awe, holy island Who: Daniel, Kal, and BB What: A friendly key party. Where: Pax Letale, second and fourth floors. When: Friday the 13th
Daniel was finding it uncomfortably difficult to shake off the shock of Door Number One. Unlike BB, he had no wounds to show for their travels, but the memory alone had left quite a scar. Each time he had drifted off to sleep since that incident he had been visited by countless terrible dreams, each one a vivid reenactment of what had occurred, with minor differences. In some, the man had held onto BB, or had managed to bring her hand to his snipping teeth. In others, the man had grabbed him in her place. He had woken from each with a start, beads of sweat standing out on his brow. He had told no-one, not even Chris, but had leapt at the opportunity to self medicate with friends. And though he could not help but feel some trepidation at the prospect of trying another key, he had considered the possibility that a new experience might be better, might erase or at least lessen the one before.
And so he found himself at Kal's door, rapping quickly and loudly at its surface, and calling out to his friend inside.
"OK," he called. "Let's do this. Open up."
Kal opened the door with a haze of smoke rising from about him, a hand-rolled blunt pinched between his lips at the corner of his mouth. His eyes twinkled, rather than being dull from being high, and he smiled. “Braddah! Come in, come in. I have some special bud for this very special trip.” He held the door opened and looked over Daniel’s shoulder. “Chris isn’t coming along, is he? Does he even know about this?”
"If he's readin' the boards I guess he does," Daniel said. He sidestepped past his friend and into the apartment. When he turned around his hand was already outstretched in silent demand for the joint. "Otherwise I didn't tell him." He did not add that this was largely out of concern for his partner; he had had enough troubled visions of Chris in the situation he and BB had experienced before, but unable to flee when such was required. Even now his stomach lurched at the thought, but he did not give it voice. "Did you? Y'all, you know, talked lately? About anything?"
Kal sighed, smoke billowing out of his mouth as he turned to an already prepared blunt and handed it to Daniel. “Yeah I went to bother him after we got those fuckin’ masks. We talked briefly and I brought up I knew about his dad. We didn’t stick to the subject for long.” He pressed his lips around his blunt and breathed in, the tip lighting red briefly as he did.
Daniel perched the blunt at the corner of his mouth. He moved across the living room with an uninvited sense of familiarity, and fished a lighter from one of Kal's many hiding places. After a few long, deep, quite pleasant inhalations, he risked the question he did not truly want answered. "So how pissed at me is he? For tellin' you." He shrugged, hoping Kal would prove him wrong, unable to stop talking and simply listen to his friend's response. "He's seemed OK with me lately, so maybe he's not pissed? Or is tryin' not to be? We actually had this date, in public, and it went kinda well, so I mean…"
Kal smiled crookedly and went to his fridge to pull free a six pack of interesting, local brews. He pulled a drink free and offered one to Daniel with a movement of his hand. He’d take the rest to BB, a gift of sorts since they were jumping ahead of things. “I don’t think he’s mad. I mean, at first he seemed irritated but I told him he can’t be mad at you. He deflected like he usually does but then, I don’t know, he let me know he was upset by the whole thing--his father and what not. We ended up watching telenovas together and discussing homes for my grandmother. She, by the way, can’t stop talking about you and your ass. It’s kind of disturbing.”
Daniel flashed a bright, broad grin; the glowing cherry of the joint jumped with the motion. He exhaled another long-held breath. "I mean can you blame her? Look at this." Beer in hand and a little wiggle in his step, Daniel moved back to the door, holding it open for his friend to pass. Given everything else happening in the hallways of late, he doubted anyone would mind them openly smoking pot there. He cracked open his beer and took a sip, a fine dusting of ash drifting to the floor as his hands moved.
"How's she doin'?" Daniel asked, as they headed to the stairwell and back down to Daniel and BB's floor.
“Feisty as ever,” Kal said with a sigh, smoke curling around his beard before lifting up to the ceiling. Reaching BB’s door, Kal knocked at it with the hand holding the six--now four--pack, making the glass clink together. “But more willing to consider going to a home. I may have promised that you and Chris will visit her if she goes willingly.”
"Absofuckinlutely," Daniel said. Then he kicked out at the door with one booted foot, calling out to BB around the guttering joint held in his mouth. "BB, open up!"
