Unfamiliar Territory

I did not run far with the bullet in my leg.

I had never been shot before, but I had expected more pain. Instead, it felt like the muscles in my thigh were going numb. I could hardly feel anything. It soon made running impossible, and even walking became a difficult and awkward task.

But I kept walking. I walked as the hours dragged on and after the sun went down. I kept away from the streets, from the useless people. They would only get in the way or they could’ve been part of my nightmare- working against me. I didn’t know anymore. I couldn’t remember anymore.

I limped down a dirt road far away from the lights of shops, homes, and streetlights. The stars and the moon were blocked by unseen clouds and I could hardly see the path.

I was lucky to find a sturdy enough stick before the sun was gone, as the numbness in my thigh had begun to branch up and down the entire leg. I figured it was either from blood loss or maybe even magic in the bullet itself. I couldn’t stop to check. I knew if I stopped I wouldn’t be able to keep going, and I had to keep going.

I tried not to think. No more plans, no more questions. My body felt on the edge of oblivion. What wasn’t numb was burning with a fire worse than when I was chased around the school by Mutt. Back then, I wasn’t in very good shape and was running for my life for less than a minute. I think this time I had been on the move for-

The branch snapped. I fell forward into the dirt with a surprised groan. When I hit the ground, it felt like the world came down with me.

I wasn’t getting back up again. This was it. The end of the road. Either they would find me, or I would die here, alone.

I kept my eyes closed. Breathing hurt my chest. I chocked as dirt filled my mouth and nose. I sneezed.

“God damnit!” I moaned, wanting to slam my fist into the ground but being unable to lift my arm. “Damnit, damnit, damnit!”

“Damn you Mallard! Damn you Mutt, Kat, Stallion, Mr. Copper- damn you all,” I hissed as I breathed into the dirt. “Screw you guys and your magic, your knowledge-or whatever the hell. I was perfectly fucking fine with my life-not knowing. Then you all had to show up with your god damn tea and take it all away!”

I slammed my forehead into the ground with enough force to feel the shockwave in my brain. “Well, fuck you guys! Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you! You can take your familiars and witches and whatever other magic bullshit and shove them up your-!”

Something stopped me from continuing my rant. Something new that wasn’t a sight- I still had my eyes closed- and not a sound, as it was deathly silent save for my shouting.

It was a smell. Lots of smells. I could smell the blood from the gun shot wound- sour and pungent. I could smell the dirt, the trees, the leaves, flowers, and something...else.

It was like the time I could smell Kat’s injury, but with the entirety of my surroundings. At first whiff, the amount of new things I could smell was overwhelming. But, as I moved my nose around and honed in on a particular scent within the mass, I found that I could separate it from its close neighbors.

In the span of seconds, I was doing it easily, without effort, and I caught the smell, something so sharp that it was clearly separated from the natural odors of the dirt road and the swaying trees.

It was horribly complicated and horribly sour. I was both appalled and intrigued by it. The numbness and burning in my body became secondary to my nose as I pushed myself off the ground and crawled towards the fascinating scent. As it led me from the dirt path and into the grass, I opened my eyes and was altogether taken aback again.

I could see. I could see everything like it was as clear as day. But I knew it was still dark out- it had to be. The sun only went down less than a few hours ago and yet I could see the trees and mountains miles and miles away. Glancing back, I could see the very distant lights of the park, and of the town beyond that. In a sudden panic, I darted my eyes everywhere that I could.

Was this another magic trick? Did those bastards finally catch me again?

But I was still alone. That, or they were being pricks and messing with me by hiding somewhere close by. I didn’t linger with the thought for long when the terrible scent grabbed my attention again, and this time it gave me idea.

Maybe the seeing in the dark thing came with being able to smell everything. If that was true, then maybe they hadn’t found me yet, and, in the dark, they’d have to rely on Mutt to track me with his abnormal sense of smell. There was nothing I could do to prevent that, but there was a way to make it harder for him.

So I continued to crawl towards the overwhelming smell. I ignored the growing pain in my body and tried to keep my newly improved eyes trained everywhere at once. It was like having that old, malnourished body all over again. Weak and vulnerable-just the way Mr. Mallard and the others preferred me.

