I used to have nightmares about Faerie. The Keepers, the Manor, the torturous way They transformed my body. It took years for Fletcher and Lyeorn to banish them, through a combination of magic, medicine, and talk therapy. Even so, they never went away entirely. Rather, it was a matter of degrees. I could go a week, then two weeks, then a month, then three months, then six months, until eventually they became irregularly occurrences. Once a year, perhaps, or once every year and a half.

The frequency decreased, and so did the intensity. I no longer found myself bombarded by the odor of plaster and wet grass, the sight of gray clouds sucking up all the light overhead, the cold blandness of porridge, the itch and prickle of calloused fingertips on my shoulders, or the insistent tick-tick-ticking of hammer and chisel against marble. Eventually, I could feel the volume being turned down, the color fading, my skin thickening against the mental incursions. The dreams became unpleasant, but tolerable, and I no longer woke up with cold sweats and shivers when I dreamt of Arcadia.

I would like to say that Fletcher and Lyeorn deserve all the credit for this, but that would be a lie. Some of it is the simple fact that I am older. I forget who it was, or when I heard it, but I once heard the words "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."* Although I do not subscribe to the overall system of belief that saying comes from, I do find it to hold true. I lost my family, and had to find my own way through the world. Night terrors would have been a liability, and so I found a way to bury the fear. The magic of makeup, and dressing up in a more feminine fashion. Medicine from a bottle, or the back alleys. Pillow talk between lovers, in that space between falling asleep and waking up, between two bodies in bed and waking up alone.

Things improved further when I moved to Sao Amador, and left behind all the reminders of all the tragedies that had beset me in RhyDin. I no long had to walk past or through the Marketplace, or the cemetery, or the old Raptis home. I was free from all the obligations of the Courts, and made my way up from retail associate to owner of my own dress boutique.

But, of course, RhyDin pulled me back in, as she must do for so many other expatriates. I let myself be smooth-talked into coming back into the city by an overly charismatic @#$hole of an elf who cut me loose in the midst of a major personal breakdown. I let myself be convinced that my fetch could not possibly be in Sao Amador anymore. I let money motivate me, more than friendship, even more than personal pride in my work. And I unleashed a new set of (figurative) nightmares into my life.

It has been nearly five years since I decided to come back, and even though I have spent large chunks of that time outside the city proper, both physically and mentally, it does not feel like RhyDin has left me the way it did when I lived in Sao Amador. It haunted me, and still haunts me, in a warped reflection of my dreams of The Lands. It is not that my senses are heightened here, no. It is the fact I suffer similar torments to my past bad dreams. Only now, my tormentors are the ones who should be protecting me, and should have protected the Raptis family. My fellow Stolen Ones hunt me down, night after night, down rain-slicked alleyways and crumbling brick roof tops, from Seaside to the Marketplace to New Haven, and every space in between. I run down the hallway of my apartment building, dimly lit in a way it never is, but I never reach my room, nor do I make it to the fire escape before I am cut down, shot in the heart, struck in the back of the head and beaten to a pulp. "Sic semper proditores,"** they whisper to me as they lower my body to the ground, into the ground, shoveling fistfuls of dirt into my face.

I still fear the Fae, but in a different way now. I fear Them the same way that I fear death. If the Gentry decide that They want me back in Arcadia, well, there is not much I can do to stop Them, so why worry about that? And besides, I have been given little indication that They are planning such an abduction. The threat from my former comrades in arms, though, is more immediate.

A little more than a year ago, I was banished, under pain of death, from RhyDin City. Three months ago, I returned in spite of my sentence. The fact of the matter is simple. Either they kill me, we find a way to peacefully coexist in this city, or they leave. Because despite everything I have suffered through here, one other fact remains. RhyDin is where my friends are, and I will be damned if I abandon them one more time.


*1 Corinthians 13:11
** "Thus always to traitors."

October 13, 2018
Black Magic Burger

One of the many skills I have developed over the years has been the ability to live through life-changing events. The Raptis family killing, multiple moves to and from RhyDin, coming out of a coma, being exiled? I have always found a way to live through it. It has not always been pretty, but in the grand scheme of things, I stayed alive. I am still alive. That used to be enough.

