Terrible Minds Flash Fiction Challenge: 200 words, part 2

Written for the 2nd part of Chuck Wendig's 5 week flash fiction challenge on Terrible Minds.  Basically, one picks 200 words written by someone else for last  week's challenge, then adds their own 200 words to the mix.  Below, the story beginning I chose by Fatma Alici, and following that, the 200 words I added.


Another shot glass slammed down as Toops flashed her big, black eyes at me.  “Are you going to black out.”  Her tone as dry as the desert planet we had left.

“I never black out. “  I grinned motioning for another shot.  “I’m only resting my eyes.”

 Toops rolled her eyes and crossed her arms.   “Yeah, I believe you, Lancer.  I really do.”  Her scarred fingers pushed her still full glass back and forth across the metal bar top.  “Didn’t you say we have a man coming in to offer us a job?

“You handle all the contracts.  I’m your simple minded muscle.”  I winked at her.  “Me big man.  Me hit things hard.”  The burning fire scalded my throat as I took another shot.

Her hand snapped out faster than my eye could follow.  Those strong fingers crushed mine into my palm.  “Do not call for another shot.  I swear I will break your fingers right now.”

A hearty chuckle rumbled up my throat.  “Alright, alright boss lady.”

My fingers were released.  “We are partners.”

“You say that now, but once the client gets here you’ll change your tune.”  She couldn’t deny it.  It was true.

---

The mark joined us not too long after that. I know they're supposed to be clients, but I can't help thinking of them as marks. Lancer likes to think of us as noble ruffians, taking on jobs to help the weak and disenfranchised. Truth is, we take on the jobs that pay the most. Sometimes that means we take the client for a bit of a ride.

Lancer was right about one thing: when the client arrives, I play boss. Pretty much have to; no one would buy me as the hired muscle – at least no one with all their bits in tact. Marks are always weary of a girl without a purpose. They'll buy me as the brains, but not the brawn.

Lancer brought this one in. I let him do that once in a while because it makes him feel like we're equal partners. More importantly, it makes the marks think that I'm hot stuff. They're so lucky to get me, I send one of my peons first to see if they're worthwhile instead of going myself. Doesn't always work, but when it does, it's a much bigger payday.

Terrible Minds Flash Fiction Challenge

Wrote this for Chuck Wendig's most recent flash fiction challenge on Terrible Minds.

Blurred, crystalline shapes whined into view.

Rebecca blinked, but otherwise kept still while she assessed the damage. The glass had exploded inward, which bothered her less because it had knocked her down, and more because exploded inward was a contradiction. She didn't like that.

Her habit had protected her ears and God had protected her eyes. Her hands hadn't been so well looked after.

She put a cautious, bleeding hand on a pile of glass cubes, another on bare concrete, and started to push herself up. For the first and – she hoped – only time, she was glad Mother Superior insisted on those ugly, thick-soled shoes. Her stilettos never would have gained traction.

A hand appeared in front of her. She took it without questioning its origin. It was strong, warm, masculine. She was happy to allow the man to help her stand, to accept her glasses as he handed them back. For a second, Rebecca let herself believe she might escape. She put her glasses on.

She started, which startled the man. His one hand hung awkwardly in the air, as if he was still waiting for her to take her glasses; the other rested on his gun.

Quicksand, Part 32

They found Charm-Charm under a massive stone bridge which lay across a field and was too high to connect anything to anything else. She was standing in one of the arches, leaning against the cool, damp stone, smoking a cigarette. She nodded politely to Daisy Chain, then gave Sally a judgemental once-over. “Is this who you wanted me to meet?” She sneered. “She looks human.”

“She is human,” Daisy Chain said, a bit abruptly. “Earth born. Don't pretend you can't tell the difference.”

Charm-Charm bristled. “So she's human. Why have you brought her to me?”

“There are raiders after her.”

“And?”

“And we want to get to them first.”

“And?”

“And when a lack of hunters presents itself, who would you rather be killing?”

Charm-Charm shrugged. “Fair point. Why are they after her? Is she Dust heavy?”