I gritted my teeth against the strain in the muscles in my arms and remaining leg. I wondered what I would do if I had another chance to hold Mallard’s life in my hands.

It took another hour to get to the source of the smell. It wasn’t so much the distance as it was that each few inches I would push through were filled with more burning pain and forced effort than I would usually care for.

I spotted the source as I rounded a rather thick tree trunk. It was some sort of trash or junk yard, which explained the strong mixtures of foul odors. I almost laughed at my good luck. It was perfect.

A long time ago, Mutt, Stallion, and I had decided to take a walk through the town’s strip mall and just browse around. It had been my idea, like most of our hangouts had been, but it was one of the first ones where it was the three of us, so I was taken aback when we met up and I saw how Stallion looked.

Mutt was his usual, excited, self, and could hardly stand still as his head spun around to all the different stores. Stallion was doing much of the same, but there was no smile on his face.

“Hey, Foxy, how’s it goin’?” he greeted, seeing me and grinning. We met up and shook hands while Mutt continued to ooh and ahh a few paces behind him.

“I’m good. Glad you guys could make it,” I said back, momentarily shoving back what I saw and smiling as well. “So, is there anywhere you guys want to go to first?”

“Oh! There!” Mutt shouted, pointing to a clothing store with big, colorful letters making up its sign.

“Alright, cool.” I couldn’t help but laugh at his excitement.

Stallion tried a smile that looked forced as we followed after Mutt. “Just remember, Mutt, we’re here to browse not buy!”

Mutt just waved back before he ran the rest of the way to the store and through the doors, startling a few shoppers along the way. Stallion sighed as he ran a hand over the top of his head. “Don’t know if I’ve said this already, but, sorry, about him.”

“It’s cool,” I said with a shrug. “I’ve gotten pretty used to him actually, and it’s almost nice, in a way. You already kinda know what you’re in for with him when you first meet him.”

“You’re not far off,” Stallion mused, stopping before we reached the doors, making me stop as well. “I just mean...Well, it doesn’t matter all that much. He didn’t give you too much trouble or bother you too much when ya’ll went to that movie the other night, did he?”

“No, not at all!” I assured. Stallion folded his large arms and raised a brow at me.

It had been a few weeks since I had first met Mutt. I had been so focused on learning more about them, but they didn’t know much about me either.

Well, at the time, I thought that moment with Stallion was as good a place to start as any.

“Back where I’m from, people at school liked to play games all the time. They liked to pretend they were this other person just so you would like them and think they were cool. Believe it or not, I was actually sort of popular and so I was faced with people like that a lot and it got pretty...I don’t know, old, I guess. I didn’t like it-borderline hated it when I figured out most of the people I considered my friends were like that. I told them how I felt about all the bullsh-crap they were pulling and, well, let’s just say it was good that my parents decided to move, because by that point I was basically alone.”

I ran a hand through my long hair, slightly embarrassed to be sharing something that sounded so ridiculous when I said it out-loud. “Anyways, long story short, Mutt might be the best choice as the first person for me to meet at a new school. He’s real with himself and he’s real with other people. I find that a lot cooler than actually trying to act cool.”

“Well...Good. That’s good he didn’t bother you.” Stallion rubbed the back of his head as I looked at him, avoiding my gaze as he stared up at nothing. Had he even been listening?

“Er, Stallion, you alright?”

“What? Yeah, I’m fine, I’m cool- frosty, even.” He looked back at me and tried another forced smile. It made it look like he was in pain.

I only frowned and held his gaze until he finally sighed in defeat. “Okay, would you believe that I’m not alright?”

“I may be inclined to, if you can convince me well enough,” I said, following Stallion’s eyes as he looked around.

I saw a few shoppers who looked like they could be fellow students giving us strange, dirty looks. “Would it have to do with them?”

“Partly,” Stallion said. Without another word, he proceeded into the store. I followed after him as he held the door open for me.

