Ruby Red Marionette

thirty | illusionist

I thought that there was only one place Isaiah could take Yvette to go for a drink—the cheapest place that sold alcohol in a ten mile radius. It was called Jessie's and they sold free drinks after ten.

But when Tyler and I went there (or rather, ran there like our lives depended on it), they were nowhere to be found. We walked away feeling very defeated; there were no other cheap drink spots in town. Of course, there were some farther away, but Isaiah was too lazy to go that far.

I asked Tyler to help me brainstorm ideas as to where he could be, but of course, it was Tyler. He knew nothing.

"Do you know any nearby places they could be? You like the night life, don't you? Come on. Think."

"Contrary to what you guys might think," He took another bite of the corndog that we bought along the way, "I'm actually quite a homebody. But the only ones I know are Jessie's and that place we went to when Carlos died...or didn't."

"First of all, I'm never going back to that place. Second of all, why would Isaiah bring Yvette there?"

"Why would you never go back there? I mean, since you like 'clues' so much, I would think that you'd go there to see if you could get any information on what happened after we left."

I stopped in the middle of our stride and looked at him. I hated how he could never chew with his mouth closed, and looking at him now as he did it was repulsive, but he was right. Now that there's a possibility that Carlos was still here, it changes a lot about what could have happened that night. It invalidates a lot of the questions that Batul and I were asking that night at the graveyard.

I didn't answer Tyler. If I did, I would elaborate on the idea of going back there and eventually convince myself to do so, and I couldn't let that happen. That place was hell; whether our friend died there or not, there was something about it. The man who served us the water, the emptiness of it, the dripping water: it all reminded me of everything bad in my life. From Charlie, to my mother, to the explosions. It was almost like something there knew who I was and was using some kind of technology to remind me of everything negative I could ever think of.

"How did you even do that anyway?" He asked me while we walked. "I mean, I don't even get it. You remembered the quote, and then you remembered something Yvette said—two events that have nothing to do with each other—and came to that conclusion? Like, how...? What?"

"They do have something to do with each other, Tyler. Everything is related."

"How?"

"Okay, listen to me and listen to me closely." I began. "Someone is dropping bread crumbs for us. We have to follow the trail and pick them up. So everything that happens to you can be interpreted as a sign."

"How do you know that someone's doing this?"

Because of the tracking device in my leg and the text message that came after I found out. "I can't explain that now. But you have to look at it as a riddle, Ty. Batul's quote said 'The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living'. The quote means that when people die, like Tupac, they are still figuratively alive because the living, like his fans, always talk about him and listen to his music. But, like I said, it's a riddle. Riddles are sometimes literal. So, again, it's: 'The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living'. So, this omnipresent being is telling us that the dead, Carlos, lives on through the memory of the living. It's no coincidence that weeks prior, someone we don't know asked Yvette if she knows Carlos and she said 'I don't remember'. So if the living, Yvette, doesn't remember the dead, Carlos, then the life of the dead is not placed in the memory of the living. It's a riddle. So, where is the life of the dead placed?"