THE CLAYTON TIMES

CLAYTON, NORTH CAROLINA  MONDAY, OCTOBER 14TH, 2019
$1.99

CHAOS AT THE PUMPKIN FESTIVAL
MYSTERIES SURROUND UNUSUAL DISASTER
by Elaine Mitchell - Editor-In-Chief

Last Friday, Clayton held its famed annual pumpkin festival. However, unlike years past, this event was not a calm night of games, magic shows, and pumpkin pie. Early on the morning after, residents gathered in shock before the ruins of our Civic Center, surrounded by uprooted trees and shreds of pumpkins throughout the park.

The remains of the Clayton Civic Center.

Police arrived at the scene around 10 AM, and were puzzled as to its nature. The state of destruction seemed to be that of a natural storm, though it was unusually localized around the park where the festivities were occurring. Chief of Police R. Hermans informed me that it is currently being investigated as an act of vandalism.
"While the department won't comment on potential suspects during an ongoing investigation, we will say that this bizarre incident seems to be the result of an organized group of some kind," Hermans said in a statement. "We are encouraging members of the public to send copies of photos and videos from the 11th."
The department's spokeswoman clarified that although a number of police officers were present at the event, none were witnesses to any criminal activity. Additionally, their personal devices did not contain any media of the event. This is especially unusual in the case of Officer Leyton, who is well-known in the community as an amateur photographer.
Reporter Joshua Lee interviewed a number of families who identified as having attended the event, but found that similarly, no photographic evidence of the event (both on cellular devices and on social media) could be found. When questioned, these individuals could offer a generic summary of their activities at the festival, but faltered when pressed on specific details. No interviewed person had any information relevant to the incident.
Lee also found five cases of inconsistent memories: in one, 78-year old retired resident Leonard Schneider reported bringing a large pumpkin to the event and having it win a prize, but he could not locate the prize ribbon. In another, 9-year old Mary Banks described a mayoral speech, despite the fact that Mayor Smith missed the event due to a fever.
The damage to the Civic Center and the park was investigated by Reporter Sarah Samson along with local construction worker Devin Hartle. While most of the damage seemed to be attributable to rot, Hartle identified several areas where the woodwork had the marks of fire damage.
"You know, the building hadn't been maintained super well before all this, but it definitely took some hits at some point in the last few weeks, and I believe this is what led to its collapse," Hartle said. "Whether this happened on the day of the festival is hard to say — I know I was there and it seemed fine, but clearly it isn't anymore."
The City's Department of Public Buildings is expected to release an official report later this month.

PTOLEMY Division
Censorship Office

Filing Operative: 06750353/4157 "Obsidian"
Document: 4112873607-461/039A
Reason: Appeal for Public Document
Body:

Last week's operation was a shitshow, nobody's denying that. But we must remember who we serve.
No parathreats were found, no GOC agents were exposed, and yet we're here treating this like the reconstruction of Mekhane. There's nothing sensitive or classified in this newspaper. I think the Coalition Code is clear, censorship here is illegal.
We don't need a second round of cleanup, more amnestics, more fake memories. Let it print and allow the people of Clayton to pick up the pieces themselves. The current cover story is inadequate and everyone knows it.
It's a small community, they can get through this if they know what happened. As it stands, there is no public information on the event and the civilian government is flying blind.
I respectfully ask that the article be permitted to circulate.

Decision:

REJECTED
REMOVED FOR SECURITY REASONS


Clowns, where do I start?
If you are a licensed clown breeder like myself you may be familiar with the heated debates within the clown industry. Many uneducated individuals may think this is all a worthless discussion, but I believe these points must be addressed by a well-seasoned professional who knows the difference between the scary clown and horror clown breeds.
I, Bambousio Starswinger, clown breeder, seller, blogger and practising ringmaster, have some opinions on the corruption in the clown industry that many may find to be controversial and more liberal than other clown owners.
1. Selling inexperienced clown owners hard-to-manage clowns.
Let's begin with the obvious. There are clown breeders out there who are only in it for the money. They may start selling the rodeo clown (who will no doubt be deformed due to the sickening breeding practices these breeders use) to someone with no experience in clown husbandry, tell them nothing about the care these breeds need (Lots of space in their tent, big ball pit, plenty of cream pies etc.) and run off with their money. Now you have an unhappy clown soon to be abandoned by their owner because they don't have the right environment for their clown.
This happens everywhere, from large horror clowns to the daintiest porcelain. Unlicensed breeders are rampant in the clown industry and there has been no legal action taken against them. When will the elites see that a happy clown is a healthy clown? And don't get me started on the deformities that are brought to certain breeds…
2. Unhealthy traits bred into clowns for the ‘aesthetic'.
Call me old fashioned but I just don't get aesthetics. Especially when it comes to clowns. The charm of the clown is in its natural state, with silly red noses and fun colours. This simple formula is what made the clown species as popular as it is today.
I do NOT enjoy these new traits being bred into certain clown species, like the pierrot clown being bred to have a certain small face shape, which makes it hard for them to breathe. It's the same with mimes, jesters, whitefaces, all of them.
These certain deformities are being bred for the looks and not the well being of the clown. This is why some clowns die young. You may buy a clown for its markings or face, but what always comes first is the clown's personality. There are some clowns I have in my tent that may look undesirable, like my mixed American Tramp breed, but have the biggest hearts out of any clown.
3. Herman Fuller's Circus should NOT be endorsed.
To my friends in the clown industry, this should be self-explanatory. Herman Fuller's Circus of the Disquieting is not a safe environment for clowns. I know I'm going to get a lot of flak for this, but someone had to say it.
My main problem with Herman Fuller's Circus is how it messes with the natural state of the clowns. It gives them abnormal abilities and creates what shouldn't even be considered normal clown behaviour.
Clowns are unpredictable and deviating from the norm when it comes to clowns is the last thing you should do. I have heard of Herman Fuller clowns becoming violent and unhinged while in his care, and frankly I feel it is a harmful environment for the clowns, their carers and their audience.
…Not to mention the clown milk from there tastes terrible.
4. Clown milk should not be mass produced.
Oh, here come the haters and clown milk-purists. Before you ‘doxx' me or anything, let me explain. As tasty as free-range clown milk is, it should only be served on special occasions.
Clowns need to be milked, that's common sense, but commercialising their milk is exactly what normalises their mistreatment. STRESSED CLOWNS DO NOT PRODUCE GOOD MILK. UNHAPPY CLOWNS DO NOT PRODUCE GOOD EGGS.
Mass producing clown milk is a step back from what good clown owners have been campaigning for for years. We don't want unethical treatment of clowns. We don't want clowns becoming a product (disregarding clown meat), and we don't want unhappy and unhealthy clowns. What more can I ask?
5. On the topic of clown meat…
Oh boy. This is a controversial one. There are many arguments for and against clown meat, so let me preface this by saying that I am against the consumption of clown meat. Sure, it's edible, but I don't eat it myself, so there might be some bias.
Clown meat is another area of the industry where things can go far south very quickly. Clowns being raised for slaughter, clowns being fed unhealthy food for more mass, and even clowns having unsafe meat.
There are many breeds that do not have digestible meat: Scary clowns, tramp clowns, I also believe boxer clowns and pierrots taste disgusting.
Some breeds though, happen to be unethically raised for their meat. I have heard whiteface and rednose clowns being raised for slaughter and frankly it sickens me.
Clowns deserve a healthy and happy life in a large tent with lots of toys - NOT in a cage! As soon as you start treating clowns like a business, like something to be sold, you're dead to me and all respectable clown owners. Find another job. As I said before, clowns should not only be a product. Clowns are kind, friendly, funny, silly, and lovable. Clowns are family.
6. On the consumption of clown eggs…
Don't.
You should know.
Just…don't.
So there you go. I may lose some friends after this, but frankly I needed to set up boundaries a long time ago. If you are against me and willing to debate with a professional breeder, take a bite. But other than that, I wish you all a wonderful day.
- Bambousio Starswinger


