The way things are (Death)
Ted was in a mood. It was sort of a good mood. Sort of a just-kind-of-there mood. On the one hand, he'd just met Norman Bates. On the other hand, he'd just met Norman Bates. It was a conundrum of emotion that whirled around in his head. It left sort of a pleased mental space behind, but that pleased part was surrounded by a turmoil. He wasn't really sure how he should be feeling about anything. About this city, about being here. About the people he was meeting.
It was better than prison in ways. He could go outside and wander around all he wanted. He could do what he pleased. He could wear what he wanted. No orange prison uniforms for Ted. But this place was sort of a prison all by itself, wasn't it? Nobody could leave. People were brought in against their will.
Actually, if what he was hearing was true, then The City was sort of like a kidnapper, and all the people that he was meeting were captives. Captives with Stockholm Syndrome.
There was a nice botanical garden that he found on the map. It actually took him a lot longer to find it in life. Things kept moving. Something that he was pretty sure would never stop unnerving him. No matter how long he ended up staying. Buildings weren't supposed to move. Neither were streets. They only did that when you were crazy. Unless there was some sort of mass continuous hallucination going on where people who weren't even together experienced the same thing, then these things were actually happening. Ted thought that if he paid too much attention to the goings on that he might find himself feeling nauseous.
When he did find it, though, he decided that it was quite worth the effort. There were flowers here that Ted had never ever even dreamed of seeing. He bent down to smell a very large deep red blossom with huge, soft petals.