils and plumes of black flames were licking along the edges of his teeth. His pignite grunted and spat out the rotten apple. It rolled away, skirting underneath one of the pews. The apple crumbled to cinders, floating in grey speckles atop the white liquid. The pignite spoke:
“I have sowed the stars in the heavens,
And mine is the silver crescent of the moon.
And as the golden kernels of the stars ripen into golden waving ears of stars
Bearing twenty times more of glittering gold,
I shall mow them with the silver sickle of the moon.”
We drank more sanitizer. We’d forgone using our hands; instead our mouth was under the dispenser, the gel pooling there, leaking out the sides as we desperately swallowed, searching for the fountain of youth. White liquid plinked onto the smooth floor in a steady cadence.
It was close enough to getting drunk. Our uniform was ruined as more viscous liquid gushed around us. Control had been lost. Years of hard work became undone in just a fumbling split second.
When Trevor’s pignite finished speaking we retched, abruptly and violently. Bile burned the back of our throat akin to shame. Dark shapes wriggled within the vomit. They were the bloated corpses of rattata that had not learned how to fly in time.
Trevor began laughing again, and we joined in too. It was a joyless symphony. Sickness still dribbled down our front. Spots irrevocably stained the uniform white. We could rescue every princess trapped in their tower and still never be clean—
The VR headset was ripped free.
Tobin’s mouth had gone numb. A metallic taste akin to electrical fire hummed in the air. She could see Brit gripping the smoking headset tight.
Her vision blurred. Tobin stumbled. Oh, right, motion sickness. Never had it been more obvious that they were at sea. The floor rolled beneath her feet. She crumpled to her knees as everything blurred and spun around her.
“What…” Tobin gagged, clapping a hand over her mouth. “...What the fuck did you do to me?”
The capture disc whistled merrily beside her. It wrote out a message in immaculate cursive, saying:
hey don’t blame me!! I was just trying to show you what I saw :(
have you considered therapy? :o
Tobin seized the disc and made a motion as though to heave it overboard. But Brit caught her arm on the backswing, shaking his head slightly. She glared at his doubles until her queasiness settled.
Then Tobin stood and stormed out of the ARGO without a backward glance.
…
Soft blue lights shone over the Crystal Wailord. A primarina bartender sat on a rolling chair. It was cast in the shape of a delicate seashell, flared rainbow spots decorating the rim before melding into a pastel cream color.
Every so often the primarina would open her muzzle and release a pulse of sound, solid and singular like the beat of a drum. As it passed through Tobin she tasted alcohol: bloody marys and sapphire martinis. They alternated with each pulse.
Crystalline instruments dangled overhead. They smoothly shifted into one another to form an intricate forest of chandeliers. Orchestral music reverberated from deep within their rock cores.
Tobin nursed her drink—vodka with ginger beer (the primarina had given it to her free of charge as thanks for her services, whatever the fuck that meant)—in silence, playing a modified version of jenga. Whenever she pulled out a block, she took a drink; whenever the tower collapsed, she took a drink. Either way, Tobin lost. She found that darkly amusing.
A glass cutaway exposed the opposite wall. Sea pokémon swam alongside the cruise liner. They conversed with the ship in their own secret language. Everything was blue. It caught in the crystals above and hovered there, trapped.
Miguel sat a few feet down the bar. Sweet-smelling lacquer coated the dark wood. Revolving lights cast a shifting chiaroscuro effect around it, around him. He was alone except for his servine, who lay coiled about his neck. Every few minutes he would check his phone.
Whenever Tobin finished a round of jenga she scooted closer. Closer, ever closer. She felt light-headed and lost within the clouds. The primarina had beat the drum multiple times.
It reminded her of when she’d snuck onto the roof of a company building with Micah. They smoked weed together and she wondered aloud whether one earned the right to be happy. Micah had giggled while Tobin tried not to choke on paranoia.
Her styler buzzed. The Rotom left yet another message:
why are you ignoring me? :(
this is boring
no one likes a sore loser you know >:((((
Tobin could see Miguel’s phone now. The screensaver was a picture of a pretty woman and a young boy with dimpled cheeks. He shared Miguel’s eyes.
“Cute kid,” she said.
Miguel started. His servine whipped around, forked tongue flicking free. Twin recognition lit up their gazes. Miguel relaxed; his servine did not.
“Ah.” Miguel wearily rubbed his bald head. He nodded thanks.
The primarina rolled by again. Tobin hated how the martini’s fruity aftertaste softened the dry gin. The sweetness was overwhelming.
“Can people fall in love too young?” Miguel asked her suddenly. “I was barely an adult. Sometimes I feel so… trapped.”
His words were slurred.
Tobin had married Micah right on the cusp of twenty. Almost ten years spent yoked to another person. What a waste, in the end.
“I think so. And not just people. My job... fucks.” Tobin closed her eyes. The afterimages of lights vibrated behind her lids in time with dancing feet. “I loved it once, I think. And I’ll have to go to a convention and pretend I still do.”
A long pause. Miguel’s face screwed up with intense concentration. His brows quartered into a heavy V.
“Why?”
A simple question, yet a loaded one. On one of the televisions adorning the bar’s wall, the grinning skull of a corviknight was baking in the golden desert sun.