"Marine? That's a really pretty name!" The intoxicated stranger said with a grin.
That's common response number four.
The most common response is to say "Oh, like the water." Which is both dumb and not fully accurate. The dictionary definition for marine is something found in the sea.
The second most common response is for someone to toss a salute and say either "attention" or "ten-hut" as if they are the first person in human history to make that joke about my name.
The third most common response is "Oh, is that French?" which is a whole rabbit hole I don't like having to dive down. To simplify it, my mom was certain she was having a girl and started referring to her unborn child as "Aquamarine", she was dead set on that name. One ultrasound later and she finds out that she's having twins. Rather than do the almost rational thing and name one of us Aquamarine, she just saws the name in half. My sister is Aqua because she came out first, and I'm Marine because the first half was already taken. So no, it isn't French. My mom is mostly Irish and we lived in Peoria.
And as previously stated, the fourth most common response is to comment on how pretty my name is. I don't know how people find it pretty, this name is a burden to live with.
High school sucked. That's where the "ten huts" really bulked up their numbers. My few close friends usually refrained from it, but I was never quite safe from the joke rearing its ugly head.
I made a promise to myself I'd run off to a distant college and there I could go by my middle name. Christina, but I'd just have everyone call me Tina. Then I'd finally be free. I busted my ass on my SATs and picked up as many extra curricular activities as I could while keeping my grades up. I worked hard to make sure I could get into any college I wanted. And I did. Yale. Anthropology major. I was soaring towards freedom, a freedom named Tina. I packed my bags, I loaded up my car, and I sped off onto a new adventure. Freshman orientation.
They had name tags.
Already printed out and ready-to-go name tags.
I was given a sheet with the contact information for my advisor, the key to my dorm, and a huge name tag with Marine in bold, allegedly to help me socialize. I didn't even bother asking. I accepted my fate. Another fours years of Marine. I excelled at my studies again. I worked as hard as I could every day and every night. I picked up extra classes in History and Global Affairs. I took public speaking classes. I was going make it so I could move anywhere I want, land a high paying gig, and be definitely known as Tina. No one would ever heard the word "Marine" and think of me. A few extra years with my accursed name and I'd finally be free forever.
I took an on campus job helping to manage the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments. I got really good at answering all the questions people had coming through. One day passing through was an older gentleman who took a great interest in me. Whenever he had a question he'd just watch as I went on and on with every bit of information I had about the instrument. At the end of his walk through the museum he asked how soon until I graduated. As it happened, I was due to graduate just two months later. He handed me a business card and told me to call him as soon as I had my degree. He looked down at my badge. Marine. He said he'd be sure to never forget that name.
That man was Mr. Dark. That man is now my boss.
He did not forget my name.
Six figures a year. Luxury apartment in Manhattan. A Rolls-Royce Phantom. Drinks for free and flashy company dinners every week. I'd made it.
Marine still persisted.
I'm the company's favorite lobby girl. As guest walk around, they're sure to stumble upon many things that we have for sale. I typically tell them the wild and fascinating stories behind whatever strange anomaly they're looking at. I some times converse with clients for hours.
After they've been introduced to me as "Marine".
Today is the kind of day where I lead the show. Some ultra hipster rap artist is debuting an album that he only made one copy of, which will go to auction immediately after he plays it to the crowd gathered here today. The lyrics are a bunch of Fifthist nonsense about love and space and the like and the production leaves much to be desired. It does attracts a very specific type of client though, and the building has been filled to the brim with some of our finest musical oddities. A guitar that rings out with a woman's voice, a piano that improvises ragtime on command, a trumpet that has been known to act as a precursor to some rather wild parties. I am the woman for this job, no question about it.
"This is exactly in Marine's wheelhouse." A coworker said the evening before, when the instruments were being loaded in.
Indeed. I'm on my eighth sale of the evening. This is totally my wheelhouse.
Marshall, Carter, and Dark allows their employees to mix business and pleasure. Actually, they pretty much encourage it. The man in front of me is fairly attractive. He's apparently the brains of a beloved indie band. He's eyeing me in such a fashion that I don't think he'll need any persuading if I invite him up to my apartment after the event.
And he just told me how pretty the name Marine is.
Goddammit.

« My Life Aquatic | Away From This Place »


"State your name and position within the Foundation, please." The voice, distorted through a series of speakers, echoed throughout the room.
The thin man - seated upon a folding metal chair, his hands resting on the table before him - startled before responding to the one-way mirror.
"Uh, sorry. Miles Lykar, junior navigator of the SCPS Oro-, sorry, the Palma, ma'am."
An awkward moment passed as he sat waiting for the crackling voice to return.
"Please state, in your understanding, the nature of your assigned mission on 13/03/2021."
Miles swallowed, a lump having formed in his throat. He suspected why they'd called him in; he knew what he wrote on his after-action report. But it wasn't something he knew how to disclose.
"Yes, uhm, well, we had been told that the folks up in AA1 had been working with Archives and the Hazers2. They had been going through the sounding bones we nabbed from J&J3 when they noticed some concerns."
The silence continued, unresponding.
"Yeah, apparently there were a few that didn't fit the uh, the timeline: when we knew J&J was working and what they were working with. I know it made Director Barrett nervous, so that was our first clue something was off. He was the one who gave the order, ma'am. I suppose it wasn't just a seaman's superstition, to have kept the Palma wet-docked."
"Please state, in your understanding, the nature of your assigned mission on 13/03/2021," the voice repeated. Miles couldn't tell if it sounded more irritated.
"Sorry, right. We were to take one of those bones, ones they flagged as irregular, on a temporal jaunt. Best I understand it, the practice was still the same: Captain marks our destination with the nail in the bone, and off we go. That part went smoothly, but after a few hours, we realized things were weird."
The speaker crackled back to life. "Can you elaborate, please."
"Yeah, well right as we were expecting to get to our destination the instruments started acting up. The chronometer was throwing up errors left and right, and we couldn't make out land - some blasted fog had rolled in and -"
"Your vision of the coast was obscured," the voice inquired.
"No, well yes, but we wouldn't have been able to see it anyway. We were too far east. We had factored in higher water levels due to climate change, but our instruments couldn't find land at all. As far as we could tell it was just an endless ocean under the night sky. There must have been land somewhere though, right? Anyway, 'Capt left the command deck for a few minutes, then came rushing in. He was spooked, we could all tell. He told us to bring the boat about and head back. He was practically running along the deck to grab the nail and hammer it home. We were pushing ourselves along at full speed on the way back. That's when I saw, it."
"Please describe what you saw." Miles was suddenly, and violently aware of the ocean outside Site-184, the waves crashing, endlessly, rising up the beach as the tide shifted. He whipped something wet from the side of his ear before continuing.
"I'm not sure how best to describe it." He paused for a moment. "When I was a child, I loved whales. They were these bigger-than-life creatures that filled your imagination. I didn't see one until my parents took me up to St. John's4 on a whale-watching boat. One of the things that they told us as we were heading out on the boat was that most whales don't die on the shore. Sure there are strandings, but usually, the whale dies at sea. They bloat and float for a while as the gasses build-up, but then they rupture and start to sink."
"They call it a Whalefall, fitting name, you've got this massive, partially decomposed carcass that's no longer buoyant, so it starts to fall. And as it falls, it moves away from the light, from the air, all those things that whales need, same as us. And it descends, for miles, into this black abyss; eventually, you wouldn't be able to see it, but it's still there, falling."
"When it finally hits the seafloor though, that's when it becomes interesting. It becomes a banquet hall, a city of food, for all these deep-sea critters. I don't know where they come from, but they do. They start eating their way through it: carving it apart, bit by bit, bite by bite. It can take decades for them to strip the body clean, to work their way through the marrow of the bones. Eventually, it's all gone: the blubber, muscles, skin, all of it. Except for those bones."
"They just sit there, do you understand? Resting in that pitch-black darkness, in silence. Once all the creatures leave, when the bounty has been picked dry, they're abandoned to that unending night. That's what I saw, in the gap between the fog and the night sky, I -"
Miles bent forward as his abdomen was racked with pain. He stood, a hand on the table for support as he coughed. A slick mucus filled his mouth. He gagged as it splattered onto the floor, the taste of the salty bile lingered.
He took three breaths in and out. "That's what I saw there: impossible ivory towers, curving and rising out of the sea. I don't know how big they were, there was no frame of reference, but I could glimpse them through the fog, reflecting the moonlight. There must have been hundreds. I felt like one of those small, dark things, crawling along the seafloor to nibble away at the remains of something larger than I could comprehend."
The figure, hunched over, lowers himself back into the chair. He scans the room, finding his gaze unmet by the uniform walls, he settles on his reflection in the mirror for his revelation.
"But that wasn't the worst part. No, that happened when the fog crept inward, closing in on the boat. As it obscured the moonlight, I saw them move. They pitched forwards towards us, like something rising."
The silence hung in the near-empty room. Miles steadied his breathing. It felt as though a weight had been lifted; he had just come up for air.
"Thank you, that will be all," the voice responded.

Access SCiPNET Email? One (1) new message! Priority: HIGH

Re:Widenet Implementation - 13/03/2021

To: ui.481pcs|tterrab_rtcrd#ui.481pcs|tterrab_rtcrd
From: [ENCODED]
Subject: Wide-net Implementation - 13/03/2021

Director Barrett,
I've spoken with Lykar. It appears he has no recollection of exiting the command deck or disembarking from the SCPS Palma during their return voyage.
Recent analysis shows the liquid being produced following his recovery is composed of a saline solution with trace amounts of spermaceti. It is my request that he be confined to quarters until further notice.
The O5 Council has hereby authorized you to proceed with operation "Wide-net."
Regards,
O5-2.