It isn't anymore. I know that some people would say that this return has been far less successful than previous ones I have made. I did not escape the Courts and become a model, I did not leave a pleasant beach town for the hustle and bustle and bright lights of RhyDin high fashion, and I did not even emerge from a coma to return to the status quo. No, this time, I came back to the city in pretty terrible shape. I came back without a job, a place to stay, or having said much of anything to my friends in the past year. Even now, I am still barely making ends meet, between a pair of waiting jobs at Delectable Craving Catering and Black Magic Burger. Mason took pity on me and gave me a chance with the former job, and then passed my name along to one of his former workers and proteges when she opened her own restaurant. I even lived with Mason and Eva for a time, and it was good for me. It gave me structure and an incentive not to fall back into the self-destructive habits that plagued me in Gruvebyen.

I also lived with Eden for a spell, and in that time I spent split between those two residences, I managed to rekindle those friendships. Through work, I planted the seeds for more friends. There is Per, another waiter at Black Magic Burger. His arms are covered in tattoos (and I am guessing he has other tattoos in places that are typically covered by our work uniforms) and a big, bushy beard. He took me under his wing when I was starting out at Black Magic Burger, and I appreciated that. I also met Grethe, who works as a hostess there. She is a little less friendly than Per, a little more sarcastic, but I feel like she has been warming up to me. It helps that we have a shared interest in make-up artistry. Finally, there is Max. I could not tell you the precise reason why we hit it off so well on our first night working together, but we did, and they asked me to be their roommate less than a month after I started. I am sure some of that was necessity (their lease ended rather abruptly) and some of it was financial (it is cheaper to rent a two-bedroom apartment than a one-bedroom), but they know plenty of people beside me. Perhaps they saw me as a kindred spirit of some sort, wearing make-up and nail polish with my work t-shirt and jeans. I mean this as no disrespect to Mason or Eva, but it is nice to room with someone closer to me in age, someone who feels more like a peer of mine and less like a cool aunt and uncle. And it is an even give-and-take: no charity, no obligation, just a genuine friendship born of a shared sense of style and mutual introversion.

Why do I mention these things? I want you know how strongly I feel for these people, and therefore how much it pissed me off when the Courts sent someone to attack me at work.

***

"You can't hide in there forever, Bailey!" Through the wooden closet door, I could hear him shout, his footsteps slamming against the ceramic tile. They grew closer and closer until they culminated in his body crashing against the door. The wood bulged, the lock strained, but my refuge held up. For the moment, anyways.

"I only have to hide until the morning, Royse!" I bluffed. I need an escape plan. Some sort of weapon. My choices, however, looked slim. A large mop and bucket, a plunger, a pantry cabinet filled with cleaning supplies, the weak light bulb barely throwing off enough light for me to see. I squeezed my left hand around the chef's toque currently serving as a makeshift bandage for my slashed palm. Shutting my eyes, I tried to picture the tell-tale drips of blood, from the sink where Royse had sneak-attacked me, to the service area, doubling back deeper into the kitchen towards the refrigerator, freezer, and my current prison, the closet. As soon as I had felt the knife carve into my hand, I had tried firing off a blinding blast of magical energy, only to find the spell fizzling out on my fingertips as I stumbled backwards. Royse had planned this well. He landed himself a job here just a week ago, found a night when we closed up the restaurant together, convinced me to help him with kitchen break-down, wore a magic nullifying necklace or ring of some sort, and nearly stabbed me in the back while I was putting dishes away. It was dumb luck that I turned to face him as he brought the knife down, and even then, I only partially dodged the blow. The blood on my clothes and throughout the kitchen served as proof of that.

"I'll wait until hell freezes over. You're going to pay for what you did!"

"Get in line," I said, trying to sound bored. Instead, my voice squeaked, and I winced. Despite that, I tried out some bravado. "The Sandman did not tell you I killed three of his men before? What chance do you have? You should probably go and get reinforcements. Do not worry, I will be right here when you get back."

"No! You're mine and mine alone!" The door rattled again; that lock was not going to hold up too much longer.

"What did he promise you? Money? Some sort of title? From what little I know about the Courts these days, there is precious little of value left. You can just walk away, like I did. Leave the city, and you can be assured of a peaceful life." Rather than a spoken reply, I heard laughing from outside. "What is funny?"

"You don't remember me, do you?"

"Should I?"

Royse laughed again, higher-pitched and strangled. "You killed my brother, you killed Cooke, you nearly killed me, you burnt down the diner, and you don't remember me?"

"Royse, I did not do those things."

