The Assembly - Chapter 7

Lucy knew the other students each had two faces. She had known it forever, but it was clearer now that she was in high school. They would turn towards she and Treena and she could see their fangs all but dripping with blood, and then they’d whip their heads around, towards a teacher, or somebody’s parents and the fangs and the viciousness would be gone, the faces of angels in the place of the monsters she saw.

Lucy looked at the empty desk next to hers, wrinkled her forehead with worry, glanced at the sunshiny sky through the window and poked her finger with her No. 2 pencil. She looked around at the other kids in her class as they passed notes to each other, doodled or stared into space. One or two were listening to Mrs. Walden, the history teacher.

“I went all the way to the South Pole where I had my picture taken with the Emperor Penguins. They look like they are wearing tuxedos, so I wore a tuxedo, too. I’ll bring in the picture to show you one day. But it wasn’t all fun and penguins, I can tell you. No sirree. It was on that trip, I lost my little finger.”

She exhibited the stump for the class.

“And three toes. They froze and turned black.”

The bell rang.

“So you see, class, I was an explorer once.”

Lucy took a last look at the empty desk beside her and slid out from her own. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and pushed her way through the other students out into the hallway. Some girls followed closely behind. Lucy, as always, ignored them.

“Well, he’s nobody. His father doesn’t work for Socketry. He does something menial with I think like power lines or whatever. I saw him once. He was wearing like a tool belt?”

Lucy was tall and thin and nobody looked at her as she loped through the under lit hallway. She looked around, her blue eyes sharp sighted and icy, her glance striking other students without sympathy or friendship. If any inattentive student got in her way, she pushed them aside with her shoulder. When any of them accidentally, mistakenly, caught her eye, they shuddered, looked away and moved on. Most of them carefully kept their heads averted and rushed quickly by. She wasn’t going to her next class she decided. Her nostrils twitched.

A small girl, pale faced and younger than Lucy, tapped her on the shoulder. Lucy spun around and faced her. The girl turned several alternating shades of green.

“Girls Room. Second floor. West building.” And she scurried off without looking back.

Lucy ran. Students leaped out of her way, flattening themselves against their lockers.

In the West building, the hallways were always pretty much empty. The walls were locker-less, and there were no ordinary classrooms, only science labs. The decision to sequester the lab rooms in their own wing was made after a series of unfortunate explosions caused fires that spread to other parts of the school. Now all the science labs could happily burst into flame simultaneously, and the rest of the school would be completely safe.

Lucy rushed past shelves of jars containing bloated, pale, nearly glowing frogs, their eyes bleached white by the formaldehyde. This was one of the less frequented hallways. The students, as a whole, found it disturbing. At the very end of the hall was a mostly unused Girls Room. Lucy opened the door and went inside. She heard muffled sobs coming from one of the stalls.

“Treena?”

A hiccup and a gulpy kind of half sob was the reply.

“Treena, it’s me.”

The door to the farthest stall was kicked open with a shuddery thud. Lucy looked inside and Treena was sitting on the toilet seat, looking as miserable as anyone possibly could. She had been crying, smudging her copious eye makeup, black tears streaking her face in grit. Lucy thought Treena looked beautiful with black tears criss-crossing her cheeks. She wanted to take Treena’s face between her strong hands and lick the black lines of sadness off.

Treena had a hard time in high school. She was very pretty, pretty wasn’t the problem. She was sensitive and smart and couldn’t sensor what she said or thought very well. No one ever picked on Lucy. No one ever said mean things. Not to her face.

“Hi.” said Lucy. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Treena sobbed.

“What?”

“I’m such an idiot.”

Lucy looked down at Treena, a horizontal crease appearing between her eyebrows.

“Boys suck.” Treena said, and sniffled.

“Which boy?”

“It doesn’t matter. Just forget it.” Treena stood up and walked to the mirror and began to re-smudge her eye-makeup into a more attractive configuration.

“Was it Derek?”

“He’s a total jerk.”

“I bit his thumb in second grade.” Lucy volunteered. “I think he still has the scar.”

“He told me.” Treena smiled through the mirror at Lucy. “Thanks. Oh, God, Lucy! What time is it?”

“I’m not-“

“It’s almost two. We have to run.”

“Why-“

“Don’t you remember? The mandatory Socketry assembly is today. They take down your name if you don’t go. My Dad would kill me.”

Treena’s father, like Lucy’s, worked at Socketry International, but in an entirely different department.

Treena grabbed Lucy’s hand and yanked her out the door. They ran through the frog-lined hallway, out of the science building, through the central quad and into the Front Building where the auditorium was located. When they arrived at the assembly hall, they realized they needn’t have hurried as long lines snaked in front of each entrance, a man in a dark green suit at each door taking each student’s name as he entered.

Lucy and Treena drifted to the back of one of the lines. Treena looked surreptitiously at the students ahead of her. She thought they all looked so clean and shiny. None of them looked at her, but what she perceived as their teenage perfection made her feel self-conscious of her smudgy face and black-smeared eyes. Two girls who stood in front of them eyed Lucy apprehensively, not sparing so much as a glance for Treena. She saw this and it made her want to do something. Scream, or dig her nails into one of their faces, but she knew she never would. She would stand there quietly on line and if anyone dared to be mean to her, Lucy would snap her teeth and growl.

