Chapter Text
Minutes stretched. Neither spoke, nor offered a question. Raz focused on his breathing, and laced his fingers across his stomach. He felt it rising and falling with every breath. Sniffing hard, he frowned as hints of coagulated blood spurted out of his nostril from a particularly harsh exhale. He dragged his thumb across his nose, stared at the glimmering, crusty residue, and wiped it on his jacket.
Next to him, Bobby rasped through his mouth. Up close, his cheekbones were too pronounced. They stretched over his nearly colorless skin, as if strangled in a clear, thin sheet of plastic pulled taut. At least, in their somewhat relaxed positions, Bobby was no longer starkly pallid.
Surrounding them, the swaying, icy shadow flowed and impeded. The wind carried its chill, and Raz was beginning to see his own breath. He was surprised that it had given them a wide berth and allowed them to rest on the grass. Those hundreds of eyes swam through the ooze and rested at the edges, pupils dilated. He was reminded of thick foam at the end of an ocean wave.
But while the water would recede, the shadow refused, and every bubbling, sloshing inch of the vast shadow contaminated Bobby’s mind, just waiting to pull them into its whirlpool.
Their only saving grace was the reprieve. However brief, it was granted. When Bobby accepted, it seemed the shadow followed. It appeared to have no control, given Bobby’s affirmation. The shadow, after all, was a part of Bobby. It simmered and boiled, until it grew too intense, like water seething in a heated pot. And when it overflowed, then it sneered its worst at Bobby, sending him spiraling into acts against others and himself.
When Raz looked at Bobby, finding his expression vacant, he tugged at his sleeve.
Bobby wants to talk. At least, he’s talking long enough to recover his strength. For the shadow - name still pending - I bet it’s just biding its time, waiting to see what I’ll do and what Bobby says.
Bobby’s eyes were moving. They shifted from side to side, up and down. He was probably connecting the stars, the likes of which confused Raz. He knew his Big Dippers and Orions and Cassiopeias, but the vast, velvet backdrop of space contained strange, squiggly formations. Stars blinked in and out, lights turning on and off in the blink of an eye. As he watched the stars, Bobby nodded off, but the static droned, and he snapped awake, gasping, earning a metallic, piercing buzz that made him grit his chipped teeth.
Raz’s frown dipped.
When I was listening to the radio, the static was crazy loud, but I couldn’t discern what it was saying. It’s still talking to him in a volume that I just can’t understand, right? That must be it. Probably should’ve figured that out sooner, or maybe I did. Brain fog sucks.
Bobby rubbed the bridge of his nose, coughed, and cleared his throat. He let his arm slap down into the shadow, entirely unaware of the skeletal fingers spearing through the mixture to clasp onto his wrist. The static continued, snarling in a noise that rattled Raz’s teeth, and as Bobby’s expression twisted, Raz’s stomach flipped.
This part of himself is setting Bobby up for failure. Bobby’s done it countless times, and this thing definitely helped worsen those feelings to cause Bobby to lash out. No wonder he wouldn’t notice it. He’s been talking so badly about himself this whole time. He has no other outlets, so it’s entirely internalized.
He paused, then recalled the ever-present, faint throbbing in his brow.
Well, that’s not true. He made me his outlet until that backfired.
Raz tried to move his legs, but the mire wasn’t as gracious. The slightest movement was met with contempt. Tendrils wormed around Raz’s ankle, the warning clear. He wasn’t leaving, and neither was Bobby. The talon remained pressed against Bobby’s stomach. It tapped a phalange against Bobby’s ribs, as if idly playing on a xylophone. Knowing they could’ve been submerged or stabbed at any second, Raz started their conversation with slow and simple small talk.
“What happened to that outfit you had on?”
Bobby tugged at his vest. The sleeves were torn and revealed his bony arms. Raz had seen them many times already, and still, the impact was the same. Instead of any healthy layers, they were slabs of skin stretched across a humerus, ulna, and radius.
“That stupid thing? It, uh, it vanished when I went through the gate.” He hitched his thumb in the direction Raz came. “You went through camp, You changed, too, right?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, I-I just figured you would’ve been wearing the outfit you made.”
“Guess not.”
“Guess so.”
They lapsed into silence, though it was far shorter. Bobby blew out his lips and narrowed his eyes. His frustration heaved in each word.
“Don’t you wanna ask me stuff that’s important? Or are we just shooting the damn breeze?”
He held out his hand. “Look, Bobby, I-I really-I really don’t know where to start. So much has happened, and-” He rubbed his head. “-and my thoughts are muddled. I don’t think I’ll be able to run through everything, so give me some time.” Managing a smirk, he tacked on, “That’s an order from the winner.”
Static whispered. Though the words were incomprehensible, Bobby grimaced. He crossed his arms, and the shadow slithered between them, filling the space. As it quivered like an iridescent oil spill, Raz was thankful no new appendage emerged, and the talon only dug in a hair. The deterrent was clear enough as its lipless grins stretched, filled with numerous snicking teeth.
Raz coughed and massaged his throat. Levity wasn’t in Bobby’s best interest. The shadow had every intention to utilize the slightest slip on Raz’s part. Anything said and done was a trigger to ignite the most severe of Bobby’s reactions and incense the shadow to swarm them. But although Bobby hadn’t scorned him, nor let loose a whimper, the tightness of his frown warned Raz to maintain his professional poise as a Psychonaut.
“Okay, okay, um, let me ask about…” He snapped his fingers a few times, humming. “...uh, the beginning. If we start there, that’ll be better for both of us. Keep our heads in the game.”
The fingers on his right hand curled inward one by one. “What game? Did you think this was a game?” he slowly demanded, and the talon wedged inward on the side of his torso. He winced, but nothing snapped.
As a rise in snickers assaulted Raz’s ears, and the static droned, he found it in him to scowl. He had already elucidated his intentions. He had never wanted to hurt Bobby; it should have been evident he was taking everything with utmost solemnity. Even the lightest of quips were stated with the resolve of easing Bobby’s tattered nerves.
With the PSI lock still squeezing around his head, the pain like a sour tonic, Raz decided it was acceptable to exchange a few quick barbs.
“Can you stop taking everything I say as a personal attack? It’s like you want me to get pissed, right? That way, we’ll devolve into another meaningless argument and get nowhere fast.”
Static pitched, as if tuned incorrectly on a television. It blared squarely into Raz’s ears, but he refused to bend like an antenna. He sat up, using his elbows as leverage. He looked Bobby in the eyes, brows furrowing, and he captured Bobby’s gaze. Unblinking and undaunted, he waited.
That thing was jeering, but when Bobby broke first, it hushed. Bobby’s expression sagged, like his muscles had lost elasticity. He dragged one hand across his other arm, where Raz found various bruises. Taking a closer look, the staggering strife over the day remained with Bobby. Grime and blood still matted his scalp, hardening like mud. His welts and wounds were scabbed and scarred, blotches of scarlet contrasting with icy blue skin. Even his teeth were damaged, and Raz couldn’t recall when his braces had been destroyed.
“Yeah. No, yeah. I’m-” He swallowed hard and filled his chest with a phlegmy breath. “-I’m the loser. Gotta do what the winner wants. I wasn’t even good enough to direct my own movie.”
“And you never will be, dipsh*t!”
“Raz is already in the director’s chair, and you’re just reading off his script!”
“You knew you couldn’t win, not with how much of a f*ck-up you are!”
“Should’ve just buried your head in the sand.”
The shadow’s snarls interrupted with cunning cruelty. The smallest hint of Bobby’s weakness was gnashed between their teeth and eaten. Then, they spat up and belched their ridicule. As the air reeked, stinking of humid stomach acid, Raz forced his churning guts to still as his eyes burned.
I have to treat this like I’m treading water. He’s vulnerable, but he made an effort. He’s trying to meet me in the middle, even if I have to walk faster.
As Raz solidified his plan, he shifted through his time in Bobby’s mental world, selected a fragment out of hundreds, and asked about the first person who came to his mind.
“What was your mom like?”
Bobby’s face screwed up, as if catching a whiff of the putrid air. Raz gnawed on the inside of his cheek, feeling like he needed to slap himself, or a TK hand had really swatted his cranium.
Oh, way to fumble.
“Didn’t you see for yourself?” Bobby growled, the static rumbling like ominous thunder. His knuckles popped as he clenched his fists and forced himself to sit up. “You were snooping around my memories, and I burned that dump to the f*cking ground with you in it. Why do I gotta talk about that hag when you already got the picture, huh?”
“Dumbass! He wants to know why your own mother didn’t want you.”
“Or why you were pawned off to all those different homes and shoved back into her care.”
“He has such a kind mom, doesn’t he? She sure puckered up to kiss him all over.”
“He wants to drive the dagger deeper.”
“His family loves him. All of yours couldn’t stand you!”
Bobby squeezed his eyes shut. Raz gasped, unsure of where to place his hands. As his eyes darted, he watched the appendages slithering in the mire like snakes. Their tips were sharpened, riding on the backs of gurgling waves. And as the claw curled around Bobby’s torso, Bobby uttering a pained groan, Raz blurted the first words that came to mind.
“I-I-I’m sorry. You’re right to be upset. That’s not what I should’ve done.”
The tendrils collapsed like water sprayed from a hose. They splashed into the shadow and covered the blinking eyes. Bobby winced and started with something between a splutter and swear. His gaunt face and slack jaw matched the many mouths. Dragging himself to sit cross-legged, knees bouncing, Bobby was entirely unaware of the ooze pooling in his lap. Skeletal hands and shapes of fingers wound in sinews and muscles emerged from the mixture. But as they reached for Bobby’s torso, where the talon clasped like a vice, Raz evenly spoke, despite the sweat on his brow.
“I was angry at you, but I was wrong to enter your home when you begged me not to. I still did, and it was shameful of me to repeat a past mistake. I already learned that lesson years back.” He raked his fingers along his clammy neck and face, his fringe with their split ends itching his cheek. “We’re taught that respecting boundaries is one of the most important aspects of being a Psychonaut, and I crossed yours. I’m sorry for causing you so much distress that you were compelled to set it on fire.”
Bobby wasn’t offering a swift response. He fixed his gaze to the stars radiating above. They ranged from hundreds of thousands bedazzling the pitch black night. If there was a moon, then it was smothered by the stars. Raz couldn’t exactly pinpoint if there had been a moon, though the familiarity of being on the ground and observing the night sky refreshed his aching body.
He had wronged Bobby. Raz, regardless of his status as Bobby’s imprisoned actor, was still a Psychonaut. He stepped over the line of what it meant to be an agent. At the time, he felt there was nothing unprincipled in deriding the director. Despite Bobby’s apparent agony, of which Raz knew, he still snapped at Bobby and stormed off to the one location where Bobby couldn’t touch him.
He had begged Raz, and flippantly, Raz stormed to a home where Bobby was no longer welcomed.
I mean, it’s awful what I learned, how his mom neglected him and kicked him out. I just wanted to protect myself. Strongman and Bobby were chasing me. They wouldn’t let me go, but he pleaded with me not to go inside. Raz frowned. Pretty sure trying not to get eviscerated was more important at the time, though. I can only guess whose side Hollis would be on.
Raz wasn’t certain what Bobby would have done to him, had he snatched Raz’s collar in time. He was positive he wouldn’t have been left in one piece. His limbs could’ve been hacked, leaving him with bloody stumps. His guts could have been spilled while Bobby laughed and Strongman filmed. There were countless possibilities trickling into his thoughts, each more gruesome and grotesque than the last. It would have been a real show-stopper for the lone viewer.
He shivered. The shadow surged over his legs like a rush of frigid, freshwater muck. It caked his lower half and rose upward, a mocking blanket. Gritting his teeth, both he and the shadow suddenly stopped as a new splatter speckled the ooze on Raz’s thigh.
Raz’s hand moved automatically. Glints of cracked scarlet brightened the area. He snatched his tossed goggles before the shadow could seize it. As the shadow batted across his bruising knees, retreating, Raz wrapped them around his neck. And with a breath held in his throat, not bothering to wipe the stained lenses, Raz warily examined Bobby, who held out his limp hand.
“Yeah, well…” he mumbled, not meeting Raz’s eyes, “...I sure f*cking crossed yours, so I don’t have any right to complain. Jeez! What am I saying? I don’t have a leg to stand on. Look what I did to you.”
“Oh, you were planning to do the worst.”
“You wanted him to suffer.”
“You were gonna prolong this for as long as you could.”
Shrill giggling spewed like steam. As if reading Raz’s mind, the shadow confirmed his deep terror. But it couldn’t have been the case. It had reacted to Bobby’s thoughts, his feelings on the matter. Bobby was already well aware of his actions, of the brutality he had forced Raz to endure. There were far too many incidents to shift through, like tabs in a thick binder, and as Bobby dipped his chin to his chest, Raz chose to start over.
“Maybe…maybe we can start somewhere else,” he suggested, though Bobby did not answer.
Scratching through his hair, Raz clicked his tongue and looked over his shoulder. By mercy alone, the shadow seemed disinterested by his proposal. Rather, it was focusing on the heavy foliage. Trees toppled into the viscous ooze. While the brittle bark was chewed, and the leaves were used as toothpicks, the cameras were far more visible. They even had the nerve to advance, the tentacles and talons dragging forward through the ebony essence, as if the shadow truly had no mass.
Despite consuming Bobby’s mental world, it wasn’t enough. The shadow wanted more. They were the last remaining morsels.
As hints of scarlet broke through the dark sea, glimpses of organs rising to coat the exterior, Raz turned his attention to Bobby.
We can still do this. Just have to stay calm, keep Bobby calm, he thought, watching Bobby stare at the sky. There’s so much to discuss that it’s overwhelming, and we’ll be overwhelmed, if I keep screwing up. Where should I start again?
“My mom-”
“Oh!”
Raz clapped his hand over his mouth, startled by Bobby, who was startled in return. They waited for the other to begin when Raz sputtered. He patted his chest, feeling like he was choking on his own tongue as he desperately searched for something to say.
“What? What is it? What’s the damage?”
Bobby’s sharp demands were met by Raz dismissively waving his hand.
“No, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Go ahead, Bobby. I’m listening.” A quick chirp of a laugh tittered under his teeth. “It’s difficult starting off with a topic as large as your mother, so-”
Bobby snorted. His lips yanked tight in a grin. He wedged his fist hard against his mouth. His shoulders quaked as he coughed, muffling his laughter and blowing out his cheeks. They burned so heavily that his freckles were smothered in a shade of deep, deep violet.
Raz blinked. He almost couldn’t comprehend seeing Bobby seized by a snickering fit. Even the shadow was stricken silent, as if equally dumbfounded. But when Bobby peered at Raz out of the corner of his eye, a train’s whistle went off in his brain, and he realized what he inadvertently said about Bobby’s mother.
Raz let out a wheezy, garbled string of a laugh. He snaked his hand behind his hot neck. His face contorted in an expression combining regret and amusem*nt.
“Um, oops!”
As Raz tugged his collar, Bobby finished off with a sigh. He lacked his smile, but his frown wasn’t unpleasant. There was a neutral crease on his mouth. His eyes were open and no longer half-lidded, which Raz might have believed were focused.
