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  “Please... Ives... enough with the questions. He’s about to wake up.”

  Thomas sounds so exhausted, the ache of wear dripping off his words, that I let him go, just for that moment, and once again devote all my thoughts and gaze to the figure in front of me.

  He jolts awake, much like Rascal did. As if he’d awakened from a horrible dream, and not to one. A singular shout is released from his throat, and then he collapses on the gritty, decaying staircase beneath him, and just breathes, just prays.

  He does not gasp like Rascal did. He does not thrash about. He only lies down on the staircase, eyes pulled closed tightly, fingers pressed against his eyelids, as if attempting to erase some horrible image or thought from his mind.

  It’s moments that he’s still, collapsed like that, breathing near evenly with eyes sealed shut. I’m not sure if I should commend him for bravery in closing his eyes in what’s literally a nightmare world or stupidity. When he does return to seeing, he flips to face the staircase again, as if he does not want to see anything but what is important or immediately dire. His fingers search out the corners and holes of the soot beneath him. It’s similar in some ways to a sponge, riddled with thousands of gaps, and it breaks off in every pet of his hand.

  He doesn’t know what it is. That’s clear in his eyes as he drops the chunks of the staircase in his hand over the side, and though his expression claims him to be somewhere in the league of horrified, he does not cry. He does not shout. He only struggles up to his feet and begins to ascend.

  I am curious about this. Hardly an emotional reaction to the world around him – just an obvious, immediate need to find either an answer or other people.

  Even in my solitude, I allow myself a slight emotional reaction.

  He does not do what both Rascal and I did, upon our arrivals – which was call out for any other. Perhaps he believes that because he cannot see anyone, there must be no one there.

  Or... perhaps he did not think of it. He is young, after all.

  I stand and begin to walk with him, still contemplating his somewhat shell-shocked expression in silence. I remember how much Rascal knew when she woke up, and I wonder if any of that knowledge is lingering within his silent mind as well.

  Finally, I watch a sort of light, a sort of needy desperation, begin to fade within the hues of his irises. The fear is still there, actual, vivid, but it is not so choked, not so urgent.

  Perhaps I just watched the knowledge of the other world that Rascal woke up with fade from his gaze. Perhaps I just watched the everything that had made him react the way he had fade.

  I certainly hope not. I am unsure if I will be willing to go under again, if he falls, and my early evaluation has been that he is interesting.

  He walks in a very uneasy way, footsteps too wide or too narrow. Uneven, contrasting with Rascal’s always very carefully paced steps. The realization that he could, of course, trip at any moment is something that I am working hard to forget.

  It’s not long before I spot Rascal, still lounged on her stair. This young boy started much higher than her – much closer to her. Perhaps so that the pair of them can be drawn together. Or perhaps the very size of the staircase itself has changed.

  The young boy seems to have spotted the other, and moves, staring at her as if unsure, towards her reclined relaxation. As he reaches her stair, he meets her gaze, and pauses where he is.

  I stop as well and watch the two of them. I hold my breath as the wind whistles by, a sort of kind reprieve from its usual howling. The two do not speak for a moment, and, absently, I wonder if they will get along.

  And then, Rascal’s freckled face breaks into one of its first smiles that I’ve ever seen. Perhaps the absence from Todd and her constantly hyperventilating friend has given her a space of reprieve.

  “You’re young,” she says.

  Obvious observation. I had really hoped you’d have better observational skills than that.

  I watch the younger boy narrow his eyes – or perhaps the sides of his eyes just grew darker. “You’re old,” he spits back.

  Oh, come on, really? Are they children?

  In a way, I suppose they are. But I had hoped them to be more than that.

  “Not really,” Rascal replies. Her eyes glance up at the sky, for some reason, and I can see red reflected in her cornea. The young boy’s gaze also joins hers, and he visibly shudders at what he sees. Perhaps he should have spent more time assessing the sky above them, after all.

