Sloane's Apartment, the night before...
Time passed, uncaring. The hours and days mixed and swirled together, blending and blurring like when faces and bodies suddenly lose definition and simply become a crowd. Sloane’s face took the center of the frame, the bandages over her nose and the continuity error of the sudden appearance and disappearance of a black hat lined with a veil the only thing changing as time lapsed while she blankly stared ahead like a mannequin. Only a slow zoom on her unflinching pupils reflected the changing scenery around her: a cramped dining room full of old crying women surrounding a table overloaded with untouched food. A wall of stiff shoulders standing at the ready as a flag was draped over a casket. A crew of baggage handlers testing the limits of the phrase “handle with care” as they unknowingly or unsympathetically chucked refrigerated crate holding remains into a cargo plane. A blazing furnace lighting up a dark, nearly empty room as a box is unceremoniously pushed into a fire, cutting to ashes being placed in an urn for nobody.
Sloane blinked as the elevator dinged, bringing her back to the here and now. The second it took between the elevator reaching the top of her apartment building and the doors opening dragged on for an eternity. She caught her reflection in the polished metal, the slight warping of the image making her appear as melted and exhausted as she felt. One farce and four funerals later, only the brief respite of stopping in at a Halloween popup had energized Sloane to make it through the rest of her day. She glanced down at her shopping bag, a hint of red fabric poking through the protective tissue paper, and breathed deeply. Attending the Halloween Festival at a time like this felt mad, yet the normalcy it brought about to her otherwise “unconventional” week was actually quite therapeutic. The elevator dinged again, the door opened, Sloane stepped through the threshold, and the doors slid shut behind her.
Sloane didn’t immediately feel unsafe as she approached the door to her penthouse. It took a moment for the unease to set in, like when accidental eye contact was made with a man across the bar and the sense of accomplishment she felt at managing to not awkwardly glance away suddenly shifted to a swell of anxiety as they took it as an invitation to approach. Her hand hesitated on the handle of her front door as she heard a faintly reminiscent jazz number playing on the other side of the door. She didn’t leave the stereo on when she left, and even if she did it certainly would’ve been tuned to something more melancholic and somber. She slipped a hand into her pocket and held on to her Channeler as she cautiously opened the door and crept down the hall as softly as her heels would let her. She wasn’t concerned that she didn’t know who was intruding in her home. She was concerned that she knew exactly who was here.
Her fears were realized as she turned the corner.
Sitting in her armchair, drinking her brandy, and listening to her stereo was an older man well into his sixties dressed in a casual suit, his slicked back hair doing little to cover the bald spot on his head. His eyes were closed behind the thick frames of his glasses and it was difficult to tell if he was bobbing his head along to the rhythm of the music poorly or if he was constantly catching himself from nodding off. Thumbing through her bookshelf was a woman in black that in the dim lamplight might as well have been Sloane’s doppelganger. Her brow furrowed in disapproval at the book she was reading, a look that matched the one of disgust on Sloane’s face as she saw her mother and father. The faint light of Lux flowing through her Channeler glowed from her pocket as the stereo clicked off and Sloane stepped further into the room, making her presence known.
“Sloaney, sweetie. You’re home,” said her father, getting up from his seat with a smile. The genuine warmth and happiness in his voice made Sloane freeze. The last time Sloane had seen Malik Faris he’d gunned down their butler Warren without an ounce of hesitation or regret, the same way a person would absentmindedly smash a mosquito. That had been over a decade ago.
“We’re going to miss our reservations,” said her mother, thumbing through the pages of a book. Yasmin Faris didn’t even look up to acknowledge Sloane. Unlike her father, Sloane had seen her mother within the last year. Unintentionally for both parties. It had not gone cordially.
“We’ll be fine,” said Malik as he took a few steps towards Sloane. He let out an easy laugh as he reached out to her. In the past ten years he had found some way to reconstruct the tips of his fingers. “Wow, look at you. Figured you would’ve outgrown the goth look by now.”
Quietly, almost inaudibly, the words muttered out,
“...at a funeral…”Sloane found herself knocked back into the mind of a seventeen-year-old girl whose father kept making “joking” comments about her appearance and broke eye contact with the man. On the rare occasions friends crossed paths with her father they always talked about how funny he was, seemingly uncaring that his punchlines only ever punched down on his daughter. She had grown since then. She snatched back the confidence he’d knocked away and wrapped it back around her like body armor. She didn’t care what this man or anyone thought about her (and for real this time, not like when she was a hormonal teenager screaming the same sentiment as she stomped out of a room, desperate for anybody’s approval).
