Quote Originally Posted by mistysakura View Post
Argh, every time they're talking about going to Jack's place, I want to scream warnings at them... just like talking to the TV It's really scary how much Lance knows, and the spin he's putting on it. It's also interesting to see how the parents are reacting -- Ryan seems like such a yes-man... The whole bit with the trio doing karaoke and scoffing huge burgers seemed a bit weird, given that they still weren't completely safe -- I guess they just went delirious with 'freedom'? Looking forward to the next chapter!
Thanks, Ada! Hehehe ... yeah this is one of those cases of dramatic irony, isn't it, where the readers know just a little more than the characters. Or is that the case? You shall soon find out. Yeah, I agree Lance is a powerful character and with that comes the inevitable corruption that power brings, to an extent at least. I think the dynamic between Ryan, Lance and Azura is an interesting one: you're right in that Ryan will generally be closer to Lance's point of view and echo him, while Azura acts as this fierce voice of reason and, sometimes, passion. And yes, the bit with them celebrating was a bit out-of-kilter, but I tried to think about the adrenaline of freedom and escape from near death/capture, and there would be a dizzying elation that comes with that, I think, maybe slightly inappropriately, I don't know.

Here is the next chapter. A whole lot of stuff is about to go down.

+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

Chapter 78 – Underneath.


Lisa hung up the dirty, cream-coloured receiver of Jack Criddle’s phone and sighed. Had it been the right thing to do, not telling Lance the whole truth? She had omitted any mention of the fact that the text she had found was her grandfather’s secret diary, lying further by telling Lance she had lost the text while escaping from the Sepulchre, but that she had memorised the key locations; likewise, she had said nothing about Marina’s fragment of the Sixth Key.

She stared blankly through the tatty flywire that covered the enormous window of Jack’s kitchen. Though the sun was not quite up yet, and the sky still a deep umber streaked with orange in the east, the old sea captain, Frank, was sitting on a deck chair among the enormous mess of junk, rubble and curios that comprised the back yard of Jack’s beachside hut, smoking tobacco from a smooth wooden pipe.

Lisa regarded him with mild amusement. He had sung his bizarre sea chantys throughout their voyage from the mainland, where Jack had picked them up, to where they had moored the boat, just off the beach near the hut. Lisa watched as he puffed little white plumes of nonchalance into the crisp morning air, his eyes knotted over a crossword puzzle that he could surely scarcely see in the half-light. Was it really possible that there sat before her a man in his sixties – seventies, even – who was apparently completely carefree and content, while there she was in the kitchen, a stressed teenage girl of fifteen who, she knew, had already experienced more pain and seen more terrors than most people would see in a lifetime?

Life didn’t seem to make sense.

She turned away from the window and, tucking a tendril of newly-black hair behind her ear, she located the least grubby glass on the stainless steel sink and poured herself a glass of water. After they had arrived on Red Rock Island, she had asked Jack to buy her a black rinse from the all-hours deli beside Shane’s Shark Shack: the crimson bob was just a little too attention-grabbing, especially as the Union had now seen her new look. While Marina, Gavin and Jack had all collapsed wearily into bed when they returned to the hut an hour ago, Lisa found the prospect of sleep impossible, not least because she had slept for the entire naval voyage. Moreover, she had been too keyed up to rest; after dying her hair back to its old black (it felt odd to return to looking like herself) and showering, she had decided not to put off the phone call she had to make to Lance, and had dialled him at once.

Was it a mistake? Lisa felt oddly empty at having brought the Guard back into her loop – displaced, even. In just a few days of independence, she had learned to live, more than ever, without parents, without the Guard, without rules. It had been exhilarating. To think that, according to Lance, her parents and most of the Guard would soon be descending secretly upon Jack’s little hut made her suddenly regret her decision. It felt as though she had discovered a world and a life of her own, and then sold them for a price she wasn’t even sure she cared about.

At least she still had some secrets. The diary and Marina’s fragment. There was no way she was ready to part with them yet.

She was glad that Marina and Gavin had agreed to the decision. Just after they boarded Jack and Frank’s fishing vessel, and the night waves battered the craft as it sailed for Red Rock, she had explained her fear of the Guard being infiltrated and suggested that they not mention Marina’s fragment but, rather, hide it somewhere themselves.

“Fine, whatever,” Marina had muttered sleepily, trying to curl up in her bunk; she was still half-asleep, it seemed.