“Not especially, no.” Daisy Chain looked down at his feet, embarrassed. “A bit. She's the last of my humans.” Sally didn't know if he was embarrassed because he had humans or if it was because he had one as seemingly useless as her. Or was he embarrassed that he needed help protecting her?

Charm-Charm nodded, understanding but disapproving. “I see.” She perked up slightly. “So who are we going to kill?”

Quicksand, Part 31

They had started walking again. Sally didn't know where to, but she was too exhausted to ask. She realized that in nightmares it was nearly impossible to get to where you wanted to be and that the sluggishness she felt might be a reflection of that. Maybe if she didn't want to be anywhere, it would be easier to get there.

“Don't drag your feet,” Daisy Chain told her. He had his hands in his pockets and his head down as if trudging through a strong wind.

—but there was no wind. The sidewalk they were on had broken up and turned into rocks and stones and twigs and dirt and it was now a path through a forest with trickling stream.

“I can take you home,” Daisy Chain said, after a while.

Sally perked up. “You can?” She was about to hug him. Her arms were already stretched out. “Wait. What about the guys that are after me?”

“They'll still be after you. I'll try to find them here before you need to sleep again.”

“What if you can't?”

“Then you'll just have to try to remember – and run.”

Sally thought it over. “So... say I do go back. When I sleep I come back here?”

“To Nod. When you wake up, first thing, draw a picture. A place in Nod. Not the one we were attacked in. Somewhere where you felt safe.”

Sally wanted to say that she hadn't felt safe since seeing Daisy Chain beckoning her into a dark alley, but what she blurted out instead was, “I can't draw!”

Daisy Chain shrugged. “You're going to have to. And you're going to have to look at it every night before bed, until you fall asleep. And when the raiders figure out where you're going to wake up, you'll have to draw a new picture and erase the other one from memory.”

“And how long do I need to keep doing that?”

Daisy Chain shook his head, the way he did when he was trying to dislodge a particularly stupid or childish question from his brain. “What? Forever. As long as you're alive.”

“So you're saying, every time I sleep, for the rest of my life—”

Daisy Chain clapped his paws together twice, slowly. “Now she get's it.” He looked a little friendlier and added, “It's the best I can do, Sally.”

Sally walked on in silence.

“What if I stayed?” Sally asked after a long time. “I don't mean forever. But what would we have to do to make it safe for me to sleep?”

Daisy Chain pondered this. “Stick to the original plan. Find the raiders that are trying to kill you and kill them.”

“That's it?”

“Isn't that enough? When you're up close, Sally, it's not like watching some cartoon character get crushed by an anvil.” He stopped, grabbed her hand and pulled it to his chest. It was warm, soft, moving. She could feel his heartbeat, rapid, more rabbit than man. “We're real. We're alive. And when we die, we die. It isn't pretty.”

As delicately as she could, Sally pulled her hand away. “I know,” she told him. “I get that.”

“We'll need help,” Daisy Chain said.

“From where? I thought everyone here was—you're going to say Minty, aren't you?”

Daisy Chain looked taken aback. “Minty? No, that poor girl has enough of her own shit to deal with without getting involved in mine. We leave her out of this.”

Sally was relieved and tried not to let it show.

“We'll go see Charm-Charm.”

Quicksand, Part 30

Sally walked along a tired concrete path. It was flanked on either side by evergreens, except they weren't green; they were black as if, even up close, they were silhouetted against the sunless pink and yellow sky. She felt like she had been walking for hours, but she kept speeding up. She wanted to put as much space as possible between herself and Daisy Chain – and his homicidal lingerie bunny. She couldn't get away from them fast enough. But she wasn't exactly comfortable on her own, either. Every sound made her heart jump and every crack in the pavement made her skin crawl. She couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched, followed, plotted against and she had no idea how to wake herself up.

