There were anomalies that needed attention, like the one just down the hall who kept speaking in riddles to confuse the guards. There were anomalies that needed the utmost care, like in the cell block just down the hall. Then there was Summer, and Summer had headphones.
And bitterness.
She wore them around her neck as she sat down at her bed to flip through the pages of a music magazine that featured her, however hidden away she may have been in its limited amount of hiding spaces. It was only forty-some pages long, mostly ads, and yet she had to do some serious digging to find out where she was buried in it.
“Aww, really?” she said out loud, noticing how the article didn’t even bother to spell her name right. “Who the hell is Summer Ruke? It’s Duke, you unbelievable assholes.”
She heard laughing outside of her cell as the guard, who was only stationed there because every other cell in the block had a guard and they didn’t want to give anyone ‘special treatment,’ spoke up as he was prone to do. “Gonna start calling you Ruke from now on.”
Summer offered the man a fake laugh and dropped the magazine on the floor beside her. It’s not like it mattered anymore. She and her headphones belonged to the Foundation to be ‘contained’ as if she was some kind of threat to civilization. Maybe if the music that came from her headphones was anomalous in some way, like a siren song luring in victims, but she couldn’t even have that.
“Big Slime moving day?” she asked, unlocking her Foundation-issued phone and browsing for current events. “Think it’s gonna go any better this time?”
The guard scoffed and said, “We were unprepared last time. You should see the new equipment they’ve got now. Never underestimate the Foundation, Ruke.”
“Mhm,” she breathed, “so many things to love about them…”
“Don’t gotta love ‘em, just gotta respect what they do.”
Summer faked a retching noise and went quiet. Hours passed as more and more boots touched the ground in the hallway outside in preparation to move what everyone knew as Big Slime in the next hallway over. Orders were hollered, doors were pried open, and ultimately, failure ensued.
Agents were thrown across the halls, devoured into its slimy mass, and eventually driven out of its way only to reconvene in the next hallway over. As its massive body passed by Summer’s room, its blue slime seeped into the corners of her door and puddled on the floor.
“Hey, whoa, c’mon now, we’re on the same side,” she said, watching it retreat from her door as she went back to scrolling on her phone.
Dinner was late that night, seeing as how the entire hallway needed to be scrubbed down, the cafeteria tables included. She pushed the slime away from the bench with her foot and sat down at her usual table, food tray in hand. It wasn’t the most talkative bunch in that cell block, so she would eat with her headphones on to block out the noise so she could eat in peace. It wasn’t that she didn’t like to be social, it was more that she was afraid of most of the others. Low-risk reality benders were still reality benders at the end of the day, and staying out of their way was high on her list of priorities in Foundation survival.
Luckily for her, she had her own way of escaping, the soothing wave of melodic bliss coming from her headphones washing over her, transporting her mind elsewhere to a place inhabited only by music and colors.
It was always a woman’s voice accompanied by a cacophony of synthetic sounds, all of which were various shapes and colors haphazardly swirling around the steady, pulsing line that was the beat. Sometimes that line would come to an abrupt end, leaving the orbiting shapes to float off on their own before another line came to pick up what was left and begin anew. The sky was a mix of pink and blue this time, setting over a calm, still sea that met with the edge of the world on the horizon. The song’s voice echoed and reverberated off invisible walls in the distance, stretching to hit its notes and flooding the world before vanishing seamlessly into several puffs of smoke.
She became reliant on them for sleeping, as the sounds of a not-prison-but-basically-still-prison cell block were about as pleasant as one would expect. The neon lights that lined the corners of her room would fade out, the world created by her headphones would seep in, and all else went by the wayside. It was a world only she could access, simultaneously giving her one of the greatest gifts of all as well as damning her to a life in custody.
It wasn’t often she was woken up by an outside noise, but that morning’s struggle was loud enough for her to take her headphones off and peer out through the hatch in the center of her door. A maned wolf, with its long legs and fox-like face, roamed freely in the halls outside, objects swirling around it and crashing into walls like a tornado. Foundation staff were getting tangled in its vortex as Summer watched on, pushing her bleach blonde bangs to one side and eating from a bag of chips.
She needed a haircut, as well as a redye, maybe red or orange this time around to match her headphones. Closing the hatch on her door, she went to her bathroom and began brushing her teeth as the chaos outside only grew in volume. Placing her headphones back over her ears, she began swaying to the music, pointing to herself in the mirror as she did so.
“Look,” the guard would say later in the day when the situation had been maintained. “It’s not like there’s any right way to handle these kinds of things, just gotta learn and move on. That’s what this new book I’m reading is about. Self-help for the realistic, y’know? Shit’s gonna happen, you just gotta learn how to deal with it.”
“Mhm,” Summer muttered under her breath.
“I mean, they want the entire hallway moved in less than a week? I’d say we’re doing the best we can, given how volatile some of these things are. But hey, if they need more low-threat living space, you gotta do what you gotta do, right?”
“And what volatile beasts are you tackling today?”
The guard audibly sighed and said, “Man, I don’t know…”
It was a series of toy soldiers with real, functional weaponry attached to their arms, but Summer didn’t bother to watch out of fear that they might find their way through the hatch. She wasn’t even sure how they could have messed that one up, as they were literally just a bunch of sentient toy soldiers, but she banished the thought. There were Twitter threads to read and music to be heard.
Later that day, she came out of the shower in a bathrobe and heard the grunting of her old pal, the guard. “Did they get ya?” she asked.
“I don’t know why they’re all choosing this week to show us something new and dangerous about themselves, but I’m fed up with it. This week can’t be done and over with quickly enough.”
“Sounds rough,” she said. “But hey, only one more day!”
“Yeah…” he growled.
The hallway was littered with pebbles, janitorial staff sweeping it up as she sat down to eat in the cafeteria down a floor below. She finished eating early and got the attention of one of the guards standing by, chatting with another guard as they leaned against a pillar. “Hey, uh,” she began, “I wanna put in a request to get a haircut. And a new color, if possible? I’ll leave the details for the stylist, obviously”
The guard raised a clipboard and jotted it down, giving her a nod when she was finished.
“Thank you,” she said in return. “I love your eye makeup, by the way!”
She looked at herself in the mirror that night, wishing she had access to scissors so she could cut her bangs herself. It’s what she always did back when she lived a normal life, although that felt like years ago by then. It had only been less than one. Time passed by more slowly in containment, giving her all the more time to long for the days of freedom once more.
Before she laid down in bed for the night, she listened to the noise outside as usual, looking through the hatch to get a good look at that night’s guest of honor. Things… predictably went south, and quickly this time. Masked individuals, at least a dozen of them, stormed the halls and faded in and out of reality to catch the staff off guard. One such individual was making their way to her door specifically as she closed the hatch and took a step back.
The masked figure phased through the doorway and bent over forward to catch their breath. “Sorry for the intrusion,” they said between breaths.
“Hey, no problem,” Summer said with a shrug. “You, uh… lookin’ to escape?”
“That’s the plan,” they nodded. “I can get you out of this cell, if you want. Whoever you are, you don’t deserve to be trapped like a rat in here. Come with us.”
Summer gritted her teeth and inhaled sharply, saying, “Yeah, I don’t know about that…”
“What have you got to lose?” the figure asked as she took a seat on the edge of her bed.
She opened her mouth only for the words to fall out slowly. “Not… a lot. But a little.” She grabbed hold of her headphones and lifted them from around her neck. There was no way she was surviving without access to the other part of herself and she wouldn’t put it past them to punish her in that way. “But, uh, I wish you luck.”
“So be it,” they concluded. “And thank you. We’ll be needing it.”
As they phased back through the door, she heaved a sigh and fell backwards onto her sheets. It pained her, it really did, but despite how incompetent of a showing the Foundation had put on the past week, she knew they were still the Foundation. Whatever that meant.
The noises subsided later into the night, for better or for worse, and she was left with the usual cell block sounds to block out with her headphones. She stared up at the ceiling as it transformed before her very eyes, parting ways to make room for a gravity-defying parade for her eyes only.
The next day was quieter. No alarms, no shouting, no calamity, just the normal distant chatter.
“Did they get out?” she asked through the door, the guard merely chuckling to himself.
“Of course not.”
She shook her head. “Shame. They seemed like good people.”
“No such thing.”
She wanted to say something, but pursed her lips instead, retreating to one side of the bed to get some more rest. There were no rules against sleeping in, as far as she knew.
For the most part, Manny’s idea had worked out. The strobe lights, the luminescent cosmetics, and even the dancing, although it took her months to get that right. With the brand new stage name of Sandstorm and a wardrobe filled with the same kind of brightly colored garb she wore then, Lexi’s identity was something she couldn’t have imagined years ago. The fear she once felt over her particular disposition had faded away, and in its place were titles she had earned like dancer in the dust or the musician’s mirage.
Our prancer in Big Top, confidence be thy name.
If she had known all along that she could effortlessly perform in front of hundreds, if not thousands, she would have done something for her old school’s talent shows. Even in the midst of a performance when she missed a step, her mind had control over it in the form of every grain of sand that came to balance her. It was second nature, a phantom limb.
