Riddle V.I.Z.ion

Chapter 11: And Then There Was One

"Day four on base. Tensions are high. Morale is low. We lost contact with Phil Eggtree approximately seven hours ago after he left for the facility. He was supposed to be coming home. Currently, it is suspected that—"

"Phred, you've been in there for twenty minutes. It's my bathroom, not yours. Start paying rent or get out."

Sat quite miserably on the toilet lid, Phred fell quiet and deleted the voice recording. Leaving the bathroom as the stern voice dictated was the last thing he felt like doing. Out there, mere feet away in the living room, was the reality of the situation: a vanished friend, a furious Smiley, and a frightened Zach. Here, well... it wasn't like the rolls of toilet paper were going to rise up with their problems and hate him for making a joke of things to cope.

"Yeah, ok Miss Sundae, I get it... I'll be out soon..."

All good things come to an end, Phred supposed, taking more meticulous care in washing his hands than he had at any point prior in his life, dismally counting each bubble as it popped. Every cell was squeaky clean by the time he shut the faucet off and decided to brave the tangible horror waiting in the living room.

Mrs Sundae was waiting outside, her expression analytical and moderately sympathetic; neither quality stopped her slamming his sanctuary door behind her and clicking the lock shut.

The living room was exactly as he had left it, which is to say depressing and unsettled. Anxiety cobwebbed the air so thickly that it was impossible to exist there without becoming coated in its gluey strands. Smiley was pacing, each step an act of violence. Zach smoked and sparked on the carpet, surrounded by a neat circle of cinders. Phred did what he did best; stood gloomily in the middle of the room, let the atmosphere form a crust around him, and hoped no one asked him to do anything more complex than that.

This was how it had been since Phil's last call.

Phred was no fatalist—that would require a degree of personal severity that went beyond his pay grade—but after the fifth hour of waiting, of nothing on the phone, no response to the texts, his mind had begun to wander, and now there was no retrieving it from the paths it weaved through. What was he supposed to do? How was he supposed to reconcile with the fact that his final conversation with his best friend had ended with a half-joking demand that he pick maccies up on his way back from wherever he'd ended up?

You don't get to pick your last conversation with someone. Somehow that was the hardest thing to swallow about the situation. Now he was standing here with words he hadn't said like cold marbles in his hands, and they slipped and slithered in his grip so that he could never quite remember which ones were important; how could you be just as desperate to tell someone you wouldn't be the same person without them as you were to explain your latest theory on the teleporting cat in their apartment building?

Phil couldn't be dead. Phred still had things to say.

Feeling more awkward than usual, Phred cast about for somewhere to sit—standing felt stiff and formal, and he didn't want anyone trying to speak to him. This was a slight problem, as there were precisely no actual seats left. Mrs Sundae had unearthed enough armaments from the basement to furnish a small militia and piled them on the sofa. This was on his list of Things To Not Think About because it said concerning things about the sanity of his friend's mother, and quite frankly there was enough going on in life, what with the aliens, the crushing reality of the world he was growing in to, the potentially dead best friend, and the teleporting cat.

("Were you ever going to tell me about this, mum?"

"No, darling. You are my child. It's my job to keep you safe from everything, and part of that is not frightening you with the things I can't let go of. I'm sorry it's come to this. Don't drop the rifle—it jams easily.")