Treena sighed. Lucy looked at her and wondered what was wrong. They were nearly at the entrance. The girls in line ahead of them gave their names. Lucy stepped forward, Treena pouted and looked at the floor. Lucy looked the man at the door straight in the face, as they were about the same height. Dark lensed glasses hid his eyes, his jaw was narrow and long, and he wore the anonymous dark green suit she had seen on other Socketry International employees. When she was a little girl, she had asked her father what the men in the green suits did. Mr. Troma said, “Security,” and quickly changed the subject. And as the grade-school aged Lucy looked into Mr. Troma’s face, she thought he looked ashamed.

Lucy didn’t say anything to the man in the dark glasses. Treena poked her. She looked down, avoiding the man’s invisible gaze.

“Name please.” His voice was surprisingly friendly.

“Lucy Troma.”

He nodded and smiled, and just as he lowered his head to tick off her name on his clipboard, Lucy’s sensitive ears heard a very quiet whirring and a nearly silent click. She looked him in the face, but his sunglasses regarded her blankly.

Treena gave her name and they entered the auditorium. By now, most of the seats were taken. The din of students chattering to each other echoed off the walls. They found two seats together and sat down. The last of the kids entered and took their seats. The lights in the auditorium dimmed as the stage brightened. Principal Jeffries walked up to the microphone at the podium.

“Good afternoon, students.”

The noise lessened, but the hum of whispered conversations was still clearly audible.

“Quiet.”

There was a note in his voice that made them stop whispering and go silent.

“Thank you. It is my pleasure to introduce you to Dr. Arnold Messner, Senior Director of Outreach for Socketry International. I am sure you will make him feel very welcome. Dr. Messner?”

A very ordinary looking man in a sports jacket and an open-necked shirt walked up to the podium and shook the principal’s hand. The principal left the stage and took his seat as Dr. Messner smiled benevolently at his audience. The three men who had been taking names at the door quietly positioned themselves behind them.

“Thank you, Principal Jeffries for that kind introduction. Hello, students.”

A pause, and then some scattered applause.

“Socketry. Many of your parents work with us at Socketry International. But then, you already know that. I have come here today to show you a little bit of what we do and to answer any questions you might have.”

Lucy and Treena looked at each other. Both their fathers worked at Socketry and no one had ever answered any of their questions.

“I’m going to show you what some of your parents do every day. And those of you whose parents don’t work at Socketry are not to feel left out. You yourself might one day be an employee of Socketry International.”

Winston Marks poked David Stern in the back and hissed, ”Yeah, as a janitor.”

“Socketry affects all of us. Every day.”

“Same old platitudes.” Lucy whispered under her breath. Treena nodded back.

“Teenagers like yourselves are on the brink of adulthood. On the verge of making the important choices that will determine where your lives will lead.

“You kids look pretty smart to me.”

The teenaged audience looked at him stony-faced.

“So, I’m going to tell you a secret.”

No reaction. Dr. Messner’s enthusiasm was not dampened.

“All paths, even if you don’t major in socketry in college, no matter what you decide to do, all paths, no matter how circuitous the route, will eventually lead you to Socketry International.”

Dr. Messner looked out at his audience and smiled.

“There. I said it. Some people find this notion a little scary. They say Socketry International ‘rules the world’. Well, that’s one way of looking at it, I guess, but that’s not really the case.”

Lucy and Treena heard a boy’s insistent whisper from a couple of rows behind them.

“Lucy. Hey, Lucy!”

She turned her head. Jeremy Welk was sitting up and looking right at her.

“Hey, Lucy. Come over to my house tonight. You can show me how much of a freak you really are.” He laughed silently and high-fived one of his friends. Lucy’s eyes narrowed. As his eyes met hers, the smirk vanished. Her head snapped back around and she sat up very, very straight.

“So, the question that’s usually asked is: What the heck is Socketry exactly? I’m here to tell you exactly. And do more than tell- to show you what you can accomplish, how the path to wherever you want to go in life, whatever it is you want to do, can be shortened, simplified- if you decide to become a part of Socketry International. To show you what the possibilities are, where you can go, what you can have.” Dr. Messner lingered affectionately on the word ‘have’, and then made eye contact with as many students as he could. He flashed his warm smile.

“I think you’ll like what you hear.”

One of the green suited men pulled down a projection screen.

“First: What is Socketry? Here’s the dictionary definition.”

A slide bearing the definition appeared on the screen.

Socketry: (n) 1) The study of causality; of what fits in where and how actions affect events 2) the practice of ensuring objects, people or events behave or occur in a predetermined manner in order to produce a particular outcome

“This is just a fancy way of saying socketry is a name for the way things work. Or the way they should. Socketry International studies the way the way things fit together, interconnect. Once these connections are identified, the conduits between anything- people, events, corporations or nations, can be smoothed out and things can be accomplished more cheaply and more easily. You might say that socketry is the grease that keeps the cogs, all the cogs, moving.”

The audience’s attention had once again drifted. They had all heard this grease-cog-interconnecting speech a hundred times.

“So much for secrets being revealed.” said Treena.

Lucy nodded, and looked back at Jeremy Welk, her eyes blank. He caught her glance and began to look nervous.

