“Huh. I just lost seventy thousand dollars,” Jones said. He squinted at his computer with his mouth slightly open, looking like a grandpa trying to send an email. “Eyyy, so we’ll eat in tonight!” He had a thick New York or north Jersey accent. “What are ya making?”
Jones was wearing a fancy dress shirt with pastel pink and baby blue stripes. He always dressed fancy, even when he was working from home. His cuff links cost as much as his computer. His long, light brown hair was gathered into a neat ponytail. He spent forty-five minutes trimming his beard so he could have perfect stubble.
His partner Rosa was curled up on the couch, painting her nails. Jones smiled whenever he saw Rosa her pajamas. She had resting femme fatale face. Piercing eyes, pronounced cheekbones, the very picture of an international con woman. Physically, she was the embodiment of the archetype. She looked born to betray. An illustration drawn by a cartoonist from the ’50s. And here she was, curled up on the patched up old couch, under the peeling paint, wearing sweatpants and hair curlers. She looked out of place being normal. She was only like this around him. He found it unimaginably charming.
“We broke?”
“Eh, for a couple weeks.” He shrugged. “I’m bad at these internet scams.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed deeply. “Jones, I know we’re hiding out but I don’t belong in a dump like this.” She spoke in a throaty purr. “This keeps up and I’m gonna do a job.”
“Sweetheart, don’t even go there! You especially gotta keep a low profile. Plus, I want to spoil you a little bit.” She looked up at the water damaged, tobacco-stained ceiling. He wasn’t doing a very good job spoiling her. Ah, she was so good at communicating with only a glance!
“Comfort is the problem. You shouldn’t be able to fraud people from your own home. Its all numbers. No finesse at all.” He moved across their tiny apartment to the couch. She recoiled away from him. “It’s too ethereal. I’m a fictional character.” He slowly ran his fingers up her leg while she idly played on her phone. “It’s all fake. Even the money is fake. I am too ghostly. Formless. I wisp away in the aether. My art requires the senses. Touch, taste, feel-”
She firmly placed her foot on his chest. He gave it a kiss before she shoved him away.
“I don’t fuck broke losers,” she said.
“Will you at least cook tonight? I’m feeling real sad.” He gave her a pleading look.
They locked eyes, then played rock-paper-scissors. He won and she sighed in frustration.
“I’m in your head, cutiepie,” he said.
“But not in my pants. Go make some money, mister fictional character.”
He schemed and plotted while she cooked dinner. There were so few rich people in Sincoke and he already got most of them. Every now and then some tech guys would show up looking for cheap office space. They all wanted to make Sincoke the new Silicon Valley. Maybe one of the guys he scammed could have.
If only they could leave. Then the world could be their chessboard once again. There were too many people after them. He’d burned the New York mafia and Mexican cartels. He was wanted by private militias owned by billionaires he’d screwed over, and the governments of Guam and El Salvador. Rosa was in even more trouble. Jones could become anyone and blend in anywhere. Rosa’s pride gave her too much identity. Sincoke was the last place anyone would look for them. Plus the intelligence and military headquarters made it risky for anyone to pursue them.
Boring as shit, though. Alias was starting to wonder about that Sincoke Curse. A lot of people believed in it. Truck drivers dumped their hauls outside city limits. Professional athletes refused to play at Sincoke Stadium. They’d attempted to leave Sincoke several times—but something always prevented them. Sometimes it was activity from one of their many enemies, sometimes it was because he hit a low point like tonight and they didn’t have money to leave, and sometimes it was as simple as a canceled bus ride. A lot of people had stories about coming to Sincoke and, for one reason another, staying there forever. One of the reasons why it’s such an unknown city, is that no one knows anyone from there. Alias had never heard of it. That was part of the appeal.
He was a very superstitious man, but fate had no sway over Alias Jones. He’d get out. He heard Rosa boiling pasta. He smelled sauce heating up in a saucepan.
“Mmmm! Home made or store bought?”
In response, she leaned out of the door frame and looked at him like he was crazy.