“It’s like, it’s like, it’s like this.” Once the words started pouring out she found they couldn’t stop. “They want you to give and give and give and give some more. ‘S never enough. Never, never, never.”
The long hours had stretched from sixteen to twenty-four-hour shifts. Compassion wrung itself out, transforming into something grey and colorless. Her home wasn’t her home. The station was her home.
“And I think maybe I’m a coward? I don’t know how to make it stop. Fucking circles. I just, I can’t… we’re just reacting. It doesn’t mean shit.”
Tobin pressed her palm against her hand.
She was so tired, an ache that sunk deep into her bones, straight to the marrow. Time with Micah became harder and harder to find. No wonder he was fucking other people now. The job had consumed her from the inside out and left behind an empty husk.
“… Damn.”
“Damn.” Tobin agreed. They toasted in commiseration of their shared misfortune.
The bar was dancing. It was a miracle, really, that a ship this size could sail. How funny if it sank to the bottom of the ocean. Tobin chuckled aloud at the thought.
“Well, well, well. Hiding again, are we?” Trevor slid into the seat beside Miguel, grinning.
Tobin glared at him. Trevor caught her expression. He frowned, his smirk shifting into something more palatably neutral.
“I don’t like you,” she said.
Trevor blinked.
“Have either of you been to parties with the crew?” Tobin continued.
“Dunno.” Miguel was squinting, expression puzzled. “Should I?”
“We go to a lot of parties.” Trevor’s tan remained disgustingly inconsistent. He was still staring at her with raised eyebrows.
“Some of the crew like to gatecrash parties if they can. Especially the rich ones.” The primarina had returned unbeknownst to them. She rested her cheek in the palm of her hand, watching them intently. A pukka shell necklace adorned her slim fur neck. The primarina continued, saying, “Not anymore, though. Leads put a stop to it recently.”
“Why’s that?” Tobin asked. The primarina’s gaze flickered.
A gardevoir walked onto the raised stage and began singing. The crystal orchestra tuned itself to her minor key. The song was so sad, it was almost unbearable. (She sang as if at any moment a sea witch would steal away her voice.) More pokémon gathered on the other side of the glass to listen. They were like remoraid clinging to the underside of a mantine.
“Nothing but trouble, really. Can I get you two anything?” asked the primarina.
Darren had thumped into the seat next to Tobin.
“Having fun without me?” he asked, grinning. “And yes please, darling. Whiskey. Neat.”
“I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” Trevor said, sardonic. He also ordered a drink for himself. Now it was Darren’s turn to look baffled while the primarina whisked away.
“Where’s Brit and Mint?” Darren asked after a pregnant pause.
“I’m not their keeper,” Tobin muttered.
Trevor and Darren’s pokémon were shooting darts at the other end of the bar. Miguel’s servine slithered off to join them. Good riddance.
Tobin ran a hand along the bar. Stains and indentations occasionally marred the varnish, imperfections indicating lost memories. She wished she could sense the past with just a brush of her finger pads.
“She reminds me of Rosa,” Miguel mumbled, lifting his head as the gardevoir continued her ballad.
“Ah, Rosa! Oh, Rosa!” Darren sang in an attempt to break the tension. His voice was rough and out of tune. Both Tobin and Trevor cracked grudging smiles. “Rosa was Miguel’s unrequited love.”
“She was like a super hot gardevoir or whatever,” Trevor added, grinning.
“No. She was a human girl. But her hair was green and she…” Miguel briefly fell silent. “She deserved better. I would have worshipped her. I would have washed her feet and kissed the ground she walked on.”
A pregnant pause followed this declaration.
Trevor rolled his eyes. “You lot are so depressing. Fucking hell.”
He pulled out a cigarette and lit up.
The primarina returned with drinks. She stared at Trevor and then, pointedly, at the sign that read NO SMOKING. Disgruntled, he stubbed the cigarette out.
Tobin ordered more vodka. Everything was too blue. The drum kept beating.
They played several rounds of jenga together. Darren placed one of the pieces between his nose and upper lip, pretending to be a mustache-twirling villain. It got Tobin to laugh. Suddenly she thought she might be violently sick.
She rushed to the bathroom. It was single, unisex. Floral wallpaper and a handsome cabinet opposite the toilet bore down on her. Tobin would never understand the need for a pretty room to answer nature’s call. Some recent previous occupant had sprayed cloyingly scented Fabreeze everywhere. It made her headache worse.
Tobin didn’t vomit. She sat hunched over the toilet and dry heaved for a few seconds. If she could just find release maybe it would be easier. Flecks of spittle swirled in the clear water; shit stains clawed the sides of the toilet. She was alone with her nausea.
At last, she said, “You’re only ever sick when you’re drunk or pregnant.”
Then Tobin sank to the floor and began crying. The sobs were torn from deep in the chest. Her shoulders shook as she gasped for air. It was the sort of crying that made breathing near-impossible. It was the sort of crying that felt a lot like dying.
She fumbled for her phone and dialed his number with shaking hands.
It went straight to messages.
Micah’s wry voice almost set her off again. It was as familiar to her as her own. Tobin sniffled.
“I know... I know I probably shouldn’t call. But I miss you. I wish you were here.”
She hung up, placing her head between her hands. Eventually, Tobin dried her eyes, flushed the toilet, cleaned herself up, and stumbled back to the bar.
