Headspace (146)

PSI-4

“Erik, stay there and don’t…”

…don’t call anyone, Erik thought. His hands were twisted up in the fabric of his shirt and pulling in two directions at once. Oh, no…

“Erik, I have to call…” Miss Gottschalk said.

Then there was a crash from downstairs and a voice snarled, “We’ll be back for the kid!”

“My window!” said Miss Gottschalk. She ducked through the trapdoor and slid down the ladder with practiced ease.

And the voice in his head said, Run. Go down the fire escape. We can still catch them. There’s only six of ‘em, kid. I’ll get them all…

“…No,” Erik said thickly, trembling. You kill people.

Ain’t that what you need right now?

Miss Gottschalk called up from below, “Erik, please stay with me! Don’t dawdle!”

My uncle said stay with her and be safe.

He went down the ladder. It was hard to do that with Angie but he didn’t want to leave her up there. They weren’t rock stars. They couldn’t get another one whenever they wanted.

Miss Gottschalk’s apartment smelled like those sachets Ann put in the toes of her shoes. It was knitted and doilied and overstuffed. There was carpeting, and then rugs on top of the carpeting. Everything was round and soft. The only noise was a dark wooden clock on the mantelpiece, clucking away like a disapproving hen.

Get out of here, little boy. You’ll make those nasty men in red jackets come up here and break all these nice things, like you made them break the window.

He wasn’t sure if he heard it or just thought it. Maybe it didn’t matter. He clutched the violin case and ran. His shoes only made a thumping sound like he was punching a pillow, until they found purchase on the hard floor of the stockroom.

Miss Gottschalk was already examining the remnants of her window display when he pulled the fabric curtain aside and peeked out to make sure it was safe.

It wasn’t safe. There was a nice lady out here looking at a red brick some gang members had just pegged through her window — and they said they were coming back — but it was the closest thing he had to ‘safe’ at the moment, so he came out and obediently presented himself.

Miss Gottschalk set the brick on the window seat with the striped cushion and the broken glass. “Property damage!” she declared. “This is warfare. I am calling the Naughts and Crosses, they won’t stand for this!” She picked up the delicate white telephone receiver that Erik’s uncle had so recently been yelling into trying to get them some help, and she set her hand in the cradle in its place. Her expression softened and she addressed Erik more gently, “I’ll see if I can get them to go after Mr. Eidel for you, or at least walk you home, but Strawberryfield isn’t really their territory, and if they won’t deal with you I really do have to call the police. You can’t stay here, Erik. You understand that, don’t you?”

Erik nodded, pulling on his shirt.

“Come here and sit behind the counter in case they come back. Would you like a picture book?”

No, I don’t want a picture book, you stupid woman! I want my uncle back!

Erik slowly shook his head.

She was trying to be nice, and if he was mean she might throw him out, and his uncle said he was supposed to stay here.

Why? Why am I supposed to stay here? Why am I supposed to stay here and let a lot of bad men hurt you when I can make them stop?

Kid, we can find him! They can’t have gone far. You’ve got people who like to tell you things! Come on, Violet must be dyin’ to see this! We’ll ride up on them like Dale Danvers in the serials and make sure they never hurt anyone ever again! We’ll be the good guys!

Erik put his hands over his ears and curled up in the dusty space behind the glass-fronted counters with the tiny shoes. The good guys don’t kill people.

Now, kid, you know that ain’t how it is.

Miss Gottschalk said, “I wish to speak to Customer Service,” then she leaned into the phone and said it more clearly, pausing after every syllable, “Cus-to-mer Ser-vice! Are you a human being or a load of gears I’m talking to? Oh, you didn’t understand that either? What kind of bass-akwards, gadabout street gang sets up an automated calling service — did you understand that?”

Erik only sort of heard. He was looking at something else.

There was a white woman. All white, like paper, with her shoulder-length white hair hanging in sweat-soaked strings around her face. She had a blue uniform with a long coat like his uncle’s coat, except with shiny brass buttons. The pants had really wide legs and a panel in front that buttoned across so you could kind of pretend it was a skirt, but that was just the army being silly. You couldn’t move like that in a skirt, not without showing everyone your raggedy-ass underwear you’d been washing in a upside-down helmet, or your bare ass. It was hard to see the single cigarette tucked behind her ear, but he knew it was there. She was smiling.

