Short Story: Philo Dendron and The End of the World

Rosie’s Diner - About an hour before the lunch rush

Yesterday the world had ended, but today was just normal. Particularly in Rosie’s Diner, on the corner of 67th and Harold Jones, which had only ever had two interesting things happen within its walls. Under its roof, in 1963, someone had briefly thought about killing JFK, before hearing on the crickety radio that they’d been beaten to it. In 1969, just as Buzz Aldrin was stepping off the moonar lander some guy blasted two nobodies into kingdom come. Even 9/11 was boring here, it was a crazy slow day. Today was perhaps the least momentous day in the diner’s monotonous history. A woman sat at the counter with tears not yet welling in her eyes, but it was clear she’d cry at practically any question. The waitress was hesitant even to refill the woman's coffee, and was trying to use her minor telekinetic abilities to refill the mug without the woman noticing. She needed a divorce from her husband. 

The bell above the door chimed brightly, “Goddamn it, Leo, you know you aren’t allowed in here.” Leo, an alligator man with a fisherman’s hat (sitting crookedly on his head), a threadbare, once cashmere sweater, no pants or shoes, and a newspaper tucked into the crook of his arms, stopped dead in his tracks, eyes growing wide. Comically framed next to Leo’s real-life face was a flyer, taped to the classic glass diner door, which had a rather charming photo of Leo printed over, in big, bold lettering “NOT ALLOWED FOR REASONS OF WON’T SHUT UP. also, no pants” The two stared at each other for some time, “Leo,” the waitress said, almost tenderly, in square waveform. Leo bolted, stupid alligator feet clopping and slapping like a snake caught by a toddler in some parable and tail dragging behind him with a tell-tale rasping noise of scales over concrete. His newspaper flittered to the ground, which on closer inspection was artfully hand-drawn in crayon - nominally about the theft of taxation with a few, tasteful allegations of pedophilia. About 30 feet down the sidewalk, Leo tripped over his own feet and tail, fell to the ground, and just sort of lay there. 

At the end of the counter, a guy who looked like a dollar-store-half-ass George Clooney tried to smile at the waitress in a familiar, can-you-believe-this-shit type of way, and thought to himself, ‘I am such a normal guy, someone should give me an award.’ The waitress, already schooching the carafe again, didn’t notice the smile, as she was too busy pretending to scrub the counter. This was all quite normal for Rosie’s Diner, again, even quite boring. 

Yet Philo Dendron, a sort of bee-like man, sitting in a booth wearing a pretty tasteless tribly (too easily mistaken for a fedora), sunglasses, and a trench coat, was quite disturbed. Recall, the world had ended yesterday, and it was increasingly seeming as if Philo was the only one who’d noticed. Everyone else was just wandering around, carrying on like the world hadn’t gone and ended. Mr. Dendron, after a day of adrenaline-tinged anxiety sweats, had decided to do something about it, and so was preparing, quietly, to make a scene and act a fool. The air in the diner felt like syrup, Philo leapt from the booth. Well, most of Philo, except the trenchcoat. Philo began artfully rocking his hips. Painted across his fuzzy, black and white striped chest in pink lettering was “CAN’T YOU ALL SEE THE WORLD ALREADY ENDED?” Philo Dendron did not have the world’s most extraordinary penis, rather it was quite average both in length and girth. Though the absolute perfect precision with which the windmill was executed created an optical illusion enhancing all important qualities of Philo Dendron’s beenis. The sad, proto-divorced woman at the counter was placed in a hypnotive state. George Clooney boy stumbled to his feet, from the stool, and cried, “This guy is not a normal guy!” If Leo would only pick up his head, weighed down both with forbidden knowledge and leaden, crocodile tears, he would see what no one in that diner could. Philo Dendron’s, actually quite impressive, stinger was also windmilling, though in the opposite direction - a perfect demonstration of the Coriolis effect across two hemispheres. Almost surprised by his own action, Philo began screaming: “NOTHING MATTERS, THE WORLD HAS ENDED CAN’T ANY OF YOU SEE THAT THE WORLD ENDED! SOMEBODY FUCKING DO SOMETHING”. The poor, put-upon waitress muttered too to herself, “Just great,” and called the police. 

The Police Station - About an Hour Later:

Philo Dendron sat in an Interrogation Room at the Police Station wearing some harlequin routine pieced together from both the station’s lost and found and evidence locker. His feet were bare and he wore a pair of glasses with only one lens. Waiting, waiting miserably, for a pair of on-the-nose pig guy police officers who were also demons. He had not much longer to wait, as Officer Good and Detective Bad stood just down the hallway, eating doughnuts and drinking coffee while they gossiped about the unarmed minorities they’d ruthlessly gunned down that morning. “Well,” said Officer Good as a pause in conversation extended just a bit too long, “may as well deal with that bee-like fellow.” Detective Bad looked thoughtful for a moment, finished his doughnut, and said, “Sure, let me go reheat my coffee and pour it on my wife and we can head in there.”

“You are a rabid and unfortunate creature,” said Detective Bad as he entered the room, and seemed as if he had more to say, but paused as he took in Philo. Who, for his part, sat in a white folding chair, holding his head in his hand, wiggling his toes wildly.

I’m sorry,” he said after quite some time had passed, and his toes had gotten tired, “I kinda lost it there,” The two pigs exchanged a long, meaningful look, but were clearly too stupid to understand what the other was trying to communicate. At length, they pulled out the only other two chairs in the otherwise empty, beige room. The walls were painted, poorly, with a shade developed by an accountant in Akron, Ohio to be the most boring possible color. It was a normal beige mixed with a hint of creamy white that had been left in a musty basement long enough to go a bit gray, and then watered down with approximately 8oz of saliva per gallon. It was impossible to mass produce, “but I promise I had a very good reason.” 

“Mr. Dendron,” began Officer Good, eyes clearing suddenly as if he’d only just managed to have a thought, “you’ve been arrested on public indecency charges, it says here that you were flashing in a diner.”

“Yes, of course.” 

“Eye witness reports place length at about 8” and girth estimated at 5” in diameter.”

“I resent that.” Defensive, now. 

Catching up, slowly Detective Bad asked, “You say that you had a good reason, Mr. Dendron, what might that be?”

“Well, it’s just, the world ended yesterday and it didn’t seem like anyone had noticed, and I was just sitting there, stewing, so I felt that I had to get the word out.” Nervous again, toes taking back up their wiggles, “I had to do something.”

“Yes, yes, that’s all in the report,” Officer Good, who only seemed capable of checking the folder placed in front of him, “‘Can’t any of you see the world ended’ and all that." Detective Bad picked up the "train" of thought, "Clearly, Mr. Dendron, you are medically insane. The world is just as not-ended as it was yesterday.”

“The world was ended yesterday, after about 2pm.”

“And when you say that the world ended, Mr. Dendron, what do you mean?” Detective Bad again evidently committed to some kind of diligence.

“Well, I guess to get technical about it, around 2pm yesterday the dead- and the live-world switched places. We’re now, pretty literally, where all the dead people are, or were, I guess. Technically, everyone in the world died.”

“How do you know?” Either one of them, it really doesn't matter.

“Well, it’s kind of a long story. When I was a kid I had a friend who was a sand golem. Randy. Do you know much about sand golems? Their physiology?”
 

“Sand.” Parroted Officer Good, who was a foul pig demon.

“Sure, like all golems they have a core. Sand ones have a diamond, the highest kind in the whole universe. So, we, Randy and I, or the Ur-I, I guess? Whatever those two kids were riding the amusement park ride, you know, the one that’s, like, enclosed and you get strapped in standing up and then it spins you all about unbelievably quickly. You know the one?” The officers stared blankly. “Anyway, those kids were on it and, well, uh, Randy couldn’t keep himself together, he was blasted about into constituent parts. And one piece, the diamond, his core, flew right up the nose of the other kid. Blasted all the way up and lodged itself into the corporeal brain. Now the force of two consciousnesses coming together like that, it, like, mixes them all together. What comes out was a new thing, wholly new. Two kids, merged, in a mind, consciousness, soul, and some other freak kinda thing pops out. Not a freak, sorry, we’re fine. But bodies, they really only like one soul, one soul to a body. This one was overflowing. So the body rejected exactly half of my intertwined consciousness, which without a body of its own, was taken instead to dead-world. And I got the body and stayed here. Ever since we’ve been linked, I can feel her, all the way in the other world.”

“Wait, her? I thought you said the kids were you, obviously a man, a male type, firmly in the binary, and some kid called Randy?” Officer Bad, Dubious.

“The Whirlinomicon.” Said Officer Good.

