I stared at the playing card in my hand. It was the six of clubs, and with a twist of my wrist it turned into the jack of clubs, then the king of hearts, the ace of clubs and then from poker to tarot, the Fool, the World, the Magician. They all looked real enough—felt real too. But when I scratched the far corner of the card against a piece of paper, an inky black line trailed after the card. I wiggled it a bit, making it zig-zag, before dropping the illusion, and in the end, there was nothing but a black pen, uncapped, resting in the palm of my hand.
I had become The Magician, lunging head-first, eyes-closed once again into a deal with people far scarier than I was, with no idea of the consequences. Except, that really wasn't true anymore, was it? While I still didn't know much about being The Magician, when Jarqual said that I'd become part of him, he was being much more literal than I'd thought at the time. There was no ritual, no incantation. When I'd agreed, Jarqual had done it the very next moment, and suddenly I knew what it was like to be a bat.
I had awakened an entirely new type of proprioception. Men could always tell where their fingers were, even when not looking, and I could always know what was going on in The Magician's tent, along with a having much vaguer feel for the rest of the circus. Jarqual wasn't lying when he said that he was the circus.
On the other hand, if I could feel all of this, what could Jarqual do? I wondered what piece of me Jarqual had inherited. What did a single tent correspond to on a human? A kidney? An eye? I could always ask him later.
The magic was great in some ways, but frustrating in others. I could make a convincing illusion after doing something attention grabbing, something a magician might do to distract from a bit of sleight of hand, but it couldn't be just anything; it had to be on theme. Cards? Yes. Small animals? Yes. A water bottle? No. I'd spent all of yesterday trying things to see if they worked. Most things didn't, but happily, I could make myself invisible, even on photos, even to cameras. My assumption was that it had to do with the fact that magicians were supposed to be able to vanish into thin air, which was what made it conform to the theme. It was a popular trick.
When I finally stopped playing with my powers, and rested my head back on the pillow, my door opened without so much as a knock, and my sister entered my room. So I twirled a finger at her and the package under my bed now contained playing cards. Filled to the brim with them in a loose pile, replacing all of the weapons Jarqual had put there. Still, if someone were to open it, they could still hurt themselves, especially with the knife and the vial of poison. It earned me a weird look, but I would take that over telling her that I joined the mob anyday.
My sister, Anna, was a small and nosy creature, with long brown hair and beady little eyes to match. Her jawline was as round as mine was, and I'd always been jealous of how much better that looked on a woman. The petite triangle on her face was also fairly unlike the turnip I had for a nose. Honestly, I was a bit jealous of missing out on all the good genes. At least she was weird. Weirder than me even.
"Do you wanna go to the mall with me and mom?" she asked, while taking a quick peek inside each of my drawers. I told you she was nosy. I thought it was cute right up until I had something to hide. She didn't normally rummage under my bed though, it was too dusty, which was why I almost never cleaned under there—and I always left a bit of dust after too.
"What are we shopping for?" I asked
"Clothes mostly. Maybe some new sheets," she replied, fiddling with some of my earlier attempts at illusions that I'd put in the drawer for safe-keeping. She shot me a raised eyebrow when she saw the collection. I was not about to justify my collection of weird objects to someone rummaging through my stuff, and the fact that she didn't press meant that she knew it too.
"So just following mom around?"
"Yeah, but it's still good family time."
No objections here, and I could even run a little errand right after.
The mall was a nice place for a family outing. My mom loved shopping and would take us there often. Getting to play dress-up with her children brought her a lot of joy. It was slightly less busy than usual, with pockets of people moving here or there in place of the dense carpet of individuals that was the norm. We passed by glistening store-fronts displaying all too expensive objects, and I stopped briefly in front of the lego store. They had a very nice star wars themed display, a bit too pricey for me though. But then again, I hadn't discussed my remuneration with Jarqual yet.
"I was worried that I'd never see you look at a lego set longingly again," said my mother, "the few that we have as decorations in the house kept reminding me of you."
My mother wasn't old old, but at fifty-five she wasn't young either. She was a short-haired redhead with a thin figure brought about by a lifetime of smoking, and it showed. Working in an office all day and staring at a screen also didn't exactly help her complexion. I worried about her a lot. She was still lively, but the wear-and-tear of the years was getting to her.
