Young Writers Society

Ah, it’s so exciting! The tournament is finally starting! …Umm, but where is he?

Edge can see perfectly well in the darkness, but not in total darkness. He’s staring up at something with a sliver of light shining through. It feels like he’s lying on metal. Is he in a box?!

He scrambles up and pushes against the lid, which swings upwards. He holds the lid open with one hand and awkwardly climbs out before letting it drop. Huh, he was in a container of some kind. He’s never actually seen anything like it before. Is it some kind of delivery box? Just for the participants? It delivered him to an alley — he at least knows that. And there’s another one, on the other wall some five metres away!

Edge eagerly runs over, but since he’s short, he needs to jump onto the container, jump again while pulling the lid open, and land on the rim to actually open the container. He’s pleasantly surprised at how agile he is.

And there’s a little hat-girl inside! He didn’t see anyone like that among the other participants, since he would remember a pink party hat like the one she seems to be wearing but that’s actually part of her. He’s about to ask who she is, but she speaks before he does.

“Go away, please; your excitement is icky.”

Edge’s grin immediately turns into a small frown. “What do you mean?”

The little girl peeks up at him, but her cotton-candy blue hair must be covering her eyes. “The disappointment is better, but try not to be so sad about it. I hate slimy feelings.”

“Umm… I still don’t know what you mean.”

Her tone changes from neutral to sulky. “You’re just like my brothers.”

Is that a mean thing to say? Edge doesn’t know her brothers, but it doesn’t sound like it would be a nice thing to say just then.

“How are your brothers?”

“Excited and dumb, just like you.”

Okay, she’s definitely being mean.

“They also like to annoy me,” she continues. “And I also can’t do anything to stop you or make you go away!”

“But I’m not doing anything to annoy you, honest!”

“I was just happy being alone in here until you came and bothered me. Hmph!”

This was such a confusing conversation. “Wait… are you saying you wanted to be in here?”

“Yes!”

“So your brothers didn’t put you in here as a trick?”

“No, they did. I complained so they would think I also didn’t want to be in here. They’re so dumb.”

Edge scratched the side of his head, trying to make sense of it. “Why would you want to be alone in here?”

She sighs. “It’s better than being with my brothers. And my sisters are also annoying, but they think I’m annoying too, so we don’t want to be with each other anyway.”

“You have a lot of brothers and sisters,” Edge says wistfully. “I never had any…”

“You’re so lucky!” she whines. “But you’re being even sadder than before, and I told you I don’t like slimy—”

A loud cry, almost like “how”, comes from behind Edge, so he turns to look. There’s a weird, green thing with a yellow feather looking up at him.

“—feelings. Go away already!”

He looks back to the hat-girl. “Sorry, I— Argh!”

The green thing jumped up and tackles him into the container. He hits the bottom of the container, glad to have missed the girl, but she starts screaming at the top of her very high-pitched voice. It hurts even more than the tackle!

“Argh, stop it!” He struggles with the green thing. “And get off!”

“You’re in here!” she screams. “And you’re fighting! Go away! Go away! Go away, go away, go away—”

Since the lid is closed again, Edge can’t really see anything. It was night outside, but at least there was dim streetlight making the alley bright enough for him to see clearly. The green thing bites him, so he slashes at it repeatedly until his hands start stinging. He realises it’s odd, since his claws aren’t frail at all, but then he realises its liquids from the green thing that’s burning him.

“Ow, ow, ow!”

He can’t rub his hands, and he can’t see anything, so he decides to just slash at the side of the container instead. He quickly rends it, which allows some light to filter through. The green thing is just a heap of green meat with nasty liquids spilling out of it.

“—away, go away, go aw— ARGH!”

The girl’s pitch rose even higher when she saw the green thing, apparently. Edge recoils and almost wishes he could fit through the slices in the container.

“You killed it! You brought something in here to annoy me—”

He can’t take it! Logically, he should just jump out of the container, but the girl’s screaming is driving him insane. If he doesn’t get out, he might actually pass out! So, he drags his claws around the sides of the already shredded area, hoping to cut a hole of the container for him to escape.

“—and then you killed it in here! You’re so much worse than my brothers! I can’t believe you—”

Almost there! Just one side more…

“—did this! You’re the worst!”

Done! The metal falls outwards and he scrambles out as quickly as he can. The hole isn’t so small that his clothes would catch on it as he climbs through, but even if it had, he wouldn’t have paid much attention to it anyway. Whatever else the girl is screaming at him, he doesn’t hear it, as he anxiously wipes off the last of the stinging liquid on the wall. He then runs out of the alley and into the street. He notices the street is empty, but he’s honestly just focusing on running away as quickly as possible.