Not on the outside. She was smiling on the outside, but that wasn’t her. She was smiling on the inside and looking out the windows like she wasn’t supposed to do.

Her room was way nicer than his. He knew she had it longer than him and she was older and better at it, but he was still sort of jealous. She had walls and wallpaper. Green wallpaper, but that was supposed to be funny, because of the arsenic. Arsenic was for gunpowder and bullets and they all had their turn doing that. There were paintings on the walls, and a closet with clothes. She had a chandelier. It looked like a gas one, but it didn’t matter how it worked. It worked because she said so. There was shaggy blue carpet on the floor, wall-to-wall like the dining room would’ve had, except new and fluffy and nice for walking on. A bathtub with warm water and bubbles in it that never ran out was centrally-located, but that was only for when it was boring.

She was playing the music, though. She had a phonograph, but that also only worked because she said so. She saw it in a shop and she liked the design of the horn, so she put it in the room. Like she picked out the clothes. Like he had picked out his lamp.

It was Franz Ferdinand, which sounded kind of like synco and kind of like Calliope’s records — Calliope’s newer records. Alba preferred Franz Ferdinand for killing people like Uncle Mordecai liked Led Zeppelin for being on drugs.

George liked it too.

Take me out, they kept singing. Demanding it. Take me out!

So that’s what my mom looked like, Erik thought. It didn’t really matter about the locket with the funny pictures. He should’ve guessed someone was going to show him eventually.

…And that’s what St. George looked like using my mom to kill people.

He was laughing. Alba was fun to drive! And strong! Hell yeah! Talk about your horsepower!

George didn’t like to hold a weapon. He would take them from people and use them, but he dropped them when they ran out or he got bored. That was pretty much how the killing worked too. He would hold onto a person for a little while and they’d dance. It was very much like dancing, then a bullet went through the head or a bayonet went through the chest and he’d kick them away to make room for a new partner. If there were too many coming at once and they were being pushy, he’d drop a few before they got near — a gun or a thrown blade, he didn’t care — and pick someone who looked fun to kill close up. They couldn’t shoot him. They shot at him, but he had lots of dance partners to put between Alba’s body and the bullets. A very funny thing he liked to do was, if someone had some grenades hung on their belt or vest or a bandoleer, he’d pull all the pins, shove that person gently aside, pat them on the back and then dodge through the melee before anything went off. Then that person would be dead and a lot of other people standing around them would be dying and dead, but he’d only count the one with the grenades. He could only be sure about that one.

He was counting. He counted out loud. He laughed and he counted out loud as he cut people’s throats and put knives through their eyeballs and blew them up and shot them. He was so fast. He was too fast not to be using magic somehow, but it looked so simple and natural. You wouldn’t expect him to slow down like you wouldn’t expect a lightning bolt to slow down, or some milk you spilled on the floor. It went everywhere.

And, oh my gods, what a mess it made.

“Ninety-seven… Ninety-eight… Ninety-nine… Ha-ha! One-hundred!… I like it, I love it… See ya, pal! One-oh-one!… One-oh-two… Is this anyone’s liver? Here, take it with ya!” He stuffed it, whatever it was, into a pocket and then cut off the head of the person with the pocket. The eyes rolled up and the mouth fell open with blood coming out of it.  “One-oh-three! Is this anyone’s head?”

Alba was sitting on the window seat and counting along with him, like she was watching a rainstorm and curious about how far away the lightning was. Uncle Mordecai didn’t know she had a window seat. He would’ve said it was bad for her.

107… 108…

The phonograph played and people died.

Erik was pretty sure the song wasn’t supposed to be that long, but it went as long as they wanted it.

“One-nineteen! That’s my time, folks! You’ve been a great crowd!” Alba bowed, he made her do that, then he lit up his cigarette with a white flame and stood still in the middle of all the blood and dead people to smoke. He did that very fast, it seemed like one long drag and then she was only holding ashes, which he dusted on her pant leg. “Ah! Okay, girl, let’s get you home.”

I don’t do that for just anyone, kid.

When someone aimed a gun at her from half a mile away, he picked up an armless torso by its shirt collar and the bullet went into its gut. “People ain’t got no respect, you know that, Alba?”

I know it, Georgie, she said raptly. We’ll show ‘em.

He shooed her hand scoldingly at the sniper and returned her to the wall in relative peace.

A metal door banged open and a red hand shot out to grab her by the arm.

