Pasha Malla - People Park

And then a person came reeling out of the fog, right in the path of the car. Olpert yelped, stomped the gas. The figure, black as a shadow, thumped into the grille, flipped over the hood, and amid a screech of brakes rolled up and wedged between the open door and the windshield.

The car idled. A jagged hypotenuse cracked the glass. Beyond it the fog tumbled and seethed. Half lolling into the car, half dangling outside, hung a boy.

Starx appeared, stared at the body, at Olpert, and back.

Olpert felt he’d swallowed a handful of tacks and his stomach was a clothesdryer, tumbling them around.

Starx spoke — Holy fug, Bailie — and some part of Olpert released and drifted off into the mist. He felt light, watching Starx peel the kid from the doorframe and lay his body, limp as a sack of flour, on the hood of the car. Starx listened to the chest, felt for a pulse inside the hood. He’s dead, said Starx, eyes wide and astonished. We killed him.

We? said Olpert.

We.

Up and down F Street, nothing but fog.

Open the trunk, said Starx. His voice was solemn.

Olpert did.

Now help me.

Together they hoisted the body into the trunk. Gently Starx folded the kid’s legs, crossed his arms on his chest. Around his left wrist, a fork. The hood came loose: one side of his face was a mess, the left eye swollen shut, the cheek stippled with dried blood.

At least it’s him, said Starx, the kid who spat on you. See?

Olpert’s vision swam. The tailpipe spewed exhaust against his legs, pleasant and warm, he didn’t want to move. Starx closed the trunk and guided Olpert into the passenger seat. But the door wouldn’t close properly, it kept popping open.

Just hang on to it, said Starx.

Olpert did.

Listen, Bailie, this is the reason we’re in this organization. You have a problem, they take care of it. We’ll take him to the HG’s. They’ll know what to do. Right?

Okay.

He handed Olpert the walkie-talkie. You talk though. Your gramps an OG and all.

Okay.

Bailie, it’s going to be fine. It’s an accident. I pushed him, sure, but I didn’t realize you were — not that it was your fault. . Starx massaged his temples with his thumbs. Just an accident, he said. They’ll take care of it.

Starx turned onto Tangent 10. Waiting for a response over the radio, Olpert stared at his reflection in the sideview mirror. A smudge marked his jawline from ear to chin: he wiped at it, but the mark remained. Vaguely aware of Griggs’ voice — What is it, B-Squad — calling from his lap, Olpert peered at the mirror: the mark wasn’t on his face at all. It was the glass, he realized, smeared with something red and sticky-looking and wet.

VENING WAS coming and the armoire was empty. Or it appeared empty, it was possible that if Sam looked one place then Raven went somewhere else, that he could somehow read Sam’s thoughts and knew where his eyes would go and bounce from that spot to another. The door was secure, the lock held fast, there was no chance the illustrationist could have tunnelled his way out, what would he have used?

Sam had trunked him, the illustrationist had told him how: The image I take with me into the trunk dictates where I will reappear. The image had been of the armoire. Sam had drawn it. But what if his drawing hadn’t been perfect enough? Maybe the perspective was off, or he’d gotten the shading wrong. . Where might Raven have trunked to instead?

Sam rapped on the door. It’s dinnertime okay.

No answer. Yet the basement felt different, emptier somehow. Sam pressed his ear to the door, heard only wood.

Outside the light was shifting, the sprinkler hissed and sputtered across the lawn. And time’s machine was still silent.

Sam said, Okay I’m nuking dinner.

He carried the dead bird upstairs, struck by the weightlessness of it, a pocket of air wrapped in feathers, and put it in the kitchen trash. From the freezer he took two trays of nuclear dinners, punctured the cellophane lids with a knife, and while they were nuking he took the knife in his fist as a murderer might and stabbed twice at the air. He pressed the blade into his fingertip, felt the sharp prick, pushed until it punctured the skin and a droplet of blood swelled and ran down his finger in a twisting ribbon.

With the nuked dinners stacked in one hand and the knife in the bloody other he went back downstairs and stood before the armoire and said, I have your dinner but I cut myself okay.

No reply.

Sam closed his fingers around the handle of the knife and made a stabbing pose. He said, I cut myself, I need your help, come on out. Help me.

The sprinkler on the lawn stopped. The silence was absolute.

Raven I’m just trying to do the work okay. You stopped time’s machine before the third hand came all the way around. Monday the work’s over though right Raven? I’ll let you out then. But I need your help okay. Please Raven. Please okay?

Nothing.

Sam went at the armoire with the steak knife: he stabbed, the handle snapped, Sam kept stabbing the door clutching just the blade. Blood ran down his arm and smeared his fingers and he kept stabbing and scraping, shearing wood from the door, saying, Help me, help me, help me.

He stopped. The pain in his hand was a sharp wet twang and he uncurled his fingers with difficulty. He’d buried the blade into his palm, he had to wiggle it out, the sound it made was gristly. The blood was sticky and hot and everywhere. Sam took off his three watches, lay them side by each on his bed, the third hand stuck at nine. Then he wrapped his wounded hand in ducktape, thinking as he did of Adine’s face in the hospital, swathed in bandages, the eyes hidden somewhere deep inside, seeing nothing.

CAN I GET you a drink, said Wagstaffe. Or something to eat — sausages maybe?

Griggs eyed the NFLM’s Silver Personality, whose face glowed an ungodly russet in We-TV Studios’ halogen-lit hallways, chin jutting from it in a dimpled, tanned promontory. He had the eager look of a camper on parents’ visiting day, standing there with his hands clasped, rocking on his heels. The unsolicited and disarmingly thorough tour was finally over, here at the control room.

Noodles checked his watch. Tapped it. Held it to his ear. Didn’t nod.

We’re fine, said Griggs. Let’s proceed to the task at hand?

Of course! Head on in, I’ll get you guys set up.

Wagstaffe wheeled two chairs up to the console, patted them for Griggs and Noodles to sit, flicked a switch, and a bank of monitors came to life.

Grab headsets, said Wagstaffe. They’re tuned to the NFLM frequency. What else?

As long as we can monitor all the Squads, said Griggs, we should be fine.

Wagstaffe puffed his chest. Well with ten thousand cameras — Eyes on the City, as we say! — feeding live right here, you’ll be able to see anything you want. Actually, he said, tweaking a knob on the console, for a little intimate entertainment , if we switch over to the live We-TV feeds, there’s a lonely Fort Stone housewife who —

That won’t be necessary, said Griggs, smacking his hand away. Now, shouldn’t you get back to your movie?

Our movie, Griggs — All in Together Now , right? We’re almost done the final cut! It’s going to be —

Noodles nodded curtly toward the door.

Mr. Imperial Master, said Wagstaffe, retreating. Mr. Head Scientist — good lookin out!

Though the monitors displayed the whole city — the Institute’s Quad, the parking lot of IFC Stadium, a rooftop camera surveying People Park from the Museum of Prosperity — every view was obscured by fog. Even the Knock Street Station security camera across from the Temple revealed only a faint glimpse of Pea and Dack standing sentry on the front porch.