“Sometimes when you smash together two boys - and they explode in just the right way - you end up with something completely unrelated, afterwards style.” Officer Bad opened and closed his mouth several times. “Whatever, anyway, yesterday, at two, I could feel us slide over each other, just the same way as when we split. And I now I feel him, on my left, and not my right. Inverted. It’s wrong, and it hurts.” With this last word, Philo’s left hand, the one not holding the pipe, drifted and rested over his heart, fingers clutching ever so slightly.

“Wait, him? What that fuck?” Officer Good

“That’s all well and good, but what does this have to do with the flashing?” Asked Detective Bad, the sharper of the two. (Officer Good was muttering “I’m gonna beat the shit out of this kid I swear to god I hate this kid. I hate kids these days, god, I’ve had it just up to here.” Gesturing about nipple height.)

“Oh.” Sad little bee eyes misted over, “I needed to get in touch with someone in authority, so that maybe they could fix this.”

“Why not go to a scientist, or doctors, or the governor? Some kind of magical practitioner of unknown means and strength?”

“Which scientists? Where? Why would they believe me? I thought if I could get my picture in the paper or something maybe the right person would see.” A brief pause, “That’s how it works in the movies.” One more brief pause, “I wasn’t thinking clearly.” An edge of mournfulness creeping into his voice.

“If we’re really switched with dead-world, wouldn’t that mean that we couldn’t die anymore? I killed seven people just this morning.” Detective Bad, a smug look perceivable through his horrid pig demon features.

“No, it’s a closed system. Souls are recycled. When someone dies in dead-world they just go back to the live-one as a new person, or like a dog, or something. Or sometimes get deposited into objects if they get unlucky.”

“Ah” Officer Good for some reason, in a tone which he considers wise, “Reincarnation, the endless cycle of Samsara.”

“Not really, there’s no karmic input. There’s also no way out. It’s kinda like the line at the grocery store. Wait, no, that doesn't matter. What happens now? When do I get my picture taken for the paper?” At this, Officer Good’s rage boiled over, and he attempted to leap over the table and grab Philo by the front of his t-shirt (17th annual Happytown Police Department Unarmed Vagrant Beat-Off!). Thankfully, though, Officer Good both tripped over his own feet and got tangled in the chair he was sitting on, and sort of fell flat on the table, with an odd-wet kind of smack, and just started whimpering.

“Print journalism is dead, kid.” Detective Bad, with some glee and a hand on Officer Good’s shoulder “When was the last time you saw a local newspaper, dumbass?” He laughed for about twenty minutes, a seeping obsequious laugh which nearly drove anyone who could hear it mad, “Technically, this is your first offense, so as much as I’d like to hang you in the public square, it’ll be a $200 fine, pay it at the desk. You can dispute it at the hearing, date will be assigned at the desk too. Now, get the fuck outta here.”

The Hard, Dirty, Grungy Streets - About an Hour Later

Well, what’s the point really? Dead world, live world it’s not like there’s really that much difference, functionally. PoPeromia Pixie was happy there, Philo thought. She seemed happy, rather, happiness flowed downstream across the bridge between them. Sadness, too, content, disgust, hunger, lust, confusion, wonder, excitement, discomfort, and sometimes - nothing at all. When Philo gathered all Po’s shared emotions, though, into a cute little pile, the good and pleasant ones were more plentiful than the hurt. Which is more than could be said for Philo, whose contributions back across the bridge were somewhere short of enjoyable. Things wouldn’t be any different for him in the living world, just like things wouldn’t be that different for Philo in the dead one. What did it matter then? Go home and leave things be. Something Officer Bad had said, though, echoed in Philo’s mind: ‘or a magical practitioner of some sort’. “Huh, a wizard!” Philo said out loud, barely audible over the muffled plip-plap of his fuzzy feet which were much closer to boots than feet, and had no toes. He passed a woman, who was lurching on her one remaining leg, to her final sirenification surgery. Once complete, she would audition to be the new Starbucks mascot, she dreamed of nothing greater than to be a sigil of capital. As the two passed one another, she thought ‘that guy isn’t wearing shoes, and doesn’t have any toes, yet, I have some cosmic sense that he was only recently wiggling some.’ Philo did not notice her. 

——————————————————————————————————————————

    Somewhere in the city, in some messy near-forgotten alleyway, lay a dog on her side - panting despite the early autumnal cold. She was giving birth. When she had gotten pregnant, nine months earlier (all pregnancies lasted nine months here, all babies were born in exactly the same developmental state) she had intended to find some home, some refuge in which to be loved and cared for. She’d been on the streets too long, though, and bore their marks too visibly for The World to conceive of her as anything but a street dog. No home had taken her in, dogcatchers avoided her, there was no emotional Instagram time-lapse of some kind soul showing how love changed even basal creatures. She was about to die, here in the cold, from the strain of delivering her puppies. Soon after, her body would grow cold, even as the pups struggled and searched for milk. The puppies would die soon after. They’d all freeze together in a lump, when night came and the cold really set in. They’d have already made their journey by then, all of them, together, through the tunnel to the other side. For another chance. Hopefully a better chance. The dog shaped lump would be thrown away in the morning, before it had even the chance to stink. 

A Wizard’s Office - However long it takes to google “directions to a wizard’s office” and walk there

Philo sat in the waiting room, he hadn’t known that wizards would have waiting rooms. Or that their office would be in a rather bland, tree-bark brown, too perfectly square office building. There was a dentist next door, Philo thought he could hear a drill whirring, and so felt the sensation in his entirely human teeth. It was empty, except the seat Philo had first sat in was unnaturally cold. It must have been a ghost, waiting for some reason, perhaps because it, too, knew what had happened. The thought gave Philo some comfort. He’d never been to a wizard before, Philo had done very little in his life, and he was tired. It took effort, but he thought he could stop his emotions from flowing to Peromia, which he did when he felt he was burdening her. Since the switch, Philo had been so on edge, so lost in the anxiety of the end of the world, he’d been blocking his emotions constantly. Except, perhaps, during the windmilling. Though precisely what emotion would have been conveyed to PoPeromia he was not sure. 

Presently, the previously closed door opened and a calm, somewhat bored voice issued forth, “You can come on in.” Philo rose to his feet, weary and a bit unsure. As he entered the actual office, a boring room about 10’x10’ with practical, industrial carpet tiles enrobed in walls which failed to arouse any feeling whatsoever, the presumable wizard put his fingers in the air and wiggled them about mystically. He glanced down at a slip of paper on his desk, it was unclear if this was supposed to be disguised, and said in the same bored voice, “Ah, Mr. Dendron, my secretary has filled me in on what you told her over the phone.”

“That was you, on the phone. I spoke with you,” The wizard, Francis Tasia, according to the nameplate on the desk and the degree hanging on the wall, just stared, somewhat shy of politely, pretending not to hear. “Um,” continued Philo, now uncertain, “you didn’t even, like, try to change your voice or anything, it was clearly you.” Conspicuously, the waiting room was definitively secretaryless. There wasn’t even a desk or a place for one to sit. Frank the Wizard continued to stare, unblinking eyes visibly drying, some kind of power pulsing behind the pupils. “Did this place used to be an OBGYN?” Asked Philo.

“An Actuarial Accounting firm. Have you never been outside before?”

“No, no, I’ve been outside.”
 

Somewhat unconvinced, with the sub-polite veneer wavering, Frank plowed ahead, “So you think that the world has ended, what is it that you want a wizard to do for you?”
 

“Did you want to see the ghost first? I think it was here before me?”

Frank followed Philo’s eyes to the empty chair, “There’s no ghost, the window there is drafty, that seat is just cold.” Now completely convinced he was dealing with the world’s most fresh-off-the-lot man.

“Oh…” Philo looked saddened for a moment, “Okay, well, it’s like I told you over the phone, live- and dead-world switched yesterday, we’re in dead-space now. I thought, as a wizard, you might have felt it, that you might know something about it.”

Frank the Wizard tented his fingers, and looked as if he were preparing to deliver a familiar speech. A siren blared momentarily as flashing lights streaked past the window, both fading in seconds. “Tell me, Mr. Dendron, what do you know about wizards?”

“That they do magic.”


“Sure, okay, instead, maybe tell me what you know about magic?”

“You can cast spells and stuff, like fireball and chain lightning and things like that.”

“Not without a license, we can’t, and them sonsofbitches are not easy to come by.” Frank the Wizard looked genuinely angry for the first time. Philo noticed the “Constitutional right to bear fireballs” and NCMA “National Combat Magic Association” stickers on Frank’s water bottle on the corner of the desk. “Magic is a waveform, one which operates in the empty spaces between other things. The thing about empty spaces between things is that it’s the same no matter what things it’s between.”

“So…” Philo looked contemplative, “There’s no magical means to tell whether we’re in dead space or live space.” The two said in perfect unison.

