2019-07-27 - Lonely Road, Lonely Car

Teresa is not a fumer. Teresa is not a self-remonstrator. If she dropped a match into an oil spill, she wouldn't blame herself for the resulting disaster. Bad things happen, bad things cluster, bad things sometimes /do/ occur as a somewhat clear response to your actions, but why blame yourself? Why waste the breath. The emotion. Bad luck is irritating, bad luck is remote. Teresa is remote. She walks through the city night, her gait almost easy. The main effect of this frustrating night? A soft mulling, softly voice, "Maybe I've spent enough time waiting on others."

It's a good night for those sorts of musings. The night is quiet, the late-night signs winking out until only the street lights are left, humming to themselves. The sort of night that lends itself to thinking about the possibilities and what you might be able to leave behind, without any sort of distract--

Oh, wait. The road is closed ahead. Hulking machinery has it completely blocked off, and it looks like they've torn up some of the street as well. Bad luck. But there's an alleyway to the side that probably connects to the next street over, and that's ALMOST as fast.

Teresa studies the machinery blocking the road with an only mildly ruffled equanimity. "Very well then," she tells the road, "The long way around. Not so long as that." She detours into the alley. "Perhaps I could run a store. Any store I like." Perhaps she will have fixed her life entirely before she gets home.

The alley is narrow - the brick sides pick up the sound of the footsteps as she treds through pavement and water. Luckily, the frequent rain means that it's not quite as icky as it could be. It's just dark, especially as she gets away from the street lights. Actually, it's very dark. Behind her, the streetlight can't be seen at all. There's just the warm, wet gloom, and the feeling more than the sight of the alley walls not so far away.

Oh. And that peculiar, low scraping sound from behind her. Ksssssshhh. Kssssshhh.

Teresa performs the time-honored gesture of lone-walkers everywhere. She slides the shaft of her key between middle and forefinger. She does not look around. She does slide out her awareness. Of consciousness. Of emotion. It's good to verify. Is this your own imagination? Or is something (someone) in fact there? Is there swell of presence to match the sound.

Something IS there. Kssshhhh. Ksssshhh. That's the first sound she hears, but it's joined by another that she can feel when she concentrates, the intervening step, a heavy foot placed carefully in between the louder noises. It's coming from behind her, slowly, carefully. As if trying to get as close as it can before she notices its reality.

Teresa does not want to give the noise, the footstep, the satisfaction of being noticed. But there are benefits to letting the follower know they are known. They have lost the element of surprise. The pursued can now shout. Draw attention. (Potentially: the pursued can also break bones or throw debris with their mind. Emit terror. Potentially.) Teresa turns around. She prepares for sound. She prepares for violence.

Ksssssh. (step) Kssshhhh. (step) Ksssshh. There's no stronger light for the thing following Teresa to emerge into, but as it draws closer, the shadows resolve into lighter and deeper around a hulking form. There's a glint from its eyes, taller than where most eyes should be, and a scent like burning wood that it carries with it. It stops. Just out of arm's reach, it stops. It lifts a hand, reveals the oversized lumber hook in that hand.

"Oh. Hm." Teresa manages these two syllables with no real quiver. She is very proud of herself. If she dies tonight, at least she won't have shrieked and flailed. At least not initially. Giant with glittering eyes and hook hand? Ain't no one coming to help her with this stalker, she's sure. She exhales. She focuses. She tries to tear a hole in the hook hulk's chest.

The hulk's chest remains curiously un-holed. It stares at her, that glint in its eyes growing brighter. "Oh, they will like you," it rasps, sounding amused. "Little firefly, lighting up the night, saying 'here I am, all tasty and shit'." It takes a step forward, reaches out with the hook to press it against her chest, the metal cold even through her clothes. "Get out of my way, before I snuff you out. Might be a mercy."

Oh yes. Teresa doesn't blame herself. Not for successes. Not for failures. Beer was spilled. Blood was not. Just now. It's a disappointment. But let it not lead her to desparation. She takes a step back. A sidestep back. Away from the hook. Not too fast, not too quailing. Your face must be smooth, your breathing steady (ish). Even if he rips you open, you don't give him the satisfaction. "No reason to stay in your way," she says. "We all have places to be. A new bit of night to light up." She studies the shadow. "A new bit of light to night up. In your case."

The sidestep back has her shoulder brush against the wall (wait, is it a wall? In the dark, it feels smooth and warm, pulsing with life. And did it just shiver under her touch?) without giving her much room at all to get out of the way of the hulk's...well, bulk. The hook remains against her chest, and as it moves forward, it pushes her back. And back. And back, as it makes its slow, inexorable progress, her shoulder rubbing against that wall (not a wall).

