#notstinky

He was tired. It wasn’t the kind of thing he’d admit if pressed — even Teddy wouldn’t be able to get it out of him, no matter how convincing their coaxing methods might be — but it was an undeniable truth. Emilio’s already uneasy relationship with sleep had only grown more strained as of late, thoughts of Aesil in the basement clawing at his mind like a hungry beast. He could line every doorway in the house with salt to keep mares from making meals of him, but that wouldn’t stop the nightmares his mind came up with on its own. So Emilio was tired, and he’d avoid sleep, anyway. It was an endless cycle.

Tonight, he was avoiding sleep with a walk through Worm Row. He liked the familiarity of the neighborhood, even if he spent less and less time there now. He still ran into familiar faces, still shot the shit with neighbors and business owners who often admitted they’d assumed he was dead. It was quiet at this hour, though, the streets absent of those familiar faces. There was comfort in that, too. Emilio often thought he was better off on his own, or that the world was better off when he was, or both. He sighed to himself now, quietly fiddling with a knife in his pocket.

A shape took form ahead of him. With his slayer-enhanced night vision, he could make it out as a person easily enough, could make out enough detail to know it was a familiar person. Closing his eyes, he considered his options. Maybe, if he ducked into an alley, the kid wouldn’t see him. Or maybe she wanted to see him just as little as he wanted to see her, and any interaction could be avoided that way. Or maybe she’d do what every other kid in this town liked to do and strike up a conversation with him. The last option seemed the most likely, and Emilio sighed. Not too late to duck into that alley, he thought. Might be a good idea.

—

She smelled him. Through the stink of Worm Row, the musk of other wandering humans and the general wind-blow brine of the ocean, Thea smelled Emilio. She wanted to avoid him; how was she supposed to see him after Walmart? Everyday she opened her closet and that neon green shirt reminded her that she almost ate him and that she couldn’t go back to Walmart again. But her legs followed his scent and Thea thought of herself like a cartoon character following a pie in an open window. If Emilio was a pie, Thea imagined he would be one of those meat pies with the flaky, buttery crust. Not that she wanted to eat him! She definitely didn’t want to eat him. Which was the thought coursing through her head as she found herself staring him down in the darkness. 

“Mr. Emilio!” She called out quickly, trying to push away thoughts of him as a delightful slice of pie. By now she should’ve learned that it was in her best interest to eat before leaving work, but something about eating late at night tended to make her gassy. Something about aging meant she couldn’t eat in the middle of the night the way she used to; ah, adult life, Thea thought, despite hardly being an adult. Of course, it was possible that her digestive issues were instead caused by her growing stress, constant anxiety and lack of sleep but there was nothing she could do about those things and so, like most of her justifications, she accepted what was easier. The Wolf never got gassy, anyway. “Can you see me? I know it’s dark!” She was still down the sidewalk, calling to him like a pie. No, not a pie. She needed to get the image out of her head. “I smelled you! I mean, I want to eat you! I mean—not that—I saw you!” The Wolf had given her many things she didn’t like, but better vision at night was the only thing she thoroughly enjoyed—the moon was so clear! Once she cured herself, she’d miss it. 

She sprinted up to meet him, remembering from watching him hobble out of Walmart that he seemed to have some kind of bad leg; or perhaps that he was just tired after being chased around by a giant wolf thing. “If you were a pie do you think you’d be a meat pie or like, and this just occurred to me, rhubarb?” Thea asked. “Like strawberry rhubarb—tart but sweet and very red? I always thought I would be banana cream because old people like me.” 

—

It was definitely too late to duck into the alley now. She saw him, clearly; she was calling out his name (albeit with a Mr. in front of it, something Emilio didn’t think anyone else used to refer to him), running towards him like they were old friends. Emilio wondered if she felt any actual kinship towards him or if it was guilt that drove her to chase him down in the streets, as if having a conversation with him would serve as an apology for chasing him through that retail store instead of further punishment. If not for the shitty leg, he might have considered making a break for it. As it was, though, he was pretty sure any attempt to do that would only lead to embarrassment. 

“I can see you,” he replied flatly, though he didn’t admit just how well he could see her. He had no concept for how a normal human saw things in the dark, had no idea what it was to see shadows without clarity. He didn’t know as much about werewolves as he did about the undead, but he imagined she saw better than an average human might in this darkness, too. He wondered, somewhat absently, if she was born a wolf or if she’d been bitten. His gut told him the latter; from what he knew of werewolves, the ones who were born into it had more control than the ones who weren’t. He doubted a born wolf would turn in the middle of a store and chase him into the bathrooms. He bristled a little as she continued, claiming she’d smelled him and talking about eating him. He didn’t think it was a threat, though that didn’t mean there was no danger to it. She’d nearly taken a bite out of him in that supermarket, after all. He wasn’t exactly excited about the idea of a repeat performance. 

She was directly in front of him now, and Emilio regretted his decision not to hide out in the alley even if it wouldn’t have saved him. He regretted his decision to come out tonight at all, regretted putting himself in a position where he’d run into someone he didn’t want to run into. He shoved his hands into his pockets as she spoke, only realizing she’d asked him a question when her voice no longer bounced off the walls of the buildings around them. “What?” It took his mind a moment to catch up. “I’m not… a pie. What the fuck is rhubarb?” 

—

Thea didn’t want to be weird, it was an unfortunate reality that she just was weird. She’d tried all her life to not be weird. Her fashion sense was aggressively normal. She laughed at normal people's jokes, even when she didn’t think they were funny. In university, she made a lot of normal friends that did normal things. She’d never done anything too rebellious; she’d never done anything too not rebellious enough. What she’d always wanted to be was exactly average. If people could look right past her because she blended in, she considered that a victory. She didn’t want to be scrutinized, she couldn’t stand attention. She hadn’t always been good at being normal, but it was what she wanted. It was not normal to be a man-eating wolf thing and it was not normal to be talking about pie and it wasn’t normal to have sniffed down Emilio. Thea was struck with a wave of nauseous embarrassment, which festered first as it always did in her stomach. Why couldn’t she just be normal? 

“Uh, rhubarb is like…a plant?” It was more than just a plant, but normal people would probably sense that rhubarb wasn’t a normal topic of conversation and pivot. Thea imagined herself asking a very regular ‘how are you’. She could taste the simple pleasantries on her tongue; all she had to do was say it. She could say it. She could bite down the educational impulse she had. She could swallow her meandering thoughts. “Okay, so it looks like a red celery but it’s got a leafy top.” Thea explained this by gesturing to Emilio’s own fluffy mess of hair. “It’s really sour. It was used in China for medicinal purposes and then—this is just off the top of my head I might be wrong but—it got really expensive across Europe since it was so hard to get, and people really wanted it. And then they sorta accidentally discovered that you could grow it in the winter—like if you picked it early and left it in the dark it would grow—and then it like really popped off in desserts and wines and stuff but then like, war, I think. And then it wasn’t really as popular. And anyway, people use rhubarb in stuff but I wouldn’t say it’s like a mainstream vegetable. Not that it’s, like, niche, or whatever! I mean, like, no one’s talking about tatsoi. Is it basically like bok choy? Yeah. But it’s not. But anyway I bet there’s like a hundred different types of squashes that no one talks about.” 

Thea shrugged, as though she hadn’t just delivered an entirely uninterrupted speech of what she remembered about rhubarb. “I’m not really interested in, like, plant stuff. So I don’t know. But I also didn’t know what rhubarb was but I kept seeing it in pies so I looked it up one day. I think it only works in desserts? I think you have to add a lot of sugar to make it taste good to most people.” Like Emilio, she thought. Not that she thought he was hard to get along with! To her, it seemed like he had a very mushy interior (like a pie), but he gave off vibes of ‘stop talking to me’. Which, now that she thought about it, seemed to be the vibe she was getting from him. Her embarrassment chewed up her stomach. Normal people probably knew when to shut up. “So, uh, h-how are you?”

—

She was talking about plants, and Emilio felt more out of his depth now than he had in a long time. He was so much better at life or death situations than he was at simple conversation. With a knife in his hand, he was confident. With punches flying towards him or teeth snapping at his throat, he understood how to proceed. But with things like this? With a kid standing in front of him, talking about plants and trying to… to what? To bond with him? To speak with him like he was a person instead of whatever it was he really was? He’d understood Thea far easier when she was a wolf snapping at his heels. That version of her made more sense to him, felt easier to deal with. This one, the one that talked about plants and gave history lessons and called him Mr. Emilio was a mystery he didn’t know how to solve.

“Never understood it,” he said with a shrug. “People paying a lot of money for something you can grow from the dirt.” There were few things Emilio did understand, of course, but things like this seemed especially confusing. The use of money in general often seemed stupid to him. He couldn’t comprehend the value of a thing that was only worth something because someone some time ago had decided it was. More tangible values made some sense to him, though even those felt strange at times. Trying to comprehend capitalism was about as impossible as trying to comprehend Thea. Both were brimming with unknown variables, and no amount of trying would make them fit together. “I don’t… know what either of those things are.” The discomfort of the conversation was a stifling thing, hanging over them like a fog. Or maybe it was only uncomfortable to him. Maybe Thea found it fine, found it normal. Maybe Emilio was the strange one, the piece that didn’t fit. It wasn’t as if he cared much about fitting, anyway; mostly, he just wanted to be left alone. 

“You know a lot about plant stuff for someone who is not interested in it,” he pointed out flatly, immediately feeling a flare of uncertainty at his tone. He’d never much cared about being rude to people, but it felt strange to be rude to a kid, particularly one who only seemed interested in speaking to him. An apology lived and died on his tongue, unwilling to force its way out from between his teeth. It didn’t matter, anyway. He felt like none of it really did, like he was only ever playing pretend. Maybe he should ask why she thought he was a rhubarb pie, but he wasn’t sure that mattered, either. Or he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer, or he wasn’t sure she knew it. “I’m…” Fine. Wasn’t that the truth? Wasn’t he always fine? No matter what happened — massacres or demonic sacrifices or werewolves running through supermarkets — Emilio was fine. He was never the one who found his grave when the day was over, never the one left bloodied on a factory floor. Emilio was always fine. It wasn’t a good thing. “I should really… I mean, I’m sure you have things to do.” He gestures to the empty streets around them, well aware that no one out at this hour had anything better to do. 

—

Thea shrugged. “It’s not that simple, really.” Gardening, in general. Life, more broadly. It’d be nice if people didn’t have to pay a lot of money for things they could grow in the dirt, it’d be nice if people had the tools to grow as much as they wanted to in the dirt. It’d be nice if the world was…well, nicer. She blamed capitalism and she had another lesson perched on her tongue but just enough sense to swallow it down. Emilio didn’t care, probably. He was probably off to go do something important like helping someone. Maybe he was off to out pizza the hut, Thea didn’t know and it didn’t matter: she knew he didn’t want to be here. And it was her. It was always her. She didn’t have charming things to say; her head was full of useless facts. She couldn’t thank him because she’d mess up the words. But she wanted to try. If it came out wrong, then she wanted to try again. She wanted to be able to try, always, to thank Emilio. Being able to try meant he was alive, she was alive, and he didn’t hate her so much that he’d shut down conversations. The state of trying was powerful to her—everything was possible there.

“Um, I mean, ‘not interested’ was probably the wrong choice of words. It’s…” Thea bit her lip. How could she explain it? That the world was large and beautiful and that she loved it? And that it could teach so much about the vaster, expanding universe above? And that everytime she learned something new about this Pale Blue Dot, she loved it more? She could try to thank Emilio but she couldn’t try to explain this: it embarrassed her to love something that so many people neglected and the garbled mess of words that always came out was easy to misunderstand. “We live here,” she said quietly. “Plants aren’t, like, a special interest, but…if I could know everything, I would, and then I’d still want to know more, you know? This is our home. Don’t you want to know more about it?” The world was full of remarkable things, just about everywhere she looked. She struggled to understand any view to the contrary. She’d once read the brain described as a leaking pot; she couldn’t possibly hold all the knowledge there was, or even all the things she’d learned (calculus was already slipping away) but the joy was in the learning. And—Ha!—she’d like to try. 

But Emilio wanted to go, he said she had things to do but it was obvious from her rhubarb speech that she really had nothing better to do. Thea slumped. Maybe there was no way to make Emilio like her. “Well, okay, yeah…” She forced a smile. “Well, Mr. Emilio, I just wanted to thank…” A tickling on her ankle distracted her. Absently, Thea reached down and scratched her leg. Drawing her hand back up, she brightened at the dark black dot on her hand. “Oh! Cool! A spider!” She wasn’t great at identifying spiders; there was a whole system to it, she knew. Looking at their web, color, legs, markings, habits, etc. The fact that people sent spiders off to be identified reassured her that she wasn’t stupid for not recognizing this species…at all. 

Thea drew her other hand in to adjust the spider into a better angle for viewing. Just as she was sliding her hand in, the spider bit down and Thea jerked away, flicking it off. She stared at the tiny bite, red and swelling. It didn’t seem too deep, but she was….hurt. Hurt that it bit her at all, when she was such a spider enthusiast. Thea sniffled. “It bit me.” She frowned. “And now it’s gone! I can’t even identify now. What if it was a new species? I could’ve named it after myself! I would’ve called it…” It really hurt. Like, emotionally. Like what? Was she not good enough to stay on? Did the spider sense her murderous nature and punish her? She deserved it. This spider bite wouldn’t even turn her into a cool spider themed superhero, and she couldn’t even tell Emilio that because he wouldn’t even know who Spider-man was. And she wanted to make her stupid, unfunny joke to Cass but Cass was, like, being evil or whatever. “It would’ve been called ‘waste of space’ because that’s me.” Her eyes watered. 

Then she looked at Emilio, and the tears shot down freely. “Why did you get me a neon green Pizza Hut shirt?” Thea sobbed. “I’m lactose intolerant! That was so mean; I can’t even eat pizza. I mean I can, but without cheese, but that’s not even pizza! That’s saucy bread! Why do you want me to have saucy bread, Mr. Emilio?” 

