Gotta Be You

18: Interlude

Other than the steady drip of a small waterfall, the catacombs of Paris were dead silent. They usually were. Clankken loved it down here. No one to bother him, no one to jeer and spit at him. His only companions were the skulls of centuries past.

He skipped along the river, nose to the air. There was a spot where he was sure to always scrounge up a bite to eat, but it was unfortunately close to the surface. If he went just as dusk was falling, however, Clankken knew he would be able to nab some scraps without being seen before the rats got to them.

As he approached the exit to the word above, he paused. Resting on the balls of his feet, he cocked an ear, listening for any sounds of human activity. Hearing none, he scurried forward. Blinking against the dying light of the day, he swiftly hoisted a bag from the nearby dumpster over his shoulder. As he passed back into the shade of the cavern, he relaxed slightly.

Though he'd lived above for so many years before this, it had taken a surprisingly short amount of time for him to... change. He no longer fit in up there. The things that had transpired a year prior had altered him irrevocably, and he was no longer a man.

Making his way back into the depths of the catacombs, Clankken followed a trail only he could see. A left here, a right there—he ducked under a shelf of rock and clambered up a series of small footholds and squeezed his way through a narrow tunnel. In time, he made it to his sanctuary. It was a small and modest "room", seemingly a dead end (though, there were no true dead ends in the catacombs). A pile of fabric scraps made up a bed and an old milk crate was his table.

He dumped the contents of the trash bag onto the crate and began to sift through for anything edible. Luckily for him, someone had thrown a half-eaten rotisserie chicken carcass out that day. He'd be eating well for the week. Gnawing on a drumstick, he turned to the far wall.

Dozens, maybe even hundreds of pieces of paper were stuck to the stone wall. Pictures, drawings, newspaper articles, and various other assorted scraps were marked up in red and connected by hanging string. Clankken was entirely aware of how it appeared, and he didn't care. Fascination, obsession. Love, hate. Justice, revenge. They were all different sides of the same coin.

He removed a page that he'd torn from Le Monde earlier that week from his pocket and stuck it to the wall. He regarded the picture thoughtfully as it sat in the center of the web.

"Can't wait to meet you," he whispered, his voice like rocks rolling down a cragged cliff.

The azure eyes of Rodney Copperbottom started back at him, unblinking and unknowing of what was to come.