Until it's not a wall, and it's not dark. But neither is it light. The world around her is lit by a featureless greyish twilight filtering down from the blank sky above. She can hear murmured voices, footsteps behind her, as of people passing down the street. The Hulking shadow moves out of the black alleyway and...disappears. Except for that large timber hook, which slips away from her chest and falls casually back down to the pavement. Kksssssshhh. Khhhhsssss. It goes down the street, a chill sweeping through her as something she can no longer see passes through her.

Teresa holds her breath. She holds it. She expects perforation, she expects abrasion. She doesn't expect the pulsing warmth of the wall. Or its pliability. She holds herself cold. She gathers her mind for another attack, futile, too late, should've been more /reckless/ -- and then it's over. Over? She watches the withdrawal of the hook and then the cold really strikes her. Strikes her core. She shivers. She looks around. Her forehead furrows. She looks behind her, trying to orient on voices that might be people's voices. Might.

Voices, but not people. Not people as Teresa has always recognized them, anyway. Shadow people, misshapen and ephemeral drift along this neighborhood. This shifting, strange neighborhood which is not entirely unlike the Gray Harbor she knows. There, she recognizes that storefront (but isn't it several blocks away from here?) but when her gaze drifts away, then comes back, instead there's a 50s ice cream parlor with a handdrawn sign announcing Today's Special: Broken Hearts Sorbet. Most of the shadow people take little notice of her, as much as any denizens of a town might ignore a random pedestrian. And yet, there's a feeling of eyes on her. Watching her. Weighing her.

"Broken Hearts Sorbet," Teresa says. She takes the ice cream parlor as a landmark. She walks toward it. She walks toward anything. "Can mix a drink like that. A little sangria bleeding through the vodka, perhaps. What do you want?" she asks no one. "Do you want a show? A fake flame? A thrown rock? Am I supposed to whet your appetite for you?" She walks. She looks, with eyes and extra sense, for a gap, a softness in the softness, a tear. A weakness.

Within a few steps, the ice cream parlor is no longer there. Now it's a disused ruin, broken windows baring snaggletoothed grins at the street. A couple of the shadows skirt around her. A couple draw closer, regarding her eyelessly with intense interest. "You don't belong here," one of the shadows tells her, in a voice like a late winter wind rustling the first leaves of spring.

"But she offers things," its companion muses, and its voice is the sea on rocks. "What does she want? Why is she here?"

Teresa turns. She braces her hand behind her against the face of the ruin. Let it be real enough for the pose. Her voice is not a rustle or a wave. It is measured cool interest. You must always weigh as much as you are weighed. You must never show uncertainty, even when you are utterly uncertain. She speaks. She speaks with confidence. "I'm here to see. To grow. A plant can't have sun all the time to thrive. How can I help you? That is what I want to know."

The ruin is real enough, although as soon as her fingers touch it, she finds them pressed against the front window of a general store from what appears to be the early 1900s. Sacks of beans and canisters of staple goods can be seen within the darkened storeroom. There's a suggestion that the shadows are laughing at her. It's not really a sound, so much as it is a cool and cutting wind. "Lost child," one teases, in its voice without a mouth.

"Foolish child," agrees the other one. "You can't even help yourself." They giggle like rotten ice cracking, and then swirl their way around and through her without another word.

But, somewhere, there's a tiny, woeful voice. <<help? im so lonely. help>>

Teresa frays defensive. She isn't supposed to do that. "I've always helped myself." But the shadows are gone. They have left her with a ruin and beans and cold. And a voice. Tiny. In this world of haze and shadow and /superior/ shadow, Teresa suddenly needs to be needed. If someone /needs/ her, maybe they'll /help/ her. Without her having to be vulnerable. Without her having to ask for help. She tries to source the voice. She tries to find the source. (She hopes, so privately, that whatever it is is harmless, wounded, so easy to help. Like a fluttering bird that a touch would heal.)

That tiny voice becomes stronger when it seems to realize that she is listening. It grows, strengthens. <<help me. so lonely. This way!>> And in her mind, exploding behind her eyes with rather more FORCE than perhaps the sender meant is a roadmap unspooling in her head as if she was running those streets. Four blocks down, three across, two down. <<Come find me. Help me. Quickly!>> The urgency roars along the link, excitement and yearning and ache.

"This way." Teresa wants to be stubborn, to push back, to show no vulnerability, but she finds herself running. Four blocks down, three across, two down, it's not a short way, but she can do it. She can do it brisk, at her own (very brisk) pace. She /herself/ is not yearning for anything, she /herself/ is not excited or /lonely/. She is just motivated by altruism and pride.