We went inside and made our way to the more deserted men’s section. I could see Mutt near the hats, trying on multiple ones at once while countless more lay discarded at his feet. He didn’t seem to notice either us or the employee who stood nearby, glaring daggers at him.

“We don’t normally go out to malls, movies, or things like this,” Stallion explained, grimacing when he noticed Mutt but turning his attention back to me. “It’s not that we don’t like to, or that it isn’t cool hanging with you or anything, it’s just that we...’re busy. So, if I seem...not alright, or if Mutt is a little more of a nuisance than normal, it’s because of that.”

I tried to consider what he was saying. A sports guy like him. At my old school, they were the cream of the crop. Like most schools, it seemed hard for them not to go out and do things like this, even if they didn’t want to.

I couldn’t help but seem a little skeptical. “Busy?”

“Yeah...”

“With what? If you don’t mind me asking?”

“Club stuff,” Stallion said quickly, then, clearing his throat in the silence that followed, “And I’m part of the school’s track and field team-and basketball team later in the year. Or, I guess I used to be.” Stallion scratched the back of his head. “Last year I kinda had a falling out with the team- the basketball one. I might not be in it this go around...”

“Was it that bad?”

“Well, if you consider black eyes and fractured bones bad...” Stallion waited for me to wince before continuing. “Then yeah, pretty bad.”

“Jesus, Stallion...”

“Yeah...I probably would’ve been expelled if I didn’t wait for them to try to hit met first, and even still if I wasn’t coach’s top player.”

“Was that the reason why they tried to hurt you? Were they jealous?”

“Nah,” Stallion said at once, before pausing and then averting is eyes again to a rack of polo shirts while clearing his throat. “Well, maybe, I dunno. One of the guys might’ve been pissed that his girl had a thing for me. Another one was probably pissed that I scored on him awhile before, one-on-one. And the third guy I think had a thing for me and was confused about his feelings, so he got angry instead of figuring them out.”

“Jesus...” I repeated, not knowing what else to say.

“Man, honestly, I would have preferred if they were just pissed about me being a better player,” he said, smiling his first genuine smile since I met him that day. “But I think that was the only reason they tolerated me for so long. Then...Then when they found out I was in a club that was about drinking tea with dead people...It kinda turned the whole team against me and gave the ones with grudges an excuse.”

“To me, it sounds like the things they are getting pissed about weren’t even your fault to begin with,” I said, finding my voice. “And if your team is willing to turn on you just because you like to...drink tea with dead people, maybe you’re better off without them.”

Stallion laughed. “It wasn’t the tea drinking that made me want to join-that part is as weird as it sounds. I joined it because Mutt asked me to.”

“He did?”

“Yeah. Before that, I was actually pretty cool with most of the other guys on the team. Most of us had been playing ball together since before highscool. I figured...I guess it’s just like you said, man, people like to play games.”

“So...you and Mutt have been friends for awhile?” I asked, innocently enough, but at the same time thinking how I was finally getting the chance to get to know all of them a bit better.

Stallion almost seemed to catch wind of the same fact as he casually brushed through a few shirts hanging up nearby and remained silent for a moment. “Not really,” he said, softly and slowly. “I’d never thought much about how or why I’m friends with him, but now that you said that thing about being real with yourself, I bet you that’s what it is.”

I thought about what I could say, when an angry shout brought Stallion and I’s attentions back to Mutt. The employee, an older guy with red and grey hair, had finally lost his patience and was trying to get Mutt, who was now wearing an assortment of hats, shirts, and ties, to pick up the piles of clothing he had left on the ground.

“I should probably go handle that,” Stallion said, sighing. However, I noticed how less tense he appeared.

“Maybe no black eyes and fractured bones this time,” I joked, half worried that maybe it was too much, though Stallion laughed out loud. Loud enough to grab the attention of the people in the store, including a thrilled looking Mutt and a now panic stricken employee.

“No promises,” he said, smiling wide and showing off his white teeth. “And, hey man, thanks for talking out that stuff with me.”

“Course, anytime,” I said, smiling back and feeling good about myself.