The shadow rippled. The static was quieter. Its appendages were dissolving into itself, and the edges trickled away from them. It ceased gorging at the sight of Bobby’s good humor. Every eye was wide, and each mouth was snapped shut. Only the tendrils carrying the cameras remained close, as if the shadow was uncertain how to comprehend Bobby’s abrupt delight.
Raz grinned. But if those running, distant waves say anything, I bet this thing is pissed.
“Yeah,” Bobby said, entirely unaware of the collapsing trees, “let’s start with that hag. I got somethin’ to say about her.”
He nodded. “Okay. Just so you know, I’m aware of certain…parts. So, if you don’t want to go there, we don’t have to talk about them.”
Bobby dragged his hand across his chin. He stopped to stare at knuckles, which, like the rest of his body, were littered in cuts. He might not have noticed the extent of the damage caused by the shadow, but his hesitation keyed into Raz that something was stirring within him.
It wasn’t the proper time to mention it, however. When it was time to cross that bridge, only then would be the right moment.
Bobby started with another sigh.
“She’s, well, she wasn’t much of a mom. She was more than happy to get rid of me whenever she could. Whenever camp rolled around, she’d sign me up for both month-long summer sessions and week-long holiday training.” He stopped, pursing his lips, then scoffed. “Sometimes, she’d lose custody of me, and my foster family of the week or the foster system would ship me off to camp. Anything to get me out of their hair. Bet they were f*ckin’ happy when I’d get sent to juvie. At least, then they didn’t hafta to pay those bullsh*t fees for Whispering Rock.”
A bitter laugh crawled out of his throat.
“Still, I kept going back to her. I thought, I dunno, one day, she might change her mind.” He shook his head. “Ha! Haha! Stupid. Completely f*cking dumb. As soon as I was old enough and finished school, I was out her damn door and her damn hair for good. I bet she’s toasting another f*cking drink to my absence.”
Raz frowned. He fiddled with a loose wrinkle in his pants. He couldn’t imagine such fervent rejection. Donatella was tough, and her love, sometimes, incorporated that unique toughness. A few passive remarks here, a disappointed sigh there, it was nothing Raz couldn’t handle. When he was younger, and his mother spared him worried looks, or huffed out a breath after discovering him TK’ing an aerial hoop, she still welcomed him into her arms. Now, she might have grumbled that he was spending more time with the Psychonauts, but Raz never stopped loving her, and she never stopped loving him. She always saved a seat for him at their dinner table.
“She was your mother. She should’ve been better. I know my mom wouldn’t get along with her.”
Bobby whipped him with his glare. “Not with how your mom hounded you. Smothering your face in kisses so much that you were smeared by her lipstick.”
“Yeah, it gets pretty embarrassing when she does it in the lobby and - oh, uh-!”
He stumbled over his words. His mistake was foolhardy. He overlooked the rancor in Bobby’s tone. An edge of jealousy lingered in his vowels.
The pain of Bobby’s fists bashing into his face and breaking teeth rushed forth, inflaming Raz’s cheeks. Wrapping tight around Raz was the odor of decaying guts wafting from the shadow’s mouths like bad breath. Brightly colored viscera packed down their visible throats like chunky, half-chewed vomit. When Bobby had screamed about the Aquatos, his severe animosity beating Raz down deeper and deeper through the screens, Raz couldn’t help but shudder.
But Bobby, too, recoiled. And at once, the shadow was still. Though, Raz was disgusted to realize slimy intestines, like moldy sausage links, occasionally poked free from various closed mouths.
“sh*t. No. I’m the loser.” He pried his fingers through his matted hair. “I gotta do what you want.”
Raz dissolved his own wariness. “Bobby, I don’t want to force this out of you. I’m not trying to coax any sort of confession. I just want to talk and understand.”
The stars overhead continued twinkling, untouchable. Raz peered between them and Bobby, watching as Bobby eased himself back on the ground. With the talon firmly clutching Bobby’s torso, the daggers desiring the perfect inciting incident to savor Bobby’s puncturing, Raz’s thoughts ran rampantly.
It hasn’t reacted just yet. When it was attacking Bobby, it happened during a period of intense stress and internalized malice. It’s still spreading, and I can only anticipate when it’ll jump into action. So, I have to keep calm, choose my words carefully, not get swept in the current, and maybe, Bobby will stay calm, too. I don’t know what could set him off, but so far, so good, I think? We were able to recover. We can get through this without more bloodshed.
“Can I ask a few more questions?”
“Knock yourself out,” Bobby muttered.
“When-when we were at your funhouse - can I call it that? Or does a haunted house sound better?”
“I don’t care.”
“Uh, right. At your funhouse, I screamed at you, and I told you to go home.” Raz rubbed his thumbs against his middle fingers. “Do you have a place to stay when your internship ends this summer?”
“No. I don’t.”
His blunt remark was like hitting a wall nose-first. Raz took a breath and couldn’t speak, feeling it trapped in his throat. As it tried to disperse, he struggled to think. He, himself, had two homes. He had a comfortable dorm in HQ, decorated with whatever he liked. Trinkets from missions, memories from the circus, filled with the smells he enjoyed. Then, there was the caravan, always traveling, where he shared a room with his siblings. When he was younger, he often shared a bed with Frazie, sleeping on her stomach while Mirtala snuggled into the crook of her elbow. Although cramped, his little sister’s foot smacking him in the head, and annoyingly noisy because of each other or the outside world, he was safe.
But they weren’t just physical rooms. At the Motherlobe, Raz was free to explore and strengthen his psychic powers. He had a laundry list of friends, teachers, and coworkers. He could strike up a conversation with anyone and usually have a fun time. The classes and missions were thrilling, coupled with the downtime spent with his fellow Junior Agents. From movie nights in the nearest town, or driving around with Milla, or visiting the Psychic Seven in Green Needle Gulch, to everything in-between, the Motherlobe had become a new home.
And with headquarters in mind, he had a place to return to when he tired of his life as a secret agent. The Aquatos had his bed ready when he visited, and he dressed in his silken tumbling outfits lovingly sewn by his mother. As he stretched and flipped, practicing with his family, or helping out with dinner, then lounging around a campfire with a good story to tell, the smiling faces of Augustus, Donatella, Dion, Frazie, Mirtala, and Queepie awaited him.
Razputin Aquato was not alone. He was enveloped in consistent warmth.
Bobby Zilch was not as fortunate. As soon as his internship ended, the Motherlobe doors would close. And there he would have been, duffle bags in hand, with nowhere to go.
Raz finally exhaled his question.
“Why…why didn’t you tell Hollis? She could’ve - would’ve helped you.”
Bobby tensed, and he did not answer. He looked away, twisting his neck as far as it could go. The shadow extended a hand similar to his from its essence and caressed his cheek. Raz was transfixed as, just like before, a spout rose from the shadow, but before it could inch toward Bobby’s ear, he shouted the first questions coming to mind,
“D-didn’t you like your internship? Is that why you couldn’t-?”
“Huh?” Bobby blurted, turning back and arching an eyebrow. The spout splashed onto his shoulder, staining it black. “‘Didn’t I-?’ What? Where are you going with this? Those are-those are completely different.”
They’re tangentially related, actually. Kind of. On second thought, he might have a point.
Grimacing, his thoughts racing, Raz’s canine caught on his lower lip. “I don’t know. I really, really don’t know where I’m going. Well, yet. I don’t know yet. Sorry. I’m all over the place.”
His uncertainty was the key unlocking the gates, and the shadow gushed in frenetic pulsations. It snarled in dozens of intonations. Raz steeled himself and clutched his knees, stiffening like a plank of steel. Insults razed their bodies like the serrated edges of knives. Underlying everything was the static, stretching across the land and curling around Raz’s head. Like a television screen, he grew fuzzy, and gray splotches dotted his vision as the cacophony terrorized them and-!
Bobby nodded. Everything was swept away in silence.
“All right,” he said with an audible gulp.
“‘All right?’ Is that what you said? What the hell?”
“You can’t be serious, stupid.”
“Why are you doing what he wants? Raz is f*cking with you and...”
At Bobby’s softer tone, the shadow was gradually withdrawing from them and grumbling. Not a single jeer interrupted his compliance. While static steadily droned, it was as if the volume had been lowered with a remote control.
Bobby awkwardly added, “I lost. I guess, uh, I gotta put the work in. Gotta talk more.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Raz piped up, watering a flower of hope blossoming in his chest.
He didn’t address Raz’s earnest remark. Bobby’s eyes locked with the countless stars. Among them, jet black holes were transfixed across the atmosphere. They appeared to be other galaxies. And while they were striking, Raz was brought down to earth as Bobby cleared his throat.
“Y’wanna know about my time in the intern program? You gotta start farther back than that.” Bobby itched his nose, and Raz rested next to him, idly rubbing the grass. “My favorite places on this hellhole of a planet were Whispering Rock and the Motherlobe. Camp was my kingdom, and the Motherlobe was, well, not a kingdom, but I had room and board. I had a place for me. I didn’t have to worry about going hungry, when I could sleep.” Bobby quickly looked at Raz, a shade of purple dusting his cheeks. “How ‘bout that? That good?”
“Yeah. Keep going.”
“Uh, right, right.” He meandered, wringing his hands. “Jeez, I’m all over the place, too. Where do I-?”
“You said we should start farther back. How did you feel about camp?”
“Right, yeah. LIke I said, Whispering Rock was my kingdom. I never had such freedom in all my life. When Oleander came knocking on my door and gave me that pamphlet, I was stoked. Someone wanted me, and said I could be a hero.”
His tone hitched on the final word. His fists trembled.
“Not some f*ckin’ circus freak. Everyone in Drywell knew me as that. Gotta gang up on the psychic kid, but camp was different.”
“I get you there,” Raz quietly admitted, fingers locking across his stomach.
Bobby hesitated, then asked, “Yeah? What do you mean? I remember you, uh, gave that grand ol’ speech when you dropped in at camp. Had everyone listening.”
“I was mostly concerned with whether or not the counselors would understand how genuine I was.” He offered a tiny smile. “My parents weren’t supportive about me attending camp.”
“They weren’t?”
The sharp shock in Bobby’s voice jarred Raz. His eyes looked ready to bulge out of his sockets. But Raz supposed the reaction was warranted; it wasn’t as if they had revealed anything about each other before, and Raz was about to explain why.
“Well, duh. I had to drop in, like ya said. Besides, my dad ripped up that same pamphlet. He grabbed it right out of my hands-” Raz mimed the gestures used by his father, eyes narrowing on the invisible scraps of paper falling around him. “-and shredded it. No son of his was going to a psychic summer camp.”
“So, that’s why you had to run away? Why the hell would he say no?”
“It’ll sound unbelievable to someone who hasn’t lived it. He thought psychics killed his father and cursed our family to drown in water. I had a huge issue with water because of it on top of that.” Raz heaved out a sigh, muscle memory recalling the impact of crashing through Maligula’s storm. “He knows better now. We all do.”
Bobby stared at him, mouth ajar. Then, he wrinkled his nose. His body tensed, and he seemed unable to retort. Whatever he was ruminating could wait, however, as Raz jumped back on track.
“Anyway, you said camp was like your kingdom. Strongman said something similar, I think.” He paused to rub his brow, the PSI lock squeezing. “I know it was your home away from home. Nothing could hurt you here. I mean, why would it? As much as you said camp was stupid, or your relationships with the other kids were…” He pursed his lips. “...abysmal, you must’ve felt safe at Whispering Rock.”
“Y-yeah, yeah.” He scoffed. “I mean, I loved going to camp, and you’re right. As much as I said it was stupid, they were some of the best times of my life.” A smirk lazily tugged at his lips, full of fond remembrance. “One summer, I made this lake monster costume and terrorized the younger kids.”
“Oh, I know about that. Lili showed me a photo of your massive costume. Was it a costume? Looked like a contraption, now that I think about it.” He sighed, closing his weary eyes. “That would’ve been a fun mystery to solve, if I was there.”
“So, you can one-up me again?”
At his brazen tone, as if snapped automatically, Raz slapped Bobby’s bait aside with a casual, “Maybe.”
“And he’d do it all in one day, just like how he usurped you, stu-”
“But I think-” he interjected loudly over the shadow, Bobby’s eyebrows raising to his hairline at his bark, “-there’s more to your camp experience than just bullying kids. You were taking out your frustrations on others because you liked it. It served to remind you that you weren’t in the position of being bullied, right?”
He rolled his eyes. “Nail me on the head like a hammer, why don’t ya?”
“And at one point, there’s also the fact you were a star student.”
Raz paused, eyes widening. His words had the potential of being twisted. Flashes of pulsing lights ebbed in his mind. The GPC had been covered in Mental Cobwebs for a reason.
Wait a second. That’s right. Mental Cobwebs form in areas that are neglected. Bobby wouldn’t easily forget something that upsetting. Were they really placed deliberately?
Thankfully, Bobby hadn’t seemed to register the implication. He continued as if they were truly having a normal conversation.
“I almost never cut class, and eventually, got all my merit badges. I went through the ranks, even if it took too many summers.” He frowned, glancing at Raz. “You got it all in a single day. I was going there for years, and you…you just won the f*cking lottery.”
Spite seeped into Raz’s thoughts, and he bit his tongue. Again, Bobby was assuming. The natural response, had Raz remained ignorant, would have been to retort with similar venom. He had traversed the asylum to rescue everyone, Bobby included. Such a gesture had never been appreciated by Bobby, who hoped he would have fun dying.
But from Bobby’s point of view, Raz considered the length of time spent in camp. Luck was involved. If he hadn’t arrived, then Oleander had the possibility of victory. He had saved everyone and earned his position as a Psychonaut. Simultaneously, the cards were a royal flush, in which Raz was able to steamroll through a summer’s worth of training and more in a morning, afternoon, and evening. The factors aligned like the stars shining above their heads. Without them, as Raz’s molars chewed into his cheeks, he knew everything would have been vastly different for himself and his family.
They might have never learned the truth.
He stared at Bobby, whose shadow encroached. The grass was flattened by the ooze that moved like molasses. As it grazed their bodies, the talon tracing a line across Bobby’s torso, exactly where he had sewn himself together, Raz swallowed his frustration.
They were lying on the grass, and once again, Raz turned to the stars. Once before, he had been lying on his back, sand sifting around him, when he was locked out of the maze. There, the wasteland was as infinite as the sky, the grains as innumerable as the stars. Bringing himself to that moment, Raz spoke what he had realized by his lonesome.
“I think…if you hadn’t lost your brain, we could’ve gone through the asylum and stopped Oleander and Loboto together.”
Bobby’s breath hitched.
“What?”
“You heard me. You were talented. You are talented, Bobby. Even with, uh, some setbacks, you were on the right track. Sure, I was a little better in some areas, but you were great in others, like levitation. You were zipping and zooming ahead of me during that race in Milla’s mind. I only beat you by the skin of my teeth. Remember that, Bobby?”