Maybe being an only child wasn’t such a bad thing if he could possibly have had a sister like that.

***

“That of course isn’t all. Base readings and location history is already quite a lot but I’m sure I don’t have to tell anyone quite how much a certain Kate Hardy can pull in just a few hours if she ends up focusing on something and trust me, she definitely focused on this one.”
Safi spoked up. “Uhh…this might be a really silly thing to mention but do you think maybe Kate saw something in like the future that made her do all this and she’s just not actually told anyone yet because well…I’m not quite sure. Maybe she’s trying to nudge things in the right direction quietly and telling anyone would be bad, which means oh dear, is us realizing a bad thing…” Safi trailed off. Serafina looked the slightest bit concerned and Anna couldn’t help but notice that she’d repositioned herself ever so slightly almost like she was instinctively trying to guard Safi somehow. Meanwhile Sally was lost in thought, which was where Anna was too.
“You know. I think there’s a lot to be unpacked in that statement which we definitely might want to think about. You might just be right. In ways that could mean quite a lot for us.”
Sally was nodding vigorously in the corner. “Kate definitely is thinking up a lot more that she has let on there and while we don’t need to panic about ruining the timeline by having realized anything, we do need to seriously consider the possibility that we could be dealing with a pretty big moment in history or the future or honestly I don’t know, time is weird especially the way that Kate talks about it like the future is the past and history is the future. You have to be someone that sees the fourth dimension to have any hope of understanding.”
“It is a bit much,” said Anna, “but yeah, we have to give some serious consideration to that particular idea and we are in fact going to be giving serious consideration to that idea. Not that it’ll change a lot. Either way, even if this is the most boring in history or the most life changing moment in history it’s all equal and we’re absolutely going to approach things the same way so don’t worry. I just don’t wany anyone being under any extra pressure on the chance that our to be fair, quite logical speculation here turns out to actually be true.”
There was a collective nod from everyone as Safi spoke up again. “I think we can handle it. Its going to be ridiculously cool but yeah, no pressure. Stay cool. Do the job. Get through the day as you would any other.”
“Excellent,” said Anna. “That’s another great point then which once again we can set aside as we get into a couple of the last things that Kate has to point out to us. We can get to crunching through all of the actual leads very soon.”
“There’s going to need to be a few recalibrations,” said Sally.
“A couple yeah…no doubt about that but I think it shouldn’t exactly detract from any of the framework we started. Well at least not with what we’ve managed to actually establish up to this point. Obviously, it is all very much subject to change as we go along. We do still have more to clean up.”
Sally nodded. “True. True. True.”
Anna smiled. “Well speaking of more to clean up, let’s get going here. Onward to the next big point. Which is actually about those things that attacked us. This is something we were very much studying by the end, so this is going to be good. I think some information on this is very much what we actually needed to know for today here so that lines up really well. Unless somehow, we end up learning every single suspicion, we had was wrong but somehow, I highly doubt that.”
“I would be very surprised if all that behavior was normal,” said Serafina, joining the discussion verbally for the first time.
“Yup. Well here goes nothing. For starters we finally have a name for the thing, so we can well stop calling them things. Casual quality of life upgrade I suppose. And well without further ado, they are actually called Vrialedens. Which translates according to Kate to something along the lines of Flying Dust Monkey. I think that’s a pretty accurate description.”
“Yeah. Flying. Made of dust. Not a hundred percent sure about the monkey part of the equation but I suppose I can see it,” said Sally.
“So, what more do we know about these monkeys?” asked Safi.
“Great question. So, we’ve got pretty much everything there is to know actually. Kate was able to find out quite a lot. For a species that seems to be pretty obscure there’s quite a bit of research out there about them, or that’s what Kate said. I have a feeling these things are a bit more than you’d think. I mean they aren’t the most natural things to exist in an area. Sure, sandy weather, dusty creatures, but its not the most obvious route evolution could have taken.”
Sally nodded. “Yeah nope. I know I’m not exactly a biologist, but I can fully agree with that statement.”
“That’s a safe call,” said Anna, “because guess what, these creatures are not known for gathering in groups later than four or five due to a highly territorial part of their behavior which is…”
“Very, very bad for what happened on our way out of there. That was way more than just four or five being together.”
“Precisely. So, chalk that one up to being suspicious. If literally the very amount present, there was super suspicious the way they acted towards Serafina is probably going to turn out to be a little bit of a formality in terms of establishing exactly how weird an unnatural that was.”
“Well, this is certainly going to be fun to decipher,” said Serafina.