Footnotes
1. Site-184's Aquatic Anomalies department
2. Colloquial term for the Hezur-langilea, a small group of Foundation-aligned, thaumaturgic practitioners of Osteomancy: the manipulation of organic bones.
3. Jean & Jean Transtemporal Shipping
4. Capital city of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.


« A Fractured Curtain | Dread & Circuses Hub

It was always so easy with other Clowns. You tell them you like them, you kiss, then hijinks ensue. Either that or you get hosed with water and walk away in defeat with wet, floppy shoes. Humdrums always had to make everything so needlessly complicated and unfun.
“Hey, Crash!” she heard a smaller Clown call out to her. He had a bit of a waddle to his walk as he neared her. She snapped out of her daze as she looked him in the eye.
“Oh, hey, what's up?” Crash asked, slack-jawed and unaware.
“You're up next!” he exclaimed. “Tower of Clowns, remember?”
Crash stared directly in front of her to the entrance into the Big Top from a side run under the bleachers where the talent gathered before a show. “Oh. Right. Am I on now?”
“YES, you're on now! Get out there!”
She shook her face in an attempt to get herself back in the game and ran out into the ring where nearly a dozen Clowns were stacked on top of one another while the bottom Clown rode around in a circle balanced on a ball. She leaped on as it passed by her and climbed to the top, her hands and feet grabbing and stomping on the other Clowns along the way, much to the amusement of the audience.
When she had reached the top, she grabbed the hands of the top Clown and raised herself into a handstand. The one she found herself holding hands with was none other than Zoozoo, who she acknowledged. “Zoozoo.”
“Crash,” the demonic Clown replied.
“Hey, maybe don't try and scare away our staff.”
Zoozoo gave her an indignant snarl as she said, “I don't know what you're talking about.”
“Tootsie's staying whether you like it or not.”
The tower swayed to an extreme degree, the two of them bending along with it. “She's a Humdrum with a liability attached to her brain. As if we don't run enough risks with us Clowns! Humdrums should at least be reliable!”
“So you wanna fill the Circus with as many boring Humdrums as possible? That sounds exactly like what a Humdrum would say!” They straightened out as another Clown came climbing up the tower.
“Then maybe they're onto something after all.”
The final Clown was finally at the tower's top, her feet standing on top of the bottom of Crash's oversized shoes. “Hey Lolly,” she said, craning her head to look up at her.
“Hi Crash!” she said back, smiling sweetly to the audience as they cheered. “Did I interrupt an argument? It sounded like I interrupted an argument. Any juicy drama?”
“Zoozoo's trying to get rid of Tootsie.”
“Manny's trying to get rid of Tootsie,” Zoozoo corrected her. “Don't pin this solely on me.”
Lolly screwed up her face as she looked down at Zoozoo, saying, “But she's family! Zoozoo, stop trying to scare away family!”
“That's what I was saying!” Crash added.
Growling, Zoozoo simply said, “Can we talk about this later?”
“And we almost kissed last night!” Crash said directly to Lolly.
Lolly ooh'd in delight. “Scandalous!”
“It was on the ferris wheel! Super romantic stuff.” Zoozoo must have realized that this no longer concerned her as she had gone quiet. “Hey, you wanna get wasted after the show?”
“Do I ever!” Lolly replied as she leaped backward, landing on a miniature trampoline that had magically appeared behind the tower.
“You're not invited,” Crash let Zoozoo know as she did the same after sticking her tongue out at her, landing on another magically appearing trampoline.
By the time the tower had reduced down to just the Clown on the ball, he leaped off of it, but no trampoline magically appeared, causing him to crash down to the ground as the audience got a good laugh at his expense. The rest of the Clowns bounced off of their respective trampolines and gave a deep bow to the audience, who applauded the act.
Icky came out afterward to play them out and introduce the act after them, by which point Crash had exited the stage. Lolly stayed in the Big Top beside Icky, a giant smile on her face as always. The orange-haired Clown gave one last glower in Zoozoo's direction as she received the same in return.
To her surprise, when she turned around, she was able to make out the face of Cassie amongst the crowd as she picked up litter with a pointy stick. She didn't exactly seem very happy doing what she was doing, despite being in one of the best places in the known world. “Tootsie! Hey! Did you catch me out there?”
“Oh, sorry, I didn't,” Cassie responded, giving her a half-hearted smile. “With how many trash cans you've got sitting around, you'd think people would be more inclined to spend an extra few brain cells to use them instead of tossing shit on the ground.”
“Kids, am I right? Once you make the big switch, you don't mind them as much. Clowns are just weird, grownup, creepy kids, after all. And plus, you'll get access to hammerspace!” She reached into her Clown pocket and pulled out a bouquet of flowers to hand to Cassie. “Sorry again about your beanie. If there's anything you need, let me know.”
Cassie shook her head, saying, “It's alright. I'm still really tired from last night, so I'll probably just go to sleep after my shift.”
Crash frowned, but gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder nonetheless, saying her goodbyes before making her way to one of the bar tents. She took a seat at one of the stools and leaned onto the counter, heaving a sigh as the bartender came to check on her.
“Tough day?” the Humdrum asked.
“Something like that,” she replied despondently. “You ever been in love, Bartender Man?”
The bartender shifted his eyes from side to side and said, “Look, it was a one-time thing, if she's said anything about me then it's probably not true.”
“Because I feel like I suck at it.”
“Oh.” The bartender regained his composure and continued, “Well, ya can't win ‘em all, eh? Just gotta hope that next time will be better. Always a next time.”
“Gee, thanks,” Crash remarked with a quick glare, not realizing that he had moved on from their conversation to service a guest. “Sometimes you just wanna wear a hoodie and slacks, ruffle your hair up, and lie on the floor.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” asked Lolly as she took a seat beside her, ordering two jugs of Clown Milk.
Crash sighed, saying, “It means I'm all out of love these days.”
“Get some Milk in you and we'll see about that!” Lolly exclaimed, raising her jug to her lips and chugging a quarter of it right away. She rapidly bounced up and down in her seat, her eyes spinning in her head until they landed on an image of hearts. “The more ya drink it, the more ya love it!”
Crash took a few sips from her own jug, then a few more sips, followed by even more sips until she slammed it back down on the counter while exhaling in ecstasy. “Great for your skin and keeps your blood sugar up!” she agreed. “I wish Tootsie could experience this. Humdrums don't understand what they're missing out on.”
Lolly giggled at her. “You're really hung up on her, huh?”
“All the woes in the world belong to me!” she cried out under a spotlight she had summoned from nowhere in a display of theatrical melodrama, her arms and legs waving around as if they had no bones as her eyes expelled tears at an inhuman rate. “All for a beanie! Pray tell, fair lady, what power doth this woven head covering hold over you! What spell hath been cast! What evils betray thine colorful threads!” She hung her head and bowed just as she had done for the audience earlier that night. “Scene!”
Lolly applauded with her white gloves as her hands were separated from them, using them to down more Milk. When she put the jug back down, she fit her hands back through her gloves and said, “Did she lose her cute hat somewhere?”
“Somewhere in Russia,” Crash replied, the spotlight fading as her body took its regular form once more, bones and all. “And during her birthmonth, too. It's a sad state of affairs.”
“Humdrums don't care as much about the months they're born in, remember?” Lolly pointed out. “Just the day. What a waste of a month!”
“The only thing they do right is Christmas,” Crash sighed. “It's been a while since I've had that kind of connection with someone. Thought I was in there last night, but at the last second… Woe! It feels like it's been so long since I've really kissed someone."
Lolly turned to her, black liquid practically oozing out of her lips. “Okay, okay, I give, lay it on me already.”
“Ah, it's not the same,” Crash said, resting her cheek on her palm. “I need the romance! The passion! The lust! I need that feeling you get when you know you're about to kiss someone for the first time… and then you do! And then rainbows! Fireworks! Ka-blam! Ka-blooey!” Her hands acted out every word she had been saying. “I had a crush in middle school. His name was Maurice. Great guy. The first time we smooched was in the cafeteria after lunchtime was over. It was like a… caterpillar climbing a branch to eat a leaf. Ya know? Like when two hands reach into the same bucket of popcorn and then they touch and both people have to make a decision right then and there. It's like chemistry, yeah?”
“Chemistry?” Lolly asked.
“Yeah, chemistry. Like a mixed drink.”
The bartender, who had been halfway paying attention to their conversation, came closer and looked at Lolly, asking, “Is she always like this?”
“Mhmm!” Lolly replied as Crash went on with her nonsensical tangents. “You're new here, but you'll get used to it.”
“Hey!” Crash cut in. “No talking about the story's narrator when she's busy narrating!”
Lolly shrugged. “It's obvious you've come down with a case of puppy love, but we both know how to right a wrong. I can lend you a key of a certain variety if you know what I'm talking about. It'll just be a quick jog there and back again.”
Crash gasped at the realization in a manner that was far too dramatic for what the situation called for. “The rocket! You're right!” She held Lolly by her cheeks and gave her a big kiss, complete with unnecessary kissy noises before releasing her and bolting out of the bar.
“I meant the kaleidoscope key!” Lolly yelled as she chased after her, but it was too late. Her goggles were placed over her eyes and her rocket was already roaring.
“Hey, tell Icky I'll need the day off!” she called out as she grew more and more distant in the night sky.
From just outside the tent, Lolly slapped her face with her palm and shook her head. “If that girl would just listen for five seconds.”