—

It wasn’t that simple, because nothing ever was. Often, Emilio thought things would be so much easier if they just made sense. If he understood more about why people paid so much money for things that came out of the dirt, would the world as a whole feel easier to swallow? If his mother taught him how to grow a rhubarb instead of how to hold a knife, would he be happier now? Was Thea happy, he wondered, knowing all the simple things she knew about how life worked and how the world operated, telling it to a man in the streets she’d once tried to take a bite out of? She didn’t look it, but it occurred to Emilio that he might not have known what happiness looked like. Not on anyone else, and certainly not on himself. It wasn’t that simple. Not rhubarb, not Thea, not happiness. Nothing was ever goddamn simple.

He thought about the way he tended to operate, the way he went years without knowing anything at all and tried to make up for that now. He was a detective because he wanted to know things, because he hadn’t felt safe in his own skin for years now and maybe if he’d known a little more about what was going on with Lucio before his betrayal he could have prepared himself better. Maybe you could survive the end of the world when you knew it was coming. Or maybe an apocalypse was an apocalypse, no matter how much advanced notice you were given. He shrugged, pressing his tongue against his teeth until it ached. “I like to know things that are… useful for me to know. I’m not sure plants are useful.” Some days, he thought a thing was only useful if you could use it to hurt someone. Other days, he was sure a thing was only useful if you couldn’t. He wasn’t sure what kind of day today was. 

It probably didn’t matter much, anyway. There was nothing he could say to Thea that would make the tangled mess of himself make sense to her, just as there was very little she could say to him that would make him better understand who she was. They were standing on separate continents, even just a few feet apart. She would shift with the full moon, would grind down bones and organs between her teeth, and Emilio knew about it, could anticipate it coming, and would let her go all the same. He didn’t know anymore what kind of man that made him, what kind of hunter. He didn’t think it was anything good.

He was practically vibrating, eager to get away, but Thea spoke again and there was — a spider? Emilio’s brow furrowed, confusion seeping into his chest as he wondered if he was supposed to do something about that. But then, the spider was biting her, and Thea was… in pain, from the looks of it. Concern shoved confusion out of the way, some always-there part of himself rising to the surface like he was in Mexico three years ago watching his daughter slide across gravel. “I don’t…” Her eyes were watering. Emilio glanced around the street, desperately hoping for someone better equipped to deal with this kind of thing to arrive. He’d never known what to do when Flora ran up to him with skinned knees; he wasn’t much use here, either.

“I… What?” Was this everything bubbling to the surface at once, sprung up by that spider bite? He’d experienced things like that before, though with him, rage tended to be the primary reaction. “I didn’t… It was the first shirt I saw, you were naked, and I — I don’t even know what saucy bread is, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you… I mean, you’re not dying or anything. Right?”

—

She was being split from the inside; two hands dug into her heart and ripping in two pieces like a pomegranate, wet red seeds dropping down. Thea couldn’t understand—obviously, not all emotions followed clear logical paths but usually hers did, usually she understood them. She couldn’t rationalize the sudden betrayal she felt, and the yawning ache that threatened to devour her. Maybe it was something about Emilio’s general presence that turned her inside out. Maybe she was all allergic to him. But she just felt so hurt. At him, mostly. At herself. At humanity. “Plants are so useful!” she bellowed, tipping her head up to the sky as tears ran down her face. “They make oxygen! You wouldn’t be alive without plants!” The plants didn’t care about them as a species, probably. Considering all the climate change and deforestation and general plant-based violence. Maybe Poison Ivy had a point. Maybe they were all better off turned into sexy trees, or whatever she did (it’d been a while since she touched a DC comic). But, still! That didn’t make it right for Emilio not to care! He should care. Why didn’t he care? 

Thea tilted her head down, regarding the plant-hater. Anger flickered through her broken heart. How could he? After all that plants had done for him? Emilio didn’t care about anything; not her, not plants, not spiders, not Pizza-Hut. “You’re so mean,” she said, lips coated in snot that ran down from her nose. The whites of her eyes were streaked with red. “You try to act like you’re so cool.” Like he didn’t have to care about plants. Like he could grab ‘Juicy’ pants and she’d just be okay with it. “Like you don’t care. Like you don’t want to care. But what kind of a person does that make you? A–“ She thrust her spider-bitten finger at him, which was swollen and purple. “–selfish–“ It really did make her so mad; the kind of people that didn’t care. People that littered, or spread misinformation, or traded empathy for comfort. The world couldn’t be a better place if it was filled with people like that. “–coward.” 

Dimly, she remembered how Emilio had given her clothes at all, even if they were ugly; how he hadn't said anything; how he didn’t scold her and how he wasn’t scared of her, which meant everything. After all that she’d done, to know that she wasn’t something terrible meant the world. Thea knew he was a good man, Thea believed it. But, still! It hurt! He should really care about plants! “Ungrateful,” she said. “Like you haven’t eaten a really bomb-ass salad before. What are you? One of those Carnivore diet people? You can’t even get all your nutrients that way.” Then, she started to cry again. “Why don’t you care? Why don’t you care about the world, Mr. Emilio?” 

—

In a fight, the world always seemed to narrow. There was you and the person in front of you, and nothing else really mattered. Most of the time, this was added to by the knowledge that only one of you would be walking away intact. Emilio had been taught to play for keeps, treated every fight like a fight to the death even when he had no intention of making it so. There was something comforting about a thing that you could treat the same every time. There was something relaxing about the way the world narrowed, the way nothing existed except you, the person in front of you, and the weapons you both held in your hands. 

The world narrowed here, too, but there was no comfort to it. The street was empty but for him and the crying girl in front of her, and her tears made so much less sense than the knives his opponents usually wielded. Was this to the death, too? He glanced around, searching for something to fight, for some kind of escape. But he couldn’t walk away without leaving her crying, and that felt worse than walking away with a knife wound in his gut. She was yelling at him, punctuating each word with a stab of her finger that wasn’t sharp enough to break skin but might as well have been. Emilio flinched at the sharpness of her tone, the force of her words. He couldn’t argue with them; he was a selfish coward, and he knew that. What he didn’t know was how they’d gone from having a normal conversation to this so quickly, or what Pizza Hut had to do with anything. 

“I don’t know what half those words mean,” he replied, trying to keep anger from joining the conversation. It was rattling the bars of its feeble cage, demanding to be let out the same way it always was. His rage wanted a fight; it had never really wanted anything else. The rest of him didn’t think that was a good idea, but it was hard to stop a pot from boiling over once it had started. Rage rose like smoke, slipping through his fingers no matter how adamantly he tried to grasp it and force it back down. “Why should I?” He snapped back, unable to stop himself. “Why should I care about the world? World’s never given a shit about me, has it? Fuck the fucking world. What are you mad at me for?”

—

“You should love the world!” She was screaming; why was she screaming? Tears and spit flicked off her face as she gestured around her, desperate to expel the pain from her chest. Thea felt strongly about this—she couldn’t even say what this was—it was all she lived for. Her mind dissolved into simplistic directions—there, here, this, that—and in them she pulled away meanings that could never be brought to words. She felt them—there, here, this, that—like the instinctual migratory path of a bird: carved into her flesh from birth, perhaps; something to do with the magnetic field of the earth, maybe; the truth about being human. There was only one Earth, and only one reality and who else would cry for it? “The work is endless,” she said, quieting down to a whimper. “Everyday: living, paying attention, being good. The work is endless. But how can you…How can you not care?” 

Thea’s heart was broken by this most of all: more than the Pizza Hut, more than the plant hate, more than the “juicy” pants. “We live here. We breathe this air. We drink the water. Out of the billions of planets that probably exist, we’re here. Out of all the things that could’ve happened to Earth, it had all the ingredients for us. How can you not care about that? How can you not love the world? Not because you should be grateful, not because you owe anyone anything…but because it’s so wonderful.” Thea couldn’t explain the heart shattering love she felt; she’d never once been able to get the words out exactly and her examples didn’t explain it. She loved simple things. She loved sunrises and sunsets and the science of light that explained it. She loved to spread soft butter on toast; thinking about how cool it was that butter existed or that bread did or a toaster. She loved the condensation on an icy drink in the middle of summer. She loved lamps and their stupid lamp shades. She wasn’t ignorant to the complex horrors of the world: the slaughter of scientists that proposed unpopular theories, industrialization, man-made climate change, how ugly lamp shades really were. How could she explain that? That her love came without conditions and without boundaries? 

That she could understand and love and that she believed everyone should. Especially Emilio. Thea sagged, her anger rising out of her like cold steam. “The world has hurt a lot of people, more people than it’s helped. I think, like…yeah. It’s easier to find people that think like you. I think you’d be…well, you wouldn’t be shocked, I guess. But yeah, most people think like that. I guess it’s easier, I don’t know. But I don’t care if it’s easier. I don’t care if it makes more sense. What—” She swallowed. “What do you think happens when everyone thinks like you? Whoever hurt you…Whatever people or like—I don’t know your trauma—but whatever it was…they probably thought like that too, didn’t they? I mean, that’s usually how it goes. It perpetuates itself, right?” 

Thea paused, sucking in a quivering breath. “Why can’t you admit it? You do care, don’t you? You helped me; you could’ve left but you helped me and you weren’t mad about it. You care, you care, and if you just open up a little more you can…” How could she explain it? “Even if it means nothing in the end, even if it’s worthless, even if I don’t deserve to, I care. I think… You know, for thousands of years people have been looking up at the stars and making up stories and giving them names and…why do that? Why bother? And then we went up to space and in the grand scheme of things, nothing matters at all. Not us. Not this world. Not even this solar system. I’ve always thought that meant we should care. We’re the only people that can.” Thea rubbed her chest. “It hurts. Um, to know that you don’t.”

—

You should love the world. It was a laughable concept. The world had done very little for Emilio, had done little more than take from him for as long as he’d been a part of it. Maybe even for longer than he’d been a part of it. After all, hadn’t his story been written before he was born? Hadn’t everyone known, from the moment his ancestors were born to hunt, that his life would be a short and bloody one? The world had been finished with him before he began at all, and he was fine with that. He was. But it didn’t mean he was going to celebrate it. It didn’t mean he should love it.

(But maybe he should have, anyway. After all, hadn’t he always loved things that hurt him, in the end? He loved a mother who’d sharpened him like a knife and been prepared to toss him aside the moment the gleam of his blade dimmed. He loved her even now, even knowing that she’d never felt for him a fraction of what he’d felt for his own daughter. He loved an uncle who’d betrayed him with the best intentions, loved a wife who’d wanted him to be something he wasn’t, loved siblings who would have buried blades in his chest in a heartbeat if it meant getting ahead. He’d loved Rhett, even when he’d been sitting in the back of his van between two corpses, trapped somewhere between the past and the present. He’d never loved anything that treated him well. Maybe that meant he should have adored the world, too.)

Anger was easier than grief, so he clung to it. He held it like a child against his chest, let it rest its head on his shoulder. His daughter was gone now, dead nearly as long as she’d been alive, so he nurtured his rage in her place. He let out a bitter laugh as Thea continued, its sharp edges threatening to cut anyone who got too close to it. He didn’t know why she was doing this all of the sudden, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter why she was saying the things she was saying; it only mattered that he didn’t like them, and that he wanted her to stop. “There is nothing wonderful about the world,” he told her. “The world is a shitty place, full of shitty people. And it doesn’t matter if those people think like you or me. Plenty of awful people do the things they do because they want to make the world better, you know. Plenty of awful people love the world. It doesn’t mean anything.” Hadn’t his uncle been trying to make the world better when he’d ruined everything? Didn’t hunters exist to try to fix the world? Even the vampires that slaughtered his family must have thought of it as solving a problem. It didn’t change anything. Nothing changed anything.

The anger grew bigger, went from a thing that crawled to a thing that walked. It was hungry, and he let her feed it. “And what good has caring gotten me? You almost took my fucking head off in that store. Caring will be the thing that kills me. Why should that be celebrated? Why should I speed it along by caring more?” (Wasn’t that what he wanted? Wasn’t everything he had done for the last three years an attempt to speed things along?) “The stars didn’t save anyone. The stories didn’t change anything. Nothing does. The world is shit, kid. It’s — it’s cruel, and it doesn’t care about any of us, so why should we care about it?” 

—

“Waterfalls,” she said. “Oranges. Mud. That look Van gets when she’s excited; her smile—god that’s cheesy. Nora’s scary paintings. Cass…Cass when…” Thea lifted her head, meeting the horizon behind Emilio’s blurry face. “When she was just herself. The stinky way Samir used to smell. Felix’s positivity. Sai’s unbridled bat passion. Wind on a bald head. Space; all of it. Dogs. The stray cat with the weird tail that follows me after work. Stories; all of them. Rain. The Voyager Golden Record. Traffic. Dandelions. Poppies. The boiling point of water. Star Wars. Star Trek. Stars. Sagittarius A. Spiders. Jar Jar Binks. It’s all wonderful.” But how could she explain it to him? How could she show him? “I love simple things. I love when you wake up and your eyes are crusty and you forgot to close the curtains properly so the sun spills on the ground like orange juice—and orange juice! I love orange juice. I love that it’s really not that good for you, but my dad always bought it. He always made me drink it. And now oranges are him; I drink orange juice and my dad is here. Isn’t that wonderful? I love this shirt.” She pulled it away from her chest; a worn black t-shirt which might’ve once held the iconic X-Men symbol, but had been scrubbed and washed and abused so much it bore only four cardinal smudges, like a lopsided compass. 

“The world had my dad; my friends. It still has orange juice. How can you say that the world isn’t wonderful? It holds everything: everything you hate and everything you love and look it’s not…” Thea tried to gesture again, but her heavy arms lacked the energy. “It’s not broken. All that love and all that hate, and there’s not even a dent. You’d think if you went out to space, you’d see all of our desires and all of our shit but it’s just….blue and white. And that’s it! That’s why it matters. No one else will ever be able to see it and I want everyone to know that my dad loved oranges and that I love my dad.” Thea wiped her eyes. “So, yeah, it’s wonderful. It’s the best place. It’s the only place.”