Wait. Have I seen him levitate? At any point in this movie, I don’t…I don’t think I did. It requires upbeat, positive emotions, so…
Raz halted his internal chatter at Bobby’s continued silence. Bobby rolled himself to his knees, head hanging. Raz followed, setting his hands on his own shoulders. He whispered his name, worried from Bobby’s lack of outbursts or reaction to their physical connection. He was tempted to shake him, to drag out something tangible, even if it was aggravation. As the shadow lurched forward, Raz’s jaw tensed, preventing him from yelping, as it hardened over where they had once sat, razor-sharp claws emerging and waiting to pierce, if they decided to rest their stiff spines.
Scratching his head, Raz wondered if another change in topic was necessary. If discussing camp was too heavy, then the next place where Bobby felt protected was also his last.
“Um, what about your time in the intern program?”
Bobby’s eyes spun to the top of his head. Up close, their sclera was bloodshot, puffy, and gray. His blood vessels must have burst, as red seeped into their corners. He was glaring with such precipitous indignation that Raz recoiled, jerking back and sweeping out his hand that the shadow lurched aside. He clutched the earth, hearing debris shifting under his fingers and tumbling into the abyss below. Catching his breath, his demand was overpowered by Bobby’s snarl.
“Oh, f*ck this! What’s the matter with you?”
As it turned out, they were the exact words Raz wanted to shout. He uttered a garbled grunt, his confusion a warm flush across his face. He threw out his hands, foregoing protocol.
“H-hey, you said you were gonna cooperate-!”
“Shut up!” Bobby shot to his feet, glowering down at Raz. “I knew this was wrong.”
“Huh? What’s wrong now?”
“I said I knew this was wrong! What I did!” He jabbed his finger into the PSI lock, digging it in and pushing Raz back on his haunches. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you being so goddamn nice to me? Saying I could’ve been there with you when you ain’t even looking at what I did to you!”
He swung his leg back, only for a tendril to snatch his ankle. Yelping, he recovered, landing awkwardly on his knees. A moan rolled over his teeth, and a phalange dug into his gut. Damp spots darkened his stained shirt, and Raz gasped, his consternation evaporating as the talon released its fingers and sank into the shadow. Bobby clutched his torso, only to wrap his arms around his groaning stomach, and looked up to seethe at Raz.
“How can you say I could’ve been there with you? After all the sh*t I pulled, that’s what you wanna say? You think I could’ve been somethin’ different? You’re wrong!”
Static crackled, rippling with an undercurrent of verve. Red lights dotted their skin. The cameras hastened through the shadow, carried like offerings. They filmed and filmed, ensuring their lenses would never carry a speck of dust.
“You insulted me once, and I shot at you in a tank! I trapped you in here! I terrorized you! Stabbed at you! Tried to flay you! I chased you around with a chainsaw and nearly gutted you! I said I wasn’t gonna let you-! Let you-!”
Raz whispered, “Let me go?”
“Let you die,” breathed Bobby.
The blood drained from Raz’s face. It must have been a thrill to record.
“Y-you said-”
“I wouldn’t let you lose an astral projection layer. It’s the same thing.” Bobby’s expression warped, anger distorting his raw, somber tone. “So, why? Why the f*ck aren’t you mad? Get mad! Look at what I did to you! Why can’t you be mad at me like everyone else?”
Remember! Mad later! Mission first!
Raz gasped as he stared at Bobby, and those words cried in his mind.
He didn’t retort. He waited. His lines needed to be perfect, for Raz, in a rush of clarity, knew.
This is agonizing for you, isn’t it? What I just said must be killing you inside.
Staring at Bobby’s stricken face, it was all too clear. Diving into the past, promising he could’ve had an alternate path, swarmed Bobby with volatile emotions. It was the understanding that he could have had a better life; both of them could have. For Bobby, who had been swamped in a hole of his own undoing, smeared in fetid mud and torn apart by his own hands, it was every ounce agonizing as being impaled by his own chainsaw.
To spin the tale in the other direction, to demand to know why Raz was talking to him, was his new means of escapism. Deflecting the truth with his callous demands should have incentivized Raz to argue. In the worst case scenario, they could have reignited another chase scene. All the while, the shadow would hiss and laugh, filming their mutual demise. They were stars of a two-man tragedy.
Raz remembered the odors of the funhouse. He recalled stabbing pain. He felt the beatings of a lifetime that would most likely than not travel with him to the real world. He heard every demeaning insult and misunderstood cry ripping from Bobby’s throat. And from it, the cauldron filled with Raz’s contempt simmered, bubbled, and erupted.
His nose started to bleed, and as Bobby grunted, Raz snatched his wrist.
I know what you’re doing, Bobby. It won’t work. I’m not letting you off my hook.
He swung his arm down, and forced Bobby to kneel in front of him.
Actually, Ford, you’re wrong. They should be combined.
“You want the truth, Bobby? I did say I wanted to talk, so it’s only fair that you get the truth, too, right?”
The corners of his eyes burned, and swiping his tongue across his bloody upper lip, he let Bobby have it.
“I am mad at you! I’m pissed! This is the angriest I’ve ever been in my entire life! You trapped me in your mind, and you did everything you could to break me! I hate you for the pain you put me through! But guess what? I’m alive! I rewrote your script! I survived everything you threw at me, and you’ll never get to strap me down on a chopping block! Ever!”
He stopped for a breath. From his eyes and his nostrils, fluids flowed. Raz panted and dragged his glove over his nose, smearing the scarlet stream in streaks. He could have placed on his goggles to hide his tears, hatred and misery that had accumulated over his seemingly endless time in Bobby’s mind. But he choked on his gasps, shoulders trembling and chest heaving, unable to use his hands. They were squarely on Bobby, one grabbing his wrist with enough power to nearly break it, the other on his chest, feeling his thundering heartbeat through his damp shirt.
Bobby’s reaction was strange. He softened, his body sagging. Such relief even willed a ghost of a smile to cross his face. If he was expecting Raz’s rage, then he received his just desserts. Screaming in his face, as if that was what Bobby wanted, Raz grabbed the script one more time and crossed out the lines he was sure Bobby was considering.
“And I’m sorry for the pain I put you through, too.”
Bobby might as well have looked like Raz had plunged his fist into his guts and disemboweled him. Raz wondered if that pain would have been lesser than hearing an apology.
“I’m mad at you, mad at myself, mad at everything. I wish that, instead of fighting with you, I could’ve helped you sooner. I could’ve been there for you.” Raz sniffled and wheezed before dropping his hands into his lap. “Yeah, you pushed a lot of people away. It’s a factor in all of this. Maybe you would’ve pushed me away, too, if I knew earlier, but that’s not what happened, so I don’t know what could’ve been. I just wish it wasn’t this!”
He held Bobby’s shoulders, forcing Bobby to look at him while he squirmed. Above them, the cameras hovered, tens of them circling around them like gnarled trees. Their space had become precariously finite, filled with just themselves in a sea of darkness and viscera.
Calming himself, Raz continued with the lines he had hastily scribbled onto the script.
“I’m going to be mad for a while, but I don’t want to fight or yell. Just, please, keep talking with me because right now, we’re on evening footing. I don’t know how long that’ll last.”
co*cking his head, Bobby muttered his uncertainty. He glanced and seemed to find nothing that would spark Raz’s statement. But they were both haggard, wounded souls on despair’s front door, and Raz swallowed, his true feelings seeping out like the blood dribbling down his nose.
“If we aren’t honest with each other, we can’t get anywhere. We didn’t tell each other anything because we hated each other, and even now, I still kind of hate you.”
The shadow’s waves rocked and overlapped. Static rose and fell in those ripples. Incomprehensible words spliced together, maiming more malevolence upon them. And as the cameras rolled, Bobby scoffed out his weariness.
“I hate you, too.” He lowered his gaze and his voice. “But if I was in your position, I’d hate me more. I already do.”
Bobby looked at his hands. They quivered, his right hand more than his left. They had grasped the handles of blades and chainsaws, swinging them with reckless abandon. Those knuckles had battered Raz’s face black and blue. All the while, he had screamed with shrill amusem*nt and baleful bemoaning as Raz suffered, every moment of his agony recorded.
Raz tried to hold one hand, but Bobby tucked them to his stomach. Blood stained them like a speckling of paint. Raz was unsure if Bobby was aware of his own reopened injury. At the bare minimum, his innards remained where they needed to be preserved, protected by thin threads and shoddy needlework. Nona would have been appalled.
“I knew this was wrong. I knew it all along.” Bobby stared at Raz through his caked, matted hair splattered to his brow. “I just wanted to hurt you.”
Raz sighed. He knew that. If he wanted to be malicious, he could have reminded Bobby of how many times he admitted it. There was more than a simple desire for vengeance and a grudge empowered by envy.. He was aggrieved with life and Raz, choosing to kill two birds with one stone. If he couldn’t be the leading man, then he was the director clinging to his camera, dragging down the one who stole his starring role.
In any other place of business, Bobby would have been fired. He would have been arrested, of which he already had a plethora of experience. He would have been tried and convicted, left to rot in a cell, of which he, again, had a plethora of experience. Bobby would have found a new reality behind bars: life without the possibility of parole.
But the Psychonauts were unlike most organizations. They were trained to understand people and assist in their ailments. In his young life, Raz had seen and endured many tragedies. He witnessed the cruelties caused by man, and in turn, strove to help. Like his peers and mentors, he was primed to offer a helping hand, a sentiment he had long before coming to Whispering Rock. It was within his nature to help others.
Despite everything, inspecting the haze crossing Bobby’s cloudy gaze, the wiriness of his too-thin frame, the exhaustion threatening to destroy them both, so long as the shadow insisted upon a horrifying tragedy, Raz was not going to allow Bobby to surrender.
“I don’t think there’s a chance in hell we’re gonna be able to cover everything, but I just want you to know…” Raz thumbed his nose, and the red flow stopped. “...if we had been able to put aside our differences in Whispering Rock, I truly think you could’ve helped me. I would’ve been just as happy if you had been standing next to me on that stage.”
Bobby didn’t answer again. He stared at their hands, then swept his attention across the landscape. Raz didn’t know what he was witnessing. To him, the forest must have been present. Nothing should have seemed out of the ordinary.
He threaded his fingers through his hair, uttering a disgruntled groan. Hunching forward, smelling of rot, he whimpered. His knuckles smacked into his head, and Raz urged him to stop, the cracking of bones too much for Raz to hear.
“It’s over, though. I can’t go back. I can’t do it over.”
“Even if you can’t do it over, it’s not the end. You do have a future.”
He glared. “The Psychonauts ain’t gonna take me back with open arms! If that’s what you think, then-!”
“The Psychonauts forgave Oleander, and they forgave Loboto. They forgave Nona-” Raz blinked, unsure if Bobby would know that name. “I mean, they forgave Lucy, my great aunt, my grandmother. You know she was Maligula, right?”
The shift in topic seemed to unnerve Bobby. The shadow, too, appeared to wait. It gripped the cameras tighter, a few cracking along their sides. Raz noticed the eyes shooting along those tendrils shifted and leered at them from his level. The static murmured, as traitorous as a whisper, but it trailed off as Bobby continued, peering down at his knees.
“I know her. Nona, um, your granny usually, uh, came to camp. She, um, gave me these turnip treats once. Uh, oh, with all that Maligula stuff, Agent Gette made that big-ass display with you smack-dab in the center.”
“Only because it was the best Otto-Shot photo Adam had of himself,” Raz said smugly, “which also happened to be the best picture of me.”
Bobby didn’t respond, which Raz had expected. They came to a strange fork in the road, and remained still. The only ground left to stand on was threatening to become submerged. The shadow oozed and spread, seeping their footwear, all while Bobby’s soiled shirt continued to be stained red. He wasn’t reacting to the pain, numb to it, his vigor subdued, his spirit crushed.
It was simplistic to declare Bobby had a future. They were words carrying a specific weight, and couldn’t have been transferred to Bobby, such as how providing someone with a diploma wasn’t a guarantee of achieving a career in the field they studied. While he remained silent, as if the static was soothing him, he reminded Raz of a person in a trance. He was not outwardly reacting to the torturous stimuli. Unless it came from Raz, then Bobby moved or spoke. And for the means of his future, as his viewing of the stars were blocked with the oppressive cameras, there had been one person who directed him onward.
Should I mention her? He was always trying for her, so maybe…
“You know…there was one person who always saw the best in you,” he said slowly, and Bobby waited, leaving Raz to second-guess whether she was appropriate to mention while he was vulnerable. “Chloe.”
Bobby gasped. Static screamed and transformed into intolerable voices. Intonations clashed and screeched, derision on every tongue. They were too plentiful to understand, a cacophony of abhorrence toward himself. The shadow’s mouths jabbered while the eyes narrowed, pursued by hundreds of appendages dashing free from the ooze, prepared to impale.
But as the tremors began anew, Raz caught Bobby again by his shoulders, grounding him when he began to convulse.
“Chloe was special to you, and you were special to her. You two were best friends,” he adamantly proclaimed. “She wouldn’t want you to beat yourself up. She’d want you to be your best self-!”
“She’s better off without you!”
“You were hounding her with your problems!”
“She was too nice to say no!”
“That’s why everyone thought you were with her!”
“Isn’t that why you scared off anyone coming too close to her? Even she was sick of it.”
The cameras lurched forward and suffocated them. Bobby clapped his hands over his ears and screwed his eyes shut. Raz glared at each lens, taking in Bobby’s quivering frame. On every cracked glass, their fragmented selves were captured. As the shadow howled, static thundering, the very air was replaced with the fumes of stomach acid, harsh enough for Raz to nearly retch.
But Raz forced himself to remain present. He wanted nothing more than to snatch a camera and bash it through the rest. Sudden, confusing acts of violence would further worsen Bobby’s demeanor and understanding.
Bringing his attention back to Bobby, Raz frowned. He couldn’t hear exactly what Bobby uttered in frenetic notes. Hoarse sniveling reached Raz’s ears, and Raz murmured Bobby’s name, urging him to look at only him.
“She’s better off without me. I was hounding her with my problems. She was too nice to say no. Everyone thought-”
Bobby froze. His whimpering subsided in a heartbeat. His hands went limp. They dangled by his wrists. He brought his head up to stare at Raz, the off-whites of his eyes taking more space than his irises. Even his larger eye was astoundingly smaller.
“That’s right. You-you watched the tape. You heard it all.”
He spoke as if requesting Raz to deny what they both knew. It was a horrid memory, which had erupted in static the second Bobby understood their implications. How he had been ostracized by them, cemented in silent shock, might have been the worst stumble on the staircase of his downward spiral. Every face had been plastered with disgust, as if he truly was the epitome of reprehensible. With how he mistreated them, savoring any chance to torment them in summer camp, or possibly disparage them at the Motherlobe, it was a no-brainer why they refused to listen. To them, Bobby, who had clung to Chloe with his bitten fingernails wedged into her hand, was the worst kind of parasite.
The facts had been distorted to suit a warped narrative. He hadn’t deserved such public scorning. To present to them an archetype, who was indicative of his happiness and potential for change, and have them deem him perverse, Bobby’s memories with Chloe were stained in ink and overwritten.
The very spot they stood on was evocative of that joy. If the shadow hadn’t consumed everything, Raz wondered if there might have been figments representing Chloe and Bobby smiling and stargazing.