« A Fractured Curtain | Dread & Circuses Hub


The Year Was 1778.

The sleek, angular profile of the SCPS Palma, an experimental Engle-class stealth missile corvette, cut silently through dark waters. Her decks hummed with a vitality that Captain Barrett could feel resonating throughout the command deck - a low, constant vibration that settled deep in the roots of his molars and dulled the osteoarthritis in his knees. She was hunting.
They had been tracking their prey, a medium-size fishing trawler, for nearly three days: from its departure in Havana on a fine summer morning in 1983, to a few miles east of La Nouvelle-Orléans, a smuggling port for American revolutionaries. One that had recently been ceded to the Kingdom of Spain.
It wasn't a particularly fair game, Barrett reflected as he glanced at the radar-map, and not quite the swan-song he had anticipated when he signed on all those years ago. There had been danger and mystery once. Jean & Jean Transtemporal Shipping had been smuggling supplies, weapons, information, people, and anomalous objects to the highest bidder across nearly 400 years, completely and entirely unchecked by anyone. They had been an inconvenience for the Foundation's operational and archival departments for a large portion of that. Particularly the latter - who were responsible for finding out how an M1 Abrahams main battle tank wound up on the Western Front, alongside other incongruities. When the Foundation caught wind of what they were doing, they were quick to respond. Barrett could still remember seeing the Palma for the first time -
"Captain, we're seeing two vessels inbound towards the target. Small ones moving slow."
He was snapped out of his musings by the interruption. The additional blips on the radar, approaching from the coastline, confirmed their suspicions: a scheduled rendezvous. They knew, of course, where the vessel was headed before it left port. It would have been nearly impossible to track them had they not, but still a ship lost in time wouldn't be unprecedented or the strangest thing Barrett had seen in recent years. Those rowing toward the trawler threw any such plausible deniability out the window. "Alright," he responded, "let them close the gap, then bring us up past the horizon. Prep two teams for insertion."
Barrett leaned forward instinctually as the ship accelerated. He could feel the power, barely contained and straining to be let loose. She was the fastest thing on the seas with enough firepower to decimate navies. Nothing could catch or even see her; not for at least another few hundred years. On nights like this, surrounded by dark seas and bright stars, he felt she knew it too.

They had an open radio line with both RHIBs on approach: two six-person teams, Alpha to board and secure the fishing vessel, Beta to intersect with the now-loaded rowboats that were making lazy progress towards the shore. They were within visual range now and creeping steadily closer.
Barrett had lived this moment a hundred times. It was a moment of possibility when no-one knew what would happen next. When they were chasing down the big fish, J&J fully aware of the cat and mouse game, there had been close calls: unexpected escort ships, an oil tanker rigged with explosives, the occasional airplane, submarine, or anomalous weapon, an incident with a nuclear device during the Spanish Civil War. They had made it through - not all of them - by the skin of their teeth. All through good instincts, quick reflexes, the stalwart protection of the Palma, and a generous amount of luck. These days things went soother. They were cleaning their way through the captured and decoded ledgers, closing in on those small shipments that never seemed important enough before. They had time now and plenty of bones to pick from.
A panicked voice, filtered and distorted through the radio static, blasted across the deck: "Launch on deck. Missile Launch! Returning fire, this-"
A flurry of alerts rang on top of one another, commands and responses echoning over the continued barking of the radio. Barrett trained his eyes on the fading flare emerging from the fishing boat's deck. The seconds slowed to a crawl. Somewhere in the dark, it raced towards them. He couldn't see it against the sky. However, the ship could. As the CIWS roared to life, arcs of tracer-marked fire tore apart the stillness of the sky, red-hot and fading into the distance. The first, second, and third bursts shuddering into the darkness, until the fourth - in a flash of white light - found its mark. Barrett stilled his breath as the voice over the radio came back to him. "Splash one. Hostile crew subdued." Maybe a desk job wouldn't be too bad, he thought as he checked his pulse.
The sweep was routine. Smuggled contraband: a small shipment of rifles, ammunition, and explosives, tagged and recovered. With the crews detained for questioning, Alpha team secured small, shaped charges below the waterline of the trawler. Barrett watched as it sunk beneath the waves, nothing but a fading wreck. The smaller rowboats, emptied, they let drift away.

The Ritual:

The hunt was concluded. The night was quiet once more.
The old man walked to the bow of the ship where the sharp angles of cast metal met at a knife's edge. He approached the two curving monoliths of yellowed, glistening ivory - sea spray reflecting the pale moonlight. Before him were the jawbones of two right whales, mounted horizontally along the gunwale. He let his hand drift along the surface of the port-side one and felt the deep, carved lines etched into it. It was too dim to see but they, like the rest, were ingrained in his memory as though his very own bones were marked with the story of each leviathan's life. They began similarly. Beasts, born amidst the wave, growing and feeding on the millions of minuscule lifeforms that drifted the currents. Growing and learning; mating and eating. It was in their deaths that the creatures differed. The leftmost, harpooned and lanced by cold, cruel steel, had been brought ashore and stripped bare of its blubber. A carcass picked apart by scavenging humans, its body rendered down into oil. Its twin, stranded on the beaches of Newfoundland, was found with a trawling net wrapped tight around its head, suffocating to death as its stomach clogged with plastic.
His hand came upon the deeply embedded iron nail. Legs planted firm against the deck, he strained and pulled on it, until it gave with a spray of saltwater across his face. Pulling the hammer from his belt, he turned and laid the metal tip against the carved jawbone of the younger beast. This one had swam the seas as he learned to sail. He brought the hammer down. The nail bit. Bone cracked. He raised his hand up again, then let it fall, driving six inches of cast-iron downward in a series of blows as the relic splintered and spat shards across the deck.
Letting a slow breath out, his gaze slid across the night-sea. They were heading home.


CONTENT WARNING:
This entry contains depictions of eating disorders and mentions of self harm. Read at your own risk.

