“Something’s… off,” he whispered at last. “Can’t shake the feeling.”
“Bad dream?”
“No, more like a feeling.” He took a few long, slow breaths. "I don't know if it's bad, just weird. Like there's something…" Regan frowned, one hand curling around the quilt he pulled up to his chin, the other squeezing Rowan’s more tightly. "I don’t know. It’s no one thing, not a specific… I just don’t like tonight, that’s all."
"Sometimes you don’t need a reason.” Rowan was quiet for a moment, and looked faraway themself.
“Sometimes you don’t need a reason. Some nights just need to pass. The only good thing is, they all do.”
“It’s like someone’s still watching me, even though I know they’re not.” He let out a sigh, rough and frustrated. “I know it’s nothing. I know it. But still.”
“What can I do?”
“Tell me it’s nothing," Regan looked up quickly with a strange, sudden hope. “Really, just tell me it's nothing to worry about. I don’t believe it when I say it, but maybe I’ll believe you. I always believe you.”
“I can’t say it’s nothing,” Rowan said slowly, and the smile that spread across Regan’s face was bitter.
“Because in Parole it’s always something, right?”
“No. Because it’s not nothing if it makes you feel like this. That’s definitely something. It’s important.”
The smile that was more of a grimace slipped off Regan’s face. The look that replaced it was much more tired, and it was hard to believe he’d actually been asleep when they came in. Or that he’d slept much at all the past several nights. “I think it was a dream after all. I remembered a little.”
Rowan didn’t speak, just waited as Regan collected the pieces in his head and fit them together. As he thought, his frill began to shiver again.
“Water,” he said at last, in a whisper so dry at first it seemed like he might be asking for a drink. Rowan had to lean a little closer to hear, even holding each other as tightly as they were. “Instead of fire. Parole was drowning instead of burning. I was… down so far, couldn’t see which way was up. Except,” he gave a laugh that held no joy at all, and entirely too much fear. “There was still smoke all around. Isn’t that weird? No fire, but smoke underwater. And people, or… creatures, something, in there too.” He paused, swallowed hard, then cleared hist throat as if it were parched. “And… and there were…”
“It’s all right,” Rowan said almost as quietly, and holding very still. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“Teeth. That’s all.” Regan shook his head, maybe to clear it of unwelcome thoughts, maybe to wake himself up more firmly and escape the dream for good. “I thought Zilch would be home by now."
"They were here for a little while,” Rowan said, following his obvious change of subject; at least it was to a much more reassuring thought.
“I thought Zilch would be home by now.”
“They had to go back out,” Rowan said almost as quietly, finally letting Regan’s hand go only to gently touch his frill when it began to shake again. “They were here for a little while, but their run wasn’t over. They’ll be back soon, don’t worry.”
“Did they get hurt?”
Rowan’s hesitation was almost unnoticeable—but nothing got past Regan. His eyes flicked up immediately and they opened theirs, saw his instant attention, and gave a slight sigh. “Their old skin came undone on a loose nail again, so I sewed it back up. It took five minutes, and they’ll be fine.”
“I keep telling them to just use new skin. Someday it’s gonna get them into trouble.”
“I know.” Rowan was quiet for a moment, black eyes downcast as Regan closed his again. “But it’s important to them.”
“I don’t get them sometimes…” Regan mumbled, turning to half-bury his face in blankets and Rowan’s fur. “Love ‘em, but don’t get ‘em. Or Jay. He went to some… party? Jay. Jay went to a party. Thought he was messing with me, but it’s true?”
“You could have gone too. We were all invited.”
“I don’t see you going.”
“That’s because I have… books.” They wrapped one arm more securely around Regan’s waist, other hand gently resting on his frill, thumb stroking his cheek.
“Uh-huh.” Regan smiled, sleepily but much more happily this time. “And I have… everything.”