As Bobby struggled to control his breathing, Raz lowered his voice.
“I’m sorry. What they said wasn’t right or true.”
Bobby sucked a breath so sharp that Raz almost feared he’d break more of his teeth. He bashed his fists into his knees, most likely worsening their bruises. He grabbed his head and ripped his fingers through his hair, growling behind his gnashing molars. Raz whispered his name.
“You heard what they said. You heard what they insinuated. They said I was-!” Bobby’s voice cracked, as if he was a child again. “It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that! She saw somethin’ good in me. Ha! Nah, that ain’t it. She thought I was an alien, so she hung around me, and I kept making up stories to keep her interested, but-but then, it was something more than that. She cared. She liked me. She was the only one.” He swallowed. “She-she-she had somethin’ I didn’t, and it’s sure as f*ck somethin’ I can’t have now.”
“What was that?”
Weakly, he extended his finger to the sky.
“A way outta that dirtball town. A way off this f*cking planet,” Bobby wheezed, and he pawed for the horizon. “You remember her. She was always looking up there, always reaching up there, always planning for her big trip through the stars. She said she’d take me, and I-I really wanted to go.”
Raz nodded. Logistically, it was an impossibility. It was nothing more than a dream from their childhood. Chloe was not an alien, despite her insistence, nor was Bobby a genuine representative of Fath 703. The entities talking to her that she claimed were from alien life were the whispers of humans from her burgeoning telepathy. The tales he fibbed in return were merely false chronicles. But the way Chloe presented herself, such as calmly declaring to Raz that turtles, too, heralded from outer space, had welcomed Bobby. She invited him into her world, allowing him a glimpse of something beyond the mudball called Earth. From there, a genuine bond had formed.
So, they stayed in touch. Phone call after phone call, meeting whenever they could, their friendship was unique. He never wanted to hurt her. She was the most important friend in his life. Someone so special, in his mind, deserved her freedom from the woes he implanted and the insinuations crafted by others as they observed without a shred of understanding.
He snipped the cord, but she refused to end her transmissions. Thereafter, Chloe tried, and she tried, and she tried. She reached Bobby’s voicemail, leaving him with nothing but her confusion, uncertainties, and pain until she finally surrendered. And each of those messages Bobby remembered, trapped in an endless loop, leaving Raz to wonder, if he had managed to check his dorm, would he have discovered more of them?
“She didn’t need someone as awful as me in her life,” Bobby cried, cutting over the snigg*ring of the static.
“Chloe doesn’t have to deal with your sh*t anymore.”
“But you didn’t think about how she’d feel.”
“Ain’t that why she kept calling? Calling and calling and calling someone who shut her out.”
“You f*cked her head up good.”
“It’s better she finally kicked that bad habit. She’s free of you. She’s got nothin’ tyin’ her down.”
The intonations lapped and rolled, laughing. It seemed there was no need for any kind of stabbing pain or further lacerations when their voices slashed enough. Bobby rammed his palms to his eyes, rasping and racking on new sobs. As he trembled, far worse than a leaf on a mere twig, the cameras captured every second of his misery. Across the broken landscape, his cries must have reached far back to the graveyard and farther beyond.
Raz stroked Bobby’s arm. He held his breath, diffident. He sat with Bobby, and the land allotted to them was barely enough for two. The shadow burbled with amusem*nt, as if challenging Raz to continue. When Raz said Bobby’s name, he was rebuked with a harsh shake of Bobby’s head. So entrenched in his wretchedness, the deep grievance Bobby carried toward others, and the sheer, agonizing regrets about Chloe that had compounded him, Bobby was left only with his tears.
It wasn’t easy to just wipe them. Raz couldn’t brush the back of his hand against Bobby’s eyes. Bobby might have snatched and shattered his fingers, or the shadow would have pierced through his palm from behind with a sharpened tendril. Threats to his physicality aside, he wondered if he should have invoked her name at all. He had wanted to reason with him that there was always someone in his corner, proof of a future that may have happened, but as Bobby struggled to contain his sniveling, Raz remembered it was eerily similar to when Bobby had covered his mouth and curled into himself in, mere seconds after strangling the life out of Raz in the funhouse’s gallery.
“You…you said that before, too,” he mumbled, “but with Chloe, with others…”
If the Chloe he perceived in his mental world held onto her resentment, she was like those Raz overlooked. Giving it further thought, Bobby had repeated the pattern. Chloe wasn’t the only one he slammed the door on. There had been Lili when she attempted to reconnect, and Raz could only imagine what else transpired between him and his laundry list of mentors when he mulled over Compton.
But out of them, Chloe was special. She had directed him toward a better path. And Bobby swerved off the road.
“She’s sad.”
He jumped. A tinny coo echoed in the back of his mind. He checked his surroundings, finding only themselves and those suffocating cameras. The landscape, as anticipated, was an inky mire that stretched across the horizon. As the opaque ooze glittered, as if mocking the stars, Raz repeated those odd, unnerving words far louder than intended.
“She’s sad?”
Like a knife impaling through his lung, Bobby choked. His hazy, unfocused gaze seemed unable to center on Raz. Even with a slight shake of his head, Bobby questioned him with a slurred tongue.
“What was that?”
Faint whirring loomed above them. The cameras were adjusting as Bobby rubbed his eyes with his bony fists. Raz assumed they were zooming in, hoping for the best shot of Bobby’s palpable despair.
Scratching through his scalp, layered in sweat that began to trickle down his face, Raz swarmed through his foggy memories. Over everything that had occurred, somewhere he heard those two words. They came neither from himself or Bobby. It was a familiar voice, he believed, the kind he often heard when coming home and being welcomed by open arms.
Small hands pressed on him, followed by tiny feet. He felt the presence of being climbed on. A little body, reminiscent of his childhood, was clamoring over him. The sound of bells echoed, sterling silver in his mind’s eye, only for chime to fade. Chills marinated through his skin, and then, a dull, aching throb pulsed in the center of his forehead. Grimacing, Raz cupped it, renewing the tingle in his nostrils. Splotches of sewn fabric, scarlet and gold, seeped into his vision and were dashed by Bobby hurriedly saying his name, though the stark chill had already seeped into his bones.
“H-hey, your nose is doin’ it again,” he stuttered, and Raz dragged his hand across his upper lip.
The blood was faint, as if he accidentally splattered paint on himself by flinging the brush out of the can. It wasn’t steady, and he stashed that worry again for another time. A sudden stroke of pain was a nonissue when he saw himself lying on the grass deep in his own mind. He couldn’t move, his limbs paralyzed, but with only the twitching movements of his eye, there stood Mirtala with a smile filled with too many teeth.
Raz breathed out, “So, that’s it.”
He clutched Bobby’s knees, the bones still jutting into his palms. His wet fingers created muggy stains along his jeans. Bobby hardly seemed to care, not with the steadily dripping blood ruining his shirt.
“Bobby, I know you were hurting. I know you’re in a lot of pain, but when you pushed Chloe out of your life, I think you know how much you hurt her. It’s been eating away at you, like so many other traumas in your life.”
Bobby waited, misty eyes wide. He glanced between Raz and his hands. In return, Raz tightened his grip, not hard enough to bruise, but hopefully enough to reassure and drive home his point.
“That’s why, and I know it's easy for me to say this because I’m not in your position, I’m sure she’d be willing to talk to you again. She must miss you.”
“No, she wouldn’t!”
“She’d never do that!”
“Not in a million light years! Not in-!”
Bobby gnashed down on his teeth. Anguish burned his complexion to a mottled purple, contusing himself. Briefly, he struggled to free himself, only to hesitate. He tucked his head low, surveying the distance that no longer existed beyond the cliff’s edge. He had devised his own demise, cementing himself as alone in the universe, and Raz was determined to explain that there was always another chance to connect. It wasn’t an alien sentiment, after all.
“How do you know?” came Bobby’s grim demand over the shadow’s roars.
Providing evidence from a grueling nightmare was not going to convince Bobby. Raz already had the proof he needed as their messages, bouncing between joy, regret, and sorrow crooned between his ears. And as the shadow rippled, Raz catching hints of new blades of grass appearing, he spoke carefully.
“Because the real Chloe I heard over the phone and the Chloe I saw in your camp were upset that you ended things so badly. Both of them said you were left with their unanswered voicemails. That’s why the Chloe in camp was lambasting you.” He shook his head. “But that Chloe was your perception. The real Chloe kept trying because that’s how much she cared. Did the real Chloe ever say she hated you? Or was she just sad that her best friend suddenly left her alone?”
The bruise across his cheeks dissolved, hardly healed. The blood may as well have pooled down into his wound and spilled across his thighs. With how ghostly white Bobby appeared, Raz would have assumed it was a terrible case of anemia.
The shadow erupted, but Raz forced his voice to be louder than deafening damnation.
“Throughout the year, even if you were digging yourself deeper, you were holding on to the hope that you’d connect again, weren’t you? You wanted to say sorry, didn’t you? Because even if she finally gave up, the ball was in your court. You still have a chance to make amends, and you know that’s what Chloe wants. It’s what you both want!”
Bobby’s chest came to a halt, held still on a breath. His unreadable mask slipped, betraying the shock that had marred him. Again, tears invaded the corners of his eyes. He jabbed his knuckles to them, the strikes too harsh. Raz flinched, hearing a faint cracking of bone. His fingernails bit into his skin, straining the tendons, as he clawed his hands down his gaunt cheeks. Raz could have believed the skin was ready to shred like paper.
His blubbering came in sharp, wheezy reprimands. If Raz hadn’t heard the shadow’s cruelty up close, then he might have assumed they were more insults.
“I didn’t want to make her sad. I didn’t want to - she was my - how could I - how could I do that to Chloe? Why am I so f*cking stupid? Why didn’t I just pick up the goddamn phone?”
He ached, longing in his vowels. The shadow had ceased snickering at some point and resumed growling. Thin hisses pervaded, voices in the stinking breeze. Although the tendrils had blocked off Raz’s vision of the greater landscape, thrusting outward to form a barrier like bars in a jail cell, Raz knew better. Those hundreds of mouths were whispering and confirming Bobby’s choices as the most foolhardy, the most callous.
Raz’s own mouth twisted as he watched and waited. He withdrew his hands, setting them on his thighs. Only Bobby’s sniffling and huffing resounded, his breathy agony spreading far and wide. Not even the shadow interfered, ensuring every unbecoming hiccup and sob was caught on film. The static was remanded to a thrum, like an untuned signal from a radio.
A shiver ran up Raz’s arm. He pinched his wrist, feeling the tremors traveling to his fingertips. When he peered at his hands, his neck felt oddly tight. Nothing was wound around his throat, but the sensation remained. The longer he stared at Bobby and listened to his woes, the sensation worsened, muscle memory inflaming, a hot, pushing pain constricting his vertebrae.
His jaw ached, and his lips trembled. Across his body, various incisions and blows resurfaced. From stinging to scalding, to slashes and strangulation, it would seem the suffering he had endured returned with a swinging force. Exhaustion had weakened Raz, reminding him of every injury, each physical prompt of Bobby’s directorial debut. And as Bobby sobbed, Raz’s body throbbing from a torrent of maltreatment, he rubbed his hands, storing in vexation for another time, another place.
Yet, a bitter snarl rose from the back of Raz’s mind.
He’s more upset about what he did to Chloe than he is about me. How many times have I said sorry, huh? He hasn’t said it once, and I have to placate him?
He winced. He promptly snatched those thoughts, Censors beating them within an inch of their lives, and tossed them like refuse.
No. Don’t view it that way. He already said he knew this was wrong. He does feel bad about what he’s done to me. It matters.
Bobby was contrite, evidenced by the contamination. It wasn’t just toward Chloe; there was repentance for his captive star sprinkled throughout their movie. He had known, clearly stating his transgressions, even if he wept for her, not him. Hatred may have existed and boiled within his heart for Raz, but it had simmered to a persistent steam. For Chloe, his ruefulness could have overwhelmed him, drowning him in the depths of sorrow, and Raz understood why, urging Bobby to once again listen.
Now that Raz had invoked her name, that dreadful incident had another victim. He peered at the ground, shades of brown grass renewed. The circle was widening, much to his silent delight. He didn’t bother to examine the cameras, for the static still growled. Bobby was already beating himself down enough, and as he wept, Raz felt compelled to question him about those companions he invented for himself. They, too, had firsthand experiences and witnessed Bobby’s downfall like spectators who continued breaching the stage, desperate to change the script written in ink that bled through the thick pages.
“I know this is hard. It’s painful, but can we keep going,” he asked gently, “or do you want to take a break? Because that’s okay, too. We, uh, we’re not going anywhere.” He cleared his throat. “You know, not going anywhere physically.”
Bobby managed to pull his shaky hands into his lap. He sniffed hard, mucus staining his lip. Huffing his disgust, Bobby scrubbed his face with his shirt, and Raz quickly inspected his wound, stifling his horror. The talon had wedged halfway through his shoddy stitching,. While blood dribbled, his skin had been perforated, as if buttons had been removed from his concave stomach. It didn’t seem as deep, but appearances often deceived. Raz was only lucky to realize Bobby’s organs remained intact, even as the blood steadily flowed, and new bruises darkened his wiry frame with mottled contusions.
Bobby’s shirt rolled down, and he tugged it lower. His brows knitted, and he jerked his hand close to his face. His palm was damp, slick with blood. His lips moved, and no words emerged, his confusion worn freely.
“sh*t,” he mumbled, and he pulled up his shirt to his chest. “When the f*ck did this happen? Hold on.”
Raz flinched. As Bobby scrambled to fix himself, wet fingers struggling to pluck at the threads, Raz was transfixed by a memory. He had felt Bobby’s body, the bones awkwardly stretching against threadbare skin. His ribs were pronounced, pushing against his sides, as if they would pierce through with another tight grab. Years of malnourishment had weakened his body, scrawny and weak. It was as if his muscles had atrophied throughout the day, leaving him frighteningly thinner than Raz had thought.
Words escaped him. “We can stop - uh, I mean, I’m good with…sewing, so I can - um, have you eaten?”
Raz screwed his eyes shut and scrunched his face like he had eaten a lemon.
Sheesh, why don’t I just stick my fist in my mouth while I’m at it?
A low, mournful rumble from his stomach answered for Bobby. Like Raz, he hadn’t any chance to enjoy a Dream Fluff or a PSI Pop. Even the grotesque pastries and meats from the funhouse would have been some sustenance.
Fidgeting with his gloves, as Bobby vacantly leered at him, Raz sensed he wasn’t prepared to discuss it. He had just come off weeping for his only friend. Continuing from that train of thought seemed preferable, though Bobby squirmed under the weight of Raz’s silent scrutiny. He supposed it was the case, confirmed as Bobby muttered that he hadn’t eaten and didn’t offer an explanation why. Left with new questions, Raz brought them back on track as the static vibrated.
“Well, uh, where was I going with this? Oh, right, um, because of that incident, that’s why…you hurt Ambassador. You took it out on him.”
Bobby stiffened. His lips formed Ambassador’s name, but he did not say it.