“Treena, why do you think they made such a big deal out of everyone in our class showing up. I mean, if they’re just telling us the same things we’ve all heard at every assembly since kindergarten.”

“Who knows.” Treena was distracted by the sight of Derek Lipinsky deep in conversation with Brenda Jakes. She had day-dreamed about Derek since the fifth grade, ever since he had defended her from some mean big kids who threw mud on her sweater. A couple of weeks ago he had started talking to her. She obsessively related every word, every gesture, to Lucy. Two days ago, Derek took Treena by the hand and led her to the concrete stairs behind the gym building. He kissed her. They sat making out on the concrete steps until Treena realized she was so late for Earth Science, she might as well skip it. That was the last time he spoke to her. Treena hated him. But she knew if he took her by the hand again, she would let him lead her anywhere. She hated him so much.

“When those Socketry men asked for your name, did you hear a clicking sound? Like a camera, I think?”

“What?” Treena was still staring at Derek, suffused with malevolence and lust. “No. I don’t think so. I mean I don’t remember.”

“I think there was a clicking.”

Dr. Messner was talking about how the smallest acts of Socketry workers could affect the lives of starving disaster victims in Bali for the better.

“This isn’t a real assembly.” Lucy said. “It’s a fake. An excuse. They’re after something else. It’s socketry. “

The Door In the Wall - Chapter 6

Mr. and Mrs. Troma circled the pretty Blue Sector block, looking for a place to park. Mrs. Troma looked nervously at the car seat they had purchased for their yet unseen daughter. Mr. Troma found a spot and neatly parallel parked the shiny green car that had been given to him upon his last promotion at Socketry International. They walked without speaking, not looking at the well-tended and impressive streets and buildings of the Blue Sector, animal topiary decorating the traffic islands. They had left the slums and the crowds of dirty children far behind.

* * * * *

Lucy’s mother had never been so tired. Her foot was unfortunately no longer numb. A grinding pain wound its way upwards from her ankle. She looked around, hoping some unknown Samaritan would appear out of the empty dark streets and help her on her way.

“Stop kidding yourself.” she thought. “There’s no one. Anyone who shows up is more likely to be an enemy than otherwise. I must keep going. I must keep moving.”

As she repeated those words again and again to herself, she wasn’t always sure whether she kept them in her head or if she said them aloud. Keep going. Keep moving. She felt foolish and lost and realized with a note of mingled pride and panic, that this terrifying night-time journey was the first thing she had ever done completely on her own. She knew that if she survived this night she would never be frightened of anything else.

As she approached the empty square that housed the Copper Market in the daytime, she saw a large shadow making its way towards her. She wrapped Lucy tighter in her sweater, pressing her to her breast.

She heard the sound of wheels on pavement, and a pedi-cab slowly came into view. The driver was small and dark and weariness was apparent from the dejected angle of his head to the laborious pedaling of his feet. He looked up and saw her. They looked at each other across the empty, trash-strewn market and each saw their own exhaustion mirrored in the eyes of the other.

She limped up to him, holding Lucy.

“Going home. Done for night.” He said, not looking her in the face.

“Please.”

“No more. Finished.”

“Please.”

He sighed.

“Where you going?”

“Blue Sector.”

“Papers?”

Silence.

“No.”

“Then no ride.”

He began to peddle away. She clutched at his arm.

“Please. Help us.”

He noticed the infant she held in her arms and sighed again.

“’kay. I know a street. No guards.”

“Thank you.” She climbed into the seat.

“Is longer. Cost you more.”

“That’s fine.”

He turned his pedi-cab around and pedaled off down an empty street.

* * * * *

Mr. And Mrs. Troma stood in front of the impressive stone edifice that housed The Ladies of Untrammeled, Perpetual and Unavailing Mercy. They looked up at the well-tended window boxes from which grew sage, parsley and lavender. They looked at each other. Mr. Troma yanked the bell-pull hard. Nothing happened for a moment, then, just as a dart of panic pierced Mrs. Troma’s insides- maybe this isn’t for real, maybe there’s not going to be a child- a deep gong sounded within.

* * * * *

Lucy’s mother sat in the pedi-cab, her eyes closed, murmuring words of comfort to her child. Whenever her eyes flickered open, she saw they were wending their way through dark back streets and twisty alleyways. She was deeply grateful for this respite from worry, as part of the responsibility for getting her to where she was going was now placed on the hard narrow shoulders of the man in front of her.

She had almost fallen asleep, the exhaustion of this terrible night overwhelming her, when they stopped. Her eyes opened. A wide, clean avenue had opened in front of them, street lamps causing the topiary to cast eerie shadows.

“Blue Sector. Where now?”

“The house of Our Lady of Untrammeled, Perpetual and Unavailing Mercy. Do you know where it is?”

“I know. Not far.”

He looked around nervously and began to pedal. He didn’t know what he was thinking. Taking this woman into the Blue Sector where neither of them had any business being. Stupid. It would lead to nothing but trouble. But she looked so tired. And she had the child with her. He thought of his own child who he hadn’t seen in many years, who he pedaled all over The City every day to support. He hoped the money he sent back home reached him. He didn’t know. He pedaled on.

“Here.” He said. They had stopped in front of a large, stone building.