When I was twenty-two, after I’d dropped out of college and realized there was no life for someone like me, someone who had messed up as much as I had, I turned to the church. It was before Ophelia, before the man in the alley—right after I got the job as a 911 operator. In-between, like I’d fallen into the cracks, swept along by a river but not quite yet out to sea.

I hadn’t gone in years, not really devoutly gone like I had when my mother first started, in my teens. I hadn’t moved away for college, but I hadn’t kept going either. It was that in-between age—the one where you aren’t quite in youth group, but you aren’t quite in an adult life group. Not responsible—expected to be. I was living at home with my parents until I could save enough to move out, stuck in every sense of the word. Trapped by myself, by my thoughts, by my migraines and my guilt and my living.

I wasn’t doing great. I had just finished the training, and just gone into the job, and there were so many days when I helped people, and so many more when the walls closed in on me. When I wanted to go to a bar and search for something, something I didn’t really know, and maybe it would be a person there, or maybe it would just be a drink, or several, or something to knock the pain out of me, to send me to the floor, into the street, horns blaring, headlights swerving, crack and boom and—

When the thoughts got bad, I would go to pray. I never felt good at it, felt like I rambled too much about my problems and didn’t do enough praising. Then I figured that God heard a lot of praising, and maybe if God cared about me, then God wouldn’t mind if I vented. Talked. Vomited words into clasped hands and called it worship.

On the days when migraines stabbed my eyes out like the Ides of March, like Lavinia seeking vengeance on the men who tortured her, tongue-tied with the pain—on those days, I did not go to pray.

I would go into the sanctuary. Sit down towards the middle. I never wanted to disturb anyone, but none of the church staff seemed to mind. Occasionally, the preacher would talk to me, about life, about my plans, about God and holding fast in faith. Most days, he was busy writing his next sermon, and wouldn’t leave his office until the end of the day.

When I went to sit, I never turned the lights on. I kept it dark, hoping to soothe the pain, draw it back, temper it, let it ride itself out like a wave against the shore. It never did. I kept the lights off anyway, though. And I wondered if the pain was a sign. If it was a punishment from God, a punishment for what I did to her—to you.

You always looked so beautiful, in the dark. More real, like the shadows didn’t really pass through you, like you weren’t really one of them. You felt solid, like I could reach out and touch you, brush my fingers through your hair, help you pull it up into a pony-tail. Maybe if you were really there, we could leave the sanctuary and go outside, find a tree to climb in, swing upside-down until a branch broke, and we could both break our arms and go to the hospital, where our grandfathers would be to give us chocolate to eat, so much we’d make ourselves sick, and we could joke about lightsabers, about blowing each other’s brains up, and maybe this time, I’d think of something more clever than a gun for my weapon, something cooler, like a double-sided ax, or a vibranium shield with the American colors on it, or a flame-thrower to hurl towards people. A magic boomerang, one that wouldn’t always return to hit me, but instead, circle back around to see if I was still there, if I was coming, to make sure I wasn’t left behind.

You would sit there, on those days, in long church dresses that I’d never seen you wear, and your hair falling down to blanket your face, to cover it, preserve it, but I’d know it was you still, could tell from your posture, from the faint turn of your lips, from the way your hands held one another and the way you lowered to your knees to say a prayer, the faint whisper of your voice like a memory decaying, rotting away inside of me, just like you inside your coffin, or maybe you weren’t rotting anymore because you were already gone, already bones and dust and life smashed into stardust, a fine mist on the breeze.

I could never tell what you were praying for. Could never tell if you were really there. I mean, I knew you couldn’t really be there, but sometimes I wondered if you were a guardian angel sent down by God. A sign. A warning, maybe. You would stay in the darkness with me, and pray, and you wouldn't look at me, not like you did sometimes when I was younger, not like you did in the bars when I grew older, not now, sitting across the room, unmoving, watching the panic attack of a man who was able to grow up while you weren’t, wondering why I’m so upset, and maybe in your mind, you’re still eight, and you don’t really understand it, you’ll never really understand this weight, and that’s a blessing for you, but it’s a curse for me. I shouldn’t ask for your forgiveness. I don’t deserve it. I never will. I shouldn’t ask for Ophelia’s, shouldn't ask for Robin’s, shouldn’t act like I deserve to even talk to you, to think these thoughts, to remember you and how you were.

Why should I get to carry on your memory? Why should I be one of the ones carrying your coffin, when I’m the one who put you in it?

Not just me, in a way. But Robin paid his debt, didn’t he? And the others, they pushed you, but not like me. Not over the edge. Into the oblivion.