Good morning, my dear. I hope you’ll read this letter someday.
Miss you so much, though you are close at hand
Dreaming a day will come I can be free again
Then you’ll remember, hope you’ll understand

Stuck in the room next door where I can hear you talking
My meals delivered almost every day
When it is safe I’ll let you know it’s me in here
Then I can tell you ‘bout my hidden stay

Feels so good you’ll know I’m home soon

One of these days the war will end for both of us, dear
We’ll have some time to mess around outside
The memories aren’t gone, we’ll put them back in place together
Know you’ll forgive me, that’s always so nice

Feels so good you’ll know I’m home soon

Writing you every day, my love
It still could be all right
Got ever so much to say, my love
It might still be all right

If only one day the war could end for both of us, dear
It would be safe to mess around outside
The memories are here, we’d put them back in place together
Know you’d forgive me, it would be so nice

You can’t ever know I’m home, dear
You can’t ever know I’m home here

(It’s not that I don’t want to serve you the whole story on a silver platter or I can’t, Barnaby,) said the voice in his head — which was much more polite than the usual clue-by-four he was used to receiving from his surroundings. (But I’m going to have to take back everything I give you… Not even take back, but… I have to hide it so you don’t remember what happened or that I helped you. That’s how this is going to end. I am going to pull a lot of threads out of your sweater and you don’t have that many left. I don’t know if it will fall apart when I’m through. This is a bad thing I’m doing, but I think leaving you to deal with this all by yourself would be worse.)

“Oh, no, I quite agree,” he said, eyes closed. He was trying very hard not to wonder about anything while he could see, and he was just too curious at the moment. None of the sick people around him were in any shape to be weirded out by him having a one-sided conversation with thin air, anyway.

“About my poor sweater, I mean. I wouldn’t worry about hurting me that way, it’s not your fault my brain is broken and it seems there’s not much anyone can do to fix it. The way my day’s gone, I expect I’ve discovered your identity all the way down to your childhood pets several times already. Or whatever sort of a ‘hood you had. Are you human?”

(Sometimes I wonder, but yes, I am. I just don’t feel it very much anymore. If you just count today, then ‘several times’ is about right. If we count since you’ve been here, it’s more like several hundred thousand. Between you and Erik, it’s like I need to be a goddamn juggler to stay alive. Pardon me, my manners are rusty. I don’t really talk to people much anymore. Not… Not unless I’m pretending I’m not me.)

“That was you and not Mordecai just now, wasn’t it? Do you do that often?”

(I try not to. I don’t want to… to steal pieces of his life. But I do. I do that to all of you. That’s all I do anymore. I’m sorry, but I’ve said that before and I keep doing it anyway, so I guess I’m not sorry enough.)

“We’ve met before!”

(Oh, yes. Again and again. I helped you paper my room. It’s nice for a change. But please, let’s not get into that, because if you start finding those things I’ve hidden, that’s just more things I have to hide again. I don’t think it would hurt a normal person, but I’m never sure about you. You’re… I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re falling apart even without my help.)

“No-no, I am aware. You can’t tell if you’re knocking any extra bricks out of my wall when the whole thing’s in a constant state of disintegration. That’s what you mean?”

(You don’t have to phrase it as if you don’t already know. It’s really cute, but I know how it is with you, I won’t be offended or annoyed. You don’t even have to put things into words if you don’t want. You know what you know and I know what you mean.)

That seems eerily familiar, Miss… “What should I call you?”

(I think Miss 101 is fine. Seven characters, not another one of those damn four-letter names. Reduces to two. That’s prime.)

“…I’m beginning to suspect you’re some sort of hallucination I’m having.”

(Yeah. I get that a lot. I can sound just like your own thoughts if I want. Makes it much easier for me to hide, but I begin to feel like Charles Boyer taking advantage of Ingrid Bergman.)

That’s Gaslight! Do you mean the play or the movie? No, wait, there were two of those. Sorry, I’m not paying attention, you did say…” He opened his eyes to search his surroundings for a reminder and then shut them again quickly. I don’t really want to know that, I only meant… Well, I do want to know that, but what I really want to know… He shook his head. “If I don’t say it out loud my sweater is going to sprawl in all directions at once, Miss 101.”

