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Bonfire Morning by Erin Tyler Twenty minutes later, I heard a knock at my door. Finding The Mistress' supplies was easy, and I had them all ready to go within 10 minutes. However, I was sure she would appreciate it if I gave her a little more time to sleep off her hangover, and I wanted to see if I could make it to the hospital anyway. I was still procrastinating, though, and wondering if I could make an effective weapon that was more than just a steel pipe and a piece of glass. The knock prompted me to stand up. "Who's there?!" I called out. That felt strange: here I was, alone in the middle of a post-apocalyptic ruin, and someone had the courtesy to knock. "...'S me," I heard outside. "...Gary?" "Yeah." I opened the door a crack. He was mulling right outside. "What do you want?" "Uhh..." He looked behind himself. "...I'm usually shadowing Dad around this time." "So go shadow him, then." "I really think he wants to be alone right now." He scratched the top of his head. His hair was filthy; he looked like he might have lice. "He's back there chopping wood and cursing up a storm." I looked at his face -- he was anxious. "Are you thinking it's better not to disturb the angry man with the axe?" "Yeah," he said, nodding. "So go home, then. Who's watching your sisters?" "A neighbor, right now." He stopped scratching his head, but kept his hand on top. "Uhh... Nat-Natsuko... I'm, uhhh..." He paused and bit his lip. "Yes?" "I'm... sorry we burned you in effete." "Effigy." "Yeah, that. Sorry we burned you in effigy." I sighed, and opened the door all the way. "Can you say you speak for the whole town?" He winced. "I didn't think so. So I'm sorry for thinking you and your dad could." I paused. "That's why your dad got voted out, isn't it? He said something about it." "Yeah... so I heard. He made me skip the burning last night to punish me for the theater thing yesterday." He looked at me quizzically. "I smell like toilets. Can't you tell?" "No. I don't have a sense of smell." I leaned against the doorframe. "And I am the biggest dumbass in the world." "'S all right. Dad tries to, uh... to let everyone have their own opinion, do their own thing, but, uhh..." He paused and tried to think of what to say. "It can come back and bite him in the ass?" I offered. "Yeah! Big time." He stared at the ground and mulled. "So can I shadow you today?" "-Bwuh?" "I was thinking about it last night, and... some of the stuff you had yesterday really was cool." He peeked a little past me and saw my clumsy art-robot. His eyes goggled. "Whoa... huh!" He blinked and shook his head to regain his composure. "Uh! Anyway, I was thinking that... maybe... if I follow you around some, I could..." He trailed off there. His shoulders slowly raised. "I dunno. Understand... better?" "What do you mean?" "I mean, uh..." He rubbed his face. He wasn't able to muster the same forcefulness as his father, but when he wasn't trying to fake it, there was a thoughtfulness there that the older Carson didn't quite have. "Get to know... things... better. See the way you see stuff." He sighed, and his shoulders fell. "Does that make any sense?" "Actually, yeah, it kind of does. And I appreciate it, Gary. I really do." He smiled a little. "Okay! But! Uh..." He looked up at Sky Tower. "I don't wanna go up there." "It's okay. I probably have a few hours to kill before I need to go back up there." I looked behind myself at my small pile, and thought about what I had to do. "Actually, Gary, it might not be such a good idea for you to shadow me right now. I have something I need to do." "...Oh! Okay, well, I don't wanna get involved in The Mistress' business-" "-No, for myself. There's this place northwest of us called Massachusetts General Hospital, and I need to go there to check something out." "The old hospital? Right before the bridge?" I froze. Bad idea, I thought. This is a bad idea. "...So I've heard." He smiled. "Yeah! I know where that is! A bunch of old buildings right there by the river, real creepy place. Me 'n my friends used to go up there and dare each other to go inside." "Okay, then. So... it's safe to walk up there? At this time of day?" "As safe as anywhere else around here. But if you're asking about crooks 'n stuff, then they usually come up from the south. They'll head further northeast, but they don't go near the river very much, which is where you're going." "All right." I quickly stepped out of the storeroom and locked the door behind me. I knew what Gary was about to ask me, and I wanted to be gone by the time he thought to ask me. I was too late: "Do you want me to come with you?" I sighed. "I can't ask you to do that, Gary. You're a kid." "You're practically a kid yourself!" "Believe it or not, I'm older than you." I tried to get away. "I'm armed! What've you got?!" I froze. "Suppose there is some guy up there that gives you grief! What'll you do then without me?" I slowly turned. "Alan is already pissed at me." "He already knows I've been up there. Besides, if he gets pissed at anyone, it'll be me for not cleaning toilets." He scrunched his face. "I freakin' hate cleaning toilets!" There was no way around it: I had to bring Gary along. Safe roads or not, the kid could protect me. "We don't attack anyone," I clarified to him just before we left Mariel's. "We only defend." He nodded. "That's the first thing Dad taught me." The kid isn't so stupid after all, I thought before remembering that I had seen him go on the offensive. Twice. Yeah, alright, he's pretty stupid. He led the way as we rounded Mariel's and turned left at the next intersection. We heard loud grunting and chopping noises as we snuck past the pharmacy -- Alan was going ape-shit on those trees -- as we kept our eyes peeled for cougars. I thought I saw a tail lolling about in the building next to the pharmacy, but it didn't pull back or start pursuing us. "They probably don't need to eat again right now," Gary whispered back to me. "...Probably." He was meat and I wasn't, but I said nothing. We took a right at the next burnt-out stoplight and headed north down a one-way road bordered by the high walls that were all that was left of a series of tall buildings. It felt like walking into a concrete canyon, with wind gusting through in irregular intervals. Gary bundled up in his coat and jammed a knit cap on top of his head, but didn't complain. The road emerged onto a four-lane boulevard with an overgrown median. It was the most open space I had seen in the city outside Parkside. The whole scene was eerie: there weren't that many cars around. There were some rusted-out heaps parked in spots along the side of the boulevard, but it looked like damn near everyone had just got up and driven away. The buildings looked to be in varying conditions of decay: some structures -- mostly the smaller, more modern stores on the north side of the street, to our right -- had been long abandoned, burnt up, broken apart, and left to collapse and rot; others looked like they had been abandoned more recently, such as a few of the townhouses and taverns to our left, and aside from a need for a few new windows and a good scrubbing, they could be re-inhabited today. Like the roads to the south, the boulevard was leaf-littered and untrodden, save for a few animals. I felt eyes on us once or twice. "Do you see anyone?" I muttered to Gary. "No," he muttered back. "Dad always tells me to keep my head moving and use my peripheral vision. Try to see them before they see you." He looked up at the fourth story of one of the buildings to our right. I followed his gaze and nearly felt my (imagined) heart stop -- there was someone watching us from up there, out of one of the windows. The person quickly ducked out of sight within two seconds of me spotting him (or her -- I couldn't tell). "Most folks won't start anything with you most of the time." I noticed that his hand was resting on his hip, just above the grip of his gun. "Most folks," he repeated. "And only most of the time." "Yeah..." His head turned to the left, but it seemed like he wasn't ignoring the fourth-story person completely. "Let's keep going. We're almost there." Ahead of us was a jumbled mass of roadways, and beyond that a bridge over the river. Before that and to the right was a complex of nondescript red brick buildings with small, evenly-spaced dark windows. Few trees grew around the buildings, which made me nervous. The wind picked up as we got closer to the structures. Even without a sense of touch, I somehow felt cold, very cold. I had a foreboding sense of deja-vu from the place; I had been there before, but of course, I couldn't remember when. Centuries ago, most likely. Or maybe more recently than that. "Are you okay?" When I wasn't paying attention, Gary had turned his attention to me. I realized that my arms were crossed, and I was shivering. "I thought you couldn't feel stuff." "Yeah, I can't. This is, just..." I shook my head. "I dunno." I took a deep breath and walked toward the nearest set of open doors. As I got closer to the hospital, I got closer to the river. I could see a concrete wall separating the road from the water, with little success. The river was higher than the road, and the water lapped over the edge, flooding the lower parts of the roadway. I hopped onto a lamp post and shimmied up. "What're you doing?" Gary asked. "Someone did some heavy engineering on this side of the river," I replied. "I want to see-" ...Oh, my goodness. What a sight it was. The Sea Witch of Norfolk had told me that without public funding for education and research, there were no effective institutions to monitor and mitigate the effects of climate change. That was obvious to me up there on that lamp post. Everything north and west of our little peninsula, on the other side of the river, was a floodplain. Parkland next to the river was a muddy mess; water pooled freely in the roads, and invaded homes and businesses. Someone, some... group, maybe the Army Corps of Engineers, had installed levees along the river around this central area of the city. Nobody was manning the levees, however. Nobody was fixing them. The river was relentlessly pushing and wearing away the barrier, and as sure as the sun rises in the morning, it would eventually win. I had noticed that we were heading downhill as we made our way closer to the river, which meant that Parkside was safe from the inevitable flood (probably, or just maybe). Within just a few years, however, the area Gary and I were standing on now would become part of the river, unless someone reinforced those levees. Damn it, I thought, one panic situation at a time! I sighed and slid down the pole. "We fucked up, Gary," I croaked. "What?! What'd we do?!" "Not you. Me and..." I rubbed my eyes. "...You know what? Don't worry about it. It's too late anyway." "Wh-" Gary looked up the road, toward the bridge. "Is something coming for us?" "Something already came for us, and it got us." He blinked. "I don't understand." "Ohhh..." I gave him a light pat on the shoulder. "Don't worry about it. Auntie Natsuko is just pining for the good old days. C'mon." I waved him toward the hospital. He hesitated. "How old are you?" The inside of the hospital was dark and quiet. Deeper into the building, I saw lights that looked natural, like they were streaming in through windows; much of the interior, however, was cloaked in shadow. I kept my ears open, listening for any footsteps or other noises that could signify something was alive in there, but I heard nothing. Gary and I delayed our journey in the lobby as we tried to figure out our next move. "Did you bring any lights?" Gary asked. Crap, I thought. "No." He patted his pockets. "I think I might have some matches somewhere... Just, uh..." He felt inside some pockets, then some others. "Hmm..." Wait, I thought, I have a light. Except... "Hey, Gary, I... have a light, but, uhhh... you have to promise me you won't freak out." He looked up from his pockets. "Whuh? Why would I freak out?" "Well, because..." I weaved my fingers together. "I told you I'm a person, but... I have this thing I can do, and it's one of those... not- so-human things." He looked concerned. "I won't hurt you, or myself, or anyone else, I swear. It's just... it's weird enough to startle you." He still looked concerned. "Look, could you just promise you won't pull a Junior and shoot me?!" I looked at his gun. "...Okay, sure." "...All right." I took a deep, fake, yet relaxing breath and said, out loud, "Flashlight." The lights behind my optical sensors blinked on. Gary's jaw dropped. "Whaaaaa!" he gaped. I shone my eyes on the ground so I wouldn't blind him, but he was already dazzled. He bent down and looked at them. "Fucking cool!!" he yelled. "I know, right?!" I replied. "Oh, I gotta get me somma those." "Aw, but you have to be a robot." He grunted in disappointment. I looked at the floor and saw, in the dust and dirt covering it, tracks leading down the hall, and a single pair of boot prints next to it. "Look, down there. Those look like they might have been left by one of The Mistress' robots." "Is she here?!" "No, she's back at the tower. Look at them -- they've been here a long time." Gary walked up to the entrance to the hall and looked down. "They go to the left, there," he said, pointing down into the corridors. "Into some of those little rooms down there." We followed the tracks, which were mostly worn away. They led past a set of intact but filthy windows that looked out into a jungle-like courtyard. After that, the tracks turned left into a cluster of administrative offices. As soon as I looked into the office, I saw a hint as to what The Mistress had been doing there. "There," I said, pointing to the top of a desk close to the door. A desktop PC tower had been dusted off and laid on its side, then part of its cover had been taken off. "I bet The Mistress did that." "Why?" Gary asked, before he started poking around the nearby offices to ensure we were alone. "She was scavenging," I replied. "You remember her shop? Everything she's got in there are parts she pulled from all the old machines in these ruins." I followed behind Gary and looked into other offices. Similar PCs and their monitors had been pulled apart. "She came out here on a parts run, and she brought either Leviathan or Tiny along with her. I've seen her leave on parts runs before." "Yeah, Dad said she can be seen leaving the tower every once in a while." I stepped into an office and waved Gary in. "This is stuff your ancestors used to do their jobs. It's like I told you, it's not some kind of-" My eyes settled on something else on the desk that had been moved: an old, yellowed letter. It was so brittle, it nearly broke apart when I picked it up and unfolded it. "-Some kinda... alien..." I read the letter: Monday, June 23, 2053 Dr. O'Connor, The Massachusetts Board of Health requests your attendance at an audit of the state's funding for neuropathology research at the State House in Boston on Monday, July 28, 2053 at 8:00 AM EST. Among the topics to be discussed are your recent requests for an increase in state funding for Massachusetts General Hospital's research program and its Before I could finish reading the letter, the bottom two-thirds broke off the top and hit the desk, where it crumbled into illegible dust. "Damn it!" I yelled. "What'd it say?" Gary asked. "Uhh..." I had my suspicions about what it meant, but I had to be sure. "Let's double back to the lobby. I have to check the directory." The hospital directory behind the front desk of the lobby had also been disturbed