Although frazzled, Raz focused on the two who had been sidelined. The archetypes were as important to discuss as everything else. They were interconnected, self-preservation and self-improvement, clashing attributes. Both stemmed from his childhood, growing with him, but Raz only had Ambassador’s perspective on what transpired. Considering who they were, what they represented, and the actions they chose for themselves, Raz realized he hadn’t known much about them from their source.
How they shrieked with laughter speared through his eardrums. They had relished in Bobby’s suffering, like a delectable drink to top off the carnage. Even before their wicked laughter, they gnawed thoroughly through each other. How they had all screamed while Raz trekked through the maze, delivering blow after blow, one after the other, in fight after fight after fight, the viciousness of it all stemmed from Bobby, a victim of his own deliberate decisions and cruel circ*mstances.
Everything came to a boil. It was inevitable that the pot would overflow, much like Raz’s own hatred that had cooled. Without a proper, fitting top, the archetypes couldn’t contain the eruption, nor what would happen. All they commanded were their own reactions, each stewing in unique frustrations, and in his mind’s eye, Raz saw Ambassador skewered with rusty hooks, kneeling in the slum of his prison.
“When you put Ambassador through that for a year, it’s like you were punishing yourself. All over something you didn’t do. They didn’t believe you, so, instead, you hurt yourself. You’ve been doing that a lot through them, haven’t you?”
“Tweedledum deserved it, and Tweedledee couldn’t do sh*t.”
Raz’s biceps twitched. The shadow offered that single sentence, imbued with heavy contempt. Every word seeped with venom, the ooze creeping closer. The new grass was smothered in blotted stains of resinous ink. Raz hurried along with his next question, hoping to bring Bobby around to the conversation, instead of brooding in his thoughts.
“Hey, generally speaking, what about your archetypes? How do you feel about them?”
Static continued murmuring, dulcet tones drifting like a lullaby. The stark contrast to the blaring, electrical droning made the hairs on Raz’s neck rise. Through the tree-like appendages, their cameras still insufferably close, he saw the mouths moving and speaking inaudibly. Raz wasn’t privy to the spite they spat, and judging from the melancholy softening Bobby’s features, he wondered what words ebbed and flowed in his thoughts.
Bobby dragged his hand through his hair. His wet fingers caught on matted curls. With a harsh tug, he freed his hand and sighed.
“f*cking…Tweedledee and Tweedledum…” he mumbled, his leg bouncing. “They’re sh*tty scraps. Never should’ve made them.”
“It’s not like you knew you did. They formed because you needed them.” Raz paused. “Actually, when I think about it, I should ask you something more to the point. When you realized you had them, what did you three do together? Because from the looks of things, it doesn’t sound like you had them out in public.”
“I didn’t want them out,” Bobby snapped, his tone rigid. “They were - you saw them! You saw what they looked like, sounded like, acted like. I couldn’t be seen with them walking around. I already had the worst reaction possible because that f*cking space freak showed up.”
Well, jeez, if you gave Ambassador a chance to explain-
Raz scowled, hidden by his glove when he went to itch his nose. His Censors promptly stamped the aggrieved suggestion out of existence.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. It wasn’t that easy. Nothing is as simple as doing anything in hindsight, especially when emotions are running high. His mistreatment toward the archetypes and vice versa was like a slow boil. What he did to Ambassador was the outcome. I can’t let my own frustration get the best of me at this point. He laced his fingers together in his lap as Bobby waited. He needs me, and I want to help him. I have to. I don’t want him to hurt himself or them anymore.
Raz exhaled.
“So, just posturing here. You kept them mostly to yourself because you were afraid of how you’d be perceived, right? Or because you felt-” He gulped, taking a leap. “-ashamed and angry with yourself.”
Bobby’s gaze lowered, somberness wafting like a sour odor. Instantly, Raz pursed his lips. Casting judgment was an act just as callous as what the other interns had done. He supposed someone might have insisted otherwise, as Raz had greatly suffered at Bobby’s bony hands, but he felt no compulsion to condemn Bobby. Factoring in everything that had transpired, along with their current imposing surroundings, Raz surmised his own sudden annoyance came from a combination of everything.
His feelings had already been addressed. Although, deep inside, he felt the current renewing, along with the physical pain still throbbing around his brow, Raz knew better. In front of him was Bobby, enduring the brunt of his turmoil and grimly unaware. While the cameras rolled, and that thing continued hissing its mocking, malicious mistruths in Bobby’s ear, Raz was going to follow through with what he promised Bobby from the very beginning.
He was a Psychonaut. He was here to help. And with what had already been said, Raz pushed ahead.
“I think - I know they were trying to help you. I’m not sure about all the details, but I believe that’s the case. It’s just too bad everything went off the rails.”
Bobby looked up rather quickly. He sucked in a breath and clamped his mouth shut. Sniffing harshly, his eyes regained their misty edges. He looked left, then right. Emptiness accompanied him on both sides, and as the static crooned, Raz’s voice strained.
“Do you really regret making them?”
“Do I regret…?”
“Of course, you do.”
“Just two more attractions to add to your carnival.”
“What good were they? You never brought them out. You never used them because you were afraid.”
“Ain’t that right? And Raz is thinking the same thing! You circus freaks deserve each other!”
Liquid sloshed and rolled. Raz whipped his head over his shoulder in time for a tendril to once again curl around his throat. It didn’t squeeze, but its snug pull pinched on his skin. Fingers emerged from the mixture and grazed his throat, the same calloused tips that had strangled him +-time and time again. They were Bobby’s hands tugging on his sore flesh.
He refused to react. He forced his eyes to remain still and perfected his neutrality. If the shadow wanted him to yelp or choke, then his showmanship would persevere. His disgruntled audience, hundreds of jabbering, incensed members strong, rebuked his efforts. They jeered through the static, demanding Bobby to agree, and Raz watched, a touch pale, as Bobby raised his head.
Their eyes met. Bobby was blinking slowly, like a cat on the verge of trust. He again peered left, then right. And drawing in a breath, Bobby crushed the shadow’s expectations.
“I don’t think I do. I guess. It wasn’t…always like that. Things were better. When I first got ‘em, that is.”
His choppy, hesitant rebuttal was a direct assault. Immediately, the tendril unwound. It hovered, as if considering a strike on Bobby. But every aspect of it hesitated, coming to a full stop. Not a single wave pressed. Not a single bite or swallow resounded. Not even a smidgen of ink dribbled. Everything had come to a grinding halt at Bobby’s first, true sign of passive resistance.
Raz grinned. Casually, like he was fixing his collar, he snatched the tendril and hoisted it to his lap. It squirmed like a fish in an eagle's beak. His fingers flexed, and out spilled inky residue from its exploded tip, a crushed pen. The stains hardly mattered as a weak yelp echoed from one of the mouths, and Raz relished in his second, frontal attack.
Oblivious, Bobby shifted toward Raz. Their knees grazed together. The slime blemished Bobby’s jeans and spilled through the rips. At the cold contact, Bobby winced and swatted at his knobby knee, still none the wiser.
“Like ya said, I didn’t know I made them. They were there in my mind for years.” He tugged at his earlobe. “It wasn’t…always bad. There were good times. I just made things worse.”
He looked at Raz, who gently smiled and nodded. Bobby sighed and complied.
“Easier to blame them and their suggestions, y’know? Easy targets when you threaten to push ‘em in a paper shredder.” He pointed to his right. “Strongman knew that. He was always trying to act bigger than he was.” He pointed to his left. “Ambassador wasn’t willing to take my sh*t sitting down. He’d argue back. Say what I’m doing is wrong, stupid, or I need to compromise. Yada, yada, yada.”
He huffed out a held breath. He fidgeted and twisted his head, as if seeking them. Wherever the archetypes were, Bobby could have summoned them. He clearly had the capability, but it was almost like he expected them to appear on either side.
He lowered his voice and his head.
“But it wasn’t always bad. When they first showed up, or, uh, when I could finally bring them outta my head, they were…psyched. I didn’t think anyone could’ve been that thrilled to see someone like me, a-and they were there to help. Kept saying it over and over again.”
“But you never…used them, really.”
“No. Not like how they’re meant to be. I just couldn’t. I kept having this niggling worry, and-and it turned out to be true.”
Raz bit his tongue. He figured that was the case, evidenced by everything that had come before. He wanted to reply, only to feel his mouth dry, and he watched as Bobby pulled at his shirt, trying to tear off his second skin.
“I mean, I did use them. It wasn’t like I kept them cooped up - uh, just in my dorm, at least - but in my mind, I could practice psychic combat with Strongman, and with Ambassador, he was better with studying and sh*t. They liked to talk, so my dorm was usually never quiet whenever I had them out. They were in my corner kind of like…kind of…like…”
Raz saw Bobby’s tongue pinch between his chipped teeth. He flung his head up so quickly to stare at Raz that Raz feared the vertebrae in his neck had shattered. Like a bobblehead, it jostled before snapping in place. Up close, his pupils had suddenly shrunk, the size of pencil dots. Blood vessels had already popped across his sclera, staining the grays a renewed crimson. The longer he looked at Raz, the more Raz was forced to contend with how bloody they became.
“H-hey, hey, hey! Bobby, what’s-?”
Bobby trembled so viciously that Raz thought his skeleton was trying to escape his fleshy prison - or rather, what little flesh and muscle coated them. His breathing came in short, frantic bursts through his mouth. Surrounding them, the static spiraled and conspired. Intonations, varying in pitch, surged like a tidal wave. Intermingling insults drove into Bobby, who gripped his finger with such intensity, Raz feared he was going to break it.
As the cameras craned lower, sequestering them, Raz shouted over the static. But his words were smothered, seized by a crashing wave. The shadow swirled, regaining its bulbous form, before looming over Bobby. Covered in a veil, Bobby was ignorant to pulsating penumbra. And as a single, massive maw wrenched open, with jagged teeth and a slimy tongue, Raz screamed.
“Bobby! Whatever it is, we can work through it! We can-! We can-! We can…”
He trailed off as a massive mouth clamped on Bobby’s back. Dark raindrops slammed on Bobby’s shoulders, and teeth chewed into his sticky, decaying body. As Bobby choked on his breath, hot tears burning the corners of his eyes, and a croon slipping between a few missing teeth, Raz’s face fell. The tendrils might have begun looping around his lower extremities, and the hot, stinking breath dizzied him, but he continued thinking, continued piecing together the puzzle.
This reaction happened because he made a connection. He looked at me when he said his archetypes were in his corner. Right now, just like they tried to do, I’m helping him.
As the static heckled Bobby, who mouthed to Raz through stopping and starting stutters, it hit Raz like a freight train. And he almost, almost allowed himself to feel a speck of relief, vindication.
It’s true. He does feel horrible about what he did to me. I shouldn’t have doubted it when he’s already acknowledged it. He’s crying about me, for me. Maybe even for himself and what could've been us.
Bobby scrubbed his face with his elbow. The shadow spread outward, fanning like a cape on his shoulders. The teeth jutted inward, accruing multiple bites. It even had the nerve to taste him with that filthy tongue in the color of mold. Like the shadow was insisting another push would be Bobby’s last, Raz glared at the many eyes blinking open along its sides, staring in a way as if a smile could have crinkled their corners.
As for this thing, if I have to hear another half hour of static, I’m gonna dive into a mouth, and beat it up from the inside.
Daunted, Raz summoned whatever words felt right, and immediately wished he had a second chance to think.
“Bobby, Bobby, don’t think about that right now. Just - let’s go back to them. How’d they help you? Wait, no, you just answered that. Uh, why couldn’t you accept their help? Wait, no, I just got why. Um…”
The shadow gnawed on Bobby, mouths rising and biting at his hips. He was paler than death. His shallow breathing pushed him one step at a time to the grave. He continued mouthing his words, the full extent of what he had done consuming him alive. Every decision made was incorrect, and every path taken was wrong. The opportunities had slipped through his fingers, sand in an hourglass, and as it almost ran out, Bobby was finally feeling the depths of how far he had fallen.
He had known it wasn’t right. He had spoken it. Now, his body endured the repercussions.
But Raz was not willing to allow him to suffer for another moment longer.
He gripped Bobby’s elbow before he could raise it again to his face. Although his legs ached from the tension in the tendrils coiled around his shins, he remained steadfast. He gripped Bobby’s wrist, applying gentle pressure when Bobby tensed, and set it across his knee. Now, with nothing to shield himself from Raz, Bobby once again met his gaze through the mist in his vision.
“I think they were trying their best to help you, but things just went too far. They didn’t deserve that.” Raz glanced at Bobby’s shirt, the tangy blotch like an artistic graphic design, one of his own making. “Neither did you. They were wrong, too. So was I.”
“No.”
“Bobby-”
The shadow nibbled on its morsel, savoring the apparent taste. Bobby groaned, sweat glistening on his gaunt face. He spoke in low, breathy whispers.
“It’s me. It’s always been me. I made ‘em. They’re actin’ that way ‘cause of me. It’s - everything is my fault. No one else’s.”
Raz clung to Bobby, hand to his elbow, the other to his wrist. He shook his head, but his gesture didn’t dispel Bobby’s insistence. The fog and distant look in his eyes, they cemented Bobby as elsewhere. The shadow snickered, an eerie rumble like an earthquake. It was close to claiming victory. It had Bobby between dozens of teeth, and one twitch of its jaws could have shredded his back, revealing those bones to the humid air, like an uncooked animal.
Raz had never felt so powerless. When Strongman and Ambassador had maddeningly laughed at Bobby, who had been impaled by the shadow, Raz retaliated. A punch to Ambassador’s face and thorough, judgmental maligning shut them down. But they were only two compared to a landscape that had usurped Bobby’s mind and invaded his thoughts. They were manageable, reasonable. Compared to years upon years of abhorrence drilling through Bobby’s thoughts, encouraging his worst traits and denouncing his attempts to escape his hole, the shadow superseded Raz’s attempts.
Bobby’s gentle voice broke through the static stemming between Raz’s ears.
“Raz?”
His eyes stung. He choked on a ragged breath. Dragging his sleeves across his eyes, a disgruntled moan leaving him, Raz held out his palms. He tried to speak, tried to conjure any prior training, but nothing, absolutely nothing could have prepared him. What he was experiencing was a first for the Psychonauts, and beyond that, he felt like a shattered marble statue.
He managed a tense, threadbare smile.
“Sorry. It’s not like a Psychonaut to get this sad. Well, um, that’s not true. I guess I don’t…I don’t know what to do, Bobby.” He sniffled hard. “I guess I really don’t know how to help you.”
The shadow ripped free from Bobby’s backside, leaving behind puncture wounds. Bobby winced and cupped his shoulders. As he dragged his thumbs over the new tears in the jacket, those mouths snapped in unison, gleefully shrieking another falsehood.
“Ha! You’re so broken that not even the golden boy knows what to do with you! You circus freaks deserve each other. You should both just drown.”
Bobby’s brow wrinkled. A surge of frustration scorched him a plum shade. He glared at nothing in particular, but the many mouths suddenly snapped shut when he leered at Raz.
“It ain’t you,” he mumbled as Raz tilted his head back, ordering his tears to subside. “I told ya. It’s me. You didn’t do nothin’. I’m the problem.”