Sally's mind went back to the hunter. That's what the slutty rabbit had called him – that had been her excuse. The guy's a hunter. The guy was a hunter. No one dressed like that who wasn't, or didn't want people to think that they were. And that had been enough of a reason for Daisy Chain to condone his murder, apparently. Sally wasn't fond of hunters, as a breed. She couldn't figure out how anyone derived enjoyment from killing animals, and as for the hunt itself, tracking an unarmed creature of lower intelligence with gun from a safe distance didn't seem very sporting to her – but she wouldn't want to see someone killed for it; and the way he had died. She could still remember it, every detail, every ruby drop that had sprayed through the air, his face contorted in pain and fear and the way that, at the end, his eyes just went blank, and when he fell, there wasn't even a thud. Even sound had stopped caring about him.

She was angry with Daisy Chain. Not just angry with him; disgusted by him. She couldn't believe that her fuzzy, friendly childhood hero was actually a monster, a calculating killer, devoid of compassion and able to witness a murder with apathy. But he had saved her, hadn't he? She had stopped moving in the park and he had stayed back to protect her. If they had all rushed at once, that group of figments could have killed him and God only knew what would have happened to Sally if they had. And now, thanks to Daisy Chain, they didn't have a leader, they were wandering around Nod with no purpose, no direction—I hope they're not wandering anywhere near here, said a small voice, unearthing itself from her subconscious. Actually, she realized, she could be quite close to them – them or people like them. Daisy Chain had said that Nod was full of raiders. They could be anywhere.

Sally couldn't help imagining Thrib, leaking black ink, dragging his half-dead body after her, calling out her name. She smiled, just a little, when she realized that he would be calling out Thally, Thally, but when she thought of him using the lobster thing as his henchman, her smile faded. He could be out there, right now, looking for her.

A heavy hand landed on Sally's back.

“There you are,” Daisy Chain said, as Sally's heart slid down out of her throat. “What the Hell are you doing?”

“Let go of me!” Sally shouted. She tried to spring forward, but Daisy Chain tightened his grip on her shoulder. “Let me go!” It came out as a high-pitched shriek. Despite Sally's insistence, her struggles were in vain.  “You let her kill that guy,” Sally hissed, still trying to pull free. “I saw you.”

“Yeah, I did. So what?”

Sally felt that she could have coped with almost any answer, have graciously accepted any offers of regret, but the callousness of his response made her sick. “I hate you,” she told him – and suddenly she could remember telling him the same thing all those years ago, when he'd told her she was never going to see him again. Sitting in the plastic yellow chair by her tea party table, too mad to get up and give him a hug goodbye.

Daisy Chain released Sally as she surged forward again and she fell onto her face. He did not offer to help her up. “This is the way life is here, now,” he told her. “That guy came here to hunt—to kill figments and steal our Dust. To get high. And I'm supposed to do what? Let it happen? Tell Charm-Charm, Sorry, I know hunters killed your whole family and they've been invading our world and murdering our children for centuries, but would you mind not killing this one; Sally's lurking in the bushes over there and it might upset her delicate stomach? I don't think so. Life is hard. It's ugly. Deal with it.”

Sally tried to pick herself up.

“I thought I was doing you a favour by bringing you here. I thought I could keep you safer if I kept you with me.”

Daisy Chain looked exhausted. He gave Sally his hand and hauled her upright. Once she was standing, he stepped back awkwardly, looked down and shoved his hand-paws into the pockets of his jeans. “I didn't mean for any of this, you know.”

“I know,” Sally heard herself say it before she was aware of having thought it – but it was true, it was written clearly on Daisy Chain's face. “But, the blood...”

Daisy Chain looked up at her, confused. “It wasn't blood, Sally. It was Dust.”

“I thought Dust was blue.”

“Some of it is. It depends who it comes from. She drained his Dust—”

“It looked like blood,” Sally muttered under her breath. “If it was Dust, why was it red?”

“Because blood is red.”

“I thought blood was red because of iron.”

“Maybe his Dust had iron in it. Stop trying to make sense of everything; you're wasting your time.”

“And the way he died—”

“He's not dead. I've tried to explain this to you. She drained his Dust, which means on Earth, he's a vegetable. Which is worse. And I hate to say it, Sally, but the same thing will happen to you.” He sighed a long, sad sigh and looked back at his feet. “It's my fault,” he told her. “They're only after you because of me.”