recently, and wheel marks on the floor told me that one of The Mistress' robots had been there, too. This hospital did, indeed, have a neuropathology laboratory in the basement, which was marked as floor B- 1. The nearest entrance to B-1 was down the hall straight out of the lobby. At the first right was another hall leading into examination rooms on the far end, an elevator to our right, and a staircase to our left. A faded sign next to the staircase read "NEUROLOGY LABS - B-1" with a downward-pointing arrow. We carefully tread down the stairs, peeking over the edge first to ensure that nobody was waiting for us at the bottom. On the first landing, we found more skid marks from one of The Mistress' robots. Gary sniffed the air and gagged. "Gugh," he said, "something reeks!" He followed me down slowly, making more gagging noises the further down we went. On the landing for floor B-1, I opened the door, and Gary howled. "Gary! Shut up!" He yanked up the collar of his shirt and held it over his mouth and nose. "Fuck, Natsuko!! Something in there fuckin' died!!" His eyes were watering. "That shit's rank!!" I looked inside and saw a waiting room. There was a reception desk in the far right corner, and three hallways: one to the left of the desk on the side furthest from us, and two more on opposite sides of the room. Water glistened off the surface of the linoleum tile floor -- the river was leaking into the hospital, and everything below this floor was completely flooded. "You stay here, then," I said. "In the dark?! No freakin' way!!" "Then go back upstairs. I'll try not to be too long down here." "What if something's in there?! Maybe whatever died has a big brother!" I thought about it and sighed. "...I have to go in there, Gary. This is really, really important to me. You don't have to follow me any further if you don't want to." He looked like he was ready to run out of there. "...You seriously can't smell that?!" "Nope." "Aw! Lucky! The toilets back home smell better!" He jogged back upstairs, adding, "Holler if you get in trouble!" halfway up. Back in the 21st century, he'd be a regular Boy Scout, I thought as I rolled my eyes. I quietly entered the waiting room and looked around. Nothing was moving around inside -- despite Gary's fears, very few large animals would enjoy being around the smell of (what I assumed to be) rot. With water on the floor, all traces of The Mistress' activities were long gone. I thought to myself, What could have brought her down here? What could a robotics expert want in a neurology lab, where they study brains? The answer was so painfully obvious, it hurt. I was actually a little shocked that I hadn't thought of it before. But I had to see for myself. I had to know where I came from. On the wall to my left was a plastic sign that listed the rooms of the doctors, the departments... ...And, in large white letters, the words "BRAIN BANK -- 7". There was a brain bank in room 7, which was just 15 feet to my right. A brain bank, like a bank where they store money, only in a brain bank... I felt a little strange as I walked toward the glass door of the brain bank. A little... off. A little dizzy. A little claustrophobic, as the walls seemed to close in on me. The door was wide open, and a cloudy murkiness seeped out into the waters covering the floor, turning it slushy and dark gray. Fortunately, I had thought far enough ahead to take my sandals off before walking through there... but looking into that room, I felt them slip from my hands and land on the floor with a splash. I was home. I don't know how to better describe the feeling. A profound sense of deja vu washed over me, stronger than what I had felt outside. The dimensions of the room: longer than it was deep, and crowded. The ceiling-high partitions, arranged like bookcases in a library, except these had cylindrical indentations in them that went over a foot inward. The small desks and shelves along the wall, cluttered with papers and laboratory equipment, and the white cupboards overhanging them. And the floor. The tile floor, with that gristly, gray watery stuff all over it. When I saw the gray chunks near the shelves, I realized they were brains. I wanted to heave. I tried to heave. I dragged myself inward and looked at the nearest row. The cylindrical indentations had contained brains at one point, and some still did, although they were all decomposed. Rubber stoppers lined each edge of each indentation, and a glass lid was either latched over or hanging from each hole. All of the rubber stoppers had dried and cracked with age, and the refrigeration that kept the brains frozen had seeped out. Without anything to preserve them, the brains had rotted away. This is what Gary had smelled: row after row of decayed brains in the dark basement of this abandoned hospital. ...Had I been one of them?! It was impossible! I wasn't decayed, I was alive! Alive-ish, anyway! I walked from row to row, looking into the holes that were filled with room-temperature stews made from water and rotting flesh. All the stoppers were cracked. All the seals had been compromised. All the brains had been dissolved to lumpy nothingness. Except for one. The indentation stood out from all the others. Although its lid was wide open, something seemed different about its rubber seal. I walked over to it and got a closer look. The outer edge was dried, but the inner edge, perhaps miraculously, remained rubbery and soft, with maybe a sixteenth of an inch to go before the indentation's occupant would have been consigned to oblivion. There was a tiny paper tag just below the indentation: "Subject 172." I looked up into the dark space. I was home. There was something in that darkness, something deep and vast and very, very familiar. For a moment, it felt like my lights could not pierce its full length, and I was looking into an infinite abyss. It had been there for centuries, patiently concealing its sole occupant until... whatever. Until the doctors returned. Until doomsday, maybe. Until the rubber seal gave out, which it never got the chance to. Until The Mistress had opened the lid and removed its occupant. Me. I was Subject 172. I am Subject 172. I am absolutely positive, beyond any doubt; I have never been more certain of anything else. The darkness beckoned. I staggered back, horrified that I could feel anything like that. For God's sake, I thought, let me feel physical pain! Let me smell the stench of this place! Anything but that! I tried not to freak out, but I was already freaking out. I quickly clawed at the tiny paper tag and pulled it out. "Subject 172," it read, and nothing else. I turned it over to only find blank paper. "...No," I muttered, "no-no-no..." I looked up and around frantically, then slosh-dashed over to the cupboards. They were filled with cups, beakers, microscopes... and binders. Empty binders. I threw them to the floor and ran over to the desks. "Where is it, where is it?!" I snarled. I yanked a binder full of paper off one of the desks and rifled through it. The binder was full of measurements, documents, graphs and charts, all kinds of things, but nothing that said "Subject 172," or at least nothing I could see in the few frantic seconds I spent ripping through its pages. "Where the fuck is it?!" I pulled out another binder, but similarly found nothing. "My name, God damn it!! What's my fucking name?! Who am I?!" Another binder, then another. I knocked a row of them off the desk and attacked another. "Fuuuuck... fuck!!" I knocked it, and another, to the floor. Then I found something: a binder, with a column full of numbers from one to 200, and columns of numbers next to each one. And at the header of the first row: "Test Subject #". Subject 172. Test Subject 172. "...I'm a God damn guinea pig," I breathed. What was it? What