“Yes, actually, that’s right.” Frank looked impressed, but quickly covered it up, “Well I suppose we could probably devise a method, but it would take time, trial and error. Really it’s a purely academic question, which space we’re in theoretically has no bearing on magic. Which, if what you say is true, has been proven, the magic I’ve done today has been completely normal.” Frank the Wizard did very little magic, in fact, most of his business was looking at objects people brought him, telling them it isn’t cursed, and then charging for an hour. The only magic he’d cast that day had been a small illusion to make the barista at the coffee shop think his hair was a little better styled than it actually was, a little thicker, too, less recession. “I suppose there are probably magical researchers out there who would be interested in the question. But even if they could get an answer it’d take time. Probably a decade.” Frank’s degree gleamed behind him on the wall,

Wizard Technical University

Francis Agamemnon Tasia

Bachelor’s of Magic

Arcane Studies 

“There’s nothing you can do for me?” Philo asked, forlorn.

“I can cast a relaxation charm on you, take some of the edge off.” Finger raising to chin, scratching, pensively, for too long, milking the moment, “Suppose I take you seriously, how do you even know this happened?”

“A part of me is in Dead-World, I got all exploded and mixed together with another kid when we were young, it was too much and we split into two connected souls. I felt her slip by me yesterday, and ever since the parity’s all wrong. Everything is moving backwards between us.”

“That is… highly unusual…”

“They studied me, when I was young, after it all happened. I don’t think they really learned much.”

“Can you communicate? You and this other soul?”

“Not really, I get emotions but not words or images or anything."


“Can you tell what he, she, they I guess, can you tell what they’re feeling right now?”


“Yeah, all of those. Not right now, I haven’t wanted him to feel my emotions so I’ve been closed off, it takes effort but it’s doable.”

“Hmmm, I had an old professor who’d be quite interested in you. The space between you two must be fascinating. Have you ever tried a seance?"


“No, I didn’t really think they worked.”

“They don’t, in theory it’s perfectly possible but the tunnels between us and dead-world are only permeable to certain kinds of, well, call them packages. We’ve never figured out how to convert messages properly, and have them de-converted on the other side. But you already have a line open, for you things might be different. Try a seance. I have a lady, she’s less of a sham than others. I’ll see if I can’t get in touch with this professor, he’ll want to meet you. Now, my hourly rate is…”

Philo’s Apartment - One Long Walk Later (~3pm, the day after the world ended)

“Philo! You’ve been gone all day! Where have you been?? What have you been doing? You always leave a note!” Said Jonathon Strikes (that’s his legal name), Philo’s roommate, he’s a camel person about as tall as any other Human-Type Person. A somewhat strangely proportioned humanoid. 

“Mmmmm? Oh, I got some breakfast, then arrested, and then I went to a wizard.” Philo - dazed, not least of which by Frank’s fee.

“Is this all about the end of the world?” Lucky Johnny, as his friends called him, was one of the most affable people in the world, well liked by anyone who ever met him, “I told you not to worry about all that, it’s not like there’s anything you can do!” Lucky Johnny had been the first person Philo had told about the end of the world, and had believed him implicitly. 

“But what if there is? It seems like I’m the only one who knows, and you’re the only one who believes me.”

“It’s not like anything’s really changed,” People tended to take advantage of Lucky Johnny, because they knew he wouldn’t say no, even when he knew he was being taken advantage of. “If it’s important, then important people will figure it out, and then what to do about it. Besides…” Philo’s time in the lab hung heavy between them, “They know about you already.”

“I just… feel like I have to do something.”

“How does PoPeromia feel about it?” Part of why Lucky Johnny and Philo were so attached was that Johnny knew Philo would never ask anything of him. Which made Johnny want to do all the things that Philo would never ask for.

“I’ve been closed, since a little after it happened.”

“Then they’re probably worried about you. Are you going to work today?”

“No, it’s too late, I’m too tired.”

“It’s Thursday, too”

Philo visibly perked up, “Bowling night! I’d forgotten!”

“Yeah, bowling night, buddy”

“Okay! I need to take a nap, then, I’m so tired!” Johnny seemed to agree, giving a small laugh and nodding, Philo buzzing off to his room. As Philo reached the door, Johnny seemed struck, “Wait, you got arrested?”

“Yeah, but there weren’t any kids around, so I don’t have to register as a sex offender!” Said Philo, brightly. Johnny was not comforted by this, and no less confused. Philo was often noncommittal in his story telling, Carmen and Josh would get it out of him later. 

Johnny and Philo lived in the 1980’s idea of a gentrification building, situated in a not-so-downtown neighborhood which was convenient to almost nowhere. Both Philo and Johnny had assumed the other needed a cheap place to live, when they’d each just really needed to live with one another. Three buses, an electric scooter, a rental bike, and a ride on the back of a friendly turtle had taken Philo to Rosie’s Diner. A place he’d chosen for no particular reason. A diner had a way of seeming like an appropriate setting to addled minds.

Within the shell of pale, neutral polyethylene, postulated “timeless style”, Johnny and Philo lived in a 1.5 bed, 1 bath apartment. The landlord, a sentient pile of grease, had explained in a queasifying, lugubrious, somehow nasal voice “One of the bedrooms doesn’t have a closet, or a window, so it doesn’t count as a full bedroom for zoning, but I assure you, it’s quite comfortable”. In fact, the “second” bedroom was supposed to be a coat closet in the original floor plan, but some enterprising child with a highly-developed, esoteric sense of humor had enlarged the closet by about 20%, in crayon, as a prank. No one ever questioned it, and the apartment was built to specs. Johnny, given his nature as a camel-human carpet, had worried he may end up stuck in the almost unlivably small room, but had been surprised, pleasantly, when Philo had buzzed into the closet in apparent joy. Into that very same room, Philo now buzzed, wings and stinger drooping a bit, showing his tiredfulness to an experienced observer, less joyously than the first time, but spirits noticeably improved by the promise of bowling. 

The Bowling Ally Nearby - One nap - including a dream of a mighty pendulum, a double pendulum with two worlds at the pivots. The pendulum swings in a slow, tiresome manner with the worlds orbiting one another erratically, yet in a perfectly modelable fashion. Every so often, the cosmostic grandfather clock (which is larger than all empty space ever conceived, and which contains all things) emits an echoless chime from unseeable bells. Tied to the rigid rail connecting the two world-pivots is Philo himself, dressed damsel-y. Above the damsel-Philo stands a villainous version, twirling cartoon mustache, laughing a much smaller chime, identical to creation’s bells. No one is coming, no one will save the damsel - a hastily made peanut butter and honey sandwich, a shower, a shit, and a shave later.

The echoing crash of bowling balls into bowling pins. Josh Chist was working extraordinarily hard not to derail the conversation with his current train of thought ‘noon, goon, what if we called noon goon? What if we had showdowns at high goon?’. In about 1987, a second virgin conception entered the christian cannon. There had been other virgin conceptions, of course, but only the two for the son of the christian god, named whatever was closest to “Joshua” in the era. Though, in 1987, no one, particularly devout Christians of all denominations, were willing to take a surprise second coming of Jesus very seriously. So, Holy Mother Mary Jr. was disregarded, and Jesus Christ was virgin born - for the second time - in a near-March 1988, to a 19-year old punk-rock front-woman, who just happened to already be named christ. As Josh oft liked to repeat, while high and as if for the first time, this was a bit of a loophole. No one ever said Jesus could only come twice (here he winked, extremely immodestly), and he’d died for ALL sins when first he’d come, including his own on the second go-round. So, he’d waited until cush got good, then came back to spend his second life as a pansexual, stoner degenerate making horror films no one would ever see and jacking off to pornos that made him blush way back Garden of Gesthemene-way. 

“So as I lay there, my perspective somehow split between damsel-me and cartoon-evil-me, I got the sense that no one was coming to save me, either me, or I guess any other kind.” Philo was recounting his dream, instead of anything actually important that had happened that day. 

“Hmm, I wonder what that means, like you’re self victimizing somehow or something?” Asked Carmen SanFrancisco, thoughtfully. (“Noon, goon” whispered Jesus Christ, just not quite under his breath).

“I have weird dreams all the time, I think all it means is that I’m having weird dreams.” Dismissed Philo. Lucky Johnny Strikes reached forward to refill his vaguely gross glass from the pitcher of cheap, bowling-alley-beer (his fifth favorite kind) and wished someone would ask Philo about the other events of the day. Instead, they’d lapsed into the companionable quasi-silence (Jesus was still muttering, though now about another joint or maybe some wings or something) between the second and last games of any great bowling night. 

Philo was haunted by a dream, a particular dream. More of a memory, dreamified. It was the precise and only moment that Philo and PoPeromia had been one, then the following moment where PoPeromia was ripped away, across the veil and through the tunnel. A hazy aural dream, driven by the clowncircus lights, the minorly distant carnival music, the inertial sickness of the ride, the feeling of being ripped in two, of incorporeal hands reaching for one another, forming too slowly to grasp hold. The instant the two had realized they would not be allowed to remain as one, or even together, they had named one another. The act, the very act, renewed the closeness of oneness and togetherness, which began to fade even while they felt it. This dream rushed through Philo often, and he felt some distant impersonation of all of these feelings in a single second, as he was when Johnny asked:

“So,…, what was the deal with all that weird shit you were up to today, Philo?”