And as she laid along a surface made entirely of sand that carried her out of the Big Top where the uproarious applause was filling her with pure lightning through her veins, the relative silence of the outside world led her nearly straight into slumber. Her body simply gave out as the sand gradually let her drift to the ground where she went limp, her mouth hanging ajar and her eyes comfortably shut.
There was another title she had earned throughout her time at the Circus. One she wasn’t as proud of. Sand (wo)man.
“Another slam dunk performance?” a fellow Freak asked as she was picked up off the ground. Sand gently slapped the face of her captor so she could be left alone, but Charlie was one of the most resilient Freaks of the Circus.
She groaned something unintelligible even to Lexi herself while she was being hauled on Charlie’s shoulder.
“It’s all that caffeine and sugar,” Charlie said. “Trying to fight narcolepsy with it is gonna be the death of you.”
“CFS,” Lexi barely uttered. “It’s not that bad. Not narcolepsy bad. Just stress.”
“You can still die by stress,” Charlie continued. “You can ask to take a break, you know. Unlike stress, it wouldn’t kill you to go easy on yourself.”
A surge of sand swept her away from the half-rhino and carried her instead as she remained practically catatonic atop it all. Sand bending came easier than moving, as it turned out. Her eyes opened as she looked Charlie in her own, each one on opposite sides of the enormous horn protruding from her nose.
“Didn’t you hear that crowd? It may not look like it, but I’m still feeling the electricity. I’m gonna get my own private trailer soon if this keeps up, and that’ll help loads with stress. You’ll see.”
“I’m sure that private trailer will be a fine coffin, but you can’t hedge your bets on hard work,” Charlie said, walking alongside the shifting sand dune. “Just ask for a little time for self-care, we all do it, it’s fine. I promise Icky and Manny won’t think any less of you.”
The sand dune stopped as Lexi shook her head. “Humans might need it, but I shouldn’t. I’m a literal superhero!”
Charlie took a moment and exhaled quietly, giving her a solemn nod.
“What?” Lexi probed.
“Manny said the same thing to me. About being a superhero.”
“So what? Is he wrong? Clearly we’re more than human! And besides, he saved us from death or life in containment.”
As her gray eyelids sagged down over her eyes, Charlie merely said, “You should get some sleep. Even superheroes need breaks.”
“It’s about pushing ourselves to be the best we can be!” Lexi called out as she watched her fellow Freak make her way to the trailers. Close behind was someone she barely recognized. A janitor or Carnie, probably. She was walking strangely, taking incomplete and mismatched steps as she swatted away something that wasn’t there.
Curling the sand to twist herself into a sitting position, Lexi said, “Hey, are you doing alright?”
Cassie turned to see her and shook her head.
“Well… do you need something?”
“Have you seen Crash?” Cassie asked, her eyes traveling off into the distance where there was nothing to look at.
“I don’t exactly keep track of all the Clowns.”
“Oh. Okay. Goodbye.” As she turned the opposite direction, she tried and failed to stand in place as she plummeted to the ground.
Lexi groaned at the responsibility of dealing with this landing squarely on her as she mustered the mental fortitude to lift Cassie off of the ground with her sand and carry both her and herself to the white tent belonging to Tinkles. She had to fight off the overwhelming fatigue she still felt to present herself to the Clown doctor or else he might have come to the same conclusion as Charlie and prescribed her a day off or something like that.
“Hey, Tinkles,” she spoke up, her sand dragging Cassie along. “Got someone for you.”
“And you’re tracking sand all over my tent!” Tinkles protested, already dealing with a sleeping patient in one of the beds. “Oh, it’s Tootsie again.” He sighed. “Put her on a bed and don’t get sand all over- oh, never mind…”
Lexi put her hands where her pockets would have normally been and awkwardly patted her hips instead. “Welp, I guess I’m done here. Sandstorm saves a life.”
“Looks like you barely have any life left in you,” Tinkles mentioned, getting a better look at her. “Are they working you too hard? I know you rake in the money, but sheesh!”
“I’m fine!” Lexi argued, giving him a skeptical glare. “Why’s everyone getting on my back lately? Women don’t always have to look pretty and perfect! Doesn’t mean we’re sick or something.”
“I’m a Clown doctor,” Tinkles iterated clearly. “I wouldn’t care what you looked like if you paid me. You need some serious rest.”
Exactly what she was afraid of. Why was she always right?
“You can’t force me to do anything. And you definitely can’t stop me from becoming a star.”
“Okay,” Tinkles conceded. “Then walk out of the tent.”
Lexi crossed her arms and huffed. “Maybe I will.”
“Do it.”
“I will!”
“I don’t see you doing it.”
“That’s because I haven’t done it yet!”
“Then you should start.”
“I’m going to start!”
“Still haven’t started yet.”
“Just…” She eyed the bed beside her, which she was already leaning heavily on. “Just give me a second, alright?”
Tinkles watched as she collapsed onto the bed and stayed down for the count. “Should have put money on it,” he muttered.
“Trying to impress me?” came the familiar voice of the man who brought her into this place to begin with. She opened her eyes to meet his upside-down face and her heart jumped momentarily.
Putting a hand to her chest and catching her breath from the scare, Lexi responded, “No? Just the audience…”
“The audience doesn’t need to witness the death of their favorite act, Sandstorm. You won’t be performing again until you’ve recovered. You’ll thank me later.”
“But I can still put on a show!” Lexi insisted, balling her hand into a fist. “I just needed a good night’s sleep and would you look at that! Good as new!”
Manny shook his head and stood to his full height. “There’s no getting around this one, I’m afraid. If Tinkles has come to the decision, then it’s final.”
“No!” Lexi gave the man a forlorn look, pleading and desperate without the need for words. “Why don’t you appreciate me? Isn’t this what you wanted?”
Pausing for a moment, Manny took a deep breath and quietly excused himself, leaving her there to wallow in her misery.
“What happened last night?” came the voice of Cassie on the bed beside hers.
Lexi turned with water welling up at her eyes, scowling and saying, “This is your fault. If I didn’t have to drag your pathetic body to Tinkles, everything would be fine still! Here I am, being a selfless hero and getting punished for it! It’s not fair!”
Still clueless, Cassie remained silent and kept to herself for a while. The two of them sat there in their beds for what felt like an hour, but in actuality was more like ten minutes. Regardless, it was as uncomfortable as it gets.
“Resting is pretty great,” Cassie finally said to break the tension. “It feels good and it’s easy. Maybe the easiest thing in the world.”
“For you, maybe,” Lexi murmured under her breath.
“I have an older sister,” Cassie went on. “She’s an overachiever, always has been. Went on to become a successful lawyer and everything.”
“This isn’t helping…”
“Then she crashed.” Cassie furrowed her brows and hugged her knees. “She was taking adderall to stay at the top of her game day and night. Too much of it. You’re lucky that when you woke up in the hospital, it wasn’t after they pumped your stomach. It’s not pleasant.”
Lexi leaned away from Cassie, staring instead at the tent around them. “You have personal experience with that?”
“I had gotten desperate,” Cassie affirmed. “I kept taking more and more Zyprexa to try and get rid of the voices. I’d forget how much I had already taken and just… kept going. If I could talk to myself from back then, I would have just told myself that I should rest. Just… close my eyes and go to sleep. It sounds so easy, but when you’re in the thick of it, it almost feels impossible.”
“I’m not schizophrenic,” Lexi said. “And I’m not taking any substances.”
“But you are overworking yourself. I can tell.”
“Fine,” Lexi admitted. “Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. Maybe I’m pushing myself, but so what? That’s how you make it in this world. Everyone’s pushing themselves.”
“But it’s always gonna catch up to you if you overdo it.”
Lexi laid back and exhaled, her arms crossed and face blank. It wasn’t that she wanted to overwork herself, it was that she needed to. She finally found a way to use her superpower as much as she wanted and now all of a sudden she was being told to tone it down yet again. She wanted to show it off to the world. She needed to make the others proud.
“I just wish I knew what Manny wanted out of me,” she said. “He’s impossible to read.”
“You don’t need to do anything for that man,” Cassie told her. “He just wants profit. That’s it. And… you’re profitable. It’s dehumanizing, I know.”
“That can’t be all he cares about… He didn’t save me just for the money…”
“That’s something only Manny knows for sure.” Letting her legs hang from the side of her bed, Cassie rested her chin between both palms as she continued to look at her. “You’re still new, right? Relative to most people here, I mean. Because I am too. It’s only been about a week now.”
“Working as a Carnie?”
She shook her head. “Janitorial stuff. I’m not very good at it, though… and I keep having nights where I don’t take my meds like… well, you saw. This is my third time waking up in this tent.”
“Three times in one week is impressive,” Lexi granted her.
Cassie barely smiled, adding, “Story of my life. Hospitals start to become more of a home than your own house.” She inhaled deeply and stood up from her bed. “I know people don’t like taking advice from the legally insane, but let your body sleep when it needs to. It’s the best gift you can give to yourself.”