Jones cracked a smile, then cracked open the window so he could smoke. He was pleasantly surprised when the cloud blew away. Usually smoke clouds just lingered in Sincoke. The breeze was nice. He hated stillness. He was a con man, what was he doing sitting at his computer, phishing for Bitcoin wallet passwords?
Games were supposed to be fun.
Jones’ high society contacts kept talking about some guy named Zengrel coming to town tonight. Mysterious guy. Everything was public about him except for what he actually did. He was open about how he gave his money away but no one knew how he got it. He seemed to know everyone, as far as Jones could tell his job was being photographed with other powerful people. There were rumors—of weird experiments at his private islands, that he was a spy—and he did not confirm or deny anything. He seemed to relish in being a mystery. Jones recognized a fellow traveler.
Powerful people only come to Sincoke to hide, like him, but sometimes they came to do weird shit where they knew no one would notice or care. If Zengrel was hiding something, Jones could blackmail his ass. But blackmail was ugly. He might as well just do more phishing scams.
There was a knock on the door. Jones threw his cigarette out the window and looked through the pigeon hole. Two poorly disguised plainclothes officers. Sheriff Arpel’s favorite. They didn’t have warrants but that never stopped them. These bastards were worse than the NYPD. Whatever. He’d make them go away.
“Ey, sweetie,” he joined her in the kitchen. She was fishing through the cabinet. “What name did I take this apartment under? Heads up, we probably gotta move soon.”
Rosa huffed and banged a can of diced tomatoes on the counter. “I don’t know. I don’t even remember your real name.”
“Hmm. I don’t think I’ve ever told you.” He knelt next to her. She scooted to the side so he could get at the cabinet under the sink. There was a plastic container of dish machine packets full of fake IDs.
“If you did, I wouldn’t believe you,” she said.
He kissed her leg and she stiffened. “That hurts,” he said. The knocking got more insistent. He cleared his throat, then started saying words to turn on his Sincoke accent. People hated New Yorkers ’round these parts. For a split second Alias Jones wondered if he was really from New York, or if that was another character. That happened sometimes.
Gotta keep your story straight, he said to himself. “Howdy y’all, howdyy’all. Laying it on too thick. Howdy y’all. There she is!” He’d have them on their way in no time, feeling like they got everything they wanted. Then whoever he was tonight would disappear forever. “Then I’m gonna go out again. Got a work thing.”
“Try to remember your name this time,” she said coldly.
It was the early evening and the sun was oppressive. Julie Ping was sweltering in an air vent above His enemy. Her sneakers and athletic wear were soiled from three days of hiding and sweating. She took off her shirt and tossed it on top of her cooler full of snacks—a colorless hunk of plastic that was hard to carry around quietly. It was decorated with stickers of cartoon characters and costumed heroes. Pop culture was idolatry, but He made an exception for her. She blew dry air at herself with her hand held mist fan. It was out of water and there was too much activity to sneak into the bathroom. She used it to crush a cockroach that brushed against her calf.
She was stalking her Master’s enemy. Normally that was a pleasure, but she was getting very bored. This was the third day in a row of watching the blasphemer type away in this Jobly co-working space. It was on the third floor of a warehouse on the edge of town—Sincoke was full of empty, cheap to rent commercial real estate. He was probably writing more lies and slander, like claiming that her Master couldn’t actually fly, or that his followers kept dying of preventable illnesses. Fool, every illness is preventable if you practice Hao Yidong with a righteous soul!
Three weeks ago he had an office with a window at the Sincoke Sun. Julie took care of that. Master put a curse on this ‘journalist.’ She saw to it that it worked. She was His little gudu-giu. His Venomous Ghost. She haunted his office. She wrote down all his passwords, submitted unfinished drafts to his editors, messaged slurs to his coworkers, looked up porn on his company laptop, gave his car keys to some teenagers, and put an acrylic fingernail in his laptop bag. His wife found it. He had no explanation.