Sally was having trouble getting used to the speed of the place. Everything, including her own thoughts and emotions changed so quickly, without warning. Now she wanted to forgive Daisy Chain, hug him, to make him feel better. He looked so wounded, so vulnerable, so—“Are you wearing a thong?”

The question snapped Daisy Chain out of whatever revelry he had been lost to. He looked up at Sally. “Yeah. So?”

Sally glanced at the two red strips of fabric strung across Daisy Chain's boney hips and realized that they had always been there. Somewhat uncomfortably, she also realized that there was something decidedly close-minded about commenting on anyone's choice of underthings, most especially if that person was a giant talking rabbit. She tried not to let her eyes linger. The only appropriate answer was a non-committal one. “Ah,” she said.

There was some uncomfortable shifting on both sides.

“Look, I know you didn't mean for any of this,” Sally told him after a moment. “And I know you've been doing everything you've been doing to try to help me. But this place... I can't stay here. It's weird here. It's wrong.” She paused before adding, “Um, no offence.”

Daisy Chain shook his head. “None taken. Nod used to be beautiful. Parts of it still are. But between the raiders and the humans, it's a nightmare.”

It took a second for what he'd said to sink in and part of it caught in Sally's brain. 

“Humans caused this?”

Daisy Chain shrugged. “Yeah. No offence.”

If you are enjoying Quicksand, please come back soon for the next chapter.  In the meantime, you may like my novel Aigaion Girl.

Quicksand, Part 29

Pink and purple light filtered through the needles of a row of giant evergreen trees and shone off the few unbroken windows of a distant factory.

“It's morning?” Sally asked tiredly. “Did we walk all night?”

Daisy Chain gave her a meaningful look. “No. It doesn't work like that here.”

“I don't get what you mean,” she told him.

“I mean that it's always morning here, and at the factory there, it's always just before 

dusk. Some places the time changes, some it doesn't.”

Sally sighed. “So... what time is it?”

“It isn't any time,” Daisy Chain growled. He took a deep breath. “Look, just don't worry about it, OK?”

“So, what are we doing here?”

“Looking for someone,” Daisy Chain said over his shoulder. “I have a feeling she's around here somewhere.”

Sally was about to ask who she was, but she was interrupted by a horrible scream. 

“What the Hell was that?” she asked, but Daisy Chain was already running.

“The factory,” he said over his shoulder. “Come on.”

Sally couldn't help feeling that it was some sort of trap and as she struggled harder and harder to keep up and fell farther and farther behind, she became convinced of the idea. Soon, she was completely alone, jogging among the large, orange needles that covered the concrete path. She pushed herself to run faster, hoping that she was wrong about it being a trap, praying that soon, Daisy Chain would come back into sight.

When she reached the factory, she saw someone, but it wasn't Daisy Chain. She immediately ducked behind a tree, then crouched down in the bushes that were growing next to it. She looked back at the parking lot that surrounded the factory. There were two—people was generous. There was one person, a man in cargo pants, a puffy vest and an orange baseball hat and there was a figment, another rabbit-woman, but definitely not Minty. This one had eyes, for one thing. She seemed to lean a little more to the rabbit side of things than Minty and Daisy Chain, and was dressed in lingerie. She was standing behind the human, holding a large curved knife at his throat.

The man screamed again. “Please! I'll give you anything you want. Please, I just want to wake up,” he whimpered.

The rabbit-woman's face didn't betray any emotion. “Too late.”

Sally closed her eyes. She heard the man scream no, but it went on longer than she expected and was followed by heavy panting. She risked opening an eye.

Daisy Chain was standing behind the rabbit-woman, holding the wrist of the hand that held the knife. The woman was struggling, though seemingly not very hard, to get her hand free.

“What the Hell, Daisy?”

“Come on, Charm-Charm,” Daisy Chain said with a sigh. He looked exhausted. “What are you doing?”

The woman, Charm-Charm, narrowed her eyes. “The guy's a hunter, Daisy.”

Daisy Chain peered around her at the man, who looked like he was considering his chances if he ran. “Are you sure?”