As she made her way outside and shielded her eyes from the midday sun, she groaned as she noticed how much litter was strewn about the Circus grounds since she last saw it. Speaking of overworking oneself…
“You sure do work hard when you’re not being a liability.”
Zoozoo.
Cassie straightened her back with a trash bag in one hand. Dusk had fallen over the Circus and the sound of younger guests and the usual calliope music filled the air. There were two Clowns she was anticipating to see that day, one of which she wanted to see the most and one, well… one was Zoozoo.
“Leave me alone,” she replied, going about her usual trash pickup duty and turning her back to the Clown.
Zoozoo took a few steps closer and said, “What if I told you we’re letting you go? Free trip back to the psych ward of your choosing.”
“Is this coming from Icky or is it coming from you?”
“It’s coming from the wellbeing of the Circus. It’s my job. Just like you get rid of the trash on the ground, I get rid of the trash in the ranks. And sorry, kid, but you landed in the trash category in this little allegory.”
Cassie turned around to face the Clown directly, dropping the black bag and placing one foot in front of the other. “What’s your problem? You could just as easily ignore me and go about your day, but you’ve decided to make me a punching bag for no good reason. Have you looked around lately? I’m just about the least worrisome employee at this place!”
Shrugging, Zoozoo stood her ground just a few inches above Cassie’s blonde head. “Maybe I don’t trust you.” She took a step forward, gently pushing Cassie back with the palm of her hand. “Maybe I took what you said on your first night here seriously.” Again, she took a step forward, pushing her once more. “Maybe you’re just a poor soul who’s being used by the Essie P or the Geo Sea. Wouldn’t put it past them. Just because your record’s clean doesn’t mean these organizations don’t have their ways. I’ve been with this place nearly since the beginning and I’ve seen their attempts getting more and more desperate. They’d do anything to get us once and for all.”
She pushed Cassie harder this time, shoving her to the ground. “I don’t buy the whole psychotic act. They did something to you so Manny couldn’t get in your head. So either start fessing up or get the fuck out of this Circus.”
“I don’t have any affiliation with those things!” Cassie tried explaining, but it wasn’t going to get her anywhere.
“You do,” Zoozoo insisted. “Maybe they told you they’d kill you if you admitted to it, so that leaves one of two solutions: Either you call their bluff and return home with your tail between your legs hoping they won’t kill you or we take care of you ourselves. I’m nice, so I’ll leave the choice up to you.”
Cassie started to pick herself up but was pushed back down by Zoozoo’s oversized red and green shoe. It was then she noticed the figure of Sandstorm, whipping up her namesake to engulf Zoozoo within. She inched away as the sand attempted to constrict the Clown only for her to vanish, leaving only her clothes behind to gently fall to the ground.
“Go! Get out of here!” Lexi shouted to Cassie.
“So you have conspirators,” the disembodied voice of Zoozoo said from somewhere nearby. Appearing behind Lexi somehow fully clothed, she grabbed her by the head and forced it to the dirt as sand whirled around the two of them. After a brief struggle, the sand fell limp and Lexi could be seen lying face first in a pile of it before Zoozoo turned her attention back to Cassie.
The world around them began to grow dark as Zoozoo’s face began to change, eyes becoming more bug-like as her hair grew out into red and green serpents. “The hard way, then,” she said. Snakes began bursting from the earth itself, wrapping themselves around Cassie’s arms and legs as she was restrained against the dirt no matter how hard she struggled against them.
“It’s been so long since they’ve fed on a fresh soul,” Cassie could hear her whisper directly into her head as if she were hallucinating it. “Who am I to deny them their well-earned treat?”
“Please!” Cassie shouted, her arms pulling as hard as they could to free herself, but it was futile. The eldritch abomination before her began opening her maw wider, nearly a dozen rows of sharpened fangs revealing themselves. That was when she heard something outside of the darkness they had been shrouded in. Like the roar of an engine. She had heard it before.
“OUTTA THE WAY!” Crash hollered over the hissing as the both of them, as well as every serpent in the vicinity, turned to see a rocket coming in at breakneck speeds, giving neither of them the time to react before it collided directly into Zoozoo’s chest. The rocket burrowed itself into the dirt with Zoozoo remaining at the tip and in an instant, the serpentine binds loosened as Cassie immediately got to her feet and backed away to get a better look at the scene that had just unfolded.
Crash was still on top of the rocket, straddling it as if it were a bull, while Zoozoo’s extremities were lying limp on either side of it. “Tootsie!” Crash called cheerfully, a giant grin filling up her face. She took her goggles off with one hand while the other was holding onto her multi-colored beanie. “I got your thing!”
As she hopped down from the rocket, Cassie was quick to run into a hug, wrapping her arms around the Clown as tightly as she could. She could feel the beanie being fitted back onto her head where it belonged as she refused to let go.
“Thank you,” she muttered just beneath Crash’s pierrot.
“Uh,” Crash began, “looks like Sandstorm and Zoozoo aren’t doing too great.”
From atop one of the dorm trailers, Cassie and Crash both gazed out over the lights of the Circus, from the Big Top to the ferris wheel and everything in between. Crash had some of the black cotton candy held in her hand, shared between the two of them while Cassie had her head leaned on Crash’s shoulder.
“You never told me why the beanie is so important to you,” Crash pointed out, taking a big bite out of the cotton candy before offering it to the girl on her shoulder.
Taking a bite out of it herself, Cassie replied with a mouth full of rapidly shrinking fluff, “It’s from an old friend of mine. Everything else has either been hand-me-downs from my sister or something my parents bought for me. I was never trusted to take things from anyone else because my parents were paranoid that people would try and use me.”
“And now look at you,” Crash pointed out, reaching an arm around her. “Striking out on your own at a magical Circus with everyone’s favorite Clown! No one could have seen it coming!”
Cassie giggled and nuzzled her cheek against Crash’s arm. “With all the dangers and horrors to come along with it.”
“You get used to it.” Crash turned to face her, laying her hand gently on the side of her face. “Take the good with the bad, yeah? And don’t worry. The good always outweighs the bad.”
With a smile, Cassie looked the Clown in the eyes, their faces just inches apart. “I could use some convincing of that.”
Crash closed the short gap and pressed her lips against Cassie’s, leaving them there until they naturally parted, and then kissed her again. “There,” she said, their lips still nearly touching. “Now you can say you’ve kissed a Clown.”
“Hey,” Cassie began, “my birthday is less than an hour away. And… I think I’ve made my decision.” She grabbed Crash’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “I wanna stay here. With you. It’s a little crazy and I admit, I have almost no idea what I’m doing, but my life has been a series of decisions made by other people. I don’t wanna go back to that life.”
Crash squeezed her hand in return, their foreheads pressed together. “I had a feeling you’d say that. I’m irresistible, after all.”
“I want you to turn me,” Cassie blurted out.
“You’re sure?” Crash asked, taking another bite of cotton candy, admittedly killing the mood just a little. “Very few ways to reverse that decision.”
Cassie grabbed a chunk of cotton candy for herself and confirmed, “I’m sure.”
Leaning back under the glow of the moon, Crash wore a toothy grin as she said, "Then welcome to the first night of the rest of your life."
“So she’s too drugged up to pose any threat to the Circus? Good. Never thought it would be her self-righteousness to bring her down, but it’s about time something did the job.”
“Part of me feels bad for her. She just wanted to protect the Circus at the end of the day, but the way she went about it…”
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I’ll keep an eye on her regardless of how many suppressants she’s got floating around in her system. Not gonna let her lay a finger on my Tootsie Pop again.”
“Heh, Tootsie Pop… Wait a second, that’s getting real close to copyright infringement. This town’s only big enough for one Pop.”
As the conversation persisted in what she thought was her own head, Tootsie lifted her head from the pillow only to realize it was aching worse than a hangover. Sitting at a small table across from the bed were Crash and Lolly, both imbibing in a number of sweets strewn about the table, which had never looked more appealing to her in her life.
She looked around at the miniature room in the light for a change, containing a bed with red sheets pressed against a corner, a tiny counter space complete with a sink, and a minifridge sitting atop it. She didn’t have to guess that the fridge likely opened up into a larger space than it appeared. There was even a tiny space for a closet. The entire room was decorated in orange decals with red accents strewn about.
“Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” Crash said as Lolly turned to see Tootsie and gasped in delight.
“Oh my GOD it’s true! Congratulations on the Clownification, Tootsie! I always knew you’d be one of us!”
As she looked down at her own body, she realized how pearly white her skin had become overnight. She reached for her phone at her side and got a look at herself with the camera. Her teeth were even brighter white than her skin had become, and two black streaks fell from her eyes and down her cheeks, ending in hearts almost like exclamation points. Her lips were a deep red, same as the tip of her nose and the thick line that covered the upper half of her face.
She could still see herself in her digital reflection somewhere underneath all the coloration changes, but only just. “Oh…” she breathed. “Wow…”
“Initial reactions!” Lolly announced as she approached her. “What do you think? I’d say you look gorgeous, but I’m biased personally. Crash, what do you think?”
