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whumpcereal · 2 years

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behavior modification, part fourteen

<previous, masterlist here!

content warnings for: not much, really! This chapter is a short plot break before we go back to whumping Jack. Adult language, very oblique references to past trauma, and general upset.

part fourteen: joe and his mother

Joe stares at his phone. His thumb bounces over the screen but doesn’t quite touch down.

Jack has been missing for ten days. Except, according to the police, he isn’t missing at all. According to the police, it appears that Jack took off on his own, that he left while Joe was at the conference to avoid an unpleasant scene. They assume he simply isn’t answering his phone because he wants to establish distance. That he’s starting over somewhere new. Somewhere away from Joe.

Based on his past, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched to assume that he might, well, take off. He has a history of erratic behavior under pressure, doesn’t he?

And they think that Joe might have been hurting Jack. That he made Jack afraid. Because of Ivan fucking Peters.

When we spoke with Dr. Peters, he said Mr. Kenyon seemed frightened the last time he saw him–apparently, just before the conference you both attended. Do you have any idea why that could be, Dr. Prescott?

Jack wouldn’t leave him. Joe knows it. Joe would never do anything to frighten Jack. Joe would never hurt him. Jack knows that. Joe’s made sure of it.

But no one believes him.

Wherever Jack is, Joe hopes that Jack still believes. That he knows Joe will find him. Because Joe will. He has to.

But he can’t do it on his own.

He sighs and presses his thumb to the screen.

Marilyn Prescott

His hands shake as he sets the call to ‘Speaker.’ His mother answers on the third ring. She’s breathless; Joe can picture her wrestling market bags into the back of her SUV.

“Joey-Bear!” she chirps. “Look, honey, you know I love to hear your voice, but I’m in the middle of–”

“Mama?” Joe winces at the raw sound of his own voice.

He knows his mother isn’t going to let that pass. She has the instincts of a bloodhound.

“Bear?” Marilyn says sharply. He hears the thud of a car door. Her voice is closer when she speaks again. “Joey, are you okay?”

He isn’t. There’s no fucking universe in which Joe is okay.

“Mama,” Joe says, and the word cracks in two. He doubles over his knees. “Mama, it’s Jack.”

He hears his mother’s gasp, and he rocks farther forward. Marilyn is the closest thing Jack has ever had to a mother; Joe usually jokes that she loves Jack more than she loves him. Jack is easy with her. Safe. It’s something Joe loves, watching the two of them together.

“What’s wrong? Is he alright?”

Joe squeezes his eyes shut. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Bear,” Marilyn says, urgent this time, “what do you mean?”

For a moment, Joe thinks he might just hang up the phone. Then, he won’t have to tell her. But he takes a shaky breath and forces himself to say what he has to.

“He’s missing.”

Silence. Then–

“What? Joe, what does that mean?”

Joe is crying now. “He’s missing, Mama.”

He wishes she were there with him, that she could take him into her arms and reassure him. She’s always done that for him. When his father left, when they had to move to a shoebox apartment and Joe had to change schools, Marilyn made it an adventure; there was a new racecar bed and breakfast for dinner every night. When Tommy Stevens outed Joe in junior high, Marilyn joined PFLAG and took Joe to his first Pride parade–and maybe she took Joe to teepee Tommy’s house under cover of darkness. And when Joe found out about the things that had happened to Jack when he was a kid, she’d held Joe and let him cry so that Jack wouldn’t see.

His mama has always known what to do.

“Baby, you have to tell me more. What’s going on?”

“I was in New Orleans for the conference. And I–”

Joe loses it. His words disappear in a ragged sob, and he can’t catch his breath.

“Breathe, Bear. Breathe.”

But he can’t. Jack is gone, and Joe can’t fucking breathe until he comes home.

“Joey, tell me what happened,” Marilyn says.

“He-he-he wasn’t here when I got home. And Carl was locked up and out of sorts. I–I called the police.”

“And?” Marilyn urges gently.