  “Where am I?” His voice is somewhat restrained, I believe, attempting to hide emotions. His body is stiff, frightened, but I see some strength in him, a tightness fast enough to spring passed anything that he believes to be a threat almost instantaneously.

  Spring passed anything without falling off the edge?

  Now, that’s a whole different story.

  “You’re on a staircase.”

  I cannot stop the scoff from exiting my mouth and puncturing the air.

  “Duh.” He’s just as unamused as I am. “What staircase? Where?”

  Rascal shrugs – a common theme with her, I’ve noticed. Perhaps she’s not extrospective enough to form accurate answers to questions.

  “I don’t know,” she answers, despite my thoughts. “I don’t know much except the fact that I am here...” You and me both, I muse, but she goes on, in a way that surprises me. “... sometimes. And, sometimes, I’m not. Sometimes I’m in another world with streets and cars and people that grin and have brown hair.”

  I had not known that. There had been no outward, physical indications that she ever left “the staircase”. Perhaps she, like Todd, is beginning to lose her sanity?

  The very thought makes me want to call out a warning to the young boy – but aside from that being impossible, I would not know what to say.

  “I’ve never been here before,” he’s admitting.

  “What’s your name?”

  This question seems to shock him again. It’s interesting to see how much this conversation is bringing to light, on both of their faces, in both of their souls. He seems much more frightened than he has been before, and Rascal seems much more talkative. I suppose, there was nothing really to say to anyone else she had been traveling with... not even my brother.

  The young boy is stuttering that he doesn’t know.

  And I watch Rascal smile at him again, as she confides that she does not know her name either.

  I remember Rascal’s first encounter, as I watch her scoot over and allow the young boy to join her on the stair. The two of them continue talking, and though a part of my brain processes the words, my mind is not there. I am thinking how Rascal merely attempted to get Glasses to walk with her. How awkward she was with the older man and Todd. How the baby never listened to any of her whims, but her trying was still slightly absent. And here... the pair of them are sitting on a staircase, talking about stupid nothings that are obvious facts of their world. And strangely... somehow... it calms them both.

  I tune back in entirely to notice the young boy’s glance down – horrified, frightened, terror ignites on the dark of his face, and his eyes begin to well with tears – and I cannot help but wonder what it is they are all so frightened of, down there. I can hardly see the backdrop of sky behind the entirety that is my pair of charges. I wonder how much of that world I am truly missing out on, by studying it so carefully.

  “Sorry,” he’s murmuring, through the smear of tears, but she insists that she doesn’t care, offering none of the maternal support she had once given both Glasses and the baby.

  I wonder what has changed her so. Does she believe this approach will work better with this young boy?

  She prods him, an action that instantly frightens me, and then asks for his age.

  “His age?” I interrupt, though none can hear me. “He doesn’t know how old – ”

  “Eight. How old are you?”

  “Well,” I huff to myself. Thomas is amused by this – his hiss of laughter is so
mething I did not realize I’d missed. Perhaps it’s just the releasing tension between the two of us that I have longed for.

  “Told you they’d know how old they were, Ives.”

  “Shh,” I hush, to cover my momentary lapse – and luckily for me, Rascal is already speaking further, drowning out Thomas’ chuckles.

  “Eight,” she begins, hesitates into a pause that nearly immediately wears too long. When she ends, finally, with “teen. Eighteen,” and the young boy doesn’t respond to what, I believe by the unhappy bend of her face, was supposed to be a joke, I sigh with a click on my tongue.

  “You’ve gotta try harder than that.”

  “Maybe that’s the best she can do,” Thomas offers.

  “Best you could do,” is my muttered reply.

  “I don’t know what’s up there,” Rascal chimes in. “I don’t feel like it. If I sit here, there’s a good chance I won’t fall. If I move, though...”

  “So it has nothing to do with my brother? Or everyone you’ve lost?”

