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Wilford wasn’t quite sure when he fell asleep, but waking up made it very clear that he had. He didn’t want to wake up; waking up meant dealing with things. Like the fact that the bed slanted slightly toward one corner. But there were dog claws digging into his ribs, and a night of heavy drinking had caught up with him, so getting up and moving was a necessity.
He found his glasses on the edge of the bed, and sort of wished he hadn’t. The room was in an even worse state than he remembered. For one, there was no bedside table for his glasses. For two, everything was smashed and broken and lying somewhere it shouldn’t have been. This was not a damage bill he was looking forward to paying. He headed into the bathroom, finding it in no better state. The door was barely on its hinges, the mirror had been shattered, and for some reason, everything that belonged in his dresser was either in the sink or on the floor. This was stupid. He was stupid. And he was feeling just sick and hungover enough to admit it.
Wilford had to go home. He had to deal with what he’d been trying so hard to ignore. Maybe Jim was wrong. Maybe the stuff he’d found in the library had been one big coincidence. Maybe the sky was purple.
He did what he could in the trashed excuse for a bathroom before finding his jeans from the day (week) before and fishing out his wallet, keys, and phone. There was no point to this room anymore. It was time to move somewhere else. He kicked the bed to wake up the dog, making sure it saw that they were leaving before heading downstairs. He stopped at the bar just long enough to arrange for new room, and for all of his things to be moved over while he was out. Then he got the dog its breakfast, and left while the animal was distracted.
His own apartment was comfortable in its emptiness. He didn’t like a lot of things or clutter in his space, which did have a hidden bonus of being infinitely easier to clean up when he threw a fit. At least at Milliways, he could pay someone else to do it for him, and throwing his fit there this time spared him from that. He headed into the bathroom - clean, neat, everything right where it should be - and started what he couldn’t do at Milliways. He spent at least ten minutes brushing his teeth, scrubbing the taste of sleep and stale booze out of his mouth until it almost hurt. The fashionable scruff he normally liked had become messy and dirty-looking. He picked up the small set of clippers from the drawer, but changed his mind seconds later. It was time for a change anyway so he reached for the shaving cream instead. Once the scruff had been taken care of, he cleaned up his moustache, giving it a good trim so it would sit right when he shaped it. It felt nice to clean up. He could probably do with a haircut as well, but that wasn’t something he’d be doing himself. After a few more moments of staring at himself in the mirror, he decided a haircut was exactly what he needed, so he headed back to his bedroom to put something on that wasn’t decorated with reindeer drinking coffee and surfing geckos.
Plain black T-shirt. A decent pair of jeans. His favourite shoes were still back at the bar, but he had a few other pairs he could wear that were equally comfortable. Making sure he still had his keys and wallet and anything else, he spared just enough time to grab his leather jacket from the kitchen table before leaving the cramped confines of his tiny apartment.
Billy wasn’t home when Wilford knocked on his door. It didn’t make much sense, since Billy was just as unemployed as he was at the moment, but he didn’t care. He let himself in with the spare key he’d stolen years before and headed to the kitchen to make himself some coffee and find something to eat. The front door opened as he was digging through the fridge to find something that wasn’t cream cheese to put on a bagel, but he barely looked up. There was only one person it could be.
“What are you doing in my house?” Billy asked through the wall.
Wilford finally pulled his head out of the fridge just in time to see Billy walk into the kitchen. He looked around at the mess Wilford had made with the coffee pot, sighed, and poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Good! You’re home!” Wilford looked at something that looked like strawberry jam, and tossed it back into the fridge. “Make it to go.”
Billy looked down at the mug in his hand. “You just…” He stopped himself, sighed, and reached for a travel mug instead. “Where are we going?” He looked up at Wilford, stopping again on his way to grabbing a second mug. “You’ve shaved. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” His bagel popped up out of the toaster, but he ignored it. Billy was here, so they were going to do something far more interesting.
“Fine.” Billy took the bagel for himself, smearing some butter on it before wrapping it in a paper towel. “Whatever.”