(You want to know how old I am. And how I see plays or movies if no one’s allowed to see me. I’m used to it, Barnaby. People are blurry. I don’t think I’d better tell you my age because you might figure me out again. A nice lady should never be quite exact about her age, anyway. I’ve had a human span — zero to one-hundred. And I still go to movies and things, just not in my own skin. So I’m up on current events, but thanks for being willing to fill me in.

(You’re always so helpful. We’re a lot alike, and I know you know how I know you agree. I’m sorry I know you but you can’t remember me. It’s like a violation, but that’s everything about me these days. The only other way for me to be is, well, dead. And I’m not ready for that.)

“I really feel for you, Miss 101, but you already know that. It seems you really don’t need me to talk.”

(Sometimes you need you to talk, Barnaby. You have a hard enough time. If I can make it any easier, I’m willing to accommodate.)

“Ah.” He sat back. “If you really mean that, Miss 101, I’ll allow you to mop up after the household and put Mordecai back into bed. I promise I won’t look. Or if I do, you can always make me forget what I saw.” He smiled disarmingly. “I volunteer for the damage in exchange for the help. What do you say?”

(I say I know you’re exhausted, I know how hard it is for you just to exist and be rational. I know you’re hurt and scared, too, and I know why. I know you’re not being lazy when you ask me to do it for you.

(But if I help you like that, you’ll feel even more angry and scared and broken than when you couldn’t remember putting Hyacinth in Room 102. They’re damaged enough to believe you took care of them and they don’t remember, but you’re not. There will just be a hole, a mystery, and no way to answer it. It would hurt you as much as not knowing why we’re all here. Maybe more.)

He shuddered and turned his head aside. His mind burned, but it might be humiliation or disgust. “This is indeed a violation, Miss 101. If this is the only way you’re able to exist, I pity you, but I don’t like you.”

(I know. I’m really sorry. I didn’t want to do it like this. But I can’t go. You need help.)

And how did you want to do it, Miss… Miss…

(…Miss Monster. Miss Rapist. Miss Freak. Don’t hold back. I know how you feel; I hurt you. It’s all right. I wanted to do it a lot of ways. I’ve been trying and trying, but I keep hitting dead ends. I’ve been in and out of a lot of people today, Barnaby. I have violated a lot of people trying not to hurt my… my home. The people who take care of me even though they have no idea who or what I am most of the time.)

“Your family, Miss 101.”

(My family is dead, Mr. Graham. They’re dead because of me.)

Shots, in the middle of the night. A scream. A gun. A fire. He wasn’t sure of the order, but he understood what had happened, and he knew he was only seeing it because she was still so hurt by it.

“No, you…” he said. He knew then. He knew he knew, had known, and then he didn’t know it anymore. He put a hand over his eyes to stop them from looking for it. If he found out who she was again, she would only take it away again. This could not be good for his sweater! “This is very difficult, Miss 101.”

(I know. Please let me distract you by answering something easier.)

She went to Chris first. She’d easily convince him to check up on Lucy and Calliope for New Year’s. She knew through Calliope that he had been too nervous to eat much, and that included the salmon puffs. Hyacinth’s household and Calliope’s family did the most damage to the buffet and themselves because they missed two meals before.

Even if Chris was a little messed up, she could still get him into a taxi. She’d whisper that it was probably food poisoning and Calliope would be in even worse shape. He had anxiety, he’d take it from there. She’d nudge him to pick up some medicine on the way, (she’d looked through several pharmacies on the way to him and found some quick-dissolving tablets that would do the job) and she’d slip him the money for that and the cab fare once he got there.

However, once she reached him, she found him in the shared bathroom of his cold water brownstone with his head in the toilet and a line of similarly impoverished young people banging on the door.

A look in that semi-conscious head showed her he’d eaten only one salmon puff… and followed it up with twenty-five macarons. He went back to the table after Milo left. And after midnight, he bought a bottle of cupcake-flavoured Tuathan Cream, from a liquor store, on clearance. He was so damn certain Miss Shimizu was going to savage them in the paper, and so depressed about the fate of his raccoon photos… Even now.