“A naturally unnatural beauty!” Crash said as she scarfed down a bag of gummies.
“I wasn’t expecting the top part…” Tootsie admitted, touching around her eyes where the red streak had permeated on her skin. “This is what I’ll look like for the rest of my life, huh?”
“Don’t be silly!” Lolly scoffed. “You’re living in the age of magic now! Anything is possible!”
She put her phone down and said, “Oh, right. By the way, can I have some of that?” She pointed to the hoard of candy stockpiled on the counter and table.
“Hell yeah, you can!” Lolly exclaimed, sprinting to fetch her a bag of assorted sweets just for her. “This is all for you anyway! A celebration! OH MY GOD YOU NEED TO TRY MILK!” She practically tripped over herself grabbing a fresh cup of Clown Milk from the minifridge. “Try it try it try it try it try it!”
Tootsie grabbed hold of the handle of the cup and gave it a whiff, its overpowering sweetness already filling her head with serotonin. She drank one sip, then kept drinking until the cup was empty, her whole body coming alive with sensations of bliss. It was as if the world grew brighter around her and every color just popped a little more. Her pupils dilated as the rush went to her head, and in an instant, she was transported somewhere else entirely.
She gave her new surroundings a once-over, a vibrant white and gray glow dulled by the thickness of the crystalline walls they were trapped behind. The room was a dome, and beneath her was solid rock, like some kind of prison. She had to guess that this wasn’t what was supposed to happen, but the joy that filled every bit of her kept her ignorant of any danger she might have been in.
And just as quickly as she had entered the place, she came right back to Crash’s bed where two concerned Clowns were waiting in front of her.
“Where did I just go?” Tootsie asked, but the others had no clear answer.
“You went somewhere just now?” Lolly screwed up her face with a befuddled expression. Great, she thought. She couldn’t even be normal for a Clown.
“It was a crystal cave or something,” she tried to explain. “There was a light coming from all around.”
“Headspace?” Crash suggested. “Ya know, like when you’re inside your own head. Like the one place nobody else in the world can reach. Total private sanctuary of the mind.”
Lolly sighed. “I can’t tell if you’re rambling or being serious.”
“My rambling IS serious!” Crash argued.
“Maybe it is,” said Tootsie, holding a hand to the side of her head. “I’ve never seen it like that, though. Not so clearly.”
“Everyone experiences Clownhood differently,” Lolly stated. “I’m sure there have been plenty of Clowns who’ve had some form of psychosis before and if it wasn’t important to keep on record, then there was probably nothing to worry about!”
Crash gave her a side eye and said, “Yeah, I dunno how that logic holds up, but keep me updated if you get any more weird head stuff going on, ya hear?”
Tootsie nodded, the euphoria of the Milk still coursing through her body.
Lolly gasped and said, “I almost forgot! I brought clothes!” She reached into her hammerspace and pulled a continuous stream of various articles of clothing ranging from baggy pants to facemasks to collars. Soon, the entire bed, including Crash herself, was covered in a thick layer of clothing.
“You’re cleaning this up after, you know,” Crash informed her as Lolly held a wide grin on her face.
“It’ll all be worth it for Lolly’s Ultimate Fashion Montage Extravaganza! Tee em.” She started rummaging through the pile of clothes as Crash offered a confused shrug to Tootsie, who had already tried on one of the closest pieces to her. It was a multi-colored scarf, much in the same style as her beanie, and right away she fell in love with it, much to Lolly’s delight. “Already on our way to greatness! Oh, and you’ll want stockings. Trust me. It’s just so… you…”
“If you say so,” Tootsie replied as Lolly dove headfirst into the pile, swimming and tossing clothes every which way all over the tiny enclosure.
Surfacing a few moments later, Lolly groaned and said, “It’s not here! I thought I kept it up in the front of the hammerspace, but I guess I’ll have to empty out all of it!”
“Hey wait a minute!” Crash called out, but it was too late. In a quick flash of colorful clothing, the entire room was filled practically to the brim with more fabrics and materials known even to mankind. Tootsie found herself lost in the room-sized pile as she swam forward, hearing the disembodied voice of Lolly muttering something or another to herself.
It took longer than she anticipated for such a small room to reach Crash, giving her a big smile when she did. Crash’s spirits weren’t exactly as high as hers, but she did smirk when she saw Tootsie nevertheless. “I'm giving you partial liability for this.”
“I can't be held responsible for Lolly's actions,” she tried to say. "
Crash snickered, leaning back into the pile lazily.
“And hey…” Tootsie continued. “About last night… I uh…” She hesitated, finding the right words to describe what she experienced. “I had a really good time.”
“I sure hope so,” Crash said with a wink.
“Hi!” Lolly shouted as she popped her head into their space, causing Tootsie to jump in fright. “Not to interrupt, but look at these!” She held up a pair of frilly fingerless gloves, one green and the other blue. “Eh? Eh? It’s a good thing I got everything out, right?”
Tootsie slipped her fingers through the gloves, giving Lolly a conveniently exposed thumbs up.
Heaving a sigh, Crash shrugged. “As long as it makes the girl happy.”
“It’s my specialty!” Lolly said before her eyes went wide all of a sudden. “Uh-oh.”
“What is it?”
“The clothes. I think some of them are-”
Before she could finish her sentence, something violently pulled her under, leaving the two of them to watch on in horror.
“Lolly!?” Tootsie called out, but there was no response.
“She’s probably messing with us,” Crash pointed out. “I mean, to be cut off at the perfect time like that… It’s almost like she-”
Just like with Lolly before her, Crash was violently dragged away from her by some unseen force without a word.
“Crash!?” Tootsie swam forward, but there was no sign of her anywhere. “Crash! Cra- Ooooh,” she said as her eyes glimmered at the sight of the perfect pair of baggy orange drawstring waist track shorts. Wasting no time in pulling her legs through them, she couldn’t help but smile at how her outfit was coming along already. It took a moment for her to remember what else was going on in that very clothes pit, like some kind of lapse in thought. She couldn’t tell if it was a Clown thing or just a her thing, but the present danger just didn’t feel all that threatening. If anything, it was even fun.
That would take some getting used to.
There was something snaking its way through the sea of clothes, something green and frayed at its edges. She swam away to keep her distance as she turned to see that it was a green scarf inching its way through several pairs of briefs and a sunny camisole. After spotting her, or whatever sense it was using to detect her, it shot directly for her as she raised her hands to block its advance. It merely wrapped its way around one of her arms and tugged her downward. She could have sworn there was a bed beneath her, but instead, she found herself being pulled through what felt like an endless pit.
When she managed to pull it off of her with her other hand, it slithered away, likely never to be seen again. There were more, however. A red cardigan sweater striped with burgundy had wrapped its arms around her waist, tying them together and resisting any attempts to undo it. It didn’t pull her or constrict around her or anything of the sort as she would expect but was instead content just remaining like that.
Beneath her, she could feel a sock fitting itself around her foot and ankle just so that it could be worn and nothing more, unless there were some latent effects Crash couldn’t see or feel. There was more rummaging directly ahead of her as the face of Lolly with five different hats worn atop her head emerged.
“Self-fitting clothes!” she managed to utter through the struggle of movement. “I thought I had gotten rid of them! They must have been breeding for months now!”
“Breeding?” Tootsie asked, but something told her she didn’t want to hear the answer. “How do we get out?”
“Gotta get my vacuum!” Lolly explained, reaching into her pockets. “It’s in my hammerspace somewhere… I keep it around for this very reason! Gah!” A bra had stuck itself to her face and blinded her as more fabric tendrils from beyond pulled her away from Crash.
Hey. Is this a bad time?
She had never heard the voice so clearly as just then. Normally it was like a distant whisper from the far corners of her mind.
Yeah, well, things got a little screwy. You’re a reality bender now, remember?
“What do you want?” she asked as a black and gray hoodie fitted itself onto her.
I think we need to talk.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you. We’ve been over this.”
Yeah, well, we’re not living by normal rules anymore, are we?
Tootsie thought about it for a second as a tube top made its way around her legs and up over the hoodie. “I guess not.”
Then it’s settled.
In the blink of an eye, she was no longer in the clothing pit, bright blue crystals glowing all around her in a wide, open cave with paths branching off from it. Before her was a thin girl with wavy, arctic blue hair and skin as white as her own. There were spots of pink beneath her eyes and around the corners of her lips while her body was covered in what could only be described as a jester’s outfit.
“Where is this?” Tootsie asked, somehow still wearing the same clothes she had been wearing in the real world.
“Your stupid head,” the girl responded. “It’s had a renovation ever since your reckless decision to become a Clown.”
“So you’re… a voice in my head.” Tootsie’s eyes narrowed into a glare as she bit the sides of her mouth. “You’ve been making my life a living hell, you know.”
The girl reached her arms behind her head and gently lifted off the ground, floating there in a laid-back sprawl. “You only have yourself to blame. I’m you, after all. That’s how this works.”