“Sounds good,” Gavin had said, pulling his grey beanie tighter over his shaved head. He reached into the pocket of Marina’s jeans, which lay on the floor of the below-deck cabin, and removed the tiny, glassy fragment, handing it to Lisa. “The question is, where the hell do we hide it?”

Lisa had struggled with the same question for some time. Even the hot spurts of steaming hot water rinsing the tides of purple from her hair had not cleansed her mind enough for her to make a decision on where to hide the fragment. Part of her wanted to hurl it into the ocean and simply lose it forever, or, similarly, bury it in a patch of salty scrubland and forget where it was. But her mind looped back to the scrawled text in her grandfather’s diary and his description of the power behind the Iron Lock. The fire of the Phoenix. Eternal life. If Lisa lost the key forever, the secret of the Iron Lock would be lost, too. Maybe she would be better off hiding the key somewhere it could be found if needed? Would it be too much of a risk to hide it, say, under one of Jack’s splintery floorboards?

She checked her watch and sighed. She would have to make a decision within the next twelve hours. According to Lance’s rigidly-spoken words on the telephone, that was when the Guard was to descend on Red Rock Island – on Jack’s little hut – and prepare for the invasion of Silver Rock Island.

Lisa was surprised that Lance’s stern words had cut her.

“We will attack the Union’s base. You kids will stay put on Red Rock Island. No arguments.”

Even as she absent-mindedly poured herself another glass of tap water, Lisa found her face screwing itself up in contempt. Did Lance think she was some kind of idiot? She smiled savagely. He had no idea what she had lived through … what the three of them had experienced together. They had escaped the Union yet again; they had found and retrieved keys. Didn’t that prove their mettle?

Lisa remembered something Jamie had said while he helped her bleach her hair.

“My ex-mum always said bleach damages your hair. You’re meant to use some wanky dye.”

He had taken a sip of lukewarm beer and locked eyes with Lisa’s wide-eyed reflection in the mirror.

“I’ll tell ya one thing I’ve learned, girl padawan. Adults are fucken pussies when it comes to their kids.”

Lisa smirked. For all his obliqueness, Jamie was right in that regard: adults seemed to have developed a collective habit of treating their teenage children like incapable infants. Her parents had done it, keeping her in the dark for so long. And now Lance was doing the same, cloistering them in Jack’s house while the adults – who, from what Lisa could see, had never had as much success against the Union as she, Gavin and Marina had – played the starring roles.

Indeed, as Lisa unwrapped one of Jack’s high-protein muesli bars from the peeling, faded green cupboard, she realised exactly what bothered her. Not Lance’s disregard for her achievements – after everything, she wasn’t sure she cared what anyone except Gavin or Marina said anymore – but the pragmatic thud in her soul: she was going to sit on the sidelines while the war was finally – maybe – won.

For the millionth time, the old fear returned to Lisa: had she become a crazed adrenaline junkie? Why did she even want to fight? The jets of deadly light sizzling the air, screams and explosions of gunfire, blurred vision and heart hammering … it was terrifying, not exciting … but her body seemed to feel otherwise.

Suddenly, the urge to run overcame her. Gulping down an arid ball of muesli (how did Jack manage it?), Lisa double-checked that Frank wasn’t on sentry duty (he was now draped over the deckchair, eyes closed and the steaming pipe lolling dangerously close to his collar) before reaching for her backpack, scribbling a note for Gavin and Marina and bounding toward the front door.

Jack, Gavin and Marina would only be asleep for a few more hours. She couldn’t bear the thought of not making the most of her last few hours of freedom; the last few hours of being alone.

She had to breathe.

*

Larry O’Brien sprinted down the spiral stone staircase, his heart pounding. The torches were already burning in the sconces on the walls: was he too late?

He reached the small cavern he needed to visit and turned the corner to where the cell was located. Behind a series of ceiling-to-floor iron bars, crumpled in a corner of a bare cell with just a bed, toilet, sink and desk with texts sprawled across it, was Professor Geoffrey Westwood. The man was a shadow of his former self: he had lost a great deal of weight over the past four months, and was now skinny and more wizened-looking than ever before. His eyes drooped with weariness as he gnawed on a slice of bread.

“Geoff,” Larry said.

“What is it?” Westwood asked tiredly. “What do you people want from me now?”

“I only have a few minutes, and I can’t be seen leaving here. You must do exactly as I say. My name is Larry O’Brien. I am a double agent working for Lance Hudson and the Guard, sabotaging the Union from the inside.”

A flicker of hope crossed Westwood’s face.