"But your rebels did!" His fist pounded the door, and I scurried deeper into the closet, searching desperately for something, anything, that might form a makeshift weapon. "They knew Cooke was a source of intelligence, and they killed him! Him and Rowan..."

"Royse, I am sorry, but I was not one of those rebels." I pawed over cases of Bar Keepers Friend, Pine Sol, industrial strength bleach, and bug spray. Wait. Aerosol. I can use this. I ripped the plastic off of the top of the case and pulled out a can. "The Sandman lied to you. I did defend myself against the Sandman, I did defend myself against Cooke and his men a couple of years ago, but I swear upon the names of Fletcher, Kaskia, Lyeorn, and Boris that I did not kill Cooke, and I did not kill your brother." Even as I spoke, I tip-toed over to the door, unlocking it as quietly as I could. I took a few steps back, my finger on the spray can trigger, blood dripping down my other hand onto the stone. I steadied my body like a statue and waited.

"Lies!" Royse's shoulder hit the door. As it swung open wildly, one of the hinges popped loose, tripping him up and sending him staggering into the room. I did not allow him a chance to recover. I pressed down on the trigger, shooting the pesticide right into his eyes. He screamed, dropping the knife and clawing at his face. "Kill you!" he gritted out, but I was already hip-checking him into the mop and dashing towards the island. The knife clattered and scraped against the floor as he accidentally kicked it in his fumbling search. While Royse was recovering, I grabbed a wok from the rack, then rushed over towards him and swung my makeshift weapon as hard as I could at his skull. He grunted, dropped the knife he had finally found a grip on, but did not go down. I lined up a second shot, slower, more deliberate. *Crack*! He fell in a heap.

The wok sizzled like a cymbal when I dropped it. I hunched over, heaving and sucking in deep breathes. Eventually, I caught my breath, as my flight-or-flight instincts were replaced by the searing pain in my palm. With the fog of war gone, I saw Royse as he must have actually appeared: a tall man with deer horns just above his eyebrows, his dark brown hair now mottled with blood. My rage bubbled up and boiled over.

"Stupid..#$%!..." I unleashed a stream of curses as I dragged him from the closet to the walk-in refrigerator. The antiseptic smell of the cleaned-up kitchen was now replaced by a medley of ground beef, lettuce, green peppers, and cheddar. I propped Royse up against a rack, and punched him in the face. Again and again and again and again and again.

"Stay. Away. From. My. Friends." The message was likely lost on an unconscious man, but it made me feel a hell of a lot better growling it out. I had my fist cocked to resume the beating when the room started to spin. Somehow I managed to drag myself out of the refrigerator, through the kitchen, and behind the bar, where the house phone was located. Each button press left red smears on the numbers as I dialed our sous chef.

"Indrian...I need you to come in, and I need you to call the guard...Royse attacked me...Why? How the hell should I know? How am I?" I looked at my wound, felt a wave of dizziness wash over me, and squeezed my hand as hard as I could. I yelped as my flesh turned to marble, neatly preserving the gash under layers of rock. "I'm okay. Really. Just...come in, please? The kitchen is a #$@! mess, I'm sorry."

I shoved the phone back into its receiver and, with the assistance of the bar rail, hauled myself to my feet. The beer refrigerator door creaked as I opened it and retrieved two bottles of Silver Mark. I cracked one open, took a long sip and smashed the other one against a stool until the bottom was all jagged edges and dripping beer. Hopefully Indrian would get here before I had to use this.

November 3, 2018

There is a checklist I go through each and every time I wake up in an unfamiliar place. The fact that I have such a checklist should say a lot about my propensity for putting myself in these situations. The fact that I was going through the checklist at this moment says something about how intoxicated I got last night at the rave.

Is there someone sleeping next to me? I turned my head to either side, even though it felt like there were weights bouncing around in my brain, and looked. No. Good. All right, next question.

Am I wearing all of my clothes? My run of luck ended here. All I was wearing, underneath a rough gray wool blanket stained with red paint, were my tights. At some point, either I had taken off my boots and dress, or someone removed them off for me. The blue paint daubed on my face, neck, chest, and arms had been joined by a rather primitive looking brown door on an orange backdrop. It did not quite square with my answer for question number one, but it also would not have been the first time someone left me alone after an evening together. I decided not to linger on that thought any further. Massaging my throbbing forehead with my fingers, I moved on to the third question.