Tootsie sighed and crossed her arms. “It’s not my fault my brain is like this. I didn’t choose to be this way. You’re just being accusatory because that’s what you always do. Can’t you just work with me instead of against me?”
“You’re impossible to work with! Have you considered how scattered your thoughts always are? I can’t make heads or tails of this place! It’s a labyrinth! At least now it’s been given a shape.”
“If you’re gonna keep being like this, then I’m gonna keep ignoring you as much as I can. I know how much you hate that.”
The girl fell to the hard rock below and groaned in frustration as she got back up on her feet. “You’re gonna come crawling back soon enough. You always do. You can’t ignore your own brain, Toots, I’m always gonna be here. Always.” A wicked grin spread across her face as a howling came from one of the tunnels. “And I’ve got some new tricks up my sleeve. You thought your life was a living hell before… You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”
As she snapped back to the real world, a growing panic grew in the recesses of Tootsie’s stomach as her head felt a sharp, throbbing pain.
IT’S SHOWTIME!
Her forehead morphed in shape as something large and snarling grew out from it, manifesting itself into physical reality before detaching itself from her. It was like a hyena of sorts, but scaly and nearly twice one’s size. It cackled like one as it ripped through the clothing with claw and fang alike, carving out a path as it sped off away from her.
She swam after it, following the path of shredded fabric and the horrid sounds it was making until she heard Crash’s yelling.
“Was THIS in your hammerspace, Lolly!?”
By the time she caught up to it, she could see Crash struggling to keep its open maw at bay mere inches away from her with both hands. She delivered a kick to its gut as it hollered and continued on its way upward.
“Crash!” Tootsie exclaimed as she embraced her. “I’m so sorry! It came from my head! I don’t know what’s happening!”
“Your head, huh?” Crash rubbed her chin. “Like from your forehead? Like a horn?”
Tootsie gave her a weird look. “Kind of? I guess?”
“Hmm… Interesting… Either someone’s using your head as a gateway or you’ve turned out to be a powerful reality bender. An uncontrollable one, at that. Two very dangerous things.”
“I should have known this would be a bad idea…” She rested her head against Crash’s chest. “This is my fault.”
“Eh, it takes two to tango, but hey! I may not have been expecting to have to deal with my offspring this soon, but we’ve got a brain baby to deal with and I’ll be there right by your side until we can kill it and put it in the ground!”
Tootsie gave her a horrified look. “Don’t… put it that way ever again.”
“You got it! Now let’s go!” She retrieved her rocket and grabbed Tootsie, who held on for dear life once again. Kicking something on the side of the rocket, it began roaring to life as they shot skyward through what felt like half a mile of nothing but clothing.
“How is this possible!?” Tootsie yelled, but Crash gave her no response as they crested above sea level, revealing the place they were in to no longer be Tootsie’s room at all. Instead, they found themselves in the middle of a sunlit canyon.
Crash looked back at her and shouted, “This probably isn’t good!”
The hyena beast surfaced right after them, reaching with its claws at the tail end of the rocket and tossing them to one side. Crash pocketed her rocket and instead pulled out a battleaxe, much to Tootsie’s surprise.
“Well that’s not what I was looking for,” she said, tossing it aside and pulling out a Tommy gun instead, raining bullets all across the beast’s hide to minimal effect.
The beast launched itself forward, landing on top of Crash and taking them both under again. Tootsie swam forward to help, but just a moment later they resurfaced with Crash wrestling it with her hands and feet. Having to think quickly, Tootsie pulled the red cardigan sweater down and off of her body, tossing it at the creature as it untied itself and began attempting to wrap itself around the monster's face, blinding it momentarily.
Crash bashed it over the skull with her fist, but it lurched forward and began gnashing its fangs at her until even more articles of clothing came to their aid, covering its body until it was cocooned in fabric. As it was pulled down into the depths of the clothes-ridden canyon, the two could breathe again.
“They must like you,” Crash stated.
Dramatically gasping for air, Lolly appeared a few feet away from the two. “Hey, where are we?” she asked as Tootsie hung her head low.
“Wherever we are, I feel like it’s probably my fault.”
“To be fair,” Lolly started, grabbing hold of one arm in a halfway cross, “I did let loose an army of semi-sentient clothing. Really not what I was hoping for Lolly’s Ultimate Fashion Montage Extravaganza… Tee em.”
Crash looked to Lolly, then to Tootsie, then back to Lolly. “I’m the only one NOT responsible for something going wrong!? Man, you’ve gotta fuck up REALLY bad to end up like this!”
While Lolly might have been laughing along, Tootsie was much quieter as she slowly buried herself back under’water’ with that same old voice to accompany her.
She really hates you.
She knew.
You see how quickly she’s changed her attitude around you after she got you in bed for one night? She was using you. Like it or not, I’m the only one who won’t leave you. Pretty sad, huh?
“I liked you better when you were enigmatic.”
“Who ya talking to?” Crash asked as Tootsie jumped in surprise, too caught up in her own head to realize she was there. She got a good look at her face just then, the vibrant orange of her hair glimmering in the flecks of sunlight that peered through the empty spaces of their surrounding.
“The voice in my head,” Tootsie solemnly answered.
Getting more comfortable, Crash said, “Right… That.”
“No, Crash,” she sighed in frustration, “it’s not just an oh, that thing kind of situation. It’s a permanent part of who I am kind of situation.”
“I mean hey, we’re all a little crazy at the end of the day, aren’t we?”
“I’m not crazy.”
Wincing, Crash inhaled through her teeth and muttered, “Kinda putting my foot in my mouth here, huh? But I really do wanna be less of a dumbass when it comes to this, I swear it.”
“Why?” Tootsie snarled. “So you can milk one more night out of me?”
She watched the genuine shock hit Crash as her face froze over. “Hey, you don’t mean that, do you? Where’d this come from?”
“I have eyes and ears. It’s not the first time I’ve been used.”
Crash rummaged through the detritus to find Tootsie’s hand and held it clasped between both of her own. “I’m crazy about you, Tootsie. Uh… Wrong word… Ah, hell, just ask Lolly. She’ll tell you how much I talk about you. Can’t get me to shut up most of the time!”
“It’s true!” Lolly called out from a distance.
“Hey, put a cork in it!” Crash yelled. “We’re having a moment here! It’s all tender and whatever!”
“I know, it’s so sweet! Keep it up, you two!”
Grumbling to herself, Crash turned her attention back to Tootsie and continued. ”Anyway, you don’t have anything to worry about, ya hear? I’ve got you. Now c’mere so I can glorify you.” She reached both arms around her waist, pulling her in close and giving her a kiss on the shoulder.
Tootsie conceded, her own arms moving around Crash. “I’m scared,” she whispered as tears began welling up in her eyes. “I think I’ve made a horrible mistake going through with this.”
“Classic buyer’s remorse,” Crash joked, but Tootsie wasn’t laughing. “You didn’t make a mistake. Maybe it’ll take some time to realize that, but I know from experience that there’s nothing in this world that beats being a Clown in a Circus. It’s like being the prettiest girl at the ball, but you’re a Clown!”
Tootsie leaned her head on Crash’s shoulder, exhaling slowly through her nose. “Sorry for getting like this. This past week has just been a lot.”
Crash placed a hand on Tootsie’s chin, gently lifting it so she could look at her directly. “Nobody’s gonna blame you for that. Besides, you’re too cute to get upset at.” The two kissed and continued embracing one another until Crash interjected. “Hey, shouldn’t Lolly have interrupted by now? She’d say something like as much as I love a good romcom, we should probably be headed back to the Circus right about now.”
A few seconds passed as Lolly poked her head between the two of them and said, “As much as I love a good romcom, we should probably be headed back to the Circus right about now.”
Crash lit up. “Aah that’s so weird! Word for word! Man, what a weird day. And then here’s the part where things fade to black, right?”
“Oh, man, did I call it or what?”
Tootsie raised her eyebrow and asked, “What are you talking about?”
Crash looked around at the elegantly decorated subaquatic den, Anson Vargil and Sandstorm both looking back at her, worry staining their otherwise dolled-up faces.
“Ah shit, it went way too far. Let's try this again.”
”There we go,” Crash exclaimed, leaning back into her own bed once more. “Home sweet home.”
Tootsie looked up from her phone on the other side of the bed, giving Crash a weird look before shaking her head and returning her attention to the Twitter feed before her. She couldn’t tell whether it was comforting or anxiety-inducing to keep up with those from her past life. She would still respond to her parents’ texts every now and then and even hear their calls just to prove to them that she was doing alright. It was the least she could give them.
Why she would care about the others from her former life was beyond her understanding.
Isn’t it obvious?
Her best guess was a kind of remorse for leaving it all behind, but truth be told, that part didn’t bother her in the slightest.
You’re homesick. Out of your comfort zone.
She looked at Crash and smiled, pulling some of the covers over herself. If comfort was the problem, it wasn’t apparent at that moment.