But what did any of that matter if the shitty people outweighed the good ones? If more people thought like Emilio than her? If she was the “shitty people” he was talking about? He was right; plenty of awful people loved the world. She didn’t want to eat him, but she almost had. What did it matter, really? Thea sighed, the pain sloughed off her body. Physically, she felt better. Emotionally, she’d never felt worse. At least the swelling in her finger had gone down. “I still care. I don’t think I’d like who I’d be if I stopped caring.” She met his angry gaze and held it; hoping that he knew it was him she was talking about. She’d sooner get eaten for caring than turn into a curmudgeonly Emilio. “The part about life that’s great is the attempt, I think. Not the solution. The caring itself, not what it gets you. I think… I think…” Finally, Thea gave up; her passion curled up and took a nap inside her heaving chest. 

The final breath of her argument quivered out as a wisp: “I think the world is full of good people too. Caring can be the thing that saves you too. The stars saved me. Stories have helped us for centuries. To be human is…” And then it was gone; there was nothing more Thea could say. Her rebuttals were useless, and the more Emilio spoke, the more right he seemed instead. “I don’t think you need a reason to care.” She stepped back, feeling as though she’d be struck in the head. She just wanted to go home now. “I care about you,” she said, but did she? Did she, really? She would’ve eaten him.

—

She made a list like it was easy, like the good things eclipsed the bad entirely. And it didn’t. For Emilio, it didn’t. He wondered, for what felt like it might have been the first time, if she was the one who was different or if he was. For him, even small things could kickstart a spiral. He could wake up on a sunny day with the arms of the person he loved tangled in his limbs and his dog sleeping at his feet, could have a warm mug of coffee in his hand and breakfast cooking in the kitchen, could greet people who meant more to him than anything with a nod and a wave, and it still felt like the world was ending. Teddy could rest their head on his shoulder, Wynne could read him some text Nora had sent them and explain the humor behind it, Xóchitl could bring him a bottle of his favorite whiskey, Jade could go on some sunny ramble, and his chest still felt tight and the air still felt thinner than it should have. 

Did it mean he was broken? Did it mean something was wrong with him? There were days he felt more like a ghost than a man, days where his bed was a casket and his house was a tomb and removing himself from either felt just as complex and unnatural as raising the dead. Thea spoke of all the things contained within the world, but all Emilio could think of were the things that weren’t. His daughter was no longer a part of the world, was no longer a part of anything; how could he love a thing that had let her go? How could he love a place where she wasn’t, where she’d never be again? The world was cruel. It was uncaring. It stood, unblinking as little girls died and bad men lived. What had the world done for him? What had it given him? The world took and it took and it took.

It took from Thea, too. It carved her into something not-quite-human, some hodgepodge version of what she used to be. It snapped her bones and tore her skin away and morphed her from a girl into a beast every time the moon was full in the sky and sometimes when it wasn’t. The world turned her into something she clearly didn’t understand, sent her on rampages that Emilio could have stopped but didn’t, and she loved the world anyway. She spoke of oranges, of space, of weeds with pretty flowers and words he didn’t quite understand. All of those things existed, and she loved them. All of those things existed, and they still weren’t enough.

He didn’t know if it comforted him or terrified him, the idea that this was the only place. He used to be religious. It was an easy step for slayers, whose weapons included holy water and rosaries. He used to believe in something after the end, in a life that kept going even when your body gave out. He used to imagine meeting his father, or talking to Victor again. But the world ruined that, too, didn’t it? The world turned him into whatever he was now, this jaded, angry thing. The world snatched that belief away from him, but only after turning it from a comforting thought into a threatening one. He didn’t think he was religious anymore, which meant he agreed with at least part of what she was saying — that this was all they got. That this world was the only place they would ever see. And it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough.

“It doesn’t matter.” It came out hoarse, and he hated that, too. He hated most things, hated everything, sometimes. He hated the bad parts of the world that made him miserable. Sometimes, he hated the good parts of the world, too, because his daughter would never see them. He saw something beautiful, and it ached. He experienced something decent, and it hurt. Grief had hollowed him out, poured bitterness into the empty places until he was full of it, until it was overflowing. It didn’t matter; nothing did if she wasn’t there to see it. “It doesn’t matter if you care or not. It doesn’t matter if you try or not. It ends the same. It all ends the same.” 

He shook his head, nostrils flaring. “The good people don’t make it. The world takes good people and tears them into fucking pieces. It’s the bad ones who live longer.” Thea was a good person, he thought. She clearly cared, even about people she shouldn’t have. She was kind, even when she had no reason to be. She was a good person, and once a month she turned into a beast that would tear anyone it came across into shreds. What did that mean, then? Was a good person still a good person when they hurt people? What if they didn’t mean to? What if they didn’t want to? 

“Don’t,” he warned quietly. Caring about him was the worst mistake she could make; they both probably knew that. “Look, whatever — Whatever this was,” whatever made her go from casual conversation to this and drag him down with her, “it’s done. I’m done. Go home. Take a shower, go to bed, whatever. You’re wasting your time trying to tell me the world is good and nice and worth it. You save that for someone else.”

—

And Thea turned and left at Emilio’s command, with tears dried against her hot cheek and her mind swarming. She wondered how much Emilio saved for someone else—between his bitterness, in the moments of care she knew he exhibited (he saved her, after all)—maybe it was all of it. Maybe the problem was that he saved nothing for himself. 

Somehow she managed to stumble back to Winter’s, somehow she stood naked under a whining spray of cold water—hot showers were bad for the environment, so she never took them. Even when there was someone else’s blood to be peeled off her skin, she froze herself for the promise that she was minimizing her carbon emissions by the tiniest fraction. She thought of it as the least she could do, but even before The Wolf, it was her habit. Was it Emilio that punished himself by allowing pain to live inside his lungs; expanding and contracting, billowing in the air around him? Or was she, that did the same with the opposite? When she exhaled, twisting the squeaky shower tap off, love swirled out of her mouth, masking that terrible dark stain inside that really fucking hated cold showers. The throbbing black hole that wanted acknowledgment, affection, attention; the thing that was hungry, angry; the light-devourer that had never been allowed to breathe and never would be. Thea saved nothing for herself either. If she did, the ugly, selfish thing would swallow her up and she’d never do another good thing ever again. She was tired of doing good things and cold. Very cold. 

Before bed, Thea looked up at the sky—with the light pollution, she could make out only the brightest of celestial objects, the city-dwellers’ pantheon: Vega, Jupiter, Capella, the Moon, Sirius, Venus. She tried to look for Rigel but kept mistaking Betelgeuse for it. She wondered if it was possible to be a good person if she ate people, and if deep inside, she wanted hot showers. Wasn’t someone like Emilio better? If he didn’t care for this world and acted with kindness anyway? Wasn’t he a good person because he didn’t force himself to be? What did her affection for Earth matter, if she would easily abandon it for Mars—which, as she was looking up, she couldn’t find, or if she had, it might’ve been Rigel or Betelgeuse? 

Whatever it meant to be a good person, maybe she had the idea all twisted up. Maybe Emilio was right; maybe the world didn’t matter (it didn’t on the cosmic scale) and there was no reason to care about it. 

The rhyming had become… almost fun, if Felix was being entirely honest with themself. There was something kind of entertaining about it, even if it was technically a curse. It didn’t seem to be hurting anything and, as a bonus, it seemed to annoy Leo enough that he’d been avoiding conversation with them. If it were only Felix cursed, they might have just… let it continue for a while. But they were pretty sure some of their friends were getting tired of it, and it didn’t seem fair to subject all of them to a life of rhyming just because Felix didn’t mind it. 

So, they’d called together a strategy session. A few of the people who were cursed — and no one who wasn’t. The last thing they wanted was to spread this thing even further, so it seemed way safer to only include people already involved. It wasn’t like someone could be cursed twice, right? 

The boiler room was a little cramped, not really meant to house this many people at once, but that was okay. They wouldn’t be in here long, hopefully. Felix had set the glass orange in the center of the room, like they all might need a reminder about why they were gathered here today. He squinted at it suspiciously from where he sat on the single office chair, elbows on his knees and hands folded and propping up their chin. 

“We need a plan of action,” Felix announced. “So far, nothing we’ve tried has had any real reaction. It can’t be broken. And once you’ve touched it, rhymes must be spoken. But every curse has to have an out. I think we all know that without a doubt. So, what should we do? I want to hear from all of you.”

—

As far as Charlie was concerned, rhyming kinda fucking rocked. He had been a lyric-writing machine as of late, speaking the words aloud and then writing them on paper if they sounded good. Yeah, Finn was annoyed any time Charlie opened his mouth to speak to him, seeing as how everything that came out of his mouth was a fucking rhyme, but that wasn’t his fault. How was he supposed to know that ugly as sin Faberge egg was cursed with a rhyme scheme curse?

So that’s how he’d ended up in Felix’s boiler room apartment after a shift at the pit, tired and a little out of sorts. Charlie looked around at the others in the room, then let out a sigh. “Well as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing that we’ve learned. We’re stuck in a rhyme which is, as far as I’m concerned? A total fucking crime. But also, I’ve been writing a lot and I feel kinda like a robot. So I can go either way, I write music by day.” He shrugged his shoulders.

As far as Charlie was concerned, this was a gift. He was able to write his music and not have to wrack his brain for rhyme schemes when he was cursed to do it automatically. It was great! He’d written so many songs in such a short amount of time that he was allotting himself a break after all this was cleared up. 

__

Thea had found a nice patch of damp for herself, tucked against the wall of Felix’s possibly still rat-infested boiler room. For hundreds of years, humans had been rhyming (probably, Thea had done no real research regarding the topic). But the couplet itself dates back to like, the medieval era, right? (She really should’ve googled) Regardless, Thea felt connected to her poetry slinging ancestors in that she was certain she had poetry slinging ancestors. Really, could anyone confirm that she wasn’t related to William Shakespeare? The rhymes said otherwise. There was a history of art she was connected to; a history of verse and meter and kids teasing each other on the playground rhyming ‘fart’ with ‘smart’. It was all really normal, when she thought about it. 

Still, her ability to hold conversations was severely impaired and that ability was struggling before the rhyming. “What if the answer is a visual enhancer? Perhaps the answer is…more advancer than basic thinking?” Thea had been testing the bounds of the rhymes; as long as they existed—slant, couplet, alternate, ballade, enclosed, triplet, limerick, villanelle—the form didn’t matter. ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’ was as valid to her tongue as ‘I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again (I think I made you up inside my head)’. She wasn’t surprised that this had led to creativity for Charlie. “I’m pinking.” Thea brought her cold hands to her hot face; it was hard to say what she was about to but the truth was clear to her. 

“I-It might be that state of head clear, so-called.” Thea gestured to her hair (which was growing in nicely!). “That state of bald to which I was once appalled; in case any here recalled. That is to say, to our problem enthralled, perhaps we all must go bald?” 

—

The English language was complex and often confusing as a non-native speaker; and that was without being cursed to rhyme anytime one opened their mouth. Of course, as Anita had learned, the rhyming wasn’t limited to speaking in English. Spanish was a much more beautiful language and lent itself better to forced rhyming in her opinion. But in this strange grouping of Felix’s friends, Spanish was not a realistic option. Despite her usual propensity to yap she had resigned to being slightly more silent to try and avoid having to rhyme. Being forced to do anything, even something as simple as rhyming, was not something she had interest in. It had grown old and at least in silence Anita felt like she was in control. 

Both people who had spoken so far seemed strange and Anita didn’t know them much at all. When the one sitting against the wall suggested they all go bald, Anita’s face scrunched into a disgusted frown as her eyes rolled to the side in the direction of the woman. “No, we are not entertaining that for one moment; and I surely hope I am not that suggestion’s only opponent.” 

Moving somewhat suddenly from where she was standing near Felix, Anita picked up the orange egg from the table and threw it against a wall on the other side of the small boiler room with all her strength. It, of course, didn’t break. They’d tried that many times before. She sighed, walked over to pick it up in defeat and then placed it back in the center of the room where it had been. “It doesn’t break. And nothing happens when you feed it to a very large snake. I don’t know much about curses and I’m sure there are some exceptions, but the ones I do know of can last for generations.” 

—

Rhyming wasn’t the worst, but Ariadne had never been a big fan of Dr. Seuss. That was too much, and she preferred an occasional rhyme rather than constant ones. Which was probably rude to say and think, but she couldn’t help it. At least rhyming didn’t seen to cause her or anybody around her any actual harm. That would’ve been too much, and wouldn’t have been something that she could so easily deal with. Some of the nightmares she’d had to cause even wound up rhyming, which was a bit of a headache and had made for some less effective nightmares – something she’d have normally been thrilled about, because less effective meant less harm, but it also meant she wasn’t as quickly satiated, which meant she had to do more, which ended up meaning more harm.

But right now she was here to help Felix. Not to make things about herself and have some sort of a pity party about all of it.

“You’ve all got good thoughts.” Ariadne began. “I guess we’ve just gotta figure out how to connect the dots.” She winched. “I’d rather not go bald, if it’s all the same to you. I bet there’s something else that we can do!”

—

Okay, so some of the suggestions so far weren’t the best. Felix wasn’t really sure how going bald would help anything, and they rubbed a hand absently over their hair at the thought. Their mother used to shave their hair in the summers, but it had never looked quite right. Their brother always insisted it was because they had a lumpy head. Felix wasn’t sure if that was true. They hoped it wasn’t. “I’m not sure going bald is the best solution,” they said hesitantly, flashing Thea an apologetic smile. “I’m sure, between all of us, we can find another resolution!”

But, of course, throwing the orange wasn’t helping much, either. Felix winced as it hit the wall uselessly, falling back onto the ground without breaking the same way it always did. They weren’t even sure if breaking it would actually lift the curse. For all any of them knew, that would make things permanent. “We can’t afford to be pessimistic! How many of those generational curses are linguistic? I know we can find a good way out. There are some really smart people here, so I have no doubt. We know trying to break it won’t work. If we keep trying the same thing, we’ll all end up going beserk. Let’s try to think of things we haven’t done yet! I’ll start up a list so we don’t forget.” They pulled out their phone, typing in the notes app. Breaking the orange was at the top of the does not work list. They added a last resort list and typed bald beneath the heading. “Has anyone tried anything on their own? Let me know so I can put it into my phone!”