I Walk Through Your Dreams and Invent the Future.
Chapter Two: Build Me a City and Call It Jerusalem.
Chapter Two: Build Me a City and Call It Jerusalem.
“Actually, you said Love, for you,
is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s
terrifying. No one
will ever want to sleep with you.”
The shower water had long since run cold. Cool, wet ceramic pressed against Tobin’s back. She rested her head between her knees. Water spooled through her hair, pooling around her toes before swirling down the drain.
She stood up, turning off the water. The nozzle flow slowed to a stop. She stayed still, dripping wet. Blank white walls sectioned into corners by sharp horizontal lines consumed her vision.
Eventually, she stepped out of the shower.
Tobin dried down, chasing away the goosebumps running along her arms. The towel was soft. Her short hair hung in damp clumps around her face.
Hazel eyes underscored by dark bags stared out the mirror as she brushed her teeth. Up, down, around, and then once more with feeling. Tobin’s hair had taken on a bit of a frizz, fringes curling up into a cowlick. She spent a good minute finger combing it into submission.
The reflection twisted. Her skin sagged and greyed, teeth jagged and black. One tooth shone gold. Gnarled hands clasped around her neck; Tobin thought she might choke and die. (Nothing happened.)
Tobin exhaled. Her breath fogged up the mirror. The witch of the woods was gone.
Putting the ranger uniform on was like donning a suit of armor. Stiff, starched fabric zipped up and over soft, supple skin. The scattered pieces were stitching themselves back together. Tobin straightened her jacket.
She walked back out into the main cabin. Brit still slept, sides steadily rising and falling. Peppermint was awake, fixated on The Rotom (it had become a title denoting the inevitable) parading around in the corpse of Tobin’s capture styler. The disc sparkled with golden jubilance, spinning midair in lazy loop-de-loops.
Peppermint: Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
“Yeah, yeah.” Tobin pulled up a chair. She reclined all the way back until it groaned with protest. Resting her feet on the desk, Tobin glowered at The Rotom. It hadn’t tried anything. Yet. But it had also been evasive as hell the entire previous night. “Oi. What was all that noise you were making before about princesses and princes.”
The disc halted at the apex of its loop. Gravity took a moment to reassert itself, and the disc plopped back onto the bed. A glowing orb of energy hovered above the disc.
Brit startled awake, glancing around, before narrowing his eyes at The Rotom. It sparked and shifted, orange body sharply ethereal, flickering in and out of existence. Then The Rotom vanished. It left behind a message pulsing in neon shades:
I said what I said
race ya for it ;)
Tobin swore loudly. Storming over to the desk, she wrenched the bottom drawer open. Inside the recorder rattled like the warning rasp of an ekans’s tail. Tobin slammed the drawer shut, recorder untouched, sitting down with a thump.
She seethed. She fumed. Peppermint watched her.
Peppermint: If you want the rainbow, you have to tolerate the rain.
Tobin turned on the television. Knights of Castellia was playing. The music shimmered like sequins in the sterile air. Micah hated musicals. He would always complain about how randomly bursting into song was distracting and took him out of the story.
A piece of paper torn from the pad on the desk had a few half-hearted scribbles from the night before. They were notes Tobin had jotted down while attempting to grill The Rotom for information. It read:
thorns and towers
ghost types are douchebags
surveillance maybe saw... something
Tobin couldn’t exactly jaunt up to security with this, though. Even if she could, she didn’t want to involve those bumbling morons unless absolutely necessary. And it might still be an elaborate hoax. She didn’t trust The Rotom.
Brit peered over her shoulder. He tapped the second line with his bright red talon. Tobin underlined the word douchebag for emphasis. At least they agreed on one thing. He took the pen out of her hand, adding another comment:
rape?
Such an ugly word.
Tobin desperately wanted a cigarette. All these years later and the urge still threatened to overwhelm her from time to time. The ghost of nicotine past kissed the back of her throat.
…
Tobin liked tennis courts. The sharp white lines bisecting bright green clay. Rectangles within rectangles. Every obstacle had a place, every rule had a purpose. It was a safe space.
The noonday sun beat down overhead. Wingull trailed behind the cruise ship, neat white vees in a crisp blue sky. One of the crew members had told Tobin a wives’ tale several days earlier: wingull only ever followed captains who beat their partners. It was a bad omen.
Sweat dripped along the dip of her forehead. Her clothes stuck to her skin. Tobin struck the tennis ball backhanded, slicing it toward Darren. He lunged, his own racket narrowly missing as the ball spun away.
Peppermint declared the ball had already gone out of bounds, awarding the point to Darren.
“Bullshit!” Tobin shouted. She fought the urge to hurl her racket at the hard ground.
Darren stood doubled over, hands resting on his knees. Pit stains darkened the entire upper half of his t-shirt. Sweat dripped off the bridge of his nose.
Beside him, his dewott twirled her own racket. The blue otter had bounced around with ease, occasionally pulling off an acrobatic flip for no reason at all. Show-off.
Tobin glanced over at Brit and saw agreement reflected back in his gaze.
Peppermint: He who expects no gratitude shall never be disappointed.
Tobin raised a choice finger in the sky.
“Maybe… a break…?” Darren suggested.