did the binder say? Something about neuro-something-something-something research on the front cover, something I'd need a Ph.D. to understand. They had been using me to... test it, or control it, or something. I don't know. At that moment, I didn't care. I was someone's guinea pig. I looked through the binder for more notes. I found something: "1/23/18 -- Subject 172 -- administered 40 cc's of" ahhh what the fuck is this, I thought. What the fuck is this shit?! How do I even pronounce this shit?! I threw the binder across the room with a ridiculous overhand throw. I was bent forward, gasping for air I didn't need and staring blankly ahead at the shelves. The unmoving, reeking shelves in the darkness, filled and surrounded by the mushy remains of my companions for centuries. My home. Their tomb. I was fast approaching full-blown freakout mode. Shivering, I looked around once more at the desks and cupboards. The floor was wet, but the environment was so dry -- metaphorically, I mean. Even abandoned, it all looked neat and organized. Professional. Inhuman. There was no personal paraphernalia anywhere, no names. Of course there aren't any names, I thought. They'd never give them names. They're test subjects. What if some doctor lost her son that morning to some horrible disease, only to find his fucking brain in there being dissected by that afternoon? Nobody could ever know who they had been. ...My identity. My entire life. It was lost to history. The loss was crushing -- I could actually feel it dragging me down like a weight. I let out a hoarse cry. To prevent myself from collapsing into the muck, I laboriously pulled myself up to the counter. I was bawling, but no tears came. I clutched the countertop and sobbed. I don't know how long I was there. Minutes? Hours? When I felt a hand on my shoulder, I jumped and screamed. "Whoa!" The person was holding a burning torch, and he took a step back. "Relax, Natsuko!" he said in a slightly muffled voice. "'S just me!" I shivered and held back. "...Uh, um... flash... light," I muttered, and my eye-lights shut off. It was Gary. He had a wet handkerchief tied around his nose and mouth. "I heard yelling! What's going on?!" I held my arms close to my chest. "...This... it... Gary, they-" "-Is there someone else here?!" I took a deep breath and sighed. "...No," I said, a little more calmly. "We're alone." "Then what happened?!" I looked up at him. I was completely, totally miserable. "Just... get me out of here, Gary," I warbled. "Please, please get me out of here." Gary left me alone on the stoop outside the hospital as he went into one of the abandoned buildings across the road. When he emerged, he was carrying a bucket. He put it down in front of me -- the bucket itself was a little dirty, but the water looked fresh and clean. "There used to be folks who lived out here, up until 20 years ago, when they agreed to move to Parkside," he said. "They left some of their stuff here. They got... big tarps, up on the roof, to collect dew and rainwater." I absently nodded. He handed me a clean(ish) rag. "Here, wipe some of the stink off. I found your shoes floating around just inside." He threw them on the ground next to me, then stood up straight and looked down at me. I stared up at him. He stared back. "Um," I said, and twirled my finger. He didn't get it. "Turn around?" He looked over his shoulder, then looked back at me quizzically. I sighed. "I need to strip, kid." "-Oh!!" I thought I saw a deformation in his pants, around his fly, as he turned around. I stifled a chuckle just before I took off my skirt. Fourteen, I thought. A rough age. "...So what was going on down there?" he asked. I sighed and started to wipe off my feet and legs. "It's a really long story, Gary." "I've got time." I paused for a moment. "This place used to be a hospital. Do you know what that is?" "Yeah, where they used to treat sick people." "Well, they did research here, too. Scientific research into disease." "...Okay." He was following along. "That room, down there..." I paused again. "They stored human organs down there, Gary." His eyes went wide, and he moved to face me. "Eyes forward, Gary!" He turned back around. "What?!" "Brains, specifically." "What the fu-?! They took brains, like... outta people's heads?!" "Yeah, for research purposes." "Buh-why?!" I thought about how best to explain this. "...Because you can't know what a disease does to a person unless you get a really close look at the kind of damage it does to them. That includes organs, and brains." "Yeah, but-!" He sputtered. "I'd be pretty pissed off if someone came around tryin' to remove my brain, even if I was sick!!" "They weren't removing brains from living people." Gary calmed a little. "...They weren't?" "All those brains that were in there... they were removed from dead people. People who died from diseases, or..." I looked at the ground. "...Were in accidents..." "So... what, they just removed everyone's brain when they died so they could study them?" I stood up and removed my fuku. "No. Back then, some people took part in what was called 'body donation,' or 'organ donation.' Basically, they agreed that when they died, doctors could take apart their bodies and remove all the organs they needed." "For research?" "And to help other people directly." I washed my arms. "Doctors could perform a kind of surgery called a 'transplant.' That's where one person's organ gets really sick, so a doctor will replace it with the organ of another person." "...A dead person." "Exactly. They could take, say... the heart out of a dead guy and put it into someone whose heart doesn't work." "...And... the dead guy's heart would work in the person who had the bad heart?" "Yeah, if the dead guy's heart worked when he died." "...Whoa," Gary breathed out in astonishment. "...But the, uh... brains..." "You can't swap brains, no. But like I said, they had to look at organs to figure out how disease hurts them. That includes diseases of the brain. It's how people figured out ways to cure those diseases, to shut them down before they could do any more damage, or to give people ways to prevent themselves from ever getting the disease to begin with." Gary turned to his side and looked at me. I threw the rag over my breasts. "Damn it, Gary, I told you-!!" I paused. He had a haunted look on his face. "You serious?" he warbled. "They could do that?" "...Whuh? Gary, what's-" "-My mom died of meningitis." ... ...I was paralyzed. He said nothing for a few moments. "She, uh..." He wiped his nose and eyes. "...She... I was 10, and... the girls were real little. I still remember her. She..." He breathed in. "She got this, uh... real bad headache one day, and she had a fever, then she said her neck was stiff, then she had to go into a... a dark room? And we had to be real quiet 'cause she couldn't stand light and-and noise? The girls were real little. They were crying, so I was... told to take them to a neighbor, but later I was told that it was so I wouldn't... I mean, we wouldn't get sick..." Gary wasn't looking at me anymore, but I could see the water in his eyes. "...And then, uh... Dad and Doctor Phillips came out later and told me she died. And we had to burn her body and... her sheets..." He let out a little sob and covered his face with his hands. His shoulders shook. "Jesus, Gary. I'm..." I paused. "I'm sorry..." He took his hands off his face and scrunched it. "...Mmnnhh!" he grunted, forcing his tears back down. He sniffled inward hard so his nose wouldn't leak. He took a few seconds to compose himself and slow his breathing. I saw his father in him, right there. And when he felt ready, he looked up at me. "...You might have a problem with the... the doctors, and the stuff they did with the... uh, the brains... of the dead people, down there..." He breathed