“Mmmmm,” Philo was off-balance, he was always off-balance when he dreamed, “Well I went to a diner to cause a scene,” He remembered he hadn’t yet told the other two the world had ended, “Back up, I guess, the world ended yesterday and I was going crazy and thought I had to do something. So, diner, a scene. The waitress didn’t like the scene so she called the police. I was hoping to get my picture in the paper with at least a local interest story to get the word out, but the cops told me print media and newspapers are dead. Then I thought a wizard could help but he just kept asking if I’d been outside before and recommended a seance.”

“The world ended yesterday?” Asked Carmen, gently kicking Josh.

“Yep.” Philo said, matteroffactly. Josh glowed for a moment, he was a white guy this time, and looked a lot like the twinkified depiction which hung on the walls of grandmother’s homes. 

“Yep.” Josh said, equally matteroffactly, then continued, “Though not really in an important way, we just switched spots with dead-world, technically we all died. I see why a freakazoid like Philo would take that so seriously, though.” Philo glowered at Jesus for a single instant and then brightened,

“Wait, Josh, could you switch us back?”

“Nope, not with the accords, I probably wouldn’t do it anyway, or maybe couldn’t” Every god from every religion was equally real and just as powerful as they were in their holy books, and so had negotiated themselves into uselessness to prevent all out god-powered holy war. Besides, Josh hardly ever used his christian god/Jesus powers. For, this time, the Son of God had come not to save but to sin, to suffer mundanity, to fail to find a reason for it all, and to die in obscurity. Philo seemed to accept this reasoning, or the lack of it, implicitly - and went back to looking vaguely worried. Johnny stood, seemingly satisfied with the progress of sorting out Philo’s whackjobitude, and started the third and final game of bowling.

“Well, are you going to do the seance?” Asked Carmen, taking on the pseudo-motherly tone she used when Philo was being pathetic.

“Yeah, the wizard said there was a good chance it would actually work, I’d take any chance to talk to Po” CRASH, Johnny had rolled a strike. Josh stood with the dumbfounded languor of someone who’d smoked a too-strong joint and had three bowling alley beers, he was next.

“Did you reopen?” Johnny - as he was sitting back down.

“I did, he seems… weirded out? Maybe a little worried? He’s calmed down some since I first reopened” Johnny nodded, looking satisfied, and calmer than he had since yesterday. Carmen was interested, things would be fine.

“I’ll take you, if you let me sit in. To the seance, maybe I’ll write a piece about it.” Carmen SanFransisco was a journalist, or an international super-criminal, or a journalist as coverage for an international super-criminal. Most importantly, she had a car, which was only the 17th most important reason wretched, carless Philo and Johnny liked her. 

“Yeah, of course!” Philo was back to practically (in the literal sense) buzzing, “I have to call in the morning, apparently she’s by appointment only, or something.” 

“Ha, a by-appointment-medium, now there’s something to tickle the brain” Josh said, as he sat back down, Carmen rising in turn. “Well, how’s work for everybody?”

“Fine, OH! There was an interesting case recently where a guy tried to use a trained octopus to steal back a necklace from his ex-wife to give to his new lover. Apparently he’d actually got the jewels in the divorce, but they got him on B&E and animal cruelty!” Philo was a remote court stenographer. Two of his parents were in law, one a Judge and one an Assistant DA. They’d managed to work out a deal for him where someone left a walkie-talkie in the stenographer’s chair, and Philo listened in and recorded the trial. He had the lowest accuracy rate of any stenographer, but he was a child of nepotism and the stenographer’s union was unbelievably strong, so he could never be fired. Philo rambled as he stood for his turn, Carmen lithely slipping in his vacated seat.

“I just had a great story last week, the Shah of Iran was caught illegally streaming legal online gambling in Cairo.” Carmen said, “Nearly front page stuff.”


“Wasn’t there some kind of crazy jewel heist in Cairo last week?” Asked Johnny,

“Was there?” Carmen asked, literally purring. Which was a slight bit strange, since she was as stock-standard human as possible in this silly world. Philo sunk two of the worst gutterballs in history, back-to-back, his 21st and 22nd of the night. 

——————————————————————————————————————————

    Somewhere else - on a corner or perhaps under the derelict cover of a bus stop - a bum (the bummiest bum) lays wrapped in a tramp-coded blanket; shivering, more than necessary. To himself he mutters - can’t you see can’t you see can’t you see. All that he wants is to be told - I do I do see - he does not even dream of a gentle tone, he isn’t picky. 

Philo and Johnny’s Apartment - The Next Morning

Philo stood in the kitchen of the apartment, which was decorated loosely around a chili pepper theme, he was looking out the window, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers printed with something very much like chibi godzillas, sipping from a mug of coffee printed with biz-e-bee across the face. In Philo’s mind, he was rugged, stoic, gathering his thoughts, preparing for what was surely to be a dilemma. In reality, he looked like a jackass, a relatively charming jackass. There was a sudden, demanding rapping on the door. Philo glanced at the clock just above the stove, showing 7:47 in a linoleum glow (it was nearly nine). Johnny would still be sleeping, he ‘worked’ nights. Working was a loose term for Johnny, he was the mascot for a pre-roll brand - weed was federally legal, and joints were sold in a cigarette-like pack in all 54 states. Which mostly involved Johnny meandering around the city, attending parties and events with various babes of most genders, trying to look as cool as possible while a photographer followed. Whichever photos elicited the greatest sense of envy amongst boys between the ages of 14 and 18 (the brand’s target audience) are handed off to an artist, who produces cell-shaded style paintings to serve as advertisements. Anyway, Johnny normally isn’t up until noon, so, can’t be Johnny at the door, reasoned Philo, 'who else even knows where they live?' Asked Philo, in his mind. Josh supposedly, by reasonable extension, a second round of knocking - audibly angrier, Carmen. 

Who breezed past Philo into the apartment the moment the door even was cracked, bumping, perhaps unnecessarily, into Philo on the way, depends on who you asked. “Good morning, Philo! Good to see you’re up,” She said in a voice of almost indetectably false sweetness, and a little too loudly, “Did you call the medium yet?”

“No,” Philo appeared to be choosing his words carefully, “I was working myself up to it.” A series of emotions crossed Carmen’s face: amusement, pity, disgust, boredom, rage, fear. Philo was incapable of reading these, and assumed she wanted a mug of coffee of her own, and busied himself pouring one.

“Well, let’s just go” After a moment.

“Now?”

“Sure, after you put on some clothes.”


“What’s the rush? I don’t even know if she has space for me today or anything!”


“She’s a medium, Philo, how busy could she be?”

“I don’t know! Really really busy!” Carmen just stared at Philo with an uncharacteristically hard edge in her eye. After a bit, “Jesus, why are you pushing so hard?”

“Why are you dragging your feet?” The two entered a sort of Dragon Ball Z beam battle staring contest which Philo almost immediately lost, all but physically rolling on his back and showing his belly.

“Okay, Okay, geez, let’s go.” Philo said, turning towards his room, leaving a half full mug (this one says ‘Mommies’ #1 and most favorite - maybe nonbinary - son). When Philo returns a few minutes later, wearing one of his more normal outfits (sneakers, worn blue jeans, a faded graphic tea with one of Johnny’s ads on it, smelling faintly of plum blossoms) Carmen has taken his spot, standing in the window, sipping from the mug.

“I promised my editor a story on this, he seemed pretty excited. I’m kind of on thin ice, my stories haven’t been drawing clicks like they used to” Evidently Carmen had softened, feeling guilty for pushing Philo as she had. 

“It’s okay, it’s good. I probably would’ve sat around just thinking about it until it all built up to some manic frenzy, if it was left up to me. Let’s go.” Philo said, in a gentle voice tinged with gratitude.

This time, as they were leaving, Philo stopped at a little notepad resting on the table among the scraps of a breakfast from the previous day, one that Johnny had taken from a hotel on a ‘work trip’. He wrote, 

“Carmen came this morning, we’re going to the medium. She seemed kinda angry, we should remember to ask her if everything is alright. I’m scared. To talk to Peromia. What if she doesn’t want to talk to me? What if I’m the only one? Carmen was also kinda scary but she’s being nice now.”

