It opened easily when I turned the knob; it wasn’t locked. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that, so I observed my uncertainty, and then retrieved my flashlight and shone it into the darkness behind the door.

Stairs. There we stairs, going down. They looked rough-hewn, as though they’d been cut directly into the earth. I was careful with my steps, though found that despite their appearance, the steps were easy enough to take. I did take them one at a time, though, to ensure I did not slip. My body had memories of slipping and falling on steps, and they were unpleasant.

As I descended, the must of the place became quite prominent. It was a rather particular smell, one I knew from basements as a child and from other wild places that humans had trimmed and sculpted.

My light allowed me to see this, too, was a basement, and it was positively full of shit. Not actual manure, but all sorts of items.

I observed that my mind had several responses almost simultaneously.

One response was a strong interest in knowing everything that was down here right away. This thoughtform began making plans to inventory the whole of it and organizing ideas about how to do this in the most efficient way.

Another response was a feeling of overwhelm that quickly gave way to collapse. There was simply too much shit, this thought concluded. This is hopeless, it said, and we should abandon it straight away and close the door and pretend like we never noticed it. We were happier before and clearly don’t need any of this shit anyway.

And a third response, which had the gentlest effect on the feeling tones. It was also the simplest. It was: I wonder what’s here?

So I selected that thought and allowed myself to poke around a bit, in the shit.

It took very little time for me to find the chest. The chest, of course, meaning my grandfather’s chest. It was covered in marks, sigils, and runes, some quite foul, others of mixed use and reputation, depending upon when and where a person might be from. He had been an alien, after all, my grandfather. And so he did not see things in exactly the same ways as my other family members had.

I put the flashlight under my arm and lifted the chest with both hands. It was much lighter than I was expecting. In fact I could carry it with one hand like a platter and did so such that I could use the flashlight with the other hand. I took the chest back up and out of the basement, shut the door, and then took the chest into the living room.

No sooner had I taken my boots off than there came a rapping at my door.

It was Val.

“What’s up, girl,” I said absently and wandered back to the chest, sat down cross-legged.

“Ah am to be in attendance at the Grovah Mannah tonight around seh’em, and ah would delight in the presence of yo comp’ny.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “I’ll go. I’m not wearing a fucking dress today, though.”

Val sighed, which I did notice, though barely. “Fine,” she said.

“There’s iced tea in the jug thingy on the counter in the kitchen,” I said to her, though my attention was on the chest.

I felt along its surface with my fingertips. Though it was clearly quite old, it did not feel so. It seemed as though it could have been from within my lifetime, even though I knew it was not, that it was from my grandfather’s childhood, long before I had been born or even my mother had been been born.

“You get anutha package?” Val asked.

“No. I found this in the basement.”

“Basement? What basement? Herah?”

“Yeah. You get there from the back porch.”

“Wherah?”

“Behind the chair I usually sit in,” I said.

“And this … objet de curiosité was down theyah?”

“Um hmm.”

“Well what is it?” Val asked.

“It’s my grandfather’s pirate chest.”

“Oh mah gawd,” Val said. “Your grandfather was a pirate? Which one? Grinnah?”

“No, it was Caesar’s.”

“The alien,” she said.

I frowned but didn’t show her. “Yes. And no. He wasn’t a pirate. It’s from when he was a kid. He and his brother made it together, as I recall.”

“Well it looks quite dreadful,” Val said, and I heard the ice clink around in her glass.

“I think it’s kina neat,” I said.

“Aren’t ya gonna open it, then?”

It was a good question and worthy of an answer. I wasn’t sure why I had held off opening it. So I looked inside myself and saw that there was a tone of curiosity and a sense of mystery that I was savoring and trying to enjoy. Opening it would, of course, bring an end to not knowing what was inside.

“Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph, Teresa. You can take the fun out of a sex dream,” Val said.

I knew that expression from someone else, somewhere else, and it made my blood boil. So I breathed slowly, evenly, watching my blood pressure change, revert to its usual state. And I watched my mind correct the impression: Val is not that person who used to say that to me. She has come to know this saying some other way. And I watched my feelings of rage and anger and disappointment dissipate harmlessly.

“I said what I was thinking out loud again, didn’t I?” I asked Val.

“How should I know, Teresa. You say what you say, just like e’rybody else. How am I to know what you’re thinkin’?”

“Fair,” I muttered, which is not a thing I usually said.

The mood and the moment was ruptured anyway, so I worked the pattern lock until it clicked, then removed the lock and opened the chest.

Inside were boxes, stacked rather neatly. On the top layer, I could count three rectangular boxes of differing sizes. I knew there was another layer beneath, though I could not recall how.

Written across the inside of the chest lid, in Aldebarran, was this:

☬ ℔℈℣℣℘ℜ℈ ℘ℒℒ ℣℣ℏ⚴ ℣℣ℑ℥ ℸ⚴ ℔℈ ℵ⚴℣℣ℵ ⚸

It was transcribed, of course, since Aldebarran didn’t have a script based language before meeting humans.

My lips mumbled out the words: “Beware all those who wish to be known.”

As I spoke them, a charcoal-like scent arose from within the chest.

I took out the first box and saw it was attached to the one next to it and to the one underneath it by a pale blue ribbon. So I set it down near the chest and then pulled out the box next to it, which was connected to two more boxes by ribbon. It was plain, then, that all these boxes were tethered together by the same blue ribbon; and, once I’d laid them out on the floor, I could count them all, totaling six boxes.

Again, I heard the clinking from Val’s glass. “Boxes within boxes. Whadda suhprise.”

I shot her a glare, but my back was to her, so she could not see it.

“Aren’t you even a little bit curious what’s inside of them?” I asked.

“What? Inside yo dead alien grandfathah’s pirate chest? No, my dear. No I’m not.”

Her words drained what interest I had in continuing while she was present, so I carefully put the boxes back inside the chest, closed it, and then relocked it by swiping the puzzle lock in random directions.

“What?” Val said. “Alluh that and na-uh ya not even gonna open them?”

I grabbed the chest as I stood up. When I passed her, I mumbled, “I’ve lost the mood.”

See chapter list

Bruno 014

1 - 11:11

2 - 2:16

3 - A Photo, Followed by a Film

4 - The Pain That I Wrote On Your Heart, I Wrote Backward In Mine

5 - Perks of Membership

6 - To the Mansion Borne

7 - We’re All Going to Brunoland!

8 - Restoration Hideaway

9 - New Day, New Idea

10 - Cat’s Paw

11 - All Tomorrow’s Parties

12 - In a Maze …

13 - Neverwas, In Remembrance

Interlude

14 - Close to the Chest

15 - Infectious Drift (Pts. 1 & 2)

Bruno

I was not sure of the precise time, but it was not morning. Perhaps late afternoon or early evening? The place could have been Brunoland, or maybe someplace else, but it was arranged in an amusement park fashion, with themed sublocations and transitional passageways and bridges and things.

There were people I came to this place with, but I had gotten separated from them. They were still there. I knew that. But I was not sure where they were. So as I made my way through the place, there were new people I encountered.

A couple of women were trying to cross a stretch of land. It looked like a normal walkway to me at first and so I did not understand their difficulty; however, upon closer inspection, I could see blue folds opening and closing in the ground. They were blue on the inside and looked a bit like wave crests or smiles.

“How do we make it across?” I asked one of them. She was the shorter of the two—a brunette about a head shorter than me and fuller figured.

“You need these,” she said and handed me something. It was whitish and felt like a deflated balloon.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked.

“You need to put them in water,” she said. “Then, you have to tell it a joke. If it likes it, it will begin to inflate. When it’s inflated enough, you can stand on it and ride it like a hoverboard and make it across.”

I raised my eyebrows. “And you’ve done this?”

“Yeah,” she said. “We can’t keep them fully inflated, though, so we keep falling.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thank you for your help.”

“You’re fine,” she said, then went back to trying to tell her whitish balloon thing a joke.

I set the one she gave me in a small pool of water that looked like a rain puddle, but when I looked closer I could see there was a small depression in the walk.

Then, I heard in my mind: There isn’t any way across. You’re sunk.

Without thinking, I replied, “That’s one sunk cost.”

It inflated some.

“Huh,” I said. “It’s not jokes.” I looked around to find the woman that had helped me, but she was dangling from a partially inflated balloon board that was bobbling over the opening and closing folds of blue.

I put my attention back on mine, waited.

Nothing happened.

“I’d like to go now,” I said.

It said in my mind: Now go-go? No, no, baby. No way.

“Then take me away-ay, okay?”

It inflated some more, lifted out of the puddle and was floating around my head.

“I have no fucking idea what is happening,” I said.

It replied: It’s my happening, baby. Want out?

“I want to happen across the way, bae.”

It inflated fully—so full that I had to jump to grab it before it flew away. I pulled myself up and onto it, then stood. My weight seemed to push it closer to the ground, which I did not really understand, since the other woman had been dangling from hers.

It’s not your weight, it’s the bait.

“Huh?” I said.

The balloon board lost some inflation, and my footing became less stable.

“Fuck, right,” I said.

Right! Duck and tuck!

Instinctively I sank into my center as the balloon reinflated, accelerated, and performed a barrel roll to the right, sending us in a different direction, into a building, and down a staircase.

I had no idea how I did not fall off or what was holding me to the board.

We exited the building, and I could see we were now over water—not like an ocean but more like a swamp or pond or marsh of some kind. I could not get a clear sight of it because I was doing my very best not to fall off the board.

I caught sight of land. It was dark there, and there were trees, some park benches of stone, and a small, ruined, single-story house.

“I want to go over there, please,” I said.

Easy-peasey, lemon squeezy! it said in my mind.

The board floated us through a broken out window and into the house.

Once inside, I stepped off it and onto the floor of the house. The board immediately deflated all the way. I folded it and put it in my coat pocket.

I recognized the interior of the house. It was not a real house but a set. I knew this because I had run a game here before. I did not design the set, but I was familiar with its layout.

I opened a tiny chest and shook out its contents. Nothing inside was of use because it contained only props in miniature.

With an annoyed sigh, I made my way through the set, confirming that everything was too small to actually be useful. Soon, I’d lost interest in the place altogether and went outside.

Two: “Slave in the Cave”

A brief walk into the trees there, and people were around again. There were a great many of them. Some I recognized and some I did not.

I became aware that there were men and there were women. I did not see any other kinds of people there, nor could I feel them nearby. All of the men were standing around, many drinking beer, and talking about nothing. I tried to understand what they were saying. They were speaking a language I could understand, but their words carried no communication, no transmission of ideas or thoughts or feelings of sensation or awareness. So it became quite effortless for me to ignore them. And the women who were there were talking, too. I could hear them and understand them. They were talking about each other, about the men, and about how it felt that day, how it was to be there—wherever we were—and what things plagued them and worried them, what comings might be good and which ones might be bad. But this was the whole of their discussion. There was nothing else being transmitted or exchanged, planted or grown. So it became quite easy for me to acknowledge them gently and then move along.

Beyond that large group of men and women, I found a smaller group of people—again, only men and only women. They were engaged in a kind of orgiastic party. Most of the men were leaving as I arrived, but a few remained. And I could feel the separation of my age as I approached, meaning that I was much older than most of the people in this smaller group. And indeed I could see the kinship between them and people I had known in my younger days, I could also see many new things—things I’d only dreamt possible—being quite casual there. Perhaps too casual? There was a welcoming and accepting quality to the congress that I found rather lovely, and I slipped in easily, lay down. But there was also an unfortunate detachment that struck me as rather self-absorbed and unaware. So, again, my age and experiences seemed to separate me, even from those who sectioned off their own selves.

One woman reassured me and rubbed my leg in a way that was quite nice even as other women kissed on her body. I allowed myself to enjoy it for a moment, then quietly excused myself, and left the gathering there, proceeding onward.

There, a man who was shorter than me and a bit chubby—younger, too—said, “Isn’t this great?”

“What?” I asked.

“All the women have to work, and we get to fuck off!”

“We?” I asked.

He looked at me in confusion, blinked, and then walked away from me.

The feeling then arose from my chest and bloomed in my mind as an awareness that he could not see me as I was, that his mind had compressed his vision in a way that he did not see me as a woman; and, because there were only men and women in this place, his mind had then shuffled me into the only other option he knew.

This awareness, while generally elucidating of the moment, also irritated sore spots within my heart and my body, and a perturbation began to scratch my mind, like a bit of sand in the shoe. I knew I should stop everything and attend to it properly, but I did not. Instead, I carried on.

The path sloped down and around the hill, winding me to the base of it, and then inside a cave therein.

It was dark, but I found I could see quite well, as though my eyes were fitted with a tapetum lucidum or similar feature. The path in the cave was rough at first, then became clearly defined by a mosaic floor. I followed the designs in the floor with a sort of intuition, though I knew it was derived from books and from study and from play, not some arcane faculty or from ancestry.

The path led me to a room where a person was seated at a desk. The desk was ordinary and unattractive—offensively so—lacking any sort of design appeal or ornamentation, not even the beauty of a clean and simple line. It was slightly worn and damaged, but again, not in a way which added to its beauty or appeal. It made it look cheap and not considered. The chair the person sat on was the same: plain, ugly, and worn. There was a chain that connected one leg of the desk to the ankle of the person; but, when I looked closer, I could see that the shackle was not actually fastened. All they had to do was stand and shake their leg, perhaps, or reach down and open it, and they would be free.

I did not say anything then, though. I continued to consider them as they were.

They sat, at this ugly desk in this ugly chair in this lightless and windowless cave, staring at nothing, doing nothing, saying nothing, offering nothing, receiving nothing. And, affixed to their finger was something that reminded me of a heart rate monitor. Periodically they would tap it against the surface of the desk. And, stuck into the back of their right upper arm was a tube. This tube was thin and ran from the back of their arm up into the ceiling, disappearing into the hill somewhere. I could see blood and bile and phlegm flowing through it, but it only followed up and into the hole in the ceiling. I considered how the person was able to live and survive in these conditions and found I could not. Yet there they sat, alive, though not well.

Some feeling of compassion arose in my chest and from it came a desire to crouch down and remove the shackle. But when I did, they scooted their foot away from me. So I sighed softly, stood again, and made my way back out of the cave.

Three: “Fifty Years Over”

When I was outside again, I craned my neck to check behind me—a function of my training—and I nearly missed what I saw. But my memory, faithful as ever, showed me it again. And so I stopped and turned back to look. And I looked and I saw:

ꟻiꟻTY YɘAᴙꙅ ovɘᴙ

I said it quietly, aloud, to myself: “Fifty years over.”

I did not know what that meant. “I don’t know what that means,” I said.

Then, a gentle breeze blew through, and a tree branch swayed in it. In doing so it revealed a small symbol centered over the phrase in the hillside:

༗

“Huh,” I said.

I still didn’t know what it meant. “I still don’t know what that means,” I said.

Then a strong gust of wind came—strong enough to nearly push me, so I turned my back to them and hurried away from the hill, along a footpath through a spare stand of trees until the force of the wind was buffeted sufficiently. I slowed my walk but kept on in the same direction, along this footpath.

There was a cabin there, small and modest, with the door partially open. So I stepped onto its slight porch, then went inside. I had to duck to clear the door, but could stand up inside. The feeling of my head being so close to the ceiling was uncomfortable, though, so I hunched a bit.

The cabin was lined with books.

My interest spiked, and I wanted to look at each and every one of them, though my attention seized upon a particular one, spread open and sitting on a small reading table near a diminutive bed positioned along the wall underneath the cabin’s only window.

I sat gently on the bed, testing to see if it could bear my weight. It seemed fine, so I looked at the book and read some of what was on the open pages:

𝔑𝔢𝔩 𝔪𝔢𝔷𝔷𝔬 𝔡𝔢𝔩 𝔠𝔞𝔪𝔪𝔦𝔫 𝔡𝔦 𝔫𝔬𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔞 𝔳𝔦𝔱𝔞

I cursed my lack of language study and struggled with the phrase, parsing it as not Latin but some age of Italian, probably from before the 21st Century, meaning outside of my main area of study. The best I could make of it was something like “in the middle of the way” or maybe the road? My Latin, which was not great, either, was interfering with my destitute Italian.

Being stubborn and curious, though, I tried some more, looking over several pieces and passages, turning the pages delicately and gently, slowly.

𝔖𝔢𝔩𝔳𝔞 𝔒𝔰𝔠𝔲𝔯𝔞

I saw that. Something hidden, maybe? The hidden self? Or hiding from oneself, of oneself? Perhaps hiding oneself from oneself?

That didn’t seem right, at least not in a literal sense. I’d misread the words. I knew that much, at least.

Then, at the bottom of one page:

㇀㇀㇀

I knew these marks, these three marks. I knew them to note that I exist, that to exist is to know them. I was not sure why they had been written by hand in this book, nor by whom. And it was not clear what their intended purpose was beyond stating the obvious. It reminded me a bit of how when I was in school, people would draw infinity symbols on their notebooks.

Feeling frustrated and like I had little hope of gleaning much from the book, I left the cabin, and carried on, with a sense I was returning, to the beginning.

Four: “If You’re Waiting on Me …”

I came to a place that resembled a neighborhood. It was the sort of neighborhood I was used to in my childhood. In some places we had called them additions, in others, subdivisions. There was some technical distinction between the two terms, but I’d never understood it.

The night of the place was apparent, then, and I looked at the sky with a casual disinterest. I was not sure when that had happened. Whenever it had gotten dark, it had slipped past me, and I had missed my favorite part of a day, which was twilight.

She approached me from across the lawn I was standing in. Once she reached me, I saw she was shorter than I’d expected. She was at least a head shorter than me. Her hair was dark and curly. She looked like Mitz and also Panna, but she was not either of these women. There was a familiarity about her, a kind of knowing that had yet to ripen.

She kissed me and I started. I had not expected that and was not sure I could handle it.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I … I’m not sure. But that isn’t how I wanted to kiss you.”

She leaned in close and said, “Then kiss me the way you want to.” She didn’t wait for me to initiate. She kissed me again.

This time I tried to be open to the experience and to allow my self to feel whatever I was feeling, without resistance or harshness, and to be there, with her. Specifically her, not the shadow of Mitz or Panna or whoever else tried to pry into my mind.

I found myself flat against the lawn, in my back. She was over me, lifting her jacket up and over us—like a sheet—and I could see she had no shirt underneath. My hands reached for her breasts. My lips kissed them. My tongue licked them.

It passed in an instant, and I was alone again, on the lawn, with only this dim feeling of recognition.

Five: “… You May Be Waiting Forever.”

The walk to the beginning from the lawn felt interminable. There was almost nothing I could do, it seemed, but think of her and how she was gone. I could feel what was there, within my reach. I could touch her and taste her, and I could still recall these things. Yet she was gone.