Joe only shakes his head. Carl, soiled and whining in his crate. The untouched steak on the counter. The unstoppered vodka on the bar cart. And no Jack. No Jack.

His mother sighs on the other end of the phone. “Joe, honey, I need you to talk to me.”

Joe sobs again. “They did an initial investigation, and–they–Mama, they looked at his cell phone and stuff. They said he’s not missing. That he just left. They wouldn’t tell me–but-but-but I’m on his accounts–and–and–”

“Bear, slow down. I don’t understand.”

“The purchases on his card move west. Location services on his phone, they–”

“Jack wouldn’t leave you,” Marilyn says immediately. There is a certain acid in her tone, as though she’d like to take the police sergeant over her knee and give her a darn good spanking for even suggesting such a thing.

“No,” Joe agrees, his voice hoarse. Then, softly: “At least, I didn’t think so.”

“He wouldn’t, Bear. You know that.”

Marilyn sounds so sure. Joe should be sure. He is sure. But he doesn’t know where to look. He doesn’t know what’s happened. And he can’t seem to get control of himself.

“I don’t know where he is, Mama. And he–I’m so scared. What if–”

Marilyn’s breath is sharp. “You don’t think that Bill Chester–”

Joe’s gut quails. Fuck. Chester hasn’t bothered with Jack in years, not since Jack was released from juvenile detention. It’s too risky, now that Chester’s in Congress. He wouldn’t.

But he might.

Peters had said Jack was frightened the last time he saw him. Maybe Bill Chester had already reached out. But Jack would have told Joe, wouldn’t he? And he didn’t seem afraid before Joe left for the conference.

Joe should have called him earlier the day of the keynote speech. If Joe hadn’t wasted all that time talking with Peters, maybe–

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” he whispers. “Mama, I–”

But he can’t say it. I think someone took him. It’s absurd. But something about the thought lodges in Joe’s brain like a burr.

“I’ll book a flight,” Marilyn says. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“You don’t–”

“Joseph Anthony, I do. We will figure this out together.”

“What can we even do?”

Marilyn sighs. “I don’t know, baby. But I told you: we’ll figure it out. We always do.”

“Thank you, Mama,” Joe says.

“Bear, I love you. And so does Jack. Everything will be okay. I’m coming.”

He wants to believe her; that’s why he called her in the first place. But the question bounces through his mind again: what can they do?

next>

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#behavior modification #joe prescott oc #marilyn prescott oc #joey-bear and his mama are very sweet together #whump #whump writing #caretaker gets taken care of

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belladonnaandulriched · 4 years

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amped and wired, part two | chapter five: hello darkness

It was quite the awkward walk at first, given Charlie and I had no clothes on—all I had were my pants, and after the big series of erections I had had, and after all of the food I had eaten that day, it was difficult to even keep those up my waist and my hips. And then there was the fact Lars, Scott, and Mrs. Hamilton all remained upstairs at the moment as far as I knew. It wasn't so much I had a discomfort with walking next to a naked man given we had showered together before, and also the fact we were in a strip club together, but rather it was the fact he was completely naked and I was all sweaty. I had my hopes that there would be a shower nearby because I didn't want to go out some place feeling all slovenly and whatnot.

Charlie skirted past one of the tables and he brushed his bare hip against the side.

“Ouch,” he grumbled.

“Oh, shit, you okay?” I asked him.

“Oh, yeah—it's just not often I cut my teeth on a rounded edge...”

Lucky for us, nobody saw us walking towards the front room to fetch our clothes: my hockey jersey still hung off of the back of the chair, as did my coat. I was quick to put on that clean jersey first, while Charlie roamed about the room for his underwear and his jeans. I spotted a pair of pants over by the bar, strewn right on top of that heavy wood. I looked over at him putting on his shorts on the other side of the room when I pointed it out.

“Are these here yours?”

“Right there?” he replied with a clearing of his throat. “I think so, if I remember correctly. I remember the girls lay the both of us on that shelf over there—” I remembered the first time I had come here and I did it with Cindy and Gwen on that very ledge in question. “—and Louise took our pants for us.” He ambled over to me to see them for himself.