She had bounced back very well from my brief coma, not as well as my sister, but still to a surprising degree. That didn't mean that it had been easy on her when it happened, just that she had gotten better.
I would describe her as kind and caring, if a little too straight-laced. I definitely didn't think she would approve of my recent venture into the entertainment industry. Which is why, in an ideal world, I would never tell her. Her finding out was a risk that admittedly made me a bit uncomfortable. I liked my life, for the most part, and I didn't want any horrifying realizations tearing my family apart. In that regard, I assumed I was no different from the masses of cheating husbands, closeted gays, and downright criminals. Especially that last one. But, well, I was willing to take the risk for what was on offer.
"No need to miss me now, mom. I'm here to stay," and for far longer than you could possibly imagine, I hoped.
In strategy games it's often said that if you're winning you should keep the game predictable, and if you're losing you should create as much chaos as possible. If the predictable outcome is a loss, then why not jump into something unpredictable, a shuffling, shifting chain of events that might change things around, and if not, then what are you going to do? Lose twice? As if.
In life, everyone starts off in a losing position, heading towards the game-over of death, and the game is, for the most part, fairly predictable. You just try to lose as little as possible. Me? I was interested in winning, and I didn't care how hard I risked losing to get there. So a little chaos could only be good for me.
"Good," said my mother, smiling at me, as we continued walking.
We went shopping for clothes. It was what anyone would describe as wholesome. We started with Anna. I'd say the conga line of clothes coming into the dressing booth was unending, if only in my imagination, but in reality it was only three or four outfits. My mother even threw in a hoodie with bunny ears on it because "Oh, god! Put it on, just to see!" though neither she nor Anna were the type to actually go through with it. I admit that it was adorable, and that I had tried on the version in my size too. Surprisingly enough, the baggy hoodie actually looked better on someone bigger, suck on that one genetic lottery.
When we finally finished, three or four hours later. I begged off of going home, saying I would go out for a walk. There may have been hugs involved. In reality though, I was as tired as anyone else, but I still had work to do.
The mall was ripe with people to practice on, and I had time to kill before I had to go and head towards Glenda. I stood on the top floor of the mall, looking at the people below and trying to catch them in my illusions. I multiplied the number of balloons in a child's hand, and pulled a few disappearing acts on people's personal belongings, only to have them reappear later in the first pocket they were looking through. At some point I had to move, because I'd drawn too much attention to myself. Being subtle was surprisingly hard when you were forced to make attention grabbing movements all the time.
At home, in the privacy of my own room, I could be as audacious as I liked; I'd already tried probing lots of edge cases for my illusions. A hot pink gun. Fake money with playing card signs on it. A bird that talked. They worked, but the fine print mattered a little too much, the talking bird could only be little better than a parrot, the money obviously fake and the gun non-functional (and more ridiculous than I wanted.) It was always on the very edge of something useful, just toeing the line, but not quite crossing over.
Overall, It was a confusing and frustrating endeavor. Seeing all these new laws of reality be so vague and unquantifiable left me a bit uncomfortable. How was I supposed to know if something was on theme? And for that matter, how did the universe know? I'd become so used to the world having hard and fast rules, that this new layer to the onion felt a bit off-putting. It just didn't jive with me as someone who'd always thought of everything as being made of atoms held together by traditional physics. But at least there were rules, no matter how wishy-washy.
Luckily, Jarqual, and presumably the others like him, had the sense to investigate the rules of their, and now our, shared existence. He'd told me that after a lot of testing they'd managed to narrow it down somewhat. It was some combination of "inherent" features of the dreams and the judgment of the people who were dreaming it at the time. An absurdist artist would let you get away with more than a grammarian, and a psychotic person tended to just make everything very chaotic. Pushing this as far as it would go had always been part of the agenda, but there were risks too. If you changed the kind people who dreamed you too severely, wouldn't that change you as well? The risk was what kept the collective dreams from trying anything too extreme.
Still, I thought that maybe if you raised someone from —
"—Bark, I am interrupting your stream of consciousness," barked an enormous man in a black fursuit, some kind of dog, saying the actual word "Bark" instead of just barking.