“No way that was out.” Her mouth set into a stubborn line. Darren just shrugged, panting hard. He looked so pathetic she couldn't help but take pity on him.
Tobin walked over to the side of the court where their water bottles waited, squeezing a stream into her mouth. She tossed Darren the bottle, watching with mild amusement as he plopped down and doused his face.
Brit and Darren’s dewott started a new round. Love-love. The word tasted funny on Tobin’s tongue. Romance had become a means of keeping score.
No longer held back by their human companions, the pokémon went all out. They zoomed across the court as the ball whizzed almost faster than the eye could track. The ball made a satisfying thud whenever it connected properly with the racket. Streaks of sludge trailed behind it from Brit’s strikes, purifying into sweet-smelling water whenever it was volleyed back.
Peppermint made another bullshit call. Both pokémon paused to shoot them a withering look. The game continued.
Tobin licked her lips and tasted salt. She thought about the ocean.
“Have you noticed anything strange lately?” Tobin absently grabbed her foot, arching her back. She held the position for five seconds, feeling the pull in her calf, before switching to the other leg.
The ship swayed, hitting a wave of turbulence. Tobin almost lost her balance. Darren laughed, propping himself up on his elbows.
“Stranger than yesterday?”
“Along those lines.”
Tobin stared out at the court.
Darren scrubbed at his wet face. Water glittered on the pads of his fingers, between the swell of his knuckles. The dots connected into the shape of a pokéball. It shook once and then clicked success. A critical capture.
The ship rocked again, hard and jarring. Tobin didn’t stumble this time. A cold breeze whipped across the bow.
“Miguel has been quiet recently.” Darren shivered. “Well, more quiet than usual. We were chilling at that nice bar down below, the Crystal Wailord.”
Tobin flopped beside him. She traced concentric circles on the smooth clay. If she breathed deeply she’d catch a whiff of hot plastic. The cruise liner whined under the weight of its passengers and their baggage.
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. After we liquored him up a bit, he was mumbling some story his ma told him as a kid. Something about, uh”—Darren scratched under his chin—“a gardevoir that would drown children or whatever. Why?”
“Just wondering. This trip has been weird.”
The sky was so blue. And the ocean below them, too. Two domes meeting on the line of the horizon. And at the end of the line maybe they’d find Arceus. Or Unova. Whichever came first.
“Yeah. I was surprised you wanted to hang out again, honestly,” Darren said.
Tobin fiddled with her wedding ring. The gold band cut into her flesh. It no longer fit properly: a sign she was growing fat and lazy.
“It was cool, though,” Darren added, “the way you marched in there last night. Very Ranger-y.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And sexy.”
“Give it time,” Tobin said, deadpan.
She wondered what Micah would think if she fucked Darren. Taking a disadvantage and turning it into a deuce. Would he be jealous? Would he even care at all?
Darren laughed.
Brit and Darren’s dewott switched sides. Brit puffed out his throat sac, strutting past. Darren’s dewott twirled her racket in response. Such unnecessary posturing, yet that was half the fun (maybe Brit was a show-off too).
Water and acid now littered the court. All that wonderful geometry, ruined. Competition was a beautiful, terrible thing. It divided the world into winners and losers. Trying to impose order over violence only inspired chaos.
“You better clean that shit up when you’re done!” Tobin shouted. Brit waved his compliance before contorting to reach for a corkspin. Refocusing, Tobin added, “I used to play tennis with my husband. He liked playing, but hated playing against me.”
She set the wedding band on the ground between them. There it lay trembling, subject to even the subtlest whims of the ship’s movements.
“Can’t imagine why.” Darren grinned. “Figured you were gonna beam me with that thing several times.”
Tobin pointed the racket at his forehead, right between the eyes. The racket was swathed in fur. Soft beige strands clung damply to her fingers. If she flexed she could feel the antler handle throbbing beneath the fur coat. (When the passing seasons changed would it change too? a racket that bloomed in rhythm with the cherry blossoms.)
Then Tobin dropped it, the clatter loud and jarring, folding her arms behind her head. She drawled, “I play to win, baby.”
Darren smiled his slow, easy smile. A sudden commotion distracted them. People were gathering along the starboard bow of the ship, pointing and gesturing. Many had pulled out their phones. The flashes were almost as bright and loud as the crowd.
Tobin and Darren glanced at each other. They stood in unison. Brit and Darren’s dewott continued their tennis match, clearly uninterested in the growing spectacle.
Tobin had long ago mastered the art of forcing her way through a crowd. She pushed ahead, stubbornly uncompromising, ignoring the indignant glares and grunted curses. Some of them recognized her uniform and respectfully subsided. Darren trailed meekly in her wake.
A school of alomomola were racing alongside the cruise ship. Tobin had never seen them move so quickly before; usually, they floated placidly upon the surface of the sea. And yet here they were soaring freely.
Pink ink unfurled across the ocean’s blue parchment. Songs lyrics about love and healing were scrawled in the margins. (No one could read what they wrote, not even the clever ones.)
Water flowers swelled around the surging school. They spilled forth like a spoiled secret, propelling the alomomola ever onward. People cheered, urging them to outstrip the cruise liner. Children sat on their fathers’ shoulders and waved their chubby arms in the air. More lights from phones flashed.