—

There was a brief moment that Charlie considered the bald thing, a hand shooting up to his hair, and then thought better of it. “I’d rather rhyme forever than be bald.” He decided, pulling a face. He fell silent for a long moment, wracking his brain for ideas of how to be free of the curse. Sure, it was useful to get songwriting done, but it was a nightmare when trying to have a serious conversation with someone and you’re acting like fucking Dr. Seuss. 

He frowned at the mention of generational curses and large snakes, looking at Anita a little funny before shaking his head and going back to the task at hand. Breaking the curse. “What happens if we dull its shine?” He asked, staring at the tacky object. “Surely if we find a way to tarnish it, we’ll all be fine.” Charlie scratched at his head, unsure if that was a solution to anything or just a way to take his frustrations out on the orange.

Had he tried something on his own to break the curse? He thought about it for a minute, looking over to Felix’s phone. “I tried rhyming all the words I could think of that would rhyme with red. Took a while, but… it didn’t work and I was filled with dread.”

__

Having an idea rejected was not a good feeling; having it rejected in rhyme was somehow worse. Thea slumped against her moldy pitch of wall. Yes, she’d also rather rhyme forever than be bald and yet, she couldn’t stop thinking that ever since her hair started coming back, her life was weird. Mostly that was because of the strange hair serum she insisted on but what if it was because she angered some baldness god by not respecting the bald? What if this curse was yet another warning from the bald man above? Thea sighed; probably not. Wait… Thea shot up, waving her arm in the air as though this were a classroom, but spoke despite anyone calling on her. She pointed to the older, very attractive woman. “Snickity snackity make, what’s this about a snake?” Thea leaned back again. “We’ve gone through it, if a snake can’t do it, maybe we quit?” But Felix was trying so hard, and no one wanted to rhyme, or be bald. 

“Yes.” Thea shrugged at Charlie’s red rhyming plight. “What a mess. Technically everything rhymes. I don’t have lactose digesting enzymes.” Thea shook her head. “No, what I mean to say—not to play—is that rhymes slant, are still rhymes you can grant. Words imaginary are not a rhyming scary. It is true, though it makes me blue, that the English language has…” She paused. “Words known as…” She paused again. “Unrhymable.” She sighed. “I thought I was able…to break rhyme with these words fabled…instead I became unstable.” Thea lifted a finger up. “Listen: purple. What rhymes with purple? Purple rhymes with purple. Circle is not a perfect rhyme for purple. Jimminy jemminy nurple, I still rhyme with purple.” Thea hugged herself, trying to soothe the pain of purple rhyming. “My point is that rhymes imperfect, are still rhymes you can perfect. And so what does it matter? What’s the point of all this chatter? For a curse that will never shatter?” 

—

Anita didn’t care for being pointed at, but she did grin softly at the suggestion that if a snake couldn’t solve this that it was perhaps unsolvable. A sentiment she, as the snake in question, wanted to agree with but also one she knew had to be untrue - because she knew that there had to be a way to stop this awful rhyming even if she wasn’t the one who was able to figure it out. “Why are you both trying to rhyme colors? Red, purple … and all the others. You seem to be making this harder on yourselves than this all needs to be. Don’t you see? You don’t need to be Shakeperian with the words that you say. They just need to rhyme at the end of the day. It is harder in English that is no doubt, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a solution we can’t scout out.”

It wasn’t something that she would admit aloud, but there was part of Anita that wondered if this was a permanent curse. Her ability to transform into a snake, the gift of the lamia, was technically a curse. An unbreakable one that traveled through a family for generations. She didn’t really want to have a second curse upon her forcing her to rhyme until the end of time. “Maybe if we source this orange back to its origin we’ll find a solution before we become permanent jesters. Preferably before the start of the new semester. It’s one thing to have to rhyme, but I don’t wish to feel like the lorax trying to find words that rhyme with antenna, glands, and thorax.” 

_ 

Ariadne did her best to stay mostly silent. All the rhyming was giving her more than a bit of a headache, and she wasn’t always great with words to start, so suddenly rhyming perfectly was a bit unsettling. Which, again, was maybe a rude way of looking at things, but she couldn’t quite help herself. It was important to try and think of ideas though, and she scrunched her face up, trying to think of more ideas – Thea and Felix and Anita and the dude called Charlie were all having really interesting ideas, and she wanted to do her best to at least try and contribute something.

“Maybe if we ask it to stop? I don’t know if that idea’s a flop.” But it couldn’t hurt to suggest. Ariadne was always down to ask people, animals, or – objects, in this case, to do their very best. Give them the choice, even though she wasn’t sure if this orange had a thought process – conscious – but if she could come back from the dead then maybe decorative oranges could think for themselves.

“Thankfully if I have to rhyme when I do ballet – I shouldn’t have to think all day.” Ariadne nodded, “Plié rhymes at least mostly with chassé, and so on.” So that much was a relief, that she wouldn’t sound too weird during class. Though she was sure that some way would come about to make things sound weirder than they should’ve. “Uh, we could also leave it be? Go away and come back and maybe offer another plea?”

—

This really was a mess, wasn’t it? Everyone was going back and forth about their experiences, and Felix’s feelings towards the curse were souring the more they realized that their friends were probably having less fun than they were. Charlie was full of dread, Thea was rambling about unrhymable words and baldness, Anita had classes to teach, Ariadne had ballet… but that was why they were all here, weren’t they? If they banded together, they’d surely find a way to break the curse. 

Glancing up at Ariadne, they offered a small smile. “Talking to it was one of the first things I tried,” they admitted. “I asked it to let us stop rhyming, but it never replied.” They’d tried that tactic for longer than they’d like to admit, in various different ways. Begging, pleading, making empty promises to the reflective glass… nothing had really done what they were hoping for. “I’m not sure making it dirty would do much, either. It’d probably work as well as breaking it, and we tried that for so long that I had to stop to take a breather!” Breaking it seemed mean, anyway, and Felix didn’t want to be mean. They squinted at the egg, inspecting it carefully.

“Maybe it wants us to make a specific kind of rhyme,” they suggested. “Something to do with the thing itself this time? There could be some kind of secret password. Or maybe something we need to try to say backwards? Or it could just have to do with the egg. Or maybe we have to take it to the leg!” Could the leg be related? Leg did rhyme with egg, didn’t it? Except… “I guess it doesn’t look much like an egg, when you really look at it. The shape isn’t quite right, so the word doesn’t really fit.” They turned it over in their hands with a sigh. “I guess… it’s really more of an orange. I didn’t even know they sold glass oranges, but apparently they do. Isn’t that weird to think about?” They were rambling now… and unaware that those rambles no longer rhymed. Still turning the egg over, still perplexed, and just as clueless as always.

—

There were a lot of ideas being thrown around, and Charlie wasn’t sure which one would make sense. Well, the orange egg thing wasn’t lonely, so appeasing it seemed to be out. Rhyming words with difficult words to rhyme made sense. He was so lost in thought that he tuned out most of what was going on, only coming to when Felix began speaking again, going on and on about different rhymes.

Charlie stared at Felix as he rambled on, noticing that his words slipped from rhyme to just regular speech. “Wait.” Charlie pointed at Felix, shaking his head. “Nothing rhymes with Orange! Which means…” He paused a moment. “Felix, you fucking genius!” Charlie surged forward and shook his friend by the shoulders, grinning brightly. “That’s it, nothing rhymes with orange! We’re fucking free!” He placed his hands on either side of Felix’s face and nodding his head excitedly before letting go and doing a little dance now that he wasn’t stuck rhyming everything. Now Finn wouldn’t be reduced to murdering him for his rhymes! Amazing!

__

“No, technically things do rhyme with orange.” Thea said quickly, ignoring the more celebratory aspect of Charlie’s words. “There just aren’t perfect rhymes. But what’s a perfect rhyme even mean? What does it—I mean—what I was saying was…” Thea paused, staring at the group. She wasn’t rhyming. Felix wasn’t rhyming. Charlie wasn’t rhyming. Their problem was solved! And yet, watching Charlie celebrate made her feel decidedly empty. “I guess we’re free?” Her words were back to being bland; her cadence was clumsy again. She was Thea. She frowned. What rhymed with free? “Uh, I guess we have knees? Uh, tree?” It wasn’t the same—she had to think about her words, she had to bear the ugly sound of her voice echoing in her ears. She was Thea, as she had been before all this. Rhyming wasn’t so bad, when the alternative was this. Thea forced herself to perk up. “Hey! Good job, Felix!” 

Pushing herself off the ground, she swiped dirt off her legs. “Now, what do we do about the orange?” Thea pointed at it. “It is really nice, and I think it matches with the Garfield posters, but maybe we should, like, break it or something? Or put it in a case that says ‘don’t touch unless you want to rhyme’? Or, uh, something?” Thea winced at herself; she’d gotten used to the more eloquent rhyming. 

—

For as much as Anita cared for Felix, she did not much care for this group of their friends and she cared even less for their ramblings and ideas regarding fixing this curse. Clearly there were no solutions down in this boiler room. Mentally planning a swift exit before things devolved into listening to the girl suggesting they go bald, Anita had not even noticed that people stopped rhyming until the excitable one burst across the room (not that it took much to burst across a room that size) and was exclaiming that they were free. She frowned, a bit annoyed that everyone was still talking about rhyming with colors. Hadn’t they gotten past this. 

“Tons of words rhyme with orange in Spanish,” Anita muttered, mostly to herself and whomever else in the room spoke Spanish. “Naranja. Toronja. Corrija. Esponja. Puta.”  As she listed of Spanish orange rhymes the realization of what the others were talking about settled in. Had the ridiculousness of the English language just saved them from this rhyming hell? Gross. She’d cogradulate Felix on the success later, maybe, it was their fault everyone was rhyming to begin with anyone. She certainly wasn’t going to do it in front of these strangers, though. “Did you not see what happened earlier? How do you expect to break this thing? No, no. This thing must be locked away in a box of some kind, taken to a remote location, and buried a minimum of 12 feet underground. And then the key must be destroyed.” 

_ 

“Aw, well…” but it did make Ariadne smile that Felix had already tried her idea. They were really great, and the fact that they didn’t just immediately brush her idea off. Because there were plenty of people who might’ve done that. She wouldn’t judge any of them for brushing it off, because that was just how things worked, sometimes, and there wasn’t a reason to be judgmental about it right back to them. That wasn’t kind, and she wanted to be kind whenever she could.

“That’s – we’ll think of something, I know it. We’ll figure stuff out.” Except she did a double-take, listening to everyone else. They weren’t rhyming anymore. “I sort of like blue. It’s a nice color.” Ariadne shook her head. “Sorry, was – I just wanted to try it out, to see if I’d –” she smiled. “If there was still rhyming going on. “That’s true, orange is a tricky thing – word – to rhyme with.” She signed, but nodded to Thea’s idea, and Anita’s. “We could lock it up. Just to be safe?”

—

The rhyming curse was broken, it seemed, as easily as it had been cast in the first place. Touch an orange and rhyme. Speak the word ‘orange’ at the end of your sentence and free yourself. It didn’t make a lot of sense but, then, curses rarely did, did they? Felix felt a rush of… pride, maybe, as Charlie called them a genius, even though they’d had no idea what they were doing when they broke the curse. They hadn’t meant to free anyone any more than they’d meant to curse them in the first place, but maybe intentions didn’t mean much here. Maybe it was enough that they’d broken the curse at all.

There were other matters to attend to, anyway. Felix looked to the orange skeptically, shifting their weight uncertainly between their feet. If Anita wanted to bury it, maybe they could bury it. But… “I’m not sure I can dig a hole that’s 12 feet deep. Maybe we should just, um, chuck it into the ocean or something?” Did it still have its power? If they touched it again now, would the curse start anew? It was hard to say. “I can take care of it. Um, one way or another. I can make sure no one else gets cursed.”

—

Staring at the orange with a look of hesitation, Charlie frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. “Maybe you should handle it with a pair of tongs, yeah?” He suggested, looking over to Felix with a raised brow. “I mean, can’t risk touching it again, you know?” He looked to Anita, nodding his head. “I definitely think the deeper the hole the better off we are, bury that shit away and hope no one digs it back up. The ocean is an idea too, throw it off the side of a boat Titanic style.” Charlie wiggled his brows, remembering the scene where she threw the necklace into the ocean. 

“Just don’t get yourself cursed in the process of getting rid of it. Because if you curse yourself and then throw it into the ocean, you’re fucking screwed, you know?” Charlie decided it was important enough to point that out, god forbid that poor Felix be stuck rhyming for the rest of his life.

__

“What if the fish start rhyming?” Thea asked with complete and honest seriousness. “When you throw it into the ocean? I mean, and, you gotta think about—like…” She hated not rhyming. Everything sounded harsh and wrong. “…like, pollution. There’s a lot of garbage in the ocean already, it’s not nice to dump things in it.” She frowned; maybe none of them really cared about the environment. And yes the ocean was vast, but that thing totally looked like it would just float and then what? “It’s like, you know in Oops, I did it again? They have that whole part in the music video. Which, um, yeah—“ Thea gestured to Charlie. “Yeah, like Titanic. I know that’s not your point but people find things in the ocean eventually. Someone could find it.” The attractive woman was sure that it couldn’t be broken—even if Thea thought they just needed to try harder—and Thea couldn’t argue with an attractive person. It wasn’t much better to bury it either; there would be rhyming worms. 

Thea shrugged; rhyming wasn’t the worst thing to her. “I trust you, Felix. Whatever you want to do with it, that’d be good.” She agreed more with Ariadne, and the idea of locking it up. “Even if it slightly contributes to the declining environmental state of our planet.” Felix was allowed a little climate crime, she thought. They were owed that. 

—

“Oh my god!” Anita finally exclaimed, astonished and exhausted by all of the talking and discussion about what to do and how it might make the fish start rhyming. It was like the curse was lingering, trapping them into a cycle of hypotheticals and hesitations on how to destroy the stupid orange thing. She had given a perfect solution but its feasibility was questioned. Fine. But she was not going to sit around in this room any longer and have a philosophical discussion about how throwing the orange in the ocean may impact the environmental state of the planet. 