He picked them off of the top of the bar and unfurled them out before him.

“Yeah, these are mine. Not sure where she put Frankie's pants at... but then again, it's Frankie's pants.”

“True,” I recalled.

I fixed my hair while he slipped on those pants. I noticed the legs were a bit on the baggy side, more so than I remembered from a mere few days ago when we last saw each other. He zipped them up and I realized my eyes were not fooling me.

“My jeans are getting loose,” he told me, and I shook my head and shrugged at that.

“Are you trying to lose weight?”

“Why would I try to lose weight when our nest egg is a bunch of burnt eggshells?”

My mouth dropped open at that. In fact, when I took a second look at Charlie's face, I noticed it appeared a little bit slimmer than normal. The three of them were bone broke, so bone broke that actual broken bones would break even more bones for them.

He peered over his shoulder to make sure we were alone in there, and then he motioned for me to come closer.

“What is it?” I asked him, to which he brought a finger to his lips.

“What is it?” I repeated in a whisper.

“You wanna know how broke Scott is right now?”

“How broke?”

“Just yesterday, he checked his bank account and found he had negative twenty five dollars.” I gaped at him.

“Negative?” I didn't even know that was possible.

“Yeah. He even printed out a receipt because he knew Frankie and I wouldn't believe him at first glimpse. But when he said that, I realized just how horrible that is to have. To not have, rather. He doesn't even have no money!”

“What about you and Frankie?” I asked him. He stuffed his hand into his one jeans pocket and I caught the sound of coins clinking against each other. He took out a handful of coins: even from there, I could tell he only had a couple of bucks in change. Not enough for even one cup of coffee.

“You sure John and Martha won't answer your calls?” I asked him, to which he nodded his head.

“Like what Scott said, it was like the place burned to the ground and the two of them bounced outta New York.”

“And the three of you almost froze to death because they left you out in the cold.”

“Exactly!” He then snapped his fingers as a twinkle in his eye emerged. “Hey, write that down, that's an excellent line for a song.”

“I don't have any paper, though,” I admitted to him with a shrug of the shoulders.

He glanced about the room for something, and then he lunged for the cash register behind the bar. Voices caught my ear, and I turned my head to find Scott and Mrs. Hamilton striding through that room, both of them completely naked. She had her arm across his shoulders and the look on his face was one of delirium.

“Hey!” Scott called out to me. “There's Joey!”

“The big chief of the hour,” Mrs. Hamilton declared.

“We were just talkin' 'bout you,” he added with a big goofy smile on his face. I looked over my shoulder to see Charlie writing something on the palm of his hand. Probably that line I had said.

“What about me?” I asked them as I adjusted the collar and the sleeves of my hockey jersey.

“How you're such a good boy and everything,” Mrs. Hamilton answered; even for being an older lady, she had quite the nice chest. No sagging or anything like that.

“Lars was talkin' about how you're so sweet that you've been lettin' him stay with you,” Scott added in one fell swoop.

“Where is Lars, by the way?” I asked them.

“He's napping,” she replied. “Poor boy had quite the adventure up there, such that it overwhelmed him. And he's a regular in here!”

“What'cha writin', Char?” asked Scott.

“Pretty kick ass line Joey threw out a little bit ago.” He held out the palm of his hand to the side for Scott and Mrs. Hamilton to see for themselves. “'We almost froze to death because they left us out in the cold.'”

“Ooh, yeah—that's a good one,” Scott agreed.

“See, Joey, you have so much to offer,” said Mrs. Hamilton.

“Well, I dunno 'bout that,” I confessed as I stuffed my hands into my pockets and bent my right knee.

“Aw, come on,” she insisted. “You have so much to offer.”

And then I realized she called me “big chief of the hour.” Huh.

“Tell you what, Joey,” Scott began, “—when we get our shit together, I promise you that on the next record that we'll give you writing credits.”

“Really?” I raised my eyebrows at that.