At the beginning, the entrance to this place, after a fashion, there stood a wooden arch. Cut into the wood were these words:

ƎvɘᴙYTHiᴎg THAT ᴙiꙅɘꙅ MUꙅT Ↄoᴎvɘᴙgɘ

I read the words and felt my lips tighten. I nodded and passed through the arch, back to the world. Back to Bruno.

Go to next chapter

See chapter list

Bruno Interlude 1

“Sà-wàt-dii, Jivasce,” I said. I gave a slight bow with my hands pressed together near my chest.

“Good morning, Teresa,” Jivasce said. She clipped the stem of a flower and then lay the bloom next to the large chest atop the shrine.

“How are your parents?” I asked, then immediately recalled what she had said the last time I’d seen her. But I had said it.

“They’re fine,” she said.

I felt a wave of relief wash over me, even though I did not consider them to be particularly good or pleasant people, her parents.

My feet moved me closer to her and to the shrine.

Affixed to the chest atop the shrine was a placard, which had a low relief:

⠓⠑⠗⠑⠊⠝⠀⠗⠑⠎⠊⠙⠑⠎⠀⠞⠓⠑⠀⠗⠑⠍⠁⠊⠝⠎⠀⠕⠋⠀⠞⠓⠑⠀⠓⠑⠇⠍⠑⠙⠀⠙⠗⠁⠛⠕⠝⠂⠀⠞⠓⠑⠀⠎⠕⠝⠀⠞⠓⠑⠗⠑⠕⠋⠂⠀⠙⠊⠑⠙⠀⠑⠊⠛⠓⠞⠽⠀⠽⠑⠁⠗⠎⠀⠁⠝⠙⠀⠎⠕⠍⠑⠀⠍⠕⠗⠑⠂⠀⠑⠝⠞⠗⠥⠎⠞⠊⠝⠛⠀⠁⠀⠛⠑⠝⠑⠗⠁⠞⠊⠕⠝⠁⠇⠀⠇⠑⠛⠁⠉⠽⠀⠕⠋⠀⠏⠁⠊⠝⠂⠀⠺⠊⠎⠙⠕⠍⠂⠀⠁⠝⠙⠀⠇⠕⠧⠑⠲

My mind wanted to touch it, to feel the raised dots and decode their meaning. But my heart staid my hand.

“I would not,” Jivasce said.

I lowered my hand.

“Has there been a service?” I asked.

“It’s happening now,” she said. She picked up a small broom and lightly swept the ground around the altar.

I took an extra step back to ensure I was out of her way. Then I looked around the grounds. I saw no one else.

“No one came?” I asked.

“Only the ones who wish to be seen can be seen, and only the ones who wish to move unseen may move unseen,” she said.

Again, I looked and that time I let my eyes relax so that I might see everything, rather than that which I was simply accustomed to seeing.

Slowly, one by one, a procession of persons came into view. Not like living beings, exactly, nor like ghosts or spirits. There, yes, but also not there; and, neither there nor not there.

My mind wanted to count them so I let it do that while I let my heart be open to the procession and proceedings. I stood with some solemnity and with my hands resting together.

Jivasce continued her work, burning incense, sweeping, cutting flowers, and kneeling.

The faces—over two hundred that my mind counted before losing interest—became familiar to me. I could see, then, many people from the peoples my body came from, my mind was descended from, and my heart knew as kin.

I felt as though I might be able to speak to them, but I did not speak.

Some of them looked at me as they passed, one after another. Some did not.

When I saw my father, Wil, pass by, I reached out my hand.

He took it gently and smiled at me. Wil looked much as he had in his last days, but with a fuller white beard. He had strength in him then, not like he did when he was living his end, but neither quite like in his youth. I saw in his smile and felt in his hand that I would see him again, so I let go, and he continued on with the others.

I bid silent goodbye to Jivasce. I wasn’t certain she heard me, but I didn’t care.

With some heaviness in my body but a lightness in my heart, I walked back to Mouthpath Way, carrying words and stories in my mind.

Go to Interlude

See chapter list

Bruno 013

Dearest readers,

Thank you so much for reading Bruno. It’s an unexpected gift that showed up during a rigorous revival of Teresa’s Backbone. Upon rereading it today, we noticed there are a shocking number of typographical misfortunes and to a degree we would typically never permit a beta reader to see, much less present as a finished piece of work. Please accept our deepest apologies. The composition and publishing process for this work has been unusual and clearly requires some adjustment. We will make every effort going forward to present work that is up to our normal standard—starting right now, with the next chapter of Bruno: “In a Maze …” We hope you enjoy it!

That morning I found myself in a hedge maze. I knew it to stand between the Bruno Botanical Gardens and the Bruno Hotel on Centralisa. Or maybe it was the Grand? While I knew myself to be an excellent wayfinder, I did sometimes confuse places in my mind when visualizing them.

The hedge was tall enough that there was decent shade. And it being a bit brisk that morning meant that I could feel the chill. I was not wearing a coat or jacket. I was in a t-shirt and cut-offs with thigh high leather boots with stiletto heels that would sink into the grass a bit with each step, leaving me wondering why I had chosen them for this excursion. For that matter, I could not seem to recall what had impelled me to the maze that day. Yet, there I was, quite deep within it.

At the maze’s center was a meditation garden. There were stones and benches and soft tufts of moss and grass. I picked a place and sat, closed my eyes, watched over the breath.

When I was done meditating, I began working my way back out of the maze.

Many people could and often would become lost in such a maze. But they are really quite simple. Also, hedge mazes require a tremendous degree of maintenance, so there were often groundskeepers in there, tending to it, who knew the way, but even if there were no one else around, the signs of the passage of people could easily lead one back out, if one were to simply look and see.

So I looked and I saw, and I followed the signs of the passage of people.

I turned a corner, and there sat a bear. Not a likeness of a bear such as a statue or a topiary. A bear. A living bear. I thought it was a black bear, but I really wasn’t sure.

My nerves blazed with electricity, and my mind filled with all the things I’d ever heard about surviving bear attacks or dealing with bears encountered in the wild. Yet my legs kept moving me toward the bear. Slower, yes. I was walking slower than I had been. And there was a kind of kindness and gentleness my body was expressing that hadn’t been there before I saw the bear.

My mind told me this was suicide, that the bear would surely eat me. Yet I continued toward the bear.

When I reached the bear, I gently extended my hand.

My mind told me: The bear is going to eat your hand like a sausage.

But I did not care. True, I did not want my hand to be eaten, but neither was I worried about it.

The bear seemed to sniff my hand but otherwise showed no interest in it or me.

I saw, then, that there was a collar around the bear’s neck. The collar had a plate on it with symbols inscribed:

𝕭𝖗𝖚𝖓𝖎𝖑𝖉𝖆

“Brunilda?” I said aloud.

The bear did not respond, but I knew it was her name.

“Are you lost in here?” I asked her.

She did not say, but it was evident to me that she was.

“Okay, no problem,” I said. “I was on my way out anyway. You can just follow me out, okay?”

Brunilda didn’t say anything.

I eased past her, gently, then resumed my egress, this time with a different sort of confidence, the kind a trail guide might express.

My intuition told me she would follow me, and she did, once I’d gotten several paces ahead.

We cleared the maze after a few moments.

Brunilda walked close to me and sat down.

“Are you all good from here? Or do you need me to help you find your way?” I asked.

Brunilda stood and began walking. We were on the Gardens side, so I watched her walk through the Botanical Gardens toward the City. I wondered what the average Brunoun would think of a bear walking down the street. Would it be a surprise? Or just a Wednesday?

I saw that what would have been a surprise to me was no longer so surprising. That each day and every experience peeled away something papering over a thing I’d thought I’d already learned. And perhaps I had, but the removal still needed to occur.

Without thinking, I scratched at my sternum, then made my way to the Bruno Public Library. I cleaned my heels in the restroom, then click-clacked down the long, green hallway in the Typing Wing where I would spend the rest of the day.

Go to next chapter

See chapter list

Bruno 012

A large, black canopy had been put up over and around the screen to make the movie visible during daylight. There was a degree of cover from a large pergola, too, but it was insufficient alone to provide the darkness necessary to watch the picture.

I sat on an end. I always sat on the end of a row. There was something in my nerves that impelled me to do so. That, and large sets of training in my mind that encouraged me never to be in the middle of a row. So, knowing that, I had little grievance with part of the picture appearing less ideal to me than for folks with better seats.

From this vantage, I could also see people pass by the screening area, people that I did not necessarily expect to see. Bonder, for example, walked on by and gave me a small wave from the chest, a charming smile.

I looked at him and tightened my mouth but not into a smile exactly.

He did not seem to mind and continued on his way.

The mind wanted to replay things Val had said about him. So it did, and I let it but didn’t get involved with any of those stories or even listen particularly closely to what was being resaid.

Instead, I watched the movie.

It was a simple and sincere story of a woman trying to do the right thing within a hopelessly corrupt and inefficient government. Back home, this would have been a drama. Maybe even a tragedy. But there in Bruno, it was a comedy.

Despite looking very familiar to me, I could not recall where I knew the actor who played the lead from. The film gave her name as Daisy Tachard but that did not ring a bell. Her face floated around in the mind even when she was not on screen, and I felt that very familiar feeling arise within me. It was the desire to know. I did not nurture it then, nor did I do it any harm. I noticed it was there, the desire to know and that it was interacting with the mind to try and find out, to recall, remember, or deduce who this actor was.

Miina sat down next to me while all that was playing out in my head.

I looked at her, smiled.

“Hey, Tee,” she said. She pulled off her huge sunglasses and shoved them in her also huge bag, then sloughed off her huge fur jacket, took a really deep breath, blew it out and into the bangs of her Louise Brooks haircut.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I have … had a day,” Miina said. Then she blinked twice, looked at the screen. “Oh! Daisy Tachard. I love her.”

The mind flooded with follow-up questions about Daisy Tachard, but I ignored them and attended to Miina, who was actually there with me and not just being represented by flickering light on a large screen and overactive neurons in my brain.

“Wanna talk about it?” I asked.

Miina felt around on herself, then went through her coat pockets, her bag. She turned to me, “I hate to ask, but you got a smoke, Tee?”

“Oh sure,” I said. “They’re cloves, though. That okay?”

“I love cloves,” she said.

I pulled two from the pack, lit them both at once, handed her one.

“Some folks think they taste like soap,” I said.

“Somebody named Val,” Miina said, then took a drag. “Umm yeah. That’s nice. Okay, so the drain is not working right in my laundry room, and it is a dis-ease. Like, I can’t even fucking deal with it, Teresa. I’m serious. I am so sincere right now.”

I smiled and nodded. Then, a question popped out: “Wait, you have a laundry room?”

She nodded. “Mm hmm,” she said, took a drag and then asked, “Don’t you?”

I wasn’t sure. I closed my eyes and mentally walked through the house I was staying in. I could not find it. “I can’t find it,” I said.

Miina raised her eyebrows but did not push. “Well, mine sucks, so. Right now, count yourself lucky. Because it’s a mondo pain in my ass, girl. I’m serious. Like, seriously.”

I wondered how my clothes were clean if I did not have a laundry room. It seemed odd I could not recall, nor that I had memory of folding clothes, hanging them up, picking them up from a laundry or cleaners.

“I think Bonder is trying to flirt with you,” Miina said.

“Huh?” I asked, my mind having been elsewhere. I reprimanded myself, gently, for having lost sight of my surroundings and current situation.

Miina pointed with the long, skinny, black cigarette I’d given her.

I looked over my shoulder and saw Bonder had indeed returned and was leaning against a garden wall, he blazer pulling open, revealing his bare, tanned, tattooed chest.

He winked at me over lowered sunglasses.

I looked back at Niina and rolled my eyes. “Oh jeezuz.”

“What? You guys were a thing for awhile, yeah?” she asked.

“I mean … I guess?” I said. Truthfully I could not remember. There were some faint impressions of touching his chest and … a few other things. But no real context beyond those.

“He’s kina hot,” Miina said.

I frowned.

“What?” she said. “I’m serious! He’s got a nice body.”

“He’s an asshole,” I said.

She shrugged. “So? Don’t marry him. Just have your way with him and go on, girl.”

I shook my head. “I’m not really that into guys,” I said.

“For real?” she asked, taking a slow drag.

“Yeah. Like I’m married to a woman.”

“Shit, you’re married?” she asked loudly, nearly coming out of her seat.

“I mean, technically, yeah.”

“What does that mean?” Miina asked.

“I don’t know. I …” Pictures entered into my mind. Fights. Yelling and screaming. I did not hear it, only saw it, as though I were outside of myself watching it, like a film. “... I’m not sure I want to know.”

Miina didn’t push. “Hmm, well, that’s chill, though, right? This is Bruno, bitch. Everybody’s sitch is we-urd, amiright? I mean, seriously?”

That seemed true in my sense of the feeling tones of the place, but I really didn’t know. “I really don’t know, Miina.”

“But you date, right?” she asked.

I shook my head no.

She dropped her head some. “Fuck?”

I shook my head again.

“Oh, Teresa. Oh, honey, no. Uh-uh. That’s not right. Seriously.”

I shook my head a third time. “No, it’s not like that, Miina.”

“What’s it like then?”

“I don’t know, but. I don’t really want to.”

She mouthed the word fuck but did not say it aloud. Which struck me as strange since she’d said it loudly a second ago.

“That or date or anything, really.”

Miina twisted up her face. “That, does not sound healthy, Teresa. Seriously.”

“I know it’s unusual for a lot of people,” I said. I thought of other ways to qualify it, but I refrained.

“Uh, yeah,” she said, then took the last drag of the cigarette. “I’d kill everyone I know.”

I still had a few drags left on mine, so I took one, watched the breath come in with the smoke, leave with the smoke.

“Wait, are you like ace, or something?”

I chuckled. “No,” I said. “Not at all.”

“Then I don’t get it. Seriously,” she said. Miina dropped her cigarette into the well-manicured grass, crushed it out with her stylish Mary Jane.

“There’s not that much to get,” I said. “It’s not a part of my life right now. That’s all.”

“We’re going to have to fix that,” she said.

“No, please don’t …”

Miina shot up out of her chair and strutted across the lawn to Bonder.

I watched her go, her ass shaking from side to side with each step toward him. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said.

Some parts of my mind wanted to watch Miina talk with Bonder, maybe try to read their lips. But I did not indulge those impulses.

I put my attention on my cigarette, finished it. Then I collected Miina’s cigarette butt from the grass, put both of them in the pack with the rest of the smokes.

I watched the movie, which was about to be over.

Daisy Tachard’s character—who was named Maisie—was getting dumped by her husband.

My eyes looked down. I tried to look back up at the screen but found I could not. My heart was in great pain, a stabbing sensation that would not subside with breath.

I touched my hand to my chest and found my shirt was soaked in blood. I stared at my hand, dark and red, and wondered how I would survive.

Go to next chapter

See chapter list

Bruno 011

I smoked that morning, but not my usual brand. I had picked up some clove cigs at the Brunoja Night Market, and I was loving them. They were long and slender, wrapped in black paper, and the filters had been lightly sweetened.

Val did not care for them. She said so: “I do hate the taste of a clove cigarette.”

I ignored her.

“Tastes like soap,” she said.

I took another pleasurable drag from the clove, then took a trick.

Val noticed without showing much interest.

She went on, saying, “Na-uh a ta-baccah cigarette I git, but why anyone would want to puff on a sticka soap is well beyond mah comprehension.”

I was hearing what she was saying, but since none of it interested me, I kept smoking and playing cards.

She, too, played cards.

“The Dawgs will be out tonight,” she said.

I found that mildly curious, so I bit. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yea-uh. So you’d best stay in tonight, he-uh?”

I shrugged.

Val used that as an opportunity to lecture me again about safety. “Teresa, dear, you simply must take bettah care of yo-self.”

I looked myself up and down, then looked back at her, over my large readers that I had forgotten I was wearing.

“I don’t mean like that, gurl. I mean out in the wurld. This is not a kind place.”

I sighed, then took a drag, took another trick. “Suits me fine.” I’d wanted to stay silent, but sometimes I could not.

“Well, you’d best be-waruh. The Dawgs make Bonder look like a little poodle.”

I grinned. “He basically is.”

Val dropped her hand so that I could see her cards.

I frowned. “I can see your cards, Val.”

She ignored that and said, “Bondah was gonna brainpress me, Teresa.”

I shook my head, then took a drag, exhaled. “No, he wasn’t.”

“Yes, he was.”

“It was never gonna happen, Val. He wouldn’t have, to start, okay? And even if he had tried, I’d have stopped him.”

“Oh, that’s right,” she said in a slow, dripping sarcastic flow of honey shit-talking. “You’re little miss bad gurl na-uh. I plum forgot.”

I glared at her, not because I especially cared about what people used to describe me, but because she clearly was delusional about this who situation, and it was beginning to annoy me.

“Val, you’ve got Bonder all wrong,” I said.

“Oh, I do, huh?” she said.

“Yeah. He’s just a dude.”

“So in otha words, a psychopath.”

“Well, I dunno. Maybe. But he’s manageable, okay? Like, I’ve got this.”

“You do, huh?”

I felt a roil of aggression in my chest. It was quite familiar to me, unfortunately. “Well, I got him to leave you alone, didn’t I?”

“Su-ah, but at what cost?”

I did not yet know the cost. But neither did I care. I was certain I could deal with Bonder, should the need arise again.

“He’s a pussycat,” I said, then smoked the last of the clove, stubbed it out in the diamond-shaped cobalt blue ashtray. “And I have an affinity for cats.”

Val rolled her eyes. “A cat’s paw, maybe. He’s a dawg, Teresa. All men are.”

I could not argue with her, but neither did I wish to, so it was easy enough to let that go.

“My point is, Val, you can relax about him and about me.”

She shook her head. “You’re gon be the death o’ me, child.”

“I’m fifty, Val.”

“Still a child to me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, fine. Whatever.”

I took the last trick.

Val light threw her hands up. “I’m goin’ to the Club.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “That’s a great idea. Go hang out with all those catty bitches who hate us. That’ll chill you right the fuck out.”

She didn’t say anything, just stood and walked back inside.

I sighed, regretting what I’d said.

I went in after her and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Val picked up her purse from the coat rack. “I’m just a wee bit tired today, Teresa. Thas all.”

A pinprick of worry formed in my mind, supplied by my heart, but filtered through knowledge of medicine and health, the bulk of which I was unsure how I’d acquired.

“Have you been sleeping?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said.

“Eating?”

She shook her head.

“Jeezuz, Val.”

“I know, I know,” she said and waved both hands. “I’ll sort it out.”