Walking up to the egg again, Anita allowed her neck, jaw, and inner digestive tract to shift into the mojave rattlesnake. She did not know these people, and typically would not have exposed herself so obviously, but none of the questioned an orange figurine making the rhyme and they were all friends of Felix’s, in the boiler room of the Grit Pit - if there were ever a space safe from hunters this was it. Opening her mouth wide, she inhaled the orange and allowed it to travel through her body where it would hopefully, finally, meet its end. 

Anita whipped her mouth after shifting back to her human appearance, scanned the room, making eye contact with each of the individuals present. “Now that that is settled, let us never speak of this again.” She paused, waiting to see if the orange in her stomach was going to make her rhyme again, “And look at that, no compulsion for poetry.” She grabbed her bag and made her way to the exit, seeing no need for her to stick around for even a second longer. 

_ 

Ariadne found herself distracted by her relief, up until a lady partially turned into a snake? Or snake-like? Which caused her to do a fairly significant double take. “Or… that. That works too.” It did work, so long as it didn’t hurt the woman who’d eaten the orange and didn’t hurt the orange, either. Even if it had caused all of them to just keep rhyming non-stop. Wynne had found it cute, maybe even charming, but it had been a bit dizzying.

“I won’t say anything about that, I promise.” Ariadne held up her hand, Girl Scout salute and all.

“I know I could use a rootbeer float, if anybody wants to come along?” She turned to leave. “Felix, if you want, we can go shopping for decor together sometime.” Ariadne nervously shifted from the ball of one foot to the other, wishing she had on shoes that were more flexible, desperately wishing to go by her dance studio. “But we did it. That – good job, everyone!” She winced at herself.

—

Thea made a very good point. What about the environmental impact of a cursed glass orange sitting on the bottom of the ocean floor? Felix grappled with the lack of a perfect solution, heart stuttering uncertainly as they tried to come up with some magical answer that might resolve the issue with no kind of negative impact. Burying it in the dirt might find someone else digging it up, keeping it locked away always ran the risk of it being found. What options were available to them? How could they get rid of a thing that didn’t seem to be able to be destroyed without risking someone, somewhere finding it and using it for some kind of poetic evil? 

Their heart was pounding with the pressure, panic threatening to suffocate them, when Anita stepped forward. She made a quick beeline for the orange, and — she ate it. Felix blinked, watching it disappear down her throat. She spoke, not in rhyme, and Felix blinked again. The orange was gone. No one was cursed. This was the closest thing to a best-case scenario they’d gotten in a while, wasn’t it?

He hadn’t been in town long, but Charlie had learned to have a certain level of suspended disbelief in things around town in Wicked’s Rest. But when Charlie was walking through the downtown commons, the last thing he expected was something that looked like a Pokemon walking into a fucking portal. Like, an actual portal. A portal. Charlie rubbed his eyes, trying to see if what he was seeing was actually real, and it was. It wasn’t going away. And that funny-looking dude with the paintbrush was finishing the details on it before putting a foot through the portal. This was going to be his only chance to follow the thing. 

A few things went through his mind the moment he realized he could follow the creature. One, he could very easily get trapped in there. Two, the colors that were coming out of that portal? Trippy. Reminded him of Alice in Wonderland, which instantly enticed him for all the wrong reasons. Three? He wasn’t alone in watching this portal. He looked to the others in the commons before wiggling his brows at the familiar face of Felix and stepping into the portal. No way he wasn’t going to go check it out. 

The first thing he realized was that he was much too small for this world. Like, actually mini-sized. Charlie blinked, tempted to rub his eyes again, but he kept his gaze on the lamoodle. He searched the room, looking for something to explain what was going on. He’d stepped into a room, and the table was so high up, he barely came up a few inches on the leg of the table. There was a crumb of something on the ground, and once again thinking back to Alice in Wonderland, he thought about eating it. The crumb, of course, was a full-sized cake to the small Charlie. He continued to ponder on whether or not to eat the fallen food when he noticed someone else walking through the portal and stood up from the small cake on the ground. 

_____

When they were a little kid, Felix’s mother used to read them storybooks. Some were familiar, classic tales — things like Where the Wild Things Are, or Harold and the Purple Crayon — but others were more obscure. There were balam-specific books that Felix figured must have been family heirlooms, things passed down from one generation to the next with such great care to avoid tearing the yellowed pages or smudging the hand-written ink. Felix had adored them, had asked to have them read in place of anything else more often than not. And their mother, more often than not, had complied. They’d had some of them memorized by the time they were old enough to lose interest in bedtime stories.

There had been one in particular that seemed a play on Through the Looking Glass, though Felix’s mother swore that her book predated that one. It had been bright and colorful, and while it hadn’t been Felix’s favorite, their sister had adored it. She’d begged for it to be read nearly every night and Felix, when they shared a bedtime with her, had begged right alongside her just to make her happy. It had been a good story. It had followed the misadventures of a balam who found himself trapped in a fantastical place, stuck in a shift but with his consciousness still at the front of the mind he shared with his jaguar. As time went on, the balam in the story — Chester — had slipped more and more into an in-between state. His human mind and his jaguar’s mind had merged, slipping him into a quiet madness. In retrospect, it was a pretty horrifying story, but told with bright pictures and silly turns of phrase, it had seemed so much more tame. Felix still remembered the illustrations in the book.

They looked an awful lot like that painting on the wall up ahead.

Curiosity drew Felix towards it, their head tilting to the side. Was there someone else who’d read about Chester’s adventures, they wondered? Their mind went immediately to their sister, who they hadn’t seen or heard from since leaving home years ago. On some level, they understood the more popular version of the story was likely what was being referenced here, but… Hope was a dangerous thing. People talked pretty often about the dangerous effects of curiosity on cats, but it was hope that made an easier noose. Felix stepped up to the painting — the portal — without thinking, stepped through it with a quiet sigh. Oh. All right. 

Ahead, they spotted a small creature moving, and they recognized it. “You’re the guy with the ducks,” they murmured, more to themself than to anyone else. Then, a little louder: “Hey! Wait up!”

—

Thea was slightly less bald now. To most people, that meant nothing. To Thea, it meant she coveted the soft strands on her scalp. It was a little more like mowed lawn than luscious locks but she’d take it. It also meant that every few steps, she paused to find any reflective surface and admire her hair, which was hard to do at night, but this too, she would take. She was finally happy enough to not use the strange hair serum; finally happy enough to stop crying about her lack of hair. Finally ready to forgive Cass. When she saw a man with a lot of beautiful, curly hair in the commons, she didn’t think about how she wanted to steal his hair at all. And when he went into a portal, she thought ‘that’s his problem’ and she was ready to leave. With a few strands of hair, she had reached inner peace. 

But nothing—not hair or a lack of it—could change her admiration for Felix. When they went in too, the only natural thing to do was follow. “Felix! Portals are bad! Usually!” Thea turned around, offering the person behind her—Oh my god, that was Sai, wasn’t it? The myth, the legend, the bat enthusiast who faced the end of an admittedly suspicious clinical trial together. Sai was a comforting presence, insofar as she could be confident that he wouldn’t make her bald. Well, that wasn’t the point now; Felix went through a portal following a man—with hair she did want to steal, actually, and she couldn’t pretend otherwise—and the two of them were still standing in the commons and Thea was going in too. Where Felix went, she would go too. She could only offer Sai a shrug before she was off. 

Thea loved stories. In them, she felt the best of humanity's instincts: the need to speak, the need to create, the desire for connection, the ability to listen. There was a reason most stars had real names and stories to go along with them. If given the chance, Thea thought anyone could create their own story. So when she stepped through and found the end was a clear Alice in Wonderland rip-off, she was a little disappointed. All that endless creativity and now Disney would come after them for the costumes. Costumes? “We look weird,” she said. They were weird: that table was definitely not their size and that crumb made her feel like they were ants that needed to carry it off for their queen.

Thea turned around. “Sai? Are you okay?” 

—

Sai was walking across the commons when he caught sight of a familiar face walking up to what looked like a window, showing a completely different world on the other side. One full of colors. “Thea?” He said, but she’d already disappeared into it. He probably should just move along with his day, he thought, and hope for her sake she made it out of wherever she went. But Sai’s curiosity got the best of him. He wasn’t planning on going in or anything, just take a quick look. He poked his head through, but his foot caught on the edge of whatever this thing was, and the next thing knew he was tumbling through the window and out on a tiled floor, patterned in an off-kilter green and red-brown. The papers he’d been holding spilled out in a flurry around him. 

“I’m fine,” he told Thea, picking himself up gingerly. He started to gather his spilled flyers, and glanced around. Above them towered a giant table. The whole room was giant, it looked like, except for two other strangers in the room with them, who were normal sized. So it was just that everything else was abnormally large, then. Somehow that felt more comforting than Sai shrinking himself. “Where are we?”

The whole place rang some distant bell. He’d read Alice in Wonderland, or at least his mother had read it to him, when he was just a kid. But he tried not to think about that sort of thing. That was another time. Another person, really. And Alice in Wonderland and books like that hardly captured his attention now. Except of course, unless he was in it. Sai looked back at the portal behind him, thinking of leaving. Whatever was happening here, it didn’t seem like something worth sticking around to see through. But just as the thought occurred to him, the portal closed with a zap, like an old school TV turning off. “And how do we get out of here?”

__

Blinking owlishly and turning to see Felix and two others follow after him, Charlie waved a hand. “Hey, Felix.” He greeted his friend with a smirk. “See you also like to frequent mysterious, other-worldly portals.” He got up from his crouch next to the cake-sized crumb, then looked to the others he didn’t know. “Name’s Charlie.” He started with, knowing that they should probably start with knowing each other’s identities at the very least. “Thea, we spoke… online!” Charlie finally spoke, nodding his head with a look of recognition in his eyes. “Nice to see you in person, though I’m sorry it’s under strange conditions.” He turned to Sai, having never interacted with the guy before. “Sup,” was what he settled on, then turned back to the crumb. 

“I don’t know about you guys, but it’s giving Alice in Wonderland,” Charlie spoke, pointing to the group, then to the cake that practically screamed at him to eat it. “You think if we eat it we’ll be normal-sized?” He asked, raising a brow before scooping up a peace with his hand. “Momma didn’t raise no bitch,” he muttered before biting into the pastry before anyone could tell him it was a bad idea. As soon as he did, he grew in size, up and up and up until he felt like he fit into the room. He looked down at the smaller people, giving a thumbs up. Nothing deadly had happened. 

Charlie was careful not to tap his foot as he waited, suddenly aware that he was fully capable on stepping on his friends in this moment. So instead, he looked around for the Lamoodle, who was standing in the doorway, watching them with a knowing gaze in its eyes. Charlie pointed to the creature, who quickly walked away as soon as it had noticed that Charlie had seen it. “I think it wants us to follow?” He found himself saying after the others had grown to his size, taking a step in the direction of the door. 

As soon as he walked out of the room they were in, Charlie’s jaw dropped. It was nighttime, but still, the colors of all the plants were vibrant. Things looked like they were drawn instead of real, but Charlie could still reach out and touch them like he was on the page of a real storybook. “I took something crazy, didn’t I?” Charlie found himself saying, blinking rapidly as he tried to get things to make sense to his eyes.

__

“Oh, hi, Charlie.” They shouldn’t feel disappointed. On some level, Felix knew that. It was a stupid thing to think that this otherworldly portal had anything to do with a sister they hadn’t spoken to in years just because the world inside of it looked a lot like her favorite bedtime story from when they were kids, but the brief flicker of hope the sight had brought on had formed the prettiest noose. They glanced back as more people joined the fray, offering Thea a small smile. “Thea,” they greeted. They squinted at the man next to her. “Oh, hey, you’re the bat guy! Hi.” 

Looking to the giant crumb Charlie pointed out, Felix shrugged. Before they could stop themself, they started to correct him. “Actually, I was thinking it looks more like…” They trailed off. No one else had ever read Chester’s nightmare story about slipping into madness with your mind split in two. Not for the first time, Felix felt a little lonely. He wondered if Syd had ever read the book, wondered if she’d remember it if they called to ask. Shaking their head, they offered the group in front of them a small smile. “No, actually, you’re right. It’s like Alice in Wonderland.”

And then, before anyone could stop him, Charlie was eating the crumb. It seemed like a bad idea — hadn’t eating the food been what caused Chester’s shift in the story? — but there was no time to argue. In an instant, Charlie was a giant (or a normal-sized person?) and Felix was expected to eat the crumb just the same. They racked their mind, trying to remember the beginnings of the storybook. Chester fell through a waterfall, landed in a tree, ate… a fruit! It had been a fruit, not a crumb. So… the crumb was probably fine, wasn’t it?

Felix hesitated just a moment longer before taking some of the crumb and sticking it into their mouth. It was sweet. It was good. Before they could make an attempt to pinpoint the flavor, they shot up, hoping that they were growing to normal size and not… giant size. It would suck to step out of the portal again and be a Godzilla-type version of themself. (The Grit Pit would probably love it.)

As everyone else joined them and Charlie pointed out the little painter, Felix nodded adamantly. “I met him before!” They exclaimed excitedly. “He made ducks!” They rushed off to follow the creature, slowing as they exited the room into the cartoonish night. “Um, everybody should — be really careful not to eat any fruit, I think. You know, in case it’s rotten? Also, watch your step! There might be more tiny people. We don’t want to step on anyone!”

—

The guy with the hair was Charlie? The dude she had talked to at length about how she ate people and how he didn’t eat people yet, but would at some point in the future, definitely start eating people? Thea frowned; now she didn’t want his pre-zombie hair. “I don’t really like Alice. People say it’s actually about math, but really it’s just a story about a little girl going through a stressful situation and instead of helping her, people here are just really mean?” Thea looked around for Alice-hating confirmation from the men but Charlie was asserting that he wasn’t a bitch, and Felix seemed enthused. She turned to Sai. “There are no bats in the story,” she said, hoping to convince him at least. 

Alice was a story without logic. Or, was it a story that operated on its own logic? Regardless, they existed in the real world and the real world had rules. For example, no portals. For example, people couldn’t just grow or shrink. Thea tried to parse the science of it but by the time Felix grew full-sized, her brain sizzled like a fried microwave. This was a dream, surely. A strangely vivid dream featuring two men she knew, and one man she actually didn’t know very well and couldn’t have possibly conjured up an appearance for. Thea took a bite out of the crumb and felt herself launched up, skin tingling. Thea sighed; she wanted that dream where she had tea with Roberta Bondar, not this. She didn’t want this. She stumbled behind Charlie and Felix, trying to find the thing they were staring at. It was not Roberta Bondar and so, she quickly lost interest.