The sound of something being dropped, clanging as it hit the floor, followed by swearing met Daniel's kick. The swearing continued as more clanging could be heard, moving from one end of the apartment to the other. By the time BB opened the door, she had a sour look on her face, but she only used a moment to glare at them before opening the door wide.
"Couldn't give me a heads up, I know you have a phone, Daniel Ciin," she muttered, waving the two of them, their alcohol, and the heavy scent of pot that preceded and followed them. "God, that shit better be good." As they walked through into the entryway, a thin layer of brownie mix could be seen spread over the kitchen floor; a pan that had once held the mix was now in the sink, along with other baking apparatuses. BB, meanwhile, was following Daniel and plucked the joint from his mouth. She glanced back at Kal, motioning for a beer. A deep inhalation later, and she seemed to soften.
"So what're we doing? Just...another random key? Did you all see the post I made, people have been saying where they've been, so we don't have to go in blind..." She was off at a million miles a minute, one hand holding the joint while the other continuously motioned at Kal for a drink.
Kal pulled a drink free and offered it to BB as he glanced at Daniel; she cracked it open and removed the blunt from her mouth, sipping. “Is she always like this? Does the pot mellow her out at all?” Daniel was too busy laughing to respond, though he nodded as he sipped at his beer. Looking back at BB, Kal smiled. “I wish I had your energy. God, the shit I would be able to get done.”
"Right? I can't even imagine…" Daniel propped himself up against the nearest wall, nursing his beer in between semi-helpful suggestions. "So yeah, I've been checkin' out that post, and there's a couple I'd really like to avoid. The bonfire sounded kinda nice? But I think we should find one nobody's posted about yet, and see where that leads."
BB was in the midst of downing half the can of beer, so when she finally pulled it away from her mouth she sounded half drowned and coming up for air. "Seriously? You wanna have Mr. Cannibal 2.0 try and chomp your arm off?" Her eyes rolled toward the ceiling as she considered her own words. Daniel only shrugged.
"You know what, no, I'm down for that. Because I would love to see either of you two macho dudes shriek like a little girl. So are we going or are we going?" She brought the blunt back to her mouth, a long drag expelling smoke from the corners of her lips. Her feet started carrying her toward the door, beer and blunt in hand.
“A key no one has used yet sounds like what we should do,” Kal replied, quickly guzzling the rest of his beer and leaving the empty in BB’s sink. Pressing the end of his blunt between his lips, he placed the last three beers in her fridge before turning to follow her out of the door, his hand stuffing into his pocket to withdraw a baggie of additional weed and papers. “You think we need more for the road or are we good?”
"Naw, save it for after," BB replied, turning around in the hallway. She took a few paces backward toward the elevator. "Trust me, if this is anything like last time, all the weed in that bag," she pointed to the container in his hand, two fingers pressed around the blunt she'd stolen from Daniel, "isn't gonna be enough." She pressed the blunt back to her lips as she nodded, eyes wide, and then turned back around to all but skip toward the elevator, hitting the call button to go up.
Daniel skirted around her the moment the doors opened, entering the car before either of them could. "It'll be fine," he insisted, holding the door wide for them. Once they were safely inside, he grinned impishly at both his companions. "We already know not to use the axe-shaped one, and somebody posted about one with a beaded handle… somethin' about not eatin' anything in there. So there's two we know to avoid, right? Easy peasy."
The doors chimed open at the fourth floor, and once again Daniel was quick to take the lead. He stopped short at the keys, though, clearly not wanting to be the one to choose (and choose poorly). "Any of 'em look particularly nonthreatening to y'all?" He pointed up to one forged from bronze, the turquoise stain of age marking its length. "That's kinda cool. Sort of Indiana Jones lookin'."
“It does,” Kal replied with a smil. Due to his height, he was much closer to the keys and able to gaze at them without tugging them free. “Do you guys want to do that one or is that one of the keys that’s already been used?”
He moved down the hallway, a hand lifted to flick at one of the keys and send it spinning before he looked back at BB and Daniel for direction. “We could always try two keys. BB, you want to get Alice? Then we can all pair off so no one is riding this solo.”
To her credit, BB only tensed for a moment. She'd been mid-sip of her beer (thankfully it didn't suddenly slide down the wrong pipe), and she kept from glaring in Kal's direction in response for his innocent question. She quickly swallowed down the beer that threatened to choke, quickly parlaying her discomfort into a shrug.