“Am I usually wrong?”

Daisy-Chain let go of her wrist. “Can I have some of the Dust?”

Charm-Charm sneered. “You know how I feel about that,” she told him – and then, without ceremony, dragged her knife across the hunter's neck.

Sally's scream caught in her throat, as the air around the rabbits turned red. The two rabbits stood looking at each other as the man fell to the ground, the hedge cutting him off from Sally's field of vision.

Charm-Charm said, “Been a while, Daisy.”

Sally crouched down below the level of the hedge. As she crept away, she heard Daisy Chain's voice. “Come on,” he said, “there's someone I want you to meet.”

Sorry it's been a while.  With December and the Christmas season coming to an end, we're back to plugs of Aigaion girl, instead of creepy holiday art.

Chapter Titles

Wow... so I found this saved as a draft from almost a year ago.  I decided I'll finish it and post it now; hopefully it still makes sense.

Happy End of the World, everyone!

I always seem to have a lot of trouble coming up with chapter titles.  I've heard that you're supposed* to title books after you finish writing them and I know a lot of people have trouble with this -  but to be honest, I have a much harder time titling the individual chapters.

I feel like the chapter titles should all sort of fit together, or have a theme or something.  Sort of like those young adult novels where every book in the series is an adjective (Broken, Taken, Flowing, Smelly) and it would be weird to have one out of place.

The big issue I'm having with Quicksand at the moment is titling the chapters (/parts).  The narrative is so long and convoluted (and will eventually put into an even less linear order) that I think separating it into chapters is necessary - but then I'm not sure how, or if the chapter titles should somehow indicate which of the three plots that chapter is technically about.  I've even considered little icons to indicate this - suns and moons and stars or rabbits and foxes or... something.  I don't even know.

I had this same problem with Aigaion Girl, and I think I was only saved by the fact that I wrote it in first person, so I very lazily titled each section with the name of the narrator, then counted down the signs of the apocalypse and BAM!

Of course, there's a little part of me that wonders if titled chapters are things that belong in children's books and fantasy novels only.  I'm racking my brain and I can't think of where else I've seen them.  Of course, I'm in Slovakia at the moment and don't have any books I can run and check.



*whoever decided that...

Whoops, completely forgot, it's December, so all posts should be accompanied by a creepy-ass piece of holiday art from the magical time of yesteryear. 

Poetry Revisited

Since I have the place to myself this weekend*, I've been having a lazy day and I thought I would narc around** a bit, so I was looking at my Fictionpress profile and some stuff that I published on there a while ago.  I thought for a laugh, I would look through my angst-ridden poems from days gone by and see how cringe-worthy they were.  To my complete and utter shock, they're not bad.  Actually, I would say they are good.  

I had pretty much given up on writing poetry because I assumed, without really thinking about it, that my several-year poetry "phase" had been generated by man-related emo-ness and that everything I wrote during that time was therefore crap.  Oddly, several of my old poems don't have anything to do with men - and now that I can look at them more objectively, I'm pretty happy with the ones that do as well.

So, I'm thinking, this idea that only hormonal teenagers write poetry anymore needs to go away.  We no longer live in a society that can support people as professional poets, but I think people still have thoughts and feelings that can best be expressed through the written word.... and I'm not saying that I am a wonderful poet - but if I hadn't let my insecurities get the better of me, maybe by now I could have been.

Still, I'm young.  I may get there yet.

*My fiance is elsewhere.  I am bored and I want him to come home.

**This is my new phrase, referring to lazily looking over one's own old writing, paintings, photos, etc. with no real goal or purpose in mind.

Quicksand, Part 26

 “Any chance of us taking a break anytime soon?” Sally was struggling to keep up. They had been walking forever. It seemed like forever in a literal sense; they had been walking for as long as Sally could remember and they would be walking for as long as she could foresee.

“No,” Daisy Chain barked.

“I need a break,” Sally retorted. “We've been walking for—” Forever sounded too whiny, even if it was true. “Hours. There's no one around. The only person we've even seen was that—” Sally stopped herself short, preventing herself from referring to Minty as that freak, although it would have been an accurate enough description. Daisy Chain obviously had a soft spot for her; he'd been in an even worse mood since they'd parted ways. “—Girl. And she ran away.”