She lifted his hand, spun herself around like she was dancing with him, and collapsed into his arms, laughing. She did that. She was redder than he was, even her hair.

“I did it!” she said. “One-nineteen! I told you I could do it! Did I do it?” She looked behind her, but they’d already closed the door and she couldn’t tell.

“You did it,” Uncle Mordecai told her. He was smiling. He was holding a blood-covered woman who had just killed a hundred and nineteen people and he was smiling at her. “They’re leaving. I’m so proud of you.”

Don’t you lie to me! Erik snapped, though only a low groan escaped him aloud. He still had his hands over his ears and Miss Gottschalk was still yelling at the automated calling service (“Operator! Op-per-a-tor!”). It had only taken a couple of seconds for him to see the whole thing. He was proud of her because they were running out of ammo and they couldn’t shoot people so they needed some other way to stop the attack until they could make more! She scared the hell out of him when she said you guys were gonna kill that many people! That whole time he thought she was gonna die, and then so would everyone else!

Am I lying to you, kid? You know how it was and so do I. That doesn’t make it wrong. We’re the good guys.

You are not the good guys! You… You just got used by the good guys!

So use me. You’re a good guy. How about it?

No! It was a bad war and my mom died in it and that’s how come my uncle knows killing people hurts you!

Sure it hurts. Losing your baby teeth hurts. That doesn’t mean your life’s over when it happens. I’m sorry about your mom. If it had been a fight, I could’ve saved her. But it wasn’t.

You got her shot!

I’m sorry about that too. I didn’t see it that time. I got excited. But I got her back home so they could fix her. And she got this super amazing kid out of the deal.

Shut up! I don’t care! Anthony, are you here? Make him go! He knew Hester wasn’t. It wasn’t a house. Damn it, he should’ve stayed upstairs.

Lame Anthony doesn’t have a real good grasp of making people do stuff, kiddo.

A voice with a rather more querulous quality faded in, and Erik thought he made out the slumped figure of a man standing near the broken window, but the glass counter and the little shoes were in the way: Oh! Isn’t the window much nicer this way, Erik?

Violet! Erik thought desperately. Violet was everywhere. I’ll give you cereal later!

I’m just having a super fun time watching you, Erik. You wanna know what they’re doing to your uncle?

Yes!

Too bad.

He sobbed and pressed both hands over his eyes. The metal one whirred and clicked in protest. I hate all of you!

I never said you had ta like me, kid. Your mom did, and your uncle used to, but you don’t have to. You just hafta let me in, or I can’t help you. There’s six of ‘em. I won’t skim any off the top. I’ll spot you the liquor and the cigarette, we’ll just make our best effort. Whaddya say?

My uncle said not to!

Yeah. That seems weird to me. Does that seem weird to you?

Erik’s eyes widened and he covered them again, but he saw.

He saw a red man, hardly more than a kid, aiming a long gun over the top of a pile of broken boards and furniture.

Stop it! You’re making this up! You weren’t there!

I’m where the fighting is, kid. I like it when people die.

He had black gloves and a black coat which were dusted with gray from the rubble. It was cold and he was shaking, but that wasn’t just the cold. He had snipped the fingertips out of the gloves, they didn’t come made that way, and they were unraveling. They kept getting stuck in the trigger and he was scared he was going to blow his own foot off. Or the guy next to him.

There was a small book propped up against the barricade between them with a line drawing of a much more confident looking gentleman aiming and firing a long gun. Fig. 1. Fig. 2. Fig. 3. It seemed simple enough, but there weren’t line-drawing people shooting at this gentleman.

There weren’t people period. The book only talked about deer. Even when it quite clearly meant people, it said ‘deer.’ But it would be urban deer, or suspicious deer.

He was looking at a couple of urban deer wearing police uniforms right now, they were dodging behind mailboxes and lampposts, and these deer had guns.

The deer with guns did not wish to share their lamppost forest with a bunch of revolutionaries, and, quite frankly, he would prefer not to share his forest with a bunch of deer with guns, so somebody was gonna hafta go.

Die. Somebody was gonna hafta die. Nobody was gonna go. They already had all these barricades and a Declaration of Intent; it would be kind of a waste to just go. And he was pretty sure those newspeople over there were filming.

A bullet exploded the leg of an occasional table just to the right of him and the splinters stung his cheek and made it bleed.

“Damn it, Dad! I’m not hitting anything either, but could you at least point the business end in their general direction? When they’re not scared of us they shoot more!”