"You lookin' to ditch me already, beefcake? You want some alone time with your boyfriend?" She teased. Daniel quickly flipped her off. The can emptied, she put it at the junction of wall and floor near someone's apartment, rising to her feet with the still-smoking blunt in hand. "Naw, I don't think she'd be into this kind of thing. But yeah, that works, let's go already!" Taking a puff, she moved up and slapped Daniel's chest, then made a show of trying to (unsuccessfully) grab a key. After a moment, she glared between the two. "Really?"
"Really," Daniel said; BB made a face in response. He snatched the dwindling joint from her lips and drew a long, deep breath. As he held it, he reached upward, grabbing at a white key with teeth like a rabbit's long ears. His fingers wrapped tightly around it, but only for a moment. Then he wrinkled his nose and made a small sound of disgust, punctuated with a puff of heady smoke.
"Gross. This is one you picked up earlier, BB." He held it between thumb and forefinger. It pulsed faintly, a soft thumping that put him in mind of a pulse. "It's kinda cool, though, right? I say we try this one."
Kal moved to Daniel’s side and peered down at the key. “Yeah, let’s do this.” Plucking the key out of Daniel’s hand, he jumped slightly and frowned at the pulse within it. Momentarily startled and trying to quickly recover, he turned away from the pair and feigned interest in the various doors. “So what do we do? Just put the key in one of the doors? Or does it have to be something specific?”
BB's disgusted expression had not dissipated. "For one, I didn't pick it, I just touched it. This isn't finders keepers, assholes. But yeah, just... stick it in a lock." She threw a hand haphazardly toward a door, her foot tapping impatiently against the floor as she waited to see if Kal could handle unlocking the door or if he needed assistance.
Kal took the last drag of his blunt and left it pinched between his lips as he plunged the vibrating key into one of the various apartment doors. It slipped in and turned with ease, the click of a lock being undone audible, and shortly after he pushed the door open. Blinking, he looked into what should have been an apartment but was clearly not. “Whoa,” he murmured, the dead blunt falling from his lips and landing on a shark that lay before him. It rolled off the side of the creature and plunked into water. Kal, wide eyed, turned to his friends. “I’m not that high, right?”
"If you are," Daniel said, "we all are. 'Cause…"
Daniel took a step into the room. It was a cautious step, uneven, and his foot rolled atop the broad back of a still-swimming shark. He removed the joint from his lips and handed it to BB who was lingering just inside the door, leaning out to look over what they'd chosen. Then he took another step forward, his mouth agape as he walked over the great beasts.
"Holy shit, y'all," he called, turning around just in front of the third shark's upraised fin. "This is wild. C'mere."
BB laughed, muttering under her breath about how much of a fucking idiot he was being, but followed all the same. The surface the sharks made was rounded and uneven, their movements jerking away at odd moments to reveal rushing water beneath; BB could not see the bottom of this wide... was it a river? Or an ocean? The thought that she might fall in did not present as much of a fright as it perhaps should have.
She opened her mouth to say something, and was immediately distracted by a small figure hopping along from one shark back to another. BB quickly pointed, shouting, but the hare kept moving as though to stop would mean sudden death.
"Holy... sharks and rabbits? What the hell?"
“This feels like it’s about to be some Aesop's fables shit,” Kal murmured as he made his way forward on the sharks backs and paused behind BB, a large hand coming to rest on her small shoulder as the shark beneath his feet shifted. “I guess we should follow the rabbit, huh?”
"And what, go down the rabbit hole into some Alice in Wonderland stuff? No thank you," BB snarked in return, even as her legs wobbled when the shark beneath her flicked its tail. It certainly wasn't feasible for them to remain standing on the sharks for long, and the rabbit was quickly disappearing out of sight. She glanced at Daniel. "Forward ho?"
"Takes one to know one," Daniel teased; BB stuck out her tongue in reply. Then he turned and made his unsteady way down the makeshift bridge. It was slow going, made to seem all the worse by the hare's seemingly increasing speed. Daniel found himself wondering what might happen once the creature's passage was complete. Would the sharks remain in place for their newest travelers? Or would they turn on them, and snap their legs out from under them? He wrinkled his nose, but kept his face firmly away from his friends, hoping to keep his concerns from them for as long as possible.
