Hide(32)
Doesn’t matter. Mack’s not a mystical person by any means, but she’s going to win. It feels inevitable. It’s not a triumphant feeling, though. It’s heavy and monstrous.
Familiar.
At least this time, her sin is passive abandonment, not active betrayal.
* * *
—
“What do you think, man? Want an alliance or whatever?” Christian warily eyes where the hot ones are debating whether it’s better to head into the park first or second and the weird ones are calmly gathering supplies.
Ian is in neither of those groups, and doesn’t want to be. He definitely doesn’t want to be. He’s told himself so several times as he tears apart his bag for the fiftieth time. He can’t find his pen. How can he write without his pen? All this inspiration, and he can’t even—the back of his neck is already sticky with sweat, and he can feel several bug bites, not to mention a blistering sunburn on one patch of arm that he missed with the sunblock yesterday, and no, he is not feeling inspired, he is feeling drained and exhausted and annoyed and where the hell is his pen?
All this inspiration, and he can’t even write because he doesn’t have his pen. That’s what’s holding him back. It has to be what’s holding him back, because if there’s not some magical formula for writing, some mystical combination of the right objects and mood and setting and music, that means there’s no way for him to find the right way to do it. That means all there is to writing is just…writing. And it’s hard. It’s so hard. He hasn’t finished a piece since he graduated. What if he never does again?
“So?” Christian prods.
“Do you really think you’re going to win?” Ian asks, staring up with slightly more malice than he intended. Christian’s not going to win, and neither is Ian. He never wins anything, not ever.
Why did he agree to this? That stupid DNA ancestry test he took, hoping for some unknown connection to a culture he could tap into. To something that would infuse him with purpose, with story. Instead all he got was a random woman, second cousin or one-eighth cousin fourteen times removed or whatever, reaching out to him and telling him about this contest. Why had he thought it could be good? When was anything ever good in his life?
Christian lets out an angry huff and stomps away into the early morning darkness. Just as well. Ian doesn’t have any desire for an ally, any will to play whatever game the others have decided to turn this into. Wasn’t it a stupid enough game on its own without making it more complicated? They’re playing hide-and-go-seek, for god’s sake.
Despondent, penless, and knowing that even if he did have the pen he wouldn’t write today, Ian abandons his heavy bag and wanders out of camp into the overarching shrubbery. He walks aimlessly, shoulders hunched, hands shoved into his pockets. How can he be chilled and sweaty at the same time? He hates it here. He hates it everywhere.
If he were someone else, doubtless he could have found a story in all this, but he doesn’t want to be one of those cheap genre writers, vomiting out word garbage for the tasteless masses. He has an MFA. He wants to make art. He wants to write things that matter. He wants to give interviews in a masculine, casual, big-money study, surrounded by classics—none of his own books, of course, because he wouldn’t need to do anything as gauche as show them off. Obviously whoever interviewed him would note the lack of ostentatious self-advertising. He wouldn’t need to promote himself. The work would be enough. There would be a photo of him, unsmiling, staring boldly at the camera, which would make his face handsome somehow. And he’d have a pipe that he’d smoke during the interview without apology, lit by his sleek, expensive lighter.
Dammit. He left his lighter in his bag.
His wood-paneled study disappears, slapped from his mind with an errant branch to the face.
Swearing and sweating, Ian passes the entrance to a cavernous building with demented cupids hanging—literally, in one case, swinging by its neck—from the faded, rusting sign. LOVERS’ HIDEAWAY. Whatever the attraction was, it’s all indoors. Probably used to be a water ride, which brings to mind mildew and rot and mold. He imagines it infiltrating his lungs, settling in, populating his body with millions of tiny mold spores shot like arrows from Cupid’s bow. Hard pass.
A little farther down the twisting path he’s on, he sees a building that fits his mood. The opening gapes beneath a massive demon. Once it was probably covered in plaster, but the rain has gradually melted it away so only the metal skeleton remains: a horned skull, a barrel chest, skeletal wings. Still not as creepy as the cherubs, really. A love tunnel and a hell tunnel so close to each other. Probably better if they were combined.
That’s a clever thought. Or at least there’s a clever thought somewhere in there, if only Ian had his fucking pen to write it down.
He pauses at the ticket booth. Prices listed on the side were stamped into a metal plate, so he can still make them out. Someone had a sense of humor. Park-goers had to purchase a sin in order to enter—Lust, Envy, Greed, Sloth, Gluttony, Pride, Wrath. Oddly, someone has scratched in ASTERION beneath those. Isn’t that the name of the town?
His interest is piqued, and he’s running out of time, so Ian steps beneath the demon and enters the building. He’s made the same error he hoped to avoid with the love tunnel. Half of the roof here has caved in; the ride also used an artificial river to move boats along a path. Of course, that’s long since dried up, leaving only mildew and a depression in the middle of the pathway. Mildew and depression: both familiar states for Ian.