“She doesn't know you,” Daisy Chain said, as if that was a valid explanation. “And you're strange-looking. You frightened her.”

“I'm strange-looking?” Sally sputtered.

“I wouldn't take it personally; most humans are.”

The stand of trees they had been walking toward for so long was still a ways in the distance, though the street had turned into a narrow, worn path across a garbage-strewn public lawn, surrounded on either side by dark, shadowy hedges.

“Seriously, though,” Sally said, after what she thought had been a reasonable amount of time, “I really do need to stop.”

“Seriously, though, we're really not going to.”

Sally stopped in the middle of the path, a few feet behind Daisy Chain. “You do what you want. I'm taking a break.” She realized, as she got ready to drop her bag dramatically, that she didn't have one with her. She was also wearing different clothes than she had been when she was awake, but that fact was so minimally weird compared to the rest of her day that she dismissed it almost immediately. Sally sat down just off the path and sighed. The dirt under the grass was cold and damp – and both the cold and the damp seeped immediately into her jeans, but it was wonderful to finally sit down, regardless of how numb her ass was going.

“Get up,” Daisy Chain said. There was no kindness in his voice, no hint of the patience and forgiving tone that Sally remembered from when she was a child.

“No,” she told him. “I need to rest.”

“Get up, Sally.” He sighed. He was obviously tired himself. “We don't have time for this.”

“I'm not—”

Behind Sally, somewhere in the shadows, a twig snapped. Sally froze – and for the barest second, so did Daisy Chain.

“Stay down,” Daisy Chain whispered out of the side of his mouth, as sally tried to get to her feet. “If they catch you, roll.”

They? Sally tried to stand up to get a better look. Daisy Chain put a hand on her head and pushed her back down. “Are you deaf? I said stay down.”

Sally heard the sound of chains jingling behind her.

“Well, well, well,” said a voice. It was a thick, slimy voice and Sally's urge to get a better look at them was immediately quashed by it. “Daisy Chain and a human. I always had you figured for a skin lover.”

“Nice to see you again, B.B. If you run now, I won't kill you.”

Sally heard the sound of several people laughing; one of the voices among them obviously belonged to B.B. She moved closer to Daisy Chain's legs.

“You've had thith coming for a long time, Daithy,” said a voice which Sally was sure belonged to a cartoon snake, “and there are a lot more of uth thith time.”

“Thrib,” Daisy Chain said stiffly. Sally could almost hear the smile in his voice as he added, “How's your sister?”

Thrib hissed and rattled something loudly and Sally had a horrible mental flash of Sir Hiss as a real, living creature. “Don't you talk about my thithter!”

Sally was sure it was a hiss, sure Thrib was a snake, but she couldn't bring herself to look to confirm it. She wasn't afraid of snakes, not really, but the idea of one that was a comparable size to Daisy Chain – and able to talk, too – was more than she thought she could handle.

Daisy Chain let out a short, cruel laugh, as if to say, yeah, whatever. “So, who else is here? Stefanos? Kappenstance? All present and correct? What about Figwort?—Oh wait; I killed Figwort, didn't I? Too Bad.”

“We'll get you back for that,” said the oily voice of B.B. “We'll get you back for all of them.”

From what she could hear, Sally had determined that Thrib was directly behind her, B.B. to her rear and right slightly. She couldn't see or place any of the others that Daisy Chain had mentioned, a fact which she was, at best, ambivalent about.

“Seems like the whole gang is here,” Daisy Chain said. “Except Lisbet, of course.”

Thrib rattled angrily.

“Remember,” Daisy Chain whispered to Sally, “roll.” He raised his voice. “So, what are we waiting for, here?”

Thrib rattled, B.B. howled and shook his chains and a maryid of growls, groans and shrieks emanated from the shadowy trees that surrounded the park.