It always starts with a simple question. Questions that are innocent and light; things that need to be investigated. Things we asked when we were kids, things we ask day to day. “Where does this hole go?”, “How does this anomaly work?”, or most recently “How long can I go without food.” They were all simple questions, each with some defined answer somewhere. Once tested, they can be tested again and again, compounding a single idea until it's proven fact. Think on how the sky is blue.
Often I'm caught with more nebulous concepts that morph into questions. "How many different ways has the world ended since I started speaking this sentence?" It was something that could be, and probably had been, calculated. The answer floated around my mind, but I didn't care enough to grasp for it. I lived in a foggy mind, one I was quite accustomed to. One I've lived in before yet always somehow pulled myself out of. I'm rambling.
These questions are normal. Things everyone asks themself. Kids ask questions all the time, and I'm getting paid to ask them! It's fucking ridiculous. Yet, it's always worse when I realize where I work. This place is basically a death factory, ready to send me to my grave at any second. This is no place for kids to work. I say that as though I'm still talking about kids, but I shouldn't lie to myself. Quite honestly, I don't entirely remember what I was talking about.
All of these questions soon get tainted as you learn more and more about what you're doing. I once again say like this isn't a territory I wasn't walking for years.
We found a stupid hole. We got curious, as kids would. We tossed a rock in, but nothing happened. We should have gotten bored and left, but nope. Luna volunteered to test our hypothesis and they stepped into it. The hole leads to another hole, trapping Luna in, taking their energy as she disintegrated. Her screaming still echoed in my mind. It disappeared after taking my classmate friend. We never saw her or the hole again. I didn't know if I had the right to call them a friend. I didn't know her that well, and they were generally a loner. I wasn't the friendliest. I still feel bad about it. Though, that's just how things go. You never get over it, but you learn to push it aside. After all, that's what counts, right?
Ironically, I didn't even know about the Foundation or the world of anomalies at the time. Something that was ever so enticing, yet just another death sentence. Nothing I could walk away from once I stepped into it. That wasn't even mistake number one in the grand scheme of things. Though, if I listed them all we'd be here forever which is another thing neither of us wanted. It was, however, Mistake Zero. The thing that would forever open my eyes. That's what I call it anyway.
I lingered on the other question. My brain was slow to recall but it was catching up. I couldn't remember the question number that I ironically gave it, but it was the first SCP I was assigned to study. It was right after asking a coworker why people make art that is meant as a weapon. We were tasked to answer the original question: how does it work?
Every single one of us could tell you that from the second we laid eyes on it. It scooped out my wet, goopy insides and crawled into my hollowed out chest while I was still alive. It snaked its way into my brain, and started using a frying pan on it. It pulled on the worst parts: memories of people I loved, people I've lost, anything I ever cared about. It ripped them all in half in front of me. Lit on fire, stomped on, strangled, opened in front of me. As much as it stung, there wasn't much to do. They had pretty much lied to us, never said we shouldn't look at it. I suppose that was a given. A few of my team broke free long enough to look away. Like that would save any of us from the visions we saw, the slimy snake was still in our brains.
That was Mistake Twelve. Ironic I call it a mistake, normally that label is for when people die. I mean, somewhere in my mind they did. It wasn't the only time people “died,” yet it sticks out as not only the first but the most important.
I learned something from all of the questions-turned-mistakes. Some stuck longer than others; I started keeping a journal. It kept me safe, taught me what I knew, and held what I thought was important. It held all of my non-confidential notes and anything else I needed.
There is a mistake I keep reliving and relearning. It was a pit in my stomach that pushed me to continue my games. It was a dull angry pain that never really stopped screaming. It loops back to a question I asked when I was 12. It was a question that would kill me, if none of the others I asked on a daily basis did. Truth be told, I came to terms with it when I started the whole adventure. It was a question. I had the curiosity that pushed me to try it. Though, I can't say that's what it really was.
The curiosity, like all questions I've lived through, turned dark. It became a sort of on-and-off game I would play with myself. See how long I could go. See if I could push myself further, and I did. Days turned into a week, that week turned into almost two. Dizziness overtook me constantly, and I broke down and ended the game. That was the longest I went, and it was at 16. It was always so easy to dance with death. To play with my life in my hand, heart on my sleeve, and pride in my chest.
That was what made it so easy to work at the Foundation. Constantly teetering on the razor thin line of life and death, not knowing you had already tipped far over it until it was too late. I took that fact in stride. I felt that I could see through it all. The haze in my brain, the redactions on the page, and hurt in my heart. I walked on clouds letting myself be drunk on ego and pain. I didn't care.
It always broke down, I played my game, danced in blood and puke, then built myself back up. Questions really will get you far, and most people don't realize that. I suppose you need a level of follow-through to get those questions answered. It never mattered how many times my life went dark, I could see it through or use my self destructive behaviours until it all resolved. I knew where I stood, knew I was right at death's door with the amount of work I took and the stupid games I played.
None of them were really games. It was easier to approach them that way though. Easier to lie to myself. Easier to claim it was nothing. Everything was simpler to break down. It's just a game, games can't be bad. My logic was flawed, but that didn't matter. I was always the type to examine it, then toss out my observations.
I was sick. But truth be told, I never wanted to get better because playing with danger was comfortable. I embraced the darkness at the corner of my eyes, always expecting it to be my last.
Maybe this time it was.


Graphic depictions of abuse ahead. Proceed with caution.

30 days to the march.
30 days, and plans that could be made in 5. How hard was it? Get a pass, pick a date, march a bunch of concerned woman down the road and scream for your liberation from Big Pharma. That easy.
Who was Theresa kidding?
That was without the red tape. Without the FBI breathing down their backs. Moreover, without the Kosher Nostra or Triads, and the money invested into the game. Without a sick cat to take care of. And pettiest of all, the keystone piece of the mob wall, without even permission to smoke indoors.
Theresa hadn't been paying attention to Caryn, anyways. Might as well step out for a smoke.
Caryn's townhouse had a second floor balcony. The view wasn't all that good, unless you liked overlooking the wall of perfect little psuedosuburbia that defined decent BackDoor residentials, but the fact that she had a view was reason enough to be jealous. All in all, the perfect place to light up her e-cig and lose herself in the sting.
What was she doing? Theresa had jobs to apply for. Grant listings to sift through. Would she even be attending the march? What good does a march do, without something to prop it up? This felt like a game, something to pass the time as she waited for the flies to pick her apart. There had to be something more to this, something—
"Is everything alright, Feather?" Theresa hadn't heard Hellen coming up behind her. "You seem troubled."
Theresa groaned. Hellen couldn't leave Theresa to herself for two minutes? "I'm alright, Hellen. I just need some air."
Hellen hummed. "You seemed troubled, is all."
There she went again with that babying voice. Like Theresa was some delicate little thing that hadn't carried moose spray since she was 9. But it felt too genuine to even yell at, even if it was perplexingly out of character.
Theresa swallowed, and took another hit off her e-cig "Don't worry about me, really. I can take care of my own."
Silence, for a while, before Hellen made some… sound. "Alright. Well, call me if you need to, alright?"
Never, then. Not that Theresa was about to say that out loud.

28 days to the march.
There were so many things Theresa should have been able to put on her resume in a just world. There was managing a radical feminist art collective; too bad it went against dominant narrative (and maybe a few vandalism laws). She took care of a terminally sick cat; but then, caregiving was an expectation for women. Theresa had created a home lab out of spare parts with which she synthesized and examined a variety of useful chemicals; even so, what money did that make anyone?
Finally, Theresa could go on a date with some rich schlub as a trojan horse to getting a real job in her chosen field, giggling at every stupid joke and ignorant remark, playing the part of the pretty face, ignoring every red flag that screamed against this low-value insect, and not immediately vomiting the moment he was out of her sight.
It was what you needed to succeed in the modern world, and none of it was what an employer wanted you to tell them.
No, it didn't pan out this time. It never did.

"It's 24 days to the march, and you're asking me now?"
Caryn whistled over the phone. "Sorry, gyn1. Just, this is once in a year stuff! And mom's getting up there in age, so I gotta make the most of it, yeah?" She sighed. "You'll do fine, you'll do fine. It's a public access talk show, you can't screw it up."
"Are you— why me? I don't… I don't do talk shows. I manage events, I bring in recruits—"
"We all do that, though."
"Yeah, but I don't do talk shows. What if I flub, what if I make the Sisters look like a crowd of close-minded hosers? You're giving the chimp a gun."
"Come ooooooon, you'll do fine."
"And I can't even do that day, I have—"
"Damnit, sorry, I have to go? They need me out back." click
Theresa blinked, but stayed perfectly still otherwise, and the nascent "an interview that day" disappeared back down her throat.

"Hi, it's Theresa Petrucci. We're supposed to interview in 23… no, 22 days. Unfortunately, something… family emergency came up. I apologize, but I'll need to reschedule, if that's alright. Thank you, and again, I apologize for the inconvenience."
Theresa swallowed, and hung up.
Who was she kidding? She'd "worked" as an artist for six years. If she couldn't even keep a Saturday interview date, what business did she have expecting a callback?
Something tugged at her leggings.
Sharon mewled, climbing onto her lap and pooling herself into a loaf. She was bleeding, again, but as metal as that was, the Line of Sisters didn't need to be seen as a bunch of crazy freebleeders. But that was assuming Theresa had the energy to care.
Theresa sighed, gently petting Sharon's back. "What am I going to do with you, Sharon?"
Sharon yawned.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry I'm not paying attention to you. It's," Theresa chuckled. "You try being a human. Running through hoops just to… just to feed you and the ones you love."
Sharon shifted onto her back, and Theresa tentatively rubbed her belly. "No, it's not fair to you. Feels like everything I do to get closer pulls me away. I promise I'll get the job soon, though. We'll be able to get you better medicine, more visits to the vet, more… more toys, I'm sorry I don't play with you enough… can you keep a secret, Sharon?"
Sharon purred through her tummy rubs.
"Thanks. I just…" Theresa swallowed. "You're better than all of them. Better than the Mafia, the academics… better than every dirty little TRA in this stupid city." Sharon kneaded Theresa's shirt. "Why'd they make you the sickly one?"
Rubbing became scritching. "They're the sick ones. Hide it under performance. Rotten. Rudderless. Scum. That's what living a lie does to you. But you're too stupid to lie to me. You're just a kitty. The sweetest little kitty in the world. You deserve to be healthy. They should be bleeding. They should be stumbling over dirty newspaper, crying and howling and sick, like they are on the inside.
"But that's it, right?" Sharon purred. "That's not how it works. They made it a game. One long monkey in the middle. Dance and dance and dance until you drop. Playing the longest-"

Sharon yelped, and scurried off of Theresa.

Theresa blinked, and look down to her hands to find a small spot of blood.
… this was going to bite into her savings.

"20 days." Theresa wobbled in place. "20 days."
Nurse what's-her-face nodded, that disgusting sort of pseudo-sympathy, like she knew what Theresa was going through. "I know. It's not fair to you, and it's not fair to Sharon." She sighed, shuffling through her papers like she didn't know exactly what went wrong with Theresa's cat. "Hm. On the bright side, she's a little heavier than when you brought her in. Food going down?"
Theresa did something that was probably a nod. At the very least, Sharon hadn't been puking as much.
"Good, good. We'll need to do a few more treatments on Sharon, standard care. We'll call you when she's out, alright? I know the Jussila-Kahn across the street stocks some of the medicine. Shouldn't be too expensive, she's Masquerade-compliant."
The door behind the nurse was slightly ajar. There was so much medical equipment. Anyone would be envious.
But Theresa blinked, and left the examination room through the other door.