The two of them were quiet for a few slow, deep breaths and just as they were both on the edge between sleep and awake something seemed to occur to Rowan, because they blinked a few times and raised their head. “Oh. Zilch did ask me to tell you one thing.”
“What’s that?” Regan was much closer to a far more restful dream, but he pushed himself back into focus and opened his eyes as well—only to close them again, smiling, as he got his answer.
“Good night, Dream Sweet…” Rowan began to sing, gentle voice and soothing lullaby melody surrounding Regan like their warm embrace, chasing every lingering bit of tension from his body and fear from his mind. He sank down into it like he did their blanket and pillow nest, only hanging onto wakefulness to make it last. In moments like these, he didn’t want to miss a note, a moment, or a breath. “In the morning, I’ll be here…”
When the song’s words were over, Regan didn’t have any of his own. Instead he raised his head enough to kiss Rowan’s cheek just above their jaw, then let himself relax entirely with a deep sigh.
“And so will you, Regan.” Rowan murmured, half to him and half to themself.
“That’s ‘cause it's warm in here,” he mumbled back, eyes closed. “I’m staying here forever.”
Rowan let out a sleepy chuckle. “Zilch will be home soon too. I told them to just come find us in here…”
“Good.” Regan’s eyes opened just enough to travel across the room to the desk against the far wall. A faint but knowing smile spread across his face. He found the words he was looking for as he smiled up at Rowan and closed his eyes.
“Home is where the heart is.”
Confused—and then intrigued—Hans followed their gaze across the room to the desk, and the books strewn across it. He saw nothing of interest, until he looked again at the row of dully shining shapes across its top level.
“Oh. Huh!” Now that Hans actually gave it his undivided attention, he saw why this room was the most important in the entire library. It was these large, cylindrical, sealed jars of clear fluid, and the small objects that gently floated, suspended, inside. He really would have expected to find these perfectly preserved internal organs down in the secret lab, but here they were. “That’s definitely a heart. And lungs, a stomach—and I don’t even know what that is, a spleen? Pancreas? Wow. That’s messed up. That is really…” he shot a look back at the beanbag chair and the pair snuggled safe and warm in each others’ arms. “You guys some cute little murder babies, or… oh. Oh!” He smacked his translucent forehead with an equally ghostly hand. “Obviously. Stitched-up Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come down there. This is where they keep their unmentionables, isn’t it?”
Neither of them answered. Rowan’s eyes were closed as well and their head rested against Regan’s. Both of their breathing was slow, regular, and after a few seconds, synced to a gentle, shared rhythm.
“Wow. Outstanding.” Hans chuckled and shook his head as he turned away. “And I betcha dollars to donuts you’re two more unmentionables right here. ‘Cause they never mention a thing—about any of this. Do they? Wouldn’t want to reveal, uh, weak spots, would you? All tall, dark and terrifying, nobody’d ever know. I mean, unless you’re… me.”
Hans began to fade from the room, then snapped right back to full saturation. For a moment he focused as hard as he could, just to project the illusion of standing right there, solid and in the flesh. Even if they couldn’t see him, they’d know he was there eventually. By the time he was done, all of Parole would.
“Oh, and by the way, lizard boy—you were right! It is a weird night! A good night. But I’
m not nothing. I’m definitely something! Oh, let me tell you—I’m something else!” He left the room with a laugh, and not by the door.
For the second time that evening, Regan woke up, but this time it wasn’t from a sound. Not even the smallest noise broke the room’s gentle stillness, or reached his sharp ears. He shivered, a long shudder running down not just his spine but his entire body.
“Rowan?” he gasped, voice higher and more desperate than it had been.
“Hmm?” They were awake immediately, eyes open and focused on Regan's face. His every muscle was locked and his eyes open wide and staring; he looked almost panic-stricken. In a moment, so was Rowan.
“Regan, are you all right? Can you hear me?” Finally, after one of the strangest, most frightening seconds of his life, Regan seemed to snap back to life and into himself, grabbing at Rowan’s wrist and forcing a breath into his lungs like it was the first one he’d ever taken in his life.