Magical hitmen should really have more awareness than me. It was good that we had a near monopoly on magic powers for the moment, otherwise I'd die before I could learn. If I couldn't even spot a giant, matte black humanoid dog in front of me, I must've really had problems.
"I'm so sorry Andy, he's always like this," complained… Dr. Wilkins, my neurologist?! He looked as tired as the last time I'd seen him, but a bit less put together, wrinkled clothes, stray hairs sticking out of his head.
"I am a government agent sent here to investigate the recent comas and track down the lovely lady responsible, woof," every single thing the guy said came out worse than I could have possibly imagined.
"If you're a government agent, then why are you wearing a fursuit of all things?"
"Disguise, woof, people know what I look like, and I like to change it up to keep them guessing," said the dog-man, proudly showing me his badge. He held it up for me to examine, and frankly, it looked official enough to pass muster. But then again, I had no idea what a badge was supposed to look like or whatever, and anyone with the cash to drop on a giant animal costume (which, now that I think about it, might have been paid for with tax money) was definitely rich enough to get a nice looking fake badge made. And it was totally freaky for any government agent to do that, unless they were infiltrating a convention I guess. So I remained unconvinced, and I'm sure my soon-to-be-former doctor could tell.
"Mr. Becker," began Dr. Wilkins exasperatedly, "could you please humor the man. I assure you that I ran a detailed background check and that he appears to be a perfectly legitimate government agent, if a very eccentric one."
"I am, I am," assured the man inside the dog suit, nodding his head back and forth, seriously.
Ah what the fuck, I'll go along with it. At least he was cool to look at, very lifelike. And I've already hopped on the train to crazytown, so what was another station or two?
We sat down at the Food court's McDonald's. The duo sitting directly opposite of me. Dog-suit had ordered, like, 3 big macs, while the doctor only had a drink. I didn't feel like eating anything. We looked ridiculous, and several people were staring at us. They all lost interest sooner or later but the churn of the crowd made it so that there were always eyes on us. It was a bit disquieting.
"I don't understand why you two are working together," I said, skipping the small talk.
Dr. Wilkins adjusted his collar as he gave a side glance to the so-called "government agent" — agency to be specified.
"I was asked by Roderick here to help him find you as soon as possible and to participate in a joint interview, but we got through my part while we were looking for you. Originally, we'd planned to visit you at your home, but you weren't there. Roderick deduced that you were likely headed to the mall. Don't ask me how he knew that, I have no idea and he refuses to tell," said the doctor, a bit too smoothly, like he'd practiced beforehand
"And I still won't, woof," replied Roderick, smugly shoving down an entire burger down that snout of his.
The truth is that I wasn't born yesterday, or even last week. It was plainly obvious that there was more going on here than I was being told, but frankly, I had better things to be doing today, namely murder-stalking, than… whatever this was. So I chose to let it slide and get this over with as quickly as possible.
"And what do you two need me for?"
"Information, woof. What can you tell me about the woman that put you in the hospital?"
"So you know she was responsible? Because I really wasn't sure if she was or not."
Now that was a boldfaced lie if I've ever told one. I had a very talented fortune teller tell me all the dirty little details he could dig up from the streams of fate about the incident. Time, place, date, location, motive. Glenda was just feeling a little bit prissy that day and felt like having some 'harmless' fun—at my expense.
"I have a strong suspicion, woof. She matched the profile of the people who caused the other incidents. It's a new date-rape drug on the market," I didn't believe a word he was saying. I knew she did it with magic, so this had to be a cover-story of some sort. "Do you remember her appearance, did she give you any personal details, a name maybe? Any information you have could be helpful," said Roderick
To be fair, while, technically, she hadn't given me her name herself, I definitely knew it. I'd spent a good chunk of yesterday cyber-stalking her. She was a short, portly woman that liked to wear business suits, especially because she worked in HR at a company near here. Not married, no kids, at least as far as I could tell. Lived alone. The where was still a bit of a mystery, which I planned to resolve with some good old fashioned detective work, but all this wasn't exactly something I could share with dog-boy over there.
"Short and fat, very loud when angry. About this tall," I said, indicating with my hand, "Oh, and she had short hair too, brown I think."