They seemed to pour onto the lawn, creatures of all shapes and sizes and Sally's intention to follow Daisy Chain's instructions gave way to her overwhelming instinct to run. She got to her feet and tried to do so, but it was less than a second before she was knocked to the ground. She felt something grabbing at her arm and then she rolled. It was ridiculous, she decided, to be rolling around on the ground like she was having a seizure when she should be running away, but, still, whatever was trying to get hold of her arm wasn't having much success.

Sally could hear unpleasant noises, damp thuds and cries of pain, and she could only imagine that the majority of them were coming from Daisy Chain; there were far too many of the bad guys there for him to be winning. She kept rolling, praying that she wouldn't roll into any of them, begging her body to wake her up. She felt herself teeter on the edge of a steep incline, then gravity took over and pulled her down a short hill rapidly, before slamming her into something hard and immovable. All the air was pushed out of her lungs. It took her a moment to catch her breath and a moment more for everything around her to stop spinning. Once it had, she looked up and realized that what she had hit was a tree.

The tree itself wasn't particularly impressive; it was just a tree. The only mildly odd thing about it was that the branches all seemed to be out of Sally's reach – that, and there was a man tied to it by a leather dog leash.

Sally scrambled away from him as quickly as possible, but when she realized that he was frantically fumbling with the latch, she asked quietly, “Are you really here?”

The man looked at her but didn't answer. He kept trying to remove the leash from his collar, with no luck.

“Here, let me,” Sally whispered, risking a glance back at the lawn, where Daisy-Chain, although he wasn't winning, seemed to still be alive. She undid the clasp as quickly as she could. “I'm Sally,” She told the man, who was, ridiculously, in his pyjamas. “What's your name?”

He didn't answer.

“Come on,” she told him. “We have to try to help Daisy Chain.” She grabbed his arm and steered him toward the fray. He wrenched free and ran, full speed, into the middle of the lawn, at the exact right moment to catch the attention of a creature Sally guessed to be B.B., who looked like a nineteen thirties cartoon version of the big bad wolf, if he wasn't a cartoon at all.

B.B. lunged, his horrible mouth open and aimed at the man's throat. Time seemed to slow down as the wolf, with his crumpled top hat and too-long, hairless snout, sailed through the air.

“Daisy!” Sally was surprised to hear the desperate, high-pitched shriek leave her own mouth, but even as it did, she wanted to clarify it, to add save him to the end – but there wasn't time for that.

Nonetheless, Daisy seemed to understand. He swatted away some small, lobsteresque being, grabbed the man by his shoulders and shouted, “Wake up!”

The man, to Sally's amazement, froze for a moment, then faded, like a mirage.

B.B. landed, skidded only slightly and turned on Daisy Chain. “You'll pay for that,” he said, in his horrible, slimy voice, as he advanced. “Not that it matters. Soon we'll have all the Dust.”

“Sure you will,” the figment answered.

Sally felt sick to her stomach. There was something sinister in Daisy Chain's voice, something all too at home with the carnage she felt sure she was about to witness.

Daisy Chain pulled a long, curved knife from somewhere unseen and plunged it into B.B.'s shoulder, causing him to howl in pain and spraying a sparkling, indigo mist everywhere. Thrib, who was indeed a snake, slithered toward his fallen employer, only to catch another of Daisy's knives in the back of the neck. Daisy Chain pulled his second knife out of Thrib and used it to slash B.B.'s throat.

B.B.'s howling ended in a damp gurgling sound. Daisy Chain looked around at the other figments, who where – with the exception of Thrib, who, writhing and thrashing on the ground, was inching toward escape - standing frozen, with their eyes fixed on their fallen comrade. “Anyone else?”

The figments, Thrib, the small lobster thing and a couple of raccoons that had the same human to animal ratio to their make up as Daisy Chain, slithered, crawled and shuffled into the darkness without a word between them.

When Daisy Chain fell to his knees, Sally wasn't sure it was because he was exhausted, disgusted with himself or sad because of what he had been forced to do. She did not expect him to pull his first knife out of B.B.'s shoulder so suddenly, or to intentionally breathe in the deep blue mist that still hung in the air, or to lick the blade clean.