It was difficult to think of towers and thorns in moments like these.
“A good omen, yeah?” Darren asked. A cigarette hung loosely between his lips. “Sure you don’t want one?”
She shook her head. Darren shrugged before pulling out his lighter. The cigarette tip shimmered gold; Darren ignored the dirty looks from those around them. He touched her, a bit hesitant.
Tobin realized she’d left her ring behind.
She glanced up at the sky. The wingull still tailed them. Darren’s light touch caressed her lower back. She missed being intimate with another person.
Her capture styler hummed. When Tobin pulled it out, The Rotom had left a message:
found something, you slacker. are you even trying??
…
The virtual reality system ARGO had been closed down due to a malfunction. Tobin had no doubt that The Rotom played a role in the matter. She stared at the hulking machine, hands in her pockets, expression inscrutable. ARGO was a massive spherical building painted nauseating shades of orange. The interior was dark and cool, all the lights shut off.
Beside her sulked Brit. Disapproval radiated off him in waves.
“Chill the fuck out. He stayed with us all last night and nothing happened.”
But Tobin felt a touch nervous herself. She had trained in VR before; motion sickness caused issues almost every time. If this turned out to be some sort of trick she would be pissed.
Clusters of mushrooms clung to ARGO’s walls. They glowed, softly phosphorescent, squat and bulbous, their gills breathing in and out to the rocking of the ship. Several morelull lay huddled together, observing them with dark eyes. The faint scent of moldered yeast lingered on.
Corded ropes hung limp and lifeless on faded rings. The hemp clumps dangled around them like knotted strands of blonde hair. Tobin swallowed down her rising bile.
Her styler turned on. The Rotom had resurrected it, the disc ducking away from her. A line of golden thread stretched out, guiding her beyond a myriad of possibilities. Somewhere in the darkness perhaps lurked the unturning, waiting with shears to determine how another might die.
Tobin followed the line.
It brought her to a cubby filled with VR equipment. She pulled one out, the headgear dark and heavy in her small grip. Tobin started strapping it on before pausing and glancing over at Brit.
He reached for a headset of his own. She shook her head; his hand dropped to his side. Brit’s middle finger burned red.
“This better have a point,” Tobin said.
aw don’t be like that! you can trust me ;)
The words beat against the inside of the VR headset like the face of an alarm clock. A light tingle of electricity arced along her arms. Blue eyes swirling with fractals swam into view before everything went dark.
05:00 05:00 05:00 05:00 05:00
04:00 04:00 04:00 04:00
03:00 03:00 03:00
02:00 02:00
01:00 01:00 01:00 01:00 01:00 01:00 01:00 01:00 01:00 01:00 01:00
00:00
The pied piper was a meloetta who had lost her red slippers. Her once green hair was now bleached white; the black notes crawled across the music sheets in an unending wave. She sounded like the ocean.
She stood at the edge of the bridge, watching a line of rattata line up in a row, as if waiting to be shot. We could tell when others used to be in love; those rattata swan dived into the ocean but didn’t drown. Their wings burgeoned just in time. The rest weren’t so lucky.
We found Arceus—summer haloed by the chirping of kricketune—in the space between trembling whiskers. We were still waiting for our wings, but they never came. Our shoulder blades ached from the lacking.
Underneath the bridge, the cruise liner was docked. It idled in the water like a penned tauros. It could be easy to forget just how large the ship truly was. At max capacity, it held more people than many small towns on the fringes of Unova.
A name tattooed the ship’s side. We realized we had never cared to remember it. It had fallen away in a subtle reckoning.
All the color had been drained from the attractions adorning the ship. They were lifeless. Inert.
Inertia was the tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged. We remember someone we once loved telling us that once upon a time. An object in motion would stay in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. It was friction, like the friction stemming from rubbing against someone we wanted to fuck.
We asked the pied piper to let her hair down. She listened. It uncoiled off the edge of the bridge with the thudding cadence of a leitmotif.
We climbed down the hair. Music beat beneath our breast. Grey stains cast shadows over our hands. We could go mad here, caught in this liminal space between bridge and boat.
But we returned to earth; our feet brushed the wood floor, anchoring us to reality. The hair pulled away. The music stopped. The silence stretched out before us.
We descended deeper into the bowels of the cruise liner. No one else was around.
The layers were peeling away, leaving only a barren hallway. Panelled walls loomed over us, stripped of color. The sheer volume was so much more prominent without people or pokémon. The ship’s maws were slowly clamping around us.
The hallway opened into a chapel.
An organ covered the far wall. Pipes wove and tangled together like a lower intestine. Music rumbled in rhythm with the ship’s heartbeat as the pedals and keys shifted up and down. It was jazz played in reverse. Painted red eyes bore down from the ceiling.
A NEW PERSPECTIVE WILL COME WITH THE NEW YEAR
Trevor sat sprawled out on the furthest back pew. His pignite lay before him, hogtied, an apple shoved in his snout. Burnt pork filled the sterile air. One sanitizer dispense—of pitch black and rake thin plastic—stood upright beside them.
“It’s a miracle. An absolute fucking miracle,” Trevor drawled. His pignite turned to glare at us. Trevor gestured toward the sanitizer dispenser. “Wash your goddamn hands.”