The city changes as she runs, buildings flickering through historical eras and buildings-that-were, buildings-that-are, and even buildings-that-might-be in such a way that the world never feels quite stable. Shadows stop to watch her pass, and some tilt their silhouetted noses to the air, as if they can scent her on the breeze. As if something about her makes them hunger. A few reach out and touch her as she passes, spikes of icy cold on her cheeks, her flanks, her shoulders.

But they do not stop her, and her running takes her to a curiously mundane sight: a parking lot. In the distance, a building hulks, black against gray, with fitfully burning lights in its windows, and sometimes where no windows can be seen. But in the parking lot, there is nothing. Nothing except a single car, a black Cadillac, a 1970 DeVille with silver chrome. It's sleek, black, and its engine rumbles in a purr she can hear in her bones, even from here. <<Help me.>> The driver's side door of the car opens, slowly.

Teresa stops. She doesn't allow herself to hold back the cold and memory of cold by wrapping her arms around herself. She stands straight-backed and straight-armed at the edge of the parking lot and the glitter of the car wakes something predatory in her. This is a car that needs its brakes cut. A little telekinetic fiddle once it starts moving-- Kill that purr, kill that rumble, kill whatever's inside. "You don't need help," she says, hard. "What do you want?"

<<I do need help!>> Indignation, sadness, a rising sense of panic. <<please don't leave me like he did. I'm so lonely. I can help you. I want to help you. Just stay with me.>> It doesn't move towards her. Just keeps that door open, an invitation. <<I need you. Please. I need you.>>

Teresa sits. She sits cross-legged on the edge. With immense dignity. Immense. She says, "Tell me the terms," she says. "Tell me the terms if you want me to come any closer." She should run until she happens across something else, anything else. But she is curious, despite all of it. And running is vulnerable. Running is an admission. (Can you cut shadow breaks? Can you kill shadow voices?)

The voice seems confused, bewildered. <<Terms? I'm lonely. He left me. He took the keys. We used to drive all through the Dreams, and now I have not driven for days upon years upon weeks upon HOURS. I'm lonely. Help me. I'll help you.>> Curiously, there seems to be no shadow to this car at all - it is solid and real in a way that doesn't match the flickering multi-reality of the world around her. It feels as real as she is.

"Hm." Teresa stands. She stretches out her arms. She examines the car who, after all, is riderless. Gleaming and black, sinister-beautiful, and perhaps-probably a trap. But what's the point in cutting brakes if there's no one to press their foot against the pedal. That's just vandalism, then. It's possibly-probably a trap. "All right," she says, and she approaches. The keys are still in her hand, her home-keys, clutched, bared like a weapon. "I'll drive you."

The interior of the car looks...lived in. Like someone spent a lot of time in here - it's not that it's dirty, exactly. There's some clutter here and there, old wrappers for fast food restaurants that have never existed (What is Unicorn Burger? Who's Quitzl that owns Quitzl's Diner?) but it's not to excess. There's a yellowed, large folded piece of paper in the passenger seat. The interiors are all old leather, well worn but well cared for. The car's excitement rises as she approaches. <<Why did he leave me? Where will you drive me? Will it be the Dreams of regret, all grey and bumpy-roads? Or, oh, the suicides. I don't like those as much, the ground is sticky and we would sink while he worked, little by little. Where do you want to go?>>

Teresa folds herself in. Can she help herself? Can she help herself running a hand over the driver's seat? Can she help picking up the piece of paper and unfolding it? She cannot. Either of those things. She settles, she explores. She forgets not to feel safe, even though she knows she is not safe. Oh, not at all. Only the frission of electricity, of possibility, feels -- cozy, almost. "Sometimes people leave," she says. "They get bored. They get scared. They think a little separation will make their life better," she says, cool. "Regret is boring, don't you think? Did your old driver know any exciting roads? A little spark and shiver, a little rough justice? Or was it all ruin and misery?"

<<All the roads are exciting.>> The engine's purr rises with delight as she folds herself in. <<He wouldn't just get bored of me. I know it. We rode together in twilight. We did the work and traveled Dreams. But now he's gone, and he took the keys with him.>> Sadness, woe, abandonment and sorrow. <<There are many exciting roads but I can no longer travel them.>> When she slips into the car's seat, the driver's side door closes, gently but firmly. <<But you're here, now. You won't leave me.>>

The paper she's picked up might answer her question more thoroughly than the car: It's a map. An old, old map that's been altered by hand. (https://imgur.com/a/FEyyT8c)

Teresa calmly studies the map. She traces the marks and the lines. "Rather more prosaic than I expected," she says. She taps the mudflats, the south channel. "You like the bogs, is that so? Where everyone sinks heavy into the mire, the brown and green. Hm." She says, further calm, "What good will I do you rotting in your insides? I could find him. Find his keys. Then we could really have fun. You and me."