17 days to the Wombyn's March, and they had Theresa doing Scribe work.
It was boring and undignified. Sift through meeting notes, count attendance, do whatever bookkeeping was pawned off onto you by the treasurer. High School drama club, with more money at stake.
Theresa almost didn't notice that El had skipped the past two meetings.

"Hey El, it's Terry. Just checking in, see if everything's alright. You know, 16 days to the march and all. Feel free to call me if something's up."
Theresa hung up.

"Hey, uh, you doing alright? There's two weeks to the march and I haven't heard a thing. Here to talk if you need it."
Theresa hung up.

"…" What the hell was she doing? 12 days left and nothing but radio silence.
Theresa canceled the call.

10.

8.

6

5.

4.

Still 4.

Only 3.

3.

3.

3.

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3—

"Heya, Terry! Look, I know it's 2 days before the march, but I still really need you to fill in for me on BackTalk With Toby Clark. Don't worry! Clark's sympathetic to the cause, and I've drafted a list of talking points for you to go over. They should be expecting you by 9 AM, and be sure to wear something nice. Thank you!"
… Theresa turned her phone off.

Tomorrow.
The march was tomorrow. All this chaos, all this running around and falling over.
And the march was tomorrow.
Maybe it was the pressure of knowing that. Perhaps it was the very real fear that Theresa could botch this appearance, killing the march before it began. It could even have been the stiff, awkward suit she'd stuffed herself into for the sake of the show. Regardless, what should have been PR fluff no longer felt like that.
Theresa very nearly wiped her brow with her free hand. As good as bareface was for optics, television required a modicum of makeup. You weren't presentable, otherwise, and even the tiniest slip before the show could set the tabloids against you. Certainly, it was why Theresa had chosen a back alley to vape.
Her watch said 9:13. Thirty-seven minutes left to get a grip.
Traitorous anxiety. Everyone at the studio had already been so nice, and Toby Clark wasn't one of those wretched "deplatform" fanatics. And what did a moderate know about radical feminism? Theresa would steamroll this.
So why did she feel so damn nervous?
Maybe… maybe she could weaponize this? She's a dissident. Against the Kosher Nostra and Triads, those criminal monsters who killed each other in the streets, smashed storefronts, kidnapped, mutilated, and poisoned children. Theresa wasn't the monster in the situation, right? So… so loathe as she was to be the weak one, this could serve her. Right?
Damn it. Theresa had always been a fighter, a rebel, someone who took charge of destiny. Playing to the victim would be just as much improvising as finding a way not to look like a bulldog feminist.
No matter, she'll just have to go with the flow.
Extinguishing her e-cig and putting it back into her coat pocket, Theresa put on her best smile and strode back into the studio.
Any normal person would have been immediately placated by the stupid smiles of the personnel there. Weren't they here to help? Did the secretaries not wish for everything to go smoothly? Did the crew not want engaging, guest-friendly television? This wasn't Springer.
So Theresa nodded back, parried small talk with small talk, answered the crewmates' questions, let everything just glide over her as she plotted her next course of action. Sure, she hadn't seen head or tail of Toby Clark, but maybe it took a while to get ready. She had seventeen minutes to plant her feet and load her guns; by all logic, she'd be f—
And Theresa found herself stopping in the middle of a back-stage hall, caught in the glare of someone she did not recognize.
To her left, leaning against the wall and staring daggers into Theresa, was a woman, black, about Theresa's age from the looks of it. The woman wore a dress Theresa might have expected to see at a Sunday brunch, rather than a TV studio. It was hard to tell if she was actually short or just shorter than Theresa; maybe Theresa was thinking too hard about the distinction.
Theresa blinked, turning to face the woman. "… is something wrong?"
The woman opened her mouth, only to spit at Theresa's feet.
Ah.
Theresa looked over the "woman" again, just to confirm her suspicions. The face wasn't right; neither was the frame. Not even getting into the gaudiness of the dress: looks like someone didn't know how to dress himself properly.
Another man lashing out unprovoked. The talking points wrote themselves.
Theresa hummed, suppressing the first genuine smile of the day. "Male aggression gets you nowhere, steer."
And Theresa walked away.
***
Theresa almost didn't notice that she hadn't seen Clark at all this morning. Certainly, she didn't care.
If everything before the encounter had been a haze, everything since was a breeze. Already, Theresa had blocked out the talking points, taking care to build up to the inevitable sob story over the intern. She'd be a bastion of bravery, vulnerable enough to confide her troubles but strong enough to overcome them. That Clark would most likely kick that intern to the curb was icing on the cake.
All she had to do now was sit around the green room and wait to be called on. Clark would do his monologue, Theresa would look for something to attach to, and then, at the flick of a light, Theresa would make her entrance to the stage and show the world exactly who the Line of Sisters were.
That stupid intern had no idea what he'd done. Theresa almost wanted to thank him! Who would have thought some brutish pervert would save the Wombyn's March?
Theresa checked her watch, and counted down every joyous second to apotheosis.
The green room's television flicked on, to some outdated 3D graphic Theresa couldn't have been happier to see. Next came some generic MIDI jingle, echoed distantly from the studio. Theresa had never been so excited for the inevitable and obligatory announcement.

"Coming live from the BackDoor,"

She could taste it.

"it's BackTalk with Toby Clark!

Something was going right.

"Here to back-talk with our honored guest, Theresa Petrucci,"

It all came down to this.

"your host,"

How delicious.

"Katrina Edris!"