It never occurred to him Calliope might need help; he was thinking if he couldn’t escape the evils of commercialism, maybe it would be better to puke until he died. Maudlin, overdramatic fool.

But she was used to seeing the worst of people and loving them anyway.

She slipped into him just long enough to spring the button lock and open the door. She said, “I’m sick. I think it was something I ate. I’m really worried about my girlfriend. She lives in Strawberryfield. 217 Violena. Could somebody go check on my girlfriend?” Then she let him fall.

This cute girl with blonde hair and freckles helped pick him up. “You have a girlfriend?” she said.

“Huh?” he said. “No. We’re not together anymore.”

She smiled.

They helped put him back to bed and got him a soda out of the vending machine, but none of them cared enough about a near-stranger’s ex-girlfriend to hike down to Strawberryfield. Least of all the girl who was thinking he was kinda cute and maybe if she took care of him he might go out with her.

So it was back into the network of connections that she swam through like a rat in the pipes, catching fleeting glances out of the eyes of strangers to make sure she was headed in the right direction. Well, not the right direction, not one. But she didn’t let him see the full extent of how she navigated because she was afraid to blow out his damaged brain.

He was grateful. The hallucinatory kaleidoscope of thoughts, memory and images she had to sort through to go even one way was almost too much. People didn’t just sense the world like remote cameras, they analyzed it. Constantly. And often in ways that made no damn sense.

Wait, wait, wait. Go back! Some people don’t have an internal monologue? How the hell do they function?

(Oh, Barnaby. If I don’t pick and choose what to answer, you’ll spend the rest of your life asking me questions. And I can’t let you remember any of this.)

She tried Calliope’s family next. She found a coloured bellhop and convinced him to knock on the door.

Euterpe answered it, still wearing his pyjamas. He managed a weak smile and raked back his dark hair. “Hey. Are you room service? I don’t really know how hotels work. I was, like, in this mental hospital for a couple days but they definitely did not have any room service. Or any rooms. I got no context. But, uh, my mom really wants some, uh, apple juice? Pretty much all she says. Been kinda like a zombie movie, all night. You’d tell me if it was a zombie movie out there, right? Is there still room in hell? I gotta figure there is, or they’d, like, subdivide it and jack up the rent. Ha.” 

He was about to break down in hysterics out of sheer exhaustion and it was going to come out somehow. He was trying very hard to keep a lid on it and be normal for his family’s sake. It was really sweet of him, but the bellhop didn’t see that, he just thought this guy was nuts.

“There’s not any apple juice in the machine. Or any brains. They don’t want any brains, but, ya know. Soda crackers. They want apple juice and soda crackers. I was afraid to leave them long enough to go to the store. My big brother puked in your ficus and my nephews ate all your refrigerator candy.

“And I am super sorry about all your sheets and towels, bra. I tried to do laundry in the bathtub like usual, but there’s, like, way too much of it. And not enough tiny soap. Why is all your soap so tiny, my man? It’s super weird.

“And do you have, I dunno. Like, a babysitter? Or something? Colouring books? Honestly, I’d let them have a whole vat of those pillow mints and a chainsaw if it’d just keep them busy for fifteen minutes…”

Behind him, Helix and Sigma had been jumping up and down on one of the beds the whole time, surrounded by soda bottles. Sigma paused only a moment to drink some more sugar.

A pale hand clawed its way up the bedspread, its owner lying invisible on the floor. “No, no,” a female voice muttered. “Not before dinner, my precious little experiment…” It was a little after eight in the morning.

Sigma passed the bottle to Helix and he drank too. None of the adults were able to back up anything they said today, and Uncle Terp didn’t care. The hand disappeared with a thump. The twins exchanged a glance, “Mommy sleepin’,” Helix said, and they began jumping again.

