I found myself back in the rose garden, sitting on wet grass and immediately annoyed. My head felt like how it usually did after downing five pints of Guinness, and then daringly asking the waiter to bring over a shiraz. Shit was spinning.
Fuck it, I thought anyway, I'm home free!
And with that simple word, everything threatened to fall apart all over again. The thought of home, my perfect, dream apartment . . . the pretty pastels and quiet, the high-rise view, so picturesque, now lost because of fungus and/or some opaque evil forces.
I'd be back in my parents' basement once this mission was over. But even that couldn't really bum me out anymore. I hadn't returned empty-handed, and the lessons were still fresh. My discovery of the depths of my strength and the immense creative power of fear would not be leaving me anytime soon. I suppose I could pick up some pastel curtains to beautify the mess that had been my room as I'd left it . . .
A noise nearby startled me from my thoughts. Maybe I'd been foolish to assume things were that simple. Maybe the trial of the arrest and holding cell had only been a prelude to an even grander mindfuck.
Expecting the worst, I turned towards the sound. In the dark I scanned the cluster of trees, saw a funnel of light that illuminated a single, towering oak tree. Towards its base I could make out a dark figure. Holy shit.
As I crept closer I saw that it wasn't moving, just sitting there. Then I noticed the spray of dreadlocks. It was Baccha, looking just as dazed as I felt, and seemingly inspecting his shoes.
"Hey, fuckhead." I said, not knowing why. He looked up, and before he had a chance to respond I rushed towards him, my arms open.
I wanted to never let him go. The whole episode had been so lonely, devoid of any warmth of real humanity. "Hey, doll," he managed to say through the bearlike grip of my hug as we slowly swayed side to side.
"Are we really here?" I whispered, pulling back to look at him. Unable to let go just yet, my hands shifted their position from his back and down his arms.
"Yes," he said, and a thrill went through me as he caught my sliding hands in his own.
"How do you know?"
"You just do," he said, and I was really okay with leaving it at that.
"What happened on your side?" He asked before I could. I gave him the summarised version.
"Wow," he said, "those assholes."
"Totally, but also not really, right?" I said, surprising us both. But I continued, "You know this, I mean, they don't have the awareness that we can afford to have. Theirs is the path of least resistance, which always tends downwards. So we subvert their whole shtick once we cease labelling them in any terms that give them power. Their torture carnival becomes our springboard to total freedom."
He gave me a smile that sent yet more oxytocin flooding through my system. "You're right," he said, "first trip into the portal and you come out a master."
I sat down beside him, inching him aside playfully with my hips so we could both rest against the bark. "I had a pretty damned good coach."
He grinned even wider. "What was it like?" He asked, and somehow I knew he wasn't asking about my apartment, or my time at the station.
"I became formless, and from that domain I chose the qualities, and then I was back here," I said, "It felt like discovering something that's always been there, effortless."
Nodded, he said, "That's the true spirit of Hekate – you didn't just survive their bullshit, you reshaped your own self at the very core of reality."
My head was clearing, and memories were coming back fast now. Not only were there more flashes from that night after the Invisible Scorpion, but the morning after too. Me and Baccha really needed to talk, or at least I really, really wanted to talk to him. But now was not the time.
"What happened to you, anyway?" I asked
Immediately his brows burrowed and he reached a hand to scratch at his dreadlocks bashfully. "Oh you know, a weird, bungling, Archer spy-type fantasy."
"Come on."
"100 percent serious, girlie. It's one of those deep-seated wishes, and the bastards use it everytime. An entire facsimile: sports cars with missiles and ejector seats, close-quarters combat, martinis shaken, not stirred."
"You do not get to make me laugh like this, after everything I've just beenthrough."
"I can't help it! What's wrong with wanting to be all suave, well-suited and well-wanted by all the pretty girlies?"
"The name's Yelin," I said, still giggly, my voice fake-low, "Baccha Yelin."