The clear gel stung. We started with our fingers, then our knuckles, then our palms, then worked our way up to our elbows and finally our shoulders. No one could doubt we weren’t clean. The scent of rubbing alcohol mixed with the scent of smoke. Just to be certain, we even rubbed behind our ears and the back of our neck. It tingled.
“What the hell you waiting for?”
Trevor had pulled out a carving knife. He traced looping circles on his pignite’s skin. The cuts bled white. We looked at them and then at the black confessional box. It threatened to swallow the room whole; it rose above us like an indomitable tower we had to scale.
Each step felt like it might be the last taken. Ever. That final footfall would herald with it billions of eyes closing in unison. We stepped inside.
The confessional box’s interior left us blind. We sat there (the sound of straw being spun into gold could be heard; if only we knew his name) and waited. Salt water dripped from the ceiling into our eyes. We saw clearly for the first time.
Brit sat on the other side of the confessional. Mesh segmented his rubbery skin into miniscule octagonal dots. His throat sac had been sliced away and stapled to the ceiling. He couldn’t speak, only watch.
I have a confession to make:
Before the fires came, there were victini. Their dances turned winter to summer, their dances lit the path to gold. I followed them while the forest burned.
When the fires came, I fled to the hills because I saw in them my own twisted reflection. I hid there while smoke clogged the sky and flames salted the land.
After the fires came, Peppermint guided me to survivors. We rescued them together. I never told anyone anything else, and they gifted me a beautiful gold medal to wear.
Forgive me for I have sinned. My grip is a Midas Touch and my home is a Parfum Palace. I walk through it and see only shattered statues and empty mirrors.
We donned the VR headset dangling opposite us.
The crews’ quarters were much smaller than our own sleeping quarters. We had to duck to enter. Vines were everywhere: curling out of the floorboards, twining out of the cot springs, writhing out of the portholes. The quarters were dark and cramped. Our breath cut itself on razor sharp thorns.
Maria the audino sat huddled in the eye of the storm. The blackened vines contorted and knotted around her, creeping ever closer with each inexorable inhale. Her fur was disheveled and her eyes wet with unshed tears. At first she wouldn’t speak.
We pulled out the capture styler. Circles wound their way through the thick vegetation. They were a beacon of white light shining out from the darkness.
Euphoria sang across the entire cruise liner. It wasn’t real but it felt real. Maybe we were the pied piper all along. Maria the audino turned to face us.
What happened?
“I don’t remember,” Maria said.
Holographic images of people and pokémon flickered in and out of existence. They wouldn’t stop dancing.
Can I help?
“I don’t think so,” Maria said.
Bodies were gyrating on rumpled white bedsheets. Maybe if we squinted we could make out the shapes beyond the shadows.
Why not?
“Because I want to go home,” Maria said.
There were so many people in that room. They would dance until the world ended and maybe even forever after that.
But what about justice?
“There is no justice,” Maria said.
The room vanished and we were alone. Very, very alone.
Could I hew it from the blood of stone?
“Please just let me go home,” Maria said.
She looked tired. Her eyes were starkly blue in a world of black and white.
If there’s anything at all…?
“You already know,” Maria said.
We couldn’t understand. We desperately needed a reason to scream, to break. Just give us an excuse for fuck’s sake.
Maria was so dirty. Soil clogged the pads of her paws. Seeds nested there. Tender shoots burst free; unfurling on the ends were black eggs speckled with off-white dots like semen stains. Perhaps each egg was a new universe waiting to hatch. We would help her become clean again.
We took off the VR headset. Ash coated the inside of our mouth. It tasted like, I’m sorry I seduced you, left you defiled and desecrated on the altar of your own sad, pathetic creation. Poor, poor child. You can never be a lady now. Who will worship you when I’m gone?
Brit watched us leave. He said nothing because he couldn’t speak. (His eyes said, Just bleed glass. They shatter across the carpet and tear your feet to ribbons.)
The chapel was coated in viscous white liquid. It crept under the pews and flooded the cracks in the wood flooring. There would be no dove with an olive branch here.
Trevor had worked through a chunk of his pignite’s thigh. Blood and gore painted his white throat black. He wiped at the corners of his mouth, smearing even more blood into his pores in the process.
“It wasn’t me.”
We squirted out more hand sanitizer. The dollop sat on our palm, trembling in the still air. We wondered how Trevor figured such a thing could ever be true.
“If you think about it, Goldilocks is, like, that bitch. Not too hot, not too cold, but just right. The golden rule.”
We pressed the palm of our hand against our mouth. The sanitizer tasted sharp and acrid on the tip of our tongue. We spread it along the ridges of the roof of our mouth. Everything became coated in a bitter film. Trevor just laughed and took another bite from his pignite.
“I hate women. I hate everything about them. The way they go to the bathroom in herds like a pack of dumb animals. The way they whisper and titter and backstab each other with a soft word and sideways glance.
“The way their vaginas clench around my cock like the jaws of Charybdis. And then you escape and there’s Scylla off the port bow, that fucking slut. The very thought of a woman’s touch repulses me. If I could live in a world with only men, I would. I would, and I don’t regret it. I’ve never regretted anything in my entire life.”