Above, the stars glimmered. Hundreds upon hundreds, thousands upon thousands of lights danced. They were smoldering comets streaking across the sky. Offering a chance to recuperate, they welcomed Raz to observe, to see through each nook and cranny of their constellations.
And Raz, holding his breath, did exactly that.
It was no wonder why Chloe had brought Bobby to the end of their world. From the cliffside at camp, the stars glinting above the far reaches of Whispering Rock must have been just as numerous and beautiful. His mind cleared, basking in the lights that seared beyond the tyrannical cameras. Regardless of the lenses reflecting his misery and teary-eyed, smirched complexion, the stars seemed to insist for Raz to seek them, to peer beyond the radiance of white lights tinged violet.
Wait, what?
Raz blinked.
Then, he squinted.
And then, he shot to his feet and pushed aside the cameras. The tendrils recoiled, jiggling like jelly. He held his cheek, keeping his head stationary, until Bobby uttered his name.
Without asking, Raz snatched Bobby’s hand. He hauled him upright, catching him when he wobbled. Before Bobby could bark or bluster, Raz jabbed his finger at the sky.
“Bobby, what’s really above us?” he demanded, bordering on breathlessness.
He rolled his eyes. “Mood swings much?”
Aforementioned finger quickly wedged into Bobby’s collarbone, and he challenged him with a wry grin. “You have the audacity to say that to me? Come on, Zilch, work with me. We’re rocking in the same sinking canoe, and we’ve cried enough to fill Lake Oblongata.”
Seemingly surprised by his shift in attitude, Bobby’s smirk crawled across his face. His face might have grown hot, and he awkwardly rubbed his eyes, but a glimpse of the Bobby Raz had known appeared. Below them, as if relenting to Raz’s unwavering, renewed will, the pustule collapsed, careening into itself with a sickening splash. The teeth dispersed in the resinous sea, drifting like seashells. The eyes searched each other, seeking answers for his reignited confidence. To the lapping ooze, it was once again in a battle where it had already assumed victory, and Raz was ready to dash its expectations.
Scoffing, Bobby raised his hand. “Heh. Fine. Whatever. About time you noticed.”
All at once, when he snapped his fingers, the sky plummeted. The apocalypse had already occurred behind them. Now, the horizon and atmosphere joined them. Those hundreds upon hundreds, thousands upon thousands of stars descended. In that brief second, with streaking lights charging toward them, Raz was blind. A hot flash seared his retinas, and he refused to blink. So long as Bobby stared at them, Raz would, too.
Then, they were present, up close and personal. Raz could’ve touched and rearranged them, which, upon recollection, he had done countless times before - now with permission.
They weren’t stars at all. Before them were hundreds upon hundreds, thousands upon thousands of gleaming thoughts and dark thoughts tainted with strands of ink. Intertwined, oozing, silken threads weaving around the web-like tissue, they formed constellations of Mental Connections.
The shadow was radiating in the lights. Raz could have sworn it sighed. It exuded huffs of pleasure at the array of connections, food for thought, an exquisite feast fit for a gourmand. But as a tendril reached for the nearest one, Raz snatched it, holding its head like a viper before it could have shown its fangs. To Bobby, he must have appeared strange with his fist in the air.
Yet, as Raz glimpsed through the connections of Bobby’s woes, his fears, his malice, his shame, he felt a smile coming on.
Hungry, boy? No wonder you’re suddenly acting starved. You were eating the mental world, but you’re not full yet. After all, no way a shadowy sea can just seize what’s that far up in the air.
The tendril ceased its wriggling. All at once, the static came to a grinding halt. Raz felt every eye perforating him. As he smirked, he leered over his shoulder, accepting the swell of shock racing through the entire mental world. He made sure every camera cradled by quaking appendages got his good side.
That’s right, you subconscious amalgamation. Golden boy is talking to you. I know what you are and your game. You’re not just one little thing, or something tidy and neat that I can write off on a report. You’re ‘everything,’ aren’t you? Everything he hates about himself, everything painful that happened to him, everything culminating together to form something so self-destructive. His anger, his shame, his unfulfillment, and much, much more. You’re the parasite, not him! You were a voice buried deep in his head that got way too loud and fed off him!
Without awaiting an answer, Raz flexed his fingers, and carelessly crushed the tendril. He heard a mouth cry out in the distance. Again, he was stained, the sable liquid seeping down his arm. It might have looked nice as a splash of color, but Raz decided the earthy tones of his bomber jacket was perfect as is.
There is something I can do. A change in perspective. Sasha once said isolation can lead to important discoveries, but in this case, isolation led Bobby down a dark hole. I can help him make a change in his thoughts and directly attack this thing! No way I’m gonna give up now!
“Bobby,” Raz said, and Bobby blinked, jarred back to attention, “I see just how much you dislike yourself.”
He squirmed like prey caught under a massive paw. But Raz softened his smile, seeing through his frightened exterior. Behind his downturned lips, the crease in his brow, the rigid posture, and the wounds marring his body, Raz looked closer and saw Bobby.
“And, honestly, when I look at you, I see myself.”
His eyebrows damn near reached his hairline. “You don’t-”
“I do. Remember? I said I wished you had been on that stage with me. If we hadn’t been that dumb as kids, it might’ve happened.”
Bobby rubbed his neck. He wasn’t dismissing Raz’s assertion. He had already listened to the claim, and Raz assumed it was processed. So, he steeled himself, reaching deep into his own thoughts. He searched through his memories, flashes of grandeur and morbidity striking him as his own growth. From the moment he realized how to summon his PSI hand all the way to his prior mission with Agent St. John, events that had transformed Razputin Aquato into the Junior Psychonaut and acrobat that he was today stemmed forth. And they served as the backbone to his declaration.
“It sucks when you have to confront a bunch of terrible things at once, and I was in the same boat as you. When I was younger, I felt like I didn’t belong in my own family. I thought my dad hated me. He kept me and my siblings around the nightly campfire and told us psychics were evil night after night. So, after he tore up my pamphlet to camp, I was compelled to run away, and that’s when I-”
“Hold up, hold on, hold it. Your dad kept you and your siblings around a campfire and told you guys psychics were evil?”
Bobby’s blunt, shocked tone stabbed through Raz’s sincere monologue. His train of thought thoroughly derailed. It careened off the cliffside, and the clamor exploded in Raz’s mind. Plumes of smoke hazed over what he wanted to convey. Gobsmacked, the confidence Raz accrued was the lone victim of the crash.
Bobby looked exactly as anyone would when interjecting. His eyes were wide, and his mouth agape. His arms were slack at his sides, his clothing still hanging off him. He leaned toward Raz, and utterly dumbfounded, Raz held up his hands, spluttering a meager response..
“W-well, uh, my dad suffered a lot, and-and he didn’t know the truth. H-he was pretty happy to be psychic once he, um, did, though.”
“But he - you’re psychic.” Bobby tapped Raz’s chest. “You’re psychic, Raz. He was telling you psychics were evil? He was doing this night after night again ya said? That’s-” He gasped. “-that’s why you ran away to camp?”
“No, no, I-! Not evil! Actually, what I mean is, um, well, he made psychics out to be pretty evil, and, okay, so, yeah, I was sitting there, knowing I was psychic, and listening to him go on and on about how psychics were awful, and, um, that factored in to why I ran away, but that’s-! There was a reason, okay? A lot of them! He thought psychics cursed us to drown in water, and I think I said that before, and that’s a whole other thing I was about to get at. Oh, a-and not night after night, just most nights! I should’ve said most - look, he saw how I saw him when my mind was meshed with Oleander’s mind, and that was also a whole different thing, and that’s not even getting into what Ford did to make him think like that, and-and-and-and-!”
His rambling tangent and frantic gestures grinded to a halt like a car slamming on the brakes. If he was in a play, then he might have been trapped under the spotlights. The static drawing near his head, buzzing like a locust swarm, signified as much.
Bobby was wearing an odd expression. Every mask before had been tainted. They were colored violet or twisted his features. Otherwise, the bloodshot eyes in his sockets and bruises disfigured that rage with contrition. And in the very beginning, there had been sneers that suited his role as a killer, of curled lips and wicked laughter.
But everything about Bobby had softened. He almost looked his age. The quiet tone he utilized, coupled with the light in his irises, compelled Raz to stop. Bobby wasn’t offering more; he seemed to be waiting for Raz.
It was a strange sympathy. What Raz had said inspired such a piteous look. He shifted under Bobby’s gaze, dragging his hands along his forearms. He would have preferred the suffocating cameras looming above them to record each instance of their enmity and suffering. For Bobby to stare at him with solace, a sentiment that should have been reversed, inclined for Raz to stop and think.
In a single week, Raz had saved the world twice. In a single week, he achieved his dream. In a single week, at the tender age of ten, his entire life was flipped upside-down, as if the prior years meant nothing, and the truth emerged to drag him through the grave.
When his father worried about the water as they performed the Devil’s Firehouse, Raz remembered what he said.
“The curse isn’t real, Dad. It’s just something Ford put in our minds to keep us safe.”
It was a lie, a misconception, a contortion of the genuine past. But it didn’t erase what had transpired when that falsehood was their steadfast reality.
Under those pretenses, Raz was ostracized. He had been burned by the frightened or frustrated looks of his family just for exercising his powers. He was born with gifts that they deemed curses. Frazie later stopped playing with him, insisting he grow up and pretending her abilities were nonexistent, her shame a rift between them. Dion, a fervent follower of their father’s footsteps, articulated his agitation in private reprimands, demanding Raz obey and oblige unquestioningly. Their father and mother knew best, their grandmother had been harmed, and their grandfather was long dead, undeniable proof of what psychics had done to the Aquatos.
But he was not like his siblings. He might have been petrified of the water, his heart pounding as the Hand pointed toward his doom, and yet, Raz understood his differences alienated him. A line had been drawn, one that they may have declared was by him. He had crossed it again and again, prompting Augustus to redraw it in the sand with a scoff, and Raz couldn’t quite meet his eyes.
Another night, another story, another cautionary tale about how fortune tellers ruined their lives. They were not to be trusted. They were not to be heeded. One day, the water would rise and swallow them, but only if they were slow in their acrobatics. So, the Aquatos had trained and trained and trained, and if Raz was caught assisting himself with a telekinetic burst, his performance was then extended. Raz practiced to the point of exhaustion, of aching limbs, gritted teeth, and stewing rebellion, all while under his father’s watchful eye.
When the stranger - his own grandmother, Nona, Lucy, the true perpetrator whom he loved - had given him the pamphlet, for the first time in a long while, Raz felt like he belonged. But the gasps from his siblings, and their mother tensing her jaw alerted Raz that he had opened Pandora’s box. He wanted to attend a psychic summer camp, a government facility, home of the ones who cursed them. He may as well have purchased a welcome mat to set outside the caravan.
His father’s eyes blazed. His mighty hands shook, and each knuckle on his clenched fists popped. Raz’s grip was weak, and he had no means of defending himself.
Like water hitting its boiling point, Augustus snatched and tore the pamphlet into mere scraps of paper.
It was for everyone’s benefit, he had said. No son of his would cavort with filthy psychics.
And so, in the middle of the night, on the back of the World’s Smallest Pony, Raz escaped. He ran for his life in hopes of acceptance - just as Bobby had, when he accepted Oleander’s recruitment.
But he hadn’t been the one to open the box. It had already been left ajar by the one who bequeathed him with a private prayer. Forces beyond Raz’s control or understanding conspired against him over twenty years ago, creating what had been the present day rift between him and his family, for it had been based on lies. Augustus, as he came to realize multiple truths, embraced his son, his worn, patterned silk a comfort on Raz’s skin, when the minds untangled, and when they stood atop a cliffside overlooking their family.
As Bobby waited for him, Raz believed he understood, as deep, deep within him, rebellion still simmered, and his old dreams transformed into familial admonishment. His wounds, compared to those on his father and Nona, were still clad in old bandages. They remained under wraps, soothed with salves and acceptance. Though no longer fresh, the scars were inward on his epidermis.
Raz sighed.
“It’s funny. Right after everything happened, I didn’t really talk about how I felt. I never talked about it with my father. He was hurting tremendously after the Maligula incident. I didn’t want to add on to it. So, I kept quiet, just like how I criticized my sister when she hid her powers..”
He snaked his hand behind his neck, Bobby observing him with an unchanging visage.
“But yeah, I was hurt. The most I did was throw away the bacon,” he said, chuckling, though Bobby wouldn’t get the joke. “I guess I never really talked to them about how it impacted me because I was focused on them. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I did talk to them, but it was mostly about how they were doing. At the time, I thought I was all right. I felt safe. I felt wanted. We…we stopped holding secrets. Stopped the blame game and started really looking at each other.”
He regarded Bobby, who hadn’t blinked. The static quieted, leaving only their breathing and the rippling energy of the Mental Connections. Bathed in the light of constellations, Raz managed a bitter smile.
“It didn’t hit me until you brought it up. My parents were trying to protect me. They love me. They didn’t know any better and thought what they did was in my best interest, no matter how harsh, but I was psychic, too. I was someone I thought they scorned for years, and my parents, well, they wanted nothing to do with psychics..” He thrust out his hands like a true ringmaster, and his voice boomed. “‘Come see Razputin, the black sheep of the Aquatos! His own dad wants him dead!’ That’s what I thought, at least.”
Bobby gasped. The shadow rumbled, voices rising, but Bobby sharply shook his head. He finally blinked, eyelashes batting. Brows furrowing, he broke Raz’s gaze to glance over his shoulder. Craning his neck, he squinted at what remained of the forest, but though it was devoured, it seemed he couldn’t see through the trees.
Raz quietly questioned, “Did you hear something?”
As he rubbed the back of his head, he replied far too quickly. “Naw, nothin’. Must be my imagination.”
The obvious lie should have been grabbed and revealed. But impulsivity and judgment had led them down a darker path. Raz waited for Bobby, letting him walk away, his head bowed. He walked through his shadow, which, much to Raz’s delight, seemed to shiver. The eyes weren’t darting, not were they stationary. Rather, their eyelids seemed to droop, as if resisting the urge to slumber. Those many mouths were silenced and engulfed in slow rolling waves of its own ilk. Although appendages tried thrusting upward, they were lulled back into itself, like the strength had been sapped the more Bobby walked across it.
And as he did, the earth recovered. The shadow was still massive, encroaching far beyond their reach, but it was no longer surrounding them. It receded back toward Bobby, stemming from his boots, and creating a larger environment for them. If Raz had to estimate their space, it was the size of a dorm room, which gave him the chance to better prepare for any rapid strikes.
Raz crossed over the freed area, glad to have room to extend his sore legs. “Get what I mean? I know it’s a lot to take in,” he said, and he stooped low to grab the weakening tendrils that tried slithering toward him from the mire. He jabbed in his fingers, breaking them like twigs, appearing as if he was only stretching.
Bobby pivoted to watch Raz straighten. With that same, solemn look, he said, “You’re still defending them. After what they did, you’re defending them.”
“Yeah, guess I am. I can’t change the past, and I can’t change how they acted, but there are things I can change.”