  “Oh, give it a rest, Ives,” Thomas soothes. “She probably doesn’t want to do Back Story Central in the first five seconds of meeting this kid.”

  “No, but really. Is that her motivation for staying still? ‘If I move, I may fall’?”

  “After watching, like, twenty of her companions die, you can’t think that’s a stupid remark.”

  “Has five become equivalent to twenty when I wasn’t looking?”

  “Okay, fine.” Another laugh. “But you get the picture.”

  “I’m watching the picture and I still don’t get it.”

  I do not know why I keep murmuring statements I am unsure I want Thomas to hear. Inevitably, he will understand what I am trying to say.

  Perhaps this absence of speech with Thomas makes it near impossible for me to not communicate with him when he returns. Perhaps this solitude had begun to wear on me more than could be expected.

  Perhaps that’s why he disappears, quiets. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?

  But I have no time left to consider that, for my attention is ripped back to the staircase on the other side of the barrier through a scream so chilling, I believe for one moment something horrific has truly happened. But as the air rustles their hair and the cries of some lost soul surrounds them and I watch my charge pull into Rascal, as if seeking comfort from this world, comfort he still believes he may be able to find, I unfurl. They are fine. It is a normal nightmare.

  Hm. “Normal”.

  She informs him, after his frightened, agitated query, that “some” believe it’s the cries of those who fall from the staircase.

  His silence includes my own question, my own wonderment who that “some” could possibly be. I do not remember any of the others that traveled with Rascal offering up such beliefs.

  Or perhaps they did, and I merely forgot? Perhaps the same fear and memory lapses that occur in the world across occur here? Perhaps Isaac was correct to believe his mind to be failing, and to be frightened by the prospect almost incurably.

  Perhaps... it’s not only that reality that is suffering the downfall of broken minds. Perhaps it is this one, ours, too.

  If cries can be trapped in the wind, why can’t we be trapped in our minds?

  I wonder if I should pose that thought, that question, to Thomas – but I do not. Instead, I keep my silence, and with it, listen to the pair converse.

  Rascal is holding my charge, firmly, securely, as if worried that at any second he will topple over the edge and disappear. His shaking seems to indicate either a readiness or ableness to. “Do you think there are other staircases around here?” he questions, beginning to still, eyes and face going somewhat blank as he contemplates. “And we’re hearing other falling people?”

  I quiet my laugh within my throat, but Thomas does not quiet his. I wonder how well he can see my charges and their world from his vantage point, but I do not ask him, once again. I am too... “into” the conversation I am currently listening to. So I allow him his reaction and I allow myself my silence.

  Rascal moves, her bright eyes dimming slightly as she reverts her energy to considering. “Perhaps. Do you think they all lead to the same place?”

  The young boy reacts in a way that I did not expect – almost immediately his blank expression stiffens, his face hardens into a mask of animosity. His glare is so fierce that, even on the other staircase, here, safe, concealed from the pair of them, I cringe away, allow him his space. “I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?”

  Either Rascal does not see the hardening his face has done, or she does not care. A large smile splits her face instead, one that warms and softens every line and crease of her, in contrast to the boy, who looks offended at the mere idea of being amused.

  “I don’t know,” she begins, and it’s obvious she’s attempting to keep herself from laughing at the mere realization of what I’m sure she believes to be genius, “Screech.”

  “Screech?” His question is echoed by me, and even his facial expression could be seen as mirroring the one that I have suddenly portrayed at Rascal’s outburst. “What is screech supposed to be?” I go on, while he chooses, “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I don’t know your name.” The way her body bends as she speaks portrays her to either be jesting, or over-exaggerating her point. “You don’t know your name. You have theories about the screeching in the wind. Your name is Screech.”

  Once again, I scoff. Perhaps Rascal is not as intelligent as I originally viewed her. Naming a young person Screech just because she had nothing else to go off of? Is that what she considers a good idea? I hold in my spark of chagrin for “Screech”’s response.