-Love beyond ages and measure, Philo

In Carmen’s Car - Right After the Last Scene

    Carmen loved jazz, and insisted on having it playing anytime she was in the driver’s seat of her 1999 Toyota Corolla. A quick glance at the dash would show that the car (named Priscilla) had only ~33k miles on it, was currently traveling 45 mph (20 over), and needed an oil change. Carmen’s grandmother had bought the car new, late in 2001, and then had almost immediately entered a senior living facility, so the car had mostly sat for about six years waiting for Carmen to turn 16. Even then, she rarely drove it, out of a combination of fear and love for her mother, who was doting enough to still drive Carmen about well after she’d gotten her license. Shortly after her 18th birthday, Carmen had been struck in the head by an absolute monster line-drive foul ball at a minor league baseball game (driven by her mother). Once she woke from the coma four days later in the hospital(driven an ambulance), she had become fearless. No one was certain whether it was the near death experience or the brain damage which separated Carmen from her fear, and she declined to comment. Carmen had taken Priscilla with her to college in some tiny lake town in Minnesota, where it was mostly parked in a driveway while Carmen walked or biked everywhere, often too quickly over ice in clothes ill-suited to the cold. These days, Carmen mostly drove rentals when she was on assignment, or had a local contact taxi her about, and Priscilla sat in the parking garage of her slightly shabby apartment building. The Billie Holiday was to keep Carmen calm, to stop her from actively attempting the murder of her fellow drivers. 

I say I’ll move the mountains, and I’ll move the mountains, if he wants them out of the way - Crooned Billie Holiday, already barely audible over the noise of the engine, Priscilla’s interior was clean and stagnant. “In 1000 ft. turn left onto Rosamund Ave.” Interrupted the GPS voice, set to Master Chief for some reason. Philo stared out the passenger window, slump of his shoulders alternating from moody to morose and back at 2,000 Hertz. 

“What’s wrong, slugger?” Carmen accentuated the word “slugger” with a friendly punch to the arm, but wasn’t looking and ended up only grazing Philo’s arm, in such a way that it was more painful than if the punch had made solid contact. She also punched harder than she meant to.

“Tchchhchchchh” Philo rubbed his arm - Crazy he calls me, sure I’m crazy - “Nothing, I’m completely fine.” - Crazy in love I’d say - Philo held himself together for one second, “I’m nervous I guess.” A single tear rolled down his cheek, “It never seemed like it would be possible to talk to Peromia. I’ve spent all this time assuming it wasn’t possible. I could feel however I wanted about it, could assume she wanted to talk to me as much as I wanted to talk to her.” From the punch or from the emotion? - I say I’ll go through fire and I’ll go through fire. As he wants it, so it will be - maybe the jazz? 

“Oh, Philo” Carmen’s motherly tenderness entirely real, “Of course they want to talk to you.” She paused, for what felt like quite a long time - Like the wind that shakes the bough, he moves me with a smile - “I don’t know. It’s like… I know I can’t feel it, that bond you and PoPeromia have. So, I can’t really say the right thing, or tell you from experience.” - The difficult I’ll do right now, the impossible will take awhile - “But I know. I know they must feel the same way as you do, because you feel that way.”

“It’s so far. It’s so impossibly far. And if it’s real, this chance to talk, then nothing will be the same after. I don’t like how it is, but it’s always been that way. What if we can talk and he doesn’t like me? What if he just isn’t interested?” - I say I’ll care forever, and I mean forever, if I have to hold up the sky.

“Then you’d just have to become someone they like” - Crazy he calls me, Sure I’m crazy, Crazy in love am I - And the song plays out in instrumental, even Ms. Billie Holiday seeming to pause, and reflect, before she comes back with another, a brand new tune. The two sitting in Priscilla, the odd tingle of vulnerability still buzzing about their nasal cavities. Afraid, only in part because Carmen is driving 110 mph on the highway. 

An incredibly Standard College Professor’s Office - The Same Time as the Last Scene

A horrific nightmare monster is sat at a desk, particle board with slightly nicer than average stain, clearly a bulk furniture purchase, in the middle of a non-descript office, just on the small side. The room was about 7’x10’, carpet tile with a white-bread-bland pattern, exposed brick walls painted over with some inoffensive color. The building was old, the third oldest on Wizard Technical University's campus. The desk itself was militantly neat, occupied exclusively by a laptop, a second monitor, a thermos of some kind of nutrient soup, and a nameplate which read “Prof. Tony Tagonist”. Not a stain or speck of dust. Behind the desk was a horrid eye monster. It was a creature, vaguely humanoid, 5’10” with the impression of fitness, which seemed to be composed of a number of eyes of all shapes and sizes which had been sown together into a human effigy. At the moment, all but two eyes were closed, the eyes one would typically expect in a humanish face. Which meant the creature could easily be mistaken for a flesh golem or patchwork ghoul. Except for the distinct lack of a nose, mouth, and ears, three main components in the identification of a Human-Type Person. He did seem aware of his strangeness, and so wore what could only be assumed to be a toupee, a Norman Bates-ass toupee. As well as a pair of khaki colored slacks, a white oxford shirt, a quality, if a little old, brown sweater over, and a pair of well-used, well-cared for leather loafers. The screen of the laptop only showed the default windows background, but an email was pulled up on the second monitor. There were no visible connections between the two, and seemingly no power cord, despite the lighting symbol on the battery indicator in the top right corner. It is impossible to label this creature without knowing his origins: eye golem, eye homunculous, some kind of demon? Only one thing was clear. He had tenure. 

A knock came at the door, three crisp rasps shortly after another, which indicated napoleon syndrome, racism, and some unresolved sexual concerns in order. “Come in” Called the eye-abomination, despite a clear lack of a mouth. The door opened to a tactical 60° and a short, birdman in military uniform entered. “Ah, Colonel, do you have the file I asked for?”

“Yes,” He’d reached the desk, and set a manilla folder labelled “The Center for Doomsday Weaponry, Freak #22” next to the nameplate. The Colonel’s stupid velcro name patch, over his left breast, read “Col. Rando Clipper”. “Why do you care about this kid anyway? This wasn’t the easiest file to get.”

“I received an e-mail from a former student,” Said Tenured Professor Anthony Tagonist, “No doubt some talentless young worm trying to ingratiate himself. Apparently the subject came to him spewing something about the world’s ends. I was curious, I suppose, towards the properties of such a child.”

Colonel Clipper was standing at attention now, so rigidly locked he may just pass out, his eyes would be bulging, if the eyelids were not flexed to keep them in place. His normal stance. “Kid was deemed useless, parents were endless legal neuisances, so they let him go.”

“Well, I will judge that for myself. Our aims are not the CDW’s, perhaps we will find a use they missed.”

“I doubt it. Say,” A red popeye-persuing-olive-oyl blush spreading across the colonel’s cheeks, the space above his beak, rather, “What about some dinner? You owe me for the file.” He did look like popeye, if popeye was the son of toucan and a parrot, with a metrosexual haircut.

“No, thank you.”

“Oh come on, I’ve been asking for weeks, it’s the least you can do, I’m a good guy, a good bird-style guy. I’ll pay and everything.” One of Prof. Tagonist’s spare eyes opened, the one where a nose ought be. “Oh, let me help you with that.” The colonel pulled out his phone, turned on the flashlight, and shined it right into the newly opened eye. Which, for its part, did not dilate or react in any noticeable way. “See? I’m a good guy!”

“That does not help.” The eye began closing slowly, as if forced, “I do not have time for dinner, nor any mouth with which to eat one. I am certain you have other responsibilities, Colonel.”

“Sheesh, fine, I’ll ask again next week. It’s true what they say, nice guys finish last, even with weird eye creatures.” The colonel turned to leave, “I double parked my military helicopter on the roof anyway.”

In the blessed absence of the colonel, Prof. Tagonist opened both the thermos and the mouth positioned eye - splashing the nutrient liquid into the moutheye - before turning to his laptop screen, which now displayed the contents of the folder on the desk.

The Center for Doomsday Weaponry

Report: CDW-B-0221995

Subject: Freak #22 (Birth name - Jonathon Halberbashery, Alias - Philo Dendron)

On the evening of Sept. 14th, 1995, an incident occurred at the Happyplace State Fair on the whirlytron resulting in the soulmerge of two children and split of the resultant creature across the world gap... 

Lady Morgana’s Seancery Parlor - 12:05PM Exactly

Philo and Carmen had actually arrived at the Seancery Parlor two and half hours earlier, only to see an hours of operation sign on the door: Morgana didn’t open up until noon on Wednesdays. Any other day, either, as it turns out. After some deliberation, the two passed the intervening time at some nearby batting cages. Philo swinging, missing more than hitting, at the lobbed 40 mph pitches while Carmen crushed 90 mph pitches again and again, without fail, never missing one. Always a self-perceived gentleman, Philo tried to open the door, and found his arms sore to the point of uselessness. The humor of watching Philo try to noodle-arm the door open wore off shortly, and the two entered: Carmen the gentlemanly one and Philo blushing, in accordance with his role.

