• Chapter Three

    One of the travelers opened his eyes. It was the man who was standing when the nurse opened the door. It was no surprise that he had collapsed; it was a surprise that he had not collapsed sooner. He was dehydrated, exhausted. The nurse, a woman in her thirties named Adja, would have ventured a guess that he had been carrying the man, his brother as he had said, for at least two days. And out there, in the desert where they had been, and carrying someone roughly the same weight as him, she had come to two conclusions: either this man was driven solely by determination, or this man was inhuman.

    That was preposterous, though. What else would he be other than human? Those stories were old. No one believed them, least of all this no-nonsense nurse. It had to have been mind-over-matter.

    Had to be.

    But in any case, she was about done at work when the stranger woke up. He didn't startle her. No, he didn't even make a sound. But she knew that he was awake because there was a sudden awareness about the room. It was that feeling that one gets when one comes to the suspicion that they are not alone in the room. That was the sort of presence that this man had about him: that you were not alone

    Dull brown eyes peered lazily through a slight gap in his eyelids; he didn't have enough energy to open them all the way. His eyes had gone cross, not that he could really tell. The space above him was only flat white ceiling. He had the distinct feeling that he was inside a cloud.

    He wanted to go back to sleep. Being on a cloud was so pleasant after spending so much time on the earth. It would be nice just to float here for awhile.

    Passively, he wondered if his brother was on a cloud, too.

    Brother, he thought, and was then aware of his legs. They felt heavy, like they were keeping him from floating anymore. The weight of his legs, which seemed like stone, was immovable and grounding. Stone... how fitting, he thought as he felt himself land, head still in the cloud.

    His eyes focused and he could make out details in the whiteness in front of him. It wasn't as clean as it had looked unfocused. God, I'm stupid, he thought beratingly as he eventually made sense of his surroundings.Floating on a cloud, what an idiot I am.

    He could hear feet, but couldn't move his head to see to whom they belonged. A shadow passed in front of his vision; his eyes had to readjust again.

    "How are you feeling," asked the shadow with a woman's voice.

    Like I have been hit by a mountain, he tried to say. It came out as incomprehensible rasping. She promptly gave him water through a straw. Like a good nurse.

    He tried again to speak. Thank you. My name is Leonard. It is a pleasure to meet you. She laughed a bit at his determination, though it was not a clear laugh. Much more like an amused exhalation, the kind of sigh that one makes when they are both bemused and feeling pity.

    "Don't overexert yourself," she advised.

    He relaxed, or tied to. He was frustrated at his inability to communicate. What was the point of being awake when you couldn't speak?

    He closed his eyes again and drifted off to sleep again.

    ~

    Garrett moaned. This one was a moan of discomfort. He had a headache, he was dizzy, he was dry, and he was fairly certain that he had woken up in the wrong place. He opened his eyes to find that he was incorrect: that he was in his own delapidated apartment in one of the less than favorable parts of Neptha's inner city, if you could call it that. He always felt like he was in the wrong place, even if he did manage to make it home the night before. There was always this feeling that if he was not in the wrong place, then he was probably in the wrong body and this was the wrong life. He would have liked to believe something mystical about this, but the truth was that he was just plain unhappy most of the time.

    Oh, sure, he had plenty of money without having to work for it. He spent most of his evenings drinking and trying to make friends with the naïve citizens of Neptha, having a general good time. And his apartment may have been in a sorry state, but he didn't spend much time in it other than for sleeping and hiding out. But when he thought about all this, it still felt like he was uncomfortable in his own skin.

    He tried not to think about it.

    It wasn't because of some moral imperative. He liked stealing. He loved stealing. He just thought that there would be more to it.

    He rolled over onto his face and reassessed the situation he was in. Same apartment, same city, same clothes as the night before. Same floor. He'd missed his makeshift bed completely, which was nothing new. He was surprised that he'd actually gotten home at all and not ended up in an alley behind someone's trash cans. It had only happened once before, but it had haunted him ever since. There was nothing more embarrassing than waking up with someone else's banana peels in your face.

    Well, there were more embarrassing things, he was sure. But at the time it was simply something he didn't want to experience twice.

    And the most disappointing realization was that he was alone. He always hoped that he would wake up one morning and there would be something beautiful laying next to him with no explanation. He hadn't had much luck. He frowned and sat up, trying to work through the hangover to wake up properly. "Gaaaauuuugh," he moaned to no one. "How much did I have to drink last night?" One drink that was surprisingly strong on the vodka and two that had the most disgusting gin you've ever tasted, a mathematical voice in his head told him. He actually was keeping count whenever he went to drink. Then a lyrical voice rang: Hearts full of youth, hearts full of truth. Six parts gin to one part vermouth. Three drinks shouldn't have affected him so much, but he was a very skinny man and didn't really eat much before he went drinking that night. He swore up and down that he would start being smarter about when he drank, but he had a tendency to break his own rules.

    He stood, wobbled, and caught himself. "I'm okay," he mumbled to the empty room, and made his way to the kitchen. He was hungry. He needed to do dishes. He rinsed off a dirty plate and made a plan to officially wash dishes later when he had energy. Maybe after he ate something.

    He opened the cupboards and watched a moth flutter lazily out from the darkness. "That's a good sign," he commented, then yawned. Beans, canned carrots, rice, some kind of unlabeled preserve. In the breadbox: bread; about half a loaf. He shrugged, grabbed some of the bread, and began spreading the mystery preserve on it. It was red, which didn't really mean anything in terms of flavor. Most preserves were red.

    He took a bite.

    He didn't think it was possible for preserves to taste like old.

    There was a knock on the door, which was so loud that it echoed inside Garrett's head. He winced and put his attempted breakfast down on the counter. Reluctantly, he wandered over to the door. He wanted whoever was there to just go away, thinking that there was no one there. But he rarely ever had visitors aside from his landlord, and that barely counted.

    They knocked again. "I'm coming, already," he yelled at the mysterious visitors. He finally reached the door and turned the knob to open it. He swung it open and stuck his head out into the hallway. "What do you want?"

    The hallway was empty. Well, almost empty. On the floor at his feet was a cream-colored envelope sealed with wax. He didn't recognize the insignia, but it looked somewhat like a keyhole, he thought. He looked up and down the hall for whoever it was that bore this strange letter, but there was no one to be found. Well, that's certainly strange, he thought as he bent down to pick up the letter. Thinking that this was a strange, strange town, he brought the envelope inside, left it on a table somewhere, and prepared to go out to the streets for some good, old-fashioned swindling.

    He would address this weirdness later.