“What happened to your face?” he asked with a look of concern that almost appeared genuine.
“I was at a funeral for a friend,” said Sloane more assertively, ignoring the question. She found some pleasure in the way her father recoiled uncomfortably. A glow of Lux again and the TV was on and muted, turned to the news, as the overhead lights fired up and a glass of brandy poured itself for Sloane as she walked by her father and grabbed the tumbler.
“Why are you here?”“Why does an old man need a reason to see his little girl? I just missed you, Sloaney. ” asked Malik, gesturing widely.
“Great. You saw me. Only took you ten years. See you in another decade,” she said.
Yasmin huffed sharply, “I told you this was a waste of time.”
“Hey, c’mon, you said you’d give her a chance,” said Malik.
“That was before she so rudely made us wait.”
“Stop talking like I’m not in the room,” said Sloane, turning to her mother who refused to look her way and instead found interest in a different book on the shelf.
“What part of I was at a funeral didn’t you understand?” “Right, no, we got it. Sorry for your loss, kiddo. Were you close with the departed?” asked Malik.
“No,” said Sloane
“Oh, one of those gotta make appearances or your social standings will go down kind of funerals, huh? Man I hate those. The dead won’t know if you show or not, so why does everyone else gotta be such a prick about it, yeah?”
“It wasn’t that either, said Sloane again. Finn’s funeral had been as barebones as it got. There were more staff on hand than visitors.
“Nobody would’ve cared if I hadn't shown.”“Hah. Then why go?”
Sloane didn’t know. It felt like the thing to do. She hoped when she went someone else would feel the similar obligation to show up and acknowledge that her life had some kind of impact. She took a sip of her brandy and left space in the conversation for silence to fill the room, interrupted only by the occasional shifting of paper on paper as her mother casually thumbed through a book. Her father shifted uncomfortably, opening his mouth to speak and immediately getting cut off by Sloane.
“Why are you actually here?”“Like I said, I wanted to see you,” said Malik.
“No, why are you actually here?”“Um, well, again, to see my daug—”
“Cut the bullshit,” said Sloane firmly.
“She shouldn’t speak to you that way,” said Yasmin out of the side of her mouth. Sloane glanced at her mother. Talks of theft, blackmail, torture, and murder hardly made her mom blink, but colorful words always threatened to ruin the botox or make her eye do that twitching thing. Sloane couldn’t tell for certain, but for a moment she’d almost seen an eyebrow move. “We didn’t raise her to use such language.”
“You didn’t even raise me, Yasmin!” said Sloane, a rare hint of heat bubbling up in her voice.
“I was raised by a Nicaraguan maid that you poisoned and an English butler that he shot right in front of me.”“Sweetie, Warren and Maria—” Malik started.
“Her fucking name was Marta,” said Sloane, her voice raised but still controlled.
“Language!” hissed her mother, snapping the book shut.
“Right, right, sorry Sloaney. Memory’s the first thing to go, you know?” Malik chuckled, the laugh falling flat as his daughter’s expression did not lighten. “Look, Marta and Warren's deaths were a, well, a mercy killing. The city was doomed. Even if they had survived the attack from the Stygian Snake, which they wouldn’t, their families had all been wiped out during its assault. No parent wants to witness the loss of their child. I’m sorry you had to witness what happened to Warren, but it was the right thing to do sweetheart. It eased his suffering. I’m not happy we had to do it, but it was something that had to be done.”
“A mercy killing…”“That’s right.”
Sloane sighed deeply as she sat forward, hair falling in her face as the dark reality of what her father had said set in as she stared into her drink. He truly believed he had done something noble and just by executing their staff instead of allowing them to witness atrocities and more suffering. A shadow was cast across her vintage rug as her mother moved to the other bookshelf, oozing and pooling across the carpet like the blood that had seeped out from Warren in the grand hall of her childhood home. She had seen countless deaths since then, but the first one would forever be burned in her mind. A seventy year old man, bald and liver spotted with a mustache like a walrus, white shirt soaked wine red, blood gargling out of his mouth as his lungs filled with blood from where her father had failed to hit his heart when he’d shot Warren in the chest.