“I don’t think you took something,” Thea told Charlie. “Because then, why are we here? I don’t do illegal drugs. I mean, like, I wouldn’t know where to get them, that seems scary.” lt was silly to explain anything to a dream apparition, but she didn’t want him to be stressed about it. She nodded at Felix’s warning not to step on other tiny people. Thea moved forward on slow, careful tip-toes. “Does anyone know what happens next in the story? Does Alice meet the cat now? Or the caterpillar? Is it the tea party scene?” Thea sighed again, finding that she was increasingly disappointed by her surroundings. Yes, her brain was doing a nice job of painting an Alice in Wonderland landscape but she didn’t want Alice in Wonderland. “Do you think we can ask that thing if it’ll do Star Trek instead? Or uh…” She gestured at Sai, wanting to be inclusive to his interests. “Bat Trek? Star Trek but with bats?” 

—

“Uh, hi,” Sai said back to the other person who’d clearly recognized Sai. Although Sai didn’t recognize them. Maybe he’d come to their door about the petition? He’d seen too many faces then to remember them all, but supposed he might have been memorable enough. Especially if he’d managed to sway this person to the cause. 

Why did the answer always have to be eating something, Sai wondered, as the other three took turns eating from the crumb, and grew to match the size of the room. He looked at the scrap of bread with trepidation. But quickly set that aside as soon as one of them – the petition signer – mentioned stepping on someone. Not wanting to end up underneath someone’s shoe, he took a generous bite off one corner and joined them. He left his stack of now-mini flyers on the table. They weren’t the most important thing right then, anyway. 

Sai shrugged when Thea looked to him to weigh in on the story. “I’m not really a fiction sort of person. I’d rather be back in Wicked’s Rest than in any story, Alice in Wonderland or otherwise,” he said. “It’s definitely not drugs, though. I’m pretty sure, anyway,” He didn’t think drugs would have much effect on a vampire, not that he made a habit of testing it. And he definitely didn’t remember anything like that. The doorway seemed the most likely culprit, and it sounded like Thea thought that creature might be somewhat responsible. “You think the creature opened up the door to this place?” He contemplated that. “Do you think we’ll go back to reality if we kill it?” There were four of them and one of it. That could be good odds, but there were its reality-warping powers to consider. “Although maybe that’s too risky to try. At least as a first option.” 

He followed the others out the door, and onto a path. In the distance, there was an odd looking forest. But in the matter of a few quick steps, they were at the outskirts. Sai looked back behind them, but couldn’t see the cottage they’d stepped out of moments before. Hopefully, the way back wasn’t there, because he wasn’t certain they’d be able to find the place again. 

Up close he could see there were no trees in this forest. Giant mushrooms towered over them, while smaller ones lined the path beside them. The scene rang a bell in the back of this head, as clouds of smoke began wafting down from one of them. “The caterpillar, maybe?” He said out loud to the rest of them. Only hadn’t Alice been able to see the thing in the story, talk to it? All Sai could see now was the gilled underside of the brown-capped mushroom above them. 

—

Not drugs, that was clear from the multiple points of view that stated the contrary. Charlie nodded his head slowly. “Alright, fine. This is painfully real,” Charlie muttered. Despite being able to take the weirdness in stride, sometimes it was a lot to deal with. Like right now, it was a lot. He looked toward Felix, then to Thea and Sai. “Felix, if you know more about this world, you should tell us.” Charlie probed, nudging his friend with an encouraging expression. “Seriously, maybe you can help us get out of this mess.” Charlie continued to look around at the world around him, and then… he saw him. The creature that made the portal in the first place. 

“Oh, it definitely wants us to follow it.” Charlie told the others, watching as the lamoodle tapped its foot and pointed to its pocket watch, playing the role of the white rabbit. “See?” Charlie hissed, pointing towards the creature who waited at a distance. 

“Come on, let’s go!” Charlie was more insistent this time, quick to follow after the lamoodle, who only dashed off when Charlie got close enough. He swore the flowers were… talking as he passed them. “Do you see his hair? It’s ridiculous.” One pansy whispered to a rose, who snickered in response. “My hair makes me happy,” Charlie muttered to himself in defense of his hair, though a hand still went up to it, wondering if maybe he should cut it off…

__

“Why — Why would I know more about it? I don’t know any more than you guys do! I just know that fruit is rotten, sometimes! And — And eating rotten fruit can upset your stomach, and I don’t think anyone needs an upset stomach right now!” Or to be stuck in a shift. Felix quietly hoped that whatever was going on here wouldn’t trigger the jaguar or prompt him into forcing his way to the surface. The last thing any of them needed was that. The jaguar would probably eat his way through the others, and then Felix would end up stuck here, and then…

They shook the thought away. Now wasn’t the time to catastrophize. Their head whirled towards Sai the bat fan at his suggestion, eyes widening. “We’re not going to kill him!” They protested loudly. “Why — That’s your first suggestion? He’s just — He just likes to draw!” Belatedly, they remembered that the others might not know about this thing. “I mean, I don’t know what he’s called, but I know he likes to draw. He made ducks once! They were rubber! And alive! I took one home, and it ate my dish sponge and then disappeared out a window a few weeks later. So maybe he just wants to make more ducks. Except, uh, this time instead of ducks, it’s Alice in Wonderland.” Was that a natural next step from ducks? Felix wasn’t really sure.

They also weren’t really sure that the little guy with the paintbrush tail genuinely wanted to be followed, but Charlie seemed pretty insistent and he was already heading in that direction and shouldn’t they try to stick together as a group? Felix scrambled along behind him, turning to usher for Thea and Sai to do the same. As they moved past the flowers, they heard whispers rising up to meet their ears. “Look at how they walk,” one of them murmured. “Like they’re not sure which way is up.” 

“You, uh, you should really try to be nicer,” Felix said, squinting down at the flowers and stepping carefully. Were there more tiny people down there? “We can hear you, you know, and it’s not, like, cool to be rude. But, hey, there’s cake back that way, and if you eat it, you won’t be small anymore! So that’s — a thing you could maybe do. Instead of saying mean things. You get me?”

—

“You’re right. We should totally kill it.” Normally Thea was against murder, except the multiple murders she had (accidentally) committed, but morality didn’t apply in dreams! She could be as mean as she wanted. Not that she wanted to be mean, but she could! “And then we can have our collective StarTrek fever dream. I call dibs on being second in command!” Many would desire the Captain role, but Thea knew the truth of StarTrek was that the second-in-commands were cooler: Spock, Kira (okay, Sisko was pretty cool), Riker (ew), Chakotay, Worf (that one time it was Worf), Annika Hansen (prev. Seven of Nine). Also, leadership seemed scary. 

While it did sound like Felix knew more than they were letting on, Thea didn’t press it. Mostly, she was hoping to manifest the StarTrek dream she was not preoccupied by. Sai would be the doctor, Thea was certain. Felix would be the commander and, even though it meant demoting herself, she thought Charlie would be a slutty second-in-command like Riker. Realistically, Thea knew she’d be one of those background characters that run around the ship doing errands and then gets murdered by evil aliens. She tried to focus back on the Alice dream. She followed Sai’s attention to the mushroom caps above, and the smoke, and then, the mean flowers. “I think we’re out of order,” she said, looking at the impatient creature beckoning them. “Maybe we’re going too slowly for it?” 

The flowers started up, insulting Charlie’s hair, which Thea had a healthy jealousy of. And then Felix, which Thea simply could not tolerate. “Hey! Felix knows which direction is up!” The lilies in the back murmured something about how she was bald, giggling to each other. Even though Felix had advised against it, Thea lifted her foot up, hovering above the flowers. “What if we just, like, killed them?” she asked. She turned to Sai, who seemed—to her—to be the most sensible. “We could just like, bypass everything if we trample the flowers, right? What’s the worst that could happen?” She looked to Charlie. “Don’t you want revenge for the hair comment?” She looked at Felix. “You…actually I can’t justify this to you, but clearly this will have no consequences!” Murder was bad, obviously, unless it was a dream (or you sometimes turned into a hungry, hungry wolf, or if someone tried to kill you in a grocery store). “I wouldn’t do this in real life, to be clear. I would never murder anyone. But…” She looked down at the flowers; were they trembling? 

— 

Sai wasn’t so sure why everyone was so quick to defend the creature. It wasn’t human or anything, and hadn’t talked to them once as far as he could tell. It didn’t make a difference to him either way, but clearly it did to the rest of them. Except for Thea, maybe. “If it just sends us to a different world, I think we definitely shouldn’t kill it,” Sai said, to make sure that was clear. “I’m mostly just concerned with how to get out of this one. We are all trying to get out of here right?” He was starting to wonder if that was the case. For all he knew, some of these people wanted to stay. That didn’t bode well for Sai’s ability to get out.

“Do you have other ideas how to stop… whatever this is,” Sai said Felix, gesturing at the storybook world around them. “Since you know the most about the thing we’re following. Was there something that made the duck disappear or did it just run away?”

Sai shrugged at Thea when she picked up one foot threateningly. “I don’t care either way. If it makes you feel better, but I don’t think it’s going to change the situation,” he said. They were annoying, muttering insults under their breath and tittering to each other. Maybe some of them were directed at them, but he was only half paying attention. “Unless these flowers are important to that creature or something. Then maybe it would help us in exchange for leaving them alone.” He didn’t have a lot of great ideas here, especially with others wanting the pacifist route. And hopefully they were in this together. 

Although he felt like he should clarify. “But I’m pretty sure this is real,” Sai added to Thea. “You’re not hallucinating or anything.” At least as far as he could tell they were all really here. Could vampires hallucinate? Probably not. That sounded like something for the living. 

__

Feeling a bubble of annoyance deep within him rise to the surface, Charlie rolled his eyes. “We’re not killing anything,” Charlie decided then and there. “I mean seriously, he’s just having a fun time. Felix, you know this guy, right? Has he done anything to warrant harming him? I don’t think so.” Charlie shook his head as they kept walking, realizing that Thea clearly thought that she was stuck in some kind of fever dream. 

“Thea, this is real. We’re all awake right now.” Charlie tried to tell her, though wasn’t all that certain he’d be able to get through to her. “These actions have consequences, and I’m not about to fucking find out that the flowers spit fire and become the size of skyscrapers, alright? Stick to the path and don’t fucking kill anything.” Charlie found himself walking a bit closer to Felix, brows furrowing as he tried to find sight of the guy with the paintbrush again. 

“You think we’ll run into the queen?” Charlie found himself asking, eyes darting around at the sights around them with a feeling of fear. “I mean, I like my head attached to my body, is all. And maybe pissing off the flowers is a surefire way to get our heads chopped off!” He hissed, whipping his head around to glare at Thea.

__

At least Charlie agreed that they weren’t killing anything. Felix was a little surprised at Thea’s insistence that killing was probably fine, but… it quickly became clear that Thea thought this was a dream or something, and Felix wasn’t sure they could fault her for being okay with killing a creature in a dream. Turning back to Charlie, they shrugged helplessly. “I mean, I don’t know him personally! I just — I just ran into him one time, because of the ducks! I don’t even know if it’s the same guy. Like, he could have a brother.” 

They rubbed at the back of their neck, a little uncomfortable as Thea, once again, suggested murder. At least it seemed as though everyone else was against it, albeit for different reasons. Sai and Charlie both tried to convince Thea that this was real, but Felix knew well enough to know that that would be a hard sell. After all, she still thought they were a very dedicated furry, despite having seen him shift more than once. 

“Everybody just — You know, take a breath,” they suggested. “It’s gonna be fine! We’ll figure out what’s up, we’ll get out of here, we won’t kill anybody, and then we can just, um, watch Star Trek. Right, Thea?” They offered her what they sincerely hoped was a comforting smile, then turned to Charlie as he walked near them. “I mean, um, the queen isn’t very hard to trick. From what I read. You just have to fool her.” Chester had done it, in his story. Felix remembered the heroic tale fondly, the way the cat camouflaged his body and made his head the only thing visible in order to spark a debate on whether or not a disembodied head could be beheaded. From there, escape had been easy. They could probably replicate that simply enough. 

They pointed at the paintbrush-tailed creature, which continued to beckon them to follow but danced just ahead of the group, putting distance between them each time they got close. “I think he’s trying to show us something. Maybe he just wants to show off his art, you know? He put a lot of effort into all this. Maybe we just need to appreciate it a little.”

—

Disappointment fluttered in Thea’s chest like a swarm of bees. She set her foot down, safely away from the flowers, and buzzed with regret as they perked up and continued to jeer. All of this was just a dream, and sometimes—if she was being honest with herself, which she was always inclined to in a dream—she’d like to know what would happen if she just let it all go for a moment; not the wolf, but her in all her human glory. But Sai was right, it wasn’t going to change the situation. And if he was right about that… Thea looked over at him. Was this real? How could it be? What was the science here? Yes, of course, scientific understanding was constantly evolving and yes, of course, it could be possible—somehow—that they’d end up in some Alice in Wonderland knock-off land but how? It was easier to accept dreams but, of course, she was a man-eating wolf and where did that knowledge go? It was too late to think it was a dream. Sai was right after all. 

Thea slumped as Charlie said it too: this was real; they were all awake. The ever spinning black hole in her chest pulsed with indignation but the wolf that slept inside of it remained there, too beaten to push out of her. “Fine,” she mumbled, wincing at her own petulance. How were they going to get out of this? It seemed so unfair to her that they were subjected to some uninspired game; her desires leaned towards rage and rebellion. She thought, at least, Charlie would understand—okay, maybe that was a musician stereotype. “Hey!” she snarled back at him. “What’s better? Trying something or just like, going along with whatever this is! What if they want to eat us! You can’t just—you can’t just—” Thea slammed her mouth shut. It was important to turn a bad situation around. It was important to fight. It was important to believe there was a cure out there for bald girls who turned into people eating wolves. She thought Charlie would agree; there had to be a cure out there for inevitable zombies too. Thea held that hope for the both of them.