The Seancery was like most, a store-front in a Happytown strip mall. Entering into a reception area, furnished thinly, a small desk with a laptop idling, two leather, winged back chairs nearly on the wrong side of worn, Philo and Carmen approached the desk, a bell on which Carmen rang sharply. Light streamed in through the storefront windows, strip mall parking lot light, which cast an odd, orange-but-almost-yellow glow on the deep purple, velvet curtain which divided this reception area from the rest of the space. No Morgana presented themself after a few moments, so Philo began ringing the service bell with a three second interval. Eventually, a woman ducked through the curtain and came to stand behind the desk. She was beautiful, in a long-dead nobility sort of way. “Jesus Christ, I’m here, can I help you?”

“No, I didn’t bring him with me.” Philo said absentmindedly, still ringing the bell regularly, caught in some kind of loop. Carmen reached over and grabbed his hand, gently, and placed it on the surface of the desk, away from the bell. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Philo, coming to himself, “I was recommended your services. Half of me is in dead-world, I want to talk with him. I was told you might be able to help.”

“Well, first, who referred you?” Morgana, still clearly somewhat annoyed.

“Some wizard named Frank.”

“That fucking guy,” Morgana, whispered under her breath. “Usually, I’m by appointment only” The emptiness of the shop pressed in on all three of them, only enhanced by the heavy, sluggish, scented, occult quality of the air around them. “But this sounds interesting, so I’ll make time for you, for the standard walk-in fee. Come to the back and tell me more.” She said while turning and walking back through the heavy, velour veil. 

Philo and Carmen looked at one another, only for a moment and followed. Into a stagnant, ritual space in which the air seemed to press even more heavily. The room was walled off, by black velvet and velour, entirely from outside space, no light leaked in, lit instead by candles in various sconces and candelabra about the room. Which seems somehow more and less bright than it ought to be, given that the candles were somewhat scant for the space. The air smelled of sage and other incense, though none was visible burning, as if the room itself just smelled that way, naturally. A few small side tables ringed the room, but held only the candles, with one larger, round table in the very center, large enough only for two. Morgana’s chair was austere, a simple wooden affair, with no cushioning, just on the throne side, while Philo’s was a comfortable, padded number. Morgana made eye contact with Carmen, “You’ll have to stand, I’m afraid.”“That’s perfectly alright, I’m just here to observe. Actually, I may like to write a story about this, for the New Belgian Rag, would you mind?”

“Not at all.” Turning now to Philo, “So, tell me more about what brings you to me today?”

Philo breathed deeply, less satisfying than usual given the cloying air, but calming all the same, “Well, a previous version of me got mixed together with another kid at a soul level. Bodies’ can only take one soul, so half the new one got rejected, mistaken for a ghost, and sucked into dead-world. Two days ago dead- and live-world switched places but I don’t really care about that anymore, I’m on some other shit. For a second I felt her more closely than I had in years. I just want to talk to her, to the me that got sucked away. That’s my deal now.”

Morgana seems contemplative for a long while. The air in the ritual chamber seemed to swirl, scent morphing subtly, sage fronted, then lavendar, sage again. Philo almost felt he could see the current. “Are you even sure she remembers? If the soul passed to dead-world via the normal means, it would have passed through The Filter, been reset.”

In the emptiness of Philo’s face was a deep and malignant shock. “I-I don’t know. I think she does. I, can uh feel. Some of what he feels. And he-he cares about,” Shock broke and eyes filled instantly with tears, which could not, could never, be held back. “He cares about me! I know he does! I think he does.” Tears openly streaming down Philo’s fuzzy-wuzzy face, voice breaking with nearly every word, trailing off near the end there. Carmen placed an arm, gently, around Philo’s shoulders, squeezing slightly.

“It’s certainly not a standard situation, we don’t know if they went through The Filter, but it is a possibility you should think about. One you should prepare for.” Morgana’s voice had warmed for the first time, not yet kind, though. “Knowing that, do you still want to try and contact them?”

“I have to.”

“Okay, we’ll do a real one, a real seance, it won’t look like the movies, and it's going to hurt, are you prepared for that?“I am” Carmen withdrew her arm, and pulled out a notepad, Philo seeming to have found a well of resolve she was unfamiliar with. 

“For the best shot for this to work, for anything at all to happen, you should know my real name is Uther. Seances are bunk, if you didn’t know, The Filter confounds them, but this is so… odd… that I have no idea what may happen. Hold out your hands.” Philo did, palms facing up on the table. Uther produced a knife and the bell of a pure white lily from uncertain space, and drew the knife across Philo’s palms, placing the lily, gently, into the cradle of one hand. “Cup your hands together, don’t let any blood spill. Do you have anything of their’s anything you shared?”

“Well my name, I guess, she named me.” Philo, wincing, hissing the words slightly.

“That’s… perfect actually,” Turning to Carmen, “Can you write it out, crumple it, and drop it into Philo’s blood?” Once she had, they all stood silently, almost relaxed, more frozen than anything, as blood slowly welled and filled Philo’s cupped hands.

Just before the blood spilled over Philo’s fingers, Uther rose, cupped her hands under Philo’s, went to her knees next to the chair, and, with great care, tipped Philo’s cupped hands into her mouth. She drank his blood down, swallowing both the flower and the crumpled paper whole. Not a drop spilled, not even a thin rivulet streaming from the corner of Uther’s mouth, which neither Philo nor Carmen could help but imagine, for only a moment. She rose, inspected the candles from about the room, and selected a thick one, with a rough wick. “This wick is woven from lavender, the wax is infused with it.” She then poured the wax into the wounds on Philo’s hands, sealing them for the time. The candle was replaced, and another, similar candle was selected, placed on the table, as Uther sat across from Philo. They all sat in silence for a moment, breathing, the air now tinged with the copper-iron tang of Philo’s blood. Uther closed her eyes, picked up the candle, tilted her face up, and poured wax over her brow until it settled as a sealed and hardened blindfold. Returning the candle to the table and direct eye contact to Philo. She reached across the table and drew Philo’s hands towards her, palms up again, on either side of the candle, hers resting underneath his. “Close your eyes, and breathe in as deeply as possible.” The only sound in the space was the scratch of Carmen’s pen. Suddenly, the candle began to smoke heavily, every wisp pulled directly into Philo’s nose. He didn’t cough.

For a time, nothing happened, even the scratching of Carmen’s pen seemed to lose its noise. As if corrected by a mother, Philo slowly drew himself up to sit with perfect posture, and grew rigid. His face relaxed as any idea of tension or pain left it, mouth just open, like a word was waiting just at the gate. Seemingly waiting for this cue, Uther spoke in an unnaturally strained voice, “Hello, is anyone there? Have we reached dead-world?” There was no reply. After a moment Philo’s lips began to move, not-quite-soundlessly, speaking, but without enough air for the words. “Hello?” After another moment, “Hello? Can anyone hear me?”. No reply, just the motion of lips. “Once there was a girl who drew a mighty sword from a stone and became the next king of England. She went on many heroic adventures, and drew to her many grave and powerful knights who served at her feet. She was great and kind and her kingdom prospered. One day, her mother fell ill. An illness from which there was no recovery. The girl knew it was her duty, as daughter and king, to heal her mother, or slay her. The king had no great love for her mother, but would not see her die, so she and her sister, until then bitter rivals, ventured forth and found the holy grail. Lo, though, the sister desired her mother’s love for her own, slew the girl as she led them home and healed her mother with the water of the grail. The sword returned to stone to wait for another girl as noble, and there has sat since.” No response. Philo’s lips began to move, again soundlessly, and Uther dropped his hands, landing on the table with a soft thud, the candle snuffing instantly, smokelessly. Philo slumped to a normal reprobate’s posture, “It didn’t work. Please leave. There’s no charge.” Carmen looked between them, then down to her notepad, where only a quarter of the exchange was logged. Slowly, as if exhausted, Philo drew himself to his feet, and turned to leave.

“Hey, Philo?” he stopped, hand knifing the part in the curtain, wax cracking and blood seeping, half congealed around the edges, stigmata and yonic wound, and turned to listen, “Try having a plot next time. This inertial narrative stuff is only interesting when you have something interesting to say”

“I do,” said Philo, voice soft with an echoey quality of having bounced off many hard surfaces, “I do have something interesting to say.”“Sure.” Uther lit a clove cigarette, eyes still bandaged in wax, as Philo and Carmen re-parted the velvet curtain and passed reverse-wise back into the world. The smell of cloves, tobacco, sage, other herbs, and blood all blended together into some corrosive, miasmic haze. Something new ran under these scents, which none of them could’ve recognized as the scent of the Grim Reaper. Who stood in the corner of the round room and chuckled to himself, a sound that was wind and bells and death as yet, maybe forever, unrealized. 