“You’ve come to rescue me!”

“In a manner of speaking,” Larry said matter-of-factly. “I’m not here to bail you out myself, but I’m here to help you get free in the end. Listen: the Guard is leaking false information to the Union that the Fourth Key has been discovered near Azalea Town. Sterling will come and ask you if this is congruent with the texts before he takes any action. It’s imperative that you lie to him and confirm the bogus info.”

Westwood looked bemused.

“But to what end is all this?”

“We are luring the Union’s forces away so that the Guard can attack this base. I have already told the Guard your location. They will liberate you when they get here. But you have to promise me you will do this. Tell Sterling that the Fourth Key is indeed somewhere on the coast of the peninsula, west of Azalea Town, and only when he asks you, which he will.”

Westwood nodded sharply.

“I will do it, I give you my word,” Westwood said.

“Thank you, Westwood – now, I have to get out of here before he comes …” Larry paused, teetering on the cusp of doing something before deciding to go through with it. “Listen, Westwood,” he said solemnly. “I think Sterling is onto me, and what I’m going to try to do tonight might be my death.” He removed a silver chain from around his neck and passed it through the bars of the cell; Westwood took it soberly. “If I die tonight, please give that to my wife, Esther, and my daughter, Jenna.”

Westwood’s eyes were wide as he curled the chain into his hand and placed it securely in his pocket.

“I will,” he said.

Larry nodded curtly, and turned to leave, but Westwood called out:

“Thank you, Larry. And good luck.”

Larry turned and deigned a troubled half-smile.

“Thank you, Geoff. You too.”

*

The office was lit by a single candle placed on the corner of the polished granite desk. It burned not with a yellow-orange flame, but of a deep, bloody vermilion hue.

His dark eyes burning in the eerie illumination Joseph Sterling picked up his mobile telephone and dialled a number while Veronica Stawell took a long drag on a cigarette in the seat opposite.

A voice answered through the receiver of Sterling’s mobile.

“Sir.”

“I have just received intel that the Guard has located the Fourth Key. Is this true?”

“Y-yes, sir.”

“Where is the key located?”

“We haven’t been told exactly, but it’s somewhere on the coast of the peninsula, west of Azalea …”

“Tell me everything you know.”

“They haven’t said much yet – we were only just informed – but we’re all converging in Olivine, it’s the closest to all the teams’ locations, and then we’re taking boats or something from Olivine to the key. Scheduled to arrive at 2am.”

“All of the teams are involved?”

“Yes, sir. Everyone who can help. It’s all hands on deck. Probably close to a hundred agents. You should send maximum force.” The voice suddenly rose an octave. “I-I m-mean, if you should decide, sir, it’s your deci-”

“Yes, it is. Don’t remind me of the extent of my power in the same breath as displeasing me,” Sterling hissed. “Now tell me, how is it that I learned of this mass movement via an intercepted communiqué, rather than from you?”

“S-sir … please, we were only just told …”

“I hope you haven’t forgotten our arrangement, maggot. I don’t need to remind you of your wife Natasha’s beauty. I’m sure neither of us wish for her to be … damaged.”

“N-no, please sir …”

Smirking, Joseph Sterling hung up.

“What a pussy,” Veronica snarled, blowing a ring of smoke into the air.

Sterling stood up abruptly.

“Assemble the best of the best on the floor of the cone in twenty minutes. I’m going to pay our mate Westwood a little visit.”

*

For the first time in Lisa’s memory, Red Rock Island was waking up to a gloomy sky and an aggressively cold zephyr. Reeking of dried salt and Seaking scales, she wrapped Jack’s wool-lined jacket around her and pulled Gavin’s grey beanie further over her short hair. As she hurried along the coastal promenade, she wondered if she might be mistaken for a boy, at a distance.

Her destination was mercifully a long way from the well-policed main mall. As the sun finally crested over the misty horizon, Lisa located the ivy-choked two-storey brick bungalow and pressed the doorbell.

There was a scuffling behind the white door, and then several seconds of silence. Lisa knew a bleary eye was scanning her through the peephole. Shaking her head, she removed Gavin’s beanie and her aviators.

A latch clicked and the white door swung open.

Jamie stood there, naked except for a pair of black-and-yellow beer-branded boxer shorts, his bleached hair sticking up like a Nidorino’s spine.

“Lisa. Hey,” he said simply, his deep voice muffled by the smouldering cigarette that dangled from his mouth.