No, she told the bellhop. This is a nice hotel and these crazy people are lawyers or some shit. It’s not any worse than when that rock band stayed here, and they ended up covering all the damages, with a huge tip. I’m just going to get them the room service and the doctor. They obviously need a doctor. I am not calling the police. I’ve made up my mind, that is final!

“Apple juuuuuice…” someone moaned.

“Hang on, sir. We have a doctor on staff,” the bellhop said, if not entirely of his own volition.

So everyone who might plausibly investigate a food-poisoning incident at 217 Violena had been taken out by the food poisoning.

She began sorting through her file of people who were vaguely associated with Hyacinth’s house, but she didn’t have a lot of great options. All she could do was talk to the ones who weren’t coloured — and be dismissed as irrelevant or insanity or, if she really screwed up, discovered. If she slipped inside a coloured one and walked off, she might alert any number of concerned friends and family, or even the police. There was only so much mess she could clean up and she did not want to get her whole family shot again.

New Year’s Day complicated matters — many of these people didn’t need food poisoning to be incapacitated.

She’d been about to put Fred Halsey on like a jumpsuit and button him up — sure, his family would be scared shitless, but Hyacinth had saved his life and he owed her, that was fair — when Barnaby hit upon the idea of shopping. She had to yank all the tendrils of her influence home, and use them to work her way inside Mordecai’s feverish and fragile brain to keep the old man from getting himself killed. But he just wouldn’t listen. Then Mordecai’s body gave out, the connection shattered like glass, and he hit his poor head on the floor.

Now she was using all her ability to compensate for Barnaby’s cracks so they could have a rational conversation. There was no glue for repairing Barnaby. It was like piecing together a broken plate and holding each shard in place while trying to prep and eat a three-course meal off the damn thing. She had enough hands for that, but not enough for that and Fred.

She’d have to explain everything, trust Barnaby to hold his own shit together for another hour or so, and go ruin Fred and Georges’s whole day. Fred had a broom; she probably remembered how to ride a broom, even with a dick in the way. It wouldn’t take long to get him there, she probably wouldn’t kill him, and Barnaby wouldn’t hurt himself shopping.

They could blame Fred’s presence on Erik’s tentacles and delirium when she was done. The poor kid would feel guilty and scared, and Mordecai would flip out, but that wasn’t anything they hadn’t been through before. Maybe they’d be motivated to train him a little better, after…

Wait, wait, wait. Miss 101, go back. You’ve missed someone. Seth is closer than Fred — gods, I hate all these names — even by broomstick. You forgot…

(NO!)

It was as if someone had slammed a door in his face, but the door had a picture of a blue man curled up on a park bench and screaming with grief on it, and when the door hit him he fell through the frame.

It was a warm night in summer, San Rosille was in pieces, and a lot of people were sleeping outside, wherever they could find a spot that wasn’t too wet from the rain. Seth had managed to find some drugs, and he didn’t care about the bench being wet, or about finding anything to eat. Actually, he didn’t even care about the drugs at the moment.

He was crying, screaming, begging her, out loud and inside his head with images and feelings he couldn’t even put into words. “Don’t leave me, Auntie Di! Please don’t leave me, Auntie Di!” Not like this. If she took the memory and left him like this, he was going to find out they were dead all over again, and her too. It hurt too much already.

He wanted her to take everything away. He wanted to be a crazy person with no past and have no idea who those people were when he heard they were dead. He knew she could erase everything that made him, and he was clinging to her so she couldn’t go.

There was no distance here. There was not a seer watching this vision and able to think critically about it. There was a woman remembering it in vivid detail and hellishly aware of how this was going to turn out, what she had done. I won’t do that. I don’t want you to die, Sprite. I love you.

“I’ll…” He thought he would kill himself if she left — all of him, not just the memories. But she knew he wouldn’t, because he wouldn’t have any reason to.

And he was too scared of it to do it himself. She knew that about him too. She didn’t know, not then, that it was because of how Mordecai had hurt him. She was able to escape and they were both still alive in part because of how Mordecai had hurt him. And she would’ve murdered everything that made Morph without a second thought if she’d found out about it when he’d done it. Causality was hilarious sometimes, truly. Wasn’t it, Barnaby?