She ruined his reputation, and made it so his life would more accurately reflect his filthy soul. He was where he belonged, in a cockroach infested warehouse, working without air conditioning, among other insects—the dozen or so other loathsome nonbelievers he shared space with. Most of them were social media account managers. Four of them operated a company that designed luxury golf club grips. One of them was a web-series author going through a divorce and having a rebound office affair with a woman who coordinated schedules for dog walkers. Julie saw a lot in those three days.
All of them were flabby, smelly, and poor-spirited. That’s what the evils of modernity like cell phones, food hormones, and believing in evolution did to you. They needed to offset it by practicing Hao Yidong. Instead they sat around all day picking at keyboards and having the nerve to complain about it.
Julie was growing impatient and resentful. She was angry that she trained and passed the trials, only to have to sit in cramped, uncomfortable places and listen to the impure for days, while everyone else hung out at the compound meditating and practicing Hao Yidong and experiencing bliss and basking in His presence and probably talking about her behind her back like fucking jerks.
Time passed while she seethed, and everyone went home except for her target. She grew claustrophobic and increasingly agitated. She felt a desperate need to move. To exercise her body, to exorcise the negative energy she felt in every muscle and joint.
But he wouldn’t fucking go home! It was pointless for her to be here. She could only do petty things like make sure the men’s restroom was out of toilet paper, or steal peoples’ lunch from the faculty fridge and frame him. Did Master not want her around? She felt His absence acutely. The noise of her target tapping on his keyboard was driving her insane. She lunged towards the grate and glared at him with hatred. She noticed that the cockroach she smashed earlier was still wiggling around.
Oh, how the foul persevere.
The warehouse was in ill repair. It was creepy, creaky. She considered her title, a reference to her role and the processes that shaped her into it. Gudu-gui.Venomous Ghost. She grabbed her shirt off the cooler and bit into it, rending it into something a little more appropriate.
The journalist stopped writing and looked at his screen with a self-satisfied smile. He was bald, with a disheveled beard that he used to keep it trim and square. He turned around in his office chair to face the empty room.
“I’ve written about all of Sincoke’s cults. I’ve been harassed and gang-stalked, but you California transplants really took it to next level. I’m not going to stop.” He clapped his hands and stood up. “What can you take from me anymore? You gonna keep making my pens explode? Taking the… fucking staples out of my staplers. We’re alone now, stop hiding. You know what you have to do to stop me.”
Julie was hiding behind a desk wearing tattered clothes. She tossed up her hair and messed up her complexion by rubbing bathroom soap and crushed snack bars all over her face. She skulked to the light switch and turned it off.
“Here were are. There’s no curse, you’re just a thug, and your leader is a powerless con—WHAT THE FUCK!” He caught a glimpse of Julie crab walking between two desks, barely visible in the dim light from his laptop. She bumped her head and grunted in frustration, but played it off as a spooky moan. Then she started making awful gurgling noises from the back of her throat.
“This is fucking insane,” the journalist walked towards her trepidaciously. Julie silently whisked around the desk to avoid him, then slithered across the room while he investigated under the desk. She leapt off the sill of a boarded window and wrapped her legs around a ceiling beam. She hung upside down, silhouetted by the laptop’s light, and waited for him to turn around.
Suddenly he shouted, “Just kill me already!”
Before Julie could process that, he turned around and jumped out of his skin. Then he paused and stared at her. “You’re a girl,” he said. “Kid, what-”
Julie panicked, then she was totally overwhelmed by fury. She treated the beam like a crossbar and swung at him with the full power of her thighs and core. She was an accomplished gymnast, and the journalist was bowled over by 4’11” of pure lean muscle.
She fully lost control. She exposed herself because she doubted her Master and acted impatiently and in self interest. She came to clawing at his face. Blood pulsed from deep scratches on his cheeks, forehead, and across his eyes. Her fingers were covered in blood, and both of them were streaming angry tears. They shared a sense of shame, failure, and of belonging nowhere. Everything was ruined for both of them.