“Where were you, anyway?” Wilford asked, taking what he presumed to be his cup of coffee and making tracks toward the front door.
“I was at the unemployment office. Where you might want to be,” Billy said, following after Wilford because he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.
Wilford paused before opening the door. “Why?”
Billy sighed. “Because somebody had to go act out a vendetta and get half the station laid off.”
“I’ve got a plan for that,” Wilford said. He opened the door and stepped outside, taking only a few moments to decide on whose car to take. “Give me your keys.”
“How about no?” Billy said as he juggled everything to lock up behind them. “Where are we going?”
Wilford shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Keys.”
Billy ignored him and got into the driver’s seat of his car, leaving Wilford with few options. Resigned to Billy’s stubbornness, he got into the passenger side and wrenched the seat back as far away from the dash as it would go.
“Where are we going?” Billy asked again.
Wilford shrugged again. “Don’t know. Just start driving. We’ll find it.”
Billy made the noise he usually did when he was trying not to sigh as he started the car and reversed out of the space. Wilford ignored it as he pulled out his phone and pulled up the apps on the small screen. They were primitive versions of the apps he’d come to rely on for fun, but they had mostly the same information. Wilford found a gathering nearby and directed Billy through the streets, ignoring his questions about where they were going until they came to a parking lot with a line of cars and a huge crowd around them. Wilford didn’t want to participate; he just wanted to watch the mayhem unfold. It was like any other street game people played, with simple rules. People bought in to have a spot in the line of cars, and they had to stay in the car as long as possible while a second group of ‘zombies’ did everything they could to get into the cars using nothing but their bare hands. The cars were a mix of old junkers and specially built rigs, but it never really seemed to matter which one you were in. The zombies would get in sooner or later. If your car was the last one to be broken into, you got the money. And then the whole thing started over again.
It was mayhem. Pure, simple mayhem. People jumping on cars, trying to kick in windows and pull enough trim pieces off until the whole thing just started to fall apart. It was, ultimately, pointless for everybody but the five or six buy-ins in the cars. Something to do to let off steam, but they stood no chance of gaining anything for their efforts.
The more Wilford thought it looked like evidence that the whole thing with Jim might have been some epic prank or misunderstanding, the less he was certain. Why did anybody do this, unless it was something they were supposed to do? Something somebody else wanted them to do? But surely that would mean that he wouldn’t just be able to sit by on the sidelines and watch. What, then, was his role in this if the whole thing had been dreamt up by some insane being?
“Fuck it. Let’s get out of here,” he declared suddenly.
Billy looked over at him with that Look. Wilford hated that look. Billy wasn’t here to worry and fret; he was here to be Wilford’s ride in case anything got out of hand.
“You cut your hair.” Billy was still giving him that Look. “And you spent more than eight bucks on it, didn’t you?”
“Drive,” Wilford said, ignoring the question. He shouldn’t have been surprised that Billy would notice. Billy noticed everything. He was irritating like that.
He made that noise again and pulled out of the parking lot, this time to just drive around aimlessly. Or was it aimless? Was something or someone else determining where he turned? If that was the case, then surely Wilford should have been bound to that as well, right? That’s how things worked, wasn’t it?
“Stop here,” he said suddenly.
Billy tried to pull over, but construction scaffolding blocked the shoulder. Before he could ask any questions, Wilford quickly hopped out of the car and picked up a chunk of concrete from the sidewalk and hurled it at the first car that drove past them, shattering the passenger window. The car immediately screeched to a halt just feet in front of Billy. Then the driver stepped out, and Wilford realised that he had maybe made a mistake. The guy was huge, and he was pissed. Wilford reached for his gun in his inventory and… it was gone. Where was his gun? Why did he only have an empty cardboard box and little else on him?
“What the fuck?” Billy shouted, already trying to get away.
Wilford wasted no more time. He got back into the car, struggling to get the door shut while Billy tore out of the tight space, having to back up to get away from the car with the smashed window. The driver chased after them on foot as Billy quickly turned around to get away.