“Like what?”
“Like nothing!”
“Nothing can change! Why are you asking something that dumb?”
“You’re being stupid!”
Around them, the shadow ebbed and cried. It quaked and juddered, sporadically ramming in the distance. Callousness had swapped for a frenetic energy, panic stretching the insults. Raz casually bent his arms above his head, dipping sideways, too, to witness the shadow. From what he could tell, its tendrils and appendages were thrusting high into the air. It could no longer grasp anything, for it had consumed whatever was left. There were no trees or foliage to devour or snatch, as Raz discerned the vastness of it seemed strange. Hints of the horizon glimmered in the distance, no longer hounded by the craving contour.
He paused, his back cracking. Holding the pose as Bobby paced out of the corner of his eye, he let his mouth drop when he looked down.
It was flowing inward. Subtle shifts and shivers in the inky pool were illuminated under the might of the Mental Connections. And as he gathered himself, Raz watched the very same ink leaking back into its essence, into where it started.
Bobby isn’t acknowledging it. When it was going on about Chloe and me, Bobby was in pain, and it was gaining traction and influence. Now, it looks like it’s coming toward us, getting quieter.
Raz could have let his eyes widen, but allowed his realization to go unheard when the static’s fervent clamor renewed. While Bobby heeded only Raz, the shadow was powerless. As more grass was exposed, and the cracks in the world appeared, revealing gory innards that slipped downward, Raz pressed on with Bobby as the tides changed.
“Thinking about all that again, it’s kind of like what my dad said after everything went down. Memories are stories we tell ourselves about where we come from. The story he told himself his entire life was a lie, and that’s the story he passed down on to me up until that certain point.”
Raz refused to lend an ear to the overlapping static and waves. A swift, jarring torrent charged inward, spreading and flinging squalid sewage in liquid squalls. Sheer negativity threatened to overwhelm them, though puddles appearing in the ooze distorted the reigning ilk. The appendages sloughed back into itself, pincers and hands grasping at nothing, popping and popping and popping, spewing black rain. It was toiling in a losing battle, a surprise flank beating it back toward a single point.
Raz glanced at its origin. It was converging into its natural state. The discharge was slithering back into the average span of Bobby’s shadow from every inch of the world. Sinking into that new crevice, the eyes and mouths were rapidly vanishing. While hundreds still existed, blinking and flapping their lipless gums like fish out of water, it was steadily returning to where it had sprung. Like filling an endless pan, it flowed into itself, far beyond the meaning of fullness, an endless trough for pig slop.
The static still shrieked incomprehensible nonsense. Raz paid it no mind when Bobby focused only on him.
“So, I think what I had to realize was that we really can’t change our pasts, no matter how painful,” he declared, and he approached Bobby, the difference in their height so minuscule.
Bobby hadn’t said a word, and it was okay, Raz hoped. He didn’t need to acknowledge it, not with words. Listening to someone other than the rampant cruelties slinging mud in his head, providing a new perspective, instead of adhering to the stagnant, stuffy squalor of his past, was what Raz believed would bring Bobby out of his head.
“We can make new stories, and like Agent Fullbear once told me, we can rewrite how we view our memories. We can make the most of them, and look on the brighter side while still acknowledging the pain. The past has already happened, but our futures haven’t. You won’t know until you try.”
“Stupid! He’s lying!”
“Look what you did to him! He’s tricking you!”
“You’re-!”
“You can’t-!”
And those mouths were dragged back home. Their weak, pathetic attempts of distraction were swallowed. Tasting their own medicine, they were forced into silence and pulled into the vacuum, as new light brightened Bobby’s full irises.
Like a tape being rewound, the shadow lost the ground it had gobbled. Skeletal digits, lobster pincers, or octopus tentacles couldn’t prevent its erasure. There was nothing to grab, and the soil rejected it. Though still vast and immense, it was receding at a rate far faster than its expansion. The scars of the world had not healed, but the stench of stomach acid was slowly suppressed by a wind tinged with pond scum.
To Bobby, Raz held out his hand.
“Hey,” he began, tilting his head, “think you can give it a try with me?”
But as Bobby drew a breath, two tendrils snatched his wrists. They were desperate, pinning him in place like vultures fighting a meal that wasn’t dead. Bobby grimaced, static wailing mistruths that Raz couldn’t decipher. He stared at Raz’s hand, and Raz’s grin tightened, his molars grinding. Lowering it now would have appeared like the offer was off the table, so while the shadow retracted, and hands feebly emerged to snatch at Bobby’s limbs, Bobby sighed.
“Raz, you’re…” He shifted, the slightest gesture enough to brush off the invaders. Though more fingers and pincers curled around his legs, they were drunk back into their original form. “You’re something else. You really are. I wish I really could’ve been on that stage with you.”
Steadily, steadily, the shadow retreated. From every direction, it returned to whence it came. And above, while the sea raged from being confined to its coffin, the mass of constellations changed, too. While they appeared no different, the black substance no longer seemed coagulated around the strands, and down, down, down they dribbed. Out of those thousands of connections, Raz glimpsed a change in a dozen, leaving them without connected threads, and while he couldn’t read what they were, he sensed what he needed to say.
“You still can be.”
They were at a distance closer than the best of friends. Raz stepped forward, the grass dull and dead around them, the size of the Atrium grounds. The rapidly dwindling shadow was converging to that single point like a coursing river, and the mouth of its origin had no choice but to swallow.
While Bobby was still stationary, Raz stepped to his side, They faced away from the shadow, Bobby still not acknowledging its existence. As he dried his eyes with his soiled shirt, Raz once again saw Bobby’s jutting ribs and concave stomach. His own guts twisted at the sight, the jagged wound gouging Bobby appearing to pulse. Catching where Raz observed, Bobby released his shirt, blood stains on his cheeks.
“I lied about that, too,” Bobby mumbled, ghosting a hand across his frighteningly thin torso. “To Hollis, to the med team. I wasn’t doin’ good. I just didn’t care. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. Just made me sick all the time.”
The shadow screamed, latching onto a sign of weakness. It wailed insults, familiar and crude and debasing, but Bobby flinched hard enough for his teeth to hit. His eyes darted, whipping everywhere, but he couldn’t see. The manifestation of what had tormented him for years was not yet present to him. As his cloudy vision searched, the static quivering, Raz launched into what he believed would bring Bobby clarity.
“Hey, Bobby, do you get lost in your head? Does that make it hard for you to take care of yourself?”
Bobby gasped, and the shadow howled from two direct hits.
“Sometimes, when a person has gone through an intense period of self-loathing, they get caught up in their own head. They start believing terrible things they say about themself. You neglected yourself, and you spiraled. In the end, the one you ended up hurting the most is yourself.”
Raz held out his arms around them.
“What you’ve been hearing and believing your whole life, none of it’s true. You aren’t like that. You’re better than what you tell yourself. I know you are.”
“Shut up! Circus freak!”
The shadow’s desperate shriek could have been a record playing on repeat. It screamed not at Bobby, but to Raz, reiterating its malice. Strangled words hailed upon them. The waves surged faster and faster, lightning speed toward its origin. As Bobby’s eyes widened, his full attention given to Raz, a confident line from their childhood sprinted in Raz’s head.
End of the world? More like end of the line, sucker.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! You make me sick! You can’t help him!”
“A circus freak trying to help another circus freak? Don’t make me laugh!”
“He can’t help you! Don’t forget what you did to him!”
“You were going to keep him here for as long as you could! You were going to-!”
Bobby sucked in a breath so harsh that Raz thought his teeth would rattle.
“How can you say all that when I-? What I did to you-! I-! I’m-!”
And before Bobby could finish such a treasonous question, Raz grabbed Bobby’s wrists. He lowered them, bending Bobby toward him. Their breathing was harsh, almost swallowed by the endlessly shifting tide. It drowned, deeper and deeper, filling the manger with mouths sewn shut.
The inflictions suffered across the day - or however long it had been, for time stretched on differently in the mind - faded. As Raz held Bobby, staring into those eyes that threatened to overflow with tears, his own hatred ebbed. It might as well have been taken by the shadow, dragged far, far underground. At that moment, it no longer mattered. The pain had existed, and it couldn’t have been clearly erased, but with his heart full, Raz came to another realization.
“I know. I know. I’m grateful that you regret what happened to me, and you’ve already hurt yourself enough,” he said, and through the frustrated yowls of the decaying shadow, he smiled. “You know, even with everything I learned about you, the truth is…I still really don’t know you, and you don’t know me. I don’t know your favorite band. I don’t know what you do in your spare time. Heck, with all this, you asked me what my favorite horror movie was when I can’t for the life of me figure out yours. Also, I didn’t know you were a lot like me.”
“How the hell can you take any of the blame?” he wearily asked, expression pinched.
“I don’t want there to be any blame. I just really, really want to help you here and from now on. Besides, if we couldn’t share a stage back in camp, there’s a good chance we can share the spotlight as Psychonauts.”
Bobby’s jaw quivered. His wet eyes blinked. Pitiful gasps escaped him. Raz released his wrists, so he could drag his slick palms across his dank face. He struggled to respond, shaking, not like prey, but with the countenance of someone who had been absolved.
But the shadow trembled. Like a child throwing a temper tantrum, it might as well have tossed itself on the ground. It roiled and bubbled and pulsated like popping pustules, unable to cease its demise. Forming multiple lines and returning to its inkwell, Raz could have sworn he heard his name roaring through the static.
The horizon was clear. The flow was almost done. Through the gore and cracks, the shadow had no reprieve.
Raz pushed a little farther.
“You know, Bobby, since you told yourself such vile things for years, you don’t even know what’s around you.”
Bobby blinked, stray tears escaping. “What’s around - huh? Wh-what the f*ck?”
Shock elongated his face. His blustering propelled him forward. His lanky body couldn’t push Raz aside, and Raz steadied him as he gazed at the remnants of the forest. Behind them, now that Raz could properly look, were the vestiges of Memory Vaults and cracked CRTs. Their hollow husks were all that remained of what had been an expansive forest of gnarled trees and overgrown roots.
Collapsing to one knee, Bobby was finally seeing the decimation. He sunk his fist into a crack, Raz shouting his name as he hurried to join him. Bobby yanked it free, withdrawing a clump of slimy, congealed viscera. It was an unholy combination of a lung and lower intestine, the latter gouging through the uneven holes of the graying organ. With a shriek, Bobby launched it at another crevice, and it bounced back into the abyss.
“The ground! What’s wrong with the ground? A-and where’s the woods? Hey! Raz! What’s-? What’s-? What’s…?”
Then, when Raz pointed, Bobby looked down.
And for the first time, he saw what he had done to himself.
He may as well have frozen like the meat in the cooler upon understanding the truth, and the static stopped all at once.
The world trembled, pins and needles on their bodies. Raz clutched Bobby’s shoulders when he cried out. He held him close, glaring at the inky rapids, gushing deeper to its starting point. Dark splotches burst up like quick geysers, gulped down by the oncoming rush of its own essence. As Bobby’s mental world clattered like broken dishes from a cupboard striking the floor, Raz heard Bobby’s whispers over a sudden outpouring of hideous static.
“Nothing! You’re nothing! You are nothing! You’re always gonna be nothing!”
Bobby grasped the back of his head. He buckled, the words starting and stopping. At his realization, he mumbled so hurriedly under his breath that Raz could barely understand them.
“I was - this whole time, I was-! That’s-! It’s always so f*cking loud. It’s like thunder and static in my head, but-but hold on, hold on, it’s right between my ears. It’s way louder than usual. Why’s it-why’s it-? What is that?”
“Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!”
The single word repeated, as mighty as the earthquake, emboldening the shadow. It swirled upward, rising, putting everything it had to one more attempt. A tidal wave of ink shot far above their heads, glistening like grease, congealing from every angle. It dipped low, the height of a skyscraper, and unleashed a final, desperate strike. It was coming far faster than Raz could ever command with his hydrokinesis, plunging so swiftly that the world was a black curtain across their eyes. As Bobby’s fingernails dug into Raz, he seized Bobby, tucked Bobby’s head to the crook of his neck, and screwed his eyes shut.
Raz understood the fear experienced by the protesting Grulovians.
He heard Bobby gasp. Then, for a split second, all was silence.
An eruption battered from above. Raz couldn’t see. He was suffocating, his breath stolen in an instant. They clung to each other, Raz expecting them to be torn apart. A seemingly endless deluge of frigid ink pounded them, empowered by the static and negativity. It weighed them down, as if dragging them to the bottom of its sea, the viscid feeling of organs and dirt rubbing against them.
Raz couldn’t scream. He didn’t dare move, holding on to Bobby with whatever strength remained in his limbs. His mind and heart hammered, the PSI lock doing him no favors. Just as he thought he was going to succumb, he gasped.
It only lasted a mere moment, for when Raz opened his eyes, a bubblegum pink light greeted him. It pulsed, jutting outward with spikes. Ink shedded and piled into the shadow, its final move all for nothing. In silence, with one of Bobby’s hands extended and the other clutching his temple, they observed the writhing, shuddering mixture pool into its original length, until not a mark remained.
Bobby’s shield evaporated. His arms slackened. Together, they stared at the flat shadow with its average height and form that matched Bobby’s. Nothing about it exuded either extreme or extraordinary. As if it hadn’t collected its essence, the shadow remained still, moving only when Bobby adjusted his hands to sweep through his matted hair. It had no dimension; it was merely a shadow extended by the vast illumination of the Mental Connections, of which, were still shifting.
Raz was dumbstruck. He couldn’t unearth anything to say. All he could do was hold Bobby’s shoulder.
“That was…that was…” Bobby trailed off, then, with the shadow moving alongside him, he asked, “How long…has that been happening? How long was that there? I-I-I-I don’t even know what the f*ck that thing was, or why it’s a freakin’ shadow!”
His panicked tone echoed, shrill enough to combat the intensity of the shadow’s screams. In front of them, as if impacted by Bobby’s wails, the fallen cameras transposed. The cracks in the earth were plentiful, and the cameras shuddered as they slipped inside. Only one remained, jostling from left to right, stained with ichor.
Slowly, Raz untangled himself from Bobby. His awkward gait aside, he hobbled toward it and gathered the camera in his arms. He glanced in the fissures, finding no sign of the other cameras through the grotesque mass of viscera in the bowels of the world.
A single red light shined, and he spoke into the camera like an untrained actor.
“A long time. This whole time. Even longer than that. You know now, right, why it’s tethered to you? You know what that is because now, you finally acknowledged it. It’s everything. How you feel about yourself, talk about yourself, your frustrations, your shame, your past mistakes and traumas. All concocted into something you’d see in a horror movie.”
Raz looked over at Bobby, who grabbed his mouth. The realization pinned him to the ground, his shadow mirroring. Stripped of its features, it was nothing more than Bobby’s blank reflection.
Raz offered the camera, and Bobby accepted it with both hands. He examined it, seemingly baffled with how to maneuver it. He hit a button on the side, and the slot popped out. There, nestled between the wires and guts, was a video tape.
Bobby removed it as if holding something sacred. To the average onlooker, there was nothing special about it. It was an unmarked black VHS tape. It was in need of being rewound, and announcing his intention to watch it, his tone quivering, Bobby dragged himself to stand.