Smoke was snorting out of his nostrils and plumes of black flames were licking along the edges of his teeth. His pignite grunted and spat out the rotten apple. It rolled away, skirting underneath one of the pews. The apple crumbled to cinders, floating in grey speckles atop the white liquid. The pignite spoke:
“I have sowed the stars in the heavens,
And mine is the silver crescent of the moon.
And as the golden kernels of the stars ripen into golden waving ears of stars
Bearing twenty times more of glittering gold,
I shall mow them with the silver sickle of the moon.”
We drank more sanitizer. We’d forgone using our hands; instead our mouth was under the dispenser, the gel pooling there, leaking out the sides as we desperately swallowed, searching for the fountain of youth. White liquid plinked onto the smooth floor in a steady cadence.
It was close enough to getting drunk. Our uniform was ruined as more viscous liquid gushed around us. Control had been lost. Years of hard work became undone in just a fumbling split second.
When Trevor’s pignite finished speaking we retched, abruptly and violently. Bile burned the back of our throat akin to shame. Dark shapes wriggled within the vomit. They were the bloated corpses of rattata that had not learned how to fly in time.
Trevor began laughing again, and we joined in too. It was a joyless symphony. Sickness still dribbled down our front. Spots irrevocably stained the uniform white. We could rescue every princess trapped in their tower and still never be clean—
The VR headset was ripped free.
Tobin’s mouth had gone numb. A metallic taste akin to electrical fire hummed in the air. She could see Brit gripping the smoking headset tight.
Her vision blurred. Tobin stumbled. Oh, right, motion sickness. Never had it been more obvious that they were at sea. The floor rolled beneath her feet. She crumpled to her knees as everything blurred and spun around her.
“What…” Tobin gagged, clapping a hand over her mouth. “...What the fuck did you do to me?”
The capture disc whistled merrily beside her. It wrote out a message in immaculate cursive, saying:
hey don’t blame me!! I was just trying to show you what I saw :(
have you considered therapy? :o
Tobin seized the disc and made a motion as though to heave it overboard. But Brit caught her arm on the backswing, shaking his head slightly. She glared at his doubles until her queasiness settled.
Then Tobin stood and stormed out of the ARGO without a backward glance.
…
Soft blue lights shone over the Crystal Wailord. A primarina bartender sat on a rolling chair. It was cast in the shape of a delicate seashell, flared rainbow spots decorating the rim before melding into a pastel cream color.
Every so often the primarina would open her muzzle and release a pulse of sound, solid and singular like the beat of a drum. As it passed through Tobin she tasted alcohol: bloody marys and sapphire martinis. They alternated with each pulse.
Crystalline instruments dangled overhead. They smoothly shifted into one another to form an intricate forest of chandeliers. Orchestral music reverberated from deep within their rock cores.
Tobin nursed her drink—vodka with ginger beer (the primarina had given it to her free of charge as thanks for her services, whatever the fuck that meant)—in silence, playing a modified version of jenga. Whenever she pulled out a block, she took a drink; whenever the tower collapsed, she took a drink. Either way, Tobin lost. She found that darkly amusing.
A glass cutaway exposed the opposite wall. Sea pokémon swam alongside the cruise liner. They conversed with the ship in their own secret language. Everything was blue. It caught in the crystals above and hovered there, trapped.
Miguel sat a few feet down the bar. Sweet-smelling lacquer coated the dark wood. Revolving lights cast a shifting chiaroscuro effect around it, around him. He was alone except for his servine, who lay coiled about his neck. Every few minutes he would check his phone.
Whenever Tobin finished a round of jenga she scooted closer. Closer, ever closer. She felt light-headed and lost within the clouds. The primarina had beat the drum multiple times.
It reminded her of when she’d snuck onto the roof of a company building with Micah. They smoked weed together and she wondered aloud whether one earned the right to be happy. Micah had giggled while Tobin tried not to choke on paranoia.
Her styler buzzed. The Rotom left yet another message:
why are you ignoring me? :(
this is boring
no one likes a sore loser you know >:((((
Tobin could see Miguel’s phone now. The screensaver was a picture of a pretty woman and a young boy with dimpled cheeks. He shared Miguel’s eyes.
“Cute kid,” she said.
Miguel started. His servine whipped around, forked tongue flicking free. Twin recognition lit up their gazes. Miguel relaxed; his servine did not.
“Ah.” Miguel wearily rubbed his bald head. He nodded thanks.
The primarina rolled by again. Tobin hated how the martini’s fruity aftertaste softened the dry gin. The sweetness was overwhelming.
“Can people fall in love too young?” Miguel asked her suddenly. “I was barely an adult. Sometimes I feel so… trapped.”
His words were slurred.
Tobin had married Micah right on the cusp of twenty. Almost ten years spent yoked to another person. What a waste, in the end.
“I think so. And not just people. My job... fucks.” Tobin closed her eyes. The afterimages of lights vibrated behind her lids in time with dancing feet. “I loved it once, I think. And I’ll have to go to a convention and pretend I still do.”
A long pause. Miguel’s face screwed up with intense concentration. His brows quartered into a heavy V.
“Why?”
A simple question, yet a loaded one. On one of the televisions adorning the bar’s wall, the grinning skull of a corviknight was baking in the golden desert sun.