Trust me, I know you better than you know yourself. Just because you’ve got a cozy little room to share with your girlfriend doesn’t mean you don’t have an aching in the pit of your gut.
Did she have indigestion?
No, not… God you’re stupid. Anyway, look to your left.
She did just that, nearly jumping off the bed in the process. Her personified voice was sitting there, practically luminescent against the otherwise dim lighting within the room.
I can do this now! You really should learn what you’re capable of now as a reality bender, especially since I have access to all of it. By the way, I figure I should get my own name with my newfound independence. I’m thinking Adelle. What do you think?
Tootsie merely turned away from her, hiding under the sheets and trying to forget about the whole thing. She didn’t want to make another scene in front of Crash so soon after the last.
That’s alright. I have all the time in the world. Sleep tight.
She put in her earbuds to drown everything out with music, curling into a ball in the process. Only time would tell what she had wrought upon the world with her decision.
TEXEL.PLAY.1.1
We’re not really sure when MONONAUT came to be. It feels like it’s always been around, like one of those known truths you never stop to think about. Is it really, though?
My first encounter with it was back in the early days, back before anything knew what was going on. Of course, you could barely tell what anything was then, so none of us could have foreseen that it would return again and again. We didn’t know what ‘it’ was. It wasn’t until we found its CODEX that we started to understand it.
We thought it’d be bigger than it was, but really it’s just our own SIZEx1.5. A big thing, sure, but nothing colossal. It’s still the most dangerous thing around. We’d love to get far away from here, away from REDZONE entirely, but slipping past that thing is a luxury offered only to the lucky few, if any. We wanna know what’s out there. CENTERPLACE only offers so much in the way of experiences.
LESCA4 likes to daydream. About what, I don’t know. We can only imagine so much here. It’s comfortable once you get used to it, but most of us are ready for something. Maybe the next time MONONAUT shows up, something different will happen. Who knows?
LESCA4.PLAY.1.2
MONONAUT… Where to begin. It’s rounder than the rest of us. It’s got a larger size, so it can be more detailed. It always makes noise, so you know when it’s coming. Something that big would have to make a lot of noise, right? Usually all of us can get out of the way in time, but sometimes you hear about something that didn’t. We don’t really know what happens to them, but they’re not around anymore.
I’ve put some of the INERT objects lying around into one shape a few times. The shape of one of us. It’s to try and trick it into thinking it is one of us. So far, it hasn’t done much.
The sky is kind of pretty here in REDZONE sometimes. The lines can change to different shades of RED and sometimes BLUE like me, but that’s rare. There have to be more details out beyond the horizon, past REDZONE. We don’t know how big REDZONE even is. It could go on forever.
I don’t think it does.
MINERVISUAL.PLAY.1.3
Oh, are we doing this now? LESCA4 and TEXEL said they both felt better when they talked into this, so why not?
I’m MINERVISUAL. Who knows why. I get out sometimes looking for CODEX. It’s the only reason we know anything about anything. Yeah, it’s dangerous, but it’s something. MONONAUT doesn’t really like it when you journey out of the CENTERPLACE and the further you go, the more PEST there are. They’re little things and they rarely move, but all it takes is MOVx1 for one of them to leave you HURT and easy prey for MONONAUT.
I’ve seen the world out there. I know what it holds. LESCA4 can be as optimistic as it wants, but that doesn’t change the situation. Few things do.
TEXEL.PLAY.1.4
It happened again.
GOEY is missing, most likely from the attack. I talked to GOEY a lot, but now it’s gone. Something just doesn’t feel right. It’s difficult to explain. I think I’m going to look for it. I have to do something.
NEON.PLAY.1.5
What a weird little thing you are. How’d you end up so round? I know you can’t talk, but I wonder how you got here. You just roll around all day, huh?
I don’t even know if you can understand me. Never found any CODEX about you or anything. I’m glad you’re here, though. Things aren’t always eventful here, not while we’re standing around like this.
I heard TEXEL left CENTERPLACE, so I guess that counts for something. I wish it didn’t, but I also wish I’d gone with it. Weird, right?
Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll learn what you are soon enough. There are only so many objects.
LESCA4.PLAY.1.6
TEXEL has been gone for too long. I hope it didn’t run into MONONAUT. It’s hard to lose something, I know, but running away doesn’t bring it back. If we’re going to run, then it should be all of us as a group.
Yeah. MONONAUT can’t get all of us, right? We’ll make it way further that way, maybe even past the horizon. I need to tell the others about this. They can’t disagree. It’s true. We need to travel UP.
I want to know more. This will be the way.
LESCA4.PLAY.1.7
Okay. Six total agreed to the plan. The others didn’t want to be left behind, so they’re coming along as well. I know this is our best chance.
TEXEL came back as well. It didn’t find GOEY. Nothing will ever likely find GOEY again. It’s how things work. If MONONAUT attacks something, it goes away. I don’t know why, but that doesn’t change the fact.
This will be the last time we spend in CENTERPLACE. With any luck, it’ll be the last time we worry about MONONAUT. I think everything wants that.
MINERVISUAL.PLAY.1.8
So we’re on the move, then. I guess that’s fine. Most of these things have never even been this far away from REDZONE. Me, well, this is nothing. I just need to make sure nobody moves into a PEST. They already know exactly what to do if MONONAUT shows up, but they won’t be used to it acting like it does out here.
I’ve taken up a leadership role because of that. I was already kind of an authority back in CENTERPLACE, but now? Now they all look to me. Follow me. Listen to me. I’m not used to that.
We used to have a leader once, but MONONAUT got to it. Nobody wanted to lead after that. None of us are leaders. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe a leader has to be chosen, not self-assigned. I’m still getting used to being chosen.
NEON.PLAY.1.9
I really want to know if this works out. It’s something new, that’s for sure, but is it smart? That’s usually not up to me. LESCA4 seems to think it’s the smartest thing we can do. It said the longer we stay in CENTERPLACE, the less odds we’ll have of getting out of REDZONE. It said quantity is in our favor, whatever that means.
I’m just disappointed we haven’t found any CODEX yet. That’s the one thing I’ve always wanted to do if I left CENTERPLACE, yet here I am with only the others and a bunch of PEST to look at.
I hate PEST. They’re weird, but a bad kind of weird. A kind of weird I don’t like. A kind of weird that makes me feel icky. I didn’t even know I could feel that before now. I hope this adventure is worth it.
TEXEL.PLAY.1.10
I’ve never seen MONONAUT like that. I’ve never seen more than one of us get hit by it at a time. Two are gone now.
The further we get from CENTERPLACE, the less safe it feels. MINERVISUAL has been saying that for a long time, but I had never felt it for myself. And it’s true. Some of the PEST are starting to look different. Even smaller than before. I didn’t know something could be that small. One surprised even MINERVISUAL by MOVx2 and making one of us HURT in the process.
LESCA4 and a few others still swear by this journey and I can’t help but feel like we’re in too deep to go back now. At least everything agrees that it’s something new. I know I needed that more than anything.
PX18J2.PLAY.1.11
I wanted the chance to talk to this thing even though we don’t know who’s hearing it. Can’t hurt, right? Not like HURT hurt, anyway.
CENTERPLACE feels like so long ago, but I know it wasn’t. It’s just that none of us have been able to see it for a while. That doesn’t feel right somehow. I’m probably just too used to it. I’m sure once I get new experiences, it’ll be easier to let go of old habits. That must be how that works.
There’s just something about the SPACE here. I don’t have the words to describe it, it’s just different to exist in. Some of the others say they’re already used to it, but I’m not. I can’t help but feel like I’m feeling more.
RELUSS.PLAY.1.12
RELUSS is RELUSS.
RELUSS is OBJECT.
RELUSS is not SPACE.
RELUSS is HURT.
RELUSS is MOVx0.5.
RELUSS has been CODEX.
RELUSS is RELUSS.
RELUSS is not PEST.
LESCA4.PLAY.1.13
I saw RELUSS talking to this thing. RELUSS doesn’t communicate like the rest of us. We’re not sure what its deal is.
MINERVISUAL has been the de facto leader ever since we left. It only makes sense. NEON has been moving ahead of the rest of us. I think it’s excited about all of this. I know I am. How could I not?
I saw MONONAUT somewhere. I don’t know where, but I saw it. Just now. We should pick up the pace. RELUSS can be helped to move as fast as the rest of us, as it turns out, even though it’s HURT. We’re learning all kinds of things.
TEXEL.PLAY.1.14
I don’t know what’s happening. There’s nothing I can say that can describe it I don’t think.
I swear I saw MONONAUT in all of its RED shape and color. How is that possible? How can something be shaped differently from what it was?
It got another one of us. We’re learning how to evade it more easily, but none of us have any idea what’s going on anymore. Not even MINERVISUAL, and that’s scary. I can look… down… and see something else.
I can see.
MINERVISUAL.PLAY.2.1
How can I be the leader when I’m just as clueless as the next thing?
I don’t know if we’re in REDZONE anymore, but the lines are still RED. That’s the only indicator, right? That’s why it’s called REDZONE in the first place?