She didn’t have any time, and she was stronger than him. She didn’t even let him finish his sentence. She hid the memory and left him on the park bench with tear streaks and no context. He decided he must’ve had another nightmare. Oh, well. He knew how to get back to sleep.

(I will not hurt him again. Not because they were all too stupid to notice the orange fishy crackers were off and you sold your mental health for fancy desserts, showgirls and alimony. Do you…)

But you…

She’d been at the top of the basement stairs, looking down at Seth and Mordecai. They had frozen in the middle of their fight and were staring back up at her.

Morph said, “Oh, gods…”

Sprite had collapsed, hidden his face and begun to sob, “This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, no, no, no…”

“…It was you the whole time,” Morph said.

He always said that! She threw up her hands with a scream. “I can’t fix it this way, I can’t stop you, I don’t even know how to get you out of here, but fuck you, Mordecai! Fuck you! I will live under the same roof with you because I have nowhere else to go, but I will never forgive you!”

She put Seth back on his feet, though he was sobbing and thought he was losing his mind, and stamped away from the doorway. Blow him out of the water, Sprite, she thought. She hid the memories and let them get back to their fight.

When she saw Mordecai again, she punched him!

…never stopped…

They’d found her unconscious body on the floor. She woke to the sound of Seth sobbing and Mordecai, pissed off, doing his usual schtick: “It was her the whole time! It was her the whole time!” Yeah, yeah, yeah. So obvious. Every damn time. She apologized for what she had done, and what she was going to do.

They made up. That time, she got to hug Sprite, and he said he understood and he was so glad she was okay. She said she was so proud of him. She told Morph she knew, and she sure as hell wasn’t proud of him, but she didn’t have the energy to stay mad.

Then she took all the closure and resolution away from them and put them back in the kitchen, so they could tell Erik about her as if she hadn’t just had to tell the whole household herself. They didn’t notice how fast it seemed to have gotten dark outside. It was like that after a storm.

…hurting him.

(DO NOT ARGUE WITH ME, MR. GRAHAM!)

“Ah…” He rolled onto his side and propped himself up with an elbow. “Miss…” There was a little hiccup, as if he’d lost his place while reading, and then he found where he’d been. “Give me a moment to explain, Miss 101. Please. You’ve spiked my blood pressure so hard it has induced a nosebleed, and I don’t think it’s liable to stop on its own. If you reset me again, I’m just going to read it off these blood stains again, and we shall be trapped in an endless loop until one of us dies.

“Oh.” As far as he was concerned, he had been sitting on the floor of Room 102 and allowing the occupant of Room 101 to explain her actions and her plan, and now he was sitting in one of the nice chairs in the front room with a glass of milk on the end table and a cookie in his hand. Well, he knew enough to know he was missing something, and why.

He dunked the cookie. “I prefer tea in cold weather, Miss 101. Oh, yes, there is vomit in the water bucket. At least, there was as I last recall. Well, thank you very much. You’ll make someone a fine wife someday.”

(You have a cruel sense of humour, Mr. Graham. I have never liked it. Will you stay in the house with your milk and cookies and allow me to collect Fred so you have some kind of plausible explanation for all these people being tucked in and cared for by ME when I yank all these memories out of your broken goddamn brain?)

Are you upset with me?

(I’m trying not to be. It’s pointless.)

“I’m reluctant to say this… Er, well, stop me if you’ve heard it before and it was what upset you. As I recall — so take it with a grain of salt — you were going to blame Erik for your actions and expect Mordecai and him to soak the damage. I have recently encountered a reason we might not want to upset Erik unnecessarily. It’s in my head if you look for it.”

A brief pause.

(This is Erik standing in front of a machine which Milo built and wondering if he ought to murder everyone in the world. And the machine is capable of doing this, although Milo did not mean it that way.)

“Indeed.”

(You realize, of course, that this is insane.)

“Oh, yes. You know what I know and you know what I mean. You know I am not in full possession of my faculties, but you also know delusions are off-brand for me. So far as I can tell, this is a possibility. It seems equally likely — exactly equally, and let me tell you, that is bizarre — that at this exact same point in the future, he will be comforting a crying baby with cake, because his uncle taught him to express love with food.