I was not sure she would. I made a mental note to try and go over for dinner at her place more often,. Perhaps I could bring food that she might like and that might induce sleep. Or I could hypnotize her, I thought, but I did not like that thought, so I let it leave my mind without getting involved with it further.

“Maybe I’ll skip the Club and go home, have a na-up,” she said.

“I think that’s a good idea,” I said. “Maybe have a glass of water before.”

She nodded. “Be seein’ you, Teresa.”

“Bye, Val,” I said.

As I watched her walk away from my house and up Mouthpath Way to her own home, I caught sight of the mailbox, which shimmered softly, so I approached it.

When I drew near the mailbox, I caught the sweet scent of jasmine. I took a moment to enjoy that, then opened the house-facing door on the box. Inside was a small box, about five inches cubed. I removed it from the mailbox and the shimmering stopped, as did the jasmine emission.

My body closed the mailbox door with one hand and turned the cube around with the other, ambling back to the house, while my mind puzzled over what could be inside. This was, in fact, my favorite part of receiving a package: the not knowing. As soon as I found out what something was, however delightful or dreadful, then I was no longer all that interested.

There was, inscribed on the box, the postal information:

฿ⱤɄ₦Ø ℅ TɘᴙɘꙅA Aᴎbɘᴙꙅoᴎ

viA HigHꙅqɘᴎT

I either did not know then or could not recall who or what Highspent was. The mind turned over various ideas, but these were not memories rather imaginings, so I let them fade away quickly.

Inside the house, I retrieved a utility knife from the toolbox on the back porch, opened the box by carefully cutting the tape along the edge, then lifting the flaps slightly and using only the very tip of the blade to cut the tape along the seam. I’d learned this somewhere but could not recall where or when. I knew that whoever taught me this had told me an accompanying story about damaging the contents of a package by zealously slicing down the middle seam of the tape. But I could not recall who or why.

I opened the box.

A crystal orb, white and foggy, sat inside. There was a familiarity to it, though it felt conceptual more than actual. The weight of, for example, surprised me. And its coolness was not shocking, but neither was it something I recalled directly.

“Huh,” I said, then placed it in a wooden bowl on the coffee table.

I had no idea what it was, but I had come to trust by then that whatever a thing was became evident eventually. And if it did not, then it did not matter.

I spent the rest of the day puttering, as my father used to say. I did some cleaning. Some writing. Some reading. I looked at the clothes in my closet and thought I probably needed to purge some of them, but I could not muster the enthusiasm for it, so I abandoned that task.

Soon, it was nighttime, and I heard the howls.

Val had told me to stay inside, so of course I did not.

I grabbed a flashlight from the toolbox and put my boots on.

When I went outside, I could not hear the howls. So I walked back the way I’d come into Bruno those weeks ago. It was an intuition, not a rational decision.

After forty or fifty steps, I saw him: a large black dog with brown markings, standing in the path, eyes locked on me.

He looked like maybe a Rottweiler but bigger? I was not very well-educated about dogs as I was with cats, so I was not sure of his breed or even if it were particular to Bruno or not. But he was very large and weighed over two hundred pounds. I was sure of that from his size and build.

I went to calm him, then immediately stopped as he growled. I knew, then, I had made a mistake. This was not a cat, but a dog, and I could not use my natural felicity for cats with dogs. I recalled then, though absent of how, that this had gone badly for me in the past.

So I began to back away. Again, I immediately realized this was a mistake, but it was too late.

He barked and lurched toward me.

I brought both arms to bear in an x-shape across my face. I could recall the feeling of being bitten and rent by dog’s teeth. I recalled it from dreams.

But he did not bite me.

I opened my eyes despite feeling electric with adrenaline, cortisol, and norepinephrine.

A white and orange flash darted between me and the dog.

The dog let out a cry, then turned and ran away.

I lowered my arms and saw him there on the path, alive and strong. Mr. Pook.

“Pook?” I said.

He looked at me with old amber eyes and smiled a tiny smile, then walked toward me.

I could see his limp was healed completely. His left shoulder had been crushed and then surgically reconstructed, so he limped for quite sometime thereafter and was, as I recalled, still limping a bit at the time of his death.

He reached me and sat down on his back haunches, looked up at me.

“Jeezuz, Pook … how are you alive?”

Mr. Pook did not answer me, which was not out of character.

I bent down and picked him up. As he always had, he kept his legs stiff and straight. So it was like picking up an end table. He was dense and muscular, as he had been in his prime. I could see he was quite old now—impossibly old. And alive, which was also not possible.

He growled at me, the sort of warning he’d given me when I was a child.

“Right,” I said, then set him down gently. Then I turned back for the house, motioned for him to follow. “It’s this way, Mister Pook.”

Just as he had when I’d first found him, back when I was a child and he was a kitten, he followed me home.

Go to next chapter

See chapter list

Bruno 010

You are a writer who just found a book. You read the book and want to make a choose your own adventure game based upon it. You have an interview with this coked up 80s guy who is eager to make your game.

When you go to meet him, your favorite writer/programmer, at re, is there. The 80s guy introduces you to re, who says a bunch of re-like shit, shows your their latest game, then the three of you go to the conference room.

80s guy digs your shit and wants to make your game.

At re is all like, Now you had done fucked up; or, mad respect yo.

You work on adapting the book to a game, and it turns out you're nuts. This started because your hot, mod, 60s mom died when you were little cos you couldn't find your stuffed rabbit.

Your dad takes you to see your shrink, but you see at re on the street and follow them instead.

At re asks if you wanna get wet, and you say, Uh, yes, and then you smoke some PCP; or you don't. The events of Training Day occur up to the point where it starts to suck, at which time you and re go for milkshakes.

Re says you can order the blueberry bliss shake and go back to sleep; or the raspberry radical shake and trip fucking balls or become a sexist asshole–drinker's choice.

You do all that, then re jumps off a building in Scott's Addition, and you go see a movie at the Bow Tie, giggling to yourself whilst muttering a mashup of pop goes the weasel and the weasel goes pop in singsong–to the chagrin of the Boomer couple near you, and the utter indifference of the GenZ couple in front of them.

Your game is making you crazy! Turns out, the author of the book you found was a real nutbag, and killed a bunch of waiters for an upscale bar in Manhattan, then moved to the woods of Oregon to write treatises on life and nature and shit. And also a choose your own adventure book, apparently.

Somehow, it's like he was being controlled by an eyeless smile, and that same symbol is showing up everywhere like some law of attraction shit, and you're drawing it on the walls and stuff like every killer movie ever.

There's some boring shit, like where you kill your dad who might be part of some Dharma Initiative-style psych study; or maybe not. Then you chop him up all the while wondering who is really controlling you, since you don't have free will apparently.

You can figure out why you did all this and get the rabbit and die with your mom, effectively sparing your dad; or putting him out of work, whichevs. Either way, your therapist is gonna freak.

Then you get to see how this shit happens all over again, and maybe get a random QR code to download at re's latest game.

But in trying to come up with something better, you just throw the fucking book away, and finish it yourself, working in more bow-chick-a-wow-wow and Matrix shit, even more Lewis Carroll references, and a game within the game within the game within the game wherein you can play a Tetris-style puzzler that slowly reveals a grainy 1995 era mpeg of Robert Palmer's “Simply Irresistible” video.

Re shows up in a sick whip, like just a busted-ass, puke green Hunter mobile, a fucking land yacht of epic proportions, blaring “Let Me Ride” out of its one remaining feeble tweeter, crackling and popping with all the ‘hell yee-ahs.’ You hop in and haul ass to the Hoffheimer, whereby you embarrass yourselves beyond recompense by popping and locking and getting crunk on the dance floor, just straight going at it in an invisible dance competition whilst shit-talking a waiter you both keep referring to as ‘the dee-jay’ and ‘a jive sucker.’

Later, you hit the Aldi and get some lawn chairs at a destructively low price, then drink too many chocolate shakes at Urban Farmhouse and drag race a couple of bruhs, Paula Abdul/Keanu “Hush”-style.

There were many folks there, and it occurred to me that the dress of many Brunouns was quite idiosyncratic and variegated. Like one woman wore a tank top rolled up and clasped over a leather chest plate that angles down over her abs and ended almost in a point at her waist. Another woman had a t-shirt and jorts and wore a spiny-looking leg brace on her left leg, which extended up from a tall thigh high boot, while her other foot had an ankle boot that matched the style of the other from the ankle down.

Lots of folks were decorating eggs. Eggs of all different sizes and shapes. Some people engraved theirs. Other covered theirs in what looked to me like Washi paper and then coated them with a clear coat, like a varnish.

I saw Celadria, who I knew from book club, sitting on a stone bench with a thick moss cushion on its seating surface. She wore cute culottes and a tie-dyed blouse with silver pauldrons and cool, black sunglasses.

“Yasu, Teresa,” she said. “How are you today?”

“Wassup,” I said, then sat next to her on the bench. “I’m good. How about you?”

“Oh, it is a fine day. The weather is beautiful. Some feared rain, but I did not. I knew the sun would shine this day.”

I nodded. “Cool, cool. Do you mind if I smoke?”

She shook her head no.

I lit up, leaned back.

My eyes caught sight of a sign, which read:

₦Ø-ⱤɄ₴Ɇ

“No ruse …” I read out loud.

“Nai,” she said, which I heard as ‘nah,’ but then remembered ‘yes’ sounds like that in Greek. “‘New Day,’ it means. The equinox. The new day of the new year.”

“Oh,” I said. “So it’s Bruno’s New Year?”

She laughed. “Oxi,” she said, which I knew meant ‘no,’ somehow. “That’s earlier.”

“Oh,” I said again, in a more final way than before.

“So it’s just, like, a fertility ritual?”

“Oxi, prosperity. The Union of the Snake is the fertility ritual. Not that fertility is much of a concern in Bruno,” she said.

“The Union of the Snake?” I asked as I exhaled, ashed.

“Nai, it’s about a week from now.”

“Huh,” I said. I gestured with my cigarette hand. “Is there a big to-do like this?”

“To-do?” she asked.

“Party. Like a party?”

“Aa! Well, there is an orgy. I suppose that’s party.”

I adjusted my sunglasses, took a drag. “An orgy, huh. Is that, like, by invitation?”

Celadria shook her head. “It’s open to the public. Anyone can come.”

“You ever been?”

“I used to go. When I first came to Bruno. Many years now. O chronos petaei.”

“Yes, it does,” I said and my mind recalled how old my children were now, what life had been like before them, and when I, myself, had been a child. “Man alive, does it ever.”

Celadria smiled and nodded.

“So what’s with these tables?” I asked. I gestured to tables that had two legs and looked as though they’d been sawn in half. Each had several items on them.”

“Those are half-seen tables. There are seven items on them, each representing a different symbol of prosperity and abundance. Good fortune.”

My mind recognized mistakes in my perception, but I did not really care. I was there to relax and maybe learn a bit, not be perfect.

I saw Vyolet. She was out of uniform in a cute chainmail sundress that sparkled beautifully in the morning sun. She had a shorter woman with her, who I did not know then, and who I took to be her date or lover or partner.

She waved at me with the sort of cool indifference that I’d come to think of her as her signature.

I waved back.

“Does she mess up your mail?” Celadria asked.

“Huh? Vyolet?”

Celadria nodded.

“No. I mean, not that I can tell. Why? Does she mess up yours?”

“All the time,” Celadria said. “She’s constantly giving me Miina’s skatá.”

“Huh,” I said. “Well, she’s only ever brought me my mail. And I guess I haven’t tried to send anything.” My mind suggested I should try it out, perhaps with postcards. “Maybe I should send a postcard …”

Celadria smiled and nodded again.

Despite the loveliness of the morning and the nice scent that Celadria gave off, I missed my family. I thought of them often and wished I could return to them. Or maybe bring them here? It hadn’t occurred to me before then that I could bring them there. Maybe? Confusion formed in the mind, a tangle of views. So I took a deep breath, then the last drag of the smoke. I put it out and put the butt in my shorts pocket. It was something to think about, but not then.

Go to next chapter

See chapter list

Bruno 009

There were so many faces that day. So many names. This was not unusual. The mind knew them all and would keep them all safe. Safe from forgetting and from the tarnishing ravages of time. It would also categorize and file them away, albeit in its own time and idiosyncratic manner, which was a process I had come to trust.

So in the moments of that day, I let the faces into the mind. I let the names in, too. And I trusted the mind to take of them.

There was, for example, Jaegertemis. She was tall, fast, and strong. Her hair was dark, about to her shoulders, and worn in a simple, loose ponytail held by a tied leather band. She had a bow—a magnificent bow, insofar as I could tell, not being an expert on bowyery. Her eyes were keen and sharp yet also far more relaxed and casual than I would expect during a manhunt.

She did not know, Jaegertemis, that she was, in fact, hunting me and that I was standing right beside her, participating in the hunt for my own capture. This, too, was not an unusual feeling. It was not the first time I’d felt it, rather one of many times. It was a situation that was common to the trade and was nothing to be alarmed about. I knew this, even if I did not know how I knew it.

“Jaeg,” I said to her, “I’m concerned I’m slowing you down.” Which was true, but the context distorted its meaning, so perhaps I ought not have said it.

“What?” she said. “No, Teresa. You’re fine. Your tracks and passage are actually quite light. Really unusual for a doctor.”

Right, I thought. She thinks I’m a doctor. Which, again, was true in a sense, so long as you understood the proper sense. I wasn’t sure she did. Is it my place or concern, I wondered, to correct each person’s misunderstanding about every particular? I pondered that as we searched for the thief. As we searched for me.

Another example was Londra. We were at the Bristyne Mansion, and I was leading a meditation there. After the meditation, we were to play a game—sort of a variation of Clue or Cluedo that I had written in some recent weeks specifically for the occasion.

Londra was blonde and friendly, but her attention training was weak, and she showed little dedication in progressing. So while everyone else sat with eyes closed in attention practice with the breath, she rummaged through boxes in the corner of the parlor.

I went to her to assist. “What are you looking for?” I asked in a whisper.

“That book on flowers,” she said. “It’s so sexy.”

I nodded, “Okay, then you have the right box.”

She looked down and into the box but didn’t resume her search.

I gently took the box from here, removed two items, and then she caught sight of the book and shoved her hands into the box, pulled it out. “There it is! Thanks, Teresa!”

I nodded, replaced the items I’d removed, and set the box back where it had been, straightened the adjacent ones she’d moved in her search.

Then I began distributing the game cards around the room to each participant. Normally each person would get three to six cards, but because there were so many people, each person got only one. I had already thought of this, though, and borrowed cards from another game I had. It was a similar sort of game that used cards that would be close enough. And even though I had not worked out how the distinction between this game’s one card and that game’s five cards would be significant, I trust I would discover that during play.

And then a third example: Jivasce. She stayed in a large home—though not a mansion—at the edge of the Bruno Cemetarium and was conducting classes on morbid film, anatomy, and the arts of killing through witchcraft. Though I had not interest in these matters, Jivasce was my charge in some sense, so I had to look after her. It had led me on a ramshackle quest for a hideaway we could use.

I ended up selecting the best option I could, which was to allow her simply to conduct her demonstrations and lecture, while I stayed in the hideaway. This turned out to be with an older couple not from Bruno, who were staying in the Bruno Hotel on Centralisa. I did not know them, but became friends with them quickly, Toma and Berlish, and they invited me to their suite.

From there, I monitored the situation at Jivasce’s presentation, as well as tracked the movements of the rough magicians trying to find and kill her. This required a combination of astral projection and cyberskills, using the Bruno Atollnet through a watch I’d bought at the market. The technology felt ancient to me, like the kind I had used as a kid, but it was sufficient to my tasks and more or less untraceable.

There came a knock at the door.

Toma answered it through the intercom. “We aren’t receiving any more guests or services today,” he said.

Then I recalled: “Oh, shit, Toma. I’m sorry. I ordered cigarettes.”

He waved it away. “No problem.” He opened the door and took the cigarettes from the bellhop.

“Limo, car, or …” the bellhop was asking, when Tom interrupted.

“Limo,” he said.

The bellhop nodded, touched the digital tablet, then smiled.

Toma nodded back, then closed the door.

He handed me the cigarettes. “Here you are, my dear.”

I stood up and went to the balcony.

“You can smoke in here, if you like,” he said.

“I appreciate it Tome, but if I start, I won’t stop.”

He nodded, then went to the dining table where Berlish and two other older folks were playing a trick-taking card game I did not know the name of but strangely could recall the rules for.

After smoking, I checked on Jivasce again.

Her class time was nearly over, and there had been no incidents.

It helped that the magicians were looking for me, her protector, assuming I would be with her. And it helped that I had stolen a rare and powerful artifact from their urban coventry to arouse their ire. They had, in turn, employed several bounty hunters to find it. One of whom was Jaegertemis, but I had by that time made sure she would not be able to interrupt Jivasce by trapping her in the Cave of Neverending Shadow in the Nestwood. She didn’t know I had trapped her, of course. She went in believing I had gotten lost in there. And I meant her no ill will. I would return there, when this was over, and lead her out.

Another hunter employed was Fruck. Fruck, who was about seven feet tall and piles of muscle. I was not interested in spending much time with them, so I had simply put them to sleep from an astral perch. This was not hard to do with someone like that, I found, who had devoted so much time to their body and so little to protecting their mind.

I found out some time later that Fruck was Jaegertemis’ lover, so I was relieved I had not harmed them. I had been protected, once more, buy good will and the desire to be harmless, or at least to be as close to that as I could.

I received a call from the magician named Kwent, who said over my archaic wristwatch, “They are banging down your door,” meaning the other hunters—a trio of sisters, who were all razors and whips. I had avoided them entirely and that was my basic stratagem for dealing with them. One to one is winnable. One on three is not. But, through seeding information that I had hidden the artifact in my home—which I had—I knew that this would most likely draw them there. I had not hidden it very well. It was in the toolbox on my back porch. But then again I had no actual interest in the Claw of Consignment, nor did I want these furies tearing my house apart looking for it. It was a timing issue. Timing, redirection, and mitigation of damage and harm.

“Thank you, Kwent,” I said. “I’ll be okay.”

He looked unsure, but I didn’t care about that. I switched off his call, then packed up, said farewell and thanks to Toma and Berlish.

“Oh, Teresa,” Berlish said.

I raised my eyebrows but did not speak.

“Mah Whist club is meeting this week-end, and they would very much enjoy your new card game, I do believe.”

I wasn’t sure what card game she meant. “My new card game …” I said.

Toma made a cycling motion with his hands. “The one you said was like Cluedo.”

“Oh!” I said, remembering the one they meant, though not having said it to them. “Sure. When is it?”

