These Sainted Seouls | ongoing

section three: him

They were in a ghastly long hallway, fluorescent light bleeding out of the walls. The girl behind him was making panicked animal noises. He turned to her and smiled, very slowly; this was something he had practiced in mirrors and black windows, this death-look, and it never failed to spark fear. The girl had fear: now she was pressed up against the wall, the ugly dress stretched over her bone-skinny legs, with her eyes wide and human.

"I've been here before," she said.

"What?" He wasn't expecting that.

"I don't like this place," she whispered. "This is where my brother died."

He bit his lip so hard he thought it might bleed. This wasn't part of the plan. He had woken up in the taxi and thought he should scare her a bit, just enough to keep her away from him and his city. He could drag her through the dark tunnels in his mind, let her wander around the beast-caverns, and then yank her out when she was properly terrorized and return her the nightclub. To that soft slutty world that pulled him in without fail, though now he would have to find a new place to frequent. He couldn't go back to her nightclub and give her the satisfaction of his weakness. He could go to the place he'd gone last spring; he touched his arm with his fingers and remembered how the needles hurt going in, and how his brain had sucked up the pleasure. That could only last so long, though, before his father noticed something again--

"Hello?" The girl had apparently gotten a hold of herself: now she was snapping her fingers in his face. "It's really not the time to start planning your drug relapse."

"What?"

"You were talking out loud. I asked where we were and you started talking about your father and--."

"You said your brother died here?"

"Yes," she blinked, almost startled, though it seemed to him a perfectly natural question.

"Well, something's wrong, then. That you've been here before. That you remember this place. That someone died here--that's impossible."

"Why?" she said. "I think the more impossible thing is that we just transported out of the taxi--and right into--thin air--into this hallway."

"That's not so impossible and you know it," he said. He took her by the shoulders and shook her, just barely, just so she'd look him in the face. Her chin rose up, and the truth was in her eyes: she not so much a stranger to this type of thing, because it had happened a billion times before. Little things, admittedly. But reality was more happenstance to her than it was to most people. He could not access his matrix and run her through the system when he was in here, so he just looked at her, and tried to make sense of her runny white skin and her over-round eyes.

"We're in your head," she murmured. "Aren't we?"

"I'm in my head," he said. "You're in my head too. I brought you with me--" This, he thought, would be a perfect moment to get angry, to have hatred rush through at him at how she was messing everything up. But, of course, there was nothing. If he could find a place to leave her--if he could get into the city--

"You're doing it again."

"What?"

"You're making a face like you're thinking about something, but I can hear everything out loud. It's in my head too. Shit, I'm in my head inside your head. How does that work?"

"Why aren't you upset?" he said, taking a step back and looking at her again. She was running her long black hair through her hands, and the movement made little sparkles in the air.

"You said there was a city in your head," she said. "What was it called again--?"

"I basically kidnapped you. You had a traumatic memory of your brother. A traumatic memory from seeing this place before, somehow; somehow you've been in my head--what the hell--but I kidnapped you. Most people would, I don't know, be offended, at least--"