“Hey Jamie,” Lisa greeted, stepping inside quickly. “Didn’t wake you did I?”

“It’s seven a.m.,” he grunted, locking the door behind them. “Haven’t slept yet.”

Without waiting for Lisa, he trudged through the corridor that led to the rest of the house.

“I’m in my room, dude,” he muttered.

Lisa couldn’t help but smile to herself: Jamie was supremely unconcerned by her appearance.

She picked her way carefully through the rubble strewn through what remained of his ‘ex-mum’s’ house. Lisa was flabbergasted by how much filth had accumulated since her visit just a few days previous. Clothes, empty cans of beer and cornflakes formed a steady track from the entry to the kitchen to the living room. The kitchen sink was dripping. Most of the lampshades were shattered; a golf club, a baseball bat and a pair of tennis rackets lay on the torn linoleum beside a collection of small rocks and cricket balls. A smorgasbord of bottles of spirits and ales – all empty – lined the full length of the half-wall in the dining room, like some kind of victory parade.

Lisa nearly jumped out of her skin as she passed through the living room: what she initially believed to be a pile of clothes on the futon suddenly moved and groaned, and a pair of arms stretched out from within the mess, followed by a second, hairier pair.

Lisa scuttled into Jamie’s bedroom and instinctively closed the door behind her.

“I thought you told me you don’t live here anymore,” she said. “Who are the people on the futon?”

Jamie was sitting cross-legged on his bed, unabashedly poring over a glossy magazine emblazoned with pictures of topless women.

“Rod and Amy? They’re boss. Let ‘em crash for the night. We had a wicked rave last night.”

Lisa screwed her nose up at the smell emanating from every corner of the room: it was an acrid mixture of sweat, alcohol and something pungent that she couldn’t quite identify.

“No kidding.”

“And not that it’s yer business, but I’ve been here ever since you made me come back. I felt like I owed my ex-mum somethin’ in return for all her good work, so I redecorated.”

He took a long drag on his cigarette before returning it to its at-ease position between his lips, his blue eyes fixed to a pair of printed breasts.

Lisa hesitated to sit down on the bed, but, to her surprise, Jamie obliged her, wordlessly moving his dirty jeans from the foot of the mattress and gesturing for her to sit. She did.

“So did you get your key then?”

He looked up from his dirty magazine, his pallid, malnourished face and bloodshot blue eyes suddenly keen with interest.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

“Destroy it?”

Lisa tilted her head and grimaced.

“It’s indestructible.”

Jamie regarded her blankly for a moment.

“Flush it down the dunny then.”

Lisa almost laughed. For the millionth time, she recalled the words in her grandfather’s diary. The fire of the phoenix. Eternal life.

“I would – if it wasn’t so much more complex than that …”

She fell back on the bed and sighed, her eyes falling on the lurid yellow-and-black poster that she had woken up to four days ago:

SO YOU’RE JUST GONNA ROLL OVER AND GIVE UP LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO? OR ARE YOU FINALLY GONNA GET MAD AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?

Enormous globs of putty attached the poster to the wall.

A smile curled Lisa’s lips, replaced immediately by a sense of dread.

“Can I say something?” she said abruptly, staring at the poster with a swirl of something akin to affection in her stomach.

“No,” Jamie said dully. He guffawed suddenly and took a quick drag of his smoke. “Haha. Kiddin’. Yeah, what?”

“I know I’ll sound like an idiot but … I’m scared of this all being over,” Lisa said, forcing herself to say the words as her face flushed red.

“What d’you mean?” Jamie asked, saving a page of his magazine with his thumb and closing it, as though he detected a serious conversation in the air.

“I mean … I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life after this is all over.” Lisa felt the words tumble from her mouth, allowed to flow for the first time. “I was washing the dye out of my hair this morning … back to black … and I was just thinking, like … how boring my life will be once the war is over. The last six months have been the most horrible and exciting months of my whole life, and – okay, this is gonna sound kind of emo, but … it’s pretty much the only interesting thing that’s ever happened to me. I don’t want it to end.”

Her chest tightened as she disgorged her ugly truth. She winced, waiting for Jamie’s reply.

“Guess that’s fair enough,” he mumbled.

Lisa’s eyes moved from the broken lampshade on the ceiling to Jamie: he had reopened his magazine and was ogling a nude woman who appeared to have clambered out of a very cold lake.

“You don’t think that’s ridiculous?”

Jamie’s slate-blue eyes looked up briefly from the dirty magazine.