“It took minutes for Warren to die. You could’ve shot him again,” said Sloane, watching the brandy swirl in her glass, disgusted that she even had it in herself to discuss the optimal method to perform a mercy killing, let alone to even pretend that it was anything other than just a murder.
“Jesus, kiddo. Wetwork was always more of your mother’s thing. I realized in that second that I was no killer. I freaked out. The reason I took so long to return was because I was having a panic attack in the next room. Honest. I’m not a bad guy, just a bad shot,” said Malik.
“You could’ve warned them. You could’ve sent them away with their families. Somewhere safe, ” said Sloane. Malik shook his head. Of course at the time her parents thought the world was ending. Almost everybody did. The Coven had proved them wrong.
“You could’ve stayed. We stopped the Stygian Snake. You just abandoned me.”“Hah!” Yasmin laughed so sharply that it caused Sloane to jump.
“Honey, please,” said Malik, waving his hand to silence his wife. “Sloaney, you got everything wrong. We tried to save you. You abandoned us.”
Silence fell over the room again as Sloane struggled to even comprehend the absurdity of the statement. What they had tried to do was abduct her, but even if in their misguided brains they somehow thought they were doing the right thing then why did they never bother trying to do it again? It wasn’t like her parents had waited until the final moment and left when the ship snapped in two and sunk into the Atlantic. They had spotted the iceberg well before it even struck and had quietly evacuated without informing any of the passengers, launched all of the lifeboats for the hell of it, and then boarded and cruised away on their own luxury yacht that they had trailing behind the ship the whole time. Sloane sharply inhaled a breath, ready to unleash a torrent of harsh words that had been bottled up inside of her for a decade, when her father hit first and knocked the hot wind out of her.
“You abandoned us and it was the right thing to do. It was the right thing to do sweetie. Oh god,” said Malik as his voice cracked. A visible look of panic crossed Sloane’s face as her father’s shoulders began to heave as he started to loudly weep. “At first I was just angry, and then I was embarrassed. So scared to admit that I’d been wrong. So scared that you’d just hate me.”
At least that was what Sloane thought he said. She looked to her mother for confirmation. Yasmin’s eyes were downcast, the closest she’d ever come to showing genuine regret. She looked back at her father although it was difficult to do so. He looked smaller here than he did in her memories. Discomfort crept over her as he continued to sniffle and blubber like a child, thick tears running down the trenches in his wrinkled face and mixing with the snot clingy to the gray hairs of his beard. He was still saying words, but they were near nonsensical phrases punctuated by the snicker-snack of sobs.
Sloane realized too late that he was moving in to embrace her, falling upon her like a zombie minus the merciful act of ripping out her jugular with his teeth to end her suffering. She wanted to push him off but felt the strength evaporate from her arms like it would in a dream, leaving her weakly holding a frail, sobbing old man. She could feel the chilling presence of her mother loom closer like a sentinel, not close enough to touch yet still close enough to drain away Sloane’s heat. In the past week she she had been betrayed and assaulted by a close friend resulting in an emotional and public breakdown, tear gassed and arrested by a government agency, buried a handful of friends, was being hunted by a serial killer, and worst of all had been made aware of the existence of a person like Trevor. Yet somehow, this experience was more terrifying and awful than any of those.
Yet again, time passed indeterminably before Sloane was able to react. It might’ve only been seconds, but it felt like eons. Dinosaurs evolved into birds faster than Sloane was able to push her father away. There was a gentleness to it that was somehow still devoid of kindness, the type of precautionary touch she’d give to an antique whose fragility was still yet unknown. Sloane stared at her crying father in his eyes and saw her reflection in their brackish waters, mistaking the cold figure in them for her mother. She folded her arms tightly across her chest to provide a barricade for any further attempts at a hug. Her dad wiped his face and gave an embarrassed smile.
“I’m sorry, honey,” said Malik. “I was wrong back then. I don’t want your forgiveness because I don’t deserve it. I just want to be a better father.”
“You want to—” the words broke in Sloane’s throat as her face twisted and contorted into a look of anger, her eye twitching like her mother’s would. She quickly recovered and shrouded the vitriol, twitching aside.