Philo’s Room - Much Later in the Evening

Philo sat alone in his tiny room, voice hoarse and mostly lost from the crying and screaming, and scream-crying, he’d done in Carmen’s car. Then again, when he’d gotten home, and been able to crawl into the constipated, dark, wombic space underneath his bed. He sat, at an ancient ages-old desktop computer, pirating new music onto his Ipod Classic. Stoically ignoring how his throat hurt, his palms, now bandaged in neosporin and gauze, throbbed, and how raw and dry his eyes felt. “I need a fucking leitmotif” he mumbled to himself, dazed. “Something with trumpets, if it’s like a musical sting. Or maybe, just a trumpet if it’s more thematic.” He knew his mania was finished, knew in retrospect that it was only brief. Johnny sat at the kitchen table, a day’s stubble growth, working through a pep-talk. Stepping through it carefully as a minefield. 

The two of them sat in the silence together, together in the sense that they shared the same space, could feel one another across it, for long moments of the historical definition. Occasionally, Johnny could hear Philo move about in his room, could hear a quiet shuffle of clothes and bee-fuzz moving over themselves. Philo heard Johnny stand, eventually, and the soft bustle of mealmaking. Heard, soon after, a place set for him at the kitchen table. Heard exactly three ice cubes ring against a glass, imagined a crack from one, from the shock of cooling the water. Just for him. They’d have to return to life, as it was, changed unmeaningfully. Parse whatever meaning was possible from this new pain, adjust to a world with one fewer possibility than it’d had before. It could wait. Until the morning at least.

Philo, no sulking child, emerged soon after, before even the food had gone cold, and the two shared a simple dinner of pan-fried, store bought gnocchi. They did not speak, Philo drank two and then three glasses of water, realizing how thirsty he was after the first sip. When the plates were clear, Philo gathered them, rose, and attended to the washing up. Moving deliberately, which made him, particularly, look as if he were moving through amber. With dishes in dishwasher and kitchen surfaces wiped down, Philo turned to the couch, instead of retreating to his room, and he sat as Johnny picked a movie, some comedy neither of them would remember in a week. Maybe it was time to grow up? So, the night after the world fractured ebbed away, a slow, seeping current. Like every night does. 

Philo and Johnny’s Apartment - The morning after a long, deep sleep that only comes from a day spent crying:

It was 11am and Philo was seated, in some minor miracle, at his desk, stenography machine sitting in a crater cleared amongst the detritus. 40-lbs desktop computer shoved to the side, teetering dangerously. The honorable court had just finished jury selection in the relatively high-profile murder trial of a local, prominent used car dealer. On trial for this grisly crime (the dealer had been run over again and again in an 87-point turn, and had been turned to a kind of mush which had to be scraped off the parking lot) was an 88-year old grandmother with more cataract than eye. An ambitious defense lawyer was trying to get the charge knocked down to manslaughter. Philo was currently rocking about 80% accuracy. Opening arguments were starting: “And over the next seven days this prosecution will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mrs. Gonzalez believed she would not be required to pay for the vehicle if Mr. Andreaz was ‘pastified’, and was relying on her several-inch thick cataracts to make this whole affair  look like some kind of heinous accident” The defense attorney’s voice faded as Philo lost focus.

His phone rang. A loud, angry ring. Each time someone called him, Philo regretted choosing “loud and angry” as his ringtone. He removed the left earbud, keeping the trial playing in his right ear, and answered without looking, “Hello” (accuracy: 60%).

“PHILO,” Carmen was yelling without shouting, the exuberance in her voice more than making up for the perfectly reasonable speaking volume, “IT WORKED, I FIGURED OUT WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY”

“Okay, wait, what? Slow down” Clacking away at the stenographer’s machine, “What worked?”

“THE SEANC…”

“Also who is this? I didn’t look”

“PHILO IT’S CARMEN JESUS CHRIST”

“No, Josh and Carmen are different people”

“PHILO IT IS CARMEN I AM GOING TO KILL YOU”

“Ah, just Carmen that makes much more sense” (Accuracy: 45%)

“Shut up” she waited a moment to make sure the point got across, exuberance deadened “I think the seance actually worked Philo. What do you remember from it?”

“Hmm, I remember going limp in sort of a brain way. Like when your foot or something goes to sleep and you leave it too long. And eventually when you try and move it, it's hard, and you can feel it moving, but it doesn’t really feel like it’s you moving it. That, but with my personhood and sort of intent. I was aware of my body, aware I was moving my lips and had perfect posture, but I couldn’t tell what I was trying to say, because I wasn’t trying to say it.”“You were repeating Uther, Philo, I was watching your lips, you were trying to say what she was, you were just behind her. Uh, delayed actually.”“Huh, and that means it worked?”

“I was re-reading my notes this morning, and thinking about it. You and PoPeromia are the same person, it’s probably reasonable that whatever was happening to you during that ceremony was happening to her, too.”

“So she was also sitting with great posture and mouthing stuff?”

“Well, yeah, actually, I think so. But she wasn’t mouthing, I think she was actually verbally repeating what Uther was saying. She was just in an echoey room, or them speaking was enough register, so it transferred back and you were repeating the repetition. When signals travel long-distance they dampen, each time what Uther said crossed between you two, over the world-gap, it got quieter, so you weren’t even making noise.” Carmen waited for Philo to say something (Accuracy: just hitting random keys). When he took too long, she continued, “Philo it worked, just not how we hoped, and PoPeromia happened to be alone.” 

Another pause, then, “ But what does that change? Even if you’re right, I still can’t talk to him. I mean.” Philo, who even across the phone was sounding closer to despair than anyone had ever heard him. Something in this seemed to break Carmen, the hopelessness, the self-pity, how Philo had already given up before he’d even tried, really.

“Philo, you’re afraid to live.” She said, with more venom than she’d intended. “So afraid of somehow losing whatever connection you have to PoPeromia that you’ve become some kind of gay, incel hermit.” Finding the tenderness along the way, “if you actually want to find some way even to talk to them, you have to get out there, you have to have zany adventures which are barely related and only make sense if you discard a traditional sense of logic!”

Philo thought, for a long time, not pressing any keys at all. Then, “Even if I wanted to, what would we do? Just keep trying until someone else is around?” brightening as he spoke, beginning to mash his stenographer’s keys much too hard. A dead possibility, the possibility, revived, and only marginally zombified.

“SURE,” Carmen said, her own enthusiasm back from the dead, and this time actually shouting, “OR WE COULD TRY SOMETHING ELSE”

The Driveway of an Uncomfortably Powerful and Dubiously Moral Telepath - After opening statements, a witness on stand, midway through the testimony of a professional goop-viscosity tester

“Okay, so, this extremely powerful, ex-special ops telepath, who HAS DEFINITELY KILLED A LOT OF PEOPLE, is gonna root around in my mind?” said Philo, asking for the third time,

“Yes,” said Carmen, a third time, calm as could be.

“Okay, yeah, sure, let’s do it.” His face suddenly set, that new determination back, seasoned by the having given up of really only about forty minutes ago, “This is having a plot, this is what people who have a plot do” as he and Carmen exited Priscilla. Carmen didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was, in fact, not having a plot, that he was mistaking emotional denouement, mixed with the set-up for later plot, as broader story structure. She reached the door and knocked her friendliest knock, Philo using her for three-quarters cover. Before long, a short, honey blonde elfin woman answered the door, she had the appearance of softness, of peace, a mother who made a pilates class perhaps twice a week, on a good week. When she shook Philo’s hand, introducing herself as Hopina Clairmont, her grip was iron. The two were escorted into a pleasant living room, lacking only a touch of kemptness, exchanging all the usual pleasantries.

“So,” said Philo, sitting down on a lumpy, slightly faded floral patterned couch, on a small stuffed monkey and next to an indeterminate juice stain, “How exactly did you meet Ms. Clairmont, Carmen?”.

“Oh,” replied Carmen, “I did a story on her a year or so ago.”

“That’s right,” A southern drawl at the corners of Hopina’s voice, sounding of lilac, “I was the first women ever to be appointed to lead a death squad.”

“Wow,” a cartoonish bead of sweat appearing and running down Philo’s forehead, “That’s very impressive, way to break the glass ceiling, ma’am. What does it feel like to kill people?”

“Honey, you really needn’t worry, And as far as killin’, it feels different every time. No man kills the same person twice, because you can only kill someone once, and you aren’t the same man as the last time you killed them.” She nodded, sagely, savagely, “You’ll know soon enough yourself, anyway.”

“I’m not gonna kill anyone. Am I gonna kill someone? How do you know? Are you also a prophetrix?”

“No, dear, just a telepath. It’s a look on your face. You can always tell. Tell when someone’s killed before, when they’ll kill again, when they’ll kill at all, really.”

“So, anyway, Hopina,” Carmen cutting through the unease in the air, “Philo here has a fairly interesting psychic entanglement situation.”