“Thank you. Thank you so much. I can’t even-. Well. I won’t be a moment.”

He watched her get slowly and sorely out of his cab. He wondered what she was doing there and then decided he didn’t really care as long as she paid him. He had decided long ago that the business of his fares did not concern him, as long as they paid.

He watched her walk up to what at first glance looked like a blank stone wall, then as he peered a little closer, he saw what could have been the outlines of a small door placed a couple of feet above the sidewalk. Looking closer, he saw (he thought) faint lines etched along the edges. Harpoons. And ships. They made him think of home. He heard her speaking quietly to her child, he couldn’t make out the words. Then he thought he saw her take something out of the bag she carried on her shoulder and place it inside the child’s clothing. But he couldn’t be sure in the gloom, and her back was to him. She fiddled with something on the door, as indeed, door it was, and it opened. She placed the child gently inside and closed the door quickly. Her legs gave out under her and she sat down hard, her face in her hands.

He had been so interested in what this woman was doing and what was behind it all he had ceased to be vigilant. He heard footsteps, and then a voice.

“Show me your papers. Now.”

* * * * *

As Mrs. Troma waited for the door to be opened, she glanced over into the narrow alley and shuddered as she saw two rats peering at her out of the shadows. And perhaps it was a trick of the light, but it seemed to Mrs. Troma that the rats had blue human eyes in their rat faces. Just then the door to the house of Our Lady of Untrammeled, Perpetual and Unavailing Mercy opened and she forgot all about them.

Darkness - Chapter 5

Mr. Troma ate the French toast and bacon and drank the coffee and orange juice Mrs. Troma had prepared. She, however, was so nervous she hardly ate anything. She just picked at a strip of rapidly congealing bacon. Mr. Troma had seconds. He had a stomach of iron, as he often boasted.

Finally, it was time to drive into the city and become parents. All they had been told was that their soon-to-be child was a healthy baby girl. They had endured a long and arduous screening process which boosted Mr. Troma’s confidence in the order immeasurably but made Mrs. Troma impatient. Mrs. Troma asked during one of many screening interviews what had happened to the little girl’s parents. The only information offered was that they were both dead.

*****

Lucy’s mother trudged through the murky sludge, shifting her daughter to her left hip. What at first seemed to be empty darkness, a passage to nothingness, now showed itself to be a low-slung portal of chipped stone, and like the painted frieze she had just examined, much older than the building housing the coffee shop above.

As she moved forward into the blackness, she felt movement, a slithering around her ankles. She hoped she had imagined it, that it was just the inevitable shifting of water and silt. It wasn’t. An unseen something brushed past her ankle. She shut her eyes hard, opened them, saw spots and continued to walk, holding Lucy tightly to her chest.

* * * * *

Poor little thing, thought Mrs. Troma. She was glad she would be able to give this child a home and she vowed it would be a happy one. Mrs. Troma hadn’t had a particularly happy childhood. Her mother drank too much and her father used to tell her folk dancing was completely useless and if she ever made it to those places she used to look at pictures of in books she had taken out from the library, she would be sorely disappointed. People in those kinds of countries didn’t wash properly, they ate all kinds of weird food, spoke funny languages no sane person could be bothered to learn, and their plumbing was a joke. In lots of places they didn’t have real toilets even, just smelly, unsanitary holes in the ground. Old Mr. Chicklets (this had been Mrs. Troma’s name before she married Mr. Troma) had been in the Official Socketry Naval Forces when he was young and once spent a weekend in Constantinople and he knew what was what. When Mrs. Troma read about dances from Argentina or Bali and tried to work out how to do them in the living room, Mr. Chicklets would laugh at her.

Mr. Troma might be a little bit of a stick in the mud but he never ever laughed at her. He was proud of his wife and all the interesting things she knew and enjoyed her cheerful enthusiasm. Mr. Troma just hoped that he wouldn’t one day begin to bore her. Mr. Troma liked children but the main reason he was so enthusiastic about the adoption was that the prospect made Mrs. Troma so happy.

* * * * * 

Lucy’s mother told herself it was nothing, no different than swimming in the ocean and seeing or feeling a fish swim by, something she had enjoyed in the past. Something else in her head said, “man o’wars and stingrays, they live in the ocean too, and you wouldn’t want them swimming along side you.” Then she told herself jellyfish and stingrays didn’t live in flooded basements. She took a deep breath, her throat catching at the foul stench, and took a step forward.

As she plunged farther into the dankness ahead, she heard one of the most unwelcome sounds possible. The door at the top of the steps behind her, the door she had found locked a few moments earlier, clicked and then opened.

Just then, a pain so sudden, so sharp, it took a moment to register, drilled itself into her right ankle. She kicked out, smashing her foot against the wall, attempting to dislodge whatever horror was attached to her by teeth and blood. She looked down and saw grey fur and a long hairless tail. The rat-like thing hissed and looked her in the face. Was it the gloom or did the rodent have green human eyes in its pointed face?

She heard footsteps hurrying down the stairs. Lucy’s mother limped forward as her sharp-toothed attacker disappeared. The water stung viciously in the wound which now bled profusely. As she stepped into the filthy water she hoped whatever was entering her body through the bite didn’t kill her. She ran. Steps splashed behind her. Numbness crawling up her foot, she limped and stumbled and tried not to fall.