Where am I? The lack of support on my back made it clear I was sleeping on the ground. I touched it tentatively. My fingertips found a cool, slightly damp surface. I rolled over, groaning, to get a closer look. Faded green-and-white tiles, coated in a liberal dusting of plaster debris and God knows what else, greeted me. A hint of mildew and must hung in the stale air. I dipped my face into the crook of my elbow and coughed to keep from retching. Then, I lifted my eyes.

I appeared to be inside of a giant warehouse or factory, far larger than any such structure I had ever seen or been in in the city. This building's best days clearly resided in the distant past. All the drywall and finishing had been ripped from the walls, leaving just the wooden frame and concrete. Where windows once sat, jagged shards discouraged urban explorers from climbing in, allowing sunshine and long thorny branches to penetrate the interior. Dark puddles of water glittered nearby with the remnants of broken glass. Deeper inside, spray paint covered nearly every inch of exposed surface inside. Much of that graffiti consisted of crudely drawn words and figures, but some of it happened to be quite stunning: a green-and-red dragon spitting out what appeared to be acid, a monarch butterfly sitting on a pink bubble, an abstract shape whose tentacles seemed to dart out in all directions in a neon riot. A little ways down, the floor had collapsed in on itself, proof of time and decay's decisive victory. A black pit divided the halves of this story. Unless one could fly or leap great distances, they would not be crossing over to the other side. Sadly for my curiosity, I did not possess those skills.
A rattling noise caught my attention, followed by a hissing sound, like compressed air escaping from a can. I followed it through an archway, down a hallway, and into another abandoned chamber of this building. A humanoid figure stood by a wall filled with elaborately designed nicknames written in spray paint. ARTemiz. Ragnar0kk. WyrdBern. On a patch of empty concrete, this artist put the finishing touches on his tag in purple: B-BO1.

"Welcome." The word came out filtered and muffled, as if spoken through some obstruction. "You like what I've done?" The figure turned to face me, and I saw why that was the case. A respirator mask covered the bottom half of their face, while thick shaded goggles kept their eyes from view. Between that and the formlessness of their gray hooded sweatshirt (hood over their head, of course) and black-and-white striped track pants, it was hard to tell their gender from appearances. Although assuming what they had just painted on the wall, I could probably wager a guess. Still...

"Hello. I do, although I must confess that that is the least of my current concerns. Is that your name?" I pointed at the freshly written signature, the letters and number(s?) splashed and swirling on the wall.

"A name." A throaty chuckle emanated from behind the mask. "You're wondering 'Where am I?', aren't you." The intonation almost approached that of a query even as it zigged up and down in pitch.

"I have an inkling." I cast a glance at the dark branches dripping water on the ground, tasted the ozone in the air. Not ozone, I corrected myself. Glamour. "I am in the Hedge. I must have sent myself here after the rave last night." I paused. "Assuming time is still flowing the same here as it is there."

"Very good." Sarcasm? I shook my head, unable to tell through the clicks and hisses. "And do you know who I am? What I am?"

"Bee-Bee-Oh-One?"

"B-boy. Or b-boy one."

"Does that mean you prefer he/him pronouns?"

"Sure." I thought I saw his shoulders shrug through the sweatshirt, but it might have been a trick of the morning light. "That's fine. A bit simple, but fine."

"Well, if that is not what you would like to be called-"

Laughter seeped out of the respirator. "Strange. You wake up partially undressed, in a place that's not your home, covered up and painted on, and you're concerned about pronouns." Again, his voice straddled the edge of asking and not asking.

It was my turn to shrug. "Assuming you are Fae, it is always...prudent to be polite and not offend." I narrowed my eyes. "Did I sleep with you?"

"In what way?"

"The, ha, biblical one." He stood there in silence as I waited for an answer. Staring at me, I could only assume. "Sexual intercourse," I added, hoping he knew enough of Common to know those words.

He doubled over, slapping his knee and wheezing. "Please. As if I'd sleep with you. I just made sure your clothes stayed clean - it's hanging up somewhere..." He trailed off as he straightened up, then waved at nothing in particular. "...over there. I gave you a blanket, and a way out." Red mitten-clad fingers pointed at my midsection and the painted door now adorning it. "But I think you're missing an important question."

"Why."

"Yes!" He clapped a hand against the can, causing the contents to clatter around inside. "Why here? 'Why me?' Why me. Some people would say it's random. Chance. A coin-flip. But we know better, don't we." His voice dropped to a whisper as he leaned in closer to me. "It's the Wyrd."