“Yes, Yes, the dead girl.” Several of Philo’s corrections dying in his throat: ‘They’ and ‘Well he’s not really dead the whole process wasn’t normal’. “What is it you’re looking for, what would you like me to do, precisely”

Speaking around the lump in his throat, slightly choked, “Well I’d like to talk to him, my… entanglement. We tried a seance, but it seems like it mostly linked us up, more than letting us actually talk. Carmen thinks there might be a link, somewhere deep in my mind. I’d like you to dive in, to my brain, or my mind I guess, and see if you can’t connect us.”

Hopina Clairmont looked skeptical, “A full dive is rough, boy, you need to be made of stern stuff to handle something like that.”

“I can handle it, for her, anything.”

Still doubtful, “All right, then, up you get, come sit here.” Hopina dragged a short stool over from the kiddie table in the corner as Philo rose, and settled on the offered perch. “Now, child, It ain’t gonna be my fault if you ain’t ever the same.”

Squaring his shoulders, and sitting voluntarily straight for perhaps the first time in his life, Philo said, “No ma’am, it’ll be all mine. Say,” looking about the room, “where are your kids? We haven’t heard them since we got here.” Carmen made wide, desperate eye contact and shook her head, very slightly as Hopina’s iron fingers grasped his temples, just under antennae. 

“I sent ‘em on a play date. Try to clear your mind, dear, the less turbulence I got on my way in the easier this is gonna go for you.”

Philo tried, earnestly tried. But as those iron fingers dug into his skull he could not help but to think of PoPeromia. Of this vital essence, kept ever just out of reach, beyond some veil he could not understand, had only recently, even, become aware of. Memories came, unbidden and unstoppable, of his half-life half-lived, of the gulf of emptiness he could never bridge, never cross. Scents, images, sensations all half-smelled, half-seen, half-felt. Soon after he’d been released from the lab, his parents had taken him to a meadow, in low, rolling foothills of the ancient, weathered mountain ranges just outside Happytown. It had been spring. The long not-quite-green-really-more-beige grass was dotted with wildflowers of nearly every color imaginable. They’d laid down a picnic blanket, had eaten his favorite sandwiches and potato chips and cookies and drank his favorite soda pop and laid all together, amongst the grass and the flowers, in a loose circle with their heads close, not touching, but hair and antenna and hats all tangling together in the gentlest breeze of that early spring as a hesitant sun, just gaining the confidence of summer, caressed them gently across the forehead and cheeks and nose, particularly the bridge. Cooing from every direction, “isn’t that sun so lovely”, “this is just so beautiful”, “that was one of the most delicious lunches I think I’ve ever had”. Even to a young Philo the subtext was clear, isn’t this so nice, isn’t it so nice to be outside and not in that dank, dark, scary lab anymore. But to Philo, there may as well have been no difference, no difference without PoPeromia. Mom had just been saying, “Isn’t this so lovely, Philo? What do you think?” and Father begun stretching that stretch, the big one, which meant he was going to sleep wherever he happened to be when the tendrils began to bore into him. Hungry, squirming worm creatures who were all Hopina Clairmont ate through his skull and into his very mind, devouring the memory before his eyes as it was replaced with pain, pure and white and hotter than the sun, which was presently eaten by a worm-Hopina. 

When the light of pain faded, Philo found himself standing alone in a craggy shadowland. The boulders and crevices and ravines scattered in all directions were vaguely fleshy, appearing, in what little light seemed to be emanating from Philo himself, to be moist. But was dry to cautious touch. With little else to do, Philo picked a random direction and began to walk. He walked first for hours and then for days, never encountering another soul or even another light, days turned to weeks and Philo found that he was hungry, he ate of himself, though he never seemed to diminish, when he was thirsty he used his ever growing nails to cut a vein to drink from, and he relieved himself wherever as he walked, since his clothes had all worn away an age ago, and the weeks slowly became years as Philo’s beard grew and eventually fell off and grew again, as Philo walked ever onwards he became first a man, then an old man, then a truly old man, then died and continued walking until all his flesh fell off and he was only a skeleton and no longer needed to eat or drink or to relieve himself. It was only after all his bones had worn away and even the spiritual outline of himself was beginning to glitch about the edges, that Philo came to a gorge in what he presumed to be the surface of his mind, and found himself to be no different than when all this had started. Deeper than his imagining, the gorge, which seemed unfair, this being his mind and all. His side of the gorge was connected to the other, which despite its unfathomable distance was actually quite close, by threads of silk so pure and white and thin that he knew if he stepped on one he’d instantly be sheared in two. So, instead, Philo sat determined to wait for whatever would happen, which happened about thirty seconds after he sat down. 

From somewhere far above, perhaps heaven, were it in his mind all along, descended a drop of silver, holy and radiant, at a slow, constant pace. As it came closer Philo understood it to be god, which he then understood to be Hopina Clairmont, who came to rest, delicately, in the direct center of one thread. Both moth and its silken cocoon. She spoke in a quiet voice which shook the bones of that world, “Philo, you made it, perhaps you are sterner than I presumed.” All traces of southern accent gone, replaced, instead by the specific new england accent which almost sounds English.

“I did.”

“Did you learn anything along the way?”“How to shit and walk at the same time.”

‘That’s the first thing we all learn.’ Which was not said, but shook the world nonetheless. “PoPeromia made it as well, quite a bit more quickly than you, in fact.” With this, Philo looked across the thread, and saw, indeed, PoPeromia Pixie standing across from him. As Philo blinked PoPeromia changed from a tall, thin vaguely human woman with long brown hair, tucked behind ears a little more square than one would expect, with crystal-clear lavender eyes that somehow made one think of blue, a high, beaked, noble nose, and a small thin-lipped mouth, to a man with equivalent, but inverted features. In either form PoPeromia was beautiful to Philo (horrifically pansexual), and, perhaps, to others, but more beautiful to Philo than anyone else in dead- or living-world. Or any other for that matter. 

“Philo,” They said, softly, their first word, repeated.

“I’ve decided something,” said Philo, his own voice soft, “If you’d like to, I’m going to bring you back, back to live-world.”

PoPeromia’s eyes glistened, “I’d like that, Philo.”

“And we’ll get married, Peromia, and we’ll never be apart again. I can’t be apart from you.”

“I can’t either, Philo, we were never supposed to be.” Something began to tug the two apart, gently, to pull them back the ways they’d come, and up, into the endless sky, with no stars whatsoever. “And when we die, they’ll light our bodies on fire wrapped all together and we’ll melt into one thing again, like we were supposed to be.” Philo just nodded, eyes full of tears, feeling, for once, like he need not say anything, the distance between them growing as PoPeromia spoke, their voice growing more distant with each word. Though, suddenly, Philo began to struggle, as his feet were leaving the ground, struggling back towards them, screaming, 

“I’M GOING TO DO IT, POPEROMIA, I’M GONNA GROW UP, I’M GONNA MOVE FORWARD AND I’M GONNA LIVE, NEXT TIME THERE’S GOING TO BE A PLOT, AND THEMES, AND LEITMOTIFS. IT’S GOING TO BE A REAL STORY, A LOVE STORY.” By this point, fully taken off his feet, being pulled into the sky like a fish on a hook, “I’M GOING TO DO IT, I’M GOING TO GET YOU, I’M GOING TO BRING YOU BACK.” As the two were whisked away from one another once more, pulled into clouds of the deepest azure they could never have hoped to see from the ground, and back up into waking, into their respective worlds.

“This is going to be very expensive.” Muttered Hopina Clairemont to herself, still perched on the thread, “you weird, perverted freaks.”

In A Suburban Garage, As a Preface to Immense Violence - Sometime in the near future

“The time the time has come I can’t believe can’t believe I’m going to be free finally going to be free.” Muttered the WASP wasp suburban housewife who sat at a table in the garage of her home cum prison. This was both a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant and a wasp person, a WASP wasp. On the table in front of her lay a neat stack of papers (divorce in nature), a Glock 9mm, and an Iphone 4s. Her five children, 15-19, had become ungrateful, and made it clear they were no longer in any need of raising. The front door opened, and slammed shut, too hard, he always let that FUCKING door close too hard. The wasp^2 took a headband from within the pocket of her modest cardigan, pure white with the letters SHWMFTL (Suburban House Wives and Mothers For Total Liberation) set in a small, bleeding circle. She tied the headband around her forehead, causing her sensible, fashionless bob to bunch up a bit at the top of her head, and looked for a moment hesitant. It passed. As, in a single movement, she picked the gun off the table, shot the phone, and tucked the gun into the waistband of her mom jeans at the small of her back. The muzzle hot against whatever passes for flesh for a wasp person, she didn’t flinch. Instead, she collected the papers, went to serve her husband, then walk out that front door, which would be closed gently behind her, almost sensuously, and into some vague, revolutionary future. 

Philo Dendron will return, in: Philo Dendron and the first thing about a magical school to actually be good

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