He was pointing the business end in the general direction of the rooftops while he tried to sort out the instructions in the little book. “Ah! Right!” he said. He juggled the gun and managed to get the shooty-part pointed at the urban deer, with the… the ‘stock’ against his shoulder, and it said he could break his face if he didn’t have that right, so it was kinda important…

He was supposed to let his cheek ‘rest naturally’ on this object that the book warned might break his face in order to aim properly and he suspected that was why the others seemed to be firing somewhat randomly.

Should I just do that…?

Another bullet embedded itself in the ground near him, kicking up a little puff of snow.

Okay. Yeah. Better not.

He lowered his head cautiously and tried to line up his eye with the sight while keeping the other eye on the little book, although he knew damn well what it said.

Okay. Find an urban deer. Aim for the center of mass… Not the lamppost. Move, you stupid deer. Aim for the center of mass… Focus on the bead, not the target and/or deer. Breathe naturally and relax… Ha-ha, fuck you, Recipes for Better Living. Don’t anticipate the recoil…

What if they have a family?

He could only see blue serge and a blurry hint of a silver badge. That made it a little easier.

Hey, I want to have a family someday too.

Don’t pull the trigger. Squeeze…

It was the noise that bothered him more than anything else, even the pain of the stock jamming itself into his shoulder. It was like someone ripped open a hole to a dimension of pure loud and poured some of it directly into his head. It was loud before, but this was LOUD!!

Well, of course it’s loud. You put your ear right down next to it so you could aim it, you jackass.

His head was ringing like he’d just got done playing a rock concert and there were still more people firing, but he faintly detected someone saying, “Hey, we got one!”

He put the rifle back against his bruised shoulder, referenced the book on how to clear the spent cartridge and aimed again. “You have to put your cheek on the stock and focus on the bead!” he said.

“Hell is a bead?” said the guy next to him. André. It was André.

“It’s that little round thing in the middle of the sight!”

“What’s a sight?” a distant and desperate voice demanded.

“Oh, gods,” he muttered. He raised his voice again, “Damn it, just point the business end in their general direction and let me try again!”

This memory that he shouldn’t have and did not want dissolved into another one.

“Okay, this is basically applied geometry. That’s what you teach, right?”

Please don’t! I don’t want to know these things! Why does it even matter?

You’re the one who thinks it matters, kid.

Seth was standing on top of the city wall and aiming a gun at a tree. Mercifully, it was a tree. One which had already taken quite a few bullets and was leafless and very dead. He issued a low laugh and turned his head shyly to one side. His hair was shorter. It made him look younger than he was. “Trig, Morph. Trigonometry.”

“Don’t split hairs, schoolteacher, there’s geometry in that,” Uncle Mordecai said. He barely looked any different at all. The coat looked newer, with the brass buttons. “And your Auntie Di’s pet name for me is not going to catch on. I’m trying to tell you there are some foundational principles we are dealing with. I’m not asking you to square the circle.”

Seth put down the gun and spoke conversationally, “You know, they’ve just managed it. But you have to bend reality into what they’re calling a ‘transcendental plane.’ I mean, it’s theoretical, but they’re trying to reproduce it in a lab. It’s going quite well!”

“That seems very interesting and I’d like you to live long enough to find out how it goes,” Mordecai said. He picked up the gun and handed it back. “Don’t be scared of it. They take the loud out of these things at the factory nowadays.”

Seth weakly accepted it and pointed it at the ground. “It’s not so much the noise as the implications.”

“Are you worried you can’t or worried you can?”

Seth made a sickly smile. “Do I have to pick one?”

“Okay, give me the gun and sit down,” Mordecai said.

Seth looked relieved. “Oh. You’re going to give up on me too.”

“No, I’m not, because you’ve finally got a responsible person attached to this war. I’m going to talk to you. But I want your head out of harm’s way while we do it. You’re not ready to aim at a tree yet if you’re trying to sort out the implications.”

The city wall was crenelated like a medieval battlement. This was more of a stylistic choice than a practical one — even with magical augmentation, crossbows and boiling oil were on the way out when they knocked down the old wall at Muro Road and put this one up. It had only been there about a hundred years, but they wanted it to look like three-hundred. They didn’t really expect to have a bunch of real life soldiers crawling around on it and under it and feeling absolutely ridiculous with their guns and shells and radios. It was there for people to take pictures of it. But there was a nice broad walkway along the whole thing, and it did make a convenient place to rest one’s back so the folks on the outside didn’t notice you and start shooting.