“I am not fond of the world, but if at all possible, we probably ought to steer him towards option two, not to put too fine a point on it. You should, I should say, because I’m not going to be here much longer, and I believe I’ve put together why.”

(That thing where you think you can alter reality by moving small objects around is a delusion.)

“I suppose it is, to a certain extent.” He chuckled. “Dear me, that’s a bit embarrassing. I haven’t been this sane in years! And I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say we may affect Erik’s behaviour in his early twenties by making him a bit less of a punching bag now. Trying to, anyway, if we can.”

(I know what you want to do, but I don’t know how much of it is due to your fatalism and your enormous ego. The ego on you would choke a horse, Barnaby. Are you willing to entertain the idea that if I do not hold you together and help you do everything yourself, you might not drop dead of a heart attack six days from now? That this plan of yours may not be taking advantage of the inevitable but in fact an elaborate form of suicide?)

“Hmm.” He dunked another cookie. “No. No, I am not. Not seriously. I’d only be humouring you, which is also pointless. I’ve already seen it. Well, I have to presume it’s the option where I have my coat and shoes, because you’re helping me. I prefer that one. The other one might be me sneaking out while you’re involved with Fred, to force your hand and die a hero. You are not wrong about my ego, Miss 101.”

(You’re not being consistent. You want me to screw predestination by helping guide Erik and surrender to it by killing you. These two things do not go together.)

“They do if screwing predestination is also predestined.”

She didn’t seem to have anything to say to that.

“Oh, Miss 101, you know what I know, but you don’t have my perspective — I assure you, you don’t want it. What seems to be madness may only be a form of sanity too complex to be grasped by the conventional mind. Well, not that yours is conventional, I don’t wish to be insulting. It doesn’t really matter.”

He smiled. “You’re trapped, Miss 101. Pardon my sense of humour, but I’ve trapped you in causality. You are capable of knocking me unconscious or lobotomizing me, even temporarily…”

(Barnaby, I don’t know what…)

“Oh. Psychosurgery. I have the impression it doesn’t work very well. You may rummage around in my head looking for context all you like, it may be in there somewhere, but at your own risk. Ah! It must not be fashionable yet or they would’ve done it to Milo — no intuition needed, pure logic. …Is this really the best you can do with me?”

(Afraid so.)

“Hm. It’s not so bad. I could get used to it.” He picked up his thread of thought easily, with a shrug, “The point is: You don’t know if whatever traumatic thing you do to me to get me out of the way will turn out to be what kills me. You also don’t know if going ahead with your unaltered plan will result in Erik murdering the world. Your best option for continuing to live with a relatively clean conscience is to do what I say, because then at least whatever happens will be my fault. And I want to get dressed and go out. So can we get started?”

◈◈◈

At the bottom of the attic stairs, he straightened his tie. “Ah, it’s a lovely day!” He caught himself. The relative loveliness of the day was entirely dependent on the monster riding in his head. “Er, well… Thank you, for that. Are you, uh, perfectly happy holding down the fort here and walking to the pharmacy with me?”

(No.)

“Ah-ha. Well, all right… If you’re not happy, are you willing to do it without abandoning me out there, even if I irritate you?”

(Just don’t push me.)

“No, dear, of course not. Thanks again. Just one more thing!” He drew a pencil out of his pocket and scratched a large, black X on the undressed floorboards, just past the stairs, near the wardrobe. “There! Put your mind at rest, Miss 101. That is precisely where I die, so as long as I do not lie down on that mark I’ve just made, I am immortal!”

(We have discussed how moving small things does not alter the nature of reality, but only what you’re able to see, Barnaby.)

“Miss 101, you’re the one operating my tenuous grasp of sanity. If it is not up to your standards, that is your fault.”

(We’ve also discussed how I feel about your sense of humour. And pushing me.)

“Terribly sorry, my dear. Thanks again. Let’s be as quick as we can.”

With her help, he got down the stairs and out of the house without being distracted by the paint stains at all!