“Really. Really really. Like after what happened following the incident at the warehouse, you're a good guy, Joey. And now I'm finding out that you're a literal gold mine for things to make Charlie write them down on the palm of his hand.”

Charlie meanwhile shook his hand about to dry out the ink. He then set down the pen back on the shelf behind him.

“You guys wanna get some coffee?” he offered Scott and Mrs. Hamilton.

“Love some coffee!” Scott decreed. “But I have negative money, though.”

“I've got money,” she promised him.

“Big Mama's got us covered,” I said.

“Big Mama's got you boys covered,” she echoed with a grin and a gleam in her eye.

“Let me see if Lars is up, though,” I told them with a raise of both of my index fingers.

“Gives us time to get dressed,” she assured me, and without another word, I skirted past them to double back to the real big room.

I held onto the rungs of the ladder and climbed up to that loft, the site of a queen bed with the covers thrown off of the mattress and a pair of floor lamps made of that real heavy black wrought iron off to the sides. Lars himself lay face down ass up in the middle of the mattress: his hair spread out from one side of his head, over the spot next to him like a smooth blanket.

“Hey—” I called out to him. “Hey—” That time I didn't have something to pull out from under him to get his ass moving. I wasn't willing to pick up the mattress, either.

I did have my bare feet, though.

Even though the rope that Louise had tied us up with was buttery smooth, my skin down on my ankles itched a little bit, especially once I raised one foot to shake the right side of his ass. He groaned as I shook him a little bit.

“Hey!” I called out to him. I lowered my foot and reached forward for a slap on the ass.

“Hey!” he yelped out; he raised his head to better enunciate it a second time around. He turned his head to look back at me, puzzled and a little disheveled.

“What're you doing?” he demanded in a broken voice.

“What're you doing?” I asked him.

“Sleeping.”

“Not by the looks of it, you aren't. Anyways, get up and get dressed. Mrs. Hamilton's takin' us out for coffee.”

“Oh, shit—where are my clothes?” he wondered aloud. “And be careful with my ass, too—Mrs. Hamilton really went to town with that knife handle earlier. What the hell did she do with mine and Scott's clothes?”

“That's what I wanna know,” I said with a brush of that tender ass. He let out a little squeak and clambered into a seated position there on the bed, probably to regather his bearings. I glanced about the loft, past the floor lamps, for his clothes. I figured they might have been buried inside of those covers and that duvet, and sure enough, they were!

“Here, so I won't haveta drum that booty of yours again,” I told him with a toss of his pants at him. He caught the pants on the side of his head and his shoulders, such that he lifted his right leg a bit to show me some of the back of his thigh.

“Don't do that again unless you're sitting on a gold mine,” I scoffed at him. He clasped his pants to his chest so as to show me the baffled look upon his face.

“Do what again?”

“Lift your leg like that.”

“Sit on a gold mine,” he echoed, and put his pants over the tops of legs to protect his genitals. “Where's my underwear?”

I lifted up a pair of little white shorts from inside of a fold in the comforter.

“I believe I have 'em,” I said. “You know, I actually had a pair of white shorts like these once—I have no clue what happened to 'em, though. They were extra short like this, too.”

“And you actually wore them about like real shorts?” he almost laughed at that.

“Yeah, they were real nice white denim—what'd you think I meant?”

He opened his mouth to say something but he was interrupted by the sound of Mrs. Hamilton's voice.

“Lars? Joey?”

“Present!” he called out.

“Heya,” I followed up with a turn of my head and a glance down to her.

“What're you boys doing?”

“Just tryna get Lars' ass movin' up here,” I replied.

“Real New Yorker of you, Joey,” Lars remarked.

“How ya doin',” I said in a low tone. “Like that?” I brought my voice up to my regular voice.

“Like that!” He groped at me for his shorts and I tossed them at him.

“Avert your eyes,” he told me as he held them before him. “Don't look—don't fucking look.”