“What is wrong with you?” Billy shouted, keeping an eye behind him. Of course the angry driver got back into his car and turned to chase them.
“I had to do something random!” Wilford shouted back, turning to look at the car quickly approaching behind them.
“Well, you fucking did it, dumbass!”
Wilford could not really argue with that. Especially not because the other guy had got close enough to ram into them from behind. The tail end swerved out, but Billy held it, keeping them almost in their lane. Other cars honked and shouted at them as they ran through lights and cut sharp corners to get some distance between them and the guy Wilford had managed to piss off.
“Why?” Billy demanded, cutting off a truck as they ran a stop sign. “Take your fucking pills. Maybe this shit wouldn’t happen!”
“Fuck you!” Wilford shouted, again reaching for a gun that wasn’t there. He could kick himself for not checking that he had it.
Billy spotted something up ahead, and quickly slammed on the breaks, making Wilford have to brace against the dash as they skidded into a curbside parking space. The guy behind them wasn’t fast enough, and sped past them, crashing into a cop car that was pulling out at the next intersection. They both watched for a few moments while the cops got out of their car to swarm the other driver. Well. That was that taken care of.
“What the fuck!?” Billy shouted again, this time throwing a few awkward punches at Wilford.
Surprised at the outburst, Wilford blocked his face for the first two, before lashing out with one of his own. The cramped confines of the car made it difficult to get a properly good swing in, but he had no problem trying. At least, not until Billy landed a solid hit right in the middle of Wilford’s face, making his entire world explode with red and pain. He covered his nose, knowing he was bleeding, and looked at Billy with stark disbelief.
“The hell was that for?” he demanded.
Billy followed it up with one more, which Wilford barely managed to flinch away from. This time Billy’s fist hit the side of his head, which did not feel any better.
“Warn me next time,” Billy said, properly angry for the first time in months.
Wilford had nothing to say that wouldn’t make him sound completely insane. He just stared at Billy dumbly, trying to not bleed all over himself.
“I don’t know what the hell is going on this time, but if this is your cooldown, I’m glad I missed the beginning of it,” Billy continued, not quite shouting, but clearly wanting to. “You cost me my job, and now you’re trying to get me killed. I’d appreciate it if you just… stopped.”
Wilford still had nothing to say. He had clearly crossed a line, and this time he even had a pretty good idea of what that line had been. He responded with continued silence; by not arguing and letting Billy win. They sat in silence for a long, tense moment before Billy finally put the car into gear and pulled back into traffic. Wilford waited until Billy had calmed down a little bit before starting to dig through the glove box and the centre console for some napkins or something. He found some eventually, and tried to stuff them up his nose to stop the bleeding, but it was already a mess that just a few napkins weren’t going to fix.
“Put your head down, stupid,” Billy said finally, driving much more cautiously than he normally did.
Wilford did, only because it seemed like the best way to keep Billy from shouting at him some more. At the next light, Billy reached into his back seat and unzipped the gym bag that was still back there. The shirt he pulled out was not the most pleasant thing in the world, but it was better than a couple of flimsy paper napkins, so it’s what Wilford used to hold his face together. He thought that maybe Billy was going to take him to a hospital or a clinic somewhere, but was surprised when the car stopped, and he looked up to find himself in the parking lot outside Billy’s building.
“Go home, Wil,” Billy said tiredly. “Get laid. Get some sleep. I don’t care; just get over whatever the hell this was.”
He got out and walked up to his door, clearly not wanting to be followed. Not sure what else to do, Wilford got out as well, and headed to his own car, slapping away a couple of curious bees that wanted to examine his face. Once behind the wheel, it took him about twenty minutes to get his nose to stop bleeding so he could actually drive. He thought for a brief moment about going out to do something else, but in the end he took part of Billy’s advice, and went home. He had no plans for once he got there, but it was a start.
The drive was short, and soon he was climbing the stairs up to his own door, sighing as he unlocked the door. He hated this apartment. He hated everything about it, and how small and empty and boring it was. Maybe he’d go back to the bar for a little bit. Trash a few more rooms, and then maybe he’d feel better.