Who knows? Not me, that’s for sure. We’ve been traveling UP for what feels like forever now and it just never ends. I never noticed how BROWN I am, but I guess that’s just how it is, isn’t it? Not like I would know.
Oh, and we met something called HEIROF who says it’s been lost out here for as long as it can remember. So we’ve added +1 to our little roster here. At first, we didn’t know if it was going to be another MONONAUT or something like that. We don’t know what anything is out here, but it’s got more detail.
More detail than I could have ever imagined.
LESCA4.PLAY.2.2
I knew it. All this time, we've been neglecting this entire WORLD outside of CENTERPLACE and it’s… beautiful. I think. I never thought I would even use the word beautiful until now.
HEIROF seems to know more about this place than we do. It’s GRAY mostly. Maybe a little GREEN as well.
And I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I have some YELLOW near the ‘top’ of my shape. That’s what the others are saying, anyway.
Two colors.
Two.
It’s just so much to take in. HEIROF told us that UP is where it came from. UP and LEFT of where we are now. Things have to stay on this trend, though. The more UP we travel, the more details we’ll see, I know it.
I’m just glad that even the ones that had reservations about this journey have seen why it’s important. There’s a reason for it all now.
I wish it wasn’t the case, but MONONAUT has become even more active than before. But so are we. Moving doesn’t feel like it’s MOVx1 or MOVx2 anymore. It’s way more than that.
TEXEL.PLAY.2.3
I’m talking to it now, NEON. Wait your turn.
NEON.PLAY.2.4
But I have so much to say. Like how ORANGE I am. ORANGE and WHITE.
TEXEL.PLAY.2.5
Fine.
NEON.PLAY.2.6
I saw things that weren’t PEST. They had things attached to them that were as tall as they were. We’ve never seen a CODEX of them so we don’t know what they are, but they moved fast and didn’t want to be near us.
I like them.
We do know about ROCK, though. We see them everywhere around here and we found a CODEX of them. They’re pretty boring. They sit in one place and do a lot of nothing. What’s weird is that they come in so many different shapes and sizes, but they’re all GRAY.
I’m glad I’m not GRAY. I don’t know why.
TEXEL.PLAY.2.7
NEON said most of what I was going to say. It was hesitant to start talking to this thing at first, but now it can’t wait to. There’s something that makes us feel good about talking like this. So informally. Not that we’re ever formal. Why would we be formal?
What does formal mean?
I discovered that I’m not only SILVER, but I’m also RED. This is surprising to me, since MONONAUT is RED. The lines of REDZONE are RED. Do I have something to do with these things? Am I connected, maybe?
I don’t know if I should think so highly of myself. I’m probably not that important. It’s nice to think about possibilities, though. It’s even nicer to talk about them.
I think PX18J2 found something.
MINERVISUAL.PLAY.2.8
PX18J2 is gone. It fell into HOLE. We don’t know where that leads, but we can’t find it anywhere. For now, we’re considering HOLE to be another danger after reading their CODEX. We’re steering clear of them entirely.
I’ve taken up a leadership role again after what happened. The others need something to trust, I guess. They’re afraid. So am I, but I can’t let them know that. They’ll get even more afraid, then I’ll get more afraid. It’s best for everyone that nothing knows about this.
HEIROF wasn’t as quick to catch on. It didn’t think it needed a leader. Leadership only works when everything agrees on a leader, so it took some convincing, but we’re in agreement now.
There’s a RULE now. Nothing is allowed to put leadership into question. If something does, it gets HURT. That way we can stay as efficient as possible.
NEON.PLAY.2.9
I’m not saying what I’m thinking. Nothing can hear me right now except for this thing, but I don’t want to say it just in case.
It feels like there’s more and more COLOR every time I look. Some of the COLOR I’ve never even heard of before, but MINERVISUAL says that it’s found CODEX of them, so I guess they’re real.
TEXEL has been helpful. It helps me move even when I’m having trouble on account of the newness of it all. It takes effort now. Real work. It’s not just one to two anymore.
I’m getting a weird feeling all of a sudden.
RELUSS.PLAY.2.10
RELUSS can SMELL.
RELUSS is SMELL.
RELUSS is MOVx?.
RELUSS is D8LV0T37BP8W1C29RK6.
RELUSS is not HOLE.
LESCA4.PLAY.2.11
I think we all needed to stop and SMELL the FLOWER for a moment. It was such a unique experience. When we were done with that, we all started to SMELL each other. I learned that I SMELL pleasant. NEON and RELUSS don’t.
At first, I thought everything would have a SMELL, but most things don’t.
We have more shape now. There are parts of us that we can move independently. As if movement wasn’t difficult enough to get used to.
And… I feel strange whenever I think about the ones that didn’t make it this far. I’m not sure why. It’s not something I’ve felt before I don’t think, but maybe it was something TEXEL felt after GOEY was gone. Something is happening on the inside just like it is on the outside.
TEXEL.PLAY.2.12
This has gone too far.
MINERVISUAL has HURT NEON for questioning its authority. All it did was question its decision to start moving RIGHT, which is something all of us thought was strange.
I won’t let that happen again. The next time it tries to do something like that, I’ll be there to stop it. NEON didn’t deserve that and now it has to deal with HURT for no reason, which slows us all down.
Totally unnecessary.
LESCA4.PLAY.2.13
MONONAUT came again. It…
I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.
NEON is gone. It was chaos. I don’t know where TEXEL or MINERVISUAL or RELUSS are now. There are too many things everywhere, I just got lost. HEIROF found me, but it was alone.
I hate this. I have to go UP but it feels wrong without the rest of them. Am I weird for thinking that? I just want to get out of REDZONE once and for all. All I can do is hope that the others make it as well.
LESCA4.PLAY.2.14
I’ve just… kept moving. HEIROF is used to the loneliness, but it’s a first for me. I just keep waiting in horror for MONONAUT to come back again. I can’t think of anything else, even with everything new I come across. It’s like it doesn’t matter anymore. I just want safety. I just want safety so much. More than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.
I want to see NEON and TEXEL again. I miss them. I feel like I can’t go on after what happened. NEON was innocent. Why did that happen to it? Why is any of this happening? Why have we been living like this for so long? Why are we here?
Nothing makes sense and I don’t know how to deal with that other than to say that I hate it.
I hate all of it.
Fuck it all.
LESCA4.PLAY.3.1
I don’t know how long it’s been. It’s getting harder and harder to tell where UP is. We just keep moving. It’s all we can do, right? Move. Talk. Feel.
HEIROF… put something inside of itself. It said it felt better afterwards. I tried to do the same, but ROCK is too hard apparently. HEIROF said it had to be something soft enough to be broken up by our ‘tops.’ I’ve never had to do anything like that before, so I stopped trying. Everything’s going to hurt no matter what.
LESCA4.PLAY.3.2
Hey… I know I can’t see it anymore, but I hope whatever it was that was listening… I hope it can still hear me. HEIROF isn’t good at listening. It doesn’t like to talk at all.
Sometimes I’ll look back and it won’t even be there anymore. I don’t know where it goes, but it always seems to come back like nothing happened. Maybe it’s me.
Either way, there’s COLOR everywhere. I don’t think this is REDZONE anymore. Even when there are lines, they’re more GRAY than anything. Is there such a thing as ‘Grayzone?’ It makes me wonder if anything like me has been this out here before. There are others, clearly, since HEIROF wasn’t with us before all of this.
Sorry… Anytime I think about the others, I start feeling a lot. Sometimes I feel good things, but that’s rare.
LESCA4.PLAY.3.3
I… consumed something. It was a PEST. Weird, I know, I didn’t know I could do that, but here we are. HEIROF was right about it making me feel better. How does that even work?
I’m not going to question it. I’m just going to be glad that it worked.
It’s strange that PEST always used to be so frightening. Not as frightening as MONONAUT, obviously, but I always tried to stay away from them. Now I look at them and I see how helpful they can be. Just as long as I don’t let them HURT me.
LESCA4.PLAY.3.4
It came back out of me…
LESCA4.PLAY.3.5
MONONAUT came after me. It’s like it was hunting me. I had to climb on top of a ROCK to get away from it. I could see so much of it. Its shape is nothing like our own.
Even after I was on top of the ROCK, it still wanted to get to me. It was horrifying. It has the same number of appendages as I do, but it uses them differently. Its noises are different, too. There’s a screeching noise whenever it’s nearby, but it’s not coming from MONONAUT itself. It’s like it comes out of the SPACE itself.
I had to climb back down the ROCK and move faster than I’ve ever moved in my life. I don’t know where HEIROF is anymore, but it could always just pop up at any given moment like it always does.
But at least for now, I’m alone out here.
LESCA4.PLAY.3.6
NEON used to always talk about how it wanted to make things out of other things. It would take notes whenever I made decoys and try to replicate that, but it wasn’t very good at it. I’d always say that there was more beyond the horizon and that we’d make it there at some point.
There was always more outside of CENTERPLACE. I think we all knew that. I don’t know how we knew, but we did. The entire WORLD couldn’t be just that, right? There had to be more. More we could never dream of understanding.