I stood to my feet and wondered over to the ladder for a look down at the floor below me. I spotted Mrs. Hamilton wrapped up in her skirt and her teddy once again, but this time she had put on that leather jacket over the top of her body. I noticed Scott striding up next to her with those dark eyebrows of his raised and his hands stuffed into his jacket pockets.

They were standing almost a little too close to each other and I wondered what went down up here when the bunch of us were down below having our party.

I heard a zipper pulling up, and I turned to see Lars standing to his feet. He once again looked a lot heavier than I had imagined, and more so at that point—like he had gained about ten or fifteen pounds worth of water weight when neither of us were looking.

“Have you seen my shirt?” he asked me.

“It's probably in there,” I replied as I examined the fuller outline of his body.

There was something Lars hid from us, something that made me think back to the warehouse when we were running out of there. He told us there were instruments on one side of the room, but I didn't see anything there. And then there was the incessant belching. Granted, he did have a reason for that with eating a bunch of meat, but I never saw him with any meat once I gave it some thought. When he let out another one upon putting on his shirt, I caught a whiff of iron.

It made sense.

That didn't mean I had to accept it as truth.

He adjusted his hair and turned to me with his eyes bright and his skin looking warm.

“Shall we?” he offered me.

“We shall,” I answered to him with a raise of my eyebrow. Mrs. Hamilton's laugh caught my ear right then and I could only assume they were growing antsy over there. I led him down the line to the floor beneath us and we ambled over to Mrs. Hamilton and Scott to check to see what they were discussing right then.

“Yeah, I used to have these really gaudy yellow shorts that said 'not' all over them,” he was telling her. “I'd wear 'em all the time—you remember those, Joey?”

“Oh, yeah, they looked like shorts made completely of duct tape, boxed cheese, and yellow caution tape,” I replied.

“So where—wait, where are Frank and Charlie?” asked Lars as he passed them to fetch his coat.

“No clue actually,” Scott confessed. “Charlie just said he'd be right back.”

“And Frankie said he needed to barf,” I recalled.

“They're over here, you guys,” Lars hollered from the front of the club.

“They've been standin' over there for several minutes?” Scott wondered aloud, to which I shrugged. But the three of us made our way over to them: I caught the smell of peppermint, to the point it was right up in my face.

“Damn,” Scott remarked.

“Louise lent me a shitload of tooth paste in a jar,” Frankie said to us with a break in his voice. His breath reeked of that rich peppermint to where Charlie was rubbing his eyes from it.

“Jesus,” I said as I fanned my hand before my nose and my mouth. “God, Frankie, d'you use all of it?”

“Nah, it was just overkill even from using a little bit.”

“Where are the girls anyway?” Lars asked them.

“They're all changin' clothes,” said Charlie. “They told us to get movin' if they didn't want that puke smell to float into their room. It smelled real good in there, too.”

“It did!” Frankie declared. “Last thing we saw before we got outta there was Cindy putting lotion on her chest.”

I sighed through my nose because I was so close to touching those breasts and she swatted my hand!

“I should tell you boys that if we're going anywhere towards Syracuse, you oughta be bringing back those masks of yours,” Mrs. Hamilton informed us in a single breath.

“We're not goin' to Syracuse, though,” I pointed out. “I know a place down near the reservation.”

They all looked on at me with some serious intent. Lars even raised those eyebrows at me, as did Scott.

“Injun,” Charlie mouthed, to which I nodded at him. Mrs. Hamilton poked her head into their dressing room to tell them where we were going, and then she doubled back to the cash register to fetch her keys to lock it.

Meanwhile, we all bundled up inside of our coats and headed out to that burgeoning lake effect cold: I noticed the clouds forming on the farthest side of the valley, right over those cold leafy shores of Lake Ontario. Something told me it was going to snow some time soon—when, I had no idea. I knew I had to say this, though: it was better than being in that hot strip club and getting all sweaty once more.