“Do you smoke or anything?” he asked.

“No, I wouldn’t want… The kids.” The schoolteacher and erstwhile volunteer smiled quite winningly. “I’m thinking of picking up some kind of drug habit, actually!” He dusted a place free of the obvious rubble and sat down. 

“I wouldn’t blame you. I don’t smoke either. With me, it’s the money. It always seemed silly to make payments on an installment plan for something interesting to do with your hands. Of course, then one gets roped into these situations where they desperately need something interesting to do with their hands. I can’t have Martha up here.”

Seth looked slightly uncomfortable with this. “Uh, Martha is, uh…”

“Yes Martha is a violoncello and you’re sitting on a wall with a crazy person who is holding a gun. And I am doing this because the Prime Minister of all Marsellia asked me to, if you’ll recall,” Mordecai said dryly.

“Do you know how to play anything smaller?”

“No, but I suppose I’d better learn. Or take up smoking. That’s later, though. You’ve never killed anyone? Yourself, I mean.” He knew Seth did tactics, which was an indoor activity and fairly divorced from the resultant deaths. He didn’t know Seth wasn’t kidding about the drug habit, not then.

Seth shook his head.

“How about an animal?”

“No. No.”

“Have you ever seen anything die? Not bugs or mice, something with a personality.”

“I had a kitty,” Seth said, looking down.

I would expect you had several kitties and perhaps a racehorse, Mr. Desdoux, Mordecai thought. But he was good at paring down his sarcastic nature when he needed to. “Did it bother you?” he asked.

“Well, of course it bothered me, Mr. Eidel, but M’Lord Jonathan Digby-Forsythe was seventeen years old, he lived a full life and I didn’t have to shoot him!”

Mordecai sat forward and turned to stare at him. “You named a cat M’Lord Jonathan Digby-Forsythe and you have the nerve to sit here and look at me cockeyed for naming my ‘cello Martha? I don’t even know any human beings named M’Lord Jonathan Digby-Forsythe!” Okay, he was good at paring down his sarcastic nature, but he wasn’t perfect at it.

“My little sister…” Seth protested. Then he shook his head and shrugged. “It was a joint effort.”

“Okay, well, shooting a person, killing a person, is nothing like that at all. You don’t know them. You’re not attached. The thing you’re attached to is the idea that you shouldn’t kill a person. And that does hurt, but it’s a different kind of hurt. It’s not as hard. All the other stuff around it is much harder. Most of the time you don’t see them die, and you don’t even know if they’re dead. You… You haven’t had anyone die on you yet here?”

“I know people have died, and I’ve seen dead people, but I’m inside.” He looked away. “The starcatchers bother me. The starcatchers bother me even when they don’t die. They don’t know what they’re doing. They can’t. If they knew how dangerous it was, they wouldn’t do it. They’re children.”

Mordecai nodded. “That’s harder. That’s much harder than killing a person. Being scared that other people you do care about are going to get killed. And you’re still here, you’re coping with it.”

“Maybe killing a person should be that hard,” Seth said.

“It’s not,” Mordecai said. “So we’ve come to the other side of it. It does get easier, and you stop thinking about it. Most of the time. And that’s not good. Well, it’s good for your ability to go on and be happy and have a life — it’s probably not so great for humanity as a whole, if you understand me. But it’s not like a switch gets broken. It’s like one gets installed. And you’re a volunteer like me, so that means you’re in charge of this switch…”

Seth put a hand on him and stopped him, “Aren’t you a soldier, Mr. Eidel?”

“What sort of a scenario have you put together in your ‘academic’ mind that allows for Jim finding a soldier playing ‘cello in a movie theater during a siege and this soldier being called Mister Eidel? Did you think he picked a name for me like M’Lord Jonathan Whatever-it-Was?”

“Do you have some other reason for a guy who plays ‘cello in movie theaters to know about killing people?”

“I’m a revolutionary,” Mordecai said. He extended his hand in introduction. “Was, I should say. I seem to have ended up on the other side of it all of a sudden.”

“You must’ve been younger than me,” Seth said.