“You’re in the library,” they said, rubbing circles on his back as he desperately sucked in one deep breath after another. “You’re safe in the deepest, most protected room of the library with me. Nothing is going to hurt you here. Nobody can find you here unless you want them to. Just listen to my voice, and try to breathe very slowly, in to the count of four, one, two, three, four…”
“That’s it, just breathe,” they said, rubbing circles on his back as he took in one desperately deep breath after another. “You’re safe. Just slow, deep breaths.”
“Okay—I—okay,” he stammered, squeezing their wrist so hard it had to hurt. He seemed to realize this almost immediately because he let go quickly, frill shaking like a dry leaf in a high wind.
“What happened?” Rowan asked, reaching up to stroke his trembling neck frill that had so recently seemed paralyzed, other hand resting on Regan’s chest, which was now moving up and down too quickly and deeply to be considered normal. “Another nightmare?”
“No. I don’t know.” Regan shook his head. He flopped back down and burrowed more closely against the warmth of their soft body and softer fur, burying his face in the depression between their shoulder and jaw.
“Something woke me up. I couldn’t breathe, it felt like I was still underwater. Maybe it was the dream again, or…”
Rowan waited as they had before, but this time Regan didn’t continue. They could feel the pounding of his heart, and his rapid pulse beneath his frill, and now their own heart was hammering right along with Regan’s.
“I don’t know what’s going on with me tonight,” Regan murmured. “Never had a nightmare so bad it woke me up, or a flashback in my sleep, if that’s what this was. I actually felt this one. It hurt, when I couldn’t breathe. Throat, lungs…”
“That sounds terrifying,” Rowan said, followed by one of their brief pauses that meant they were considering too many possibilities to even choose one. As usual, most of them were frightening. Finally, the most urgent question won out. “Does it still hurt?”
“No, I’m fine…” Regan tried a faint smile; it didn’t quite make it. ‘Fine,’ like ‘normal,’ had been such an alien concept for so long, it bordered on the absurd. But it was worth a try. “Whatever it was, it’s over now. Damn, it’s been a weird night.”
“I’m just sorry it happened. It’s hard enough handling your demons when they stay in your head. When they cross the line into actual pain…”
“Yeah.” Regan took another slow, experimental breath, looking troubled even when he found he could. “It was… sharp.”
A chill lingered in the air like the aftermath of a winter breeze. Rare in Parole, which had experienced nothing like autumn or winter in ten years. Almost unnatural—and in this city, that was saying something.
“Are you cold?” Rowan asked after several seconds, seeming partly lost in a reverie as distant and strange as most other things had been this strange night.
“Am I green?” Regan managed to give them a little smile that stayed this time.
“You’re adorable.” They looked fully at him then, and the worry faded from their face seeing his smile was free of anxiety or pain.
Rowan pressed a kiss against the top of his head and pulled the blankets tight around them both, trying to surround the easily-chilled reptilian Regan with every bit of their warmth they could. Immediately after, they smiled against his smooth scales despite their worry, realizing they’d unconsciously passed on the kiss they’d received not long before, all its intimacy and promise, all its love. A message like the song, and just as important. “Better?”
“Long as you stay with me.” Eventually the folds of skin at Regan’s neck lay still and the rest of his shaking stopped. The night was still strange, but together they regained an equilibrium. It took a while, but Regan breathed easy.
“Always.” Neither of them were going anywhere. Not on this strange night.
☾
As Hans took in everything he’d seen, he began to think. And as he thought, he pushed away from the windowsill at which he floated, like a swimmer kicking away from the edge of the pool. Then he began to rise.