After what had happened down in the City, I assumed that Mrs. Hamilton found herself a brand new car. But rather, her car was parked on the far side of the lot behind Black Orchid and looking quite forlorn and weary from all that had happened. The front bumper was still crumpled from where we ran into that transformer, and even from a distance, I could tell the hole left behind from the passenger window had been covered with a sheet of plastic and a ream of duct tape. At least the windshield, the roof, and the hood were all clean.

“Don't tell me we're takin' that,” Scott said to her in the same tone of voice you'd expect to hear at the sight of something like that.

“We are,” said Mrs. Hamilton. “Even after all the nonsense down there in New York City, it still runs well and the axles are all still intact. It's just—when you boys pile into the back seat, keep your heads down if you want to stay warm.”

“What about the front seat?” Frankie asked her. She didn't answer.

I sighed through my nose again as we made our way over to the car: Scott called shotgun, which meant I had to be stuffed in the back with Frankie, Charlie, and Lars, but he would be face to face with wind and cold through a sheet of plastic. The whole interior smelled of lemons and a hint of iron, like some of the blood from that one clone got into the backseat somehow. I huddled next to Charlie, who had his one hand up on the bar overhead: I noticed one of the screws holding it to the ceiling was coming loose. One too hard of a turn and whoever held onto that thing would yank it down.

Lars and Frankie squeezed in to the right of me: the skinny boy crammed in between three big guys. One too hard of a turn and the bar would fall and the big guys would protect me. I figured it wasn't too bad after all.

Indeed, the car fired up and the bunch of us drove out of the parking lot behind Black Orchid. We reached the street corner and I wondered if Mrs. Hamilton knew the way there.

“It's on the outskirts of town, right, Joey?” she called back to me.

“...yes? Yeah.”

She turned right and Frankie and Lars bowed their heads down to avoid the blowing of the cold wind through that sheet of plastic. I wrinkled my nose and kept my shoulders hunched up; I envied Charlie given all he did was squint his eyes a little bit, but I knew it had to be rough for Scott. Every so often, he flicked his head back to get that thinning hair out of his mouth.

“How is it?” Mrs. Hamilton shouted over the winds.

“Not bad, actually,” said Scott. “Kinda noisy and the plastic smells funny. But it's better than stickin' your head out of the window, though.”

I brought my coat collar up to the top half of my face. My bangs protected my brow and my eyebrows but my ears were still freezing over from the raw cold coming in from the window. Lars hunkered down closer to me while Frankie was practically laying down in the seat with his knees up against that corner between the back of the passenger seat and the door frame. Cold knees were better than a cold face, I suppose.

We wound our way through the back half of 'Swaygo when I recognized the tall pine trees lining the outside of the reservation. All the memories of my mom and my grandma taking me there when I was a little boy came back to knock me sideways. I had the memory of wearing a little headdress when I was in elementary school during a drum circle still as clear as day when we came closer. Across the street, I noticed a small dim lit cafe that had been there for as long as I could remember. My grandma always got me a hot chocolate there on the extra cold days, like that very day.

Except I was older at that point. But there were times I still wanted a little white mug of hot cocoa and those tiny little marshmallows, especially on a chilly day such as that.

Mrs. Hamilton turned into the driveway a little hard but Charlie managed to hold onto the handle just fine: I took a glimpse up at the handle on the ceiling. That one loose screw stayed in place, much to my relief. But I looked over at Frankie and watched him leaning over a little too hard into Lars' chest.

“Ouch—ow, Frank!”

“Hang on, everybody,” Mrs. Hamilton told us as we bounded into the little gravel parking lot. It was always weird walking around there whenever it snowed: one time I asked my grandma if she would take me sledding there but she swore to me that was a bad idea because I wouldn't go very far.

She pulled on the parking brake and killed the engine. Scott rubbed his eyes and gave his hair a toss back.

“We gotta get you a new car,” he told her.

“We?” said Charlie as he let go of the handle.

“We?” said Frankie with a clearing of his throat and sitting upright.

“We?” I said just because; but then again it wasn't for just because given I knew I was a part of this again now.

“I, I mean,” Scott corrected with a nervous smirk on his face.