Except, when he tried to open a door, all he found was his bedroom on the other side. Same with the closet. And the stairwell on the other side of the front door.
Well, fuck.
He found his glasses on the edge of the bed, and sort of wished he hadn’t. The room was in an even worse state than he remembered. For one, there was no bedside table for his glasses. For two, everything was smashed and broken and lying somewhere it shouldn’t have been. This was not a damage bill he was looking forward to paying. He headed into the bathroom, finding it in no better state. The door was barely on its hinges, the mirror had been shattered, and for some reason, everything that belonged in his dresser was either in the sink or on the floor. This was stupid. He was stupid. And he was feeling just sick and hungover enough to admit it.
Wilford had to go home. He had to deal with what he’d been trying so hard to ignore. Maybe Jim was wrong. Maybe the stuff he’d found in the library had been one big coincidence. Maybe the sky was purple.
He did what he could in the trashed excuse for a bathroom before finding his jeans from the day (week) before and fishing out his wallet, keys, and phone. There was no point to this room anymore. It was time to move somewhere else. He kicked the bed to wake up the dog, making sure it saw that they were leaving before heading downstairs. He stopped at the bar just long enough to arrange for new room, and for all of his things to be moved over while he was out. Then he got the dog its breakfast, and left while the animal was distracted.
His own apartment was comfortable in its emptiness. He didn’t like a lot of things or clutter in his space, which did have a hidden bonus of being infinitely easier to clean up when he threw a fit. At least at Milliways, he could pay someone else to do it for him, and throwing his fit there this time spared him from that. He headed into the bathroom - clean, neat, everything right where it should be - and started what he couldn’t do at Milliways. He spent at least ten minutes brushing his teeth, scrubbing the taste of sleep and stale booze out of his mouth until it almost hurt. The fashionable scruff he normally liked had become messy and dirty-looking. He picked up the small set of clippers from the drawer, but changed his mind seconds later. It was time for a change anyway so he reached for the shaving cream instead. Once the scruff had been taken care of, he cleaned up his moustache, giving it a good trim so it would sit right when he shaped it. It felt nice to clean up. He could probably do with a haircut as well, but that wasn’t something he’d be doing himself. After a few more moments of staring at himself in the mirror, he decided a haircut was exactly what he needed, so he headed back to his bedroom to put something on that wasn’t decorated with reindeer drinking coffee and surfing geckos.
Plain black T-shirt. A decent pair of jeans. His favourite shoes were still back at the bar, but he had a few other pairs he could wear that were equally comfortable. Making sure he still had his keys and wallet and anything else, he spared just enough time to grab his leather jacket from the kitchen table before leaving the cramped confines of his tiny apartment.
Billy wasn’t home when Wilford knocked on his door. It didn’t make much sense, since Billy was just as unemployed as he was at the moment, but he didn’t care. He let himself in with the spare key he’d stolen years before and headed to the kitchen to make himself some coffee and find something to eat. The front door opened as he was digging through the fridge to find something that wasn’t cream cheese to put on a bagel, but he barely looked up. There was only one person it could be.
“What are you doing in my house?” Billy asked through the wall.
Wilford finally pulled his head out of the fridge just in time to see Billy walk into the kitchen. He looked around at the mess Wilford had made with the coffee pot, sighed, and poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Good! You’re home!” Wilford looked at something that looked like strawberry jam, and tossed it back into the fridge. “Make it to go.”
Billy looked down at the mug in his hand. “You just…” He stopped himself, sighed, and reached for a travel mug instead. “Where are we going?” He looked up at Wilford, stopping again on his way to grabbing a second mug. “You’ve shaved. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” His bagel popped up out of the toaster, but he ignored it. Billy was here, so they were going to do something far more interesting.
“Fine.” Billy took the bagel for himself, smearing some butter on it before wrapping it in a paper towel. “Whatever.”
“Where were you, anyway?” Wilford asked, taking what he presumed to be his cup of coffee and making tracks toward the front door.
“I was at the unemployment office. Where you might want to be,” Billy said, following after Wilford because he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.