in and out. "I don't." He said nothing else, and I said nothing else. When I was done cleaning myself, he took the rag and wiped himself off, although he didn't need to clean as much as I did. And when we were ready, we returned the bucket to its place under the tarp across the street and headed back to Parkside. A couple minutes after Gary and I left the hospital, The Mistress awoke with a start. "Whossat!" she blurted, then moaned. She lifted her goggles a little and rubbed her eyes. "...Oooooohhhh... never again, never again..." She sniffed, then looked in her coffee mug. "...Hehn... still the best robot ever," she muttered. With a loud groan, she lifted herself out of her chair and shambled out of the kitchenette. "Natsuko, you here?" she called out, with more energy this time. "Natsuko!" When I didn't reply, she shrugged her shoulders. "Eh. Must be downstairs." She remembered she had left a can of beans somewhere near her bed -- that was going to be her breakfast. She poured the rest of the coffee into her mug (even though it was cold) and shambled across the shop toward her bedroom. That's when she noticed something was happening in Parkside. "Mmm?" She brushed aside the plastic curtain and looked down at the town. A crowd had gathered near the east entrance of town, the one closest to Sky Tower. She patted herself down, but didn't find her telescope (I left it by her bed). "Meh." She reached into one pocket and pulled out a smaller monocular, then focused it on the crowd. Father (/Mayor) Fitzpatrick was standing in the middle of the crowd, and he was speaking with fiery zeal. The crowd was getting riled up. Although The Mistress couldn't hear what he was saying, she saw him point at Sky Tower with an accusatory fervor. "...Shhhhit," she mumbled, then reached into another pocket and pulled out an old smart phone. She checked the screen, which told her that the robots in the lobby were fully charged. She checked their armaments and saw that they still had as many as she had left them with. "'Kay, so lobby's good." She looked around. "Tiny! Leviathan!" Her robots appeared out of another room. "We've got a 'Bonfire Morning' scenario." Their eyes turned red, and their miniguns popped out. "Get loaded, get downstairs, and take opposite doors. Don't shoot unless they try to enter the lobby. Understand?" "Yes, Mistress," they replied. "Teeny!" she barked, and he appeared. "Bonfire Morning! Get your brothers down to the lobby ay-sap!" He folded into the elevator shaft. Leviathan got in first, and Teeny dropped down. She lifted her chin and shouted, "Natsuko, for your own sake, you better be in here somewhere!!" I wasn't in there. Gary and I took a left onto the pharmacy road and passed the cougars, still lazing around in their den. Alan stormed up the opposite way, carrying two large loads of firewood under his arms, with his axe dangling from one hand. He looked like he was still in a bad mood. Before we could avoid him, he saw us. "You two!!" he barked, dropping the firewood (but not the axe, hurrah!) and accelerating toward us. I lifted my hand and started to say, "Hi, Al-," and saw Gary shaking his head rapidly. Alan was near us already. "Where the hell have you two faaaauuughhhh!!" Alan was knocked back by some invisible force. He clutched his nose and pulled his shirt over his mouth. "Whad duh hell hab you been rolling around in?!" "We, uh...," I stuttered, "...I took Gary up to the hospital-" His eyes went wide. "You toog my son where?!" "I made her take me with her, Dad," Gary said. "It's not her fault. She said she wanted to go to the hospital, and she said she didn't want to take me-" "-Nuh, nuh!!" Alan grunted, then pointed at me with full force. "You don't take my son anywhere!!" "I'm sorry I got angry at you," I stated quickly and clearly. He started to say something: "Ah!" He tried to say something: "Mmm..." He couldn't say anything. "And I'm sorry I blamed you for the bonfire," I continued. "That was stupid of me. I should have figured it was outside of your control." He huffed, then took a couple steps back and lowered his shirt. "...I got the impression," he stated, more calmly, but with some force, "that you didn't exactly care for The Mistress. That you're bound to her against your will." "I am." "Then why are you taking her side?!" "Because I learned some things about her last night," I winced, "...and I can't tell you what they are." He rolled his eyes. "Look, Alan... what I said before is still true: I have to live with her, or else I'll die. Although, frankly, if I have to live with someone, I'd rather like them, at least a little, and I found out last night... The Mistress isn't so... hateable." His eyes went wide. "There's a lot you don't know about her, Alan. I got that mixed up with what you think you know about her, and I blamed you for everything. So I'm sorry." He let out a long sigh, like air escaping a balloon. "I am a colossal jackass," I added. "Huuhh...," he grunted, "...no, it's okay. You make a good point: I can't expect you to take Parkside's side in this." "-Deh! I don't want there to be sides!!" I blurted. "She's up there all alone! She's lonely too, man!" He gave me a disbelieving look. I shook my head. "I'm doing it again. Like I said, there's stuff you don't know about her. A lot of stuff." He blinked a couple times and nodded slightly -- he could believe that. "She's made it pretty clear she doesn't want to be down here," he said. "I think she actually wants to, although she doesn't know it." "I don't think most folks want her down here, either." "There's nothing any of us can do about that," I mumbled. Nobody said anything for a second. Then, "...So just... what the hell is that smell?!" "The stuff of nightmares," I said. "And poo," Gary added. Alan's eyes were watering. "Okay, look... follow ten... no, twenty steps behind me and wait outside Mariel's. I'm gonna bring back water and soap." He shivered. "So much soap!" The mob was moving toward Sky Tower with Father Fitzpatrick in the lead, and The Mistress was watching them. "You wanna rumba?" she growled. "I can dance all day, bitches! Come get some!" She put down her monocular and screamed, "Come get some!!" She was shaking. The mob was almost to the door. "...Okay, okay," she muttered, then held a walkie-talkie to her mouth. "Everyone in position?" "Yes, Mistress," Tiny replied. "Yes, Mistress," Leviathan replied. "Yes, Mistress," the guard-bots replied. "Ding!" Teeny replied, right behind her. "Okay, get ready." A moment passed. The mob moved closer. "Get ready!" Ever closer. Then there was a shift. Father Fitzpatrick didn't go straight to the front doors of the tower. Instead, he turned left and headed toward the destroyed theater. The crowd followed. "...Whaaat," The Mistress mumbled. "Where the fuck're you goin'? You thinkin' of taking in a show, or getting a new dress-" "-Fuck a duck!!" she suddenly screamed, throwing the monocular on the floor. She turned and ran through her bedroom, then into the junk-lab. "Natsuko!!" she screamed, but I didn't respond. Miki-chan made herself small. "Fuck-fuck-fuck!!" The Mistress ran toward the elevator and almost called Teeny, but instead paused, and did an indecisive dance in place. Here, in no particular order, is a list of her most predominant thoughts: If she went down, the mob would try to kill her. If she didn't bring her robots, the mob would kill her. If she brought her robots, they would kill the mob. If she went down and lived, then it would only be because her robots had killed a bunch of people... which would mean another mob, or one or more bounty hunters on her ass, and that's not even mentioning how royally pissed that would make High Mistress Blood. (Believe it or not, Blood could get angry -- it just took a lot of effort.) If I died, that would