“I suppose I must have been. I don’t like that it happened. I don’t like that I killed people, and people were killed, and hurt, and all for nothing. It hurt me, but it didn’t ruin me. And you see here I am ready to do it all over again. Because it’s the right thing to do. This is my country, this is my home, and when it comes right down to it this is my life. And not just mine. There are things I’m willing to die for. And there are things I’m willing to kill for. A lot of them are the same things. You already know you might die trying to help out.”

Seth nodded. “But that’s just me…”

“It’s not just you. It’s everyone you could’ve helped that you won’t be able to help because you’re dead. And all the people they could’ve helped. And a bunch of kids who’ll have an inept geometry teacher as they grow up.”

“Trigonometry.”

“Do you want to be alive to be the guy who explains to them there’s a difference?”

“Yes,” Seth allowed.

“Do you want to help your Aunt Diane and Jim and all your other friends at the wall stay alive so they can do what they love to do and help each other and everyone else stay alive?”

He nodded.

“Then you have a place for a switch. You can learn how to do this. You can learn how to protect yourself and everything that’s important to you instead of relying on everyone else to protect you. And it’ll hurt, and you’ll always have it, but it won’t ruin you. We’re in the middle of a siege. These choices aren’t easy for us, but they’re the ones we have to make. Your aunt has been sheltering you, you know that, don’t you?”

Seth sighed. “Yes.”

“She asked me to do this so you can protect yourself, but I don’t think that’s as important to you as everything else.”

“No.”

“Well, you’re both idiots,” Mordecai said. “There’s no difference. They’re both the same. Understand?”

“I’m trying.”

Mordecai nodded and stood. “That’s the hard part. Trying. Getting a bullet to go where you want it to go is just applied geometry. Put the hard part on the back burner and let me help you with the easy bit.”

Seth picked up the gun and had a look at the tree. “You just called the Prime Minister of all Marsellia an idiot.”

“Smart people can be idiots too, I should know.” He edged a little closer and dropped his voice, “But, uh, keep it under your hat, will you? Your Auntie Di terrifies me. And not just because she could order me shot.”

“I’ll try, but she’ll probably get it out of you eventually.” Seth gamely closed one eye and tilted his head to one side.

“Rest your cheek on the stock, sight down the barrel and aim for the center of mass…”

Erik was curled up against the glassed-in counters, hands clamped over his face and rocking back and forth. It didn’t really help. It was just something to do. Like when they put Milo in the straitjacket so he couldn’t bite. He knew all of that wasn’t true when he said it!

He also knew it was true enough. You remember what that big guy with the stuffed gorilla said? I know you do. I can see it in there. When you try to break down a hard thing for someone little to understand, you end up telling lies and contradicting yourself. Your uncle wasn’t lying, he was trying to explain something so big even he doesn’t get it. He wasn’t lying to you in the stockroom either. He thinks someone will see you and you’ll go to prison or die, or you’ll be extra hurt because you’re a little kid and you can’t handle it. He’s not a liar, he’s just doing his best. I do my best too, and I’ll try not to ruin it for ya, kid, but I can’t promise. Some things are worth killing for.

The next words felt like ice cubes dropped down the back of his shirt: And you know you don’t have to go to prison if ya really don’t want to.

He shuddered. Please go away.

He wanted it to go away because… because he sort of didn’t want it to go away. He was starting to feel like he was drowning and he kept swatting away the life preserver because he didn’t like the color of it.

I know that’s not how it is. I know that’s not how it is. My uncle said…

But his uncle said a lot of stuff.

Could I really still be a good guy? Erik, a little more sad and a little more hurt, but with a switch for when it gets really bad and I get to decide when that is? Like Maggie knows how to steal when she needs it?

It didn’t answer him but he wasn’t asking it and he guessed it knew that.

I’m broken already. I know I can hurt myself and not die.

My uncle doesn’t want me to be hurt, but does he know how much this hurts?

Can you find them? he asked.

I’m sorry, kid. I can’t do that part for ya. It’s really small and nobody’s dead yet.

Erik looked up. What do you mean ‘yet?’ Is my uncle killing those people?

He’d probably like to try it so he can get back here to you, but I kinda doubt it. The reverse is not impossible.

…They wouldn’t kill my uncle. They wouldn’t really kill my uncle. He wouldn’t be dead. You’re lying again! That’s just something people say!

Kid… Why wouldn’t they?

The green boy shot to his feet with a cry. He fisted both hands and pulled them against his chest. It hurt there. No! They CAN’T kill my uncle! I’M NOT DONE WITH HIM YET!