* * * * * 

Mrs. Troma sat in the passenger seat and watched streetlamps and signs flick by as Mr. Troma drove. Soon neat suburban homes gave way to the forbidding warehouses and seemingly endless industrial tracts that bordered the edges of the city.

“Hon. What do you think of the name Wendy?” Mrs. Troma asked.

“I like it fine.”

“Good. She’ll be Wendy Troma then. Unless when we see her she looks like something else. Then we’ll name her whatever she looks like.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

By this time they were cruising down city streets, catching the green lights, honking street arabs, feral dogs and bands of grubby children out of the way. As they neared the heart of the city, the streets widened. They were getting close. The entrance to the Blue Sector was right in front of them. They pulled up to the guardhouse that marked the entrance. A man in a dark suit leaned out and spoke to Mr. Troma.

“Papers?”

Mr. Troma showed him the identification card he had been issued by Socketry International and they were waved through. They drove on.

When they were within a couple of blocks of their destination Mr. Troma began to look for parking.

* * * * * 

Lucy’s mother glanced over her shoulder and hobbled forward as quickly as she could. She saw the silhouette of a man, the backlight erasing all features in the gloom. She stopped and turned to face him. With her injured leg, she knew there was no way she would outrun whoever it was and she might as well make some sort of a stand.

The figure rushed toward her, quickly reaching the low portal. As he ducked his head, about to enter the tunnel, he let out a terrific shriek and dropped to the floor with a tremendous splash. Lucy started to scream. Her mother made no attempt to quiet her as she watched the mad, flailing struggle in the few inches of murky water. Dozens of the rat-like creatures were coming out of the walls.

Rodents scrabbled over his body as he splashed helplessly. Lucy’s mother thought she could see panicked hands attempting to fling rats from his body, them leaping back onto his desperately fighting form, biting, scratching and squeaking. It was horrible. The water clouded with blood. An arm reached up out of the murk and she could see bone from wrist to elbow. That was enough. Lucy’s mother turned and ran down the tunnel, lopsided and awkward, with her deadened leg and broken heel.

Her mind was blank save for pain, blood and fear. She expected sharp teeth and claws to leap out at her from the ceiling and walls. She was terrified she’d see green human eyes peering out at her from rat faces; certain they’d drag her down to the floor and get at Lucy. She held her child closely to her, feeling her warmth, feeling the beat of her heart and walked on.

As she plodded onwards, comforting her daughter as she went, she realized the tunnel didn’t seem to be turning much at all and if nothing else leapt out and attacked her, if she ever found her way back up to the surface where there was air and light, she was at least going in roughly the right direction. And if nothing else was tracking her, now that whoever lay behind her skeletal and dead was out of the game, she would be damn near untraceable.

She walked on and on, the universe shrunk to this world of dark and bad smells. Thankfully, the passageway was inclining upwards. The thought of plunging deeper and deeper into the earth was a horrible one to ponder. She hoped she was right. It was impossible to be certain of anything in dark that thick.

She walked on.

Hours might have passed or it might have been as brief a time as fifteen or twenty minutes. It was impossible to tell and when she took out her phone on the chance it might lend her some light, give her the time, be a reminder of the upstairs daylight world, she found the battery was dead. She stuck it back in her pocket and trudged on. She kissed Lucy’s forehead and began to sing. She no longer cared how dangerous making noise might be. She sang every song she could remember from her childhood, pop songs, lullabies, and the old sea shanties her grandfather used to bellow.

Time passed.

Her eyeballs prickled. It wasn’t precisely light she saw around her, more a slight, nearly imperceptible lessening of the all-consuming darkness. She might have thought she was imagining it if it didn’t travel through her eyes into her brain, making her head hurt.

She could see Lucy’s face.

The tunnel got narrower as the air around her brightened. Lucy’s mother found she was no longer trudging through fetid water, although her feet, numb long ago, couldn’t feel the difference. The greasy surface of puddles shone in the welcome, but still meager light. She could see a stone wall ahead. A throb of panic bisected her brain before she saw the passageway was not coming to an end just veering off sharply to the left. She made the turn. Light pierced her eyes. A breeze brushed past her cheek. She looked around, gratefully. There were old candy wrappers on the concrete floor, a discarded newspaper with yesterday’s date.

It was a subway station. She could have laughed. Cattercomber Street Station. She’d been there a thousand times and never suspected the presence of a passageway, of catacombs under the city, apparently giving the street its name. It was completely deserted, the booth of bulletproof glass was empty and shuttered. Unfortunately, this subway line (the Purple) wouldn’t take her where she wanted to go, deep into the Blue Sector. And everyone knows how unreliable trains are late at night. She could wait for hours. No, she decided. It was time to venture above ground.

She made her way through the turnstile and up the concrete steps. She sucked the fresh air deep into her lungs, tasting better than fresh bread, better than strawberries, better than anything. She blinked into the brightness of the streetlamps, the wide sprawl of Cattercomber Street spread empty before her. She again kissed Lucy’s forehead and started what she hoped would be the last leg of her journey on foot, the perilous street level crawl to the Blue Sector.