  “That’s horrid,” he’s replying, hardly studying her face as he gives off his answer to her attempt.

  “See? That’s what I said,” I note to Thomas.

  “You two are such children,” is his rather melancholy reply.

  “She named an eight year old screech.”

  “Is his age somewhat indicative of the name he should be given?” Thomas’ voice is so obviously attempting to mirror me and mine. His voice has even fallen down to my same rheumatic and accent.

  I “pfft” at him, waving once as I move back towards the barrier, pretending to suddenly find interest in the scene that had already upset me so.

  “It’s better than ‘hey you, kid’, isn’t it?”

  “Barely,” I murmur.

  But my charge does not reply for many moments. He’s staring somewhere, at something, as if in a deep thought. His face is scrunched slightly, and his eyes are near indistinguishable under the brush of his sweeping eyelashes. But when he does answer, he is completely in the moment, dragged back from whatever thought or memory he had been entertaining.

  “Okay, Freckles.”

  Freckles. That’s what I had thought when I first saw her. How her freckles were the most distinctive part of her body, of her face.

  The name he has awarded her in return is much more fitting than the one she awarded him. His name is based off of one thing he said once, as an eight year old – hers is based off of her very being, the entire scape of her skin.

  “Freckles?” is only her question back.

  “Well, I don’t know your name. You don’t know your name. You have freckles all over your face. Your name is Freckles.” His voice, like Thomas’ a few moments ago, is clearly an attempt at mimic. Though I laugh, once, Thomas is much more proud, and decides to choose words to celebrate the occasion.

  “A man of my own heart.”

  “Oh, hush.” An idea to fish for information I have been trying to weed out of the voice above me hits me so strongly that I cannot resist my next statement, as calloused as it may be. “Is he even old enough to be considered a man?”

  A pause. True consideration. Not seeming to recognize yet what I am doing to him. “Gee, I don’t know. Most people are only men when they hit adulthood. But that varies based on location – what’s socially acce
ptable for what place. What’s normal based on social norms on the like, you know.”

  I hide my immediate grin. It had been near exactly the response I had been looking for. “Sorry, what was that? Social what?”

  Realizing the pitfall he’s plunged himself in, he immediately begins to retract. “Nothing. I think I was... sleep talking... or something.”

  “I’m sure you were.” I give him a grin caught between coy and relaxed before I turn back to the barrier, where “Freckles” has just lowered her hands from her skin, as if looking for the freckles that the other has proclaimed to be upon her face.

  It’s as I go to criticize her for feeling something that is as very obviously “unfeelable” as freckles, and as she continues speaking to Screech, that I realize that... until that moment, she may not have known what her face looked like, even in the simplest sense. I stare at my reflection through the glass. Is this a comfort I vastly underestimated the enormity of? Something as simple as knowing what you looked like, who you are? Many of the questions that I feel like most living organisms should have answered are, still, as of yet, unanswerable to me – who I used to be, where I am, why I’m here – and yet, I realize, with a strange sort of jolt, that she has even more questions and even less answers.

  She does not know where she is, and while I do not, either, I have a voice assuring me of things. Whether or not they be lies or truth can depend solely on my interpretation of them. Perhaps there are other worlds, in which the beings there assume things based on their surroundings and what they’re told – and they’re accepted merely as truth or lie purely on how and what they believe.

  Until this moment, I have taken everything Thomas has said as simply lies, words to distract me from solving the enigma that is life. But perhaps it is, after all, the truth. Perhaps these other memories... and dreams... are just that – fitful thoughts from lives that either no longer matter, or dreams about worlds and universes that are far, far out of comprehension. Perhaps, as he said at our starting, this is my home, and this always has been my home, and I’ve been living here with my twin brother, and a voice above, and a whole assortment of Moderators who know my name and story better than I. Perhaps I have always been staring at this staircase, I ponder as I watch Screech rise and talk to Freckles. Perhaps this always has been my universe. How will I ever know if it was not?