Stallion made to go, but stopped midstride and turned back to me. “Hey, uh, this might sound kind of weird, but do you think we can keep all this we talked about today just between us? No telling Kat, Mr. Mallard or even Mutt, alright?”

“Bastard,” I cursed as I dug deeper into the earth. “You were no different. Liar. Monster. You were just like those kids at school, but worse.”

There was no easy way to get into the junkyard. The gates were all locked with chains and the tops of the fences were protected by barbwire- not that I could even climb it in the first place with my gimp leg.

I managed to follow the scent trail of some animal-a raccoon, I think- to a spot at the fence where it dug a little trench to slip under it. While I was still by no means a large person, I had to widen and deepen the gap a good bit before I was going to fit through. I tried to continue my streak of no thinking and just focus on the task, but that memory still seeped in through the cracks.

“But why that one?” I asked myself, groaning against the continual burning in my muscles. I had almost forgotten about that day.

“I did forget it! Like all those other damn ‘good’ memories, they were just lies. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to!”

I had thought they were finally opening up to me. I had thought...

“Who cares what I thought.” I pulled myself into the now widened trench, cursing a bit as the bottom of the fence scrapped against my back, but managing to slip through. “I know the truth...I know the truth now.”

There were no lights on in the junkyard. It was as still as the dark, but I could still see through it all. There were piles of trash, discarded furniture, shells of cars. Mountains of waste piled high on top of each other.

Winding paths cut through the piles, where trash was only littered, and it was through those where I continued my crawl. I kept my eyes open for anything- any slight movement, as well as a place to hide.

The smell was overpowering. I had to keep a hand over my mouth and nose just to stay conscious. It made the crawling more difficult- near impossible, in my condition-but I did not stop. Even though the numbness was crawling up my waist, even though the rest of my body was just one large fireball.

“What’s going to kill me,” I asked myself, “the bullet, or my own-?”

“Hey, you ever think about how you might die?” Mutt asked me out of the blue one evening. We were working on etching out two gravestones which were right next to each other.

I stopped in the middle of mine to look over at him. “Huh?”

“I think about it sometimes,” Mutt went on, running the pencil up and down the paper, his brow wrinkled. “Maybe I’ll accidentally eat poison, or I’ll get shot, or I’ll get hit by a car.”

“Or you could just...you know, pass from old age,” I suggested.

“No, I don’t think that will happen.”

“What? Why not? And why do you sound so sure?”

“Cause it’ll mean I did a bad job.”

I tried to go back to the inscription. Like a flower, you were bright and beautiful but passed from this world too soon. But what Mutt said made me stop and put the paper and pencil down.

“What are you talking abou-?”

“Done!” Mutt proclaimed, holding the paper out to me. All I could see was a dark grey cloud of pencil smear- he was always too rough with the etchings. I looked over to the inscription he had been working on. Like a tree, you were strong and wise but lost your love one rainy afternoon.

“What is with these inscriptions?”

Mutt held down the paper and puckered his lips as he looked between me and the gravestones. “What do you mean?”

“I mean...” I put the paper down and stood up so I could see the wide, hilly expanse of the graveyard. In the distance, Kat and Stallion working on their own gravestones. “This isn’t the first time we found ones that had poems, or some other weird way of communicating how a person died. Don’t you think that’s weird? It kind of bothers me, and I don’t even know any of these people. I can’t imagine how they must feel.”

“They don’t feel anything,” Mutt pointed out, quirking his head at me. “They’re dead, remember?”

“Right, I know. I guess I meant if they were...able to see it, I wonder what they would think about it.”

“They wouldn’t think anything.”

“Oh?” I folded my arms. “There you go sounding sure again. What makes you so sure?”

“I don’t know,” Mutt shrugged, staring blankly at the smear of pencil on his paper. “They’re dead. They don’t care.”

I let my arms fall back to my sides. Mutt was rubbing the paper between his hands as he continued to stare down at it.

Before I knew what to say, a tear fell down from his face and stained the grey smear. “Mutt?”

“Hey! Let’s go see if Kat and Stallion are done with theirs!” Mutt suddenly exclaimed, jumping up and grabbing my hand, dropping his paper and pencil in the process.