“What’m I, yer shrink?” He smirked, not unkindly. “I dunno, I get where you’re coming from. Life is boring as batshit.”

Suddenly, his expression became deeply serious: he removed the cigarette from his mouth as his forehead creased with sincerity.

“Look, the night we met at the Colosseum was the fucking best my life has ever been,” Jamie said flatly. “Running. Getting attacked. Getting my knee fucking blasted by an Ice Beam! Dude, it’s not ridiculous. I was fucking shitting myself the whole fucking time but it was fucking rad. I’d give good money to do that shit again.”

Lisa gave up trying to count expletives.

“You really feel the same?”

“Shit yeah!” he cried. “Rad enough for me to stay here at my bloody ex-mum’s place for the last four nights, hoping you’d come back.”

Lisa felt a shiver course through her skin: his utter vulnerability raised almost frightened goosebumps all over her body. She waited a few seconds for him to laugh, or say that he had been joking. He didn’t.

The silence stretched on as Lisa’s thoughts raced. Had she given him the wrong impression? Was he infatuated with her? Was that why he’d waited for her to come back? Or was it just because he wanted another glimpse of a life of danger? Lisa regarded him as he flicked nonchalantly through the pages of his porno magazine, completely unfazed by her presence. Certainly, he was attractive: his torso was slim but sinewy, and even with his bloodshot eyes and pallid skin, he had a handsome face and a strong jawline. If anything, the dark circles around his eyes gave him a rugged, dangerous appearance. Lisa watched him stub out his cigarette in the smoked-glass ashtray on the bedside table. Nothing about him was conventionally likeable. Indeed, everything about him was repulsive in her eyes: he swore, he drank, he smoked, he looked a porn in front of a girl he barely knew and he was clearly involved with some kinds of drugs. The image of Darius drifted across her mind’s eye and she felt her heart glow at the thought of his dimples. Her breath became shallow as she thought of his voice, his laugh, his attitude. She was attracted to him: a hopeless crush. But her feelings toward Jamie were different. She wasn’t sure she even liked him, but she found some kind of convergence with him. Perhaps it was the fact that he was someone outside the insane world of the Guard and the Legend: someone from the real world. A teenager who was actually allowed to be a teenager. Someone she could actually vent to about how she felt. She knew her friendship with Gavin and Marina was infinitely deeper, and yet both of them were embroiled in the same chaos as she: they all faced the same hell together, they shared every moment of fear and pain. But if she had told them how she felt about the war ending, would they have felt the same way? And if they did, would they have admitted it to her, for fear of, like her, being thought ridiculous by the other?

There was no such fear with Jamie. What did Lisa care if he thought she was ridiculous or selfish? Whatever his perception of her was, she didn’t care.

For an infinitesimal moment, the image of the two of them kissing flitted across her mind’s eye as her brain sorted itself out, sliding shards of confused light over one another. She grimaced in disgust.

“I don’t want to go out with you.”

The words leapt from her lips before she could lasso them back.

Jamie’s dark eyebrows shot up toward his peroxide-blond hairline. He burst into a fit of deep guffaws.

Lisa’s cheeks burned.

“That’s good,” said Jamie eventually, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “I don’t do relationships, full stop. Only sex.” He crooked his head. “We can do that if you want.”

A wave of horror crashed over Lisa.

“No! No way!” she cried hastily. “EW. No. No no no. God no!”

“Okay, chill out dude, I was messing around …”

She shuddered. “I’m only fifteen anyway!”

“Big deal, I did it when I was thirteen.”

Lisa stared at him blankly.

“My dad would kill you if he knew what you’d just said to me,” she said haughtily.

Jamie put up his hands as a sign of non-violence.

“Okay, I misread my audience. Sor-ry, Prudy McPrude. You can go back to your meltdown if you like. You don’t know what you’re going to do with your life after the war, etcetera …”

Lisa scowled at him.

“I wasn’t melting down,” she snapped. “I just don’t know what to do next.”

“The war isn’t won yet, is it?”

“No, but the way Lance was talking on the phone … it sounds like he’s putting everything he has into this ambush we’re doing on the Union’s base tonight.”

The magazine slid from Jamie’s lap to the floor.

“You’re what?!” he almost yelled. “I’m coming with you!”

“You can come with me all the way to Jack’s hut,” Lisa said shortly. “That’s where I’ll be. Sitting pretty while the grown-ups fight …”

“Laaaaaaaame,” said Jamie.