She gave me the particulars, and I said I would be there.

“And maybe,” she made a mischievous face, “you could teach them a little meditation.”

My brow reflexively furrowed. I did not understand why she said it like that but neither did I care, and I had to be going, so I said, “Sure thing. No problem.”

One final example: Jivasce’s parents, Porschen and Karr. They were not happy with what Jivasce was doing, nor that I was helping her. They’d threatened me with all sorts of things. I could see when they did that I was not easily frightened. I was unsure how this had come to be, but it was clear just the same. All I had said to them was: “She’ll be fine. I’ll see to it.” They had said many things in return, most of them threats and unpleasantries—a few of which had found purchase in the memory stream and would return again and again. I did not get involved with those, and stayed on course to make sure Jivasce was in fact safe throughout.

When I made it back to her and everything else was either sewn up or soon to be, she said, “I think it went really, really well, Teresa.”

I didn’t care, really, but I was glad she was all right.

“Maybe I should kill my parents next,” she said with a smile.

I nodded. “Try and stay out of trouble.”

I handed her the bag with her rabbit, Kewel, and then left and went home.

The house I was staying in had a broken front door. Some of the books I had were tossed around and open on the floor. The back door to the porch was open but not broken, the toolbox was open and its tray tossed aside, the contents of which were everywhere. But everything else seemed in order. So I went about picking up the strewn items and putting them back where I kept them, breathing in a way that felt very supportive and good as I did.

Go to next chapter

See chapter list

Bruno 008

I was lost in thought over some phrase I’d read there: “Had she ever really loved me? Or was it only who she thought I could be?”

My body started at the sound of many knocks, a rapid fire pounding on the door.

I sighed and stood, stretched my legs, and found one was asleep, so I hobbled to the door, ready to tell Val that I had taken care of it. Bonder wouldn’t be bothering her. Not for awhile, anyway.

But it wasn’t Val at the door.

It was a young, androgynous person with long brown hair and serious eyes. They were about an inch shorter than I was and very skinny. They wore a black leather jacket very much like the one I’d worn when I was young.

“C’mon,” they said in a deep, frustrated voice. “Let’s go.”

“Uhhh, does your mom know you’re here?” I asked in irony.

They scowled. “Are we going or not, Tee?”

I had no idea where we were supposed to be going. “Going where, young’n?”

“Brunoland,” they said.

I shook my head, as though somehow that might help.

“Brunoland?” I repeated.

“You said we could go,” they said. “And Sanaa is already there. I really want to see her, Teresa.”

“Okay,” I said. I looked at them and tried to remember. Who they were. They seemed very familiar suddenly, but I could not place them. “I’m sorry. I’m having trouble recalling the details of our conversation.”

They shook their head, pulled out a pack of Red Lights and lit one. “Fucking typical.”

“Hey, we smoke the same brand,” I said.

They stared at me like I was stupid.

“I guess a lot of people do,” I said.

“I’ll fucking go without you,” they said.

“You will?” I asked in rebuff. I wasn’t sure why I was being sassy with them, but it felt right.

“Fuck you, Tee. You know how important she is to me.”

I took a drag, nodded. “Sanaa,” I repeated. I had no idea who that was. I could see their sincerity, though, and I believed they were being truthful.

My mind was filled with questions. My heart was sympathetic. And My body said, “Okay, fuck it. Do I need money?”

“No,” they said. “Just bring your pass.”

“My pass?” I asked.

They nodded.

“To Brunoland?”

They scowled again. “Did you fall on your head in the shower or something?”

“Maybe,” I mumbled. “Let me get my shoes and my bag.”

I did, and then we were off. Off to Brunoland.

The walk along the path, past Val’s, and out of the woods, down to the City of Bruno passed without conversation. The silence was unusually comfortable. It felt unusual, to me anyway, when I thought about it.

“How does someone like me meet someone like you?” I asked them.

They looked at me, their eyes scanning mine. “Feeling guilty?” they asked.

“Guilty?” I said. “Why would I feel guilty?”

They looked at me a moment longer, then looked away. “Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but they did. And I wasn’t sure how to get them to explain, so I decided to wait on following up till later, once we were inside Brunoland.

Brunoland turned out to be in the forthbeast corner of the peninsula—or nearly so? There lay some land beyond the edge of what I could make out as we approached.

What I could see of Brunoland itself was many lights of different colors and sorts, a tall palace-like structure, and a gate into the park. Screams carried from the ride nearest the gate, accompanied by a whooshing sound and the rickety-rack of the cart soaring along the rails.

“There’s a goddam amusement park here,” I said.

They ignored me and hustled to the gate, waited for me to catch up.

I didn’t walk any faster. I got there when I got there.

The gate attendant wore a colorful smock with white capris and Keds. She smiled and said, “You all going to Brunoland?” Her voice sounded affected and distinctly clown-like in a way I found off-putting.

I looked at my young companion and saw they wore a nearly identical expression.

“Just show her the pass,” they said.

“Right. The pass,” I said, then began digging through my satchel to find it.

“You did bring it, didn’t you?” they asked impatiently.

“Hold your fuckin’ horses, kid, I have it in here somewhere.” I was not a full one hundred percent certain that was true, but it felt likely, so I kept rummaging.

“Ah, I think this is it?” I said as I handed it to the gatekeeper.

She looked at it, then said. “Um, this is your membership card for Ms. Mux Video.”

“Video?” I said.

“It’s a video rental card, Teresa,” the kid snapped. “It’s not the right one!”

I frowned at them. “Okay. Fine. I can see it’s a video rental card. I just didn’t know people did that anymore is all.”

With some feigned dignity I put the Ms. Mux card back in the bag, looked some more.

“Are you enjoying being off from school?” the gatekeeper asked my young companion in her clownish voice.

The kid pulled out a smoke and said, “Yeah. Right. School.” Then they lit it.

I found another card, but it was my library card for the Bruno Public Library.

I sighed. “It may not be in here,” I said but kept looking despite.

“Well that’s okay,” the clown-voiced woman said. “I can just look you up in the registry!”

I stopped. “Oh. Well, then yes. Let’s do that.”

“And what’s your park name?” she asked.

“My park name? I said.

“Just look under Teresa,” the kid said.

She looked from the kid, then to me, like she’s awaiting confirmation.

“Yeah, look under Teresa. Or Tee. Or maybe Willa.”

The kid chuckled.

“What?” I asked.

“Willa,” they said, exhaling smoke and laughing.

“Hey, I know, all right? It doesn’t suit me. We all have names that don’t suit us, kid.”

“Ain that the truth,” they said, then took a drag.

“Okay, yes,” the clown talker said. “I do have you here under Tee. Teresa Anderson of Mouthpath Way.”

“Mouthpath?” I said.

She looked at me, blinking. “Is that not correct?”

“Uh, I mean …”

“It’s your road, stupid,” the kid said.

I frowned. “I’m not stupid, okay? I’m just kind of ditzy these days. That’s not the same thing.”

They rolled their eyes.

“And this is Dorian, yes?” she asked.

I felt a wave roll down my scalp, then a pain in my chest, behind the breastbone.

With softened eyes I looked at the kid. “Yes. This is Dorian.”

Dorian hadn’t been paying attention, but caught the change in my demeanor. “What?” they asked. “You having a stroke?”

I smiled a little. “No. No, I’m fine.”

“Can we go already, then?” they asked.

I looked at the woman with the awful clown voice. “Are we good to go in?”

“Ab-so-toot-lee!” she said, and did a jaunty two step. “Enjoy your adventures in the magic of Brunoland!”

“Uh, yeah. Thanks,” I said, then walked through the gate. I turned to the kid, “Okay, Dee. Where to?”

Dee flicked their cigarette and took the lead. “She’ll either be in the Greek Pantheon or the Hindu Suragana.”

“She?” I said. Then, I recalled: “Oh, Sanaa.”

But Dee was not listening to me. Not that they ever did. Or even that they should, if I were being honest with myself.

I followed them through the winding trails cut among trees and over bridges built fording small streams, and through tunnels through hills. All along the way were rides and games and hawkers—buskers, too, and street magicians, fortune tellers.

We walked for well over five minutes before Dee stopped.

I looked around and could see from the stylization of the place that we must be in the Greek Pantheon.

Dorian was looking, eagle-eyed and focused.

I, unfortunately, couldn’t recall Sanaa in the slightest and so was of little use. I smoked a cig and waited while they searched.

After a few moments, Dee said, “I don’t think she’s here.”

I looked around from my seat by a doric column without getting up, as though I’d know her if I saw her. There were many young women here, many Dee’s apparent age. “You sure?” I asked, then took a drag.

“I’m sure,” Dee said. “They must be in the Suragana.”

I nodded. “Okay. So we off to there, then?”

Dorian looked at me, meanly. “Is that a question?”

I wanted to be kind to them, given everything that had happened between us, but I found myself staring back at them.

After a moment of locked eyes, they looked away first and said, “C’mon.” They walked off without waiting.

I stubbed my smoke out in an ashtray near the bench and then followed them.

Dee led me through a menagerie and past what looked like a brothel, down a hill, then along an iron wall with a majestic waterfall pouring from its side.

“Wow,” I said as we approached it.

“You’ve been living under a rock?” Dee said.

“Just chill, all right,” I said. “It’s pretty.”

They smirked but carried on, and we passed over the top of the wall and then made our way through a Romani style village to a gothic castle. Beyond that, we walked through an orange dusty valley filled with tents. Then, up a foothill.

I was not winded and was unsure why. The body was not tired, not showing signs of fatigue or discomfort. I felt fine. And the mind had questions and was running through storylines about me and Dorian, but it was otherwise quite still. And my heart felt open, even though I was still heartbroken over what I’d done.

Dee looked at me. “You didn’t do anything, Teresa.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

I blinked back some tears and then asked. “Why did you say the thing about feeling guilty then?”

They looked away. “I was just fucking with you. You know how I am.”

I did, though I couldn’t say how. “I don’t know anything about Sanaa, though, Dee. What’s the deal there? Like, really.”

“She’s my girlfriend,” Dee said.

I felt my eyebrows raise on their own. “You have a girlfriend?”

Dee looked at me. “What? Don’t act so shocked. I have a life outside of you.”

I put my hands up and tried to suppress a smile, but found I could not.

“Of course,” I said.

Dorian tilted their head. “Imma sock you in the jaw, Tee.”

I chortled, but then held my hands out again, made a serious face. “Okay. Okay, I’ll chill.”

“Yeah,” Dee said. “Do that.”

I nodded.

We walked into a central area and there were statues of and performers dressed as many Hindu deities. I didn’t recognize many, so I looked at some of the placards while Dee searched for Sanaa.

I was reading about Kali when Dee tapped me on the shoulder.

I turned around and saw them. Smiling. And not that terrifying smile they used to give me. Like a truly happy face.

Next to them stood a young woman seemingly their same age. She, too, was smiling. But she had a very cool look about her, like she might be a model or a rockstar or something.

“Tee,” Dee said, “this is Sanaa.”

I smiled and extended my hand to her.

She very casually touched her forehead to it. Then extended hers to me, so I did the same.

“So, is this, like, your mom or something?” Sanaa asked Dee.

I looked at Dee but said nothing.

“No,” Dee said. “Teresa is my sister.”

I watched Sanaa to see if she bought it.

“She’s, like, way old,” Sanaa said.

“Hey …” I said, but Dee held up a hand, so I stopped.

“She’s, like, totally thirty or something,” Sanaa said.

Feeling quite flattered suddenly, I smiled and relaxed.

“We have different mothers,” Dee said.

Which was true. Well, more or less true.

Sanaa gave a single nod, then seemed to lose what little interest she had in me.

Dee looked at me, smiling.

I smiled back.

They kept smiling, so I did too. But then I asked. “Sooo, what now, sib?”

“Can we go back to your place?” Dee asked.

“My place?” I asked.

They nodded.

“My place, as in the place I’m staying?”

Again, Dee nodded.

“On Mouthpath Way?”

Dee frowned.

“Uh, yeah. Okay. Sure,” I said. “Why not.”

So we three traversed the park back to the clownish gatekeeper.

“You all have a Brune-tastic night!” she said.

I gave a weak wave.

I had half-expected Dorian to flip her off, but they didn’t. They just kept smiling, walking hand-in-hand with Sanaa.

When we got back to the house where I was staying on Mouthpath Way, I began to feel less comfortable about this plan.

Dee and Sanaa immediately got on the couch and started Frenching.

“Oh, uh,” I said, but then went silent and left the room, hid in the kitchen to think.

My mind noticed unpleasant sounds were contacting the ear. It’d been a very long time since I’d heard big sloppy making out on a couch, and it was not a welcome return.

So I went into my bedroom and closed the door.

I lay on the bed, pulled my legs up to my chest and waited.

Apparently I fell asleep because morning came, and when I got up and went back out to the living room, they were gone.

Dee left a note. It read:

𝒯𝒽𝒶𝓃𝓀𝓈, 𝒯ℯ𝓇ℯ𝓈𝒶. 𝒲ℯ’𝓇ℯ ℯ𝓋ℯ𝓃 𝓃ℴ𝓌. - 𝕯

I wasn’t sure that was true or ever could be true in any way that made sense to me, but it still meant something, that they’d said it.

Go to next chapter

See chapter list

Bruno 007

After breakfast, I had coffee and a smoke on the back porch, read a bit from a paperback I’d had in my satchel the whole time, apparently. Then I showered, and dressed. I wore jean shorts with a white button down and a navy blazer, black Docs. I found a pair of black Wayfarers in the pocket of the blazer. I put those on. In another pocket, a book of matches with something on the cover:

S🅞🅕🅣🅔🅡 B🅛🅤

In the interior pocket of the blazer, a letter in an unmarked envelope. I took it out, read it.

I saw many feelings arising in my chest, from and around my heart. And I could feel tears welling, so I gently refolded the letter, placed it back in its envelope, then set it in the bedside table drawer atop the journal.

My fingers pushed the sunglasses up, gently dabbed at my tears, wiping them down and away, as not to smudge my eyeliner too much.

Three breaths. One quick and shallow. One slow and deep. One normal. Then I slung the satchel across my body, and headed out.

When I got to the place on the path that led to Val’s house, I saw my mind considering stopping in to talk with her. Then, a voice emerged amid the thoughts, saying, There is no point, Teresa. She’s going to be upset and useless until this is taken care of. Just stick to the plan.

I wasn’t sure who the voice belonged to, if indeed it was anyone’s. But my heart agreed, so I walked on by Val’s house and then out of the woods and down into the City of Bruno.

The City was not as busy as it had been the day and I Val went to the Cuntry Club, but there were certainly a lot of folks. I could feel my nerves wanting to act up. My mind scrambled, deploying breaths and framing thoughts. My heart stayed steady and ready. My body kept walking. I noticed all of it and did not interfere.

As I made my way on Rowe, I saw the sign for Kensington.

The mind wondered if we should make a detour to the Bruno Public Library, retrieve what I’d stashed there.

No, the voice said. Stick to the plan, Teresa.

“Okay, okay,” I said aloud. “It was just a thought.”

Indeed. A stupid one.

I rolled my eyes and kept walking.

Two blocks later, a small guy with a rickshaw came alongside me.

“Need a lift?” he asked in a cheery voice. It was the tone of someone who enjoyed being awake early in the morning.

“Uh, well, I’m going pretty far to the forth,” I said.

He shrugged, then stopped, set the two-wheeled carriage down.

I stopped, too.

The runner looked me up and down, which caused feelings to arise in me—some of feeling desired, some of embarrassment. I rubbed the side of my arm, self-soothing, but then it became clear it wasn’t about that at all.

“You’re about, what? Eleven, twelve stones?” he asked.

I really didn’t know. So I shrugged.

He nodded with the certainty of someone who had a lot of skill. “Yeah, that’s a good weight for me. Climb on in!”

I looked around, for what reason, I was not sure, but I noticed I did. Then I said, “Uh, okay.” I started to climb in, then paused. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes!” he said, nodding his head both times he said it. “Please!” He gestured for me to continue, so I did.

The cart was surprisingly comfortable—far more so than I’d predicted. And I could easily nestle myself into the back of it, stretch out my legs.

I saw him smiling and nodding. “Very good,” he said.

He went to the handles of the cart, stood between them, lifted the cart and walked for a couple of steps, stopped.

I felt flush in my cheeks. “I’m too heavy, aren’t I?” I said.

“No!” he said. “It’s a good weight for me. Very good.” Then he resumed moving, quickly picking up speed.

My satchel I’d positioned in my lap had my cigarettes. So I fished them out, then took out the matchbook, looked at the name again.

I was about to light the cigarette when it occurred to me to ask: “Will it bother you if I smoke?”

He shouted over his shoulder to me: “No! The wind will keep it behind me.”

“Oh,” I said. I looked around once more—this time to check the wind. I wasn’t sure if he was correct. “I guess so.”

He kept running, speeding us along the streets of Bruno.

I cupped my hand and struck the blue-tipped match, lit the smoke. I expected, of course, that sulfury taste that follows a match light, but it did not present. Rather, there was a sweet taste.

“Huh,” I said. “Weird. Wonder how they did that?”

I put the matchbook back in my pocket, the smokes back in the satchel, and smoked while taking in the sights of Bruno.

It had been said I was not the most fun to travel with. I could not recall then by whom, but it was something I knew, somehow. Yet today I felt quite peaceful. It was true, though, that I tended to be unimpressed by the mere sight of things. Buildings looked the same to me, more or less. Landscapes were, well, stretches of land. I knew that I knew lots of folks who would become captivated by the beauty of land or intrigued by architecture or building designs and that I was neither. I could appreciate their interest and enjoyed hearing about what they liked about it, to a degree, but one place was basically the same as another to me. It’s scenery.

The runner eased the cart to a gentle stop, then turned to face me. “Is this okay? I’d like to turn nest now. Is this far enough forth?”

“Hey,” I said, “it’s plenty far. A lot faster than I’d have gotten here on foot.”

He nodded twice, said, “Yes, yes. True!”

I climbed out and looked in my satchel. A pang of panic stabbed me in the chest. “Oh, shit, man. I don’t have any money.”

He looked confused, then asked, “How much do you need?”

“What? No, I meant to pay you,” I said.

“For what?” he asked.

“For the ride,” I said.

He shook his head no. “I am training. I need the weight.”

I felt my head raise back slowly and my mouth open. “Ah, I said. Okay, so this is like, what, for an event?”

He nodded. “The Bruno Tallchew,” he said.

I didn’t know what that was. “Is that, like, a competition?”

He laughed. I think he thought I was joking. This, I knew, was something that happened to me sometimes. I would ask or say something they considered so fatuous that they assumed I was being witty. I had learned to play along.