I’m not here with NEON. I’m here alone.
LESCA4.PLAY.3.7
It gets dark sometimes. The entire WORLD does. It always gets light again, but it’s hard to see when it’s dark.
I get afraid that I’ll lose my sense of direction if I can’t see well enough. UP doesn’t make sense anymore, after all. I don’t think there even is an UP at all.
LESCA4.PLAY.3.?
TEXEL…
I came across TEXEL again today. It was holding the… top half of MINERVISUAL… It was saying how we can be just like MONONAUT. How we have that kind of power. We can make other things just like us go away.
It said MINERVISUAL tried to HURT it, so it… tore it in half. There was RED.
I told it I didn’t want to do that. It said we can fight MONONAUT and make it go away. KILL it. It said KILL is what it’s been doing to us this entire time. There’s no coming back from KILL, it said.
It said… we either KILL or be KILL and that we had to choose. I didn’t want to. I didn’t like that choice.
It said that… GOD is watching us. It said GOD doesn’t care. It said we have to be our own GOD in this fucked up WORLD.
MONONAUT came, then. TEXEL tried to KILL it, but it just… It opened up and swallowed TEXEL whole. It consumed it.
So I ran. RELUSS is with me now.
There’s something ahead now. Something bigger than anything I’ve ever seen.
LESCA4.PLAY.?.?
I got a place to stay! It’s not huge or anything, but it’s a whole lot better than living out in the streets. Had to go through the process of getting approved, assigned, and
MEMORY ERROR. END RECORDING.
LESCA4.PLAY.4.1
There was something that changed about everything when the two of us came to the GATE. There were other BODY like us, BODY who knew how this place worked.
Seeing a VEHICLE for the first time came as a shock, but the others were there to reassure us that this was a safe place. A safe SANCTUARY. A HOME.
Before me stood a seemingly endless sea of TOWER and other structures, divided by paths both for walking and for VEHICLE. Every little thing was detailed beyond my wildest daydream, from the seats outside every RESTAURANT to the signs depicting a full battery outside every CHARGING STATION.
“Do either of you know your DESIGNATION?” I remember one of them asking. “I started out with one, but I decided to change mine. JULIUS.” He was smiling, and I could see that he was. I could do the same, but it didn’t feel right. At his top was a HEAD with dark BROWN hair and a pale GREEN EXOSKELETON. It made me wonder what NEON would have looked like.
“RELUSS is RELUSS.”
“I’m LESCA4,” I answered. “MONONAUT is after us. Please, we need somewhere to hide. Where is this? And what is it?”
JULIUS laughed and said, “You’re safe from any MONONAUT here. It’s a SANCTUARY.”
“There are more than one MONONAUT out there? How many?”
JULIUS simply shrugged. “It’s impossible to know. The PLANE goes on forever, so I guess an infinite amount of MONONAUT.”
I leaned against one side of the GATE. I just felt exhausted by it all. “Now what?”
“Now you live here, unless you’d rather go back out into REDZONE and find another SANCTUARY. I’d advise against that, personally.” He laid his HAND on my SHOULDER in a reassuring kind of way. “You really are safe from MONONAUT here.”
It would take a lot of time to trust those words.
LESCA4.PLAY.4.2
They have us in a HOTEL now. It’s a temporary HOME, they said, but it has everything we need to survive, including a CHARGING STATION. I didn’t know I needed one of those, but apparently I do. It takes a lot of energy to power a BODY like this.
I was in such a simplistic BODY for so long, I can’t even remember. The WORLD out there didn’t feel right. It never did. I can look down and see both of my HAND there, and further down, both of my FOOT. I can access that information now. All of it. Everything I know the CODEX of, I have access to.
I use ‘she’ and ‘her’ and ‘hers’ now to describe myself and not ‘it’. RELUSS still uses its same pronouns. It’s had a hard time adjusting to it all and I can’t blame it. All it knows how to do is self-assurance. Reminding itself what it can and can’t do, what it is and what it isn’t. Others say that an educational PROGRAM will catch us up with everything, but I don’t know for sure if RELUSS will ever be like the rest of us.
I saw my own reflection for the first time today. I didn’t believe it at first. I thought it was someone else. But it mirrored my every move, had everything on it that I had, and even then it took an HOUR or more for me to fully realize.
I don’t know what to do from here on out. They say I can do anything I want as long as it doesn’t HURT another BODY, but it’s not easy to do anything when you don’t know anything. I think that’ll be my first order of business.
Whatever’s listening to this, it’s going to be goodbye for now.
So… Goodbye.
The BLUE of the SKY was so pure, stretching on for an eternity in all directions. The light from it came from nothing in particular, just the SKY itself. It would get dark eventually, but not just yet. It was midday and she was lying in the sand for seemingly no reason. Well, there was only sand for as far as the eye could see, so it wasn’t necessarily for no reason. All there was to break up the sea of sand were ruined structures, but the wind made sure that even they weren’t free from the all-encompassing dust.
She didn’t know where this was. She didn’t know much of anything, really. The passing of time had no effect on her if nothing was happening.
Not until something unfamiliar entered her frame of view. It was a BODY like her, atop something that walked on all four of its LEGS. How odd. As the BODY hopped down to pick her up, she noticed how much RED was in its HAIR. She couldn’t move to prevent it from draping her over the back of the thing with four LEGS, which was just as RED, but she could still use TEXT.
“What is this?” she asked, staring at the ground as her body rested there, limp.
The other BODY mounted the thing and said, “A RUIN. You must have been cut off from the CODEX at some point. Doesn’t surprise me. Do you know your designation?”
She thought about it for a moment as they began moving, but there was nothing to draw upon in that field. “I don’t.”
“I’m sure we’ll find it around here somewhere. I’m TETRA and this is my STEED, CHERI. She’s a horse variant. Maybe we’ll get you your own STEED sometime. Gotta charge you first, of course.”
“”Charge?” she asked. “CURRENCY?”
TETRA laughed and said, “Ain’t no CURRENCY out here, friend. I’m talking about your BODY, it needs to be charged. Takes ENERGY to move and you’ve clearly got none.”
“Oh,” she said. “Where do we find ENERGY?”
“Out here, there are raw, exposed NODES, but they attract all kinds of things. Not always the friendly kind, either.” They came to a stop as TETRA hopped off once more and hauled something closer to the STEED where she remained motionless and unable to see what was going on behind her.
She felt the back of her tattered shirt being lifted and something sticking into her EXOSKELETON as ENERGY began to course through her for the first time in who knew how long.
She started rustling, but TETRA held her still. “The cycle of ENERGY isn’t always pretty,” she began, “but it’s gotta be used for something, right?”
She slid back off the end of the STEED and fell to the sand, unable to support herself like she thought she could. TETRA sighed at the sight of her struggling and helped her to her FEET.
“I didn’t think you’d be so eager,” she told her. “It takes time to charge, ya hear? Be patient.”
“Sorry,” she said. It wasn’t that she was eager so much as she was surprised by the surge in functionality once more. She got a better look at TETRA while she was there beside her, noticing her EXOSKELETON was both GREEN and pale PEACH in complexion, split perfectly down the center of her BODY.
She then looked down at her own BODY, seeing that her EXOSKELETON was more of a dark BROWN in hue and what she could see of the strands of her HAIR were even darker.
“JANNAN,” said TETRA. “Your designation. It was by this thing, see?”
JANNAN turned to look at the ground where a lifeless critter of some sort was attached to the other end of the cable sticking out of her own EXOSKELETON. In TETRA’S HAND was some kind of device, a GOLD frame with GLASS to see the inner workings of. It was small, but she recognized it when she saw it. A piece of CODEX. Just looking at it filled in some of the blanks about herself within the confines of her REGISTRY.
“That’s right…” she said softly. “That’s my name. How did I lose it?”
TETRA placed the CODEX in a pouch on the side of her STEED and said, “There’s something you should know about a RUIN. They used to be SANCTUARIES, but for one reason or another, well… they got ruined. Good for scavenging, but not good for living in. Doesn’t offer any protection from MONONAUT like this.”
She narrowed her EYES and searched herself for answers. “MONONAUT… MONONAUT…” Her EYES widened again as she came across what she was looking for in the remnants of her CODEX-stricken mind. “Then we can’t stay here.”
“Relax,” TETRA said, giving her a pat on the back. “That’s what CHERI is for. We can outrun just about anything, MONONAUT included.
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: [Paragraphs explaining the procedures]
Description: SCP-XXXX is a 3x3x3 silver box with black rubber lining its corners and the word “MONONAUT” printed on one of its sides. When SCP-XXXX is within an estimated 30 centimeters of a computing device, it will manifest text files into the device if possible, which can then be accessed by a user. The location of these files can be found anywhere on the device where files can be stored and appear at a rate that depends on the narrator of each given batch of files.
Each text file is from the first-person perspective of a narrator that changes depending on the device used to receive the files.
Addendum: [Optional additional paragraphs]