suck. "Daaaaaaaagggghhhh!!" The Mistress screamed. She ran to her radio room, grabbing a laptop and another smart phone along the way, and turned her newly-restored radio on. "Sea!! Come in, Sea!!" No response. "This is an emergency!! Bonfire Morning!! I need Sea!!" Still no response. "Fine, bitch!! You asked for this!!" She whipped open her laptop and entered commands as fast as her fingers could type. In a box on the bottom of the screen, she typed, "Call me you stuck-up shithead." Above that, a map of the entire earth was pulled up, along with a line over it. She typed in a few commands, and the line moved. A few seconds later, the Sea Witch of Norfolk appeared on the central monitor. "Metal!!" she screamed. "What the fuck are you doing?!" "Answer your phone!!" The Mistress spat. "What-!" "-Bonfire Morning, God-damn it!!" Sea's face dropped. In an instant, she was no longer livid. "Run," she said in a low, calm voice. "Leave everything and run." "They're not after me, they're after Natsuko!! She's outside the tower!! Here, look, look!!" She held up her smart phone and showed Sea a series of red bars on the screen. She quickly swiped each one to the right with her finger, turning them green. "Blocked, now unblocked!! You're cleared!! Now make an appearance!!" Sea was confused for a moment. "Whuh-" she muttered, before understanding dawned on her face. "...That's not what they're used for," she grumbled. "I don't give a shit!! You make an appearance in five minutes on the north side of Sky Tower, or you get to explain to Blood why you let my apprentice die!!" "Natsuko's your-" "Five minutes!!" The Mistress screamed, and switched off the radio. "Jesus Ffffffuck!! Teeny!! Elevator!!" "...I challenged him," Alan said after an uncomfortable silence. "I didn't say anything," I replied. "You told her about the election, Gary?" "...Yeah, Dad." Alan sighed. "I challenged Ossie. That's Father Oswald Fitzpatrick...," his mind wandered a little, and he chuckled, "...our town's resident Man of God. Great with numbers. Used to keep our books, until the stress got to him -- then he became the town drunk. I once watched him drain half the tavern's stores of vodka in a single night! Had a... a revelation!" He wiggled his hands in front of his face and looked up toward the sky. "Found God! He's been a self- righteous prick ever since... although, I'll admit, he cleaned up good, and he's helped a lot of people." He sighed. "But then he decided he wanted more." "The mayoralty?" I asked. He scoffed. "I was never mayor! I was never elected! Nobody demanded an election before Ossie, so it's always been in Carson hands. I thought I could whup him by just... reminding everyone who I am." He paused. "It didn't work." I stopped in my tracks. "Hold up," I said. "You're telling me the whole town got up before daybreak and decided to change their leadership just like that?!" "It wasn't everyone. We've never held an election before, so we kinda decided the rules as we went along. No kids could vote, for starters. We just asked the folks who were there for a show of hands." "That's a really shitty election!" "I'm sure some of the folks who weren't there will get mad once they hear I'm out, but I don't want to start a spat between my neighbors-" "-No! No! You don't do this sort of thing off-the-cuff! There's procedures you gotta follow! You gotta give people time to decide!" "You don't understand, Natsuko, I..." His eyes were watery, and not from the stink. "...I know these people. I've helped them. They told me to blow off," he waved his hand, "like that." He couldn't look me in the eyes -- his shame was too great. "...Alan," I said. "Look at me, Alan." He didn't. "Look... at... me." He peeked up. Holy crap, I thought, I can see his son in him. "People make mistakes when you don't give them time to think about things, especially important things. A gaggle of your friends were wowed by some pretty words for a moment, and then were asked to make a huge decision. They're going to regret this, and a whole lot of people are going to agree with them, and when they do, nobody's going to want to follow this... Father Fitz-something any... more..." I drifted off at the end there because I saw Father Fitzpatrick and the huge mob that was following him. Alan and Gary soon saw them, too. Fitzpatrick's mob pointed at us and cried out in unison. "Oh, shit," the three of us said, also in unison. "Brother!! Alan!! Carson!!" Father Fitzpatrick called out. I noticed Junior to his left, his eyes glazed and fixed firmly on the ground, and the ABCs to his right and just behind him, being held less-than-lovingly by two men. Alan saw them too, and went pale. "A word, please!!" Alan ran to get his girls, but was met by Father Fitzpatrick halfway. I could barely hear their conversation. Alan growled something like "...Rip your head-!!" "...Not going to hurt your daughters. I'm here..." Father Fitzpatrick looked at me. Directly at me. Alan traced his gaze. "...Not a threat!!" "...Demon!!" Father Fitzpatrick stressed. "Ossie-!!" "-You will address me as 'Mr. Mayor,' Brother Alan! That, or 'Father!'" Father Fitzpatrick strutted past Alan. Alan got his girls back... ...But he knew he was helpless for whatever came next. Father Fitzpatrick strode directly toward me, his mob not far behind. It was the torch-and-pitchfork variety of mob, with more than a few assault rifles thrown into the mix. They were on the hunt for monsters, and I was the creation of our very own local Dr. Frankenstein. What do I do, I asked myself. If I barricade myself in Mariel's, they'll break the door down!! If I run, they'll just shoot me in the back!! I was frozen. I can't go anywhere!! I can't do anything!! "-Faugh!!" Father Fitzpatrick cried after he got within a few feet of us. He covered his mouth and nose with one hand. "You two!! What is that foul odor?!" "Bad decisions," I warbled. "And poo," Gary also warbled. He glared at the two of us. "You have been... copulating..." "What?!" I cried. "No!" Gary yelled. "Ewwww!!" I added. Gary gaped at me, a little hurt. "The foul aura around you confirms it!! Don't try to deny it!!" The mob rumbled. Pitchforks and torches were raised. "Those who copulate with demons... lie permanently with demons!" The rumble turned to a low, continuous growl. "...I am so sorry, Gary," I said. "Eeegghhnn!" he whimpered. And then... ...A voice arose on that street, drowning out all other noises. "Whhhaaaaaat's uuuuuuuup Park-siiiiiiiiiiiiiii-eeeee-iiiiii-eeeeeee- iiiiiidddd-ah?!" it cried out. The mob shrank in fright and turned toward the source of the noise. Toward Sky Tower. And there, at its base, just outside the doors, was The Mistress, with Teeny, Tiny, and Leviathan flanking her back and sides. In one hand she held an intercom microphone which was connected by a curly black wire to Teeny. Large speakers projected from his sides. Large miniguns projected from his brothers' sides. "It's a beautiful morning, and I'm sure many of you have hangovers!" she called out. "Let me adjust the volume to make you feel better!" She tapped something into a control panel on Teeny's side. If the volume had been 1 before, she cranked it to 10. "IS THAT BETTER?!" her voice roared across the city, followed by a loud feedback screech. Everyone in attendance, except for The Mistress and me (I knew enough about her to temporarily shut off my audio sensors), covered their ears. "There we go!" she said, the volume instantly returning to 1. "It really is such a beautiful day! Yessir!" She glanced up at the sky. "A beauuuutiful day!" The mob's attention was completely off me and the Carsons. "I see you're harassing my Natsuko, there! Gonna attack her! Gonna string her up and burn her!" She waved at me. "Hi, Natsuko!" I weakly waved back. "...H-hi..." "Yyyyyeah!" she said, then glanced up at the sky again, then back down. Father Fitzpatrick bore his teeth and held his cross in front of himself as he strode toward The Mistress. "Back, witch!!" he spat in roiling fury as he walked up the plaza toward the tower. "I send you back to the pits of Hades where you belong!!" "Mmmmmm... no," The Mistress replied. "I like it here. Plus, rent is higher in the pits of Hades." Although Father Fitzpatrick was still quite some distance from her, he shook holy water at her. "I send you back to the pits, so you can do no more evil here!!" "Evil?" The Mistress asked, then snapped her fingers. "Oh, yeah! I was planning on doing evil today, wasn't I? Yeah, it was breakfast, then shower, then read the paper, then evil, then buy stamps." "You will not make a mockery of The Lord!!" She was ignoring him (probably). "I'm gonna do some evil over there," she waved a little to her left, "then some evil over there," she waved to her right, "then, like... a bunch of evil there," she waved her hand in circles in front of her. "You'll come back later, and you'll be, like, 'Wow! This place is at least... 