“We’ve spent all this time fighting, so much time scared that the Union will win and we’ll be screwed. And now, it sounds like we’re the ones who are probably going to win somehow, judging from what Lance has planned, and of course that’s what we’ve fought and some people even died for. I’m not saying I’m not happy about it. But it’ll be all over, this whole thing will be over and everything will go back to normal, and I don’t even know what normal IS anymore. Normal to me is being with Gavin and Marina – and running away from people and searching for things and fighting the Union. That’s what I’m used to now.”

She sighed heavily and covered her face with her hands, massaging her temples.

“Seriously, what am I ever going to do with my life that’s, you know, as real as this?”

“Well, what did you used to wanna do?”

“Be a pokémon trainer,” Lisa answered at once. “I started out on my journey but didn’t really get far before I got more interested in the Legendary pokémon. I thought maybe I could study and be an expert on Legendaries and their myths, or something …”

“Not being a dick, but is that even a real job?” Jamie asked.

Lisa threw her hands up in despair.

“I don’t even know,” she sighed. “I worked part-time at a pokémon centre last summer. I suppose I could go into nursing or something … my mum would be happy, she’s always saying that I should become a nurse.”

“Mothers should be banned from telling their kids what to be,” Jamie said, a little too venomously.

Lisa hesitated, before her curiosity overwhelmed her.

“What did your mum want you to be?”

“My ex-mum, you mean.”

“Okay. Her. What did she want you to be?”

“You can’t laugh.”

“I promise.”

“She wanted me to be a priest.”

Lisa couldn’t help it: she snorted loudly.

“A what?!” she said, fighting off a smile by opening her mouth broadly, as if in shock. “She has met you, right?”

“Oh yeah,” Jamie scowled, his face darkening. “She’s a lovely piece of work, is my ex-mother.”

He reached for a green pack of cigarettes from the bedside table, withdrew a smoke and torched the tip with a white disposable lighter.

“What did she – I mean – well … yeah, what did she do to make you hate her so much?” Lisa asked in a hushed tone. She was suddenly gripped with the urge to leave the room, to escape Jamie and all his grievances, and at the same time, she found herself transfixed.

“Hate isn’t the word,” Jamie glowered, blowing an aggressive plume of smoke into the air with unrequited force. “I loathe her.

“She was a fucking cartoon. She still is. Fucking sweetness and light. Rabbiting on at community bake sales and bullshit like that. Seriously, people like that still exist. ‘My Jamie’s going be a deacon. My Jamie’s gonna be a priest. My Jamie absolutely adores Bishop Harding.’ Fucking crazy bitch. Couldn’t hear anyone but herself.

“When I told her I hated religion and think it’s all a load of bollocks, she went fucking apeshit. Screamed the house down. Said she didn’t have a son.” He chuckled suddenly, mirthlessly. “The next day she checked me into a Catholic Boys’ Wellness Centre.”

“Oh,” Lisa said. “That’s kind of … hardcore, isn’t it?”

“It was a fucking prison, and this was a year ago. I was sixteen,” Jamie snarled, his eyes flashing. “A prison where they indoctrinate you to be like JESUS.” He nearly yelled the name. “Fuck that. It was me, some heroin addict dude, and a bunch of closeted fagboys who were being ‘cured’.”

His voice was rising in pitch and volume now; his face was scarlet.

“So my ex-mother, bless her fucking soul, is gonna come home from prayer camp to find her Mary statue no longer has a head and her bible’s soaked in my piss.”

He took a long, violent suck on his cigarette.

“I need a beer. I’ll be back in a bit,” he said abruptly, suddenly embarrassed-looking. Not making eye contact with Lisa, he stole from the room, slamming the door.

Lisa found herself transfixed on the spot where he had been sitting, her heart thudding even though she had been still for some time. She wasn’t sure whether to feel sorry for Jamie, or to be utterly repulsed by his vitriolic revenge.

Perhaps she didn’t like him after all. Perhaps he only made her feel better by comparison.

Opting to distract herself from the misery of Jamie’s life, Lisa’s eyes moved to the poster on his wall. She had assessed it while he spoke. She knew it was right, even poetic.

Crawling over the mattress, Lisa removed the tiny fragment of transparent glass from her pocket and, checking the door to make sure Jamie wasn’t returning, she peeled the poster from the wall and pressed the key into the largest glob of putty. It was small enough to be completely consumed by the soft globule.

Heart racing, Lisa reaffixed the poster to the putty and regarded it from every angle, her smile broadening with each second.

Marina’s key fragment was now invisible.