Julie rose and left him sobbing on the ground, babbling the name of his soon-to-be ex-wife. She looked at his laptop to try and recover the mission. It was open to a coauthored online document. She skimmed it. He figured out that he was being stalked, but thought that Julie would kill him when they were alone. This article was intended to be his final work, meant to expose his enemies and vindicate him in death.
There were terrified messages his coauthor begging him to leave the building. Julie typed: “gotcha 😉 Haha I’m fine. Gang stalked! Pfffft I’m at a hotel.” She thought about his scratched up face. “With a girl whose into some weeeeird stuff :O 😮 ;)”
“Why are you doing this to me?” He bawled. “Why have you-”
Julie tossed a stapler at him. “I haven’t done a fucking thing,” she hissed. “It was His will this be done, so it happened. I had nothing to do with it. He controls fate, I just nudge it along. Don’t bother telling anyone about me; I just made sure no one will ever believe you again.”
He stopped crying and looked at her sadly. Julie realized he was sad for her. This angered her, but for a brief second they locked eyes and she saw him as a fellow human being, hurting. Then she heard her phone ringing in the vent and she could only think about Master. She disappeared into the darkness above them, completely forgetting about the journalist and the life she ruined.
“You’ve done well, my little Bug.”
She could hear him smiling as he said her affectionate pet name. He was always smiling. He exuded peace, and everything seemed OK when he spoke to her. All of her doubt, frustration, shame, and anxiety melted away. She wondered where it even came from.
“Come back to me now. I want you to meet someone.”
“Anything,” she said
Someone was desperately trying to wake up. It was an arduous process, the sleep was thick like tar. The more they struggled they more they felt stuck, like quicksand. It felt like they’d been trying to wake forever, flailing, occasionally breaking the surface, then getting sucked back in, like they were trying not to drown. They had no memory of anything else. Trying to wake up was all they had known.
Suddenly they noticed their leg was uncomfortable. Other sensations followed, and they became aware of their surroundings. They were in a tightly enclosed space, a container made to fit them exactly. They somehow managed to moved their leg in their sleep, and their knee was clutched tightly to their chest. They probably did it because—they were suddenly aware—they were freezing.
By then all they had ever known was discomfort and cold, but they still tried to wake up. Suddenly they became aware of a tiny, quiet, distant feeling that something was wrong. They decided not to confront it. Being in the box was all they had ever known, so they had no reason to question it.
In a light stupor, they began idly exploring their surroundings with their hands. They felt a loose tube, and pricked their fingers on a sharp needle affixed to the end of it. That discouraged them from exploring until they became aware of a different sensation.
Hunger.
They began playing and squirming around. She discovered that the wall above her was loose by bumping it with her elbow. It hurt. Pain was pervasive in the waking world, but it always seemed to precede discovery. Slowly, awkwardly, their body still weak and tired, they pushed the lid open and rose from their container.
First came self-awareness. She was a woman. She was wearing frilly white lingerie that left her breasts and pretty much everything else exposed. She played curiously with her long, dark red hair, and she tripped over her legs as she stepped over the side of the box, moving like a newborn giraffe. She looked down at her toes and flexed them. Her nails were painted powder blue. She didn’t quite feel at home in her body. Her feet felt like they were miles away. Her head felt large and heavy. Every movement felt delayed.
Then she was aware of her environment. She was in a large room covered in red curtains. Soft light filtered through them, basking the room in a transfixing glow. There were a couple dozen other woman-sized boxes. They were different colors, black, white, red, pink, or powder blue just like hers. The black boxes were decorated with spikes and studs, the pink ones with elaborate bows and teddy bears. The blue boxes were bedecked with white frills that matched her lingerie.
It had a description:
For the Everyman!
Jessica is the ideal ‘Girl Next Door,’ a pleasant, regular gal with a secret sexy side.
The perfect step daughter, wife’s best friend, secretary, or hot neighbor.
Ask her for a cup of sugar, and she’ll give you your wildest dreams.
Every powder blue box had the same name and description. She didn’t identify with the name ‘Jessica’ but that must have been her name. It was right on the box.