Mrs. Troma - Chapter 4

The big day had finally come, and Mrs. Troma woke up early. It was spring and the crocuses had sprung up around the Japanese maple in the backyard. She went downstairs to the kitchen, tied a tidy apron around her waist, and flung open the windows smiling happily as the fresh air engulfed her. She made coffee and French toast and bacon. Mr. Troma came down soon afterwards and they ate breakfast together, as they always did.

Mr. and Mrs. Troma were a happy couple. They had met at the City University ten years earlier, he studying socketry, she folk dancing. When she was in school she dreamed of traveling to the Carpathians, and learning brown bear dances from the few remaining people who kept to the traditional ways. Mr. Troma studied socketry. She often sewed her own skirts from brightly colored fabric she bought from dingy stores, run by exotic seeming men and ladies in head scarves who smelled of unidentifiable, yet undeniably interesting, spices. Mr. Troma studied socketry.

After University Mr. and Mrs. Troma married. Mrs. Troma festooned their small flat with braided streamers and flowers she found at the Copper Market in The City. Mr. Troma got a job at Socketry International. Mrs. Troma knew, and being a cheerful person, was resigned to the fact that Mr. Troma would never agree to visit the Carpathians or the Urals or The Sandwich Islands. Mr. Troma did well at his job and advanced quickly through the ranks of Socketry International. Soon they were able to move out of their flat and into a small house. One of the things Mrs. Troma liked about it was that it was situated right across the street from a playground which was perfect for the many children she planned to have. She pictured circles of happy boys and girls dancing the simple yet pretty steps of the Albanian goat dance around the swing set. The years passed and no children came. Doctors were consulted, but to no avail.

One day, while Mr. Troma was at work, Mrs. Troma wandered through her beloved Copper Market, before catching a matinee at the Torquemada Grand National Theatre. She loved the exotic piles of brightly colored silks and cottons, imported from the far away places she had dreamed of visiting while at school. She gazed at small painted panels that depicted in bright tempera, men with elephant heads, clever looking monkeys and beautiful dark-haired women in exquisitely painted translucent saris and robes. She pushed her dark blonde hair behind one ear and smiled to herself as she looked at an etching of the Crocodillius, one of her favorite dances, printed in a delicate shade of green on brittle papyrus. Still smiling, Mrs. Troma looked up and saw, off to the side, a small tent draped with rusty looking yellow velvet. Over a black shrouded doorway was a sign that said “The Wondrous Madame Purple: Consultant”.

The combination of the exotic with the matter of fact on the sign intrigued Mrs. Troma, and she decided she wanted a consultation. She crossed over to the tent, pushed aside the heavy black curtain veiling the entrance and stepped inside. The curtain closed behind her shutting out the din of the market and the noise of the city beyond with the suddenness of the pulling of a switch. All was silent within the tent. There was little light and the smell and fog of incense was thick and sweet in the corners, drifting slightly less pungently into the center of the space. Mrs. Troma peered around her.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

“Yoo hoo. Anyone here?”

Still nothing.

“Um. Madame Purple?”

A phlegmy cough punctured the quiet.

“Six guilders.” Cough.

“Excuse me?”

“You. If you want the consultation. Six guilders. Up front. Cash. (cough, cough) No checks. None of those charge cards. Cash.”

“Ma’am, are you Madame Purple?” asked Mrs. Troma.

“Six guilders.”

Mrs. Troma stepped a little closer to where she thought the voice was coming from. As her eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom, she could see in the corner what would have looked like nothing more than a pile of fabric and laces, if it wasn’t for a bare white hand sticking out of it, palm face up.

Mrs. Troma dug in her purse for six guilders, and finding the coins, dropped them into the bony white hand.

“Sit.”

“Well, Madame Purple, what I-“

“Don’t talk. (cough) Sit.”

Mrs. Troma sat. Madame Purple pulled a small plastic TV tray out from behind her, unfolded the legs, and set it up between them. She fished out a chamois cloth bag from among her robes and veils and plunked out what looked like polished chicken bones onto the flowered patterned plastic. Anyway, Mrs. Troma hoped they were chicken bones. They looked disturbingly like the bones from a human hand she had studied during her required anatomy course at university. She supposed Madame Purple was examining them from behind the lace and gauze. Looking over at her, she shuddered as she got the impression that the lump of fabric was peering at her, rather than at the shiny bones.

Mrs. Troma shifted uneasily and regretted her decision in coming here. It smelled funny, too.

“What do you-“

“Shh. (cough)”

They sat in total silence for a few more minutes. A very long few minutes for Mrs. Troma.

“Here.” Madame Purple’s hand was once again outstretched. This time it held a small (slightly dirty) square of cardboard. Mrs. Troma took the card, noting the interesting gold ring on her finger, molded in the shape of (she thought) an octopus. The card read:

Mrs. Troma was confused. “What am I-“

“Good-bye.” said Madame Purple.

“How did-“

“GOOD-BYE.” said Madame Purple, who sunk back into the gloom.

Mrs. Troma opened the curtain that covered the doorway and the urban soundtrack was switched back on. She blinked in the bright sunlight.

When she would think of Madame Purple in later years, and she often thought back on that day, she knew she must have boarded the subway, ridden to The Torquemada Grand National Theatre, and watched the show. She still had the ticket stub and program pasted into the scrapbook she used to house the mementoes of things she had seen and places she visited. But of the show itself, a well-received musical called Noses and Feet Dance Dance Dance, and a hot ticket she was lucky to get (Socketry International was nothing if not well connected), she remembered nothing.