… what?
The crowd cheered like the announcer hadn't made a mistake, a raucous applause that nearly drowned its own broadcast out. Then, from behind the curtain came—
No. Absolutely not.
That was the intern.
The intern washed himself into the applause, bathed in it like a narcissistic baby bird, exulted in the glory of a grave mistake. What right did he have? How could they let this happen? What happened to Toby Clark? He must have done something, that little weasel, and—
"Welcome! Apologies to those of you expecting Mr. Clark, little Wulan's recital had to be rescheduled."
… that was a woman?
Theresa had to steady herself. That was… men didn't have voices like that. You could always tell. You could always tell. But you… you could always tell! Why did she let herself trip up like that? Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Katrina flashed a smile to the camera, like the barrel of a gun before a hostage. "How are we doing today? Maybe I spent too much time in the sound stage, but I'm seeing a lot of new faces in the audience."
Raucous cheering. What was happening?
Katrina went on with her monologue, but it was rain on the roof of a car. Flippant, do-nothing talk show jibes, to be bounced off the elephant in the room. Theresa had to improvise.
What was she going to do? The crux of her old piece was gone, dust in the wind of optics. She had to think, crawl through the talking points, the talking points, the talking points! All about the talking points! Confined to a beach and made to build a wall, bravo Caryn! Hope you have fun at the Wombyn's Gaggle, you inebriated louse!
A knock on the door. The green light was on. There was no time.
The walk to the edge of the stage passed in thoughtless eternity, an overwhelming fog that swallowed all sensation. And then, from the edge, Theresa saw Katrina, and burning clarity infested her once more.
"My next guest, funnily enough, is also an understudy." Was she grinning? Was she sneering? The tunnel vision wasn't enough. "Personally, I wouldn't have invited even the intended guest. But so go the laws of broadcasting."
The audience jeered at Katrina.
No. No, not at.
With.
"So," Theresa didn't need to see her grin; she could hear it. "Without further ado, let's give a warm, generous welcome to the "line of sisters"'s own Theresa Arianna Petrucci!"
The audience screamed. There was no way but forward.
This was going to hurt.
Theresa gulped, putting her best foot forward, forward, forward. The carpet felt shaky under her boots; her seat looked so far away. She shouldn't have turned to look at the audience.
Crowding the seats like peasants at a hanging was an audience Theresa had never seen, not in what little she watched of BackTalk. Where once were smug libfems and aging retirees teemed a gallery of threatening faces: bearded Hasidics with inflamed arteries; hooded women with eyes aflame; street robots with all-too-stiff skinpaint; red-clad figures that seemed to literally simmer; alt-rockers whose muscles imagined invisible bottles; clusters and clusters and clusters of the patriarchy's footsoldiers, here to rip Theresa's tongue from her dissident mouth.
And… and there was El. Sitting in the front. Eyeing Theresa like…
Theresa stumbled over her unseen seat, barely keeping herself off the floor while Katrina leered, daring her flee. For the sake of the march, that wouldn't be an option.
Theresa hoped and pleaded that the alternative was any better.
Katrina smiled. Sitting at her desk, she towered over Theresa. "Welcome, Ms. Petrucci. How are you doing?"
They're intimidating her into silence.
Theresa nodded. "Fine, fine. I don't… appreciate whatever was done to the regular audience, but I'm doing fine."
Katrina tilted her head. "And what was done to the audience?"
Theresa hoped she hadn't just licked her lips. "I mean… the audience isn't usually, uh…" She gestured to the audience, like one might at a snake rearing to bite. "… filled with the mafia."
"What an odd observation. What specifically makes you think they're mafia?"
"The… fact that… there's so many… just so many robots."
Booing.
Katrina sighed. It was the most honest thing she'd done all day. "Audience tickets are first come, first serve, and they can't be bought in bulk. If you're seeing 'so many robots', it's probably because 'so many robots' wanted to see the show. Really, Ms. Petrucci, you're fine."
Theresa shot another glance back at the audience. She didn't feel fine.
"Now," and Katrina made a show of straightening her papers out. "You're part of the "line of sisters", correct?"
That's Line of Sisters, capitalized and without quotation marks. "Yes, yes I am. We were—"
"Why did he platform you?"
Theresa blinked. "… what do you mean?"
Katrina chuckled darkly, shaking her head like Theresa had chewed up the curtains. "Maybe I'm digressing, but I can't understand why Clark would invite a hate group onto his show."
They're accusing her of rank bigotry.
Theresa grimaced. "We're not a hate group. We fight for the rights of all women."
"Interesting." Katrina leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand with an almost practiced ease. "You know, I've done quite a bit of digging leading up to now. In lieu of reading out your group's… sordid funding record, I'd like to give you a hypothetical. Consider it the formal opening question."
This was going bad.
Katrina straightened up, clearing her throat. "Recently, the Barnacle conducted a survey of LGBT Americans. Approximately .3 of respondants identified as some form of transgender or genderqueer; that's about 920,000 in total. Your organization's brands 920,000 people in America alone 'deluded perverts', and actively fights for their effective disenfranchisement. Is that—"
"If you're going to lie about the Line of Sisters, do it to someone else." It took all of Theresa's effort not to raise her voice. "The official position of the Line of Sisters, straight from a Big Sister herself, is that they're victims. They and every one of their defenders have been brainwashed by Big Pharma and billionaire elites into thinking that all their problems can be solved by, by self-mutiliation, poisoning, whatever. And, and they'll never get what they want, that's the tragedy, they'll just cut and—"
The audience screamed with palpable rage; possibly literally, how Theresa's body shook.
Again, Katrina cleared her throat. "As I was going to say, the Barnacle is an above-Veil news outlet. When Trip Through the Backdoor conducted the same survey, with the same methodology, across various American Free Ports, that number jumped to 10.7 percent. In the BackDoor alone, that number was 26.8 percent."
Theresa grit her teeth, steadying herself in her chair. "Impossible. I've walked these streets. I've seen the people. You can always tell."
Katrina blinked, then smiled. "Interesting you say that after calling me a 'steer' in the pre-show."
If not for the cameras, Theresa might have spat at Katrina's feet.
"Regardless," Katrina set her papers down. "It's generally thought that the BackDoor's demographics were influenced by its heavy Nälkän population, and particularly the Weilstedt."
"You're actually bringing up the mafia."
"Always a conspiracy with you. Have you considered you might just be wrong?" Katrina reached for something under her desk, and one of the floodlights descended from the rafters. "When I say 'Weilstedt', I mean the Judeo-Nälkän ethnic group, not any kind of syndicate."
So she was in their pocket.
Katrina continued. "Now, an important part of Weilstedt culture, and indeed, most Nälkän cultures, is the rejection of the gender binary. As I understand it, the first evidence of the male/female binary can be found in Daevite legal codes; as an aside, I understand the empire wasn't kind towards Judaism, either."
"Can't you be murdered for having anal sex in Judaism?"
Why was Katrina still smiling like that? "Now, many of the "line of sisters"'s art pieces target the Weilstedt specifically. Interestingly enough, despite their significant gender variance, most pieces portray them as a cabal of men. Men with… pretty particular appearances. So,"
Katrina turned to look directly into a camera. "What you are about to see is not endorsed or condoned by BackTalk with Toby Clark, nor BackDoor Public Access. It is presented purely as evidence of the Line of Sister's attitude towards vulnerable communities."
There was a click, and the floodlight began projecting something onto the curtain behind Theresa. The crowd was silent.
A violent chill blew through Theresa. She almost didn't turn around.
Projected onto the curtain was an art piece by Robin. It depicted a group of Weilstedt mobsters, overlain by a background of shadow, menacing a group of children in the foreground. It made sense at the time, to make the children blonde, and the Weilstedt…
They're making her out to be a Nazi.
"Now, what does this—"
"Are you serious?!"
Theresa nearly toppled the chair standing up as fast as she did, but the projector's glare nor the shadows off-stage could scare her into submission right now.
"This is a sham!" Theresa growled, turning back to the intern's desk. "Where's Toby Clark?! Where's your integrity?! Where in the broadcast code are you allowed to slander me and my organization?!"
That slimeball intern blinked, like she didn't know what she'd just done. "Ms. Petrucci, are you alr—"
A sudden thud cut her off as Theresa's fist found the surface of her desk. "Don't act like you don't know! First these, this sheer disrespect you've shown for me, your guest! Is this how you treat a guest? Is this that famous Toby Clark hospitality?"
And that bitch had the nerve to furrow her brow. "I… didn't invite you on? From the start, I'd been petitioning the network to drop—"
"But it's not enough for you to insult me, right? I have to be a Nazi!" Theresa spat upon Katrina's desk. "Is everyone who disagrees with you a Nazi?! Sure, my feminist philosophy goes perfectly with National Socialism! They loved women!"
Typical, ignoring Theresa's question in favor of wiping down her desk. "I mean, I didn't call you a nazi, but between that drawing and—"
"There it is again!" She couldn't face that lying rat anymore. Theresa stormed over to the front of the stage, and hoped every single mob-bankrolled goon caught her death glare. "Shame on you. All of you! Everyone roped into this, this hit piece! Every one of you spits on actual Holocaust survivors with your lies!"
The crowd booed. Let them boo.
"You think can silence me like that?! Who's intimidating the lone voice of dissent? Who's the real Nazi?" Theresa spat over the stage. "All of you make me sick. Every last one of you is an enabler, and if there were any justice in the world you'd all be—"

And that's when it hit her.