“Fine,” she mumbled again, finding that Charlie’s bouncy hair (it really would make the best wig) was easier to be angry at than Felix’s sad eyes. “If you’re familiar with the story Felix, do you have a plan for getting us out? I mean, like, can you think of anything?” Thea also promised herself she’d hold them to the idea of watching Star Trek. What better entertainment for a boiler room, anyway? “Appreciate it?” Thea glanced at Sai—her only shred of sanity here, embodied by that man who she clung to the sane ideal of—and blinked. Well, it was something. “Paintbrush guy! I really appreciate your artistry! Wow!” Thea brushed a leaf. “So cool! Just like a real leaf! I’d spend VBucks on this in Fortnite, like, for real.” She hoped the queen would show up soon, to end the endless leaves at least. The last thing she’d ever do was spend VBucks on this. 

—

Sai followed the rest of them as they chased after the creature. What they were going to accomplish by following it, Sai wasn’t sure. But letting it out of their sight didn’t seem like a great idea either. That might be the easiest way to get stranded here, wandering lost through giant mushrooms and rude flowers.

He hadn’t contemplated the danger of running into characters like the Mad Queen, before Charlie said something. Sai could only hope the world was free of them. He wasn’t prepared to fight off an unhinged monarchy. Not to mention the possible danger of the creature, Thea had a point there. And all they knew about it so far was something about rubber ducks. Who knew what else it could do? “Thea does bring up a good point, we should probably consider if this is all an elaborate trap or something,” he said.

Flattery though, the others might be onto something there. It had worked on the pizza, so why not a paintbrush monster. “It’s really impressive,” Sai added on, when Thea started to compliment it’s work. “I, for one, love the oversized cottage and all the… talkative flowers. I’d also be impressed, too, if you had the ability to summon another door back out of here. That would be some feat of artistry, right?” He glanced at the others with a shrug. That was the best he had. Maybe the kitsune had been right, that acting really was a life skill. At least in Wicked’s Rest and it’s adjoining worlds.

__

Charlie huffed as Thea and Sai began complimenting the creature’s work, finally getting on board with not murdering the guy who just wanted to flex his creative muscles a little bit. “Well I’ve been impressed since the beginning,” Charlie spoke aloud in order to continue with the compliment train they seemed to be doing. “Say, you think we can learn names? I’m Charlie, and this is Felix, Sai, and Thea.” He pointed to each person as he named them. “What’s yours?” He waited for a moment, watching the creature before it drew out a white rabbit, which quickly hopped away. “I think he wants us to call him the white rabbit. Dude’s in character.” Charlie muttered to the rest of the group.

Charlie decided to walk toward the creature, who scurried further into the world. Charlie looked around, appreciating the attention to detail. The creature was a real fan of this world. It was easy to think up situations that the creature was in to come to loving Alice’s world. What if he had a friend who read the stories to him? What if he was lost in a library once and that was the book they latched onto? There were endless scenarios that Charlie could think of. “I’m so writing a fucking song about this.” Charlie decided aloud, looking around in awe as he came into a fancy garden of white roses dripping with red paint. 

Squinting at the flowers, Charlie wracked his brain to remember what this was all about. He looked into the distance, and that’s when he saw it. A giant gothic castle surrounded by card guards. “Oh, fuck.” He grumbled, falling back in line with the others. “I think he wants to kill us with the mad queen,” he whispered to Felix, not wanting to tip off the other two who were already a bit murder-happy. 

__

Everyone seemed to have given up the idea of killing paintbrush guy, at least for now, and Felix found some relief in that. They dealt with enough violence in their day to day life at the Pit already; the last thing they wanted was to add to it here, to bathe themself in more blood than they had to. They were sure there was a peaceful resolution to this story; they just needed to find it. Thea was asking them for an answer, but Felix was more familiar with the version of Wonderland his mother had read to them than the more popular one. Chester’s story ended only when he accepted himself as both cat and man, allowing him to shift back to himself enough to climb the tallest tree and turn the doorknob at the highest branch to exit. He’d had to be fully jaguar and fully human to manage it, and such a thing was impossible outside of children’s stories. Add to that the fact that Felix was definitely the only balam here, and they’d probably have to find another solution.

Maybe complimenting the paintbrush guy was the way to go. “Uh, also, you — your tail is good,” they added, flashing the little guy a thumbs up when he turned back around. “Very — Very cool tail. Um, ten out of ten, Mr. White Rabbit.” If that was what he wanted to be called, it seemed like common courtesy to allow it. After all, Felix preferred it when people called them what they liked to be called, too. Maybe White Rabbit would be more willing to help if they were kind.

Or… maybe he’d lead them to a big, scary castle. Felix hesitated, glancing to Charlie. They didn’t want to believe that White Rabbit had brought them all this way just to let the Red Queen kill them. If he wanted them dead, couldn’t he have just drawn a bottomless pit for them to fall into? “No…” they mumbled, brow furrowing. “No, this — this whole thing is about the story, right? It’s like you said, he’s really in character. And — and the Red Queen doesn’t succeed in killing anybody in the story, does she?” Not in Chester’s tale. And, considering the more human version was touted as a children’s story, Felix doubted the Red Queen decapitated anyone in that, either. “We’re supposed to defeat her,” they said, feeling strangely confident. “We’re supposed to trick her, like Ch — Like Alice did.”

—

Murder! Now things were making sense to Thea. Wait, no. She was not happy about murder. No way—well, other than the flowers, she was happy to squish those but that was when this was a dream! Now that it wasn’t, now that it was something she couldn’t explain, murder made her stomach flip. Instinctively, she tucked her body behind Sai, as though he could somehow protect her from the uncomfortable truth: she was a murderer, and some part of her really did find the convenience in it and another part really wasn’t all that bothered. It was the horror of murder that churned in her stomach, it was guilt. She watched the green scenery transform as they approached the castle, lined with its playing-card-guards. The lush bushes turned to tangles of pointy red brambles; beautiful white roses, with sharp thrones, dripped with wet red paint; the tall, dark castle ahead snuffed out the painted sun. The Red Queen—or was this the Queen of Hearts? Why did Lewis Carroll think it was a good idea to have a Queen of Hearts and and Red Queen—was unequivocally an evil figure, and if they killed with her, that made them…evil? But if they killed her, then they would be…good? But murder in general was always evil, right? And Thea was…

“Wise white rabbit, thank you for putting a narratively compelling moral conundrum in your knock-off story.” Thea was not thankful at all; she liked Sai’s idea of goading the creature into making a way out instead, but the feeling that they’d have to see this through dug into her skin. It felt inevitable as they were led through the dark halls, dozens of red playing guards marching behind them. The halls echoed with their footsteps against the stone below. “White rabbit, can you give me an antacid? No? Okay.” Her stomach burned and she swallowed back rising bile. “Defeat her how, Felix?” Thea whispered to her friend, weirdly afraid one of the guards would tell the evil queen their plan. Not that they really had one, and not like they hadn’t been talking loudly before. “Like with murder? Do we murder her?” If this wasn’t a dream, but it was clearly created by the White Rabbit thing, did these creations have life? Were these all the White Rabbit’s children? 

What did Alice do? Thea couldn’t remember. Alice in Wonderland had stressed her out so much she never really paid attention to it—the book and the various movie adaptations. “Um, who do they want to behead? Isn’t it, um, the Cheshire Cat?” Did that mean Felix? But Thea liked their head. “O-or was it the Mad Hatter?” Was this one of those things the movies changed? Who amongst them was the Mad Hatter? Asking herself that, her gaze drifted to Charlie. Yes, okay, but maybe the beheading wouldn’t even be one of them! Sure the guards were marching ominously but they probably just did that! The answers were no clearer to her and finally they reached the large red doors of the queen’s throne room which opened with a squeaky wail. “Oh! It was just everybody, right? The queen was always like ‘off with their heads, off with their heads’ because she liked it! I remember now! She hates everyone!” And the red-faced queen, sitting on her playing card throne, did indeed look like she hated everyone. She gripped her heart scepter as if she wanted to snap it. 

“Off with their heads!” She bellowed, bouncing on her throne. 

“See?” Thea whispered. “Like that! She likes killing people.” But perhaps Felix was right, the queen didn’t actually kill anyone…right?

—

The compliments were clearly not working. All they’d gotten out of it was a name. And he didn’t remember the white rabbit ushering Alice into the queen’s castle, which seemed to be what was happening now. Sai slowed as they approached, rethinking the wisdom of following the creature. But as he glanced back, a group of playing card guards folded in behind them. Apparently, they’d found the book characters. 

Thea was rambling about the queen, as the group was ushered into the throne room. It sounded like she was maybe in favor of trying to kill the queen, but Sai wasn’t interested in that. The numbers were definitely not in their favor. Only with the execution directive, maybe they wouldn’t have a lot of choice. 

Sai didn’t remember what part came next. “Is the execution right away, or do they bring us to another location?” He asked, glancing around them for any clue about what might happen next. That might be the time to make their escape. He took a few steps back to stand a bit closer to Felix and Charlie, and lowered his voice to whisper to the other three, “I’m thinking when the time is right, we should make our escape and run. Unless one of you all has a better plan. We might not know how to navigate the world or anything, but I figure being lost is better than losing our heads.” 

__

A surge of panic went through Charlie, suddenly unsure what to do here. Well, he never knew what to do in any given situation, but especially not one where his head could be detached from his fucking body. Charlie took a deep breath, then turned to Felix, who he trusted. “I have no fucking idea what to do, here. And I kinda like my head where it is, you know?” There was an edge of hysteria to Charlie’s voice that wasn’t there before like he was finally in way over his head and he couldn’t handle it anymore. Either the cosplaying lamoodle picked up on this or decided it had had its fun, and waved to the group, then gestured for them to follow it into a side room. “What?” Charlie found himself mumbling before turning to Felix and Sai, then shrugging and following after. It was either this or losing his head, right? 

Once Charlie was in the side room, he nearly collapsed with relief. A portal. The lamoodle gave a mock salute to the group as they entered, then disappeared through the portal it had created. “Fuck, he took pity on my pathetic ass.” Charlie found himself speaking with wonderment before scurrying through the portal. No way he was staying in here a second longer.

As soon as he walked through, he found himself right back where the whole adventure had begun, in a park back in Wicked’s Rest. “Oh thank god,” Charlie exclaimed as he collapsed to the ground and hugged the grass rather dramatically. “There’s no place like home!” 

__

“I don’t think we should kill anyone!” There was a hint of panic to Felix’s tone but, really, when wasn’t there a hint of panic to Felix’s tone? The world kept throwing strange situations like this one in their direction, and Felix could only cope with so much before things started to crack. The Wonderland thing had been almost fun before the threat of beheading came into play, and while they were pretty sure no one was going to lose their head — that wasn’t in the story! This was about the story, it had to be! — it was hard not to feel anxious at the possibility. “And no one is going to lose their head! We just need to…”

The queen was yelling. More specifically, the queen was yelling off with their heads, and Felix didn’t think that kind of command left much up to interpretation. Chester had only survived his tale shifted, and Felix was afraid to try that solution. Chester kept his wits about him in the story, but would Felix? Their jaguar was so volatile, so unpredictable. What if he hurt their friends? It was too risky and, all at once, Felix’s confidence that they’d be fine began to waver. 

When the self-proclaimed white rabbit waved them towards a door, Felix felt that following was the last-ditch effort they had no choice but to make. They scrambled along with the group, rushing through the door behind Charlie and sighing at the sight of the portal. There was every chance that it would take them to yet another strange world — there were plenty of stories with cat protagonists that Felix would like to avoid getting trapped in — but they were willing to gamble that none of those stories would involve a queen ready to immediately remove their heads from their bodies. So they rushed through the portal, though not before pausing to thank the lamoodle for taking pity on them.

On the other side of the portal, the grass was still green and the sky was still dark. Felix had no way of knowing how long they’d been inside, but it didn’t seem that they’d been away long enough for the sun to rise. They sighed, sitting heavily on the ground beside Charlie. “I’m so glad we’re not giants.”

—

Thea was working up the courage—and the internal logic to condone—chopping someone’s head off when the White Rabbit scurried away and opened up a new portal. By the time Charlie and Felix had run through, Thea had decided that beheading someone would be morally okay because this wasn’t real and she was being forced to do it. Nevermind that no one was actually forcing her. If it had to be done, ethically it was okay…right? When she noticed where her compatriots had gone, her exhale of relief threatened to suffocate her. “Come on, Sai!” She called out and sprinted through the portal—accepting for now that she wouldn’t find a satisfactory scientific explanation for all this and would promptly shove this experience into the back of her mind, where all the trauma went. 

Thea flung herself onto the grass beside Felix and Charlie, rolling around in the beautiful, real, not-Alice-in-Wonderland greenery. She flipped onto her back and looked up at the stars; all beautiful, all still in their places. “Eh, I think I give that like…a three out of ten. What do you guys think?” She heaved. “Yeah, being a giant seems scary. But being super tiny seems fun!” Glancing around and comparing their size against the objects around them, she deduced they were pleasantly normal-sized. Above, Polaris winked at them. “Is anyone else, like, super hungry?” She sat up as Sai walked through. “Milkshakes? Donuts? On me!”

—

Sai followed Thea and the others through the new portal. Even if it led to another fictional world, it had to be better than an execution, right? But instead of a fresh novel, he stumbled out onto grass. A glance around confirmed it was the park they’d come from. They were back in Wicked’s Rest. He didn’t embrace the grass like Charlie was doing, or roll around like Thea, but he knew exactly where they were coming from. He’d never been so happy to see a lawn before in his life. 

The boiler room was hot and sweaty and uncomfortable and Felix didn’t really like it. There was a weird, mildew smell that seemed to hang off the walls, seemed to cling to the very air in the room. They wanted to leave, but… Well. Leaving wasn’t an option, was it? Not in any way that mattered, at least. They could leave, but they’d have to come back at the end of the day. They could go, but what was the point of going if it was just to return, again and again? They sat on the mattress and ached a little.