But just as he ventured toward a Memory Vault, where husks of VCRs remained, he tripped. His body slammed to the ground with such sudden aplomb that his face smacked first. Like a wiry tree, he toppled, and the tape scattered, skidding like a skipping stone down into a crevice. The camera landed right next to him, still filming close by his face.
Bobby groaned. As Raz rounded to his front, he managed to lift his upper body. He bent his left leg, slowly shaking his head and panting. The effort seemed to strain every muscle in his body, as if he had run a marathon. Raz went to lift him, only for his gaze to lock onto his stationary right leg. While Bobby wriggled in place, he couldn’t jerk or bend that limb.
Instead, it plunged straight down into darkness, into the shadow.
Bobby lurched back, a yelp in his throat. He scrabbled on the ground, his front half awkwardly arched. Clawing at the ground, Bobby jerked his head over his shoulder, shouting he felt something, already far too late.
Reminding Raz of the skin of an apple peeling off, the shadow raised its arms from the ground, and snatched Bobby’s leg, dragging Bobby through itself.
He was sinking like an anchor. Thinner tendrils erupted around the shadow, breaking the neighboring earth. They coiled and seized his limbs, twisting tight like stretched twine. His left leg was gulped down, leaving him like a victim of quicksand. As one encircled his neck, tightening like a noose and causing his eyes to bulge, Bobby’s upper half lurched, reaching out to Raz with flexed fingers.
Raz snatched Bobby’s arm, hunkering in place. With the appendages locked around Bobby’s limbs, it was a game of tug of war. Digging in his heels, Raz gritted his teeth as he pulled back. Every muscle and tendon ached, and he inched away, forcing Bobby out, but the shadow refused to surrender. Back and forth, back and forth, they struggled, submerging Bobby in viscous ink staining his skin.
With a snarl, Bobby suddenly broke off from Raz. Landing on his side, Raz barked Bobby’s name. He was drowning faster without aid. But as Raz scrambled to help, Bobby seized the strap of the camera. He whirled it around his head, chipped teeth gleaming scarlet, scattering bits of paneling.
“Get the f*ck-” He rammed it over his head, and smashed it squarely into the shadow’s brow. “-off me!”
The shadow disconnected in an instant, lurching away to the other side of the ring like a victim of a knockout punch. A muffled moan in Bobby’s voice echoed. Its limbs and tendrils retreated, the former to the grass, the latter within its body. The force of the blow propelled the shadow aside and ejected Bobby from the mire, leaving not a trace of ooze sliding down his frame.
And as the camera fell into the shadow’s essence, Bobby hurried, crawling to Raz, who secured an arm around his shoulder.
The distance was too great. It stretched like a rubber band between Bobby and his shadow. Then, a pop.
As if bubblegum snapped, Raz and Bobby stared at the ground. It was dirty brown, littered with dead grass and fissures filled with gore. Nary an inky strain was chained between Bobby and his shadow. Rather, it was lying flat on its back many feet away in a wide berth, if Raz ever saw one.
The shadow was no longer a part of Bobby, not a single strand linking them.
It - he - lunged from the ground, rising with a vampiric flourish. Eyes snapped open in a vicious glare. Deep red and green irises were enmeshed in yellow, bloodshot sclera and glittered in the mist across his face. Dripping from his scalp was ink, giving his frame renewed density. As he twisted his head, vertebrae cracking, a nasty, jagged grin rippled across his face, and he dragged his tongue across his teeth, relishing his freedom.
He was far faster than a blink. The shadow zipped across the grass, pressing himself, as flat as a piece of paper, to a fissure, before vanishing into an endless sea of viscera. He was gone and on the run.
Raz scrambled to peer inside, gasping. Bobby warily followed, crying out with disgust.
The innards of the world were draining. They sank just as Bobby had, churning like a heavy meal in an overstuffed gut. Bloody smears splashed across the crevices, and Raz was reminded of processed food in a grinder. They swirled and sloshed together as they tumbled deeper, deeper, then surged in the direction the shadow fled.
Tremors reignited, though faint. The rumbling grounded them, worsening the cracks. But Raz knew they had no time to waste, trying to say as such when he caught a glimpse of Bobby.
He wrapped his arms around his midsection. Shaky hands gripped the hem of his soiled shirt. Slowly, he inspected his gash. The threads that stitched through his flesh had come undone. Blood seeped like paint, and mercifully, perhaps, by the peculiarities of the mental world, his entrails remained behind his tissue and skin.
Bobby swallowed hard. He looked where the shadow escaped, words tumbling over his quivering lips.
“That was - it was - he was-” He choked down the lump in his throat. “All this time, I was…” He grasped his ears, his chest heaving as he dared to look at Raz. “It was always loud, always crept outta nowhere, but I didn’t…I didn’t…why did I let it get this bad? How the f*ck did I let it go on until I…when I…trapped you, I…”
Raz gnawed on his cheeks as Bobby curled in on himself, like a freshly run over hedgehog. His whimpering was carried in the breeze, a touch of humid air still lingering.
“What the f*ck is wrong me? I knew this was wrong. I knew it, but I did it anyway. I always pulled this kind of sh*t,” he cried, and on his knees, he slammed his fist to the ground, his fingers withering as the strike connected. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Always so goddamn stupid! Why couldn’t I be better? I knew better! It was too much for me, but I still-I still-! What I did to you-! To her! To my own stupid archetypes and my own stupid self! Now, now, now, that thing is-! f*ck! Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid dumbass!”
He continued beating his trembling hand to the ground, cursing. Raz listened, motionless. Then, he ghosted his hand across the PSI lock.
Despite it all, the director was responsible for the production. He, in the end, ran the show. Bobby had concocted and conceptualized his scheme. He had devised the means to enact it, pulling the wool over sympathetic eyes. And then, when he had Raz in his clutches, nearly bashed his brains out with a sledgehammer, determined to fulfill a delirious desire to film his revenge, a measly, short-term solution.
Fueled by such life-long traumas, in desperate need of help that he had rejected, it wasn’t single-minded aggression. It wasn’t a tepid combination of enmity and envy that empowered Bobby to attack Raz. The factors in play, like a prolonged war, had included a myriad of falling dominos leading to their mourning disposition, and Raz knew what to call that thing.
He was a lifetime’s worth of self-loathing, fortified by interconnecting issues that dragged Bobby deeper down the hole. Over time, what should have remained in his subconscious took on a life of his own, goading his iniquities toward himself. And as a shadow, crucially linked to Bobby, he contaminated Bobby with chilling hisses, promising the mistruths he spoke were Bobby’s assured reality.
Bobby had already been punished enough, before and during, pre-production and production. He was a broken, hollow caricature of who he could have been. And as the lone witness to Bobby’s self-flagellation, Raz wiped his eyes and hoped to stop the tears from continuing to run down Bobby’s cheeks.
“You know, I remember something Sasha told me. It went along the lines of problems usually appearing bigger in our heads than they really are. For a moment, I thought that might’ve been the case when your shadow shrank down to size, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.”
He slipped off his coat, and kneeling next to Bobby, wrapped it around his torso. Bobby blanched, screwing his eyes shut and grunting through clenched teeth. As a makeshift tourniquet, it would be enough to temporarily staunch the bleeding. Bobby scoffed, mumbling that horror movies sure were generous with the amount of blood a person could lose.
Raz gripped his shoulder, speaking quietly.
“Bobby, I know you’re feeling terrible, and it’s sunk in for you just how wrong everything was. There were tons of things in the past that led up to this. A lot of people let you down. A lot of events happened in the worst ways.”
Bobby shook his head, trying to retort, and Raz hurriedly continued.
“Don’t say it’s just your fault alone. Yeah, you played a big role, and you made plenty of bad choices, but you just realized how awful you were talking about yourself, right? So, beating yourself up isn’t going to make that thing stop whatever he plans on doing to your mind. You can’t become a better version of yourself, if you keep putting yourself down.”
Tremors continued, steadily shaking the fragile earth. The stenches were dissipating, as if they were being sucked into the seemingly endless crevices. For now, the dull, dusty domain was theirs, and they were alone. Only their voices resounded.
“We can’t let that thing win. We have to go after it and…”
“I can’t.”
Bobby’s voice cut in, as hollow as the barrel they found themselves in.
“I can’t. I can’t.”
He looked at Raz, but couldn’t meet his eyes. He was fixed elsewhere, staring just above them. Bobby tried raising his hand, and the bruised digits curled into a fist that once again hit the ground. The impact was nonexistent, and more likely than not, only served to worsen his pain..
Allowing the shadow to gain farther and further headway was going to be detrimental. Seconds were precious in a mind so volatile. On the verge of collapse, the aftershocks rippling through their bodies, Raz should have insisted they hurry.
But he didn’t.
It was not at all what Bobby needed, for Raz had already promised to do whatever he needed, so long as Bobby let him in.
And so, he said a single word that would have shocked those waiting desperately for his return, as it lengthened his confinement.
“Okay.”
Bobby blurted what naturally came from a person being told their prisoner preferred their stay. “Huh?”
Raz sat next to Bobby. Before them, free of the ink, were the Mental Connections. They twinkled with luminance that should have blinded them. But as Bobby gawked at Raz, and the strands continued shifting ever so slightly, Raz folded his hands in his lap, casting Bobby a mild grin.
“That’s fine. I told you I’d stay with you. We can recover here, but I still think we should find somewhere to go, and rest up there.” He glanced at Bobby’s torso. “Maybe somewhere with PSI Pops.”
Bobby’s damp eyes shone with the same intensity as the connections. Out in his peripheral vision, they - he - continued changing. Lines and threads were trailing away and discovering new companions. Others were snipped and remained. Regardless, the constellations were pristine. When Bobby sucked in a breath, he dried his eyes for hopefully the last time, murmuring a response that would have sounded casual in the real world.
“I like Dream Fluffs more.”
“Yeah, they’re pretty good. I really like the crunch of the PSI Pops. Also, they’re more fruity than sweet these days. Must be something Otto did to the recipe and-”
Raz gasped. He twisted, feeling nothing on his back. He patted his midsection and shoulders, Bobby blurting to know what was wrong. Then, stalled by a confusing stint, and feeling his neurons firing, he briskly turned to Bobby.
“Oh, hey, that reminds me. Did I bring my bag with me, or did I leave it in Sasha’s lab? Because I don’t remember falling out of that cooler with it, and my old one appeared on me when I traversed through camp, and that’s gone.”
Bobby blinked. “Your…bag? Your bag - oh, oh, right, your bag. I, uh, hid it back in the construct. I stowed it in one of the closets. There were plenty of other doors ya didn’t have time to investigate.”
“Aw, darn. I always keep some in there. I’d set a squirrel on fire for a PSI Pop right now.” Raz hummed, leaning back and resting his palms on the ground. “I wonder what those other rooms were like. Thinking about it, you had those floor plans, and they were pretty detailed. I’m kinda disappointed our chase scene didn’t extend through a few more rooms. Maybe I would’ve found a third kitchen.”
His joke landed flat when Bobby scratched through his hair. Admittedly, Raz was curious to learn if there was a secret third kitchen. Perhaps, rather than human entrails, the entrees would have been platters of roadkill and an assortment of acrid wine.
A cool, calming breeze swept through the end of the world. Over the cliffside, the Mental Connections - or, as Raz believed he should have been calling them Mental Constellations - rose far from their grasp. They returned to the universe, sewing new threads across the horizon. While Raz couldn’t read them at all, they burned with a brilliance untouched by morbidity.
Tingles ran underneath them, but Raz said, “We can rest for as long as you need. Then, we can go after it together.”
Bobby gritted his teeth, mustering the strength to lash out, and startled Raz.
“Why are you still being this nice to me? This calm? Even if all that sh*t just happened, you’re…”
He trailed off, his tone losing its edge. He was catching himself, a flush on his sweaty face. By now, a normal person would have bled out.
Raz couldn’t stop his sigh. It was no wonder Bobby had pushed aside the extended hands before him. Even in his frailest moment, he was a dog knowing only how to bite. Collaring him was another cruelty, as was reprimanding him. He was trying, the effort present, and as his tears dried on his cheeks, Raz couldn’t feel an inkling of agitation toward learned behavior.
“Well-” he drawled, and he gestured at the broken terrain. “-first point.” Then, he pointed at Bobby’s torso. “Second point.” Finally, he patted his uniform. “Third point, but to clarify it before you say I’m just doing my job, I-”
“You’re trying to help,” Bobby interrupted, and he itched his hot neck. “I-I get that, yeah, I get it. I don’t know - I mean, it’s - something like-”
Starting and stopping, Bobby huffed. He stretched his legs, and his knees popped. He assessed the damage to his body, counting the various cuts, bruises, and teeth marks in his skin. Hissing as he touched a fresh bite, he stared ahead at nothing in particular, then dragged his gaze toward Raz, who, now that they were properly alone, was struck with a quirky realization.
“You know, going back to what I said, as much as I learned a lot about you, I still don’t know much about you personally.”
“Same here.” His eyes darted from side to side. “Since we, uh, never offered it to each other?”
“We were too busy kicking the crap out of each other or being general assholes. Seriously, if I saw you were in my general vicinity, I had to act like a showoff.”
Bobby snorted, as if hearing Raz saying minor curses was the height of amusem*nt. The tension in his body evaporated, and he relaxed, lowering his shoulders. Raz emulated his posture, stretching his sore legs and letting loose a held yawn.
“Well, if you don’t mind a few more questions-” Raz rubbed his hands, offering an impish grin. “-maybe we can hash it out until you feel ready to go. Better than sitting around doing nothing, right? We might as well get to know each other, director to actor, actor to director.”
“Sure. Yeah.” He rolled his eyes. “Some director I turned out to be.”
“Hey, I’m a pretty uptight actor. If I don’t like something in a script, I’m changing it. The True Psychic Tales department hates me since whenever they feature me, I send in corrections that often go overlooked.”
“You know that sh*t’s fabricated, right? It’s practically propaganda.”
“TPT is based on real events, so I want to be as accurate as I can whenever it’s my story.”
“You gonna submit this one for approval?”
“Not without extensive rewrites. This first draft sucks.”
Bobby cracked the first genuine laugh he heard all day. Exuberant, light, airy like a child’s cackle, it warmed Raz’s heart. Raz laughed alongside him, as if they were old friends. And although there was an exasperated grumble in the back of his head, begging Raz to seek out the shadow before further calamity struck, he felt more at ease with Bobby than ever before.
For him, for both of them, it was exactly what they needed.
“So, back to getting to know each other. Let me get a big one out of the way since those eye bags are pretty atrocious,” he said, grinning and pointing at the dark rings under Bobby’s eyes. “How well do you actually sleep? And don’t think about saying it’s fine because I can see otherwise.”
The smirk languidly tugging at Bobby’s lips almost, almost denoted something more between them. “As you can tell, not too f*ckin’ well.”
And gradually learning more about one another, as they conversed in soft tones louder than the tremors of Bobby’s frangible world, the gash across Bobby’s abdomen - along with the various wounds littering his frame - stitched together into tight, rugged scars.