“I need you to leave.”The uncomfortable silence returned again and pressed the entire room beneath its boot as it choked the atmosphere. Slowly, dejectedly, her father nodded as her mother ushered him to a closed door where she pulled out a small object, tapped it against the frame, and guided her husband through a portal. Her mother moved to follow then hesitated, turning to fix Sloane with a stare, her eyes lingering on her daughter’s broken nose. Yasmin’s lips parted into a thin, cruel smile.
“Thank whoever did that for me. Your nose was always unflattering,” said Yasmin, stepping into the portal. “About time it gets fixed.”
Interactions: Schrodinger's Linqian
@FernStoneHarbor, the Halloween Festival
That night Sloane had a nightmare. Of course she did. Dreams were just an extension of reality, and her life had always been so dreadful. It had only become more so as she heaped on more responsibilities of things that she had no real control over, instead becoming just another thing to worry about and distract her focus. She had put her businesses on the backburner—work seemed unimportant when Father Wolf was on the prowl. The morning and afternoon of the Halloween Festival had been a blur of phone calls as she shuttled to and fro between Cracker Island and her oddity shop to ensure that the Curious Curio stall would be properly supplied with “paranormal” rubbish and the prize pool amongst the various games stalls would be stockpiled with creepy dolls branded with her store. Even if she was to be stabbed violently to death in the street that evening, she still owed it to her employees to make sure that her business flourished.
She still managed to find enough time to get herself ready for the festival. Typically Sloane didn’t give a hoot about festivities, but Halloween was different. She loved Halloween. It was the one time of the year where she had not only the opportunity but the social obligation to put on a mask and be someone different. For a few hours she was allowed to not have to worry about the world and if it was still turning, as if her removal from existence would somehow bring about a global crisis instead of being like removing a single drop of water from an endless ocean. Although the vivid nightmare and Father Wolf still weighed heavily on her mind, Sloane was still going to attempt to enjoy the Halloween Festival—
or rather, thought Sloane as she adjusted her wide-brim red hat and tucked a yellow scarf into a red trench coat,
Carmen Sandiego.“Carmen” made her way to the harbor in time to hear the ferry blow its horn as it signaled its departure. While her alter ego could’ve easily stolen a boat, and Sloane already owned one, she made the assumption that making port at Cracker Island would be a nightmare and decided to simply wait as if she were one of the common people. By habit she looked at her wrist to check the time, her watch safely sitting in the drawer of her nightstand at home as it didn’t go with her costume, and instead slightly frowned as she saw the burn scar she’d gotten nearly ten years ago. It had faded overtime, but she was convinced it would never go away. She pulled out her phone to check the time instead and noticed that she had missed a call from an employee. So much for hanging up her responsibilities. She called them immediately.
“It’s Sloane. Hold on, it’s too loud here,” she said as she wandered away from the dock to find somewhere quieter.
“Okay, what is the problem…”Minutes later Sloane returned to the dock the way she had left it. She turned a corner as she pulled out her phone to reply to a text message from Anya:
Here. Are you on your way? Sloane hammered out a generic, boring, and factual response saying how she was awaiting the ferry, deleting the message as she absentmindedly passed by a lady in red in favor of texting something more clever. Sloane decided to take a selfie instead and write something cheeky like how she had gotten distracted by stealing the lighthouse.
It was only through the screen of her phone that Sloane finally registered the woman she had walked by, the cheap cigarette and curly hair that spilled out of a red hood immediately making Sloane feel her stomach sink. She lowered her phone. The last time she’d dealt with Linqian the woman had almost assaulted her, and if not for Lynn being an absolute bitch Sloane doubted she would’ve been spared the bible beating after the cuffs had come off. A cold wind cut through her jacket, impossible to tell if it was the ocean breeze or Linqian’s presence. The best thing to do would be to just leave. Sloane took a few steps following that very intention, the heels of her boots thunking heavily on the wooden boardwalk before coming to a sudden stop. Was pushing off the inevitable really the right thing to do? The large red hat turned ever so slightly so that Linqian was but a fuzzy blob in Sloane’s periphery.
She remained there in that middle state for a moment, too afraid to directly make her presence known and too scared to abandon the only opportunity they might ever have to honestly speak with one another without there being an audience carrying cans of gasoline and matchsticks.
Estylwen
Shin Ghost Note
AtomicEmperor
FernStone
NoriWasHere
Arkitekt
Damycles
Fetzen
Atrocious