He’d known that person all his life and he was only just starting to figure out how little that was. How little that meant.

I have to grow up and still have him so he can tell me all this stuff when he thinks I’m ready to hear it and I can say it’s okay and still love him!

“Erik?” said Miss Gottschalk. She had her hand over the phone. “Dear?”

Come on, kid, let’s go! You can call me when we find them. I’m sure Violet will…

Hey, Erik?

“Shh-sh-sh!” Erik managed aloud, waving a hand. Violet, will you tell me where…

You wanna know where you remember that guy with the matches from?

Violet was sitting on the countertop next to the phone, kicking her little shoes back and forth above the reasonably-priced selection of other little shoes. Her eyes were blank white like a statue. She smiled at him.

Erik’s expression screwed into a snarl. Cousin Violet, you are so damn stupid…

But then he saw. And he remembered she wasn’t stupid. Just really mean.

And she thought she was funny.

You didn’t see it ‘cos it’s dark. It’s too bad. But you weren’t gonna go until it started to get dark. I think we’ve established that. It’s pretty fun this way, anyhow. We got to look at some neat stuff. It runs a bit long, I guess.

She didn’t have to say it. She didn’t even have to say why he didn’t see it. He knew.

If it had been sunny that guy with the matches would’ve been all sparkly.

Like John.

Go fuck yaself, Cousin Violet, St. George said. A smallish older man with pulled-back hair and a pointy white beard appeared briefly, flung an irritated gesture at her and stamped out through a wall.

Too soon, Georgie, Violet said. She faded away.

“Erik…?” said Miss Gottchalk, very soft. For a second… And that was just silly because this was just a scared little boy who was hiding behind her counter so the interloping street gang wouldn’t get him… But for a second she’d been afraid he might hurt her.

Erik slammed his hand down on the phone’s cradle, breaking the connection. “Ricky don’t lose that number!” he cried.

Miss Gottschalk staggered a step backwards, clutching the receiver. “Erik…”

Erik had tears running down his face and she leaned in and down like when her youngest customers were obviously too tired but their parents didn’t want to be done shopping yet. “…Sweetheart, do you want the phone?”

Erik nodded with the whole upper half of his body. “Please. I’m… sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She gave him the receiver. He took his hand off the cradle, listened for the tone and then racked in a familiar number with his index finger jammed in the dial. He was used to doing it from payphones, he could almost get it without looking. Hi. My uncle gave me money for the movies. Wanna come?

Mrs. Green-Tara, don’t pick up, he thought. Anyone but you. Even the dog. I’ll talk to the dog!

He didn’t think she would. She’d just hang up on him. Violet liked to make things happen.

“Hello? This is Herald Street News! Yes, we’re open! The potato chips are buy-one-get-one-free because they’re about to expire!”

The voice was female, but it wasn’t Gita Green-Tara. He knew it was John’s little sister but he couldn’t get the name out, or even ‘little girl who likes to dress up that poor dog!’

He sang again, it was the only thing he could think of, “Please, please help me!”

“Erik?” she said.

He just kept singing. He felt like he got halfway through the damn album before she stopped him, but it was a little less than a verse.

“I’ll get Johnny,” she said, and he heard her put the phone on the counter.

He started to cry again, out loud this time. Great big hitching sobs, and when John’s voice came on the phone and said, “Erik?” all he could do was say, “Yes!” and then hand the phone to the nice store lady.

She put her hand on his shoulder and rubbed while she spoke. “Hello? I’m sorry, Erik is indisposed. Well, a street gang seems to have kidnapped his uncle. They’ve put a brick through my window and it’s really not safe for him to stay here. Can you help him about that in any way? I’m on Courier Lane. Yes, it’s called Hens and Chicks. We’ll be the one with no front window, dear. Just a moment.” She put the phone to Erik’s ear and he put a hand on it and adjusted it.

“Erik?” John said. “You don’t have to talk. I don’t get what’s going on but I’m leaving right now and I’ll be there in five minutes. Okay?”

“…okay,” Erik managed thickly. “Okay.” He sat down on the floor and began to bawl.

“I think I’d better go,” Miss Gottschalk said to the phone. “Five minutes? Okay. Bye-bye.” She sat down next to Erik and held him. “That’s quite a good response time,” she told him. “But I do hope he’s in the Naughts and Crosses, or else there’s going to be paperwork. Erik, would you like some more tea?”