He looked up at Sally, from where he appeared to be doing lines of whatever it was off of B.B.'s chest. “You want some?”

Now, she decided, would be a very good time to run away. She looked at the trees behind her and wondered how far she would get before Daisy Chain caught up. And if he didn't catch up, would that make her fair game for the remaining figments?

“It'll wake you up.” Daisy Chain chuckled quietly. “Well, no. It'll give you more energy.”

“You killed him,” Sally said, trance-like. She couldn't run. If nothing else, she knew that Daisy Chain could protect her.

“Yeah,” he said. “I would have killed more of them, but there were too many for me to take on. I figured if I could get Thrib to run, the rest would follow suit.” He inhaled some more of the iridescent indigo powder that was now floating up from B.B.'s open neck and sighed. “Are you sure you don't want some? It will make you stronger.”

“What is it?” Sally asked slowly. She remembered to add, “And, no, I don't want any,” before Daisy Chain had a chance to answer her.

“Dust,” Daisy Chain said. “It's—it's life. Pure life.”

“It's like your blood?”

“Yes.”

“And you're drinking it? Inhaling it?”

“He would do the same if it was the other way around, trust me. That's what B.B.'s gang does—did. I'm hoping they'll calm down now, for a little while at least. They can't do much without a Keeper.”

“What is what they did?”

“They killed people for Dust. Nod is overrun with raiders now. The gangs are getting bigger, harder to avoid. They trap people, scare them half to death, then kill them and get their dust while it's at its brightest. That's why they want me dead; I've been trying to stop them.”

Sally tried to ignore the fact that none of what Daisy Chain had said made any sense to her. She asked, “So, are those the guys who were after me?” The idea of them, of Thrib, especially, trying to catch her made her skin crawl. But at least with B.B. being dead, there was some chance that Daisy Chain would let her go home.

“No.”

“No?”

“They weren't after you specifically. They weren't even after me; I think they were on their way to drain that poor bastard and they just happened to find us.”

“Yeah, about him,” Sally said slowly. She thought she should be shaking after everything she had witnessed and been told, but she wasn't. She could look at the dilapidated remains of B.B. without even feeling ill. Ironically, she found her new sense of calm inescapably unnerving. “You made him disappear.”

“I woke him up,” Daisy Chain explained tiredly.

So I just need to find a mirror, Sally thought to herself. She smiled slightly. She could be out of this Hell sooner than she'd expected.

“Before you ask, no, it won't work for you.”

Sally thought about playing innocent, asking, before I ask what? but she see from the look on Daisy Chain's face that it would have been pointless. Instead, she asked, “Why not?”

“Because you're heavily and chemically sedated. The only thing that's going to wake you up now is me, and I can't do it from here.”

Sally started to walk away, following the path they had been on. “You're unbelievable,” she said over her shoulder. “You know what? Leave me alone. I'll find my own way out of this place.” How? Whispered her inner voice. She chose to ignore it.

Daisy Chain caught up to her within a few steps. “Yeah,” he agreed, “you will find your own way out. It's called death. They'll kill you here, you'll become a vegetable on Earth and, believe me, I won't be going back to wake you up.” He looked like he was in pain, just thinking about it. “I couldn't—I won't put myself through seeing you like that.”

It hadn't occurred to Sally until right then that Daisy Chain actually cared about her, that everything he had done had been to protect her. She suddenly remembered him from when she was a child, playing Barbies with her, helping her cut out curtains for her dollhouse from her mother's good tablecloth. She remembered him showing up at daycare and how scared she had been before he came, when she was sure that her parents weren't coming back for her.

You're a prize idiot, Sally's internal thoughts told her. She knew they were right. Daisy Chain had risked everything to help her and she had spent every minute she'd been with him either whining or cutting him down. He had just taken on a huge gang of armed figments singlehandedly because she had sat down and refused to move, even when he told her how dangerous it was to stay where they were.

Sally stopped on the path. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't—Thank you for coming to get me. And for not leaving me back there.”

Daisy Chain almost kind of smiled. “Come on,” he told her. “We have to keep moving.”