"Fate?"

"If you must be so crass. 'Fate.' He stepped back, making a spitting noise, though no saliva escaped his mouth. "You're here for a reason, I'm here for a reason, and I'm going to tell you why."

I folded my arms across my chest, but nodded for him to continue.

"Because I know what you want, and I know how you can get it."

"What would that be?"

"You want to become Fae."

November 26, 2018

The bar was gone.

With the advent of the holiday season, I started feeling nostalgia for some of my past haunts. It did not surprise me to find that many of the clubs I used to dance and drink at were gone -- warehouses and factories rented out on the weekends are not what anyone would call stable, permanent homes for businesses. Sometimes, the name and theme of the club would change -- Purgatory had changed from Hi-NRG dance to hip-hop to gothic industrial in just three years. Sometimes, the neighborhood changed. RhyDin was gentrifying, and once-worthless industrial land butting up against run-down apartments became considerably more valuable when those apartments were merged together into fewer, larger condominiums. Either the building got knocked down in favor of something shinier and glassier and cleaner, or they buffed out the rough edges, replaced the windows, knocked out the walls, exposed the pipes and ducts in ceiling to sell new residents on factory-chic.

Sometimes, though, businesses just disappeared. And not in the ways I previously mentioned, or even the more prosaic "Out of Business" papers plastered in the window, soon to be followed by "For Rent" signs. Sometimes, the buildings just vanished. Literally. An ornately designed brick church, with two tall towers, a portico with four round columns, and a gigantic copper crucifix at the top, could wink out of existence one day, replaced by an ordinary square mixed-use building. Victorian style houses might be replaced with bungalows, and then those bungalows might turn into split-levels.The city is always changing, whether the method be mundane or magical.

Still, it did not make it hurt any less when I went to the address of Český Domov and found a vacant lot. To the left, a four story building sat. The top three floors were dark brown, with tall windows, fire escapes, and a patch of ivy struggling to climb from the top floor to the roof. The first floor had a pair of stores: a barber shop that appeared closed for the day, and a convenience store that promised cold beer and hot coffee. On the other side of the empty lot sat a one-story gray ranch house. A sidewalk snaked from the wrought iron fence at the front of the property, branching off between the front door and towards a wooden barrier beside the house. In lieu of grass, the homeowner laid down artificial turf and plotted out a small rock garden

I knew it was futile, but I looked around the street for somebody, anybody, who might know what happened to my favorite beer hall. It was late, though, and the handful of people I saw walking through had that fast walk and dead-ahead stare that indicated they were not the chatty type. I sighed and ducked into the bodega.

The short ceiling, narrow aisles, and shelves packed to the rafters with all manner of food and beverage combined to make the shop feel both cozy and claustrophobic. Near the front counter, a tortoiseshell cat slept by the cash register, her lazy tail flopping against the drawer in near-regular intervals. A red-skinned tiefling with long straight horns springing from his temples was kneeling and stocking packs of cigarettes. I left them both alone momentarily, stepping over a twenty pound bag of rice on my way to the back of the store, where the refrigerators and freezers were located.

I found the beer cooler and traced my fingers against the glass. Silver Mark. Badsider. Baranduin. As tempting as it was to fall back on the old tried and true brews, my heart needed something to remind me of what I had lost.

I carried a six-pack of green bottles with the world "PILSNER" embossed on silvery foil. My free hand patted the snoozing cat as I set the beer down with a chorus of clinks. The tiefling looked back over his shoulder then and stood.

"Anything else?"

"A pack of Red Cowboys, please?" He nodded and twisted back around, retrieving a pack of cigarettes with a desert background and the crimson silhouette of a man on horseback. I handed over some silvers, hoisting the six-pack up above my head in a makeshift toast/salute, and exited the shop.

I took a few steps toward the empty lot and sat down in front of it. The beer rested besides me, as I took out a cigarette and lit it. After a few drags, I opened two bottles of beer. I took a long swig from the first one, then tipped it so the liquid within splashed onto the asphalt. I let it flow and thought of everyone I knew who had died. My parents. Fletcher. Kass. Lyeorn. Boris. Cooke. My fetch. Lirssa. The names kept coming and coming, until the bottle emptied out. I splashed a little more liquid out from the second bottle, then took a small sip of my own. I wasn't going anywhere for awhile.