Wilford paused before opening the door. “Why?”
Billy sighed. “Because somebody had to go act out a vendetta and get half the station laid off.”
“I’ve got a plan for that,” Wilford said. He opened the door and stepped outside, taking only a few moments to decide on whose car to take. “Give me your keys.”
“How about no?” Billy said as he juggled everything to lock up behind them. “Where are we going?”
Wilford shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Keys.”
Billy ignored him and got into the driver’s seat of his car, leaving Wilford with few options. Resigned to Billy’s stubbornness, he got into the passenger side and wrenched the seat back as far away from the dash as it would go.
“Where are we going?” Billy asked again.
Wilford shrugged again. “Don’t know. Just start driving. We’ll find it.”
Billy made the noise he usually did when he was trying not to sigh as he started the car and reversed out of the space. Wilford ignored it as he pulled out his phone and pulled up the apps on the small screen. They were primitive versions of the apps he’d come to rely on for fun, but they had mostly the same information. Wilford found a gathering nearby and directed Billy through the streets, ignoring his questions about where they were going until they came to a parking lot with a line of cars and a huge crowd around them. Wilford didn’t want to participate; he just wanted to watch the mayhem unfold. It was like any other street game people played, with simple rules. People bought in to have a spot in the line of cars, and they had to stay in the car as long as possible while a second group of ‘zombies’ did everything they could to get into the cars using nothing but their bare hands. The cars were a mix of old junkers and specially built rigs, but it never really seemed to matter which one you were in. The zombies would get in sooner or later. If your car was the last one to be broken into, you got the money. And then the whole thing started over again.
It was mayhem. Pure, simple mayhem. People jumping on cars, trying to kick in windows and pull enough trim pieces off until the whole thing just started to fall apart. It was, ultimately, pointless for everybody but the five or six buy-ins in the cars. Something to do to let off steam, but they stood no chance of gaining anything for their efforts.
The more Wilford thought it looked like evidence that the whole thing with Jim might have been some epic prank or misunderstanding, the less he was certain. Why did anybody do this, unless it was something they were supposed to do? Something somebody else wanted them to do? But surely that would mean that he wouldn’t just be able to sit by on the sidelines and watch. What, then, was his role in this if the whole thing had been dreamt up by some insane being?
“Fuck it. Let’s get out of here,” he declared suddenly.
Billy looked over at him with that Look. Wilford hated that look. Billy wasn’t here to worry and fret; he was here to be Wilford’s ride in case anything got out of hand.
“You cut your hair.” Billy was still giving him that Look. “And you spent more than eight bucks on it, didn’t you?”
“Drive,” Wilford said, ignoring the question. He shouldn’t have been surprised that Billy would notice. Billy noticed everything. He was irritating like that.
He made that noise again and pulled out of the parking lot, this time to just drive around aimlessly. Or was it aimless? Was something or someone else determining where he turned? If that was the case, then surely Wilford should have been bound to that as well, right? That’s how things worked, wasn’t it?
“Stop here,” he said suddenly.
Billy tried to pull over, but construction scaffolding blocked the shoulder. Before he could ask any questions, Wilford quickly hopped out of the car and picked up a chunk of concrete from the sidewalk and hurled it at the first car that drove past them, shattering the passenger window. The car immediately screeched to a halt just feet in front of Billy. Then the driver stepped out, and Wilford realised that he had maybe made a mistake. The guy was huge, and he was pissed. Wilford reached for his gun in his inventory and… it was gone. Where was his gun? Why did he only have an empty cardboard box and little else on him?
“What the fuck?” Billy shouted, already trying to get away.
Wilford wasted no more time. He got back into the car, struggling to get the door shut while Billy tore out of the tight space, having to back up to get away from the car with the smashed window. The driver chased after them on foot as Billy quickly turned around to get away.
“What is wrong with you?” Billy shouted, keeping an eye behind him. Of course the angry driver got back into his car and turned to chase them.
“I had to do something random!” Wilford shouted back, turning to look at the car quickly approaching behind them.