85% more evil!'" She glanced up at the sky. A bullet struck the ground just a foot to her left, and she jumped a little. "Hohcrap!" she chirped, then looked into the mob. "Leviathan. Warning shot." The miniguns on Leviathan's side started to spin, and a half-second of blazing fury poured out into the air above the mob. They cried out and ducked, but nobody was harmed. "Hands off your triggers, assholes!!" she snarled, before she turned back to Father Fitzpatrick. She glanced up at the sky, then down at her smart phone. She nodded. "Old holy douche. Leave Natsuko alone and get the fuck outta here, or I summon a demon. Right here. Right now." "Do your worst, you... whore of Satan!!" Father Fitzpatrick snapped. "It's a big one! You might even know her!!" He looked slightly confused. "Okay, you asked for it!!" She yanked on the microphone and let it go, and it snapped back into Teeny. "Teeny!! Evil Mix!! Track Five!!" After that, two things happened. First off, The Mistress danced to Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice." I'll let that sink in for a moment. ... ... ... ... ...You good? Yeah, you're good. I couldn't believe it myself. I heard sounds coming from Teeny, and I thought it was just stuttery old audio that The Mistress had decided to play for some reason. She was tapping her foot, though. Then: "...Don't be shocked... by the tone... of my voice..." She strutted down the stairs and shook her arms. "Check out my new weapon... weapon of choice." She hopped on the railing halfway down and slid the rest of the way. My jaw dropped. I let out a snort, but I covered my mouth before I could laugh. "Don't be shocked... by the tone... of my voice..." Father Fitzpatrick was brandishing his cross as The Mistress tapped up to him, adding a couple little twirls along the way. She was no Christopher Walken, but she wasn't too bad. "Check out my new weapon... weapon of choice... yeah." "Back, witch, back!!" Father Fitzpatrick yelled. He took a couple steps back himself as The Mistress continued her dance toward him, with her robots rolling slowly along behind her and Teeny pumping out the music. "Listen to the sound... of my voice... uhh! You can check it all out... it's the weapon of choice... yeaaahh." She moonwalked closer to him (and she was pretty good at that!). Meanwhile, I looked around the crowd and saw frightened faces. People praying. Tears. They were terrified by Fatboy Slim. Fatboy. Slim. I clutched my hand over my mouth as hard as I could and thought, Oh. My. Fucking. God. I suppose that, alone, could have counted as the second thing. If so, then I'd like to amend what I said before: three things happened. Because as The Mistress danced, I saw three faces that didn't belong to someone gripped by terror and/or confusion. Annabelle, Bee, and Charlotte were intermittently watching The Mistress and looking up. Charlotte whispered something to her sisters. They looked high up to the north. "You can go with this, or you can go with that." The Mistress wiggled her fingers in the air. "You can go with this, or you can go with that. You can go with this, or you can go with that, or you can go with us!" I looked up and saw what (I thought) the girls saw. There was the third thing, high above us: bright, colorful ribbons of light in the sky, swirling above our heads. The Aurora Borealis, right there in the middle of the day, just outside Sky Tower. The lights seemed to condense into the shape of a half-ovoid with some kind of brim around the flat end. "You could go with this, or you could go with that." Others were seeing what was happening in the sky, too; people were turning their heads up and looking at the aurora, then looking back at The Mistress with a growing horror that she was causing this phenomenon. The half-ovoid seemed to be gaining features -- discs on its sides, like ears, and a protrusion on its front, like a nose. "You could go with this, or you could go with that. Or you could go with-bop-bop-boo-bee- bop-" A woman in the crowd looked up and saw the lights. Her eyes went wide with terrible recognition, as if she had been violently mugged at one point in the distant past, and now she saw the criminal again, alone in a room with her. She pointed upward and screamed, "Wiiitch!! Wiiiiiiitch!!" Others looked up. "S-Sea Witch!! Oh, Jesus, it's the Sea Witch!!" The crowd became agitated by intense fear. Two lines appeared in the center of the ovoid. They opened... ...Into a gigantic pair of eyes that looked straight down. "Walk without rhythm, and it won't attract the worm!" The flat, brimmed end shaped into an enormous naval captain's hat over the eyes. "Walk without rhythm, and it won't attract the worm!" Although the shape was slightly fuzzy and indistinct below the eyes, it was definitely an enormous human head hovering up there hundreds of feet in the air, colored by the swirling rainbow lights of the aurora that formed it. "Walk without rhythm, and it won't attract the worm!" "It's the Sea Witch of Norfolk!! She's back!! Ohhhhhhh!!" Torches and pitchforks were abandoned as the mob dispersed in a mad dash back toward Parkside. "The Sea Witch of Norfolk is back!! Run!! Everybody ruuuuuuun!!" Father Fitzpatrick glared at the giant head in the sky. Its eyes turned and looked back at him. He threw his cross up in front of him and cried something unintelligible. "If you walk without rhythm, huh, you never learn." The music cut off. "I just summoned the Sea Witch of Norfolk, asshole!!" The Mistress shouted. "What've you got?!" A voice boomed down from the sky. The fucking sky. "HI." Father Fitzpatrick took in a sharp, deep breath. "Deeeeeeemmmmoooonnnn!!" he shrieked. "UGH." "Back!! To Hell!! With Yoooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuu!!" "THIS ISN'T WHAT THIS IS USED FOR, METAL." I realized I recognized the voice. The woman with the tight hair, shallow cheeks, and military manner from the radio: the Sea Witch of Norfolk. That's... her, I thought. It's definitely her. But how is this possible?! The Mistress quickly whipped her smart phone up to her face. "Ham it up," she quietly growled. "THIS IS DEGRADING." "The guy's packing a piece!!" The Mistress whispered. "Ham-it-up!!" He was -- I hadn't missed the lump under Father Fitzpatrick's robe at his hip. "UUUUGGGGHHHH..." Sea shook her head a little, then glared down at Father Fitzpatrick. "...YOU... DOWN THERE... LEEEEEAVE THIS PLAAAACE." "To hell with you, demon witch!!" he screamed back. "HE'S NOT-" "Ham!!" "-AGH!! FINE!! ROLL ON F-X!!" Her eyes turned bright red. Her indistinct lower face became pointed and serpentine, with a great forked tongue poking out from between rows of shark teeth. The sky glowed red, and columns of fire