“It’s like, it’s like, it’s like this.” Once the words started pouring out she found they couldn’t stop. “They want you to give and give and give and give some more. ‘S never enough. Never, never, never.”
The long hours had stretched from sixteen to twenty-four-hour shifts. Compassion wrung itself out, transforming into something grey and colorless. Her home wasn’t her home. The station was her home.
“And I think maybe I’m a coward? I don’t know how to make it stop. Fucking circles. I just, I can’t… we’re just reacting. It doesn’t mean shit.”
Tobin pressed her palm against her hand.
She was so tired, an ache that sunk deep into her bones, straight to the marrow. Time with Micah became harder and harder to find. No wonder he was fucking other people now. The job had consumed her from the inside out and left behind an empty husk.
“… Damn.”
“Damn.” Tobin agreed. They toasted in commiseration of their shared misfortune.
The bar was dancing. It was a miracle, really, that a ship this size could sail. How funny if it sank to the bottom of the ocean. Tobin chuckled aloud at the thought.
“Well, well, well. Hiding again, are we?” Trevor slid into the seat beside Miguel, grinning.
Tobin glared at him. Trevor caught her expression. He frowned, his smirk shifting into something more palatably neutral.
“I don’t like you,” she said.
Trevor blinked.
“Have either of you been to parties with the crew?” Tobin continued.
“Dunno.” Miguel was squinting, expression puzzled. “Should I?”
“We go to a lot of parties.” Trevor’s tan remained disgustingly inconsistent. He was still staring at her with raised eyebrows.
“Some of the crew like to gatecrash parties if they can. Especially the rich ones.” The primarina had returned unbeknownst to them. She rested her cheek in the palm of her hand, watching them intently. A pukka shell necklace adorned her slim fur neck. The primarina continued, saying, “Not anymore, though. Leads put a stop to it recently.”
“Why’s that?” Tobin asked. The primarina’s gaze flickered.
A gardevoir walked onto the raised stage and began singing. The crystal orchestra tuned itself to her minor key. The song was so sad, it was almost unbearable. (She sang as if at any moment a sea witch would steal away her voice.) More pokémon gathered on the other side of the glass to listen. They were like remoraid clinging to the underside of a mantine.
“Nothing but trouble, really. Can I get you two anything?” asked the primarina.
Darren had thumped into the seat next to Tobin.
“Having fun without me?” he asked, grinning. “And yes please, darling. Whiskey. Neat.”
“I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” Trevor said, sardonic. He also ordered a drink for himself. Now it was Darren’s turn to look baffled while the primarina whisked away.
“Where’s Brit and Mint?” Darren asked after a pregnant pause.
“I’m not their keeper,” Tobin muttered.
Trevor and Darren’s pokémon were shooting darts at the other end of the bar. Miguel’s servine slithered off to join them. Good riddance.
Tobin ran a hand along the bar. Stains and indentations occasionally marred the varnish, imperfections indicating lost memories. She wished she could sense the past with just a brush of her finger pads.
“She reminds me of Rosa,” Miguel mumbled, lifting his head as the gardevoir continued her ballad.
“Ah, Rosa! Oh, Rosa!” Darren sang in an attempt to break the tension. His voice was rough and out of tune. Both Tobin and Trevor cracked grudging smiles. “Rosa was Miguel’s unrequited love.”
“She was like a super hot gardevoir or whatever,” Trevor added, grinning.
“No. She was a human girl. But her hair was green and she…” Miguel briefly fell silent. “She deserved better. I would have worshipped her. I would have washed her feet and kissed the ground she walked on.”
A pregnant pause followed this declaration.
Trevor rolled his eyes. “You lot are so depressing. Fucking hell.”
He pulled out a cigarette and lit up.
The primarina returned with drinks. She stared at Trevor and then, pointedly, at the sign that read NO SMOKING. Disgruntled, he stubbed the cigarette out.
Tobin ordered more vodka. Everything was too blue. The drum kept beating.
They played several rounds of jenga together. Darren placed one of the pieces between his nose and upper lip, pretending to be a mustache-twirling villain. It got Tobin to laugh. Suddenly she thought she might be violently sick.
She rushed to the bathroom. It was single, unisex. Floral wallpaper and a handsome cabinet opposite the toilet bore down on her. Tobin would never understand the need for a pretty room to answer nature’s call. Some recent previous occupant had sprayed cloyingly scented Fabreeze everywhere. It made her headache worse.
Tobin didn’t vomit. She sat hunched over the toilet and dry heaved for a few seconds. If she could just find release maybe it would be easier. Flecks of spittle swirled in the clear water; shit stains clawed the sides of the toilet. She was alone with her nausea.
At last, she said, “You’re only ever sick when you’re drunk or pregnant.”
Then Tobin sank to the floor and began crying. The sobs were torn from deep in the chest. Her shoulders shook as she gasped for air. It was the sort of crying that made breathing near-impossible. It was the sort of crying that felt a lot like dying.
She fumbled for her phone and dialed his number with shaking hands.
It went straight to messages.
Micah’s wry voice almost set her off again. It was as familiar to her as her own. Tobin sniffled.
“I know... I know I probably shouldn’t call. But I miss you. I wish you were here.”
She hung up, placing her head between her hands. Eventually, Tobin dried her eyes, flushed the toilet, cleaned herself up, and stumbled back to the bar.