Theresa stopped. Covering her was something thick, wet, viscous. Paste-like. Seeping down her skin, into her clothes. Dripping from an errant piece of burst red rubber. Red. It caked her front, her right. Splattered like a spilt drink. Theresa sniffed.
Tomato paste.
Theresa barely noticed the grey blur in her tomato-stained peripheral, climbing onto the stage. Barely processed that feminine "Thanks for nothing, Anita Bryant!". Hardly took note of the security-shaped blurs that tackled it to the ground.
The crowd was screaming again, less in scorn, more in the manner of a wrathful storm. Jumping in their seats, frothing at the mouth, calling for a reckoning. It was just so far away.
El. There she was, getting out of her seat and making her way to the exits.
It'd been so long since she talked to El.
Theresa stumbled off of the stage, to reunite with El. She had to talk to El. Nothing else mattered. El was her student. El was her friend. El was a worthless traitor who couldn't cut back on the chocolate without the help of a memetic hazard. El was everything.
Something grabbed her arm, repeated its "oh no"s, cried condolence in a Hellen-like intonation. That didn't matter. Theresa yanked her arm away and continued forward; she had to talk to El.
El looked back, and hurried her egress. She had so much to learn.
The two of them emerged from the studio. El really thought she could get away with such stubby legs. Silly, silly, El.
Theresa took hold of El's arm. "Hi, El." She tilted her head. "Did you enjoy the show? I'm sorry it wasn't Caryn. She had business to attend to."
El said nothing; whimpered, maybe. She had so much to learn.
"Are you hungry, El? Am I making you hungry?" Theresa gaze drifted down to El's canvas bag. "You should eat. A growing girl like you needs every calorie she can get. My car's nearby; I can take you anywhere in the city that would have me. Wouldn't that be nice?"
Theresa didn't wait for an answer, dragging El along the street, as far as possible into that tomato-covered mist. When did BackDoor SoHo get so claustrophobic? Were its residents always as considerate as they were now, stepping out of Theresa's way? Was the artificial sun always so hot?
There. A sit-down pizzeria. Perfect.
Theresa threw the door open, made her way to the front desk. "Table for two, please."
Why did the receptionist look at her like that? "M-ma'am, are you—"
"I'm fine. Table for two, please."
The receptionist gulped, passed her two menus, cringed when Theresa smiled back. No matter. Theresa took the menus and found a nice, comfortable table. El would love it. Theresa's treat.
Theresa settled into her booth; after some encouragement, El did the same. She looked so nervous. Tried to hide her canvas bag.
Theresa tilted her head. "Did you enjoy the show? I'm sorry it wasn't Caryn. She had business to attend to."
El scratched at her head. "It was fine, I guess." A pause. "I'm sorry, Terry, I—"
"What do you have to apologize for? You stuck with me against the mob. Cheered me on when no one else would. Abandoned me for a month. Came to support me on live television." Theresa reached into her coat pocket for her e-cig, twirling it in her fingers. "What more could I ask of my favorite student?"
"I'm… Terry, I just… I'm sorry." Theresa stuck the e-cig in her mouth. "I had… there was college. And my broth— my sister. There just wasn't time. And I was afraid I'd… disappoint you, so—"
Theresa spat the e-cig in El's face, and El yelped. There was little more to say.
The waiter that approached their table looked just as much like a kicked puppy as everyone else. "Hello. Welcome to… welcome to Spicy Crust Pizza. Just a note, we don't allow—"
"I'll have a salad. Have you met my friend, El?" Theresa gestured to her friend, El. "It's her birthday. I'm sorry you had to catch her smoking, she's just very excited. I hope you can forgive her."
The waiter paused, mouth slightly agape, licking his lips before he next responded. "Th-thank you for not smoking. Will-"
"What's the meatiest pizza you have?"
"P-pardon?"
"What's the meatiest pizza you have?"
The waiter gulped. "That's, uh… if you mean the most meat? I… that'd be the D-dinosaur's Delight. Will you be—"
"El will have the Dinosaur's Delight, in the largest size available. She'll also have a chocolate shake, again in the largest size available." Theresa looked back to El, practically buried in the plush of her booth. "El's been starving herself for this meal. She should be proud to have earned a cheat day."
Theresa smiled, and El cringed further into her seat. "Don't be so uptight, El. It's your birthday. You deserve a day to yourself, where you get to eat whatever you want no matter what that stupid fucking magazine said about you."
"It's… it's not my—"
"You're lying to me again, El." Theresa steepled her fingers, elbows on the table. "You're lying to me again. Why? You can tell me anything, El. You can tell me why you haven't been to a single Line of Sisters meeting since last month. You can tell me why you haven't returned a single call. You can tell me why, when I ordered you to throw that magazine away, you not only lied to me, not only cut your favorite mentor out of your life, but kept it with you. Carried it around like a good luck charm. Like it'd ward me away.
"But," and Theresa reached over to pinch El's cheek. "I forgive you. I really do." El winced, but Theresa kept pinching. "And despite everything you put me through, I'll always be with you, El. We're all. We. Have!"
El yelped, swatting Theresa's fingers from her now bleeding cheek. She looked like she was about to cry, but what reason did she have to cry?
"Everything I do, El?" Theresa leaned in. "I do it for you. Not me, not Caryn, not anyone in the world but you, El. So if you've any compassion in your big, beautiful heart? You'll show me exactly what's been keeping us apart."
El paused, like she actually had to think about what to do next. Then, slowly, steadily, Ella "El" Romero reached into her bag, retrieving something unseen, and slowly, steadily passed it to Theresa under the table.
Just Girly Things Magazine.
This month's edition.
Theresa smiled, pulled out her wallet, left $50 on the table, and left the pizzeria. Then she made her way back to her car, powered on her GPS, set a course for Williamsport, and drove.
When Theresa looked in the rearview mirror, she saw the propane cannister in the backseat, and laughed until she could barely breathe.

Theresa knocked the door open with the propane cannister.
Everything had to go. The furniture had to be crushed. The wires had to be cut. The nightlights had to be smashed open. The electronics had to be destroyed. The mannequins had to be killed. KeeLee and Mrs. Schaeffer had to be taught a lesson.
Theresa picked up a dainty chair, smashing it against the wall until it was little more than torn wood. One of the back supports, a column of sturdy pastel wood, was reasonably intact. It'd have to do.
Picking up the support, Theresa swung for the nearest nightlight. The plastic bulb folded inward, but didn't shatter; but that was no matter. This house had far more important things in need of breaking.
The speakers clicked on, a dissonant drone like microphone feedback.
Theresa dropped to her knees, taking hold of the wires snaking the floor and pulling as hard as possible. Some of the speakers went silent; others droned on, on and on and on. Even so, if that was the best JGT could do then it wasn't enough.
The dining room. Theresa knocked the mannequin over and stomped on its face until it no longer looked like a face. It creaked and hummed and groaned, until it didn't.
As Theresa made her way into the kitchen, the droning increased, became a kind of electronic screech, like the house itself was screaming in pain. Let it scream, try to drown out the sound of Theresa smashing every bit of glassware she could find. She'd leave the house just as broken as it tried to leave her.
The fridge, she barred shut.
Theresa's head buzzed as she made her way into the living room. The speakers were getting too loud. When did it get so dark? When did it get so hot?
Theresa groped for wires, cables, anything that could have plugged or plugged into a speaker. They were loud. All-encompassing. Too loud. Stuck on the precipice between inhuman and uncomfortably human. So, so loud. How did they get this loud?
She almost didn't hear that squeaking, like plastic on plastic.
Theresa turned around. Every mannequin that had previously lounged around the furniture now stood up, twitching like old washing machines. She barely had time to dodge the first's lunge, and not enough time to dodge the second.
Theresa elbowed the mannequin in the stomach, but it didn't move. She kicked at the shins of the approaching third, but it got up again. Tried to get her fingers in the eyes of the fourth, but all she found was smooth plastic. Screamed for them to let her go, but she couldn't talk down a mannequin.
And besides, the speakers screamed back louder than Theresa ever could.
The mannequins forced her into kneeling, folding her torso over her shins, keeping her chin to the floor. Two hands attended to her eyelids, made her face the upended TV.
And then the TV turned on.
Pink. Waves of pink and pink, squares of pink and pink, innumerable patterns of pink on pink on pink. If the speakers screamed, such was their face, an ever-shifting collage of pink, a mosaic of color and light that hated Theresa on an impossibly personal level.
The speakers screeched, and a burst of static changed the scene.
"You think can silence me like that?!", screamed a Theresa that wasn't Theresa. It glared at the camera — at Theresa — with a face borne of melted paint and uncompromising hatred. "you make me sick." "you" "are" "an enabler, and if" "this" "is" "how" "a Big Sister" treat" "s" "me" "as" "a guest?" "the Line of Sisters" "'ll never get what" "it" "want" "s"
The speakers screeched, and a burst of static changed the scene.
Melty-faced monstrosities attended every sub-Veil news network Theresa could think of, and then some. Each screamed in indignation or fury or mirth or condescension or disappointment or disgust; beside them, windows, to Theresa, to the intern, to Robin's cartoon, back to Theresa.
The speakers screeched, and a burst of static changed the scene.
The audience from BackTalk looked back at Theresa. Their eyes were censored; cycling through the bars were lines from Theresa's resume.
The speakers screeched, and a burst of static changed the scene.
An apartment, so similar to the one Theresa lived in, sat in the distance. The door was open.
The speakers screeched, and a burst of static changed the scene.
Dogs, men, and infections mauled cats that looked like Sharon.
The speakers screeched, and a burst of static changed the scene.
The walls were pink now.
The speakers screeched, and a burst of static changed the scene.
So much pink.
The speakers screeched, and a burst of static changed the scene.
It's too loud.
The speakers screeched, and a burst of static changed the scene.
Make it stop.
The speakers screeched, and a burst of static changed the scene.
Make it stop.
The speakers screeched, and a burst of static changed the scene.
Make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop please make it stop make it stop—
Theresa hadn't noticed that the screeching had stopped until she was too hoarse to keep screaming, hadn't realized her teary eyes had been allowed to close until she opened them again.
On the television screen, standing in that familiar pastel bedroom, was Mrs. Schaeffer. She looked… Theresa didn't know what she thought Mrs. Schaeffer looked at her like. All she knew was that Mrs. Schaeffer was looking at her.
Mrs. Schaeffer sighed. "My apologies, Theresa. If I had known it would have come to this," She shook her head.
Theresa tried to reply, but all that came out was a weak sob.
"You deserve better, Theresa. Better than what Ms. Edris gave you. Better than the field you've been forced into. Better than what KeeLee deemed your punishment."
Slowly, gently, the mannequins pulled Theresa to her feet, leading her down the hall and towards the stairwell. At its base were two more mannequins, trailing thin wires from the second floor. Each took her into a gentle, two-person bridal carry, hoisting her up the stairs, down a hall, into a darkened bedroom.
The empty picture frames lit up with the image of Mrs. Schaeffer. "When I look at you, Theresa, I see a woman denied her potential by the ungrateful fools that surround her. Tomorrow, it would be my greatest pleasure to lend you whatever assistance you wish in the pursuit of your perfect self."
The mannequins laid Theresa into an impossibly comfortable bed, and laid beside her. Then, two more. Two more. More, and more, and more, until Theresa could do naught but lie still in bed.
"But for now, get some rest, Theresa."
And Theresa slept.

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Footnotes
1. Theresa rolled her eyes.