I laughed. “Well, thanks, all the same. Glad I could help you train, I guess.”

He bowed slightly, his hands pressed together and raised to his forehead. “Thank you! May your travels be safe!”

“Yeah, yours, too,” I said.

He grabbed the handles to his cart and was turning to nest, when I thought to ask: “Hey, what’s your name?”

“Hiromi,” he said.

“I’m Teresa,” I said and extended my hand.

He took it gently and politely, touched his forehead to it. “Good journeys to you, Teresa.”

“You too, Hiromi. Thanks again,” I waved with a little fanning of my fingers.

He nodded once, more then raced away down the cross street.

The spot Hiromi had dropped me proved to be quite close to the place I was going—which was, of course, the Auberghine Mansion. I did not know how I knew to go there, but I did. Neither was a certain of how I knew I would find Bonder there, but I knew that I would.

The stand of trees that hid the mansion from street view had no visible path, yet I knew the way. It was obvious to me, both the path and that I had much experience in wayfinding.

Beyond the wood was a body of water. A pond or a maybe a bay or something. I wasn’t certain, and I did not care. My resolve was locked in place. I could feel it: the alignment of body, the breath, the voice, the heart, the head. All in good fit with one another.

When I reached the water, I saw there was a fan boat moored to a small dock. On the other side of the dock, a paddleboat.

My mind considered the paddleboat and felt an inclination toward it. I felt my heart sink some as memories began to surface.

My body, though, with kindness toward this, moved to the fanboat. I turned it on and drove it to the other side of the water, where I docked it and disembarked.

The Auberghine Mansion proper looked like a country house, a few stories high, and surrounded with appointments one would expect the laborless rich to have.

I ignored all that and went to big entrance door.

There’s a pull chain, so I pulled that. I heard a strange creak and a clang.

The door opened, and a woman with dark eyes and big hands was there. She wore a silvery cocktail dress and stilettos with a peep.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“I’m after Bonder,” I said.

She scoffed. “You’re after Bonder? That’s a new one.”

I sighed, but kept it small. “Is he here?”

The woman scrunched her mouth, then stepped aside, opened the door so I could enter.

“Thanks,” I said.

As I crossed the threshold, I said to her, “I’m Teresa. Anderson.”

“Dapvna,” she said and offered me a large hand, with long, mirrored nails.

I touched my forehead to it, as Hiromi had to mine.

This made her laugh a soft little laugh.

“Nice to meet you, Dapvna,” I said.

“Enchanté,” she said—sarcastically, I think. Then she walked into a room adjacent to the hall.

I knew it was not the way I needed to go to find Bonder, so I went up the sweeping staircase, then to the elevator near its summit. It required a key, but the key was in it, so I used the elevator to go to the basement. I did not recall how I knew there was a basement, nor how I knew that’s where I would find him. But I didn’t care. I was determined. Focused.

The elevator made creaking sounds as it lurched down. It was a slow descent, and somewhat loud. When it reached the bottom, it stopped, and I got out.

The basement was finished into a den of sorts. The kind of thought of when I thought of midcentury modern homes or a key party from the 70s.

And I was right. He was there.

Bonder sat on a long, curved couch, sipping a drink from a snifter. He wore black slacks, no socks, dark red driving moccs, and a charcoal cashmere sweater. Tattoos crawled out from every visible place. The dragon tattoo on his pec was most prominent. I recalled, then, what it tasted like, how his body moved when I licked his nipples. This knowledge confused me, but did not deter me.

“Ohayo, Teresa. Wie gehts?”

“Don’t sweettalk me, numbnuts,” I said, to my own surprise.

He smirked then looked into his glass, swirled it. “I was just being friendly.”

“Leave Val alone,” I said.

His smirk turned to a proper smile. “What makes you think I’m after Val.”

“Look,” I said. “Don’t bullshit me. And leave her alone. She’s the only friend I’ve got here.”

He stared at me.

I met his stare. I recalled how I had practiced staring at cats when I was a kid. They always looked away. Mr. Pook would also growl at me, but even he looked away.

Bonder, too, looked away.

“What about me, Tee? Aren’t we friends?”

“We fucked,” I said, which felt like a discovery to my mind, but also sounded true. “That doesn’t make us friends.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “You could use a friend like me.”

“Look, leave her alone and I’ll be whatever you want, okay?”

He arched his eyebrows and looked at me again. “Really?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” I said.

“You said whatever I want.”

“What are you, six?”

He nodded slowly. “Okay. As a personal favor to you, I’ll leave her be. But someone has to answer for Kella.”

“Right,” I said. “Maybe find the person who’s actually responsible.”

He looked in his glass again, took a sip.

My mind put it together. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” I said.

“You know how it goes around here, Tee. The house always wins.”

“Yeah, well, leave me and Val out of it.”

“I already said I would.”

“See that you do,” I said, then stormed back to the elevator, got in.

“Teresa,” he said.

“What?”

“You still rock me, baby.”

I rolled my eyes as the elevator took me up.

Val would be happy. But I’d eventually have to repay this favor. It was all right. I had time to work it out.

Go to next chapter

See chapter list

Bruno 006

The soaker tub was much easier to stand up in than I’d thought it would be. As I’d observed some days before, the water pressure was quite good, especially for this kind of shower. The curtain was very nearly transparent and had a soft, almost fleshy feel to it. It hung from silver rings with ball bearings that made a very particular sound as they slid along the guide rail.

The water was not only well-pressurized, it was a lovely texture. It was soft, like the water where I’d lived as a child, but not quite that soft.

The soap was there, in a bath caddy—an unremarkable looking tannish block. Yet when I used it, it felt quite nice. I found it worked quite well on both my skin and my hair, which seemed highly improbable, yet it was so.

As I showered, I noticed the appearance of my body for the first time since coming to Bruno. My skin showed subtle signs of aging. The elasticity was reduced, but it still held firm. New spots had arrive, though none unsightly. My breasts were bigger than I remembered, though not at all large. They were further apart than I realized. And my body hair had not regrown much. My bush was somewhat thick but well-groomed, and I had some hair under each arm, but that was it. The hair on my head was longish, though not past my collarbone. It was long enough to tie back or clip and get a range of styles, but still short enough that washing and drying wasn’t labor intensive. I saw I kept my fingernails short. They were unpainted that day. My toes were painted white and in good repair, showing no chips or peeling.

When I’d finished showering, I found that much of the water had already left my skin. I toweled off in a minute, two at most.

I opened the medicine cabinet I’d found behind the mirror on my first day here, and took my medicines, brushed my teeth and flossed, rinsed, then I went to the bedroom.

There was a closet in the wall opposite the bed. I had failed to notice it before. Like so many things in Bruno, I was unsure how that was possible, yet it was.

In the closet I found a good array of clothing, arranged well on hangers and shelves. I picked a pair of bleach-splotched cut-offs, a black Nirvana t-shirt with the neck and sleeves cut to fit, and a pair of black loop toe sandals with a tiny bit of block heel on them. There was also jewelry, from which I selected a short shell necklace, a couple of silver rings, and a silver ankle chain.

I recalled having seen an eyeliner pen in my satchel, so I got that and lined my eyes along the top lids and about half of each bottom. There was lip balm in the bag, too, so I put that on.

Having made myself ready to explore, I sat on the couch to think about where I might go.

No sooner had I done so than I heard a knock at the door—not the music I’d heard when Vyolet delivered the painting. It was a knock.

I hopped up and opened the door.

On the other side was a woman, ten years older than I, possibly more, with elegant blonde hair just shy of her elbows. She wore a purple, nearly black, dress that seemed Victorian to me, though clearly was not. There was a deep scoop to the neck and no bustle, but it was much more ornate and tailored that most contemporary dresses.

“Oh, good,” she said in a what I heard as a thin Southern drawl. “You’re he-ah, Tee.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I am.”

She pushed past me into the living room.

“Come on in,” I said, then closed the door.

“Bonder is looking for me,” she said.

“Bonder?” I said back.

“And they say that he thinks ah did it.”

“They do?”

“And then there’s gonna be a whole to-do. Like they’re gonna want to brainpress me and go through my thangs.”

“Brainpress?”

She walked in circles as she continued speaking, wringing her hands, which I saw were quite wrinkled. “They won’t tell me wha! I wish someone would tell me wha.”

“They?” I asked.

“Oh, you know. The bitches at the Club.”

“The Club,” I said. Then I added, without knowing why, “The Bruno Cuntry Club?”

She ignored that, and said, “Ashury has them all peckin’. You know how they do, ‘specially when they’re togetha.”

“Ash,” I said. “Who is our friend …”

“That bitch doesn’t have any friends, Tee. We’re all just pawns in her stupid games. Jayzus, you’re so naive sometimes.”

That felt true. “That’s true,” I said.

“And everyone likes you.”

That seemed less certain. “They do?”

“And they want my odd ass outta they-ah. They wanna make room for the ‘new bluud.’” She said the last two words with air quotes, her fingers reminding me of this rabbit ear game my grandmother had played with me as a girl.

“New blood?” I said. “There’s a limit on the Club roster?”

“Huh? Well, no. Not as I recall.”

Oh, so she was being neurotic, then. “Oh,” I said. “So you’re being neurotic.”

She stopped circling and came right up to me. She was a good head taller than I and smelled of something old but pleasant. “Help me, Tee. They’ll listen to you.” Her breath was minty with a hint of licorice. Absinthe?

“They will?” I asked and became instantly self-conscious about my breath. I knew I’d just brushed, flossed, and rinsed, and yet …

“You’re breath is fine,” she said.

“Wait, how did you …”

“You always worry about your breath when we talk close. And it’s always fine.”

“Oh,” I said. “I have a strange tongue that can get stinky.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Teresa, we all know about’cho tongue. Will you talk to them for me?”

Of course I would. “Yeah. Of course I will.”

Her face lit up, then softened, she stepped back and began circling again, but in slower, more even steps. “So you will talk to Tillian while I distract Ash. I can ask her about her brother’s colon again. Or perhaps compliment the renovations she’s havin’ done …”

“Wait … what I am talking with them about?” And I had no idea who Tillian was. Unless she meant Tily. Maybe she meant Tily.

She stopped and looked at me, blankly. “About me. And mah predicament.”

“Right,” I said, nodding, not understanding. “Which is …”

“What have ah been talkin’ about this whole time, Teresa? Bonder and the missing Dowirry gurl. They think ah had somethin’ to do with it.”

“Bonder,” I said, not knowing who the hell that was, “and the missing Dowery girl.” That brought up more information. “Kenna Dowery?”

“No, the younga one. The pretty one. Kella.”

“Well, I mean, Kenna isn’t not pretty,” I said reflexively.

“She looks lika horse, Teresa.”

I shrugged. “I think horses are pretty.” I thought for a second and a few things pieced together in my mind, like a puzzle I’d done at the beach twenty-seven summers ago. “Kella. She’s a bit shorter than I am, right?”

“I haven’t measured the child, but I believe so.”

Though the pieces were connected, and I could see them very clearly, it was difficult for me to speak them into coherence. “Was she at your house?”

“They say she was! I’ve neva had the gurl over befo-ah. Not to my recollection, anyway.”

My mind wanted to puzzle over this, but my body shook the thoughts away. Then I asked, “Just tell me what you want me to say to them.”

“Tell them the truth,” she said. “Say Val was with me and that it couldn’t have been her.”

“You’re Val,” I said.

She tilted her head and glared at me.

“Vallison Cooper-Rosh,” I said, recalling her full name.

“And you’re Willa Teresa Anderson the fou-teenth. We all caught up, na-uh?”

“Right,” I said. “The double-you is for Willa.” Which made my head jump. “I don’t feel like a Willa,” I said.

“And I don’t feel like a Tiffany Mysander. We all have names which don’t suit us, Tee. Can we just go?”

“Yes, of course,” I said, though my mind was filled with questions.

“Good,” Val said, then sat down on my couch.

I looked at her. “You wanted to go to the Club, yeah?”

She nodded. “Post haste, mah de-ah”

I looked from the couch to the door. “Sooo, let’s go?”

Val looked me up and down. “In a Nuh-vanna tee shurt and Daisy Dukes, Teresa? To the Club?”

Right. Of course. I nodded. “Right. Of course. Let me change.”

I was nearly in the bedroom when it occurred I didn’t know what to wear.

So I darted back to Val, and asked, “What should I wear?”

“A dress, dingbat,” she said. “A cute one. Not one of the slutty ones.”

I felt my brow furrow. “The slutty ones are cute, too,” I said.

“Not at tha Club,” she said flatly.

My mind wanted to argue, but my body took me back to the closet, pulled out a seersucker maxi dress. I whipped off the tee, hopped out of the shorts, kicked off the sandals, and pulled the dress over and onto me, shifted in it, then stepped into some simple leather flats and hurried back to Val.

I put my arms out. “This okay?”

She frowned and stood. “It’ll do. We haven’t any time to waste, Teresa.”

“Yes,” I said, putting my arms down. “So you’ve said. Repeatedly.”

Val flung open my door and hustled outside.

I followed her, closing the door as I passed through.

“Wait.” I recalled my bag. “Do I need my bag?”

“What fo-ah?” she asked.

“Right,” I said. “Never mind.” And we walked at a brisk pace along the path, up to and the past the second house.

“That’s your place,” I said as we passed it.

“Las time ah checked,” she said absently. She was breaking a sweat.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I am a worried hen.”

I laughed a little but kept it quiet. I could see she was stressed.

“I meant from the walking,” I clarified.

“I am not so young as you, Teresa. But ah shall manage.”

Fair enough, I thought. “Fair,” is what I said. It didn’t sound like something I’d say, but I said it.

We made our way out of the woods and down into the City of Bruno. The streets were alive today, teeming with folks and animals and carts and bikes. I heard no motors, though, and saw no cars or trucks nor motorbikes.

The street we walked wound around where I’d been to the Bruno Public Library; then curved upward—or what felt upward to me, what I would later learn was called forth and used this symbol on signage: ^Ⓕ.

I did not catch the name of the road we had been walking, but I did see the sign for the one we took to next. It read, predictability:

₵Ʉ₦₮ⱤɎ ₵ⱠɄ฿ ⱤØ₳Đ

There was something like a gateway in that there were low stone pillars on either side, the sort that a gate might be mounted to, yet there was no actual gate.

The road was cobblestoned, but laid in such a way as to not prove difficult when walking. My mind wanted to stop and examine how this could be, but the body kept moving along, staying in stride with Val.

A few moments down Cuntry Club Road and I could see the buildings and facilities well. There were tennis courts, naturally, and a golf course, a large swimming pool. What looked like horse stable. Perhaps for polo? There were also enclosed buildings, one of which looked like a cinema.

“They have a theater here?” I asked.

“They have three, Teresa, and you live they-ah when you’re not too busy smokin’ and writin’.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “I smoke. And I write.”

“Not at tha Club, de-ah,” she said.

“Right. Not here. I wouldn’t do those things here,” I reminded myself. “Not at the Club.”

Val led us to a poolside dining area, of which there were many.

Seated at a circular table with white linens were three women of various ages and looks, though they all were dressed similarly.

“Hayyyy,” Val and the three other woman all said in unison. The women rose as Val moved in tiny steps, leaning forward to hug each of them and kiss their cheeks.

“Lemme hug ya neck,” Val said to one of them—Sibby, I think her name was.

Yes, my mind was filled with remembrances. Sibby was young and quiet and skinny. Ash was older than I was, but not yet Val’s age, and clearly the queen bee of these three. And Tily was larger, my age, and laughed a lot. I knew that much, even if I didn’t know how I knew any of it. It hadn’t been there, and then it was. In my mind.

Ash caught sight of me. She tipped her chin. “Ter-ree-sahhh, always nice to see you, girl!” She hugged me and kissed my cheeks. I mimed doing the same but did not actually.

Then I repeated this process with Sibby and Tily. I noticed Sibby, too, mimed but did not actually kiss me. She smelled quite nice. Pink pepper, I thought, which surprised me, for whatever reason.

After hugs and kisses, I saw there was a fourth chair, but not a fifth.

Val sat down.

So I stood, seeing feelings of awkwardness arise within my upper arms. I noticed them, but did not get involved with them.

“Oh, lawd, Teresa’s got no chair!” Tily said, then laughed.

“Well, we can’t have that, now can we?” Ash said. She looked around, craning her long white neck, thumb and forefingers rubbing together as she did. When she spotted who she was looking for, she clicked her tongue and said, “Joggy! Joggy, over here!” She waved her arms like one might to signal a plane from a beach.

A tall, thin woman with short, slicked back hair came quickly to the table. She wore a tuxedo and trousers but no coat. “Yes, Miss Ashury?”

“Call me Ash, dear, everyone does,” she said, then went right into her request: “Teresa, here, does not have a chair. Can we rectify that, please?”

Joggy looked confused. She looked at the table nearest us, saw it was empty and had four chairs. Then, it was like she realized the situation she was in, and asked, “Would one of these be to ma’am’s liking?”

Ash—and everyone else—looked at me.

A second later, I got it. “Sure. Yes. Yes, any of those will be fine.” Then I added, “Thank you. Joggy.”

Ash smiled the smile of a satisfied woman of leisure, then turned back to Joggy and said, “One of those will work just fine, Joggy.”

Joggy nodded and moved one of the chairs from the nearest table to ours. It took less than three seconds.

Joggy and I stood there, over the chair, each looking at one another.

“What?” I asked gently.

Joggy looked to the chair with only her eyes, then back to me.

“Oh, shit. Right,” I said, the swept my dress with my hands and stood over the chair so Joggy could scoot it under me as I sat down.

“Thank you, Joggy,” I said.

Ash smiled. “Yesss, we do thank you so much, Joggy. You’re such a dear.” With white gloves hands, Ash retrieved a pink rectangle from her clutch, then stuck it out toward Joggy in a way that reminded me of how patrons at a strip club tipped the dancers.

Joggy bowed very slightly, one arm behind her back, and took the money. “It is my true pleasure, Miss Ashury,” she said.

“Well isn’t that a dear,” Ash said. “Call me Ash, honey, everyone does.”

Joggy bowed once more, then stood at attention.

“That’s all for now, sweetie. Send Victoria over for our order in about five,” Ash said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Joggy said. She made a small bow again, then hurried away.

I was tired already, and I hadn’t even looked at the menu.

Then, as if on cue—and perhaps it was—a short woman with cropped red hair arrived with menus, and handed them out to each of us, one at a time.

I looked at mine and could not decipher it. Some of the characters I’d seen on signage around Bruno, but not enough to make them out.

So I looked at the woman with cropped red hair, and said, “I’ll have the club.”