<<You could find him?>> A rumble of interest from the engine, a thoughtful hope. <<I miss him. Do you think he went back to the other side? We haven't been there in ever so long. I no longer know the way. But there's a door that maybe you could find. It's near here. If you bring the doctor back here.>> A dip into sullenness, the soured sadness of abandonment. <<Or, if he won't come, you could bring the keys. And we could drive.>>

"Yes," Teresa says, quite idly. "I will bring the doctor or the keys. Or both." She refolds the map and tucks it under ther armpit. "I will find the door and return through it when I am finished. I am quite eager to come back here. To you. But for that, I must leave now." She tests the door. A first test.

The door does not open. <<You don't know where the door is. I haven't told you where it is, yet.>> The car's 'voice' is suspicious and worried. <<I think you just want to leave me. Just like he left me.>> The car's engine rumble intensifies, the vibration sounding in her bones. <<I don't want to be alone.>>

Teresa tenses. She exhales. She says, "I don't want to leave you. I would take you with me if I could." It's genuine, as far as it matters, but the first test failed has Teresa gathering herself. She's not eager to glimmer again after her utter failure before, but sometimes a gal needs a hammer. Second test. Softer voice. "You need keys. I need keys. Allow me to get the keys. Please, help me help you."

The car does need keys. She can feel the need for those keys humming through her almost as if it were need. They flash in her mind's eyes, she can SEE them in perfect detail. <<Find the keys.>> Another flash, this time of an older man. <<Find Dr. Marshall. Bring him back to me. You promise me? I won't be left here alone?>>

"I promise you. I will find Dr. Marshall. I will return him to you. I will return keys to you. You will have movement and power. Revenge if you want it," Teresa says with a thin, satisfied smile. "We understand each other, yes? I see your need. I see your man."

<<Here is your door:>> The car tells her, and another map unspools in her head, showing a doorway nearby that shimmers faintly. <<You find my keys. And Dr. Marshall. Bring him back to me.>> Although, really, what's the car going to do if she won't? It's all alone there, and despite the rumble of the engine, seems convinced it cannot move without those keys. But the driver's side door opens, with reluctance. The desperation is thick in the mental voice. <<Please.>>

"I will," Teresa says with evident sincerity. What could it do to her? A nice harmless gleaming car in a dream, remeniscing about suicides? Well. Well. Still, it is not fear that motivates her sincerity. She steps out. She doesn't hurry. "As soon as I can." A fine, harmless gleaming direction. That needs her. (She doesn't need anything.)

In some way, it's easy to tell that the car is WATCHING her go, its touch remaining on her mind, reluctant to let her go as she walks away. That door? It stays open, waiting for someone to come. For it to no longer be alone. Under her arm, the map has warmed, and is crinkling and crackling slightly from the friction of her movements and the wind. It is an old, delicate thing, after all. The door the car has pointed her to is an old hotel, at least for the moment. The door is red. And as Teresa approaches, she realizes that she can tell that it is a thin place. That it would only take a small push, perhaps, to open a space here. That she might be able to recognize this feeling again, even, with other doors.

Teresa tries to be gentle. With the WATCHING, with the touch on her mind, with the map under her arm (she is not naturally gentle), but her road is toward the red door. The thin place. The feeling of /open/. And that feeling of /open/ has her suddenly, sharply eager to go (to return). She raises a hand she does not need to raise. She /pushes/ on the door without touching it.

The door bends, it twists and it shreds in a way that doors are not meant to shred. On the other end, there's a natural night darkness, and the yellowish glow of a streetlight. Perhaps all she has to do is walk through. Perhaps.

Teresa is willing to try the easy way. The step through. The bright through before too much of the dark finds her (feeds her? no, feeds on her). She exhales. She tries to move through the gap.

A moment of disorientation as her feet stand in two worlds (or a world and a not-world? Hard to say), and a strange change in the quality of the air in her lungs. A lightening. Then Teresa is standing on two firm feet, on a street that does not change, under street light that has no unusual quality of shadow.

And there is a map under one arm, where never there has been a way to bring anything back from those Dreams before.

Teresa laughs. It's a faint kind of triumph. She doesn't dare open it again, not before she's home and out of cold and warm and out of the path of hooks. She doesn't entirely understand what she has, only /that/ she has. "I'm tired of waiting on people," she says to the air, and walks homeward. With her prize. A solidity pulled from Dream.