And then, there was someone at the door. And Thea was familiar enough that Felix recognized the way she hesitated before entering the room, smiled a little as she did. “Hey,” they greeted with a small, uncertain wave. “You can come in, if you want to… stay.” Did they want that? They weren’t really sure. They thought it would be better than being alone, at least. 

—

Thea often thought of Felix. Before their new accommodations, her thoughts were limited to thinking about how none of the other fighters were cool like Felix (some of them were Razor, and therefor stinky) and how maybe Felix wasn’t actually a furry, and got bit by a cat and turned into one instead (Felix had explained it to her once but Thea refused to retain information that she didn’t want to believe). Now that they were in the boiler room all she could think about was how they were, what they needed, if they were okay. Her thoughts always brought her to the boiler room, even if Felix wasn’t there. This time, though, they were. 

“How does this smell worse?” Thea asked, slowly walking towards Felix. “I mean, uh, wow! The air is so, uh, full of nutritious fungus spores! That’s gotta be like, good for your hair, right?” Thea’s hair was growing back in, though the identity of bald was soaked into her. And so, being bald, she wouldn’t know what was good for hair. “This place looks…” Horrible. Really bad. Like, truly horrific. “….so much nicer than the last time I was here! Did you get anything new?” Thea looked down at the mattress, trying to determine if they had replaced that thing at least. 

—

Felix let out a little laugh at Thea’s question, because it was a valid one. Somehow, the boiler room did smell worse than it had the last time she’d been in it. Felix hadn’t really noticed before she said it — it was easy to grow accustomed to certain things — but it was undeniable now that it was out in the open. “You get used to it after a while,” they offered with a grimace. “I think… The space is actually kind of versatile.” It wasn’t. It really wasn’t. It was a boiler room that looked like a boiler room, no matter how much Felix tried to spruce it up with decor from thrift stores and paintings from strangers on the internet. 

Maybe Thea was right about the fungus spores being good for their hair, though. Felix didn’t really know how fungus spores and hair worked, but they thought it sounded like it probably made sense. Most things Thea said were like that — not thoughts Felix would have had themself, but thoughts that made sense when you really considered them. “Oh, I’ve gotten a few things for decoration,” they confirmed, gesturing around the room. “I don’t know how… good they look, but I think they open up room for conversation?” 

—

Something was off, more than it usually was or could be expected to be with a boiler room. Thea stared at Felix. Something was different. “Did you…” she paused. “…get a haircut?” That was probably it. She turned back to the decorations, going over each piece. “Oh cool! Is that an orange?” It was the fanciest orange she’d ever seen, like something someone with too much money would buy and then forget about. Bright orange and lined with gold, Thea was sure the little gems must’ve been (hopefully ethically sourced) diamonds. Without invitation, she picked it up. “This looks expensive!” She turned to Felix. “Sorry, I’m a little pensive…” She put the orange down. “Is that offensive? I hope you’re not defensive. Tensive—or apprehensive. Is this excessive?” Thea pointed at the orange. “It just looks expensive!” And Felix didn’t seem like they had a lot of money, at least, would they be here if they did? 

“It’s a good-looking fruit.” Thea said. “I’m in a rude telling mood.” She paused. “I’m sorry.” She paused again. “I worry—I’m wrong.” She gripped her throat. “My tongue?” Something was off! the sounds—no, the words. “Dr. Seuss? I want juice? Pamplemousse?” Her typical RPM (rhymes per minute) was never this high before. “Am I a poet? And I didn’t know it?” 

—

“Not recently?” Felix brought a hand up, patting their head absentmindedly. “Maybe I just figured out how to style it decently?” Unless she was saying it looked bad, in which case… well, they could probably blame that on living in a boiler room, couldn’t they? They watched as Thea ran over to the orange, picking it up for inspection. “I got it from a thrift store,” they announced with a nod. “I don’t think she had any more. But maybe you could find something in the same vein? Like, maybe a little glass plane!” Was a plane like an orange? Not really. But Felix was confident that the vibes could be the same, if it was the right type. “It really didn’t cost very much at all. And I think it looks pretty good sitting against the wall. It makes the place feel a little brighter. Like, I feel like the air is lighter. Do you know what I mean? Plus, it reminds me of Halloween!” And they liked Halloween! Who didn’t? 

Thea seemed to like the glass fruit, in any case, and Felix was pleased by the revelation. They preened a little, as if they were the one being praised. But then… Thea seemed a little confused. And, hey, was she rhyming? Wait, was Felix rhyming? Hadn’t a lot of people been rhyming lately? “Uh oh…” Felix glanced to the orange, sitting back on the shelf. “Oh, no… Thea, I think we might have a problem? Uh, and not the kind you can write about in an advice column.”

—

Poetry had never been Thea’s favorite artistic medium. She knew there was a vast, ancient, history of poetry but she’d also lazily read enough Robert Frost in school to be sick of it. Still, there was something primal about the rhyme. Something that tickled her ear and sat well against her tongue. “I suppose this is quite the conundrum.” Conundrum! That was a word she never used! And yet, without thinking, her tongue folded perfectly around it. Eloquence was a skill Thea had long ago deemed impossible for herself and yet. “But it seems exciting for our life’s humdrum.” She felt Shakespearean and with it, a sudden reverence for the power of words. Was this how writers felt? Anything she thought, she could mold it into beauty. “I can’t digest lactose. Comatose. Verbose. I don’t mean to impose, but if I may propose, this is kinda fun.” Maybe she should write! Thinking that, her mind drifted to Cass’s fanfiction and she realized that perhaps there were some people that simply shouldn’t become artists. For now, she could rhyme. For now, she could feel like she possessed a skill that would be lost to her otherwise. 

Of course, there was the logic to consider here. Why was she rhyming? What happened? Did the mold of the boiler room finally get to both of them? Thea set the orange down which, knowing it came from a thrift store, definitely seemed like a steal to her. “I like it.” She said with a smile, thinking of both the orange and their strange rhyming blessing. “My words never fit. Prior, my language was hit—“ she paused, staring up at the ceiling that…definitely didn’t seem up-to-code. “—with my imprecision. My indecision. My lack of vision. My anxiety induced division.” Now she didn’t need to think, and her words came out without the usual internal cringing. Did Felix understand how much it meant to her to have confidence? Sure, she rhymed, but it seemed like a small price to pay for the sudden self-assuredness. “I can speak free, unlike a newbie. I could be the best of interviewees! I feel smart! I feel like I can do art!” Thea laughed. 

Looking at her friend, she couldn’t help but smile wide. “You don’t like it?” 

—

Thea seemed to be enjoying herself a little and, if Felix was being honest, they kind of got it. They were used to not knowing what was going to come out of their mouth next, but this added a whole new spin on things. It was probably bad. In the long term, it was probably very bad. But… maybe in the short term, they could roll with the punches a little? I guess there are worse things to be stuck with than rhyming,” they agreed with a small smile. “And there could definitely be worse timing. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have anything else to do. I might as well try something new.” They’d never rhymed like this before, after all. 

But… maybe they should try to figure out more. Why were they both rhyming now? Was it tied to the boiler room? If the whole Grit Pit started rhyming, Felix was pretty sure it would end with them getting into trouble somehow, and they’d had enough of that recently. They didn’t want to know what punishment might be cooked up for them if they got the handlers rhyming. It was a harmless thing, but most of the people in charge tended to want their pride protected. But it was hard to worry about it too much when Thea seemed to be enjoying herself so much. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing,” they admitted. “As long as we don’t have to sing. But I’d kind of like to know what caused it? And if it’s going to last for a bit. Come to think of it…” Hadn’t they been rhyming for a few days now? When had it started? And — oh, no. “I think I might have passed it on to a few other people already? I should probably check in and see if they’re all still going steady. Maybe it wears off after a little while? As long as it doesn’t turn into anything hostile…”

—

“Now you see!” Thea grinned, dancing happily in a little circle. “Weeee—“ Which she noticed rhymed with see—what a novel thing to do! As she spun and spun, Felix continued and Thea stopped abruptly. “Woah.” She held her arms out in an attempt to steady herself against the spinning room. “That goes to show…” She laughed. “I haven’t done that since I was a kid.” As she thought about it, the last time she seriously attempted any rhymes was as a kid as well. Of course, she never managed anything better than “cat” and “hat”. There was something exuberant about rhyming; something lively and fun. She wondered how far back rhyming went; did humans rhyme when the first stirrings of language emerged? Did they notice the funny, pleasant sounds and want to repeat them? “I could go for some squid,” she said. Thea shook her head; what was Felix saying? 

“Maybe it’s the mold?” Thea suggested. “Which may be a danger untold. Did everyone to whom rhymes fold…” Thea shrugged. “…come to the boiler room? Take in the mold doom?” If it really was mold, they should probably go see a doctor. But, surely Felix had this place inspected, right? It just smelled moldy! “I feel the opposite of hostile. I could run a mile!” Which wasn’t that impressive, and she also still had no real grasp of what a mile was. Yes, she could do the conversion to kilometer but it wasn’t a whole number, which made visualization difficult. “But maybe it’s wise…to think about the whys…” Thea slumped a little, knowing this meant that her fun hangout time with Felix would be cut short. “And check in on your other friends to see if their health offends or if their rhyming ends.” She frowned. “I’ll get squid alone to atone for my student loan.” Which didn’t make sense but now that she thought about it, she hadn’t paid that off. And also, never would. Maybe the lonely squid eating would atone for it somehow. 

—

It was hard not to laugh as Thea spun around in a circle, even if the whole situation had the potential to be something dangerous. There was no harm in it in the moment, at least, was there? There were worse things to be stuck doing. Felix knew that intimately. They’d much rather be trapped rhyming their words than fighting supernatural creatures in an underground fighting ring, after all. “Well, I’m glad you’re having fun,” they said earnestly. It made them feel a little less guilty about the idea that they’d done this to her, somehow. “Just be careful not to try to walk around when you’re done. All that spinning has to make you dizzy. And you look pretty busy. With the spinning, I mean. And I’m not trying to intervene.” 

Could it be mold? Felix knew very little about things mold might cause, but they were sure they would have heard about it if rhyming was among them. They thought back, trying to remember everyone who’d rhymed. “Well, Beau was here before he started,” they mused. “He was definitely rhyming by the time he departed.” Maybe it was tied to the room. Except… “Oh, Ariadne was doing it, too!” The realization hit them suddenly. “I was so worked up, I never even knew. I ran into her on my way home from the thrift store. She helped me up, then we talked for a few minutes more. She seemed normal at first? While we conversed. But she was definitely rhyming by the end. I don’t think that was pretend. It didn’t start until after she picked up the orange I bought.” The realization hit them all at once. Beau had picked up the orange, too, and so had Thea. “Oh, man, I can’t believe I forgot. It has to be tied to this thing!” He pointed adamantly to the orange. “I had no idea the kind of trouble it would bring!”

—

“Your royal decoration is the source of our vexation?” Thea looked at the innocent, innocuous orange. It looked so cute in an ugly way, it couldn’t be that. But Felix seemed sure and they would know what the common denominator is. Still, it saddened her to see that the culprit was an orange; like it was one of her own children that had committed a heinous act. She loved oranges and all citrus fruits in general. Ethically speaking, if an orange was the root of evil, would she have to stop eating them? She wasn’t sure she could uphold an orange boycott. “I guess I won’t be eating the squid, which was a thought a little morbid.” What were they supposed to do about the orange? Eat it? Had anyone tried that yet? “I think you should assemble the rhymers, to tell them about this fruit designers.” 

Would the rhymes go away? So soon? The thought saddened her. Still, if it was for the betterment of the lives of…seemingly a lot of people…then it wouldn’t be nice for her to be so selfish about it. Thea wanted to be a good person and maybe sometimes that meant giving up the rhymes. “Okay,” she said, finally taking a seat beside Felix. “We’ll figure something out for this curse! A way to reverse. Now that you know the cause—and I give you applause—it’ll be easy to break the rhyming laws with your paws.” She stared at the orange. “I’ll be sad to see it go. It turned the room into a chateau but perhaps it’s a style you did outgrow.” She smiled at Felix. “On the other side of this there will be a rainbow.” 

—

“That’s what it seems like to me,” Felix agreed. “I don’t know what else it could be.” Ariadne and Beau had definitely both been rhyming in retrospect, and they’d both touched the orange. Felix couldn’t think of anything else the two had in common aside from just… speaking to them. God, if just speaking to them was enough to pass this thing along, they’d be in real trouble. The orange would be far easier to control, they thought. They hoped the orange was the cause. “I think you can still eat squid if that’s what you want to do. I just don’t think you’d have to.” They weren’t really sure why she’d thought squid was a necessary thing but, then, they were often uncertain what made Thea come to the conclusions she did. They’d never say as much aloud, though. “That’s not a bad idea, really. I mean, I could definitely use some help, clearly. But I’m not sure one of them would go for it. And I think he’d be more bothered than he’d like to admit.” It was probably better if Beau didn’t find out, right? Felix didn’t want to think about how angry he’d been before, didn’t want a repeat of it. Just the thought made them antsy.

A curse, Thea called it. That… was probably an apt descriptor. Curses were definitely a real thing, and weren’t they usually tied to objects? Felix mourned the fact that they didn’t know any spellcasters. One of those would probably come in handy. “Maybe it’s the kind of thing that will wear off with enough time,” they suggested. “I mean, it isn’t feasible for us to always speak in rhyme. I bet sooner or later, it’ll just go away. We can wait it out, at least for a few days.” Mostly because Thea said she’d be sad to see it go, and Felix didn’t really want her to be sad, even over something so small. “How would you feel about waiting it out? Not for forever, just a few days, no doubt.”

—

Thea perked up. “Really?” she asked. “I can keep the rhyming for a while? Get a mealie? Run a trial?” A mealie—which wasn’t a word as she was using it—of squid, which she was now convinced she wanted, because she’d mentioned it so much. She threw her arms around Felix and pulled them into a tight hug. “You’re the best! Better than the rest!” She pulled back. “It must be addressed, and expressed—don’t protest—that all of coolness has coalesced…” She poked their shoulder. “…inside you, no matter what you do… You rock, even when my hair was eating your sock. All of my expectations you outdid.” Thea grinned. “Will you come with me to eat squid?” 

—