She thought of the card Madame Purple had given her. Mr. & Mrs. Troma had spoken of adopting a child, they wanted to raise one (or several in Mrs. Troma’s case) so badly and there were so many unwanted children in the world. Mrs. Troma had read of childless couples journeying to Upper Mongolia or the Dead Sea and adopting children out of orphanages there. She loved the idea, but it was so expensive and traveling was so difficult these days, even when some of the problems could be smoothed over by the powers that be at Socketry International (who had local branches everywhere).

She knew Mr. Troma wouldn’t think much of an adoption agency, and a religious one at that, which arranged for cards to be given out by fortunetellers at the Copper Market. Mrs. Troma knew she could argue that there was no evidence that The Order of Our Lady of Untrammeled, Perpetual and Unavailing Mercy had arranged any such thing. Madame Purple could hand out Mr. Troma’s business cards from her tent and it wouldn’t mean he was any less competent at his job.

Mrs. Troma decided it would be best if she neglected to mention to Mr. Troma just how she had found out about this new adoption agency. She knew this is where she must find her beloved much dreamed about child. Madame Purple had all the trappings of a fraud, Mrs. Troma knew that, but something in her felt the very uncanniness of the experience, no matter how spurious the trappings might be, had pointed her in the direction she must take.

The Painted Frieze - Chapter 3

The old woman looked up at her, an expression of concern on her wrinkly face, a lilac cardigan on her back. She looked harmless enough.

“Listen to me. There isn’t much time. You must-"

“Who are-"

“Listen. The counterman has betrayed you. He’s one of them.”

She could hear a commotion coming from the shop front.

“Ignore that. One of my colleagues is faking a heart attack. We’re buying you what time we can. Listen to me. The door to my left leads down to the cellar. Go down the stairs, and you will see a large red door. You can’t miss it.”

“But—“

“Listen! Go through the door and turn right again. Follow the passageway past four doors. The fifth door will be silver. Go through it. There should be help of some kind waiting for you. Can you remember these instructions?”

“Yes, I think so. Look, who are-“

“Go.”

“ Thank you. Who-“

The old lady more or less shoved Lucy’s mother through the cellar door.

“I am Mrs. Anderson. You won’t see me again. Good luck.”

Mrs. Anderson shut the cellar door behind Lucy and her mother. The lock clicked into place. Lucy’s mother shuddered, adjusted her daughter and carefully walked down the stairs in the near darkness. As her eyes slowly accustomed themselves to the murk, she perceived a slight greenish glow. It wasn’t much to see by, and the light had a slightly flickery quality that seemed formulated to make one queasy, but she supposed it was better than absolute darkness.

As she stepped down the last step onto the cellar floor, she stifled a gasp as her foot was submerged in two inches of cold fetid water. She hesitated to think in what order of filth she was now ankle deep. The stench of mildew, sweet decay and filth (filth, she thought, is what they say in old-fashioned books when they mean shit) crawled its miasmic way up her nostrils, lodging in her sinuses making her gag.

Lucy wrinkled her tiny nose and whinnied. As promised, the large red door was straight ahead. She sloshed over to it, no longer caring about the noise, just desperate to escape the smell and the damp.

She reached the door, kissed Lucy’s forehead, took the large rod-like handle in her right hand and made to turn it. Nothing happened. She tried rotating it up, towards the ceiling, still nothing. Tears sprung in her eyes. “I will not cry, what’s the use?” She splashed back to the stairs. She made her slippery way back up them, panting, her mind willfully blank, a wave of exhaustion hitting her between the eyes with a dull, painful thud. She turned the knob of the cellar door. Nothing. Locked.

She sunk down on the top step and held Lucy close to her breast, shutting her eyes tight, stifling a sob, frustration battling fear for precedence. Standing up and breathing shallowly through her mouth, she trudged back down into the stink. She stopped on the last step before she would have to put her foot into the black wetness. She looked around her, the pale walls of the passageway glistening. To her surprise, she discerned the faint tracings of what might once have been a painting or a frieze. She saw the faint outlines of a ship, with a high prow and three masts sailing jauntily across the dirty wall. She saw another ship (or was it the same one?), this one with two masts broken, men jumping into the ocean to what must have been certain death, large tentacles grasping the prow. Lucy’s mother couldn’t see what came next in the green half-light, so she stepped into the flooded floor, barely flinching. This time, instead of going right, towards the locked red door, she walked straight ahead, closely examining the nautical frieze. It was finely and skillfully painted, though now faded and in some places chipped and obscured.

The third panel showed a disturbed sea, no ship in sight, rubble and bodies surrounding a large-eyed Kraken, screaming men gripped in three tentacles. But then, slightly farther along, a dinghy, containing what looked like a woman. Strangely, the woman looked neither sad nor frightened, but triumphant and, although Lucy’s mother knew she was being silly, wicked. The next painted episode in what was obviously a narrative was very odd. The Kraken was underwater surrounded by fish and seahorses, his many tentacles entwined with the limbs of a human female figure. It was hard to tell if it was supposed to be the woman who was escaping the torn apart ship as the head had been scraped away viciously, with deep scratch marks in the wall. It was a faintly disturbing painting, one Lucy’s mother would have found interesting if she had seen it in a well lighted museum or gallery, a card with useful information and the catalogue number tacked to the wall, but here, with the smells and green light and locked doors, she didn’t like it much.