“Hey, wait,” I tried to say as Mutt began to tug me away from the tombstones. “What did you mean when you said that thing about doing a bad job?”

Mutt stopped pulling me and looked back at me with a raised eyebrow. I barely caught it beneath the flappy hat and bushy hair. “Huh?”

“You said you wouldn’t die of old age because it would mean you did a bad job.”

“I can’t tell you,” Mutt said, smiling and pulling at me again. “Come on, let’s go find Kat and Stallion!”

“Why can’t you tell me?” I asked, resisting.

“Cause it’s not important,” Mutt stopped trying to pull, but didn’t look back at me. “Come on.”

I looked back at the discarded paper and pencil that still lay in the dirt and grass beside the tombstones.

“What about your inscription?”

“It’s not important. It’s a bad one. I did a bad job.”

Mutt still had a grip on my hand. I was going to say something, but it caught in my throat when he looked back at me.

A smile was still on his face, but I could see more tears threatening to leave his eyes. “Can we please just go?”

I let him take me away from the paper, pencil, and the tombstones. By the time we made it back to Stallion and Kat, he was all smiles and laughs.

We never talked again about death or jobs and, after a few months, I had forgotten the conversation ever happened.

Until now.

“Why now?” I screamed into the crashing thunder and the pouring rain.

In an instant, the quiet night had come alive with a torrential storm. I was crawling to a bus. Like most other vehicles in the junkyard, it was missing its tires and most of its engine--but it still had a roof and seats.

However, I did not make it that far. Crawling through mud made the already near impossible task completely impossible. The bus was only a few feet away when the numbness reached my chest and the fire in my muscles turned to something altogether stiff and chilling.

All the while, I could not stop thinking about them. Even at the end.

After I had found Kat at her tree, I would sometimes watch her from afar. I found the best spot to be behind a fence that separated the designated school grounds from the rest of the world. Through that fence, I could see her drawing, napping, or just staring out into the sky.

It did not take me long to feel guilty about basically stalking her, so I would start bringing my school notes or books to study- but even that just turned into pretending to study while I would covertly look over at her and her tree. There was no one else out there to convince, I was trying to fool myself.

But I couldn’t help it. Every time I saw her at club meetings or just happened to pass by her in the hallways, she was always so...guarded. Never a smile, eyes looking every which way like she was waiting for something to go wrong.

Alone, it was different. When she drew, I could tell she wasn’t keeping a watchful eye out because she was completely engrossed into her drawings. When she slept, the creases in her forehead smoothed out and the frown was less intense. When she stared out in the sky, I tried to imagine that her thoughts were as carefree as she appeared.

Even though during those few minutes I never once spoke to her, never once caught her eye, I believed it was during those few minutes I saw the real her, and I loved it.

It was...the best thing ever.

As I laid out in the mud, waiting for the magic bullet to claim my life, the feeling came back to me. I couldn’t let it go-couldn’t get angry about it. I missed it so badly. I missed caring about her, caring about Mutt and Stallion. I missed wanting to get to know them. I missed Mary- her laugh, our talks.

After everything that’s happened, there was no more room for regrets. Mr. Mallard was right. What’s done was done. I couldn’t remember my parents or my old life, but, even so, I would not- could not- forget about my friends.

That’s right. That’s who they were. My friends.

It wasn’t all a lie. I would catch sincerity; I would discover glimmers of their true selves despite their best efforts to bury it up. I could still remember shadows of all the people that would try to lie to me-to pretend.

Mutt, Kat, Stallion, and Mary weren’t like that. They were different. They tricked me, but they weren’t pretending. I saw who they were and I liked it. Not the monsters Mr. Mallard tried to make them out to be, but the people I had come to know.

I closed my eyes. The rolling thunder and the pounding rain were nothing more than faint echoes in my mind. I could no longer feel the body I was attached to. I was floating away.

Where I was going, there was no room for regret, anger, misery, plans, hope, or love.

“I forgive you,” I whispered into the mud. “I forgive you.”

It was all I had left. I took the plunge into the blackness. No more regrets.