“Well, you fucking did it, dumbass!”
Wilford could not really argue with that. Especially not because the other guy had got close enough to ram into them from behind. The tail end swerved out, but Billy held it, keeping them almost in their lane. Other cars honked and shouted at them as they ran through lights and cut sharp corners to get some distance between them and the guy Wilford had managed to piss off.
“Why?” Billy demanded, cutting off a truck as they ran a stop sign. “Take your fucking pills. Maybe this shit wouldn’t happen!”
“Fuck you!” Wilford shouted, again reaching for a gun that wasn’t there. He could kick himself for not checking that he had it.
Billy spotted something up ahead, and quickly slammed on the breaks, making Wilford have to brace against the dash as they skidded into a curbside parking space. The guy behind them wasn’t fast enough, and sped past them, crashing into a cop car that was pulling out at the next intersection. They both watched for a few moments while the cops got out of their car to swarm the other driver. Well. That was that taken care of.
“What the fuck!?” Billy shouted again, this time throwing a few awkward punches at Wilford.
Surprised at the outburst, Wilford blocked his face for the first two, before lashing out with one of his own. The cramped confines of the car made it difficult to get a properly good swing in, but he had no problem trying. At least, not until Billy landed a solid hit right in the middle of Wilford’s face, making his entire world explode with red and pain. He covered his nose, knowing he was bleeding, and looked at Billy with stark disbelief.
“The hell was that for?” he demanded.
Billy followed it up with one more, which Wilford barely managed to flinch away from. This time Billy’s fist hit the side of his head, which did not feel any better.
“Warn me next time,” Billy said, properly angry for the first time in months.
Wilford had nothing to say that wouldn’t make him sound completely insane. He just stared at Billy dumbly, trying to not bleed all over himself.
“I don’t know what the hell is going on this time, but if this is your cooldown, I’m glad I missed the beginning of it,” Billy continued, not quite shouting, but clearly wanting to. “You cost me my job, and now you’re trying to get me killed. I’d appreciate it if you just… stopped.”
Wilford still had nothing to say. He had clearly crossed a line, and this time he even had a pretty good idea of what that line had been. He responded with continued silence; by not arguing and letting Billy win. They sat in silence for a long, tense moment before Billy finally put the car into gear and pulled back into traffic. Wilford waited until Billy had calmed down a little bit before starting to dig through the glove box and the centre console for some napkins or something. He found some eventually, and tried to stuff them up his nose to stop the bleeding, but it was already a mess that just a few napkins weren’t going to fix.
“Put your head down, stupid,” Billy said finally, driving much more cautiously than he normally did.
Wilford did, only because it seemed like the best way to keep Billy from shouting at him some more. At the next light, Billy reached into his back seat and unzipped the gym bag that was still back there. The shirt he pulled out was not the most pleasant thing in the world, but it was better than a couple of flimsy paper napkins, so it’s what Wilford used to hold his face together. He thought that maybe Billy was going to take him to a hospital or a clinic somewhere, but was surprised when the car stopped, and he looked up to find himself in the parking lot outside Billy’s building.
“Go home, Wil,” Billy said tiredly. “Get laid. Get some sleep. I don’t care; just get over whatever the hell this was.”
He got out and walked up to his door, clearly not wanting to be followed. Not sure what else to do, Wilford got out as well, and headed to his own car, slapping away a couple of curious bees that wanted to examine his face. Once behind the wheel, it took him about twenty minutes to get his nose to stop bleeding so he could actually drive. He thought for a brief moment about going out to do something else, but in the end he took part of Billy’s advice, and went home. He had no plans for once he got there, but it was a start.
The drive was short, and soon he was climbing the stairs up to his own door, sighing as he unlocked the door. He hated this apartment. He hated everything about it, and how small and empty and boring it was. Maybe he’d go back to the bar for a little bit. Trash a few more rooms, and then maybe he’d feel better.
Except, when he tried to open a door, all he found was his bedroom on the other side. Same with the closet. And the stairwell on the other side of the front door.
Well, fuck.