"So if this is a fable," he asked his companions, "anyone want to guess what the moral might be?"
“Some tortoise and the hare shit?” Kal murmured, inching forward a little at a time. “Like, maybe it’s a good thing the rabbit is ahead of us. Rabbits never seem to win in fables, right? They’re always tricksters or full of themselves.”
"Sound familiar, Kal?" BB said, a churlish smile rolling around her lips. "But yeah, you're not wrong. Except for Bugs Bunny, but that's a whole other story." Bending at the knee, BB hopped from one shark to the next, her landing pad sinking briefly in the water as the shark adjusted for her weight. After a brief pause, she skipped again, moving from shark to shark like stones.
"Hey, you know, this is actually kinda fun—" she started, just before her shoe snagged a fin and had her tumbling forward. BB landed between two sharks, holding herself just aloft but drenching her whole front. She spat out salt water, rolling onto her back and onto the relative safety of one shark's surface. Daniel slowed his steps to stay nearer to her, though he knew well enough if she fell again, they would both be drenched. Better that than to be alone in the water, he thought. She slowly and carefully dragged herself to her feet, ringing out what clothing she could.
"Not too much farther now," Daniel said. "The rabbit's got, like, three more sharks to go, and I think we're gainin' on him. Tiny little legs and all…"
As they drew nearer to the opposite shore, more detail came into view. There were palm trees, warm sand, and what appeared to be a small gathering of homes set into a circle, facing the shore. The prospect of further exploration excited Daniel, and though he kept his hand on BB's, his footsteps grew quicker.
The end came when they were two long strides from the end of the bridge. The hare turned on its furry heel, an impish gleam in its eyes. It spoke, and though they could not understand its words, the meaning was clear enough. The little beast was mocking its bridge, teasing the sharks mercilessly though they had helped him so much. Beneath the intrepid trio, the sharks grew restless.
"Fuck." Daniel dragged out the word; everything around them seemed to happen in equally slow motion.
One shark leapt from the water, grasping the rabbit's hind leg in its teeth. Others followed. Blood filled the water, and the bridge began to break apart. And amidst the gnashing of fins and sharp, snapping teeth, the hare's pained scream could still clearly be heard. BB gaped, heels digging into the back of the shark she was currently riding.
“Fuck, fuck,” Kal cursed as his arms went out to find his balance. It’s like surfing, just think it’s like surfing, he tried to convince himself as he reached to grab BB’s hand to ensure she didn’t go flying off a shark. Looking at Daniel, he yelled, “We need to get back to the shore!”
"And how exactly are we doing that?!" BB shouted in return, unable to motion at the vast body of water around them that stretched on for what seemed like miles due to the two men around her holding her hands. The closest shore was where the rabbit was being torn into tiny pieces, which did little to inspire BB to inspect it further. All the same, she moved back, trying to drag Daniel and Kal with her with little success.
It seemed the room would decide for them, for as BB pulled them backward, they were spat back out into the hall from whence they'd come.
Daniel landed in a pile of limbs. His heart pounded, his thoughts raced, and he could not be sure where he ended and his friends began. There was blood and salt water on his hands; he could still smell blood, could still hear the bloodcurdling shrieks of the hare. He drew as deep a breath as he could, exhaling slow and deliberate, trying hard to still his anxiety-addled body.
"I'm done with the keys," he said, from somewhere beneath both his companions. "Done. I don't give a shit if there's a pile of gold in one of 'em. I'm tapping out."
Kal lay on the floor with his eyes locked on the ceiling, the keys stirred by the air of their falling. “I...I think I’m good too,” Kal admitted, a hand on his chest and his other to his side. “One key’s enough for me.” He closed his face and groaned. “Fuck, I am never going to get the sound of that fucking rabbit out of my head.”
Rolling onto his side, he pulled his legs out from the pile of limbs and reached into his pocket. “Who wants to smoke more? Maybe it’ll dull the memory.”
"Is that even a question?" BB was freed by the other men disentangling themselves, leaving her to climb to her feet. Sneakers hit the ground with no sound but the purpose to erase everything they'd just seen. "And yeah, curiosity killed this cat. I wanna get so smashed I forget my own name." She motioned both of them toward the elevator, but was unable to stop herself from casting a glance back at the door they'd just come from; all of this insanity, and for what?