"And that's absolutely everything you can remember?" asked Roderick.
"Sorry if it isn't much help"
He sniffed the air a bit, angling his head left and right to look at me better, the costume must have made seeing hard. In the end he breathed out, seemingly dejected.
"No, that's fine, If a bit disappointing after going through all the effort to track you down, but it's not the first time I've had someone who didn't remember anything. I'll just have to go about it the old fashioned way again, huh? We're leaving, Wilkins," he said, as he started to leave the table.
That settled that, then. I got up as well, but there was one thing I wanted to do before I left. Roderick's get-up was honestly very high-quality, and I wanted to get a closer look, maybe cop a feel. So, I came up to him and pawed at his arm for a handshake, but before I could investigate the texture and fabric, I noticed something. Heat. Heat and shockingly flexible, elastic skin underneath all the definitely-real fur. And I was suddenly very aware that the mouth that he had stuffed all those burgers down during our short conversation seemed wet and fleshy, with some drool pooling at the corners. The very tall thing looked down at me. There was no way this guy was human.
The doctor was looking at me with a mildly disturbed expression, anxious, maybe worried too, like I'd just done something I shouldn't have even been able to do and he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. For his part, Roderick just looked down at me, and did whatever passed for a smile when you had a snout instead of a normal fucking mouth.
"No one will ever believe you. No one at all."
The duo didn't say anything more, the doctor skipping off to follow after Rodericks disappearing tail.
I hadn't expected to meet a dog-person today, but I had to hurry, I was almost late for my little stalking session.
The wind blew through my hair as I sipped my coffee, messing up my already imperfect hairdo. I was sitting out front of a cafe with a view of the building Glenda worked in. There were things that I needed to know about her, and there was only so much her social media could tell me.
Turns out, Glenda left work at 4:59 PM, the naughty girl. She made a beeline for the parking lot, which was good. If she'd decided to go for a coffee instead, I would've had to leave. Too risky. I'd already spent an hour going around in circles and looking over my shoulder with some clever illusions placed here and there just to throw Roderick off if he felt like following me. I had no idea what his deal was, but I wasn't about to be incautious around any more supernatural entities, no matter how well it worked out for me the first time, and he was clearly as interested in Glenda as I was.
Glenda stopped her steady march next to an abandoned cardboard box in the parking lot, looking at it weirdly. Then twisting her head all around. My heart stopped for a beat when her gaze passed over me, but it clunked back to life when the gears that turned her neck didn't seize up as she faced me, and instead completed their turn. Her extrasensory perception was not as impressive as I'd feared then. That was good.
Imagine you encounter a dangerous new kind of animal. Do you
A: "Poke it with a stick from a 'safe' distance and see what it does." or
B: "Kill it right away with overwhelming force, like with a shotgun."
I could see the merits in either or, but in this particular situation I'd prefer to end things with as much subtlety as possible, which was why I settled on starting with some reconnaissance and put up illusions all over the parking lot. She was looking at my not-actually-there cardboard box, very colorful, perfect for a vanishing assistant act with a contortionist partner, in a lot of confusion—touching it even. She could definitely tell that something was up with it and was being a bit wary, but based on how closely she was examining the box, I didn't think she could see through it completely. She also didn't react to the illusion that I'd put a good bit further away, on the other end of the parking lot, so it was probably out of her range. This was really the best case scenario, if she could sense the other one, or god forbid, me I might have been in serious trouble, but dealing with the unknown always carried some risk.
She hopped into her car, and I followed her in a rental after a couple of minutes, an air tag already in place to let me know where she was without making me come into her range, visual or otherwise. Thank you Glenda for generously posting some car pics on Instagram.
When I got to the little suburb she called home I made myself invisible. It was honestly far too small for me to blend into. She got home at about 6PM, and put her lights out around 10PM. I would have liked to investigate her actual house, but I didn't want to chance coming any closer for fear that she may have still been aware enough in her sleep to sense me.
Besides, It was already horrifically late, and I had an hour-long trip back home. With my ability to work outside of the box, this was probably more than enough information to get it all over with anyway.
And now, all I needed was a plan of action. Knowing what I knew, what would be the most effective, least incriminating way to finish my business with Glenda Robberts?