flanked her head. "OLD FOOL!! YOU ARE NOTHING BUT AN INSIGNIFICANT ANT TO ME!! BOW BEFORE ME, THE ALMIGHTY SEA WITCH OF NORFOLK!! STOP LAUGHING!!" Who's laughing, I asked myself and looked around, but nobody was. I could hear a chuckle coming from somewhere. Somewhere... above me? It was a noise emanating from the Sea Witch, but it didn't sound like one she was making; it sounded like background noise in the air around her. "I AM THE ALMIGHTY SEA WITCH OF NORFOLK-FOLK-FOLK-FOLK-" her voice suddenly lowered, and became more distant, "-Damn it, Rita, if you don't stop laughing, Doug'll never have to clean another grease trap again," and back to booming,"-AND I WILL CRUSH YOU WHERE YOU STAND, YOU SIMPERING COWARD-WARD-WARD-WARD!!" The Mistress sighed. "You're already echoing, you dumbass." A pause from Sea. Then she went wild. "AAAAAAAAHHHHHH- WWWWWOOOOOOOOOO!!" she screamed, with fire and bats flying out of her ears and mouth as the sky flashed and thunder clapped behind her, and lions and bears roared in fury and wolves howled and chainsaws blared and every God-damn scary thing happened at once in that maelstrom of lights and rage in the sky. Father Fitzpatrick was shaking badly. His eyes were widened in terror. His grip on his cross slackened. He gripped his bible with his other hand like a child clutching a teddy bear. Urine pooled around his feet. In a moment, he turned heel and ran. But before he was out of sight, he gathered enough of his limited courage to turn and shriek, "Alan!! I know this isn't you!! But your son, Gary J. Carson, has fornicated with demons!! For that, I banish him from Parkside, in perpetuity, under penalty of death!!" "SCRAAAAAAM!!" Sea roared, her giant snake-shark jaws descending toward the man. "Haaaahhhh-aaahhhh!!" Father Fitzpatrick screamed, and kept running. And when he was out of sight, the fire and bats and crazy shit stopped... well, except for the whole head-in-the-sky thing, that was still there. Sea had returned to (relative) normal. "...GOOD. NOW THAT THAT'S OUT OF THE WAY... METAL. I WANT SOMETHING IN RETURN." "I don't owe you shit!!" The Mistress snapped into her smart phone. "I WANT YOU TO LEAVE PARKSIDE UNBLOCKED. THERE'S GOING TO BE A SNOWSTORM IN THE AREA IN THREE DAYS-" Alan, already looking pale and fearful, let out a cry of anguish, "FOLLOWED BY A HIGHLY-POSSIBLE ICE STORM." It was all too much for Alan. "No!!" he cried as he held his head in his hands and sank against a wall. His children stood by his side. "No-no-no-no!!" I wondered, What the hell? "WHEN THESE THINGS HAPPEN, THESE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT IT. IT'S A FARMING COMMUNITY. IT MATTERS TO THEM." "They don't want you!" The Mistress replied. "NOBODY DOES." "I don't want you!!" "I DON'T CARE. BLOOD WANTS YOU TO STOP MESSING WITH THE HOLO-SATS." Her eyes turned red. "SO STOP MESSING WITH THE HOLO-SATS!!" The Mistress started to say something, but stopped. "...Fine!" she grumbled. "But see if you like it when I start broadcasting Queen to your ship 24/7!" "I HATE QUEEN." "I know! And I've got a whoooole playlist for you to listen to!" A pause from Sea. "GOODBYE, METAL," she grumbled. Her head de- coalesced, and in a swirl of lights and color, the aurora vanished into nothing. And I was left... flabbergasted. I looked around for a curtain, and for a small dog that could pull it aside to reveal the real Sea Witch of Norfolk, but I saw neither of those things. Could she be another street over, I thought, or maybe up in Sky Tower? From the way the Parksiders spoke of her and The Mistress spoke to her, however, it looked like she'd be an unwelcome guest no matter where she went around here. Plus, it didn't explain the aurora. It didn't make sense. Nothing made sense. Alan was sobbing. Gary was in a state of shock. The ABCs were trying to comfort their dad and figure out what the hell was going on. "...A- Alan-" I started to say. "Welp!" The Mistress chirped, and clapped her hands together. "Mob dispersed, problem solved!" She turned to her robots. "Bonfire Morning is over, boys. Stand down." Tiny and Leviathan's miniguns rolled back up into their bodies. "Bonfire Morning?" I asked. "It's code for when people get sick of burning fake witches and want the real thing! Or," she waved her hand at me, "...you know... their... associates." I breathed out. I couldn't believe I was about to say this and actually mean it, but, "Thank you, Mistress." "No problem, Natsuko. Those Parksiders try to-Holy Hell in a handbasket girl, what the fuck is that smell?!" "Shattered hopes and dreams," I mumbled. "And poo!" Gary chimed. The Mistress gagged. "...Teeny! Soap! Water! Fuckloads of both on the double, agh-gah!" Teeny turned and rolled quickly back to Sky Tower. "You went to the hospital, didn't you?" she asked. I froze. "That's the last place I smelled anything so nasty. What the fuck did you go up there for?" "Ahhh... I... wanted to see where Miki-chan came from." "...Oh." This seemed to be an acceptable answer. "Has, uh... Miki- chan... said, or... done... anything..." She paused. "Ah... you know what, don't tell me. Don't. I... I can't, I mean I don't... ah." She waved a hand dismissively. "Y-you got the parts for the glider?" "Yes, Mistress." "Gimme the key, then. I don't want you getting your stink all over them." She held out her hand. ...And that was it for my private sanctuary. She knew about it, and she wanted in. Trying not to look too apprehensive, I handed her the key to the padlock. She strode past Alan into Mariel's, unlocked the padlock, opened the door, and switched on the lights. "...Niiiiice!" she called back. "You used Miki-chan for inspiration! Kinda bulky, though. I can see, like... three things, no, four things that won't work, right off the bat." She offered surprisingly soft and constructive criticism of my robot, but I wasn't paying attention. I whispered, "Alan, what's-" "-That was the Sea Witch of Norfolk," he mumbled. "I know, but why's everyone so scared of her?" He looked at me with disbelief. "She's the Storm-Bringer! The Destroyer of Cities!" I was totally clueless. "She summons hurricanes! Blizzards!" He jerked his hand at the sky. "Ice storms!!" It was my turn to look at him disbelievingly. "...Alan... she can't do that. She's a meteorologist." "A meteor-what, now?!" "Meteorologist. She doesn't summon weather, she predicts it. She observes stuff like... clouds, wind speed, temperature, a hundred little things like that, then she uses that stuff to predict what the weather will be like a day or two days or a week from today." I peeked back at The Mistress, who was still preoccupied with my robot and the little shop I had set up. "She's a scientist!" I whispered. "Only she doesn't make stuff! She looks at what's going on, then she takes a guess at what it'll be in the future!" He still looked doubtful. "Alan, if she wanted to kill you with an ice storm, why the hell would she warn you about it three days in advance? She'd simply kill you with an ice storm!" He didn't have a response for that. "Nat-su-ko!" The Mistress said, popping out of Mariel's. She flicked the key at me as Leviathan came rolling out carrying the box full of glider parts I had collected earlier. "Lock up, then let's go home." I looked at the key, then I looked at Alan, then I looked at Gary. And I gave the key to Gary. "...Nnno, you lock up, Natsuko," The Mistress said. "He can stay there," I said. Gary's eyes went wide. "He needs a place to sleep, at least until the heat dies down in Parkside." Alan nodded. The Mistress huffed. "That isn't your decision to make." "But I set up Mariel's." "My stuff is in there." I felt some of my hope drain just before I said it: "Then I'll move it out." "I don't want you to!" I paused and stared at her. She sighed. "...You got a nice little shop set up in the