He reached out and prodded my side. I swatted him away, jolted by the feeling of my palm lingering for just a little too long over his hand.
"Girlies, huh." You called me girlie, I thought, loving it.
I must have looked so fucking smug, because he laughed and shook his head knowingly, lips squeezing together. "I did," was all he said, coupled with a meaning-filled look that I didn't want to shy away from.
We were on some dangerous territory. Quite literally, because of the portals and because we hadn't binded the shadow predators yet, but also because whatever emotions we'd previously felt for each other now seemed to have been heightened after the excursion through our own private hells. Apparently talking to Baccha now was like taking ecstasy. But don't tell the asshole brigade that.
"Frank and Lisa," I said suddenly, still eye-fucking him.
"Any minute now," said Baccha. "Don't ask me why, but usually we all come back around the same time. It's still super strange, actually, to be experiencing time as the half-assed construct it is."
We passed the following moments in blissful silence, listening to actual crickets and the infrequent creaking of branches overhead, the rustling leaves. I'd like to say that I snuck looks at him, but actually it was really just blanket staring as he resumed studying his shoes. No doubt the portal, no matter how familiar its trickery, had also taken its toll on him. It occurred to me that maybe his experiences contained the same theme because he'd yet to fully learn the lesson, whatever that was.
But I didn't quite feel like bringing it up to him just then. Maybe he was already ruminating on that. I wasn't exactly crazy about the idea of reliving any of what I'd survived, either. Seeing him slumped over like that had triggered a memory from a long time ago. It had been a Saturday, and we'd gone out. A rare outing that featured the entire lineup from Rooster Red's Silver Static (surely you remember the glorious name of our old band from chapter seven). While many would argue that we as a group held little potential, I'd always contended that we were downright phenomenal during a performance in light of how we functioned once we were offstage.
It had been near-impossible for us to get along when there wasn't any music to shut us up. We simply didn't hang out or do any of the other fellowship activities that formed the foundation of so many bands. The membership of RRSS, a truly liberal revolving door system, tended to split into the stereotypical factions. You know: drummer and bassist, guitarists, vocalist and guitarist. But on this particular day there we all were, out and being a general nuisance about town. And by fuck, it was actually going well. Hours had gone by without us shouting indiscriminately at each other.
Midway through this fiesta, I remembered that a mutual acquaintance, Timothy 'Night' Shade, had invited me to his birthday party. If you can't tell from the name, he was a tall, thickset goth, with panda eyes and a merry penchant for witticisms and trouble-making. I called him, and unfortunately he was already drunk out of his mind. I didn't understand all of what he said, but I gathered and conveyed to the gang that the party was no longer accepting guests.
"Fuck that," Baccha had said, and dialled up Shay, a childhood friend who was besties with Tim. Amazingly, she was sober, and said she'd meet us at the lobby of the Weston Prime, one of the swankier hotels at the epicentre of town.
For some reason, our bassist at the time, Max, chose this moment to reveal that he'd brought along a bottle of absinthe. He proudly told us that this was the real stuff, made of high-quality ingredients and constituting an even higher percentage, and insisted that we each do a shot to really get into the festive-mood. We were already pretty sloshed, so of course we agreed.
Perhaps Baccha had sensed my trepidation, knowing of my rather shit tolerance. He asked if I'd like to try mixing our shots with OJ, and got a can from a nearby vending machine. What you must understand is that Baccha was notorious even then for making shit up. So as he explained how well the two beverages paired, I paired my gratitude with a healthy dose of suspicion. The concoction tasted terrible, like battery acid and vomit (and not your own either).
The effect was instantaneous, and we began lumbering like zombies towards our destination. I have only the vaguest recollection of how we got to the Weston Prime, of the street lights blazing like candles and all of us resorting to Google Maps, even though the hotel couldn't have been more than a fifteen-minute walk, and we'd passed by it numerous times during the course of other party-hopping sojourns. And finally, the horror on Shay's face as she stood by the revolving door, realising what fresh hell she would be introducing to the party.