The passage faded away into darkness. She decided she hadn’t much to lose at this point and walked ahead into the black.

Running - Chapter 2

She ran down the street as quickly as she could with her baby girl slung at her side. She was out of breath and she cursed herself for putting on the shoes she had that morning, and then got mad at herself for worrying about her missing heel and the blister on her left big toe. Lucy scrunched up her face and looked at her mother with steady eyes.

The woman pushed a thick clump of dark hair off her face as she ran. The air was damp and chill, making her nose red and her joints ache. At the next corner she stopped, took a deep breath and listened intently. It was silent, except for the faint and distant sounds of sirens and traffic, which comforted her a bit, as traffic is a busy daytime sound. She began to walk quickly towards the jagged intersection of a narrow street little more than an alley that obliquely bisected the slightly wider avenue she was looking to escape. She turned quickly into it as her daughter began to scream.

“Please be quiet, Lucy, please. Just a little while, I promise. I promise, we’re almost there. Shhhhh”

Lucy continued to wail, her cries cutting through the dark night with a sound so piercing it was almost visible. Her mother tried to comfort her as she limped quickly through the darkness, the lights of the city penetrating the bitter gloom only in sad dim patches. Buildings rose on either side of them, featureless walls giving away nothing, an Imperial warehouse on one side, a deserted stables on the other. She heard things crawling and squeaking and scrabbling around her feet. She tried to ignore it, tamping down both her disgust and the fear that caused bile to rise in her throat. She pulled Lucy’s face close to her neck and wrapped her sweater tightly around them both.

Lucy’s mother finally saw a faint, but real glow. Sure enough, a few yards ahead, the alley ended abruptly, cutting into a wide thoroughfare. She peered out, and seeing no one she stepped into the legendary Boulevard du Monde. Shuttered bookseller stalls lined the sidewalks. She turned right, onto the empty street, the electric street lamps casting a pinkish glow on the night. All was quiet. Even the information vendors had locked up and gone home.

The Boulevard turned sharply and Lucy’s mother saw yellow light spilling out of a storefront about twenty yards ahead. She slowed to a walk. It was the Cup of Broken Dreams, a coffee shop she had passed by many times but never entered that catered mostly to members of the knowledge brokering trade. The thought of warmth and a cup of tea was tempting, and she needed to feed and change Lucy. But was it safe? She wished everything wasn’t so difficult, she wished things were different. The phrase “things would be different if they weren’t the same” popped into her head, something her mother had always said to her. When she was a teenager she thought that was absolutely the stupidest thing anyone could say. Now she thought there might actually be more in it than she had first assumed.

“But this is pointless and it doesn’t matter. Stop thinking. Stop it, just watch and keep moving. Shut up shut up shutupshutupshutup…” she told herself, trying too quiet her brain which she was sure was vibrating, making Lucy even more confused and upset than she would have been otherwise.

She took a deep breath and squinted into the foggy window of the teashop. A man was drying cups behind the counter with a rag. His face was blank and ordinary. The only customers were three old ladies sitting together at one of the far tables. She thought she would chance it.

“If I’m wrong, forgive me.” she whispered to Lucy as she entered the café.

A bell rang above the door as it opened. The three old ladies all turned and looked at her in unison. They all smiled in that soppy way that Lucy’s mother loathed, the way grandmothers always smile when they see babies. It was slightly disconcerting to see it in triplicate. She went up to the counter.

“Tea, please. And where’s the bathroom?”

The man behind the counter pointed silently.

She entered the bathroom and locked the door behind her. She awkwardly managed to clean Lucy up and change her in the tiny featureless room. She sat down on the toilet, unbuttoned her blouse and guided Lucy’s mouth to her breast. She flinched slightly. Lucy already had teeth and they were unusually sharp. As she nursed Lucy, she shut her eyes and tried not to think about what she was about to do. Don’t think too far ahead. Next step: Cup of tea. After that- well, there it was, wasn’t it? Make your way through Blue Sector without being seen. And then-

There was a faint knock at the door. She looked down and Lucy was asleep. She quickly buttoned her clothes. She said nothing and stayed perfectly still.

A slightly more insistent knock.

“Dear?”

A pause.

“I know you’re in there.”

It was one of the old ladies. There was no use denying she wasn’t in the toilet, the three women had seen her go in. And she couldn’t escape, there was no other exit besides the door, nowhere to hide. It was probably nothing. And if the woman was an enemy, she could fend off an old lady. If she wasn’t armed. If she was by herself. If there was no silent and lethally polite operative standing behind his old lady Trojan horse ready to do his worst. Well, she thought, I can’t stay in this toilet for the rest of my life, attractive as that prospect might seem at this moment.

“Be out in a minute.” She answered.

“Dear, I think you should come out now.”

A pause.

“They’re coming.”

Lucy’s mother stood up, her daughter in her arms. She took a deep breath and opened the door. It was the bravest thing she’d ever done.