Food was her priority. She tested her body, got used to piloting it. More senses came online. She smelled something sweet and realized she was heavily perfumed. She heard incessant humming from the boxes, then another sound—chewing, sucking, someone horfing down food. Her eyes lit up and she followed the sound, gingerly stepping around the boxes and the tubes attached to them. The noise was coming from the other side of the curtains.
She was struck with anxiety and dread again. She felt compelled to run away from whoever was on the other side of that curtain and leave this box room. Then she thought of food. She had no reason to question any of this. It was all she’d ever known. It was fine.
Still, she peered through the curtains cautiously.
Another red room. The carpet was red, as was the overhead light. A spiral staircase led somewhere. There was a huge man standing next to a bent folding chair, anxiously eating cookies out of a sleeve. There was a whole package of cookies on the chair! Jessica eyed them enviously, practically salivating.
She heard footsteps on the staircase, then another voice. “Ey, Ezzy, I think—whoa whoa what are you doing?” Jessica thought he spotted her, but he was talking to the big man. “Fuck dude you were doing so good how did you—where did you get those?”
“I dunno man I just—“
“You don’t know, Ezio? The cookies just appeared?” The man who descended the staircase was short and fit, and had a neat mustache. Ezio was putting the cookies down, but he still slapped them out of his hand. “You gotta watch your diabetes man. We want you to live a long life, you fat fuck.”
“I know man. I’m just worried about this situation. The damaged goods. How the fuck did the IV get detached? They’re gonna think one of us, you know, disturbed it.”
“They’re not gonna think shit dude. I hate sex, you’re too fat to get hard, and Asher’s gay.”
Jessica heard an exasperated voice come from behind a door she didn’t see. “I’m not gay, dude.”
“I swear they talk in their sleep on Wild Nights,” Ezio said, reaching for the cookies.
“No one believes in wild nights except for girls who dye their hair black, and guys who pretend to be bisexual to fuck them. Like Asher.”
“Hello boys!” Jessica emerged from the curtain. She was surprised by her voice. It instinctively dropped husky and low during the ‘lo’ at the end of hello. Ezio stared at her. So did the mustache guy, but without any feeling or desire in his eyes.
“What are you doing outside your box?” He asked firmly.
“Guys what’s going on?” From the other room.
“Shut up Asher.” He said it without humor that time. Asher must have sensed it, there was no huffing or mumbled complaint. Mustache’s brown irises seemed to darken to black. Meanwhile Ezio’s eyes traveled her body lustfully. He was her best bet, and she sauntered over to him without missing a beat. She touched his arm girlishly and stood behind him, acting scared of Mr. Mustache.
“Don’t worry about him, he’s just gay,” Ezio said and laughed. Jessica laughed along with him. She made sure her smile reached her eyes. She sold it.
“I’m not gay,” he said. “I’ve just overcome my need for sex so that women can’t control me.” She wasn’t getting any cookies from him. Jessica looked up at Ezio and snickered. They shared a private little laugh.
“Yo, she can chill for a little while,” Ezio said.
“Your fat ass bumped into a box and left merchandise without an IV for three hours. Then you fucked up putting it back, and got blood all over the velvet interior. We already might be in deep shit.”
“Come on man, it was one of the Ravens! The interior is all black. No one will notice.”
“That’s a reallygood point!” Jessica leaned into him. She was getting cookies.
“She’s a fucking minx dude,” Mustache said. He looked at Jessica, who had the plastic sleeve in her hand and six cookies shoved in her mouth. She stopped chewing and pointed at herself.He narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, you. And you’re getting crumbs all over your lingerie. Even straight out the box, these whores know how to turn us against each other. Come on Ezzy, we’re more important. Us. The fellas.”
“Now whose gay, dude,” Asher called from the other room.
While they argued, Jessica regarded Ezio with puppy-dog eyes. “Can you bring me more snacks? Maybe we can hang out upstairs for a bit! Stretch our legs?”
He gave her a goofy smile. He was missing his front teeth.
“Anything.”