She said, “I’m not your server, ma’am.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

Ash seemed offended. “Teresa, dear, don’t apol-oh-gize … Mainey, fetch us Victoria, won’t you dear?”

The red haired woman—who was Mainey, apparently—said, “Yes, Miss Ashury.”

Ash blinked slowly under a tight smile as Mainey disappeared. Then, she looked at me. “Don’t ever apologize to these people, Teresa.”

“These people?” I asked reflexively.

“The help,” she said. “The staff.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“It’s their job,” Ash said.

I felt my brow furrow and heard myself say, “Okay.” But I did not understand, exactly. And I saw storylines forming in my mind about what Ash meant but did not say.

Val spoke, then, saying, “Ash, I luuv what you are doin’ to your mansion! It’s so class-say!”

“Oh, I do love that you love it, dear,” Ash said. “It’s been a long time coming, as you know …”

I felt my attention drift from the two of them to the other two women: Sibby and Tily.

I wanted to talk to Sibby. I felt my curiosity hovering around her. But I knew my duty to Val was to talk to Tily. So I ignored my curiosity and attended to my duty, turned to Tily, and said, “So, Tily. Catch me up …” and then quickly added, “girl.”

Tily smiled at me, raised both her hands and began to prattle on about all sorts of things that simply would not stay in my mind. My mind, which kept wanting to drift over to Sibby, and could not for the life of me hold on to what I was supposed to be talking with Tily about.

I allowed my eyes to dart to Sibby now and then, to see what she was doing.

She sat awkwardly there, fidgeting with her gloves, her napkin, her menu.

Shortly, Victoria arrived. She was tall and very strong looking. Even through her work attire, it was obvious she was a lifter. “Hiiii ladies! Y’all ready to order, or you need a few?”

Ash opened her menu and feigned looking at it, then looked up at Victoria and said, “I believe Teresa is ready.”

Victoria looked to me, smiled. “You ready, girl?”

I smiled reflexively. “I’d like the club,” I said.

“The special or just the sandwich?”

“The special?”

Ash chuckled. “Is that a question or an order, dear?”

I looked at her but didn’t reply.

Victoria said to me, “The special is the sandwich, some fries, a soda, a slice of pie, and a cup of coffee.”

“Oh!” I said. “Then that. Yes, please. Definitely that.”

Victoria gave a small smile, took everyone else’s order while I regained some composure, focusing on my breathing, watching feelings of tension in my muscles, energy waves rolling through my body. And storylines and ideas about Ash forming, then disintegrating, passing away.

I went for a cig, then realized I didn’t bring anything.

“Goddamit,” I said without thinking.

The table went quiet.

Shit, I thought. Oops.

Ash was the one who asked me what I meant—of course she was, fucking Ash. “Everything all right, dear Teresa?”

“I, uh, just realized I forgot my cigarettes.”

Victoria immediately offered: “Oh, that’s no problem. I can bring you a pack from the cabana. What’s your brand, girl?”

“Red Lights,” I said.

Victoria nodded. “I’ll bring them with y’all’s drinks.”

“That’d be great,” I said.

“Really, Teresa,” Ash said. “Smoking? At the Club? It’s so unsightly.”

“Yes, Ash,” I said. “I want a fucking cigarette. That okay with you?”

I felt tension overtake the atmosphere of the table. I could see and feel it localized around Val, Sibby, and Tily.

Ash made a sardonic smile and cocked her head. “If you want to make an ass out of yourself, girl, don’t let me stop you.”

“Good,” I said. “I won’t.”

It all played out like it always did after that. Ash holding fucking court, while Val kissed her ring. Tily laughing at everything. Sibby being shy but occasionally saying something tangential, only to be ignored.

We parted in a fashion similar to how we’d arrived, with all the hugs and kisses these fake bitches could dole out.

By the time Val and I were at the gate, I was halfway through the pack of smokes.

“Well, that coulda gon bettah,” Val said.

“It was a fucking waste of time, Val,” I said. “Why do you hang out with these assholes?”

“These assholes,” Val said, “are shot callas. Well, Ashury, anyhow.”

“They’re no friends of mine,” I said, then flicked my cig away.

Val shook her head. “They have no friends, Teresa. As I said be-foah. What’d you expect?”

“Nothing, I guess,” I said.

I saw the thought arise to piss on the sign as we passed it, but then I thought they weren’t good enough for my piss.

Almost as though she could read my thoughts, Val observed, “Well, I decla-uh, Teresa, a mood has certain taken to you.”

“I’m sorry, Val. I’m not angry with you. I’ll do what I can to help you, but I can’t help you like this. I’ll find another way.”

“How?” Val asked.

“I don’t know yet. Bonder maybe.”

“Bonder?” she said with her whole body. “That psychopath?”

“I’m not afraid of Bonder,” I said, though I didn’t know why. I couldn’t even picture him, much less recall anything about him.

“He will hurt you, Teresa,” Val said, clutching my upper arm.

“No,” I said. “He won’t. I know how to handle people like him.”

Val balked. “Oh, you do? You a tough gal nay-ow?”

“I’ve lived several lives, Val. Bruno isn’t the whole of me. Not by a lot.”

Val didn’t say anything. She looked at me for a long hard minute, then we carried on, silently, back to our houses.

When we reached hers, she waved without looking. “Be seein’ you, Tee,” she said, then went inside.

I didn’t reply.

When I got back home, I ripped off my dress and threw it on the floor. I wanted to burn it, but I didn’t.

I put back on the clothes I’d wanted to wear that day and sat on the back porch. I smoked, stared into the Bruno Woods, letting its leaves take me wherever it was they took me.

Go to next chapter

See chapter list

Bruno 005

On the table, on a green cloth spread flat, was the pistol, disassembled to its component parts.

Again, apparently I was mistaken again. It was not a .357 Desert Eagle, rather a .44 caliber from the early nineteen nineties. It was the ‘movie gun’ from that time, the one every director seemed to want to put in their film.

I appraised the components as though they were new to me, yet as I looked closely, I knew each quite well. I would not liken them to a friend, per se, but a coworker at a job that one does not love but performs well despite.

There were also, on the table, cleaning tools and oils. Another piece of cloth. I reached for them, then heard something:

I got up and went to the front door. My habits told me to not open the door, to look out the window first. But I did not do that. I opened the door straight away.

There standing was a lean femme person, at least a head taller than I was, chewing gum listlessly behind red lips that sparkled like rubies. Her eyes were surrounded with thick, black eyeliner, and flying above them were long, false eyelashes. She wore very short blue chambray shorts and a matching short-sleeve buttoning top with a single button in the high middle buttoned. She held with her long arms a thin rectangle wrapped in brown paper and twine.

“Tee Anderson?” she asked in a throaty, bored voice.

“Yes. Good morning,” I said.

“This is for you, babe,” she said, then handed me the package.

“Oh,” I said. I took the package. “Thank you …” I looked for her nametag.

I didn’t find it, but she knew what I was doing.

“Vyolet. With a why,” she said.

“Very nice,” I said. “Teresa. I’m Teresa Anderson. No aitch.”

“I know,” she said while chewing gum.

I smiled, noticing a twinge of embarrassment budding in my chest. “Of course. Thank you, Vyolet.”

“Have a nice day,” she said in the same disaffected tone, then turned and left.

I watched her head up the path toward the next house—the one where I’d found the ashes—then closed the door.

My curious mind wanted to know what was underneath the brown paper, but I did not open it right away. I set it gently against the left wall, then returned to the table and the parts of the gun.

I sat once more in the uncomfortable-looking-yet-comfortable wooden chair and then set about cleaning the parts. It took very little time. I did not use a stopwatch, though it felt a bit like I had. I could almost hear the ticking.

Likewise, reassembling it went very quickly and with no problems. I felt some amazement at my ability to do this, yet in my body there was no surprise. It felt very comfortable and familiar, like I’d done it many, many times—too many times to count.

With the gun put back together, I got up and carried it back to the bedroom.

The drawer in the nightstand, next to the twin bed along the wall under the single hung window, is where I’d found the pistol. But when I went to replace it there, it’s like it wasn’t right. I found myself kneeling instead, and lifting up the mattress away from its base to put the gun in there. And when I did, I found a journal. So I took the journal out, put the gun in, and lowered the mattress. I went back on my heels and sat there on the floor, next to the bed, with the journal.

For several moments, I felt fear arising in my body. I felt various fears. A cold fear in the stomach. A hot fear along the scalp and tops of the ears. A tense fear in the muscles of the shoulders. I watched them, each one, as they arose and passed away, and when I was calm again, I opened it.

On the first page was written:

𝒯𝒽𝒾𝓈 ℐ𝓈 𝓉𝒽ℯ 𝒮ℯ𝒸𝓇ℯ𝓉 𝒟𝒾𝒶𝓇𝓎 ℴ𝒻 𝒲. 𝒯ℯ𝓇ℯ𝓈𝒶 𝒜𝓃𝒹ℯ𝓇𝓈ℴ𝓃.

“Double-you,” I said.

I felt then, in the body, some curiosity about what that meant. But I did not contemplate it further. I turned the page.

On the second page was written:

ℐ 𝒻𝓊𝒸𝓀ℯ𝒹 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝒶𝓁𝓁 𝓊𝓅 𝓈ℴ 𝒷𝒶𝒹𝓁𝓎. 𝒜𝓁𝓁 ℐ 𝓌𝒶𝓃𝓉ℯ𝒹 𝓌𝒶𝓈 𝓉ℴ 𝓁𝒾𝓋ℯ 𝒶 ℊℴℴ𝒹 𝓁𝒾𝒻ℯ. 𝒲𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓎ℴ𝓊, 𝓂𝓎 𝓁ℴ𝓋ℯ. ℐ 𝓀𝓃ℴ𝓌 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓈ℴ𝓊𝓃𝒹𝓈 𝓈𝓉𝓊𝓅𝒾𝒹 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓅ℯ𝓇𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓈 𝓊𝓃𝒻𝒶𝓉𝒽ℴ𝓂𝒶𝒷𝓁ℯ ℴ𝓇 𝒾𝓃𝓈𝒾𝓃𝒸ℯ𝓇ℯ 𝒷ℯ𝒸𝒶𝓊𝓈ℯ ℴ𝒻 𝒶𝓁𝓁 𝓉𝒽ℯ 𝓈𝓉𝓊𝓅𝒾𝒹 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃ℊ𝓈 ℐ’𝓋ℯ 𝒹ℴ𝓃ℯ 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒶𝓁𝓁 𝓉𝒽ℯ 𝓈𝓂𝒶𝓇𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃ℊ𝓈 ℐ 𝒹𝒾𝒹 𝓃ℴ𝓉 𝒹ℴ. ℐ 𝓀𝓃ℴ𝓌, 𝓉ℴℴ, 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒾𝓃𝓉ℯ𝓃𝓉𝒾ℴ𝓃𝓈 ℴ𝓃𝓁𝓎 ℊℴ 𝓈ℴ 𝒻𝒶𝓇, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓉𝒽ℯ 𝓌ℯ𝒾ℊ𝒽𝓉 ℴ𝒻 𝓌ℴ𝓇𝒹𝓈 𝒾𝓈 ℊ𝓇ℯ𝒶𝓉 ℯ𝓋ℯ𝓃 𝓌𝒽ℯ𝓃—

It stopped there, and the em dash at the end was more of a long slashing line. I could read the frustration in it.

I took a breath and let my mind take the words apart, try to arrange them into coherence.

After a moment and with little to show for it, I turned the page.

On the third page was written:

ℐ 𝓁ℴ𝓋ℯ 𝓎ℴ𝓊. 𝒞𝒶𝓃’𝓉 𝓎ℴ𝓊 𝓈ℯℯ ℐ 𝒹ℴ? 𝒞𝒶𝓃 𝓎ℴ𝓊 𝓃ℴ𝓉 𝓈ℯℯ 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 ℐ 𝒸𝒽ℴℴ𝓈ℯ 𝓎ℴ𝓊 ℯ𝓋ℯ𝓇𝓎 𝒹𝒶𝓎? ℐ𝓉’𝓈 𝓎ℴ𝓊 𝒶𝓃𝒹 ℴ𝓃𝓁𝓎 𝓎ℴ𝓊 ℐ 𝒸𝒽ℴℴ𝓈ℯ ℯ𝓋ℯ𝓇𝓎 𝒹𝒶𝓎. 𝒯𝒽ℯ ℴ𝓃𝓁𝓎 ℴ𝓃ℯ ℐ ℯ𝓋ℯ𝓇 𝒽𝒶𝓋ℯ 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓉𝒽ℯ ℴ𝓃𝓁𝓎 ℴ𝓃ℯ ℐ 𝓌𝒶𝓃𝓉 𝓉ℴ. 𝒯𝒽ℯ𝓇ℯ 𝒾𝓈 𝓃ℴ𝓉 𝒶𝓃𝓎ℴ𝓃ℯ ℯ𝓁𝓈ℯ, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓌𝒽ℯ𝓃 ℐ 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃𝓀 ℴ𝒻 𝒶𝓃𝓎ℴ𝓃ℯ ℯ𝓁𝓈ℯ, ℐ 𝒷ℯ𝒸ℴ𝓂ℯ 𝒾𝓁𝓁 𝒶𝓉 𝓉𝒽ℯ 𝓉𝒽ℴ𝓊ℊ𝒽𝓉 ℴ𝒻 𝒾𝓉. ℐ—

Another long dash, though this one was not so frustrated.

On the fourth page:

ℐ 𝓁ℴ𝓋ℯ 𝓎ℴ𝓊. ℐ 𝒹ℴ. 𝒲𝒽ℯ𝓉𝒽ℯ𝓇 𝓎ℴ𝓊 𝓁ℴ𝓋ℯ 𝓂ℯ ℴ𝓇 𝓃ℴ𝓉. 𝒲𝒽ℯ𝓉𝒽ℯ𝓇 𝓎ℴ𝓊 𝓌𝒾𝓁𝓁 ℯ𝓋ℯ𝓇 𝓁ℴ𝓋ℯ 𝓂ℯ 𝒶ℊ𝒶𝒾𝓃 ℴ𝓇 𝓃ℴ𝓉. 𝒜𝓃𝒹 ℐ 𝓌𝒶𝓃𝓉 𝓎ℴ𝓊 𝓉ℴ 𝒷ℯ 𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓅𝓎.

I read this and could see instantly that it was true—absolutely true—but not complete. There was something else not said after. I thought I knew it then, but did not say it aloud. Instead, I closed the journal, put it in the nightstand in place of the gun, and then retrieved the gun from between the bed and its base. I grabbed my coat, put the gun in the pocket. It was quite large and heavy so it was cumbersome that way, with the side it was on sagging quite a lot.

So I got my satchel and put it in there, slung it across my body, and set out down the path to the City of Bruno, half-thinking I might see Vyolet on the way. I was not sure what I would say. The mind had a lot of ideas—jokes mostly. I let those flow through but did not get involved with any of them. I kept my focus on the path, one foot after the other, moving me toward town, toward my destination.

My destination was the Bruno Public Library.

I found it without great effort. I had a nose for libraries and bookstores. This, the Bruno Public Library, was located on Kensington near the intersection of Rowe. There were two stacked signs at the corner of the intersection saying as much:

₭Ɇ₦₴ł₦₲₮Ø₦ ^Ⓑ and then atop it: ᴙowɘ ^Ⓝ

I would learn that ^Ⓑ was for beast, the opposite direction of ^Ⓝ, which was for nest.

The frontispiece of the library reminded me of an old brownstone style, though without a proper stoop. Across it read:

฿ł฿ⱠłØ₮ⱧɆQɄɆ

I knew this meant library.

Inside, as is the case with most if not all libraries, it was very quiet and still. So quiet it was that my tinnitus began to ring. I had either forgotten I had tinnitus or was more accustomed to ignoring it amongst other sounds. But the near silence of the library turned it up such that it was mainly what I could hear.

The librarian at the front desk was covered in tattoos, each a beautiful work of art and arranged with great skill in relationship to one another. This was evident from even a quick glance. Part of me wanted to stare at them at great length, perhaps by way of introducing myself, striking up a conversation. Hi, I’m Teresa. That sort of thing. But the body paid little mind and kept moving, carrying me deep into the innards of the library, where there were dense shelves and piles of books.

There was some sort of cataloging system at work. That much was plain to see. I could not place the symbols nor immediately understand their relationships but that wasn’t very important to my task at hand.

I searched in my way to find the most obscure feeling section, the one with the strongest musk and the least signs of dusting. There I found a rather heavy tome that had characters I could not read on its spine:

⇴ ☸ ❖ ꘏

Something about these struck me as familiar, though I could not place them, and I did not care.

I set the big book down on the floor and examined what was behind it, meaning along the shelf, where it met the wall, the shelves above it and below, and any structural supports or gaps.

Therein I found a place suitable to my purpose.

I drew the pistol and placed it in the spot I’d picked out. It sat well enough between the wall and the shelving. Should anyone do as I had and look inside, they would immediately find it. But if they were only to take the book, they would most likely not see it.

Satisfied enough—it didn’t have to be perfect, after all—I picked up the large book and placed it back on the shelf.

My eyes caught the symbols again, but the rest of me showed no interest, so I left that spot and went back to the front of the library.

As I walked out, it occurred to me once again to speak to the librarian, who was bored and pretty looking, her huge glasses way down her nose as she read a book, the cover of which I could not see. I assumed it was a romance novel or maybe sci-fi or perhaps a blend. But I did not know. She glanced at me with only the barest acknowledgement before returning to reading.

I did not speak or wave; I simply left.

The return home—or to the house where I was staying, rather—was faster than the trip to town. I had often observed this to be the case, even though I understood it was subjective.

Once back inside, I washed my hands and took off my coat, hung it on the standing coatrack near the door, in the corner. I noticed, then, there was a fedora atop the rack that either had not been there before or that I had overlooked every other time I’d been in here over the past few days. Part of me wanted to take it and try it on, but I did not.

Instead, I picked up the package and appraised it once again.

It was about two feet wide by what looked a bit shy of three feet long. Maybe thirty inches? And it was about an inch thick, wrapped in brown paper similar to the sort used for grocery bags.

The twine was thinner than one might think ideal for a thing of this size and tied very well and neatly. I hesitated to cut it, so neat it was, but I ignored that sentiment and fetched scissors from the kitchen, cut the twine. I gently tore away the paper and saw it was a painting—quite amateurish but with some unique qualities. It had whitespace showing through a myriad of colors and shapes along and down the left of it, with the central image being a light abstraction of a face—a single eye and eyebrow showing in a peekaboo style, a mouth below. The face was underneath a fount of dark curly hair, which went up and away, blending into the colors on the left. Fewer strokes detailed the hair on the right side, which consisted of a few curvy lines. The perspective of the face had been painted in such a way as to create a gestalt illusion, meaning it could appear two different ways, depending upon how one looked at it.