“That's real kind of you, Scott, but remember, I'm the one with the money,” Mrs. Hamilton swore to him as she unbuckled her seat belt. “I'm already savin' for a new car.”

“Hopefully you can get a nice big one soon, too,” Frankie added. “I dunno if I can take another ride like that.”

“You?” said Scott.

“You?” Lars echoed.

“Yeah, you saw me—I was layin' on my back like how the girls had me layin' on my back.”

“Except you're cold as ice this time,” Charlie quipped.

“I'm so hot for her, I'm so hot for her, she's so cold!” I sang, which made them all laugh out loud. We all piled out onto the cold gravel and we made our way up to the rickety wooden front door, which I could tell they had repainted given the smoothness of the rich dark red color on the outside: Mrs. Hamilton held the door for me, and then Lars, followed by Scott, Frankie, and Charlie.

The inside was exactly the same from my memory, from the kiss of scarlet on one wall to the cream colored paint job all around to the heavy dark wood making up everything. We were greeted by that aroma of fresh brewed coffee and muffins and scones straight out of the oven in the next room. I was there for a mere cup of coffee, but upon looking out the window, there was a part of me that wanted to take them across the street to check out the reservation for themselves. It had been so long it seemed, the last time I sat in a drum circle or attended a powwow. The headdress on my head during a performance of “Indians” lacked the same feeling to me. Sure, I was in my element when on stage, but there was something else to sitting still and feeling the earth underneath my folded legs.

We took our seats at the big table on the far side of the room, right underneath one of the windows where we could look out at the car and the entrance to the reservation.

“What is that?” Lars asked out loud from across the table. I turned my head and followed his gaze up to something on the wall dividing the window next to us and the one next over: one of those mallets with a long spindly handle and a tattered looking head tied down with twine. It wasn't a tomahawk, I knew that much.

“Looks like a mallet,” I said. “A mallet straight outta the cartoons.”

Mrs. Hamilton offered to get the five of us a round of the coffee, but I kept my eye on the reservation out there. All the memories kept on returning to me with every examination of the trees out there. I also remembered there were sand baths out there, too: embedded in those trees stood a big stretch of fine grayish sand dotted with holes that looked like exhumed grave sites. But they were sand baths: you could lay in one of those and have someone come on over and lay a stretch of sand over you like you would on a beach. But the sands there would help nourish the skin and it felt like someone was holding you all the way around. The experience was not on the same level as laying in bed with a bunch of blankets, but it did have a similar feeling.

Crawling down into a hole, laying down flat on your back, and relaxing into the earth for one teeny tiny little moment in everything with a blanket of fine dirt over your body.

“Penny for your thoughts, Joey?” Lars asked me as he brought his cup of coffee to his lips but did not take a sip. I turned to him and then dropped my gaze to the white bone china mug before me.

“When we're done here, I wanna take you guys across the street,” I said.

“I'm sure we can do that,” Mrs. Hamilton's conceded with a wink before she took a sip. “I'll allow it.”

I was feeling warm again once we headed back outside to that stretch of gravel, but that time around, I had been put into the leading position. This was my history here, my roots, the reason why I put a headdress on my head in the first place. I stood on the edge of the parking lot and glanced about both ways first before I led them across the pavement to the entrance. Suddenly, I was a young kid again walking up that dirt path with my mom and my grandma and it made my heart swell a little bit.

Allow me to just put on a bit of ink in the form of a monarch butterfly upon my chest and run around with the biggest fucking war bonnet I could get my hands on. My soul was lighting up here and shoving itself right into my earhole. The path wound its way through the trees and I found myself in the empty clearing, the site of all the drum circles and whatnot, and I found myself wondering if I could be even more bone broke than the three guys behind me. So bone broke that my bones turn to dust in the wind.

That faint, delicate aroma of incense burning caught my attention. Underneath it was the earthy smell of sand.

“What's that over there?” Frankie asked me. I stared straight ahead to see that very stretch of grayish sand.