We got to the hotel room in time for the birthday boy to receive us with a proper look of disgust on his face, before shortly proceeding to pass out in the bath tub. We each recognised various faces from the underground rock scene the band was involved in, and promptly split up to go mingle.
It couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes before we reconvened out on the balcony, pretty much because we needed to smoke. The place was so huge it was basically a backyard, complete with a little turf of carpet grass. There could've been a whole other separate party here. So we pulled three or four of the wicker couches just lying around into a circle and sat down to make it so. While I'd courteously bowed out from any more absinthe, faced with pressure from Max, Baccha made the fatal mistake of downing one last shot.
"Are you okay?" I remember asking. He just smiled wide, his eyes reduced to minus signs. This indicated two possible scenarios: he was either totally blissed out, or preparing for shut down.
It was a beautiful night, filled with good people and a carefree atmosphere. The ferris wheel from the nearby amusement part was visible in the background, all lit-up and moving slow like God's personal hypnosis wheel. We were all taking turns exchanging Timothy anecdotes, tales from gigs we'd attended or played at. Then I resorted to my time-honoured routine of trying to set up Baccha with any girl in his vicinity by making jokes at his expense. I didn't know why I did it, as if it had ever even once been an effective method. If I had to guess, knowing what I know now, I'd say it was nothing more than an excuse for me to say something to them and show them how funny I was. Kind of dickish, in retrospect. But Baccha was always game.
"You should date this guy," I'd said to the part-time model after I learnt that she was majoring in fashion design, patting Baccha's shoulders. "He's really into fashion." I can't recall what he wore that night, but chances are nigh it wasn't part of any seasonal trends that took the runways by storm that year.
Baccha laughed good-naturedly, then suddenly, with his eyes still shut and face tilted towards the sky, he stammered out something that sounded like, "You guys wanna see a magic trick?" Before anyone could answer he projectile spewed across the jam-packed table occupying the centre of our makeshift circle. Went full Exorcist over the bottles, paper cups, cigarette packs and ashtrays. Immediately we all backed the fuck up; I think a dude literally vaulted up and behind the couch he'd been sitting on.
"Oh my God," cried a punk but somehow preppy little chick from the corner, "I can smell it from here!"
Baccha throwing up was usually a pretty ill omen, and true enough, mere minutes later I went down too. Then came the long, arduous descent back to the lobby, practically crawling and taking turns shouldering one another, and Shay finally helping to convince a cabbie to take us after the rest had denied us on sight, or perhaps scent. Fucking Max had actually stayed behind to continue the warpath.
That had been us, in a nutshell. In the scene Baccha and I were commonly referred to as "the beanie twins." Lovable losers, always geeky, somehow even more so when around the females. We might have looked cool from a safe distance: long hair, instruments, tight pants, and uh, beanies. That illusion had been fostered more stringently than anything the shadow predators could've constructed in their wildest wet dreams. Ultimately it didn't matter; get too close and one of us was sure to puke on you.
And yet. Here we were, saddling up to bind the fuckers with powers we never could've imagined existed, or possessing ourselves. Magic trick, indeed.
In that first phase of my life, I'd just hobbled along, failing at every endeavour. Never hit it big, never got the girl, couldn't even get high and let loose properly. But now, I felt a surge in my self-belief. Whatever I wanted could really be mine for the taking; I only had to claim it. Others no longer had the right to dictate what I ought to desire, and they certainly had no right to intervene. From now on, all my decisions would be steps towards my dreams. I wish anybody or anything all the best if they intended to get in my way. And right at the tail of this glorious epiphany was an overwhelming urge to just straddle Baccha right up against this tree.
Maybe I would have, if not for an eruption of sound from the other end of the garden. A violently blinding light split the dark, illuminating Frank and Lisa – they weren't walking, they were crashing back into reality, locked in a desperate embrace.