Looking at the painting struck a pain in my chest, behind the breastbone. From this point of pain, many other feelings began to emerge, like plumes of smoke or lava from a crack in the crust. I watched them form and then saw how storylines and ideas began to take shape from what they made. I did not get involved with any of it, though, and set the painting against the wall, where I had put it right after receiving it earlier that morning from Vyolet.

I returned the scissors to the kitchen and put the twine in the trash, the paper in the recycling bin. Then I went to the back porch, and there was a toolbox. I was not certain it had been there the whole time, but it was there then. I got a hammer and a tacking nail and went back to the living room and hung the painting there on the same wall I had it leaning against.

The image of the subject—by that I mean, the face—filled the room with a lovely warmth and radiance, even if my body and heart and mind were still swarmed with feelings and thoughts and stories.

I took a moment to appraise it, check that it was level in the way my dad had shown me, and then I returned the hammer, went to the bedroom, and got the diary from the drawer.

I lay on the bed and contemplated what was there on those four pages.

There was … something else. Something I could feel but not see.

And then it occurred to me why these had each ended. None of them offered anything. They were expressions, yes, and so offered whatever self-expression can, but they were not yet to the heart of the matter. I felt a need swell within me, a need to know.

I turned the page, and noticed the fifth page had been torn out.

“Huh,” I said.

Then I let the book rest on my chest, and I lay there on the bed in the light coming in through the window. There was a feeling forming around me, surrounding my understanding but not yet infusing it. A feeling that I might be here for a while.

Go to next chapter

See chapter list

Bruno 004

I lit a cigarette and smoked. Then, I noticed a shimmer coming off the mailbox. I thought it was a trick of the light. A prismatic effect from the sun. After a few drags, though, I realized it was not that. It was something the mailbox itself was producing.

So I walked to it, cigarette in hand, and leaned close.

There was a scent. It was like jasmine with something a bit sweeter still. Honey? Maybe honey. My smell of it was thin, meaning there either wasn’t much of it, or the cigarette was deadening my sense. So I dropped the cigarette and ground it out with the toe of my boot. No real change, so I concluded the scent must be rather faint.

The shimmering seemed to be an effect of the material of the mailbox. I did not touch it, but I looked very closely at it and could see it was pulsing in a rhythm.

Unlike most mailboxes I was accustomed to, this one opened from both the front and the back, presumably one door was for the carrier that would approach it from the path, and the other for the inhabitant of the home, who’d come at it from the back.

I opened the back door and saw a small square—like a Polaroid photo—was set inside. Nothing else.

As soon as I took the photo, the shimmering stopped.

So I placed it back in, and it pulsed in a different rhythm.

Hmm. I thought. But nothing more.

I took the photo again and closed the mailbox back door.

It did, indeed, resemble a Polaroid, but it was not that exactly. It was certainly made to look like one, but it was on heavier stock and was a simple print.

On the face of it was a picture of a femme person kissing the cheek of someone who was facing the other way, so their face was not visible. Their hair was, visible. And there was a lot of it. Big, curly, dark hair. The face of the person kissing their cheek was in a high, happy smile, with her eyes closed. I did not recognize her. But I felt like I recognized the other person very well, even though I could not see her face. They were a woman. I knew this, even though I could not see for certain in the photograph.

I noticed I felt a chill, so I went back inside and grabbed a coat. It wasn’t a peacoat, exactly, but people often mistook it for one because it had a similar length and was navy. I think I called it a minitrench at one time, but by then I just called it my coat.

I looked again at the photo and hoped I would recall more. I did not, so I put it in my coat pocket, and then went back outside to have another cigarette and plan the day. I had not, after all, been able to make it further than one house up from where I was staying.

Something about being on the porch with the photo in my coat, the cigarette in hand, and the very particular view I had from there of the mailbox, the path, the forest, made me sink into a trance of some kind. And by way of that trance, memories passed by, none lingering long enough for me to see before the next drag of smoke reset things.

When I had finished the cigarette, I had enough of a plan to try. My plan was this: I would follow the path until I began to feel the slightest bit tired, then I would turn back. I was not sure how I knew, but I knew for certain that if I stuck to this, I could make it back without issue.

So I walked away from the house I was staying in to the path, then up the path past the next house up where I’d seen the fireplace and ashes, and carried on down the path.

There were not many houses along the way. I had assumed, erroneously as it turned out, that there would be many other houses, perhaps even arrayed on alternating sides of the path. But no, that was not the case. There were only those two. The one in which I was staying, and the other with the fireplace and ashes.

In fact I left the woods much faster than I thought. While at the house, the woods seemed impenetrably dense and unendingly vast. Yet a mere few minutes past the second house they just stopped. And on the other side lay a city.

It could not have been a very large city because I could see most of it from the vantage I had. This was due to being higher up, yet I could see most of it. It was a peninsula, very nearly an island, with bodies of water—lakes or ponds or whatever—and the shape of the land looked familiar to me. It resembled a typographic symbol or linguistic character of some sort, but I could not place it.

There was a sort of optimism that tried to assert itself from within my breast, but I did not take to it. I watched it arise and then I watched it slowly dissipate as I walked down to the city.

At some times in my life, I would get a kind of disorientation when in cities. It wasn’t a complete dissociation, yet I often felt not quite real. I did feel present. And I did have good contact and awareness of my body and its workings, the feelings and sensations. And the mind was alert, aware, and putting in good effort. Yet there was a property of the summation of the experience that felt not quite real. Like there’s so much to take in and to see, to look at, to smell, hear, and so on, yet nothing at all really. Like it’s an illusion. Like a painting you can walk around in. If you look closely, you see it is only lines. It is only gobs of paint spread across a flat surface. This was my experience of cities generally, many times, and my experience of the City of Bruno that day.

So I followed my body’s feelings, letting my mind pilot as it was wont to do, and being open to my curiosity, to the pleasure and displeasure of my experience. This led me to a boardwalk. At the time I believed it to be the singular one, but I learned later there are a few boardwalks. This one was on what to me was the bottom right part of the Isle of Bruno, what I would learn is properly called the mouthbeastern bit.

A few minutes’ walk down the boardwalk there led me to a large building that I took to be a chapel or perhaps a church. My curiosity impelled me to go in, so I did.

The interior did hold many of the feelings and scents that I knew from churches, yet it was also clearly a school of some kind. I spent time walking around the first floor, which was a square around a square in terms of layout. The inner square was a library; the outer square a hallway that led to different offices and classrooms. Those rooms with open doors, I peered into but did not enter.

On what felt to me like the left side of the building, there was an auditorium, the double doors to which were closed. There was a piece of white masking tape across the gap between the doors with this written on it in red marker:

☙₴Ɇ₴₴łØ₦ ł₦ ₱ⱤØ₲Ɇ₴₴❧

I could understand that well enough that I thought I should not disturb it. My curiosity, however, impelled me to open the doors anyway, which I did. The tape snapped loose from one door as I did, and I went inside the auditorium.

There was pew seating stacked like an amphitheater and facing a silver screen, on which a film was being shown.

There were people here, though not a great lot. I did not count, yet I knew it was less than twenty.

I took a seat in about the middle of the room, in the midsection of the pew I picked.

The film engorged my attention quite rapidly. I was thinking not just of the film but how it spoke to other films I’d seen. It said things about those films, of them, and to them. Many things this film was saying were derivative of other, better works—some films, some books or short stories—but I could not deny the captivating power of this presentation of the same ideas.

The three leads were very familiar to me: Beety Bishop, Matthew Justinian, and Osu Kamawasi. I’d had a small, parasocial crush on Beety Bishop for a few years until I learned she was a fascist. I couldn’t look at her the same way, and it made the viewing of the film irregular despite its clear power to suspend disbelief.

The film’s plot was about three science professors engaged in an experiment to perceive time travel. So they’re not traveling in time, merely observing the passage of time from a singular vehicle of perspective. I had, I knew, written things like this myself, and had this ability without apparatus. Yet the film presents the idea as novel and the conceit of speculation that made up its central premise. It was enjoyable enough to watch, so I did.

I could intuit with greater and greater ease and certainty as the film played on what was going to happen next. I was as though I had seen the film before, even though I knew I had not.

A young woman next to me—to my right—leaned over to me and said, “That’s what I objectively look like.” She nodded with her head to the screen.

I glanced at it, but knew who she meant. “Beety?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “She’s so hot.”

“Everyone in this film is very pretty,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s so good.”

Another actor I recognized came on screen, into a scene with Beety and Matthew. She was Ruth Schwarz, one of my current faves.

“That’s what I objectively look like,” the woman next to me said.

I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “You objectively look like Ruth, too?”

“Yeah,” she said. “She’s so hot.”

I wanted to ask her something, but I couldn’t think of anything, so I didn’t.

Then, a woman to my left with large, dark, curly hair leaned close to me and said, “This is the part where everyone starts to hate it.”

Again, I half looked at the film, but I didn’t need to because I already knew why. I knew it was going to become metafictional and deconstructive to the point that the suspension of disbelief would break for most people.

“This director does that a lot, doesn’t he?” I asked.

She smiled. “I don’t know,” she said.

I looked back at the screen and it was a low camera angle up at Osu driving a truck. He said something that I ignored and pointed a pistol at the camera then fired it. The sound editing made it seem like he had killed someone in the audience and they had fallen over in the rear left of the theater. No one looked to see. Instead, people started talking to each other and not watching the film.

“See,” she said to me. “He’s just killed someone in the audience. It’s a cheap trick.”

“Gimmicky,” I said.

“For sure,” she replied.

I didn’t know many people aside from myself who said for sure, so that stood out to me.

Then, the woman to my right tugged my coat sleeve.

I looked back to her, and she said, “This is where it gets really good.”

I knew what was going to happen next. The three main characters were going to transcend time and leave the film, destroying it and making it blank, white space as they went.

And then that happened in the film.

“That’s so awesome,” the woman on my right said. “Bae’s a genius.” She meant the director, of course, and she said genius like jen-ee-us.

The woman on my left guffawed and folded her arms around her coat, crossed her legs.

I wanted to say something to her, but I couldn’t think of what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

The film ended as I knew it would. Then the people left, me among them.

When we were on the boardwalk, the woman with curly dark hair headed deeper into the city. I wanted to walk with her and talk some more, maybe ask her deeper questions and get to know her. But my body didn’t move.

The woman to my right was there by me. She lit a cigarette, so I did, too.

“Such a great film,” she said.

I nodded in acknowledgement, not agreement.

“I’m Shala, by the way,” she said.

“Teresa,” I said.

We shook hands in that awkward way women sometimes do.

We talked about the film, but I could not really keep my attention in the conversation. It kept wandering away, down the boardwalk, deeper into the city, following the woman with the curly dark hair.

Go to next chapter

See chapter list

Bruno 003

This house was a bit smaller, having a living room, dining room, kitchen, and bathroom. That’s it. The bathroom had only a shower stall. No tub. It had the same strange toilet that I had at the place I was staying.

Though I felt impelled to rifle through the cabinets and drawers, I did not do so. I only glanced in the bedroom. It was a full or maybe an irregular queen sized bed centered in the room against the back wall. There’s a medium sized window in the left wall, letting sunlight filter in. I was not sure how sunlight managed to pass through the dense forest canopy, yet it leaked into the bedroom through the window. I saw the dancing dust particles in the light.

The kitchen was spare and well-appointed. I did not go through the cabinets or inspect any of the appliances or utensils. It had a very greenish-blue feeling to me. Not quite minty. A bit more blue. I did catch a glimpse of a small table with two chairs, very much like the one in the house I was staying in, but the seat cushions were in ideal shape. There was a fleeting feeling of jealousy that I did not notice until I was back in the living room, inspecting the fireplace. Why did I not have pristine chairs from a matching set? Why were mine mismatch? Why was one uncomfortable looking and the other had a gash in its seat cushion?

I had no answers to these questions and only barely noticed their arising and passing. My attention was on the fireplace because there was a human-like silhouette barely visible along the bricks.

I studied the posture of the silhouette and found myself thinking of kinesics, meaning the way bodies express communication without words. There was definitely a fear. A great and terrible fear. Like one might have for their very life. There was a cowering, too. The body had folded itself down to become smaller. Bodies tend to do that to avoid notice or to seem weak and uninteresting, unchallenging, yet sadly that often provokes or emboldens others instead of deterring them.

I craned my head around inside the fireplace itself and could see a handprint and some signs of scuffling in the ash. She—the body belonged to a woman—had tried to climb inside the fireplace, back first. So she had backed away from someone or something, backing into the mantle first, then cowered and shrank, then tried to back into the fireplace as a way to gain shelter and protection for whatever it was that was frightening her. She had not made it.

There was a second sign in the ashes, a long groove that told me she’d been dragged out and away. I traced it across the floor and saw bits of ash still there, though not many. It had likely been swept between the time she was here and when I was there looking. She was not the occupant of the house. I was not certain of what I was seeing that directly confirmed that, but the totality of the examination gave rise to my knowing it.

I went outside and stood on the front porch. It wasn’t a stoop. There were no steps. It was a flat porch with a very simple pitched roof and unadorned, square posts. It was added later, after the construction of the house. I could tell because the materials of the posts and ceiling were clearly newer than those of the proper house, and I could see that the level of craftsmanship and detail was far less.

The path into Bruno ran to the house where I was staying. Further up, on the right, was this house. I had set out that morning to explore and made it only this far. Maybe fifty paces up and to the right. To this house with the owner not home. To the woman in the fireplace and whatever her fate might be.

Go to next chapter

See chapter list

Bruno 002

฿ⱤɄ₦Ø

It felt like a city limit? But there was no real sign of a city.

The path’s well-worn, yet there’s wild growth all around. It’s like the path would not dare widen into the primeval wood, nor would the vegetation think of growing over the path. That’s a feeling. The feeling I had, walking the path.

Some time later, not long, I found a house. Or a cottage? Something like that. It’s on the left side of the path and had a small amount of space around it and the growth.

There’s a box on a stick. A mailbox. It has my name on it: T. Anderson. It’s white letters on a black box. The name, my name, looks like the paint has smeared? But not quite, creating an almost three dimensional illusion.

I went to the door and found it unlocked.

My instinct was to say, Hello? But I didn’t. I just looked around inside.

It’s a small house with about five or six rooms, depending upon how you count the open galley kitchen attached to the front room. Or living room. Or leaving room. Whatever you call it.

There’s a small dining room with a table for two. Probably room for a bigger one, but that’s what’s there, with two mismatched chairs. One of them is wood and looks very uncomfortable. The other is like a metal chair with a green cushioned back and seat. The seat had a tear in it, and its foam innards were showing.

There’s a bathroom. It had a toilet of a strange and elaborate shape. It reminded me of a snail shell, and I wasn’t immediately sure how one would use it. There’s a small pedestal sink with an ornate mirror hanging above. Intuitively, I pulled on it, and opened a medicine chest behind it, embedded in the wall. There’s five prescription bottles and some vitamins of different types in there. Some ibuprofen. Three small, tortoise shell colored hair clips. An unopened condom and a small bottle of lubricant. A plug. I shook my head and closed the medicine cabinet. There’s a dope soaker tub with a shower, the water line for which was chrome and visible and atop of which was the showerhead. I checked it. Good pressure, especially for a setup like this. I smiled at that, turned the water off. I could still smell the water. It smelled fresh and clean with a hint of chlorine. Or what smelled like chlorine to me.

There’s a bedroom. It’s small. There’s a twin bed with a single hung window over it. The bed’s situated longways along the wall. Next to it, there’s a nightstand with a small, green glass lamp on it. Next to that, a book. It’s a weathered paperback in a somewhat unusual size, about 6”x8”. I picked it up and looked at the title:

⇴ ☸ ❖ ꘏

I didn’t know what that meant, so I opened it and looked at the title page, which repeated the cover title, of course, but had this additional detail:

฿ⱤɄ₦Ø ℅ TɘᴙɘꙅA Aᴎbɘᴙꙅoᴎ

I could see that’s my name, but had no idea what it meant.

I thumbed through it and saw many interesting pictures. They’re illustrations of a singular style. Like one artist did this. And there are tables and charts and things. But it’s all in a script I couldn’t read and did not recognize. So I sighed, closed it, dropped it back on the end table.

I opened the drawer to the nightstand and saw what was inside:

Lipstick of two colors. Colorless lip balm. More condoms. Another bottle of lubricant. A vibrator. A dildo with a studded leather strap. A collection of my favorite ink pens in blue and black. Thirteen bottles of nail polish in different shades of blue and green, mostly, with a few pink, a white, a black, and some sparkles, a deep red. Oh, and a gun. A pistol. What looked like a .357 Desert Eagle. My eyebrows raised at the sight of it, and I sighed once more, closed the drawer.

The last room was a side porch. There’s a small, dirty glass table with a cobalt blue, diamond shaped ashtray set there on it. There’s a pack of smokes next to that, with a lighter resting on top of the pack. There’s four chairs, low and slouchy, with plastic weave cushions in a floral print. From here I can see into the thick, dense woods. It’s frightening at first, but then, hypnotic.

Okay, I thought. I can live here awhile.

Go to next chapter

See chapter list

Bruno 001

I know I said it would be Deep Rules then Song Grimoire, but in developing it, I realized I want to do a simple version and a more complex one. So it kina makes more sense to give you the Basic Song Grimoire after the Main Rules, and then the more involved one after the Deep Rules.

With that being said, check it out:

The Song Grimoire—Basic Version

So this is something that I casually dropped into the novel during its original 2022-3 run. I didn’t explain it. All I said was that you could add a song to your grimoire. I have no idea what that meant to you or anyone else who read it back then because no one ever said or asked anything about it.

What I’m going now is giving you the full idea I had in mind. If you dig it, great! Use it in good health. If you don’t, then no worries. Set it aside.

What’s a Grimoire?

Well, in its simplest most straightforward definition: a book of magic spells.

In both fiction and real-life, they are often in the possession of a magic user of some kind, like a witch or a warlock or wizard or whatever. They are generally personal originally, like one person makes it as like a personal compendium, diary, or recipe book. Then, when they die or it is stolen from them or whatever, it comes to be in the possession of another person or group. So that’s the basic concept of a grimoire.

Okay, So What’s a Song Grimoire?

It’s a collection of songs: a playlist. Or mixtape if you’re old school or a hipster.

What Songs Are on There?

Ultimately whatever you want, but the way I did it in 2022-3 was that you would “unlock” them in different chapters. So you read a chapter and say, Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without a Face” is embedded or referenced. I would say (usually at the end under the “play procedure”: section) something like “you can add this song to your grimoire.” Other times I would invite readers to pick a different song or add ones they liked, and sometimes people would post other songs.