“Well, Liam was useless,” he said to himself as he ascended into the night sky, where he did all his best pondering. Before long, the city lights of Parole spread out far below him like illuminated lines on a map, leading from Point A to Point B. “But I can work with this. What do we have? We got a pretty much invincible Frankenstein-monster, and a heart-in-a-jar. We got a soft little goat, and a scaly little lizard. We got a guy with a shark tooth, we got a girl with a… very cool motorcycle. Huh. Might take a few tries, little more digging, but… Yeah. I can use this. I can do anything I want.”
Hans smiled, a sharp white crescent floating sideways against the dark night sky. “I think I got myself a plan.”
One week prior to CHAMELEON MOON…
☾
“Miss Rose?”
She looked up in surprise. Out of everything Rose had expected to happen today, of all the strange and amazing sights Parole offered on a daily basis, this was something new.
“Yes, Cai?” She asked as soon as she could speak. He had actually spoken. At least she thought he had, now she had to make sure. “Do you have something you want to share?”
The young man with the mop of curly blonde hair and dark circles under his eyes hesitated. He shut his mouth again, blue eyes flicking to the tile floor. The room wasn’t an intimidating one. He wasn’t being put on the spot in class or a work meeting. The converted classroom held a circle of ten chairs, the most comfortable ones Rose could find, in the coziest room with the cleanest pillows. Most schools in Parole had shut down and ones that did run didn’t have enough living, able-bodied staff to keep up regular hours. But whether school was in session or not, this classroom would never have a pop quiz. No grades, no wrong answers.
“It’s okay. There are no wrong answers here. Anything you feel is right.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
She waited, but didn’t actually expect him to continue. Her question had been gentle and inviting, but without much actual hope behind it.
Cairus Maddox was a brick wall. After over a year and a half of group, he hadn’t said a word. Nothing, no responses to any questions, never volunteering to speak. None of Rose’s attempts, whether warm and gentle, or more seriously searching, had yielded any kind of fruit. He just built up his walls stronger, higher, retreated further behind them, and farther away. People completely withdrawing after severe trauma wasn’t uncommon, and she suspected this was the case. But she couldn’t stand the feeling of somebody getting left behind, or not doing enough to help them.
That said, he had perfect attendance. Rose had never needed more than ten chairs, and sometimes only two or three other people showed up. Some came once, then never again. But Cai never missed a week. In all this time, he was the only constant.
Rose knew from his sparse medical records that he spoke English, and to her knowledge, he was verbal and not deaf or hard of hearing. He’d also received a
Chrysedrine injection when he was eight years old—but no unusual side effects had manifested. In fact, there had been no noticeable effect at all. Cai was apparently one of the very few people for whom the ‘wonder drug’ had done nothing whatsoever, including its original intent as a therapeutic substance. That in itself was something of a mystery.
“You don’t have to,” she offered softly when he kept hesitating. Going a year and a half without saying anything at all, and then jumping right into public speaking was quite a challenge. “It’s okay if—”
“No, I want to,” he said quickly, eyes narrowing not in a glare but determination as he took a deep breath, angular shoulders rising and falling as he geared himself up.
He was a mystery too. Cai clearly followed everything said in the room, listening intently and taking in everything said. Still, he never asked any questions, leaving Rose with no answers.
But several weeks ago, she did get a few. Rose was a firm believer that beauty, love and basic human goodness could be found even in the most terrible of circumstances. A good way of surviving those terrible circumstances was to post regular reminders. Getting permission for her group to use one of the classroom’s walls to put up a Wall of Thanks bulletin board—a place for everyone to post one note a week, something that made them happy, just one good thing—was the easy part. Actually finding that one good thing in Parole could be significantly harder, even for Rose.
Or so she thought. Of the entire group, Cairus was the only person who had something to put on the board, every single Thursday.
“My boyfriend Tobias is going to be the next Jimi Hendrix. First Parole, then the world! I’ll go to all his shows.”
“Radio Angel made a channel just for old standup comedy and it’s been up for a whole week. SkEye hasn’t found it yet. When I listen, sometimes I forget where I am. Sometimes feels like we have normal lives.”
Life Within Parole Page 9