“Need a bath?” I offered him. I led the way across the clearing to the sand baths; to my left stood a small wooden shed with an open front, with a shelf covered in towels to accompany with a spot in the sand there.

“I just feel peaceful walking through here,” Scott remarked. “A piece of peace is what we need.”

“What the earth here could need... a piece of the pie of peace.” Lars followed up as he gazed out to the sand baths.

“Peas?” Scott asked him.

“Peas,” Lars said.

“Peas porridge hot,” I muttered, “peas porridge cold... peas porridge in a pot nine days old.”

And yet I could feel something within me. There was something about those memories I had had before then, but something about those memories brought me there to the reservation. I thought back to the conversation I had with Mr. Lang back at my place. He told me to let them figure out how to say “thank you.”

Let them figure it out because I was the one who saved them. Let them figure it out because I was the one who's letting Lars stay with me for the time being.

Let them figure it out... because I was the one who found Maya and dragged them into this mess.

And at that point, I was back to square one, a place I visited as a small boy. A little boy once again with my head clear and the dead weight off of my shoulders.

I also thought about Lars joking about living near here, hence why there were ghosts in my apartment.

It all had to go together somehow. It only made sense to me.

“The music industry is going sideways,” I stated aloud as I gazed on at Lars, who crouched down before one of the open sand baths, “and yet we were brought here. What could it possibly mean?”

I looked out the incoming darkness, out to the rain clouds as they formed around the nondescript outskirts of Oswego. I followed their shape as they extended out towards Syracuse. I looked out behind us to the faint lights making up the skyline of Syracuse, and I spotted some neon. All of that neon like down in New York City. Maybe I was just overreacting, but it made me wonder about things.

I turned back to Lars, Scott, Frankie, and Charlie as they congregated one of the sand baths. I had the weirdest sensation in the pit of my stomach.

Neon. That weird meaty webby shit covering the sidewalks in the heart of Manhattan.

Those clones. Malfunctioning at random times and coming after us. Blood hungry, bizarre, and bloody bizarre. Those clones made of human flesh, including the flesh of our brothers and sisters in the music world.

Me laying on an operating table and having my body sliced open and mutilated while I was awake. That was a dream, but still. It hung with me in my memory.

“What could it possibly mean?” Mrs. Hamilton asked me; the very sound of her voice jarred me. “What do you mean?”

“All of it. Everything that's happened to this point.”

Lars approached us with a grave look on his face.

“There's something odd about this place here, Joey,” he told me. “Like—I'm getting a weird feeling about it.”

“Explain,” I said.

“You know that pit you get in your stomach when something bad is about to happen?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“It's kind of like that.”

In fact, I glanced about the area. There was something off about it: when I came here as a kid, the place was bright and colorful, like anybody could come here, especially if they were like me and Iroquois, despite it being a reservation. All of that was missing. In fact, a lot of it had been replaced by nothing more than low sheds and some benches: the one thing that stayed intact was this piece of sand before us. All the old houses were gone, but a little mausoleum looking building way over by the edge of the trees. Lars' joke about living near a reservation.

You violate the dead in some fashion, and they'll come back for you at some point, especially when they were here first, ya bastard.

Of course.

“The damn clones are going to come back,” I told them. “When is beyond me, though.”

“What do you think we should do?” Mrs. Hamilton asked me in a hushed voice. I stared straight ahead to Frankie and Charlie checking out one of the sand baths near the far side of it. I nibbled on my bottom lip.

“Nuthin' yet,” I advised her. “As far as you, me, your apple danish here, and this bush right here all know, there's not a lot we can do.”

“Yeah, and if we do, we probably won't find much or we are fucked sideways,” Lars added, unfazed by the fact I referred to him as an “apple danish.”

“So just—stand by, rather,” she followed along, “is what you're saying.”

“Exactly.”

“I oughta build a pyramid over your chest, Char,” Frankie was saying.

“Forget the pyramid—gimme a cube.”

“Last thing you guys need is a cube—” Scott quipped.

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