So I Can Put Whatever I Want On It?

Well, yes. It’s a solo role-playing game, so please play to please yourself and no one else!

But if that’s too loose or freeform for you, I’ve got you covered. You’ll encounter different songs in the chapters and be told how and if you can add them to your grimoire.

Can I Have More Than One?

That’s not how I have designed it, but of course you can, if you want.

What Can I Do With It? Like How Do You ‘Cast’ a Song?

So my idea goes like this: the song affects the literary reality of the scene—similar to how that works cinematically, theatrically, and in your car. Which means the most obvious alteration is …

• Change the mood - You can shift the mood of the scene by choosing one of the songs from your grimoire and ‘replacing’ the song in the scene with that one. Likewise …

• Create a link between scenes - Music is often use to create narrative linkages. You can do this by ‘casting’ as song in a chapter that you want to be linked to another one wherein that song was played by me or by you. And of course …

• To induce a mood - If there is no stated song or music in a scene, you can ‘cast’ one from your grimoire to induce a particular mood.

• Create a whole scene or chain or scenes - Maybe a particular song is so evocative for you that you use it to create your own scene, chapter, or even cluster of chapters from ‘casting’ it.

• Use lyrical content to alter a detail - You can use a word or phrase from a song in your grimoire to alter a narrative detail or description in the scene.

• Use the song structure to enhance or alter features of the narrative - Say a song has a really powerful guitar solo. You could use that as a kind of ‘special move’ to enhance an action in the story or to accelerate an action or process. Likewise, you could use a song with a great bridge to create a connection between two separated things in the narrative.

So that’s it! That’s the Basic Song Grimoire. Tell meh what you think and hit me up with questions.

Xoxo,

T

Main Rules

I look down and into the valley below—far below. I’m not sure how far, exactly, but hundreds of feet down. There are lights down there. Lights mean machines. Machines mean people, usually. So if I want to be safe and alone, I can remain here on the trestle. If I want to be around other people, I can make my way down there. If that’s what you want us to do, then let’s go.

But if you want to stay here a little longer, let it linger, then I’ll sit down on the edge and let my feet dangle.

Then …

“Teresa Van Santana.” The voice is crisp and clear, yet rich and a bit throaty.

A wave of embarrassment covers me like an itchy blanket. I don’t get caught off-guard often, and I am not accustomed to feeling embarrassed, either. So it sucks.

I’m on my feet quickly and facing her.

Her eyes are shielded by a visor. She is wearing a helmet that covers her ears and forehead but leaves her nose, mouth, and chin exposed. There’s a visible scar on her chin. Scars are interesting in the 32C because we have the means to remove any blemish, correct nearly any “imperfection.” So if someone keeps one, they want it—like it means something—they can’t afford to have it changed, or they’re too immersed in whatever attention-consuming bullshit to take the time to get it done.

I notice right away that this woman is a Heel. That’s a type of Ministry secretist akin to a Brim or a Trench. They are psychically shielded, both by the helmet and through years of rigorous training as a mindguard. They tend to have loads of augs—biological and biomechanical augmentations to improve performance and reduce the likelihood of injury, illness, and fumbling. And they often have genies, too—genetic modifications to change the basic functioning of their natural processes. This one, for example, has some kind of pheromone genie because I can smell her from all the way over there in the cold.

“Teresa Van Santana,” she says again.

“Who’s asking?” I ask.

“I am Ministry of Secrets Public Operative Secretist, Tazat Odune. Your assistance is requested under Ministry Aegis.”

I sigh. “Really?” I ask. “Now?”

“At your soonest state of readiness,” she amends.

I shake my head, trying to let go of my own plans.

I take a breath, slow but not too slow, deep but not too deep.

Then I ask, “What is it you need, Public Operative?”

“The township below is in distress and disregard of Ministry Aegis. Your assistance is necessary to pacify and quell resistance to Ministry admonishment.”

I snort. “I, uh … I am not interested in doing that.”

“If you don’t,” she says, “many lives will be lost, Teresa Van Santana.”

“You can just call me Teresa,” I say.

She nods.

I sigh again, and then breathe normally, watching my breath form like dragon smoke in front of me, then dissipate. I let my inner feelings mimic this, until I am calm again, clear-sighted.

“I was headed that way.” I point across the rails to the mountain path heading up the slope. “To the Skiilodge.”

“I can accompany you,” she says. “I can brief you in better detail about the situation, and we can sync our tactics, form a provisional strategy.”

I shake my head, not in contempt of her, but out of the pain of recognition. I know all this language well, this programming, this indoctrination. I was like her once. Not a Heel—a Trench, then a Brim. That was before I woke up, before I left the Ministry and went private. Not that that was a perfect solution by any means, but. It’s what I did, what I could do at the time. So I feel for this young Public Operative who is doing what she believes to be the right and good things, the necessary things, those things that need to be done. She’s wrong, of course, but that isn’t her fault. Not yet. We’ll see where things fall after we’ve talked.

She tips her chin down slightly. “I appreciate your candor, Teresa. It isn’t easy for me to hear, but I will think on what you’ve said.”

I look at you and ask, “Fuck. Did I say all that out loud?” Because I do that sometimes.

If you want to take her with us and go up the mountain trail, we do that. That’s what I want to do, so that works well for me.

If you want to ditch her and ghost away into the night, we can do that, too. I’m not eager to do that, but I will if you want.

TB2026 IW-001

So last time I said I’d set you up with a simple system for playing Teresa’s Backbone as a solo role-playing game. If you missed that issue, you can read that now:

All caught up? Awesome. Lemme show y’all the easiest way to play. Here’s a scenario to help you get your footing, followed by the actual rules and explanations:

Tutorial scenario: “In a Room …”

So read this, babe. I’ve bolded key words and phrases that might pique your curiosity. After you’ve read it, I’ll show you how you can use the Oracle.

I find myself in a small room. It’s brownish, with some ambient yellow light and a bit of gray natural light coming in through a small window.

What’s plain to see is a metal door in the floor in the far left corner. It reminds me of a submarine hatch. Or how they look in movies, anyway. Next to the hatch is diving gear.

There’s a table against the wall to my right with what looks like a 21st Century computer on it. Wait … no, like a 20th Century? Maybe from the 1980s or 90s. On the desk is a fancy silver lighter, a minidisc, and a photo of a woman. She has long, curly brown hair and a septum piercing. She looks unsure that the photo is being taken.

There is, of course, a door behind me, the way I came in. I remember it’s red on the other side, but green on this one. And green gets you out.

Okay, so now, just let your mind be easy. Take a breath. And see what your curiosity goes to. I know I stacked the deck with the bolding, but you can let it go anywhere. If any other feelings arise—frustration, impatience, boredom, excitement—that’s fine. Don’t do anything with those yet except notice they are there and—if you want—jot down a quick note about what they pertain to.

Once you have what you want to know more about, we can investigate using the Oracle. If you don’t know what you’re curious about yet, that’s okay. Do it for one or more of the bolded items in the scene.

Here’s an example:

Object of attention: ambient yellow light

Now, ask yourself a question about your object of attention; then, roll a six-sided die (d6). Read the result like this:

1: No, and…

2: No

3: No, but…

4: Yes, but…

5: Yes

6: Yes, and…

So, for example, you might wonder: “Is this yellow light significant?”

Then you roll the die.

You roll a 5.

You look at the list above, and you see 5 means “Yes,” which means yes, the yellow light is significant.

So write that down. You can continue asking yes or no questions about it until your curiosity is satisfied.

For example, I might next wonder: “Is the significance in this room?”

I roll a 2, which we can see from the above chart means “No.” So now I know the ambient yellow light is significant somehow, but not to anything in this room.

Then I might make a leap and realize the door is red on one side, green on the other, and that yellow completes a 21st Century stop light pattern. So ask the Oracle: “Is that right? Is the red, yellow, green pattern in some way like a 21st Cen stop light pattern?”

I roll a 5 again, which as you’ll recall, means “Yes.”

Now let’s do another!

Object of attention: small window

Again, you ask yourself a question about your object of attention—this time it’s the small window; then, roll a six-sided die (d6). Read the result like this:

1: No, and…

2: No

3: No, but…

4: Yes, but…

5: Yes

6: Yes, and…

So, for example, you might wonder: “Can I reach the small window?”

Then you roll the die.

You roll a 6.

You look at the list above, and you see 6 means “Yes, and …” So that could easily be something like, “Yes, and it’s unlocked!”

So write that down and keep asking yes or no questions like these until your curiosity is satisfied or you naturally move on to some other scene.

Okay, one more example. Let’s interact with the computer on the desk.

Object of attention: computer

Once more, you ask yourself a question about your object of attention. We’ve done the yellow light and the small window. Now it’s the computer. Roll a six-sided die (d6), then read the result like this:

1: No, and…

2: No

3: No, but…

4: Yes, but…

5: Yes

6: Yes, and…

So, for example, you might wonder: “Is the computer on?”

Then you roll the die.

You roll a 4.

You look at the list above, and you see 4 means “Yes, but …” So that could easily be something like, “Yes, but it requires a password to access.”

So write that down.

Then you might ask: “Do I know the password?”

You roll 3, which is “No, but …” We could parse that as, “No, but it could be hidden somewhere in the room.”

Just like before, keep asking yes or no questions until your curiosity runs out, or you naturally go on to something else by following your curiosity.

As I said before, if you don’t know what you’re curious about, do it for one or more of the bolded items, writing down the results in your play journal.

And, of course, if you’re seeing this isn’t something you want to do for a given chapter, that’s fine. Just read that one like a vignette and another chapter will eventually arrive in your inbox. You can totally mix and match, playing some and simply reading others. No problemo.

Okay, now try this out with an existing chapter of Teresa’s Backbone! You can find the master list (i.e., “The Backbone”) here. Pick one, and give it a go!

If you want a few suggestions about cool chapters to start with, here are three, each with very different tone and mood:

Okay, so what did we just do? Let’s look …

The Game Is Driven by Your Curiosity and Feelings

You don’t need ‘rules’ to play. You just need to notice when you are feeling something and what that feeling is. For example:

• Who is that? → Curiosity

• I wish they’d do this instead → Frustration/desire

• What if…? → Imagining other possibilities

So it’s Headcanon: The Game, right? You’ve read and watched things and wanted it to go differently. That’s the game of Teresa’s Backbone. The advantage this game has over a static work—even an interactive or choice driven-one, like a video game or choose your own adventure dealie—is that the author is playing along with you.

That’s it. That’s the game at its simplest. If you want to get started, go ahead and go!

If you want more game-y stuff, keep reading.

Uncertainty Is Your Collaborator

If you’re a decisive person who knows what she likes, then you may be good to go. But if you aren’t sure, we’ve got some things to help you out.

There’s an often used solo role-playing game method called the Oracle. You can consult the Oracle when you’re unsure. Here’s how:

The Oracle (d6)

When you don’t know what happens, ask yourself a question, then roll a six-sided die (d6). Read the result like this:

• 1: No, and…

• 2: No

• 3: No, but…

• 4: Yes, but…

• 5: Yes

• 6: Yes, and…

The Right Tool for You: This is your game to play, babe. So if you’ve got a six-sided die in an old Monopoly box or maybe a bunch from a Yahtzee set, you’re golden. But you could just as easily use a Magic 8 Ball or Tarot cards. Use what you like. And if you don’t know, pick one and try it, see how it goes. Then maybe try another method. Tell us about it in the comments, an email, or a play report (see below).

Okay, so now you have your own feelings and a simple method to work through uncertainty with the Oracle. If you’re good, then see you later! If you want more, read on!

Choose Your Own Chapter Order

When I first put this out in 2022, I published chapters as I wrote them. Now, in 2026, I’m trying to create more cohesive clusters of chapters and release them together. Having said that, you can still read and play in whatever order you want. You don’t have to follow the narrative path I am as the author—nor are you limited to a ‘path’ or ‘cluster.’ Those are just suggestions to make it easier.

In any case, whether you go off-road or follow what I do, here’s a way to track it simply:

1. Write the name of the chapter across a fresh page. You can buy a notebook for this, use individual sheets in a binder, or use a digital notepad. I like to date everything, but you do you, babe. (Oh, and there’s the real date you’re playing and then there’s the fictional date, which you may or may not be able to determine. Email me if you want help with that.)

2. Write down the curiosities and feelings you experience as close to your awareness of them as possible. If that’s too intrusive, just allow time to reflect at the end, then write them down.

3. Do any ‘rule’ stuff you want, like consulting the Oracle or applying Deep Rules (more on that in the next newsletter).

4. Pick where you want to go next, meaning, the next chapter you want to read.
   
   

Now, from this process which I call your journal or play journal, you can make two things pretty easily:

A map. I like to use a horizontal (or ‘landscape’) view. I usually start in the top left. I write the name of the chapter and then circle it or draw a box around it or something. Then, I draw a line to where I go next, do the same for that chapter. If you want, you can also note paths you could have taken, but didn’t.

A play report. This is like a summary or abstract of what happened in your play session. It may only cover a chapter (or even a piece of one) or it might cover several chapters. It depends upon how much you played. And it may include comments, including interactions with me. You can also put whatever else you want in the play report.

Okay, so that’s how to track your journey through the book. If you’re ready to play, go on ahead!

If you want to create a character and add more depth to your gameplay, keep reading!

Who Are You?

The great thing about fiction and fantasy is you can be whoever you want. You can even be multiple people at the same time. So:

Making a Fictional Character for Your Gameplay

A: Play as yourself basically as you are. Freestyle the rest as you go. Childhood playing in the backyard rules!

B: Play as me, Teresa Van Santana, Master Secretist. This is kind of the piggyback/fly on the wall option and is the closest to simply reading a book but you can still steer Teresa in a way you can’t in a normal book. I will warn you that I am stubborn, though, so it’s not like a video game where you have total control over the character’s choices. It’s more like a suggestion.

C: Play as yourself, but translated into the Secretsverse. Most of you know the Secret of Secrets is, among many other things, a quasi-autobiographical and mythologized adaptation of parts of my own life into this literary universe set (primarily) in the 32nd Century (32C). So you can do that, too! I’ll send out a detailed method in the Deep Rules newsletter, but the easy way is to just imagine yourself in the world. What would your job look like? What sort of things would you want to see in the future? What sort of things might surprise you that they’re still around in the future? Like that.

D: If you’re more of a trad gamer and want a ‘class’, pick a type:

• Caster - Ministry decon functionary, part secretist (kinesicist) and part magistra but also neither. Assess whether person requires deconstruction and how they’ll be cast.

• Catchie - Infrastructure maintenance workers blamed when systems fail, even when problems have supernatural/speculative causes. Scapegoat carrying everyone’s tech anxiety and failures.

• Circadian - Freelance inheritors doing transplanetary gig work to avoid family expectations, constantly destroying circadian rhythms. Complain about unfairness despite privilege.

• Decommissioned - Former Ministry operatives with service augmentations trying to reintegrate into civilian life. The augs mark them and create barriers. The prodigal who came back changed.

• Meewi - Service workers/station keepers who see no-kia and everything else. Underestimated but deeply perceptive. The seeing fool, medium through which all information flows.

• Vega - Interplanetary vagabond and/or miscreant.
  

The Things You’ll Carry

So if you want, keep up with the things you have on you. The Old School way of handling this is easy: if you wrote it down, you have it. If you didn’t, you forgot it or lost it. Bada boom. Done.

If you want to be more specific, consider these:

1. Things you always carry. Like your keys, a purse, a lighter, tampon, etc.

2. Things you are carrying right now, but it’s situational. Like I may wear a little black dress and slingbacks to a fancy party, so I can’t very well have my hissing blade strapped to my fucking arm.

3. Stuff you have stored somewhere safe (and where, in parentheses)

4. Stuff you know where it is but it could be taken, bought, stolen and so on (and what it would take to go get it, in parentheses)

5. Items and other things that are too large to carry or move (and how they are secured or not, where they are, in parentheses). This includes things like homes and large vehicles, obviously.

6. Virtual items. It’s the future, babe. People ‘have’ a lot of shit that doesn’t actually exist in material reality, but they can access, use, and rely on nonetheless. So, like, Bubble accounts, banking shit, all that stuff.

7. Magickal items. Since this is your game to play, you can decide whether magic is real (magick) or just tech that passes for magick. In any case, this is the weird shit that tends to have larger than life effects.
   

Also keep in mind, you don’t have to account for all of these. Use the ones you like that make it fun. Leave the rest. And you don’t have to play the same way each time out. Some of these may matter more than others to you on different gameplay days.

Who dis?

So you know people, right? And you’re going to meet more people as you play through the novel. You can just keep all that in your head, if you want.

But if you’d rather have a way to keep up with it, here’s a simple one:

1. Choose one or two people who are very important to you. If you’re playing as me, this is easy: my wife, Lila Juno; my kids, Mason and Fox; my cats, Jimmie & Jasper.

2. Think of a few people who can help you out in a jam. (And write how in parentheses.) For example, Teresa has had Cobie (physician), Horace (best friend/military), Klava (bodyguard) among her most reliable contacts. If you’re not playing as me, you can always write me there: T (author of the book/Master Secretist). I gotchu.

3. Write down people you encounter while reading. If you get a clear sense of them right away, just put it in parentheses. Like: Condita (mechanic). If someone seems more weird or mysterious, just put down whatever you notice, like: Strange chick in black leather with a silver whip; what’s her deal? Like that.

4. Write down people you’re searching for (and put why in parentheses). Example: Wendy Glass’ killer (avenge Wendy so her ghost can move on).
   

I’ll Never Tell

Everyone has private or confidential information that’s usually not damaging, just embarrassing. But then there are secrets.

Secrets are dangerous. They’re a bit like nitroglycerine. If you don’t handle them carefully, they can explode and blow up your life and then you have problems, grrrl.

So, my best advice? Don’t keep secrets! Be honest and kind.

But, since this is a mystery adventure kinda deal, you probably have one or two. Write them down (or don’t) and guard them fiercely! But keep them in mind as you go through. Remember: if you encounter a secretist, they could learn your secret without you even knowing, so be careful.

Okay, so that’s the most basic, easiest way I know to get you started. Take what you like, leave the rest. And if you’re a seasoned gamer and have, like, a big one for 5e or Pathfinder or whatever, just use that, bruh. Let me know how it goes.

If you want even more stuff, stay tuned for the Deep Rules, coming next time! And after that: the Song Grimoire!

Have fun, babe!

Xoxo,

T

PS—I hope you can see this method can be applied to any text, be that your favorite Murakami novel or a Chinese takeout menu. Try it out with other stuff!